Living Hope that You Can Share

Well, grab your message notes out of your bulletins. "Living Hope" is the series that we are in this summer in the book of 1 Peter in the Bible. And as you're getting those out, I want to give you a sneak preview. Yes, a sneak for the first time ever, a sneak preview of our fall series here at Twin Lakes Church. We're going to call it "Jesus Journey 40 Days in the Footsteps of Christ." This is a sneak preview of the cover, actually, of the book. It's a series we are writing here at Twin Lakes. Starting at the end of September, our entire church, all 3,000 plus of us, will take a virtual trip to Israel. You'll remember last spring we actually went to the Holy Land and filmed for this series on the actual sites where Bible stories took place. And that has been turned into small group curriculum and sermon material. And we wrote this 40-day devotional book around this. You're going to see places Jesus actually walked. You are going to get the message of Jesus so much better because you'll be understanding the historical context of it so much better. I am so excited about this. Are you excited about this? Does this sound good to you? I'm glad to hear that because we need you. We need to build a foundation for this series.

What we need to do is this. See this blue card in your bulletins? We really need to build a foundation for this by having people sign up to host small groups for this series and facilitate small groups for this series. If you're willing to open up your house or help to lead a small group starting the last weekend of September, fill this blue card out, whether you're here in the auditorium or over in Munsky in the venue service. Drop these in the offering at the end of the service because you are needed. And please pray for us as we now enter the final stretch of preparing this series for the fall. We are editing the videos, editing the book, and rolling into our final month of deadlines here and we don't just want to do this in human strength. We want this to be a spirit empowered series so we really would appreciate your prayer for this. I'm very stoked about this.

Now let's continue our series Living Hope in First Peter this morning. Living Hope that you can share. We're talking about evangelism today. And let me tell you a story to start out with. I will never forget visiting a large church in another state which shall remain nameless, but its initials are Texas. All right? And I was visiting, I was in a city that for the sake of this story I will refer to as Dallas, but it was Fort Worth. And after this church service, which was wonderful, a woman comes up to me in the lobby and greets me, says, "Well, you must be new." And I said, "Yes, I thought these are very friendly people." And without another word she whips out a little Bible tract and she says to me, "I would love to share with you how the Bible says that Jesus Christ is God's only Son came to die for us on the cross." And I thought I'd spare her some trouble and I started to say, "That's awesome." And I believe that too, very enthusiastically. And she looks at me and smiles and says, "Mm-hmm." And then she goes right on with her spiel.

And I kept thinking she needs to know I'm already a believer, you know? And so I forced words in edgewise, "You know, I'm already Christian." And she cuts me off. "Well, that's great. Now, we're on this side without God, but if you receive Jesus, you'll move over to this side and I could not deter her from witnessing to me." And finally, this is a true story, I finally received Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. Just to shut her up. Plus, I knew that would be a great ending to the story. But she went away beaming and I went away wondering if that's how I sometimes might come across to people unintentionally. Because that bugged me. I mean, I love Jesus! And she was getting on my nerves, right? Is that how we're supposed to share our faith? Like pre-programmed robots? Like religious salespeople? You know? Like the Stepford people? Not if you read the Bible.

Today, we're gonna get into one of my favorite parts of the Bible. If we, listen, if we all memorized and actually lived the words that we're going to study today, so much bad stuff that happens in the name of Christianity would never happen. And I have to tell you something, this is more relevant than ever. Right now in this country, Christians need to hear these words more than ever. And I'm talking about 1 Peter 3:15–17. It says, "But in your hearts, set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you for the reason, for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ might be ashamed of their slander." Amen?

If you're a Christian and you've ever felt inadequate about sharing your faith with other people, and who hasn't? Or if you're a Christian or not a Christian, and you've ever been embarrassed or bugged by other Christians who have done bad evangelism, and you've secretly wondered if you're supposed to invade people's personal space and force feed them evangelistic cliches like Walker, Texas evangelist did to me. And you feel guilty that you didn't do that and you won't do that, then this is for you. Because in this passage, Peter gives four keys to sharing my hope. And really I could subtitle this, "How to Share Your Faith Without Driving Everybody Crazy." Jot these down.

First, you got to make sure your heart's right. You need to have right allegiance. Right allegiance. Make sure you're focused on the right Lord. The first sentence there, Peter says, "But in your hearts, set apart Christ as Lord." What's Peter saying here? Remember the context. This is written during the time of the Roman Empire. In the early church, if a Christian stood up in a public arena like the Colosseum and cried out, "Jesus is God," not one person would have been offended. That would not have gotten that Christian into any kind of persecution because the Romans and the Greeks believed in many gods. To call Jesus God wouldn't have been revolutionary or even a little risky. But if a Christian shouted, "Jesus is Lord," his life would be at risk. Because the Romans, Caesar, has claimed exclusive rights to the title of Lord. And so that was key. Who is your Lord?

The question then and now is, who is your Lord? Where is your allegiance? A lot of Christians can say, "Yeah, Jesus is God." And it doesn't appear like their life is changing at all. It's, "Is Jesus your Lord?" That really starts to have implications for your life, right? Because if in your heart, your circle of friends is Lord, if in your heart, peer pressure is Lord, if in your heart, career advancement is Lord, you might not share your faith. So the question is, how do I get focused on Christ as Lord? Well, for me, it's a daily gut check. Ask yourself daily, "Who is really Lord of my life right now?" Every morning ask yourself, "Whose opinion matters the most to me right now, gods or somebody else's?" Because when Jesus is central, when you're excited about Jesus, then you're going to find a way to share your faith naturally and persuasively. So have the right allegiance. That's foundational.

And then second, have relevant answers. Relevant answers. And if you notice, there's three really obvious sub points that Peter is making here. Jot these down in your notes. First, Peter says, "Be prepared." He says, "Always be prepared to give an answer." Let me ask you bluntly, how many times has somebody asked you questions like, "How can you believe the Bible? Why are you a Christian?" Let me ask you a question. How can you believe in God when there's so much suffering and you say something like, "Well, just because you got to talk to my pastor." Listen, you have to be prepared. You say, "All right, how can I get prepared?" One word and you are not going to like it. Practice.

I was watching a piece on Michael Phelps, the amazing Olympic swimmer. His coach actually makes him swim sometimes with various random obstacles. Random things that might happen to him when he's swimming so that he's prepared for these things, right? Like for example, he makes him swim blindfolded. He makes him swim with wax stuffed into his ears. He fills the practice pool with live paratha. No, that part's not true. But he does make him swim blindfolded and so on. And Phelps actually learned to count his strokes so that if he cannot see for some reason during a race, he could still do it. That's the truth. And you know what? That actually came in hand. He went in one Olympic race in Beijing. His goggles filled with water and he could not see, and he thought there's no need to panic. I'm prepared for this. And he counted his strokes, and all the practice paid off.

And you can practice giving answers. Why not? You know you're going to get the questions. I actually do this when I'm driving around town or when I'm out for a run. I was even doing this this morning. I imagine people asking me questions that I know I'm going to get as a Christian. Why are you a Christian? Well, what do Christians think about this or that that's in the news? And I have to explain my Christian position. And I literally out loud will say it. And I'll correct myself and I'll change my word choice because you just never know. Be prepared. One time we're flying to Phoenix to visit Laurie's parents on Easter Sunday afternoon. And that means I've just preached about six church services here explaining Easter. And I'm wiped out. I'm peopled out, right? We get to the airport early and we're at the gate and Elizabeth says, "Mom, Dad, are you sure we're at the right gate?" "Yes, honey, we are. Look, it's right on the tickets." "Mom, Dad, I think we're at the wrong gate." "No, we're not, sweetheart." "Mom, Dad," and finally we look around. Everybody else is gone around our gate. Somehow Laurie and I were reading and had completely missed the announcement to move down the airport to another gate. So we sprint over there. We're the last ones on the plane. There's only five individual seats left for our whole family. So we all had to sit next to strangers. And I'm in the middle seat between a sleeping guy and a woman on the aisle about 30 years old eager to talk. And she says, "What'd you do today?" And I said, "Oh, I went to church figuring that'll shut her up like it always does, right?" And she goes, "Really? I did too for the first time in 20 years since I've been a little kid." And she says, "And I've been wanting to ask somebody, 'What is the deal with Easter?'"

So I went to sleep. No, I was prepared, right? I basically preached my sermon to her. Well, funny you should ask. You know, I have three points for you. So... But you just never know when God is going to put... That couldn't have been an accident, right? That's totally God. If I ever doubted that there was a God, I would just have to think back to the times that he's given me opportunities to share my faith like that in ways that could not have been coincidence. You never know when you're going to get a chance to share. Now, maybe you're thinking, "Well, what if they ask tough questions that I don't know the answers to?" Well, you know, this is exactly why we do a lot of sermons on tough questions here at TLC. And we try to resource you. In fact, flip your notes over and look at the top of the second page. I put some resources for sharing your hope there. There's all kinds of resources to help you. I just put a few there. And one I'll highlight is the second one, this book, Tim Keller's book, "The Reason for God." We always have this at our book cart because I think this is one of the best books that's come out in the last decade about why it's reasonable for somebody who is, you know, intellectual even to believe in the faith.

And let me just read to you the titles of the first five chapters of this book. "How can there just be one true religion? How can a good God allow suffering? Why is the church responsible for so much injustice? How can you take the Bible literally? And hasn't science disproved Christianity? Doesn't that sound good?" So, when somebody asks you those questions, you don't have to have this memorized, but at least you know this book exists. And you can honestly say, "You know what? There's a book I've been wanting to read. Let me get a copy and let's read it together. And would you be willing to just go through a chapter a week and let's talk about this together? Let's explore this book together." And so you can have a great conversation about some of these reasonable answers to faith.

Now, flip your notes back over. You'll notice the verse says, "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you." This is not saying you don't have to initiate, you just wait for them to ask. This simply means sharing your faith is a dialogue, not a monologue. Sharing your faith is a dialogue, not a monologue. You don't have to cram everything you know about your faith into one panicked monologue, right? Yesterday I was talking to a woman named Annette who is a missionary to San Francisco. She actually works for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes there at San Francisco State. And she says a lot of students are very interested in joining her Bible study. She says there's a lot of spiritual openness there. But one woman on the San Francisco State basketball team said, "Not a chance. I'm not only not a Christian, I'm actually opposed to Christianity. I've seen the Bill Maher movie, "Religulous," and Christian poisoned society, no way. But Annette was kind to her, kept coming to the basketball games. This woman a year ago finally came to a cookie baking party and then to a table game night. And then she said, "Well, because you've been so kind to me, I'll go to one Bible study." And she remarked, "Oh, you know, that was a lot different than I anticipated." And now she does not miss one of the weekly Bible studies. Why? It was a genuine relationship. It was a conversation, not a monologue.

So be prepared with relevant answers. And then Peter says, "Be positive with your relevant answers." Did you notice he says, "Give everyone who asks you the reason for the hope." Circle the word hope. Peter does not say, "Give everyone who asks you the reason they are going to hell. Give everyone who asks you the reason everything they think and are doing is wrong." He says, "Share your hope." In fact, would you say that word hope out loud with me? Say it, "Hope." This is what people are starving for, starving for. Here's a quick definition of Christian hope. Christian hope is an optimistic outlook based on powerful promises. Christians believe that God promises to work all things together for good. And we're saying, "Here's why we're confident in a world that looks so bleak." Now listen carefully because I want to make this clear. Christian hope is kind of funny. Christian hope is not positive thinking because Christians actually believe in the inevitability of suffering. Christians believe bad stuff will happen. Practically every book of the Bible promises that. But we believe in the resurrection and the restoration of heaven and earth and that God is now orchestrating all the events of all of our lives, ultimately for the best. And people around you need this kind of hope so badly.

So be prepared, be positive, and then third, be personal with your relevant answers. He says the hope that you have, it's your hope. So give him your reasons. I had a college professor who was an atheist, former Jesuit priest, and that is an intense combination. Let me just tell you. And he told me, "René, I have a rebuttal for every argument you could possibly give me for your faith. But when you tell me how your faith helped you through your father's death, there's nothing I can say." Relevant answers. Be prepared, be positive, and definitely be personal with your relevant answers. But alert! You could have all the relevant answers in the world and they will go down in flames if you don't have, number three, a respectful attitude. A respectful attitude. Peter says, "But," and this is the phrase that Christians so often forget, "but do this with gentleness and respect." So easy to slip from this and get antagonistic and aggressive and divisive.

I remember at a family camp at Lake Tahoe, our son Jonathan, when he was about five or six years old in the children's camp, accepted Jesus into his heart. And he was so excited about it. We were in the van driving to see some sights later that same day. And I overhear from the backseat Jonathan, who has just, you know, become a Christian, witnessing to his little sister Elizabeth, who was about three or four years old at the time. And I'm hearing this, "Elizabeth," Jonathan says, "wouldn't you like to play up well and have Jesus in your heart?" And Elizabeth, because this is the kind of kid she was, says, "No." And Jonathan starts screaming, "Play the prayer! Play the prayer!" Instantly, and Elizabeth's screaming back, "No! No!" This is what I'm hearing all of a sudden, "Play the prayer! No! Play the prayer! No!" And I had to stop the car and discipline them for evangelizing. No, just kidding. But this tender moment had like instantly turned into full-on religious warfare, right? Just like adults can wage. And Peter warns against it. He says, "Show gentleness. You can't argue people into the kingdom of God. It does not work that way." And he says, "Treat people with respect." Do we need to hear this in this era of crazy blog posts and stuff? Or what? You cannot insult people and then say, "Don't you want to accept Jesus?" Be gentle and respectful. I'm begging you, let's be a church that is known for our gentleness and respect.

You can come up with the wildest opponent to Christianity that you can possibly envision right now. And Peter's saying, "Be gentle and respectful to them." Take people's breath away by your lack of aggression in the face of aggression, just like Jesus on the cross. Even though people will try to provoke you to anger. And look at what else it says, "Keeping a clear conscience." Be a good person, you know, a person of integrity. Sadly, this is not always what Christians are known for. I just saw this on Craigslist the other day. I used a board game called Fleece the Flock, the TV evangelist game. There's a game board inside. It's like Monopoly and the object is to build your evangelistic empire and cheap people out of their money, right? Which, of course, actually has happened. But Peter is saying, "Don't give people a legitimate reason to slander your faith." Now, that doesn't mean that they won't slander you. At times, they will. But live such good lives that they are ashamed of their slander.

Let me show you what I'm talking about. Here's the opposite of that board game. Last week, the youth group from Bayside Church in Granite Bay was here. We hosted them. In the name of Twin Lakes Church, they went out this week and volunteered for the city and county of Santa Cruz. They said, "We are here representing Twin Lakes." They did graffiti removal all over the city. They worked at the Homeless Garden Project, weeding and planting. They served meals at the rescue mission. They sang and preached and did their testimonies at a service there. This is giving the faith a good reputation, right? Some of you are challenged by this. They're thinking, "Wow, those were high schoolers. How can I get in on this? That ship has sailed. Those high schoolers are already gone. What can I do to kind of enhance the reputation of our church and our faith in the community?" I have two words for you. Blood drive. That's all I'll say all that.

Now, just take a step back here. Remember who Peter is writing all this to. In fact, shout this out. Let me see if you've been paying attention during this series. In your own words, who were the original readers of this? What were they going through? Persecuted Christians, right? What century? The first century. That's right. Christians who are being persecuted, being burned at the stake, being fed to lions by Nero. In context, Peter is... Listen. Peter is basically teaching these people how to die. You think it's hard to respond with gentleness and respect to people who are provoking Christians to wrath these days? Peter is saying, "When they start lighting the tinder at your feet, to burn you to death, when they spit in your face and slander you, you look at those people and with gentleness and respect, being so calm like Christ when you're martyred that they're ashamed of what they're doing to you, you tell them about your hope." Now, is it even possible to live like this?

Some of you may recognize the name Dr. Graham Stanes. He was a missionary doctor who worked with lepers in remote India for about three decades. This is his missionary support card. You might remember the news. About 10 years ago, in Orissa, India, religious extremists set fire to the Jeep where Graham and his two sons were sleeping. They were at a Christian summer camp, and they were burned alive to death. Survivors found Graham Stanes with his arms around the bodies of his two sons. But it was the response of Gladys, his wife, and Esther, his 13-year-old daughter who had not been there, that was on the front page of every newspaper in India the next day. Gladys said, "I have only one message for the people of India, one great desire, that each citizen of this country should establish a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, who gave his life for their sins, let us burn hatred and spread the flame of Christ's love." Recently, she went back on the 10th anniversary, and all the papers covered her visit. Front page news again, I went online this week to find out how they were reporting this. And here's what Gladys said 10 years later. During these 10 years, there have been times of sadness, but these are just momentary emotions which also fill me with great hope, the hope of heaven, and of being reunited with my husband and children.

And then an Indian reporter basically said, "What is the reason for this hope that you have?" And then this forgiveness that you've been able to extend. And she says, "I forgive because I have first received forgiveness from Jesus Christ. I have encountered the presence of Jesus in my life, and this is the spirit I share." What's the source of her hope? It's not positive thinking. It's the same exact thing that's here in verse 18 of 1 Peter 3. He gives the gospel in a nutshell. He says, and let's read this out loud together kind of almost as a creedal statement here. Let me hear this church, "For Christ died for sins, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body, but made alive by the spirit." That's the core of our message. Because evangelism is sharing the gospel, the main way to go wrong is to get this message wrong. The gospel is not, "We are more spiritual than other people." The gospel is not, "We're better than other people." The gospel is not, "You should try harder to be better." Even though all those things are perceived as the message sometimes. The gospel is, "God so loved the world that He gave His only Son who died for our sins, once for all, to bring us to God." That is an awesome message.

So don't listen, don't major on the minors. Don't focus so much on some hot topic of the month that the central message of the gospel gets lost. Now, before the final point, I want to give you kind of exhibit day on this. I want you to hear from somebody who calls himself a recovering offensive evangelist. Now this guy is an academic superstar. He's currently finishing his PhD at the University of Aberdeen. He's been published already in books and journals in the academic field. He is our venue worship leader at our newest pastoral school in the first pastoral staff member. I want you to welcome Adam Nye as he comes to stage to share for us. Adam, come on up.

Thank you. Yeah, anybody that knows me knows I love to just endlessly discuss and debate issues of faith and theology, you know, to a fault. I can get a little overzealous at times. And when that happens, I totally forget about gentleness and respect. But I tend to justify that because of the importance of the issue. For instance, my best friend that we had both grown up in church, he had gone to Bible college like I had, and we were in the ministry together, he became an atheist, and he still is. And when that first happened, he started questioning my beliefs, and it was on. I was all over him, and it was point, counterpoint, and I was going to argue him right back into the kingdom because that always works. But he would say, you know, so this is what you believe as a Christian. You know, God became a man, died for your sins, came back to life, went to heaven, and he's going to come back someday. I'd say, "Yeah, I believe that. Amen. That's what I put my hope in." And he'd just look at me like, "What? Are you serious?"

And my impulse as a at least moderately intelligent person is to just want to respond to that with overwhelming argumentative force, shut down every doubt he has, lay every presupposition bare, and expose his wrongness and getting to stop looking at me like that. You know what I mean? I don't know if you've been in that. Thank you. You know, he wants scientific proof. He wants logical evidence. I want to give him that. I don't want him to think I'm crazy. I want to remove all those doubts, but it's pretty foolish to think I can do that. You know, it's, I find my own arguments very persuasive, but the other person is rarely as impressed as I am with what I have to say, and I find that very disappointing. But really, honestly, someone would have to be crazy to become a Christian because I won an argument with them. Right? So what can we do? You know, how do we give a reason for our hope with gentleness and respect? Because don't get me wrong. I think growing in our knowledge of the Bible and in our ability to explain our faith intelligently is super important. It's a major passion of mine, but it's also super important to be growing in our humility, and that's an ironic weird kind of growth because it's the kind of growth where we say, "He must increase and I must decrease." It's a growth by shrinking.

So how does that go together with, you know, growing in my knowledge and my ability to reason and growing in my humility at the same time? For me, very difficult lesson learned, especially in these kind of argumentative encounters I'd have with my close friends. The answer really came in reading this passage, 1 Peter 3:15. In that first sentence, I kind of found the key to the whole thing, where Peter says, you know, "Set apart Christ Jesus as Lord in your heart." I had to recognize that I'm not Lord of the argument. I don't change people. Jesus does. I don't have the power to open someone's eyes and hearts to the point they're they're ready and willing to receive Christ. That's the Holy Spirit's job. My job is to just separate Jesus for myself and point to Him, testify to Him. And when I do that, when I separate Jesus from myself, my pride, my ego, my arguments, then I have found somewhat more successfully, then I can testify to Him with gentleness and respect because it's not about me. It's not about me winning the argument. It's about glorifying Christ. So that's been the key to me starting to make some progress on this and thank you for letting me share that with you. Appreciate it.

Thank you so much, Adam. And what Adam's talking about is really the final point, which is relaxed assurance. A relaxed assurance when you're sharing your hope. Check this out. Peter goes into kind of a hard to understand riff about, of all people, Noah. And it's a difficult passage to understand. He says, "Jesus went and proclaimed God's salvation to earlier generations who ended up in the prison of judgment because they wouldn't listen." You know, even though God waited patiently all the days that Noah built his ship, only a few were saved then, eight to be exact. Okay, what? What is the point of this obscure Noah reference? How is this strange reference to Noah, of all people, supposed to inspire the first century Christians who read this in their context? Well, think about this. They saw themselves as sort of latter-day Noahs, didn't they? They believed God's judgment was coming. They were calling people to turn to God. And how was that working out for them at this point? Not too well.

And so this is encouraging to them in three ways, and to you and me too. First, if Noah had Christ with him, then so do I. Peter is saying that the eternally existent Son of God was there working in past ancient days alongside, for example, Noah supernaturally invisibly before his incarnation. And that means he's here now with you and me too. And if Noah didn't have to create results, then neither do I. Very few people believed Noah, but was Noah a failure? No way. He was one of the greatest men of faith in the Bible, and he didn't produce any results. And we too need to remember, like Adam said, as Christians, it's my job to speak, but it's God's job to save. It's my job to do the possible. It's God's job to do the impossible. I can't save anybody. So let that pressure be gone from you. But you can share your hope. And then finally, if Noah could handle the critics, then so can I. Can you imagine all the insults and mockery? The Bible says, "In those days, the thoughts and intentions of every person's heart was only evil all the time." Can you imagine the insults he must have received? Well, if he can endure it, so can I.

So how do you share hope? Well, have the right allegiance, relevant answers, a respectful attitude, and a relaxed confidence, a relaxed assurance. I want to close with a powerful example of somebody who put all this together so well. I actually have a school paper, a civics paper, that I will always treasure. George and Patricia Buring were such great people, great friends of mine here at TLC. But George died of cancer when his youngest daughter, Anna, was just a teenager. And then Anna's mom, Patricia, also had cancer and died. And Anna wrote a paper for her high school Western civ class, and she chose the topic, "Man's Search for God." And at the end of the report, she tagged on something very special, her reason for her own personal hope. And I want you to listen to just the ending paragraph of her paper. This was a teenager writing in her high school Western civ class.

She says, "I want to share personally with you my life." Now remember, this is my life and my beliefs, and I would just ask you to read thoughtfully and try to understand. That's all. A lot of Western society lacks what I treasure. I want to talk about my own experience with God this year. It's my opinion that if I did not have God in my life, I would have been in a completely hopeless state since my dad got terminal cancer. My stress level went sky high. Sometimes I didn't even feel like getting out of bed, but I've made it. I do not believe God gave cancer to my dad, but I can see him working through it. And the most important thing is God gives me a sense of personal hope. Did you catch that? Hope. God is the reason I do get out of bed. God's the reason I will carry on. For I believe God was speaking the truth when he said, "For I am the Lord your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, 'Do not fear. I will help you. I have him.' And if I were stripped of everything I had or was capable of doing, he could never be taken away from me." Thank you for reading this.

Now that is a teenager graciously giving the reason for the hope that she has. And by the way, she got an A. And so this morning, let's remember the ultimate reason for our hope that we can share with gentleness and respect as it was shared with us. Let's take communion together. Would you bow your heads with me as we prepare our hearts? You know, if you're going through a tough time right now, you can have that kind of hope too. Maybe you've never placed your trust in Christ as Lord, but you can do that right now. This can be your first communion as a believer. Maybe you've been coming checking this out. You can say in your heart, "Jesus, I receive you as my Lord and my Savior." The difference it will make in terms of your hope level is astounding. Dear Jesus, we set you apart in our hearts as Lord. You are our King. Not Caesar, not somebody else's opinion, no one else but you, God. God, help us to be known as a church that shares that hope with gentleness and respect and a clear conscience. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.