Embrace of the King - Aiden Huff | LW2023

Embrace of the King - Aiden Huff | LW2023

In his talk, "Embrace of the King," Aiden Huff delves into the notion of surrendering to the will of God, drawing from biblical teachings and personal experiences. He accords surrender a battle term, wherein one relinquishes their aspirations to fulfill God's designs instead. 

He emphasizes the key roles of prayer, biblical guidance, and careful deliberation in our decisions, cautioning against hasty interpretations of phenomena such as dreams. Through the parable of Job 11:13-19, Huff illuminates the concept of heartfelt surrender to God, which requires immersion in prayer and God's Word.

The talk is interspersed with personal anecdotes underscoring the transformative power of surrendering to God, from dealing with mental health issues such as anger and anxiety to navigating significant life trials like terminal illness. Huff presents his own struggles with anxiety, conveying how surrendering concerns to God is an ongoing, unique journey for each person yet integral to attaining God's peace and joy. 

He ultimately advocates for the priority of God's plan over individual plans and concludes with the reassurance that surrendering to God's will enhances closeness to Him and provides a richer experience of His love and grace.

Transcript

Hi, what's up? Cool. I generally speak pretty quietly so if I'm speaking too quiet, please tell me. If you guys in the back can't hear me, please let me know.

I cried a lot while writing this and I cried a lot more this morning. I got some not great news about my mother this morning so I'm feeling pretty emotional so I probably will cry at some point. Just a heads up. I'm also talking about some pretty heavy stuff so I'll get started, I'll introduce myself a little bit and I'll pray to get started. I lead at Bellevue High School.

For those of you who don't know. I got placed on a mega team. I was debut. That did not work very well. That was over pretty quickly.

We ended up splitting within a year. I'm now the head leader of Bellevue with Will and Nina. I'm in electrical engineering at the University of Cincinnati. I'm also finishing up my MBA. I'll graduate in May with both.

I'm engaged to my wonderful fiance Elsa. We're getting married in May as well so that'll be a busy month for us. Went to Ryle. I was first discipled by Jared Blair and then David Cook and now Rick. I gave my life to Christ on June 24, 2015.

I'll never forget that night. It was summer after my 7th grade year. I was at the summer camp, and it was the first time I really experienced the Holy Spirit. And I was there worshiping in a room with all these people. And before I knew it, it had been 4 hours.

And I was the only person left in the room with a guy leading worship and everybody else had left 2 hours ago and I didn't even realize I was just so surrounded by the spirit and I'll just never forget that day. I definitely lost my way along the path but definitely straight away during times always figured it out.

I always believed in Jesus but there was solid amount of time where I wasn't doing anything about it. My first year of leading is really what turned me into the man you guys see today. I was faced with countless hard realities about my life and the way I was living my life as I was forced to either turn away from or lean into. Thankfully I leaned into those. Yeah.

I'm going to pray to get started. Lord, I thank you for your love. I think for the cross. I think when you were on the cross you had the opportunity to take yourself off but you love us too much. Lord, I lift up Beth this morning.

I thank you that her medical problems are not an obstacle to her sharing the gospel. Lord, lift up Jesse this morning. I thank you for his constant friendship, companionship. Lord, I thank you for his devotion to the city of Dayton. Lord, break these seminars this morning.

I pray that any words of mine to get through would be forgotten, Lord, and only yours would be remembered. Think for today. We think of this weekend. I thank you for a community of believers that are so willing to lay down their lives for you, Lord. We love you.

Amen.

I want to get into first why I'm doing this. For those who know me well, know that my flesh hates doing this. I hate being center attention. I hate speaking. I hate being in front of people.

If you paid attention to me at leadership, I go upstairs, crab food immediately downstairs. I do not want to be anywhere near groups of people. If I look at my life and I look at leading, how much I hated it at first, I hated contact work, and I hated being going into student sections. I remember my first game. Jared and I were walking into a game, and there's a group of students, and we're walking past them.

Jared sits down next to him. I'm just so anxious. I keep going, sit by myself for a few minutes, and eventually Jared calls me over, and he's like, hey, I need five. Like, I'm making bets about this game. I need five.

Just it was great to have Jared as a head leader for such a long time, because that's just who he is, which is the opposite of what I was. So I'm hoping that experiences like this will help me to not hate doing this. Also felt a serious conviction when Rick asked me to do it. At first, it was immediate, like, pit in my stomach. Like, no, no way I'm doing that.

But I could tell that the Lord was telling me that I should. This is something that I feel like I've been ready to share for a long time. I'm going to be talking about a dream that I had. I had this dream about nine months ago. I feel like I've been ready to share this for a while, but just not had an opportunity to do it.

I'll talk about this more later, but for those of you that don't know, my mom was just diagnosed with stage four Glioblastoma, which is brain cancer, and she had brain surgery, did the whole thing. And we're back home on the couch, and she loves HGTV. I don't know why. It's terrible. I hate watching it, but she loves it.

And we're sitting on the couch, we're having a conversation, and then the conversation dies down a little bit, and I was like, hey, you want to watch TV or something? And she looks me in the eyes and goes, it doesn't matter. I was like, what do you mean, it doesn't matter? She said, Only thing that matters is me telling people about Jesus. And then she got on her phone and started texting her nurse from the hospital.

And at that point, I kind of decided I wasn't doing this. I was going to use my mom as an excuse, but she's not using it as an excuse. I don't think that I can.

Here I am, like I said earlier, I'm going to talk about a dream that I had, but I wanted to kind of give a disclaimer first about dreams. I feel like that's kind of a weird subject. The Old Covenant shows multiple accounts of God leading his people through dreams. Genesis 28 god met Jacob in a dream, revealing to him his presence in the land of Canaan. Genesis 37 joseph sped multiple dreams for telling his rise of power.

And even in the New Testament, Matthew one and two, the Lord comes to Joseph in a dream, says, but as you consider these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as her wife, for which is conceived in hers from the Holy Spirit. And then Matthew 219 through 20, but when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are dead. And there's many other examples god's Bible revelation. But a lot of those instances, Lord was using dreams because the Bible didn't exist yet, right? Like he couldn't point Jacob to the New Testament because it didn't exist.

We now have the New covenant. The New Covenant stresses the importance of the scripture. The Bible speaks time and time again to not trust the heart. Science tells us now that a lot of times our dreams are things that we selfishly desire or experiences we've already had. Jeremiah 79 says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick who can understand it?

So I say all that to say, like, just be cautious when trying to interpret a dream. I wouldn't just take a dream at face value and believe that that's what the Lord's telling you to do. Seek biblical principles, seek counsel before you believe that. I strongly believe that the Lord chose a way to communicate with us, and it's the Bible and use that.

But with all that being said, I feel like the Lord has spoken to me and showed me many things through dreams. I feel like it's something that I pray a lot, especially before I go to bed. I pray that the Lord would protect my dreams and show me stuff.

There was a really cool example from about a year ago. I had a dream about myself at a park with high schoolers leading them. And there was this couple that was leading at another school with me in the dream, and that was it. I have dreams pretty much every night that I remember, and I forgot that one immediately because it didn't mean anything to me. And then a few months later, the couple approached me and was like, hey, we feel like we're being called to Belgium.

And I was just like such a cool connection and that the Lord was like, just gave me so much confidence that was supposed to happen because I had a dream about it two months before.

Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and jump into the dream that I want to talk about, this dreams about heaven. It's a dream that I've had maybe twelve to 15 times.

This dream starts out, I'm at the gates of heaven and surrounded by people. Most of the time it's people that I know and we're just like worshipping the Lord right at the gates of heaven. And there's been a few times where it's like people that I share the gospel with that end up not accepting Jesus. And regardless of whether they do or not, it was more just like God was showing me that it's not up to me, it's up to Him. So the stream started off like it always had, but this time it went further and I stepped into heaven and I'm surrounded by an infinite number of people.

I can't count so many people. And usually I would hate that thing, I hate that sort of thing. I hate being in that situation, but I just felt so safe, so loved and so surrounded by people. And we're all worshiping the Lord, worshiping one name, and Lord's up on the hill and visually he's far away, but he doesn't feel far away. And I look down and I see Jesus in front of me and just like just wraps his arms around me.

And even in a dream, that was the safest I've ever felt, the most loved I've ever felt, the most peace I've ever felt.

And I wake up from that dream just like so dumbfounded, like, can't believe the Lord would show me that or allow for me to experience that.

And I spend like the first few hours of me being awake just like crying, just so in all of the Lord. But pretty quickly that feeling starts to fade as I realize when I'm back in my crappy life on earth. And I quickly become kind of frustrated in the feeling of like, now I'm not feeling those things that I want to be.

So I spent about a week just kind of being upset about it, honestly.

But I feel like over the next few months the Lord was trying to show me that I can feel those things now. And he wanted to show me how. That's what I'm going to talk about. For those of you that want entitle, it's the embrace of the king. I'm going to be in Job eleven, the main scripture.

I'm going to be in Job 1113 through 19.

And the main points I'm going to talk about are what I mean by surrender and what the Bible means by surrender. Because what I learned was that the answer to that question is surrender for me with how to feel those things. I'm also going to talk about what surrendering can do for us and what it did for Job. And then I have some examples from my own life of where either I wasn't surrendering and I needed to, or I did. And the result of that, when thinking about the title for this, I could have used many words instead of know father, Shepherd, Savior.

All those would have worked. That would have been correct. But I feel like I chose King to emphasize God's sovereignty, his ultimate know, just relating to surrender. And like a dictionary definition, surrender is a battle term. It means giving up all rights to conquering power.

When an army chooses to surrender, they lay down their arms and the conqueror takes control. From then on, surrendering to God works the same way. God has a plan for our lives, and surrendering to Him means we set aside our own plans for our lives and eagerly seek to fulfill his. The good part about surrender is that God's plan for us is always better than our plan. He has our best interest.

I think of Jeremiah 20 911, for I know the plans have for you, declares Lord, plans not to harm you, but to prosper you, plans to give you hope in the future. I feel like in my own life, at least in my mind, my own plans were also doing that. My own plans were bringing me hope in the future. But the Scripture tells us that they're not. Proverbs 1412 there's a way that seems right to a man to a man, but its end is the way to death.

That seems pretty clear cut. It right.

Our Lord is an omniscient god. He knows what is best. He conquers us to save us.

There's two main levels of surrendering Scripture that I think we can relate to our lives. The first is the one that we talk about at summer camp. Right? It's letting Jesus drive your car or whatever analogy we use. It's the initial surrendering to the drawing of the Holy Spirit that leads to salvation.

We let go of our own attempts to earn God's favor and rely upon the finished work of Jesus Christ on our behalf. We become a child of God, and I feel like we talk about that all the time, and obviously that's important, that's great. But I feel like there's also another level of surrender.

But the other level comes during times of greater surrender, during a Christian's life that bring deeper intimacy with God.

The more areas of our lives we surrender to Him, the more room there is for the filling of the Holy Spirit. When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we exhibit traits of character, the fruits of the Spirit that's love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. More surrender directly leads to more of the Holy Spirit, which means a deeper feeling and understanding of the fruits of the spirit. The second type of surrender is what I'm going to mostly focus on in this.

So we're going to go ahead and jump into Job. I'll give a little background for those of you that don't know. The book of Job opens by introducing a righteous man. The Lord describes him in Job one eight that there is none like him on earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He then undergoes a series of terrible calamities include succession that strip him of his wealth and noble position in society.

He has to face the death of his ten adult children and his body is inflicted with painful sores. Job is unaware that a serious spiritual challenge concerning his faith in God is taking place between God and Satan. Despite his loss, Job worshipped the Lord by saying naked I come from my mother's womb and naked I shall return there. Job was not prepared to blame God for his problem even though he did not understand why he was going through these trials. He did not understand but trusted God anyway.

Job lamented his loss and questioned his misfortune. And after seven days of silent grief, a series of conversations recorded between him and some friends who were shocked at his condition and were determined to discover the reason for his suffering. They wrongfully believe that only sinners suffer while the righteous are blessed. They were determined to discover Job'sin, punish him for his crimes and correct him with their counsel. So Job 1113 through 19 is Job's friend so far talking Job and before this so far has already gone through his whole spiel of Job of like here's all the things you probably did wrong, this is why it was happening to you and he got that part wrong as the scripture tells us.

But his response to Job is what Job's response should be. He got correct, which is in Job blood says yet if you devote your heart to him and stretch out your hands to him, you put away the sin that is in your hand and allow no evil to dwell in your tent. Then, free of fault, you will lift up your face. You will stand firm and without fear. You will surely forget your trouble recalling it only as water has gone by.

Life will be brighter than noonday and darkness will become like morning. You will be secure because there is hope. You will look about, you take your rest in safety. You will lie down with no one to make you afraid. Many will court your favor.

What I like about this passage in a lot of the scripture is that there's a very clear if then says in Job 1113. Yet if you devote your heart to Him and stretch out your hands to Him, if you put away the sin that is in your hands and allow no evil to dwell in your tent, then you'll experience all these things. A lot of the different versions to say if you surrender to the Lord as they're getting. I chose this version BSG. Because I feel like kind of answers the question of how to surrender is by immersing ourselves in prayer in the word of God that we devote and stretch our hands out to him.

It's impossible to feel the embrace of God if we aren't putting ourselves in his presence. We need to get into God's presence and stay there until we feel God's loving embrace and grace filled presence. You can't feel the embrace of the Lord if you're not in position to hug him in the first place.

You another big thing I feel like we often miss is that we don't ask for it. We believe in the power of prayer, and we desire the presence of the Lord. But how often are we specifically praying for that?

Something that I've started doing is like, before I started your quiet time, before I started worship. I'll pray, Lord, like, lord, will you show me your loving embrace? Let me feel the warmth of your touch and then ask him to hold me. And I just feel like there's no reason why we shouldn't be inviting the spirit into what we're doing.

I feel like there's no other way to be truly joyful in this world. It's another way to stay faithful and focused on Christ. It's another way to love others like ourselves. Scripture says time and time again, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Happiness that we sought, happiness sought for outside the Lord is ultimately going to be empty.

To some ministry examples, this kind of tells the stories. There were these two students named Matt and Nate. This is my first year leading. This kid named Matt was a local student, and then he transferred to Lloyd. And then he was transferring to Dayton.

And this is when I was still leading at Dayton. And Dakota called me one day, coda Murray. I was like, hey, this guy Matt, he's transferring to Dayton. He struggles to get along with students. He has some level of mental disabilities, gets Lloyd.

A lot of students don't like him, but he loves young life and he loves being around leaders, and he just needs somebody to love him.

He had been kicked out of his house over and over again. His parents were divorced, and it felt like every month his mom would kick him out and go to his dad. His dad would kick him out. It was a back and forth. It was like a 16 year old kid.

So there were times where he would just call me at 02:00 a.m. Be like, hey, I don't know where to go.

And he would make that very clear. He would like, tell the other students that.

And there's another kid named Nate who had been coming around stuff for a little bit, came to club. He was friends with Jesse for a few years, but was always just like, an angry kid. Would never tell us anything about his life. At the time, I was living with Jesse and Nolan Brooks. And I come home one evening.

It's like midnight, and I walk in the living room, and they're both crying on the couch. And obviously I wanted to know what's going on. So I walk in, and Nolan shows me this video of them at the park. And Matt's just, like, holding his head, and Nate's just, like, beating him up, just like, for a minute straight. The snow, and obviously in that moment brought to complete sadness.

But pretty quickly it turned into an anger, an anger towards Nate of, like, he knew Matt was like this. How could he do this to him?

Jesse, Nolan and I go up to the school like, midnight. We pray outside for a few hours. I go back home. The next day, I'm at my house. I can't sleep.

I go up to the school again about 01:00 A.m. By myself. I'm spraying on a bench up front. And if I'm being honest, I was not praying for Nate. I was so mad at my no interest in praying for him.

Selfishly, I was only praying for Matt.

I'm sitting there, and from a distance, I see this guy walking towards me. And that could have been any number of things at eight and at 01:00 A.m.. So I was kind of scared of woke up. Who is this guy walking up to me? But as we got closer, I realized it was Nate.

Immediately, my heart just gets so hard. I was like, Lord, why is why is Nate right here? I even know of every person on the planet that I would feel adequately prepared to have a conversation with. Nate was last place I did not want to talk to him. He doesn't say anything.

He just sits next to me on the bench. And like, a minute later, I muster up the strength and be like, hey, man, how you doing? And immediately he just starts breaking down, crying.

In that moment, my heart softens so quickly. But Nate goes on to explain to me that he has diagnosed PTSD from stuff he experienced as a child and even trying to speak to the school council for a month. But there's so many kids that want to talk to him. It's like a two month waitlist, and he just wants somebody to talk to.

We go and have, like, an hour long conversation, and I share the gospel with him. And I learned so many different things that night of like, who am I to believe that I know more than God? Nate's walking up to me, and I'm like, I'm sure that this is a mistake. Like, Nate's not supposed to be here right now. I cannot have a conversation with this kid.

The Lord is able to move in terrible situations. I feel like that is maybe one of a thousand examples I have from leading at Philippian Dayton of the Lord moving in some truly terrible situations.

Our circumstances are not a barrier for the gospel and the love of God. Looking at Nate's life, there's no reason why he should do anything, prosper in anything. Nobody cares about him.

But the Lord doesn't. Doesn't care about that. Cares about Nate, cares about his heart.

Lastly, I learned that I needed to surrender my need to be right and feel angry to allow for the spirit to move.

I wanted so desperately to be right about this being a righteous anger. I should feel this. This is right. He did something wrong. I should feel angry about this.

And it just wasn't true. The Lord was using that situation for me to share the gospel with me.

Learned a lot about surrendering my own needs so that the spirit can move.

Another current example that I'm still kind of battling through with my students is my first camp trip was kind of like a culture shock, punch in the face sort of thing. Grew up in a very privileged home. My biggest trial ever was like getting a B on test. It doesn't even compare to some of the things that our students have to go through. Not like you can say that and you can kind of understand it, but it's hard to understand until you're until you're there.

Where I'm at my first camp trip a few months after I got placed, and I have 7101s with guys, and six of those seven guys didn't have a father, whether they were dead or in jail or just left. Um, and over time, as I began to love these students and love Bellevue more and more, my flesh desires so greatly to fill that hole. My flesh so greatly desires to be their father.

It is very true to say that for a lot of the belly students, will and I are the only adult men in their life that care about my flesh. It's not that it's a bad thing, but deeply desires to be the student's father. But it's not what God has called me to do.

I can't fill that hole. I don't have the ability to, but I know somebody who can.

And I'm learning. I need to surrender my desire to want to be that so that I can allow for myself to push them in the direction of the Lord.

They have a father shaped hole in our heart, and I know a God that can fill it. And I keep trying to fill it.

My main student's name is Tristan.

His father overdosed on heroin, and within the month, his mom overdosed on heroin.

I was like, look at this kid's life. And it's like, I want so desperately to fix it, but I can't.

But I know who can.

So that's been a difficult battle for me, but it's been so cool to see as well tristan's life just completely change.

I also wanted to talk a little bit about my anxiety with I talked about a little bit earlier, but it's hard to talk about surrender for me without talking about this. This is naturally who I am. I'm somebody who worries pretty much all the time, so my flesh does. It takes a great deal of surrender for me to allow for the Lord to carry those burdens.

My first year leading, I was at Jared's house with Jared and Jesse. We're just watching a movie and Jared, being who he is, was casting like this great vision over my life, like a super know, prophetic, super great loving vision for my life. And he was talking about all these things that I'm going to do and he's like, I can't wait to watch you lead this team and watch you do all these things. And I assume he has a great amount of confidence, but also just gave me so much anxiety. The thought of doing any of that to a point where I couldn't handle it and I left.

I just walked out and I was trying to drive home in the middle of my drive home on the interstate going 70 miles an hour and started my panic attack. And I was feeling my face, my arms, and I'm like, I'm convinced I'm going to crash my car, but only by the grace of God did I pull over and not hit somebody.

It was a long process to get here.

Like I said earlier, the solution I found out of surrender is immersing ourselves in prayer and in the word of God.

There really is no other way to do that. Surrender is going to look different for everybody, and what it is you need to surrender is going to look different, but the idea is the same, more of the Father and less of us.

Talked about feeling the embrace of the Lord through trial in my own life. My like life verse is James one, two through four, count all joy, my brothers, may trials of various kinds. For you know the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and let steadfastness have its full effect. You may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing. There's kind of a cool connection that's my verse and I end up leading a Bellevue.

Just being able to live that out and show that to my students is awesome because their trials are a lot worse than mine were, but I get to show them that. They get to count it all joy.

Like I was saying earlier in job eleven, Zofar gets the cause of Job trial wrong, but he gives the correct response on how he'll feel if he surrenders to the Lord. Job 1116 says, you will surely forget your trouble recalling it only as water has gone by.

And I have a quote here from Charles Spurgeon about this, about this verse that. I feel like sums it up really well and gives some good insight. Says, we seem to lie, have all broken in pieces with our thoughts, like a case of knives cutting into our spirit. We say to ourselves, we never shall forget this terrible experience. And yet, by and by, God turns towards us the palm of his hand, and we see that it's full of mercy.

We are restored to health. We're uplifted from depression of spirit. We wonder that we ever made so much of our former suffering or depression. We remember it no more, except as a thing that has passed and gone to be recollected with gratitude that we have been delivered from it, but not to be remembered so as to leave any scar upon our spirit or to cause us any painful reflection whatsoever. Thou shalt forget thy misery.

Remember it as waters that pass away.

Um, I don't have any notes for this part. I just wasn't sure what to write. I also kind of figured that the spirit would say whatever was supposed to be said.

Like I was saying earlier, my mom has stage four Glioplastoma.

And I called my parents this morning, so they went to get another MRI yesterday. MRI came back and said they all have the tumor, and they have another brain surgery coming up in a few weeks.

It I feel like it's just been such a great testament to my mom's faith, the way that she's living.

There was a day two weeks ago where I was sitting talking to my mom, and when we found out she had the tumor, she had a seizure and a stroke and wasn't breathing or have a pulse for, like, 30 seconds. Our neighbors and nurse practitioners came over and gave her CPR, saved her life. But she was talking and she said, Aidan, like, the Lord could have taken me so easily. But, yeah.

And she has just chosen to surrender the rest of her life to the Lord. It's been such just inspiration for my life in the sense that life is fleeting for all of us, and we have the opportunity and the chance to live like that. It doesn't need to take a near death experience for us to get there's. For my own life, it's been honestly, I'm extremely sad that my mother has cancer, but it's been such a great opportunity to share with my students. Like, the joy comes outside of our circumstances.

Dave and I used to mess around and joke around when I was in high school. He'd always say, if it's my time, it's my time. And obviously it was a joke, but obviously. But during those times, I could tell that there was a certain truth to it. And he truly believed that.

And just trusting that the Lord was going to do what the Lord was going to do.

I truly, truly can sit here and believe that if the Lord is calling my mom that's good.

Mom keeps saying, like, every day the Lord is good and somebody on the outside doesn't that wouldn't make any sense, right? But in her mind, in my mind now, her having brain cancer has led to her sharing the gospel with ten people at the hospital that she wouldn't have an opportunity to talk to.

I get to sit here and say that by surrendering this to the Lord, I get to experience the fruits of the Spirit. Despite my mother having cancer, I guess here and say that she's experiencing all those things.

Like physically she's in pain, but spiritually she is the healthiest she's ever been.

Um, this passage from Psalm 16 that I want to end on added in this document, I couldn't figure out where to put it. It's a passage script that I love, that one to incorporate somewhere, but it didn't feel right anywhere that I was trying to put it. So it just kept being pushed down farther and farther and document and I know it's at the end and I can tell that's where it's supposed to be. Psalm 16, five through eleven, the Lord is my chosen portion. In my cup you hold my lot.

The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Indeed I have a beautiful inheritance. I bless the Lord and gives me counsel in the night. Also my heart instructs me. I've set the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand I shall not be shaken, therefore my heart is glad and my whole being rejoices.

My flesh also dwells secure, for you would not abandon my soul to shield or let your holy ones seek corruption. You make known to me the path of life in Your presence there is fullness of joy, at your right hand our pleasures forevermore.

I'll pray real quick and then, hey, God, thank you for Your love. Thank you for the Holy Spirit. Lord, I thank you that we get to experience fullness of joy and peace and security despite what the world is telling us to believe. Lord, despite our circumstances, I thank you for my mother. I thank you for her life.

I thank you for such a beautiful life that she's lived, Lord, and thank you that she has laid down her life for you. Pray that she would continue to be an example for me. Lord, thank you for your love. We love you. Amen.