Micah 6:8

P 3398 Faith has one primary purpose.

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“If you want to be made right with God by fulfilling the obligations of the law, you have cut off more than your flesh—you have cut yourselves off from Christ and have fallen away from the revelation of grace! But we have the true hope that comes from being made right with God, and by the Spirit we wait eagerly for this hope. When you’re joined to the Anointed One, circumcision and religious obligations can benefit you nothing. All that matters now is living in the faith that works and expresses itself through love!” Galatians 5:4-6 TPT.

You know I’ve done enough stupid stuff in my life to know that positive talk won’t help me to use my faith and love others. Mainly because whatever you talk yourself into, you can talk yourself OUT OF! Plus satan would be de-light-ed to help me to go the wrong way. Even other people’s reassurances won’t help when my focus goes off – ‘whatever the Lord is doing,’ and lands on ‘what’s in it for me?’

Yesterday I looked at David and his faith-filled interactions with the Lord. No matter what happened in his life, David’s heart stayed right with God – even when he was corrected. You and I are blessed to be able to live that way too, because of Jesus and what He did. So this morning, hubby and I were talking about how much we need to be reminded that God doesn’t love us for what we do or don’t do – He loves us because Love is Who He is. Now we always have a choice in the arena of faith. Do we believe Him or not? Will we let Him make ‘love’ who we are?

If we don’t make that choice to deliberately keep aware of His Grace, we can become so focussed on serving the Lord, and making sure we do everything right – that we forget to enjoy every single day what we have been given. When we live with rules and judgment over ourselves, we are much more likely to give that junk away to someone else: Peter made that clear when he said: “…such as I have give I thee!” Acts 3:6.

His focus in the above scripture, was spot on. He honed in on being a benefit to those around him, not the law. So giving away what he had, meant that he lived aware that he had fresh clean water bubbling up inside him. His faith was always active. I want that, and I’m pretty sure you do too – that’s why we are all taking this journey together. When our focus is on right and wrong, eventually, we will start focussing on, and judging ourselves, and others.

This wrong kind of perspective can distract anyone from the revelation we’ve been given about God’s Grace and what He has done for us. Jesus did not only come to save us from our big or little sins – He came to save and restore our relationship with our Heavenly Father. Sin is the lesser thing, the Lord Jesus’ primary focus is always on redemption and restoration and His love being shed abroad in our hearts – by FAITH. We receive love by faith, and we give it away … using our faith.

When we read the gospels, it is clear Jesus wants us to know what His Father likes and wants from us. And self-recrimination and condemnation of others is not on that list. Micah 6:8 tells us that God has shown us what is good. “He has shown you, O man, what is good;  And what does the Lord require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?” 

Adam and Eve lost their fellowship with God; but Jesus, the second Adam, is the Founder of a whole new spiritually-aware kind of people. He came to restore us and exponentially increase our faith, love and fellowship with our Heavenly Father, so that we could begin to know the kind of Oneness that the Trinity enjoys. We cannot have that when we have enmity with one another. Our focus will go off faith and fellowship and love, over onto finding fault with others.

That’s when we decide to protect ME at someone else’s cost. Maybe we don’t like these people because they do this and that, or we don’t like this member of our family because they did so and so. You know, loving people doesn’t have to mean we give them permission to mistreat us, or that we approve of the way they treat others. Loving them means that we use our faith, put them into God’s hands, and live the way He says. 

We can’t afford to embrace the idea that everyone thinking the same way is the criteria for restoration. It isn’t! It can’t be! We don’t all think the same way! Almighty God Himself has to be the One Who unites us.  However, His love is a universal language, and expressing that love, using our faith, as He leads us, can take away barriers. That’s what God’s love given freely to all of us undeserving sinners did! It took away all barriers. We can now enjoy Who He is, and He can expand our viewpoints over and above our prejudices – so that our prejudices… fade … away.

If someone is in error, then we need to remind them from God’s Word what His way looks like. If necessary then we will engage the church leadership in this process. Withdrawing love cannot be the way forward. As we co-operate with the Holy Spirit, and let Him love people through us, we will learn to release our faith as we choose to live in love. Meanwhile Galatians 5:6 says: “And we to whom Christ has given eternal life don’t need to worry about whether we have been circumcised or not, or whether we are obeying the Jewish ceremonies or not; for all we need is faith working through love.” 

The law can’t produce what faith does, in our own lives or in the lives of others. Faith has one primary purpose – to activate our lives with love. Bless you 👋.

P 3286 Cling to Him

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Jeremiah 9:23: “This is what the Lord says:“Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know Me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the Lord.” V25-26: “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will punish all who are circumcised only in the flesh— Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, Moab and all who live in the wilderness in distant places. For all these nations are really uncircumcised, and even the whole house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.”

This is the Lord’s pronouncement over Israel, He is throughly sick and tired of these people who say ‘yes’ but do ‘no.’  He makes it perfectly clear that being rich, popular, strong, and wise in this world’s ways, is not for His kids. What He is looking for is a people who know Him, and know His ways, and love Him so much they will follow Him wherever He goes.  And because of those deliberate choices then His ways will show up in every attitude and action they take. First of all let’s look at what delights God and what is His benchmark, because the Holy Spirit very kindly gave us a list!

He loves kindness, righteousness and justice. He operates from those things. It will never be enough to read the words and nod and smile, or even wipe away a tear. Crying is easy, changing is not! However, whenever  God speaks, He is telling us about Himself and we need to listen to Him. The Jewish people were not wrong in their desire to please Him but pleasing quickly turned into placating. They carefully implemented 613 laws to make sure everyone did what He wanted – and woe betide any Wally that tried to do anything else! They were punished by the religious. These dear people put Almighty God into a box of His own design. The glorious box He called Mercy and Grace, they misused the Mercy Seat and then they walked away from personally knowing Him. The Mercy Seat is a place of meeting, not just dropping off your sins like a dry cleaner! The thing that is heartbreaking is, He is so easy to know. He told us what He likes and doesn’t like. 

 
Where His chosen people missed what He was saying, was that they legislated something that was meant to flow out of willing obedience, compassion and a desire to honour Him. He wanted the Jewish people to love His Ways —not just salute the flag and run back into their old habits. Only to front up at Yom Kippur and pay the set price for their disobedience, lack of loyalty etc… once a year!  He is saying that lovingly, and willingly honouring His ways is the way we love Him. “But He’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbour, be compassionate and loyal in your love, And don’t take yourself too seriously— take God seriously.” Micah 6:8.  

You might want to pause and think on that.  Almighty God isn’t just looking for a transitory relationship— a sometimes on, sometimes off again, depending on their mood — a girlfriend. He wants a pure and holy wife for His Son! Father God is a parent. He wants someone worthy of His Son Jesus, and all Jesus has done for us — to be His Son’s precious Bride. Someone who is willing to have the Lord cut away everything that has taken up residence in our hearts that can defile us. Sadly, sometimes those things also define us – yet we are proud of them. His people back then were circumcised to show to the world around them that they were His children, but their hearts remained unaltered. The question I want to ask today is this: has our heart, life and attitude been altered by following the Lord Jesus? Or do we settle for the outward appearance of being ‘church people’ without any inner conviction and subsequent changes to our lives.

 
Do you want to truly delight God? Then let Him circumcise your heart. Not just fill you up with more information, more rules, or sadly, even more failure. Instead, surrender your whole life to Him, like Jesus surrendered His whole life for you – willingly, joyfully, devotedly. Falling in love cannot ever be a set of rules, it is a process of choosing to get to know each other, enjoying the other person’s ways. The Lord Jesus is totally acquainted with each one of us, who we really are. He already knows every single thing there is to know about us — and yet He picked us anyway! Amazing. Next time you sing: “Amazing Love, how can it be?” Please remember that. Gratitude is our only response. 

When we meditate and act on His words, HE becomes our focus. This is a lovely side-effect of loving the Lord that will improve our view of His kingdom, this world, and other people. We will lose all of our judgment and gain compassion in this process. But at the same time we cannot circumcise ourselves. That’s why we have the New Testament, to explain to us that He has, in fact, already done that. Praise God that He knows exactly the right time and place to put His loving finger on something that is holding us captive to our old way of thinking. The Holy Spirit longs to help us as we cling to Him and get to know His Ways. Bye. 👋

P 3219 A different kind of fasting.

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Isaiah 58:5-11: “Is this what I want—this doing of penance and bowing like reeds in the wind, putting on sackcloth and covering yourselves with ashes? Is this what you call fasting? No, the kind of fast I want is that you stop oppressing those who work for you and treat them fairly and give them what they earn. I want you to share your food with the hungry and bring right into your own homes those who are helpless, poor, and destitute. Clothe those who are cold, and don’t hide from relatives who need your help. If you do these things, God will shed His own glorious light upon you. 

He will heal you; your godliness will lead you forward, goodness will be a shield before you, and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind. Then, when you call, the Lord will answer. “Yes, I am here,” He will quickly reply. All you need to do is to stop oppressing the weak and stop making false accusations and spreading vicious rumours! Feed the hungry! Help those in trouble! Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you shall be as bright as day. And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy you with all good things, and keep you healthy too; and you will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring.”

In my opinion Almighty God makes it perfectly clear, in passages like this one, how to walk with Him. Here’s another interesting one from another prophet, Micah 6:8:“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Our spiritual wellbeing, and our spiritual health, relies upon our choice to do things His way. God is quite simply not into alternative theories. He has laid out His own eternal plans, plus He has written down His interactions with other men and women just like us, for everyone to see and for us to notice and obey. 

If someone asks me, ‘what should I apply myself and obey? Well, Isaiah 58:5-11 keeps me pretty busy! So do the Beatitudes in Matthew 5. PS they are called the BE-attitudes because we are to live like this, personalising His instructions into our lives. Jesus doesn’t waffle on making ridiculous, ostentatious, new age remarks – He simply taught. Everything He said and did in the New Testament was teaching. Here He is teaching us how this new life we have been given works — what it looks like in action.

In the past in our home, we have had a procession of people – mostly young people – who had nowhere to live. Their relevant adults threw them out, so we simply applied Isaiah into our lives and made room for them. Now we choose to help other people who do the same thing we did, only they do it on a grand scale. We don’t act like an organisation when we do this stuff, because we are not. People get quite puzzled that we are not ‘official’ in what we do. To me helping others is just normal Christianity. Our first response to people in trouble is: “how can we help you?”  

Meanwhile, whether the other person is a Christian or not – what’s that got to do with anything? We can’t afford to be selective … Father God wasn’t when He picked us! Despite current theology none of us is any prize …Yet He is so amazing because we are all prizes to Him. The value you put on another human being can change their life. It will most certainly change you! If we only take care of those people who care about us, then we are more concerned about our own comfort, than obedience.

We look after our family, plus we help others – that’s the mandate in this scripture. Once, in a major city, we were walking down the street and a young man was sitting on the pavement with a sign that said: “I‘m starving.”Who could walk past that? It was a busy city and loads of people never even saw him. Someone might say:  “What if he’s a drug-user? It isn’t good to give them money!” Quite right! But you can go buy the guy food and a drink! I don’t have to solve his problems, but I can help him a little even in a small way even if I am just passing through.

Another time, an elderly gentleman was huddled in a doorway, it was so cold. He had a thin little jacket on, pulled tightly around him. The wind was freezing, whistling away … I was cold and I had a jumper, a coat and scarf on! Hubby gave the man his pseudo-suede coat, some food vouchers and we prayed for him. Hey, if you want to open doors, this is the way to do it. Help them. We prayed for him and told him how much Jesus loves him. He told us he’d never had a coat like that one before. That’s when I teared up then, because the coat was not all that good, but … it was warm. 

If you want to know Jesus intimately, then do what He did when He was here. Put God first. Then choose to see what He saw, hear what He heard, look at what He looked at, without judgment – help the ones He helped.

In this fast-paced life today it seems that we think we can’t ever have enough money, because the line for enough, always moves away from us. However, it is good for us to do what we can. Things like, treating other people with kindness and respect, no matter how they look or smell! The poor, the downtrodden, the weak, the disenfranchised are far more likely to listen to what Jesus says, than the supposedly comfortable people who are spending their lives making money and collecting things.

Father God has clearly told us in Isaiah what sort of fast we need to participate in. He even tells us He has chosen it. The next move is ours. Bye. 👋

P 3097 How to live.

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“But He’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbour, be compassionate and loyal in your love, And don’t take yourself too seriously— take God seriously.” Micah 6:8 MSG. 

I just love that this verse says don’t take yourself too seriously. In my life as I follow His instructions and learn to live by them, I’ve discovered accidental times of sheer bliss. It is as if heaven comes down in a little bubble of joy and hubby and I and the Lord are right in the middle of it. He’s laughing and we’re laughing – and we have no clue why we are laughing … we just are! And it feels so good! Eventually you end up wondering why you were worried, harassed or upset in the first place. That’s the place to stop wondering why, and just enjoy the moment! You and I ain’t getting out of this life alive!

Here’s an interesting thought that might help with that. We cannot spend the life we now have, trying to punish any previous generations for the mistakes they made. This life is not meant to be lived retrospectively – it’s too short. I’ve also learnt that deliberately avoiding someone else’s mistakes means I’m just going to make different ones! And I did! Groan!! Judgment always leads to a worse place than we started at.

Hubby and I have just returned home after a little time away in a peaceful place. I’m always glad to get home again, but boy I will miss the view. (See above.) We met a new group of tiny friends here. A small flock of sparrows appeared on our balcony. The bible says that the Lord feeds birds! I distinctly remember that God once fed His little birds my homegrown, much anticipated raspberries. I was pretty ticked off about it too! I didn’t even get ONE! Yes, I repented!

Back to our sparrow visitors. These dear little birds kept arriving early in the morning, and peering hopefully through the big glass window. I’m a sucker for any bird that sits on the back of a chair and sings its heart out! Meanwhile, those little birds really know how to eat, they sure can sock it away. The way they ate you would think they were emus!

OK – it seems it is time to be spiritual! Did you get that instruction in the above scripture? Right at the end, it says: ‘don’t take yourself too seriously, take God seriously instead!’ That’s the whole point of course. That’s why we are all still here, we are here to learn to take the things of the Spirit, seriously. Here’s a question I don’t much like to ask myself, but it has been helpful because it diagnoses my own attitudes rather quickly. What if you were the only person left in circle of family and friends who knows Jesus? Is your life a witness? Yeah, I know. Bring that up!

Meanwhile, we don’t just witness by what we say – we also witness by WHO we are – especially when people are looking, and …even when they aren’t. However, somebody, it seems, is always looking – I’ve learnt that the hard way. Living this life, the only one we have, for His sake, is part of taking Almighty God seriously. The same God Who heals the sick and raises the dead, makes the deaf hear and the blind see – is living inside you. Our job is to let Him out for the world to see. That’s what Paul did.

Paul often ended up in nine kinds of trouble because nobody could shut him up! Everywhere he went he found a public place and started telling people about Jesus. He told governors, kings, religious people, important people, business people, ordinary people, and some listened and some didn’t. Some hauled him off to jail, and he took that in his stride and witnessed to the guards instead!  Paul didn’t wait for revivals – he started them!

The thing that Paul’s life clearly shows me is that half-hearted won’t do. Whatever the Lord has in His plans for each one of us  – we need to make sure we listen, stay humble, and simply go and do it.  Paul was so brilliant, he could do more than one thing at a time. He witnessed, preached, founded churches, and wrote a huge chunk of the New Testament. But all of the Lord’s disciples, with the exception of Judas, gave up the rest of their lives serving God. 

It seems to me that we can sit about waiting for the Holy Spirit to do what He has already done, many many times before in the church’s history – or we can take God Himself seriously and get on with His kingdom’s business. We still have the book and that’s plenty to go on with! I would hate to think that we will spend our whole lives knowing we are saved, yet ignoring the many who are not. What Micah is talking about here is our attitudes – our attitudes are meant to lead to actions. 

We were saved to serve Him. Look! I’m truly sorry if nobody told you that you were actually giving your life away when you first said ‘yes’ to Jesus — but I just did that, right here, right now. So what are you going to do about it? That’s the real issue. How to live this life now, is all over His book. Bye. 🤪 !

P 2884 The life of God in us.

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In Luke 11:46 it says:”Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.”Well this one is a doozy that nobody talks about! We cannot afford to preach what we don’t practice – we may not be perfected yet, but the starting place is having enough humility to tell God we can’t do it. We need His help, and we need to admit our lack to others.

Sometimes, at church, there may be helpful people who love to explain to others how they too can be healed, fixed, etc., because this verse says blah blah blah, so if you just do blah blah blah you’ll be right! If that isn’t enough weight to kill a sick donkey, I dunno what is! The Lord wants us to minister whatever we minister with mercy in our hearts, not law! And there is not one way to do anything. The more we know Him the more ways the Holy Spirit will help us find! Meanwhile if you ever find a pastor who will help you carry your load – treasure him!

Luke 11:42:“Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone.”BTW, Jesus is not making a point about tithing, instead He is saying that there is a lot more to following God than just being definitively particular about it!

Tithing cannot make up for disobedience in other areas. In this passage He is explaining to the people around Him, that we can’t pick and choose what we will obey! Unfortunately, a kind of self-righteousness will show up in people who value law more than life. Our aim is to value and cherish HIS LIFE IN US. We cannot afford to neglect being just, and sharing the love of God toward others, because those things are a hallmark of His Presence.

I want to be perfectly clear about this next remark… the way we treat our enemies — EG:  the people we don’t like;  or people who are annoying;  or family members who irritate the living daylights out of us;  or the people who deliberately and maliciously hurt us — those attitudes show us, and others, how much we love HIM! And like Jesus is saying here, we cannot pay lip-service to these things so we are going to need His help.

Many is the time, I’ve been sobbing away before the Lord explaining that I had tried to be nice to people who have hurt me, but I was totally poverty-stricken because I could not do it from my heart. That’s what “blessed are the poor in spirit...”is all about. Jesus Christ set the bar too high for any of us to reach it … without His help!

He also identified Himself with all of mankind when He said: “When you do this and that for other people, you are doing it for Me!” Our obedience is incredibly important to the Lord. Read the book. We need to understand that Father God is not interested in all talk and no action! God is looking for us to have enduring FAITH. Hebrews 12 says He is the Author of faith, so when we have faith, the life of God is in us. 

Micah 6:8 says:“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”Mercy is now our middle name, and it is a sign of the life of God within us. Making sure that we treat others lovingly is not some old-fashioned nicey-nice concept – it is sorely needed grace in today’s self-centred world. We are to live by Christ’s brand of justice now – it is called unilateral forgiveness! Forgiveness is not optional and it is actually still justice. It is simply justice covered in MERCY! His ways aren’t ours!!

The reason the Lord was repeatedly angry with the Israelites, was because they would not obey Him – they ticked some of His boxes, but most of the time they went their own way. Father God knows how to get us through ANYTHING. He is our loving Father who created us and knows the very best way we should go. So in order to have His life, right here right now, we need to give our life away for His will, and …  … usually someone else’s benefit! That stuff makes very little sense to a legally-based mind, it will probably just make them angry. 

The Lord is not fooled by our efforts to impress other people with how spiritual we are, His kids are to carry His Presence and His abounding Life within them wherever they go. The same way David’s men carried the Ark into Jerusalem – walking and leaping and praising God! The life of God in us will lead us through anything.

Bye 👋

P 2611 The way forward.

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The first thing I want to say today, is this: without the Holy Spirit’s help – and He is available to each and every one of us – we cannot overcome sin and inadequacy by ourselves. Self-talk is not the answer, that’s this world’s answer! Confession, repentance, and humbling ourselves is the only way to thrive and survive in the Christian life. 

Jesus Christ LET Himself be humbled in the most extraordinary ways. Purity, blamelessness, grace and love hung dying on Calvary and He did nothing to deserve the appalling treatment He faced. We all know He only ever did humanity good. So if we meet ugliness from other people, we should not be surprised or offended. Jesus said that in John 13:15-17: ”I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.”

So let us not be arrogant and imagine ourselves as somehow superior to the world around us, just because we happen to know something they don’t.“What do we have that was not given to us?”1 Corinthians 4:7. Here’s a useful thing I’ve learnt … When I stopped trying to outtalk others, or even organise people into suiting me, and I accepted that only God Himself can change people … I began to see other people in a totally different light.

Before that, my judgmental attitude blocked my view of them, even though I had God-given spiritual eyes, my own judgment clouded them. At the same time, I became more and more blind to my own sins. Plus I couldn’t see other people’s needs or understand them. Instead I saw myself as far more needy and unable to change than they were, because of my difficult background. That’s called pride … … think about it!  

I felt entitled to be angry with the other people because they were not helping me. It was their fault I kept falling over, their meanness made me stumble. Yeah, I know wunnerful attitude eh?  I’m not writing this stuff because I am proud of it! Spoiler alert!… I still fall over. Especially when I am tired, sick, or out of sorts!  Like Paul, I’m not there yet, but I continue to aim at transformation. Sadly, if you poke me hard enough, I probably will snarl at you. Sigh.

What that means, is this, in those moments I have totally forgotten that MY debt has been paid in full.  I’m living like an unsaved person instead of a redeemed one! If I am wrangling with guilt and shame over the way I spoke to someone, I need to remember that Jesus paid for my sin. (He paid for yours too!)  Now, my problem is no longer about my sin, it is … what am I going to do about it? Will I shrug my shoulders, and walk on and hope my awful attitude will disappear— or humble myself, repent and let the Lord discipline me?

When I fight for myself to prove myself ‘not guilty,’ or to justify any other nasty thing, or attitude, I am voluntarily walking out of the new covenant. That covenant is my agreement with God that the blood of Jesus will save, cleanse and change me. Unfortunately, at the same time, I am also choosing to put myself into harm’s way, into enemy territory, because I am stepping out from under the umbrella of Christ’s atonement, and now I am trying to shelter from the enemy’s onslaught with my own reasons, anger, excuses and inadequacies! 

The bible tells me to follow my Saviour down the same road He took. I suffer wrong because I am following Jesus. He suffered wrong and said nothing! Even if I truly think I am right, and I can prove it, I must make a choice to let go, and let God vindicate me! Reconciliation is my priority, not vindication. Vindication is the Lord’s work. My advice in a conflict is this —let LOVE be your default button. Not the kind of love that is portrayed on TV, but the kind that is in 1 Corinthians 13, and Colossians 3!

Jesus died to reconcile us to Almighty God, however, we still have choices. We can choose to step away from His Ways when we make our feelings, our needs, more important than His following Him! This means we can avoid being changed, and we will lose the ever-present ongoing war toward total transformation! Eventually guilt will drag us down and away from the light of God’s transforming love. And then shame makes us hide from the only One Who can help us – the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is the Person Who helped Christ through His life on earth and the crucifixion, He is totally well equipped to help us through our bad days.

The way forward is described in Micah 6:8“But He’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbour, be compassionate and loyal in your love, And don’t take yourself too seriously—take God seriously.”  Bye👋