Defiantly, Unashamedly, Generously | Speak Truth Unashamedly
Weekend Scripture: Romans 1
Only the Gospel has the power to save anyone and everyone who ends up believing in it.
Ben Foote walks us through Romans 1 as we discuss the Gospel and what it means to speak truth unashamedly. The Gospel is an indisputable fact, but sometimes we treat it like a lifestyle choice. Sin is a terminal disease affecting everyone, and Jesus is the only cure. You are God's Plan 'A' to share the Gospel with the people in your life.
- Hi. Thank you. Yeah, like Neil said, my name is Ben. I'm a pastor based out of Denver, Colorado. Had the great honor of getting to teach here a handful of times. And Scott asked me to come out for this series where you're talking about these three different characteristics that if the Jesus followers in the room could live with these characteristics at play and at life, then you could become a resilient and faithful. Jesus follow her, right? So resilient meaning like you can take one on the chin from life and you'll stay standing and faithful meaning the world can get even darker than it already is, but you can retain your hope. And I'm pumped that he asked me to come out because I genuinely believe that these three characteristics that you're talking about for these three weeks, that if everyone in this church, I mean, this is a big church, if everyone were to take these three things seriously and live them out, I do not believe it's an exaggeration to say that this church could like change your part of the world, you could change central Kentucky if you lived these three things out. Last week, Scott kicked us off by talking about worshiping defiantly. And today we're talking about something else that it could just change your world.
We're talking about what it looks like to speak truth unashamedly. And again, if you were to live this way, it wouldn't just change your life. It could change the lives of your family and your friends and your workplaces and your schools. And so if it's cool with you, I would love to just jump in, jump into scripture and jump into this idea of speaking truth unashamedly. And we're gonna do that by jumping into Romans chapter one. So if you got your Bibles, you can go ahead and flip there. You got the Gospels, then Acts, then Romans. Romans, in case you are unfamiliar, it's this long, wonderful letter written by an apostle named Paul. And he's writing to the budding church in Rome. And at the time that Paul writes this letter, he's not yet been to Rome, but he wants to go so badly. It's like, he keeps making plans to go, but his plans keep blooming up. And basically ever since Paul started following Jesus, Rome is this bucket list for him. He's like, I've got to get to Rome. And so at the very beginning of this letter, Romans, right after some short greetings, Paul kind of stresses to the church in Rome how badly he wants to come visit. And he says this, we're picking up in Romans chapter one, verse 13. He says, I do not want you to be unaware, brothers,
that I have often intended to come to you, but thus far, so far, I've been prevented in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles. I am under obligation, both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. And so I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. Okay, so Paul is eager, right? He's dying to get to Rome. Why? Is it to make new friends? Is it to take the tour and see the sights and put another stamp in his passport? No, Paul just told us, I'm dying to go to Rome because I am dying to preach the gospel. And then he says this next, and this is kind of the key verse for us today. He says, for because I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek. So Paul says, I am not ashamed of what of the gospel. And when we talk about speaking truth unashamedly, we're talking about the same thing that Paul is talking about. We're talking about sharing the gospel with no shame. Okay, and so before truly jumping into this idea together, it's probably worth our time to get on the same page by answering the question, what is the gospel?
Okay, sometimes I kind of worry that that term gets watered down a little bit, or sometimes it becomes vague, right? We use the word gospel as kind of this catch-all term for anything good that happens to us spiritually, right? Like I'm living in the gospel today, or sometimes we take the whole Bible front to back and we say that that book is the gospel. And there's nothing wrong with that. But in Romans chapter one, verse 16, when Paul says that he is unashamed of the gospel and he's dying to get to Rome to preach the gospel, he means something very specific when he uses the word gospel. We can think of it like, he's talking about the capital G gospel, right? So what is the capital G gospel? capital G gospel. And it's an awesome book of the Bible. It's one of my favorites. It's logically laid out. It's for the thinking man and the feeler. It's an awesome book. We just don't have time to read 16 chapters today. And so for the sake of time, Paul succinctly defines the capital G gospel in a different letter in the New Testament. This one, he wrote to his friends living in Corinth. And it takes him eight verses to define the gospel instead of 16 chapters. And so here it is. Paul says this in 1 Corinthians. He says, "Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel that I preached to you. The gospel which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved,
if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain." So Paul basically says in his letter, "Let's take a time out right now, and let's just remind ourselves of the capital G gospel that has saved our lives." And then here it is, next verse, he says, "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received." Okay, so I prioritized the gospel above all things. And here is the gospel. The gospel is that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared. Like he's still living to this day. He appeared to see this, and then to the 12, and then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive. Paul's like, "Just go talk to them about seeing Jesus." Then he appeared to James, and then to all the apostles. And then here's an important part of the capital G gospel that we often forget about. Paul says, "Last of all, finally, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me." Okay, that is the capital G gospel. To drill down that word count even more for today, the gospel is four bullet points with the power to change the world. The gospel, the good news, is that Jesus put our sin to death through the cross. Jesus put our death to death through his resurrection. Ever since his death and resurrection, Jesus has been rescuing the sons and daughters of God, and then the fourth bullet point of the capital G gospel, I am one of the rescued. That is the gospel. It is the story of who Jesus is and what he's accomplished, and because he's changed our lives so much, this is a story that we relate in terms of our experience with it, our testimony. If you want to sound fancy, which means the capital G gospel is a story that can be boiled down at the end of the day to one sentence, which is, "Jesus rescued me from sin, shame, and death, and here's how he did it."
That is the capital G gospel that Paul says he's unashamed of. This is the reason that he's dying to go to Rome because he's dying to tell people the story of how Jesus rescued him from sin, shame, and death, and if you are one of the Jesus followers in the room today, this is the same truth that we are to be speaking unashamedly. We are supposed to be shouting the story of the gospel from the rooftops, and it's absolutely vital that we do that. Why is it so vital? Why is it so important to speak this truth unashamedly? Paul already told us in Romans 1, 16. Here it is again. It says, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel for because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. Why is it so important that we speak this truth unashamedly?" Paul says, "It's because it's only the gospel that can save anyone and everyone who ends up believing in it." At this point, my assumption is that many of us in the room were like, "Yeah, I know all this stuff. You're not saying anything I don't know. We're nodding in agreement. We believe in this intellectually, but at the same time, myself for sure included, at the same time, we have these certain situations or these certain relationships in our lives where we're just walking on eggshells with the gospel for some reason, and we're making excuses. We're telling ourselves, "No, no, no, I'm just waiting for the right time. I'm waiting for the right opportunity to talk about Jesus." We're tiptoeing around the hope of the entire world. Why would we do that? Paul says, "Hey, let's just call a spade a spade. If we're doing that, it's because we have become ashamed of." Will they, will they stop being my friend? Will they avoid me in the office? We have become ashamed
of the gospel. Why? Well, I think that there are a number of reasons that we become ashamed of the gospel. But for today, I want to just kind of harp on what I believe to be the number one culprit. Here it is, even though it's a tough pill to swallow, we become ashamed of the gospel whenever we don't truly believe it to be indisputable fact. Here's what I mean by that. It's not possible to be ashamed of indisputable fact. That's not a thing, right? You think about, you know, the laws of nature, for example, like the law of gravity. No one's ashamed to believe in gravity, right? I like to rock climb. That's a big thing in Colorado. A lot of rock climbing gyms, I've been to these places more than I can count. I've never heard anyone embarrassed to use ropes, okay? I've never heard anyone be like, I'm sorry I'm using these ropes. It's just, you might think I'm crazy, but I've decided for myself personally, I've decided that I believe in gravity. It's like, no, gravity is an indisputable fact. Everyone believes in that. I think about oxygen, for example. You go to the public pool, see a little kid who can't swim, his parents are distracted, he jumps into the deep end without his floaties. What do you do? You don't sit and think about it. You go and rescue that kid and guess what? You don't apologize to his parents when you're done, right? You don't look at them and go, I'm sorry, I probably crossed the line. I should have let you do you and let you parent, like you want a parent. It's just guilty. I'm one of those wacky oxygen believers. It's like, no, you sound like a crazy person, right? You can't be ashamed of indisputable fact. Here's what you can be ashamed by. You can be embarrassed by things that you believe at the end of the day to simply be lifestyle choices. You know, in other words, you should never feel shame for holding your breath when you're swimming laps at the pool. Oxygen is an indisputable fact. You probably should feel a little bit of shame for wearing a leopard print speedo while you do it, right? The leopard print speedo was a choice that you're making the rest of us deal with, right? We have this experience every time we look at old pictures of ourselves, right? I look at pictures of myself from the 90s and I'm like, that's, I thought that looked good. Denim on denim with more denim, you know, like Canadian tuxedo with a puka shell necklace and a bowl cut. It's like, dude, what are you thinking, right? I'm not ashamed that I'm wearing clothes, of course. That's a fact of life. I'm ashamed of my choice in clothing. At this point, you're like, dude, you lost me at leopard print speedo. Like, what are we talking about? Here's the point I'm trying to make, even though it's a tough pill to swallow. Is there a chance? Just let's be honest with ourselves. Is there a chance that sometimes we
feel embarrassed to share the story of the gospel and to talk about Jesus with our friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, because at the end of the day, is it possible that we actually view the gospel as a lifestyle choice that we've made more than indisputable fact? And I don't know, right? That's a conversation that you've got to have with Jesus, but I don't, I don't know, maybe some of us need a heart check here. Jesus said himself, he said, "I am the way and the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me." And for my fellow grammar nerds and book nerds in the room, the articles in that verse are everything. Notice what Jesus did not say. He did not say, "I am a way and a truth and a life." And some people will come to the Father through me, but don't worry because other people will come to the Father through other means. No. Jesus did not say that he's one of many lifestyle choices that we can make. Instead, Jesus made the audacious and radical claim that he was the embodiment of indisputable reality. He said, "I am the way to live your life. I am the truth of reality and I am life itself." The flip side of the coin of that truth is he's telling us our friends and our family will stay lost and they will stay lied to and they will stay dying until they encounter the way and the truth and the life. And just like we would never apologize for pulling we should not feel ashamed for sharing the story of the gospel with other people and telling them about Jesus, because the gospel is not a choice that we made. I remember what this was like for you. Instead, the gospel was like this brick wall of reality that we ran into at one point. And thank God that we did. Why wouldn't you tell everyone about that? This is maybe an overused metaphor, but usually metaphors are overused because they work. And so here's a metaphor for the reality that we live in. Use your imagination for a minute. And just imagine that it was just indisputable fact. There was no way around it.
Like 100% of every human being who has ever been or will ever be born is born with a terminal disease. That's just the way it is. And this disease is, it eats away at your life and it wrecks your relationships and it spirals you into self-destruction and it renders you a shell of a human being and without fail, this disease always results in premature death. Let's just say that that's how life works. At the same time, let's say that you somehow discover the cure to this disease. In that situation, it's really hard to imagine you doing anything other than telling the whole world about the cure. And yet the whole of scripture tells us our reality is no different from that metaphor. Scripture tells us the tough truth. 100% of every human being who has ever been or will ever be born is born with the terminal disease of sin and separation from God. Okay, this disease eats away at our lives, it wrecks our relationships, it spirals us into self-destruction, it renders us shells of human beings and without fail, this disease always ends in a premature death because you and I were designed for eternal life. That is how our reality works. And yet many of us, maybe most of us in this room
have found the cure. We found Jesus. We found the sacrifice who bore our disease on his back and the firstborn from the dead who was raised to life and the eternal king and Christ who promised us that he will come back one day and when he does, he's going to defeat the evil forces of this disease. He's gonna grind them under the heel of his boot as if they were nothing. And that same king, Jesus, our Christ, our cure, commanded us. He didn't ask, he commanded that we share the gospel unashamedly. He commanded us to make disciples of all nations. He commanded us to tell everybody about the cure in Jerusalem, out to Judea and Samaria and to the very ends of the earth. Like Jesus commanded us, get out there and tell people about me before they die of the disease. And yet here we are, I'm preaching to myself too, me included, here we are, tiptoeing around that command and telling ourselves that the cure is actually this very delicate thing, this fragile thing. It has to be introduced in just the right way with just the right words. We're telling ourselves, I'm just waiting. I'm not ashamed, I'm just waiting for the right moment to tell my friends and family about the cure. Listen, if the gospel is truly a matter of life or death like Jesus says it is, the right moment is always today.
And yet we just become up with every imaginable excuse to not tell people about the cure, why? Again, Paul would say it's because we've become ashamed of the gospel and that might be because we don't view the disease as indisputable fact. And so we view the cure as just this lifestyle choice that we've made, this belief we have. But Jesus was very clear with us. And he said that the gospel is not one of many ways to eternal life, the gospel is not opinion, the gospel is not a hobby or a past time or a self-help program. And in a world that says you live your truth and I'll live mine, the gospel is not your truth. The gospel is the truth, don't keep it to yourself. What happens when we become ashamed of the gospel is it's not just bad for the world around us, but it's bad for our own hearts and our own faith. it's gonna sound familiar. It's a very common trajectory for many Jesus followers. Some of us have been here before. Others of us are here today. And to describe this, we'll continue using this metaphor of disease and cure. Okay, but here's what happened to many of us. At one point in our lives, maybe you were young or maybe this is like recent. It was just within the last year or whatever. At some point, you discovered Jesus. You discovered the gospel, you found the cure.
Typically, around that same time frame, someone usually taps you on the shoulder and says, "Hey, there's this huge group of people "who meet every single weekend "and almost all of us have the cure." And so we just get together once a week and we thank God for the cure and we remember the cure and we talk about what life should look like 'cause we've got all these habits and patterns that were formed by the disease. So we just try to figure out how to live now that we're cured and would you like to come? And you're like, yeah, that sounds awesome. I would love to go. So you go and you love it, right? It's illuminating. Feel like you've met your people. So you start going every single week. Eventually, someone taps you on the shoulder again and they say, "Hey, this is a pretty big group," which is great, but there's also this smaller group of us that meets on Wednesdays and all of us have the cure. And so we just get together. We kind of unpack what we learn in the big group and we kind of support one another. Would you like to come? And again, you're like, I would love to be there and you love it, okay? So far, there's nothing wrong with any of that. We are commanded to live within community with one another.
So there's nothing wrong with that until, okay? Until what happens to many of us is over time, eventually we wake up one morning and we realize I only have relationships now with people who have the cure. It's like I know some people with the disease, I bump into them at work, at school or whatever, but like I don't have relationships with them anymore, like kind of keep them at arm's length, right? Why? It's like I don't even know why. I guess I just feel so removed from that old way of living. If that continues, eventually many of us, like I just feel like I see this everywhere now. It's like many of us become disgusted or angry much of the time with the people who still have the disease. Why? Because all these diseased people are acting sick all the time and it's uncomfortable and it's offensive to me. It's almost like we forgot that we once had the same disease, but it's offensive to us and so we silo ourselves and we circle the wagons with other people who have found the cure and if that is left unchecked, it leads to a very backwards and disorienting way of living out our faith, which looks like this. You wake up one morning, you do this every morning maybe,
you're up even before the sun's up and you've got your steaming coffee and you've got your Bible and you're reading the Bible and then you pray, right? And you thank God for the cure and you ask for his help in continuing to throw away the old patterns of disease and so you're just praying, you're talking to God and then eventually you reach that part of your prayer where you say something like, hey God, there's this girl at school named Julie, right? Or I've got this co-worker, this brother-in-law named Kyle or whatever. I've got this person in my life who still has the disease and their life would be so much better if they could find the cure and so God please help them. I don't know how they're gonna hear about it. I don't know where they're gonna find it. But God, please help Julie, please help Kyle to discover the cure. And then we say amen. And the next time we see Julie or Kyle later that day or later that week, we talk about sports, we talk about the news, the weather, we talk about anything other than the cure that we've found. And then we leave that conversation and think to ourselves, man, just if only they could somehow discover the cure. It's a disorienting, backwards way of living out our faith
because like any time that we pray for our friends and our family to discover the hope of the gospel, Jesus looks at us and says, go look in the mirror, you are the answer to your own prayers. And listen, if we even know that to be true and we still won't get off our butts and be the answers to our own prayers, it is because we have become ashamed of the gospel and we have let go of the world changing responsibility Jesus gave us to speak truth. This used to be something I felt pretty good at, honestly. Like I felt like this is, I got a lot to work on, but this is something I'm good at. Lately, I don't know, maybe it's because I travel a lot and I don't, it's like I don't have a home almost, maybe that's part of it. I just feel like I've circled the wagon. So I'm preaching to myself and probably you might feel like I feel, which is like, okay, can I get off the mat to breathe for just a second? And it's like, yeah, in a second. Let's finish leaning into this. I want to offer you a challenge. I believe there's encouragement packed in this challenge, but in Jesus' masterful sermon on the Mount, okay? At the beginning of this sermon, right after blessing the down and out, Jesus looks at these people who have been following him from town to town and he says, "Hey, in case you didn't know, you are the salt of the earth and you are the light of the world." You're the salt. You're going to preserve the world by preserving my truth and my grace and my gospel. And Jesus says, "You're going to be the light of the world. You're going to spread the light of my truth and grace and gospel into the darkest reaches of your world." And one of the things I love about Jesus, he does this more often than you'd think. Sometimes we miss it because it's an ancient text, but he's just got the gift for delivering a hard truth, but it's wrapped around some palatable humor, you know? It's like giving your dog medicine, you just put a lot of peanut butter and they don't even know what happened to them, right? He does that with some tough truth and he does that when he calls us the light of the world. Look, he says this, "You are the light of the world. He's speaking to us. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden." He says, "Nor do people light a lamp and then put it under a basket. That would be ridiculous. Instead, they put it on a stand and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good deeds and give glory to your father." Who is in heaven. And when Jesus is talking about a lamp with a basket on top of it, he's being absurd on purpose. He's being funny to slip in a tough truth. If he were to preach this part of his sermon today in modern language, he might say something like this. Let's imagine that you're redesigning your home. You're sick of your stupid couch or whatever. You want to redo your living room. So you make the hour and a half trek to IKEA or I don't know how close the nearest IKEA is. They're almost always an hour and a half away somehow. So you make the trip to IKEA. You do the whole thing. You eat the sausages or whatever they serve and you spend all day there. You buy some stuff, you go home and one of the things you bought was this kind of cool hipster lamp. And it's from IKEA, so it has a ridiculous name. It's like the kindertutin or whatever. You pull out the kindertutin and you put it in your living room and you plug it in and you screw in a light bulb and you turn it on and it's perfect. You love it. It just brings so much light into your once gloomy living room. You're still unpacking all the stuff you've got. Another thing that you've got is this hipster little salad bowl, right? The huutto flarpen. And you pull that out and now you're seeing it next to your lamp and you're like, "Man, these kind of match pretty well. This looks pretty much like the base of the light. I could make for a good lamp shade." So what you do is you take your lamp shade off, you put your huutto flarpen on your kindertutin and what happens? A few questions. Is the lamp still a lamp?
Yeah, you can't change the designer's intention. Is the light bulb still screwed in? Does the lamp still contain a bright, hot, white light within it? Yes. Here is the kicker. Is this lamp allowing its light to spill into and transform the darkness of the living room? No. Why? Because it's a lamp with a salad bowl on its head which is absurd and ultimately pointless. It's a tough truth that he just slid in there. If we are the lights of the world and we're not allowing our light to spill into the darkness, Jesus is like, "This is getting absurd." In fact, when it comes to spreading the light of the gospel into the dark world around us, it's pretty crazy. We are God's plan A for that. And there is no plan. and make disciples of all nations. You stay home and learn more about my truth and grow in your faith." He doesn't say that. He says, "You have to go. You have to go and make disciples." In Acts, the resurrected Jesus does not say, "I will be a witness unto myself to the very ends of the earth." He says, "No, you, you're going to be my witness to the ends of the earth. You are going to be the salt of the earth. You are going to be the light of the world because we are God's plan A for sharing the hope of the gospel with the world." And maybe that's not fair because there is one time in the book of Luke where Jesus says, "If we don't proclaim him to be king and glorify him in the highest, then the rocks will cry out." So there's your plan B. When it comes to your friends and your family who are lost and broken and hurting and far from God, it is either going to be you or rocks who share the gospel with them. We have to be the light of the world. We must share the gospel. We must speak this truth unashamedly, no shame. Some of us are going, "Okay, but how? I don't even know where to start." Don't overthink it. Again, the gospel is a story that's related in terms of our experience with it. You really don't need a master's in theology. You don't. You just need to have a relationship with someone and then you say, "Can I take you out to lunch?" And then you tell them unashamedly the story of your life and how Jesus interrupted it and the story of how awesome he is and what you're learning from him and what you still struggle with. Just let him a little bit into your life. That's it. The gospel, remember, at the end of the day is a story that can really just be summarized as Jesus rescued me from sin, shame, and death. And here's how he did it. And so a challenge and an encouragement. Some of us, we have a name in our heads and in our hearts right now. That friend, that family member, co-worker, the neighbor, like the person who was lost and they're lied to and they're hurting and they're far from God. Listen, the name that the spirit of God himself put in your heart right now. Please hear the truth of Scripture telling you, you are
God's plan A for delivering the gospel to that person. It is why the name is in your head and in your heart. And so listen, you have got to follow through for them. And when we pray that this person somehow discovers the hope of the gospel and yet we don't do anything about it, Jesus says it's absurd. You only really have two options for prayers in front of you this morning. If you've got a name on your heart, you can pray that you discover the courage to become the light of the world in that person's life. You can pray that you follow through for that person or you can pray that they encounter some talking rocks real fast, which of course is absurd. Because if we are the light of the world, but we're praying for someone else to do our jobs, Jesus would say, listen, I love you. But you are acting like a kinder-tutin with a hooter-flarpen on your head. Jesus' words, not mine. So I'm going to pray for us here in a minute. And then after that, we have a chance to respond maybe to this truth. If you're anything like me and you feel very convicted about it, we can respond. We're going to do that a few ways. First, we're going to praise our God through worship. And I don't know, maybe you just need to praise him this morning. Maybe you need to kind of step back into a place of gratitude. Maybe as you're singing these songs, just be thankful to him. Like thank him for the person who followed through for you, your plan A, your salt, your light. We're going to praise. We're also going to partake in communion. This is our chance to pause and reflect and remember that it was Jesus, our King, our Christ, who bore our disease on his back. But then here's something you could do. And I'll say it one more time at the risk of sounding redundant. You have a very big church. There's a lot of you. And if every single one of you were to take this seriously, I do not think it's exaggeration to say you could absolutely, like Jesus through you could absolutely change your communion. What you could do is you could pray. Pray, if you wanna take this moment and solidify it as a moment of change, if you wanna make a commitment to your God, you can kinda help cement this moment in your mind by coming forward and up to these rugs and kneeling, comes in front to pray, asking someone to pray with you or praying by yourself, but you could take a moment to pray and listen, this is gonna, at first,
you're gonna think I'm a bad pastor. As backwards as it sounds at first, when you pray, do not pray for the name that God put on your heart. Instead, pray that God gives you the courage to be the light of the world for the name that God put on your heart. Just come, fall on your knees, shake hands with your God, make a commitment to him. Tell him I will obey you. I will be your witness and I will go and make your disciples and I will be the salt of the earth and I will be the light of the world. Like come tell your king, I will be the answer to all of my prayers for my friends and my family because I will speak your truth unashamedly. Let me try to get us going by praying over us. (soft music) God, thank you ultimately for this truth. Kind of a couple ways to look at it is I'm torn in my heart on the one hand. It just feels like a crazy responsibility that you've given us. I mean, this is the hope of the world, my savior, like God in the flesh. Like this is the cure for the disease and you say I need you to go out and share it with everyone. Like I know myself, you know me, I'm a mess. My wake up every morning feeling like I don't do not have my life together and yet you look at me and say, man, you're plan A.
Get out there and tell people about me. So it's like part of me feels really heavy with a responsibility, but then there's another way of looking at it, which is like how cool is it that you've given that responsibility to us? That you've looked at us and said, my grace is enough to cover how broken you are. My mercy is enough to cover how many times you've messed up. Get out there and tell people about me. To be the bearers of that kind of good news is pretty amazing. God help us to shift our hearts for those of us who have a name in our mind and in our heart right now. Help move through the hearts of your children, shift our hearts from places of fear and embarrassment, from shift our heart from the place where it's like, oh, what if they think I'm weird? What if they laugh at me? You know, shift our hearts over to the place where we're just so confident in you and confident in the power of your gospel to save everyone who believes that we are just itching to tell our friends about it. But that's a big ask and you're a big God. So you've got to help us and do that in our hearts. God ultimately, I thank you for this truth. God may we all lead into it and watch you change the world. I thank you for this time. I thank you for these people. And I pray this in the name of your son, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
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