Return Backslider!

But I invite you to turn with me to the Word of God, Jeremiah 14. We will focus on v. 7, but let us read v. 7 -9. Jeremiah 14, and we'll read v. 7 -9. When you get there and find that, let us stand for the reading of God's Word.

Jeremiah’s Plea for Mercy

Let us hear the Word of God. Though our iniquities testify against us, act, O Lord, for Your name's sake. For our backslidings are many. We have sinned against You. O You, hope of Israel, its Savior in time of trouble, why should You be like a stranger in the land, like a traveler who turns aside to tarry for a night?

Why should You be like a man confused, like a mighty warrior who cannot save? Yet You, O Lord, are in the midst of us, and we are called by Your name. Do not leave us. Amen. Let us be seated and let's unite our hearts in prayer.

Our Father, we thank You for the gathering of Your church on the Lord's Day, the first day of the week when Christ our Lord rose from the dead. We praise You for the means of grace, for the singing of spiritual truth, the reading of Your Word, gathering our hearts into one in prayer and sitting under the ministry of the preaching of the Word of God.

And Father, our cry in this hour now is that Your Holy Spirit would be our help, that He would descend upon every heart in this gathering, that we would hear with faith, that we would respond to the Word preached.

We pray, Father, that we would turn back and that You, Lord, would not leave Your people. We ask that You would take away our love of sinning that causes our hearts to grow dull towards You and that causes You to remove Your presence from us.

We ask, Father, that we would, by Your grace, be kept in Your hand and that we would abide in Your love. Father, we pray, search our hearts. Let us, all of us, young and old, do true heart business with You.

Let us be searched in humility and let us, by Your Holy Spirit, respond in repentance and obedience. Father, we ask for any who are in our midst this morning who are strangers to the Gospel, strangers to the grace of Jesus Christ and are trusting in anything other than His cross and His resurrection, we pray, open the eyes of their hearts and save them for Your great namesake.

Turn their hearts away from sin and bring them into the kingdom of Your Son, we pray. We ask in Jesus' name, amen. The summary and the main point of our passage this morning is very simple and very sobering.

The Lord is removing His presence. He is departing from Israel because of their iniquities. If I can give an analogy of a guest invited to a dinner, the Lord here is the company of Israel and like a guest offended, provoked, He is now getting up from the table because of Israel's sins against Him and He is making His way towards the door, making His way for an exit and Israel as a whole is encouraging His exit by their continuing in their rebellion and their hypocrisy.

And Jeremiah, the true prophet, he senses all is not well with our relationship with our covenant God. And so he pleads for Israel. He knows judgment is coming. Already Israel is coming under the temporal judgments God had promised.

Famine is all about them. There are signs of the coming curse and Jeremiah pleads on behalf of the people, Lord, do not leave us. And so let's consider our exposition first of verse seven. Jeremiah begins, though our iniquities testify against us, Jeremiah is honest.

He makes no excuses. He makes no qualms. He does not try to skirt around the issue. He owns it. This is our fault. The Lord has done no wrong to us. Psalm 119 verse 68, the Lord is good and does good.

The Lord has delivered us from Egypt with an outstretched arm. He's delivered us from all of our enemies. And he knows we cannot blame the Lord. We have broken covenant. He says our iniquities testify against us.

That is their iniquities, all of them are lined up one after another to take the stand and to bear witness against Israel. Here are the reasons you deserve the Lord to depart from you. And then his plea.

New King James says, do it, Lord. The ESV says, act, Lord, for your own namesake. Christian, is that not the only thing we can plead for the Lord's mercy? Grace cannot be demanded. Mercy cannot be demanded.

We plead for mercy on the basis of God's own names for God's own namesake. Exodus 34, six, the Lord, the Lord, merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Psalm 130 verse four, after he says, if you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand?

He says, but with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. Turn to Psalm 79 verse nine. Psalm 79 verse nine, he writes, help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name. Deliver us and atone for our sins for your namesake.

Brothers and sisters, we are debtors. We are beggars, we are sinners. Every single hour of every single day. Psalm 40, we are poor and needy and Jeremiah knows it and he does not plead any supposed merit, but he pleads the mercy of God.

Psalm 115 verse one, not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name, give glory. You who have compassion on whom you have compassion, have mercy upon us, stay with us, do not leave. Lastly, the confession.

For our backslidings are many. We have sinned against you. Literally, it could be translated for our apostasies are many. Our turning backs are many. In this sense, brothers and sisters, when we backslide against the Lord who bought us, our sins are worse than the sins of pagans.

Israel is backsliding against the backdrop of salvation and redemption. God has been merciful to them, generation after generation, delivering them from the bondage of Egypt, keeping covenant with their forefathers.

And how do they return the favor of grace and mercy? They, like Peter 2, 1 Peter 2, they, like a dog, return to its vomit. They return to their sins after vows have been made, after covenants have been made, after promises have been made, after they have sworn off particular sins.

We will not return to these. And they go back. They are like the lepers in Luke 17 when Jesus cleanses 10 of them and He says, go, show yourself to the priests. And after they do, only one comes back to the Lord.

And Jesus says, were there not 10 of you cleansed and only one has returned to give thanks to the Lord? They were happy to receive God's mercy and blessings and they abused His mercy as an excuse and a license for sin.

Jeremiah says, we have sinned against You. Parallel to Psalm 51, David's confession, against You, Lord, and against You only have we sinned. Christian, does your sin against grace and redemption pierce your heart?

Galatians 2 .20, Christ who loved us and gave Himself for us, and when I backslide and I sin, I'm sinning against the One who from love hung on a cross for me. And yet, John 6 .68 is still true. To whom shall we go, Lord?

You have the words of eternal life. And we are to say to ourselves, no matter how much we might feel like it is hypocritical to go from the pigsty of sin back to the mercy of God and plead for His namesake.

God says that that is what faith does and you must return, O backslider. Return to Me that I may return to you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Resist the devil and he will flee. That is what Jeremiah is pleading for.

Lord, You must do this. Take away our love of sinning and nevermore Thy temples leave. Do it in us, Lord, for Your namesake. Keep us so that we will be kept so that You will draw near and abide with us.

Backsliding and God’s Withdrawal

Now, let's turn to our doctrine this morning. Having considered the exposition of verse 7, I have two main doctrinal points I want to draw out for us. Number one is the lengthier of the two. Two will be more brief, but it will springboard us into our application.

Christian, this is one of the things I want you to be instructed by from our text is that God begins to withdraw even from those who truly know Him when they backslide. God begins to withdraw even from those who truly know Him when they backslide.

This is an old covenant reality and this is a new covenant reality. And yes, we believe in the perseverance of the saints. Yes and amen, and praise God. If God by His grace has made a sinful heart new and has given Him union with Christ, He will never ultimately and finally fall away.

Praise God. But Christian, do not think that that means that God is static and indifferent towards our obedience and relationship to Him. And do not let that cause you to think that your backsliding does not repel the Lord and chase away your assurance of His favor such that the Lord says to His people like He did in Judges 10, 14, go and pray to the gods that you have chosen and see if they will deliver you.

Let me give you a few texts. Ephesians 4 .30, Paul says, do not grieve the Holy Spirit. John 15 .9, Jesus says, if you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love.

James 4 .5, He talks about the Spirit that God has put within us who yearns jealously. We either entertain the Holy Spirit and chase away sin or we entertain sin and we chase away the Holy Spirit's influence in our life.

One will win out. Listen to our confession. Chapter five on God's providence. Paragraph five says, the most wise, righteous, and gracious God does oftentimes leave for a season His own children to manifold temptations and the corruption of their own hearts, to chastise them for their former sins or to discover unto them the hidden strength of corruption and deceitfulness of their hearts that they may be humbled and to raise them to a more close and constant dependence for their support upon Himself and to make them more watchful against all future occasions of sin and for other just and holy ends.

Conscious Sin and the Loss of God’s Favor

Now, why does this usually happen? What usually causes the Lord to be provoked and to begin to make His way towards the door and make an exit? There are many things we could talk about. I want to talk about the primary one.

The usual primary reason that we chase away the Lord's presence is because of conscious sin. Sin that is not done in ignorance. Sin that we are informed by the light. We know what is right and what is wrong and we choose to live in it anyway.

These are the sins, brothers and sisters, that stare us in the face. When you go to pray, if you even go to pray, when you go there and you begin to try to summon from your heart an ounce of sincerity, these sins are staring at you in the face and they are like a looming cloud pointing at you, testifying you are playing the hypocrite.

You profess God is your Father, but you don't do what He says. And it hinders us. Our hearts feel cold. There are hidden faults, Psalm 19, verse 12, but then there are presumptuous sins. High-handed sins.

What are we to do? This is what we're going to open up in our application, but brothers and sisters, we are to get up from the table as quickly as we can and chase after the Lord and plead with Him not to leave.

We are to turn from our sins, repent of our sins, and beg Him, Lord, do not leave us. Now, let me answer an objection. Someone will say, but if we as God's children are secure, if election is true, if Hebrews 13 .5 is true, He will never leave you nor forsake you, then there's no point in going after Him.

No point in pleading with the Lord not to leave. Brothers and sisters, do not reason that way. There were false prophets in Jeremiah's day, Jeremiah 6 .14, that comforted God's people that way. And God says, they have healed my people's wound lightly, saying to them, peace, peace, when there is no peace.

And God destroyed those false prophets. Let me offer two answers to that objection. Number one, let me say this, there is always difficulty and tension preaching on this sort of subject, because I am aware that there is almost always at least three groups of people sitting in front of me.

There are sincere believers who are walking with the Lord in sincerity. There are true believers who are backslidden. And there are those who are still dead in their trespasses and sins. And it is often not easy to tell the difference between those last two categories.

The backslidden Christian and the person who is just void absolutely of grace. And so let me give two answers that will address both of those possibilities and scenarios. Number one, do not presume and abuse the grace and mercy of God as an excuse not to repent.

God will leave and forsake the unrepentant. 2 Peter 3, 1 -9, Peter says, in the last days, there will come scoffers and mockers, and they will say, where is the promise of His coming? He's not coming to judge.

Look, the world has continued on the same as it always has from the beginning of the world. And Peter says, they willfully overlook this one fact, that the people in Noah's day thought the exact same thing.

Judgment's not coming. And then in a moment, almost the entire world is condemned by the flood. And Peter says, it is going to happen a second time, and this time by fire. My friend, God will not be mocked.

You will reap what you sow. The unrepentant sinner will be left for eternity and judged by God Almighty. Do not play games with His Word. Do not make jokes. Don't mock. It will come. A very scary dynamic of this is that Jesus says that many who even make a grand profession of faith will be destroyed.

Matthew 7, 21, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father. They call Him Lord. They profess to be Christ. They were in the church, and they're cast out.

That's the John 15 dynamic. You can be a branch in Christ, you look the part, but you're not actually united to Him, drawing the sap of His spiritual life, and therefore you bear no fruit, and He says it will be cut off and thrown out to be burned.

Let me give a second answer to that objection. Hebrews 13, 5, He will never leave you nor forsake you is absolutely true. God will never forsake, ultimately, His elect people whom He foreknew. Never, ever will one be lost.

But here's the thing. He uses His warnings and His departures to test us, to encourage us, to run after Him, and to plead with Him not to leave us. The warnings serve a purpose in the lives of the elect.

They bring the fear of God into our hearts. I don't want to be proven to be false. I must, by the grace of God, resolve to return, and relying on His Spirit, I must repent of this, and I must return to the Lord that He will return to me.

Your enduring, your falling seven times and always getting back up is what proves you are not among those who draw back. Hebrews 6. Keep fighting, keep getting up. Weary though you may be, listen to the threat, listen to the warning, and respond in faith, and run after the Lord.

Practices That Provoke the Lord’s Departure

That brings us to, sorry, before we go to our second point here, let me just briefly be very pointed. Things, very common things that provoke the Lord to depart. This is not an exhaustive list. Number one, prayerlessness.

That might be a surprise to you that I would start there. Prayerlessness is the sign of a presumptive heart. A heart that thinks, I can do whatever I want on my own. I don't need the Lord. I can do His work without His help.

Think of Peter. Watch and pray, lest you fall into temptation. Secondly, attending the means of grace in an unworthy manner. So, these are people who are in church, they come to church, and they listen to sermons, and they critique sermons, and they sit in judgment on sermons, but they don't obey sermons.

They don't change. They don't receive the implanted Word with meekness. They look into the law of liberty, and they walk away, and they forget what they look like. Thirdly, living at a distance from God and not keeping up communion with Him.

And fourthly, returning to sins that have once been renounced. That vows have been made. Promises have been made. Reformation has been experienced. And then returning like a dog to its vomit. That brings us to the second thing, doctrinally, and it's going to springboard us into our application.

Entreating God to Remain

The first point is that the Lord begins to depart even from those who truly know Him when they backslide. The second point is this. Christian, even while God is on His way to depart, He may still be entreated by you.

And He must be entreated by you. Luke 24, if I can give an analogy, when Jesus is walking with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and He indicates to them that He intended to go farther, to depart from them, and they plead with Him, no, Lord, turn aside and spend the evening with us.

That is the point of Jesus' departure from His people. Is to test whether we will plead with Him to stay with us. Or on the other hand, whether we will be like those pig farmers in Matthew 8 .34 who pleaded with Him to leave their region.

Just go. I want my sin. I don't want the conviction anymore. Just let me be. We do not want to be or find ourselves in that place. God acts in a myriad of ways to get His people's attention. His kindness leads us to repentance, but also His tough love and His temporal judgments get our attention.

Tough love from our Father who disciplines those whom He loves to cause us to reflect on our souls and realize my soul is sick. I've wandered a long way from home and I need to return. I need the great physician.

Turn to Isaiah 1, chapter 18. We read it for our call to worship. You probably know Isaiah 1. Isaiah 1 is one of the most, I don't even know the word to put on it, condemning passages regarding Israel's apostasy and hypocrisy.

God is fed up with their turning back to idols and He says to them in verse 18, "'Come now, let us reason together,' says the Lord. "'Though your sins are like scarlet, "'they shall be as white as snow.

"'Though they are red like crimson, "'they shall become like wool. "'If you are willing and obedient, "'you shall eat the good of the land, "'but if you refuse and rebel, "'you shall be eaten by the sword, "'for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.'".

There are so many passages like that. Ezekiel 33, 11. Turn back. Turn back. The Lord takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that He would turn from His evil way. Turn, for why would you die?

God calls backsliding sinners to turn again for His namesake to be restored. That brings us to our application. Our final section here. How, brothers and sisters, how should we respond practically? I have several, several things that I want to draw out for you.

And these are all kind of just of one piece. I'm just going to work through them, but I think you'll see how they flow and fit together. Number one, Christian, when you sense that God is withdrawing, it is high time to run after Him and to entreat Him to stay.

Husbands, let me give you an analogy. If one day your wife opened the front door and she said to you, I am leaving you. I can't take this anymore. You don't respect me. You have no interest in me. You have interest in everything else.

I am leaving you. I am going to find someone who will treat me the way I deserve. Brothers, if you love your wife, you will that moment and that instant get up as quickly as you can and strive to get your foot in that door before it closes and plead with her, do not leave.

Stay. Brothers and sisters, how important is the Lord? How valuable is your never-dying soul? Is the Lord not worth more than pornography? Is He not worth more than money and the things of this world that rust and moths destroy?

Is He not worth more than all of that to you? Or are you just going to hold on to your sin like Gollum held on to that ring until it brought him down into the fires of Mount Doom to his own destruction?

That is what the fool does. He looks at his sin and he says, I will not let go. I cannot let go. I must have this and it will destroy him. You kill sin or sin will kill you. Jesus said to the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 16 .3, you know how to discern the weather.

You know how to read the sky so that you know what tomorrow's weather will be like. But He says you do not know how to discern the signs of the times. Brothers and sisters, do you know how to discern the signs that God is beginning to depart from you?

Coldness of heart. No urgency or perseverance in prayer. You begin to leave off your duties. You don't read the Scriptures. You don't pray. You don't lead your family. When other people talk about spiritual things and the goodness of God, you feel uncomfortable because you can't relate.

And sooner or later, you begin to depart from the gathering and the assembly of the saints. And perhaps most clearly of all, you are weakening in your resolve to fight against sin. Brothers and sisters, it is time for urgency.

If that is you, today is the day of salvation. Turn to the Lord while He may be found. It is not time for half-measures and half-heartedness. It is time rather to be awakened from our slumber and to seek to enter the Kingdom of God by violence.

To strive to get back on that narrow path and to stay on that narrow path. You might be here. I don't know most of you very well. You might be here and you're listening to this sermon and you're thinking, I am months or years down the path of backsliding and you are fearful because you know even as you listen to this sermon, you don't feel the urgency to return.

And you're scared because you know, if grace is in me, I should at least mourn over the fact that I have repelled the Spirit and grieved the Spirit. But you know, my heart feels hard. My brother, my sister, if that is you, it is high time to seek the Lord with all diligence.

Pray. Confess that to Him. Pray until you pray. Not just the fleeting two second, once or twice a day, Lord help me, I know I need to get back in the right way. Show God by the posture of your heart. Plead with God like the persistent widow until you feel your heart has in some small measure broken into heaven and you have God's ear and confess to Him, Lord, I have offended.

And I do not deserve your mercy. But for your namesake, return to me. Take the posture of Esther. When she knows her life is on the line and she says to Mordecai, I will go in unto the king and if I perish, I perish.

Tell yourself, I will go to the king of kings and see what he says. Christian, I cannot make you do heart business with God. I wish I could. I do not have that power. But I can plead with you to tell you that you should.

That you must take sin dead serious and backsliding dead serious and before it is too late, before repentance gets even more difficult, turn back to the Lord. I have several other things I want to encourage you in.

Resisting the Devil’s Accusations

I pray that that's you. That you have a resolve, a desire. I want to return to the Lord. Be aware, Christian, the devil will try with all his might to stop you and to thwart your effort. And he will do it primarily in two ways.

Number one, he will tell you that the road to repentance is too steep to even begin climbing. Christian, that is a lie. He is the father of lies. And as I said, if you do not start today, repentance will be even harder next week or a month from now.

I understand the web of destruction that sin weaves is a painful one. It is difficult to untangle. Best to seek God's help now. But he will also seek to thwart your efforts in a second way by telling you you are unworthy to return to God for mercy.

Turn to Micah 7, verse 8. Micah 7, verse 8. Rejoice not over me, O my enemy. When I fall, I shall rise. When I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me. Christian, the devil is a liar and a murderer from the beginning.

He will do everything he can to fill your head with lies that would keep you from believing the Word of Christ. And you need to be prepared to do battle against the enemy of your soul and the accuser of your soul.

And he will throw your sins in your face that you have done what you've done all the while professing to be a Christian. And he will tell you, you might as well go hang yourself like Judas did because there is no hope of repentance for you.

Do not believe it. Tell him like Luther said, yes, devil, I deserve both death and hell. What of it? For I know one who died and made satisfaction and atonement for my sins. His name is Jesus Christ and he lives forever to make intercession for me.

You need to push past the devil's lies and say, I am going to the King of grace who is stronger than you. He crushed you. Defanged you. Your days as the accuser of the brethren are done. You are bound.

And the Word of my King always triumphs your lies. And he promises that whosoever comes to him, he will in no wise cast out. We sung, brothers and sisters, let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream.

If you wait until you are better, you will never come to him. He's the Savior of sinners. When you get to the throne of grace, plead the merits of Jesus Christ. 1 Timothy 1 .15, this saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptation that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the chief.

Hebrews 7 .25, he is able to save to the uttermost all who draw near to God through him. Does that include the backslider? You better believe it does. Take Peter's example. Peter backslid against mercy and grace.

He trusted in his own strength. He fell on his face. And yes, he wept bitterly, but he did not go hang himself like Judas. Rather, Peter met the Lord in Galilee just like the Lord told him to. And he was restored.

He ran to the Lord after a fall, believing there is more grace in Jesus Christ than there is sin in me. Lastly, Christian, so when you sense God is withdrawing, it's time to return. It's time for urgency.

You must be prepared to fight against the devil's accusations and his lies. And fourthly, repent and obey. It really is that simple. Return to the Lord with repentance and obedience. Revelation 2, do the works you did at first.

If it is sin that chases away the Lord's presence, it is repentance and obedience that draws him near. Turn to Psalm 40. Psalm 40, this is for the person, you might be here, and I don't even know who you are, but the Lord is speaking to you.

You're backslidden. And you are months or years down the line. Sin has created a web of destruction awake behind you that you don't even know how to begin to undo it. You don't know which way is up, which way is down.

You don't know what the right thing to do. Listen to the psalmist who can relate to that in Psalm 40, verse 12. For evils have encompassed me beyond number. My iniquities have overtaken me and I cannot see.

They are more than the hairs of my head. My heart fails me. Listen to the comfort of verse 13. Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me. O Lord, make haste to help me. Christians, seek the help of the Lord. The Lord is in the business of redeeming messes.

He's in the business of making beautiful trophies out of situations of dirt and sin and misery. You may not know the path forward, but I promise you the Lord is able to help you. He is able to give you truth and clarity and guidance and direction and the power of His Holy Spirit to put sin away and obey the Lord.

Repentance, Obedience, and Mortification

Christian, take repentance and obedience dead serious. I want to close with this. Cut off the hand that needs to be cut off. Gouge out the eye that needs to be gouged out. Again, this is not time for half measures.

This is your never-dying soul. Do not think, I will start by cutting off a portion of one finger, and if that's not enough, then maybe I'll consider more. Jesus just says, cut it off. It is better to go into life maimed than it is to go into hell with a whole body.

Leave it behind. Cut it off, throw it away. Whatever sin entangles you and is grabbing its arms around your ankles, seeking to trip you up, seeking to bring you down and injure you so that you cannot get up and finish the race towards the celestial city.

Hebrews chapter 12 says, throw it off. Get rid of it. Far better is a whole life on earth without your arm or your eye than an eternity in hell with your whole body. Don't play fast and loose with God.

Sin will creep in. If you open just a crevice, it will slither in and its fat body will blow that crevice open and sin will have full reign in your heart. Keep it out at every point. Show no mercy. John Owen said, strangle it until it has no more breath in it and then strangle it a little longer.

Return. The Christian life is warfare. Literally, God tells us, it's war. You are going to be bloodied. It is going to be a hard journey to heaven. Pilgrim's progress, literally all the way to the gate.

There's foes on every side seeking to drag us back. Go somewhere else. Go a different way. And the Christian has to agonize. Weary though he may be, tired and bloodied, he has to fight on by the grace of God.

I will get back up and I will kick this sin away from me and I will run. I may stumble, but I am not going to stop. I am chasing after the Lord, looking unto Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith who ran the race set before Him.

And He not only awaits us there where He will receive us, but He runs alongside us to help us and give us strength to make it. Christian, look unto Jesus Christ. He is gracious and merciful. He shed His blood.

He was buried and He rose again. To bring many sons to glory. Look unto Jesus. Return to Him. He will show mercy for His namesake. That His grace might be magnified in your changed life and in the eternal salvation of your soul.

Look to Jesus Christ. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we pray that You would, even now we pray against the schemes and the fiery arrows of the evil one, our enemy, the devil, that ancient serpent, the accuser of the brethren.

We pray that You would deliver us from the evil one, that there would not be a single heart in this room that is indifferent. Lord, there is no such thing as sitting on the fence. There is the kingdom of Satan and there is the kingdom of God.

And we pray that every soul from the youngest amongst us to the oldest would close with Jesus Christ and would find themselves safely trusting in Him for His grace. Father, we thank You that You receive backsliders.

We pray, cause us to turn from our sin. Cause us to hate it more. Cause us not to defend it, not to play games with it. But Father, that we would with all our might, striving by the grace that You give us that is with us to help us, that we would seek to put it to death and that we would put on Christ.

And that we would set our minds on things above where Christ is. Father, we pray that all of us who know the blessing of Your presence, Your drawing near to Your people, that we would so value the blessing of having You near, that we would be afraid of doing anything that would chase Your presence away, that would chase our assurance away.

Let us be careful because we love You as our Father and because we want to honor You. We pray, bless us this morning. Bless us this Lord's Day. Bless Your people. Grow us all in Christ. Help us to speak the word to one another, to be faithful, to look after one another's hearts and souls.