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In this sermon, Pastor Aaron Shamp expounds on the profound themes of the Prodigal Son parable, focusing on the concepts of exile and homecoming. He explores the feelings of homesickness that many experience, emphasizing that this longing signifies a genuine desire for a home in the presence of God. The sermon highlights the role of Jesus as the true older brother who seeks to bring us back from our exile and the importance of understanding our lives as a pilgrimage toward that ultimate homecoming. Pastor Aaron encourages listeners to find hope and purpose in their struggles, recognizing that every suffering is part of the journey toward fulfillment in Christ.
Takeaways
Takeaways
- The Prodigal Son's story illustrates the journey of return.
- Exile and homecoming are central themes in Scripture.
- Homesickness reflects our longing for a true home.
- Our desires indicate that we were made for another home.
- Jesus is the true older brother who seeks us out.
- Exile is the human condition due to sin.
- Jesus endured the ultimate exile to bring us home.
- We live in the "already but not yet" of the Christian life.
- Finding hope in suffering is essential for spiritual growth.
Creators & Guests
What is Redeemer City Church - Lafayette, LA?
Pastor Aaron Shamp preaches about the Gospel and facets of Christianity at Redeemer City Church. These podcasts are his sermons.
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Well, if we're already in Luke chapter 15, then I'm going to start reading verse 17.
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When he came to his senses, he said, how many of my father's hired workers have more than enough food. And here I am dying of hunger. I'll get up, go to my father and say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired workers. So he got up and went to his father.
But while the son was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran, threw his arms around his neck, and kissed him. The son said to him, Father, I have sending this heaven and in your sight. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father told his servants, quick, bring out the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.
Then bring the fattened calf and slaughter it and let's celebrate with a feast. Because this son of mine was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. So they began to celebrate. Now his older son was in the field. As he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he summoned one of the servants questioning what these things meant. Your brother is here, he told him. And your father has slaughtered the fattened calf.
because he has him back safe and sound. Then he became angry and didn't want to go in. So his father came out and pleaded with him. But he replied to his father, look, I've been slaving many years for you and I've never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me a goat so that could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you slaughtered the fattened calf for him.
Son, he said to him, you are always with me and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found.
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So we've been looking at this story for a few weeks, for several weeks now, and we're looking at how in this one short story, Jesus teaches us so much about what it means to become a Christian, what it means to be a Christian. We've looked at how we've looked at the Father's forgiveness and the Father's love for the Son. We've learned about repentance through the Son's coming to his senses and returning home. We've been learning so much through this parable. We've been learning about how
how we gain entrance to the Father's house and a seat at the Father's table. Jesus weaves into this short story so much meaning and significance and different themes that whenever we slow down to look at it in detail and try to pick out those themes and really explore all that it means.
It's incredible all that we have to learn. And there's another theme in this story that Jesus inserts into it that if we pause and look at it, we can learn lot from. And that's the theme of exile and homecoming. Exile and homecoming is not just a theme in this parable, this short story, but it's also one of the great themes in scripture. We see themes of exile and homecoming going all the way back to Genesis, whenever Adam and Eve are exiled from the garden, but the
Lord promises, but God promises that he is going to send a son that will one day bring them back into his presence. We see exile and homecoming in the story of Abraham and how he was called from his home and for a while was a nomad, a wanderer, as he was following God's direction to bring him to the home that God had promised for him. We see this in the story of Joseph, in the story of Daniel, in the story of the Jews who had been captured by the Babylonians and brought as captives
into Babylon and how those exiles from their home were waiting and looking forward to the day whenever God would bring them back to their home. It's one of the major themes in scripture and it's a theme that we also see in this story. It's a theme that we can identify with in our life because as a theme it kind of becomes a motif or a symbol for so many of the things that we experience in life. The struggles of life, our hopes and dreams, and also our feeling that we are often not at
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home. So that's what we're gonna be looking at today and we're gonna be looking at a few things. First we're look at that feeling of homesickness that tells us that we are not in the home that we were made for. So that homesickness, the reason we have that homesickness, and then how the gospel promises us homecoming.
So we all experience this feeling of, and we could describe it in a few different ways, but I'll just call it a homesickness in life. A homesickness, this idea that no matter where we are or what we're doing, we often don't feel like it's exactly the right place that we're supposed to be. We still tend to wonder, could there be somewhere else that is the place that I belong where I will experience satisfaction and fulfillment? We sometimes get brief moments of satisfaction.
moments where we're at and all in the world does feel right and we say, this is where I'm supposed to be. Brief moments of tranquility and comfort in where we are.
whether that be in the community that we find ourselves in, the literal city that we live in, our family and our place in our family, even our careers at times. sometimes get that and we think, this is where I'm supposed to be. This is where I belong. But if we're honest, we recognize that those are brief moments in what is the norm of feeling homesickness. The norm is that feeling of desire, longing, of where am I supposed to be? And trying to figure that out and those feelings
of comfort or satisfaction are usually just brief periods in between the times of longing. The majority of our lives is spent trying to find our place in this world. When we were children, experienced this, especially we started to experience that longing even more acutely as we became teens and maybe in college and so on. But.
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And you thought to yourself, you looked at the adults and you thought, well, one day I'll have it figured out like them. But for those of us who are, you know, in late 20s and 30s and so on and even beyond that, you start to realize that feeling doesn't go away. Even into adulthood, you continue to experience that longing and desire of how do I fit in this world? And why don't I feel like I fit where I'm at? And no matter what kind of changes I make, it seems as though that longing
and dissatisfaction still continues to follow in just different forms and variations. Many of our stories, even outside of scripture, just in the stories of our culture and the stories that we cherish, the theme in many of those is the theme of not being at home and trying to find that home.
In one sense, this is the great theme of The Hobbit, right? And the dwarves who are trying to, who are exiled from their home because of an evil force, and who are trying to go back home and reclaim their home. In the movie version of The Hobbit, Bilbo even says this to him whenever he is thinking about abandoning the journey, but then he decides, no, I have a home, and I know what it feels like, and I'm gonna stick with you guys until you find your home.
So many of our stories carry this theme as well because it touches on a universal human experience, this sensation inside of us that is homesickness.
In his, in probably his best sermon ever written called The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis spoke to this so clearly and eloquently it's hard for me to think of anyone else who has spoken of it better. He calls this sensation of homesickness a desire for a far off country that to a certain extent only exists in our hearts and imaginations, but that no matter what we do, we can't seem to find it. He says, there's a little bit of longer quote, but,
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But consider what he says here. He says, in speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you, the secret that hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like nostalgia, romanticism, and adolescence.
Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth's experience was to identify homesickness with certain moments in his own past. But all of this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in his past, he would have not found the thing itself, but only a reminder of it. What he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering.
And have you ever experienced that yourself? Maybe you go back to one of those places that in your mind was so perfect. Sometimes we call it the good old days, right? You go back to that place and you find that, that.
satisfaction still somewhat only exists in your head, as Lewis says, in a memory, but not so much in the place itself when we try to go back to those good old days. Whenever we travel and we pursue new experiences and new places, they might be fun, entertaining, but we still find that longing is within ourselves. This homesickness is inside of all of us. No matter what we try to do in this world, the homesickness remains.
point. Our homesickness tells us that we were made for another home.
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Our homesign is tells us that we were made for another home because we all experienced this desire and longing. The dream of a far off country where we truly belong, but nothing that we do, no place that we go, no accomplishments that we make in this life, no relationships that we enter into can finally and completely fulfill that longing. Like I said, we might get brief moments here and there where Lewis says we sometimes call it beauty, where we are caught up in beauty and for a brief moment.
we experience satisfaction in transcendence, we might call it, but then almost as quickly or before we can even recognize that we have experienced it, the moment passes. Have you ever felt that before? But nevertheless, we all experience that desire in ourselves. In mere Christianity, Lewis describes it this way. He says, we all desire hunger. And why is that?
because we were made to eat, right? We desire hunger and it makes sense because there is a correlation to the satisfaction of that desire. We have the desire of hunger and there is food that satisfies us. And we can apply the same rule to all of our other desires. For all that we have within ourselves, we find that when we desire it, that there is typically an answer to that desire even if we struggle to find it. What that suggests is that...
The desire that we have within ourselves tells us that there is that other home. There is that place. There is that satisfaction and fulfillment. If we have that desire, then that home must exist. But the question is, why do we experience the longing but not the satisfaction? And here's where we get into exile.
The reason that we experience this longing of homesickness, but not the satisfaction of it, and no matter what we try to do in life, it doesn't give us that satisfaction is because we are experiencing the, we are.
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going through the experience of being in exile. And so this is my second big point today, which is that our homesickness is the experience of exile. That's why we experience the longing, but not the satisfaction, the desire, but not the answer to that desire in this world, because in this world, in this life, we are in exile from that true home. And that's the problem that creates this homesickness is exile. What the Bible tells us is that the home that we were made for is in the presence of God.
That's where we belong. The beauty that we chase after, those moments of transcendence that we get caught up in, the longing and desire within ourselves is meant to be satisfied in the presence of God. We see this depicted in the creation story in the Garden of Eden. It's not the garden itself that we need, but it was what the garden was.
In the garden, Adam and Eve, mankind experienced a home because they were living in the presence of God. They were united to him in relationship. They had a conversational relationship with him. And they, as the scripture says, they even had such a relationship that they walked with God in the garden. And there, mankind was at home because the home that we were made for, once again, was to be in the presence of God. God created this perfect world.
formed the garden that him and mankind might be able to live in perfect harmony in that context. And it's in that context in the garden where all of our desires, our hopes, the longings that we experienced within ourselves, there was an answer to that longing. It's where we were meant to flourish. But as we know in the creation story, sin entered the picture.
center of the picture whenever Adam and Eve tried to take control of the garden. They tried to take control of that home and be the masters over that garden. In a sense, usurping God's role as king over the garden, as ruler, where his word was authoritative, they chose to go their own way whenever they broke his one rule of not eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, right? In doing that,
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What they were doing was they were saying that we are choosing our word over God's word. We are placing our authority above God's authority by choosing to break his one simple rule. They were choosing to not love God. Because what was the point of that rule?
Right. This is something that theologians and scholars have have asked and tried to answer for for years. And many Christians, we maybe have tried to ask that question before of what's the big deal? What's the whole point of that tree? And what was so bad about eating from the fruit of that tree? Here's what it was all about. We all recognize on the surface, it's a simple rule. Right. You have all of this to enjoy in the garden. Don't eat from this one tree. It's a simple rule.
And by obeying that one simple rule, Adam and Eve were showing God, number one, that they submit to his authority and that through their obedience, they love him.
They love him. They desire to satisfy him in expressing their love through their obedience. So whenever they chose to disobey, what it was was a failure of loving God. Just like in our story where the two sons in their rejection of the father were ultimately showing that they didn't love their father. The younger son shows that he didn't really love his father, but he loved his father's things whenever he took his inheritance and went off and squandered it.
The older son showed that he neither really loved the father, but only what he could get from the father, and that he protested and refused to enter the house whenever the father was throwing a party for his son who had returned home. If the older brother would have loved his father, then he would love what his father loves, and he would have gone back into the home. He would have celebrated as well and joined in the party. But he doesn't.
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And that is another picture of the same sin that happened in the garden that sends all of us into exile. In a sense, we are all younger sons in exile from our home, born into this world, into a world of exile where it is broken by sin, where we...
experience separation from us and God the Father because of our sin and lack for love for Him. And because of this experience, we are born into a world that we were truly not made for. And this is why nothing in this world can satisfy our homesickness. John Lennon from the Beatles once said this, he said, I used to think it was mere homesickness. Then I started getting it at home.
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Someone like him had all the resources and opportunity before him to try to satisfy that homesickness in whatever way he desired to pursue it. And he could not shake it because nothing in this world will satisfy it because we were made for that home with God. We were made for the presence of God to live in relationship with him and then in that relationship with God to flourish, to experience satisfaction, to experience fulfillment.
but because of our sin, we live in exile. What Jesus shows us through this parable is not just the instance of one lost son or of two lost sons, but what he is saying to us is that we all are lost sons.
We are all lost sons in this world experiencing exile from the father that we were made to be in relationship with. We are all in exile outside of the father's house, outside of the garden, we might say, that we were made to live in and to flourish in. We are all lost sons in exile.
The younger son, because of his sin against his father, not loving his father, demanding his inheritance, goes off to a far away country. He goes off to this far away country and there's something interesting in the details that we might skip over if we don't notice it and read slowly.
Remember that the prodigal son parable was the third in a series of three parables, right? We looked at this in week one. We looked at the first two parables. Jesus tells three. The first one is about a lost sheep. A sheep is lost from the rest of the herd. And what happens? The shepherd goes in rescue. He goes to search and find that lost sheep and bring it back. In the second parable, it's a perfect parallel, except this time with a woman and coins. She loses one of her coins and she
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goes in search trying to find that lost coin. She finds it and brings it home. The parable of the prodigal son is once again an almost perfect parallel, but it's missing this one detail. Whenever that son goes away and is lost, no one goes in search for him. No one goes in search and rescue of the younger son. Why not?
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If we step into this culture and time that Jesus was telling this story, they would have caught that detail and understood what was missing, what went wrong there.
Whenever that younger son left the family, remember, he threatened the family. He hurt the family not only by taking all that wealth, but by abandoning the family, by running off, committing a sin, not only against his father, but the whole household, the whole family, whenever he did that, leaving them behind so that he could go and enjoy his new wealth. Whenever that happened, there was someone in the family who should have been responsible for going, finding that younger son and bringing him back home to the
family and that person whose responsibility that would have been would have been his older brother. In this culture the role of the older brother the term for this is primo genitor.
The role of the older brother in the office that he held included certain privileges, right? We've talked about this before where he would have received a larger share of the inheritance and so on, but it also came with responsibilities. And one of those things that the older brother should have done is that whenever the younger son, his little brother left, he should have gone in search and rescue of him. He should have gone and found him and brought him back home out of his exile, out of his misery, out of his sin, out of the pig slop that he was
in, but he didn't. Why? Because that poor younger son had a Pharisee for an older brother. Remember that
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Jesus is telling this story in the context, if you go back to the beginning of Luke chapter 15, Jesus is telling this story in the context of him establishing a new community with sinners and tax collectors. He was welcoming them around himself and to himself, and he was even entering into community with them by sitting and eating with them. The Pharisees were watching him and wherever they observed this, they grumbled and they said to themselves, you know, surely this guy is a fraud.
He's a fake because he would not be going into community. He would not be in relationship with these kind of people. And so Jesus turns to them and he tells them these parables in response to that. We can see in the stories how the shepherd and the lost sheep corresponds to Jesus and those sinners that he was making community with. The woman and the lost coin, the father and the younger son in this story of the prodigal son.
Jesus and the sinners that he was in a community with. But where do we see the correlation to the Pharisees and the older brother that based on his goodness, based on his obedience and having done everything right, he didn't think that his younger brother was worth going and rescuing, worth going and searching out.
You know, in his mind, his younger brother had made his decision and now he's going to reap the rewards of that decision. He had sowed those seeds and he was going to get the fruit of what he had sown. He didn't think it was worth it. And then even when his brother comes back home, he is still not ready to welcome him back. Why? On what grounds? What was the issue? Because he had been so good.
because he had been so good, he stayed at home, he deserved his place in his father's house, at the father's table, but the younger brother didn't. And that's why he didn't go follow after him.
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But for you and I in our exile and when we experience that homesickness, we have the good news of this, that we don't have a Pharisee for an older brother, but that we have.
an older brother who does as he should do. We have an older brother who is not just an older brother in a human sense or in a worldly sense, is a true elder brother, like one that should have been in this story, who is Jesus. Jesus saw us in our exile and he left his home to go and search and rescue. That's what he was doing in that moment by bringing those sinners and tax collectors around him and eating with them and creating a
new community with them. He was doing what the older brother in this story should have done by going off in search and rescue for those in exile. And he does the same thing for you and I. Jesus left his home. He condescended himself from his position of equality and authority with God the Father to come down to this earth as a human.
and go on a search and rescue mission for us. But Jesus' mission to find us and rescue us would not be something that would not cost him anything. Instead, to rescue us from our separation from the Father, to rescue us from our place of exile and bring us home out of that place of exile, what Jesus would have to do is he would have to take our place in our exile.
You see, if we in our place of exile in this earth, where we are outside of relationship with God the Father, we are outside of being a part of the Father's family and having a seat at the table, our exile will one day end if we stay in that place, our exile will one day end in the ultimate exile from God, which is eternal punishment and separation from God the Father.
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For Jesus to rescue us out of this place that we are in, He can't just say, can't just tell us, here's the way back. Here is the path home. Here's the road that you need to take, the things that you need to do in order to rescue yourself and walk your way back out of this exile. No, for Jesus to rescue us, what He would have to do is take our place.
and ultimately take our place in our position of exile by experiencing that punishment, that separation from God, the wrath of God on human sin and our lack of love for God the Father, our placing our own authority over God the Father's authority, our trying to maintain control, dominion over our lives rather than submitting to what God's word says and following God's word over our own. Jesus had to experience the ultimate exile.
for all those things that you and I should experience. But by doing so and taking our place, what he does is he opens up the door so that we now are invited into this relationship with God, which does not just mean, it does mean a change in status from being lost or found, right, from being an orphan to being a child of God, but it also means is being brought back to the home that we were made for.
which is a relationship with God through the work of Jesus Christ. My third big point is that Jesus endured the ultimate exile so that we could be brought home.
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But we still at times, even as believers, whenever we're walking with Christ,
Whenever we are repenting from sin, and we're trying to follow God's will, when we're trying to pursue righteousness and seek the kingdom first, there's still times in our life, for those of you who are walking with Christ, where we experience that homesickness, we still at times experience that longing. We still at times experience the pains and the sufferings that come with living in a world that we ultimately were not made for.
So what does that mean for us? If Jesus brings us home in Him, right? But that we still live with the sufferings and the homesickness in this life. It means a few things. First of all, it means that even in spite of the sufferings that we experience in life, and there's times where we still have that longing of homesickness within ourselves, that we can find our home in Christ.
So we can find that home and we know that we have it and we can experience that satisfaction in Christ, partially. The ultimate fulfillment, the final answer to that desire that we have will not come until one day whenever we are removed from this world and we are in heaven with God.
We are removed from the brokenness of this world, from the presence of sin, any powers of sin and darkness in this world, and we are brought back into that true home that we were made for. So right now we live in a state.
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I've said this a bunch of times over the years at Redeemer, where we experience the already but not yet aspect of the Christian life. Where in Christ, we have already been given access to that home that we were made for. But because we still exist in this world, there's a sense in that we not yet have fully received the satisfaction of that thing.
So what that means for us, if we are going to mature as Christians and reconcile, how do I be in Christ and find the satisfaction of those desires but still in this world? What it shows us is that we now understand that in Jesus we have found our home. But until heaven, we're pilgrims on this earth. We have to take on the identity and the mindset of being pilgrims.
understanding that we have Christ, we have that destination, we have that home that we are promised. It is secure for us, it is given to us. We know that it is there, but that we are still walking the pilgrim journey from that world that is going to pass away to the one, to that far off country that we are one day going to receive.
You know, not tomorrow, but next Monday, November 11th is Veterans Day, but it's also the anniversary of something else that we don't talk about as often, which is that it's the anniversary of whenever the Pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower signed the Mayflower Compact. They landed at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, just a day or two before November 11th. And on that day, they got together and they signed that compact. But why did they go on that journey? What was it that they were doing?
They went on that journey because they understood that they were pilgrims.
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They originally were in England and because their right to worship and their ability to worship had been persecuted because they were not allowed to do that, they recognized that they had to leave England and go to Holland. They were pursuing the satisfaction of finding a home, in worship in God. And so in order to do that, they left England, they went to Holland, but even in Holland, they still could not there find.
the situation they needed in order to worship God as they ought to. So a group of them decided that they would go on the perilous journey across the Atlantic so that they might have a home where they can worship God.
That was the desire behind it, that they might work to see the kingdom of God on earth to bring home what God has promised us, even in an imperfect and impartial form here on this earth and then live in that. And that in that kingdom on earth that they might be able to proclaim the gospel. As they left on their journey, William Bradford wrote in his memoir of Plinth Plantation, he said, so when they left that good and pleasant city,
which had been their resting place for nearly 12 years, they knew they were pilgrims and lifted up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits. They understood that that journey that they were on, which is true of all of life, is a journey of being a pilgrim. And whenever we experience the sufferings, the steps of faith,
the perilous seasons and journeys that we might be going into, what they did was they lifted their eyes to, as Bradford said, that dearest country. And whenever they lifted their eyes to that dearest country that they were pursuing after, that God had called them to, it quieted the sufferings in their soul. So how does your life change if you see it as a pilgrimage? Well, it means that you're now able to somewhat reconcile
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the already but not yetness of the Christian life. Why is it that I still, even in Christ, I have to pursue and work to find the satisfaction to the longing and I still have homesickness at times? Well, we recognize because there's some already but not yet, right?
And when we go through the sufferings of this life, we start to reframe and have a new perspective in our life where every suffering and every loss is not final. It is not fatal to us, but we recognize it all as just steps and stations along the journey to our dearest country, to our home, that dearest country and home that we are guaranteed and that we cannot lose. And so what it does is it places all those losses and those
momentary sufferings in perspective of the light of the home, the country, the gift that we have for us in Jesus Christ. Paul said in 2 Corinthians that whenever we take on this attitude, what it does is it takes all the sufferings, all the setbacks and trials we go through in this life, and he says it makes them light and momentary. How? Right, some of you guys have gone through incredible suffering.
Some of you are going through incredible suffering now, loss, questions, doubting, setbacks, disappointment, discouragement. How is it possible that what you're going through can be light and momentary whenever it is heavy? You can't see a way out, perhaps. It hurts.
It'll only come with a perspective of seeing that of where we're heading and reminding ourselves that we are pilgrims.
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enduring the sufferings, walking through the darkest valleys on our way to that city, on our way to that home, that we are guaranteed and we cannot lose. And Paul says, so whenever we have that perspective, all of our sufferings are considered light and momentary in comparison to the weight of glory that we are promised in Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you.
that even in the midst of our experiences of homesickness and exile and all the struggles and the dissatisfactions, discouragement, discouragements and sufferings that can come with that, that in you we are promised homecoming. Father, let us in your grace give us a little taste of homecoming this morning as we respond to you in worship.
We thank you Lord that we are guaranteed that dearest country by the blood of Jesus Christ and not by our own working and our own walking our way back. So Father, in the grace and love that is abundantly poured out on us through Jesus, let us experience even if briefly, a momentary taste of that joy and satisfaction that we have coming for us in heaven. We pray this in your name, amen.
As we respond in worship this morning, we're going to respond in worship and singing, but also respond in the Lord's Supper. Jesus told us on the night when he was betrayed, he sat with his disciples and he passed around the cup and he said, this cup is the blood of the covenant. It is my blood poured out for you.
He passed around the bread and he broke it and he said, this bread that is broken is my body broken for you. What he was telling them is that his blood that was shed and his body that was broken was shed and was broken so that we might experience the gift of salvation, right? But whenever he did that, he said, do this in remembrance of me. Jesus knows how
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prone we are to wander and Jesus knows how quickly we forget and so we need reminders.
So he said, do this in remembrance of me. He gave us this very physical, tactile way that we can be reminded of and blessed once again with the grace of what he has done for us. And so as we continue in worship this morning, before you stand and sing, I want you to take just a moment to go before the Lord, lay out before him your sins, where you have lacked in repentance, lay out before him your sufferings in all the ways that you're
experiencing homesickness today. Lay those things before him. That can be painful as we reflect on the trials that we are going through. It can be painful and sting when we confess our sin before God the Father.
but then be reminded of what Christ has accomplished for us. So even if it stings for a moment, let that sting be washed away in the joy that comes with salvation through the work of Christ. And so you do that as you go to the back and you take that cup and you take that bread and an act of faith remembering I am the recipient of what Jesus has done for me. Though I don't deserve it, though I did not do anything to earn it, I have received
this incredible eternal gift of grace. So take that moment to reflect and pray and then as you're ready, make your way to the back where we have the juice and cups. If anyone needs prayer, if you want to talk to someone about something that you're going through that you need prayer for, I'll be in the back. Justin, if you want to go in the back too, we'll be back there. If you want to pray about following Christ or anything else that's on your heart, come back there and talk to us and pray with us.
Aaron Shamp (38:29.569)
For anyone else, go take the cup and bread, receive it, and then come back to your seats and let us continue in worshiping our Lord through song.