Colossians, Fullness and Freedom V, How to Have a Ministry of Power

You can be seated. Let's jump right into tonight's teaching in the Book of Colossians. And I'm looking for the light spot, Dave. Where is that? Right about here? All right. You all should have gotten an outline. If you didn't get one, would you put your hand up so the ushers can run down and give you some now? Little green outline. It's really basic, but it does help to have something to write on. Oh, by the way, Francis Infuso's message this weekend, he's called us and he's felt prompted to change what he was going to bring. And this really even sounds a little more intriguing to me. Go ahead, Donna. Clearing up your perplexion. Understanding life's setbacks. Oh, none of you have ever had any of those. That may not be a very relevant message, but for a few of us, they've had a setback or two. I think knowing Francis, there's going to be humor. There's going to be a lot of stories that we can relate to. But mainly, there's going to be a lot of insightful truth that's going to be shared. Colossians chapter 1. If you're here tonight for the first time, this is our fifth teaching in this expositional walk through the book of Colossians. I'm really excited to share in this ministry with Dave and Grant and Todd last week. And Dave picks up again next week. And we're just going to keep barreling. I thought I was going to barrel through 12 verses, but I got stuck on Paul. Verse 24. Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, which is the church. I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness, the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations but is now disclosed to the saints. To them, God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is, read it with me, Christ in you, the hope of glory. We proclaim him admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end, I labor, struggling with all his energy which so powerfully works in me. I want you to know how much I'm struggling for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not met me personally. My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Isn't that great? I mean, you just read that, and the whole world out there is trying to figure out what it's about. And we hear, right, clear as a bell, it's all in Christ. Without him, it doesn't make sense. I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments, for though I'm absent from you in body, I'm present with you in spirit and delight to see how orderly you are and how firm your faith in Christ is. How many of you, I need just a little bit of a context here. How many of you eat at a fast food restaurant twice a week or more? Boy, I feel suddenly slobby myself. I must eat six or eight times. How many of you eat at a fast or, well, no. How many of you eat regular, just go regular home-cooked meals the great majority of the time? Just you kind of stir it up, yep. Now, how many of you have a thoughtful, well-prepared, nicely presented, multiple course gourmet meal every week? We have a chefess here who put her hand up. When's the last time you spent at least an hour and a half having dinner? Can you tell me when was it? Maybe it was last night. Maybe it was six months ago. But how many say that is the exception, not the rule? Let me see that. When we're going through the Word, the fact of the matter is most of us who are honest grab fast food bites. And every once in a while, we have a good home-cooked meal. And rarely do we really sit and just let the Word feed our soul. I know, because that's kind of where I live. And those days that I'm able to do that, it's a treasure to me, because my soul gets fed. And as we're looking through this tonight, I pray that if nothing else, you just increase in your hunger to want to sit down and have a gourmet meal on your own. And the greatest thing about living when we do in 1995 is the resources that are available to you to have your own meal. I mean, our resource center out there is a cookbook. You can go in there and get everything you need to become, basically, a Bible expert. But more than that, to feed yourself in the Word of God. And tonight, we're going to see some of the most important things that Paul says about his motivational attitude about ministry. And I'm going to get to that in just a minute. But before I do, I wanted to say a couple of things about where we've been, because I think it's so important. And I know that every Wednesday, a few new people are showing up. And that's exciting. And I love it when you tell people about Wednesday nights, because it encourages us to prepare and teach and minister when you just spread the Word around. But we've been getting excellent teaching, and we've been getting some things down in our spirits that are important if we're to go on and really get the challenge that's ahead of us. Look at verse 21. There, Paul writes and tells the people where they were. And Grant, last week, talked about that. They were alienated. Remember that word? Alienated? It's an awful thing to be alienated from someone, isn't it? But verse 22, then, Paul went on to say, where you now stand. You were alienated, but now you stand. Look at verse 22. Reconciled by Christ's physical body through death to present you wholly in His sight without blemish and free from accusation. And verse 23, then, says where you must go if you're going to continue on. So where you were, where you are, and where you must go if you're to continue on in the faith. Look at verse 22 for just a moment, because there's a couple of words here. How many of you can't imagine yourself being wholly, without blemish, and free from accusation? It doesn't sound like the way I live. How many of you had at least one thing that accused you today about just being a sort of a wormy kind of person? One thing you said, one attitude you had, one thought about somebody? But right here, the Bible says that Christ presents you that way. And there's two words that I just want to nail down. Dave did an excellent job. I think Grant did the same thing. But I'm not convinced, as I prayed about this, that we all really get these two words. And they are vital if you're to have a life that's free from condemnation and secure to go on and be effective. The two words are reconciliation and justification. So the three principal themes we've seen so far, number one, I think, is in the overhead. The whole of these verses, 15 through 23, is about the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ. And then he talks here in verse 22 about being reconciled and justified. Let me talk about reconciliation for just a moment. How many of you think you know what reconciliation is? Please, Dave, put up your hand. You taught this. Thank you. OK. Reconciliation is when enemies become friends. This is the word you use in relationship to understanding God as your Father. And the Bible is saying, and I want you to get this loud and clear and ask God to just give you revelation in your own heart about it, that you have been reconciled. You are not being reconciled. This is not something you're improving upon by how good you've been or how much you've given or done for God. You have been reconciled. Notice, in fact, if you have some of those marking pens, you should take your marking pen right now and just put in an underline right there, middle verse 22, through death, underline, to present you. To present you. You are being presented to God. Reconciled and justified. The word justified, I always remember it this way. Of all the seminary and all that stuff I had, it's still the easiest way to remember it. To be justified is to be just as if I never sinned. Think of God as your judge, and that's where justification comes in. You've been reconciled as a father, and you've been justified as a judge. Again, what you need to get done in your heart is that you know that at the end of the age, when God consummates everything, which may be this weekend, I don't know, maybe 100 years from now, you will stand before Almighty God, and he will declare you justified and righteous and holy and acceptable in his sight. You know that now, because Christ has done for you what you could not do for yourself. Now, the reason I know this is an issue is because some of you grew up in an environment where you were taught that if you kept doing the right things that people in a church or people in some kind of religious background kept telling you to do, if you kept doing those things, you would be then acceptable. But you wouldn't really know until that last day, and in fact, if you did something really bad the last day of your life, you better get someone nearby real quick to help you get cleaned up before you die. And so you've been dangling by this doubt and uncertainty, and I wanna make it really clear tonight that reconciliation and justification, say the two words with me, reconciliation and justification are done deals when you put your faith in the blood of the cross of Jesus Christ. I don't understand how God could do that, but he does. And sanctification, the process of becoming holy or conformed to the image of Christ is just that. It's a process that's predicated on the certainty of your faith and your justification and reconciliation. If you don't know this, if it's not something that pulsates in you, then the process of sanctification is a slippery slope. I wish I could do a moonwalk, I don't have it. But that's what it's like, because you can't make progress in sanctification because you're always wondering, I wonder if I'm really justified. I wonder if I'm really redeemed. And the reason I know that's true is every Sunday morning when I give an invitation, some people lift up their eyes and raise their hand every single week. Some of you have confided in me, I thought I was really doing okay with God, but I'm not really sure that I know him. You need to get that down. It's a gift that God wants to sink down into your spirit and let you know that you know, that you know that you're not just 100 years from now, but today you're redeemed. Today you're reconciled. Today you're justified. And if you ever need a reason to come to worship, just think about that one. When I come in here, I don't come and say, did I have a good day? Is this a day I really ought to praise God for? I mean, when you come in here, the only reason you need to worship God is what I just said. You've been justified. You've been redeemed and reconciled by the blood of the cross. It's all the reason we need to worship, amen? It's the only reason we need. Now, this is important because to go on from this without this being sunk down into your spirit is just a futile exercise. And when we talk about power ministry here in a moment, you gotta take it off the base of what you know is true about you. God has declared that you're reconciled and that you're justified on the basis of faith in Christ. Now, knowing those things, Paul goes on and let's look carefully now at what you're gonna see here is his passion for the gospel and for the church. Here is a man who is passionate about the church. Verse 23 and verse 25 indicate that the gospel and the church were inseparable in Paul's eyes. Folks, I frequently get asked, and sometimes I have to admit it's in a critical way about why I feel so strongly about the church and particularly this church. And I have to say to you, I understand the whole issue of a citywide church and regional church and universal church, but I also believe there is something profound about the local church. And Paul is passionate in his declaration about the gospel and the church. You're not gonna make it out if you're just sort of serving the gospel on the circuit. I mean, eventually you will find yourself adrift and probably deceived. But Paul makes some very clear things here that aren't techniques about ministry. They are attitudinal. Now, when you think of a ministry of power, what do you think of? If I were to say, we're gonna have a ministry of power tonight, what would you, come on, give me some images. What would you see? You'd see healing lines, right? And you'd see miracles. You'd see people being prayed for and falling over, maybe getting up and walking, maybe rubbing their eyes. Maybe their hair would grow back, I don't know. But you'd see power ministry, okay? That's what you think of, you think of miracles. But Paul, the apostle, defined power ministry in his life as the power to see people's lives transformed. Now, occasionally miracles would follow his ministry. But folks, when you read the book of Acts, it's very clear that most of Paul's ministry didn't have the spectacular miracles that you saw on occasion. I mean, that's the deceiving thing about reading the Bible narratives. You know, you read about a miracle in Laodicea, or in, you know, pick it up, in Corinth. And then, oh, and they moved and traveled on down in the missionary journey to this next city, and they saw another miracle. But they don't tell you, it was like four months. Four months of just doing what I'm gonna talk about right now. And yet, the gospel was having power to change lives. So let me share with you three words that I think define a ministry of power, and you're not gonna like them. Here's the first one. A ministry of power, if you're called to a ministry of power, then you're called to, number one, suffer. It's so easy for me to pass over this word, and you wanna know why? Because I can't relate to it. I mean, I can say a lot of things about my ministry, but I don't suffer. I don't think we in America really have a clue about suffering. Let me remind you that Paul wrote this letter to a church that he'd never seen. And where was he writing it from, as Dave told us in week one? A prison cell. And what was the implication of being in that prison cell? What was likely on Paul's mind was awaiting him? Execution. He was clearly suffering. He was often in chains, and you know the detailing of his own journey of suffering for the gospel. But we don't have much of that, do we? You know, F.F. Bruce writes about this particular, very intriguing phrase, I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions. He says, Paul is saying, in my own person, I am filling up those afflictions of Christ which have yet to be embraced on behalf of his body, the church. You see, just as Jesus came as the suffering servant, and he himself suffered for the gospel, and suffered for our salvation, we too who are committed to evangelism are going to suffer in some form. And Paul knew that better than anybody. Turn to the book of Acts in chapter nine. Remember, Paul was a zealous Pharisee. One author said that Paul would have left his stamp on history, Christian or not, because of the intellect and the passion that he had for God. Paul was a man of great tradition, and he was very convinced that when the Messiah came, that Messiah would free Christians, or free the Jews, rather, free the Jews from Roman rule. And there was no way that Paul believed that this man, Jesus, was the Messiah. You know that, don't you? Why? Why couldn't Paul believe that Jesus was the Messiah? What was his great stumbling block? Because Paul knew the Old Testament law. In the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 21 and verse 23 says, listen, cursed is anyone who hangs on the tree. How could the Messiah of God be under the curse of God? So this Jesus was an imposter. Paul clearly thought that. He was convinced that this was not the Messiah. And so he was out to destroy the church. And if you read carefully the book of Acts, he was driving the persecution of the Christians, oftentimes being involved in the arrest and persecution of believers. Now, I want you to look at Acts nine. Okay, he's out there, he's on his way. Look at verse two. He asked for letters to the synagogues, that if he found any belonging to the way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute the church? Me, why do you persecute me? Who are you, Lord? Saul asked. I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Friends, let's stop right there. Anytime, anytime you may suffer or be persecuted for the gospel, remember this one thing, it's Jesus. That is the object of your rejection, of your persecution, of the hurt that you're feeling. And the reason you can rejoice is because you're bearing that affliction in your body for Christ. The Bible clearly teaches you will be rewarded. That's why it says rejoice when you're persecuting, because God has counted you worthy to bear that affliction so he can reward you. And so it goes on down and he has this incredible experience. Look at that in verse 10. In Damascus, there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called him to him in a vision, Ananias. Yes, Lord, he answered. The Lord told him, go to the house of Judas in straight street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul for he's praying. In a vision, he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight. Now, I love Ananias, because here he wants to help God know that maybe that's not a great idea. He says, Lord, I heard many reports about this dude and all the harm he's done to your saints in Jerusalem. Notice he doesn't say my friend, my brothers, but your saints. Basically, Ananias is saying, Lord, I'm not sure if you understand this guy Saul, he's trouble. You can't mean this thing. But look what he says. Verse 16, I will show him how much he must, what? Suffer for my name. And so the suffering begins from that moment. And then look just over to Acts 21. A couple of places and just illustrative of what Paul endured for the sake of the gospel. Verse 10, Acts 21. I'm sorry, if you don't have a Bible, I hope I'm not losing you here. Thank you for being patient. But it says, I want you to underline these things. After we had been there a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. Notice prophets always have these cool names. Agabus. How many of you named your kid something like Agabus or Ezekiel, I don't know. Coming over to us, he took Paul's belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, the Holy Spirit says in this way, the Jews of Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles. Now remember, Agabus was a proven prophet. He had prophesied the famine that had preceded this. You know, the whole section of the world came under famine because Agabus prophesied it. So when Saul or Paul, now Paul sees this man and here comes this heavy duty prophet. He says, by the way, and he takes Paul's belt. And I'm not sure how he tied his own hands and feet with it. That was kind of a miracle in and of itself, if you think about it. And he says, this is what's gonna happen symbolically of the person who only spent, if you'd been Paul, what would you have said right then? You know, that belt, I just borrowed that belt from Bill over here. That's not my belt. I was just gonna give that belt away. I don't really, you know, if it were me, I wouldn't want a prophet to come and say, this is what's gonna happen to the owner of this belt and see himself all bound up symbolic of the suffering he was about to endure. And look what happens. When we heard this verse 12, we and the people, they're pleaded with Paul, oh, don't go to Jerusalem. And if I'd been Paul, I'd have said, oh, you know, praise God, someone finally got a word from the Lord. Really clear, you know, this prophet is off the wall. These people, right? That's not what happened. What happened? Paul answered verse 13. Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready. Everyone say that. I am ready. About five of you said, I am ready. Not only, he says, not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. I am ready. Those two words or that conjunction in a word, I'm ready. I want to land on that for a minute. Cause in my prayer time late this afternoon, I felt like this was the core of the message for tonight. I'm ready, Paul says, for the gospel, for the name of the Lord, for the sake of the lost, I'm ready. I'm ready to be sent. I'm ready to stay. I'm ready to give myself away. I'm ready to receive whatever God has for me. I'm ready to lay my life down. I'm ready to pick it up and move. I'm ready to serve. I'm ready to be served. I'm ready to give. I'm ready to receive. I'm ready to listen. I'm ready to speak. I'm ready to minister. I'm ready to lay down my life. I'm ready to sacrifice. Just a simple little question tonight. Are you ready to do whatever God would ask you to do? How many of you believe that's a lot easier just to nod and say, yeah. And then you walk out and God says something very significant and very profound to you. I had to search my own heart. I wanna be ready. I wanna be ready to do whatever God says, but I'm just like most all of us. Folks, we have this very strong sort of momentum of our lives, don't we? We're gonna do this and we're gonna do that and we're gonna have this routine and that routine. And very often we never hear God say, would you do this? Would you be, would you pour out your life here? Why? Because we're not ready. I wanna be ready to do what God says. I wanna be ready to hear the word of the Lord. I wanna be ready to pour out my life. I wanna be ready to be embarrassed. I wanna be ready to be rejected. I wanna be ready to be a friend. I wanna be ready to listen. I wanna be ready to be used. You know, in three weeks, three weeks from tonight, we're hosting a revival conference. We really, we're just serving as the host. We're not, we didn't design this. We didn't invite the people, but Tim Bergen from CTV called me, gee, a couple of weeks after we're in here and he came and he said, this would be a great location and this is the purpose and these are the people and I recognized all the names and I prayed about it and kind of talked to some of the staff and elders about it. And so we're hosting this conference. We're ready. And I have a sense that there's gonna be, it's gonna be an eye-opening weekend. And this isn't, you know, in the previous months of the fall, we talked about, you know, times of refreshing and the move of the spirit, but these people that are coming are folks whose roots are deep down in the revival of prayer that's going on around the world. And we're gonna learn some neat things. We're ready. I just have to say, are you ready for what God may wanna teach you on the 22nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th of March? And are you ready to hear the word of the Lord and then respond to that in your own life? Because it's when you're ready that you find that God is able then to move you where he wants you. And sometimes with suffering, that's how it happens, but that's where the fruit is, when you're ready to respond. I don't suffer, but I have to say this, I'm ready and I wanna be more ready. And I'm grateful to be in a place where it's okay to be growing in that with you. All right, second thing I want us to see here is that Paul says back now in Colossians 1, that I have become its servant, that is the servant of the church by the commission that God gave to me. The second thing is, if you wanna have a ministry of power, you have to be willing to serve. In verse 23 and verse 25, Paul says, I'm a servant of the gospel and of the church. Now we could do an entire series on serving. In fact, I have in the past. It's clearly a key to greatness in the kingdom of God. Jesus not only taught it, but isn't it something that does it ever grab you like it grabs me now and then, that the one who was the Lord of the universe, the creator of all things, the one who had the power to do whatever he's so well pleased to do, chose to come as a servant and to obey God to the point where he would bow down and wash the feet of another man before he laid down his life and died on the cross. This one whom we exalted as Lord of all in song is the servant of all. One of the things about this church that I love is the fact that so many people quietly and willingly serve. We instituted several weeks ago the Servant's Heart Award, remember that? And we had about 60 or 70 responses just like that. People nominating other people, many of whom you don't know because they're behind the scenes serving. And that's one of the things that makes this church as wonderful as it is, is because many people have that vision to serve. But I've also noticed that that service is many times built on an ability to find a place where there's a need and a fit. And I don't want you to put your hand up because I know some of you don't know this, but are you really convinced that you know where you fit in your ministry of service? One of the things that you've got to come to terms with is God has created you in a unique way to fit into some role in the body of Christ. And I'm grieved when I discover how many people don't know what that is. People can walk in the Lord for 20 or 30 years and never really know, this is what I was fitted to do. One of the things that's been thrilling for me in the last several years is I've had experiences where the Lord has clearly spoken to my life. I mean, in my conscious mind, in certain circumstances, and said to me, this is what I created you to do. And it is a wonderful thing. I'll tell you about one of those times. Six months ago, when flight 427 crashed just tragically killed everybody, I was called to do a funeral from a family who had been part of North Way and then had drifted away. And it was one of the first funerals that was taking place for the people that had perished in that plane crash. And I remember so distinctly, I worked with Susie and Bill and others here on the staff. We didn't have a church. We didn't have a building. We had to go down to North Park. But I remember walking up to take the microphone to begin that service. And I heard the voice of the Lord say to me, I created you for this moment. And if you were there that day, and I know some of you were, there was a very unique thing that happened in that one hour or less, 50 minutes together where scores of people searched their hearts and knew that the presence of God was very tangible. And I've had other things like that. And there is nothing in all of life that compares to that for me. Now, is that just something I should get? Because I devoted myself to the gospel. No, you need to know that you have the same call from God. He's created you with certain gifts and a unique pattern of life and personality that he wants to use in a very precious way. And when you find it, folks, it's a joy. I mean, it's a delight. It's a thrill. And I want you to believe that God has that for you. And sometimes it moves a little bit. And sometimes you try something. Anyone ever try to ministry and kind of bombed? I've done that a lot of times. You just bombed. I mean, that wasn't it. And that's okay. I mean, you know, God, he gets over it. Very few things really get God sort of all bent out of shape. Ooh, I really messed that one up. I tried to do an open air campus revival thing once where I would go out in the quad and preach. That wasn't me. I knew it because no one ever stopped to listen. I just kept walking by it. Nothing worse than feeling totally irrelevant. But see, what Paul says here is that I've come to be a servant. So it's not just the fit. Another thing I see that people say that they need is they need to be appreciated. And that's very true. But the fact that Paul was able to have this spirit of service while he was in prison says to me one very important thing. He says that his awareness of the needs of others was greater than his own preoccupation with himself. I want to say that again. Paul's awareness of the needs of others, people he'd never met, by the way, was greater than his own awareness of the circumstances in which he found himself. And if you're to be a servant of the Lord, may I say one of the things that you need to be able to do is to have a sensitivity to the needs of others. Folks, the greatest way to grow as a Christian is to ask God, help me to see the needs of others and then let me be an instrument to meet them. And a miracle happens because God undertakes, he starts sending people your way and they take care of you. The motivation for being a servant has to be a vision of seeing lives changed, not just, well, you know, I ought to do it because I'm a member of the church now. How many of you know improper motivations for serving burn out real quickly? How many of you, anyone here, part of last summer's all-star gang volunteer army? Remember, we had the all-star game in Pittsburgh. Wasn't it last July, wasn't it? And they had a big volunteer, and I remember them being on the radio saying, we need people to stand in the streets and show all of the guests that are coming to Pittsburgh what a great city we are. And we want the whole world to watch television and see what a neat city we are. Well, the reports I got were that, yeah, a lot of people turned out, and then all of a sudden it just started dripping away. Because you see, the motivation to show people what a great city this is doesn't last very long. It's okay, but, you know, the nation really doesn't care all that much, even about baseball at this point. But when it comes to the motivation to serve God, we know that what we're giving our lives to has eternal consequence for people. And the reason why I can be fired up no matter what happens is I know that what I'm giving to people will last in their life, now and on into eternity. And the Bible makes it very clear that God doesn't miss a blink about this. He sees it and He rewards it. And one of the keys is allowing yourself to be used, not just in the church. Listen carefully. This is an important point in this thing, because one of the greatest sources of encouragement to you as a servant will come when you serve people outside the body. We're prone to serve people that we're safe with, but you want to really shake someone up? Serve them, if they're not Christians, serve them in some tangible way, and let it be known that you're doing it because of the love of God. Not in a holier than thou, but, you know, I just wanted you to know that the Lord loves you and I just wanted you to receive that. There's a fellow out in Cincinnati by the name of Steve Sogren. How many of you have heard of Steve? Anybody? His book, Conspiracy of Kindness, talks about the way he discovered the power of serving. He had tried to do this one-on-one evangelization. How many of you have ever tried to go on a witnessing mission door-to-door? Oh, is that a, that's brutal in today's culture, okay? And he was having the same results that most of us have. He was just getting beat up every place he went. And the Lord spoke to him at one point along the way, and I want to quote it because it was a powerful thing. He was like many of us, he was just feeling futile in the whole thing. Oh, somewhere, I guess I misplaced it. But the Lord said, if you take care of the pains of my loved ones, I'll send them to you. And so Steve went out, and all that he did was he did kind acts. He went to a neighbor's house and raked up their leaves. He got his group of his leaders together and held a car wash for free. People came and they washed the cars and said, well, okay, you know, why are you doing this? Money for a trip or something? No, we just want you to know that the Lord loves you. Could we pray for anything for you? The first day they did it, they had 42 cars and stuff. Every person allowed them to pray for them. Several of them had tears in their eyes and testified to something happening. Well, I'll make a long story short. Over the last 10 years, his church has grown from 20 people to 2,500 people. And they've planted something like 15 or 18 congregations in the greater Cincinnati area, all based on the principle of serving others at their point of need and using it as a bridge to share the gospel. Great little