In um 1944, a young man named Richard Wormbbrand was arrested in Romania for preaching the gospel under a communist regime. For 14 years he was imprisoned. Three of those 14 years was in solitary confinement with no light and no sound. He was tortured. He was starved. But when he was finally released, the words that he said really astounded anyone who heard it. These were his words. He said, "Alone in a cell, cold and hungry, I danced for joy. Christ was so present to me I almost forgot I was in prison. No brand later founded Voice of the Martyrs testifying that thriving in exile isn't about escaping hardship. It's about discovering God in the middle of it. You know, just like Jeremiah, whose book we are in this morning as we are journeying through the Bible and uh entering u the major prophets, we're reading today in what he is testifying that you can still thrive while you are in exile. a letter of encouragement that God is speaking to him to help people discover God when they are going through a troubled time in their lives. The question when we go through waiting times or hard times is not where you are but who you are becoming while you are waiting. So I hope as we journey through this text today that you will be encouraged by the words and be able to experience hope in waiting times, in trouble times, in trying times, whether you're going through it right now or whenever it hits us. So I've titled my sermon this morning is thriving while waiting hope during hard times. Waiting times sometimes feel like wasting time, isn't it? But if we read how God has worked in redemptive history where we get a sneak peek of God's timeline and his work and the people who were going through it did not, it can reveal to us how God never wastes any moment of your life or my life. So in this passage that we are in and in this book that we are in after all their kings have failed successively the unthinkable finally happens to the people of Israel God's beloved people God's own people they are now in exile the Azerans came after them and then the Babylonian Empire came and swept them and have taken their best and their brightest into captivity leaving a very small remnant in Jerusalem and Judah and Jeremiah is still being used by God to prophesy to them. So as a nation when you are in exile and you are waiting for God's next move, it can look very uncertain. So here is a nation who is in exile, experiencing hard times. Jeremiah himself, if you read through his book, theologians call him as the weeping prophet because God is allowing him to personally experience pain and suffering and through that communicate how he feels to the people he is calling him to communicate. So the question that this book answers for us today is how does Jeremiah thrive as a prophet during these hard times? How can the exiles thrive during hard times while waiting? And how can you and I thrive during hard times while we are waiting? Now both the prophet and the people will have to wait for a long time till the hard times are gone. But it's not like God is passive and not at work. He is doing something beautiful in those things. And we get a clue of how we can go through those times by three things we are going to look at from this passage today. First, we can thrive by the word of God during hard times. We can thrive by engaging in the mission of God during hard times. And finally, and above all, we can thrive by the grace of God during hard times. Let's begin by looking at how we are called to thrive by the word of God. First of all, the prophet whom God is choosing, you know, his name is Jeremiah. And um his job is not easy. And Jeremiah gets a call to be a prophet. We read about that in the very first chapter of the book of Jeremiah. It sounds very similar to the call of Isaiah that we read the previous week. So if you have your Bibles, turn with me to Jeremiah 1:es 4-9. Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And before you were born, I consecrated you. I appointed you a prophet to the nations." Then I said, "Oh Lord God, behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth." But the Lord said to me, "Do not say I am only a youth. For to all to whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, declares the Lord." Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me, "Behold, I have put my words in your mouth. See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms to pluck up and break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant." This is the call and very similar to Isaiah. Now, Isaiah had a had a gift of speaking and he needed to be humbled. Whereas Jeremiah was terrified and meek and he needed to be encouraged. Isaiah needed the call to touch and and unleash God's call on him. And here God himself puts his his hand and touches the mouth of Jeremiah and says, I am putting my words in your mouth. And that is what carries Jeremiah throughout his ministry. In fact, it's one of the longest books of the Bible. And when we do our walk u fast reading of the Bible in the fall in 60 days, this is the book we call the wall where you hit the wall. like in Marathon, you hit the wall in mile 20 because it's so long, so hard, and and so emotionally disturbing when you read this book of all the things God asks Jeremiah to do and he does and sees no results all through his lifetime. He keeps doing this and is eventually um tradition says that he was exiled to Egypt. They were taking him captive there and was martyed in Egypt. He could never see the fruit of his labor come through. But what he continued to do was he remembered his call that God placed in his life. And he wrote, he preached, he wept for the people. And he remembered that the plants, the seeds he is planting were going to bear fruit. and it did bear fruit in the next generation. So I want to encourage you if you are in a waiting time, if you want to see someone you love, your friend or family member who are living away from God, you want them to experience God in their lives, whether you're mentoring them or pouring out to them, you need to only rely on speaking God's word into their life. That is all God calls you to do and expect God to do the work. You know, Monica was a Christian woman. She lived in the 4th century and she had a very rebellious but an extremely brilliant, intellectually proud but spiritually lost son. He rejected her faith. He chased pleasure, embraced heresies. He mocked Christianity. But his mother Monica never gave up on him. She prayed for him, pleaded with him. She followed him to different cities and wept and prayed for years. At one point, she asked a bishop to speak to her son. And the bishop refused, saying it would do no good. But he conferred Monica with these famous words. It is not possible that the son of so many tears should perish. Years passed, nothing seemed to change. Then one day when her rebellious son was 31 years old, God broke through. He heard a child say, "Take and read." And he opened the Bible and he read Romans 13:3-14. and he was convicted by the Holy Spirit and he became one of the greatest theologians in church history. His name was St. Augustine and he writes this in his biography in his book called Confessions. It's a fantastic book that I encourage you all to read. But Monica never got to see the full impact of her prayers. She died shortly after his embracing Christ. But it was her faithful parenting and pouring of God's word and tearful intercession gave the church one of its greatest gifts. Like Jeremiah, she didn't live to see all the fruit, but she served faithfully and sold faithfully. So my dear friends, God sees every tear, every prayer, every effort you think is in vain. The fruit may come later, but it will come as long as you keep pouring in God's word and praying fervently for them. You know, in his book on confessions, Augustine writes later on, reflecting on it, she wept for me more than mothers weep for the bodily death of their children. And he quotes her mother's words in uh book nine and chapter 10 where he remembers she telling him son for myself I have no further delight in anything in this life. What I do now is not to achieve anything of my own but to remain a little longer until I see you a Christian before I die. And God granted her that wish at the end. So keep doing, keep believing, and keep speaking God's word. And in verse one, it says, "These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon." You know, if you read the chapter before this, what has just happened was Jeremiah has disputed the prophecy of another prophet. This other prophet named Haniah is declaring to the people in exile that they are going to experience freedom within two years. That their life was going to radically change within two years. and God is going to bring them back into Jerusalem. So he was telling them, "Do not go into the city. Stay where you are and God is going to bless you." But Jeremiah, God asks him to wear a wooden yoke around his neck to tell the people that they are going to be under the yoke of Babylon cuz he's trying to accomplish something in their life. And God knows it's going to take 70 years for that change to happen. Though people want it to be done fast in two years and they are gravitating to this voice of this prophet who is proclaiming falsely that's going to happen. And this prophet Haniah comes to Jeremiah literally breaks this wooden yoke and tells the people this is what's going to happen. And God eventually proclaims his judgment on this false prophet. And he says,"I going to put the iron yoke around you to remind you and the nation of Israel that they are going to live in captivity in Babylon." You know, Jeremiah was not the most popular preacher. He had a contrasting message to all other voices and prophets, especially prophet Haniah. You know a prophet's role is basically to declare the word of God and the will of God and the Judah was a rebellious nation and and it still is the same today. You know we live in a place which is a very godless place and there are always other voices that keep promising to us prosperity through a pursuit of pleasure or power or money. It happens. These voices come from outside through our culture as well as inside the church. These false prophets ex exist both out in the corporate world and within the church. And discerning God's voice amidst the scacophony of voices tends to be difficult, isn't it? Because we tend to believe subliminally that God's purpose for our lives is to keep us happy. You know, God's purpose for our lives is not to keep us happy. God's purpose for your life and my life is for you and me to be his people, to belong to him, to experience his love and his grace and his mercy and his power. But there are all the other voices out there that sound very authentic. In fact, they even sound very noble. Haniah, where he was pitching for this, he was saying, "Oh, look, the temple, all these vessels in the temple have been taken away by the Babylonians. God wants to bring those back into his temple." And he's going to do it in two years. when you turn on your televisions or internet, you can always find a tele evangelist, you know, whether these uh in the United States or or in anywhere in Asia or India promising you the same thing. Oh, your tears are going to turn into joy. Oh, in two days, God is going to restore all the fortunes that you have lost. There are people who made millions of dollars by proclaiming these truths and gullible people fall for it because these are not prophets whom God has sent into this world. And that's why God communicates the prophetic voice of God today flows through the pulpit through his through his children who proclaim his word who don't have to wait to hear God's word in a mysterious manner is just written to us and it's our job to faithfully expound on it. But God's plan was not to bring them in two years. He had told this plan all the way back to Abraham in the book of Genesis and to Moses that he knew as much as he is pursuing his children and he wants them to be his people, they're going to keep running away and away and away from him that eventually he would have to send them into exile and it's going to take them 70 years or at least one to two generations to feel the pain and the need so they can come back to his word. Because God is not in a hurry. We tend to carried away easily by our heart's desires and the lures of this world. But his goal has never changed in redemptive history. Look at your life. If you map your life, the highs and lows, God allows them for only one reason. That we may become his people. that we will be his children and that he will be our God. That's the central covenantal theme that flows through the whole Bible. That's the heart of God. It's the heart of a father waiting for his prodigal son to come back to him. And sometimes he will take away things in our life that we tend to put our faith upon that we tend to draw our sense of identity or joy or pleasure from so that we will know that we need to run back to our heavenly father. And your job and my job is to be able to discern these voices using God's word. It's not even just about reading your Bible every day. We are in a constant battle for our minds by ideas that are floating out there whenever we step out in this world that are promising these things. And we need to be able to discern well is this really true? what these voices are promising or is what God's word says is the truth. And you need to ask yourselves, what lies have I believed in my heart from these voices? And the Bible talks about making every thought captive to the thought of Christ, which is intentional hard work. Because by default when we go through pain, when we go through suffering, when we have to wait, none of us want that, isn't it? We want the pain and the discomfort and the uncertainty to go away as soon as possible so we can move on to the next thing. But God is always doing something deeper in our hearts which we may not be able to see at that very moment. But he's a gracious God. And look what he does in verse two. This was after King Jacconiah and the queen mother, the Unix, the officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsman and the metal workers had deported from Jerusalem. Now, Nebuchadnezzar, who was the greatest king at that time of Babylon, he had a brilliant strategy on how to deal with the people of God. So, he thought the best way he can deal with them was two two things. He wanted to eliminate them as a nation and he wanted if that doesn't work to assimilate them. Was a two-pronged strategic attack. So he was trying to take away the best of the people from the nation into a foreign land into an exile so that he thought those who were left behind were only old people and formers and that a nation could completely be destroyed. And the second idea he had was when he takes all these best and brightest into Babylon that he can assimilate them by helping them to get rid of everything they believed and to help them to believe in this new God. Well, Nebuchadnezzar didn't realize how God was bigger than him. that he was neither going to let his people be eliminated, but he encourages them and he tells them, "I want you to thrive in this place. I want you to grow. I want you to build homes and families and marry and have children so you will grow and be my people." And his plans of assimilating them backfired big time. And we know that when we read the story of Daniel and his friends Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, he even tries to give them a different name, Belshasar, which means a son of the god B and thinks that will change their identity. But God preserved his best to thrive in a hostile environment and used them in an extraordinary way to confront the greatest king and to humble him and bring him down. Because these bright men who were taken into exile when they were very young were taught the word of God which they held firmly on even when they were in this foreign land. So this is another encouragement for those of you who are parents to teach your children God's word especially if they are going to public schools in this country. Public schools are propaganda machines. That is where these ideas, these other voices are shown that question the very foundational faith and beliefs that you and I hold. At a very young age, they are told to question our identity, of our gender, of our of marriage, of everything you and I believe are truths, unalterable truths from the word of God. They're just propaganda machines. And therefore it becomes the task of every parent to homeschool your child whether they go to school or you're teaching them at home not just to read the Bible and memorize them or go for Bible quizzing competitions to win prizes but to help them to know God's word and to interpret God's world through God's word and that is a great calling you know the primary task of education ation is that the primary task of education is not to help our kids get great grades. It is to help our children to be able to integrate biology and math and physics and history and literature with God's word. Are you doing that? Do you think your schools are doing that? I can guarantee you they absolutely do not. But we have some wonderful resources out there that exist. Now that's how you childproof your children when they're going to live in a very hostile anti-Christian environment. You cannot put any number of external rules to prevent that. Not if they get straight A's and a 4.0 grade. There's nothing wrong in that. But if that is the metric you're measuring, you're missing out on something more bigger. you're missing out on measuring if they are learning to think rightly about thinking about themselves and the world and God's word. That is what you need to be measuring and that is what the purpose of education is and that is where we have the word of God to guide us to bring us back to it. In verse three, it says, "A letter was sent by the hand of Elsasa, Elasa, the son of Shepham, and Gamariah, the son of Hilkaya, whom Zedekiah, king of Judah, sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon." Who are these guys? These names sound so random, but every name is put there for a reason. Even when the entire nation was hostile to the prophet Jeremiah, these were the guys who saved his life, who rooted for him. You can read about them in Jer in the later part of this chapter in Jeremiah 28 and in Jeremiah 16. Those names come about. They were his friends whom God used to take God's word from Jeremiah to the exiles so that they can hear the word of God to help them discern these voices. You know, when you're down or feel abandoned or defeated, we need to always seek to hear the voice of God because God is always speaking. God always speaks. He comes through. He sends Jeremiah as a prophet to the nation. But today for you and I, we can get his word. It's readily available in our hands. But more than that, he also sent wonderful friends of Jeremiah who were also friends of the people in exile. Truth is not something that can purely be discovered individualistically by myself. We live in a very individualistic extreme autonomous culture. where it it promotes and exalts the self-made man or woman. You do not need anyone or anybody or anything to live by yourself. And that is one of the greatest lies even for us to enter into a relationship with God. We need friends who can come to us when we are down, when we are weak, when we are fragile. Fellowship and community, church, and hearing God's word preached and taught. There's something powerful about that. And being in a small group or being discipled by someone when you are in a crisis, you need to remember that's your exile moment. God is going to God has sent you into exile and you need to accept the exile moment. Don't try to fast forward it. You can't. God will take his time to do what he wants to do because he says, "I have sent you into exile." While it wasn't an accident that happened to the nation of Israel, God intentionally sent them into exile because there has a repetitive behavior of his people. And it's the same thing from the time they were called as a nation. They keep going away from him and he sends other forces, other nations to bring them back. And it's the same thing for your heart and my heart. the tendency to drift away from him to walk away from him to repeatedly go after the things we have mispakenly put our faith on. He may send not a Babylonian king or a nation, but he could send you a difficult boss. He could send you a toxic colleague in your workplace. He could send a crisis, a family crisis, a health issue, not to punish us, but for us to reflect so we can run back to our father. And that happens when we have his word through which we can discern these different voices through the friends and the community that God has given us to help us to get back to him. we can thrive even while in exile because today we don't have to wait for a letter to come from a prophet in a far country. Today we have the very word of God that we can go to to help us in those times and you and I can thrive in our waiting by the word of God. Secondly, we're going to turn on to how God is encouraging them by saying that they can thrive by engaging in the mission of God. What do you do when you wait? You know he says in verse five onwards, "Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there and do not decrees. But seek the welfare of the city where I sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf. For in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, "Do not let your prophets and your deveners among you, who are among you, deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie they are prophesying to you in my name. I did not send them, declares the Lord." He gives them basically two messages. says, "I want you to thrive by engaging in a mission that I'm giving you, and I want you to not listen to these other voices." You know, when a crisis hits us, you know, exile is a very painful thing where you're uprooted from a place where you grew. Most of us are immigrants in a new country. We we did it by our own choice. We came here out of our own valition. But it is not the case when you are taken uh forcibly against your desire into another country and everything. You're surrounded by people who don't look like you. You're surrounded by people who are wanting to exploit you and destroy you and and and suppress you. So when we go through a crisis, we're always looking for a shortcut, a quick ending of pain and discomfort. And that's the reason we gravitate towards these voices. But God's word come to us to say, "Hey, I want you to thrive." How do you thrive when you're waiting when you don't know what's next? What do I do? You know, thriving in such situations in life happens when we do God's work wherever he has placed us in God's way, accomplishing God's purposes for those around us. I repeat thriving in life happens in those situation when we do God's work wherever he has placed us in God's way accomplishing God's purposes for those around us. You know when you move as immigrants to a new city there are two dynamics at play. One is you feel that a group of people you want to isolate and be in a bubble and you want to use the city and not really give back anything to it. That's usually an immigrant mentality. And that's what these people had. You know, let me just use the wealth the city gives. Let me use the job it gives and I'll send this money back home to my people and I'll take care of myself. it it serves my own individualistic purposes. Or the other thing that happens is where the city wants to exploit you and suck the last ounce of your blood by throwing some money at you and really gets lets you do nothing fruitful in life. So either you want to thrive personally and individually or be consumed. But God has a third way. He tells them, "Hey, you can live on mission." And being on mission is I want you to think about serving the city. Pursue a career that fits you. Use your God-given gifts and talents and work hard and make a living. It says, "Now build houses and live in them. plant gardens and eat their produce. Just provide for your family. There's nothing wrong with it. Thrive as a family, but I want you to raise a godly home that can be a witness around them. You know, most homes in big cities tend to be broken homes. Homes where there is so much disharmony inside. And he wants them to multiply and not decrease. But he says,"I want you to thrive not just by yourself as an individual unit, but thrive by being engaged in seeking the welfare of the city. Don't just stop with doing what you want for yourself." It says, "For in its welfare, in its shalom or in its holiness, you will find welfare." You know, we dealt with this exhaustively. Um, you know, Tim walked us through this in our last retreat. It talks about having a heart for the people who live around you. And how do we develop this heart? You know, the first thing for us to do is to drive around your city and see where is the brokenness in your city. You know, we probably live in a place where we don't see physical brokenness. There are not like slums or homeless shelters a lot as it can see in other parts of this country or even other parts of the world. But there can be brokenness in the systems that form the heart of the city. And it took me a long time to realize that, you know, it's only as we were living in the city where we are in now and we were trying to um help one of our friends daughters, we found how broken the school system is. And it's only as I started uh volunteering um in the New York Little League, I began to get to know other parents and their children and and realize the same thing. The school systems are broken. There's so many families that are broken. and and and really genuinely I had I began to have a special love for all the boys in my team. I didn't care whether they were playing great or small or not so great, but I knew each one of their stories and it really moved me to love on them. And God is calling us. Don't just be thinking about your own bubble and how you can make your life great again in America. Think about the welfare of your city. You know, he has blessed you with incredible gifts and money and education that more than 90% of people who live around where you are, I can guarantee you, do not have. So, start somewhere to care for it. You know, early on when we were starting our church, not knowing where to begin, I I went and signed up to be a volunteer in our city library. And through that I befriended a old gentleman from Iran who used to be the photographer of a sha and he would tell me later on. And we you know was helping with him with some basic um computer skills and eventually through that relationship after 6 months when a crisis hit him I was able to share the love of Christ and and he was able to feel the love uh of a community of Christians. and his wife and him. They came to our church, if you all remember, I think was our third or fourth anniversary with a special gift and and shared a witness. It began with just signing up for one volunteering and just befriending and being there. It's not as hard. I know work is difficult. You know, you all work probably 80, 90 hours a week. How about giving just 1% of that time for your city, however you are. Because it says in in in its welfare you will find welfare. And and and it says the next thing he says is don't listen to these other voices. And lastly says you can thrive while you're waiting by being and remembering the grace of God. Verse 10 it says for thus says the Lord when 70 years are completed for Babylon I will visit you and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place and this is the verse the most famous verse that many of us have perhaps in our homes as a promise from God and it is says for I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord plans for welfare and not for evil to give you a future and a hope then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be founded. I will be found by you, declares the Lord. And I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord. And I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile. In verse 11, it says, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." Do you believe that, my dear friends? God's plans, he's not just specifically talking about bringing the people back to a particular geographic location. He's talking about bringing them back to him. That is God's plan. Not just for them, but for you and me. Always. He wants to always bring us back to him to give us a future. And it's not a just a worldly future. He's not just telling you he wants to give you a future to help you buy a nice new car or a home or other gifts. He gives that to everybody. He's a gracious God. But he gives you a future that you can share with him forever in eternity for eternal life in the new heavens in the new earth. His goal is primarily relationship and not things. And if you ask the question what God really wants, he answers that in verse 12. says, "Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you." That's the heart of our heavenly father for us to go back to him, talk to him and to remember we will be heard by him. What a blessing when someone hears you when you go through a crisis, isn't it? He says, "Seek him with all your heart." This love should draw us to seek him with all our heart. And he promises even more. He says we will find him. He says he will restore our fortunes. You know pain is temporary. He will redeem all things in his way and in his time when we are back to him and it happened exactly like he said. They came back to the physical place. Yes. But their heart was still far from him because no amount of earthly kings could restore their hearts to him. No amount of earthly prophets proclaiming God's word was powerful enough to draw their hearts to him to bring that change of heart by bringing God's word to them. He had to eventually show them that they needed not just a greater king. They needed a greater prophet than Jeremiah who was also set apart in his womb born through Virgin Mary. But he was he didn't just bring God's word to them. He was the incarnate word of God. Jesus Christ. That's how John's gospel introduces us to him. In the beginning was the word. The word was with God and the word was God. And this word came into this world because what the prophets could not accomplish by merely proclaiming Christ the incarnate word accomplished through his life, death and resurrection. For that he was first of all exiled from his father's presence so that we will not be exiled every time we fail. He took God's justice on the cross for you and I so we do not live in permanent exile. He rose again and his spirit now lives in you and me. And his spirit now changes hearts. We're going to see that next week. His spirit is now able to return our hearts and to help us to go back to him and that is purely by the grace of God and he wants us to see that. So my dear friends if you are in a waiting time or a painful time are you grumbling or are you thriving? Are you running to him? Are you running away from him? The longer the farther you run away from him, the longer is going to be your exile because God cares about you coming back running into the father's arm. Many times, most of us tend to be like the prodigal son, isn't it? Till we head hit the end of the road, till the last ounce of what we have put our faith in exists, we we try to run away. And it's only when everything is exhausted we remember the father's love. And guess what? He is waiting. He's waiting for you to come back to him. Sometimes waiting time seems like a hard time. You know in Asia there's a species of bamboo, some of you may know this that after it is planted, it shows absolutely no visible sign of growth for 5 years. Nothing. So for five long years the farmers water it they see no evidence of anything sprouting from the surface. But in the fifth year within six weeks guess how high the sprouts shoot up. Something that didn't grow for 5 years suddenly in 6 weeks shoot up over 80 ft. What was happening? You think the whole time it was growing roots deep, wide, strong enough to support this towering tremendous growth spirit. But had it tried to grow before it was ready, it would have collapsed under its own weight. And this is God's word to the exiles, my friends, to the discouraged, to those in long seasons of waiting. You think you're stuck, but God is strengthening your root system, your character, your faith, your relationships, your hope. You want God to grow you up quickly, get you out quickly, but God wants to grow you deep first. So don't despise despise the delay. Embrace it. Don't flee from exile. Engage with it. Engage with God during your exile through his word and let others help you engage with it. Don't quit before the promise arrives. Keep engaging the world around you and in due time you will see the fruit of what God has been doing all along. And when that bamboo shoots up, it's not just beautiful, it's unshakable, isn't it? So my dear friends as we close I want to encourage you if you are pursuing or discipling your children or mentoring someone in your family or friends or praying over them even when the results seem slow trust God and keep doing what you do. And for those of you especially our young adults and students in college, think of what cultural messages have you bought into you believed that contradicts God's word. You try to discern the word and extract a truth from God's word and apply to it. And for us as a whole church and as a family or as a small group, why don't you prayerfully consider this summer of one tangible way to bless your city, your neighborhood? Maybe you can pick one service project together. You know, we're going to stop doing um small groups for a month in July. That's a great opportunity as small groups to get out into your community and serve in tangible ways. Pray. You can do a prayer walk in your city and see your city through God's eyes. And however God moves you, you can do this.