What is Real Faith?

Well, good morning, everybody. How are you doing today? Whether you're joining us in person, joining us online, it is a great day to be in church, isn't it? Beautiful day here in Santa Cruz County. My name's René, another one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church.

Hey, Faith Forward is the name of our fall series. But before we wrap it up with our final Faith Forward message today, I just kinda wanna give you a little preview about what's coming up next week and don't miss it. We have a very special Thanksgiving service. I love Thanksgiving. How many of you love Thanksgiving? It's like my favorite holiday, but it kinda sneaks up on us sometimes. So the weekend before Thanksgiving, we're gonna kinda equip you to be grateful all week long. So don't miss it.

We focus so much on the bad news. Let's focus on the good news. Let's focus on gratitude. That's next weekend. Then the next weekend in just two weeks, we start our Advent series, Shadow and Light. And this is all about the prophecies from Isaiah that inspired Handel to write The Messiah. And in the series, we're going to feature the choir. They're gonna come back. They're gonna sing selections from The Messiah. Doesn't that sound awesome? It's gonna be an amazing series and Advent. So I hope you guys come back for that. That's all in the next couple of weeks.

But right now, Faith Forward has been this series all about how to move forward with confidence in an uncertain future. And we need to hear this so much. People are feeling hopeless and angry and exhausted and divided. And so what we've been doing is building up one another's faith in this series. And this is Celebration Weekend as we wrap up this series. Are you stoked? Has God not been doing great things in this church through this series? I'm so excited about this.

I asked you to send me your stories, stories of how you grew during this series and stories of acts of kindness that your family or you, your small group did during this series. And for about two thirds of this sermon, what this is about is I'll be celebrating what God has done in this church through your stories. And here's why you need to listen to this. If you walked in demoralized and kind of exhausted today, because it all feels like bad news right now and you've had enough, you are going to leave feeling so uplifted today. You know why? Because you're going to hear reality.

The reality is that it's not all bad news out there. In fact, far from it. The reality is God is on the move and God is doing great things. And so you are going to hear things that never, ever, ever get covered in the news, which majors on bad. You know, one of my studies was journalism when I went to San Jose State and there's an old saying in journalism, if it bleeds, it leads, right? In other words, if it's bad news, that's what's going to get on the news.

What you're going to hear today is just as real as the alarmist things you hear on the news. In fact, it's more real because God's head is in it and you're going to leave feeling inspired and it's happening right here locally. And if you are joining us here at church or maybe online for the very first time today, met some first time visitors walking in from the parking lot this morning, welcome. And this is a great weekend for you to see and to sense the heartbeat of Twin Lakes Church.

So let's dive into a couple of your letters. Barbara Moore wrote this. I hadn't realized how cynical I was becoming over the last couple of years. Raise your hand if you can relate to that. Just kind of like you've been drifting into cynicism. She says, you know what? It's much better living faith forward than the faith backward way that I was living without even realizing it. And I'm so grateful that this series has contributed to that.

Another woman here at the church named Carly wrote a letter. This is just part of it, I thought this was profound. She said, I struggle at times with depression and PTSD. Now this is a woman by the way who has a master's degree, who's an amazing person, but you know what? Many of us, including me, struggle with depression and anxiety. She says, at times I feel useless and a total burden. Now don't get me wrong. She says, I believe God has a plan for me, but I just can't see the end of this battle, this battle with depression that she's in.

Then you said one week that God already sees the win of our battles in past tense. Do you remember that in the story of Joshua? I don't understand it and I can't see it, but I will hold on to this. Thanks for giving me the hope I need to take each day one step at a time. And that's why we call this series, Faith Forward. Because that's what faith is. Faith is not just taking that initial step of belief in Jesus Christ and commitment to the Lord as your master, as your savior. That is a part of the walk of faith. But then it's every day waking up and taking that day's step forward in faith for you in the race that God has given you to give.

And it means being sensitive to how God might be leading you to take a risk, to take a step forward in faith that day. For example, a woman named Elaine in our church who's going through cancer treatment herself said this in a letter last week while waiting in radiology for a CAT scan. So she could have been just focused on her own worries, right? I noticed a gal who looked very nervous. Inside my heart, God told me to go and share with her. So I did. That's scary, right? When you sense that, go on and go share with that person.

So I walked up, this is just some random woman in the waiting room. So I walked up and I told her how much God loved her and that he had her in the palm of his hand. And he loved her so much. She mentioned to me that she was anxious and she started to cry. She needed God's love that day. And it was awesome that he used me. Isn't that great? And that's been happening all over the county through the church as we've been more sensitized in this series, I think, to the fact that God has some place for us to move faith forward every day.

Now you're gonna hear more of your stories. Some of these are gonna make you cry. Some of them are gonna make you laugh in just a minute. But first, let's do a little devotional in scripture. We've been studying faith for eight weeks. So as we wrap up this series, here is the million dollar question, what is real faith, right? If it's true, as we saw in Hebrews 11, that without faith, it is impossible to please God, then this is about the most important question you could possibly ask, right? What is real faith? Like, what does it really mean to be a Christian?

Well, in James 2:14–20, the apostle James talks about this. This is a fascinating passage of the Bible. Now that we finished with one of the classic passages in the Bible on faith, Hebrews 11, kind of wrapped up our study in that in the book, in the sermon, in the small group series, let's in our wrap up today, let's go to another classic Bible passage on faith, which is James 2:14–20. I love this because the book of James has a fascinating backstory. Check this out. James was one of the half brothers of Jesus. Now just try to wrap your head around that for just a second. Jesus Christ is your older half brother. You are being raised with Jesus in your household. Your mom is always telling you, why can't you be like your brother, the Messiah?

You know, ah! Maybe that's why when we first meet him in the pages of the Bible, James and his other brothers are making fun of Jesus. They don't believe in Jesus. In fact, this is in the pages of the Bible. Jesus, his own family, his own half brothers are mocking Jesus. Then after Jesus is resurrected from the dead, the Bible says he appears specifically to James. Man, I wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that conversation, right? You know, kind of, the Bible doesn't give us any more details, but it had to have been something like, hey bro, what was it you were saying about me?

Ah! But whatever happened in that meeting, after that James becomes such a devoted follower of Jesus that he is willing to be killed rather than disown Jesus. Now, if James were here with me, sharing this platform in our auditorium today on this live stream, and we were to ask him, hey, what's it feel like today, you know, being Jesus Christ's brother? I mean, 2000 years later, you got a billion people claiming to be followers of the guy you grew up with in your house, how does that make you feel? What do you think he'd say? Well, actually, we don't have to wonder because he wrote a letter to the very earliest Christians about this probably a few decades into the Christian movement, maybe a couple of decades or so.

And really the whole letter is about something that really bugs him about us, about all the people in this burgeoning movement who are now claiming to be followers of his big brother. And he basically says, the whole letter is really one theme, it's basically, I knew Jesus super well. And those of you claiming to be followers of Jesus, you're not acting like the Jesus I knew at all. In this passage, James makes four points about what real faith is and what it is not. Basically he's saying, if you claim to follow Jesus, that means you follow Jesus, like act like Jesus. How many people think Christians need to hear this today or what, right? We all need to hear this, so let's plunge in.

Now, to be clear, James has already said in chapter one that salvation is a gift of God. Verse 18, he says, "God chose to give us birth through his word." Right? It's not by works, God chooses to give us the new birth. But he sees all these people walking around giving that idea a lot of lip service. So he says, let me just make four things clear. Real faith is, number one, not just something I say. It's not just something I say. Verse 14, what good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith, and if you got your notes out of your Bible, circle that word claims. He's not saying that this person really does have faith, he's just saying this person claims to have faith, knows all the right words, but has no deeds. Can such faith save him?

He's saying this guy's walking around knowing all the right phrases, all the right jargon. He can speak Christianese, words like I'm saved, I accepted Jesus, I prayed the sinner's prayer. But James' point here is talk is cheap. Anybody can say anything, real faith is just words I say, and real faith is not just something I feel, not just something that I kind of emote, it's not just about feeling the feels. Look at verses 15 through 17, I love this. Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and without daily, what? Food, if one of you says to them, go in peace, be warm and well fed, but does nothing about their, what kind of needs? Physical needs, what good is it? In the same way faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by what? Action is what? Is dead. Wow.

Real faith is not only not just what you say, words, it's also not just feeling empathy, or feeling close to God, or feeling sorry for somebody. You do something about physical needs. Now let's just talk about physical needs for a second, right here in Santa Cruz County. This number stunned me when I looked it up this last week. Did you know that about 35% of Santa Cruz County residents face food insecurity right now? Now food insecurity is kind of a technical term that people in the social services use. What does food insecurity mean? Food insecurity means that they have zero financial margin. That 35% of the people in our county live in such a way that are faced with any kind of extra expense at all. That's slightly unexpected. Car expense, rent hike, medical expenses, they will not be able to afford food.

There's no margin anymore, not with gas prices going up and food prices going up. And this number's just getting higher. So that's theoretical, right? The technical definition. What's it actually look like? What's it feel like? So last Wednesday night I'm hanging out down at our free grocery distribution. I hope you take advantage of this if you need it. Every Wednesday, no questions asked, you don't have to qualify. We literally give out bags of free groceries, including fresh produce here at our People's Pantry, 3.35.30 every Wednesday afternoon. So I'm chatting with some of the people that are coming in for food, and several of them tell me some very moving stories, including this one.

Man, probably 10 years younger than me, super good shape, sharp guy. I said, "Oh, you know, can I ask you why you're coming here for food?" He goes, "Well," he said, "I had a great job. I thought I was set for life. I was an ATM technician for a major national bank." And then during the lockdown, I was laid off. And he said, "Virtually the same month that I was laid off from my job," he said, "My mom got rapid onset Alzheimer's disease and she's a wanderer, and so memory care facilities won't take her in. And so I'm taking care of my mom 24/7 right now. And at the exact same time, my slightly younger brother had a series of heart attacks which disabled him. He can't take care of his family. Now I'm helping his family, taking care of them, bringing them food, and so on."

Now listen to what he said. He said, "You know, you go through life and everything is good, and then suddenly the bottom falls out. And at first you feel anger and betrayal, you're not prepared. But help like this has changed my perspective. I know we will be okay." Now, you know who gave that man hope? You did. You didn't just give him food, you gave him hope. Because of the fact that every Wednesday at TLC we give out free groceries with our people's pantry team, and we are able to give out so much food because we get our food from the community food bank, and because of their buying power for every one dollar donated to the food bank, they can buy four meals, an amazing deal.

And so I just wanna encourage you to donate at TLC.org/food. You might know that our goal this year is $100 for every man, woman, and child at TLC, including those who join us virtually. I know not everybody can do that. Some cannot give anything. You just need to receive this food from us. Some can give more. But if we all do what we can, and that's the average, then we can raise enough for one million meals because faith is not just saying, I feel sorry for you. Go in peace, be warm and well fed. Faith is helping.

Now, before we move on to the next point, some of you are very guilt-oriented people by nature, like me. And so I know what's probably going on in your head right now, you're going, oh, your guilt is kicking into high gear. You're thinking, but I don't, James says meet physical needs. I don't meet every physical need around me all the time, so I'm no good. Wait just a minute. Did Jesus meet every need around him in his life? No. Did Jesus heal every person that was around him during his lifetime? No. But he was characterized by a life of service. And James is just saying, if I claim to be following Jesus, then my life is going to be characterized by loving service to others too.

Because faith is not just something I say and not just something I feel. And third, it's not even just something I think. Now this is fascinating. In verse 18, James says, but someone will say, you have faith, I have deeds. Trying to separate the two. Well, show me your faith without deeds and I'll show you my faith by my deeds. He's just saying, the two can't be separated. Watch this. You believe that there is one God. Good, even the demons believe that and shudder. This is just a dramatic way of saying, watch this now, there should be a correlation between knowing Christian content and showing Christian character. Do you agree with that? But for some reason, there isn't always.

In fact, just a second, take just a minute and think of all the people that you know who know the Bible 10 times better than you. Are you picturing some people? Now, are they always in every instance, 10 times more loving than you? Often not. Why? Here's my theory. We can get so fascinated by the content of our faith because Christianity, the doctrines in Christianity are so endlessly fascinating and rich and mysterious. My master's degree is in theology, so I love talking about theology and reading about theology. I do it constantly all the time. My wife and I, if you're a fly on the wall, there's two things that we always talk about in our downtime. We talk about the warriors and we talk about theology. Those two things, constantly.

But so we can get so fascinated by it that we forget to apply it. It's kinda like this. Let's say I decide I need to get into better shape. And I go onto Amazon and look for their best-selling fitness books, and I order one of them, and here's one that came up on Amazon. This is an actual book, "Becoming a Supple Leopard." Right? This is an actual Amazon best-seller, self-published book on fitness. So I tell you about this book, and I say, "I got this, I'm gonna become, I am going to become a supple leopard." Six months later, you see me and I am not supple. I'm like going, "Ugh, I can hardly bend over." And I'm not leopard-like. You know, I'm blob-like. And you say, "What happened, René? Didn't you read that book? I thought you loved that book." And I go, "Oh, yeah, I do love that book. In fact, I got some colored highlighters and I marked it up. And then I started a home group where we all bought this book and we studied this book. And every week we memorized a different line from this book. In fact, I decided to start a grad school where we study the word origins of every word in this book and is just deeply fascinating. However, I gotta admit to you that there is some tension now in the study group because it's unclear in the text whether one should stretch before exercise or after. And so we've kind of broken into a pre-stretchational and post-stretchational group and we're barely even talking to each other anymore.

You would say, "René has lost his mind!" But we do that with the Bible and call it deep study. So what does James say looks like a deep Christian life? Not knowing the jargon, not feeling the feels, not just kind of accumulating knowledge for knowledge's sake. Again, I love studying theology, richly, richly, richly enjoy it, but it is in service of actually developing holiness and Christian character. James says, "Real faith is something that I live." It's something that I live. Look at James 2:20. I think the Living Bible translates this the best. He says, this is the sense of what he's saying, when will you ever learn that believing is useless without what? Doing what God wants you to. Faith that doesn't result in good deeds is not real faith.

Now, let me just say this. This verse right here, this is the most controversial part of the book of James. In fact, it seems to contradict the whole rest of the New Testament, especially the Apostle Paul's writings who famously said, "It is by grace you are saved, not by works." And here James seems to say, "Oh, but it's not just faith, it's faith and works." So how do you explain that? Well, this is really James's way of just reiterating what the Apostle Paul himself says. In fact, very famously in 1 Corinthians 13, where he says, "If I have faith that can move mountains, but do not have what? Love, I am what? Nothing." James is saying that's exactly right. But when we do put together the content of Orthodox Christian doctrine with love in action, man, that is so powerful.

I mentioned this briefly in my newsletter, but a week ago over at Loft Coffee, I sat across the table from a local friend of mine. She's a prominent local politician, also teaches part-time at UC Santa Cruz, and she told me this. I have to be honest with you, René, my idea of Christians was almost entirely negative. I thought of Christians as very judgmental, isolated from society, not usually very smart. And she's telling me this, and you know what, I was happy for her honesty, but I gotta be clear, I was not surprised. If you're a Christian, you've lived in Santa Cruz County for any number of years, this is not surprising to you that this is how Christians are often perceived by our broader culture.

But then she said this, "TLC has blown away what I now see as my prejudice against Christians. I have met smart, kind, generous Christians who I would probably still disagree with on issues important to me, but whom I have grown to love." And it's that last word that's key, love. Love, love, love. You know, so many people are pointing this out, but we're living in an age where everybody's retreating into their own little fortress, right? Where everybody thinks exactly like they do on every single point. Christians are doing it, and so is everybody else in our society, on the left and the right and everywhere else. And what happens is your mentality begins to be, it's us versus them. And because you know fewer and fewer people who disagree with you about anything, it becomes so easy to stereotype people and make the kind of assumptions that she made about Christians because she just didn't know any Christians.

So how do we overcome that? The Bible says this, "For it is God's will that by doing what? Doing good. You should silence the ignorant talk." It's not hateful, it's just ignorant. They just don't know any Christians. You should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people by doing good. That's the key. Check this out. My friend told me the single factor that changed my attitude toward Christians more than anything else was your commitment to feeding the hungry, meaning Twin Lakes Church commitment. She had just expressed astonishment to me that last year we raised enough for two million meals. Now that's great, and I was pleased to hear that, but it gets better because she leans across the table and suddenly asks me, "René, tell me about your faith journey. Like why do you do this, and why does your church do this?"

And I said, "I'm sorry, I don't have time, but perhaps we can make an appointment." "No, are you kidding me?" I had the opportunity to explain how in my own life I was just caught up in legalism until I was preaching through the book of Galatians, and suddenly the gospel of God's grace just changed my heart and became very real to me. And I said, "You have to understand, this church's generosity is not out of guilt. It's not out of any kind of, oh, I'm twisting people's arms. It is a spigot of gratitude for God's lavish grace in our lives." And as I shared my story, she listened with genuine interest.

You know, there's a saying we like around here, and it's this good deeds lead to good will that lead to an opening for the good news. And at that table at Loft Coffee five days ago, I saw this exact sequence play out. Good deeds, good will, good news. But you know what? Here's the thing. I know you all already get this. I tell people all the time, and I told her, I have the incredible privilege of pastoring one of the most loving, generous groups of Christians on planet earth. What James is talking about here in this passage, I see happening at Twin Lakes Church every single day.

And to prove it to you and to inspire you, to lift you up, I just wanna wrap up with some more of the stories that you've been sending me. Again, if you're just joining us this weekend, here's what's been happening exactly one month ago. Four weeks ago, mid-October, we launched what we called our Acts of Kindness Initiative as part of this Faith Forward series. We've got small groups meeting all over the place in person and homes and also on Zoom, all over the county studying the Faith Forward material. And we challenged each group to have an Act of Kindness project. And we just said, just be creative, look around and see what you could do in keeping with what Scripture tells us to do.

Well, I could never have imagined what has happened. If I could map these Acts of Kindness, you'd see how all over our county, these deeds have been spreading. We're into the hundreds now, and this all happened in a month. And there's a story behind every single one of these. Here are just a few. See if I can get through this one without crying. One of our Zoom groups found, they're all just meeting on Zoom, and it became clear that one of their members was a quadriplegic named Christine. Well, the group leader called her daughter named Seattle, who is her primary caregiver, and said, "Listen, don't tell your mom right now, but we just wanna know, does your mom need some help? Can we do an Act of Kindness for her?"

And her daughter just burst into tears and said, "My mom has been praying every day for help. We need a bed, we need a table, we need an electric generator up where we live. There's so much that my mom hasn't taken a shower in a year because she doesn't have a shower chair." And so the group stepped up, and last night, after I shared this in the evening service, Seattle and her mom sent us this video. Watch this.

Hi, my name is Seattle, and this is my mom. Her name's Christine. I just really, we really both wanna spread a really big message about how much this community service and the group, the Bible study group, that Ann just recently helped my mom, and I both join in on how great an impact they've made in our lives, my mom's life.

So much. In the last week and a half, we've been given a new bed for her because she had really bad sores, a shower chair, a generator, and this, we're using an iPad that was donated through Richard and Julia, and we're just so thankful for everyone. I don't even, the crazy part is, I haven't met a lot of these people, and they just opened up their hearts to us and answered my mom and I's prayers. Like, we don't feel alone anymore.

No. At all. And we're so thankful, and I don't mean to be emotional, but I still haven't taken in the generosity that's been shared. I just, I didn't know, but I'm so thankful.

Wow. Christine, I know you're watching Seattle too. We love you, don't we? We love you, we love you, we love you, and you are not alone. I mean, and when you consider the fact that these are happening all over the county, that is just one story, you know, you want Christianity to have an influence here in Santa Cruz County. Let the political machine battle out and destroy each other, because what we do is we're little seeds, we're little bits of yeast, and Jesus said, "Just be patient, trust that process," because that's how the Kingdom of God comes. How many times did he tell us that?

Let me just show you some of the little seeds being planted. Let's zoom in on some more. One group cleaned gutters for a widow in the church. Another group cleared five dead trees on the property of another widow. We can't take care of this. Members of another group had new neighbors. The storm blew down one of their trees, breaking windows, making a mess, so this small group cleans it up with hand saws and chainsaws and tells them, "This is just a welcome to the neighborhood gift." Other groups put together gift bags for every single staff member at Mar Vista School, got many letters of thanks like this. I am a special ed teacher at Mar Vista, would like to sincerely thank you and the Twin Lakes community for sending us all such incredible, thoughtful gift bags. Thank you for shining your light in a world that's feeling a little dark right now. Love it.

This group volunteered with Martha's Kitchen, which offers free meals on Fridays, and I love that the whole family helped, including the teenagers. Another group collected PJs and cans and clothing for neighbors. This group built a shed for a CZU fire victim in the Santa Cruz Mountains. This group delivered bags filled with necessities to the warming center in Santa Cruz and got to know the director. Another group worked at an assisted living center on a patio refurb for them. This group made gift bags for the Rebelly Family Homeless Shelter. Another group is giving every single Santa Cruz City police officer a gift bag. The Women at Freedom Women's Center are all being provided Christmas gifts by another group. Another family in Scotts Valley, the Hernandez's, threw a catered party for their neighbors and friends. The only cover charge, a donation to the food bank.

I love it. Our junior hires put together gift bags for homeless people. Others donated over 1,000 pajamas to Project Pajamas for kids in transitional housing. So many more, but would you just join me in giving God glory for what he is doing through Twin Lakes Church? This is all in one month. One month. One month. Can you imagine if this continues to be our vision to be a counter-cultural revolution of God's love in our county? Here's the big idea. If you're patient, real faith has ripple effects.

And again, this is not about you trying harder to be better. A pond doesn't try hard to make ripples. Somebody throws a pebble into it and ripples are naturally made. God throws a pebble into your life. It's his grace. And then the more that captures your imagination, God lavished so much grace on me. God so loved the world that he gave. The more loving and the more giving you are going to become too.

So as we reach the end of the series, don't just say, you know, man, this faith series was so good. I heard it, I felt it, thought a lot about it, learned some new concepts. James would say, yeah, let's keep living it. I wanna close with this letter. I think this summarizes the whole point of the series in Hebrews 11 so well. Listen to this. My husband and I got baptized at the beach last month. I grew up in a house that believed in God, but never went to church, studied the Bible, or had discussions about faith. When I was 17 and fresh out of high school, I entered a relationship that quickly became abusive. And I was in that relationship for two and a half years.

When I was close to giving up, contemplating ending my life, I decided my last ditch effort was to give it all to God. I sat on the floor and cried and asked God to take it all, just tell me where to go, what to do, and if he was real, please be with me, please save me. I had up until then seen my future as dark. But after that prayer, I was able to see it out. I had hope, I left, and now I have more than I could have ever dreamed, including a husband who's loving and kind, and who actually brought me to TLC in the first place. And I could only have that after giving it all to God, and I love the way she puts this, which I did not even know was an actual thing then.

Now she says, what does this have to do with faith forward? And she gets this, oh, I wish everybody got this. On the day of my baptism, I felt so loved, so whole and joyful, but as you reminded us, things will suck again. She says, I'm only joking, partly, but you reminded us that this is just the first step, and things won't go perfect, but we'll be better equipped to handle them. And I knew that was true because after leaving the abusive relationship, things got harder and more difficult, and slowly got better in ways that I couldn't then see them.

So here's the last line. I knew you were right. Stepping out in faith can be hard and painful for a long time before you ever get to the light on the other side, but oh, is it worth it? Man, she captured the whole point of Hebrews 11, didn't she? Which is the life of faith is not easy, but it is rewarding. And so whatever the next step you need to take, maybe you've been just kinda come and checking this out. You wouldn't even call yourself a Christian, but you've been thinking about it. I just encourage you, take the next step for you, which is to say, God, I don't even kinda get this, like she didn't either, but if you're real, take me, take my life. I commit my whole self to you. That is your first step. It's not easy, but it's worth it.

But many of you, you made that choice decades ago, and you've been kinda stalled out a little bit in your faith. That's because you've forgotten that the life of faith is about the posture of living faith forward every morning. You wake up, God's mercies are new, you're forgiven every morning, God gives you a fresh start. So you get to take the next step of faith for you into God's adventure. It's never easy, but there is joy, there's reward. It is so worth it when we live our lives faith forward. Let's pray together. Would you bow your head with me?

Heavenly Father, I just pray that if there are people here right now who've been thinking about taking that first step, that they would say in this moment, Jesus, today is the day I take that step. Lord Jesus, I don't understand everything about the life of faith, but I am surrendering to you as the woman in the email did, just take me, I'm yours. I trust in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. And Lord, for those of us who've already made that step years ago, help us to live every day, trusting completely in you, living faith forward. That's not only a release for our anxieties and our fears, but it's also the way we are ambassadors for the kingdom of God. It's the way we gain a hearing for the gospel, being doers of the word and not hearers only by your grace as we're captivated by your love. And it's in Jesus' name that we make these commitments, amen.