The Name of Jesus

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Hey, good morning church, good morning, man. Wherever you are at, I am so glad that you are joining us this morning. It is gonna be such a great time. I know worship was already such a sweet time to be in his presence. And listen, I know that most of you are at home or maybe you're watching this later, but wherever you are at, if you are able, I want you to do something for me. I want you to join me in standing for the reading of God's word. Yes, I know some of you are in bed. Yes, I know some of you are on your couch, you're cozy. I hope that you have something really tasty and warm to drink with you, but I still want you wherever you're at to get your body involved of opening up our hearts and our minds and our spirits. So stand real quick and we are gonna read today's key theme, it's found in Philippians chapter two, verses nine through , it says this.


  

 Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the father.


  

 Let's pray. Father, we just thank you for today. We welcome you into this place. We welcome you into our homes. Lord, we thank you so much for the opportunity that we have to worship, even when we can't congregate together, that we can still come together under your name, Father. We're so thankful for this day, Lord, have your spirit move in our hearts and our minds. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen and amen.


  

 Okay, you can be seated or get back in bed or whatever it is that you need to do. It's gonna be a good, good morning.


  

 I always prefer when everyone's together and everyone's in the room, there's nothing that takes the place of church being together in community. But in moments like this and times like this, when weather is not cooperative, I'm very thankful for the technology and the fact that we can still be together, we can still worship together, we can still give. It's such a powerful, powerful tool. But when I heard that we were gonna be able to do this and I decided, okay, we're gonna shift all of our fasting dates back one week because I wanna have kind of a special Sunday because I know we have kids who are probably watching with you and I think this will be a fun opportunity to be able to learn and to grow here. And so here's what I wanna talk about. I always, anytime it's like, hey, what do you wanna talk about? My default is like, I just wanna tell stories about Jesus. We have lots of other subjects that we cover, but that's typically what I wanna do is I wanna talk about Jesus. And you find the stories of Jesus in the gospels, the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and all of them have their own little emphasis and all of them have their own twist and they all have a special place in my heart. Like Luke is this beautiful thing. I always love reading the book of Luke during the Christmas season and John is just so beautiful how it starts in the opening and Matthew highlights so many great parables and the sermon on the Mount, there's so much good stuff. But Mark has a special place because if you've ever read the book of Mark, you'll know Mark and the person who authored Mark was all about action. There's no fluff, there's no details. Sometimes you can't even tell how much time is passing. Like Mark is all about just action, action, action. Now tradition states and most scholars believe that Mark, the writings that Mark compiled were actually from the eyewitness accounts of Peter. And so it kind of makes sense that it's very direct, very brash, very let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go. Here's what's going on. And Mark, it's just this constant movement, constant going on. And there is a section of scripture that it is so jampacked with like Jesus just doing miracles, it's crazy. When you read it, if you read it just from the account of Mark, it makes it appear that it's a day, maybe two days that Jesus is doing all this work. It is just like he is just on a miracle spree. He cannot stop and he cannot be stopped. And so I wanna kind of look at that. If you wanna read it, this is actually in the second half of Mark, I believe it starts in Mark chapter four, verse , so from that on, and then all of chapter five. And this is just this amazing thing because what we wanna talk about today is I wanna tell some stories about Jesus, but I really wanna focus on this idea, what we read in Philippians, that Paul wrote later when reflecting on the very person of Christ,


  

 that Jesus is so many things as so many times, but there is something that's powerful, that Jesus is not just the Son of God, which he is. He didn't just come down to the man, which he did, but he is the King of all of creation, that he has authority over all things. And it says his name, which is like the representation of his authority is above all other things and all other names. And I think in this passage of scripture, we see this highlighted over and over again. So, Mark chapter four, just so you know, Jesus is in his ministry, he's teaching. He actually just finished teaching a lot of parables, parables you've probably heard, like the sowing and the different types of ground and different things are found in this chapter. And after teaching all these people, it says that he tells the disciples, "Let's get in the boat and let's go to the other side." Now, just so you remember, he's doing ministry in the area of Galilee, so this is the sea of Galilee that they're around, and he tells these men, "Let's get on the boat, let's go to the other side." Something else to contextually remember, he's got his  disciples at this point, and many of them have grown up in this region, so they're familiar with the water, and several of them were professional fishermen, so they were on the water all the time. So these were men who were used to being on this sea, who are used to going to these different places, and they're with this. So Jesus gets in the boat and it says that Jesus falls asleep, he takes a nap, which if you've read the verses in the chapter that's leading up to this, you'll understand that Jesus is tired because he has been going nonstop. And the only instruction he said was let's go to the other side of the sea. And it's interesting that he told them to go to the other side, and this will come up just a little bit, because the other sea, we'll see it one place, he gets in this place that they call the Carcians, but this is actually part of what we would call, some people would call the Decapolis, which is  different cities that are all up and down this side of the Sea of Galilee. And the thing that's interesting about them is none of them are actually predominantly Jewish. Almost all of them are predominantly Gentiles, and they're actually very known for having different religious ideas, worship styles, and things like that. So Jesus goes and he says, let's go to the other side. He gets in the boat and he falls asleep. And his disciples are in the process of taking them across. And it says that as they get across, when they're in the middle of the sea, all of the sudden, a great storm stirs up. And it becomes really bad. And we know it's really bad, because these men who are fishermen, who've grown up in this sea, who've grown up in boats, who know what it's like, who've experienced all this, they start freaking out. And they start fighting, and they start rowing, and they can't go one way, and they can't go the other way, and they just feel like they need to get to the side. And they start to realize, like, we are not gonna make it. We are going to sink.


  

 And they start crying out, and they start screaming. And finally, they cry out to Jesus.


  

 Do you not care that we're gonna die? And they wake him up.


  

 But as soon as Jesus woke up,


  

 Mark chapter four, verse , it says, when Jesus woke up, he rebuked the winds, and he said to the waves, silence.


  

 Peace be still. And suddenly the wind stopped, and there was a great calm.


  

 Then he asked them, why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith? And the disciples were absolutely terrified. Who is this man, they asked the other. Even the wind obeys him. I find this so amazing. Jesus just immediately wakes up, and he says, peace be still. Here's a couple little things I take away from this little section before we move on to the next part. I find it interesting that even, that Jesus, he's asleep, he's tired, but even in the middle of the storm, does the lightning and the thunder and the waves and the wind, does that wake him up? Nope, he's out.


  

 He's in total peace. He's not worried about the storm because he knows that he's over the storm. But I always find it interesting. It says that when his disciples cried out to him,


  

 that's when Jesus woke up and immediately calmed the storm. We actually see this pattern throughout history. It's sometimes we think, man, to get God's attention, I gotta say the right prayer, or I gotta go to church for some time, or I've gotta stop doing some of these things, or start doing some of these things, or give a certain amount of money, or read this much Bible, and you don't have to do any of that. I love it in the Old Testament, when the people of Israel will be impressed by the nation of Israel. It says that the cries and the groans of the nation of Israel made it to God's ears, and he sent their rescuer.


  

 You don't have to do anything except cry out. You don't have to have the right words. You don't have to have the right phraseology. You don't even have to have the right systematic theology. All you have to do is cry out to the name of Jesus, and he will show up. And he can do whatever he needs to do. In this example, it was calm the storm. And I love this because this is just proof right here that the name of Jesus is above creation. That he with his very words was able to calm the storm, just like his father with his very words created the earth and everything in it. That the very spoken word that God used in Genesis to be able to create all that we see and have, that Jesus was able with those same breaths and the same words to be able to say, "Peace, be still." That even creation and everything around it has to bow to the name of Jesus. Now, if this was the only part of this story, this would be enough of the story. This is already crazy. There's a storm. I actually think that it was like demonically inspired because it was trying to stop Jesus in his ministry, but he comes through and it is stopped immediately.


  

 But it goes on. So basically starting in chapter five, Jesus gets to the other side of this because now it's smooth sailing, no pun intended. They get over there and they get to their side. And it says immediately when he gets off the boat,


  

 a man comes up to him who is possessed by a demon.


  

 And we know from this account and in some of the same accounts of the story in other gospels that this man was causing terror in this town. It said that they would try to chain him up and he would break the chains, that he would go and hang out in the graveyards, that he was always naked with no clothes and he would cut himself and he would do all these crazy things and people were scared of him. Anytime they tried to bound him, he could just have superhuman strength and break out like it was crazy and people were scared.


  

 And this man, the moment that Jesus came off the boat, this man came and went straight to him


  

 and started asking these questions. There's this dialogue of why are you here?


  

 Why are you here to mess with me?


  

 And it says that Jesus cast this evil spirit out. Listen to this in chapter eight of verse five. It says, "For Jesus had already said to the spirit, "come out of the man, you evil spirits.


  

 "Then Jesus demanded, what is your name? "And he replied, my name is Legion "because there are many of us inside this man."


  

 This, what a scary thing. Like he's like, we are Legion. There's many of us here.


  

 And a lot of people would be like, oh, one demon's scary, a Legion of Demons, which you know, a Legion is a lot.


  

 That's a little weird. But then he says this, and this is interesting, he says, "Send us into those pigs, the spirit beg. "Let us enter them so Jesus gave them permission "and the evil spirit came out of the man "and entered the pigs and the entire herd "of about , pigs plunged down "to the steep hillside into the lake "and drowned in the water."


  

 That's wild. That's wild. So here's what happened. Jesus cast this demon out. And you would think that people would be ecstatic. That they would be ecstatic, like wow, this guy who's been demonbossessed and has been causing all this trouble to our town and causing all these issues, that Jesus came and he healed them. But actually, when the herd's been told everyone what happened to the town people came, they were upset.


  

 They were angry with Jesus. And they're like, please leave here. Not because they thought he was too powerful, but because they were upset that he just messed with their economy. Now remember I said this was Gentile territory. That's why there was all these pigs. If this was a Jewish community, there'd be no pigs because pigs aren't kosher. But this was Gentile territory. This was a herd that they were raising for food and all that money just went into the ocean. They were not happy. They didn't care that this man was delivered.


  

 They were just upset that their economy and their money was ruined. And so they're like, you just need to get out of here. But here's what I love. There's this beautiful picture that it says that when the people came and they found Jesus, they found the man who was formerly demonpossessed with the legion of demons. And it says that he was seated at the feet of Jesus, fully clothed, at peace and in his full same mind.


  

 What a powerful thing that happens whenever Jesus shows up and intersects us. Maybe you feel like your life is just chaotic. Maybe you feel like your mind can't be calmed. Maybe you feel like you have no peace. Maybe you even feel like there's things that are oppressing you and that you just can't seem to get ahead of. The name of Jesus is above all those things.


  

 And just the mention of the name of Jesus makes these things quake. You saw there was no difficulty throwing out a legion of demons compared to just one. Like he had no issue with that because Jesus is over. All these different things. And Paul talks about this in Ephesians chapter six. He says, "We're not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, "but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, "against mighty powers in the dark world, "and against evil spirits and heavenly places."


  

 Paul is referencing the fact that at the end of the day, we are not fighting against human beings. We are fighting against the influence of darkness and the evil one. And Jesus says, "You don't need to be afraid. "You can take heart because I've already overcome "all of those things in his name "and through the power of the cross." And so right there, this guy leaves. And this guy begs, he says, "Can I come with you? "Can I come with you, Jesus?" And Jesus says, "No, I want you to go and stay here "and tell everyone what has happened to you." And it says that he went up and down those  cities, sharing about what Jesus did. This demonpossessed man, this man that everyone had given up on and was living literally like an animal in the wild, he becomes one of the earliest evangelists of Jesus and spreader of his message. And it looks like, for most people would say, he's the first person to share this idea of Jesus with nonJewish people, because this whole town was there. Which is why later we see that those cities have a very high ratio of people turning to Christendom early on in the ministry, because I think this man was able to tell this story. Now that's a pretty fantastic story. And if I was there, I would already say, "Wow, that's pretty awesome." But as soon as this ends, he gets in the boat, he tells the guy to stay, and he says, "We're going back to the other side." This is no break. Jesus is just going, going, going, going. So they get to the other side of the sea,


  

 no problems this time, no storm. And it says that the moment that he got off the boat again, there was a crowd waiting for him. They were waiting for him right when he got off the boat to hear from him, to hear his teachings, to see what he had to say. And it says that while he was there,


  

 a man came to him who was kind of a religious elite. And he came to him and he said, "I need you to come and heal my daughter."


  

 This man's name was Jairus. And he says, "I need you to come and heal my daughter." Now this is interesting because the religious elite did not like Jesus. They thought he was a heretic or crazy or demon possessed. They called all sorts of things, but they weren't for him. But the thing that Jairus knew was Jesus had already done miracle after miracle, healing after healing. And whether he liked the guy or not, or thought he was the Messiah, the thing that he knew was he had the power to do miracles. And if you're a father or a mother, and one of your kids is sick, and even this point to the point of sick and potentially dying, guess what? You're willing to do anything for them to be saved. So he goes to Jesus and he says, "Can you come and heal my daughter?" And Jesus says, "Yes, I can."


  

 And so he says, "Let's go." So they're making their way to Jairus' house. But there's just this picture it talks about. There's so many people. And it says the crowd was pressing in on Jesus all the time. And I always picture it because I'm sure as a dad, like Jairus just wants to start throwing people and punching people and getting them out of the way because it's like, you are keeping this guy from my daughter and my daughter is dying. I need him to get there to save him. And this crowd is just constantly impressing Jesus and slowing him down and asking for things. And it says in the middle of this process of him trying to get to Jairus' house to be able to pray for his daughter,


  

 it says that there was a woman who had an issue of blood and she'd been bleeding for years and years and years.


  

 And it says that she had this thought that if I can only touch the hem of his garment, just the very, if I could just touch his robe,


  

 I can be healed.


  

 And there's so much that we don't have to get into detail or that we don't have time to get into detail about the reality of this passage because this woman by Jewish law and by Jewish custom was considered to be unclean because of this bleeding issue. So she wasn't supposed to be in public and she wasn't supposed to touch other people because when an unclean thing touches the clean thing, the clean thing becomes unclean. If you're a parent and you've got kids, you know that. I do laundry, it's clean, and then that touches one of my unclean children and then it's no longer clean anymore and it only takes a minute to be destroyed. That's just how it works. And that is how the system works. So she was deemed unclean because of this issue of blood. She wasn't even supposed to be in this type of public space. And in fact, the punishment for doing this would be and not announcing yourself and intentionally making other people unclean is actually a penalty of death.


  

 And she comes to this place and she thinks, if I can just keep my head down, there's a crowd, maybe they won't notice me. If I can just touch the hymn of his garment, I believe I can be healed and then I can just leave. And so she sneaks in and she presses her way in and she touches the hymn of his garment. And it says that instantly power left the body of Jesus and went into her body. And in that moment, her body was supernaturally healed from this issue of bleeding that she'd been dealing with for over a decade.


  

 And now her plan was to do this and to slink off, which this lady had a lot of faith. She really believed if I could just touch his clothes,


  

 I could get out.


  

 I could get out. I don't know if she was trying to justify it. Like I don't need to touch him because that would make him unclean, but maybe if I just touch his robe, then it'll be okay.


  

 But she did it. And all of a sudden, with all these people around, Jesus stops and he says, "Someone touched me."


  

 And I can just picture it. I'm sure Jairus is like, "We got to move. "Things are in a hurry here."


  

 And then all of a sudden, in Mark it says, "One of the disciples said, "'What do you mean someone touched you?'" All these people are pressing around. Everyone's touching you. Now in other gospel accounts, they make sure to let us know and call out who it was. It was Peter. Peter was the one who gave this wild, like, "Everyone's touching Jesus." He said, "No, someone touched me and power left me."


  

 Healing power. And all of a sudden, this woman had a brave moment. And she said, "It was me. "It was me. "I touched you. "I touched you."


  

 And this is what he said in verse .


  

 It says, "Immediately the bleeding stopped "and she could feel in her body "that she had been healed of the terrible condition. "And he said to her, "'Daughter, your faith has made you well. "'Go in peace. "'Your suffering is over.'"


  

 What a moment for Jesus to bring so much dignity in. He doesn't want her to slink away. He doesn't want her to think that she did something wrong. He doesn't want her to think that she has to hide this miracle. He wants you to know that your faith has made you well. And if you couple this with some other stories that we've read in Mark, Jesus also equates the healing of people's bodies with the forgiveness of sin. In fact, he says it's easier for him to forgive sin than even to heal bodies, because that's his very nature and the very purpose of who he is. So he gives this woman the dignity of saying, "Not only are you healed and your suffering is over, "but you can go and shalom completeness, wholeness, "and perfection, and peace,


  

 "and you can be forgiven of your sin."


  

 And in many ways, he's also proclaiming the fact that she's no longer unclean, that she's clean. And Jesus does all this counter to the rituals and the customs of the day. There was no sacrifice. There was no purity ritual. There was no washing. All of this, he just says, "With my words, because of my name, I can do this."


  

 And this is one of the first times that we see this thing of, like I said, the normal thing is when unclean things touch clean things, the clean thing becomes unclean. But you have to understand, when the clean thing is Jesus, the appearance of the lamb, when the unclean thing touches the clean thing, the unclean thing becomes clean.


  

 And that's what happened to this woman. Jesus was not defiled as a result of her


  

 ceremonial uncleanliness. Jesus was able to press that to her through the very person of who he is.


  

 So this woman experienced this. And it's like, holy cow. And people know this woman. It's like, holy cow,  years, this is wild. She's been healed and people are excited. But you know, Jairus is just like, "Nope, we gotta keep going." And it says, "About this time."


  

 Remember, this is all one day. Maybe two, maybe there was a little bit of time. This is just going, going, going. In the middle of this, when Jesus is about to get back on the journey, it says that some servants of Jairus came from his house and came to him and said, "Your daughter is dead."


  

 Don't trouble the teacher to come all this way.


  

 She's already passed.


  

 There's nothing anyone could do.


  

 And he tells Jesus this, and Jesus tells him,


  

 "Have faith.


  

 Let's go to your house." So he continues to his house. And it says that Jesus gets there and people are mourning and there's crying and there's wailing and all this kind of stuff. And he shows up and he says, "Why are you weeping? She's not dead, but she's only asleep."


  

 Now, Jesus has a lot of things in his ministry. He said a lot of things that people responded to. Sometimes people respond with great joy. Sometimes people respond with tears. Sometimes people respond with anger. But this is the only time that Jesus has said something, about something he's about to do, and Jesus has laughed at.


  

 He's laughed at.


  

 He says, "She's not dead, she's asleep." And some of us may think, "Yeah, it's just because they didn't have a chat GPT, so they weren't able to ask the signs of death, so they didn't know if it was dead or not." Listen, people in ancient times were far more acquainted with death than we are today.


  

 They were far more acquainted, both in the food that they eat and in the loved ones that they cared for. It was personal. They knew what it meant for someone to be dead. And they knew what a dead, like the signs of death, the fact that the breathing stops and the heart stops being, they knew all these things. They maybe didn't have all the medical terms that we had, but they knew that when the breath of someone was gone and the breath of this girl had been gone. And what we can see from the story is for some time.


  

 And Jesus shows up and says, "She's not dead, she's asleep." And they laugh at him.


  

 They laugh at him.


  

 And he tells Jairus, "Just keep having faith." And it says that he kicked everyone out


  

 and he only took Jairus and the mother and then Peter, James, and John into this room.


  

 And here's the body of this little girl on her bed,


  

 in all natural ways, dead.


  

 But Jesus looks at her. This is in Mark chapter five, verse , and says, "Holding her hand, he said to her, to lith the coom, which means little girl, get up.


  

 And the girl who was  years old immediately stood up and walked around.


  

 They were overwhelmed and totally amazed.


  

 Jesus gave them strict orders not to tell anyone what had happened. And then he told them to give her something to eat."


  

 Now, some people said, "Oh, was this just a spiritual resurrection?" Or maybe he did this whole section right there at the end, this whole little thing of like, he told them, "Give them something to eat."


  

 You see, back in this time of Jesus, there were people who believed in spiritual things. There were people who believed in spirits and people who rose in the spirit. Like that wasn't an uncommon thing. The idea of something spiritual raising. They had this whole thing. But the ideology that was around that was there's spiritual things that happened. There's spiritual beings that are around, but they can't interact with our world.


  

 So they can't eat things. They can't pick up things. They can't do that because they're not actually spiritual things. That was like an idea, a concept. Part of that was from the Greek influence. And the part of that just was from superstitions. But that was a thing. But what was not known, what was not heard of, was the fact that when something that was dead physically comes physically back to life. And the reason Jesus says, "Give her some food," was one, she probably was hungry. But two, it's because only living things can eat something. Only something that is physical can take hold of that and eat it. That's why he did that. That's why Jesus, when he appeared to his disciples after his resurrection, and they were freaking out because he just showed up in a room. And they're like, "Oh my gosh, what is he?" And they were scared. And he said, "Hey, you guys got anything to eat?" And he ate fish and bread with them. Because he was proving to them over and over again. This isn't just a spiritual resurrection. This is a physical resurrection that Jesus experienced. Because he wants us to know that he can physically resurrect our bodies. And that one day, at the end of this time, when Jesus comes back, our bodies will be united with our spirits and we will be resurrected into a new body. Because that is the power that he has.


  

 And so when we look at all this story,


  

 in just these short couple of verses,


  

 Jesus has the power to rule over creation, over our environment.


  

 Jesus has the power to rule over the storms. Whether those are literal or figurative,


  

 he can rule over those. He has the power to rule and to reign over spiritual things, principalities, demons, anything that you want to bring up. It is under the rule of Jesus.


  

 He has the power to heal sickness in our bodies and to forgive sins that we've committed and to make us clean and pure. He is over all of those things.


  

 And he is even over death itself.


  

 And he has the power to be able to bring resurrection life.


  

 You know, today, we get to celebrate who Jesus is to us.


  

 We get to hold on to that truth. And I don't know what you need today. I don't know if there's some natural things in your life that Jesus needs to show up and rule over. I don't know if there's some storms that you're dealing with that he needs to calm. I don't know if you are in an environment where darkness is raining and you need the light of Christ to shine. I don't know if you've got physical ailments in your body or in someone that you love and Jesus needs to be in that midst. And he needs to take things that have been happening for years or decades. And he needs to bring peace and healing and wholeness to that situation. I don't know if you have a sin in your life that needs to be forgiven, or if maybe even there's something that for all intensive purposes is dead and needs resurrection life.


  

 Jesus can do it all.


  

 The name of Jesus, the person of Jesus,


  

 our elder brother, the one who came and died and was risen again, he is all you need.


  

 He's all we need. He's the thing that we get to press into.


  

 So I don't know what you need this morning.


  

 Hopefully you're nestled up, cozy and warm.


  

 Hopefully there's a beautiful window picture of some snow


  

 and life is content.


  

 But even though things may look fresh on the outside, maybe you have something on the inside that's stirring.


  

 You can invite Jesus to that. You can invite Jesus into one or all of those things because that is the type of God we serve, the one who is not far away, but the one who is near, the one who is moved when he hears the voice of his people, the one who sees dead things and is compelled to bring them back to life.


  

 Who can't stop healing everywhere that he goes and forgiving sin. This is the type of God that we serve.


  

 So on this cold and chilly Sunday,


  

 we get to celebrate that Jesus is alive.


  

 And here's what I wanna do wherever you're at.


  

 I'm gonna give just a minute and we're gonna pray. And maybe there's some people who are watching right now and you've never made the decision to accept Jesus.


  

 Today's a great day to do it. You don't have to be in the room to accept Jesus. That's a decision you make on your own. And we hope that you're in the room next week when we're back together, but I want to give you this opportunity to make this decision today. So wherever you're at, bow your head and just repeat this prayer after me. Say, "Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for sending Jesus,


  

 "the King of the universe, the name above all name,


  

 "to die for me."


  

 So my sin can be forgiven, so my heart could be set free,


  

 so I could experience your power in my life.


  

 It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.


  

 Have you made that decision today?


  

 There's a couple of things I want you to do. One, tell someone. Maybe you've got a friend in the room, maybe you've got someone that you could call, tell someone. They actually, I think, will have a phone number that they can put up on the screen that you can text and connect with our team. And we would love to answer any questions, but share it, this is good news. Anytime you make a decision to accept Jesus, it's good news. Guess what, it was good news for the disciples when they got across the sea. It was good news for that demonpossessed man when he met Jesus. It was good news for that woman with the issue of blood, and it was good news for that little girl who didn't even know Jesus was coming.


  

 It's good news whenever you experience Jesus.


  

 But hey, listen, we love you so much. I'm so thankful that we got to be together, even if it's one distance. Know that my heart and my mind is praying for you. I'm praying that it is peace. And whether you get no snow days, one snow day, a week of snow days, time off work, whatever this upcoming week looks like,


  

 I just pray that you are able to experience the presence of Jesus, that you can have the peace that passes all understanding, and that the time together, wherever you are, is sweet. We love you so much. Next week's gonna be awesome. We're gonna be continuing our fasting series. You don't wanna miss it. So hey, you have a great rest of your Sunday. Stay warm, and I will see you soon.