TD Jakes - Redemptive Recognition
In Genesis 42:3-8, Joseph immediately recognizes his brothers who come to Egypt for grain during the famine, but they fail to recognize him as the brother they sold into slavery; this illustrates the powerful idea of redemptive recognition—only by truly recognizing Jesus as Lord and Savior, and recognizing fellow believers as family in the Body of Christ, can we experience full redemption and reconciliation.
I’ve got a great message and a fantastic Bible class that I want to share with you today. It’s going to speak life into you. If you want to get ahead of me, go to the book of Genesis, chapter 42, verses 3 through 8, and get ready, get ready, get ready for the word of the Lord. I’m going to take just a moment to pray and ask God’s presence to open our hearts and minds, to move all distractions out of our way, and to give us the ability to focus on the Word of God so that our souls might be fed. We’re getting all kinds of news and stories from various places—some right, some wrong. Everything is going everywhere, but in the Word of God, folks used to sing, «In the Word of God, I have a hiding place.»
So let’s get into the Word of God, where it’s safe, and understand what the Lord is saying about the times we’re living in right now. I promise you a word from the Lord, and I assure you it’s going to be relevant to what’s happening now. I promise you that if you’ll follow me and really study this word, you’re going to grow. You might need a pen and pencil if you’re old school; you might need your iPad if you’re new school. But let’s go into the Word of God.
Father, in the name of Jesus, we believe you for blessings on top of blessings and revelation on top of revelation. Above everything else, we seek understanding of your Word. We crave understanding; we want to grasp the Word. We want to understand the times we are in. We want to comprehend our responsibilities. We are willing to adjust our attitude to conform to your Word so that we might be the people you are calling for in this last and evil day. Drive out the devices of the enemy, the tactics of Satan, and use us for your glory. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen, amen, amen.
God bless you, God bless you, God bless you! Now I’m ready to get into this. I’ve got something I want to share with you, and it might sound strange, but hopefully, by the time I finish, you’ll understand redemptive recognition. You’ve hardly ever seen those two words together, but I’m going to focus more on the recognition than the redemption. However, redemptive recognition is a powerful concept that I believe is important. Recently, I had the privilege of preaching for Hillsong in New York for Pastor Carl Lentz. I was a guest speaker; I didn’t really preach. We had an interview on Sunday morning, and he aired the interview during which we discussed race relations in the US. During our conversation, spontaneously, God dropped something in my spirit as an illustration. I held up this cell phone, and I told him, «This is an Apple phone.»
The Challenge of Recognition in Technology and Life
You might have another type, but this particular phone has face recognition technology. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Several articles have been written about how even the best algorithms still struggle to recognize Black faces as effectively as they do white faces. It’s not that the phone is bigoted or racist; it’s just that the people who designed it created it to recognize their faces, and there weren’t that many faces of Black and brown people in technology, especially in the creation of face recognition. This affects everything, especially at airports. As we go increasingly digital, face recognition becomes very important.
However, the stats from US government tests indicate that the top-performing facial recognition systems misidentify Black individuals at rates five to ten times higher than they do white individuals—five to ten times higher—only because the technology hasn’t been programmed to recognize our features. Its cognitive ability to reason and recognize someone’s face is limited by its experiences. Do you see where I’m going? It doesn’t dislike me; it doesn’t hate me. I own the phone, and I bought it, but it has trouble recognizing me because it isn’t wired for my features. Think about that and let it marinate a little as we start talking about recognition, whose root word is cognitive.
What we remember and how we experience that memory has a lot to do with where we are in our text today. We’re going to start talking a little about Joseph, but I will cover many aspects of redemptive recognition.
Joseph’s Brothers Fail to Recognize Him
What stimulated this thought was when I read this verse about Joseph in Genesis 42:3. Joseph’s ten brothers went down to buy grain in Egypt, for there was a famine in the land. Egypt was the only place prepared for the famine and had food. They went there to buy grain, but Jacob did not send Benjamin, Joseph’s brother, with his other brothers, fearing that harm might befall him. You can see how Jacob is still tormented by the loss of his sons. He is afraid to send another son for fear of losing yet another one. He clings tightly to Benjamin, who is like Joseph—a beloved child born to him and Rachel. He does not want to lose him like he lost his mother, and he thinks he lost his brother.
The sons of Israel came to buy grain among those who came, for the famine was in the land of Canaan. Joseph was governor over the land, the one who sold to all the people. Joseph’s brothers came and bowed down before him with their faces to the ground. Joseph saw his brothers and recognized them, but he acted as a stranger to them and spoke roughly to them. He changed his voice slightly and asked them, «Where do you come from?» They replied, «From the land of Canaan to buy food.» Joseph knew his brothers, but they did not recognize him. They failed to recognize someone whose very presence was essential for their survival. In order for them to benefit from their relationship, they eventually had to recognize him as their brother, but they did not do so at first.
Later in the text, you will read where Joseph revealed himself to his brothers and they all began to weep because they had not treated him like a true member of the family. They had told their father he was dead, yet now they needed the very one they had rejected. It was a significant moment of family healing. Joseph comforted them, saying, «You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.» You’ve heard this preached many times; he’s truly trying to ease their fears and help them understand they don’t have to live in guilt for the mistakes they made in the past. It’s a moment of family healing. If you have any family at all, you’ve had or will have these moments. Families can become estranged and must reconcile. They must recognize that they are on the same side.
If you’ve been married for over 30 days, you’ve experienced those moments where you had to stop fighting over a specific issue and realize you are on the same side. You don’t need to attack the individual but rather address the issue. However, when you don’t recognize someone as an ally or brother, it complicates resolving conflicts. Sometimes this leads to tragedy or years of silence between siblings, discord in families, tensions in the home, and divisions over assets that may end up in court. It can escalate when you don’t recognize your own relationship. For clarity, Joseph in the Old Testament is a real figure, but he also represents a type of Christ. It is significant that he illustrates how his brothers did not recognize him, as a picture of how Christ would come to his own and not be recognized. What you cannot recognize will not redeem you.
Jesus Came to His Own, But Was Not Recognized
Consider this: I want you to look at the Gospel of John, chapter 1, verses 10 through 14. You will see a depiction very similar to what we read in Genesis 42:3-8. Quickly go to John 1:10–14, which states, «He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.» Let’s stop right there. He was in the world, a remarkable fact to grasp. The creator of the universe, the CEO of the planet, came into the world. Something so immense entered something so small; he humbled himself. Paul later discusses this, how he humbled and shrank himself, pouring out his glory and honor. He entered the world he created, yet «the world knew him not.» This is about Jesus.
If you read earlier in John 1:1, you’ll find «In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.» All things were made by him. Without him, nothing was made that was made. In John 1:14, we understand that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. This is talking about Jesus, the same Word that said «Let there be» is the same Word that entered the womb of Mary, wrapped himself in flesh, and became a carpenter’s son. Yet, the world did not recognize him; they dismissed him as merely a carpenter’s son, just as Joseph’s brothers failed to recognize him. But the next verse provides a closer illustration: «He came unto his own and his own received him not.»
Now, we are not just speaking about the world; we are speaking about his own people, his own culture, his own background. They did not receive him either. However, «As many as received him, to them he gave power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.» This experience of being born again hinges on recognition. Do you recognize him as the Messiah? Do you recognize him as the Son of God? Do you recognize him as the Lamb of God? Do you recognize him as the master of your life? Salvation isn’t merely predicated on the existence of God; it requires recognizing God. You can have God exist in you without being redeemed.
But if you recognize him as Lord of your life and King of Kings, it is this recognition that brings about redemption. It is not self-righteousness or morality—though you should strive to be better—but it is, in fact, recognition that ushers in redemption. Do you remember when Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead? Thomas entered the room and said, «I will not believe unless I thrust my hand into the wound in your side and feel the nail prints in your hands.» Jesus responded, «Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe.» Thomas was declaring he wouldn’t recognize Jesus until his conditions were met. Recognition brings about redemption, a pivotal moment when he finally acknowledged Jesus as Lord to His knees.
I believe the scripture said that he exclaimed, «My Lord and my God!» What happened? He recognized Him. It is possible, my friends, to live in God’s world, breathe God’s air, appreciate God’s Son, and smile at the moon in the middle of the night against a backdrop of twinkling stars and still not recognize the Creator or His creation. It is possible to be left calling the creation the Creator. To all of you who pray to the universe, you are praying to the creation and not to the One who created it. It is possible to enjoy the wind blowing on a sandy beach and to dip your feet into the chilly waters while it tickles your toes as you walk down the path of a sandy beach, watching the sun set against an alabaster sky, and still not recognize that all of this did not happen by chance, but that God did it. The point of recognition has everything to do with redemption.
Recognizing God in the Storm
Do you recognize? It’s possible not to recognize God because you’re in a storm. The disciples had that problem. You remember they had been with Jesus all day long. Jesus went apart into the mountains to pray. When He came down from the mountains, the boat was now out in the ocean. The Bible says that Jesus came walking on the water toward them, and they did not recognize Him; they thought He was a ghost. They recognized Him in good times, but they did not recognize Him in bad times. There are some people who recognize God in good times, but when the storm is raging, they do not recognize Him in the storm, and they ask, «Where is God?»
Even though He is coming right at them, they don’t recognize Him; they think it’s a ghost because they do not recognize God in a storm. I want to talk to you about your cognitive skills and your ability to recognize God when the conditions change, when the storm arises, when the lightning flashes, when the job is lost, when your body’s in pain, when a loved one dies, or when a partner leaves.
Can you recognize God in a storm? Recognition: do you have the cognitive ability to recognize God in a storm, or is your attention so distracted by the storm that you don’t see the Savior of the storm? Are you so distracted by the creation that you don’t see the Creator? Are you so distracted by how you feel that you don’t pay attention to the fact that God is with you in the storm? Is the enemy fighting you more through your conditions, or is he fighting you through your cognitive ability to recognize God in spite of the conditions? In fact, I would suggest to you, my brothers and sisters, that it could be possible that the only reason he sent the storm was to block your cognitive ability to recognize God in the midst of it.
What am I saying? I’m saying that the storm may be a distraction that causes you not to recognize that the one walking on the water is the same one you walked with on the beach. I’m saying that the same one who was with you before you got into trouble is with you now, in the middle of your trouble. I’m saying that the same one who was with you at the wedding is the same one that’s with you at the graveside. I’m saying that the real pivotal point of revelation is based on recognition. Recognition may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. The truth of the matter is joy never left, but sometimes we’re so busy weeping that we don’t recognize joy in the night. It takes daylight, the conditions changing, for us to see that He was there all the time. So rather than praying about the circumstances all the time—and I’m not saying we shouldn’t pray about the circumstances—sometimes we need to pray for our recognition.
No wonder Paul says in Ephesians chapter 1, «I pray therefore that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened, that you might know what is the hope of His call.» He said, «I’m praying for your eyes, not your circumstances.» I’m praying that you might recognize. Here, Joseph’s brothers—I have not lost my place. Joseph’s brothers have come into the place of plenty and they have kin over there, but they do not recognize him. In order for them to really benefit from who they have on the other side, their cognitive ability has to be able to recognize him as kin to them. Until they do that, the real breakthrough of the text does not occur.
You can be right beside the greatest blessing of your life; you can be within a stone’s throw of your own deliverance and not recognize it. You can be just one breath away from the greatest idea you’ve ever had and not recognize it. You could have met your husband and not recognize it; you could have met your wife and not recognize her. I actually met my wife on many occasions and did not recognize that she was going to be my wife. It is possible to be in close proximity to your destiny, but until your recognition of what you have comes to light, you cannot receive what you do not recognize. You cannot embrace what you do not recognize. You cannot be redeemed by what you do not recognize. Jesus came unto His own, and His own received Him not; but as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God.
Generational Trauma and Preconditioned Reactions
O God, open my eyes that I might recognize what I have available to me because sometimes I do not recognize my friends for my enemies. Sometimes I choose the people who say the nice things, never realizing that the person who told me the truth was really more my friend than the person who heaped lavish accolades and platitudes upon me that amounted to monuments of absolutely nothing. I thought that they were my friends, and it took me years to recognize that the one who wrestled with me did so because they loved me. So I want to talk to you about recognition, understanding, and the evolution of our understanding—not just that we recognize, but how we recognize.
I was on the phone the other day, and we were having an interesting conversation. Some great thinkers were on the phone, and we were discussing these mice that went through lab tests. They would put perfume in the room, and whenever the mice smelled the pleasant aroma or scent that they put in the room—whether it could have been perfume or the smell of food—whatever it was, the mice responded in a very positive way until they started shocking the mice every time they smelled the pleasant smell. Eventually, without shocking the mice, when they smelled what used to smell good, they developed an aversion to it because lodged in their cognitive memory base is a memory that something bad happened when they smelled this pleasant scent.
Now, without being shocked, they are still reacting as if they were being shocked because built into their memory system is that this smell brings pain. We can all understand, and we ought to be able to understand that what was shocking about the conversation is that when the mice had children and their children had children, when they were placed in an environment where they smelled the scent, they recoiled, just like their parents, even though they had never been shocked. What they began to understand is that trauma is cross-generational; trauma passes down from generation to generation. Even when you don’t have the same experience, you have the same reaction because it is wired into your DNA.
That’s why history matters; that’s why yesterday matters, young people; that’s why your background matters. Because sometimes you’re reacting to something not because you had the experience, but your grandparents had the experience. When you smell the smell, you still jerk back because it is wired that way. I wonder how that plays out when you’ve had a bad experience with a race of people, and then you have children, and your children have children. They have not had the experience, but they still have the reaction because it’s been wired into them. I wonder how that plays out if you had a bad experience with a gender; it passes down generationally to the point that it’s wired into your DNA that there’s trouble when you see that gender.
I’m just asking, I wonder how that plays out with certain types of music and certain types of stimuli. Maybe we are not born with a clean slate as we thought we were. Maybe we are born with predispositions down inside us that create certain reactions and fears. I wonder why you’re scared of heights. I wonder why you don’t like chocolate; I wonder why you don’t like strawberries. I wonder why you came here, and nobody in your family likes marshmallows. I wonder why we have predispositions toward certain attitudes. When they walked into the room with Joseph, they did not recognize him, and they were uncomfortable and ill at ease, yet they still did not recognize him. When they came to Jesus, they did not recognize Him.
Revelation Shatters Old Ways of Seeing
I’m starting down a trail of something that I think is important that we need to talk about. It kind of goes a little bit deeper with this. I’m headed somewhere; you just bear with me a little bit. Not recognizing things correctly has a lot to do with how well you are, your wellness, your spirituality, and your ability to receive things from God. Many, many times when we don’t recognize things correctly—or I’ll use the word discern them correctly—sometimes we don’t get the blessing that we ought to get, and sometimes we receive a curse we could have avoided because we failed to recognize properly what we should have recognized.
At the Last Supper, Jesus was sitting around the table with His disciples, and all their lives they had been wired to see this as a Passover meal. They had a little bread and a little wine, which is normal; the elements are the same things they had been using for years to recognize the Lamb that was slain and painted on the doorposts of the believers when their ancestors left Egypt. It was a good thing; it was a redemptive thing. But they were thinking backward on the Lamb, and all of a sudden, Jesus shattered their old memory when He took the old elements and gave them new meaning. He said, «Take, eat; this is My body.» Not the Lamb of your ancestors, but «This is My body that was broken for you.» All of a sudden, He had to shatter through years and years of their cognitive understanding that this represented the Lamb that was slain in the Passover when they left Egypt. Jesus shattered it.
A revelation can bring a paradigm shift; then all of a sudden, you see something old in a new light. O God, I pray that you would grant us a revelation and help us see something old with new light—see new opportunities, see doors where you used to see walls, and see God making a way in a place where you didn’t see Him making a way. See not just the historical context, but suddenly Jesus said, «This is My body, ” and He offered the wine, saying, „This is a new testament in My blood.“ He shattered years and years of preconditioning and their thinking. That’s what revelation does; it shatters years and years of stinking thinking or bad dispositions or reactions to things in a certain way.
O God, give us a revelation where we begin to recognize things from a different perspective than how we used to see them. Just don’t give us religion; we don’t need more religion. We need revelation; we need revelation and a relationship so that we can have a new understanding about an old idea. Because when you have a revelation—when you have the ability, through that revelation, to recognize something in a different light—it shatters every curse that has ever been on your life. Before Jesus shattered it around the table, He shattered their way of thinking about it. He shattered what their parents thought about it. He shattered what their grandparents thought about it.
With the moving of a piece of bread, He said, „This is My body that was broken for you, ” and it shattered everything they’d been pre-wired to understand about it. O God, give us a shattering preacher—a shattering church that shatters old ideas—not steeped in such tradition that they will not shatter the tradition in order to walk in the revelation of God. You need a revelation of God that will shatter your old principles and ideas and cause you to grow and shift. Because God could be trying to reach you on the water, but you’re running from Him because you think He’s a ghost.
Discerning the Lord’s Body in Communion and Church
So I’m praying that the eyes of your understanding might be enlightened—that we behold; we see it over and over. In the scripture, we see „behold.“ All of a sudden, God is trying to unveil something. It’s an apocalyptic unveiling. God is trying to unveil something in a new light, in a new capacity. You may be asking God for a new situation, when all you really need is a new revelation: Do you recognize? This is My body; this is My blood. And so the physical body of Christ now serves them—the memorial body of Christ—and He serves it to them.
The disciples are the mystical body of Christ, and soon He will return as the glorified body of Christ. There are four bodies of Christ: the physical body of Christ, the communion as the memorial body of Christ, the Church as the mystical body of Christ, and upon His return, we will experience the glorified body of Christ after He has risen from the dead. It’s all a matter of how you recognize it because, if you don’t recognize it rightly, it’s just wine and crackers; it’s just grape juice and bread; it’s just some mead, and I’m hungry. We see later in the Church at Corinth that they were getting drunk at the communion table because they did not recognize the sacredness of what they had. Oh my God, how many times do people not recognize the value of what they have until they lose it? In retrospect, they realize, „He was a good man; my father wasn’t as bad as I thought he was.“ „Mama, my mother was right about that.“ „But my ex-husband wasn’t who I thought he was.“
All of a sudden, it registers. Don’t wait until you lose something before you recognize the value of what you have. Behold, this is my body that’s broken for you. Behold, this is Joseph; I am your brother. Behold, this deals with your cognitive ability to recognize and to be redeemed on the basis of your recognition. So, if I were the devil and I couldn’t stop redemption from coming, I would stop you from recognizing it. If I were the enemy and I couldn’t stop you from having a brother, I would stop you from recognizing it.
Why is it that some people go to church and they get blessed, while other people get in the car, and all they do is gossip? Why is it that some people are slain in the Spirit, while other people are flirting with somebody across the pew? How can we be in the same atmosphere and have two different experiences? It’s because one recognizes the holiness of the moment, and the other one is so carnal that they do not recognize God at all, nor do they recognize who’s walking up there or moving through the pew. Do not be the kind of Christian who does not recognize the privilege of being in a moment with God, an encounter with God, a touch of God, a word from God.
Recognizing One Another as Family in Christ
In First Corinthians, we were talking about communion. I want you to see this: 1 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 23 through 29. Here Paul says, „For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread; and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'Take, eat; this is my body, which is broken for you. This do in remembrance of me.' And in the same manner, also, He took the cup, when he had supped, saying, 'This cup is the New Testament in my blood. This do ye, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord’s death till He comes. Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.'“
But let a man examine himself—not his neighbor, not his wife, not his son, not his daughter. Some people can discern everybody but themselves. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself. Oh, wait a minute—he drinks damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. That means that if we take of the cup and eat of the bread and we don’t discern the Lord’s mystical body, you could take communion and not discern that I’m a part of the body too!
If you don’t see me as an equally significant part of the Body of Christ, and yet you take communion, then you drink damnation to your soul. Paul goes on to say, „For this cause many are sick, many are weak, and many have gone to sleep because they did not discern the Lord’s body.“ Church, wake up and hear me: until you’ve really discerned me to be an equal part of the body, then don’t drink from that cup and don’t eat that bread. For the damnation is in not discerning me to be an equally equivalent part of the body of Christ.
We Are One Body with Many Members
1 Corinthians 12:12–27—here the Apostle Paul teaches the church at Corinth, using a metaphor of us being one body. „For as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are still one body, so also is Christ.“
He says, „I have one body. I have two knees, two big toes, four toes on this side, and four toes on this side—ten toes across my foot—but it’s still one body. I have two legs, but I have one body. I have two hands, but I have one body. I have eight fingers and two thumbs, but I have one body. I have two eyes, but I have one body. I have two jobs, but I have one body. I have one mouth, but I have one body.“ You understand what I’m saying? I have two ears, but I have one body. All of them are shaped differently, look different, and function differently, but you cannot allow the differences of the members to divide the body because it is one body, and it was built to be different. That’s what makes it beautiful. That’s what makes it wonderful. That’s what makes it work.
„For as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are still one body, so also is Christ.“ For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles. There is no difference regarding your ethnicity, background, or racial makeup, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, whether you’re rich or poor, whether you’re part of the upper echelon or whether you’re lowly. We have all been made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many.
If the foot says, „Because I have not the hand, I am not of the body, ” is it therefore not of the body? The foot doesn’t get to renounce the hand and say you’re not legitimately a part of the body. If the ear says, „Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body, ” is it therefore not of the body? In other words, one part of the body doesn’t get to reject the other part simply because it looks different. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were members, where would the body be? But now they are many members and yet one body. Many members, yet one—that’s what our nation is built on: many yet one, many yet one.
And the eye cannot say unto the hand, „I have no need of you, ” nor again the head to the feet, „I have no need of you.“ Nay, those members of the body which seem to be more feeble are still necessary. We need each other. And those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor. And our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness. For our comely parts have no need. But God has tempered the body together, having given more abundant honor to that part which lacked.
God gives more honor to the part that lacks, that there should be no schism in the body—there should be none, zero, no schism in the body—but that the members should have the same care one for another. You can’t not care just because you came from a different zip code and still say you’re a Christian. If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. You can’t just watch the suffering and turn your head because if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. Or if one member is honored, then all the members rejoice with it. We are in this together.
Now you are the body of Christ and members in particular. You know you are the body of Christ when you feel my pain. You know you are in the body of Christ when you rejoice when I rejoice. You know that you are the body of Christ when you weep when I weep. That is the proof. When you recognize me as part of the body, as your brother, it breaks the famine. To see your Savior in the storm stops the wind.
A Call to Reconciliation and Prayer
I want to pray with you today. I want to pray with us today. I want to pray with our world today.
Father, in Jesus' name, we bow our heads because we are sinners. We bow our heads because we are wretched. We bow our heads because we are human. We bow our heads because we are flawed. We bow our heads because we are not finished yet. We bow our heads because sometimes we are angry without reason. We bow our heads because sometimes we are full of rage and not revelation. We bow our heads because sometimes we are not enraged; we just don’t see it. We just don’t get it, and we are conveniently blind, thereby consistently quiet. Shatter the quietness; break through the darkness. Transform the dark places into light by renewing our minds until when one of us weeps, all of us weeps. We are changed and redeemed because we recognize. Don’t let this be just another moment that passes us by without recognizing anything except what others tell us to think about it. I pray that this would be the launching pad of the greatest revival America has ever seen. But we cannot revive the world while the church walks in darkness. Let it start with the church; let it start with its leadership. Let it start with the men and women of God who claim to know You. Let it start by breaking down our traditions until we are less concerned about football players and more concerned about murder. Our values are so far off base, and we have forgotten the love of God. Give us a miracle in the mighty name of Jesus, we pray. Amen, amen, and amen.