Paul responds to being brutally attacked in Jerusalem by sharing his testimony with those who had just tried to take his life. His testimony serves as an example of how Christians can share their testimony when God provides opportunities to do so.
Transcription (automatically-generated):
If you haven't done so already, open up your bible to Acts, chapter 22. As you know, we're going to be taking a look at verses 1-21 tonight. In this passage, Luke records the apostle Paul publicly sharing his testimony of how Jesus saved him. Now here's a quick recap of some of the events that set the stage for this scene. Paul and the mission team he was traveling with finally make it to Jerusalem.
And after they got there, they were welcomed by the church there. And Paul shared with them how God was reaching the Gentiles with the gospel through his ministry. The Christians in Jerusalem glorified God when they heard this news. But then, almost immediately, they began telling Paul that he needed to prove to the people how pro-Jew, pro-Moses, and pro-Law he was. Paul acquiesced to their council and began a week-long ritual purifying process.
And near the end of that week-long process, the plans of the Jerusalem leaders imploded when some Jews saw Paul and tried to literally kill him because they accused him of defiling the temple. They were in the middle of beating Paul to death when he was rescued by the Romans. Instead of licking his wounds and running away from the persecution, Paul leaned into the opportunity to speak to the very crowd that only seconds earlier was trying to kill him. I was talking with Jeff this week, and he described this scene to me, and it's awesome. If you could put the picture up on the screen of where they were at.
Paul is probably standing at the top of those steps. Hard to see, but that's why the yellow arrow is right there. He came out this little door, and he's standing there, and there's a wall, probably of Roman soldiers in front of him, separating Paul from the Jewish mob down in that lower area who was just trying to kill Paul. And that's where he's standing, getting ready to deliver this message. This is where he shares his testimony with them.
A testimony is a word that's used a lot in church culture. But "testimony" is not a Christian word exclusively. Testimony is a judicial word, and I put the definition of the word on your outline for you. But a testimony is a formal, written, or spoken statement, especially one given in a court of law. When you give a testimony, you are testifying to something you have seen, heard, or experienced.
When Jesus rose from the dead, he came to his disciples and told them to go share their testimony about him with everyone. He said it in these words also on your outline. Acts one eight. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Jesus told them, you will be my witnesses.
You will go around and share your testimony about me, what you have seen me do, and how I have changed your life. And they did. They went around sharing how they saw and experienced the risen Jesus in their life. Now get this. When the disciples shared their testimony about Jesus, they were sharing the gospel of Jesus.
Their testimony was a vehicle for the gospel. The gospel is a very particular message about Jesus that includes the historical events listed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. The historical fact that Jesus died on the cross for sins, was buried, and then was raised to life on the third day. Now, if the disciples relayed that information alone to people without bringing any of their personal experience into the equation, they would have been sharing the gospel in a very technical sense. But when they shared their personal testimony about Jesus, they shared how the reality of those historical events penetrated their lives and transformed their lives forever.
'You see the difference? They could have just shared the facts. Jesus died. Jesus rose and left it at that. And that is the gospel according to Paul.
But they went further. They shared the facts about Jesus' death and resurrection. But they shared how this risen messiah personally met with them, revealed himself to them, and transformed them. Are you tracking with me? Their testimony was a personalized version of the gospel.
Their story was a vehicle that delivered the gospel message to people who desperately needed to hear it. Although the apostles were some of the only people who were eyewitnesses to the resurrection of Jesus, they aren't the only ones who have a testimony to share about the risen Jesus. Every single person has a story, whether they are a follower of Jesus or not. Every person has a story about where they were born, their upbringing, their family, the ups and the downs they've experienced in this life. Every person in this room has a story.
But if you happen to be a Christian, your story includes a personal testimony about the gospel of Jesus Christ. Your story includes how the risen Jesus applied his finished work on the cross and his resurrection to your life. Brothers and sisters, Jesus has met you. He saved you, and he's changed you. That's a part of your story.
It's the best part of your story, and it's the part of your story that you can and should tell others about. You can share the gospel with people by relaying the historical facts about Jesus, but you can also add to that a personal dimension of how the gospel has transformed your life. Your testimony is a vehicle that carries the gospel message in it. This is huge. You can share the message that has the power to save people.
You can do this by sharing your story with them. What does this have to do with Paul's testimony in Acts chapter 22? You may be thinking to yourself, the answer is everything. Tonight we're not going to approach Paul's testimony like we would a history lesson. We're going to approach it like a training seminar.
We're going to look to the example of how the apostle Paul shared his testimony to help us with the sharing of ours. I'm going to make five observations from Paul's example that will help you in the sharing of your testimony with other people. Here's the first observation. Act upon any opportunity you have to share your testimony about Jesus. We see Paul do this in our scene.
Paul didn't have to share his testimony here. He chose to. They just bullied him. They just beat him up. They just literally tried to kill him.
Paul could have walked away not saying a single word to them. Except, you know what? Forget you guys. But he didn't do that. Instead, he took advantage of an opportunity he had to talk to the crowd about Jesus.
There are a couple different avenues you can take to get to the place where you can share your testimony with someone. You can ask for permission to share your story. This is what Paul did. We read about him asking for permission to speak to the crowd. Back at the end of chapter 21, in verse 39, it says, Paul said, referring to the commander, I'm a Jewish man from Tarsus of Cilicia, a citizen of an important city.
Now I ask you, let me speak to the people. Paul asked if he could talk to the crowd, and he was given permission. And what did he do with the permission he was given? He took this opportunity to share his testimony with the people who were gathered there that day. What could this look like for you to ask someone permission to share your story?
Well, here are a couple of examples how I might do it when I'm having a conversation with someone and I would like to tell them about how Jesus has changed my life. Sometimes I just ask them politely for permission to do just that. In the middle of our conversation, when I sense the time is right, I might say, hey, would it be okay if I shared a little bit of my story with you? Or would it be okay if I shared with you a story about the most important thing that has ever happened in my life? Sometimes it could be as easy as that to open a door to a gospel conversation.
Keep in mind that when you ask someone, they could say no. But in my experience, I found that 99% of the time they won't. But if by chance they do say no, all you do is you just move on to something else in the conversation. But if they say yes, then you have a green light to share your testimony with them. Asking for permission to share is one way that you can initiate a gospel conversation.
The second way happens when someone asks you to share your story with them. One Peter 315 says this, and it's on your outline. In your hearts, regard Christ the Lord as holy, ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason, for the hope that is in you. Someone may be watching your life, not like a stalker, but like a coworker, a fellow student in your class, a friend, a family member, a neighbor. They may see something in your life that captures their attention.
They might already know you're a Christian. They might not, but they see something in you that's different, and they want to know more about it. And they might just come out and ask you, hey, I've been watching you, not like a stalker. And I've noticed that there's something different about you, and I just don't know what it is. Why are you so happy all the time?
Or why do you seem to have so much peace all the time? If something like this ever happens to you, then you can know that a door has been opened to you to share your testimony about Jesus. What are you going to say? Where are you going to start? What will you include, and what will you leave out?
Are you ready at any time? Like 1 Peter 3:15 says, we need to be when someone else initiates a gospel conversation with you. Our next three points. We're going to look at the specifics of what Paul shares in his testimony, and this will give us some ideas about what we can share in hours when the time comes. So here's the first thing you'll want to include in your testimony, and it's the first fill-in on your outline, too.
Your testimony should include details about what your life was like before Jesus saved you, the good and the bad. This is what Paul led out with when he shared his testimony that day. With one eye swollen shut and a bloodied mouth. He says, starting in verse is of our passage. Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense before you.
When they heard that he was addressing them in Aramaic, they became even quieter. He continued, I'm a jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel, according to the strictness of our ancestral law. I was zealous for God, just as all of you are today. I persecuted this way to the death, arresting and putting both men and women in jail, as both the high priest and the whole council of elders can testify about me. After I received letters from them to the brothers, I traveled to Damascus to arrest those who were there and bring them to Jerusalem to be punished.
So Paul here shared what his life was like before Jesus saved him. And he included both the good and the bad. The good, well, he said to them, you guys know me. And he addressed them with familial terms, brothers and fathers. I'm a jew like you guys.
I had the best education growing up. I was zealous for God, like you guys are. And these aren't bad things in and of themselves. These are good things. And they were true of Paul's life before he met Jesus.
But Paul also included some not-so-nice things about himself, too. Paul said, guys, the zeal I had for God did not lead to a godly outcome in my life. I hated Christians. I punished them. I arrested them.
I killed some of them. I persecuted Christians to the death. I destroyed families. When I took people's moms and dads, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters to jail for believing and following Jesus, I was not a good man. Paul shared some information about his life that has allowed his audience to relate to him both good and bad stuff from his life.
He included some of the worst parts of his life that allowed his audience to know that Paul did not think he was a good person. We should take note of this and include these same parts in our testimony. We should share both the good and the bad. Now consider sharing parts of your story that will help your audience relate to you. Good things like where you were born, where you grew up, what shaped your life growing up.
These things will go a long way in helping people get to know you a little bit on a personal level. But you shouldn't only share nice things about yourself when you share your testimony about Jesus because then it wouldn't be a testimony about Jesus. Consider sharing parts of your story that show how desperate you were in need of being saved by God. Share the stuff that was ruining your life. Share the stuff that you were ashamed of.
Share the sin that you needed forgiveness for. Share the grimy parts of your life. Share the things that let people know that you do not believe you were a good person when Jesus met you. And why do you need to include your sinful past when you share your story. Well, what did Jesus die for if you don't have any sin in your life?
Jesus didn't die a brutal death on a cross so that he could give us just the little nudge we needed to get into heaven like we were almost. We're so good. We're almost there. Okay, cross. Now.
I'm in. We weren't halfway to heaven when he met us. His death and resurrection didn't get us over a little speed bump on our way to eternal life. We were absolutely dead in our sins when he found us with no hope of getting right with God on our own. We were running from God on our way to spending an eternity in hell when his grace interrupted us and saved us.
Minimizing your sin will minimize the price God had to pay to save you, but sharing your sin will make much of the grace of God in your life. Rightly understanding and conveying the seriousness of your sin will maximize how awesome Jesus is in saving you from it. And it will help your audience relate to you because they already know about their sins. But do they know about yours? If not, they may be misled into thinking you are a nice person who didn't or doesn't have any problems like they do.
But if they know about your sins and then they hear how God loved you in spite of your sins, they might believe that God can love them in spite of their sins, too. Now, there are some cautions you need to take when talking about your sin. Be careful that you don't make too much of your sin when you talk about it. I've seen this play out sometimes in the time that I've spent in the recovery community. It's not exclusive to the recovery community, but I've seen it come up a lot of times there.
People try to one-up one another with their war stories all the time. The longest I've ever stayed up without sleeping is five consecutive days. Five days? That's it? That's nothing, bro.
I've stayed up eight days in a row without sleeping. Someone else chimes in. They take a backseat. Rookies. I went five consecutive years, from 1979 to 1984, without sleeping even one single day.
Awake the whole time goes on and on and on. If you make too much of your sin, you run the risk of glorifying your past sin, making it sound cool or desirable when we all know that it isn't. On the flip side, be careful that you don't make too little of your sin, either. I addressed this idea a little bit already. But if you make too little of your sin, you inadvertently end up making too little of the price Jesus had to pay to deal with your sin.
But I'll add this. Sometimes people will minimize their sin because it's too painful for them to talk about. Talking about some of the stuff from the past may bring up too many emotions. And that's why some Christians don't talk about their past. It's why some Christians won't talk about their past, and it's why some Christians literally can't talk about their past.
They get too jammed up inside emotionally just thinking about it. If this is describing you, please listen very closely to what I'm about to say next. If you can't talk freely about the sins from your past, that you've already been completely forgiven of sins that no longer define you because Jesus has washed away all those stains that may indicate you are holding on to some unnecessary guilt and or shame from your past. When Jesus met us, we were imprisoned in our sin, but he came with the key that unlocked our prison doors and undid the shackles that were around our hands and our feet. He opened the door and made a way for us to walk into the light of freedom, and we did.
But the door to our past has been left open. And although we walked out of there and we never have to go back, sometimes people do. They walk back into their old cell and put the shackles back on themselves. They're not locked, they're just hanging there. Some Christians are still living in the gloomy darkness of their old prison cells, even though they don't have to.
If your past sin still hurts today the same way that it hurt you before Jesus met you, I would encourage you to reach out to a fellow brother or sister in Christ that you trust and invite them into the process of walking out. The healing that is available for you in Jesus today. And like there is every week, there are going to be people up front at the end of the service here tonight available to pray with you. Come and pray with someone if there is more freedom in your life that you want to experience, freedom that you need to experience. Okay.
Once you've laid the groundwork for your testimony by sharing what your life was like before Jesus saved you, the stage is set for you to introduce the star of the show. Now you are ready to tell people about Jesus and how he saved you. This is the next fill-in on your outline. Your testimony should include details about how Jesus saved you. Again we see.
This is what Paul did when he shared his testimony, picking it up in verse six. As I was traveling and approaching Damascus about noon, an intense light from heaven suddenly flashed around me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, Saul. Saul, why are you persecuting me? I answered, who are you, Lord?
He said to me, I am Jesus of Nazareth, the one you are persecuting. Now, those who are with me saw the light, but they did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking to me. I said, what should I do, Lord? The Lord told me, get up and go into Damascus, and there you will be told everything that you have been assigned to do. Since I couldn't see because of the brightness of the light, I was led by the hand by those who were with me and went into Damascus.
Someone named Ananias, a devout man according to the law, who had a good reputation with all the Jews living there, came and stood by me and said, brother Saul, regain your sight. And in that very hour, I looked up and saw him, and he said, the God of our ancestors has appointed you to know his will, to see the righteous one, and to hear the words from his mouth, since you will be a witness for him to all people of what you have seen and heard. And now, why are you delaying? Get up and be baptized and wash away your sins. Calling on his name, Jesus revealed himself to Paul in a personal and powerfully life-transforming way.
Prior to meeting Jesus, Paul thought that all this Jesus talk was a sham. He didn't believe that Jesus was the Messiah. He didn't believe that he resurrected from the dead like his disciples were telling everyone that he had. He didn't believe any of it until this encounter that he had with Jesus on the road to Damascus. Now, Paul believed all of it.
He believed because the risen Jesus met Paul and revealed himself to him. Paul was blinded by the encounter, and he needed a miracle to have his sight restored, which happened. And from that moment on, Paul's life would never be the same, because now he was a believer and a follower of Jesus Christ, who was and is the Jewish messiah, the savior of the entire world. That's an amazing testimony. Right?
One truly, one for the ages. And now you might be thinking to yourself, well, what am I supposed to do with this? My story doesn't even come close to being as awesome and as supernatural as Paul's or even like other people's testimonies that I've heard. Now. I get sad sometimes when I hear Christians share that.
They feel like their testimony isn't good enough or powerful enough because it doesn't include a miracle or deliverance from a life of crime or drug addiction like those are the only kinds of stories that can bring God glory. Praise God. If you grew up in a loving family with both parents at home, and you graduated from high school and you've never done drugs and you don't have a criminal record, praise God. If you didn't have to go through some of the brokenness that other people had to go through in order for them to come to Jesus, praise God for that. But here's something else that you need to know.
If you are ever tempted to feel like your testimony isn't good enough. No matter who you are, if you are a Christian, the story of your salvation is a miracle story. Did you know that your sin made it humanly impossible for you to save yourself because of your sin, you were naturally drawn away from Jesus, not towards him. You were in an utterly hopeless situation, trapped and holding a one-way ticket to hell. And then, at just the right moment, Jesus infiltrated your life.
He drew your dead and wicked heart to himself. He applied his grace to your life. He became irresistible to you when he revealed himself to you. He opened the eyes of your heart so that you could see your sin clearly for what it is. And he showed you in a way that you were able to see the glory of what he accomplished for you on your behalf.
When he died on the cross for you and rose from the dead for you, he accepted your confession of your sin and your offer to turn your life over to him to follow him the rest of your days. He spiritually cleansed you and redeemed you and reconciled you to God. He made you a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. He gave you hope in the place of hopelessness you once had. Friends, hear me.
That is a miracle of God. And every single Christian has experienced this miracle if they are in fact a Christian. So please don't minimize what Jesus has done in your life by comparing your story to another person's story, Paul's or anyone else's. Maximize what Jesus has done in your life by understanding what he has done in your life. So with that said, when you share how Jesus saved you, consider including any of the following pieces of information if they happen to be true of your story.
Share if you grew up in a Christian home where your family read the Bible every day and they shared the gospel with you at an early age and you believed it. Share if a friend invited you to youth group and that was the first time you ever heard the good news about Jesus, and Jesus met you right there and saved you. Share if you were in a chapel service in prison and that's where Jesus met you. Share if you were in a recovery house and someone came in to do a Bible study and that's where you met Jesus. Share if you had Jesus come to you in a dream or a vision and that's how you were saved.
The examples are endless. The point is this. Share however it happened when Jesus met you, you're not going to have a story like the apostle Paul's because you're not Paul, you're you. And your salvation story is a miracle too. Next, you getting saved is not the end of your story in one sense is really just the beginning.
So go ahead and write this down. Your testimony should include details about how Jesus has changed you, how he's changed you. When Jesus saves someone, he usually doesn't whisk them straight to heaven. You notice that we continue to live our lives here out on this earth, but now we live them having been changed by the power of Jesus. And that power does change us.
This is a part of your testimony that you should share with people. Some testimonies include stories of radical healing taking place in a person's life. Sometimes these healings are physical in nature, where a person is touched by God in a special way that restores their body to full health. Sometimes these healings are emotional and or spiritual in nature. Sometimes God completely removes guilt and shame from a person's life in such a way that they can tangibly feel it, if that makes sense.
Sometimes I've heard people share that after they come to Christ, it feels like a million pounds has been taken off of their shoulders. Sometimes God frees a person from destructive patterns of sin that they were once powerless to overcome by their own strength. But Jesus set them free and they no longer walk in those same patterns anymore. If any of these experiences are a part of your story, make sure you include them in your testimony. This is an amazing opportunity to glorify Jesus for what he's done in you.
But many of us don't have testimonies that include miraculous manifestations of the Holy Spirit's power like that in our lives. That's okay. That's because every believer has an incredible opportunity to share a very specific way Jesus has changed them. It's something that's common amongst every single believer, and it's something that people will be able to see in us when they watch our lives for long enough. And it's this.
Now, when I say this next line, you may think I'm confused, but just give me a few seconds, okay? You'll see what I mean. Before Jesus saved me, he was already the Lord of my life. Get this. Jesus is the Lord of everyone's life, whether they acknowledge him as lord or not.
He owns everything in the universe, your life and my life included. Jesus was my lord before he saved me. But I wasn't honoring him as lord or following him as lord before he saved me. I didn't want him to be my lord, and I certainly didn't obey him as lord. And I didn't derive any joy from the fact that he was my lord.
I was a rebel. I was living in direct opposition to the way the Lord was calling me to live. He was my lord before I was saved, but I didn't relate to him based upon that rightful title he has always held. But that changed once he saved me. When he forgave me and filled me with his spirit, my heart and my mind towards him were changed.
Now I love the fact that Jesus is Lord of my life. Now I want to honor him, revere him, love him, and obey him. And those are the things I began to do once I became a Christian. I no longer lived for my own will to be done in my life. I now lived for Christ's will to be done in my life, which, by the way, is a supernatural, miraculous manifestation of the spirit's power in a person's life.
God changes the heart of a man. It takes the power of God to do that. And the kind of life that lives in joyful subservience to God can be seen by others. And when they see that change in us, we should explain to them what they are seeing. We can tell people, you see me live different from other people.
You want to know why I do that? It's not because I am special, and it's not because I am a nice person. It's because Jesus Christ is the Lord of my life, and I live for him. I strive to live the way he tells me to live. Jesus is the reason I try to do money a certain way.
Jesus is the reason I try to do marriage a certain way. Jesus is the reason I try to do fatherhood a certain way. He's the reason I try to do friendship a certain way. He's the reason I try to make disciples a certain way. Jesus is the reason I try to do anything and everything I do a certain way.
I don't try to do things my way anymore. I used to live like that when I was operating as the Lord of my own life. But something drastic has changed. Jesus has saved me and he is the Lord of my life. And now I'm trying to live like that's true.
So whatever you see me try and do, know this. I'm trying to do it in the way that Jesus has called me to do it, because he's the Lord of my life. Paul included this aspect of his story at the end of his testimony in verse 17. We'll pick things up, he says, after I returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance and saw him speaking of Jesus, telling me, hurry and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about me. But I said, lord, they know that in synagogue after synagogue I had those who believed in you imprisoned and beaten.
And when the blood of your witness, Stephen was being shed, I stood there giving approval and guarding the clothes of those who killed him. He Jesus said to me, go, because I will send you far away to the Gentiles. After Jesus saved Paul, Jesus started giving Paul instructions, not suggestions, commands, as it was Jesus's right to do, because he is the Lord of Paul's life. Verse 18, Paul, get out of Jerusalem. Verse 21, Paul, go.
I'm sending you to the Gentiles. And Paul did what Jesus called him to do, because Jesus was now the lord of Paul's life. When you become a Christian, Jesus becomes not just the savior of your life, which he is, and that is so awesome, but he also becomes the Lord of your life in a fresh way, which is equally as awesome to him being your savior. That means you will happily give yourself to doing what he says to do. You can include that as part of your testimony.
Paul did, and we should too. So how did the crowd respond to Paul's testimony about Jesus? Not good.
They tried to kill Paul before he shared his testimony, and they wanted to finish the job after he shared it. We'll see that when we pick up our study next week in verses 22. But don't let that deter you from sharing your testimony with people God brings into your life. That's only one of four different ways someone might respond to the gospel. One, someone might respond in anger.
Two, someone might respond with indifference. You'll hear things like, oh, that's cool that you found your truth. I think I'm just going to kind of stick to my truth and we'll just keep going in our own way. Three, some will respond with curiosity. They might ask questions and want to hear more.
They haven't come all the way, but they maybe have come closer than they were before you shared your testimony with them and then four. Which is the best? Some will respond with repentance and belief in Jesus Christ. With that said, I'm going to invite Jeff and Maureen to come up. I'm going to just end this message with some bonus rapid-fire rat-tat-tat thoughts just to bring this to an end.
This isn't all there is to say about sharing your testimony. This is a handful of observations that we can take away from Paul's testimony in Acts 22. And I'm not suggesting that you have to share your testimony each and every time you talk with someone. I'm not suggesting that when you do share it, though, the things you've heard in this message don't have to be delivered in this precise order each time you share. And you don't need to share all of it every time you share.
Depending on the various relationships you have with people, you can share your story in smaller parts and pieces and chunks over time too. Now, if you wanted to spend time preparing your testimony in advance so that you would be ready to take advantage of any opportunity that came up to share it, let me tell you this. You will experience a very rich reward. That's because meditating upon the gospel and how Jesus personally applied the finished work of the cross and resurrection to your life will have a dramatic effect upon your life. The act of remembering how Jesus displayed his love for you will change your perspective on literally everything in life.
The more time you spend remembering how much Jesus loved you and loves you will give you more joy and gratitude in your life. Reflecting on how Jesus has personally loved you will ready you to share the gospel through the vehicle of your testimony with people who will then have a chance to respond to the gospel and be saved. God can use you to impact another person's life for eternity. And although there wasn't a positive response in this particular instance where Paul shared his testimony, there are many other scenarios recorded for us in the New Testament where people did pick up what Paul was putting down for them. Jesus used Paul's testimony for God's glory, and he can use ours too.
Let's pray that he does. Amen. Amen. Will you pray with me? It's a simple prayer.
Jesus, we want more of you. We want to see you more, understand you more, relate to you more intimately. We want to be changed more because of your powerful presence in our life. You saved us, Lord, and we don't want to be the same because of that. We want to be different.
We want to be like you and we want to be used by you. Lord, I know that's the cry of the hearts of all of your people. And so, Lord, we just ask you collectively, would you help us, help us understand the fullness of what you've done for us and help us understand how to take the story that you're writing in our lives and help mobilize us to be able to share and to proclaim that story to people in our lives who are desperate to hear it whether they realize it or not. Breathe on us fresh, Lord, your holy spirit to encourage us, to literally give us courage, to give us peace and joy and power to live on mission for you, telling everyone about you like we've heard it all said, Lord, all we are, we're not special. We're just a group of beggars telling other beggars where we found the bread of life.
Help us do that, Jesus. We pray in your name. Amen.