AUG 2 2026 | The Book of Acts S1E2 | Church in a Chariot

Well, good morning, Church. How are we doing this morning? Wow, great. Summer day, it's hot. We're excited to be here, though. Let's go. My name is Harry. I am the family pastor. It's good to be with you at Sea Change Church this morning. We are continuing in our series in the Book of Acts titled "The Church Has Left the Building." And throughout this series, what we're going to be doing is repeating our big idea. The big idea that Pastor Adam presented to us last week is going to be thematic for us throughout the entirety of this series. And so I'm going to go ahead and read our big idea this morning.

It says that the Book of Acts repeatedly shows that the mission of Jesus was never intended to depend on a handful of extraordinary leaders. The apostles provide the foundation, but the expansion of the church happens because ordinary disciples, business owners, homemakers, servants, mentors, hosts, craftsmen, and unnamed believers say yes to God where they are. The Holy Spirit empowers everyday people to make an extraordinary difference. So in this series, we are going to be looking at characters other than the apostles. Sometimes we put the apostles on a pedestal, and I'm not sure we should do that. I think they're also ordinary individuals. But we are going to look at the non-apostles, kind of the side characters in the story.

There's no side characters with God, but this is our lens, right? And so we're looking at the side characters, ordinary individuals, and today we look at the character of Philip. And Philip is later known as Philip the Evangelist, and I think we're going to see why in our story today. But it also distinguishes him from another Philip. There's another Philip who was an apostle, but this Philip is not an apostle. He was one of the seven men chosen because he was full of the Holy Spirit. He had a good reputation, and he was chosen to wait on the tables of the widows who were being neglected at the distribution of food.

We talked about that last week. There were seven men chosen. Stephen is who we focused on last week. He was chosen, and Philip was chosen to wait and care for the widows and serve their tables. But pretty soon after that, persecution breaks out against the church. You have the martyrdom of Stephen. You have Saul beginning to ravage the church, and the church is scattered. And all Philip was doing at the time that we're aware of is waiting tables for Jesus, and yet now he's on the run. And you'd think that would scare a young man out of ministry, and yet Philip just goes deeper in.

Philip arrives in Samaria, and it says he preaches Christ to the Samaritans. And when he preaches Christ, it says the whole city begins to believe. They begin to experience healing. It says the city was full of much joy. And now in our passage, we're going to pick up in Acts 8:26. This is directly after that amazing moment in the city that the Spirit of God now puts Philip on another assignment. So let's go ahead and jump in, starting to verse 26. It says, "Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, 'Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.' This is a desert place.

And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, Queen of Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to Philip, 'Go over and join his chariot.'" So God calls Philip to leave a thriving ministry in the city to go to the desert and minister to one individual. Why? Why would God do that? Because God loves individuals, and he will go out of his way to rescue just the one. Jesus told a parable about a good shepherd who had 99 sheep and one had gone astray.

Well, he had 100 sheep. 99 were in the pen. One had gone astray. And what's he said the good shepherd does? He leaves the 99 for the one. This is what God does. He's always willing to go out of his way to rescue the individual. And if you had been that one person on the desert road, he would've sent you a Philip. This is what he does. He sends his church. He sends his saints. He sends his people on mission to announce his salvation and his love to those who are lost. Which is why William Temple says that the church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.

See, the church has to leave the building because there is always someone somewhere on a desert road, just hungry, in need of the gospel, in need of the good news, having a story that's weighty and heavy, and they need someone to show up on that road and meet them where they are. And so Philip leaves the public spotlight of the city to minister to one individual in the desert. And I put in your notes that influence in public places only matters if you have faithfulness in hidden spaces. See, Philip was able to preach to a whole large crowd to change a city, but he was just as willing and effective to sit with and minister to one person in the desert where no one could see, no one could applaud.

Who Philip was in public matched who he was in private. And that can be challenging, I think, for many of us, especially at church on Sunday. It's easy to show up to church and put on our Sunday best, and our best face, and our best foot forward here at church when we're surrounded by other believers. Man, but who are we on Monday? As a pastor, to be honest, it's a thing I have to constantly examine. And my wife let me know this week I wasn't being a great husband. And I was like, "That's true. I haven't been." I've been cranky and frustrated and stressed because it's been a big summer.

And I was like, "Man, who am I being behind closed doors?" I want so bad to be the same person in public that I am behind closed doors, and Philip's a great example for that He is who he was when no one could applaud him, and he just continued to share and follow Jesus. For Philip, his public ministry was sourced from a humility to serve as he just waits on tables for these widows. It was sourced from a willingness to listen as he listened to the Spirit of God. Notice his ability to hear God's Spirit. He must have had quiet times of prayer, quiet moments of solitude that he could hear from the Spirit.

He had this willingness to listen, and then he had a faithfulness to follow, that when God called him to go, he went. Wherever you go, Lord, I'm going. And if we just had those three things, we'd be in pretty good shape. If we just had a humility to serve, a willingness to listen, and a faithfulness to follow, we'd be in pretty good shape, and God would use us in extraordinary ways. But too often, I think we're obsessed with what we think we deserve over how we can serve. We just think about ourselves and what we deserve instead of how I could serve others, or we're not willing to listen because we're just too busy.

We don't make quiet time with God and the Spirit because we're just busy, we're hurried, we're rushed, or even worse, we're more in love with our own voice than God's voice. And so we don't listen. And if we don't do those things, it's going to be hard to be faithful to follow. And notice none of those things are about being talented. None of those things are about your strengths or your skills or how great you... None of them. They're actually all very achievable things. It's not about gifting. It's not about strengths. None of it's about being talented. It's about being willing and faithful and humble.

When I was in high school, I was a wrestler in high school, and I was a sophomore this year, and our team was going to the CIF championship. And we had a kid on our team, his name was Peter, and he was an incredible wrestler. He was really good. He was a senior that year. He had never won the CIF championship, but we knew this is the year for Peter. Peter's winning it this year. And so the whole team was rallied behind Peter. And we show up at 6:00 a.m. because that's how early you got to show up for these horrible things, and it's a weigh-in, and you're there.

And weigh-ins are at 7:00 a.m., and we can check our weight beforehand, and Peter steps on the scale to check his weight, and he is overweight by a pound and a half. And in wrestling, that's a really big deal. You cannot be even 0.1 pounds overweight. You will not wrestle. So you have to be exactly on weight or under. And he's about a pound and a half over. And so Peter, he puts on some sweats. He puts on a beanie. He starts running around jogging, trying to see if he can lose any last bit of water weight so that he could make weight, and weigh-ins are approaching.

And so he gets one last chance to step on the scale to check, did he make it? And so he strips down to his boxers, and he's being wiped down with towels to get all the last moisture off of him. He steps on the scale, and he's overweight by 0.2. And it hits the team. He's not going to get to wrestle. We were all banking on Peter to go win this thing, and he's not going to get to do it. And then an idea dawned on me. I realized he'd been sweating a whole bunch, and so some moisture must have been left in his underwear.

And so, look, you weren't allowed to go down butt naked. You weren't allowed to do it. But what I had this idea of, I was like, he just needs a dry pair of underwear. You can't leave the building. There's no bathrooms, and so look, I'm a team player. I gathered my team. I was like, "Everybody, let's make a wall." And they did. They circled around me, backs turned. They made a wall so no one can see. I did a quick change, and I handed Peter my underwear. And I was like, "Peter, put this on, brother. Go weigh in." Peter put it on. He weighed in.

He made weight exactly, and he went and he won the championship. Yes, CIF champion. I know. It's pretty good. Pretty good. It's amazing. And in this moment, see, I was not a good enough wrestler at the time to go win the championship. I just wasn't good enough. I couldn't have replaced Peter. I wasn't talented enough, gifted enough. I had nothing to offer but my undies. Yet I was a core reason our team brought home a gold medal that day. Because I was just willing to give up what I had. Anything just to give up what I had. And for God, God is not looking for impressive people.

He's not looking for really talented people. He is looking for willing people. People just willing to show up and be like, "This is what I got to offer, Lord. This is all it is. Use it as you see fit." He's just looking for willing, humble, ordinary people that he will use in extraordinary ways. And so God sends Philip, and Philip encounters this man in the desert. And we should know a few things about the Ethiopian eunuch. The Ethiopian eunuch, it says that his job was to safeguard the royal treasury for the Queen in Ethiopia. And a eunuch is someone who's been castrated, if you don't know.

And historically, most eunuchs in the royal courts, they did not choose this path. This was likely chosen for him, forced upon him as a small child. See, kings and queens would intentionally force enslaved boys into castration to serve as high-ranking administrators and officials because eunuchs were considered the most reliable. They were reliable, especially to guard large wealth and treasure, because they had no spouse. They had no children. They had no in-laws. And so they had very little motivation to steal royal funds. They had no one to provide for. And so this path was likely chosen for him since he was a child. But somewhere in his story, he must have encountered the Jewish God, Yahweh.

He encounters God, and he puts his trust in God. And now he's traveled thousands of miles from Ethiopia to arrive at Jerusalem to worship. While he was there, he must have purchased the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, a copy of that scroll, which would've been incredibly expensive. It would've cost a small fortune at the time. And so we see that this eunuch has devout faith And yet, the story of his childhood would not escape him. Because in Deuteronomy 23:1, it explicitly bans castrated men from entering the assembly of the Lord. So when he would've arrived in Jerusalem, his temple access as a eunuch and as a foreigner would've been heavily restricted.

He would've been banned from entering the inner courts of the temple to worship. And originally, the reason that law is there in Deuteronomy is to protect God's people, because at the time, they were surrounded by these pagan nations, and they had these cultic practices, some of these pagan cults, and they would worship their gods, and one of the acts of worship to show their devotion would be castration. And so God specifically bans that. He says, "I do not desire that form of worship." He says, "If you want to worship me that way, do not even enter the temple." He banned that because he didn't want his people doing that.

It's the opposite of who God is. His first commandment to Adam and Eve is be fruitful and multiply. This is the opposite of that, and so God had banned it. But at this moment in history, they were living more by the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law. And so many years later, this eunuch, he had a much different story than that. This was forced upon him, and yet he would've been restricted. But God saw his heart, God saw his devotion, and so God sent him Philip. And God says to Philip, "Go join his chariot." And let's keep reading to see what happens.

So let's pick up again in verse 30. "So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, 'Do you understand what you're reading?' And he said, 'How can I, unless someone guides me?' And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this, 'Like a sheep, he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearers is silent, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.' And the eunuch said to Philip, 'About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?' And then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture, he told him the good news about Jesus." So Philip runs over to this chariot.

Imagine it was moving. Imagine Philip just running, like playing catch up. He's running to this chariot, and he discovers when he gets there that the eunuch is reading the prophet Isaiah. And he asks him, "Do you know what you're reading? Do you get it?" And the eunuch's like, "No, I don't get it. How could I get it unless someone explains it to me? How could I get it?" Which shows, I think, the Bible is so alive, and it's so powerful, and it speaks through generations, but I think if you open it up, and you ever have trouble, I just want to give you some comfort.

It can be challenging. It can be challenging. And it's helpful to have a body that comes together and opens the Word together because it can be challenging. And so he begins with this Scripture, he says, and he tells him the good news about Jesus. And the Scripture he was reading was Isaiah 53, which is one of the clearest passages, chapters, in the entire Bible that prophesies the crucifixion of Christ. Right before the section that the eunuch was reading, right before that section, he would've read in Isaiah 53 a famous passage that says, "He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." He would've just read this. There's no clearer passage in the Old Testament that just outlines the gospel story. That the perfect Son of God was pierced for me on a cross, for my sake, for my well-being, for my transgressions, for my sin. And my sin was put on, poured out on Jesus. Jesus carried my sin. He wore my sin. He was treated as a guilty sinner in my place, abused for my transgression, and with his death, he put my sin in the grave.

And now I walk free because another has taken my place, another has substituted himself for me, and by his wounds I am healed. And for this eunuch, this speaks right to his story. Because his whole life was spent serving a queen who required his disfigurement. But then he reads about a servant king who was disfigured in his place. In fact, in the chapter right beforehand in Isaiah 52, he probably would've just read this as he's reading through this scroll. He would've just read that Jesus was marred beyond recognition. It says he was so disfigured that he did not even look human. And it is because of Jesus' disfigurement in our place that someone like this eunuch and someone like you and me no longer has to identify as the things we've done or the things that have been done to us.

We no longer have our access to God restricted. We can run towards our Father. And he may have been rejected by religion at the temple, but he's redeemed by Jesus at the cross. He can just full access to the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit. And this has always been God's plan for the eunuch. This has always been his plan. Look what it says just three chapters later in Isaiah 56. I wish we could've been there to like, I'm like, "I can't wait until the eunuch reads 56." I wish we could've been there to see him read 56 because it's so good. Look what it says in 56:4-5.

"For thus says the Lord: to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off." See, God has always planned to redeem this eunuch and any that would come to him, and he does it tenfold. Look what it says. He says, "You could never have sons and daughters. You could never pass down your family name. But in my house, I'm going to give you a name better than sons and daughters.

In my house, you're getting a monument. In my house, your name will never be erased." Because their family name was just constantly erased, not able to have sons and daughters, and here in the house of the Lord, he says, "No, you belong here. You're lasting here. Your name here with me is everlasting." God speaks right to his story in the prophet Isaiah, and if God can speak to his story, I promise you that God can speak to yours as God has spoken to mine. And if you are here and the gospel has spoken to your story, then I just want to encourage you. We've got to become a people who share with others.

We've got to become a people eager to share how the gospel has changed our lives because the gospel gives hope to the hopeless, it gives credit to the discredited, but the gospel must be carried before it can be received. So who's God sending you to? Man, is there just one or two people on your heart where you're like, "I just know I got to share with them this week." Who is God saying, "Hey, go join their chariot. Go link up with them. They got to hear your story." Where are you carrying the gospel? Because if church can happen in a chariot on a desert road, then it can happen anywhere we go because this is church, right?

He gets in, they're in community. They're opening up the scripture. He's preaching the gospel. Spoiler alert, it's about to end in a baptism. It's church. They're having church in a chariot. That's what's going on. So church can happen in a chariot on a desert road 2,000 years ago, and it can happen wherever we go. We love this version of church. I love this version of church. I'm a pastor, right? This is great, but we don't need great lights. We don't need an amplified microphone. Church can happen where you go. You can leave the building and bring church on your walk with the dog, in your grocery store, as you sit with your friends, at the park as you watch your kids play, as you wait in line for your coffee.

Church can happen where the church goes. But we have to be a people who carry the gospel. It's essential for us. One of my favorite quotes is a quote, I've been using it all summer. I think I used it last time I preached here, and I used it at some camps this summer, and I'm just going to keep quoting it because it's my favorite, but it's not in your notes. But St. Teresa of Avila and she says this, "Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good.

Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world." God's plan A to bless the world, to heal the world, to carry the gospel to the world is you. So will you do it? Now let's keep reading. Let's go back to verse 36. "And as they were going along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, 'See, here is water. What prevents me from being baptized?' And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and he went on rejoicing.

But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through, he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea." I love that the eunuch asks. He sees the water and he asks. He goes, "What could stop me from getting baptized?" He's so used to being stopped. He's so used to being like, "All right, cool. Hey, that's far enough. That's close enough." He's just so used to being like, "All right, stop right there." And he asks. He's like, "What could stop me? Are there any hidden barriers? Are there any hidden rules? What's to stop me from getting in that water, professing faith in Jesus, and celebrating newness of life?" And Philip says, "Nothing." And that's the whole point.

Nothing can ever separate you again. Nothing can stop you. I put in your notes that true belonging is found when you realize there are no barriers between you and God's love. And perhaps we need to ask ourselves a similar question. What's stopping you from going deeper? Wherever you're at in your relationship with Jesus, we're all in different journeys with the Lord. What's stopping you from going another step deeper? What's stopping you from putting more of your trust in him, from receiving his love and forgiveness? What's stopping you from getting involved in a small group and getting into community? What's stopping you from getting baptized? What's stopping you from stepping deeper out into service?

What's stopping you from taking one more step deeper with Jesus? There's no barriers. Jesus has torn down the barriers, and we can trust him. And so this eunuch is baptized, and there's no greater affirmation of belonging than baptism. Because baptism represents forgiveness. It represents becoming a part of the body of Christ. It represents newness of life and a new loyalty and a commitment to Jesus, a new king in your life, a new birth into a new kingdom. It's a belonging sacrament. And I love what John Mark Comer says. He says that followers of Jesus need to come back to the reality that baptism is their primary pledge of allegiance, and the litmus test of our faith is the degree to which we love our enemy.

See, our greatest devotion above all devotions has to be the gospel of Jesus Christ. It has to be newness of life in Jesus above all other things, and that's what baptism symbolizes. Nearly everything else is secondary. The gospel has to have the primary allegiance in our hearts and in our lives. And when the Church recaptures their single-minded loyalty for the gospel, then the Church will best be equipped to act like the Church outside the walls of the building. But we have to be gospel-centric and gospel-focused. And it's so easy to get distracted by all sorts of other things in our walk with Jesus. And we have to consistently come back to the meat, to the center, to the core of our faith, which is the gospel.

This is what equips us to best go and make gospel change, to be the church outside the walls of the church. When my wife was pregnant with our son, Jude, he just turned three. We just celebrated his third birthday, and it's crazy. This just blows my mind. And we have our second due in October. But when Jude was in the womb and Kalina was carrying him, Kalina signed us up for a birthing class. And that was supposed to prepare new parents for the birth experience. And I didn't know what to expect. I didn't dream of being in a birthing class growing up, and so this was new.

I thought it would be very hands-on. I thought it was going to be a lot of her practicing pushing and me being like, "Push!" And then she'd squeeze my hand. I didn't know what to expect. And it was not that at all. It was very informational. It's educational. And it was fine. It was good. The thing I liked the least about it, though, was they made us sit on the floor the entire time, and I don't like sitting on the floor. It hurts my back. I'm not into it. I do anything I can to avoid sitting on the floor. But for each class, for eight sessions, for several hours, we were forced to sit on the floor.

And that was not because they didn't have chairs. They had plenty of chairs. That wasn't the problem. They actually had enough chairs we all probably could've had two chairs. I could've sat in a chair and put my feet up on another chair. No, they actively stacked the chairs and put them in the corner and even had the nerve sometimes to ask me to help them. Like, "Hey, you know these chairs that you're not going to be using? You want to help me stack?" I was like, "No, I don't want to help you stack those chairs. I want those chairs." And so they would force us to sit on the floor, and the women, the moms, they mostly just accepted this.

They were pretty cool about it because I think, I don't know, they're all pregnant for the first time. Everything's already weird and uncomfortable. They're just like, "Yeah, let's do criss-cross applesauce for three hours. That makes sense." And so they were fine. It was the men who had the issue. All the dads in the room. I wasn't alone in it. As the class went on, you just saw dads leaning on things, trying to find a way to just not be on the floor. I found dads were doing wall sits to just try to... There was one class, this is true, there's one class where a dad just unstacked a chair in the middle of the class and just sat in it, and I thought he was so brave.

I was like, to stage a public protest, a peaceful protest, in the middle of this birthing class, it was admirable. It was brave. And when it came down to the actual birth of my son, what I found out for us in this situation was that class was pretty much not helpful at all. It just wasn't helpful. Almost nothing we did in that class applied to the birth of my son. None more striking to me than the fact that I had a chair the whole time in the hospital. In fact, in the hospital, I spent most of my time in a chair next to my wife's bedside, encouraging her.

And so it didn't help that much at all. So the real thing was actually kind of easier than the class because I had a chair. That's a joke in case the moms want to come after me. But the reality is, the truth about it is, nothing actually could've prepared us for that moment. That moment was so unique. That moment was so challenging. It was so beautiful, but Kalina had a pretty complicated delivery. It was kind of scary. It was challenging. None of the regular stuff we would've learned could've helped us in that moment. And sometimes preparation, you can do all the preparation you want, but eventually you have to face the moment.

Eventually, preparation has to just become action, and I think the same is true for the church. We can equip you. We want to equip you. We want to prepare you. We want you to take the gifts assessment we've been talking about. We want you to come to trainings. We want you to be prepared, listen to sermons, be in small groups, be prepared to go and change the world. But at some point, you got to do it. At some point, preparation has to become participation when the church leaves the building. And if we have that single-minded focus on the gospel of Jesus, then eventually the gospel's going to become more than just an idea to all of us.

It will become a way of life, where you just start to speak it out. You don't even mean to. You just start to celebrate and live in a reconciliation type of way. You're just looking for reconciliation. You're looking to bring people in. The gospel has to become more than a good idea. It has to become a way of life for us, where it spews out into our words and to our actions. And for this eunuch, this eunuch comes out of the water. He gets baptized, and he comes out, and Philip's gone. That's got to be weird. Philip, it says, is transported by the Spirit and arrives in Azotus.

He's carried away by the Spirit, which is crazy. I'm about to go back to Africa with an amazing team for the fourth time on Thursday. We fly out, and it's over 20 hours of travel, and it's brutal. But apparently, teleportation is not off the table. And I'm praying for it. I don't know. I think it's only happened once. Maybe you guys know of more times. I think it's only happened once, but I'm fine with second place. I'll be the one. And so Philip, as he baptizes this guy and then gets transported, he's literally gone from waiting tables to teleportation. He's carried away by the Spirit.

And then he says he arrives in Azotus, and what's he do? What's Philip start doing? Preaching. That's right. Single-minded focus. He just preaches the gospel, town after town after town until he gets to Caesarea. And then for this eunuch, it says the eunuch goes away rejoicing. The eunuch walks away rejoicing, and now that eunuch is recognized as the first person to bring Christianity to Africa. Many African Christians actually trace back their heritage to this eunuch. And the church in East Africa is one of the longest existing churches in the world and has started with the Ethiopian Church. And so an entire movement started on the continent of Africa because one ordinary man was willing to leave the thriving ministry in the city, which probably felt pretty big at the time.

Like, "Man, this is popping off. Look at this city." Well, he goes to the desert road, preaches to one man, and now over years, a continent is being reached and changed because he shared the gospel with one individual, because he followed God's Spirit. So when you leave this place, would you carry the gospel to someone who needs it? There is someone somewhere on a desert road, and they just need the gospel. They need to hear your story. They need to know how God has touched you and moved in your life. So would you carry it? And if you do, you do not know the chain reaction that it may cause.

Amen? Amen. I'm going to invite up Pastor Joe Brandy, and he's going to lead us in communion. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen. Amen. All right. Well, we are going to close. Honestly, I don't think we need a better benediction than ending with the Lord's Prayer.

But here we are. So extend your hands, and we'd just love to bless you with this church. We just want you to know that you are blessed. Now we send you out. We just send you out. We pray that you're being equipped, that you be in community, that you be rooted, that you come here to hear the gospel, but then you go out there to live the gospel. And so God, we just bless these people, Jesus. Bless us to be a people who carry out the gospel, Lord, who live the gospels in the hard relationships in our family. We live the reconciliation of the gospel.

With strangers, God, that we might be a beacon, a lighthouse, God, for people. That they might come, and they might hear our story, and they might hear the gospel. God, send us, Lord. Send us to one person this week. I pray we come back next week just with gospel stories on our lips. Give us opportunity, Lord, and make us aware by your Spirit of the opportunities in front of us. And if we're here, and that gospel's still new, God, let that gospel sink in, that truth sink in, God, that first they might just experience the love, the forgiveness, and the freedom, God, that you provided by tearing down all the barriers.

And we can just come to you freely now as we are. We love you, Jesus. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Love you all. Bless you guys. Peace. You're the way, the truth, and the life. You're the well that never runs dry. I'm the branch, and you are the vine. Draw me close and teach me to abide. Be my strength, my song in the night. Be my all, my treasure, my prize. I am yours, forever you're mine. Draw me close and teach me to abide.