Sermons tagged with Scripture

My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. But thanks for being here on this July weekend. It feels fun and full and energetic. I loved the worship this morning, and I'll just admit up front, I'm at risk today. Whenever I'm feeling good and happy and energetic, I'm going to say some crazy stuff. So I'm going to try to keep it concise. This is the second part of our series called Obscure Heroes. Now, to spend any time in church, to spend any time around the Bible, even to be in the South, in the Southern Christian culture, is to be aware of some of the heavy hitters in the Bible, of Moses, and of David, and of Ruth, and Paul, and all those different figures. But in Scripture, there's so many different people and so many different examples, and I love getting into the nitty-gritty of it and finding it for ourselves. I love uncovering new people and new examples and new stories. And so for eight weeks this summer, that's what we're doing, is we're going to look at some of the lesser-known figures in the Bible and see what we can learn from them and their example. And really, why did God include this story in the Bible? What can we learn from it? So this morning, we're going to look at somebody in the book of Judges, Judges chapter 4. So if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn there. If you don't, there's one in the seat back in front of you. There's also myriad free options online. So, you know, take your pick there. But before we do that, before we get to the book of Judges, I want to tell you about something that happened in my house this week. I think this was Wednesday night. Jen starts texting with her sister. And I'm saying, what's going on? What are you texting about? And she said, they've found, her sister's name is Lauren, her husband's name is Rusty. They have a daughter named Meredith. She's my niece, for those playing along at home. And she said, Lauren and Rusty have found this app called State Stack. And I said, what's that? And they said, well, it's just, it's like for learning. It's just a map of the United States with no borders on the inside of it. And then the app gives you a state, and you have to tap on the map where it goes to test your geographical knowledge. And my niece, Meredith, is super smart. Like not the kind of smart like, oh, she's going to be sharp one day. Like the kind of smart where you're like, she's going to create rockets. Like she's really smart. And they were texting because Meredith had beaten her parents. She's three. But she loves maps and she beats her parents at this. And listen, her parents may listen to this podcast. They're not dumb people. They're smart. They're as smart as anybody in this room. But Meredith's a genius at this app, so they're texting back and forth about it. And so Jen says, I want to try it. So she tries it. I'm not going to tell you. You can ask her what she got later. I'm not going to tell you. That's between her and Jesus. And of course, what do I want to do? I know my states. Give me a thing. I want to try it. I got to try this thing. And listen, normally I don't brag on stage. I got a perfect score. First try, right? I got an 80, which bummed me out. It bummed me out. That's the max score. Max score's an 80. Who makes an app with a max score of an 80? It's got to be 100. That's terrible. It's so dissatisfying. That's as high as it goes. In my mind, it's 100, but that's what I got. So I do it really quickly, and I just hand it back to Jen and walk off like, yeah, that's right, you know, waiting for her to kind of acknowledge it. Then, because I'm such a me monster, because I have such a fragile ego that I need the affirmation of others so desperately, after like three minutes, we're sitting there watching the British baking show, and I kind of look over, and I'm like, did you text your sister? Has she heard tale of my victories yet? Does she know that I'm smarter than her three-year-old daughter? Have we covered this? My ego needs to know that they have responded to this. So eventually she's like, yes, Nate, they're very impressed. And once I was adequately stroked, this is good. Great, everybody knows I'm good at states, right? And now listen, that's pathetic. But that all exists in us. We all need the praise of others. We all like to know that we did a good job. We all like to be told that you're important, that you're enough, that you're special, that what you did is exceptional. We all need that. We all want that, which is why I think Saul is such a relatable character for us. We're going to get to Deborah, who we're going to talk about today, but we're going to do that by contrasting her with Saul because we have a picture in the Old Testament of two leaders of Israel and two people who handled it in a very different way. Saul was the first king of Israel. He followed up a period known as the period of the judges that I'll tell you a little bit more about in a second. But he was the first king of Israel. Israel collectively acted like a seventh grade child and stomped their foot and looked at God and said, we want a king too because everybody else has one. And God says, fine, I'll give you a king, but you're going to regret this choice. So he named Saul the king. And Saul was from the smallest clan and the smallest tribe. He was a Benjaminite or Benjamite or whatever. I don't really know how to say that. But he belonged to the tribe of Benjamin. He was of the smallest clan. And so in that way, he was an unusual choice. But scripture tells us that Saul stood head and shoulders above everybody else. If you were to look through a room, he was the most impressive looking guy. He's the one that you would look at and go, that guy's probably the one that needs to be leading us. He probably looked a lot like me. And so that's who God chose was Saul. Saul became the first king. The problem with Saul is that he had this fatal flaw. Here's a man with tremendous opportunity, tremendous choice by God to be named the very first king to lead his nation. He's got the whole world in front of him. He is the first choice by God to lead God's chosen people. But Saul messes up and he continually makes it about him. He continually leverages all of his power and all of his authority and all of his ability to make it about himself, to put the praise on him, to get the attention of other people looking at him and going, Saul, aren't you good? Saul, aren't you wonderful? Aren't you a good king? And we see some big sins in his life. There's one time where he goes out to battle. Samuel is the prophet, and he's the earpiece to God and the mouthpiece to Saul. And he tells Saul, take the men out for battle. Stay here for seven days. On the seventh day, I'm going to come perform a sacrifice, and then you can attack the Philistines, and God will give you favor. So Saul says, okay. So he goes out, and he waits seven days. Well, it's the seventh day. Samuel's still not there. Saul looks around. He feels like people are starting to scatter. We don't know if that's true, if that's an excuse. But he takes matters into his own hands and he gathers everybody around and he grabs the sacrifices and he performs them himself without Samuel. And Samuel shows up as this is happening or right after it's over. And this is in the first part of the book of Samuel. You can see all this stuff. And he says, Saul, what are you doing? And Saul tells him, he gives his excuses. Well, you weren't here when I thought you would be. And the people were scattering and I got scared and we needed to go ahead and do this. And now we can attack. And I was just trying to do the right thing. And really what's happening in the heart of Saul, I think is he's got military authority. People respect him as a military leader. People respect him as a political leader. But Samuel's the religious leader. But now he's not here. So what does scheming Saul get to do? Well, now I get to step into this void and I get to be seen as a religious leader. I get to grab myself a piece of that pie too. And now people are going to respect me politically and militarily and religiously. I can step into that and we don't need Samuel as much anymore. Now we can just be me. And now people are going to think that I'm a religious leader too. They're going to respect me for my faith because the respect that I have already is not enough. I need more, right? And so he steps into that and Samuel says, what are you doing? And because of that sin, God tells Samuel, I'm going to take the kingdom away from Saul. And Saul's made aware of this, but he doesn't seem to change anything in his life. He continues to live and lead and guide that way and continue to make everything about him. Another time later on, he's going into battle and God says,, I want you to go in, and I want you to completely conquer these people. And a lot of us know, particularly if we're interested in military history, that in that day when an army would sweep into a country or a city, that when they would conquer an army or an enemy, they would plunder. They would take for themselves all of their goods. Anything that was there that was of any value at all, they would claim for themselves. And kings had first dibs. And so God says, when you go in and you conquer them, you don't take anything for yourself. You destroy them. Don't touch it. But what did Saul do? There's some stuff there that he wanted. He wanted to build himself up. He wanted to be the guy with the wealth. He wanted to be the guy with the stuff. I don't know why he took the things, but he took it, and part of it was, look at me, look at how great I am, look at my great kingdom, look at my vast wealth. And so he couldn't keep his grubby hands off of it, and he made it about himself again. Later, when David comes on the scene, and he's anointed as the next king of Israel and Saul has to deal with that reality, there was this song that used to just drive him crazy. It incensed him with rage to the point where he tried to kill David. And I'm sure that it sounds better in the Hebrew, but in the English it's Saul has slain his thousands and David has slain his tens of thousands. Saul's getting credit, but it's not enough. He needs more. He's jealous of David. Look at me, look at me, look at me. Saul would definitely wanted to know what his sister-in-law's response was to state stack. He absolutely would have needed to know that. When he got home from battle, he would have to know from his wives, did you text the other wives and tell them about my great accomplishments on the battlefield today? He would have to know that stuff because it was about him and it was about getting praise of man. Saul sought the praise of man. That's what we see in his example. He sought the praise of man. Everything that he did, every avenue that he took, even when he was sorry, when he feigned sorrow to Samuel, when he was confronted with his sin, was this feigned sorrow. He was really just sorry that he got caught. All he wanted is for everybody to like him. Saul sought the praise of men. And this, I believe, stands in direct contrast with the story of Deborah. We find the story of Deborah in Judges chapter four. Judges is the seventh book of the Bible if you're trying to turn there. And I'm not gonna go verse by verse. I will read a portion of it, but I'm just gonna tell you the story. Now, a judge at this time in Israel, they wandered around in the desert and then Joshua came in and he conquered the land of Canaan that we know as modern-day Israel. And then the tribes got scattered to their different states, as we would understand them, or territories. And then Israel had no king. God was their king. But every now and again, the Israelites would go through a pattern that we go through. We see this pattern over and over again in the book of Judges. We see it all throughout the Old Testament, and we see it in our own lives. Sin, slavery, sorrow, salvation. God sets them up in the promised land. Everything's good. He's their king. Everything's wonderful. They have their laws. They love God. He loves them. But eventually, after things went well enough, they would kind of forget about God and be like, God, we're good. We're going to take it from here. Thanks for getting us into the promised land. Thanks for getting us through that hairy spot. But we're fine now. They would forget about God. They'd start to do what was right in their own eyes, the Bible says. None of us can relate to this. So let's all just judge the Israelites together as they failed in this way. And sure enough, when that happens and we go, I'm good, God, I don't need you anymore, what happens? They fall into sin. When they would fall into sin and forget about God, God would allow an oppressor to come in, the Amalekites and the Amorites or some ites, and they would come in, the Canaanites, and they would oppress them. And they would cry out to God, oh my gosh, God, we have sinned, we have forgotten about you, and because of you, we're under the rule of this people. Will you please throw them off? Will you please save us? And God would respond to them, and he would send a judge. He would appoint a judge, and the judge's role was to overthrow the oppressors. When there's a judge in the Old Testament, there's a whole book of them here, their entire job is to overthrow the oppressors. That is their appointed job by God. And so in Judges chapter 4, we see a woman named Deborah. And we're told some stuff about Deborah. First of all, she's a prophetess. Second of all, she's a judge. She's the only lady judge, female judge, that I know of in the Bible. She's the only one, the only judge that was both a prophet and a judge that had both military and religious authority. And to me, I don't know about you, but in this time for a woman to rise to power, anytime somebody rises to power who doesn't look like all the people before them who have risen to power, that's an interesting person to talk to. Deborah's awesome. Love to talk to Deborah. She's a prophetess and she's a judge and the Canaanites are oppressing them and it's her job to get rid of the Canaanites. So she calls on a guy named Barak. From what we can see in the text, Barak seems like a general. She calls on a guy named Barak to come talk to her and the very first thing she does is she kind of gets on to him a little bit. Barak, didn't God tell you to go to assemble 10,000 men and go up against Sisera? Sisera was the general of the king of Canaan, and he had 900 chariots, the Bible tells us, which in contrast with Israel's zero chariots, is overwhelming odds. And apparently incredibly intimidating. And you get the sense that Barak has not assembled the men that he's supposed to assemble because he was scared. He felt like that was an unwinnable battle. It was an unwise choice. He was leading people to their death if he did that, so he kind of shied away from it. And Deborah's like, hey, did God tell you to do this or not? She's just got so much faith. And he's like, yeah, I guess so. And she goes, well, go assemble your men and let's go. And then Barak says this, because I think Barak's a little bit of a coward. He says, I'll do it if you go with me. Because he thinks that this is a bad deal. He thinks that he's going to die if he goes. He thinks there's no way that they can win this. So he says, okay, Deborah, you put your money where your mouth is, and then I'll do it. And I would love to have been in Barack's head when she said, okay, let's go. Right? I would love, like, what did he go? Oh, well, good. Here we go. This is super. That's not what I was planning on, Deborah. So they go. Now, here's what's interesting on stuff right here. Think about this. What would Saul do if he were Deborah? What would I probably do if I were Deborah? Barak comes to me. Didn't God tell you to take your army? Yeah, but I'm scared. What would Saul have done? Saul, knowing that God was going to deliver the victory, that there was glory to be had in this victory, I think would have told Barak, that's all right, dude, go home. Just give me your army. I'll lead them. You don't have to. It's going to be good. Conniving Saul, conniving Nate, some of us, is that not what we would do is look for a way to leverage that for our own power and authority? Let me grab the glory. I don't have any troops, but if you're scared to take yours, I'll take them. You don't have to do it. Barak, don't worry about it. I got this. That's not what she did. She said, this is something that God has asked you to do. You need to go do it. Irrespective of what it meant for her. She's not going to leave the troops. She's not going to get anything from this. And then she says this incredible thing. I love this line. She tells Brack to go and let's attack Sisera. And so they're on their way to go, but before they go, she says this in verse 9. Barak said to her in verse 8, if you will go with me, I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go. Okay, so that's his gamble, right? And then she says this, and she said, I'll go with you. Nevertheless, the road on which you But you are not going to get the glory for this. No one's going to know about this. No one's going to know what you did. There's a woman. It's not me. We find out later her name's Jael. She gets to kill Sisera, not you. So you're just doing this to be obedient. And I don't think Barak hears her because they go into battle and they defeat the chariots. It's amazing God gives them victory on that day. During the battle, Sisera jumps off of his chariot and takes off to survive. And while he's running, it says that Barak is still chasing him. Barak is still chasing that glory. He still wants the victory. He's still like Saul. He's still that me monster that needs people to look at him and give him the glory for what he's doing and say, you were great. That was a great victory that you won that day. He's still chasing the glory. There's no indication that Deborah's doing that. Deborah's chilled out. She already knows how this is going to play out. She doesn't care. And here's the cool thing about Deborah. Deborah has no idea that this story is going to end up in the Bible. She doesn't even know what the Bible is. It's not like there's some journalist embedded with her who's getting quotes from her as they do this. She has no clue that this is going to be recorded for posterity. But here we are thousands of years later and we know about Deborah because God saw her faithfulness and rewarded her. So Barak is chasing Sisera, and there's a woman named Jael who's married to a king that's buddies with Sisera's king. And she sees Barak running, and she's like, hey, come in here. This is a very loose paraphrase of what's in Judges. She says, come in here. I got a spot for you. So he comes in there. He lays down. He's exhausted. She covers him up with a rug, which I guess will do if you need a blanket. And he asks for some water. She gives him warm milk and dude falls asleep. And then, now I'm sorry if you don't like this part, but it's in the Bible and I like it. I think it's neat that it's in the Bible. She takes a tent peg. It says that she went to him softly, but she did. She put the tent peg against his temple and she drove his head into the ground. Yeah, it's in the Bible. You deal with it, okay? Judges 4. Go read it. Super fun. Now, then she goes to the entrance. Barak and his army are still chasing him. She's like, hey, Barak, you should come see a thing. And he goes in there and she's killed Sisera and God has defeated their oppressors and Israel is free. And we're told that Deborah provided a peace of 40 years. Now, there are so many different places where Deborah could have solved that and made it all about her. She could have taken the army. She could have gotten word of Jael. She knew who was going to kill him. She could have gotten word of Jael. When you get him, just secure him in your tent. I'm going to come and I'm going to kill him. She could have taken any of that stuff for herself. She could have made it about her. In fact, after Judges 4 and the next chapter, Judges 5, there's a song called The Song of Deborah and Barak. And if you read it, she writes it. It's in her voice and all of the credit goes to God. The day that God won, the day that God defeated, the day that God delivered into the hands. None of the credit. She didn't care. She wasn't looking for admiration for other people. She wasn't looking for other people to notice her. Sometimes it just takes a woman to teach us men that lesson that she was just doing the right thing because it was the right thing. Deborah sought the praise of God. Saul sought the praise of man. Deborah sought the praise of God. She did what she did to an audience of one. So to her, it didn't matter who defeated. It didn't matter who killed. It didn't matter who the glory went to. She sought the praise of God. And in that way, I think personifies a principle that we see Jesus lay out in Matthew chapter 6. I think that she is the personification or the best example of this. In chapter 6, Jesus is in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, his first recorded public address, and he says this. He's talking to people about practicing giving. When you give, he says this. Pick it up in verse 2. Can you imagine? You're sitting here having a church service. Some dude, it would have to be a dude, kicks open the doors. Then trumpets sound. He's like, I'm going to give you guys 50 grand. And we're all like, great, thank you. That would be ridiculous. But he says, don't do that like the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be seen in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. I love that. I love the matter-of-factness of that statement. Don't be like the people who seek the praise of men for the good things that they do because I tell you the truth, that's their reward. You want to give something away to somebody? You want to buy somebody a meal? You want to do something nice and altruistic? That's fine. Post on your Instagram story and the likes that you get, that's your reward, God says. Congratulations. You got this from someone you talk to twice a year. Good. When you do something good and we do it for other people, we do it to be noticed and we put it out there, God says, that's your reward. But if you'll do it in secret and not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, then your Father in heaven will see and he will reward you. And can't we admit that we like people who have this figured out? We admire people who have the character to do good things because God has laid it on their heart to do them, and not for any other reason than because they believe it's the right thing to do. Don't we admire people like that? I told you before about my father-in-law and how much respect I have for him. One of my favorite stories about him, he's just like this in a lot of ways. I could tell a lot of stories, but one Christmas, Jen and I gave him a North Face fleece, which was like, I don't know, like a hundred bucks. It was a big deal for us to give that kind of gift. Like, look at us. This is what we're getting to give her dad, my father-in-law. So we give him this North Face fleece. He worked downtown. He worked in an office, but he liked to wear that to work. And he called it pretty, and it was good looking, and whatever. It's a nice fleece where everyone's very happy. Well, a couple months later, or maybe the next winter, I don't know, he's not wearing this fleece anymore. And Terry, his wife, is like, John, what did you do with that fleece? And he says, oh, I don't know. I'm just not wearing it today. He keeps not wearing it. She's pressing him. John, come on. Nate and Jen gave that to you. Where is that fleece? He's like, ah, it's not cold outside. She's like, John, it's like 12 degrees. You need something. She presses him and presses him and finally he confesses. He's driving down the road one day coming back from work and it was a particularly cold day which in Georgia is probably like 56, 57 degrees. It was a particularly cold day and there's somebody on the side of the road spinning a sign which when I see somebody on the side of the road spinning a sign, which when I see people on the side of the road spinning a sign, I'm like big on technique. I want to see what you're bringing to the table, man. Like, I want to see what you got over there. Like, sometimes it's pretty impressive what they can do. I do not notice what they're wearing, but John noticed that this person just had a hoodie. They just had a thin sweatshirt. And their job was really cold. So what's he do? He pulls off to the side of the road. He gets out, takes off his fleece and walks it over and hands it to the person and says, your job requires this a lot more than mine does. You take this. And he gets in his car and he goes home and he never tells a soul. He only tells anybody because his wife bugged him about it long enough to learn the story. We love stories like that. We want to be like that. Deborah lived her life like that. Jesus says when we do that, that God the Father sees us and that great is our reward. And so listen, what I want us to understand today is this. The praise of man intoxicates. The praise of man intoxicates, but the praise of God satisfies. The praise of man intoxicates, but the praise of God satisfies. Here's what I mean. When you're intoxicated, you're not thinking clearly. You're not making the best decisions. You're not the best version of yourself. You probably say some stuff and do some things that you don't mean. It causes you to act in ways that are not reflective of who you really want to be. The other thing about being intoxicated is it always takes what? It always takes a little bit more. If one drink did it this time, then it won't be long before you need two. Right? If one pill, if one whatever does it this time, if I get this feeling for one, then eventually I'm going to need two. And eventually two's not going to be enough and and I'm gonna need three. And isn't this what happened to Saul? He gets appointed as the king, he gets anointed, and people are giving him attention in his little clan and then he continues to get elevated and people continue to acknowledge him and continue to heap praise on him. And it's never enough. So he steps in and he says, I want religious praise too. It's never enough. He steps in and he takes more wealth too. It's never enough. When we live for the praise of man, it's never enough. We can never hear enough good things about ourselves to be satisfied. We always want more. It causes us to act in ways that are not reflective of who we want to be. It causes us to not be the best version of ourself. And we always need just a little bit more, just a little bit more praise, just a little bit more pats on the back, and no one can ever make us feel like we are enough. And God's praise satisfies. And when I say satisfies, I think of it like this. Every now and again, I eat healthy. And when I do, one of my favorite things to eat is just grilled chicken and grilled vegetables. I just put a skewer of grilled vegetables on the grill. Sometimes we roast them in the oven, a little bit of salt and pepper, and then chicken with salt and pepper. I like that meal. I like that meal because I can eat as much of it as I want and I don't feel bad. Now, if you know something about dieting and you would say to me in the lobby, well, actually, it's not good to eat that. Listen, just let me have my chicken, okay? I'm not at that level yet. Just keep it to yourself. When I eat that grilled chicken and I eat those grilled vegetables, I can eat as much of it as I want and I don't feel bad. I just feel full. I feel good. I feel healthy. And if you were to come to me after that and you go, hey, you want a piece of this pie? You want cinnamon roll? I would tell you, no, I'm good, thanks. I'm fine. I'm satisfied. That's what the praise of God does for you. When God has acknowledged that what you're doing is good, when between you and the Heavenly Father, He says, I'm proud of you. That's good. That's enough. You don't need to take the troops and go to conquer anybody yourself. Deborah says, I'm squared away. I'm fine. You don't need to get the credit for winning the battle that day. I'm good. I'm fine. I'm squared away. I'm good. John didn't need to tell anybody that he gave his fleece to anyone. Why? Because between him and God, he's good. I'm satisfied. When we live for the praise of God, it satisfies us. We don't need anything else. Because the one who created us is looking at us, telling us, you're enough. I'm proud of you. I love you. For some of us, that's all we need to hear. If we keep fighting and scratching and clawing to get other people to tell us that, it's never going to satisfy. Even when you get what you think you want, you're going to get there and find out it's not enough. But God's reward satisfies. And so listen, it's not about stamping out this need to be known. It's a very natural need to need somebody to say, you're good and I appreciate you and you're enough. Lily has started in with this. Like yesterday, for an hour. It was the first time it happened. Jen and I were looking at each other like, oh my goodness. Daddy, look at me, look at me, watch this. Daddy, watch this. Daddy, watch this. And I'm like, I'm watching, buddy. Let's go. And listen, Jen's going to be mad at me. It wasn't even that good. I mean, she's just like, she's just running and jumping into a chair. Get back to me when you memorize the states, kid. But she wants to be noticed. She wants to be known. She wants somebody to tell her, that's good. I'm proud of you. So the Christian life isn't about stamping that out. It's just about focusing it on the right thing. Moving from trying to get our affirmation and our praise from man to seeking our praise and our affirmation from God. And when we do, we're told we will get a reward. And I thought about this. If I'm going to make the whole point of the sermon, obeying God so that we get a reward, I should probably be able to define what the reward is. I don't know what it is. For Deborah, it's being in the Bible and us knowing her story thousands of years later. For some of us, it's some sort of arrangement in heaven. I don't know. Great is your reward in heaven. I don't really know what that means, and I can't really define for you what it is for God to reward you for operating for his praise, but here's what I know. God's reward is better than your friend's reward. God rewarding you, noticing your good behavior, and affirming you is better than the reward you're going to get from Mitch in accounting that you talk to twice a year. It's better than these online. God's reward is better than your friends. It's better than your spouses. God's reward is better. And that's what we should be living for. So I hope that as we look at the story of Deborah and we compare it to Saul, that we'll be honest about where we sit and that we'll have a desire to live for the praise of God and be satisfied in that and let that be enough. And in light of those things, I would ask you as we finish, for you to consider as you go into your week this week, for whose praise are you living? For whose praise are you living? Another way of thinking about that is, the next time you feel compelled to do something good, ask yourself, why do I want to do this? Do I want to do it so that other people will see me be good and I'll get their appreciation for that? Because God says, that'll be your reward. Or do I want to do this because it's the right thing to do and I want my Father in Heaven to see me and be proud of me? For whose praise are you living? Let's pray. Father, you're so good to us. You see us and you know us and you tell us that we are enough. You see everything that we do in secret, God. I know that there are good people here who have done so much in their lives that nobody knows, that they feel like nobody sees, that they feel like they're never going to get credit for. And I pray that they would hear loud and clear this morning, God, that you see them. You notice. And their reward is great. God, for people who are like me, or like Saul, and struggle so much with wanting other people to tell them how good they are, would you just help us make you enough? Would you help us live for your praise? Would you help us hold out for your reward? God, we pray these things in your son's name. Amen.

Good morning, I'm Doug Bergeson. Wait, wait, you've got to be kidding me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it just a few months ago when Kyle Tolbert, our youth pastor, came up here to speak? And before he uttered a word, before a single word, good or bad, was out of his mouth, you were applauding him. What do I get? I'll tell you what I get. I get bubkis, nada, nothing. Let me tell you something. It's not lost on us, those of us who are asked to speak in the middle of July, but never ever at Christmas time, and for sure not at Easter. It's not lost on us that we're not on God's A-team. We get it. We're not stupid. So given that, it might be nice if you tried to be a little bit more encouraging and supportive. So let's try this again. I would not have done that. You know, the Bible's very clear that we're to test and approve what we hear, to be discerning about what's being taught, not just to accept it willy-nilly. And here you all are already clapping for me, and you haven't the faintest idea what I'm going to say. Come on, people, you're better than that. Anyways, hopefully it's obvious that I'm just goofing around, as I'm not only thrilled to be here, but I feel immense privilege to be sharing this morning. And just for the record, far from expecting applause, my desperate and sincere prayer and hope is that God will make what I say clear and useful to you all. I'm really excited about this new sermon series that we're starting. In the past, when I've been asked to speak, I've always kind of hemmed and hawed, wanted to think about it. But when Nate called me this time and explained that the new series was going to be on the obscure heroes of the Bible, I was, for some strange reason, I was enthused, and I immediately jumped at the chance. A big part of it might be that it's just different than the norm, and different is sometimes really good. Mix it up a little bit, move off the beaten path. But more than simply serving as a nice change of pace, there's a much more consequential reason for studying these obscure heroes. They have a lot to teach us. Now, there are plenty of times when I wish the Bible was easier to understand and didn't avoid so many questions that I'd like answers to. Wish that it explained a whole bunch of things better. A little less ambiguity and mystery would sometimes be nice. But in response to that wish, I've heard it said that God, whose Spirit inspired every word written, must have included what He thought was important, what He thought we needed to know. So rather than worrying about the stuff that wasn't included, we'd be much better served paying attention to the things and those people and those events that God did include in his word to us. And that brings us back to our sermon series. God saw fit to tell us about these characters and their stories. And for that reason, we are not going to ignore or gloss over or relegate these heroes to a footnote any longer. Instead, we're going to exploit them for all their worth and see what they can teach us, what they can reveal to us, how they might strengthen and encourage us. The Apostle Paul said it this way, for everything that was written in the past, even obscure heroes that maybe we've never heard of, was written to teach us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. As I said, I was surprisingly enthused when Nate called me. Not only was I pumped for the series, but one name immediately popped into my head and I knew that was my guy. That was who I was going to talk about, Gamaliel, the great Pharisee and teacher of the law, and what he wisely concluded when confronted by the incredible boldness and defiance of Peter and the other disciples in the earliest times of the Christian movement. Now, how many of you have heard of Gamaliel? You don't have to raise your hands. You know, just wink or smile as I look around the room. Nothing but a sea of blank, expressionless faces. That's perfect. But before we get to Gamaliel, I need to set the table a bit for you, provide the backdrop to help explain why what he does, what he acknowledges is so valuable to me, that his was the first name in all the Bible that popped into my head. In other words, I need to make sure that we're on the same page with respect to one significant foundational point in order for us to see why Gamaliel, who himself is not even a believer in Jesus Christ, is a hero for us today. The key foundational point is to identify the overarching story of the Bible. Some of you are probably going, oh, sheesh, we're not going to be out of here until Tuesday. Not to worry, not to worry. It's not that daunting a task. In a nutshell, the opening chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, reveal that God's loving intent was to provide all that we, His creations, need. Our job, our part of the bargain, is to trust that He is both able and willing to do that on our behalf, and for us to resist the temptation to want to decide for ourselves what's best. The rest of the Bible is just a long and involved telling of our incredible struggle to trust in God rather than ourselves, as well as the remarkable lengths God goes to to make it possible for us ultimately to place our full and abiding confidence in Him. Now, most of you are probably familiar with the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The garden was a fantastic place. Those two have a great life. It's a really sweet setup. There's only one rule, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, growing up in church, I didn't fully understand the significance of the boundary God established for humankind. My general sense was, you know, God likes rules. He's kind of a stickler about rules. And Adam and Eve got in pretty big trouble because they broke one of them. Well, as I've later come to understand, what actually happened was a much bigger deal than simply breaking a rule. What actually happened struck at the very heart of God's intent for creation. In allowing them to eat from any tree but the one, God was establishing the critical boundary for Adam and Eve and for every human since. God was saying, if you want to enjoy all of the good of my creation and live in my kingdom, you have to trust that I and I alone know what's best for you. And even more than that, you have to trust that I'm both able and willing to provide it to you. And so the questions that's faced Adam and Eve, as well as you and me, is do you believe that? Are you convinced that God knows what's best for you and that He is intent on providing it at all times and in all circumstances? When Eve first faced that question, the fate of all humanity hung in the balance. And what did she decide? Well, it turns out Eve wasn't completely convinced that God could be trusted. And she decided and felt the need to trust in someone else. Eve, that's who she decided to trust. She just trusted in herself instead. And now the serpent was cunning and planted the seed in Eve's mind that although God was certainly able to provide what was best for her, He wasn't willing but was holding something back. The serpent said, come on, Eve, you won't die. God's only worried that if you eat that fruit, you'll be like Him and be able to decide for yourself what's best, then you'll be your own God. And that has been humankind's struggle ever since. In the last book of the Bible, Revelation, it wasn't a question of God was willing to provide for his people, but if he was even able. Written at a time when Christ followers were just undergoing terrific persecution, with their very lives at stake, the facts on the ground were so difficult and so dire that only a nut job would conclude that somehow God was still in control and still in charge. And into that terrifically difficult and stressful situation, the Apostle John shared a vision of being transported up to the throne room of heaven where God sort of pulls back the curtain for a second just to show what's really going on behind the scenes. The message, no matter how things look from your perspective, I am God and there is no other. I have your back now and I have it for all eternity. Nothing can ever separate you from my loving care. Your faith and trust are well placed. God is asking each of us, do you believe, are you completely convinced that I'm both able and willing to provide the very best for you? That's the central question running throughout the entire Bible, and it's the central question of our human existence. But our struggle, our temptation, is to say in all different ways, well, God, to tell you the truth, in this particular area of my life, or in this particular relationship, or in this circumstance at this particular time, I'd like to have a say. I'd rather decide for myself what's best for me, what will make me most content, most comfortable, most safe, most fulfilled, most affirmed, most successful, most happy. After all, wouldn't I know better than anyone else what's in my best interest? That's exactly what Eve did. That's exactly what I do. And that is the root of all sin, a failure to trust in God's promise. We're just not entirely convinced, not enough to give up complete control. A famous passage from Proverbs that many of you probably know by heart is, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. But that's not easy. Our world and our culture constantly bombard us from every conceivable angle with arguments that God, even if he does exist, is neither able or willing to provide what's best for us. That life demands we take charge and we're better off when we do. Non-stop appeals to be our own little lords of our own little lives. Now we're going to do a little audience participation here for just a minute. I'd like you all to close your eyes. Alan, keep your eyes closed. Okay. Imagine that you're on the seventh floor of an office building. You are alone, and it's dark. An electrical short circuit has knocked out the lights and started an intense fire, which has engulfed the entire floor and will soon breach the room you're in. The smoke coming in under the door and through the vents is overwhelming, forcing you to drop to your knees. Your eyes are burning and you're beginning to cough uncontrollably. You can open your eyes now. Suddenly, off to your right, you hear a violent pounding on the outside of the far wall. Then the blade of an axe comes crashing through and soon the shape of a firefighter appears in the opening and he shouts, come on, follow me, I'll get you out. Wouldn't he be surprised if you yelled back, oh, thanks, buddy. I'm good. I got this. Of course, no one would do that. No one trapped and on the brink of perishing would respond that way. We would not only listen to the firefighter's commands, we would literally cling to him. We would follow his every word because we implicitly trust him. Not only does he know what he's doing, but he went to great lengths to find and rescue us. And it's plain as day that we desperately need his help. My illustration borders on the ludicrous because we'd never do that. Yet that's what we say to God all the time. I'm good. I got this. Now maybe some of us hear this illustration and say, that's not me. I'm good at trusting. My faith is rock solid. Maybe that's true, at least on the surface. But even for those of us who trust God fully in most areas of our lives, I bet that there are little nooks and crannies. I appreciated you using that earlier. Little pockets where we don't. A relationship, a decision, a priority, a behavior, perhaps, for which we're not convinced God's preferred course of action serves us best. So we plot the course by our own wisdom. We decide for ourselves what's best. And when we do that, we forfeit some portion of the abundant life that God so desperately wants for us. Sadly, doubting God's promises, not being fully convinced that he is both able and willing to provide the best for me in all of life's situations, happens far more than I even recognize. The decision to trust in my own judgment is typically very subtle. So subtle, in fact, that I don't even realize that I'm doing it much of the time. I'll share an example from my own life, but first I have to give you some context. Twenty-six years ago, we moved down here from New Jersey. I quit a really good job on Wall Street. We sold our dream house that we only lived in for two years. We left our beautiful little town and all our friends. We had a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a newborn. We moved for a lot of reasons, but chief among them was my concern that it was all too consuming and that only over time does the true cost of that kind of investment in one's career become apparent? And by that point, it's often too late. The damage has been done. I believe back then, as I still do today, that wherever your treasure is, wherever you invest most of your time, your energy, your ambition, that's where your heart will ultimately be found. And I knew that for me, I couldn't keep doing that job in that city for very long without it, for all practical purposes, becoming my treasure and stealing my heart. Okay, so we did everything they tell you not to do all at the same time. Moved to a different part of the country, changed careers, sold houses, bought houses, had another baby. Deb had just turned 33, and I was 35. The plan was that I would invest our modest nest egg in the financial markets to support our new downsized life, and we'd live happily ever after. Now, fast forward 15 years. I'm meeting Jeff Hancock, who is Grace's teaching pastor at Carolina Ale House. I think it was on a Wednesday afternoon because that's when they had their specials. It's true. Jeff and I had a relationship built largely on a strong and abiding shared love of beer and for the places that happen to serve beer. Is there any stronger foundation for a friendship? Nevertheless, that was ours. So we'd get together every so often. And that particular afternoon, as soon as I sat down, Jeff asked if there was something wrong. And I started weeping and began to share with him how I was in the midst of suffering what for me was a breathtaking financial loss in the futures market. How I couldn't sleep, how it had stolen all of my joy, how it affected all of my personal interactions, including my most cherished ones with my wife and kids. Excuse me. With the child in college and two in high school, how it jeopardized everything Deb and I had planned. That loss was wreaking havoc in my life. Now, I shared with Jeff that afternoon that, yes, I was obviously sad to have lost so much of our nest egg at such a critical time. Yes, I was sorry for my stubbornness, my stupidity. Yes, I was sorry for my arrogance not to respect the markets. All that was true. Yet the reason I was weeping, what most undid me, was what the loss revealed about where I placed my trust. How it betrayed the fact that much of my confidence, my security, and my hope was wrapped up in our little nest egg, and that the notion that I trusted God was clearly not true, if not a bald-faced lie. And that is what makes it so tricky, because a lot of the time our struggles to trust are in those gray areas, things which in and of themselves don't strike us being all that bad or sinful. Nevertheless, we are not doing what God is asking us to do, to trust him with everything and in every situation. We simply aren't convinced that his way is always the best way. In answer to his question, do you believe that I am both able and willing to provide all that you need, we are saying no, not always. In the example I just shared from my own life, my answer was clearly no, I'm not completely convinced. In addition to trusting you, I would like my nest egg back. When we worry about things, even very serious things, we are wrestling with the question, will I trust God with my crisis? Is He capable to handle it on my behalf? Once again, our worrying says no, as it reveals that we're simply not convinced that God can handle the situation, or at least not to our satisfaction. According to the Bible, worry is the opposite of trust. When we choose not to forgive someone, contrary to God's clear desire and instruction, what are we doing? In not so many words, we are saying, I don't believe that God knows what's best for me. What about how we spend our money? I like to think that I include God in those discussions. But what I really do is only involve him in the discussion about the small portion that I might realistically earmark for charity. Concerning the other much bigger chunk, the 80, 90, or 95%, I say, wait just a second, God. Stay in your lane, buddy. I gave you some. This over here is for me to decide what to do. Scripture encourages us to confess our sins to one another, even and perhaps especially the deepest, darkest, and most shameful ones. My immediate response is to say, no, thank you, over my dead body. No way can that possibly be in my best interest. We're encouraged as believers to always be prepared to share why our hope is in Jesus Christ. I don't do it. I don't want to offend this person or turn them off. I don't want to be thought a weirdo or a creep. I'm a confident person generally. I'll share my opinion on almost any topic with almost anyone. But for some strange reason, I don't trust that God will have my back if I share my faith. God says be thankful at all times and in all circumstances. But I don't want to always be thankful, and there just so happens to be things in my life that I'm not thankful for. Yet having a spirit of appreciation and thankfulness is one command of God's that I've come to acknowledge clearly leads to joy and abundant life. I think of the people I know who are most pleasant and encouraging to be around, the ones that are most nutritious for me. Almost without exception, there are people who live life in a spirit of thanksgiving. The old saying is true, it's not happy people who are thankful, it's thankful people who are happy. Ironically, even knowing this, there are still times when I choose to defy God's good intent for my life and instead choose the way of the woe-is-me, self-pitting grumpus. Now, I could go on and on, but if each of us took a deep dive into our motivations for doing some things and not others, for worrying about things over which we have little control, for habitually engaging in certain behaviors or responding in certain ways, for placing so much importance on what others think, we would understand more clearly that, at least in those instances, we're not fully convinced that God always has our best interests at heart or that His way is always best, that He is completely trustworthy in all of life's circumstances, that He is intent on giving us life to the full, the life that is truly life, if only we would trust. And that, at long last, brings us to our hero, Gamaliel. What he offers is a simple proof, evidence to bolster our conviction that the God we worship deserves our full confidence and trust. I've never been a fan of belief for belief's sake. Don't care how sincere it might be. In other words, if I'm going to believe that God always has my best interest at heart and is able and willing to provide it to me, I want it to be true. More than that, I need to be convinced that it's true if I'm ever going to fully trust in it. Otherwise, as we've seen this morning, I'm going to succumb to the temptation to lean on my own wisdom and judgment. This is where the battle lines are drawn and the war for my trust is waged. And this is where Gamaliel's cool logic and reasoning come through in the clutch. Now let's go to the story in the book of Acts and jump into the action. Our story takes place in Jerusalem, not long after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The Christian church is in its infancy and growing rapidly. The Jewish establishment is nervous and on edge. The disciples, Peter and John, have just healed a beggar who had been crippled from birth. Everyone was amazed, and when Peter saw their reaction, he said, men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if it's by our own power or godliness that we had made this man walk? You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. By faith in the name of Jesus, the man you see and know was made strong. It is in Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see. While they were still speaking, the Jewish leaders, none too pleased with Peter and John's message, arrested them and threw them in jail for the night. The next day, they were brought before their rulers and elders and teachers of the law who questioned them about the healing. By what power or what name did you do this? And Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, replied, Let me interrupt our story for just a second to point out what remarkable change can happen in the hearts and minds of ordinary men and women when convinced of God's truth and imbued with His Spirit. Just a short time ago, these same disciples were the gang that couldn't shoot straight, timid and wavering, untrusting, unreliable, and unconvinced. Now look, there's hope for all of us. Now back to our story. The Jewish leaders were astonished by the courage of Peter and John, especially when they realized they were ordinary unschooled guys and weren't sure what to do as they had to admit that the healing was a fantastic, outstanding miracle which they couldn't deny. And they couldn't really punish them because everybody was running around praising God because of that miracle. So they issued some threats and ordered Peter and John not to speak about this Jesus. However, even after the imprisonment and threats, the disciples continued to preach, teach, and heal until the high priest and his associates could not stand it any longer and arrested them again. But that night, an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail in order the disciples to go back to the temple and tell the people the full message of this new life. When all the rulers assembled the next morning and sent for Peter and John, they were surprised to learn that although the jail was locked and secure, nobody was inside. The Bible says they were puzzled by this. I love the understatement. I bet they were puzzled when they later learned that the men were back in the temple court preaching and teaching. They went and got them, but not by force for fear of what the people might do. The high priest again questioned them, and now reading from Acts 5, 28 through 39. This is the high priest. We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, he said. Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood. Peter and John and the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him. When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. Then he addressed them, men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. Some time ago, Thudas appeared, claiming to be someone, and about 400 men rallied to him. He was killed, and all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too wasailed, and the apostles were let go. And now here, for you all this morning, is the $64,000 question of the day. If Gamaliel, the wisest and most esteemed teacher of the day, could be here with us this morning, is there any doubt that he would conclude if their purpose is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men. You will only find yourselves fighting against God. Well, it hasn't been stopped. There has been nothing like it in all of human history. No other power or movement or belief system has come close. Down through all the centuries, across every people group and culture on earth, and reaching the furthest corners of our planet, God has been on the move, faithful to all his promises. The prophet Isaiah wrote about God's faithfulness this way. and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. And that's why Gamaliel is a hero to me. His wisdom and insight remind me again that God is true to his word always and is going to do what he promised to do. If I'm going to trust God completely and not rely on my own wisdom, but surrender control in all areas of my life, not just some of them, I need that assurance. Our God is both able and willing to provide all that we need. My hope and prayer for all of us this morning is that the words of the Apostle Paul might be our words. I know whom I have believed, and I'm convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day. Thank you. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for loving us. Thank you for all these people who carved out time on a hot Sunday morning to come to know you better and to worship you. Lord, thank you for pursuing us. Obviously, forgive us for all the times that we are trust wavers. We're simply not convinced that you're completely trustworthy in all of life's situations. Thank you for the hope that you give us through your son. And it's his name we pray. Amen.

This is the third week of our series called Best Practices. The idea is that I believe that there are some habits in life that we can form that if we do, they're the most important possible habits we can have. I believe that these habits, these practices, will make us better at every aspect of our lives. They'll make us better wives and mothers and husbands and fathers. They'll make us better friends, better children, better family members, better employees and employers. And more importantly, they will bring us alive in our walk with God and our knowledge of God and be a part of the answered prayer that Paul prays over us, that we would know God with the depth of all the saints, that there are some practices, some keystone habits that we can develop in our life that if we do, we will become closer to who God created us to be. And so we're taking four weeks and looking at those habits that make us better in every aspect of life. The first week we looked at reading the Bible. I hope that you guys took the challenge from that. I kind of challenge you all to make a goal and make a plan and then let somebody in on that plan for some accountability. So I hope that you've been reading the Bible maybe a little bit more than you're used to and that that's been a blessing for you. Last week, Steve did a phenomenal job talking about worship. If you missed that, which is the summertime and I get it. So if you missed that last week, they're online. You can watch them on video. You can listen on our podcast and catch up with that one. This week, I want us to look at the practice of prayer. And prayer is a huge topic. It's incredibly broad. At the last church I was at, we did a six-part series all on prayer, and it still wasn't adequate to cover everything that the Bible had to say. So this morning, I know that I get to touch on prayer, but I don't get to talk about everything around prayer. Because if you go through the Bible, what you find is that the Bible is replete with verses on prayer. We're told in the Old Testament if we're brokenhearted that we can run to him. That's what David tells us in Psalms. We're told that we should be marked, be characterized by prayer. James says the prayer of the righteous person is powerful and availeth much, does much doing. Jesus tells us that if we're tempted, he tells us in Matthew, if you're tempted, if anyone is tempted, pray. So there's this aspect of prayer that helps us stave off temptation. We're told in Philippians that we should be anxious for nothing, but pray over everything. And that if we do this, that somehow God's peace comes into our life and guards us if we will be people who pray. In Colossians, Paul tells us that we should be devoted to prayer. In Romans, he tells us that we should be devoted to prayer. But there's this peculiar verse. It's not peculiar. It's just kind of famous. It's probably a better word. In 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 17, where Paul is finishing up his letter to the church in Thessalonica, and he's telling them, hey, here's the last things I want you to do. And in the middle of this list of advice, he tells them this really difficult command, pray without ceasing. He says, I want you to do a couple of things. I want you to bless one another. I want you to help one another. I want you to honor God. And I want you to pray without ceasing. And I don't know about you, but I read that verse and I'm like, I don't even know how to do that. I don't know how many in this room would raise their hand and say, you know what? I have been obedient to that command in my life for X amount of weeks, X amount of years, X amount of months. That's a super challenging verse. And so as I thought about the best place to invest our Sunday morning on prayer, I thought it might be best to tackle this verse. Because we can talk about all the things around prayer, postures in praying, different types of prayer. We can go through Psalms and see the different types of prayer that David offers. We could look at the correct format of prayer that Jesus does when he teaches the disciples how to pray. We'll talk about it more later, but he gives a pattern of prayer in the Lord's prayer that we're supposed to follow. We could talk about that. We could talk about this idea of listening prayer. Spurgeon, one of the most influential pastors to ever live, this guy from England in the 1800s when he was 19 years old, he had a multi-thousand person congregation, just an amazing guy. He wrote to his students that if you only pray, and if when you pray, all you do is talk and you don't listen to God, then you are like somebody who dips their toes in the Atlantic and claims to have experienced the whole of the ocean. So there's this whole idea of listening prayer where we clue into God, which I'm being honest, sounds a lot lot like meditation, the Christian version of that. And we could talk about that, and I think there'd be some ground to gain. But where I've landed is, until we get this command down, the command in Colossians to be devoted to prayer, the command in Romans to pray continually, the command in Thessalonians to pray without ceasing, until we become people who are characterized by prayer, then all the different types of prayer and all the different information around prayer really is not as impactful to us. I think the first thing we need to do is become people who are characterized by prayer. And if you think about the biblical heroes that you know, they're characterized by prayer. Moses prayed all the time. David prayed constantly. Hannah, the mother of Samuel, is famous because of her prayer, because she was praying so fervently that Eli, the high priest, thought that she was drunk. She was just praying to God. There's a great prayer from Moses' mother. There's all these great prayers through Scripture. All the biblical heroes that we know are people who are characterized by prayer. And I would bet that the people that you look up to spiritually are people, whether you know it or not, who are characterized by prayer and devoted to prayer. As I think about this idea to pray without ceasing and make that kind of the first goal of our prayer life is to be a people who are devoted to prayer, Spurgeon again said that we cannot be constantly in the act of prayer, but we can be constantly in the spirit of prayer. And I believe that that goal is best illustrated through a super cheesy made-up story that I heard years ago. I heard this story back in high school. It is not true. Somebody made it up, but it makes a good point. There was a guy who was super spiritual, really close to God. Whenever he prayed in public, it was excellent, excellent prayers. People were really impressed with him. For the sake of the story, we're going to call him Nate. So there's Nate, the super spiritual guy. I'm talking about Nate Murray there in the back, not me. Super spiritual guy, and his prayers were incredible. And one day his friend said, I want to hear his nighttime prayers. Like, I want to hear what he prays for at night, at the end of the day. Because that's like the good prayer. Like, you pray in the morning, you pray for the day, then at night you pray again. I want to hear what Nate prays at the end of the day. And so again, this is made up, it's silly, they snuck into his room and they're hiding out somewhere. I don't know if it's in the closet or under the bed, wherever you want. They're hiding out, they're listening to Nate. Nate comes in at the end of the day and they're like, oh, here we go, dude's going to pray, this is going to be some good stuff. They're super excited to hear what Nate says to God at the end of his day. They expect him to get down on his knees next to the bed and double over like you're supposed to. I mean, that's what good believers do. You get on your knees next to the bed. That's part of the deal. And they're waiting for him to do that, and he doesn't do that, and he just gets into bed. And they're like, oh, maybe Nate's having an off night. And as he climbs into bed, he pulls the covers up, and he lays back, and he simply says, good night, God. I'll talk to you tomorrow. That's what it is to pray without ceasing. He didn't have a big, long prayer at the end of the day because he had been in the spirit of prayer communicating with God throughout the day. And so when he got to the end of the day, he had run out of words. He had said everything he needed to say. And so like you say to a good friend or to your spouse when you're roommates or whatever, is you say, hey, good night. Talk to you in the morning. And that's it. That, to me, is a good picture of what it is to be in the spirit of prayer and be praying without ceasing. But just like the Bible, when we talked about in the first week of best practices, we hear this, but we don't do it all the time. Christians, a lot of us are not good at praying. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hands, but man, how hard is it to pray sometimes? You sit down, you're like, I'm going to do the thing, I'm going to pray, and you go for like two minutes. You're like, God, I don't know what else to do. You start thinking about the emails that you're going to have to send out, and your kid starts making noise, and you run upstairs, and that prayer time's done. It's hard to pray. It's hard to be devoted to do. You start thinking about the emails that you're going to have to send out. Your kid starts making noise and you run upstairs and that prayer time's done. It's hard to pray. It's hard to be devoted to prayer. But I think that maybe there's a motivation to go into prayer that we haven't considered that if we do, it would make it a lot easier to approach prayer. Because again, don't raise your hand, but how many here have decided at some point in your life, I want to be better at prayer, I want to pray more regularly, so I'm going to white knuckle this thing and set my alarm and I'm going to get up early and I'm going to pray? How'd that go? So as we think about how can we be obedient to the seemingly impossible command to pray without ceasing, how can we be more like Nate? I now regret using that name. I think it's important to answer this question, and I want you to answer it personally. When do you pray? Like right now in your life, as you go throughout your week, when do you pray? What is it that drives you to prayer? Maybe you're in a habit of praying every morning. Maybe it's specific things that take you to prayer. I mean, a lot of us pray for the meal, right? We know that drill. We're Christians, and so you go out to eat, and you kind of look around the table, and who's the most spiritual one here that's going to say, like, hey, I'll pray. Like, who's going to be the big Christian? And then if you got to eat with me, you have to go like, Nate, you have to pray. You're clearly, you're the pastor. That seems to be the gig. And so like you pray, right? And here's what I would say about meal prayers. If you mean it, pray. If you don't, eat. Okay. It doesn't matter. If you mean it, pray. If you don't mean the prayer, don't pray the prayer, ever. We need to be sincere with prayer. One of the things I try to do about prayer is not pray when we don't mean it on stage. We don't pray as just a way to get people up here awkwardly. It would have been really great to have Jordan pray at the end of worship so that I could hobble up here without all of you guys staring at me, but it wouldn't have been an honest and an earnest prayer. So pray when you mean it. And when you don't mean it, don't pray. But we pray when we have meals. We know that. And some of us are good about having time set aside to pray. But what is it that makes you pray the most? What is it that drives you to prayer most earnestly? Isn't it something that happens in your life that's too big for you? Doesn't anxiety drive you to prayer? When you're so worried about something, when you don't know what's going to happen, isn't that when you run and you go, this is too big for me, and you appeal to the almighty creator God? Isn't that when you appeal to the supernatural is when you realize in life this is too big for me. When the decision is too big and you don't know what to do. Do I take the promotion or do I not? Do we move to the city or do we not? Do we change our kid's school or do we not? When the decision is so big that we don't know what to do, we pray. Because in that prayer is an admission that God is bigger than us, that he's supernatural and we are natural, that he is God and that we are not, that he's a creator and that we're the created and that we need his wisdom for this. When we're walking through the difficult times and our spirits are low, we pray. When the diagnosis comes in, what do we do? We run to God and we pray. When we don't know where our kid is, or we don't know about the decisions that they're making, or we're so worried that they're going to run off the rails, what do we do? We pray. I was just at a wedding last weekend in Dothan, Alabama. And it was a really beautiful experience because it was Jen's cousin. Jen's my wife, not just some lady I talk about. It was Jen's cousin getting married. And she's older. She's like 30? She's 35? Oh, man, she's up there like me. So she's 35 and for years she was dating a guy that wasn't good for her. Just wasn't good for her. I've met the guy. He's a good guy. He's got a sweet heart. He just had stuff going on that made him not husband material just yet. And there was nothing, her dad's name is Edwin. There's nothing that Edwin could do. Edwin and Mary, there was nothing they could do. You guys who have kids who are adults, you know you can't tell them who to date. You can't tell them who to see. That's not going to work out. You just have to hope that they end up with the right people. And so they didn't know what to do. They had no other option, and so they made a space in their home, and every day, Edwin went to the space in his home, getting choked up thinking about it, and got on his knees and prayed for his daughter, that she wouldn't marry this guy, and lo and behold, after years of doing that, she broke the cycle with him, and she met the right guy, a good dude who loves the Lord, who's got a good head on his shoulders. And they got married on Saturday. And as they got married, I looked over at Uncle Edwin down the row, and he has tears streaming down his face because that's an answer to prayer, because the prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective. And what happened to Edwin is he had no other options. He was simply reduced to prayer. And what I want you to see this morning is when we are reduced to prayer, we pray. We pray when we are reduced to prayer. If you think about when I asked you that question, when in your life do you pray? The answer, whether you know it or not, is I pray when I'm reduced to prayer. When I have no other options, when I've exercised everything else to try to exert my control over it, when I've exercised every other avenues to fix it myself, and I realize that I am helpless, then I am reduced where the only thing I have is prayer, and so we cling to prayer, and we appeal to the supernatural God that we know. After we had a miscarriage and we got pregnant again, I wanted desperately to be able to do something to keep this baby safe. There was nothing I could do. I was reduced to prayer. So I prayed. Guys, we pray when we are reduced to prayer. When there's something happening in our life that is so big and so confusing and so difficult that makes us feel so helpless that we get on our knees and we appeal to our God. God, you've got to help me here. And if that's true, if that's true that we pray when we're reduced to prayer, then the opposite is true too. And when I say this, this is going to step on some toes. And I'm sorry about that. But let me just tell you this. Okay, this is not an us or me and you situation. This is not an us and them situation. This isn't staff and elders and then lowly congregation situation. This is a we situation. If this steps on your toes, I promise you it stepped on mine too. My toes hurt literally and figuratively worse than yours. I'm in this with you, okay? So when I say this, I'm not accusing you of anything that I am not guilty of. We are just all a bundle of insecurities and mechanisms trying to go through life, figuring out how to follow God together, okay? All of us. But if it's true that when we pray, we pray because we're reduced to prayer, then it's also true that when we don't pray, we assert our independence, right? When we don't pray, we are asserting our independence. When there's something coming up in life and we don't pray about it, we don't go to God about it, what we're saying implicitly is, I'm good, I don't need you for this one, I got it, right? And I know that's harsh, and I know that's not what you intend when you don't pray, but tell me that's not what we're saying when we don't pray. When I don't pray about a sermon, God, what would you have me do this week? What I'm saying implicitly is, I'm good. This is community. I've done a community sermon twice a year for the past 10 years of my life. I got it, God, I'm fine. When we make a decision at work, when we approach the sales meeting and we haven't prayed over it, what are we telling God? I got this sale, God, don't worry about it. We go into a meeting and we have a blanket of that prayer, blanket of that meeting and prayer. What are we telling God? I got this meeting, God, I'm good. We make decisions with our kids when we interact with our spouses, when we try to build them up, when we make decisions about church or about which small group to join. When we make these day-to-day decisions and we don't pray to God about these decisions, we make them on our own. What are we saying? We're saying, God, I'm good. I got this. And I'm in there too. There's a pastor in Washington, D.C. named Mark Batterson, and he said, you should never initiate what you cannot saturate in prayer. I don't know about you, but in my life, I've initiated a lot of things that were not saturated in prayer. And when we do that, we claim our independence, don't we? We flex our little independent muscles. We say, God, I'm good. I don't need you for this. And we figure it out on our own. And every day we do that is one more day we convince ourselves that we are adequate for the things that God has called us to in life. It's one more day when we make the argument implicitly by not praying to God that I am enough for today and that I don't need you. Thank you. Every day we go, we get a little bit more independent. We build our sense of self a little bit more. We reduce our dependency and our reliance on God and we build up our independence on and our dependence on ourselves. And then we go through life like this, praying maybe just for meals, praying maybe just for things here and there, praying when we go to Bible study and somebody goes, hey, will you pray? And you're like, okay, I guess I will. But we know in our own life we haven't prayed like that in a while. And every day we do that, we build our independence a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more until something happens and outside forces in life exert themselves on us and act on us to reduce us to a state of prayer. And then we pray again. And then we pray and we pray and we pray. And God in his goodness and his glory, he fixes it. And then what do we start to do? We exercise our independence muscles again and we say, God, thank you for your help over there. I'm good now. If it's true that we pray when we feel reduced to prayer, then it has to be true that we don't pray when we feel adequate for the day's task. Now, there is another reason why some of us don't pray sometimes. And I don't have time to talk about it at length this morning, but it is true and it should be mentioned. Sometimes we don't pray and it's not because we think we are adequate for the task. It's because our faith is a little broken and a little shattered and we don't think God is adequate for the task. And so we don't pray because we're just afraid that it's going to further hurt our faith. And I don't have a lot to say about that this morning, except if that's you, please don't carry that by yourself. If the reason you have not prayed as much as you normally do lately is because you kind of doubt God's ability to answer that prayer, you think he might be inadequate to it, talk to somebody about that. Come talk to me. Talk to one of our elders. Talk to someone that you respect spiritually. Don't carry that by yourself. So I think that that's true. But I think that for most of us, as we walk through our Christian life, if we find ourselves in a season where we are not praying without ceasing, we're not even praying regularly, much less without ceasing, that the reason that is, is because we feel adequate for the task. And if we want to break this cycle of meaning to pray more, but not praying as much as we should, then I think we have to initiate a practice. And we need to understand that every prayer we pray admits dependence. We need to understand that every prayer we pray admits dependence. Every prayer we pray, no matter how flippant, even if it's just a, dear God, thank you for this food, we're so excited for this lunch, amen, that admits some sort of dependence on some level that God, it's because of you and your gifts and your goodness that I get to eat this delicious, this week I had a pot roast and Cajun macaroni and cheese sandwich. I'm in prime condition to recover from my injuries. And when we pray for that, we say, God, it's your goodness that I get to enjoy this. Even in part, every prayer, every prayer admits dependence. Every time we throw anything to God, whether we do it for 45 minutes or for 10 seconds, is a way to go, God, I'm not big enough for this. I need you. That's why I pray every Sunday before I preach. It's honestly not as much to ask God for help as it is to remind me that I need it. I'm not big enough for this. I need you. Every prayer that we pray, no matter how small or how big, admits dependence. And so if we want to make prayer a daily habit, if we want to finally figure out how to persist in prayer and be devoted to prayer and be obedient to all those verses we talked about at the onset, if we want our prayers to be powerful and effective, then I think what we need to do is practice a daily reduction to prayer. I think we need to practice a daily reduction to prayer. I don't think that we need to practice praying every day. I do, but I think it'll come after this. I think we sometimes put the cart before the horse and we skip it. And we go to God with all of our independence and all of our capabilities and we go, well, I know that I should pray to be a good Christian, so let me try to pray. And what we need to do instead is the very first thing we need to do is daily reduce ourself to the need to pray. Do you know that this is actually how Jesus prays? When the disciples went to him and they said, hey, can you teach us how to pray? You pray differently than us. Can you teach us to pray? The very first thing he does, he gives us a pattern, doesn't he? Gives us lines to recite. He gives us a pattern to follow. The very first words out of his mouth, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. God, you are big. We call this adoration. God, you are awesome. God, you are wonderful. God, you are the creator. God, you are holy. You are different. May your will persist here as it does in heaven. May your will be done. We start every prayer. God, you are big and I am small. God, I need you and I am insufficient. God, will your will be done, not my will be done. And it puts us in this place where we are reduced to prayer. So I think we need to practice a daily reduction to prayer. Daily admitting I am insufficient for my tasks today. Now, if you're a thinking person, that exercise of daily reducing yourself to prayer will force you to ask the question, what am I inadequate for? If you're a thinking person at all, you'll want to know, for what am I inadequate? What do I need to get done that I can't handle? What do I need to appeal to God for? And in this exercise of thinking through, for what am I inadequate, we will arrive at these great callings that we have on our life that we sometimes forget. If you're a husband or a wife, do you know that your role is far more than to simply love your spouse? According to Scripture, my understanding is that my goal, my job with Jen, is to serve her like Christ loved the church, to lay my life down for her, and to do everything I can to be a tool in the hands of God to make her as beautiful and as spiritually vibrant as is possible, to help her become the best version of herself. I'm not adequate to that task. Her job is to be a tool in the hands of God that makes me into the most respectable, lovely, godly, spiritually healthy version of myself possible. Nobody is adequate for that task. How can she do that without prayer? Our job is to raise Lily, and not just to raise her so that she goes to a good school and has a nice life, but to raise her, to release her into the wild with as little baggage to undo with a therapist as possible, who loves God, who knows him, and knows him more intimately than Jen and I ever did. That's our job. We're not adequate to that task. You're called to be pastors in your workplace. We are all a member. If you're a Christian, you're a member of the royal priesthood. You are called to be pastors in your workplace. Jesus tells you in the Sermon on the Mount that other people, if you're a Christian, other people should see your good works and so glorify your Father who is in heaven without you ever talking to them about who you believe in. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians that we are led in procession by Jesus and that through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. You are inadequate to that task. You have no choice but to rely on God to help you accomplish those things in that day. When someone asks you a difficult question and you realize they've opened the door for a spiritual conversation, you're inadequate for that conversation. You need the Spirit. You need to say, God, help me here. Give me ears to hear and give me wisdom to speak. When we practice a daily reduction of ourselves to prayer and admit our inadequacies before God, what he will do is bring to light all the wonderful, beautiful, grand things that his word calls us to, to live a life worthy of the calling that we have received. And in the face of those, we'll have no choice but to say, I can't do that myself. And that will drive us to prayer, to God. And in doing that, in a constant reduction of ourselves, we have reminders of the tasks to which we are called. In the face of those, we feel inadequate. We run to God in prayer. And because of our mindset and our posture before the Lord every day, by to Scripture? Be devoted to prayer? Be a person who is characterized by prayer? You want to be obedient to that seemingly impossible command in Thessalonians to pray without ceasing. I think it begins with a daily reduction of ourselves to prayer. Daily admitting our inadequacies and admitting our need for God so that we might accomplish just in that day what he wants us to accomplish in that day and that that knowledge will drive us to a prayer with him all the time. I know it's a lofty goal. Pastors say stuff like this a lot. But I really do want grace to be a place that's devoted to prayer, that's characterized by prayer. I know we have some people here who all you have to do in this sermon is nod your head because you're already doing this stuff. You're some of our warriors and you pray all the time. We need more of those. We need people praying for our families. We need people praying for the children's ministry. We need people who come and sit in this space and touch seats and pray for the people who sit there. We need to be a church that prays. And I think the key to getting into that habit is daily confessing our need to do that, is daily reducing ourselves to prayer. And I hope that we will. If that's not part of your life right now, then I would encourage you, make it a part of your life this week. This week, daily reduce yourself to prayer. This week, every day, just get up and say, God, I need you today, and tell them the things you need them for. And let me also tell you this, if praying isn't part of your normal habit, just pray until you're done praying. If you pray for a minute, nobody cares. Pray for a minute. Pray for 60 minutes, great, good for you. Pray for 60 minutes. Pray until you're done praying and then go and do what God's called you to do that day. But I would challenge you this week, for one week, if it's not a part of your regular habit, to daily this week reduce yourself to prayer. Now, I'd like to invite you all to pray with me, and the band will come up, and we'll have a song, and then we've got a special thing that we're going to do at the end. Father, you're good. You love us. You're merciful to us. You call us back to you. Your goodness, like a fetter, binds our wandering hearts to you. Father, if there's anybody wandering, I pray that you would draw them in. God, I pray that if we are not characterized by prayer, that we would be. Lord, help us reduce ourselves to prayer. Help us not wait for life to do that for us. Show us the things that you've called us to for which we are inadequate. Let us be the husbands and the fathers and the wives and the mothers and the friends and the employees and employers that you've created us to be. May we be a people and a church and individuals who are characterized by a devotion to prayer, Father. God, may you work in my own life that I might set the pace for that too. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

Good morning. My name is Steve Goldberg. I'm the worship pastor here at Grace Raleigh. And I just got to be up front with you first and foremost. It's been a little while since I've done something like this, since I've talked in front of a congregation like this. In fact, I think we have a picture of the last time I did it. That's me on the right. Okay, that was my bar mitzvah. That was several years ago. And a few things have changed since then, so I'm trying to adapt with that. So last week, Nate brought the first installment in our series of best practices. He talked about reading the Bible. And I don't know about you, but I felt convicted about that. And I, even as a pastor, do not spend as much time in the Bible as I think that I should. And I dedicated more time this week in the Bible, and I feel extremely blessed because of that. I've also heard that many of you are doing the same thing and that it's a blessing as well. I would like to encourage you to keep going with that, to keep on. And if those of you that haven't jumped in yet, it's not too late to start reading your Bible. Jump in, start today. I'm sure it will be a blessing in your lives. So a few months ago when we were talking about this series on best practices, Nate said to me, Steve, we're going to be doing one on worship. And as the worship pastor at Grace, I would like you to take that one. And I immediately said, oh, this is great. This is great. This is what I do. This is going to be so easy. This is low-hanging fruit. I've wanted to share with you for a long time. I really only get about a minute or so during each service each Sunday, so I get to share everything that I want to about worship. So I sat down, and I started putting my thoughts together, started doing some research, looking in the Bible, looking in my textbooks, and I quickly realized that if I were to share everything that I want to share with you guys about worship, we would easily be here for half the day. So we're not going to do that today. I can see all the... Okay, good. No, we're not going to do that today. What we're going to do today is just focus on what I think would be a good starting point on worship, and that is to talk about authentic worship. So we're going to be talking about authentic worship today. So when I was 12 years old, my uncle made me a tape. He dubbed it. Do you remember how to do that with the buttons and the this and then you undo it? Yeah. Okay. So he made me a tape of Jimi Hendrix live at Monterey. And if you're not familiar with this concert, this is the one where he hit the scene and he lit his guitar on fire, okay? So 12-year-old Steve hearing this for the first time, I could not believe what I was hearing. I immediately, immediately ran down to the garage. I grabbed my wiffle ball bat. I grabbed some string. I grabbed some tape. I ran back up to my room. I put the string on the bat. I put on the bat. I put on sunglasses, my best Hard Rock Cafe shirt, and I pretended to be Jimi Hendrix in the mirror. I had to be a part of it. Music has that way of affecting us deeply. Music goes into us. It affects us. Have you ever seen people who have Alzheimer's or maybe dementia, that they're living in another reality, and then somebody plays Amazing Grace or Just As I Am for them, and they have this moment of clarity, and they can sing every word and every note. This is how music affects us. The first time that I went to church with my wife, for those of you who don't know, we were separated at one point. We were heading toward divorce. We started going to church together. It was the music, when I walked in, the music that broke down those walls that I could hear the good news of Jesus. This is the effect that music has on us. But is all music worship? No. Is God looking just for music? No. He's looking for worship. So we're going to be talking about worship today. But worship is kind of a broad term. We can worship all kinds of things. We can worship God. That's good. We can worship other gods. Not so good. We can worship the universe, nature, our finances, our careers, our spouses, our children. So today I thought it would be good to kind of hone in on what we're talking about. We're going to be talking about authentic worship in the church, corporate worship. And so I have a definition for us that worship is the activity of glorifying God in his presence with our voices, our bodies, and hearts. So worship is the activity of glorifying God in his presence with our voices, bodies, and hearts. Did you know that praise and worship is mentioned over 400 times in the Bible? That we're commanded to worship over 50 times in the Bible? So anything that's mentioned that much in the Bible I think deserves for us to take a look at. So first of all, we want to look at why we don't praise the Lord with our breath, Psalm 98 says that the rocks will cry out and the rivers will clap their hands. Now we live close enough to the mountains here in Raleigh. Have you ever been next to a river and listened to the sound of that? Does it not sound like applause? And the rivers clap their hands for God. All of creation praises God. The next time that you're walking along a river, maybe taking a hike, take a moment and worship God right there. Not only did he create worship here, he created it in heaven. You understand? All of this goes away. But not worship. Worship is our primary activity in heaven. So he created it. Also, he is worthy of it. He is worthy of worship. Great is the Lord, most worthy of praise. His greatness no one can fathom. That's Psalm 145. He's the only one worthy of worship. Now, we sometimes get that wrong. We sometimes misstep. We sometimes put things ahead of God when maybe we shouldn't. If you do that, listen, you're not alone. John, we just did a series in John. He wrote the Gospel of John. He also wrote some letters and Revelation. John, in Revelation, And you know that this is true. And why do we know it's true? He wrote the book. He could have left that part out, but he didn't. He chose to keep it in there so that we can know that we're not alone in this. He's also present in worship. What did we talk about earlier for our definition? Worship is the activity of glorifying God in his presence with our voices, our bodies, and our hearts. He's present in worship. This is something that I think we kind of take for granted nowadays, that he's present in worship, okay? Before Christ, to be in the presence of God was not a common thing. Before Christ, God dwelled in the Holy of Holies. Now, you have to understand that in Israel, there was the temple. Most people could not go into the inner part of the temple, the holy place. They were on the outskirts. They could not even be close to the presence of God there. Then, within that holy place, there was something called the Holy of Holies. And that's where the Ark of the Covenant was. The only person, there was only one person that could go in there. That was the high priest. Only one person could go into the presence of God, and that only happened once a year on the Day of Atonement, on Yom Kippur. Once a year, one person could be in the presence of God. Okay? And let me give you an idea of how serious they were about this. They were so serious that they would tie a rope around him when he went in so that in case he died while in there, they could pull him out. That's pretty amazing. I mean, the fact that that's how serious it was to be in the presence of God. Now, through Jesus, we're able to be in the presence of God. He says that wherever two or more are gathered in his name, he is present. So how do we do this? Well, worship is the activity of glorifying God in his presence with our voices, our bodies, and our hearts. So with our voices, we can sing. The Lord is my strength and my shield. In him my heart trusts and I am helped. My heart exalts and with my song I give thanks to him. That's Psalm 28. We know this. There's time dedicated in our service to this. There are billboard charts called praise and worship. Singing connects us to God. It connects our hearts to our minds. In fact, praise is mentioned in multiple ways, this singing in the Old and New Testaments. We have tehillah, to praise vocally in song or shouts. Hallelujah, you might be familiar with. This is a shouting call for corporate praise. We have tada, which is to sing praises together as one community in harmony. This is what we do when we gather each week in worship. So we worship God in his presence with our voices and with our bodies also. We see this multiple times. Now I'm going to say a few verses here. I just want you to know that I'm not making this stuff up. I mean, this stuff is in the Bible as worthy offerings to God. I mean, this is acceptable worship to God. You can bow your head to God. The man bowed his head and worshiped the Lord, Genesis 24. You can lift your hands. So I will bless you as long as I live. In your name I will lift my hand, Psalm 63. This word is yadah, to lift or throw arms upward in praise and surrender. A similar one to this is spreading out your hands, like this. This is sabah, to reach out with affection to God, to feel his hold on us. This is almost like you're reaching out for a hug from God. This is I need you, God. Bowing your knee. praising God. We're getting excited about God. Clap your hands, all people. Shout to God with loud songs of joy. Psalm 47. Here's one of my personal favorites. Falling on your face before the Lord. Leviticus 9. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offerings and the pieces of fat on the altar.. If you put your envelope in there, and the Lord's fire came and consumed it, I think we'd all shout and hit the floor, right? And you know what? We would be worshiping. Okay, dancing. Uh-oh. Dancing. Okay. And David danced before the Lord with all his might, and David was wearing a linen ephod. This is 2 Samuel 6. David is king of Israel. He's returning with the Ark of the Covenant to put it in the Holy of Holies. He's built a tabernacle for it. He's super excited. And how excited is he? He rips off his clothes and basically dances in his underwear through the streets. And I think we have a video of this. Anybody catch who that was? Richard Gere? You should go find that on Netflix. So what he's doing is halal. This is to boast foolishly, to make a show of it. But what do we see there, right? So he's dancing through the streets. He doesn't have his clothes on. Everybody's cheering and shouting, right? But what else did we see? We saw his wife looking out the window, right? Okay, and this is actually, ouch, right? Right? But David retorted to Michal, I was dancing before the Lord who chose me above your father and all his family. He appointed me as the leader of Israel, the people of the Lord. So I celebrate before the Lord. And then he goes one step further. Yes, I am willing to look even more foolish than this, even to be humiliated in my own eyes. But those servant girls who you mentioned will indeed think I am distinguished. He was dancing with abandonment before the Lord. How often have we been in this place? I'm sure we've all been there at some point in our lives where we've done something maybe vulnerable or something that we believed in or just put ourselves out there and people criticize that. They look down on us for it. It's happened to all of us. It's not a good feeling. On the other side of things, how often are we the Michal in that story where we look at someone and go, why are they doing that? Why are they acting that way? Maybe don't they know that we don't do that here? It's easy to see ourselves in both situations here. So we talked about worship is the activity of praising, worship is the activity of glorifying God in his presence with our voices, our bodies, and our hearts. This is the authentic part I want to talk about. We worship with our hearts. It's good for us to worship. God created us to delight in him. We experience this delight a great deal in worship. In fact, Psalm 92 says, it is good to give thanks to, a few years ago, I was at a worship conference in Orlando. And it was one of the big conferences that they do every year. There are about 1,500 worship leaders there. And all the popular worship artists were there too. So we had like Hillsong and Bethel, Phil Wickham, Chris Tomlin, Elevation. I mean, it's a lot of the songs that we do here, those artists were there. And the times of worship were very powerful. I mean, they know how to usher you into the presence of God. And it was powerful. But at one point during the conference, the power went out. And everybody in the room, all 1,500 of us laughed first because, you know, we're all in worship ministry. It's like, ha, ha, ha, like we're elbowing each other. Like, it even happens to them. You know, look at them squirm. And so we were laughing. And then we see all the people dressed in all black coming, like running around the stage and everything with their flashlights trying to figure out what the problem is. And when it was obvious that the power wasn't going to just come back on, we kind of settled down a little bit. And out of the front of the room, there were maybe eight people or so, started singing, How Great Thou Art. We sang that this morning. Worship doesn't need the lights and the sound and all the stuff. Worship is about our voices, our bodies, and our hearts in God's presence. They started singing. It started rippling out as the verse was going. Everybody knows this song. We're all worship leaders. There's 1,500 of us singing relatively well in harmony. Okay? This moment was amazing. I'm singing my heart out. It gets to everybody singing and worshiping. The room is erupting in worship. We get to the chorus, and I go to sing, and nothing comes out. Nothing comes out. I'm so overwhelmed by what's happening that I fall to my knees and just lift my hands and try to whisper the words. I had never heard anything so beautiful, and I don't think I ever will until I get to heaven. That really was, I believe, a taste of what heaven is going to sound like. It's not going to sound like acoustic guitars and drums. It's going to sound like God's created people worshiping with our breath. This was authentic worship. So our authentic worship here is going to be us. It's not going to be what the church down the street is doing. If we copy what the church down the street is doing, it's not authentic, right? If we copy what they're doing online at megachurches and see how they're worshiping, it's not going to be authentic, because authentic worship comes from the heart. So we need to worship authentically like Grace Raleigh. We need to worship authentically like Grace Raleigh. Now, also, feeling something in your heart. Did you notice something in all this worship that I mentioned in the Bible that it's all actions? It's all things that you feel in your heart and you do. So authentic worship isn't going to be feeling something in your heart and not doing anything about it. That's not authentic either. Authentic worship is feeling it in your heart and expressing it. But are we going to look like the church down the street? No, we're not. We're going to look like us. So, we are going to have a time of worship here at the end of our service. And let me just tell you, as we go into that time, you know, grace is a very unique church, I think. Grace has been through a lot over the years. Grace is full of people who love each other. I will say that most people who come here for the first time, one of the first comments that they have is how much a family it feels like here, how friendly people are, how included they feel. What I'm trying to say is that this is a safe place. This is a place where family can be family with each other. If you are feeling a way to express yourself, let's not be the Michals in the story and say, what are they doing? We don't do that here. And listen, I know that it's going to look different. It's going to look different. It's going to look like us. And all that we want as a church is to worship God with all of our hearts. So I'd like to ask you all to stand and join me as we pray together. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you that we get the opportunity to glorify you in your presence. What an amazing thing it is that we can come into your presence and use the breath that you have given to us to just give back to you. Lord, we know that you work deeply in us, that you love us, that you knew us before we were born, that you know every hair on our heads. So Lord, we ask that that love just come through us now in a powerful way. And we pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's worship together. You give life, You are love, You bring light to the darkness. You give hope, You restore every heart that is broken and great are you lord it's your breath in our lungs so we pour out our praise we pour out our praise it's your breath in our lungs so we pour out our praise to you only you give life, You are love, You bring light to the darkness. You give hope, You restore every heart that is broken and great are you lord it's your breath in our lungs so we pour out our praise we pour out our praises your breath in our lungs so we pour out our praise to you only is your breath in our lungs so we pour out our praise we pour out our praises your breath in our lungs so we pour out our praise to you only he's so good and worthy of our praise. Let it pour out of you. will shout your praise our hearts will cry these bones will sing great are you lord and all the earth will shout your praise our hearts will cry these bones will sing pray are you lord and all the earth will shout your praise our Our hearts will cry. These bones will sing. Hey, are you Lord? It's your breath in our lungs. So we pour out our praise. We pour out our praise we pour out our praises your breath in our lungs so we pour out our praise to you only it's your breath in our lungs so we pour out our praise we pour out our praise. We pour out our praise. It's your breath. In our lives. So we pour out our praise to you only. What a gift it is to be able to praise God freely and openly. And we can only do that because he allows us to. He created us to worship him and to glorify him. And he does that because he loves us. He is jealous of me. Love's like a hurricane. I am a tree bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy. When all of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory And I realize just how beautiful you are How great your affections are for me And oh, how He loves us all. Oh, how He loves us. How He loves us all. He is jealous of me, loves like a hurricane. I am a tree bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy. When all of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory And I realize just how beautiful you are and how great your affections are for me And oh, how He loves us all. Oh, how He loves us. How He loves us Oh, how He loves us Oh are his portion and he is our prize drawn to redemption by the grace in his eyes if his grace is an ocean we're all sinking and heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss and my heart turns violently inside of my chest I don't have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way that he loves us oh how he loves us oh how he loves us Oh Oh how He loves us Oh how He loves us Oh how He loves Oh Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here. Before I get rolling, you should know that your Christmas offering is at work, okay? We got the new lights installed over the weekend. I think they look amazing. I think Steve and the team did a phenomenal job. We had some volunteers here sacrificing some time and a specialist in who's running the lights for us this week. So we are very fancy. And we're very grateful for all their time. So let's say thank you to them. And if you gave to the Christmas offering at all, then you helped with this. So thank you so much as we continue just to kind of take steps forward in excellence. We're starting a new series this week called Best Practices. And to start the series, I wanted to take you back to, I think it was about 11 years ago, in 2008, I'm on a trip to Honduras. I taught at a school at the time. I was the high school Bible teacher and the chaplain, those poor young minds. And the trip that we took every week was, or every year was to Honduras. And so because I was a chaplain, I got to go. And the guy that led it was a guy who lived in the States named Mark Searcy. He's actually, he grew up on a tobacco farm in North Carolina. I think I said that right, tobacco. And he became, at the age of 19, he got married and he felt compelled to be a missionary. And so he moved to Haiti to farm there and to be a missionary in Haiti and ended up fleeing because they feared for their lives. The government was kind of chasing them down. And so they flew out in the middle of the night. And then they became missionaries in Honduras. And then at this season of life, I think he was in his 50s at the time, he led trips back down to Honduras with some of the people that he met down there. And so we partnered up with Mark Searcy. And I loved Mark. He has an easy laugh. He's a good old boy. He always had in his chest pocket a miniature bottle of Tabasco sauce for any of the food that they might eat or encounter in Honduras to kind of just make it more palatable. Like, he was a good dude. And the first night we were there, Mark says, hey, I'm going to do a Bible study. So whoever wants, just come on up to my room. We'll sit out on the porch and we'll do a Bible study. I'm like, great, I'm in. So I go up there and a couple of the kids go up there and dude starts teaching out of the Bible and he opens up his Bible. And I don't know about you, but when other people open up their Bible, I'm always like, I want to see how marked up is this thing, right? Because I heard one time, show me a Bible that's falling apart, and I'll show you a life that isn't. So I wanted to look at his Bible and go, man, what's in there? And what I saw is that it was marked up to high heaven. There was highlighters, four different color highlighters all over the place. And he starts to teach in this southern draw and this easy speak and kind of the occasional giggling. And I'm loving it. I'm eating it up. This dude knows his stuff. He knows his Bible. And I've been in Christian school. I've got a seminary degree. And I'm listening to him and I'm like, I've never heard anybody explain the Bible like this. I'm all in. And then he finished, and he said, any questions y'all have, we can just stay up. I love God's Word. We can just stay up talking about it as long as you want to. I kept that dude up until 2 in the morning, 3 nights in a row, asking him questions about the Bible. Until every night, he was like, Nate, I've got to go to bed. And I was like, okay, me too. And then we'd just be exhausted the next day. I loved it so much. And his knowledge was so effusive and so easy. Any question you asked him, Mark, what'd you think about this? What about this? How do I make sense of this? He would go, okay. And he would know the story to go to or the exact reference to go to. He didn't have to take his phone like I do and Google that. Let me Google those keywords. Oh, that's in Colossians. No, he just knew and he would turn there. And then he had this cross-reference system. Everything that was highlighted had notes out to the side and those were other verses that talked about the same thing. And so he'd off the top of his head, flip to a page, read you that verse, talk to you about it. And then he'd go like, well, actually it would be helpful if we could do this one and this one and this one. And so he'd flip over and just verse after verse after verse. And I found out that there was a method to his coordination. Each highlighter meant something different. And it was amazing. I loved hearing the Bible for Mark Searcy because he knew it so well. And you probably have known people like that in your life. Men or women who were such students of God's Word, who loved it so much that you felt like you could ask them any question and they could give you a verse to help you answer that question. And I think as believers, whenever we hear that somebody has a knowledge of the Bible like that, we all go, I wish I knew the Bible like that. Don't we? I wish my Bible looked like that. I wish people could ask me a question about spirituality and I could just give you a verse. Anything. I wish I knew the Bible like that. And I think that we know that if we did know the Bible like that, that we would be better at life. We would be better parents. Maybe, I mean, growing up, my dad, if we missed Sunday, if we were traveling on a Sunday, it's not like we got to lay out of church. We had just family church, which was way lamer than normal church. So I wanted to be in town on Sundays just to avoid my dad's sermons. But he would give these sermons and he knew the Bible and it stuck with me all these years later that it mattered enough to him to open up scripture and continue to teach it to us. And for some of us, if we thought of the idea of doing family church, of teaching our family the Bible, of opening it up for our children, we would probably be intimidated by that. We might not know where to turn or what to do, and maybe we wish we could do that. From time to time, we'll talk about doing a devotional in the house. Maybe we wish we could do that. Maybe we wish that when we opened up, that when we went to work and people would ask us questions about what we think and what we believe and how do I deal with this situation, I bet we wish we knew where to turn. I think when we hear about people who know God's Word really well, it's a very natural and common thing for us to think to ourselves, I wish I did too. But the question really becomes then, how can we do that if we don't study it all the time? Those highlights in Mark's Bible, and they were from cover to cover, they didn't happen in a day. That was years of waking up every day and spending time in God's Word, spending time in prayer. What I say are the two most important habits that any person can develop ever. That's years of effort. That's years of learning. That's years of seeking things out. That's years of prioritizing studying his Bible. How can we ever know it, those people that you admire? How can you ever know the Bible like them if we don't study it like them? How can we ever know God's Word like that if we don't read it every day? How can we ever be truly helpful, as helpful as we could possibly be to those in our circles of influence, to those on our tennis team, to those that we work with, to those that we happen to hang out with or are in some club with, or how can we ever truly be as helpful to our neighbors as possible if we don't know God's word to help them and how can we know God's word if we don't prioritize it and study it every day? We know this to be true. As a matter of fact, I think that to a room full of what are probably, I'm guessing, mostly Christians, whenever you talk about reading the Bible, you get the exact same reaction as when somebody talks about their diet, right? You have a friend, and they're losing weight. They're just withering away. And you notice them, and you're like, yo, what are you doing? You look great. You're going to have to buy all new clothes. What's going on? And they tell you about their diet. Oh, I'm doing the keto diet. I'm doing, I'm no carbs, no sugar. I'm just, I'm the starvation diet. I haven't eaten in three weeks. Like whatever it is, like some new thing, I'm doing this diet. What do you always say to yourself or sometimes out loud to them? I should do that. You see somebody and they're just looking healthy. What are you doing? They're like, I took up swimming. I'm running. I'm running with a group of people three times a week. It's really great. What do you always say to yourself? I should do that. Right? Because we know it's good for us. Somebody, maybe you're talking to a friend and they're telling you about this new budgeting technique. Man, me and my husband, me and my wife, we've been kind of budgeting. We're doing this and this and this. And you always, personal finances, we go, I should do that. When we hear, hey, we should read the Bible, all of us in our heads go, I should do that. No one's here to argue with me about that. As a matter of fact, I've worked really hard to not let it out that this week was going to be about reading the Bible because I was afraid that we would hear that it was about reading the Bible and go, oh, yeah, I know. Like, I should do that, right? And we know all the verses. We know what Scripture says about reading Scripture. We say that it's sharper than any two-edged sword, that it penetrates soul and spirit, bone and marrow. We know that the word of God is living and active. We know that God's word will not return null and void. Whatever we invest in it, we will get a return on that investment. We know that we are supposed to hide it in our hearts, that we might not sin against God. There's this idea that by memorizing the Bible, that by consuming it, that by learning it, it somehow operates as a preventative so that we don't do the things that we don't want to do anyways. We know that. We know that we're supposed to hide it in our heart. We know that we're supposed to put it on our walls and instill it in our children and teach it to the next generation. Like, listen, guys, we know the verses about reading the Bible. And if you don't, if those were new to you, then now you do. We know that we're supposed to do that. As a matter of fact, if the point of this morning was only, hey, go read the Bible more, literally, I think all I'd have to do is come up here and let this be the sermon. Hey, this is part one of best practices for this week. You should read the Bible. Let's pray. And honestly, tell me if I'm lying, 10 of you would be like, yeah, he's right. And you'd go home and you'd do it. Because we know that this is what we need to do. So to me, the more interesting question becomes, if we know we're supposed to do this, and none of us here would argue with me that it's super important to invest ourselves in learning Scripture, then why don't we do it? Why aren't we better at it? That's one of the church's dirty little secrets. I don't know if you know this, and I have to be careful about that. I'm sure there's more that are worse. But one of them is this. Nobody's very good at this. There are some pockets, very few heroes, who have made it a habit and do it daily and have for years. And those are the people who are rock stars that I want to be like. There are others we've experienced, this is where I would put myself, pockets of success where we have months and years where we're very good, and then we have days and weeks where we just forget or we get busy or we just aren't interested then, and we fall away. Everybody struggles with this discipline. I know this to be true because I've spent enough time in ministry and enough time in church that I've stopped being surprised at people who tell me they're going to start reading their Bible. People who we respect, who seem to have it together, and very much do, and are leaders in the church, who will come to me privately, and not just here and just my general experience. I don't want you to start thinking, naming names, like who's buddies with him that doesn't read the Bible. I don't want you to do that. But people are coming, will come to me and be like, hey, because of this experience, I just want you to know, like, I'm really going to get back into God's word every day. And earlier on in my ministry, I would be kind of surprised, like, what? You don't read the Bible? I thought I was the only hypocrite. You're like me? I've talked to pastors. It breaks my heart. I've talked to pastors who are like, yeah, I don't read the Bible every day. My sermon prep is my devotion. I'm like, bro, that's not good for you. So one of the secrets of the church that I just wanted to be honest about is nobody's good at it. Very few people maintain that discipline for a long time. So if you're here and your first thought to, hey, we should read the Bible more, and your first thought was, I should do that. Listen, everybody in the room feels the way that you do. Who's a believer? Everybody feels that way. So to me, the more interesting question is, if we all agree that we should do it, and we know the verses about it, and there's really not a new angle to approach you to convince you to do it, then the more interesting question is, why don't we? So I put a question out on Facebook this week, and I've been talking to people. Hey, we know that we should read the Bible. Why don't we do it? Y'all don't know this, but Facebook's one of the best sermon prep tools that there is. And I got a bunch of interesting answers. And they kind of fall into two categories. One category of reasons kind of tells on our motives a little bit. And the other categories of reasons are really things that probably should be discussed and handled. And so we're going to look at both of them. But I saw a lot of people say, I'm too busy. I just, I want to do it. I know that I should. I just, I'm busy. And that's legit. We're all busy. If you're not busy, we are all jealous of you. We all have more to do than we want to do. We all feel rushed every day. That's life. That's how it goes. And then when we have the down moments, when we can finally rest, we just want to shut everything off. That's not, maybe we don't want to run to Scripture. So some people said that they were busy. Some people said, and I thought this one was particularly interesting, that it's more easy to be comfortable than it is to be convicted. They kind of expressed this idea of, if I open the Bible and read it, I'm going to feel bad about my life. And I don't really need that right now, so I'm going to leave it be. And I thought, honestly, I'm not trying to be overly dramatic. I just thought how sad that to some people we've reduced Scripture to this source of conviction and not a source of hope. And we forget that it gives us promises and good news and offers us freedom in what is best for us, that hope is found in Scripture. And what a shame when we reduce it to the source of conviction, which, by the way, is because that's what's best for us if it does convict, because God has a heart to serve us, right? So some people said conviction. Some people said that they were busy. Some people just said, it's not interesting. I've read it before, you know, like I've read it before. I know it. I know what Ephesians says. And so now I just read other stuff. But one person even, they asked a question and I thought that this was really telling. One person said, you know, I really don't like to read, which is pretty legit. There are some people who just don't like to read and that's fine. I mean, I get that. We got to, that a roadblock that we've got to find a way past. But he said, I don't like to read. It's just not my thing. So I like to try to listen to the Bible in my car sometimes. Does that count? And I thought, what an interesting question. Does that count? Does it count for what? To whom? What score are we keeping here? Who's tracking that with you? Does that count? And you know it really told on him, didn't it? And it tells on us too. Because it's a question I've asked and I've heard before. If I read one verse a day, does that count? If I remember a verse and I say it out loud, does that count? If I read one chapter, does that count? If the chapter's short and it only takes me two minutes, does that count? Count for what? What are you doing? Who are you trying to please when you do that, when you ask if it counts? And it really tells on our motives, doesn't it? All of those questions, all of those excuses so far. When we're asking, does this count? What we're revealing is that we're really reading the Bible out of a sense of ought or duty. I'm doing this because I should, right? We talk about reading the Bible more, and the very first thing we experience is, oh, I should do that. Not, I miss that. I want to do that. I long for that. It's, I should do that. Like do your taxes or not eat meat. Things that really stink. I should do that. And that's what we relegate the Bible to, is this thing that we should do. And so it becomes this duty that we perform out of a sense of ought. And by white knuckle discipline, we get up early and we read the Bible. We get up early, we set our alarm. It's a big thing. We make coffee. We sit down with our Bible or our app or whatever it is, and we read it for five minutes. We're like, oh, gosh, that was great. I need to text out some verses, right? It's this thing that we do out of the sense of ought or obligation. And I don't know how you work, but whenever I do something out of a sense of ought, I always end up resenting that thing. You ever joined a Bible study because a friend asked you to? And you didn't really want to, but you didn't want to tell them no either. And so you did it. And every week that dang thing rolls around. You're like, has it been a week yet? Is it really Wednesday? And you dread it and you complain and you go and it's fine. And you come home and you're like, I'm glad that's over. That stinks, man. You ever volunteer out of a sense of ought? You don't like that. That's no fun. You dread it. The things that I do because I feel like I should out of a sense of ought that I just make myself do out of white-knuckle discipline, I never enjoy them, they never stick, and they never are around for very long. And so it's no wonder if what's motivating us to read the Bible is this sense of ought and should that we fall away from that discipline. It's no wonder that it doesn't work, right? So really we have to start asking, well, what's the right reason to read the Bible? Because I would tell you, if you leave here and you feel a sense of ought that you should, then I would just tell you don't yet. Because I think the only real motive that will sustain us and enliven us as we try to make this a discipline in our lives is to be motivated by a deep desire to know God. And I would ask that question to you. And I think that this is the question for the series as we go through this series called Best Practices. Every week we're going to look at a different spiritual discipline. Worship next week and then prayer and then some of the more forgotten disciplines. Some of the best practices that we can have in life and in spirituality. And the driving question for all of these practices really is do you want to know God? Do you have a heart for God? Mark wanted to know God. He wasn't trying to become smarter. He wasn't trying to be good at teaching. He wasn't trying to be an effective missionary or an effective pastor. Mark wanted to know God, and his Bible was evidence of that. The way that it gushed out of him when he got to talk about God was evidence of that. He wanted to know God and so he dove into God's word every day to get to know him better because he understood that there's no better way to get to know our creator God than to read the word that he left us that thousands of people have died for that's been preserved for us over the centuries so that we could have the living God there as we read him. He wanted to know God. Those nights staying up till two, those were pure nights. My motive was to know God. I had never heard the Bible like this. I had never heard it explained like this. I want more, I want more. I want more. And in that moment, it wasn't about being a more effective Bible teacher or prepping for some role down the road. It was just about, I want to know God. And when you wake up every day and one of your prevailing interests in drive that day is, I just want to know God better today. You're going to dive into God's word. And when you're through, you're not going to ask anybody, did that count? Because no one's keeping score. Then the question is, do I know God a little bit better? Do I understand him a little bit better? And so I would say that for many of us, this might be where you can stop this morning and just pray a simple prayer. If you're sitting there and you're taking an inventory of yourself, do I want to know God? First of all, be honest about that. There have been plenty of times in my life, some while I've been at Grace, where if you sat me down and said, Nate, do you want to know God right now? I would have to be honest and go, no, just don't. Which is why one of my regular prayers I prayed at some point every year of my life, if not more frequently than that, is God, help me to want you more. And for some of you, that's all you need today, is to just commit to praying that prayer. God, I don't want you right now. Help me to want you more. Help me to desire you more. Give me a drive that wants to know you, that makes me want to get up and open your word. Give me a drive that wants to understand the Bible more. God, I want to know you. I long for you. If that's not there, the disciplines that we're going to talk about for the next four weeks, those will fade. That's the only proper motive is the desire to know God more. And so I would say for a lot of us, it starts there. Father, give me a desire for you so that I will get up and pursue you more. And these best practices that we're talking about, I think they're best practices because they ignite your desire for God by your continued participation in them, in scripture reading and in worship and in prayer and in the other disciplines. They ignite your desire for God and then they deepen your knowledge of God. That's why they're the best practices. That's why we're going to walk through them for the next four weeks. But the fundamental question to the series, to all of those things, is do you want to know God? For some of you, the take-home needs to be, Father, I want to know you more. Help me. Now, there are others here, I think probably a lot, who you would say, yeah, I want to know God. I mean, I could want to know him more, but I want to know God. I genuinely do. I genuinely want to understand Scripture better than I already do. There's just some things that make it hard for me because I do think that there are some legitimate hangups and some roadblocks that need to be removed so that we can make this a part of our life. Things like when I read it, it's hard for me to understand. I just don't understand. There's big words or there's words I'm unfamiliar with, and I just, when I read it, I don't, it doesn't make sense to me. It's kind of out of context. I don't get it, whatever it is. We'll talk about that. Sometimes that's a translation issue. For some people, one of the comments I got, and I could totally relate to this, was, you know, when I just read words on the page and process them on my own, it doesn't really light me up. What lights me up is getting to talk about it with others. That helps me. Sometimes I come alive in conversation and hearing how you experienced it and getting to bounce reactions off of you. That's really helpful to me. I relate to that. I have a men's Bible study. We've taken a break for the summer because I don't like them that much. But when we start meeting again in the fall, all we do every week, particularly this guy, all we do every week is we read two chapters of the Bible and then we get together and I go, okay, what'd you learn? What'd you see? What'd you experience? What do you have questions about? We start to talk about God's word. So if you're somebody who's a processor who needs to talk about this with other people, get in a group where you can do that. Sometimes that's a legitimate need. One person said, you know, I like to be able to read the passage, but as it's just isolated there on its own, I really don't know what to make of it. I would love it if there was some sort of an explanation of the passage next to it so that I could consume them together. That's a devotional. What you need is a devotional. They're all over the place. Go online, type in devotional, they'll come up and buy one. If you need help or a guide with those, let me know. Email me, write it on your communication card, and I'll follow up with you. But a devotional, somebody, an author has opened it up, they list a verse, and then they have information next to the verse that helps you reflect on what you just read. Maybe that's what you need. If you're having a hard time understanding it, it could possibly be your translation. And this is a little tedious, but every time I talk about this in a Bible study, everybody who's there with me kind of really pays attention. And so my thought is that maybe we don't know this in church, And so I'm going to share this with you. If it's boring, I'm sorry. But when we start talking about Bible translations, there's really three major ways to do it. There's word for word, there's sentence for sentence, and there's thought for thought. The Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek and in Aramaic. The New Testament was written in this thing called Koine Greek, which means common Greek, which is a really solid argument against the King James Version. I'm just saying. As a matter of fact, if you don't understand it and you're reading the King James Version, stop it. That's a hard one to understand, and it doesn't really, it's not super helpful. But the three different kinds of translations, word for word, sentence for sentence, thought for thought. Word for word, what the translator does when they're trying to translate it from Greek to English or whatever the original language was in that verse to English, is they're just looking at the word. They're going, what does this word mean? What's the best possible English word for this word? But if you've ever taken a foreign language, you know that sometimes the sentence structure is not the same. Subject, verb, order, and adjective order is not the same all the time as it is in English. And so you have to minimally reorganize the words so that the sentence still means the same thing. But a word-for-word translation is trying the best they can to stay true to whatever this word is. A great example of word-for-word is the NASB, the New American Standard Bible. That's probably the most accurate translation going right now. I think you can make an argument for Holman. I'm not sure. I haven't looked at it in a while. But that's word for word. It's not very readable. If you look up something in the NASB, it's kind of hard to read. It's less understandable, but the words are right. So if you're doing a Bible study and you really want to know what does this verse say, look it up in the NASB. It can be very helpful. Then there's sentence for sentence. Sentence for sentence is they take it and they go, okay, this is what this sentence means in the original language. What's the best way to restate this in English so that people can read it, but it also stays true to what was written? A good example of this is the NIV or the ESV. I preach from the ESV and I read the ESV. Those are sentence for sentence, a little bit more readable, but while maintaining accuracy. And then there's thought for thought where they take like a whole verse and the translator says, what is this verse saying? And what's the best way to say that in English? A good example of this is the NLT, or the new living. If you are someone who's never really read the Bible regularly, and it is hard to understand, one of my first encouragements for you would be to start with the new living. You'll pick one up, use that filter on your Bible app. We're going to talk about those in a second. Use that filter there and choose the NLT, and it makes for a more readable, easily understood experience. Sometimes it's just a translation issue. And then some of you may wonder about something like the message. That's not a Bible translation. The guy that did it, Eugene Peterson, said this is not a translation. It's just to help. So it's good to read for overall comprehension, but you should always balance that with something that is an actual translation. So it could just be a translation issue that's a roadblock for us. For those that feel like we need more or you don't know what to read, that's a big question too. I want to read the Bible. I don't know what to read. I do a reading plan, but sometimes, Nate, those stink. So what else could I possibly read? There's an app called YouVersion. Some of us know, a lot of us know about it. Some of us don't. If you do know about it, man, you should be using this thing. It's called YouVersion. It's the Bible on your phone. They have it in the Apple store. And then for snooty Android users, they have it in the Google Play thing. Okay. So they have it there too. It's everywhere. You download it and it's the Bible on your phone in every possible translation ever. So you can figure out one that works for you. And then they have literally hundreds of reading plans. Some last seven days, three days, some last a whole year on godly womanhood, godly manhood, how to be a better husband, how to be a better wife, how to be single, how to be a better parent, how to be a better kid, how to be a better employee or employer, what the Bible has to say about grace or faith or mercy or love, chronological through the Old Testament or through the New Testament. You can find any number of things there, and it will tell you what to read every day when you wake up. And you can keep track of it, and you can take notes in it, and it'll keep track of your notes. It's a phenomenal tool. It's hugely helpful. And one of the best things it'll do, for those of you with commutes who don't like reading, it will read the Bible to you. You don't have to do anything special. You just open it up, and at the bottom of every chapter, there's a play button. You hit that, and it'll just start reading it to you. So you can listen while you walk or while you're in the car or whenever. It's hugely, hugely helpful. So here's what I want us to do this morning. Everybody, when you walked in, you were at least offered a bulletin. I want everybody to take that out right now. If you don't have a bulletin, you can use the back of a communication card, and you can bear down on the Bible that's in front of you. I'm going to give you a little homework. I know that it's summertime and that you didn't expect this and some of you are mad at me right now, but I'm giving you homework and I'm going to ask for everyone to participate because if you're the cool person in your row who doesn't participate, then other people are going to be empowered by your freedom and they're not going to do it either. And so we want everybody to try do this together. So write stuff down, even if you don't mean it, okay? Here's the homework for everybody. Three questions for you today. The first one, what's your goal? What's my goal? As I think about reading the Bible, as I mentally kind of go, I need to do that. What's your goal? What's a reasonable goal for you? It might be to simply, I'm going to pray every day that God will help me to want him more. It may be, I'm going to read my Bible every day this week. I would encourage you to make a goal over this series. It's month long that we're going to be four weeks in this series. I want to set a goal. Maybe it's I read a book of the Bible a week. Maybe it's I read a chapter a day. Maybe it's I read a verse a day. Set a goal for you that's reasonable. Don't get like, don't get your eyes big at the buffet and then bring home more than you can stand, like reasonable. Second, what's my plan? What's my plan? How am I going to accomplish this goal? This is where you need to think through, what are the roadblocks for me? What are the reasons I don't read the Bible more? Is it time? Is it interest? Is it that I need people to talk to? Is it that I don't understand? Is it that I need a devotional? What is it for you? What's your plan? How are you going to make sure that you accomplish this goal? And then last, who are you going to tell? Who are you going to tell? We all know we've made private commitments in our hearts to do things before, and if we just keep it between us and God, we have an incredible propensity to not do that thing. So who are you going to tell? Who are you going to invite into this to hold you accountable? And I would challenge you, if you're married, do not list your spouse there. That's not good. Because listen, I don't know about your marriage, but you probably don't need the added tension of now accountability partners for this new thing on top of everything else. Like, hey, did you pray today? No, but when I do, I'm gonna pray for your attitude. Okay, all right. So don't do that. A friend, somebody who can help you out. Keep track of that together. So today, I hope that there's some emails and some texts going out. I hope that you'll make a commitment to this, that you'll make a plan for this, and that you guys will hold one another accountable. Incidentally, I had this thought this morning. I'm just going to throw this out here. I think sometimes we don't know what to read. We have kind of a loose idea of what we'd like to read, but if we open the Bible, we don't really know what we're approaching. There's narrative books that tell stories. There's books that help us with theology. There's books for wisdom and poetry. There's different books for different things. I thought about typing out summaries of the different categories of the books of the Bible so that you could kind of use as a go-to guide of I'm trying to think about this, what would be helpful? Or as I look at Ephesians, where does that fit in and what is that going to help me do? If you're interested in that, write that on a communication card or email me. And if I get 10 people who are interested, I'll do it. If I get nine, Google. But that's the goal. Take whatever your next step is to make Scripture more a part of your life. If it's, God, I want to want you more, pray that prayer. If it's taking a simple step to overcome an obstacle, do that. Get somebody else involved. And let's be one of the very few churches, I believe, that has a whole bunch of people who are actually good at this because we want God more and we've chosen to prioritize this in our life. All right, I'm gonna pray and then we're gonna move into a time of communion. Father, we love you. God, I know for sure from talking to the people of grace, we want to know you more. A lot of us do. God, I pray that for those of us who might not be feeling that right now, who might just kind of be gliding through life spiritually, that you would ignite in us and in them a desire to know you more. God, I pray that you would help me work in my heart through your spirit to want to want you more. Lord, I pray that as we move through this series, that we would instill these disciplines and practices in our life out of a desire to know you, that you would change the way that we relate to you, that we would walk with you more deeply, that we would love one another more purely, that we would offer one another as a result of these practices more grace and more patience and more earnest and hospitable love. God, I pray that you would use this series in our lives to draw us more nearly to you. I pray for those who do have a goal and who have a plan. God, let them execute it. Give them the courage and the discipline to see it through. Give us grace for ourselves when we mess it up. But God, I pray that we would walk back in here this next week and the week after that victorious in the commitments that we've made. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.