Sermons tagged with Rest

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Jordan, it is interesting to me that you think profundity is what's required to get up on the stage when they parade me out here every week, falling woefully short of the bar. This is the third part in our series called Big Emotions, where we're just kind of looking at times in Scripture where we see a blow-up or a blow-out or people with with just big overwhelming emotions because that is so much a part of our life. That is something that we experience just as we go through life. Sometimes our emotions are too big for us and they're overwhelming. And so this morning I wanted to take a look at big emotions in our prayers and what happens and how does God respond when big emotions creep into our prayers, when our prayers really become cries. And to do that, I want us to think about prayer together. It's really, when you consider it, one of the more interesting passages in the Bible, one of the more interesting interchanges that Jesus has with his disciples. They're following him around. They're watching him do ministry. And at one point, they look at Jesus and they say, hey, Jesus, will you teach us to pray? Now, this is a really interesting question coming from the disciples. And many of you have probably considered this before. The disciples knew how to pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed their whole life. They had gone to synagogue every week, maybe daily at different points in their life. I don't know. They had seen a ton of people pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed many prayers before, but there was something different, so different about the prayers of Jesus that they had to stop him and say, can you teach us to pray like you pray? Because that's different than how we pray. And Jesus responds by sharing with them the Lord's prayer. You guys probably all know it. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. And so in that, Jesus gives the model of prayer to the disciples and to us in perpetuity. And if you break that down, I've always been taught prayer and I've taught prayer this way in church, in youth group, in camps, in different places, in men's groups, small group, when we talk about prayer, something that's always been really helpful for me is the acronym ACTS. And you guys have probably heard this before. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. So the way that Jesus opens up the prayer. When we pray, the first thing we should do is adore God. God, you're great. God, you're good. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. God, you are wonderful for this. God, you blow me away for that. And when we do this, it really puts us in the right posture for prayer, you know? It really reminds us who we're talking to. I had a Bible teacher in high school who was also my soccer coach, who was also my administrator because I went to a small school. And when he would pray in class, he would say, okay, everyone, let's pray, bow your heads. And we would bow our heads to pray, and he would wait 20 or 30 seconds. And so finally, I asked one day, Mr. Dawson, what are you doing? Like, that's awkward. Why do you make us just sit there in silence? What are you waiting on? Because it's almost like, does he want us to pray? Like, should we? And he told me what he was doing. He said he was taking his mind, whenever he would pause before prayer, to Isaiah chapter 6, where the throne room of God is described. And it says that God is on his throne, and the train of his robe is filling the temple with glory. And there's these six-winged angels flying around him saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And it's just so overwhelming that he cowers in a corner. And Mr. Dawson said that when, he said, when I pray, I like to take myself there to put myself in proper posture before God to remind myself when I pray, where am I going? I'm going to the throne room of God, the King of the universe, and I'm addressing the creator of the universe. That's a serious, somber thing. That's a place for humility. That's a place for penitence. This is why when we teach our children to pray, we teach them to bow their heads and close their eyes. It's a sign of reverence. It's a sign of respect for knowing who we're talking to and where we're going. It's why I encourage you as much as you can to kneel when you pray. Because it's hard to put yourself in the posture of kneeling and not feel humble, at least a little bit. And so Jesus says we should start with adoration. We should adore God. We should praise him. And then we should go to confession. What are the things, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. How have we trespassed against God? What attitudes do we bring into this day and into this prayer? What sins do we carry with us that yet remain unconfessed before the Father? What do we need to confess to God before him? And then we move into this time of thanksgiving, praising Him. God, thank you for your goodness in my life. Thank you for my family. Thank you for a church that I love. Thank you for the rain. Thank you for the day, whatever it is. It's John's second birthday today. Thank you for a great two-year-old son and for friends watching him in the nursery right now. Thank you for all of those things. We praise God for things. And then, suffocation. Then we ask for what we need. And you guys know, and you've heard this, that the tendency when we pray is to skip act and go straight to S. Skip all the other stuff and just go, dear God, I really need blank. I really need you to show up here. I really need this to work out. I'm really worried about this. It's all the I need, I need, I need. And there's a place for that in prayer. But the way that Jesus teaches us prayer, it follows this pattern of first putting ourself in the proper place and then confessing our sins, which remind us of the humility we should carry into the throne room. And then thanksgiving, let's acknowledge all the blessings God's given us in our lives before we ask him for more, and then in that proper mindset, say what we need to say. That's kind of the proper way to pray. But sometimes we pray when our emotions are too big for propriety. Sometimes we pray prayers that become cries. And the emotions that we bring into that moment are too big for acts. I've shared with you guys before that the first time Jen and I got pregnant, we miscarried. And I'm not in the business of doing comparative pain for miscarriages and who has the right to the most sorrow. But for us, the pain was particularly acute because we had been praying for a child for years. For years. We had struggled mightily. Our moms and grandmas were praying for babies. We had the church around us at the time praying that we could have a baby. We knew that's what we wanted to do. On my mama's deathbed, a few years before we got pregnant, the very last thing she did for me was direct someone to the top of her closet to get a stuffed animal that she made to give to my child when we had them. She went ahead and made it, and I think my sister finished it up for her so that we would have that to give to our first child. So when we got pregnant, we were elated. And then we went to the checkup for eight weeks, and the baby wasn't there. I don't know how long it took me to pray after that. But the first time I did pray, it wasn't Acts. The first time I prayed, it didn't look very much like our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. It looked a lot more like God. What in the world? What the heck? I would say different words if I weren't on this stage and there weren't children in the audience. That's how I felt, and that's how I prayed. What are you doing? Because we, and we're not entitled to this. None of what I'm about to say really matters, but to us it did. Jen's a school teacher. She loves kids. She's teaching in a Christian school, leading people towards you. We still have relationships with some of the kids that she taught in those days. I was a school teacher. I taught high school Bible. And then I worked at a church. We had made good choices. We were good Christian people. We had checked all the boxes. We had done all the things. And there was people who were living lives way more rebellious than us who were just tripping accidentally into family. And then we get pregnant and then you take it? No, I'm not praying acts. I'm not following the pattern for this one. There are some prayers that we pray that become cries. When we hear of the terminal diagnosis and we go to the Father and we say, really? This one? Him? Her? Why not me in your jacked up economy? Why them? There's a girl in our community. She's a young woman in our community. Just last week or two. She battled cancer for five years and came to it a week or two ago. Beautiful family, young kids. I don't know when that husband is going to pray again. When he does, those prayers will be cries. We've all prayed prayers like that. Where we're walking through what feels to us like the dark night of the soul and we don't have time or patience for propriety. We just go to our God and we are raw and we are real and we cry out, what in the world? How is this right? How does this make sense? As parents that send their kids to school in that private school in Nashville, what do those prayers sound like when they start to pray again? We've all prayed those prayers that are so big and so raw and so emotional that they become cries. And so I think it's worth it to look and see how God handles these prayers in Scripture. Because we get to see some. God in His goodness left them for us in His inspired Word. And so what I want to encourage you with today is, I know that we've all prayed those prayers. If you've never prayed those prayers, I'm so happy for you. I hope you never do, but I think you will. And what I want us to know as we look into the scripture this morning is that God is not offended by our prayers that become cries. I don't think God in his goodness and in his grace and in his mercy is offended when I look at him after the deepest pain that I've felt up to that point in my life and I go, what in the world? That's not fair. That's not right. That doesn't make sense. I don't think God gets offended by those things. I don't think he's so small that our broken hearts offend our God. And I actually think that there's grace and space for those prayers because we see them in the Bible. We actually see Jesus pray one of these prayers, a prayer that is so raw and so real and so emotional that it becomes a cry. This prayer is recorded in all four Gospels. We're going to look at the account in the Gospel of Luke chapter 22. Beginning in verse 39. And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, speaking of Jesus. And the disciples followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them, pray that you may not enter into temptation. And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed, saying, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, this scene, many of you know it, Jesus has just left the Last Supper with the disciples. He's instituted communion. He's told them, my body is going to be broken for you. My blood is going to be spilled for you. He knows what is going to happen. He knows when he gets done praying, he's going to be arrested. And he knows that when he's arrested, he's going to be tried. And after he's tried, he's going to be flogged and beaten, and he's going to be hung on a cross and left there to die and then face death and hell. He knows that. And so he brings the disciples with him, and he says, remain here while I pray. And he goes off a distance, one would assume, so that they couldn't hear him. And it is interesting that they all ended up hearing him, because there's nothing in the text to indicate that Jesus subtly knelt and clasped his hands and said, my Father who is in heaven. No, these prayers from Jesus that we see, in Luke it says he knelt. In another gospel it says that he fell with his face to the ground. And the disciples are a stone's throw away and they can hear him clearly. And then he gets so intense in his praying that sweat begins to mix with his blood, which we know is something that can actually happen in moments of incredibly intense stress in our lives. So the prayer that Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane was not, Dear God, if there's any other way, would you please point me in that? It wasn't that. It was Jesus on his face prostrate, God, Father, please don't make me do this. Please, is there any other way? Is there anything else I can do? I do not want to bear this. I do not want to be on the cross and hear you and see you turn your back on me. I do not want to say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I do not want the crown of thorns in my head. I do not want the nails in my wrist. I do not want to do this, Father. Is there any other way? Please, please take this cup from me. That's a prayer becoming a cry. That's Jesus sidestepping propriety and crying out to his heavenly father. And in there, he finds what we should find when we pray like this. No matter how deep, no matter how raw, yet not my will but your will be done. Please give me the strength to accept your will. So I know that God isn't offended by those prayers because his son prays one to him in full view and vision of the disciples. And then he tells us about it in all four gospels. And that made me wonder, where else in the Bible do we have prayers that are raw and real and emotional? Where else in the Bible do we have prayers that have become cries? And of course, I went to Psalms. And I just started reading them and flipping through and finding them, these things where people are just raw. I am weary unto death. I want to die. Take my life. And I put them in your notes, Psalm 142 and Psalm 13 and Psalm 77. I think of Hannah's prayer in the temple when she's praying so earnestly and fervently for a child that Eli the priest thinks she's drunk. I think of the book of Lamentations, which is a whole book of tough, raw prayers. And I was going to kind of bounce around between those prayers, but then I was reminded of another psalm that's really dear to my heart, Psalm 88. If you have a Bible, I would encourage you to turn there. I encountered Psalm 88 when I took a trip to Israel several years ago. One of the things most groups do when you go to Israel is when you're in Jerusalem, you go to Caiaphas' house. Caiaphas is the high priest that had Jesus arrested, had him tried, and had him murdered. And in the basement of Caiaphas' house is this makeshift small dungeon. And a portion of the dungeon is a cylindrical room that they would tie ropes under the shoulders of the prisoner and lower them into this pitch black, dark room. Now there's stairs that lead down, but in Caiaphas' day, in Jesus' day, that was not the case. They lower you in and they pull you up when they're ready for you. And most people believe that this is where Jesus spent the night after he got arrested, waiting on his trial before Pilate the next day. And when you go to Jerusalem, you can go down into that cell. And our guide pointed us to Psalm 88. Psalm 88 was written by the sons of Korah, we're told. But it's also believed by scholars to be a prophetic messianic psalm. And many scholars believe that this is meant to be the prayer that Jesus prays after he's arrested. If it's not the prayer that he prays after he's arrested, Jesus knew the scriptures, he knew the psalms, this could very well be a psalm that came to mind that he quoted. But when I picture Jesus arrested and alone and reading, crying these things out, it brings fresh meaning to it for me. And when we listen to it and read it, I think you'll be taken aback by how very real it is. So I'm going to read a good portion of it. Beginning in verse 11. Is your steadfast love declared in the grave or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? And then verse 13, They surround me like a flood all day long. They close in on me together. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me. My companions have become darkness. That's a real prayer. That's not a prayer you pray in church in front of other people. That's not how we teach our kids to pray. We see accusations in this prayer. You have caused my friends and my loved ones to shun me. It is your wrath that beats against me and waves and covers me. The person crying out to God in this psalm feels the darkness closing in in such a way that they don't know if they will see the light again. My companions have become darkness, he ends with. And that's it. I am grateful to God for choosing to include in his Bible and his inspired word prayers that are that raw and that are that real. Prayers that show us that when our emotions are too big for propriety, that our God can meet us in those places and hear us. He appreciates those prayers so much so that he recorded them and fought for them and protected them down through the centuries so that we could see them too. So when we pray them, it's okay. When we need to cry out to God, we can. He's not offended by those prayers. He hears those prayers. He welcomes those prayers. And here's what else happens when we cry out to God, when our prayers become cries, when we lose all sense of propriety and we're just trying to figure it out. Here's what else happens when it's literally the dark night of our soul and the darkness is closing in around us and our life is falling apart and our children are making decisions that we don't understand and our husband is making decisions that we don't understand and everything that we thought was going to happen, this future that we had projected is not going to happen. This person that I love is not in my life anymore and I see reminders of them all the time and I don't know how I'm going to put one foot in front of the other. I don't know how I'm going to do it. When we pray those prayers, this is what happens. If we look back at Luke 22, there's a verse that I skipped. Verse 43. In the middle of his praying, and there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him. In the middle of Jesus crying out, Father, please don't make me do this. Please let there be another way. God says, son, you're going to have to walk that path. But he doesn't make him do it on his own. He sends an angel to strengthen Jesus in the dark night of his soul. And I can't help but believe that God will send angels to strengthen you too. When you pray those prayers, I think God sends his angels to strengthen you as well. And I don't know what those angels look like. Maybe it's a hug. Maybe it's someone's presence. Maybe it's a text or a phone call or an email. I know in our family it's cardinals. Maybe it's a southern thing, I'm not sure. But we believe that when a cardinal shows up in your view, that that's a lost loved one who's just stopping by to say hello. Just to check in on you. And so sometimes God sends cardinals just when we need them. Another big one in our family is Mallard Ducks. You know that we lost my father-in-law a couple years ago. And Mallard Ducks were really special to him. And I can't tell you all the cool places where we've just kind of looked and there's a duck there that doesn't belong there. And it's just God kind of reminding us that he loves us, that he sees our pain, that he walks with us in that pain. Maybe, for some of us, God's using this morning to strengthen you, to buoy you. I hope so. Maybe this is just what you need. My hope for all of you is that you never need this sermon and you never have to pray those prayers. But my suspicion is you have a better chance of dodging raindrops on the way back to your car in a downpour than you do of living a life without tragedy. And so I think all of us, at some point, need this sermon and this reminder that when our emotions are too big for propriety, God can hear those prayers too. And in the hearing, in those moments, he sends his angels one way or another to strengthen us. I just got done reading a book. It's actually Beth Moore's biography. I would highly recommend it. One of the best books I've read in a couple years. And in it, she was talking to someone who faced incredible tragedy. And she asked her, how is it that you have kept going through these years? And she said, God opens my eyes every morning. I have no other explanation than that. There are nights that I went to sleep and I did not want to wake up and God opens my eyes. And so I get up that day and for us today I use the breath that's in my lungs and I praise him and I go. We will all in different times and seasons and for different reasons and in different ways walk through dark nights of the soul. But when we do, we can cry out to God. And when we cry out to God, He will hear us. And when He hears us, He will send His angels to strengthen us. I'll finish with this verse from Isaiah, and then I'll pray, because it's one of my favorites. We're taught in Isaiah that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and that he comforts those who are crushed in spirit. Let's pray. Lord, we love you. You're big, you're good, and you're gracious, and we are broken. We need you so much, and we have no right, we have no right to pound our desk and shake our fist and demand answers from you. We have no right to do that, and yet in your goodness, from time to time, you allow it, and you hug us, and you weep with us. I lift up the people today who might have recently prayed prayers like these, and I just ask that you would strengthen them, that they would feel your presence, they would feel your goodness, they would feel your love, they would be strengthened by you. Father, buoy us and tether us to you. God, we also thank you that Jesus did drink of that cup, that he did die for us, that he did conquer death and sin and hell for us so that we don't have to. And God, we look forward to a day when we understand things just a little bit better. But in the meantime, may your presence and your love be ever enough. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. Man, that was good. I tell you what, I tell you what, I love you guys. I love this place. I love this church. It is so special. God's doing something here, y'all. He's doing something in me. He's doing something in y'all. And I fully, fully believe that the brightest days of grace are ahead, that he has a lot for us to do in us and through us. And I'm excited about those. This morning, we are starting a new series. And I got to say this too. I expected for this morning to be terrible. Can I just tell you that? I expected it to be dead in here, for there to be sporadic attendance, and for it to just be a lame Sunday. I'm coming back from South Africa. I don't know what day it is. I feel like eating lunch right now. I have no clue what's going on around me or where I am. We have a team coming back from Mexico that represents a lot of our core folks. Did you guys just clap for yourself? Is that what just happened? Good job, everyone. Yes, we are the best. We got students coming back from Metta. They're all ready to fall asleep. Yeah, this is great. And then it's the middle of October, and if you don't know anything about Grace in October, it's like July 2.0. Everybody goes to the mountains to see leaves, I guess. I don't know. They don't come here to see me, and so it's just kind of sparse here. And I thought this Sunday is going to be dead. And then I'm sitting here worshiping and I'm like, holy cow, God, this is amazing. That was some of the best, most energetic, enthusiastic, sincere worship I've heard come from us. And I'm just fired up, especially about what I get to share with you this morning as we start our new series called Great Prayers. So what we're going to do for six weeks is just open the Bible and look at some of the more impactful prayers that we see in Scripture. And hopefully by looking at these great prayers, we can become greater prayers, but we're not going to talk about how to pray. We're not going to talk about having devotions and that prayer time needs to be a part of our life. And here's why. We're simply going to look at some of the most impactful prayers and meaningful prayers in scripture and kind of ask the question, what can we learn about them for our prayers? And so the one that we're kicking off with is very near and dear to my heart. It's very special to me. This is my prayer over grace. It's what Rachel Gentile just read. As she got up here to read, I leaned over to Jen, and I said, she's just the best. And Jen has tears in her eyes because she loves Rachel. And she's like, I know. Maybe I'm just jet lagged. I don't know. And I don't love Rachel that much. Maybe I'm just fatigued. You're not a big deal, Rachel. It's whatever. We're glad you're here. But this prayer, it's the one that I pray over grace. My office at home, I've got it sitting in the corner now. I need to get it framed and then hang it up. But I've got this prayer written out on a big piece of paper in calligraphy that we had a friend of ours do for us. When I come and pray over children who are born at grace, this is what I pray over them. When I pray for grace, it's what I pray for grace. When I pray for my children, it's what I pray for them. When I pray for you, it's what I pray for you. And so for me, it's perfect that this prayer sermon is coming right on the heels of traits of grace, where we're saying this is what makes grace, grace, and this is who we are. And so now right on the heels of that, we say this is to me the prayer of grace. And I think it's safe to call it the prayer of grace because the greatest church planner of all time, one of the most influential Christians who ever lived, Paul, the apostle, is the author of this prayer. And what I think is cool about it is that it's really mirrored throughout the rest of the Pauline epistles, the other letters that Paul wrote to the churches. So for those of you who may not know exactly what Paul did, you just know he's kind of a name of one of the saints that we talk about in church sometimes. Paul wrote a third of the New, or two-thirds of the New Testament, as far as the books that are attributed to him. Paul planted seven to ten churches right after Jesus died. He's responsible really for the early church movement throughout Asia Minor. And once he was converted on the road to Tarsus, Paul spent the rest of his life traveling around these cities on the Mediterranean coast, planning churches and encouraging the church leaders and the people within those churches, and then writing letters back to those churches as he was going on his four different missionary journeys. If you count the journey on the slave ship that shipwrecks at Malta and then eventually makes it to Rome, then there's four journeys. And so all through those journeys, he's visiting the churches and then he's writing letters back to the churches that he's already visited or that he longs to visit. And in most of those letters, he has a prayer. There'll be a preface and it'll say something like, for this reason, I bow my knees before the father. And that's what we see in Philippians. And sometimes it says, whenever I think of you, I pray for you and here's what I pray. But if you'll read Paul's letters carefully, what you'll see in these prayers when he prays for those churches is that they're remarkably similar and that he essentially prays for the same thing for all the churches. And so it's interesting to me to look, what does Paul pray for the churches? What's the singular thing that he wants? What does he always pray for no matter what else is going on? But before we look at and examine what he prays for, I thought I would ask you what you think you would pray for. Put yourself in the shoes of Paul. You spent your life planting these churches, investing in these people. You want to see them grow. You want to see them flourish. You want to see the communities evangelized and reached. You're hopeful for these churches. Not only that, a lot of these churches exist in cities and in empires that are under persecution and oppression, where it might even be illegal to be a Christian and to be in these churches and definitely to be leading these churches. So if you were to write a letter to these churches and you were to include in that letter a prayer, here's what I hope for you. Think with me sincerely, what would you pray? What would you hope for them? What would you want for them? Would you pray for safety? I would. Would you pray for relief from persecution? Would you pray in a day and age when a life expectancy isn't long? Would you pray for health? Certainly you would know some people there who were ailing. Would you pray for the success of the church? May you reach the community. May your love abound so that others come to know Jesus. Would you pray for the health of the church, for the wisdom of the leaders? If you were Paul, what would you pray for? And then think about it in terms of the people that you do pray for. Hopefully, hopefully you pray for the people in your life. If you have kids, hopefully you pray for them regularly, if not daily. If you don't, that's okay. Maybe you have an eight-year-old and you're thinking, gosh, I have not really prayed for that kid very often the first eight years of their life. Okay. Well, they don't have to go any more years without you praying for them daily. So start doing that now. Hopefully you pray for your spouse. Hopefully you pray for them daily. If you don't, that's okay. They've gone however long they've gone without you praying for them daily. But start now and don't make them live that life anymore. Pray for them daily. Hopefully you pray for the people that you love. Hopefully you lift them up to God and you ask for what's best for them. And when you do, what kinds of things do you pray for them? If we pray daily, maybe there's daily prayers, but I think a lot of us probably relegate prayers for others to when there's something urgent going on in their life, right? When there's a tricky relationship, when they've reached a difficult season, when they're awaiting news for a diagnosis or they've received it and now they're undergoing treatment, when there's a difficult situation at work, when there's a difficult situation with their family, with their kids, or with their marriage, then we lift them up. And so when we do, it's often a petition, right? God, save their marriage. God, help them here. God, help me here. Help them do that. God, I just pray for protection for my children. We've got one girl in the youth group who recently turned 16. I'm very certain that her parents are praying prayers of safety on the road and for the other drivers who are around this particular young lady. Those are the kinds of things we pray for, like circumstantial help in this situation. And listen, those are good prayers. They're good prayers. And we see those throughout the Bible. We see David say that God is his fortress and his strength and he prays for protection. We see Paul at different places pray for healing. We see Paul pray urgently and petition God that communities would be reached and that the gospel would be expounded. So we see all of those prayers in scripture. But when we look at Paul's prayer, to me, as we read it, and I'll read it again here in a second, to me it speaks just as loudly what he doesn't pray for as what he does. And I think that we have a lot to learn from that. So let's look again at the prayer that Paul prays, and let's ask together, what is it that he's asking on behalf of the church. Verse 14 in Ephesians chapter 3. So here's what Paul prays. the triune God, that you would be strengthened by the Spirit, that you would be indwelled by the Christ, and that you would be filled with the fullness of the Father, resulting in knowing God along with the saints. So when we say knowing God this morning, we mean the triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So Paul's prayer is that we would know God. That's the prayer, that you would know God. Not for safety, not that everything would be okay, not that the people would be healed, not even for success and growth of the church, not for anything circumstantial, but a singular prayer for them is that they would know God, that they would know him deeply and so commune with the other saints that know him. And it is my prayer for you that everything in life would push us to this place where we know God more deeply. It was the apex value for Paul. Again, do we see in other places him praying for those things? For safety and for protection and for growth and for the expounding of the gospel? Yes, absolutely, he prays for those things. But it's not the first thing he prays. It's not the apex value. It's not what's most important to him. To help us think about this idea of like this apex value, this thing that's so valuable to me, I'm going to pursue it above and beyond anything else. I'm going to tell you a snippet of the story of me getting home from South Africa, which is a heck of a story. But our flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg kept getting delayed. And we had to catch a flight in Johannesburg from Johannesburg to Atlanta. And that margin of time between when we were going to land and when we needed to be at our gate kept shrinking. And I'm looking at my buddy that I'm traveling with, and it kind of dawns on both of us, because he's a more experienced international traveler than I am, and he didn't do me the favor of advising that I not check a bag. So this is really his fault, and he owes me money. But I didn't know not to check a bag, so I had a small bag, and I checked it, figuring it's an international flight. We're going to be there for six days. It seems like the time you check something. Anyways, I checked it. So we're looking at each other going, and he's like, dude, you ain't going to get that bag. You do not have time to go to baggage claim, go to check-in, go through security, and get to the gate. You've got to choose. Do you want what's in that bag, or do you want to get on that flight? Do you want that stuff, which, in that bag, or my Crocs, guys? I know. I know. Oh, man. That's great. If you're watching online and you don't know what just happened, I'm not going to explain it to you. You just got to be here. You just got to be here. So sad. But I know I want to get home. I want to see my family. I want to see my church. I don't want to spend more money on another ticket that's going to cost more than the content of my bag. So even though I really want that stuff and I like some of that stuff, it's just my apex value in this situation, my biggest value, my biggest priority is to go home. So even though it hurts a little bit, I'm going to make a choice to pursue the thing that I need the most. It was the apex value. My value is to go home, see my family, to be in my house. Paul's value for us is that our souls would go home, is that our souls would find rest. And if on occasion we have to leave a bag behind to get closer to the Father, so be it. If on occasion the sickness is what's acting in our life to actually conspire to bring us closer to God and drive us to a deeper knowledge of Him that we would be filled with his fullness, then so be it. Paul prays that our souls would go home, that our souls would find rest in God, that they would go there first and foremost, and that that's what we would want to sacrifice anything else for the sake of knowing God. Maybe this is why Paul writes in Philippians 3.8 that he considers everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. So if we want our prayers to mirror the ethic of Paul, then when we pray for ourselves and we pray for others, we pray that our souls would go home. We pray that our souls would find their rest in God, no matter what else we have to go through. So if we have a child who's wondering and they don't know about their faith and we see them making decisions that we might not make, the prayer to pray for that child is, God, would everything in their life that they're experiencing somehow conspire to push them closer to you so that they might go home? When someone is sick, sure, we pray for them to heal, but we layer that prayer at the end with kind of a tip of the cap to Jesus' prayer, to the Lord's prayer where it says, not my will, but your will be done. Yes, Father, I pray that they'd be healed. Yes, Father, I pray that they would be okay. Yes, Father, I pray that you would bring relief in this situation. But more than anything, I trust you and I trust your sovereignty. And I'm praying that you would use everything in that situation, use all the circumstances in their life. I pray that they would conspire so that they might simply know you more so that their souls could go home and find rest in you. That's what we pray. And when you ask me to pray for you, when someone's sick or someone's's marriage is struggling, or someone's child is wandering, or things are hard, I always pray the thing that you ask me to pray. But I always follow it with, but God, whatever you choose to do here, would the circumstances conspire to push them closer to you, that they might be filled with your fullness, that they would be indwelled by your Spirit, that they would be strengthened by your Spirit, indwelled by your Son, that they may be filled with the fullness of the wisdom of the Father, that they might know you. So I want to encourage you too, parents, as you pray for your children, pray this prayer over them. We can't possibly see all of the winding roads that may eventually lead them to a greater depth of faith. I can tell you in my own life, there's been two times in my life when I thought, I'm going to have to walk away from this. I can't believe this anymore. This is untenable to me. And one is way more recently than you think it was. But that when I walked through it, and when I got honest about the God that I was pursuing, and when I started pursuing answers to the questions that I had, God opened my eyes to a greater faith and a greater depth of desire for Him. And I feel like as I walk through those points of inflection in my life that God used them to bring me closer to Him so that I might desire Him more. We never know how God is weaving lives to bring us closer to Himself. So sometimes we don't pray away the circumstances that He has brought about to work in. Sometimes we simply trust Him. All the time we simply trust Him. And we say, God, not my will, but Your will be done. We say, Father, I just want to echo Ephesians 3 and pray that everything that happens in the life of this person would conspire to push them closer to you, that they might know you more, that they might know what it is to walk in your peace. That's our prayer for others. That's our prayer for Grace, that God, whatever you do here, if we languish in the small room with the pole in it for the next six years, who cares? God, with all the events that Grace conspire, that we might know you more and do greater things in your name so that other people might come to know you more through us. Who cares where we meet? If we move into a big fancy new building and we do it in a year and a half because God just decided that's what we need to do and hundreds more people come, who cares? God, with the events of these people coming, conspire so that they might know you more and be pushed closer to you. It's our only prayer. And if you were to ask me, Nate, why is this Paul's apex value? Why is this the thing that he feels is most important? Well, the first answer and the most important answer is this is exactly what we were created for. This is why God made us, so that he could share Himself with us so that we would know Him. That's what heaven is. I think we mess up. I think we make a mistake when we make heaven about our personal salvation. Am I in or am I out? Am I going to burn or am I going to be in there for forever? That's kind of silly. The purpose of heaven is that we would be reunited with our creator God and experience eternity in harmony with him forever. The purpose of heaven is that we fulfill our ultimate purpose of just knowing him. And so every inch we move closer to knowing God, every bit of depth that we gain in our knowledge of him, every bit of closeness that we experience in our relationship with him is a way to bring heaven down here on earth. And so not only we experience heaven, but those around us get a little glimpse of what heaven's going to be like with every inch that we move closer to the Father, with every embrace that he uses to pull us in as this small reflection of what heaven will be one day. That's why Paul prays that we would know him. But as I was thinking about it this week, writing this sermon on various flights at who knows what time of day it was, depending on the time zone, this thought occurred to me that, you know, we are at our most gracious and most peaceful when we are experiencing the most closeness to God. Another way to say it is, the closer we get to God, the more grace and peace that we walk in. The closer I get to God, the more I pursue Him, the more I know Him, the more I love Him, the more I experience Him, and I feel his goodness in my life, the more gracious I am with myself and others, the less annoyed I get in traffic, the less annoyed I get with my kids, the less obnoxious I think someone is, and the more I realize they're just a hurt person who's hurting other people, and they need God's goodness just like I do. Isn't it true? In the times in your life, when you look back and you would say, or maybe it's right now, and you would say, I'm as close to God as I've ever been, or in that season I was as close to God as I've ever been, weren't you also your most gracious with yourselves and with others? And isn't it a good indicator that we're not walking with God when we begin to lack grace for ourselves and we begin to get really hard on others and we become harsher versions of ourselves? And isn't it true that the closer we get to God, the more peace we experience? And the more we know him, the more certain we are that he'll take care of us. I did not know. I did not know if I was going to be home today. Catching that flight was, I don't think you can cut it closer. I really didn't know if I was going to be here. But I also really didn't pray about it that much. My only prayer while I was sitting there wondering if I was going to make it was, God, if you want me home, I'll be home. If you want me to preach, I'll preach. If you don't, I won't. And I'll get to keep my crocs. So Lord, your will be done. There was an upside to both, you know? But my only prayer was, Father, do what you want. I trust you. Whatever, if you want me to get home, we'll get home. It's kind of like, it's one of the things that raising the money for the building taught me. We did the campaign really, really dumb and it was just kind of like, well, you know, God, if you want us to have the money to buy the land, then we'll have it. If you don't, then we won't. Now we need to raise more money to get into the building. And you know what? If God wants us to have the money, you're gonna give it. And if he doesn't, you won't. Okay. The closer you get to God, the more peace you experience in life. And so I think it's, and honestly, the times in our life when we're drifting from God are sometimes the times when we get most honest and we try to seize the most things and we worry about the most things that we can't control. And then the closer we drift to God, the more of his peace that we feel. And so I think it's very true that the more we know God, the more gracious and peaceful we are. And as I was thinking about that, I was also reminded of the fact that Paul signs off almost all of his letters, grace and peace. He almost always says grace and peace to you, to the saints and wherever. And I've always paid attention to that. And I've always wondered why that is, especially if you juxtapose it or you compare it with the passage in Corinthians, where it says these three things remain, faith, hope, and love. The greatest of these is love. Like why doesn't he ask for faith, hope, and love to you and all the saints? He doesn't do that. He asks for grace. He wishes them grace and peace. I've always wondered why. And maybe, just maybe, it's because Paul knows that grace and peace are byproducts of knowing God. Paul knows that if God answers his prayer in Ephesians 3, 14 through 19, and then Colossians 1 and in other places, that the people in the churches will know him. And if they know him, they will be people who are filled and who will walk in grace and peace. And so by blessing them and wishing upon them grace and peace, what Paul is really doing in his Pauline way is saying, I hope you know God. I hope you grow closer to him. And so I'm praying grace and peace unto you this morning as well. If you are a praying person, I hope that this great prayer can influence the way that you pray for others. Sure. Pray for the circumstances. Pray for protection and pray for health and pray for success and pray for reconciliation and pray for forgiveness and pray for all the things. But layer over them this apex value from Paul, that the person you're praying for, that the body that you're praying for, the family or the church or the people that you are praying for, would simply know God. That even in the circumstances that you're praying for, that all of them would conspire in some miraculous and unknown way to draw people closer to the Father, that He would use those circumstances to pull people near to Him, that they might experience the grace and peace of their soul going home with God. If you're not someone who prays for the people in your life regularly. Okay. You don't have to be that. If your children have not had the benefit of a praying parent, they can now just start. If your spouse hasn't had the benefit of a praying spouse, if your friend hasn't had the benefit of praying friends, if your co-workers haven't had the benefit of a praying co-worker, okay, they can. Anytime you want. So I hope you'll be people who pray for people. And when you do, I hope that you'll pray according to the ethics of Paul as he prays. That whatever happens, whatever they experience, whatever highs and lows they walk through, that if there's success in their life, celebrate that success, but pray fervently and ardently that it would bring them to a deeper knowledge of God. If there's struggle in their life, pray for a relief of that struggle, but pray first and foremost that that struggle would bring them to a deeper knowledge of their God that they might walk in grace and peace. As I encourage you to pray that for others, let me pray that over you as we wrap up. Father, we love you. We thank you for what you're doing in this place. I thank you for what you're doing in me. There's so many things to pray for. In this room, God, there are struggles that no one knows about. There are hurts and hangups that have not been articulated or that have. Our mind goes to places of stress and of urgency. And so, God, I pray that your hand would be in all those. In this room, God, there's also seasons of celebration, of goodness, of sweetness, of joy and blessing. Whether it's in the highs or in the lows, God, may we not forget that you are the author of those things. And may everything happening within them conspire to push us closer to you. God, I pray for grace. I pray that you would work in the lives of the people who are here and who are at home. And that all the circumstances that are working in their life right now would conspire to bring them closer to you. That they would be strengthened by your spirit. That they would be indwelled by your son. That they would be filled with the fullness of the father. Help our souls to find their rest in you, to go home to you, and so walk in the grace and peace that you offer us. In Jesus' name, 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.

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. Well, good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. Thank you for joining us for Easter. Everybody looks great in their Easter best. I really do like all the bright colors, and I am of the opinion that Easter is the greatest day in the Christian calendar. It's the greatest holiday. Christmas acknowledges the arrival of our Savior, but it's Easter that acknowledges and signifies the victory of that Savior, of Him doing what He came to do, And it is right and good to be together in church and celebrate this victory. And that's what we're going to talk about this morning. As I was thinking about Easter, I was also thinking about the power of images and how when we see a picture or we see an image or we see a logo, it often carries with it a great amount of emotion for us or at least information from us. There's things that we can see, images that we can see that will immediately conjure up from us stories or nostalgia or emotion or things that we'd like to share or things that make us laugh or whatever. And I think that there is this really remarkable intrinsic power in images. To help you understand my point, I have some for us this morning. Here's a very famous one that all of us have seen before. When we think about images, when you see Mickey Mouse ears, what does it make you think of? It may send you back to your childhood when your dad was wearing short shorts and he took you to Frontier Landing or whatever it is. That's what mine was, mosquitoes and the whole deal and hotlines and everything. And it goes back to my childhood in the 80s. And now more recently, it goes back to taking my daughter Lily. We went earlier this year. We went three years ago. I have great memories there. So when I see those ears, it conjures up with me pages and pages worth of memories that I could share with you. And I'm sure that you do too. Maybe it's just annoyance at Disney World and you don't like that place at all and you wish it would quit showing up in your life. That could be it, but you've got something there with just that image. And there's another, here's another one. Let's look at this one. That's not even a picture, but we all know what that is, right? That's coffee. And when you see that, I don't know where that takes you. It takes me, when I think of coffee, I think of being quiet and being relaxed, often studying, having a book, or just staring out the window in silence. The older I get, the more things I see that make me want to sit somewhere and be still and stare out the window in silence. Maybe it's because I have two young children, but that's what I think of when I see coffee is maybe it takes you to after dinner, to a little dinner and dessert or whatever. But maybe you are a person who has coffee paraphernalia all over your kitchen or your office and coffee is a part of who you are and you feel very seen right now, whatever this image means to you. Speaking of feeling seen, some of you will feel seen with this next one. Yeah, we know what that is. That's the Vince Lombardi trophy. That's the Super Bowl trophy. Now, for some of us, it conjures up memories of great, great success. For others, like me, I'm a Falcons fan, it's great pain that is in that image. For others of you Browns fans, that image means nothing to you. You might not even know what that is. I don't know if you do or not. I probably had to explain it to you. And then lastly, there's this, which is known the world over for excellence, victory, and championships. We can all wholeheartedly agree that Georgia Tech's the greatest at everything. That's such an easy joke because Georgia Tech's the worst. They're the worst at everything. They're the NC State of Georgia. Anyways, whatever the image is, whatever the image is conjures up for us emotions and stories and experiences. And I was learning about the power of visual learning and what images do. And they have this remarkable ability to package and compartmentalize for us knowledge and stories and so much other information that's represented in just that image. And it's funny because God created us that way. He created us to be people who don't learn as well by seeing or by reading or by hearing, but by experiencing and by seeing something and by having an image or an icon that immediately takes our mind to a thing or to a place and immediately begins to unpack all the details that go into that image. And I was thinking about the power of imagery this week because I believe that God designed and created for us an image to last until Jesus comes back to remind us maybe of the most important part of the Bible, which is Easter. It dawned on me that baptism is the image of Easter. The act of baptizing someone is the image of Easter. And so when we had some folks in previous months reach out and say, hey, we think we might be interested in being baptized, I asked them if they would do it on Easter. I mentioned before that the early church would only baptize people on Easter because of the imagery, because of what it meant, because of the symbolism laced into baptism. And so I thought, what better way, what better way to acknowledge Easter than to celebrate Easter than to have baptisms on Easter and talk about the symbolism of those baptisms within, or the symbolism of those baptisms within the act of them themselves. And so as we gather for Easter and we are reminded what it's about, let's also acknowledge that God created for us an image of Easter that we ought to be reminded of as we go throughout our Christian lives and our Christian walk. Baptism is so important, as a matter of fact, that Jesus himself started it. Jesus only started two traditions. The church has a lot of traditions. We're observing Lent right now as a church. I hope that that's been a spiritually nourishing season for you, and I hope that the Lord has spoken to you and moved in your heart and drawn you closer to him. I hope that observing Lent this year has been spiritually beneficial for you. And many churches have many different traditions. Some of you, you're here with friends or you're here with family and your church has different traditions that our church isn't observing this morning. And either I'm sorry for that or you're welcome. I'm not sure how you feel about the traditions that you're not currently experiencing. But the church has a ton of traditions. But only two of them were started by Jesus. The first is communion. Communion celebrates the Last Supper and the breaking of bread and Jesus dying on the cross, which is encapsulated by the image behind me. But the other tradition that he started was baptism. When he left, when he went back up to heaven, his final instructions to the disciples were to go into all the world and make disciples and to baptize them in the name of the Father and great deal to God. And I would argue that it matters a great deal to God because the very act of it, the very image of it is itself a symbol of Easter, which is the greatest victory that is ever won. And this isn't just my idea. I didn't just conjure this up reading scriptures and piecing things together. This comes from Paul himself. The Apostle Paul wrote a letter to the Romans. And in that letter, it says this in chapter 6, beginning in verse 3. So Paul says, in our regular rhythm of faith to remind us of the miraculous victory of Easter. And he walks us through it. And in a few minutes, we're going to have the opportunity to baptize in this service two of our kids, and then in the next service, two of our adults. And I'm very excited about that. And when we do it, when we baptize them, we're going to put them under the water. And when they go under the water, that is a picture of the death of Christ. They are buried with him in death, Paul writes. And so that takes us back, it should take us back to that Friday when Jesus hung on the cross, when hope was lost, when the disciples scattered, when Mary was brokenhearted, when no one knew what to do. And it takes us to the Saturday in that poignant moment before they come back out of the water. It takes us to that sacred Saturday where hope was lost and confusion reigned and disappointment ruled the day. And they didn't know what to do. And they didn't know what to do about their Savior. And they didn't know if he was going to come back. They didn't know what was coming on Sunday. So Saturday they just sat in their sadness and in their depression. And in that moment when they disappear and you can't see them, right before they come back up, that's Friday and Saturday in the baptism imagery in the Easter story. But the story doesn't end there. It doesn't end on that sacred Saturday. It ends on Sunday when Mary goes to the tomb to look for Jesus. And it's that passage that Jordan read to us a little bit earlier in the service. And in that passage, it has to me what is the greatest sentence in the whole Bible. When Mary goes and she's looking for Jesus and the tomb is empty and there's an angel there who looks at her and he says, what are you doing? Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is risen. He's not here, Mary. You're not gonna find him. And I'm telling you, I'm telling you, that's the greatest sentence in the whole Bible. Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He has risen. Because without that sentence, without that sentence, nothing else matters. Do you understand? Nothing else in all of Christendom, nothing else in life matters without that sentence. When we have Christmas, we have the arrival of the Savior. That's good. We should celebrate that. That's hopeful. And that's a fulfilled promise that people clung to for thousands of years. But on Easter at the empty tomb, when Jesus conquered sin and death, that is the greatest victory ever won. That is the greatest sentence in the Bible. And if that sentence isn't true, then everything else fades and nothing else matters. All of Christendom and all religion and all faith is just babbling morality without that sentence, without the reality of the resurrected Jesus and the empty tomb where he conquers sin and death finally. And so when we see the baptized person spring up out of those waters, that's the moment that they're capturing. They're capturing the empty tomb. And it says that they are raised to walk in newness of life. And it reminds us of the victory that Jesus won that day. It reminds us of why this is the greatest holiday. It reminds us of the import of that sentence because in that empty tomb, in resurrecting, in raising to walk again in newness of life, Jesus accomplished for us victory over death and victory over sin. Jesus made it true that old prophecy, oh death, where is your sting? I'm reminded of this old gospel song that's ripped out of the scriptures that says, oh sin, where are your shackles? Oh death, where is your sting? Hell has been defeated. The grave could not hold our king. And when we baptize someone and we pull them out of the water, that's where the moment goes. It's to someone springing forward in newness of life. It's to victory over death. Do you realize, do you realize that this, one of the reasons that this is the greatest day on the Christian calendar is that this is the day that conquered death. This is the day that gives us hope. This is the day that we celebrate, that we cling to, that we hope for, so that when we watch someone we love slowly drift into eternity and eventually we say goodbye to them, because of Easter, we say goodbye for now, but not goodbye forever. Because of Easter, we can hold their hand and we can pray with them and we can know with certainty that they really are going to a better place and that they are waiting for us there. Because of Easter, death has no sting. What hurts about death is missing someone for a little while. What hurts about death is not having them in your life, is not being able to pick up the phone and call them like you used to. But what hurts about death is not the finality of it because Jesus took that away when he raised up out of that tomb. And we celebrate that victory when we raise someone up out of the water. That Easter is the greatest victory of all time. And it gives us incredible amounts of hope. And it takes away the fear of the one thing of which we are all the most fearful, which is what happens when we die. And because of Easter, because Jesus died on the cross, because he was buried, because he rose again and was raised to walk in that newness of life. We know that one day we will go to the marriage supper of the Lamb. We know that one day we will be in heaven with Jesus for all of eternity. We know that one day we will see those that we loved again. We know that one day we will be united with our Savior and we can set down the burdens of hope and faith because Jesus will be right there in front of us because of Easter. And not only in that moment where Jesus sprung out of the tomb, where we come up out of the water, not only is there victory over death, but there's victory over sin as well. Sin has no shackles on us anymore. So not only is there hope for the future, for what will happen one day, but there is hope for right now because scripture teaches us that when we are a new creation, that we come up out of the waters to walk in newness of life, that what that newness of life means is we are no longer shackled to the sins that we carried before we knew Jesus. I preached a couple of weeks ago about repentance, and what I said is that after Jesus, after the Holy Spirit, after we know him, after we become Christians, then repentance is possible. Before that, scripture tells us that we are slaves to sin, that we have no choice but to sin. But with the miracle of Easter, it doesn't just give us hope for the future. It gives us hope for the right now, that the sins and the things in our life that we don't want there anymore can actually be defeated. And we find that hope in Jesus. Easter reminds us of that hope. And it reminds us that we're not chained to the sins that we once carried anymore. So not only does Easter point us towards a future hope, but Easter points us to a present hope, victory over death and sin, future and present. And so, in a few minutes, as we do the baptisms, let's see in these baptisms the picture of Easter. When they go under, let's take ourselves to the Friday and to the Saturday and to the waiting and to the confusion. And let's know that that's just God putting to death your old self. And when we see a raising to walk and newness of life, that that is the victory of hope for all of eternity. That is the victory that Jesus has already won and he's going to come and claim again someday. But as you move through life, as you go through Easter, as you attend other services, as you go to other churches, and some of you back to your own churches, my hope for you is that whenever you see a baptism, that it will carry you right back to Easter, right back to this day, right back to the victory that Jesus won for you and for me, and that it will fill you with a hope, not only for the future, but for the present as well. And let's see baptism for what it is, a picture, an image of Easter itself, of the greatest victory ever won and the greatest day on the Christian calendar. Let's pray and then we're going to baptize some people. Father, thank you so much for the miracle of Easter. Thank you for what it is, for what it represents. God, I pray that as we think of Easter and we think of the images that surround it, that it wouldn't just be bunnies and eggs and pastels and baskets and flowers and all the rest, but that the first thing we would see is your victory. The first thing we would see is how you love us. How you sent your son to die for us and how he resurrected on the third day. God, may we be moved with each baptism that we see with the power and the efficacy of Easter and all that today represents. I pray these things in your son's name. Amen.

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. We'll be reading from Matthew chapter 6 this morning. This, then, is how you should pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you get to be the senior pastor here. Congratulations to Tar Heel fans. Please be humble about it, lest you become unbearable to your Christian brothers and sisters. That was a heck of a game last night. Yes, yes. That's good. That was some very tepid applause there. I know you feel bigger than that, but you're being humble as we speak. We have been going through our Lent series. This is, I believe, part six of the series, and I hope that you have been keeping up with the devotionals, as I say, every week and reading and being encouraged by those and by the other folks in the church as you've gone through those. This week, we arrive at the topic of forgiveness, and we've been kind of walking through that all week. Hopefully, as you've read the devotionals, you've thought about forgiveness in your own life. I think when we arrive at the topic of forgiveness, we can't help but wonder, do we owe some forgiveness? Whenever I encounter that topic of forgiveness, whenever I see the word, whenever I'm challenged by scripture, whenever I'm talked about how God has forgiven me so I should forgive others, I immediately think, who in my life am I holding a grudge against? Who am I withholding forgiveness from? And I would bet that most of us, when we hear that idea, begin to think about who in our life have we had to forgive? Where have we had a difficult path to forgiveness? Is there anybody in my life that I need to work towards forgiving now? And so with that in mind, I wanted to kind of talk about the challenge of forgiveness and the instructions that we find in the Bible concerning forgiveness. And the best place, I think, to start is with the very words of Jesus. We're going to allow Jesus to frame up our discussion on forgiveness this morning. The Bible in the Old Testament, New Testament, all throughout it has a ton to say about forgiveness. But again, I think if we can go to Jesus and read his very words and what he has to say about it, that that's the best framework for the discussion that you and I need to have about forgiveness as we rest on that topic this morning. So I would first look at two different passages, two different things that Jesus says about forgiveness that are really in harmony with a lot of other teachings throughout scripture about forgiveness. The first is the one that Jacob just so eloquently read a few minutes ago. I don't know if you've noticed it before. Most of us know the Lord's Prayer, and you identified that as the Lord's Prayer as soon as he started to read, right? But in Matthew, when Jesus finishes the Lord's prayer, which is where Jacob was reading from, he does a little bit of commentary. He has some comments to make about it. And we read those this morning, but I'm not sure if we heard it or if you've paid attention to those before. So I would call our attention back to the way that Jesus comments on the prayer that he just prayed. Because part of that prayer is, Father, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. At least that's how I memorized it growing up in the King's English. But sometimes forgive us and then help us forgive other people. So Jesus says this after that in verse 14, for if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive your sins. So this is a pretty stark and interesting teaching. And I'll be honest with you, I don't know how this works theologically necessarily and intertwines with the doctrine of salvation. I just know that when, that Jesus himself says that if we will not forgive other people, then our Father in heaven will not forgive us, which is pretty stark. That leaves us very little option, right? So forgiveness immediately we see is required. It is not optional. And then later in the passage, or later in that same book, Jesus is having a conversation with his disciple Peter. And Peter asks about this forgiveness. Surely by now Peter knows that forgiveness is not optional, that if we do not forgive other people in our life, then God does not forgive us. And that seems like a place that we don't want to be in. But Peter asks, certainly there has to be a limit to the forgiveness that we are instructed to offer to others. But to that, Jesus says this in Matthew 18, verses 21 and 22. Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times? Jesus answered, I tell you, not seven times, but 77 times. Some translations say, but 70 times seven. And see, we need to give Peter a little bit of credit. He says, Jesus, how many times should I forgive someone for sinning against me, for wronging me, for harming me? Up to seven times? Which feels very generous, if we're being honest about it. Someone slaps you in the face seven times in a row. You're just going to keep forgiving them? A business partner steals from you. Maybe you can forgive them once. You're going to, up to seven times, you're going to do that? Your neighbor backs into your mailbox. One is a whoopsie, but three, come on, man, knock it off. Like seven times is pretty generous. And Jesus says, no, no, not seven times, but up to 70 times seven, up to 77 times, which is a figurative way of saying as often as they require it. No, you forgive others as often as they require your forgiveness. And when we look at these two teachings from Jesus on forgiveness, these two statements, we have no choice but to conclude this, that unlimited forgiveness for the Christian is not optional. If you're here this morning and you wouldn't call yourself a believer, I would say that the good part of that is that you don't have to forgive anybody if you don't want to. You can just hold grudges, which may be nice. But for the believer, unlimited forgiveness is not optional. And I think that that's important to say out loud and to acknowledge. Because so often, we Christians have a habit of kind of viewing instructions that we're given as things that maybe we're supposed to do. Maybe we can try to do. Maybe one day I'll get there. Maybe one day I'll work up to forgiveness. Or we will think of it as optional. Someone hurt me. I don't want to forgive them. I don't need to. That's in the past and we've never done the work to do that. Or someone did something to us and we have every right to withhold our forgiveness from them. And so we do because it hurts so deeply. And what the Christian ethic is on this is to say, hey, we're instructed to offer unlimited forgiveness, and it is not optional. Now, to some of us, to many of us, that sounds like a challenge. That sounds difficult. If you think about some of the people who have hurt you in your life, some of the things that would require your forgiveness, to simply pithily say, well, God tells you to offer unlimited forgiveness, it's not optional. That's tough. And so I thought it best to have this conversation kind of in light of different groups of people in life that we will feel called to or pressed on to forgive. So I've got three categories of folks, three categories of situations that require forgiveness from us. And I want to talk about how we should kind of address those things because some are different than the others when we get into forgiveness. So the first and maybe the easiest category of people to forgive are those who have apologized and sought restitution. Your neighbor backs into your mailbox. They knock on your door. They say, hey, I'm so sorry. I just knocked over your mailbox. That's my bad. How can I pay for it? Okay. If you withhold forgiveness from your neighbor in that scenario, you've got issues, right? Like you've got problems. Someone stole 50 bucks from you 10 years ago. You still haven't forgiven them. Simple, everyday offenses. Your spouse said something that had a bad day. Just yesterday, I was kind of just being snippy in the morning, and Jen just looked at me. She goes, are you grumpy? Like, did you wake up grumpy? And I'm like, yeah. Sorry. I'll fix it. And, you know, thankfully, I got a little bit more chipper, but I had to apologize. Sorry. Sorry I woke up. I don't know why. I had slept eight hours. It was a great night. I had a great night last night, a good day. I don't know what my deal is, but I'll fix it, right? So there's sometimes just these run-of-the-mill things. Someone wrongs us. They apologize and seek restitution. And the right thing to do is to forgive them and move on. And if in these scenarios, you can't simply forgive them and move on, that's a you problem. You should do that. If you are holding grudges and can't just forgive people when they apologize to you, listen, I sent that email and you shouldn't have been copied on it. And I know I said those negative things about you in front of our coworkers, and I'm very sorry. and I will not do that again. Okay, that one stings a little bit, but still, you're a grown-up. Get over it. Forgive. So in these situations where someone has wronged us, but they've apologized, admitted their fault, they're seeking restitution, we should forgive. And we all know that. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought like, yeah, that's pretty easy. You're all adjusted adults. If you can't do that by now, you need a different sermon. Okay, this isn't for that. Let's just suck it up and forgive. The second one is a little bit more challenging. The second one is when we are tasked to forgive those who do not know they need to or simply refuse to apologize. That's a little bit more difficult. When someone has wronged you and they refuse to apologize for the wrong or acknowledge that it was wrong, and yet you find yourself in a position where you need to forgive them. Spouses get into a fight. They argue. They each say hurtful things. They go to their separate corners of the room, and they sit there like children with their arms folded. I mean, are you going to forgive him? I'm not going to forgive him until he says he's sorry. Okay, well, you sure are teaching him a lesson. Congratulations on being a grown-up. I always say in those situations that children are concerned with whose fault it is, and grown-ups are worried about making things right. So as adjusted adults, as people who love Jesus, we seek to make things right. Now, it's more challenging when someone has hurt you and they won't admit it. They refuse to admit that that was their fault. They refuse to admit that what they did was wrong, but we need to find it in ourselves to forgive them. It's a more difficult task, and yet we should simply extend forgiveness. Another one that I thought of this week is, you know, in this category too, is when people don't know that you even need to forgive them. When people don't know that they've hurt you. And so when you forgive them, you just forgive in silence and they'll never know that you forgave them. And I don't know if this is appropriate for me to share or not, but one of the difficult things in my position is when people choose to no longer be at grace, when people choose to move on from grace. The longer they've come to grace, the more difficult it is when they choose to leave. And I understand that we're not all going to go to the same church for our whole life. Like, I get that, and not everybody leaves poorly, and not everybody hurts when they leave, and some people leave really, really gracefully. But sometimes people leave, and as they're leaving, they say things that hurt. They say things that are insensitive to me, and they'll hurt my feelings. And I understand that I operate in a world where most of the people around me don't think I have those. But I do. I do have feelings. I don't have as much as you all. That would be rough. But I have some. And sometimes they get hurt. But they don't know that they hurt me. They don't know that that's difficult for me. They don't know that I haven't forgiven them. They don't know that I need to. And I'm not going to call them up and say, hey, you hurt me. I just want you to know you hurt me, but I forgive you, so we're good. So I just have to forgive in silence. We don't get any credit for that. But God calls us to forgive nonetheless. And in both of these situations, those where people have wronged us, they've apologized and sought restitution, and then those where people have wronged us and they don't know they have or they refuse to admit that they have, I think it's very helpful for us to refer back to Jesus' instructions and say, to the Lord's prayer, and say, Father, forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Forgive us our debts. Forgive us our sins as we forgive the people who have sinned against us. It's this reciprocity. It's this awareness of the more I focus on Christ, the more I allow the reality of his forgiveness to wash over me. The more I see myself as the happy recipient, undeserving recipient of his grace and of his goodness and of his mercy and of his kindness and of his forgiveness, the easier it is for me to be a conduit of that forgiveness to others. When I reflect on what God has forgiven me of, the fact that he has forgiven me before I even know that I needed to admit fault. Before I was willing to admit that I had wronged him, God in his goodness still offers me and extends to me forgiveness as soon as I'm ready to accept it. And so particularly for these first two categories, when someone's wronged you and apologized, or when someone's wronged you and they haven't apologized yet, but it's your run-of-the-mill average amount of frustration or hurt, it helps us to reflect on Jesus and who he is and how he's loved us and how he's forgiven us and say, yeah, how could I possibly hold a grudge in light of all that love? And so in most situations where you need to offer forgiveness to someone else because they've wronged you, in a vast majority of them, 95% of situations that require our obedience, My official pastoral counsel to you would be, just suck it up and forgive them, man. Figure it out. That would be my counsel to you. Now, I might arrive there in a gentler way. I might say it like, well, you know, and we'll pray about it and wait for you to call me back and realize that's what you need to do. But at the end of the day, the advice would be just suck it up and forgive them and move on. God forgave you. You forgive other people. He empowers you to forgive. We have no right to hold grudges. We've all messed up. Let's move on. But there is a third category where I would never, never give that clumsy of advice. And it's really where I want to spend the bulk of our time today because I feel like it's probably the most helpful for us. And that's those of us who have this group of people to forgive. Those from whom you have every right to withhold your forgiveness. If there is somebody in your life who has hurt you so profoundly and so deeply that you have every right to never forgive them. No one could come to you with an argument and say, you know they deserve your forgiveness, right? Because they don't. No one could come to you and be like, you know, you just need to kind of eventually, it's been 20 years, eventually you got to figure out how to suck it up and forgive. No, no, no, you don't. No, you don't. I have a very good friend who used to be married to another really good friend of mine. Their names are Kevin and Lacey. They live in another state, so I can use their names. If you know Kevin and Lacey, just shut up about this. About seven or eight years ago, Lacey had invited me and another friend of mine, Tyler, to their house to surprise Kevin for his 40th birthday. And we went up for a couple of days to celebrate the birthday. And it was a little weird. There was a little bit of tension. But Kevin and Lacey also had an adult daughter who was engaged. And then five children aged like 10 to 12 and younger. So the oldest was like 10 or 12 and then they had four younger ones and one of those was adopted. So their life was crazy. So to go to their house and for it to feel a little bit crazy or a little bit stressful wasn't totally out of the ordinary. So I didn't really have any red flags going off. It just felt a little tense, right? So we spent a couple of days there, Tyler and I do, and then we hit the road to drive back to, at the time I lived in Atlanta, so we're driving back to Atlanta. And we get about 45 minutes away, and Lacey calls me. I answer the phone, and she said, hey, her voice was shaking. She said, hey, can you come back? I said, sure, what's up? She said, I think he did it again. Three, four years prior to that, Kevin had admitted to an affair with a friend of theirs. And, you know, we kind of all walked through that together, and they had sought restitution and made things right and worked on their marriage, and she had extended forgiveness and yada, yada, yada. But when she said, I think he did it again, I knew immediately what she meant. So we turn back around, go back to Lacey's house. She kind of explained why she thought what she thought. We get into Kevin's computer and read text messages, and she's right. It was a woman in their church small group of all things. And they had made plans in a couple of weeks to tell their families because she had three young kids too. They had made plans to tell their families and somehow existed in this fantasy world where everything was eventually going to work out okay. They just had to get over this difficult challenge at first. But Lacey had figured things out too soon. So Kevin had gone over to her house, picked her up, and they ran off together. And we didn't know where they were, and he wasn't answering his phone. But see, Kevin and Lacey only had one car and Kevin had it. And they only had one bank account and Lacey, they had one bank account and Kevin had moved everything to his business account. So she had no car, no resources and she had five kids. And I spent the next two days convincing my friend Kevin to let Lacey have a car and a couple thousand dollars. And I sat in that house as Lacey gathered up the kids with some close friends of hers and explained to them that sometimes people make poor choices and your daddy's been making poor choices. That is pain. That is hurt. That is being wronged. And I would never, never look at Lacey in those moments and say, you know that offering unlimited forgiveness is not optional, right? You're a believer. And yet that's still true. And I don't know everyone's story, but I'm confident that we have some Lacey's in this room. Some women who have been hurt in that way. Some men who have had to walk through that pain. I know in a congregation our size, we have people who grew up in abusive homes. We have people whose parents victimized them. I know that we have folks in our midst who have walked through being a victim, who have been abused by a parent or by a grandparent or by a spouse or by a partner, and your hurt is deep, and that wrong is big, and that chasm is wide. And what I wanted to know when I was looking at the topic of forgiveness is, what do we tell those folks? How do we help you, those of you with the deepest hurt and the deepest lies and the most challenging path to forgiveness, what can we offer you? So frankly, if your issue is someone hurt my feelings or someone hurt me and they apologize and they've sought restitution but I'm choosing to hold this grudge, figure it out. Figure it out. Forgive them. But for those who sit in profound hurt, what do we do? How do we even start towards forgiveness? The thing that kind of played in my head as I thought about deep hurt is kind of this question, is how could the father look at his victimized children and instruct them to forgive? How could our good heavenly father take Lacey, pull her in, hug her and hold her and tell her, you know, eventually you're going to need to let go of this. Eventually I'm going to move you to a place where I'm going to ask you to forgive Kevin. How can God do that? If we've been hurt in that way, how can we hope to do that? And listen, listen, listen. If you're like me and the path to forgiveness in your life, you're lucky, you're blessed. It's never been that difficult. When I think of, gosh, what are my challenges in forgiveness? They're not a lot. I've not had to walk the road that Lacey's had to walk. So if that's you, I would still encourage you to lean in to what we're talking about this morning. I would still encourage you to listen to what I'm about to share with you that Lacey told me this week, because you might find yourself one day in that room when your friend's life is falling apart, and you might want to counsel them well, or God forbid, you might walk through this too. And let me also say this. Last week, talked about repentance, walking away from the things in our life that don't need to be in our life and walking towards Jesus. If you are doing things that have the potential to require someone to forgive you the way that Lacey is working to forgive Kevin, please stop doing those things before they require the forgiveness that you do not want to force on anyone. But I picked up the phone this week realizing my ignorance, realizing I have not much to offer for deep hurt. And I called Lacey. And I basically asked her that question. How can the Father look at you and love you and yet still push you towards forgiveness? How have you processed forgiveness over the course of the last seven to eight years? What would you say to this topic? And it really, it kind of made me sad. I'll just be honest with you guys. We talked for about 45 minutes, and at the end of it, I realized how badly I wish that I would write sermons several weeks out because it would have been so much more beneficial to have Lacey here and to let us just have a conversation and let you guys listen to it and listen to her perspective. And I told her that. I said, I wish that we could just play this phone call for the people of grace, for the folks in the church. I wish that they could hear these come out of your mouth and not just me bloviating for 30 minutes trying to repeat what you said that was so, so great. I wish you could hear that conversation. But since you can't, I wanted to share with you some of the more helpful things that she shared with me about how she's moved through this profound season of hurt and tried to walk in obedience to offering unlimited forgiveness in the way that she is called to do. And so a couple of things that she said about forgiveness were particularly insightful. And I wanted to share those with you as well, particularly those of you who are walking through profound hurt. And you could say, I have every right to withhold forgiveness from this person. Okay, a couple things for you to know. First, that she pointed out to me, forgiveness does not require trust or affection. To forgive someone, you don't have to reinstitute them into the position that they were in. You don't have to drum up some artificial affection for this person. Lacey has forgiven the other woman, the woman that was in her small group that claimed to be her friend that Kevin left her for. She has forgiven her. She feels no affection for her and she feels no calling to do it. So if one of the things holding you back is, I don't know how I could ever like that person, I don't think you need to. Forgiveness looks like loving somebody. Biblical love, we're instructed, is that we should love others as we love ourselves. How do we love ourselves? We want what's best for ourselves. So how do we love others? To offer biblical love to someone else is to simply desire what is best for them. It is possible to desire what is best for them without actually liking them. Last night, I desired that Duke would win because it's a more interesting story. It was best for Coach K. I do not like the man. I don't have any affection for him. It was just an interesting story, right? We can want what's best for someone without having feelings of affection towards them. And if that helps you get over that hump, so that's good. We also don't have to reinstall them into trust, right? If you have a business partner who steals from you, you can forgive that business partner. You do not have to go back into business with them. If you do, the next one's on you, man. That's your bad. We do not have to reinstall trust. If someone cheats on you, you can forgive them. You do not have to go back and stay with them. So if that's helpful for you, just understand that forgiveness, as I understand it, does not require a reinstatement of trust or affection. It's simply wanting what's best for them and moving on. This one was helpful too. Forgiveness doesn't get to be an arrival. For deep, profound hurt like that, someone lied to you for years, someone hurt you in an incredible way, it doesn't get to be an arrival. Lacey told me she kept expecting to kind of cross this finish line, that she would have one day where God had worked in her heart, with through enough prayer and enough counseling and enough time and enough space that she would be able to say, okay, he's forgiven. I'm moved on. That's done. Except the ripple effects of his actions show up again and again and again in her life. The weekly task of just coordinating the kids with him, where to pick them up and where to drop them off and what are you going to pay for and what are going to pay for, and all the crap that you have to deal with when there's a divorce now, and you have to shuttle kids around, and it's just fresh aggravation every week. Right now, she's got a couple kids going into college, and she has to fill out all of that paperwork on her own, and it's difficult when there's two different parents and two different families, and she's experiencing fresh frustration at the reality of her divorce because of choices that he made and she didn't. That's fresh frustration that she has to then forgive him for again and again. One of the most profound things she ever said to me as we were kind of talking through it, and I was asking what are the hard parts, she said one of the hardest parts is watching your kids grow up alone. Because they do that thing that they do and they make you smile or they make you laugh. And you get to look over at your husband or your wife and you both acknowledge what they just did and you get to experience that intimate joy together that no one else gets to see. And now she has to do that alone. That requires fresh forgiveness. And so it made me think that maybe this is what Jesus was talking about. When he said, no, no, no, not seven times. As many times as they require it. Because maybe Jesus understands that profound hurt has ripple effects. And they show up again and again and again and again. And if you're not prepared to offer ongoing forgiveness, then you're not yet prepared for forgiveness. Because those ripples show up over and over again in your life. And so if you're facing profound hurt like that, just understand, you don't get to cross the finish line. It's more of a mindset of forgiveness. And really the thing that she said that I wanted to finish with is she said, you know, Nate, this would all be impossible without Jesus anyways. She said, I don't know how people walk through hurt like this without Jesus and then try to forgive without Jesus. He's the only reason I can even ever forgive. And she said, in this really funny way, everything that's happened has pushed me more to him, has pushed me closer ever forgive without him. And it reminded me of this verse in 1 Corinthians. And I thought, oh, how appropriate and how much sense does that make in the context of forgiveness when he says to Paul, Jesus says this to Paul, my grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in your weakness. Or rather, that's God the Father saying that to Paul. We are insufficient to offer the forgiveness that we need to for some of the offenses that have been committed against us. It is only through Jesus that we are able to offer that forgiveness. His strength is made perfect in our weakness. It is only through him that we are able to forgive. So if you're one of those people who's carrying that profound hurt, just know that I don't believe you will ever find true forgiveness outside of Christ empowering you to offer it, compelling you to offer it. And when we do that, and when we allow Jesus to empower and compel us towards forgiveness, I think this really great thing happens. By empowering us to forgive, Jesus untethers us from our hurtful past. By empowering us to forgive, Jesus untethers us from our hurtful past. Lacey described it like this. She would just be going through her day, having a perfectly fine day, and then she would see something. She would see a store that Kevin liked to shop at, or a place that they used to go to, or just something that would trigger her and remind her. And then instantly, because she was holding all that hurt, and because she had not yet moved to a place of forgiveness, it was like there was this tether attached to the back of her head that would just jerk her attention into years in the past and jerk her right back into that hurt of those days following the decisions that he made. And she said it was terrible to go through days not knowing when or how my attention was going to be jerked back into the past and I was going to experience that pain fresh. And so really and truly, and we know this about grudges, and we know this about hurt, and we know this about pain, when you are walking through life carrying hurt, when you are walking through life carrying anger, when you are walking through life holding a grudge, that's not hurting them. It's not hurting them for you to be angry at them, not nearly as badly as it's hurting you. And so when Jesus empowers us to forgive, he cuts that tether and he gives us the freedom to walk forward into our future, not being constantly jerked back into our painful past. And I think that there is some freedom there. He unburdens us from the hurt and the pain that we carry every day. And he says, here, let me take that from you so that you can walk in freedom. And so I would say to you this, very carefully, very gently, if there is deep and profound pain in your life, if forgiveness for you is hard, and that person or those people have no right to ask it of you, okay. But when you're ready, Jesus offers you freedom from that hurt. When you're ready, Jesus offers to untether you from that past. When you're ready, you can move into a more free and loving future where you can't get snapped back into your pain at a moment's notice. But it requires you to forgive. It requires you to offer that. But when you do, you find a freedom in Jesus that you can't find anywhere else. I don't know how deep your hurt is, but I do know that life is better when you're not holding it. I don't know how hard forgiveness is for you, but I do know that the reason the Father would hold you and call you to him and say, you know that I'm going to ask you to forgive that person is not so that you can be morally right and morally exemplar and so that he can push you into this uncomfortable situation just so that you feel like a good human. He's telling you to do that because he loves you and he knows that freedom and love are going to be found on the other side of untethering yourself from that. He holds his victimized children and encourages them towards forgiveness precisely because he loves them and wants them to experience the freedom of life on the other side of that pain and he knows he's the only one that can make it go away. Which incidentally is why if your pain is in the first two categories, and I flippantly say, just get over it and forgive, because the same promise is extended to you, that Jesus will empower you to do it and that you will walk in love on the other side of it. So I would encourage you this morning, wherever you are on the spectrum, however you've been hurt, if it's possible to forgive, do it. Allow Jesus to empower that. If you're not there yet, if you say, I hear you, Nate. I know, I understand. Hopefully you don't disagree with what I've said. I haven't said anything clumsy. But you're simply not there yet. It's okay. Maybe just pray this prayer. And say, Father, I know you call me to forgive. I'm not ready. Will you please work in my heart so that I want to forgive? Just pray that prayer. I know I'm supposed to forgive. I don't want to. But I'm asking you and giving you permission to work in my heart to change that so that I do. And just take that step towards forgiveness. But I hope and I pray that as I pray in a second, that if there are people in your life who have hurt you, who you do need to extend forgiveness to, maybe just take a second while I'm praying right now and go ahead and offer that. And let's move out these doors free from some of the pain that we carried in with us this morning. And if you can't do that, let's take a step. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for modeling forgiveness to us. God, we know that we have offended, that we have hurt, that we have trampled with our actions, and yet you offer us unlimited forgiveness. So God, first, I pray that we would be grateful for that and overwhelmed by that. Second, Father, I pray that in turn we would offer forgiveness to others. And Lord, I pray in particular for those who have walked through deep hurt, through a hard betrayal, through abuse, through manipulation, through whatever kinds of awful things we people can do to one another. God, I pray that you would give them the courage to take a step towards forgiveness, to simply maybe even just pray that you would help their heart move, that you would soften their heart. Father, if we do offer forgiveness and obedience to your instructions, I pray that you would meet us there, that we would find you there, and that we would experience a peace there that maybe we haven't had in a long time. In the meantime, God, thank you for loving us so well. In Jesus' name, amen.