Podcast Summaries

There's some popcorn in the youth corner, so if anyone wants to go and accompany the young people, they can come and eat some popcorn. There's a rapidly diminishing bag of popcorn there. You're like, get it in. Get it in now before the greedy grown-ups arrive. Okie dokie. Marvellous, marvellous. Great. Oh, you're a very good-looking bunch this afternoon. Anyway, last week, Ryan kicked us off talking about a really central biblical idea about God being our loving Father. Whatever our relationship with our earthly dad might be, God wants to know and relate to us as a father. It was a really wonderful time together. It was a really wonderful message. If you missed it, I do recommend you catch up on the podcast, but I would recommend having a glass of water and a box of tissues with you. I thought Ryan was going to dehydrate at one stage last week, so you might want to rehydrate halfway through the message. But no, seriously, it was wonderful, so please do check it out. As Ryan said last week, this is a really huge topic. It's something which people will do entire Christian conferences on. So realistically, what we can achieve in half an hour on a Sunday afternoon is not masses. But we're also aware that this is really hallowed ground for many of us, that our relationship with our dads, for some of us, has been problematic. For some of us, it's complicated or painful. So we also want to tread very carefully this afternoon as well. But we do think it's really important to go here, even if this is a place of pain for us, because we believe that this is also a place where we can find enormous amounts of freedom and wholeness and hope. Amen? And so as Ryan said last week, we may only really have time in these sessions to kind of take the first steps on a journey of healing. But if there's any way that we as a church can love and support you as you want to take continual steps on that journey, please do talk to your home group leaders or talk to anybody in a position of leadership within the church. We'd love to talk to you about how we could kind of facilitate some onward steps on that journey. And so today I'm going to try and pick up where Ryan left off. I'm going to be exploring some of what it means to actually have God as our Father. And as I've been mulling this passage over over the last couple of weeks, there's a little bit at the beginning of the biography of Jesus' life written by one of his apprentices called John. And it's been kind of rattling through my brain. It's describing Jesus and it says this. To all who believed in him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. They are reborn. Not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God. Anybody ever read that before? Heard that before? Is that familiar to anybody? It's okay. It's okay if it's not. It's okay if it's not. And so I've been kind of meditating on that. I've been kind of chewing those little phrases over in my head. Being born again, being reborn, being born into a family called children of God, brought into a family by choice, a birth that comes from God, a new beginning, not based on human passion or family planning. And I've been mulling over and thinking, it's a really strange idea. It's a really strange idea to like be born, reborn a second time, and this time into a completely different family. Like can you imagine how strange and disorientating that would be? Like imagine if someone was reborn into your family of origin. Like all of a sudden you've got a new brother or sister and you're like, hi, who the heck are you? Like strange. But imagine if that was your experience as well. Like if you came into somebody else's family, like it would be a strange experience, right? Yeah? Anybody with me? Thank you. It would be a strange experience. Like there'd be a whole load of stuff that you'd want to, you'd need to catch up on. Like I wonder like what weird and wonderful family traditions would you need to introduce this new person to? Like what awkward family secrets would you need to just kind of take them to one side and say, hey, weird aunt Sarko, no, like you'd have to have that conversation, wouldn't you? Like what relational dynamics might need explaining to your newly arrived siblings? For example, if someone got reborn into my household right now, there's a handful of things that we would need to explain. One of them is the sheer quantity of board games present in the building and an expectation that any free time will be spent playing the said board games. Secondly, there'd need to be a briefing about exactly how to talk to great grandma, what to say, what not to say, how to get into her good books and how to stay there. Very important. We'd also need to talk about the very important unspoken sock policy that exists in our household. We have a certain way that we like to remove our socks in our house. It involves stretching your sock up as high as you can on your leg and then kind of methodically rolling it down your foot until you get to the bottom and you make a little kind of sock token. That's a polite way of referring to them. We call them something slightly less polite in our house. And these little sock tokens get dotted around our house and whoever is doing the laundry that week gets to unpick the slightly crispy sock tokens off the floor before going in the washing machine. Apparently that's how we like to do things in our household. But there we go. That's too much information. So what I'd like you to do is get into those little groups with the people around you and just discuss if somebody was coming into your family of origin or your household at the moment, what would be the things that would be important to give them a quick briefing on? Or maybe you want to flip it the other way around. If you were the person going into someone's family, what would you want to tell them about yourself? For example, I'm a massive introvert and I can't do anything until I've had a cup of coffee. Stuff like that. It doesn't have to be deep and meaningful. Keep it light and whatever. Only share what you feel comfortable sharing. But take a couple of minutes with the people around you and then we'll report back. So on your marks, get set, go. Okie dokie. Let's hear from some of you guys. What would be some of the things about your family or about yourself that you feel would be important to share if you were suddenly introduced into a new family? I'm going to come over to the youth sofa first. Pray silence for the youth home group. What would you need to share or say? Like how different people act. Like in my family, people have different looks. So you've got to know which look means what, right? Very good. Okay. Who else has got one? Go on, Eileen. What have you got? To put things back where they come from. No, that's not important. It is when you can't see. That's true. That's true. If you're partially sighted, things going back where they came from is very important. I'll give you that, Eileen. Okay. Okay, here we go. Here we go. So me and Geoffrey share this one. If you come to my house, you may think everybody's fighting, but in reality, we're just trying to get hurt and it's a form of love. So very, very loud conversation style. Very good. What else? Who else have we got? Diddly dee. Yeah. Oh, oh, oh, oh, here we go. Yeah, I have to tell people what happens when they pull my finger. What does happen when? No, I don't want to know. No, actually, no. Let's not go there. Let's not go there. Okay, that's quiet enough of that. It's not long before someone lowers the tone, right? Like, it's not long. Okay, thanks for sharing. So as I said, as I was meditating on this passage that we heard in chapter one of John, this idea of being reborn into God's family, like, called the child of God, this idea of being reborn into a new family. It's a kind of strange and clunky concept. But there is an elegant and much more simple word that we use for this idea. When someone gets added into a family from outside, gets all the benefits of being a fully-fledged member of the household, what's that? Adoption. Absolutely right. And luckily, there are other places in our Bibles which use this language of adoption into God's family. And really, this is the point where Ryan left us off last week. God wants to reach out to us as a loving father and adopt us into his family, to heal us and restore us, make us whole, and walk out the rest of our lives alongside him in a loving relationship. And so today, I just want to spend a bit of time exploring that idea and asking, what does that actually mean? Like, what does it actually look like in my everyday life? How should that idea impact the way that I think about myself and think about the world around me? Or if I'm still making my mind up about saying yes to Jesus, about the idea of being adopted into God's family, saying a big yes to Jesus and calling myself a follower of Jesus or a Christian, like, what am I getting myself in for? Another thing I did in preparation for today was I read Ben Britton's Masters. No, yeah, your Masters, that's right. Give us a wave, Ben. There he is. So I read Ben's Masters, which was really good. Your dissertation. I thought it was good. And I didn't just read it for the fun

Since we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan. Come on. That's a shot in the veins, right? Like, drink a cup of coffee in the morning, or read that. Like, that's absolutely amazing, right? So there we see the idea of God adopting us into his family, and a whole bunch of other stuff besides. And we're going to do a real deep dive on this passage, but before we do, let's just really quickly define what we mean by adoption. Shall we? Like, first thoughts that comes to mind when we think about adoption. What do we mean by adoption? Or more likely, when we talk about adoption, what do we picture? So I'd like to hear from you in this moment. Who gets adopted? Children, very good. How old are those children? Under 18, yeah. Under 18, so we're thinking small children, medium-sized children, big children. What do we think? Generally speaking? Generally speaking, small children. Right. And why would they get adopted? Whole bunch of circumstances, right? Like, loads of reasons why. Who does the adopting? What kind of people adopt? Who adopts children? Nice people, yeah. Can anyone adopt, generally speaking? If you can go through the checks and all that stuff, yes, absolutely. Very good. Here's one big question. Who benefits from the adoption? Like, who's the primary beneficiary? Who benefits? The child, right? That's the biggest benefit, lands with the child, absolutely. So that's one of our modern understandings of adoption, isn't it? That's what we picture. We picture small children being adopted by families. But what Paul's readers would have pictured would have been ever so slightly different. It's very close, but it's not identical. So in Roman culture, at the time, adoption was something that only upper-class people could really do. They were the only people who could afford to do it. They were the only ones who could manage it. Middle class or working class people would be struggling to get by, so adding another mouth to feed was actually quite a bad idea. In fact, many families would sell their children into slavery if they couldn't get by. Ouch. Brutal, right? But a little bit more cash in the bank, one less mouth to feed, very brutal. Furthermore, it wouldn't have been common at all for small children to be adopted. In fact, you looked to actually adopt somebody who was a little bit older. The reality was that infant mortality rates were really, really high, so only about 50% of children survived through childhood, and only 40% of them would reach adulthood. So when considering adopting a child and feeding and investing in them, the younger you adopted somebody, the riskier the investment. You might well be motivated by compassion to adopt a young child from a deprived background, therefore increasing their chance of survival, but very, very few families would have done that. And the main reason for that is that Roman adoptions had a motivation that we don't really think about. Roman citizens would have adopted children into their family because they saw it as an opportunity and an advantage to do so. Think of it like this. I'm a wealthy Roman citizen. I've got loads of cash. I've had a few children, and I hope to pass my vast wealth and businesses on to my children. But because I'm minted, I've basically given my kids everything that they've ever wanted. If they've wanted it, they've been given it. They've never had to work for anything, and now they're in their mid-20s. How are these children? They're spoiled, right? We've got some spoiled brats living in the house, and I'm looking at them, and I'm like, I'm not going to pass my business on to them because I'm not an idiot. Like, I've worked hard for this. I can't pass this on to you. So I have a bit of a problem. Oh, wrong page. Sorry. So I'm also frankly embarrassed by my children because they're wandering around town. They've got my surname, and they're bringing my name into disrepute. So something needs to be done about this. What can I do if the children that are going to be my heirs are spoiled brats or worse, females? Because that would be worse, wouldn't it? I could go through the motions of starting to discipline my children in their early 20s, start to bring them into line and form some decent character in them. Obviously, that's not going to work if they're females. Like, no amount of hard work and discipline is going to solve that problem. Don't come at me. It's the Romans. It's okay. We're going to be okay. I thought there'd be some titters of laughter there, but there was just like a wall of hostility that came at me. I was like, no, Emily, it hasn't worked. They didn't get it. I'm sorry, I did look at you. I thought you're now my only friend in the room, so I had to look at you. Anyway, so you can either try and bring some discipline into their lives in the early 20s, or you can take a shortcut. You could write off those biological kids as a loss, and you could look to adopt a nice, healthy young man in his teens who's managed to survive to this stage. You could grab one like this, and you could just bring him into your family like this. Very good. Thank you. Now, he's worked a nice manual job most of his life, so he's got really good muscles. Have you? Oh. He's got great teeth. Look at those teeth. They are good teeth, right? He's got good teeth, but he's also worked hard, so he's got good character. He's got very, very good character. And if I adopt you into my wealthy household, you're going to work really hard and be grateful, aren't you? Yes. Good lad. Very good. Thank you very much. You can go and sit down. So I can trust this lad. So I could adopt Theo because he's young. I can shape his mind, and I can shape his character and his understanding. And he's not a girl. Ha! I got one more in. Anyway, in this way, I get what I want. My family name lives on in safe hands, and my hard work is passed on to somebody that I can trust. That is what Roman adoption looks like. And it happened all the time. It was really well recognized. In fact, the last handful of Roman emperors had actually been appointed in this way. The previous emperor had adopted somebody into the family and appointed that person as their son. So this dynamic was really well known, well established, and popular. And this, this is the kind of adoption that Paul was talking about in that passage that we read. When Paul talks about adoption, he's not thinking about our idea of adoption. He's thinking about this Roman idea of adoption. So let's just read it again one more time, but with that picture in our minds. It says, All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms, because we are united with Christ. Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. He decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. Bit of a mind blower there, right? He's saying that before any of us were born, even before the world was created, before a single blade of grass was formed, he knew about each of us. He chose to adopt us, to bring us into his family. And then it goes on to say this, This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. Just pause here. We're going to come back here. Fix this little phrase in your mind. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. This is the truest truth. Most of us don't believe this. We're going to come back here. Remember what I just said about Roman adopters and think about that little phrase. And so we praise God for the glorious grace, the amazing gift that he has poured out on us who belong to his dear son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his son and forgave our sins. He has showed his kindness to us along with all wisdom and understanding. So here we go. This is what it means to be with Christ. We're kind of unpacking that idea of united with Christ, in Christ. He's talking about what Jesus achieved by his death and his resurrection. He's pointing to that moment that we celebrate each week with communion, that Jesus died, was buried, and was raised to life again for us and for the world. That because of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, we can associate ourselves with Jesus and say, I want to do that too. I want to die to my old life and to be raised to a new life. And that's what Paul's talking about. He's talking about being united with Jesus in death and his resurrection and being raised to a new life. Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we've received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance and he makes everything work out according to his plan. So do you kind of hear that story emerging? Do you see that story of adoption that's emerging there? God had a big master plan, a plan in place before the dawn of time, a plan to adopt us into his family through his son, Jesus, a plan that he was delighted to play out, which gave him great joy. Like this is that adoption and it's free to us. We cannot earn it. And it's going to result in an inheritance. It's amazing, right? We're going to take a couple of minutes back in those little groups

So get back into those little groups and just talk very briefly. What stood out, and especially when you think about the idea of Roman adoption, where the person who does the adopting kind of has the advantage. Go for it. So in general, when we picture adoption, we picture a small child desperately in need of love and care who needs protecting and providing for. And when we think about God adopting us, that is certainly true. But what's also true at the same time is this other definition of adoption that Paul's readers would have recognized. That in adoption, the person who does the adopting is the one who is seen to be benefiting. They are the ones that win in that arrangement. The benefit lands with the adopter. And we see this is true because of what Paul says in that passage that we read. I don't know if you caught it. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. What Paul is laying before us here is a picture of God the Father as a wealthy, influential adopter who is choosing to adopt children into his family because he sees something in them that delights him. This is kind of different to our idea of adoption, right? When we think about adoption, we think about the benefit landing with the one who is adopted. And when you're adopted, hopefully the move into a new family life, it's a life which is better, more secure, with better prospects than the one you came from. And whilst mostly that would have been true for those in the Roman system too, from a social perspective, it would have been seen that the one who benefited most from the adoption was the one who did the adopting. That adoption was a strategic and beneficial move by the adopter. We don't think like that, do we? But Paul's readers would have thought exactly like that. So imagine the power of hearing this read to you with that truth in your mind. Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. Sometimes this kind of gets lost in our English translations, and it's lost in this passage too, where it says he chose us for adoption. It would be more helpful to say something like, he chose us for adoption to sonship. That language of sonship is that thing that I've just described, that process of choosing someone to adopt to be a primary heir, to be the one who inherits the farm and who bears the family name. The best thing about being adopted into God's family is that God the Father is not sexist like much of the Roman Empire was. The kingdom of God is for both men and women. Both men and women are adopted and full name-bearing, inheritance-receiving heirs. Just because Paul borrows a bit of language of sonship that was recognizable at the time, there's no reason why we can't read the verse as, God decided in advance to adopt us into daughtership and sonship by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. Guys, when we think about God adopting us into his family, adopting us as sons and daughters into the inheritance we're supposed to have, this little refrain is meant to be ringing in our ears. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. When we think about our adoption into the family of God, we're supposed to understand that God wanted to adopt us so much that adding us into his family was a strategic advantage to him. That by you and I being adopted into the family, he won. He benefited. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. Guys, this is what it means to be adopted by Father God. This is what it means to be reborn into God's family. Not a birth resulting from passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God. Paul is inviting us to believe that before the creation of the world, God knew us. That he planned to adopt us into his family. That he has an inheritance for us. That he didn't adopt us out of duty or pity or obligation, nor did he kind of adopt us en masse along with innumerable other humans, just another face in the crowd. No, Paul says that he knew us in advance. He planned for each of us and that it gave him great pleasure to adopt us one by one. Who believes that? Good for you. I struggle with that. Big time. Can you imagine how we would live if we believed that? Like if we lived our lives as if that was true, can you imagine? Like if I could know that God loves me so much that he adopted me into his family and that he saw that as his advantage? We talked a little bit earlier on about spoiled brats walking around with that kind of air of self-confidence. Like we're supposed to walk around with a sense of confidence because we know who our father is. Like does anybody else find this really difficult to believe? I find this nearly impossible to believe. In fact, if I'm honest, most of the time I walk around thinking that the very opposite is true. When I think about myself being adopted into God's family, I think, wow, God is so good for wanting to adopt me. Honestly, such a generous thing to do. Adopting someone like me must have done so out of sheer pity. Or something like, yeah, God adopted me into his family, but God adopts everyone into his family. Like if they want to be part of it, there's nothing really special about me. I'm just one face in the crowd. Now don't get me wrong, I'm chuffed to be here, but I doubt he even knows my name. Or maybe I think something like, crikey, it cost so much for God to adopt me into his family. I owe him an enormous, enormous debt. I bet he's really angry with me. I better get to work to pay off my debt. Instead, we are dared by Paul to adopt and explode our understanding here. He is not allowing us to hold any of those mindsets. This is a huge part of my personal walk with God and my journey so far. I'm one of those people who's been extremely blessed to have a really great dad. Not a perfect dad. Nobody has the perfect dad, but my dad, sorry, he sat just over there, which is why there's a sorry. You weren't under the impression that you were perfect. Sorry. We'll have this conversation later. I'm going to start that again. I'm one of those people who is extremely blessed to have a really great dad. Yeah? Amen. He's not perfect, but nobody has a perfect dad. But my dad is one of the really good ones. Some of you know that to be true. But even though my relationship with my dad has been pretty plain sailing and unproblematic, the idea of adoption has always tripped me up. I came across this really a couple of years ago when a wise friend asked me, how do you relate to God? I thought to myself, I've never, ever been asked that question before. What a strange question. I said, what does your relationship with God look like? Like, who is he and who are you? And it was such a funny question, I had to go away and think about it. But I came back and ended up saying, I feel like God is my boss. God is my boss and I love working for him. I want to work really hard for my boss that I love and I want to earn a lovely bonus. I want to get promotion. I want to get affirmation and recognition, not to mention a lovely paycheck and a hefty bonus for doing a good job and working hard. Hmm, said my wise friend. And then she asked me, what about relating to God as a father who just loves you and has an inheritance for you regardless of what you can do for him? What if God's adopted you into his family and loves you and it gives him great pleasure to do so? Strangely, I find that a little bit harder to get on board with. And all of a sudden I found myself rationalizing left, right and center and going through that list of excuses I just mentioned. Well, if God did adopt me, it was likely by the skin of my teeth. He was probably tutting and rolling his eyes as I walked in through the door saying, go on then, you might as well come in. Or it was completely based on duty. Clearly I was so depraved and lowly that he adopted me out of sheer duty. He didn't want to, but he was almost compelled to because that's kind of the guy that he is. He's supposed to be loving and that would be the right thing to do. Or maybe he actually didn't notice me coming into the family at all because he accepts everyone. He just swung open the gates and I just kind of snuck in technically. He might even not know that I'm here. All of these mindsets lead me to a place where I want to earn my way into God's favor or I want to hide from his close attention. It becomes difficult for me to think about God knowing who I am. And even though I know I'm technically part of his family, I don't think of myself as a dearly loved son. And yet this is what God says about me and about you. God decided in advance to adopt us into daughtership and sonship by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do and it gave him great pleasure. Em, would you come and join me? That'd be great.

Why don't we stand together if you'd like to? We're going to have a little time of response. If you feel comfortable, you can close your eyes. You can pop your hands out as if you're about to receive a gift. That's what we sometimes do to just kind of tell our bodies what we would like our minds to understand. Let's just kind of key into God's presence in the room. I don't really know how adoption works. I'm sure someone who's much more sensible than me can correct me later. But in my head, adopting parents are kind of given a catalogue of kids, like Argos, and they can kind of flip through the catalogue and choose one they might like. I imagine seeing Father God flipping through that catalogue and my profile comes up, or your profile comes up. Just imagine your picture coming up on that page. Your name, your history to this date, your likes and your dislikes, your temperament, your neurodiversity, your learning difficulties, your health issues, your temper, your shame, your insecurities. Everything about your family of origin, your gender identity, your sexual orientation, your history of addiction. I would imagine that for most of us, we would assume that adoptive parents might take one look at us and turn the page and go looking for a kid with less baggage, a little less of a handful, a little bit more X, a little bit less Y. I imagine most of us might have a list of things quite high up in our minds. The reason why Father God might want to turn the page on our profiles. And we just want to stand together as a church and say that that list that comes to the forefront of our mind is a list of lies. The good news, the crazy news is that for each of us, Father God has looked at our profile. He knows us more deeply than we will ever know ourselves. He sees us, all the hairs on our heads, warts and all, and he says, I will adopt them. And it gives him great pleasure. And then he turns the page and he looks at another picture, another profile, and he says, I'll adopt them. And it gives him great pleasure. He doesn't just hand the catalogue back and say, don't waste my time, I've got other things to do, I'll just take the lot. The Father knows each of us by name. He knows all the hairs on our heads and he chooses us, each of us, by name and is delighted to do so. Holy Spirit, we welcome you here to come and speak that truth deeply into our hearts. Holy Spirit, we invite you to come and speak louder than that list of lies, that list of reasons why we think the Father wouldn't want to adopt us. Come, Holy Spirit, and speak to our hearts. I mentioned earlier on there'd be a moment to share any prophetic words or words of encouragement, any words of knowledge that we might have. If anybody does have anything, this is the moment to share it. But I'm going to say we are standing on hallowed ground, and so think about your use of language when you come up. But you're very welcome if anybody would like to come up and share anything they feel God has said to be an encouragement, this is the moment to come forwards. At the start of the service I had a picture of a barbed wire fence, and just as Daniel was just been speaking around speaking to our hearts, I had a sense for some people there's some pain or something around your relationship with fathers and things like that, that you just put barbed wire around your heart. And the great news of this picture was God was able to go through that fence. It wasn't about you having to remove it first. God can work even through the things we just try and suppress and put away. So be encouraged, he's working, even in those painful places, even if you aren't able to go there yet yourself, he's working. I was thinking about the prodigal son and how the father runs to the son who repents and turns back. And so I had a picture of each of us turning to God and God running towards each of us individually, because it is a one by one thing, it is all of us having that personal relationship, but it is also all of us, and that's what connects us, and that's what makes us brothers and sisters. So the fact that we can all do that ties us together in a powerful way, so that was the sort of picture I saw in the room, so hopefully that's helpful. I get the picture of someone standing and it's dark and there's rain and they can't see anything apart from rain and all this darkness, and they look down and they've got bare feet and they're standing on a rock, and they just know they're not going anywhere because they've got their feet on the rock, and they're not going to fall over, they're fine, they're standing on a rock. Just as we were singing there, I saw a vivid image of a Christmas tree, and what resonated with me is that although we all may be branches, some longer, some shorter, some discoloured, we all get from the same stream of life. And no matter your circumstance, where you come from, who you are, where you will become, we're all the same, and that the tree will continue to grow no matter who you are. Anybody else? It's not too late. We had one final one from our friend Annie, who texted me this morning, she said she was praying for our gathering, and she said she felt God say, never once did he leave you, did he leave us on our own. Never once did he leave us on our own. And so we're just going to respond in a handful of ways now. Emily's going to lead us in singing our final song, and it might well be that we want to sit in a moment of prayer and reflection, it might be that we want to sing this from the top of our lungs, it might be that you'd like somebody to come and stand with you, to pray with you with what's going on. Maybe one of those particular words or something else has really resonated with you and you'd appreciate somebody coming and standing with you. So that's something that we do in this church, we love to pray with people. And so as Emily leads us in one final song, if you want to move out to the space on the right or the left over there, and kind of look expectant, then some folks who have been trained to pray will come and stand with you and pray with you. GBC folks, this is a reminder of how we pray for people. Remember, we always ask consent twice. We say, may I pray for you? And we always ask before we place our hands on people, we don't presume that. And really we're just letting the person take the lead. So they might want to share something with us and say, that picture really resonated with me. They might want to say nothing at all, in which case we just want to say thank you, Jesus, for what you're doing and please do more. So let's move into that space now. If you'd like someone to stand with you, make a move out to the side. And Gloucester Vineyard Church people, if you're singing and you look and you see someone standing there, that's you. That's you to go and pray for that person. So let's worship, let's pray with each other. And then in a couple of minutes, we'll wrap things up and head over to the kiddos. Thank you.

I am chosen, not forsaken, I am who say I