Sermons tagged with Hope

Grace, this week there's a man named George Floyd who was killed by a police officer. George was a black man, and you can't help but think that his race was a white woman who, in a racially fueled fear, weaponized the black man's race against him in a threat. And those instances are the most recent that have come into the national conscience. But there are just more instances in a long string of events that have happened that have pointed to the fact that we live in a culture with simmering racial tension. We live in a place where racial inequality is real. And I didn't think it would be right to get up here and just start preaching about Acts as if those things hadn't happened this week. I didn't think it would be right to meet together as together as we can be on a Sunday morning now and not acknowledge those things and pray for the racial divide and the wounds in our country to heal. And I didn't think it would be right to start this Sunday as a church and not earnestly ask our God together, what can we do, what can grace do to be a part of healing this divide? What portions of it as a greatly and majorly lily-white congregation can we own? And how can we contribute to closing the divide that exists in our culture? So I wanted to take a minute as we begin and pray for George Floyd and his family and pray for the racial divide in our country and pray for wisdom, for grace, as we seek to find how the Lord would have us be an active part of the healing of these wounds. So would you please pray with me? Father, our hearts are broken that we live in a place where things like this happen. Our hearts are broken that these incidents are not isolated. They're just the ones that we see. We know that you see all the incidents. We know that you have seen all the injustice. And we know that your heart breaks over injustice far more than ours ever could. So Father, first we pray for your heart in the face of these things. Break ours with yours. Father, we pray for the family of George Floyd. We ask that you would bring a healing that only you could bring. We pray for the attitudes that underlie the fear of Amy Cooper. And ask that you would solve those and bring those to the fore so that we might confront them and deal with them with equanimity and with justice and with grace. And Father, we ask that you would guide the partners and the leadership of grace and show us how we are to contribute to closing this divide and healing these wounds. Show us the path forward as we grieve, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen. All right. This morning is part two of a sermon that I'm calling Early Church Distinctives. Last week was part one. Hopefully you have your notes and you've got them numbered one through three. This week is going to be four, five, six, and seven. And last week I opened up with a short fictional story, really a parable, about a boy that was firing arrows at a barn and the arrows would land in the midst of a sea of red and then he would walk up and paint a target around the arrow and go, look, I hit the bullseye. And we talked about how, you know, this happens and this is applicable in a lot of organizations and institutions. It's a good parable about the dangers of mission drift. And often we start things without even knowing what we're going for, without even knowing what the goal is, without even knowing what the target is. And so we are asking last week as a church, how do we know that we're hitting the target? Another way to think about it is if Jesus and Paul were to come into the church on a Sunday morning when that's allowed, would they look around grace and everything that we're doing and say, yeah, you guys are nailing it. This is exactly what you're supposed to be doing. This is the target that we painted for you. So last week we asked the question, how do we know that we're hitting that target? How do we know that what we're doing as Grace is right? That Sunday mornings and small groups and children's ministry and student ministry and the philanthropic ministries that we do, how do we know that all that is right and good? Well, in Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47, we have a seminal passage that defines the early church. It paints the target for us. It shows us these are the things that the early church was characterized by. What's going on in the passage is Jesus has gone into heaven. He's left the disciples with the keys to the kingdom. They've received the Holy Spirit. They went out and they preached to thousands of people this gospel of repentance. Repent of who you thought Jesus was when you killed him and accept and walk in faith in the fact that Jesus and when he challenged them to repentance, it says about 3,000 were added to their number. And then those 3,000 formed the church. And right after that, we get Acts 2, 42 through 47, and it tells us the very things that defined the church. So last week, we looked at the first three distinctives that we see as defining the early church. This week, I want to look at the next four, four, five, six, and seven. And we said last week, there's different ways to group these together. You could pull out four distinctives or nine, but we're doing seven. And so last week we talked about the fact that they were devoted to the apostles' teaching, meaning they were eager learners. They were devoted to fellowship, meaning they were devoted to Christ-centered time together, and they were devoted to prayers, meaning that they were committed to the spiritual disciplines that they expressed in that day. So this week, as we continue to ask, how do we know if we're doing it right? What does God expect of his church? I want to continue to look at these distinctives that define the early church. By way of review, I wanted to take a minute and read the breaking of bread at the prayers. This week I want to start out by looking at that phrase that they sold all that they had in common and gave to any who had need. And we want to sum that up by saying that the fourth distinctive, if you're keeping your list there, is that they were known for generosity. They were known for their generosity. And it's interesting what's happening in this passage because what's literally happening is as the church is formed, everybody is selling whatever they have and giving it to the church leadership and saying, here, this is for the greater good. You guys use it for whatever you need to use it for. Obviously, my family's going to have some needs, but we trust you to provide for those. Here's everything that we own. Please use it to provide for everyone here, which is a super high bar. That's really daunting. Can you imagine if when we had our new members class at Grace, when we did Discover Grace and we talked all about Grace and who we are, and then we got to the end of it and it was like, okay, if you want to be a partner, here are the requirements. You know, you need to commit to Sunday morning attendance. You should be a believer. We'd like to see you in a small group. Also, small thing, if you could just kind of sell everything that you have and write a check to the elders, we'll take it from here. That would be a pretty tough sell. That's a pretty tall order. But to understand what's happening here, we need to feel the freedom to apply the principle and not necessarily the practice, because the principle is far more important. First, we need to understand what's happening in ancient Israel, in Israel at the time of Christ. Israel is what we would think of as a third world country. There's lots of joblessness. There's lots of poverty. There's lots of hunger. There's lots of suffering. There's no medical system really to speak of. And so suffering and need and want in Jerusalem was great. And while it was great, there was no infrastructure to provide for those who had fallen through the cracks of society. And what we understand is that God has intentionally designed the institution of the church to undergird society as a safety net to catch those who have fallen through the cracks of familial care. God first assigns to care for others. He first assigns family to care for family. This is why over and over again in Scripture, God makes a point of saying that if you love me, if you want to express true religion, then you'll care for the widows and the orphans. We see this in James in the New Testament, that true religion is to care for the widows and the orphans. We see it in Isaiah in the Old Testament, where God says, if you really want to please me, then plead the cause of the fatherless and take up the case of the widow. And what he's saying there is, and even in Deuteronomy when he says, look out for the sojourners, for the aliens, for the ones that don't have a family and can't support themselves, what he's saying in all that is, the church needs to serve in society as a safety net to care for those who fall through the cracks of familial care. We're supposed to be there and be helping them. And when there is a need, we are supposed to meet it. God has designed the church as an institutional safety net for society. And so in that time, there was no government. There was no Medicare. There was no welfare. There was no food stamps. There was no health care. There was none of that. And so the church was the only hope for the person who didn't have a family and was in need and couldn't support themselves. But now in our culture, thankfully, we have another safety net, which is the government. We do have a societal infrastructure to watch out for people who fall through the cracks of familial care. But still, the church undergirds all of that, and people who cannot be cared for by their family and cannot be cared for by the government, God looks at us, the church, and says, now you, you care for them. So we're still there, and it's still our responsibility, which is why the point from this part of the passage is that we need to be generous. We need to be conduits of God's generosity. We need to have a grieving heart for those who hurt and reach out to help those who can't help themselves. We need to be glad providers for those that are not provided for by their family or provided for by the government. We need to rally around them and be generous in spirits and be conduits of God's generosity. Another way to think of it perhaps is like this. When I became a senior pastor, I learned eventually about a thing called a designated giving fund. I'd really never heard of that before. It might shock you guys to know that I'm not a financial titan. I don't really know all the ins and outs of all that stuff. It's all news to me. I just try to spend less than what I make. That's pretty much it. But I found out that there's these things called designated giving funds. And how this works is you have money and you give a portion of that money to this fund that a company or an individual manages. And a lot of people will give money to this individual and they manage all the money in a fund. And that money is earmarked for charitable donations, charitable causes. And whoever you give your money to, they just sit on it and they hold it for however long you want to. And then when something pricks your heart, when something touches you, when you see a need that you'd like to meet, you pick up the phone or you type the email and you let the person managing your money know, hey, I would like you to send this much money to this person because they need it. This matters to me. I'd like you to allocate my resources to that person or that institution for those people. That's how a designated giving fund works fundamentally. And what it's made me realize is that we're all God's designated giving funds. That's what stewardship is. We've heard about this idea of stewardship before, that everything we have is God's and not our own. We've heard about that. But the more I thought about it this week, I've realized we're all God's designated giving funds. He allocates a portion of money to us. He entrusts it to us. And every now and again, he picks up the phone or he writes the email and he taps us on the shoulder and he says, hey, this thing matters to me. I'd like you to allocate some of those resources to them. I'd like you to allocate some of those resources to these people. That's the principle of what's happening here in Acts chapter 2, is they're expressing the Lord's generosity. And I think increasingly, and I know that that's a tall order, and I know that you may be very far away from viewing everything you have as really belonging to God. And that's, I think, a progressive revelation as we understand God. But I think one of the marks of spiritual maturity in a church and in an individual is when the church and when the person understands that we're really just designated giving funds for God. He's allocated a portion of his resources to us as individuals and to us as a church. And every now and again, he taps us on the shoulder and he says, hey, this matters to me. I'd like you to shift some of those resources over there to them. And that's how we're to serve. It's the mark of the church to be generous. The fifth distinctive that I see in this text is that they were committed to gathering. It says they gathered day by day in the temple courts. It's this old school way of church. You know, when I grew up, we were there every time the doors were open. We went Sunday morning, we went Sunday night, we went Wednesday night, every week. That was the deal. The doors were open, we were there. That's kind of old school church. Now, increasingly, if someone is a regular church attender, it means they come to church maybe twice a month. But the early church was committed to the gathering. It mattered to them. It mattered to them to come together when they were able to be in the temple learning and praising and fellowshipping together. The early church intuitively and instinctively understood the power and efficacy of being around one another, the power and the efficacy of the gathering. This is why in Hebrews we're told to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. Because there's something special about being in the same place. And if nothing else, that's what this time of pandemic and isolation has taught us. Across the board, across the country, almost universally, church engagement and virtual attendance is declining. And as we've talked about that as a staff, and I've talked about that with the elders, I've just made the point that, you know, online church, this ability to participate in church in our sweatpants and the comfort of our own home, that's been a thing for at least 15 years, maybe longer. And there's a reason why it hasn't taken off. There's a reason why it hasn't overtaken in-person church. Because even now in the 21st century, we understand that there's a power and an efficacy that's difficult to capture in simply being together, in experiencing the teaching together, in laughing together, in and worshiping together and sharing together in the lobby, we understand that that is important. It's why at Grace, if you do come to a Discover Grace class, that one of the things we do ask our partners to commit to is to prioritize Sunday morning service. Because we believe that the gathering matters. And I can't wait until we are able to gather again. It's a distinctive of the early church and it ought to define our church. The sixth distinctive is the one that, of all of them, probably fires me up the most. I get so excited about this, and I think that it defines the early church. They were defined by communion and community. They were defined by communion and community. We see in verse 42 that they were devoted to the breaking of bread. And then again in 46 that they gathered in one another's homes and they broke bread together. It happens two times. And then all throughout this passage, we see they, they, they, collective, collective, collective. It's always about others. And the church is a fundamentally communal institution. It is fundamentally involved with others. I've said often it is impossible to live out the Christian life on an island. It is impossible to grow closer to Jesus void of the influence of others in your life. We absolutely, our souls need to be surrounded by godly Christian community. That's why at Grace, our mission statement is to connect people to Jesus and to connect people to people because we believe that we cannot deepen our connection with Jesus void of connections with others. And I believe this so fervently that I would say to you, if you're listening this morning and you're not sure that you have Christian community in your life, ignore everything else that I'm saying. Put it all on the back burner. Just take it and set it aside for a later date and get Christian community in your life. Stop right now. Quit listening to me and pray that God would provide for you a community of faith who supports you, who love you, who have permission to tell you the truth about yourself and to tell you what Jesus says about you. We desperately need Christian community in our life. And the early church was a communal thing, and that persists to this day. But it wasn't just about community. It was about communion. We see that phrase, the breaking of bread, and we automatically think that this is an expression of community and hospitality, and it is. And for all of history, for all of history, that has been how we've expressed hospitality. Food has been the fundamental way that we've expressed community. Once you get to know somebody a little bit, maybe you have a common activity or something, but eventually you're going to say, hey, let's grab lunch. Let's get the wives together and let's go to dinner. Let's get the families together and y'all come over. And increasingly that means we go somewhere and we experience a food together, but the most intimate time, the most special times are when people are invited over to the home. When you invite people into your home, there's a special care taken. You clean up the house. You let them know that you care about them, that they matter to you. You try to think of the special thing that they like, of the appetizer that they went nuts over the last time, of the dessert that you can remember in conversation that they said they like. If you're making steaks and there's somebody who doesn't like steak, you make sure and you have chicken to make them feel thought for and cared for. You make sure that there's something for their kids so that they know that their kid is important to you as well. There's this special power of hospitality, of welcoming people into our homes and expressing community in that way. And when the tradition of communion started, that's where it started. It started in someone's home as Jesus and the disciples sat around and broke bread together. They sat around and they were having a meal together. They were expressing community. It was the Passover supper. And you know, we observe communion in our churches. Most churches observe it like grace does. At grace, we do it once a month in the service. The elders stand on either side at the end of the sermon. I'll go through the story of communion and when it started and we'll have a particular thought that we go with. Then we spend some time in prayer and then we line up and we get we get the bread, and we dip it, and we go back to our seats, and it's an austere, respectful time, and that's right and good. But communion didn't start that way. Communion started in community. Communion started around a table. When Jesus took the bread, and he looked at the disciples, and and he broke it and he began to hand it out. And this was not an unusual practice. Every home didn't have a knife. The way that you serve bread was to take the loaf and tear off a portion of it and give it to your guests. So what Jesus did was not a new thing. This wasn't unusual to the disciples or anyone else who could have seen it. It was a ubiquitous, common part of the meal. And in this moment, Jesus takes the thing that we do every time we express community and he imbues it with purpose. And he says, every time you do this, do what? Line up in church and get in the line and tear off the bread and dip it in the wine and spend some time praying? No, not that. Every time you do this, every time you gather in community with me as your focus and you break bread, you serve the bread to the people who are in your house. This common activity that was mundane until this moment. Jesus says, every time you do this from now on, I want you to remember me. I want you to remember that I'm the bread, that I'm the bread of life, that my body was broken for you. Similarly, he takes the wine and he pours it. It's a totally common mundane activity. It happens in every dinner party ever where the host takes the glasses and pours the drink. And Jesus says, whenever you do this, whenever you do what? Gather in church and dip the bread in the wine? No, whenever you experience community together and when you serve the drinks, I want you to stop and remember me and feel that and see that as my blood that is poured out for you. Remember my crucifixion and that I am the tie that binds here and that I am what brings you in common with one another and that I am what reconciles you with the heavenly Father. Remember that. Communion didn't start in church buildings. It started at dinner tables. It started in community. And Jesus took these mundane expressions that are a part of every communal gathering around the table, and he said, from now on, when you do these things, don't just let them be a passive thing where you just serve the bread and you serve the drinks and you move on. I want you to stop and I want you to remember me. That's communion. Communion is always an expression of community. Communion always draws us into community and community should always focus on communion. So I think the challenge for us at Grace, who love community very much, we're real good at community. That's one of my favorite things about this church. We love having people over. We love getting together. But the challenge for us is when we do, when that bread is served and when it's broken, when the drinks are poured, it is right and good and obedient to pause and to pray and to say, Jesus, thank you that you are this bread. Thank you that you are this drink. Thank you that you make tonight possible and that you make our relationship with you possible. We're having fun here tonight, Jesus, but we want to pause and we want to say thank you for making this possible and we want to remember you because that's the instruction of communion. Not once a month when you're in church, come to the front and take the bread and dip it in the wine. That is a shadow. That is a mimicry of the actual communion. And it is right and good to do it in church. But it is forgetful and wrong if we don't do it together in community. So let the challenge be to grace as we commune, as we gather, as we express hospitality and we all begin to fling our doors back open and have people over. Can we please take a moment in those times and do things in remembrance of Christ and make communion more a part of our community. Finally, the seventh distinctive is that this church had a contagious joy. I want to read for you the last portion of scripture so that you kind of know what I'm talking about. It says, They gathered together every day. They invited people into their homes. It's not a stretch to think that they would just invite their neighbors in too because there's a meal and you should come have fun with us. They gathered in the temple courts. They pooled their resources and gave to anyone who had need. No doubt that brought people in who had need, who experienced this genuine community and love for the first time in their life. And then in all of that, as they met with glad and happy hearts, they praised their God and it said that they won favor with all the people. Not just the people of the church, but the people around them, which means that the people of Jerusalem at large began to take notice of this infectious community of joy that was the early church. And because they began to take notice of that, because they won favor with the people surrounding them simply by being an expression of the church and exuding that contagious joy, because people saw that, this passage ends with, and the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. Their contagious and infectious joy led to the salvation of souls. It's really interesting to me that two weeks ago I talked in Acts 2 about the fundamental and foundational repentance of the church. It's a confession that I've been wrong about who I thought Jesus was and I'm going to walk in the belief that he is who he says he is. And out of that confession and repentance, 3,000 people were added to that number. And now in Acts 2, 42 through 47, we see more people being added to their numbers. And the confession and repentance is what drew people in at the beginning, but now at this point in the church, what's now drawing people in? Now what's drawing people in is the favor that their infectious joy is winning with all people. Now what we're seeing is the church cranking on all cylinders. We're seeing the results of what happens when people are devoted to the apostles' teaching and are eager learners, when they're devoted to fellowship in Christ and their time together, when they're defined by community and communion, when they're known for their generosity, when they're experiencing joy, and all of that is working together to cause the people of Jerusalem to look at the church and go, what's going on over there? That's different. I want to be a part of that. That's why when we have Grace's big night out, whenever we can do that again, I cannot wait. I always tell Compass Rose where we have them. They say, do you want to just rent it out? Should we shut it down and just invite Grace people? I always say, no way. I want the other folks of Raleigh to see our community because I believe our community is infectious. This is how the church ought to work. This is how we draw people in. And I believe, Grace, I absolutely do, that even though we are in a time of trial right now because we can't meet together, that as soon as we can fling the doors open and as we move forward, I think grace is going to be stronger than it ever has. And I think if we will commit ourselves to these seven distinctives, that if we will be eager learners, that if we will devote ourselves to Christ-centered time together, that if we will be known for our generosity, committed to spiritual disciplines, if we will be committed to the gathering, if we will see the importance of community and communion, I think if we will do all those things, it will produce in us an infectious and contagious joy that the people of Raleigh will notice and come to. And I hope that's what we will be. I hope that we will be a church in the 21st century that embodies all the distinctives of the church of the first century. And I'm so excited to see where we get to go from here when this season of quarantine is over. Let me pray for us. Father, you are so good to us. We can't fathom how you love us. We can't fathom how you look out for us. We are collectively thrilled that we get to be participants in your church, in your kingdom, in your bride that you came to rescue. Thank you for Jesus, who is the tie that binds us together and reconciles us to you. God, I pray that we would be every bit as unflinchingly the church in the 21st century as they were in the first century. Give us boldness to go where you would have us go. Give us zeal and energy to get there. Give us a devotion to you to sustain us. Give us an infectious joy to draw others in. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Happy Easter, Grace. This is the weirdest Easter ever, isn't it? None of us have ever experienced an Easter like this before, and I don't think we ever will again. It makes me so sad because Easter is my favorite holiday. I love Easter. I love getting to see everybody. I love the energy in the lobby and in the auditorium. I love getting to hug everyone's neck and seeing how everyone is dressed and meeting children and parents and grandparents and family. It's just, it's such a great holiday. And Easter is a boisterous holiday. It's celebratory. It's exuberant. It celebrates the victory of victories. But it just doesn't feel like Easter right now. It doesn't feel like Easter at this time in our culture and in our community. We don't feel exuberant. We don't feel boisterous. We feel anxious. We feel unsure. For many of us, it's hard to see a path forward on the other side of COVID and quarantine and economic depression. To have a job right now, if you have one at all, is to have done the mental math of how long can my company continue to pay me? And once that money runs out and they have to make cuts, where do I sit in the spectrum of people in my office? We look over the cubicles and think I'm more valuable than that person. That person's probably going to have a job longer than I do. I think to be employed is to have had to have done that math. I talked to a buddy just last week who said, yeah, man, I have a job now, but I really don't know how much longer they can continue to pay me. That's a difficult stress to be in. And then I think of the people on the other side of that stress, the folks right now who own businesses, who are running companies. And I think, gosh, that's a difficult decision that they have to make. They're walking down that path as well, trying to figure out who can we keep and how long can I keep them and how long can we keep things afloat. Others are furloughed and that's fearful and that's fraught with uncertainty. We may not see a path forward there because will the job that we were relieved of be there when things go back to normal and what will normal look like? Or if you're just unemployed and you're facing the idea of trying to get a job once the economy can get turned back on, man, we're facing job loss at an unprecedented rate. The unemployment rate is close to that of the Great Depression. So a lot of us are thinking, even if I can get back into the job market, what is the competition for those jobs going to look like? These are very real stresses. These are very real fears and sources of anxiety. And then if we think about a path forward, that's uncertain too because what does it look like when we just turn the spigot back on and we can all come out of our caves and get haircuts and see each other and not wear sweatpants anymore? What does that look like? I've talked to parents that are concerned about how this is impacting their kids. I know for me, my daughter Lily is asking questions like, Dad, what is a virus? What do viruses do? There's caution tape over our neighborhood playground right now and every time we go by it, she says, it makes me so sad that the playground is closed. And she doesn't understand, and she's sad that she can't see her friends. I'm sad I can't play with my friends. And what's it going to look like when things are normal again? I think a lot of us are facing the reality that the impact of COVID and what we're walking through right now is going to be more protracted than we ever anticipated. And so the truth of it is right now we don't feel like Easter. It doesn't feel like spring. We feel a lot more like the people of Israel that Isaiah is talking to in the book of the Bible that he wrote. In the Old Testament, there's a book called Isaiah. It's one of the greatest books of prophecy ever written. It's a phenomenal book. And he's writing it to an Israelite people who are God's chosen people. They're God's children. They're his chosen ones. And they wear that like a badge of honor. And they should because God has promised them His protection. And in those promises, He's also promised them that He would grant them land, that it would be what we know of as the modern nation of Israel. That would be theirs forever. Yet in the time of Isaiah, several hundred years before Jesus comes on the scene, they do not inhabit the land of Israel. They're actually enslaved by the Babylonians. They're enslaved, they feel abandoned, they feel forgotten, and they're abused. And for many of them, they were hopeless. They're thousands of miles away from the land that was promised to them. Many of them feel abandoned by their God. God, if you're so good, if you're so real, if you're looking out for us, then why are we here? Why are we growing up as generations of slaves? They felt hopeless. They felt anxious. They were very unsure of their path forward and they didn't even know what normal could potentially look like. And so as I thought about the Easter message, I thought it was more appropriate to look at this verse in Isaiah than it was to start off with the resurrection story and the victory that it celebrates because we feel a lot more like the people in Israel or like the Israelites than we feel victorious right now. And it's to these people, these people who felt hopeless, these people who didn't see a path forward, that God gives this great chapter in Isaiah 43. I would encourage you to read the whole chapter of Isaiah 43 and see the heart and the promises of God brought forth in that chapter. But in the 19th verse, God makes this promise. He gives His children this assurance that I think is so comforting and so powerful and so wonderful that it's where I wanted to land for us this morning. And I can't speak to the posture of God during this passage. I can't speak to his emotions because the scriptures don't reveal much about it. But if you'll allow me the license to make a guess, I picture God in this passage as a good and kind and loving father. I know that when I comfort Lily, I bring her up into my lap and I bring her close to me and I tell her that everything's going to be okay and I try to, I use a calm voice and I try to reassure her and I kind of picture God collectively doing that with his children in this verse. In Isaiah 43, verse 19, God says to his children who are hurting and broken and scared and unsure. He says, behold, I am doing a new thing. Even now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it? I will make paths in the wilderness and streams in the desert. I love that verse. What a wonderful verse of comfort to his children. To bring them up onto his lap, to comfort them, to embrace them, to bring them into himself and say, I know that you feel hopeless, but I'm going to give you hope. I know that you feel forgotten, but I see you and I remember you. I know that you feel abandoned, but you're not abandoned. Even now, even though you don't see it, I'm working for you. Don't you see it now? If you look carefully, can't you see the work that I'm doing for you? Even in a very practical way, they were surrounded by thousands of miles of wilderness. There was all this uncharted territory between them and the land that God had promised to them. And God says, I will make a path through that wilderness. And even though that wilderness is surrounded by desert, I will make streams in that desert to sustain you. I love the message there in Isaiah 43, 19, where God says, hey, I'm doing a new thing. I'm going to make a path for you. I'm going to make streams in the desert. I'm going to make the impossible possible. I know you don't see a way out. I know that you feel forgotten. I know that you even feel betrayed by me, but I have not forgotten you. I remember you and I see you. And I think it's important to note that these people have every right to wonder, man, has God forgotten about us? Has God forgotten about me? He made me these promises. I've done all the right things. Is he still looking out for me? And God in Isaiah 43, 19 says, yeah, I am. I still care about you. And I heard one time that a good book or a good verse is 50% content and 50% timing. It depends on when it encounters you in your life, what's going on in your life. And that's maybe why this verse is so powerful for me because I remember when I encountered this verse and when God made a new path for me in my life. I have proof that this verse is true and that the heart of God stays true for His children. In October of 2014, and I've told this story to grace people before, so I won't belabor it, but for those of you who may not be aware of this part of my story, in October of 2014, Jen and I found out that we were pregnant. And we had struggled for many years to get pregnant. It was the prayer and the cry of our heart that God would allow us to be parents. And we had people and communities praying around us. It was an incredible movement of God and always encouraging to know that these people were looking out for us. And in October of 2014, we found out that we were pregnant. And we were exuberant. We were so happy. I can't remember joy like that. But in early December of 2014, we learned that we had miscarried. And in our life, the way that things have gone for us, that was the deepest, most profound sadness we'd ever had to walk through. I felt broken. And even though I wouldn't have admitted it at the time, I was mad at God. I felt abandoned by him. I was looking at all these other people who had kids and had families, and I would think arrogantly, why did they get a family? What have they done? I've organized my life around you, God. This isn't fair. But I was just mad at God, and I was just flailing and thrashing. And in the midst of that, I got asked to preach a sermon. I was on staff at a church, and the new year was coming, and that was typically a time when I got asked to preach. And so I got asked to preach in the beginning of January. And I wanted to be a good soldier. I wanted to do my part, and so I agreed to do it. But I didn't want to preach. I was mad at God. I don't want to get up there and start talking about his truths. And so in all that, I went to Jen, my wife, and I said, hey, I have to preach in a couple of weeks. What should I preach about? And she showed me this verse in Isaiah. She pointed it out to me in her Bible. And she said, I need you to preach on this verse. I need you to preach on a new thing because that's what I need. And I said, okay. And I wrote her a sermon. And it's the only time in my life that I can remember writing a sermon for one person where I thought, I hope the rest of you get something out of this. But for me, I just hope that this encourages my wife. And I wrote it for her. And even, can I just tell you, even as I preached it, I didn't believe it. I didn't, I didn't, I was preaching about God doing a new thing and I didn't want a new thing. I wanted my old thing back, that baby that we had. I was convinced it was a boy and his name was going to be Sam. And I didn't want a new baby, I wanted Sam. But I preached it. And I got through it. And we just kind of muddled on. But around Mother's Day of that year, we found out that we were pregnant again. It was joy of joys. And that pregnancy is what gave us Lily. This is my daughter Lily right here. This week, I taught her to ride a bike. She looks amazing in that helmet. I wish all of you could have heard her screaming and laughing and exclaiming and giggling at her ability to ride a bike. It was incredible. It was one of the gifts of this COVID time that we have that part to ourselves where she can learn. And you know, every time I look at Lily, I'm reminded that she's my new thing. She's my new path. Every time I hold on to her, every time I help her fall asleep, every time I pray for her, I remember how I felt in December of 2014, and I hold on to this new thing that God did for us. I hold on to this new path that he made for us that I would never not choose, that I'm so grateful for. Lily is my reminder that God continues to make new paths. And it may seem weird that this is what I'm talking about on Easter, that it's some obscure verse in the Old Testament, but I wanted to help you see how Lily is my reminder that God still makes new paths because I believe that Easter stands out throughout all of time as God's yearly reminder that he continues to make new paths. Isn't that what Easter is? Isn't that what the disciples stumbled upon? The story of Easter is that Jesus was crucified on Friday and he was put into a grave And as the body of our Savior went into that grave, all hopes of a future went into it with him. That grave, that tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea was a dead end. There was no paths out of there. It was it. There was hopelessness in that tomb. And as the disciples sat around quarantined, ironically, on Saturday, they had no hope. They sat in the middle of a dead end. They were anxious and unsure of a path forward, just like us and just like God's children of Israel in the nation of Babylon when Isaiah was writing. And then on Sunday, on Easter morning, Mary goes to the tomb and she hears maybe the greatest sentence that's ever been uttered in history by the angel of God who is at the tomb. And he says to her, why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen. Jesus is risen. And in that moment, what we see is that all of history turns on its axis and God has won the victory of victories. He has conquered death and hell with the resurrection of his son. He has restored us to a relationship with him. What our sin broke, that death and resurrection repaired. And because of Easter, there are no dead ends. Because of Easter, there are always new paths. Easter itself is a new path where Mary walked into that tomb feeling as if she was entering into a dead end, into a hopeless situation with no path forward. And God, in that moment, I can almost hear Him whispering, Behold, the new thing, the new path, the stream in the desert. And because of Easter every year, we're reminded death has no sting. Because of Easter, we have my favorite quote that says, for we are not given to despair, for we are the Easter people, and hallelujah is our song. There is no pandemic. There is no death. There is no disease. There is no bad news. There is no tragedy that can overcome the victory and the joy of Easter. And isn't it great? Isn't it remarkable? I wish that we could be together for Easter. I wish that we could celebrate this as a family. But isn't it wonderful that in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, in the middle of isolation and global uncertainty and anxiety, God has placed this most holy and high of holidays to remind us, I still make new paths. I still do new things. You may not see a path forward, but I do. You may not know what's going to happen next, but I do. You may feel abandoned by God. You may feel let down by God. You may be looking around going, God, I've done all the right things, man. I've tried to be nice to my wife. I've tried to be nice to my kids. I've tried to support my husband. I've tried to give when I can. We try to be generous people and my life feels like it's falling apart. And where are you, God? And Easter is his reminder for us that he's right here. Can I also tell you that that message, that simple message that God still makes new paths, he still makes old things new, he still makes beauty out of ashes is why we're filming here in this place. It's why we've chosen this park, not just to make it springy for Easter, not just to remind us of the promises that nature brings in at the end of every winter, but because this park used to be a city dump. This is the park that used to be the landfill for Raleigh. This place, where I am, everything here used to be filled with trash and fire. It was undesirable. It was the last place anyone or anything wanted to end up. This place was one big dead end. And God, in His goodness, has made it beautiful again. He has literally laid new paths in this place that families walk on and enjoy. There's a playground that children play on. This has become one of the prettiest places in the whole city. And to me, it's a reminder and a symbol of the fact that God still makes new paths. So if you need a reminder, if you need some encouragement during this Easter season, come out here, walk around, look at the greenery, experience the beauty, and be reminded this Easter that even as you sit at home, even as some of us are fraught with uncertainty, even though it might feel silly to be all dressed up for Easter and still sitting on our couch, just remember, God still makes new paths. The same God that made one for Israel, that has made one for you in the past, that has made this place beautiful, will make a new path for you too. And isn't God good for placing that yearly reminder in the middle of our uncertainty? Let's pray. Father, you're good. You're good even when we don't know how. Even when we don't know how everything's going to work out. Even when it's hard to see that goodness sometimes. We know that you're good. Father, thank you for conquering death for us. Thank you for conquering tragedy for us. God, I lift up anyone who feels uncertain, anyone who feels anxious, anyone who might be saying, I don't want the old, I don't want anything new, God. I just want things to go back to the way they were. I pray that we would take solace and comfort in your word. I pray that we would take solace and feel peace from your promises. And that in the gentle way that you do it, that you would draw us into you and you would remind us that you are still the God who makes new paths. It's in your son's name we pray, who died and was risen for us on this day. Amen.

Good morning. My name is Doug Bergeson, and I am a partner here at Grace. Typically, when I say good morning, it's supposed to elicit a response, but I don't want to put too much pressure on you. Thank you. Hold on to your hats, because we are going to kick this morning off with a bang. We're going to play one round of Final Jeopardy for all the marbles, okay? And just to refresh, I will give you the answer, and you, our studio audience, is to find the question that best fits that answer. You got it? Okay, here we go. A, sitting at a dead stop on I-95. B, anesthesia-free root canal. C, listening to a celebrity athlete refer to himself exclusively in the third person. D, being waterboarded. E, death by meteor. And F, all of the above. Okay, now your job is to answer in the form of a question. Just shout it out. Someone asked, Nate asked if that was my wife. No, no. She was thinking it, but she's not that type to do that. No, no, that's very kind of you. I wish that you had made it a little less personal, a little less hurtful. What kind of sermon? I'm looking for what kind of sermon? Stewardship sermon, I guess. That's right, a sermon on giving. You know, it's a little sad and depressing for me that you found that so easy to answer. What really stings is that there are some of you out there who answered that question without any sense of irony, without any sense that it was meant to be a joke. I was watching a few of you, and you were actually sitting there trying to answer it seriously. Yeah, I think I'd rather die by a meteor than have to listen to Doug. But okay, well, too bad. I'm here. I'm going to go for it, and you just have to put up with it, okay? But first, let me open us in prayer. Dear Lord, thank you for this morning. Thank you for all these people. Help me say what it is you want me to say and help it to be profitable for us. And it's your name we pray, amen. Okay, as we are kicking off our capital campaign, Grace is Going Home, I've been asked to speak on biblical stewardship, how we invest our resources, our energy, our passions, our time, and our finances. But what I have to say this morning really doesn't have anything to do with our campaign. It encompasses it. It's included in that. Rather, though, I want to share my understanding of what the Bible teaches about biblical stewardship, about giving, about the importance and practice of it. I also want to push back against some of the ways biblical teaching has been misrepresented and misunderstood. My hope is to adjust the lens through which we see giving in a way that reveals it to be the blessing and the privilege that God intended. Now, I've heard a bunch of stewardship sermons over the years, some better than others, and good or bad, compelling or not, they all kind of typically hit the same notes. You know, one being that, boy, the Bible talks a lot about giving, so it must be really important, and you better pay attention, that God is the owner and source of everything. So why do we even fuss? You know, and why do we even think that it's any of ours in the first place? How we should use our resources for God's glory. How giving expresses our thanks to God and is an outward expression of a confession, really, of the gospel. And how our giving can help people in important ways. And typically, your stewardship sermon ends, sort of seals the deal with an emotional and heart-rending story of how a certain gift made an enormous difference in someone's life. You're not going to hear any of that from me this morning. No bringing you to the emotional brink. No pulling at your heartstrings. No litany of all the great things grace can accomplish helped by your generosity. Another thing you're not going to hear from me is something that every stewardship sermon and stewardship campaign has either said outright or strongly implied, that God and His church need our money. They need our tithes and offerings to carry on their business. Now, I'm exaggerating just a little bit, but it sounded sometimes as if God is up in heaven, fingers crossed, anxiously waiting to see if Debbie and I come through with an appropriate tithe so that the work of the church can move forward. And that's only a part of it. If you're all familiar with the Bible standards for giving, you know that the bar is set pretty high. It is hard to do right. There are a lot of boxes to check. Not only are we supposed to give, but we're supposed to be generous about it. And being generous might not even be good enough because the Bible standard is sacrificial giving. And not only are we asked to give generously, perhaps even sacrificially, but we're supposed to give in a spirit that considers others' needs more important than our own. Not only are we asked to give generously and with the proper care and concern for others, but we're supposed to give freely, not out of obligation or compulsion. Finally, it's not enough to give generously, even sacrificially, thinking only of others, not at all about ourselves, freely, not out of obligation or compulsion. There's one added kicker. We're supposed to do it joyfully. We're supposed to be happy about it. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my, how do we do all that? Not surprisingly, my track record is pretty mixed in meeting all those expectations. I'm not at all convinced I'm doing it right, doing it well, or doing it enough, and I know I am not alone in thinking that. If you could see me when I open my checkbook, I'm not sure you would remark to yourself, well, would you look at that? Look how cheerful Doug is. More often, you would see someone who's trying to be a good soldier, who's giving out of his abundance, who's giving out of a sense of need, who's giving out of a sense of obligation, recognizing that the need's here and elsewhere. You know, of course, there have been times when a specific appeal, maybe a church or a cause or perhaps a mission trip, has really gotten a hold of me and touched me, where I became emotionally invested, you know, and I've really got fired up, kind of like a sugar high. But before too long, I always seem to settle back into the less emotional, more mundane and murky exercise of balancing what I need and want with what I think God needs and wants from me. What's the right amount? I don't want to be stingy, but do I really want to go overboard? What's enough? If I give everything away, is that better? Is that inherently more spiritual? How does that square with my responsibility to my family? There's a tension. It's as if I'm in a Turkish bazaar bargaining with God. My goal, more often than not, is to try to arrive at a number that allows me to feel good about myself and sufficiently faithful because I gave God his part without impinging too much on the things that I want, the things I'm used to doing and having, the things others in my life want and expect. Something's lost in this process. That simply can't be what the biblical writers are talking about. For some of us, that sense of obligation leads to a desire to seek God's approval, to do enough to please him, to check that box. For others, it can lead to a pervading sense that giving is a zero-sum game, that when we give, inevitably we forfeit something of equal or greater value. It can also leave open the door for spiritual pride, the thinking that, you know, we're really coming through for the church and for God, that we are one of his 18, you know, a sense of self-righteousness and self-satisfaction. Or the pendulum can easily swing in the other direction, where that sense of obligation leads to guilt or a sense that somehow we're disappointing God. For others, we might simply tune it all out and convince ourselves that we're at a stage of life where this really doesn't apply to us. If we have young kids, we're just starting out, my pace sucks at work, blah, blah, blah. We'll worry about that later. So I became increasingly dissatisfied with what I was hearing about giving. It left a bad taste in my mouth. Nothing I had heard had equipped me to give as the Bible wanted me to, generously, joyfully, with a genuinely compassionate heart and caring heart, not out of obligation or compulsion. It's not that all those reasons for giving that I had heard were wrong. They're not. But something was missing, something big and vital to the understanding and practice of biblical giving. And because they didn't tell the whole story, those reasons simply weren't enough for me to experience giving as God intended. So what was missing? It's a $64 question. I'll tell you what was missing. I needed to be more selfish about my giving. That's what was missing. I needed to think about my giving in a much more self-interested light. I needed to understand better what was in it for me. Why? Because giving isn't for God. It's for you and me to benefit and help us. Now, the Bible does talk a ton about the importance of giving. No argument there. An enormous emphasis is placed on giving generosity in Scripture. But all those sermons and stewardship campaigns that I heard had it backwards. Giving's not important to God because he needs it. God wants us to give because we need it, because of the magnificent things the act of giving can do for our stubborn human hearts, how it can shape them, transform them, and move them to a better place. There's no question that our giving can help others, but what's too often missed is how profoundly our giving can help us. The idea that God and his church need our money creates a sense of obligation and duty that misleads and ties us in all kinds of knots. And it does the experience of giving a huge disservice. Now, this may come as a shocker, but God is perfectly capable of doing what he intends to do without your or my help. Scripture's pretty emphatic at that point. Listen to this passage from Psalm 50, written at a time when God's people, the nation of Israel, were seeming to be very faithful and obedient. They were giving lots of tithes and offerings. But they too had it backwards by thinking that their sacrifices and offerings were what were important to God, as if he needed them. This is God talking. I have no need of a bull from your stall or goats from your pens. For every animal of the forest is mine and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains and the creatures of the field are mine. If I was hungry, I would not tell you. I love that. I love that. You know, that seems pretty clear to me clear to me. God values our giving and graciously accepts and uses our gifts, but he does so for us, for our good, for what giving can do to our weak and frail and wandering human hearts. When I said I needed to view my giving more selfishly, when I needed to think about giving in a more selfish light, it's to embrace and lean into this truth that giving can be life-changing for the giver. And the sooner one grasps that truth, the sooner biblical stewardship seems less like an obligation and more like a gift, less like a duty and more like a privilege, less like eating your Brussels sprouts. And I'm referring to Brussels sprouts before you. All the new recipes the last 20 years where they throw in brown sugar. The kind of Brussels sprouts my mom made for us. She boiled them and maybe if she was in a really good charitable mood, she'd sprinkle a little salt, a little pinch of salt. They were horrible. So remember that when you're thinking that. Don't say, oh yeah, I like Brussels sprouts. So it'll be less like eating your Brussels sprouts and a lot more like a cream-filled donut. Not to overstate things, but how we think about giving is a game changer. When one thinks of it primarily as an obligation, the act of giving is robbed of much of its joy and its power to transform our lives. And it's very hard not to think of it as an obligation unless one sees that it is the giver who benefits from giving as much or more than anyone or anything else. Giving is a gift for the giver first and foremost because of its power to move and shape our hearts. My go-to passage in scripture is one many of you are probably familiar with. It's from Matthew chapter 6. I adore this verse. This is Jesus talking. It's one of the most straightforward passages in all of Scripture. And for God's purposes, for what he's trying to accomplish, one of the most useful. Wherever I place my time, my energies, my passions, my affections, my confidence, my joy, my hope, and yes, even my financial resources, that's where you'll find my heart. Now, you might have noticed when I came up here that I brought a rug with me, a very special rug. Way back in the late 1980s, Deb and I finally had a little bit of discretionary income. And I forget how now, but I developed an interest in Oriental rugs. I found them just exquisitely beautiful works of art, each one painstakingly hand-woven over very many months. And, you know, I was enthralled with them, and I went as far as to start buying a few and spending what, for Debbie and I, was a lot of money. Now, you have to bear with me, because I actually have to bend. This is Persian from the holy city of Gom in central Iran. It's woven out of silk with hundreds of knots per square inch. The signature of its master weaver, or Rami, is woven in Farsi here at the top. Needless to say, my rugs immediately became part of my treasure. One way you could tell they were my treasure is that when anyone was coming over to the house, I would scurry and roll it up and put it away for fear that it would be spilled on. Now some might say that defeats the purpose of having a rug if you put it away whenever it might be seen or walked on, but I didn't care. Another way you could tell that these rugs were part of my treasure is that for about, oh, roughly the first thousand times she ever vacuumed them, I couldn't help myself. I felt compelled to gently remind Debbie that she needed to be careful, very careful, and never, I mean never, suck up the fringe for fear that that's not as tightly woven and it unravels and falls apart. I have since stopped that practice, fearing that I might suffer an unusual and tragically fatal accident while sleeping in bed one night. Now, I'm not saying that it's wrong to appreciate and enjoy beautiful things. It's simply to illustrate how easily they capture our affections, how easily they become part of our treasure. Far more than supporting a church or funding a ministry, giving away our resources can be a most powerful antidote for all those things in our lives that compete to be our treasure, a very practical and effective way to help us loosen our grip on our earthly treasure. When we give and invest in the things God cares most about, in things that can have an eternal impact, whether we know it or not, whether we can feel it or not, we are moving our heart's center of gravity. And we are adjusting the lens through which we view our lives, our world, and our futures. Cultivating a perspective that increasingly mirrors God's. God does not need or want our money. What God covets is our hearts. That's what he's fighting for. And the act of giving is one of his most effective tools to align our hearts with his. Now, I might have raised a few eyebrows earlier when I said that in order to experience giving as God intended, joyfully, generously, compassionately, and freely, I needed to understand giving in a much more self-interested light. Surely, someone must have been out there thinking to themselves, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Isn't Christianity all about being completely and utterly unselfish? Never thinking of yourself, but always considering others more important? Yes and no. It's certainly true that we are called to be unselfish in the sense of considering others' well-being before our own. But that's not the same as saying that it's not in our selfish best interest to do that. In Luke 9, Jesus explains it this way. Again, this is Jesus talking. So here's Jesus calling us to serve and to sacrifice and follow his example, but that we do this ultimately to benefit. And it may surprise some, but any notion that self-interest is somehow anti-Christian is not supported in Scripture. How we act in our own self-interest is where we've gone off the rails. That's been the problem since the Garden of Eden, not the self-interest itself. In fact, the Bible consistently encourages us to pursue a life of faith precisely because it's in our best interest to do that. Taking it one step further, placing your faith and trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is the single most self-interested thing one can ever possibly do. Okay, so what now? What am I suggesting each of us do? First is to simply acknowledge that where we lay up our treasure is where you'll find our hearts. It's as night follows day. It's really pretty straightforward. So if you care at all about the condition of your heart, you can't really avoid some introspection, some question about where you're laying up your treasure. Second, I want to encourage each of us to lean into the transformational power of giving by taking a step or two forward, whatever that step might be for you. Far more than an obligation, the ability to share our resources is an opportunity and a privilege that we should not let go to waste. Few things are as effective in helping us move our treasure to where moth and rust won't destroy. Few things have such potential to align the beat of our heart to the rhythm of God's own. However, please keep in mind that moving our treasure doesn't happen overnight. It's a process. I'm reminded of a time about 20 years ago when I started a Navy SEAL workout plan at home. I get it. Feel free to snicker. I'm not Navy SEAL material. Nevertheless, I kicked off what was supposed to be a 12-week program of two and a half strenuous hours each day, six days a week. Turns out, this is also a shocker, it was too much. It was too soon, and it was way too unpleasant. After six weeks, I had completely given up and was back upstairs in my office eating milk duds all afternoon, doing exactly zero hours of strenuous exercise each day. And that's how these things often work. And moving our treasure is no different. Far better to advance the ball, to take a step or two forward, wherever you are in your journey. Forward progress and movement are the keys. I've been at the stewardship thing a long time, and I've already shared some of my struggles, but my growing appreciation for how giving blesses me has made a difference. In all my years, I don't think I've ever given sacrificially in the sense of really giving up something I really, really wanted and needed. But over the last few weeks, as I've been thinking about my experience with giving, I've come to see that's not exactly how God works. I've always viewed sacrificial giving as coming through what I call the front door perspective, in which a battle of the will takes place right out in the open of my consciousness. A forceful bending of my will, giving up something I really need or want simply out of obedience and faith. I collapse. Exhausted and spent, but faithful and obedient, confident in God's smiling approval. You rock, Doug. Well done, good and faithful servant. Now the key is getting up. I didn't really practice that very good. But I no longer believe that's how giving sacrificially or otherwise actually works. Rather, much more quietly and far less dramatically, God enters through our back door and starts working on us, using our giving to slowly change what we think we need and what we think we want, what's important to us, and a priority. In fact, I'm beginning to suspect that the people who actually do give sacrificially don't even necessarily know they're doing it, because at this point, what they view as valuable, what they treasure, has moved and evolved so much. Personally, I have a long way to go, But I can honestly say that over the years, God has used his gift of giving to slowly but surely move my treasure, and thus my heart, to a far better place. The things that I think I need and want have changed, and I've come to view the opportunity afforded by giving as much more of a privilege and much more of a joy than ever before, and I find that enormously encouraging and hopeful. In closing, it's more than okay to think about how giving benefits us. In fact, I think it's critical to understand if we truly seek the life that God has designed for us, life that is truly life. Listen to this lavish promise from 1 Timothy. Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant, nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life. Back in the 1950s, a young missionary traveled deep into the jungle of Ecuador to spread the good news of Jesus Christ to people who hadn't heard it. He and his four colleagues were found murdered along a remote riverbank, murdered by the very tribespeople they had gone to find. A famous saying is attributed to that young missionary, and it's stuck with me over the years, and it really captures what I've tried to share this morning. He had written it in his personal journal six years before he died, and this is what he wrote. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose. He this morning. Thank you for your magnificent plan of redemption that graciously includes us. And you do that because in your wisdom, that's how we change. That's how we grow. That's how we prepare for eternity. Thank you for giving, for not only what it does and the witness it provides, but also what it does to our human hearts. And we thank you for loving us, for pursuing us, and for the hope that you give us. And it's your name we pray. Amen.

20 years ago, Grace was launched by a courageous group of faithful believers with a dream to expand God's kingdom in North Raleigh. Part of this dream was establishing a permanent home to serve as a launching point for this ministry. Through the years, God has used Grace to strengthen families, build faiths, and knit together a wonderful community of His people. But because there has always been a more urgent struggle or need, the dream of having our own home has not yet been realized. Now, however, we see that we are entering into a time of health. We believe that it is time for us as a church to look outward once again and dream big dreams about how God might use us to build His kingdom here. We continue to believe that having our own permanent home is a part of God's plan for us and is critical to our ministry and our community. We believe that after 20 years of hoping and dreaming, now is the time for Grace to go home. Good morning. Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be the lead pastor. This is a big, special morning. I'm so excited to get to share with you. I am in the habit of praying before I get up to preach, and in both services, I've just prayed that God would give me the strength to kind of keep it together without just blubbering like an idiot, because it's just, I feel so excited about what Grace is stepping into and getting to share this with you. On most Sunday mornings, on all Sunday mornings, I feel like my job as the pastor is to get up and open the Bible and share with you what I believe is teaching us together. My job is to teach scripture. I try to anchor everything I say in scripture and simply open it up and explain it to us in a way that is hopefully compelling or convicting or inspiring, whatever God has for us that morning. I feel like that's my job. But this morning, I'm going to take a little bit of a departure from that and just share with you what's been going on for the last 18 months. If this is your first time with us or your first couple times with us, this is not a typical Sunday morning, but it's the right one for the life of the church now. So if you allow me that license, I'm just going to share with you this morning and not preach at you this morning. Hopefully, I never preach at you, but you understand what I'm saying. In September of 2018, we went on an elder retreat to a farm in Youngsville. We had our sitting elders, and then we had three of our elders that had been recently nominated and appointed but weren't yet voting. They were junior elders. I still consider them junior elders. And we all sat around talking and dreaming about grace. And two of our elders, Bill Reith and Burt Banks, said that it was time that we start discussing the 10-year plan for grace. What's our 10-year plan for Grace Raleigh? Their very corporate 10-year plans seem important in that world, and so they thought we should have one too. And one of the items that they had on the agenda to discuss was the question of, do we want to own our own permanent home in North Raleigh? Do we want to be owners or renters? Historically, we've been renters, and so this was the question of, do we want to own one day? And very quickly and overwhelmingly, the response of the room was, yes, this is what we want to do. And uncharacteristically, during this discussion, I remained quiet. You may find it hard to believe I'm vocal in meetings. I don't have a problem saying what I think, and sometimes I feel like that's the role, so I should share my two cents. But in this particular elder meeting, as these decisions were being made, I stayed very quiet. And I stayed quiet because I carry with me an acute awareness that this is not my church. This is not my building. These are not my dreams. The church's goals are not my goals. This is our church. This church existed long before I got here. This church existed and did things and people poured into it and developed a life here long before Nate arrived. And so I'm acutely aware of the shoulders that I stand on and that my job is to steward the dreams and the hopes of us, not me. And because that's such a huge decision, I didn't really want to be the driver of that. So I stayed quiet. They quickly decided, yes, we want to be owners. And so then the natural question is, okay, what's the timeline for that? When do we want to begin to make decisions to take us down that path? And very quickly and overwhelmingly, again, the answer in the room was right away. We need to start making decisions right away. We need to start moving towards that now. And I remember thinking, I can still remember where I was sitting. I was sitting on the fireplace looking at those couches and chairs and couch, and I can see the dim room around me. And I remember thinking as everyone discussed this, why don't we pump the brakes a little bit? Let's just, let's chill out. Like I'm, it's a big enough challenge to fill a 200 person auditorium. Let's not build a 400 person auditorium. Let's just wait. I'm not really sure I need that pressure in my life, you know? And then in my head, I'm also thinking, and I'll tell her story in a second, but we had just then that month moved out of a season of tremendous debt. We haven't even announced to the congregation yet that we were out of debt. And now here we are signing up to go into more debt. And I'm going, gosh, maybe we should just like chill out. Can we just be healthy for a little while? But these were the decisions that were made. And I began to understand why we were making those decisions. And so that had set in motion a series of events. Shortly after that, we formed a building committee. And it was their job to go out and figure out how much are we going to need to spend to accomplish what we need to accomplish. So they went out and they looked around and they came back to us and they said, this is kind of what we think. This is what it's going to cost. This is what we think monthly debt service on it would be. And so this is kind of our goal. And so then once we had that goal, we realized we needed to get capitalized. So we formed a capital campaign committee last spring and asked them the question, this is what we want to do. Let's come up with the best way to do it. And so we've been working behind the scenes for 18 months now and are ready to present to us, the church, everything that we've been hoping and dreaming and praying and thinking about. But to understand the decisions that have been made and why we feel like now is the right time, I think we also need to understand the story of grace. Because we have some here who have been here since the very beginning. We have others who have come recently, and I'm not sure we all remember exactly how we got here. So like the video said, in 2000, there was a core group of faithful believers, a group of people from St. Andrew's Presbyterian over on Falls, that said they had a vision and a dream for starting their own church. A church that would be a light in the community that they love so much. A church that would strengthen faiths and strengthen families and watch people come to know Jesus and watch faith get deepened. Watch people walk with Jesus with more depth. They wanted to impact the community of North Raleigh, and so they banded together and they launched, at the time, the church called Grace Community Church. The very first Sunday, this church met on the lawn at the YMCA, and they had no idea what to expect. And that first Sunday, over 1,200 people showed up and sat on the grass and listened to that preacher preach and sang songs together. Everybody was blown away by what happened. And it was that Sunday that God, for the first time, whispered into the ears of those who cared so much about grace and believed in this place, hey, this church is special to me. My hand is on this place. I'm gonna use this church. I'm gonna use this place. Grace matters to me. And so that core of people believed that and believed that God's hand was on this place and believed that God had big plans for grace and believed that God was moving to make this an effective church in his kingdom. And so very quickly they needed space. So they started to meet at a storefront that used to be a Michael's. It affectionately became known as St. Michael's. And the idea was never that that would be a permanent location, but that that would be a temporary space until they had the health and the finances to build a permanent home. That's been the goal from the very beginning. It was just deferred because they needed space so quickly. But then having outgrown Michael's and not yet being totally prepared to go out in health and build a building, they made the decision to rent a space over on Meridian Drive. It was a larger space, 600-person auditorium. They were filling it up and going and blowing, and it was a really, really special time where it was easy to be enthusiastic about grace. Understanding that they weren't yet home, but that soon, when they were ready, they would have a home. And during that season, it was incredibly evident that God's hand was on grace. It was evident that God cared about that place. There was a thriving student ministry, a thriving children's ministry, wonderful people and wonderful families being strengthened and coming to know the Lord, and God worked in that place. But it was also during that season where there was some turmoil and some tumult in grace. There were struggles and trials and dreams got deferred and difficulty to walk through as a church. And it was during this season that some of that hopeful core that helped to start grace with all those dreams began to wonder if God's hand was still on grace, began to wonder if God still had plans for this place, began to wonder if the brightest days of grace were still ahead or if they were already behind. And so grace began to dwindle, and grace began to struggle, and those dreams got deferred. And it was in this season, in December of 2016, that my story intersected with grace. I still remember it was December 8, 2016. I had my first interview with the Pastoral Search Committee. They had asked me to block off enough time for a two-hour Skype interview, which I thought was excessive, but what do I know? I'm not making the rules. So that day, I started to prep and plan for the interview. So if you know me, you know that I don't like to be unprepared. I don't like to be caught off guard. I like to know what to expect. If you ask for a meeting with me, I'm probably going to say, yeah, that's great. What do you want to talk about? Because I got to know it's going to eat me up inside if I don't, if I can't prepare and think through everything that needs to be said. And so going into an interview, you better believe I'm going to be ready. So I started to dig into grace. And at the time on the website, they had a history of grace, just the events that happened year by year. And so I read through that history and I saw the ebbs and flows and the triumph and the trials. And then they had their elder minutes online. So I started to read through the elder minutes for the past couple of years. And I got done with all of that and I thought, yeah, I'm going to cancel this interview. I don't really want to be a part of this church. I got done with that research, and honestly, my conclusion was, I just don't see God's hand on this place. I don't have a lot of hope for that church. So I don't think I'm going to go there. I don't want to waste anybody's time. I need to cancel the interview. And as I opened up my computer to email Holly, who was then chair of the committee, it occurred to me like, come on, big time. You're 36. You don't have big enough britches yet to start turning down interviews. Just take it. Use it as practice. Let's see what happens. So I did. And I did the interview. And it was funny because in the interview, I gave the most honest answers ever because I didn't care if these people liked me. I wasn't trying to get anybody to like me. I was just telling the truth. And then at the end of the interview, they said, do you have any questions for us? I said, yeah. I mean, I've looked at your history. I've read through it all. Grace has been a hard place to be a part of for several years. And they all kind of started smiling, nodding their heads. I said, so there's a lot of churches in Raleigh. What are you doing there? Why do you go to that place? What's so special about it that you're clinging on? And Holly got a big smile on her face. And she said, because we love this place. These people are special to us. Our kids grew up here. Grace means a lot to us. It's our community. And we believe that the best days are still ahead for grace. And everybody nodded and smiled and agreed. And I believed it too. And I realized that God's hand was here and that there was reason to hope for grace and that I too believe that the brightest days were still ahead. It was hard to believe that when I visited in February for my like official visit interview weekend and I came to a service and there's less people in the service that Sunday than there are in this room right now. But I still believe that God wanted us to be at this place, and that God wasn't done with grace. And so in April of 2017, my wife and I, Jen, and our then one-year-old daughter, Lily, moved up to Raleigh, and we assumed we became a part of grace. And when I got here, it was not going well. We were very far in debt. Our line of credit had been maxed out. The bank had frozen our credit cards. There were some people who told me like, thanks for coming, but you'll probably be moving home in about six weeks. We just weren't sure about this place. But there was all kinds of things that happened in that first year that I felt like was just God whispering in my ear, Nate, I still care about Grace. My hand is still in this place. I still have plans for it. I'll never forget the Memorial Day offering in 2017, that first year that I got here. My whole goal was to get through the summer without incurring more debt, without begging and borrowing and stealing more money, right? I just wanted to try to get through the summer without going into greater debt. And in the month of May, we were running a deficit. And going into the last week of the year, we needed an offering of $15,000. That year, we were averaging about $10,500 a week. So we needed 50% more, almost 50% more in the offering to come in that week for us to remain solvent and not have to go into greater debt. And I don't know if you know this about church world, but Memorial Day weekend is the worst, okay? It's the worst. Nobody comes and nobody gives. And I don't blame you because if they didn't pay me, I would go to the beach too. Nobody's harboring ill will about that. But the reality of it is, that's the lowest giving Sunday of the year, every year in every church in the history of churches. So to be praying for 15,000, 5,000 more than what we normally get is an absurd prayer. And I prayed it all week and I asked the elders to pray. We didn't send out an email. We didn't ask for money. We just prayed. If I'm honest with you, I didn't really believe that it would happen. That Sunday, $28,000 came in. Not a single huge gift, just faithful giving from people who cared about grace. Without being asked, I was blown away. That will always stand out to me as the first time I felt God's hand on my shoulders saying, hey, listen, pal, you just worry about preaching. I'll figure out the rest. Let's go. And I knew that God's hand was on his place. Later that year, a couple months later, we owed $17,000 to World Overcomers that took over our space on Meridian Drive. And the deal that we got to get out of there, we still owed them money. And I emailed a lady that I didn't know on a committee that I had never talked to and said, hey, listen, I'm new here. This debt is gonna crush us. Can we please defer to the end of the year because we can't afford to pay it over the summer. And she emailed me back and she said, we love God and we love his kingdom and we love his church and you are forgiven of that debt. Don't worry about it. Again, God tells us his hand is on this place. He's not done with grace. And over these three years, I will have been here three years in April, over these three years, we've seen some of the people who thought that maybe God was done with grace begin to come back and breathe new life into it as well. We've seen people come back and believe that, yes, God's not done with this place. We've seen families added. We've seen our young family small group, Virgin, our three-year-old class is stinking full every week. We've seen more kids on the roster than Erin's had in the history of her tenure at Grace, which is now seven years. We're seeing small groups filled up. We have two established services. We're totally out of debt and saving money for the building already. We are in now a healthy place where we are watching faiths being strengthened. We are watching people being connected with Jesus. We are watching a community being built. And for the first time in the history of grace, we really are walking in health. And that's why we believe that after 20 years of wondering and wandering, that it's finally time for grace to go home and realize the dreams that we've dreamt for 20 years. Now, when we say that, that it's time for grace to go home, that we believe now is the time to pursue a permanent home, a permanent building, there's a couple things to understand. The first is when I say permanent home, I'm careful to say that because we could buy land and build or we could buy a building and upfit. We're open to all options. And I think the question becomes, why now? Why build? Why is it that we want to own our own building? Why is it that we want to own our own permanent home in this community that we love? And there's a lot of reasons for this. And in some business meetings that I'm going to tell you about, we're going to cover those reasons. But I think there's two really compelling ones that I would share with you this morning. The first most compelling reason that this is the time for us to go home and have a permanent home to call our own is to simply look around at this space. Now, we're grateful for this space. If this little room didn't exist, we would not exist as a church. No question about it. God gave us this space and allowed us to get our feet underneath us here. But look around. Does this feel like home to you? If you're not sure, sit behind the pole one Sunday and then answer that question. Where I have to walk over here to be able to see you. Hey, guys. Look in the corners because we have no storage. So we just put extra chairs on the sides and put tablecloths on top of them. That's less than optimal. We have a lobby. We say we're about connecting people to people. And a big part of that is our lobby and talking and being able to catch up with friends. The lobby time, honestly, is some of my favorite time of the week every week where I get to buzz around and catch up with everybody and see what's going on. It's too small. Try to hang out there right after the first service. It has to spill out into the front, whether it's cold or raining or whatever. Speaking of going outside, even if it's cold and rainy, have a kid in elementary school and have to walk outside every week, whether it's cold or whether it's fair, whether it's rainy or whether it's dry, and walk past the aquarium store and down the hallway of offices and get your kid in the repurposed children's space. We're grateful for that space. It just doesn't feel like home. If you think this feels like home, get here early on a Sunday morning when we have to get the air and the fans going because it smells like an aquarium. That's a thing. Come on Thursday, I'll show you. We'd love to have a restroom available in the lobby so that people don't have to walk down the children's space to get to it. If you've ever tried to, when that door's open and kids are trying to get into the nursery and other families are trying to get out of the nursery and you're just trying to get by to go to the restroom, there's a choke point over there that definitely does not feel like home. We'd love to have a playground for our kids to play on. I would love for our students, our sixth through 12th graders, to have their own space. Right now they meet in this space, and Kyle, our student pastor, is doing a phenomenal job with them, and he's gotten that. We're growing. We're running about 40 kids a week when everybody comes. But this space still swallows them up, and there's a limit on what they can do. Students like to be rowdy and rambunctious, and that's great, but we have to kind of keep a lid on that because we have not put enough money in Kyle's budget for auditorium repairs, so he's got to stay within some certain parameters. They need their own space that feels like home for them too. We need to invest in our student ministry. We want adult spaces during the week that feel more like living rooms where it's comfortable to sit in and meet in and have small group in so that our adults who come don't have to sit in repurposed children's spaces around white plastic tables and metal folding chairs. We're happy to do that, but we want other people to come too. We want you to be able to invite people to small group and have it feel comfortable and like home when they come. I dream of having some of our folks who work from home to take a day every week and come sit and work with us as a staff and as a community and make it kind of a hub during the days where people just are. We can't do that in our current space. And more importantly, all the things that I just mentioned, the pole and the chairs and the small lobby with the very nice hutch. If you go to Grace and you call Grace home, we don't think about those things. We don't care about those things. Those aren't really that big of a deal to us. But when you bring somebody for the first time because you want them to experience all that you've experienced at Grace, everything that I just listed is something that they have to get over in order to come here. The fact that you can't even see us from the road. We have signs on our building, but it's useless. Why do we even have that? You can't see it. You have to find us. We've joked that we're like a secret club. You only find us if you get invited. Everything that I just listed is something that they have to get over, that they have to get past so that they can be fully engaged here. As they assess whether or not they want to be a part of grace, those are all things that they have to be willing to move past too before they can really receive what God has for them here, before they can be encountered with the beauty and the grandeur of the gospel. And I just want as few things between people and Jesus as possible. I want people to notice as few things as possible that are detriments to what we're doing here so that they feel at home too and they feel freed up to encounter Jesus in this space. And so I think it matters. The next compelling reason that I think it's wise to build now is because it's really, this is not exciting, but it's true. It's fiscally responsible to own. It's the more financially wise thing to do with the resources that we have. Most of you in this room, you own your home. A vast majority of us do. Why do you do that? Because you know that financially it's the best decision for your family. The same is true for us as a church. We believe that it's the wisest thing to do with the resources that we have. Another thing you understand as you invest in a home now in whatever season of life you're in is if you'll do it up front, if you'll be financially wise in the early years of your life and you make sound choices, then later in the decades to come, you'll have the financial freedom to do what's really special to you with your money. You'll have the financial freedom to really spend your resources on what matters most to you. And we wanna do that as a church too. Right now we give 10% of our offerings to missions, to ministries going on outside the walls of grace. And I'm so proud that we do that. But I wanna see that number grow. What if we can get into a facility and get that manageable? And as our numbers and as our budget grows, our property cost doesn't have to and we can give 30, 40, 50% of what we have to things going on outside the walls of grace and be a generous church. It's more fiscally responsible to buy now so that we can be generous later. And just to kind of further drive that point home, we were in that facility on Meridian Drive for 16 years. In 16 years, we spent $5.4 million on rent. And that's conservative because for a season, we rented some extra space that cost more money. It's probably much closer to $6 million. And coming out of that space, we had debt to show for it. We want to make good choices so that that never happens again. That's why we believe that now is the time to act and move and go home. Now, with those things being said, there's some details that I do want to share with you this morning. And then I'm going to tell you about the informational meetings that we have and why we've chosen to go that route. The nitty gritty of it is, and this will be covered in those meetings, so you don't have to remember all this right now, but you're probably very curious. Our goal in the campaign is to raise $1.5 million over two years. We're going to ask everyone to make a two-year pledge and try to have that by the end of two years so that we can do what it is we think God wants us to do. The reason it's $1.5 million is because in the estimates that we have, we want to build a building that's between 400 and 600 people. The auditorium is between 400 and 600. In church world, once you have the auditorium size, you have the algorithms for all your other space. So it's really a decision about how big of an auditorium do we want. This one seats 200. The elders want us to have a 600-person auditorium. I want us to have a 350-person auditorium. I don't need that pressure in my life. But that's the decisions that we're making. We're open to buying land and building, but we would rather buy a building and up fit. Buying land and building takes more time and takes more money. The only reason we would do that is if there's a piece of land that's so attractive that we just couldn't pass it up. We want the building to be as close as possible to Capitol and 540. This puts us in range of everyone who calls Grace home. That's an optimistic goal. I was having lunch the other day with somebody who's been buying and selling land in the Raleigh area for probably 30 or 40 years. And when I told him where we wanted to be, he audibly laughed at me. But we think that God is going to look out for us. He'll give us the place that we need to be. If we were to buy and build, that could cost as much as $4.5 million, and $1.5 million allows us to borrow what we need to make that happen. If we want to go a little bit smaller, build and upfit, that is going to cost somewhere around $3 million. So 1.5 over two years positions us to do whatever it is we think we need to do. Now, to raise that money, we formed a campaign committee. And the campaign committee began, got a book written by an expert who's done 100 of these. And we started to read, what's the best way to go about this? And what we quickly learned is all the experts have a set way that you're supposed to go about raising funds for a project like this. What they wanted us to do is tear out all of the givers at grace and take like the top 15 families and I would go meet with them personally. Then you take the top 30 or 40 families and the elders go meet with them individually, share all the information, ask for a pledge. And then you take all the other families and we'll just get to you whenever we get to you. We're busy. We've got a lot of things going on. That's how it goes. You tear them out, you have the meetings, and the experts say by going and sitting down in someone's home and presenting to them and making a personal ask, you're gonna get more juice out of that lemon. That's the best possible way to get the funds that you need. That's the way you need to do it. And so because that's the way we need to do it, that's what we set about doing, is figuring out a way to do that. Now that was a challenge because at Grace, we have a long history, nobody knows what anybody gives at Grace. There's one person who knows how much people give. That's a guy named Tom Ledoux. He is our finance manager. He's living his best life in the villages in Florida right now. So you don't have to worry about running into him at Harris Teeter. And in between games of golf, he does our finances. We get a great deal on it. I love that guy so much. And he's the only one who sees what everybody gives. So to tear out our givers, I would have to start learning some stuff that is none of my business. But this was the way we need to do it. This is the money we need to raise. And so we started talking with the elders about it. One of the elders raised a concern. He's like, I'm really not comfortable with that. I don't think that we should do that. I think that we should just ask everybody all at once and let them respond however they want to and let the Holy Spirit move. And my response to him was, I think you need to go play in the forest and sing with the animals. Like, that's Pollyanna stuff, man. We got to get real. But the more I thought about it, and the more we prayed about it, the more I became convinced that that way to raise funds was just not right for grace. The more I thought about going into homes and presenting and asking, the less comfortable I got with it. The more, honestly, the more I saw it being the plans of man trying to figure out the best way to go about this and not making room for the Spirit. And so I thought rather than going to you individually and making an ask that I would just ask you corporately and trust you. I've tried as I've led Grace to trust you to be adults who love Jesus and love this place and trust you to go home and pray about it and allow the Holy Spirit to direct as if he saw fit that you would be sensitive to that and trust the pledges that come in. Another reason I didn't want to do the individual meetings is I began to think about it. And this is really what drove it home for me is, I don't want anybody in the church who gives to the campaign to think that their gift is valued any different than any other gift. We have some families in our church that because they've made wise choices, because God has blessed them, they really do have great means. We have some families in the church who have the ability, if they wanted to, to give in ways that were really impactful for the campaign. They give a lot of money. And that's wonderful. And then we have other families in the church that are far closer to mine and Jen's end of the spectrum that are in their 20s or in their 30s and kind of trying to figure out how to get life together. And some of us even living paycheck to paycheck and any amount that would be given would be really sacrificial. And if these families are able over the next two years to cobble together five or $10,000, I don't want to value that $10,000 any less than I would value the $100,000, $150,000. Because even though the amounts in those two gifts are different, the faith is the same. The sacrifice is the same. The spirit of generosity and obedience is the same. And I don't want to be a part of a system that makes those two people feel any different for what they gave. Because every bit of it is special. Every bit of it is impactful. I got a text this morning from a good friend of mine who just knew that this morning was when we were launching the campaign at the church. And they're a family like us. And he just said, hey, proud of you, rooting for you. Julie and I are committing $1,000 to the campaign this year. I started to cry in my bedroom. It's the same sacrifice. It's the same generosity. The gifts aren't different. And I don't want to treat them that way. So rather than going to your houses and doing an individual ask, we're having these informational meetings and we're asking corporately. There's three informational meetings. You have them on the cards in your seats. They're all identical. We're just asking that you would come to one of them. If you want to come to all three, because you just love this kind of stuff, knock yourself out. But we're asking that you would come to one. We hope that every partner and everybody who calls Grace home will come to at least one of these meetings. At those meetings, we will roll out for you all the things that we would have if I came to your house and sat down with you and talked to you. The type of ask that we're looking for, all the details of the campaign. There's an FAQ sheet on the huts that will give you a little bit more information if you have questions right away. We will go through all of those details. We'll have people from all the committees here that you can ask questions of. There'll be some give and take. And I think that those are going to be some good times for us at the church. That's where that's going to happen. We're hoping that you will come to those. And for the next five weeks, we're going to talk about the next steps of grace. Because I believe that the building, pursuing a permanent home, is just the first step that we need to take as a church that's now walking in health. The question facing grace now is, God, what would you have us do with this health? And so over the next five weeks, we're going to answer that. It's going to culminate in a pledge Sunday on March 1st, and we'll find out if this is a realistic dream. But as I close today, I would just share this with you. I was reminded in my preparation that in July of 2017, we had a business meeting. It was to talk about how to financially make it through the rest of the summer, how to exist as a church. And I remember there was somebody in the back of the room who stood up over there, and they said, hey, and they kind of talked to the room and said, hey, we just need to all give a little bit more and we'll be okay. And I was able to say to him and to everyone, actually, no, you don't. You don't need to give any more. This church is generous and doing everything that it can right now. You don't need to give us any more money. We need to be more responsible with the money that you're already giving us, and we're going to do that. And then I made a promise. I said, as a matter of fact, if you'll trust me, I'm not going to ask you for more money again until we're ready to build a building. So now here I am, three years later, because of God's grace, we've been able to keep that promise, asking you to consider participating in the campaign as we seek to go home. Asking you to consider participating in this above and beyond what you give to operational budget. So the invitation is to go home and just begin to pray and to think and to plan and earnestly ask God, God, how would you have us participate in this campaign? We'll have those informational meetings. We'll have our services for the next five weeks. And then on March the 1st, we're gonna come and celebrate and submit our pledges together and we're gonna see what God is gonna do. In the meantime, if you have any questions, my door is open. I will meet with you, talk with you, answer whatever questions I have. If you'd like an individual meeting, we can have that. I'm just not going to impose that on you. But that's the invite. Let's go as a church and pray how God would have us be involved with what he's doing here and the next steps of grace. Let's pray. Father, you're so good to us. We know that your hand is here. We know it's on this place. We know that what happens here matters to you. God, we believe as a body that it's time for us to take this step of faith and pursue a permanent home in this community where you've planted us. So God, I earnestly pray that if that's your will, if that's from you, let us marvel at how you make it happen. God, if that's not your will, if this needs to be our home for a while, then make it abundantly clear that that's your will and let us celebrate that too. God, we simply humbly ask that your will be done and that we walk in obedience to what that is. Father, be with these families and these individuals as they go and pray. I pray that they would be sensitive to your spirit. I pray that their hearts would be opened, would be moved by what moves you and that you would guide and direct us to exactly where and how you would have us participate. God, I cannot wait to see all that you do in this season of grace. It's in your son's name we pray, amen.

My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here. As a pastor, it often falls on me to offer counsel and advice to people. Believe it or not, sometimes people will call the church and ask to talk to a pastor or ask to talk to me or even seek me out individually knowing full well who I am, and they will still ask me for advice on things or what to do in certain situations. And for a long time in those situations at my old church, it was a larger church in the Atlanta area, about 2,000 people. If you called that church, you got funneled to me. I was the one that you would talk to. It was a really talentless staff. So that was my role. And for a long time, my advice in those situations would pretty much default to suck it up. Like, get it together. Quit being a sissy. Let's go. Like, you just got to face the music. You got to stand up. You got to stick your chin out, and you got to take it. And I came by that advice honestly, because for a long time, that's what worked for me. Part of my story is that when I was younger, I was bullied pretty badly. For a couple years, elementary school and then in middle school, there was two kids in my neighborhood who just delighted in tormenting me. And I won't get into all the details of it, but one of the things they would do, just to give you a picture of what fifth grade looked like for Nate, is they were in middle school, so they got home before me. They would hide in the bushes at the bus stop and have an industrial strength rubber band, and they had sniffed it. So it was one big long rubber band, and then when I would get off the bus, they would pop me in the ears and in the neck and in the legs until I would cry or run, and then they would call me names. That was like most days. So we started diversion tactics. I got a letter to get off the bus at other bus stops. My mom would come pick me up at school sometimes, but that was a part of my life, and that was a part of my life for a couple of years. And at some point or another, as a kid, I just realized I can't care so much what they think about me. They would invite me over to play and I'd be like, oh good, we're friends now. And then I would get there and they would just make fun of me until I would go home. And it taught me to have a thick skin. It taught me to not let it affect me when other people pick on me. It taught me to be tough. And at some point in my adolescence, I decided I'm tired of them having this kind of control over me. I'm just going to tough it up. I'm just going to suck it up and figure out how to not care what they think. And that's what I did. And so in adulthood, when an issue came up, my thought was, suck it up. Just don't be a baby. That's what I did. Worked for me. Let's go. And that's kind of the mindset I had several years ago when I got one of those phone calls at the church that I was at. Some guy called the church and just said he was in a real tough way, needed to talk to a pastor. So pick up the phone. Hey, you know, one of the pastors here, what's going on? How can I help you? And he was 31 years old, and he had a girlfriend who had a bit of a drug issue, in his words, and she had just broken up with him. Nobody in his family liked him, liked her, but he was crestfallen over this breakup. And he wanted to know from a pastor, if there is a good God in heaven, how could he allow this girl to break my heart in this way? And I thought, are you freaking kidding me? Like, you're 31. She broke up with you. She's a drug addict. This is a good thing, dude. Get another girlfriend. There's a lot of them. Like, I could not muster any sympathy for this dude. In my life, there was a good friend of mine who had just lost her husband, and I'm comparing and contrasting these tragedies, and I'm like, bro, suck it up. Like take a day, you know, have a beer and then get back to it. It doesn't matter. Like I literally, I was nice to him. I wasn't mean. I had the hardest time caring about this guy's issue. Like the girl broke up with you, man, whatever whatever. And so a couple days after that, I had lunch with a counselor. Every now and again, a counselor will reach out to a pastor and invite you to lunch, and they're basically, they're kind of courting your reference. You want to get to know each other, and they know that I kind of funnel people into counseling, and so that's kind of how that goes. And so we went out to lunch, and we were talking, and I said, hey hey man, let me just ask you a question. So I have to counsel sometimes. Let me get a little bit of advice. I got this call the other day. How would you have handled that? And I told him about the guy's issues and my response. And he kind of thought about it a second and he said, I'm guessing that you grew up in a pretty good home. And I said, I mean, yeah, I did. I'm guessing that you grew up in a pretty good home. And I said, well, I mean, yeah, I did. I'm guessing that your parents are together and that you never really had to wonder if they were proud of you. And I said, that's true of me. Yeah, I would say that's true. I said, how'd you know that? And he said, it's just, you just kind of get a sense. I can just tell by the way you carry yourself. He said, I'd be willing to bet that that guy you talked to on the phone probably doesn't have a background like you. He probably doesn't have that family structure to lean on like you did. And he probably values the relationship with that girl and what it did for him and the value that it made him feel a lot more than you ever would. So your ability to detach yourself from that and move on is not the same as his. So I would probably handle that with a little bit more empathy. And I thought, whoa, this dude is smart. I'm going to give him all the referrals. How did he figure that out in 20 minutes of talking to me? I was super impressed. And it also dawned on me in that conversation, because I'm obtuse,ations are always a little bit more nuanced than they seem. And that most of the time when we're talking about issues of mental and emotional health, suck it up is really bad advice. It's really careless and thoughtless and obtuse. And since then, I've rethought about the way that I offer counsel. And that really got my wheels turning on mental health in general. It's something that I care about a lot. I care deeply about how the church engages it because I think historically the church has engaged mental health a little bit like I did. Suck it up and pray it away. Let's go. You're not a good enough Christian. If you were a better Christian, you wouldn't be so sad. So let's lean into God and let's quit being a sissy. And I just think historically that's how we've handled it and that's obtuse. That's not helpful. And more and more, it's being pressed into the national conscience. Last year, we had several athletes come out and say that they were struggling with anxiety, that they were struggling with depression. There was a very high-profile rookie in the NBA who had a terrible rookie year, and he confessed that it was because he struggles greatly with anxiety. There was an offensive lineman, a big, huge bear of a man for the Philadelphia Eagles, I believe, who missed a half of football because he was in the locker room at halftime throwing up because of anxiety attacks and could not get himself out on the field. So more and more we become aware of these things. Every time there's a shooting, then mental health and the epidemic gets thrust into the national conscience. And so as we approached this series and we said, I want a better life, and we thought through the four things that we were going to talk about, I just kind of felt like, based on all of those things, my experiences and what's going on in our culture now, that it would be good to take a Sunday and say, hey, you know what? I want a better me. I want to be more healthy. And so I wanted to take a Sunday and talk to those of you who do struggle with some sort of mental or emotional struggle. I wanted to talk to us as a church, as we encounter and engage and love people in our life who are walking through that struggle. And so as I prepared and thought through what I wanted to say and how I wanted to approach it, I actually had a conversation with my therapist. I started seeing a therapist this last summer. And normally when I tell people that I'm in counseling, I immediately tell them why I'm in counseling because I don't want them to think that I'm broken or crazy or that there's something going on. So I want to be very clear, but it's for this really good reason. But as I prepared for this sermon, I thought, I'm going to quit doing that. Because what do I care what you think about how I go to counseling? We need to destigmatize it anyways. So I had a conversation with my therapist. And he's a believer. And he's got a master's in divinity. And so he's very helpful for me. And I said, hey, man, I'm going to be doing a sermon on mental health. What does the church need to know about mental health? What do you wish pastors would say about it? And he said, well, you know, I don't really hear a lot of sermons on mental health, but the ones that I have heard tend to focus on unhealth and what that's like. And I just think that we do a disservice to the church when we don't paint a picture of what health is. So I would invest my time in that. That's interesting. How would you define health? And he defined it essentially this way. He said, a healthy person walks in a sense of security and worth. He said a healthy person, someone who's mentally and emotionally healthy and stable walks in a sense of security and worth. What he meant is, if we're going to be emotionally stable, if we're going to be mentally healthy, then we need to have a sense of security. We need to feel safe. We need to know that everything's going to be okay. If we're walking around in constant fear, a constant uncertainty, or like we've got our eyes covered and we don't know where our next step is going to go, that that's going to cause some mental instability. So we first need to feel secure, but we also need to feel valuable. We need to feel worth. We need to feel like we're enough. We need to feel like we're good enough for other people, that we have some intrinsic value. We need to understand that about ourselves and walk in an actualization and an acknowledgement of that value. So he said, to be healthy, we need to walk in a sense of security and worth. And then he said something that I thought was really interesting. He said that every person gets their boat rocked a little bit. Every person in their life, all of you, at some point or another, have had times where you felt unsafe and had times where you felt unworthy. We've all had our security compromised. We've all had the rug pulled out from under us. We've all felt like, no, this time it's not gonna be okay. And I think more predominantly in the American culture, we've all had times where we don't feel worthy. Some of us feel that pervasively right now. For some of us, the story of our life is this low simmering sense of unworthiness and lack of value and like we're not good enough. And all we've ever done is claw to show ourselves and the people around us that we are actually good enough. Everybody struggles at times to feel secure and to feel worthy. And what he said is, when that happens, healthy people develop healthy coping mechanisms to get themselves back on track. Unhealthy people develop unhealthy coping mechanisms to try to grope for that security and to try to grope for that value. We've seen these unhealthy coping mechanisms, right? Someone feels unsafe, their world feels crazy, and so they become hyper-controlling of their environment all the time. They become, their house has to be clean, and their house doesn't have to be clean because they like a clean house. Their house has to be clean because they've got to exert control over something. And that's not necessarily bad, but it can become unhealthy. Where we see this most is when people exhibit unhealthy coping mechanisms as we lurch for value. This is the girl that far too easily gives herself over to whatever guy will pay attention to her. Because from that guy, she is getting her sense of worth, and that's how she's coping and lurching for that. This is the grown man that still tells you how good of an athlete he was in high school. Because all he's saying is, tell me I'm valuable. Tell me I'm worthy. This is the guy that can't help but brag about whatever it was he did. It's not because he's dumb. It's because he's incredibly insecure and he's groping for value and he doesn't feel it. So he's just looking at you going, can you just tell me I'm awesome? Can you do that, please? He's a 15-year-old kid going, please tell me I'm great. We all do it. As we grow up, we find more nuanced ways to grope for this value, but we do, and it becomes unhealthy. This is where addictions start and get carried on, right? We feel unvaluable. We feel unworthy, we feel unsafe, and so we drink, we medicate, or we find a hobby to numb it, or we refuse to sit in silence. In my research, I saw a great quote from Blaise Pascal that said, all of man's problems can be summed up in his inability to sit in a quiet room alone. Some of us hate the silence. Some of us can't go more than 10 seconds without pulling out our phone to distract ourselves from the things that we don't want to think about. Unhealthy people develop unhealthy coping mechanisms to lurch for the security and the value that we all need. Healthy people develop unhealthy coping mechanisms to lurch for the security and the value that we all need. Healthy people develop healthy coping mechanisms to bring back and restore that sense of security and worth. And when we think about healthy coping mechanisms, I think this is a good place to insert the spiritual into the conversation as we think about what are some healthy coping mechanisms with a lack of stability or a lack of value that can bring me back to a place of true health. And as I had this conversation with my therapist, I suggested these two things. I said, I think God provides for us these senses in these two ways. And he said, yeah, that's not everything. And I just want to say very clearly, I'm not covering everything that we do and how we handle mental health this morning, but this is a very good start, I think. As we think about healthy coping mechanisms and what it means to be truly healthy, I want to suggest these two things to you, that there's really two pillars of true health. There's security in God's sovereignty and worthiness in God's love. If we want to be healthy people, truly healthy the way that we were designed, we have to walk in a sense of security anchored in God's sovereignty and a sense of worthiness brought about by God's deep and compassionate love for us. That's what true health is. And so a healthy coping mechanism is to acknowledge that God is sovereign, to acknowledge that God is in control, to acknowledge that nothing happens outside of his purview and outside of his will and feel the relief of that. A good coping mechanism is to look around at the people in your life that God has placed in your life who love you and who value you and who are telling you that you are enough and to allow that to be the truth that you hear and not the truth from the detractors. I actually think that these two pillars are some of the greatest things that Christianity has to offer. I think we undervalue the sovereignty of God. One of my favorite verses, group of verses, is Philippians 4, 6, and 7. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, through prayer and petition and with thanksgiving, present your requests to God, and the God of peace who transcends all understanding will, listen, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Are you anxious? Are the things keeping you up at night? Does worry characterize you? Pray those things to God. Release them to God. And he says that his peace that passes all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. And what that means is God is saying, I've got it. I'm in control. I'm God. It's going to be okay. Rest easy in my sovereignty. He does this again in Romans 8, where it says, we know that for those who love him and are called according to his purpose, that all things work together for the good of those who love him. Everything works together for the good of those who love him are called according to his purpose. Romans 8.28 tells us everything's going to work out. Even if it doesn't work out now, it will work out eventually. It's a beautiful promise from God. I saw a clip of a pastor doing the funeral for his mother that he lost far too early. And he said some amazing things. He said, you know, with God, all of our prayers are answered. I was praying so much for my mom to live, and then she died. He said it disillusioned him for a little bit. But what he realized was he was thinking about it wrong. And it dawned on him that in God, all his prayers are answered because she knew Jesus. So as he prayed for his mom to live, the truth of it is either she's going to live or she was gonna live. She was gonna be okay or she was gonna be okay. She was gonna be with family or she was gonna go be with family. God is good or God is good. This is the sovereignty that he offers us. And one of my favorite passages that I mentioned often, Revelation 21, paints this beautiful picture where it says the end of days that we will be with God and he will be with his people and there will be no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. There is a sovereignty and a peace that God promises throughout scripture. Scripture is replete with these promises. And if we want to be healthy and cling onto a sense of stability and know that everything is okay, even when we don't see how it's going to be okay, then we cling to the sovereignty of God that is laced throughout Scripture, and we know that it's going to be okay, even if it doesn't make sense to me. And I believe that a healthy person reminds themselves of the sovereignty of God and rests easy in that and not in their own control. The next thing we do is we rest in God's love. We know the Bible tells us God loves us. We know John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life. God tells us that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without his knowledge, so how much more does he care about you that the numbers of hairs on your head are numbered? He knows you that well and that intimately. He tells us that if your earthly father knows how to give you a good gift, how much better are my gifts? He tells us that we know that we are loved because while we were still sinners, he died for us. He tells us that we are able to love him because he first loved us. From God, if you listen, is a constant, pervasive, never fatiguing voice that says, you are enough. I love you. You do not have to perform for me. You don't have to be good for me. You don't have to sell for me. You don't have to execute for me. You don't have to impress me. I love you as much as I'm ever going to love you. And to be healthy is to walk in an acknowledgement of that love and not need the accolades of others and not be so desperate for the approval of this group because I'm walking with the approval of my God. And if you give me it too, that's great, but I don't need it because God gives it to me. That's what health looks like. Have you ever met somebody who is so comfortable in their own skin that you just marvel at it? To me, that's a person who walks knowing that God loves me and I'm good. That's what health is. So if we want to be a healthy person, we need to quiet the voices that are telling us we're not enough and listen to the pervasive and persistent voice of God that tells us that we are. As we think about ourselves pursuing mental and emotional health, I think the best, most practical way to do that is to pursue health. We need to identify poor coping mechanisms in our life and pursue healthy ones. If we're going to be mentally healthy, if we're in a state this morning where we feel given towards depression, if we feel given towards anxiety, if we feel given towards just unhealth, I think a good exercise is to identify the unhealthy coping mechanisms that exist in our life. And listen, we all have them. One of the things I'm more certain of than ever, especially in being in counseling, is that we are all a bundle and an alchemy of insecurities and coping mechanisms to present ourselves as enough, all of us. So the best thing we can do is try to identify where these coping mechanisms are and pursue them and pursue healthy ones. But I don't just want to talk about us, how we pursue health. I think one of the big questions the church faces and some of us in our life faces, if I have people in my life who are not healthy, how do I love them towards health? What can we do to love other people towards emotional and mental health? I think two things I would suggest to you this morning. The first would be to offer the empathetic compassion of Christ. To offer the empathetic compassion of Christ. Hebrews tells us that Christ took on flesh, that he bore our infirmities, that he was tempted in the ways that we are tempted, so that he understood our plight, so that when we pray to our Savior, we're not praying to someone who is altogether unfamiliar with the human condition. We're praying to someone who is empathetic with us and therefore compassionate towards us. Do you realize that empathy is the birthplace of compassion? That empathy begats compassion. That the thing that happened with me and that guy that called the church that day, I had zero empathy for him. Therefore, I had zero compassion. It made no sense to me how he was that broken up about that. I could not put myself in his shoes of caring that much that I would doubt the existence of God because a girl dumped me. And so I had no compassion for him. But when I had that conversation with the counselor, and I realized the nuances of what was going on in the conversation that I had with that guy, the thought occurred to me, you know what? If I didn't grow up the way that I grew up in the house that I grew up in, it's entirely possible that I would handle that situation just like he does. And that I'm not tough. I didn't just learn to suck it up. I'm just the benefit of a good environment with good coping mechanisms. And the truth of it is, if you think about me as a little kid, I said I learned to suck it up early. No, I didn't. No, I didn't. I didn't decide as a 12-year-old to get tough. No one gets tough at 12. I was in an environment where I was loved by family and by people at church. And that reminded me of my worthiness. My parents breathed scripture into me and that reminded me of God's sovereignty. And I begun to cling to those things. And I wouldn't have articulated it like this at the time, but all that happened is I had to simply develop healthy coping mechanisms for feeling unsafe and unworthy. And the guy that I was talking to on the phone that day had never had the opportunity to develop those. So the first thing we do with people who are experiencing unhealth is we offer empathy. And we acknowledge and admit that even if we don't understand, even if we've never felt that way before, if you change the alchemy of my life and you make the circumstances the same and you run me through the ringer that they went through, there's a very good chance I would come out the other side feeling and thinking and acting the same way that they do. So don't think that we're for a second better than them or more stable than them or tougher than them or stronger than them. We have a different background than they do. And when we can acknowledge that we would be the same person they are, that produces in us empathy. And out of that empathy comes compassion, where we realize some of the worst possible advice would be to suck it up or to pray it away, that we need to first be empathetic with them and understand. And empathy is also the acknowledgement that sometimes when people are dealing with a mental health issue, it's a chemical imbalance. They are sick. Looking at someone who is depressed and telling them to suck it up is like looking at someone with the flu and telling them to run a couple miles. It's useless advice. All it does is make you look dumb and then feel bad. We've got to offer empathy, which produces in us a Christ-like compassion. To help us offer empathy, I wanted to share with you some statistics that I found in the research that I've been doing. These are from the National Mental Health Institute, Institute of Mental Health. What I learned is that a quarter or 20% of U.S. citizens exhibit some symptoms of mental illness. Now, that's a wide brush. That's mild depression all the way to extreme schizophrenia, okay? But 20%, one in five of you, look down the row within two people and one of them is crazy, right? That's a lot. It affects a lot of us. Now, here's what I think is really interesting. It says that there's 22% of women and 15% of men deal with mental health issues. Now, here's what that doesn't mean, that men have it together more than women do. What it means is they're more honest than us and you're a stubborn jerk. That's what that means. You just can't admit that you're struggling. You just fold your arms and pretend like everything's okay. And it only gets worse because 26% of millennials of 18 to 25 say that they experienced some sort of mental illness or exhibit signs of that. Only 14% of ages 50 and older. Now listen, I don't think for a second that you people who are 50 and older in this room have just have life so figured out and all your coping skills so nailed that you're the healthiest bunch in the room. Listen, if you're a dude over 50 and you're like, I don't struggle with depression. Yes, you do. You're just stubborn. Listen, all of us at some point have experienced a season of melancholy. We all have. If you haven't, you're a psychopath or you're not paying attention. All of us experience anxiety in excessive ways. Everybody in this room has had a suicidal thought. Everybody. The difference with healthy and unhealthy is how we cope with those things. I also thought it was really interesting that 50% of adolescents show sign of a mental disorder. And if we understand that health is to walk in a sense of stability and worth, is it any wonder that half of our high school students have no idea how to cling on to stability and worth? We are all of us broken. We are all of us at times weak and in need of help. There is none of us in here who is singularly and individually strong and healthy. And we need to acknowledge that as we seek to offer empathy to others. The next thing we can do to love people towards health is to celebrate courageous choices. We need to start celebrating courageous choices. When somebody makes a decision to get help, when somebody makes a decision to be vulnerable and confess, we need to praise those things. We need to celebrate those things. We don't need to deride those things. I've talked a lot about counseling in this sermon. One of the things that breaks my heart is that counseling gets such a stigma that people, when you start talking about going to see a therapist or going to see a counselor, that we automatically think, man, only broken people do that. What's going on in your life? What can you not get together yourself? Why do you need help that you need to go talk to a professional to do that? Are you crazy? What's wrong with you? What have you failed at? How did you ruin your marriage? When did you get fired? We just assume that when people are going to see a therapist or going to see a counselor, that there's something broken in them. But here's the thing, there's something broken in all of us, so we need to stop it. Sometimes, most of the time, the unhealthy coping mechanisms that we have are so deeply embedded and ingrained in us that we can't see them. We don't know how to find them ourselves. And we need a trained professional to talk with us and help us see those and then help us see a way through them. We need trained professionals who are more than pastors. I'm very quick to go, listen, I wanna try to help you as best I can. I'm gonna pray for you. You need to talk to a therapist, not because you're crazy, but because they're good at it. The other thing I've learned is when you talk to somebody who will say, I should really go speak to a counselor about this. A lot of times they won't. And at first they won't because it's a pride thing. I don't want to do that. I don't want people to see me parking at that office. I don't want people to think that there's something wrong with me. I don't want people to think that I can't handle it or that I'm weak somehow. I don't want all the stuff that goes with seeing a counselor. So I'm not gonna go do that. And it seems like pride. But when you start to peel back the layers, what you find is that it's really fear. I'm convinced that the reason, if you're thinking about seeing a counselor, getting help, working through some unhealth in your life, I'm convinced that one of the big reasons we don't do that is because we know good and well what we're going to have to walk through when we get there. We don't want to have to look at ourselves in the mirror. It is easier to cope. It is easier to demur. It is easier to distract than it is to confront. And so we keep walking away from our unhealthy selves instead of turning and allowing someone to hold up a mirror and show us and work through it and walk through it and emerge on the other side more healthy. It's often fear that keeps us from getting help, not pride. And so I want you to know this morning that I think it takes bravery to go get help. And I actually think, and I would love for our church to start thinking about it this way, that counseling is not for the broken. It's for the brave. Counseling is not for broken people. It's for brave people. If it were for broken people, then we'd all be in it because we're all broken. But at some point or another, you have to take a step and make a decision that I want some help. I want to be healthy. I want somebody else's voice in this conversation helping me identify the unhealthy pockets in my life to restoring me to my God-given sense of security and value and love. And since I can't find my way out of this mess myself, I want to get someone else to speak into it for me. And that takes bravery and courage. The counseling is not the broken. It's for the brave. My prayer is that 2020 will be the healthiest year for you in a long, long time. For those of you who are brave enough to pursue health, I think it begins with acknowledging and identifying the unhealthy ways we bring ourselves a sense of security and worth. And doing the work to replace that coping mechanism with one that pushes us towards God's sovereignty and pushes us towards God's love. If we have people in our lives this year that we're trying to love towards mental health, we need to do it with empathy and compassion. And we need to, as a church and as a Christian subculture, destigmatize what it is to get help and admit that we all need it. And it's not for the broken, it's for the brave. I hope that some of you will make courageous choices, even this week. If you do want to talk to a counselor, email me and I'll work to find you a good one. I'm not going to send you to mine, but somebody. If there's someone in your life who is struggling, please, please offer them empathy. Please offer them compassion. Please offer them understanding. Try the best you can to put yourself in their shoes and love them from that perspective. And let's make this year a healthy year. Let's pray. Father, we do love you. We thank you so much for loving us. God, if there is anybody here who feels unworthy, who feels unvaluable, who feels unloved, God, may they just feel a pervasive sense of your love and your compassion wrapping around them today. Help them to hear the voices in their life that speak for you and tell them that they are enough. God, if we feel unsafe or insecure, I pray that you would restore that sense of security with your sovereignty. God, for those here who are struggling, who are sad, or who are anxious, or dealing with a multitude of other things, help them feel your peace today. Help them feel your hope today. Remind them that that hope, your word says, will not be put to shame. God, I pray that we would be healthy, that we would walk in a sense of security in you, of value in you, and that that would enable us to love other people well on your behalf. It's in your son's name we pray, amen.