1 Kings 5:1-14 Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.
- Usually we are more familiar with someone’s victories than with their vulnerabilities
- Syria recently experienced a deadly earthquake
Now bands of raiders from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” Naaman went to his master and told him what the girl from Israel had said. “By all means, go,” the king of Aram replied. “I will send a letter to the king of Israel.” So Naaman left, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten sets of clothing. The letter that he took to the king of Israel read: “With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy.”
- Naaman represents everyone seeking God
As soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his robes and said, “Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of his leprosy? See how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me!”
- The king saw a fight, Elisha saw an opportunity
- We feel angry whenever life presents us with something we are not equipped for. (dad, bill/job, faith to believe)
- Most of us fight the opportunities God is actually sending us (I didn’t expect…)
When Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his robes, he sent him this message: “Why have you torn your robes? Have the man come to me and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel.” So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.” But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.
- 2 most dangerous words between you and peace. (thank you, piano)
- Elisha didn’t run after him. He let God work through another
- He became angry because he didn’t go in. When I don’t go into the presence of God, when I don’t ask God, “What are you doing in this situation”? When I don’t seek the spirit of God to lead me. If I would have taken one moment and said, “I don’t wanna fight about this. I don’t wanna be right. I wanna be healed. I don’t want to prove my own power. I wanna receive your power.
Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.
Luke 4:24, 27 “Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown… And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”
- When we are obeying God we don’t see the change. His skin didn’t heal with every dip. We need to have faith for the end.
- As long as we want to be in control, we’ll be angry. That’s why we have the presence of God. This is the Jordan river where we can dip 7 times. Isn’t it interesting that God’s greatest goal in Naaman’s life was not to heal his skin, but to produce faith in his heart.
Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your work. Thank you for the story that comes to us after 1000s of years yet you use it by the Your Holy Spirit to speak to our hearts today. And to really make change in our lives. We pray that Your Holy Spirit would be the one that speaks to each person here today using your word, we pray that we would find in US receptive hearts and minds, anxious to be the people that you have called us to be anxious to increase our trust in You. May somebody here today Father, if not all of us, have our lives changed and inspired by the trust that we can have in you and the faithfulness that you show? And how anxious and how, how anxious and how and how you use miracles yet today in our lives, give us Lord the faith to see that in the faith to believe and faith to act and that In your name we pray. Amen. When I talk about Elijah, and Elijah, one of the things that It comes to my mind from my past was my son, he, when they would go to church, my boys, I would ask them, not when they went, they went to church every Sunday. They didn’t have a choice. I told my son one day I said, something like, you know, the only thing whatever keep you going from church as if you died? And then he said, Well, no, not really, because that’s when you do go to church. And I thought about this, right? Yeah. I didn’t go to church if you’re dead, too. So that’s true. You never stopped going to church. But he I asked her, Hey, what do you guys learn in a children’s church? And my son was all excited. He told me, they learned about Alicia. And Alicia was one of the girls in our church. And she was a great girl. You know, everybody liked Alicia and I thought, okay, you know, that’s nice. Did she come and share about her life or something? And so that’s, that’s the road I went down. I could never figure out in there. Tell me about, you know, Alicia did this Alicia, what on earth? And it wasn’t until later somebody said, I think he’s talking about Alicia. Oh, okay. I knew that I knew that. Of course. So yeah. It’s all about how you pronounced that name, isn’t it, how you get in there. But I this is a story that, that we’ve become very familiar with in our lives, if you’ve been around church, you’ve grown up or if you’ve come and started read your Bible, it’s, it’s a fascinating story. Because it’s, it’s what we all want to hear what we all want to see. And we can relate to name and from the point of, I feel like a name. I feel like somebody who has a little bit of a distance from God, I feel that I’m somebody who, who is just asking God to do things and I understand the frustration of when God doesn’t do that. And so here we have the story. It’s it’s it starts off right as we read with with naman, just great, powerful guy in government and, and everything’s going super well for him and just looks like a celebrity. He looks like, you know, the kind of life everybody would want to have. But he had a problem. And I think so often in our own lives, right? We look at people, and we see all the great things they’ve accomplished. But what we don’t see is their vulnerability, and they sure don’t show that. But the reality is, every human being has a vulnerability. Every human being has a weakness. We’re all struggling with different things in our lives and something that we have absolutely no control over. And that’s certainly what naman was dealing with in his life, he, he could look really good on one side, but on the other, if you’d look under the robes under the armor, you would see that no, you pretty much had a death sentence, there wasn’t anything really good. In fact, it was very devastating. He will soon be ostracized from his society, from his community. And so as high as he was, that’s about as low as he was just about to be and people are concerned. But there’s really nothing that you could really do until this little slave girl pipes up and says, you know, where you guys stole me from? I knew a man who could cure leprosy. And so they said, Well, let’s go find this God that you have. And so off they went, right. So they find Mr. Elisha here with firstly finding the king. And the king is absolutely scared to death about what are you talking about? You’re asking me to cure this man, you crazy. And I think all of us can see that and relate to that part of the story. On the sense of God gives us stuff that is beyond us to do, God will give us a situation you know, you always we always like to hear, you know, God will give you never give you more than you can bear, which is not true, at least right. And so here’s a situation where this man, he becomes very frustrated with that. And you and I become very frustrated with the same things too, when God puts something in our lap that we really don’t know how to deal with, when God gives us a big brings a big bill into our lives that we owe any mount an amount of money to, but at the same time, maybe we don’t have a job. And it’s like, Well, God, why are you giving me this if I don’t have that, to take care of. Sometimes it’s a family situation where we you know, we needed something from our past, a lesson that we would have learned in this situation. But maybe, you know, we didn’t have a great family life maybe growing up, we didn’t have an example of how that was made. We had just the opposite of that. Now, we’re trying to raise our own kids and we’re trying to raise our own family trying to be in a marriage. And we just don’t have an example to go from. We’re just winging it, and we’re just doing our very best and it just doesn’t always work out too well. And in this frustration, why am I being given more than I can bear Why am I giving more than what I was ready for and prepared for and it creates that that deep sense of anger that anxiety against eventually ultimately against God? We blame God God, why did you put me in this situation? Why? Why did it come around? out like this. And so the king Joshi looking at the situation he sees these just as fighting words, this guy’s trying to trigger me this guy’s trying to pick a fight a quarrel with me what oh, and I think when we become fearful like that man alive is we do see everything as a fight, everything has a battle, everything has a threat to our lives. When we get into that corner, we get into that edge, or we just feel people trying to push us just a little bit too far, the only way to respond is and in fighting is in overpowering. But then you don’t you don’t have the ability, you don’t have the fight, you don’t have the power, you don’t have the strength. And so you just stay ahead. And I think this is where this king was in a way that we can relate to him and understand him. But isn’t it interesting, the thing that the king saw as a thing that might do him under might kill him was the very opportunity that God was presenting to him. And how many of us have lived learned in our lives, that the things that we think are a threat to us things that we think are actually going to take us out are the very things that God is using to get us to the next place in life. The people that we think that we’ve ended up meeting and we don’t really know why we’ve met them, we’ve kind of missed the people that we had before. Fast forward a little bit. And those are the very people that give us life very people that redefined who our lives are the very people who all of a sudden contributed so much meaning to us and and really made our life fulfilling and meaningful. Sometimes we fight against what God gives us thinking that it’s here to kill us here to destroy us, when in fact what God is saying, No, I’m bringing this here for an opportunity for you as a chance for you. This is something I want to do new in your life. And so we see here with Joe ash, the example of the negativity of it, what not to do, and that’s to, to regret and to disagree and to feel like a victim of the whole thing. And then to come over and hellacious side and say, oh, oh, don’t worry about that. That’s not for you. That’s for me, send them over to me, I’ll take care of that. And all of a sudden, what what the king saw as a threat, Elisha saw as an opportunity as something that God was going to do something God was going to take care of. And you and me and my life in our lives, as we go through life. And as the problems begin to mount, regardless of what they are, we always somehow superimpose our negative doomsday scenario on them, when in reality, God is bringing his perspective into it. And and it’s, it’s not so not more complicated than just stepping over it and asking, instead of what is this problem doing to me, but instead asking God, what do you have for me? How are you leading me through this? How will all of this work into your plan?
We all know these verses bow, all things work together for good. Those who love the Lord are called according to His purpose. We love those verses, but we often forget them. We think they apply to other people or somebody else needs help will quote them for somebody else. But they’re not always for somebody else. 100% of the time, they’re for us. And it’s our trust that God knows what he’s doing. And God is taking care of us. And even though some things go bump, some things are are chaotic. That just means that’s our own perspective of if we knew what God was doing, we’d be grateful for the changes that are coming along our way. I couldn’t help but think about Silicon Valley Bank, and how that overnight Madeleine, what happened there, all of a sudden, this bank goes out. And everybody’s scrambling and they talk about how many people have a lot of money in this bank and far beyond what the FDIC insures and and I’m thinking boy, there must be a lot of desperation. Right now around here and our neighbors I personally don’t know anybody connected the bank, but MIT, perhaps you guys do prep guys know several. Regardless, it’s things like these that we see. They’re not here to destroy us, even though this is what man intends, and he’s what governments ended up doing to themselves one way or the other. The big picture here is God is not a victim of what mankind does, what society does what God or what governments do. God is never the victim of the decisions of other people. God always ensures your safety always ensures your goodness. And God regardless, always has a plan. Sometimes it’s to strengthen you. Sometimes it’s to encourage you, to embolden you. Sometimes it’s to teach you faith in these times. Regardless of what happens. I’ve always seen people who will turn to God always walk out of these things and say, wow, look what man tried to do to me, but look how God took care of me. I’m so grateful for the way the Lord was able to take care of my life through this one way or the other. It always ends up like that. She’s like, everybody has a different story. But ultimately every year She who knows the Lord and puts her trust in God comes out of it with the same story. Look how good God was to me, I sure am glad that I trusted in him and put my faith in Him. And so I say that to encourage you to, to kind of be on the front side of end of these things when these things come out of the blue and they hit us really hard. Next thing in the story that I want to bring up I think super interesting is, is a name is reaction to Alicia. Now Nate of Aisha, he never left his room, he never left his house. And he just sent a message out to naman to go and dip seven times into the Jordan River. And a naman was deeply offended by this. He says, doesn’t he know how important I am? Doesn’t he realize what a privilege it is for him that I have come to his door? The least he could do be to come out and you know, bring his maracas and, you know, or bring up you know, some special robe or something like that, and dance around me and make some noise and at least he could do something according you know, to what I might be expecting. So he’s very disappointed and and he very much has this attitude of, you know, what if he’s, if he’s going to disrespect me so much as to not even come out and say, Hello, then you know what, I think I’d rather have this lepers I’d rather have my arm fall off on my way home, then have to deal with somebody just so disrespectful like this guy is. And I think there’s two words in that verse I want to bring up and it’s what naming says, I thought, when I read that verse, I read it again. And I read it again. And I read it again. I thought, I thought and I thought about that. I thought about that I thought, you know, those little little words, those two little words, I thought those little words have gotten me into so much trouble. Because I contrast what I expected with what God was doing. And I put my priority on what I expected and what I thought would be happening. And I get into that mindset of but I but I will What about me or I thought this I thought that and what does that do? That just separates you that creates a a gulf between you and God because what you are thinking and what you are intending and what what you feel is the right way, honestly, is many times as light years away for what God’s trying to do what God is trying to say what God’s trying to bring out in your life. And yet very rarely do we ever ask ourselves God, what is it that you’re saying? God what is that you’re planning? What is the you’re doing? God? What is it that you’re thinking? What is that you’re thinking? And so Elijah here so naman is very upset with Alicia and he takes off he says I’m done with this. I’m not going to pay more attention. This idiot. I drove all the way down here and I brought all these gifts for him and nothing. What a waste of time. That is an off he goes. And what does Alicia do? Alicia says oh no. Right and he puts his tennis shoes on he starts running after name name and Noemi? No, you misunderstood me no one more thing, right? No, he doesn’t do that at all right? That’s what I would have done. But that’s not what Alicia does is okay. Ad O’s. Goodbye. Have a good time. See you later. Maybe Alicia just lets it go. And I’m thinking what kind of faith does Alicia have to think that it was all up to names? It was all up to what naman decided to do, I would think of why shouldn’t be saying oh, maybe I didn’t do this right. Maybe if I was supposed to cure him of his leprosy, I should have been a little nicer. Maybe I should have kept him around a little bit or said something that should have come out, you know, and done a little ritual around him. But no, he is so confident in what God is doing so confident that he says, Okay, I’m just here to do what God’s given me to do. And that’s it. This is how it’s all supposed to work out and let it work out. God was still do what God is here to do. And he just lets him go. And what eventually happens as a result of that name and servants come around and they say, Mr. naman, let’s think about this a little bit. We’ve come so far, you’ve paid so much money, right? And what happens is, is that God was not only expecting Alicia to do all the work in this thing. God had other people at work in this situation. Did Alicia know about name and servants? Did he know perhaps that they would be encouraging him to No, not at all. But what Elijah had was the confidence that God had it all taken care of, that he only needed to do what he needed to do, and that God would do everything else? Wouldn’t a wonderful amount of faith that that is in any one of our lives, so that we Yes, I trust God’s going to take care of this. I trust what God has given me to do I have done okay, things aren’t going the way I thought they would go, you know, things aren’t going. But it doesn’t matter because it’s not about what I do. It’s only about what God decides it was only about what God sees fit to happen. And that is so often in our lives, we have time and time again, we’ll become more frustrated because things aren’t going the way I thought they were. But even in those moments, Elijah persists. And even though he doesn’t have any idea, he soon learns that God has many other people at work in this situation. When I talk to people about devastating things that happen in their lives, one of the things I assume notice, and if I wasn’t talking to you, it’d be about me, certainly, somebody would help me by saying this very same thing. What I soon noticed help people is that, very often, the person who is suffering feels very alone feels that nothing else is happening, that they are 100%, responsible for what is going to happen, or it all the weight is on them. And wouldn’t it be nice if God would lift some of the weight here a little bit. But what I’ve learned is that there’s always other people involved, people, perhaps, you will never learn people’s names and faces you’ve never seen perhaps never will, perhaps this will be occasion where you will meet them. But God is never limited at all, even if it is to just you, he’s never limited to just you. He doesn’t ask you to do something all by yourself, and think that you are going to bear the weight of seeing this whole thing come to completion. It’s never like that with God. God is always working in a big family, God is always working with all of his children, God is always working in a big picture, to come and meet the needs of that we have to fulfill the purpose that he has, we are never alone, and we are doing what God is leading us to do. Sometimes people come up to a situation and though they will need something to be done, perhaps in a bureaucracy or something like that. But yet, in the big picture, what happens, God was already taken care of all those situations. A story that comes to mind that are very grateful for is my wife, ami, when she graduated from college, she had a visa, she’s trying to fill out a visa to stay in the United States, but only for so long. And and then she had to go back to the Philippines and most of us are very aware of how the situation, situation to be the nicest way to put it. Goodness absolute nightmare happens for so many people, she got stuck in that situation where she was not going to be able to stay in the United States, but yet there was really nowhere to for her to go back home to either those doors Takata closed, so she just kind of stuck in this situation. And all of us would kind of think, yeah, well, what
are you going to do? Now? You know, where are you going to find a lawyer to do this, where you gonna find lawyer to do that. And in the midst of all that she graduated, she passed her test to be an RN, but she couldn’t get a job. Because she was you know, it wasn’t legal to be able to do that. And there was a couple that out of the blue for somebody who knows, somebody said, you know, I do know somebody who was looking for some health care for their mother, a personal health care. And so they offered that job to AMI, and I said, yeah, thank you very much. And so he lived with this lady, and she took good care of her. And during the course of events, the lady had a heart attack. And AMI saved her life from that. Unbeknownst to AMI, that there was this lady’s son was the mayor of the city. And when AMI saved the mother’s life after a heart attack, the son took a little bit more gratitude for Ami. And he talked to her found out what our situation was. And he said, You know, I know some people done immigration, let me see what I can do. And what happened was back in the days when people we had paperwork, he took the paperwork, she went from the from the very last place in the line and put it right through. And in a very short amount of time, she got a letter saying here, here’s your green card, you can go to work. And that, to me is a reminder constantly, that is never just us that are doing all of the work. It’s never just up to us what we want to see happen. God is always working with people who are cooperating with his will far beyond what you and I would be able to do far beyond. So when we get discouraged remember, it’s not just you it’s not all up to you God has got other people hard at work to see His purpose and His plan to come around and so often is to bless us in our own lives fulfill the purpose that He has for us in that all naman needed to do was to what? Get in the water, just get in the water. Get in that’s all you got to do name and just get in the water. How many times have I come to a moment where I just didn’t get in the water. I knew what God told me to do. But I just kind of went on and usually what he tells me to do is to rest I trust in Him to rely on Him and to be confident in him and, and I don’t. If I just get into the water, I would have been okay. If I would have just gone to the Lord beforehand and say, God, what about what about your perspective on this? What are you looking to do in this situation? What is the solution that you want to bring about God? How about if I if I would just say, God, I, I’ve done everything I can do. I have fought as hard as I can fight. I have brought all the energy to this that I can and, and I just can’t do it anyway. I just don’t have it in me anymore. And wonder if God is saying, naman? Yeah, you’ve come up with all these great reasons why you shouldn’t dip in the water, but I thought you came here to be healed. And so often in my life, that’s exactly what God says to me. Hey, okay, so you’re working so hard to work on all this, I thought you came to me to ask for America, I thought he came to me to ask what I would do in this situation. Let’s just do what I’ve asked you to do? It would. Let’s just start with that. You know, honestly, that’s all I want to hear. It’s all I really need to hear. And here we are in church today in this, this is a very real coming into God’s presence moment. This is a very time where where we are hearing God, and God is telling us what he would like to have done. This is the moment where we can say God, are you going to do what you want to do? Or are you going to be frustrated with me trying to find reasons to not trust you to not rely upon you to do it? At some point we got can come to us and and he can say instead of asking or seeking or exercising your own strength and power? How about you just rely upon me a little bit? How about you put your faith in me and let me come through for you. Jesus talked about name and once it was when he had just started his ministry and announced himself there and in the synagogue and, and he’s read there out of Isaiah 61, what what God wanted to do with him, and then he came back from that to say, you know, I can’t do a lot of miracles among you people, because you guys don’t believe I can do anything. You know, A prophet is never honored in His own hometown. So it’s too bad. And he referred to Elijah, he said, you know, during Elijah’s time, there were things that a lot of people needed help with. But it was only the person who had faith that received the help. And then this is when he talks about naming. He says a name it. There were a lot of people in Israel at that time who had leprosy. But there was only one who was cleansed. And one who wasn’t even an Israelite the most unlikely one to have faith. He’s the one that I claim that God cleansed and God helped. So for you and for me, it really is about are we going to be that person that trust in God unequivocally? Are we going to be that one puts our confidence in what God is doing and not in what we see other people doing or not doing? Or or if they’re measuring up a good enough or not enough and what they’re doing know? What is God doing? What is God doing? Can we trust God to lead this thing through? When naman went down into the water, it came up out of the first time. Was he cured anymore? No, not at all. It would have been nice, right? If name would have dipped down and come up out? Oh, look at this look a little healthier. I better dip one more time. Right? And he dips one more time. Oh, look at this is this is going well. But it wasn’t that at all. naman was told to dip seven times. And he’s down six times. And then it was only on the seventh that he came back up. And he was clean, he was cured. I think all this reminds us that sometimes change or solutions or answers are very slow and coming. Not because God but because God is bringing about his solution in his time and in his way. And for a lot of us, it’s asking, Are you going to dip six times? Or are you going to go ahead and dip seven times? Are you going to go all the way with the Lord? Are you just going to kind of get fed up and say, I didn’t get what I wanted. Until even until now. So I’m going to go elsewhere? How many times have all of us done that in our own lives? Where we’ve asked God to do something, and whether or not it gets answered whether or not gets fulfilled or healed or the problem is solved. We measure God’s goodness and God’s faithfulness. And that becomes the purpose of our relationship with God. Is this thing going to resolve itself or not? Is God actually going to do his job or not? When God is calling you and me to say at some point, it’s not about the healing. At some point. It’s not about the solution. At some point, it’s about my relationship with God. Am I going to continue being faithful with God? Am I gonna have my confidence in the Regardless, and that’s the transformation that had to happen in namens. Heart, he had to go from the point where he realized God wasn’t as interested in his healing, as he was, as God was interested in him having faith. And if you continue to read past verse 14, where we were, you’ll soon see that it was exactly that, that name and received faith that he learned who God was. And he wanted to be a follower of God, the One True God, even after he went back home, and at some point, you and I need to have that transition in our lives, we get so busy saying, Lord, this is my problem. I know you can solve it, why don’t you solve it? God is because I’m not doing something what is it’s all about the problem. It’s all about the problem. When in reality, for all of life for all of eternity, it’s never about the problem. It’s always about our relationship with God. And if you are right in a relationship with God, and if you honor God for who God is, and if you enjoy the love that God has for you, regardless of what is happening in circumstances, those do not measure those do not limit those do not say anything about the goodness and faithfulness of God in your life. What says that about the goodness and faithfulness of God in your life is his presence with you and his voice to you, and the embrace that he has in a way he walks with you? Sometimes God does amazing miracles in your life, I’d say more than any of us would expect. I would say what Jesus said about name and being, there was many who needed a miracle, but only one received it the one who had faith, I would say Jesus could say that anywhere in the world today. A lot of us need a miracle. But there’s only one person who has faith out of everybody. And I think that comes to us today to say, Am I that person? Am I the one who has faith in God? Am I the one who believes in the goodness of God, am I the one who believes that God will take care of me that God will take care of my loved ones that God will have? Walk with me through this?
Watch God, move, gosh, God work, and know that the amount of little miracles that happen in your life doesn’t even begin to compare to the change in your heart that happens when you find out who God really is, and how much God really loves you. All of a sudden, that surpasses that. And also you begin to walk and you live with God, and somebody who God is able to speak to, and someone who God is able to direct, just like Alicia was about Elijah receiving a blessing. And at some point in our own lives, it’s about how we are able to be a blessing to others because of our connection with God. Let’s not lose that. Let’s not just be people who say okay, is everything right with me? Am I okay? Let’s instead let’s move beyond that. Let’s say, let’s be about God, let my life reflect my my life, express the love of God and the peace of God to other people. Let God use me the way he desires to use me that I might be a blessing to other people may I might be used by God to build the faith of other people to May God be so real to me and so alive in me that I am able to bless others others are able to see God in me. That’s where God wants to take us I believe that’s the true story of, of naman and his uncle. And that lesson that He has for us, let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the stay that we’ve had to, to open up your word and to read of this ancient story and to see the truth of it. And Lord, we pray that you would find people here today who perhaps they are obsessed about a problem assessed about a need. Heavenly Father, I pray that they will be able to see your your opening brace to them and your welcoming of them in your heart, your life. And that they would have the confidence that you are taking care that you’re doing far more than what their own eyes are able to see that you always prove yourself to be faithful and good, that you are loving. And only if I pray that we put our trust and our confidence in you. But even more than that, Lord, that we would fill our lives with your presence, that we would enjoy you for who you are. Not for only what you do learn but for how much you love us. Now you should include us in your plan, and how we are part of your family for all of eternity. In the name of Jesus we pray, Amen.