You test every foothold climbing a high cliff, then treat the wet stones in the river as if they could never give way. First and Second Kings answers why a people God rescued ended in exile—the land lost, the temple burned—not through one spectacular leap, but along a path of small, everyday compromises measured “in the eyes of the Lord.”
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
The sea behind us, the desert before us, we still needed his help, now more than ever. The pillars of mist, the fire we followed, he spoke at the mountain, gave us his law, showed us the way forward, but we chose to ignore it. A cycle of forgetting, generation after generation, chasing idols. The prophets warned us, but injustice kept rising. Kings failed. People rebelled. The temple destroyed. A nation in ashes. We abandoned his law. Had he abandoned us?
Well, good morning, Harvester. I’m so glad you’re with us today. We’re glad that you join us at any of our campuses, whether here in St. Charles or O’Fallon or Troy. And if you’re online, we’re glad that you decided to take some time and worship and study God’s word together.
So if you are new with us, we are in a series called From Eden to Eternity. And in this series, we are covering the Bible really from cover to cover. We’re going through what God has been doing in the history of humanity, just looking at it from the scriptures.
And over the last few weeks, what we’ve learned is that God rescued his people from slavery in Egypt. And then he provided for them while they were in the wilderness. And then brought them into the land that he had promised them. But once they were there, there was a problem. The people wanted, looked around themselves, looked at the nations around them. And they wanted something that they thought was missing. And they said, we want a human king. And so God allowed them to have that. But really fast, they realized that human kings are fallible. And Saul, the first king, ends up having terrible insecurity issues. And really untrustworthy. And he didn’t obey the Lord. And so he ends up replacing him with a different family, which was the family of David. And David becomes probably the greatest king and shepherd of Israel. And he gives them a promise that he will continue his lineage to have kings in Israel. And that’s what we’re going to pick up today.
And as we do so, we’re going to explore a section of scripture that is probably the most forgotten. One of the most forgotten. One of the most skipped. We’re going to study first and second kings. No amens? Yay! Excitement? I don’t blame you. Maybe some of you have never read the book of first and second kings. And I’m going to refer to them as one single book. Because originally it was a single book. But when it was translated from the Hebrew to Greek, they didn’t have a long enough scroll. It is 50,000 words. 47 chapters combined. And so they split them into two. First and second kings. But it’s really the book of kings of Israel. And there’s a few things that you need to know about it. I know that it has a lot of weird names and places and dates. And that it just is not intuitive to who we are now.
But the book of kings is answering a question. It was written at a time where the nation of Israel had been taken into exile already. Both kingdoms, which we’ll talk about how they separated here in a minute, had been already in exile. And it responds to one question. It answers the question, why? Why did this happen to us? How did we go from living in the promised land, having God’s blessing over us, this amazing temple that we had, into now being in exile? That is the question that the book of kings answers. And it has a formula. It has a basic formula. And this formula is actually the reason why most of us tend to skip it. And what I’m going to try to convince you today is to not skip it any longer. You read first and second kings because there are so many amazing encouragements and really just teachings from the Lord in it.
But the reason why most people skip it is because of this formula. That it goes, it’s a commentary on the lives and the reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah. And here’s the formula. It’s going to give you the king’s name and whose son he was. What age he was when he took over. How many years he reigned. Where he reigned. And this seems like a little bit repetitive after a while. But then in all of them, every single one of them, there’s this odd comment or evaluation about whether the king was good or it was evil. And he wasn’t referring, the authors were not referring about, talking about economically or militarily or politically. They had a very specific measurement. In the eyes of the Lord. In other words, this was God’s evaluation of the reign. Were they good or were they evil in the eyes of the Lord. And you’re going to see that phrase in the eyes of the Lord all over this book again and again and again.
And so if you were to read it, here’s what you’re going to find out. That kings tried to reign well but mostly failed. That God sent a lot of prophets trying to call his people back but they didn’t listen. That injustice grows and eventually both Israel and Judah fall. In other words, king shows how small compromises in Israel’s covenant with the Lord or relationship with the Lord eventually led to decay and exile. It wasn’t that God fell asleep on the job and oh, you got conquered. It wasn’t that God was unfaithful. It was Israel’s unfaithfulness that led to the exile.
Now, the question that you and I need to ask when we read these books is why would God include 50,000 words of commentaries on kings in the Bible? What is there for me? I tell you that I believe that the book of kings is there because in our humanity, we always fear the cliffs of life. The forks on the road. The moments of crescendo where your life gets to a point and you have to make a choice to either go this way or that way. We always fear and pay attention to those moments but we always act carelessly on the small slippery stones that are in front of us in our everyday lives.
Let me tell you a story that happened to me that might explain this a little bit better. In 2005, I was an intern here at Harvester. Don Sanders, one of the things that he would do with all the interns was always to take a road trip at the end of the internship and just have some fun and reflect back on our experience. He took us to a place that I’m going to leave undisclosed because of what I’m going to say about it. He took us to a place that has a river and it has some rock formations that bring the river into a narrow passage. The river has created these pools of water and rock formations and it has cascades and waterfalls and it has a cliff. What happens when you get four young men near water and a cliff? Someone’s going to say, hey, let’s jump off a cliff.
This is my disclaimer for all of you parents that are getting ready to send me an email about why I’m talking about jumping off cliffs. Kids, don’t do it. It’s not worth it. Don’t do it. There you go. However, back in 2005, we may or may not have jumped off that cliff. Someone says, hey, let’s jump off it. It seemed fun at the time. Now, all these guys were from the Midwest. They have probably done this a lot. It was actually my first cliff jump ever. I grew up in Mexico City. I remember, here’s what happened. Going up a cliff and it was an easy climb. Not a big deal. As you realize the height, as I realized the height, I started to feel like just the precarious circumstance that I was in. And I started to grab on a little tighter, be a little careful, make sure that I was placing my footing just right in my hands. And you get on top and then you look down, right? And there’s all this water and there are rocks. And I remember telling myself, okay, you know, it’s like firm, you know, step in and then just jump off, out, away from the cliff. And I’m just saying that over and over again. And sure enough, right, they jump. I think I was third in line. And I finally, you know, mustered the courage and I jumped and it was fun. I think we did it a couple of times each.
But this is not an important part of the story because what happened next is what I want you to remember. So then after we’re all done hanging out there, Don grabs two of the interns and he’s like, okay, we’re going to start heading back. You guys wrap it up and let’s go back. And the other intern tells me, hey, you see this rock? And it was like a six to eight foot rock. He’s like, let’s just jump off it and let’s do one last jump and we’ll go. I’m like, okay, sure enough. So we had to go back across the river, right, to the other side. And there were some stones or rocks just, you know, sticking out of the water. And so he just takes, you know, one step, two, three and climbs onto the rock and, you know, and he’s getting ready to jump. And I’m like, you know, it looks easy enough. One of the things I didn’t realize, though, is that we were both soaking wet. So with him going first, he left those rocks wet. And so I take the first jump and it wasn’t too far and I feel my foot slipping but barely. And before I could rethink in my 21-year-old brain, I’m like, that’s fine. I take the next jump and my feet just decide to keep going and decide to let my tailbone just take a hit that day. And I just like fall on my tailbone.
Now, here’s the amazing thing, okay. In the pride of a 21-year-old, I just opened my eyes and I just happened to see that my friend had just jumped into the water and was underwater. And the Don and the other two hunters were gone. And that’s the moment you have to say, do I let them know or do I not? And I just, no one saw me. And so I just slipped into that pool that was right next to the rock and I just hung out there for a second in a lot of pain. And the other guy, you know, gets out and is like, hey, are you going to jump? I’m like, I’m good. I’m good. I decided to go with I’m not going to tell them. And I just rode all the way back. I remember that day just kind of on my side a little bit because my tailbone did not let me sit straight.
Now, I tell you this story because here’s what happens to us in our spiritual lives. We are so careful. We realize that there are moments in life when we have to be really careful. You’re climbing up a hill. You’re getting ready to make a big decision. And you know that you have to pay attention. You may fall. But the reality is that most of us act carelessly toward the everyday decisions that we have in front of us because they seem easy. They seem like an easy jump. And sometimes these decisions create a slippery slope that may just lead you to ruin, that may just lead you to failure. That’s the story of the book of Kings.
And I want you to remember this. The road from rescue to ruin is not made by a big cliff, but it’s paved with small stones of compromise. It is those small stones of compromise that will lead you eventually to failure and that certainly led the nation of Israel to failure. This is why compromise is so dangerous. Because no one wakes up one day and says today I’m going to ruin my career. Or today I’m going to end my marriage. Or today I’m going to destroy my relationship with my kids. No, it happens slowly and it’s a cumulative path that all of a sudden before you know it you wake up one day and you are in a place you never thought you would be.
So what I want to do over the next few minutes is this. It’s simple. I simply want to take the story of the book of Kings and we’re going to take snapshots of different Kings just lives and stories. And then we’re going to have to fast forward. But what I want you to see is a pattern. A pattern that reveals what the path of compromise looks like. So let’s go into it.
Here’s the first thing that I want you to know about compromise. The compromise doesn’t begin with a change of behavior, but a change of affection. It doesn’t begin by doing something different. It usually appears as a change of what you love. Open your Bibles in 1 Kings 11 starting in verse 1. And it says… Nevertheless, in spite of knowing that, Solomon held fast to them in love. Then let’s go to verse 4. As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God as the heart of David his father had been. He followed Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech, the detestable god of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord. He did not follow the Lord completely as David his father had done.
And so what we see here is the Bible says that it just started with something subtle that probably no one else noticed except Solomon. He loved many foreign women and what they brought to him. And I want you to know that more than likely, this was more than lust. It was about the power and status and alliances that these women brought to him, that these marriages brought to him. The fact that now he could establish his kingdom and be renowned and have relationships everywhere. And he loved that feeling more than he loved the Lord. But the Bible says that it was a slow path. As he grew old, or with the passage of time, he starts to love not only these women, but their gods. And all of a sudden, what was unthinkable at one point, it becomes part of his life. He stops being fully devoted to God. He starts serving other idols and gods in the nation of Israel.
And here’s what we need to pay attention to today. If Solomon in all of his wisdom could not do the right thing, though he knew what was right, but followed his love, his affection. We need to make sure that we know where our affection is. Because nine times out of ten, our lives will follow not what we know, but what we love. And that’s one thing that you need to know, that your affection is in the right place. Because compromise will shift that.
Here’s the second thing that compromise does. Compromise makes obedience negotiable. It makes obedience negotiable. So we’re gonna have to fast forward one generation. From Solomon to now the next generation. This is in 1 Kings 12. And here’s what’s happened up until this point. Solomon was unfaithful to the Lord. So God told him, I’m going to tear the kingdom in two. In other words, the kingdom was gonna be split into two separate kingdoms. I’m gonna take ten tribes and I’m gonna give them to a different family because you were unfaithful to me. But I’m not gonna do it in your time because of the love of my son David. I’m gonna do it to your son, to the next generation. But your son is gonna get to keep two because I made a promise to David. But the rest of the tribes will go and become a different kingdom.
And so that’s where you get when you read the book of Kings. It’s gonna tell you whether the king was of Israel. That means the northern kingdom that separated. Or Judah and that became the southern kingdom. And so it splits into two and you pay attention to that when you read it. But what happens here is that the new king of the northern side of Israel has a decision to make. Jeroboam is his name and he has a dilemma. Should I let the people keep going every year to all the festivities that happen in Jerusalem and the old capital? Or would that affect their allegiance to me? So let’s read about this dilemma.
First Kings 12, 26 and on. Jeroboam said to himself, The kingdom will now likely revert to the house of David. If these people go up to offer sacrifices at the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, which was the old capital. They will again give their allegiance to their Lord. Rehoboam, king of Judah. They will kill me and return to King Rehoboam. After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves. He said to the people, it is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt. One he set up in Bethel and the other one in Dan. And this thing became a sin. The people came to worship the one at Bethel and went as far as Dan to worship the other.
So Jeroboam is afraid that if he lets the people keep going back to the old capital that their allegiance will be gone. And so he decides to make obedience negotiable. He creates an alternative for them. He says, you know what? Let’s not worry. Jerusalem is too far anyway. I’m going to create these two calves and you can worship them right here within our kingdom, within the boundaries of our kingdom. Now, I want you to notice how subtle but deceptive this was. He didn’t say, let’s worship new gods. He said, let’s worship God. We’re just, you know, all the rules and regulations about how to worship. Let’s not worry about it. Here’s how we’re going to do it from now on. He just modified Yahweh’s instructions. Let’s make worship more convenient to us. And that’s exactly what compromise does. It makes obedience negotiable. It chooses fear over trust, convenience over obedience and faithfulness. And if we don’t pay attention, we might be tempted to do the same in our lives.
So compromise is going to make obedience negotiable. But here’s what happens with compromise. Compromise never stays put. So Jeroboam creates and modifies a different type of worship. But here’s what we read. If you were to continue reading, not too far after that, Israel somehow is entrenched in idolatry. And what we need to ask ourselves is how did this happen? And I’ll tell you how it happens. Because once you remove God’s authority, God’s word as authoritative in your life, then you are just going to do whatever you want. And you’re going to listen when it’s convenient and do your own will when it’s not. And all of a sudden, your life is going to have all these mixed standards everywhere. And it’s going to shift. And that’s how compromise starts to shift in you away from the direction that God is calling you to. Because compromise always requires another. It always grows.
And you are going to see throughout the book of Kings, so many kings, it is said of them, that they followed in the ways of Jeroboam. That they fell in the sin of Jeroboam. Over and over again, this sin just grew and expanded. And here’s how it works. It begins with a decision that you and I make. But then that decision turns into a pattern of life. And then that pattern creates a practice. And the practice turns into a culture. Before you know it, what was compromise now is the new normal. And this is what happened in Israel. Once generation compromise became the next generation’s normal. So you and I should pay attention with what we tolerate personally. Because that might become normal or normalized generationally.
So let’s recap really fast. Compromise begins with our affection with what we love. It starts to shift it a little bit. And then that shift messes and attacks our obedience. Because now we make it negotiable. And eventually compromise sits in. And we begin to tolerate things and it grows from there. So the question that I have for you this morning is simple. As we look at the lives of the kings of Israel. Are you making the same mistake that they made? Are we allowing compromise to come into our lives, into our relationship with God? Is your relationship with the Lord limping? Where am I limping in my devotion to God?
One of the things that we need to understand is that it’s not a single sin, by the way. It’s not a single sin. Compromise is more like an attitude. It’s an attitude of carelessness toward our relationship with God. Toward who he says that he is. Maybe his word. It’s like we just treat him with contempt at times in our minds. We think that we know better. That’s how compromise really changes our direction. And so you need to ask yourself. Are there areas of your life where you have allowed that to happen? Where maybe God is asking you to remove something. And you make it or allow it to stay. And maybe you’re jumping back and forth in your life. You want to follow God. But you also see the world’s ways. And you’re back and forth.
And if you’re struggling with that, the prophet Elijah has a great word for us. Let’s fast forward again. 70 years. And this is probably one of the greatest prophets. He talks to King Ahab. Ahab was an evil, evil king. And he gathers just to tell you and to let you know how much compromise grows, right? It started with Jeroboam modifying worship rules. And all of a sudden, 70 years later, there are 850 prophets to the Baals. To the other gods. To the idols. And Elijah confronts them all. He brings the people. Brings the prophets. Brings the king. And says the following.
Let’s read out of 1 Kings 18. Says Elijah went before the people and said, how long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal is God, follow him. Here’s what the people said. But the people said nothing. In other words, I love Elijah’s attitude. He rejects middle ground completely. He says, you need to decide. If Baal is the real God, then go ahead and follow him. But if you realize that God is the one true God, then you need to live like it. There’s no middle ground. You need to make a choice. Now, unfortunately, the people said nothing. In other words, the nation of Israel refused to choose which God to worship. But not choosing is a choice in itself. And I hope this is not us and our families. I hope we don’t keep wavering back and forth between what God has for you and what the world, you know, entices you with.
Because here’s, I think, the invitation that the book of Kings makes to all of us. The authors invite us to be careful with the slippery stones of the everyday life that entice you to compromise your relationship with God, your covenant with the Lord. And here’s what I want you to think about. Here’s something you can do today, okay? Let God’s word remove one stone of compromise that exists in your heart. And let him redirect one step. Just remove one stone today and let him redirect one step today.
Let’s fast forward a third time. 230 years later, this is toward the end of the kingdom of Judah. There’s a young king named Josiah. And Josiah is an example that even though compromise sits in, in a sense, deep roots, that people, that you and I can still rise above that compromise and live differently. So Josiah is a king, the Bible says, that follows in all the ways of his father David. In other words, he’s a man after God’s own heart. He remodels the temple. And as they are remodeling this temple, as he takes on this project to remodel the temple, something happens. There is a book, Deuteronomy, that appears that has been just collecting dust there. And what I find interesting as I was reading this passage, it’s like, isn’t it amazing? You know, the nation of Israel is decaying and the word of God was sitting in some room collecting dust. And how often does that happen in our own lives? That our lives are falling apart, but our Bibles are brand new on the bookshelf, just sitting there collecting dust. But they take this book and they take it out to Josiah and they read it to him. And he is convicted and he renews his covenant with the Lord.
Open your Bibles in 2 Kings 23, 1 through 3. It says, then the king, Josiah, called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. He went up to the temple of the Lord with the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets, all the people from the least to the greatest. He read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant, which had been found in the temple of the Lord. The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord to follow the Lord and keep his commands, statutes and decrees with all his heart and with all his soul. Thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.
And from there a revival starts. He goes and he destroys many of the idol worship, high places where people used to gather and worship other gods. He celebrates a Passover in a way that hadn’t been celebrated in hundreds of years. And you know how it all started? By opening his heart to the word of God. See, throughout the book of Kings, God is always speaking to his people, to his kings. He sends prophet after prophet. Some of them we know, many of them were nameless. They just say a man of Judah or this other prophet. They don’t even need to know, we don’t need to know their names, we just need to know the message. And that’s what we need to understand today, church. That it all starts by us allowing an open door for God’s word to remove the compromises that we’re making and to redirect our paths.
But you know how we do this? By doing what God tells us to do. Not knowing it, but by doing it. A preacher gave an illustration about what it means to take God at his word and to not just know God’s will, but to do it. He said, imagine that you have a teenage daughter. And you come back from work and as you go past their room, you see the mess that is sent. This is hypothetical, I know that it never happens in your homes. Your teen’s rooms are always clean. But he says, imagine that it’s messy and so you tell your daughter, honey, go clean your room. It’s a mess. And so you keep going and you do your things and you come back an hour later and the door of her bedroom is closed. And you just hear her saying something. And as you get closer to the door, she is repeating, honey, go clean your room. It’s a mess. Honey, go clean your room. It’s a mess. And so you open the door and you’re like, what are you doing? And she’s like, dad, I memorized what you told me to do. In fact, I looked up every word and I know grammatically what you want me to do. But you look at the room and the room is still a mess. What would you do? Right? I tell you what I do. I’d be like, you better get to it in the next five minutes or you’re going to be in trouble. And what if your daughter at that point told you, yes, dad, but you know what I’m thinking? Before I get to it, I’m thinking about having people over and just really discussing what you actually mean by honey, clean up your room. It’s a mess. It’s silly, right? But that’s exactly what we do as Christians. Many times we take the words of the Lord. We memorize them. And by the way, there’s nothing wrong. Some of you need to memorize God’s word and some of you need to do God’s word because you already know it. It’s just putting it into practice.
I know in my life there are many times where I’ve been convicted because I knew what to do. I just didn’t do it. And we need to let God direct our path. For some of us it means confessing a sin or ending a habit or maybe gathering, having a conversation, apologizing in front of someone. Maybe for some of us it’s starting a new habit to open God’s word without anyone guiding you. To do it on your own and get to see what God has for you today. Or maybe it starts by opening your day in prayer instead of doing anything else that you’ve been doing. Maybe it’s a new habit for you. Or setting a boundary in a relationship. Whatever it may be is different. But here’s what I do know. Many of us are waiting for a specific call from the Lord to come to your life. And I’m telling you that call is waiting for you. You just need to take some steps in the right direction. You need to stop letting these slippery stones or rocks on your path distract you and redirect you.
Let’s fast for one last time. 30 years after Josiah we’re going to find one of the saddest passages in the Old Testament. 2 Kings 25, 8 through 11. And it said, it was so important that they recorded the day of the month and the month and the year. And it says, on the seventh day of the fifth month in the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar, commander of the imperial guard and official of the king of Babylon came to Jerusalem. And that was bad news. Because that meant that a foreign commander was in the homeland, was in Israel’s territory. Judah’s territory. And it says that he set fire to the temple of the Lord. The royal palace and the houses of Jerusalem. Every important building he burnt down. The whole Babylonian army under the commander of the imperial guard broke down the walls around Jerusalem.
And this is why it’s important to read the Bible as a whole. Because if you’ve been reading and if you’ve been following with us, this should take you back. It’s like a memory. You need to go all the way back and think about the hopes and dreams that David had to build a temple for his God. And then about Solomon collecting all the materials and making it a majestic temple. And the sacrifices and the praises and the joy and the prayer. And how God’s presence came down on the temple. And he promised to be there that he would listen to the prayers of his saints. And all the joy that came along with that. And here we are, 350ish years later. And there is the smell of death and smoke. In a city that once seemed impenetrable. It’s just frail and in ruins. That’s what happens according to the book of Kings. When you let compromise overtake your life.
But here’s the amazing thing. The amazing thing about this book is the very last part. The ending. The last few verses. Just flip right over to the next page. 2 Kings 25. Starting in verse 27. In the 37th year of the exile of Jehoiakim, king of Judah. In the year of Awel Marduk. He became a king of Babylon. He released Jehoiakim, king of Judah from prison. He did this on the 27th day of the 12th month. He spoke kindly to him and gave him a seat of honor. Higher than those of the other kings who were with him in Babylon. So Jehoiakim put aside his prison clothes. And for the rest of his life, ate regularly at the king’s table. Day by day, the king gave Jehoiakim a regular allowance. As long as he lived.
Now, for most of us, when we read this for the first time. You’re like, what happened? What’s going on with this king? Why is that important? Why would you end the book like that? I’ll tell you why. Because in the midst of hopelessness. 37 years after exile began. A glimmer of hope appears again. An inexplicable act of grace occurs. The last king of the line of Judah. The line of David. Who is still alive. Receives this grace while he’s in exile. Not because he deserved it. But because God is still moving. And he’s still in control.
And here’s what I want you to remember church. Even when our choices lead to ruin. God is faithful. Our choices will have consequences. But our failure does not cancel God’s faithfulness. It doesn’t matter where you have been. God is faithful. And you know what grace feels like. You know what Jehoiakim experienced. The moment that you’ve been maybe by your own choices. And failure. And despair. And ruin. And then a king comes to you. And offers you a place at his table.
And I’ll tell you the reason why this ending is here. It’s actually sprinkled throughout the rest of the book. We can find one of those times in 2 Kings 8. And here’s what it says. It just reminds us that God is a faithful God. It says nevertheless for the sake of his servant David. The Lord was not willing to destroy Judah. He had promised to maintain a lamp for David. And his descendants forever. The reason why the book of Kings ends like that. Is because it wants to remind the people. See the last king of Judah. He’s still alive. He’s not wearing prison clothes. He’s eating at the king’s table. We don’t know how. But God made a way. And God was going to make a way farther. Hundreds of years later. Through a king that wore a crown of thorns. But that’s a story for a different day.
For now the people of Israel will have to learn. To live and to serve God in a foreign land. And I tell you there’s a lot that we can learn from that. So I hope that you can join us in the following few weeks. When you pray with me.
Father thank you so much for the fact that you are faithful. That Lord even in the midst of our lives being compromised. Our love being split. Our affections Lord being misplaced. Lord you take your promises and you are faithful to them. I know Lord that you know already every single thing that we’re going to do. And you loved us anyway and you’ve offered us a way to know Jesus. And Lord that is because your faithfulness is greater than our unfaithfulness Lord. And so I pray this morning that you would continue to turn our hearts toward you. That you would continue to just remove stones of compromise. And redirect our paths Father. I pray that you do that in a way that glorifies you. And in a way that transforms our lives, our families Lord. Our church and our community. We thank you in Jesus name. Amen.
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