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Welcome to Mariners Church Weekend Message Podcast, inspiring people to follow Jesus and fearlessly change the world. Discover your purpose and get connected by visiting MarinersChurch.org or click the link in the show notes.

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If we haven't met, my name is Eric. I'm so honored that you are with us today, and then we're gonna get to study the scripture together. I'm also. I'm so proud of our church and so grateful for what God has been doing over the last several weeks. Last weekend in this service and all of our services and all of our congregations, we saw 358 people confess faith in Jesus, stand and place their faith in him, which is beautiful. And I know some of you, that that was you, that was your story. Last weekend is the first time that you place your faith, your trust in Jesus to be your Savior. We're so proud of you. We're excited to walk with you. What you did is not the end of your journey with Christ. It's the beginning. It's the start of a lifelong relationship with him that goes all the way into eternity. And we're honored to walk with you and to help you and to be there for you and so thankful, so thankful that you are a part. I'm also thankful that as a church, you are leaning into some of the big topics that we've put on the table. We started week one, masculinity, last week, all the world religions and how Jesus is different. We'll talk about therapy, and you'll see how it relates to all of us in a couple of moments. But next week, I want to echo what Jared said to have your kids in the kids ministry, because we're going to talk about the sexual ethic of the Christian faith, which is honestly one of the biggest struggles that people who don't believe the Christian faith will wrestle with about the sexual ethic that we believe the scripture teaches. So next week's the Sex Talk. And we aren't the best as a church of publicizing when we talk about sex. Two years ago, our high school pastor, Chris, when I did a message about sex, he sent out. It was during the series on the Table. He sent an email to all the parents in the church of high school students. And I got it because I'm a parent of a high school student. And it said, join us next week for sex on the Table. And I got the email and I got my phone. I called Chris, our high school pastor, and he answered like, bro, bro, bro. Did you just send. Did you just send. Hit send on that email. Did that go to all the parents? He said, yeah. I said, dude, go to your computer right now and pull up the email. I want you to read it to me. He reads it to me, and he's so pure. He doesn't see anything wrong with what he sent. So then I feel guilty, like something's wrong with me. For honestly, Chris is. We have the best high school pastor. He's awesome. So I'm really thankful. Yes, he's amazing. Several years ago, actually, 20 years ago, I was pastoring in Miami, and I was burdened for the number of people that I heard, not only in our church but in our community who were wrestling with depression, anxiety. There were people who didn't know where to turn for counsel in their marriages or in parenting. And I really felt like God planned, placed this on my heart to launch a counseling center. So I recruited the head of the psychology department at a Christian university in South Florida to leave her position to come and launch a counseling center. She recruited a team of therapists that would work for her. I raised the money, and then we designed this facility that became the counseling center that we launched. We launched this counseling center. I remember as we were designing the facility, one of the main questions was, where's the entrance going to be? Because there's a stigma. This is 20 years ago. There was a stigma around counseling where some didn't want to go because they were afraid somebody would see them and feel as if they were like, why is he there? Why is she there? And so that was a major discussion. How do we help people go into the counseling center and feel as if they can go and get in as quickly as they can? That was a barrier for entry that we identified. We wanted to lower that barrier for entry. And then as a pastor, I began to feel the burden to communicate to our people, listen, it's okay to not be okay. In fact, one of the messages of the Christian faith is that none of us are okay, that all of us are in need of God's grace. In fact, you became a Christian when you realized you needed his grace. And you grow as a Christian when you need his grace and you rely on other people to help you, and you rely on the mercy of Jesus to sustain you, and it's okay to not be okay. And it was an important message to help people understand. Well, that was 20 years ago, and that's no longer the reality of our cultural context. Going to counseling or seeing a therapist is no longer seen as something people are ashamed of. In fact, some would say it's become a badge of honor. You will often hear people say at a dinner party or some environment, well, my therapist says, well, I've been talking to my therapist about this very thing, which is great that it's no longer a stigma associated to it. But some have said it's now become a badge of honor, essentially saying, I'm willing to do the work for development or I have the resources to pay for a therapist. We now live in what many have called a therapeutic culture. And the term therapeutic culture is often defined by lots of access to content about anxiety, depression and other struggles, people self diagnosing themselves on social media and then pronouncing the diagnosis over themselves that they share with the world. And then people using therapeutic language who are untrained in therapy and in counseling and psychology and using that in everyday language. So we're no longer where we were 20 years ago when we had to tell people it's okay to not be okay. We're living in currently, what's called a therapeutic culture. In the article How Anxiety Became Content, the author shares how TikTok the hashtag trauma. All videos related to trauma have been viewed over 6 billion times, and there's currently more than 5,500 podcasts with trauma in the title. The author shares this we may have overcorrected from an era when mental health was shameful to talk about to an era when vulnerable people surround themselves with people conversations and media about anxiety and depression. Watching and listening to so much anxiety content, which transforms a medical diagnosis into a kind of popular media category, might be contributing to our national anxiety crisis. The Verge published a series of articles about people self diagnosing themselves on TikTok. And they claim that they do so often in hopes of finding an identity, of having something that they say they are I am this or I have this. Dr. Andrea Gynenhagen is a child psychologist. I'm sorry, a child psychiatrist. And she stated, I am glad those communities exist, but when people misdiagnose themselves, it becomes a problem. I've had people cry in my office because I told them that they did not have the diagnosis that they think they have. She's saying that people self diagnose on social media and then they go into her office and she says, I'm sorry, from a clinical standpoint, that's not actually what you have. And the reason they're upset is because they were claiming to have that as part of their identity. Esther Perel is a psychotherapist who specializes in relationships and sexuality. She's renowned and she was in Vanity Fair with a long interview, and she expresses a concern with our current therapeutic culture. She's a licensed therapist expressing concern with therapeutic culture. She says there is such an emphasis on the self care aspect of it that is actually making us more isolated and more alone because the focus is just on the self. About therapy speak, which she says used to be called psychobabble, where amateurs or people who are not trained in the discipline are using language that they hear other people use. And she says about therapy speak, you have a different opinion, and I bring in a term that makes it impossible for you to even enter into a conversation with me. I labeling enables me not to have to deal with you. Here's what she says is happening. There's someone that you don't want a relationship with any longer, and all you have to do is say, well, that person is this, or I think that person is this, and then you were justified to quote, unquote, cancel the person. So labeling is making us more isolated. And labeling, according to her, is also people finding a sense of here's what I have and here's who I am. And let me just pause for a moment and remind us who are Christians. You already have the best label, the greatest identity there is, because you have been made the son or the daughter of God. And there's no better identity than that, no better label. But labeling is currently common in our current therapeutic culture, and there's different labels that people take, like anxiety or trauma, and anxiety and trauma are real. But there's psychologists who are expressing concern that these have just become labels that people take. So about the label of anxiety, Darby Saxby is a clinical psychologist at usc, and she stated this. I worry that for some people, anxiety became an identity marker that makes people feel special and unique. That's a big problem because anxiety as an identity gives people a fixed mindset, telling them that this is who they are and they will be in the future. About the label of trauma, another word we often hear used in our culture, Will Self wrote a Long form article in Harper's Magazine chronicling the expansion and the redefinition of the word trauma. Essentially saying trauma used to be a narrowly defined word, and like many words in our culture, it's grown and becomes all of these things that are put in the bucket of trauma. He concluded many thousands of people are becoming convinced that perfectly ordinary reactions to such commonplace problems as overbearing bosses or untrustworthy friends are in fact reflex responses seared into their psyches by the white heat of trauma. He's not the only one who thinks we've overused the term trauma. George Bonineo is the chair of the Psychology department at Columbia University. He wrote the book the End of Trauma. He agrees that the word is overused, and he gives a very strong assessment. He says people don't seem to want to let go of the idea that everybody's traumatized. So if you've lived through the LA fires and you've lost everything, you have experienced trauma. If your boss says you need to come to work on time, that's not trauma. That's not trauma. That's called accountability. There's a difference. And my concern as a pastor is that I pastor people who live through trauma, some who've lived through abuse. And when the words trauma become this massive junk drawer where everything gets thrown in, we actually cheapen the experience of those who've experienced real trauma. And we dishonor them and their stories. And the same with abuse. When abuse gets broadened so much, those who've experienced, and some of you have the deep betrayal and pain of abuse. We dishonor those who've gone through abuse when we declare everything to be abuse. So all believe that who I've quoted from that anxiety, trauma, mental health challenges are real. They're just saying we are living through an overcorrection. And while at one point we needed to tell people it's okay to not be okay, which I believe we still need to tell people it's okay to not be okay. Some of you need to hear it's okay. I'm so glad you're here that you realize you're not okay and that Jesus wants to overwhelm you with his mercy and his grace. It's okay to not be okay. Some need to hear that. But some need to hear okay to be okay. You don't have to find something deep within your soul that you bring to the surface to give you an identity. It's okay to be okay. Okay, so those are therapists and licensed counselors and researchers writing about therapeutic culture. But what about therapy itself? We've also seen this massive uptick. And then those who are going to therapy is all therapy good. Abigail Shire is a researcher who lives in la and she last year released the book Bad Therapy. She insists no that not all therapy is good. And she says there is such a thing as bad therapy. She chronicles bad therapy as therapy that makes existing symptoms worse and introduces new symptoms. She calls bad therapy the type of therapy that labels normal, everyday sadness that all of us deal with, that labels that as depression and normal everyday worry as anxiety. She believes that anxiety and depression and trauma, these are real disorders and sometimes require medication and oftentimes therapeutic intervention. But because we've normalized them so much, she believes that we've projected them onto people who don't actually have them. Her major concern are the children and adolescents, because she says, hey, adults, you have enough life experience, enough mental faculties that you can discard some advice and keep some advice. But children don't have that ability. They're very vulnerable. She actually points to the drug program DARE as an example. Do you remember DARE school assemblies? This is your brain on. This is your brain. It's eggs in a pan, not frying. This is your brain on drugs, and they're all frying. Remember that? Research says those weren't effective. In fact, some research says they actually introduced drugs to kids who didn't know of certain drugs, which was true in my school. I mean, I remember being in those DARE programs and being next to some buddies who were like, dang, bro, I didn't even know they had that. We have to try that. And so she compares the current therapeutic. Therapeutic culture, especially towards adolescents and. And children, as. Are we doing the same thing? Are we introducing struggles that people did not even realize? She had her most strongest critique against therapy today is related to the rising anxiety and depression rates among teenagers. And she says, there's one piece of research that we all knew continually that would help the mental health of children and teenagers, and it was get your kids off of the phone and off of social media and help them play with other kids. We all knew that, and yet many therapists said nothing about it. They just continued to take the recurring revenue from parents who let their kids be on social media when they were 10 years old, and there were psychological organizations who did nothing about it. As you can tell, I'm a little bit passionate about this one. She wrote, none of the psychological organizations, not the American Psychiatric association, the American Psychological association, or the American School Counselor association, issued any call to arms on one item we knew was impacting mental health among children and teenagers. Abigail Shire is not alone in her questioning of the current effectiveness of all therapy. A group of psychologists published this scholarly article. Like many scholarly articles, it's a very long title. More treatment but no less depression. The treatment prevalence paradox, which they say this is rare. Typically when you identify an ailment in a culture such as breast cancer and you design treatments for it, you see the ailment go down. But that's not happened at all with Anxiety and depression. And we have 40 years of history. Now. Treatments for depression have improved and their availability has markedly increased since the 1980s. Mysteriously, the general population prevalence of depression has not decreased. They are not alone. That's a group of psychologists. The Atlantic published an article about a research study with 1000 students in Australia. Half of the students were put into a group that received therapeutic instruction in school. Now, this was not from licensed therapists, but therapeutic instruction via educators. And the other half of the students received no such instruction. At the end of the study, the students who received therapeutic instruction, they had worse relationship with their parents and. And more anxiety and more depression. Okay, Eric, wait a second. Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is not going how I thought this sermon would go. Are you saying that there is bad therapy? Are you against therapy? If you know me personally, some of you, this is your first time you've ever met me. You're like, who is this guy? If you know me personally, you would know I'm not against therapy at all. My wife has her master's in mental health counseling. I've been to therapy. I've recommended people to therapy. I launched a counseling center. But is there such a thing as bad therapy? Yes. And there's also bad preaching and there's bad counsel. And who you listen to matters. The verse I want to drill into our hearts and our minds is Proverbs 13, verse 20. This is God's word. Will you read this with me aloud? The one who walks with the wise will become wise, but a companion of fools will suffer harm. You want to become wise? You must walk with the wise. If you listen to foolish counsel, you will become foolish. And so walk with the wise. You want to be wise about who you walk with. When I was 18 years old, I got my first pickup truck. I bought paid cash for a 1995 Nissan pickup truck, and I drove it for 18 years. The reason I did is because I read a financial management book by Larry Burkett and he said, pay cash for a car, drive it till it dies, and then dust it off and drive it some more. And I did that. I had the truck for 18 years since I adopted it as a baby. And I kept it all the way through high school graduation of that kid of my truck. 18 years. Now, when you have a vehicle for 18 years, a bunch of things start to break. The odometer completely stopped working and the fuel gauge works. So some of the time I learned that there is a difference between no gauge and a gauge that works some of the time. And a gauge that works Some of the time is way worse than no gauge at all. You understand the illustration. The odometer never lied to me. I knew it wasn't working. I never relied on the odometer to tell me when I needed to get the oil changed. I just calculated the number of months that. That I had been driving the fuel gauge. It sometimes told me the truth and sometimes lied to me. And that is the most dangerous. Truth and error mixed together is the most dangerous kinds of counsel. No. So if you're a therapist, you're like, oh, my gosh, I feel like he's going after my discipline in the sermon. Let me go after my own discipline. Let me go after preaching for a moment. No preaching is better than preaching that is mixed with error and truth all combined. Let me talk about bad preaching. Some of you who have had steady diets of bad preaching. I'm not referring to the style of the preacher, how long the preacher speaks for, what kind of version from the Bible the preacher teaches from. I'm referring to the content of the message preaching that would tell people things like this. You have to earn God's favor. It's on you to get God to love you. And the message of that is ruinous for somebody's life. It's damning for somebody's life because someone lays in bed at night wondering if they've done enough good to get the God of the universe to love them. Wonder if they've done enough for dad, Father, God to actually care for them. They spend their whole life on this constant striving of a. Of a. I lost the word. Treadmill. Treadmill. That's the word. They are on a spiritual treadmill. Not going anywhere. That kind of preaching is so ruinous for someone because it's the opposite of the truth. The truth is that God has already set his affection and mercy on you. And he loved you so much that God the Son entered this world and placed Himself on the cross to take away all of your sin and your shame. And. And he invites you just to rest in him because he declared as he died for you, it is finished. And if you trust him, you are enough before God. Not because of you, but because of what Jesus has done for you. And you can rest in the mercy and the grace of Jesus. That's what your soul needs to hear. But preaching that gives you the sense that you can actually, in your merit, qualify yourself before God, that is horrible bad preaching. And when it comes to therapy and friends and counsel, you see online, bad wisdom. Wisdom from this world is hurtful. And harmful to you. He who walks with the wise grows wise. A companion of fools suffers harm. And when you sit down and listen to a therapist, you are listening to someone who's really influencing your life in a major way. In my study for the sermon, I read an early book from Sigmund Freud that he wrote in the 1920s called the Question of Lay Analysis. He was writing to therapists and counselors. He wanted this movement to grow, and it did. He was highly successful, Freud was, in accomplishing his vision of a community of therapists. But he told the therapist, you are gonna make a bigger impact on the person you meet with than their rabbi, their priest, or their pastor, because you're gonna sit across from that person with great frequency in a one on one environment. And so what someone shares with you impacts you so significantly. He who walks with the wise grows wise. On this week's if I Had More Time podcast, I sit down with Dr. John Townsend, who's in our church and he's trained in both theology and psychology. We talk briefly about the three different approaches, the three broad approaches to therapy. There is one approach that is a science based approach and therapists who have the science based approach. They lead with modalities and approaches to the psyche that were developed by scholars such as Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and B.F. skinner and Aaron Beck. There's the science approach to therapy. There's a second approach called the scriptural approach. And the science approach values the science only. The scriptural approach values the scripture only. And if you would meet with a therapist who is in that approach, they would only counsel from the Bible. They would only use Scripture to answer questions that you have or to give you a direction. And then there's a third approach, a third bucket of therapists and counselors, and it's often called the integrated approach that integrates both science and Scripture, yet holds Scripture as the ultimate authority. And just to own where I am coming from, I believe in the integrated approach. Now, some would say, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're saying we need more than the Scripture. Why do you want to integrate the sciences? I have a high regard for the sciences because I have a high regard for God's general revelation. God has chosen to reveal himself through creation, but also through our conscience. He has placed his image on humanity. And a psychologist who studies general revelation, who studies the psyche. Even if the psychologist doesn't give credit to God for the the truth he discovers. I agree with Augustine, the early church father, who says all truth is God's truth. And so I hold a high view to the sciences, yet I hold a higher view of the Scripture. And I would want you, when you receive counsel from someone, to receive counsel from someone who learns from the sciences, yet believes that God's truth, his scripture, his special revelation, or as John Townsend says, psychology must bend the need of Scripture. That scripture should be your ultimate authority. And so, Eric, wait a second. Are you saying that I should only listen to a Christian therapist? You're not saying I should only go to a Christian doctor? Yes, A doctor treats your body. You should go to the best doctor you can. A therapist, to quote Sigmund Freud, is providing a talking medication or a talking cure. And this is the influence of your mind. And you need to be very wise about who you let influence your mind. So let me give you three differences between wise counsel and unwise counsel. This applies not only to therapy, but to friends, to what you choose to watch on social media, to whatever it is influences you. Because if you want to be wise, you have to walk with the wise. Here's number one. Unwise counsel focuses only on feelings. Wise counsel applies truth to those feelings. This is one of the big contentions that Abigail Shire makes in her book Bad Therapy. She says that there's an over obsession in our current context with feelings. So much so that some educators, even in childhood education, will open their classes with this question, what is everybody sad about today? And people start to share what makes them sad. We're learning that does not make us really healthy. And Gene Twang, who teaches at San Diego State University, wrote, maybe everybody thinking about how anxious or hurt they are might not be the best idea. So are you saying, Eric, that we don't have feelings? No, absolutely we have feelings. You have feelings because God created you as an emotional person. Of course you have feelings. But we want to not only understand why we what we are feeling, we want to understand why we are feeling. So something so wise therapy not only validates your feelings. Yes, I know you feel that way, but questions the beliefs beneath the surface that lead to those feelings and challenges untrue beliefs that are beneath the surface. We see this example in the psalmist, Psalm chapter 42, verse 11. The Psalmist says, why my soul are you so dejected? Depressed? So if you've wondered, can a Christian be depressed? Absolutely. A Christian can live with depression. The psalmist did. Essentially, if you read Psalm 42, it's like clinical depression. He can't eat, he can't sleep, and he's asking himself, why my soul are you so dejected? Why Are you in such turmoil? But notice he asks, why is he feeling this way? And then he gets beneath the surface and. And no matter what the answer is, he challenges himself. Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him, my Savior and my God. So wise therapy gets beneath the surface of the feelings and challenges those feelings with the truth of who God is. Number two, Unwise counsel sets you as the authority. Wise counsel submits to God as the authority. So unwise counsel in our day, this is so prevalent. This is in movies. This is from friends. This is common advice all over the place. Very common for someone to say, hey, just follow your heart. It's very cruel. Counsel. Follow your heart is actually cruel because my heart will take me down a path of destruction. Augustine, the early church father, said it this way, what am I without you, God, but a guide to my own downfall? If I follow my heart, it will sometimes take me places I don't really want to go. Unless my heart is constantly being renewed and changed by the grace and truth of Jesus, my heart can take me down really bad places. Why? Well, Jeremiah, chapter 17, verse 9. The Scripture says the heart is more deceitful than anything else. It's incurable. Who can understand it? One of the reasons I love spending time with our care and recovery groups here at the church is they graciously remind me and remind each other. When we followed our hearts, we got into a really bad spot. But God is so good to us and so kind to us that he now invites us to follow Him. You don't have to live with the pressure of you being the authority of your life. Jesus entered this world and he rescued, pulled you to himself. If you are his and he now insists on being the authority of your life, you don't have to live with the burden of following your heart. You get to follow your Savior, Jesus, who always has your best in his heart for you because he cares for you, loves you and shepherds you. You don't have to follow yourself. You get to follow your Savior, Jesus. And it's a much better way to live. A much better way. So practically, if somebody counsels you, a friend, a preacher, a therapist, anyone, to go with your own authority, and it violates the authority of the Scripture. That is unwise counsel. Unwise counsel. Number three, Unwise counsel over comforts or over challenges. Wise counsel provides a healthy balance of comfort and challenge. There are moments in your life where you will need to be comforted, where I need to be comforted. And there are moments in your life where you need to be challenged. And Jesus is our perfect one because he knows the moments we need to be comforted. And he's the Father of all compassion and the God of all comfort. And he overwhelms us with his tender mercy and his tender grace in those moments. But he also knows when we need to be challenged and nudged. And he challenges us and he sanctifies us, and he grows us and matures us. But many say we are living in a time in which one of the chief values or the prime values that people will hear is, hey, just be sure you're in an environment where you, quote, unquote, feel safe. Well, there are times where you need to feel safe. If you are in an abusive relationship, if you are being taken advantage of, you must get in a safe place. But there are moments in your life where you need to be challenged. And one of the ways you grow is to step out of your comfort zone. One of the ways you grow and develop is to actually be overwhelmed in a healthy way that causes you to learn new things and attempt new things and take risk. If you have someone who only values you being safe, your growth will be stifled. If you have someone who constantly speaks to you as if you will be a perpetual victim, your growth will be stifled. Now, some of you are victims. In fact, in a room this size, there are likely a lot of people who've been victimized in here. All of us have been hurt. All of us have been betrayed. But for some, much deeper, much deeper hurt. Some of you have lived through sexual abuse. Some of you have lived through trauma. Some of you have been abandoned. Deep, deep pain. And you need to be comforted. And you have a savior, Jesus, who runs to the brokenhearted, and he cares deeply for you. But even those who have lived through that level of desperate pain, we have a savior, Jesus, the Christ, who not only is tender and compassionate towards us, who placed himself on a cross to remove our sin and our shame, but. But on the third day, walked out of the tomb and is alive. He's the victorious one. And because he's the victorious one, his sons and daughters don't have to live as perpetual victims. You can be a victor because Jesus is the victorious one. He's the victorious one. Jesus is the wonderful counselor in scripture. He's the counselor that you ultimately need. And he surrounds you with his community of people who will also care for you and provide help to you. One of the passages in scripture that I love is about a group of people who tested every message they heard to see if it was true to see how it would line up under the authority of Scripture, which is really what I want for you, because I want you to walk with the wise. So you are wise. And you're gonna hear a lot of messages from pastors, from therapists, from online influencers, from friends. You're gonna hear a lot of messages. In our current cultural context, which has been called a therapeutic culture context. There's a lot of messages that are coming your way. I want you to be able to test and keep what is true. The Apostle Paul in Acts chapter 17 bragged about a group of people known as the Bereans. This is what he said. The people here in Berea Berea, they're of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, which is crazy. He's like smack talking Christians against one another. In Acts 17, it'd be like me saying, you know, the 10am Service, it's. It's more noble than the 11:30. That's what he did. I don't recommend it, but that's God's word. The people were here of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, but notice what he calls noble character. They received the word with eagerness and they examined the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. So you're a lot. There's a lot of messages coming your way. You even. Messages from a preacher receive the word with eagerness, but then test it to be sure it's true. And you keep what is true. One of the guides that we put together to help you, I'm really proud of it. It took us several months to work on it. I only worked on part of it. We worked with a team of therapists, licensed counselors, educators and scholars to put together a guide for choosing a therapist. On your way out, you'll be able to get this guide. It's just some questions that you can ask a potential therapist. And the last section is questions you can ask yourself after you meet with a therapist. It's just a tool to help you choose wisely, where you get wisdom from. Also on your way out, we have an invitation for you to join our regen groups. For those who are in a season of needing recovery, we are here to walk with you today. We have to end the way that we're going to end because of the subjects that I brought up. I mean, you sat through a sermon in which you heard words like abuse and trauma and anxiety and depression and marriage strife and parenting struggles. The wonderful counselor Jesus wants to meet you right now and care for you. For some, he'll bring comfort to you. For some, he'll bring challenge to you. But he wants to meet you right now. I'm going to ask our shepherding elders of our church to come and stand down front. We typically at the end of our service, we will say, hey, we have an elder prayer room. We're not going to have it in the back. We're going to have it down front. Today people from our prayer team are here as well. And as we worship, if you need prayer for healing, we are ready to pray for you. We want to meet you right now in the middle of your struggle, in the middle of your pain, sometimes God begins a process of healing. In a moment like this, you'll receive prayer, and it's not as if you walk out and everything is great in your life. A process of healing begins. Sometimes, though, every week this happens. Every week this happens in our elder prayer room. People will say, I went back to the doctor and this is gone. I had this struggle and it's gone. Sometimes in these moments, God chooses. I don't know why he chooses. Sometimes not other times, but sometimes he chooses to completely bring healing in this moment. So it can be physical healing, emotional healing, spiritual healing. But as we worship, they are ready to pray over you. Lord Jesus, I pray for those who are gonna be praying for your flock, your people. I pray you will guide their prayers. I pray that you will overwhelm us. You are the wonderful counselor with your grace and your truth as we worship you. In your name I pray. Amen. All right. Extend your hands, please, and let me pray a prayer of blessing over you as we go. Jesus, I pray you'd bless your sons and daughters this week that you would remind them that you are gentle and approachable and that you love them, cause your face to shine on them. I pray they will experience your mercy and your joy that this new week, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Go in peace. Have a great week.