Daniel and the Lion's Den | Against All Odds | Pastor Rob Koke | Shoreline Church | Message

[THEME MUSIC] [THEME MUSIC] [THEME MUSIC] Good morning, everybody. You guys doing good? On a cold, rainy, fall day, we'll take it. We'll take it. It's better than the blistering heat we've had for months and months and months. It's great to be at church. Great to be with you here this morning. Thank you so much for being here. Lauren and I had a very, very special thing happen this past Wednesday night. We were up in Tulsa, Oklahoma to celebrate the grand opening of the new facility for Newhart Church. And maybe you don't know it by that name because we call it Shoreline Tulsa. But they just built a brand new facility, renovated an older facility into a brand new space, and it was so beautiful. And what really weighed on my shoulders in a really beautiful, beautiful way, was just the legacy of Shoreline here in Austin and how it's planted churches in Tulsa and Dallas. And now they're planting churches all around the world. And it's your faithfulness, your legacy, your prayers, your encouragement. And some of you know, Earl and Onika, they pastor Shoreline Dallas and Ben and Jess from Tulsa. We have a picture we just want to show you. But this is from Wednesday night.

And you might not know this. But Jess, that's Ben's wife that's in the center there. She actually got saved at Shoreline many years ago. And then Ben and Jess met here at Shoreline and got married. So they owe us their very life. And then now they're up in Tulsa building a fantastic church. And that's all a part of what God has done through Shoreline, through you guys. And it's just wonderful to see and to celebrate. So let's give God praise for that incredible, incredible event. All right, let's all of us stand to our feet. We're going to do something that we do at the beginning of every single message. We're going to recite our Shoreline creed. And we want to encourage you to do this with some enthusiasm and passion. This is what we believe, the truth about Christianity. God's amazing love and grace that we'll never have to lose. We can always celebrate and participate in. So if you're new to Shoreline, you can read along. The rest of us are going to say this with some enthusiasm and passion. You guys ready? I mean, really ready? Listen, you didn't have to cheer for the Longhorns yesterday. So you should have plenty of energy for church today. And if you're an Aggie, you finally won yesterday. So good for you. Awesome, amazing.

All right, here we go. "I am loved by God. I cannot earn it. I cannot lose it. I am forgiven and made brand new. In Christ, I live with passion and purpose. I am empowered by the spirit to be the church in the world and to live this love revolution." Come on, let's give God praise for that. [APPLAUSE] You know, sometimes life can be intimidating. Have you ever felt yourself in a situation where you were completely out of your depth? You were surrounded by people or situations that just really kind of made you feel less than? Unfortunately, that happens to me all the time. I was a part of a college business group, just part of the education process. And in our group was an actual Rhodes Scholar. He could speak like 15 different languages, cured diseases in his spare time. And I graduated from the part of the class that made the upper half possible. That's intimidating. I was playing golf in a charity tournament. And so there were four of us on our team. It was best ball, so you just take the best shot. All four of you have a chance. But we had a guy on our team that was trying out for the PGA Tour.

And when he swung his club, the very first swing, he started no warm-ups, no practice swings, no prayer. He just got up there and smashed. club in the in the bag and wondered if I'd ever played golf again and then there was a time that Lauren I got on an elevator at the hotel that we were staying at it was actually in Los Angeles we were speaking at a church of some friends of ours and they put us up in this hotel and we were staying on the third floor apparently on the 10th floor of this particular hotel there was an event center of some kind and we get on on the elevator and right after we stepped on to the elevator Ryan Reynolds and his bodyguard stepped on the elevator after us we're on the elevator with a major Hollywood movie star and and so I push you know the third button and it goes to the third floor I get off and I'm turning around to to Lara say wasn't that cool we were just on the elevator with a celebrity and I turn around and she's not there she's still on the elevator and I look and the doors haven't closed yet and I catch her guy she sees me I see her and then the doors begin to close and I look at her there is no remorse no regrets and then the doors closed and I'm searching for my room key as my wife of 25 years ascends into heaven with Ryan Reynolds I asked her about it afterwards she said I was trying to get an autograph for our daughter sure she was sure she was but it's intimidating life is that way sometimes and I wonder if if we kind of like Bible stories where there are lots of flaws in the characters of these stories because they make us feel a little bit better about our own journey we like to hear about Peter you know he denied the Lord he was always sticking his foot in his mouth or Gideon we talked about him for a whole month you know just a couple of months ago and you know he had all kinds of issues and challenges and we feel a little bit better about our own journey you know you think about you know just just the way some people live David you know he was he was a man after God's own heart but you know he also had some some issues in his life and then we hit a story like we're going to talk about here this morning we hit a story like Daniel and

it's hard to find a flaw he's living the best kind of life and we read his story and it can be intimidating and we think to ourselves nobody has lived their life as good as this but perhaps what we fail to realize in the story of somebody even like Daniel is that not that he's some spiritual superstar that has some kind of predisposition to following God that none of us have when we really boil down the story of Daniel it comes down to the choices that he made the habits that he formed in his life choices to be totally honest that every single one of us can make because it's not based on how intelligent you are or how much money you have in the bank or how much education or how much experience these are all choices that every single one of us can make we can adopt the same kind of habits that Daniel did and we will live the same kind of extraordinary life now we're going to talk this morning about four daily choices four daily habits that Daniel embraced in his life and one of them I need to tell you upfront is a what people might call a keystone habit it's the one that actually empowers all the others and we're going to unpack Daniel's story and this part of his story happened during the reign of King Darius and he was a he was a kind of like an organizational genius he you know he divided his whole kingdom into a hundred and twenty different provinces and and chose leaders over those provinces and then there was three leaders that he chose to lead the hundred and twenty and then there was one he was going to put in charge of the three and that's where we pick up the story here in Daniel chapter six verse three now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the entire kingdom exceptional qualities I like how the New King James version. Here is the first daily choice that Daniel made. Daniel chose to have a positive, excellent mindset. He chose to do that. He chose to have a positive attitude regardless of the circumstances.

Now, we might think, oh, it's easy to have a positive attitude if things are going well. But in this particular case, in Daniel's life, the circumstances were not in his favor. He was not a free man. He was conquered by the Babylonians and by the Persians. And so he was not a free man. He was held in captivity. What the Babylonians would do is try to erase any remembrance of history and culture. They wanted to absorb people into their society. And so he was actually experiencing the systematic erasing of his heritage and his faith and his whole group of people that he was associated with. He was living in a time when state-sponsored executions took place commonly, often at the whim of the leader. He was living at a time when the leaders themselves were often volatile and unpredictable and violent. So he's living with this attitude of being positive even in the midst of difficult circumstances. In fact, three of his friends were thrown into a fiery furnace. So we're not talking about ideal circumstances. We're talking about someone who chose to be positive, chose to have an excellent mindset even in circumstances that were less than ideal. Danielle, I mean Danielle, my daughter's name is Danielle. And I was wondering how many times

I was gonna say Danielle instead of Daniel. But I'm talking about Daniel this morning. Daniel, his attitude helped him navigate changing landscapes, even changing rulers. He actually was a leader, I mean an elite leader and advisor to kings of four different reigns. Nebuchadnezzar and Beltsazar from the Babylonian kingdom and then Darius and Cyrus from the Persian empire. Think about how unique that would be. Sometimes, you know, in American politics, you'll have somebody that serves at a cabinet level and then an administration changes. If it's of the same party, they might ask that person to stay on. If it's from a different party, they almost never would ask that person to stay on. But here we have Daniel serving as an elite counselor to kings, even though one administration was conquered by another land. And they still kept him in that position of leadership. There was something about the way he carried himself. He had a positive attitude even in the midst of negative circumstances. And that positivity endeared him to people around him. And he spoke life and encouragement. He was filled with wisdom. And he infused value and encouragement to those around him. He never saw his circumstances as a platform to spew gossip or negativity or to poison the atmosphere.

And because of that, you know, he was elevated to these high levels of leadership. He had a positive, excellent mindset even in the midst of negative circumstances. His story is a masterclass in living your best life. You can choose your attitude. You can't always choose what happens to you, but you can always choose your response to it. You can't choose, you know, what's happened in your past. You can't choose to, you know, always control, you know, what's happening in your present. And you certainly can't choose to control the people in your life, but you can always control your response. Maybe you heard it said, you know, that your attitude determines your altitude. And I'm here to tell you it's true. Or maybe you heard this, that life is 10%. You know, what happens to you in 90% how you respond to what happens to you. And that is also true. Daniel, he couldn't control his circumstances. The only thing he could control was his attitude. And I don't know what's taking place in your life this morning. Maybe you came to church with some challenging circumstances. Maybe your marriage is facing some difficulties. Maybe you have a child or two that's making some poor choices in their life. Maybe you've just got a negative report from the doctor or perhaps you're facing some financial challenges.

We can't always control the circumstances that surround our lives, but we do have the ability to control our response. We're learning from Daniel how to live a truly God-glorifying life and the first habit, the first thing he did was he chose a positive, excellent mindset. The story goes on. The vice-regions and governors got together to find out if there was some old scandal or skeleton in Daniel's life that they could use against him. But they couldn't dig up anything. He was totally exemplary and trustworthy. They could find no evidence of negligence or misconduct. Daniel's excellent positive mindset and the way that produced this elevation of his leadership in all these different places actually created some envy amongst the other governors and leaders of the day. So they're trying to find a way to pull Daniel down. And so they hire the Persian IRS and the ancient FBI and they do a thorough search of his life to find anything they can possibly use against him. But they find nothing. No offshore accounts, no kickbacks, no shady texts. Though they did a search, they came up with nothing. In Numbers chapter 32 and verse 23, it says, "Your sin will find you out," right?

And that's really true. Your sin will eventually bubble to the surface and people will recognize the true nature of your character, my character, anyone. You know, it just has a way of happening. But sometimes, you know, it can be a while. Sometimes it's immediate, sometimes it's months, but sometimes people can go for decades and keep some kind of secret hidden in their life. Eventually, it'll come out. But how much faster would it come out if somebody actually did an investigation and did a moral inventory of your life? How much faster would it happen? Let's be honest. How many of us in this room would survive a moral investigation into every corner, nook and cranny of our lives? Would any of us survive a public audit of our browser history, our text threads, or our thoughts at 5 p.m. when someone cuts us off in traffic? Lara has literally scared the crap out of me. You know, when we were first married, she said, if you have an affair, I just want you to know our relationship will not end in divorce. No, it'll be much worse than that. (audience laughs) She said, and I quote, I will end your life

and then mulch the backyard. That's what she said. So, you know, mostly because I really like breathing and I like being alive, I have not engaged in any behavior that would disqualify me from ministry or put my marriage in absolute jeopardy. So I'm grateful for that. But if you were to do an inventory, if you were to do a search like they did of Daniel in my own life, you're sure to find some things. You're sure to find things like some selfishness, perhaps, or pride, or envy, or a lack of patience. Sometimes when I'm driving, you know, Lara's sitting right next to me. She cracked me up the other day. She said, you know what? Everybody drives at the wrong speed limit as far as your concern. Five miles over, they're a maniac. Five miles less and they're holding up the road. And thank God for grace, thank God for the forgiveness that we have in our relationship with Jesus. So I'm not saying that Daniel was perfect, nobody's perfect. And every one of us is going to have bad days and all of us are going to be tempted from time to time. But he lived his life dealing honestly with the journey of living his life with integrity. We can't change our past, and maybe when you look at your past you see all kinds of failures in this way. But we can change how we live from this day forward.

Daniel, he lived with integrity. And integrity is a great word. It means that your heart is integrated. It means that your whole and undivided, it means that your heart is not compartmentalized. It means that you don't live a certain way on Sunday and then choose to live a different kind of life on Monday and Tuesday. You don't have a Christian life and then a work life and then a secret life that nobody else knows about. Your heart is whole. It's integrated, you have integrity. Daniel lived with integrity. He's famously known for having decided early on that he was not going to eat the king's food. He was going to eat the food that God ordained for the children of Israel to eat. He wouldn't defile himself. And it was almost like he made an advanced decision that this is the way he's going to live. One of the secrets to living a life of integrity is that you make your decisions ahead of time. You don't engage in decision fatigue that at the peak of temptation, you don't know what to do because you haven't fully made up your mind. Make up your mind even today that you're going to live a life of integrity. And he surrounded himself with good people like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And we value community here at Shoreline. We talk about it all the time. On Wednesday night, men, you can get together with other men from our church and they'll help hold you accountable. Ladies, we have sisterhood and all types of opportunity for you to connect in community. Daniel lived a life of integrity and so can we. The other envious leaders, his contemporaries, they tried to find fault with them, but they couldn't.

So instead they had to trap him and they get King Darius to sign an unconditional decree that nobody could pray to any God except to the King with the penalty being death itself. It's pretty clear from the story that King Darius didn't even know what he was signing or the impact that it would have, but there you have it. They found a way, a foolproof way to get rid of Daniel. But it leads us to the Keystone habit that I referenced earlier. The one thing that Daniel did that empowered all of the other habits in his life. In verse 10 of Daniel chapter 6, now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to the upstairs room where the windows opened towards Jerusalem. Three times a day, he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God just as he had done before. Daniel, he chose to have a positive and excellent mindset. Daniel chose to live a life of integrity, but all of that was fueled by this decision. He chose devotion. He chose devotion because he knew what his source of power needed to be. I can tell you here this morning that it's a good idea for you to have a positive attitude even in negative circumstances. But if you just take that away from the message today, then you'll be kind of in this mindset that you just got to muscle it out, you got to self-help your way to a better life. And that's not the way Daniel lived. He had a positive attitude in the midst of negative circumstances. Why? Because he chose to live as a fool. with Him, He chose to be committed. And it was out of that relationship that everything else flowed in His life. People sometimes come up to me and say, "Pastor, is it hard to live the Christian life?" And I said, "No, it's not hard, it's impossible. You can't do it on your own, but when you raise your hands and surrender to the Lord, it creates a funnel where He pours His spirit into your heart and into your life. And by His power, you can do all things."

That's why this is the number one keystone habit in Daniel's life. He was committed. He was connected. He was communing with God, because your source of power is only going to come from one of two places, yourself or from God. And the truth is, even your best efforts will fail. But with God's power, you can do all things. And this is what Daniel does. He opens up the windows, that point in the direction of Jerusalem. And he gets down on his knees, and he begins to pray. This act of devotion opens up the floodgates of God's spirit in his life. And it's the source of every good thing. Some of you might be here today, and you're saying, "You know what? I wish I could be committed like that," even at the risk of my own life, to be committed to prayer, to be committed to the Sabbath, to be committed to the practices of a fully devoted follower, to serve God with your time and your talent and your treasure, to share your faith, to be involved in community, to never put up a zero when it comes to your personal devotions. So I wish I could be committed like that. But the truth is, I think all of us know how to be committed. So the issue isn't, are we committed or not? The issue is, what are we committed to? Because we all have the ability to be committed. Some of you, you know, get up early and stay late because you're committed to your work. You know how to do that. Some of you are committed to your family and nothing would come between you and your family. You're committed. You know how to be committed to your family. I think even in that whole spirit of the family, we think about what happens in society today.

It used to be that there would never be any conflict between church on Sunday morning and things that were happening in the community. When I grew up, even stores were closed on Sunday. There was no competition. People recognized the value of coming together and worshiping God. But those days are long gone in our culture. And now everything's open. You can do anything you want on a Sunday morning. And they even have, you know, sports leagues that meet on Sunday morning, forcing, you know, parents to have to choose between coming to church or, you know, somehow giving their kids that leg up of understanding the value of competition and teamwork and all of that. It just happens. And I get it. It's not easy. Lauren and I, we are, you know, now the proud grandparents of five grandchildren and our oldest sterling is now involved in soccer. So we have a little bit of the behind the scenes look, you know, it's not cheap, man. You're spending some serious cash to get your kids to participate in team sports. And you got to get up early. You know, so we were, we were taking sterling to, to a game early and you know what, every other parent was there early. And they had, you know, insight into the whole soccer thing that we've kind of lost sight of. But man, they were ready. They were prepared. They had chairs. They had tents. They had, you know, like a tailgating kind of smorgasborga food that would just literally knock your socks off, man. They were all in.

So not only did they pay for the soccer fees, but man, they got the tent and the massage chairs, battery operated. They were styling. We were out there 105 degrees, sweating. You know how to be committed. You men that are going to go on a hunt this fall, because deer season opens up in just a couple of weeks, right? You know how, what you need to do to be committed, man, you're going to be up early. You're going to be there out on the, on the range. You're going to go and you're going to bag your deer. You know what it takes to be committed. And I'm just asking you here this morning, what are you most committed to? Because that's the question, what are you most committed to? And Daniel, he was most committed to God. He was most committed to his devotion to him, and nothing would keep him. Everything would cause him to put up a zero, and he got down on his knees because he knew that everything in his life came out of his relationship with God. If there was a temple, he would have gone to the temple to worship God, because there's nothing more important than being in the presence of God. He would open up his heart and his ears to hear the word of God, because he would know that there is nothing more important than his devotion to God. You know how to be committed. You do. My question is, what are you most committed to? And after you've paid the soccer fees and done all the stuff to make sure your family is taken care of, and then the church, you know, we're believing God for great things, casting vision, building the kingdom, spreading the word of God all around the world. Oh man, I wish I could participate in that. I just, you know, there's nothing left. You're committed, and in some cases committed to really good stuff.

But what are you most committed to? You know what I think Danielle said, even after the decree came, I can't do anything. I can't do anything without God's help in my life. I can't have a positive attitude in the midst of negative circumstances. I can't live a life of integrity. I can't fight my way through the battles of life. I can't do it on my own. So if there's one thing I'm going to do is I'm going to get on my knees and I'm going to pray to my God, I'm never going to put up a zero when it comes to devotion. When we gather together on Sunday morning to the best of my ability, nothing's going to come between me and God's people gathering together to worship the Lord so we can be filled with this presence. I'm going to honor God with my time, honor God with my talents, honor God with my treasure. So I'm going to live my life. And it didn't matter if things were good, Danielle, I mean, Daniel was dining with kings or helping to lead the nation or his life was on the line. His practice never varied. He had a place that he went to pray. He had a posture to his prayers and he persevered in prayer and you know what? Every single one of us can do that exact same thing we can choose. The jealous leaders ran to the king to report that Daniel was paying no attention to the king's decrees. The king saw the trap and the deception and he was greatly distressed because his decree was irrevocable. We pick up the story in verse 16 so the king gave the order and they brought Daniel and threw him into the lion's den and the king said to Daniel, "May your God whom you serve continually rescue you." Can you imagine this pagan king is now praying for Daniel? That's how much Daniel's life inspired those around him. A stone was brought and placed over the mouth of the den and the king sealed it with his

own signet ring and with the ring of his nobles so that Daniel's situation might not be changed. And the king returned to his palace and spent the night without eating and without any entertainment being brought to him. How's that for a plot twist? The most powerful man on the planet can eat or sleep, and the one condemned to die in a den full of lions is resting like a baby. You think to yourself, oh, if I had power, if I had money, if I had fame, if I had everything that the culture talks about, then I would live a rich life. No, you know what? You have a relationship with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and you can find yourself, even in a den of lions, at peace, at rest. And with joy, that's what this story is all about. The fourth choice Daniel made out of his choice in devotion, he chose to stand in faith. In Hebrews, chapter 11 and verse 33, "Who through faith shut the mouths of lions." He trusted God even in the lion's den. And we don't always know why. We find ourselves in the lion's den. Sometimes I'm sure we create our own lion's den. But sometimes life just has a way of unfolding. Throughout all of my years as a follower of Jesus, I've noticed that God at times can lead us in such a way that we never experience the storms of life. And we're probably not even aware of all the times that God has preserved us from storms that were imminent.

We just don't even know. An accident that could have happened that didn't happen, so we're just not aware. So sometimes God leads us in such a way that we don't even experience the storm. But sometimes storms happen. And I've noticed that God in his grace and in his power can take us out of the storms. And then sometimes we're in the storm and he just takes the storm out of us. And here is Daniel. He's in the midst of the lion's den with hungry lions all around him and he's at rest. God took the storm out of him and then eventually took him out of the storm. At the first light of dawn, verse 19, "The king got up and hurried to the lion's den. And when he came near the den, he called to Daniel in an anguished voice, "Daniel, servant of the living God. Has your God whom you serve continually been able to rescue you from the lions?" And Daniel answered, "May the king live forever. My God sent his angel. He shut the mouths of the lion and the king was overjoyed in order for Daniel to be lifted out of the den. And when Daniel was lifted out of the den, no wound was found upon him because he trusted in the Lord his God. Choose faith, my friends. It might look like you're in the middle of the lion's den.

It might look like everything around you is falling apart. Choose faith." And you know what, this miracle of God preserving Daniel in the lion's den completely changes King Darius' life. He sees all of this unfold. And it changed him forever. And King Darius makes a decree. And I want to read it to you because it's just so mind-blowing. When you stand in faith in the midst of the lions in your life, your testimony will reverberate so much further than you ever imagined. It'll spread to your family and to your friends and to the people you work with and to the community around you. Lauren and I, we were at this church thing on Wednesday night. And a pastor from Ohio that I had never met before came up to me and said, "The fact that you're still standing in faith, that they're everything that's happened to your family, I just want you to know." In Ohio, I think often about you guys, and I've never met you. But we're standing in the midst of difficult circumstances because you said yes to God in the midst of your difficult circumstances. I'm just here to tell you, you know, in the midst of the lions in your life. Listen to what King Darius decrees. He says, "I issue this, that in every part of my kingdom, "people must fear and reverence the God of Daniel. "For he is the living God and he endures forever.

"His kingdom will not be destroyed. "His dominion will never end. "He rescues and he saves and he performs signs and wonders "in the heavens and on the earth. "He has rescued Daniel from the power of the lions. "You never know who's gonna shout God's praises "because you're standing in faith "because of what God is doing in the midst "of your circumstances." You know, up in Dallas, this weekend, Shoreline City, it's meeting across multiple campuses. The whole Dallas Metroplex is being transformed because of what happened many years ago right here at Shoreline. This weekend is the second grand opening of the new facility up in Tulsa. All of that inspired and happened because of your, yes to Jesus, your encouragement, your prayers, your financial support. In fact, that building, we gave a huge financial gift from Shoreline to help them renovate that facility. Your giving is helping a kingdom-focused church to spread the gospel. And Lauren and I were flying back from Tulsa on Thursday morning and we sat next to a girl, young gal, who happens to live in the very neighborhood where that church is. And so it didn't take much. She said, "I run by that church. "It's been under reconstruction. "I've seen all the cranes.

"I've seen all the painting. "I've seen all the work that they're doing." And we got to tell her something really good is happening there, something really good. You never know where the testimony of your stand of faith is going to take someone else's life, maybe even someone you never met. So I wanna challenge you this morning to make some good choices, to establish some good habits, choose to have a positive attitude even in the midst of negative circumstances, choose to live with integrity. And here's the one that empowers all the other ones, choose to live where you are most committed to God and choose to stand in faith. You do that and you'll live an exceptional life. Could I hear a good amen? (audience applauding) Father, we just thank you so much for the opportunity to be together here today. And Lord, I just pray that you would inspire each and every one of us to live the way Daniel showed us we can live our best life. None of those decisions are outside of the capacity of any single one of us here today. We can do it. Help us to do it, Lord, in Jesus' name. Maybe the first decision you need to make with every head bowed and every eye closed

if you're here today and you have never invited Jesus into your heart, maybe that first decision you make, that first choice is this, to receive the incredible gift that God has for you. If you came to church here this morning, you've never invited Jesus into your heart, or maybe you did at one point in time, but you slipped away, but you wanna get right with God here today. You wanna meet him for the first time or rededicate your life to serving him. Would you please raise your hand quickly and boldly wherever you are? Wonderful, God bless you, God bless you. There's a whole family that raised their hands together. So awesome. All of you with your hands raised, I wanna lead you in a very simple prayer to invite Jesus into your heart. I want you to pray this prayer out loud after me, would you? Would you join me in this prayer? Let's all of us pray together. Heavenly Father, I thank you for sending Jesus. Jesus, I ask you to come into my heart. Forgive me of all my sins. I put my trust in you. And I will live for you from this day forward. Buy your power for your glory in Jesus' name, amen. Would you give them all a great big hand clap? (congregation applauding)

Let's all of us stay in our feet. With nobody leaving earlier, moving around. I'm just gonna ask our prayer partners to come here to the front. And if you prayed to receive the Lord or to rededicate your life to serving him, you can go to my right or to my left. that says, "Made brand new, we wanna give you a copy of the New Testament Bible gospel of John. It's such a beautiful way to start your journey in faith and also give you some information that'll really help you to live this Christian life that you prayed to receive. So you can go ahead and be dismissed right now, all of you who have made Jesus your Lord and Savior. So the rest of us, let me close with this blessing that comes from Numbers chapter six. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn his face to you and give you peace. God bless you, have a fantastic rest of your Sunday. And don't forget next week, invite some friends. We got these cards available. Invite your friends. God bless you, we'll see you then.