Lessons for Life with James Long, Jr.
Are you longing to find answers to the deeper issues of life? Join James, a pastor, counselor, and university professor with over 30 years of experience. Hear James as he tackles some of life's biggest questions and helps us find God's solutions to life's struggles. Learn the power of living by God's grace and for His glory. Experience the joy of forgiveness and freedom found in Jesus Christ alone. If you are on a search for freedom, you will love being part of this conversation. Subscribe, and enjoy the show!
Lessons for Life with James Long, Jr.
Uprooting Anger: Transforming Our Reactions Through Faith and Grace
How do you respond when anger bubbles up, threatening to control your actions and emotions? In this episode, we kick off a transformative nine-week journey through Robert Jones' book "Uprooting Anger" with a foundational discussion on what anger truly is. By examining its biblical definition as an active response to perceived evil, we invite you to reflect on your personal experiences with anger. Grab your journal and get ready to identify and address your triggers and responses, setting the stage for true transformation.
Feeling trapped in a cycle of frustration, especially during everyday scenarios like traffic jams? You're not alone. Join us as we dissect the nature of anger, its triggers, and how it manifests in our lives. Through relatable examples, we explore the idea that anger is an active response we can control, involving our beliefs, feelings, actions, and desires. Learn how to reconstruct your underlying beliefs, thoughts, and actions to master anger and respond in more constructive, godly ways.
In the face of our struggles with anger, there is hope and grace to be found. This episode delves into overcoming anger through faith and humility, emphasizing the importance of submitting to God, resisting the devil, and drawing near to Him. We discuss the significance of repentance and the doctrine of justification, offering a path to peace, strength, and purification. Reflect on the abundant peace, hope, and joy that come from being justified by faith, and join us in prayer for global conflicts and those affected by 9-11, seeking peace through Christ, the Prince of Peace.
ABOUT JAMES AND LESSONS FOR LIFE
Are you longing to find answers to the deeper issues of life? Join Dr. James Long, Jr., a pastor, counselor, and university professor with over 30 years of experience. Hear James as he tackles some of life’s biggest questions and helps us find God’s solutions to life’s struggles. Learn the power of living by God’s grace and for His glory. Experience the joy of forgiveness and freedom found in Jesus Christ alone. If you are in search of freedom, you will love being part of this conversation. Subscribe, and enjoy the show!
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Hello everyone, it's James Long Jr, and welcome to our first Lunch and Learn. I am so excited to be here with you. Thank you so much for joining us today. Over the next nine weeks, we'll be diving deep into a book called Uprooting Anger, and Uprooting Anger is one of those studies where it talks about anger from a biblical perspective. It's about learning how to uproot our anger out of our lives and the difficulties that we have. Now. Today's lesson is going to be foundational, because what it's going to do is help us explore the key question what is anger?
Speaker 1:So, if you haven't gotten a chance to grab the book yet, what I would encourage you to do for me is to try to purchase this book sometime in the next week. We'll be going every week on Wednesdays for about a half an hour, 45 minutes just talking through each of the chapters. It's about nine or 10 chapters that we'll be doing, and so what we want to do today is to start by just once again thanking you so much for being part of our group, thank you so much for joining our Lessons for Life membership or group coaching program, or for those of you that are part of our Time for Change course and coaching program. We'll talk more about that a little bit later, but I want to thank you for being part of that group and I want to thank you for taking this time as well. Hopefully you're going to get a good lunch. I'll be sitting here talking to you over the next 45 minutes, but hopefully you're going to be eating a great lunch. As we are doing this lunch and learn together, what I want to do is open us in a word of prayer before we get started here.
Speaker 1:So, father, I want to thank you for your amazing grace and your kindness and your favor. I want to thank you as well for the fact that you're such a great God and there's no one like you. I want to thank you for the life you've given us in Christ. I thank you for his sacrificial death, his victorious resurrection, his ascension into heaven, that he's seated right now at your right hand praying for us, interceding for us, and he will come back as the Lord and King where every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. From that till that time, lord, until we see you, we struggle in this world. We struggle with conflicts, we struggle with difficulties. I pray that you would help us to master the anger, the struggles that we have today, and help us to bring glory and honor to your name. In Jesus' name.
Speaker 1:Today is, amazingly, 23 years since September 11th here in the United States and the conflict that was there because of that, but yet we don't want to be mistaken. The fact is that there are conflicts all over the world. There are conflicts, wars and rumors of that, but yet we don't want to be mistaken. The fact is that there are conflicts all over the world. There are conflicts, wars and rumors of wars. There are conflicts in churches, there are conflicts in communities, there are conflicts in marriages, there are conflicts in family, there are even conflicts within, and so anger is one of those key things that so many of us struggle with, and what we want to try to do over these next several weeks is to learn about anger and how to find God's solutions to the life problems that we're going through.
Speaker 1:Let me start by telling you this that anger is found throughout Scripture. I'm going to open up the screen so you can see it, so it won't be a distraction. I want you to see that Scripture has a great deal to say about anger. It's important to recognize that the Bible doesn't just condemn anger. It offers us hope and ways to deal with it so that we don't have to struggle with it. Anger is seen and described as a sin in which war. It wars against our soul. For so many of us that is true, but anger in and of itself can't be wrong completely in the fact that God is angry. We'll talk more about that today.
Speaker 1:So, especially as we go through these studies, what I would love you to do for me is this I want you to grab a journal or a notebook, and I really would love it if you would sit down and try to think through. I'll be asking you questions as we go through this study. I'll be asking you questions and I'm going to ask you to really think deeply. I often say to my clients that I really want to see something move from informational to transformational. I want to see it move from just information in your mind to a transformation of your heart and a transformation of your life. So I want you to think about a time when you were angry and you felt like you were battling with this anger and the force is pulling you away from peace and towards conflict, and I wonder, what was it that triggered you? I also wonder what was it that you did in those triggers? What did you tend to think? How did you tend to respond? How did you tend to respond? How did you tend to respond in word or action? I really want you to consider those type of things as we look forward and move forward here.
Speaker 1:So anger is interesting because I want to give you a working definition of anger. Robert Jones, in his book Uprooting Anger, gives us this working definition and it goes this way Anger is our whole person's active response of a negative moral judgment against perceived evil. He said it's a whole person. It's a negative moral judgment. It's an active response. It's not something that comes upon us, it's something that we are actually doing. It's a negative moral judgment, and then it something that comes upon us. It's something that we are actually doing. It's a negative moral judgment, and then it's against a perceived evil. So those pieces are important.
Speaker 1:Let's look at each one of those pieces as we go through this Now. First, as you think about the definition that he speaks of here anger is a response against something. So I want you to think about that. There is a reaction that you're having to some type of provocation that has happened. Somebody cuts you off in traffic, somebody says something. There was a look that happened. There is something that has triggered, there was an action that has happened. You've been provoked by that action and you are feeling some levels of anger. What are some common provocations? And if you're here, it would be great if you want to put some comments in the chat line. That's fine, but I want you to think about what are some common provocations that happen.
Speaker 1:Now, we've talked about traffic. Maybe it's something at work, maybe a kid doesn't respond as well to you as you would like, and so I want you to think about what is it that tends to provoke? What are the things that provoke you? And so, rather than just looking at what's happening around us, I really want you to think about what is happening within you. What are the things that happen within you that cause you to maybe respond in certain ways and to react in certain ways? What are the provocations that happen? It's so important to be able to know what those provocations are, because if you can know what those provocations are, it can give you insight on how you can master this. It's also why do these things provoke us?
Speaker 1:I may say that traffic bothers me. I was just driving near the city recently, a city recently, and there was a lot of traffic and I was telling my wife I'm so thankful that I don't have to drive in this kind of traffic. I used to drive two or three hours to a major city near us and then I was finding myself getting more and more frustrated with the traffic that was happening and I would get tense. I could feel my hands on the steering wheel. I could feel the tension. I could say that I don't want to get that person cut me off or whatever it was. There were things that were happening within me that I knew that these were provocations and they were provoking me. But the question is why are they provoking? What does it matter if somebody is in front of me and is driving selfishly? What does that matter to me? Why do I get so frustrated with certain things in life? And you need to ask yourself those same type of questions.
Speaker 1:So what is anger is so important? It's a response against something. He continues with this that, as you think about the definition, you remember it's a whole person, active response of a negative moral judgment against perceived evil. I want you to consider this, that it is an active response, it's something that you're doing. So many people today find themselves really struggling with this, because they tend to think that anger is something that somebody else has done to them. You've probably heard it you made me angry, you did this to me, and so what we're thinking is it's almost like we're passive, we can't help it. We can't help that the situation has happened, and what he is arguing here is that it is not something that is passive, it's actually something that we do, and so this is going to be important, because if you're not able to do something about it, you're going to feel hopeless and helpless, right? So if something's just coming upon you, somebody does something, and you can't help but react in anger, you're feeling helpless and hopeless, and what you'll need to do is to try to control them so that they can stop doing the thing that they're doing to you. That is going to cause you problems.
Speaker 1:But if I can recognize, and if you can recognize, that our anger is an active response, it's something that we're doing in the way we think, we're doing in the way we speak, we're doing in the way we react, we're doing in the way we speak, we're doing in the way we react, and that is why, if we can control us, then we can have a better chance of mastering anger. In a biblical way, the fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and self-control. It's the ability to control ourselves, to master ourselves, to be aware of who we are, but to also be able to engage ourselves and to respond in godly ways. So, if you think about it, anger is a response against something, so there's some provocation. Anger is also an active response. It's something that we do that leads to. The third thing I need you to know is that anger is a whole person active response. A whole person means that involves everything of who you are.
Speaker 1:So many of us tend to think that anger is just an emotion, it's just a feeling, it's just I can't help but about this feeling that happens. But when you think about it, anger is a whole package of your beliefs, your feelings, your actions, your desires. It comes out in the ways you think, it comes out in the ways you speak, it comes out in the ways you act. So when you target dealing with anger, it is going to be so important to recognize that there are so many components that you will have to deal with as you deal with the anger. It's not simply changing the belief. It's changing the feeling, it's changing the underlying beliefs, it's changing the thought process, it's changing the words that we speak, it's changing those actions and then it's ultimately having a heart change, and we'll be talking a lot about that, but your heart needs to change for you to be able to really have restoration and freedom over this anger. So anger is a response against something. Anger is an active response, it's something that you're doing and anger is whole person. So when we attack it, we have to attack it with every one of these components in life.
Speaker 1:Next, I want you to consider this that anger involves a negative moral judgment. Those three words are so important. It's something that we think has been done wrong. We object to a wrong committed and it pits us against what we believe to be just or evil. And as they're on both sides of the political aisle, one side views this thing as right, while others on the other side believe that it's wrong You've got people on both sides of the aisle that believe that they're making negative moral judgments about the other person, the other camp and they start to look at these judgments and they start to attack one another. Rather than being able to come together and talk about things and to try to find solutions to deal with these problems, people just tend to attack each other, or they attack the principles, but they don't ever seem to come to solutions.
Speaker 1:Anger is a negative moral judgment and as we make these negative moral judgments, our anger objects to something that is wrong. It pits us against what we believe to be right or just and what is evil or just Now. I want you to see the line on the bottom here. It's not always sinful, as we will see later. So there are some times, very honestly, that you will have strong negative opinions about something that is happening and you will find out that those things were not sinful. So what are the things that trigger you? What are the kind of things that get under your skin? What is it that tends to cause you to get really angry? Where are you taking real strong stands and, looking at a particular situation, saying that's Okay?
Speaker 1:Now, we highlighted the word perceived for a reason. Perceived is based on your perception. Anger arises from our personal perception, something that we like or we oppose or dislike, or we oppose and so we're angry. We have a personal perception of a particular situation and we do dislike it and we oppose it. We have a personal perception of a particular situation and we do dislike it and we oppose it. Now, the problem with our perceptions is this Our anger may or may not be accurate. As I said before, there have been tons of times I can think of in my past where I thought I was absolutely accurate in my perception and my perception was wrong. And when I got additional information, I found out that the thing that I was really struggling with, the thing that was really angry with I was wrong in my perception.
Speaker 1:See, our perceptions may or may not always be accurate and our response, very honestly, even if our perception is accurate, sometimes our response may or may not be godly. So it's not even just the perception of how we see the thing, it's the fact of. Are we responding in ways that honor God? Are we responding in ways that reflect him? And what it does is, you will find that it arises from your value system. Not all people are angered by the same thing and the reason why they're not always angry about the same thing is because they don't always have the same values, and the values that you have at a heart level drive the anger that you're having. It drives what you believe. It drives the way you think. Therefore, it drives the way you speak and the way you act. Other times, people will just use labels like I'm not angry, I'm frustrated, and so what they do is they think of anger as one way they make something less I'm frustrated, but the problem is this that's all still anger, and so how you're perceiving something to be affects the way you will tend to engage a particular situation and how you will tend to respond to it.
Speaker 1:Now, there are a lot of different passages that will talk about anger. Now there are two passages that are specific here and in James chapter 1,. In James chapter 1, verses 13 through 15, it's actually interesting that if you go back to the beginning of James chapter 1, he talks about the difficulties that we have and that how we deal with the struggles and the tests of this life are really important, and he says that you are called to consider it pure joy when you encounter those various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith develops perseverance, and let perseverance finish its work that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing, but if any of you lack wisdom, ask. So what he's saying is that when you're going through the test and the trials of life, you need to go and ask God, go vertically I often say that to my clients go vertically, ask God in prayer, go to his word, get godly counsel to try to figure out. Is this a test which is called to grow your faith? Now, in James, chapter 1, verse 13, he's talking about not tests to grow your faith, but temptations that hinder your faith when you're tempted. Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by. And so what James is arguing here is this In chapter 1, I believe what he's saying is that, as you look at verses 2 and following that, there are different types of struggles that we can have.
Speaker 1:Those different types of struggles that come into our life are either tests which will grow your faith or they are temptations which will hinder your faith. And verses 13 through 15, he's saying that the subtlety of our evil desires is this it can hinder us and it causes us to maybe blame God or blame, and those temptations hinder our faith. Now in James, chapter 3, verses 13 through chapter 4, verse 12, what I want you to read there is at the end of chapter 3, he talks about the wisdom, godly wisdom, and then he talks about wisdom that is from above, and he's talking about these two different types of wisdom that are so important for us to have in our lives. And as we understand the different types of wisdom that is there, we will either be grounded in an earthly wisdom, which he actually says is demonic and is of this world, or we could have a godly wisdom that is based on God, of course, and it's heavenly.
Speaker 1:And then in chapter four, verses one through 12, he's talking about conflict and he says what causes the fights and quarrels among you? Is it that, not this, that your desires are battling within you? So what James argues is that the conflicts that you and I have are oftentimes things that we personally struggle with, and they are whether I am trusting either in God's wisdom or, when I go through a conflict, I become selfish. And what James argues in chapter four? He says a lot of times the conflicts are because I'm selfish, I covet, I'm prayerless. I either pray to God that's in with wrong motives, or I don't pray at all. And then he says you are becoming faithless, you are going to the world for its satisfaction and security rather than going to God. And he says that God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. And so let's look at that passage and see if we could see some of the steps that we need to take to get out of it now. In james, chapter 4, he says this about some of the steps that you need to take now.
Speaker 1:He says in verse 5 or do you suppose that it is to no purpose that scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he's made to dwell within us. Then here's the hope. I really want you to see this as you struggle with anger sometimes. I want you to see the hope that he says in verse six. But he gives more grace. It's just amazing, it's super abounding grace.
Speaker 1:Or as Paul says in Romans, chapter five, where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. He's saying that where you struggle, if you can recognize and if I can recognize very honestly that if you and I can come to a place where we humble ourselves and recognize that God is good and that my struggles and the difficulties I'm going through are the evil things, that the evil things are happening within me, that this, maybe, is a test to grow my faith rather than a temptation to hinder it. That I'm going to trust in godly wisdom rather than worldly wisdom. And he says these steps here, right at the end of verse 7. He says Submit yourselves to God, therefore, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts. You double-minded, be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourself before the Lord and he will exalt you. Do you see the steps there? He says I need to submit.
Speaker 1:So many times, very honestly, when we get angry, there is usually something else that's underneath it. For a lot of us, it's fear. So we are afraid of something, afraid of some other person, or afraid of some loss, or whatever it may be, and that fear causes us to try to control. The more we try to control the situation, what we find is that we will get angry. Fear will lead to control, which will lead to anger. And so what he's saying is this that's the temptation you're going through the difficulty you're going through. It is either a trial to grow your faith or a temptation to hinder it.
Speaker 1:Trust in godly wisdom rather than earthly wisdom, and then you need to submit to God and you need to resist the devil. Resist the devil means that we need to say no. Resist the devil means that we need to say no. Now, satan can't make you do anything, very honestly, that you don't want to do. It is our flesh that causes us to act out in the ways that we do. So you and I struggle oftentimes with our flesh. Now, satan knows your areas of weakness, he knows the struggle. So that's why we need to resist the devil and what he says here and this is where the hope is, and he will flee from you.
Speaker 1:Then he says draw near to God. So how do you draw near to God? You go vertically and ask him in prayer. You draw near to God in his word. You draw near to God by going into community, and he will draw near to you. That's the promise. Into community, and he will draw near to you. That's the promise.
Speaker 1:And then he says cleanse your hands, you sinners. What he's saying is that there's some external things that you need to do behaviors that you need to change, to clean yourself. And then he says purify your heart you double-minded. That's why repentance is so important. Repentance is not just changing external actions, it's about changing your mindset, it's about changing your heart. So he's saying that you need to cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts you double-minded. And then you could see the grief that is here in verse 9. He says be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. The sin that is happening, the selfish desires that are happening, the fact that, as this situation has come into my life, rather than seeing it as a test to grow my faith, I've been using it as a temptation to hinder my faith. I've been trusting more in selfish wisdom rather than godly wisdom, and that it's having an impact, and so that should cause me to grieve. And then what he ends with is humble yourself before the Lord and he will exalt you. So this is so important to be able to recognize that we need to humble ourselves before God and he will be the one to lift us up. He says in verse 11, 11,.
Speaker 1:Do not speak evil against one another, brother, the one who speaks against his brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you're not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and one judge who is able to save and destroy. But who are you to judge? Your neighbor we're not supposed to be boasting about tomorrow. We have no control over that. We're not supposed to be speaking about one another. We're not supposed to be judging another. We need to be sitting under the judgment of God.
Speaker 1:And for those of us that are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, here's the wisdom that God says that I declare you not guilty. And the beautiful concept of justification, the theology, doctrine of justification, is that even though I am guilty as sin, god pronounces me as righteous in his sight because of me, not because of any work or character or conduct within me, but that he applies Christ's character and conduct in my life. And he does that by this phrase imputation. Imputation is like a banking term. It means to credit. God credited Christ with my sin and your sin, if you trust in him, and then he credited us with Christ's righteousness. That's why Paul could say in Romans, chapter eight, verse one there is therefore now no condemnation for those that were in Christ Jesus. And he could say at the end of that chapter nothing will ever separate you from the love of Christ. And so the beauty of the gospel, the beauty of justification, says to you and to me that we have been declared not guilty, we have been declared righteous, and if God can rescue me and you from our sin, why could we not go out and try to rescue other people? And Peter is told that he needs to forgive multiple times.
Speaker 1:And then Jesus gave the parable, and he gives this parable about this guy that owes this king an enormous amount of money and an unpayable debt, and the king was ready to throw him into prison. And the guy begged him please forgive me of this debt. And what did the king do? The king forgave him of the debt. Now, what the guy then did was to go out to somebody that owed him a payable debt, and now he's going and attacking somebody about a payable debt. There's something so wrong with that, and so what I believe God is trying to let us know is that, if God can forgive us the greatest sin, because he is the true judge, and if I stand under his grace and his mercy, that there's only one lawgiver, one judge, one who is able to save and destroy. And who am I to judge my neighbor? As you continue through? I want you to think about this.
Speaker 1:There are so many places where anger is found in scripture In Daniel 2, verse 12, the king was angry against the wise men because they thwarted his desires. And a pivotal passage in Genesis, chapter 4, is Cain and Abel. Right out of the Garden of Eden, our foreparents, adam and Eve, their children, are at war. Actually, cain was at war with his brother and it's interesting that God comes to Cain and he says that sin is crouching at your door. It desires to have you. You must master it. He's saying that there is anger that is welling up, there's jealousy, there's covet, there is this envy that is welling up, there's jealousy, there's covet. There is this envy that is welling up with inside of you, cain. You must master it or it will master you and it will have an impact. And we saw that it not only mastered Cain, it hindered his vertical relationship with God, but then it hindered his horizontal relationship with others. We see something similar in Genesis, chapter 27, where Esau had been deceived and cheated out of his birthright and he was violently angry with his brother and wanted to attack him.
Speaker 1:In Genesis, chapter 39, we see Potiphar wrongly believed that Joseph had done wrong. Now, if you remember, joseph was being accused of mistreating Potiphar's wife. Potiphar comes in and hears this. He believes that what he is hearing is accurate. So his anger is being raised up over this perception. You remember before we had talked about that sometimes our perception is not always accurate in our anger. That's exactly what's happening here.
Speaker 1:And in Proverbs 19.3, it says the fool at times is angry with God, and so we find ourselves angry with God, and that is so foolish to believe. So I want you to consider what is anger. Anger is something that we all respond to. We respond to our whole being, our thoughts, our emotions, our affections, our words and our actions, and it is something about our perception, and that perception can be wrong and therefore can be harmful to others. So let's remember his definition Anger is this whole person's response of negative moral judgment against a perceived evil. So that's the big thing that I want you to consider as we move forward here. So once again, I would love you to pick up the book Uprooting Anger and grab that, because what we're going to be doing, lord willing, is next week we're going to go into the next chapter and we'll be talking about is your anger really righteous? And there's so many times that we think that our anger is absolutely righteous and, let's be honest, our anger is an active response. It's our whole person. It's the thoughts that we have, the beliefs, the desires. I want you to think about the negative moral judgments that you're making of other people and I want you to think about the fact that your perceptions sometimes are not always right of our program called Lessons for Life.
Speaker 1:Lessons for Life is the ministry that I have, and if you've ever been to my website, it's jameslongjrorg. That's jameslongjrorg. I would love it if you would go there. There's a lot of amazing resources that I have there. There are blogs, there are podcasts, there are devotionals that are there, there are checklist, worklists, worksheets, and all of those are there for free.
Speaker 1:Now, if you're looking to go a little bit further in our work, I would love it if you would consider being a member of our Lessons for Life community, and there are three different levels that we have currently. First is the Lessons for Life membership. The Lessons for Life membership is an online membership site where you'll get powerful coaching videos. You'll get some helpful resources, get a community of like-minded believers, and this community of like-minded believers offers you this opportunity to be able to see transformation, and that's only at $27 a month. We're adding new resources constantly. There are hours upon hours of information there on the site right now. I would encourage you to consider doing that. For those of you that want to take it, the next step would be all of the information from your membership level you would still get. But if you go to the next level, the coaching level and that's our most popular one and that's where you get all the benefits of the monthly membership but then, in addition, you get bi-weekly coaching calls and in those coaching calls I do some focused trainings, q&a sessions, and we also bring in interviewees to interview them during that.
Speaker 1:For our top level, for those that want to go to the next level, that is our flagship course. It's called Time for Change. It is a five-module, 28-lesson, it is tons of downloadables and you get almost 11 hours of teaching just with that course. I walk you step-by-step through the change process. If you do that course and coaching, we give you 12 months of access to the course, but then you get 12 months of specialized and focused group coaching, and so that are the three levels. I would love it if you would consider going there. You can go to jameslongjrcom slash memberships, or jameslongjrcom slash join now. Those are several options that we have for you. I look forward to being with you as we move forward.
Speaker 1:Once again, I want you to know that you can live by God's grace and that you can live for his glory. He wants to grant you peace, hope and joy, found in the person and work of the Lord, jesus Christ. Let's pray so, lord, today I want to thank you for this group. Thank you for those that are here today. We thank you for those that will join us again in the future. I pray that you would remind us that you have solutions to the struggles that we go through.
Speaker 1:So many life problems, so many difficulties. Father, the conflicts that are happening around us are abundant. The conflicts that are happening around us are abundant. The conflicts that are happening within us are abundant as well. I thank you for the fact that in Christ, that there doesn't have to be any condemnation. It can be gone.
Speaker 1:I thank you that in Christ, that there can be peace and hope and joy, as Paul said in Romans. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God. I thank you for the fact that not only do we have peace, but that we have access to you, and I pray that you would remind us that we have grace, in which we now stand. So help us to live by your grace and for your glory. Today, as we remember once again 9-11, I pray that you be with those families that lost, for those that are struggling around our world. Father, in pain and war in so many different countries around this world, I pray that those wars would end, but, greater than that, I pray that they would come to some level of peace, knowing that Christ is the Prince of Peace. In Jesus' name, we pray, amen, blessings. Thank you again for being with us. No-transcript.
