God Saves a Terrorist (Part 2)

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and open them with me to Acts chapter 9.

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Last week we began looking at the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, who, as we know, will later become the apostle Paul, the apostle who is responsible for writing, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the majority of the books of the New Testament.

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He would be responsible for taking the gospel to the ends of the known world of his day, and he would go to death for his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

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And yet, he began his life, at least he began in what we see in the Scripture, as a terrorist.

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Now, we might not have ever thought to use that term of Paul before, but if we look at the modern expression of what we would call a religious terrorist, someone who is willing to imprison, to sanction, or to kill on behalf of their God, to go out and demand that people convert or be imprisoned, we would say that is an act of religious terrorism, and that is exactly what Paul was doing.

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Last week we gave an exposition of chapter 9, verses 1-19, and this week my desire is to make some application from what we looked at last week.

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And if you were not here, do not worry, you will still be able to follow today, there will not be anything of necessity that you'll miss that you just won't be able to follow, you'll still be able to follow today, but I would encourage if you were not here, to go back and listen to last week and at least learn about this event, this watershed moment in the history of the Church, this paradigm shift in the life of the Apostle Paul, where he went from being Saul of Tarsus, the great Hebrew of Hebrews, the great Pharisee, the great persecutor of the Church, to being the Apostle Paul, the greatest of all missionaries in the history of the Church.

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This shift is an amazing thing, and his life from chapter 9 to the end would never be the same.

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So just as a reminder, let us stand and read, giving honor and reverence to God's Word.

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We'll read chapter 9, verses 1-19, and then we will pray and ask God to bless our time of study.

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Verse 1, But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues of Damascus, so that if he found anyone belonging to the way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

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Now, as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.

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And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, Who are you, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting, but rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.

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The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice, but seeing no one.

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Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing.

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So they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus, and for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

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Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias.

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The Lord said to him in a vision, Ananias, and he said, Here I am, Lord.

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And the Lord said to him, Rise and go to the street called Strayed, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul.

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For behold, he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay hands on him so that he might regain his sight.

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But Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints at Jerusalem, and here he has authority from the chief priest to bind all who call on your name.

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But the Lord said to him, Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel, for I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.

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So Ananias departed and entered the house and laying his hands on him, he said, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you came, says to me or excuse me, by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.

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And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight.

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Then he rose and was baptized and taking food.

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He was strengthened.

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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.

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I thank you for the truth of the word.

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And I pray, Father, first and foremost, as I always pray, please keep me from error as I seek to bring instruction to the saints by the power of your Holy Spirit.

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For ultimately, he is the instructor.

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And if there is anything to be taught today, it will come through his applying the truth to the hearts of the hearers.

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And father, I pray for their protection, I pray that as we open the word together, you would protect our minds from wandering, protect our thoughts from going to the things of the world, focus us intently on your word and help us to understand the value of under understanding what it is we are studying here today in the conversion of Saul of Tarsus.

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Father, I pray you would glorify yourself and what we are doing now in Jesus' name.

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Amen.

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Paul was a zealous individual, and it's interesting that he never stopped being a zealous individual.

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He was zealous for Judaism, and then after his conversion, his confrontation with Jesus Christ, he becomes an even more zealous Christian.

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God took all the energy that he had, which had been focused against him, and he refocused that power and energy toward him.

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And it really is an amazing scene as you think about the entire situation and what's going on in the life of Saul.

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But it's also an amazing scene in the church because if you were to just consider for a moment a person who is persecuting the church, who is hating the church, who is coming against the church, trying to imprison people, put them in jail, put them even to stoning, as Stephen had been stoned, and this person who had even gone to the high priest, had gotten papers from the priest to give him the authority to put people in prison and taking soldiers with him to go and find these people so that he might imprison them, to hear that this person had converted might make one a bit suspicious.

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In fact, there's indication in the New Testament that his early days there was suspicion.

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Even this person, Ananias, who sent to him, says, Lord, don't you know who this is? As if God didn't know.

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And I don't think Ananias was being irreverent.

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I think he just wanted clarification.

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As I said last week, he didn't want to get sent to the wrong house.

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They didn't want to get put in.

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You realize, God, this this is the one you're speaking of.

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Saul, the guy who was sent here to imprison us all, that's the one you want me to go to.

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And, you know, my wife and I were talking after service last week as we were going through the text.

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And and, you know, she was just relaying to me, you know, it really is as if one of the terrorists, and we're all so familiar with terrorism now, we see it all the time.

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We have to witness it on television.

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They put it right in our face.

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And the 24 hour news cycle forces you to watch things that you'd never want to watch.

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Somebody right before the moments of their death, just sitting there waiting for the knife.

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And, you know, we're forced to watch this.

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And imagine that God called you to board a plane and go overseas and go into the house of one of those men who you had seen take the life of another and say, go to him and lay your hands on him.

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And preach the gospel to him.

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You might be a little bit more than Ananias willing to say, Lord, are you sure? Are you are you certain, Lord? It's an amazing situation.

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It's it's it astounds me every time I read it, because God did save a terrorist.

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And what I want us to see from this text, we've already gone through sort of verse by verse.

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We've looked at the meaning of the text and what I didn't do last week.

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I want to give you something today.

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I didn't give you the outline of the actual text.

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What we see is Saul's mission in verses one and two, Saul's vision in verses three through nine and Saul's conversion in verses 10 through 19.

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So his mission, his vision and his conversion, his mission starting out was to imprison Christians.

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His mission starting out was to be a scourge against the way, which was what the early church was called followers of the way he was he meant to be their enemy.

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And he was.

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And then God, through Jesus Christ, brought to him a vision which blinded him and he told him, you're persecuting me by persecuting my followers, you're persecuting me.

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And for three days he was without sight and he didn't eat or drink, doesn't say he couldn't, said he didn't eat or drink, indicating this is probably a self-imposed time of fasting.

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He had been face to face with the Lord Jesus Christ, the very one he was persecuting has come face to face with him.

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I don't think I'd want to eat either.

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I don't think I'd be thirsty either.

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I think I would be doing nothing but face down in the dirt praying.

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And it does say he was praying.

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That's what Paul was doing.

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He's praying.

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And you've got to think what's going on in his mind at that moment.

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Every.

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Every man that he had imprisoned.

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Every woman that he had taken, every orphan he had created right at that moment, he's dealing with that.

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And God sends him a messenger of grace.

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Brother Saul, isn't that beautiful? That messenger of grace comes to him.

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Yes, you're a sinner.

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Yes, you need a savior.

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You've seen him, you know him, you've been converted.

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And now.

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Receive the Holy Spirit.

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This is the moment in the life of the apostle, it's an amazing moment.

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And what I want to show you by way of application is three examples of Christian truth that we see in Saul of Tarsus.

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Now, I've given you the answers last week, there were blanks and I felt bad because we didn't get to them.

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So this week I felt like I'd do you a favor.

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I just went ahead and added them in.

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And so you don't even have to write the blanks in.

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You know what they are.

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And let's let's go through them now.

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Because in Saul, the first thing we see is an example of sovereign election.

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We see an example of sovereign election.

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The Bible is clear.

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And this is something we really need to get into our minds.

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You need to really get this in because it's hard for us to understand.

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But we need to allow this to seep and steep.

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And our brains seep in and stay.

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God is free to choose and to use whomever he will.

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He is free to choose and use whomever he will.

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I call your attention back to Romans nine.

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We read it as our opening text this morning.

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And if you want to write in a little note to go back later and meditate on it, I encourage your meditation on Romans nine this week, but particularly verses 14 through 18.

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Because the Apostle Paul in Romans nine is talking about this.

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He's talking about God's ability to choose whom he will.

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He's talking about God's sovereign election.

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He's talking about the fact that throughout the whole history of the world, God has always made it a point to choose whom he will.

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He chose Abraham out of everyone in Mesopotamia, he chose Abraham.

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Not because Abraham was a good man.

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Abraham was an idolater.

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He still chose him.

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And out of Abraham, he chose Isaac.

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Not because Isaac was the firstborn.

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And not because Isaac was the oldest child.

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He had an adopted son, Eleazar of Damascus.

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He had another born son, Ishmael, the son of Hagar.

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And he would have many other sons and daughters through his second wife, Keturah, after the death of Sarah.

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But Isaac was the chosen one, the one that God had given the promise to Abraham for.

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And in Romans nine, he says we have the picture of Abraham as an election.

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We have the picture of Isaac as an election.

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And then we have the picture of Jacob.

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And the picture of Jacob is the most profound, because Jacob is chosen over Esau, his older twin brother.

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And in the culture of the day, the older brother was the one who would receive the blessing.

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But God said the older shall serve the younger.

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That Jacob would be the one who received the blessing.

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Why? Romans nine tells us.

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So that God's purpose and election might be established.

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So that it might be demonstrated that God chooses whom he wills.

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And it's not us who chooses.

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We choose according to all kinds of reasons.

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We choose because someone's more handsome.

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We choose because someone has more money.

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We choose because someone has more benefit to us.

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But God chooses based upon his choice, not upon what we might choose.

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And thus he gets to verse 14 in Romans nine.

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He says, What shall we say then? Is there injustice with God? Is it unfair that God would choose? By no means.

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Me gnoita means it's the strongest emphatic no in the Greek.

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In fact, in the King James Bible, they put God forbid, because in the vernacular, God forbid was the strongest emphatic no.

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It's a time where the King James uses a dynamic equivalent, because the Greek does not say God forbid.

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It says may it not be.

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But it's a strong, excessive no.

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Is God unfair? No.

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That's Paul's answer.

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Never.

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And he goes on to say, For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.

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Verse 16, So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but upon God who has mercy.

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For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, For this very purpose I raised you up, so that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

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So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

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In fact, I will add a little thought from the Greek here that's often missed.

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The term have mercy in English is how we would show mercy as a verb, to have mercy on someone.

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But in Greek, the word mercy, there is a verb.

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So it actually says, He mercies whom he wills.

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He hardens whom he wills.

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And it makes a correlation between the two.

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God is the active one choosing to mercy whom he wills, and harden whom he wills.

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Very important linguistic note at that point.

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God is free in the dispensation of grace.

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He is free to choose to whom He will give His grace.

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He is sovereign over His grace.

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Why do you think we call our church by the name we call it? It wasn't an accident.

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It was an act of sovereign grace.

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It wasn't an accident.

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It's God's sovereign grace.

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Now, I don't preach on this particular issue every Sunday.

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But it just so happens it's in the text.

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Because God chooses Saul without his approval or his consent.

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God chooses Saul without Saul choosing Him.

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That's an important truth.

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In fact, I want to quote to you two people who reject sovereign election.

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I know that the quotes I'm quoting are people who would reject what I'm saying.

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And I want you to hear this.

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This is what we might call Arminian people.

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People who believe in Arminian theology.

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And this is what they say.

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One, quote, God offers salvation to those who will have it, but does not enforce it upon anyone who doesn't want it.

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End quote.

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God's a gentleman.

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He'd never force himself on anyone.

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I've heard that, but that's not what he said.

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But that's basically that he offers it, but he doesn't impose it.

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The next thing, the next quote, God's drawing never forces anyone to repent, nor does it change anyone's will apart from the consent of his own heart.

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What do those do? Who is sovereign in that relationship? Man.

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God can't do nothing unless you do something.

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Well, I'm here to tell you Saul would disagree.

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Saul would disagree.

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He didn't want to receive Jesus.

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He hated Jesus.

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He hated everything Jesus stood for.

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He never entertained the notion of placing his faith in Jesus.

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You know the old picture of the knobless door? You know what I'm talking about? The door where Jesus is standing there, and there's a door that doesn't have a knob on it, because Jesus stands at the door and knocks.

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By the way, people misuse that quote all the time.

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But they say Jesus stands at the door and knocks, but he never would enter.

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Jesus kicked Saul's door in.

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Jesus didn't need a doorknob.

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He went in like a SWAT team.

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He knocked him down.

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He blinded his eyes.

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And he said, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Saul wasn't ready for that.

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And Saul certainly didn't invite it.

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Were it left to Saul, on that road to Damascus, he would have continued on to imprison and possibly bring about the death of many more.

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Were it left to the sovereignty of his will, he would have never changed.

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Saul is a picture of this verse.

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Proverbs 16.9 The heart of a man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.

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You know, we get up in the morning thinking, I'm going to do this.

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And God might have another plan.

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In fact, James tells us we should never say, I'm going to get up and do this and that, or go here and there.

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But I should say, if the Lord wills, I will do this or that, or go here or there.

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Who's sovereign in that relationship? It ain't me.

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And even James points out to us who's sovereign in the relationship between us and God.

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It's God.

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And Proverbs 19.21 says much the same thing.

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It says, Many are the plans and the minds of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.

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We got all these ideas.

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We got all these plans.

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And Paul had all this idea.

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He was going to go in and persecute the church, and he's going to bring vindication to his fellow Jewish people.

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But no.

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God had a different plan.

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And here's the key for free will, by the way.

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Those who want to argue free will, God has a free will.

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And when your freedom runs into God's freedom, He wins every time.

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Ask Jonah.

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Ask Jonah.

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Do you have a type of freedom? Yes.

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And we can discuss that another time.

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But we have a type of what we call free moral agency.

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We make choices.

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I decided this morning to get one food rather than another and those things.

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But the reality is this.

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When my freedom runs into God's freedom, He wins every time.

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God had a purpose for Saul.

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Saul couldn't even fathom the purpose God had for him.

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Now, I've heard some people who advocate what we call libertarian autonomous free will.

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That's a big phrase.

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Basically it just means people don't have any outside influence.

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They do exactly what they want.

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They don't have any external influence.

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And I've heard people who argue for that.

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They say this.

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Well, they say, Well, Saul still could have rejected Christ.

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Here's what they're missing.

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They're missing the beauty and the point of God's sovereign choice of Paul.

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Because the reality is, Saul would have never chosen anything other than Christ having come face to face with Him.

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The idea that he could have or would have is not even part of the conversation we should be having.

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In the sovereign plan of God, there's no maybes.

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There's no possibilities.

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Molinism, for those of you who might know what that is, is a false theological system which says that God sees all different possibilities everywhere and then He chooses the one that's going to save the most people.

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It's the new thing that's trying to oppose Reformed theology.

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It's called Molinism.

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It's trying to make its way into the Southern Baptist Convention as a way to oppose simple theology that God is sovereign over who will be saved and who will be lost.

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God is sovereign over who's going to go and who's going to stay.

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God is sovereign over our moving forward or our moving backwards.

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That God is sovereign over everything.

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They've got to have something else because they can't stand it.

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So they create this false system called Molinism.

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And the idea is that God simply deals with the cards He's been dealt.

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And you know what the problem with that is? Who dealt the cards? If God's just dealing with the hand He's been dealt, who's the dealer? That's the one we should be worshiping.

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I want you to consider Paul's own testimony of himself.

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Turn your Bibles to Galatians 1.

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I want you to consider Paul's testimony of his own conversion.

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Galatians 1, 13.

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He says, For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it.

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That was something Paul would never forget.

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Even though he knew his sins had been forgiven, this reality, he called himself the chief of sinners.

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He didn't say I was the chief, I am the chief.

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And he maintained this understanding of where God had saved him from.

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And he says, I persecuted the church violently.

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I was advancing in Judaism beyond many in my own age among my people.

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So extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.

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But when He who had set me apart before I was born and called me by His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son to me in order that I might reach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with any other, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia and returned again to Damascus.

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The point of this is this.

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Saul said this.

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He said, When Christ revealed Himself to me, He did so because He had chosen me before I was born.

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And it says it in the text.

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It says, When He who set me apart before I was born and called me by His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son to me.

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And he goes on to talk about his journey then where he would go and study and spend time in meditation with God.

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But the reality is, the point of the text is he's talking about how God sees this thing.

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How we see our conversion is we were sinners and we at one point received Christ and we were saved.

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But the way God sees it is different.

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God sees it that He knew us before we were ever created.

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He knew us before we were ever born.

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He knew us before the world was ever made.

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That is a powerful thought.

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That God had a purpose for me.

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That God had a purpose for you.

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That God has a purpose for His believing saints from the very moment that He creates the world.

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And Saul is an example of this.

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If there's anyone who understood God's sovereignty and election, it was Saul.

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And he would proclaim it and proclaim it and write about it and teach about it throughout his epistles, especially in Romans 8, 9, 10, and 11.

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So I want to move on, but that's the first thing we see.

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Saul is an example of sovereign election.

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Number two.

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Saul is an example, and I got to get moving.

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That took a little longer than I thought.

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Saul is an example of undeserved forgiveness.

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Do you know what is the most precious reality in the life of the believer? It's not election, even though that is a precious reality.

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The precious reality is forgiveness.

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It's God's election that causes the process by which we are forgiven, but the reality is forgiveness.

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It's that precious thing that allows us to put our head on our pillow at night and fall asleep, knowing that our sins have been covered and our sins have been washed away and taken from us as far as the east is from the west.

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That's the blessing that allows us to live without guilt.

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There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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That's the blessed truth.

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The problem is that many people feel like forgiveness for them is something that they're owed.

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You just talk to many people, and they'll say, you know, God's going to forgive me, and you'll say, why? And they say, because I'm not that bad.

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I certainly have much more good than I have bad, and if God's weighing the scales of justice as the woman with the blindfold and the scales, if God is just going to close His eyes and weigh my bad against my good, He'll have no choice but to forgive me, because my good is so much better than my bad.

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I like the laugh.

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I agree.

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Ha ha.

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That's true.

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That's right.

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Because that's funny to think that someone would think that way, but people do.

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And what happens is they don't realize how desperate they are for forgiveness, and they don't realize that they don't deserve forgiveness.

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And this is easy to say about Saul.

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It's easy to say, yes, Saul needed forgiveness.

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He hated the church.

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He persecuted the church.

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He went after the church.

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He was putting people in prison.

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He was maybe even putting people to the sword and putting people to the stone.

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And certainly he watched over the stoning of Stephen.

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Certainly he's a man who needed to be forgiven.

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But hey, hey, I am a deacon, or I am an elder, or I have been in church for 30 years.

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I am a good guy.

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Or I was brought up by a deacon.

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I was brought up by a pastor.

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Watch out, kids.

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Well, I was brought up by something.

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Something makes me better than Saul of Tarsus.

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Here's the thing we need to remember in this very simple story is that when God saves him in undeserved forgiveness, it's a picture of the same forgiveness you received when you received Christ because you didn't deserve it either.

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The forgiveness we enjoy as Christians is 100% undeserved.

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From our perspective.

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It's undeserved in the sense that it's 100% not merited by us.

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You didn't do anything to make God look and say...

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And this is the problem with Arminianism, by the way.

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The Arminian says God looked down the corridor of time, saw what you were going to do, and then chose you because of that.

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No! That robs grace of being grace.

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Because now you're being rewarded for something you've done.

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Whatever it is.

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We didn't earn our salvation.

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God didn't save you because you're good.

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God saved you because He's good.

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Very simple.

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All of us are Saul prior to our conversion.

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We are all Saul.

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I didn't mean for that to rhyme, but it did.

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We're all Saul prior to our conversion.

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Thus we get to part three.

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And I'll try to make this short.

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Saul is a picture first of sovereign election.

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He's a picture of undeserved forgiveness.

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And both of those relate to us as well.

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Because we're a picture of sovereign election.

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And we're a picture of undeserved forgiveness.

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So he's a picture of us.

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He's an archetype, if you will.

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He's one like us.

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Not the archetype because he wasn't the first.

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But he's one like we are.

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But the last thing he's a picture of...

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He's a picture of radical conversion.

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When Paul converted, everything converted.

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It was radical.

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Now, you hear that word radical.

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And what that means is affecting the fundamental nature of something.

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That's what radical is.

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And that's the definition of Paul's conversion.

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In fact, that's the way he talks about it.

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In 2 Corinthians 5.17, he says, If anyone be in Christ, he is a new creation.

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The old has passed away.

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The new has come.

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There's a radical change that occurs at conversion.

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Paul didn't try to mix his old life with his new life.

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He didn't try to become a Christian Jew.

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Neither did he try to become a Christian Pharisee.

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He forsook all for Jesus Christ.

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Why? Because he'd been radically changed.

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He didn't add Christ to his life.

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He abandoned his life for Christ.

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You know, the vast majority of the people who claim to be Christians have never abandoned anything for Christ.

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In fact, many people who would call themselves Christians would not even be inconvenienced for Christ.

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Much less abandoning a comfort.

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They wouldn't even allow themselves to be inconvenienced.

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What normally is called conversion in modern church-ese, modern evangelicalism, what is normally called conversion is simply adding Jesus to an already good life.

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And you'll hear people say that.

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They'll say, I have a good life.

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And what does the evangelist say? Well, if you take Jesus, it'll be just that much better.

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Or if you take Jesus, he'll complete that hole in your heart.

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Because you've got a God-shaped hole in your heart and you need God to fill it.

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That is foolish and blasphemy.

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Jesus is not an addition to life.

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Jesus is life.

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Jesus Christ, as Paul Washer said, is not a yuppies accessory.

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As if He were like the cherry on the top of an ice cream sundae.

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Jesus is all or He is not at all.

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And true conversion is always a radical experience.

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It might not necessarily mean that we're knocked down by a bright light.

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It might not even be that we're found face down in the gutter with a needle in our arm.

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We might be a relatively decent person by the world's standards.

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But when any person comes face to face with the perfect Jesus Christ, and all his supposed goodness falls flat, and he's shocked to realize the absolute desperation of his life without Christ, that's conversion.

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You're face to face with Jesus and you see who you really are.

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That's what Paul had.

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And that's what so many in the evangelical world don't ever experience.

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I was recently talking to a friend of mine, and what I'm about to say is not to disparage him in any way.

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He's a great pastor.

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He's a wonderful preacher.

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And he and I were talking, and he said, you know, I've worked really hard to keep my children safe from impurity, and to keep their eyes pure, to keep their ears pure, to keep them safe and holy, because I don't want them to have to repent of the sins I repented of.

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And I understood what he was saying, because I don't either.

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I don't want my children to have to repent of the same sins I repented of.

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And if you had a life like I did as a teenager, you would probably hopefully say the same thing.

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I don't want my kids to do what I did.

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I don't want them to lie to me.

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I don't want them to do the things that I did.

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But I tell you this, even if they never lie to me, even if they never act in any way impure in my eyes, when they come to Christ, they're going to come in radical conversion, because no matter how much sin they have, it's enough to damn them to hell.

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Every conversion is a radical conversion, because every sin is a radical sinner.

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We might not all be Hitler, but ain't none of us Jesus.

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And the person who's never been radically converted is the person who's never been converted at all, because he's never been face to face with Jesus.

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You know what the most dangerous thing we can do when we read this conversion of Saul of Tarsus is? It's to begin to think this, Oh, look how great the grace of God is to give it to a man like him.

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Because the reality is, we should always say, Oh, look how great the grace of God is to save a man like me.

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Someone might be well to say, I've never persecuted the church.

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I'm no Saul.

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Is there anyone in here today who would be willing for one day of your life to have all of your thoughts put on a video recorder and shown to the church, just for a day? You've lied, you've lusted, you've hated, you've blasphemed, and you stand right where Saul of Tarsus stood, if you stand outside of Christ.

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You stand as one condemned.

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But just as Saul of Tarsus received the grace of God, so too will all who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

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We are great sinners, but we have an even greater Savior.

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I pray that if you have never called upon Him, that you would today.

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Let us pray.

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Father in heaven, I thank you.

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I thank you for the reminder of sovereign grace, of undeserved forgiveness, and of the need for radical conversion.

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And I pray, Lord, just as you saved Saul, that you will continue, Lord, to save souls in this place.

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To see men and women and young people come unto the preaching of the gospel and be converted to the truth.

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God, use this time to show mercy upon whom you will have mercy.

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And give us the grace to always be willing to see the family of God expanded through the preaching of the gospel and the repentance of sin and the conversion of sinners.

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In Christ's name we pray.

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Amen.

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Let us stand and sing.

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And if you have a need for prayer, you're invited to come.