00:00: God's Word is iconoclastic.
00:01: It's a fancy word that means to break down and destroy idols and false beliefs.
00:09: As we immerse ourselves in an ongoing basis, we find that God's Word corrects our false ideas about who God is and how God works.
00:15: One of those false ideas is that the Christian life is an easy life.
00:24: The Christian life is not an easy life.
00:29: It's a good life.
00:29: In fact, it's a very good life, and I believe it's the best life, but it's not an easy one.
00:37: God's Word is honest and upfront about that.
00:44: Luke chapter 21, verses 12 to 19, Jesus says to his disciples, they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my namesake.
00:57: This will be your opportunity to bear witness.
01:04: Settle it, therefore, in your minds, not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.
01:17: You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and some of you they will put to death.
01:22: You will be hated by all for my name's sake, but not a hair of your head will perish.
01:29: By your endurance, you will gain your lives.
01:38: I can only imagine what that sounded like to Jesus's first disciples.
01:38: Some of you they will put to death, but not a hair of your head will perish.
01:45: By your endurance, you will gain your lives.
01:54: That's a hard truth.
01:54: Jesus told his disciples then, and God's Word tells us now, that as Jesus's followers, there will be people who oppose us, mistreat us, hate us, and in some cases will even kill us simply for being Christians.
02:08: But that won't be the end of the story.
02:14: Physical death is not the end.
02:14: If we persevere in our faith in Jesus, physical death won't mean a thing in the scope of eternity.
02:22: We will live together with God because of Jesus.
02:22: Jesus told his disciples this not just for the sake of honesty, but for the sake of motivating them to persevere in the midst of opposition, to recognize that they were being offered something better than what they could have simply by playing it safe.
02:42: We need to wrap our minds around this.
02:42: It's not something you're going to hear about in the world at large.
02:48: It's not even something talked about in very many churches these days, but it's a crucial truth.
02:54: And I want to draw out three aspects of this that we really need to get.
03:01: faith in Jesus is no guarantee of protection from hardship in this life.
03:01: It's not even a promise of protection from being murdered for being a Christian.
03:13: We saw that in Luke 21 just now.
03:13: God can and sometimes does protect his people from hardship and sometimes from death.
03:22: We can legitimately ask for that from God and seek that from God, but we have to trust that God knows best.
03:30: Two, we must persevere in our faith in Jesus in order to cross the finish line and enter glory forever with God.
03:39: Now, I'm not saying that we need to work in order to keep our salvation or we need to work in order to get the end result, but I am saying we have to continue to believe in Jesus.
03:55: A saving faith is a persevering faith, just as a saving faith is a repentant faith.
04:03: First Corinthians chapter 15 verses 1 and 2 tells us, Paul writing to Christians, I would remind you brothers of the gospel I preached to you.
04:17: which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.
04:27: He's calling them to perseverance and saying, latching onto the gospel, believing in Jesus is the path to final being with God, being saved, right?
04:40: These are already believers.
04:40: They have already been saved in the sense of forgiveness, counted righteous, but they are being saved.
04:46: That is God's bringing them through the Christian life across the finish line into glory and that journey requires continued faith.
04:53: Third, if we persevere in faith in Jesus, even the worst hardships, even death itself will not separate us from eternity with God.
05:09: Romans chapter 8 verses 35 to 39 is perhaps the most famous passage on this topic.
05:16: Paul celebrates the truth of the gospel asking this series of questions.
05:21: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
05:21: Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
05:28: As it is written, for your sake we are being killed all the day long.
05:36: We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
05:36: No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
05:44: For I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
05:57: The confidence of Paul in that in that worshipful celebratory passage is clear.
06:05: Even death itself can't separate us from the love of God.
06:12: Can't sever us from relationship with God.
06:18: Why do I focus on these four things?
06:18: Number one, if we don't grasp and believe these things, we're in danger of making shipwreck of our spiritual lives.
06:28: Because if we don't understand that Jesus does not promise to keep us from suffering and even death in this life, then we're going to despair and lose confidence in Jesus when hardship comes.
06:40: We'll end up holding God responsible for failing to do something we thought he was going to do when he never promised to do that in the first place.
06:53: We don't want to end up in that place.
06:53: Second, if we don't understand that saving faith in Jesus is not about a conversion experience, but about ongoing, continuing, persevering faith, we're going to be apt to delude ourselves and to think, oh, I'm in a spiritually healthy place.
07:07: I'm in a spiritually secure place when our lives are full of evidence that we don't have relationship with Jesus.
07:18: Don't trust that because you went forward at an altar call or prayed to receive Jesus as a child or et cetera, et cetera, that means it's a done deal.
07:25: Real faith in Jesus is a persevering faith in Jesus.
07:33: And so we're called to continually trust in him and to have confidence if we are continuing to trust in him.
07:41: Third, if we don't understand that the worst that the world can do to us, even death itself, is nothing compared to what lies ahead for us who believe in Jesus, then we're apt to turn away from Jesus in this life when life gets hard, or at least when it threatens to get difficult.
08:01: We need to recognize that nothing we face is a big deal in light of the eternal stakes involved, or we're going to wimp out as soon as we're threatened with hardship.
08:17: Fourth, these are exactly the kinds of things that the early church had to wrestle with in Acts chapter 12.
08:23: The early church had to come to grips with these same realities, and they had to do it not in a middle-class American kind of context, but they had to do it in the midst of persecution, in the midst of his brothers and sisters in faith, literally dying.
08:36: Acts chapter 12 is not a random grab bag of stories.
08:44: Well, it's got the death of James, it's got the rescue of Peter from prison, it's got the death of Herod, you know, it's got these kind of random stories, and we just happen to have a chapter division there.
08:52: In reality, it's a unified story presented by Luke, which reveals these truths by telling us three death stories.
09:02: The death of James, the near death of Peter, and the death of Herod.
09:10: Now, we're told in fleeting fashion about the death of James.
09:16: Pause.
09:16: This is the James of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Peter, James, and John.
09:16: This is James, the brother of John, the sons of Zebedee, the sons of thunder, as Jesus called them.
09:23: Inner circle of three guys that seem to be the closest to Jesus in the gospel accounts.
09:30: This James, and we're told, about that time Herod, the king, laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church.
09:37: He killed James, the brother of John, with the sword.
09:42: Wait, why was he in jail?
09:42: Why did he come to this decision?
09:42: We're not told.
09:49: We don't know those details.
09:49: Just, yeah, this wicked man killed him.
09:49: Herod was a wicked Roman Roman ruler who was king over the region under the Roman banner during the time of Jesus in the early church.
10:04: This is the same Herod that met with Jesus shortly before Jesus' death.
10:04: Herod was a violent, selfish, cruel man, and he was violently persecuting the church.
10:12: He got hold of James and killed him.
10:20: James was murdered, or more aptly put, martyred.
10:20: When I think about James being part of that elite group called the apostles, and arguably even part of the more select group of three that seemed particularly close to Jesus, and he dies?
10:40: Early in the days of the church?
10:40: I'm not sure exactly how far into the church era we are here.
10:48: Maybe a year?
10:48: I'm not positive.
10:48: But the idea that we lose James this early is just hard.
10:56: It's not the first time, though.
10:56: We see in the beginning of the chapter that he's one of multiple people being seized and violently treated by Herod, and we saw in Acts chapter 7 the death of Stephen.
11:11: But it's shocking nonetheless.
11:11: God does not mean for us to think that his purposes for his people are easy or free of suffering.
11:20: Even Jesus had to suffer.
11:20: Jesus, the eternal, uncreated Son of God, the one and only Son of God, had to suffer in order to do and accomplish the greatest work that God has ever done.
11:36: It was not possible for God to save the world and redeem creation apart from the suffering and death of Jesus.
11:43: And if God said, the good that I have in mind requires the suffering and death of Jesus, we shouldn't think that we as his adopted sons and daughters are going to get off scot-free either.
11:57: Not because God is absent or indifferent or mean or cruel.
11:57: He's none of those things.
12:05: But because God has plans and purposes that far exceed our small goals and ideas.
12:15: Know that following Jesus will involve hardship.
12:15: Accept it.
12:15: So that when, not if, it comes, you're ready for it.
12:23: These aren't just my thoughts about the topic.
12:23: This is what Peter himself said.
12:27: This is the same Peter who was rescued from jail in our passage this morning.
12:32: He wrote to Christians in 1 Peter 4 verses 12 and 13 and said, Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.
12:42: But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.
12:57: Peter's telling us this is normal Christian life because there's something better on the other side of this that we're working for and waiting for and longing for.
13:02: And so as we look at the first death story of Acts 12, we see that the death of James will not let us be deluded into thinking that the Christian life and the American dream are the same thing.
13:16: They look very, very different.
13:22: The second story is the rescue of Peter.
13:26: We have to go back to verses 2 through 4 to see the setup though.
13:34: He, Herod, killed James, the brother of John, with the sword.
13:34: And when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also.
13:40: This was during the days of unleavened bread.
13:40: And when he had seized him, he put him in prison, delivering him over to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending after the Passover to bring him out to the people.
13:54: Peter gets arrested and is put into the equivalent of maximum security jail.
13:54: He's got four squads of soldiers guarding him.
14:00: From what I looked up, it sounds like traditionally that would have been a group of four, so probably 16 soldiers guarding him.
14:04: He's literally chained up, positioned between two guards in a locked jail cell with sentries outside the jail cell and a further gate that has to be opened in the process of leaving as well.
14:19: You don't get out of that with no one the wiser.
14:28: You don't get out of that just like, oops, they forgot to lock and latch the thing.
14:28: Like, you get busted if you try to get out of that.
14:34: You don't make it anywhere.
14:34: And yet, he's going to escape as we see.
14:42: But why is he there to begin with?
14:42: Verse 3, because the Jewish people, who were very anti-Christian by and large, liked King Herod killing James.
14:49: And Herod said, oh, you like that?
14:49: How about an encore?
14:57: This man is so narcissistic, so self-centered, so defined by delighting in himself and being made much of that he murders one guy and prepares to murder another guy just for the sake of the praise of man.
15:14: He got good PR with his subjects by killing James.
15:14: He's going to do it again, get more good PR, which is sick from beginning to end, that he's A, willing to do it, and B, the Jews have that kind of attitude towards people being put to death.
15:27: We're going to see it in more detail later in the chapter, but we see it in a bridged form here.
15:35: Herod is for Herod.
15:35: He's a self-centered, narcissistic despot.
15:42: Now, James has died.
15:42: Peter's been arrested.
15:42: The intent is to kill Peter as well.
15:42: This would have been a great time for the church to just say, oh, let's just mourn.
15:53: Let's just be sad.
15:53: Let's just give up.
15:59: Let's be hopeless.
15:59: We lost one of our key leaders.
15:59: Now we're about to lose another.
15:59: And arguably, Peter's the main spokesperson.
16:06: He's the main leader amongst the apostles.
16:06: We're going to lose him now too.
16:11: But they don't.
16:11: They don't grumble.
16:11: They don't whine.
16:11: They don't lose all hope.
16:17: They responded in faith.
16:17: Verse 5.
16:17: So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church.
16:27: I love that.
16:27: By the church.
16:27: Not just by a handful of people.
16:27: This seems to be a churchwide prayer effort.
16:37: Now, churchwide probably in the context of Jerusalem where this is taking place.
16:43: But as we've moved through the book of Acts, we've seen it grow from about 120 people in chapter 1 to 4,000 men plus women and children.
16:49: We're probably talking a Jerusalem church of 10,000 plus people.
16:59: And they're going to God in prayer.
16:59: Earnestly.
16:59: Not like, oh yeah, keep Peter on the checklist of prayer items.
17:07: It's earnest.
17:07: It's heartfelt.
17:07: They're pouring out their hearts and souls.
17:07: They're pleading with God.
17:13: They're not going through the motions.
17:13: Where are they doing this?
17:13: A brand new church of 10,000 plus people does not have a corporate congregational space to meet.
17:21: They don't have a big new mega church building.
17:25: They're meeting in pockets here and there in this person's house, in that person's house.
17:31: And we get a glimpse of one of those pockets in verses 12 through 17.
17:35: I love how Luke tells us this story.
17:35: Now, Luke almost certainly wasn't there.
17:35: But Luke is a historian.
17:44: He did his research.
17:44: He talked to the folks involved.
17:44: And we know that Luke engaged with Peter.
17:50: And so he almost certainly got this story directly from Peter.
17:50: And he includes the detail.
17:56: He gets out.
17:56: He realizes, oh, that wasn't a dream.
17:56: That wasn't a vision.
17:56: I'm really out.
17:56: And he goes to the house of John Mark's mother, knocks on the door.
18:00: And the servant girl is so beside herself with excitement, she doesn't even open the door.
18:08: Peter's out.
18:08: And she runs off to tell him, dude, let him in first, Rhoda.
18:14: Open the door, Rhoda.
18:14: But instead, she runs off to tell the rest of the group that's praying, Peter's here.
18:20: And all these people that have been praying for Peter to be released are like, nah.
18:27: Do you guys feel the irony in that?
18:27: God, do this thing.
18:27: God does it.
18:27: Nah.
18:36: Couldn't be.
18:36: No way did God do that.
18:36: God, you must be a saint.
18:36: It must be Peter's angel, et cetera, et cetera.
18:41: Like, no.
18:41: And meanwhile, Peter's like, come on, let me in, right?
18:48: Go back.
18:48: Let him in.
18:48: Tells them how God had rescued him.
18:48: Says, tell James and the others.
18:58: Now, when he says tell James, he doesn't mean the James that we saw dead at the beginning of the chapter.
19:02: He means James, the brother of Jesus, who has, since the life of Jesus, come to saving faith and ends up writing the book of James in the New Testament.
19:08: Tell that, James.
19:12: James.
19:12: And then he goes off elsewhere.
19:12: When I look at this humorous, funny, Rhoda, you're never going to live this down scenario.
19:23: In fact, I got to believe Rhoda's a believer.
19:23: I got to believe we're going to see her in heaven.
19:30: Everyone's going to be like, oh, you're the one that forgot to open the door.
19:33: She's going to be like, yeah.
19:33: And then somebody else is going to come up to her.
19:36: Oh, you're the one.
19:36: Yeah.
19:36: She's never going to hear the end of this, right?
19:36: And this story is in there and the prayer's response.
19:42: And I think we have to take from this, it's possible to be genuinely prayerful and earnest in prayer and yet still struggle to believe it when God answers.
19:59: Those things can coexist.
20:04: Now, I think God answered their prayer better than they expected.
20:04: Now, I don't know exactly what they prayed for.
20:10: I'm hypothesizing that it was probably something like change Herod's mind, get people to advocate for him, you know, somehow move political pressure and mechanisms so that he gets set free.
20:30: God doesn't do that.
20:30: He doesn't use any of the normal means in this instance.
20:30: He does a miraculous, you can't explain it except God did it kind of rescue.
20:36: I love it when God works that way because God gets the glory.
20:42: You ever noticed how often in the Bible God works in ways that are just ridiculous to explain unless God did it, right?
20:48: One of my favorites is when Jesus heals the blind man by spitting in the dirt, rubbing buttons at the guy's eyes.
20:55: That doesn't work unless you're God.
21:01: I don't care whether you spit in the dirt or pour water bottle water in the dirt.
21:01: You rub dirt in somebody's eyes.
21:06: They're going blind.
21:06: They're not getting their sight back.
21:06: Here also we see God getting them out of maximum security jail.
21:12: No one's the wiser.
21:12: Lock, chains, guards, none of it has any effect.
21:18: He just gets away.
21:18: The angel's talking to him in the midst of it.
21:18: Guards don't hear it.
21:18: Hey, get up.
21:24: Put on your clothes.
21:24: Put on your, your tuna.
21:24: Get your sandals on.
21:24: Let's go, bub.
21:24: And they're just oblivious whether they're sleeping or spaced out or I don't know.
21:31: God gets the glory.
21:31: And it comes to pass that the soldiers who had unjustly held Peter prisoner are the very ones who end up put to death rather than Peter.
21:45: God turns the tables.
21:45: Now the soldiers suffer in that moment, but Herod doesn't get away with things.
21:56: God holds Herod to account as well.
21:56: We see this in verse 20 and following.
22:01: Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, and they came to him with one accord, and having persuaded Blastus, the king's chamberlain, they asked for peace because their country depended on the king's country for food.
22:11: Essentially, these two city-states are in trouble because they don't locally grow their own produce.
22:17: They need to import it.
22:17: They're a, they're coastal shipping cities.
22:17: They, they import and export, and like, we need the food that comes from this area.
22:29: The king is mad at these two city-states.
22:29: We don't know why.
22:29: And they pair up to come plead with Herod.
22:35: They make arrangements to get an audience with Herod.
22:35: They ask for peace because they don't want to face his wrath anymore.
22:40: They're either already starving or they will be soon because Herod's mad at him and withholding food.
22:46: And notice how it plays out, verses 21 and 22.
22:54: On an appointed day, Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and delivered an oration to them.
23:00: And the people were shouting, the voice of a god, not of a man.
23:00: Herod's putting on a show, putting on his royal robe, sitting in his throne, talking to the crowd.
23:07: And these folks know that he's a selfish, narcissistic man.
23:15: They know the way to get what they want from him is to suck up.
23:21: It's to stroke his ego.
23:21: It's to flatter him.
23:21: They're playing him like a harp.
23:21: And so they say of his speaking, the voice of a god, not of a man.
23:27: They're manipulating this guy.
23:38: How does Herod respond?
23:39: He doesn't give God the glory.
23:39: If he'd been a godly man, he would have refused such praise and diverted people's attention to God instead of him.
23:49: Exactly what Barnabas and Paul will do when we get to Acts 14 and a similar situation comes up.
23:55: But Herod, as we saw from the beginning, he needs that praise.
24:00: He needs that flattery to meet his ego.
24:00: And so he accepts their praise, treating him like God.
24:10: But Herod is for Herod, and God holds him to account.
24:10: Verse 23, immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down because he did not give God the glory, and was eaten by worms and breathed his last.
24:21: I don't know exactly how that played out.
24:26: I can't imagine if it was like some sort of CGI effect where you could watch him suddenly getting eaten by worms, and then he stops breathing or what.
24:33: But clearly instantaneous, right away, breathtakingly sign of judgment because he didn't give God the glory.
24:40: At the heart of creation is that God created the universe for God's glory.
24:51: Everything that exists exists for God's sake, not simply for our sake.
25:02: Yes, we benefit from it, and God is good to us and gives us good gifts, but that's not the final goal.
25:07: James lived for the glory of God even unto his own martyrdom, demonstrating that it's worth following Jesus no matter what.
25:15: Peter was rescued by God for the glory of God, and Herod is put to death for stealing God's glory.
25:21: This is not a thing that we can brush off as a minor issue in scripture.
25:29: In Romans chapter 1, Paul is laying out why everyone is accountable to God.
25:36: Everyone is guilty before God.
25:36: Everyone's got enough information to be accountable to God, and he says, verses 21 to 23, although they, people at large, knew God, they did not honor him as God.
25:51: Or give thanks to him.
25:51: But they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
25:57: Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images, resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
26:05: He said, we don't want God in his spectacularness.
26:10: We'll just take the things he's made and treat them like their God.
26:15: That's part of why man deserves to be judged by God.
26:15: Colossians 1, 15 through 18 describes Jesus this way.
26:23: It says, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
26:23: For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.
26:34: And he is before all things.
26:34: And in him, all things hold together.
26:43: And he is the head of the body, the church.
26:43: He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.
26:50: That in everything, he might be preeminent.
26:50: God created via Jesus.
26:50: He keeps everything existing properly according to Jesus for his glory.
27:01: So that Jesus is the preeminent honored one.
27:13: And 1 Corinthians 10, 31 is one of a number of passages that tells us as believers in Jesus, live for the glory of God.
27:19: So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
27:26: When you go home today and have lunch, or you ladies, if you go for a sack lunch and a walk at Voyager Park, or if you go for some task or hobby this afternoon, you are supposed to do that, whatever that thing is, for the glory of God.
27:39: Do it in such a way as to value God more than things.
27:46: Do it in such a way that says, Jesus is what matters most to me.
27:46: Do it in such a way that is pleasing in God's sight.
27:53: God created the world for his glory, and we're meant to live that way.
28:01: We say here at Faith Chapel that our purpose is to worship God by enjoying relationship with him and one another through Jesus Christ.
28:09: We exist to worship God.
28:09: That's what we believe here.
28:13: That is the very central point of why we even exist, to worship God, to honor God, to glorify God.
28:20: Everything else is under that banner and contributes to that objective.
28:29: The Christian life is meant to be lived according to God's good design for creation that is lived for God's glory.
28:35: Can I put this really simply for you?
28:35: It means we put God first, always.
28:35: It means that we treat the world around us as a gift from God, but we love the creator more than his creation.
28:49: It means we love the Giver more than the gifts that he gives.
28:49: It means that we live on God's terms by faith, even when life is hard.
28:56: We turn to him in earnest prayer in our times of need, trusting that he knows best how to answer.
29:04: And if he doesn't say yes to our particular plan that we've asked for, we know that he's got a better plan.
29:09: He knows better than us what the answer should look like.
29:15: Every parent of children has experienced some time when the kids asked for something and you had to say no because you had something better for them.
29:23: God's like that with us, but a million times more so.
29:29: Living for the glory of God means that we continue to live for Jesus and tell others about Jesus, even if it means hardship, even if it means that people choose to treat us badly.
29:44: It means we won't run away from hardship if it means being unfaithful to Jesus.
29:44: It means that we'll stick with Jesus even if it costs us everything.
29:53: We say here that our mission is for every believer, that's you Christian, if you're here as a Christian, for every believer to become, make mature and multiply, fully surrendered disciples of Jesus Christ.
30:09: Our goal is for every believer in here to become a fully surrendered disciple of Jesus, meaning there's nothing that you hold back.
30:15: There is nothing that is more important to you, more valuable to you than following Jesus by faith.
30:19: We say yes, Jesus, before we demand to know what the instructions are.
30:27: It's what it looks like to live for the glory of God.
30:35: I don't promise you that it'll be easy.
30:35: I can pretty much promise you on God's word it won't always be easy.
30:40: There'll be times when it's great.
30:40: Peter experienced some of that and yet he's the same one that says, hey, don't be surprised when the fiery trial comes on you as though something strange were happening.
30:50: I love Philippians 4.13, one of the most misused verses in the Bible.
30:58: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
30:58: We usually use that as a verse like, yeah, yeah, I can do more than I think I can do.
31:03: What it actually means in context is I can follow Jesus when life is so stinking hard, I don't even have food to eat.
31:09: It means God will help me stay the course.
31:20: When it's hard, when I'm suffering, that's what that verse is talking about.
31:27: Christian life is a hard life, but it's a good life.
31:27: And it centers on God, living for God, trusting in God, delighting in God so that God gets the glory.
31:35: And I promise you, according to God's word, we're going to find it's totally, totally worth it.
31:43: And all God's people said, amen.
31:53: Worship team, would you lead us in a closing song of worship?
31:56: As we prepare to close in a song of worship, I pray that you would orient our hearts to praise, to recognizing the good that you've done for us historically by sending Jesus, the good that you've done for us in our own personal lives in recent weeks, months, and years.
32:16: And persuade us, grant us, and grow us in our faith to have growing confidence in you for the future.
32:26: We pray these things in Jesus' name.
32:35: Amen.