Good morning and Merry Christmas to everyone. It's good to be in the House of the Lord for those who don't know I know most of you do but I'm John I'm Pastor Harris's eldest son and I've been away for the last four years pursuing higher education and recently moved back to renovate our home and be with our families and also attend this church. And one of the things I've realized after living in different places over the last few years is that

Grace Bible is actually a very unique and extraordinary place and it's something

growing up I think I took for granted. I thought this is just normal life, but it's really not.

And it's good to be frequently reminded, I think, of that.

The extraordinary blessings that God bestows on us because we have a tendency to forget those things,

to take them for granted.

It's not our nature to do that with things that we are familiar with.

So let me say a few things about this church before we examined the passage under

consideration. First we are blessed here at Grace Bible Church to enjoy accurate

and uncompromising preaching and teaching and this is a very rare quality especially in the day and age where most pastors

are more concerned with their own reputations than the precious souls under their watchful care.

And I've seen this firsthand.

We are also blessed to be part of the bond of believers who love each other.

Loving each other is something that it's not everywhere I thought that was just the way that every

church behaved and all Christians should behave that way but that's not always the

case and we do love each other here as expressed through the ministry and the fellowship that we enjoy being in each other's company.

Using our spiritual gifts, not every church has the high percentage of people that attend using their spiritual gifts on a weekly

basis and involving themselves and each other in their own lives.

And one other thing I didn't note this but as I'm thinking about it also a church that's

not willing to sacrifice the truth when it even comes to shutting the church down.

We still want to meet and it's because of those two things because we love each other.

We see it as necessary to be together, just like a family needs to be together and we know that Jesus Christ has commanded the

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