How to Handle Failure - Life of Christ Part 96

Among all the baseball hype that's going on, certainly the greatest human interest story of all this year is the comeback attempt of a guy named Dwight Gooden. If you've been reading about him in the paper, Dwight Gooden, probably one of the most dominant pitchers to come into Major League Baseball in the last 15 years. He was the Rookie of the Year. He led the Mets to the 1984 World Series Championship.

He was a Cy Young Award winner in 1985. But all the time, Dwight Gooden's life was spiraling down into a life of cocaine abuse and alcohol abuse. And finally, his life was so out of control and he had resisted every attempt to fix him that he was suspended from all contact with baseball about a year ago, a little over a year ago. And it looked like Dwight Gooden was finished. He'd gone from the once dominant athlete now to a depressed cripple.

Here's what he said about himself in an article in the paper this week. And I quote, he said, There were days I would lie in bed too whacked out to even answer the phone. My heart would keep racing. I was too wired to sleep.

I couldn't stop sweating. I was so messed up. I could not even get out of bed to play with my children. I hit rock bottom. I felt like a complete failure.

I can relate to Dwight Gooden. I mean, I've been there where I failed so badly that all I wanted to do is go find a hole, get in it, put dirt over top of me and have the whole rest of the world go away. I can relate to the shame and the feelings of humiliation and inadequacy and guilt and worthlessness that this man was dealing with.

And I don't know. I'll bet some of you can relate to that, too, you know, because as I look at this life, seems to me failure kind of is just part and parcel of what it means to be human. I mean, we might as well get used to failing because we do a lot of it. And so that leads me to talk this morning to you about failure. I wouldn't be surprised if there were many of us sitting here this morning who, after we got up, we put on our nice clothes, we pasted on our nice face to come to church. But if you take all that away, I'll bet you there's some of us sitting here this morning who feel like failures, failures in our job, failures in relationships, failures in our families, wherever. Now, how are we going to handle that, folks?

I have a bias. My bias is that failure never destroys anybody's life. It's the failure to properly process failure that destroys people's lives. You understand what I'm saying to you? Failure won't destroy your life.

But if you and I don't process it right, it sure will. And so I want to talk to you about the way God has given us as Christians to process failure so that instead of becoming destructive, it actually can become constructive in our life. And we want to look at an example of a guy named Peter. Peter probably had one of the most famous failures in all the world. We want to look at that and then talk about some principles that allowed Peter to come back. Peter's life didn't go to destruction after he failed. He ended up being the leader of the church and writing part of the Bible.

But what did he do that converted that failure into something constructive? We're going to talk about that. So let's look. We're here in Matthew 26, beginning at verse 69. Now, remember, Jesus has been arrested. He's been taken to meet with the high priest Caiaphas and with the Jewish Sanhedrin. And Peter, we know from the story, has tagged along behind and sneaked into the little courtyard just outside where their trial is going on.

So here's where we pick up the story. Verse 69. And now Peter was sitting out in the courtyard and a servant girl came up to him and said, hey, you were with Jesus of Galilee, weren't you? He denied it before all of them sitting there and said, I don't know what you're talking about. God, get away from me. And then he went out to the gateway where another girl saw him and said to the people around him, hey, this fellow was with Jesus of Nazareth.

I remember seeing him hanging around with Jesus and he denied it again with an oath and said, I don't know the man. You understand that? I don't know him. Get out of my face. And after a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, no, wait a minute, surely you are one of them because your accent gives you away. Let's play a little game here, OK? I'm going to say something. You tell me where I'm from. Ready? Here we go.

Love them cowboys. Where am I from? Yeah.

How about this? New Jersey. Where am I from? Well, if you live up there, you'd probably say Brooklyn, but no, I'm actually from New Jersey. How about if I say to you, hey, Mon, where am I from?

Jamaica. Sure. So I don't know how Peter said I don't know the guy, but however he said it, he said it in such a way that people who understood said, aha, he's from Galilee. Yep, this guy was there. And so in response, Peter said, verse seventy four, he began to call down curses on himself and he began swearing at them and saying, I don't know the man. Get it through your thick skulls.

I don't know it. And immediately a rooster crowed. And it's Luke, chapter twenty two says, and Jesus turned and looked at Peter, looked right at him because Jesus was only a few yards away, right inside the door being tried. And then Peter remembered the word that Jesus had spoken and he'd only spoken it to Peter a couple of hours before. He said to Peter, Peter, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times. And Peter went outside and he wept bitterly. Why do you think Peter went outside and wept bitterly?

You ever think about that? Well, I don't know about you, but I think it's because he felt like a total failure. I mean, wasn't he the guy who stood up and said, Jesus, if everybody else disowned you, not me, I'll die for you.

He just said that a couple of hours ago. And here he does exactly what Jesus told him he was going to do and disowns Christ three times. And he feels like he's failed Jesus. He's failed God. He's failed himself. He's failed everybody around him. I mean, how can you get a bigger failure than I am?

Peter thought. And he went out and he wept bitterly. You know what this tells me about failure? This tells me that failure hurts. This tells me that failure causes pain.

When we fail, it hurts. And, you know, there's an old church tradition, I can't verify, but it's an ancient tradition of the early church that said that for the rest of his life, every time Peter heard a rooster crow, he would begin to weep, remembering what happened to him that night. I can't confirm it. Never met Peter. Never asked him.

But tradition says every time he heard a rooster crow, Peter would begin to tear up, remembering his failure of that night. Now, that's the end of the passage, but it leads us to ask a really important question. What's our question? So what?

Right. Lon, I don't own a rooster. They don't crow in Washington. You know what I'm saying? I've never denied the Lord. So, so what?

Now, this doesn't have anything to do with roosters. You understand? This has to do with failure. And every one of us here has failed.

If you haven't, you should come up here and continue the rest of this sermon. Because I have failed and so have you. Now, the question is, how do we handle failure so failure doesn't destroy our lives? Well, that's what I want to talk to you about, how to handle failure God's way. Now, when we talk about failure, there's really two levels of failure we need to talk about.

Level number one is what I like to call everyday failure. By this, I mean the failures we all struggle with on a daily basis. And they're different for all of us. Some of us, it's our temper. Some of us, we got foot and mouth disease.

You know what I'm saying? Some of us, it's like we look at women in ways we know we shouldn't look at women and we swear we're not going to do it today, but we do it. With some of us, it's impatience with our children. With some of us, it's pornography. With some of us, it's overspending.

You know, credit card challenged, you know, we are when we go to the mall. I don't know what yours is, but I'll tell you, for me, my number one everyday failure that I fight every day is controlling my appetite. I have food failure. I didn't realize it till recently, but I am calorie challenged.

That's what I've learned. Now, there was an article in the paper this week, I don't know if you saw it, about Mark Henry. Mark Henry is the world's super heavyweight powerlifting champion, and he is really a big hopeful for a gold medal in the Olympics in weightlifting for the United States. He weighs four hundred and five pounds. He's six foot three. He has a forty eight inch waist. He has a twenty two inch neck. He wears a size sixty four jacket. And his feet, you ready for this, are sixteen quadruple E. This boy is still growing. He ain't grown into those feet yet.

That's the way I look at it. He's so heavy, folks, that to weigh in, he can't go to the Dallas Cowboys locker room. He lives in Dallas. He can't go to the Dallas Cowboys locker room because their scale doesn't go over four hundred. He has to go to the airport and get on the freight scale.

This is true. Or occasionally, if he can't go there, the local meat market lets him come in and they weigh him down there along with all the carcasses of beef. Now, this guy, he eats over 5000 calories a day and they had a sample meal of his in the newspaper.

Here it is. A big bowl of gumbo, a 20 ounce T-bone, au gratin potatoes, several orders of onion rings, unlimited bread and iced tea, a huge bowl of ice cream and an enormous hunk of chocolate cake that's so rich the restaurant calls it chocolate sin. Now, when I read this menu in the paper, you know what I thought? Here's what I thought. I thought, what's so big about that dinner?

Sounds like a good dinner to me. Can you see my problem? I have a problem.

Listen, I have struggled with my weight my entire life. Sometimes I've won. Most of the time I've lost. For me, it's a fight to the finish every day. And I'll tell you something.

Public enemy number one in my life is the scale at my gym. I get off that thing feeling like a failure a whole lot more often than I get off that thing feeling like a success. Now, how are you going to handle this?

How do we deal with this, with these everyday failures? Well, people have different strategies. Some people just go around kicking themselves for several days after they do one of these. Some people run away from the situation. Other people put a mask on and hide their real feelings and they don't tell everybody the truth. They walk around and say things like, oh, well, I'm trying to put on a few pounds.

Right. Some people just get depressed, you know, and disconnect from everybody and everything. You know, people ask you what's wrong? Nothing. What's wrong? Nothing. What's wrong?

Nothing. How do we deal with this healthy, though? Well, you know what I've learned about these kinds of undisciplined, obsessive, dysfunctional behavior, things that we do that make us feel like such failures every day? You know what I've learned? I've learned that those things come from woundedness. There's a reason that drives those things. You know, you don't just fall in love with food.

You don't just fall in love with something. There's a reason that drives that behavior and its woundedness, its pain, its hurt, which instead of resolving the way God says we're supposed to resolve it, instead, what we try to do is we try to drown it out. We try to drown it out with food, drown it out with sex, drown it out with alcohol, drown it out with overworking, drown it out with drugs, drown it out with pornography or with power. And as a child, I learned the destructive habit of trying to eat my pain away. But that's not the right way to deal with it. God says the right way to deal with that pain that we feel is not to drink it away, eat it away, sex it away, but to resolve it away. And, folks, to do this, many times we need the help of a friend outside of us, a therapist, a counselor who's a Christian who understands how to do this. You know, I have a position on therapy and that is that therapy doesn't heal anybody. I don't think therapy heals anybody.

But therapy does have value. Good therapy helps us figure out what's broken and then it helps put us in touch with some godly steps to get it fixed. God is who heals people. But there are ways to tap into the healing of God.

There are ways to open up the healing of God that many times you and I are not practicing or we wouldn't be doing the destructive behavior we're doing. And a good Christian therapist can help us understand the principles that put us in touch with God's healing. Principles like forgiveness. Boy, that is a healing, powerful principle. Principles like faith.

Principles like trusting the power of the Spirit of God in your life every day instead of your own power. You know, these are important things and that's why we set up our counseling center so that we've got good, solid Christian counseling to help people get in touch with the healing power of God for this everyday junk that you deal with. You say therapy, Lon?

Therapy is for wimps and nerds and weaklings. Well, Wright Gooden thought that. He said, as an athlete, I could conquer anything.

I'd been so dominant in my life on the mound, that attitude flowed over into the rest of my life. I thought to myself, I can do this. I can do anything. I don't need anybody.

He said, well, I was wrong. Only a weak person says I don't need any help. A strong person is a person who says I do need help and I'm strong enough to admit I need help.

Hey, I don't think I'm a wimp and I don't think I'm a nerd. And I've gone and sought out therapy at times in my life. I've gotten therapy. Say, Lon, you, you've gotten therapy.

Yep, I sure have. And I'll tell you something else. Everyone who's close to me thinks I need more. That's what I'll tell you. Maybe I do. But there is no embarrassment to saying I need help.

Can somebody help me? I'm self-destructing here. And friends, if you need help, you call our counseling center. That's why we're here. Don't go on feeling like a failure every day in your life.

There are reasons why you're acting like that and God can fix it if you'll let us give you some help. Now, there's a second level of failure, though, and that's what I would call crash and burn failure. I mean, this is when a lot of our everyday failures sometimes result in pushing us over the edge. And this is failure that comes when the whole house of cards comes down and the whole thing crashes and we go into free fall.

Now, what are some examples of this? Oh, when your husband or wife walks out on you and divorces you and leaves you to raise a kid or two all by yourself. Boy, you can go into free fall real easy and feel like a failure right then. When you hit somebody with an automobile and hurt or kill them and all of your life goes out the window as you knew it, when you commit some crime and you end up in jail, when you flunk out of school, when you make a bad decision at work and you lose millions of dollars of the company's money, when you make a bad decision with your own investments and lose every dollar you ever had saved.

I mean, this is free fall kind of stuff here. When you tell the wrong person something and destroy a relationship that you can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again, when you neglect your family so long that you lose them, when you get into a destructive dating relationship and somebody slam dunks you and you don't think you can go on anymore and you start asking, I wonder if I can borrow Vince Foster's gun, you know what I'm trying to say? I mean, there are times, folks, when we go over the edge and failure is to the point where we're ready to call it quits and just check out of here. Some of you know that kind of failure. Some of you have experienced that kind of failure. That's the kind of failure Peter's dealing with. He's not just dealing with everyday stuff. He's dealing with free fall over the edge failure now.

So how do you deal with that so it doesn't destroy your life? I've got five principles I want to give you. You ready? Here we go. Five I want to give you. And the good news is that God has a plan that works to deal with crash and burn failure.

He has a plan that works. You just got to follow the steps. Here they are. Number one, and this is by far the most important. If you don't get any other step, make sure you get this one.

Here it is. Number one, build a self-esteem system that's based on the love of God and not your performance. Let me tell you that again. Build a system of self-worth for your life that is based on the unconditional, unchanging love of God for you and is not based on your performance. Friends, most of us learned a system of self-worth that's based on our performance. That when we perform right, we're worth something, and when we don't perform right, we're not worth anything. And if that's the system of self-worth that a person has, when they fail, man, and they fail big time, it's really serious because their whole system of self-worth comes crashing down.

That's why people blow their brains out. Now, Peter had to struggle with this. You know what happened to him after he failed? He went back to fishing.

You read about it. John chapter 21, he said, I failed so bad. I'm not worth anything to God.

I'm not worth anything to people. I'm going back to the only thing I know that I can do well, and that's catch fish. And by the way, he didn't even do that so good. And if you remember, in John chapter 21, Jesus, after the resurrection, came looking for Peter and found him up at the Sea of Galilee and called him in from the boat. Now, notice who came looking for who. And he said, Peter, the reason I'm here, I'm not here to talk to you about ministry and I'm not here to talk to you about your failure. The first thing I'm here to talk to you about is to let you know, Peter, I want you to know I love you just as much today as I did before you disowned me three times. You got to understand that, Peter. What you did doesn't make one bit of difference regarding how much I love you, Peter. You've got to believe that.

I wouldn't have come looking for you if it was any other way. And, folks, Jesus loves you the exact same way. Now, for many of us, this is very hard for us to believe, very difficult.

Maybe we believe it in our heads and maybe we believe it in our theology, but to believe it in our spirit is very hard for us. And the reason is because most of us have never been loved like this, never been loved like this before. Our parents didn't love us this way. Our siblings didn't love us this way. Our friends don't love us this way. Our husband or our wife doesn't love us this way. And our boss certainly doesn't love us this way. You understand what I'm saying. But this is the kind of love that Jesus offers to give every person alive.

And this is the kind of love that he wants us to build our system of self-worth on, a love that has nothing to do with your performance. You say, Elan, you don't even understand this. You're just a preacher. We live out in the real world.

You live in this insulated little cubicle. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Listen, I know I'm only as good as my last sermon. I understand that. That's the way the real system works.

If I have a couple of strikeouts and foul balls here, I know I'm in trouble. You say, no, Elan, we love you so much. You could do the worst job in the whole world and we wouldn't say a thing. Right. Right. You don't think I believe that for a moment, do you? And then, you know, I've worked with athletes.

Athletes know they're only as good as their last set of stats. They understand that. And I understand the world you live in because I live in the same one. But what I'm trying to tell you is there is a level of love that the world knows nothing about that Jesus Christ is offering you and me.

It's unconditional. And friends, God loves you just as much when you mess up as when he loves you when you get it right. You've got to learn to believe that, that when you mess up, he doesn't love you one tick less than when you get it perfectly right. He doesn't love you one tick more.

It has nothing to do with his feelings for you. And it's only when we build a system of self-worth based on that reality that we can go on to handle failure. If you don't have that reality as the basis for your self-worth failure, it will destroy your life.

It will destroy your life. Just let me say one other thing. If you're here today and you've never trusted Christ in a real and personal way, folks, for you, I'd like to share with you that God loves you, even though right now you don't even belong to him. He loves you with a love that is so deep, a love that this world cannot even begin to match, a love that will heal you and make you healthy and functional. And if you've never trusted Christ as your real and personal savior and you're trying to find healing and health, and as we heard Ed share earlier, satisfaction in this world, I'm here to tell you, you're not going to find it outside of the love of Jesus Christ. I hope you'll really think about that.

He's offering you this same kind of love. Well, let me go on to the rest of the steps. Step number two. Once we've constructed a self-esteem system that's based on the love of God, unconditional love, step number two in dealing with failure is we have to bring closure in our relationship with God when it comes to that failure. How do you do that, you say, Lon? Well, you do it by owning up to your failure and openly accepting the responsibility for your failure.

No blame shifting, no excuses, no weaseling, no justification. Take it right to God. Say, God, I blew it.

I failed. It's nobody else's fault but mine. And the Bible says if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us of our sin. 1 John 1.9, and God, I'm here blaming it on nobody but me and I need to be forgiven. That brings closure about this failure in our relationship with God.

And that's important. Now, you say, Lon, but that's so hard to do just to say it was my fault, nobody else's fault. Well, of course, it's hard to do if you've got your worth and your acceptance and your self-esteem tied into your performance.

But if you're not tied into your performance with your self-worth, it becomes easier to do. Peter did that. How do you think Matthew, Mark, James and John found out that Peter did this?

They weren't there in the courtyard that night. How do you think they found out he did this? Say, Jesus told them.

I don't think so. I think Peter owned up to what he did, accepted his responsibility, got forgiven by God and that made it safe enough for him to tell his friends. That's what I think happened. Third step, once you've got some closure in your relationship with God, then you've got to get closure in your relationship with yourself about this failure. How do you do that, you say? Well, you do it by being willing to accept the consequences your failure brings. Failure always brings consequences.

Sometimes they're little, sometimes they're horrible. But God says in the Bible, Galatians chapter six, whatever a person sows, that's what they're going to reap. And even though lots of smart college professors have tried to convince us all that that's not how the world really works, your spirit and my spirit knows better.

We know that's how it works. And when you and I are willing to stand up and say, these consequences that I'm going through right now are my fault. I deserved them.

They came because of my failure and nobody else's. And you validate those consequences and you authenticate those consequences and you accept them as being valid and worthy. What you do is you begin to bring closure within your own spirit that, hey, I'm paying for this. I've sucked it up. I've been a man about it.

I've been a woman about it. I'm paying the price for it. And that brings closure in your life so you can start to say, now let's go on. I'm paying for it. Now let's go on.

Long as you keep blaming somebody else, you can't bring closure inside yourself. My son's at the Naval Academy, as you know, and we're real proud of him. And one of the things they're teaching him there is this very principle. He had a decision that he made not too long ago. And I said, well, how do you feel about it? And he said, Dad, what they teach us here is look at the facts, make the very best decision you can make, and then stand ready to accept the consequences of your decision, whatever they may be.

That's teaching somebody to live healthy because that means I can deal with it. I accept the consequences. I pay for what I did.

Now let's get on with life. Fourth step is not only bring closure in your relationship to God and in your relationship with yourself, but here comes the hardest one. You need to bring closure in your relationship with other people, meaning if you wronged another person when you failed and most of the time other people are involved, then it means not only do you need to say, God, you need to forgive me, not only do we need to say to ourselves we need to forgive ourselves, but then third, we need to go to the people that got hurt by our failure and we need to say, I failed, I blew it, I hurt you and I need you to forgive me. Now that's hard because we have to humble ourselves before another person and do it.

And that's the step so many of us try to skip. But you can't skip that step because that broken relationship, that unresolved hurt that you caused will be a ball and chain around your ankle the rest of your life until you get free. And the only way to get free is to go say, would you forgive me? Accept the responsibility and bring closure.

Will relationships always go back to being what they used to be? Not necessarily, but you'll be free. Fifth and final step is this, exercise faith. So what do you mean by that, Lon? I mean believe the promises of God about your failure. God's made you some promises about your failure. He said, Romans chapter 8 verse 28, all things work together for good.

You mean even off the edge free fall crash and burn failure? All things means all things as far as I can tell. All things work together for good. Listen to those who trust God with those things. Give that stuff to God. Give your failure to God. Say, God, it was a horrible failure. It was a horrible failure, but I know you're big enough that if I give it to you, you can bring something out of that failure that's constructive. Here's another great verse in the Bible.

One of my favorite because I have to use it all the time. Here it is, Joel 2.25. God says, Joel 2.25 in the Old Testament, and I will restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten. Folks, when I look back at my life, I see whole sections of my life that look like a locust plague just came through. I mean it is like a grasshopper infection that ate everything up and it's totally barren, totally devastated, and yet God has given me a promise, and God has given you a promise that says God will restore to us the years the locusts came through and ate. Now you're going to believe God or aren't you? You're going to give it to God or aren't you? You're going to give God a chance to do that in your life or aren't you? I'll tell you what, God will do it if you'll let him. Let me show you how he did it for Peter. Turn to Acts 4, and with this we're done.

Page 773 if you're using our copy of the Bible. Folks, God is a God of restoration. God is a God of restoration. God is a God of restoration. And here we find Peter in Acts chapter 4. This is only a couple months later, maybe a year at the most.

We don't know exactly, but not long. And you know where we find him? This is really interesting. Look at verse 5. The next day the rulers and the elders and the teacher of the law all got together in Jerusalem. This is the Sanhedrin. You mean the same Sanhedrin Jesus stood before?

Yep. And look who was there. And Caiaphas was there. You mean the same high priest that Jesus was being tried by a few months before?

Same guy. Did it ever occur to you that Caiaphas and the high priest and the Sanhedrin were so close to the action that when Peter stood out in the courtyard and screamed, I don't know the man, I don't know the man, that they probably heard him? If Jesus heard him enough to turn and look at him, don't you think these people heard him? So he failed in front of the whole Sanhedrin, and look what God's done for him. God has given him another shot at the same people that he had his worst failure in front of. You understand what I'm saying? He's back in front of the same people at the same location.

And look what happens. Verse 7, they had Peter and John brought before them and they began to question them, saying, By what power and what name did you do this healing? Verse 12, Peter defends Christ and he says, Salvation is found in no other, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. And when they saw the courage of Peter, whoa, this is a different look, isn't it? When they saw the courage of Peter and John and they realized that they were unschooled ordinary men, they were astonished, now watch, and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. Now, isn't that exactly what Peter stood in that courtyard and denied a few months before that he'd been with Jesus? And now he's right in front of the same group of people with another chance to get it right by the grace of God. And this time he says, Yes, I was with Jesus. And yes, I'm proud of that.

And I don't really care what you think. That's what I should have said the first time and God in his grace has given me another chance and I'm going to say it this time, that's restoration. Look what God did for the man. Folks, God will take your failure if you'll let him and he will turn it around in ways you can't even dream and restore you.

He'll restore the years the locusts have eaten if you'll let him. With God, if you know Jesus Christ, failure is not fatal. There is no failure that has to be fatal, folks, if you'll follow the principles that God's given us.

Here they are. Number one, build a self-esteem system based on the unconditional love of God, not your performance. Number two, if you fail, bring closure with God. Be open about what you did and go to God and tell him. Don't shift the blame, accept the responsibility.

Let him forgive you. Number three, bring closure in your relationship with yourself. Accept the consequences, validate them as being deserved. Don't blame them on somebody else and pay for what you did so you can get on with life. Number four, bring closure in your relationship with other people.

If there's somebody out there you've hurt, you go out there, humble yourself, and get rid of that ball and chain around your ankle. And number five and finally, commit your failure to God. Exercise faith and trust God to restore to you the years the locusts have eaten. This is what it's all about, and if you'll practice those principles, God, I promise you, will take any failure, I don't care how bad you think it is, and he'll turn it into something constructive in your life. Let's pray together, shall we? Heavenly Father, I want to thank you that you are the God of the second chance, and you're the God of the third chance, the fourth chance, and the 50th chance, and the thousandth chance. That you are a God of unconditional love and that your love for us has nothing to do with our performance.

That the Bible says that you demonstrated your love towards us and that while we were yet sinners, while we were performing horribly, Christ died for us. And so, Lord, I pray for each of us here that you would first of all convince us that we can build a self-worth system that doesn't have to be based on our performance. And then help us to take these principles that we've talked about and put them into practice so that our failure does not have to be destructive. Lord, we wish we didn't fail. We'd like to do better. But thank you that when we do fail, you've got a plan that means our failure does not have to destroy our lives. And for folks here today who are feeling like a failure, I pray that this would be hope and an opportunity that they see to take that failure and turn it into something that will be constructive in their lives. Thank you for your love for us. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen. Amen.