In Matthew, this gospel that was written to
Jewish people, that was the target audience to
prove that Jesus was the fulfillment of all
the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah coming,
we have an interesting passage which, let's use
the right word, it's challenging.
It's very challenging.
And it shows that Christianity, the true Christianity,
is radical by nature.
That Christianity is not, where do you go
on Sunday to church, that has nothing to
do with Christianity.
Christianity, to put your faith in Christ and
to live out your faith, is radical.
So let's see what Jesus said at the
end of Matthew 10.
Do not suppose that I have come to
bring peace to the earth.
That's strange, I thought he was the prince
of peace.
I did not come to bring peace, but
a sword.
For I have come to turn, quote, a
man against his father, a daughter against her
mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother
-in-law.
A man's enemies will be the members of
his own household, end of quote.
Anyone who loves their father or mother more
than me is not worthy of me.
Anyone who loves their son or daughter more
than me is not worthy of me.
Whoever does not take up their cross and
follow me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds their life or saves their selfish
life will lose it, their life.
But whoever loses their life for my sake
will find it.
Oh my goodness.
No wonder a lot of people didn't follow
Jesus after he said things like that.
But he never went after them.
He never chased one of them down and
went, listen, listen, I'm sorry, that was a
little strong, so I wanna change it around
for you.
He never did that once.
He just spoke the truth in love and
then he let it lay there.
And those who followed him followed him and
those who didn't, didn't.
Now, when they were trying to find Osama
bin Laden and the country had decided that
it was right that he could just be
put out of the way, they gave that
job to some Navy SEALs along with other
intelligence operations.
And the Navy SEALs or the Rangers are
these people who are severely trained, go through
a great deal of hardship, and then are
sent on many times covert missions which are
very difficult and filled with danger.
And before they go out on these, they
have meeting after meeting where their operation is
laid out.
The helicopter will land here.
You're to go in there.
This group is to do that.
This group is to cover the front.
This group is to cover the back.
You're gonna go up.
We have pictures of the house, of what
the house looks like.
They knew the doorways.
They had planned for this thing with Osama
bin Laden.
They had the hallways mapped out.
The ones who went in there knew everything
about the house.
They also were told there's gonna be these
many people with weapons that we know about.
There's gonna be this kind of operation against
you that will be mounted.
Something else could happen.
This could happen.
That could happen.
But this is not a walk in the
park.
Some of you might not come back.
None of you might come back.
All of you might come back.
But this is what it is.
This is part of any kind of military
operation.
I was just watching a recounting of D
-Day when the largest amphibious landing ever in
the history of warfare was done.
America joined World War II after Pearl Harbor.
And now we were fighting in the Pacific
against Japan and against Germany and their allies
in Europe.
And the war was not going well in
Europe.
And France had been taken.
So Germany controlled France, or most of it.
So now under Dwight D.
Eisenhower, who later, General Eisenhower, who later became
President of the United States for two terms
in the 1950s, they were gonna land hundreds
of thousands, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of
troops to make a push through France and
go toward Germany.
Russia, on the other side, withstood Germany's attack
and they were coming from the other side.
And now Hitler and his minions were gonna
be put in a vice.
But Eisenhower, the history books tell us, couldn't
sleep for a long time because he knew
that this landing, which was tried to be
hidden, no one knew what part of France,
the coast of France, they would land on.
And it was gonna be in Normandy that
they would land.
And there were all these beaches which became
famous.
Why'd they become famous?
Because the blood was running like the water.
Because no matter where you attack, there were
some opposition and they were told when those
boats, those small boats, leave the big boats
that brought you across the English Channel, and
now when those boats open up and you
have to try to make it to the
beach and there's machine gun nests up there
just wiping out people, sometimes they opened up
the barrier to let them out into the
water and before they could even take three
steps, there were 10 people dead just from
the machine gun fire.
So everyone was told about these things.
This is what you're to expect so that
nobody goes into the battle and goes, what,
what are those people firing their guns at?
What is this about?
In other words, to be ready for battle
means you have to know what's gonna go
down.
Matthew 10 is the chapter where Jesus picks
his 12 disciples and he calls them by
name, he chooses them.
They were ordinary people like you and me.
Fishermen, tax collectors, very ordinary people but the
thing about Jesus is he picks ordinary people
so they can do extraordinary things through his
power and his grace working in their lives.
They weren't strong supermen, they were just regular
people like us and he chooses them and
in that chapter, he begins to tell them
what's involved in following him and some of
the things that are gonna happen to them,
they're gonna be persecuted, they're gonna be brought
before judges and before councils, they're gonna be
flogged, they're gonna face great opposition, so on
and so forth and he tells them that
whoever confesses him before people, he will confess
before the father and he'll own them as
his own and whoever denies him in front
of people, he'll deny them before the father.
I mean, it is right out of somebody
going into battle and this is what it's
gonna be like and this is a part
of Christianity that is hard for us to
understand because we have watered down Christianity, especially
in our country, into something mundane, harmless, just
go to church on a Sunday but the
aggressive, radical nature of it has often been
lost.
Where we pick it up at the end
of the chapter, what we read is Jesus
is telling the disciples, not gonna hold anything
back, he wants them to know exactly what's
gonna go down there and the first thing
he tells them so they're prepared is this
odd sentence, don't think I've come to bring
peace, I've come to bring a sword.
Now, this is so strange because God is
the God of peace, Jesus is called the
Prince of peace.
Peace I give you, he told the disciples,
not like the world gives you, I give
you supernatural peace, peace that passes all what,
understanding and now, in another context, he's saying,
but I haven't come to bring peace.
If you will put your trust in me
and you will become Christians and followers of
me, I just want you to know before
you go out into the world, you are
going out into a battle.
If you bear my name, you're part of
an invisible spiritual battle that is going on
right now in this world and I would
like to suggest to you that there's something
in the atmosphere over the last four or
five years that has been unleashed in this
country that is you can feel it.
In opposition to Christianity, from the highest people
in the government to the public schools, to
the media, there is an anti-Christian, anti
-Bible feeling that I have never experienced in
my life.
On September 10th, 2001, God kept me up
the entire night.
I never slept, I hadn't had coffee or
caffeine but I was not allowed to sleep
through the entire night.
I went to bed at 20 to 11
or something like that and I was still
up at six something in the morning and
I was driven to just pray, read the
word.
God made one verse especially alive to me
but I was walking around my house, not
to disturb my wife, and asking God, why
can't I sleep, what is going on?
Why do you have me up?
There are a number of things that happen
in my heart to prepare me for what
would happen the next day which was 9
-11, September the 11th.
Four of our members went to be with
the Lord and we know about the infamy
of that day.
I am feeling something in my bones for
the last few years and now lately more
and I hear it from pastors around the
country.
As someone recently said, it's almost like there's
a movement to make Christianity criminal behavior.
Oh yes there is.
And to stand up for parts of the
word of God is hate speech.
To believe in God, to have the doctrines
that have held for 2,000 years are
mocked by politicians from the highest to the
lowest level.
It's not just I don't want your Christianity,
it's I hate your Christianity.
I'm against that you believe in any absolutes
and you believe in this savior from sin.
Jesus here is warning his disciples that to
follow him means you're in a conflict.
There will be trouble.
There will be pressure.
There will be enemies.
There will be opposition.
There will be people who just don't disagree
but they're gonna come after you because remember
as Jesus taught elsewhere, no student is greater
than their teacher and if they hated their
teacher, they will hate the student.
The disciple.
How many say amen to that?
And if they oppose your leader, they're obviously
gonna oppose you.
This is natural brothers and sisters.
For example, let's just take this example.
If you were, prior to you becoming a
Christian, if you cursed and used every four
letter word and used God's name in vain
and Christ's name in vain and then you
became a Christian and you stopped talking like
that, well, the people closest to you are
gonna notice that and then you're gonna say,
no, I don't talk like that anymore.
I'm a Christian.
Well, that creates opposition because what you're silently
saying, you're wrong in what you're doing because
I was wrong in what I was doing
but now I'm not doing that anymore and
people don't want to hear that.
I used to live that way.
I used to carouse.
I used to lie.
I used to hate.
I used to do that.
No, I won't be part of that thing
on the office anymore.
No, I don't want to hear that joke.
Well, people just don't say, fine, whatever you
want.
No, they do not say that.
They come after you for that.
How many know what I'm talking about?
Just lift your hand.
Lift your hand high if you know what
I'm talking about.
Now, if you compromise to fit in with
the people, well, that's what this whole little
passage is about.
Will you accept the radical nature of Christianity?
Are we gonna be just confessing Him with
our mouths and our hearts are far from
Him or are we gonna be Christians who
live out their faith in this radical way
that Jesus said?
So let's just close this up and put
this together so that it can help us
to pray.
I don't have a lot of things to
say to you today but the few that
I do are very important.
So Jesus said in the text here in
Matthew 10, I have my NIV Bible here.
I've come not to bring peace but to
bring a sword.
You're gonna have pressure, animosity, there'll be division
and then to make it worse, something that
nobody wants to hear, this pressure is often
gonna come from the people closest to you,
from your own family.
I mean, if you wanna think of a
way to get people not to follow you,
Jesus is taking that course.
No one wants to hear that but Jesus
is telling them the truth, not what they
wanna hear.
He's telling them the battle, if you follow
me, the invisible battle that you get drawn
into is a battle where some of the
opposition will come from those closest to you
and the people that will fight your faith,
resent your faith, disagree with your faith, be
vocal about their disagreement will be people in
your own family.
You'll have enemies, not just in the world,
you'll have enemies many times in your own
family.
So I'm warning you now, disciples, before you
go out into the battle, there's gonna be
opposition and a lot of it's, the heat
is gonna come from very close to you.
And then there's the whole question of peer
pressure.
Jesus is saying there will be peer pressure
from those around you and often closest to
you and that peer pressure will be, don't
follow the will of God, don't put your
trust in Jesus, don't live out your Christian
life.
There's gonna be enemies and the enemies will
be many times close to you.
I've seen that lived out many, many times.
He's not here right now, he'll come later
on in the day, but we have our
friend Samer Mohammed, whose testimony I won't give
him again in its entirety so that you'll
understand.
He grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp.
He was studying to be an imam and
he just hated Israelis and he hated the
West and he hated Christians and he thought
he knew what Jesus is about because Isa
is mentioned in the Quran and that's what
it was about.
And his father was a famous fighter who
went into Israel to kill Israelis and his
father was famous in that camp and he
was just full of hatred and violence.
So somebody gave him a New Testament, he
began to read it.
Long story short, he has this wonderful experience
where he asked Jesus to come into his
life and save him.
Immediately when they find out he's carrying a
Bible, his brothers drag him to the roof
and threaten to throw him off the roof
and kill him.
They tell him to their face, you keep
reading this, we will kill you.
It'll be an honor to kill you.
It will be an honor to kill you
because we'll be carrying out our religious duties
to kill an infidel like you.
You're bringing shame.
His own mother who he loves so much,
her heart was broken.
Why must you shame me?
Why must you do that?
See, we're not used to that but this
is happening all over the world.
This is happening all over the world where
serving Jesus, putting your trust in Jesus really
costs you something.
And then he can't go in the house
anymore.
He follows Jesus and when his mother dies,
they let him know, you come near that
funeral and we will kill you.
We will kill you.
So he cannot go to his mother's funeral
which breaks his heart.
And then he gets so bold in his
witness.
We have trouble speaking in America about the
Lord.
He's up in people's faces over there saying,
no, Jesus means love.
What I used to be in meant hate
and emptiness.
And he went too far on television.
They issued a fatwa on him which means
that he can be done away with himself
with no recrimination and he had to flee
that part of the world.
So this is happening to people.
To serve Jesus, it costs you something.
I had the pleasure, pleasure, the brokenness and
timidity that came over me to talk to
hundreds of mainland Chinese pastors in one meeting,
half of whom I was told had been
in prison for the cause of Christ.
Prison.
Not someone looking at them nasty, prison.
They served time just for following Jesus.
So this is what Jesus was preparing the
disciples for.
And then as he tells them, there will
be opposition, there will be pressure, there will
be difficulty.
A lot of it's gonna come from people
close to you.
Maybe some of you here have faced that
pressure and did you know what?
I believe that the peer pressure and the
family pressure is sometimes more subtle and more
powerful than even what they face in mainland
China.
Because it's subtle, it's robed in if you
love me, if you love your family, why
would you do this?
Or your friends, why do you have to
stick out now and be so straight-laced
and narrow?
Why are you judgmental?
Are you trying to say I'm living wrong
and you're living right?
There's many ways that they can cook it
up.
But how many know that is very strong
pressure?
Very strong.
They'll use, people will use culture on you.
You used to go and party, why don't
you party now?
You know, we're from Trinidad, we party.
Why aren't you partying with us?
What's they call that thing that they do
in their carnival?
Yeah, why don't you go now?
Why, you're holier than us and all the
rest?
How many know what I'm talking about?
Just lift your hand, right?
So it comes in different strokes for different
folks.
But it's very real and Jesus warned against
it and then let me close.
He said anyone who loves their mother more
than me or their father or their sister
or their brother more than me is not
worthy of me.
This is the radical nature of Christianity.
And let this word search all of us.
No, but I go to church and I
believe mentally in the doctrine of Jesus Christ
is the son of God and he died,
I'm right, I'm happy.
That is the gospel.
But now living out the faith, let me
ask you.
Jesus requires that love to him is paramount
in our lives.
You can't, you're not allowed to love anything
more than Jesus.
I have a new little granddaughter that I
held in my arms yesterday.
She's like 10 days old.
I love her but I can't love her
more than Jesus.
He loved me longer.
My mom's here, she's 106 months old.
She told me the other day, she said,
oh, Jim, my back, I'm getting old.
I said, mom, you're not getting old, you're
old, you're 100.
I love my mother.
My mother stuck with me and stuck and
held our family together.
I don't know what would happen.
She would have left my dad when he
started drinking.
I can't love my mother more than Jesus.
If she goes against God's plan for my
life, even though it'll cost me tears, I
gotta follow Jesus.
She gave birth to me but he died
for me.
He's, listen, he's loved you before you ever
even thought about it.
He's loved you before you even thought about
him.
How many can say amen to that?
His love is longer, his love is deeper.
His love is more intense.
And his love will go on forever.
In heaven, we don't have family relationships, it
seems.
There'll be no marrying and giving and marriage
and all of that.
We'll know each other but our relationship with
Jesus has no end.
Some of our family members might not be
in heaven so that'll sever us, we won't
see them again.
But we're gonna see his face forever and
ever and ever.
Sometimes, love for family fights against what Jesus
wants for your life.
And that's hard.
When love for him is fought against by
love for another person, who you love.
Notice the danger of this.
Jesus is not talking about evil people coming
against you.
He's talking sometimes what he wants you to
do is gonna go against everything that seems
just so natural.
With all due respect to my mom who's
here, she was not happy when I went
in the ministry.
I had a college degree, I was not
trained for the ministry.
I say this not in any disrespect for
her.
No one has a better mother than me.
She's been so supportive.
But when I went in the ministry, she
got quiet on the phone when I told
her what I was gonna do.
And she said, you already have a child.
And she was very practical.
How are you gonna support your child?
That little rundown building on Atlantic Avenue, there's
no people, there's no money.
I said, Mom, I'm gonna have to live
by faith.
And she said to me, which caused tears,
which she didn't see, and Jim, what does
faith pay?
Because she wanted to know, you gotta take
care, you gotta be practical.
My mom's very stable, and it adds up
or it doesn't add up.
But a lot of times what God calls
you to do doesn't add up, but it
adds up.
Come on, does it add up?
It adds up.
So sometimes what your closest loved ones want
will fight against what Jesus wants for you.
And you have to discern that, oh, and
say, Jesus, I say yes to you because
you love me.
One last enemy before I close, this is
the closest one of all, you, me.
You know what Jesus said?
You can have desires or dreams, you can
want a certain kind of lifestyle, you wanna
live in a certain place, and it goes
against his plan for your life.
So Jesus said, if anyone comes after me,
he's gotta take up his cross.
Now to the Jewish person who he said
that to, they knew what a cross meant.
One of the Roman emperors crucified 2,000
Jews at once and lined them up alongside
a road so everybody could see 2,000
Jews killed on a cross.
What a cross meant was death.
So what Jesus is teaching now, to really
enter into the full life that I have
for you, you have to die to the
life that is selfish and fleshly in you.
Because if you hold on to that life,
you lose the potential life.
But if you die to that life, then
you'll have the life that I'll give you
plus for all eternity.
To be a follower of Jesus who got
crucified was right away, you're in the crosshairs
of somebody's gun back then.
So Jesus said, sometimes your own Jim Cymbala,
forget anybody else, Jim Cymbala, my desires, my
comfort zone, what I'd like, what I'm used
to, how I saw my parents live in
front of me, that will fight against what
Jesus wants me to do, and the only
way out of it, that dream, those emotions
that are gonna fight against what the Lord
wants, they have to be crucified.
I have to die to that.
God has to put it to death.
You're saying, wow, I never heard Christianity described
this way, I'm not making this up.
This is what Jesus said.
If anyone comes after me, let him take
up his cross.
And anyone who saves his life will lose
it.
But anyone who loses his life and says,
no, I won't go the way I wanna
go.
I'm gonna follow Jesus no matter what.
I'm not gonna worry what this one's gonna
say or that one's gonna say.
And brothers and sisters, as I close, haven't
we found out that even when you try
to please people, you can't please them anyway?
You can't please them anyway.
They're gonna get upset with you anyway.
This is not, I'm not talking now, everyone
hold still, this, I'm not talking about rancor
now, I'm not talking about being hostile to
anyone, I'm talking about being sweet and lovely
like Jesus.
But nobody could turn him away from what
the Father wanted him to do.
And what the Father wanted him to do
was die on a cross.
You think his natural body wanted to do
that?
Didn't he cry in the garden?
Didn't he sweat drops, like drops of blood?
And didn't he say, Father, if there's any
way out of this, if there's any way
that this cup could pass from me, please
take it from me.
But nevertheless, not my will, but your will
be done.
There's a searching, a shaking going on in
the world and in the churches today.
Cultural Christianity is showing its total weakness.
White culture, black culture, political culture, religion, it's
showing that it's impotent.
It doesn't make strong followers of Jesus.
Right now, there is a call from heaven
going out, who's really gonna follow me, who's
gonna serve me?
I'm sending a letter to all of you
for this, it's gonna go out next week,
pleading with you because I feel the need
in my own life that on these Tuesday
nights, all the deacons, all the pastors, all
the workers, ministry workers, ushers, everyone's gonna get
it, choir members, that every Tuesday here in
June that we meet together and we pray
because we need something new from God.
When the world changes and the devil gets
stronger and the atmosphere is more aggressive against
us, we can't just stay the way we
are.
How many believe we need something fresh from
God?
We need something more from God.
But Pastor Cymbal, you've been doing this for
a while and look how God has blessed
the Brooklyn Tabernacle.
I'm down for that, thank you Jesus, but
I need more.
We need something more.
Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on
me.
You know why?
Because you can't do this without God's help.
You can't fight off the love of family,
peer pressure, all the considerations that come against
us sometimes, mocking, laughing.
We're gonna be giving you later on, it'll
start next week if I can get it,
we have come across this wonderful, Pastor Hammond,
best thing I ever saw, we're gonna give
you by the thousands a little pamphlet like
this.
And it's called One Minute Witness.
And we shared it with just the staff.
Staff members came up to me, said, I
can't believe how good this is.
And you're gonna learn how to just, in
this pamphlet, I'll tell you the principles right
now, but this pamphlet just explains them, how
you can start to witness to anyone.
And someone came to me and said, you
know, I know about the Lord, I just
don't know how to start.
I don't know how to start to witness.
How many would love a good way to
start to witness to somebody?
Lift your hand up high.
In other words, you want to witness to
them.
But how?
So this is ingenious.
It's done by an evangelist who we happen
to meet, and it starts like this.
You ask permission from a person, and you
say, excuse me, may I ask you a
question?
So they know you're polite.
Yeah, you can ask me a question.
Tell me, what's the greatest day in the
history of your life?
Tell me the happiest moment in your whole
life.
They're gonna think back, oh, I graduated from
college, I got married, I had my first
baby, whatever it might be, right?
That's so interesting, that's good.
Can I tell you the greatest day of
my life?
And then you start telling them, BC, before
Christ.
However you lived before you found Jesus.
I was afraid to die.
I was on drugs.
I was nasty, full of hate.
I was this, I was that.
And then the greatest day was when someone
introduced me to Jesus Christ.
And now you know what's in my life
now?
And they're gonna have to listen, because you
listened to their greatest day, so they gotta
listen to your greatest day, right?
And then you tell them all the changes
that have come in your life.
And from there, you end up saying, I
sometimes wonder what my life would be if
I hadn't have found Jesus.
Then you go and seal the deal.
Wouldn't that be great if all of us,
every day we could just walk up to
someone, Sylvia, one of her people that work
for her in the post office, and say,
may I ask you a question?
Sure, permission granted.
Just tell me the greatest day you had
in your life, and they'll tell her.
I wanna tell you about the greatest day
of my life.
You mind?
No, I just told you mine.
Boom, the door is open.
Oh, how many wanna share Jesus with more
and more people?
We're gonna give you that help.
But you know what, brothers and sisters?
Whether it's serving here, or whether it's, we
gotta pray.
Because Jesus never intended us to be this
strong on our own.
He wasn't saying, now guys, suck it up,
and get going, and let's see you do
this.
No, he wasn't.
We know that he said, no, you'll receive
power from on high, so that you'll be
ready for that warfare, that you'll be strong
but tender, not mean.
There's a lot of mean Christians giving Christianity
a bad name.
They're hostile.
If someone disagrees with them on anything, you
could feel the edge come in them, politically,
racially, whatever.
I see that all the time.
Just, ooh, you feel that little body language.
Jesus never had any of that.
He loved.
He loves me so much.
He loves you so much.
How many, looking back, can say with me,
Pastor, Jesus has shown his love to me
in ways nobody knows.
Could you just lift your hand gently?
I was just up there, we were praying
and singing, and I said to God, God,
you might love all of them, but me,
you love.
What you've put up with, all the mistakes
I've made, and you keep loving me.
Don't you wanna love him back?
Why do we love him?
Because he, let's pray.
Jesus, we hear your warnings, we hear your
words.
We're not called to a parade, we're called
to warfare.
The parade will come later.
Yes, we're gonna go to heaven and be
with you, but between now and then, there's
work to be done, ministries to be carried
out, battles to be fought.
Help us when those closest to us are
being used to try to pull us away
from your plan for our life.
Help us when our dreams and our comfort
zone and what we're used to, just so
selfish, I'm so selfish, Lord, given, left to
myself, I'm the most selfish person in the
country.
That's how I feel today.
But your spirit can help us pick up
our cross and be more than just go
-to-church-on-Sunday Christians.
Be transformative in our life, Jesus.
Whatever that current and that invisible something, I
know it's as real as this pulpit I'm
touching.
Whatever that thing is that's out there pulling
people away and families away, ruining children, ruining
marriages, destroying everywhere it goes.
Whatever that dark cloud is about, help us
to rise up and shine for you, brighter
than ever, Lord.
You said that if anyone loves anyone else
more than you, then we're not worthy of
you.
We receive that.
You deserve our best love, our deepest love.
I love my mom, I love my wife,
I love my children, my grandchildren, I love
them all.
I love this congregation, I love the deacons,
I love everyone, God, you know that's true,
but I love you more than anyone.
Help us all to love you more than
anyone or anything.
Now, Lord, you know we can't do this
by ourselves.
We're too selfish, we're too weak, but you
have begun a good work in us.
Complete it now.
Make us soldiers.
Make us strong.
Make us strong where we've been weak.
Make us straight where we've been crooked.
Help us to put away every secret thing
that's not of you, Lord, so that we
can be clean and happy and whole for
the person who saves their life will lose
it.
They're gonna lose their life.
You said that, you warned us.
The one who clings and holds on to
their way is gonna lose everything, but the
one who loses their life will find their
real life in following you, serving you.
There's something strange going on out there, Lord.
It's in the churches, too.
Things that were once known to be wrong
are now suddenly right.
Your word never changes.
That cannot be, but it's the pressure, Lord.
It's the pressure.
It's this subtle, damnable pressure to fit in,
be accepted, not be laughed at, but today
we wanna say to you we have decided
to follow Jesus.
We're not turning back, Lord.
By your grace, we're not gonna turn back.
We thank you for your word today to
us.
We are happy to follow you.
We are happy to trust you.
We are the most blessed people on the
face of the earth because we have Jesus.
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but Jesus
and his word will never pass away.
Make us strong now, Lord, to serve you
and to be used by you in this
critical hour that we're living in.
It's, God, God, it's a critical hour.
You gotta answer our prayers.
You gotta do something new in us.
It's no joke out there.
There's a current that's sucking people off left
and right, Lord.
Keep us strong.
Keep us close to you.
We pray it in Jesus' name.
And everyone said aloud.
Amen.
Stand up and hug each other gently.
Greet one another.