We are surrounded by the most amazing technology, aren’t we? Imagine trying to explain to someone just 30 years ago what a “cell” phone is … or explain the “internet.” Technology is changing so quickly that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with it. Now the rage is 5G … I couldn’t tell you the difference between 4G and 5G because I have no idea what the difference is between 3G and 4G is … I don’t even know what the “G” stands for, to be honest. We’ve gone from floppy discs to hard drives to the “cloud” … from “kilo” bytes to “mega” bytes to “giga” bytes and “tera” bytes.
Now it seems like the computer or the internet is able to read or anticipate your thoughts. I start to type a sentence in an e-mail and before I’ve typed two words it’s finishing the sentence for me. The same thing happens when I start typing a search on the internet. I start typing “hurricane” and it immediately asks me if I’m looking for the latest information on Hurricane Laura … and it’s right about 85% of the time. What’s a little bit creepy to me is how it … whatever “it” is … keeps track of my inquiries and selections and then makes recommendations. “Hey, Gordon, you like this movie, we think that you might want to watch this movie or these movies?” YouTube does that … and sometimes they’ll put up a little teaser. “Hey, Gordon, you want to see who wins in a fight between a lion and hippo?” They got me with that one.
I wish I hadn’t watched it for two reasons. One, it was pretty brutal. Lions are pretty tough but the hippo in the video just decimated that poor lion. I felt guilty for watching it. I don’t like to watch anything die … and I especially don’t consider it to be “entertainment.”
I wish I hadn’t watched it for another reason. Because I watched it, YouTube began flooding me with more videos of wild animals attacking other wild animals … the combination was staggering. “Jaguar attacks crocodile” … “Tiger attacks python” … “Python attacks tiger and then a lion, a water buffalo, a crocodile, and another python.” If you’re interested in that kind of thing, they have tons videos of crocodiles attacking every creature you can think of. They’ve got videos of octopi attacking sharks … bears attacking mountain lions … Baboons attacking lions … and hippos attacking [pause] … you guessed it … crocodiles.
The outcome of these “encounters” can be quite surprising. Sometimes the predator wins … and sometimes the prey wins. As I said, it’s usually pretty graphic stuff. I only watched that one video of the hippo and the lion and they finally stopped sending more of them after about six or seven months … I don’t remember exactly when they stopped … I’m just glad that they stopped … well, almost stopped. Every now and then they’ll try to tempt me something like a “chicken versus a rhino” video or a “duck versus a crocodile” video but I don’t take the “click bait” as they call it.
There was … or still is … I don’t know if it’s still on the air or not … a sort of human version of this show called “Deadliest Warrior.” The purpose of the show is … or was … to scientifically discover who would win if they ever faced each other in combat: A Roman foot soldier versus a Viking warrior … a Japanese Shogun warrior versus a medieval knight … a ninja versus a cowboy. It turns out that no matter how good you are with Chinese throwing stars, a bow and arrow, or num-chucks … a Colt. .45 wins every time.
Lions, bears, hippos, crocodiles, Roman soldiers, or ninjas … as one king in the Bible found out … nothing on this earth is a match for “El Elyon” … “The Most High God.”
“El Elyon” is probably not a name that many of you are familiar with but … like all the other names that we’ve studied so far … it is another one of those interesting and unique names for God. You should recognize the first name or word … “El” … the generic Hebrew word or name for “God.” “Elyon” is a qualifying noun that means “high.” It comes from the Hebrew verb “alah” … which means “to ascend” or “mount up.”
This is the “follow me and pay close attention” part of my sermon. “El Alah” means “God Ascending” but when you turn “alah” from a verb into a noun … “elyon” … it means “God Most High” … “God Supreme.” God is not “alah” … “ascending” up the hierarchy of gods … He is the top God. There are no other gods above Him. He is the one that the other gods aspire to … who wish to rise above. The other gods may try to “alah” … to “ascend”… to His height but there is no other god where He is and there is no other god higher than Him. “El Elyon” … “The God Most High” … the supreme God … the one that all the other gods are trying to surpass but cannot because He is so high above all the other gods that they have no hope of ever getting close to reaching Him … let alone over take him and surpass Him.
So far it sounds like the name “El Elyon” is suggesting that there is some kind of hierarchy of other gods out there. We know that there is not … but you have to keep in mind when this name … El Elyon … first appeared. Besides Judaism, all the other religions around the Middle East were pagan. Judaism alone was unique in its belief that there was only one God … but it was a concept that was new and difficult for a people with a pagan background to grasp. When God challenged the gods of the Egyptians, He knew that it would be no contest because there were no Egyptian gods … no Ra … no Isis. God’s purpose was two-fold … to show the Egyptians the power of the One True God of Israel and, at the same time, to show the children of Israel that their God, Yahweh, is their God … that Adonai, the Lord, is One!
When the prophet Elijah went to Mt. Carmel and challenged the priests of Ba’al, Elijah could chide Ba’al without fear of retaliation because there was no Ba’al … never has been … never will be. God’s victory over Ba’al was assured from the start … but again, Jezebel, the followers of Ba’al, and the children of Yahweh needed to be reminded of the reality and the power of “El Elyon” … the One True God.
This is the year 2020, am I right? America! One nation, under God … in God we trust, amen? Everyone knows that God is “El Elyon” … God Most High … God Supreme … because there are no other gods, right? Oh, if you believe that, you are oh so wrong, my sisters and brothers.
You don’t believe that God is “El Elyon” if you’re a wiccan. Wiccanism is the modern or updated version of witchcraft … actually a mixture of witchcraft, paganism, and deism. They believe that “the spirit of the One, Goddess and God, exists in all things … in trees, rain, flowers, the sea, and in each other and all of nature’s creatures.” This from their official website. You heard what I just said, didn’t you … they have an official website. On their “official” website they state the following: “We acknowledge the cycles of nature, the lunar phases and the seasons to celebrate our spirituality and to worship the divine.” Wiccanism, they say, is “a belief system that allows for the witch to work with” … listen very closely … “it is a belief system that allows the witch to work with … not in supplication to … deities with the intent of living in harmony and achieving balance with all things.” Did you catch it? They work “with” … not in “supplication to” … deities. In conjunction with … not in supplication with their deities … making them co-equals with their deities … which means that their deities either aren’t any better than mere morals or that witches have powers equal to their deities … or that the goal of wiccanism is to learn how to become a co-partner with their gods … either their gods are not “elyon” most high or wiccans are “elyon” most high.
Millions of people around the world practice santeria. Most of you probably don’t know anything about santeria but it was developed as a clever way for African slaves in Cuba and the Caribbean to practice their pagan religion while practicing Catholicism at the same time. Instead of calling one of their African gods “Bablú Ayé,” who is associated with disease, they call him … or it … “St. Lazarus.” The priest is happy that they have a statute of St. Lazarus enshrined on a table in the corner of their house but, in reality, it is both St. Lazarus and Bablu Aye. By the way, if the name “Bablu” sounds familiar, Ricky Ricardo … you know … Lucille Ball’s husband on the Lucy Show … was from Cuba and the song that he made popular, “Babalu,” is, in fact, a song about the santeria god “Bablu Aye.”
This is a very cursory explanation of santeria. Basically, santeria is a polytheistic religion practiced fairly widely in Latino countries and in Latino communities, like Miami, in the United States. Their gods are called “orishas.” According to some of the websites that I read, there are hundreds of “orishas” or gods in Africa but within santeria, there are only seven main orishas. Hear that? There are only seven “main” gods … with many, many lesser gods.
According to their official North American website, “each orisha has its own distinct personality and a wide range of strengths, weaknesses, and interest.” Hummm … a god with weaknesses. They go on to say in their website that “in many ways, understanding an orisha is like understanding another human being.” So, within the complex hierarchy of santerian gods, there are some gods who are higher or stronger than others and some that are lesser or weaker. To a santerian, the divine creator “Olodumare,” would literally be “El Elyon” … the God Most High … of the hundreds of santerian gods who are “Elohim Alah” … or “gods ascending” as they try to over-taken each other and rise in the hierarchy of santerian gods. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “It is likely that Orisha traditions will continue to grow and be recognized as one of the principal African contributions to world culture” (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Santeria).
Satan … one of God’s angels … aspired to be “Elyon” … the “Most High.” Listen to what God said about Satan in Isaiah 14:12-14: “How you have fallen from Heaven, O Star of the Morning, Son of the Dawn! You have been cast down to earth, you who weakened the nations. But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend’ … alah … ‘to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the Mount of Assembly in the recesses of the North. I will ascend” … ‘alah’ … above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like ‘Elyon’ … the Most High.’”
Instead of “alah” ... ascending … above God to become “El Elyon,” Satan is cast into Sheol by “El Elyon” … the God Most High (Isaiah 14:15). I guess the founders of “The Church of Satan” never read that part of the Bible, amen? And yes … in case you didn’t know it … there is an official, organized Church of Satan … founded in California in 1966. It has since moved to … can anyone guess? It’s now located in “Hell’s Kitchen” in Manhattan, NY. Well … at least they have a sense of humor or the ironic about the place they’re going to end up for all eternity, amen?
Now … it seems that there are two “denominations” … for the lack of a better word … in satanism. There is the “theistic” denomination … or branch … who worship and venerate satan as an actual deity or supernatural being. Then there’s the “atheistic” satanists … yeah, you heard me right … “atheistic” satanists. “Atheistic” satanists regard “satan” as merely a symbol of certain human traits. The “Church of Satan” must be of the “atheistic” variety. Listen to how they describe their doctrine on their official website: “Since the satanist understands how all gods” … and they capitalize the word “Gods” … “Since all gods are fiction … instead of bending a knee in worship to … or seeking friendship or unity with such mythical entities” … listen up! Here’s the good part … the satanist “places himself [or herself] at the center of his [or her] own subjective universe as his [or her] own highest value.” That should literally scare the hell out of you because it sounds an awful lot like what we hear being preached in our culture today … that we are all the center … the “El Elyon” … God Most High … of our own “subjective” universes. Since there are approximately 8 billion people in the world today, that means that there are 8 billion potential self-made universes all being dominated by 8 billion individual gods. There may not be 8 billion people in the world who believe this, but there are still a lot of people in the world who believe that they are “El Elyon” … God Supreme … and the center of their own little universes … if not THE actual universe itself, amen?
What the wiccans and the druids and the santerists and satanists fail to recognize … but the demons that they worship do … is that Jesus is “ben El Elyon” … the “Son of the Most High God.” Three out of the four times that the title “El Elyon” … “The Most High God” … is used in the New Testament, it is used by demons. And what the demons knew … and what King Nebuchadnezzar would find out … is that it isn’t nice to fool with El Elyon!
In 606 bc, the Babylonians … under the command of King Nebuchadnezzar … besieged Jerusalem and completely destroyed the city and the Temple. The survivors were led off as slaves … including one young man by the name of “Daniel.”
In those days, if one nation defeated another it was obvious that the conquering nation’s gods were stronger than the gods of the people they conquered. How else could the victors have succeeded if their enemy’s gods were stronger than their gods, amen? That was clearly the case with El Elyon. Judah had fallen. Jerusalem was in ruins. In the eyes of the Babylonians, it meant tht their gods were “elyon” … most high … and not Jehovah. Nebuchadnezzar had even taken the treasure and all the sacred implements from the Jewish Temple and put them in the houses and temples of his gods. Their victory clearly meant that Jehovah was no “El Elyon” … God Most High.
A series of events were to prove, however, that Jehovah was indeed “El Elyon” … “The Most High God” …. Possessor of Heaven and earth. Babylon was never going to be the everlasting kingdom that they thought it would be. El Elyon had decreed that. Through His prophet, Jeremiah, God declared that the Babylonian’s everlasting kingdom would be destroyed in 70 years … and it was.
King Nebuchadnezzar and the people of Babylon saw the power of the Most High God protect the lives of three young Hebrew men … Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah … in Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace. King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians saw the power of El Elyon when He saved Daniel from the jaws of King Darius’ lions. King Nebuchadnezzar saw the power of El Elyon when God gave Daniel the power to interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s troubling dreams and visons.
But it wasn’t until Nebuchadnezzar went head-to-head and toe-to-toe with El Elyon that King Nebuchadnezzar truly came to realize just how powerful El Elyon was and how little power he actually had. Standing on the roof of his magnificent royal palace in Babylon, King Nebuchadnezzar proudly proclaimed: “Is this not magnificent Babylon which I have built as a royal capitol by my mighty power and for my glorious majesty” (Daniel 4:30).
I love it! The Bible says that while he was speaking … while the words were still in his mouth … a voice from Heaven spoke … the voice of El Elyon! “O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is declared: The kingdom has departed from you! You shall be driven away from human society, and your dwelling shall be with the animals of the field. You shall be made to eat grass like oxen, and seven [years] shall pass over you, until you have learned that El Elyon … the Most High … has sovereignty over the kingdom of mortals and gives it to whom He will” (Daniel 4:31-32).
Immediately, says the Bible, El Elyon’s sentence against Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled. “He was driven away from human society, ate grass like oxen, and his body was bathed with the dew of heaven, until his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers and his nails became like birds’ claws” (Daniel 4:33).
I love the humility of King Nebuchadnezzar after his encounter with El Elyon: “When that period was over, I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven” … to El Elyon … “ and my reason returned to me” (Daniel 4:34). Anyone here losing their minds or have lost their minds and would like their “reason” to return? Then do like Nebuchadnezzar and lift up your eyes toward Heaven … to El Elyon.
“I bless El Elyon,” Nebuchadnezzar proclaims once God has restored him to sanity. “I bless El Elyon, and praise and honor the One who lives forever. For His sovereignty is an everlasting sovereignty, and His kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and He does what He will with the host of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth” (Daniel 4:34-35; change in tense is mine).
There is no one, Nebuchadnezzar realizes, “no one who can stay [El Elyon’s] hand or say to Him, ‘What are You doing?’” (Daniel 4:35). As the great Bible scholar A.W. Pink once said: “God does as He pleases … only as He pleases … always as He pleases” … echoes of Psalm 115:3, where the psalmist declares: “…our God is in the Heavens; He does whatever He pleases.”
Foolish, foolish King Nebuchadnezzar! To think that he could challenge El Elyon that way … to think that he was more powerful than God … what an absurd assumption, amen? To go against the King of kings and think that he could hold his own … let alone win. A fool’s mission, right? We know so much better today, don’t we?
Let’s see. The Communist government thought that they could give Ol’ El Elyon the boot, didn’t they? Yep … they could just kick Ol’ El Elyon right out of Russia or China or Cuba … except that He’s still there! And if El Elyon wants to start a revival in Russia, guess what? And if He wants the Holy Spirit to catch fire in China, guess what? And if He wants the whole island of Cuba on its knees, whose gonna stop Ol’ El Elyon, amen? Putin? Xi Jinping, the president of China? Miguel Diaz-Camel, the current president of Cuba? Don’t think so.
Who or what on the face of the earth can stop El Elyon? To God, battleships and destroyers and atomic submarines are nothing more than bathtub toys … our thousands of missiles little more than gnats … our nuclear bombs are as harmless to Him as 4th of July sparklers. He doesn’t need a vaccine against the COVID, amen?
Our story today begins at a very interesting point in Abram’s life. He and his nephew, Lot, stand between the cities of Bethel and Ai … an important intersection and time in their lives. They have decided for their two families to go their separate ways. Abram graciously lets his nephew make the first choice. “If you take the left hand, then I will go right,” he tells Lot, “or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left” (Genesis 13:9).
The Bible says that Lot looked about him and saw that the plain of Jordan was well-watered everywhere like the Garden of the Lord … like the land of Egypt, “so Lot chose for himself all the plain of Jordan and traveled eastward” (Genesis 13:11).
Now … I’ve read so many commentaries … I’ve heard so many sermons where poor Ol’ Lot gets hammered pretty hard … usually accusing him of making the “wrong” choice to go to the right instead of the left. He is criticized for choosing impetuously … he’s accused of consulting or going with the desires of his flesh … in other words, of being selfish … he’s blamed for going by what he sees with his eyes instead of choosing by faith.
I personally think that he did what 99% of us would do … especially if they had a family. He chose with an eye towards his family’s future. He chose what he thought would be the best pastureland for his sheep and livestock. I believe that he chose wisely and responsibly. The Bible says that both he and Abram had flocks and herds and tents. Lot had family and livestock to take care of … and he chose to take them to the plain of Jordan where there was plenty of water and trees and grass … a fertile land where he could grow crops. I think that he made a very wise and practical choice. As I said, one that I believe any one of us would have made if we were given the same choice.
Abram supporters, however, claim that Abram made the right choice … the Godly choice.
STOP!
To think that way is to miss the true beauty and power of El Elyon. El Elyon is so omniscient that He can give us a choice and still know what we are going to choose.
Let’s roll back the tape. Lot and Abram are between the cities of Bethel and Ai. What if Abram chose first instead of Lot? What if he chose to go right … to go east? Guess what? He would have encountered the same problems, the same obstacles that Lot encountered. He might have made different decisions … but the conditions would have been the same. Abram would have found himself caught in the middle of a war between five kings, as Lot did. He might have been taken prisoner and it might have been his nephew, Lot, who would have had to come and rescue him and his family. Abram still would have had to contend with the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. What if Lot had chosen to go left … to go west? Then Abram would have had to go right … to go east?
I really, really want you to follow me on this. At that moment, was God quizzing Lot? Was Lot on “The Price is Right”? Did he choose the wrong door? Get the ceramic donkey instead of the trip to Cancun, Mexico, or a new car
NO!
There was no quiz. There was no right or wrong door. I really don’t believe that God is in the business of setting us up that way … pass/fail … do you? I sure hope you don’t.
If Lot had chosen the wrong door, so to speak … made the wrong choice … then Abram made NO choice! Abram had to go west because Lot chose to go East. How can Abram be praised for making the right choice when his choice was being made for him by Lot? It was Abram who told Lot that he would go east if Lot went west and vice versa, remember? If Abram is to be praised, it is for his faith in El Elyon because he knew that it didn’t matter whether he chose first or last … which way he went … east or west … because God would be with him.
Several commentaries that I read make the claim that Lot chose the world over God … that he chose what looked good over God’s will … that he chose his way and gave God the highway … how? How could that be? I’ve read this story many times and at no point does God tell Lot to go west and Lot looks at the fertile plan of Jordan and says “No!” and heads east.
Stay with me now. Why would God punish Lot if He … through Abram … gave him a choice? Hardly seems fair to me. How is going east a punishment? God didn’t send those five kings to punish Lot … they were already there. Lot or Abram, the kings would have seen either one of them as invaders and attacked them. God didn’t send Lot to Sodom and Gomorrah as punishment. Sodom and Gomorrah were there long before Lot ever showed up there. wasn’t waiting for Lot to make his decision, decided that Lot had chosen wrong, and suddenly planted Sodom and Gomorrah there … poof! … to punish him or his wife and poor family who had nothing to do with Lot’s decision, amen? In fact, Lot and Abram were a long, longs way from their ancestral home in a land that they had never been to before … so I doubt very much that Lot knew that Sodom and Gomorrah were there and if he did, why would he chose to go there given Sodom and Gomorrah’s reputation?
When Lot and Abram were looking out over the horizon, neither of them knew what was to the east or to the west. Have you ever bought a house or rented an apartment in what appeared to be a nice, quiet neighborhood during the day only to find out that is in the flight path of a major airport or a drag strip or an open air disco or party central at night? You made the best choice you could given the information that you had. That’s what Lot did … nothing more.
I’ve been around long enough and made enough decisions in my life to know that sometimes you end up in high cotton … praise the Lord! … and sometimes you end up in Sodom like Lot. Sometimes the best things that have happened in my life had nothing to do with me … like Abram … and sometimes the worst things that have happened to me also had nothing to do with me but were the result of other people’s decisions … I happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and found myself in the middle of a war that I didn’t start … like Lot … and had to have someone come rescue me.
Like Lot … like Abram … I know this one saving and guiding fact in my life. Wherever I go … whatever decisions I make … El Elyon is right there with me, amen? Wherever I go, guess what? El Elyon … the Most High God … is already there. No matter what situation I find myself in … no matter what kind of opposition I come up against … no matter what level or degree of difficulty I have to face … guess what? Guess who’s watching over me … has my back? Say it with me … El Elyon. The Most High … the Most Supreme God … and there is nothing higher, nothing greater in Heaven and earth than El Elyon, amen? So, as the Apostle Paul says, if El Elyon is for us, what can stand against us? What have we to fear, amen?
All these commentators and scholars and pastors beat up on poor Ol’ Lot … for what? He was asked to make a decision and he made the best decision that he could. We’d have done the same thing … and let’s face it, not all of our decisions have been good ones, amen? If we were to get honest, most of our decisions have been based on selfish reasons. We’ve all made decisions to go left instead of right … to go east instead of west … because it looked good or looked to be advantageous … only to have it turn into a nightmare. I once bought a Chevy Vega … that’s all I’m gonna say. We’ve all made decisions based on greed … laziness … because it appeared to be the easier, softer way … or it gave us the advantage over someone else.
Don’t get me wrong. You can’t jump into any ol’ pile of manure and expect God to turn it into a bed of roses but God can do an awful lot with the messes that we make of our lives, amen? We should always do our best to make the best decision possible … given the facts or what information we have … always pray and seek God’s guidance and direction as much as possible … but at some point we have to make a decision and live with the consequences. Living with our consequences is possible because El Elyon … God Supreme … is watching over us … loving us, guiding us, and empowering us to get through to the other side.
Lot chose to go east. When he and his family were captured, El Elyon sent Abram with 319 men to go up against five kings and their armies … and they prevailed because of El Elyon! Melchizedek, the king of Salem and high priest of El Elyon, brought out bread and wine and he and Abram praised El Elyon and gave Him all the glory. “Blessed be Abram by El Elyon … maker of Heaven and earth,” prays Melchizedek, “and blessed by El Elyon, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” (Genesis 14:19-20). This is the first time in the Bible that God is referred to as “El Elyon” … the Most High God … God Supreme.
Most of you are probably very familiar with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah but there is something about that story that you may not have noticed before. Before God rained destruction down on Sodom and Gomorrah, Abram … who is now called Abraham … asked God: “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it?” The Lord promised Abraham that he would not destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah if, indeed, He found that there were fifty righteous people living there. Sodom and Gomorrah was so wicked that Abraham was doubtful that there were that many righteous people in both cities combined, let alone one, so he keeps bargaining with El Elyon until he gets God to agree not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if there were at least 10 righteous people … and God agrees.
God does not find 10 righteous people, apparently, because He does destroy both cities … but notice what El Elyon did do before He destroyed them … He sent two angels to rescue the one righteous man, Lot, and his family. Ever notice that? God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah but He rescued the righteous before He destroyed them. Lot and his family were surrounded by Sodomites and Gomorrahians. Lot and his family lived for years in a pagan country surrounded by wiccans and pagans and satanists, so to speak. Lot never gave in to the ways of his neighbors but remained faithful to God … and his trust and faith in El Elyon doesn’t end up baseless.
So when you find yourself at a cross-road in your life … when you are faced with a decision and don’t know whether to go left or right or straight ahead … fear not! Fear not, my brothers and sisters, because El Elyon is watching over you. Make the best decision that you can …. pray and seek God’s guidance … and then trust El Elyon … He has already given us the victory! Praise be to El Elyon, the God Most High, who gives us the victory through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen?
Let us pray:
Elohim … Adonai … Yahwah … El Elyon:
We are so very, very thankful that we can call upon You in our times of trouble and distress and know that You will answer us because You, El Elyon, have promised us that You will never leave us nor forsake us … that You will be there when we call.
We thank You, El Elyon, for being our refuge and dwelling place. Because You walk with us in the middle of our troubles, we have no reason to fear any evil or trouble that may come our way.
El Elyon, You have never left us in the past and we know that You will never leave us in the future … nor can evil or harm snatch us from Your hand because You are the Most High God.
We are so grateful that You have not given us a spirit of fear but a spirit of power, of love, and of a sound, solid faith. We are so grateful for Your love and Your protection.
In the name of Jesus, who sits at the right hand of the Most High God, we pray. And would all God’s grateful and humble children say with me: Amen!
