Ed Hindson: Can We Still Believe in the Rapture

In this powerful message, we explore the question: Can we still believe in the Rapture? Drawing from 1 Thessalonians 4, the sermon unpacks the hope and assurance found in the promise of Christ’s return.

Key Highlights:

• Why Bible prophecy is written to prepare, not scare
• What “caught up” (harpazō) means in Scripture
• Seven assurances that the Rapture will take place
• The difference between the Rapture and the Second Coming
• Why believers can live with confidence and hope in Christ

The message reminds us that Jesus is coming again—not to discourage us, but to encourage us to live faithfully and share the gospel while there’s still time.

 “Therefore encourage one another with these words.” (1 Thessalonians 4:18)

Can We Still Believe in the Rapture

God bless you, thank you. It’s an honor to be with you this morning. Let me say a quick word about why we’re here. The Henly Foundation was established in honor of a very well-known Southern Baptist Greek scholar and evangelist, Jesse Henley, who preached all over America for many decades. He passed away and went home to be with the Lord some time ago, and his son set up the foundation—based on their business in Atlanta—and left an amount of money to be placed into that foundation for the specific purpose of teaching Bible prophecy in Southern Baptist seminaries. He named me in his will to help distribute that money and designate where it would go.

So, lest you think I gave the million dollars—I had nothing to do with that. I was only involved in channeling it to both Southwestern and Southeastern. We love this school, we love your president, we love all of you and what you are studying for, preparing for, and what you represent. Again, we realize there is a diversity of opinion on eschatology, and I’m grateful that you chose to come today to this chapel, the Day of Prophecy.

I want to remind us: Bible prophecy is not written to scare us; Bible prophecy is written to prepare us. It’s not written to frighten us; it’s written to invite us—to come to Christ while there’s hope, while there’s time.

Now, throughout the day today, the other men who are here are going to deliver some tremendous lectures—don’t miss those. One of the questions that always comes up in relation to the Rapture is: “Well, nobody ever heard of this idea before Darby in 1830. That’s a relatively new idea.” Well, yes—so was justification by faith with Luther. But be that as it may, Dr. Watson, who has done an incredible amount of research at Oxford and Cambridge, will share with us this afternoon dozens of pre-tribulational Rapture statements that predate Darby, of which most scholars are unaware. I think you’ll find that fascinating and insightful. That alone doesn’t prove the view, but it certainly disproves the idea that nobody ever thought of this before 1830.

Secondly, Dr. Michael Reelick from Moody Bible Institute, who is himself a converted Orthodox Jew, will be speaking this afternoon on Israel and the Church in prophecy. There are those who would like to say that the Church really is the new Israel and that God has no significant purpose for historic Israel—or literal Israel—today. He’ll be addressing that issue. Then there’s a Q&A in the afternoon, and this evening Dr. Craig Blazing from Southwestern will be speaking on how you correlate the prophecies related to the Rapture with those of the Day of the Lord. I hope you’ll make time to include that in your day and that you’ll find this interesting, challenging, and encouraging.

My task is to address the question: Can we still believe in the Rapture? I mean, after all—“Come on, Ed—the word ‘Rapture’ is not even in the concordance. You’re not going to find the word ‘Rapture’ in the English concordance.” Of course, you’re not going to find the word “Trinity” either. You’re not going to find the word “Sunday” in the English concordance either. The concept is there—the Lord’s Day, the triunity of God, the catching up—but you’re right, the English term may not be there. So we want to ask ourselves: Is this idea even taught in the Bible itself?

If you have your Bible, take it and turn to 1 Thessalonians, chapter 4. There are many passages in the New Testament that talk about the Rapture, but this one clearly defines the various aspects of what happens at the time of the Rapture. Remember that Paul is writing this letter very early in his missionary journeys. Most New Testament scholars date Thessalonians somewhere in the early 50s. We’re talking about a letter that Paul wrote only twenty years after the death and resurrection of Christ. He’d gone to Thessalonica, stayed there for three weeks, preached the gospel, led some people to Christ, planted a church, and left. Then he writes two letters back to them addressing issues related to the second coming of Christ.

They want to know: “Well, Paul, since you were gone in the last few months, a few people have died. Does that mean they’re going to miss the return of Christ?” He answers the question here in the fourth chapter, beginning in verse 13 (I’ll read from the Holman Christian Standard Bible):

“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, concerning those who are asleep [who have passed away], so that you will not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again—we just sang about that; you just cheered about that—it’s the confidence in the resurrection of Jesus that gives us confidence in our resurrection as well. For in the same way, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by a revelation [a word] from the Lord: We who are still alive at the Lord’s coming will certainly have no advantage over—will not precede—those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the archangel’s voice, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive will be caught up—there’s the term; if you like to mark things in your Bible, you might circle that; harpazō in the Greek—‘you’re out of here,’ snatched away, caught away is what it means—caught up together with them [the dead and the living at the same time] to meet the Lord”—notice—“in the air”—you might underline that: not on the earth, but in the air—“and so shall we always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.”

It’s been nearly 2,000 years since Jesus ascended into heaven and left us with the promise that, “If I go back to the Father’s house, I will come again and receive you unto Myself.” Virtually every Christian denomination on the planet has, somewhere in its doctrinal statement or affirmation, a belief in the second coming of Christ—Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Charismatics, etc.—all believe that ultimately Jesus will return. Even a theologian as non-evangelical as Emil Brunner said, “A Christian faith without the expectation of the second coming is like a ladder which leads nowhere.” The whole point of the Ascension was: “I will return.” There must be a time when Jesus returns.

But when it comes to interpreting prophecies about His coming, we look at (1) the facts of prophecy, which are very clear and simple—“If I go, I will come back,” etc.; that’s pretty clear; (2) then there are issues of interpretation—how do we interpret other statements in relation to the return—in which there is a variety of opinions even among believing evangelicals; and (3) just plain speculation. When we don’t know how all the details work out, people simply guess.

My good friend Tim LaHaye says that when the Rapture occurs and we go up, all your clothes will fall off and be left behind in a nice, neat pile as a testimony that you’ve been raptured away. So I want to know, Tim—what about your glasses? What about false teeth, fillings, artificial parts? Some of us would have more left behind than gone! “There’s Grandma—man, she left a pile; none of that was real.” I don’t know. There are some things we don’t know all the details about, so people with every eschatological view speculate as to how they think this might occur. But the real issue about the Rapture is not the areas of speculation. The problem is that sometimes people preach their speculations as though they were facts, instead of staying with the basic facts.

Now, the doctrine of the Rapture is often the whipping boy of today’s preachers. A dear friend of mine—if you looked at my résumé, I’ve spent a lot of my life (I’m an ordained Baptist minister) in Presbyterian and Reformed circles—was preaching in a Presbyterian church against the Rapture. He went through a long explanation, and when he got to the end he said, “And so, you see, there never will be a Rapture. All we have to look forward to is trouble, trouble, and more trouble.” His own congregation moaned out loud—there was this ugh from the crowd. I mean, if you get a moan out of Presbyterians, you have really struck a nerve.

Be that as it may, I wanted to stand up in the back and shout, “Wherefore, comfort one another with these words!”—but I didn’t. After the service I said, “Wilson, wait a minute, man. I know what you’re saying—you don’t think there will be a pre-tribulational Rapture—but there has to be a Rapture somewhere, sometime. It’s either got to happen before the Tribulation, during the Tribulation, before the Wrath, after the Tribulation, there is no Tribulation, before the Millennium, after the Millennium, there is no Millennium, it’s at the end of time—but you’ve got to put it somewhere. You can’t just get rid of it. You’d have to take 1 Thessalonians 4, rip it out of the Bible, and throw it away.”

“I know, I know—I get it,” he said. But the problem is people who don’t believe in a pre-tribulational Rapture often act like there’s never going to be a Rapture. No—there has to be a time when the dead are raised and the living are caught up.

Now, no matter what our eschatology is, we all have a responsibility to use our confidence in the Lord’s return to encourage people—not only to be prepared to meet the Lord when He comes, but, in the meantime, to spread the gospel to the world, to engage the culture, and to exercise social responsibility. Just because I believe Jesus is coming someday—and I think it could be any day—doesn’t mean I don’t try to do something to make a difference in the world in which I live. It has often been observed that those who are the most heavenly-minded have generally done the most earthly good. It does not behoove us to say, “The Lord’s coming, therefore I’m not going to take my responsibility to engage the culture with the power of the gospel.” No—of all people, we need to be committed to accomplishing that to the glory of God.

Looking at the text we just read, I think we find at least seven assurances that there will be a Rapture.

First, a reminder: do not grieve like an unbeliever. That doesn’t mean that a believer does not grieve. Of course we do—when a loved one dies, our hearts are broken—but they’re not broken without hope, because we believe that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. At death, the body may go to the grave, to the dust, or to the ashes—for the early martyrs, to the lions in the Colosseum—but the spirit goes to heaven to be with the Lord. Therefore don’t grieve over those who have “fallen asleep.” It’s obvious he uses that term as a euphemism for death, because you have the same term in Acts 7: when Stephen is stoned to death and is about to die, the Bible says he was “falling asleep.” He says, “Lord, into Your hands I commit my spirit.” Don’t grieve like an unbeliever, with the hopelessness that this is the end.

It has always amazed me that people who claim to be atheists and say, “I don’t really believe there is a God,” every time something goes wrong they get mad at God. When the bottom falls out of a person’s life—believer or unbeliever—what do they intuitively cry out? “Oh God, why did this happen to me? Oh God, my girlfriend dumped me. Oh God, I lost my job. Oh God, I flunked the exam.” Why do we do that? Because we’re created in the image and likeness of God. We know intuitively there really is a God. Unbelievers get mad when problems come; believers go to their knees. The unbeliever shakes his fist in the face of God: “If there’s really a God, I’ll tell you—” You’re so mad at God, you’re convincing me He exists. I thought you said He didn’t exist. Why don’t you curse the planet? “Oh, darn you, planet! Oh, curse you, evolutionary processes! Oh, natural selection, darn you; you’re eliminating me!” They don’t say that. They always want to blame God, then turn around and say He doesn’t exist.

(I won’t get into Joe Biden today. He went wild—if you saw him on the news—he wants all the terrorists to go to hell. I’m not even sure he believes there’s a heaven. But be that as it may, people get frustrated because they don’t have any real hope.)

Second, you have the reassurance: the dead will return. God will bring with Him—lead from heaven—those who have died and gone to heaven. So there has to be a time when the spirit is reunited with a body in a literal resurrection by the power of God. Why do we believe that? Because we believe that Jesus rose from the dead. We have the assurance that we too one day will rise from the dead. At the time of His coming—the parousia, the second coming of Christ—the dead will be raised when they return.

Third, the Lord Himself will return to the clouds. He will descend—come down—to the clouds, and those who are alive will not precede those who have died. For twenty-one centuries, Christians have believed the message of the gospel, put their faith and trust in the atonement of Jesus Christ, and believed that His death on the cross was a sufficient payment for their sins—and yet they have died, and died, and died. Biblically, if the spirit is in heaven and the body is in the dust, this passage is saying that when the Lord returns from heaven, He’ll bring that departed spirit with Him. He’ll resurrect the dead; He’ll rapture the living; and He’ll call us all up to heaven—to the Father’s house. There are three signals mentioned in the passage: the triumphal shout, the voice of the archangel, and the trumpet of God. When those occur, God is going to call the entire body of Christ home to heaven.

Fourth, it involves a resurrection: “The dead in Christ will rise first.” That little designation “in Christ” is used throughout the New Testament—uniquely, over fifty times—to refer to believers in the Church Age. Those who are “in Christ” are those who have come to faith in Jesus as HaMashiach—the Messiah, the Lord, the Savior. They have believed that when Jesus stood up on the nails on the cross, pulled Himself up on the spikes, shed His blood, breathed His last, He was making an atoning sacrifice for our sins—that He was not simply dying as a martyr to a cause or as a moral example to society, but that He was literally the Son of God incarnate in human flesh, who goes to the cross in that body to die in our place and take the wrath of God against our sin upon Himself. Because of His death and His resurrection, we have the assurance that we too one day will rise from the dead.

Fifth, 1 Thessalonians 4 clearly indicates there will be a Rapture—a time when the living are “caught up.” “We who are alive and remain will be caught up.” That tells me several things. First, when Jesus returns, there will be believers on the earth. You’ll always hear some theological cynic say, “Well, I don’t know if anybody’s really saved, and I don’t know—when Jesus comes, will He find faith on the earth?” The answer here is yes. Now, that doesn’t mean everybody who makes a profession of faith is genuinely saved. In fact, while you’re studying here in seminary, you need to answer that question for yourself. The greatest tragedy would be to study about God and the Bible and theology and walk out of here lost—never having a personal experience with Christ, never having a real encounter with the Savior. That’s the most important thing. There are intellectual issues to deal with and practical matters to learn, but ultimately it’s about a spiritual journey that God is taking you on—from a point of salvation to a point of service.

I didn’t have the privilege of growing up in a Christian home. I grew up in Detroit, Michigan, in a totally non-Christian family: no God, no Jesus, no Bible, no church. So how did I come to Christ? A Baptist church built a new building a couple of blocks from our home, sent out a flyer advertising Vacation Bible School, and my mother sent me. She didn’t even take me: “Get out on the street, make sure the light’s green, don’t get hit by a car—you’ll be fine. Go there; it’ll be good for you. Get out of the house.” When I got there, I learned that Jesus loved me, that He died for my sins, that He rose from the dead, that He ascended into heaven, that He was coming again, and that I could have a home in heaven forever—and it was free. I raised my hand—“I’m in!” God, in His grace, reached down and touched my heart and life, called me unto Himself, and then began to change the whole pattern of what would have been my life. In that moment of encounter with Him, I went from a family in which every single relative I had was lost—when my mother used to say, “Your uncles are coming over tonight,” I’d think, “Not them! They’ll get drunk, get in a fight; it’ll be a mess”—and God started over with one kid.

Maybe you came from a family like that. Maybe you’re the first believer in your family. Or maybe, like my wife, you come from a long line of believers—she has so many Christian relatives you can’t witness to any of them; they’re already all saved! It’s like being in heaven. (You can’t do evangelism in heaven—if they’re not saved, they’re not there.)

Notice what happens at the moment of the Rapture: the living are caught up. The term comes from the Latin rapio, rapere. In most English translations it’s “caught away,” “snatched away,” “caught up.” Sometimes you’ll hear people say, “This idea is only in 1 Thessalonians 4; you’re building a whole doctrine out of one chapter.” No, you’re not. There are several raptures in the Bible. Enoch, in Genesis, walked with God—and what happened? He was gone. (I don’t know if his clothes went with him or not—he’s gone alive.) Elijah is caught up alive in the chariot of fire (the mantle fell off, but he was raptured away). Philip the evangelist—after he baptizes the Ethiopian eunuch—the text in Acts says, “the Spirit of God harpazō—caught him up”—a temporary rapture—and dropped him at a different location. The apostle Paul uses the term harpazō of himself when he says, “I was caught up into the third heaven.” Even the Ascension of Christ is referred to as a rapture in Revelation 12, where the woman gives birth to the male child—obviously a symbol of Christ—and the child is “caught up”—harpazō—unto the Father in heaven. Then you have the rapture of the two witnesses in Revelation 11—two men preaching the gospel (presumably two born-again Jewish preachers) testifying of faith in Christ, I think during the Tribulation. The Antichrist—the Beast—orders their execution; they are killed; their dead bodies are left lying in the street in Jerusalem for three and a half days while all the world watches and sends presents to each other and celebrates their death.

I remember way back in the 1950s hearing a preacher comment on that passage and say, “I don’t know how the whole world could watch somebody lying dead in a street in a certain location in three and a half days, but maybe it’s got something to do with television.” Pretty good guess. I’d like to be watching CNN on that day, because the Bible says the Spirit of life enters into them—God resurrects them and raptures them up to heaven. “We’re here with CNN—it’s the fourth day now—the two dead guys are still in the street… Wait a minute—they’re moving around… They’re getting up! Wow—they’re going up!” I’d like to hear them explain that one.

Why would God go to all the trouble to do a “mini-rapture” of the two witnesses unless He’d already done the greater Rapture and wanted everybody to understand why those people had actually disappeared? You’ve got to place the Rapture someplace.

People will say, “Come on—you guys who believe in a pre-tribulational Rapture are really teaching two second comings.” No, we’re not. We’re emphasizing two aspects of Christ’s coming: the Rapture is in the air, in the clouds, taken to the Father’s house; the Return is to the earth, when the world is judged and the kingdom of God is literally set up on earth. There are multiple aspects to the first coming—the birth of Christ, the life of Christ, the death of Christ, the resurrection, the ascension—it’s all part of the first coming. In fact, at His death He left, and He came back—but it’s still all part of the first coming. The second coming, I believe, involves a catching up and then a coming down. Some have delineated at least 15 or 20 differences between the Rapture and the Return. Some will say, “Well, if your presupposition is that this has to be two different events, you’re going to look for differences—‘in the air/on the earth, taken away to the Father’s house/return to rule with Christ in the kingdom on earth’—if you’re literal and premillennial. If you’re looking for compatibility, you’ll find a way to harmonize them.” That’s true. Depending on your presupposition, if you’re determined they can’t be the same event, you’ll be convinced by differences; if you’re convinced they have to be the same event, you’ll look for ways to resolve them. Those of us speaking today don’t believe the two events occur simultaneously; there are too many differences.

Every eschatological view tries to take the pieces of the eschatology puzzle and put them together in some logical order. I believe the pre-tribulational view genuinely, sincerely tries to do that. Some views just leave all the pieces on the table—“Pan-millennial: it’ll all pan out in the end. Next question.” That avoids the hard work.

Sixth, you have a reunion: we’re with the Lord forever, and the entire body of believers is with the Lord from that point on. Therefore, the resolution follows: “Wherefore, comfort one another with these words.” Encourage one another. The promise of the Rapture is not to discourage—it’s to encourage. There must be a time when the dead are raised and the living are caught up. To be fair to the text, you have to put it somewhere; the debate is really only over the timing.

I believe the purpose of the Rapture is at least fourfold:

1. To take the Bride home to the Father’s house (John 14). Jesus tells the believing disciples—Judas having left the room already—that if He goes back to the Father’s house, He will come again “for you.” About six times in that passage He uses the preposition “you”—for you believers.
2. It takes us to the judgment seat of Christ—we will all stand before the bēma seat. Is that different than the great white throne judgment? Is that the time of believers receiving their rewards—their evaluation?
3. It precedes the marriage of the Lamb (Revelation 19), because the marriage clearly takes place in heaven. You have to get the Bride up to heaven—to the marriage—in order for the marriage to be complete, and it must include all believers of the Church Age.
4. It precedes the triumphal return. In Revelation 19, Christ appears on the white horse, marches out of heaven with an army robed in white. Where did they get that? In verse 8 of chapter 19: they got it at the marriage. This is not an army of angels—this is the Church, the Bride of Christ—no longer rejected, martyred, maligned; now it’s the raptured Church, home to heaven, married, who marches out of heaven as the Church triumphant with her warrior Husband, coming back to reign and rule on earth. To try to allegorize that away, to me, doesn’t take the text seriously. At some point you have to get the Church up to heaven—to the marriage—to return in triumph.

As Dr. Akin pointed out this morning, while pre-tribulationalism is debated among scholars, it’s the predominant view of people in the pews (which doesn’t make it right), and it’s also the predominate view of some very significant pastors—Chuck Swindoll, David Jeremiah, Ronnie Floyd, Charles Stanley, Johnny Hunt, Paige Patterson, and our beloved Dr. Akin. Why would those guys actually believe this? Let me give you ten reasons why I think (and you can evaluate them for yourself) the Rapture has to come before the time of Tribulation:

1. Jesus promised to receive believers unto Himself—to take them home to the Father’s house (John 14).
2. His instruction to be watching for Him to come (Matthew 24). He didn’t say, “Keep watching for the Antichrist to come.” I’ve heard every wild, crazy idea about who the Antichrist will be. It’s always the American president we don’t like—never the president of Brazil. You don’t want to know who the Antichrist is—if you figure it out, you’ve been left behind. That’s not good. Keep watching for Me to come. Pray that you escape the hour of trial coming upon the earth (Luke 21; Revelation 3:10).
3. Revelation 3:10—“kept from [ek, out from] the hour of trial” that is coming upon the whole earth. The idea is not limited to 1 Thessalonians 4.
4. The persecuted woman in Revelation 12 symbolizes Israel, not the Church. That matters because later it’s the seed of the woman persecuted by the Beast who flee into the wilderness. Are those Church-age believers, or Jewish people under persecution during the Tribulation? The woman is pictured as the mother of Christ (sun, moon, stars—Joseph’s dream imagery). The Church is the Bride of Christ. Your wife is not your mother, and your mother is not your wife—two different roles. Jesus descends from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, David—He’s Jewish (John 4: “Salvation is of the Jews”). God is not anti-Arab; Arab is an ethnicity. Islam is a religion to be evaluated theologically, but Christ unites Jew and Arab, black and white, Asian and Westerner.
5. The Church is not the object of divine wrath (1 Thessalonians 5:9). We’re “not appointed unto wrath, but to obtain salvation.” In Revelation, the seal judgments are called the wrath of the Lamb; the bowl judgments, the wrath of God the Father. If wrath is being poured out in the Tribulation, are you going to pour out divine wrath on the Church? The Church has always suffered the wrath of man and of Satan, but not the wrath of Jesus. Jesus took the wrath for us on the cross: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” You don’t beat up the Bride of Christ and then take her to the wedding. (Some say, “It’s for the purification of the Bride”—that sounds like Protestant purgatory: “Beat the sin out of her, then marry her.” Why only beat up the last generation of believers? What about the previous twenty-one centuries?)
6. The Rapture is imminent (Titus 2:13)—the blessed hope of the believer.
7. The Rapture is instantaneous (1 Corinthians 15)—“in a flash, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.”
8. The Rapture is unique for those who are “in Christ”—Church-age believers.
9. The Rapture precedes the bēma judgment, where believers are evaluated and rewards (or lack thereof) are distributed.
10. The Rapture precedes the marriage and precedes Armageddon (Revelation 19). I’m not looking for Armageddon as the next event. Will it come? Yes. Is it next on the calendar? I don’t think so.

Everybody wants to know, “When is Jesus coming back?” The answer: nobody knows. The older you are, the sooner you want Him to come back—you’re running out of time. The younger you are, you think, “I’m not in a hurry—I have my whole life to live; I don’t want Him to come back too soon; I haven’t graduated yet.” A God who loves you enough to send His Son to the cross will come back when the time is right. You can trust Him.

The other question: “When is the mess in the Middle East going to come to an end?” Answer: it isn’t—not until He returns. In the meantime, do we pray for peace? Yes. Work for peace? Yes. Be accountable and responsible? Yes. But the facts, in my opinion—that Israel’s back in the land today, that there’s crisis in the Middle East; that the global economy already exists; that weapons of mass destruction have been invented—how much time do we have left? I don’t know. I can’t tell you if you have five minutes, five years, or fifty years, but I don’t think the human race has five hundred years. Given the depravity of the human heart, the proclivity toward destruction, and the potential of the weapons of mass destruction at our disposal, it’s only a matter of time till somebody uses them. That alone ought to tell us, no matter your view, we’re getting closer to the time when He will come.

I want you to help me conclude the message. Turn to the person on your right and on your left—one of whom you probably came with—look them in the face and say, “No matter what your view is, one day Jesus is coming.” Then ask them, “Are you ready?” Go ahead—it’s all right.

I trust you didn’t say, “I hope so.” That’s the wrong answer. “I’m doing the best I can”—that’ll never do it. God already did the best He could when He sent Christ to die for our sins and take our place. The message of the gospel, the message of salvation, the call to service, the anticipation of His return—all of that is designed to give us hope for the future. I don’t need to worry about the future—God is on the throne; God is in control. He’ll do what’s right when the time is right. The question is: Am I going to do what He wants me to do in the meantime? Our answer should be, “Yes. Amen. Whatever You want me to do, in whatever time I have left—whether You come or I go—my life is Yours to serve You.”

Father, I pray this morning: bless our hearts, challenge our minds, stir our souls—that we might realize the incredible love that You have for us. You died for the Bride. You love the Bride. You’re coming again for the Bride. Help us to have a high enough view of the Bride to understand why You would come for her before You declare war on the world. In the meantime, help us—as members of that Bride—to display Jesus, not just in what we think or say, but in how we live: that our heads might be used to study, our hearts inflamed with passion, and our hands and feet engaged with service—to the glory of God.

For we pray in Jesus’ name.

Amen.