Power of the Spirit
Download MP3If you have a Bible, I invite you to open to Acts chapter 2 or chapter 1. Sorry. Acts chapter 1 as we begin our 2nd week in our series on acts. As you're doing that, I'm just gonna kind of take inventory of who actually came back from last week, Who's not scared of our group prayer time. We lost half of our college students this morning, and, I called them out on it.
Joel Brooks:Acts chapter 1. We'll begin reading in verse 1, same text as we read last week. In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when He was taken up, after He had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom He had chosen. He presented Himself alive to them after His suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God. And while staying with them, He ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which He said, you heard from me, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the holy spirit not many days from now.
Joel Brooks:So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, it is not for you to know times or seasons that the father has fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. And when He had said these things, as they were looking on, He was lifted up, and a cloud took them out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, 2 men stood by them in white robes and said, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?
Joel Brooks:This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven. Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away. And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room where they were staying. Peter and John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James, the son of Alphaeus, and Simon, the Zealot, and Judas, the son of James. All these, with one accord, were devoting themselves to prayer.
Joel Brooks:Together with the women, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and His brothers. This is the word of the Lord. Amen. You would pray with me. Father, we pray that you would honor the very reading of your word, and that even now through your spirit, you would begin opening up hearts and minds to receive that.
Joel Brooks:Lord Jesus, we wanna hear from you in this place. We wanna look more like you as we leave this place. And so I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may Your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Amen. One of the things that I've really enjoyed, especially when my girls were younger, is coaching. Coaching soccer. I enjoy spending time with them, I enjoy actually the game, and teaching them how to have fun in the game and yet also work hard at soccer. You can learn a lot of life's lessons, through practice.
Joel Brooks:You can learn grit and hard work, and I just love instilling those things in my girls. But one of the things that I didn't think I would enjoy as much as I did was, was the time right before the game starts, when you have the huddle up, and you get to do the pep talk, the little pep talk. And, and I loved gathering all the girls together and we put our hands in there and I'd I'd look them all in the eye, and I would remind them of the things we went over and practiced, and I would tell them that I believed in them, that they were gonna do great, and and I was so excited about the game. And then I would usually say something like, and about the other team, well, never mind, I I probably shouldn't say anything, and I'd pretend to walk away. They'd be like, what?
Joel Brooks:What about the other team? And I'm like, well, I I I shouldn't have said anything. I'm sorry. You know, no, you gotta tell us about the other team. I was like, okay.
Joel Brooks:I didn't wanna say this, but do y'all like puppies? And I'd say, oh, yeah. We we love puppies. And we're just talking about puppies. And I was like, that team hates puppies.
Joel Brooks:They hate puppies. They hate kittens. They hate flowers. They hate the sunshine. They hate everything that is good in this world.
Joel Brooks:They hate Chick Fil A. And these kids are just ready to explode at this point, and we have our Braveheart moment, and we storm the field, and the other team would not know what hit them for the first 2 or 3 minutes, because our we played like a team possessed. Now, you you can't give that pep talk too early. That's gotta be right before the whistle blows. Because if you did it 10 minutes early, then they're distracted, they're thinking of other things.
Joel Brooks:Right before the whistle blows, they wanna go out there and they wanna knock off other kids' heads. The timing was everything. Now in our time in Acts here, Jesus is essentially, he's doing the huddle. He's essentially doing the pep talk before the game is on. And he's got the disciples all gathered around and he is saying things like all authority on Heaven and Earth has been given to me.
Joel Brooks:And they're looking at the resurrected Jesus and they are ready. They are ready to get out there. But after he says all authority has been given to me, and after he gives them the great commission that they are to go to the ends of the earth, and as they do that, he will be with them, he then says wait. You guys, you need to wait. I mean, can you imagine how hard that would have been?
Joel Brooks:I mean, the resurrected Jesus was next to them. I mean, sure they had failed Jesus in the past, but they had a new resolve now that they knew He had conquered sin and death, and they were ready to get out there and to win the world. But then Jesus tells them to wait. I can't imagine Peter being the waiting type. I bet he had an especially hard time doing this, but the fact is, as willing and as able as at least the disciples thought they were, to get out there and conquer the world as willing as they were, can you really imagine them doing so just because they now had this new found courage?
Joel Brooks:I mean, was the world really gonna be changed because of Peter's leadership skills? Are the world gonna be changed because of Thomas's apologetics, or because Matthew's financial savvy? Was the world gonna be changed because of the energy of James and John and all that they brought to the table? Was the world gonna be changed because of Simon the Zealot's political connections? How was the world gonna be changed?
Joel Brooks:The world was gonna be changed, because Jesus was about to unleash His spirit upon these people and change the world. It wasn't gonna be changed because of their gifts or their new resolve. They were powerless apart from the Spirit of God. And so Jesus, He has them wait for 10 days, they could do nothing but think about how incapable they are to carry out the mission that Jesus just gave them. For 10 days all they can think of is how powerless they are to accomplish the task given.
Joel Brooks:For 10 days, they just waited for the spirit. Jesus wanted them to understand that changing the world was not something that they were going to do for Jesus. Changing the world was something that Jesus was going to do through them. Jesus was the one who was gonna give them the power to do this. Now the reason that Jesus could so emphatically tell them in verse 8, that they would be His witnesses to the uttermost ends of the earth, and He could say that so definitively, you will be my witnesses, is because He says, you will receive power.
Joel Brooks:You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. When that power comes upon them, the world will be changed. He says, that's why you have to wait. You have to wait for that power. Now, the Holy Spirit, He is the main character here in the book of Acts.
Joel Brooks:People are gonna be baptized in the Holy Spirit. They're going to speak with the Holy, after being filled with the Holy Spirit, they're gonna prophecy through the Holy Spirit, Heal people through the Holy Spirit. Be convicted of their sins through the Holy Spirit. Be given instructions by the Holy Spirit, they're gonna be called to missions by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is mentioned 59 times in the book of Acts.
Joel Brooks:He is the central character. And although this book is called the Acts of the Apostles, it could just as easily been called the acts of the Holy Spirit. And if I can just linger on that point for just a little bit longer, I'd like to, because I think it's important for us as a church to really understand the Holy Spirit's role in our midst. What these disciples lacked at this point, what they lacked concerning their ability to carry out the mission that Jesus had given them was not more knowledge. The disciples had all the knowledge that they needed.
Joel Brooks:For 3 years, Jesus had been their teacher. They essentially had a masters of divinity taught by Jesus Himself. Then after Jesus rose from the dead, they got their PhD. He began to talk to them about the kingdom of God, explain more fully who He was as the son of God. It says that He opened up their minds to understand the scriptures, so now they understood Genesis all the way through to Him, and how the entire Bible speaks to who He is.
Joel Brooks:They had the knowledge that is not what they lacked. And they didn't need any more proof as to who Jesus was or proof concerning His resurrection. They were utterly convinced Jesus was alive. And they didn't need a plan, because Jesus had already given them their plan. They were to start in Jerusalem and then they were to go to Judea and then they were to cross ethnic lines, and they were to go to Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, because God's plan has always been to make one family out of all the nations of the earth.
Joel Brooks:They had the plan. And they weren't waiting for better timing. All of Jerusalem was abuzz at this point with the resurrection of Jesus. It was a powder keg just waiting to explode. What they lacked was the fire to light the powder keg.
Joel Brooks:They lacked the Holy Spirit fire. And without this, they were powerless to change the world. The reason I wanna belabor this point is because I think we often forget this. I often forget this. I think our church can forget this.
Joel Brooks:We can think the success and failure of the mission that we have been given by God, depends on better planning, better timing, better finances, or better facilities. The mission of God depends on better programming, or better music, maybe better marketing. The sad truth is 95% of what most churches do can be done with without the Holy Spirit. It can just function completely fine and we yet we wonder why the world does not reach. But ultimately, the world's not gonna be transformed by any new hip program or by anything that we ultimately bring to the table.
Joel Brooks:We're not transformed by that. We are transformed by the Holy Spirit. In John 16, Jesus said that when the spirit comes, he will convict the world. He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. I became painfully aware of my failure in this area last week.
Joel Brooks:As a lot of you know that I struggle at times with preaching. It doesn't come that naturally to me. And last week was one of the worst times for me. And I don't know if it was just extreme fatigue or dyslexia or a combination of both, but I could not say simple words last week. Not complicated ones like you know anthropomorphism or something like that.
Joel Brooks:This was this was the word still. I could not say the word still last week. I was pronouncing it still. Alright? Like I was from Alexander City.
Joel Brooks:Alright? I asked somebody from Alexander City if I can use that, and they're like, what was wrong with that? But I kept saying the word steal, and I wanted to say still, that Jesus was still doing these things. He was still doing these things. And as I'm saying the word steal, I I know it's like, something's not right, something's wrong, that's the wrong word.
Joel Brooks:Why can't I say this word correctly? And yet I kept saying it, steal. And so I I I'm thinking as this is going on, I was like, how well, how do you spell it? Alright. You spell it s t e e l.
Joel Brooks:No. That's not. That's what I'm saying. That's not the word it. I'm thinking it's s t e a l.
Joel Brooks:I was like, that's not it either. I was like, I can't even think of how to spell this dang word that I'm mispronouncing in front of everybody. And I'm thinking all of this while I'm preaching. And so then I just get into conversation with the Lord. I'm like, why in the world do you have me get up here so I can make a fool of myself in front of all of these people?
Joel Brooks:Why do I have to do this every single week Meanwhile, I'm still preaching as all this is going on. After the service, I just wanted to beeline at home. I just wanted to get out of there. I just wanted to go home, and somebody stopped me before I could leave and said, Hey, I'd love love it if you would pray with me. I said, Okay.
Joel Brooks:I said, I just want you to know that as you were preaching, the Holy Spirit just so convicted me in these areas. And you know who you are that I was talking with. I want you to know that the Holy Spirit slew me in that moment. Slew me for my arrogance. As if I thought, the Holy Spirit's work depended upon my performance.
Joel Brooks:As if I I have to perform a certain way in order for the kingdom of God to advance. The arrogance of that. And yes, an arrogance that we fall into all of the time. As a church, we fall into it thinking we have to get everything perfectly right. It has to be some new plan, some new program, some better music, something that's the only way we can reach the world as if it depends upon us.
Joel Brooks:Tell me, when has there ever been a revival that has happened? God doing extraordinary work because a pastor made it through a sermon without messing up. Like God's up there going, you made it all the way through. You're like, I'm gonna send my spirit now. God is not limited by these things.
Joel Brooks:If you look at the great revivals in history, you'll notice that that never happened because of the preacher and a great sermon, simply because the Holy Spirit came and he wanted to make Jesus known to people. In 18/59, or 18/57, sorry, there was a great revival that happened in New York City. There was a pastor named Jeremiah Lanphier, and he decided that he really just wanted to see people reach the lost reached for Jesus. And in 1857, He handed out pamphlets. This is what the pamphlet said, A date prayer meeting is held every Wednesday from 12 to to 1 o'clock in the consistory building of the North Dutch Church, corner of Fulton and William Streets.
Joel Brooks:This meeting is intended to give merchants, mechanics, clerks, strangers, and businessmen, generally an opportunity to stop and call on God. Amid the perplexities incident to their respective avocations. It will continue for 1 hour, but it is designed for those who find it inconvenient to remain more than 5 or 10 minutes. As well as for those who can spare the whole hour. I mean, it's not exactly a page turner pamphlet, But he hands all of these out and so the the first meeting, it was just him.
Joel Brooks:And he's just praying, but 30 minutes into it, 6 guys came, and they stayed for the prayer meeting. The next week, they had 15. The week after that, they had 30. Within 6 months, 10,000 people were meeting every day for prayer. 10,000 people.
Joel Brooks:All meeting and confessing their sins, pouring out their hearts to God. These were people that were, across different ethnic lines. This was the wealthy and the poor, it became this melting pot of people just pouring out their hearts to the Lord. The New York Times wrote this about what was going on, it says, The great wave of religious excitement, which is now sweeping over this nation is one of the most remarkable movements since the reformation. Travelers relate to in cars and in steamboats, and banks and markets.
Joel Brooks:Everywhere through the interior, this matter is an absorbing topic. Churches are crowded, bank directors rooms become oratories, School houses are turned into chapels. Converts are numbered by the scores of 1,000. Similar assemblies we find in other places of the city. A theater is turned into a chapel.
Joel Brooks:Churches of all sects are open and crowded by day and night. It is most impressive to think that over this great land, tens and fifties of thousands of men and women are putting themselves at this time in a simple and serious way, the greatest question that can ever come before the human mind. What shall we do to be saved from our sins? This revival spread outside of New York City and in 18/58, there were 20,000 baptisms per week for the entire year. 20,000 baptisms a week as this revival spread across America.
Joel Brooks:And what you see here is something similar to Pentecost. It's it's a revival coming. It's Holy Spirit power coming, and just transforming hearts on a mass scale. Around this exact same time, you had across the pond, a revival that was happening in Ireland, in the Ulster, Northern Ireland area. An area that's near and dear to my heart.
Joel Brooks:Spent 10 years of my life, during the summers going there. And during this time, there was 4 young men who were in the city of Kells, and they got together deciding that they wanted to pray. Because they wanted to know Jesus more and they wanted to make Jesus known. They wanted the lost to be saved. And so, they decided to meet every Friday night from September 18, 57, and they did.
Joel Brooks:They met through the long cold winter and it was just them. And, they didn't see a single convert for 3 months. And finally, one person was converted. They kept praying for another year, and 50 were added. And then in 18/59, 100,000 people that year came to know the Lord in Northern Ireland.
Joel Brooks:100,000 people were converted. This spread over to Scotland, where 300,000 people were converted the next year. It's the Holy Spirit doing His work. I was reading some of the articles about this and how crime and prostitution were nearly eliminated in Northern Ireland, and there was a reporter who interviewed a former prostitute, and asked her why she had quit being a prostitute. And she talked about the genuine change that had come upon her, and that she could no longer do that line of work.
Joel Brooks:What I thought was hilarious was the line she said after that, she goes, Plus, I can't find any more clients. The Lord was changing hearts in a massive scale. The Holy Spirit was doing in a moment what could not be done by an entire army working their hardest. This is why Jesus said, Wait. Wait until the power of the Spirit comes upon you, and then you will be my witnesses.
Joel Brooks:Perhaps, we as a church, if we really want our city and our world to be changed, or for us personally to be changed, we need to renew our focus on waiting for the Spirit of God in prayer. Trusting in His power and not our own. Perhaps we probably should find an upper room, and to go and spare that 5 to 10 inconvenient minutes, and to pray. Now just so you know, I grew up in a church where we didn't really talk about the Holy Spirit. It's not that we didn't believe in the Holy Spirit, I mean, you have to, you believe in the Trinity, there's the Father, Son, and the Spirit.
Joel Brooks:It's just we didn't know what to do with them. The best analogy I would have is he was kinda like that weird uncle you saw once a year at a family reunion, and, you know, he dressed differently, you know, he's wearing some bizarre hat or bizarre shoes that he picked up from one of his world travels. He was the one who would always tell these bizarre stories to any of the kids that would listen to him, and he looked at this guy, and he knew you were related somehow. And you knew that you actually, you did love Him, but whenever He came and gave you a hug, it just felt awkward, and you would have preferred just keeping your distance. And that's how I kinda grew up thinking of the Holy Spirit.
Joel Brooks:We're in the same family, but you're just strange. And I kinda wanna keep my distance. And then I went into a college ministry that was the exact opposite of this. It was Holy Spirit everything. I mean, they would come to a service and they were ready to get their Holy Spirit on.
Joel Brooks:They're handing out tambourines. I mean, it was just it was time to encounter the Holy Spirit in every occasion. Every song was about the Holy Spirit. Every message was about the Holy Spirit. We had Holy Spirit conferences.
Joel Brooks:If you prayed a prayer over your lunch, you said a blessing. If you didn't mention the Holy Spirit 3 or 4 times, I mean, it probably didn't count. That's the kind of people that I would always hang out with that defined our college ministry. But the truth is, both the church that I grew up in and this college ministry that I was a part of neglected the true work of the Spirit. I'm not sure either of these groups really knew who the Holy Spirit was.
Joel Brooks:My old church, they acted like, you know, the Trinity was the Father, Son, and the Holy Bible. And really, that I was taught a lot of moral conformity, but very little about how the spirit of God can actually transform your heart into obedience. So that was neglected. But then in this college ministry, they mostly reduced the Holy Spirit to an emotional experience, or to some impersonal force or power. It might surprise you to know that only one time in the book of Acts, and that's in Acts 8, when the Samaritans are getting their own Pentecost, but only one time in the book of Acts does anybody actually pray for the Spirit of God to come.
Joel Brooks:Spirit of God, come. And that's when Peter is wanting the Samaritans to have their own Pentecost. It also might surprise you to know that never once, not a single time in acts, do you find anyone ever praying for power. The church never prays for power. Yet, I have found in almost all the charismatic circles that I've been a part of, by far, the thing that is prayed for most is Holy Spirit, will you come and work in power?
Joel Brooks:Will you move in power? I wanna be careful here because, Acts is full of times in which the Holy Spirit comes down and moves in power. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with praying for the Holy Spirit to come and to move in power. I just want you to see, that's not the focus of what is happening in Acts when we actually do see the word of God, or the Spirit of God coming down and moving in power. It was not the focus of the early church's prayers.
Joel Brooks:Their focus was this, Jesus we want to know you more. You've ascended, you physically left us, but we still want to know you more, and we want to hear from you, and we want the world to know you. That was their prayer. And the Holy Spirit when he hears people praying, how they want to know Jesus and how they want the world to know Jesus, the Holy Spirit says, I want that exact same thing so why don't I come down and help you out? The Holy Spirit says, I can get on board with that and he comes down and he works through these people in power.
Joel Brooks:And that's what you see at Pentecost and that's what you see over and over through the book of Acts. These people they did not meet in the upper room in order that they could get chill bumps. That wasn't the goal. They met in the upper room because they wanted to pray that the glory of Jesus would spread to the ends of the earth. Then the Holy Spirit came down to ensure that that happened.
Joel Brooks:I'd just like to interject here also that when we pray for these things, when we pray for the lost, be open to the idea that you don't have to speak during this time of prayer, but you can listen. Jesus has ascended. He's seated at the right hand of the Father, and currently, right now, He is making intercession for you. He is praying for you. And, we can listen to this in our quiet moments.
Joel Brooks:And can I just say, that if you could hear, if you could hear just for one minute how Jesus is currently praying for you, you would not fear a 1,000 foes? There is not one thing that you would not gladly give up in sacrificial service to Him. If you could just hear for a minute how your Savior is praying for you. And so part of our intercession is simply listening to a God who still speaks to us. A God that we want to know.
Joel Brooks:Jesus, we want to know you and we want your glory to be known and the Holy Spirit says, I can get on board with that and He comes and He moves in power. Church, are we doing this? The language that's used here to describe this is to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. That's what Jesus said was gonna happen to the disciples, that they were gonna be baptized in the Holy Spirit. In Luke chapter 24, Jesus describing this event, He calls it being clothed in power.
Joel Brooks:You are going to be clothed in power. The word baptized means to immerse, to dip, to bathe. If you combine the clothe and power with the the notion of being immersed, basically it's to be completely enveloped. To be baptized with the Holy Spirit, clothed in power. And we know that this happens at Pentecost, which is what we're gonna look at next week.
Joel Brooks:This happens when the disciples are gathered in that upper room after 10 days, and the Holy Spirit falls down upon them. And in chapter 2 verse 4, we read that they were filled with the spirit. So instead of using the language baptized with the spirit, when the baptism comes, the language that Luke uses, he And they will continually be filled with the Spirit. This is not a one time event, it's not a two times, two times event. This happens 2, 3, 4, 5 times, over and over through acts.
Joel Brooks:They will be filled with the Spirit of God. And then, when they are filled with the Spirit of God, they go out and they testify about Jesus. Over and over, you will see that when the disciples are filled with His Spirit, they powerfully testify to the Lordship of Jesus. So you see that in Acts 2:4, when they are filled with the spirit of God, they go out and they boldly preach in His name and the result is there are 3 1,000 people saved. In Acts chapter 4 verse 8, it says that Peter, he was filled with the Spirit and he began to boldly proclaim who Jesus was.
Joel Brooks:And the religious leaders looked at him and they said, how in the world are such powerful words coming out of such an uneducated man? In Acts 4:31, it says that the disciples were gathered together and once again they were filled with the spirit and they began to proclaim the gospel and many were added to the Lord. Acts 6, you have Stephen who's a man full of the Holy Spirit. What does a man who's full of the Holy Spirit do? He proclaims the gospel and he preaches one of the best sermons you'll ever hear.
Joel Brooks:And it says that people could not believe, they couldn't believe the Spirit, or His wisdom, and His Spirit as He spoke. 59 times, the Holy Spirit is mentioned in acts, and in 39 of those times, the Holy Spirit is speaking. He is filling people to proclaim. In Acts chapter 9 verse 17 is when Paul, he is converted, and he is filled with the spirit, and the first thing that happens after he is filled with the spirit, it says he immediately goes to the synagogue. And then he begins to proclaim that Jesus is the son of God, and people were amazed.
Joel Brooks:Acts 11, Barnabas, filled with the spirit. He immediately begins preaching. It says, and many people were added to the to the Lord. Over and over again, as we read through acts, people are filled with the spirit, they boldly powerfully proclaim who Jesus is and people are changed. You will be my witnesses.
Joel Brooks:Why? Because you will be filled with power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And the reason that these disciples can declare so boldly who Jesus is is because when the Holy Spirit has descended upon them, has filled them, they don't just know Jesus, they know Jesus. This is the spirit of Jesus filling them. And if you know Jesus, you cannot help but declare who he is.
Joel Brooks:And the world knows if you're a fraud or not and you're a declaration of Jesus. And when these men came and they were boldly declaring who Jesus is, they knew that those men had been meeting with Jesus. They were filled with Jesus. And now they began to overflow Jesus to the world. That's what it means to be filled with the Spirit.
Joel Brooks:Is this what's happening in our midst? Let's quote one of the great saints, Bono of you 2. Bono says religion is what happens when the spirit has left the building. Religion is what happens when the spirit has left the building. I don't know about you, but I don't want religion.
Joel Brooks:I don't want religion. I want Jesus. I don't want empty programs, empty facilities, empty music. I want to know Jesus, and I want Him to be known, so can we, church, pray, pray for a fresh work of God's Spirit to make Jesus known to us and to make Jesus known to the world? That's actually how I'd love for us to close our time together is in prayer, and so we are gonna break up into groups, and we're gonna pray for these things.
Joel Brooks:This is what I want us to pray for. Pray that we would come to know Jesus more, that He's not just an important figure in history, but He's the living Lord, and we can know Him, actually know Him. Pray if you don't know Jesus, pray that you would. Pray that He would come to you with change your heart, or just listen to the other people as they pray. And then I would like for us to pray for those who we know who do not know Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Pray for them by name, those who we know who are lost. And hear me, don't pray for an opportunity to preach the gospel. We'll get to this as we go through Acts. You're not gonna be praying for opportunities. Know Jesus, and you're gonna know opportunities.
Joel Brooks:Every day, you have the opportunity to share Jesus. You don't have to pray for more opportunities, or all around you. Pray for the boldness to declare what you believe, And then not say, maybe take time to listen, because I believe in a Jesus who still speaks. So let me pray for us briefly, and then let's break into prayer. Lord Jesus, I pray you would be with us in this time.
Joel Brooks:Lord, we want to know you, and we want the world to know you. So holy spirit, come and direct our time of prayer. All for the glory of Jesus. Amen.
