How Could a Good God Allow Suffering

You may have lost a loved one tragically, far younger than they should have been. Maybe you've experienced deep betrayal, or you just hear what's going on in the news, and you see all of the chaos, the darkness, and injustice, and hurt in our world, and you think, why would a good God allow suffering? Well, the reason we're asking this question today is because we're starting a mini series called I Have a Question. We're just spending the next couple of weeks, today, Easter Sunday and next weekend, just asking three different questions, some tough questions of our faith. The first one, how could a good God allow suffering?

Today on Good Friday. Then on Easter Sunday, we'll ask, isn't the resurrection a fairy tale? Is it really historically true? And then thirdly, we'll ask, can I trust the gospels? The four gospels that really are the main accounts of Jesus' life in the Bible.

Are they trustworthy? Are they even original anymore? It's been so many years that have been passed down. Can we actually trust the words that we have in our Bibles? So I hope you can join us for these next three sermons, but today we're looking at the big question, how could a good God allow suffering?

And it's an important question to ask because it's a question that threatens to undermine the Bible's claim that God is both all good and all powerful. If suffering proves that God is not good, then we should be terrified of Him. If suffering proves that God is not all powerful, then we should despair. He can't help us. If suffering proves that there is no God at all, then we're wasting our time here this morning.

Why gather for a religious ceremony if God doesn't exist? So it's an important question for Christians to wrestle with. But if you're here and you're exploring, you're not actually a Christian, but you're interested, it actually matters for you as well. Because an atheistic worldview doesn't help you in your suffering either. It only leaves you with the blind, pitiless forces of nature.

If God doesn't exist, and you suffer greatly, and you cry out, all that you hear is the silent indifference of the universe. If there is no God, there is no hope beyond this life. There is no meaning for your suffering. But if there is a God, and if Good Friday is what it claims to be, then your suffering can have meaning, and your suffering may not be the final note in your life. Now the reason it's appropriate to deal with this question today is because Good Friday speaks of one of the darkest days of suffering to ever occur in human history.

The trial, torture, and tragic death of Jesus of Nazareth was one of the most cruel and unjust things we have ever witnessed in our world. And yet, it's actually in Jesus' suffering on Good Friday that Christianity offers some answers to this question, how could a good God allow suffering? So what we're going to do now for the first part of our time together is just spend some time in the story of Good Friday. I'm going to storytell and retell the events from Mark's gospel as they're recorded there. I'm going to start in Mark 14:32 and then go all the way to Mark 15:39.

So if you want to open your Bible and follow along, you can. But let's just enter into the story together. And as I tell the story, I just want you to notice all the different ways in which Jesus suffered on Good Friday. So we begin in Mark 14. After he had supper with his disciples, Jesus took them out to one of his favourite places, the Garden of Gethsemane.

And he asked his disciples to sit there while he went away to pray. But he took three of his closest friends, his closest disciples, Peter, James and John with him. And as he took them a little further into the garden, he began to be visibly distressed, deeply troubled. And he said to his buddies, my soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Wait with me and watch.

Wait here and watch. Now when he tells them to watch, he's not saying look out for enemies. It's actually a way of saying watch in prayerfulness. They had watches of the night back in that time, and sometimes they would get up in the watches of the night to pray, and so he's saying, pray with me essentially. And after he says that to Peter, James and John, he goes a few more steps into the garden and he falls to the ground and he says to the Father, Abba, Father, all things are possible for You.

Remove this cup from me, yet not as I will, but as You will. And Jesus spent an hour in agony just praying there on the ground. And then he gets back up to go and see his friends, but when he gets there, they're asleep. So Jesus speaks to Peter. He says, Simon, are you asleep?

Could you not watch with me for one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. And Jesus, overwhelmed as he was, he went back into the garden, fell to the ground, prayed those words again. Abba, Father, all things are possible for You.

Remove this cup from me, yet not as I will, but as You will. Now who knows how long he spent praying there again, but then he went back to check on his disciples again, and again they were asleep, and they were speechless. They had no response to make to Jesus. He goes and prays again, does the same thing, returns, and a third time they're asleep. Jesus, in his darkest hour of need, was utterly alone.

These friends of his, they fell asleep when he needed them most. So he comes back that third time and he says to them, wake up. It is enough. The hour is at hand. See, the Son of Man is to be betrayed into the hands of sinners.

Arise. Let us be going, for my betrayer is at hand. And coming into the Garden of Gethsemane was one of Jesus' band of brothers, one of his 12 disciples, Judas Iscariot. And Judas had met up with this band of thugs and decided to betray Jesus. And he wasn't just going to betray Jesus from afar, he told this band of thugs that he would actually betray Jesus with a kiss.

In that culture, it was a warm way of greeting someone. So as Judas came in, he said, rabbi, and kissed Jesus on the face. And it was in that way that Jesus was betrayed. The band of thugs took Jesus and seized him, and Jesus' disciples seeing what was happening thought, oh no, our Messiah's getting taken, so one of them took a sword out and cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest. And then Jesus confronts this band, and he says, have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs to capture me?

I was with you day after day teaching in the temple. You didn't seize me. But let the scriptures be fulfilled. Let all that God has promised in the Old Testament be fulfilled. Now Jesus' disciples, they realised, wow, he's giving himself into this.

He's not resisting this, so they all fled, except for one or two. One of them was Peter, and Peter followed along as Jesus was taken into Jerusalem, and they took him to the house of the high priest. And Peter just sat outside warming himself by a fire. Now you'd expect at this time of night when they knocked on the door, that the high priest would come out bleary eyed saying, what do you want? What do you want at this hour?

But no, when they knocked on the door, they went in, and the room was full of the Jewish Sanhedrin, the highest council of their nation, the chief priests, the high priests, the scribes, the scholars, the religious leaders. They were there. They were gathered for this moment to put Jesus to trial. And they brought in all these false witnesses who accused Jesus of all sorts of things, but their witness didn't corroborate until eventually the high priest got up and said to Jesus, what do you have to say to these things? What is it that these men say against you?

But Jesus opened not his mouth. And the high priest getting more worked up says, are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. And you see, what Jesus was doing there was deeply offensive to the high priest, because when he says, I am, the Greek version of that is ego eimi. That's the Greek translation of the Hebrew, Yahweh.

So when he says, I am, it sounds like he's saying, I am Yahweh, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power. Jesus is claiming to be the Son of Man from Daniel 7, who is this exalted figure seated at the right hand of the Father, seems to be equal in status to the Father, so Jesus is claiming to be divine. And so the high priest tears his robes and he says, what further witnesses do we need? You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision?

And the council condemned him to death. And the people that were there, they began to spit on him. They covered him with a cloth over his head, and they beat him and said, prophesy. Tell us who hit you. Prophesy, as they hit him.

Meanwhile, Peter is outside. One of Jesus' friends was still there. And a little servant girl came up to him and said, you look like one of Jesus' followers. And Peter denied it. No.

No. I don't know who Jesus is. The servant girl pointed Peter out to a few others, and again he denied it. And then a third time, some other people said, no, surely you're one of Jesus' disciples, and Peter denied it vehemently.

And it was at that point the rooster crowed the second time, and Peter remembered that earlier that night, Jesus said to him, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times. And Peter broke down and wept. Jesus wasn't just abandoned by his friends. He was denied by his friends. The following morning, the council got together and they consulted.

You see, they had a problem. They were not a free nation in this period of history. They were under Roman occupation, and they needed Roman consent to execute someone. So they needed to take Jesus to the governor of that area, Pilate, and get his permission to put him to death. But Pilate wouldn't care if Jesus is claiming to be the Son of Man according to Daniel 7.

He didn't care about their religious debates, so they had to come up with a cunning plan to force Pilate to condemn Jesus to death. And you can see in Pilate's questions the line of argument that they took. They claimed that Jesus was the king of Israel. In other words, that he was a rival to Caesar, and they were forcing Pilate to choose between Caesar or putting Jesus to death. That's what they were trying to do.

So when Pilate is questioning Jesus, he says to him, are you the king of the Jews? But Jesus opened not his mouth. And the chief priests, they were accusing Jesus of all sorts of different things, and Pilate says again to Jesus, do you hear what they're saying? Have you no answer to make? But Jesus opened not his mouth.

And Pilate was amazed that he wouldn't defend himself. Jesus wasn't submitting to the priests, he wasn't submitting to Pilate, he was submitting to the Father's plan. He was letting the scriptures be fulfilled. And around about that time of the year, Pilate had a tradition of releasing a prisoner for the Jews. And so he saw an opportunity to release Jesus because you could see he was harmless.

And so he said to them, would you like me to release the king of the Jews for you? But the chief priests had stirred up the crowds. You see, there was another man in prison and his name was Barabbas. He was an insurrectionist. He wasn't just your run of the mill murderer.

He was a zealot. He was essentially a freedom fighter. In Israeli eyes, he was a national hero, maybe a dumb one for trying to fight the Romans with military power, but still someone to be admired. And they had a choice between the violent freedom fighter or the Prince of Peace, and they chose the political option. They chose Barabbas.

And when Pilate said, well, what will you have me do with this king of the Jews? They shouted out, crucify him. And Pilate said, why? What evil has he done? Crucify him.

Crucify him. So Pilate, more interested in his political career than justice, obeyed what they said. He sentenced Jesus to crucifixion. But before that happened, he had him flogged. He had him scourged.

Now that was already enough to kill someone in those days. To be scourged was to take a whip that had pieces of bone and metal and things like that in the end of it, and to flay someone's back and to pull out flesh. And that's what they did to Jesus. They scourged him before he was given over to a battalion of Roman soldiers. That was about 600 men who were used to brutality, who were using this Jewish prisoner as a form of entertainment.

And you can imagine the raucous as they got together and they saw this pitiful Jew who claimed to be a king against the might of the Roman empire, and so they robed him with a purple robe and they twisted together a crown of thorns. They put it on his head, and they would beat his head with a reed, and they would pretend to pay homage to him, hail to the king of the Jews, as they beat him and spat on him. And after they had had their fun with him, they took him out to be crucified. But Jesus was already in such a terrible state that he couldn't carry his cross to the Hill of Golgotha. So they compelled a man, Simon of Cyrene, to carry it for him to Golgotha, the place of the skull.

And as they crucified him, the Roman soldiers, so used to brutality, just gambled over his clothes. Well, it happened. And they rubbed salt in the wound. They put a sign above his head to mock him, the king of the Jews. And you see, crucifixion was the most shameful form of execution that the Romans had thought of at that point.

It was so horrendous that in polite Roman company, you didn't talk about crucifixion. It was so horrendous that Roman citizens were not allowed to be crucified. That was a law that they had. Jesus was subjected to their worst form of execution. It was something that was done in public by a roadside.

He was hanging there naked, and passersby would look and would mock. Some of the Jews that passed by mocked him and said, you who said you would destroy our great temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself and come down. The chief priests and the scribes also derided him. They said to him, he saved others. He cannot save himself.

Let him come down now from the cross. Let the Christ, the king of the Jews, come down now that we may see and believe. Even the two criminals crucified next to him derided him. He was the most shameful, humiliated person on that Good Friday. It was at the third hour that they crucified him, which is about 9AM according to our clock.

And for three hours, he endured this until the sixth hour, midday, when the sun should be shining its brightest, darkness covered the land. And for another three hours, Jesus hung there until 3PM in the afternoon, until he finally cried out on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And he gave out one last cry before he breathed his last. And of all the people present, it was a Roman centurion who witnessed what happened and said, truly, this man was the Son of God. Those are the events of Good Friday as they're recorded in Mark's gospel.

Now how does this story help us understand how a good God could allow suffering? Well, it makes all the difference when you realise who Jesus claimed to be. Remember how he said, I am, you will see the Son of Man coming at the right hand of power? He claimed to be divine. You see, the tragic sufferings of Good Friday are not just the sufferings of a good man, but the sufferings of the God man.

God suffered in Christ. Everything we just heard about Good Friday, the loneliness of Jesus' suffering, the weight he felt in the garden, the abandonment by his friends, the betrayal of Judas, the false accusations, the denial of Peter, the torture, the execution, all of it was experienced by God in the flesh, by Christ. You see, everything we just heard about Good Friday turns our question on its head. No longer can the question simply be, how could a good God allow suffering? The question really becomes, how could an all powerful God allow Himself to suffer like this?

Why would God do this? Why would He subject Himself to Good Friday? If He had good reasons to suffer at the cross on Good Friday, it means there could be good reasons to allow for suffering in our world. So why did God choose to suffer in Jesus? Well, there are many reasons, but here's the main one.

God chose to suffer in Jesus so we wouldn't have to drink the cup of judgment. God chose to save us from the suffering we would have endured without Christ. Remember how Jesus kept saying in the garden, remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what You will. Remove this cup from me. The cup is a terrible image that comes from the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament, it's the cup of God's judgment and wrath. We see it in places like Isaiah 51, where it says, wake yourself, wake yourself, stand up, oh Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of His wrath, who have drunk to the dregs, the bowl, the cup of staggering. See, the cup was a stomach churning image. It represented God's wrath and judgment against rebellion and sin. That's why Jesus was sorrowful even to death.

He was about to drink the cup on behalf of rebels and sinners. He was going to do that of his own free will, but at the end there, it felt so crushing, that burden, that he was asking the Father, is there any other way? Remove it from me, but not what I will, but what You will. Two chapters later in Isaiah, we read that he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.

Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. This is what was happening at Good Friday. You see, God is a just judge.

He doesn't enjoy the judgment of sinners, but he will never ever ever pervert justice. And so on Good Friday, God upheld His justice and upheld His love for sinners. He upheld justice and His desire to give mercy. We've all fallen short of our role as God's image bearers. Human beings are meant to be reflections of God in the world.

We're meant to represent the good and just and benevolent God. But when we look at the world and how the human race has filled it, we've filled it instead with greed and injustice and violence. We haven't represented God well. We've earned God's judgment. But God upheld both His judgment and His love at the cross by paying the penalty of judgment for us in our place so that He could extend mercy to everyone who hides themselves in Christ, who puts their trust and their faith in Him.

Jesus drank the cup so that we don't have to drink the cup of judgment if we put our trust in Him. That's why God chose to suffer in Christ. He chose to save rebels from what they deserve. And because God suffered in Jesus, it shows us that He is not distant and disinterested in our pain. He actually wrote Himself the worst part in the human story.

He entered into our story and has suffered like us and more than us. The divine creator allowed Himself to be embodied in space and time, able to sweat and suffer and suffocate on the cross. And He did it for people like you and me. Good Friday tells you that God loves you. God loves you with an excruciating love.

He loves you with a cruciform love, a cross shaped love. He loves you enough to do this, to die an excruciating, shameful death, to set you free, so you can have peace, so you don't have to carry your shame and your sin anymore, so that you don't have to justify yourself, so that you can be justified by Christ alone as a gift. So how could a good God allow suffering? Well, the philosophical answer is that a good God would allow it if it achieved nobler ends than a world without suffering. And Good Friday shows us that God secured the salvation of the world through the pain and the shame of the cross.

If He can use the most shameful form of death known in that time to produce such inestimable good, then surely our God can use the suffering in our world for nobler ends. But the cross doesn't just help us philosophically, it also helps us emotionally, because it shows us that God hasn't shielded Himself from our pain, but the man who was flogged and beaten and spat on and crucified was the God man, Jesus Christ. We won't always understand why God allows suffering in our lives. In fact, even though Jesus knew why he was suffering, it didn't lessen his pain. He still cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

We can't escape pain and suffering in this world, but Good Friday shows us that we can escape it in the next, that we can be forgiven and offered eternal life and a kingdom that cannot be shaken, a kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy that will one day restore this world and usher in a new age where there is no more pain and no more suffering. A man called Jonny Gibson makes this point that God is good in the midst of suffering in a children's book called The Moon Is Always Round. And Jonny based this book on a real experience he had with his son, Ben. On 17/03/2016, Jonny's daughter, Leila, was born. Jonny brought his son Ben to hospital with him a few hours later to meet his new sister.

Ben gave her a toy giraffe, and then he held her. And as Jonny tells the story, he says two things stuck out at him. As his son held Leila, he noted that she never opened her eyes and she never made a sound. So the reason Jonny points this out is because Leila was stillborn. And Jonny wrote his book to help explain suffering to children.

And it grew out of a conversation he had with his son, Ben, later that night while driving home. In the car, Ben asked his dad a question. Daddy, will mommy ever grow a baby that wakes up? Jonny said, I don't know, but let's pray that she does. Then, daddy, why isn't Leila coming home with us?

And Jonny said, because she's gone to be with Jesus. Why is she going to be with Jesus? Because Jesus called her name. But will she come to be with us after she's been with Jesus in heaven? No, Ben.

When you're with Jesus, you don't want to be anywhere else. Why? Because Jesus is such a wonderful person. And then Ben asked, daddy, why isn't she coming home? And Jonny said, Ben, I don't really know why.

But as they drove home that night, he looked out at the moon and he pointed it out to his son. And he said, look at the moon, Ben. See how round it is tonight. Now we know that the moon is always round, but sometimes it doesn't look that way in the sky. Sometimes it looks like a crescent.

Sometimes you can't see it at all. But the moon up there, it's always round. And it's the same way with God. God is always good. Sometimes you see it in all of its brightness.

Sometimes clouds are covering it. Sometimes you see it only a little bit, but God is always good, just as the moon is always round. And Good Friday assures us that God cannot be anything other than good. The one who suffered was no mere man. He was God in the flesh.

He comforts us in our sorrows. He assures us that His suffering was worth it because His suffering secured freedom, forgiveness, and eternal life for everyone who trusts in Him. Well, we're now going to respond to what we've heard by joining in the Lord's Supper together. And this is so fitting on Good Friday because Jesus himself had this supper on the eve of his execution, and he used the Lord's Supper to explain what his death meant. You see, the cup represents the blood that Jesus shed to purify us from our sins, and the bread represents Jesus' body given over to the suffering of the cross.

Jesus' death ensured that we don't have to drink from the cup of judgment. Instead, through faith in Jesus, we get welcomed to the Lord's table, and we drink from the Lord's cup as his children. That's what we get instead. Instead of the cup of wrath, we get the cup of the Lord at the Lord's table. He's made us children of God, so we take a seat at the Lord's table as free and forgiven people and enjoy His approval and presence.

This meal is a visible symbol of what Jesus did with his authority, of what he submitted to in order to secure our rest and peace with God. Jesus submitted himself to death, even death on a cross, so that everyone who submits to him in faith and trust can know that judgment already happened at the cross. It's finished. We are free. At this table, we, with the hand and mouth of faith, through the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit, truly receive Christ who gave himself on earth in the sacrifice of the cross.

This supper also speaks to us of the fellowship we have with one another around the Lord's table, that we give visible expression to that body of which Jesus is the head and we are his members. We are the body of Christ, and this helps us to understand Paul's warning in 1 Corinthians 11. He says in verse 29, for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. Now this has a twofold meaning. We must be able to discern Christ's body in the sense that we understand we are eating something that points to our Saviour's body, which hung up on the cross for our sins, so this is a sacred meal.

But we must also discern the fact that our brothers and sisters here, we together are the spiritual body of Christ, and so we don't want to drink in a way that's unworthy. We shouldn't participate in a meal that proclaims Christ's forgiveness if we are holding unforgiveness in our hearts towards a brother or sister here. We shouldn't participate in a meal that declares Christ's love for us if we do not want to love and serve one another. We shouldn't participate in a meal that declares our unity in faith if we are at odds with someone else in the church family. This is what Paul means by saying discern the body.

The Heidelberg Catechism is a historic Q and A summary of our faith. It says in question 81, who should come to the table of the Lord? Answer, those who are displeased with themselves for their sins, yet trust that these are forgiven them, and that their remaining infirmity is covered by the passion and death of Christ, who also desire more and more to strengthen their faith and amend their life, but the unrepentant and hypocrites eat and drink judgment to themselves. The Lord's Supper isn't for perfect people. It's for people who trust that Jesus' death has paid for their sins and who desire to grow more and more in their faith.

If that isn't you yet, you're welcome here, but let me just encourage you to sit quietly and ponder what we've spoken about today rather than participate in the meal. But if you do trust in Jesus and you're ready to participate and you want to do that, then the elders are going to offer you the elements which you can take from them. I'll invite the elders to come up and set up the table now. And they're going to hand you the elements. First, we'll start with the bread.

We'll hand out the bread to you, and then just hold on to that because they'll come up and I'll lead us so we can eat the bread together, and then they'll hand out the wine and the juice to you, and hold on to that because they'll lead us so that we can drink together. And while we're handing them out and taking that time, I'm going to read some scriptures from Isaiah 52 to Isaiah 53. You can choose to reflect on them as you're grabbing the elements, or just quietly pray as we prepare ourselves to eat and drink together. Behold, my servant shall act wisely. He shall be high and lifted up and shall be exalted.

As many were astonished at you, his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance and his form beyond that of the children of mankind, so shall he sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths because of him, for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard they understand. Who has believed what he has heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.

Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. It says in Mark 14:22, and as they were eating that night before his death, as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it, broke it and gave it to them and said, take. This is my body.

The bread which we break is the sharing of the body of Christ. Take it, eat, remember, and believe that the body of our Lord Jesus Christ was given for a complete forgiveness of all our sins. The elders will now hand out the juice and the wine. And I'll continue to read from Isaiah 53 starting in verse seven. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth.

Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment, he was taken away. And as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him.

He has put him to grief. When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring. He shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied.

By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors. Mark goes on in verses 23 to 25. It says, and Jesus took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank of it.

And he said to them, this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many. Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God. The cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks is the sharing of the blood of Christ. Take it, drink from it, all of you. Remember and believe that the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ was poured out for a complete forgiveness of sins.

Let's pray together. Jesus, we remember that when you gave yourself to that band of thugs, you said, let the scriptures be fulfilled, and all of the Old Testament scriptures found their fulfilment in you. You were like those Old Testament sacrifices whose blood was poured out for forgiveness and for atonement. You are the Lamb of God. You are the perfect sacrifice.

Thank you for giving yourself over to the shame and the suffering of Good Friday to set us free. Father, we pray that you would cause us to rejoice greatly. We ask that we would leave this place just so light and unburdened and free because we don't need to carry our shame. Jesus carried that horrible weight for us on Good Friday. Jesus died for our sins.

They are removed from us as far as the East is from the West. So help us to enjoy the peace and the freedom that we have in Christ and to share that with those around us. We pray it in his name. Amen.