S2S Sisters: “Knowing the Hero: Why Your Whole Life Depends on the Story You’re In”  Rachelle Wenger

Our prayer is that you will be filled with the knowledge of His will, strengthened with all might according to His glorious power. Hi, and welcome to Strength to Strength Sisters. The vision of S2S Sisters is to encourage women to be catalysts in advancing the kingdom through biblical teaching, testimonies of faithful women, and thought-provoking discussions. This is a women's-only call, and this morning or afternoon, depending on where you're living, we are excited to welcome Rachel Wenger.

She is going to be giving a bit of her testimony. The title of her talk is "Knowing the Hero: While Your Whole Life Depends on the Story You're In." So at the end of the call, we're going to be doing a Q&A. We just ask that you turn your videos on. We love to see your faces.

If you don't speak and your video is on, you will not be on the recording at all. And this call is recorded. It'll be available later on. And yeah, I'm very excited to introduce Rochelle to you. I'm so excited to hear about what God is doing in her life. So a little about her. Rochelle comes from a family of nine children and considers that peer group one of the biggest blessings of her life. She has lived in Nigeria since 1997, serving in linguistics, Bible translation, and translator training.

So before I pass over the call, first, I'll just mention Rochelle's having some internet connecting difficulties. So her video is off right now. Her signal is stronger when it's off. So just so you know, it's not your screen or your computer. Her video camera is off right now. But with that said, I would like to pray, and then I'll pass it over to her.

Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you for this day. Father, I thank you for these women and sisters that are on this call and the ones that are going to be listening to it in the future. Heavenly Father, I pray that we can glorify your name in this platform. And I pray that you would be with Rochelle as she shares. I pray that you would bless her for her willingness to come on. I pray, Father, that through this, their women would be moved or touched and enlightened and motivated to serve you better. Heavenly Father, I pray that the technology here would work properly. I pray that Rochelle's internet connection would be strong for the remainder of the call.

And I pray, Father, that we can be diligent daughters of yours and spread your word and serve your kingdom. And this I pray in the wonderful name of Jesus. Amen. All right, Rochelle, I'll pass it over to you. Welcome.

Thank you so much. It's good to be with you all. Yes, sorry that I am appearing just as a gray head and shoulders there. I am in a village in West Africa, and it's amazing that we have as good internet service as we do here, but it doesn't quite hold up to have live video coverage through Zoom very reliably. So sorry about that.

What I want to talk about is the story that we're in, and of course, the central person in the story who is God. And I would like to ask if you were to describe God, what are the top five things that you would mention?

In fact, if you have a pencil and paper, just write down, if you're describing God, what are the top five things that you would mention? I'll give you a few seconds, a minute or so to write that down.

Okay, well, I won't ask you to tell me what all you wrote down, but we'll be coming back to that later on in the evening or afternoon for you.

The most important thing about a person is what comes to their mind when they think of God. And our perceptions of God affect everything, everything, everything in our whole life.

When I was—I play a grand piano. You know, I've been a missionary now for how many years? It's like 25, 26 years, something like that. But for a lot of my life, even on the mission field, I had a struggle with whether God actually loved me. Even talking about the question always reduced me to tears. Sure, the Bible said God loved the world. Sure, Jesus had died for everybody, but I was just an infinitesimal member of the crowd.

He sacrificed himself for the great, miserable mass of humanity. He died for the crowd, but did he love me personally? Sure, Paul said he loved me and gave himself for me, but Paul was special after all. And what biblical evidence was there that he cared about me?

And during that same period, I also struggled with motivation to righteousness. I had always wanted to do right because it was right, but I was finding that motivation hopelessly flabby in combating sinful desire. And the question, why even bother? You know, who cares what's right? was stalking at the edges of my mind.

And I was reading a book by A.W. Tozer and was struck with his exhortation to ask God to teach us to love him more. And so I began praying this, "God, teach me to love you more." And a few days later, I was bowled over by the sudden realization of his love for me. And it went like this. Why would I—why would a person, and why would I be sent to hell? Well, obviously, I had sinned and fallen short of God's glory.

I, Rochelle Wenger, stood condemned before the high court of the universe for a particular list of crimes, and on judgment day, I would personally stand to answer before God for them. So on what basis was it that I believed that I was going to heaven? Because I did.

And I realized the reason that I believe that I'm going to heaven is because Jesus took the punishment for all those crimes I committed. Those sins for which I would personally and individually have been sentenced to hell, he suffered for in my place.

My whole personal individual list of sins, he paid the penalty for those. He knows my name. And with that realization that he cared for me so much that he took the punishment for all the things I have done, my heart was overwhelmed with his love for me and responded with love for him.

So my prayer to learn to love him more was answered through seeing his love for me. And since that time, the issue of whether or not God loves me is not a throbbing ache that reduces me to tears. He's proved that he does.

And a completely unexpected result of all this was motivation for doing right.

Doing right for right's sake is ultimately too feeble a motivation. But when you're in love, what could be more desirable than pleasing the one you love?

You know, everything hangs on what story we think we're characters in. If we know that God created a wonderful world with humanity as his regents to rule the world for him, and that even though both the world and the regents had been badly damaged by evil, God himself has, through Jesus, launched a rescue mission, a mission of restoration that neither hell nor high water can thwart. And he's going to set the world right so that at last his eternal purpose of joy and fellowship with a glorious creation can be accomplished. Who would miss the chance to be part of that?

But there are a lot of other narratives out there, and being a character in one of those is quite a different matter. And in fact, you see the problem with multiple narratives right from the beginning, right back in the beginning of Genesis.

God creates a perfect world. I mean, it's perfect. There's no sadness. There's no death. There's no sickness. There's no marital tension. There's none of that. It's a perfect world.

And the snake comes. And what does he say? You're kidding. I can't believe it. God told you you couldn't eat from the trees of the garden?

What's he saying?

He's casting doubt on God's goodness, on God's generosity. And then when Eve says, "Well, no, we can eat from all the trees in the garden. There's just one that he told us we can't because if we eat it, we'll die." So of course, there's a good reason. He says, "You won't die. God knows that when you eat it, you're going to be wise. You're going to be like him." That's why he doesn't want you to eat it.

What's he saying? God isn't really as generous as you think. You have to look out for yourself.

He doesn't want what's best for you. You've got to get what's best for you.

And of course, humanity chose to believe the snake instead of God, and we see the devastating consequences up to today.

But God promised someone who would crush the snake and have his heel crushed.

And so as you follow the story through of how indeed the world gets worse and worse and gets destroyed, and eventually God calls Abraham and promises to bless the entire world through his family.

Somehow, Abraham is part of God's plan to get the world back on track. And what's very interesting in the call to Abraham, God says, "Leave your country. Leave your father's family. I'm going to bless you. I'm going to make you a blessing. I'm going to make your name great. I'll bless whoever blesses you. Curse whoever curses you." What's interesting about this is that grace precedes obedience.

God tells him, "Go to the land of Canaan." And he hasn't even gone yet, and God gives him all these blessings. And then it says that Abraham did what God said. He got up and heated for Canaan. But grace precedes obedience. God poured out his blessing on Abraham even before Abraham had actually set out for Canaan, like God said.

And this is a theme that we see over and over again as we go through the Bible, that God's grace gets poured out on us, and that is then what brings obedience. So Abraham had his adventures and his descendants end up in Egypt, and God has compassion on them. It says that he remembered his promise, and he went to rescue them to defeat the Egyptian gods. It's very interesting. His showdown with the Egyptian gods, you know, the Nile god, God shows that he's got more power than the Nile god, and the frog goddess, God has more power than the frog goddess, and the sun god, God can beat him at his own game.

And so God is revealing himself as somebody who's very different from what everybody thinks. I mean, Egypt is the superpower of the day, and the Hebrews are slaves, upstart nobodies. They're wretched Asiatics, as the Egyptians like to call wandering nomads.

And their God is so powerful that he can beat up the superpowers' gods, which is pretty impressive. Well, then a lamb's Passover, and God has the Israelites put the blood of the lamb on their doors so that the destroying angel skips their house, and God protects them.

And then when Pharaoh throws them out, God defeats Pharaoh's military machine by dumping it into the Red Sea and rescues the slaves once and for all, and takes them out to Sinai, where he makes a covenant with them and gives them the gift of the Torah, the law.

And note again, in the Exodus passage where he gives them the law, how grace precedes obedience. He says, "I am the God who brought you out of Egypt. So now, this is what I want you to do." Look at that. He's already rescued them. He's already set them free from the bondage, already rescued them from Pharaoh's regime. His grace has reached out and rescued them, and now he says, "Do this."

So once again, the grace and then obedience theme comes through.

And then he migrates with them through the desert, camps with them, and is patient with them even when they are stubborn and even when they serve other gods. And the serving other gods is not just God being snippy.

The other gods that were on offer in the ancient Near East were vicious and cruel, and to serve those gods meant to embrace evil and injustice and oppression and cruelty. And God rejects all of that and calls his people to a completely different kind of worship.

He calls them to be like him. You know, he says, "Be holy like I am holy." He's completely different from these cruel, vicious other gods. He's good, and he wants them to be like him. I'm involved in Bible translation, and one of the mother tongue translators that I'm working with said to me, "Reading the Old Testament in minute detail has changed my whole life because I see how kind God is." In the religion that I came out of, I constantly heard that you have to be careful and avoid sin, or God will cast you into hell.

And when I became a Christian in the churches, I heard a lot of things pretty much that same thing. But as I'm reading through the Old Testament, I see over and over again how patient God is with his people. They do horrible things, and it makes him angry, but he doesn't abandon them.

They're unfaithful like Hosea's wife, and he faithfully comes after them. They're stupid and ungrateful, and he still loves them. He punishes them, but the goal is to rescue them. He said, "I'm realizing that the things that I used to do that I knew were wrong were rooted in not really trusting God, but now that I'm starting to understand what he's actually like, I can trust him."

He too had been believing the snake's lie, that, "Yeah, you can't quite trust God. You know, you have to look out for yourself. He's not out for what's best for you, and he might get you, yes, if you're bad enough, so you have to watch your own tail because he's not watching yours." No, no, no, no, that's not true. I know just what he means. The paradox is that it's the kindness of God that leads to repentance.

Fear of hell and love of God are two roots that grow into very different trees.

So then we have a very interesting passage, Exodus 33 and 34. In fact, if you have a Bible, please turn there. We have where the children of Israel have just abandoned true worship for the worship of the golden calf, had a wild orgy. Moses has come down from the mountain. There's been a plague, and he says, "What do we do now?" God says, "I'm not even going to go up with you to Canaan." And Moses says, "Oh, no, this is not going to work." So Moses goes out to the tent, and God comes and talks to Moses in the tent.

And Moses says to God in verse 18 of chapter 33, "Please show me your glory." Moses has realized that God is so different from the Egyptian gods, and he wants to know more of who God is, and he realizes that God is glorious, and he wants to see it. He's hungry, but God says, "I will make all my goodness pass before you, but you can't see my face. No, it would kill you.

You can't. But I'll put you on the rock in a crack, and while my glory passes by, I'll cover you with my hand, and then take away my hand, and you can see my back parts, but you can't see my face because it would kill you."

And so then he says, "So what you do, cut out two tablets of stone, come up on the mountain, and I'll give you a replacement for the tablets of stone that you broke when the children of Israel were having their fling with the golden calf.

And I'll give you a replacement for that there on the mountain." So Moses cuts out two more tablets of stone, gets up early, and goes up on to Sinai, and God comes down and speaks to him. And this is very interesting.

Here we have God revealing his glory to Moses, answering Moses' request from 33:18. Yes, Moses can't see him, but God is giving him a glimpse of his glory by this explanation.

He says, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and children's children to the third and fourth generation."

Okay, so I want us to look at verse 6. Notice how God sums himself up with several adjectives.

The five top things he mentions,

it depends on what translation you have, but something down the lines of tender and kind, patient, completely loyal, and faithful. That's how he sums himself up. I don't know how similar or how dissimilar that is from the five things that you wrote down, but it's very interesting that this is how God sums himself up. Those are the words he uses to describe himself.

Look at verse 7. This is another interesting thing. What is his nature? He says that he keeps mercy for a thousand generations, forgives iniquity and transgression and sin, doesn't clear the guilty, visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and children's children to the third and fourth generation.

So it's not symmetrical. If people oppose God, the repercussions for that go on for three or four generations.

But for those who love him, as it says in the parallel passage, those repercussions go on for a thousand generations.

You can see which one God wants to do, which one he loves to do. He gets tired of the punishment very quickly, and he never gets tired of going on and on and on and on with blessing. I mean, a thousand generations, what is that? 30,000 years, something like that. The world hasn't been around that long, right?

There was a day a while back when Jennifer, who I live with, asked me how I would describe God and said, "Whew, that reminds me of when I was a child once, and I was going to describe my mother in my journal, and I found myself uncharacteristically at a loss for words, because with anyone else, I could list off their strengths and weaknesses, their faults and virtues, but my mother was so off the charts good that I didn't even have the vocabulary for it."

And actually, we have on our wall this verse, Exodus 34:6, God's self-revelation to Moses. We have it in Hebrew, the description, "El Rachon Chanun, Erech HaPaim V'Rav Chased Ve'Emet," a God who is tender and kind, patient, completely loyal, and faithful.

And Jennifer pointed to the plaque and said, "Look, God is like Rudolph Weiner, just infinitely more so." And it brought tears to my eyes because it's true. Tender, kind, patient, completely loyal, and faithful. I couldn't sum her up better than that. And that is what God is like. God is like my mother, just infinitely more so.

The book of Exodus actually is very interesting in this regard. It has first one of its heroes, Pharaoh, Moses, and then its main villain, Pharaoh, found its theme nicely. Who is God? So Moses asks it first, and then Pharaoh asks it later on. And the whole book of Exodus is an exploration of that question.

He's the one who hears groaning and has mercy. He's the one who heeds oppression and judges it. He's the one who abandons punishment after three or four generations but keeps up rewards for 30,000 years. He's the one who overthrew all the gods of the world's superpower and showed that its "divine king" was just putty in his hands. He's the one who doesn't tolerate idolatry among his people, but he's patient and forgiving. He's the one who rescued his people from slavery and destroyed the slave owners. He's the one who's so terrifyingly glorious that he can't even be represented by an image.

He's the one who's so holy and so other and so utterly different from sorted humanity that he can hardly stand close to them, and it's frankly dangerous to be close to him, and yet who made a way for it to happen.

And in fact, that latter part is a basic outline of the plot of the book with God coming down from heaven and making arrangements to live with Israel and the plan almost getting scrapped due to idolatry and then getting the plan back on track. And finally, in the final chapter, God arriving to live with them in the tabernacle at last.

Now, this gets picked up in the New Testament very interestingly. I was a while back sitting out on the hill. I found actually that to sit quietly in the evenings for maybe half an hour or something, just me and God down on the hill, is one of the most helpful things that I have ever done. Sometimes I pray, sometimes I just sit there with him.

And it has been hugely helpful in getting my focus to be on God throughout the day. So I was sitting on the hill, and I said to God, "Show me your glory." And just like Moses said, I said, "Show me your glory and help me to help others see your glory."

And John 1 flashed into my mind. Now, John 1, what does that have to do with it? Well, it's very interesting actually, because John 1 is a sequel, really. You know, John 1, verses 14 to 18, years ago they seemed to me just sort of like a string of unconnected nuggets.

But actually, they're perfectly clear and coherent as a sequel to what we just looked at in Exodus 33 and 34, especially when you start looking at the terminology. It's clearly intended to be a sequel to that.

Moses begged to see God's glory, and God told him, "Yeah, I'll reveal a bit of it to you, but I can't show you my face because such an overload of glory would kill you." And a major part of the revelation that he did give Moses, which turns out to be a repeated theme all the way then throughout the Old Testament, is that he's "Rav Chased Ve'Emet," completely loyal and faithful, or different translations say abundant in goodness and truth, or filled with unfailing love and faithfulness. And John translates it into Greek as of kindness and truth, "Kleres Charitos Ealetias."

So John, his announcement runs like this. John 1, verse 14.

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." What's he saying? He's saying that what Moses never got to see, what he only vaguely glimpsed and heard described, we have seen.

God has made a way at last for us to see it. The glory of the one who is abundant in goodness and truth made its tabernacle among us, its human body. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The word that's used there is actually that he tabernacled among us. It's the same word that was used in the Septuagint for the tabernacle in the wilderness.

So God came and dwelt in a tabernacle among us. The tabernacle was the body of Jesus. We were never able to see God's glory, or Moses was never able to, but now we get to see it in Jesus.

So verse 15, John, this is John the Baptist, people were witnessing to him and cried out saying, "This was he of whom I said to you, 'Comes after me, is preferred before me, for he was before me.'" Well, yes, of course, Jesus was before John because Jesus was the one who revealed himself to Moses on the mountain. This abundance of goodness and truth reaches all of us. One act of grace and goodness that we heard about back in Exodus has been superseded by another. Better yet, and what is that? Verse 17. "The law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."

Yes, the Torah, the law, via Moses was a gift, but grace and truth himself, via King Jesus, is here in person. Verse 18. "No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him."

Yeah, Moses wasn't able to see God, and nobody else was either, but the one and only God in the Father's bosom has revealed him at last.

So yeah, the Bible tells a long, tightly woven, astounding story from Genesis to Revelation, and we've only touched on a few of the bits of it, but it's a story of a wonderful creator who made a wonderful world and sees it in trouble and comes to its rescue.

And that rescue was launched with the death and resurrection of Jesus. Yes, it's a long-term adventure, and it sometimes looks like it's going the wrong way, just like the outcome of World War II in Europe was decided on D-Day, but more Americans were killed in the next 11 months finishing the mop-up operation than in all the rest of the war put together.

The outcome of the war for the universe was decided at the death and resurrection of Jesus, and that's the story we're part of. The story of God's beautiful eternal purpose being achieved for Earth. We're just a little part of the mop-up operation, and the narrative makes a difference.

And who you think is in charge? Who's the hero of the story? We're not hunkering down in the face of burgeoning evil waiting to escape the mess. No, God's kingdom has invaded the rebel world, and he has given me, he has given us the privilege of joining up.

And just like after D-Day, everybody knew that the game was up for the Nazis. Everybody knew that VE Day was coming.

We know that the final victory is coming, even though the paroxysms of the dying Nazi regime might be vicious. We know that the victory is coming, and we get to be a tiny part of God's project to bring his kingdom on Earth as it is in heaven.

We know that King Jesus has won the decisive battle, and he will ultimately set everything in the universe to right. Why he would want a clumsy fool like me to be part of the operation is a wonder to me, but since he does, who would want to miss the opportunity?

So yes, it makes a difference whether you know what story you're in and who is the hero at the center of the story. What's he like? One of the translators that I work with, one of the mother tongue translators, said to me, "I'm so grateful for how God has changed me over the past year. It used to be that when people wronged me, I would resent them. And now when I'm wronged, I find that just doesn't have a hold on me. I don't brood on what they did. Instead, I'm reminded of how much God has forgiven me."

And in fact, there was somebody who was urging him to cut off relationship with somebody that was obnoxious. And he said, "Oh, I know he's hard to get along with. I mean, he humiliated me in front of other people, but what I've learned about God, as I've been reading the Old Testament recently, is how he doesn't cut people off. He keeps giving them chance after chance after chance. So I'm going to pray for this man, and I'm not going to cut him off." And that actually reminds me of a chat I was having with somebody from another religion in which he was thinking about the possibility of coming to Jesus, but worrying that he wouldn't be able to live up to Jesus' standards.

And I said, "I get the impression that you think that until and unless you're capable of carrying out Jesus' teachings, you can't follow Jesus." And he said, "Yes, that's correct." And I said, "I have some very good news for you. Jesus invites sinners. That means people whose hearts are hopelessly at odds with his character. Folks who are weak and fearful and hateful and incapable of doing anything really good. He doesn't ask you to fix yourself up before presenting yourself to him. He invites you to come mess and all, and your job is to surrender to the king. You know that urge, that drive to earn favor instead of surrendering to the favor we're so scandalously unworthy of.

That is really hard. But it's only in standing on that favor that we can actually change into the people that God intends us to be. We receive his grace, and that empowers us to be obedient. And God's patience through that process astounds me. God doesn't have just limited middle-class grace. He has immeasurable riches of grace, as the apostle said. It's infinite. My friend, who's thinking about whether or not to follow Jesus, still hesitates and says, "Yes, it's incomparably beautiful, but what if it's not true?" And I said, "You know, the bottom line is you don't believe that God is really that good. All powerful and all wise, oh sure, yes. Good and merciful, yeah, yeah.

Loving, yes, yes, yes. But to lower himself to become a human being, to ask us to welcome any wretch who repents, let alone 70 times 7." You know, God told us, Jesus told his followers to forgive 70 times 7. God forgives 70 times 7. That's how he is. No, this friend of mine, he thinks God's kindness is limited kindness.

And that is so typically human. But countering our notion of limited middle-class kindness is a major theme of the Bible all the way from Genesis to Revelation. Our dark notions of God, which are uncannily reminiscent of what the snake was insinuating in Genesis 3, those dark notions of him keep us aloof from him and keep guilt instead of gratefulness as the driving force of our lives. And over and over and over, in a thousand variations, Scripture keeps repeating the surprising theme of God, who is God, the Lord, tender and kind, patient, and completely loyal and faithful. That is more and more and more. As I grasp it, it's so huge. I'm still just beginning to grasp it.

But it's transformative in every area of my life. And that is what I wanted to say tonight. Thank you. Thank you so much, Rachelle. That was a wonderful talk.

It definitely spoke to me personally. We are going to open it up for a question and answer right now. So think about some questions that you may have or just comments. We do ask that you turn your video on if you want to ask something if you're on the Zoom meeting. We'd love to see your lovely faces.

And you can also send in questions through the chat box if you prefer as well.

One thing you said, Rachelle, was you read a book from A.W. Tozer, and in it, it said, "Teaching us to love him more," or "Teach us, have God teach us to love him more." I love that prayer. I'm definitely going to pray that. But you also said, "When you are in love, what is more desirable than doing something for love?" And I think that's really great because, of course, I strive for righteousness and always fall short. You know, you can have definitely better days than others. But it's something that I struggle with a bit. I'm more of a perfectionist type of person. And it can be hard, especially on hard days. And I just, I love that.

It really spoke to me that I could just do this for the love of God, not because I'm trying to follow his rules or things like that. Because I do love rules. I like things like that, a nice tidy box. But just to do it out of love, what a wonderful thing to think about.

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I think that's really going to help me to be a better wife and to be a better mother and be a better person for God. Does anyone else have a question or a comment?

Every once in a while through the years, I have heard of a phrase that has really, really shaped me. And I heard one today. So we just have teenage children. And it feels like I've entered another season of life where I am kind of looking at my life. I have always thought that half the work of training and raising children is, first of all, working on yourself. And I still believe that. But I heard a phrase that says that she said, "He's like my mother, yet infinitely more so." And I thought, "I am going to take that phrase, and I'm going to remember it throughout the years." I love, love that. I want my children to say that of me someday.

Or today, but in the future.

There's a question here in the chat for you, Rachelle. It says, "What advice could I give to someone who feels that it's not worth it or that their life is a failure?" I would say, "Show them Jesus. Show them the God all the way from Genesis to Revelation, who reaches out in love." And yes, of course, there can be both failings on our side, and there can also be things that other people do that are out of our control that means that everything that we try to do gets stymied and it doesn't work out. But what God is trying to do, he's shaping us. And he's making us into the, you know, this little life that we have is very, very short, and he's making us into the people that we're going to be forever and ever and ever.

And so as we respond to the things that he allows into our lives and become the kind of people that are shaped by his character, that is not failure. That is becoming who we're going to need to be forever and ever.

I say hallelujah to what you shared, Rachelle. I can definitely relate to growing up in an environment where you didn't sin out of fear because you didn't want to go to hell, to finding God in a real and powerful way, and in a very personal relationship with him. And I just praise the Lord for that. And I thank you for sharing in that way today all those beautiful truths and the beautiful thing about him. And I know this is just such a common verse about God using, oh, I can't think of it right now, but how he uses the brokenness of our past to shape us beautifully for the future. And I just, I praise him for that.

And to me, that shows such a God of mercy. And also, I feel like, you know, what you shared, there's so many things to learn about God. And what I feel like is, it seems like the more you learn about him, the less you know. Like, you learn more of his depth and ways, and yet you still see that there's so much that you don't know. And I just, it just makes me excited. So yeah, God bless you for sharing. Well, while we wait to see if there's another question or comment, another thing that you said was that we get to be a tiny part of God's project to bring his kingdom. And I think that's such a wonderful thing to keep in mind because our lives can be so big and important to us and our little, our daily lives, the things that we do in our home and the things that upset us or frustrate us can be so big.

And we need to remember what's important. We need to remember that we are part of God's project. And yes, I, you know, God does care about these little things. I understand that and believe that. But what really matters, and that's being Jesus Christ to those around us and having a relationship with God and just being who he wants us to be.

Yeah, just to keep in mind what story we're in and who's the hero. And that's so wonderful because, of course, God is the hero of the story, and he is just so wonderful. I love the verse that you brought us to, Exodus 34:6. I think I also need to type that out and have it hanging in my house as a reminder, especially as a reminder of what type of person I want to be. And these are things that I want to be. So that's such a beautiful thing. We serve such a wonderful God, and I'm so happy to be his daughter.

Well, thank you so much, Rachelle, for your time today and the talk that you put out there. It's definitely a glory to God. And yeah, very, it spoke to me so much today. And I thank you very much for your willingness to be on here today.

I would like to talk about the next month's talk. So Strength to Strength Sisters, we have a talk usually the first Saturday of the month. And our next talk is by Anita Yoder. And her talk is "God's Design for Mentoring: A Simple Term for Older Women Teaching the Younger." So I'm very excited to have her on. It'll be at 3 o'clock p.m. Eastern Standard Time next Saturday, April 6th. So join us there. Rachelle, can I ask that you close the meeting in prayer, please? Sure.

Let's pray.

Thank you, Heavenly Father, for your goodness that runs over every day. So much goodness you pour into our lives. Thank you for your amazing love and patience and kindness and tenderness to us. And for how much deeper it is than we can even see yet.

And we ask for you to open our eyes more and more for you to show us your glory and to help other people see your glory. Thank you for each of the ladies on this call. We ask for you to bless and guide and protect each one. To enable each one to know the truth about you, to not believe the snake's lies, and to love you more and more and to have that love and the gratefulness for who you are, be the guiding force in life.

We ask that you would enable us to be living our lives as a little piece of your kingdom operation. We want to see your kingdom come. We want to see your will done on this earth just as it is in heaven. We're looking forward eagerly for that day.

Come, Lord Jesus. Thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Have a nice evening. You too. Bye. Walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him, being fruitful in every good work.