2020: A Year of Celebration!

“Finding the Hope we Need!”

Key Verses:  Romans 8:37-39

The Resurrection Narrative: Matthew 28; Mark 16; Luke 24; John 20

Written and delivered by Pastor Jerry Ingalls from the building of the First Baptist Church of New Castle, Indiana through an on-line service to the Church of Jesus Christ.

Resurrection Sunday April 12, 2020 (Easter)

COMMUNION MESSAGE

Let us set the stage for communion this Easter 2020, in these very uncommon days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He is risen! _______________This is normally where I would hear hundreds of people saying in response: “He is risen indeed!” I am saddened that I am being greeted in person by less than nine people. But, it is for good reason that the hundreds of us who wanted to gather today did not because to not meet is the right thing for us to do.

In addition, I believe that our not gathering is neither a violation of our constitutional rights nor of our biblical mandate to not forsake the gathering of the saints. It’s neither! I directly, yet gently, say that knowing that some of my fellow pastors passionately disagree.

We are choosing to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ in word, online, because, at this unique moment in our lives, to do anything other than that is a violation of our chief evangelistic deed: To love our neighbors as ourselves! We don’t want our words of love and our deeds of love to cancel one another. Right now, we love our neighbors as ourselves by being the very best partners with our local hospitals and health departments that we can be in order to love our neighbors more than we love our own traditions and practices. We are called to fast these for a few months to actually live out our faith with full sincerity and conviction.[1]

Church, we’ll be together soon. I don’t know when, but be patient and trust God. We are prayerfully making the sacrifices necessary to speed our way through these uncommon days.

Here is the truth that I want you to come to the Lord’s Table knowing: Jesus’ victory gives us the hope we need to face life and death with a victorious mindset!

Paul teaches us this mindset in Romans 8:37-39, “We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Because of this truth, I can declare to an empty worship center the promise of the empty tomb without losing my hope. Because: HE IS RISEN! Nothing changes that! NOTHING changes the victory we have because of Jesus; therefore, let us view the world through these glasses—with hope, a hope that can look upon suffering and death and not lose perspective.  

We are not victims of circumstances or chance. We are victors—more than conquerors in Jesus Christ. Our circumstances don’t determine our hope! The hope we need to face our circumstances is found in the empty tomb! HE IS RISEN! Yell it out… Proclaim it!

Jesus’ victory gives us the hope we need to face life and death with a victorious mindset!

Listen to the word of the Apostle Paul from 1 Corinthians 15:17-22,

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

Serve Communion: Let us respond to this truth by coming to the Cup of Grace together. The  Table of the Lord is open and all who are have been invited by Jesus are invited to participate with us in the remembrance of Him—our Lord Jesus’ sacrifice, His death and resurrection, for our eternal life. (lead in partaking from 1 Corinthians 11:23-26).

Pray for all who have partaken in this meal and for God’s grace upon all who would receive.

Response Song: “Draw Me Close”

SERMON

That is the perspective we have today, after thousands of years of reflection—time gives meaning to events in history! Events are pregnant with meaning at the time, but it is hard to find meaning in the midst of a major, world-changing event when you are in the middle of it.

This was even true for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Even at the resurrection, which we gather to celebrate today, there was unbelief, fear, and confusion.[2] The Bible doesn’t hide the real emotions of the first followers and disciples, we just read right over them.

Listen to some key words from the Gospel accounts of the resurrection of Jesus Christ:

The closest followers of Jesus experienced a full range of emotions on the first Easter morning because they did not have perspective, yet! The same is true for those of us who are trying to faithfully walk through the COVID-19 pandemic. We need time and separation from the event to give the event meaning. We have neither—time nor separation—in our current crisis, yet.

Let’s process our current situation and then learn how we can apply today’s teaching to it: Jesus’ victory gives us the hope we need to face life and death with a victorious mindset!

A Christian author recently wrote in his blog, “It’s like there’s a dark cloud called COVID-19 hovering over us. It’s generating worry, irritableness, and especially tiredness.” Then he asked, “What is the dark cloud? What is it that is sapping our energy and causing stress reactions?”[3]

The answer is grief. I know it sounds weird, but I have been grieving all week in anticipation of not getting to hear hundreds of people cry out with conviction and hope, “He is risen indeed!” Could you text Ken or me, or FB post, or YouTube comment “He is risen indeed” right now so we can encourage each other? Please…that will do my heart some good. We need one another! 

There is a sense of grief that is touching many of our lives in ways that have not been experienced in our well-regimented, orderly lifestyles as 21^st century Americans. We are a time- driven culture. We are a people with a plan and have devices or planners to keep us on track. We get upset when things don’t start on time or take too long, by our own standard of effectiveness and efficiency. We are driven, but that leads to us being an intolerant and impatient people! What gets in our way of accomplishing our goals makes us angry…

It’s like there is a dark cloud hovering over us!

There is loss of safety from so many people getting sick from COVID-19, suffering, and dying.

There is loss of jobs, routines, and money.

There is loss of fun events and freedom of movement.

There is loss of opportunities to “touch” friends and extended family.

There is loss of gathering physically and doing life together.

There is loss of the security and safety of the “normal” life; whatever that means to you.

We do not know what to do for such a devastating event as COVID-19, because it is disrupting everything, right here and right now, and it has dangerous potential for the future, so we grieve and we start anticipating in our hearts and minds our worst fears. That is called “catastrophic thinking” and that leads to anxiety today and dread for the future, and we don’t quite know what to do about it or what to think about it. If we are not careful, that becomes depression and our hope bucket gets drained… And without hope, we die from the inside out…

It’s like there is a dark cloud hovering over us!

Like with any grief process, people are dealing with it differently. People are going through the five stages of grief: Denial; Anger; Bargaining; Sadness; and Acceptance.

Some of us are living in one specific state and others of us are oscillating through multiple stages in any given day or in any given conversation. Unfortunately, many Christians are living in denial and call it faith. Then they are controlled by what they are unwilling to recognize within themselves: real emotions revolving around a very real event that is affecting every aspect of life.  

In a recent article called “That Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief,” the leading expert in the study of grief, Dr. David Kessler, stated about our current crisis with the COVID-19 pandemic,

We feel the world has changed, and it has. We know this is temporary, but it doesn’t feel that way, and we realize things will be different. Just as going to the airport is forever different from how it was before 9/11, things will change and this is the point at which they changed. The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air. We’re feeling that loss of safety. We are grieving.[4]

I was talking (via email) to a friend about “anticipatory grief” and my friend said to me,

As followers of Christ, we have the advantage of hope, which may help combat the grief and trauma, but I also think we need to give ourselves some space and remind ourselves that it is okay to not be okay right now. The way we experience spiritual health in this time is that when we feel the need to attempt to escape that we escape into the arms of Jesus and not into the things the world says will bring us comfort.

We do need to cling to Jesus and the victory God has given us in Jesus Christ! His death on the Cross and His defeat of death—the resurrection—do give us a hope that is bigger than our circumstances, but that doesn’t mean we put on blindfolds to our circumstances! We hope in the New Heaven and the New Earth, but we live right here, smack dab in the middle of a broken, hurting, down-right scary world.

Jesus’ victory gives us the hope we need to face life and death with a victorious mindset!

In 1 Peter 1:3-6, Peter trumpets the hope we have from the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the midst of a broken world with trials and temptations, suffering and grief,

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.

People are suffering in real ways, people are dying, there is real reason to grieve and we can’t add a layer of Christian guilt for experiencing grief, sadness, anger, or anxiety. Complicating your grief process with layers of guilt for having real emotions, covered by a veneer of self-imposed Christian platitudes does neither yourself nor others any good. Can I just say that this is hard and I want it to be over? I want people to stop getting sick, stop dying, and I want our lives to go back to “normal”, whatever that even means for any of us.

My faith, and even the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, does not stop me from being human—a real person who needs sleep, rest, healthy nutrition, relationships, and emotional well-being. And trust me that I have tried really hard to live a super-human life. It doesn’t work, not for long…

As the leading expert on grief teaches,

There is something powerful about naming this as grief. It helps us feel what’s inside of us. Fighting it doesn’t help because your body is producing the feeling. If we allow the feelings to happen, they’ll happen in an orderly way, and it empower us. Then we’re not victims.[5]

The victory of the resurrection is that I can face today and every day, of not only this COVID-19 pandemic, but of whatever may come in this fallen, broken and scary world, with HOPE![6]

As Paul triumphantly declares in 1 Corinthians 15:54b-57, “‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

It is my deepest prayer that today, this day we call Easter, the Holy Spirit will fill up your own personal “hope bucket” to overflowing! Hope doesn’t come from what’s happening out there (in our circumstances) or even what’s happening in here (in our heads and hearts), hope is firmly established in the fact that the tomb is still empty! Hope is a gift from God!

Yes, grieving the effects of the fall and the brokenness of this creation is a real part of life and our faith does not stop that from being our reality. But we do not grieve without hope!

In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14, Paul teaches us, “Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep [people will still die], or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him [the resurrection from the dead].”

Suffering and death have always been a part of living in a fallen and broken world. One thousand years before the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Psalmist wrote in Psalm 43:5 a call and response to God in our grief: “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”

So let’s try our Easter call and response again: He is Risen!  He is Risen INDEED!

Jesus’ victory gives us the hope we need to face life and death with a victorious mindset!

The hope we have in Christ gives us purpose and resolve to live with hope even when we have not yet found meaning in our suffering, or in the current COVID-19 pandemic. We do not need to wait to find meaning in our own suffering because we can trust that God is with us. This does not need to make sense to us, right now and right here.[7]

Patience in our circumstances and trust in God allow us to remain faithful and not paralyzed by grief, fear, or anger. Let us remain mindful of God’s presence in our circumstances and through these difficult times! That is His promise—God is with us!

Suffering and death are pervasive and intrusive experiences for all people! And in the light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, death has been reframed so that we can see an old picture with a new perspective. Death has been swallowed by the victory of Jesus Christ and it now stands within the boundaries of God’s all-embracing love! We are no longer alone; God is with us!

There is a lot of suffering, here and now, and if the predictions of medical experts are accurate, we are going to see much more suffering in the coming weeks. Jesus never promised us we wouldn’t suffer, but that He would be our Good Shepherd through it and with us in it.

Hebrews 5:7-8 teaches us, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.”

And this is why we must remember that Jesus’ suffering did not have the last word, because the Passion of the Christ led to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Good Friday happened but Sunday came!

It may feel like we are stuck in one long Good Friday, filled with suffering, but let us remember that Sunday has already came and death no longer has the last word. May we trust the Good Shepherd and the Hope He has given us. I join in the ancient prayer, written 3,000 years ago, relevant today during this COVID-19 pandemic: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4).

Jesus’ victory gives us the hope we need to face life and death with a victorious mindset!

You can listen to this message here:

To watch the video click HERE

FOOTNOTES:

[1] One of our church’s elders responded to this section with the famous quote of St. Francis of Assisi, “Preach the Gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.” The more nuanced quote is actually, “It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.”

[2] A friend commented on this statement, “Just as it’s hard for us to see meaning in our current events, it is just as hard for us to have perspective that there was unbelief, fear, and confusion in the time of the Passion of Christ. We know how the story ends, so we view every event through the lens of victory (meaning)! But the people who were living it in real time were questioning their decisions and searching for meaning as their lives seemed to be falling apart around them.”

[3] Bill Gaultiere, PhD. https://mailchi.mp/soulshepherding.org/covid-19-help-for-grief?e=b4a0884ffa. Accessed April 8, 2020. There is a merging of Dr. Gaultiere’s thoughts on grief and my own in the introduction.

[4] Scott Berinato. https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief. Accessed April 8, 2020.

[5] Ibid.

[6] The same elder reminded me of the quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.”

[7] My friend wrote of this, “This is where the concept of ‘daily bread’ really seems to matter. There’s nothing wrong with seeking meaning, but lacking meaning does not give us license to sit down and quit in this moment. God supplies us what we need for each day as it comes, and we have a rare opportunity right now to live more presently than we have likely ever allowed ourselves to do in our lifetimes.”

2020: A Year of Celebration!

“Comfort the Suffering!” (Part 2)

Key Verses:  2 Corinthians 1:3-5

Crucifixion Narrative: Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke 23 and John 19

Written and delivered by Pastor Jerry Ingalls from the building of the First Baptist Church of New Castle, Indiana through an on-line service to the Church of Jesus Christ.

Today is Palm Sunday. On this day we enter “Holy Week” or the “Passion Week”. It is a week normally filled with times set apart for silence & solitude, prayer & reflection, special gatherings and times in remembrance of Jesus and His Passion. During this unique time of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are doing our best to both protect you by keeping you home and not inviting you into a situation that is potentially harmful to you and dangerous for your neighbor, while still bringing to you special services online (Holy Thursday & Good Friday at 6:30 pm) and times to take communion in your own home during the Holy Thursday Service at 6:30 pm and Resurrection Sunday Service at 10:30 am this Easter Sunday.

Let’s talk briefly about the opportunity for you to take communion in your home twice this coming week. As your pastor, this is a “seize the moment” opportunity. For me, it is beautiful and empowering, to invite you to the Table this Thursday night and next Sunday morning, for each of your households to learn how to participate in the common cup of Jesus Christ in your own home. I discern that this is an important step for many of us: to bring communion home and to empower parents and grandparents to be the spiritual leaders of their own households. For you to see your home as sacred and yourself as a spiritual leader to your family. God has called you to this and has already empowered you with His presence. So, when you go pick up your eggs and milk this week, pick up some grape juice and bread. Nothing costly or fancy is required. Have them ready for Thursday night at 6:30 and Sunday morning at 10:30. Call the church office or click on the contact us button on the webpage if you can’t shop right now or have questions.

On a personal note: I do miss our gatherings, there is something significantly missing in our lives when we can’t gather together on a regular basis. This grieves me more than you know: We lose so much of what God calls us to be as the community of God’s family when we think we can do church in our own homes, not physically with our brothers and sisters, but there is no other right or reasonable way to face these difficult days, so we must make do and make the best use of technology. I ask you though to allow yourself to anticipate our coming back together, to let the hope of our physical proximity one day to cause you to realize the importance of our weekly gatherings as a significant part of your future life, on the other side of the COVID-19 pandemic. Until then, please remain home and live in agreement with all efforts for community well-being.

Many of us are praying and hoping we can be together soon, Lord willing in May. I love you and miss you! Your pastors, elders, and leaders honestly hope the daily phone messages, the weekly emails, and the online services through our webpage, FB Live, and YouTube are helping each of you. That the www.rightnowmedia.org resources are helping you grow in Christ. Please also utilize the new google spreadsheet, that we have sent out twice, to ensure every person in our congregation is being connected with personally. I can sincerely say that we are doing our best in these difficult days to communicate with you and to help keep people personally connected. These are difficult times for all of us. Please pray for us, as we pray for you.

In today’s teaching, we are going to continue to learn what I introduced to you last week: Jesus suffered so that we can be comforted; therefore, let us comfort those who are suffering! Our primary scripture for this lesson is from the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verses 3-5,

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

I hope you took time to read through the Gospel of Matthew, chapters 26-27, this week If so, you saw that Jesus was “social distanced”, to the max! In Matthew 26-27 Jesus was:

• Abandoned by people: Matthew 26:69-75;
• Betrayed by people: Matthew 26:14-16, 20-25, 47-56;
• Condemned by people: Matthew 27:1-5; 24-26;

and then Jesus

• Died on the Cross for all people: Matthew 27:32-66

This is the extravagant love and amazing grace of our God for the world! Jesus suffered so that we can be comforted; therefore, let us comfort those who are suffering!

We are now going to focus on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. As I prepared for this sermon, I studied not just the Matthew 27 account of Jesus’ death, but also Mark 15, Luke 23, and John 19. During this Holy Week, I encourage you to saturate yourself in these four accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion and the immediate events that led up to the Cross of Calvary. Once again, you will find those accounts in Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke 23, and John 19. Please read them and allow the extent of Jesus’ suffering for us to pierce your own heart and mind.

Listen to what the finished work on the Cross of Calvary has made possible for you. Paul’s words from Romans 8:1-4,

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

This is the Good News of Jesus Christ: There is no condemnation for those who belong to God in a relationship with Jesus! On the Cross, Jesus faced the horror of taking on Himself all of humanity’s sin even though He never sinned Himself (2 Corinthians 5:21) and in doing so Jesus experienced becoming the curse—He was cut off from God (Galatians 3:13), becoming the forsaken of God in our place (Matthew 27:46, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me”). Jesus took the punishment for sin; so that, we can have God’s favor and protection in our lives—the blessing of never having to face God’s wrath and condemnation (John 3:18, 36).

Jesus came into this broken world to heal it! In fact, Jesus gave Himself over to death so that we can have life, not just eternally with Him, but also abundantly (John 10:10). The abundant life means our lives are filled with God’s peace and power through His presence in us. The abundant life includes an invitation to join with Jesus in the work of healing by how we respond to our own and other’s suffering: the grief, pain, anger, isolation, and loneliness of these dark days.

Jesus suffered so that we can be comforted; therefore, let us comfort those who are suffering!

Are you willing to share with Jesus in His suffering, so that you can share with Him in bringing comfort to others? How are you reaching out to people during the coronavirus pandemic?

Jesus knows your suffering and can sympathize with you. You are not alone in your loneliness, isolation, or suffering and in fact, the God of peace is with you. God knows how to care for your needs. I invite you to “be still” and listen to God in this time. Truly listen. Set apart a space in your home and prioritize time every day to stop for 10 minutes to simply “be still”.

Please guard your mind against the lies of the world and your heart from the heavy loads of people’s brokenness and despair. You are not the sum total of your own or other people’s choices—do not be a slave to fear, because you are a beloved child of God!

A friend said to me about this truth,

When circumstances around us change, whether due to our decisions, the decisions of others that affect us tangibly, or things that are legitimately out of our control, it is easy to become defensive, embarrassed, or withdrawn when we can no longer present that image of “The American Dream” or whatever standard we feel we are expected to achieve. But, if our aim is to place our identity as a child of God in the forefront of our minds, then just maybe “the things of Earth will grow strangely dim.”

When we stop and listen for God through His Word and through prayer, He changes our perspective, but we must learn to “be still”—to quiet all the other voices and focus on our minds on God’s promises and God’s ways. We don’t know the ‘why’ of this present darkness, but we can know the ‘how’ of our response to dark days: to live by faith today, with hope for tomorrow! Shine the Light of the Word for all to see the glory of God in and through us (Matthew 5:14-16).

How do we shine brightly like stars in this dark night?

In Romans 12:9-21, Paul teaches us how to live the hope given to us through Jesus Christ:

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty [proud/arrogant], but associate with the lowly [humble/meek]. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Jesus suffered so that we can be comforted; therefore, let us comfort those who are suffering! Your days are in His hands and His hands were spread as the East is to the West on the Cross of Calvary so that you can overcome evil with good, here and now, today. This is the work of the Cross for you, in you, and through you!

Remember, God is not surprised by COVID-19. Never forget, that His Church is His Plan A to bring comfort to those who are suffering in this world! You and me! Bring the comfort that Jesus Christ has given you to the world that so desperately needs comfort in the midst of such horrific suffering.

Don’t let the hurts of this life determine the way you live your life. Here is a testimony from a friend in our church, “This is a thought I have to remind myself of almost daily. Sometimes I truly feel personally victimized by my own life… The nights we have laid in bed and said to the other person ‘did today even really happen?’ But I find resilience in Christ. Not in a trite, cross-stitched platitude kind of way, but in the sense that I wrestle with Jesus about what on Earth He is doing in my life and why things are allowed to happen and what their larger purpose can possibly be; without exception, these times of seeking understanding have driven me closer to Christ and never further away.”

There is a lot of suffering, here and now, and if the predictions of medical experts are accurate, we are going to see much more suffering through April and into May. But Christ never promised us we wouldn’t suffer. We are suffering as co-heirs with Christ.

In John 16:33, Jesus told His disciples to expect suffering and not lose focus, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

Praise God for the finished work of the Cross!

Jesus is our Comforter and He can commiserate with us because he has suffered greatly! His suffering gives our suffering perspective! His actions for us gives our actions direction and focus!

I pray for all who are in Christ Jesus: May the Holy Spirit who lives in you activate in your heart and mind the promises of God and cause you to live with faith, hope, and love. May the Comforter lead you as you pray for God’s daily direction through this time of suffering.

Jesus suffered so that we can be comforted; therefore, let us comfort those who are suffering!

You can listen to this message here:

To watch the video click HERE