Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. Today I am talking to Aaron Cotes, the wife

of Alberta pastor James Cotes. He is the pastor of Grace Life Church in Canada. He is currently

in jail in a form of solitary confinement because he refused to heed government edicts and

restricting the capacity of his church to 15%. He simply believes that according to scripture,

his responsibility is to Christ and not to the government. And that part of that responsibility

is making sure that as many people as possible can hear the gospel and to congregate with believers

in person. And so in order to properly and biblically shepherd his flock, he could not, in good

conscience, heed those government restrictions. And for that, he is in jail. And so we are going to

talk to his wife, Aaron Cotes. She is going to fill in some of the details on this situation. She's

going to tell us how we can support them and how we can pray for them and give us some updates and

what's going on. You are going to be extremely encouraged by her faith, by her faithfulness, the

faithfulness of her husband, James. You're going to be uplifted by her testimony. Now, if you're

someone a Christian who maybe has heard about this situation and you have kind of looked the other

direction and said, you know what, this isn't real persecution. This is just someone trying to be a

martyr or trying to get media attention or trying to, you know, fan the flames of conservative

outrage about government lockdowns or you have clamored to try to clarify why he is not actually

being persecuted for his faith, but he is actually just, you know, serving the, the just punishment

for violating the government's orders on COVID restrictions. I encourage you to listen to this and

to listen to her interview as openly and as graciously as you possibly can. Something that's

amazing to me is that in this time of listening and learning that we are constantly told that we

have to do, we have to heed people's lived experiences and almost elevate them to absolute truth.

When it comes to a brother in Christ, when it comes to a pastor in Canada who is being jailed

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