Cleansed Inside and Out (Then Jesus Came Series #4) Luke 17:11-19

Jesus meant more than his physical needs. He said, your faith has made you whole. This idea of being whole, he was healed and delivered from the penalties of the messianic judgment. In other words, because of the man's faith. Because he came back and worshipped and glorified and recognized Jesus. He was spiritually healed as well. In our terminology today, we would say, the man got saved. Jesus was needed, so he saved him. There's no one to keep him. I have actually two more. I could go on and on in all of these, but I have two more I'm going to look at, and then sort of six total, and then we'll move on to something else. I took a little different approach to the passage this time with my studies and my notes and so on. To some degree, and we've hit the easier, obvious attributes in the first three, but to some degree, we keep seeing kind of the same thing in all of the stories as far as the big attributes of Jesus. And I thought, well, I'm going to start to repeat myself quite a little bit, and so we're going to do a little different something today, or I approach it a little bit differently. And obviously, we've seen that Jesus is all-knowing, and we've seen that over and over in everyone and his planning and so on. And we're still going to overlap to some degree, but this time, I looked at the passage, and as I looked at it, I began to see or began to list the things I saw about Jesus in the text. And I looked at it, and then I went back and looked at it, and every time I go back and look at it, I see different things. Some of them were huge things, okay? Some of them were just little tiny glimpses of something I would see, but I just went back over and over, and I jotted down everything, every big thing, every little thing, and the list became quite long. The challenge then became, to me, was to pick three for three points. I could have went four, five, ten, but I thought three's a good number. And to look at those today, I'm going to bleed. I'm just going to kind of meander. I felt like that after I got done with my notes. It's like, okay, I've just gone all over the place with these because I have too much of my list to start with. But so bear with me as we do this. I want to challenge you sometime to do the same thing. You know, we look at these familiar accounts, and we look at the people involved, and we look at the miracle, and we don't always focus on the person of Christ. It's kind of a different way to look at things. And so I challenge you to look at these familiar accounts. Don't just look at it once, but as you go through it, think through it many times, see how many of God's or Christ's attributes or characteristics you can list. Not only the big things, but also the little things. Let me ask you, please, to turn in your copy of Scripture. And this morning, we are going to read the text. There's only eight verses. Luke chapter 17, if you would, please. Luke chapter 17, we want to look at verses 11 through 19. So Luke chapter 17. Give you a second to turn there. Familiar passage, beginning with verse 11. It says, And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks. And he was a Samaritan. So Jesus answered and said, But where are the nine? Three things I want to focus on this morning as we look at this passage. First of all, mercy. Secondly, healing. And third, heartbreak. Before we dive into this passage, let's stop and have a word of prayer. Father, give me thank you for this wonderful, beautiful day you've given to us. We thank you for everyone who's here today. Pray for those who couldn't be here. You know where they're at, what's going on. And I pray that you'd be with them, that you would bless them in their travels or in their work or whatever's happening in their lives. I ask that you would be with those who may be joining us online or in other ways this morning. I pray that you would bless them and encourage them as they follow along in this passage with us. I pray that you would give us a great time together, a great time of fellowship, and just a great time of learning that the Holy Spirit will work our lives in a mighty way. And we give you the thanks and the praise in Christ's name. Amen. My first point this morning is mercy. Luke chapter 17. I know we just read it. Let's look at it again, 11 through 14. Now, it happened as he went to Jerusalem that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. Then as he entered a certain village, there met him 10 men who were lepers, who stood afar off. And they lifted up their voices and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And when he saw them, he said to them, Go, show yourselves to the priest. And it was so. As they went, they were fled. Just a little introduction. I'll tell you the honest truth. I had to trim my notes a little bit. I told my wife I was practicing the doge. I was in the Department of Efficiency. And I had to make my notes more efficient because it was really, really long. So I cut some things out about what I wanted to say about leprosy. So you might have to do it on your own time. But leprosy is a serious and contagious disease. Again, because of time, I'm not going to really look at it. Just other than to say its effects in people's lives during biblical times was horrendous. It really did cause much trouble, especially for the Jewish population, this thing of leprosy. And it's medically treatable today, but then it was devastating. It was a devastating blow to be pronounced with leprosy as a Jew. As others as well. As we find the Samaritans were in the same boat. In our text, we find as Jesus entered into the city that these 10 men stood afar off. That means they kept their distance. Now, why they did that was because they were following the law. They were following the Jewish law. They were unclean. And it doesn't record that they announced that they were unclean, which makes me think, okay, was this a leper colony? And again, I had all that written down and I didn't want to cut it out. I'm kind of projecting some things there. I don't know. But they were not to go near other people because they were contagious. And so they stood afar off. They begged Jesus to have mercy on them. Mercy is defined basically as not giving someone what they deserve in the sense of judgment or punishment. So they were asking Jesus to have mercy, and we'll get to this in a minute, but to take away the effects of this disease even though maybe they did deserve it in some way. Well, mercy is identifiable. It is not a stand-alone attribute. And so as I jotted down the word mercy, in my notes, I said, Jesus, mercy. Well, mercy just doesn't come by itself. You can define it by itself. It's identifiable. It is a separate thing. But it's something that just doesn't happen alone. It's very difficult to separate it in practice from grace and love and compassion. If you have mercy on someone, you're also going to have grace. You're also going to have love. You're also going to have compassion. You're going to have these other things. And it's hard, if not impossible, to have one without the other. But I find that Jesus is merciful. Jesus is merciful. That's part of his attributes. That's part of his characteristics. He is full of mercy. Again, I don't know these circumstances. I don't know how they became lovers. I don't know if it was because of sin in their life or if it was just this contagious disease they came in contact with somehow. I don't know how they got it, but whatever the case, they realized Jesus and mercy could take pity on them and heal them from the disease. In that sense. And I've kind of stretched this a little bit, I guess. But mercy was not allowing them to have the effects that the disease was bringing. The physical pain. Leprosy is an interesting thing, though, because I say the physical pain, it actually deadens the nerves. And so the pain is really not there, but there's still physical pain. It doesn't make a lot of sense, kind of a contradiction in a sense. There was a missionary. I'll throw this in. You've heard me tell this before. And they were asking, they were kind of saying, what are you thankful for? And this missionary said, I'm thankful for pain. And they were confused by that and said, what do you mean by that? And he said, the leper colonies that he worked with, they were, and if you look at pictures online, there's some horrendous pictures of lepers where they're deformed and they're burned and they're broken and their bodies are just really a mess. And the reason being is because they can't feel what's going on. And he said, so the leprosy has affected the nerves and they'll rip like a boiling pan off the fire and like just scorch their hands and not even know they're doing it because they can't feel anything. Or they'll break a bone and not know it and so it heals crooked. So all of this kind of things went on with these lepers. Like I said, so it was a physical pain, but it really wasn't physical pain. And yet they suffered from it. Other effects of this disease was the social ostracization. They weren't allowed to be around anybody. They were lepers. They were contagious. Again, it's treatable today, but there are still leper colonies today. As I was looking at it, I said it's a series of three different antibiotics they use and it seems to clear it up. And it's a bacterial infection. But again, then they didn't know that and they didn't have the medicine to do that and so they were kicked out. They lived in the leper colonies. They lived outside of town by themselves. They weren't allowed to take part in social things. Even coming to the temple was forbidden. And so this was the social, they were basically social outcasts. Isolated from everyone and anything. Now, put yourself in that place if you were a parent being isolated from your children or isolated from your family so you couldn't see them really except from a far distance. You had to live away from home. What a mess you'd be in. And this would bring about emotional and mental pain and anguish. And so they're crying out for Jesus and they're saying, Jesus, have mercy on us. And so Jesus in his mercy did provide for their healing. God works in interesting ways in healing people as well as other areas of our lives. God always works in interesting ways. Sometimes I scratch my head and say, what are you doing, God? He knows. Okay? I find that sometimes when Jesus healed people, it was immediate. Boom. It was done. In Matthew 8, it was the account of another leper who asked to be healed. In Matthew 8, 3 we read that Jesus put out his hand and touched him saying, I am willing, that is, to be cleaned. The leper asked to be cleaned. Cleansed him. Are you willing to cleanse him? So again, 8, 3 says that Jesus put out his hand and touched him and said, I am willing, be cleansed. And immediately, the leprosy was cleansed. Sometimes Jesus didn't heal what he requested and what I mean by that is he didn't heal it all. The request was there, but he didn't heal that person. Now, this isn't from the Gospels, but it's one we're going to be familiar with. It's the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12. He had an ailment. We don't know what the ailment was. He had something going on. We don't know what it was. And he writes in 2 Corinthians 12, Concerning this thing, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And he, that is God, said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, most gladly, I would rather boast of my authorities that the power of Christ may be upon me. So in this case, again, it's not dealing with Jesus necessarily, but God and Jesus are one in this. It's the same, different persons, one God. And Paul said, I asked God three times to take this from me. Three times I begged God. And God said, Nope, I'm not going to do it. My grace will carry you through. You're just going to have to bear with it. You have to deal with it. And it never did get removed. And there's a lot of ideas in what it might have been. We don't know. It doesn't matter. Sometimes God required folks to demonstrate their faith or wait for some reason. One such example is the case of the blind man who was brought to Jesus. In John 9, we read, and Jesus is teaching, okay, and so they bring this blind man to him. It says, When he had said these things, he sat on the grounds to Jesus. He sat on the ground and made clay with saliva. And he anointed the eyes of the blind man with clay, and he said to him, Go, wash in the pool of saliva, which is translated scent. So he went and washed and came back seeing. Now, I don't know why Jesus would do things like this, but you read in the scripture often that he did something, and even back in the Old Testament, God did the same way. I'm thinking of Nabal with leprosy. When he went to the prophet, the prophet said, Go dip yourself sometimes in the Jordan River and you'll be cleansed. And remember, Nabal went away mad. He was like, Wow, he could have just come out himself. He said a servant ought to tell him. He could have come out himself, and he could have just healed me right there. I could go back home, and the river's there cleaner. Anyway, he was mad. But until he did it, so he demonstrated he was going to follow the instructions, then nothing happened. Same way with a blind man in this couch. Jesus bit underground, made mud, made clay, put it on his eyes. He said, Go wash. If the blind man would have never gone to wash, he would have never gotten to say. Now, I don't understand why Jesus sometimes immediately healed people. Sometimes you had him wait or demonstrate your faith or whatever the case is going to be that was going on in their life. Sometimes he actually says, No, I'm not going to heal you. Whatever the situation is, I know that it was every case in everybody's life is different. If God works, if Jesus works, God works differently in everyone's life depending on two things. One, their needs, and two, his plans. Second point this morning, healing. Luke 17, 4. And when he saw them, he said to them, Go, show yourselves to the priest. And so it was as they went, they were cleansed. In the Gospel of Christ, we find many instances of Christ healing people of different infirmities and sicknesses. This is one of those instances as we mentioned earlier that the healing wasn't immediate. Jesus said, Go, show yourself to the priest. And as they were walking away, we find that they were healed. Jesus could have said to them, You're healed. Go your way. I don't know why he didn't. Instead, he maintained his distance. And we may not know all the reasons for this. I can guess a couple of things. One that came to mind was one reason he didn't go close enough because he didn't heal them right away. And if he would have went close enough to touch them and so on, he would have been considered unclean by the Jewish people he was seeking to reach. I don't know if that was the reason or not. That's the thing that came to my mind. And there's two other reasons he may have handled it this way. He told them, Show themselves to the priest. Again, this would have been according to the Jewish law. The priest was the one that had to declare them free from leprosy. It was always interesting that it all went back to the priest to me. Didn't go to the doctors or anybody else. Go to the priest. Show yourself to the priest. He'll determine if you're free from leprosy or not. We don't know all the details as to why Jesus would heal these men in this way instead of instantly. But there are some things that we do know for certain. First of all, we know that Jesus had a reason and a plan. And his plan was carried out exactly as it was meant to be. He had a reason for doing what he did. We may not understand it, but it kind of goes back to where we are today. God always has a plan. God always has a reason. We may not understand it. He doesn't ask us to understand it. He just says, Do what I ask you to do. He said to these men, Go, show yourself to the priest. They just said, Oh, sure, right. Yeah, that's not going to happen. The priest won't let us. They would have never been healed. But in obedience, they followed what God asked them to do and they were blessed. They were healed because of it. Again, God expects the same things from us. And we may not see things happen immediately in our lives. But if we do as God asks us to do, he will bless us. Secondly, we know that while these ten men were going to see the priest, they were physically healed. We've already mentioned that. Third, we know that when Jesus heals someone, it was a complete physical healing. Jesus didn't say, Go show yourself to the priest to be healed from the waist up. He didn't do that with anybody. When he healed someone, it was total. It was complete. It was completely done. There were no leftover side effects. There was no partial healing with Jesus. A few years ago, I was working with the late Pastor Ray Herwig. I have a lot of respect for him. He was a big guy. Just big. I don't know, when he passed away, just not that long ago. Older than I was. I say older because now I'm probably his age. He was a carpenter by trade. But he also was a pastor and was in the ministry many, many years. And side note to this, we were helping build the log cabin. Dan and me were building the log cabin. And the instructions, it was one of these pre-modeled log cabins. You come in and put it up. And this was a monster. He had me working on the construction crew, which was funnier than all the get-outs, right? Because if you ever see me do construction, that's not one of my gifts. And so we're looking at this in the instructions. We all got to laughing about this because it said, you and your wife and a couple of friends can set the main beam. And we were laughing because we were trying to figure out how burly was the woman that this guy married that was going to lift the end of that beam up like a story and a half or two up into the air. Yeah, it took a crane. They had cranes, not cranes, but they had loaders at both ends that lifted it up. Anyway, so that was Ray. Ray was just a great guy to be around. I loved being around him. He was a lot of fun. And we were going out to this work site one day or coming back one or the other. We were just jabbing about a bunch of stuff. I was just out of college. So I was one of those, I know everything, college persons anyway. But I was trying to learn from him. And I don't even know how we got into the discussion. But we ended up somewhere along the line with divine healing and divine healers and all of that. And he said, I don't believe in divine healers, but I do believe in divine healing. And he went on to explain that God can and does heal people even today according to his will and plan for their life. So my next point in my notes was God can still heal people today. And there's a big if. If it is in his will. If there is a plan for it. I do not believe in divine healers. I'm not going to go mail a handkerchief to you and you're going to be healed because of it. We're not going to lay hands on you necessarily. In that sense that we see, you're going to be healed. Nothing like that. But he can heal people today. And I didn't put this in my notes, but he can do it a number of ways. He can do it, and I've heard of people where they've been healed in really, I'll call it mysterious ways. They were diagnosed, and I hear this a lot with cancer, they're diagnosed with cancer, they have a tumor, and they later go back and the tumor's gone. It's like, where did it go? Nobody knows. And that doesn't happen a lot, but I have heard of accounts where that has happened. Sometimes he heals people through doctors. So he says you're going to go through the chemo, you're going to go through the treatment, you're going to go through whatever you need to go through. And that is the wait. But in the end, their body is healed of whatever disease they had. And sometimes God says no. While there are some reports of unexplainable, miraculous healing in the life of a person as people pray, there is no promise of physical healing. Okay, so God can still heal today if it's in his will, but there is no promise of physical healing. God doesn't say I'm going to heal you of your sicknesses. I'm going to heal you of your diseases as a blanket promise. Okay, I'm going to throw a random side note. This is my brain kind of rambling. It's in my notes even, but I wrote it down. So here's my brain rambling around a little bit. I wonder sometimes if we don't see more of God's workings, and you go back to the verse in James I read, if we don't see more of God's workings is because we don't pray effectively and fervently. With faith, believing that God can do anything he pleases. If you look at that passage again, it says the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man and woman avails much. Do we pray believing that God can do it? Again, I don't know. Maybe I'm just all wet when it comes to this, but I often wonder if that's not part of the problem. We don't pray in faith. We don't pray effectively. We don't pray fervently, and we don't believe and trust God for the answer, and then when he does answer, we need to make sure that he gets the glory and the praise for it. It's not just, boy, were we lucky, or wonder how that happened, or it'll always be a miss. No, God did it. Give the glory to God. Well, okay, that was my brain just going on as well, I'm a rapture soul. Take it for what it's worth, okay? Just as in the days of Jesus, the answer may be yes or no, or you might say continue to follow me, people, while you wait. I also see that Jesus heals more than just in physical ways. Luke 17, 19, again in our text, he says, and he said to him, Arise, go your way. Your faith has made you well. There was only one of the ten that came back, glorified, praised, and thanked God for his healing. And there's one that came back, the wording in this verse 19 indicates that for this man, Jesus meant more than his physical needs. I wonder, I don't know why the others didn't come back. They were just too focused on their, and we'll get back to this in a minute, but they didn't come back, and this man came back and Jesus said, he said, your faith has made you whole. This idea of being whole, he was healed and delivered from the penalties of the messianic judgment. In other words, because of the man's faith, because he came back and worshiped and glorified and recognized Jesus, he was spiritually healed as well. In our terminology today, we would say the man got saved. That's a little bit off for this time period is what we think about being saved, but basically that's what it is. The man came to Christ, became a child of God. And it's interesting that Jesus didn't say, okay, now go to the priest. He said, go your way. So maybe he went to the priest, maybe he went back to his town, his home, whatever, but go your way. Jesus had cleansed him inside and out. The same is true today. People are sick in sin, they're lost and separated from God. 1 Peter 2.24 says, who himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness. By his stripes, you were healed. Christ died on the cross on our place taking the punishment for our sin that we all deserve. And when we come in faith, putting our faith and trust in Christ, God will cleanse us spiritually and bring us into his family. I find that this was true even back in the Old Testament. Isaiah 1.18 says, come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Jesus said in John 3.16, the verse, I'm probably tired of hearing me quote it, but it's so great, so good. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. So what can we learn from this second point, from this point of healing? First of all, healing in the scriptures could be physical, can be physical, more importantly, it is that we need to be healed spiritually. Second thing I see is that physical healing can happen today, but it's not promised by God. God doesn't say I'm gonna heal you. He might, he might not. He may do it in time. Third, it seems when miraculous physical healing does occur, it comes through the effective, fervent prayer of the righteous, not divine healers of some sort. And it's interesting that everybody, you know, you hear these stories occasionally of people being healed. Like, go back, the tumor's gone, and when you hear these stories, they also include with the story that people around the world were praying for these people. Again, God doesn't always work that way. He can't if he chooses to. When we pray for someone to be healed, do we pray in faith, believing God can do it? And if he answers that prayer in a positive way, do we praise and thank and glorify him? My third point this morning is heartbreaking. Luke 17, beginning with verse 15. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice glorified God and fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks, and he was a Samaritan. And Jesus answered and said, were there not ten cleansed, but were there nine? Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this one? I think one of the big things that stick out to me in this text is that he was a Samaritan. Boom, there it is, right out front. Do we know the dissension between the Jews and the Samaritans so we won't take time to re-go through all of that. But it's assumed by the way that this is written that there was one Samaritan and nine Jews. It was when Nolan came back and said there was one foreigner. So we assume the other were nine. They were heading for the priest. They were about the Jewish law. They were doing what they in their head thought they were supposed to do. Now there could be multiple reasons, and I said we could get back to this in a minute. But they did not return to say thanks to Jesus, including one. All they really were concerned about were themselves and their physical healing. It's all about me. Me, me, me, me. I want to be healed. Jesus, heal us. Oh, look, you said we go to the priest, we'll be healed. And so off we go, and that's where their focus was. That's where their whole mindset was. They were just going to be healed, and that was all they cared about. Secondly, it might be because of their blindness, because of their strict adherence to the law. That is their legalism. They were so legalistic, they were so into the Jewish law, the parasitical law, that they said we have to do this and we can't deviate from it, and they were going to go and do that. They were religious. Third, they didn't recognize who Jesus was, even though a miracle just occurred in their lives. And what I mean, they didn't recognize who Jesus was. They didn't recognize him as the Messiah. They recognized he was a good teacher. They said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. He was a good teacher. He was a good person. He was a prophet. He was whatever. But they didn't really recognize him as God to be worshipped. It's still a poor excuse for not coming back and at least saying thank you. Whatever the reason, and we could list a few more probably if we really sat down and brainstormed it, but whatever the reason, they didn't bother to even come back. That day to say thank you to Jesus. Only this Samaritan demonstrated true faith and glorified and praised Jesus. No one but this one. As we look at Jesus' reaction to this whole situation, I don't really believe it was a criticism of the Samaritan when Jesus said, were there not any, I'm sorry, they all accepted his warning when he said it that way. I don't know that that was an out-and-out criticism. It was kind of a fact of life. It was like it was, you know. You're a Samaritan. Why are you back worshipping me? I think it was more of a condemnation of the Jews. There was 10. Nobody bothered to come back except one more. One stranger, one Samaritan came. Where are everybody else? That is a true condemnation. And I think it was probably, and this is my head, this again, I projected this a little bit, but I really feel like it was said as an expression of sorrow and heartbrokenness on Jesus' part. Those who should have been the most thankful, those who should have been the most knowledgeable about who Jesus was, those who should have been in the forefront praising and glorifying God for the miracle that just took place in their life, they just walked away without any gratitude whatsoever. Jesus' heart can be broken still today. You know, it terrifies me, it frightens me to think that we can break Jesus' heart in the same way these men broke his heart as well as other ways. We can break Jesus' heart with our lack of recognizing who he is, with our lack of recognizing what he has done in our lives, by ignoring him until we need something. And I'm talking about Christians here. I'm talking about those who accepted Christ as Savior. We can ignore him. We can just, like, go on with our lives and not even think about Christ, not even think about God, until we need something and then, oh boy, we're all spiritual, we're ready to pray. By our lack of gratitude and our failure to give him the glory when he works in mighty ways in our lives, or just because he is God, give him the glory. We can break the heart of Jesus by our sinful behavior. When Jesus left this earth, he also sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in each believer. In the same ways that we can break Christ's heart and break Jesus' heart, we can grieve the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 4.30 says that, Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. It's kind of an awakening thing to realize we can break Christ's heart still today. We can grieve the Holy Spirit. The next thing we can do is we can quench the Holy Spirit. We can put the fire out. Do not quench the Holy Spirit. Do not water down, put out the fire. In the way that we live, do we break the heart of Jesus? Do we grieve and quench this Holy Spirit of God in our lives? To bring us to a conclusion this morning, I see that Jesus showed mercy on the ten lepers. The same mercy that is available to us today. It may not be the mercy of healing. It may be mercy in some other ways, but Jesus is the same. Jesus is merciful. Jesus shows mercy to us today. I see that Jesus miraculously physically healed the ten lepers. I know that today, I don't want to make this, I'm not trying to push this as a big issue, okay? But in the same way, God can still divinely heal our physical ailments if He chooses to do so. But it seems to me, as I read the scripture, only through the prayers of the righteous, only through the faith of prayers, and believing God can do it. And again, we don't see this happen often. And I wonder sometimes, is it because we don't pray as we ought to? I don't know, I'm just throwing that out there. I see that we can, I see more importantly, that physical healing, God still does heal people spiritually as they come to Him in faith, with a heart of repentance, receiving Christ as their Savior. We can break the heart of Jesus by the way we live and the things that we do and say and get involved with and so on, that displeases Him, and He looks at us and He says, where are you? Why are you doing this? Disappointed, heartbroken at us. We can also quench, and we can also grieve the Holy Spirit. How has God spoken to you today? And how will you respond? Let's stand and we'll close in prayer. Father, give me thank you for this wonderful day you've given to us. We thank you for the opportunity we have of being here today. Again, we thank you for those who aren't here. I pray for those who couldn't be here, that you would be with them. Again, as we asked earlier, that you would give them traveling mercy or that you would touch their bodies and heal them and lift them up. Father, that you would be with them as they're working. Whatever the case may be, Lord, that you would be with them today, that you would bless them and bring them back again safely when we every opportunity we have to fellowship together. I ask that you would give us a good week this week, that we would be able to speak with someone about it, encourage them through your word, to share with them the gospel of Christ. Father, just to encourage them in some way. That we'd be ministers to those around us. I ask that you would give us a good week, that we would use our time wisely. Father, that we would be aware of the things that we say and the things that we do. May we bring you glory and give you glory in all that we do. May we praise you and give you thanksgiving. May you receive the glory for our lives. And we thank you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.