Foundational Healing

My name is Jenny, and I'm a grateful believer, and I struggle with codependency, and I'm an adult child of family dysfunction. Hey. How many of you, like me, have the ability to really hyper-focus on something? Like really hyper-fixate in on something? Yep. I find that I can hyper-focus on most anything. Like for example, food. If I find a new food that I really like, I can eat that over and over again until I get sick. Or sometimes, it's a hobby or a skill that I'm trying to learn. A couple of years ago, I was watching a kid's baking competition on TV, and they were making macaroons. And see, I'm a baker, and I'm watching these kids, and I'm like, well, if these kids can make macaroons, then surely I can make macaroons. And so I began this hyper-focus quest to make these perfect macaroons. I did all this research on what are the right ingredients to make for macaroons, and I went to all the different stores to get those ingredients. And then I read all these different recipes and read all the reviews on the recipes to find the perfect recipe. And I watched all these videos of people making macaroons, so I could pick up on all these tips and tricks. And it took some time, you guys, but I did it. I made great macaroons. One time. One time. And I believe if you look at the screen in a minute, there should be a picture of, well, there might be a picture of a macaroon that I made from there. There it is! It's funny, because once I did it, it's like I conquered the challenge, the hyper-focus

lifted, and I never wanted to make another macaroon ever again. But other times, I hyper-focus on things that I'm really, really passionate about, that I find myself talking about all the time. And one of my current fixations right now is this concept of foundational healing, this idea that we need to go back to the very root or origin of our pain to help understand our struggles. Now, we recently had a retreat here for our ministers' wives at Saddleback Church. Now, we're a big church. We have a lot of campuses, so it's not uncommon that we don't all know each other's names. And so we wear lanyards with our names on them. And this year, they did something really cool. On the backside of the lanyard, they had three lines that they wrote on it, and they asked us to put on three things that we could have a conversation with somebody about. You know, hobbies that we like, movies, TV, something like that. And I kid you guys not, on the top line of my lanyard, I wrote, childhood hurt and pain. As in, ask me about my childhood hurt and pain, because that's a great starter conversation to have with somebody. And just in case you think I'm exaggerating, there should be a picture. Oh, there it is. See? There's the lanyard I wore around. Now, sometimes I can't help myself, but I am self-aware enough to know that I'm a little bit of a weirdo for writing that on my thing. But I think that we can all agree that here at Celebrate Recovery, it is kind of addicting to talk about the freedom and the healing that we have found through Jesus, right? Okay, so what do I mean by foundational healing, and why is this so important and necessary? Well, foundational healing, simply stated, is the healing of our core hurts and wounds. And this is so important, because the current struggles that we're all dealing with, they are all tied directly to the wounds and the pain in the past, and our pain of the past. We all want a recovery that stands the test of time, that is built to last.

It's not just momentary, and it's not just for a season. But to get that lasting recovery, we need to address the core issues of our past. We need to look at our childhood and identify those hurts and those traumas. Now, I think the word hurts is a really common word. We use it a lot in Celebrate Recovery, and I think most people are comfortable with that word. But I think the word trauma can be a little bit of a different story. Some of you may have even had a little bit of a reaction when I used the word trauma. We might all be working on different definitions of the word trauma. And so for the context of my talk today, I wanted to define the word trauma. So SAMHSA, which is the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, defines trauma this way, as results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or threatening, and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual's functioning and physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being. This definition addresses three things. It addresses what happened to us, how it hurt us, what the harm was, and how it affected us. Now, that definition is a little long and kind of hard to wrap my mind around. So I did reach out to Dr. Nita Phillips, who's a trauma therapist, and I asked her, we love Dr. Nita, I asked her, what is your basic definition of trauma? And she said this, trauma is anything that has happened to you that has changed your belief about yourself, others. God for the worse. Again anything that has happened to you that has changed the way you believe about yourself, others, or God for the worse. This is her baseline definition of trauma and it's what she uses to help people to understand if they've experienced trauma in their life. So you guys woohoo'd a minute ago, we love Dr. Anita here. You guys she has a new book coming out in September, it's called The Garden Within. John and I got an early release, we were able to read it and I highly, highly recommend it. And I did get her permission to reference here and

quote the book here today and I'm so, so thankful for that. So in her new book she mentions that there are different types of trauma. The first type are things I think we all normally think of as traumatic events. These are any kind of abuse, death of a loved one, near-death experience, health crisis, just to name a few. But this also would include adverse childhood experiences and this includes having parents divorce or get separated, living with a parent, sibling, or a caregiver who struggles with mental illness, or an addiction, or witnessing any kind of violence. She also also mentions historical traumas. Now listen to this, Dr. Anita describes these as events that are so widespread, they not only impact entire cultures, but they are so intense that they influence generations beyond those who experience them directly. These traumas are so significant that they infect entire cultures and multiple generations. And then another type of trauma that really caught my attention are developmental traumas. Now rather than what did happen to us, developmental traumas are results of what didn't happen to a child or what didn't happen for a child. This can look like emotional neglect, not having parents or caregivers who are there for you emotionally growing up, or growing up too fast and having to take on responsibilities that kids shouldn't have to take on, or growing up in an unreliable or an unstable home that feels chaotic and unsafe at times. Now I think that these developmental traumas, when I was reading this I was thinking I think they can feel more subtle, they can feel more seen, and I think they can definitely feel harder to prove. And I think that actually can be a little weird to call some of those things traumas, but I want to say please take it from the word of a trauma therapist that they are. And she says, she goes on to say that just because you weren't beaten, sexually violated, or verbally abused does not mean you have not experienced trauma in your life. And then she goes on to say that I give you permission to embrace what you have experienced, to be able to name it. So more and more studies are beginning to show just how widespread trauma is. In 1995 there was a study done on adverse childhood experiences and they found that more than two-thirds of the participants in

the study had experienced at least one adverse childhood experience in their life. And then in 2022 the National Council for Mental Well-Being reported that, listen to this, 223.4 million people living in the United States have experienced at least one or more traumatic events. That's 70% of our population. That's a lot of people that have experienced trauma and those are just the people that have reported it. So why all of this trauma talk to start off? Well for a couple reasons. I'm talking about foundational healing today and to do that we have to know what we need to heal from. And two, because trauma is so widespread and it affects our entire well-being. But mostly because the trend that I have seen from my 10 years in recovery, and that definitely applies to my own life, is that so many of us were never allowed to call it what it was. We are never allowed to name it. So many of us were taught explicitly that we have to deny, deny, deny that anything ever happened. Or we were shamed if we brought it up. Told that we were wrong for feeling that way. Told that it didn't even happen that way. Or told that we're being dramatic or weak for talking about our emotions or expressing our emotions about it. But here's what I want. I want true healing for all of us. I want us all to be able to embrace what Dr. Nita gives that permission to embrace what we have experienced. I want us all to be able to name it. But here's the thing. If after all that I've just said about the word trauma, if you're still uncomfortable with the word, that's okay. That's okay because you know what? We can all agree that we all have hurt in our lives. That we have all been hurt by other people and that we have all hurt others. So why is acknowledging this hurt? And for some of us our traumas, why is that so important? Well because knowing our history, knowing what happened to us, it helps us to understand why we believe certain things and why we behave certain ways and why we struggle with certain things. Now I think I think that traditionally recovery has all been about our habits, right? People come into recovery because of our habits. I think most people come because they know that they have an unhealthy habit or a behavior that is making their life feel unmanageable. And most of the times those are identifiable behaviors like

addictions, compulsive behaviors, codependent behaviors like control. manipulation, enabling. But I think another reason that people get into recovery is because they're aware of how much hurt they have in their life. And I fell into that camp. And here's what I mean by that. When I got into recovery, I was more aware of the pain in my life than I was of how I was behaving. I was more aware of how I was hurt than I was of the habits that I was doing because of that pain. So some of us come into recovery more aware of our habits, and some of us come into recovery more aware of how we're hurting, of the pain in our lives. But here's the cool thing. Recovery works for all of us, right? Works for all of us, and we all end up in the same place. We all come wanting the same thing, which is we want that pain to stop. And I think the stigma around recovery has been that it's all about just stopping behaviors, that if we just stop behaviors, that the pain will go away. But here's the thing. Our goal here at Celebrate Recovery is not just sobriety and stopping behaviors. It's about going after that freedom and that healing that we can find through the power of Jesus Christ. Right?

Right? Sobriety, it's great, and it's necessary, and please, I'm not saying that we don't need sobriety. I'm just saying that we want so much more than sobriety. We want that true healing and that freedom. Hebrews 12, one tells us, therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles us so that we can run with perseverance, this race that is marked out for us. And I love this because according to this verse, we're to take off everything that hinders us and the sin that so easily entangles us. And I think the sin is easy to identify. It's our hurt, I mean, it's our habits and our behaviors. But I think this verse also talks about our hurts and our hangups because our unhealed and unaddressed hurts and hangups, they hinder us. They can hold us back. And we wanna run this race that is marked out for us as unhindered by our hurts and hangups and as unentangled by our sin and habits as possible. That is the freedom and the healing that we are all here for. Not just getting rid of the habits, but going after the hurts and the hangups too. So I've talked a lot about hurts and habits,

but not so much about hangups. So what do I mean by hangups? And the way I like to think about hangups is they're belief systems. They're ways that we think about ourselves, others, and God. And these hangups, they develop directly out of the pain and the hurt and the wounds of our past. And so I wanna share with you guys some examples of some belief systems or some hangups that I definitely have dealt with and some other people have dealt with. I'm a burden. My emotions and my needs make me a burden. I'm different. Something is wrong with me. To be loved, I need to be perfect. I'm not capable. I can't trust myself. I'm not good enough. To be safe, I must be invisible or unnoticed by others. I can't trust anyone. I am responsible for the happiness of others. If I don't help that person, then they won't be okay. My emotion makes me irrational. I have to do it myself because no one else is gonna help me. I'm not worth it, and I am fundamentally unlovable. Like I said, these beliefs, they develop directly out of the pain and the hurt of our past.

And then these hangups, they end up driving our habits. And our habits, more specifically our unhealthy habits, are most often outward symptoms of our inward pain. They're reflecting our inward pain. Dr. Diane Langberg says it this way. She said, the wounds of trauma are not visible, but the effects are. So the hurts, they deal with our heart and how we feel. The hangups deal with our head and how we think, and the habits come out in our actions and our habits. So it starts in our heart, and then it goes to our head, and it comes out in our hands and how we act and behave. And so we have to go after all three, hurts, hangups, and habits, to get that freedom. So like I said, even though the pain of my past is what brought me into recovery, once I got into recovery, I quickly realized that my struggles do have a name, codependency. And then as I began, something interesting happened. As I began to address and unpack the wounds and the pain and all of the trauma from my past, I began to realize that I was understanding my struggle with codependency more. I was beginning to understand why do I even struggle with codependency in the first place? And I discovered that childhood hurt is most often the root of codependency. See, these codependent behaviors that I struggle with, they all formed as survival techniques in my childhood.

I needed these behaviors to feel safe in the dysfunctional home that I grew up in. But see, what began as necessary in childhood became unhealthy in my adulthood. Brene Brown calls this putting on armor, right? She said that we all grew up both experiencing varying degrees of pain, trauma, disappointment, and hard stuff. And that these behavior, these habits that we deal with, that we develop, they're putting on armor, and they were necessary as kids. that armor on as adults, it keeps us from being fully seen and fully known. And now this thing that we thought that was protecting us is now hindering us and keeping us from running that race. So for me, recovery from codependency looks like becoming aware of how I was hurt, how that has made me believe and think about myself, and then the behaviors I'm doing because of that, and then realizing that I no longer need those belief systems and those patterns of behavior to keep me safe or to make me feel safe. Recovery for me looks like laying down that armor and then realizing that what was once helping me is now hurting me, but not just hurting me, but now I'm hurting others with it as well. So how did I lay down that armor? I went back to my childhood and I addressed the pain and the trauma and the wounds and the hard stuff and the disappointments.

I had to go back to heal, to understand why I put that armor on in the first place. To get that true healing, we have to start with the heart because that's where the hurt is, and the hurt is the foundation of our habits. Dr. Anita says this, your emotions won't last forever, but they will wait forever. When we ignore our emotional pain, it doesn't just go away. If we don't acknowledge it, it will continue to affect us. See, these addictions and these compulsive behaviors and these habits, they're all indicators of emotional pain that has been unaddressed and is unhealed. So how do we go back and address these past pains so we can go after that foundational healing? Well, if you've been in Celebrate Recovery any amount of time, you probably know right where I'm headed but we have a step and a principle here in Celebrate Recovery that helps us to do just this, right? We have the fourth step process. Yep, that thing that Hosanna said she skips all the time, that's the thing I'm talking about. So I was talking with Hosanna about this talk. I was processing it through with her because she's somebody that I love and I admire and she's helped me a lot. Who, by the way, she has a new book out as well. So if you're here, yep, yep. So we were talking about why the steps are so important in our recovery process and she said this. She said, for most of us, our habits are systematic.

Our struggles were systematic. So we need a systematic approach to heal. The fourth step in this recovery process, that's a systematic, strategic way to fight in our battle to heal. Principle four says, openly examine and confess my faults to myself, to God, and to someone I trust. And step four said, we made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. So just real quick, in case you're not familiar with what this fourth step process is, it's just an honest look back at our lives so that we can see how we've been hurt and how we've hurt others because that helps us begin to understand our struggles a little bit more. So I'm not actually gonna go into the fourth step process today and how to do that, but here's the thing. We brought workshops back to the summit this year and I'm so excited, yeah, I'm so excited about that. And so one of the workshops is actually on the fourth step. It's gonna be here in the worship center. So I highly, highly recommend that. So when we talk about recovery, a lot of the time, we like to use the analogy of like we're peeling the layers off of an onion, right, as we're going deeper and deeper. But our theme is built to last. So I wanted to look at this through the analogy of a wall. So here's my wall that represents a little bit of my life. And what I want you to see with this wall

is imagine that the top represents our habits and the middle represents our hangups and the bottom down here represents our hurts. So what I want you to see is the foundation of our wall is our hurts. And built on top of that comes our hangups and built on top of that comes our habits. So it starts with how we feel, which affects how we think, which affects how we behave, right? So I wanna share with you guys three examples from my own life, my own fourth step process today. So my first foundational hurt I wanna share with you guys is a conversation I had with my mom when I was about six or seven years old. And she was telling me that my parents were going to be getting a divorce. And it was a relatively quick, emotionless conversation. It happened one morning before school. And I remember driving to school that morning, sitting in the backseat and hearing my grandma and my mom talking and my mom said, is Jenny still crying? And I remember hearing my grandmother so clearly with exasperation in her voice say, yep, I guess she's not going to school today. So between those two conversations, I remember feeling shocked and scared and confused. But another thing that I felt so definitively in that moment is I'm a burden.

Sitting there crying and hearing my grandmother sound exasperated with me that I couldn't go to school. I remember thinking, I'm doing something wrong. I'm a burden. And so out of these feelings developed the hang up, the belief system that I'm a burden. My emotions and my needs make me a burden. And so out of that developed the habit. of denying my emotions, hiding them, stuffing them, doing anything I could to avoid ever feeling like a burden again. And so the second foundational heartbreak I wanna share with you is the time that my mom was hospitalized. I was in junior high. Let me tell you about my mom. She is the matriarch of our family. She is fierce. She is full of life. You do not mess with my mom. So when I walked into the hospital that day and I saw her looking so weak and so fragile, it was really, really jarring. And I remember feeling terrified and scared and overwhelmingly sad by what was happening. But another thing popped up that I had never felt before is I began to feel very protective over my mom. And so between this hurt and this feeling, the hangup, the belief system that I began to develop is I am now my mom's caregiver.

I am responsible for her well-being. Our relationship flipped. And I thought it is my responsibility to take care of my mom. I'm only okay if my mom is okay. And so out of that hangup, I developed the habit of putting my mom first in everything. I put her above my own needs. I put her above everybody else. And actually, when Johnny and I were married, the first four years of our marriage, I put her above my, I put my mom above Johnny in everything. Her opinions were more important to me than anyone else's. And you guys, as you can imagine, this is a really destructive habit. And then the last hurt brick that I wanna share with you is the pattern of growing up in a chaotic home with multiple divorces and multiple moves. And this left me feeling unsafe a lot of the time, anxious, unsettled. And so out of this hurt developed the hangup, the belief that I am my own protector. It is up to me to keep myself safe. I am the one in charge of my own safety. And so out of this hangup developed the habit of control. Ah, control. This, this is my drug of choice right here, right? I don't, I don't drink or anything. I just control everything and everyone.

So I just want you to see some examples from my own life. But I also want you guys to see something else. If I had gotten into recovery and my only goal was to stop behaviors, right? If I stopped denying my emotions and I stopped putting my mom first in everything and I stopped trying to control everyone and everything, but I stopped there and I didn't go to address these hangups and I didn't go to heal these hurts, what I want you to see is that any time I try to build a new habit in my life, I'm still building on the foundation of unhealed hurts and unaddressed hangups and that these are gonna continue to drive and influence any new habit that I put up here, which is why it is so important that we go back and we address these foundational wounds in our life. Because when we go back and we start to address those foundational wounds, we initiate the healing process. And when we initiate that healing process, we heal how we feel. And when we do that, then we can begin to change how we think. And then when we do that, we can change how we act and behave, right? And that is the transformation that we are all after here. So I just want to mention real quick here, this is important, that when we go back to our childhood, when we go back to take that look back, we are going back to explain and understand,

but we are not going back to blame, right? We want to look back to understand and explain why do we heal, I mean, why do we struggle with certain habits in our lives? Why do we believe certain things? But we're not going back to blame others for the choices that we make in our lives. So when I talk to people about this four-step process, something that I'll commonly hear is that they're really hesitant to do it. Something that I'll commonly hear is that they're really hesitant to put their own parents on their fourth step. Sometimes they feel that it's disloyal or it's dishonoring, but remembering that we are not going back to blame anybody, we are just going back to understand so that we can begin to understand ourselves. Or maybe they think they have an ideal childhood and they have nothing to put down on their inventory. But here's, but here's the truth, right? Here's the truth. We're all fallen beings in a fallen world, which means that we have all been raised by fallen beings in a fallen world, which means that no matter how ideal and wonderful your childhood was, you still have some childhood hurt and pain in your life. You still were exposed to some level of dysfunction. It is impossible for an imperfect person to be a perfect parent.

I have tried, it does not work. And I stand here, by the way, as a parent who knows that I will one day be on my own kids' inventory. I could probably write it for them, but I won't. I won't do it. That's controlling, I don't want to control them. But thanks to recovery and therapy, I am painfully aware of the ways that I have hurt. my own kids, that I have hurt them. And you know what's funny is when I tell people this, some of their immediate reactions to me are, oh no, Jenny, you're a good mom. You love your kids, you love your kids. But here's the thing, both are true at the same time, right? I'm a good mom, I love my kids, I try really hard. And I've hurt my kids. They're not mutually exclusive. I am a good mom who has hurt my own kids. So, real quickly, when we go back to look at these foundational hurts of our past, it doesn't just apply to our parents, it's any relationship that has had a foundational impact in your life. So maybe some of you are thinking right now, yeah, but Jenny, you don't understand the amount of pain in my past. You don't understand what I have had to face. And you're right, I don't. But I do know who does know the amount of pain that you have been in, right? Or maybe you're thinking, I don't even know how to start this process because, listen, I've spent my entire life

suppressing these emotions and denying these memories. I wanna leave you all with some encouragement today. Some encouragement and hope to face the pain of our past so that we can all go after that foundational healing. Another thing that Dr. Nita says is she says that faith says something is possible, but hope says it's possible for me. And I want all of you, I want all of us to walk out of here today with hope. And the best way to have that hope and to find that hope is to remember who we have for us in our corner, right? Who we have fighting for us and protecting us and healing us because we are not meant to do recovery alone. So let's look at some members of our recovery team. And I wanna start with the three hardest working members of our recovery team, and that's God, our Heavenly Father, Jesus, our higher power, and the Holy Spirit, who we have living inside us and empowering us to do all things. So Isaiah 61.1, I think, gives us a really beautiful example of how all three work together to care for us. And it says, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed and commissioned me to bring good news to the humble and afflicted. He has sent me to bind up the wounds of the brokenhearted, to proclaim release to the captives and freedom to the prisoners. Now that's the Amplified, but I want you guys to hear the King James Version because I think it's really beautiful as well.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. I love, I love this verse so much. Because I think there is so much hope to be had here. See, this is a prophecy about Jesus. And it starts with the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, on Jesus, because the Lord has anointed and commissioned to me. So listen to this, we've got God commissioning and anointing Jesus to go and do something that only he can do, and he's being empowered by the Holy Spirit to do it. How beautiful is that of all three of them working together to care for us. And then it goes on to say that Jesus came to bring the good news to the meek and the humble and the afflicted. Who better to hear the good news than those of us that are hurting and struggling and know that we've hurt others, who know that we need hurt, right? And then it says he came to do three things. Bind up the wounds of the brokenhearted, proclaim release and liberty to the captives, and give freedom to the prisoners by opening the prison doors.

And like I said, I love how the King James Version puts that, that Jesus opens the doors, right? He makes the way, he shows us the way, but here's the thing, we still have to be the ones who step out of the prison doors. We still have to make the choice, we have to pursue that. It's like Johnny said earlier, Jesus does all the initial work, but we still have to respond, we have to step out of it. How many of us knows what it feels like to be brokenhearted? How many of us knows what it feels like to be held captive by those condemning and those compulsive thoughts and belief systems about ourselves, and how many of us knows what it feels like to be imprisoned by those hangups and those habits and behaviors we just can't seem to stop? Well, the good news is we find hope in Jesus, because he is our deliverer and he is our healer. He came to set us free from all of it, and he did, because when Jesus came the first time, you know what, he fulfilled this prophecy, and he already did all of those things for us. You wanna know where we get the strength and the courage to face the pain of our past? We get it right here, from God our Heavenly Father who loves us so much, Jesus our higher power, and the Holy Spirit who empowers us to do all things, even the really, really hard things.

So we're gonna sing a song here in just a minute, and it's called God Turnin' It Around, and some of the lyrics are all of my hope is in the name of Jesus, and breakthrough will come in the name of Jesus, and when we do, I wanna say, All to boldly sing that out and declare that breakthrough will come in the name of Jesus. Aw, thanks. Okay, so we have some other members of our recovery team as well that are really, really important, right? We've got our sponsors, our accountability team, our open share group, and our Step Study brothers and sisters. Each one of these people is vital for our recovery because they help create that safe space that is so necessary for the healing process to begin. And the last thing I wanna mention real quick is therapy. Sometimes we have such deep wounds in our life that we have to go to the doctor to help with the healing process. It's just like if we fall and we cut open our legs, sometimes we have to go to the doctor to get stitches. The same is true of our emotional pain and our wounds. Sometimes we have to bring in the help of a doctor to heal, a counselor. And people ask me all the time, do therapy and recovery even work well together? And I'm like, yes, yes, they're powerful.

I promise, grab every single tool you can, every single tool you can to get that help. What I really want you guys to hear from me today is that recovery is not just about stopping behaviors. It's not just about sobriety, it is about so much more. What if when we notice that unhealthy habit or behavior pop up in our life, instead of heaping shame on ourselves and saying to ourselves, why can't I just stop this? What if we looked at these poor choices and these unhealthy habits as evidence that something inside of us needs to be healed and cared for, that we need to be cared for? What if our first thought isn't shame, but it's grace and compassion? What if the first question that we start asking ourselves is how have I been hurt? How much easier would it be to admit our struggles if we met ourselves with compassion? Because then we could not only go after sobriety, but we could go after that foundational healing that will allow us to strip off all that hinders us and that entangles us so we could run with perseverance, this race that is marked out for us. I wanna end today by praying for us, but I wanna pray Ephesians 3, 14, 21 over all of us together. Let's pray. We come to you, Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of your glorious riches,

you may strengthen us with power through your spirit in our inner being, so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith. And I pray that we all, all of us, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the Lord's holy people to grasp how wide and how long and how high and how deep is the love of Christ for each and every single one of us, Father, and to know that this love surpasses knowledge, that we may all be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. And we thank you, God, that you are able to do immeasurably more than we can all ask or imagine according to your power that is at work within us. To you, God, be all the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. Amen.