Sermons tagged with Diversity

I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life, all over my life. I see promises in fulfillment. All over my life. All over my life. Help me remember when I'm weak. Fear may come, but fear will lead. You lead my heart to victory. You are my strength, and you always will be. I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. All over my life. I see your promises and fulfillment all over my life, all over my life. See the cross, the empty grave, the evidence of your goodness. Jesus. I see your promises in fulfillment all over my life, all over my life, yeah. I see your promises and fulfillment all over my life. Yeah, you're all around us. So why should I fear? The evidence is here. Why should I fear? Oh, the evidence is here. I searched the world, but it couldn't fill me. Melted deep rays, treasures of fame were never enough. Then you came along and put me back together. And every desire is now satisfied here in your love. Oh, there's nothing better than you. There's nothing better than you. Oh, there's nothing, nothing is better than you. Come on, tell them. To show you my weakness My failures and flaws Lord, you've seen them all And you still call me friend Cause the God of the mountains Is the God of the valleys There's not a place Your mercy and grace won't find me again. Oh Come on. Tell them now. Come on, choir. Oh, there's nothing better than you. Nothing. You turn bones into armies. You turn seas into highways. You're the only one who can. Somebody give a praise in this house. I don't think we're finished yet. Come on. Come on, one more can. You're the only one who can. You're the only one who can. Jesus, you're the only one. Come on, give Him one more shout of praise. When all I see is the battle, you see my victory. When all I see is the mountain, you see a mountain moon. And as I walk through the shadow, your love surrounds me. There's nothing to fear now, for I am safe with you. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees, with my head lifted high. Oh God, the battle belongs for you. Thank you, God. God, you see the end to tell. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees. With my head lifted high. Oh God, the battle belongs to you. And every fear I lay at your feet. I'll sing through the night. Oh God, the power of our God. You shine in the shadow. You win every battle. Nothing can stand against the power of our God. In all mighty fortunes, you go before us. Nothing can stand against the power of our God We wanted to let you know that our mission here at Grace is to connect people to Jesus and to connect people to people. One of the best ways to communicate with us here at Grace is through our connection cards. If you would like to speak to a pastor at Grace, if you have any prayer requests for our prayer team and our elders, or if you're not receiving our Grace Vine weekly emails, this would be a great way to fill it out and let us know. If you're watching with us online, you can click the link below and submit the connection card there. Or if you're here with us at Grace, the connection card is in the seat back pocket in front of you. Just be sure to drop it on your way out in the box next to the doors. Thanks so much for joining us this morning and we hope that this service is a blessing to you. Well, good morning, everyone. It's great to have you here at Grace Raleigh. I'd like to ask you to stand. My name is Steve Goldberg. I'm the worship pastor here at Grace, and it's great having people here in the room. It's great having people at home joining in with us. I thought that this morning we could start off with the scripture of John 3.16, that God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life, come to the well that never runs dry. Drink of the water, come and thirst no more. Come all you sinners Come find his mercy Come to the table He will satisfy Taste of his goodness Find what you're looking for. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save us. Whoever believes in Him will live forever. bring all your failures bring your addictions come lay them down at the foot of the cross Jesus is waiting there with hope in our hearts For God so loved the world praise god praise god from whom all blessings Praise Him, praise Him For the wonders of His love For God so loved the world that He gave us His one and only Son to save The power of hell forever defeated Now it is well, I'm walking in freedom Oh God so loved, God so loved the world Bring all your failures, bring your addictions. Come lay them down at the foot of the cross. Jesus is waiting. God so loved the world. Amen. God sent his son. They called him Jesus. He came to love, heal, and forgive. He lived and died. To buy my pardon. An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. he lives all fear is gone because i know he holds the future And life is worth the living Just because He lives And then one day I'll cross that river I'll fight my spine No war with me And then as death Gives way to victory I'll see the lights of glory and I'll know He lives. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow Because He lives All fear is gone Because I know He holds the future And life is worth the living Just because He lives. And life is worth the living just because He lives. Amen. Amen. All right, y'all can have a seat for a moment. Good morning, Grace Raleigh. It is fabulous to see your smiling faces in here. And welcome to those of you that have joined us online. It is a beautiful and sunny Sunday morning, Welcome to the world for this beautiful sunny weather because in two weeks, the mission committee will be here to gather all of the goodies that you choose to bring. So if you go to Grace Raleigh's events page, you will find a list of things that the mission committee is looking for for the Interfaith Food Shuttle. You will buy those. And then on either that Friday or either that, I'm sorry, that Saturday or that Sunday, you can drive through. The hours are listed on the screen. You can drive through. They will come out to your car. They will pick it up. They will bring it inside, and they will take care of it. So all you have to do is go to the grocery. And I guess these days you could even have it delivered to your house. So that is fabulous. And speaking of driving by and dropping off, if you are the parent of a 6th grader through 12th grader, today is the day you get to drive by and push them out of the car. Woo-hoo! We are so excited to announce that Grace Students is back up and running live and in person. Kyle will be here tonight in all of his fun. And we have the cool thing happening too that he's live streaming the service. So if for some reason your 6th through 12th grader can't be in the building tonight, no problem. Email Kyle, kyle at graceralee.org. And he has all the information and the links that you need to be able to be attached to the live stream and join in that way. They're now going to start into a routine of being in person one week, meeting online together the next week in person, and you get the idea. But email Kyle for any information that you guys might need. So thank you again for coming, for being a part of Grace Raleigh thisbbling together another meal just to check that off the list. Have you ever wondered if you have the balance right? Have we worked hard enough? Have we played enough? What will our children remember about us? Have you ever wondered if you've done it right? Is it possible to even really know that? Did we give our passions and energies to the right causes? Have we given ourselves to the things that matter the most? Or in the end, is it all just favor? Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody here. This is as full as the church has been since last February. That's crazy. Man, you guys, apparently, we've been going through Ecclesiastes. Y'all love depression and hopelessness. So thanks for showing up to that. You're like, I got to get out of the house now. Maybe that's what I needed to do the whole time, which is make you really, really sad. So you had to come see people. This is great. If you're still joining us at home, we're so grateful for that. This is the third part in our series called Vapor, where we're moving through the book of Ecclesiastes. We've said the whole time that we've saved the dreariest book of the Bible for the dreariest month of the year. And what's really fun is that this is the joyful sermon. This is the one, this is the good news. This is the one where we celebrate. We only did two songs up front because we want to end praising God together, and he gave us sunshine to do this. So it seems that the weather is matching the rhythm of the series, and I think that that's fantastic. In the first week, we started out and we talked about this idea of a hevel or vapor or smoke, and we concluded that Solomon would argue that a vast majority of Americans are wasting their life, right? Which means a vast majority of us are probably investing our life pursuing things that ultimately we can't grab onto or vapor or smoke. They're here one day and they're gone the next. And so that really left us with this question at the end of that week, is there a worthwhile investment of our lives? And if you have notes, you see that at the top of your notes. I think that's been a question that's been lingering in the series. Is there really a worthwhile investment of my life or is it all just a waste of time? Is everyone here just, we're all just chasing vapor? And I think that there's a good answer to that question, but last week we answered it a little bit, but we stumbled into another harsh reality. The harsh reality that even if we pursue wisdom with our life, even if we're obedient, the godliest of the godly, that does not insulate us from pain. Our godliness doesn't protect us from grief, right? And so what we learned by looking at that beautiful passage in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, there's a time for mourning and there's a time for joy. There's a time for grieving and there's a time for healing and there's a time to be hurt. There's a time to live and there's a time to die. Like we saw that passage. And what we learned is that pain is not punitive. God's not tightening the screws on us to punish us. Pain is the result of a fallen world, right? And that the harsh reality that Solomon gives us in Ecclesiastes is that no matter what we do, we're going to hurt. No matter how godly we are, there will be seasons of mourning in our life. And so that leaves us, I think, with another really difficult question. Can I ever hope for true happiness? Can I ever, on this side of eternity, grasp onto something that isn't Hevel or vapor or smoke? Can I grasp onto a joy that is immutable and unchangeable, that is resistant to circumstances in life, that even as the storms come, I can still find myself in seasons of joyfulness and contentment? Is it even possible to do those things? And I think those are the two big questions that we bring into this week. Is it possible to pursue anything that really matters? And is it possible to grab onto anything that looks like actual true contentment and joy? And the answer to those questions, I think, is yes. And Solomon answers those questions multiple times in Ecclesiastes. I think in four separate passages, he addresses those with the exact same answer. Four different times, he gives this answer, and I love this answer. I think there's so much bound up in his choice to answer the questions in this way. But like I said, he says it in four separate times. I'm going to read you two of them so that you can get a sense. They're in your notes. If you have them, they'll be on the screen if you're following along at home. But here's what he writes in Ecclesiastes, Solomon repeats this idea. That at the end of the day, what's left for us to do is enjoy our toil, enjoy our food and drink, and honor our God. The end of the book, he ends. The end of the matter is this, all has been heard, fear God and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. We talked about that last week. And it's important that as we look through what I think is kind of this formula for contentment, that we understand that when he's talking about eating and drinking, when we see eating and drinking in the Bible, that is almost always a reference to a communal activity. Eating and drinking is inherently communal. The Bible rarely talks about eating for sustenance, right? It rarely talks about food as this way to be healthy. It always talks about food and bread and gathering around a table as a form of community. And so when he says that there's nothing for man to do except to find joy in what he does and to eat and to drink. What he means is when we look around the table, when we have our meals, if we love the people who are around us, that's good. That's a gift from God. We go out to eat, we're eating with our friends, and we look around and we have genuine affection, we enjoy these people. That's a gift from God. When you look around your table and you have family there and you love that family. Now listen, we're all parts of families. We know that love isn't just sing song and fairy tales all the time. Sometimes it's hard, but at the end of the day, if you know that I love you and you love me, then that's a gift from God. And so when he's talking about food and drink, he's really referencing community. And then when he talks about toil, enjoying your toil, I have a men's group that meets on Tuesday mornings at 6.30. Anybody can join us if you want to. Just email me. Well, the more the merrier there. And we were talking about this word toil. And to a room full of men, it means career, right? It means work. It means what's your job? But Solomon uses that word a lot more broadly than that in Ecclesiastes. And the word toil really doesn't refer to your job or your career as much as it refers to the activities that you have set aside for that day, the productivity of that day, whatever it is you're going to do. Because we have some men in the group who are retired. If it's only about work, career, then they have no shot at happiness, right? They better get back to it. But really, it's broader than that. It really means, Toyo, what do you have set for yourself today? What productivity are you going to engage in today? And then in this verse, he says that we should do good. And he defines doing good as honoring God with our life, fearing God and keeping his commandments. And it's with these understandings that I kind of arrive at this conclusion of kind of Solomon's equation for contented joy and apex happiness. And I really do think it's this. People you love plus tasks you enjoy plus honoring God equals apex happiness. Listen to me. If when you eat, if as you move through your day, you look around and the people in your life bring you joy, and when you wake up, you're looking forward to the things that you're going to do in that day. Maybe not everything, but the point of the day brings you joy. And you're honoring God with your life. If those things are true of you, then I want you to know this morning, you are apex happy. It doesn't get better than that. Sometimes our problem is just that we can't see it. But I'm telling you, man, if you wake up every day and you get to have breakfast with your family or you go out to lunch with some people at work that you enjoy or you look forward to seeing some friends at small group or something like that, if you look around at your community and you're surrounded by people you love and you look at your days and God has given you something to put your hand to that you enjoy, that gives you a sense of purpose, that helps you become who he's created you to be and use your gifts and abilities to point people to Jesus as you move throughout your days, if that's what you get to do and you're honoring God as you do those things, then listen to me, you are experiencing apex happiness in your life. And I think that we get it so messed up sometimes. We do all the things that Solomon talked about in the first two chapters, and we chase all the things. We run out there and we chase all the success and all the relationships and all the money and all the fulfillment and all the pleasure and all the stuff that's out there. When really what's true is God has already given us everything we need for joy. God has already provided in our lives everything we need for joy. And listen, if you don't have those things, if you look around, you're like, I don't like any of the people in my life right now. If you don't have a fulfillment in your job, if you're not honoring God with your life, then guess what? Those things are attainable. Those things aren't out there and forever away. Those things are attainable. They're right around you. God gives us everything we need for joy within our reach. That's why I brought this chair today. This chair here is my chair from my house. This is my chair in my living room. This chair sits in the corner of our living room, and opposite me is we have a little sectional couch. There's other people who sit in this chair sometimes, but for the most part, it's me. When I sit in this chair, I get to watch dance recitals. I get to watch Lily come in with her friends, and they sing Elsa to me. And I pretend to care about Elsa. I get to watch dumb little magic tricks. We went to some restaurant and they gave her some pot with a magnet on the bottom and there's a plant that comes out of the wand and she comes in and she does the abracadabra, the whatever, and then she pulls it out and for the 37th time, I'm amazed by this magic trick, right? I sit in this chair and Jen sits on the couch and we talk about our days. We talk about what's hard and we talk about what's fun. From this chair, when someone rings the doorbell, if I angle my head just right, I can see down the hallway to the front door and I can see the little face that's there to come play with Lily. If they're all over, I can look this way out the window and I can look at them all, all the neighborhood kids jumping on the trampoline that we got to get for her. In the mornings when I'm doing life right and I'm downstairs reading like I'm supposed to, at about 6.45, 7 o'clock, I can look up the stairs and see Lily up there and motion her down to come sit in my lap and tell me what she's going to do that day. When we have friends over, which I love to do, eventually we end up in our living room and we sit around and we talk and we giggle and we laugh. In the pandemic, I worked from this chair. I set up a little table right here and I do my Zoom calls and I argue with the elders and that's pure joy except for Chris Lata. I love working from that table. I can see all the things that bring me the most joy from this chair. And if I go out there chasing joy, if I go out there trying to track everything down, what am I going to do? Buy a new house for this chair These are from old David. If this church grows to 2,000 people and I get to feel what that feels like, do my conversations with my family and friends get any better from sitting in this chair? No, man. This is it. And sometimes it's not the chair, right? Sometimes it's the kitchen. Sometimes it's when I get to cook dinner and Jen sits on the stool and we talk about our days. Sometimes it's the mornings when Ruby and Lily are on the bed and I'm in the chair in the corner of that room and we're all talking, just enjoying our times. But here's what I know. I can go out there chasing whatever I want to chase. But my times of most profound joy come when I'm right there. They come when I'm around the people that I love the most. They come when I'm soaking in the blessings that God has given me. And this is what we need to pay attention to. Solomon tells us these are God's gifts to us. If people in your life that you love, who love you, they're God's gift to you. Drink them in. Hug them more. Tell them more that you care about them. Tell them more that you're grateful for them. Tell them more that they are a gift from God in your life. You have a thing to do every day that you like to put your hand to, whether it's raising kids or volunteering somewhere or spending time in your neighborhood or going to work or looking forward to seeing your friends or whatever it is. You have things that God has given you that make you productive, that let you feel like you are living out His intended will for you? That's His gift for you. That work, that toil, that's His gift. It's designed for you. And then if we honor God, His invitation to honor Him is His gift to us because He knows that when we live a life honoring Him, we live a life of fewer regrets. We live a life of deeper gratitude. We live a life with a deeper desire for Jesus if we'll just revel in his gifts. This helps me make sense of the Honduran children I saw at one time. For years of my life, I would go down to Honduras with some regularity to take teams down to visit a pastor named Israel Gonzalez. Israel is one of my heroes. The things that he's done for the kingdom are unbelievable. And he is based in a city in central Honduras called, called, uh, Swatopeke. He and his wife have set up a free clinic there. He has a church there. And then from that church, what they do is they organize these goodwill parties and they bring teams down and you get together hot dogs and little tchotchke gifts and you go up into the hillsides. There's mountains surrounding Ciguatapeque and you go up into the mountainside and you go to these villages and he throws these goodwill parties and he hopes that by doing this, these villages that are deeply Catholic, but Catholic in such a way that shuts them off to faith rather than turns them on to faith. And so they're lost communities. And he goes and he throws these parties, and by throwing these goodwill parties, they invite him into the community to plant a church. He's planted 14 churches that way, last I checked. And I would go on these parties. And you go up into these mountains surrounding Suwatopec into a village. And that's not derogatory. It's literally a village. Homes are built of mud and wood, makeshift roofs, one or two rooms, literally dirt poor. I've had the opportunity in my life to be in a fair amount of other countries and to see poverty on multiple continents. Honduras is just about the worst. But yet when we would go there, we would get out and there would always be these children there. And these children would have the biggest, goofiest grins on their face ever. They were so joyful, and they would laugh, and they would play, and they were happy to see you, and it never got wiped off of their face. And I always wondered, kid, how can you be so happy? Don't you know you don't have a Barbie house? Don't you know you don't have a PlayStation? Don't you know your soccer ball stinks? Those kids had it figured out, man. They had people around them who loved them. They had things to do each day that they looked forward to. And they hadn't lived enough life to carry the weight of what it is to not honor God with our choices. They were walking in apex happiness. And I carry all my American wealth down there and privilege, and I look at them and I'm jealous. Because they figured out something that we haven't. And I just think that there is this profound truth that everything that we need is right there within our grasp. We don't have to run around out there chasing vapor and Hevel. God has given us these gifts already. And in that truth, in that truth that everything we need for joy is within our grasp? We answer those two questions we started with. Is there a pursuit that's actually worth investing my life in? Yes. The people you love, the tasks that give you purpose, and honoring God. You want to live a life that matters? You want to get to the end of it and wonder if it's all vapor? Or not have to wonder that? Then invest your life in the people that you love and the tasks that God has ordained for you. Ephesians 2 says that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus, that we should do good works, that we should walk in them. Walk in those good works that God intended you for and honor God with the choices that you make. Those are worthwhile pursuits. You will get to the end of your life if you pursue those things and know that it was a life well lived. And he actually doubles down on this idea of pursuing relationships with other people. I don't have a lot of time to spend here on it, but again, this is a passage that I can't just skip over as we go through the book of Ecclesiastes. He doubles down on this idea of having more folks in our life when he writes this has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Solomon doesn't take a lot of time to tell you to invest in a lot of things in Ecclesiastes. If you've been reading along with us, he doesn't tell you to do a lot of stuff there. He just kind of tells you, hey, this stuff's a waste of time. You should honor God. And then he tells you how we got to that conclusion. But here he stops and makes sure you understand the value of having people in your life who love you, who you love in return. And he sets up life as this struggle, this fight, because it is a struggle and a fight to choose to honor God with our lives. It is a struggle and a fight to keep our marriages healthy. It is a struggle and a fight to direct our kids in the right way, to love our families well, to share our faith, to be evangelists in our community, and to make disciples of the people who are around us. That's hard. And Solomon says, if you try to do this alone, woe to you when you fall and you have no one to pick you up. Woe to you when addiction creeps in and there's no one you can tell. Woe to you when doubts creep into your faith and there's no one you can talk to. How hard it must be for you when your marriage gets rocky and there's no one to fight for it. If there's two, he says, you've got a fighting chance. If there's three, that's not quickly broken. We need people in our lives to fight for us. We need to fight for the people in our lives. It seems to be a big value to us. That will help us ensure that we always have people to eat and drink with that we love and enjoy. So I thought it was worth pointing out Solomon's emphasis on this. The other question that remained from the previous weeks is, can I ever hope for true happiness? Yes. Yes, because here's the thing. If the bad things in Ecclesiastes 3 are true, then so are the good ones. Last week, I read the passage and I said, listen, pain is coming for all of us. It's going to hurt. We're going to mourn. We're going to grieve. No one gets to dodge that based on our godliness. It's going to happen to all of us. We will walk through hard times, but here's the reality. If that's true, then the flip side is true. If the bad things are true, then God says we will walk through seasons where we experience the good things. Look at the good things. There is a time to be born, to plant, to heal, to build up, to laugh, to dance, to gather things together, to embrace, to keep, to sow, to speak. A time for love and a time for peace. If we're going to have to walk through hard times, there's going to be good ones too. And I just think that the blessing from Ecclesiastes is this. It hits us with some hard realities. It's stark. It's unflinching. Hey, most of us are wasting our lives. And no matter what you do to invest it well, you're going to hurt. Those are hard truths. But I've said the whole time that if we can accept them on the other side is this joy that is waiting for us. And this is the joy. The joy is, yes, there's big things going on that we can't control. But in the midst of all that stuff that we can't control, God gives us these gifts, these moments of joy, these pockets to lean into where we celebrate him, where we're grateful for him, and we acknowledge those things as gifts. And I just think that if we accept the difficult realities from this book, then we can start to look for these little pockets of joy in our life, and they will bring us such more fulfillment than if we just move through them waiting to get to the next thing. At our house, we do a thing called Breakfast Sammy Saturday, all right? I like a good breakfast sandwich. I know it's hard to tell by looking at me, but I like a good, I put butter down, I toast the bread, I do the eggs, I do some bacon, do some cheese on there, and then I put it all together on the blackstone, cut it in half, and the good egg bleeds out onto it. It's all the goodness, and then you dip your sandwich in there. It's the best. I love breakfast Sammy Saturdays. You guys are not enthusiastic enough about this. You need breakfast Sammy Saturdays in your life. Well, I'll just let you guys sign up. Come over to the house. I'll make them for you. We love it. But it's just kind of a thing that I do. I like it. I make one for Jen and Lily, and they kind of eat half of theirs. I'm more excited about it than anybody else. But then one day, Lily brought this home from preschool, and it made me cry right on the spot. That's breakfast Sammy Saturday. She drew my griddle. She put food on it. Apparently, I make pizza there. And she brought it home to me. Now, the thing about this is, it was an assignment at preschool. She was told, just make whatever you want. It's an art project. And she made breakfast Sammy Saturday. And she brought it home to me. And she said, look, Daddy. And she told me what it was. I started crying right there on the spot. I got these big old alligator tears in my eyes looking at Jen. What a cool thing. And sure, life's going to be hard. She's going to be a teenager. She's five now, so she's kind of maxed out on cuteness, and now it's just hyper sometimes. But even though I know that there's hard times ahead, even though I know she won't always appreciate things like Breakfast Sammy Saturday, I know she does now. And I know that that's a gift from my God. And I know that what Ecclesiastes says is the best thing I can possibly do is to drink deeply of that. The best thing we can possibly do is find joy in these moments that God allows. We don't know how long we'll have them. I was talking with a friend last night who's got a new infant. And he said every time he gets up with the infant in the middle of the night and holds her, that it's a privilege. Because he doesn't know when that last time's going to be. And that's the truth of it. I think that we have so many pockets of joy in our life every day. If we have people that we love, if we have something to do that we appreciate, if we're choosing to honor God with our life. And I think that because we're so busy chasing vapor, sometimes we miss these sweet little moments that can all be had right here if we're just paying enough attention. That's why I think on the other side of these realities awaits for us this profound joy. And I think that when we realize that, that when we realize that God has designed these things to bring us happiness in our life, that what's really important is if we don't believe in a God, if we're atheistic in our worldview, then that's it. The joy terminates in those moments. That's all we have. But if we are a spiritual people who believe that God designed these things and these blessings in our life to make himself evident in our life, then our joy doesn't terminate in the moment. It turns into exuberant praise. It reminds us that we have a God that designed this for us. And the other part is, and this is incredible, that the joy that we're experiencing in that moment is only a glimpse of the eternity that he's designed for us and won for us with Jesus, which is what we're going to come back and talk about next week, is how these things are glimpses to the eternity that Jesus has already won for us. So in a few minutes, the band is going to come, and we've saved two fun, exuberant songs to praise God together. And while we do that, I want to encourage you to keep those two thoughts in your head. What are the things that I can see from my chair? What are the joys that God has given me that are within my reach from places that I already have in my life? What are the things that maybe I'm missing because I'm chasing stuff that I don't need? And then let's reflect on the reality that there is coming an eternity where that's all we experience. It's no more just pockets. It's reality. And that is something for us all to celebrate. Let me pray for us. Father, you are so very good to us. You've given us so much. Lord, I pray that we would be grateful for those blessings. I pray that you would steep us in profound gratitude for the things that we have, that you would show us what we need and what we don't. God, if there is somebody here or who can hear my voice, who doesn't have people in their life that they love, God, would you bring that to them? Would you provide that community for them even here at Grace? Would you give them the courage to slip up their hand in some way, to fill out some sheet, or to send some email, or make some phone call, or some text, and help them engage with relationships that matter to them. God, if there are people who don't have something they enjoy in their days, would you give them the courage to find that? Show them how you designed them and what you created them for. God, if we are not honoring you with our lives, I pray that you would give us the courage to do that. Let us praise you exuberantly, God, for the joys that you have given us in our lives. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. Amen, amen. Thank you, Nate. Let's all stand up. guitar solo Our God, firm foundation Our rock, the only solid ground Let's lift his name. you are the only king forever you are victorious Unmatched in all your wisdom In love and justice you will reign and every knee will bow we bring our expectations our hope is anchored in your name the name of jesus Jesus you are the only king forever forevermore you are victorious We lift our banner high. We lift the name of Jesus. From age to age you reign. Your kingdom has no end. We lift our banner high. We lift the name of Jesus. From age to age you reign. Your kingdom has no end. You are the only king forever. Mighty God, we lift you higher. You are the only king forever. Forevermore, you are the only king forever Forevermore, you are victorious. He is doing great things See what our Savior has done See how His love overcomes he has done great things. We dance in your freedom, awake and alive. Oh Jesus, our Savior, your name lifted high be faithful forever more you have done great things and I know you will do it again for your promise is yes and amen you will do great things God you do great things Oh Oh you have done great things you've done great things every captive and break every chain oh god You have done great things. You have done great things. Oh God, you guys here today. God bless. Have a great week. Thank you. Come all you weary, come all you thirsty, come to the well that never runs dry. Drink of the water, come and thirst no more. Well, come all you sinners, come find His mercy. Come to the table, He will satisfy. Taste of His goodness, find what you're looking for. For God so loved the world that He gave us, His one and only Son to save us. If you never believed in Him, you'll live forever. Here we go. We'll live forever. God so loved the world. Praise God. Praise God. From whom all blessings flow. Praise Him. Praise Him. For the wonders of His love. Praise God. Praise God. Praise God. Praise Him. Praise Him. For the wonders of His love. His amazing love. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save us Whoever believes in Him Will live forever Oh, the power of hell Forever defeated Now it is well I'm walking in freedom For God so loved the world. Amen. You are here, moving in our midst. I worship you. I worship you. You are here, working in this place. I worship you. I worship you. You are here. Working in this place. I worship you. I worship you. You are way maker. Miracle worker. Promise keeper. Light in the darkness. darkness my god that is who you are Jesus. Jesus I worship you. I worship you. You're mending every heart. You are here and you are mending every heart. I worship you. I worship you. You are here and you are way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light're the way maker. Yeah, sing it again. Oh, that is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. My Jesus. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. My Jesus. Yes, even when. Come on. You never stop. You're the way maker. Oh, that is who you are. Oh, it's who you are, my Jesus. Miracle worker. That is who you are. is above depression. His name is above loneliness. Oh, His name is above disease. His name is above cancer. His name is above every other name. That is who you are. Jesus. oh i know that is who you are When darkness tries to roll over my bones When sorrow comes to pain is all I know, oh, I won't be shaken. No, I won't be shaken. I am not captive to the light. I'm not afraid to leave my past behind. Oh, I won't be shaken. No, I won't be shaken. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. Oh, I'm standing. There's power in your name. Power in your name. There's power that can break off every chain. There's power that can empty out a grave. There's resurrection power that can save. is Thank you. I'm standing in your love. I count on one thing. The same God that never fails will not fail me now. You won't fail me now in the waiting. The same God who's never late is working you're working Yes, I will bless your name. Oh, yes, I will sing for joy. My heart is heavy God that never fails. Will not fail me now. You won't fail me now in the waiting. This ain't God who's never late. He's working all things out. You're working all things out. Oh, yes, I will lift you high in the lowest valley. Yes, I will. For all my days. Oh, yes, I will. And I choose to praise, to glorify, glorify the name of all names that nothing can stand against. And I choose to praise, to glorify, glorify the name of all Thank you. The name of all names. That nothing can stand against. And I choose to praise. To glorify, glorify the name of our names. That nothing can stand against. Oh yes, I will lift you high in the lowest valley. Yes, I will bless your name. Oh, yes, I will sing for joy when my heart is heavy. All my days. Oh, yes, I will. Thank you. Come let us bow at his feet. He has done great things..

This morning we are jumping into a brand new series simply called James, where we're going through the book of James in the Bible. The book of James is one of my favorite books, mostly because James tells it like it is, man. Like, James is blunt. He just kicks you in the teeth, and I need that. Subtlety doesn't work for me. I need you to just tell me what I need to do and tell me how I've messed up. And that's exactly what James does. So I'm excited to go through it with you. Another thing about the book of James that I like to share, because I think it's a really well-made point. It's not mine. It's a pastor named Andy Stanley. James is the half-brother of Jesus. And he ends up writing a book of the Bible and is one of the leaders, along with Peter, of the early church. He's like the very first early church father. So James believed that Jesus was the Son of God. Those of you with brothers or sisters, what would it take for them to convince you that God sent them from above and they came to die on a cross and save the whole world? Like what would it take for you to believe your brother or your sister when they said that? Because James believes that, that's pretty good evidence that Jesus was who he says he was, right? That's Andy Stanley's point, not mine, but it's a good reason to listen to James. As we approach the book of James, I'm actually going to share a video with you guys. There's a group called The Bible Project online. If you don't know about them, you should. They make tons of great videos that explain books of the Bible. You can find one for almost any book of the Bible. Just go to Bible Project. You can Google it. If you're at home right now, don't go yet. I'm about to show you a video. Please stay locked in here. But they make books, they make videos about the books of the Bible and about themes in the Bible. It's a tremendous way to begin to understand and approach Scripture. And I thought the one that they made for James was so good that as we kicked off the series, it was the best possible way to kind of prime us for what to expect. It's a little bit longer of a video. It's about eight minutes long. So settle in and buckle up, and we're going to watch this intro video to James together. Here you go. I hope that you enjoyed that. If the biggest thing that you get out of this Sunday, honestly, is to use that more in your personal life, I'm good with that. It's a really, really good resource. So I hope that you appreciated that video and how easy it is to kind of make the whole book approachable now as we read it. If you don't have a reading plan, you can grab one on the way out or we have them online on our live page. This week is set up just like chapter one is. You can see from the video that chapter one's kind of a setup for the rest of the book and the themes and the things that we need to be familiar with so that we can understand it and apply it to ourselves as we move through the book, and in this case, as we move through the series. And so that's what I want to try to do this morning, is pull out the themes and help us set up some parameters around what we're going to talk about for the remaining five weeks of the series. This is going to be a six-week series that's actually going to carry us into Advent. I'm really excited for our Christmas series that we're already working on that we've got coming up. So this is going to carry us all the way through to Thanksgiving. One of the things in the video that I wanted to point out that I thought could help us approach the overarching point of the book of James is that idea of perfection and living lives as our whole selves versus living lives, they called it in the video, as our compromised selves. I think that this is something that we can all relate to. In chapter one, they said that through the book of James that this word perfect or whole appears seven times and that James is writing to push us in that direction. And I think that we can relate to a need to be made whole in that way because many of us know what it is to live disjointed lives, right? I feel like if you're a believer for any amount of time, you know what it is to live a life that doesn't feel all the way in sync. You see a version of yourself that you know that God created you to be. I know that I can walk in that obedience. I see who he wants me to be, and yet I continue to walk in this direction and be this person that I don't want to be, but I keep getting pulled in that direction. We know what it is to come to church on a Sunday, maybe have a good experience, be moved by the worship, which I was this morning, that was great. Be moved by the worship. Be moved by the sermon. Feel a closeness to Jesus. Feel like it was a sweet moment. And then Monday morning you wake up and you go crack skulls at work. Monday morning you wake up and you forget that yesterday was a sweet moment. Maybe it doesn't even make it to the next day. Maybe you had a sweet moment and then in the car the wife says the thing that you don't want her to say and then you're off to the races, right? And there goes that peace and harmony. You know what it is to wake up in the morning, to have a quiet time, to devote some time to God, to spend time in God's Word, to spend time in prayer, and on that very same day lose your mind with your co-workers or your kids or your spouse. We know what it is to have a habit or a hang-up that we say, I'm done with this. I'm not doing this anymore. This has owned my life and has displeased God and displeased me for too long. I'm drawing a line in the sand. I'm not doing this anymore. And then maybe we added in some controls and some accountability and we asked people to help us out. And we took this stand. I'm going to live as that person finally. And then a day or a week or a month later, we do the same thing. And we live as the version of ourselves that we don't like, that Jesus died to save us from. But for some reason, we continue to go back there. I think we all relate to what I find to be one of the most encouraging passages in Scripture in Romans chapter 7 when Paul writes, he says, the things that I want to do, I do not do. The things that I do not want to do, I do. So he's talking about this tension. I see the things that I want to do. I see the person who I want to become. I want to do those things, but for some reason I can't walk in that life totally. And then I see this person that I don't want to be. I don't want to make these choices, but I can't stop myself from making those choices. The things that I want to do, I do not do. The things that I do not want to do, I do. And then he finishes off at the end of chapter seven with this great verse. He says in declaration, oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? I've taken the time a couple of times in my life to read all the way through the book of Romans from start to finish, it's great for plane rides, I always stop at that verse and just kind of go, thank you God for Paul and for his experience of this too. Oh wretched man that I am who will deliver me from this body of death? Because we know what it is to feel out of sync. The Bible calls it our new self and our old self. That our old self was crucified with Christ and it no longer lives and now Jesus lives in me and we're free to walk in this new self but there is this part of the world that continues to drag us down and make us less than whole. And it's this that James writes to address. He writes to the church, and I believe that the reason that James writes the letter is to help us pursue wholeness. James is written to help us pursue wholeness. That wholeness that is walking in the person that God created us to be, walking in the person that Jesus made it possible to be in the first place through his death, walking as that person, walking in that wholeness. He wants us to no longer live these disjointed, out of sync, incomplete lives. I think we'll see that's why he wrote the whole book. His goal is, some people call it maturity, others call it wholeness. He calls it perfection or completion. His goal is to help us get there. We understand that the only way there is through Christ, but we also understand that in this earth, on this side of eternity, that God asks us to obey. He asks us to walk and to follow. And in doing that, we will grow into mature versions of ourselves and to who God wants us to be. And so James writes to help us pursue that wholeness. And I think that's true because of this passage, chapter 1. If you have a Bible, you can open it. If you have one at home, open one there, and you should have the scriptures in your notes. But I'd love for you guys to be interacting with the Bible and with the chapter and see how it all ties together. But if someone were to ask me, point me to the synopsis verses on why James is even written. What is James trying to do? I would take you here. This is where I think he's trying to help us pursue wholeness. Chapter 1, verses 22 through 25 why James writes the book. Because he wants us to be doers who act. He wants us to persevere. He says we shouldn't be like, again, it's this imagery of two versions of ourselves. Don't be the person that looks at the law of God. He calls it the perfect law of liberty, which I love that phrase because God's word was not given to us to constrain us, but to offer us liberty. And that perfect liberty, that perfect law of liberty is Christ. He is the word of God. And he rewrote the law of the Old Testament to say, go and love others as I have loved you. Love God and love others. That's how Jesus rewrites and summarizes the law correctly. And he says that there's one version of us that we stare at the law, we see what it says, we hear it, we pay attention to sermons, maybe we listen to podcasts, we talk with friends about spiritual things, we have our ears open. We hear the word, but then we go and we don't do it. We live lives as those disjointed versions of ourselves. He says, when you do that, you're like somebody who looks at your face in the mirror and then walks away and you forget what you look like. He said, but if you'll gaze into the perfect law of liberty and persevere in doing it, then you will be blessed in your doing. And so I think the answer to our question, James says first, we say first that James writes to help us pursue holiness. So the question becomes, okay, James, how do I pursue holiness? Well, he tells us in these verses, we pursue wholeness by persevering in doing. We pursue wholeness, that complete version of ourselves, by persevering in doing. So that, I think, as a summary statement, begs two questions. Why does James feel it necessary to highlight persevering? Why does he put that out front? Why does he open up the book with it? It's the very first thing, once he starts writing. He says, hey guys, how you doing? And then he starts talking about how pain is going to happen. Why is it that James says right away, if you want to live as a whole self and you need to persevere, because he's communicating this idea of you're going to want to quit. It's going to be really hard. It's kind of a terrible selling point for James. So why does he start there? And then what does doing look like? What are we supposed to be doing? So as we answer those questions, the first question, why persevering? Well, we persevere because life requires it. We persevere because life requires it. James is aware of this reality. Like I said, it's how he starts his letter. Literally, verse 1, James, the servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes and the dispersion. Greetings, which means the Hebrew people who have dispersed outside of Israel. You also refer to it as a diaspora. Then, verse 2, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. He says, hey, how you doing? Haven't seen you in a while. Listen, life's going to stink like a lot, and when it does, just count it joy. Like, that's a terrible opener. James, why are you doing that? But he says, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know the testing of your faith produces steadfastness perseverance instead of steadfastness. But he says, And plenty of people have pointed this out before, but just in case you missed it those times, he doesn't say, if you have trials. He doesn't say, hey, if life gets hard sometimes, not saying it well, but if it does, then hang in there. He says, no, no, when? When you face trials, plural, of all kinds, count them as joy. Why? Because they're going to bear out a perseverance and a steadfastness that's going to make us perfect and complete, not lacking anything. It's this idea of being a whole person again. So a couple things from that idea and why James introduces it as a theme that shows up throughout the book. We find it again in chapter 5 when he's talking about having patience and doing good. James knows that your faith is going to be challenged. He knows that perseverance is going to be required. He knows that there are going to be couples who struggle mightily with infertility, and all they want is to experience the joy of having their own child. He knows that. And he knows that when that happens, it's going to test their faith, and it's going to make them wonder if God is really good. James knows that we lose people too early. He knew that parents would mourn the loss of children. He knows that. And because he knows that, he knows that it's going to be really easy for those parents in that moment to cry out and say, God, that's not fair. Why'd you let that happen? And that those circumstances would conspire to shipwreck your faith. And so he says, hang in there. Have faith when it's hard. He knows that marriages will end and that diagnoses will come and that abuse will happen and that abandonment is a thing and that loneliness and depression are things that we walk through. He knows that we are going to lose loved ones before we want to. James knows that and he knows that when those things happen, we're going to want to walk away from our faith because it's going to seem like God isn't looking out for us anymore. And he's telling you when that happens and it seems like things are broken, hang on, persevere, continue in faith, Continue to obey. And when you do, it will make you perfect and complete, not lacking anything. This is the real reason for perseverance. Those of you whose faith has seen that test, those of you who have walked through a season in your life where something happened that was so hard that it made you doubt if God was really looking out for you, it made you doubt if God really cared about you, it made you question your faith, if you came out of that clinging on to your faith, you know it is all the stronger. I was actually talking with someone this last week about this idea, and we just kind of noted, I noted, I don't really trust someone's faith very much until it's been through tragedy. Until it's been hardened in that kiln, I just don't trust it yet. There is something to the people who have walked through tragedy and yet have this faith that they cling to that makes it unshakable. Isn't there? I think of somebody who's going to be an elder in the new year, Brad Gwynn. To my recollection, Brad has lost his sister and his brother and his mom. He's, I don't know, in his 60s, maybe late 50s. Sorry, Brad, I don't know. He's been through tragedy. His faith has been through the tests. But if you talk to him about Jesus and about why he believes, it's humbling. It's admirable. I can honestly tell you, I don't know if I want faith that strong because I don't want to walk through what he has to walk through to have it. But I want faith that strong. James knows, if you cling to your faith through trial, if you cling to Jesus and continue to obey him even when it's hard, that it will produce this completion in us. It will produce this firm, unshakable faith that cannot be shaken, that cannot be torn down. So he opens with, hey, hang in there. Because when you do, you're going to be stronger for it. So if we're supposed to hang in there, if we're supposed to continue to obey, even when it's hard, what is it that we're supposed to do? What does doing look like, right? What does God want from us? What does he expect from us? James is setting something up for the rest of the book to go through, like, here's some simple ways to obey. If you really want to please God, then here's a simple way to do it. If you really want to walk as that person, then these are the things that you need to be doing. These are the things that you need to be paying attention to. The question becomes, what does it look like to do? And I think he answers this question by saying, doing looks like helping the needy and pursuing holiness. Doing, obeying God, walking as a whole person, looks like helping the needy and pursuing holiness. Here's why I think this. Look at verse 27. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God. You want to do what God wants you to do? You want to live out your faith? You want to live as a whole person? Then here's what you need to do. Care for the widows and the orphan and their affliction and keep yourself unstained from the world. Help the needy and pursue holiness. That's a synopsis for everything that comes in the rest of the book. Everything that comes in the rest of the book is telling you, here's the heart conditions you need to help the needy. Here's why you should do that. Here's why it's near to God's heart. Everything that happens in the rest of the book is, here's what you do. If you want to pursue holiness, then here's how you do it. And this is a theme throughout the Bible. In Isaiah chapter one, we see the very same thing. He distills, Isaiah distills it all down. God says, you want to make me happy? Care for the widows and the orphans. Pursue me. That's what you need to do. Micah says that we should seek justice, love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. It's all through Scripture. So if we want to persevere in doing, what does doing look like? Doing looks like helping the needy and pursuing holiness. And when I say helping the needy, I really do mean that because in that culture, you've heard me teach this before, but for those who may have missed it or have joined recently, when we see widows and orphans in the Bible, what we need to understand is that in that culture, that was the least of these. Widows were typically older women who had no way to make any money. So if their husband had passed away and now they're living as single women and they don't have families to care for them, there is very little they can do besides beg for sustenance every day. They are the most exposed and endangered and vulnerable in that culture. Likewise, orphans are the most exposed and vulnerable in that culture. There's no welfare. There's no orphanages. There's no Social security, there's no public medicine, there's none of that. They're just on their own. And God says, my people should have a heart to care for those who can't care for themselves. My people should have a heart to care for those in the greatest need. That's why at Grace we partner with Faith Ministry down in Mexico that builds homes for people who can't afford their own homes because they work in a Panasonic factory for less than a dollar a day. So we send money down there and build them homes and go down there in teams every year to love the least of these, to care for those who can't care for themselves. We heard earlier Mikey talk about Addis Jamari, who literally cares for orphans in Ethiopia. As girls age out of the orphanages and have no life skills and nothing to do with themselves, they take them into a home, teach them skills, send them back to school, and give them a path forward. And now they work with families on the front end of it so that when they have new babies and they don't know what to do and they're too poor to afford these babies, they give them materials and they give them training and they give them money so that they don't have to turn those kids into orphans but they can grow up in good solid homes. That's why we partner with them. That's why so many people at our church are all into a seat at the table downtown where it's a pay what you can restaurant so that you can go and have your meal and leave a token behind so that someone else can have a meal too if they can't afford it. Caring for the needy is near and dear to God's heart. And I would say to you this, if you're a believer and a part of your regular behavior and pattern isn't to care for those in need, then I don't think you're doing all that God has for you to do. I don't think it's possible to say, I'm walking in lockstep with Jesus. I'm being exactly who he created to me. I love him with my whole heart. I spend my days with him. I commune with God in prayer and yet still not help the needy. It's one of the first things that shows up in every teaching in scripture that if you love God, you'll help those who can't help themselves. Not only should we be about this as a church, we need to be about this as individuals. If you call yourself a Christian, if you claim God as your Father and Jesus as your Savior and that's not a part of your pattern, I would encourage you to find a way to make that a part of your pattern. There's a part of God that we find in doing that work. It's who His children are designed to be. And then He tells us that we should pursue holiness. Keep yourself unstained from this world. The word holy simply means different or other. In Scripture we're told to be holy as God is holy. And it's this command, it's this acknowledgement. Listen, you're different. You're different than the world. You're not better than the world. We're cut from the same cloth. You know Jesus, and the world doesn't yet know Jesus. That's the difference. You're not better than anybody, but you're different than them. And we're called to be different than the world. We're called to laugh at different jokes. We're called to post different political memes, if any at all, ever. We're called to argue differently in the public square. We're called to behave differently than them. We're called to love differently than the world. We're called to watch different things than what they watch. We're called to different standards than what they're called to. Personal holiness matters a lot. And James says, if you want to be a whole person, then persevere in doing. And what does doing look like? It looks like helping the needy and pursuing holiness. Now listen, we're holy because Jesus has made us holy. We're already there because Jesus has died for us and we are clothed in his righteousness. However, in this life, the Bible reminds us over and over again that we are to obey. And obeying takes our effort. So as far as it depends on us, we help the needy and we pursue holiness. And the rest of the book is about really unpacking that idea. What are the heart conditions that exist around helping those who can't help themselves? And what does it look like to live holy and unstained in this world? So I hope that that will serve as a good primer to get you ready for the rest of the book of James. Next week we come back with probably the easiest thing to do. It's why we're starting off with it, taming the tongue. And then we're going to move on to the rest of the book. I'm really looking forward to going through this book with you guys. I'm going to pray for us and then we will be dismissed. Father, you're good to us. My goodness. You're good to us and we're not good to you. You remain faithful to us when we are faithless. God, you watch us live our disjointed lives. And you're patient with us, and you're gentle, and you're loving. Father, I pray that as we go through this series, that everybody who hears it or preaches it, God would just have their heart enlivened to this idea of walking wholly with you. Of walking in lockstep with Jesus. Give us visions of actually being the people that you created us to be, of leaving behind our disjointed selves. Give us the honesty to identify where we're not obedient, and give us the courage to walk in the obedience that you show us. It's in your Son's name we pray these things. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. This has been quite the two weeks. We're supposed to, this morning, be in the middle of a series in the book of Acts called Still the Church. But in light of everything that's happened in our country, the elders and I universally and quickly agreed that we could not just continue on in the book of Acts like nothing was going on outside these walls. And as I've watched the protests and the demonstrations and the rioting and the looting and all the back and forth and been consumed in the news and social media and everything happening and all the voices being heard and all the things being said, I just became deeply convicted that we needed to stop and talk about this as a church. I became deeply convicted that I needed to prayerfully consider and address this as your pastor. And so I've talked a lot this week. Called people, I've sat in people's homes, I've met people, I've watched interviews, I've listened to discussions, I've read books, I've consumed podcasts, I wake up thinking about this issue of racial inequality and tension and injustice in our country. I go to sleep thinking about it. I scour the internet. It has consumed me, like many of you, for these past few weeks. And all of it, I think, has pressed on the church, has pressed us into this one singular question of what do we do now? What do we do? In light of everything we've seen, in light of what we're witnessing, in light of these demonstrations that feel different. We've seen protests before. We've seen rioting and looting even before, but these feel different. And I think it impresses upon the church the necessity to answer this question, what do we do now? What do we do as individuals? What do we do as a church? And for Grace, pointedly, what do we do as a predominantly white church in the face of the reality of the last two weeks? So as I've thought about how to answer that question, I thought it would probably be most helpful to start in this place of agreement. Every reasonable person that I know agrees that George Floyd was murdered by that police officer. I don't know any reasonable person, I haven't even actually talked with anybody, who would argue that what happened to George Floyd was justified and deserved, that what happened to him was anything short of murder. I don't know anybody arguing that. Conversely, I don't know anybody arguing for the morality and the rightness and the justification of protests that devolve into looting and rioting. I've not heard anyone make a good nuanced argument that people of color deserve the right to just charge into stores and white people deserve the right to just charge into stores and loot and take what they want and get violent. I've not heard anybody arguing from the morality of protests that devolve into looting and rioting. No one's supporting those. No one's saying that they're okay, and no one's excusing them away. So I don't think that it's worth our time this morning to further condemn the officer that murdered George Floyd or to decry the morality of looting and rioting. We all agree on those things. I think the more interesting question that we need to be asking, that I want to be asking as a member of the white community, is what is the message coming out of the protests and the demonstration? What is it that the black community would have us hear as a result of these protests? What are they using their voice to say? And if we listen closely, what should we be hearing? I've actually started thinking of the demonstrations and even the looting and the rioting in this light, kind of like this. Many of you are married. And if you're married, you know what it is to have a little spat with your spouse. You know what it is to have a little mundane day-to-day disagreement. And if you're not married, think about your relationship with a parent or with a sibling or with a close friend or with a child. We've all been in these discussions where there's a little disagreement, there's a little spat, there's kind of a flare-up, but then all of the sudden our spouse goes maximum angry. Whatever maximum angry looks like for your spouse, whether that's just like quiet, cutting comments, whether it's just getting silent and retreating, if it's throwing things, if it's yelling, whatever it is, we've been in these situations where all of the sudden at the drop of a hat, for reasons we don't all the way understand, our spouse is maximum angry with us. And we know that their reaction, that what happened that day in that instance does not warrant their reaction. If we are an unwise spouse, if we're bad at this, we will react to that overreaction. We'll point at him or we'll point at her, and we'll say, I don't deserve that. You shouldn't be saying that. What happened doesn't warrant your reaction. This isn't fair. You shouldn't do that. And we'll condemn the overreaction. And we'll heighten the argument. But what wise spouses do, what wise people do, is acknowledge. Yeah, that's an overreaction. But clearly, that's not a reaction just to what's happening in this moment. Clearly, there are things that have been simmering under the surface. There is a series of frustrations and disappointments that have led to this moment, that have caused this person to boil and bubble over in this way. So rather than reacting to the overreaction, let me be interested and listen and see what I can learn about the series of events that have built up in this person's heart to lead them to this place. Wise people want to understand what led to this response in the first place. And I think the best thing that I can do, the best thing that we can do in the face of these protests and demonstrations is to ask the question, wait, wait, wait, what is it that led to this moment? What are all the simmering frustrations and disappointments that you've experienced, that the black community has experienced that have led to this moment of demonstrations for the past two weeks? The most important question we can be asking, I think, is what is it the black community is trying to say? What are they trying to communicate? And as I think through that question, my belief is that the loudest message coming out of these protests is simply, will you listen to us now? Will you hear us now? Will you give us a voice now? I think what the black community is telling us is that, hey, racial injustice still exists. Racial inequality still exists. Racial oppression is still a very real thing in the United States of America, and we bear the brunt of it every day. It is still a thing that is happening. And I would be the first to tell you, I would be the first to argue that this country has made tremendous strides in racial equality and justice since 1968. We have come an incredibly far way in just a generation. But what these protests tell us is that we still have strides to make. We still have a ways to go. We're still not there yet. The black community is telling us we still experience injustice and oppression. And if you are a child of God, if you would call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, if you would call yourself a Christian, then when there is a group of people in your community that is telling you, hey, we feel like we exist in injustice, we feel like we are being treated unfairly, we feel like we are oppressed, that ought to perk up your ears. When there is a community of people saying, raising their hand and saying, hey, we feel oppressed. We feel like there's systemic injustice in our country. That perks up the ears of God. That breaks the very heart of God. And it ought to break our heart too, particularly as God's children, particularly as God's church. When there's a group of people in our community crying out that they feel oppressed, that life feels unfair, that it is unjust, as God's children, we ought to perk up our ears and listen intently and wonder at why and allow our hearts to be broken at that reality because that reality breaks the heart of God. Justice and correcting oppression are very near to the heart of God. I know this is true because the Bible says it over and over again. I know this is true because of passages like Isaiah chapter 1. Isaiah chapter 1, verses 10 through 18. If you have a Bible, you can turn there. That's one of my favorite passages in the whole Bible. I know I say that about a lot of passages. I really mean it for this one. I love Isaiah chapter one, 10 through 18. Those eight verses, those are the gospel. It's a beautiful passage. But I've never thought of it in the light that I'm about to explain it in until this week. If you look at that passage in verses 10 through 15, God is blasting Israel. Israel, those are his children, those are his people. They would have considered themselves the church or saved back in that time. And God is blasting them for going through the motions of their faith without really living it out. And he's saying things to them like, your solemn assemblies, listen to this, my soul hates. He says, when you pray to me, I will turn my back to this. I'm not there. I'm not listening. When you perform your sacrifices, I don't care about them. I don't want them. All the religious duties that you're doing, I'm not interested in those. And then in verse 16, after he blasts them, after he says, quit going through the motions, I'm not interested. In verse 16, it's almost as if he's saying, you want to know what I'm interested in? You want to know what's important to me? You want to know how I want my people to be defined? If you want to do the right thing, do you know what you need to do? This is what he says, verse 16. After blasting them, he ends 15 with the phrase, your hands are full of blood. 16, he says this, wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do good. So he says, listen, repent of all the things that I've just accused you of. Admit that you've been going to the motion. Stop doing that. Admit that you're living out this heartless faith and seek to do right. And if you want to do right, here's what you need to do. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Correct oppression. Bring justice to the fatherless. Plead the widow's cause. God says, you want to know what's near and dear to my heart? You want to know how I want my people to be known and what I want them to be marked for and what I want to be important to them? You want to please me? You want to make me happy? You want to know what God wants from me? Seek justice. Correct oppression. There's a community of people in our nation crying out that they are experiencing injustice and oppression and God's people should listen to that brokenheartedly and want to help. It's not just in Isaiah. In Micah, chapter 6, verse 8, a famous passage. Micah similarly ends a long diatribe of the ways that God's children have failed, And he says, if you want to do good, here's what we need to do. He says, he has shown you, oh man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you, but to seek justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Three things God wants from his people. Just distill it all down to whatever God would request. And what he leads with is seek justice. In the Psalms, we are told that we need to be a voice for the voiceless. It's the idea that when our voice is the loudest in the room, we ought to use it to help those with the weakest voice. Justice and the correction of oppression is near and dear to the heart of God. That's why I am firmly convinced that what is happening in our country right now is not a political issue. It's not political at all. And honestly, if you think it's political, you don't understand it. It's not political. It's a right and wrong issue. It's a gospel issue. Caring about this isn't about activism. It's about caring deeply about a manifestation of the gospel and the culture in which we live. What's happening breaks God's heart and it ought to break ours. It is our job as his people to diligently and fervently and generously correct oppression and to seek justice. This is a church issue. This is a gospel issue. This is a morality issue. So we have to talk about it. And even as I say that, even as I say that, there are those who I know and love who are good Bible-believing people, good moral folks, who would simply say, Nate, man, I agree with you that we need to care deeply about justice, and we need to care deeply about people not being oppressed. But I got to tell you, I just don't think that there is systemic oppression happening in our country. I just don't think that there is systemic injustice and racial inequality occurring in our country. I've heard statements like that even this week, and they're not statements from people who are racist or who mean ill will. They're just earnest, honest observations and thoughts from folks. But I would tell you if that's something that you might think, that first of all, that's something that I've thought too. But when you repeat that to black people, as I have this week, they went. I sat in someone's home and I said, hey, you know, there's some folks who would say that they just no longer see systemic oppression or injustice in our society. What would you say to them? They winced at me. It hurt them. And it wasn't a wincing of anger. They weren't mad. They didn't want to correct. It was a wincing of surprise and of disappointment and of hurt. That some people right around them don't even see what to them is so very evident. And if we don't believe that oppression is a thing, there's plenty of stories, there's plenty of examples of it continuing to happen in our country even to this day. As I spoke with people and listened and watched, I saw a lot of conversations happening between white people and black people. I was involved in some of those conversations. And in every one of those conversations, whether I'm watching them or involved in them or listening to them, the question would always come up, how have you experienced racism in your life? What are some instances where you've encountered, the white person's asking the black person, what are some instances where you've encountered racism in your life? And all of the black people had answers. They all responded with stories, sometimes multiple stories. Do you realize the power of that reality? Do you realize how condemning that truth is? That every black person you could go up to and find, even on the street, and just grab them and say, hey, I'm curious, how have you experienced racism in your life? When have you encountered racism in your day-to-day life? In the years that you've lived, what are the stories about your encounters of racism? Do you realize that they all have answers? You realize they can answer that question? That not a single one of them went, gosh, you know, I don't know that I have. You know how different that is from the white experience? I've never experienced a racial moment in my life. I've never been the victim of racism. I've never even asked my white friends, hey, when have you experienced racism in your life? Because we don't. Far and away, the vast majority of us don't even experience it. Do you realize the chasm and experiences there when they all have answers for it and we don't have any? One man shared his story, successful black businessman, went to a good college in the South, got involved in corporate America. He shared that in his office place, he often felt discriminated against. He shared some of that was probably imagined and some of it was probably very real. But what he knew is that the last thing in the world he could do is bring it up. The last thing in the world he could do is be honest about it or complain about it because you don't want to play that card and get that label. So he just kept his mouth shut. And after years of keeping his mouth shut, he gets promoted to their office in Manhattan. He moves his family up there. They find a great suburb in Connecticut where they decide to buy a home. They're walking through their neighborhood on the very first day that they're moving in. He's got his wife and his daughter in the stroller, and a car rides by them, and a white guy leans out the window and calls him the N-word and tells him that he's not welcome in his neighborhood and he needs to go home. In progressive Connecticut, a few years ago. It's still happening. I talked to somebody on the phone this week that confirmed an article that my wife, Jen, had read this week. She read an article. It wasn't an article. It was a post on Facebook that kind of went viral by a black man who just said, hey, listen, just so y'all know my experience, he loves to go on walks every day in his neighborhood. Kind of refreshes him like a lot of us like to go on walks. But he said, I'm very aware of the fact that I can't go on a walk without my wife or my daughter with me. I can't just walk through a neighborhood as a lone black man because I've gotten the cops called on me too many times because I'm seen as a threat in his own neighborhood. That story was confirmed this week when I was talking to somebody on the phone who said that they just bought a new house and they're about to move into this neighborhood. And he shared with me that his wife sat him down and said, honey, I know that you like to go on walks, but before you do that, for the first month or two that we live in this neighborhood, me and you and our kids need to go on a walk every day so that the neighbors can get used to seeing your face so that when you are out there by yourself, they don't think you're a threat and they don't call the police on you. I just moved into Falls River in April. I go on walks all the time. Never a single time, not once have I thought, gosh, I hope my neighbors don't see me as a threat. I hope they don't see my whiteness as a threat and call the police on me and I have to explain myself to them. I haven't once even considered that. It blew my mind that they still have to care about that. I was talking to another person who is very successful, who has degrees from colleges that I can't even imagine going to. He has brothers and they're all successful. And I asked him, growing up in a black home, clearly you would point to your parents as the reason for your success and your brother's success. But what was it about the way that they parented you that made you successful? And he told me that his parents always told them that they have to hold themselves to a higher standard than anybody else around them, that they have a smaller margin for error in their life than anybody else around them, that they're going to have to work harder than the other people around them if they want to achieve the same things. And they were incredibly hard on their boys for their sake because they knew that the margin for error for their children was slimmer than the margin of error of a house full of people who look like me. Then I started hearing about the conversations that black parents have to have with their children when they start to drive. They have to tell them that they're black and what their blackness means and how they should be sensitive to carry themselves. They have to walk them through protocols. If you get pulled over, do these things. Do not do these things. And they have to do this for the safety of their children. When I got my keys, my dad just handed me the keys. And he said, don't speed. And if you do speed and you get pulled over, just say yes, sir, to the officer. Be nice to him. That was it. There was no conversations about my whiteness. There was no, I've never thought to have a conversation with Lily, my daughter, about her whiteness. It's different, you guys. It's two different Americas. It's two different experiences. This points to an injustice and an oppression that still exists. This points to the reality that Martin Luther King's dream has not yet been realized. And if we want to see it come to fruition, that even though we've made great strides, we still have more to take. If the stories aren't enough, if those are anecdotal, I could point to evidence. I could point to statistics. I could point to how poverty skews greater in the African-American community. I could point to schools and how they lower in quality in African-American communities. I could point to a loss of the father figure in black homes. I could point to joblessness in the black community that's greater than that in the white community. Statistic after statistic that would lend itself to this understanding that the playing field is not level in our country. And yet even as I say that, even as I share those stories and those statistics that we all know, there are those of us who would say, yeah, but there's other factors, Nate. This is not easy. This is nuanced. There's other things going on there. There are those of us who would look at those statistics or look at those anecdotes and point to systemic issues within the black community and say, they need to get those taken care of too. They have some things that maybe they need to think about a little bit differently that they should correct as well. And I would tell you honestly, that I agree with you. This is not a one-sided issue. No conflict, no disagreement, no misunderstanding, no matter how great, is 100% one side's fault and 0% another side's fault. We all have things that we can own within the discussion. But even though I would agree that both the white community and the black community have a ways to go to achieve racial equality. I've begun to think of it like this. You know, when I was growing up, if there was somebody at school mistreating me, somebody in my life doing something that wasn't fair, treating me in a way that I didn't deserve. If I were to complain to my dad, hey, so-and-so's treating me like this, it's not fair, I don't like it, I don't appreciate it, he would say to me, son, when they act that way towards you, I want you to be gracious. I want you to be kind. I want you to forgive them. I do not want you to respond to them on the level that they are acting towards you. And I would get upset and I would say, but dad, that's not fair. They're doing this and they're doing that and they treat me in this way and I want to get back at them and I want to do this. And my dad would say, son, you're a rector and I'm not worried about them. They're not my children. You're my son. And this is how rectors act. I'm not worried about that house. I'm worried about my house. I'm not in control of that house. I'm not a voice in that house. I don't have authority in that house. I have authority in this house. And so I'm gonna worry about my house. And as long as you're a part of my house, then this is how you're going to behave. So in the issue of racial inequality and injustice, I've adopted the posture that I'm not going to think about that house. I'm not going to think about what other people need to do. Frankly, candidly, I'm not gonna think about what the black community needs to do. I'm gonna think about my house. I'm gonna think about my responsibilities. What are the mindsets and mistakes that I've made over my 39 years that I need to repent of and correct? What do I need to do? I'm not going to worry about that house. I'm going to worry about my house. Other voices will speak up in that house. They're responsible for that. That's not my responsibility. I'm worried about me. I'm worried about grace. And grace is a predominantly white church, so I'm worried about our house. What do we do? And it's because of that mindset and just focusing on myself and what I should do that I've come to really think about my role, however small it is, in racial reconciliation to really parallel the story of the Good Samaritan. A month or two ago, we were going through a series called Storyteller, looking at the stories that Jesus told to make a moral point. And one of the stories that we covered, one of the parables was the parable of the Good Samaritan. So we know this story, right? There's a man, he's on the road to Jericho, he's going from Jerusalem to Jericho. He gets injured. A priest and a Levite that we would expect to know how to do the right thing see him injured, see him dying, and they just cross over him and continue on with their day. Then a Samaritan shows up, the one that you wouldn't understand to be the moral exemplar in this story. He shows up. He sees the injured man. He kneels down. He tends to his wounds. He picks him up. He puts him on his donkey. He takes him to a hotel. He swipes his credit card, and he tells the innkeeper, whatever this person needs, you charge it to my account. That's the story of the Good Samaritan. And the point of that story, Jesus tells us, is that we're supposed to love our neighbor like the Good Samaritan, loved the injured man. And I think the current situation relates to that parable in that the black community is depicted by the injured man on the road who is crying out and saying that they are hurting, that they are in pain, that they are experiencing injustice. And every time I've heard one of those stories in my life, the first one I remember was Rodney King in the 90s. And every time it bubbles up again and every time the black community cries out and says, hey, it's still not fair. Hey, Martin Luther King's dream is still not realized. Hey, pay attention to us, please. Listen, every time that happens and every time I see the suffering of the black community, I always take the role of the priest and the Levite. And I look at them and I see them hurting and I continue on with my way. Because I think, I'm so sorry that you're there. I'm so sorry that you're hurting. I hate that this has happened to you. But I didn't do it. It's not my fault you're there. I don't hate you. I'm not racist. I don't hate people who look like you. I would never do this to you. As a matter of fact, I hate the people who did that to you. But I didn't do it. Not my fault. I'm not going to feel bad about that. And I move on. And then sometimes in my moving on to justify walking past this suffering brother, I'll begin to wonder, what could that victim have done to have prevented getting robbed like that on the road to Jericho? How late was he out? Who could he have brought with him? When he started to get robbed, did he mouth off? Did he resist? How is he to blame for what's going on? And usually, if I'm being honest about myself, those questions are asked out of a motivation to quell my own guilt. And I should confess to you that I'm, this is not figurative for me that I've played the role of the priest and the Levite. I'm a very flawed messenger for this sermon. I'm not good at this. I don't have black friends. In fact, all the arguments that some of you may have made to refute the things that I'm saying, I can promise you I've made those to my friends. So please, in my words and in my voice, don't hear condemnation, hear confession. I've been the priest and the Levite, and I'm ashamed of it. And God calls me to be the Samaritan. The Samaritan, even though it wasn't his fault, knelt down and he bound up the wounds of this person who had previously hated him. We presume that the victim was a Jew. There is racial tension between the Samaritans and the Jews. And the Samaritan ears to be perked up with what I think perks up God's ears as he encourages us, admonishes us to seek justice and correct oppression. I want to be one of those agents. And I am acknowledging and admitting, not just to myself, but publicly, hopefully, so that some of us can make the same admission that I have been the priest and the Levite stepping over the black community because I felt like it didn't have anything to do with me. I felt like because I'm not racist, because I didn't do that, it's not my fault. It's not my problem. But now I'm convicted that God himself told me to love others as the Samaritan loves others. To be a neighbor to everyone. To care about everyone's suffering and hurting. And I have been moved in the last two weeks and my heart has been broken that I want to be a part of the striding forward. I want to be a part of the healing of the racial divide. I want to help my hurting brothers and sisters. And hopefully you do too. And some of you, to your everlasting credit, you've been way ahead of me on this. I hope there's room at the party for some more. If you want to help, if we want to do more, if we want to help heal the divide, what can we do? And that's really the million-dollar question. As I've had conversations with people this week, really, people to varying degrees will say, yeah, we agree with that sentiment. We agree with that. We're with you. We want to do something. What do we do? That's the big question. So as I've wrestled with that this week, I've come up with three things that I think we can all proactively do. For those of us who want to be a part of the healing, I think we can proactively do these things. The first one is that I think that we should diversify our life. Diversify our lives. Make some black friends. I was on a call with a pastor, Albert Williams, from Dothan, Alabama, this week. And we were talking about all of these things, and I was telling him all the things I wanted to share with my church, and he said, Brother Nate, let me ask you a question. And I so love his boldness in this question. He said, let me ask you a question. You ever have black folks over to your house for dinner? And I said, well, you know, Albert, we just moved into a new house in April and it's been in quarantine. So I really haven't had much of a chance. And he laughed. He said, come on, Nate, you know what I'm asking you? No, I haven't. I haven't. And he got on to me. He told me the truth. And he didn't use these words, but he basically said, man, you don't have a leg to stand on then. You don't have any right to preach this. You're not even doing it. How are you going to go tell your people what they need to do and you're not even doing it yourself? And he's right. I'm a flawed messenger. But I'm going to diversify my life. I'm reaching out to other black pastors, not to build bridges between churches, but to build friendships between men. And I want people of color to be regular visitors in our home. I want Lily to grow up around that. And honestly, I think that this could bring about maybe a more profound change than anything else to just diversify our lives, normalize it for our children, learn empathy as we hear their stories and what they're walking through. And if I'm just being candid with you, at the risk of offending some people, there are very few people that I know who think that oppression doesn't exist who also have black friends. It just changes your viewpoint. So I think we need to diversify our lives. The second thing I would encourage us to do is to adopt a posture of listening. Adopt a posture of listening. I was talking to another person this week who agreed with me on everything and said, yeah, there needs to be a discussion. We need to talk. There needs to be some back and forth. But both sides of the party, both the white community and the black community, have some baggage to own. And there needs to be some give and take at this table. One side can't just take all the blame. And I said, yeah, you're right, but why don't we just listen for a minute? Why don't we just give? How about instead of yeah, but, instead of arguing with the statistics, instead of finding nuanced ways for that to not all the way be true, how about instead of searching for the one exception or the one article that makes us feel right about ourselves, how about we just listen to the voices and the messages coming out of the black community? We don't say anything. We don't argue. And some of the things, I'll be honest, some of the things I've seen coming out this week have just been completely illogical and nonsensical. But we don't have to respond to those. Just sweep those aside. Let's listen for the deeper messages. Let's be receptive to what our black brothers and sisters are saying. And then the third thing I would encourage us all to do is to develop a muscle for empathy. Develop that empathy muscle that you have in your heart. Learn what it's like to be a black person in the United States. Read some books. I thought about having books to recommend to you, but the truth of that is that we have all had books recommended to us. It's not hard to find them. Read a book that opens your eyes. Listen to a podcast. Seek out interviews. Listen to the voices. Seek to be empathetic and to understand. And even as I say those things, what can we do? We can do those three things. Even as I say those, there may be some of you that hear that and think, come on, Nate, like those are wispy, kind of mamby-pamby, like what real things can we do? Those feel insufficient to me. I would say to you that, respectfully, if you're doing all three of those things, if your life is diverse, if you're listening to the voices coming out of the black community, if you're developing that muscle of empathy intentionally in your life, and you still find those three steps to be inadequate, then please please let's talk and find some more adequate steps. But honestly, if you're not doing all three of those or none of those at all right now, how about we just do those and then talk about if they're empty? How about we just take those steps and then assess if they're insufficient and inadequate? Let's do the work first and then find out if what we're doing is working. I would finish by saying this. There are those of you, I believe, who will hear this sermon this morning and get fired up. You'll be excited, feel refreshed. You'll wanna be a part of the solution. You'll be happy we talked about this. Let that fire burn in a sustainable way. In a few weeks, the energy of the protest will be done. COVID will be back in the news cycle and our culture will have moved on to something else. And if we allow our fervor and our conviction to pursue racial equality and justice to fade along with the cultures, then we're gonna be right back here again. So let's let the fire burn in a sustainable way. Let's stick with it and let's mean it and let's make meaningful, lasting changes in our lives. There are others of you who may be offended by different things that I've said or disappointed in the way that I've handled this. And I understand that, I really do. This is a difficult issue. It's a nuanced topic. It stirs up emotions that we don't even understand how they got there. And it's not right of me to experience a conviction and then expect everyone else to be okay with that conviction being impressed upon them. So I would simply ask you, if I've offended you or upset you, to have some grace and some patience with me. And I would invite any one of you in response to this message or what's been happening to email me and let's start a dialogue. My email is at the bottom of the screen. It's nate at graceralee.org. Reach out to me and let me know and let's continue this discussion. I think it can only be helpful. But I know that for me, I want to be the good Samaritan. For grace, I want us to be a part of the healing. I want us to take seriously what grieves the heart of God. Would you pray with me as we pray for our city and our community and our country and our role and what God would have us do to bring about a very necessary healing? Father, you continue to be good. We know that you love us. We know that you love minorities and majorities with equanimity. We know that your heart is that we would love one another. God, give us the strength and the desire and the vision and the grace to overcome these differences in our race that are beautiful differences. Give us the strength to embrace one another. Bring people who don't look like us into our lives that we might befriend and understand them. Help each of us do what we believe is our part to heal this divide. God, I pray that you would work on our hearts. I pray that you'd speak to us even now. I pray that we would be moved by what moves you. And God, I pray for an America that's the same for everyone. Somewhere there's a four and a half year old girl running around that is in a black family. She's the same age as my daughter. God, can they be adults in the same country? Can they raise their children in a place that is void of oppression and injustice? Would you help us be a part of that reality? In Jesus' name we ask these things. Amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. I'm just so excited about this morning. I met somebody before the service started, and they said it's their first time at Grace. They've been hearing about Grace for a little while. They thought they'd check it out, and I said, well, you picked both the best and the worst Sunday to try this. This is the fifth part of the campaign series that we've been doing, and the first Sunday in February, I came out and I said, hey, we've decided that it's time to pursue a permanent home for grace. And here are the reasons why we want to do that. And then we spent the rest of the series saying, the question that we are collectively asking now as a church body is, Father, what would you have us do in health? What would you have us do as a healthy church? And we said that that was to grow deep by making disciples and to grow wide by reaching other people and evangelizing. And so we took two different weeks and said, what's Grace's plan for those things? And then last week, one of our elders and partners, Doug Bergeson, did a phenomenal job of framing up generosity and stewardship. He did such a good job last week that as I was preparing this week, I thought, this is no good. Like, I'm not going to fall down. I don't have any theatrics. I'm not going to be as funny. Now, I was intimidated this week preparing to preach at my own church. He did such a good job. I was so grateful for that. And so this week, as we sit on Pledge Sunday, and at the end of this service, we're going to celebrate and worship together, and I'm calling it worship because that's what it is, and we're going to make pledges together. That's been the invitation over the last five weeks, is as a church family, let's consider and pray how we want to be involved in the campaign moving forward. And so we're going to make our pledges together. And as we do that, in part we're pledging to a home, to a building of some sort, to roots in the community that we own that belong to us, and that's important. But I really feel like we're pledging to this place. We're pledging to grace. We're pledging to what we hope grace will be. We're pledging to the future of grace. And so in that vein, I've had conversations with leaders in the church, with staff and elders, and I've said, when you dream about grace, what do you dream of? When you think about the future, what do you want? And for me, I've spent a lot of time thinking about what I want church to look like, what a church should look like. If you were to ask me in private conversation, Nate, what are your goals for grace? What do you want grace to be? As you think about leading it, what do you want for grace? I would say to you, I just want to do it right. I want to be there for like 30 more years, and when I get to the end, I want to look back, and I want to be able to smile and say, we did it right. We did it the way that we felt we were supposed to do it. But the question becomes, well, what does right look like? And so as I thought about this and tried to distill down probably 20 years in ministry, I've thought about this question, what does a church that's healthy, what should it look like? And different churches should take on different tasks and different roles. Each church has a different DNA. So this is not a prescription for what every church should be. This is what I feel like grace can be. And so this morning, I've got seven statements on the bulletin there. And they're prefaced with, we want grace too. And when I say we, I believe that this is a reflection of not just me, but the partners and the staff and the leaders and the core of grace. So as you pledge, this is what you're pledging to. As we commit, this is what we're committing to. As we hope and dream, these are the things that we hope and dream about. So these are the seven things. Incidentally, seven is the number of completion in Scripture, so I couldn't add any more. I had to reduce them down to seven. These are the seven things that we want for grace. So the first one right out of the gate, these are in no particular order except the first one and the last one. The first one is there because these are drums that I beat all the time. The first thing that we want for grace is to relentlessly foster an affection for God and His Word. I want this to be a church that relentlessly fosters an affection for God and His Word. And I'm starting out with this, and I use that word relentless because it's important to me. I'm starting out this way because this is how I start with couples who are about to get married. One of the things that I get to do from time to time is counsel with couples who are about to get married, and it's one of the great privileges I'm afforded in my role. It's such an exciting thing to walk through that season of life with people. And on the very first night, I always say, hey, listen, this is my best marriage advice. I'm not saying it's good marriage advice. It's just the best that I have. So you probably have better advice than this. But I say, this is my best marriage advice. If you will be relentlessly committed to two things, you're going to be fine. There's no way I can prepare you for everything that we're going to encounter in marriage. But if you'll do these two things, you're going to be okay. If you'll be relentlessly committed to communication and to pursuing Jesus, you're going to be all right. That's what I tell these married couples, because I believe I can't prepare them for everything, but if they will communicate about everything, so often when we end up in counseling, when our marriage feels broken, it's because somewhere along the way, communication broke down. But then part of that has to be supplemented with the pursuit of Jesus. And so I tell these couples, if you'll be relentlessly committed to talking and to pursuing Jesus, then whatever you encounter, you'll be okay. And I feel the same way about these two directives for a church. If we will be relentless in our pursuit of God and our affection for his word, Everything else, we don't even need the rest of the list. You guys will be good. You guys will be walking with the Lord. And this is a reflection of Paul's prayer. I've preached on this prayer two separate times. So I felt like we had to start here. The prayer in Ephesians chapter three. If you want to look it up, it's in verses 14 through 19. I'm not going to pull out my Bible and read it to you, but that's where the prayer is. And it's a similar prayer that he prays for all the churches, that Paul prays for all the churches that he's planted in Colossae and Philippi and Thessalonica and Ephesus. He does, he prays in Galatia, he prays this prayer. And the prayer is essentially that you would know God, that you along with all the saints would know the height and the breadth and the depth of the love of God that surpasses knowledge, that you would be filled with all the fullness of God. Paul's prayer for the churches is that no matter what you would love God, no matter what happens in your life, whether it's triumph or tragedy, that those things would conspire so that you would know God more. That's what Paul prays and that's our prayer. And I've preached that two different times, that that's my prayer for grace. And so I had to lead with our goal. And what we want is that we would know God. And in knowing God, that we would be fostered by an affection for his word. You've heard me say a half a dozen, probably two dozen times from this stage, that the greatest habit that anyone can develop in their life is to spend time every day in God's word and time in prayer. It's the best possible habit anybody can have. And if there's nothing else that we do, I want to foster an affection for God and his word. That's why when I preach and I tell you stories from scripture, I try to make them come alive for you. I try to help you be there so that they're not just descriptions of what's going on, but that you see yourself in those stories. That's why I try to compel you to go back and read it on your own. I want you to fall in love with God's word too. I want you to have an encyclopedic knowledge of God's word and realize that it's not for people who went to seminary, it's just for people who love God's word. So as I think about grace, we wanna foster an affection affection for God and his word. We want to do that relentlessly, constantly pointing to God. The next two things that we want grace to be or we want for grace are things that were in place when I got here, and we want to simply continue them. We want grace to maintain generational diversity. I think this is hugely important, and it's a distinctive of grace. In 2017, the church was about one-third the size that it is now, maybe even a little less than that. And it was mostly people in their 50s and 60s. And those people in their 50s and 60s said, we want to hire a younger pastor. Which, all joking aside, it's going to sound like I'm making a joke. I'm not. This is not self-deprecating to get you to laugh. This is true. It takes some humility and some guts to hire a guy that's younger than you and invite them in to come and lead. That's an opportunity that people my age don't often get. That's a trust that's placed that's not easily placed. And so I've been humbled by that task, and I'm grateful for that. And in doing that, they said, we want to get younger as a church, and we have. And we've grown in our 20s and our 30s and our 40s demographics. And so we are a church that is uniquely generationally diverse, and it is to our great value that it is. One of my favorite things that I get to do in the church is lead that Tuesday morning men's group. It meets at 6 a.m. here in the church. If you want to come, we're meeting this week. Come on. Also, you have to be a guy. And in that group, we have people who are in their mid-20s and people who are in their 60s and everybody in between. And I think it's incredible that the guys in their 20s and in their 30s can say, hey, we're dealing with this with our four-year-old. I'm thinking about this in my career. What do you guys think? And then the older guys can give wisdom to the younger guys. I think it's incredible that the older guys can catch a glimpse of the enthusiasm and the faith and the questions that the younger guys are willing to ask. I think it's a phenomenal setting. It's one of my favorite things that we do. And Timothy talks about this. I preached on this passage a while back, that we should treat younger men as brothers and sons, and older men as fathers, and older women as mothers, and younger women as daughters and sisters, that the church is designed to be a family. We live in a culture where there is tension between generations. We have phrases like, okay, boomer, that frankly are stupid. Because it's a way that millennials dismiss older people for being antiquated or out of touch, and we devalue the wisdom of the previous generation. And then we have older people who make fun of millennials for all the silly things that they like. And they may be silly, but you like silly things too. Quit being a jerk. We don't need to do those things. It's not healthy. It's not good. Older people need to value the enthusiasm and the fresh ideas of the younger generation and view them as sons and daughters in this family of faith. And the younger generation almost said, we, I don't want to lump myself in and call myself young. I have a lot of gray now. We need to look to the generations that preceded us and value their wisdom and understand that their perspective, even when we don't understand it, is hard earned. So we want to embrace all generations. I don't want anybody to feel left behind. I don't want anybody to feel like they're not cared for. Because if we do this well, then our children who are growing up in the church will see other people like them when they get into their college years and their 20s and their 30s. And then we can do this miraculous generational ministry where we can see families walking together. I get to look out sometimes and see three generations of family sitting in the audience. And I love that. But we only get to keep that if we're a church that maintains our generational diversity. It's a distinctive of grace, and we want to be careful to maintain it moving forward. The next thing that I saw when I got here, and this is so important to me, is that at Grace, we want to be defined by courageous honesty and generous grace. We want to be defined by courageous honesty and generous grace. And here's why I'm saying it this way. A big value in our culture now is authenticity, honesty, transparency, someone who's authentic, someone who's real, however you want to phrase it, that's what we want. That's what we want in our friends. There's actually research out that says churches are wise to knock it off with the smoke and light show and just keep the overheads on the whole time because that feels more real and authentic and less like you're trying to entertain me, which I'm about that life. We want transparency and authenticity everywhere. We want it in our churches. We want it in our businesses. We want it in our politics. We want it in our friends. We want it in our relationships. That's what we want. We crave this authenticity. But the more I thought about it, the more I didn't think it was helpful to put up there on the screen that we want to be authentic, that we want to be real, because everybody does, so who cares? But these are the things that it requires to create an environment of authenticity. Scripture tells us that we're to bear one another's burdens, that we're to walk with one another, that we're to rejoice with those who rejoice and we're to mourn with those who mourn. Those require an environment of authenticity. And authenticity can't come out unless there is courageous honesty. There has to be courageous honesty in our small groups, in our conversations, frankly, from stage with what I'm willing to share about myself and admit to you. We have to be courageous and be able to say to one another, I'm broken and I don't work. We need to be able to say to one another, have the courage to go, I don't have this figured out. I don't understand this part of scripture. I stink at this part of being a Christian. We need to have the courage to be able to say those things because those require actual vulnerability. And I get frustrated with fake vulnerability. When people confess things that seem like a big deal, but they're no longer dealing with them or they no longer matter. Someone says, I used to be an alcoholic 10 years ago. Okay, it doesn't require much vulnerability to say that. Tell me you're an alcoholic right now. That's vulnerable. Tell me, I used to be terrible at reading the Bible, but I've kind of figured it out. But yeah, I've walked through that season too. All right, that's not very vulnerable. Tell me right now you haven't read the Bible in months. That's vulnerability. It's when we risk something by sharing it. So authenticity requires courageous honesty. But if that courageous honesty isn't met with generous grace, it's the last time that's going to happen. If I'm supposed to bear your burden, but I judge you for carrying it, I can't bear it with you. If I'm asking you to share with me, we're told to confess our sins to one another. And if you confess your sins to me and then I make you feel bad for your sins, you're not going to do that again. Put yourself in a small group. But somebody has some courageous honesty and they share something that makes them vulnerable to that group. And they're met with condemnation or apathy, when's the next time they're going to actually be courageous and share something or not? So we need to be defined by both courageous honesty, but understand that we facilitate and cultivate that honesty and authenticity by offering generous grace, by looking at the burden people are carrying and saying, yeah, man, if I were under that, I would need help too. That's how we continue to be authentic. And frankly, I'm not trying to make it about me, but that's how I get to continue to be myself. That's how we get to continue to be ourselves is only by courageous honesty and generous grace. We have to continue to offer that to one another. We want grace to be a safe harbor for the unchurched, the de-churched, and the over-churched. We want it to be a safe place for the unchurched, the de-churched, and the over-churched. If you ask anybody who's a part of any church and you say, what do you want for your church? Eventually, and it came up a bunch of times in the conversations I had, eventually they'll say, we want to reach the lost. We want to reach the unchurched. And that's absolutely true. Two weeks ago, I did a whole sermon on evangelism, on what our plan is to reach people with Jesus who don't yet know Jesus. So that is a directive in Scripture, and it is near and dear to our heart. And so we don't want to neglect that. We absolutely want to be a safe place for the unchurched where you know you can invite your friend who doesn't know Jesus and thinks church is weird, and you can bring them here, and maybe they'll go, that wasn't so weird. We want to be that place where they can see Jesus. But the other thing I know, in our culture, where we're at geographically, where we're at historically, there are a lot of people in Raleigh who have been hurt by church. There are a lot of folks that are carrying scars that were given to them by the churches that they went to. For some of you, that's your story. We've probably, all of us in one way or another, been burned by church before. And to this, Jesus says, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And it was to virtually the same culture. It was to a religious culture. And what he was saying to them is, if religion has hurt you and scarred you and worn you down and made you feel like you're not good enough and made you feel like you can't carry the weight, then come to me and I will give you rest. I'll be a safe place for you. We want to be a safe harbor for the unchurched, for the de-churched, and for the over-churched. So that when someone who's been hurt by church in the past comes here, they experience a service with grace. They experience community at grace. They experience one of our big nights out or something like that, and they take a deep breath and they go, this place feels safe. This place feels real. I feel like I can heal here. I feel like I can trust myself to this place. I want to be a place where we heal faith, where we restore the belief that church can be done right, where people are made to feel welcome and loved and offer generous grace when they offer courageous truth. We want to do that right. We want grace to be a place of flourishing faith, whether discovered, reignited, or sustained. It's easy when someone first comes to Christ, when their faith is discovered. It's a really great time. That's an enthusiastic time. That's a time in life when everyone experiences faith like Kyle gives the announcements. It's just like out of a shotgun, here we go. And that's fun and that enthusiasm is wonderful. And for reignited faith, for people who wandered away from the faith and then have come back to it and their faith has been reignited and been restored and they move from cultural Christian, from just passive Christian to culturally conservative to like actually on fire for Jesus. Then they're on fire for a little while, but we want faith to be sustained as well. We want flourishing faith at all ends of the spiritual spectrum. That's actually one of the things I pray for most for you. One of the things that I do semi-regularly is I come into this space when there's nobody else here, and I just sit in the seats and I pray. I did it this morning. And when I sit in the seats, I've been your pastor long enough, I know where you sit, man. So when I sit in the seat over there, I know in my head in the first service and the second service who normally sits there, and I pray for you by name. And I move through the auditorium, and man, this is a good place. We have good families here. I love y'all. As I did it this morning, and I rattled off names of sitting sections and just everybody that sits in that section. I couldn't believe that I get to be the pastor of people who love God and love one another so well. And when I pray for you, I pray a lot of things, but mostly I pray that your faith will be ignited. Mostly I pray that Jesus will get a hold of you and that we'll see radical change in your life and that we wouldn't be a church full of people who are cultural Christians who come to church because that's what we're used to doing and we're checking it off a box. But we come here because we're excited about Jesus and who he is and how he loves us. And we're excited about spurring one another on in that walk. So we want to be a place of flourishing faith. We want to be known in the community for our generosity and for our commitment to community. I just want, if I'm honest, I just want grace to be known. Most of the time when I'm out in public and I meet somebody and they say, what are you doing? I say, oh, I'm a pastor. They say, what's your church? I'm like, it's Grace Raleigh. Oh yeah, where's that? I'm like, well, it's behind the Panera on Capitol next to the fish store. You may have heard of it. And I'm like, no, I don't know. And I'm like, well, we used to be Grace Community Church. And then sometimes we're like, oh yeah, okay. And that's it. Listen, I'm not here to make our name great. I don't really care about that, but I want us to be a church that's known in the community because we serve it so well. We partner with Fox Road because they have the most kids, I think in the state, it's either in the state or in the city, who are on lunch plan, who get free lunch by the government because they're below the poverty line. And that's why we're doing the food drive. I want to partner with more schools. I want to do more things. We give 10% of our budget to ministries going on outside the walls of grace. I want to see that grow. I don't know if we can do it, but I want to do it. I want us to be defined and known in the community by our generosity and by our commitment to community, our commitment to one another, our commitment to the places that we live, our involvement in our various circles of influence out in the community. Different churches are known for different things. I don't want us to be known at being really good at a particular ministry over another ministry. I don't want us to be known for our pastor. I want us to be known for our people, that we're generous, that we're committed to one another and that we're committed to the people around us. So we want a reputation in our community to be. This last one is one that I love so much. It means so much to me. I want Grace to be a place where people see Jesus because we listen for and participate in his sweeter song. Now, every church would say that we want people to walk in and see Jesus here, and that's true of us too. And I believe that Jesus tells us that this is what we should do. He tells us that we should let our good deeds be seen before others, that our, let our light shine before others, that they may see our good deeds, and so glorify our Father who is in heaven, that they will see us, and as a result of how we act and how we love, that they will glorify our God, that we will almost passively evangelize. That Paul says, and I said this a couple weeks ago, that we are a processional led by Christ, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. People should see Jesus. They should feel Jesus when they come in this place, when they are around grace people, they should say Jesus was there. But the bigger question is, how do we get that done? And I think we get that done by listening, by being a people who listen for the sweeter song that Jesus is playing us. And in listening for it, we play it along as well. And here's what I mean. In Greek mythology, there's this hero named Odysseus. Odysseus, he was clever. He wasn't stronger or more athletic than everyone, but he was clever than people. I like Odysseus. And he thought his way through things. And they were sailing home. I think he was from Ithaca, but I wouldn't, you know, bet money on it. I mean, I would bet five bucks for fun, but they're going towards Ithaca, going home. And on the way home, they had to pass the island to the sirens. And the sirens on that island, they were these women that sang this song that was so beautiful that once a sailor heard it, he could not help but divert his boat to that island. It drew them in. And it would draw them in so deeply that they would shipwreck into the island of the Sirens and they would waste their life there and they were never seen from or heard from again. And Odysseus knew that they had to make it past the island. And so he brought with him, because he's clever, beeswax. And he told his men as they approached the island, I want you to put this beeswax in your ear so that when we pass the island of the sirens, you're unable to hear their song. And so the men agreed and they put the beeswax in their ear and they couldn't hear anything. And as they were doing that, he said, but I'm not gonna do that. I want to be able to hear the song of the sirens. So I'm gonna lash, I want you to lash me to the mast, tie me to the mast. And no matter what I say or do or scream at you or threaten you with, do not go there. And they said, okay, deal. So they go past the island of the sirens and Odysseus is lashed to the mast. And the men can't hear a thing and Odysseus begins to hear the song of the sirens. And it is so compelling. And it is so beautiful. He wants to go there so badly. And he is yelling and kicking and thrashing and threatening, but the men can't hear him. And he wants to go over there so bad. He doesn't want to go home anymore. He wants to go over there. What's over there is better than home. That's where I want to go. But he can't because he's lashed to the mast and his men sail him home. And so often I feel like that's the picture of spirituality that we have. That's a picture of faith that is painted. That we're trying to stay on the straight and narrow. We're trying to do the right thing. We're trying to go home. We're trying to follow God. But there's an island over there and it's got some temptations for us. And man, I really want to go there. And what's happening there is a lot better than what's going on here. And that looks way more fun, but I know I'm supposed to go this way. So we do things and we lash ourselves to the mast and we be the good soldiers. And even though I don't really want to go there, I really want to go there. I know that this is the way I'm supposed to go. So whatever I say, whatever I do, we put accountability in our life and we get other people and we go, gosh, I don't want to do that. I really want to do that, but I'm a good soldier and I'm lashed to the mass and this is the way I'm going to go. And if we do it for long enough, then we can get home and be good Christians. But there's somebody else who had to sail by the island, Jason and the Argonauts. And when Jason and the Argonauts went by the island, he didn't give any beeswax to anybody. He just let the song start. And when they got in range of the song and all the men's attention began to be diverted, he called on a guy named Orpheus, who was a legendary player of the lyre. And he said, Orpheus, will you play your lyre for us on deck? And Orpheus began to play the lyre. And the song was so beautiful and so compelling and so lovely that the men on the boat no longer cared about the song and the sirens because Odysseus was playing them a sweeter song. And he played that song for them all the way home. That's the version of spirituality that I want to live out. I believe that Jesus plays for us a sweeter song. I believe that when Jesus says that he came to offer us life and offer us life to the full, that he meant it. I believe that God wants what's best for us all the time, and that if God is asking us to do something, and it seems like it would be more fun to do that, it seems like it would be better to do that, I think that I would be happier if I would go over there and not go the way that God wants me to go. I want to be people who believe and listen for the sweeter song that Jesus is playing us that's going to bring us home. I want us to be people who listen for and believe that God really does want what's best for us. And if we'll just listen for it, if we'll just think about it, that we'll know that guilt shouldn't compel us and a sense of odd shouldn't compel us and that we don't need to be a church full of good soldiers who are lashed to the mast, and even though their heart is really over there, they're going to go there anyway. No. I don't want to be a church full of good soldiers. I want to be a church full of people who are in love with Jesus because of the sweeter song that he is playing for us. The sweeter song of fidelity in marriage and the love that's shared when we make wise choices. The sweeter song of discipline in our life and the joy this experience is a result of that discipline. The sweeter song of the habit of waking up and spending time in His Word and the wisdom that we gain is a benefit of that discipline. I never want to compel us with guilt. I never want to compel us with ought. I always want to look at what God is asking us to do as we preach and we teach in our student ministry and our children's ministry and our small groups, our individual conversations. And let's be people that don't look for because we said so, but let's be people who look for in Scripture and in the motivation and in the very heart of God. And no, He wouldn't ask me to do this if it weren't what's best for me. So why is this what's best for me? And let's listen for that sweeter song. And as we listen for it, we begin to participate in it. And then when people come around a community that's listening for that sweeter song of Jesus, and we're playing it too, that's how they see Jesus in us. And then before you know it, they start to sing along as well. That's the kind of church that I want to be. That's where I want us to go. So in a few minutes, we're going to hand in our pledges. We're going to worship together as we do that. And when you pledge, if you do, that's what you're pledging to, to be that kind of church and to see where it goes. I believe that the best days of grace are ahead. I believe that some of the people who will be the most influential folks who come into grace are folks that we haven't even met yet. I think God's going to write a really great story with us. So let's pray, and then we'll worship together. Father, we sure do love you. We sure are grateful that you love us. Thank you for caring about this place. Thank you for putting your hand on it. Thank you for gently convicting and guiding and loving us. God, we pray for big things today. Pray for big things today in the pledge and in what happens and in the future that you write for grace, but we pray for bigger things than that. Pray for flourishing faith and strengthened families and a church that continues to pursue after you. May you foster in us relentless affection for you and for your word. May we constantly listen for your sweeter song. Make us that kind of place, God. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here. It's good to see you. Happy New Year, and thank you for choosing to spend your first Sunday of the year in church here at Grace. I'm excited for this year, for all that it holds for our church and all the things that hopefully God has for us this year. I think 2020 is going to be a huge year in the life of Grace. As we launched the year, I wanted to start with a series that would be helpful for everybody. So if you're here this morning, wherever you are on the spiritual spectrum, if you're one who would say, you know what, I'm not even really sure that I'm a believer or that I want to be, but I want to try the church thing. I want to try to understand faith a little bit more. If you're here as a representative of a New Year's resolution to attend more regularly or whatever, or if you're somebody who has really highly prioritized your relationship with God for a long time, my goal for this series is that it would be practically useful for all of us, that you'd be able to take things home every week and really kind of assess, how do I implement these things in my life? I'm hopeful that this can be a very helpful series. That's why it's called I Want a Better Life. I don't think anybody, if we said like, how's your life right now? Is there anything that you want to be better? Very few of us would say like, I'm killing it. I mean, there's nothing else that I could find. Like, Kyle Tolbert's the only person I know who'd be like, nope, totally happy with everything in my life right now. This is fantastic. Kyle's our super energetic student pastor, for those who don't know. So we all want a better life, and so next week, we're going to look at, I want better kids. We're going to look at parenting. Then the week after that, I want a better marriage, which I know that there's only a couple of marriages in here that really want to be better. The rest of you are doing great. For those few, we're going to talk about wanting a better marriage. Then the last Sunday of the month, I'm really excited about, we're going to talk about, I want a better me. Mental health has come to the fore of our culture, and I think as a culture we have an increasing awareness of that. And so I want to take a week and look at mental health and what it means for a believer to be mentally healthy and how the church can accept and embrace and rally around the mental health of us individually and of the people in our lives. So I'm excited for that week. This morning, I wanted to start 2020 by talking about our schedules. So this morning is I want a better schedule. I wanted to talk about our schedules because I feel like as a culture, we are busier now than we've ever been. I feel like there are so many pulls and so many pressures and so many different things and obligations and senses of ought that pull us into things that we just give our days and our mornings and our evenings away to, that as a group of people, as a culture, a society, I think we are very likely busier than ever. I remember when I was a kid, which was in the 80s, which for me feels like a long time ago, I saw somebody tweet the other day, or I guess it was on January 1st, that we are now as far away from 2050 as we are from 1990, which is super depressing. But in the 80s, when I was growing up, man, Sundays, I just saw somebody over there doing the math like, they're very slow. I saw, in the 80s, you didn't schedule anything on Sundays. Sundays was a blackout day. There's no nothing on Sundays because Sundays was church day. I even remember growing up, you didn't have practice on Wednesday night. Nothing was scheduled on Wednesdays. That was a sacred day too. And now, man, like all gloves are off. Everything can be scheduled at any time. And people will obligate you to things so quickly. We took Lily to preschool to start that. And on orientation night, there's a large sign-up sheet that everybody just stares at you as you stare at it. And they're watching you. Where are you going to write your name? Surely you're not going to walk out of here without writing your name on something. And I thought, bad news for you guys. I'm not volunteering for anything. And I didn't. But my wife is sweet. Jen is so nice. So she signs up to be library mom, not knowing that it means like once a week she has to pick up books from the classroom and then take them to the library and then check out all the other books that the preschool now wants, which is funny because the amount of money we give the preschool every month seems like they can afford books, but what do I know? So that's what Jen does like every other day, but she loves it and she's continued to do it, but there are opportunities and things that get our time so frequently. I actually hold, I don't think that there is a busier season of life than that of parents of elementary and middle school kids. From a pastor's perspective, I get to see kind of all seasons of life and which groups of people can engage in which activities in the church. And the hardest ones to grab a hold to are parents who have kids in elementary and middle school. And it's not because they don't care about spiritual things. It's because they legit don't have time for anything. I had some of the moms in the church who have kids in that demographic. I emailed them and I said, hey, can I have your schedules? I just want to get a sense for how busy your lives are. Y'all, it was crazy. It was crazy. As I read through their schedules, literally stem to stern every day. The thing that stuck out to me most was one of the moms who has three kids put, I'm just reading her schedule every week. These are the consistent things every week. And it was all the time. And then she said, there's an asterisk, and the asterisk says, these are the activities that we can predict. There are unpredictable activities such as all these things, right? Swim meets and committee meetings and mom things and dance recitals and all the other stuff that fill up all the time. And she had a note on Friday afternoon. The schedule on Friday afternoon was from four to six o'clock, free time, nothing to do, smiley face emoji. For two hours on a Friday. That's it. That's the free time that the whole family has together. And I thought, my goodness, that's so busy. And some of us can relate to that. So listen, I'm not here this morning to demonize busyness. It's not inherently wrong to be busy. As a matter of fact, in defense of the moms that sent me their schedules, they made each of those decisions as a family. And sometimes you're just in a busy season or a season of hustle, and that's all right. So I don't want to demonize busy, but I do want us at the beginning of this year to think critically about how we assemble our schedules. How is it that we allow things to be put on our schedule? I also want to say up front that in our culture a little bit, we wear our busyness on our sleeve like a badge of honor, like being exhausted is a thing to be respected. That's stupid, right? That's all I have to say about that. That's a dumb thing. We shouldn't be proud of how busy we are. We should accept it if we choose to be busy, but it's not a thing to be admired that someone else is so busy that they can't wake up and look in the mirror and think, I feel rested. That's too busy maybe. But I think a bigger reason why we end up so busy with our time so obligated is that we tend to build our schedules like Hardee's builds a menu. Okay, we tend to build our schedules like Hardee's, the restaurant, builds a menu. Now, for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I don't know how much fast food is a part of your world. Fast food is a large part of my world. It always has been. It is near and dear to me. I'm in a weight loss bet with my dad and my sister right now, and so it is not a part of my world, but I think I'm going to lose the weight by about March, which means come April, back to Hardee's, baby. But if fast food is not a part of your world, then you don't know that in the early 2000s, Hardee's, as a restaurant, just completely forgot who they were. They did breakfast. They did biscuits. We know about biscuits. The rise and shine biscuits or whatever they are. Those are delicious. But then they said, let's get into burgers and let's do roast beef sandwiches and let's have curly fries and let's do chicken tenders and let's serve fried chicken. And how about soups? I'm pretty sure at one point there was an experimental deli counter at a Hardee's somewhere. I would have loved to have been in the boardroom just listening to these meetings where some intern says, you know, I think Arby's is making some real hay with that roast beef sandwich and curly fries. We need to get into that market share. And the rest of the really smart executives around the successful restaurant board went, yeah, sounds good. Let's do a roast beef sandwich. Let's figure it out. And they just started adding things to the menu. If you were paying attention, it was just this total hodgepodge. They did everything. I can't imagine what their inventory looked like. And then when that failed, they just went to, let's just do really ridiculous attention-grabbing commercials, and nothing worked. And the thing is with the Hardee's menu is none of the things were bad, right? Roast beef sandwich, that's good, but let's just let Arby's do it. Fried chicken, that's great. Let's leave that to Popeye's. They didn't do that. They just kept adding all the things. Anytime anybody suggested a good thing, boom, got put on the menu. And it led to disorganization, and it's not a very good restaurant. So I think that what we need to do is we need to build our schedules a little bit more like Chick-fil-A and less like Hardee's. We need to build our schedules more like Chick-fil-A and less like Hardee's because I think that we do what Hardee's does sometimes. Somebody suggests something that seems like a good idea, and we're like, yeah, I mean, I guess I should. We go to preschool, and there's a sign-up sheet, and everyone's staring at you, and my sense of awe is going to make me sign up for something. I can't leave here disappointing these strangers that I don't know again. Or we do the same thing with PTA, or it's time to coach ball, or it's time to be on the committee, or Nate called me and asked me to do this thing, and I really don't want to do it, but it's the pastor. I feel like I have to. So we just, when we get good ideas, we put that on the calendar, we figure it out, and we build it like Hardee's builds their menu, and maybe we need to build our schedule more like Chick-fil-A. Now, we know about Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A does one thing, chicken. That's it, chicken sandwich. And then they grilled it. And then with an act of Congress, they made it spicy. That's it. That's all they do. And you know that there's been some pretty good ideas in the boardroom at Chick-fil-A over the history of the restaurant. You know people have suggested some really good stuff. Why don't we do rotisserie chicken? No. We do chicken sandwiches. This is all we do. And the other thing I love about Chick-fil-A, if they put something on the menu and it's not working, get it out of here, man. They're ruthless about it. They really streamline what they allow there. They don't have a chicken salad sandwich anymore because they got away from the old one that was mashed down and in the warm bag and was delicious and they tried to go fancy and that didn't sell. And so now they don't have one because if it's not doing what it's supposed to do, get it out of here. They really streamline their menu. And I think that we need to build our schedules like that. So the question becomes, how do we build our schedules like Chick-fil-A builds a menu? How do we streamline it according to what's important to us, so that we don't live our life by default, so that we don't look back on the last year and go, how in the world did I invest my time? How do we do that? Well, I think that there's a biblical principle to help us, and we can find it in Matthew chapter 6. If you have a Bible and you want to turn there, go ahead. The words will be up on the screen in a minute. Matthew chapter 6 is the Sermon on the Mount. It's in the middle of it. It's Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7. It's Jesus' first recorded public address. I love it so much that we did a whole series on the Sermon on the Mount one time. And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is just dispensing wisdom and instruction for life. And in chapter 6, he says this. Verse 19, the words on the screen are going to start in verse 20 don't matter, that are temporary. And the purpose of this morning, don't invest your lives, don't invest your time, don't invest your effort and your energy and your talent and your resources in things that don't matter, but rather treasure up for yourselves, make priorities of the things that will matter for eternity, of the things that will matter after you're gone. Orchestrate your life around those things, treasure those things. And so, to me, the very obvious question in light of, in thinking about our schedules and in light of this passage and this principle is what are my treasures? What are my treasures? And normally when I do a note like this, I say, what are your treasures? It's me talking to you, but I really want you to internalize it this morning and think through what are my treasures? What are the things that are most important to me? What are my biggest priorities? And I was always told growing up, if you want to know what someone treasures, look at their bank account and look at their calendar. Look at how they invest their resources. How do we spend our time and how do we spend our money? And so if we think about time, if I were to go home with you or grab your phone and look through your calendar from 2019, what would your calendar say about what your treasures are? Because you can't fake that, right? We can say, oh, God's most important to me, my family's most important to me, or my friends, or whatever it is, my job's most important to me. We can say whatever we want is most important to us, but all we have to do is look through our appointments and the way that we spent our time, and we'll know what we really value. If we could follow each other around on the weekends, what would we learn about each other that we value? If we could see each other in the evenings during our discretionary time, that one family in the hours of 4 to 6 p.m. on Friday, what would we learn about what they value? If we were to look at our schedules and our calendars from 2019, what is it that we treasure? And so what I want us to do this morning is a little bit of homework. In your bulletin there, there's the question, what are my treasures? And there's five blanks, okay? I don't want you to fill those out here. What I'd love to invite you to do is take the bulletin home with you and prayerfully think through, God, what are the things in my life that you want to be most important to me? A better way to ask the question is, God, what are my God-ordained treasures? What would you have be important to me in 2020? How would you have me prioritize my life? I think it's a worthwhile exercise at the beginning of the year to take that home and sit down and prayerfully say, God, what do you want to be important to me? What have you placed on my heart that I need to value? And it's actually a helpful exercise. I did it this week. I just sat down and I thought, if I'm going to ask everybody to do this, I need to do this for myself. I haven't written down my priorities anywhere. I just kind of go. And a lot like Hardee's, my schedule by default just kind of happens. And so if I were to be intentional about building my schedule and listing my priorities, how would I list them? And so I'm going to share them with you this morning, not because they need to be yours and not because you need to copy my list, but just as an exercise of trying to figure out what should be important to us. And then how do we organize our life around those things? So these are my top five priorities in my life as I thought through them this week. You see, the very first thing up there is spiritual health, my relationship with God. The Bible has a lot to say about pursuing God. David writes in Psalms that as the deer pants for the water, so his soul longs after God, that that's how much we should long for God. I almost preached out of a passage where Jesus is interacting with Martha and Mary in Luke, I believe chapter 10. And in that story, Jesus is going to Martha and Mary's house. And Martha is doing what most of us would do and is scrambling around getting everything right, making sure the table's set correctly and that the napkins are folded and that the room that Jesus is never going to go in in a million years is vacuumed and that the curtains are just right. She's doing all the things that you're supposed to do. This is the Messiah, after all, and he's coming to my house. I'd like for it to look nice. And she gets upset because Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus. Mary's just sitting there soaking in Jesus's presence. And Martha thinks she's lazy and she gets on to her. Hey, you should help me. And Jesus actually defends Mary and says, Martha, Martha, you are concerned about all of these things, but only one thing matters, and Mary's figured it out. So I believe that if you're a believer, this is the one where I would say you should really write this down too as your top priority. But don't do it unless you mean it. Our spiritual health has got to be our most important thing to us. Because here's what I know about myself. I don't know what you've learned about yourself as you've pursued spiritual health over the years or as you've considered it, but for me, I'm a better everything when I'm walking with the Lord. I am more gracious with my time. I'm more magnanimous with other people. I'm more patient with inconveniences. I'm more considerate of Jen, my wife. I'm more present with Lily, my daughter. I behave better in elder meetings. I'm nicer to the staff and don't want to get out of meetings as quickly. I leave my door open a little bit more often so I can chit-chat, which is not really a thing that Nate loves to do. But when I'm walking with the Lord and he's filling me up, I become a more gracious and more kind version of myself. And I become a better husband and I become a better father and I become a better pastor and I'm walking in a sense of joy and contentment and completeness that I cannot experience away from the Father. So I would be a very strong advocate to putting as your number one priority your spiritual health. Even if you're here this morning and you wouldn't yet call yourself a believer, you're thinking things through, I would still submit to you that probably the most important thing in your life is being spiritually healthy. I think if you go down that path, it will lead you to serve the same God that I do. But I think for all of us, this is a pretty compelling top spot. Next for me is Jen. It's my wife. In Ephesians 5, Paul talks about marriage, and he says that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church, who gave himself up for her. So if we look at Jesus, his first priority was to God and being obedient to him, and then his next priority was the church. And husbands, that's how we are to love our wives. We're going to talk about this in a couple weeks, so I'm not going to step on that too much. But my Bible tells me that I am to sacrifice my life for my wife. I'm going to lay myself down for her, and I will, listen, I'm up here preaching this to you. She's sitting right there. She knows I don't do this all the time, all right? So let's not act like you should be like me in your marriages. No, we should work on this together, right? No, we don't want any liars up here. We're doing our best. But I know that this is how I should prioritize that. And what does it look like to prioritize these things? If we're to say that spiritual health is my number one priority, then what does it look like as far as building our schedule to do that? Well, first we have to identify the things that make us healthy. I think it's time in God's Word and time in prayer. And so for a lot of us, that might mean adjusting our schedule and going to bed a little earlier so we can get up a little earlier. Cutting out that last episode of whatever it is. Being willing to not see the end of the game, which by the way, go Titans last night. So that we can get up earlier the next day and invest in spiritual health. Maybe it means next week signing up for a small group and prioritizing that in our schedule. Maybe it means not committing to the things that are going to require our time on Sunday morning or some other time where it can be spiritually helpful to us. Maybe it means paring down some of the things in our schedule so that we can have more time for God. And if we think about prioritizing our marriages, I think anybody who's in here who's married, their spouse would be in the top at least three, okay? If that's not it, come see me. But how do we practically schedule for that? I know for us, it's going to mean me being more intentional about finding babysitters and getting out to spend time together. It's intentional about getting home for meals, not stopping by in the middle of the day if it's a full day. We can't just say that these are our priorities. We have to think practically about, okay, if those are my priorities, then how does my schedule mirror that? After Jen is my daughter Lily. I think she has to be after Jen. And if parents, if we're not careful, we'll let the kids sneak up over our spouse, won't we? But I think one of the best things I can possibly do for Lily is to love her mom in such a way that she wants what we have when she grows up. What a thing to say about your parents that they might want that. I think one of the best things for Lily is to grow up in a house where her parents love each other. And listen, we don't have a perfect life or a perfect marriage. I'm just saying that this is what Lily is supposed to see. And it's what I want to give to her. I want to love Lily so well that when guys try to date her, she knows. You're not going to love me anywhere like my dad does. Forget it. I want to love her so well that she doesn't put up with dummies when she's in high school and college. I really do. And I have her listed above the church. And I'm just going to tell you guys this right now because I want her to know as she grows up and we lead this church together that she means more to me than you guys do. I want her to know that. I want her to never think, man, my dad loved those church people, and sometimes it felt like he didn't love me as much. I don't want her to feel that. I don't want her to feel like she's taking a back seat to my job. I do want her to feel like she takes a back seat to my wife because I want her to marry a guy that does that too. And we're going to talk about this next week, but Lily's got to be on there because God's called me to disciple her and to train her in spiritual health as well. After that, for me, are my family and friends. My immediate family and my friends, I lump those together because for me, friendships are super valuable. I believe what Solomon says in Proverbs when he says, the companion of the fools will suffer harm, but the companion of the wise will become wise. I believe in the adage, you show me your friends, I'll show you your future. We believe passionately that you need people in your life who love you and love Jesus and have permission to tell you the truth. And so for me, I prioritize friendships. And I prioritize them sometimes over my job because I believe that we all need safe spaces where we can be completely ourselves and completely vulnerable and still completely loved and accepted. That's a picture of godly biblical love. It keeps us sane. For me personally, I want to be your pastor for 30 years, not three years. And part of that and the help for me is having good friendships both inside and outside of the church that give me life where I can just be myself. So for me, I prioritize those. And then my job. You guys. I put it there because I think the tendency is, for any of us who have careers that we care about, is to allow that to leapfrog everything else in our life. Is to allow that to steal time from other things. And I hear often from people who are retired that one of their biggest regrets is working too much. And I don't want to say that. So on the front end, I try to constantly remind myself because it will eat me up. You guys know how it is with work. There's always more to do. There's always more to think about. There's always something else to be done. There's always the next hill to climb. There's always something urgent. There's always the phone call and always the email and always the thing to respond to. It's not going to go away just because you choose to respond to this one. The next wave is coming. So at one point or another, you have to draw a line and you have to say, these are my God-ordained treasures, and I'm not going to let this one overtake ones that it shouldn't. So we have to measure how highly we prioritize our jobs or whatever else may go there that tends to eat away at your time. So my hope is that you'll go home and you'll say, God, what are my treasures? What are my God-ordained treasures in my life? That you'll physically write them out and then ask this question, what would it look like for us to radically reprioritize our lives around God-ordained treasures? What would it look like for us to radically reprioritize our lives around God-ordained treasures? If I say these are the most important things to me in 2020, then what's it going to take to organize my life around those things? What am I going to have to give up? What am I going to have to reprioritize? Who am I going to have to willingly disappoint and say, I can't do this thing anymore because I'm going to prioritize these things? And if we ask that question, what's it going to look like if we radically reprioritize our life around these God-ordained treasures, I actually have an example of what that could look like. As I was thinking through this this week, there's a family in our church, Wynn and Elisa Dunn, and they've got two kids, one in elementary school, one in middle school. I think the daughter might be in middle school now too. I got to figure that out before they come in the second service and I offend her. But I noticed on their Facebook feed is a lot of pictures like this. I think, Lynn, we have a picture of their family. Yeah, that's them doing something involving harnesses. It seems very fun. They do stuff like this all the time, all the time. They are forever going on little family outings and vacations and retreats. As a matter of fact, listen, I don't check up on you when you don't come on Facebook, but often if I don't see them on Sunday, on Sunday afternoon or Monday, I'll see a picture of their family together somewhere. Family time is big for the Dunns. And so I called Wynn. I said, hey man, this might sound weird, but I'm doing a sermon on this. I kind of explained it to him. And I said, you guys seem to be hanging out as a family all the time. Your kids are in middle school, and they seem to still like you and want to be seen in public with you, which is a big win for Wynn. And so I asked him, like, what's your philosophy around family? Like, what led you to value it this way? And he goes, well, do you know my full story? I said, I guess I don't. And he told me that years ago, he had a really lucrative job. It was a very high-paying job, but it was a high-stress job. And it consumed him. This was in the days of Blackberries, and he was forever on it. It was ever-present. Dinners, weekends, vacations, it was always, when can you do this one more thing? When can you just take this call real quick? Can you just close this out? Can you just put out this fire? It was always a part of him. And he says it was causing a lot of stress in his marriage, particularly as they invited kids into this marriage. And now his wife is home caring for the baby and he's never present. And it was causing tension and it made things difficult. And the kids began to notice how committed he was to his phone and his job too. So much so that he told me that, I think it was about 10 years ago, they went to Busch Gardens as a family. And as he was getting out of the car, he said, you know what I'm going to do? And he took his BlackBerry out and he put it in the car and he shut the doors and he locked it. And he said, when he did that, everybody in his family started crying because we've got our dad. He's going to be present with us today. I'd love to be the ticket taker at Busch Gardens that day. What's the matter with you guys? Like no one made you come. You can go back home. But his family cried because now we get dad. And it didn't take too much longer after that until he looked at his life and he said, man, I'm prioritizing things that I just don't want to prioritize right now. And so he changed careers. He called an audible, left the very high paying job, changed careers and chose a career, chose an industry that would allow him to have more time with his family. Made an intentional choice to radically reprioritize his life around what he believed to be God-ordained treasures. He said that was nine years ago. I said, as you look back on that, do you have any regrets? Or was it just best decision you ever made? And he said, you know, I'm not going to lie. Sometimes I think about the money and what would be possible if I had it. But no, there are no regrets. I love my kids. My kids love me. I have a good family, and it's so much more valuable to me than any resources that I could have. And so I'm praying that for some of us, this is just the nudge that you needed because there have been things going on in your life and you're too busy and you're too caught up and you see things slipping away from you that are important to you. And maybe the Holy Spirit's just working in your heart right now to say, hey, why don't you let some things go? Maybe this needs to be the year that you get okay with disappointing people. Where you realize, you know what? If the stranger's disappointed in me for not doing the thing that they want me to do, I'm going to be okay. Maybe we need to step away from things. I'll even say this. I want to be your pastor before I run the business of the church. If you need to step away from church things, sorry Aaron, for your own health, do it. Claim your schedule around your priorities. And in 2020, let's make some changes and reprioritize our lives around these God-ordained treasures so that when we get to the end of this year and look back on our schedule and we look back at how we invested our time, we go, yeah, I invested these things in treasures that matter for eternity so that we had a better year this year than we did last year. So I hope you'll do that. I hope you'll take the list home. I hope you'll pray through your priorities, and I hope that you'll have the courage to reprioritize your schedule around the things that you and God agree are super important to you in 2020. All right, I'm going to pray. And as I pray, I'm going to pray over the year, too, as we kick it off together, and then I'm going to dismiss and we'll go out into the world. All right, let's pray. Father, thank you so much for you, for your presence, for your goodness, for how big and marvelous and miraculous you are, for how much you care about us, for how much you care about how we fill our time. Lord, I pray that we would be courageous in naming our priorities. I pray that we would be courageous in building our schedule around those. God, if we have to say no to some things, then give us the audacity to do that. If we need to say yes to some things, give us the discipline to do that. God, we know that decisions that we make and things that we resolve to do often falter and flutter. God, I pray that you would be with us and give us your strength to see these things through so that our lives might change in profound ways, God, if that's what you would have. Lord, I pray over this year, may all the events of this year conspire to draw every one of us closer to you. Will you overcome doubts? Will you overcome fears? Will you overcome hesitation? Will you overcome hurt? Will you speak to us in the triumphs so that we don't take credit for those? Will you speak to us in the tragedy, God, so that we don't get overly angry at those? Will you please conspire everything in our life to draw us more closely to you so that we might know what it is to walk with you? For many of us, God, make this the year where we finally break the chains of the old habits and walk in new habits. God, please bless this year and bless us as we walk in it. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.