Titus 2:1-5 • Spiritual Mothering
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
I want to stay on that subject of spiritual mothering and ask that you look in your Bibles this morning at Titus chapter 2. Titus chapter 2 as we'll look at verses 1 through 6, same passage as last week as we considered what spiritual fathering was then. But now continuing in a passage that some has described as the great commission for us. It really is that, an understanding of how God plans to use spiritual mothers for the family of God. Let's stand as we honor God's Word, Titus chapter 2 verses 1 through 6. Paul the Apostle writing to Titus a pastor says, "But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine.
Other men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness.
Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good and so train the young women to love their husbands and children to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands that the Word of God may not be reviled.
Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled."
Let's pray together.
Father, as You are building the family of God, You have established a church in which there are spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers who minister not just because they're biologically connected, but because they are spiritually fulfilling a calling.
Would You help us to perceive again the depth and deerness of that calling on a mother's day for spiritual mothers throughout this congregation and throughout this community and throughout the world as You use the witness of godly mothers in Your church to save eternity for the souls of Your love. This we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Please be seated.
Author Nancy Ortberg writes these words, "When I became a mother, I found a Jekyll and Hyde living inside of me.
Sometimes sweet Dr. Jekyll showed up. I was patient, calm, kind, reasonable, generous, thoughtful. For the first time, there was a person in my life that I loved more than myself and I wanted that.
I was doing unselfish things.
I was a loving person.
Once at a grocery store, I had a baby clinging to me, a toddler in the grocery cart, another running down the aisle. The grocery cart was so full, I had to kick the bag of diapers down the aisle in front of me to the checkout counter and I thought almost out loud, "What am I doing with my life?"
Back at home, I unloaded most of the groceries, fixing lunch, forgetting to unpack the ice cream.
Then to get away from all of that, I took the kids to the park. I kept counting them. One, two, three. I know I brought three. I ought to go home with three, but by the time I did get home, I hated myself.
I hated my children.
I put them in their rooms and I shut the door. I went to the garage and I cried. I thought I was losing my mind.
The Mr. Hyde in me was impatient, frazzled, rude, angry, frustrated. I was becoming two people. I know that there are moms who are always patient and kind toward their children. I admire them. I don't like them, but I admire them.
And I would love to tell you this day that I have a plan to fix it. How male of me to want to fix it.
I don't think I have a plan to fix it.
What I do have is a word from the Lord to say, "It is worth it."
The spiritual mothering to which God calls women in His church is of eternal significance.
And the sound doctrine that the Apostle Paul is establishing here is one simple truth. There is enough of Jesus for both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde moms.
So that the calling that God has given is not only precious, He is enabling it. And what enables that calling for Mr. Hyde moms to actually fulfill an eternal calling for the sake of the spiritual children of the church of Jesus Christ is to recognize, first of all, Mr. Hyde moms have good company.
They are not the only ones needing encouragement. They are not the only ones needing a Savior.
The encouragement is obvious in terms of its need by the subjects the Apostle Paul is addressing in this brief little letter. He's saying there are people who need encouragement in the face of being anxious, and the Apostle Paul is one of those people. After all, he is writing to Titus, and Titus is somebody that he's previously sent to Corinth to take care of troubles there.
And even the Apostle Paul spoke of going to Corinth saying this, "I wrote to you out of much affliction.
And with many tears I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, wondering if I had enough wisdom to deal with you."
Enough moms can repeat all of that.
I have anxiety about whether I have enough wisdom to do what God calls me to do. And it's not just being anxious.
There's encouragement needed for those who feel alone.
Paul says right at the outside of this letter to Timothy, "I'm leaving you in Crete and island isolated from everyone else. I'm leaving you in Crete while I go on to work with the other churches."
Titus will be alone. He will be isolated, and he will be stuck with the ministry of the Apostle Paul who himself recognizes what it means to be isolated not just in ministry but in memory.
How can I do what God calls me to do when I know the background of my own life, my difficulties, my struggles, my failures? This is the same Apostle Paul that some of you will recognize is trying to get churches to conform as his spiritual children to a life of following Jesus Christ where Paul himself can't seem to forget his own failures.
After all, he was the apostle who held the cloaks of those who stoned Stephen.
He was the one who before the Lord brought him to himself on the road to Damascus, persecuted believers, tortured them, took mothers from their children.
Early in his ministry as the Apostle Paul is trying to put his credentials in front of people, he's a little bit humble. He says, "You know, I'm the least of the apostles. I mean, the others knew Jesus face to face, but not me. I'm one as born late into my apostleship. I'm just the least of the apostles." But as he continued in life and the magnitude of the cross of Jesus Christ became much more pertinent to him, and he began to say, "Look how great it was that God had to send his son to die not just for the sins of the world, but for my sin that by the middle of his ministry he doesn't just say I'm the least of the apostles.
He says I'm the least of the saints.
There's nobody that I'm ministering to that has as bad a reputation as I.
But by the end of his ministry, when he's writing to Timothy at the end of his apostleship, the Apostle Paul writes to Timothy, "I'm not just the least of the saints. I am the chief of sinners."
As the cross got bigger and bigger, he recognized how much was needed to cover his sin, and it began to press on him as though he could not forget what he had done. And for all of us who are parents whose memories of our dealings with our children sometime
haunt us, where we have memories of things we hope they forget.
What a blessing to have an apostle who says, "I know what it means to need a Savior because of things I remember."
And it's not just that he struggles with his memory, he struggles managing his emotions.
You remember he said, "Going to Corinth, I was in fear and trembling." And then he wrote these words of his dealings with them. He said, "There is daily pressure on me in my anxiety for my children," meaning the churches that he was ministering. I just daily feel this pressure to take care of people, so much that he wrote in 2 Corinthians, "For I fear I may not find you as I wish, and you may not find me as you wish, that there may be quarreling and jealousy and anger and hostility among you, and God will humble me among you.
I fear that I will see problems in you that are my fault, that you're not what I want you to be, but I'm not what you want me to be.
And God is going to humble me because neither of us is what we ought to be."
Any mom know that feeling?
Moms need a Savior. Even Mr. Hyde Moms and the Apostle Paul knew it. After all, how do you handle anxiety and the feelings of isolation and the haunting memories
and the management of emotions that you're not going to measure up? How do you handle any of that?
You remember what the Apostle Paul wrote Titus at the very beginning of this letter. I said it at the beginning of this service.
"Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior."
He knows the memories. He knows the management issues. He knows the problems, the faults, the peril, the not measuring up. And he says, "But I am your Savior. And because I died on a cross for your sin, because I sent my Spirit to overcome your shortcomings, you can still by my grace know peace." And it's that grace that brings peace that is the Savior's promise to us that is actually enabling the parenting, the spiritual mothering that God desires so that our children don't see in us our perfections. They see our love of the Savior who covers our imperfections.
The Degan Hart family told me recently they were on a trip. And as mom was taking care of the baby, the older girls began to take sidewalk chalk and trace the silhouette of mom on the ground as she was caring for the baby, which worked only until the clouds came and the sun was obscured. And they couldn't trace the loving features of their mom anymore. And it was the reminder that it's when we keep in front of the Savior, His love, His grace before us, that our children most see in us not necessarily our perfections. They see the caring features we most want them to see. I am one who lives in the sun. I'm the one who lives under the grace and favor of my Savior. That's the one I want you to know. I want you to see love from me because of the one who does love me. And that's supposed to be changing us. That's supposed to be shaping us. This same Apostle Paul wrote, "After all, I am in the anguish of childbirth to see Jesus Christ formed in you." That what the Apostle Paul is most wanting in his own spiritual mothering is for the children of his to be framed according to Christ Jesus because he knows the consequence. I mentioned to you last week that this chapter is so counter-cultural because what we know even in secular psychology theory is what's called family systems dynamics, where what typically happens in families is the system adjusts to dysfunction.
If it's emotional, if it's physical, if it's addictive, it's abusive, that families typically take their function, their form, changing conversation, schedule, emotions, the way people interact. They most form around the dysfunction. It changes everybody else. And what the Apostle Paul is saying here is, "I want functionality. I want God, Jesus Christ, the presence of the Spirit to enter the family system because that's going to be more powerful than anything else." As that radiance of the sun is flooding into spiritual moms, the spiritual mothering is coming into the older women in the church, touching the younger women in the church, that that is creating health that is itself now determinative of health in the family of God. It's the reminder that despite all the great challenges, what God is establishing in His Word is that there is hope for Mr. Hyde moms, not just for their own salvation and encouragement, that there is a calling for Mr. Hyde moms who begin to recognize that God has given them tasks that will change eternity for the people their lives touch. That's not just biological moms.
That's the older women in the church. That's the mothers in the church who are touching lives by their example, by their beliefs, so that they are actually by their calling changing eternity for those in the church of Jesus Christ.
What does that mean if you are a Mr. Hyde mom? What actually is this passage saying is your calling? Well it's obvious if you're a Mr. Hyde mom, you are to be June Cleaver.
Or Mama Walton.
Or whatever is the current TV mom who's just perfect. After all, doesn't the passage say, verse 3, that the older women are to be reverent? So go to church a lot.
And don't slander, that is don't gossip even if that hussy is wearing that dress again.
And don't be slaves to much wine, so be careful with the cooking, Sherry.
And teach what is good, so make sure that if the TV is on, it's only on Sesame Street or SpongeBob or Teletubbies or something else equally gross. No, I mean good.
That's the stereotype.
What actually is the calling?
The calling of spiritual mothers is to be warrior women for God, to be she bears for belief in their children, to believe that God has called women of maturity, of spiritual discernment into the church whose convictions and lives are going to reverberate through the life of the church for the family of God and the eternity of the church's children. How does that actually happen? It happens when we recognize that women are called to perceive there are forces against the family that God has established and therefore we will fight for the family. And spiritual moms view that as their responsibility.
I think of it in my own wife's character and background as she would sometimes do the things that needed to be done for the protection of our children, sometimes calling ahead to the teenage party to say, "Are there going to be parents there?
Is there going to be alcohol there?"
Now I must tell you this did not always make my wife the most popular mom in our home.
And so Kathy would sometimes say to a child, "Listen, I am the gate through which evil has to come to touch you and I will not open the gate when it's in my power."
And then she would say sometimes that meant you have to love your child's welfare more than you have to love your child's mood because you have a calling.
"Warrior, women, for God, for the sake of their children."
That is that spiritual mothering to which we are called and it has definition. Verse 3, "They are to be reverent in their own behavior." This is not just kind of some sort of goody-two-shoes Sunday school lesson.
The word reverent means suitable for the sacred.
That the apostle is saying that the mothers are conducting themselves in the life of the church in such a way that sacred things can grow in the life of the church, in the families of God, in their place. That moms who say, as Marlene was saying earlier in her testimony, that I have no greater joy than to know that my children walk in truth. And for that reason, I will by behavior and by words and by activities, I'm trying to establish the ground, the soil in which seeds of sacredness can grow for my children's sake. And I perceive it that way, that we are not just bound by what is popular, by what is cultural, by what's on the TV. We are saying we are guarding home and hearts that suitable sacred things may grow in this place. And that's more than just, it includes the decision to be involved in worship. But it's what happens in your home, it's what happens in your recreations, it's what happens even in the way that you talk about other people. And that is, of course, what the apostle himself is saying. He urges older women, mothers in the church not to be slanderers. And you think, why is that necessary to say? It may help you to know that the language in the Greek actually says not being diabolical, not being devilish in speech, as though the apostle understands that one of the most serious ways that we undermine the gospel in our homes is by speaking uncharitably about other people with regard to their foibles or flaws or faults. And the reason is because our children will have faults and foibles and will make mistakes. And if they're a total example of the way that our family deals with people who are struggling, is they hear ridicule or fault finding, what makes us think they will come to us or to our church when they are wounded and weak? The very thing that establishes children's willingness to come to the church of God, the family of God, is that we have established a culture of grace that we understand people's weaknesses, we understand that they are flawed. We want grace and we want to extend it. And by our speech as well as our worship, the words that we use as well as the worship that we sing, we are establishing that culture of grace. And spiritual mothering has that essential in terms of what is expressed for the sake of the future children of the church. And for that, women who are spiritual mothers are not to be slaves to much wine.
You say, why does he bother to say that? Stay sober. I mean, that should be obvious.
Well, in an era of opioid epidemics and binge drinking, again making headlines nationally this last week with the death on the Penn State campus, with our own local news reporting repeatedly the effects of intoxication and sexual assault, you begin to say, why does this reminder need to come? We could, of course, expand the list. Remember last week as we were talking about this standard as it applies to men, the apostle was simply reminding us, I want you filled with the Spirit, not drunk on wine. I don't want taking into your life, into your mouth, into your stomach, into your system, those things that control you rather than being controlled by the things of the Spirit. You're not to be slaves to others. This is not just trying to be shaming people into obedience or away from some sort of cultural fun. It's the song that we sang with such fervor just a few minutes ago. I'm a child of God. I am not a slave to sin. And so the apostle Paul talks about the slavery of his time that women in isolation and loneliness and anxiety could seek to medicate with wine just like they do now. But he says that could be anything that influences, of course. It doesn't just have to be wine. It could be internet addictions or gambling or gaming or binge TV or food addictions or appearance compulsions.
What is controlling you? What is enslaving you rather than a perception of the grace of God that has freed you? The apostle Paul is wanting people to recognize you by the gospel of Jesus Christ are freed from your anxiety and from others' expectations. You are accepted as a child of God by the king of the universe. And the spiritual mothering that God is giving to the family of God is meant to reinforce that in the children of God by the spiritual mothers themselves understanding it. Here's this great opportunity to say to other people, "You don't have to be a slave to anything
because God is even by those that he has put in the church to instruct, to mentor, to help, shown you what freedom can be." And the consequence of all that is that there would be mothers who teach what is good. That's the end of verse 3. If there's any portion of that verse that just sounds like grandma's talk and teach them to be good, you know, it's that portion of the verse until you take the comprehensiveness of what is being said. Here is evil. Here are cultures that are working their means into our children, into our community to say, "I want to disrupt the work of God in your heart and life. I want the system to be controlled by what is dysfunctional." And the Apostle Paul is saying, "No, spiritual mothers have this great opportunity to turn things around, to be the example within the church that by their confidence and the grace of God are communicating to God's children. They don't have to be slaves. They don't have to be controlled. They don't have to be under the expectations of others. God has. Read them, teach them what is really good and turn the whole system to health as a consequence. What does that begin to look like, to turn the system to health in our families?
I thought as I was reading recently one of the major cultural forces that we work against.
A generation ago we were told that the primary worship center in American culture were the shopping malls.
Why was that the primary worship center? Because there we displayed our values.
We spent our wealth and where a person's treasure is, there is their heart also. We even displayed our common music in the malls as musackie as it might have been.
But the malls are dying.
What's replacing the malls as the worship center determining the family systems around us? Writer Julianne Vargas says this, "The digital cultural mall is even more powerful than the physical mall." What's the digital mall?
It's the phones that we carry. Here's what she writes, "Put the mall in your pocket and take it wherever you go. Walk around its aisles every 45 seconds, peruse the stores while you wait at the doctor's office." We and our kids are so conditioned by our phones that any moment that we feel displaced or uncomfortable, we automatically feel in our pockets for our phones.
When she wrote that, and I read it the first time, I thought, "I actually think I may do that."
We carry a cyber sanctuary in our pockets, a space apart, a place that promises relief. And as our children escape into the cyber world, they enter a new disembodied community.
They are given every opportunity to recreate themselves without accountability.
Perceived anonymity draws out of us actions and words that we would never engage in in regular activity with other people.
Likes and comments offer edification, but more likely they are used for condemnation
or shaming or bullying.
Especially with personal phones, this culture's worship powerfully is alluring for our children. They are being wooed moment by moment into idolatries of what will satisfy them, but will prove empty. Just one example.
Now I know it's Mother's Day and we're all supposed to just be happy, but I came to do some spiritual business. I hope you did.
One evidence of our phone's control. Naomi Wolf, feminist, journalist, no friend of the church, writes one of the consequences.
She writes, "Young women who talk to me on campuses about the effects of pornography
on their intimate lives say they can never measure up.
They can never ask for what they want. And if they do not offer what the porn offers, they cannot expect to hold a guy.
And the young men talk about what it's like learning sex from porn and how it is not helpful in learning how to deal with a real woman."
So as the images multiply, some of you have seen the surveys, sexual intimacy actually decreases.
So the generation that is cohabitating more than any other generation is the generation actually having less sexual intimacy than any previous generation. Naomi Wolf writes, "For the first time in human history, the images are being preferred to the reality."
I don't have to deal with a real person.
How do we deal with that reality?
The answer is not only recognizing that Mr. Hyde moms have a calling.
Their lives have a consequence.
They make a difference. The Apostle Paul is writing to say, "In this family system of God, there are those who are spiritual mothering who don't just have a calling. They are changing the system by living for God under His grace and by His power in a way that is powerful, eternal in its consequence." How do we see that? It's as the Apostle begins to describe the effects of spiritual mothering in the church. Verse 4, "Once the older women have been reverent in worship and word and controlling influences," verse 4 says, "they so train the young women to love their husbands and children."
It's almost like it's an automatic. It's not like, "So maybe there will be an influence." It's the understanding as there is spiritual mothering that's happening, biological moms, spiritual moms as well as the spiritual mothering is happening in the family of God. So things just start to happen.
The younger women are trained. The word "training" is actually a word that means called to their right mind.
Come to their senses. Not the culture anymore having the final word, but the church, the family of God having this influence through spiritual mothering that begins to touch others. Or even things like, verse 4, "Young women loving their husbands and children." You think, "Well, that should be obvious."
Maybe.
Author Pamela Paul in a new book called "Starter Marriages."
The future of matrimony in the United States says this, "Cobabitation and divorce patterns are causing us to have to revise the marriage covenant that we have all accepted for so long. Her advice is whether entering marriage or cohabitation to sign a contract for only five years.
And then if there's not agreement by either party at the end of that five years, go your separate ways.
I mean, it makes a lot of practical sense.
Think of what it says to the human heart, "I will stay with you only as long as you satisfy me."
And the nature of what it means to be a human heart flourishing under the standing, that I am in a covenant relationship, that whether this goes well or poorly, that whether or not I feel right or don't feel right in sickness or in health, in poverty or in riches, I will love you.
I am committed to you. This marriage is not based upon a condition of our getting along. It is based upon a prior commitment to love because that is God's commitment to us. And to know that human health and family flourishing occurs not just when a couple understand, "I am committed to you." But children see couples committed to one another. So that in an intergenerational church like this, we don't have children who might come and say, "Are my parents going to stay together for five years?" They see couples that are together for 10 years and 20 years and 30 years and 40 years and 60 years in this place to say, "There can be something that is real beyond just we get along or we get apart." Don't you recognize that so much of the cohabitation that's going on in this culture is driven by two fears at the same time. The first is that I will be without someone, and the second is that I will be with the wrong one.
And so we'll just experiment for a while. And what that means is I have to keep qualifying over and over and over again for your love, which means I can never be good enough for the assurance that God intends for a marriage to have. And what God is promising on the other side is young women will learn by the example of spiritual mothers in the church of Jesus Christ what it means to love their husbands and children unconditionally as they themselves have been loved by a Savior.
It's not just that there would be this loving of husbands and children. I don't have time for all of the specifics here, but there are a few key ones in verse 5. What else would young women learn? They would learn about working at home.
Now I must tell you in the history of the church, the great debate on that phrase is whether it's about locality or industry.
Is it young women should learn about working at home or is it about working at home as in staying busy when you're there?
And you'll even find different translators translating it different ways. I must tell you, I think the debate is not the issue at all. The language of the Apostle Paul is that young women would learn to be home workers. Our phrase is "homemakers," that there is value that they perceive in the home that God has given them. It's not as though the Apostle Paul has never read Proverbs 31 where the godly mother is one who works in charity and works in real estate and works in various endeavors or doesn't know about Lydia, the seller of purple, who supported his own ministry. But he is saying there are young women who learn by attitude, by action, by word, by priority and commitment to look at their homes and say, "This is important.
This is the priority of our hearts and lives and endeavors." And what we're really about is providing that place, that circumstance where our children flourish in the things of God. And that's our priority as we're thinking as a couple.
Last weekend, Kathy and I were not here. We were ministering to our family because our daughter, Katie, was graduating from college and we did the math for us with four children that was 30 consecutive years of Christian education tuition.
Yippee!
And not just that we're done paying tuition. Somebody after the first service said, "You know, you do have grandkids."
He said, "Don't tell me that now."
It's not just that. It's that we rejoice that the Lord, by the teachers and men and women, put spiritual parents and mentors and spiritual mothers as Sunday school teachers, as grade school teachers, as even college professors, people who love the Lord. I know not everyone will have the same availability and commitment and conviction, but everyone should be saying, "We are committed to creating that sacred place for our children, that spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers are saying, maybe the mother needs to make a little more money so that we can do what is necessary for the spiritual nurture of our children." What is needed? We are going to value the home in which Jesus establishes spiritual priorities for His children. And ultimately, that is described as these young women not only being these home carers,
but those who are submissive to their own husbands. Now listen, if you interpret that phrase the way the world interprets it, you will hate it and should hate it. If all it means is, you know, you just put away with your gifts and you just subvert all your gifts and talents and give to your kids.
Not at all what the Apostle Paul means. Two Greek words to arrange under, to take all the gifts and talents that the Lord has given you and to fully express them in behalf of other people to live sacrificially, to live with an eye towards spiritual consequence, not just buying the values of the world, but in this retooled family system, living for God's purposes, including expressing the gifts you have for the sake of others, spiritual and eternal good, and making those decisions, those value judgments as God calls us to in order to value what He values. And the ultimate impact, I mean, it's just incredible, is verse 6, "Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled." Now I must tell you, one of the great mysteries in this passage is people wonder about the order of those mentioned.
Paul started with older men, then he goes to older women in terms of their influence,
then he begins to talk about younger women before he comes back to younger men. Why does he do that? You would expect him to say, "Older men have this influence upon younger men, older women this influence upon younger women." But instead he puts this spiritual mother piece, these older women, these mature and godly women, he puts them in the pivot place as though the spiritual mothering is not just affecting the women. It's affecting all of the future generations, including the younger men.
Does that happen? I couldn't help but think of it when I watched Ken Burns' Civil War documentary and Shelby Foote, the historian at one point, reported what most commonly was on the lips of soldiers as they lay on the battlefield dying of wounds and thirst.
He said, "Most frequently they called for their mothers as something deep and profound is planted even in the lives and hearts of warriors by the spiritual mothering that they receive."
It's just a reminder that there is this huge privilege in the calling that God gives spiritual mothers, whether it's biological family or spiritual family. It is this recognition that as a life is lived under the grace of God, fully aware of the freedom that he intends, free of the haunting memories, free of the failures that plague us, free of the anxiety with an understanding I am forgiven and therefore it's changing how I talk about people and the worship I bring and the attitudes that I bring that we are just spreading the gospel through the family of God.
And I couldn't help but think of the power that when I saw again Marlene List's testimony. Now I had thought about Marlene before I saw the testimony because a couple of weeks ago right on this stage there was a children's musical, Joshua and the Battle of Jericho. And there were lots of young children. I rejoiced that they were singing Bible songs. That was just great. But what I really rejoiced in was looking and seeing all the different children from different backgrounds and ethnicities who were gathered together as the people of God, that next generation coming up. And I thought to myself, man this unlimited grace thing is really working.
You know the leaders of this church when they talked about we want to be a church of all peoples and generations.
And hey, we're doing pretty good. You know, I mean we're pretty smart.
And then after that program I went to my office and I was packing at my things to go home and I looked out the window and in the parking lot I saw a group. It was like a great multitude from every tribe and language and people and nation. And they all got into Marlene List van.
And I thought, this is not the great plan of the leaders.
This is a spiritual mother who is changing eternity for these children and the children this church is reaching.
I know she's not the only one as I think of the gal pals and I think of the Sunday school teachers and I think of the Good News Club advocates and I think of you who are single moms being both mom and dad and I think of you godly grandparents who are caring for children you never thought you'd have to care for and I think praise God. You have perceived what it means to have a calling and the promise of God is you shall have a consequence.
That's the blessing as God by spiritual mothering is protecting eternity for the family of God
to which He calls us all. Father so work in us we pray that we who have perceived the goodness and the wonder of what it means to be forgiven and made right by Jesus Christ now have a calling. Some spiritual fathers, some spiritual mothers you are using wondrous people by the grace of God to do the work of the gospel for which we praise you. If we feel like we haven't remind us of the grace and peace that's still ours that you turning us back into the system that you intend may equip us for the calling you have given. This we pray in Jesus name. Amen.