Loving God, we thank You for being exactly who You say You are and doing exactly what You said You would do. You have created us in Your image and have redeemed us by the grace and loving sacrifice of Your Son, Jesus Christ. You are real. Your love is real so we need You to make our love real to. Make our love real when we pretend and hide behind the right words with no accountability or follow through because if we have real love for Almighty God, then we must have real love for one another. We cannot love God, whom we have not seen, and hate those who we do see. And as we desperately accept Your forgiveness, let us also forgive others by letting go of who was right or who was wrong because whatever we believe about Almighty God needs to be demonstrated in the relationship that we have with one another. Right beliefs should cause right actions. Right religion will manifest itself only from right relationships with the Creator and with each other. So Lord, give us the strength and the faith to stand up. To stand up for love. To stand up for the elderly. To stand up for the poor. To stand up for the sick. And to stand up for the broken hearted. Help us to stand up for our brothers and sisters in this very room whom the world has forgotten. Help us to stand up for the cause and ministry of Jesus Christ so that our light will shine so that we can glorify our Father in heaven. Shine in our lives Lord “so that we can see that to follow You is less about avoiding sin and more about courageously and actively doing God’s will” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer) so that we can do what the world will not do for us: Love God, love ourselves and love our neighbor.