Jackie Hill Perry at RockPointe Church

Would it be strange if I kept my mask on? Would it be strange? Oh, I haven't been on stage in a long time. This is uncomfortable. How are you? All the lights are on. I mean, some of you like what you don't, no. Maxine, actually I am because I really want to know. She was talking to a friend of mine. His name is Jamie Ivey. She lives in Austin and was telling me how she was flushing the toilet with snow water, so I got really worried. For Texas, I thought you all lived like settlers here, but my name is Jackie, like she said, I'm from St Louis originally, I live in Atlanta, with my husband Preston of seven years, we celebrated our anniversary on March 1st, so that is.

It's going to be great because we can leave our house to do it. It would be great. We have three children. The oldest is Eden. She is the sixth. The middle child is Autumn. She has two. The youngest She forgot about Sage. She is four months old. why did I forget uh I'm not getting to sleep um but tonight I feel like I don't know if it feels unique just because I haven't been to a

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recently because of the pandemic and all that stuff um or if it just feels unique because I think one of the things that, being away from traveling and talking, makes the simple things that much more important, which is why tonight feels important to me.

I think it's significant that God gave me. us the privilege of being able to come together as Christians and be able to listen to god uh that's a privilege um that god the transcended can speak with us that's really important and that's why I want us to pray is Okay, okay, father, thank you for being so kind to communicate. Thank you for giving us the Scriptures so we know who you are. You know what you think. We know what you want us to believe. We are not left without a guide. We are not left without wisdom, we really do not have to figure things out on our own, so I pray to God that tonight you will be honored.

I pray to God that you are heard. I pray to God that you speak. I ask that your spirit. It would do what you said it would do, which is glorify Jesus. I ask God that you convict us of sin and challenge us toward justice, but I ask that at the end of the day we all walk away with hope. Satan doesn't like hope so I ask God to give us that in the name of Jesus. Amen, where do I start? Oh my god, can I just talk? It's okay, I don't have a pulpit or notes, it's just me.

I'm just talking, I promise it will be as concise as I can. I understand there's a lot of light skin telling the room, but I come from a background called black

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, so when I ask you a question, I really want you to answer um, it's not rhetorical at all, I mean, I just want you to say something that you can point, you know, lift your foot, anything, bounce your shoulders, something, uh, man, and I had lasik, so my eyes are blurry, I can't. I see 20 20 still so I just need your help. Okay, praise God from whom all blessings flow.

My story, I think it's best if it begins with the story that begins all of ours, which is Genesis 1, 2 and 3. Um Genesis. 1 says that in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth. I have always found it very interesting that the Bible, the scriptures, the way we understand who God is, what we read to see God's self-revelation. The first thing it wants to tell us about God is not that he is lord, nor that he is king, nor that he is omnipotent, nor that he is omniscient, all of these things are good, true, doctrinal and orthodox, but what the Scriptures tell us about God. . immediately is that he is the creator in the beginning, God created and I think that is important because for God to be the creator of everything he already establishes the precedent that everything that God creates is automatically subject to him, so even before To start the conversation about sexuality, I have to start with God Himself.

I think a lot of us tend to want to start with sex without starting with its creator, let's get a framework and a fundamental understanding of who it is, so when we talk about that created thing. we have some context for why we should treat it as he told us we should make sense uh in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth so that god would be the creator of all things already tells us that he must be omniscient. he must be lord he must be king because he is ruler over all things that have ever been made god ends up making a man his name is adam by the way not eric and i thought it was funny uh he makes adam out of dust and then breathes in his lungs and calls it a living being and then it comes out of its rib, uh, makes a woman named Eve.

I've always found it interesting to know that the rib had no sauce, nothing, it was just a dry rub. I don't know I'm not a fan of dry rub I like bbq sauce on my ribs so he makes eve and gives it to the man and one of the interesting things I think about before the creation of eve is that god It says that It is not good for man to be alone when you read Genesis 1 and 2. One of the things you will pay attention to is that God calls many things good. He looked at that and it was good.

He looked at this. It was good, he looked at it and it was good and when you look at the Hebrew it says that God judged it good, that God not only saw it and arbitrarily called it good, he judged it to be good, which is a warning. As for the things we call good they should be aligned with what God calls good, but that is another conversation for another day, the point is that he says that it is not good for man to be alone, so God in his wisdom and in its sovereignty it does not do so.

Don't ask Adam what would make this situation bad. He doesn't ask Adam for advice even though he has dominance. He doesn't ask Adam for his opinion even though he has authority. He does the like. Come here. I'll bring it with me, sir, I put it in my left shoe, because in my pocket it felt weird to say that, so I said shoot anyone. He says it is not good for man to be alone, so God makes an executive decision. by having the woman remedy this situation, God makes Eve a compliment to Adam, she is like him but different from him, which shows that there is some beauty in diversity, that this was part of God's original design that The man should have something. different from him but different from him, so even when you get into the conversation about homosexuality you can start to see some glimpses of why it is a perversion and by perversion I don't mean that in a negative six I mean different from an ordinary in the sense that it's different from the way God designed it uh so he makes Adam, he makes Eve and everything is fine and everything is fine and good, then he tells them, hey, be one flesh, do your thing. , name these animals, have babies, all that and then the snake shows up uh, he's a ruler because he shows up, he doesn't introduce himself, he doesn't ask his name, he immediately starts asking the question.

Has someone ever walked into your house and started asking you questions? You don't even say hello, you don't even take off your shoes and put them on the little rug, you know, you came in here and covered the whole bottom of your soles, all in my house. I didn't know he was a comedian. Until tonight he says, Did God really say that you will not eat the fruit of that tree? he gave an order but he gave them freedom first you can eat everything you can have everything except this thing so for eve to know the order means that adam must have communicated it to his wife it is ironic then that satan was not addressing adam but eve satan is coming to Eve with a question: Did God really say that man should not or that he cannot eat this fruit or whatever and Eve says huh, well, he didn't say that we can't eat the fruit of the tree and we can't touch it she is saying things that God never said God never said you couldn't touch that thing, which tells me that you are no longer clear on the word of God anyway, the interesting thing is that when she starts talking to satan, it is about less about satan's question and more about why he wants her to question god's word because if she questions god's word then she ends up questioning god himself she looks at the tree while having this conversation with herself and sees nothing else what good qualities in what God said would kill her, she looks at the tree and it seems good, everyone says well, well, who was using that word before she looks at the tree and says it is good for eating, a delight to the eyes and wanted to make one.

Wisely she had affection for something that God told her could not have entered my story. I was born into a lineage of people who are prone to trusting their affections over the word of God. When I was born into the world, the Bible says I was born in sin and I was trained in iniquity so I was already born with a disposition that needed to be fixed uh my mother uh raised me she was a great mother uh a bad mom sometimes you meet one of moms who don't explain why you're in trouble you should damn yourself what did I just do what I said buddy I did it you didn't explain to me mom I'm just I'm just asking I'm an enneagram three I need you to explain it to me I need some conversation here my dad he was very inconsistent, he was in my life when he wanted to be, he would show up and then leave, show up and then leave, and I think that definitely gave me a negative view of men because I was never able to observe them. just caring, loving, nurturing, um, even the lack of loving contact from a man was missing, the first time a man touched me was through sexual abuse, um, I think that really affects a young girl's mind when the first introduction you have to a man is through oppression through objectification Growing up, I began to notice in the first grade of kindergarten, one of those years before I knew how to spell my name, that I felt an attraction toward same-sex girls on the playground and didn't know what it was.

I called, I didn't know what to make of it, this was the early '90s, so it's not like you know all the language that we have available to me today to grab and identify with, it was just something I had in myself that I didn't I knew what to do until I went to church that's when I found the name and in church that's when they told me that the phrase for what I was feeling was called homosexuality and my problem wasn't the title, my problem wasn't even the condemnation, my The problem was the way it was presented from the stage and the way the people in the pews had this mafia mentality towards those who would be considered homosexual, which to me said: oh Christians don't like this kind of thing. people and if Christians don't like these kinds of people, Christians don't like me so if Christians don't like me, how could I have the freedom to confess the way we do?

Talking about people is important because we want to create space for safety, we want to create a space where people feel the freedom to bring to light what is in the darkness with us, but I didn't have that, so I kept it a secret. for a while. It's really a long time since high school came uh, I was making myself uh, you know, smoke a lot of marijuana, steal clothes, I used to steal clothes to have money, smoke marijuana, I thought it was efficient, you know, you're like I'm a kind of sinful administration. The thing is, I was a terrible person, um, and I went to church with my aunt merle, my aunt merle, if you follow me, you may have heard me mention my armor before she was one of the safest ones that grandma intended. , is one of the most confident women I know.

What I have known in my life is that I have never seen her knees. Every piece of her wardrobe that she has is a dress that goes up to her pinky finger. It's Tuesday night and you still have a dress on Merle, but what Merle showed me is that Christians are different from the world. I used to watch her life and it used to be very interesting how she didn't respond the same way everyone else responded how she seemed to love God and delight in God in a way that seemed foreign to her. Me and her example is actually what led me to guess that God uses other people and tries to convert me because she always remembered how he or how he changed her.

I thought of her when I thought of Christians. Does that encourage anyone other than you? Are you an example to someone or what it means to be like Jesus, high school is here, I'm just here doing me and I made the decision, you know what it is, it seems harder to be straight than just being myself, so I made the decision to just, you know, being gay, so I went into my space and pressed this because everyone remembers it felt weird to even say it on Myspace, what's that archaic? By the way, it was a social media platform. uh, there was a guy named Tom and he would always be in your top ten.

I'm sure he's working for Facebook somewhere. I walked into my space and had a conversation with this young woman and we struck up a relationship that lasted. about two weeks gay or straight you know when you're a teenager you don't know what you want so we were together and then I had another relationship with another young woman and we were together for two years and that relationship is when I transitioned to what in the community gay black lesbian is gay lesbian, the black gay community is called a stud, a stud is the woman who, um, presents a hypermasculine self, so you know, my pants sank, I wore boxers, uh, I wore oversized shirts I used to wear sports bras to flatten my chest my voice is already a bitheavy so I had it unlocked um I would put my I would put my hair in a ponytail all of these things and I think what's helpful for people to understand is that I think some of the gender identity issues in our world today are consequence of our inability to communicate what real femininity and masculinity is and let me explain. growing up, I was never the typical girl who didn't like pink yet I didn't, uh, I didn't wear purses, I still don't pack much, I have pockets, um, you know, I didn't use those extra ones when I talked about all the things no, that's what they say girls do well.

I didn't do all the things they said women do, so what they called me was tom boy, what they said was you're acting like a boy, so I'm starting to think that my type of femininity isn't femininity at all actually. I must be what you say I am and we do the same to boys, he cries and we say you are acting like a girl winning, he is actually acting like an image bearer, he is acting like a human being and then why Do you expect more or how else would you expect people to believe if we have imposed these kinds of social constructs on gender identity that aren't even in the Bible?

I think what would help our society is if we get a complete theology of what it means to be a woman and not a theology of what it means to be a woman that describes women as people who cook or women as people with soft voices are women like people who wear dresses, so When you see those who will begin to transition into a trans sense of self, they will always have a hypermasculine or hyperfeminine view of what they believe a woman is. So if I have bigger breasts, if I wear a dress, if I wear long hair now I'm a woman because I became what you told me women were, so for me I was confused and then I put on these clothes because it seemed right to me.

In my case, I felt like it was natural in a sense, but the strange thing is that God never let me enjoy it as if I had a kind of happiness because sin is enjoyable but the Sin is not ultimately satisfying, so I believe God was kind and merciful in the way that He never allowed me to escape my convictions. It got to a point where it seemed like he wouldn't leave me alone with anyone. It's like sir, stop talking. I just want to sin. I know you died for it, but. My God, I just couldn't, I just couldn't shake them and I had this immense awareness of my distance between me and God and I really believe that's the fruit of Sunday school.

I'm not kidding because I didn't do it. I don't know anything about repentance or the atonement or propitiation and all that stuff, but I knew John 3 16 and I knew that Jesus died for sinners and that little truth alone is the only truth that convinced me before I came to Jesus and Don't clap yet. I'm not saved on this part, so I called my cousin Keisha because she was the only Christian I knew who wouldn't immediately pull up Leviticus 18 on the phone. There are many Christians like this who don't know how. to engage human to human they don't know how to engage human to human keisha knew I could call her and she would ask me about my day I knew I could call her and she would ask me how I am I knew I could call her and just being that doesn't mean she I shouldn't be telling the truth, but it did mean that I felt like his goal with me was not to fix me but to love me and I think people feel that. they feel when you are trying to fulfill a Christian duty instead of seeing them as a person because my identity was not primarily wrapped up in my sexuality and that is why I think one of the problems that I have seen and I have addressed it when I had a conversation on college campuses and they said, Hi, Jackie.

I have a gay friend and I need advice. What is his name? What's Eric's name? Why did you introduce them as your gay friend? He tells me this is how you see them, what do they do? They like who their parents are where they're from what music they listen to there's a lot more to a person than who they have affection for and keisha she did that with me so she was the first person I called when I felt like God was It got on my nerves and I said Keisha. I feel like God wants me to know him, but I don't want to know him.

I'm really having fun like I don't want to be a Christian because I thought Christians were really boring people. I just thought they might, you know, they go to church and they wear very long dresses and they don't listen to secular music or Beyonce or anyone, they just don't do anything and she told me something really confusing, she said you. I know what I pray for you because when you told me you were gay I thought I had done something wrong, I thought I hadn't told you and for context, Keisha was about 20 years older than me.

I thought I hadn't given you enough gospel I thought I hadn't told you enough about Jesus I thought I hadn't given you enough Bible she put all the blame for my depravity on her works and said she gave it to god and god said what? did you know? I love Jackie more than you give her to me and what she did was free her from feeling like she had to convert me. She put me in the position of God's hands where she could relax and I could be hers and so could she. He told me you know what I'm not worried about you God has you I didn't know what that meant I said what does that mean you're going to kill me does that mean I don't my understanding is dark according to Ephesians, no I don't know what that means, so I took our word for it, about a couple of months later, I was in my room, I'm 19 years old, this is October 2008 and I'm watching MTV doing something very unspiritual and I felt like it was like starting a band or something like that and the band was never formed, that's what's interesting.

I felt this strong conviction that was also connected to a thought and the thought was that she would be the death of you I'm like whoa, wouldn't I tell myself that I know the devil's program is not going to condemn me because he wants me to stay here, is this the lord talking to me so I started having this conversation with god and I tell the lord that I don't want to be heterosexual because I thought coming to Jesus was synonymous with heterosexuality because no one taught me that coming to Jesus was actually synonymous with holiness.

They made it seem like being a Christian was being heterosexual as if righteousness was also morally pure I'll explain to you if I came to Jesus to be heterosexual I wouldn't come to Jesus for Jesus I would come to Jesus for an idol if I didn't come to Jesus for Jesus I wouldn't come to Jesus because of Jesus and many of us preach this type of gospel this gospel Hey, come to God so you can get married Hey, come to God so you can have children Hey, come to God so that people don't talk about You're already gay, that's not It's the gospel, it's a prosperity gospel because I'll say it again, it's a prosperity gospel because you want to promise people an easy Christian experience that has all the trappings of marriage, children, all these things, but how dare I to offer?

Considering marriage as the goal of the gospel when marriage itself is not even eternal, but God is the marriage between the church and the lamb, so the presentations of the gospel must come to God by God and when you come, you will still have difficulties . but when you come, he will help you. I don't have that framework yet so my initial rejection of God's call was a rejection because I thought he was calling me to be straight when he was actually calling me to himself so he said god I don't want to be straight and I really feel the spirit of god saying just come to me and we will figure all that out.

I'm paraphrasing because I don't think God says all that. but you know he could have done it. He's a god who contextualizes and condescends for us and stuff. Then I had another question for God. I told him I don't know how I can do this without you. I tried to be holy. I have tried it. to be pure I said the sinner's prayer in the back of about 14 books about three times and it never worked and that's because I thought I could convert that saying these words would make me born again that I could be mine that I could raise myself from among the dead I tried to be a Christian apart from faith in the justice of Jesus and then I told God.

I think my hands were so empty and my options were so few that I had no choice but to believe he had to do it. Do it and then I said, I can't, I can't do it, but I have to trust you enough to believe that you can. I didn't know that what happened at that moment was repentance and faith, it was repentance because I thought that if Jesus was offering himself as the alternative to all my sin that he must have been the best alternative or the best alternative to everything that I love before him that is repentance because it is concluding and making a decision about my life that this is completely useless in my repentance then I turned I didn't turn 360 I turned 180 because it was 360 I am closing myself in on myself I am turning to legalism I am changing the works I'm fulfilling all these duties to try to earn my salvation but instead I turn to Jesus in faith and tell him that if you are who you said you are, you will do what you said you would do, which is save people like me, because so much God loved the world that whoever believes in him will not perish but will have eternal life in At that moment, the Lord Himself saved my soul.

I didn't even know until I went to work the next day. I used to work at Wendy's. I used to use, you know, sour cream and chopped potatoes and chilis and ice cream. I'll give you the recipe, if I had it, I was at work and I was behind the register and this young woman came in and she was very pretty and I wanted to covet her. I wanted to behave like I normally did but for the first time in my life I was conscious of god and it wasn't like before I didn't know god could see everything it was just that now this time I cared so the conversion didn't eliminate the temptation the conversion imputed reverence was concerned about what god saw and I asked god for help I said lord because there are no hymns or scriptures nothing I said lord help me that is beautiful because I was interacting with the high priest before I knew that was his name that went to his throne of grace for help in my time of need before I even read Hebrew and he helped me, helped me by helping me endure and finally advanced the story.

I started doing poetry and I did this poem called My Life is a Stud and That night I met a guy named Preston and my poem is about my story about being a lesbian, at some point his testimony is about him as a man who slept with everything who could breathe and had lip gloss, so we became friends, you know? There's a lot of baggage in our closets and apparently we like to talk about it on stages and uh, I had no intention of having a relationship with a man because I thought he was the type called celibacy, you know, I just didn't, I just wasn't. there, I just wanted to love Jesus and so be it, um, but over the course of three years my life and my affection started to shift towards him and it was strange because I thought so. thirsty I thought he was thirsty let me explain I thought I was making him an idol or something like you know, when you're in the world you always have someone to text I always have someone you know pie and do all these things and I'm like I feel alone, you know, I've been killing the flesh for so long, I don't know what to do, I just want someone to turn my arm and I told the woman who was discipling me, uh, which is really important too.

I told her I said I think I'm starting to like the president and I don't know if this is the devil trying to take me away from my purpose or the Lord trying to do something new and she said how well the disciples do what the disciples do what that she said pray for it didn't offer any real help pray for it well so I prayed for it for a year and I kept giving it to the Lord and my affection continued to grow for it and it was the strangest thing in the world and I finally said to God, I said God, I don't know what your will is to be Preston, but if it is your will for us to be together, then put it in his heart to pursue me, but if it is your will. that's a word for someone uh but if it is if it's your will that we be friends then give me the self control to treat him like a brother and not like a lover two weeks later this man calls me on the phone nervous as a mug and preston is in the neighborhood, the black kids in the neighborhood only get nervous when the police are around, they don't get nervous for any other reason, so I think I don't know what didn't happen, is he moving?

I don't know, it's this rental bitch guy and then Jackie said. I feel like God wants me to chase you, but I don't even know if you like me because I have an amazing poker face. Hello, he plays with me a lot. day you're not going to know how many books I have um I don't even know if you like me, you like me and I said I like you and that started the beginning of one of the most difficult relationships I've ever had in my entire life because my relationship with Preston unearthed the trauma of being single that allowed me to hide it and forced me to come out of all these fears and all these things and all these hurts that I had to deal with, but the interesting thing is that eventually when we got married, it was funny how that somehow validated my testimony before the people where when II got married, now she is safe and is really a Christian, as if when I repented and believed in the Lord Jesus and began to bear the fruits of the spirit, that was not so. the evidence of my salvation was again that people exalted and esteemed my marriage to one person above my marriage to god preston did not make me saved preston is not my deliverance preston is an extension of God's good gifts to me, he is simply the means by which God specifically wants me to honor him, but that doesn't mean that if some god calls someone out of a life of the same sexuality, if they are single, it doesn't make them someone. less useful and glorifying to God, in any case, we have a lot to learn from them because we are all going to be single in heaven.

Closing sanctification is difficult and I think one of the things I had to learn is that God really is stronger than everything I am tempted to leave because I think the world and the church sometimes don't give us a role, but a framework solid, I suppose, not only for beauty but also for the power of God, that in coming to Jesus it is not that I will not fight it is not that I will not be tempted it is that I have now been given a power over sin that I did not have before is that in my liberation I am no longer a slave to my flesh but I am a slave to righteousness and I truly believe that is what the world needs to hear and see because perhaps they do not believe in our presentations of the gospel because they do not see it in how do we live if they don't see power in us when Say it, it has nowhere to land and I think it's something really useful for us, so how do I close?

I think I want to close with something more egalitarian and say let it not be a praise in Egyptian like the other use of the word which is everything anyway um whether a person is gay or straight all were made for god all things were made and for He the problem is all of us like me like cain like abel like Joseph like Moses like Joshua like David like Solomon like Samuel like Isaiah like Elijah like Amos like Peter like Paul like Pilate like Bartholomew like Solomon all of us are born without seeing God as glory highest that exists we are all born satisfied with created things like our god instead we are all born desiring and delighting in the broken cisterns that cannot even hold water we are all born assuming that we can be healed by things that are not even complete in themselves we were born broken we were born distant i get it some of you grew up in christian homes but you are not a christian just because you grew up in christian homes, you are only a christian when god the father or when jesus reconciles you to the father through your faith in him, that is what you makes you a Christian, not your location therefore, because of our distance there is wrath god is holy therefore god is just god must judge sinners because god is good god hates sin does not delight in sin does not take pleasure in sin and I think we should rejoice more in that because in a world in a society where injustice abounds we should delight in the fact that there is a god who will never seem overlooked or doing wrong, that there is a god who sees sin and sees the evil and will never absolve him unless he is put under the cross, we all deserve it. but god in his love and grace sent jesus jesus is god in the flesh he came and lived a life that we cannot live he never looked at a tree and thought it was good to eat he never looked at a tree and thought so it was a delight to the eyes he never looked at a tree and had affection for something god told him not to love he loved his god all his life even when satan came and searched trying to tempt jesus to turn stones into bread jesus was fully satisfied in the word of his god to the point that he was willing to go hungry because he knew that bodily satisfaction is not what he needed to live but only God himself Jesus is our model of justice and this Jesus went to the cross on the cross our sins were placed on him our lies our ego our pride our arrogance our self-righteousness our racism our abuse our all the things we want to talk about and don't want to talk about were put on the lord jesus and then what was put on him was the wrath of god so that god would be the just and justifier of all those who put their faith in the lord jesus but not only that jesus died and went to the grave if he stayed there me being up here and talking and possibly being cold it would be a waste of time we would have no hope if he was still in the grave but it is because he rose from the grave defeating sin and death that then I can say that if you believe in Jesus you can do the same if you trust in Jesus you can do the same you can have life above all the things you can being enslaved you may be thinking that I am good I read my bible I pray I even have a couple of podcasts that I give to compassion international every month many He will say lord lord yes I did not do all these good things in your name and he will say I never knew you so my supplication no It is not even for the one who attracted the same sex My supplication is for the person who is content without regret My supplication is for the person who is so satisfied with where he is with God that he does not even try to search There is no hunger for justice there is no thirst for holiness there is complacency within the bible belt which I think is problematic and maybe I am going off on a tangent because the lord wants to remind you that he is worthy of you he has more to give you he has more to offer you you can have joy in Jesus you can Be happy in Jesus and I promise you that you will have fewer burdens, so come to me, all of you who are tired and burdened, and I will make you rest.

Drunkenness is sometimes a fruit of your restlessness. Your anxiety is a fruit of your restlessness. Your cock. of pornography addiction is the fruit of your restlessness your adultery is the fruit of your restlessness put that to jesus and I promise you that he will forgive you for going where you didn't think he would go but I hope it encouraged you because I believe that god is real and I believe that God is faithful and I believe God is worthy and I believe God is true and everything he says applies to us today and forever my story is not unique I just come in the lineage of all Christians who have been reconciled to the father to through the works of jesus christ and i just want us all to share that same thing.

Amen, let me pray. He was a bit of an awkward god, but he was good. I pray for your spirit that he does what he does and that he establishes. free people that would raise the dead that would renew minds that would uncover eyes that people would experience power that people would experience fullness in you I pray that I will thirst for your scriptures that there will be a hunger for the word of God, I pray for clarity in the scriptures that when spiritual warfare keeps people from understanding, keeps people from persevering in the Scriptures, God, may you give them the power to endure it to keep pushing until they see what you said.

God, I pray to listen. that people can listen to you again God I pray for trust that people trust you again I pray for freedom that people feel the freedom that the spirit gives to all who walk in it God help us to love you above all things help us to love you help you and our neighbors to not be satisfied with small things that satisfy little god help us to want more of you including me we need you jesus we need you every day I pray all these things in the name of Jesus amen