 In the words of Francis of Assisi, when he met brother Dominic on the road to Umbria. Hi. That's one of my favorites. So in order for a member of the US military to become a conscientious objector, they have to prove three things. The first thing they have to prove is they have a stance that they believe in something. The second thing they have to prove is that they are sane, that they are not crazy, basically mentally healthy. And the third thing they have to prove is that they are sincere, that they are not using a loophole in conscientious objection to leave the military. And so it was 2017, and I was a second lieutenant in the Air Force, and I had been convinced that through reading the Bible, I can talk a lot about this, that Jesus' Sermon on the Mount was the constitution of the Christian life, so I decided, you know what? I'm crazy. I'm going to turn in this package and I'm going to see what happens to me. So I decided to leave the Air Force, and so I went through step one, and I had to meet with a chaplain to prove that I had a stance, to prove that Christians couldn't use violence. And so the chaplain looked at me and he said, he said, you're crazy. You really think that you can't take an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth? I said, man, that's what I believe my whole life. I promise you, that's why I was a Christian my whole life, but now somebody just walked me through the Bible and showed me some truth. He said, nah, I get where you're coming from, but at the end of the day, I'm going to take teeth and I'm going to take bones to protect my brothers. And I said, I hope you don't take my teeth. But he said, I understand. All right, so I passed the first test. I was religious. And then came the second test, which I think was the more intimidating test of the two. I had to prove my sanity in front of a mental health specialist. Has anybody ever been to a psych ward or something like that? I'm kidding. But, and so it was a three hour long interview and the question that stood out to me most, this man, he wouldn't shake my hand and he looked at me, he said, you have 15 minutes to answer the following question. How do you know that you are hungry? Take 15 minutes to answer that question and I'm not going to interject. So I want all of you, I know it's a little bit late, turn to the person next to you and tell them the first thing that came to your mind. How do you know that you are hungry? Did anyone hear anything interesting? Shout out if you heard something interesting or if you came up with something interesting. My stomach hurts. When sardines start tasting good. Okay, I haven't heard that one yet. Any other ones? How do you know that you are hungry? It's an interesting question. Sardines, hunger. All right, so this, I remember exactly what I said and I really didn't know if there was a right answer to this. I could have been put on the spot and this guy could have deemed me crazy based on what I was saying, so I was pretty nervous. So I said, I know I'm hungry because I eat food. It's pretty good, right? It's pretty basic. I said, I know I'm hungry because if I haven't eaten in a certain amount of time, there's a certain component that hunger equals time since I last ate. So internally we kind of have this concept of hunger. You check in with yourself and say, oh, it's been a while since I last ate. And I said, my stomach sends electrical signals to my brain. I knew that. And the last one was, I use the bathroom. That's how I know that I'm hungry. It's been a certain amount of time. So hunger, it's one of these analogies that is so useful to us in the Christian walk because it's something we experience so often. How many of you have ever experienced hunger in your lives? I hope everybody raises their hand. You're all human, perfect. And Jesus, this is why Jesus is such a genius when he starts teaching us about the most valuable things in life. He pins them to the things that we most often experience. So in Matthew 5.6, does anybody know what Matthew 5.6 says? It's a beatitude. It says, what was it? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled. So Jesus, he's linking our physical world to our spiritual world in a very powerful way here. And he's saying, hey, you have to hunger for the spiritual things as you do for the physical things. So we get from Jesus that hunger is actually a spiritual thing, allowing for something that no food or drink will ever satisfy. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled. In a sermon series through the book of Matthew, a man named Finney Caravilla, he fellowships with me out in Boston. He defines righteousness in that verse as this, righteousness. A covenant faithfulness that displays itself through attitude and action. A covenant faithfulness that displays itself through attitude and action. So let me ask you a question. Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness in the same way that you do a delicious meal? Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness the same way that you do when you go get in line for the cafeteria? How many of us are our daily schedules are built around our feeding schedule? I would say most of us, it's something that we are deeply attached to and it drives our life. So this mental health specialist, it rings so clear in my mind. I gave my answer and I spent three hours with him and he looked at me and he said, he said, all right, I'll see you later. And I tried to shake his hand and he said, I don't shake people's hands. I was like, okay. I thought it was kind of strange and I walked away and I said, I was like, did I pass? And he just said, you're an anxious person, but I know you're not crazy. I said, what did I say? And he said, I'm not going to tell you. So I come up here in front of you stamped by the government as sane. So you can believe everything that I tell you moving forward here. So if Christ were to appear to you right now in front of you and he were to ask you, checking on your spiritual sanity and he asked, hey, hey Clark, hey Peter, how do you know you're hungry? How do you know you're hungry? What would you say to him? You had 15 minutes to answer this question before Christ. I know that all of you did it with food. Could you say to Christ in the spiritual realm the same things that you could do with food? Could you look him in the face and say my King, I know I'm hungry because I had an insatiable appetite to serve you and to fulfill my purpose. Could you point to your life and could you tell him what you did? What you did that displayed your hunger or would you be caught speechless? Speechless in the moment if Jesus were to ask you that same question, how do you know you're hungry? How does your life prove it? So my question for you this night is, are you hungry? And if you are hungry, why are you hungry and how are you spending your calories? How are you spending your calories? Another interesting thing about hunger is that it can be driven by two things. It can be driven by habit and it can be driven by what types of activities you choose to participate in. So your decisions actually influence your hunger. So let me get at these two types of hunger. Hunger by habit. How many of you, when you wake up, feel like you're hungry? Most of us, if we're used to regular breakfast, we feel like we're hungry out of habit. How many of you feel hungry around noon, around lunch or dinner time? Right? How many of you feel hungry? Is it dinner or supper? Which one is it? I'm confused about the supper. We'll go supper or dinner. I don't know. So we're hungry because we've been trained, we've been trained to be hungry at certain times. And this is a type of hunger that I feel is very dangerous because your body doesn't actually need the calories. Your body is telling yourself it's basically an existence of hunger. You can eat a buffet at night and wake up starving the next morning and you don't need any of the food. So you can have a hunger that's driven by just your existence, by just trying to keep you alive and keep you there. The other type of hunger is driven by your exertion. By your exertion. So let me explain myself. How many of you have ever worked really, really, really hard physically and just been so hungry because your body is craving the energy that it's expelled? Has anyone ever experienced that type of hunger? Exactly. Which one is more rewarding? Obviously, the second one is more rewarding. The hunger that is driven by exertion. The hunger that is not driven by just existence but the hunger that is driven by exertion. When I was quite young, I heard somebody give a talk about brushing your teeth. And their point was this. I'm going to try to link a spiritual thought in your mind and something you do every day for the rest of your life. So they said, every time that you pick up a toothbrush and you brush your teeth, I want you to picture the sin that you might have participated in and I want you to picture yourself wiping it as you brush your teeth. And I kid you not, every time I pick up my toothbrush, I think of this self-examination. And I don't know how they did it, but I think twice a day just because of a toothbrush that I need to confess my sins before God. Jesus, when he gives the Sermon on the Mount, he's telling us, every time you experience physical hunger, I want you to examine your spiritual state. So he's doing it even more. And I don't know what I can say to you to try to do that. What I can try to say to myself that every time I think about food, I should be thinking about my hunger and thirst for righteousness. And if we can't think about that and more than we think about food, I think we have things backwards. So now I'm going to try to link your physical hunger to you thinking about your spiritual state of hunger. And it's a high bar to hit, but I hope that you can spend your time if I miss it. If I miss the mark and I can't do it and I can't convince you that every time you think about hunger, you should be thinking about righteousness, that you should be spending some more time there. So are you hungry and do you have an appetite? So here we are at 2 a.m. on a, what is it, Friday or Saturday? Is it Saturday? So I have a hunch that many of you are hungry, spiritually hungry. If not, there's no way you would be here. So good on you. This is all good. Having an appetite is a sign of spiritual health and vitality. How many of you have ever watched someone lose their appetite for spiritual health, or not spiritual health, their physical appetite? Has anybody ever seen that? A couple people out here. So I always tell the story is near and dear to my heart. Just over two years ago, my family found out that my mom was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer and the months preceding that, she had lost her appetite. She wasn't eating. And all of us intrinsically know that if we don't have an appetite, something is horribly, horribly wrong. And so this is a question that you have to ask yourself every day. Are you hungry? And are you hungry for the spiritual things? If not, it's a sign that something is horribly wrong and not having an appetite. What does it lead to? At the end of the day, it will lead to death. And so if you look around you and you saw someone with a fire before, you saw someone enjoying food and all of a sudden there's a marked difference or even a gradual change, what will your reaction be? Will you roll along with it or will you diagnose it? My family, unfortunately, we weren't paying attention and it was too late. The appetite was gone and the cancer took over as many types of these cancers do and my mom was gone within 27 days of diagnosis. So are you paying attention to your spiritual appetite? And if you don't have a spiritual appetite, what steps are you going to take to increase your spiritual appetite? So all of you, I asked, have you been hungry before and most of you raised your hand? So you affirm to me that you're human. Congratulations. I hope you feel good about yourself. I'll hand out trophies later for that one. But the next question worth exploring is once you determine you have an appetite, what are the reasons are there for hunger? So why is it that you're hungry? So number one, reasons that you're hungry. You haven't eaten. This year I've spent a lot of time experimenting with fasting. I don't know if any of you have endeavored in the fasting world. I'd highly recommend it. But my roommate and I in Boston, we set goals for ourselves. We said, all right, first time we're going to go one day. I was really hungry at the end of one day. No eating. Second time we're going to go two days. Third time we're going to go three days and then we went up to five days on a water fest. And I'm telling you, at the end of that fifth day, I ate the biggest grilled cheese sandwich the world has ever seen. I was very, very hungry. But it's a very basic point. If you're hungry and you're not feeding yourself your maintenance, it's no surprise that you're going to continue to be hungry for substance. So that's a good check. Are you maintaining your spiritual life every day to feed yourself? At a minimum, at a minimum, have you opened your Bible and read one verse and have you spent one minute in prayer with the Lord every day? If you're not, then you're going to be hungry. Another reason why you might be hungry. You aren't eating things of substance. How many of you have ever gone on a celery diet? That's not a thing of substance, but my one story that sort of breaks my heart. I spent two years at a place called the Air Force Academy and I quit that and I spent a year in Mozambique, Africa, that's Southeast Africa. And one of my jobs was to go and do a nutritional assessment on a famine zone. In the World Health Organization, they have all these guidelines that go into how to determine if there's a famine somewhere and malnourishment. And so I took a team of people and we went around to an area of famine. And there's nothing more heartbreaking than actually seeing a mother who can't feed her children out of sheer lack of resources. So what I saw was in these areas, the moms are scraping tree bark off the trees and into a bowl to feed to her kids so that their hunger would go away. Can you imagine not having food out of choice? Some of us, I think about myself and I put myself through fasting when these people don't have any food. So if we aren't feeding ourselves foods of substance, we're gonna get hungrier and hungrier. In my experience leading up to meeting a faithful church community, I visited 16 different churches in the Boston area. I was in grad school and I would go from church to church to church just looking for consistency and substance. And that drove me at one point. Is anyone familiar with the LDS church? I was so curious about the LDS church because the people there, they said they believed one thing and they actually carried through with it. If they said they didn't believe in alcohol, they wouldn't drink alcohol. I was like, wow, that's a mind blowing idea to me in the churches that I had seen. And at the end of the day, I was sitting there thinking, is this, I know they're doctrines off, but is this the only group of people that will teach things of substance? And I was looking everywhere in the liberal cities of the world, you will find people throw the Bible under the table and just stomp on it. And intrinsically, I knew that was wrong, but there was nothing, there was no other place I knew where to go. I was literally going from church to church, not getting anything of substance. And I was begging God, like please give me something I can chew on and it will give me an appetite or it will satisfy my hunger. All right, and then this third type of hunger. So I typed on you're not eating or you're not eating foods of substance. A third one is you're eating out of habit to stay alive and to exist. This in my mind is a dangerous place to be spiritually because all of us know that we have to maintain our spiritual walk, our spiritual hunger in order to just get our daily existence. But how many of you are coming here not to go do something afterwards? Is there anyone here that's just coming to sort of satisfy yourself and then to leave and to hope and not let it reach into other lives? I hope nobody, I hope nobody is here just to be fed out of habit and not to go on after that because the fourth one is you're hungry because you're exerting energy. You're hungry because you're exerting energy. When I was in the Air Force we went through something called Siri training which is also known as survival training and what they do is they stick a group of soldiers in the forest for about four weeks and they give you one meal. They give you one meal to survive on and they make you hike around 12 hours, no, 12 miles every day throughout those four weeks and let me tell you I was 200 pounds going into the training and we examined our bodies every once in a while and you could see our ribs protruding week by week as the training went on and we were starving. I remember in these little meal package they were wrapped in plastic. They had little condiment packages that we were saving and it was towards the end of the training and all of us were sitting there exhausted and I remember having a package of ketchup and it was my last piece of food and I was leaning against this tree and I remember opening this ketchup and just squeezing it out into my mouth and saying, ah, this tastes so good. This is the best tasting food I have ever had but it also was the last thing I had and why were we hungry? It's because we were exerting ourselves daily it's because we wanted food because of our exertion not because of our habits so each one of us, we have to examine our own hunger. Is your hunger from existence or is your hunger driven by exertion? There's a certain amount of spiritual hunger that we need to chase down truth but at some point what's it worth if we're not exerting ourselves to go on a mission and not just any mission but the greatest mission of all time this mission is given to us by Jesus himself to go make disciples of all nations of all nations so has anybody here ever helped somebody move a house or move from one place to another and have you been promised some sort of food compensation? Yeah, every time. Come help me move, I'll buy you a pizza. It's classic. If you were the person in charge of the move would you buy that person the pizza before the move or after? Right? Isn't that an interesting point that if we're going to increase our spiritual hunger we actually should be exerting ourselves before we want, if we want to increase our appetite if we want to not increase our appetite we should eat the pizza first and then the move will never happen. You see what I'm getting at? If we're not exerting ourselves we can't expect for the mission to be accomplished. It was December 24th, 2016 so this was around four months before I decided to turn in my application as a conscientious objector and I was in my parents' house and in Minnesota surrounded by my family and all of them had supported me in my military walk that we came from a missionary background and I remember looking at my family and telling them I'm leaving the military because I don't believe that it's what Jesus has for us in this life. I don't think you can follow Jesus and be in the military and use violence and you can imagine all sorts of questions start getting fired at me and I was very intimidated and I love them, who doesn't love their family? So I grabbed my Bible and I remember flipping through it and trying to explain to them all these things and I ran into the bathroom and I remember just being in the bathroom trying to consume the word again trying to consume it so that I could go back and share truth and there's a point of desperation where you jump into sharing God's word that makes you just hungry and ambitious for truth that you would take your Bible into the bathroom so that people won't see you so you can go back out and share with them. Have any of you been so desperate for truth that you'll take your Bible into a bathroom to memorize it only to go back out to share it? I think about that moment a lot in that if we truly love people our exertion for them will exhibit itself in our spiritual hunger. So which do you think is going to cause you to grow more? If you have no one to share the gospel with or if you have somebody to share the gospel with which one? If you have someone to share the gospel with you're automatically training you're automatically increasing your hunger in order to go share with them. Chasing others puts us into this high gear and it actually forces you to get your personal holiness together at the same time. I often think about this conundrum about I'm scared to go share with this person or anybody because I don't know everything. Has anybody ever faced that fear? I face it all the time and I've and I still hang around people and I think to myself do you know there's a paradox there that in order to know truth you have to be exerting yourself. So at some point in time all of us are going to have to take a leap of faith and we're talking about the church planters forum this morning there's a man in Boston guess what guess what the question he asked an atheist on the street was in order to share the gospel with him. Is anyone here? Are you a Christian? That led to a man's baptism. Asking a man on the street are you a Christian led to a baptism led to one soul saved? That's all it took and in the journey up to that baptism Clark can affirm this. When you're interacting with somebody that's not in the faith your own appetite gets driven higher and higher and higher. How many of you have ever debated a topic with a fairly smart person? Any of you? How many of you prepare hours beforehand because you know that they're going to put you on your heels if you don't and just destroy you. There's a similar concepts with us going on the mission to make disciples and that as we pursue others our own strength is going to be increasing higher and higher and higher. I talked about being part of the Air Force Academy so when I was a freshman around 18 years old I weighed 165 pounds and the average weight of males at the Air Force was 195 pounds. I felt very small. So this is in a perfect analogy so I approached my roommate or a hallmate and I said hey I really want to gain weight. Can you help me put on some weight and maybe put on some muscle so I don't I can be a little stronger. Do you know what his advice to me was? He said I want you to eat a jar of peanut butter every day. Is that a jar of peanut? Not just a small jar of peanut butter a big jar and he said I will get you a jar of peanut butter every day and your task is to eat it and to finish it every day. So day one sets the jar of peanut butter. I take two spoonfuls I'm like I'm done I can't do it. He said all right we'll try again tomorrow and I'm going to take you to the gym too this time. We're going to do some exercise. Day one all right next day I tried eating it. I got maybe three spoonfuls. Rinse and repeat that method for a month. Guess what? I was eating a jar of peanut butter every day easily easily. No problems asked because of the calories you're burning in your physical life. So as you increase your exertion you actually increase your appetite and you get stronger and stronger and stronger and many people will affirm this. If you want if you want to get stronger you have to exert yourself. There's no there's no games and it's the same in the Christian walk as we go and exert ourselves to find others. So one of the taking it back to the beginning of the story one of the main things that the military threatened me before I got out was they said all right let's say all of this goes through this whole story it all it all goes through and it works out you're going to owe the government half a million dollars and I said half a million dollars where am I going to pull that out? And so the mental health specialist he said that was one of his questions at the end he said are you sure you want to go through with this? You will be in poverty for the rest of your life you will never you won't want to get married you won't want to do any traveling do you want to go through with this? And I said yeah of course I do Jesus is commanding us and so I turned in my application and I got stationed in LA and at the end of the summer about eight months later I was sitting in my sitting in my office and I get this email and said your application has been approved by the secretary of the Air Force and the secretary of the Air Force sits in the White House they were appointed by the president so I had been waiting for this email for so long so I could hardly contain my joy I printed it off and I was walking into my boss's office and I was like bam it went through they approved and she was very supportive she started crying she's like I'm so happy for you but she was a civilian there are some civilians in the military so she said I need to walk you to your military supervisor's office and so he can be in charge of getting you out of the Air Force so he walked me down and sat me down with this lieutenant colonel and he was a Christian man he had a Bible on his desk and he had my application printed out and he looked at me and he said he said alright I know you got approved but I just want you to know that at the end of the next 12 days you will walk away with a half a million dollars in debt but you won't have to wear the uniform and your commitment will be over so I said yes sir I'll do whatever you tell me and 12 days later I had completed all this checklist this checklist to get out and I walk into his office and this man's eyes were red his hair was all messed up his Bible was open my application was all over and he looked at me and said I've tried everything in my power to give you this debt and I can't figure it out I don't think it's real so I'm sitting there thinking I'm like smiling inside trying not to show it and he said you're free to leave call this number if you have any questions about this debt and he let me go I took that number I ripped it in half didn't want to memorize it never wanted to call it again and here I am before you a free man with a stance to follow Jesus deemed sane by the government I don't think I'm crazy and sincere I seek to make disciples everywhere through any means and I pray that all of you can be doing the same but there's a warning sign that I wanted to give you have to stay hungry and you have to stay exerted it's not a one-time thing when I first started my application to leave the military I looked at Finney he was a good friend through the process and I said hey like I'll come work at Sattler you don't even have to pay me I don't need money I'm sold out and I was in front of my family I was in front of my friends I had my Bible out I was like I was Mr. Evangelist and two years later I think about myself in regards to my testimony when I go back home I'm not in my bath I'm not in the bathroom anymore studying the Bible with my family and I was just thinking about this tonight what is it that we have to do to keep our appetites up and it is this exertion it doesn't come naturally and these are questions that we're going to have to ask ourselves every day of our lives life is a grind and we have to continue to pursue it I used to stay up I remember when I made the decision to leave the military I stayed up long nights praying, reading I would even shadow box in my room by myself talking to Jesus saying Jesus is this real? Is this what you want me to do? I don't do that I haven't done that in a really long time so I think to myself what do I have to do to increase my own appetite and I don't know what it might be in your lives but every time that you have a meal or that you get hungry I want you to think about your hunger and thirst for righteousness I want you to think about your hunger and thirst for righteousness and then I'll just ask two last questions here what's the worst meal maybe you can turn and ask turn and tell your neighbor what's the worst food story or the worst meal you've ever had or the worst story you have with food take 30 seconds to tell your neighbor your worst encounter with food all right any good answers worst encounter with food let's hear some eating what? asparagus? all right okay right here that's bad okay so I got asparagus food poisoning of some sort one more any one more example right here okay yeah we all have really bad examples with food my least favorite food story I say this with a little bit of a shame face my favorite food in the whole world is pumpkin pie I live and breathe for pumpkin pie and I don't know why maybe it's because it only comes out a couple times a year but my mom had made me a whole pumpkin pie for myself one Thanksgiving and do you know what I did? I took that pumpkin pie alone to my room after Thanksgiving meal and I ate it all and I remember sitting there just like I think my stomach's going to explode and I went and I threw up my favorite food now I sing to myself what have I done what have I done but isn't it the same thing with the spiritual journey that if we are selfish with our own spiritual hunger and we're hoarding it there's no reward in the end even with the best food you could possibly imagine if you're hoarding it for yourself there's no reward in the end all right so take 30 seconds what's your best experience with food all right 30 seconds with your neighbor I ask for your worst what's your best experience with food everybody has to tell your neighbor you don't have a choice all right let's hear three best experiences with food just Chinese food all right good enough all right anybody else best experience with food homemade custard that sounds really good one more meatballs and potatoes and what okay I don't know what that is but I want to all right so my favorite food story my favorite food moment I grew up I was born and raised in Ecuador I spent 18 years there and Ecuador is a country with a lot of mountains and my friends and I got in a little bit of a season where we would climb mountains and have any of you ever hiked and packed food and when you pull that food out and you make it after exerting yourself it's like it's the best feeling eating food after you've exerted yourself so my friends and I we get up we've hiked up I think it was we were at 16,000 feet which is really high you're like gasping for breath and this was base camp and we pulled out dehydrated mashed potatoes and tuna out of a bag doesn't sound super good but that day had been so grueling and I remember sitting there with my four friends after just accomplishing what we thought was the greatest feast a great feat and we were eating and all of us looked at each other and said food has never tasted so good and we were smiling we were crying we were patting each other on the back it was amazing best food story so the worst food it's really interesting the worst food experience with a team of people exerting yourselves can turn into the best feeling isn't that interesting and I think there's spiritual connections here too did all of you know that there is a messianic banquet being prepared for us? did all of you know that? I hope to see all of us there in this life we're living to exert ourselves we're not here for happiness unfortunately it's nice in the moment but that's not what we're here for that's not who Jesus is preparing the banquet for the Messiah is preparing it and it's going to be it's going to be delivered to the overcomers the overcomers of this life the ones who are exerting themselves so I'll read to you in Revelation 19 just seven through nine it says let us be glad and rejoice and give him glory for the marriage of the Lamb has come and his wife has made herself ready and to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen clean and bright for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints then he said to me right blessed are those who called to the marriage supper of the Lamb and he said to me these are the true sayings of God so how do you know you're hungry? all of you how do you know you're hungry? may your hunger be born from your exertions to embark on the greatest mission of all time to live as a disciple of King Jesus and to you to do everything you can to proclaim him so go get some sleep get hungry increase your appetite I pray that your physical hunger will serve as a constant reminder of your hunger and thirst for righteousness every time you eat I want you to ask how do I know I am hungry? am I just existing? or am I exerting myself? I pray that you will find yourself exhausted yet clinging to a pack of ketchup whatever they might that might be in your life some form of truth smiling to yourself as you longed for souls I pray that you will find yourself clinging to every piece of truth and preparation along the way may your hunger be contagious and may Jesus fill you and every soul your hunger spreads to amen let me say a prayer Father I don't know how to instill a hunger in us I just know that we have choice we have choice tomorrow to go and to find a lost person and to ask them are you a Christian? do you know about Jesus Christ the Son of God? I pray that we would make choices in our lives which would make us hungry which would be force us to hunger for your righteousness Lord and to thirst for it that we may be filled Father you have great promises your son came and gave us so many blessings Father don't let us go another day and trick ourselves into into doing spiritual things just for ourselves Father we are here to proclaim your kingdom we are here till your son comes and prepares the feast which we are promised please help us overcome and to be hungry not to exist but to exert ourselves and in your son's name we pray amen