This podcast episode delves into the profound topic of integrity, featuring insights from Pastor Ralph Campbell. We engage in a meaningful dialogue that emphasizes the necessity of integrity in both personal and ministerial contexts, highlighting its paramount importance over mere charisma. Pastor Ralph articulates that true integrity manifests through a harmonious congruence between one's public and private personas, urging listeners to examine their moral foundations. Throughout our time, we explore the critical role of integrity in speech, the dangers of conflating spiritual empowerment with moral maturity, and the essence of living a life that aligns with one's professed values. This episode serves as a clarion call for all individuals, particularly those in leadership, to cultivate a life marked by unwavering integrity in order to fulfill their divine calling and to finish well.

Takeaways:

• The podcast emphasizes the profound significance of integrity in both personal and professional spheres of life.
• Pastor Ralph Campbell articulates that integrity is not merely a matter of charisma, but a reflection of one's character and moral congruence.
• It is imperative to engage in daily moral examination to ensure alignment between one's public persona and private self.
• Listeners are encouraged to practice early repentance, fostering a habit of addressing moral failures promptly and sincerely.

Hey there and welcome back to the Clarity Podcast.

This podcast is all about providing clarity, insight and encouragement for life and mission.

My name is Aaron Santemeyer and I get to be your host.

Today we have the phenomenal opportunity to have with us in the podcast Pastor Ralph Campbell, and we get to sit down and discuss what integrity looks like.

And so my friend, spiritual mentor, Pastor Mark Lehman, had the honor to be with Pastor Ralph and hear him share about a message on integrity, specifically coming from Psalms 15.

And we were together.

Pastor Mark said, you got to have him on and discuss it.

He said it's one of the best he's ever heard and this will not disappoint.

It was great to learn from Pastor Ralph, his heart and his passion for us to for each and every one of us to live a life of integrity.

We discuss the realities of being a pastor and the integrity is more important than charisma.

The idea of having integrity in our speech and the importance of moral examination and allowing integrity to govern our lives.

So anyway, phenomenal podcast and very, very insightful.

Encouraging and you won't want to miss it.

Do ask you to continue to send in your questions for back channel with Foath.

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Over six plus years of him answering questions and it's been a joy all the way.

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I know the podcasts I subscribe to.

They're the ones I listen to.

They show up on my feed every Tuesday.

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Better than now to get started.

So here we go.

Greetings and welcome back to the Clarity Podcast.

So excited to be here today with a fellow West Virginian and also a friend, Pastor Ralph Campbell.

Welcome to the podcast.

It's great to share with you today, Aaron.

Thanks so much for having me.

I am looking forward to our conversation and it's going to be excellent.

And Pastor Ralph, for early on in the podcast I would come up with introductions for people and then I realized I shared all the things that they didn't really think were important.

So I shifted, you know, halfway through and thought, you know, I just asked the person I'm interviewing, what would they like to share that's they find important about their life.

So I'm going to ask you that question.

Can you introduce yourself on the things that you would want the listeners to know about?

Pastor RALPH oh, thanks.

Thanks so much for letting me do that, Aaron.

The most important thing is, is that I'm married to Jane.

Okay, There you go.

37 Years and we have shared a ministry partnership during that entire time.

It has been wonderful.

Two kids.

Brooke is 30.

It works for Freddie Mac, lives here in Northern Virginia.

Connor's 26 serves on staff with us as worship arts pastor at our church and will be heading to the field applying to PWM in a year or two.

We're excited about what the Lord has for him and wherever that is as well.

And along the way, I get to serve Bethel Church in Martinsburg, West Virgin, serve the network here locally as a regional presbyter.

So it's a good kingdom work.

It is.

And looking forward to our conversation today.

So our mutual friend, Pastor Mark Layman, he was, you were in a meeting and you shared this about integrity.

He said, it's the best I've ever heard.

And so and I thought, well, it'd be phenomenal to have you on the podcast and unpack it for us.

And so I'm going to go ahead and jump in.

You One of the things that you share is that would be erroneous to think that spirit empowerment insulated, insulates us from failure.

That's a powerful quote.

So we're most people listening to this.

Well, a lot of them are Pentecostal, and so sometimes we do think that.

So sure.

How did you come to that idea, Pastor Ralph.

I think watching the systemic falls of people in Pentecostal and charismatic circles over the last few years, I referenced that in the talk that during a zoom call that I had with some friends of mine who serve at a Presbyterian seminary in New Jersey, one of them made the prescient statement that I believe Covid is going to be apocalyptic in the Koine sense of the word.

We knew what he meant.

Not a catastrophe, but an unveiling.

And shortly after that, that notable name after not name began to come out in modern evangelicalism with a fall, a scandal.

And that has unfortunately continued to this day.

So just processing all of that, Pastor Mark had asked me to share on integrity to our network in some venues, some different ways.

And I think that looking at that, that our spirit empowerment distinctive could have given us a mentality that we are Insulated from failure.

And so I will unpack that for a moment.

Obviously, that some of the most sobering stories in the Bible involve people who are genuinely called by God, used by God, you would say, empowered by God, and yet were deeply susceptible to compromise.

Samson's an obvious choice.

David is another.

Both marked by divine calling, but neither were they beyond moral collapse.

And Scripture never teaches us that anointing or spirit empowerment eliminates any vulnerability.

So the presence of gifting, it's not the same thing as the presence of maturity.

Wow.

Spirit empowerment is real.

It's powerful.

We believe it.

It's part of our orthodoxy and orthopraxis, but it is not immunity.

And I do have a couple of thoughts that I've kind of come to along the way.

And modern Pentecostal thought hasn't explicitly taught this confusion.

We wouldn't do that.

But I think functionally we've conflated empowerment with maturity.

That's a huge mistake.

Yeah.

I mean, in other words, we wouldn't say that the gifts, if the gifts are present, character is irrelevant.

We wouldn't say that.

But in practice, I think that we have erroneously assumed that a visible spiritual activity is evidence of invisible spiritual health.

And I think that that theologically, that conflation has occurred in a couple of key way.

In that the way that we speak in Pentecostalism, we collapse categories of new mythology, meaning we talk about being led by the Spirit, being anointed, being used by God.

But that blurs a distinction, I think, between empowerment and sanctification.

So if our language is always exclusively associated with power or anointing rather than equally with conviction or obedience or holiness, we've got a real problem there.

Yeah.

Wow.

That's powerful.

Powerful, powerful, powerful.

And lots of.

Lots of it honestly made me pause when I read it.

And honestly, I'd not given a deep level of thought to it.

But since I've read it, it's been something that's come back.

And I grew up.

I grew up in an Ieg church, you know.

You know, the church I grew up in.

And, you know, I've been in Pentecost since, you know, since I was born.

And so I've seen.

Seen it, seen the challenges that come with it.

And so one of the other things you wrote was that what it looks like to have integrity govern our lives.

So, Pastor Ralph, if you're painting a picture of what.

What does it look like to have integrity govern our lives?

So my understanding of integrity is that it's a moral congruence and that moral congruence is to order our lives.

So it's.

The public self is not divorced from the private self.

They're not at war with.

With one another.

It's when what is visible on the platform is actually rooted in what has been cultivated in it.

And practically for us, in ministry, that means our prayer life supports our preaching life.

Our financial habits align with what we preach from the pulpit.

On stewardship, the speech behind closed doors matches the grace and truth that we proclaim in public integrity with moral congruence.

It means that there's not two versions of ourselves.

There's not one for the pulpit.

There's not one for private life.

But that doesn't negate the need for grace in our lives.

We all fail.

I fall catastrophically sometimes.

It does mean that we practice daily repentance.

And I emphasize the word daily there.

Integrity is not perfection, but it is an honest responsiveness to the conviction of the Spirit, to.

To a refusal.

And I think this part is important, Aaron, that I wrote.

It's a refusal to let small compromises in our lives become normalized.

Wow.

And so a person who lives by integrity, they still stumble.

We do, but we don't live divided.

We let truth rule us.

Which is why I love Psalm 15.

I think it's one of the incisive Old Testament texts on integrity.

Yeah, yeah.

So let's jump there.

So Psalm you, you, you, you point you shared from Psalms 15.

And super insightful.

So how does some.

How does some.

How does Psalms 15.

How does it speak to the importance of moral examination?

So I think it's remarkable in that.

In its construct, it.

It asks a relational and a spiritual question in.

In moral terms, who may dwell in your sanctuary?

Who may live on your holy hill?

And I think David, to me, David is asking, who can be trusted with.

With holy things?

And the answer for us in Pentecostalism or charismatic circles, it's not about talent or influence or eloquence or charisma.

It is about character.

And the psalm then to me gives us an X ray of what integrity looks like.

It describes a person whose walk is blameless, whose speech is truthful, whose relationships are rightly ordered, whose promises are kept, and whose money is handled with integrity.

It unpacks all of those things that I just listed.

And so it's a matter of proximity to God.

It's a matter of moral reality.

And when I read, examines me, as Scripture should, and I think that that's an important part where.

Where we let Scripture examine us and particularly texts like that.

Because if we don't walk through a moral examination like that on a regular basis, here's the danger.

We can become incredibly skilled at ministry, but remain unsearched in our soul.

And we know that God is asking us to.

Search me, O Lord.

Yeah.

And Pastor Rafa, is that something you've grown in over time?

That, that understanding of this moral examination and what does.

And, and letting us text speak to you in that.

In a. I think it would be some level of vulnerability.

Right.

To be open to a text and the Holy Spirit speaking to us.

What does that.

What.

Could you, could you share just a little bit more about that.

To answer the first part of your question?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

You know, I grew up in an assembly of God pastors home, my parents, pastors assembly of God churches for 60 plus years.

I went immediately to one of our assembly of God Bible colleges.

But along the way, things that I believed and things that I spoke were not fully integrated into the practice and the habits of my life.

And so I came to a place where, you know, different failings in my life that I needed to hunger for.

Holiness.

Yeah.

And the need for, the need for grace in your life should point you in that direction.

It is the goodness of God that leads us to repentance, we hope.

And you know, that that has become a journey along the way where, where I want the gap to close between, between who I am and what the Lord has called me to be.

Wow.

That's very important to me.

Wow.

Wow.

Good word.

Good word.

This is not.

I mean, it was full of things that I learned.

The line of thought that the fall does not begin with sin, but the thought that sin does not touch me.

How does that speak to integrity?

I'd never heard it put that way, but it, it.

But as I looked back and, and honestly, when the time of examination, my personal life, I thought that is, that's a light bulb moment right there.

This idea that, that it's sin.

The fall does not begin with sin, but with a thought that sin does not touch me.

Can you share more about that?

Sure.

I, I have a little bit to say about that.

Yeah.

And.

And again, this goes back to, to what has happened in modern evangelicalism over the last five years.

I'm not going to name names, but we've witnessed everything from SBC to our own selves and then notable names along the way.

And because it was such a volume of leadership failure, it's no longer isolated.

It's cumulative now and continues to be.

So when that happens, it's no longer individuals that we hear about, that we look and examine its culture.

And it's our evangelical culture.

It's now our Pentecostal culture.

And so I felt like in looking at that, we needed to slow down and say not just what happened to them, but what is going to happen to me or to us if we're not careful.

And in a word, I think that the root system of many of those moral failures is some sort of bizarre sense of exceptionalism.

That's the word.

I mean, no one walks away from their ordination night having the presbyters laid hands on them, or wakes up one day in their first ministry position and decides to destroy their marriage or betray their calling or devastate their church.

Yeah, that collapse and erosion begins much earlier somewhere in our thinking.

And when a person starts to believe, somehow because of a delusion from the enemy, that the warnings of Scripture and warnings we proclaim from the pulpit, they apply generally, but maybe not urgently to me.

So before there's ever a public failure, you can count on this, Aaron, that there is a private shift on how someone is viewing themselves.

Hmm.

It's the moment that I begin to think that I'm less vulnerable than what Scripture says I am, or I'm less susceptible or I'm more stable because of my calling, my experience, my longevity.

And though all of those beliefs tend to lower the guard, and if it lowers the guard, then we begin to think that sin is not really going to touch me, then.

Then something happens communally, and that's that.

And that, I think, is this.

That boundaries feel less necessary.

Our lives.

Accountability begins to become optional or.

Or restrictive.

Correction begins to be intrusive and unwanted rather than protective.

We no longer place ourselves in environments where we will be questioned.

And then curating who has access to our lives.

And all of those things begin to add up with this assumption that I can manage what has destroyed others, that we're the exception to the role.

And Scripture constantly pushes against that illusion.

That's why Paul says, you know, let anyone who thinks he stands take heed unless he falls, because that confidence can turn into presumption.

And along with that, the hecticness, the busyness of our lives, the pressure of a growing church or a larger ministry or more responsibility.

We begin to feel like no one has as much on them as I do, therefore, I deserve a little relief.

And we tend to then justify, I think, some sins.

Yeah.

And that.

That drift, that drift that they can easily take place.

I liken it to.

You know, I used to go to the beach as a kid.

And we would.

Virginia beach or Ocean City, which our part of the world.

And so my parents would always tell us, we need to stay in front of the hotel.

But, you know, I would go out and get into the waves and play, and before you knew it, I was 100 yards down the beach in a different place because I did, you know, I mean, because you drift, right?

And you said the business, the pace of life, if you're not concentrated.

And I would always tell my.

My parents, like, it's not going to happen to me, like, I'm going to keep, you know, I mean, but when I didn't concentrate it on, you know, the waves and the water, it pulled me and, and even sometimes it was a little bit at a time.

But eventually I ended up on somewhere on the beach where I didn't think I was going to be.

And back to your point that I don't know too many people on ordination night that would say, hey, I'm gonna.

In three years, I'm gonna blow my family up and my ministry up.

It's not where they start, but at the same time, if the focus isn't there, it can easily, easily drift to that place.

Pastor Ralph, you also share about the.

You give a great example about integrity and speech and highlighting our integrity and speech.

What's that mean to you?

And would you mind sharing the analogy that you share?

Oh, sure.

Some years ago, the kids and I were walking our dog on one of the 83 miles of walking trails in Columbia, Maryland, and this guy came jogging by, and our dog, who only wants to be loved and think that every stranger loved her back, just kind of lunged and pulled towards her, and he just erupted with such an invective and venomous hostility and called me all kinds of things and questioning my parenting and.

And I walked away from that encounter thinking about our speech, thinking about moments where.

Where I let things slip, or whether a moment of tension or I don't know how to handle something, or.

Or a moment when a parishioner would slam me after a service when I'm most vulnerable.

Thinking about how our speech, Jesus says, is one of the clearest windows of our soul.

So when Psalm 15 says that the one who dwells with God speaks the truth from his heart, kind of echoing those words of Jesus out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks and then continues on with no slander on the tongue, it tells me that our integrity is deeply verbal.

It's not only what we do, our actions, but it's how we Speak.

And I think for ministers especially, this is critical because we live by words, we preach words, we counsel by words, we lead with words.

And so if our speech somehow becomes distorted by exaggeration or flattery or half truths or some little bit of moral compromises or gossip, then that becomes a bigger breach in integrity that can be central.

So I think that integrity of speech means truthfulness.

I don't try to manage an image, enhance where I shouldn't.

It also means restraint.

That I would not say, you know, I refuse to say in private what would dishonor Jesus, even if I could get away with it.

Really important.

And then the notification.

My speech should not casually erode trust in other people.

Dropping a remark here.

And we can do this reflexively if we're not walking intentionally in, in a spirit of daily repentance.

I think, you know, our hearts are so desperately wicked and deceitful of all things.

I mean, if we don't get.

We can find ourselves in a.

In a ministerial conversation and we're manipulating it towards an end.

And that, to me, that I have grown to hopefully to understand that that's a lapse of integrity, at least for me, if that makes sense a little bit.

It makes a ton of sense.

And it's about curating an idea and, and as you said, leading on it.

I think we can all be there.

And I know it's.

It's.

I was just at lunch with somebody the other day, and he had.

And we were having a conversation, and somebody had come to my gate when we were still living in Madagascar, and he started.

The guy was going through a difficult time.

And he basically said, well, I know you would never have these type challenges.

Your life's perfect.

But what it made me realize, Pastor Ralph was, is my words were making him think that my life was perfect and I was not.

My speech was not.

There was a level of integrity missing there because my life wasn't perfect.

You know what I mean?

And he didn't know.

Oh, he's got struggles, too.

And all his.

Somehow I had it altogether.

But the Holy Spirit really convicted me that day.

Not that I need to stand up and share everything with everybody, but at least I had given a Persona that somehow I had everything in my life in order, and somehow I just had it.

And the Holy Spirit really convicted me.

And it was around this idea of my speech, that somehow my speech had portrayed that somehow my life was perfect and that I was responsible for that.

And it's led me on a journey for the last eight, nine years being intentional about it, but at the same time not to give off this Persona with the way I talk or curate or guided conversation to I'm the hero.

Right.

But to be transparent and authentic with people that I'm on the journey also.

And when I saw you wrote that it's good, it really, really, really jumped out to me.

One of the other things you wrote about was the idea that measuring success by integrity rather than charisma.

Could you share about that?

Yeah, let me back into that this way, Aaron.

I, I had written a few lines in that integrity message about our own brand of Pentecostal syncretism.

And I think that's where that, that, that's the, the genesis of that thought.

And you know, biblically, syncretism, it's not an outright rejection of God.

Right.

Blending with a competing value or an idol.

Israel didn't abandon Yahweh, they just simply added to Yahweh.

They kept the temple, but they tolerated the high places.

They retained the language of, they retained all the language of covenant.

You see this in kings and chronicles.

But they absorbed the practice of the surrounding culture.

And I think that that same dynamic we have been susceptible to in Pentecostalism, in blending things of the Spirit with celebrity culture or ambition, that has not been crucified.

Revival language coexisting with a reliance on branding, charisma metrics, platform building, I think that is, that has been where we were preaching dependence on God, but still operating with now the instincts of a market driven world.

And so I think that's where that whole genesis of the charisma thing kind of came from.

And I see our circles, that, that charisma does this reflexively asks, did this service, did this sermon, did this podcast, did this meeting, did they feel my impact?

But integrity asks something completely different.

Did I remain truthful, faithful and clean hearted and honoring of Jesus while I was serving?

Wow.

And in our circles, charisma is often evaluated.

Charisma is often evaluated by response, right?

Yeah.

The attendance, the applause during the message, the reach, the influence, the momentum, the clicks.

Integrity is measured by an entirely different metric.

Whether my private life and my public life is aligned and so it those kinds of things.

This doesn't mean the charisma is bad.

People are naturally compelling.

Some people just walk into a room, but.

But it can attract people while it hides decay.

And that, that's really important.

Integrity, on the other hand, it's not dramatic, it's not flashy, but it is the essential quality of our profession.

Wow.

Wow.

That is, does that help at all.

A ton.

A ton.

You know, missionaries make.

And I made this mistake earlier on, and when you, when you wrote this, I.

A lot of times we'll land in a country and the first person that is charismatic and speaks English, we all sudden say, hey, they're.

They're the man of God for this hour because they speak English and they're charismatic.

Right.

But we're.

We missed that maybe they don't have the character in place and the integrity in place.

And I've seen it time and time again where it's just.

If you watch it, we've evaluated on what you said on charisma and the ability to speak English, and somehow that's anointing from the Holy Spirit.

Right, Aaron, or whoever speaks English.

So they got to have the anointing.

But missing that and honestly covering over a lot of character and integrity red flags because of the charisma and because they speak English, you know, I mean, and so I've just seen it and I've done it myself, and.

But then you'd begin to see a pattern that plays out.

So when you, when reading in your writings, it surely, surely jumped out to me.

So what would be the difference in a world where brand management and loyalty?

Would you.

Are they the same thing?

And because.

Yeah.

And thoughts on loyalty, maybe to a person or to an organization versus brand management?

Are they in conflict with each other when it comes to integrity?

Or can you.

Yeah.

Thoughts on that?

Yeah, that's a really great question.

And no, they're not the same, but I think they can be easily conflated.

So loyalty, I think rightly understood, is.

Is covenantal.

Okay.

It's rooted in truthfulness, rooted in faithfulness.

Loyalty stays present, especially relationally.

It bears burdens.

It seeks the good of the other.

When the conversation is difficult, it stays present.

Loyalty is not threatened by honesty.

Brand management, by contrast, I don't think is covenantal at all.

It's transactional.

That's true.

Its primary concern is not truthfulness, it's preservation, it's image management.

So brand management asks, well, what must be said, what must be projected, what must be reframed, and in our world, what must sometimes be hidden in order to protect the institution or the leader or the shepherd or the image.

And that's why I think that brand management can disguise itself as loyalty.

So it has said in our circles, don't bring that up.

Don't talk about that.

Don't question that we need to protect the work of God.

But if what we mean by that is suppressing truth to preserve appearances.

That is not loyalty.

That is image, control.

Wow, wow, wow.

Love it.

And you articulated it in a very, very clear and concise way.

I love it.

So, last question.

Well, I got one or two more questions for you.

So you wrote finishing well is our calling.

How can guarding our integrity help us on the journey to finishing well?

Yeah.

So, you know, now at 62 and approaching 40 years of ministry, but still having a viable season left, I, I look, I'm looking back and looking at the legacy of my parents as well.

Looking ahead to, to my son being on the field somewhere and finishing well.

It comes down to not any dramatic moment at the end.

Hey, I finished well.

I just, I broke the tape.

I, I ran the race.

Finishing well is only built over that long, long obedience in the same direction through thousands upon thousands of small decisions that looked inconsequential in the moment.

But those small truthful decisions, repentant decisions, humble decisions, hidden decisions, decisions that we make.

I'm not going to do this.

I need to do this.

You know, guarding our integrity it's how we stay aligned over the long, the long haul.

And integrity helps us finish well because it keeps us again from our lives, from being divided.

Short accounts with God.

Repent early, not late.

I think that's so critical and I'm passionate about that.

Receive correction in your life, Be open to correction in your life before correction becomes exposure.

And you know, integrity, if we, if we live with the habits of integrity, it trains us to value truth over image, value holiness, value faithfulness over what people are thinking of us or impression.

And you know what matters to me as, as you saw in the talk there is the relationships that matter most at the end.

You know, your marriage, your children, your co laborers in ministry, your church's trust to still have staff members from 30 years ago say, you know what, Pastor was the same person at home as he was in the hallway.

The testimony that those who absolutely know you the best at your worst and your most wonderful moments can still affirm.

You know what?

This was a person of integrity.

I think that's finishing well.

Yeah.

One, one last question for you.

You mentioned you're passionate about repenting early.

I think you said daily repentance.

Is that something about that?

What does that look like?

And you said rather than waiting, repenting earlier, could you just share a little bit more about that?

Well, now you're venturing into a little bit of a different area for me.

I think I'm still one of the only some friends of mutual friends of Ours can attest one of the only assembly of God pastors who keeps the Book of Common Prayer on their desk to read every day.

Yeah.

And I find it important to, to bring some sort of prayer of repentance before the Lord every day, because I need to.

I, I sin, I fail, I fall short.

I, I, my thinking isn't right, you know, my, I have reflexive things that just happen.

And then I, then I realize, thankfully, by the conviction of the SP wasn't right or that was, that was sinful.

And if you realize it, then you must repent.

You, you must do something about it.

You must take it to the Lord.

You must ask for cleansing.

I'm only talking to myself here, Aaron, who is listening?

I'm talking to myself that I need to do that.

And years ago I was explaining this to my kids.

I love frosted flakes, okay?

They laugh at me because I pour a bowl of Frosted Flakes and then I dump sugar on top of it.

What's left at the bowl, you know, I put it in the sink and if I don't run water on it, then that little bit of milk and sugar becomes incredibly hard and the sun comes through the kitchen window and just bakes it on.

So if I don't rinse it right away, yeah, I'm going to have to be scraping it off and working a whole lot harder.

And so I, I found in my life, I need to get under the flow of its cleansing power as soon as I can.

Yeah.

As soon as I realize something, as soon as there's a conviction from the spirit, that's kind of where that's come from.

No, I love it.

And I think that speaks for all.

You.

You said you won't speak for everyone, but you sped for your else.

But I think that it's the reason I asked it, asked it because it jumped out to me.

And I think in this season of my life, I'm recognizing, honestly, asking for forgiveness from God and then asking forgiveness of people.

You know, I mean, if, when that time of reflection, if there's somebody that, you know, at the end of the day, as I'm going through my day and there's somebody that maybe I might have been sharp with my words to, or I could have been kinder to, or I, you know, I was just rushing past and didn't value them fully.

It's interesting.

At the end of the day, the Lord brings those people back to my mind.

And there was a season that I would just think about it and say, yeah, I'm going to connect with them and apologize.

But I didn't.

Right?

But now I got it to the place that I do my best the next day to send the email, make the call, send a text.

Because if I do it quickly, then I do it.

If not, I push it off and then I got two days and then I don't do any of them.

But when you said that, that made me jump out.

So, Pastor Ralph, it's been phenomenal to spend some time with you today.

Will you pray for us that God will use this convers conversation to encourage those listening in on the importance of integrity?

Finishing well and yeah, just been great to spend time with you.

You pray for us today.

Absolutely.

And thank you, Aaron.

It's been a joy to be part of this.

Yeah.

Lord Jesus, you are the one who perfectly walked the holy hill of the Lord.

And because of your grace, we can ascend that as well.

If it were not for your blamelessness and your perfect righteousness, there would be no hope for us.

And so we trust in your grace.

We trust in the wonderful love and goodness, that you are the one full of truth and beauty and righteousness and holiness.

And just as you are majestic in all your ways, Jesus.

And we simply want to be close to you.

We want to ascend the holy hill of the Lord.

We want to have proximity with who you are, Lord, because we know that nearness to you is likeness to you.

And so, Lord, we.

We pray that.

That we would not just guard our ministries, but that we would indeed guard our souls.

We would guard our hearts from that as the wellspring of life.

And Lord, may.

May who we are in you matter so much more to us than.

Than any ministry we build or endeavor that we take on.

Lord, may.

May that be the driving passion of our lives to abide with you, Jesus, to be near you.

And until, as Paul puts it in Galatians, Christ is formed in us, that is our hope and desire.

We pray in your wonderful and precious name, Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Sam.