DISCLAIMER:  This text is not a verbatim transcript.  Communication Access Real Time Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication credibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.    >> You can also download our church app. Just search for "First Colony Church of Christ" in the App Store or on Google Play. The app is a great resource where you can stay connected to First Colony Church. Thank you for joining us today. We're glad you're here. >> Thank you for joining us today. We want to let you know about a few items of interest. First, go to our website, firstcolonychurch.org, and go there often. You'll find links to our worship services; Bible study options; online giving; and our podcast, Anchor Point. You can also download our church app. Just search for "First Colony Church of Christ" in the App Store or on Google Play. The app is a great resource where you can stay connected to First Colony Church. Thank you for joining us today. We're glad you're here. >> Richard: Good morning, church! How is everybody doing today? Are you ready to worship the Lord! Our God is good and His mercy endures forever, amen? ("Your Love Awakens Me" playing) >> Richard: God is good, amen? There is no One like our God! Faithful, faithful and true. ("Whom Shall I Fear" playing) >> Richard: Thank You, Lord Jesus. You are always by our side. You may be seated as our communion comes up and lead us in communion. >> Troy: Good morning. I'm Troy Matthys, and this is my wife Rachel. We're just very pleased to be able to share communion time with you this morning. If you would prepare your elements and pray with me, please. Dear God, we come to You this morning with grateful hearts. We're so thankful, Father, that You Are the Author and Finisher of our faith, Lord. You called us to be Your children, Lord. It's nothing that we did; You did it all. All we have to do is accept the call, Father. We thank You, Lord, you have done EVERY work for us, including sacrificing Your Son Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins. This morning as we take the cup and bread, we do want to remember Your majesty and Your awesome power and tell You that we love You this morning. In Jesus' Name, amen. You can now take your elements. >> Rachel: I will be reading from 2 Chronicles 20:6-9. (Reading) ("Cornerstone" playing) >> Shane: Amen! Thank you, guys. We believe that God has called all of us to be givers. God is the Ultimate Giver. We have been given much so we want to be generous as well to give our time; our money; our abilities; but also to work together to partner with God. So we take our offering time as a part of worship, and you can give online. It's secure. It's safe. You can give in the offering boxes at the back of the room as well as online. We're grateful to partner with you, so let's pray over this offering time. Our Father in heaven, we know in Your Word that You love a cheerful written. We know we were created to get great joy in giving because we become like You Are. We have a heart like Yours. We know You're the Greatest Gift, God, and have given us so many blessings. We seek You, God, the Giver, above all gifts; but we want to be used by You to give to others. So this offering, God, we ask that You multiply it into many blessings in ways we can't even ask or imagine. We pray this in the Name of Jesus Christ. Amen. >> Joel: Amen! Thank you very much. Well, hey, good morning, everyone. It is so good to see you all this lovely Sunday morning. So this is the kids' spot where basically it's specialized, observable teaching because we're glad that our kids are here. Thank you for being here. So this is for you and those of you that are young at heart. This is for you as well. Yes, I have something very sharp in my hands. Do not run. All right, well, when I was a kid and I finally learned how to read, I discovered "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. They were awesome because you would go on a journey and let’s say you're looking for Incan treasure and would say "You have the choice: do you swim the piranha-infested river; or do you go and look for another way?" And you're like, "I think I will swim the piranha-infested river." And then you die and have to go back to the beginning and start over. As I became pretty savvy at figure out "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, I would have my fingers in all the positions of the choices I had made just in case I made a wrong one. I could go to the right one and do it over again. Well, our Christian walk is kind of like that. We make choices every day, and our choices start inside the heart. The question is: are you making the right choices or the wrong choices? The cool thing is God's Word shows us how. The verse I have for you today comes to us from Hebrews 4:12. It says, "For the Word of God is alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword; and it penetrates and divides the soul and spirit, the joints and the marrow; and it judges the thoughts and the actions, attitudes of our heart." I have a heart right here. Now, this is one of the experiments that I have done in church and it didn't work so this is round 2. Let's see if we can get it to work. (Laughter) So we have the Word of God, sharp. It's going to penetrate, and if it's a good thought or action, it will go right through. If it's not, it will, uh, not go so well. I'm actually going to try -- if you go in the soft spot and have a sharp enough needle and you SLOWLY push through -- in theory, you know, you're supposed to also put Vaseline on it, and I think we're going to get it; I don't know. (Pop) Boy, it's getting exciting! As it turns out, that was not a good attitude or thought. (Laughter) But the cool thing is that we make choices every day; and hopefully in this particular case our choice is a good choice and it's grounded on the Word of God. Wait. No. Dun-dun-dun-da -- it will work twice -- are we pushing our luck? Is in a good action? Is this a good attitude? (Pop) Turns out it wasn't! Who knew? (Laughter and applause) However, when it DOES work, it's possible to go all the way through and have a red thread inside. Now, I like the red thread because that's Jesus in our lives and that's what guides us to making the right decision. It starts with the Word to have God. Thank you for entertaining my, uh, my actions here today. I know Shane is extra pleased because it is his favorite thing when they don't work. (Laughter) >> Shane: I love it when it goes wrong. (Applause) Although it worked the second time in first service so maybe they're thoughts are little better than yours. (Laughter) I don't know, but I'm just saying. Well, we would love to connect with you here at First Colony, especially if you're a guest or new here. Fill out the digital Connection Card on the QR code in front of you or see us in the lobby. We'd love to connect and pray with you or for you, find you a group. Just come connect with us one way or another. If you're online, we hope you'll say hi in the chat box to let us know who we are so we can connect with you there. Kids, grades one through five, Ms. Danelle is ready to take you to Main Street Live! kids worship. Please walk calmly across the lobby and enjoy your wonderful worship time. Parents, if you have not checked your kids in, there's a kiosk that you can to really quick. Everyone else, let's greet one another at this time of fellowship greeting. >> Richard: Here we go. ("House of the Lord" playing) ¶ Oh, we shout out Your praise ¶ ¶ We shout out Your praise ¶ >> Richard: Yes, church! There's joy in the house of the Lord today! You may be seated! >> Ronnie: Thank you so very, very much, Richard and team. My goodness; didn't they lead us so well this morning? I mean, they just led us in such a fantastic way. (Applause) Yeah, let's express our appreciation. Hi, everybody; glad to see you. To those in the room, we welcome you today to the First Colony Church of Christ; and to those of you worshiping online, we're glad to have you as well. Two weeks from today is our annual Super Sunday Bring a Friend, Invite a Friend day. Our guest speaker this year is NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore. He's such an accomplished gentleman, a former Navy test pilot. If you know something about aviation, he has over 660 aircraft carrier landings to his credit. He spent over 170 days in space. He's a pilot for Space Shuttle "Atlantis" and commander for NASA's next manned mission. He's also a strong Christian, strong Bible preacher, teacher. I'm looking forward to him being here and being with us. That's two weeks from today on Super Sunday. Well, we're in a message series called “Upgrades," and we're talking about upgrading from grief, which is something we have all experienced and will continually, to a better kind of grief. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” The comfort of our Great God is available for those of us who reach out to Him. C.S. Lewis wrote these words about grief after he lost his wife, whose name was Joy. He said, “No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear. I'm not afraid, but I'm experiencing the sensation of being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same listlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other types I feel mildly concussed like I have a concussion. There's an invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says or perhaps just hard to even want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. And yet I want others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would just talk to one another and not to me." Later he would say that when someone would approach him, he said, “I didn't like it when they brought up the topic of my wife, and I didn't like it when they didn't bring up the topic of my wife.” Grief is this: deep emotional sorrow and distress over losing some cherished person, dream, or thing. It could be even a thing. You know, I mean, if you've lost, for example, your old homestead, there's something sentimental about that; or it can be a dream, for example. I'll never forget. A woman told me years ago after her do "I do not miss my husband's adulteries, nor his drunken tirades, but I am grieving. I grieve the loss of a dream. When we got married, I never thought this would happen. I'm grieving what could have been, what should have been." But then certainly we know the grief from losing a person. There's an axiom that says "change is your friend," and like all axioms is partially true but not always true. Sometimes change can feel like a spring garden, good things, good changes. You know, good possibilities. And there are necessary transitions in life that come about. Sometimes change can feel like a merry-go-round. Is there anything productive to this at all? And sometimes change feels like a funeral home. There's loss; there's grief. Some of you read the book "Who Moved My Cheese?" written 20 years ago, which describes the sometimes-visceral reaction we have in the face of change. And sometimes change really is loss. And we grieve it. Jesus grieved it. If you think that grief shows a lack of faith, that's just not true. John 11, Jesus will grieve the death of His friend Lazarus. Now, when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell at His feet, saying to Him, "Lord, if You had just been here, my brother would not have died." My brother Lazarus would not have died. "When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in His spirit and greatly troubled." "He said, where have you laid him?" They said to Him, "Lord, come and see." The shortest verse in the English Bible, Jesus wept. So the Jews said, "See how he loved him." The Lord experienced the full range of emotions. You were created in God's image, and God grieves. God has sorrow. And grieving is the natural response to loss. Even Jesus, who knew He was about to raise Lazarus from the dead, wept. Said He's greatly moved in His spirit. This is not the way it's supposed to be. THIS is -- we're created for Eden but don't live in Eden now. John Claypool wrote a book back in 1974 called "Tracts of a Fellow Struggler." John Claypool was a preacher and had a daughter named Laura Lou; and at age 8, she was diagnosed with leukemia. She died at age 10. In his little four-chapter book, "Tracts of a Fellow Struggler" basically four sermons that he gave during her illness and after her passing. It is not for the faint of heart. If you can read "Tracts of a Fellow Struggler" and not be touched emotionally, you're made of Teflon. In that book, Claypool talks about his stages of grief and they're not particularly linear. They can be circular and sometimes you may think you're past a particular stage and something can come up and it brings you back. He said for him, for example, his first stage was just numb shock. He said it was just hard to get your head around it at all. Sometimes you walk around in a daze, not really able to make sense of anything. He says, "I felt like I fell into an unknown country where I didn't speak the language and couldn't any landmarks to get my bearings. All I knew to do was just put one foot in front of the other. And try as best as I could to find the next step." I know over the years some of you have gone through a painful loss. It's fresh; it's raw; and I might just say to you when you're here, I say, "How are you?" And so many times people will say, "Well, I'm here." That's it. "I'm here." And I know what you're saying. You're here -- there's no muscle tone. Everything's foggy. You feel like a skeleton with just skin, but you're continuing to put one foot in front of another. You know, you're eating; you're trying to sleep; you come to church; and you keep on as a skeleton, knowing that at SOME point you will get beyond the numb shock and some muscle tone will return. But for Claypool he said, first of all, numb shock. And then despair. He said, “This is where I was just convinced all my best days were behind me and my future is just going to be bleak and awful, no real future ahead.” Which led to nostalgia. He said, “I just wanted to go back, just go back. I keep looking at photos. I just want to go back. I don't even want to THINK about walking into the future.” And then there was anger. I need some answers here. Claypool would say that's a dead-end street, searching for answers that make perfect sense. He said that for him, he found out, though, and it was a sweet part, to discover that when all you have left is the Lord, that is enough. And then he said, the fifth stage for him -- and he said this was a game-changer -- was gratitude. I'm going to come back to this later in the message. He said, “Instead of being resentful over what you lost and regretting what you no longer have, if you can press on to the point where you can be grateful for what you had as long as you had it, that's a huge transition point.” To be angry because a gift has been taken away is to miss the whole point of the gift; and life, he says, is a gift. EVERY relationship, treasured, it is a gift for that day. He said that leads to hope. And yes, hope as believers, eternal hope; but also there comes a point where there's hope also where I no longer believe all my best days are behind me. God still has something for me here. I still have a purpose. I can still be useful. And I'll smile again. The question is not how can we avoid loss because you cannot. How can you make it not happen? You can't do that. But to choose as it a passage as an exodus to a new chapter in life. So here's my second major point, which is you don't bounce back from grief. You can bounce forward, but you don't bounce back. About eight or nine years ago, I had to have shoulder is surgery. Two bum shoulders, right torn cuff, labrum, spurs, everything. I had to have shoulder surge and was no fun. I asked my surgeon, "So, Doc, how long will it be before I feel like I never had the surgery?" He said, "Oh, it will be 18 months." I said, "You're kidding me!" "No, it will be 18 months." So for, you know, two or three months I had to wear this harness, a sling, and could BARELY lift my shoulder at all, had to do all these exercises, had to go to physical therapy. I -- you know, I've met several physical therapists. We have several in our church; I didn't really know, you know, what you did. Now I know. And physical therapists have a mean streak to them. (Laughter) They seem to enjoy it, actually, you know? You might think they're very pleasant, very nice. They enjoy inflicting pain. But hey, here I am later -- look at this! How about that? It's like it NEVER happened. I play golf as poorly as I did before I had the surgery. It's like it never happened. Grief is NOTHING like shoulder surgery. I bounced back as if it NEVER happened. Grief is NOTHING like that. You can bounce forward; you can't bounce back. The life and at the time of my mom -- I can't bounce back from that as if her life never happened; as if her death didn't matter. The life and death of my dad, the life and death of my sister Gail and so many dear ones I have known over the years -- there's no bounce back as if their life didn't matter as if their death -- like it never happened. Their life happened. And they are missed and their absence matters. We can adapt; we can move into a new normal; there will come some measure of joy in the morning; but it is just that. It's a new normal. How can you move there? First of all, grieve your loss. Don't minimize or rush it. You're moving into a new reality, and there's no artificial timeline for you. You ride your ride. Secondly, receive from others. We need that. Even Jesus going into the Garden of Gethesemane, He said, "I need you to just come with Me." There's a strength transfusion from one another. Romans 12 said rejoice with those who rejoice; be willing to mourn with those who mourn. We need that from one another -- but listen carefully -- there's only so much your friend can do. Remember, they have limitations. Even the BEST friend is no substitute for the ministry of the Holy Spirit. So take your losses to God. Sometimes this involves lament. People ask, "What's the difference between lamenting and just grumbling?" When you grumble, you complain about God. When you lament, you complain to God. And you take your hurt and your confusion with a mustard seed of faith into the Lord's Presence. Psalm 13, "How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and take counsel in my soul and EVERY day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, O Lord, my God. Give light. My enemy will say, I have overcome home, and my foes will rejoice when I fall.” Notice how the lament builds to a sliver of hope. “But I trust in Your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in Your salvation. And I will sing to the Lord, for He has been good to me." 1 Peter 5 says “You cast all your cares, even your free, on Him; because He cares for you.” He cares for His burdened people. He said, you come to Me, rest in Me, let Me be your shelter in a haven. Rest, regroup, refresh in Me. And fourthly, see God's gifts, even in loss. This is where I take you back to Claypool's book "Tracts of a Fellow Struggler." He talks about seeing the life of his daughter as a gift and he said it was a game changer for him. He had to get there, and he told a story -- it may sound a little silly. Here we are in our day and age and think everybody has a washing machine; but Claypool, you know, back when he was a kid, not everybody had a washing machine. He said they had a neighbor who had one, though, and his neighbor was going into military service. He came over to Claypool's family and said, "Listen, I will be away for three year and I've got this washing machine. Would you like to have it?" They said -- for three years, anyway. They said "Sure!” The neighbor brings it over. They have it in the Claypool family basement and for three years, they have a washing machine. Then lo and behold, their neighbor came home from military service. He got his washing machine back, and Claypool complained bitterly. He said to his mom, "Why did he have to take the washing machine back?" And he said, my mother replied, "John, it never belonged to us. It was always a gift, and we should not just complain continually that we no longer have it. We need to find a place to be grateful it ever came to us in the first place.” Peter Barnes said in reading that story, "It was a breakthrough for me and I was able to change my perspective from one of resentment over what I lost to one of gratitude I was ever married to my wife in the first place," he said. “And this change in perspective literally transformed my life.” That's why 1 Thessalonians 5 would say this: "In every circumstance to find gratitude for that is God's will for us.” And then also trust, that God is at work in you for good. As you work through the stages of grief, trust that God is at work in you. Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” So you never doubt that God is at work. Anybody can bring good out of good, but even out of -- this doesn't teach that everything is good but that in even those distasteful circumstances God can bring about something good. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion, the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so we can comfort those in any trouble” -- notice this – “with the comfort we ourselves receive from God." You trust that God is at work even in those distasteful situations where He's working in us; He can bring about good; He can even use those as training times for your future ministry. As Ron Hutchcraft prayed, "Lord God, please don't let me waste this grief. If it's going to hurt THIS bad, please use it somehow to make me even more useful to You." Last of all, remember God's promises of hope. 1 Thessalonians 4: "Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope." In other words, you'll all experience grief, but in Christ we can do a better kind of grieving. We have an upgrade. "For we believe," verse 14, "Jesus died and rose again." That's an early Christian confession. What do you believe? Jesus Christ died and rose again. "So we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him." A euphemism for death. And beginning verse 15. Over the next three verses you will see the word "Lord" used five time, reminding us that all authority over the living AND the dead belong to Jesus Christ. "And according to the Lord own Word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep." In other words, the Christian dead are not disadvantaged in any way; and those who are living right now on earth are not disadvantage in any way. There is an unbreakable solidarity between the church on earth and the church in heaven. Death cannot separate you from the Lord, and death does not separate us from one another permanently. It's only temporary. It's a comma. It's not a period. "For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first." A place of honor. They lead the victory parade. "After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so WE will be with the Lord forever." WE will be. Solidarity. Unity. Our separation from one another's temporary. Some of you in this room, you buried a child. Some of you lost a child before you ever really had a chance to hold that child. Those children are precious to the Lord. I believe life begins in the womb, knit together by the Lord; and I believe you will relate to that child and the wonder of eternal personhood and in the fullness of God's incredible tomorrow. Just like we know Jesus rose from the dead, every believer gets an Easter Sunday as well. Verse 18. "So therefore you can encourage one another with these words." Encouragement, not disillusionment. Encouragement, not hopelessness, not doubt. In Christ we have a better kind of grieving. We do not grieve like the rest of mankind who have no hope. That doesn't mean you're not going to carry some scars. That doesn't mean you bounce back like it never happened, but you can bounce forward because of the gospel. Grief hurts. Grief hurts a lot; but the anchor hold, and the anchor of the Christian Hope sees us through. We don't get over it, but we get through it because we have a rock-solid Anchor. Let me put a photo on the screen, a photo of family of Steven Curtis Chapman. Many of you know who he is. He's actually the most awarded, most official awards of any Christian musician, contemporary Christian musician. That's his beautiful family. There's someone missing from this photo, and here she is. This is little 5-year-old Maria Chapman. On May 21, 2008, this difficult day for the Chapman family, their teenage son was driving home. They were just actually in the not-too-distant future their oldest daughter was about to be married. I believe it was a Friday afternoon. Their teenage son is driving home in an SUV. The kids are playing outside and their 5-year-old daughter Maria, she just loved her older brother, and she darts out to meet him; he never saw her. He hit her. Steven Curtis Chapman was on his porch on his phone, hears a commotion. He runs out. He just describes calling 911. She was rushed. Maria was rushed to Vanderbilt Hospital, Life-Flighted. He's driving there frantically and just praying. "God, please, please; we just -- we can't lose Maria." And the doctor said, "We have done -- we did all we could do. She didn't make it." Steven Curtis Chapman said, “I went to a room where I thought never would hear me and I screamed as loud as I could and did that multiple times over the next few weeks. I would just go to place and just scream over and over as loudly as I could.” He said, “So many people loved on us. They were so kind. We know where she is, but I just want her back. In the future, we started doing good things, he said. We started several organizations to help Chinese children with special needs because our little Maria was born with a hole in her heart. We've seen all these amazing things happen in her honor over the years, but he said, we still carry the sadness and the grief.” He said this: "It's a completely unfixable, broken-beyond-repair situation until heaven. In heaven, and only in heaven, will this make sense." That's why I would remind you today never take your eyes off the big picture. It's important that we continually see the big picture not just one or two scenes -- the whole book -- not just one chapter -- the whole day and not just ONE meal or one snack. That's why Jesus kept telling His disciples not to get caught up in the drama of the moment, the drama of persecution, the drama of criticism, so that you lose heart and run away. No matter how bad the present moment may be, God has a future for you, and God has a future for your loved ones in Christ. It's large; it's huge; and the anchor holds. Matt, would you be making your way up here, please, to lead us in our closing prayer? As he's doing so, I want to read a Scripture to you from Isaiah 35:10. This describes our big picture. "They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away." >> Matt: Let's go to God together in prayer. Dear God, we know that no matter what stage of life we are in, whether in good times or in bad, grief will enter into our lives. In the past couple of years, COVID has left many with grief of many different kinds it has secluded us from loved ones. It has canceled milestone events. It has taken loved ones away from us. But even in the midst of COVID and many other life-altering events, we are thankful that we have a God that walks beside us through it all; a God who has experienced grief first-hand and can understand our pain; a God who has experienced the loss of the loved ones; a God who experienced betrayal at the hands of one of His closest companions; a God who heard His mother cry and heard His friends weep; a God that wept alongside His friends; and a God that willingly experienced a humiliating and painful death so that even in the midst of our grief, we may have hope. We thank You, God, for that hope and for the many blessings in our lives; and we pray that we would have a heart for sharing the reason for our hope with those in need. In Jesus' Name we pray. Amen. >> Shane: Amen. Thank you, Matt. Church, I'd like to introduce you to Police Chief Joe Wappel. He has been in law enforcement 41 years, 18 years as chief of police and provided security for our church here the past three years. So he started his career with the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Department office but looking forward to retirement now. Joe and his wife have been married 43 years with three daughters, one son, ten grandchildren, and one more due tomorrow? >> Joe: Tomorrow. >> Shane: Tomorrow. Let's show our appreciation to Joe for his service to us at our community. (Applause) Thanks, you, Joe. Thank you, guys. As we close today let me run through a few things. Bible class of all ages are at 9:45. You can have a seat for a second if you want. It's connected to Ronnie's message. Next Sunday at 9:45, the hour before this worship hour, will be a special grief group led by Dr. Virgil Fry and Corey Jefferson. It's off the gym. See me in the lobby this Sunday or next. We can help you find it. It's also in the website in the Order of Worship. I encourage you to check that out, okay? There's a few books in the lobby just to the right. Most of them have been picked over but Virgil wrote these devotional books about grief and gave us some to give away so they're out in the lobby at the tables to the right there, okay? Also remember those of you watching online, we have a Bible class for you at 12:30 so stay right where you are. The class will begin. Remember, Super Bowl Sunday, Bring a Friend day is coming up. There's invites on the website to send to your friends so check that out. Let's invite people and pray about who God wants us to invite to this great Sunday we will have. Also today is GroupLink. We love to help people get connected and to your small group here at this church whether it's a men's group; women's group; home group; care group; whatever with it might be. See me in the lobby and I would love to chat with you about groups and help you find your small group, okay? AND this Wednesday, Grant Wright and I begin a class that is a parenting class called "Parenting in a Post-Christian Culture." We'll hit a lot of very interesting topics and really dig into some things that really are hitting us today. It will be -- I don't know if we will have all the answers but will go through a lot of really interesting questions. That's in the Education Wing Wednesday night 7:00 to 8:00 and hope you will join us, okay? I think that gets it all. I want to say thanks for joining us today. Remember, when we walk out these doors, we go into the mission field into a place where God wants us to serve; so before we do that, let's stand and sing one more song. ("House of the Lord" playing) >> Richard: Singing it out, Church! >> Richard: Church, thank you for worshiping with us today! You are dismissed! Be blessed this week!