Welcome to culture and Christianity. There is no shortage of things to talk about. I'm privileged. I'm going to get to introduce to you a pastor, a friend of mine, one of the most influential pastors in the country. But before we get to that part of the podcast today, I want to invite you just to join me in praying for Venezuela.

You know, we sent Delta Force to Venezuela remarkable, remarkable outcome to bring Maduro back to the U.S.

A lot of chatter about the appropriateness of that. And to be candid, when I first heard that the operation was taking place,

I just kind of got quiet and said, Lord, how do we pray for this? We had service on Saturday night.

And when I finished service, a couple came up to me. I knew them. They were from Venezuela.

And they walked up and they said, we have someone that we would like you to speak to, a pastor

friend. And I thought they were getting introduced me to somebody in the congregation and they

held up their phone. They were FaceTiming a pastor from Venezuela. And he immediately began to talk

and tears streaming down his face, thanking me for what the U.S. had done to bring freedom back to Venezuela

and to give the Christian community there an opportunity that he felt like had been taken away from

them. It was really, it was startling to me. He was so unexpected, and it seems surreal to be

having a live conversation on Saturday night,

the day of the operation in Venezuela with a pastor in that country who was literally emotional

with joy and gratitude for the U.S.'s role in that.

And so what I want to invite you to do is join me in praying that freedom will come back

to the people of Venezuela. They have lived under the authoritarian rule of a Marxist, aligned with

Iran and Russia and China, and the people have suffered greatly. I don't know what the future holds,

and we never know how those things will unfold. But from the leader of the people have suffered greatly. I don't know what the future holds. And we never know how those things will unfold. But from a leadership standpoint, it took a tremendous amount of courage because the upside, while it was real, was certainly fraught with a lot of things that could have simply had a lot of blowback. And President Trump and his team made that decision anyway. So let's pray that freedom will come to the people of Venezuela and for the church in that

part of the world.

Venezuela is one of the most oil-rich, petroleum-rich nations, certainly in our hemisphere,

a Venezuela that with the freedom of the gospel could become a light that would be a huge asset to this part of the world.

So join me in those prayers.

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