STAND BY ME
IN FAITH
DR. JIM DIXON
2 TIMOTHY 1:5, 2 TIMOTHY 3:14
SEPTEMBER 20, 2009
The Family is the name of a national and international Christian ministry. The Family is sometimes called The Washington Fellowship. They own retreat centers around our nation and all over the world. Here in Denver, they own a retreat center called the Downing House. In Washington, D.C. The Family owns a retreat center called The Cedars, and Barb and I have been to both of those retreat centers and we’ve been to the Downing House many, many times. Now The Family also puts on the National Prayer Breakfast every year in Washington, D.C. The National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. gathers senators and congressmen from both parties and many of these senators and congressman share their Christian testimony—how they came to know and love Jesus Christ, Democrats and Republicans. Traditionally every year at the National Prayer Breakfast, the President and the First Lady also attend, and we’ve been there to that National Prayer Breakfast, and it is an amazing event.
Now, our church has some connections with The Family. Just earlier this summer, Bart Tarman preached here on a Sunday morning and Bart for many years was on the staff of The Family. He also was chaplain at Westmont College and is Chaplain Emeritus at Westmont College. And Stan Holmes, who is an elder at this church, an Elder Emeritus, Stan is on the staff of The Family, and Doug Coe who is the president and the head of this ministry called The Family, he has come and he has spoken at our church in times past. He’s come over to the Downing House and spoken there on many occasions. The Downing House once belonged to Jerry and Martha Dell Louis and Martha Dell Louis was an Elder right here at our church. She is now at our sister church, which was our daughter church, Greenwood Community Church.
So, we have these connections with The Family, and therefore I was very interested when a month ago I got my issue of The Week, which is a popular secular magazine, and they had an article on The Family. In The Week magazine, normally they just quote newspaper reporters from newspapers all over the world in a variety of scenes, but here their editorial staff actually did some research and did an article on The Family. They implied that The Family was secretive and perhaps even a little bit cultic. That’s simply not true. I mean it is true that The Family doesn’t define itself extensively. They don’t have a credal statement. They don’t have a doctrinal statement. They just have a statement that they seek to lead people to faith in Jesus Christ and they seek to help people follow Christ more faithfully in this world.
The Family was founded in 1935 with a stated purpose of leading political leaders and corporate executives to faith in Christ. The Family cares about the poor, but there are many ministries out there that focus on the poor. The Family focuses on reaching people in power, reaching them for Christ: political leaders, corporate leaders. In this article in The Week, they cited examples of politicians who were members of The Family and had committed adultery as though The Family was responsible for this, as though this ministry was lax on morality, when the truth is you can look at any ministry and find people who have done that thing. You can look at any church in America and you start looking at who attends that church and you’re going to find somebody that’s done something wrong. You can give a black eye to any ministry you want to give a black eye to if you just quote bad behavior by people who attend or participate.
The truth is: here is what The Family is about, here’s what the Washington Fellowship is about. It’s a mentoring ministry; it’s all about mentoring. That’s why they were established in 1935. That’s what Doug Coe and all the staff seek to do today. They go all over the world and they seek to befriend leaders and then mentor them to faith in Jesus Christ and mentor them to a faithful walk with Jesus Christ. That’s their purpose: mentoring. That’s really what we’re talking about today. We’re in a biblical sense the true family. We are the sons and daughters of God, brothers and sisters with Jesus Christ, through faith in Christ, and we’ve been called to mentor people in the faith. This is what we’re going to focus on this morning.
I want to begin by looking at parents as mentors, parents as those who mentor us in the faith. It is true throughout history, hopefully true today, that parents mentor children in the faith. In our passage of Scripture for today we looked at 2 Timothy 1 and we saw how Paul, writing to Timothy, mentioned the sincere faith that dwelt first in his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice, and now, Paul says, dwells in you. Now this passage has some controversy to it. Almost every passage in the Bible does, and there are some scholars who believe that the sincere faith that Paul mentions is the Jewish faith, and there’s other scholars who think that the sincere faith that Paul is mentioning is the Christian faith. So, what is this sincere faith that was first in Lois, then in Eunice and now in Timothy, and you’ll find that scholarly opinions differ.
But most Bible scholars agree that it’s the Christian faith and the reason is Acts 16 because in Acts 16, Timothy’s mother is mentioned and we’re told Timothy’s mother Eunice was a Jewish Christian and that she’d become a Christian before Paul ever met Timothy and that this Jewish Christian had married a Greek man, a gentile. We are also informed that she did not have her son Timothy circumcised. So, it seems highly unlikely that the sincere faith Paul is talking about is the Jewish faith, since this woman married a gentile and also did not circumcise her son. But the likelihood is that the sincere faith Paul is referring to in Timothy is the Christian faith that is first in Timothy’s mother and grandmother and then in Timothy.
The belief is that Paul on his first missionary journey befriended Lois and Eunice and he mentored them into the Christian faith and then they in turn mentored their son Timothy and therefore Paul can refer to Timothy as a child of the faith through Eunice and through Lois. It’s speculation. We really don’t know the answers to all those questions surrounding this, but this much is clear: a lot of mentoring was going on and Timothy was the beneficiary. He was mentored by his grandmother, by his mother and by the Apostle Paul.
We have in the Bible the Shema, which we have seen many times and we know that in Deuteronomy 6 in accordance with the Shema, which is and was so precious to the Jewish people. The Shema is the admonition of God, the commandment of God that parents inform their children regarding the things of God. This is the Shema. Throughout history the people of God have been instructed by God to teach their children and to nurture them in the faith, to mentor them. And so, I thank God that I had such parents, that my mom and dad mentored me in the faith. They not only mentored me, they mentored my brother Greg and they mentored my brother Gary. They led us to Christ. They led us to faith in Christ and then taught us what it means to live for Christ on this earth.
That wasn’t just true of my family; it was true of Barb’s family. Barb’s parents mentored Barb in the faith, and her sisters, Jan and Bernadine. Her parents mentored them all in the faith. They led them to faith in Christ and taught them what it meant to live for Christ on this earth. Every dinner, every night, when Barb was growing up, after dim1ers there would be Bible reading and prayer. After dinner every night it was part of mentoring the children in the faith. So, I thank God for parents who are faithful in this and I know the Lord today would challenge you as parents and grandparents, and would challenge all of us as parents and grandparents to be faithful in this task: that we would mentor our children and grandchildren in the faith.
Now I can’t speak of parental mentoring without thinking of Suzanna Wesley. Maybe many of you have heard of Suzanna Wesley. Suzanna Wesley was born in the l7th century. She was one of 25 kids. She was born to a mom who had given birth to 25 kids. She had 24 brothers and sisters. Incredible. What an amazing family. I can’t even imagine, because I was one of 3 boys, and still when my dad would call me every Sunday afternoon and say, “Is this number three?” because I was the youngest, third-born son. And he called my brother Greg, “is this number two?” He’d call my brother Gary, “is this number one?” As we got a little older, we tried to confuse him here and there, but we were, “one, two and three.” Can you imagine? “Is this number 25?” What an amazing family.
Now Suzanna Wesley herself gave birth 19 times, but 10 of those children died either in childbirth or shortly thereafter, so she raised 9 kids. Suzanna Wesley raised 9 kids and she mentored them in the faith, and her kids shook the foundations of the earth. One of her kids was John Wesley and John Wesley was the founder of the Wesleyan movement. John Wesley was the founder of the Methodist Church. John Wesley, graduate of Oxford, great in the faith, and before he went to Oxford, John Wesley wrote his mom, Suzanna, and we have the letter and it was an amazing letter because he writes his mom, “Mom, I want you to send me a list of your favorite books. The books you most valued. The books you read and received the most from. Send me a list of your favorite theological books, your favorite historical books, your favorite poetry books, your favorite books.” This is an amazing thing. I had a great mom, but before I entered seminary, I would not have asked my mom for a list of books. But how could this woman, who had such a huge family, where did she find time to develop this vast library and to read all these books? She was an amazing woman and she mentored her children.
Charles Wesley was one of her children and Charles Wesley was my favorite because Charles Wesley was perhaps the greatest hymn writer in the history of the Christian world. He received his love of music from his mother, Suzanna. Charles Wesley wrote more than 7,000 hymns and he also graduated from Oxford. These hymns are great hymns of the faith. At Christmastime, you sing Hark the Herald Angels Sing, you should think of Suzanna Wesley because her son Charles wrote that. And whenever at Easter you stand up and sing Christ the Lord has Risen Today, you should think of Suzanna Wesley because her son Charles wrote that. And some of my favorite songs Charles Wesley wrote, including And Can It Be That I Should Gain, a powerful hymn that should be sung in cathedrals with huge pipe organs: you just get chills as you sing this great hymn of the faith written by the son of Suzam1a Wesley. What a great mom and how she mentored her children, brought them to Christ and led them in the Christian walk.
If I were to ask you to name the people in Christian history who have most influenced Christian thought, who Jesus used most to shape the thinking of his people, you might think of the Apostle Paul. Certainly, Jesus calls the Apostle Paul on the Damascus road, met him on the Damascus road and called him into the ministry for the purpose of forming the theology of the church. So, you pick up your Bible and you see that much of the New Testament is written by the Apostle Paul. That’s by the will of Christ. This is why Christ called Paul to write and to craft much of the New Testament and to shape the thinking of the Church of Jesus Christ.
You might also think of Martin Luther. Martin Luther was used by Christ to shape the thinking and the doctrines of the church. Martin Luther had courage. He was brilliant. He was a linguist. He was a theologian. He translated the whole of the Scriptures from Latin to German. And Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg in defiance of the Roman Catholic church at a time when the Roman Catholic church was experiencing significant corruption and he launched the movement called Protestantism. Pretty significant person.
You might also think of St. Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, the author of The City of God, a book that is a “must read.” And St. Augustine certainly, along with Luther and Paul, shaped the thinking of the Christian church. You can read the life of St. Augustine. You might think that Ambrose was the great mentor who mentored Augustine, but it was his mother, Monica. Her prayers alone were the primary force behind the conversion of St. Augustine as she prayed for him constantly and he constantly later in life mentioned how his mother mentored him and mentored him into the faith.
Secondly, I want to take a moment and look at the Bible because the Bible mentors us in the faith. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Gideons. Maybe you’ve heard of the Gideons International: a great Christian ministry. Some of you who are members of this church work for the Gideons. I know because you write me letters and you tell me what’s going on in your ministry. You invite me to Gideon functions, not all of which I can go to, but I thank God for the Gideon ministry. They place Bibles in hospitals and in hotels and motels all over the world. Of course, they translate the Scriptures into countless languages and publish millions of Bibles and distribute them over the earth. So, when you go into hotels and you open that drawer next to the bed and you see a Bible in there, the Gideons have placed it there. How many amazing testimonies are told about hotel rooms where somebody is all alone and they’ve lost a loved one or they’ve been rejected and they’re worried about their future, or maybe they’ve been told they have cancer, maybe they’re depressed, maybe they are suicidal and they open that drawer by the bed in their hotel room and they see the Gideon Bible and they start to read and the power of the Holy Spirit descends upon them and their life is changed forever. Many of them come to faith in Jesus Christ, give their soul to Christ just by the anointed power of the Word.
I want to tell you a little story about a man named William Cowper, one of the most interesting guys in Christian history. It’s pronounced “Cooper,” and he was born into an amazing family. He was born in 1731. His father was John Cowper. John Cowper was an Anglican pastor. William Cowper’s mother was Anne Donne, and Anne Donne was part of the John Donne family. If in college or high school you remember your poetry, you know all about John Donne, one of the most famous metaphysical poets in the history of the world. When you think of the phrase “no man is an island” or “ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee,” you know those phrases because John Donne wrote them.
But he wasn’t just a great poet, he was a great pastor. John Donne was the pastor of St. Paul’s Cathedral in the city of London. So, William Cowper was born into an amazing family with his father John being an Anglican pastor and Anne Donne of the John Donne family. Now when William Cowper was born, his parents rejoiced. He was their fourth born child, and the first three had all died in childbirth. So, they were hoping beyond hope that their fourth child would live and William Cowper did. After the first three children died in birth, he survived. His parents were so excited. He could not have known it, but just not that much later his mother gave birth to a fifth child and that child died in childbirth and Anne Cowper died giving birth to that fifth child.
Tragedy. After the death of the fifth child, only William Cowper remained in the Cowper family except of course for the father, John, and he fell into clinical depression. He’d just lost his wife, his best friend, his beloved who he had loved with all of his heart, and she was gone and four of the five children did not survive childbirth and he just went into clinical depression, could no longer serve the Lord, could no longer pastor his church. He just went into the depths of depression. Then as William Cowper grew up, this young man began to understand the pain and the suffering and the tragedy that happened to his family, he rebelled against God. He shook his fist at God. How could you allow a family that’s serving you to experience so much death, so much sadness, so much loss? How could you allow it? My father needs a spatula to get off the ground he’s so depressed. My brothers and sisters have died. My mom is gone. How could you have allowed this?
He rebelled against God and he began to live a profligate life. And though he went to Oxford and had high honors and was later invited into the House of Lords, and rejected it. He lived a debauched life. Every sin he could think of he attempted. He lived an immoral life, a sexually promiscuous life and a vacuous life without meaning, and then he became depressed, clinically depressed. Then he began to be suicidal. Three times William Cowper attempted to take his life and on the third time he almost succeeded. The authorities had William Cowper examined and they labeled him insane. In a time when the mental health world was not very compassionate with labels, they labeled him insane and they sent him to what was then called an insane asylum, and you can’t imagine in that time, in that century, what it was like to go and live in an insane asylum, but that’s where they sent William Cowper.
So, there he was, living in an insane asylum and months went by and in his room there was a Bible. It hadn’t been placed there by the Gideons (they weren’t doing that yet), but they had a Bible in the room and William Cowper looked at it and resolved he would never read it. He’d rebelled against God. That Bible represented everything he hated. It represented the death of his siblings. It represented the death of his mom. It represented the depressions that his father experienced. Everything bad, that Bible represented, and time went by. Within six months William Cowper just went stir crazy with boredom. He decided to open the Bible and read it and an amazing thing happened. As he opened the Bible, the power of God came upon him. The Holy Spirit just flooded the room and filled him and he repented of his sin and began to weep. He just cried and cried and cried and he gave his soul to Jesus Christ. Now, I’m going to return to William Cowper in a moment, but understand, just reading the Bible radically changed his life. The Bible has been given to us by God as a mentor in the faith.
Before we leave the Bible as mentor, I want to mention William Tyndale. This past week I was visited by Elisa Morgan. She came by the church to meet me in my office. Elisa Morgan was the CEO of MOPS. She’s now CEO Emeritus of MOPS International. When Elisa Morgan took over the MOPS ministry, there were 350 groups and when Elisa Morgan resigned just earlier this year, there were over 4,000 groups in 30 countries. Just an amazing anointing by God on her. She writes books and she’s written a new book called She Did What She Could. This book is about Mary of Bethany and the story told in Mark’s gospel, the 14th chapter. Mary of Bethany anointed Jesus with costly oil and many of the disciples complained that this was an extravagant waste. Jesus said of Mary, “She did what she could. She did what she could and I tell you that in every generation all over the world wherever the gospel is preached, her story will be told. She did what she could.” It’s a powerful little book. God wants you to do what you can.
This is published by Tyndale, and Elisa Morgan brought the president of Tyndale from Chicago to this church this week. So, I was talking to the president of Tyndale Publishing, the third largest Christian publishing house in the world. It’s named after William Tyndale. Do you know who William Tyndale was? What an amazing man. A graduate of Oxford. A master of Greek. A master of Hebrew. In love with Jesus Christ and his life purpose was to translate the Bible and put it into the hands of common, everyday people, because in Tyndale’s time only the clergy had Bibles.
One day Tyndale was talking to a clergyman and the clergyman defended the right of the clergy to have exclusive possession of all Bibles. The clergyman told Tyndale that only the clergy could be proper stewards of Holy Scripture. Only the clergy can do exegesis. Only the clergy understand hermeneutical principles of interpretation. Only the clergy can rightly divide the Word of God. The masses twist the Scriptures to their own destruction. Only the clergy should have Bibles. Tyndale, though he understood this pastor’s argument, grieved inside because he knew that God’s word was meant to go everywhere and he said to the clergyman, “In my lifetime I intend to see to it that every boy and girl on every farm in Europe knows more of the Bible than you.” So, Tyndale translated the Scriptures for the masses. He got into trouble with the powers that be, which at that time was the Roman Catholic Church. I hope you understand I’m not anti-Catholic. I have Catholic brothers and sisters I love. Archbishop Chaput is a friend and a great man of God, a great Christian leader, but at that time the Roman Catholic Church wanted exclusive use of the Bible and Tyndale therefore was considered a heretic for trying to get the Bible to the masses. He was incarcerated and then burned at the stake so you could have a Bible.
So, you go home and you’ve got a Bible there, I’m almost sure of it. You go home, you’ve got a Bible there, and do you know what a privilege that is? Christians for centuries never had a Bible. If they wanted to HEAR the Bible, they had to go to church and hear the clergyman read it. Nobody had a Bible for centuries, really, until the time of Guttenberg and the printing press. Now everybody has Bibles and what a privilege it is. Don’t abuse it. Read it. Study it. Let God mentor you in the faith through Holy Scripture. What a gift it is.
Finally, I want us to look at friends as mentors. I think this is the will of God for us, not simply that parents mentor in the faith and that the Bible be used for mentoring in the faith, but that we befriend people. For the sake of the faith, in the love of Christ, mentor others and allow friends to mentor us. I want to mention John Newton. I think most of you have heard of John Newton, certainly you have sung some of his hymns. “Amazing Grace” is the most beloved hymn in the Christian world. Even in the secular world all over the earth it’s voted #1 in popularity. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,” written by John Newton.
One of my favorite hymns of John Newton is “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken, Zion, City of our God,” and that’s a hymn again that needs to be sung in a cathedral with a pipe organ. It’s awesome. But John Newton was a hymn writer. He was born into a Christian family and loved very much by his Christian mom. When John was seven years old, his mom died and he remembered that she taught him three things supremely. One was to memorize the Bible, and until he was seven years old, he did a lot of Bible memorization. Another was to sing the great hymns of the faith and enjoy them. And then another was to enjoy and write poetry. So, these things he got from his mother, but she died when he was seven and John Newton became bitter and ultimately rejected his Christian heritage and rejected the Christian faith. He turned away from Jesus Christ and as a teenager John Newton just took off and he went into the shipping world.
He joined the slave trade and he went on slave ships that went up and down the coast of Africa buying and selling human flesh, an abomination before God. By the time he was 22 years old, John Newton was a captain of a slave ship on the coast of Africa. He was living a debauched life. Unbelievably, he was an alcoholic, he was a lush, he was a womanizer, incredibly promiscuous, having sex with his slaves, forcing them. His whole life was tragic and it was empty and meaningless, vacuous at the core.
But then at age 23, in the midst of a storm at sea, he picked up a book by Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, and God filled the room. The Holy Spirit descended in power and John Newton began to cry, he began to bawl, and he gave his soul that day to Jesus Christ in a moment of desperate repentance. He left the slave industry. One day he would join with William Wilberforce to bring down the slave industry and destroy it in England. He left the slave industry, but stayed in the shipping industry for 12 more years until he was 35. He was Master of the Tides in Liverpool, trying to live a Christian life, not really knowing what to do with his life when two Christians decided to mentor him.
And who were they? One was John Wesley, Suzanna’s son. He was living in Liverpool then. So, John Wesley decided to mentor John Newton, to mentor this man in the Christian life and the Christian walk. And who was the other one? Well, the other one was George Whitfield. I’m sure many of you have heard of George Whitfield, one of the greatest revivalists, one of the greatest evangelists the world’s ever known. Seven times George Whitfield came over here to colonial America and he launched the Great Awakening here in colonial America. Benjamin Franklin, who was a deist and not a Christian, nevertheless sent money to George Whitfield because he so loved his preaching. George Whitfield and John Wesley, the two men that decided in Liverpool to mentor John Newton. They befriended him, came alongside him, stood by him, and mentored him in the Christian faith.
Now I want to return for a second to William Cowper. William Cowper, as you recall, accepted Christ in that insane asylum. William Cowper accepted Christ when he opened that Bible after six months, and the Spirit of God descended upon him. He stayed in the insane asylum for six more months before they released him and now, he was a free man. Thirty-seven years old and a free man, and not knowing what to do with his life or how to live his life, he had just accepted Christ after a debauched lifestyle, shaking his fist at God in total rebellion. Now he was a Christian. What was he to do? He went to Olney, a town in England, and decided to go to a local church there. There was a new pastor at that church. His name was John Newton.
William Cowper goes to that church in Olney and John Newton was 43, William Cowper, 37. They become best friends and John Newton is convicted by Christ that he is to mentor William Cowper, so they become best friends. They take long walks together almost every day. Laughing, talking, sharing. William Cowper said that John Newton gave him three things above all else: a desire to memorize Scripture, a love for singing hymns, and an interest in writing poetry—the same things that John Newton’s mother had once given him before she died when John was seven. But it was John Newton who helped William Cowper find sanity and learn what it means to walk with Christ. William Cowper the rest of his life would struggle emotionally, but oh how he loved Jesus.
You can today go and look up the Olney Hymns. The Olney Hymns are some of the great hymns of the faith that were published at Olney. When you think of the Olney Hymns, these great Christian hymns of the faith, you think of John Newton. There are 348 hymns in the Olney Hymns. Here’s the amazing thing: 68 of them were written by William Cowper because John Newton had mentored him and given his love for music and now William Cowper began to write music and those of us who grew up in the church, we sang not only Newton’s hymns, but William Cowper’s hymns. Amazing that this guy who was suicidal in an insane asylum, found Jesus, was mentored by John Newton and became a master writer himself. Towards the end of his life, 1791, it was William Cowper who translated the Iliad and the Odyssey and his translation today is considered a masterpiece.
I hope you understand how important all this is. How important it is that people be mentors and that people find mentors. How important it is that we befriend people. So, that’s why we give you opportunities to go into the inner city and mentor a young man or a young woman. Elementary school, junior high school, high school, Save Our Youth, Whiz Kids, these are ministries we train you in and you can mentor. That’s why we invite you to go into the Sunday School classes to mentor kids. That’s why we have men’s and women’s ministries and we have mentoring programs in those ministries where you can be a friend and stand by someone and help them make it through life with faith in Christ and they’ll help you because this is the call of Christ upon his people. I hope you know how important this is from a historical perspective. Where Christians fail to mentor, darkness grows. When Christians fail to mentor, the lights fade.
You can look at the YMCA, founded 1844 by George Williams. The YMCA was founded as a mentoring ministry. It was founded for the sole purpose of mentoring young men in the Christian faith. That was it. What do you think of today when you think of the YMCA? It’s huge. Ninety nations. Twenty-five million members. But what do you think of? A place to work out? Some programs for kids and adults? Very few Y’s retained their Christian vision and mentored kids in the faith because at the upper levels there was a failure to mentor—over generations there were failures to mentor.
Of course, you can look at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, the Ivy League schools. Barb and I went to Princeton University in New Jersey some years ago with our son Drew when he was looking at the possibility of going there. We went into Nassau Hall and in Nassau Hall at Princeton University you see pictures of the presidents on the wall. You see John Witherspoon, who signed the Declaration of Independence, Presbyterian pastor and in love with Jesus Christ: president of Princeton. And you see Jonathon Edwards, one of the greatest evangelist pastors, theologians the Christian world’s ever known: president of Princeton. And Princeton and Harvard and Yale existed to mentor young people in the Christian faith that they might shape the world for Christ. Now you go to these schools and they are academically strong and well endowed, but if anything, they try to destroy faith in Christ. Over many generations at the highest levels, there was a failure to mentor.
Of course, you can look at mainline denominations, such as the PCUSA. I was ordained in the PCUSA and for 8.5 years I was an ordained Presbyterian minister in the PCUSA. Eleven thousand churches, but they’re drifting into apostasy, moral apostasy, theological apostasy, pluralism, syncretism, relativism, every bad “ism. “And it’s because at the highest level, and even in their seminaries, there’s failure to mentor, failure to contend with the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. What’s happening in the PCUSA is happening in the ELCA, in the Lutheran movement, it’s happening in the UMC, in the United Methodist Church. John and Charles Wesley, Susanna Wesley, they would be stunned at what has happened to the movement they started as faith is abandoned and is adrift into heresy.
So, we live in critical times. We are the Church of Jesus Christ. We’re in the 21st century and the faith remains. Jesus said, “I’ll build my church and the gates of Hell, the powers of death, will not prevail against it.” So, we’re called to be faithful in our time. It begins with mentoring our kids at home, and our grandkids, be faithful at home. It takes a firm commitment to the Word of God no matter what the culture says. A firm commitment to the Word of God morally and theologically that we might truly be people of the Book, the Holy Scriptures. It takes Christians who are willing to befriend, to pour their life energy into befriending a person in need, that we might mentor them. It takes Christians who are open enough to say, “I need mentoring,” that we might be mentored in the faith and the Church of Jesus Christ might be strong. Let’s close with a word of prayer.