Sermons tagged with Shame

Good morning. How are you guys doing today? Good. If you're new, if you're visiting, my name is Aaron. I'm the worship pastor out here. And I don't know why, just to let you in on a little secret and give you a chance to laugh at me, whatever. I don't know why, whenever Nate's up here consistently and I come up here, one of my first instincts is to say, I'm not Nate. Like, you guys didn't know that. Like, for some reason, you thought, man, what happened to Nate over there? He just got a lot better looking suddenly. And I mean, maybe, maybe, but hey, really glad to be here. Nate, thanks so much, man, for the opportunity to come up and share what's been on my heart. To kind of launch us in, get our minds going in the direction that we're headed today. Have you noticed how the mistakes that we make speak so much louder to us than the right things that we do? To kind of give you an idea, so several years ago, my wife and I, we went to Miami, and I had been on this venture and this journey for a long time, trying to learn Spanish, trying to just get better at it. And I was doing the Rosetta Stone thing, all of that. I was doing really good. I could say, like, going to Mexico in October with the mission trip, I would have been perfectly fine asking where the bathroom was. I'm just good. I wouldn't know where they were telling me to go, but I could ask where it was, right? So I was halfway there. But I remember we went to Miami. And if you've never been, it's a culture that's largely influenced by the Latin culture, the Cuban culture down there. And so just the places that we went, I got to speak a lot of the Spanish that I knew, like restaurants and stuff, right? That was good. But when we got back, I was just, I was kind of feeling, like I was having a lot of confidence and I wanted to impress my wife, who is the love of my life. And so we were out one day and I was hungry and she was hungry. I was like, you know what? I know how to say I want to go to Five Guys. That was before the burgers cost 45 bucks. And so I was like, so I want to look at her with all the confidence that I could muster. I looked at her dead in the eyes and I said, quiero cinco hombres, right? Sounds good, right? But if you speak Spanish, you know what I said to my wife was not I want to go to Five Guys. What I said to my wife was, I want five men. And it was not what I meant to say to her because I did not want five men. I wanted to go get an overpriced bacon cheeseburger, right? And you know what I did after that? I did not say Spanish words that I did not understand until, what's funny is this true story. I tried it again last week. But let me encourage you. If you're trying to learn Spanish, don't use the words that you hear on video games because you could end up saying not good words in front of your grandma-in-law who does know very good Spanish. And she looks at you like, did you mean to say that? And I don't know. I just heard like she was getting shot at. And then I repeated what she said and it was whatever. But what's really funny about this, right? Like that, it struck me this week how vivid that memory was. And it's funny. We laugh about it. We can do whatever. Like it wasn't that big of a deal, but it really struck me how big of a mistake or how the mistake stuck with me all of these years. Isn't that true for all of us? We have these goals. We have these things and these places that we try to get to in life. And isn't it true that the failure en route to that goal, it seems to keep coming back over and over and over. It seems to play on repeat. And this isn't just a Christian thing, it's a human thing. But if you're a Christian, it's not just the goals that you have, is it? It's also who Christ has asked you to become. And so on the other side of those shortcomings, on the other side of those mistakes, man, it seems like that's an easy thing to point to. It's when the voice of shame starts to speak pretty loudly on repeat. I know what you did. You think they're going to accept you at church if they find that out? In this series, we're talking about emotions. Emotions that can overwhelm and emotions that can kind of take control and move you into being something you've never really wanted to be. And what I would argue is that a lot of the emotions that we're talking about, they're not to be demonized. Like the emotions that we experience aren't bad things. Like anger, for example. Anger left unchecked will completely wreck havoc in your life. But without anger, you would also not have passion. You would not be moved to act. Yesterday, we went to a lot of people at Grace Serves. We went to Rise Against Hunger. Without anger causing someone to be passionate about world hunger, they would not have that ministry. Fear, fear, unchecked, it will immobilize you. But it's also caused people to create a lot of safety in our world that we never would have seen otherwise. So a lot of these emotions are not bad, but shame, shame has no place in our world. I truly believe that shame is one of the most often used and effective tools of our spiritual enemy, consistently pointing at where we fell short. And the reason why shame is so powerful in our life is because shame not only points to your mistakes, but it identifies you by them. Like you are the sum total of the things that you have done wrong, and it plays on repeat. And so what's heartbreaking about this is our lives are often wrapped around, our identity is often wrapped around that one season in life, that one mistake, that one thing that you did or that one thing that was done to you. And we try as hard as we can, except we just can't forget it. That's what I want to talk about today. Because here's what we have learned. You can't quiet that voice. So how do you keep it from being so overwhelming? And if we're going to look at the life of anyone who has messed up time and time and time again, who else could it be except for Peter? Some of you thought I was going to say me, and that's not nice. Stop it. Right? But we're going to look at Peter. And to catch you up with where we are in the story, we're going to be in Matthew. But to catch you up with where we are, we're actually just within a few hours of what Nate talked about last week with Jesus in the garden. It started in the upper room with the Last Supper where Jesus is Jesus is predicting actually Peter's denial. Jesus says to Peter, hey, Pete, you know, listen, in a few hours, like you, actually, he says, all of you are going to abandon, turn your back and going to leave me. And Pete says, no, no, not me. Not me. I'd never do this. Well, Peter, funny, I love you. But it's not very smart to argue with the guy who can read your mind. But yes, you will do. This is something you're going to do. They move forward. They go into the garden, and Jesus simply asks them, hey, let's just stay awake and pray with me for a little bit. Jesus goes off to pray. It's probably interrupted by Peter snoring, and he comes back, and Peter's asleep. It does that twice. Then they move forward. Jesus is arrested. The guards come. Peter chops off the ear. Jesus puts it back on his head, so there's another correction. And then they go to the court. And that's where we're going to pick it up. In Matthew 26, we are met with this scene. Now, Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. A servant girl approached him and said, you were with Jesus the Galilean too. He denied it in front of everyone. I don't know what you're talking about. Now, when Peter, when it says that Peter cursed with an oath, that's not the same kind of cursing that we do when somebody cuts us off in traffic, right? This was more along the lines of, may God strike me dead if I'm lying. That was how firm Peter was in saying, I don't know this man. And so he broke. The account of Luke actually tells us that Jesus and Peter made eye contact. And it was at that moment that he broke. And here's one of the reasons why I think that shame is such a powerful tool is because it's so easily mixed up with conviction, right? Like both shame and conviction point immediately at the thing that you don't want to see. The thing that you don't, it points at the mistake. And both make you feel bad about it. And so as a Christian, how do you discern the difference? Like which one is shame? I don't know what to do. And you end up just kind of stuck in the same spot. But the best way that I can come up with to describe the difference is this. Shame disqualifies, and conviction invites. Shame is always going to disqualify you from wherever it is that you're trying to go. Wherever it is that you're trying to accomplish, shame is going to look at you and say, you, you, you, you don't, you can't go there. Like, really? Like, you think that you can do that? But conviction is the opposite of a tool used by the enemy. It's the voice of the Holy Spirit in our life. And it's always inviting us to something. It's always inviting us to what's next. That's the difference. Shame points at our mistakes and shows us how we can never be anything other than that. While conviction points at our mistakes and says, hey, here's what's coming. This is where we go from here. This is what's next in our life. What's fascinating to me about this, like we just talked about where this scene began, there was three to four mistakes, probably about seven to eight if you include the three different times that Peter denied. This is at the end of the Gospels. This is at the end of the three-year window into Peter's mistakes. What has happened every single time? He's dropped the ball. This is what he's known for. He's the guy who messes up. He's the guy who puts his foot in his mouth, except he gets back up and he follows Jesus. He gets back up and goes where Jesus asks him to go over and over and over again, except for this time, it changes. We don't know exactly where Peter went after this moment. We don't know exactly what happened. But all four of the Gospels go to the next scene, which is Jesus' crucifixion. And at the scene of the cross, it lists several of the people who were there, most of which are some of the women who were following Jesus at that point in time. And the Gospel of John tells us that John was there as well. You know who wasn't mentioned? Peter. Like, we can't tell you exactly where Peter went, but with a pretty good amount of certainty, we can tell you where he wasn't. Probably the place that he wanted to be the most. The place with his best friend to support. I don't think Peter was merely flexing when he told Jesus, no, I won't deny you. But what we see is that shame disqualifies us from everything that Jesus invites us to do. Can we stop for a second? And like, it's easy to point a finger at Peter and say, yeah, Peter, you should have just went, man, you're forgiven, like all this other good stuff. But can I ask you, like, what is shame keeping you from that Jesus is inviting you to do? Where is Jesus inviting you in your life that you have convinced yourself that you don't deserve? Where in your life is it this accusation of shame that you could not lead your family towards Jesus? Why would they ever respect you? Who knows you better than them? Why? Do you really think you can go to church? Man, hypocrite. How dare you show your face there? Do you really want to try to have more spiritual disciplines in your life? Like, why are you faking it? That's not you. It's the voice of shame disqualifying you from where Jesus is inviting you. And here's what's true. In your life and in my life, we will never, we will never out-talk shame. I hate that. I remember when I was younger, there was a lady who told me that I had the gift of gab. What I really think she was saying is, Aaron, shut up a little bit, man. But here's what's true. You'll never out-talk and out-convince yourself of why shame is wrong. Do you know why? Because you're you. Like, who knows you better than you? As we try to move past this moment, what are you reminded of? Well, another one. For every one failure, we've got 40 others. And that's where our mind keeps going to, which is why I love what Jesus' response was. To all of this, Jesus shows up in the gospel of John chapter 21. Now, you have several of the disciples who have already went off. and I believe, and there's a lot of people who do believe, that what we're about to read is evidence that Peter went back to his old lifestyle. Peter went back to his old job. It doesn't mean that he is no longer caring for Jesus. He doesn't love Jesus anymore. It doesn't mean that even a little bit, but it just simply means maybe he felt like he couldn't do what Jesus is asking him to do. He couldn't be the person who Jesus was asking him to be, so he will sit into what he did before he knew Christ with a love for Christ. And then Jesus shows up on the beach. Jesus shows up while these guys are out there fishing. They go out fishing throughout the night, and they have been fishing all night. They haven't caught anything. Jesus shows up on the beach and says, hey, guys, you have any fish with you? And no, we haven't. And then we have, I skipped a slide. You can go ahead and jump to the verse, just so you can have the feel, and it says this. To become who Jesus, no, go back one, I'm sorry. What we're to do, let's start over. Let's roll the bumper. And so to become who Jesus says we can be, we must correct who shame says we are, right? Like that's the next point. I think it's at the bottom of your page, whatever. It'll be fine. So, but Jesus shows up on the beach, points at these guys and says, hey, listen, here's what's going on. What did he say? He said something. You guys messed me up so bad again. Where am I at, Nate? I'm just kidding. Don't do that. So Jesus shows up on the beach. These guys have no clue that it's him. They've been fishing all night, and Jesus asked them, hey, do you have any fish? He says, no. So he says, hey, throw your net on the other side of the boat. They throw the net down, and then there's so many fish, they could barely haul it in, and then something clicked. We don't know exactly what was going through Peter's mind, but we do know there was something different in this moment., he tied his outer clothing around him, for he had taken it off and he plunged into the sea. All right, so we can't breeze past all of that yet. Like we got to bring some attention to something because I love fishing. I do. I know a lot of you love fishing. I would love to go fishing with you unless you fish like Peter, which is no fish and in your underwear. Like that just, it's weird. Maybe if you catch fish, sure, I can get past the other thing, but just that's what's going on. Have no clue why it's in there, but John wrote it. So maybe he's just pointing out, look at this dummy, right? So who knows? But something happened in this moment. Something happened. This is the third time that Jesus has appeared to the disciples. And not once do you see this type of a reaction from Peter. So much so, he was so excited to see his Lord that he couldn't wait for the boat to go 100 yards to shore. He jumped out and swam just so he could get there. Peter remembered something. If this story sounds familiar to you, it had to to Peter as well. This is very similar to the very first invitation from Jesus to Peter, where he was sitting out in the water, very similar scene, all night fishing. Clearly, Peter's not very good at it. All night fishing, no fish. Jesus says, throw it on the other side. And they couldn't even bring in all the fish. So that happened and Peter remembered and it drew him to Christ. Some of you may know my story. Some of you don't. I grew up in the church. I wasn't a Christian at all. My father was a pastor. So really what that meant is I knew how to act like a good preacher's kid on Sunday morning, right? So I learned all the do's and all the don'ts. But the moment I had, the moment I had an opportunity to split and kind of leave the church was when I was 16. My parents divorced, and I took the path of least resistance. My entire family left the church and for the next several years of my life. It wasn't that I was ignoring God. I just didn't think of God. It wasn't a conscious decision saying, okay, I don't want anything to do with you. I was just living my life, doing my thing, doing what I wanted to do until I was about 19, 20 years old, had a car accident that should have killed me. And I remember whenever I went into the hospital, I was in the hospital for several weeks, had a shattered kneecap, a severed femur head in my left hip. If you're wondering why I walk with such a strut, that's the reason. But I remember while I was sitting at the hospital, the several years that I had spent just kind of doing my own thing, no consciousness of Jesus or God or anything along the lines of that, not one of the people that I knew hung out with anything, no one showed up. The people who did show up were the people from years and years ago. People that I went to church camp with, friends that I grew up in church with, some of my father's pastor friends, they showed up and they prayed with me. And this, I'm not saying anything about any of the people, but what that was is God reintroducing himself into my world. He began wooing me. And so I started this back and forth journey, right? Like this, this, this back and forth. Okay, God, I'll do the right thing. I'll do it, do it, do it, mess up. And then I kind of run off and then do my own thing again. I can't do that. Mess up, do it, do it, do it, run off, do my own thing again. And it was like this for a very long time because I reverted to what I knew. Like you have to be good enough. You have to be awesome enough. You have to be all of these other things. And then I remember I went to visit a lady named Carol McCraw, the same one who told me I talk a lot. She was a worship leader in our church growing up. And I went honestly, just simply to say hi. She was a very important person to our family. And I remember when I walked in and simply said hello. She saw, she was playing piano as the music was getting started, and she saw me. She got up, she ran, and just gave me a hug. And it was in that moment, it felt like God wrapped his arms around me, and there was nothing that I did. Now, I clearly wasn't carol, but God used her in a pretty big way because it was in that moment I surrendered my heart, and I could do, man, there was such a love for Jesus, and then I'm telling you, over the next several years, we can sit down and have some coffee or something at some point in time. But it's this journey of falling short. And it's these moments of shame floods my mind. And I consistently go back to this moment where all I did was walk into a place with no intention of seeing Jesus, simply to visit a friend. And it was in that moment, like I'm drawn to the compassion of God because of that personal experience. I'm drawn to the love of Christ in that moment because I realized I didn't deserve anything. Like I think about my past and I cringe, But the love of Christ accepted me for who I was and walked alongside of me. I believe that's what's happening in Peter's world right now. Maybe he went back to his old lifestyle. Who knows? Maybe they were hungry and they went fishing. But there was something in this moment that when he saw Jesus, he saw, oh wait, like something clicked and he remembered. He remembered the love that Jesus has for him. He remembered the last three years, not for the failures that he experienced, but for the Christ who picked him up, for the Christ who invited him into something different, for the Jesus, for the man who helped, who walked along the water with him, for the man who never gave up on him. And Peter saw, and he remembered, he didn't go to the beach, and he wasn't met with a stern rebuke. He wasn't met with some disappointed speech. He was met by his best friend who cooked breakfast for him. He got to hang out. Then he asked him the same question three times, right? He says, hey, Pete, do you love me? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Lord, I love you. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, I love you. Feed my sheep. Hey, Peter, do you love me? Yes, you know I love you. Why are you asking me this? Like, Peter, because you need to remember. You were never, never with me because of how awesome you are. But I want to do something in and through you that will blow your mind. Then I have to believe that it popped back in Peter's mind when Jesus said, hey, I'm building a church and you are the rock on which I will build this church. Peter remembered not the failures that he had, but who Christ said he is. He didn't remember the mistakes that he's had. He remembered the promises of his Lord and Savior. Man, what is shame keeping you from that Jesus is inviting you to? How different would your world look if when the voice of shame started to creep up, you hushed it with the promises of God? How much more boldly and confidently could we walk into what Ephesians 3.20 tells us? That the same God who is working in you is working through you. How much more boldly could we run into that? If when shame said you don't deserve it, you say, I know. But in Christ, I am chosen. In Christ, I'm a child of God. Yeah, but they'll never accept you. They shouldn't. But in Christ, I am completely forgiven. You'll never change. In Christ, I am a new creation. I think that's why Peter told us in 2 Peter that you were chosen and dearly loved. What a shame robbing you from the joy of your salvation, the freedom in Christ. So at the bottom of the bulletin, there's one more blank, and we'll put it on the screen. It simply says this, I am blank in Christ. Now at the bottom of that, we've listed several things, but you can go through those on your own, or you can look throughout Scripture. But what I want you to answer is this. What do you need to know of the promise in Christ? Who do you need to remind yourself are? Who do you need to remind yourself that you are in Christ to hush the voice of shame in your life? Is it that you're new? Is it that you're forgiven? Is it that you're chosen and dearly loved? If you look through that and you don't see it, shoot me an email. I'd love to chat with you. I'd love to help you find whatever it is in your world that will quiet the voice of shame. But maybe put a piece of tape on that. Write it on a sticky. Put it on your dash. Put it on your whatever you need to. Wherever you need to put this so you can remind yourself not simply who you are, but who the Savior of the world says that you are. Who the God who created the heavens and the earth claims that you, his child, is. How different would your world look if we didn't settle with the accusations of shame? But we boldly corrected it with the promises of God. Let's pray. God, thank you. Thank you so much for your kindness. Thank you so much for your love. Thank you so much for your forgiveness that we do not deserve, Lord. As we go throughout our week, as we go throughout our life and inevitably fall short of what it is that you've asked from us, God, would you just send your Holy Spirit to remind us of your promises? Remind us of who you see us as. God, help us to find our identity in your love and in your grace and not our failures. We need you, Father, and we trust you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Jordan, it is interesting to me that you think profundity is what's required to get up on the stage when they parade me out here every week, falling woefully short of the bar. This is the third part in our series called Big Emotions, where we're just kind of looking at times in Scripture where we see a blow-up or a blow-out or people with with just big overwhelming emotions because that is so much a part of our life. That is something that we experience just as we go through life. Sometimes our emotions are too big for us and they're overwhelming. And so this morning I wanted to take a look at big emotions in our prayers and what happens and how does God respond when big emotions creep into our prayers, when our prayers really become cries. And to do that, I want us to think about prayer together. It's really, when you consider it, one of the more interesting passages in the Bible, one of the more interesting interchanges that Jesus has with his disciples. They're following him around. They're watching him do ministry. And at one point, they look at Jesus and they say, hey, Jesus, will you teach us to pray? Now, this is a really interesting question coming from the disciples. And many of you have probably considered this before. The disciples knew how to pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed their whole life. They had gone to synagogue every week, maybe daily at different points in their life. I don't know. They had seen a ton of people pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed many prayers before, but there was something different, so different about the prayers of Jesus that they had to stop him and say, can you teach us to pray like you pray? Because that's different than how we pray. And Jesus responds by sharing with them the Lord's prayer. You guys probably all know it. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. And so in that, Jesus gives the model of prayer to the disciples and to us in perpetuity. And if you break that down, I've always been taught prayer and I've taught prayer this way in church, in youth group, in camps, in different places, in men's groups, small group, when we talk about prayer, something that's always been really helpful for me is the acronym ACTS. And you guys have probably heard this before. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. So the way that Jesus opens up the prayer. When we pray, the first thing we should do is adore God. God, you're great. God, you're good. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. God, you are wonderful for this. God, you blow me away for that. And when we do this, it really puts us in the right posture for prayer, you know? It really reminds us who we're talking to. I had a Bible teacher in high school who was also my soccer coach, who was also my administrator because I went to a small school. And when he would pray in class, he would say, okay, everyone, let's pray, bow your heads. And we would bow our heads to pray, and he would wait 20 or 30 seconds. And so finally, I asked one day, Mr. Dawson, what are you doing? Like, that's awkward. Why do you make us just sit there in silence? What are you waiting on? Because it's almost like, does he want us to pray? Like, should we? And he told me what he was doing. He said he was taking his mind, whenever he would pause before prayer, to Isaiah chapter 6, where the throne room of God is described. And it says that God is on his throne, and the train of his robe is filling the temple with glory. And there's these six-winged angels flying around him saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And it's just so overwhelming that he cowers in a corner. And Mr. Dawson said that when, he said, when I pray, I like to take myself there to put myself in proper posture before God to remind myself when I pray, where am I going? I'm going to the throne room of God, the King of the universe, and I'm addressing the creator of the universe. That's a serious, somber thing. That's a place for humility. That's a place for penitence. This is why when we teach our children to pray, we teach them to bow their heads and close their eyes. It's a sign of reverence. It's a sign of respect for knowing who we're talking to and where we're going. It's why I encourage you as much as you can to kneel when you pray. Because it's hard to put yourself in the posture of kneeling and not feel humble, at least a little bit. And so Jesus says we should start with adoration. We should adore God. We should praise him. And then we should go to confession. What are the things, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. How have we trespassed against God? What attitudes do we bring into this day and into this prayer? What sins do we carry with us that yet remain unconfessed before the Father? What do we need to confess to God before him? And then we move into this time of thanksgiving, praising Him. God, thank you for your goodness in my life. Thank you for my family. Thank you for a church that I love. Thank you for the rain. Thank you for the day, whatever it is. It's John's second birthday today. Thank you for a great two-year-old son and for friends watching him in the nursery right now. Thank you for all of those things. We praise God for things. And then, suffocation. Then we ask for what we need. And you guys know, and you've heard this, that the tendency when we pray is to skip act and go straight to S. Skip all the other stuff and just go, dear God, I really need blank. I really need you to show up here. I really need this to work out. I'm really worried about this. It's all the I need, I need, I need. And there's a place for that in prayer. But the way that Jesus teaches us prayer, it follows this pattern of first putting ourself in the proper place and then confessing our sins, which remind us of the humility we should carry into the throne room. And then thanksgiving, let's acknowledge all the blessings God's given us in our lives before we ask him for more, and then in that proper mindset, say what we need to say. That's kind of the proper way to pray. But sometimes we pray when our emotions are too big for propriety. Sometimes we pray prayers that become cries. And the emotions that we bring into that moment are too big for acts. I've shared with you guys before that the first time Jen and I got pregnant, we miscarried. And I'm not in the business of doing comparative pain for miscarriages and who has the right to the most sorrow. But for us, the pain was particularly acute because we had been praying for a child for years. For years. We had struggled mightily. Our moms and grandmas were praying for babies. We had the church around us at the time praying that we could have a baby. We knew that's what we wanted to do. On my mama's deathbed, a few years before we got pregnant, the very last thing she did for me was direct someone to the top of her closet to get a stuffed animal that she made to give to my child when we had them. She went ahead and made it, and I think my sister finished it up for her so that we would have that to give to our first child. So when we got pregnant, we were elated. And then we went to the checkup for eight weeks, and the baby wasn't there. I don't know how long it took me to pray after that. But the first time I did pray, it wasn't Acts. The first time I prayed, it didn't look very much like our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. It looked a lot more like God. What in the world? What the heck? I would say different words if I weren't on this stage and there weren't children in the audience. That's how I felt, and that's how I prayed. What are you doing? Because we, and we're not entitled to this. None of what I'm about to say really matters, but to us it did. Jen's a school teacher. She loves kids. She's teaching in a Christian school, leading people towards you. We still have relationships with some of the kids that she taught in those days. I was a school teacher. I taught high school Bible. And then I worked at a church. We had made good choices. We were good Christian people. We had checked all the boxes. We had done all the things. And there was people who were living lives way more rebellious than us who were just tripping accidentally into family. And then we get pregnant and then you take it? No, I'm not praying acts. I'm not following the pattern for this one. There are some prayers that we pray that become cries. When we hear of the terminal diagnosis and we go to the Father and we say, really? This one? Him? Her? Why not me in your jacked up economy? Why them? There's a girl in our community. She's a young woman in our community. Just last week or two. She battled cancer for five years and came to it a week or two ago. Beautiful family, young kids. I don't know when that husband is going to pray again. When he does, those prayers will be cries. We've all prayed prayers like that. Where we're walking through what feels to us like the dark night of the soul and we don't have time or patience for propriety. We just go to our God and we are raw and we are real and we cry out, what in the world? How is this right? How does this make sense? As parents that send their kids to school in that private school in Nashville, what do those prayers sound like when they start to pray again? We've all prayed those prayers that are so big and so raw and so emotional that they become cries. And so I think it's worth it to look and see how God handles these prayers in Scripture. Because we get to see some. God in His goodness left them for us in His inspired Word. And so what I want to encourage you with today is, I know that we've all prayed those prayers. If you've never prayed those prayers, I'm so happy for you. I hope you never do, but I think you will. And what I want us to know as we look into the scripture this morning is that God is not offended by our prayers that become cries. I don't think God in his goodness and in his grace and in his mercy is offended when I look at him after the deepest pain that I've felt up to that point in my life and I go, what in the world? That's not fair. That's not right. That doesn't make sense. I don't think God gets offended by those things. I don't think he's so small that our broken hearts offend our God. And I actually think that there's grace and space for those prayers because we see them in the Bible. We actually see Jesus pray one of these prayers, a prayer that is so raw and so real and so emotional that it becomes a cry. This prayer is recorded in all four Gospels. We're going to look at the account in the Gospel of Luke chapter 22. Beginning in verse 39. And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, speaking of Jesus. And the disciples followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them, pray that you may not enter into temptation. And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed, saying, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, this scene, many of you know it, Jesus has just left the Last Supper with the disciples. He's instituted communion. He's told them, my body is going to be broken for you. My blood is going to be spilled for you. He knows what is going to happen. He knows when he gets done praying, he's going to be arrested. And he knows that when he's arrested, he's going to be tried. And after he's tried, he's going to be flogged and beaten, and he's going to be hung on a cross and left there to die and then face death and hell. He knows that. And so he brings the disciples with him, and he says, remain here while I pray. And he goes off a distance, one would assume, so that they couldn't hear him. And it is interesting that they all ended up hearing him, because there's nothing in the text to indicate that Jesus subtly knelt and clasped his hands and said, my Father who is in heaven. No, these prayers from Jesus that we see, in Luke it says he knelt. In another gospel it says that he fell with his face to the ground. And the disciples are a stone's throw away and they can hear him clearly. And then he gets so intense in his praying that sweat begins to mix with his blood, which we know is something that can actually happen in moments of incredibly intense stress in our lives. So the prayer that Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane was not, Dear God, if there's any other way, would you please point me in that? It wasn't that. It was Jesus on his face prostrate, God, Father, please don't make me do this. Please, is there any other way? Is there anything else I can do? I do not want to bear this. I do not want to be on the cross and hear you and see you turn your back on me. I do not want to say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I do not want the crown of thorns in my head. I do not want the nails in my wrist. I do not want to do this, Father. Is there any other way? Please, please take this cup from me. That's a prayer becoming a cry. That's Jesus sidestepping propriety and crying out to his heavenly father. And in there, he finds what we should find when we pray like this. No matter how deep, no matter how raw, yet not my will but your will be done. Please give me the strength to accept your will. So I know that God isn't offended by those prayers because his son prays one to him in full view and vision of the disciples. And then he tells us about it in all four gospels. And that made me wonder, where else in the Bible do we have prayers that are raw and real and emotional? Where else in the Bible do we have prayers that have become cries? And of course, I went to Psalms. And I just started reading them and flipping through and finding them, these things where people are just raw. I am weary unto death. I want to die. Take my life. And I put them in your notes, Psalm 142 and Psalm 13 and Psalm 77. I think of Hannah's prayer in the temple when she's praying so earnestly and fervently for a child that Eli the priest thinks she's drunk. I think of the book of Lamentations, which is a whole book of tough, raw prayers. And I was going to kind of bounce around between those prayers, but then I was reminded of another psalm that's really dear to my heart, Psalm 88. If you have a Bible, I would encourage you to turn there. I encountered Psalm 88 when I took a trip to Israel several years ago. One of the things most groups do when you go to Israel is when you're in Jerusalem, you go to Caiaphas' house. Caiaphas is the high priest that had Jesus arrested, had him tried, and had him murdered. And in the basement of Caiaphas' house is this makeshift small dungeon. And a portion of the dungeon is a cylindrical room that they would tie ropes under the shoulders of the prisoner and lower them into this pitch black, dark room. Now there's stairs that lead down, but in Caiaphas' day, in Jesus' day, that was not the case. They lower you in and they pull you up when they're ready for you. And most people believe that this is where Jesus spent the night after he got arrested, waiting on his trial before Pilate the next day. And when you go to Jerusalem, you can go down into that cell. And our guide pointed us to Psalm 88. Psalm 88 was written by the sons of Korah, we're told. But it's also believed by scholars to be a prophetic messianic psalm. And many scholars believe that this is meant to be the prayer that Jesus prays after he's arrested. If it's not the prayer that he prays after he's arrested, Jesus knew the scriptures, he knew the psalms, this could very well be a psalm that came to mind that he quoted. But when I picture Jesus arrested and alone and reading, crying these things out, it brings fresh meaning to it for me. And when we listen to it and read it, I think you'll be taken aback by how very real it is. So I'm going to read a good portion of it. Beginning in verse 11. Is your steadfast love declared in the grave or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? And then verse 13, They surround me like a flood all day long. They close in on me together. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me. My companions have become darkness. That's a real prayer. That's not a prayer you pray in church in front of other people. That's not how we teach our kids to pray. We see accusations in this prayer. You have caused my friends and my loved ones to shun me. It is your wrath that beats against me and waves and covers me. The person crying out to God in this psalm feels the darkness closing in in such a way that they don't know if they will see the light again. My companions have become darkness, he ends with. And that's it. I am grateful to God for choosing to include in his Bible and his inspired word prayers that are that raw and that are that real. Prayers that show us that when our emotions are too big for propriety, that our God can meet us in those places and hear us. He appreciates those prayers so much so that he recorded them and fought for them and protected them down through the centuries so that we could see them too. So when we pray them, it's okay. When we need to cry out to God, we can. He's not offended by those prayers. He hears those prayers. He welcomes those prayers. And here's what else happens when we cry out to God, when our prayers become cries, when we lose all sense of propriety and we're just trying to figure it out. Here's what else happens when it's literally the dark night of our soul and the darkness is closing in around us and our life is falling apart and our children are making decisions that we don't understand and our husband is making decisions that we don't understand and everything that we thought was going to happen, this future that we had projected is not going to happen. This person that I love is not in my life anymore and I see reminders of them all the time and I don't know how I'm going to put one foot in front of the other. I don't know how I'm going to do it. When we pray those prayers, this is what happens. If we look back at Luke 22, there's a verse that I skipped. Verse 43. In the middle of his praying, and there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him. In the middle of Jesus crying out, Father, please don't make me do this. Please let there be another way. God says, son, you're going to have to walk that path. But he doesn't make him do it on his own. He sends an angel to strengthen Jesus in the dark night of his soul. And I can't help but believe that God will send angels to strengthen you too. When you pray those prayers, I think God sends his angels to strengthen you as well. And I don't know what those angels look like. Maybe it's a hug. Maybe it's someone's presence. Maybe it's a text or a phone call or an email. I know in our family it's cardinals. Maybe it's a southern thing, I'm not sure. But we believe that when a cardinal shows up in your view, that that's a lost loved one who's just stopping by to say hello. Just to check in on you. And so sometimes God sends cardinals just when we need them. Another big one in our family is Mallard Ducks. You know that we lost my father-in-law a couple years ago. And Mallard Ducks were really special to him. And I can't tell you all the cool places where we've just kind of looked and there's a duck there that doesn't belong there. And it's just God kind of reminding us that he loves us, that he sees our pain, that he walks with us in that pain. Maybe, for some of us, God's using this morning to strengthen you, to buoy you. I hope so. Maybe this is just what you need. My hope for all of you is that you never need this sermon and you never have to pray those prayers. But my suspicion is you have a better chance of dodging raindrops on the way back to your car in a downpour than you do of living a life without tragedy. And so I think all of us, at some point, need this sermon and this reminder that when our emotions are too big for propriety, God can hear those prayers too. And in the hearing, in those moments, he sends his angels one way or another to strengthen us. I just got done reading a book. It's actually Beth Moore's biography. I would highly recommend it. One of the best books I've read in a couple years. And in it, she was talking to someone who faced incredible tragedy. And she asked her, how is it that you have kept going through these years? And she said, God opens my eyes every morning. I have no other explanation than that. There are nights that I went to sleep and I did not want to wake up and God opens my eyes. And so I get up that day and for us today I use the breath that's in my lungs and I praise him and I go. We will all in different times and seasons and for different reasons and in different ways walk through dark nights of the soul. But when we do, we can cry out to God. And when we cry out to God, He will hear us. And when He hears us, He will send His angels to strengthen us. I'll finish with this verse from Isaiah, and then I'll pray, because it's one of my favorites. We're taught in Isaiah that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and that he comforts those who are crushed in spirit. Let's pray. Lord, we love you. You're big, you're good, and you're gracious, and we are broken. We need you so much, and we have no right, we have no right to pound our desk and shake our fist and demand answers from you. We have no right to do that, and yet in your goodness, from time to time, you allow it, and you hug us, and you weep with us. I lift up the people today who might have recently prayed prayers like these, and I just ask that you would strengthen them, that they would feel your presence, they would feel your goodness, they would feel your love, they would be strengthened by you. Father, buoy us and tether us to you. God, we also thank you that Jesus did drink of that cup, that he did die for us, that he did conquer death and sin and hell for us so that we don't have to. And God, we look forward to a day when we understand things just a little bit better. But in the meantime, may your presence and your love be ever enough. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everybody, Alan, welcome back to the service. It's good to see you all. Did you shout getting some coffee? That was a great timing. That was the time. That was the spot. It's better than leaving right now. Yeah, you did great. No, you did great. My name is Nate. I get to be the senior pastor here. If I haven't gotten to meet you, I would love to do that so that in future services, I can make fun of you when you do stuff. And that will be great. This is the second part of our series called The Table. And we're focusing on Jesus's ministry and Luke around the table and how he uses meals purposefully and strategically in his life. And if you've spent time around me, if you've been here for any length of time, you know that one of the things I like to remind people of is the fact that I believe that God speaks to us in stereo. If we hear something from one isolated friend, they say one thing. If a sermon pricks our heart in a certain way, that's great to hear that one thing and try to respond to it correctly. But if we hear it from another friend and then from mom or dad or a husband or wife, and then we hear it from a sermon and then we hear it in a song and then just something, we're scrolling and we see it again, then I would argue that God is trying to get your attention and tell you something very specific. Because again, I believe he speaks in stereo, which is why I thought it was so interesting that I went to a pastor's conference this week in Orlando. And there's like 6,000 other pastors there. Some of the best communicators in the Christian world are there just kind of telling you their ideas and experiences. And it was a real refreshing time. I'll tell you more about that a little bit later in the sermon, but I thought it was really, really interesting that here I am, we're in the middle of this series called The Table. That wasn't my idea, it was Carly's idea, and then I get into it, and it's really, really great stuff. And then I go down to this conference, and what do all the speakers say? The speakers say the future of the Christian church in America is around the table. The future of evangelism in the United States is around the table. The future of discipleship, Christian maturity in our country is around the table. And we believe God is doing something and he is moving and he's moving around our tables. And so I'm sitting in the conference going, okay, I'm in. Like what you got? God, I'm listening. So for me, I do believe that God is speaking through this idea of the table. I shared with you a couple weeks ago, I do think God is doing something here. I do think he's moving here. Look how many of you showed up today. You're better Christians than the people who are cozy and warm watching online. I'm sorry, you know it. If you're home, like, you know that that's true. Thank you for coming here this morning. You really meant it. You really wanted some Jesus today, so we're going to try to take you right to him. But I believe that God is moving, and I believe that God is speaking. And if he's speaking to you about the sacred times around our tables and how we can use those and employ those and use those to push us and others closer to Jesus, then I would encourage you to lean in and listen today as well. This morning is called The Table for Relationship. We're looking at how Jesus uses the table for different purposes throughout his life. And this story we take from Luke chapter 7. So if you have a Bible, you can turn to Luke chapter 7. If you didn't bring one with you, there's one in the seat back in front of you. Luke chapter 7 has this great interchange between Jesus and a Pharisee named Simon. The Pharisees were the religious leaders of the day. They were the lawyers and the senators and the pastors all rolled into one. And Jesus gets invited over to Simon's house, and he has this great discourse. And I'll get into it, and I'll read it. And when I read this passage, it's the second part that we're not going to cover today that always, to me, jumps out as the most resounding portion of this passage. But I'm actually saving that portion of the passage for our Good Friday service. So again, that Friday before Easter, we'll be here. I don't know the time yet, probably seven o'clock, but don't quote me on that. Just don't make other plans that night. Come to our Good Friday service, and we're going to cover the rest of this story there in a different way. But I want to focus on the front half of this story that we find in Luke chapter 7, verses 36 through 39. If you have a Bible, read along with me. If you don't, it should be on the screen. One of the Pharisees asked him, Jesus, to eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at the table in the Pharisee's house, him saw this, he said to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner. Okay, we'll leave the story there. It goes on, and Simon accuses Jesus of this. Why are you interacting with this woman? Jesus tells a little parable about a debtor being forgiven his debt, two debtors being forgiven their debt, and the larger debtor is the one that is more grateful. And Jesus says this great line, yes, he who is forgiven little loves little, but he who is forgiven much loves much. And it's this great instruction about how grateful we are for Jesus and who he is operates in direct correlation to the weight of our sin that we feel. And if we don't feel a great affection towards Jesus, then it's very likely that we walk around thinking we're a lot better off than we actually are, thinking we're somebody when we ain't. But again, we're going to focus on that with Good Friday service. For this, I think it's helpful and interesting to focus on something else in this story. And before I tell that, just so I know that we're all on the same page, I told you what a Pharisee was. Pharisee was the religious leader, senator, lawyers, all wrapped up into one of the day. They were the religious elite. This woman is from the city, and she is a sinner. So that should tell you what she did and what her profession was. It was the oldest profession in the world. If you still don't know what this woman did for a living, ask someone next to you and, you know, make fun of them if they ask you, and then tell them, okay? But that's who she she was and that's what she did. Women didn't have a lot of options back then. And so she comes in and she anoints his feet and she wipes away, she dumps alabaster ointment on his feet, perfume, and then she cries on his feet, she kisses them, and then she washes his feet with her hair. And I'm not going to get into it. Culturally, this was an okay thing. This was understood. Everybody kind of knew what she was doing. It wasn't nearly as weird and awkward as it would be now. If I come to your house and some lady just wanders in and just starts crying on my feet and dumping perfume on them and kissing them, I'm never coming to your house again, okay? That's super weird. I'm not just going to sit there and be like, well, this is biblical. I'm going to, I'm going to leave. And I'm going to swear to Jen, I do not know that lady. I don't know. I don't know what's going on. But in this context, it's fine. So what's interesting to me about this dinner invitation is why Jesus accepted it. Why did Jesus go? We see him, and we'll look at this next week when we look at the table for celebration. When he asked Levi, the tax collector, who later becomes Matthew and writes the gospel of Matthew, he asked him to be one of his disciples. And Levi says, come to my house, I'm going to throw a feast. And he throws a feast with all of his sinning tax collector friends who don't know Jesus. And then Jesus is accused of being a glutton and a drunkard for going to that party and for going to other parties like that. And Jesus' response is, a physician does not come for the well, but for the sick. I came to seek and save the lost. And so we see in Jesus this very high degree of interest in hanging out with people and being around people who we good church people would not typically associate with because they're gross and we're better than them, right? Spoiler alert, we're not, okay? You suck and they do too, and that's why we all need Jesus. So we know that Jesus accepts those dinner invitations, but this one's interesting to me because it's not from a sinner, quote unquote. It's not from the outcast of society. It's from the religious elite. It's from the people that seem to not need Jesus, who he doesn't seem too interested in carousing with, except he gets an invitation from Simon and Jesus accepts it. Now, why does he accept this invitation? Now, this is a guess for me, okay? I don't have a verse to hang on this. This is my guess based on what I know of Jesus and what I know of Scripture, this is my best guess. You guys know Jesus. You know Scripture as well. You're welcome to your best guess, and you're welcome to disagree with this. But it is a guess. Why did Jesus accept this invitation? Was it to be polite? Maybe. Was it just a commonly accepted practice? It could be. But I think that Jesus was also concerned about Simon's soul. I think that Jesus also wanted him to see the light. We see throughout the New Testament and the Gospels that Jesus is pretty hard on the Pharisees. He calls them a brood of vipers and whitewashed tombs. He's pretty pointed with them. If he's going to be harsh with anybody, it's going to be the Pharisees and then a couple times the disciples. But in this scene, Jesus is actually amicable to them. He wants to go spend time with them because I believe that Jesus cares about the souls of the Pharisees as well. Not only because he says he cares about everybody, he says he loves everybody, but we see him go into Simon's house. We see him in John chapter 3 have a private, subtle, under-the-radar discussion so he doesn't get in trouble with Nicodemus, another Pharisee. We see Jesus in quiet moments act favorably towards them. Why? Because he cares about their souls too, and he wants them to know the truth. So I believe that Jesus took this dinner invitation, at least in part, to begin working towards the conversion of Simon, to evangelize him. And he knew that Simon's friends would be there, and he'd have an opportunity to begin to work towards their conversion as well. And I believe that Jesus in his wisdom knew that this woman was going to be there as well, and that would give him an opportunity to include her, to rope her in, to say in front of the religious elite, I love her too. She's all right with me too. And you should accept her at your table as well and quit separating things out and quit thinking that you're better than because you're not. Everyone's equal in the kingdom of God. I believe that he wanted to slowly chip away at their thought processes and chip away at her thought process and invite them in. So I believe that Jesus uses this meal for conversion and inclusion, understanding that both require relationships. I believe that Jesus was using this meal to begin to work towards the conversion of Simon and his friends and the inclusion of this woman and people like her into one table, realizing that both of those goals require relationships, require friendships. Jesus understands that for a man like Simon, entrenched in his ideology, since birth he has been poured into by other probably well-meaning rabbis and spiritual leaders who have simply misled him because they were misled. And it's really scary to think how generational teaching can lead to people reinforcing bad ideas on down the road until you as parents are teaching things to your kids because they were spouted to you by some ignorant Sunday school teacher when you were a little kid and you've never reconsidered them in your whole life. You see how this happens? And so this is what was happening with the Pharisees. It's not that they didn't love Jesus or it's not that they didn't like God and want to be in right standing with Him. It's that they were blind. They had been misled. And you don't break someone like Simon free from his ideology with one exchange in the town square, with one pithy remark or parable or saying. You break someone free like Simon from their ideology with conversations over time. You gradually open their eyes. If there's someone in your life who you love who does not know Jesus, we can take a page out of Jesus' playbook and engage in relationship with them and realize it's going to happen over time and over conversation and over consistency and over watching someone love them like they actually love them and love Jesus too. It takes relationship to see people come to faith. And Jesus also uses relationship for the inclusion of this woman. She is a woman one would assume. Maybe she didn't, but I don't think it's a bad guess to assume that she lived with a degree of shame. Maybe she didn't feel it all the time. Maybe when she was around other people who did what she did and other people who hired the kind of people that she was, maybe she didn't feel shame around them, but in general society, anytime she entered into a house like this, I bet she felt shame. I bet she felt unwanted and unwarranted. I bet she felt rightly excluded from genteel society. And what Jesus is doing here is going, no, no, no, no, she's good with me too. She's okay too. She's included here. When we first wrote this out, I was going to say the table for adoption or the table for inclusion and how we can use our table and we can use our friend groups to invite people into the space and say, they're good with me, they should be good with you too. And that's what Jesus was doing. He was providing her a cover for that relationship and for these people saying, we're all equal and we're all even. The challenge for this with her is that when you live your life in shame, it takes hearing that you're loved and accepted more than once for you to actually believe it, doesn't it? You know this is true in your life. Most of you in this room, if not all of you, have heard plenty of times God loves you, he forgives you, he desires you. We sang earlier, he runs after you. There's no mountain he won't climb up, shadow he won't light up coming after you. You know that intellectually to be true. You may even know that if you're a believer, you're an adopted son or daughter of the king, and he loves you as much as he can ever love you, no matter what you've done, no matter what you're going to do, he is passionately in love with you. And you may know that he approves of you and that he accepts you just the way that you are. But isn't the Christian life a slow, painful acceptance of that? Don't we have a tendency to say other people are loved and accepted, but God does not feel that way about me because I know better? Don't we heap shame and guilt on ourself and assume that we're unacceptable to God and others because of what we've done and assign His acceptance and His love to other people? Isn't it one thing to know intellectually that you're loved and forgiven and another thing to know in your heart and soul and actually live like you are? Doesn't that inclusion by Jesus take a long time for us to learn? So Jesus knows, if I want to convert Simon and his friends, and if I want this woman to know that she's truly included and loved, it's going to take time. It's going to take relationship. And Jesus sets a model of relationships in his life. I don't know if we think of it in those terms or if you've considered that before. But at these meals, we see him building relationship. When Zacchaeus is in the tree and Jesus walks by him, he says, hey, I'm coming to your house for lunch. Like, let's hang, man. Let's go. He develops relationships with his disciples. He develops relationships with the people around him. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were some of his best friends, and he went and retreated there. Those were his people. That's where he was safe and trusted, and they were safe and trusted as well. Relationships are important to Jesus, and I believe he lived a life modeling the importance of these relationships. And I believe that one of the reasons he did it is because Christianity requires relationships. Biblical Christianity requires of us biblical friendships and biblical relationships. The whole Bible is written not to individuals, but to communities, groups of people. Even the books of the Bible that are originally addressed to individuals, Philemon, Titus, Timothy, Acts, and Luke, which are addressed to blessed Theophilus, were intended to be shared as groups, in groups. Were intended for people to consume together. It's this unique perspective of Western philosophy and Christianity that has reduced Christianity and faith to our own personal salvation project, where the most important thing in faith is whether or not we're saved. And Jesus offers us so much bigger, robust gospel and love than whether or not we're going to heaven one day. He offers us a relationship with our creator God now that we can share with others on this outpost of eternity. Christianity was never, ever intended to be lived alone. As a matter of fact, if you've spent any time at Grace, hopefully you've heard me say there is no such thing as a Lone Ranger Christian. I would argue with you it is absolutely impossible to grow as close to Jesus as you can without other people in your life walking with you. That's why when we had a discussion as elders years ago around our current mission statement, connecting people to Jesus and connecting people to people, there was some pushback. Some of the folks in the circle at the time felt like it should just be connecting people to Jesus. We should not elevate connecting people to people on that level. It's connecting people to Jesus. And it was kind of tough for them to get over connecting people to people. Like, that feels too simple. That feels too easy. And so we agreed that we would put it second. So there's a clear priority there, which who cares? But I was a real stickler about connecting people to people, and some of the other people in the circle were a stickler about that because I would contend that you cannot grow as close to Jesus as you possibly can without other people in your life who also love you and love Jesus. And so we are committed to connecting people to people to help you in that walk. And if you think that, if you have any hesitation about that being true, about closeness with God being possible without, all I need is my Bible and prayer and God and I'm good. Okay, well Adam had that. The first book of the Bible, second, third chapter, he had that. In chapter two, we see him. He has the perfect relationship with God, the exact relationship with God that God created us for, the exact relationship with God that we will finally one day experience in heaven. Adam walked that. He had that. He walked with God in the cool of the evening. They talked every day. Adam was the perfect man. He was intellectually superior. He was emotionally intelligent. He was utterly fulfilled. And he had a perfect relationship with the perfect God. And he lived on a perfect earth with no pain and no death and no struggling. And he didn't work. It's like living in a country club with just amazing fruit everywhere and pretty much walking through life like me, if you think about like the perfect man. And even in that perfection, he looked around after a period of time and he went to God and what did he say? I'm lonely. I'm lonely. I need, I need a companion. You cannot live out this life on your own. You cannot live the Christian life without relationships. To further that point and to show us how essential they are, I actually want to share with you something I heard this week. I've heard this before from this same guy, and I heard it again, and it was such a good reminder, and I feel bad for not having shared this with you before. But the Bible is full of one another's, isn't it? If you read it, we should be kind one to another, we should pray for one another, we should hold one another accountable. We should confront sin in one another. We should love one another. We should outdo one another in humility. We should bear one another's burdens. We should celebrate with one another. We should mourn and grieve with one another. There's a lot of one another commands in the Bible. And one another's are impossible outside of genuine, honest friendships. All those commands are impossible to obey outside of genuine and honest friendships. Now, there's some that are easier. Be kind one to another. We don't have to know people very well to be kind to them. We can be kind to people. But the better you know somebody, the more kind you can be. If I think about Cindy, our wonderful and lovely sound technician today, and I want to be kind to her. It's her birthday or something. Jen and I can buy her flowers. Buy her flowers and have a flower sent to her house, and oh, that's a nice gesture, whatever. But I know that Cindy loves the Duke Blue Devils. And if you don't, pipe down, nobody cares, okay? She loves them. And so if I made the flowers blue and white and sent them to her, that'd be a little bit extra kind, wouldn't it? Or you know what? I might find out that Cindy doesn't even like flowers. So knock it off with that stuff and send her donuts. I don't know. The better you know somebody, the kinder you can be. But there's some of these that really, unless you know somebody, unless you're friends with them, you can't obey these commands. Pray for one another, which seems simple enough, but you guys have been in a small group and you've been in those circles. Hey, does anybody have any prayer requests? Yeah, could you, my cousin's friend has a girlfriend who's, she might have COVID. Oh gosh, is she okay? I mean, it's just a head cold right now. She's probably okay, but let's pray for her. I'm like, I'm not, nope, I'm not gonna do that. And also, just so you know, sometimes Christians, you don't have to pray for everything. Somebody can tell you something and you can be like, okay, you don't have to like, I'm gonna ardently seek the Lord's throne over this. You can just let that one be. Or it's, you know, it's surfacy stuff. My wife is sick. My kids had a little bit of a cold. I got a trip coming up. Pray for traveling mercies. Sure. But when you're in a small group for a long time and trust begins to develop, the prayer requests get different, don't they? Pray for us. Our kids are struggling in school. They might have to repeat kindergarten. We just want wisdom there. We don't know the right thing to do. We just want to do the best thing for them. You start to get really real prayer requests. Hey, man, can you just pray for my marriage? We're not doing great. It's been a rough couple, two, three years. And I really don't know how this is going to go. Will you just pray for me that I can be a good husband? Sure. Hey, I lost my dad last year, and it has really done a number on my faith, and I don't really even know what I believe, and I'm having a hard time trusting God. And I don't even know if your prayer is going to work, but would you pray it anyways? When you're friends, you start to get real prayer requests. And you can really actually pray for each other in meaningful ways. And if you're close enough with them, when they tell you to pray for their cousin's friend who might have COVID, you can tell them to shove it and pray themselves. We can't start obeying these one another's until we're actually friends. If we're supposed to confront each other with sin, let me just tell you, for me personally, you do life how you want to do life. For me, if you want to sit me down and say, hey, Nate, I've noticed this destructive pattern in your life and I really don't think it's good for you, we better be friends or I'm out. I might sit there politely and say thank you. And you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to leave that conversation and I'm going to call a friend. I'm going to say, listen to what this person said. Is this true? But I'm not going to hear it from you if you're not my friend. We don't have a track record of going through life together. And listen, confronting sin and other people, the only way it can be done is with the foundation of relationship. When the Bible tells us to mourn with one another, to grieve with one another, to celebrate with one another, those are things that require a deep bedrock friendship and relationship there to be able to do that. We cannot be obedient to instructions about biblical Christianity without the power of relationships and friendships in our life. And I would even say this, just to push it a little bit further. When I hear about folks who are going through a rough patch, marriage is really, really hard. They've developed an addiction of some sort and they're fighting it. Their personal life is falling apart. Their professional life is falling apart. Whatever it is, when I hear about people whose lives are beginning to spin a little bit out of control, can I just tell you what I often find and what they often share with me? They say things like, you know, I really don't feel like I have many friends. I'm not sure if I have any friends at all. Let me tell you something. As your pastor, and if you're sitting in this room today, I'm your pastor at least for today. As your pastor, if you are doing life without friends, you're in trouble. If you are doing life without friends who share your values, if your closest friend is your spouse and you don't have any true friends outside of that, you're in trouble. And if your closest friend is your spouse and you don't have any true friends outside of that, you're in trouble. And if your closest friend is your spouse, and you don't have, I'm not saying your closest friend shouldn't be your spouse, I'm just saying you should have really good friendships outside of your marriage. If you don't, you're putting too much pressure on them, and they're putting too much pressure on you, and you're going to let each other down, and things aren't going to go good. Jesus designed us to walk in friendships. If you don't have them, the biggest encouragement I could give you is to pursue them. When I counsel with young couples doing premarital counseling, very often I'll do the marriage of people who don't live close to us. They don't live in Raleigh. They live in Fuquay or they live in Greensboro or they live wherever they live. But centrally, their family's around here. So they're choosing a venue in Raleigh. So they want a pastor that's local and close to the venues. They find me online and I agree to do their wedding. And when I talk to these people, I ask them, what's your plan for finding a church? And very often they'll say, you know, we don't have a church. We're looking for a church. What would you recommend? How can we find a good church? And I always tell them the same thing. Listen, find a church. And I mean this, you're gonna laugh, but I really do mean it. And I think this is actually what most of you have done. Find a church that has a tolerable pastor. They don't have to be great, okay? The sermons don't have to blow your doors off every week. You can download really good sermons every week. Find a pastor that doesn't drive you nuts and sit under that teaching. Find worship that's good. Here we have great worship and we're lucky. But find it that's good. But you know what you really need? Find a church where you can make friends. Find a church where you can make friends. And then everything else kind of fades away. You can go to the church with the best preaching and the best worship and the best programs. But if you don't have friends, you're never going to connect in the way that you need to. And that church isn't going to serve you how it should serve you. So when you choose a church, choose a church to build friendships, to do life together. With all of that being said, I want to bring us back to the power of the table and ask, what would happen if we viewed our meals as Jesus did? What would happen if those opportunities around the table, and I don't want to be unrealistic, not every day, not every meal, not every time we sit with somebody who's going to have a sacred element to it, but man, it happens far more often than we think it does. What would happen if we would understand that relationships and friendships are absolutely essential to my faith, and they're essential to the faith of others, and they're essential if I see someone I want to convert, if I see someone I want to move closer to Jesus, if I see someone I want to influence, then relationship is essential within that influence. What if we accepted that and began to use the meals in our life to further those things, to pursue those things? What would happen if when we had the opportunity to go out to eat after church with our friends, we had one or two intentional questions? We don't make the whole lunch and impromptu Bible study, but what if we had one or two intentional questions? What's God been teaching you for the last six months? Anything at all? What'd you get from Nate's sermon? What'd you think of that? That was terrible. Did you agree it was terrible? Yes, I agree it was terrible. And then have a great conversation. Did you love it when he made fun of Alan at the beginning? Yes, I loved that. Whatever it was. Point of fact, I told you I went to conference this week, and the idea for that, it came to me last fall, and I texted an old buddy of mine. We were on staff together at the church I worked at previously. He left and started his own church. He's been a senior pastor for, I think, about eight or nine years now. I'm in my seventh year of being a senior pastor, and so we talk multiple times over the course of the year, how are things going, and I was telling somebody before the service that when you're a senior pastor and you have the opportunity to talk with another senior pastor, the conversation's just different, right? Because we're smarter and more spiritual than all of you. So it's just, no, it's because we have the same job. Like if you're the national sales director of whatever, and you talk to another national sales director of whatever, and there's a lot of similarities there, then you're going to be able to just talk about things that other people don't understand and can't talk about. So the ability to relate is very, very high. And so I wanted to go and have some extended time to spend with another senior pastor and just talk about what it's like to do life in the way that we've chosen to do it. And what his church is almost the exact same size as our church. And so it's good one-to-one comparisons about how you're handling different things. And I wanted to go to this conference, but I was determined to use the conversations that we had with a purpose. And some of you may have seen that I put on social media, we went to, we were going to go golf, and I said, I'd rather go see the Star Wars section because I've never seen it. Nobody in my family cares about it. And so we went to see the Star Wars section, which was great. I don't know if it was $165 great. I was there for like 90 minutes, and I was like, cool, I'm going to go to the hotel. But it was really fun. I got us matching t-shirts because of course, you know. And we had a great time. But at the breakfast, when we wrapped up, we had gone to conference for two days. We went to Disney and had that experience and shared meals together and all this stuff. At breakfast on the last day on Friday morning, I asked him, what are your takeaways? And one of the things that we agreed upon, he said, this was not a frivolous trip. This was an absolutely spiritually encouraging trip. And I made the comment, I would argue that the most important things on this trip happened in line and at meals, not at the conference, not with what we learned. And he said, a thousand percent. And it was because at the beginning of the trip, we shared, we want this to be purposeful. We want to have important conversations. We want to talk about important things. So we talked about silly stuff, our mutual affection for Caitlin Collins on CNN. I mean, we both think that she does a great job as a news anchor. But then we also talked about family. And do you think your mom and your dad and your sister are part of your ministry? What are your responsibilities for them? What do you do with hosting? How do you plan series? How do you keep your spiritual life vibrant when church feels like it's dragging you down? We had good, meaningful conversations that helped both of us. So what would happen if we all did that? And the meals that we had around our table, we began to use intentionally. And we came in with one or two intentional questions just to check on the people that we were having meals with or just to help us become better friends with them. But what if we didn't see our time around the table? And I don't mean just meals. It can be any setting where we have an opportunity to talk with people and we don't have anywhere to go and nothing to do or be? In those settings, how can we use those more purposefully to build friendships, to build the relationships that are essential to biblical living? And then I would ask you, what relationships do we need to pursue so others might begin to pursue Jesus? Who do you have in your life that you can leverage your table to push towards Jesus, to convert or include? Who do you have in your life that you can encourage spiritually? And shame on me for not including this one, but what relationships do you have in your life that you can pursue to begin to push you towards Jesus? Who seems to have things figured out maybe a little bit better than you right now that you can invite around your table and just ask them questions. There's so much benefit from doing that. I issued last week the Dinner Table Challenge for the series and said between now and Easter, we're encouraging everyone here to have someone around your table from grace who's never been around your table before. And we're encouraging everyone to have someone around your table who's not from grace, who's never been around your table before. Point of clarity, someone asked me last week, is that the same meal or is it two separate meals? It's two separate meals. For me, I'm not really down with mixing universes. I don't like it when someone invites me over to their house and they've also invited over other people who I don't know. And I'm like, well, I've been ambushed. What is this? I just want to go back home. This is completely, I was not prepared for this. But listen, if you're down with that, if that's your deal, you like mixing universes and making people uncomfortable, sure, invite them both over and let's just see what happens. But I would encourage you, don't just invite the easy ones over. Be strategic. Who can you invite over and hopefully encourage them towards Christ? Who can you invite over and maybe learn from them? And when God places you in opportunities, in small groups and in meals and around tables and in friend groups, and as you have new acquaintances that you're allowed and enabled to pursue, how can we use those to push them and ourselves closer to Jesus? But what I want us to take away from today, if nothing else, is the Christian life is impossible to live without friendships. It's impossible to live without relationships. If you don't have them or you need stronger ones, the best place to begin to do that is around the table. So let's use those strategically as we move throughout the rest of our weeks leading up to Easter and prepare our hearts for celebrating Easter when it comes. Let's pray. Father, we love you and we thank you for the example that was set for us by your son. How he modeled for us sitting around tables with people and having conversations that needed to be had. Loving on people in surprising ways, encouraging people towards conversion in gentle ways. Father, I pray for people here who feel like right now in their life they're a little bit lonely and they're a little bit alone and they're not sure if they have the friendships that they need and that they want, would you bring them people in their life that they can pursue, that will pursue them, who love them and who love you? Would you build friendships in their life? Father, would you give us the courage to pursue those, to extend the invite, to make the offer, to reach out and bridge the gaps. And God, around those tables, would you bless the conversation? Would you build friendships that last for decades? Ones that encourage us towards you? And God, in these relationships, would we find more of you there? In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace, and I have the honor this morning of being able to close out our time in our series called Powerful Prayers, where we've been looking at different prayers throughout Scripture and waning and pulling out any meaning that we can find in those for ourself and for our life and for our faith. To make a really weird transition, I had this buddy back in the day. I'm not going to say when because I don't want people reading between the lines. It's before I was here, so none of you know. But I had this buddy who was like, I think, ascribing to be an influencer before an influencer existed, like a social media influencer, do we know these? He was so precise on his social media. Like, he didn't post, like, no caption or no tweet was posted until it had lived in, like, on his notes app for, like, two weeks to make sure it was good enough. He had times, like, he literally, he had, like, days and times. I think Sunday night, like, Sunday, like, midnight was kind of his time to post because that was when most people were at home on their computer doing homework and therefore probably scrolling Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. And so there would be the most possible, like it would optimize the amount of likes and comments and all of those things that he would get on his posts. He was very, very precise with those things, even including if his posts didn't do the numbers that he wished that they would have done, if he didn't get quite as many comments or quite as many likes as he would have liked, it bummed him out to the point that he would just delete the post because he's like, well, this is a worthless post, which is a pretty silly and funny thing. But ultimately, what we found is here is this guy who his mission was to create a version of himself that was the best possible version of himself that he could show to the people around him. And his value was placed in the response from other people to that life that he had sculpted and crafted. Now, I don't imagine many of you guys are that precise in these dealings, and so you're like, yeah, cool, whatever. Nice story, Kyle. But let me give you a couple other scenarios. See if they ring a bell, or even if they don't, see if something similar maybe sparks your interest. Your mom, and as your kids are growing up, you're starting to have more days than bad days. You're a dad, and you just can't really seem to figure out why your kids always matter, why you can't control your temper, or why your family can't just be a little bit easier. Your kids can't just be a little bit easier to manage. And you're starting to feel a bit of shame for it because I'm a mom, I'm a dad, it's my identity, that's who I am. And I feel like I'm not doing a good job. And then on top of that, you jump onto Instagram and and here's this other family who their kids have their shirts tucked in. I couldn't pay my kids enough money to tuck their shirts in. And as you see it, and as you see these posts of these families and these moms and these dads who seem to be doing it a lot better than you're doing it based on these pictures or based on small group and what you hear from the other parents in your small group or whatever it might be, you start to just feel shame. You're made to feel lesser than, normally by your own self. You're kind of inflicting shame on yourself because why am I not doing better? Why am I not being better? Or maybe you're looking at the people around in your circle, in your small group, like, gosh, man, they seem to be figuring out this work-life balance way better than I am because this is really difficult for me. It's really hard to navigate marriage while I navigate career. It's really hard watching people at my work who are doing better than I am and accomplishing more than I am and much more quickly moving up the ladder than I am. And this is what I do. This is who I am. And I'm clearly not good enough or not as good as the people around me. And so once again, you just feel shame. You feel less valuable or less valued because of your performance and what you see. Maybe people around you are starting to retire and you're like, what did they do? Why are they so much smarter and w than I am, and I still have to keep working? What's the deal here? Maybe you don't want to give up work because your entire identity is found in it. Who am I if I'm not doing this thing in my life? Here's one. Maybe something in your life has been marked by some sin and some shame in your life. Maybe it's something that was public. You did something wrong. You messed up. And the people around you know it. And you start to get more worried and more worried as you roll up to small group because you know, man, everybody knows. Everybody knows that I did this thing. And I know they can't see past that I've done this thing because I know that I can't see past that I've done this thing. Maybe you start walking around your friend groups and people are looking at you and giving you that gaze that you know, gosh, that is a judgmental gaze and I do not like it. Or they say snide comments because in their minds and in their brains, if they can belittle you, then they can raise and elevate their ego and puff themselves up a bit. Or what I think I see most of all, maybe it doesn't even matter what the people around you's reaction is because you are so crippled by the shame that is inside of you because of something that you do or something that you see that you are or things that are in your heart that you know shouldn't be there. And so it doesn't matter whether anybody shows any judgment towards you or is judgmental in any way because you've already decided you're not going to give yourself any grace and you're just going to walk in shame. And so you start to pull away and you start to disconnect, especially I got to stop going to small group. I can't measure myself up to these people because I just feel shameful and less than. I can't go to church. I can't sit around these people who love the Lord and have a Lord who loves them when I know that the contents of my heart are this or that I've done this and I cannot move past it and I cannot offer myself grace to get past this. That one is exactly what we find in the story of the woman at the well in John 4. The woman at the well is a pretty, like, it's a story that probably a lot of us have heard, but I think one of the difficulties of the woman at the well, or because her shortcomings and her sin are so specific that it's hard to actually find ourselves and place ourselves inside of the story. But ultimately, what we see and how we experience and come to understand why this woman is in the place that she's in is because she was dealing with a shame that was causing her to completely disconnect and to avoid any interaction with anyone. We find her at the well drawing water in the middle and the hottest part of the day by herself. This doesn't happen. Culturally, you don't go to get water in the middle of the day. First, because basically everything that they needed to do around the house and for themselves, they need the fresh water for that day. And so to go later in the day is to not be able to do all of those things up until that point. Second, you don't go in the hottest part of the day because it's the hottest part of the day. You know, like you have to carry those water, I don't know, the water carrying devices, vases, or I don't know what they what they... I don't know. Ashlyn made our wedding registry, so hopefully she knows the name of water-carrying devices and put them on there. I don't know. But nonetheless, vases or bowls or something that you have to carry. And then, I mean, as any of you guys know, as soon as you carry something full of liquid for any amount of time, it is very difficult, especially when it is very hot in the middle of the day. So why is this lady standing here in the middle of the day by herself doing something that every other person has already done in the morning? Culturally, we realize and we find out she's kind of hiding. She's avoiding any possible contact with the people around her because the people around her know her life. They know her sins and they know her shortcomings. And she doesn't want to deal with it. We find out what those are as she begins talking to Jesus. As she goes and he asks for water and as they begin talking, at some point he says, hey, go get your husband. I'd love to meet him. Knowing what he's doing and she says, I actually don't have a husband, I'm not married. And Jesus responds, I know you're not married. You've been married four times, and now this fifth man that you're living with, you're not married to. Essentially, reading between the lines, she has lived a life of promiscuity and adultery. And that unlocks why she's there in the middle of the day. To avoid any possible interaction with somebody who would give her that knowing gaze. Walking up to somebody who might treat her as lesser than because of her sin that she has lived in and is currently living in. Or maybe, maybe it's not even as much about what other people will do, but because she cannot offer herself and all she can think about as she's around anyone is comparing herself to the other people and it's just building up shame inside of her, and so she has just decided to eliminate all possibility of coming across anyone. But there was Jesus. As they talk, and as she kind of, why are you talking to me? I'm a woman. I'm not Jewish. Why are you a Jewish man, why would you talk to me? And his response is, man, if you knew who I was, you would ask me for a drink because I can give you water where you will never thirst again. I can give you a water that will satisfy your soul for eternity. There is no division. There's no Gentile and Jew soon enough. Because soon enough, a time is coming where everyone will be completely united under God's love, being able to be in unity, worshiping God together in his love. And I think she starts to realize who he is. And she says, sir, I've heard tell that there's a Christ who's coming. There's a Messiah who's coming, who's going to make all of this known to us. He's going to tell us how we get to experience this unity, how we get to experience unity under God. And he looks at her and he says, I'm him. I'm the guy. I'm the Messiah that you're talking about. It's an absolutely incredible story. She gets to be one of the first people on the earth to know that this is the Messiah who is coming to unite all people under God by his blood. But I tell you it not just because it's a great story, but because I think it connects really well to something that we find in our prayer that we find in Psalm 139. And that comes at the end of the story. The end of the story, as I read it, I both think, hey, this is great, and I also think, this is weird, and I don't get it. As a response to her recognizing, realizing, and understanding who Jesus is and her interactions with Jesus, she goes back into town and proclaims and exclaims to them. Now, remember, this is the lady who was off by herself getting water in the middle of the day, making sure that she had zero interactions with anyone who lives in her town and in her community because she didn't want to experience the shame of getting or having to experience anybody. But she met Jesus. And so she felt like she could go and talk to these people. That makes sense to me. And half of what she says makes sense to me. She says, could this really be the Messiah? But she doesn't pose the question. She doesn't pose the question because she doesn't go, you know what, guys, I was getting water over here. This dude asked if I wanted to give him a drink. And then he's like, actually, I got a drink for you that will quench your thirst forever. I have this guy who said that through him and by his power, that we are going to be united in God, all one people just glorifying and worshiping God. She doesn't say any of that. She says, while I was getting water, I met this guy who told me everything about my life. Could this be the Messiah? In the joy of exclamation, she brings up, I met this guy who knew everything about me. How does that make sense? Why would a person who is hiding from anybody who could possibly know anything about her life, how could she make a full 180 to now go and find all of those people and exclaim to them, I have met this guy and he knows every part of me. How awesome is this? This guy might be the Messiah. It doesn't make sense to me. And it connects, I think, really well to the beginning of Psalm 139, a prayer to David that also is insane to me and absolutely terrifying. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. All right, here's the gist. David is praying and considers it fully wonderful that God knows every single part of who he is. I don't know about you guys, but I don't want anyone to know that about me. I think if any of you knew what lied on the other side of the Kyle that I present to the world, I think you would like, no one would ever want to be around me again. There is a lot of ugly and a lot of imperfect that comes from that. And not only says that God knows every one of our actions, but he knows every one of our words that has yet to come on our lips. He knows every single thought that we've ever thought. What that means is when we decide that we're going to love on somebody or serve somebody, but it's for selfish ambition, he knows it's for selfish ambition and we're doing it for ourself. He knows that while I completely judge and I do not like this person, yet on the outside I'm going to love them and serve them however best I can, he knows how I really feel about that person in my heart. How can David consider it wonderful for a God who holds our life and our eternity in his hands? How can it be wonderful for that God to know us wholly and completely? Not only that, but verses 7 through 13 basically says, there is nowhere that I can run from you. I cannot hide from you anywhere. How can David find it wonderful? And how can the woman at the well exclaim and find joy in the fact that there is this man, Jesus, and there is this God who knows every single thought, intention, and action in our life? So we press on into David's prayer. And I think we in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God. Verses 1 through 6, you find David pray about how wonderful it is that God would fully and completely know him. In 7 through 13, you find out that there's no place to hide from him, all of which are absolutely terrifying to me. But in 13 through 18 is where you find why it is wonderful. Because God knows this completely because he created us. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. What David is saying is that as God is your child, I have been made and created on purpose. Ephesians 2.10 says we are God's handiwork. Other translations say we are God's workmanship. We are his masterpiece created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Every single one of us were created on purpose. There was intention in our creation. It wasn't random. God created you to be you. He created me to be me. He created us on purpose. He knows us completely. There's nowhere that we could go to hide. And he sent his son to experience the condemnation and the death for our sins that we deserve so that we get to experience an eternal relationship with him. All of that to say that not only as children of God, not only are we holy and completely known by God, but we are wholly and completely loved by God. To me, I see David's joy in a new light. I see complete clarity in the light of David as he declares it as wonderful to be fully known for good and for bad. I see the same in the woman at the well of why she might exclaim joyously that here is a man who knew every part of me. Tim Keller puts it this way. He says, But not be known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our biggest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved, that is what we need more than anything. That's why David was able to find peace knowing that every thought, every desire, and every action in his life, because he was a child of God, no longer, no longer shades God's view of him. Because he is fully loved and created and set apart by God, there's no longer condemnation. There's only love and there's only grace that he gets to experience. He gets to experience being fully known and being fully loved. When you look at the woman at the well. And probably for the first time in a long time, she was able to realize and experience the freedom that comes from not having to anymore be defined by or held back by her past or her present. Because all that mattered now was there's this man who not only talks of this eternity, not only talks of this unity under the Father, under God, but he is telling me, I think, that I get to be a part of it. Me, the person who has to hide from everyone because I cannot deal or bear with the amount of shame that I hold on to, this same woman who is living in utter and complete fear, completely and wholly crippled by shame, had to run down to town to the people she was avoiding, and she had to say, guys, there's this guy who knows all the things you guys know about me, and he, I think, I'm pretty sure, he is offering me the same love that he's offering all of us. Somehow, I get to be a part of this. What if us, as Christians, as children of God, lived in the freedom that she got to experience? Where we weren't always and completely crippled by the fear and anxiety and the shame that is brought on by comparing ourselves to the people around us all the time. What if we weren't defined by the accomplishments that we have or the things that we are trying to figure out? What if we weren't at all defined by anything except for people who are wholly known and wholly loved by God? Can you imagine that freedom? Can you imagine the way that you could treat people and experience life if you weren't held back by your fear and by your anxiety of how people see you or how you're presenting yourself? If you weren't consistently bringing shame upon yourself and couldn't get over the fact that you are the way that you are in certain ways, not realizing that God has forgiven that a long time ago and God created you exactly as he intended to create you? Tim Keller writes separately in a separate book, Jesus took the condemnation we deserve. He faced the trial that should be ours so that we do not have to face any more trials. So I simply need to ask God to accept me because of what the Lord Jesus has done. Jesus took on the condemnation and the trial for us. And so, in light of that, we read on. Listen. Listen. Then the only person whose opinion counts looks at me and he finds me more valuable than all the jewels in the earth. How can we worry about being snubbed now? How can we worry about being ignored now? How can we care that much about what we look like in the mirror now? To continue in my own words, why would we ever place our source of identity, value, or worth into the hands of anything outside of a perfect father's perfect love for us? Who do we think we are to not offer ourselves grace when Christ and God's eternal position in heaven, eternal posture in heaven, is to have grace and forgiveness for you? Who do we think we are that our grace should be more expensive than God's? Who do we think we are that we are not allowing ourselves and offering ourselves the grace that we have already freely been given through the blood of Christ? And when you look at the other people around you, when you look at a mom on social media, when you look at a dad who seems to really be able to just get it with their son, just really be able to play with their kids and connect and all this stuff and you're having a hard time, when you look at the accomplishments of someone else that's around you in your circle, at your work, in your small group, wherever you find yourself comparing your life to the life of another one in order to boost or deflate your ego, here's my question. What comparison can you make that compares to the knowledge that you have been fearfully and wonderfully made by a perfect creator? What comparison can you make to anyone else around you that compares to that knowledge? That you are both fully known and fully loved by the creator of the universe. And through the blood of Christ, you have been set apart for the joy of an eternal relationship with your creator, God. May we today, may we this week, strive to experience the freedom of the woman in the well, the freedom of David who prays and is thankful that a God fully knows him. Offering our self-grace, offering the people around us grace, and only looking at ourselves and the people around us in one light and one light only as people who are completely and wholly known by God and loved by God. And may that be our only distinction for ourselves. Let's pray. Lord, I don't know why it's so hard for us to give ourselves the grace and to find our identity in you, even though you've made it so accessible and so easy to do so. Lord, would you just please lighten up our hearts and allow us maybe for the first time to experience the freedom of having complete certainty in our identity, our worth, and our value in you. And look for it nowhere else. Lord, we love you so much. Amen.

We always talk about the stories of Moses and Abraham and David and Paul. We know all about the boys, but what about the girls? Why don't we talk more about the people in the Bible who are like me? When I read the Bible, I see story after story of women who are amazing. I see the courage and hope of Miriam and the boldness of Mary Magdalene. I see the consistent and quiet obedience of Mary, the girls of the Bible are pretty awesome. And when we take the time to learn their stories, we will be amazed at what God can do with someone who is consistently, humbly, and lovingly faithful. Nice. All right. Good morning, everyone in the room. Good morning, everyone online. My name is Kyle, and I am the student pastor here. And as you can probably tell, I am not Nate, who is our head pastor. For any of you guys who are new, who are like, I don't know who Kyle or Nate are, I'm just a student pastor. And I'm thrilled to announce that the reason that I am on stage preaching this morning is because Nate and his wife, Jen, have just welcomed their new son, John, into the world. And so, yeah, let's get a little, yeah, let's get some cheers going for that. I mean, absolutely incredible blessing. I'm not exactly sure of the birthday, but I know I got a text with a picture on Friday, so we're going to go with the 30th and just, if I'm wrong, then we will correct it next week. But I mean, just such an incredible blessing. Like it has been such a celebration on our staff group text, just of celebrating Nate. And on Facebook, you'd think Nate's about to go like Facebook famous with how many people have commented and liked the pictures of his son. And it has been awesome. And honestly, too, guys, just to be aware of it for a second, it doesn't, or I guess to put it differently than that, it's not lost on me the fact that the last time that I was asked by Nate to step in and preach for him was when he had to take a little bit of time off because he and Jen were basically spending their last few days with Jen's dad, John, and dealing with that loss of a father and of a grandfather far too early. And how beautiful and how incredible is it that this morning, that the next time that I was asked by Nate to step in and preach so he could take a little bit of time off to be with family, that it is because they are celebrating the new life and the birth of their son, John. And so real quick, I just wanted to take a second and just pray for them real quick and just thank God for his blessings. God, thank you for bringing us here this morning. God, thank you just so much for Nate and for Jen and what they mean to our hearts and what they mean to our church and to all of us here this morning. God, I just pray that you are just showering them with joy right now as they have welcomed in John, this beautiful baby boy. And God, we just pray that in the midst of probably a lot of sleeplessness and a lot of unrest, God, that they find places where they can rest, even if it's not physically, where they can just rest in you and in your blessings and in your joy. Amen. So anyways, so with that being said, here I am this morning getting to go through another incredible woman's story within the Bible. And I love the ability to do that. And this morning, we're going to go into the book of Ruth. And one of the things that I think is incredible about Ruth and is noteworthy about the book of Ruth is that you could make a sermon, or excuse me, you could make a series that is called Faithful about the book of Ruth. When you go through Ruth and you see the way that these people live their lives, see the unbelievable ways that Ruth steps out in faith, looking at fear, looking at terror, looking at loneliness, looking at loss, and at every moment choosing to turn to faith. And this morning and next week, we get to spend two weeks talking about the faithfulness of one of the most faithful women and one of the most faithful people in all of the Bible. Before we get going, I do want to mention that in my just imminent and unbelievably high amounts of wisdom, as I thought about the fact that, you know, at some point I'm going to preach this series, these two weeks in Ruth and, you know, John's due date is May 17th. And so that's a few weeks away. And so in my wisdom, I was like, you know what I'm going to do? Because I know how babies work. And I know that sometimes people have babies early. I'm going to start on May 3rd to just get ready. You know, I'm going to be fully ready. That way, if John comes early, Mother's Day, I'm all in. I got it. I'm ready to go. Well, here we were on Friday when I got a text with a baby's picture. And I'm like, this is Nate messing with me. Turns out it wasn't. It was John in the flesh. And so I say that not to give any excuses or not in any way to say anything, except for the fact that this sermon might be a little bit less dialed in. It might be a little bit less polished than sermons you're used to. I know that anybody who's heard me preach before is probably laughing at the fact that I would use polished in my sermons in the same sentence. But I do say that to say that this story, as we read through Ruth 1 together, and we talk through Ruth 1 together, that regardless of how well or how poorly I speak or how polished this sermon is this morning, the truth that is found in Ruth 1 should speak for itself. And so I ask for grace, and I also ask for the fact that even if I am spitting absolute nonsense, that at least this story you will let resonate in your hearts and hopefully walk away learning something by simply hearing this passage of scripture. And so this morning, I actually, I wanted to start off by telling you guys the backstory of actually how I ended up making my way to grace. It's a story that I don't really think I've told that many people. I mean, not for like any reason. I'm not hiding it or whatever, but, you know, I figured it'd be something that would be worth talking about. And it's a story that I love because when I think back on it, it's just pretty wild that it worked out this way because, as a lot of you know, I was working as a student pastor in Atlanta at a church called Greystone. And I was actually working underneath Nate, who was also at Greystone. He wasn't the head pastor, but it was a, you know, it was a bigger staff. And so, so they were like, I guess, levels to the staff. And so I was actually directly under Nate. Well, we left Greystone at about the same time. He came up here, obviously, to enter into being, becoming a head pastor. Woo, exciting. That's us, yay. But I left to kind of go into school and to do some seminary stuff. Well, after about a year of doing that, I realized that as someone who was so used to being in full-time student ministry that when I'm sitting in classes listening to ministry and talking about student ministry, I realized how bored I was and how little I enjoyed learning about these things and talking about these things when I wasn't able to be a part of them. Ministry was great and talking about ministry is great, but doing ministry and actually having interaction and actually having students that are in my life that I love and that I get to be in their lives, when I was missing out on that, I was just like, dude, I don't even know if this is worth it. And so I decided, you know what? I'm going to try to get back into the church. We'll figure out what exactly it looks like and with school and all this stuff, but I'm going to try to get back into the church. So, you know, I tried to explore some avenues. I found that some churches were doing stuff. Nothing really worked out well. At about the same time, one, I texted Nate. I said, yo, you're a head pastor and head pastors know things. So if you hear of anything, I'm trying to get back into the game, baby, basically is what I said. And at the same time, my dad's first pastor that he was a student pastor under reached out to me. He was the head pastor at this Baptist church that was right outside of Athens, Georgia. Now, Athens, Georgia is where I lived. I went to UGA, Go Dawgs. Yep, we all agree. Tons of people are nodding in the building. I know you're all nodding at home for the good dogs. But I was living in Athens at the time. My brother and sister-in-law lived in Athens. I was hanging out with them most every day. A lot of my friends still lived in Athens. My parents even, even though they were in South Carolina, only lived about an hour and a half, two hours away. Everybody was in Georgia. Everybody was very near Athens or Atlanta or somewhere around there. And so when someone calls and says, hey, we have a job available doing student ministry where you don't have to leave this place you love and you don't have to leave these people you love, well, then you listen. Especially when it's a pastor who you know and who you already know, this is a man that I would love to work for because I know that my dad loved working for him. And so as I'm talking with Nate, because Nate texted back and said, well, you know, it's funny, we actually are looking for someone as well. And so I'm kind of, at the same time, I'm interviewing in Georgia, I'm interviewing here. And obviously it progressed a little bit quicker in Georgia because I could just get out to the church. And so, you know, I was able to go check out the church. It was this beautiful Baptist church. One of those Baptist churches that, you know, it's kind of just in the middle of town where it's just like, oh my gosh, this is just like beautiful and awesome. And there's so many people who come in from everywhere. And it sounds like they have like a big thriving student ministry. And all of these things are awesome. And I got to go to a service. I was like, oh, this is cool. This is really nice. This is great. All of these things. And so I actually got a call the night before I was coming up to Raleigh to do some of those same things. And the call was to say, hey, Kyle, we want to hire you as our student pastor. They gave me an offer, and you know, it was a good offer for, I guess, like monetarily as far as like being a student pastor. So that was cool and that was great. Well, so that was what I was sitting on when I drive up to Raleigh for the weekend. And so as I drive up to Raleigh, the first thing that happens is I like meet with Nate. And I'm thinking that Nate and I are and I are just going to be like, you know, gabbing about, you know, what's been going on, all this type of stuff. And, you know, cause I'm like, well, I mean, I know I got Nate on my side. I've already worked with Nate. And then we have this like conversation where I go, oh my gosh, I don't know if Nate wants me to work here. And, and all he was doing was he was grilling me and he was saying, here are these things that I've seen in you in the past. How, like, you know, how have you been able to make strides or Or are these still things that you would consider strengths? All of those things. But right off the bat, I was pretty overwhelmed. But I spend the weekend talking to different people and interviewing and getting to meet staff and came on a Sunday morning. And as I drive up, I'm like, oh, yes, this church is in the side of a storefront. Interesting. That's cool. I like the white letters though. But so I'm like, okay, interesting. And so I come in and obviously, you know, like we have done an incredible job with this space, but obviously like it doesn't really rival like a beautiful Baptist church's sanctuary, you know? And so we're going through these things and we go through service. And then I come on a Sunday night and I get to meet some of the students. And as much as I love meeting these students, I'm kind of hearing about that while there are certainly just some incredible students in this ministry, that there have been a lot of people who've left it. And because of that, it maybe wasn't at quite the healthiest state. And so as I left, I received a job offer from Grace as well. For less money, obviously. This is a smaller church. It is a smaller youth ministry. In no way was I expecting it to be more because I was kind of like, hey, I don't think you understand that I'm young and single and a student pastor. You shouldn't be paying me this much money. That type of thing in the other place. But as I left, you know, I just, I sat there and I'm like, hey, if I made a pro-con list, it's going to be an interesting look. And I was going to bring out a whiteboard and actually make a pro-con list, but I don't know how many of you guys were here the last time we used a whiteboard on stage, but Zach Winston and I, getting it off the stage, almost knocked the TV down and broke a wine glass that was on the table for communion. So we're not going to do that this morning. So just imagine with me a pro con list being on a whiteboard here. But when you look at it, it's like coming to grace means leaving my family. It means that instead of the max distance that I am from my close personal family as being about two hours to the closest that I am to anybody, which was my parents at the time, it was four and a half hours, and then six hours if I wanted to drive to Athens. And not to mention that, but also my friends and all of these things. And I'm choosing a smaller church that seems like the youth ministry might not be quite where the youth ministry was at this other place. And I'm choosing less money. And I mean, like, honestly, like, just like the definition of conless is having to work for Nate. But, you know, so here's all of these things. And I say that to say, when you look at every single decision that I had to make, when I compared the two, and when I made a pro-con list of what it would look like to go to Grace versus go to this other church in Georgia, from every human perspective, there was literally only one decision, and it was screaming at my face saying, you've got to take this job in Georgia. But here I am. And so, yeah, woo! Thank you for the claps. That's nice and funny. And I think that this first chapter of Ruth helps at least a little bit explain why it is that I'm here. To give a little background behind Ruth, basically what is going on in this time is they are living in Israel, God's chosen people in God's chosen land. You know, Moses had brought his people out of Egypt and, there weren't kings, and so it's instead the time of judges. And so God has given his people his law. These are the laws and the commandments that I ask you to abide by. And the judges were to make sure that those were abiding. I don't know. Whatever. Not important. So because there weren't kings, because there was no earthly ruler, then God kind of reigned supreme in a way that he doesn't. We don't quite see as much now where basically because these were his chosen people and the people who were called to live out his law and called to live out their lives in faith and to trust him and to worship him, when they were doing so, then times were good. Harvests were good. If they weren't, there might be times when armies come in and take over some of the land. There may be times of famine because people aren't living for God. It was just a different time, and it was how the culture was set up during the time of judges. Well, we were in one of those times as we jump into our story. It starts out talking about this woman named Naomi, and Naomi and her husband, Elimelech, were dealing in a time of famine to the point that they realized, hey, like, this is rough. And instead of choosing, instead of making the choice to say, I'm going to trust God to provide what he needs to provide for me and for my family, they instead decide they are going to leave. They're going to grab their two sons and they are going to go into another kingdom. Well, this other kingdom, we'll call it not a friendly. We'll say Moab is like an enemy nation, an enemy country. They're continuously at war. During this time, I read somewhere, it's not actually within the pages of Ruth, but that during this time, there was no love lost between these two kingdoms to the point of like war and battle and all of these things. And so for them to leave Israel and go seek refuge in a kingdom that was not only not God's chosen place and God's chosen people, but an enemy of God, people who were so against God and his people that they wanted to kill him. And so this is where they went. They settled in and Elimelech ends up dying. So Naomi loses her husband and now all she has is her sons. Malan and Chilian, her sons, marry two Moabite women. They marry Ruth and they marry Orpah. They live there for 10 years. And in those 10 years, neither one of them is able to conceive. Neither one of them is able to produce a seed that could lead to them continuing their familial line. In this culture, that was about the most important reason to get married was one, to take care of your family, but two, to raise up a son and raise up a family who is able to take care of your crops, who is able to grow, who's able to take care of your land, who is able to continue your family line. And when your family or when your parents get older to take care of them as well. So in these 10 years, there haven't been any children conceived and her sons die. Both of them die before they're able to conceive. And so now what we're left with, we're left with Naomi, Orpah, and Ruth together. And Naomi, in her overwhelming tragedy, finally realizes that she now has to look her shame in the face. She now has to look her fear and her bad decision in the face and say, I can't provide for myself here. There's nothing that I will be able to do here. I have to return home. She says, I know that the Lord would have me. I mean, she doesn't say this, but like essentially she says, I know the Lord would have me return home because I have to be able to survive. And so I'm going to have to look in the face of people who are probably going to look down on me and see me differently because I chose fear over faith 10 years ago. Coming back in her shame to say, you know what? God is asking me to be here. And so this is where I need to be because I need to survive and I need to be a part of where God has me, even if it means I'm going to be looked down upon. But on their way there, she looks at her daughters-in-law and she says, leave me. Don't be with me anymore. There's no reason for you to follow me back because if you do, if you follow me back, then I can assure you nothing good awaits you. They all weep and they plead with her like, no, we're going to stay with you. You need us. You need us for survival. There's no way you're going to be able to make it alone. But Naomi continues to press on and says, there's literally nothing there for you. I have no, you can't just marry some random man in Israel because you're a Moabite. They won't marry you. Also, I'm too old now to find a husband and much too old to find a husband where I can have another son and you can marry my next son so that you can continue the line and continue in this kinship. So don't go with me. Go back home. Go where your family is. Go where you're comfortable. Go where you know that you at least have some sort of hope at having a family and having a life because coming with me will be no life at all. At this, they all weep again. Clearly, there's so much love between these three women that it's just beautiful. But after it, Orpah says, okay. So she gives her love to these two, and she heads out. But Ruth says, no, I'm staying with you. She says, I don't care what you have to say with me. Stop pleading with me. I'm going to stay with you. And that's where we're actually going to pick up and we're actually going to read. It's in Ruth 1. we're going to stop. How incredible is that? How unbelievable is it that Ruth would say in the face of everything that Naomi is telling me, I'm going to stick with you, Naomi. Let's go, let's head back to the pro-con list. I want you, I want us to understand the implications of what she's saying. Because not only is she saying that by sticking with Naomi, that it probably means that she is going on towards loneliness and singleness, and that will be the end of her family line. Not only is she saying that, which is incredibly devastating, especially in this time, but I know that there's some that like in today's culture, especially some people like, yes, queen, you don't need no man, you know, but also take account that she is taking an elderly woman back and her goal and her mission and the only reason she's doing so is so that she can be a caretaker for this elderly woman who's not even her mom, just a mother-in-law that she has grown to love. So the rest of her life is going to be meant for just finding food wherever she's able to scrounge up food for a single woman without any land. But not only that, but she is a Moabite woman who is entering into Israel where she is hated. So she is walking into a place where she knows she is going to receive bitter racism. And it's alluded to multiple times later in Ruth that she is entering into a place that actually could be quite harmful to her, that she could experience, she could be hurt, injured, killed, or raped by any of these people because she is considered nothing as a single Moabite woman, as less than nothing by some of these people. What's waiting for her if she doesn't stay with Naomi? She gets to go back to her family. She gets to go back to her home. She gets to go back with the hope and encouragement that I can probably find another husband, that I can finally start a family even though I wasn't able to before. There is no good, satisfactory reason why she should stay with Naomi except that, one, she was being nice to help Naomi out, but I think that what Ruth realized and what Ruth knew in her heart, the reason why it didn't matter how long the list of cons were for entering and how long the pros of going back to her kingdom were. I think she knew in her heart what Daniel knew and what Daniel, I mean, excuse me, Daniel, what David wrote in Psalms 84.10 when he says, better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. I think what she realized and what she knew without a shadow of a doubt is that the Lord had her staying with Naomi. And that is the only thing that mattered. When I was trying to decide, honestly, I'm going to be honest with you, I wasn't ever really trying to decide. Every stop that I made, every interaction that I had, every single part of my weekend in Raleigh was the Lord yelling at me, Kyle, this is where I have you. And I don't at all mean to, and please do not hear me at all, likening my experience coming to Raleigh with Ruth's experience of giving up her entire life to be a single caretaking woman who is ending her seed. Because I came here and I was overwhelmingly blessed. And I came here with immense hope at what was to come. She left without any hope except that if I am in the will of God, then I know there is always hope because I know that there is no place better to be than inside the will of God than anywhere else. I know for me, I was incredibly thankful because this would have been a very difficult decision for me had God not been literally screaming in my face, this is where I have you. And I don't mean to say that I haven't experienced drawbacks and sadness at the times that I have to miss holidays or birthdays or weddings or the like because my friends and my family are all in Georgia. There are certainly negatives to being in Raleigh versus having taken that job in Georgia, but I promise you that every day I get to wake up knowing that because I chose, honestly, because the Lord made it literally impossible for me to choose anything else, but I got to be in the will of God and it has been unbelievable the blessings that have come from getting to see what it looks like to be, to just choose the will of God. And the point of this morning isn't to look at each one of you guys and say, hey, time to leave your family, time to leave your homes, time to go to another state and work for another Nate. You know, like the purpose of this is not, it's time to give up everything that you hold dear so that you can follow God or it's time to, you know, give up your job or your career or your friends or whatever. Now, hear me saying, it's not not that. Because if the Lord is working in your life and asking you to do so, then that's a conversation to have. And that is a prayer that needs to be thrown out. But every single day, we are faced with decisions on whether we want to act in faith, whether we want to choose faith in this interaction that we have, in this way that we think about something, with the way that we spend our time, with the things that we value. We are having an interaction in our heads on whether or not we are going to choose faith or we are going to choose ourselves. Fear, worry, comfort, all of those types of things because it's a lot easier to make the decision that seems earthly like a good decision. But this morning, what I'm asking you, well, honestly, what I'm telling you is I I am a hundred percent sure that there is no better place to be than inside of the will of God. In big ways, but in small little decisions. When you're in your small group and it feels like it's uncomfortable for me to be honest and to be open and to be vulnerable with these people that are also my friends and I don't know how they'll react to me, that you choose faith and you say, I know that this is best for me and I know that these people, if they can walk beside me knowing me and my full self, then I promise you I will have a better life and a better faith and I will experience more joy. And so I am going to look that fear of how people will see me in the face and say no, because I'm going to be vulnerable and I'm going to be open in this small group and with these friends. Maybe you have co-workers or you have friends that you know need to hear who God is, but you're afraid of how they'll react to you or you're afraid that they'll look at you different or see you different or honestly, you're afraid of the discomfort of having to figure it out or you're just afraid because it's just scary in general to do something like that. Maybe you have a sin that's eating your lunch or overwhelming you, and you're so afraid to open up about it. You're so afraid to fight it because you're so rested in it that it's become the norm, and it's become your comfort, and it's become your reliance, and you're terrified of getting rid of it, and you're even more terrified of people finding out, but you know that as soon as you're able to open up and able to share this sin with somebody that you can maybe for once and for all kick this sin because you have somebody being accountable to you for it. Maybe you need to change your priorities from the fact that obviously we live in a culture where success and our jobs and the money and all of these things are what we should be pursuing and what we should be valuing. But maybe we decide, you know what? I'm going to value God over all of that. And I'm going to make my decisions that I make for God and for his glory and out of where his will is for my life and not simply what is best for my career and my life personally. I'll give the opposite of the student ones and I'll just talk to the parents now because this is one we talk about in students a lot, but parents. Maybe it means that you need to look culture in the face and say, you know what? I know that all these parents are going to look down on me, but I'm going to value my kids' spiritual life and their spiritual walk and their ability to come to church and to be a part of a church community. I'm going to value that more than I value their education and their athletic career and future. I'm going to value their future as someone who grows spiritually and is spiritually healthy and full that also seeks after being inside of the will of God. There are very easy arguments to fight against all of these. There are probably good spiritual arguments to fight against any of these hard decisions where the Lord is asking you to step out in faith. That's why it's faith. Last week we sang, I'm no longer a slave to fear, but I'm a child of God. And I've thought before, is fear really that big of a thing now versus Bible times? Yes. If you aren't experiencing any fear or any worry when it comes to living out your faith, then my question for you is, is it because your faith is so strong and who God has called you to be, and so at every waking moment, every decision is for him, or are you unwilling to step out in faith enough to where fear isn't even an impact or isn't even a factor? I often realize about myself that it's the latter. I don't lack fear because of my faith. I avoid fear at the expense of not doing anything that requires me stepping out in faith. May we not do that this morning. May we not do that this week. May we not do that in our lives. And may we instead just understand the joy and the goodness of God and allow that to bring about a freedom in our hearts to say yes to God at any and every turn, even if it makes literally no sense to us, even if it makes no sense to anybody else around us. Let's pray. God, thank you for bringing us here this morning. God, thank you for an unbelievably beautiful depiction of faith in the book of Ruth, God. Just in Ruth 1, we got three more chapters. Lord, I know that we're not always asked to give up our entire lives and everything about ourselves to follow you and to say yes to you. But God, what I also know is every single day we are faced with choices of whether we say yes to you and your will, or we say yes to us and ours. God, may we have the freedom and the love and the joy and the goodness that we have experienced from you. May that shape our decisions and boldness to say yes to you every single time. God, we love you so much. Amen.