Ready to Die? Ready to Live?

[Below you'll find the message shared yesterday morning, December 31, 2023, during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. We celebrated the First Sunday after Christmas. It was also the last day of my call as pastor of Living Water. As of yesterday, I am officially retired. I hope you find both the service and the message helpful. It has been an undeserved blessing and joy for me to have been called by Christ and His Church to the ministry of Word and Sacrament these past thirty-nine years.]

Galatians 4:4-7
Luke 2:22-40

Often over the years, when I’ve visited elderly people suffering deeply with no prospect of improvement in their health, they’ve told me.“I’m ready to go, pastor.”

Here’s a question for those of you who are likely healthier and younger than the people who have said this to me, “Are you ready to go? Are you ready to die?

“Well, Pastor,” you may be thinking, “this is kind of an unpleasant question for New Year’s Eve.”

But I ask the question because of the song of praise sung by a man named Simeon in today’s gospel lesson. More on that in a second. We need to look at a bit of background before hearing Simeon sing.

As the lesson begins, Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus, Whom God has entrusted to their care, are in the temple courts in Jerusalem. They have two reasons for being there.

First, they’re at the temple in obedience to God’s Old Testament Law, Jesus is to be consecrated to God. In Exodus 13, for example, God commands His ancient people, “Consecrate to me every firstborn male. The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether human or animal.” (Exodus 13:2)

Second, they’re there in obedience to that part of God’s Old Testament Law which said that the mother of a son was ceremonially unclean, unable to participate in the life of God’s people for forty days after the birth, when she could be purified through the offering of a sacrifice. (Leviticus 12:8)

Now, because we know how this child was conceived–by the Holy Spirit–and Who this child is–God and Savior of the world, it may seem strange that Jesus, the Son of God, needs to be consecrated to God, or that Mary needs purification. After all, what could be purer or more holy than the virgin birth of God into our world?

Well, we’re in the season of Christmas. Do you know what the real miracle of Christmas is? It’s not just that God the Son took on human flesh. The truest and deepest miracle of Jesus’ incarnation is, as the apostle Paul puts it in our second lesson for this morning, “when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law…” (Galatians 4:4)

God, Who is holier than the Law and above the Law, intentionally places Himself under the Law–the Law that says we are sinners deserving of death and condemnation–so that He can fulfill the Law perfectly for us and give Himself as the perfect, definitive sacrifice for our sin. For your sin and for mine.

Jesus lived under the Law–God’s righteous commands, everything from “You shall have no other gods before Me” to “You shall not covet”--so that when He died, He could take away all our shame and condemnation, giving us God’s forgiveness, God’s peace, and God’s eternal life for all who trust in Christ!

In our second lesson today, Paul says that Jesus chose to live under the same condemnation of the Law into which you and I are born as descendants of Adam and Eve, “to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons [and that includes female as well as male Christians], God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.” (Galatians 4:5-7)

Here is the breathtaking truth: Through Jesus, all who believe in Him are adopted by God as first-born-sons, inheritors of everything that has belonged to Jesus before the universe came into being!

This promise is yours, friends. Jesus lived under the condemnation of the Law so that you don’t have to.

Jesus justifies–that is, declares innocent, guiltless, pure–all who see Him as the promised Savior and believe in Him.

All of which leads us to Simeon, the singer in our gospel lesson. Simeon, we’re told was a man who was, first of all, δίκαιος, righteous, meaning that he was a sinner justified by God, declared eligible for eternity with God not because he perfectly obeyed God’s Law, but because he trusted in the God Who had, centuries before, promised a Savior. Simeon was like Abraham, then called Abram, of whom Moses wrote, “Abram believed the Lord, [that is, Abram believed the promises of Yahweh] and he [God] credited it to him as righteousness…” Simeon was right with God because he trusted God and God’s promises. Luke also says that Simeon was εὐλαβής, meaning he reverenced, was devoted to, and trusted in God’s promises.

Over the years, I’ve assumed that Simeon was an old man. But in fact, nothing in what Luke writes tells us that. I’ve come to like the idea that he was a young man, with his whole future life seemingly laid out before him.

Whether that’s true or not, this man, filled with the Holy Spirit and responsive to the Holy Spirit, is led by the Holy Spirit to the Temple that day when Mary, Joseph, and Jesus come in obedience to the Law. The Holy Spirit had already told Simeon that he would not die before he clapped eyes on the Savior of the world.

And there, in Mary’s arms, Simeon sees Jesus.

Simeon scoops the baby up in his arms and sings: “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.” (Luke 2:29-32)

“Now that I see my Savior,” Simeon is saying, “now that I know He is here not just for me, but for all sinners, Jews and Gentiles, I can live and die in peace. I can face death knowing that because of this Savior in Whom I believe, I will live forever in the arms of God!”

Today, Christ comes to you again in His Word and hands you His Gospel promise, “Because of Me, all your sins are forgiven. Not just some of them; all of them. Finally, fully, forever!

He comes to you too in the bread and the wine, His body and His blood, with that same gospel promise to you, “Take and eat; this is My body given for you. Do this, even if you feel far from God or from the believer you mean to be, so that you are re-membered to Me again. And take this cupm which is the new covenant in my blood, shed for you and for all people to bring you the forgiveness of sin.”

Christ comes to you today as surely as He came to Simeon at the temple. In Word and Sacrament, you, like Simeon and Anna, see your salvation in Him.

And because Christ shows all this to you, you can, like Simeon, sing to God, “Dismiss your servant in peace. I can die now. I know the good, eternal future You, Christ, have secured for me.”

That can be our song every time we encounter Christ in worship with God’s people, when we read His Word, when we pray or serve in His name.

If this all sounds morbid to you, it shouldn’t. Listen, friends: It’s only when you are ready to die to this life, knowing that Christ has already overturned the condemnation of the Law and destroyed the power of sin and death over you, that you are ready to live in Christ’s freedom today and through eternity under His loving grace.

You’ll live each day anticipating the moment that will come after you’ve drawn your last earthly breath, when the first one you will see is Jesus and the first thing you’ll hear is Jesus telling you, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” (Matthew 25:34)  

Until that day, Simeon’s song is yours: “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace…” Amen

Saints: Who Are They? Who Aren't They?

[This message was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio during All Saints' Sunday worship last Sunday.]

Revelation 7:9-17

What is a saint? All Saints’ Sunday challenges us to ask that question each year. 

The first thing we should do in approaching this question, I suppose, is to talk about what saints aren't, or in a phrase used by the late Lutheran composer John Ylvisaker, what the saints ain't. There's a helpful discussion of this subject in Article XXI of what's known as the Apology to the Augsburg Confession. The confession makes up a portion of The Book of Concord, a place where Lutheran Christians summarize their understanding of Biblical Christian faith.

Article XXI deals with the subject of the invocation of saints, the use of saints' names to intervene for people in prayer. Behind this idea is that saints are somehow superabundantly good and can somehow put in good words for us with God that Jesus, the One we confess to be Lord, God, and Savior, doesn't.

The article says, in part, "Our Confession approves honoring the saints in three ways. The first is thanksgiving. [In their lives, we see examples of God's mercy for sinful human beings.]...The second service is the strengthening our faith. When we see Peter's denial forgiven, we also are encouraged to believe all the more that grace truly superabounds over sin...The third honor is the imitation, first of faith, then of the other virtues...[God, by His grace creates through Christ]...We admit that, just as the saints (when alive) pray for the Church universal in general, so in heaven they pray for the Church in general. However no passage about the praying of the dead exists in the Scriptures...Scripture does not teach the invocation of the saints, or that we are to ask the saints for aid..."

In short, dead saints aren't who we're to talk to when we're trying to communicate with God. Scripture teaches that we're to pray in the name of God the Son, Jesus. The early Church knew that there is no other name given by God by which we can be saved. Jesus says that He is the way, the truth, and the life, the only connection that humanity can have to God for salvation and prayers heard by God. As a young person said to me years ago, "If I can go right to the top, to God, in my praying, why would I talk to a dead believer who can't hear me?"

That's what saints aren't. To find out what they are, we’ll turn to today’s first lesson, Revelation 7:9-17. 

Revelation, as you know, is based on a series of visions given to the apostle John about sixty years after Jesus’ resurrection. 

Beginning at chapter 6, John sees Jesus, the second Person of the one God, open the first six of seven seals. With the opening of each seal, John sees this old creation in which we live move closer to its inevitable end. He also sees glimmers of the new creation that the risen and ascended Jesus will fully usher in at His second coming, when He returns to this world to claim His kingdom from our enemies: sin, death, and the devil. Jesus’ return will bring celebration and relief to all who have turned from sin and who have believed in Christ.

But, as the last verse of Revelation 6 points out, the return of Jesus won’t be universally welcomed, any more than He or His people are universally welcomed today. Those who have rejected Christ will ask the caves, mountains, and rocks for help. “‘Fall on us,’ they will beg, ‘and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb [the Lamb being Jesus]!’ For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?” (Revelation 6:16)

Then, just before the opening of the seventh and final seal, John is allowed to see two scenes which he records in Revelation, chapter 7. 

The first scene comes in Revelation 7:1-8, right before today’s lesson. The location of this scene is this world. God assigns four angels to hold back the final destruction of the old creation. “Don’t damage the earth,” God tells the angels, “until we’ve marked all of the servants of God with a seal on their foreheads” (Revelation 7:3) (This is the seal of the Holy Spirit which every baptized person receives on the day they’re made new by water and the Spirit.) Then the numbers of those sealed for salvation are counted out. The total comes to 144,000. The Bible is not here saying that just 144,000 people out of all human history will be part of God’s eternal kingdom! The number 144 is derived from multiplying the 12 tribes of Israel times the 12 apostles Jesus chose to lead the post-resurrection church. For John, it would have been a number implying perfection and completeness. And, tacking three zeroes onto the back of 144, would be a bit like one of us saying that “a gazillion” people showed up for an Ohio State football game or watched the seventh game of the World Series this past week. 

Then comes Revelation 7:9. John writes: “After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count…” 

This is no little crowd of 144,000! It’s a crowd so big that “no one could count” it! 

I find this incredibly moving because on a starlit night 4000 years ago, an elderly man to whom God had promised the impossible struggled to believe that God could overcome decay and death to give him a son and a future to his descendants.

The man’s name at the time was Abram. (Later to be changed by God to Abraham.) To Abram, the promise seemed too good to be true. So, God reassured Abram in Genesis 15:5: “[God took Abram] outside and said, ‘Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’” 

The multitude from every nation that John is shown in His vision of heaven after the life of this old world has come to an end are the descendants of Abram, the very descendants God had promised on that starry night so long ago. They were, in the words of John in his gospel: “children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (John 1:13). This multitude comes to be numbered among Abraham’s descendants not by genetics, but by faith in the God Who ultimately revealed Himself to Jews and Gentiles in the person of Jesus Christ. 

Jesus says in John 14:9: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” This the Father, God the Father, the same one Who made Abraham and Sarah the ancestors of nations, not because their bodies were capable of making children, but because God’s Holy Spirit, by the grace of God, can make new life in all who turn from sin and entrust themselves to Jesus.  

Jesus, God the Son, is the God Who gave Abraham that promise four millennia ago. And He is the God Who promises that all who turn from sin and believe in Him become descendants of Abraham. They are saints of God. When we come to believe in Christ as our God and Savior, we are the saints of God!

Saints are those who trust God to give them the free gifts that come to all who follow Jesus: gifts like forgiveness of sin, eternal life, and the power to live each day for His purposes. 

But if sainthood is a free gift from God, we must not think for a moment that sainthood is easy. We see this from just four words in our lesson from Revelation today. 

The first two of those words appear at the beginning of verse 9: “After this.” After what, exactly? John saw the multitude of saints after an event that’s mentioned in verse 14. 

That’s where you can read two more important words: “great tribulation.” 

Despite the propaganda that comes from those who misconstrue Revelation, "the great tribulation" does not refer to some endtime cataclysm. The great tribulation is the common experience through which every believer in Jesus goes in this life.

Life in this world is the great tribulation. 

We live in a place filled with beauty and wonder. But with its beauty and wonder marred by human sin, death, and even the suffering of the saints, this world, at its best, can still only give us a glimpse--a kind of shimmering shadow--of the beauty and wonder—the perfection—that await all who persevere to the end in following Jesus as their only God and King. 

After completing life in this world, the saints who have kept on trusting Jesus, will be met by the Savior, Who will make them clean forever, Who will dry their tears, Who will feed their hunger and quench their thirst for the righteous life that only He can give, and He will welcome them into the new creation for which each of us was made. 

For now, we live in a time in which, as Paul writes Romans 8, both we and the whole of creation wait with eager longing for Christ to reveal Himself and His children. 

But even in the best of times, this life can be a struggle. 

And sometimes, our struggles are made even harder because God’s Word has ignited faith in Jesus Christ within us. 

How much easier the lives of Christians would be if we just went along with the world instead of rooting ourselves in the truth and grace of God revealed in His Word. Of course, along with that ease would come death, because life is only found in Christ!

The devil tests, tempts, and tries the saints. And every believer in Christ will, eventually, bear the scars—physical, emotional, relational, or all three—that come to those who seek to follow Christ. 

Mark it well: Follow Christ and He will most certainly thwart you in some of your most heartfelt desires because He is far less interested in giving you momentary happiness than He is in fitting and forging you and your character for an eternity spent in His presence. In this life, I have chafed under Christ's hand of loving discipline more than once and I'm sure that I will chafe under it many times again before I die. I'm reminded of the words of the preacher in the New Testament book of Hebrews: "Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined--and everyone undergoes discipline--then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness." (Hebrews 12:7-10)

The Old Testament saints living in exile, the victims of injustice, would cry out to God, “How long, O Lord?” Their pain was echoed for me in the words of a saint and friend battling cancer who told me, “I just can’t seem to catch a break.” In this life, we’ve all been there...or will be. 

Our own personal “great ordeals” may include persecution, chronic or fatal illness, disagreements over priorities with those we love or with whom we work, or the conflicts that happen within us when a sin tantalizes us and we know that we must choose God’s way and not our own. The latter may be the greatest tribulation of all!

What is a saint? 

Saints are people who daily turn to Jesus for forgiveness, faith, courage, and new life. 

Saints are sinners who trust that Jesus loves and gives new and everlasting life to sinners. 

Sometimes saints turn to Jesus haltingly. Always imperfectly. At times, speaking for myself anyway, resentfully. But saints find that their lives as disciples and human beings are always buttressed by daily repentance and renewal. 

No matter how saints’ hearts may wander, they always know to come back to Christ. 

They know to Whom they belong and they know where they’re headed. 

They know that this life is not perfect. But they have a purpose in their living: To live for and to let the whole world know about the Lamb Jesus, Who will, after the last page has been closed in the last chapter of the last volume of this world's story, welcome all who have trusted in Him to His new creation. 

In the meantime, dear saints of God, trust in Jesus. Know His love for you even in the midst of life’s greatest tribulations and know for a fact that, if you remain steadfast in following Jesus, like saints before us, you will be in Jesus' everlasting kingdom. You will hear Jesus say, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” (Matthew 25:34) Amen!

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. I'm also a saint by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and a sinner by my very nature at the same time.]

Why Pray?

[This message was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, yesterday morning.]

Luke 18:1-8
The widow in the parable Jesus tells in today’s gospel lesson is desperate and helpless. She needs vindication. The culture in which Jesus lived during His time on earth gave no legal standing to women. Yet, this widow incessantly seeks vindication anyway: Whatever her standing in society, she knows that she cannot survive or live without a judge vindicating her, justifying her.

The judge is a particularly corrupt and nasty human being. Precisely because widows had no standing in the ancient world in which God raised His people Israel into being, God repeatedly commanded the Jews to care for widows, as well as for orphans, foreigners, and those the world often marginalizes, ignores, or leaves behind. But the judge had no concern about the will of God or the niceties of the law.

The meaning of this parable is underscored in part, by what Jesus has to say just before He tells it. At the end of Luke, chapter 17, Jesus talks about what His disciples, including you and me, are to expect from life in this world until, on the last day, the crucified, risen, and ascended Jesus returns to this world to judge the living and the dead and to make all things right. This world, the world as it is between Jesus' ascension and His return is the one in which you and I have lived our entire lives. As it progresses, we are called to be about God's business: trusting in Christ for life and forgiveness, living in love for God and the world, and in fellowship with His Church.

This is a dangerous time.  

It’s a time in which believers in Christ are subject to the possibility of rejection, even persecution, of course. 

But more certainly, it’s a time in which we may be lulled into thinking that this world and its rewards are all that we need, that there is nothing better that God can offer us than the baubles this world so values. Or that because we endure hardships and grief, God must be absent and His gospel false. 

Listen: The central truth of human history is that despite our sins, God, the lovesick Father Who sent the Son Jesus to die as the perfect sacrifice for our sins and to lift the burden of sin, death, and darkness off of our shoulders for all eternity, then raised Him from death to kick down the door to eternal life with God for all who believe in Jesus, and even now, sends His Holy Spirit to create faith in Jesus when God’s gospel Word comes to us, has never and will never give up on us! He has never given up on you! 

That’s why Jesus preached, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15)  

That’s why Jesus also said, in a passage you’ve often heard me cite, “...the one who endures [in faith in Christ] to the end will be saved.” (Matthew 24:13) 

The disciple of Jesus is called to cling to Christ, Who has endured everything you and I have ever or will ever endure, including death, yet rose. We are to cling to Christ, knowing through Him that God will never leave us and never forsake us. 

He will walk with us through all the valleys of the shadow of death we experience in this world and at the end of the ages, He’s going to call out to us in our graves and say, “Rise!” 

And He will tell us, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” (Matthew 25:34) 

All who turn from sin and trust in Jesus as their God and Savior will experience eternal vindication for their faith in Him.

But how are we to live now, in these dangerous times? Jesus tells us how in the parable that makes up today’s gospel lesson, Luke 18:1-18. Take a look at it with me, please. 

Verse 1: “And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” 

The word used here for lose heart in the Greek in which Luke wrote his gospel is ἐκκακέω. It’s a compound word literally meaning called out from. A good definition might be to be overcome on the outside--in our actions and thoughts--by the weariness that we feel on the inside. 

Jesus says that we need to avoid allowing ourselves to be so wearied by the things we experience in this world that we stop trusting in Him and in the promises He has guaranteed by His death and resurrection. 

God knows that life in this world can be wearying.

It’s why Jesus tells us, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28) 

It’s why we’re told in Isaiah 40:31: “...those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” 

Jesus tells us that we will not grow weary in following Him in these in-between times when we pray.

Verse 2: “[Jesus] said: ‘In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, “Grant me justice against my adversary.” For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, “Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!”’ And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly.”

The judge in Jesus’ parable is as unlike God as it’s possible to be. 

• God the Son Jesus, as we see from His cross, divested Himself of His power to become a servant to the human race, selflessly cleansing us of the filth of sin and the rot of death by His innocent blood. This God wants nothing more than to vindicate us, to justify us, simply for trusting in Christ. 
• By contrast, the judge is vain, self-centered, corrupt, and, it would seem, likelier to give justice to the high and mighty than to lowly people like this widow. Yet even this judge, Jesus says, will get around to bringing justice to the widow simply because she will not stop petitioning for vindication and justice.

How do we stay faithful to Jesus in a world that largely ignores Him? 

How do we stay faithful when we experience stress and challenges, the monotonous demands of everyday life, the drudgery of inglorious tasks, the pain of suffering, grief, rejection, conflict, uncertainty, and death? 

Like the widow, desperate and helpless, we turn to the Judge, not a corrupt judge like the one in Jesus' parable, but to God, the Lord of all creation. 

We pray to the God in Jesus’ name. We find in this God we meet in Jesus a Father who will not delay in vindicating our faith--even in the midst of the in-between world in which we live. 

As we meet Him in prayer in Jesus’ name--as well as in His Word and in the sacraments we share in the fellowship of believers--the righteous Judge of all will assure us once again, as His Word promises, that nothing can separate us from the love of God given to us in Christ Jesus. “I know that Jesus is right here with me” is a message I have heard from more than one dying Christian over the years.

When I was young and strong, I deluded myself with the idea that I was strong enough to take on any challenge...before breakfast. 

I thought that I was, “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” 

I thought that I was virtuous and deserving. 

I believed these things deep down even after I had come to faith in Christ and had been ordained as a pastor and should have known better. 

I didn’t realize I thought those things, but they were there and still remain as part of my sinful nature from which I will only be finally free after I have died and rise with Christ on the last day. 

I am older and weaker now. And, if I live into the future on this earth, I will be older and weaker still. It has become untenable for me to pretend to be Superman or that I’m self-sufficient, or virtuous or deserving. 

I am none of these things. 

I am an undeserving sinner made a saint only by the grace God gives to those who acknowledge their sin, their weakness, and their desperation and fall in faith into the arms of the One Who died and rose for people like me. 

It is only sinners who turn to Christ, like the helpless widow, who are vindicated by the God of all creation Who is anxious to grace us with His forgiveness, His love, His life.

So when you feel defeated, pray that God will lift you up. 

When you feel victorious, pray that God will keep you honest about who and what you are. 

When you feel accosted by temptation, pray to God to confess that you are too weak to resist the sin that would otherwise drag you into hell. 

When you sin, pray to God in the name of the Son Who died for sinners like you and me and you will be forgiven. 

When you face decisions or are called to do things beyond your capacity, pray and God will guide you and do through you what you cannot do in your own power. (I know this to be true because I’ve been doing a job I am incapable of doing for thirty-five years now.) 

Whatever your circumstance, when you go to the Father in prayer in Jesus’ name, He will always vindicate you. Even after you have died, the God Who died and rose for you will vindicate your trust in Jesus and welcome you into His eternal embrace.

At the end of our lesson today, Jesus asks, “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” 

We are saved from sin and death not by anything we do. 

We are saved by a faith given to us by God the Holy Spirit that recognizes the helplessness and desperation of our human condition and, by the powerful Word of God, empowers us to believe that as we call out to Jesus, we are saved. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,” God’s Word tells us. 

So, keep calling on the Lord. 

Pray in Jesus’ name. 

Whether now or in eternity or both, Your faith in Christ will be vindicated. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]