The Supremacy of Christ

All right, good morning, church. Excited to be here with you this morning. Whether you're here at CrossPoint with us or joining us from one of the other campuses, we're so excited to open God's Word. As we continue in our sermon series that we're calling Ripple Effect, how we're seeing how the gospel changes everything. When you put your trust and faith in Jesus, it changes everything. It changes everything in your life. And we're going through the Book of Colossians, which is centered on this idea of being rooted in Christ so that the gospel will have a ripple effect in our lives and change everything. Today, we're gonna be looking at Colossians 1:15-23, Colossians 1:15-23. And this passage is really central to the argument that Paul is making throughout the Book of Colossians. It's really what he is centering everything on. It's the theology, it's the belief, it's telling us who Jesus is and what He has done so that everything He says afterwards is all a ripple effect of what we're looking at today in Colossians 1:15-23 Now, last week, if you were here, you know that we did chapter one, verses one through eight. If you are a mathematician, you might know that 9 through 14 comes between 8 and 15, right? We're actually coming back to that passage a little later on in another sermon series where we're looking at prayers for the church. And so we're gonna be coming back to that. But today, we're gonna be in Colossians 1:15-23. Let's go ahead and read it together. It says, "The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now He has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation, if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant." You know, a lot of times in sports, we talk about a certain player being the heart of the team. You ever heard that phrase before? This player is the heart of the team. He's the one through which the lifeblood of the team flows. When he's doing well, the team is doing well. When he's not doing well, the team not doing well. We know that for the Bills. It's who? Josh Allen, right? Like, we all know it. And that goes to show that it really is right, right? Like, we all know he is the heart of the team. But here's the thing is that it's not just what he does on the field that that gets the team going. It's not just his talent and the way that he plays the game or how well he plays the game. It's also how he carries himself on the sideline. It's the way that he carries himself on the sideline that leads other guys on the team to carry themselves that way on the sideline. It's also the way he conducts interviews, never blaming anyone else. Even if they're to blame, he never blames anyone else, right? He just carries himself a certain way. And of course, it is his talent and how he plays on the field. When he's playing well, other people are playing well, but it's not only how he plays, it's also who he is. And everything ripples out from the heart of the team, attitudes, hope, work ethic, talent, everything, it ripples out from the heart of the team because it's the heart that pumps the blood into all the other organs, all the other extremities in the body, right? And it's the rest of our body that needs that blood in order to work. This passage today gives us the heart of the gospel. It gives us the heart of the gospel. It's the person and work of Jesus Christ. He is the heart of the gospel. He is the message. He is the good news. He is the salvation that we can have in Jesus Christ. He is the heart of the gospel. It's the person and work of Jesus Christ. And the Colossians needed to be reminded of this. The Colossians needed to be reminded of this because there was a false teaching that was starting to come up in Colossae. And it was starting to come up, and Paul was aware of it. It was this false teaching that was telling them that it was time to kind of move beyond Christ. Like, yeah, you've believed in Christ and Jesus is good and you need Him and everything, but you also need a little bit more. There's also some other things that you need as well. And Paul is saying, no, that's not the case. That is not the case. It is Jesus and Jesus alone that we need for life and godliness. It is Jesus and Jesus alone that need for salvation. And it's not just for those in Colossae, but it is for the whole world. He is the one and only true savior of the world. He is the one and only true savior who can give new life. He is the one and only who can reconcile us to God, our greatest need that we have as human beings. But they were starting to say, "You know what, Jesus is good and all, but maybe need to move on a little bit beyond that as well. Maybe you might need something a little bit extra as well." And I think sometimes we can slip into that thinking as well when we're not careful. We can slip into that thinking sometimes today when we're not being careful. Maybe after a time of being a Christian, we start being tempted to look for life in other places. We start to say, "Well, you know, yeah, I know the gospel and I know the story of what Jesus has done. So what else is there?" We can kind of slip into that thinking when we're not careful sometimes. Maybe we do it consciously. Maybe we do it subconsciously. Maybe we do it in our own thinking and what we tell ourselves. Maybe we do it in what we tell other people. If we're not paying attention, we can slip into this thinking sometimes. Maybe we start to look for different spiritual experiences outside of Christ, something that the world tells us can be a new spiritual experience for us and we get curious about it. Or we might look for more rules to fit into our lives, more commands beyond what God himself has given us so that if we follow these more commands and more rules, then we can raise ourselves a little closer to God. Or maybe we might feel like we need more knowledge about God and spiritual matters than what the Bible gives us, than what God himself gives us in His very Word. We might feel like we need to add the world's philosophies on top of scripture. Whatever is popular thinking in the world, we need to find a way to add that into scripture or on top of scripture. We can fall into all of these traps if we are not centering ourselves on Jesus Christ, if we are not seeing Him as being the heart of the gospel, if we are not seeing Him, the person and work of Jesus Christ, as being the central gospel message that God has given us. Friends, we have a great God, and we have a good God, and He has given us all that we need in Jesus Christ. And Paul is reminding us that we can look to Him for all that we need. In our passage today, Paul brings us back to say that all we need is found in Jesus Christ Himself. He's the heart of the gospel. He's all we need for salvation and godliness. And when we trust in Him, the ripple effect carries throughout everything in our lives. When we trust in Him and we look to Him, it changes our marriages, it changes our parenting, it changes the way that we go to work. It changes the way that we think about what's happening in the world. It changes the way that we vote. It changes everything in our lives when we center ourselves on Him. And so what I want us to see today in this passage is this, that the gospel message is centered on the person and work of Jesus Christ. He is the heart of the gospel. And I want us to see three ways that we see that in this passage. The first way is this, Jesus is the heart of the gospel because He is supreme. Jesus is the heart of the gospel because He is supreme. Jesus is supreme in all things. He is supreme in creation. And we see that He is supreme, especially in the new creation. He is supreme simply because of the very nature of who He is. First of all, Paul begins in verse 15 with this simple yet profound statement that He is the image of the invisible God. Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God. I can't even express how big of a deal this is in the Bible. It's such a big deal. God being unseen is such a big deal in the Bible. Did you know that one of the 10 Commandments, God gave Israel 10 commandments. When He first brought them into the wilderness, he gave them 10 main commandments. One of them is that no images are to be made of Him. Why? Because He is the unseen God. He is beyond anything that our minds could come up with in order to know who He is. Moses, who led the people of Israel, could meet with God, but He wasn't allowed to see God, or else He would die. 1 Timothy 6:16 tells us that He dwells in unapproachable light. Seeing God is a privilege, and it's a privilege that was lost by humanity because of sin, yet Jesus makes Him visible. Jesus is the image of the unseen God. Jesus is kind of the peek behind the curtain, right? Jesus is the one that opens up the curtain and steps out in order for us to see who God is. And even what Moses was not allowed to see. Jesus has made known. Hebrews 1:3 tells us He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His very nature. In John 14, when Philip tells Jesus, Philip, someone who's been following Jesus closely for three years at this point, He tells Philip, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us." And Jesus looks at him and says, "Philip, have I been with you for so long and you still don't know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." Jesus is not claiming to be the Father. All throughout His ministry, He claims that He is the Son. But He says that I am the very image of the Father, and when you look at me, you see God in the flesh. For those who are looking for God. You can look no further than Jesus Christ himself. He shows us who God is. If you wanna know what God is like, He is ultimately revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is God the Son, one of the three persons of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. And John 1:14 says that He took on flesh and dwelt among us. And as the son of God, Paul says, He is the firstborn over all creation in verse 15 in our passage today. He's the firstborn over all creation. Now, there's been a lot of confusion about this over the years. There's others like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons who take this in the wrong way, that Paul doesn't mean it at all. And it's very clear from the passage that He doesn't mean it. When He says that He is the firstborn, it doesn't mean that Jesus was the first to be born, as if there was some point where He were created or some point where He came into existence. God the Son has existed for eternity past. As long as the Father has existed, the Son and the Spirit has existed as well. When He talks about being the firstborn of creation, He means that He is supreme in rank, that He has the firstborn rights over all of creation. We know that because in verses 16 and 17, it says that nothing has been created without Him. And so we know that He has been involved in all of creation. He himself was never created, but He is supreme in rank. He is over all things. He has the firstborn rights over all things. He is the heir of all things. So He is supreme in all creation simply because of who He is. He is God the son who has existed with the Father for eternity past, but has taken on human flesh and has stepped into creation in order to save His people. He is supreme simply because of the very nature of who He is, but he's also supreme because He's the creator and the sustainer of all things. We see in verses 16 and 17, all things were created by Him, through Him, and for Him. All things were created by Him, through Him, and for Him. So he's the agent through whom the Father created all things. And as such, He has authority over all things. He has power over all things. And notice what that list includes. It includes everything that you can see and more, everything in Heaven and on Earth, things seen and unseen. Basically, there is nothing that stands outside the list of things that Jesus was there, that were created by Him, through Him, and for Him. It includes everything. Jesus is over all of it. He has no rival. He has no equal. And He proved that in His life on Earth as He healed the sick, as He made the lame walk, as He gave the blind sight, and He gave the deaf hearing, as He drove out demons, as He multiplied food, as He stopped storms, as He walked on water, as He raised people from the dead, as He did it all, He was showing who He is, and He was showing that He is sovereign and He has authority over all of creation. And my friend, if that's who He was then, it's still who He is today. And if that's who He is, then we can put all of our hope and all of our trust in Him and in Him alone. There is no one else. There is nothing else that measures up. There is no need to move on beyond Him. There is nothing that lies beyond Him. There's nothing that lies beyond His authority and His sovereignty. There is nothing that lies beyond His goodness. We can be rooted in Christ. We can look to Him, knowing that He is supreme over all creation. That all creation bows down to Him and listens to Him. And not only were all things created through Him, but they were created for Him. They were created for Him. He is both the beginning and the end. It was created by Him in the beginning. It was created for Him in the end. It all belongs to Him. Friend, this should change your prayer life. This should change your prayer life. This should change the way that you pray. This should change the things that you pray about. It should change your prayer life knowing that Jesus is the one who has power over all things. Those things that you worry about on a daily basis, He can take care of. Those things that are like the big things that you're just like, "I don't know what to do with this. I don't know how to handle this. I don't know how to carry this," Jesus can handle those things. He's supreme over it all. When life seems to take an unexpected turn on you and you don't know why, you don't even know what happened, the world just seems like it's spinning around and you can't get a grasp, you can trust in Him. You can trust in Him. He's sovereign. He knows the end from the beginning. And He is good. When the whole world seems to have turned upside down on you, you can find your hope in Him. There is nowhere better to turn because there is no one else who is like Jesus. There is no one else who even comes close. He is supreme over all things. But Paul also goes on, and He says that He is especially supreme in the church. He is especially supreme in the church. He says in verse 18 that He is the head of the body, the church. He is especially supreme in the church. This is what I mean when I say especially supreme in the church. While Jesus is the rightful ruler over all the universe, while He is sovereign and He is supreme and He has authority over all creation, He has allowed rebellion to go on for a time. He has allowed rebellion to go on for a time. He's done that in order to give people time and opportunity for repentance to turn to Him. He's done it so that more can turn from their rebellion and put their trust and faith in Him. But the church, the church is where we find a new creation living under His rule. When you put your faith in Jesus, first, or 2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us that the old has passed away and the new has come. You've been made new. You've been given new life in Jesus. Paul says in Galatians 2:20 that I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but it's Christ who lives in me. You are a new person, and you belong to Jesus. You are a new creation living under His rule, under His authority. And that's why He's called the head of the church, the head of the church. Now, some of you're looking at me like, "Wait, wait, He's the head of the church. You told me He was the heart of the church. Like, what's going on here? Is Jesus some weird being that has His, you know, heart in His head and brain in His chest?" I don't know. It's a metaphor, y'all. It's a metaphor, okay? And you just gotta roll with it. He is the heart of the gospel. He is the head of the church. That means He has no rival, no equal in His position, and that we live under His authority, not the authority of anyone or anything else. And Paul points out that He is the firstborn from the dead. Here again, firstborn, it means rank, that He has the firstborn rights, but it is also that He is the first one of the new creation, that at the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that's where the new creation begins, and that each person who has put their faith in Christ, when we put our faith in Him, we are made new. But one day when Jesus returns, we will also rise from the dead and be made new for eternity to live with Christ, to live face to face with God. See, the resurrection of Jesus is the ripple effect of the new creation. It's the ripple effect of the new creation. It's what brings new life to believers. It's what brings us hope in all circumstances. No matter what you are going through, no matter what you are facing, it's the resurrection of Jesus that brings us hope. And it's the resurrection of Jesus that resounds throughout all of creation and gives life and new life and hope to anyone in all of creation who will put their faith in Jesus. It's what brings new life to believers. And it's what brings hope to the world. Jesus is supreme in all creation. He is supreme in all creation and especially in the new creation. There's simply no other person, no other thing deserving of our worship. There is no one else and nothing else deserving of our lives. There is no one else worthy of bending the knee to. It is Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone. That's why the church fathers in the fourth and fifth century put so much work into and worked so hard to properly articulate the doctrines of the trinity and the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus and the person and work of Jesus because they recognize that He is the very heart of the gospel and really the heart of all creation and of all history. It's all pointing to Him. It's all by Him and through Him and for Him. Everything in creation is by Him and through Him and for Him. And my friend, I wanna let you know, you, you were created by Him, and you were created through Him, and you were created for Him. That is the purpose of your life. 

he church fathers in the fourth and fifth century put so much work into and worked so hard to properly articulate the doctrines of the trinity and the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus and the person and work of Jesus because they recognize that He is the very heart of the gospel and really the heart of all creation and of all history. It's all pointing to Him. It's all by Him and through Him and for Him. Everything in creation is by Him and through Him and for Him. And my friend, I wanna let you know, you, you were created by Him and you were created through Him, and you were created for Him. That is the purpose of your life, is to belong to Jesus Christ and to bring Him glory, to make Him known, to magnify Him in all of creation. And as we do that, we get to live in the joy and the freedom of being right with God. Jesus is at the heart of the gospel because He is supreme over all things. And because He is supreme, we also see the second part that we see in this passage, that Jesus is the heart of the gospel because He is sufficient. He is sufficient. Even though Jesus is sovereign and supreme over all things. We know that the world has gone wrong. People have noticed this. They've seen it and recognize it all throughout human history. People still see it and recognize it today and have tried to come up with the solutions to fix it. We look to education. We look to laws. We look to access, to resources, to politicians, to all sorts of things, just hoping that these will set things right in the world. If I can just fix this problem over here, then it'll have the ripple effect all throughout everything else and set everything else right in the world. Friends, there's only one who is sufficient to be able to do that. His name is Jesus. All the other things are good. Education, laws, resources, all those things are good, and all those are things that we, as believers in Jesus, should work toward fixing and should work toward helping people in, but they are not going to fix the problem. They are not going to bring salvation. They are not going to set the world right. They are not going to bring people to know God. It is by Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone that the world will be set right. And in verse 19, it says, "For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him." Friends, you don't wanna have to look for God anywhere else. He has given himself to us through His Son Jesus. We don't have to go to the temple. We don't have to search for Him in the rocks or the mountains or the oceans or whatever else. We won't find Him in any other religion. It is in Christ that the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and therefore, it is Him that we can be centered on in all of our lives. And because He is God, His blood and His death and His resurrection are sufficient for our reconciliation with God. They are sufficient for the forgiveness of our sin. They are sufficient for giving us the righteousness of Jesus Christ. They are sufficient for setting us right with God. And notice that He doesn't just reconcile Christians, He doesn't just reconcile people, but He reconciles all things to Himself. That doesn't mean that all people will be reconciled to God, whether they believe in Jesus or not. That's not what He's saying. He's saying that He is setting all of creation right, that there is coming a day where all things will be set right. But everyone and everything that opposes God will be done away with, and God will make all of creation new. Friend, if you're here today and you've never trusted in Jesus, that's not the side of things that you want to be on. And God has made a way for you to be reconciled with Him. And He has made a way that you can be made new, that you can have life in Him. And it's by trusting in Jesus. It's by trusting in Jesus. God has done all of this through the blood of Jesus poured out on the cross. See, Jesus is where God meets man. Jesus, the uncreated one, through whom and for whom and by whom all things were made, entered into that creation, took a created body upon Himself in order to reconcile to Himself creation in rebellion. It's not something He had to do. It's something He chose to do. The incorruptible one, the eternal God took on the corrupted creation, paid for our sins by His death, and set things right with God in His resurrection. That's the heart of the gospel. It is found in the person and work of Jesus Christ and in Him alone. And in verses 21 through 23, Paul makes it personal. He makes it personal, that this is something He's done in you if you have trusted in Him. It's not just something He's done for all things, He has done it for reconciling all things to Himself. But Paul says He's done it in you. "Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now He has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in His sight." You've probably seen the map in a mall before, right? It's like a big kind of backlit sign, and it's got all the stores and their locations where they're at in the mall. And then it usually has like a big red dot or a big red star that says, "You are here," right? It's very convenient, especially in a really big mall. We have a couple of really big malls. If you've ever been to the outlet mall in Niagara Falls, the place is a complete maze. Like, how can you find where you're at? How can you find where things are in there? Like, when I go, all I need to know is where I parked, where I'm at now, and where Cinnabon is. Can I get an amen?

- [Congregation] Amen.

- That's all I need. That's the only reason I go to the outlet mall in Niagara Falls. I just go, and then I can go, I can have my Cinnabon, sit in my sugar coma for a few minutes, and then I know the way back because of the map, right? You are here. And Paul is giving us somewhat a map of redemption, showing us where we've been, where we're at, and where we are going, that we once were alienated from God and His enemies. That's where we've been, each and every one of us. Don't fall into the trap of, "Well, you know, always been a Christian." You haven't, each and every one of us were born separated from God by our sin. But it's at the point where we put our faith in Jesus that He tells us that now because of what Christ has done in His physical body, He has reconciled us to God. That's where you are if your faith is in Jesus Christ. You have been separated from God, an enemy of God, he says, alienated from God. But now because of Jesus, you are here. You are reconciled with God if your faith is in Him. And He tells us that one day we will stand in the presence of God, holy in His sight. That's good news, y'all, because each and every one of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Each and every one of us has been separated from God, and yet God has done something to reconcile us to Himself. And He's done it in the cross of Jesus Christ. And it's for all those who hold out, or hold onto the hope of the gospel, for all who hold onto the salvation that is found in Him. So don't go beyond Jesus. There's nothing out there. There's nothing beyond Him. You don't need to go any further than Jesus. There is always deeper in that you can go. It's not beyond Him, but we're diving deeper in to Jesus. You can spend your whole life diving into God's Word, diving into who Christ is and what He's done, and you will never reach the depths of it. You can always go deeper. Don't try to go beyond. There's nothing there. There's nothing there. So when we talk about the one who gives us salvation and makes us new, it's the same one who is God overall, who is sovereign and supreme overall. So why would you even try to go anywhere else? Why would you even try to go anywhere else? He is the hope that the world needs. He is the only sufficient savior for the world. And as the church, as the people of God who have found Him to be sufficient, we are to show that to the world. We're to show that to the whole world and let them know where they can find life as well. Jesus is the heart of the gospel because He's supreme. He's the heart of the gospel because He's sufficient. And lastly, we see that Jesus is the heart of the gospel because He is central. He is central. If Jesus is supreme and sufficient, then He should be central in our lives. He is central in the story of redemptive history. He is central to it, and He should therefore be central in our lives as well. Jesus is central in all things. He is, but especially for those who know Him. He's the center of life. He is the center of the gospel. He's the center of history. He's the center of our hope, and therefore, He should be the center of our lives. That's why Paul will later say in chapter 3, verse 17, "Whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him." Y'all, it can be so easy to make Jesus a part of our lives. Let me encourage you, don't make Jesus a part of your life. Make Jesus your life. Make Him the central, the central piece of your life. He doesn't call us to be a part of our lives, like our job is a part of our lives or school is a part of our lives. That's not who Jesus should be to us. He calls us to make Him the center of our lives, the one that everything else revolves around. We can so easily put Jesus in all of the things that revolve around us in our lives, right? Jesus should be in the central place of our lives, and everything else revolves around Him. It's only right that He be the center of our lives because He is the one who is supreme over all of life, and He is sufficient for new life. He's the place from which new life springs. And it's what we mean when we say that the gospel has the ripple effect in our lives. It's that Jesus changes everything, that when we place Jesus at the center, that He changes everything else in our lives. And friends, that's where our hope comes from. Our hope comes from Jesus. When Jesus is central in our lives, we have hope. Even when things are hard, even when things feel impossible, even when you don't know what the rest of the day or tomorrow is going to bring, or maybe you do know what it's gonna bring and you have no idea how you're gonna face it, Jesus is the one who brings us hope. He has brought us into the family of God. He has reconciled us with the good and faithful God, and He will bring us home to be with Him forever because He's supreme over all creation and sufficient for salvation. So let me give you three questions to examine if Jesus is central in your life today. Question number one is this: Does Jesus hold the same place in your life as He holds in all the universe? He's the one by whom, through whom, and for whom all things are created. He is central. He is the one who is upholding all things. Does He have that place in your life? Is He the one that your life is for? Is He the one that is central? Is He the one that you are letting uphold you in all things? Does Jesus hold the same place in your life that He holds in the universe? Second, are your daily decisions in alignment with how Jesus presents you to the Father? Remember on the map of redemption, where you've been, alienated from God, where you are, reconciled with God, where we're going, presented holy and blameless in His sight. Are your daily decisions in line with who God has made you in Christ? And third, do you see Jesus as He is, or do you see Him how as you would like Him to be? He's told us who He is in His Word, and we can dive into His Word for the rest of our lives and learn more about Him and draw nearer and nearer to Him. But we can also have the temptation to go beyond His Word and try to make Jesus into our own making and whoever we want Him to be. Friends, that's not what you want. That's an idol. That's an idol that you create in your mind of who you want God to be. Our God, our Savior is good. And you will not be able to come up with anything better than who He is. So look to His Word. Keep Him central, and keep Him at the heart of your life. At the heart of the gospel, we see God redeeming His creation through the person and work of Jesus Christ. Rather than trying to make Him a part of your life, I invite you to make Him the center of it, to trust Him in all things, to give Him authority in your life, and to live to glorify Him. If you're here today and you've never put your faith in Jesus, I want to invite you to do that today. You can have new life in Him. I'm gonna pray here in just a minute, and we're gonna have some prayer partners that come up along the front of the stage. I would invite you to come and speak with one of them and tell them, "I wanna know more about what it means to know Jesus, to put my faith in Him," and they would be glad to do that with you. Maybe you're here today and you do know Jesus, but maybe you've noticed you're trying to go beyond Him a little bit. Maybe you're drifting into some other things. I want to invite you to come back to the center that is Jesus Christ, the person and work of Jesus Christ. Let's go before the Lord this morning in prayer. Lord God, we thank you that you have given us Jesus, God the Son, in the flesh. You have come to make yourself known, to make your dwelling among us, Lord, so that we can dwell with you forever. Lord, help us to never try to move beyond that. Lord, help us not to buy into the philosophies of this world. Help us not to buy into the stuff of this world. Help us not to put our hope in all of the surrounding things, all of the things that you have created, Lord, to be good things, but they're not you. They're not God. And yet we can trip up over them sometimes, Lord. We can set our eyes and our minds and our hearts on them. Lord, bring our eyes and our minds and our hearts back to you in all things. Help us as your body to keep you as central in all things, and let it be the ripple effect that goes out into all of our lives, Lord, into the way that we go to work, into the way we go to school, into our marriages, into our friendships, into our parenting, into whatever and everything that we do. Let it have a ripple effect in everything so that we may be changed and experience you in everything and so that we may be a light to others in every single thing that we do. We love you, Lord. It's in Jesus' name that I pray, amen.