Celebration Sabbath - Standing on Grace

Good morning, everybody. How we all doing? Awesome. Well, for those of you who are maybe joining us for the very first time or you're new here, twice a year we have a small group series. In this last small group series, we have been going through the book of Galatians, standing on Grace.

And so we've had five groups. Sometimes we've had more, sometimes we've had less. But I'd like to call up our first group, our Tuesday group. Bill, his group is going to go first. We allow our groups to come on up and share some experiences and lessons that they've learned along the way.

So as they're making their way forward here. The first study that we focused primarily on was Galatians, chapter 1, verse 1 through 10. Primarily about leadership and also the importance that the Gospel is the most important thing. And if you could to read through the passage, you'll see that maybe Paul was dealing with some leadership challenges. So, Bill, go ahead.

We had a smallish group this time. Linda and Alex were in our group. They're back at the pa conveniently. I offered to go work the PA so they could come up front. And I got voted down.

So they're back there. We had Pilar and Annette. And Aurora was with us. She couldn't be here today. And I really enjoyed this series.

This series was kind of challenging to preach. I don't know if pastor will talk about this, because Galatians just talks about one thing the whole way through the book. It's a one trick pony. And Paul talks about it from the top, from the bottom, from the sides, from the other side. And so you feel like we've said this already.

You know, it's getting repetitive. So it's kind of challenging to preach and to lead out on this. But the discussions that we had about grace and what does that mean and how does that work with my faith were just fabulous. And I'm gonna let some of our members talk. Cause you get to hear enough from me.

But I just encourage you to join a group next time we do this. Because I think the group is really where the beauty is. I mean, the sermons are great, pastor, great sermons. But the small groups is where a lot of the growth in the discussion happens. Thanks.

I'll slip the hundred to you later.

Hi everyone. Happy Sabbath. Happy Sabbath. Thank you for sharing that, Bill. The week that really stood out for me was week number five.

And the reason it stood out for me is because on Galatians 5, 19, it talks about all the acts of the flesh. And basically that's sin. And I can, you know, their character defects and flaws that we have as human beings and why we need the grace of God to remove them from us, if you will. But you know, Bill preached something when he preached on this lesson and one thing that really impacted me was what he said, you know, when God removes some of these things that they talk about here in the Bible, and I can add some stuff of my own, personal stuff of my own, of things that are of the flesh, he says, make sure that if God gets rid of them, make sure there's something there to replace it. Because having a void, you know, God takes away all this stuff and now there's this empty space in your soul and okay, well, now what is that gonna be filled with?

So we gotta be careful what we fill it with. The good News is in 22, it talks about some things that are replaced that God replaces them with. And those are, you know, love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. You know, these are all awesome things. And I personally have experienced God's grace in my life.

I don't know if, you know, I'm in a program, a 12 step program. And every day, you know, we say, but for the grace of God, there go I. If we see another person in the street suffering from the same afflictions that I suffered from, you know, and I'm really grateful to God for his grace every single day and his mercy every single day of my life. Every day that I get to wake up, open my eyes and say, thank you, God, for waking me up this morning. And another thing I'd like to say is, thank you, God, for my sobriety today.

Those are two gifts, two precious gifts that I do not want to waste, that God has given me. The rest is all gravy. Thank you, Annette. How long have you been sober? 30 years.

30 years. By the grace of God. By the grace of God. I didn't do anything. I just did my part.

I just did my part. I was willing to do my part. And God did you allow God to lead you? God did the rest? Absolutely.

My will was all this other stuff in 1919 through, through 21, that was my stuff. That's the way I came in, but that's not the way I left. That God has changed me substantially. Thank you. Thank you.

That's grace, all right. Yeah. So that's wonderful. It's always so good to hear from Annette. So Bill asked me, are you going to say anything?

And I said, no, I don't think so. And then I'm prompted to share. It's like, okay, get past your issues, Pilar. And it's the beauty of small groups where you see God leading you and the opportunity that he gives you where he says, okay, you're still struggling with this, or this still hasn't made sense. Let's take this opportunity then, to be in a small group, to become transparent, to take those risks with one another.

And it is lovely to be able to say, you know what? It's like, I don't get this. I'm struggling with this. And then in sharing with one another and in trusting that the Holy Spirit will guide the study. And then as we are ready to receive that information, then we are blessed with that.

That is a wonderful experience. And that' why I continue attending small groups. And I just want to very quickly thank Bill and Linda because they're always so faithful in opening their home. Thank you, everyone. A very blessed Sabbath.

Thank you. All right, well, that was. You can give them a hand.

All right. I'd like to invite our other Tuesday night group, the men's ministry group. So, Tomas, Shane, Kaden, y' all, come on up. Juni. The second week, we focused on primarily about just being faith alone, and we are justified by faith in Jesus Christ.

And so, as challenges come up in your life, how do you handle that? How do you deal with that? Ultimately, it's not about us, but it's about Jesus. So who would like to go first?

Happy Sabbath. Sabbath. I want to start by thanking God that salvation is a gift and not by my works, because those are requirements that I cannot fill. The gap between me and heaven is too great. And there's.

There is no way that I can do what's needed to be saved. And I've always had questions. I grew up in church and salvation, understanding salvation is a gift. And then seeing what the Bible says about certain things made me question a few things. Like, there's a parable.

I'm not going to go into details about it, but the parable is 10 virgins, and spoiler alert, five of them didn't make it. So why didn't they make it? Salvation is a gift. Why didn't they make it? They knew about the Bible.

They showed up. Essentially, they all had their Bibles. Where is the disconnect?

So the Bible tells another story of a rich man. They went to Jesus and asked him, what do I have to do to be saved? Now, notice Jesus didn't say nothing. You don't have to do anything. Jesus said, go, essentially, Jesus said, go, get rid of your God.

Make me your God. But he couldn't do it. His God was his riches. He essentially walked away from salvation. Now, I mention those two because where's the disconnect with the 10 virgins or five of them and the rich man?

What I've come to learn is that they didn't place the proper value to the Word that they should have to receive the gift of salvation. Because it's one thing to know you're saved by grace, it's another thing to receive it.

Now, receiving it is essentially us living the life that Christ lived. It's kind of like a bank receipt. The receipt itself has no value, but it tells us what's in the bank.

Our actions, our deeds, our works only tell us that we're saved. They don't actually save. Now, here's the key. You can falsify a bank receipt. You can make your bank receipt say, I have a million dollars in the bank.

That doesn't mean there's a million dollars in the bank. We can live a life like a Christian. We can know we're saved by grace. We can do all this. We can come up here, we can preach, we can sing, we can give Bible study.

We can do all of this. That doesn't mean we're saved. Those things are done because we're saved, not to get saved. So we can pretend all this and not truly receive the gift of salvation. And the good thing is only God knows.

And we're told to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. So this is where we have to pray. We have to submit our lives to Christ. And the. The best way, My opinion, the best way to do that is to live the life like the golden rule, do unto others.

Because when we put others first, something happens. There's energy in the air. I don't know what it is. But when we help others, that comes back to us. There's plenty of people that have lots of money, and they give.

They give a lot. And they say they just never run out of money, no matter how much they give. This is the math doesn't add up, but it works. It definitely works. If anybody comes across somebody who owns big companies, they'll tell you that they give.

They may not believe in God, they may not believe in Christ, they may not even be saved. But this is a rule that when you give, you receive. So for us, we should love, we should give, we should put others first. We should forgive and be patient. These are the things we should give.

You know, we give Love. Because when we give love, we're living the life of Christ. When we live the life of Christ, we're receiving the gift of salvation. That's there. It's there.

It's just on us to receive that gift. Thank you, Juni.

I just want to say that the groups are great. We have great discussions, especially in our men's group. It's nice because, you know, we're not an environment where, you know, we're just listening. But we actually all cooperate and we all give our comments and opinions. And that's awesome.

That's why, like Bill said, one of the best things the church has going to is this group thing. Because we get together and we discuss things and we discuss them really well. So I invite people that haven't been in the group to get in a group. Because you will learn a lot, not only from the Bible, but. But you get to know other people personally and you get to pray for them, and they pray for you.

It's really good. So that's my invitation to you. One of the things that I loved about Galatians, it talks about love, believe it or not. So faith. The right faith to have is the faith with love.

Works of love. That's what faith is all about. A lot of times we think that, you know, we mix the thing about works. Works doesn't save you. What saves you is faith only.

Yes. The only thing that saves us is faith. But when you love others, all the fruits of the Spirit come out. And you give that to people. And then you become part of the Holy Spirit.

Work. Holy Spirit comes to your heart and works with everybody. And you can work with others. And that's the works that are the good works, the works of God. Not the works that men do to make themselves look better, but the works that come from the Holy Spirit to help others.

So it's the thing that goes out from you, not something that you want to keep for yourself. See? So a lot of times we mix those things up. That's why we cannot be saved by works. Works are not going to save us.

But the works we do come out of us because of all the love we have for others. That's why it's there. Okay? So just remember, love everyone and you'll start working. Tomas, just real quick, when do you guys normally meet the men's group?

We're meeting on Tuesdays. The first on the first week at 7 o' clock on Tuesdays and then the third week also. And we've been commenting that maybe that's not enough. So we'll. We'll keep discussing that because we really like to get together, and two weeks is too much to wait.

We'll hold you accountable to that. Shane, Kaney, do you want to share anything?

Good morning, everybody. I think that this hit me a little bit differently about the grace of God personally. In my life. I was born, raised Adventist Christian School, Adventist school, K through 12. And I lost my way a long time ago, like 20, 25 years ago.

I was just like, okay, I'm done with this. And I was out in this worldly thing. And in the last two or three years, I got my son involved with church, which was the biggest blessing. And then for the grace part, I think this whole Bible study or this small group study hit me differently about the grace that God has for not just me, but for everybody. There's some things that, you know, that I'm not proud of or just directions I went.

And then all of a sudden, everything that you've learned when you were this tall, this is why I'm pro. Take your kids to church, like, a lot now. It stays with me. Everything that I learned came back, and I attributed that to the grace of God, number one. The grace that my parents showed me, it's all tied together.

And so it hit me a little bit different. So, yeah, it was a blessing. And to be with these guys and being able to speak and throw some, you know, sometimes weird stuff out there to discuss, it's good because nothing's too weird when you want to discuss it about how you feel or why, you know, because of whatever passed. So it was a blessing. Thank you.

Morning, everybody. Happy Sabbath. Sabbath. So this whole series was really interesting. I really enjoyed how Paul throughout Galatians does talk about love.

But he was. He was firm in all of that. Like, he wasn't just, oh, yeah, cool, go, go do whatever. You guys are good. It was like, no, come on, guys, let's all get together, let's talk about it, and then let's go and live the life that Jesus told us to go and live because we received his grace.

And I think that was a very iron sharpens iron kind of moment, you know? And to me, what I get out of that is if you're seeing your brothers, your sisters in church, and they're struggling a little bit, go out, show all that love to them, too, and don't let it stop there. Like, let's go and show all of that love into the communities, whether that be doing community service or services in the parks, just getting people into the church to get them to know the love of God so that ultimately we can see them again.

That was really what I got out of it. Just a lot of, hey, let's go and share with everybody we can the love that Jesus showed us so we can see him again. Thank you, Kayden. All right, let's give a hand to the Tuesday night men's group. Go ahead.

All right, I'd like to call up on the Wednesday night women's prayer ministry group to come on up. So this is our third group, and for our third week, we focus on Galatians 3, 15, 29. We talked about how faith alone and also justification, but ultimately the law points to where it actually points to Jesus, of all things. How do we love Jesus with everything? How do we love our neighbor as ourselves?

Is there a point where maybe you felt like also you fell short of the, of your. Of what we consider standards, and yet God loves you and may we also lean into his grace? All right, ladies, who would like to go first?

Hello, everyone. Happy Sabbath. I want to share about this series. I do love small groups. You a lot of times coming to our services.

There's wonderful sermons, but we don't get to have discussions with it. Especially, you know, me, I stay up here, I do prayer afterwards, and everybody's gone when I'm done. We don't really have discussions after our sermons, which I really feel are so enriching. But in the small group, you have the lesson and then you can discuss what did you feel out of this? What touched you about this?

What seemed the most important thing or what really touched your heart with this week's sermon? And that, to me, is very special. It's very special, and particularly about grace. There's just so many golden nuggets of each of the lessons, But I think for me, two of them were very important. Just knowing that we have to remember that we were crucified with Christ.

Our sins are with Christ on the cross, and we don't have to carry those. We don't have to carry those with him. And we have Christ living in our hearts everywhere we go. And we have to remember that because we are human and we do fall and we do trip sometimes and say, why did I do that? And, you know, it's so fun with my kids.

You know, we would always say, what would Jesus do if they didn't know what to do? Well, what would Jesus do? Well, my friend, he did this and he made me so upset. But what would Jesus do if they did that? And, you know, it's you know, my kids are in their 20s now, so to hear those things come back and say, you know, my friend, they're having trouble and they want to know if they should go out to, to this or get back at somebody, because they did that.

But I told them, hey, just take it easy, take a breath, let's pray about it. And it just brings tears to my eyes because sometimes I think my kids, they're out there, they're doing their own thing, but they do remember. And so these small groups, it brings us just a little reminder and we take it home to each of our families and we can share the lessons and just encourage one another. Encourage one another because, you know, not every day is super special. Not every day do you say, like, wow, epiphany.

No, not every day. But we do have those times also. We do have those moments. And I just want to say thank you to all these ladies for being in this study because like the last lesson, we share each other's burdens. You know, every person in their life goes through the roller coaster of ups and downs.

And you know, sometimes you're really good, sometimes you're a okay, everything is working out. And then other times, not so much. And you can feel alone during those times. But when you're in a small group, you get to pray for each other. You don't have to feel all alone.

And you can encourage one another in the word and encourage one another with your prayers and know that, you know, God is still working on our behalf whether we feel it or not at those moments. And I just really appreciate every one of these ladies and encourage anyone who hasn't joined a small group to please do so. Thank you. Anybody else like to share?

Well, I wanted to share about the what in our study. There is one where the writings is talking about the attributes of what is of the flesh and what is of the Spirit. And I just, I was reading it and it was talking about too about the warnings that was being put out and the fact that a lot of people were trying to incorporate under the law, not under the law and types of these types of things. But when I really dove deep and started looking into it, I was, I was pondering saying, you know what? I'm noticing that what these people were doing is they're throwing shade on how they really are growing in Christ or not growing in Christ based on, you know, the being under the law to predict, you know, are they circumcised, not circumcised, all these types of things.

And they Were measuring their, or questioning their walk with God based on these types of things versus what gives them what I call it the ick, you know, so before the Lord drew closer to me, there are certain things that I didn't find, you know, that didn't bother me. And the more I draw closer to the Lord, the more I'm not interested in doing things that would quote, unquote, satisfy the flesh versus the things that I just draw more to satisfy. Things that please God are the Spirit of the Lord. These, these, these are things that I hunger after. And that is what I gotta look and say as you're hungering and thirsting after the things of God and then it, it radiates out of you.

And instead of giving shade on, on your walk and how you are going with Christ, are we drawing more closer to the things. Are, you know, wanting things of the flesh? Has that actually changed in your spiritual walk where you're, ugh, I don't care for that anymore. And now we're going more towards the things of God. And I like how Paul, we wrote it out.

These are the things of the flesh. And I don't desire these things. I desire the things of the flesh. I'm sorry, the things of the Spirit and not the things of the flesh. And it helps me, it really helped me in that study to see we gotta measure ourselves of how we're drawing nearer and closer to God.

And that's the thing that I really liked about this study and heeding to the warnings that Galatians was pointing out about how we keep trying to use other measures of how we are drawing close to God. Are we changing? Do we want more things of God? Are we hungry more? Are we abandoning more things of the flesh?

And as we're doing that as, as our behaviors and things are changing and reflecting more in Christ. And that's one thing that I liked when I was studying this. And we were able to communicate with each other and how we, you know, are looking at. Yes, praise God. I can actually thank the Lord that I am growing in him.

We've all fallen short of the glory of God. We, you know, we're not perfect. And I'm just thankful that there is a guideline set out on what we are hungering and thirsting for. And it was a good study for us to get to know that, that we can look at the things that even though we fall short, it's nothing that I'm desiring. You know, I know that I still growing more in Christ and not throwing shade on, oh, you're not doing this, that or the other.

But am I growing in Christ? Am I? You know, and I know the more I draw near to him, he'll draw near to me. The more I grow in the spirit of the. Of the Lord and the.

In the spirit. I just. Just thankful for the Bible studies that we have, that we can just pause and really dive deep, dive deep in the Word and learn these things and dissect these types of things and come to these types of realizations for our. Our Christian walk to get stronger in Christ, to get us away from the weakness and grow more in Him. And I'm just thankful for that.

And that's why I'm glad that we have these Bible studies to come together to learn off of each other that way. Thank you. Anybody else briefly want to share? You're good. All right.

Also, when do you all meet?

We meet every second and fourth Wednesday of the month. Okay, Right back there. Please join us. Yeah. What time?

7:00pm at 7:00pm all right. Thank you, ladies. Oh, in the room behind us? Yes, the mother's room behind us. Yeah, we meet here in the back room back here.

The men's meet in the fellowship hall. There's a small little room to study just left of the fellowship hall. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Let's give the ladies a hand.

Well, I believe we have a little bit of a seventh inning stretch. We're gonna have a quick hymn, so I'd like to invite the praise team. For those who are gonna sing to Come on up, I'd like to call up Friday night's group. Come on up. Unfortunately, the long weekend has hit us hard.

So none of us, unfortunately, are away. So it's just Evelyn, Susannah and I.

The fourth week, we talked about the fact that we are adopted into God's family. We are brothers and sisters. God is our father. What does it mean then, to live as a house? Sure, if you have siblings, you know what that's like.

Parents. Ultimately, though, maybe you're searching, maybe you don't have a home. You have a home here at Downing Church. Okay. Who would like.

Anybody? Would you like to share?

I think we're all afraid of the Micah. I think one thing that stood out for me was one of the lessons that says we're all heirs of heaven. And I know traditionally for Hispanic family, it's the older son that gets all the inheritance. And reading that, it doesn't matter what birth order I am, I will be with him. I am his heir.

I am not an orphan wandering the World, I belong to him because of his grace. Nothing I can do. And I do want to encourage everyone to take part in small groups. Besides learning and discussing. You get to make connections that you wouldn't ordinarily make or find out things.

I'm like, oh, I didn't know. So and so, like the same things I did. Because we just come to church, say happy Sabbath, and we go back. It gives us community. And community is what God personally, that's why he left churches behind, because I might need you to pick me up.

And I'll be willing to pick you up when you need that.

How long have we been doing small groups here at Downey Church? Since 2000.

Okay. Late 90s. So we've been going on 25, 30ish years here. So it's part of our DNA. We don't plan to stop, by the way.

But, no, I've been very fortunate. I think what you said as well, although maybe I disagree because I'm the oldest. I resent that. I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. No, I think that this has been.

This has been, for me, this has been actually one of the hardest series. To be honest, I struggle with this series, not just with preaching, but like Bill said, it's like Paul is so intent on what he is trying to say is that don't try to add what already has been great and what has been given to us. And so I think, for me, though, and I'll talk about a little bit in at the end, is that we're part of a community. And like you said, we're here to uplift, we're here to pull up, and we're there for each other. So that was my big takeaway out of this whole series.

Okay, thank you. All right, I'd like to call up our last group, our Sabbath afternoon group, led by Mario and Edwin. Lilia, Week five, we talked about, how does this all work? I mean, well, if we're not saved under the law, then should we do anything good? Do we have to?

This and that. And ultimately our love for God, an outpouring of that is we truly do want to have joy. We do want to have love. We want to have goodness. We want to be patient, we want to be kind sometimes as well.

I think our culture tries to find our worth in action. Ultimately, it comes out of love. All right, well, I think this is our biggest group, so please don't go all at once. But who'd like to jump forward? I know.

How'd y' all Meet in there. Happy Sabbath to everyone. I just want to encourage everyone to join a small group. If you haven't done it. It's been a true blessing where many of us come together and we are like one mind.

A lot of people think the same way and think, oh, I think that way, too. So draws us closer and we pray for one another. And so I highly encourage anybody who hasn't joined a group to go ahead and do so. It's been a true blessing for me and for my family. So I highly encourage anyone that hasn't done it to do it.

Thank you. Anybody else?

So, Grace, Good afternoon. It made me think about many different things. Some of them have already been mentioned. You know, the two pathways of the flesh and the fruit. And I also thought about creation, God's creation.

God created all things, and he created us all. And every human being in this planet is created by God and deserves grace. But it's a choice, right? We have to choose to accept it. And it's a free gift, which was created way back in heaven, before this world came to existence.

And so when I looked at this picture here that's on the front cover of our book, it shows a man walking across. And to me, what I see here is the entrance to heaven, to paradise, which is a choice. And so we. We're getting pulled one way, we're getting pulled by the flesh, and the other way, we get pulled by God, right? And the Holy Spirit and Jesus and his Word.

And so we want to remember that we have a choice. It's a free gift. There's nothing that we have to do. This gift has been given to us from the beginning. And so I just invite everyone here to once again to continue developing those relationships with each other, whether it's in a small group, whether it's outside of a group, outside.

You know, as I mentioned before, Pilar and I love. We look forward to our Monday walks because it's another opportunity to continue sharing God's word and building and developing our life as Christian women. And so find that place in your life where you can build and connect with people. We've made new friends. We have this family here who's been with us in a short time, but we've learned from them, and we continue to grow.

So Grace is open to all. So take, make a choice and choose to accept it. Thank you.

Anybody else? Edwin? Thank you. Oh, try. We are happy to be here, and this is a privilege to stay with my brothers and sisters.

And sometimes we share our feelings when we read in The Bible. But this year we have the privilege to have new friends who are coming with us. I come to give the welcome to our Gloria and Gustavo Aragon, Miguel and Patricia Moreno and Abel and his parents, Francisco and Consuelo. They are there. They are part now our group.

And I read here in Galatas, they say neither no Greek nor gentile. Gentile, no Greek. Yeah. And we are coming from different countries. Nicaragua, Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba.

God is good with us. And if we are. The Bible said Galatas. If we are Sisomo de Cristo. I'm sorry.

If we are from Christ. Somos hijo de Abraham. We are sons of Abraham and springs hair of the promise. Amen. Abraham received the promise of a new life.

And if we believe in Jesus, we receive the same promise. God bless you. Go ahead. Go ahead.

I wasn't gonna. I wasn't gonna say anything. But the.

Quite simply, I honestly think that just like salvation was a free gift, that the Lord had made provisions since the beginning that was a plan since beginning before creation. Like it was what they said earlier. I honestly think grace was part of that. The fact that I think grace was extended to us through the cross, you know, not just beforehand, you know, through the law, but also freeing us from the law. I think you understand what I mean by that, because it's like we have a freedom that we have now that we can say we have because of what the Lord did on the cross, that we are now free from the law, now having far more grace than we had before.

I think you know what I mean by that. I think grace and freedom kind of go together because you're like walking under the umbrella of God. But it's hard to explain, but I think my opinion is. I think grace was a big part of what the Lord did on the cross for us. I believe it was a provision.

Thank you.

For me, the takeaway. And I'm going to connect to two verses from the book of Romans and then go on to Galatians. And this passage resonates with me. This is Romans 8:38. For I am persuaded that neither death nor.

Nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. And this passage out of the book of Galatians is one that moves me. Many years ago, I've shared this story. Beloved Ray R. Fernandez, talented musician who taught Bill how to play the guitar lead rhythm and bass.

I went to visit him when he was in hospice and he shared he wanted. I asked him, what could I do for you, Ray? He asked me to read this verse. And this verse is Romans correction. Galatians 2:20, which says, I am crucified with Christ.

Nevertheless I live yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Big takeaway for me. Here is not I, but Christ.

So that is my impression to share with you this morning. The celebration Sabbath 25 years, you said maybe a few more. Did Paul really say. You foolish Galatians.

We invite you also if you ever want to join us for our groups or this group. It's everyone's group. We meet usually every Sabbath afternoon, Fellowship hall, Tuish. If you want to join us. Before that, there is food.

We welcome you. Thank you and God bless you.

Thank you.

The last week we spoke primarily about doing good to others. And if somebody is struggling, how do we help them? Do we go and tell them how they're doing wrong? We reach out to them and I think the best way, as well as found in Matthew 18, if somebody is struggling, you see, check on them, ask them how are they doing, or maybe if there's somebody. Have you ever had an argument with somebody?

I think everybody here has had an argument. How do we handle our differences? Again, go to them privately, try to work things out.

The last thing I want to leave with Galatians is this. Galatians 6:14. We've talked a lot about the fact that it's not about what we do, but who we believe. But if there's anything to boast, it is this. Galatians 6:14.

May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. May we continue to lift up and exalt Jesus. May our lives be a reflection of Jesus. May you come to know Jesus more and more and desire to share others, what you have learned, what you've experienced, that they too may have an opportunity to come to faith and join us here at the Downey Church. Father in heaven, it's been quite a journey in the last six weeks.

As we move forward, Lord, help us to take these lessons, lead and guide us, convict us. Help us to see where you're leading. And Lord, give us opportunity to minister and to be a blessing to others. In Jesus name. Everybody said amen, grace and peace.