The Jesus Way: The Greatest Must Be a Servant, Part 2

Pastor Jeff and Cheryl Orluck

Jeff: We started a month ago talking about one of the Jesus ways and we read several scriptures where he talked about how the greatest among you shall be your servant. A month ago when we shared this back in March, I really realized as Cheryl and I were spending time on this, that this was as much about identity, our identity as it was about anything and how important it is for us to recognize who we are and to be able to realize how great we are in order to be the servants that Jesus called us to be. And of course, he was really addressing, on many levels, but on one level, he was saying, if you think you are great, prove it by how well you serve. Because if you think you are great and you are not serving, you are not really great at all.

But on the other hand, the conclusions we came to was that if you truly are great, if you've established a level of greatness on the internal you, then service is something that is kind of automatic to the identity that has come to you from Christ. That was another thing that we, that we kind of emphasized back in March, was that there are a lot of factors as we grow up, especially as children, that, that either leave us really formed as human beings or very broken as human beings. We all come into adulthood more or less broken. It's really when we come to Jesus, it's Jesus who actually restores our identity to us. And he's the one that begins to establish in us that sense of value that allows us to understand the greatness that we carry as his children.

The one thing that we didn't talk about last week, and I just want to touch on this morning before we move on, is the fact that when we come to Jesus, we've spent much of our time and we've already developed a lot of belief systems about ourselves, a lot of images about who we are, a lot of behaviors that surround those images that are contrary to the identity that Jesus calls us to. We've learned a lot of ways, the ways to think, ways to feel, ways to behave that are, that don't fit who we really are in Christ. When we come to Jesus, that identity is restored. That's what the word redemption means. When you redeem something, you restore its value.

When you first said yes to Jesus, the value that you have as a human being made in the image of God, as a child of God gets restored to you, but you've learned to think the wrong way. It's not an automatic, like flip the switch once you were this and now you are this; you are in the eyes of God. It's actually true. The identity you have is real, but you have to learn to be who God has made you to be now. There are a couple scriptures. I know Pastor Robert and TaQuaris have kind of coached us in this as well. But the first one we are going to look at is Ephesians 4:21 and 23. If you could put that one on, it's down at the bottom there.

Cheryl: Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes.

Jeff: In the New American standard, it says, "be renewed in the spirit of your mind." If you are wondering where that scripture is, if you guys read the older versions, that's the one: be renewed in the spirit of your mind. This is something that the Holy Spirit who is given to us as a helper, actually is involved in, renewing the spirit of our minds. It's something that happens every day. It's something that he works in all the time. Jesus actually said, "The spirit of truth will guide you into all truths." One of the really important truths that a Holy Spirit is guiding us into is the truth about who we are, the truth about where we live, the truth about what our lives are really called to be.

In fact, in worship this morning at one point in time, all of a sudden, I was up in heaven with the Lord and I was looking down and, and the, and the father said to me, "he said, I want you to look down at your life and I want to, I want you to look at it right now from my view." And you know what, all those big problems-- Robert talked about this as well, all those big problems and those issues and those struggles I had, they were just so small from my vantage point in heaven. They weren't impossible. They weren't insurmountable, they weren't depressing. There were solutions. there was provision. there was help. there was success When I looked at it from his viewpoint.

Cheryl: And you are better for those things getting through them.

Jeff: Yes, you are because they form in you a lot of the things that God is looking to see.

Cheryl: I'm so glad.

Jeff: Me too. I always say, Lord, I'm so glad you don't leave me where I am.

Cheryl: Yeah. I'm glad for troubles because I need them. I need them.

Jeff: Yeah. One of the things when Cheryl and I were talking, she said, pay attention to the inner new you that he is exposing.

Cheryl: Be aware. Ask him to show you every day. Show me, Lord, what is the new, bring out the new me. Help me to see this.

Jeff: The good news is day, day by day, I can't always see the change, but I found if I look back 10 years, I can actually see that something has happened in my life.

Cheryl: I see it.

Jeff: Thank you.

Cheryl: Isn't that good if your wife sees it?

Jeff: Yeah, it's really good. It's really good. People ask you how you are and you say, well, you have to talk to my wife.

Cheryl: But don't stop.

Jeff: Nope. We are on the road with Jesus. There's another scripture that speaks to this and uh, and it just talks about how Jesus is also intimately involved in the transformation of our old self to our true self. And that's an Ephesians 5:25 and 26.

Cheryl: For husbands, this means love your wives just as Christ love the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God's word.

Jeff: I highlighted, washed by the cleansing of God's word. The word of God, Jesus said, my words are spirit and they are life. And when you read his word, it washes you. He washes you with his word. I'm not talking about doctrine. You don't have to do deep word studies. You don't have to go to seminary. You don't have to be a doctrinarian. All you have to do is read and muse and converse with the Lord about the words that you are reading. If you don't understand something, a great person to ask is the Holy Spirit.

What's really wonderful is as you muse in the word, as you read the word, you can read it. You don't have to read a ton a day. I mean, I think there's great value in reading the Bible through. All of those who have done this know that to read the entire Bible in one year, you have to read seven chapters a day. That's a lot of reading. You don't get to do a lot of musing if you are reading seven chapters a day. You don't get to meditate a lot, you are just getting through it. But there's real value in it because it gives you the full counsel of the word of God. In one year, you get to kind of see the whole package. And there's tremendous value in that.

What's really true about it is even when you are not meditating or being taught or doing deep studies, by reading the word, it gets planted in your heart. There's something spiritually powerful about the word of God so that when you take it in, whether you understand it or not, whether you are reading quickly or reading slowly, when you take it in, it is transforming your heart. It is a spiritual thing that God does. Jesus said, "I am the word." You are actually partaking of Jesus when you read the word. I mean, figure it out. He said, "If you eat my flesh and drink my blood--" He wasn't talking about cannibalism. He was talking about taking part in him. One of the ways we take part in Jesus is by being in the word and letting it wash us. And as you spend that time in it, whether it's a little bit in the morning or a lot in the afternoon, or however you do it, when you do, the Lord speaks to you. He awakens his heart to you, and he uses that to reform how you think.

Honestly, the best thing you'll ever do is to just sit with the Lord and talk to him about it. At least that's what I found has been the most transforming in my life. I used to do all kinds of deep word studies and that's how I taught. And I'm sure it was all just fine, but my life really started to change when the Holy Spirit started to redirect my thinking and gave me a new counsel on what he was actually saying when I read the word. That, many times, involves him bringing you past what you've been taught as we've talked before, past the normal roads your mind goes down when you read a certain scripture and him actually pulling it out of that context and giving you a new understanding, but hat's what he does, and it's a wonderful thing. A part of what brings the transformation from the beaten down, broken you to the raised in Christ, redeemed you, is the powerful work of his word as you just partake in it.

As we alluded earlier, I already said, when we enter into an understanding of the greatness, when we actually become great people, truly great, not great because we've reached a certain status, but great because we've become a certain us, then service becomes a natural part of what we do. And we talked quite a bit about that last week, so I don't want to rehash it, but we just want to spend some time talking more here about some different aspects of service. We've had so much fun talking about this, and so many of my notes are actually Cheryl's thoughts, so we'll have to have her chime in a lot here too. Let's read first Corinthians 12. We are going to read verses 22 to 26. This is out of the New International Version. Let's just read that and then we'll take it from there.

Cheryl: On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker, are indispensable. And the parts that we think are less honorable, we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty. While our presentable parts need no specific treatment. But God has put the body together giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it. If one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Jeff: It's a mouthful there. But what we really want to look at is, is the quiet places of service that, for the most part, are unseen. Because so much of the service that every one of us provides, whether it's at work or in our homes, or in our church or in our communities, is not seen, never recognized, never rewarded, even with so much as a thank you. You ever feel like that? That's how it is?

Cheryl: That's when we count on treasure in heaven.

Jeff: Yes. It's really true. There are some service that's really visible, but most service, if you are a servant, if you have a heart of a servant, most service you provide is not seen by others, much of it, and you can feel like you are just a cog in the wheel, unseen and unappreciated, and you can end up resentful

Cheryl: Resentment over that. If you have resentment, it means that you need to talk. Okay? So check that out.

Jeff: But let's just talk about your role as service in those invisible places for a second in comparison to our human bodies. Some of us have an idea of what our pancreas does, or our kidneys, or our gallbladder or our thyroid. Do you know how big the thyroid is? A little, little, little, tiny gland up here in your neck somewhere. And when that thyroid goes haywire, guess what? You got a mess, right? We just learned with Christie. How many days was she in the hospital? 51 days in the hospital. The doctors, it took them that long to figure it out. It was her thyroid.

Cheryl: My dad was a walking skeleton.

Jeff: He was almost dead.

Cheryl: He had been through all sorts of tests, and then at the end they thought, oh, maybe we should test your thyroid. And that was it. I mean, he almost was dead.

Jeff: Almost died. Yeah. We don't think about those things. We don't realize our pancreas--- What does the pancreas do? It secretes insulin. It keeps your blood sugar right. My pancreas isn't working like it should anymore. My blood sugar's higher than it should be, but when I was 20, I was down in three big glasses of coke with every meal. Never even gave a thought what it was doing to my pancreas. Well, I'll tell you what it was doing. It was damaging it. I didn't spend one second thinking about taking care of my pancreas. We spend so much time taking care of our face, so much money on our hair and our face, and our nails, and all the things that we see. What good do these nails do for keeping me healthy? What's all that lipstick going to do for my kidneys? What's really important when you are 68? It ain't my face.

All of a sudden there's a lot of other organs that become really, really important that I never paid attention to. If you are just a cog in the wheel, if you are an unseen force, if you are serving in an unseen fashion at your job or at your church, you need to recognize that that's actually a sign of greatness. What Paul is telling us here is those parts that are... He says, "The parts we deem to be less honorable--" why do we deem them to be less honorable? Because they are not upfront. It's not the pastor. It's not the worship leader. It's not the youth pastor. It's the person who's cleaning the bathrooms.

I don't know about you, but when I come to church and I use the restroom, I'm pretty happy that that urinal is clean, and there's toilet paper and the restroom, and the paper towels are there when I need them, and there's soap to wash my hands. As soon as one of them isn't there, I run to Pat and I say, "Pat, the paper towel isn't working in the bathrooms." He never hears about the bathrooms unless someone is telling him what's not working. Pat actually doesn't clean the bathrooms. Rosina does. Thank you, Rosina.

Cheryl: Thank you, Rosina.

Jeff: Don't be discouraged if you are not being rewarded for the things that you do, because actually what you are doing is you are moving in a realm of greatness that the Lord has called you to. That's what service actually is. You are proving who you are when you serve.

Cheryl: Should I share?

Jeff: You got something to say?

Cheryl: I had a recent opportunity. I got called by some neighbors who were sick, and in the middle of my busy day, they needed me to bring them some electro lights and, and some food. And they are just some things they needed me to shop for. Well, I said, I can do that, and as I started doing this for them, I became so energized, and I was so surprised at how excited I was to lend aid to these people that were down and out. I mean, it was a couple, and they were both sick. They could not function hardly. I'm like, hop skipping and jumping down the aisles of the grocery store, finding stuff and so excited. I came home after serving them, and I was just so surprised at how much energy I had and how excited I was to do that. It wasn't any kind of drain on me. It wasn't any kind of chore. It was like, yes, I get to do this. And I'm like, wow, this is something I'd like to do every day. Please, people, let me know if you need something. I'm just there. It must be my thing. I just loved it.

Jeff: Think about how you feel when you get to serve like that; think about how it makes you feel. Oftentimes, there's a tremendous reward in serving that comes just from the satisfaction of being able to serve. In Matthew 6, Jesus, of course, he talks in the context of giving and fasting and praying. He, he talks about all of those things in the context of, but your father who sees everything, he will reward you. When you are serving in some capacity and nobody notices, but you, you have two ways of being totally satisfied. One is just your own personal satisfaction that you get to, to, to extend the gift of serving others. And two is the fact that nobody else might see you, but the father does. And the father rewards you for what you do. He sees what you do that no one else sees. And he might even reward you in ways that no one else will see.

Cheryl: I felt like my reward was being able to do this for them. I was getting so much. I can't describe it, but I was on top of the world to do this.

Jeff: Just a little caveat from there is, don't keep silent about what you need. You are stealing everybody else's opportunity to serve. We are so bad about the need to be self-sufficient. Oh, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. No, if you are not fine, you don't have to be fine. It's okay not to be fine. It's okay to need some help. It's okay to ask for prayer. It's okay to say please get me some stuff. It's okay to say, "My car broke down. I need a ride." Whatever it is.

Cheryl: Come and do this job for me. I can't do it. Could you fix this?

Jeff: Could you help me? When you do that, you give someone else the opportunity to get a blessing. I think so many times here in America, we steal opportunities from people to be blessed because we refuse to need help even when we do. We were talking, one of the things we were just remind ourselves about the mentality we have. Well, that's not my job. Not my job. I remember walking into church, not here. This is actually before; it was at North West. We got there one morning, and the sidewalks weren't shoveled coming into church. I thought, well, who didn't shovel the sidewalks? And I walked in and I took care of my duties in the church. The guy who was shoveling the sidewalks at that time was our senior pastor Gill. I didn't even think of the words, but the metal is, well it wasn't my job. I don't know whose job it was, but they didn't do it. It would've been just as easy to pick up a shovel and shovel the sidewalks.

Cheryl: They weren't that big either.

Jeff: That they weren't that big either and it wasn't that much snow either. There's something about a servant's heart that steps in and does what isn't your job, just because it needs to get done. You just see it needs to get done.

Cheryl: So are you saying it's all of our jobs to be servant?

Jeff: Yeah, I guess I am. Huh? What do you think?

Cheryl: I think that's scriptural.

Jeff: I think you are right.

Cheryl: I think it's an invitation that the Lord invites us to and it's almost like a party. That's how I would describe helping that day for me was. It was like a party. It was like, I am having so much fun, so much fun.

Jeff: A couple quotes from Cheryl in the last couple weeks: "No one will see me do this, but I'm going to do it anyway." "Ah, this is so hard. But so what? It's an opportunity to mature." Serving isn't always easy. It's hard. It costs something. Takes your time, takes your energy, might take some money. Who knows what it's going to take. It's hard. Doesn't mean it's not rewarding. We are not trying to paint a picture like you can just breeze through it. Sometimes you can't; sometimes it's hard.

Cheryl: It's like building muscle. But if you are not going for muscle, you are building a new mind, a new agreement to help others. It grows on you.

Jeff: An identity that looks like Jesus.

Cheryl: What if we all helped each other? What if we did? What if we served each other here, right here?

Jeff: Our kids go to a church that's quite a lot larger than ours. You know what's a funny thing he said? "We got a pretty large church where we attend. We still have the same problem getting help in Sunday school that you guys do at Hope." You've just got to decide you are going to serve. What have we got here?

Here's a good one, and maybe I've started to say this already, but if you are in the middle of serving and you are unseen and you are not being honored for it, it, it's important to recognize that it's not that you don't deserve to be honored, it's just that it's the father who's honoring you if nobody else is. Jesus actually alluded to the fact that if you serve and you get honored for it in public, you've just got your reward. So if you serve and you don't get noticed and you get honored by your father, that's actually a better reward than if you get public recognition. I guess we shouldn't have done that for Cindy today because we just stole all the blessing.

Cheryl: Oh no, I have to take it back. Cindy, come back here.

Jeff: The father honors you. Yes, Linda. The father honors you, Cindy, as much as we do more than we do. So let's see here. How have you felt while serving? We talked about that. Oh yes. One of the things that Cheryl brought up is, in order to serve well, you have to take care of yourself and you have to love yourself. She reminded me, Jesus said, love your neighbor as you love yourself. There's a higher commitment that supersedes that, that he gave his disciples at the end. He said, "Love one another as I have loved you." That's actually higher than loving yourself. The point of love your neighbor as you love yourself is, it's pretty hard to love your neighbor if you don't love yourself, if you despise yourself. That identity is something that's really, really important to you.

One of the things that Cheryl, many of you heard Cheryl call herself the great Cheryl Orluck. Anybody ever heard that? The great Cheryl Orluck. Why do you call yourself that?

Cheryl: Because I know who made me, and I know that I've been given life every day. I see his hand on my life. I know how much he loves me, and I have looked things over inside and out and I love how he's made me. I am completely happy with everything that he did and is still doing. It's so good. Loving yourself makes every single moment better in your life. It's so important that you can say, "I love me." It's a huge hurdle for a lot of us to look at and say, "Am I loving myself? Do I?" Can I look in the mirror right at myself and say, "I love you. I love you." I've, I've done that. On the first times of doing it, it's kind of really strange and difficult and very effective I have to say. If you want to try that, just see how you feel when you do that.

Jeff: To love yourself, to recognize your value, we've said this before, is not the opposite of humility. Jesus knew everything that he could do, and he was the embodiment of humility. These things aren't opposed to each other. Most of our issues with pride come because we actually don't know who we are. If you actually know who you are, then pride is something that just tends to disappear from great people who are truly great. Not that they are great because of their status or their wealth or their fame. Those kinds of great people, if they are not actually truly great on the inside, then that's where we have all kinds of issues. We talked about that a lot a month ago. Let the Holy Spirit continue to reveal to you the, the value and the treasure that you are, that's a pretty special thing.

We'll just come to a place where we can wrap this up. I am convinced, I mean, , there's so many things that you can do to serve. There are so many things you can, you can bring people meals when they are sick and you can help with the children. You can work with the youth and you can serve on the worship team and you can help with the technical aspects and help run the cameras. There's so much that you can do. But I'm convinced that there's nothing that is a greater service that you will ever provide in this world than to honor other people and to treat them and offer them the opportunity for self-respect and a sense of worth and value because of how you treat them. One of the ways you do that is by choosing to converse with them. And when you converse with them, you actually are looking in their eyes and paying attention and interested in who they are and what they are doing.

Cheryl: It's real.

Jeff: It has to be real. If it, if it's just something you are putting on, it doesn't work. But when you honor people, you give them, you actually treat them almost deferentially. You lift them up; you give them the best; you give them the biggest piece of cake. You just find ways that you show them that you think that they have a greater place, they deserve more than you do. Not that you actually think that you are not good enough. That's not the point. The point is that you show them that they are valued. You ask them to help. That's a way to honor people. You choose to spend time with them in some way, shape or form. That's a way to honor people. You talk to each other. You connect with each other. You listen to each other. That's how we honor each other.

And whether we are honoring our children at home or our spouses or people at church or people at work, when we treat them with some deference and we choose to listen to them and we choose to hear what they say and value their opinion-- It doesn't mean you have to agree with everything. We don't always agree, but we can still value that this person actually has come to this conclusion reasonably and I'm going to at least value what they have to say. And then we have an opportunity to discuss it further.

I read the coolest quote this week, said, "A discussion is an exchange of knowledge. An argument is an exchange of ignorance." I kind of like that. You see, when we honor people, what we do is we open the door up for discussion. When you are in an exchange of knowledge, what that means is that you hear what the other person says as they are saying it. You digest what they are saying and you respond to what they say. In most of our conversations, what we do is when they are talking, we are not actually listening. We are thinking about what we are going to say next. We don't give them the honor of hearing what they actually think. We don't show them the honor of actually thinking through what their point is and responding to what they say. We are already past what they say; what they say doesn't matter because what we think is what's right. We don't listen to what these, to what they say and we say what we think, and we don't ever let their words have an impact on us. But if you honor somebody in a conversation, that's not how it goes. You are going to say something?

Cheryl: It's kind of all about you when you are that way.

Jeff: Years ago on, on those rare opportunities that we would meet somebody and they would actually look in Cheryl's eyes and listen to her when she talked, she would lose her place because she was so startled that they were actually listening.

Cheryl: I still do that. I'm the youngest, and I went through that thing where I would try to be listened to and that's still a hurdle for me to overcome. It still is, but I'm going to just jump right over that thing.

Jeff: I remember way back in revival days. Some of you might have gone. They had these revival meetings at an empty old mall called the Apache Plaza. They were catch the fire meetings, hosted by the Twin Cities Vineyard Church. We called them the Apache Plaza meetings and we all would go there. There would be worship, and someone would speak briefly and then there would be hours of prayer lines in prayer ministry one to another. And I still remember we got teamed up with this guy named Ken. I just remember his name was Ken. I think he was praying for us and or we were praying for him. And at the end we just sat we were sitting on the rug; we were sitting on the carpet and we were just talking and you were just blown away because he was actually looking in your eyes and he was engaging with Cheryl like she was a real person. And for most of us, that is so foreign.

She commented on it on the way home. She said, "That was so strange. It was so cool. He actually listened to me." It's interesting, I notice in Cheryl's notes when we are talking back and forth. I'll say something like, the greatest service we can provide is honor somebody. And I'll notice in her notes that she writes the word "how" question mark. Let's ask the father how we can live a life that's honoring to those around us. Let's ask the father to show us how we can as a church, be a place of honor where people who come here feel honored.

Many of you know Ian Andrews; he has been a longtime friend of ours, has been here many times. He has had a healing ministry for probably close to 60 years now. I remember him going to a church out on the west coast. He got invited there to speak and do some healing meetings. Sometime shortly after that he came, and he was at our house. We spent some time together and he said "That church, it is such a place of honor. They picked us up at the airport and they treated us from that moment until they brought us back to the airport like we were royalty. They gave us the best hotel room and the best food. And they treated us like we were just like something really special. I've never experienced that before in my life."

And I thought, wow, wouldn't that be something to be a place of honor where everybody who participates with you is honored, recognized, appreciated? It can't all happen from just your leadership. That's something that we as a church have to embody. It becomes who we are. I think we've really have become a place of belonging. What if when people come to belong, they also feel honored? I think that's a gift that we can provide in our heart of service. It's something that we, that forms in us individually and then we can share it corporately. Amen. Well, hallelujah. Anything else you want to share? Okay.

Let's just raise our hands to the Lord. Father, we just thank you for what you are forming in us. You are teaching us and forming us to live the ways of Jesus. These aren't ways that we learn in the world. These are upside down in many respects to all the things that we see in the world and experience in the world and have learned in the world around us. But they are real in your kingdom. They are true. And so we surrender Holy Spirit to you and ask that you begin to form in us these realities of the kingdom that we would step into who you have called us to be. And in the greatness that we find as children of God, that we would become servants of all. Not because we are manipulated to, not because we are pressured to, not because we should, but Lord, because of who we are, who we become. Let it be part of the life that flows out of us because the Holy Spirit flows into us. Let it be the truth that we become, that we expose, that you expose in us every day.

Thank you for transforming our minds, redeeming our thoughts, making us like Jesus. That's our greatest joy. And we trust you to do it. We trust you every day to keep working and transforming and washing us so that we become the things that you've called us to be in Jesus' name. Amen. Pastor Brian.

Brian: Thank you Pastor Jeff and Cheryl. I just want to take just another few seconds here. One of the things that God asks of us is to not carry the weight of this fallen world in our hearts and minds. You might be watching by livestream. You could be here in the auditorium today. One of the things that the Lord has really pressed upon me the last few years, and I pray this prayer virtually every day. I say, Lord, I give everyone and everything to you so that I don't really need to carry the weights of everybody's life that talks to us, everybody that I care about, everybody that has a need, everybody that has a wound.

As Pastor Robert had come earlier today, we talked about hope. There's a diminishing hope that is happening in the world today. But God is a God of hope. I'd like us to just take a moment and whatever you might be being weighed down with in your heart because you care whatever situation might be in your life, maybe someone has abandoned you, mistreated you, let's just give that person to the Lord. You love someone deeply and their life is not what you want it to be. Let's just give that person to the Lord. And so today, just pray this prayer with me.

Father, I give everyone and everything to you. Let's just pray it one more time. Father, I give everyone and everything to you. Lord, the God of hope and peace, reign in us today. May we trust in your goodness, may we trust in your ability to work things out. The scriptures teach us that he work with all things for good to those who love him and are called according to his purposes. I can just tell you today that you've been called by God. He has got a call on your life. It doesn't mean you are going to be a pastor. It doesn't mean you are going to be a priest. It doesn't mean you are going to be a missionary, but he is got a calling to you. Those who are called by God. He will work his goodness into your life. He will work all things out for good.

Lord, we give all those people that we care about to you. We give every circumstance that we might find ourselves in, to you because you do all things well and you know how to take care of what belongs to you. And we belong to you because we've been purchased with your precious blood. This, we pray Jesus in your name. Let's raise our hands together. If you are at home, raise your hands with us now.

May the Lord bless you and may the Lord keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you. Be gracious to you. And may the Lord turn his face towards you and give you his peace. This we pray in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. men.

Thank you for being here today. Thank you again, pastor Jeff and Cheryl. Thank you, Walton for a great job in leading worship. Thank you worship team. Have a wonderful week. Drive safely. It is still snowing, at least in Minnesota, it is. God bless you. Have a wonderful day. And we will have people at the altar to pray for you. Pastor Jeff and Cheryl are actually going to serve communion as well this morning. If you would like to receive communion, feel free to come over here to the right side of the platform.

Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 4-16-23. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.