Sermons tagged with Responsibility

All right, good morning. You guys can have a seat. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thank you for being here on this holiday weekend. As I always like to remind people who come on holiday weekend, God does love you more than the ones who are not here right now. He loves you less at the beach. It's just how it goes. So thank you so much for being here to celebrate Ministry Partner Weekend with us. This is a really special Sunday for us. We like to remind you as often as we can that 10% of everything that's given here at Grace goes to ministries going on outside the walls of Grace. And so the way that we are structured is we support three international partners and three local partners. And you're going to get to hear from most of those this morning through video or from them being up on stage. Speaking of people being up on stage, we're going to hear from Addis Jamari. Towards the end of the service, I get to talk with Suzanne Ward, who helped to start that. And we get to find out more about that ministry. But I'm also really excited this morning to have David Rodriguez with us from Faith Ministry. I got to meet, you'll have a chance to cheer. David's not that big of a deal, all right? Just messing around, David. Love you, pal. I got to meet David in October of 2017. I had started here as the senior pastor, and that was the trip that we do in our church. And so we went to Mexico, and I felt like I needed to go to Mexico because missions are important to me as well. I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. And as soon as I met David, I thought, man, Grace would love this guy. Grace needs to see this guy. Grace needs to hear his heart for missions and what's going on down in Reynosa. And so I've been wanting to find a time to get him up here, and finally it's the time. So he's going to share with us a little bit about God's heart for the world, and then I'm going to have a chance to talk with him on our behalf to find out more about faith ministry and what's going on down there. Buenos dias. Puedo hacer esto en español, verdad? Todos hablan español. I was going to ask Nate to translate this for me. I feel more comfortable speaking in Spanish. I know you are an expert, but I'm going to give you a break today, my friend. So thank you so much. It's so good to be here, guys, with you. It's amazing. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity. And you know my name is David Rodriguez, and I'm Executive Director of Faith Ministry, whatever that means. I have no idea what that means, but I'm the Executive Director of Faith Ministry. And as I was walking here, I just saw those beautiful familiar faces, and thank you so much for coming and doing this with us. And I was talking with some of the youth that used to come to faith ministry years and years ago as students in high school, and now they're grown up and married and with kids and all of that, and that did not make me feel old at all. So thank you for doing that, but it's just a beautiful, beautiful time. I think the last time I was here at Grace, it was 2015 or something, something like that. I don't remember. Don't trust me on that, but it was a different world right then, 2015, a reckless world when they put in front of us a birthday cake and we blew on the candles and then we gave the cake away. What were we thinking? Gosh. But it was a different world right there, but it was just great to be here with us. And they asked me to share a little bit about God's heart for missions and for partnerships. And I know for a fact that it runs really deep in the DNA of church, right? Missions and programs and all of this. And I know for sure it's important for this church. I was hired in 2002 to work with faith ministry. And by the summer of 2003, I was introduced to Grace Youth, right? With 50 or 40 or 80 kids coming. and I wanted to run away right there. But I was introduced to the beautiful leadership of this church with everyone that you know from years and years ago, and I can see how much love you have for the communities. I can see how much you put into the ministry and how much you love everyone. And every time that the team came to the area, it was a fiesta, not only for the ministry right there, not only for us, for the whole town. You know, everyone got really excited about that, and it was just wonderful, wonderful to have. And then I was introduced to the adults, right, that they're a little crazier than the kids, so, but beautiful adults, and every time they come, I have tons and tons of people coming to the ministry, because they want to take pictures with you guys, and they call you family, and they call you my friends, and they call you, and they feel that you you belong to them and they belong to you. And it's just a wonderful, wonderful feeling about that. And that's how much you appreciate the partnership and we appreciate the partnership with the ministry. That's the fiesta, that's family. And that's how God sees us without putting ourselves first and our minds and our cultures and our languages and our ideas and all of that. We put it on the side and we say, you're my brother and you're my sister. Regardless of everything, we are family because we belong to Jesus. And that's it. That's the important part. That's the heart of God working through all of us. God loves us so much. That beats me because I know me, right? It's how come God loves me? I have no idea. I don't know about you and yourself, but you guys look beautiful and it looks like you behave very well. But God loves you so much. And that's the important thing, that we can give back that love because of what we receive. That's the responsibility that we have. We are, God is counting on you, by the way. God is counting on me to go out and to share that love. If you're expecting an angel that came from heaven, you know, to do the work that we are supposed to do, I have news for you. It's not coming. The closest thing that you're going to have to an angel is Nate here and me. Let me tell you, you are in troubles right there, right now, right? You look like an angel, by the way. I'll send you the invoice later. You are in troubles. There's not going to be fire from heaven in showing people the love of God. God is depending on you. God is depending on me to get involved in organizations like this, to go out and to share that love of God with the people that is in need. I witnessed firsthand the love that you guys have and how comfortable you are, how good you are in that field. But let me tell you something, this world is an expert on throwing things at us that make us, you know, discourage us from going. You name it, COVID or financial crisis, or you put the name there that discourage you to go out in the field and do this. And when I was growing up, I learned this the hard way because my dad was a principal, a director of a ministry at Bible College. And that's what they did all the time, going out and doing mission work and going in different fashions. And one of those fashions was singing. He had a choir, a group of people singing, and I thought that was fun. He's like, let me do it. You got old, good old David thinking that that was beautiful, and I wanted to join that team, go all over the place and sing and all that. I didn't count that my father was a perfectionist, and he wanted to deliver quality. So they were practicing and practicing for hours and hours because he wanted the harmonies. He wanted the first voice to match with the second voice. And then it was all of that. And it seems like he wanted me to join one of those voices. And I was singing not on first voice or second voice. I was singing on reverse because he was always speaking on me. So I became uncomfortable with that. I became like, this is not fun. I don't want to do this anymore. And I talked to him about that. It's like, I don't feel good about this. I don't want to do this anymore. And he looked at me. It's like, do you really thought that this was going to be fun? Do you really thought that this was going to be something easy? You think it's about your feelings? You think it's about you, how you feel, how comfortable you feel, how happy you feel about that. Let me tell you something. It's not about you. It's not about how you feel. It's about the responsibility that we have to share that love of God with the people that have never seen the love of God. So put your feelings on the side. We have work to do. And I keep on trying to sing. I keep on trying because this world makes and produces problems. And we know this wonderful God. this loving God that we need to share with the community. In Romans 5, 8, it speaks loud about this. God demonstrated His love while we were sinners. Christ died for us. And I keep thinking, how fun that was for the Lord. How easy that was for the Lord. And that's the question. How good He felt about dying on a cross for you and for me. I guess it was not fun. It was not comfortable. It was not easy. But He did it for you. And He did it for me. He loved us so much. He loved us so deep that He died for you and he died for me. He cleaned me. He saved me. He put me in a place that I don't deserve, but he deserves and he's in me. And now I have a big responsibility to go out there. God cares for me. God cares for the people. Let's go out. Let's get involved. Let's go out and tell the people from Raleigh, from people from Mexico, people from Africa, from people from all the way in the world that we have an awesome God. That God cares. That God loves us so much. And they need to hear this good news. There's plenty of bad news. Just turn on your TV. They don't need that anymore. They need to know about this God that you have. And that you can share those great news with everyone. Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you. It's so good to see you here tonight. I mean, today, tonight, tomorrow, yesterday. I don't know. But it's so good to see you here. And we love you and we appreciate the partnership that you have with us. And I heard that there's going to be tacos later on, so I'm going to be quiet now. Okay, let's go for tacos. So let's pray together. Lord, thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity to be here and to be with people, family. I know you love us so much, and I know you have saved us and cleaned us. And give us that desire, Lord, to go out and to share those good news with the people that needs to know that you are God and that you are your throne. This world is upside down, but you are not. Thank you for everything that you are doing for us. In your name we pray. Amen. God bless you guys. Thank you. Amen. Yeah, have a seat, my friend. David, I'm so excited that you committed to me on the way to church this morning that you'd come back and preach to us for the next two, three weeks. We're looking forward to your series on missions. You got it. People are not going to be happy in Mexico, let me tell you. Thanks so much for sharing that with us. I'd ask David just to share a little bit really about the heart of God and why God cares deeply about the ministries that we're focused on this morning. And thank you so much for doing that. A simple message of it is our job. God's counting on us to spread his love. And David's actively doing that with his staff down there. The folks that we've highlighted on video are actively spreading the love of God. We at Grace do everything that we can to actively spread the love of God. Suze is going to talk about that in a little bit. And so now what I want us to get a kind of a sense of is faith ministry and what they do and what David's role is there and moving forward what we're looking forward to next. And then ultimately, how can we partner with them in moving God's love forward and spreading the love of God to other people? And so really, if you're here this morning, what I would really encourage you to do, or if you're catching up online, I would encourage you to think through, God, how can I partner with one of these ministries? How can I do something? How can I help spread your love in a way that I'm not currently engaged in? What's the thing that I can engage in and help with? So just allow the Holy Spirit to kind of speak with you as we hear more from these folks that we partner with. So David, first of all, I got to hand it to you, pal. When I told you, you know, take about 10 minutes and share, I didn't think there was any chance in the world that was coming in under 10 minutes. I thought for sure we were going to be 15, 18 minutes. I'm just going to be sitting there and be like, well, I'm just going to interview him for two minutes. That's it. That's his time. So I'm, first of all, very impressed. Thank you. So tell us what Faith Ministry does. And let's pretend that there's people here who have never heard of Faith Ministry before and don't know what it is. Educate us on what you guys do and where you do it. Well, I thought you say 10 Mexican minutes. I was going to go for 20, right? But I said maybe, Jimen, you know, 10 minutes, actually 10 minutes. You did good. I appreciate that. Well, Faith Ministry is an organization that creates opportunities, opportunities to meet the Lord, to meet Jesus in different fashions, different ways. What we have is people that they leave their hometowns. They leave South Mexico. South Mexico has nothing for it is extreme poverty that is over there. It's beautiful areas, but it has nothing for them. They move into big cities like Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterey. But you need education to succeed. And Monterey is my hometown. It's four million people. So it's an industrial capital of Mexico. So it's hard for them to do it. So they come to the border, not because the border is beautiful. It's because they want to jump in the United States, right? It's the American dream. And they get stuck in the middle. They cannot come here. They cannot go back home. So they're stuck with nothing, nothing at all, with no hope, no things like that. And that's, I'm sorry, my phone, it's saying that he didn't understand what I say. So it's listening somehow. So, beats me. Your phone is mocking you from the audience. I know, right? That's great. It's throwing jokes. I didn't understand that. Can you repeat that? Okay. And that's what we do. We meet these people where they are, and we tell them that we have an awesome God. But it's hard to tell somebody that has no house and no food and no medical attention, and they cannot send their kids to school, that God loves you, right? And you go and say, God loves you. Jesus loves you so much. And they look at you like, really? You're making a mistake. I have never seen the love of God in my life. And that's why we begin doing things and we've been building houses and providing meals. We have three churches that we support and we provide meals for 150 people a month. And we create all these opportunities to tell them with actions, God loves you. And that's faith ministry. That's faith ministry in action with all of that. Yeah, great, great. And as I understand it, you guys kind of have, a little bit, you kind of have your summer focus, and then you have your focus during the year. So tell us about those two different focuses. And during the summer months, what do you focus on? And this is when teams go down, and this is how Grace has a relationship with faith ministry. And then during the year when teams can't come down as often, you're focused on other things locally. So tell us about your summer focus and your year-round focus. The summer looks beautiful for us. You know, for a few years it was awful with everything happening. But now every week we have a team. And that means that there's a group of people from a church organization coming our way. And we focus on that week and that church. And they come to build a house. And they come and there's nothing. And at the end of the week, there's walls and there's columns and there's a ring and there's a house for families. And we keep telling families, God is awesome. God is good. Perform miracles. And then there's a team coming and building a house for them. And that makes that team an answer to their prayers and how beautiful that is. So that's the summer. They come on a Sunday. They leave on a Friday. And the next team comes either Saturday or Sunday. and that's team after team all the summer. Let me interject real quick before the rest of the year, because one of the things that was interesting to me is to go down, and when you're there and you're helping build the house, and when I say help, I use that term very loosely, because I am no help. I lay the worst cinder block. I'm terrible at it, and I'm never going to do it again. That's what people say in Mexico about you as well. Yeah, I know. I'm probably a legend down there. There's no kidding around. There was one afternoon I worked all afternoon on a wall to get it to this high, and one of my buddies who goes here, Keith Cathcart, he's not here this morning, but he's a jerk. And he was there working as well, and he came around the corner to give me a hard time about the bad job that I was doing and saw the abject stress and terror on my face and left me alone. Can you imagine how bad the wall looked for him to leave me alone? And then when Angel, the foreman, got there later the day, he had to literally, I'm not making this up, take a sledgehammer to the wall to get it back aligned to where it needed to be. So help, the word help is very loose there. I will never attempt to help in that way again. But sorry for the digression. That doesn't count as part of your time. When you get there, usually they have the families on a bulletin board or something in the kitchen of where you're staying and kind of telling you the stories of the family. A single mom who works in an electronics factory and makes a little bit more than a dollar a day, and she's got two kids who are in school, and they're trying to figure it out. So I would love, just off the top of your head, I know I'm putting you on the spot, just an example or two of the last couple of houses that you built, who they were for, what was going on with the families. And then I think it's also important for the folks to know what qualifies you to get a house built for you by Faith Ministry. Well, we have a lot of examples. I'll tell you one that it's a lady that works for us and she injured her hand and she cannot work anymore. She's broken her hand and they have family, extended family with a mentally challenged kid with mobility issues. And for them to build a house, it's horrible. They can say for years and years and years and nothing is going to happen about that. And then there's a team coming in one week building a house for them. And you have to see their faces and their smiles and their tears saying, well, think this is a miracle for us. You know, this is something that God has given us. Years ago, I was working in Miguel de Man with many of you who work and a lady came to me and say, I need a house. And I told her, we cannot build a house anymore. Our summer is done. We have all the teams coming. We're not going to be able to build a house anymore. And she began crying. It's like, what's going on? Tell me. Why do you need a house? And I was not ready for the answer. And she looked at me and said, well, I need a house because I'm dying. I'm going to die. And I said, well, we are going to die, right, one way or another, sooner or later. She's like, no, you don't understand. I'm dying right now. I have cancer in my stomach. And I have two kids that they depend on me. And it was three kids that depended on her, the're little kids, so I'm gonna go and I'm gonna leave them with nothing. So I want a house for them to stay to go in because I'm gonna die and they're gonna thrown out of the street. I was speechless. What do you say to somebody like that? I didn't have any teams coming, everyone was already committed to a house, and it was that need, and I began telling her in the interview, oh, we have an awesome God and a mighty God and a God that makes miracles. And when I hear all of that, I say to myself, David, you and your big mouth, right? Now we're going to have to do something about it. And it was amazing to hear one of the teams calling in and say, David, we told you that we're going to build one house. And guess what? We have the money to build two houses. So you need to find me another family. And that was the miracle right there. So we built a house for her. That was the first member of the Miguel Aleman Presbyterian Church that got baptized. And she got baptized in her bed. And the pastor called me, he's like, David, she passed away, and she passed away with a smile on her face. And that's the impact that you do when you come to the community because you're sharing the love of God right there with people in extreme need. And that's great. Thank you for sharing that with us. And as I understand it, to get a house, to have a house built for you, you have to have someone representing your family who agrees to work for faith ministry. What's the time period on that? How long do they have to work with you guys? It depends. If they bring me tacos, it's a short period of time. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Right. But if they don't. Right. Those jerks. Yeah. Yes. We always ask the families to come in and work because we want them to get involved. We're not a construction company. We don't build houses for people. The house is just an excuse to share the love of God with them. But we want to tell them, if you work hard, you help, good things are going to come. So eight months, we ask them to get involved. And the first thing that they do is not building their own houses. They begin building some other people's houses. And by the time that they build their own house, they already help 10 different houses or 15 different houses by the time they build their own house. And then everyone else is going to join them and build this. And their reward is at the end of the season, they're going to to have a beautiful beautiful house not the wall is not going to be straight all the time no no right but we call it art you know it's like it's it's abstract handcrafted yeah exactly exactly so well there's so many more questions i want to ask you, David, but we are running out of time. So I would encourage you, hang around afterwards for tacos. I've even heard there's going to be an after party after the tacos at Compass Rose where we can hang out with David a little bit longer. So make a plan to stay and hang out and ask him personally what else happens during the year at Faith Ministry and most importantly, how can we get involved as individuals? I would think the biggest way to get involved as an individual 22nd through the 29th, we are taking a trip down there as a church and you can go and see faith ministry. David is really, really good on site at mixing concrete and doing all the manual labor. Very, very impressive at those things. He will be right there alongside you. David doesn't do any of that stuff. He wears khakis every day and says, good job everyone. Which is why I want to be like David. All right, David, thank you so much for your time. God bless you. We look forward to hanging out with you more afterwards. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Hey, Suze. Hey, Nate. I'm glad I don't have to follow David. I don't envy you one little bit. I'm going to do the best I can. I know you will. I know you will. So, again, we'll start off. Suze is with Addis Jamari, a ministry based in Ethiopia that you and your pal Cindy started how many years ago? Six years ago now. Wow. Yeah. Look at you. Okay, so tell us what it is and why. Well, I think it's more interesting to say why it started. You went over there, you saw some things, and then this started, and then tell us what it is. Yeah, so back in 2014, said yes to a mission trip and went to Ethiopia for the first time, and we worked in orphanages. While we were there, the level of poverty that we saw was on a level I'd never seen. But more importantly, the children that were aging out of orphanages were very young. And what happens to them when that happens? And we came home with this bird. What does happen to them when they age out of orphanages? Well, I have a 15-year-old, and that's a similar age to the girls aging out of the orphanage. And they fend for themselves. And that comes with not being educated to find jobs that can be self-sustainable. They end up having to do work that you would not want any child to have to do. Slave labor, sex trafficking, things of that nature. And so this burden was laid on our heart. Because once they age out, and I'm sorry to interrupt, but once they age out, just for our American brains, there's no government infrastructure for them anymore. They've aged out. They've just exited the government infrastructure. Now they're 15 and there's nothing to help them and there is no education. Yeah, basically they're given a small stipend, some pots and pans, maybe a pillow and a good luck. That's it. And so that burden was on our heart. We came home and we said, you know, this is not right. We can do something about this. So we went back multiple times over the next few years and just began to learn, partner alongside other ministries. And Adishamari was launched in 2016, where we first opened a home for orphaned teenage girls. And it was a safe landing place for girls that had aged out to have a loving home with people that could care for them, got them back into school, really taught them about the love of God, that they're valued and worthy. And that's how Adishamari began. Right. But now, if you work in a country long enough, you begin to understand the root issue. And some of the girls in our home had living mothers, but they just couldn't afford to care for them because of poverty. So they had to make that hard decision to relinquish their child to the orphanage, knowing they would have a better chance of getting a meal there than they would at home. So the poverty in Ethiopia, and it's the capital city. We're in Addis Ababa, which is the capital city. I always forget if it's Ababa or Adaba, and I have no confidence to say it, but the capital of Ethiopia. They're there, and these women, and sometimes women and men, sometimes it's couples. They already have children. They have another child, and they are really faced with the decision of, does this child have a better chance at a decent life if we hand them over to the government to feed them because we can inadequately care for our children? Like that's the excruciating decision that their decision point that they're coming to. And some of them are realizing their best shot is to hand them over to the orphanage. Yeah, that's right. So that's how they end up having living mothers. So we noticed and learned that some of our girls in our home had living mothers. And we had this thought, well, what if we had come alongside Zelphy's mom before Zelphy was in the government orphanage and then in our home? And we gave her tools and education and things to thrive. And that's where our family empowerment program kind of came to life, where the AJ Home combats the orphan crisis. The family empowerment program prevents it. So we want to be alongside those families, giving them the tools so they can keep their children at home. So what does the family empowerment program do? So if there's a family that's partnered up with you guys in Ethiopia, what are you providing for them? And what are you asking of them? Yeah, so when you become part of our family empowerment program, we come alongside you with education. We're teaching financial literacy, English. English is very important in Ethiopia. If you know English, you can get better jobs. You can make more money. We do economic empowerment. We're teaching them how to put business plans into practice and business management. We're doing discipleship because none of this really matters if you don't know Christ and the love of God. And then social support, medical assistance, counseling. Most of these families come from immense trauma. And so in order to really make a family whole, you have to get to that root issue of what's causing some of the rift and some of the things that are holding them back from thriving. And I think what else you guys stumbled upon, if I remember correctly, is you look at the scope of the ministry you're able to do. How many girls are you able to have in the home at once? We have six, and we do that intentionally because you can really pour into six. You get many more than that, it becomes orphanage. Yeah, when I was there, you had three. How many families are you serving through the Family Empowerment Program? We intentionally keep that small as well and only do 50 because we want to really, we'd rather pour deep than spread thin. And so we do that so we can really get to know the families. My family is different than your family and different than your family, and we all have different needs. So you really want to get to know the family on an individual basis so you can serve them best. Right. And I think it's, I don't know if you picked up on that, but when they went over, it was to care for girls aging out of orphanages. And then they realized, man, we can be so much more effective if we'll focus on families and prevent it on the front end. And even intentionally keeping it small, three to six compared with 50, and I know that they want you to do more. I know that there's opportunities to take it. You could probably take on another 50 families in the next week if you really wanted to do it. And I also think that that's a wise thing that they're doing because they're a growing organization. So staying small on purpose so we can do it well and grow with wisdom instead of just grabbing all that they can grab and then being overwhelmed and doing a bad job. So I always think highly of you guys for the pace at which you're kind of going through that. So, and I would say this, she's not going to say this. If you want to partner with Addis Jamari, you can sponsor a family. I think sponsoring a family every month is 60 bucks. That's one Chick-fil-A Coke a day. Just don't go to Chick-fil-A just like once a day. Or I went the other day. That's two meals. That's two family of four lunches. It's just two. It's so expensive over there. So just don't go to lunch at Chick-fil-A twice a month. Support Addis Jamari and you're done. It's fantastic. But that is an easy way to get involved. Suze will be at a table out there, and you can find out how to support a family for the FEP program and know that what's happening over there is really, really an effective use of God's resources to love on those families. So as we wrap up, what's next for AJ? What's on the horizon? What are you most excited about? Yeah, July's a big month. We get our second set of 50 families. We are moving FEP centers. Inflation in Ethiopia has been at a rate of 35%. And so our landlord so kindly told us recently the new cost to stay at the center. And unfortunately, we had to make a move. But with that comes great blessings. So we're moving to a new FEP center. We have 50 new families coming into our program. And we also have a new girl joining our home tomorrow. So if you guys can be praying for all of those things. What's her name? Her name is Solita. Solita. Yes, I love that name. So yeah, she comes with a really hard story. So just prayer that she will feel like God's presence from day one, that the other girls in our home will wrap their arms and love around her and that she'll just immediately feel like she's home. Good, good. Great. Well, will you join me in prayer for these ministries and for Solita? And then I think, are we closing out with worship? We're not? We're canning it? Oh yeah, I'm supposed to ask everybody to do a thing. All right, let's pray. Father, thanks so much for this morning. We lift up Solita to you and just are so grateful that it was your will to acquaint her with Addis Jamari. We pray that your hand would be on her in the transition to yet another new place with yet more new faces, but that these would be faces that reflect your love. These would be eyes that carry your acceptance and your support, and that these would be arms that are your arms wrapping wrapping around her and that when she moves out, however many years from now she does, that she would be an equipped young woman with a heart for Jesus and want to go share the love with others that she's received from the home at Addis Jamari. We pray for AJ as they move into July and all the exciting things going on. And we know that even though it is difficult to change homes, God, that your hand is in that. And I pray that they would see evidence all over the new complex that this is exactly where you want them to be as they look to move forward. Thank you for David and what he's doing in faith ministry and how you're using him to share your love with the people in Reynosa and Mago de Arman. And God, we just are so grateful for the opportunity to partner with them. I pray that we would continue to partner with these ministries boldly and cheerfully as a church, but that we would also do that as individuals as well. Show each of us how we might partner with them in what you are doing in those places around the world. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, and it's good to see you. Thank you for coming on a holiday weekend. I always like to tell the folks that come on a holiday weekend that God does love you more than the people at the beach right now. You've made the wise choice, and God will not forget this. Before I just dive into the sermon, obviously it's been a very heavy week. We found out in the ways that we find out on your phone or on your TV or from a text or whatever that there was another school shooting, that the uniquely American problem happened again. And I can't speak for you and the emotions that you went through. I could guess at some of them. But I went awful quick to anger this time. And I think one of the things that angers me the most is the hopelessness that you feel for anything to actually change, for us as a country to actually do anything that matters in any way, that can give parents who send kids to school or people who go to grocery stores or people who go to church. Our strategy now as a country is simply to hope it's not us. That's our whole plan. And that's enraging. And one of the things that angers me most is the way the church seems to respond to this when it happens. And I have a lot of thoughts about what church should do, what the body of Christ should do in the wake of these tragedies. And I almost scrapped a sermon this week to share those thoughts. But I feel so strongly about them that I do not trust myself to stay in my lane and address it. I don't trust myself to get up here and not tell you what I really think. So I don't think it would be wise for me to do that. If you would like to get a beer, I'll tell you everything, I think. And I'll buy. But one thing that I do know, one response that the church should have is to be the light that beats back the darkness. Because this is a week, to me, the word that I kept feeling was despair. What can we do? What's going to change? What do we expect ourselves to do as a country when this happens again? Because it will. And you just feel this sense of despair sink in when you realize the answer is nothing. But that's not the whole answer. I was reminded this week of a quote that I share every Easter. It's one of my favorite quotes. It's from Pope John Paul II who said, for we do not give way to despair, for we are the Easter people, and hallelujah is our song. And so what the church does in moments like these is we cling to hope. We cling to the hope that Jesus will keep his promises, that he will return one day and he will make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue, that he will rectify things like this, and that there is coming a day when we will no longer get news like this. When tragedies that happen like this that cause the national conscience to weep, there's coming a day when this won't happen anymore. And that's the day that Jesus keeps his promises. So as Christians, we do this. We gather and we sing praises and we honor our Jesus and we declare him in the public square and we agree with the world that this place is broken but that we have a savior who will fix it. And so we are the light and the darkness. We are the army that beats back despair. So let's pray. Let's pray for our country. Let's pray for the families in Uvalde. And let's pray that maybe we won't have to wait for the return of Jesus for something to be different about these instances and their occurrences in the future. Let's pray. Lord, we know that you are brokenhearted this week too. We know that we are brokenhearted about this tragedy because it has been shoved in our faces, but God, I cannot imagine the tragedies you see meted out across the world on a weekly basis that must be so heavy on your heart. So God, we just first pray that Jesus would come. We cry out with the martyrs in Revelation 6 and say, how much longer, God? But until that day comes, God, give us strength to cling to you. Make us your lights in dark places. Make us your army that beats back despair. Help us to love. Help us to help others mourn. Help us be voices of reason in our different circles of influence that ultimately point people back to you. And God, we just lift up these families in Uvalde. The mamas and daddies with empty beds and bedrooms. God, the police officers that know now that they made some great mistakes that they have to live with. God, I just pray that you would pick them up too. Lord, we don't know what to pray. Everything we say feels inadequate. But we ask that you would be there, that your children would be seen, and that your light would be noticed. Your word says that you are close to the brokenhearted and that you comfort those who are crushed in spirit. So would your spirit act in Uvalde to surround those people? And God, would your spirit act in the leadership of our country to do what we need to do to protect our children in the future? Move and stir, God, in ways that only you can so that we don't have to live in fear of things like this. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. Admittedly, transitioning to a sermon after that feels a little silly, but we're going to do it together, and in like two minutes you won't even notice, okay? So, Peter. We're in the book of Peter, and this week, we're looking at 1 Peter 5, verses 1 through 11, and I'm just going to work through that text. This is going to be a good old-fashioned sermon. We're just going to read a part of the Bible, and we're going to go, what's that say? And then we're going to talk about it a little bit. So, you have a Bible in the seat back in front of you. I would highly encourage you to pull that out if you did not bring one with you. If you're looking at your phone, I will assume that it is the Bible app and not somebody you were texting. But we're going to look at 1 Peter chapter 5 verses 1 through 11. And as is my habit, I open up the passage or the topic that I'm going to be addressing that week, typically on a Monday, and kind of look at it and begin to pray through, okay, God, what do you have for us in this passage? What do you want grace to know from here? And as I read the passage this week, I thought it was incredibly appropriate because the passage on the whole is addressed to the elders of the church. Now there is one sentence in there about how young people are supposed to act, and we'll talk about that sentence. But on the whole, this passage is Peter closes up this letter. This is the very end of 1 Peter. So it's the very end of his letter. So he closes it up with some summary advice. And most of this advice is directed towards the elders of the church. And when you see the word elders of the church in the New Testament, that means the leaders of the church, both in official office and de facto leaders of the church. And I thought, well, this is perfect timing to take a passage that addresses the leaders of the church, not necessarily the older people in the church, but those who are older and more mature in their faith in the church. It's interesting to me that this passage came up on a holiday weekend, and we even kind of put out on social media that if you're the kind of person who comes to church on a holiday weekend, then this is the kind of sermon for you. Because in this passage, we are addressing the elders of the church, the leaders of the church, and many of you are leaders within grace. And I don't get the opportunity to do this very often, to kind of say, hey, grace, those of you who lead, those of you who are on committees, those of you who are elders, those of you who serve in children, those of you who lead in any capacity, when we lead at grace, here's what's expected of us. Here is the kind of leaders that God wants to install into his church. So we're going to take a morning and address those of us who are leaders within grace. A couple things about that. There's some of you who are sitting there thinking, well, great, I'm not a leader here. I'm not a leader anywhere. This does not pertain to me. And you may be right. You may not be a leader. You may not lead here yet. You may not feel like you have influence outside of here. But some of you, some of you are wrong about that. Some of you are right. And if you're right about it and you're not leading yet, I would just say, keep being the kind of person who comes to church on holiday weekends and pretty soon you're going to be leading in the church. So pay attention because the goal, one of the things that we're supposed to do as we grow in our faith is lead the church in certain ways. Now, I don't mean positions and roles of leadership, but I do mean that we become people who have influence, whose example other people look at. And so if we go through our entire Christian life and we go to the same church for 25 years and we're never at any point looked to as a leader for anything, no one ever follows our example for anything ever, then we're probably not growing and living out our faith the way that we need to. So even if you don't feel like you're there yet, if you stay consistent and faithful, God gives us opportunities. And so I think this can be helpful to tuck away and say, when I have an opportunity to lead, this is what I want to lead like. Now, some of you who think that you're not leaders in the church, you're simply wrong because you are. Because I would actually define and frame up leadership in this way. If people are paying attention to your example, then you're a leader. If people pay attention to your example, if there's someone who looks at you and because of the way you act, they think that's the way that I ought to act as well, then you're leading in the church whether you like it or not. My sweet wife right here would never, ever, ever call herself a leader. She doesn't like the idea. She doesn't want to be in positions of leadership. She hates it. I'm talking about her right now. I'm going to hear about this later. But she teaches the fourth and fifth grade kids. And if you've been in the fourth and fifth grade for the past three or four years, then you've watched Miss Jen, and you've watched how she's interacted with your parents and other people's parents and other people in the church, and they've looked to her to learn, in part, how they ought to behave and carry themselves in the public square. If you serve in kids ministry, you're leading in the church, whether you like it or not. If you're on a committee, you're leading, whether you like it or not. If you're somebody in small group who speaks up often, if you can be counted on to give your input every week, you're leading, whether you like it or not. So many, many, many of you are leaders within grace without holding official office. And some of you are leaders within grace and you do have that office. You're on staff. You're an elder. You serve on a committee or you chair a committee or you help with volunteer efforts or whatever. So many of us in this room are currently leading and setting an example and exerting influence over the church. And if you're not doing it yet, you will. So as we accept that, what does God want from us as leaders? How does Peter tell us to lead? Before I answer that question, I do want to honor the text. There is one sentence about how young people are supposed to behave in the church, and it's in verse 5, and it says this, likewise, you who are younger be subject to the elders. And then it goes on, and we'll read that verse, the rest of the verse in a minute. But I take that to mean you who are younger in your faith, heed the advice and the wisdom of the people in the church who are older in their faith than you. Listen to them. Learn from them. Ask them questions. Don't think that you have it all figured out. Don't immediately dismiss them as old and antiquated and you have the right way to do all the things. Because the church gets better when we respect our elders. I'm talking specifically to the people who are younger than me. The church gets better, I'm just messing around, when we respect our elders. When we actually listen to the generations that came before us. And I know that's true, and I've experienced it being true recently, because of the way that the cross behind me ended up getting up on this stage. Back in the fall, months ago, the fall in autumn, not the fall of man in Genesis, but back several months ago in autumn, I got an email from an older lady in the church. And she's part of a small group that's populated with some of our older folks. It's like Chris and Karen's age. I'm just messing around, sorry. You know, Lucy Goosey on Memorial Day. Really and truly some of our older people in the church, they're in a small group. It's a great small group. They've been meeting for a long time. And most of them, I think maybe all, none of them come, but they all watch online every week. They're still just being very cautious and I don't blame them. Well, one of them emailed me and she said very sweetly that she really thought it would be great if there could be a cross on the stage and laid out all the reasons why she thought it would be great if there was a cross on the stage. And I responded to her and I said, you know, I agree with you. I looked at some ways to do it. Didn't really have a great way to get it done. So I just didn't do it. Now, you know, we're going to be getting a new space, so what's the hassle? Why bother with it? And I just kind of sloughed it off, right? Like, I understand we're pro-cross here, but we've got a lot, we've got cross in our logo and everything, so let's just relax about the cross, which seems like a really wonderful pastor response. And I mean, I said it nicer and more eloquently than that in big and long email and whatever, and I sent it off to her, and I didn't hear back. And then in February, to open our series in Lent, I preached a sermon, and in the sermon, one of the things I said was that we were acknowledging that we're standing on shoulders of the generations that came before us, and that this church wants to be a church that listens to all the voices in the church, that God forbid there be a generation of people who feel like they have aged out of relevance and that we no longer listen to them anymore. I would hate for Grace to be that place. So then I get another email. Hey, you remember what you preached? And I'm like, man, she's at it again. And she said the whole small group agrees with her. Now listen, call me a pessimist. I've been told plenty of times. Oh yeah, yeah, I think this and a bunch of other people do too. Oh yeah, who are the bunch? Well, my wife. Anybody else? But I'm sure they would agree if I talked to them. Yeah, okay, so let's chill out with whole small group language, right? And I was kind of skeptical. But I could tell it was really important to her, so I called the small group leader, an old elder of ours, who I have a good relationship with, and I said, hey man, what's the deal here? What do you think I should do? And his wife took the phone from him. And she said, you need to listen to us. Now they said it in a much nicer way than this, because these are two of the kindest people that I know. But they essentially said, you just shut up and do it, all right? Like you said you wanted to listen to the older generation. Here's your chance, big dog, do it. And I'm like, yeah, it cost me very little to do this. We need to do it. So I reached out to Greg Taylor, one of our great partners, and I said, let's inlay a cross in there, and we did. And honestly, it looks great. It was funny. We debuted it on Easter, and people were coming up to me, and they're like, hey, can we please keep the cross up there? Is that just for Easter? I'm like, yeah, no, Greg worked on it for like 20 hours, so it's going to stay up there. And in the weeks subsequent to that, Jen and I are standing over here worshiping, and she leans over to me, and she goes, it looks so good. It makes this room so much better. And it does. And I emailed the whole small group, and I said, guys, I am so sorry for being obstinate and stubborn and not listening to you. You made the church better. Thank you for your grace and putting up with me. And they were very kind and they are very gracious to me. But the church gets better when we listen to the voices that came before us. We should not slough them off. We should not dismiss them as antiquated, as not understanding, as not really getting it. We should hear some value in their years and in their experience and apply it to our lives. Our marriages would get better. Our small groups will get better. Our children will get better. Our relationships and our families will get better when we listen to the voices that came before us. Now, most of the passage, as I said, is addressed to the elders in the church, to the leaders in the church, to those who exert influence in the church. And I think I laid out the case that that's going to be most of you. So what does God expect from his leaders? And as we think about leadership at Grace, what do we expect from our leaders? So what does God ask of his leaders? The first thing that he asks is that we lead for the sake of others, not ourselves. Lead for the sake of others, not yourselves. I'm going to read you the verses that kind of lay this out, starting in verse 1. He writes, This may be to me the most crucial element of effective leadership. It may be for me the biggest responsibility that anyone with influence carries. That we acknowledge that we carry that influence not for ourselves, but for the sake of those that we serve. We're put in a position of committee chair, sitting on a committee, or being an elder, or being placed on staff, or being placed in a volunteer role. We're placed there not for ourselves, but so that we can serve the people that we have influence over. And sometimes it's really easy to see how people will use their leadership to be domineering and make it about themselves. I have a good buddy whose son Miles is six years old and he's playing on his first little T-ball baseball team or whatever it is. And he was expressing some frustration the other day because the coach will only put Miles in right field. He never puts him in any other positions. And my buddy's kind of, he's ticked. And he's like, listen, Miles isn't the best one out there. He might be the worst one out there, but he's also six. And this is teaching him to hate baseball, which is fine for me because sooner later, you learn to hate baseball. It's super boring. But it just makes me so mad, because that coach is making just this tiny little modicum of leadership over a bunch of six-year-olds. You're doing it because no one else wants to, dude. Like, we've all made the mistake, and now you've fallen on the sword. But it's going to his head, and his whole goal is to win ballgames. So. So I got to put the best players in the best places because if I don't win this six-year-old baseball game, I'm not going to be easy to live with this Saturday. Like, come on. It's silly. And so sometimes it's easy to tell when people in positions of leadership are doing it in a domineering way, are making it about themselves and what they can get out of it and not about others. But sometimes it's a lot more subtle than that. And I know for me that this lesson came home to roost over COVID, specifically in the summer of 2020 and coming out of 2020 into 2021. I realized during that season, and I'm going to be vulnerable with the Memorial Day crowd here because no one's going to keep up with this online. Let's pick it up next week. I realized during that season that my primary motivator in doing sermons and preparing sermons, whether I liked it or not, and it had always been this way, and I would have never admitted it to you, but I would have said, yeah, that's there, but I keep my eye on it. But really and truly, for all of my preaching career, dating back to when I was 25 years old and started preaching at Covenant Community Church, my primary motivator in preparing and presenting sermons was I want to impress you. That's it. I want you to think I'm good at it. I want you to think I'm smart. I want you to think that my insights are good. I want to show you something you haven't thought about before in a long time. Show you something fresh. I wanted to, you know, learn to raise my voice when I'm supposed to and lean in when it matters and all the stuff that you learn to do. And then my primary motivation was to just be impressive. Dating all the way back to when I first started. God gave me influence. He put me on a stage and he winds me up and he lets me go. And my primary motivator in that was that I would be exalted. That I would get to walk through the lobby a hero for this wonderful message that I just gave. And I was really good at pretending like, oh, thank you, thank you. But I loved it. And then COVID happened. And when COVID happened, I'm in this room preaching to that camera with one other person here. He's sitting at the soundboard not even listening to the words that I'm saying, just trying to make sure technically everything's going well. So I'm literally preaching to nothing. And we would record on Thursday. Sunday would come around. I'd sit in my living room and watch it, which felt super weird to sit in your own living room and watch yourself preach with your family expecting them. Are you getting anything out of this? Is this changing your life right now? No adulation, no good jobs, no attaboys, very little feedback. And the thing that I wanted from the work that I put into the sermons wasn't there anymore. My motivation to prep and to be sharp and to be ready and to do well, it wasn't there anymore. And so I kind of walked through this season of lifelessness and didn't really understand what was going on. And honestly, I thought more in that season. It was the first time in my life I asked the question about myself, like, is this really what I want to do? Do I really want to be a pastor for the rest of my life? Because this job's weird, man. But somewhere in there, the Holy Spirit kept working on me. And I don't remember the day or the time. I just know that profoundly it happened kind of coming back from we spent that holiday with Jen's family for a longer time and ended up losing her dad right before the new year. And when we got back from that, there's just this switch. And I just remember, maybe it was the Holy Spirit, I don't know. But I just remember thinking, why don't you just try to help them and not impress them? Why don't you just try to be helpful and not impressive? Why don't you quit worrying about if the sermon is the best sermon that they've ever heard on this particular topic? Why don't you quit stressing yourself out about that and just try to be helpful with the topic or with the passage that's been presented. Just serve God's people. And when I started thinking about it in that way, it was like a switch went off. It was like life got breathed back into my body. It was the joy of being a pastor came back. The desire to prepare and study returned. Before that, the sermon felt like the weekly test that I had to pass. You guys gonna keep paying me? Is this good enough for you? And then after that, it became the thing I was excited about. God, how do I get to help your people this week? How can I encourage the folks this week? How can I serve grace this week? What can I show them this week? I would have never done a sermon like this a couple years ago because this is listy and pointed and boring. But as I looked at the text and what we could learn from it and what we could gain from it, I was convinced that this is the most helpful thing I can do is to say, what does God expect of his leaders? More of you are leaders than you think you are, so what does God expect of us as we lead? And what's our leadership culture going to look like here? It feels like the most helpful thing to do. So where you are in your leadership, both here and in the areas outside of the church where you exert influence? Have you made it about yourself and what that influence can do for you? Or have you made it about how you can use that influence to be helpful to others and serve them? And I don't share that with you to be able to say, look at me, I've arrived at pure motives as a pastor. It's going to be smooth sailing from here. No, I'm sure I'll preach a sermon when I'm 50, if the Lord lets me do it that long, and I will have unraveled all kinds of messiness in my 40s that I need to repent of. I just don't know what they are yet. But to encourage you, if you feel like you're in a dry season in your leadership, if things don't feel like they're going, if the joy that you used to have and the things that God has you do, if that's not there anymore, maybe, maybe he's pruning you and rewiring you to get you to a place where your service isn't about you, it's about the people that you get to help. So when we lead at grace, we lead for the sake of others. We do not lead for the sake of ourselves. The other thing that God asks of his leaders is to lead while clothed in humility. Lead while clothed in humility. He says this down in verse 5. Likewise, when you were younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you. So now he's back talking to everyone. With humility toward one another. For God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. You know, you guys are smart adults, most of you. And we know what humility is. I don't need to get up here and try to define humility for you in a clever way. You know what it is to be humble. The easiest definition that I've heard that you've heard too is humility is to think, is not to think less of yourself, it's to just think about yourself less. I think that's a good example in humility. Humility isn't to falsely claim that things are not true of you. I have to walk knowing that I'm like off the charts attractive. And for me to deny that is not humble, that's just dishonest. And that's the cross that I have to bear. You have those things you have to be honest about too. But as I thought about humble people, the people in my life who are the most humble, that I want to be more like, the Ron Torrences and the Ginger Gentries of the world. And I think of Jen's dad, John. What are those people who are remarkably humble folks, what do they have in common? I think it's this. I think humility says, I am willing to serve and learn from anyone. The people I know who are the most humble walk through life with this attitude. I am willing to serve anyone. No one is beneath me. No one is too small for me. No one needs to clean up after themselves. I can do it. There is no position. There is no piece of volunteering that I can ascend to where that is too small for me. I'm an elder of the church now. I will not hold babies. No, that's not what humility says. I'm the senior pastor. I deserve all the best things. No, that's dumb. That's not what humility says. I've arrived at this point in my company. I've arrived at this point in my life. I don't have to deal with the small things anymore. Yes, you do, big fella. Because humility says there is no service, there is no act of service that is too small for me. There is no person who is too small for me to serve. And that's the easy one. To me, the harder one is there is, I also have something to learn from everybody. Because I don't know about you, but sometimes it's possible that I can get to thinking I'm pretty smart. I've kind of figured stuff out. And I see somebody who doesn't have as many years or doesn't have the experience, and I see them making these mistakes, and they're mistakes that I probably made too, and I just write them off like I got nothing to learn from them. Or I see people who have their life organized in ways that I would not organize my life. And because of that, I write them off like I have nothing to learn from them. And that's a huge mistake. That's not what humility says. Humility says that the greatest of us can learn from the least of us. That those of us who have the most to offer and the most to share and the most wisdom, that the people in this room who we would all love to hear from on certain issues, those are also the people who think that they can learn something from anybody in this room. So when I think of humility, I think of people who go through life believing, not just trying to convince themselves it's true, but believing that they can serve anyone and learn from anyone. If we maintain those two attitudes, it's going to be hard to go through life arrogantly. Another thing that God asks his leaders to do, and this one's important, is to lead watchfully. To lead watchfully. This is the verse from this passage that you've probably heard before in verse eight. It says, be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. A lot of us have probably heard that verse before. Whenever there's a sermon done on the enemy, on Satan, that's usually the go-to verse, is that he prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. And so as the leaders of God's church, we are to lead watchfully. And what's interesting to me about this verse and this passage is normally in the past when I've read it or when I've encountered it, you kind of just encounter it and it makes me think of me. Watch myself. Take hold of myself. Just know that the enemy is prowling around and that his schemes will disrupt my life and ruin my life if he can do it, so guard myself. But in the context of the larger passage, it really feels more like he's telling the elders of the church, hey, watch the flock, watch your people, lead watchfully. Know that Satan does not like what's going on here. Know that Satan does not like when families show up here. Know that Satan does not like when new people come here or when folks get more involved. He does not like that. He is not for it. And we as the elders and leaders of the church need to be watchful. And I think of the time I went on safari in South Africa. And you're driving out through the plains and the hills and whatever. And there's the way that all of the dumb Americans look at all the fields. There's a way that we look at it like, oh, look at the rhinos. That's super fun. And there's a way that the tour guide watches the fields. And his eyes are a thousand yards beyond yours. His eyes see all kinds of potential danger, and I don't like the way those elephants are acting over there. I think we might be able to see something over here if we go over there. They're looking at 10,000 things that your eyes can't see and are not trained or affixed to. You think of a captain on a boat that's looking out on the horizon for all the potential dangers and we're just looking at the person skiing in the back, right? That is how we are to be watchful over God's flock. Everybody here is the church attends and we do the things and we interact with lives and we ask questions and how are things going and what's going on with so-and-so and how's your family and I haven't seen in a little while, whatever it is. Those of us who are leaders in the church need to have the thousand, need to be looking out onto the horizon and see all kinds of dangers and evils that are waiting up for us for the sake of the flock. And what I think of the most, to put a point on it, is that old adage that we go back to whenever we talk about this passage. Who does the roaring lion devour? Well, the ones who have fallen away from the flock. The ones who are weak. The ones who are hurt. The ones who are slower. The ones who have wandered off. And so for us as leaders to lead watchfully, we look at the fringes of the church. We notice, listen, listen, listen. We notice when families start to dip in their attendance. I haven't seen you in a few weeks. Leaders, that's a red flag. We need to reach out to them. Hey, how you doing? Everything okay? Do you wanna go grab some lunch to grab coffee? Do you want to grab a beer? That's how we be watchful. We talk to somebody and it doesn't seem like things are super good in their marriage. We got to keep our eyes on that. Whatever it is, they're not coming to church together. It doesn't seem like they're talking very much. I don't know how things are doing. They look like they're stressed. They look like life is hard on them right now. Okay. Then they're on the fringe. They're out there on their own. Leaders. We need to be watchful of that. When families start to disengage from church, it could be that the preaching is terrible. I will accept that as one of the motives. It is more likely that the enemy is driving a wedge in their life. It is more likely that they have things going on under the surface that you don't see on a Sunday morning in the lobby, and that those things are bubbling up in such a way that it's demotivating them to come to church. And they're wandering off and they're on the fringes of the flock, leaders. It can't just be me reaching back out to them and calling them and saying, hey, we missed you. We have collective ownership of that to lead watchfully, seeing the dangers that are approaching people and families before they even see them and actively doing something about those dangers. Lastly, God calls us to lead with consistency. Lead with consistency knowing that at the proper time Jesus will give you rest. Here's what Peter writes. Resist him firm in your faith, starting in verse 9, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. So Peter says, once you're doing all these things, leading with humility, making it about others and not about yourself, when you're leading watchfully, actively looking over the flock where God has assigned you, once you're doing that, keep doing it. Stand firm. Don't stop. Don't waver. Don't give up. Don't give in. Continue to cling to the faith in weeks like this when it is difficult. Continue to be the light in dark places. Continue to beat back despair in the lives of others. Continue to reach out to other people and bring them back into the fold. Continue to reach out to people when you feel like you are faltering so that they might bring you back into the fold. But stand firm. Stay consistent. Hold on tight. And God, in His goodness and in His grace, will let you rest when it's your time to rest. God in his grace and his goodness will send Jesus for you when it is time to send Jesus for you. But until then, Christians and leaders, we cling to our hope. We serve God's church well. We serve it with humility and we serve it with selflessness. So my encouragement to you is if you are a leader at grace in any capacity, if you become a leader at grace, lead well. Lead with humility. And let's lead as hard as we can, as faithfully as we can, as selflessly and consistently as we can until Jesus says it's time to stop. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for these words from Peter. Lord, I pray that you would choose people at grace to put in positions of influence who embody these things, who are humble and who are not self-serving and who are watchful. God, make me these things more and more. Lord, we are so grateful for this place where we can come, where worship is sweet, where we get to see our friends, where we get to be recharged and rejuvenated. So God, we just pray that you would protect this little place, that we would be good stewards of the souls that you entrust to us, that for all the new people who come in, God, we would welcome them with open arms. For the people who have been here, God, we will watch after them and reach out to them. We ask that you would make grace all that you want it to be, and that we would serve you well in the midst of that. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. It's good to see you. Thanks for being a part of the Mother's Day service. To the moms, happy Mother's Day. We hope that it is all that you dreamed. I had one mom come up before the service and say, not that you asked for my opinion. She's a dear friend. I said, not that you, she said, not that you asked for my opinion, but just so you know, baby dedication on Mother's Day is not a gift to mothers. We empathize with you, mysterious friend, and I'm sorry, but everybody else really liked it. I don't know what to tell you. And to those for whom Mother's Day is difficult, Jen and I walked through difficult Mother's Days. For those to whom Mother's Day is kind of just a reminder of maybe something that you don't have or that you've lost or that you've hoped for, and that is unrequited. Our hearts are with you, and our prayers are with you. And I always say that in Mother's Day services, and as I look out now, I get to see some babies that I prayed for, that belonged to some mamas that I hurt for, and that's a real blessing. We're taking a break from our series in the letters of Peter this morning for really, I guess it feels silly to say it since I'm the one doing it, but a special Mother's Day message. But this is something that I will confess to you. I'm really excited to share. I feel really strongly and deeply about what I'm going to share with you this morning. And what I'm going to share with you is actually one of my primary motivators in ministry. It is one of my primary motivators to hang in there in ministry. It's one of the things I care most deeply about. And I will warn you, I've come prepared. I've been on the razor's edge of emotion this morning. I was supposed to pray at the end of the service. There's no way that's going to happen. You'll see why. But I bailed out of that before the service started. Because I'm going to sit there next to Jen and feel the freedom to be a mess if I want to be. But I'm going to do something that I don't normally do this morning and just talk to parents. Those of you who dedicated your babies. This is for you. And those of you who are family members, this is for you. And then parents in the room, this is for you. And I don't normally do this because I don't want to exclude any portion of the audience, but I'm going to take the license and the liberty here on Mother's Day to just talk to the parents in the room. And as I do that, I wanted to begin by asking you this question and get you thinking about this along with me. What sort of legacy are you leaving for your children? One day when you're gone and your children, Lord willing, have their own families and their own people in their life who love them, what will your legacy be to them? Because we're all leaving one. Make no mistake about that. We are all of us legacy builders. We all leave behind something. And there are myriad legacies to leave. We could leave an affinity for a sports team. We could leave a legacy of being a Red Sox fan or an unfortunate Panthers fan, whatever your legacy might be. We can leave behind fandom if we like. I'm going to continue to pray for your children, Shane, as you bestow that legacy on them. It's unfortunate. We can leave behind a legacy of generosity, of kindness, of hospitality, of grace. And then we all know, and I think our greatest fear as parents is to leave behind legacies that our children do not want to emulate. To leave behind legacies that wound those who have been entrusted to us. Of sin and struggle and failure. And make no mistake, we will all leave some of those too. But God in his goodness can clean up that mess for us. But we all leave legacies. We are all building them. And I think it's good to remind us of that because it's a sobering thought. It's an arresting thought. And if we just go throughout our days, I don't think that we pay attention to that. I don't think that we are reminded of that. I don't think that we are aware of that. We can be so hurried and harried that we're just trying to get people to the next thing. All kidding aside, getting kids up and getting them bathed and getting them ready to be seen by the whole church and then having the whole church laugh at your child. That was nice. And Jen had to do it by herself. That's stressful. You're not thinking about legacy when you're trying to dry a kid's hair and just get them in the dang car. Can you just sit down? We've been doing this for six years, all right? You know the drill. Get in the car. You're not thinking about legacy. You're not thinking about legacy when you're driving them to soccer practice and when you're picking them up and when they're out of town and when you're just going throughout the day and trying to decide another day what in the world dinner is going to be today. You're not thinking about legacy. But whether we like it or not, realize it or not, we are every day building a legacy for our children to follow and to walk in. And so more pointedly, what sort of spiritual legacy are you leaving behind? What will they learn about God from you? How will they see his love in you? Mamas, how will they watch you love their daddy in such a way that compels them to either find someone like you or be more like you when they grow up? Dads, how will your children see you love their mom? Will it be in such a way that compels them to love just like you did or to demand that someone loves them like you? What sort of legacy of marriage and family will we leave for our children? What sort of legacy of godliness will we leave for them? Will they see you open your word daily? Will they hear you teach them the principles of God as is dictated to us in Psalm 78 and in Deuteronomy and in Numbers? Will they not only hear you teach those things, but watch you walk them out and believe in and trust in your integrity? Will they know in their hearts that who you are on Sunday is every bit who you are on Wednesday night too? And is every bit who you are as you go into and out of your workplace? What sort of spiritual legacy will you leave? Because I am convinced, having watched children grow up in the church for 40 years, Having experienced adulthood myself, having watched my friends and my peers enter into adulthood and into parenthood and go through life, I am convinced that this is true, that you cannot overstate the value for an individual of growing up in a home where that child knows, my God loves me and my parents love me and they believe in me. You cannot overstate the value of that truth in the life of an adult. God, my creator, loves me. My mom and my dad, they love me. And God and my parents, they believe in me. And I want desperately for this church to produce children who know those things are true. I pray most ardently for the families in this church who are raising kids that those kids will grow up and they will know my God loves me, my parents love me, and they believe in me. You cannot overstate the value of those truths and the impact they have on our lives as adults. And to that end, some of us in the room, as we all acknowledge that we build legacies, some of us are legacy carriers. Some of us inherited a rich and deep faith from our parents, and it is our job to pick up that banner and to carry it forward with faith and with consistency and with passion. And we stand on shoulders of people who have come before us, who have chosen to prize Jesus in their life and have bestowed that richness of faith upon us. And our job as the carriers is to pick up the banner and go with it. And if you are a carrier of a legacy, you know the blessing that that is. You know the advantage that gives you. If you lived any life as an adult, you know the wealth that that has to grow up knowing, man, my God loves me and my parents love me and they believe in me. And to enter into adulthood being certain of those things and to have your own children and not have to worry and not have to be confused. What does godly parenthood look like? Because your parents faithfully modeled that for you. So all you do is you take the baton and you run with it. So some of us are legacy carriers. And you know the blessing of what that is. Others of us are tasked with being legacy starters. Others of us have parents, grew up in homes that may have been wonderful, may have been full of love, and maybe your parents bestowed upon you some wonderful traits of kindness and graciousness and generosity, but you did not learn from your parents what it was to love Jesus. You did not see godliness and devotion to Christ modeled in your home on a day-to-day basis. And so you don't know what that looks like as an adult. You're a legacy starter. You're a legacy beginner. You are tasked with making the decision to say, the generations that came before me, they didn't value godliness. They didn't teach the love of Christ in their home. They just were clouded and they didn't see it and they didn't have it. And I've entered into adulthood and I'm gonna draw a line in the sand that from now on, the generations that come in my family that have my last name will know that Jesus loves them. And you make a choice that moving forward, the name that you're giving to your kids is going to mean something different than the name that you got when you were a kid. You're a legacy starter. And for you, I pray the hardest. I don't know if it's fair. I don't mean to neglect anyone else, but you're the ones I love the most. You are the ones for whom I carry the most hope because I know it's hard to start a legacy. I've seen the wounds that you enter into life with. I've seen how hard it is to choose faith when you don't know the way. And I, with you, hope that your kids don't have to figure that out. I hope that they don't have to learn the lessons that you're learning. I hope that they don't have to walk the path that you've walked. I hope that you can walk it for them so that they might be legacy carriers, so that they might carry the baton on from you. And I pray hardest for you because I do think that your path is more difficult and because that's who my parents were. I won't get into the details because it's probably not appropriate here, but for different reasons, each of my parents had to draw a line in the sand and say, our name is going to mean something different when we give it to our children. And it did. And they've said it. And I get the blessing of being a carrier. I get the blessing of standing on shoulders and I've watched them struggle and I've watched them try and I've watched them prize Jesus in our home. And for those of you who are legacy starters, I want you to grow old and look at your children and see the struggles but know that it was worth it. And if you play your cards right, one day, one of your children could be the pastor of a tiny church straddling an aquarium store. And church, as we seek to surround these families. As we seek to surround these families. And at the beginning of the service, we stood, all of us. We are part of building that legacy too. In our small groups and in the ebbs and flows of life. As passions might wane, as other things in life might seek to interfere with the goals of the families and the parents. It's our job as a church to step in, to rally around, to protect, to pray for, to support, to challenge, to convict, to hope, and to see these families through as we all leave legacies. Grandparents, you're leaving one too. Your children will remember how you loved on and cared for their children. It's great if you're the fun one. Be the godly one. Be the praying one. Be the supportive one. Be the one that fights for their marriages. Be the one that loves your children well. And your children will inherit that legacy too. And let us remember remember as we seek to build these legacies, as we surround the parents who seek to leave a wake of godliness behind them, that our goal is not to raise well-behaved 10-year-olds. Big deal. Our goal is to release grown adults into the world who know that God loves them, that you love them, and that God believes in them, and that Christ died for them. Our goal is to raise grown adults who know that God loves them and he cherishes them. When I pray for my children, I pray that they would know God better than I do. I pray that they would love Jesus more than I do. And I pray that I would see things in their walks and in their journeys that inspire and convict me. I pray that they will go further than I do. And to put a fine point on it, what we are praying for is Ephesians 2.10. Ephesians 2.10 says that we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. And I love that verse because it tells us that God created us intentionally, on purpose, so that one day we might walk in the good works that he has laid out for us, that he has designed us for, that he has gifted us for, that he has turned us towards in our various bents. But as I think about it this morning, it occurs to me that that is the job of the parent, is to know and acknowledge that your children are God's workmanship. And they were created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has purposed them for before the beginning of time that they might walk in them. So as a parent, your role is to raise children who have ears to hear and eyes to see the good works that God has created them to walk in and then have the courage and the faith and the love and the passion and the freedom to walk in those good works. That's what we pray for. That's what we hope for. That we will release out of grace for generation after generation legacy carriers, not starters. That we will release generation after generation at Grace kids into the world who know that they are God's workmanship and they are seeking out the good works that they might walk in that God intentioned and purposed them for. That is our hope and our prayer for the families of Grace. And that is the challenge to the parents of Grace. And in light of that challenge, as we wrap up the service today, I'm going to invite the band up to sing a prayer over us. It's a song called The Blessing. And it's pulled straight from Scripture. It's pulled straight from Scripture most pointedly. You'll hear these words that are written in Numbers chapter six. The author writes this, the Lord spoke to Moses, tell Aaron and his sons, this is how you are to bless the Israelites. You should say to them, may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace. This song is an amalgamation of a passage in Deuteronomy that tells us to teach the word to our children, to put it on our walls, to repeat it to them in our coming and in our going. It's an amalgamation of this passage in Numbers and even the passage that we read from Psalms, a generation after generation, that if we can establish a legacy, then generation after generation can take that baton and run with it. And so this song is a prayer. And I'm going to invite you to just sit and let it be sung over you, parents. And in the song, there's this word, amen. And in the case of this song, it means I agree, I affirm that, yes, Lord. So in light of our role as parents, in light of our responsibility to leave behind a legacy worth following, I hope that you'll receive this song as a prayer over you before we go back out into our weeks.

Sometimes in life, we simply need to pause. We need to stop and sit and rest and think and reflect. In these moments of rest, often what we need most is for God to refresh us. We need Him to speak to us and breathe fresh life into us. We need for God to move and restore and encourage. This is why we observe Lent. It is a moment for us amidst all the busyness of our years to pause and focus on Jesus. Lent reminds us of what Jesus has done for us, how much he loves us and how he relentlessly pursues us. So let us together right now, be still and set our collective focus on Jesus, asking him to speak to us in this holy pause. Good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. It's good to see you on this Sunday. As your pastor, I should tell you that if you attend church on Spring Forward Sunday, you do get an extra jewel in your crown in heaven. That's just scriptural. It's in Revelation. You can look it up yourself, particularly if your basketball team lost last night and then you got up anyways. Boy, howdy. That's two jewels. Well done. Good for you. The love of Jesus is strong in you. That's great. Or maybe after your attitude, you just needed some church. I don't know. One way or the other. Before I just launch into this, I don't do this very often, but I kind of thought it was pretty sweet, and I wanted you guys to be able to just, I don't know, celebrate it, know it too. But Jeff, he's standing up over there, so we can all look at him again. He led us in Amazing Grace. He shared with me before the service that that was the first time that he led Amazing Grace since his dad's funeral. So we're grateful for Jeff. Thanks, man. All right, that's good. Just relax. It's tough enough as it is. Yeah, so we're in the middle of our series called Lent. We're observing Lent as a church for the first time since I've been here, and I sincerely hope that you guys, if you're a partner of grace, that you have been following along, that you've been participating. We've got the devotionals available. There's still some on the information table and they're available on the website in PDF form if you prefer that way. But hopefully you're following along and reading those every day along with the rest of the church. I love all the different voices that speak into it. And as an aside, what a gift when you're a pastor to get to, for me, I write sermons on Tuesday. So what a gift it is on Tuesday to sit down and be like, okay, I'm preaching on this topic this week. Let me open this handy book and see what five wise, godly people in my church think about this topic and then steal their ideas and make it my sermon. Like, this is fantastic. We're going to do a lot more devotional writing, I think. But it's been really cool to let other voices speak into us, and I've really enjoyed that. And I hope that you're fasting as well, that you picked something to fast from during this period. And just by way of reminder, if the fast to you never gets past just grinning and bearing it, like I've given up sweets or I've given up Coke or I've given up whatever it is, and all you're doing is getting through another day and going, yes, I didn't do the thing I wasn't supposed to do, then it's really, the fast isn't really serving you spiritually because a want for that thing is supposed to take us and put our eyes on Jesus. It's supposed to remind us that this is how we should long for Christ. So there's a second place to go when we fast, and I hope that you're going there as you're experiencing your fast as well. Now this morning, as Kyle said at the beginning of the service, we're focused on stillness. We've been talking about stillness in the devotionals this week. That's what you have read this week to kind of prepare our hearts for this service. And that's where we want to put our focus is simply on being still. And so as we put our focus there for the sermon, I would bring our attention to the same place that one of our devotional writers brought it, to Psalm 62. Kelsey Healy wrote this devotion, and I loved the psalm that she kind of used as her launching point, and so I thought I would start us here as well this morning. But in Psalm 62, the psalmist writes this, And I think that that struck me this week as I considered this message and this topic because of that word silence. And I thought to myself, and I wanted to pose to you guys this morning, when is the last time you experienced silence? When is, like, seriously, when is the last time you comfortably and by choice sat in silence? And I don't mean lack of audible noise. I also mean lack of mental noise, lack of distraction, in silence with nothing else, simply waiting on the Father and inviting him to speak. I started out the devotion, I wrote a little note to kind of set up this season of Lent, and I use the passage from Samuel when he says, speak, Lord, for your servant hears. When is the last time in our lives we sat in silence with no noise or clutter to distract us, and we said, speak, Lord, for your servant hears. Like, God, talk to me. I'm listening. I'm here. I'm waiting. Whenever you're ready to speak, I'm ready to listen. Because there's a waiting there. I think sometimes we go, okay, God, I'm ready to hear from you. And then it doesn't happen right away. We don't look up and see the sun shining on a particular bird that tells us a thing that we were wondering about. And so we just go, well, God's not speaking to me today. And we go on with our day, and we didn't sit in silence. And it just made me wonder, when's the last time you chose silence? When it was quiet. And to stifle the quiet, you didn't pick up your phone. You didn't let your mind start to race about that thing that's making you anxious. You didn't start to solve the unsolvable problem and start to try to control the uncontrollable events. When is the last time we sat in silence? And here's the other thing that occurred to me about the effort to sit in silence and stillness before God and wait for him. We exist in a period of time in all of human history where it is incredibly difficult to choose silence. It has never, ever, ever been harder to avoid distraction than it is in 2022. And I mean, I kind of think about that and just the clutter and the noise that exists in our life and how it would be processed by someone who was around in the time of the Bible, by someone who was part of an agrarian society 2,000 years ago, and how they would process all the noise and clutter in our life, I think it would be a little bit like taking them on a tour of a gym. Whenever I go to the gym, which is all the time, I chuckle a little bit because I look at all the contraptions that we have set up and they're really just set up to simulate ancient life because we don't need to do any of that stuff anymore. And I've thought about how fun it would be to take like an ancient hunter-gatherer and bring them to lifetime and just let them look around, you know? And be like, what's that over there? Well, that's a treadmill, man. Well, they're just walking. Like, yeah, that's what you do on a treadmill. Well, why didn't, like, they don't live here, do they? Like, no. Why don't they just, like, walk here? Well, we have, dude, we have cars. What do you think, man? Like, we got cars, buddy. We drive here so that we can walk in place around other people. We don't need to do that anymore. What's that guy doing over there? Well, that's called the bench press. Why is he doing that? Well, so he can develop muscles in his chest. Why doesn't he just like hunt? And like, doesn't his life require him to pick up heavy things? No, never. We pay people to pick up heavy things. We don't do that. Basically, if we don't come to the gym and simulate your life, we waste away as frail and fat, like just fragile people over the course of time, if we don't try to simulate your life. I think it would be so foreign to them what happens there that I think similarly, trying to explain to a person who would have originally read Scripture, to whom Scripture was originally written, trying to explain to them the clutter in our life would be equally challenging. Before electricity, you put the kids to bed, and what do you do? They didn't have books. Only the most wealthy people had scrolls. And if you do, I mean, you've only got a couple. How many times are you going to read that scroll, man? Like, what do you do? You can't pick up your phone and scroll Twitter. You can't turn on the TV. You can't grab a magazine. You can't call a friend. What do you do? You sit there. You just be still. You think about your day. Talk to your spouse. When you're on the hills shepherding all day and the sheep are eating and you can't pick up the phone, what do you do? Well, you sit. You're silent. You wait. And it's worth, I think, pointing out this unique challenge that we face for stillness and silence in our lives. Because it is so vastly different from a large swath of human history. And it makes me wonder, can this possibly be good for us as people, for our spiritual health, for our mental health? Can it possibly be good for us to be so distracted and so diverted all the time? Can it possibly be good for us to cure our boredom this quickly? That can't possibly be healthy. Surely, surely the enemy looks at our devices and is delighted with the distraction that they provide. And surely the Father looks at the clutter and does not marvel at the fact that he struggles to make it through that clutter into our hearts and into our lives and into our ears. And so, I think that the point that my wife Jen made this week as she and I were discussing this is a good one. That being still requires an action step. Now more than ever, if we want to be still, if we want to be silent, we're not going to stumble into it. It's not going to happen by default. It's not going to happen while we're watching the sheep, right? We're not going to stumble on it. We have to choose stillness. It requires an action step. It requires us to actually do it. And this is modeled for us by Christ. Jesus models for us this choosing of stillness. And I can't imagine what it must have been like to be Jesus in ancient Israel. And every city you go to and every little town you go to and every street you walk down, people are clamoring towards you and they want and they want and they want and they need and they need and they need. So the only way for Jesus to just take a breath was to do what is said in Mark 1 35 that Doug read for us at the beginning of the service when he says, and rising very early in the morning while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place. And there he prayed. Jesus models this choosing of stillness for us. And that's not the only place it shows up in the gospels. He does it over and over again where he goes away to pray. And without fail, this is not the point of the sermon, but it's just worth pointing out about our Jesus. I marvel at the fact that he would go and pray and be still. And as soon as he would say amen and take a step back towards civilization, he was covered up with people who wanted, wanted, wanted, wanted, wanted. And to me, I don't need anything else to prove to me the moral perfection of Christ than to see his relentless patience and grace with the crowds that swarmed him. Because let me tell you, who would not have that patience? I marvel at that. But Jesus models for us this need to choose stillness. And so I wanted to put in front of you this morning the thought exercise. Let's take a minute, and actually I'm inviting you into this thought with me. You answer this question in your head, not to one another, because that would be distracting to me as I try to preach, but answer this question of what would it look like for you to choose stillness? What would that require of you? What kind of action step do you need to take to choose stillness, to join God in the stillness that he's created for you and invited you into? Is it a quiet car ride? Maybe there's a consistent car ride throughout your week. To work, back home from work, to lunch, something. Maybe there's a daily time when you're in the car and maybe for that car ride, you could choose to put the phone in the center console and refuse to look at it and not be notified about anything and not turn on the podcast and not turn on the music to just drown out the noise, to distract you from the silence, but choose to sit in silence and talk to God and wait on him to speak to you. One of the things that I've tried to start doing with varying degrees of success is that this helps me have a moment of stillness in the middle of my day. When I have a lunch meeting, I usually try to get to the lunch meeting early because I don't like to be the pastor that shows up after the people with real jobs, all right? So I feel like I need to show up early and look good and get a good table for us. And so I'm usually, I've got about 10 to 15 minutes to spare. And I try to sit there and not pull out my phone during that time. And just say, okay, God, I'm here. What do you got? Is there something in this conversation? Is there something in this meeting that I need to listen to or lean into? Is there something coming up? You know, my heart's restless about this. Help me trust you. Whatever it is. it's just a little pocket of stillness that I've intentionally chosen. Like, okay, here I can be quiet and not invite other noise into my life. When I was running, past tense, I would, I looked forward to the runs because I would put in my AirPods and listen to a book. And there were good books. I mean, it wasn't like, you know, anyways, I thought of 12 jokes there that I was like, nope, nope, no, no, can't make that joke. So anyways, they were good books, all right? They were helpful books. But one day I forgot my AirPods. I think I went home from church to run and I left them here. I was like, oh shoot, this is going to be the worst. But I ran in silence with my thoughts and it was great. And so then I started picking one run a week where I'm just going to do this one with just me and God and no other noise. And it was a good time. Maybe for you, you get up early. You go to bed early, earlier than you normally do so that you can get up earlier than you normally do, which I realize is a particularly cruel challenge on Spring Forward Sunday, but let's just consider it. Maybe when we eat lunch in our office, we don't turn on the thing that we normally turn on or read the thing that we normally read. Maybe we just sit and we invite God into that space. What does it look like for you to choose stillness? And as I contemplated stillness this week, it also occurred to me that you don't have to be still to be still. You don't have to be still to be still before God. You can be still before God while you do your yard work. You can be still before God while you go on your hike, while you go on your run, while you fold clothes, while you do the mindless things that life requires of you. We can all choose pockets to be still before the Father, to crowd out the rest of the noise, and to invite him into that space. And to say, speak, Lord, your servant hears. I'm listening. What do you have? And in that silence, as we're told in the psalm that we started with, wait. Wait for him. Focus on him. Wait. Allow God in his time, in his way, to speak into you. Don't rush him. His timing is perfect. He will move when He wants. The Spirit will move when it wants. But we need to choose these moments of stillness because we need to acknowledge that they will not happen by default. They will not happen by accident. God ushers us into them, and we should respond to that. All through the Bible are calls to stillness. The most famous instruction is Psalm 46.10, right? Be still and know that I am God. Just calm down. Just stop. Just quit thinking about all the other stuff. The stuff that your mind is racing on, the things that you can't control. The things that you're anxious about. The unsolvable problems that are keeping you up at night. Be still and know that I am God. Trying to figure out Christianity and all the things and what to believe and where to go and what to do and what's going to please God and how do I even navigate this and am I doing it right? Be still and know that he is God. Let's start there. There's a reason that God throughout scripture invites us into stillness with him. There's a reason that Jesus throughout his ministry intentionally seeks that stillness with his Father. And I think that there are more reasons than this, but the three reasons I would give you are this. Stillness tunes, settles, and anchors our hearts. Stillness before God where we wait for him in silence. Tunes, settles, and anchors our hearts. Stillness before God tunes our heart to his. It aligns our heart with God's heart. It sets us in the morning. It sets us in midday. It sets us in the evening where we are aligning ourselves with God's heart, where we are making space for him to speak into us, where he reminds us that we are his child. The psalmist writes that if we delight ourselves in the laws of the Lord, that he will give us the desires of our hearts. And that doesn't happen. That makes it sound like if we just love the Bible and we love God and we delight ourself in God's laws and he's going to give us what we want. We're going to have yachts and like lots of money and sweet golf course memberships. If we just delight ourselves in the laws of God, then we're going to get all the things that we want. And that's not really how that works. The way that works is the more we delight ourselves in the laws of God, the more we delight ourselves in the presence of God, the more we take joy in the things that bring joy to the heart of God, the more our hearts begin to be attuned with God and beat with God for the same things. And so by delighting ourselves in God's law and in God's love and in God's presence, he aligns our hearts with his so that our will becomes a mirror of his will. And we know that sovereign God brings about his good and perfect will. And then lo and behold, all the things that we want because we've delighted in him and allowed him to attune us to him, they happen. He gives us the desires of our hearts. Why? Because we are attuned to him. Because we are aligned to him. Through making space. Not because we pursued him. Not because of something we did. Through simply choosing to make space for God to speak into us. And I think, for what it's worth, that this is how we be obedient to all the verses that I kind of think of as consistency verses. The instructions in Thessalonians to pray without ceasing. How do you do that? How do you go through your whole day in a conversation with God? Well, I don't know, but I bet it starts with tuning our heart to God. I bet it starts with making some stillness and seeking his presence and setting that as the beginning of our day and setting a midpoint and setting an end of our day. I bet it starts with pursuing the presence of God. Philippians 4.8, you know, finally, brothers, whatever things are true or noble or trustworthy or praiseworthy or of good report, think upon these things. How do we do that? How do we think upon things that only honor God and none of the garbage that doesn't honor God? I don't know, but I bet it starts with tuning our heart to God in stillness and in prayer. I think being still intentionally and regularly is something that begins to tune our hearts to God's heart and makes us grow in who we are as believers and walk in obedience to those consistency scriptures that seem so challenging to us. Stillness not only tunes our heart to God, but it settles our heart before God. You know, there's, this has been for the Rector family a little bit of a stressful week. Not for anything extraordinary, just life stuff, man. Just stuff going on. And it's been stressful. And I went to bed last night thinking about things, and I woke up this morning thinking about things. And I was thinking about everything but the sermon. And I got to my office, and I sat down, and I was having a hard time focusing, and so I just prayed. And it occurred to me, I don't know if it was the Holy Spirit or just me actually drinking enough coffee to think, but it occurred to me, why don't you, like, just for once, practice what you preach and be still for a second? And so I was still. And in the stillness, I was reminded, hey, the things that you care about, I care about too. The things that matter a lot to you, they matter to me. And guess what? I'm God. So I'll work it out, man. And the things that are supposed to happen are going to happen. And you can't control them. So why don't you just rest easy in me? Because I've got a plan. And then it's like, cool. Great. Sorry. Sorry about all that. The last 12 hours were dumb. I apologize, God. And then you can just preach and go and do. When we seek out stillness and invite God into our space and wait and listen, the things that seemed such a big deal, the things that seemed so heavy, God takes from us. It settles our hearts. He says, you don't need to carry that anxiety. I've got it. You don't need to try to solve the unsolvables and conquer the unconquerables. I've got it. Why don't you just be still and know that I am God? When we choose stillness, it settles our hearts before God. It offers us that peace that passes all understanding that Paul talks about in Philippians. When he tells us in prayer and in stillness, don't be anxious for anything, but through everything, with prayer and petition, present your request to God and the God of peace, who transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Where is that found? It's found in stillness before the Father. It tunes our hearts. Stillness settles our hearts. And stillness anchors our hearts. The world will send us a lot of messages about who we are. You're attractive or you're not. You're valuable or you're not. You're successful or you're not. You're loved or you're not. It'll tell us a lot of things about who we are. But in the presence of God, we are reminded, no, no, no, you're my beloved child who I dearly love, who I sent my son to die on the cross for, to rescue you and claim you into eternity with me. I love you so much that I wanted to share my perfection in heaven with you. And even though you're so broken that you can't get here on your own, I sent my son to die for you, to claim you into my kingdom. I love you. And when we sit in the presence of God, he has a way of reminding us, you're enough. You don't have to perform. I love you as much as I possibly could. Yeah, I know you messed up. I forgave that already. Just sit still and be easy with me. He reminds us that we are a beloved child. We are a beloved child of the Father. He reminds us that we're good, that we're clothed in the righteousness of Christ and that we are enough. He reminds us that he has a plan for us. And in experiencing that, we're ready to go out and our cup is filled and we're ready to go out and pour out for others, but we are anchored in the knowledge that God loves me, that God invites me into his presence, that it doesn't matter where I've been, that he always is waiting on me like the father of the prodigal son, anxious for my return, that he is always seeking after me, that he is relentlessly pursuing me with his spirit. And when I sit in his presence and allow myself to be caught and held, I am reminded that he loves me. So stillness before the Father anchors us in the knowledge of his love. It settles our hearts when we are anxious about things. It reminds us of his sovereignty and it tunes our heart with his heart, and aligns our will with his will, and allows us to walk as we are called to walk. I would tell you that I believe it is fundamentally impossible. See what I'm talking about? I mean, they're everywhere. It is fundamentally impossible to flourish in our Christian life if we do not choose stillness. If this is the closest semblance to stillness you get every week, worship and my sermons, and then until next Sunday, you can't possibly flourish in your Christian life. And I'm not saying that to convict anybody, make anybody feel bad about the noise and the clutter that exists in all of our lives. I'm just saying that as a friend and a Christian. How can we possibly grow if we don't seek out stillness, if we don't intentionally choose it, if we don't invite God into that space with us? And then here's the thing, and I love this point that Alan Morgan made in his devotional this week. God creates a stillness and invites us into that stillness because he's waiting on us there. He is waiting to meet us there. He's waiting for us to slow down and to settle down and to calm down and to put everything else away in a stillness that he created, that he invites us into, in which his presence is waiting on us. And unless we allow ourselves to sit in that presence and be tuned and be settled and be anchored, how could we possibly expect to flourish and grow in our love for the Father and in our experience as Christians. So this morning, Grace, I just want to press on us to choose that. And normally, when I press on something, I kind of finish a sermon and I say, so this week, focus on blank. But I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna say, so this week, Grace, let's focus on stillness. I'm gonna say, so for the rest of your lives, all right, as long as you've taken in air, make this a priority. Not this week. Not today. Forever. Make this a priority. And choose stillness. And sit with God. And be comfortable in silence and just sit there and invite him in. So I'm gonna pray and we're gonna sing and worship together. As we worship and as we sing, I wanna invite you to do whatever feels most appropriate to you. Stand and sing if you want to sing. Kneel and pray if you want to do that. Sit in silence and invite God into that moment. And then at the end of the song, we're going to have a chance to be still together before we launch back into our weeks and all the things waiting for us outside those doors. Let's take a minute in worship and then in literal stillness to invite God into this space with us. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the way that you love us. Thank you for sending your son for us, to claim us, to die for us, to love us, to show us, to model for us, and your spirit to empower us. Father, we live such noisy lives. You cannot possibly be pleased by all the access to screens and information and distraction and diversion that we have that cannot possibly make you happy. So God, I pray that we would be people who choose stillness. That we would be people who identify and abhor distraction. And I pray for fresh life breathed into us this week by simply choosing to sit and wait on you in silence. Would you please do that for us, God? Would you meet us in the stillness that you've created for us and invited us into? It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

It's good to see everybody. Thank you for being here on this February Sunday. If I hadn't gotten the chance to meet you, my name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. And we are in the second part of our series going through the book of Colossians. It is creatively titled Colossians. This week, we're going to look at a passage. And when I outlined the series, I had intended to talk about the idea of a suffering apostle, that to be a Christian, that to be all in, as we kind of put it in front of ourselves a few weeks ago, to really be pursuing God and serving the Lord and building his kingdom, means at times and ways to suffer, and I had planned on talking about that. But one of my favorite parts of being a pastor that gets to teach week to week to a church is, as we go through a book like Colossians, I know that we're not going to cover everything in the book of Colossians. I know another pastor recently did a series in Colossians, and he spent 12 weeks in the book. I could probably spend 16 weeks in the book and there would be enough there to generate sermons. I don't know that you'd want to hear all 16 of them, but there's enough there, right? So I know that when we do a four-part series in the book of Colossians that we are not going to cover everything. So my job as the pastor is to read a portion of scripture and ask, God, what do you have for grace here? What seems most relevant here? What do our people need to hear from your word? And so as I began to review the passage for this week, there was something else, not suffering that jumped off the page to me, but something else entirely that I wanted to put in front of you this morning because I found it most appropriate for grace and who we are. To get there, I want to talk about this idea. The idea of the American mythology of the cowboy. As Americans, we love a good cowboy. Now, I't mean the Dallas Cowboys, because as the rest of America, we hate them, okay? That's just standard policy. It's a good thing to do. If you love them, you love them. If you don't, you really don't. But I'm talking about like old school cowboys, John Wayne cowboys. We are a nation of cowboys. We love that mythology, the idea that one person could pick themselves up by their bootstraps, can make things happen, could pursue the American dream by hard work, by sweat, and by dedication, with no one's help, with no hand-me-downs, doing the best that they can with what they were given. They figure out a way to accomplish the American dream for their life, right? We love cowboy heroes. This week, Tom Brady just retired. If you don't know who Tom Brady is, God bless you. If you do know who he is, he's literally, he's easily, and this is hard for me to admit, I'm a Peyton Manning guy. He's the greatest quarterback that's ever lived. He's probably the greatest American professional athlete that's ever lived. And we love the mythology of the great quarterback, the guy that gets up early. He's at the facility before everybody. He leaves after everybody else. He's going through drills in the offseason. He's taking his health and his care and his strategy uniquely different than everybody else. It's kind of this lone ranger of look at this guy go and how he's achieved all of this greatness. We like the cowboy mythology and our business people. We love the stories of Bezos and of Gates and of Steve Jobs. These guys that in their basement built up this thing. They did it by themselves, by their bootstraps, on their own, no help from anybody, and now they are titans of industry. We love it in our politicians. Our last president, part of the mythology that made the people love him, love him even more, was this idea that he came up, he got a loan from his dad, and that was it, and it was small, and then he comes up and he builds his empire, and this is why, one of the reasons why those those that love him love him. In America, we love the mythology of a good cowboy, right? And I would argue, I would argue that cowboys, they build great countries. We did good. America, you could stack us up with any of the empires of history's past. I've told you before, I'm kind of a, I wouldn't call myself a student of history. That feels self-aggrandizing. I have an interest in it, and I know some things that sometimes show up on trivia night. That's about it. But I do like history, and if you wanted to make a Mount Rushmore of worldwide empires, America would absolutely be on there, and part of the reason, I believe this is this cowboy ethos and ethics. So I'm not here to demonize it. However, I would also say that cowboys build great countries, but terrible churches. Cowboys build great countries. That ethic works for building countries and for building success and for building businesses and for taking personal responsibility and the mythology of the individual and the hardworking person that outworks everyone else and that figures it out without any hand-me-downs, without any help, just totally independently. They did it. That ethic works in a lot of things, but it does not work in church. That ethic builds terrible churches, and it builds insecure and immature Christians. And I bring this up because I think as believers, I'm talking about big C church. I'm talking about Christian culture, I'm not talking about grace specifically yet. But I think as believers, we allow that American cowboy mentality to seep into the way that we understand spirituality and spiritual maturity in our relationship with Jesus. That this is a pick ourselves up by our bootstraps ordeal. This is an individual thing. This is my task is to accomplish spiritual maturity without anybody's help, without any hand-me-downs, without anybody else getting all up in my business. I'll handle my thing. My politics and my faith are private. I don't talk about those with other people. My spirituality is between me and God, and your spirituality is between you and God. I'm not going to get into that. I'm not going to address it with them. I'm not going to ask them about that. That's not my business. That's their business. And somebody tries to address that with you. That's not your business. This is my business. And we put up walls. I've seen this happen over the decades in church, where our American cowboy mentality begins to creep into the way that we understand faith and spiritual maturity, which is a terrible thing since it runs so very contrary to what we find in Scripture. This cowboy mentality of spirituality runs so very contrary to what we find in Scripture, and I could go down myriad examples, and I'll give you some more later, but that's the reason that I'm talking about this this morning, is that as I read the passage for this week, it leapt off the page to me and I thought, it's grace, man, we've got to talk about this. Because you will not find anywhere in scripture a John Wayne Christian. You will not find anywhere in scripture an encouragement to go it alone. You will not find any phrases like pick yourself up by your bootstraps, do not seek help out from others, do not seek hand-me-downs. You will not find that in Scripture. What you will find in Scripture is the assumption that our faith is always communal and conjoined. Here's what I mean. If you have a Bible, you can turn with me to Colossians chapter 1. I'm going to begin to read in verse 24 for a bit of context and simply to honor the text without just plucking verses out of it. But you'll given to me for you to make the word of God fully known. The mystery hidden for all ages and generations, but now revealed to the saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of his mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. So if we pause right there, last week, we looked at the soaring picture that Paul painted of Christ. This week, we see where he continues the thought by talking about this mystery of the gospel. And the mystery of the gospel is that that Jesus that we described last week, that is the apex of all of human history and the apex of all of human hope, is actually offered not just to the Jewish people, as we see in the Old Testament, but to all the world, to the Jew and Gentile alike, that God's grace is available to everyone energy that he powerfully works within me. As I read this week, approaching it with the idea of suffering in mind, I couldn't get past this verse. How Paul writes that we are warning everyone and teaching everyone that we, meaning me and you, the church, Paul and the church in Colossae, me and first part of it, I'll say because it's worth saying and then I'll move on. This is not the point of the sermon, but I do want to point this out. I've been a part of churches before, and I've been a part of ministries before, where it was the goal of the church to bring people to the point of salvation. And that salvation was somehow this finish line. That we go out into the community, we find the people who don't know Jesus, we talk to our non-believing co-workers, our non-believing family members and friends, we witness to them, we evangelize them, we share Christ with them, and then one day, gloriously, miraculously, they accept Christ. And that is a good and wonderful thing, and we ought to celebrate that. And I am ardently praying that in 2022, as ministry begins back anew and we start to move church again and things hopefully start to feel back to normal, that we see more salvations happening through the ministry of grace and through what God is doing at grace. I want to see more people come to faith. But when someone comes to faith, that's not a finish line, that's a starting gate. And then we continue to walk with them to maturity. So that one day in eternity, when we die and when they die, when we pass on and they pass on, we present them to Christ as a brother and sister, and they are mature in Christ. They have matured in their walk with Christ. And so Paul says the goal isn't just conversion, it's maturation. Another word, Bible word for it is sanctification, meaning becoming more like Christ in character. But the thing that I really want to draw out of there is how he says that we may present everyone. Not me, not I, not the leader of the church, but that we might be invested in everyone's spiritual growth, in everyone's maturation, that we might press into that together, that we might take ownership of the spiritual growth of those around us. And this, again, runs incredibly contrary to our American ethic. It just does. I kind of thought of it this way this week. America says, I am not my brother's keeper. And God says, it's a loose paraphrase, the heck you're not. That's kind of the Nate version of scripture. I don't know how God talks to you. That's how he talks to me. America says, I'm not my brother's keeper. America says that's their business. I see them sliding away from church. I see them disengaging in small group. I see them prioritizing things differently in their life. I see them developing him or her developing habits that are not healthy. I see them depending on substances more than I think is good. I see them kind of retreating into their hobbies more than I think is healthy for their marriage. I don't see them talking about spiritual things very much at all. And our American ethic and our sensibilities say that's their issue, that's their thing, and that's not my problem. I'll let them deal with it. And then when we get really fancy about it, here's what we say. I'll pray for them. I hope that in your prayers, God spurs you to talk to them. Or we say this, this is another fancy way of saying, not my problem, that's not my place. I'm not my brother's keeper. If someone wants to fall away from engagement in spiritual things, that's their issue, that's not my issue. And God says, the heck, it's not your issue. Paul's desire is that we may present everyone as spiritually mature. James actually writes about this too. I was reminded of this verse this week in weep and mourn with those who mourn. He writes that we are to share our burdens with one another. He writes that we are to carry each other's hardships for one another, that we are to celebrate with one another. Nowhere in the Bible will you find the ethic of, that's not my place, that's not my problem, that's not my role. But in the Bible, what you will find is Christian brothers and sisters taking ownership of the spiritual growth of those around them. I think of it this way, more pointedly. If you know me well, then you know that one of the things I value most highly in my life is friendship. I love my friends. And I have been blessed with wonderful friends from childhood that I still talk to on a daily basis. And God in his goodness has blessed me with people in this church that I consider true, true friends. And I know, I know that I seem prickly and grumpy and curmudgeonly. I am those things. That's not an act. I'm not playing around. Those things are true of me. But if I love you, I love you. And it wouldn't take me too long to start talking about my friends and the blessings that they are for me to be brought to tears at how much I love them and how deeply grateful I am for them. But my ethic of friendship is this. If you're my friend, then your marriage and the health of your marriage is my responsibility too. If you're my friend, then the quality of your fatherhood is my responsibility too. If you're my friend, then how well you disciple your children and show them Jesus, that's my responsibility too. If you're my friend, then I want deeply for your children to grow up in a home that loves Jesus and sees him at the center. I want deeply for you to be a good father. I want deeply for you to be a good mother. I want deeply for you to be a good spouse. I want deeply for you to walk with God. If you are my friend, then it is my divine directive to take ownership of the things in your life that matter most. If I don't speak into those things, if I don't take ownership of your marriage and of your spiritual health and of your parenting and of the things that God cares about in your life, then I don't love you. And it is a dereliction of my duty. And I just, to have friends in our life that we watch slide into things that are not good for them, that are not healthy for them, that we don't go and rescue them from, that we don't go save a brother or sister in wandering, that we just watch them slide and we quietly pray or we quietly hope. To do that isn't respectful of them. It's not kind of them. It's not respecting them. To do that, to watch a slide like that is cowardly and irresponsible. It is not loving. We are called to take ownership of the spiritual health of the people that God places in our life. We are called to care deeply about that and to prize the success of their spiritual health with the success of our spiritual health, to see them walk hand in hand. It is sad to me that the ethic, this cowboy ethic is so prevalent in our culture that we allow it to infuse the way we think about the spirituality of those that are closest to us. And I'm putting this in front of you as grace this morning because one of the things I've loved since the beginning of being here is the fact that grace is a church of deep friendships. Grace is a church of good and deep connections. That's what makes us us. That's what makes us special. In a world, literally, in a world, in a church culture where big box churches are taking over the world and little churches exist less and less, that's what keeps us here. It's not the worship and it's not the preaching. It's the relationships. It's the friendships. It's the relational foundation that this church is built upon. And I want to put in front of you this morning as a church full of deep and rich friendships, that within those friendships that you have, you bear a divine responsibility for the spiritual health of those around you. It is not your deal. It is not their deal and your deal. It is not between them and God and between you and God. It is between us and God to speak into the spiritual health of our friends. And so I want to lean into that this morning, this idea that we press together so that we might present everyone as spiritually mature. Sometimes, just to be honest with you, those things get relegated to the pastor. You know, this is going on in so-and-so's life. Pastor should probably talk to them about that. Why don't you talk to them about it? You've got a better relationship with them than I do. Don't be a chicken. The spiritual maturity of our children is not Aaron's responsibility. It is her responsibility to work in concert with our parents who are working in concert with their small groups and their friends. We all bear the burden of the spiritual maturity of our children. The spiritual maturity of your teenagers does not rest on Kyle, nor does the spiritual maturity of the church in general rest on Nate. No, it is a burden that we all share. I'm not preaching to you as a responsibility of a pastor this morning. I'm preaching to you the responsibilities of Christian brothers and sisters in genuine friendship. That the spiritual maturity of those around us is something that we ought to take ownership of. And here's the thing. When we do that, when we take ownership of others, they take ownership of us. When we begin to speak into the spiritual health of others, they feel a license, a good and healthy and right and righteous license to begin to take ownership in us. When I sit with a friend and I say, how are things with your wife? They feel that it's okay to return the question, how are things with Jen? How's your patience with your kids? They ask me that in return. When we begin to take ownership of those around us, they begin to take ownership of us as well. And that is a good and healthy thing. And in that way, we all help one another keep life between the ditches and pursuing God the way that we should. But I don't want to belabor that point because I really want to get to these last two because this is where the rubber meets the road. If you're with me and you're willing to accept the biblical responsibility that the spiritual health and maturity of those around us is our divine responsibility, that we ought to want to present everyone as spiritually mature before Christ, if you're willing to accept that mantle with me, then the question becomes, okay, I'm with you. How do we do that at grace? What does it practically look like to begin to step into my friend's life in this way? So I would share two things with you. The first would be this. Through prayerful, loving, friendly, empathetic, humble confrontation. I included all those words on purpose. I left them blank on your notes on purpose. I want you to go through the tedium of writing them. They're all important. It's not through confrontation. That's for jerks. All right? And some of you, some of you are like my sweet wife, Jen, and you're like, I don't want anything to do with any confrontation at all. I'd like everyone just to do what they're supposed to so that I don't have to do that because that makes me super uncomfortable. And I get that. Some of you are like me. And you're like, oh, this is great. I'm making a list. I'm having so-and-so to lunch, and this person, Nate gave me permission. I'm going to tell them they are screwed up. Some of you are going to come up to me and be like, listen, I can't think of any of my friends that need help, but if you'll point me in the direction of some people in the church, I'd love to. Which I got some things you could say to Kyle. That guy's been off the rails lately. We do this through loving, prayerful, humble, friendly, empathetic confrontation. If there are things happening in the lives of the people around you that are not good for them, then we check all those boxes before we march in there and we say something. So that when we say it, it's said in the right spirit. When this is done well, it can change a friendship, it can change a dynamic, and it can change a life. This happened to me recently. I have a good buddy at the church who's much, much older than me and only a little bit wiser, which is, you know, that's on him. And we hang out and we get beers and we do whatever and, you know, we talk about church stuff sometime and one afternoon he invited me out to beers. I'm like, you know, all right, that sounds good. And we're sitting there talking and he hits me with this. He says, Nate, you know, I've seen in you, you have this tact towards anger. You get frustrated pretty easily. And you can kind of flare up. And I don't know where he's coming from. I don't deal with that. That's not true at all. He was dead right. And he just said, listen, man, I do too. You don't want to go down that path. Your kids are going to remember that. My kids are grown. They remember it. You don't want your kids having those memories. That he saw me, that he loved me, and that he called me out. And because we're friends, because he loves me, because he wants my marriage to be the best that can, because he wants me to be the best father that I can, because he's rooting for me in my role, I didn't for one second feel a tone of accusation or condescension. I felt empathy and love and support. And it changed the way that I want to be a husband. It changed the way that I want to be a father. It was prayerful and empathetic and friendly and kind, and it mattered. And we need to have more of those conversations. And sometimes when I say prayerful, I mean prayerful. I have, and still am, I have prayed for as long as a year and a half or two for an opening to address something with a friend of mine. God, I see this in them. God, I know this is not good. God, I know it's not good for their marriage. Will you, with your spirit, please provide an opportunity to talk about this, and I will. Give me your patience to not need it, as we call it in my house, and just storm in there and make stuff happen. Give me your patience to see it. And then give me your grace and your empathy to address it when you've prepared their heart to hear it. So sometimes these conversations happen after years of prayer and patience and sensitivity and God working in their heart what he needs to work. But we need to have more of these conversations. And when we do, it joins us together the way that Ecclesiastes talks about how a three-fold cord cannot be quickly broken. It weaves and binds our lives together when we have conversations like this. So we need to have more of those. And we need to invite more of those. Which brings me to the next thing that we do in response to this. We obey this, we respond to this by encouraging and taking next steps. By taking and encouraging next steps. Now here's what I mean. One of the things that I'm going to very intentionally try to put in front of us more regularly as a church is the idea of next steps. Every church wants to make disciples. Every church talks about discipleship. The way that we define it is at grace, a disciple of God, is to identify and take your next step of obedience. We believe that this is how Jesus discipled the disciples, that he simply told them the next thing he wanted them to do. Go here and teach. Go here and cast out. Go here and pray. Sit with me and listen. He just told them the next thing he wanted them to do to be obedient to God and thus furthering their spiritual maturity and education. And so at Grace, we define discipleship as people, a disciple of Christ is someone who is actively identifying and taking their next step of obedience. And so if you want to be a disciple of Christ here, the thing that I would ask you is, what's your next step of obedience? What has God placed in front of you? Is it having a quiet time? We always say that there's no greater habit than anyone in their life could develop than that of waking up every morning and spending time in God's word and time in prayer. Is that your next step of obedience? Is your next step of obedience to stop staying up so late so that you can get up early? Is your next step of obedience to run? Is your next step of obedience to be prayerful about being more gentle with the people around you? Is it to take steps to remove stress from your life so that you can be more present and peaceful with your family? Is it to have a hard conversation that you know you need to have? What is God putting in front of you as your next step of obedience? And then to make disciples is to simply come alongside someone and help them identify and take their step of obedience. And that way we can all disciple each other. We don't have to be a guru on a hill that people come sit at our feet and we dispense our life wisdom onto them. We can simply help those around us, our friends, that's where we begin, identify and take their next steps of obedience. So one of the things that I want to be true of everyone who calls grace home is this, and this is a thing that I want to intentionally weave into what we do on a very regular basis. If you call grace home, I want this to be true of you. That there is someone in your life who is not your spouse, that's important, who knows and has permission to encourage you to take your next step of obedience. I want there to be someone in your life, someone, you pick who, who knows what your next step of obedience is and has your permission to encourage you to take it. It's simple as that. It could be in your small group. Small group leaders, if this makes sense to implement in your small group, do it. In my Tuesday morning group, that's one of the things that we do. It's a men's group. We go around every week. We go, what's your next step? How's it going? And then we get into Bible study. So maybe it happens in small group. Maybe your small group is big and you can pull over a couple of friends that are close and you say, hey, will you be my person who knows my thing? Can I be your person who knows your step of obedience? But I wanted to put this in front of us this morning because I believe that God gives us these life-giving friendships and he gives them specifically here at Grace. Not just for the purpose of joyful weekends and fun times and laughter and making joy better and making sadness more muted. Those are good reasons that we have friendships, but he also gives them to us because as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Your role in your friendships is to see your friends presented to Christ as mature believers. And if we are not actively engaged in that part of our role, then we are short shrifting our friends, the people who we love so much. And I wanted to put in front of Grace that you have those friendships because God wants you to spur one another on towards Him. And if it's not a part of your friendships, it needs to be. And the way that we can do this is through prayerful, humble, empathetic, considerate, thoughtful confrontation and through having someone in all of our lives who knows our next step and has permission to encourage us to take it. If we will do those things, I think that we can be a church that doesn't just exist as a group of friends, but exists as a group of people who collectively take on the responsibility to present one another mature to Christ in eternity. Let's pray that God would make that a reality here. Father, thank you so much for who you are and for how you love us and for expressing that love through the friendships that you give us. God, I pray that we would all have good and true friends that we can trust with things. If there's anyone here who lacks for that, God, I pray that you would provide it. I pray that you would show them a path. God, if there are folks here who are not connected, I pray that they would have the courage to get connected and to begin to experience these life-giving relationships. God, for those of us who have been blessed with those, may we use those as tools to point us towards you. Make us responsible, loving friends who take ownership of the spiritual health of those around us. God, make grace a church that takes very seriously Paul's example of desiring to present everyone to you as mature believers. Give us the courage to take whatever next step we need to take as a result of this morning and bless the conversations that flow out of it. In Jesus' name, amen.