Sermons tagged with Colossians

Well, good morning, everyone. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making us a part of your Sunday. Thanks for braving the treacherous roads to be here. We hope that we will make it worth your while. Just a point of clarity, when Michelle said that Nate and Aaron are going to be sharing some stuff with the parents at the end of the month, that's Aaron Winston, our children's pastor, not Aaron Gibson, our worship leader. No one cares. So it's the Aaron with some heft. So like Michelle said, this is the second part of our series called Prayers for You. I keep calling it Prayers for Grace. It's called Prayers for You, where we're opening up the year with some prayers over different aspects of our life. Last week, we talked about just grace in general. We looked at a prayer in the book of Colossians, and I invited you to kind of make that your prayer over yourselves and your families for this year. We're making it the prayer of grace this year. And this week, we're going to, and so now for the next three weeks, we're going to look at different aspects of our life and see if we can find a prayer in scripture that we can pray this year over that area of our life. And so this week, I want us to look at a prayer for our families and in particular, a prayer for our children and for their children. And so just up front, as I say that, and I tell you what the topic is this morning, I understand that not everybody in the room has genetic children. I understand that. And I know that for some of you, it's because you don't want them. For some of you, it's because you haven't had the opportunity. You'd love to have the opportunity. You really want kids. And so this might be a painful topic to bring up. And for that, I'm sorry. But I hope that those of you who do not have genetic children have some people in your life somewhere that you can love on and pour into and think about what kind of legacy you can leave for them. But for a lot of us, we have kids or we have plans to have them and we have every reason to believe that we can and we will. So this sermon is for you guys. As I think about families, I wanted to start off by sharing with you probably the greatest way that my parents have disappointed me in my life. And full disclosure, I'm going to have to mention them a couple of times today because of the nature of the topic, but I scheduled this sermon on this week and then wrote this sermon not knowing that they were going to be here. They're right over there. There's like no one even next to them. They're just sitting there. It's like there's a spotlight on them. They're in town this week for my daughter Lily's birthday. But I would say my biggest disappointment in you guys is that you're not billionaires. I really am envious of billionaire trust fund babies. I mean, what a life to be born into where you just get everything you want. You're rich as all heck. You can do whatever you want, you get the nicest of everything. I think that sounds amazing. And some of you may be like, no, that doesn't sound amazing. I want to pick myself up by my bootstraps. I don't. I want my grandfather to have picked himself up by his bootstraps and left me enough money to buy bootstraps that up themselves. That's what I want. Like, I love, like, if I'm scrolling just mindlessly, and someone wants to give me a tour of their yacht, I'll take a yacht tour. Let's see it. Let's go. A real estate agent wants to show me a $26 million penthouse in Manhattan, yeah, I'm in. Let's take a look at the fountain in the middle of the bathroom. I want to see it. I think that sounds like a really amazing life, and there'd be a lot of things that would be good about that to never have to worry about money one day in your life. But I tell you what I really want. If I were rich, I don't really care about having a yacht that seems wildly impractical and whatever. But I do think if I won the lottery, if I was just independently wealthy and I could buy whatever I wanted, you know what I'd do? This is true. Jen will tell you if I'm lying. Tomorrow morning, maybe even this afternoon, I would go to Leith Honda, and I would say, I want the nicest Odyssey you have. I want it to have everything. Everything. And I don't want there to be a single mile on it. I want someone to push it onto the truck from the factory, and I want you to back it into my driveway. That's more than anything. That would be sweet. That's what I wish. And so, thanks for nothing, Dale and Donna. Because I'm not rich. I'm not rich in that way. But I say all that to say this. I'm incredibly wealthy in another way. I'm not showing you how many Bibles I can purchase. These Bibles sit in my office. They sit in the corner, and I see them every day. And I see them, they're right next to the whiteboard that I write sermons on. This Bible is my papa's Bible, Don Green. This Bible is my dad's Bible that he was given for being some sort of star student or something like that at his high school. Nobody cares. But this is the Bible that he got for doing that. This is my dad's Bible. This is mine. Every time I look at these Bibles in the corner of my office, I'm reminded of the shoulders that I stand on. I'm reminded of my spiritual inheritance. And that's what I want us to focus on today. In some ways, nobody in here stands to inherit, I don't think, stands to inherit tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and be incredibly wealthy in our financial inheritances. If you are, good for you. But how often do we think about our spiritual health and our spiritual wealth and the kind of spiritual legacy that we've been left and the shoulders that we stand on and the shoes that we walk in? In some ways, I don't, in earthly standards, I'll probably get some sort of inheritance, but it's not going to be anything that's, I'm not buying a yacht with it. But in a much more important way, I am the recipient of a deep and rich spiritual inheritance. In a much more important way, I am the recipient of generational wealth. And it shows up for me in different times and in different places. One of the things that makes me think about it is I have a Tuesday morning men's group. And we'll have anywhere from 10 to sometimes 20 guys in there. And all we do is read through the Bible. We just pick a book of the Bible, we talk about it. It's a very simple format. And guys who are older than me will ask questions. What about this? What does this mean? What are we talking about here? And I learned the answer to those questions in first grade. That's my generational wealth. It's not their ignorance. It's their lack of exposure because maybe they didn't grow up with the generational spiritual wealth that I did. But each of us this morning has an opportunity to think about what we're going to pass on to the generations that follow. And it's a much more valuable inheritance than anything financial that you could leave them. In my son's room, we have this frame. My son is named John. He's named after Jen's dad, John Vinson. John Vinson got to celebrate with us the fact that we were pregnant and that it was a boy and that we were going to name it after him. But John has never met John. He passed before John was born. But I have absolute certainty that if we raise up John the way that we're supposed to, that one day he will come to know Jesus. And in doing so, he will have the opportunity to meet his namesake one day. They will meet. But we keep that in his room because of the name that he inherits. His middle name is Robert. That's my dad's middle name. John's name is John Robert Rector. To remind us and to remind him of the spiritual shoulders on which he sits. And Jen is the happy, grateful recipient of the legacy of John and Terry. Her parents grew up going to church. Terry grew up in Memphis going to church with an old Southern Baptist pastor, Adrian Rogers, who she still loves. John grew up with the son of Porter and Bernice. Porter fought in World War II. We've got his footlocker in my workbench in the garage. He loved Jesus. And he showed John what it was to be a godly man. And Bernice showed his sister Mary what it was to be a godly woman. And they passed that on to their children. And Jen grew up in a home, going to church every Sunday. Mom and dad serving in the church. Jesus spoken about in the home. Christianity prioritized. Quiet times happening. Being poured into. Her mom showing her how to be a godly woman. Her dad showing her what to expect from her husband. That guy is not as good when it comes to the spiritual wealth that we've inherited and some of you are too some of you are too some of you were blessed and grew up in homes that modeled faith to you some of you your dad or your mom is the most godly person you know. If not that, they at least, they prioritized church, they brought you to church, they were human and they made mistakes, but they made those right, and they always pointed you towards Christ. And in doing that, when you had kids, you knew, I always want to point them towards Christ. And you exist in this kind of, in this flow, as a general wealth cascades down through the generations, you just exist as a rung on the ladder, and that's great. And to those of you who are like us, Jen and I, who are spiritually wealthy because of the generational wealth that you've inherited, you have a deep and sacred responsibility to pass that on. To not squander it. To not mess it up. To pursue Jesus. To model to your children what it is to make him the center of your home. And to send them out into the world as better, more capable believers than you. Best case scenario, your kids know more scripture than you do. Best case scenario, they're better than you. Best case scenario, they're better dads and better moms and better spouses than you are. That's what we want for our children. So if you are the proud and grateful recipient of generational spiritual wealth, if you have Bibles you could stack together to remind you of the shoulders that you stand on, then you have a sacred responsibility to pass that on to your children and to their children and not squander it. Now some of you do not have spiritual wealth. Some of you were not born into a spiritually wealthy family. And you have an amazing opportunity. Some of you are what I consider spiritual orphans. You didn't have a mom or a dad teaching you about faith. You came to faith as a child, but there was no one there to help you, the church people, but no one that you lived with. Or you came to faith in adulthood. And now you're just trying to figure this thing out. You have a profound opportunity. If that's you, you have a profound opportunity. That opportunity is to draw a line in the sand and say, my family and my name has not built up any spiritual wealth. I did not have a spiritual inheritance, and my dad didn't, and his dad didn't, and his dad didn't. That's not a part of our family tree. I did not get to inherit that. I was born spiritually impoverished. Well, you have the opportunity to draw the line in the sand and say, but that will not be the case for my children. That will not be what they inherit. And you can change what it means to inherit your name. You can change what it means for your grandkid to be named after you. You can change what your name means. If you make the decision now to draw a line in the sand and not allow the generational trends that led to your poverty impoverish those who would come after you. And if you can tell I'm emotional about this, it's because that's what my parents did. My mom got bused to church when she was eight. It was the 60s and they did weird stuff like that. Some guy just showed up and said, hey little girl, you want to get on this bus? And she was like, yep, I do. And then she went. And she got saved. It was great. Best case scenario, you get on the bus with a stranger. You go to church and meet Jesus. She came to faith. She brought, she was what God used to bring her parents to faith. So this Pawpaw's Bible that I have, it wasn't him teaching her. It was her showing him. My dad? My dad basically grew up without a dad. His grandfather was the closest thing he had to a dad. He had a stepdad. He had a dad that ran away and he had a stepdad that didn't care about him. He found faith pretty much on his own. He was loved on by his grandfather, but that's distant. And so he made that decision. I did not, I was born spiritually impoverished, but my children will not be. And he drew that line in the sand, and mom drew that line in the sand. And in their faithfulness, changed what it means for me to be a rector. Changed what it is for Lily to be born into our family. If you are not generationally wealthy spiritually, you have a remarkable opportunity with your life to change what your name means. And I don't think there's anything that we could do that's more important than that. There is nothing that my parents can ever do for me that will make me more grateful for them than allowing me to be born into a family that was spiritually wealthy. Then impart their spiritual wealth on me. There's nothing they could ever give me that I'll be more grateful for than my spiritual inheritance from them. And we have the opportunity to us greatly the kind of legacy we leave behind. We should hope and pray, not to aggrandize it too much, but we should hope and pray that we live the kind of lives that one day my grandkid is going to sit in their office and my Bible is going to be somewhere in a stack of Bibles reminding them that I existed and I pointed them towards Christ. It should be important to us to want to leave that legacy. And so as I thought about this, and I thought about this comparison between a material inheritance and a spiritual inheritance, I thought about the material inheritance and what that currency is. We deal in material inheritance with dollars. That's the currency that we're trying to leave behind if that matters to us. And so I thought, what is the currency of a spiritual inheritance? What are we spending? What are we allocating? What are we saving up? What are we investing in our lives if we want to leave a spiritual inheritance? I think the currency of a spiritual inheritance is love. I think the currency of a spiritual inheritance is love. If we want our kids to be spiritually wealthy, then we spend our love on them and our love on God and our love on one another and we invest that love into the things of God and into our children every chance we get. And to put a finer point on it, this love is often manifested through time and presence. If we say, how do I invest my love in my children? How do I invest my love in God in my children? How does that work? I think that love is most often manifested through time and presence. And I mean time and presence in three different ways. I mean time with God and in God's presence. I mean time doing God's work and in the presence of people doing God's work and being served by God's work. And I mean time and presence with our children. Time and presence in all three of those ways. I won't hit this hard this week because I just mentioned it last week. But if you want to leave your child a spiritual inheritance, if you want them to be spiritually wealthy with what they receive from you, if you want to change what it means to receive your name or simply honor the wonderful name that you've inherited, if you want to do that, very first step, be a person of devotion. Wake up every day, spend time in God's presence, spend time in prayer. Be a person who reads your Bible every day. And parents, I'm telling you, let your children see you do it. I've mentioned before, I can remember in middle school and high school coming down the stairs and walking past the chair where my mom would sit in the morning and her Bible would be out. And this was the 90s. So it was, I don't know if you guys remember, the Bibles were thicker and they had these cases that went around them, these knit cases for old ladies with handles and you could keep pens and stuff and reading glasses in there. And her case was open, and there's usually a cup of coffee with some lipstick on it. And so every day, mom got on, she put her face on, she got up, put on her face, and then she came downstairs and she spent time in God's word and time in prayer. That's how you build legacy. You become a person of devotion. You become a person that your people see spending time with, that your children see spending time with God. You make church a priority. You go every week. I saw a good friend back there, and he's got his grandson with him. Grandson was trying to decide, am I going to go to class or am I going to have to go suffer through Nate? I hope he made the right choice. But when you grow up with grandparents that take you to church every time you're at their house, that's a legacy. And this isn't just for parents with young kids. You folks with grandkids, you're still leaving a legacy to your children. You're still influencing them. I'm 43 years old. I lead a church. I don't need nothing from nobody. I need my mom and my dad. I still need my parents. And as long as your parents are around, you do too. I was on the phone with Mike Harris this morning. His mom passed away last night. And she was in her 90s. He's still crying. There's just something about a mama and a daddy. I don't care how old you are and how old your kids are. They need you. You can still continue to build that legacy by being a person who loves them. And we love through our time and through our presence first with God. Then we love through our time and presence in God's work and what the people around us see us do. Growing up, I can remember mom was the Awana mama. We had this program called Awanas and she was in charge of it. She ran it. Dad was on the deacon board. And what it taught me is church is important. What it taught me is this matters to us. We prioritize this. And so you mamas that do all the work and show up and do all the things and bring your kids to decorate for Summer Extreme, and they're all running around while you're putting up under the sea foam stuff and making my drum kit messy for nine months. When you're doing that, your kids see you doing it. They're going to remember that. They remember prioritizing church. They're going to see you volunteering places. They're going to know what's important to you with your time and with your checkbook. They're going to notice those things. So if we want to leave a spiritual inheritance, we love through our time and presence in doing God's work. They learn from that. And we're never done doing that work. And then we show them that love through time and presence with them. And this one, I'm really preaching to myself, too. Because it's so easy when they're young to turn on a screen, to tell them to go play, to pacify them. It's a bad habit at my house. Whenever John talks all the time, he's three and a half, he's talking always. And so eventually, I start tuning him out, and he'll say say something and I go, uh-huh. And he'll be like, yeah. Then the dragon threw the marshmallow at the bear and boy, the pig was upset. And I'll go, uh-huh. And then he'll get mad and he goes, dad, why do you say uh-huh? Shoot. Okay. I got to come up with another response that seems like I'm engaged. It's difficult, and I'm not the best at it. But we love our children through time and through presence. Showing up for them. Being there for them. Allowing the extended bedtime because this might be the time when they talk. Just simply being in the room with them, finding different activities that we can do together. And that doesn't change as we get older. As we get older and our kids morph and our relationships change with them and they move out and they do their own thing, they still need time and presence with their parents. It just looks different. Your grandchildren need time and presence from you. That's how we invest in them. And so I think if we want to leave a spiritual inheritance, we live a life of love with time and presence with God, with God's work, and with our people, with our children that we love. And those requirements never stop. And as I thought about this idea of leaving a spiritual inheritance for our children, it occurred to me that selfishness is the enemy of inheritance. Selfishness really is the enemy of inheritance. Let's say, if we think about it financially, what you have to do if you have a goal to leave an inheritance behind, and you may not, and that's okay, I'm not pressing that on you, although Proverbs does, so you should think about it. If that's your goal to leave a financial inheritance behind, then what you have to do is make decisions in your working years, in your 20s and your 30s and your 40s. I'm making this amount of money, but I'm going to take this part and I'm going to set it over here and I'm going to let it grow. And I'm not going to use that for me. I'm going to use that for them. That's not for me. That's for my children. That's not for me. That's for the things that that's for the people who come after me. So I'm not going to spend it all on myself every time I get a paycheck. We have to choose to be unselfish and set some of our resources aside. We have to allocate them for others. We can't spend it all on ourselves. Likewise, if we get older and we do receive an inheritance, we do have wealth. Our granddad did pick himself up by his bootstraps and he left something for us. And now we've got this. Selfishness is the enemy of that inheritance because you could choose at that season of your life to squander it. You could buy the yacht. You could get rid of all, you could drain it dry and leave nothing for your children because you acted completely selfishly. In the same way, selfishness is the enemy of a spiritual inheritance. The reason we're not people of devotion, like we know we should be sometimes, is because we're selfish. We want to sleep more. We want to linger longer on our phone. We want to get to work sooner. There's other things we prioritize over spending time in God's word, and so we're selfish and we don't do it. There's other things we prioritize. We're selfish with our time, just like we're given a limited amount of money in our paychecks every month, and we have to decide how we want to allocate those resources. We're given a limited amount of time each day, each week, each year. And we have to decide how we want to allocate that resource. And if we're selfish with our time, and we only do what we want to do or what we have to do, and we do not intentionally take that time and allocate it for others and for the things of God, then we are selfish with our resource and we don't leave behind an inheritance. Our selfishness is the enemy of our inheritance. And it reminds me of this principle that Jesus teaches in Matthew chapter 6. Where he says. If you're leaving a spiritual inheritance, if your children are spiritually wealthy, that's a treasure in heaven. And Moth and Rust did not destroy that. If we live our lives selfishly, if we decide, if we're the generation tasked with drawing a line in the sand and saying, it's going to mean something different to have my name. I'm changing that for the generations that come after. Let me tell you something. That's hard. That's challenging. It's discouraging. And you're going to want to quit. And you're going to want to bail. And you're going to want to say, I'll leave it up to them. I figured it out. They can figure it out. But ultimately, that's selfish. And that's building up for yourself treasures on earth. My ardent prayer for the families of grace is that your children would be spiritual billionaires. That your children would be spiritually wealthy. I genuinely don't care what you leave them financially. I am going to invest all the years God gives me at Grace into partnering with you, parents and grandparents, to make sure that the generations that come after you are spiritually wealthy, to make sure that your children get a name that they honor and are proud of. I want to do everything I can so that one day your kid names their child after you because they understand that the name that you've given them is the most valuable thing you could ever do for them. That's my prayer for you. So as I wrap up, we have this simple question. What kind of inheritance do you want to leave? What do you want to leave behind for your kids? With the years remaining and the time remaining with them, what kind of inheritance do you want them to receive? How spiritually wealthy can you make them? What kind of name can you hand to them? Every week of this series, every week of this series, we're going to finish the sermon with a prayer. We're going to finish the, not the sermon, but the service with a prayer. Last week, Mikey closed us out and read a prayer, a summary of the prayer of Colossians. This week, there is a prayer that we are going to pray over our families, but it's not, we're not going to speak it. Jordan and Aaron are going to come up and Jordan is going to sing this prayer over us. And when you think about what prayer should we pray for our families, you don't have to think very hard because there's a passage in Numbers that tells us exactly what we should pray. God tells Moses and Moses tells Aaron, the high priest, his brother, go and tell the families to pray this over there, over one another. This is the prayer that we should pray for our families. So Jordan and Aaron are going to come up as I read this verse. And I want you to think about what kind of legacy you want to leave. Here's the prayer that's going to be sung over us from Numbers chapter 6. The Lord said to Moses, tell Aaron and his sons this is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace. Jordan is going to sing that over us as a prayer. As you are prayed over, as you sit, rather than feeling an impetus to stand and sing along, what I would much rather you do is take a quiet minute here at the end of the service as you are prayed over and consider what kind of legacy you want to leave. Consider what kind of spiritual wealth you want to hand to your children. Consider what you want it to mean to inherit your name. And if you are someone who has to draw a line in the sand and change what your name means, pray so hard that you would do that. And if you trust me enough to tell me that, that that's what you're doing, I promise I will write you down and pray for you every day. Let's let them pray over us and let's pray while they're praying and then we'll go have a good week.

Well, good morning, Grace. Good to see everybody. That music makes me feel like I'm waiting for a table at some sort of nice lounge or something. So you get three more weeks of that. That'll be great. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten the chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. Happy New Year to everyone, and thank you for making Grace a part of that new year for you. I would just say this. If your church attendance this morning is reflective of a New Year's resolution, that's great. My gym attendance in the morning is going to be reflective of something similar to that. So, Brad, I'll see you at the YMCA bright and early. But if it is reflective of a New Year's resolution and this is something that you want to do more often, I'm just so grateful that you've entrusted that to grace. I hope that we serve you well. And I say this in all sincerity. If you're here because of a New Year's resolution and we don't serve you well and you drive home thinking that wasn't worth it, it's not because church isn't worth it. It's because we didn't do a good job. So give another church a chance to do a good job, but don't quit on church because this sermon stinks, okay? Keep at it. It's super important. Church is absolutely vital to us as people. We were created for church community. As Aaron mentioned earlier in the service, Aaron, our worship pastor, we like to start the year with prayers for grace. We'd like to start these January series now with kind of some hopes and some prayers that we have for grace in the coming years. Last year, we spent all four weeks of January in one of my favorite prayers in the Bible. I have it stenciled out and hung up in my office at home. This is the prayer I pray over new married couples, over new babies. This is the prayer I pray, at least quietly, when I get calls about diagnoses that are tough. This is the prayer I pray when I hear that someone is struggling and might be in their last days or weeks of life. This is the prayer I pray when I go visit people at the hospital. It's in Ephesians chapter 3 verses 14 through 19. We're going to be focused this morning on Colossians chapter 1, which is basically a long form of the Ephesians prayer. Ephesians is a more succinct version, but it's basically praying the same thing. So as we start 2025, I want to remind us of this prayer for grace that we find in Ephesians. And last year we gave out magnets with this prayer on it. So I hope that some of you still have that magnet, have it in a place where you see it. I'm seeing some nodding heads. That's very good. But I just wanted to start this year out by reminding you of this prayer. And then what we're going to do is look at another version of what I believe is virtually the same prayer in Colossians and talk about the different implications of that prayer. But this is what Paul prays for the church in Eph that in the Colossians prayer. But I did want to place that in front of us and be reminded of it as we go into this prayer in Colossians. Now, as I was reflecting on this prayer, and if you have a Bible, I want to encourage you to go ahead and turn to Colossians. We're going to go through, this is going to be in my head, kind of an old school sermon, the kind of sermon that I grew up with. Now, a new modern sermon, what I try to do, what I would typically try to do, and what I started out trying to do this week is to read verses three through 14 in Colossians chapter one, where this prayer is, and try to distill it down to this one point. What's the fulcrum? What's the focus? What's the anchor of this prayer? If there can only be one takeaway for us, what should that takeaway be? And then I would spend the entire sermon trying to preach to that takeaway. But as I look through these verses, there's just too much good stuff to sweep it aside for the sake of making one point. So instead of that, we're going to go verse by verse through these 11 or 12 verses. And I'm just going to stop and go, this is what he prays here. This is what it means. This is why we need to talk about it and think about it. So this is going to be an old school five point sermon where we talk about the verse and then we talk about what it means and how it applies to us. I feel like my pastor growing up who I this is just a blow up of the bulletin is what you have on the back of your notes. This is all I ever have. But there's a lot here. And as I look at it, I think in about 25 minutes, I'm going to be halfway through with this and go, OK, we got to go fast. And then I'm just going to start summarizing things, which is what my pastor used to do. So anyways, let's get started. As I was reflecting on this prayer in Colossians, something occurred to me. And I had not really thought about this before as it relates to the prayers in the New Testament. First of all, it's important that we understand what the book of Colossians is. Colossians is what's called in theological circles a Pauline epistle. It's a letter that Paul wrote. So Paul wrote two-thirds of the New Testament. Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. He wrote those. And if you think what I was just doing was showing off, I have a master's degree in this. If I can't do that, I am the stupidest person that's ever gotten a master's degree. But those are the books that he wrote. And all of those books are letters to either a church, like the church in Rome or Corinth or Colossae, or to individuals like Timothy or Philemon. So in these letters, he's writing to instruct the churches that have been founded by him or his ministry. We get a clue in this first chapter, and we'll see that he sent out one of the pastors from amongst his team, a guy named Epaphras. And Epaphras originally shared the gospel, the good news, with the people in Colossae, and they formed a church around this good news. And now they're going and blowing. Now they're growing, and now they have a church. And so Paul spends his life going around Asia Minor planting churches and then writing letters back to the churches that he planted. And so what occurs to me is he's writing this letter to the church in Colossians, which is unique because it's actually to Colossians and Laodicea. Because he says, when you get done reading this, take it to Laodicea and read it there too. This is also for them. It's just called Colossians because they were the first addressee of the letter. But what occurs to me is he might not ever get to share with them again what he prays for them. He indicates in scripture that he prays for them frequently. But by this point in his life, he may never go to Colossae. He may never see these people in person. He may never write them another letter. He might not have that opportunity. It was expensive and time-consuming and laborious to get them a letter. He might not ever be able to share with them again what his prayer for them is. So he's got one shot at articulating a prayer for this church that they can cling to for the years and the decades to come. And I think it's really interesting in that situation to think about what does this founder of the churches, this incredibly influential apostle and missionary, what does he pray for the churches? And I think that's an interesting question because I think it's an interesting question if I could sit down with the parents in the room and ask you, when you pray for your child, when you pray for your children, what do you pray? We've got a mama holding a newborn baby back there. That baby's been prayed over. When you pray for that baby, what do you pray? If you're a grandparent and you pray for your children and your grandchildren, what do you pray for them, what would you write out? When you pray for your friends, what do you pray for them? Small group leaders, if you pray for the people in your small group, and I hope you do, what do you pray for them? When I pray for the church, when the elders pray for the church, what do we pray for you? I think those are interesting questions because you can really get a sense of someone's priorities, someone's heart, someone's clarity of vision, someone's faith by what they pray for the people that they love the most. And so I think we can get a really good glimpse at the heart of Paul and in turn the very heart of God when we ask, what does he pray for the church in Colossae? And what's interesting to me, and I pointed this out last year when we talked about the prayer in Ephesus, it's just as interesting to me what he prays for as what he doesn't pray for. Because you can read this prayer as many times as you want. What you will not find in this prayer is Paul praying for circumstances, or health, or prosperity, or success, or even growth of the church. He doesn't pray for any of those things, some of the things we think we probably find in that list. You will not find them there. So like I said, as I move through this prayer and began the task of trying to distill it down to one point, I just thought it was a disservice to the whole thing to blow by some things and not favor them in favor of making one universal point. So we're going to go verse by verse, and I'm going to occasionally highlight a phrase, and you'll see it when it's on the screen to get your attention. And that's what we're going to key in on and talk about that. So let's look at this prayer in Colossians. Let's think about taking at least aspects of it and making it our prayer for 2025 for you and for the church. And let's see what we can learn from it. We go back to that previous verse, Miss Andrea, is we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we pray for you because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God's people. I think that is an incredible compliment. What if Jesus were to come down and say, could I give the sermon this week? That'd be fine, Jesus. Go ahead. And he started it off and he said, Grace, I'm grateful for you because I know and I've heard of the faith you have in me and the love that you have for one another. What could be a better compliment to a church than that? Than to be known for your faith and love? As an individual, what could be better than that reputation to precede you, that you are known for your faith in Christ and your love for one another. What could be better? How could it possibly be better to be known in any other way? I thank my God because of you, because of your success, because of how effective you are at making money and closing deals. I thank my God because of you, because of your wisdom, because of your leadership, because you seem to be disciplined in staying in shape, because your kids seem all right and they like you. Like what other things could be as good as being known for your faith and for your love? What an incredible compliment to pay a church. It's a compliment that I hope and pray grace can receive or be thought of in that way. And I can't help but wonder then, what must you do to be known for your faith and love? What do you think it takes to become the kind of person whose reputation precedes you in such a way that when someone meets you, they go, oh, I've heard about your faith and your love. I remember my senior year, I played soccer for my high school, which I'm totally bragging about. There was 100 people in my high school. Anybody could have played soccer. Yeah, anybody could have played soccer. But we got a new teacher my senior year, a new computer teacher named Mr. Keithley, and I went in and introduced myself. I told him I'm Nathan Rector because in high school I was Nathan. I wasn't Nate, incidentally, until I waited tables at Macaroni Grill and you had to write your name upside down on the table and I shortened that real quick. That's when I became Nate. And I met Mr. Keithley and I shook his hand and said, hey, I'm Nathan Rector and he goes, oh, I've heard about you. You're the soccer player. And I was like, you're right. I am. I'm one of the best of the 45 males we have available who are willing to play soccer. So, yeah. It's an interesting thing when your reputation precedes you. What must you do to be the kind of person who's known for your faith and for your love, and what better could you be known for? There are lots of answers to this question, but very simply, at the beginning of 2025, the way that I would answer it is, if you want to be known for being a person of faith in Christ and love for one another, then you must become a person of devotion. At Grace, we have five traits. We have five things that we want every partner at Grace to be, and one of those things is to be a person of devotion. And one of the things we say all the time, I say it as often as I can, and I haven't said it often enough lately, so I'm going to start beating the drum again, is the single most important habit that anyone can develop in their life is to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and spend time in God's presence through prayer. The single most important habit. There is no other habit more important than that in your entire life. And there are a lot of things I think you need to do and ways that you need to behave to be known as a person of faith and love. But foundationally, fundamentally, it starts with becoming a person of devotion. So here at the top of 2025, as we launch into the new year, the very first thing I want to challenge you to do in your new year is be a person who wakes up every day and spends time in God's word and time in God's presence through prayer. If you don't know how to do that, I wrote in this last year a devotional guide that's on the information table right outside these doors. Grab it, read through it. It's meant to help you and jumpstart you in that. But if you are a person for whom that habit has waned, if you are a person who's never successfully begun the habit, if you're a person who's never attempted the habit, if we want to be a church that is known for our faith and for our love, That begins with becoming people of devotion. Let this year be the year that you read your Bible and you spend time in prayer. And if that's what you're going to do, if you just went, you know what, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to wake up tomorrow. I'm going to do that. Great. Give yourself grace for it. You're going to mess up and the heavens are not going to part and angels sing down on you the first time you read your Bible. Stick with it. Give yourself grace. And being a person of devotion will absolutely change your life and change who you are. That's how we become known for that. Then after he tells them what they're known for, he moves on in his prayer and he just makes this interesting note. I'm not going to linger here long, but I do think it's worth pointing out and who also told us of your love in the Spirit. So if we go back to the beginning, Paul says something really interesting there. He says, in the same way that it's borne fruit with you, the gospel is bearing fruit throughout the whole world. We see already that Paul has a heart for the world, That Paul is encouraging them to think outside of Colossae and Laodicea. And think about all the other places where the gospel is flourishing. Don't see yourself as this isolated church battling on your own in this province of the Roman Empire. But understand that as far as the Roman roads spread, so does the gospel. It is spreading throughout the entire world. And I just wanted to pause here to make this statement because I think it's so important. And it's, listen, this is something that we don't talk about enough. And when I say we, I don't mean Christians, I mean me. I mean, I don't bring this up enough in our church and I need to do a better job of it. But this is true, and this is why I wanted to stop here. Mature believers allow God to foster within them a heart for the world. Mature believers, people who are growing in Christ, allow God to foster within them a heart for the world, a heart for our international brothers and sisters. I think our temptation with our faith, like anything else in our life, is to become very myopic in that faith. To just think about that faith in terms of me or my immediate family or my children. Maybe if we're generous and magnanimous enough, we care about the faith of the people around us, and we hope to see our friends grow deeper with Christ, and we hope to see them flourish spiritually. Maybe, maybe if we've been around church long enough and God's really fostered a heart, we have a genuine heart for our small group, a genuine heart for our church, and we want to see the people at Grace come to know God in a more deep way, and we want to see spiritual lives flourish here. But what I've found is rare is the believer who has a genuine heart for their international brothers and sisters. Rare is the believer that thinks about church on a global scale, understanding that there were people worshiping in Korea 16 hours before us on this very same Sunday, singing to the same God. And I think that mature believers begin to get a grasp of the global church and seeing God in action everywhere. And I'll tell you when this clicked for me. I'm blessed to have parents that have been going on mission trips since before they were cool. They went to Jamaica in like 1991 when no one was taking mission trips. I went to Costa Rica when I was going into the eighth grade and started taking mission trips often there. But it wasn't until around 2010 that I was in Cape Town, South Africa, visiting a ministry called Living Hope, which is a phenomenal ministry. My family was involved in it. I wanted to see it, so I went down with a team. And in Cape Town, South Africa, they have these things called townships. And townships are a remnant of apartheid. If you don't know what apartheid is, I do not have time to explain it to you this morning. Google it or ask someone old. The townships are remnants of apartheid. And typically speaking, it's low socioeconomic families that continue to live there. And they run the gamut from hovels and tin roofs and pallet walls to homes that would seem relatively normal to us. But it tends to be low socioeconomic status. And there's one called Masi Pumaleli. And one Sunday we got to go to church there. We go to church in Masi. It's a small white building. We go inside and there was no single worship leader. I still don't understand the organization of it. I have no idea who was in charge. All I know is that there was about 10 South African women dressed the same who were just moving around the room singing. And the words were on the screen, and you sang too, and it was awesome. And they had these things, I'll never forget. There was these like burgundy leather pillows that strapped to their hands, and when they would hit them, it would make this loud percussion noise. I have no idea what it was. But they're doing that and tambourines and one person on the piano, because you you got to have a pianist if it's going to be real worship, and they're going after it. And they're singing some song in their native language that I recognized. I knew the tune to it, and I'm singing along in English. And I was so moved by it that I left the church. I walked outside, and I looked up in the sky, and I listened to the song of praise pouring out of that church being lifted up to my God. And I was reminded of Jesus' instructions to the disciples to go and to spread the word in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and even to the ends of the earth. And I thought, here I am at the literal end of the earth, at the tip of the continent of Africa, 2,000 years later, and there is a church full of Masi people singing praises to my God, a song that I know, and I can sing along with them. Well done, disciples. You carried the gospel to the ends of the earth. And it made an indelible impression on me that we exist in a global church. And it is right and good to care about our international brothers and sisters. In March, a friend of mine is going to travel to Istanbul. And when he gets to Istanbul, he's going to meet with 15 or 20 Iranian Christian pastors who have to go to Istanbul because they can't train in Iran because their churches are illegal and they're putting themselves and their families at risk for even going and participating. And they're going to receive training so that they can go back into their communities and they can reach people for Christ. We should care deeply for what happens over those few days. We should care about those pastors and what they're doing. And that's not unique. There's underground churches all throughout China. The church is flourishing like crazy in places like Korea and in Africa and in South America. We should care about those things. So this year, maybe for you, is the year that you allow God to begin to expose your heart to things that happen internationally. Maybe this is the year you go to Mexico with our team that goes in October. Maybe you go see what's happening in Ethiopia and visit AJ. Maybe you go to Cape Town and visit Mbuntu and see what the princes are doing there. Maybe you find another way to be exposed to what's happening internationally, but I think it's vitally important for mature believers to allow God to foster within them a heart for the global church and our international brothers and sisters. And so as I was reading through this prayer and I saw Paul's commentary there, I couldn't pass it up and not mention it to you. Now we get into the heart of the prayer. This next verse is the anchor of the prayer, and it's why I say that this is a long-form version of the prayer in Ephesians, because it's praying virtually the same thing. Just verse 9. For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives. That phrase, we continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of His will, is still very similar to the Ephesians prayer. When Paul prays there, we pray that you would be filled to the fullness with the knowledge of God, that you would know the love of Christ that surpasses understanding. He prays more than anything else that you would know God. To Paul, his top priority for his churches, his top priority for you, his top priority for anybody in his life that they knew is that they would know God. That's number one. There's not a close second that they would know God. But as you go year to year, you would grow in your depth of knowledge. When you think about the person in your life who seems to be the closest to God, who exudes his love, who just oozes wisdom and compassion and grace, Paul's prayer for that person is that they would know God more. If you think of yourself as someone who's very far from God and doesn't know him very well at all, you're not even really super comfortable with this Christian thing. Paul's prayer for you is that you would know God more. If you've been languishing in your Christianity for a decade and feel not much closer to him now than you did 10 years ago, his prayer for you is that you would know God more. And when earlier I asked, parents, what do you pray for your kids? Grandparents, what do you pray for your children and their children? What do you pray for your friends? What do we pray for churches? What do we pray for people in our small group? I hope that whatever else you pray follows. Father, I simply pray that they would know you more. The way that we say it here is this. We pray this. Would the events of this life conspire to bring you closer to God? I believe this so fervently that when I get the news that someone has cancer, which has touched my life in multiple ways, I've lost multiple loved ones to cancer. So it's not callously that I pray this. But when I hear that someone is sick, the very first thing I pray before I pray for their physical health is that the events of this battle would conspire to bring them and those around them closer to you, Father. I pray that this would drive them into a deeper depth of knowledge of you. And then I pray for healing. When I hear a marriage is struggling, before I pray that that marriage is healed, I pray that the path to that healing would bring them to a deeper knowledge of you. When I pray over a new baby, I don't pray for circumstances, and I don't pray for prosperity, and I don't pray for success, and I don't pray for health. I pray that the events of this child's life and the things that surround it would conspire to bring this child closer to you. There can be no more important thing that we pray. That's why this is the anchor of this prayer. This is the stud and the wall on which the whole prayer is hung. Before it is, hey, I know about your faith and your love and the gospel's flourishing in the whole world, but here's what I really pray for you, that you would know God. And then we get two results because of two things after this that we're going to talk about. Because I'm praying for you to know God, I want you to know this and this. But this is the anchor of the prayer. If I were going to distill it down to one thing, to one verse, to treat it how I would normally treat it, we would be entirely focused on verse 9 this morning because there can be no greater priority that we can have for ourselves or for anyone else than that they would know God more deeply. That's the prayer. I hope that you'll pray that for yourselves, for your families, and for our church. That's the biggest priority. Now, why is that the biggest priority? Why is that the anchor prayer? Because of what we see in verse 10. Verse 10 says, why do we do this? So that, I love this, you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way, bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God. I don't think we put that thought in front of us often enough. Why does Paul pray that we would know Christ in increasing measure? So that we can live a life worthy of the Lord. So that we can live a life worthy of him who loves us and sacrifices us and created us and pursues us. I don't know how often you put that thought in front of yourself. Am I living a life worthy of my calling? But the reason we pray that our children would know God deeper. I always pray for my kids that they would know you soon and love you well. That they would love you better than I did. That they would obey you better than I have. Why do I pray that for my kids, John and Lily? Because they have things to do. Because I want them to live a life pleasing to God. I want them to live a life worthy, more worthy than what I have lived. This is why we pray this over the people who would follow us and over the people around us. Simply put, Paul wants you to grow in your knowledge of God because you have stuff to do. He wants you to grow in your knowledge of God because you've got things you need to get done. Because you are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that you might walk in them. You've got some good works to do. You guys, the apex goal for everybody at Grace, if you're a part of Grace for a year or two decades or more, the thing I want for you more than I want anything else in the whole world is that you would become a kingdom builder. That you would understand that you spend your entire life building a kingdom. And that it is a waste of your time to build your kingdom or anyone else's. The only kingdom worth building is God's eternal kingdom. And when we build God's kingdom, we grow it in breadth and depth. We add to the numbers of it and we grow the spiritual depth of it. And that's the whole reason that you exist is to be a kingdom builder, to leverage every gift and every talent and every treasure and every resource you've ever been blessed by and leverage that for God's kingdom rather than your own. And I believe that to be a Christian is to have a progressive revelation of what exactly that means. Because I thought I knew what it meant seven years ago when I took the job. And now these seven years later, I have a wildly different impression of what that actually means. And it's far more challenging than I ever thought it could be. So to be a Christian is to have this progressive revelation that my life is not my own. It does not belong to me. My resources and my time and my talents and my treasures are not my own. They do not belong to me. I am a kingdom builder. I have stuff to do. So why do we pray that you would know God more, that you would know Christ more deeply? Not only because it's what's best for you and will bring you the most peace and bring heaven down to earth here as we begin to experience the presence of God, but also because he's got a plan for you. And unless you know him well and are known for your love and for your faith, you're not going to be able to execute that plan of what he wants you to do. You're not going to be able to build his kingdom like he wants you to use you to build it. So we pray that people would know God better because we've got stuff to do. We are kingdom builders. God has a plan for you and a way he intends to use you. But the more years we fritter away not pursuing him fully, not being known for our faith and our love, the less we get to execute the plan. And we watch someone else do what God might have used us to do. We are kingdom builders. We can't do that unless we're growing towards God in a deeper, in a greater depth of knowledge. The other thing there that I didn't want to pass up. If we can put that verse back on the screen, verse 10, please. This is here so so that you would live a life worthy of the Lord, and then look here, please him in every way. That arrested me as I read it this week. I don't know how many of you have a life in such a way that it pleases God, joy to him. I think if most of us are being honest, the highest mark we ever hope for as it relates to how God sees us and has an impression of us, I try to live my life in such a way that I quell his disappointment or mitigate his anger. Right? Just don't be mad at me today. Just tell me I was good enough today. Just this week. I mean, honestly, this week, I pray every time before I'm about to preach, I pray just to get my mindset right and remind me of what's important. A vast majority of those prayers are thinking through the week and thinking of if I feel worthy or not to come do this, which is stupid because the answer is no, I'm never worthy of it. But it's like, have I ticked you off this week? Have I disappointed you this week? Have I lived a life worthy of you this week, or have I let you down again? My greatest hope when it comes to God is that I simply don't disappoint him that day. But I was reminded in this verse and in this prayer that it's actually possible for us to live a life that pleases him. For us to live a life that brings him joy. To live our life in such a way that he's proud. That he smiles in heaven because of us. And let me just tell you, as a parent, like all the parents here, I'm sure, I have days when I feel like I've been a good father, and I have days where I don't feel that way. And on the days when I'm not a good father, when I'm selfish or curmudgeonly or grumpy, the greatest thing my daughter Lily, who's almost nine years old, which is weird to say, the greatest thing my daughter Lily can hope for is that she doesn't tick me off that day. That she wasn't annoying that day. That she avoided my wrath and my frustration that day. She can live her life in such a way that she doesn't incite me to frustration. When you have a bad father, that's your greatest goal for that day in that relationship. But on days when I'm a good father, when I'm patient and kind and gracious and present, when I think about the negative, when I think about how often I'm getting on to her versus how often I'm praising her. When I think about what is she hearing from me? Is she hearing any encouragement? Is she hearing any support? Is she hearing any love or is she only hearing frustration? When I think about those things in those days, what I see in Lily, not in myself, what I see in my daughter is a smile, a smile, is this exuberance, this, this ability to know that she's making me proud. And when I stop and tell her, Hey, I saw the way you handled this with your brother. I'm very proud of you for that. When I sent her upstairs to clean a room and she actually does it miracle of miracles. And I sit her down and instead of just not getting mad at her, I go, I trusted you to clean your room. You did it. This is awesome. Thanks so much. That's the exact kind of little girl I want you to be. And young lady, I want you to become. You're growing in your trustworthiness. That's wonderful. When I stop and I do that like a good father and I encourage her and she has this vision for her days that she can live in such a way that it pleases her mom and I and makes us proud. There is a different aura around her. I see it bring joy out of her. You guys have a good father. The greatest goal for a bad father is to simply avoid their anger. And often we treat God like he's not a good father. But he is. And the greatest thing we could hope for day in and day out is to live our life in such a way that it pleases him. And let that give us an exuberance and a spring in our step and a greater vision for who he is. It'll allow us to hear his encouragement from the people He uses to speak things into our life. Maybe for 2025, you simply need a greater vision of who God is and what He expects from you and how proud He is of you and how much He loves you. Because if you think God just goes through His days being disappointed in you, you're wrong. I was listening to a song this morning. And it basically said that he's never loved you more, more wildly and more passionately than he did on your worst day. We can live lives that please our Heavenly Father because he's a good father. And I think we need to have a vision for that. We wrap up the prayer with the last three verses. This is very simple. So he says, I pray that you would know God more deeply, that you would know his will. Why? Because you have things to do. You need to live a life worthy of Him. You can actually please Him if you get to work on building His kingdom and follow Him faithfully. And in doing those things, we see these words highlighted that you may have great endurance and patience and that you'll be reminded that you've been qualified to share in the inheritance of His holy people in the kingdom of light. Simply put, a faithful life gives you patience for the promise. A faithful life gives you patience for the promise. Paul talks about perseverance a lot in scripture. Jesus talks about perseverance. The other authors talk about perseverance. The reality of the Christian life is that faith is hard sometimes. I think that one of the greatest blessings of heaven that we don't talk about very often is that once you get to heaven, you no longer need your faith. Not required anymore. You can set that down. Because Romans 8 tells us who hopes for what he can see. I don't know if you've ever thought about that at all, but when you get to heaven, you don't need faith anymore. Faith is choosing to believe. Sometimes in spite of sickness. Sometimes in spite of disappointments. Sometimes in spite of doubts and questions. Sometimes in spite of a lack of clarity. Or a life and a culture and voices that will clamor it out and make it difficult to hear God. The reality of the Christian life, and those of you who have lived it for a while know this to be true, it's not always easy to cling to your faith. It's not always easy to walk as stridently with Jesus as it has been or as it will be. And it's possible that we let go of that faith because we don't persevere in it, because we let the things of the world drown it out. But what Paul says is, if you're known for your faith and your love, you care about the global church, if you grow in your knowledge of God and his will, and then as a result of that knowledge of God, you're a kingdom builder who lives a life worthy of the calling that you've received, and you live in such a way that it pleases God, then in doing all of those things, you will have patience for the promise of the kingdom for which you await. So I'll be direct with you. I don't expect that all five of the points that I just made and the things that I highlighted are deeply resonating with every person in the room and you're going to do all five things. But what I really genuinely hope is that one of them got you. And that maybe 2025 is the year that you commit to becoming a person known for your faith and your love. And so to take that step, you become a person of devotion for the first time ever or for the first time in a long time. Maybe that's what you need to grab onto. Maybe you realize and are convicted, I don't have a heart for the global church, and this is the year I'm going to open myself up and allow God to begin to point me in that direction and develop a heart within me for my international brothers and sisters. Maybe this is the year that you see and prioritize, man, there's nothing more important than knowing God deeply, and that's what I'm going to pray for me and for the people around me. Maybe this is a year that you realize, gosh, I need to get to work. I have things to do. I'm a kingdom builder and I want to go live a life worthy of my Lord. I want to live in such a way this year that I actually bring joy to my Father who is in heaven. Or maybe this is the year that you just need to be encouraged to follow God and pursue Him and He will give you the patience and the perseverance to cling to the promises that he's made you. I don't know which one of these resonates with you the most, but I hope one does and I hope that you'll cling to it as we go out these doors today. I'm going to pray for us. We're going to sing and then Mikey's going to dismiss us. Father, thank you for a new year. Thank you for what it represents, for the fresh start for those of us that need it, for new opportunities for those of us that want them. God, give us a vision for living a life that pleases you, to thinking beyond you simply being disappointed in us. Remind us that we have a good father. God, I pray for everybody in this room that they would know you more deeply this year than they did last year. That they would grow in their depth of knowledge of you and your will and in that growth, God, that you would begin to put their hand to the plow and they would begin to do your work. And they would experience the joy and satisfaction that can only come from being used by you. God, we pray over grace in 2025 that you would bring to us people that need to be a part of this family, that we would be good stewards of the people who come here. God, that this would be a year marked by spiritual flourishing, by a strength of community that even folks who have been coming here for decades would mark this year as a time of flourishing for them. We pray for the weeks and the months to come. We pray that we would honor you. We pray that you would draw us close. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning, Grace. How are we, Jay? Everybody good? Good, good. Off to a great start. I'm really excited. Thanks, Jacob, my man. Nate, as Nate mentioned earlier, my name is Aaron. I am one of the pastors out here, and I'm excited to be talking with you today. We've been in a series called 27. We started it last summer and continuing it this summer, and essentially we're just taking a book, pulling a theme or the overall theme of the letter, and talking about it on Sunday morning. This week, we're talking about... Not that one. We're talking about Galatians. So gotcha, right? But we're talking about the book of Galatians. And if I can be honest, like a couple of weeks ago when I started writing this, I got a little bit nervous because last year in the summer, I used the book of Colossians. And as I was preparing this message, I was like, man, there's some very similar tones that Paul is using in both of these letters. Man, I really hope they don't think I just kind of pulled last year's sermon out like he's doing this one again. Like, look at the one trick pony guy, right? But then last Sunday, Doug told us he had no clue that I did Colossians. So I'm like, I'm in the clear. So this was really the easiest sermon I've ever prepared because I did take last year's and I just did a find and replace with Galatians and Colossians. And you guys won't even know it. So that's not true. I am excited to be talking with us about Galatians today. Again, not Ephesians. To kind of get our minds moving in that direction. Some of you know a little bit about my story. But in case you don't, I grew up in the church. I wasn't a Christian at all. My father was a pastor. And if you've ever heard the saying that pastors' kids are the worst, it's true. Just not on Sundays, right? So that's one of the things I learned very early on is that people are looking at my behavior. Like there was an added weight to looking the part, right? Because it seemed like there was people, um, they would assess not just how good I was, but how good of a parent my father was based on how good of a boy I was. And so I learned Monday through Saturday, I can do whatever because I don't hang out in Christian circles on Sunday, Christian circle be good. And so that's what I was. I learned how to say the right things and do the right things. There was all this extra emphasis just on the way that I behaved. But when I did give my life to Jesus, I was maybe 19 or 20 years old. I was a night auditor in a hotel. I was an assistant high school basketball coaching going to school full time. And I can remember as a night auditor, you work about one hour a week. If I ever got fired from the church, I would go be a night auditor because you work one hour a night and the rest of the time just hide from the camera and nap and you were okay. But no, I remember whenever I would open my Bible, my prayer every single time was, God, help me forget everything that I learned about you as a child growing up, and you teach me who you are from your word. I wouldn't be able to articulate to you then why, or I had no clue what the, that was my, that may have been a very bad thing to pray. I have no clue, but what I knew was there was a difference in what I was feeling in that moment and what I felt as a child growing up. There was a very big difference in the unconditional love that I was currently sitting in, the unconditional love that I felt, the total and complete forgiveness that I felt that I had received from God, and the love that I felt growing up. Like the love that I felt growing up very much had to be earned. It had to be good enough. I had to do the right thing. I had to look the right way and say the right things. Otherwise, that love, it was kind of like God was just dangling it and ready to take it away at any point in time. And it didn't take long in my adulthood, or I guess if you can call 20 adult, in my almost formed brain, like it didn't take long before I started to question. I started to question my salvation. And it was always because, man, I messed up again. Does God still love me? It didn't take long before I started chasing good enough. And it's exhausting. And it didn't take long before I just wrestled with this idea of Christianity and who I'm supposed to be and I'm not good enough, I can't measure up, and just this weight, everything that I experienced as a kid suddenly kind of came back and even still today have struggles with it. Maybe you've experienced that. Maybe you've had the thought and this feeling of not being good enough. Like you just have to be better. Like it's this over-emphasis on the rules and this idea of if you don't do this, then you're really not this. God doesn't love you. God doesn't care for you. God is mad at you. It's almost like when you mess up, you feel like Jesus is stepping back in heaven and saying, hey, God, listen, I didn't know he was going to do that, right? Like, I knew all this other stuff, but that's surprise. And every decision, every action, every mistake has eternal consequences on the other side of it. Every bit of that is as a result of being exposed to legalism as a child. We all have been impacted by legalism on some level. Now, we could sit down and probably share story after story of hurt that has came from the church. Church hurt. And even if we didn't realize, and if we started to dig a little bit, what we would probably uncover is some type of legalism being at the root of all of that. Like everyone has this idea and this overemphasis, we've been exposed to this overemphasis on the rules and the regulations of Christianity. Even if someone who hasn't been in the church, hasn't grown up in the church, someone who doesn't go to church now, if you ask them, hey, what is a Christian? The majority of them will tell you some variation of, it's got something to do with Jesus, but then there's rules that you kind of have to follow throughout your life. How many times as a kid, like don't raise your hand, but how many times as a kid, maybe you thought this same thing, right? Like, hey, church is good. Christianity is good. I want to do that. I want to be involved in that, but I'm going to do it when I'm older, right? Because right now, I just want to kind of enjoy my life. I want to have fun. I want to do the things that I want to do. When I'm older, a grandpa, like 35 years old or something, like that's when, I don't know what it was for you. Like me, when I was a kid, 35 was ancient. I was dumb, right? It's not ancient. But that's the thought. Like Christianity, when I settle down, when I get to this place and I wonder, I'll start following the rules and the regulations, this emphasis on behavior. When I get older, I'll do that. When I get older, I'll be a part of that. That's legalism. We've all been impacted by it. And it's not something that's new. It's something that has been around the church ever since the church started. At the very beginning, it's the reason that Paul wrote Galatians. I feel like this is falling off of my ear, but it's the reason that Paul wrote the book of Galatians. In the book of the Galatians, it's six short chapters. Paul attacks and disarms legalism. If you've ever been impacted by it, if you've ever been hurt by it, you will absolutely love this book. But when Paul comes in, he comes in hot. Look at chapter one, verse six. This is what he says. This is verse 6. And Paul's like long-winded. He uses a lot of run-ons. This is his third sentence into the letter. This is what he says. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all. Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one that we preach to you, let them be under God's curse. Paul, throughout the entire book of Galatians, the only thing that he's talking about is legalism that has made its way into the churches at Galatia. And he's confronting really two false gospels that come from that. This idea of I have to be good enough, this overemphasis on the rules that I have to be good enough, or this overemphasis on the rules that, hey, I'm a Christian, I've got grace, now I can just do whatever I want and I'm all good. Paul confronts both of that. What's happening in the church in Galatia right now, these are fairly new, actually very new Christians. Christianity in itself is only about 49 to 50 years old at this point. And so Christianity came from Judaism. It came from the Jewish culture. Christianity came out of the Jews. And so the practices, the culture, the traditions have always been a part of it. Early Christians, even before Galatia, most early Christians were Jews. And then they came to know Christ. And then the Gentiles who came to Christ early, usually they became Jews first and then became Christians. And so as Christianity began to spread through the Greco-Roman world, like the leaders in the church had to answer this very difficult question. Like, what do we do with all of these non-Jews who are becoming Christians now? Do they have to first become Jews? Do they have to follow the traditions set in the Old Testament? Do they have to follow the customs? Do they have to do the things that we have been doing for years and years and years in order to first become Jews? And there were two camps that set up. The Hellenistic Jews were like, no, they don't have to do that. You can actually read about a conversation in Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, where the statement that came out of that was, we should not make it more difficult for the Gentiles to become Christians. But who is Paul is talking about in the book of Galatians is the Judaizers. And the Judaizers came in behind Paul to teach the Galatian Christians, hey, your faith has only just begun. Actually, your faith is not yet complete. Faith in Jesus is good, but now you actually have to become a Jew as well. You have to practice the Jewish customs and traditions, and you also have to become or get circumcised. Could you imagine that as an altar call, right? Like, lights come down, band comes up. Hey, if you want to give your life to Jesus, just go into this room on the right. You're going to be introduced to the 613 laws in the adjoining room in the back. That's our circumcision room. Go through there, and you are a Christian. You thought raising your hand when the pastor asked was hard? Like, no, that's a different kind of level, right? But that's what was happening. The Judaizers were coming in behind Paul and saying, hey, your faith isn't complete yet. You are not quite yet a Christian. You haven't yet attained the salvation that you're hoping for. Jesus is a start, but you also have to do this. It was Jesus plus something. It was Jesus and you have to look a certain way. Jesus and you have to live a certain way. Jesus and you have to believe additional things. Legalism is when we contribute identity as a Christian to anything other than faith in Christ alone. Jesus plus believing these things. Jesus plus living this way. Jesus plus this rule. Jesus plus this law. Jesus plus this command. This is what was happening in the church in Galatia, and it's what Paul is writing about. And if we can be honest, that doesn't sound incredibly different than the church today. Like, it's pretty mind-blowing to me that a faith that is based off of a singular event can have so many variations. It's pretty incredible to me that a faith based off the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, putting your hope and trust in this one man, can have so many different trends, so many different variations. And the thing that we have to realize is Paul wasn't writing and condemning the practices. He probably participated in a lot of the practices. What Paul was condemning was elevating the practices to the status of gospel, elevating the tradition to the status of gospel. Your faith isn't complete. Your salvation isn't complete. You need faith in Jesus and isn't that what we see today? Like you could line 10 different people up and ask them, what does it mean to be a Christian? And you're likely going to get several different answers. But not just about faith in Jesus and like what to believe, but about the way things you should do, the things you shouldn't do. This is what makes someone a Christian, or this is what makes someone a Christian. And this is what Paul was writing and correcting, was this confusion beginning to happen within the church. Like, how do you become a Christian? Well, you have to be this. And that's when you begin to see and you begin to hear statements like a Christian would never do this. A Christian could never say this. A Christian could never believe these things. A Christian could never be a part of these things. I have been in a place before, and I heard, I wasn't serving a church, but it was an area that I was at, and I heard pastors start to teach, hey, listen, if you want to be a good Christian, it has to be the King James Version. If you're reading anything other than the King James Version, you're a bad Christian. How ludicrous is that? Elevating something like that to the status of gospel. It's not that those things and those ideas and those beliefs may be wrong, but that is not what defines someone as a Christian. That's not what makes you a Christian. We have these ideas. You could never be a Christian and be baptized without full immersion. You can never be a Christian and believe or go to these places. You can never be a Christian. And you know what we're going to experience a lot of in 2024? We're going to experience a lot of promotion of Christian politics. You can't be a Christian and vote this way. You can't be a Christian and be for these things. Somehow, at some point, politics has came in and kind of hijacked what it means to be a Christian. And we've fallen for this false dichotomy that's presented. Like Christians are over here. This is the Christian vote. Christians are over here. This is the Christian vote. And you know what's crazy? Oftentimes they're using the same scripture to argue different perspectives. But this is what it means to be a Christian. You have to be this. There's this growing group of people called the nuns. Not like the little hat ladies with the black dress, right? It's a category on the censuses to go around. There's a question on there that says religious affiliation. And there's a box that says nun. That category. There's a book, I think it's called The Nuns. I would check it out. It's a good read, but there was a lot of political scientists who went in and did a lot of research. And what they found is this growing group of people, this growing group of folks who want nothing to do with the church, are standing in that place because of political affiliation. Because Christianity is not Jesus. Christianity is not faith in Jesus. It's faith in Jesus and this political alignment. It's faith in Jesus and this political belief. I don't want anything to do with that. And that's what Paul is writing. And that's what Paul is addressing. There is this Alistair Brigg, as I was kind of preparing this message, Nate actually brought him up to me. I went back and I watched the video and he does this incredible illustration. And he says, when he gets to heaven, what he wants to do is he wants to go and find the thief on the cross. And he wants to say, he just wants to experience, hey, what was it like? Like when you, when you got to the gate, what was it like? Like, what did they they say to you? Like he didn't even know where he was. He just kind of showed up and he ended up at this gate. And then the guy came up to him, Peter or whatever you want to call him. Peter came up and he said, so can you tell me about the doctrine of justification? He's like, the what? Well, tell me what you think about the scripture. Like give me your thoughts on it. He's like, man, I don't have any idea about any of this. Okay, well, I need to go get my supervisor. So let's go get this guy. And he's like, so can you tell me exactly why you're here? And he's like, I have no clue. Except this one guy right over here, the guy on the middle cross, said that I could come. This is what Paul is correcting throughout the entire book of Galatians. It's this convoluted confusion that has crept its way in to the Christian belief. Paul is writing and he's telling them, hey, you are, you became, and you remain a Christian because of your faith in Jesus. In Galatians 1, he says this. He says, Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by believing in what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in vain, if it really was in vain? So I ask you again, does God give you His Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law or by believing in what you heard. Paul reminded them. Hey, you know that justification, salvation through the law is not possible. Its sole purpose is to point you towards a savior that you are in need of. And I love his reminder. He said, do you remember your faith? Like, do you remember when you came to faith? Do you remember whenever you were saved? Before you knew all the right things? Before you did all the right things? Before you lived in the right way? Do you remember who you were? Do you now have to maintain and earn that love that was freely given? He reminded them of their faith in Jesus. He reminded them that a Christian is someone who trusts in Jesus. The way we say it at Grace is that you become a Christian by believing Jesus was who he said he was. He did the things he said he would do, and he will do the things that he promised. Like, that's the faith that Paul is defending. That's the faith that Paul is arguing for. And when I first read this, like, I read the, you foolish Galatians with the exclamation point, like, still kind of get that vibe, like Paul's really going in hard. Like he's still, you fools, how could you dare? But the more that I read it, I started to hear a different tone. It's an exclamation, just like you would shout to a child running towards the middle of a busy intersection. When a fear and pleading, like you have to correct course. You can't go down this path. And in verse five, he points out, like, are you still equating God's love for you by the rightness of your life? Are you still equating God's love for you and faithfulness by the blessings around you? Are you not having the things happen to you and suddenly God doesn't love you anymore? Because that's the result, isn't it? Like, haven't you been there? Or have you been there before? It's exhausting. This pursuit and this treadmill of trying to run towards awesome enough for God to save you. This over-emphasis on the rules and the regulations of Christianity and perfect adherence towards all of those is what's necessary for God to give you the love that he gave you when you first began. And it creates, it can create this judgmentalism that comes inside us. We can become the older brother in the story of the parable or the prodigal son. Like we can see the blessings in other people's lives and be like, I'm doing better than they are. Like what's going on, God? Like why is this not happening for me? Why am I suffering in these different ways? Why am I not having these good things happen to me? Look how awesome I behaved. And the moment things start going down here, suddenly, okay, it's where prosperity gospel kind of gets its momentum from, right? Like, I have to be good enough, and then all these awesome things will begin to happen to me. I have to be good enough, and then God's love will shower down on me. I have to be all of these things. And Paul says that is foolishness and we have to correct course. Like every bit of legalism really does get its leverage by its offering of direction. Like it tells you where to go. It tells you how to live your life. It tells you the things you should and should not be a part of, which there are things that should not be a part of the Christian's life. And I don't believe, I don't believe the Judaizers were malicious. I don't believe that when they came and they were teaching the Christians in Galatia, I don't think they were trying to lead them astray. I think they were trying to lead them. There have been thousands of years of tradition, and it is all that they knew. And what Paul says as a result of legalism is exhaustion, this feeling like a rejected child instead of an adopted heir with Christ. This feeling in the sense of judgmentalism, this feeling in the sense of not good enough and we begin chasing it. That is what naturally comes from legalism. And he says, anytime that we move Christ to the periphery, anytime we make him not the main thing, that's the fruit. This is what begins to pop up in our life. But there are things that should not be a part of your life. There are things that you should pursue and there are things that you should try to do. But what you need to do is keep Christ at the center of your faith. The beginning and end of what it means to be a Christian and that moves you towards something different. In Galatians 5, I'm going to read 16 and then jump down to verse 22. Galatians 5, 16 says this. So I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. I call it mountain biking Christianity. I don't know if you've ever been mountain biking before. I did whenever I was in Georgia. Well, I was in Georgia, so it would be more hill riding than anything. But if you ever go, what they will tell you is the very first rule, other than like knowing how to ride a bike, the very first rule is you're going to have a tendency to want to look at the things you want to avoid. As you're going down the hill, you're going to want to stare at the stone. You're going to want to stare at the tree. You're going to want to stare at these things because that's how you're going to avoid them. And I learned, actually, I learned that the guy was not lying to me when he told me after I was going down the hill and I saw a rock. And so I'm like, I've got to know where I'm supposed to avoid. I've got to know what I'm supposed to kind of veer towards and all of this. So your eyes and your body move towards the very thing that you're focused on. That's the entire role. That's where it all comes from, which is the same principle in life. Like Paul says it in Romans 12, he says that you're transformed by the renewing of your mind. It's this idea that you will always move towards the direction of your most powerful thought. The thing that you're thinking, whatever you are focused on, that will be the direction that your life moves. Mountain Viking Christianity says this, that yes, there are things that you want to avoid. There are things that you need to avoid. There are things in your life that shouldn't be there. What you need to focus on is the path. Is the journey that you're going on that the Holy Spirit is leading you towards. Keeping Christ at the center. Not moving him towards the periphery. What starts to happen is love develops. It's a fruit of the gospel. Patience starts to form. It's a fruit of the gospel. Kindness, gentleness, self-control. Like these things start to develop in your world, not in order to attain salvation, not in order to attain God's love, God's forgiveness, God's freedom, but as a result from it. It says that the spirit and the flesh are at work against one another. And any time we move what should be avoided, we move what should be in the periphery to the center, our body, our life will move towards those things. And what develops is exhaustion, fatigue, judgmentalism. But if we can stay focused in Christ, do you want a check mark? Do you want to know the marker along the way? Are you moving down the path? Are you growing in those things? Are you growing in love? Are you growing in peace? Are you growing in patience? Are you growing in kindness? Are you growing in self-control? Like if you want a marker that you're moving in the right direction, it's not by an overemphasis on the rules and regulations. Those kind of take care of themselves when you're focusing on becoming who Christ has created you to be, walking and riding in the path that he has called you to walk on. Paul's entire letter to the Galatians is simply a reminder that a Christian is from a life of faith defined itself by a life of love. Are you moving down that path? Are you moving towards greater patience? What's popping up in your life? The band is going to come here in one second and we're going to sing the song Living Hope. It's simply a reminder and a focus that we were separated and it's only through the saving work of Jesus. It's keeping Christ the path. We pray for us. God, thank you so much. Thank you for your love, your grace, and your kindness. We thank you for all that you've done in us and through us because of the grace that we've received in Jesus. And Father, we just ask you as it's going to be a natural tendency. Legalism isn't a new thing that's happening and the effects of it have been felt for thousands of years, God. And we just ask you to point us toward the path you're asking us to follow with the grace of your spirit, and even if it means reminding ourselves of the gospel we came to know daily, Lord, help us to do that. Help us to live the life you have asked us to live by trusting in Jesus. We need you. We thank you. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. So good to see everybody. And it sounds like to me that only the singers come during the summertime. You guys were singing great. And that was really always love it when the church sings together like that. If I haven't gotten to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby. After the service, you have dropped in. If this is your first time, you've dropped into the middle of a series called Idols that's loosely based on a book by Tim Keller called Counterfeit Gods. If you haven't picked up a copy of that, we are out, but they are competitively priced on Amazon and will be brought right to your door for ease of purchase. So I would encourage you to grab one of those and kind of read through that as we finish up the series. This is week four. Next week is the last week. Week five, we're going to talk about comfort next week, which I'm very excited to talk about that because I think it's something that every American alive needs to hear. And I think it's going to be an important one next week. This week, we're looking at the source idol of control. And when I say source idol, one of the more interesting ideas that Tim Keller puts forward in his book is the idea that we have surface idols and source idols. Surface idols are the ones that are visible to us and people outside of us, a desire for money, a desire for friends, a desire for a perfect family, for appearances, things like that that are a little bit more visible. Source idols are things that exist in our heart beneath the surface that fuel our desire for those surface idols. And he identifies four. Power, which I preached about two weeks ago. That's the one that I primarily deal with. And then approval, preached about last week that's what he deals with a lot that is not one that that's probably the one I worry about the least and then control this week and comfort next week so as we approach this idea of control in our life I want us to understand what it is and what it means if we struggle with this source idol. And again, an idol is anything that becomes more important to us in our life than Jesus. It's something that we begin to prioritize over Jesus and we pour out our faith and our worship to that thing instead of to our Creator. About four or five years ago, I was in my therapist's office. I was seeing a counselor at the time just doing general maintenance, which I highly recommend to anyone. It's probably time for me to get back in there and let them tinker around a little bit. But one day I got there and whenever I would go in and sit down on the couch, what a cliche, but whenever I would go in and sit down on the couch, he would always ask me what's been going on, what's happened since I last saw you. That was always the first question, so I knew that was the question. So in the car, in my head, I'm thinking, how am I going to answer him? I can tell him about this thing and this thing and this thing. I think that'll be enough. Well, I'll start the bidding there, and we'll see where it goes. So I go in, I sit down and he asked me the question, how's it been going for you? What's been happening? And so I told him my three things, five or eight minutes. I don't know. And I get done with it. And he just looks at me and he kind of cocks his head and he goes, why'd you tell me those things? And the smart aleck in me is like, because you're a counselor, because this is the deal? Because that's what I'm supposed to do? What do you want me to do? But I said, well, I knew that you were going to ask me what happened, and that's what happened. So I told you those things. And I don't remember the exact conversation, but he pushed back on me and he goes do you do you ever enter a conversation without knowing what you're going to talk about and what the other person is probably going to talk about and I said not if I can help it I always plan ahead whenever I have a conversation or meeting coming up I always think through all the different ways it could go and how I want to respond because I don't want to be caught off guard in the moment. And he said, how many times are you in a situation that's taken you by surprise and you didn't expect to be there? I said, very rarely. And he goes, yeah, I think maybe you've got an issue with control. Because you have a hard time not being the one driving the bus, don't you? And I was like, you have a hard time not being the one. And I kind of thought about it, and I said, my gosh, is it possible that this need for control is so ingrained into me that the reason I told you those stories is so that I could control where the conversation went and we would talk about things I was willing to open up about and I could steer away from the areas that I wasn't willing to talk about. He said some effect of, and circle gets the square. Good job, buddy. And so this need for control that some of us all have to varying degrees can be so sneaky. Sometimes we don't even recognize it in ourselves until someone points it out in us. So let me point it out in you. Some people deal with this so much that it shows up in every aspect of their life. For me, it's relational, it's conversational. I don't want to look dumb. If someone has something negative to say, I want to be gracious and not be caught off guard, whatever it is. But for some of us, we're so regimented and ordered that we have our life together in every aspect of it. We have our routine. We wake up at a certain time. We go to bed at a certain time. Our kids do certain things on certain days. If you have a laundry day, you're gaining on it. If you make your bed, you're gaining on it. Like there are things that we do. We have a workout routine that we do. We have the way that we eat. We have the places that we go. We have our budget. We have our work schedule. We are very regimented. And a lot of that can come from this innate need to be in control of everything. I think about the all-star mom in the PTA, the one who runs a better house than you, who drives a cleaner car than you, and who makes cupcakes better than you, that mom. And her kids are always dressed better than your kids. This is this need for control. And if you're not yet sure if this is you, if this might be something that you do in your life where everything needs to be ordered, and if it's not ordered, your whole life is in shambles. I heard in the last year of this phrase that I had not heard before. I'm in the last year of the Gen Xers. I think the millennials coined this phrase. You boomers, unless you have millennial children, you probably have not heard this, but maybe you can identify it. It's a term called the Sunday Scaries. Anybody ever heard that term? You don't have to raise your hand and out yourself, but the Sunday Scaries. Okay. Now for me, I have the Saturday Scaries because about three times every Saturday, I kind of jolt myself into consciousness and ask if I know what I'm preaching about in the morning. So that's, that's what I have for me. Sunday scaries are when you take Sunday night to get ready for your week. And on Sunday afternoons and evenings, you begin to feel tremendous anxiety because the meals aren't prepped and the clothes aren't washed and the schedule isn't done and the things aren't laid out and the laundry isn't all the way ready and you start to worry, if I don't, I've got this limited amount of time, if I don't start my week right, everything's going to be off, it's going to be the worst and so you get the Sunday scaries and you experience stress on Sunday night. If that's you, friends, this might be for you. And when we do this, when we make control our idol, when we order our lives so that we manage every detail of it. And listen, I want to say this before I talk about the downside of it. Those of us who do live regimented lives and who are in control of many of the aspects of them, that ability comes from a place of diligence and discipline. That's a good thing. That's a muscle God has blessed you with that he has not blessed others with, but we can take it too far. And we can allow that to become what we serve. And we can allow control over the things in our life to become more important than the other things in our life and to become more important than Jesus himself. And here's what happens when we allow this sneaky idol to take hold in our lives. The idol of control makes us anxious and the people around us resentful. The idol of control makes us anxious and the people around us resentful of the control we try to exert over them. I'll never forget, it's legendary in my group of buddies. I've got a good group of friends, eight guys, and we go on a trip about every other year. And one year we were in another city and one of my buddies named Dan just decided that he was the group mom on this trip. And I don't really know why he decided that, but he was bothering us the whole time. Don't do that. Don't go here. Where are you guys going? What are you guys talking about? Come over here. Be part of the group. Put your phone down. Let's go. Like just bossing us around the whole time. And we got mad at him. He spent the whole trip anxious. He didn't have as good a time as he could. And we, we spent the trip frustrated with Dan to the point where whenever he starts it now, we just call him mom and tell him to shut up. When we try to control everything in our life, we make ourselves anxious and we make the people around us resentful. We make ourselves anxious because we're trying to control everything. Everything's got to go according to plan. And now that we've structured this life, we have to protect this life with all the decisions that we're making and see all the threats, real and imagined, to this perfect order that we might have. And then the people around us grow to resent us because we're trying to exert unnecessary control over them as well. And it's really not a good path to be on. And the best example I can find in the Bible of someone who may have struggled with this idol of control and made herself anxious and everyone around her resentful is Sarah in the event with Hagar. Now, I'm going to read a portion of this, Genesis 16, 1 through 6, to kind of tell the story of Sarah and Hagar and Abraham. A couple bits of context. First of all, I know that at this point in the story, technically, her name is Sarai and his name is Abram, okay? For me, it feels like saying the nation Columbia with a Spanish accent all of a sudden after I've been talking in southern English for 30 minutes. So I'm not just going to break out into Hebrew. Okay, so they're going to be Sarah and Abraham, and you're going to bear that cross with me. And then what's happening in the story is in Genesis chapter 12, God calls Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans. He was in the Sumerian dynasty. He says, I want you to grab your family. I want you to move to this place I'm going to show you that became Canaan, the promised land in modern day Israel. And when he got there in Genesis 12, God made him three promises. He spoke to Abraham and he said, hey, this land is going to be your land and your descendants' land forever. Your descendants will be like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore, and one of your descendants will bless the whole earth. He made those three promises to Abraham. Can I tell you, the rest of the Bible hinges on those promises. If we don't understand those promises, we can't understand the rest of Scripture. But all of those promises require a descendant to come true. Sarah and Abraham were getting on up there in age, maybe in their 80s. And Sarah had still not born Abraham a child. She was barren or he was impotent. And she begins to get concerned enough about this that she takes matters into her own hands. She arrests control away from God's sovereign plan. And this is what happens in Genesis chapter 16, verses 1 through 6. We're going to read it together. I don't see any problems so far. Okay, a little recap here. I, for one, am shocked that the story went that way. After she said, hey, here's what you should do. I have an Egyptian slave. You should sleep with her. She'll carry a baby, and then we'll raise that as our own child. I don't know what Abraham's moral compass was at this point in his story, what laws of God he had been equated with and not. I don't know how aware he was of the myriad egregious sins happening in this one instance. But this goes exactly how you'd think it would go. After a wife, likely much older than her slave, says, why don't you sleep with my slave and you all have a child together? And then what happens? She gets anxious. She gets resentful. She sees that Hagar is haughty towards her. And then she begins to resent Abraham, blames it on him. This is your fault. Excuse me. I'm sure it was your idea. And then runs Hagar off. By taking control in this situation, she made herself anxious about everyone around her, and she made everyone around her resentful of who she was. You can see it in Abram's response in verse 6. He says, listen, she's yours. You deal with it. Don't come to me with those problems. He's tired of dealing with it. And as I was thinking about the sin of Sarah, and as I was thinking about what it's like when we take control of our own life, when we kind of take the wheel from God and we say, I've got it from here, you can ride passenger, I'm going to be in control and orchestrate everything. That what we're really doing when we take control is this. When we insist on taking control, we just get in God's way. We just get in the way. When we insist on taking control, we just get in God's way. What did Sarah do? She got in his way. He had a story that he was writing with Isaac. He knew exactly when he would, God knew exactly when he was going to allow Abraham to make Sarah pregnant. He knew exactly how the rest of the story was going to go. Ishmael doesn't need to exist. That root of Ishmael doesn't need to exist. If Sarah would have just been patient and waited on God and his timing, if she had just been patient and waited on God to write the story that he intended, if she waited on his sovereignty and his will, but she got tired of waiting, she thought it should be happening differently than this, so she took control. And as a result of that control, we have this split in the line of Abraham that has echoed down through the centuries that we're still dealing with today, over which we are still warring right now in Abraham's promised land because Sarah took control when she wasn't supposed to. She got in the way of the story that God was wanting to write. And the more I thought about that, what it's like to be getting in God's way when he's trying to direct our life the way he wants it to go, I thought about this. Now, you can raise your hand for this one. Who in here loves themselves a good cooking show? I love a good cooking show. Just me and Jeff and Karen. Perfect. Nobody else likes cooking shows. You're liars. I love a good cooking show. At our house, the things that are on the TV are house hunters, cooking shows, and sports. That's it. By the way, my three-year-old son, John, calls all sports golf. Yesterday I was watching soccer, and he said, Daddy, you watch golf. And in our house, we have a rule. When a kid is making a dumb mistake like that, we do not correct them because it's adorable, and we want them to do it as long as possible. Like the days gone by when, to Lily, anything that had occurred before today was last-her-day. Could have been last year. Could have been last week. Could have been a couple hours ago. It happened last-her-day, and it was great. At some point, she figured it out, and now we don't like her as much. But I love a good cooking show. And my favorite chef, no one will be surprised by this if you know me, is Gordon Ramsay. I really like Gordon Ramsay. I like watching him cook. I like watching him interact. I think he's really great. And so I watch most of what he puts out. And I was thinking about this, getting in God's way. And I think this fits. Let's pretend that at an auction, at a charity auction from Ubuntu, which would be a great prize, I won a night of cooking with Gordon Ramsay. First of all, I was given a significant raise. Second of all, I've spent it all on this night of cooking with Gordon Ramsay. And the night comes around. I'm so excited. I would be thrilled to do this. It would really, really be fun. I do like to cook. And so let's say that night finally rolls around and I go to his kitchen and I walk in and all the ingredients are out on the counter. And he hasn't told me what he's going to make, but all the ingredients are there. And what I don't know is he's planning to make a beef Wellington. That's one of his signature dishes. I've only had one beef Wellington in my life. I loved it. I would kill to have one that was cooked by him for me. That would be amazing. But the deal is, I look at the ingredients and he's going to teach me how to do it. So he's going to walk me through it step by step. First, you want to sear the loin. Get that, get the skillet nice and hot, sear it. Then you rub the mustard on it. Now dice up some mushrooms. And I don't know where we're going or what we're doing. I'm just following him step by step doing what I'm supposed to do. And his goal is to show me how to make a beef wellington that we've done together. Great. Except stupid me sees the ingredients, sees the steak, sees some green beans, and I go, you know what, Gordon? Actually, I've got this. It's your night to cook with Nate. What I'd like you to do is just go sit behind the bar on the other side. Let's just chat it up. I'd like to hear some of your stories. I'm going to make you steak and green beans. And I take those ingredients, and I get in his way, and I go make overdone steak with soggy green beans, and I slide it across the table to him. Having no idea what I just missed out on. Because I insisted on taking control and making what I thought I should make with those ingredients. I think that when we insist on turning all the dials in our life ourselves, taking control of every aspect of our life. That what we do is very similar to being in the kitchen with a master chef and telling him we've got this. We see the ingredients available to us and we make the thing we think we're supposed to make. Having no idea that he had so much better plans for those ingredients than what we turned out. And as I was talking about this sermon and this idea with my wife, Jen, who has a different relationship with this source idol than I do, she pointed out to me, she said, you know what they're trying to make? If your idol is peace, you're trying to make in that kitchen or if your idol is control. She said, we're trying to make peace. People with the idol of control, you know what they're trying to do with that control? They're trying to create a peace for themselves. They're trying to create rest for themselves. If this is your surface, if this is your source idol, and you try to control every aspect of your life, chances are that what's really motivating you to do that is a desire for peace in all the areas of your life. It's why your spirit can't feel at rest until your bed is made. And this is true. Why did I think of the things that I wanted to say to the counselor? Because I didn't want to get sidetracked. I didn't want to get surprised. I wanted to walk into that office with peace. Why do we prepare ourselves for the situations that we're going to face? Because we want to be peaceful in the midst of those situations. Why do we prepare for the week and get the Sunday scaries? Because we want to enter the week feeling at peace, feeling ready to go, feeling that we are in a place of rest and not a place of hurry. But here's the problem with the peace that we create with our control. It's fragile. It's threatened. It's uncertain. It's always at risk. We can do everything we can to create peace in our life with the way that we control every aspect of it. But the reality is we are one phone call away. We are one bad night away. We are one accident in the driveway away. One bad business decision. Two bad weeks of just being in a bad spot away from ruining all that peace. There are so many things that happen in life that are outside of our control that any peace that we have created for ourself is only ever infinitesimally small and thin and fragile. And when we live a life, even achieving peace, but when we live that life of a threatened peace so that now we have peace, we've done it, we've orchestrated, we've controlled, we have what we want, everything is ordered as it should be. Things are going well. Then where does our worrying mind go to? All the things that could possibly happen to disturb this peace. All of the threats real and imagined to my peaceful Monday. And then here's what we do. I know that we do it. I've seen it happen. Then we pick a hypothetical event that could possibly happen three months from now to threaten the peace that I've created, and we decide to stress about that today. And it's not even happened yet. But we're already jumping ahead because our anxiety monster needs something to eat. And I am reminded with this idea of a threatened and a fragile peace of the verse we looked at in our series, The Treasury of Isaiah, Isaiah 26.3. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. Isaiah says, and God promises, that he will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. And so what's our part in that peace? It's trusting in Jesus and not ourselves. And it occurs to me, I'm not saying this for sure, because it could just be poor planning, but I kind of believe in the Holy Spirit and the way that he times things out. I've seen over and over and over again how we've had a sermon planned for eight months, and I'll preach that sermon on that day, and someone will say, this is my first time at Grace. I'm so glad I heard that sermon. That's exactly what I needed. It's the Holy Spirit. I know that we just visited this verse. And I know that we just talked a couple weeks ago about a fragile peace. But maybe we're doing it again because some of us just need to hear it twice. Maybe some of us in this room need to hear this again and let the Holy Spirit talk to us again and be honest with God about what we're holding dear to our heart and what we may be idolizing without having realized it. Because what God promises us is a perfect peace. You know what perfect peace is? Perfect peace is an unthreatened peace. Here's what perfect peace is. Jen's family used to have a lake house down in Georgia on Lake Oconee. And my favorite thing to do when I would go down there was to kind of separate from everybody, big surprise, and go and lay in the hammock right next to the lake. Because when I got in that hammock, and I could hear the occasional boat putter by several hundred yards away, and I could hear the waves slowly just kind of lapping against the wood at the edge of that lake, and I could hear the birds and the sound of the lake, that was all I could hear. It drowned out everything else. It never seemed to matter what was happening in life when I laid down in that hammock. Everything was at peace and everything was okay. When we trust in God's sovereignty and in God's peace instead of our own, it's like laying down in that hammock next to the lake. Everything's going to be okay. Everything's going to be fine. God is in control. He knew this would happen, and I trust in him. I don't know what story he's writing. I don't know where he's going. This is not what I would have made with these ingredients, but I know that he wants what's best for me, and he wants what's best for the people that I love, so I trust him with the results of this. It's laying in that hammock and trusting in the sovereignty of God. Perfect peace is trusting in God's sovereignty, in God's goodness, in the truth that we know that he always, always, always wants what's best for us. And that he will bring that about in this life or the next. And we can trust in that. So, here's what I would say to you. My brothers and sisters who may struggle with control. I'm not here this morning to make you feel bad for your worry or your anxiety or to make fun of you for your Sunday scaries. I think all of those things are natural and a normal part of human life. It would be weird if you never worried about anything. I think it's a good goal to grow towards. But I'm not here to make you feel badly about that. But here's what I would say. If you're a person who's given to worry and anxiety and seeks to exert control, and when you don't have it, it starts to freak you out a little bit, that doesn't sound like perfect peace to me. That doesn't sound like perfect peace to me. That doesn't sound like laying in the hammock next to the lake trusting in God's protected peace rather than trusting in your fragile, unprotected, risky peace. You see? And so what I would encourage you to do is to see things this way. Excessive worry is a warning light. Excessive worry on the dashboard of your life is a warning light that should cause you to wonder what's really going on and what you're really worried about. A few weeks ago, I talked about those of us with the issue of power being a source idol and how that begets anger, and I said the same thing. Anger is the flashing warning light for us. When I'm having days when I'm excessively angry or frustrated all the time, I need to stop and pause and go, what is the source of this, and why am I so upset, and why do I have a hair trigger? What's going on with me? And wrestle that to the ground. For my brothers and sisters who who struggle with control maybe more than you realize before you walk in the door excessive worry and I don't know what excessive worry is I can't define that for you that's that's between you and God to decide how much is too much but here's what I do know excessive worry is a warning light and here's. And here's what it's telling you. It's telling you I am not existing in perfect peace. And what's our part of perfect peace? To keep our mind steadfast by trusting in him. So somewhere along the way, we've started trusting in ourself a little bit more to grab those ingredients and make what we want. Somewhere along the way, we've started taking control back from God, trusting in our sovereignty, not his, and beginning to create our own peace that is fragile and stressful. And so the question to ask yourself when that warning light starts to go off is simply this, whose peace am I trusting? I don't know what to tell you to do. Because I'll be honest with you. Like I said, I talked this sermon through with Jen. And she kind of said, yeah, all that's true. Okay, I get it. I agree. All true. What do I do? How do we not do those things? How do we not worry more than we should? What are my action steps? And I said, well, what advice would you give to so-and-so? She goes, I don't know. You're the pastor, so I'm asking you. Here's what I would simply go back to, is this question of whose peace am I trusting? Am I trusting in the peace that I've created? Or are my eyes focused on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith, so that my mind is steadfast in him and I'm trusting in his peace? Whose peace are you trusting? My prayer for you is that you'll experience the rest of trusting in God's peace. And as I enter into prayer for you, there's a prayer that I found in a devotional that I have from the Common Book of Prayer from 1552. It's amazing to me how timeless the truths of faith and spirituality and Christianity are. And how this could be written today and still every bit as accurate. But I'm going to read this prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. And then we're going to enter into a time of prayer together and then we'll worship. Oh God, from you all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works proceed. Give to your servants that peace which the world cannot give, that both our heart may be set to obey your commandments, and also that by you we, being defended from the fear of our enemies, may pass our time in rest and quietness through the merits of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen. Father, we love you. And we thank you that through your Son, we can have perfect peace. God, we are sorry for not claiming this gift that you offer us more readily. God, we are sorry for grabbing the ingredients and trying to make our own peace and write our own story. God, we are sorry that we sometimes trust in our wisdom and our sovereignty more than yours. Lord, I pray that no matter where we sit with this idol or how we might wrestle with it, that we would leave this place more desirous of you than when we came. And God, for my brothers and sisters that do struggle, that do find it difficult to give up control, that do find themselves battling that demon of worry sometimes, God, would you just speak to them? Would you let them know that you're there, that you love them, That you have a plan for them that they don't see but that they can trust? And would you give us the obedience to just do the next thing that you're asking us to do, not worrying about what the result is going to be, but worrying about just walking in lockstep with you? Father, make us a people of peace so that we might give that peace to others and that they might know you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. Like I said earlier, my name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making grace a part of your Sunday. I'm just stating this for the record. This morning, Jen went to Atlanta on Saturday with Lily, with our daughter Lily. And so I'm solo dadding with our two and a half year old son, John, which means this morning I got us both up, showered, product in our hair, presentable for church, and here on time. So I don't know if the sermon's going to be any good, but that was pretty good, and I'll take it. Yes. Thank you. And to boot, the sermon doesn't even have to be good because worship was so great, I could send you home now, and we've all been ministered to. So that was really good, too. You got one clap, two. There we go. Dang it. Aaron got a whole clap last week for his sermon, and now he's getting clapped for for worship. He's going to get a big head. Y'all don't know what it's like to deal with him during the week, I'm telling you. This morning, we arrive at this concept of abiding in Christ. And I think it's one of the most profound concepts in scripture. It's one that if we can grasp it, if we can instill it in our brain, if we can make it our mantra, it changes our entire life. This concept to me is so profound that when I was originally planning this series, the whole series was going to be called Abide. And we were going to look at what it meant for us every week to abide in Christ. But as I dove into the text, I realized that I wanted to talk about the broader conversation happening around those verses, which is why we ended up with a series called Final Thoughts. I'll remind you it's called Final Thoughts because this series is entirely in John chapters 13 through 17. In the back half of John chapter 13, Jesus has just been betrayed by Judas. They are at the Last Supper. It's the last time he is going to be in the room with his disciples before his death, burial, and resurrection. And before he goes, he has some final thoughts for them in what's referred to in theological circles as the upper room discourse. So in this discourse, Jesus is just telling the disciples all the things he wants them to know before he leaves. So it's worth it for every Christian to look into these chapters to see what Jesus has for them there. This morning, we arrive at the concept of abiding, but to help us understand why this is such a profound concept, I want to tell you about the life of my friend, Tripp. I thought about telling you about my own life, just the details and the stresses, but it feels a little bit self-serving and whiny for the pastor to get up and talk to you about how stressed he is and how much the church demands of him. So we're not going to do that. Plus you guys are really, really great and really don't demand a whole lot. Just show up on time and preach for 30 minutes. But my buddy Trip, he's probably my closest friend in the world, and we talk pretty regularly. And he's a couple years older than me. He's got a wonderful wife named Hannah, who I adore. She's wonderful. And they've got three kids, ages, I think, eight, six, and three. And then they made the decision about six months ago to add a Bernad Doodle to the lot. How do you show that you have money in America today? You have the name Doodle at the back half of your dog, and you have a lot of money if there's a Berna in front of it. It is a huge mammoth of a dog that's really annoying, and it was a terrible choice. And I'm not saying that because of my typical shtick of not caring for animals. I'm saying that because introducing that dog into that family in this season of life was dumb. And he knows it. He regrets it deeply. But Tripp and Hannah, they both have jobs. Tripp is an entrepreneur. He can work from anywhere. And he works very, very hard. But because he's running his own shop, he has to kill what he eats, right? So he's switching hats between being a salesperson, being a marketing person, closing deals, customer care. He's a creative guy. He's basically creativity for hire. He can do videos. He can host. He can help you brainstorm for your marketing thing or for an idea for you. So he's got a bunch of different irons in the fire. And to be a friend of Tripp's is to every, I would say, about 18 months, escort him through an existential crisis in which he questions what he should be doing with his career. It just always happens. And you kind of put his eye on the ball, and then he goes, but it's because he has so many different things going on. In the midst of that, Hannah, his wife, is a VP for a company that works with churches, and not just churches, but also schools and stuff like that, to create curriculum for students and children and for the parents. And her office is 30 minutes away, and her job is very demanding. And so when she goes into the office, she can't really be going back and forth, and sometimes she needs to stay late, which means that Tripp is going to be balancing the kids. And because they each have careers that they deeply care about, I think life is so much easier when there's one career in a marriage where you go, yeah, that's the more important one. For them, it's 50-50. Neither of them takes precedence over the other. So everything in their house, if you've got kids, you know, is highly negotiated, right? You are responsible for putting this one and this one to bed. I will get this one and this one up. If this one wakes up during the night, that's on you. If this one wakes up during the night, that's on me. If the dog wakes up during the night, I'll probably just let it out and hope it runs away. But they have to highly negotiate all these things. You take them to school. I'll pick this one up. And then one of them gets sick. And so when they get sick, they've got to sit down in the morning, and they've got to be like, okay, what are your meetings today? What are the things that I have to move if I'm going to stay home? They have to figure all of this out on the fly, and it is highly tense sometimes. So they're trying to juggle all of that, and I don't know what it is about them, but their kids are sick all the time. And then if one of them gets sick, you know how it goes, parents. They're upstairs down for the count. You should be at work, but instead you're taking care of the kids and the dog for three days on end. And one of their kids, they just got a diagnosis of some pretty strong ADHD. And they've been having some big behavioral things going on with this particular child. And it's been a real challenge, and it's put tension on them and on their marriage. And they're trying to balance that. They also, in their extended family, there's different tensions like there often is, and that's impacting them and how they balance all of those things. And then he's an extrovert. He loves his friends, so he wants to have time for them, but then everybody needs time to unwind and recharge, and so he needs his alone time as well. And for him, when I look at his life, it's just chaotic. And I think that our lives might not look exactly like that, but many of our lives are some version of that. If they're not now, they have been. And I know that I'm biased. I'm in the season of life where I have young kids and nothing ever gets done all the way. You can clean the house, but then this is going to go to pot. You can fix this thing, then the house is going to be a disaster. You can't do all the things when you have little kids. It's a profound season of hustle, I think. But I'm not naive enough to think that life gets a whole lot easier when they're teenagers. I'm sure that's a totally different set of stresses. I remember back to when I was like 26 and married and thought I was busy. If you're under 30 and kidless and we all just laughed, I want you to know we were not laughing with you, okay? Laughing at you. You don't know, man. But even then, even in that season of life, there's stresses and concerns. Am I going to get married? Are we going to have kids? Is this the right career for me? Is this what I want to be doing? How do I manage all of these things? And then when you're older and you have adult kids, am I doing the right, a good job with them? Am I being a good grandparent? Am I stewarding them along well? In life, we have, especially in 2024, so many concerns and things pulling us in so many different directions. I feel like we live now in a culture of confusion and chaos. There's so much stuff going on around us, and it's so hard to know the right thing to do and what to focus on and what to give our attention to in the moment. To that, to that confusion and chaos, we apply this principle that we find in John chapter 15. If you have a Bible, I would invite you to open there. If you didn't bring your Bible with you this morning, there's one in the seat back in front of you. You can open and read along there. I would encourage you, if you do have a physical Bible, I hope you do, to open it up when you get home and make sure that this passage is highlighted for you. This is an absolutely must-do highlight passage. But this is what it says. John chapter 15, verses 4 and 5. By the way, you may notice that I have a Bible that I've not used before. Last week, Gibby preached, Aaron Gibson preached, and when he did, he had a new Bible, and I touched it, and I was like, I have to have that Bible. So now I have a new preaching Bible, and I love it. So anyways, verse 4, Jesus says, Now this is what I get for switching from ESV to NIV in my Bible translation. Because the ESV and a lot of other translations, that word remain there And it actually goes along well with the picture that I use to explain salvation sometimes. But Jesus says in our vernacular, I am the tree trunk and you are the branches. And so the idea is we are, God created us and he attached us to him. We are a sprout off of him. He is the source of life. And that when we sin, when we act against the will of God, when we pretend to be God in our own life and follow our own rules, what happens is we are separated from God. And so the picture is the branch falls off the tree. It is cut off or sawn off. It falls off the tree and it is on the ground and it will surely die because it is no longer connected to its source of life. And when we are saved, what Jesus does is he picks us up and he grafts us back onto the tree so that now we are attached to our source of life. We will continue to live and continue to bear fruit. And in keeping with that imagery, Jesus here says, if you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. If you are attached to me, if you remain attached to Christ, you will bear much fruit. And here's what I think is interesting about that. When a branch, when a healthy branch on a healthy apple tree remains there, it yields its fruit in season. That branch does not get to decide what it wants to produce, when it wants to produce it, or how much it wants to produce. That branch doesn't get to go, you know what? I'm feeling pears this year, and I'm going do it in December just for funsies. It doesn't get to do that. That branch grows apples and that branch grows apples when the tree decides it's supposed to. And that branch grows as many apples as it and the tree are capable of producing no more, no less. So what Jesus is saying is, if you abide in me, if you walk with me, if you remain attached with me, if you walk through every day with an awareness of my presence, if you begin and end your days with me, if you carry me into meetings with you, if you carry me into the workplace, if you carry me into interactions with your spouse and with your children and with your friends, if you abide in me, if you bring me along, then I promise you that you will bear much fruit. Here's why I think that's remarkable. And it's how I want us to think about the invitation to abide. The invitation to abide is a gift of simplicity in a world of confusion and chaos. The invitation to abide is a gift that God gives us of simplicity in a world of confusion and chaos. When it feels like there's so much pulling at us, when it feels like there's so much that we're supposed to do, so much that we're supposed to be good at, so many different irons in the fire or plates to keep in the air, there's so much put on us. Jesus says in the midst of all that, he sweeps it away and he offers us this invitation to abide. And he says, if you abide in me and I in you, if you pursue me and bring me everywhere you go, then you will produce the exact fruit that you're supposed to produce. I'm kind of reminded of Jesus's admonishment of Martha in Luke. In Luke, it might be chapter 10, but I should have looked it up and I didn't. Jesus goes to Mary and Martha's house. And it's a famous story. You probably know it. When he goes there, Martha is scurrying about. We call it bustling in our house. Just bustling. Every day I'm bustling. We bustle in our house. So Martha's bustling around, getting everything ready, making sure that everything's good for Jesus. I mean, if Jesus is coming over to your house, you probably want to be on your P's and Q's. You know, you probably want to look pretty good. So I don't blame her for the stress that she feels at hosting the Savior of the universe in her home. And so she's bustling around doing everything. Mary, meanwhile, is sitting at the feet of Christ, just taking him in, taking in his words, taking in his presence, being his friend. She's being with him. And Martha gets on to Mary. She says, what are you doing, lazy? Come help me. Don't you know Jesus is here? And Mary's attitude is like, yeah, I do know Jesus is here. That's why I'm sitting at his feet. And Jesus says to Martha some version of, Martha, Martha, you're worried about so many things, but only one thing matters. Mary's right. Focus on me. It's this gift of simplicity in a world of confusion and chaos. And I think it helps us a lot as we face life's big questions, as we assess ourselves. You know, this weekend, I had the opportunity to go to two funerals. One of them I led, the other one I attended. And it never ceases to arrest my attention of what's said about people at their funeral. The kinds of things that are always shared. I believe at a good funeral that a close friend or a family member who knew them well will share memories of the person who has passed. That's always my favorite part of the funeral. And they always talk about how that person loved. They always talked about how that person gave. They always talk about the good things. They don't typically talk about accomplishments. And whenever I go to a funeral, maybe because I'm a narcissistic jerk, I always wonder, what would people say about me at my funeral? What kinds of things would they mention? Who would come and what would they have to say about me? And I think about one was a funeral for a mom, one was a funeral for a dad, and so I think about my parents. If I were to share at my mom's funeral, what would I say? If I were to share at my dad's funeral, what would I say about him? And I think it's natural to wonder that and reflect on that and wonder at your funeral, what are your children or friends or family members going to say about you? Will they say everything that you wanted them to say? And I think in our life there's more big questions than this, but as we think about trying to do the right thing, trying to be the person God wants me to be, trying to live the right kind of life, I think we are, at least I am, constantly asking myself these two questions. There's two big questions we're asking ourselves. Am I making the right choice? And am I being a good fill in the blank? Am I making the right choice? Are we sending our kids to the right school? Am I handling this situation with my child in the right way? Am I doing a good job nurturing my child into adulthood as they are now adult kids and I'm trying to shift my role with them? Am I making the right choice in my career? This time, this space that I spend all of my time, a majority of my waking hours, I spend pursuing this career. Am I making the right choice? Is this the right career for me? Am I making the right choice by remaining in my career and not retiring? Am I making the right choice by retiring and not remaining in my career? Am I making the right choice in who I'm going to marry? Am I making the right choice in choosing that now is the time when we want to start trying for children? Are we making the right choice that now is the time that we want to buy the new house? Am I making the right choice in it feels like maybe it's wise to get rid of the old car and buy a new car. But as I do that, how much do I be indulgent and spend? And how much do I hold back and save? Am I making the right choice in those things? Are we making the right choices in who our friends are and how we assign our time and our talent and our treasure? Are we making the right choices? Are we doing the right things? I think if we don't, if you don't wonder that about yourself, I want to meet you and I want to know where you get your peace and your confidence. I think this choice, this question hounds all of us. Am I making the right choices in all of the right places? And then we're also hounded, or at least I am, am I being a good blank? Am I being a good pastor? What more can I do and give? Am I being a good father? Am I being a good husband? Am I being a good friend? Am I being a good acquaintance? Am I just generally kind to people? Yes, of course I am. Are you being a good aunt, a good uncle, a good grandkid, a good grandparent? Are you being a good boss? Are you being a good employee? We're constantly assessing ourselves. Am I making the right choices? Am I doing the right things? And am I being good at the roles that God has assigned to me? All of that reminds me of one of the verses in Ephesians that I like to point out to you often. You can even jot this down in your notes if you're a note taker, but it's Ephesians 2.10. Ephesians 2.10 says, And it carries with it this idea that the Bible tells us that God knew you before you were knit in your mother's womb. So before you were even an idea in the eyes of your parents, God knew that you were going to exist. He knew that he wanted to claim you as his child, and he knew that he was going to imbue you with certain gifts and talents so that, because you're his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. Why? For good works, for the purpose of doing good works, that you might walk in them. So before you were ever created, God knew you were going to exist. He was going to give you gifts and good works to walk in in your life. That was going to be the purpose of your life is to identify your good works. Hey, Father, what is my good work? And then how do I walk in it? Incidentally, parents, this is, I believe, how we are to parent our children. To raise them, to identify the good works that they're supposed to walk in, and to give them the courage and the competence to begin to walk in those good works. And another way of asking, am I making the right choice and am I being a good blank, is to say, do I know my good works and am I walking in them? Because God created us before time to build his kingdom, not our kingdom. We are all of us supposed to be kingdom builders. And so we've got to be asking ourselves, God, am I building it in the right way? Am I doing the right things? And as we wonder that, and likely beat ourselves up for not doing that as much as we think we should, we come back to this principle of abide. Abiding promises. We will be what we are supposed to be, and we will do what we are supposed to do. I love that promise. The promise isn't abide in me and I in you, and you will have the best possible shot at bearing fruit. Abide in me and I in you and you probably won't be disappointed. No. Abide in me. Follow me. Pursue Jesus. Bring him with you everywhere you go. Wake up. Spend time with him in word and in prayer. Carry him through your day. Talk to him. Pray to him throughout your day. Be a person who walks with Jesus, who abides in him. And the promise is you will bear much fruit. And here's the fun part. What fruit? Does the apple tree get to decide what fruit it produces? No, nor does it decide when, nor does it decide how much. You don't worry about what fruit you're going to produce. You don't worry about what it is you're supposed to do. You focus on Christ. You be merry. This one thing I will seek. This one thing I will give my attention to. And by focusing on Jesus, by following him every day, we are assured that we will do exactly what we are supposed to do. That we will be making the right choices. And we will be exactly who we are supposed to be, that we will be walking in, that we will walk as God's workmanship in the good works for which he created us. And we don't have to worry about what those are. All we have to do is worry about abiding in Christ, following our Savior. That's why I say it's a gift of simplicity and a world of confusion and chaos. Where do we send our kids to school? Well, the more you're abiding in Christ, the more clear that answer is going to be. Am I in the right career? The more you're pursuing Christ, the more clear that is going to be. Are we raising our kids the right way? Am I being a good spouse? Am I being a good friend? Am I being a good church partner? The more you abide in Christ and focus on him and invite him into your days and into your meetings and into your going and into your coming, the more you do that, the more certain you will be that you are walking the path that he has laid out for you. He gives us this remarkable gift of simplicity. You don't have to figure out if you're doing it the right way. You don't have to second guess if you've made the right decisions. You don't have to wonder if you're a good fill in the blank. All you have to do is abide in Christ and he will take care of the rest and you will produce much fruit. What fruit? Whatever fruit God has decided you're going to produce. We know the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So I think the fruit that we produce as we abide in Christ looks something like those increasing in our character. I think it looks like us expounding those into others in our life. I think it looks like us being used by God to do His work and build His kingdom. But the wonderful invitation is, hey, hey, hey, hey, you worry about focusing on Jesus, and he'll worry about everything else you're supposed to do. This is why I say, whenever we are evaluating or deciding, we should ask if we are abiding. As a general principle in life, whenever we are evaluating or deciding, we should stop and ask ourselves if we are abiding. I can't tell you how many times as a pastor that I've had a difficult conversation on the horizon. Somebody that I worked with that I was going to have to approach and say some hard things. Somebody with whom there was conflict and it needed to be resolved. Somebody who's disappointed in me and I need to reconcile. And how when those, I don't know about you, but when those hard conversations are on the horizon, I think about them all the time. I chew on them. I stress over them. I worry about them. I think, what angle are they going to take? And how can I be prepared for that? And how can I, I've got to get on to this person. How can I best do it and not demoralize them? Like, I think about them all the time. And I'll come up with an approach. This is what I'm going to do. This is what I'm going to say. This is how I'm going to attack it. And then something will happen and it will occur to me. Hey dude, have you been abiding? Not in this. Maybe I've had a couple of weeks where I've not been super consistent with my quiet times. Maybe I've been thinking about this conversation so much but I haven't prayed about it. And when I realize that's happening in my life, I put that conversation on the shelf. And I say, I'm not going to have that conversation until I'm prayed up on it. I'm not even going to think about how I want to approach that until I know that I have been spending some time with Jesus. And I put it on the shelf and I focus on my relationship with Christ. And then in that, I begin to pray about that conversation. Without fail, the conversation goes exponentially better than I ever thought it would when I have been abiding before I evaluate or decide. And also without fail. Funny how this works out. I'm always gentler after I pray. I'm always kinder and more gracious after I pray. If you're in your life faced with a big decision right now, what's the right thing to do here? Let me just ask you. Have you been abiding in Christ? Have you been walking with him? Have you been inviting him into your days? If you haven't, let me encourage you to put that decision on the shelf. Set it aside. Pursue Christ. Once you feel connected with Christ, pull it back off and see what he wants you to do. Have you been evaluating yourself? Which usually leads to beating yourself up. Are you someone whose voice in your head is a jerk? Is way meaner to you than anybody in your life? You're not good enough at this and you're not good enough at this and you're not good enough at this and you're failing at this and you're letting them down. If you have those voices, can I ask you, have you been abiding? Have you been pursuing Jesus and abiding him into all of your days? Are you listening to what he has to say about you? Or are you drowning out his voice with your own? Conversely, if you think you're doing great at everything right now, you're not. You abide in Christ. You're not. You need him to tell you. The question now becomes, as we look at this gift of simplicity that Jesus offers in a world of confusion and chaos, the question becomes, okay, Nate, I get it. I need to abide in Christ. I need to remain attached to him. I need to pursue him. I need to make him my singular focus. And everything else will kind of take care of itself. Decisions will become more clear. And his opinion of me is the one that I will adopt. That will all become more clear. I get it. I need to pursue Christ. How do I do that amidst the confusion and chaos? It's not like we get to call a time out on life and just do a spiritual retreat for the next two weeks so we're real connected. You all have stuff to do right after this. So how do we abide in Christ day in and day out in a practical way? That's what we're going to come back next week and talk about. So I hope you can be here for that, and I hope that it will be a tremendously useful and encouraging week next week. This week, I just want us focused on this gift of simplicity that Jesus offers, to simply abide in him. And in doing that, we can rest assured we will be who we are supposed to be, and we will do what we are supposed to do.. Let's pray and then Aaron's going to have some final thoughts for us. Lord, God, I thank you for a room full of people that do want to do the right thing, that do want to become who you created them to be. I thank you for a room full of people who do want to walk in their good works, who do want to build your kingdom. God, I pray that you would instill in us an increasing desire to do that. Lord, I pray that we would abide in you, that we would invite you into our days, that we would bring you along wherever we go, that you would give us your peace that passes understanding, and that you would create in our hearts a stronger and stronger desire for you. Lord, help us to abide, and in doing so, help us to enjoy the fruit that we produce by following you. In Jesus' name, amen.