Choose Today!

0:01 As I have done and will continue to do until there remain no more hostages. I I will continue to give an update each week for the purpose that we, for, we do not forget the hostages that have now been in captivity for nearly 11 months. This week, actually, we experienced, I don't know if you were paying attention to the news, but the IDF, uh, partook in a daring mission and they rescued one of the hostages alive and, and he was able to return home to his family.

0:49 Yeah, you can, you can, you can share so that all governing powers of the world can hear partially because all I continue to hear through the news is that Israel is waging a genocidal war. That they, uh, hate the Arab people. That they're, they're persecuting the Arabs. And I will tell you that the man that was being held hostage by radical fundamentalists, uh, uh, Muslims was a Muslim himself. In fact, Israel risked the lives of their very own soldiers

1:38 for the purpose of retrieving a Muslim and bringing him back to his community in Israel. All I continue to hear is that Hamas are overzealous freedom fighter fighters for the case of Palestinian Muslims, and yet they continue to hold one of their own, if you call it that way, for nearly 11 months. As, as a hostage, they didn't release him. To me, it doesn't make it a Muslim thing. It actually makes it a hatred or vm uh, something deep within that's aimed against Israel.

2:29 And it just so happens that on the receiving end at this moment was an Israeli Muslim. I don't know if, I don't know how many of you realize that there are Israeli Muslims. In fact, 20% of Israel are Arabs. Uh, not all 20% are Muslims, but there's a good, uh, significant chunk of that that, that are, and all of that to say these Israeli soldiers are willing to risk their lives to bring a Muslim home when the so-called freedom fighters are continuing to hold him hostage as a member of the same religion. So that's my, my rant for the today,

3:16 but one hostage was saved. You know, Judaism teaches us that every life is as if you saved the whole universe. That's why the Jewish people regard life so highly. That's why they're willing to risk their lives for the sake of someone who believes religiously different than them. So, congratulations, Abby. You did a fantastic job on your first time reading from the Torah. It Is difficult. We live in difficult times where we have to both celebrate and rejoice and also mourn in the same moment.

4:04 And so you were given a a particularly different difficult task because we are continuing to mourn the loss of our elder Dave. And also yet we're rejoicing with you in this, in this moment where you take a step forward and you connect at a deeper level with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So as I usually do, I'm gonna talk directly with Abby and the rest of you, y'all, y'all can listen in. I do that partially because if I talk directly to Abby, I don't know if you realize this, you'll actually pay more attention than if I talk to all y'all. And if I at some point give Abby some, some encouraging things to try in her life, you are more likely

4:51 to do it because I'm talking to Abby and I'm not talking to you. It's kind of a reverse psychology kind of thing. No, it's just the way we're it's just the way we are as people. Abby, I'm gonna talk to you from your Torah portion. I think most of what I'm gonna say is not new. In fact, you covered a good probably half of it, But it's sometimes it just, it's helpful to continue to hear it again. One of the practices that one of our mutually good friends got me in the habit of, I'll read the Torah portion each week, but now what I do is when I'm driving into work, I'll listen to the Torah portion being read.

5:36 Why? Because sometimes we hear things that we don't see when we're reading and they become more evident and they mean more so sometimes you just have to give a different method to try. So in that, in, in light of that, you've read and you've seen some things, and now I've read and I've seen some things and we'll see if we see the same thing. The title for my, my message is really Choose Today. This is for you, Abby. This is for all of us. This is a, an ongoing choice that we have to make every day. Choose today whom you will serve. I'd like to read the portion where I'm primarily drawing,

6:24 drawing from the, the text I, if you will, is from Deuteronomy chapter 11 verses 26, and we'll stop in 12 verse seven. See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse. The blessing. If you listen to the mitz vote of otai your God, then I'm commanding you today. But the curse, if you do not listen to the mitz vote of otai your God, but turn from the way that I'm commanding you today to go after other gods you have not known. Now, when otai, your God brings you into the land you are going into possess, you are to set the blessing on the Mount of Griz.

7:10 And the curse on the Mount of Ma Mount Aal are, are they not across the Jordan, toward the West, in the land of the Canaanites who dwell in Aba opposite Gilgal beside the oaks of Moray. For you're about to cross over the Jordan to go in to possess the land iai your God is giving you. You'll possess it and dwell in it, and you will take care to do all the statutes and ordinances that I'm setting before you today. These are the statutes and ordinances that you are to make sure to do in the land that I deny the God of your fathers has given you to possess all the days that you live on earth, you must utterly destroy all the places where the nations that you will dispossess serve their gods on the high mountains, on the hills,

7:57 and under every green tree you are to tear down their altars, smash their pillars, burn their Asher poles in the fire, and cut down the carved images of their gods. And you are to obliterate their name from that place. You are not to act like this toward Adonai your God. Rather you are to seek only the place. ot, your God chooses from all your tribes to put his name to dwell. There you will come. There you are to bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes, the offering of your hand, your vow, and your free will offerings in the firstborn of your herd and of your flock. There, you and your households will eat before Adonai your God and rejoice in every undertaking of your hand as otai,

8:42 your God has blessed you. We're gonna stop there. I recognize it's in the middle of a paragraph, but that's where we're gonna stop. Otherwise, Abby, your challenge today would not be reading from the Torah report, uh, reading from the Torah, but rather sitting there listening to me talk for hours, which is still your, your challenge today. Just maybe not hours with an S. At least we hope not. See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse. The blessing if you listen to what otai commands the curse. If you do not listen to what the Lord commands,

9:28 but it's not just, if you do not listen to what the Lord commands, it also is accompanied with, but you turn aside from the Lord and follow other gods. You have not known. It struck me, Abby, you guys, you guys have been here for 12 years. Is that right? It struck me the God you know is the only God you've ever known. And that's the God that we worship here at RK Hashem, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It's just like the children of Israel. They only knew the God who brought them out of Egypt, the God who rescued their parents, who brought them through the wilderness and now has set them upon the brink of entering into Israel.

10:14 Abby, you've known no other God, And now Moses is, is speaking to them and telling them, as you go into this new land, you're going to be confronted with all sorts of peoples and Gods much like Abby. As you are entering into adulthood and your parents begin to allow you to experience adulthood choices slowly, slowly. You see, today is the doorway. It's not adulthood, it's the doorway that we're in, that you're entering into. But as you begin to, to, if you will, I'm now, I'm, I'm,

10:59 I'm making some application here. As you begin to cross that Jordan River into this new land, you will begin to see that it's not just the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that exists out in, in the adult world. In fact, there's all sorts of gods out there. None of them are the creator of the heavens and the earth. None of them are the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. None of them are the creator in the former of you. And yet, there still remain all these gods in the nations, even in our own nation. So as you begin to be exposed

11:46 to these, I want you to come back. You can, you can think back to your tour portion and, and think about the things that you have to do to protect yourself. There's a blessing. If you listen to what the Lord commands, there's a curse if you do not listen to him. And if you turn aside for him and follow the other gods that you have not known, just because you turn to follow the other gods doesn't mean that you don't have to listen to what they command. We often don't think about this. We often think, oh our God, he gives us commandments and things to follow the other gods.

12:33 They let you do whatever you want. They're so much more fun. You can have ice cream anytime of the day. You can do whatever you want is not true. The other gods, they have their commands also. And the moment you begin to serve them is the moment you'll begin to follow their commands and it will pull you away from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It will pull you away from the God that you have known from nearly birth. Well, I would, I would say birth. It will pull you away from the God that you have known all of your time here at em. When you turn to one of those other gods,

13:20 what does it mean to listen or to not listen. See, I've set before you today a blessing and a curse, a blessing if you listen, a curse, if you don't or if you listen to the other gods, you can frame it that way. Also, what does it mean to listen? Well, I have lots of jokes that can go with listening, but the reality is listening is when you hear what the Lord says, and then you do what he says. It's a, it's a two step process. Sometimes we often, uh, we'll have conversations with each other. You're not listening to me. I don't want you

14:08 to mistake that kind of listening. Listening to the Lord and hearing what he says implies that you do what he says. There's, it is not an, it's not a, um, it's not a passive listen where you can say, oh, thank you Lord. Lemme turn this onto the tv. Thank you. Thank you for your input. Sometimes we do this with our parents. That's real nice. I know you think you know what you're talking about, but I'm the technologically superior generation, by the way, that that is true. The true statement doesn't matter how old you are, because all of us Have more technology than our previous generations. Doesn't matter how far back you go, at least in, in terms

14:55 of certainly anyone living in this room. We all think, oh, you guys did it that way. That's great. We do it this way. I, I'm not talking about methods, methods, methods change, methods come and go. But if the method takes you away from listening to the Lord, then probably you should take the method and push it to the side and no longer use it. Because that method, if it's leading you to something else, if it's leading to another God, that method is not a method of the Lord. James tells us in James chapter one, be doers

15:41 of the word and not hearers only deluding yourselves for if anyone is a hero of the word and not a doer. He is like a man who looks at his natural face in the mirror. For once he looks at himself and goes away, he immediately forgets what sort of person he was, but the one who looks intently into the perfect Torah. The Torah that gives freedom and continues in it. Not becoming a hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts. He shall be blessed in what he does. You see today, you have a blessing or a curse. If you hear there's a doing that follows along with it. If there's no doing, then automatically you've made your choice.

16:28 It doesn't mean that what you do wins you salvation. That's not what I'm talking about. But what you do reflects to the world, the sort of God that we serve, if I can put it this way, you do you have a front porch light? Yeah. Does your front porch light have, uh, glass around it? Is your glass is the glass clean? Yeah, not so much. Very rarely do we have French front porch lights or lanterns that have clean glass. Why? Because we forget to clean them. But the reality is the light that shines through that, the light is Yeshua himself. If I, if you can bear with me in this example, the light is Yeshua, the glass is us. You see, the glass gets dirty.

17:14 That's not what I'm talking about. The glass can get cleaned, but the cleaner the glass is, the farther the light shines, and the more people that can be drawn to the light of Yeshua, which means that when we follow Yeshua, we have to look at our lives and figure out how to clean that glass. Now the Bible gives us lots of good ways to clean the glass, um, all of which require hard work. I don't know if you ever, ever, uh, go to the car wash or ever, if your parents ever have you, like try to get the bugs off of the windows. Certainly in like fall time or spring time, man, you just gotta like scrub to get the the bugs off of the, off of the car windshield.

17:59 It takes a lot to clean a wi a a a piece of glass. So the glass can be seen through clearly early, but understand, oh yeah, you have glasses. That's right. Here I am preaching to the choir. I forget about glasses. Yeah, perfect. Great. My child, she also has glasses and she will, we will put her fingers all over the glasses and halfway through the day, like, dad, I can't see, and I'm like, clean your glasses. Like, you gotta take 'em off and be like, oh, okay. You gotta get a, an appropriate cloth. 'cause not all cloths are, uh, are,

18:45 um, created equally. Some are created better. Use that cloth, clean the cloth. And now you can see clearly what you're trying to do is to be a doer or a follower of Yeshua that does or he asks us to do not just hear what he asks us to do. I'd like to skip a few verses here into chapter 12. Here are the laws and rulings that you are to observe and obey in the land of the Lord, the God of your ancestors, uh, in the land, the God of your ancestors has given you to possess. As long as you live on earth, you must destroy all the places where the nations you are dispossessing serve their gods,

19:30 whether on high mountains, on hills, under some leafy tree, break down their altars, smash their standing stones to pieces, burn up their sacred poles completely, and cut down the carved images of their gods, exterminate their name from that place. That's a, like, those are some radical words. The children of Israel were given a task to accomplish when they entered the land that had been promised to their ancestors, that had to destroy all of these places where the nation served their gods. They were to exterminate the God, the names of those gods from that place. History tells us that it actually didn't happen fully. But what does this mean? It means that the nations that previously inhabited that land

20:18 serve their gods in particular ways, on high mountains, on hills and under leafy trees, they had alter, uh, alters, standing stones, sacred poles and carved images. None of these are to be used. It says, obliterate their existence, exterminate their existence, completely remove it from the land. In other words, this is not how you're to worship your God. These other nations, they have, they're gods, they serve him in a particular way. You don't do that. I'm going to show you what to do. It means well, we'll get, we'll, we'll get to the application in a few minutes, but frankly, it means that we have to be ruthless in the way we come at sin,

21:04 in the way we serve other gods in our lives. But you are not continuing on in verse four, but you are not to treat aai your God this way. Rather you are to come to the place where aai, your God will put his name. He will choose it from all your tribes, and you will seek out that place, which is where he will live and go there. You'll bring your, there, your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tents that you set aside, uh, in other words, your tithes, the offerings that you give, the offerings that you avowed your voluntary offerings and the firstborn of your cattle and sheep. There. You'll eat in the presence of otai your God, and you'll rejoice over everything you set out to do, you and your households in which otai your God has blessed you.

21:55 In other words, let me, let me frame it this way. There is a central place of worship that God is going to set for the people of Israel in the land. And they're not to go to the high mountains, to the hills, to the trees where, uh, under the leafy trees, they're not to go to the altars, the standing stones, the the Asher Poles, all of that. God is going to create a central place for them to worship, and each person will go to the central place to worship the Lord. They'll bring their sacrifices, their burned offerings into other offerings. They'll bring their firstborn of their animals, their tithes, and then they will eat together. This is actually, I think, part of what you actually read. They will eat together.

22:41 Eating is a component, a very key component of their worship. I don't know if any of any of y'all, all y'all have ever considered to that. Eating is an essential component of our worship of the Lord, but it is briskets and all eating. When we eat together and we fellowship together, what we do is when we eat together, at least in the sacrificial system that's being mentioned here, when we come and bring a Thanksgiving sacrifice, let's say, let's pick, let's pick that one. We come and we give thanks to the Lord for his provision.

23:27 And what we do is we then share what the Lord has done in our lives with everyone else. Not only do we share verbally, but we share re resourcefully with, with the, with the meat. You know, where's the meat? The meat is what God blesses you with, at least in, in the, in the sacrificial, um, setting the meat. The, the Thanksgiving offering is this, is this offering where we are so thankful to the Lord that he's blessed us in whatever venture we have. We bring the whole offering. And you know what the offering, you know what you have to do with the offering. It's one of the few that you have to do. You have to consume it in entirety in one sitting.

24:16 That's a lot of meat. When you think about a, a, an offering, an animal offering, this is why you bring people with you and they partake. Why? Because number one, they help you eat the whole offering. But number two, you're reflecting to them how the Lord has blessed you in your own life and you get to share stories. I don't know how many, well, you've been to a lot of meals unless I recognize that. Like you, you're 13 years old. You eat three times a day, sometimes seven. Certainly your brother is at the seven to nine range right now. Yes, I'm, yeah, that's teenage boys, sometimes 12. But anyways, You,

25:02 you're in this like I'm eating food. Every time you sit down and eat food with someone, you have an opportunity to share with them how the Lord has blessed you. This is what maybe we don't all recognize this. It's an opportunity for us to share what the Lord is doing in our own lives when we sit down and eat with others. And when we do that, what we're doing is we are worshiping him by extolling him and actually saying, this is what the Lord has provided for me. It is good to worship God while you eat. I know I'm making everyone hungry for lunch,

25:51 But eating is a key component of their worship. Let's let it be a key component of ours. Also, bringing their tithe to the central place of the, of worship is also a part of, part of their worship. Bringing what the Lord, the, the, the, the element that the Lord has set apart as his own for the purpose of us recognizing what the Lord gives us is actually his. It's not our effort that we got it. Now, this is far more difficult when we live in a time where we make a paycheck. This is far easier when you, when you live in a, in an agrarian society where you have crops that grow, if, if the Lord provides rain or crops that don't grow, if the Lord doesn't provide rain, you see, because today we work 40 hours a week

26:39 and we assume that that paycheck is because of our labor. We assume that we are owed, which is partially correct, contractually a particular amount of money for the 40 hours of labor that we put in. The problem is in that we've failed to recognize that the Lord is the one who gives us the ability to work that 40 hours. And then he's also the one who's given us the ability to receive it contractually from whoever our employer is. Therefore, we set apart a 10th and we return it to him recognizing that he is the provider of everything that we have. In fact, I, I didn't go to this college, but I went, I almost went to a college

27:25 and, uh, the founder of the university, he made a proclamation that said, if the Lord can live on 10%, so can I. And he, at that point in his life, he set that his, the way he lived was on 10% in the 90% he set apart for the Lord. It is an amazing story, if you ever want to go look it up. Uh, I can't remember his first name, but his last name is Lano. Uh, Lano University is in East Texas. So what Abby does this mean? I've, I've, I've walked you through some of these things that the children of Israel experienced. What does this mean for you and me? Because we don't live in the wilderness

28:10 on the other side of the Jordan. We're not crossing the Jordan in our lives. We're, we're not even in the land of Israel. We're in America. We're in America. Sorry, I can't help. It's, I can't help it. We, what is this? How do we, how do we take this and apply it in our own lives? Let me give you three, three places where you can do this. Number one, what is the Lord setting before you today? You can choose the blessing or the curse. That's your choice. This has always been from the creation to now the Lord sets before us a choice. He said it before Adam and Eve. He said it before everyone, after Adam and Eve.

28:57 He said it before the children of Israel. He continues to set that choice before each one of us today. It's our responsibility now to choose which one are we going to choose. You can choose to be obedient and follow the Lord, or you can choose to follow your own will. In either case, choose today whom you will serve. You. See, just because you make that choice today, Abby, doesn't mean that your choice today guarantees the same choice or the same outcome tomorrow, every day. You're gonna be forced to choose today between the blessing and the curse. This is not something we choose once in our life,

29:43 and all of a sudden life becomes easy. In fact, I don't, I I don't want to, I don't want to be too discouraging, but every day from now on, it's going to get harder. It's not going to get easier. Just because you make the choice today, it doesn't make it easier to make the choice tomorrow. In fact, the older you get, you get, the more you'll realize how many other gods there are out there. How many other things that you can serve that are not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So, as you were entering into adulthood, I I I did a preliminary jump here earlier. As you were entering into adulthood, there's a whole land

30:31 of options before you. You need to make sure every day as you were following the Lord to continue to remove the obstacles that are in the land. The, i I now, I'm gonna go literal in the text, the, the, the mountain, the, the high places, the, the hills, the sites of worship underneath the leafy trees, the, uh, the altars, the Asher poles. All you have to remove all of these. And you're like, there's none of those in, in, in the land where I live. Well, you're right. There's nothing like that in, in Texas. We don't have many mountains or hills. However, I will tell you one of the gods

31:19 that presides over Texas, that's not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that God's name is independence. I can do it myself. You see, we live in a state that prides ourselves on, we can do it ourself. We, I I know I've used this illustration all the time. We can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. We can make everything work. It's our choice. We're gonna do it ourselves. Why? Because we're Texans. In fact, we're so good. We're the only state that can back outta the United States. 'cause the rest of the United States are so bad. I mean,

32:06 That God of independence is a false God. That is a God that too often we look at and go, I'm okay with that. God has called me to be strong and to, to, to, to help others and to be independent. Yes, that's true. God has called us to be strong and to be independent and to help others, but not apart from dependence upon him. The moment we get into that independent is the moment we become our own Gods ourself is now our God, because we can do it ourself. We don't need anybody else. It's a difficult God to serve. But let me tell you, our God is bigger.

32:54 He's a God who doesn't call you to do everything by yourself. In fact, one of these days when you're at your house and nobody else is around, I say this because you don't want any videographic evidence. One of these days when you're at your house and nobody else is around, you sit on the ground and you get a pair of boots and try to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And you tell me how effective that is, because the reality is, is not one of us in this room is capable of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. In fact, every single in this person in this room has received the benefit of the grace of God and the abundant blessing of the Lord from someone else in this room at

33:40 some point in their life. What that tells me is our God is not a God of I'm gonna do it by myself or I'm gonna, I'm gonna go off alone and I'm gonna do it on my own. That's not the God that we serve. The God that we serve says we're gonna come together. In fact, I read it in the Psalm this morning. We're gonna be slow to anger. We're gonna have compassion, grace, mercy. That's the characteristic attributes of our God. That's who he wants us to be. He doesn't want to be, doesn't want us to be this some independent self-willed. Uh, I made it to the top of the Fortune 500 or top 500 wealthiest people in America.

34:28 Uh, that's not what he wants. Now, if no, lemme just take caveat and say, if that's one of y'all, he wants you to tithe. I mean, I only partially joke. He wants you to serve him. It doesn't matter how much you wealth you have, he wants you to serve him wholeheartedly. So Abby, as you are continuing to, to cross into the land of adulthood, your continued responsibility is to clear away all temptations, to serve other gods. They will surface. If I told you that they surface every morning, then I would be downplaying how often they surface.

35:16 They surface every minute, every half hour, every, every time you make you, you change your focus to something else. All of a sudden there's another God there. We just don't call 'em Gods. We call them distractions. We call them, um, You know, yeah, We call them gaming systems. We call them television. We call them sports. We call them, man, we, I could just go all the way down this list because everything where we give our attention and our focus to has the potential to become a God in our life. At some point, you will have to choose whether you serve

36:02 that God, the God of fantasy football. I'm, I'm just, I'm trying to hit everybody's feet today. Okay? Or our God, it doesn't mean well. Okay? You understand what I mean? Finally, the central place of worship here, the great thing about a central place of worship is you get to come together with all these other people who are like-minded. In other words, for the most part, everyone who's here is here to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Amen. When you come here, all of a sudden, what you can do is you can take a deep breath

36:50 and say, I'm not on my own anymore. You can look around and say, oh, so and so is walking this path with me. Oh, so and so they've already been down this path. I should go ask them, how did they get rid of these gods in their lives or so and so is always there. In fact, let's just, let's pick on Elder Dave for a minute. Elder Dave was always here. Uh, as, as one of us says to cover our six, he was always here to sit and to watch and to fill in the, the holes that were necessary on a show, especially on a Shabbat. You see all sorts of things break. Well, we can give credit to whomever credit is due for,

37:38 why they break, but all sorts of things break on Shabbat. And you know what Elder Dave would do? He would walk around from classroom to classroom. He would check the air conditionings. He would just check in on the class and see how the class was going. He would just see if there was anything that was broken that needed mending at the moment. Why? Because he didn't want Rabbi Sean or myself or my, my dad when, when it was his, when, when it was his job up here. He didn't want one of us to step aside and become distracted by whatever that was. And it was a great relief. I can tell you to Rabbi Sean and myself, elder Dave. He, someone asked me the other day, what was, what was his job like?

38:24 What did he do? Can I tell you something? I don't know what he did, and I don't mean that in a bad way because technically I'm his boss and I was supposed to know what he did, but whatever he did, he did it so well that it never came to me. And so I don't know what he did. Amen. Yes. That that's the person you have the opportunity to grow into. Someone who walks around is an active peacemaker who brings, brings resolution in these, in these areas who fixes the little things and nobody else ever knows. You see, it's never about what do other people know? It's always about how am I serving the Lord today?

39:12 Now, the reality is other people will know because they will see you. Whether you do it quietly or loudly, they will see you. And if you're doing it and you're following the Lord with all of your heart, they will see you and they will praise the Lord for what he's doing through you. That's what happens when we come and we have a central place of worship. Your testimony causes others around you to praise the Lord, your testimony in your own life. Abby, you at this moment in your life, perhaps more than most 13 year olds, have an opportunity to give praise to the Lord because of what he's doing in your own life and what he's brought you through,

39:59 and what he continues to bring you through every day, and will continue to bring you through every day for the rest of your life. Amen. The Lord watches over you. The Lord guides you, and your testimony can cause others to praise the Lord, not to praise you. It's never to praise you. Our testimony is so that others turn and praise the Lord. It's the whole purpose of our lives. And fact, I I can't remember the, the letter writer, maybe it's Peter, uh, but we are to offer, or maybe it's Paul, we are to offer our lives as a Thanksgiving offering before the Lord. That Thanksgiving offering is what I was talking about earlier. It's the one where you're to eat the whole animal in one

40:45 sitting with a lot of people. If that's our lives and our lives were to be with a lot of people into our, our lives or to be examples, to be, um, I I I'm going to use the word consumed by others, but I don't mean edibly. Um, don't, don't let other people eat you. Like that's probably not a good idea. But, but the figurative element where we come together and say, this is what the Lord has blessed me with. This is what the Lord has taken me through this week. I want to tell all of you so that you can bless the Lord and praise him, and that you can join with me and, and partake in this blessing. By the way, this is not just you, Abby. This is all of us.

41:31 This is true for all of us. This is a place this, listen, I, I know we're not in Israel. We're not in Jerusalem. I'm not saying Dallas is the new Jerusalem. I'm not saying any of that, but I'm saying in our application, Barham is the central place of worship for us. It's a place for us to find fellowship so that you can stand strong and also be encouraged for the rest of the week when you are acting as a light upon a hill. Matthew chapter five says, let your light shine before men and women. Let your light shine before all people so that they may see your good works. Why to glorify your Father in heaven.

42:20 Your mom stressed the fact that God is your Father from your name. It's important for you to remember that everything that you do serving the Lord is to glorify your Father in heaven. It's not to glorify ourselves and not glorify your family, your friends, whatever. It's to glorify your Father in heaven so that everyone who goes, whoa, look at the young lady Abby has turned into. I'm like, this is, this is fantastic. This makes me wanna serve the Lord more, because that's the after effect. When people see what the Lord does in your life, it causes them to want to serve the Lord more. And when all of us now think about it like this Abby, when

43:08 that happens to one or two of us and that happens, then to one or two of those people, all of a sudden it spreads and it ignites the whole room because you are doing what you're supposed to be doing, which is serving the Lord and glorifying him and letting your life be an a, a, a, an offering before him that causes all people to give thanks for the Lord and the blessing that he has provided for you in your life. So Abby, congratulations on a job well done today. You have passed the threshold of the doorway into adulthood.

43:53 You're not into adulthood yet, but you're there standing and you're beginning to see that the options now are more complicated than they were as a child. This today you have the option. Choose today whom you will serve. The choices always choose today. Well, may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

44:50 I don't in the name of our Messiah, Yeshua Shalum. Congratulations, Abby.