So before we get into our little devotional, thank you for coming. Thank you for being a part of what is going to go on Saturday. We feel we can't

do something like this on organization alone or finances alone. That this is a spiritual battle.

It's a service to the community, but it is a spiritual battle.

And we feel that we need to get on our knees before God and ask him to give us wisdom, discernment, favor, blessing, and to go before us, pray for safety, pray for weather concerns, all the details, just to bathe them in prayer before we

jump into the battle. I'm going to be sharing three verses with you tonight out of the book of

Hebrews chapter 13 very briefly. Let me read them to you. Let brotherly love continue.

Do not forget to entertain strangers,

for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels. Remember the prisoners as if chained with them,

those who are mistreated since you yourselves are in the body also.

I was thinking about somebody that I met a few years ago today.

I was thinking about him. His name was Douglas. I met him in Iraq, in Erbil, Iraq a few years back. And Douglas was a man who worked, a clergyman who worked at an IDP camp in Erbil for internally displaced persons.

After ISIS came in and ravaged that area, there were numbers of children that needed to be cared for, so he devoted his life

to caring for those children. While he was caring for them, he himself was attacked by ISIS

rebels. They beat him up mercilessly. They kicked his teeth out, but he came back and he returned. And he said,

the reason I returned and the reason I'm here is only God's love can transform people. And he said,

it's God's love that is transforming these children who would be caught in a cycle of hatred.

That's what he called it, a cycle of hatred that would last for generations.

I'm here to help break that cycle by teaching them that God loves them and letting God transform their lives

to transform the community.

So that's Douglas.

And with that in mind, these three verses that I just read are the author of Hebrews desire

to get very practical.

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