Clothed with Christ

October 13, 2024

Book: Colossians

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Scripture: Colossians 3:15-17

If you will let Christ’s peace and word be your North Star, be the goal and aim of every word and deed with your spouse, your marriage will thrive and you will overflow with thankfulness that glorifies God.

Being committed to Jesus has allowed us to be able to step back in certain moments and look at it from a bigger picture and kind of remind ourselves that, you know, we’re on the same team working towards a goal and that we’re not actually, you know, against each other. It’s ultimately God’s kingdom that we’re serving, not each other or ourselves, which helps put a lot of things into perspective. It gives us a lot of perspective when we frustrate each other or fall short, and things don’t go as planned.  And also gives me a better appreciation for the love he has for us that is just unfailing. And that’s just an incredible gift. It’s the foundation because God joined us together so that we might be better together serving the Lord. And it has been a life that has been filled with the joy that comes because you can pray continually and because you can give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God for us in Christ Jesus. Two pillars in marriage trust and commitment. And someone told me initially like this picture of a triangle where Jay and myself are in the bottom and God is at the top. As we get closer with God, naturally our relationship with each other becomes so intimate and close and can withstand many storms. This dying to ourself is only modeled by Jesus. You know, it’s not modeled by any other picture in the world that is the foundation of us growing together is dying to ourselves, serving the other.

And that’s all about what Jesus has done in our life. It’s everything about our marriage. He is for sure at the center of our marriage. And we notice if he’s not like if we’re not doing our devotions or we’re not having our quiet time with God, it shows in our marriage. So, we try to make that a priority for both of us to be in the word. That’s probably what keeps us together. That’s probably for sure. Right. When Jesus wasn’t really at the center of our lives when we were first married, it was selfish. It was pretty much if everything was going well between us and things were good, then we were good. But if someone felt slighted or disrespected or less than the other person in the marriage, I felt like it created issues. And then with Christ at the center, it’s more than that. You submit to him as Lord. It’s not you anymore that’s first.  Where I’ve been and where I am now, like I’ve come a long way, right? Like I’ve been worldly for such a long time. And at a certain point, you know, I end up, you know, walking with Christ. I’m not going to say it’s easy, but it’s helped me just be like a better father and a better husband, you know, to my wife, because I’m living under God’s rules now, as opposed to what the world says now that I do know Christ.

It’s helped me because I know what I need to do as a father, as a husband, and how I need to treat my wife, you know. I love being on this journey, walking with the Lord with him because we do make mistakes, but we pray for each other. We pray with each other. We talk things out. Him taking the lead with our walk with Christ has grounded me and I feel like grounded our marriage.

We’re so different. But the base, like the number one at the top of the list, is our common faith in Jesus and how people survive the ups and downs of a marriage I don’t know how they do that, but that’s in the beginning. We said, well, divorce is not a question. We would have been divorced a number of times already, but we’ve just never had a disagreement as far as our faith, and that’s really been central to our marriage. It’s made all the difference in the world. It’s kept us together. It’s helped us to grow in our faith and our marriage. I mean, I don’t know what we would do if we didn’t have the Lord in our life, especially as we’re growing older. I’m just so thankful to have Jesus in my life.

Well, I want to start by thanking the couples who agreed to be interviewed for these videos in this series. Didn’t they do a great job? Yeah. It’s not easy putting your marriage up there on the big screen like that. It takes courage. What I really appreciate about having Christ and His grace at the center of marriage is that you don’t have to hide anything. You don’t have to hide anything. You can be totally honest about your struggles. Because when Jesus is the stabilizing, problem-solving, life-giving core of your marriage, you don’t have to provide the stability. You don’t have to solve the problems in your own power. You don’t have to try to breathe life into your marriage. Much like you just heard from our couples, Rachel and I over the years have also commented how impossible it would be to have a strong, healthy marriage without Christ at the center of it.

In the video, you heard Tara Meyer mention a picture of a triangle. This is one of those classic back-of-the-napkin illustrations that people use to describe the relationship of marriage and Jesus. It looks like this. I know it looks simple, and that’s because it really is simple. It doesn’t have all the profundity and nuances of scripture, but I believe it’s very helpful. You have Jesus there at the top. And at the other two points you have the couple, I’ll use Rachel and myself as the couple, because I didn’t want to accidentally pick an actual couple of names from the crowd and you thought I was preaching at you directly this morning. Uh, if Rachel and I only focus on each other, right? If we only look at each other, we stay the same distance apart. This is what happens when couples are trying to fix each other. I’m going to fix him, or I’m going to fix her right? Or we try to focus only on the problems, or we only focus on our feelings about the problems. We won’t get anywhere like that. But if we focus on Jesus, and both of us are walking in the love of Jesus, and we honor Jesus in everything that we do, we grow closer to Jesus and at the same time, we grow closer to each other. And we’re going to flesh out why that is in our passage today.

I said at the beginning of this six-week series that my goal is to help all of us put on the character of Christ so that our marriages will flourish here at Calvary. We’ve considered compassion and kindness and patience of Christ. We’ve looked at the humility necessary to receive Christ, and then the gentleness that comes out of us toward each other from that humility. We explored God’s tolerance of us and his forgiveness to us in Christ that came entirely from his sacrifice and did not come at all from our earning.

And then last week, we saw the sacrificial love of Jesus, which gives meaning and power to everything else. These are the marriage clothes, right? The wedding clothes are in the past. These are the marriage clothes. And if you wrap your marriage in these character qualities of Christ, your marriage will heal, and it will thrive. This morning, I want to show you how central Jesus is to a healthy marriage. That clothing yourself in those characteristics really is clothing your marriage in Christ. If you will let Christ’s peace and his word be your North Star, be the goal and aim of every word and deed with your spouse, your marriage will thrive and what will happen is you will be overcome and you will overflow with thankfulness that glorifies God. There are three commands that wrap up this passage in Colossians that we’ve been looking at. If you have your Bibles, you can open to Colossians 3. These are not entirely, these commands that we’re going to look at today, they’re not entirely different from the commands to put on those other qualities. These are like summary commands. They have a similar pattern that you’ll see. Each one tells us something to do and then it ends with thankfulness that pours out of us to God because of his goodness to us. And that’s what you saw in the video today. That’s what you saw. You saw couples who have centered their marriages on Jesus, and you’re hearing the thankfulness that is now pouring out of them.

I’ll tell you who I’m most excited for this morning. There’s folks I’m most excited for this morning. The people I’m most excited for this morning are those of you who are not yet seeing thankfulness to God pouring out of your marriage. I am glad you’re here this morning so that you can see and hear the difference that Jesus makes. I have been praying for you this week. I’ve been praying that you would see and know this incredible thankfulness that God would move you toward Jesus so that you’ll move toward each other and your marriage would get really good.

Here’s the first summary command from Paul. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. So, the first command is to let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Let in the sense of allow or permit. There is peace from Christ that is able and is ready and is willing to come in. You can see it right there on your ring doorbell, right? It’s standing on your front porch. It needs to come in. Your job is to let it in and allow it to rule.

Now, again, let me say what Paul has been saying from the beginning. We need to repeat this because Paul repeats it here. The peace of Christ that he’s talking about here is absolutely available to you, but only if you’ve trusted in him and you’ve been made new by Jesus. See, he’s speaking to the Christian community. Do you see that part where he says, to which you were indeed called in one body? He’s talking to those who have listened to the gospel and have responded to the call of Christ. He’s talking about the Christian community here when he’s giving these instructions.

See if you’re just trying to be more peaceful with your spouse, you just want to have some more peace and you’re trying to do it on your own, but you’re not empowered and equipped by the peace that comes from Christ, you’re going to fail at it. You might be able to sustain it for a short period of time, but eventually you’ll be back to the lack of peace that you had before. You’re trying to get the results, but you don’t have the product. You’re trying to get the wellness, but without the medicine. If you’re trying to make peace but you don’t know the Prince of Peace, you’re not going to find the peace that you’re looking for. But to those of us who have had our hearts committed to Christ, Paul says, let the peace of Christ rule. Let that peace rule in your heart. Now to understand what that means, we need both parts here.

What is the peace of Christ, and what does it look like when we allow it to rule? Let’s start with the peace itself. The peace of Christ is not exactly the same thing that we mean when we use the word peace. So, we use the word to refer to everything from the end of World war to a nap. Right. We have a very large range of what we mean by peace, but the peace of Christ is a little bit more specific than that. If you look at just a little earlier in the book, at Colossians 1:19-20, Paul describes who Jesus is and what he does.  This is what he says, for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. You can see that the kind of peace that Jesus creates is different. What Paul is calling the peace of Christ is the reconciling peace that’s bought through sacrifice. So, it’s not just a quiet house, okay? It’s not just a ceasefire between enemies even. It’s more than that. It’s a state of reconciled love and friendship with God. That’s the peace of Christ.

See, in our sin, we are enemies of God, and we are at war with God. You may not describe yourself that way, but if you don’t have Jesus, that’s exactly the relationship you have with God. You are at war with him. By his death on the cross Christ paid the punishment for our sins. He took the punishment so there is no longer any justice that God needs to pour out on us because of our sins. That’s been paid for. The war that we have with God is over with Jesus. At the same time that Jesus ends the war, he changed our hearts to love God and to desire to live in obedience to His Word. So that’s what the cross did. It did both things. It inserted itself into the animosity that we had with God and made peace. It ended the war between God and God’s people. Paul now says, let that peace rule in our hearts. The word rule here is not like the reigning of a king. It’s the ruling of an arbitrator or a decision maker. So, think of an umpire behind the plate. Pitch comes in and it’s close. Everybody’s got an opinion. The pitcher’s got an opinion. The catcher’s got an opinion. Batter has an opinion. 40,000 fans have an opinion. But the only call that rules is the call of the umpire.

Paul is saying to the church, with all of its varied relationships throughout, that the reconciling peace of Christ has the controlling strength, is the controlling factor for how every interaction should proceed. In every situation among God’s people the controlling factor should be reconciling peace. So that means that we should be asking constantly, how do we get from here, wherever here is in this relationship? How do we get from here to a place of reconciling peace that looks like what Jesus did for us? That’s what allowing Christ’s peace to rule, that’s what it looks like.

Married couples, if you love Jesus, the peace of Christ should be in control of every situation you have with your spouse. Now, you might not see things the same way. Rachel and I don’t see everything the same way. You might be at odds with how you want things to be both big and small, but the ruling factor to determine what you do next is reconciling peace. That’s the conviction that needs to settle into your heart. You see, Jesus bought peace between me and God, so now I’m going to sacrifice whatever I need to sacrifice, whatever it takes for God-honoring peace with my spouse. And you can see how this works really clearly if you let something else rule in your heart. So just replace the peace of Christ with something else and you can see how this works. We do this all the time, by the way. We’re constantly allowing other things to rule.

So, let’s try a few. Let’s say you let your desire to be honored rule in your heart. So, being treated with honor and respect becomes the ruling factor. It’s the most important thing to you. Now, the Bible does say that we are to show honor to whom honor is due. And it does say that children are to honor their parents in everything, right? So, honor can be a very good thing. But if your desire to be honored rises to the level of control, well, then everyone and everything else has to feed into it, doesn’t it? You start to become the person who can’t admit his sins, because that would damage your pride, and other people wouldn’t show you the honor. So you have to always be right. You become the person who can’t hear from someone else about her flaws, because not only do you need to see yourself as flawless, other people, including your spouse, also need to see you as flawless. And so they’re the ones that have to be wrong. Somehow, they’re the ones that are wrong and they misunderstand you, right? You’re not wrong. You misunderstand me. That’s why you don’t see eye to eye with me. See how that works? How about this one? This one’s pretty close to peace. This is pretty close.

Let’s say your desire for a calm and quiet household rules in your heart. Let’s say that’s the ruling factor. What’s going to create peace and calm in my house? Nothing wrong with some peace and quiet. Isn’t that peace? It’s right in the phrase peace and quiet, right? That’s peace. Well, there’s nothing wrong with a calm, quiet, well-ordered home. Unless the way you got it was by never addressing any of the problems in your relationship, so that that there is actual reconciliation and not just a false peacefulness. See, we tend to think that the marriages where the two people are fighting all the time is, those are the problem marriages. Right? And they are. If there’s a lot of fighting in the house, there’s issues there. No question. But there can also be massive problems going unaddressed with no reconciling peace at all that are tearing a marriage apart, that are all covered over by a calm of two people who are unwilling to upset the quiet of their home? That’s not Peace Church. Just being quiet is not peace. That’s not God-honoring peace that looks like Christ’s reconciling peace. Just because you’re not fighting doesn’t mean that the peace of Christ is ruling in your heart. When both of you, when you and your spouse are looking to Jesus and letting his reconciling peace rule in your hearts, you’re going to do what’s ever necessary to reconcile and to put that battle behind you, because that’s the factor. That’s the thing that’s in charge.

This will cause you to be thankful. It’s another instruction that we’re given here in this very verse. Paul says it right there at the end: and be thankful letting peace rule will make you thankful to God. Nothing gives you a heart of worship and thankfulness to God more than seeing Christ’s reconciling power at work. Here’s the second summary command let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Now, I’m not going to try to parse out the difference between a psalm, a hymn, and a spiritual song. Uh, but I will talk about where all of that worshipful joy comes from. It comes from the second command to let the Word of Christ dwell in us richly. This is the same kind of command that we had before. You allow or you permit the object to come in and do what it does. In this case, the Word of Christ comes in and takes up residence in your mind and heart. I think the mind is probably more in line with what this is talking about, because it’s talking about wisdom, acting in the wisdom of Christ.

So again, we need the two parts here. What is the Word of Christ and what does it mean for that to dwell in us richly? Let’s start with the Word of Christ. This phrase doesn’t appear exactly like this anywhere else in the New Testament. What Paul probably has in mind here is the message about Jesus. The whole message of Christ, not just Jesus’ Word specifically. And I’m taking that from the fact that it’s singular. The word singular of Christ, the message of Jesus. Now, of course, Jesus’ teaching what we have recorded for us in the four gospel accounts of his life is part of the gospel. So it’s not a huge point that I’m making here, but I just don’t want you to read this phrase and think that somehow the words of Jesus in your red letter Bible are more important somehow than the rest of Scripture. Some people make that mistake. Paul is telling us here to look at the whole gospel, the whole of the Old and New Testament, all of it pointing to the person and the work of Jesus.

This gospel is to dwell in us richly. Now, that’s a very interesting thing to say, isn’t it? How do words dwell? How does a message dwell in you? Is that different from simply knowing those words?

Right now we’re homeschooling my daughter Allie, and somehow this year I became her eighth grade science teacher. I don’t know how that happened. It really, it just happened. It’s an understatement to say that I did not see that coming. But here I am. I’m the science teacher and she’s interested in medicine. So we are studying human biology. And when I say we when I say we are studying human biology, I mean, we both of us are studying human biology. This is not teacher student. This is definitely student student. And I got to tell you, I don’t know if you know this, but there’s a whole lot of stuff inside the human body. There’s so much stuff in there. There is so much. You think you got one part of it down, you’re like, I got that part down and then you look more closely at it and there are like 25 more things in there. You’re like, oh my goodness, there’s so many things in there. And so, what Ali is doing right now is she’s trying to pack all of that information about all of those things, ironically, into one thing her brain. She’s trying to get it in there, and she’s trying to hold the names of all these systems and all these different tissue types in her brain long enough to take a test to fool her father into believing that she actually knows this stuff.

Paul is not saying simply to know the word of Christ, to have knowledge of the Word of Christ. He’s not just saying to pack biblical knowledge into our brains and have it there. This message of Christ, this gospel, he says, needs to take up residence in us. That’s why he uses the word dwell, right? When you dwell, you move in. You take over. You run the system. You run the house. And thankfully, he fleshes out what the Word of Christ will do when it takes up residence in us.

Let’s apply this directly to marriage. He says that we should teach and admonish one another with the Word of Christ. Have you ever thought about your marriage as a relationship in which you are called to teach each other because you are. That’s what marriages are. We are called to teach each other. Now, I don’t mean that we’re supposed to have little lesson plans and little lectures. I mean that you and your spouse together are supposed to be growing in your knowledge of the gospel by discussing Scripture and then helping each other see things more clearly and apply them better. Guys, it is your job as the pastors of your home to take the lead on this. You’re called to do this. Ephesians 5:26, in that verse, Paul says that our role is to wash our wives in the water of the word. This is what Jesus does with the church. And so it’s our job to do this with our wives.

Husbands and wives both need to be growing in their knowledge of the gospel. You need the knowledge. You need the facts. You need the information. And by the work of the Holy Spirit, you also need to be applying so that you both advance toward Jesus and your marriage gets even stronger. Let’s go back to our triangle. Right. Let’s go back to our triangles here. When you and your spouse commit to the peace of Christ ruling in your relationship, no matter what. You say, we’re going to have peace in this home that looks like Jesus no matter what. You know what it does. It forces you to go back into the word. It forces you back into the message of Christ, because it’s only in that message that we find the peace that we’re looking for. When you both have your eyes on Jesus, when you’re you’re soaking in God’s Word and you’re teaching each other, you’re growing closer to Jesus and you grow closer to each other.

But let’s be honest, sometimes it looks more like this. Okay. Sometimes it looks more like this. One spouse is growing. She’s committed to Jesus. She’s trying to be faithful in the disagreements. She’s trying to shed some gospel light on the relationship. And he’s struggling. Maybe he’s not being disciplined with his time. Maybe he’s not committed to being involved in a discipleship community like she is.

I chose Rachel to be the strong one here because I didn’t want to get in trouble later. That’s why it’s up there. I didn’t need that cold, icy silence. You know, not every quiet house is a good thing, as I said before. What I’m saying is it could be the husband or wife, right? That’s just an example, right? It could be either way, either spouse here. Do you know what needs to happen? Do you know what needs to happen when the triangle looks like this? Admonishment, admonishment. See how Paul says teach and admonish in verse 16? See, admonishment is correction and warning, helping someone to see the error. It’s not harsh rebuke and yelling. Don’t make that mistake. You are not going to yell your way to peace in your house. It’s not how it works, but loving, restorative, corrective guidance is part of helping each other get closer to Jesus. One of the reasons that God gave you to each other is so that you have someone close to you who can lovingly correct you. You say, Kyle, I wish I was only slightly ahead of my spouse. I wish I was only slightly ahead. And that loving correction was the answer. But my spouse isn’t striving for Jesus at all. I don’t even think we’re on the same triangle. Let’s be even more honest here.

Sometimes it looks like this. Yeah, you see the flames there? That’s called production value right there. Some of you may feel like your marriage is crashing. It’s just crashing and burning. Your spouse is going to the polar opposite direction of Jesus, and you’re just hanging on, and you don’t know what to do. Or maybe your spouse is not battling you at all. He or she just isn’t interested in growing in Christ at all. Jesus is your thing, not his thing. She doesn’t need Jesus like you do. She has her own identity. She doesn’t need him. So you’re not fighting, but you’re not centered on Christ either. And you’re struggling because, you know, it just could be so much better. You just know it could just be so much better. You know, there’s joy that comes when you worship and live lives of thankfulness to Jesus, but you’re so far from that right now, it just seems impossible. What do you do? What do you do? If you’re a Christian married to a non-Christian, it is a tough place to be. I get it, I’ve walked with couples through that over the years. I understand the struggle that that can create, and I want to encourage you with the same words that Paul uses at the end of this passage. It’s the third summary command. And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Everything in the list, every piece of clothing that we have looked at, that we’ve considered, is summarized in this command. Every word we say to each other, and every deed that we do for each other, is commanded to be done in the name of the Lord Jesus. Now, this doesn’t mean that we simply say Jesus’ name as we do them or say them. Okay? Sometimes we might do that verbally. Some of us, many of us will end a prayer with, in Jesus’ name we pray, amen. Right? So, we’ll say that out loud and that’s fine. But understand that’s not what it means to do something in Jesus’ name. To do something in Jesus’ name means to do them under the authority of Jesus. As an extension of Jesus’ Kingdom for the purpose of glorifying Jesus. Let me say that another way. The phrase “every word and deed” is a way of saying every interaction we have in the world. Okay. Every single interaction we have with anyone or anything around us. There’s nothing that falls outside of the phrase “word and deed.” So, every part of you, every interaction you have with the world around you as a Christian, should be done as an extension of Jesus himself. Every moment of a Christian’s life is to be lived with the purpose of representing Christ.

This is why Paul says, in other places be transformed by the renewing of your mind. He says, take every thought captive. All of it is to glorify Jesus. For those of you who are in a situation where you are following Jesus but your spouse isn’t, I want to tell you this morning the command is exactly the same. It’s exactly the same. Just continue to dedicate as much as you can, every word and every deed to worshiping Jesus. When you mess up, when you sin, when you fall away, when you act worldly, then you repent openly as you continue to follow Jesus and what you’ll find, or you may find, I can’t promise it’ll happen, but what you may find is that in time, this has a dramatic impact on your spouse, and it may be that God uses you to bring your spouse to a knowledge of the Lord. If we go back to the list of things that we need to put on in our marriages, all of this starts coming together into a complete outfit. For example, God tells us if we have a complaint against someone we need to forgive. We forgive the way Jesus has forgiven us, so that we then sacrificially forgive the person who wronged us and that models the gospel. It becomes a living illustration of the gospel. We have become an extension of God’s forgiveness in the world and so our forgiveness is in the name of Jesus.

We are declaring Jesus’ forgiveness. It’s worship of Christ. You see how that works? That’s how everything works. Everything in your marriage, even the most difficult trials. I know this is hard to believe. Even the most difficult stuff, the trials, the fights, the heartache all of it has been brought into your life as an opportunity for worship and thankfulness, if you will do them in Jesus’ name. You say, Kyle, I try. We even try together. We try to live this way. It’s just so easy. It’s just so easy to get focused on the wrong things. So easy to get your eyes off of Jesus. What do we do to stay on track?

A few years ago, my family was driving home from a basketball game. My son had been playing a basketball game. We were driving home from it and we were on a two-lane road, and suddenly in the opposite direction, a car was coming and it was pulling a trailer and the trailer tire blew out and the whole trailer swung into our lane, and it hit the car that was directly in front of it. It could have been us very easily, but it slammed into the car right in front of it, and it smashed glass and metal everywhere. And then the car in front of us then surged forward and it swerved, smashing and sideswiping into multiple cars until it suddenly turned left and came crashing headlong into a paver wall that was right there on the side of the road, completely destroying the front of the car.

So clearly what had happened was that the driver had gone into shock and had leaned on the gas instead of on the brake. So, it was just a tornado of twisted metal and glass everywhere. Our hearts were pounding and we kind of got our senses. And I was really shaken. But I pulled the van over and I got out and I ran through all of the glass, all the metal on the ground, on the wreckage, and I ran up to the car that had hit the wall, and I could see the driver in the front seat. She was covered in glass, and she was breathing heavily. She was she was going into shock and she was shaking. And I put my hand through the window, the shattered window. I put it on her shoulder. I said, it’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay and she’s breathing heavily. She says, I swallowed glass, I swallowed glass, I said, it’s going to be okay even if you swallowed glass. The paramedics are on their way. It’s going to be okay. You’re going to make it. Police are on the way. Medical help will be here soon. And then she got this look on her face and she said, my son. My son is in the back seat. Is he okay?

And I got to tell you, church. I had walked past the back seat. I didn’t see a boy. I didn’t see a boy in there. I said, it’s okay. I’m going to look. I’m going to look for you, okay? And I didn’t know what I was about to see. I thought maybe I was about to see a dead boy in the back seat, and I slowly moved back toward the window and church, that boy WAS STILL ON HIS iPad!  He was playing a game on his iPad!

That’s the level of concentration we need to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. That’s what it’s got to look like. See, you may feel like your marriage is falling apart. Like you’re going through glass and twisted metal everywhere. It is difficult, but you need to lock your eyes on Jesus. You need to keep your focus on Jesus. He will see you through it. He will make your marriage stronger because of that trial. I know you don’t feel that way about it, but that’s what he’s going to do. The trials will cause you to experience God’s grace in ways that you never would have if he didn’t take you through that trial. So today, today, with your spouse together this afternoon, commit to letting the peace of Christ rule in your home. Commit to agree together that Christ’s word will be your guiding light. And whatever you do, don’t take your eyes off him. Let’s pray.

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