Sermons tagged with Stress

Advent. The coming. The waiting for light to shine in the darkness. We light candles each week to remind us of the coming of Christmas. As the candles burn down, our anticipation grows. We hear songs on the radio, think about sales we want to hit, see the smiles and the well wishes of peace on earth, the bright lights and decorations and everyone talking about joy, joy, joy. Really? People are more cranky and stressed, more frustrated and depressed than ever. Tragic news pops up in our headlines almost daily now and around the world we hear the same story. We live in a world starving for joy. In the New Testament, Luke tells us of angels coming to announce the birth of Jesus to some lowly and defeated, depressed, and joy-starved shepherds. That night, there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord's glory surrounded them. They were terrified, but the angel reassured them, Don't be afraid, he said. I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. Lighting up night, the angel proclaimed, And we marvel as well that God would step into our mess, a broken world marred by our sin. And the knowledge that God is accomplishing something new, that he cannot be stopped or deterred, brings us great comfort and great joy. Yes, we still feel sorrow and pain, but God is ever redeeming, ever remaking, bringing joy from sadness, and we look forward to his return when he will make all things new, and we will live in the great unceasing joy that he has promised us. No matter what you go through, we can know this. Jesus is with us. Think about it. He is with you in your greatest victories and your most humiliating defeats. He invited us to come with him and he will give us rest. He has won the victory for us to relieve our frustration and stress. Our striving is over. Let us be overjoyed. Jesus is with us at all times, in all things. That is the beauty of meeting together around these candles. We light a new Advent candle each week to help us prepare for the coming of Jesus that we celebrate at Christmas. And this week we light the pink candle to remind us of the real, deep-seated joy that Jesus brings that we can hold onto no matter what is going on. This great joy is the startling realization that God has taken up residence in this world. Joy to the world! The Lord is come. Will you receive this king? to be here this morning talking to you about joy. I am also very sorry that I just made that wordplay joke. That was terrible. I can't promise you it's going to be the last one of the sermon, but I can promise you you're going to not enjoy any of them. But the truth is the same. I am so thrilled to be here this morning getting to talk about joy. As you just heard, we are in our third Sunday of Advent. We are lighting the candle of joy, the pink candle of joy, and for me, it is maybe my favorite one. I think maybe the reason for that is because I believe one of the major reasons why people love Christmas so much, why it truly is the most wonderful time of the year, or at least this is how I feel, is because I feel like Christmas is just synonymous with joy. That the purpose of Christmas, the purpose of all of the decorations and the lights and the giving gifts and the songs and just the super fun, joyful songs. All of this is just meant to bring about this joy of this Christmas season. And it's so cool because when you go all the way back to scripture and when you look at the very first Christmas, I think we see the same exact thing. When we jump into Luke 2, and we're going to actually read through some verses in Luke 2, when we look at the first Christmas, as we look at what happened when Jesus was born, I think we're just overwhelmed with the amount of joy that's coming out of it. As it starts, Jesus has been born and there are shepherds that are in the field. They're to Jesus, this angel comes. And so we pick a sign for you. wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth, excuse me, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. And so what happens? The angels go away and the shepherds immediately, I mean, it doesn't say this, but I imagine they sprinted to go find this baby because they're like, that was the most insane thing I've ever seen. I've got to figure out what they're talking about. And so they go and they see that what the angels had said was true, that this baby had been born. And I think they knew, they knew what that meant. And so after they see the baby, they see that it's legit. They run back and they want to tell everybody they know. They tell their families that it says they basically just recited what the angels had said to them. And then what did they do then? They hussled on back. They returned. They had to go see Jesus again. And we pick up back in verse 20, it says, I mean, there's just joy oozing out of every part of that passage. You start, you got the angels who come and they bring, quote, good tidings, good news of great joy. And then after delivering the message they have, they immediately start singing. It was essentially the world's first Buddy the Elf Christmas gram. And then after they get done singing, all of these shepherds in their joy and excitement run over. They see Jesus and then they're so excited that they take their joy elsewhere and tell other people about it. And then they bring them back and they're so overjoyed at just looking at God that they just have to turn to praising God because they're so overcome with this joy that they've experienced. And how incredible is it that now, today, this season, this December 25th, this Christmas time, we're celebrating that exact same joy. And I would argue that even the, excuse me, even the folks that celebrate Christmas that are more doing it just as a holiday, maybe because they aren't believers yet, that I don't think that they would even argue with you that Christmas is synonymous with joy. Because every part of Christmas is meant to push that agenda. But what we have the blessing of knowing is that the reason, the real reason why Christmas is synonymous with joy is because Christ is synonymous with joy and because Christ was born and Christ came and we have the gospel, we have the Savior who we know came and we know why that is a big deal and why that is important. And so we celebrate with everything we have. We have this childlike wonder and this childlike joy to just sing these goofy songs and to put up these goofy decorations and to do all of these things so that we can celebrate with the people around us this great and wonderful and awesome Christmas joy like none other. But as we all know too well, regardless of how soon, regardless of what date, even if it's like November 1st that we decide, all right, I'm going ahead, I'm getting my Christmas tree, I'm putting up my Christmas decorations as soon as possible, I'm immediately switching to only Christmas music for the next three months, as we all know, as quickly as Christmas comes, it goes. As quickly as we are just once again encapsulated by the joy of Christmas, we get on the other side of it. We get into the new year and we pack up all of our Christmas stuff and we kind of turn from that Christmas joy back into our far less joyful, far more mundane, boring, regular lives. Counting down the days until it's the next Christmas season so that you can experience that Christmas joy all over again. This is going to be weird to say, but just roll with me. I feel like our relationship with Christmas in this way is similar to my relationship that I had for a long time with the sport of disc golf. Yes, I said disc golf. It is not the same as actually as was said to me this morning, golf golf or real golf or regular golf or as us in the disc golf community like to call it, ball golf, but it is similar. Instead of there being a hole in the ground and instead of hitting a ball with a club, yeah, the form was good, I know. That was just a show off to you guys. But instead of that, it is played with a frisbee, or with different frisbees, so you throw it, and the goal is to get it down into a basket in a certain number of shots. You know, you've got your birdies, you've got your pars, bogeys, all of that stuff, and you play a round of disc golf. Now, for those of you who know me, this sport was basically tailor-made for me. One, because it's outside, and it's in these beautiful parks in nature, and you just get to be a part of that, and that's really cool. Another thing is, like, it's a sport in the sense of you're throwing frisbees, and throwing Frisbee is literally my favorite thing to do and has been my entire life. But it's not so intense to where you still just get to hang out with the people that you're with. Talk, mess around, and it was perfect during COVID because you could stay far away from people but still be around people. And you add an element of competition. And as much as I love disc golf, it was something that I very seldomly did. Basically, it was my times playing disc golf were reserved to the times where I was able to go visit home or we would go on maybe a once or twice a year, we would go on a family vacation when it worked out for the family's schedules. And so anytime we'd go on one of these vacations, my brother and my dad and I would look up and we would try to find these different local disc golf courses so that we could play. And it was awesome. It's so much fun. Like I said, it's right down my alley to play this sport. And so it became one of those things where like one of the things I most looked forward to about our trips and about getting to see my family was being able to look up these different courses and get to go and play these courses the couple times a year I was able to do so. Well, imagine my elation as I put together in my head that, wait, Kyle, you can play disc golf more than just a couple times a year. Because, Kyle, there's literally a disc golf course that's a quarter mile from your house that you drive by all the time. Now, as you hear that, I know you're putting it together in your head and you're giving me way too much benefit of the doubt as you think, oh, I bet what he did is say, I like disc golf. I wonder if there's any courses in Raleigh and realize that this one was close. No. Literally, this is a course that is very easily seen that I drove by, I'd point at people playing disc golf, and I'd be like, can't wait to play that in six months. I know, I was very obtuse to this understanding that this is something that was within my grasp this whole time, but thus, there I was, realizing for the first time this truth, that I could go and I could play this sport of disc golf, this thing that I absolutely loved doing, I could go and I could play it whenever I wanted to. Well, let me tell you that that is exactly what happened. I started playing all the time. I, I'd get done with work, and I'd go and play like two rounds every day. I'd hit up people, see if they'd want to come, or I'd go out there by myself, and I absolutely loved it. Because guess what happens when you really love something, and something brings you a lot of joy, and then you get to do it all the time. It brings you a lot of joy. And clearly I'm saying that to say the point of my message this morning is keep all of your Christmas decorations up all year. No, obviously not. And I mean, like you do you if that's down your alley, like more power to you. But obviously the point of that is not to say, hey, if Christmas brings you joy, then just celebrate Christmas all year. But what I am here to say is that the joy that is brought through Christmas is not brought because of the season. It's brought because of the truth of Christ. And there is a big and vast difference between the first time that these people celebrated Christmas and us celebrating today. And what that difference is, is that they were celebrating the birth of a baby that gave them hope. We celebrate not only the coming of Jesus, but the life of Jesus. And we celebrate the death of Jesus as he took on the weight of our sin, of your sin, of my sin, and said, I am putting this to death because I want the opportunity to have a relationship with you. And in that death, and in his resurrection, coming back to life, signifying that if we would put our sin behind us, if we would simply say, I realize that I am not perfect, I realize I deserve nothing but death, but I also realize what Jesus has done for me and has given me the opportunity to have eternal relationship with God, with our creator, with this perfect creator. And that is the joy that we celebrate on Christmas. That is the gospel. And put so beautifully, I think, by a musical group, Beautiful Eulogy, in their title song, they say, as long as the gospel is true, why do we treat Christmas as our quick fix, as our quick time where we are able to experience this great joy. Why do we use Christmas as the one time that we just celebrate Jesus and we're willing to be more childlike in our hearts? Being a little bit more goofy, decorating a little bit weirder, all because inside of us we're just joyful that it's Christmas time. Because the joy of Christmas and the joy of the gospel is forever. In Lamentations, Lamentations 3, 22 through 23. It's funny that I'm reading a verse out of Lamentations because lament is kind of the opposite of joy. But nonetheless, here we go. Lamentations 3, 22 through 23. It's funny that I'm reading a verse out of Lamentations because lament is kind of the opposite of joy,. Again, I say rejoice. I've got news for you. God invented joy. God sent his son to be born and created the joy that that brought to those people. He sent his son to die so that we could have joy eternally. He didn't create joy to say, man, when it comes to December, my people are going to be so excited. He sent joy so that literally every single day he could shower on us joy and he could shower new mercies on us every morning. God is giddy to bring you joy. He wants to celebrate with us. He invented singing. He invented dancing, both of which I'm eternally thankful to him for. Because they're great and I'm great at both of them. But not only that, but guess what happens? Guess what happened when I started playing disc golf a lot more? I got a lot better. As I played more, I started understanding more intricacies of the game. I grew this much greater love and appreciation for what was going on, from what I was seeing other people doing and trying to emulate that because I wanted to achieve those things, I started achieving goals that, like, I never even thought I could achieve, you know? I was getting my first birdies, shooting my first under par round, shooting my first 10 under par round. A few weeks ago, I think some of you guys saw on Facebook because I posted about it. I wasn't quite as joyful on my Facebook post because, you know, the putting was off. But I played in my first tournament, which is hilarious because I didn't even know that that's a thing that existed. Like when I used to just play a couple times a year, like I was like, oh, that's a thing people do. And hey, guess what? Yes, it's a thing that people do, including your boy Kyle. And I played in it, and it was so much fun, and it was so cool to just like unlock this whole new joy I didn't even know was a real thing. My putter was off, but hey, you know what that did? That just made me want to press in, because I didn't want to fall short on my putter again. The next round I play in a tournament, I want to do better. I want to see what it feels like to do even better than that. Hey, a few days after that, I went and played disc golf with my brother and with my sister-in-law, and that in itself brought me great joy. But hole 13, I got my first ace, my first hole in one. I mean, I like, you know, I put it, I got my stance. I ripped it up. Nice little Anheuser, little turnover shot up the hill, about 250 feet uphill. Smashed that thing. It's flying. It's going. Smashes into the chains. Lands in the basket. And I go nuts. I mean, like, you probably can imagine, like, you're watching me right now, and you're like, this guy's just talking, and he's going this crazy. Yeah, I'm kind of nuts. But I went insane. I was screaming, I was yelling, I was cheering. Like, literally, I wanted to make sure everyone on the course knew that I had just gotten an ace. I mean, like, I'm running around and yelling. Like, to the point that I turn around at one point, I see that my disc golf bag is here on my bench, and all my body can think to do is, I got to kick that. And so I just kick it, like, through the air. I mean, I was absolutely thrilled, and it was awesome, and I can't wait to get another one. But what was incredible to think about was the fact that that was a joy. Throwing a hole-in-one in disc golf is a joy I never even thought to be possible when I was just playing disc golf once or twice a year. Playing in a tournament, I didn't even know tournaments existed back when I was just doing it once or twice a year. Literally, as I kept playing, I've continued to unlock these greater and greater joys that I never even knew were possible or never even knew existed. And that's just a silly game. I love it. It's fun. Let's go play sometime. But it's just a silly game. Imagine how much more joy the Lord has in store for you if you will just say, I want to put that type of effort every day into seeking after him. I want my faith to be so important to me that instead of just waiting for December, I want every day to be a day that I'm seeking the same type of joy that I get to experience during Christmas time. Psalm 1611 says, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy, true, complete, 100% fullness of joy, may not be completely available until heaven, where joy, as John Piper put it, joy has no other competitors. I believe that this verse is making us, making it known that this does not start until heaven. I mean, excuse me, that this starts way before heaven. We get to experience this fullness of joy now. And guess what? Fullness of joy changes definitions because God continues to unlock joys we never even knew were existent. He has pleasures for us forever. He wants to shower on us a love that knows no bounds that we can't even comprehend. He wants to bring peace to us and hope to us that sustains us in every part and in every portion and in every circumstance of our life. And he wants to overwhelm us with joy to the point that as an overflow, we can't help but sing and we can't help but dance and we can't help but just be childlike and giddy because we're so overwhelmed with the blessings of God. And at the end of the day, I say all of this, but I don't say this to say that the gospel changes. The gospel remains the same. Every Christmas we're celebrating the same thing. And so I don't say this to say that if you spend more time with God and if you spend more time in scripture and more time growing in your personal faith, that that will change the facts of the gospel. Because the gospel is the root of our joy. The gospel is the reason why we're able to rejoice. But what I am saying is when we choose to pursue this type of joy, when we choose to pursue the joy of the gospel and the joy of salvation and the joy that is a relationship with God, when we choose that daily, and when we decide that we want to start taking that next step of obedience, whatever that looks like in our life, I can promise you that those joys that you experience through a growing faith will be far deeper and they'll be far sweeter and they will be far more profound and they will come so much more frequently than anything that you could ever imagine. So, what if next Christmas, what if instead of next Christmas being just the next time where we get to celebrate the joy of Jesus, what if instead it is a time where we get to take stock of what the Lord has done in our lives and in our hearts the last year, where we look back at the Christmas prior and then we see the ways that because we sprinted after and we pursued the joys of the Lord all year, and we said, oh my gosh, look at the unbelievable things that the Lord has done in my life this year. Literally, if I would have thought last Christmas that the Lord would have done this in my life, I would have said there's absolutely no way. So what if next year? What if next Christmas? What if this Christmas? What if from now until this Christmas when we look back from, what, a week, two weeks? We say, gosh, look at all the joys that the Lord has brought me and my heart and my family just in these two weeks. And I think that's the point of Christmas. Not simply to celebrate a birth of Jesus, but to celebrate his life in eternity. Everything that he did. Everything that that means for us. And because the gospel is true, and because the gospel is final, we do not have to wait for Christmas time to rejoice. But instead, we always have reason to rejoice. God's blessings, his joys, his mercies are new every morning and all he wants to do is shower them on you because all he wants to do is celebrate with you his creation and somebody who he has a relationship with that he loves more so than we can even grasp. And so let our joy of this Christmas be the beginning. Let it be the root by which our joy grows throughout this year. And I can't wait until next Christmas to hear what has grown out of that root of joy that started last Christmas. Let's pray. God, thank you. Thank you for creating joy. Thank you for Christmas, God. Thank you for even the holiday of Christmas so that we can be reminded of your great joy, so we can be reminded of the gospel and of its truth. But God, let us not forget once Christmas time is over that the joy of the gospel is final and is forever. But instead, God, let this be the nudge in the right direction to say, I want this joy always. Every day, I'm going to pursue it. I'm going to pursue you. God, let us pursue you always. And let us, let you do what brings you so much joy, and that is simply raining down blessings, raining down mercies, and raining down joy upon your children. Lord, we love you so much. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. I'm so excited to be with you in this way for the last time. God willing, this is the last time we will pre-record this message and show it to you this Sunday morning. Spoiler alert for those of you who haven't figured it out yet. We've been pre-recording these messages. This is Thursday morning as I'm talking, and then we release them on Sunday. That's been the best way to skin the cat since we haven't yet had the ability to live stream our services. However, next week, August the 16th, is the first time we're going to live stream our service, and I'm super excited about that. It's when we're going to resume our in-person gatherings. We're having church in our house or yours. So next week's going to look totally different. We're going to have full worship. We're going to have announcements, a sermon. It's going to feel more like a grace service. So whether you consume that here in person or at home, or I've seen people watching in the car with me up on their dash, if you consume it in that way, it's going to feel different and hopefully it will feel more like grace. And honestly, you know, that's been a tricky decision. As we approach that, there's been a lot of things to think through. What kind of precautions do we want to take as we come back? What are we going to do in here to make it safe? What are we going to ask you to do to make it safe? So if you're interested in returning next week to in-person gatherings, there's a video at the end of my sermon today that's going to tell you everything we're doing to make this safe, and it's going to also tell you some things that we're going to ask of you as you return in person. So stick around for that if you're interested in that. And I know that the decision to return to in-person gatherings and resume that is a controversial one. I know it's a difficult one. If we weren't going to do it next week, I'd have a group of people saying, hey, what are you waiting on? Let's go. We're ready for church. And by reopening next week, by resuming in-person gatherings next week, I know that there's a group of people saying, gosh, that feels foolish and irresponsible. And trust me, I wrestle with that every day. But there's two big reasons why we're choosing to resume in-person gatherings next week. And they're really this. The first one, and the prevailing one for me, is that, man, the church is a fundamentally communal institution. It's designed to be done together. Our souls need corporate worship. Our souls need fellowship. Our souls need to be around other people who love us and who love Jesus. We yearn for that. And to reduce church to what it's had to be for the past several months, to some video of worship that's prerecorded, and to me talking, to reduce church to that and to consume it in our homes, man, that is not the church that God designed. And so as soon as we can resume being together and expressing church in that way, I want to do that. I feel the impetus and the spiritual need to do that. I feel like some of us are spiritually wandering and this could draw us back in. And then on the practical level, one of the things that we realize as an elder board, and one of my prevailing thoughts is, listen, until there's a vaccine for this thing, we all have to do the math on the risks of what life looks like. We all have to decide how we want to live our life until a vaccine exists and is disseminated through our population. We're all, for the next several 12, 18 months, going to have to do this math on on what risks are worth it because it's not going away. And so it just made me realize that, man, we have a church full of people who are capable of doing that math. And so if in the equation you come out to, man, you want to resume in-person gatherings and you're going to be here next week and you're excited for that, wonderful. Can't wait to see you and wave at you from six feet away. If you are someone who you come out on that equation and you're not yet ready to take that risk and you don't know when you're gonna be, that's fine. I can't wait to see you. I'm glad we get to minister to you. I'm so glad that you're still connected to grace. But honestly, you know, it's been a stressful decision. I go to bed every night thinking about it. I wake up every morning thinking about it. I get people asking me, just about every day, are you sure we want to do this? How come we haven't done this sooner? You know, so-and-so thinks this about this. You know, so-and-so thinks we're running behind. We need to catch up. It has been a difficult decision because I can't remember a time in leadership when people have had to make more decisions with less certainty than what we have. And so it's been a difficult season. 2020 has been a difficult season. Listen, all of us, the stress isn't unique to me. All of us have faced uniquely stressful decisions. Some of you lead a business and you've had to decide how long you can keep people on. Some of you are an employee and you're not sure how much longer your position will be there. Or you've been furlough, or your salary's been reduced. We're all living under these different parameters. Man, my heart goes out. I mean, we're among them, the families who are sending children to school, and the math that all the parents are having to do. Gosh, should we do virtual? Should we do distance learning and just stay home and figure that out for families that have two parents that work? How in the world are you gonna keep all those plates in the air? And parents who have kids who are at these crucial points of their education where, man, your kid needs to learn to read and you know that you don't know how to teach phonics to your child. You know that you don't know how to teach these principles to your child. So what do we do? How do we not stunt the growth of our kids but also keep them safe? And is it reckless to send them back to preschool? Or is it more irresponsible to not get the social development that they need? How do we keep that in balance? My heart breaks for parents who have kids who are supposed to start kindergarten this year. Man, that's not what kindergarten is supposed to look like. That's a big moment, man. That's exciting. That's real big kid school. And they got to go and there's plexiglass and there's face masks and they don't leave their room and they eat right there and it's just they don't get to go to the playground. It's just not what it's supposed to be. My heart really does break for parents who are trying to do the mental math of, man, what do we do with our kids right now? And for the college freshmen who've been looking forward to this experience and it won't be what it's supposed to be. My heart breaks during this time, during 2020. Man, for those of us who struggle with anxiety or depression or loneliness, this year has been like a special kind of torture, hasn't it? Those who are given to depression, this is only making it worse. Those who are given to anxiety feel like they're swimming in it now, maybe about to drown. Every time you turn on the news or scroll through your phone, there's more bad news. There's more terrible things. There's more like, well, this kid got it over here and this whole community got it here and these terrible things have happened as a result of this. And that's just the pandemic, not to mention everything else that's going on in our culture right now. And what about those who are already alone, who already felt lonely before all the doors got shut and they couldn't go out anymore? What about people who just want a dang hug, man? This is a tough year. I've only scratched the surface on the things that all of us are walking through. I feel like this year has been uniquely distressing, uniquely depressing and anxiety-inducing. And that many of us, because we never expected that it would go this long. We never expected that we'd be in the middle of August still wondering when we'd come out of our houses. Still wondering when things are going to feel normal. For many of us, this year has been difficult in some pretty unique and impactful ways. And we may have at different points found ourselves pretty low, pretty distressed, feeling pretty beat up. That's why I felt that the story from Kings this morning was so appropriate. You might remember that we're in the middle of our series called A Time of Kings. That last week we talked about Elijah, one of the great prophets of God and his showdown with the prophets of Baal on top of Mount Carmel. And this week in 1 Kings chapter 19, so if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn there, follow along with me if you can. And this week we find Elijah at what I believe to be his lowest point, his lowest moment. I believe, this is speculation, I believe that Elijah was a person who was given to depression. I believe that Elijah probably struggled with clinical depression. There's different pieces and bits of evidence in his life that he got pretty low and pretty sad pretty quick. In this passage, he's asking God to kill him. He's the point at which he doesn't even want to live his life anymore. What's happened is after he defeats the prophets of Baal and God uses him to convert a majority of Israel back to him. This is the height of life. This is the apex that Elijah could have ever accomplished. This is the best thing that a prophet could ever want. He defeats the opposing prophets. He shows them to be inept and empty. He converts all the people he's been trying to reach. This is the greatest possible victory a prophet could win. He should be on a mountaintop. And yet, as a result of his victory, Jezebel the queen promises that she's going to track down and kill Elijah. And so in chapter 19, we see Elijah run off and escape and in solitude is crying out to God. And he's telling God, I want to die. He says, I alone exist. I alone stand up for you. I'm the only one left of all the prophets, which by the way, is not true. Elijah's being dramatic here. He's being over the top. His emotions are running away with him. And if he'd stop and think about it for a minute, he would know that it's not true. But he's so worked up in his emotions that he says, I alone remain. God, please just take me. Now they seek my life too. Don't let them get to me. He is in the depths of despair and distress and depression. He's in a low moment. And to me, if we'll look at how God responds to Elijah in his low moment, we can be encouraged about how he'll respond to us and ours. So let's look at what God does and how he responds to Elijah when Elijah cries out from the depths of his soul, from the depths of depression, I just want to die, God. How does God respond to his low moment? We pick up the story in verse 5, chapter 19. This is depressed, and God sends an angel. But the angel wakes him up, says, hey, Elijah, you need to eat something. He gives him food and water. He falls back asleep. He wakes him up again. He says, listen, you need more food. You need more water. You need to eat this so it can sustain you for the journey. So he eats whatever kind of superfood God gave him in the moment, and then he travels 40 days to Horeb, the Mount of God. And so what we see in this instance, in the first part of this story, in chapter 19, when Elijah's at his lowest moment, when Elijah is distressed, that God sustains him. In Elijah's distress, the Father sustains him. And I use that word sustain because he gives Elijah what he needs, not necessarily what he wants. Elijah wants death. He's praying, God, please, can I just come to heaven now? Can my job be done? I don't want to do this anymore. Will you please take me? And God comes to him, sends an angel, but it's not an angel of death. It's not to give him what he wants. It's to give Elijah what he needs. In his distress, the father sustains him. And so with that sustenance, he goes and he travels 40 days to Horeb. And when he gets there, God sends him to a cave. And he says, I'm going to speak to you, Elijah. I have something to tell you. So I want you to go to this cave and I want you to wait. And I'm going to come to you and I'm going to speak to you. It's this, I love this moment. It's one of my favorite little moments in scripture just tucked away. Jen, my wife, it's one of her favorite moments in scripture. I've been excited to share it to you and bring it to your attention. For those who aren't aware of this story, to share it with you for the first time and for those who are to breathe fresh life into it. But I love what happens here. He goes off of his distress 40 days through the wilderness. Who knows where he's at emotionally now. He ends up in the cave and he's waiting for the voice of God. And this is what happens. We pick it up in verse 11. This is God speaking. It says, Put yourself for a moment in Elijah's shoes. He's been sent off to this place called Horeb, the Mount of the Lord. And God tells him, I want you to go and I want you to stay in this cave. I'm going to speak to you. So you're in this cave, you're tired and you're hungry and you're sad and you're depressed and you're huddled up and you're waiting for the voice of the Lord. And before the cave, it says this mighty wind blew and probably shook the cave and there was rocks coming down and trees falling outside. And you're thinking in this cave, certainly this is the Lord. Now God is going to speak to me out of this mighty wind, but the Lord is not in the wind. So you wait longer. There's an earthquake, and now it really shakes, and now the rocks really tumble, and now you start to really worry, am I safe in this cave? Surely the Lord is speaking out of the earthquake, and the Lord's not in the earthquake. Then the fire comes. And you're thinking, yeah, now God's talking to me. In the same fire that he sent down on the altar to defeat the prophets of Baal, the same fire that he spoke out of when he spoke to his servant Moses, now he's going to use that fire to speak to his servant Elijah. The Lord was not in the fire. And then there came a gentle whisper. And Elijah gathered his things and he went out to the mouth of the cave and he leaned in. And God whispered to him, Elijah, what are you doing? And some instructions follow after that. But I love this passage because we would expect the voice of God to be in the wind or the earthquake or the fire, to be loud and to be filling and to be shaking and to be awe-inspiring. But God often chooses to speak in the whisper. Because if you think about it, the whisper is intimate. It's close. Everybody hears the wind. Everybody sees the fire. Everyone feels the earthquake. That's for everybody. The whisper is for you. The whisper is just for Elijah. The whisper is only heard when we lean in, when we're close, when we're pursuing the Father. The whisper is only heard when he wraps himself up and he goes out to the Father to meet him, to hear him, to lean in and hear what he has to say. The whisper is intimate. It is caring. It's personal. And what we see is that in Elijah's distress, the Father speaks to him. At his lowest moment, when he most needs God, God shows up and he speaks to him. He speaks to him in a special way, in an intimate way. And I think that the way that the Father responds to Elijah's distress in 1 Kings 19 is such an encouraging message for us in 2020 in the midst of our distress. Because it's the same God and the same truth. And the fact is that in our distress, the Father sustains us and speaks to us. In our distress, at our lowest moment, when we feel down, when we feel beat up, when we need him most, when maybe some of us have even cried out to God and said, God, I don't even feel like this life is worth living. In those moments, our Father sustains us and he speaks to us. He did it then and he does it in 2020. And that thing about sustenance, I alluded to it earlier. God gives us what we need, not necessarily what we want. I think some of us are praying for things that we want and not looking around for the provisions that we need. I remember as COVID started, as the world changed forever back in March, you know, we have a four-year-old daughter. She's four and a half. She would point that out to us if she could. And she's in preschool. And when everything shut down in March, so did preschool. And her year got cut short. Her year got ended abruptly like many of your children's years got ended abruptly. And at the end of March, we moved into a new neighborhood. So here we are with our only child, and we're acutely aware of that. Lily has even expressed that sometimes when it's just us in the house, she gets lonely. And that's hard to hear, but that's our reality. And man, our parent hearts are really concerned because here's our four-year-old daughter. She's been pulled out of school. It's so important to us that she's around other adult figures that have some authority in her life, but she can't come to church where that happens. She can't go to school where that happens, so it's just us. It's so important to us that our isolated four-year-old daughter would have social interaction with others, that she would have to get in fights and resolve conflict, that she would have to problem solve, that she would have to learn how to not get her way and not be selfish and play what other people want to play sometimes. That's important stuff. Those things that she was learning in preschool were incredibly important to us. And now we're in the middle of this schedule where there's no more preschool. She's not around those kids. We can't go to the playground. We moved into a place that has a playground 150 yards away from us that we're so excited about, but it has yellow caution tape over it. And every time we go past it, Lily asks us, how much longer are they going to tape up the playground? She can't play there either. We can't engage in our normal summer rhythms of play dates and appointments and Bible studies. And our parents' hearts are breaking, wondering, man, she needs this interaction so bad. And without us knowing, by what I believe was just God's providence, he places us in a house on a cul-de-sac that has 10 kids under the age of 10. And do you know that between 12 o'clock and 1 o'clock in the afternoon every day, one of those kids comes and bangs on our door and asks if Lily can play. And at this point, she doesn't even ask permission. She just goes speeding past us and runs out the door and is outside until 6 or 6.30 when we call her in. Every day. Every day she's sweaty and gross and stinky. She has bug bites up and down her legs. Underneath our front porch is several wrappers of those Popeye's popsicles and beads jammed down into the crevices and the remnants of kids playing and our creaking swing getting swung too hard from half the neighborhood being on our front porch. And it's God's sustenance. I'm so grateful for those things. That God looked out for my daughter and said, I know that this is going to be a difficult time, so here, here's what you need right now. And God is sustaining you too. God has provided for you in ways this year that you may not even be aware of yet. I think sometimes we have to stop and look around and say, we may not be getting what we want, but God, how are you providing me what we need? Because I think he's still doing that. And I think that God is still whispering to us. I think that if we lean in and we listen, we can still hear the voice of God. Back in 2013, I had the opportunity to go to Israel. It was an incredible opportunity. I've been saying since I got here that I want to do a year-long study through the Bible and then take that Bible study to Israel and go on a tour together, and I still want to do that. You guys need to hold my feet to the fire about that. I would love to take people from grace over to Israel. But one of the things we did when we were in Israel is we went up on the Mount of Beatitudes where Jesus supposedly gave the Sermon on the Mount. And there's a Catholic monument built there. And so there's a little stone wall that you could go sit on. And I was in the habit, whenever we went to a different site, of finding in my Bible the events that happened in this place and reading through them and praying through them as I just kind of experienced this place. And so on the Mount of the Beatitudes, I went off in a corner by myself, and I was sitting on a stone wall, and I can remember looking down, and I was looking down into this valley, into kind of a plain and then the coast of the Sea of Galilee as this mountain, as this hill kind of spilled into it and I'm at the top of the hill and in front of me about 10 or 15 feet away, there's a tree over here and the branches of the tree are sweeping in front of me and I just remember looking down and grabbing my Bible and reading through the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus preached there in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7. And as I was reading, I remember praying, Father, I want to see you today. I want to see you here. I want to experience you here. Help me to feel your presence, God. And towards the end of the sermon, Jesus says, look to the birds. Look at the birds. Some translations say, consider the birds. And when I read that phrase, I just kind of felt like, I felt this prompt to pause. I know this might sound funny to you. I know this might sound weird, but I felt it in my soul. Hey, just stop reading for a second. And so I read that phrase, look at the birds. I felt like I should stop reading. And I looked up and I had been hearing birds over there while I was sitting there, but none had come near me. And in the moment that I looked up, this one lone bird flew over and lit on a branch right in front of me, about 10 feet away, and looked me dead in the eye for five or 10 seconds. It felt like much longer than that. And then just flew away. And I have this big note in my Bible about that moment when the Lord whispered to me, and you will never convince me that he didn't bring that bird over to look me in the eye to tell me, I hear you. I'm listening to you. I'm with you. I'm right here. And he whispered to me. He whispered to me, I think, because it was intimate, because I was leaning in, because I was pursuing him. And I asked him, Lord, show me your presence. It was an earnest prayer. I didn't mean, I wasn't doing it to show off. I didn't tell anybody about it that day. I just kind of, I think this is the first time I've told anybody that story. I just kind of experienced it. And the Lord is whispering to you too. And it's really easy to get distracted by the earthquakes and by the wind and by the fire. It's really easy to think that the voice of the Lord is in all the huge things that are going on around us. But often what we need to do is quiet down those voices and get in a place where we can finally listen. Sometimes we produce the noise ourselves, don't we? We turn on the TV or we pull out our phone or we glance at the computer or we listen to the radio with every spare second so that there's no possible way that even if the Lord is whispering to us, there's no possible way we would hear it because we're drowning him out. In the meantime, we're distressed and we're depressed and we don't know what to do and we're just covering ourselves with all these other things that aren't the voice of the Lord. And if we would just stop and go to the mouth of the cave and lean into the Father and beg him to speak and listen, I think he's still whispering to us now. I don't know where you are. I don't know what this year has been like for you. I know for many of us, this has been a challenging year to say the least. I know that there are some of us who can absolutely relate to Elijah in this passage and just feel low. I want all of us to know and to be reminded that in our distress, our Father still speaks to us. He still sustains us. This week, let us look around for that sustenance and let us lean in for the whisper. Let's pray. Father, give us eyes to see what you're doing. Give us ears to hear what you're saying. For those of us who have clutter and noise, help us sweep it away and lean into you and hear you whispering to us. God, may those who need it most hear you this week, hear you today. God, give us eyes to see the ways that you're providing for us that we may not notice. Help us to see that even in our lowest moments that you are sustaining us. And to understand and appreciate the wisdom of even if we're not getting what we want, Lord, you are absolutely giving us what we need. God, I pray for those who are stressed about decisions. Give them clarity and confidence. I pray for the parents that face impossible choices in uncertain times, for the leaders that face difficult choices in uncertain times. God, be with us all as we try to listen to you. And let everything that's happening in this year and in this season point us back to our need for-person gatherings here very shortly on August the 16th. As we get prepared to do that, we know that everybody's not in the same place. Everyone doesn't have the same level of security and comfort as you go out and venture out into the world. And some of you may simply not be in a place where you're ready to gather in person, and that's all right. But if you are ready to gather in person, if that's something that you're looking forward to and you're considering doing, then I just wanted to let you know, first of all, some of the things that we're doing to make church as safe as possible for everyone who's going to come here, and then some things that we're going to ask you to do if you choose to come participate in the live services. What we're doing, first of all, is we're cleaning the whole church every week. We're sanitizing it, all the surfaces, every bit of it, 48 hours before anyone's going to be in this building on Sunday. So the very latest Friday morning, the whole building will be clean, will be spotless, will be sanitized, and will be ready to go for Sunday morning with kind of be sealed off so that nobody else is allowed in the building until it's time for services on Sunday. Another thing that we've done is we've mounted hand sanitizers at the entrance of every door to the auditorium. So that's going to be there, it's going to be ready for you. If you have to pull your own doors or grab a bulletin or anything like that, we're going to have that hand sander there ready for you, ready to go. Speaking of holding doors, our greeters are going to be at the doors leading to the outside and they're going to open those for you. So you won't have to worry about this. It doesn't have to stress you out. Our ushers are going to be holding open the auditorium doors. So you're going to be in great shape there. We've also mounted some offering boxes at the back of the auditorium. We understand that we can't pass baskets now so because of that there's going to be boxes at the back of the auditorium as you leave every Sunday you can put your offering in there you can submit your connection card whatever else you'd like to do we're going to have those at the rear of the room so that you can put the cards and the offering in there so that we don't have to pass the baskets. We're also going to take the bulletins and just go ahead and place those in your seats. So there's not going to be any need to grab those from an usher or for many people to touch the bulletin. Those are going to be in your seats on Thursday or Friday morning, and no one's going to touch them until you get there. Lastly, these services are for families. Everyone's invited. Kids Ministry isn't going to be open just yet. So all the families are invited to come and participate in the service on the 16th. To that end, our wonderful children's workers, our kids minister, Aaron, and our assistant, Julie, have put together some busy bags for small kids and specially designed sermon notes for some of the bigger kids to keep them entertained and engaged so that you can pay attention to the sermon and whatever else may be going on in the service on Sunday. That's what we're going to be doing for you. Now, here's a few things that we're going to ask you to do for us. We're saying on August the 16th that we are going to be meeting in our house or yours. So if you're choosing to meet in our house, then these are kind of our house rules. Our first house rule is that we're going to ask that everyone over the age of 10 is wearing a face mask inside the church. I know that's inconvenient. I know that's not fun. I don't want to preach to a room full of face masks. But for us, wearing a face mask is about being considerate of others. It's about making other people feel more comfortable in an environment. It's about taking the extra step to protect our brothers and sisters. It's really about doing the right thing. So we're gonna ask that everyone over the age of 10 wears a face mask just to take care of everyone and make church as safe as possible when we do return. Our second house rule is simply, hey, no touching please. We know that some of us are ready for hugs and handshakes and fist pounds and I get it. I am too. I can't wait until we can just act normal. But the deal is that not everybody who comes back is going to be comfortable giving a handshake or a hug or a fist pound or even an elbow bump or whatever else. So for the sake of not creating awkward situations, for not making someone else feel uncomfortable, we're just going to ask that while we're in church, we just keep our hands to ourselves. If some of you are married to a spouse where this might be difficult, let us know in advance. We'll send some zip ties to your house and you can lock their wrists down to their belt loops and everyone will be on their best behavior when we get to church. The third thing we're going to ask from everyone is to maintain a two-seat gap minimum between you and the next family, between your family and the next family over. We've removed every other row in the auditorium to maintain some social distancing as we sit, but we also know that with those rows is the opportunity to sit right next to each other. So we're just going to ask that if you didn't come with that person, if you haven't talked to them already about sitting with them, please don't sit right next to somebody. Please leave that two seat gap between you and the next family. Okay, this one's pretty simple. One at a time in the restroom, please. For the time being, all of our restrooms are now effectively single seaters. All right, that's what we're going to do. I know that some of our restrooms have more space than others, but just for the sake of clarity, just one person at a time, let's be respectful of that, should be pretty easy. Fifth, B-Y-O-C. Bring your own coffee. Coffee bar is not going to be open right now. Just wanted to let you know that ahead of time. So if you like a warm drink while you participate in a worship service, then feel free to bring that from home. But we're not going to be able to provide you with any of that for the time being. Lastly, we would ask that you would help us keep the lobby clear. I know that that's a disappointing one. That one bums me out. I love the lobby. Grace loves the lobby. It's a sacred and special place for us. We love to congregate and be together. It's the whole reason why we're resuming these gatherings. But we're going to ask that for now, since our lobby is also the tightest place in the church, that we would congregate outside or in the auditorium. Laugh and giggle and catch up in those places so that we can leave the lobby clear for those who simply need to pass through without worrying about being too close to someone else as they go into and out of the doors and into and out of that space. I know it's weird to come to church with all these rules and these precautions and these things that we're going to ask one another to abide by. I don't like it any more than you do, but I tell you what I really don't like. I really don't like preaching to an empty room. I really don't like experiencing church from my couch. I really don't like not getting to see any of you. So for those who are ready, we're excited to come back. I'm really, really excited for corporate worship to do that together and just to live stream it. So even if you're at home, you can worship with us from your house. I'm really looking forward to kind of re-engaging in what feels like a more normal church. And I appreciate those of you who are willing to abide by these things and take those baby steps with us as we inch back to something that feels like normal. For those who are willing, I can't wait to see you that Sunday.

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

My name is Nate. I'm the lead pastor here. Thanks for being here on this Sunday, the last Sunday in our series called Best Practices. The idea behind this series is that I believe that there are some habits or some practices, some disciplines that we can develop in our life that are really the best disciplines or the best practices that anybody can develop ever. That if we'll develop these, if we will make these a part of our life, they will make us better wives and better mothers, better husbands and better fathers, better children, better employees and employers, better friends and better neighbors. They will make us better people. More importantly than that, if we will instill these disciplines in our life, we will know God better. We will know him more deeply. We will experience the joy and the peace that we believe God offers. So here's what I'm doing as we move through this together. I'm assuming that if you're here in June, that you care at least a little bit about your relationship with God, okay? I don't you know this in church parlance, in the church business, or whatever you want to call it, but summertime is not like high visitor attendance time. Summertime is people who mean it come to church. So if you're here, I'm assuming that you do care to some degree or another about your relationship with God. If you're here because you are checking it out and you're not sure yet and you wouldn't even say yet that I do have a relationship with God, then I hope that this is a way for you to just assess some things and analyze some things and kind of look at and get a peek at Christianity. But as we've been going through the series, we looked at some practices that are really best for us, like reading the Bible on a regular basis. We kind of looked at how to do that and what keeps us from doing that and how we can make that a part of our life. We looked at worship in the second week. Last week, we looked at prayer and this idea of reducing ourselves to the need to pray. Don't wait for life to do that to us, but go ahead and every day admit that there's things that we need God for and spend time in prayer. And in that way, we can move further to being obedient to that command to pray without ceasing, which is a really challenging instruction in Thessalonians. This morning, what I want to do is kind of clean up the series and mention a couple best practices, a couple spiritual disciplines that maybe are a little bit less heralded, a little bit less known, a little bit more forgotten. These all probably deserve their own week, but I'm excited about our next series. I wanted to get to it. This one's a tight four-week series, so we're going to kind of hit three different things this week. So my hope for you is maybe all three of these things are great for you and you can instill all of them. Maybe you're already doing one or two, but I hope that everybody today can take home something that they want to begin to instill in their life or a discipline that they want to renew in their life. So that's my goal for you. So as we look at these three practices that we're going to cover today, one of the less heralded spiritual practices or spiritual disciplines that I wanted to talk about is the practice of giving, the practice of being generous, the practice of giving of our finances. Now, as I say that, if you're thinking along with me, okay, if you're anything like me, then your thought process might go something like this, okay? We're doing a sermon on spiritual disciplines. First thing out of the gate is that I need to give to the church. It's pretty self-serving, dude. Like, you're going to get up there, you're going to tell me these are things God really wants me to do, and then the very first one is, bam, you should give to the church. Okay, listen, I don't blame you for thinking that. I would be thinking that if I were you, but a couple of things to clarify. First of all, when I talk about giving, it's only the second time I've talked about it since I became the pastor here two and a half years ago. But every time I do talk about it, I want to be sure that we cover this thing biblically. And I want to make some points. There's some ways that we talk about giving that just aren't true. The New Testament, which it doesn't mean the Old Testament isn't valuable, but the New Testament is our authority as we look for ways to live our life. The New Testament doesn't tell us to give 10%, and it doesn't tell us that we have to give to the local church. So when I say that we should give, that we should instill the spiritual discipline of giving, I'm not telling you that you should give 10% of your income to grace. That's not what I'm telling you. So in that way, it's not self-serving. What I'm telling you is the New Testament says that we should be a people who are generous, that we should be a people who give. Jesus talks about giving in such a way that he assumes that you will do it when you give. So it's to happen, when you give, give in such a way that the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. We see a story about a widow that gave out of her poverty, and Jesus says that's a better, that's a bigger gift, a more meaningful gift than the wealthy person who gives out of their wealth, because her gift required faith, right? We see these instructions about giving, and we know that to give is a good thing. We know that that's something that the Bible talks about. But again, we're to give to God, give to things that are building God's kingdom. So it doesn't necessarily mean the local church. Paul does talk about this idea that if somebody is ministering to you and you're benefiting from that, that we should make it possible for them to continue to do that, that we should support them. But that's as close as we come to me being able to leverage the Bible to say that you have to give your money to grace. So that's really not what I'm talking about. Now, if grace is doing things that you believe in, that you want to support, then support it. Like Mikey, the guy that did the announcements, which is so well, I mean, he knocked those out of the park. When Mikey did those announcements, he told you guys that we were in Mexico right now, that we had two, that we had a team of students down in Mexico and that we're building two homes. I'll just tell you, those homes are $6,000 a piece. The missions committee that we have here, in their generosity, said, we want to go ahead and pay for you guys to build two houses so that two families who live on a dollar a day or less can have a home that they so desperately need just across the border in Mexico. They were able to do that because 10% of everything that's given to Grace goes to ministries happening outside the walls of grace. So if you've ever given, then you are a part of that. If you'd like to be a part of that moving forward, then you can give and you will be. Or if you'd like to be a part of other things moving forward, give to Addis Jamari, a great ministry going on in Ethiopia where they are cutting off sex trafficking at the front. They're nipping it in the bud before it even starts. They take girls that age out of an orphanage and they put them in a home and they disciple them and they teach them skills because there's a very high likelihood that they would end up in some sort of trafficking industry if they did not. And now they're going to the families that have to put up kids for adoption because they simply can't afford the children that they're having, and they're giving them training and investing money in them so that on the front end, those kids don't even have to go to an orphanage. So be a part of something like that. Be a part of faith ministry where our kids are now building homes for families that desperately need them. The instruction in the New Testament is that we should give and that we should be generous, that we should be conduits of God's generosity. And you may think, how is this a spiritual discipline? I know that that's something that we're supposed to do. I get it that that's instructed in the New Testament, but how are we supposed to do that? Why is that a spiritual discipline? And I would just submit that maybe we don't think about giving as a spiritual discipline because we've heard it taught poorly, or we've thought about it in incorrect ways. I've sat in services and listened to sermons before where people talk about giving as if it's some sort of investment scheme. They'll quote a verse in Micah, and they'll say, if you bring your tithe into the storehouse, then God's going to bless you and fill your barns. And it's almost this idea that if you'll give to the church, God's going to give you even more money. That's dumb. That's not how that works. Charitable giving isn't some sort of divine investment scheme, okay, where God just makes you rich because you give to other people. That's how jerks take advantage of ignorant people. That's how that works. So that's not true. It's not some investment scheme. Will you get blessed when you give? Absolutely. Is it going to be by more money in your account? Probably not. So that's not how that works. The other thing is we get guilted into it, right? God's done so much for you, the least you could do is give a little bit for him. And then it feels like this thing that we have to do out of obligation when really that's not what giving is. The reason I think that giving is a spiritual discipline is because giving builds your faith while we participate in God's goodness. Giving builds our faith while we participate in the goodness of God. I'll tell you why I think this. This was, and I have to preface this story. Jen is against me sharing this story because in this story, we stumbled into some obedience. I feel obligated to remind you that I'm an egotistical jerk and that I don't always do good things. But in this story, I'm going to do something good, okay? But now I feel like everything's balanced and that we're fine. About four years ago, I guess it was, it was December. Lily was due in January. Our only child was due in January. And we had managed to save up some money to have the kid and take the hit of Jen not being in work. Jen worked part-time. I worked at a church. I was a student pastor, a small groups pastor. And believe it or not, I did not make a ton of money. So for us to have money set aside was a big deal. We had about $5,000 set aside. And I'll just be transparent with you. we had not had that much money set aside in our marriage ever. So we were pretty thrilled that we had this amount set aside to be able to have Lillian be responsible for us to miss because she worked part-time as an office manager and she wasn't going to get those hours and we're going to have medical bills and you know how it goes. So we're feeling good about that. Well, then in late November, her car stopped working. So I had it towed to a guy that went to the church, a guy named Kelly McCart. And Kelly was looking at the car. He calls me one day. I was on the golf course. I mean, it's hard. We didn't have any money. By the way, I was golfing during work hours. I was on the golf course. He calls me. I said, hey, dude, how you doing? He says, I'm doing better than you will be. And I went, oh, no. I said, what's up? He goes, it's the engine. I said, ugh. He said, it needs to be replaced. And I'm like, what do I do? Do you think I should do it, or do you think I should just trash it and buy a new car? He goes, I think you should replace it. It's a good car. It's a Toyota 4Runner. I said, all right, how much is it going to cost? He said, $5,000. Son of a gun. So I had to go home, and I think I waited a day or two to tell Jen. You know, like, how's the car? Eh, it's fine. You know, I didn't, I just didn't, she's a very pregnant lady and I didn't want her to have to deal with the stress that I was dealing with. Because it's like, my goodness, how, how are we going to pay our bills in January? Like, how are we even going to make it? I don't want to do the humiliating thing of going to my parents and be like, we're, we're screw ups. Can you please give us money? Like, I didn't want to do that. So I was just really stressed. In the midst of this, it was time to give the Christmas offering at the church that we went to. Jen and I had prayed about it, and we had conferred, and we had each agreed that we, that year, wanted to give $500. But then this thing happened, and now we don't have any money. But it's time for the Christmas offering to happen. And I prayed about it, and I just kind of felt, you know, if I can trust him with $500 when we feel secure about our finances, then I ought to be able to trust him when I don't. And I feel like this is what God has asked us to do. So we said, all right, we'll do it. And we gave the $500. Two days later, friends of ours from the church, our age, not like grandparents or something, peers come up to us, come up to me after a service, and they said, hey, we don't know why, but the Lord just kind of put you on our heart this week. So we just wanted to say Merry Christmas, and they handed me an envelope. I take the envelope home, and inside is a check for $500. Yo. So I kind of start crying a little bit. I show it to Jen. And to me, that was God's way of saying, I'm going to take care of you. I have 1,000 sheep on 1,000 hills. I have all the money that I can possibly need. I'm going to take care of you. You did the right thing. I'm going to take care of you. I have a thousand sheep on a thousand hills. I have all the money that I can possibly need. I'm going to take care of you. You did the right thing. I'm going to take care of you. I wish I could chronicle for you the ways that God showed up in January and February so that we didn't have any need. The way that he just took care of all the things that we were concerned about. I think because we were able to stumble into obedience in that situation. But the reason I'm sharing that story is because do you not think that after we decided to give that money and then saw God deliver us in that way, do you not think that built my faith a little bit? Do you not think that helped me trust God even more? And then the cool part is the family that did it, a family called, named the Calders, they had no idea what was going on in our life. And then after they gave it, I shared with them our story. Do you not think that built their faith a little bit? Of them just sitting there going, I feel a prompting that we should try to take care of Jen and Nate. You don't think that built their faith to do that? I think that when we give, we create opportunities for God to show up and show us that he's going to take care of us. When we give, we create opportunities to be on the other end of stories like that, to know that what we gave was used for something far better than whatever we were going to spend it on to begin with. And when we do that, not only does it build our faith, but it allows us to experience the goodness of God as we are conduits of his generosity. That's why I think that giving is a spiritual discipline. Because I think it's something that builds our faith. So if that's not a part of your life, I know, I know that's a tough thing. That's a hard thing. Just practically, it's a hard thing. And there's questions around giving. Do I give 10%? I think that's the tithe. Listen, the New Testament doesn't really tell you a percentage. I think 10% is a good baseline. But I would tell you to just try to get into the habit of regularly giving anything to any ministry that's building God's kingdom. And let God show up. Let that build your faith. Get some experience in participating in the goodness of God in that way. If that's not a part of your life and you want to know God and you want to follow these steps and you want to instill these practices in your life, just find a way that feels right to you. Pray about it. Father, what would you have me do? And give in that way and watch God show up. So that's the first thing that I would encourage you in today is the practice of giving. The second thing is the practice, and you guys are going to be like, what in the world is he talking about? The practice of content consumption. The practice of content consumption. Here's the idea. I'm not going to spend long on this. I don't think I need to make a whole bunch of flowery points around it. I think that you guys can understand this, okay? There's a verse that I love in Philippians. It's one of my favorite verses. It's in chapter 4, Philippians 4, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Now that's a challenging voice. That's a challenging verse. If you think about the things that you allow into your life, the things that you watch, the things that... This steps on my toes, too. The things that you're not even sensitive to on Netflix anymore. Right? The shows that you watch. You're like, but that show has all that stuff in it. Yeah, it doesn't really bother me. Should it? Think about the stuff that you allow into your life. And if it's obedient to this, whatsoever things are just, pure, lovely, commendable, honorable, excellent, there's anything worthy of praise or praiseworthy. Think about these things. How good are we doing at that? And so I just kind of think, if this is something that I want to do, if I want my mind focused on things that are obedient to Philippians 4.8, that are praiseworthy and honorable, and all of those things, that's what I want. How do I do that? How do I organize my life around those things? I think part of it is the content that we consume. And I would ask you, for in your life, besides Sunday morning, besides whatever comes out of my mouth on Sundays, which, that's a low bar, what spiritually nourishing things are you getting in your life? What else is spiritually nourishing you? Outside of random conversations you might have with your friends that you do find encouraging or conversations that you might have with your spouse that you find encouraging, what is in your life that is there to spiritually nourish you, to build you up spiritually? For years and years and years, for centuries, the only option has been to read. And if you're not a reader, if you don't like doing that, which I totally understand, then it's really difficult to consume any spiritual content during the week that's spiritually nourishing in any way, because reading was the option. If you are a reader, I would encourage you, make books that are spiritually encouraging a regular part of your discipline. In my personal quiet time, when I'm really doing it well, when I'm really walking in consistency, I'll read the Bible. I'll let that push me into a time of prayer. And then when I'm done praying, I'll read a spiritually formative book until Lily wakes up. That's kind of how it goes. So if you're a reader, then choose books that nourish you spiritually. But if you're not, I just want to, on a practical level, let you know that there are some really great options out there for you. And I want to talk to you about this idea of harnessing the dead spaces in our schedules because we're all very busy. But there's these things called podcasts that you should really listen to. They're phenomenal. If you don't know what podcasts are, ask someone around you after the service. We will give you a one-day moratorium of not making fun of you or even calling you names for that. Just ask somebody around you, what's a podcast? How do I find them? How do I assess them on my phone. All of you have phones and you can get podcasts on all of them, okay? These podcasts are great because all of the sudden I can listen to sermons from all over the world. I can listen to people have discussions about things that are spiritually formative from all over the world. I can listen to all kinds of people. Do you understand that for centuries and centuries and centuries, the only spiritually building, nourishing thing that people got was whatever their pastor said on Sunday. And that's a bummer. Now you have access to the best pastors in the world who are preaching every week and you can listen to their sermons every week. So I want to encourage you to look for the dead spaces in your schedule. If you have a commute over 10 minutes, use that to listen to something that's spiritually formative. If you go on a walk with your dog, put in some headphones, listen to something that nourishes you spiritually. When you're at the gym, can we just all agree that almost everybody in this room is old enough to no longer need pump-up music? Nothing that you're doing requires you to be pumped up, okay? Nothing. Nobody in this room, I'm looking at you right now, nobody in this room, except for maybe Mikey, is lifting any amount of weight that requires you to be jacked. So just listen to something. Listen to something that's helpful. Listen to something that informs you, that nourishes you, that encourages you, that's spiritually formative. I have a buddy, he goes to the church, I'll tell on him. He's not here this week, and we'll see if he mentions anything to me because he listened to the sermon. But Shane Smith, and he has Smith, he has to drive to Durham every day for work, and he started listening to sermons on his drives. That dude texts me questions a couple times a week. He's asking me stuff. He's wanting to understand Scripture. He's saying, hey, I heard this taught to me. What do you think of this? He is chewing on it. He's considering it. He shows up to my 6 a.m. Bible study. I have watched his life change over the past several months. And one of the biggest things is because he takes time in his day, he looks at that drive not as a burden but as an opportunity to consume some content that's going to nourish him spiritually. And it's changed him and his family. Look for those opportunities in your life and find things that we can listen to. On your bulletin there, I emailed some people in the church who I know listen to podcasts, and I compiled some there for you. So there's recommendations there if you need some. The other thing I would say on this point is there's an app called Audible. And that you can subscribe for like 14 bucks a month and download books. You get one book a month and then they read it to you. You can listen to it. So if you're not a reader, but you're jealous of all the people you know who do read and seem to have things to contribute at parties and at like Bible study and stuff, and you'd like to be one of those people, you can game the system and have somebody else read it to you while you cut the grass. That's really great. So you can subscribe to Audible and you can get these books going in your headphones. So I just want to impress upon you this idea of consuming content that can help you. I think it's a discipline that we should all have and be careful with. The last one I want to talk about today is the practice of fasting. The practice of fasting. Now, fasting's an interesting thing. Fasting shows up in the Bible a lot. And fasting, if you spend any time around church, is something that we've heard of. If you grew up in a Catholic environment or an environment that observed Lent, then you know the idea of fasting for 40 days from certain things. And so we all kind of understand what fasting is. But as I thought about it this week, to put it in front of you, there's a couple things that I thought were interesting. First of all, we can fast for a bunch of different reasons. In 1 Samuel, we see David fast because he's mourning. He's lost his son. He's mourning the loss of his son. And so he fasts and he's brokenhearted before the Lord. We also see David fast in repentance. He's done something that he very much regrets. He made a moral misstep. He sinned before the Lord. And as a form of repentance, he pursues God by fasting. And maybe that's what some of us need to do. Maybe some of us have something in our life that's just eating our lunch that we'd love to not be a part of our life, but it just persists and it just pervades and it's just always there. Have we ever fasted over it and said, God, please take this from me? There's this really interesting passage in the New Testament in Matthew where Jesus says that this type of demon is only cast out through fasting and prayer. Like it somehow intensifies our prayer. We can fast when we're seeking guidance. In Acts chapter 13, it says that the church was getting together, and after a season of prayer and fasting, that they set aside Paul and Barnabas to go on their missionary journeys. We can, when we don't know what to do, when we don't know what's next, we can set aside some time to fast and pursue God in that. But I think maybe the most interesting thing that I saw about fasting is that Jesus just assumes that you do it. See, I think that when we hear fasting, there's a part of us that goes, okay, that's for like, that's for the ninja Christians, right? That's for the Navy SEAL Christians. Like, I'm just regular, just getting by, trying to not do dumb stuff Christian. That's for like super intense, big time Christian. Okay. Do you know in the New Testament, there's no delineation. There's no stages of Christians. You don't get to be like a white belt while that dude's a black belt. You don't get to do that. We're all on the same path moving towards the same goal of walking with God and being disciples of God. And part of that path is this assumption by Jesus that we would fast. Because he tells us in Matthew, he says, when you fast, don't do it like the religious hypocrites do it. Don't walk around with a sunken in face and all sad and be like, what's wrong with you? Be like, I'm fasting because I'm super spiritual. Don't do that. Splash water on your face. Fake it. Try to sneak it by people. Don't let anybody know what you're doing. But the interesting thing to me is this assumption by Jesus that it's a part of your life. And I know that for me, I'm not speaking for you. I'm sure that I'm behind the bell curve on this and you guys are all way ahead of me. But for me, until recent years, that was not a regular part of my life. I still, I fast with the elders from time to time, and I'm still bad at it. Honestly, half the time I fast with the elders, I have to email them the day before and be like, guys, I'm so sorry. I made a lunch appointment tomorrow, and I'm definitely going to eat tacos. So I kind of ruin that for us. It's true. The elders are nodding their heads at me right now, like, yeah, we know. And they're secretly grateful for it, so don't let them talk bad about me after this. They like it when I do that. But it's not really a part of our lives. We don't do it as a regular thing. I bet most of us in here can't remember the last time we did it. But see, Jesus assumes that we fast. And he doesn't assume that it's for, the super intense believers. It's for all of us. And the more I looked into it and thought about what it meant and what it was and why would Jesus assume that we did this, the more apparent it became that it's this picture of something. There's a book by a girl named Margaret Feinberg. I think that's her last name. Is that her last name? Yeah. And it's called Taste and See. Aaron Winston, our children's pastor, told me about it, and I started reading it. It's really good. It's gotten me firing on a bunch of different things. I'm really considering doing a whole series on food. I feel like I'm an expert on this. I could bring a lot to the table. See what I did there? Yeah. Okay, I feel like I could do a lot with that, and I want to expound more on this later. But fundamental to this book is this idea that God could have created us any way he wanted to. He could have had us nourish ourselves any way he wanted to. We could have gotten our energy from the sun. We could have worked on photosynthesis like plants. He didn't have to make people who had to eat. He didn't have to make people who had to eat so often, but he did. And it's interesting to think that maybe he did that as a constant daily reminder of our spiritual need for him. As a constant daily reminder that our appetite for food, our body's appetite for food should be the same as our spirit's appetite for God. And in that way, fasting is a physical reminder of a spiritual need. The more I started thinking about this, the more I realized that food is a picture. Every time we sit down at a table and we eat because we need it, that's a physical picture of what our spiritual body needs. And so when we fast, it's an acute reminder of that. It's an intense reminder of that. It forces us to focus on this picture that exists with us every day of our life. And every time we feel the hunger pangs in a fast, that's why some people say, well, you can fast from different things. You can fast from alcohol, or you can fast from social media, or I'm going to put down my phone, or I'm not going to do this, or I'm not going to do that. I'm going to fast from TV. And those are fine. But there's nothing quite like fasting from food. Because it's a physical reminder of a spiritual need. And as we feel those pangs of hunger, gosh, I wish I could eat right now. That's a reminder. This is how your spirit longs for God. I've even gotten to the habit of, on the occasion when I'm actually good at fasting, I'll get a little headachy. And it's really tempting because I still have a lot to do in my day. I'm usually still about to go to an elder meeting. I have other things that I have to accomplish. I'm trying to get a sermon done, whatever it is. And it's tempting to eat something because I've got to stave off this headache because I can't really do my job if I'm not feeling well. So I need to take care of myself. And I'll start to go down that road. But it's a reminder. The way that your body begins to ache because you haven't had food is the way that your spiritual body begins to ache when you're not locked into God. We don't feel it as acutely, and we don't feel it as immediately. And I think that's why God gives us this physical reminder all the time. When we don't eat, we know it. And when food is good, and the meal is good, and we're around other people, and we're around our friends, it's one of the best experiences in life. And I just think it's this one-for-one picture of our need for God. So fasting serves as an acute reminder of our spiritual need. And if nothing else, it brings to the forefront of our mind our spiritual need for God. And so if fasting isn't a regular part of your life, I would encourage you to try it. Try it and let that drive you into prayer. Try it and let that take you into a place where you admit and acknowledge your spiritual need for God. I had a friend who, he's got three boys. This is the worship pastor I used to work with in another church. For all three boys, the week they were born, he fasted for a week and prayed for them. Because those were his boys, and he wants them to grow up to be godly men, and so he pursued the Lord after them. If you've got a big decision coming up and you don't know what to do, have you fasted about it? If there's a sin in your life that's just kicking your tail and you'd love to be done with it, have you fasted about it? If you'd like to get into these spiritual disciplines more but can't seem to find that in yourself, have you fasted about that? I want to encourage you to consider the spiritual discipline of fasting. Now, as we wrap up the series, to me, there's this key question, the answer to which dictates all of our actions after being asked the question. So as we wrap up the series in light of all of these practices, the practice of reading scripture, the practice of worshiping God, the practice of prayer, of giving, of consuming the right content, of fasting, all these different things that we can instill in our life so that we could pursue God better, I think that there is a key question. And when I say key question, what I mean is the answer to this question really determines all of your actions after you answer it. And I get this idea from a book that Jen and I have recently been given. A lot of you know that cancer has become part of our reality and our family in 2019. And so when that became a part of our reality, people started giving us different things and somebody gave us a book. It's called Chris Beats Cancer. And at the beginning of this book, there's a question. And the question is, do you want to live? And it may seem like a simple enough question, but it's really profound in how you answer it. Do you want to live? Because what's about to follow in that book, what he's about to tell you to do, is for most people a radical change in your lifestyle and your diet and your habits. So he sets it up with, do you want to live? The implication is, if the answer is yes, then you'll be willing to do whatever it takes to live. If the answer is no, that's a different conversation. And for those battling that disease, that's a more tricky question than you would think. So I think it's this key question. Do you want to live? If you do, then you will do whatever it takes to accomplish that. And I think that there's a key question for us as we consider our relationship with God, and it's this. Do you want to know God? Do

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am the lead pastor here. I don't think you guys got the memo. It's Memorial Day weekend. You're supposed to be like at the beach and stuff, and here you are. So this is fantastic. I'm super encouraged by our Memorial Day crew. Just for the record, to throw this out here before I get launched into the sermon, if you are ever here while a staff member falls off the stage, the appropriate response is laughter. Don't feel bad about that. Don't feel like you have to wait and see if we're all right. Even if it's Aaron, you just laugh, all right? That's funny. And if you had fallen off the stage, that would be the best. That would be amazing. Actually, they're all rooting for me. Now they're all like, they're not even going to pay attention. They're just going to root for me like to fall off the stage. I'm going to stay right here. This is the third part in our series called The Forgotten God. For the unindoctrinated, for those that may not be as familiar with Christian theology, we believe that the Bible teaches that our God exists as a trinity or the triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. And the idea is we talk a lot about God the Father. We pray to him. We hear about him. He's all over the Bible. We talk a lot about God the Son in the form of Jesus. We see Jesus a lot. We just did a whole series on his life for 12 weeks. But sometimes we forget about the Spirit. We know he's there, but we don't familiarize ourselves with him or his roles or his influence in our lives. Last week, we said we've been talking about that what the Spirit does is he continues Jesus's ministry both through us and to us. This week, we're going to look at how he continues Jesus's ministry to us and the roles that he plays in our life. Last week, we looked at his continuation of Jesus's ministry through us and the spiritual gifts. And I brought up that there was two spiritual gifts that are often misunderstood, tongues and prophecy. And I promised that I would write up a little something to help you understand it if you're curious about my stance, not our stance, my stance on those gifts. So that's actually typed up and printed out and on the information table if you want to grab one on your way out. To the five of you that read it, I hope that it's good. They'll be there as long as there are copies, so for eight months. This week, I want us to look at the roles of the Spirit. How does the Spirit continue Jesus's ministry to us? And when I say Jesus's ministry to us, one of the things that Jesus was doing with the disciples is he was showing them how to become more like God in character, more like him in character and in disposition and in love and in heart. And so now the Holy Spirit does that in us as well. We're taught that we receive the Holy Spirit as a down payment or a guarantee on our salvation. So we believe that if you are a believer, if you call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, then you have the gift of the Holy Spirit and that the Holy Spirit does certain things for you. I saw one author, he listed out 50 things that the Holy Spirit does. We're one service now, so I've got extra time. So number your paper, one through 50. No, I'm just messing around. I'm going to do five, but there's more than what we're doing this morning, right? But the Holy Spirit plays roles for us. And as I was thinking about how do we understand who the Holy Spirit is for us and what he does for us and how he helps us, as Jesus talked about, I was reminded of this clip of the 92 Olympics in Barcelona. This is, we're going to watch in just a second, this is my favorite Olympic moment of all time. Number two, for those interested, is Carrie Strug in the 96 Olympics when she does the vault with her sprained ankle. But this is my favorite one of all time. I watched this as an 11-year-old boy, and even in the moment, I thought, my goodness, something really neat is happening here. And I thought it was a really good picture of who the Holy Spirit is for us. So I wanted us to take a second here at the onset and take a look at this video. Storbritannia Terima kasih telah menonton! That's his dad. Terima kasih telah menonton I'm going to make a small tree with a small tree. Stenbergsforskning I love that clip, man. It's great. First of all, I mean, if you're blessed to have a good dad, like, that's what they do. And so now as a dad, like, I understand that even more. But every time I watch that clip, I cry. I get a little misty. And so I was in my office this week trying to find the right version of it on YouTube. And so I was watching it, and it finishes, and I'm in my office crying by myself. And then I start laughing at myself for crying by myself. And so if you'd have walked into my office at that moment, I would have looked absolutely hysterical. Like, you probably just would have slowly shut the door like, Nate's lost it. This is terrible. And going on with your day. But I love that clip because dude's running. He's trained for the Olympics. He's poured his life into it. And he tears his hamstring, right? And I can appreciate the heart of the dude that says, no, forget this. I'm finishing this thing. And he gets up and he goes and he's going to finish this thing. And then here comes his dad fighting off people. And I love, you guys giggle both times, I love when some other guy comes over and tries to help. He's like, get away from us. Get out of here. I've got this. I'm taking care of him. I love that. And I think it's a good picture of who the Holy Spirit is for us. And I think about us that we can all relate to that sprinter. That sprinter's name is Derek. I think in our life we've all felt like Derek. When we didn't know what to do or where to go, we felt like we were all alone, that we were just limping through life, trying to get this thing figured out. And darn it if we couldn't just use a hand. I sat with somebody this week. We have the young girl Molly that sometimes plays the violin for us. Her father passed away this week far too early. That's a heartbreaking thing. And I was sitting with somebody from our church this week as we took them lunch. And we were talking about, his name was Mac. We were talking about Mac passing. And she just brought up that there's just been a lot of people in the last couple years in her life who have passed away. She knows a lot of widows who are widows far too early. And she kind of broke down. She said, I don't understand. It's been really hard for me. I don't know how to make sense of this. I believe in my God, but I don't know why these things happen. She felt like Derek. And sometimes that moment is deep and it's grievous and it's intense and we just don't know what to do. We feel like him. We're all alone. Other times we just kind of look around and we're like, gosh, I've been carrying this weight for a long time. Goodness, it's felt like it's been all on my shoulders to lead this family, to lead this business, to decide on my career, to raise this child, to be in this relationship. Sometimes it just feels like it's all on us and that we're just limping through life. And if we're being really honest, we just wish sometimes we could have a hand. And this is true even of the toughest sons of guns in here. Because some of us are wired in such a way that you never ask for help. You never need anything from anybody. You're quick to help other people, but if other people offer to help you, no, I'm good. I'm fine. And I know that mentality. But let me tell you something. Even the toughest, most independent people in here, you have moments in your life, if you're being honest, where you feel like Derek, and you could really use a hand. That's why I think Jesus' words in John 16 should comfort us so much. And let me just say, if you're sitting here going, I've never felt like Derek, boy, you need to feel like him more than anybody in this room. And I think that's why Jesus' words bring us so much comfort. We started the series with this verse in John chapter 16 where Jesus says, it's better for you that I leave so that you can receive the comforter. And we talked about that's an absurd statement because wouldn't it be great to have Jesus right next to us all the time? But Jesus says it's better that I'm not here because if I don't leave, you can't receive the comforter. And we just talked about how can that statement possibly be true. But this week, I want us to actually look at a different portion of the verse. So come back to it, but zero in on a differentper, and that's capitalized, and some of your Bibles may say Comforter, will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And this is going to be important later. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. I say that these should be words of comfort to us because of what that word helper means. The word helper or comforter in your Bible, and I don't do this a lot because normally I think it's pastors just showing off, but in this point I do think it's important. The original word there is parakletos. parakletos, which literally means to come alongside. And that's the word that Jesus uses to describe the Spirit. It's all through the book of John. It's alternately translated as advocate, helper, comforter, or teacher. It can mean all those different things, but sometimes we see it helper, sometimes we see it comforter. But what he's saying is, if I don't leave you, then the one who's going to come alongside you will not come. And that's why I say that clip was a good picture of who the Holy Spirit is, because what did that father do? He came alongside his son, and he helped him through the race. And this is the picture of what the Holy Spirit does for us. When he rushes into our life, he comes alongside us, he fights his way to us, he picks us up, and he stays beside us through life. He is our ever-present helper. And so it should bring us great comfort. And as I was doing the research on this sermon, I realized that there's a lot of different roles that the Holy Spirit plays. There's a lot of different things that he does for us. I said that one author listed as many as 50. But what I realized as I looked at this is, wait a second, Jesus calls him the comforter. Jesus calls him the helper. So the Holy Spirit's role is to help us. The Holy Spirit's role is to come alongside us. That's his big umbrella role. And then underneath that umbrella, sometimes he takes on different shapes or different forms, depending on what we might need most. And the Scripture kind of tells us or shows us the different forms that he takes on for us. So we're going to talk about the roles of the Spirit, but his role is to help us. And that role looks differently depending on different seasons of life and different wiring. So one of the first ones I want us to look at is that sometimes he's the comforter. Sometimes the role that that takes on is that the Holy Spirit is the comforter. And this is easy to see that when we're grieving, the Holy Spirit is there and he is with us. And the Bible says that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and he comforts those who are crushed in spirit. We know that when we are grieving and when we are hurting that the Lord is near to us. But to be honest with you, this was a hard one for me to relate to. I've not walked through a lot of tragedy in my life. There's not been many times where I was so broken and so grieved, maybe once that I can think of, where I felt like I needed to run to God. But I also felt like the role of comforter in our life is more prevalent than that. The other thing I know about myself is that I'm kind of emotionally broken. Like I don't really like feel emotions to the same degree that other people do. Like I'm a little bit weird in that way. And one time I was really sad about something and I called Jen and told her I was down. And her response was, Nate, those are feelings. And I said, well, you can keep these. These are terrible. I don't like feeling this way. I don't get down a lot. I probably should. I just don't get affected by much. I get grumpy about things, but I don't get sad about things where I feel like I need comfort. I don't feel like my life calls for a lot of comfort. So I actually went to some people on staff. I went to Aaron, our children's pastor, and I went to Steve, our worship pastor, and I said, hey, when you hear that the Holy Spirit is your comforter, how do you relate to that? How does that strike you? What does that mean to you? And they both gave me the same answer, and I thought it was a great one. They said, when I think of the comfort of the Spirit, I think of peace. And I thought that's so true. And often the comfort that the Holy Spirit offers comes in the form of peace. Often the comfort that he gives us is not patting us on the back and saying, hey, it's going to be okay, or giving us the plan like, hey, I'm going to comfort you by showing you exactly how it's going to work out. Sometimes that's not it. Sometimes it's just the peace that he offers us. I got to participate in the funeral that happened on Friday for Mac McElroy. And I peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. That peace of God is delivered to us through the Holy Spirit. And the comfort comes in the form of, I think, the Holy Spirit getting near us, putting his arm around us, and saying, I know that you don't know how this is going to work out, but I do. And saying, I know that you don't know what you need to do in this situation, but I know. I know that this doesn't make sense to you right now. I know that you can't make heads or tails of this. I know that it feels like a loving God wouldn't allow this to happen. I know that this feels confusing and it doesn't fit into your theology. I understand that. But I understand it. It makes sense to me. I know that you don't know how this is going to be okay or how life will ever be okay, but I think the Holy Spirit, as he comforts us, whispers into our ear, but I know how it's going to be okay. And I know how this is going to work out. And the Holy Spirit is what enables people, those Christians, to face the unknown with certainty and with peace. One of the greatest blessings of my life has been the privilege of watching my grandma, my mama, walk to death with perfect peace. She was diagnosed in February a couple years ago with ovarian cancer. It was advanced stage, and she said, you know, I've lived a long life. I'm pretty good. My husband's in heaven. My kids don't need, like, my support on a day-to-day basis, so I can pray for them. I can pray for them from heaven, so I'm just going to refuse treatment and live out the last couple months of my life in peace. And she walked. I had coffee with her every other week and talked to her about it. And she walked to death with perfect peace and no fear. You know how she did that? The Holy Spirit whispering in her ear, Linda, I know that you don't know how this is gonna work, but I do, and I've got you. So sometimes the Holy Spirit helps us by taking on the form of a comforter. Sometimes he's the illuminator. This may be the most important role of the Spirit. Sometimes the Holy Spirit is the illuminator. It tells us in 1 Corinthians 2, I've got it there on your notes, verses 13 to 14. Paul writes this, and we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Okay. What this means is, if we want to understand spiritual things at all, it is the Holy Spirit that enables us to understand those things. Do you understand that the Holy Spirit is the activator of your faith? That if you would call yourself a Christian, that in the days and weeks and years before you were a Christian, you were wandering around, the Bible says, blind, unable to see the truth. And the only way you can see the truth that it takes to become a believer is for the Holy Spirit to illuminate that truth in your life, to do the work in your heart so that you'll be turned on to the things of God. None of us comes to faith because we sit down and intellectually pursue faith. We come to faith because the Holy Spirit, in whatever way he works, illuminates for us our need for God. That's how we come to faith. None of us has faith without the Spirit. And then as we walk through life and we seek to understand spiritual things, the Holy Spirit explains them to us. He directs our paths in such a way that spiritual things make sense to us that beforehand they couldn't. That's why I truly believe if you're not a believer and you're trying to come to grips with Christianity, but the deal for you is I have to understand everything about what I'm getting into to be able to take the step of faith to be a Christian. You never will, because the Holy Spirit has to act in our life to bring that about for us. I think it even works like this. The Holy Spirit, part of his role is to illuminate God's Word. I have notes in my Bible where I was reading a passage, and I went, gosh, I don't understand what that means. And I wrote down and dated it. Father, please show me what this means. Spirit, please help me with this one. I don't understand this. And I wrote it down and I dated it and I just made it a prayer. And I can tell you that there's been a couple of times when I come back through my Bible, I'm reading it again, and I read a passage and there's a note off to the side of it that just says, Lord, please help me. And I go, oh, I understand what that means now. Because the Holy Spirit was good in answering the prayers and showing us what Scripture means. I would just tell you this. If you're having a hard time understanding some things about God, if you're having a hard time understanding some things about theology, if you're having a hard time understanding some of the things that you may read in Scripture sometimes, have you prayed to the Spirit and asked Him to illuminate for you what it means? Have you asked Him to show you? I would challenge you to pray that prayer and see what happens because sometimes the Spirit is the illuminator and he shows us spiritual truths. Sometimes he's our leader. Sometimes he shows us where to go and what to do next. I love the moment in that video when Derek is limping down. He's limping down the track, and his father fights his way to him, and he grabs him, right? And Derek at first looks at him. If you go back and you watch it again, he looks at him with some apprehension. He thinks it's another guy in a suit who's trying to help him, and he kind of looks at him like, no, get away from me. But then he realizes who it is. And when he realizes who it is, he breaks down crying because he realizes it's not all on him anymore. And he turns and he buries his face in his dad. And at that moment when he's burying his face in his dad, he's still moving down the track, but he's no longer looking where he's going. And that's a picture of what the Holy Spirit does for us. His dad has his eyes down the track. His dad hasn't. His dad says, you don't need to worry about where we're going. You don't need to worry about where we're stepping. You don't need to worry about staying in your lane or avoiding all these camera people or crossing the finish line. You don't need to worry about any of that. I got you. I will take you across. And all of his concerns and all of his worries went straight into just focusing on his dad and the comfort that his dad offered. And sometimes this is what we need to do with the Spirit more than anything, is just bury our face in Him, focus our eyes on Christ, focus our eyes on God, and allow the Spirit to lead us into the decisions that we need to make. Because sometimes we don't know what to do. Do I take the job? Do I not take the job? Do I put my resume out there? Do I not? Do I stay in Raleigh? Do I move somewhere else? Do I go to this church? Do I go to that church? We have a dynamic in a relationship that's hard and sticky and if we address it, it's going to blow it up and it's going be really difficult to talk about it, and maybe it's best just to let it lie. What do I do? Do I stick my face in the wood chipper, or do I step back and hope it works out? How do I discipline my kid? What do I say in this particular instance? How do I handle this situation? Oftentimes, we're in a place in life where we could go this way or that way, and we're not sure what to do. I was in a conversation with somebody in my family a while back, and she was in a very stressful situation, and a lot of things had fallen on her that were not typically her responsibilities. And she was really struggling with it and having a hard time with it and was ill-equipped to handle it. It was really very stressful for her. And I spent some time on the phone with her. And I tried to lovingly tell her, hey, where you're at right now in life, the things that are being thrust onto you are too much for you. They're too big for you. You're not wired to handle these things. So you don't need to continue to feel encumbered with all the decisions around the situation because you have a couple of people around you who are smart and who are level-headed and who are thinking clearly and who are capable of helping you carry that burden. So the only decision that you need to make is to trust the people around you who love you enough to make those decisions for you. How does that sound? And she said, that sounds pretty good. I think I can do that. Some of y'all came in here this morning and this is what you need to hear. You have the weight of the world on your shoulders. You have been leading the company or the family or the dynamic or the department or whatever it is, and it has felt all on you for a long time. And you're trying to decide between this and that and what's the best way and what do we do. The only thing you need to do is turn and bury your face in the Spirit and trust His leadership and trust His guidance and say, listen, God, I'm just going to focus on you and you just take me where we need to go. Sometimes the Spirit helps us by leading us. Sometimes the Spirit is the convictor. This is what Jesus says in John, that the helper is going to come and his role is going to be to convict the world of sin. And I feel like this gets a bad rap. This idea of conviction kind of gets, especially now in our culture, it really gets a bad rap, right? We are so touchy about telling anybody that they're wrong about anything. We could hear, man, this guy, he murdered his wife. And some of us would go like, I'm sure he had his reasons. Like we equivocate everything. We won't judge anything at all. We're so scared of it because we don't want anybody to feel bad about anything that they may have done, God forbid. And so when we hear that the Holy Spirit is the convictor, we kind of immediately be like, I'm not into that. Because we feel like that the Holy Spirit is the voice in our head that's shaming us for our sin. The one that's getting on to us when we look in the mirror and we say, look at you. Look at who you are. If everybody knew what you know about yourself, they would not be your friends anymore. She would not be your wife anymore. He would not be your husband anymore. They would not respect you as a parent anymore. And some of us sometimes think that the Holy Spirit is that voice in our head that's shaming us into obedience. But I really feel like that's not how the Holy Spirit works. Have you ever had, I feel like the Holy Spirit works like this. Go with me. I know this is kind of a leap, but just hang with me. Have you ever had those days when you overeat? I never have. I'm assuming that you guys have. But those days when you overeat. Gosh, I've had so many lately. The other day, this happened. This was Thursday night. Thursday was a really busy day. I got up. I had something early, so I left before Lily woke up. I had the whole day. I saw her really quick for like a minute in the afternoon. I snuck up on her at a park and said, hey. And then I went back to work. And then I had meetings that went until like 8.30 at night. And so I was trying desperately to wrap up the meeting and rush home so that I could hug Lily before she went to bed. That's what I was trying to do all day. And I get there and I walk into the room. It's right before she goes to bed. The lights are down. Jen's sitting on the bed. And she says, Daddy. And I'm like, oh, this is the best. And so I hug her, and then I decided to push my luck. I said, can Daddy snuggle with you for a minute? And she said, no, I want Mom to. Dang it. Which is, that's Lily. I mean, she loves her Mama. And so we kind of negotiated. I'm like, well, maybe mom can do it for a little bit and then daddy can. And she goes, okay. I'm like, all right, good. So long story short, I tried to lay down next to her and snuggle with her for a minute, and she just bawled hysterically. The way that any of you would react if the same thing were happening in your life. She just bawled hysterically, right? And Jen's kind of looking at me, and now I realize I'm the selfish 38-year-old jerk that's making this poor girl cry because I want her time and this is really not good fathering. So I relent and I get up. And I'm not messing around. My feelings were legitimately hurt. I was sad when I walked down the stairs. And so I drove to cookout and I ate my feelings. I did. We had decided that week we were on a diet. We were going to be strict. And I had been good that week. I really had. And then I walked down those stairs and I was like, forget this. So I get in the car, I go to cookout, double cheeseburger, onions, mayonnaise, mustard, onion rings, chicken quesadilla, Coke. All of it. All of it. I wasn't even, stop it. You've done it too. I get back to the house. I ate the cheeseburger and like two onion rings and I was like, I'm full. But I am not a quitter. So I finished it. And I'm sitting there, right? And like ten minutes after I'm done, I do not feel good. I'm having some serious indigestion. And what's the indigestion telling me? Hey, pal, that probably wasn't a good choice. That's the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the voice that talks back to you in the mirror after you overeat that says, look at you, you man, it stinks that it's getting hot. It's bathing suit season and you are not ready. Like that's not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the indigestion that you feel that says, hey, that decision that you just made, that's not what's best for you. The Holy Spirit is the heavy breathing at the top of the stairs that lets you know like maybe a walk would be good sometimes. That's the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the voice trying to shame us into submission. He is looking to love us into health. He's the voice that whispers in our ear, hey, that thing that you're doing with your life, that's not what's best for you. When you feel bad after you overeat, that's the Creator whispering to you going, you were not designed to eat cookout. When we sin and we mess up and we feel this voice in our head telling us, you were not designed to do that. That's the Holy Spirit. That's the conviction of the Holy Spirit. The conviction of the Holy Spirit never induces shame because our shame hung with Jesus on the cross. He took that from you so that you don't have to feel it. But it is a voice telling you, hey, that thing that you're doing in your life, that's not what's best for you. The conviction of the Holy Spirit loves us to health. And for some of us this morning, he's been whispering to us for a while. And we should listen. I like to say that you win every argument you ever get into with God. The Holy Spirit can whisper to you and say, hey, that's not good for you. And you can go, yeah, it is. I think it's fine. And he'll go, okay. You do not want to win that argument. Listen to him. Listen to him. And I think it's important that we understand that the Holy Spirit is never seeking to shame us in this conviction. He's only seeking to love us because it plays into the last role I want to cover today. Sometimes he's the identifier. Sometimes the Holy Spirit identifies us for who we are. Romans 8 tells us that the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are, get this, children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs to God and co-heirs to Christ. So the Holy Spirit's role is to identify you for who you are. And I think that this, to me, as you become a Christian, is maybe the most persistently needed voice and role of the Spirit that we have. Because I'm convinced that most of us, when we think about standing face to face with God, feel far more like an indentured servant than we do a loved child, right? I feel like most of us just assume, think about the way that you pray, think about the way that you worship, think about the self-talk that you feel when you even try to do spiritual things. Don't most of us in this room just assume God's disappointed in us? Don't we just assume that if we were gonna be face-to-face with God, that his first primary emotion towards us would be disappointment? We think God's love is for everybody else, God's forgiveness is for everybody else, but not me, I know better. I've been in church for a long time. I know better than what I have done. Doesn't everybody in this room feel like, if you've been a believer for any time, don't you feel like, if you're being honest, gosh, I should be so much further along in my spiritual walk than I am. God has to be disappointed in how little ground I've covered in these last 10, 20, 30 years. Don't we feel like that? Like we're somehow God's indentured servants and we owe him. We need to get better and that his primary emotion towards us is disappointment. To that voice, the Holy Spirit whispers in our ear, you're not an indentured servant. God is not ashamed of you. He is your father, and you are his daughter, or his son, and he loves you, and he is proud of you. When that dad rushed onto the track and grabbed Derek, the sprinter, and picked him up, did you read anything on his lips about him being disappointed for not properly stretching before the race? No, he just picked him up and he said, I'm here. I'll help you. I feel like we have this picture of God that's gonna be disappointed in us for not stretching or eating right the day of race, when all God wants to do is rush into our life and pick us up and help us. What I want you to see is that God's primary emotion towards you is not disappointment. It's delighted love. And the Holy Spirit's role in your life is to identify you as an adopted son or daughter of the King and to constantly remind you God loves you. God delights in you. God is proud of you. And some of you just said in your head, God's not proud of me. Yes, he is. He's proud of you. Some of you just said he doesn't delight in me. Yes, he does. He delights in you. He loves you. He's proud of you. You're his children. And the Holy Spirit's role is to remind you that the Creator God looks down on you and smiles and takes delight. Those of you who have children, you know that your primary emotion towards them is not disappointment or frustration. It's love. Why would we think our perfect heavenly Father is any different than that? So sometimes the Holy Spirit serves us as the identifier. I would ask you this question. If you're here this morning and you're not a believer, which good on you for being church at a holiday weekend and not even signing up for the whole deal yet. But if you're here this morning and you wouldn't call yourself a believer, don't you want that? Don't you want the helper? Aren't you tired of running the race on your own? Aren't you tired of it all being on you? Aren't you ready to let the helper come alongside you and serve you in whatever capacity you need? For those of you who are a believer, I want to encourage you today to lean into the roles of the Holy Spirit in your life. I don't know which one that we covered today resonates most deeply with you. But when I pray in a second, you might spend some time praying and ask God to just help you lean into that part of his spirit. You might ask God to help you trust him as your comforter and as your helper. You might ask him to lead you and to show you. You might ask him to remind you. All you need this morning is a reminder that you are a beloved son or daughter of the King. I don't know which role resonates with you most, but the encouragement this morning is to lean into it and allow the Holy Spirit to be in your life who he is and to do in your life what he's come to do. And let's embrace this idea that it's better for us to have the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit continues to bring you closer to God and draw you into the Father by coming alongside you and being your helper as you move through life. All right, let's pray. Father, we love you. We thank you for your spirit. Thank you for how he helps, how he comforts, how he illuminates and leads. We even thank you for the gentle conviction of the spirit. We thank you that he identifies us for who we are. God, I pray that we would leave, those of us who are believers, knowing that we are adopted children that you love. God, if there's anybody here who walked in this morning not knowing you, I pray that they would be your child before they leave. Let us give proper weight and value to your spirit and his ministry in our lives, God. Give us the faith to lean into him and to trust him. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.