Get Away from Here

Great to see everybody this morning. And, yeah, I had never even heard of George Lyle myself until the IMB sent me an email a couple months ago. Yeah, and Donnie and I kind of went back and forth watching those videos. Really cool to learn about a guy that went as the forerunner, the very first. There’s always got to be a first, and George Lyle is that for us. So super grateful for his legacy, especially as former IMB personnel. I feel incredibly indebted to that man. So excited about today, excited about what God’s doing, excited about what He is up to in the life of our church.

This morning, as we continue our series through the Gospel of Mark, we’re going to take a bit of what’s going to feel like a bit of a left turn. And I just want to ask a question. Anybody in the room believe in demons? There we go. Okay, that was the way to quiet it down right there. Okay. Now, I think all of us have varying perspectives when it comes to the spiritual, supernatural realm, when it comes to angels and demons and Satan and all those things.

There’s a moment that happened in Iowa over the Christmas holiday. We’ll go ahead and put the picture on the screen. There’s a guy. His name is Michael Cassidy. Anybody recognize the name Michael Cassidy? Okay. So Michael Cassidy is a, he’s the guy on the right. He lives in Iowa, and he saw something on the left in the Iowa State House that he could not tolerate. That you might recognize that is a depiction of an idol that the local Satanist temple put in the Iowa State House as part of an interdenominational Christmas display of faith. So the Iowa State House said, hey, Baptists, do your thing. Catholics, do your thing. Satanist temple, do your thing. And that guy on the right, a professed believer, he was just working there. He said, I cannot tolerate this. And he takes the head off that thing and throws it down. He’s been charged with criminal misdemeanor against free speech in the state of Iowa for what he did to that depiction of an idol. Crazy, right?

I think we all come into here with a variety of perspectives on the spiritual realm and on the demonic. But here’s the deal. It is very in vogue to be part of the demonic and to be part of the dark in our culture these days. C.S. Lewis, he foresaw this, though. And he said this about spirits and the unseen realm and demons and all those things. The quotes could be on the screen for you. He says this, there are two equal and opposite heirs into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. And the other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both heirs, the demons themselves. And they hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.

I think we all come in here this morning and we might fall into two opposite but equal heirs when it comes to the demons in the spiritual realm. We might say, hey, none of that stuff is real. Don’t pay any attention to it. Nothing ever goes bump in the night. And others of us would say everything that goes bump in the night is spiritual. You have to acknowledge that. And there’s a demon under every napkin and Satan drives every event of the world. Now, both of those are wrong. But here’s the deal. The Bible assumes the spiritual realm. And we’re going to study from a moment in Mark’s gospel in chapter 5 today that’s going to talk on this explicitly. So how about this? We’re going to pray. We’re going to open God’s word. And we’re going to see what does Jesus have to say about the demonic. Okay? Let’s pray.

Lord, thank you. God, thank you for another day that we get to come here. Like Caroline said, we get to be in the house of the Lord. God, I pray for myself right now. Lord, I really want to handle your word well. Every week I feel weight with this. But for some reason, God, this week I feel a little bit more of that. So, Lord, I’m asking you to help me. Jesus, you say that you are the light of the world. You say that he who is in us as believers is stronger than he who is in the world. You say that you’re with us always. Thank you. God, I pray that we will leave here today not Scared of the demonic, not scared of the dark. But, Lord, that we would walk in the light. That we would spread a little bit of that light into the lives of others around us this week. Lord, we do love You. And it’s in Your name we pray. Amen.

Well, how about this? While I’m continuing to talk, open up your Bibles. Turn them on to Mark chapter 5. We’re going to be in verses 1 through 20. It will be on the screen here in a second. But I want to catch you up to speed. So, last week we studied this moment where Jesus had had a full day of teaching. Now, there had been this big crowd of people that had come to Him. And He had spent what the Bible says all day teaching them in parables, explaining the kingdom of God to them. And Jesus, fully tapped into the human experience, is tired from a day of work. So, He says, I need to get away from these people. I need to have some rest. So, hey, disciples, jump in the boat with Me. We’re going to go across to the other side. We’re going to get away from here.

So, they’re in the boat. It’s the middle of the night. And then this storm comes up. And there’s such a bad storm that these professional fishermen, these sailors, are scared out of their minds. And they wake up Jesus saying, don’t You care? We’re about to die. Don’t You care? And then Jesus just quiets down that storm. And He makes everything go calm. And the disciples that were afraid of the storm become terrified of the One that quieted the storm. So, it’s middle of the night. They get to the other side. And then this moment happens. Mark 5, starting in verse 1.

They came to the other side of the sea, to the region of the Gerasenes. As soon as Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an unclean spirit came out of the tombs and met Him. He lived in the tombs, and no one was able to restrain him anymore, not even with a chain. Because he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but had torn the chains apart and smashed the shackles. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day, among the tombs and on the mountains, he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones.

When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and knelt down before Him. And he cried out with a loud voice, what do You have to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg You before God, don’t torment me. For Jesus had told him, come out of the man, you unclean spirit. What’s your name? Jesus asked him. My name is Legion, he answered Him, because we are many. And he begged Him earnestly not to send them out of the region.

A large herd of pigs was there feeding on the hillside. The demons begged Him, send us to the pigs so that we may enter them. So Jesus gave them permission and the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs. The herd of about 2,000 rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned there. The men who tended them ran off and reported it in the town and the countryside and the people went to see what had happened.

They came to Jesus, saw the man who had been demon-possessed sitting there dressed in his right mind, and they were afraid. Those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and told about the pigs. Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their region. As He was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged Him earnestly that he might remain with them. Jesus did not let him, but told him, go home to your own people and report to them how much the Lord has done for you and how He has had mercy on you. So he went out and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And they were all amazed.

Man, what a bewildering story from the Bible, right? You might be able to sense why I would have just a little bit of nervousness when I’m preaching this. Because it’s just an odd story if nothing else. And it deals with something that I would say few of us interact with on a very regular basis. But what’s very clear in this passage, and this is your main point today, is that Jesus’ authority directs and His mercy transforms. Jesus’ authority directs and His mercy transforms. Now we first see Jesus’ authority directing by how He confronts the demonic. That’s what happens in verses 1 through 5. You see, Jesus leaves the Jewish territory and He goes to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. And He lands in this place called the Gerasenes. Or in verse 20, what’s called the Decapolis. Now this is the first time in Mark’s gospel that Jesus leaves Jewish territory. This is the first time that He gets outside of the ethnic Israel area. Now, there’s still some Jews that live here, but it’s Greek control. It’s Greek culture. So Jesus gets there in the middle of the night. And then this moment happens. So Jesus came here for a reason, right? Because Jesus is the one that’s leading the whole situation. We saw that last week. Jesus came to confront the demonic. Now, we see that the demonic, the demons, wanted three things for this man. They wanted to defile him, to deface him, and then to destroy him.

Now, the defiling, you see that in verse 2. It says that there’s a man with an unclean spirit, and he lives in tombs. For the average Jewish person, the presence of the unclean spirit and the place of the tombs would make somebody ceremonially unclean. If this man had been a Jew, he would not be allowed to go to the temple. He would not be allowed to worship. He would not be allowed to participate in ethnic Jewish life. So the image of God in this man would be defiled. Because of the presence of the unclean inside of him and the place of the unclean where he lived. He would have been spiritually dirty. We’ve all been able to interact with that on some level. Not just being defiled, though. The man also would be defaced. Verses 3 and 4. You see that because he lives in these tombs. And I get that because the man is all alone. Now you see, God, God did not, He did not make us to live alone. God Himself lives in perfect, unending community within Himself. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit have always lived as a perfectly harmonized and loving community. And God made us in His image. Which means our relationships are supposed to be loving and harmonious. We’re supposed to be deeply connected to one another. That’s how God has made us. But this man lives by himself. Man, I just want to say, if I can make another plug for Sunday school. Don’t live by yourself. Come. You’re going to be here anyways at 11 o’clock. Come at 10 and participate in Body of Life here. Because God did not make you to live alone. And this man was not made to live alone. He had a natural need for relationship, for acceptance, to be loved, and to give love. But instead, he had suspicion toward him, fear of him, lowliness for him. That’s what this man lived in. And it’s not just that he was living in the tombs, but he had often been bound with shackles and chains. But he had even been tearing those things off. I have to imagine that occasionally somebody went out to the tombs. They would get up enough courage, and they’d try to lock the guy up. Maybe try to feed him, bathe him, talk with him. But they gave up on that a long time ago. This man had been left by himself. You’re not going to visit grandpa’s grave. You’re not going to visit your great aunt’s burial place because there’s the guy with the demon there. This whole area has been ruined by the presence of the demonic. And ultimately, the demonic wants to destroy this man. He’s out there crying out with a loud voice, cutting himself on the rocks, trying to take his life. That would be the purpose there, trying to commit suicide. The demons wanted to murder this man through an apparent suicide by cutting himself on the stones. That’s what Jesus came to confront. Jesus left the safe harbor of the Jewish territory to go to this graveyard in the middle of the night so that He could confront this demon. So there Jesus is, face to face with the demoniac on the beach at midnight. A man that’s defiled, defaced, and will be destroyed by the satanic forces that have possessed him.

But we see Jesus’ authority directs the situation also by conquering the destructive. Look at verse 6. Why would the demon come and kneel down before Jesus? Is that a posture of pride and strength? Nah. It’s a posture of submission. It’s a posture even of maybe Humility. I think there’s a physical display of a spiritual reality here. Jesus is in control and the demons know it. Even the demonic recognizes Jesus’ authority. And He says something interesting in verse 7. Cries out with a loud voice. What do you have to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg You before God, don’t torment me.

Now see, that’s not worship. Nah, demons don’t worship Jesus. That’s not reverence. That’s not awe. That’s not respect even. That’s the demon trying to get control of Jesus. Now hang with me here for a second. Again, we probably don’t interact a whole lot with the demonic on this level here in Ravenel, Hollywood, Lowcountry area. We’ve been so Christianized here that I think that Satan would love for the demonic to have more societal influences than personal, relational. Now, in places where the gospel is not the dominant belief system, you interact with the spiritual on a whole other level. And this is something that’s been studied by spiritual anthropologists today. It’s something that’s been recorded for thousands of years. When you want to gain control of a spirit, you got to know its name. This is weird. It’s odd for us here.

So this guy, possessed by these demons, calls Jesus by name because he’s trying to strip Jesus of His power. Maybe like if you’re a parent and your child’s out of line and you call that child’s name, you muster up your deepest, loudest voice possible, you know. Jeremy Simmons. I never heard that growing up. I’m just giving you a tester. The demonic is trying to take control of Jesus, even though it also recognizes that Jesus is in control of it.

I think it’s fascinating in chapter 4, verse 41. The disciples are terrified of Jesus. They say, who is this? We don’t get an answer from the disciples in chapter 4, but we get an answer from the demonic in chapter 5. The demonic recognizes who Jesus is. The demonic knows exactly. This is Jesus Christ, Son of the Most High God, the promised Messiah, the one that will save God’s people, our King, and the one that will destroy us eventually. Yeah, that’s who this guy is. And they come and they kneel down before Him. The demons beg Jesus, don’t torment us. Please don’t torment us. Again, they recognized. This is who we’re dealing with here. Fascinating, right?

So this is the moment that Jesus is in. And then the ultimate reversal of power, Jesus says, what’s your name? Takes the moment back. Demon responds, legion, for we are many. If you’ve grown up in the church and heard this story talked about, or if you are a Roman history buff, you would know a legion is a group of about 4,000 to 6,000 soldiers. Now, we don’t have to know the exact number of demons inside of this man, but what you do know is that this man is not possessed by just one spiritual entity, but he was possessed by an entire troop, an entire army of unclean spirits of demons inside of this man. It would make sense then why he’s been breaking shackles and chains for years. It would make sense then why he has been trying to take his life for years because he’s trying to end the misery that’s been going on.

So Jesus says, what’s your name? Jesus gets the power. Put yourself in Jesus’ shoes. Continue to think about, it’s midnight. Jesus is on a beach. And He’s talking with this man that’s possessed by thousands of demons. Anybody in the room feel a little nervous in that moment? Anybody consider putting yourself there? I’d be. I’d be scared out of my wits. But Jesus, He’s good. He’s not scared. He’s not nervous because He knows He’s in control.

The demons start begging Jesus. They start trying to make compromises with Him. They beg Him earnestly. Don’t send us out of their region. They say, hey, we’re going to beg you, verse 12, send us into the pigs. And Jesus gives them permission. It’s ironic to me. Jesus is unafraid. His authority is driving the moment. The demons are kneeling before Him. They’re making requests of Him. They’re compromising with Him. And verse 13, Jesus says, okay, fine. Yeah, you can go into that herd of pigs. And the pigs rush down the bank. They drown in the Sea of Galilee there. Obviously, the destruction that the demons wanted for the man, they inflict on the herd of pigs.

When it comes to the demonic, we all ought to know a core truth. Jesus is the liberator and Satan is the destroyer. See, Jesus is the only hope For this man possessed by demons. And for those to be the only hope for this man possessed by demons. Today, consumed by darkness and sin, Jesus is the only hope. Only Jesus can free souls. Only Jesus can drive away darkness. Only Jesus can conquer demons. He’s the only one. He is the only hope. He is the liberator. And Satan, mind you, is a destroyer. Satan is a destroyer. He made an original lie to Eve, promising freedom and autonomy. And that lie only gave death. And through Satan, death is now in our world. The real intention that Satan has for you is always to kill, to steal, and to destroy. That is Satan. That is who he is. And that means that we must resist Him and His influence on us at all costs.

I’m not saying that you need to go to the state house and tear down images of idols erected to the glory of Satan. But I wonder what is in your life that you do need to tear down that is to the glory of Satan. Think about it this way. Any offer, temptation, or lie against Scripture is demonic. The world will tell us to live a certain way that does not line up with God’s Word. Which means there’s no such thing as a little white lie. There’s no little fudge. There’s no realm of life where we can get away with just a little bit of skirt of the truth. There’s no relationship that should not be impacted by this. There’s no desire you have that should not be tested through the filter of God’s Word first.

So to put it a little more plainly, how are you influenced by the demonic? I doubt anybody in the room has a spirit living inside of them. But we’re all going to go home and we’re going to want to use somebody, mistreat somebody. We’re going to want to talk to people in ways that don’t honor and love them. We’re going to want to deal business in ways that aren’t truthful. That’s just sin. That’s just who we are. In some way, we are all influenced by the demonic, which means Jesus must liberate us.

But here’s the good news. We’ve already seen Jesus’ authority directing this moment, but we’re also going to see His mercy transforming a man. I’m going to read verses 14 through 20 again to refresh you. They say this: The men who tended the pigs ran off and they reported it into town and the countryside. And people went to see what had happened. They came to Jesus and saw the man who had been demon-possessed sitting there, dressed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. Those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and told about the pigs. Then they began to beg Him to leave their region. As He was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged Him earnestly that he might remain with Him. Jesus did not let him, but told him, “Go home to your own people and report to them how much the Lord has done for you and how He has had mercy on you.” So the man went out and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And they were all amazed.

Jesus’ mercy transforms. You see, these pig herders are witnesses of this moment where they see, in some way, the demons are thrust out of this man. They’re sent into this herd of pigs. And the herd of pigs rushes down the steep bank and drowns in the Sea of Galilee. And those witnesses become reporters. Because they go and they tell this news. They tell this story to everybody in the region. Once again, it’s middle of the night. They’re waking people up. They’re knocking on doors. I’ve got no idea what they’re reporting. Imagine it. What’s the headline of this moment? Former demoniac cleansed. We lost a bunch of pigs in the Sea. Come check it out. There’s a man over here that’s in control of heaven and nature and even the spiritual. What are we going to do?

These reporters make all the hearers of this story become observers. Everybody in the town and in the region had heard about this moment. And then they come and they need to see for themselves. They need to see the man dressed in his right mind. They need to see the man sitting there. They need to see the man taking a sip of water like he hasn’t done in years. These people come. What do you think would be the expected response? Celebration? Some gratefulness?

Some reverence toward Jesus, the one that had done it? Maybe even bringing some of their own sick and lame to Jesus saying, “Hey, can you do for my friend what you just did for this guy?” No. Verse 17, they began to beg Him to leave their region. Obviously, they had greater fear of Jesus, the one that was the king over the demons, than they did toward the demons themselves. They had a greater value placed on that herd of pigs that no doubt would have sustained a local economy and would have fed them. No doubt they too would have felt greater comfort knowing there’s a man possessed by demons haunting the graveyard than, “Hey, there’s a miracle worker who’s got good news.”

In this moment, verse 17 is the most confusing verse of this entire story. We ought to know that Jesus can do the miraculous. We ought to know that Jesus is light. We ought to know that Satan hates us and wants to kill us and destroy us. What’s surprising, though, is that sometimes people actually resist the influence of Jesus because the influence of the demonic feels a little more appealing.

This liberated man, though, he was different. Verse 18, he doesn’t say, “Get away from here.” Verse 18 says, “Take me with you.” Obviously, he wants to go with Jesus. He’s got the heart of a disciple. He’s got the heart of somebody that knows, “I’ve been transformed. I’ve been redeemed. I’ve been made new.” He lived the truth that Paul would write about, for in Christ all are new creations. In Christ, we could become new and transformed. He lived that reality, and he just wanted to be with Jesus. He just wanted to be close to the one that had saved Him, that had set Him free. That’s just what he wanted.

But Jesus had a different idea. Jesus says, “Don’t stay with me. I want you to go home and report.” Imagine what it might have been like for this man to go home. It may have been the hardest place for him to go. Home would have been the place where all the folks that knew his lowest lows and his highest highs would have been. He may have even had a family of his own. He may have had a wife and kids. We don’t know that, but he definitely had a mommy, a mom, and a dad. He had some friends. He had some acquaintances. He had some guys that he used to work with, and he had to go home to them. He would have gone home to the people that would have seen him at his worst, and the people ultimately that gave up on him, the ones that stopped binding him in shackles and chains, the ones that stopped visiting him. Those were the ones he was supposed to go home to.

And I think for some of us in the room, this hits a little different because we want someone to come home to us, right? We want someone to come home to us that have turned their back on the Christian faith. We want someone to come home to us who no longer walks in the way that we have raised them. We want someone to come home to us that has made a royal mess of their lives. And wouldn’t we just welcome them with open arms? Wouldn’t we all, like Jesus said in the parable of Luke 15, the dad that was welcoming the younger brother home, we would run and we would embrace in tears. And we would be kissing them, saying, “Welcome home. I’m so glad to see you.”

This man was to go home and report. Tell people what I have done for you. Tell people of my transforming mercy. Imagine what this guy’s story may have been like. He may have said, “There I was, just haunting at night, doing my normal thing, just crying out, cutting myself on the rocks. All of a sudden, I see Him there, the Lord of the universe. I see Him there. I feel it there. All the demons inside of me are burning and itching at this one man. So there I am. I see Him there. And I rush down the bank and I had to get to Him. The craziest thing is, when I get there, the demons force me to take a knee and I have to submit to Him. And Jesus and the demons start talking back and forth and the demons are using my mouth, but it’s not my words because it’s the demons inside of me. I don’t know. I had to explain it later. But here’s the deal. Jesus drove all the demons outside of me. And here I am. Here I am. I’ve been cleansed. I’ve been made free. I’m whole again. It’s me, mom. It’s me, dad. It’s not Legion anymore. It’s me. That is what the man is supposed to do. Support God’s transforming mercy. The text tells us in verse 20, he went out, began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and they were all amazed. Former demon-possessed man became God-possessed, and people knew it. They knew it. It’s undeniable. Meeting Jesus changes you. Others can tell that something’s different in your life.

It’s, you know, we live here on County Line Road now, and I’ve seen already a fair amount of dead animals on the side of the road. I figure out one plus one equals two there. I know how those get on the side of the road. When an animal hits a car or an 18-wheeler going at 60 or 70 miles an hour, something happens with that animal, right? There’s some noticeable change there. I think similarly, when God’s grace impacts us full force, there is a noticeable change. But in the car example, something goes from alive to dead. When it comes to God’s grace, we go from death to life. That is what happens to us. There’s a noticeable change. In fact, the Bible says that when we meet Jesus, we take on the aroma of Christ. People ought to be able to smell us. They ought to be able to say, man, that guy Jeremy, he used to be a real suck-up. He really just used to live for people’s approval, and he just wanted people to like him. He was an okay guy, but something’s different with him. I think something about Jesus happened to him. People ought to be able to look at you and say, yeah, you know, I used to know Michael, but something’s different with Michael nowadays. Yeah, something about Jesus, I don’t know.

Here’s the deal. A watching world is curious to see if our walk matches our talk. Everybody in the world believes that what we say is not what we do. And unfortunately, a lot of us have given them ample evidence to believe that, right? If I’m honest, I have too. This man in this story, this true moment of real history, had an undeniable transformation happen to him, and he started bearing different sort of fruit. The kids up here this morning, they recited Galatians 5:22 through 23, the fruit of the Spirit. These are just signs of God’s Spirit living inside of us, I dare say, possessing us for good. We all bear fruit of some sort. Those that are indwelt by the Spirit bear the fruit of the Spirit. Those of us not yet born again bear the fruit of the flesh. Fruit of the Spirit that the kids recited, love, joy, peace, and so on. Man, that’s just the outward reality of a spiritual truth.

It’s like in Colossians chapter 1, verse 13. One of the greatest statements about what happens to somebody when they meet Jesus. I think it’ll be on the screen for us. Jesus has rescued us from the domain of darkness, transferred us into the kingdom of the Son He loves. See, Jesus is the King who is still delivering souls from the domain of darkness, and we get to join Him in that by sharing the life-changing message of the gospel. We get to be like that formerly possessed man, commissioned to go and share the good news of what God has done for us. We get to say, hey, I used to be dead, but now I’m alive. I used to be consumed by these things, but now I’ve been liberated by Jesus Christ. I used to live totally for myself and for this world, but now I get to live for Him, and I have joy, and I’ve got peace, and I’ve got gentleness and self-control now. Just let me talk with you about Jesus.

You see, Jesus’ mercy transforms us so that He can use us to fight back darkness and proclaim the excellencies of He who called us out of darkness and into His marvelous light, 1 Peter 2:9. Because here’s the deal. God made all of us to love Him forever. He made us to live in a perfect unending relationship of love and light with Him. But through the lie of Satan, darkness and death and sin have entered the world. And it’s not just realities out there that we need to pray against, that we shake a finger at, but it’s realities inside of these hearts. The Bible says that we are born spiritually dead, following the prince of the power of the air, Ephesians 2. Which means we must be liberated. But that’s the good news of the gospel. The fact that that Jesus, the light of the world, came into this dark world and said, I am going to reclaim them for myself. I am going to make them new. I am going to help them truly live again.

So Jesus dies our death that we deserve on the cross because He loved us. He didn’t just die though. He came back to life and He defeated darkness and He left it in the grave. And He now invites all of us take and see to embrace that life and to have that light, to be liberated from what binds us.

You may not be possessed by a thousand demons, but you do struggle with darkness and sin. Those are realities of our world. And Jesus would love to liberate you from them. He does that in the ultimate way by drawing us from death to life and saving us. But He also does that in the day-to-day way of helping us love Him a little bit more and live a little bit more like Him.

So if you’re not sure today, if you’re not sure that you are walking in light, if you’re not sure that you know Jesus, if you’re not sure that you’re saved, I would invite you, respond to this good news by accepting it and embracing it.

The demon-possessed man took that news and he shared it and people were amazed. We don’t know if other people were transformed. We just know people were amazed. And I would invite you, be transformed.

If there’s somebody in your life that is walking in darkness and is bound by it, they come up during the last song and I’ll pray with you for them, okay? If you are struggling with some aspect of darkness and you want prayer, come up during the last song I pray with you.

Let’s pray right now. Lord, God, I just want to say thank you. Jesus, this passage certainly doesn’t say everything there is to say about the spiritual realm, about the demonic, but it says enough for us to know that you’re good, Satan is bad, and we need to walk with you. God, I pray that you would help us today to resist him, trusting that he flees from us when we do. Holy Spirit, please continue to captivate us more and more and help us to walk with you.

Lord, I pray for our community, which certainly does have its own darkness in it. God, I’m asking that you would help us to be ambassadors of light. Lord, that we would contribute to the revitalization of the low country. God, as we proclaim the message of the gospel and help others to embrace its power and its freedom. Lord, we love you. Amen.