Good morning, friends. My name’s Alex. If you’re visiting, welcome. It’s so good to have you here. If you have a text in front of you, I’m going to invite you to take it out and turn to the right. If you get to the maps, you went too far. If you get to a table of weights and measures, you also went too far.

We are going to be in the book of Revelation. Just before the service, I was just greeting people and someone said to me, I’ve never heard a sermon on Revelation before. I’m a little bit scared. And I said, Me too, if I’m honest. have had many a come to Jesus moment over this text and exactly what it means.

Some goals for you today if you’re in that space of I’m not sure about this, I’m new maybe to church, new to scripture, don’t know how I feel about a sermon series around this topic. Today we’re going to try and clear some of the ground. We’re going to get into chapter one of the text, but for the most part we’re going to make sure we’re all on the same page.

The book in front of you, the book of Revelation, which you can Google, find chapter one, or you can open the Bible app on your phone, find chapter one. The book in front of you is considered by many people to be one of the most difficult books in Scripture to teach. It’s a book that we don’t really have an equivalent for in the New Testament.

It’s from a genre called apocalyptic. Now, you might say, hold on a second. I know apocalyptic. I’ve seen every apocalyptic movie out there. I’ve seen 2020, 2012 or whatever it was called. I’ve seen The Day After Tomorrow. I’ve seen Deep Impact. I’ve seen Armageddon. I’ve seen all of these movies. I know apocalyptic.

The problem is this. The word apocalyptic in a first century context means something very different from apocalyptic in our context. It’s a book that to us will be mysterious based on the difference between our culture and that first century culture. The book of Revelation is thought by most to be written by a guy called John who had several visions of the world.

on the island of Patmos. This tradition goes back a long way and most writers, most church traditions say that this John of Patmos is the same person as John, the disciple of Jesus, the one that lay back on his chest at the Last Supper, the one that wrote the Book of John, the Gospel of John. It’s the same person.

person. This tradition goes back as far as the first century. It was given to us by a guy called Tertullian. Tertullian was a person that wrote extensively about the way that the church, the early church fathers, had laid down their lives for this thing that we do today. He’s famous for saying this, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of life.

of the church. About John specifically, he gives us these words in his book To the Martyrs. How happy is the church on which apostles poured forth all their doctrine along with their blood, where Peter endures a passion like his Lord’s. The legend is that Peter was crucified like Jesus, but crucified upside down because he didn’t think himself worthy to die in the way that Jesus died.

Where Paul wins his crown in a death like John, The Baptist Paul was beheaded in Rome, where the Apostle John was first plunged unhurt into boiling oil. and thence remitted to his island exile. The story goes that in the midst of the persecution of the church, John was dipped in oil that was boiling by one of the Roman emperors, but was un and so at that point he was sent to the island of Patmos in an exile.

Now, I wanted us to be on the same page as to what Patmos looked like. So we understand exile for just a moment. This is the Isle of Patmos today. How many of you are like, I could do with some exile in 2025? Can I go now? Now that cute little restaurant in the first century, I understand was not present.

But the island was very much the same, a beautiful jewel in the midst of the Aegean Sea. It was at the time a prison colony. The Roman Empire sent prisoners there, and John arrived as a prisoner himself, converted all of them to Christianity, and started a church on the island of Patmos. In the midst of that, he had this series of visions, most of which make up the book of Revelation.

But Revelation is distinct as well because of where it sits in the scripture in front of you. It’s the last word, the last book. It provides the end of the story. In that way, with Genesis function as bookends. If you were to take sin out of the scriptures, you would simply have a short pamphlet that would be Genesis one and two and Revelation 21 and 22.

It would start with a garden and end with a garden city. Revelation provides what you might call the end. Now, here’s the fascinating part about the way God works. It’s not really the end, right? In many ways, it’s just the beginning. It’s the end of the story in this earth as we know it now, but C. S. Lewis said in his Chronicles of Narnia, describing the world of Narnia, he’s parallel to our world.

Their life in this world, all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover. and the title page. Now at last they were beginning chapter one of the great story, which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever, and which each, in which every chapter is better than the one before. Revelation is the end of the scriptures.

It’s really just another beginning of God’s great story with us, his people, that will continue for all time. Revelation chapter one starts with these words. The revelation Of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants. What must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John.

It is he who testifies to all these things. To the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Blessed is the one who speaks the words of this prophecy aloud. And blessed is the one who hears it and takes to heart what is told here. Because the time is now. The book of Revelation begins with a promise of a blessing.

A blessing to those who speak the words, as I’m doing right now, and a blessing to those who hear it and take it to heart. Supposing we take for a moment that blessing is a real thing that will be offered to people who speak it and people who hear it. We might ask this question. Why do we avoid the book of Revelation.

You might say that rather than experiencing a blessing from it, most of us, if we’re honest, would say we avoid it, perhaps like a plague. If I were to say, how many of you read the book of Revelation in your daily devotional readings? Who would throw up a hand? Anyone? It’s a book that we come to with a load of trepidation.

And I think there’s at least a couple of reasons why we do this. I think if we’re honest, we feel like the book is beyond us. It’s beyond us. We can’t get into it. We can’t approach it. This is a copy, a picture of a copy of my Bible next to a commentary on the book of Revelation. You start to see some of the tension that’s unfolded, right?

There’s a lot of words written about this book. Some wise sage many centuries ago once said that the black, the words in Scripture, are God’s words. They’re divine. The white is space for conversation and the so much conversation on the book of Revelation. The book is complicated and feels beyond us because it’s full of all of these different metaphors, particularly a specific type of metaphor called hypokatastasis.

Just for a moment, let me explain that to you, how that works. A simile, I’m going to give you English literature 101 for just a second, a simile is if I were to say something like this. Aaron is like a rock star. Aaron is like a rock star. A metaphor takes it a little bit further. A metaphor would say something like this.

Aaron is a rock star. And you have to work out, why am I saying that? What’s the parallel between the two? The problem with hypocatastasis is it doesn’t have the first part of a metaphor or a simile. It’s as though I stood here and simply said, Rockstar. And you have this moment where you say, wait, is he talking about Aaron?

Is he talking about me? That feels like a really nice compliment. I’d like to be considered a rockstar. It doesn’t have a second part of the equation and Revelation is full of all of these types of metaphors. The book will simply say dragon. Or beast. And it doesn’t have anything for us to take and say, this is what he’s talking about.

It’s all left to us to do the work. Now maybe that work was much easier for a person in the first century, who had some sense of what he might be talking about. But for us, 2, 000 years later, we really have to work to say, what’s the context of that? And what might it be saying to us today? There’s all of these difficult metaphors within the book of Revelation that can feel out of our reach.

In addition to that, there’s 650 references in 22 chapters to the Old Testament, as this book systematically provides conclusions to some of the things that God has said in times before. All that can make it feel a little bit out of our reach, it’s language we’re not familiar with, for which we have no comparison.

It’s just different. The second is this, because it seems to have some baggage. And maybe you’ve heard of some of the stories that might be considered baggage. This is a picture of Harold Camping from Boulder, Colorado. He moved to California and started a radio show where he amassed a fortune of about 75 million dollars predicting the time of the events of Revelation.

Every time he predicted it, He, by the way, I’m going to wag my finger at you more, that’s going to be my new posture for teaching in 2025, just wait for it. In September 6, 1994, he made his first prediction that the events of Revelation would begin to unfold. When that didn’t happen, he moved to September 29th of 1994.

And when that didn’t happen, to 2nd of October 1994. Then to the 31st of March 1995. Feeling those gaps perhaps weren’t big enough, he then moved to 2011. where he said these events would begin on the 21st of May when nothing happened on the 21st of May. He said something happened spiritually, it just didn’t happen visibly, and the rest of it would unfold on the 21st of October 2011.

Those are the kind of people that get associated with the Book of Revelation, but it’s not even just people on the fringe like Harold Camping. It pulls in some of the best of the followers of Jesus into the world of predictions. Even Billy Graham, one of my personal heroes, stood up at a one of his conventions in 1940 and said, the world will end inside the next five years.

And then a few months later said it will end inside the next five years. Two years. Something about this book pulls us into predicting, into some kind of foretelling of what is about to happen, and more specifically, when it is about to happen. If you grew up in the seventies, maybe you remember the late, great planet Earth.

If you grew up in the 2000s, maybe you remember the Left Behind series. A book that purports to be about the end times and yet feels like it gets lost in the midst of just terrible literature. This is the opening line from Left Behind. Rayford Steele’s mind was on a woman he had never touched. With his fully loaded 747 on autopilot above the Atlantic en route to a 6 a.

m. Heathrow landing, Rayford pushed from his mind thoughts of his family. As you read it, it’s hard to figure out what exactly you are reading, what genre you are in. Here’s the struggle and here’s perhaps maybe the reason we avoid this book at times. How you read Revelation can have a powerful impact on your own emotional, spiritual, and even physical and economic well being.

If you get into some of the fringe of Revelation, it can play Maybe you grew up in a culture where you were taught repeatedly that this thing called the rapture was coming, and maybe you had moments where your parents didn’t come back from the supermarket on time, and you began to freak out that you’d been left behind.

One of my friends in college played one of the most delicious pranks I’ve ever heard of on a roommate. While he was taking an afternoon nap, he grabbed a couple of cars, along with a friend, and parked them as though they’d T boned each other. He set the alarms off after leaving a set of clothes in each of the driver’s seat and then blew a ram’s horn outside the window of this college friend.

The college friend, perhaps understandably, began to freak out, believing that he to had been left behind. Whether you find that funny or not funny, what’s the problem with that? The problem with that is that psychologically, that reading of Revelation had set a faithful follower of Jesus up to believe that perhaps he had been left behind, perhaps because of some innocuous sin that he happened to have committed that morning, or perhaps for a missed prayer, or something un It left him in a space that wasn’t actually psychologically healthy at all.

And yet, here’s what I’m convinced of. If we ask the right questions, the book of Revelation can be a place of great spiritual growth. It’s a place where we get challenged repeatedly over and over again. Before we get into chapter 1, just a few quick notes on how you might read this book. And you may have come across these as You’ve studied it over the years.

The first way you might read the book of Revelation is the futuristic approach. The futuristic approach would hold that chapters 1 through 3 are historical, that they happened in the first century. That the rest of the chapters were to happen in some concrete future, that they would unfold in a linear fashion beginning at some unknown date.

Another way that you may have read the book is the Preterist approach. That holds that everything in the book of Revelation has already happened except chapters 21 and 22. It’s somewhere there in history. We may just have missed it. The third way is the historical approach, that every event in Revelation matches some point in history, but not necessarily chronologically, and perhaps which event is up for debate.

In the historical approach, the Reformation Church decided that the beast represented the Roman Catholic Church. In the 13th century, scholars believed it was the rise of Islam, over in Africa. There were all sorts of things that it could mean, and yet they were up for debate. The third is the idealist approach, that it mirrors a constant spiritual battle that’s going on behind the scenes.

It may not ever happen concretely, but it’s there somewhere, perhaps invisible. And then the final approach that I like, and that we’ll take during this discussion, is this one, the eclectic approach. It means that all of those have some truth in it. The problem with that is it requires you and I doing the work to figure out which it might be at a specific time.

Now if you love concrete, if you’re imbibed in a 21st century world that says there’s always a definite answer to everything, you are going to struggle with the book of Revelation until you can openly handed say, this is a book that doesn’t love concrete. Concrete, except on a couple of terms.

What is concrete in Revelation, and we’ll see this in Chapter 1, is that Jesus is Lord of everything. Of time, of space, of this world. Is victorious over everything opposed to Him. And that ultimately, His future plan for us is good, and bold, and real. Outside of that, there’s conversation, there’s white spaces.

that are open to that. But that is the concrete of Revelation. And we see that straight away in verse 1 of chapter 1. The words of chapter 1 begin in Greek, Apokalypsik Jesu Christu. It is simply the revealing of Jesus Christ. The word Apokalyps doesn’t really mean something like the end of the world, except from this book.

Yet that word Apokalypsis is present all over the first. The New Testament. It’s actually there in Ephesians chapter 1, one of my favorite prayers to pray for us as a community. May God give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation that we might know Him better. That’s something I pray for you all regularly, for me regularly, that we will get to see more and more of what God has for us.

The word means unveiling, it means revealing, quite literally, the to see uncovered, to see something invisible come to the forefront. And already you’ll see in verse 1, it’s concrete, to show his servants what must soon take place. Now that question, soon, might throw us already, we’re like, wait, is this really taking place soon?

What does scripture mean by soon? Again, no concrete answer at this point, but we’ll get there. He made it known by sending his angel to a servant, John, who testifies to everything he saw. That is the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, blessed as the one who was born. Who reads aloud the words of this prophecy And blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it because the time is Nia.

So one of the best questions you can ask when you come across a book is, who is this for? In its original context, that’s true of every book in scripture, but perhaps most true of the book of Revelation. Who is John addressing? in chapter 1. Chapter 1 specifically addresses a context, as well as being for us as well.

The first chapter of Revelation contains encouragement for all followers of Jesus throughout history. At the same time, it has a very specific message for a group of Christians in the first century. This book is written about 95 A. D. Christianity has begun to spread. It’s moved out of the Jewish context.

It’s moved into the Gentile world. And all of the churches that we’ll read about over the next few weeks are in what is now modern day Turkey. He speaks to a group of people that are experiencing traumatic persecution. While Christianity was persecuted from the beginning, something begins to ramp up as it becomes more and more the norm.

At this point, a Roman emperor called Domitian has come to the throne and he is a tyrant. He goes after every single Christian leader and every single group of churches. It’s a hard context for us to imagine in the West today. We might throw out, Hey, I feel persecuted. But we’re not really. We don’t know what persecution is.

Our brothers and sisters all over the world they know what persecution is. But our understanding of persecution is we lose a preference. Their understanding of persecution is concrete. And if you’ve never had a chance, go and dip into some of the tales of perhaps the Romanian church, of churches in different parts of Africa, all over China.

There are so many wonderful stories. You might begin with Richard Wurmbrand stories of his time in the Romanian church and just experience what it is to live in that environment. It will help you. understand what we’re talking about here. John writes to a group of churches who are persecuted, who feel like that at any moment they might be wiped out, who feel like their lives are held in the balance.

And so a question we might ask is, what would we write? in those circumstances. If we were sitting where they sat, what would we want to know? And so as we move into chapter one, a question for us is what encouragement does John offer to them? What does he say? What does he say in the midst of families that have been broken up?

What’s he say in the face of executions, imprisonments, torture? What words of encouragement do you give to a church experiencing that? In forum five, we read these words. John, to the seven churches in the province of Asia, specifically these seven in Turkey that will experience, grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come.

As we move through these verses, notice the language, perhaps underlying in your copy of the scriptures. Every time he references the past, the present, and what is to come. Because it’s all over. Chapter from him who is and who was and it is to come and from the seven spirits before his throne We don’t have time for that.

That’s never anywhere else in Scripture. That is a mystery. It’s a podcast conversation I’m just gonna throw that out there We have a podcast on Thursdays and from Jesus Christ who is the faithful witness The firstborn from the dead and the ruler of the Kings of the earth. To him, verse five, who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and father, to him be glory and power forever and ever.

Amen. Next verse, read this. Look, he is coming with the clouds and every I will see him, even those who pierced him. and all peoples on earth were mourned because of him. So shall it be. Another reference to the future, right? I am the Alpha and Omega, says the Lord God, who is, and who was, and who is to come.

All over these verses, the writer constantly reinforces this idea. God is the God of what is past. the history. God is the God of what is now, and God is the God of what is to come in the future. To a people in the midst of persecution, he says, God holds the past. In the midst of persecution, he says, God holds the present.

In the midst of persecution, he says, God holds the future too. He is over and above everything. I, John, your brother and your companion in the suffering and kingdom and in patient endurance. that arise in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. On the Lord’s day I was in the Spirit and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, which said, write on a scroll what and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.

to a group of people experiencing persecution not yet experienced by the church. The constant message is God holds all of time, all of space, and he sees you in the midst of all you’re experiencing. You are known, you are named a specific church, is valued as his children. Revelation to these first group of believers offered comfort to those who found themselves afflicted.

through persecution. The comfort he offers is one that you, if you’ve parented, if you’ve been a grandparent, might have offered to a child who’s in pain. When you don’t have a certainty about when it will end, when that’s still up for debate. You sit with them and you do what? You offer your presence. I still have this enduring memory of the first time my wife took our children skiing when we moved to Denver.

My son Jude was at an age where he was positively unreasonable about almost everything, especially if he didn’t want to do it. And I remember this moment where he got to the end of his rope around just the process of skiing in general. He was miserable. I’d spent the last ten years Ten minutes dragging him across the snow in a helpful way, not in a retributive way.

And I remember this moment where in the midst of his tears, my wife sat with him in the snow and clutched him near to her and she just whispered over and over again, Mama’s got you. Mama’s got you. No promise of an end that was concrete, just simply in this moment, I am present. I am here. And then I watched as in the months afterwards, whenever he found himself in a difficult situation, he would begin to say to himself, mama’s got you, mama’s got you, mama’s got you, as he would speak words of comfort that had been given to him.

This is what this book offers to those first century believers. You are not forgotten. You are known. I am present with you. This is a quote from a Yemeni person in the 17th, in 2017, in the midst of a war that was broken out, in the midst of a famine, and he spoke these words. We are just waiting for doom or a breakthrough from heaven.

Just waiting for doom or a breakthrough from heaven. Those words could have been spoken by a first century believer in Ephesus, in Pergamon, in Smyrna, in Thyatira. Any of those churches listed there. Revelation to a first century audience offered comfort to those who found themselves afflicted through persecution by revealing Jesus as present with them in the midst of it.

But which Jesus is revealed? The Jesus that we read about in the first, in the book, first chapter of Revelation is not quite like the Jesus we read about in the Gospels. In verse 9 of chapter 1, we read these words from John. I turned around to hear the voice that had spoke. As I turned, I saw seven lampstands, and in the midst of them was one who looked like a son of man.

His robe came down to his ankles, and around his chest he had a golden sash. His hair was white as wool, white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet glowed as though one bronze in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters. He held in his hands seven stars, and from his mouth came a double two edged sword.

When I saw him, I fell to my face, feet fell to the ground as though dead. He came and he placed his right hand upon me, and he said, I, And the living one, the one that was dead and he’s now alive forevermore. And I hold the keys to death and to Hades. Imagine John’s reaction when he sees the one he has known as simply human and something more as he discovers him on earth and now he sees him revealed in the glory he had before time began.

The Jesus that we see in Revelation is something more than the Jesus we read about in the Gospel. Sure it’s hinted there, sure it’s true there, but now this is not Jesus hidden, this is Jesus as the text predicts, this is Jesus revealed. Jesus, as Lord over all creation, and yet present with his church, caring for them.

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. He placed his right hand on me and said, Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last. I am the living one. I was dead, and now look, I am alive forever and ever, and I hold the keys of death and Hades. What do you tell a first century group of believers who are going through a persecution that has no concrete end to it, that will last historically for at least the next 200 years?

In Revelation, you tell them that God is there and present, that He’s Lord over what is past, what is now, and what is to come. And that even in the midst of death, the worst thing, He is still Lord. The thing that seems like the last thing is not really, according to Jesus, the last thing at all. It’s just the next to last thing.

So a question for us, what do we learn from this? Starting a study on Revelation in this chapter 1 that doesn’t really tell us a lot except Jesus revealed. Perhaps we learn exactly that. Amos Young, a writer on Revelation, says this, The principal figure of the apocalypse of Revelation is, after all, Jesus Christ, both as object and subject.

He is everywhere. The book of Revelation is intrinsically linked to theories of the last things. Yes, and yet the focus on the book is the revealing of the person of Jesus and the comfort His real presence brings. The danger of the book of Revelation is a danger I want to demonstrate for just a moment through video games.

My daughter has just got to an age where she’s jumping into some video games and I love, because I loved them as a kid, I love watching her play and so she’s just made her way through The Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild. I loved Zelda as a kid for all of the just the world it brought to life. I could play it for hour after hour.

But why is understanding something like Zelda important for understanding the book In Zelda, you have a mission. Your mission is to save the princess. And by saving the princess, you save Hyrule, a classic story, right? But in the midst of it, there are side quests. Ninety of them that send you off in all sorts of directions.

There’s a mission, and then there’s side quests. This is true of video games, but true of most of the series that you may have watched on TV, anything that goes beyond just a short two hour movie. In the TV series Heroes, there was this constant refrain, Save the cheerleader, save the world, it’s a mission.

In life, you have missions, and then you have side quests, whether you acknowledge it or not. Grocery shopping is the mission. Getting Starbucks is a side quest. Some of you are like, no, it’s not. That’s the mission. Grocery shopping is the side quest. Getting work done is the mission. Hanging with co workers, side quest.

Guys, this is for you. Going to the bathroom is the mission. Spending 20 minutes on Instagram, it’s a side quest. It’s not the main purpose. Side quests actually, worst case, just distract from what the mission is. Here’s why this works in the book of Revelation. The mission of Revelation is simply this.

Jesus revealed as he really is, Lord of all creation and present with all creation. His people the when it happens side quest the how exactly in detail it happens Side quest the what it looks like Side quests. When we got lost in the side quests of Revelation, the chances are we actually missed its overall purpose.

The mission of Revelation is quite simply this, Jesus revealed. Here’s my encouragement to you as we enter this series. In the side quests of when, and what, and how, which are without interesting and fascinating, and come into this book, don’t lose the hoop. which is Jesus and Him revealed. Don’t miss Jesus in His own revelation, because this book is about Him or nothing else.

There’s one other thing I’d love you to take today. If you’re just in this place where you’re like, I’m learning, I’m excited, I like learning, perhaps. I like revelation, perhaps, I’m not sure. If you’re in that posture, that’s what I’d love you to take away. Take away this idea that Jesus is central, and what you’re going to experience is Him revealed.

But perhaps you’re in a space where you might say, I feel like a first century follower of Jesus. I feel like I’m in the midst of it. Perhaps not persecution. Perhaps sickness. Perhaps a struggling marriage. Struggling business. Perhaps health concern. Perhaps just the angst of middle age, of old age.

Whatever it is, I don’t need to name it. You get to name it. But perhaps you bring something, some angst to this that says, I just need something more than Jesus revealed. And to you, what I would offer is the same thing John offers the first century followers of Jesus. Jesus is present in the midst of that.

Nothing more, nothing less than that. This is Rembrandt’s Storm in the Sea of Galilee. In the midst of it you see a bunch of disciples and Jesus who in the story in Mark was sleeping in the boat and has now been woken up. But there’s something different about this painting, something unusual. According to the story there should be 13 people in the boat, Jesus and his 12 disciples.

But in this painting there’s 14. Rembrandt painted himself in to this picture. He’s the one holding on to the boat. to the rope staring back at the people looking at the photo. He’s inviting you and me in to this story. In the midst of something that feels beyond us, something that we can’t handle, in the midst of a storm, midst of what feels like a disaster, hold on to that.

Jesus is present. As Jesus is revealed, we are reminded that the God of the universe is present. He’s present to us and brings what he always brings. He brings hope. Let’s pray.

Jesus in the midst of our study, help us to get the thing that you want us to get, which is you revealed. Help us to see you high and lifted up. Revealed as more than you appeared to so many people on earth. Revealed as the Lord of all creation. Risen, glorified, vindicated. For us as your church, help us to see you.

And for my brothers and sisters that find themselves in the point of pain, the point of struggle, the point where they need something more than just your eventual cosmic restoration of all things, would you bring your deep presence, your love for them, Would they know the experience that my son had of a mother holding him in his arms?

Simply saying those words over and over again, Mama’s got you. Mama’s got you. For our friends here in the midst of those times, would you hold them? Would you speak those words? Their father is here and they are deeply loved. Deeply careful.

Aaron’s gonna sing a song of us, over us, as we begin to close. He might ask you to sing some of it at some point, but for the first part I’d like to invite you just to sit. And experience the presence of Jesus During this time, if you’d like to be prayed for, our prayer team will be dotted around. They’d love to pray for you.

If you’d like to wait till after the service, they would pray for you then too. Whatever you need, the space is here. But for a moment, we’re going to allow the God of the universe to calm the waves. To be with his children.