Today I’d like to talk to you about pride. How many of you would say you have a problem with the sin of pride? I find it hard. It's kind of frustrating. Can I just say it’s a frustrating topic to preach about? I think it’s frustrating to preach about it because the people who need to hear about it don’t want to listen. I mean isn’t that the nature of pride? The person who’s prideful says, “Oh I’m glad you’re preaching on that. There’s a lot of people who need that sermon this week. I can think of a lot of people who need that.” But we tend to look at ourselves and we say, “I don’t think I have a problem with that.”
I’m surprised that my wife married me. Because if you hear our story of how we met, the very first time that we met Carrie was impressed with my arrogance. I had my feet up on the furniture, sitting back, and I just had this arrogant smug. I look back now in those days and I can see my arrogance. I was pretty prideful. I’d like to say that I’ve grown over the years. I’d like to say that I’ve grown over time and that God has done some important things in my heart and that I’m not as prideful. But I don’t know. I mean ask yourself the question. Are you prideful? I think we don’t know. It’s this kind of veneer that comes up around us. I’m only going to know if I’m prideful if I end up getting emotionally upset about something and I realize I shouldn’t have done that, or someone tells me something or corrects me. And then I recognize oh yeah, I’m outside of where I want to be.
If you’re a parent, you know that this is a challenge. If you’ve got a child who has got pride in their lives it’s really hard. Because you can talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and they don’t listen. They don’t hear what you’re saying. And the more you talk, the more they shut you out. It’s like they put their hands over their ears. They don’t want to hear anything you’re saying. It’s really hard. When you try to give an instruction to a child and the child doesn’t want to hear it, says no, or has a bad attitude. They can’t see the pride that we see oozing out all over them, but it’s the pride that causes a problem. The child who is uninterruptible. You know you can’t interrupt them because, well, what they’re doing is more important than anything else. When you try to correct a child who is prideful and you know it because what do you get? You get the rationalization, you get the justification, you get the turning on you and saying unkind things to you. You see the mean words come out. You see the anger episodes, the victim mentality. You know all kinds of things happen when you try to work with a child who has a pride in their lives. It’s very difficult.
If you’re a young person watching this today, you’ve got to just ask yourself, am I proud? Is pride getting in my way? Very, very important question.
It's frustrating, isn’t it? It’s frustrating dealing with a proud person. I mean Jesus Himself was frustrated as He was working with the Pharisees. They were so proud. They were so proud that they couldn’t see Jesus right in front of them. So Jesus had these words He used to try to get past their barriers. He said this: Those who have ears to hear let them hear. He’s not saying everybody who has the ears physically let them hear. What He’s saying is if you have an openness about you and you’re willing to listen, this is important for your life. This will change you.
I want to ask you to do something today. I want you to make an assumption that you have a pride problem. In fact I want you to assume that you are the most arrogant person in this room, that you’re the most arrogant person online listening to this. See here’s what happens. We all have a narrative, a story that we tell ourselves that protects the status quo in our lives. It justifies us when we yell at someone or when we’re disrespectful. It justifies a bad attitude or a defying spirit. It justifies the ability to talk bad about someone. It justifies all kinds of these narratives we have around us, builds these kinds of walls of protection so that we are justifying in doing what we do and saying what we say. It justifies our actions and defends our reactions. This kind of wall we build, this narrative, this way we view the world, and this worldview that we have kind of cements in us that we’re okay doing what we’re doing. And we kind of justify what we’re doing.
So I want to ask you to bring down the defense mechanism just for a little bit today. When I say maybe you’re the most arrogant person in the room, oh don’t you feel it coming up? Oh there it is. Don’t you want to say, “I might be arrogant, but I’m not that arrogant. I can’t be the most arrogant person in this room.” Right? So our defenses come up really quickly. I believe that God wants to speak to us. In order for Him to speak to us, we often have to pull down the veneer so that we can hear what He has to say and what He wants to say inside of our hearts.
Today we’re going to look at a passage of scripture that’s going to address this in some very particular ways. So if you’ll open your Bibles with me to Genesis 11, in Genesis 11 we’re going to see a story about some people who were proud. We’re going to see the veneer that they had. We’re going to see the challenge that they experienced inside of them. I want to read the passage to you and I want to draw some applications. Because we don’t want to go away from here the same people. We want to be changed. We’re asking God to speak to us. The only way that you’re going to be able to hear God speak is to allow the veneer to come down. To be able to look at your own worldview and say is this really what I want to be believing? Is this right? God wants to challenge that in our lives.
So let’s read this story. Now verse 1 says this in Genesis 11. Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
In our last story in Genesis we saw they all came off the ark. The eight of them came off the ark. God gave them an instruction in Genesis 9 in verse 1 and in verse 7 He repeats it and He says – You are to go out and multiply and fill the whole earth. That was His instruction. Go out and multiply and fill the whole earth. So that’s what they’ve done for many years. So now there's a lot of people on the earth. But now we have this story about how they still have one language and God is going to do something about that in response to what they’re doing. That’s why we’re at this part of the story now.
So in verse 2 it says – And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.
This was a technological discovery that they made. I just want to say, when we discover something in our lives it has a tendency to beef up our pride. When we have an idea that we know that’s different than other people have that we have discovered something that other people don’t have, that we know something somebody else doesn’t know, then we tend to experience this pride inside. I have something that other people don’t have.
They had bricks. You see if you want to build a house out of stone before, you would have to either live near a bunch of stones or you would have to dig them up and bring them over. That’s a lot of work. You’d have to dig up these stones, then you’d have to find certain stones that fit with other stones in order to make this building that you’re going to make. But now they discovered something new. They discovered bricks.
I suppose each generation discovers new things. When we discover these new things, we feel like, wow, we’re better than the last generation. Maybe in our generation we’ve discovered the microchip. So when we discover the microchip we say, “Whoa, look how much we can do. This is so cool.” That’s the same kind of thing they’re experiencing. They discovered bricks. So now they can live anywhere they want. They’re going to save a lot of time. They’re going to save a lot of energy. They can build these bricks and fire them up. They can be in certain shapes so they can fit them together a little more easily. Now they have bricks. They’ve got some ideas of what they’re going to do with their new technology.
Notice what they do because their technology has them focus on themselves. So they’re thinking about themselves and not doing what God had told them to do. So if we continue in the passage in verse 4... In fact I’m going to do this about verse 4. I’m going to pull verse 4 right out of there and we’re going to look at verse 4 there. Because here’s what it says in verse 4. It says – Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower.” They’re going to do two things and it’s going to be supported by two beliefs that they have. We're going to get to see inside of their worldview. We’re going to get to see why they’re doing what they’re doing. One, they’re going to build a tower. And secondly, they’re going to build a city. And this tower is going to have its top in the heavens. It’s going to be a really big tower that they’re going to build.
“And let us make a name for ourselves (this is behind the scenes, so you see what they’re doing) lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” That’s the other thing. We don’t want to be dispersed. Remember God had told them disperse all over. We don’t want to do that. So we get to see a little bit about why they’re doing what they’re doing here in building a city and a tower. They’re building a tower to make a name for themselves. They’re building a city so they are not dispersed all over the earth.
Today, the fifteenth of November, marks one year from when I was in Dubai. So last year at this time I was in Dubai with Hudson, my grandson, and I was teaching about family ministry in Dubai. I was so impressed with Dubai. Dubai is a city that hasn’t been in existence that long. But their goal is to have the biggest and the best of everything. They want to be the fastest, they want to be the longest, they want the tallest. They want all of these things in Dubai. It’s just really interesting.
In fact Dubai, even though it’s a very small country, has already obtained 220 world records. World records. The largest aquarium is found in Dubai. The fastest police car is in Dubai. Interesting, Josh (he is a police officer), the fastest police car is in Dubai. They’ve got all these big things. But they’re most known for their tallest building. Because the tallest building is in Dubai. I went up into it. You can’t get to the very top because they have some kind of a temple or worship center or something up there. But you can get almost up to the top. When you look at those windows, you go, “Whoa. This is very impressive.” And if you ask them why do you want to have all these world records? Why do they want to be the fastest and the biggest? Because they want to make a name for themselves because their primary industry is tourism and they want to bring as many tourists as possible. I’m not judging Dubai. I’m not saying Dubai is like Babel or anything like that. I’m just saying it’s really interesting when people start to focus in on something in order to make a name for themselves. And that’s exactly what happened in this passage.
It's all about me. The problem happens when inside of us we have this pride that starts to grow because this kernel of selfishness that we all start out with, that we all have in our lives gets bigger and bigger when we focus in on ourselves and it starts to take over. Then we build this kind of wall around us that justifies all this to say this is why I do what I do. Don’t anybody try to argue with me. So when you try to argue with someone who’s really proud, they’ve already got all the arguments built. Because they know what to say to themselves. They’ve been practicing this for a long time. So when anybody challenges them, they’ve always got an answer. They’re always smart about this. They’ve got anything they want to say, they can say it because they’ve thought it all out. So it’s really difficult to work with a person who’s proud.
Pride comes in a lot of different forms. Here’s a flashlight. Sometimes pride comes – “Look at me. Look at my face.” It’s a boasting kind of pride. But sometimes pride comes – “Look at my feet. I’ve got so many problems. Things are so bad in my life. Oh it’s so terrible. Focus on me, me, me, me.” Sometimes the focus is out there. Oh. Look at her. I’m better than she is. Oh look at that person. Oh look at the problems they have.” So pride happens when people criticize other people and point out all the other problems other people have so they can feel good about themselves. Pride has a lot of different forms that it takes. And when a person is proud, they build these kinds of walls like the city around them that protect their view. Everyone has a narrative. We all convince ourselves that where we’re going is the right direction. That we’re going to justify where we are. We all have that in our lives. It can get us into some serious self-defeating problems.
You can tell when a person is proud because when you try to correct them, they end up reacting in ways that are self-defensive. You can’t talk to them. You try to talk to them, it doesn’t work. And so you’ve got this whole problem with correction. People who have a pride problem have a hard time being corrected in their lives. They can’t see their mistakes and they don’t want to look at them. And don’t try to convince me otherwise. I have my mind made up. Correction is one of those things that a proud person has a hard time receiving.
A person who’s proud competes and compares themselves with others. Their favorite words are “that’s not fair.” “You do that with that person, you do that with that person.” “It's not fair that you’re telling me to do this.” “That’s not fair” becomes this statement that wants to raise this person above others. “That’s not fair” becomes these words that try to justify my reaction to what’s going on. It's all about being self-focused you see.
I suppose one of the biggest challenges is when you give someone a task to do that they don’t want to do. So parents who do this with their kids, they give them a task to do and the child doesn’t want to do the task, so you get this attitude issue, or you get this defiance, or you get this reaction. Or the child always has a better way to do it, another description of how we’re going to do that. That’s all this pride. Parents have a responsibility as they’re working with their children to identify their pride and look for ways to work with that and to help them and to help those kids adjust and make the changes necessary. It is not easy working with a person who’s proud. So I suggest that one of the things that happen is when we build these cities, we build ourselves this protective covering.
The problem with the people in this passage is that they didn’t want to listen to the instructions that were given to them. They didn’t like what God was saying. God was saying I want you to disperse. Spread out and multiply and fill the whole earth! Then we find out in two chapters later that they’re saying to themselves, “Lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. We don’t want to be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. We don’t want to obey what God has.”
The real test of our arrogance is when God speaks, are we willing to listen? Now the Bible is God’s word. It is our authority. So that’s something that we all share in common, that belief that when we come to God’s word and we dig into God’s word because we want to know what God has for us. But there are some verses in the Bible that I don’t like.
I don’t like the verse that says what Jesus said to Peter. No, not seven times, but seventy times seven you need to forgive. So our narrative comes up and it says, “Oh, but you don’t know my situation. You don’t know how bad I’ve been hurt. You don’t know all the difficulties I’ve gone through. Forgive? You don’t know how much that person has hurt.” So I say I don’t really like that verse in the Bible.
Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Now right away the defenses come up and say, “Yeah, but those verse were written before my wife was born. My wife was born…if God were there now, He’d be saying something completely different.” You know we want to say, “I’m the exception. I don’t have to listen to the Lord.”
In that same passage it says – Wives, submit to your husbands. Then the veneer comes up. “I’m a woman. I don’t submit to anybody!” So there's this temptation for us to protect ourselves.
Or the verse that says – The love of money is the root of all evil. And we go, “I kind of like my things. I like counting my dollars. I like to know how much money is in the bank.”
Have I offended enough people yet here? I just want to say, I think we all can find ourselves like these guys in this passage where we end up saying, “Oh that verse isn’t for me. I don’t want to do that. I’m above that.” So the biggest test of a person’s ability to be humble is can we humble ourselves before God? Can we do what He’s told us to do? Can we obey Him? Can we follow His directives? It’s just fascinating to think that.
See, I believe that we train our children. We train our children to pick up the clothes on the floor. We train our children to clean the dishes. We train our children to clean their rooms, to do things they don’t want to do. Why do we do that? Because we want them to learn how to give up a little bit of their pride. We want them to learn how to give up their agenda. We want to do that, not so we can have clean clothes and dishes put away. We do that so that they can learn how to listen to God someday. And not just someday. Because God loves to talk to little boys and little girls, to young people. He loves to talk to them and He likes to share what He wants them to do. If a child is in the habit of having the wait-a-minute disease when he’s talking to his mom continually, what do you think he’s going to do when he comes to the Lord and God says, “I want you to do this”? “Oh not right now, God. I’m kind of busy.” We do a very important work in the lives of our children when we train them because we’re trying to help them understand something very important about giving up things.
Because there's this tendency when you discover something new that you think you know more than other people. So maybe you discover that there’s a special app called TikTok and your parents think that’s about a clock and you know that’s about an app somewhere where you can learn all kinds of things about life. So now you go, whoa, I know more than my parents. There are a lot of young people who think they know more than their parents because they discovered something. Or they go to college and they move out and they go, “Oh freedom! And look at all of these things I’m learning at college. I know more than anybody else here.” Or they get their own apartment and they go, “Whoa, look at the freedom I have.” Or they get their own car and they say, “Whoa. I’m really something.”
You see how the pride starts to develop in any of our lives. When we start discovering new things and we say, “Well I don’t really have to do what God says because I’m above that,” then we find ourselves in this significant problem of pride that seems to exalt us in a way that creates major issues in our lives.
Well I think if you’re a parent and you’re dealing with a child who has some arrogant issues, whether they’re three or four years old or fifteen years old or twenty years old, whatever they are, then you’re going to want to know what God does. Don’t you want to know what God’s going to do? How God’s going to discipline these people? Because I think God gives us a model for how we’re to work as parents. But He also shows us what He’s going to do in our own lives.
Let’s go back into the passage. Look at verse 5. Because now we see God acting. It says – And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do.”
First of all, I’ve got to say we’ve got to catch it early with our kids. Right? We’ve got to say, “Whoa, if we don’t deal with it now this is only the beginning of what they’re going to do. We better try to challenge this right now.” So that’s why we take action with them.
But there’s this whole movement in our society today when it comes to children which says pride is good thing. We want these children to have strong self-esteem. We want them to be confident and there’s some really good things about that. I don’t want to say that’s bad. When a child has a strong self of identity then they can withstand some of the temptations that are out there. They can deal with criticism. They’re not so easily upset. They have more strength in their emotions. So helping children have a strong sense of identity is a good thing. But sometimes we go overboard with that and we continually are feeding this ego that children have, kind of stepping around them, allowing them to do whatever they want so they feel good. And in essence we feed that selfishness sometimes that creates this internal pride that they have that’s bad. It’s what that does is it leads to these self-defeating activities that they get involved in and they can’t see it. They’re in trouble. They’re doing all kinds of things that are wrong. It’s only going to lead to something worse, God says.
And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.” So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.
So what did God do as His discipline technique here? What He did was He made it so their worldview, their view of how everything is going to work is not going to work for them. It doesn’t work. So let’s say there's a child who’s angry when Mom says, “Hey, you need to come and do the dishes.” “No, no. I want to get to the next level of my video game.” So there’s this debate, this argument going on continually. What Mom might do is say is, “This is not working. I am not going to do this with you because I don’t want this to work for you.” So she might take away the communication vehicle, just like God did. “Okay, we’re not going to spend time on the internet with your buddies. You’re not going to be able to watch YouTube and have the worldliness come into you that way. I’m going to cut that out for a while. It’s not going to work for you.”
Sometimes what parents do is they say, “Okay, we’re going to live life differently. So you can see when you treat me that way you’re not going to get what you want. No, I’m not going to take you to the mall. I’m not going to give you money for this. You can’t treat me like this one way and expect this other thing over here.” So what happens? Then this young person has to say to themselves, “Okay, this isn’t working for me. I’m going to have to live differently.” And that’s the essence of changing the worldview. This way that I’ve kind of protected myself, controlled life, done what I’m doing is not working for me. I’m going to have to make some changes in the way I work.
Now we might find that easy to say about a fifteen-year-old. But what are we going to do with our own hearts when our world isn’t working? This isn’t working for me. Maybe we need to ask the question, does God want to make a change in my own heart? Is there something about my worldview that’s protecting me from doing what God wants me to do? That I build this city, these towers in my life that are preventing God from being able to work, to do something in my life.
So what God does in this story is He says, “Okay, I’m not going to tell you guys to stop building a tower.” He doesn’t even do that. He doesn’t tell them to stop building a tower. He says, “I’m going to help you see that your plan is not working. This is not working for you.” So that’s what He does. He confuses their language. And what do they end up doing? They disperse themselves all over the place. You can imagine. The supervisor’s building a tower and he’s saying, “Hey, send me up twenty-five bricks.” [babbling] “Twenty-five bricks send them up here.” [babbling] It reminds me of some families sometimes. That’s how it is. You’re just missing each other as they’re trying to talk. But what God is doing is He’s saying, “Hey look, this isn’t going to work for you. We’re going to do something different here.” So sometimes God takes things away, privileges that we have. It’s the same way that parents do with children.
You know, I want to be the kind of person who listens to the whispers of God. God, you don’t have to hit me with the sledgehammer here. I want to listen to the whispers. I want you to be able to change my view, my worldview. I want you to be able to make that more biblical. I want you to be able to help me think rightly about things. I don’t want you to have to come in and make things not work for me. I don’t want to have to live the hard way.
But you know there are some children who don’t learn by dialogue. So you have all this wisdom that you hold in your own heart and your own mind and you want to pass that on to your young person and you want them to understand it, but they don’t get it because the way you talk to them that’s not how they learn. They’re not going to listen to the dialogue. The dialogue isn’t even going to get through to them. So they learn by experience.
We see this over and over again in the Bible. Saul of Tarsus had this whole worldview that he’s going to go and kill all of the Christians. And he had a pride. It was spiritual pride. This is the worst kind of pride. Where someone believes that their pride is kind of fueled by God or somehow God has given them some kind of spiritual understanding that’s better than other people. So their spiritual pride is dangerous. So Paul is going after these Christians. And what does God have to do? Smacks him off the horse. Falls down on the ground, takes away the privilege of seeing. Now Paul has to say to himself, hmm I’m going to have to evaluate my life. Maybe I’m not doing this the right way. Maybe there’s something I need to change in the way I respond. He’s going to change his worldview completely and God’s going to speak to him in that moment because his defenses come down. He’s able to do that.
I think of Pharaoh. Pharaoh said, “No, I’m not going to let those people go.” God says, “Let my people go.” “No. I’m not obeying God. I’m not going to do what God says. I’m not going to let your people go.” And so what happens? Ten plagues. Ten different times God tries to give a crisis to the king. And what happens? Does the king change? Well yeah, eventually he does. I don’t want to have to wait till ten things like that happen in my life. I want to be able to pull it down and say, “Hey God, help me evaluate this. Where am I off base? Lord, help me to change now so I don’t have this problem down the road.”
I don’t want to be like Jonah. Jonah was in that belly of that fish for three days. It wouldn’t take me three minutes to change my heart and say, “Okay God, I’ve changed my heart.” It took him three days to repent before God saw that his heart was changed and he spit him onto dry ground. I go, “Whoa. Lord, I want to be the kind of person that’s willing to evaluate to see what’s going on in my own heart. I want to be able to respond. Lord, help me be able to do that.”
See, we develop this worldview, we develop this pride, we develop this narrative, this story that we tell and the story can be wrong. The story can be convoluted. The story can have all kinds of defense and so on. But the problem is, it’s wrong. It's not in line with what God has. That’s why God’s word is so important. That’s why we read God’s word every day. Because we’re saying, “Lord, I want my defenses to go down here. I’m not looking for a verse that’s just going to defend my position. Lord, I want you to speak to me. I want you to help me evaluate the worldview that I have so that I can do what’s right, so I can follow you. I don’t want to be like these people who are so proud that they decided they just don’t need you. I’m just going to do whatever I want. I’m going to respond to you.
I would suggest if you’re a child or a young person or an adult that you want to listen to the Lord. Sometimes you listen to the Lord through your parents because that’s how God speaks. Sometimes God speaks through authority in order to present truth to us. We have to be willing to listen. Are we able to do that? Or do we have to wait.
You know Balaam’s donkey spoke to him. It had to be a donkey that finally tells him, “Hey, your worldview is a little bit off here. You need to change that.” Every one of us has a challenge in this worldview. I would suggest that we have to be able to admit that maybe we have a problem here that we need to challenge. So I think it’s very healthy for us to allow the defenses to come down, to be vulnerable for the Lord, and say, “Search me, oh God, and see if there’s any wicked way in me” as the psalmist says.
In fact regularly we celebrate communion. When we celebrate communion, Paul says in 1 Corinthians – Let a man examine himself. The Christian life is a self-examining life where we’re continually coming before God and saying, “God, am I doing what you need me to do? Do I need to make a change here? Lord, is my pride getting in the way?” Because pride is our greatest flaw. It's the most deadly flaw that we have that can hinder us from experiencing what God has for us. Oh we might think of all kinds of other sins. Oh boy. Adultery, murder. All of these things. But it’s really the pride that leads us to all kinds of other things that get in the way.
God wants to do a work in our hearts that means humility before us. And sometimes we have to step up and we have to do difficult tasks because God is calling us to obey Him in the midst of that. So I just challenge you. Think about what God is doing in your life. Allow that worldview that you have to be challenged continually by God’s word. As we do that, God’s word is able to perfect that, strengthen it, and that’s where we’re going to get the confidence. That’s where we’re going to get the direction and the purpose and the meaning that we want when we’re working with children and identify it’s not so much helping them feel good by letting them win the game or giving them a trophy even if they lose. That’s not what makes a child have the identity. We want them to have an identity who they are in Christ. That God has called them, made them special. And then we can experience this. Yes, I am good because God has made me good through His righteousness, not because of my own goodness. That I am valuable. Not because of something I’ve done, but because of what God has done in me and He’s chosen me and He’s working in my life.
So I encourage you today to evaluate your own heart. The pride that might be getting in the way and your identity, this pride, this veneer, this narrative that we all create for ourselves needs to be checked, examined, and evaluated to make sure it’s on track where God wants it to be.
Of course that’s the essence of becoming a Christian. If you’re here and you’re not a Christian yet, if you’re listening online and you’ve never accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, I want you to know that you need to give up self and follow Christ. That’s what it means. It means I’m going to allow this narrative to drop. I’m going to become vulnerable and I’m going to say, “Lord, I’m a sinner. I need a Savior. I need something outside of myself. And I trust you to be my Lord and Savior.” That’s what God wants to do in our lives and it’s a process that we continually are working out. God’s working out that salvation in our lives continually. Allow Him to do that and great things will happen inside of your heart.
Would you stand with me and let’s pray together.
Heavenly Father, we come before you now and ask that you would point out areas where sin is present and pride is protecting it. Lord, give us the ability to have a worldview that is so centered on you and directed to you that we’re able to humble ourselves before the cross, humble ourselves before your grace, and receive that in our lives in new and special ways. We want to be led by you, Lord, so we ask for you to speak to us. Change us first in our hearts before we go out and try to change everybody else. But Lord, speak to us and help us to be the people you want us to be. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.
