Morning and Evening (pt.1)

Hey, Matt Bennett here. Welcome to the Bennett broadcast episode 10. Morning and evening. Devotions that is. This is the first of two episodes on this subject. Thanks so much for tuning in. Have you ever considered and asked yourself, what do I need to do to be strong in the Lord on a daily basis? What's expected of me from the Lord? What's pleasing to God? But also, what does it take to be strong in Him? I think sometimes people can think, well, God would always want us to do more prayer, for instance, during the day. But that's not true. I mean, the Lord may have some have a special calling like Anna, the prophetess, and the New Testament. There are people with special callings. But for most people, he's got other things for us to do. We've got to have a job. We need to raise kids, be with our spouse and other responsibilities. So for most people, even those in ministry, we spend a lot of time drawing close to the Lord in prayer and devotion. But still, you got to be ministering, of course, you need to be teaching and puraging and evangelizing, all sorts of activities for the sake of the ministry. So we can't spend all time and nor there's a Lord want us to spend all the time. It's not like the Lord, gosh, I wish they would do that only they could, but they're not, but it's an impossible task. That's not the case at all. But there is a certain amount of time and frequency in which the Lord wants us to draw close to Him. And that's what this is about knowing that the Lord expects and wants us to have mourning and evening time with them is what this Bennett broadcast is about. And I've been studying this issue for years. And something that prompted me years ago to look at this was, I noticed how powerful it was when people I was ministering to and myself too would have regular devotions with God. It changed that minute. It changed me in so many great ways. But I was surprised that I guess I didn't see as much in the scriptures on and I certainly would see commands about reading the Bible, how valuable the Bible is and memorizing it and hearing it and everything and praying, but not the regularity and the amount of time. And it was always there, but I didn't really know where it was. Now I did know some passages like Psalm 1 meditating on the Bible day and night in Joshua 1. You'll be be strong and courageous if you meditate on the Bible day and night. You'll be prosperous and successful. But to me, that seems sort of thin in the sense that the Bible is all about us being pleasing to the Lord and strong in Him. So I would expect there to be a lot on this subject in terms of the frequency and amount of time, which I didn't see. It wasn't until years later when I really jumped into the subject that I found out there's a lot there on it. I just didn't understand what I was looking at. So I've studied this subject for years. I've seen people's lives radically transform when they've taken amount of time regularly drawing close to the Lord. So what we're going to be looking at first of all is the pattern of drawing close to the Lord in the Old Testament scriptures and what the Jews practice and then also for Christians as recorded in New Testament and even early church history up to the second or third century or so. And understanding this and knowing this and seeing yourself, the benefits are enormous because you'll be more confident than ever that the Lord wants you to take this amount of time, morning and evening to draw close to Him. And you'll have that confidence and you'll set around aside the time. You will build your life around God instead of just fitting God in when it's convenient. You'll also have the guilt off of you that if you don't spend all day seeking God every day, then something's wrong with you. And that's not the case at all. So you'll have peace of mind. You'll know what the Lord expects of you. You'll have the strength to be an agent of His to in your family, your community and the nation in every way. And we want to see God bring revival to the United States. And that happens when large number of Christians are seeking the Lord as He requires. And part of that is taking the amount of time and frequency. Of course, what we do during that time also matters, but also it does matter the amount of time and the frequency matters as well. And that's what this is devoted to. So we want to see revival in our country. We need a culture of Christians seeking God at a higher, stronger level than the vast majority. And that's what this is looking at today by the grace of God. So in looking at the slides here, a culture of Christians seeking God, the Lord wholeheartedly pleases God and is the means established by him to attract his presence for power and success and deepening expanding the kingdom of God. Seeking him as he requires is the highest aim of humanity. Now in upper other episodes, we go more to deep what you're doing during this time. And we need to be repenting and reading the Bible and praying and other such things. But this is focus more on the frequency. So as we think about spiritual vitality, you can think about it. In the sense that first of all, we're always hungering after God himself as a dear past for water. So we hunger after him. And then there's the principles of seeking him. I just alluded to with frequent prayer and Bible reading and doing with other people and obedience. That's another episode. But there's also the spiritual practices. And that's what this episode is. And some people call it spiritual disciplines or devotional times. There are different labels for this. But here we call it spiritual practices. Now starting off, this is really amazing. I find this absolutely incredible that the nature of the world, the structure of our solar system. And for that matter, perhaps the universe is designed around what our spiritual needs are. Now this is really kind of, I think it's very powerful to consider that the Lord put in the heavens themselves what is needed for us to be faithful and strong to him. I'm going to read this passage in Genesis 114 to 15. I think you'll never look at a sunrise and a sunset again. You'll never look at the seasons again the same way. Never look at them the same way. Genesis 114 and 15 says, and God said, let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times and days in years and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth. And it was so. Now look at that in that incredible. Let the moon and the sun serve as signs to mark sacred times, days and years. And this indeed is exactly what they do for us. The seasons, the days, the months, these mark a pattern and how we're to draw close to the Lord. This is reflected in first chronicles. You'll see here. You'll see how this what I'm reading in these verses in first chronicles echoes what I just read in Genesis and first chronicles 23 30 to 31. It says, a feast of unleavened bread feast of booze. According to the number of required of them regularly before the Lord. So you see here very plainly that in terms of pattern of spiritual devotion, it's connected to from to the stars to the heavens. And it's not as if God just said, well, we already got these things move around the sky. Maybe we'll just set up something arranged to that. But he did it intentionally, the timing of all this is coordinated so that we know how to draw close to him and certain patterns and intervals of time. Absolutely amazing, very, very powerful and something that we should take deep into our hearts. What we're focusing on here today is just the morning and evening. Other episodes will look at other patterns of devotion monthly and otherwise and seasons and conferences. The Lord wants us to do. But for our spiritual strengthening, but today we're just looking at morning and evening. So when the sun rises every morning, it should be an indication time to have a devotion. When the sun's going down in the evening, should be assigned to us time to have a devotion before the Lord. Not that it has to be exactly at that time. Of course, it can be a little bit before or after sunrise, same as sunset. But I think you get the idea. So regular dedicated focus times of seeking the Lord are essential for spiritual strengthening and feelings of the Holy Spirit. We're commanded to be strong in the Lord and to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And so to have that and to be everything he wants us to be, to be pleasing to him, we need to know the patterns he's expects of us and makes the difference. So as we consider these patterns, of course, we got to have the right motives with it. I think most Christians in the West know this, which is great. Matthew 6, 1 says, beware practicing your righteousness. Now, practicing your righteousness in this context means three things, your regular prayers, your fastings, and your giving. And that's what it's talking about here. So practicing your righteousness, these are quote righteous acts before other people, beware of it in order to be seen by them. For then you will have no reward from your father who is in heaven. So the motivation has to be right. That is you don't do it. So other people will say how great you are. It doesn't mean other people can't know what you're doing. Of course, all throughout the Bible, we see people praying and giving money and fasting. It's everywhere. So it's not like you can't talk about it. But as we do it, we need to have the right motives. And the motives are not to be seen by others or to get praise from other people. And if we have that in our heart, the solution isn't that we would stop having our morning devotions or our other practices or acts of righteousness. The solution is to repent of the bad motive and then continue on. So let's always have the right motives as we're regularly drawing close to the Lord. So the spiritual practices are more than morning and evening devotions. We're just looking at morning and evening devotions today and actually just one half of it. We're looking as mentioned Old Testament versus New Testament versus in early church. There's more to be looking at it in another episode than next week, two weeks, which I'm going to do. All right. So morning and evening pattern, there's the Old Testament versus we already looked at a few of them, but let's look at a few more. So what's key in this? And the why we're looking at these passages, I wanted to go deep inside of you that this is what the Lord's desire is for you. Because if we're going to order our lives around these times or drawing close to him, we got to have confidence that it's really him because we're busy. We got a lot of things going on and is it really what God wants. And so I'm showing these verses so that you can see, yeah, it's really what God wants. So Exodus 29, 30, 8 to 41, says, now this is what you shall offer on the altar, two lambs a year old day by day regularly. Now notice that word regularly. Says one lamb you shall offer in the morning and the other lamb you shall offer it twilight. So when the Bible, when it says it talks about regular offerings, the question is what does he mean by regular? And in the Bible, it means morning and evening. That's what the word regular means in the Bible in these contexts of making offerings. So whenever you read their passage that says they're making the regular offerings, that means they're making some offerings in the mornings and some offerings in the evenings. It's the same way today. If you use the word regular, let's say someone says you should go to the doctor regularly. Well, it's not you're not going twice today and you're not going even once a day, you're probably going maybe once a year, maybe twice a year or something like that. But that's what's meant in that context for the word regularly or brush your teeth regularly. Well, they mean at least once a day or twice a day, that's what's meant by that term regularly. Here in the Bible, when it talks about offering our sacrifices to God, the context is always pointing to morning and evening. Look at first Chronicles 2330 and they the Levites were to stand every morning, thanking and praising the Lord and likewise at evening. And that's what we do on our devotions. We thank and praise the Lord during devotions. We also offer ourselves to the Lord like offering sacrifices. We also put to death anything wicked inside of us, kind of symbolizing that offering process there. So this is the model for us that the Israelites practiced. Now, as I mentioned earlier, we've got this passage in Joshua one eight about the meditating on the book of the law, which was the first five books of the Bible. Now we have a whole Bible and we should meditate it on it on a day and night. Now, given this frequency of morning and evening devotions or going to sacrifices, day and night in these contexts probably means do it in the morning and do it in the evening. Now, years ago before I knew what regularly meant in that context, I just thought when we saw a day and night in the Bible, it always means just do it a lot or do it as seems good all the time in some way, shape, perform. And in some context, that phrase in the Bible can mean that way like continuously. But when it comes to interaction with drawing close to God or reading the Bible and praying given the context of what was going on in the temple and the sacrifices, it probably means morning and evening do it every morning and evening. Now, we have the pattern also with Daniel, a very godly man who was an exile and says here, even though he's a very busy man, he was a right hand man to some of the most powerful kings on earth at the time, Babylon, Persia. So he was a busy man and had a lot of important responsibilities. But here it says he got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before God. Now, you remember this story, this is when they're trying to get him in trouble and he got thrown in the lion's dead, even though he knew what would it mean for him. He did not stop seeking God three times per day, which is amazing. They say you can tell the measure of man by what it takes to stop him. And we get stopped from drawing close to the Lord out of ignorance sometimes, but also we get busy with other things that we don't have nearly opposition as someone like Daniel had, but we may not be faithful to our regular times of drawing close to the Lord. Now he did it three times per day and as we'll see here, that was a pattern that some devout Jews did as well, some did twice a day, some did three times a day. Psalm 55, 17, evening and morning and noon, I utter my complaint in moan and he hears my voice. Psalm 92, 1 to 4, it is good to give thanks to the Lord to get praises to your name, almost high, to declare your steadfast love in the morning and your faithfulness by night, to the music of the flute, the lute and the harp, to the melody of liar, for you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work, at the works of your hands, I sing for joy. So you see this pattern here to declare the love of God and also to sing to him, morning and night, morning and evening. And in devotional times, you'll want to sing songs, perhaps if we're other people or listen to praise music in addition to Bible reading and prayer. Now we're jumping to new testament passages, what we're looking at this to see what the devout Jews would do in the first century, because we're talking about what the devout Jews did. This is before Christians came about, but it says here, Luke 1, 8 to 11, now it says, now while he's at Cariah was serving his priests before God, when his division was on duty, according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by law to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense. Remember this is every morning and every evening, and the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense, and there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. So what is going on here is that they had the temple and the temples on the temple mount, which is a big plaza of 30 acres, and Christians would gather there during the morning and evening offering a sacrifice that this was probably the evening sacrifice at the hour of incense, and that this is what people did. They gathered all there twice a day to pray, to draw close to the Lord. So this is why there was a big crowd there, and if you remember, he came out, he saw the angel, he couldn't speak, and he had a motion to the crowd, well, why was there a crowd out there? It's because they're always there when they're offering the morning and evening sacrifices. This is what faithful Jewish believers did in those days. Now the temple mount is a 35 acre plaza that can hold up to a hundred thousand people. Maybe you've been to Israel, maybe you've been to Jerusalem, and it's still standing today, partially not all of it. A number of the colonnades around it are down, but the plaza is there. It's very big. You can be up there all day and never run into people. I've been there a couple of times. The temple is not there anymore. There's a Muslim shrine there in its place, but the big platform, the plaza, the temple mount, as they call it, is still there. And so you can get a sense and looking at it, it's a big place and it could accommodate a hundred thousand people there every morning and every evening. So twice a day, the people in Jerusalem, they would file on up to the temple mount, do their devotions, and then go about the rest of their day, then come right back. This is the pattern for those who are believers who love the Lord. Now what became convenient for the sacrifices was to time it according to the time keeping schedules of the Roman Empire. And the, as you saw in the Old Testament passages, they're supposed to do it right in the morning and then also at twilight. So this is an exact way the Jews did it in the first century with that pattern, but it was close enough and they did it because of the ringing of the bells. So the way Romans would keep time as most towns they would have bells in the middle of the town and at 9 a.m. at noon and at 3 p.m. they would ring the bells. So not everybody had a sundial on the watch, of course. So this is how you would know where to be and meet people. So if you're saying, hey, I'll meet you at the third hour and hours began at 6 a.m. So this third hour is 9 a.m. So you'll know you got to, when they ring those bells, you better be there or I'll meet you at the sixth hour. Well, that's noon. The ring the bells in town and you can go and you meet. So it's how people ordered their day. So the Jewish leaders in that day, they ordered morning and evening sacrifices accordingly. So the first sacrifices were 9 a.m. and the second sacrifices were at 3 p.m. So they were regularly offering their sacrifices to God and all the believers that out folks would gather up on the Templatus walk there at those times. The bell would ring, you better get there and then you know to come again when the bells rang again for the third a 3 p.m. the ninth hour of the day. Very convenient to go about all of this. So let's look at some of the passages now about Christians and the New Testament because it's been established here that certainly Jewish people, especially those who were devout, they would take time morning and evening sometimes in the middle day as well to draw close to the Lord in devotional time. We'll talk in the next episode about how long that is. And I'm going to put forward the case that devotion should be between 30 to 60 minutes long. A morning one should be that long and the evening one. But in justifying why that is, that's in the next episode. I'm episode 11. This is episode 10. So here we'll see a comment from a professor of liturgy at Notre Dame Paul Bradshaw. So he's done a lot of research and documented the prayer practices of the first century church. Noting that the Book of Acts confirms this morning and evening prayer patterns. Now this was very interesting because as I dove into the subject years ago, I didn't know, I'd read the Bible many times by the grace of God, but I didn't know what was happening here behind the scenes without the historical situation. Now that once I learned that they were ringing the bells and the the vowed Jews were going up in 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., then a lot of passages in the Bible made more sense to me. So here's a quote I want to give from Paul Bradshaw, Professor of liturgy. He said the observance of the afternoon time of prayers mentioned in the New Testament. Peter and John go up to the temple at the hour of prayer the night hour. That's what it says in the Book of Acts. And Cornelius the Centurion keeps the night hour prayer in his house at 3 p.m. So the night hour 3 p.m. appears to have been chosen for the afternoon prayer in order that it might coincide with the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice in the Herodian temple. So even those Jewish people and then eventually Christians who were outside of Jerusalem, they would have those sacrifices only in Jerusalem, but they would ring the bells so people would know it's the same time they were able to offer their prayers. So Acts 31 says now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer the night hour. And so when Acts was being written by Luke and he wrote it, he assumed everybody knew this because this was just a culture. Everybody did it. He's called it the hour prayer. He didn't have to explain that everybody went morning and evening because everybody knew this and this was just common behavior. And there's more New Testament evidence which we're going to look at together here, but the consensus among historians is that first century Christians practiced this devotional pattern, a similar pattern to devout Jews of that day. So here we have Acts 2, 14 and 15 says Peter standing with the 11 lifted up his voice and addressed them. Man of Judah and all who do all in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ears to my words, but these people are not drunk as you suppose since it is the third hour of the day. So this is 9 a.m. Now this is when the Holy Spirit first fell as you remember, they're all gathered there in Jerusalem. So there's going to be a huge crowd because it's 9 a.m. It's the time. The sacrifice there in the Temple Mount area, thousands of people. And so that's why the crowd was there and the Luke and the author of Acts points out that of course this is the 9 a.m. time, the third hour of the day. And then later on you see an interesting phrase, an Acts chapter 2 that gives inside it says and they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship and the breaking of bread and the prayers. Now this is the ESV which quotes it literally the word prayers plural. Some places will shorten and adjust a prayer even though in the Greek it's plural. Now this is significant that it's plural because most likely what he's referring to when it says they were devoted themselves to the breaking of bread and the prayers meaning they were there for the morning prayer and in the evening prayer that is the prayers both times of prayer each day. They were everyone knew this and so this is what's being referred to. And I think translators today because this is not as well known they'll just say prayer in general but they were together at these sat times. Acts 109 you see this example of Peter it says that came to visit him and he's on the top he's praying at the sixth hour and that's new so some would pray in the middle of the day as well like Daniel did. Then there's Acts 1031 about Cornelius. Now you remember he was a proselyte. He was a Gentile convert to Judaism and a city of Caesarea which is outside of Jerusalem of course and it says he's telling the story of what happened to him and it says four days ago about this hour I was praying in my house at the ninth hour well of course he was doing it at the ninth hour because this would all devout people did throughout the empire at 3 p.m. because that's when the sacrifices are being made. He of course would also pray at 9 a.m. because he was a devout man and maybe other times as well. You see some other phrasology in the New Testament which is suggestive like in 1 Thessalonians 3 9 to 10 it says we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face. Now before I knew this history I think I just might pass over that and say well okay they would pray a lot about them but I think what it's pointing to most likely is that no they are being faithful in the morning and evening prayers with this night and day and then first to 2 Timothy 1 3 Paul says I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day so again he's pointing to this regularity of his prayer times at least twice a day if not more than that so we see that the timing of the first century devotions among Christians was as follows is that Christians would pray at 9 a.m. someone would also pray at noon someone also pray at 3 p.m. but also someone also pray at night and there'd be up to four times per day that Christians would pray the most popular the ones that almost everybody did was the 9 a.m. the 3 p.m. although someone would have set devotional times other times and I'm not talking by the way I'm just going about your life and lifting up prayers of course about Christians do that too but I'm talking about settling down often grabbing the other people having a dedicated amount of time and space of drawing close to the Lord and that's that's what I mean by devotional time sometimes people may feel like well I just lift up prayers all day and that's great but it's not a substitute for what the Lord is asking for us in the terms of amount of time and regularity we also need sat times of 30 to 60 minutes morning and evening let's look a little bit at the early church history so tertulian according to him at 200 a.d Christians prayed five sat times per day so you notice that there's an increase here it's five by this time it became very regular among almost all the Christians what they would do so it says they would also pray before meals and before going to the baths now the reason they prayed before meals and going to the baths they saw like the meals is for your health and your strengthening also going to the baths was a a health thing that you would do and you want to be in good health so you pray before that as well and some believe that it's a muslims who pretty much picked upon this pattern which is why muslims pray five times today so they would pray morning with twilight right when you get up 9 a.m. noon 3 p.m. and in the evening I see another attestation to this by a bishop named Hippolytus describes a practice of prayer and says here but if on any day there is no instruction let everyone at home take the bible and reach sufficiently in passages that he finds profitable if at the third hour thou art at home pray then and give thanks to God so here he's keying in on the third hour which is 9 a.m. that they are to have a focus time of bible reading and draw close to the Lord and this continues on here you see an encouragement by Bishop Hippolytus that Christians are to likewise pray at the the sixth hour which is at noon and he gives the reasons for it and explains it then he goes on he says you should also do it at the ninth hour and give thanksgiving and then he says you should do it right before you go to bed and even at midnight rise in prayer so this was this document that he wrote the apostolic tradition this is like a church manual about 200 AD that was widely circulated in practice so you see here this is the pattern that Christians did and Christians were pretty much all together in those days it's not like you had the physical paliants and Catholics and the Presbyterians all separate with different traditions there's all the Christians and they're together and this is what everybody did and so I think the implication for us today is that this is what all Christians should practice if you repent of your sins and you belong to Jesus Christ put your faith in him with the washing away of your sins then this is a practice and a lifestyle to focus on and I want to pause here too and mention again that some people when they hear this they can think well is this legalism now legalism is dealt more in a previous bit of broadcast episode but it's not legalism to do what the Lord requires you to do I'm not saying and the Bible isn't teaching that this is how you merit salvation you can't do anything to merit salvation salvation comes only through penance and faith and Christ however the Lord does expect us to obey his commands and his commands such as to love your spouse to obey the government generally unless it's going against God to treat other people with kindness forgive other people these are all commands this isn't legalism and the question is well there's a Lord expect us to have mourning and evening devotions well that's going to be covered I believe the answer is yes but that's in the next episode that's an episode 11 where you look at the scriptural passages where I make that case but at a minimum you see it and these passages that it was the pattern of virtually all Christians and the Old Testament the New Testament and now the first centuries of the church so we have to ask ourselves if it's not something the Lord wants us to do then how do we justify that given that this was the practice of all believers for hundreds of years practice by everybody this is something we really have to wrestle with and also wrestle with can I be strong in the Lord without doing it any command just to be strong in him okay and continue on here with Hippolytus we see in the morning and the cockroles rise up and pray this is key as well all right we're not looking at these other spiritual practices in this but I put them in here just so you'll see there are other spiritual practices to keep you and help you to be strong in the Lord now as we wrap this up I want to mention something else what precipitated my journey and to look at this and to discover what the Bible had to teach about it because some years ago maybe 15 years ago I wanted to spend more time with the Lord and I did I want to take two hours every day and so I was doing that for a while for a number of months and I was doing it in the morning and I was great loved it and wonderful but it's not easy to do two hours in the morning got to get up very early to be able to do that and I didn't want to have to go to bed so early to have to get up that early so I decided well what if I just split it and I did an hour in the morning and hour in the evening and maybe I'll just do it that way and so I did it I changed it to an hour morning and hour the evening so I'm not I wasn't increasing the amount of time I was already doing two hours but I split it to morning in the morning and the evening and you know what I noticed the difference I noticed a big spiritual difference I felt much stronger much more close to God it was really weird honestly and I thought there is something to this and that's when I started my research and so I did a lot of research pulling up a lot of books there was it's a lot easier these days to get a lot of stuff on the web but back then work hard and got a lot of information and wrote professors and email different professors who are experts in this and that's when I discovered that this was the pattern with morning and evening devotions and not just the first century but as we'll see in the next episode even our recent history in the west and the United States we've forgotten it in the very recent history but from 1600s onward it's all that we'll look at this was characteristic of Protestants and Evangelicals also in the intervening centuries but we don't have time to look at everything I think you get the idea but this is really really amazing and powerful and so as you consider your own devotional life I challenge you to change your schedule and to have devotional times morning and evening 30 to 60 minutes prayer Bible study reading the listening to worship music it will be fantastic the change that comes to your life I don't know how many people have told me what a radical change it has made to them and in the evenings if you have kids to do it with the children now this is so wonderful to do it in front of them that they get modeled before them that you are to pray with them and they see you pray this is fantastic nothing could be better for them to come together as a family people talk about having dinner together as a family and that's great too but also to come together and have a devotional time every evening as a family is wonderful in terms of the spiritual strengthening so again we want to do the amount of time and regularity that's pleasing to God and we have other responsibilities from him not just having devotional times and we also want to be strong enough to fulfill his purposes for our lives to fulfill the destiny has forced and also to have revival happen in our communities in the nation and so that's what this teaching is all about to know the regularity and the amount of time needed to be pleasing to him to seek him as he requires and not just as convenient because what's happened in the West is we've forgotten this and we've got a great tradition in the West who are drawing close to him with this kind of regularity but we've forgotten and we're suffering because of it we don't have the level of spiritual strengthening the feeling of the spirit the Christ-mindedness that we need to be strong in him and every way so let me say a prayer here as we wrap up so Lord we love and praise you Lord made this nation once again every Christian in this country seek your face every morning every evening bringing you praise to your great name reading the Bible praying with others honoring your great giving thanks to you worshipping you like we saw in the scriptures just now to give you the praise Lord you are owed this praise we also need it for own strengthening and if you're dynamic and faithful disciples and witnesses to Lord we love you and praise you thank you Lord in Jesus name you