BdgBV4IIwK8

1:31He not only loves the body of Christ, he loves the bodies of Christ. And that's there's a distinction there, but it's one and the same. He loves the bodies of Christ, and I certainly felt that with Here at Emmanuel. And through the years of renewal, revitalization, and that all those years, and slow years in many ways, Butch was there through the years, strengthening, encouraging, sending teams, even long before I came on board here. And even as late as when we acquired this campus, if you will remember, there was a large team from Living Hope that came over and spent a week helping us just get this place together. And so I have asked Butch, when I found out that he was coming to town this week, to come and share the word tonight and to give us an update on his life and tell us what you're doing, where you are, and all that, how we can help, how we can be part of it. And so, Butch, come on up.

2:42You know, I think it's wrong when a preacher gets up and says something about you and makes you start crying from the very beginning. I have enjoyed our relationship since the first time he came. I thought he was coming to one of the hardest places that he could have. Ever come to, but he felt that he needed to do what God called him to do. And just to hear now how his vision continues with Redeemer and other places is nothing but a blessing to me. And so you guys are very blessed to have a man that looks beyond Emmanuel. But I will tell you, driving down this road today, turning right, I didn't know this was back here.

3:27I saw the sign, Emmanuel's sign. Wow. God has done a lot of amazing things out here. You know, he will talk about the town growing and all the new building, but then it's for me a great opportunity. I've been gone for five years now to come back and see how the church is still growing. While not every church is still growing, the church is still growing. And so when God's word is preached, when his people honor the teaching of his word and they go out and make disciples, who make disciples, God will bless that. And so it's a great honor for me to be here tonight. Now, I will tell you, I praise the Lord that I talked to Thomas before I started preaching because I've only heard one of his messages on this new series, Understanding Grace.

4:17Praise the Lord, I ain't preaching the same text that he preached on the second one, okay? But tonight we're going to look at Titus chapter 2, verses 11 through 15, as the Apostle Paul. Paul teaches young Titus on how to lead the church, how to develop leaders, how to grow leaders, and the impact of the gospel of grace. I've entitled tonight's message, Learn to say No to Sin and Yes to Godliness. Learn to say no to sin and yes to godliness.

4:57Beginning in verse 11 of Titus chapter 2. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

5:41Declare these things. Exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you. Even in the first century, people were disregarding their church leaders. Even in the first century, People thought that leaders sometimes could be too young to be worthy of the respect. And so, Paul made sure from the very beginning that Timothy understood that he was God's man for that place at that time. And so, as Thomas has laid an amazing foundation for understanding grace, he's reminding us that God abounds in his grace from the core of who he is, not based upon what we do. It is God's undeserved favor, it's his provision, his loyal love and help lavished upon his people. Now, Dijk Bonhoeffer makes sure that we do not cheapen grace, using it for justification of selfish and sinful practices. Whenever he says this, he says, cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

7:18It is a struggle today in our culture that teaches lies as truth to stand on truth apart from the grace of God. Even in The church, we find that a battle, unfortunately. But in contrast, he explains true grace, which he calls costly grace, as this. Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus. It comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him. It is grace because Jesus says, My yoke is easy and my burden is light.

8:04You see, God's amazing grace and love saves and changes repentant sinners. And so I just ask, as I ask every time I preach, every time that I try to present the teaching of the Word of God, is have you experienced this grace? Has there been a time in your life where you've come to recognize that you're a sinner in need of a Savior? And that apart from the grace of God, you have no hope of meriting favor before Him, but you trust in His finished work alone. You see, God put skin on in the person of Jesus Christ, His unique Son. The Bible says He was tempted in every way, yet without sin, He lived a sinless life and then He died a sin-bearing, wrath-removing death. Have you experienced this free gift of salvation available through Jesus Christ alone? Because if you have, everything about your life has changed. Now, some of us, it changes pretty quickly. For some of us, it's a process over the lifetime. But for all of us, it's going to lead to life change. And that's what this passage teaches us today. Because what this passage wants to make sure is that we understand is that God's grace teaches, trains, and empowers gospel believers to say no to sin and yes to godliness. Right doctrine leads to right living. Verse 11 says, For the grace of God. Now, again, this free and completely unmerited favor and empowering provision of God towards man in Jesus Christ.

9:44J.F. Packer, in his book, says it this way. In the New Testament, grace means God's love and action towards people who merited the opposite of love. Grace means God moving heaven and earth to save sinners who could not lift a finger to save themselves. From his book, Knowing God. John Piper wants us to focus on two things when we think about grace: God's undeserved favor, yes, but also his power for living. You see, sometimes we just end up with the one definition, and so that's why I love this passage. As we come to understand grace, we want to know that God's grace is so much better. And so much more amazing than any amazing song about grace could ever teach us. For the grace of God has appeared or been brought to light, bringing salvation for all people. Now, this isn't universalism, this doesn't mean that everybody in the world will one day be saved because of the grace of God. It means that this salvation, the means for all people to be saved, brings and came through the person and work of Jesus Christ. John 1:17 says it this way: For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Have you experienced this grace? You see, Jesus is this world's only hope. It's your only hope. It's my only hope. It's this community's only hope. And the reality of it is: it's God's plan. There's no plan B to use transformed believers to make disciples of all nations. You and I are his plan to win souls for Jesus Christ.

11:35When Thomas asked me to come, he asked me to share just a little bit about what God's doing in my life right now. And it's really beautiful as I decide on this text. It's this gospel of grace, that which saves and changes the repentant, that is drawing me to work for the fellowship of Christian athletes. Now, there's a lot of reasons I could offer to you today. You know, one of the things that I'm recognizing today is I'm getting old.

12:00And the church has no problem telling you when you apply to be their pastor that you're getting old. Okay, they want the young dudes. All right, I get it, I understand. But I found that, and in this process, I was teaching 10th graders in a high school in northeast Texas. My son is a coach and a teacher, and he's been telling me for years: Dad, the schools aren't the same as when you used to coach. The kids aren't the same as when you used to teach.

12:24No one is the same. It's harder, it's rougher. And again, not that I disagreed with him, I just couldn't imagine it being that much worse. Well, it's that much worse. But it's that much worse for so many different reasons than I think a lot of us think. I mean, when I was in 10th grade, if my parents had given up on me already, I wouldn't be alive today. Most of those kids' parents have nothing to do with their kids. Most of those kids' parents don't provide them food. Most of those kids' parents expect them to work and let them do whatever that they want to do. A lot of these kids are the way that they are because there's no one that loves them. And so FCA gives me an opportunity to go to where these kids are. And it took that horrible, horrendous experience to break my heart for those outside the walls of the building again.

13:17Man, I tell you, I couldn't believe kids would cuss me out and walk out the door, and there'd be no reinforcement for my authority in the classroom, but they would come back the very next day like nothing had ever happened. And from their perspective and what they're going through in life, nothing happened. It was nothing as rough as what they experience in their home, what they experience in their community. And this is in the United States of America. And so the beauty of this is, I had the opportunity to connect the church with these campuses and these coaches with an opportunity to make disciples who make disciples. Why? Because I have 54 middle and high schools, middle and high schools that I'm responsible for in my three counties. I have one junior college, I have 500 coaches and 14,000 students. You think that there's ever a chance that I'm going to reach them by myself? That's why FCA is passionate about connecting their missionaries with the communities and then in the church. Billy Graham said that a coach has more influence on people in one year than the average American has in their whole lifetime. And I get to be a part of helping impact souls for the kingdom. But here's the thing: people say, well, how can the church help? Well, there are things called character coaches where you can actually go in and you can be Jesus on those campuses. You can become their champlains. You can speak truth in those kids' lives. You can love them the coaches. Sometimes what churches do just to start off, they feed the kids. Sometimes what they do is they buy them a Gatorade during two days, and so that they just are out there showing them that the church cares and the church loves them. That's what I'm going to be doing. It's this gospel that. Drives this calling. Now, I'll still be faithful to the local church. I love the local church. I don't know where I'd be. I love the local church as a lost person. Okay? They gave me free food. They never cussed me out. I mean, it was great for me. Okay, so that was the nicest people I knew growing up. Now, once you become a preacher, things change. But I mean, that's a whole nother story. We're not going to get into that.

15:23Let's go back to the message, verse 12. Training us to renounce ungodliness. Okay, so again, just understanding the context of the passage. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness. That word training is child discipline. It's to make sure that you're teaching people how to live. Listen, from the very beginning of our Christian life, the grace of God is teaching us. Paul personifies grace here, making it into a teacher. It disciplines us to reject, to refuse ungodliness. That word ungodliness is rich. It means all irreverence in thoughts, in deeds.

16:12It literally means that there is no fear of God. It teaches us to fear God, to take God seriously. If God says it in this book, that settles that this is always right. I'm not always right. And so I yield by the grace of God to the teaching. Of this perfect word of God. But not only does it teach us to say no to irreverence and ungodliness, it also teaches us to say no to worldly passions. That word literally means lusts. Any worldly priorities or desires. The context in terms of how you define that word. So, this idea of if it feels good, do it. Go along just to get along. If it's fun, it's got to be okay. That I can waste my time, waste my money, waste my life doing whatever I want. It sets us free from worldly philosophies and politics and antinomian ideals.

17:09You don't just try harder and pray harder and do better and ever expect to be holy. It's only the grace of God that's going to teach you where to say no. It's going to show you this lavish love of God is so beautiful and so wonderful that you can't help. You can't help but want to be different. When you see love have influence on foster kids, and they come in after being in such a hardened condition, in such a hardened situation, then just in a matter of time that they get to spend with that new family that loves them in Christ and that loves them legitimately, I mean, like they go from not smiling at all to beautiful smiles. God's lavish love is better than anything that this world has to offer us. And I think sometimes that we forget it. So imagine. These 10th grade students who have parents that some of them aren't even in the home anymore, but they just really don't care for them anymore. Someone needs to care for them. Someone needs to pastor them. And thankfully, at least during a season, because of the way that the state of Texas does it, you can't play if you don't pass. And so for a season, a coach gets to have that influence on their lives, gets to be that truth teller in their lives. So the more that we can equip them, the more that we can help them, the more the opportunity that we have. And so the first thing Paul wants Timothy to understand, Titus to understand, is that grace that saves us also trains us to say no to all the ungodly things and passions of the world. You say, butcher, man, how?

18:53Because, man, I still love sin. Yes, we all still love sin. That's why we still sin. But we don't love the consequences. We don't love the impact of it. You've got to get saved first. This is all the overflow of a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. Because at the moment of your conversion, you are baptized, sealed with the Holy Spirit of God. God is now in you as His indwelling spirit. And then you study the Word of God. Then you pray and learn to communicate with God. You find wise counsel in your life. The older and the younger come together and we mentor one another. And we help one another so that we can be who God says we are. You see, no one's going to be able to plead ignorance and judgment. No one's going to be able to say, Well, I did this and I did this and I went to this church and I did this. When you have that many eyes and your justification for why you need to get to heaven, you're your Savior, not Jesus. Beware.

19:55And the reason that we're seeing so much wickedness and sin from those people who claim faith in Jesus Christ is because, like me and like my wife, Michelle, they've never experienced Christ. Yeah, I was a Sunday school teacher when I got saved. She was a preacher's wife when she got saved. Because the reality is in America, it's easy to be a Christian when you disregard the Word of God. You see, a grace that is powerful enough to save is powerful enough to teach, to train, and change you concerning sin. But again, I just want to just remind us: when, not if you sin, run to your gracious, merciful, and lavishly loving God. He knows. He sees. He cares. Remember, Jesus was tempted in every way. He knows why we make the mistakes we make. He knows why we sin the way that we sin. Sin is. Fun for a season. And what he'll do is lovingly give you more grace. But there's more. Not only does he teach us where to say no by his grace, he teaches and trains us on where to say yes to the godly things of our loyally loving heavenly dad. And then he says, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age.

21:31The word self-controlled is used throughout this chapter. It literally means to be serious and personally disciplined in your emotions, your desires, your attitudes, your habits in all of life. Well, that's hard in sports. It's really easy when the Aggies are winning. It's hard when they're playing bad. We can act a fool about the dumbest stuff in the world. You let that store clerk not be fast as we think they ought to be, and sometimes we justify that we get to act a fool. And we don't. We don't. So it says here, whatever you're struggling with to control, you need to go to God and ask for more grace. Listen, you have a relationship with Him. He has settled His love for you. He loves you more than you can ever imagine. Listen to me, y'all. If He had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it.

22:28That's how much He loves you. That's His. Special you are to him. That's how much we need to get. That it's only by the grace of God that any of us ever get anything right. And then, his sovereign plan, he has called you and me, and he has saved us, and then ultimately he helps us live. I mean, I just think about the time we lose control emotionally. I think that about the time that our habits get the better of us or the attitudes, what we've got to do is just take a step back and acknowledge them in sin, not thinking that we're ever going to lose the love of God. Listen, you didn't earn or deserve his love in the first place, so you can't mess it up. Isn't that good news? But I'm afraid that happens sometimes in repentance. We think that that's a bad thing. No, listen, run back to the one who loves you perfectly. You got off track for a little while. Don't live in denial, and certainly don't live in condemnation because there ain't no more of that. Jesus bore all your sin, past, present, and future, on the cross when he died on the cross for your sin. That is great news of a gracious and a merciful God. So, so literally, when you see yourself losing control, go back to the one who'll give you the grace so that you can walk under that control. Now, I'll tell you, then we need to go make it right with the people that we lost control of in front of. And man, especially if they're lost, don't be afraid if they just freak out, make them feel real uncomfortable. Man, you just go, man, man, I'm sorry I shouldn't have lost my temper with you.

23:58What? Man, I'm at. At you all the time. Why do you apologize? Yeah, I don't know. It's not okay for me. In fact, I remember the last cuss word I said. I was coaching at the time, and a kid on the field threw a rock and hit me right upside the head. Under my breath, I said a cuss word. I used to be vulgar before I got Jesus walking up there. So here I am embarrassed because I'm walking right beside the cussing coach. So he and I are walking up to the field house, and I'm just thinking, oh, I got to apologize. I don't want to apologize. I'm so mad that I lost control. I went up there and I got there. Hey, Chuck, I'm sorry that you had to hear that. He goes, man, why do you apologize with me? He said, I cuss all the time. I said, I don't. I said, God set me free from that for a long time ago, and I just hate you're the one who had to hear that. But would you forgive me for that? He said, why would I worry about what he thinks? Because his soul is way more important than my pride.

25:01And God gave me the grace. And can I tell you that our relationship the rest of the time was great? I mean, we already had a great relationship, but like it rocked his world. Now, he never got saved. I wish I could tell you that it always ended up in salvation for someone, but remember, that's in the hands of the Lord. I just have a responsibility to be a faithful witness and leave the results to God. But just know that when you blow it, there's always a way back because of the grace of God. So quit living in condemnation. Quit the Negative self-talk. Quit beating yourself up. Quit letting other people beat you up. Listen, if you got Jesus, you got it going on. All right? You have much to celebrate, much to be fired up about. And I love that here. But then that's not all that the grace does. And it helps you to live upright. That means to be right and honest with others and godly lives. That means to live like Jesus in a wicked world. In this present age, now, today, your life and mind can look like Jesus. And it needs to be because sometimes we're the only Jesus anyone's ever going to see. We're the only Bible that anybody's ever going to read. And so the opportunity for us to be who we say we are is only because of the grace of God. Only because of God's empowering, helpful grace that He gave us that saves us and teaches us and changes us. Too many of us are waiting to be holy for when we die. Let's start today by the grace of God. You see, we are in this world, but we're not of this world. We are to be distinct. We are to be different. We are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, Jesus calls us. Because right gospel doctrine leads to right living.

26:48I hope you're beginning to see why we should be more attractive to the world. We don't live in the condemnation. We don't live in addictions. We don't live for other things. We have a God who loves us. Us, a God who is for us, so it doesn't matter the opposition we face. Y'all, we really do have it going on, and I think too often we walk around like we're unhappy. And then he says this, and this is the attitude that we need to be considering in this age. I mean, y'all, I'm 60 years old, I have never seen the world go so crazy so fast. There are things I hear on the news, or I see posted online, or I heard said in my class. And I just, I mean, I just look at them and I just go, like in my class, I say, where in the world did you get that?

27:41Well, I heard it on the news. Oh, so you believe everything that you hear on the news? Yes. I said, that's your first mistake. And we just had to address truth. I mean, what are they going to do? Fire me? So I talk about Jesus weekly, if not daily. And when they asked a question, it was on like a chicken bone. I mean, I could talk about anything that I wanted to. It was just beautiful in that context. But here's the reason then why? Because this world's not my home. This ain't all I got. I put all my eggs in the Jesus basket. If I can't make it with him, I ain't going nowhere else. He says, waiting for, that means to be eagerly expecting our blessed hope that's Jesus' soon return. Yeah, any second, any day, he's going to come.

28:31But he may not come for 200 years. And so, his plan is to use you and me as his church to reach a lost and dying world with the good news of Jesus Christ. Because you'll reach people I'll never reach, I'll reach people you'll never reach. And so, I'm being given the opportunity to go back. Now, praise the Lord, I'll get to be a part of the church the rest of my life, but I'll also get a part to go and be on mission in the United States of America, go back and leverage sports for kingdom reasons. Now, here's the hardest thing about that: I don't get a salary, and so I got to raise my own support. And so, that's part of the process. Can I tell you, from a guy that's been a pastor for over 27 years, it's the best thing that's happened to Michelle and me in a long, long time. You got to walk by faith, you got to trust God to provide. And because here's the deal: He got enough money, the problem is it's in people's pockets instead of olds.

29:28Okay, he got enough money, and so what this is making Michelle and me do is we're having to pray about things we ain't prayed about in years. Like the other day, our air conditioner went out. We ain't got no money. I ain't begging. Make sure you understand that. God has got us. We're going to be taking care of it. We're saying, Oh, Lord, please, we cannot afford the air conditioner to be out, especially in Texas in the summer. Well, when you buy a new house, they give you one of those little warranty things the seller does. Hallelujah. $85. That's all it costs to fix. Y'all, we got to have a church moment. Right there with our God that fixed our air conditioning. I said, man, we prayed that this would happen. I'm so glad you came. But, I mean, again, so when you walk by faith, and so we wait for this blessed hope, y'all, this ain't all there is.

30:16And I think sometimes we act like this is all there is. We have the same goals, the same passions, the same dreams, the same priorities. And so the world doesn't see the distinction of the difference. We are living for another world, for another home. It says the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. You know, we just need to be ready, y'all. That seems to be the predominant teaching in the New Testament. Be ready, be ready, be ready, be ready.

30:43It reminds me of Christmas morning. Grew up in a lost home. Not proud of this, but the reality of it is that my most exciting day every year was Christmas morning. There was nothing in our life that we looked forward to we were more excited about than Christmas morning. We left out the cookies, we left out the milk, I mean, all of that stuff, man. I mean, like, I was so eager, like, I couldn't go to sleep. And then, like, they woke us up. Like, my parents would wake me up for school. I mean, like, I was moaning and groaning, but not Christmas morning. Not Christmas morning. So fired up. That's the way we ought to wake up and live every day about Jesus' return. And it may happen today. It may happen today. And what does that mean? That means I want to be ready.

31:31And so that's going to burden me for my grandfather who doesn't know Jesus. That's going to burden me for my roommate who doesn't know Jesus. That's going to burden me for my government officials who don't know Jesus. And I pray because the Bible tells me to pray for them. And so this soon returns, yes, it's exciting, but also it creates a sense of urgency within us. Grace creates a sense of urgency for those who've not experienced His grace.

31:57We don't live condemning them. We don't live hating them. Man, we live understanding that apart from the grace of God, we wouldn't get it right either. So, man, I beg you to consider how eager you are for Jesus' soon return and how that is motivating you to live differently, maybe, than you have been. I want you to consider the reality that no self-righteous religion saves anybody. And so, it shouldn't be shocking when people think that they're the reason for their salvation. You see, right doctrine leads to right living. That's what Paul wants Titus to understand.

32:43And so, he closes with some things that we always must remember about Jesus, who gave himself for us. He was a selfless, sinless sacrifice. He bore our sin and our wrath. And his righteousness was put into our account. He gave himself for us to redeem us, to set us free by payment of a ransom. Jesus' shed blood was the price paid for our salvation, to set us free from sin's eternal penalty and tyrannical power today. It says there redeems us from all unlawlessness, all lawlessness or unrighteousness, to purify or sanctify for himself a people for his own possession. Y'all, we belong to God.

33:38Like when you own something and someone's trying to take it, you just say, no, that's mine. That's mine. Y'all, that's what God says about you and me. No, no, no, no. She's mine. No, no, no. He's mine. No, no, no, no, no. That's mine. And so sometimes you may not feel like you're his. Run back to Jesus. Remember his lavish, gracious, gracious, undeserved love. Remember that he gives you the power to think straight, he gives you the power to understand things because he didn't close with this, who are zealous for good works.

34:16You don't just go along to get along. You don't just live life just to not cause any waves or not cause any ripples. You are zealous to live a life that looks like Jesus. How? By the grace of God. You can't do that in your own flesh. You can't do that in your own strength. And so he closes with declare or preach these things: exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard or despise you. You see, Paul challenges Titus to confidently live and teach from the overflow of what he has experienced, learned, and seen in the powerful grace of God in his life. You see, no matter how much rejection you face, no matter how much resistance you face, no matter how many trials you're going through, you know that in the hands of God, they're preparing you for eternity. They're preparing you for what you're going to face in the days to come. You see, Paul shares very clearly in this passage with Titus that the sound doctrine of our faith is that the gospel that saves us also trains and teaches us where to say no to sin and yes to godliness today. Today, you can look more like Jesus tonight. And that may mean that God's going to have you go apologize to someone. That may mean that God's going to go to you and say to your kids, or to say to your spouse, or to say to your parents, I should have never talked to you in that way.

35:57If the Creator God of the universe loves you, Already, and that's settled. If it's going to take them a little bit of time to get used to that, that's okay. Because what you're modeling before them is that Jesus is enough. He's enough. And so I trust Him. And so that's what I hope to get to do with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. What I've done is on the foyer, on this back wall right here, on each end, I've put some flyers and I've put my business cards that just allow you to contact me and find out more information about me. Some of you may be burdened to help, and I would appreciate that. We don't, you know, we're just, we're right now, that's our focus: raising enough money so that we can do ministry in those three counties. Anderson County, Henderson County, and Vanzant County is going to be my territory. But at the end of the day, what I want to do is take this beautiful gospel to some people who maybe have never heard it before, but if they've heard it, they've never applied it to their lives so that there would be hope in the midst of their hopelessness. And since 1954, FCA has been doing this. It started with professional athletes. And many of the famous people that you know today got saved through an FCA ministry and then got connected to the local church. Okay, because why? Because the missionaries are going to where they are and then getting them plugged into the local church. All right? So, have you experienced this grace? I'm going to close in prayer because tonight could be the night of you passing from religion to a personal faith relationship with the Creator God of the universe, and there's no shame in that. There's no shame in that. But it would be a shame if you're under conviction right now and you don't turn to him in repentant faith. Listen, at the end of the day, we're going to answer to him at judgment, not anybody in this room. Would you pray with me?

37:43Father, you're good to us. And what this night represents in my life is more beautiful than I could have ever dreamed. It is your church that you're building that the gates of hell will not prevail against. It's not our churches, it's yours. And so, my prayer is for blessings over Emmanuel. God, that you would shine brightly as you already are through this body of believers and through the leadership of this church. And God, that the gospel would be so front and center as we fix our eyes upon you, Lord Jesus, because you are the author and perfecter of our faith, that we would be set free from having to always only do evangelism whenever personal evangelism is always, always better. Help us, God, I pray, to be the people that say no to sin and yes to godliness, because you have empowered us through your grace, through your love, to live differently for your kingdom and glory. God, bless these people and those. Who are watching online, I pray. In Jesus' name, amen.