In this sermon, the preacher discusses the passage in John chapter 4, which is known as one of the most famous evangelistic passages in the Bible. The preacher emphasizes that no one is too good or too bad to be saved, as seen through the examples of Nicodemus and the woman of Samaria. The passage also serves as an important lesson in discipleship, reminding believers that they may not always see immediate results in their efforts to share the gospel. The preacher encourages patience and reminds listeners that there is a time between sowing the seed and reaping the harvest.

John's Gospel chapter 4, we pick things up in verse 27. Jesus is making his way from the southern part of Israel known as Judea to the northern part of Israel known as the Galilee. There's a region between the two known in ancient times as Samaria, known today as the West Bank, inhabited by the Samaritans. And rather than Jesus with his disciples doing what was common for the Jews to do, and that was that the southern section of Judea to cross the river Jordan to the Jordanian side and walk up the Jordanian side and then cross over in the Galilee so as to not even get Samaritan dust upon their feet, Jesus goes straight into the region of Samaria and he proceeds to sit down at a well in the city called Sychar. And as we mentioned last week, there was a 700-year history of just pure hatred between these two people until, as John tells us, by the Holy Spirit it became so great that the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans, and the Samaritans had no dealings with the Jews. Two completely independent people living in the same land, forced to live in the same land, but finding a way that they would not have to have contact with one another. And Jesus as a Jew takes and heads straight into Samaria, in violation of 700 years of history, and he doesn't go there alone, he takes his 12 disciples with him, 12 very Jewish disciples, very nationalistic disciples, disciples who believe that the Jews are the best, the Samaritans are no good, certainly lesser than us. And as Jesus goes into that area, he meets with a woman of Samaria there and enters into a long exchange with her while they're off buying lunch, which had to be difficult for them, having to go into some Samaritan store, where nobody sees us here, and you put those sandwiches in a brown paper bag. The passage is a beautiful passage in John chapter 4, one of the most famous evangelistic passages in the entirety of the Bible, as we learn from Nicodemus in chapter 3, this great religious teacher of Israel, that none are too good to be saved. From this woman of Samaria we learn that there are none who are too bad to be saved. God has grace for both. But the passage is also to me a very, very important discipleship passage too. We pick it up in verse 27, when at this point Jesus' disciples came back from buying the lunch, or getting it wherever, and they marveled. This is a slack-jawed, I-can't-believe-what-we're-seeing kind of word. It's a kind of shock that it has a physical effect upon them. They marveled that he talked with a woman. So here he is, talking not only to a woman, but talking to a woman in the area of Samaria. I mean, he could at least have the common decency to talk to a Samaritan man, but he talked with a Samaritan woman. And yet no one said, what do you seek, or why are you talking with her? They wanted to, but they didn't. They wanted to scold both her and him. What are you seeking here? Why are you talking with her? Then the woman, the woman then left her water pot, forgot all about why she'd come to the well, and she went her way into the city. Now Jesus never got the drink of water he asked for, but he's not going to complain. And she went her way into the city of Sychar, the well being evidently outside of it, and she said to the men, not to the women, couldn't gain an audience with the women with her background, she said to the men, come see a man who told me all things that I ever did to this be the Christ. And given her sordid background and her reputation within the city, and it's a small village, they wanted to further investigate a man who knew everything about her, because maybe it meant he knew something about them too. And so they went out of the city, this group of men came out, and they came to him. Now, in the meantime, his disciples urged him, saying, Rabbi, eat. These great pastrami sandwiches, and you've got to eat this. I mean, you put this through all of this. Jesus said to them, I have food to eat of which you do not know. Therefore, the disciples said to one another, has anyone brought him something to eat? Somebody slip in and bring him something to eat, he seems to have lost his appetite. Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish this work. Now you have the reason why he needed to go through Samaria. And it wasn't a physical reason, it was a spiritual reason, in order to obey the Father's will. It was the Father's will that he go in and reach this woman and ultimately reach a village. And then Jesus speaks to the disciples, because they were supposed to learn something from all of this. And he said, do you not say, there's still four months and then comes the harvest. Now that was apparently a common saying in that day, where people would, something would come up and they'd say, well, there's still four months and then comes the harvest. And it was the kind of thing of saying, you know, just kind of to be patient about things. Listen, don't be in such a hurry. I mean, there's got, there's some time between the sowing of seed and the harvesting of seed. Four months and then comes the harvest. I want to raise at work. Hey, listen, four months and then comes the harvest. Relax. I don't want to wife desperately. Four months and then comes the harvest. Relax. It's not going to all happen overnight. You have to be patient in life. There's time between the sowing and the reaping. So there's apparently a common saying in that day. And Jesus declares to them, behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields for they are already white for harvest. Now, Jesus apparently didn't like the saying four months and then comes the harvest. He didn't like the procrastination of it, the delay of it. God's people, we can find ourselves too patient concerning the great commission, concerning the harvest. Oh yes, four months and then comes the harvest. Oh, we're waiting for the revival. I have been a Christian for 21 years. There is one word. I remember when the Lord spoke to Jeremiah and there, and the one thing, the burden of the Lord, the burden of the Lord, the burden of the Lord, the oracle of the Lord. And the Lord finally said to Jeremiah, tell these people, I don't want to hear that word again. There's one word I could go to glory and never hear again, just as a word. And it's the word revival. Because every time I hear it, it's some distance out. It's always four months and then comes. The program recently, even within our community with the lighthouses and all of this thing, and you had to do this and this and this and this and this much time doing each of those things before violates this. It's always time for the harvest. God is always working. He's always eager to reach human lives. And the fact of the matter, we as Christians, and I include myself, I don't need any excuses for procrastination as it relates to the great commission. I need a continual fire lit under me concerning these things. And so the Lord didn't want them getting soft, spending their whole life waiting for the perfect time. There are people that are waiting decades go by waiting for the right time, the perfect time, and it never comes for them. Because it's always the right time to share the gospel in the community that God has placed us in or wherever he has us in the world to share that gospel. That's why we're here. Now, it would have been very, very easy. We want to deal with these kinds of things on a purely natural sense. No wonder why revival is always spoken of as something that's some distance out, because we can always look at a city or a society or something and say, wow, there's a lot of work that needs to be done before a move of God can occur. Now, let me clarify something before I go on. I want revival so bad I can taste it. But I'm not waiting for it. I've taken my place in the harvest field and I work hard there every day. Then I trust the greater picture to the Lord. But it would have been very easy for these disciples to look at the Samaritans and to think that there'll be a long process in being reached. They'll never understand. You can't go to those Samaritans. I mean, the first thing you got to do is you got to go in and get them all out of their whole Samaritan thing, which is wrong. You got to correct all of their misconceptions about the Old Testament before we can even begin to tell them the truth. And all of these things that we could be doing look at in our great minds in terms of what it is that's necessary before people or a person will be able to be reached with the gospel and all. And sometimes we do that and we talk ourselves out of ever sharing the gospel at all. Never get around to just declaring the gospel and seeing what happens in the situation. You can analyze yourself right out of sharing the gospel. We can do it individually. I know you've never had this experience and neither have I, but I've heard that people in other churches have. Where you look over at someone and there is like this thing, your heart has come up into your throat. It's so clear you're supposed to share with that person. Isn't it amazing? You know, we walk through life. You can walk through a mall or walk through anywhere in the course of a day. We can walk by 200 people and no prompting of the Spirit. I mean, share the gospel if you want and all, but I mean, there's no like specific prompting. And then all of a sudden there's that one person that you wouldn't have noticed if your life depended on it. But God gives you the eyes to see Him. He's at work. And there's that sense that I am to go over to that person and tell them about the love of God or whatever it is that God is putting on my heart. I've done that. You walk up to somebody, you don't know them anywhere, and you say, I don't have the slightest idea what is going on. As it relates to you or God, I don't know if you even know who God is. All I know is that He has told me to tell you that He loves you. And then there's that place where it can be part of a long progression and an important part of the progression. But I also know what it is to have that happen in my life and to look at the thing. And before I even begin to take a couple steps, I can just look at them and tell they're not ready for revival. I mean, you can just tell that you're going to have to talk with them about this thing and then do this thing and this thing here and all before they'll ever be ready. This woman in Sychar, you could have never dreamed, ever dreamed, that she was one conversation away from becoming a Christian. Nobody could have known but God Himself that that entire village was one conversion away from being reached with the gospel. And we think we know so much. I think I know so much. I'll leave you out of it. To the natural eye, neither of them looked ready, and they were completely ripe for the harvest. The importance of just following that directing of the Father, even as Jesus did, in His own way, higher way than us, but still there's that leading and then doing what He calls us to do. Now, the time of the year... I'm sounding a little angry tonight. I'm not really angry. It's the time of the year that all of this is going on is April-May. There were no crops in the field that were ripe for harvest at that time. Jesus is not talking about a physical harvest of grain. It appears that what He is talking about is He has His disciples turn to look at the fields that are white on the harvest, and He has them turn to look and to see this woman and all of these men coming from Sychar out to the well. The men probably wearing these white turbans on their head, and they look like these sheaves of wheat, stalks of wheat coming this way, and Jesus is talking to them about a spiritual harvest that is there. I have always loved the fact that in all of this, Jesus took His disciples into the middle of all of this incineria, despite that long history of them not having anything to do with one another. Jesus is modeling something for them, and they had doubtless fallen into the Jewish side in the same way that the Samaritans had fallen into the Samaritan side of this age-long kind of conflict that was going back and forth. I think what the Lord was doing in this situation was He was bringing His disciples into Samaria with Him. He was going to save that woman and that village, but also to teach them something about being ambassadors, being ambassadors of His. The interesting thing about an ambassador is that ambassadors go where they're told to go, and they say what they're told to say when they get there. That's the mark of an ambassador. An ambassador understands about themselves that they no longer represent themselves in this world supremely, but that by virtue of becoming an ambassador, even on purely the physical realm for another nation, that they no longer supremely represent themselves any longer, but now they have, by virtue of becoming an ambassador, that they live to supremely represent the kingdom and the king of which they are ambassadors. Then what happens in terms of their rights and their ideas and their thoughts and their prejudices and all of these things? Those things become subservient to the kingdom that they're representing and the king that they're representing. Ambassadors understand that about being ambassadors, and every single one of us in this room that knows the Lord, we are called one of the titles we have in the scriptures is that we are ambassadors for Christ. When we became Christians and became ambassadors for Christ, we accepted that responsibility that we no longer represent ourselves in this world. We represent a king and a kingdom. And in becoming an ambassador of Christ, we have agreed to become a blessing to all peoples in this world. And we have agreed not to fall prey to all of the divisions that mankind places upon their fellow man. We have agreed to see people the way that God sees people, as men and women that have been created in his image. And the subcategories of that great single group is those that are saved and those that are unsaved supremely. I know God has a thing that he is doing with the Jews as it relates to the last days. But in this dispensation, he sees people as saved or unsaved. And he's teaching these disciples to forget the outward appearance, forget the histories. Don't get pulled into this junk as my ambassadors. Take my message to everyone, Jew and Gentile alike. But I think the Lord was ministering to them. This whole world is full of people like this woman that you wanted to ask, why in the world I was talking to her? Why do you think I was talking to her? So she could know the things that you know, but that you, because of your prejudice, would never tell her. And it is very easy for Christians to write off vast segments of the human population and their own heart because of their bigotry. And it doesn't have any place in the life of a believer. There's neither bond nor free, Jew or Gentile, Scythian, barbarian, Christ is all, in and all, Paul wrote to the Corinthians. There was a time a while back where one of the big men's organizations was into this whole reconciliation thing in the body of Christ. And they began to talk about Christians as black and white and all of these different kinds of things. I just checked out. I'm a Christian. I am not a white Christian. I happen to be white, but I am a Christian. And this whole thing within the body of Christ of using these things and looking at these, that is stuff that comes from out there and inside of us. There's enough problems with it not to have people involved in all of that. I remember I was watching a while back. I've got to return the video series on the America's century, the 20th century. And they showed the clips from the civil rights movement in the 1960s with the whites and the blacks. I wept. That's in my lifetime, born in 1955. And I didn't have power over the United States then like I do now. But we're talking about the South and the Bible belt of the United States of America. And I thought to myself, what Bible are they reading? And these Christian groups, they're not really Christian groups, but they align themselves with Christianity. Of course, when you're illegitimate, you always align yourself with the most legitimate thing you can to take eyes off of your illegitimacy. But these groups that claim to be Christian groups, and they are absolutely prejudiced against the Jews, anti-Semitic to the core in every way. It cannot be. One cannot be a disciple of Jesus Christ or an ambassador of his and be that way. We will have had a successful night tonight. If we were to close the study tonight, and not one of us would leave this room seeing people any differently than the way that God sees people. And we all deal with it. We all deal with it. And so Jesus is teaching them these things, and he brings them into the middle of all of this. And he says, the fields are white in the harvest, but you don't see it, because you don't see things the way that I see them. And he who reaps, receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this, the saying is true, one sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap for which you have not labored, others have labored, and you have entered into their labor, speaking of the prophets. So no one, or I shouldn't say no one, but very few people come to know the Lord the first time they've heard the gospel. Show of hands, how many of you received the Lord the very first time someone spoke the gospel to you? Just a quick show of hands. One, two, three, four, five. All right. Now, I know most of these people, so I can tell you guaranteed that they did not come into the kingdom independent of tremendous labor in prayer. You saw their hands. I had the honor of officiating at a coronation service a couple of weeks ago. The mother who prayed and prayed and prayed for her son and for her grandchildren and the loved ones around that family, they answered prayer. So many of them, all of them that I know of, now come to the Lord in all from the night before she went to be with the Lord. She sat in this room the last time we had communion, sat in a chair in this room, and sitting alongside her was her family, her son, her daughter-in-law, and her grandchildren alongside. I mean, what better blessing in taking communion together, what better way to go into glory than to have that have been your final night when you're a person that loved the Lord the way this woman loved the Lord. And yet behind all of this important thing that happened in individual life, people praying. And so when a person comes to know the Lord, there's reward that goes out all over the place. The person that shared the gospel with the person, and then they said, shockingly to the person that shared it, that they want to receive the Lord. And they walk away thinking, wow, I am some kind of an evangelist. And they don't know that the Lord has brought 187 people over the last four days to tell that person in the mall that God loves them, and that parents and grandparents have been praying for them for three decades. So the whole thing is in the mix, and that's why you and I can't be discouraged when we share the gospel with someone. How many did we have? Five people in the room? Out of a room of 400, and however many more in the overflow room, that means the rest of us heard over and over and over and over and over again before the light finally went on. And so the important encouragement to us that it's not all going to be, you don't, we don't, any one of us doesn't always get to be harvest, but it doesn't mean that we're not a part of the harvest. Because that coming in and saying what you said, or they yelled at you and threw their hard hat at you at the job site and everything, was an important part of them, you know, getting to the place that one day, and you don't know it, but three years later, in Timbuktu, they're going to accept the Lord and you're never going to know about it until you get into glory. That's the way that it is. And so the importance of showing and showing and showing, and then all of us take our place, and all of this, and the reward is all equal. And many of the Samaritans of that city, they believed in Jesus because of the word of the woman who testified, he told me all that I ever did. Now this woman is already an effective evangelist, and new believers are the most effective evangelist, because they still have some non-Christian friends. So here they have, all right, that was a low, that was, okay, that's, I'm sorry about that. That was my, okay, just give me a moment. So here she is, she doesn't know any theology at all, but she has a testimony. So she goes and she tells them, and people believed in the Lord as a result of it. And so when the Samaritans had come to him, they urged him to stay with them, and marvel of marvels, he stayed there two days. We know nothing of the excitement level of the disciples as it relates to this. And so what do the Samaritans do? Right in front of those twelve apostles, they show Jesus more hospitality than he ever saw in Jerusalem, and that he ever saw in Judea. And the light begins to go on for these guys. These are people, these are people too, these are good people too, good relatives in the world. I've misunderstood them, I've branded them all with this long history. But here they are, we couldn't get out, nobody would offer us, nobody wanted us to stay in Jerusalem. Here they are, they invite us, and we stay for two days. I think that there's something important about getting around people that we don't understand very well, that produces some compassion. And many more believed because of his own word. Jesus began to teach them, and then they said to the woman, now we believe, not because of what you said, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world. An interesting thing has happened in this whole progression in John chapter 4, because it's just this progressive revelation. It begins with the woman, and she begins by addressing Jesus as a Jew. Then, as the conversation goes on, she comes to realize that he is a prophet. And then the progression occurs, and she realizes that he is the Messiah. Then the village realizes that he is the Christ and the Messiah, and finally the progression works all the way to where they are calling him the Savior of the world. Which is evidently the message that he taught them in that village, was that he came not just to save the Jews, but to save the world. They were saved there, in that city. Now Philip is going to come years later, isn't he, in the book of Acts. Wow, things are going to go like crazy. Well, listen, when Jesus has been your forerunner, it makes things easy, doesn't it? So they recognize him as the Savior of the world, and that's the way that it is. Sometimes these things just come by layers for people. They did for so many of us in this room. After two days, he departed from there, and he went to Galilee, where Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country. Now Jesus' own country, evidently what's being spoken of here, is Judea, the south. Now he was raised in Nazareth, in the Galilee, but he was born in Bethlehem, in Judea. And so he had been down in the south, in Judea, hadn't received any honor from the leaders of the people there. So when he came to Galilee, up to the north again, the Galileans, they received him, having seen all the things that he did in Jerusalem at the feast. They came back up to the Galilee, and they said, you should have seen what Jesus did down there. I mean, he cleared that temple. There was oxen, and doves, and sheep, and lamb, everything in all kinds of different directions, you know. And now they're excited, you know, he's made the headlines in a good way. And so he comes back up there, and they knew what he had done at the feast, for they had also gone to the feast. And then the third, or rather the second miracle of John's gospel, verse 46. And so Jesus came again to Cana of Galilee. That's where he did his first miracle, that's recorded in the gospel according to John, the turning of the water into wine. And there was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum. Now this nobleman is, the language that's used here is not that he is a Roman official, but that he is a nobleman, or an official associated with King Herod's rule. But as a nobleman, he is a man of tremendous privilege. He's got a great title, he's got great job security, he's got a great income. He has the kind of job and position that allows him to have some insulation in life. He and his kids, doesn't matter how bad the famine is, they eat. And they never worry about whether they'll eat, or whether they'll have clothes. He never has to worry, nor do his children, with whether they're going to be able to have a job, a good job when they grow up. These things are set for the children of noblemen. But I'll tell you something, noblemen, just like everybody else, they have their problems in life. And this problem is going to center upon his son. There are certain things that come in life, there are no respecters of persons. I don't care what a title is, or what the money is, or the what, or the what, or the what, what is. When these things come, there is no fending them off. And as a parent, it becomes a job for one who is greater than us. I'm not going to ask for another show of hands here tonight, but I'm in a little bit of that mood tonight, just a show of hands. Just, if you'd like to have a show of hands, go ahead and just, okay. All right, maybe I'm the only one in that mood. Thank you, Ken. But it's so interesting, and one of the things I love, I'm so glad that the Lord has planted us in this city of Modesto, and that we've been able to be here for a long time, and has a lot of grace on his part to do that. And one of the things that's interesting is you get to watch these cycles in people's lives. You get to watch young people, you get to watch all kinds of people. But one of the things that you watch is sometimes a person, here they are, they're coming to the church for a while, they have kind of a nominal relationship with the Lord, or what, it's not real, and they're coming here because, you know, Dad will make life miserable for them if they don't come. Or Dad comes because Mom will make things miserable for him if he doesn't come, or all the way around the whole thing. And it's interesting that sometimes when they become emancipated from Mom and Dad's rule, or whatever it might be, and they head out, and you don't see them for a long time, then when do you see them next? They got a baby in their arms. Because when you have a baby, all of a sudden you think to yourself, now what do I do? How am I supposed to raise this little one? What am I going to raise this little one in? And oftentimes that person is fairly well scarred now because of choices that they've made, and they realize, I want to raise my child in the things of the Lord, and so they come back. And so often problems with the children, or things, you know, physical, or things, you know, whatever it might be, they bring a person back to the Lord, just even having children. So here's this nobleman, his son is sick at Capernaum. Capernaum's 27 miles away from Cana of Galilee. And when he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to Jesus, and he implored him. This is a desperate man. Implored is a desperation word. He implored Jesus to come down and to heal his son, for his son was at the point of death. Now we read about it, and if we're sitting here tonight, and none of our children are at the point of death, it's like, all right, when's he going to get done? I think he's going to go the full hour here tonight, or will he stop at the end of chapter four or what? And the bets are going along the aisle, and the whole thing, and the deal. But I mean, so the urgency of the passage, we can kind of miss it. But it's another thing. When your child is sick on the death, and there's nothing you can do about it. And he's heard about the Lord, and his miracle working power, and he comes to him. Now he is under, and this is one of the things that he's going to learn about Jesus here, and one of the things that's a revelation of Jesus in this passage. He is going to learn that Jesus does not need to be physically present on the scene to heal the child. He wants Jesus to come the 27 miles to Capernaum with him to heal the child. Jesus is, before this whole thing is going to get done, not only is this man going to know, but we're all going to know that he does not have to be physically present in order to do that. He just says the word, and it's done. So he wants him to come down and to heal his son. And Jesus said to him, unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe. Now this is interesting, because when he speaks there, Jesus doesn't say, unless you people, the reason the people is an insertion there, and it's in italics, and so it's not in the original, the reason it's there is because the U is plural. Jesus is talking to the man, and he's talking to the entire crowd now, and he's rebuking them because they'll only believe if they see signs and wonders. Now, clearly, and this is a characteristic of the gospel according to John, clearly, Jesus is not interested in developing a faith in people that is dependent upon signs and wonders. He's obviously not happy with it here, and yet he wants to heal the nobleman's boy, and he's going to do that. But he's going to do it in a way that does not build a dependence or a faith by the Father in signs and wonders, because he's going to give the man his word to believe, and if the man will believe his word and act upon his word, then in acting upon his word, he will see the miracle. He won't produce it, he'll see the miracle that's been done. And so the Lord is so careful to keep, even in this situation, building people's faith upon the word of God supremely, not upon signs and wonders. The nobleman said to him, Sir, come down before my child dies, and Jesus said to him, Go your way, your son lives. That is what Jesus speaks to the Father concerning the situation. That's his promise. We can read the entirety of this book the way that this man could read that promise. And he gives the man his word, and there it is, that decisive moment. Will this man believe Jesus or will he not believe Jesus? And if he believes Jesus, then he will head for home and discover Jesus' promise to be true. It's beautiful, very wise. How the Lord, the way he works to keep us healthy and our foundation built upon the right things, and so the man did what? Believed in signs and wonders, and no, the man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him. And then, not just an intellectual belief, but a belief all the way down to the core, affected his actions, and he went his way. And as he was now going down, his servants met him and told him, saying, Your son lives! You know, I think you could add a lot of exclamation points after that particular thing in the Bible there. You can imagine they come running to him, Your son lives! Your son lives! You know, maybe not just like that, but I mean, there's a lot of excitement for sure. And then he inquired of them the hour when his son got better, and they said to him, yesterday, at the seventh hour, the fever left him. And so the father knew that it was at that same hour in which Jesus said to him, Your son lives! Imagine what an impact that had upon him. And he himself believed in his whole household. He tells the story to them, and they all trust in Jesus as the Messiah, the beautiful fruit of it. And this again is the second sign that Jesus did when he had come out of Judea into Galilee. The first miracle, the turning of the water into wine, was a miracle in which Jesus took and demonstrated his love for and his blessing upon an institution of God, marriage. The second miracle, the healing of this nobleman's son, was a miracle that demonstrated Jesus's love for the other institution of God, the family unit. The beautiful thing that speaks to us here all through the ages, how it has encouraged parents, how the Lord loves our children, and how we need to know that as we raise them. He longs to bless them, and he knows what we go through in raising children. It's a difficult, difficult thing to do. I've told the kids, you know. Don't I have told the kids? Yes, I have. Things get fuzzy at this age, you know. It'll be fun in 30 years, won't it? Who are you? Where am I? I think the single hardest thing and most rewarding thing that Karen Knight has ever done in life was raising children. Nothing was harder, and yet nothing was more rewarding. And I'm so thankful that the Lord caused us to come to know him as early in that process as it possibly could almost be. We weren't believers for the first couple of years of our oldest daughter's life, but such a blessing for us to realize tonight as parents that the Lord loves us, and he cares about us, and he loves us. We're not in this alone. We can take things to him. And what does the Father do? It's intercession, isn't it? He takes the needs of his family to Jesus, and then trusts Jesus to do what's right in the situation, and he'll always be faithful to do that.