A sermon on shared meals as spiritual practice, from Jesus sending disciples to eat in homes to the Last Supper. Elisha fed an enemy army and turned them into friends. Every meal is a chance to practice hospitality and discipleship.
Chapters
Today's scripture reading comes from Luke 10, verses 1 to 9. After this, the Lord appointed 72 others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few." Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals, and do not greet anyone on the road. When you enter a house, first say, 'Peace to this house!' If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; If not, he will return to you. Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house. When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you, heal the sick who are there, and tell them, 'The kingdom of God is near you.' Elisha was eating his breakfast.
I know, prophets eat breakfast too. And he was tucking into probably a bowl of Weet-Bix with So Good, maybe an Up Go on the side. He was eating his Weet-Bix when suddenly his servant came running in and made him spill his food all over himself. He yelled, "Elisha, we're surrounded!" And Elisha looked around in the room. They weren't surrounded. He said, "You've just made me spill my breakfast. You're the only one here." He said, "No, no, no, not here. The whole city is surrounded." And Elisha said, And why would they be surrounding us? And I think his servant was Gehazi. We don't know, his name's not listed, but it's just a couple chapters after. Elisha has a servant named Gehazi. And so I'll say it's Gehazi. Gehazi says to him, "Well, because of what you've been saying about the enemy's king, the king of Aram." And he said, "I've only said what the Lord's told me." He said, "Yeah, well, he's not happy about it." And what he'd actually been doing is that the king would say to his troops, I've heard that the Israelites are over there. Let's go make a camp near there, and we'll attack when they come this way. And so the whole troop, the whole army would move over there, and Elisha would send a message to the king of Israel and say, um, Aram's just moved his troops that direction. They're coming that direction anyway, probably tomorrow. So maybe you want to leave out of that area. And so as the troops were going to their new spot, they would see empty campfires. They'd say, oh, somebody told them we were coming. And so a runner would go back and tell the king of Aram, they've moved. They must have heard us coming. We've got to be quieter. I want you to go here now. And so Elisha would send a message. And Elisha's like a long ways away from where the king is. But Elisha sends a message, God's told me that the armies of Aram are going to this place, so move your troops away. They're coming to get you. And so they would get there, empty campfires again. And Gehazi says, says, "Well, they've come to get you, Elisha. They're so angry. You are in a mess now because they have been saying to each other, to the king, they told the king that you know everything that he says, everything, even what he's doing, like even what he's doing in the privacy of his own bathroom." And it actually says that in the Bible. And he says, "Well, I guess it's true. I mean, God could tell me whatever he wants me to know." He said, "Well, they're not happy. The king has sent them here to surround you." And I'm thinking that Elisha was probably thinking at this point, "And Gehazi, do you think I don't know this? I know everywhere else that army's been going." But he says, "Okay, let me come have a look." And so they walk up on the top of the city walls. I guess they're probably a bit higher than this. But they get up to the top of the city walls, and Elisha just looks out over the city. And Gehazi grabs him and pulls him down. "What are you doing? They'll see you!" And he says, "No, no, it's not a problem. There's way more of us than there are of them." And Gehazi says, "You've got to be crazy. There's two of us." And he says, "No, come up here. Look." He peeks over the wall. He says, "I see soldiers, lots of soldiers." He said, "Ah, I always forget. Lord, open my servant's eyes so that he can see what you and I can see." And Gehazi looks over the wall again, and he sees the same troops. But then beyond the troops, the hills that are rising up are covered in fiery chariots. And soldiers with bows and arrows and shields and swords, and they're on fire. It's the army of the Lord. And Gehazi, now he's not ducking anymore. He's just looking going, "Wow, where did they come from?" And Elisha said, "They're always with us, Gehazi. They're always with us." And he said, "So maybe we should go and ask the king of Aram what he wants." And he said, "Do what?" "Let's go see what he wants. Maybe we can help him." And so Gehazi comes down and he walks to the front door, and as he's about to open the door— I mean, Elisha— Gehazi grabs him and says, "No, stop, stop, stop, stop. They're going to kill you. I don't care how powerful your God is. If you go out there, they're going to kill you." And Elisha says, "Oh, let's say another prayer. I'll say it out loud so you can hear me, because I've already been talking to God about this, but okay. Dear Lord, please confuse their vision so that when we go out to them, they won't recognize who we are." Now, the leaders of the armies of Aram— who is the leader of the army of Aram? His name was Naaman. He met Elisha 2 chapters before. Elisha kind of has a special spot in Naaman's life and mind and heart because he cured him of leprosy. And now the entire army is surrounding, and I'm sure Naaman is kind of hoping, "I hope Elisha's not here. I really don't want to take Elisha back. My king will torture him and make him tell him things." Because what the king wanted— he didn't want to kill Elisha. He wanted to put him to work for him. If he can see what everyone's enemies are doing, I want him to tell me what my enemies are doing. And so as Elisha comes walking through the doors, and he walks out through the city gate, and he walks to the first soldier, and he says, "Where is your commanding officer?" And they say, "Um, he's just over there, sir." He said, "Thank you." And he walks right up to him, and he stands in front of a man who knew him well and says, "I'm sorry, who are you looking for?" And he said, "We're looking for Elisha the prophet." And he said, "Well, I'm sorry, he's not in the city," which is true, standing out here. And he says, "Well, where is he? Do you know where he is?" "Yes, I know where he is. He's just gone to Judah, just over the ridge there, down to the next city." "I can lead you to him." "Well, you better." And he said, "Okay, follow me." And so he starts following. And as Elisha and Gehazi walk through the fiery chariots, they peel aside and they let this army the small army of Aram compared to God's army, filter through the army of the Lord over the ridge and down to the other side. And as they get to the city, the people of Judah, they see them coming. "No, they're going to attack, they're going to attack!" And Elisha sends Gehazi ahead and he says, "No, no, don't, just wait, let them come." And they open the gates of the city and the entire army of Aram walks into the city. And when they get there, they close the gates of the city. And the king says, Israel's king says to Elisha, "Can I kill them?" And he says this, he says, "No." He says, "Don't kill them, feed them." And he says, "What? Feed them? There's hundreds of them." He says, "Just feed them. Don't kill them, feed them." So he says, "All right, you're the prophet." And so he gets out the food and he sits at the head of a large table and he lets all of these soldiers of the enemy army eat until they're full, and then he says, "Has everyone eaten?" And they say, "Yes, yes, everyone's full. Ah, thank you, that was delicious." And he says, "Um, okay, well, uh, open their eyes so they can see where they are." And they open their eyes, "Oh my goodness, we're surrounded!" And they see fiery arrows and all the walls, and they realize, "We're trapped, we can't leave!" And then the king says again, "Can I kill them? Can I kill them now?" He said, "No, you don't kill people you've just fed, they're your guests." 'Send them home. They've been well fed. Send them home.' And so the king says, 'I don't get this, but okay.' And he lets them go home. And the verse that's there next is exactly what happens at the end of the story. So the Arminian raiders did not come into Israel's land again. There's actually this unwritten law in the desert cultures of the world, and particularly in the Middle East, that if you are starving and someone feeds you, if you stumble into their camp in the desert and they feed you, you become friends. And the next time you see them, you will protect them. And so anytime someone fed someone else in that culture, it meant we are now friends, we made a pact. And so Gehazi, I mean, Elisha knew this. He knew if we can get them to eat at our table, their king will become friends with our king. When I was preparing this sermon this week, I said to, I had, sometimes I go to kindergartens and tell stories. And I read picture books to them and I do voices and it's lots of fun. And as I got there on Thursday to this little kindergarten in McKinnon, state school kindergarten, not Christian, the lady said to me as I walked in, she said, "The kids will be with you in about 15 minutes. They're with the rabbi right now." And I kind of, I looked, just thinking back in my mind of the culture I just drove through and I was like, I'm pretty sure this isn't a Jewish area. And they weren't dressed as Jewish women would be dressed. And I said, "The rabbi?" And she said, "Oh yeah, we actually, 'cause you couldn't come last month, we booked him to come this month. We forgot that, and we moved you to the same day. And so we've got two special features for today. The rabbi's telling them about Hanukkah. It's the Jewish Christmas." And I said, "Oh, okay." And just didn't, did I say, like, I know the Bible, but I just was thinking about it. So there's a rabbi here. And I kind of watched out through the window, and he was outside with them because it was such a beautiful day. And the kids came in 15 minutes later, and they started gathering on the story blanket as they do. And as they were just about settled in, the rabbi walked to the room. And he was dressed completely as a rabbi, and he'd been there sharing his faith with these kids. And as he walked out, I watched him walk through, and it wasn't until he was almost to the door that I had this thought, "Oh!" My entire talk on Sabbath is about, most of it anyway, is about the Old Testament, and it's about having conversations with people that you don't know, conversations of faith. And I said, "Rabbi," and he was all the way at the door by now, and he stopped. And he said, "Yes?" He turned around, and I said, "Could I ask you a question?" And yes, it felt as good as it sounds. It was like I just went into Jesus's day. I'm like, "Rabbi, might I ask you a question?" And this rabbi walked back, And he says to me, "Yes, what is it?" And I said, "Well, I'm actually—" And all these kids are here, the teachers are there, they're all ready. I said, "I'm a Seventh-day Adventist, and on this Sabbath coming, I'm preaching, and I'm talking about the story where Elisha leads the armies of Aram into Judah, and they trap them, and then he tells the king to feed them, and he does, and then they go home, and they don't attack again." And he said, "Yes, yes, I know the story." And I said, "What do you teach?" from that story? And he said, like that, just like he didn't even have to think about it, he just said, "We must always seek the solution of peace." And I said, "Wow." And I'm just like, I'm levitating off my chair, I just think this is amazing. And then I said, so what I'm actually going to do in this sermon is we're going to follow kind of the idea of sharing meals and the shared meal throughout scripture and what we can learn from those who shared meals together. And he smiled really big and he said, "Many beautiful things begin with the sharing of food." And I said, "That's true." I said, "Thank you." And he said, "Good day." He actually said, "May the Lord bless you all." That's what he said, and then he left. And as I was thinking about that as I was driving home, and I was thinking about where I wanted to go next with this sermon, I was thinking about Psalms 23. And I've actually printed it here in a version that you're probably not familiar with, and I've done that on purpose. This version only came out last year. It's really common English, but it's also great to look at Scripture through fresh eyes. And one of the ways to do that is to read a version you don't normally read, because it challenges you to hear it anew. And this is a poem, it's a beautiful homily, and it's actually about food all the way through. And we often don't think of it that way, but you remember that David, who wrote this psalm, was a shepherd when he was a boy. And a young man, and he knew, I'm sure he looked back on his days of shepherding and thought, I wish I could go back to that peace. I wish I could go back to just being scared of wolves and lions, and not enemies coming at me with troops. And he wrote this little poem. The Lord is my shepherd, I have what I need. He lets me lie down in green pastures. Now green pastures to a sheep is what? A smorgasbord. It's heaven. So you're just falling asleep in the middle of a plate of food, like you're just so happy. So the food is there. He leads me beside quiet waters. The reason why it's quiet waters is sheep won't drink if the water's rippling. They won't drink if it's rushing. So often shepherds all around the world will build up a dam of rocks to slow the water down. But this shepherd finds a spot where it's still, and he leads the sheep past that so that if they're thirsty they can drink. So there's food, there's drink, he renews my life. He leads me along the right paths for his name's sake. And then he switches something very fascinating here. He switches from talking about God to talking to God. And he switches at the same point when he switches from thoughts of worship to thoughts of fear. And he no longer just says, God protects me, he says, God, you protect me. Because he knows what he does with his fear. He takes it to the Lord in prayer. Even when I go through the darkest valley, I fear no danger, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. Now he's switched. It's no longer a shepherd and the sheep. It's a banquet. It's— some have said, Jewish scholars have called this the second Exodus. It's a prophecy of the return of God's people to God's land, because if God's preparing a table before us in the presence of our enemies, that means that God is on our side. It means that God has invited us, like this king that we just read about or learned about. He feeds us. You anoint my head with oil, just in case the enemy who's looking on, in the presence of my enemies, just in case the enemy who's looking on happens to not be sure, I'm not sure who this feast is actually for. God walks up and pours the oil on your head, on David's head, on our heads, and claims you as his own. My cup overflows. Only goodness and faithful love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord as long as I live. And the reason why they see this as a, as a Messiah coming, new kingdom being set up, is because all the days of my life is there twice. First, goodness and faithfulness of love pursue me in this life, all the days of my life. But then he goes on with another life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord as long as I live. And so they say it's not actually duplicating, that those two things are happening at once, but that David sees a time when God rescues his people, feeds them, and lets them live in his temple, lets them live in his presence. The thing that pops out to me the most in this, if we're following the idea of food and of the shared meal, is what I've put in bold there. You prepare a table before me. In the presence of my enemies. And if you need it on a sign, here it is: Those who feast together fight together. God has basically just said through David, if you come to me in prayer and you allow me to feed you in pastures of green and you allow me to give you drink in the still waters, then you will know that when it comes to having an enemy before you, I will prepare a table and I will have a place for you at that table. So that your enemy knows we stand together. But it sounds beautiful, but it also sounds like a metaphor. And you think, but would God ever really do this? Is he really ever gonna prepare a whole feast and set us there when our enemies are looking at us? Has God done this before? There's actually 40 years where God did it. As the children of Israel are going through the barren land on their way to the promised land, as they're going through the desert, God is feeding them manna, and all their enemies know, "These people, they walk around with no food, and they're always fed." And then they hear about the manna. And when they finally get— I find this really funny too. The first time they get to the Jordan River, 40 years ago, so that only took them a few months to get there the first time, Moses sends 12 spies in. The spies come back, 2 of them are going, "Yes, it's awesome! We're gonna have so much fun there! It's gonna be beautiful! There's so much food and everything!" And then the 10 spies drag into town, and they go, "Oh, it's horrible. They're tall, and there's just horrible things everywhere." And so Moses says, "Well, what do we do, people?" And they say, "Well, 10 versus 2, obviously the 2 are cuckoo, so we just better not go in there." And so they leave. Joshua and Caleb are the 2 that had positive reports. 40 years when they get back, Joshua is now in charge, and Moses has passed away, and Joshua says, secretly, just send in 2 of our happiest guys. Because that's all it really takes. And so they send in 2, probably somebody Joshua picked and someone Caleb picked, who they thought, they're the most like us. They'll see that the grass is always greener if God is providing it. And so they go across the river at night. They sneak into Jericho. They have a look around Jericho. They get spied out. Somebody sees them. They run up into this top-of-the-wall house, and they find a woman who invites them into her home. And when they're in there, she says this. Her name's Rahab, and it says she's saying what she has heard, what her people have heard. "We have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you." You know, that was 40 years ago, but that story, they've heard it. "When you came out of Egypt. Your God is God in heaven above and on earth below." below. She believes in the God of the desert people because he feeds them and he parts waters for them. And in Exodus, it tells just kind of this little snapshot. The Israelites ate manna for 40 years until they came to an inhabited land. That's where Jericho is. They ate manna until they reached the border of the land of Canaan. What's funny is it's not the border on this side of Canaan, of Jericho, of Jordan. It's after they cross, they have one more feed of manna. Look what happens. Then they saw— so first they heard about these Israelites and their God can part waters. Then they see their God part waters right outside of Jericho. While the Israelites camped on the plains of Jericho, they observed the Passover. The day after Passover, they ate the unleavened bread and roasted grain from the produce of the land. And the day after that, they ate from the produce of the— sorry, then the day after, they ate from the produce of the land. The manna ceased. So manna was no more once they'd crossed over and they'd said, this is the land God's given us, and they'd had a feast there. It was the Passover feast, which is a meal that means something to them. And if they had heard— if the enemy had heard about the parting of the water and now seen the parting of the water, they would have heard the story of the Passover and how their God protected them with the blood on the doorpost, and how their God protected them with the meal that they ate that night, and how they now ate that meal every year to remember that their God was more powerful than any odds that the world could stack against them. So this metaphor, beautiful meal, follows the people of Israel for years, hundreds of years. It becomes their defining meal, and they have Passover regularly. And still today, Jewish people celebrate the Passover, and we, in a sense, celebrate the Passover as well. But all of the symbols The symbols have changed because of this situation where Jesus is sitting with His disciples and He holds up the bread. And He says, we know what is written in Scriptures, but He would have said more. I'm sure He told them, "You know what this means. You know that this bread represents the flatbread that they cooked quickly so that they could leave the next morning. They cooked lots of it and they took it and they ran and they had lots of bread with them. You know that's what it represents, but I'm telling you now, Not anymore. This bread represents my body, which I'm going to give up for you when I die on the cross. And amazingly, even though Jesus said it numerous times, it went over the disciples' heads over and over and over, because that's just silly talk. You're gonna die. That's not the way to start a movement. If you die, the movement's over. And so they keep thinking he's talking in metaphors. And then Jesus, as he has the cup and he passes it around, he says, This, you've heard, is the blood on the doorpost that protected, that shows us that God protected us from the angel of death as it passed over. But I tell you that today it's changing. It's becoming the blood of your Savior. It's becoming my blood that will be spilt for you and will be put over the doorpost of your heart and will forever be with you and be of you and be in you because you have this meal. And so as the disciples are listening to this, they're getting this new understanding that they really didn't fully understand until after Jesus died and he walked on the road to Emmaus with two of the disciples, and they're telling him all the horrible stuff that's happened, and he says, "But didn't the scriptures say this, and didn't the scriptures say that, and didn't—" And he's unpacking it all for them, and they're getting it, but they're not seeing it, because if you look in the story, it actually says they were kept from seeing who Jesus was. God just didn't want, just like with Elisha, Didn't want them to recognize him yet. God didn't want Jesus to be recognized by a bunch of information that he gave. He wanted him to be recognized by something, this meal. And so when they come into the house and they beg him to stay, they say, "Please stay." He says, "No, no, I'll keep going." "No, please stay." "Okay, I'll come in." And Jesus comes in and he takes the bread and he says, "Father, for that which we're about to receive, may we be truly grateful." And he breaks the bread, and just then they go, "It's Jesus." And when they look up, open their eyes from prayer, He's gone. Poof. And then they look at each other and they say this beautiful phrase that actually started much of the Protestant Reformation with the Wesley brothers. Was not our heart strangely warmed at the words that he said? And they started reviewing the scriptures that Jesus had laid out for them, and they said, we have to go tell the other disciples that the women were not lying, they were not crazy, they were right. Jesus is alive. And they got up and they ran all the way back. And they told them about this meal again. And they reminded them, "You remember when His blood and when His flesh, He said, and the Passover has now become the communion service. And you remember that?" And they said, "Yes, yes, we remember." But there was one thing that Jesus did before the meal. Something that He wanted them to understand. In fact, the meal means nothing if they don't understand this. And it was what he did when he came into the room and he saw the disciples sitting around. He saw the basin and the towel, and he put the towel over his shoulder, and he took his outer garment off so he was dressed as a servant, and he picked up the pitcher of water and the basin, and he went and he started to wash someone's feet. They said, "Lord, what are you doing?" He said, "Just preparing you." He gets to the next person, next person. When he gets to Peter, Peter said, "No way!" You are not washing my feet. You are the God of the universe. You're not washing my feet. And Jesus said, you don't understand. If I don't wash your feet, you don't understand. If I don't wash your feet, you have no part with me. And what Jesus meant was this: if you can't let the God of the universe serve you, you can't accept the cross. Because the God of the universe took your place On the cross on Calvary, he paid the debt for sin. Your sin, my sin, the sin category of events. He paid that debt on the cross, and he says, "You can't understand it if you don't recognize that I have to serve you. You have to let me serve you. If I don't wash you, Peter, you have no part with me." And in our lives, the same is true. We eat every day. We have communion once a quarter. But what's fascinating is what Jesus did on the cross when he gave his life is that he didn't just change the definition of Passover. And actually, if you look at shared meals in Scripture, it just keeps getting wider what it means when you share food with friends. First it's God's protecting us from our enemies. Then it's God is making our enemies our friends. And it gets bigger and bigger until Jesus dies on the cross. He revolutionizes what the Passover means, what communion means. And no one says it better than Sister White in Desire of Ages, where she says this: To the death of Christ we owe even this earthly life. The bread we eat is the purchase of His broken body. The water we drink is bought by His spilt blood. Never one saint or sinner eats his daily food, but he is nourished by the body and the blood of Christ. That's global. That's everyone. Never one saint or sinner eats his daily food, but he is nourished by the body and the blood of Christ. The cross of Calvary is stamped on every loaf. It is the reflection— it is reflected in every spring, All this Christ has taught in appointing the emblems of his great sacrifice. The light shining from that communion service in that upper chamber makes sacred the provision for our daily life. The family board becomes as the table of the Lord, and every meal, every meal, a sacrament. So what's the difference? Because there are millions of people, billions of people eating meals today who do not realize that they have the potential of the body and blood of Christ on their table. What's the difference? Is this: they have not been washed in the blood of Jesus. They don't know. They just don't know. And if we recognize that they are already eating, they just don't know eternal life is on the table. It's right there. They need us to eat with them. So that we can recognize the food and share our experience, share our story. This is a fantastic book that's just come out by Peter Roenfeldt. He's written a couple of books about the book of Acts and following Jesus, and this is his latest one. I think it's only come out a couple weeks ago, and I just churned through it. It's absolutely great. Peter Roenfeldt is one of our— he's a retired evangelist and pastor-teacher. And he's trained people in church planting in the Adventist Church right around the world. And he lives— Kielor— he just lives across the city from us. And he says basically this in a nutshell, this is what his book is saying: Christian witnessing is less about you inviting your neighbors to join you and more about you accepting invitations to join them. They're already eating. And so if we will go into their cultures, go into their homes, and participate in eating communion, eating the meal of Christ with them, we will be able to do what Jesus says here. When he sends out the 72, thank you, Michael, for reading that for us this morning. He says this: When you enter any town and they welcome you, eat the things they set before you, heal the sick who are there, and tell them the kingdom of God has come near you. These are Jesus's tips for connecting to people of peace. The one thing that you see at the very beginning there is they need to welcome you. You can't force the gospel on somebody who doesn't want it. You can't do miracles in the life of somebody who doesn't believe that there's a God who can do miracles, like the story this morning. And so Jesus says these 3 things basically. Eat their food, but you can't eat food without hearing stories. And so you hear their stories as you're eating with them. You're in their safe place. You're in their home, their café, their restaurant, wherever they've invited you to. And you eat their food, and you listen to their stories, and then you heal them through the way that we know we have available to heal people because of the power of God. We pray for them, and we care for them. We teach them principles that might help them have a better life. And then you tell them, "God is near you now." One thing that I think is so beautiful in the full passage, which Michael read for us, is Jesus says to say, "God is near you now," to both groups of people. If they reject you and send you out of town, Just let them know as you leave, God was near you. God was near you. And for those who accept you and welcome you in, say, "God is near you now." Saint Paul says it this way, and actually the reason why I have this on my, kind of the last point, is because of Joel Seau, who's looking at me right now. He teaches a great Sabbath school lesson, Joel, and he was teaching a lesson about Paul a few weeks ago, and how he was interacting with people around him. And what Joel basically said in a nutshell was what Paul did when he came into a new place is he looked at the people, he looked at their culture, and he said, where is the transition point for them to see Jesus in this culture? And then he carved off everything out of his life that stopped him from getting to that point. So if it was he needed to eat something he didn't like, oh well, I'll do that. If it was he had to dress a different way, whatever. He says, There's nothing other than the body of Christ that's important to me. There's no difference between men and women, Jews and Greeks, saved and lost. They're all people who need Jesus. And so Christ and Christ crucified, that's where I focus my energy. So what Joel finished with is that Paul would take people to that point where, for instance, like when he went into Athens and he looked around and he saw the statue to the unknown god. And he read a little bit of some of their poets, and he went, "I can do this. This is a connection point right here." And he says, "You have a statue to an unknown god. You have poets that have said that—" I can't remember exactly what they said, but poets that have said something that connects that together. And he said, "I want you to know, I found the God you're looking for." And then Joel said something really funny. He said, "But it was much harder with the Jews." Because when Paul talked to Jews, he had to go all the way back to manna falling in the desert. He had to go back thousands of years to go, "All this food in the whole Bible is pointing to Jesus. Don't you see it? I found the God you're looking for." Jesus is the Messiah. We have found the God that the people in the world are looking for. Dear Lord, we thank you for giving us a way in, a way into the hearts of others. And you haven't given it to us once a quarter or once a month or once a week. You've given it to us every day. Sometimes people eat 3 times a day. Lord, we ask that you would show us a way to connect with our neighbors, our friends, our family, just by sitting with them in their world, eating their food, and listening to their stories. So that we can show them the God who is in every meal. We thank you for loving us so much that you would make it possible for us to evangelize the world. Help us as we do, just as you've asked us to do, and make disciples of those who are ready to follow you. In your name, amen. Amen.
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Better to have gloved and lost... #puppy #jackrussellterrier #thor #doglife #dog #gloves #wrestling
