Sermons tagged with Support

Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome to Grace. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten the chance to meet you, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service, which would be easy to do because we've got the holiday hoot going on and it's probably going to be pouring down rain. So you may want to stay and wait that out. If you were like me and you looked out the window at like nine o'clock, you're like, oh, look at that, it's raining. And you didn't know it was going to torrentially downpour on us, then you don't get any bonus points. But if you knew the forecast and you came anyways, that's impressive. That's almost like holiday weekend attendance there. So good for you. Also here at the beginning of the service, I just want to give everyone in the room a chance to get your cough drop out and put it in your mouth right now so that we don't hack through the entire service because it's that time of year, right? Mike mentioned earlier in the announcements that we are in the third part of our series called Twas the Night. Well, we're looking at Christmas, the greatest story ever told, and we're looking at it through the lens or perspective of the different people in the story. This week, we arrive at Joseph. We're going to look at his example of humble and consistent obedience in the Christmas story and in the early years of the life of Jesus. And we're going to ask what we can learn from that example. Now you'll remember, some of you, that this series started on December the 3rd and I was supposed to preach about Joseph on December the 3rd, but on December the 2nd, after the kids went down, Jen looked at me, my wife, and she said, Hey, what's the sermon tomorrow? And I ran her through the sermon and she made a face and I went, you don't like this one very much. And she goes, it's not, it's not your best one. And I said, well, what do I do? Like, it's Saturday night, you know? Like, it's been shipped, you know? And she goes, well, that's not really good enough. So you should probably go to your office and write it again. You can nap tomorrow. And I was like, and I knew in my gut she was right. Like, darn it, she's right. Because the sermon was going to be Christmas season. It was the first one. Christmas season is a stressful season. We all have things going on. We all have family obligations. It's just event, event, event, event. It feels so busy. Everything's packed that it's super stressful. Well, Joseph had maybe the most stressful Christmas of all time. And what was at stake if he let the stress of Christmas win is that he would miss the Messiah. Gross. That's a gross. That's dumb. That's like, I just gave you the important parts of that sermon. To make that 28 minutes and make you sit through it would be a disservice to you. So Jen was right. And then I remembered, I've written all the sermons already. I'm just going to bump them up a week. And then that will give me two weeks to come up with something on Joseph. And what I'm going to tell you about Joseph today, I think, is way better than that. Now, you may leave and be like, should have done the last couple of weeks has developed within me a much deeper appreciation for Joseph. I think he's an underappreciated figure in the Bible and portion of the Christmas story. Now, Joseph is the earthly father of Jesus, and we've all probably heard of him before, I would guess. But what I find interesting about Joseph is that even though he was the earthly father of Jesus, he had a very important part to play in the story of Jesus. In scriptures, we have no recorded words of Joseph. We don't see a single thing that he said. We don't know a single thing that he thought. Well, those are lost to history. I'm sure Joseph did have words, but his words are lost to history. And he fades out of the gospel narrative relatively quickly. We see him in Matthew and we see him in Luke. We see him in Matthew and that's where we're going to be today, Matthew chapters 1 and 2. Having and being obedient each time. We see him in Luke as part of the Christmas narrative, but he's got no words that he uses except he just takes his family faithfully to Jerusalem. And then we see him interact with Jesus when they left him at the temple when Jesus was 12 years old and they have to go back and get him. But beyond that and these three interactions that we're going to read today, we don't have anything else about Joseph in the Bible. We just know that by the end of the story, he's faded out of the narrative and we don't know why or what happened, but everyone's best guess is that Joseph simply passed away. Culturally, he was probably older than Mary, and he probably died before his time, which would imply that Jesus grew up grieving the loss of an earthly father, which I think is interesting, but not the point here. But we have fleeting glimpses of Joseph in the gospel narratives. And because we don't have any of his words, we can only know Joseph by his actions. We can only know Joseph by what he did. He doesn't get an eternal press conference to explain himself. We can only know Joseph by his actions and by how he responded. And there's three different times that God comes to him and tells him to do something. And all three times, Joseph responds with obedience. And I want us to look at those times. So if you have a Bible with you, please turn to Matthew chapter one. We're going to be in chapters one and two. If you don't have a Bible with you, there's one in the seat back in front of you. But in Matthew chapter one, beginning in verse 19, I'm going to read through 24. Actually, I'm going to read through 25, but that won't be on the screen. Joseph has just found out that Mary is pregnant. And this is problematic because they have not yet biblically known each other. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke up from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded. He took his wife, in verse 25,. God has spoken to Mary through an angel. He said, you're going to conceive. You're going to have a son. His name is going to be Jesus. He's going to be the Savior of the world. And she's engaged to be married to Joseph. And that wasn't Joseph that did that. So this is problematic. So Joseph, because he was a just man and a righteous man, had resolved to leave her quietly. And that speaks a lot to the character of Joseph because he did not have to do that, especially in that day and age. It's gross how women were treated in that culture, but he could have just publicly walked away from her and shamed her, and he chose not to do that. He was going to do it quietly. And after he had made that decision, the Lord comes to him in a dream and says, hey, the baby that's inside Mary is from me. Stay with Mary. Now, a lot of pastors and a lot of pulpits and a lot of small group leaders have used this opportunity to make some jokey jokes about Joseph and staying with Mary. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. Not because I find it to be disrespectful. But because those jokes have been trodden. And there's no good material there. So we're just going to move right on. With marveling. At the faith of Joseph. That says. Okay. And stays with Mary. He did not have to do that. But he was a just man. And somehow, this is pure speculation, but it's hard for me to believe that this was the first time God had directed Joseph to do something. Because that's a pretty big something. The first time in your life God shows up and says, hey, I want you to do something for me. I've got this act of obedience. I've got this step of obedience I want you to take. That's a pretty big step to raise a son that's not your own, that is supposed to be the savior of the world. That's a pretty big step of obedience. And yet Joseph takes it. Joseph takes this step of obedience, sees it through. We know the story. They go to Jerusalem for the census and they end up in Bethlehem and Jesus is born in a manger and the angels and the shepherds show up to celebrate. And at that point, the narrative is kind of about Mary and what happens after that. But in Matthew chapter 2, we see Joseph pop up again. Verse 13 through 15. Now when they had departed, these are the wise men, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, rise, take a man with a one and a half to two year old son. And he says, Hey, I want you to take your family and I want you to flee to Egypt. Now this, and here's, here's what he does. He gets up the next day, that very morning. And he goes, this to me is a more remarkable step of obedience than choosing to remain with Mary. Do you understand this made him a refugee fleeing into a foreign nation? We have no reason to believe that Joseph was a man of means. We have no reason to believe that at all. He was from a small city called Nazareth. Tradition has it that he was a carpenter, although I've been taught that the word there can be interchanged with mason in the original language. And there's a lot more stone quarries around Nazareth than there are trees. So more than likely, Joseph was a mason. So if you've ever had that bumper sticker, my boss is a Jewish carpenter. If you were literally a carpenter who worked for a literal Jew, then that was true. Otherwise, I got bad news for you. Jesus was probably a Mason. Anyways. He had to uproot this family, leave his career and professional ties. He had to take a two-year-old across the border as a refugee. Y'all, I have a two-year-old. I won't take that kid to Wilmington. Like, I don't want to drive him to Greensboro and back. It's a hassle, those kids. He uproots him the very next day and takes him to Egypt, where we have no reason to believe he had ties in Egypt. He reestablishes himself, finds a way to provide, finds a way to protect, finds a way to make money, does what he has to do to care for his family. It's a remarkable step of obedience. And then the last one we see is a few verses down, chapter 2, verse 19. But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, Rise, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are dead. And he rose, and he took, loads everything back up, cuts ties in Egypt, migrates back to Nazareth, reestablishes himself again. All three times, Joseph gets what are pretty tall orders. God didn't appear to him in a dream and be like, hey, read the Bible for 30 minutes a day. And then the next day, okay, I'll do it, Lord. He said, move your family to another country. That's hard. And he did it the next day. He didn't talk to the city elders about it. He didn't go counsel with his rabbi. He didn't throw a fleece out and say, God, I'm going to pray about this again, and if you want me to do it, make the fleece wet and the ground dry. He didn't do that. He got up and he went. The example of Joseph's simple, humble, consistent obedience is remarkable. And I do not believe that he gets enough credit in the Christmas story and in the way that we think about the figures in the Bible and in his value to the kingdom of God. To me, Joseph is the personification of this verse in James. You can turn with me James chapter 1 verses 22 through 24. I thought about doing this morning to get to James a sword drill with you guys. Raise your hand if you know what a sword drill is. A.k.a. raise your hand if you grew up Southern Baptist. So in Southern Baptist Sunday School, a sword drill is you would hold the Bible up by the spine. I've got my finger in the mark. But you would hold the Bible up by the spine, and the teacher would call out a verse, and you'd slam your Bible on your lap, and you'd scramble to find it as fast as you could. First person to find the verse stands up and starts to read it, and they're the winner. And they're the most spiritual person in the room and they're destined for greatness, right? That's how that went. So I thought about having a good old fashioned sword drill right here in the middle of church, but I didn't want to embarrass myself. So I didn't do it. But in James 1, 22 through 24 is this famous passage that many of us have probably heard before. And I believe that Joseph embodies and personifies this passage. Verse 22. Joseph was a doer of the word, not just a hearer. He was a man who received instructions from God, and he followed through with them. And so we know that Joseph was righteous because he obeyed. We don't have any words of Joseph, but we know that he was a righteous man because he was a man that obeyed God. And the disciple John wrote a whole book, the letter of 1 John, where the entire point of the book is, if you say you love God and you do not obey him, you're a liar. Joseph loved God. Joseph obeyed him. He was a doer of the word. And now it may sound simple to be a doer of the word and not a hearer. Simply act. Don't just listen to sermons. Don't just listen to small groups. Don't just listen to books, to messages, to different things that we picked up along the years, to the counsel of godly friends. Don't just listen to it, but employ it and do it. When you feel God nudging you to take a step of obedience, take it. That is a doer of the word. And if you're like me, if I could sit down with you individually over some coffee and ask you, what do you feel like God's been nudging you to do? What are the steps, what's the step or steps of obedience that you believe God would like you to take in your life? What have you heard him tell you to do but maybe you haven't done yet? I very seriously doubt that any of you would lack for answers there. And that's okay. We should all have that answer all the time. At Grace, we say that we're step-takers. We're always taking the next step of obedience. In this way, we're making disciples. It's okay to have that list of things that we ought to do. But let me ask you this. And I don't mean to step on toes, but just hear me out. If I could ask you that question six months ago, would your answers be pretty much the same as they would be today? If I could ask you that question a year ago, three years ago, five years ago, how long have your answers been the same to the question of God wants you to take a step of obedience, what is it? How many times has he reminded you of that? And yet we haven't been doers. So I don't say that to unduly convict or to guilt. But I do want us to see that being a doer of God's word is far more easily said than done. And here's why being a doer of God's word is so important. Here's why being an obedient servant is so important. Here's why humble, quiet, consistent, silent obedience is so important. Here's why being an obedient servant is so important. Here's why humble, quiet, consistent, silent obedience is so important because I am convinced that humble, quiet obedience is the brick and mortar with which God builds his church. I am absolutely convinced that that type of humble, quiet, day after day, relationship after relationship, step after step, task after task, season after season, that kind of life lived in obedience to God and fealty to him is the brick and mortar with which God builds his kingdom, the church. I'm absolutely convinced. And that's so important because we've talked about this before. Jesus came to live a perfect life and to die a perfect death, but that's not all he came for. If it was, then why did he waste three years letting the disciples follow him around being annoying, asking stupid questions? Because he was preparing them to lead the church that he was establishing. Because he didn't just come to live a perfect life and die a perfect death. He came to establish the church and equip us to build it. That's what he came to do. And when he left, he meant this so ardently that he spent three years of his life training everyone around him to do it. And then when he left, he looked at them and he gave them what we refer to them as the Great Commission that we find in Matthew 28 and in Acts chapter 1. Go into all the world, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And then another way he says it is, take the gospel to the corner, to Jerusalem, Judea, to Samaria, even to the ends of the earth. Go tell my story. What he's telling them in not so many words is, I have equipped you and purposed you to go and build the church. And every generation of saints and believers after them, that is our sole biggest duty is to build God's church, to build his kingdom. At Grace, we have five traits, and I'm going to start talking about those traits more. But one of them, the one that we want to push everyone to, if you are a partner of grace, we want you to be a kingdom builder. Someone who realizes and understands that every gift you have, all of your time, all of your talent, and all of your resources have been given to you by God so that you might be used to build his kingdom. It's our purpose on earth to figure out how we marshal what we have to build God's kingdom, which is to add numbers to it and to strengthen those in it. And I am convinced that the Josephs, the unquoted, maybe misunderstood, maybe non-heroic. Figures in our church's history are the literal brick and mortar with which God builds his church. That obedience is how God builds his kingdom. And when I think about someone who personifies that, first of all, I would just say honestly, I can think of several people in this room that are that to me. But I didn't want to humiliate anyone, so I'm not going to use you as an example. When I think of someone who lived this life and was used in ways far beyond her expectations to build God's church. I think of my mama. And I've mentioned her before, and I think I've even expressed this before. But as I thought about the best example of this, I just couldn't get away from it because I think it's so powerful. My mama was born Linda Sandifer in Red Stick, Louisiana, Baton Rouge. Poor family. She has a brother named Doty. All right? That's his name. That's not his nickname. It's his name, Doty. And when she was 17 years old, she met my papa, Don Green, who grew up in South Georgia. And he said, he grew up on a literal dirt floor, and he told me when I was growing up that they were so poor that his family could only afford to buy one bean, and they would tie a string to it and take turns swallowing it for dinner. While we're here, he used to say, when I was growing up, we were so poor that when the family went to Kentucky Fried Chicken, we had to pay to lick other people's fingers. If you're too young to get that, just ask somebody who's chuckling. They'll explain it to you later. They were married at 18 and 19 years old. And at the end of Mama's life, she had four kids. She stayed with Don. I loved my Mama and Papa. She was widowed in her early 60s. And for the last about year and a half, two years of her life, I would have coffee with her every other Monday for Mama Mondays. And I got to know her better than I ever had. And what I learned about her is that she never, ever felt important. She felt important to her family. It wasn't anything bad. She's to the broader community. She didn't think she mattered. She never envisioned herself as having much impact. She grew up thinking her older sister, Ann, was prettier and smarter and more talented than she was. My pop, Aldon, had this big bombastic personality, and she was in the shadow of that, helping in the back. And so she never really thought she mattered. When she would hear sermons where the pastor would say things like, God has a purpose for your life, God has a plan, he's gifted you, and he's purposed you for great things in his kingdom. She would think, yeah, not me. I'm just a mom. I'm just doing my thing. Those sermons never really resonated with her. She never saw herself as important to God's kingdom or the church. When she was 72, she got diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And praise the Lord, she refused treatment. She said, no way. I'm going to spend the last months of my life seeing my family flying around not doing chemo. And I said, great. She had two bad days. She died. I got to do her funeral. When I got up on the stage to do my part in the funeral, I looked out, there's 400 people in the room. Now listen, I had done several funerals before that. I've done plenty since. The cold reality of life is the older you get, the fewer people who attend. That's just how it goes. For different reasons, and I will not enumerate because it's unnecessary, 400 people don't tend to show up for a 72-year-old's funeral, especially one who's been quietly widowed for over a decade, especially one who never led anything, who never felt important, and was never on the stage. But as I got up there, I looked out, and I saw the contingent of bank tellers that she worked with at First Union who loved her, who all had wonderful things to say about her, who told me how much they appreciated her and the deep impact that she made on their life with her faith and with her consistency. I saw the contingent of the deaf community. She had a daughter who was deaf, and so in learning sign language, she would always sign at the churches where she was to interpret for them. We had a whole contingent of the deaf community that came to honor Linda. I saw her family, 60 deep, that she spent the last six months of her life loving on and visiting, who showed up to honor Linda. All of her kids there loving her. I saw this contingent of girls from the youth group. They were in their 20s or 30s now, but a few years into being a widow, she's in her 60s, and she's like, God, what do you want me to do? And he felt like he wanted her to volunteer in the youth. So she starts showing up to mentor these teenage girls. And they love her. They love Grandma Linda. And they talk her into going unbelievably. She never did anything like this in her life. They talked her into going on a mission trip to Peru. So she's hiking around the Andes with high school girls. It makes no sense to us. But she's just loving on them, just being consistent in their life. And a decade later, they're there to celebrate her. She lived her life thinking she wasn't that important. And 400 people showed up to tell her that she was. Now, how did that happen? Because like Joseph, she lived a life of simple, humble, quiet, consistent obedience. And I'm convinced that is the brick and mortar that God uses to build his church. And I will say this too. If you can relate to Momo, that's how you feel sometimes. If you feel like if you were in the Bible narrative, you'd be a Joseph. No speaking parts for you. God's kingdom needs a lot more Josephs than it needs Pauls. It needs a lot more quiet, consistent obedience than it needs heroes. Do you understand? God's kingdom needs so many more Josephs than it needs Pauls. More people running their mouth, more mouthpieces, more people in leadership, all that stuff. And I know that this is funny for me to say because I'm the pastor of the church, but I don't think you realize how small potatoes I am in the community of pastors, so I'm not really bragging about anything here. To make this point, that God's kingdom needs a lot more Josephs than it needs Pauls to be built successfully. You can check me later on this. Years ago, I noticed it and found it so interesting. If you turn to Romans chapter 16, the last chapter of that letter, that letter was written to the church in Rome that Paul helped to start. And it's an amazing book. It's an amazing book. Jen asked me the other day, if you could preach anything, what would you preach? I said, I would take a year and go through Romans. I will not do that to you, but I would like to. And at the end of Romans, this incredibly technical, loving, wonderful book, all of chapter 16 is devoted to salutations. Greet so-and-so and so-and-so. Tell so-and-so I said hello. Tell so-and-so I love him. You know how many so-and-sos there are in Romans chapter 16? 26 different people are listed by name by Paul, plus two different families that he says to greet. Paul helped to start that church, but those people he listed are the ones that showed up every week and held babies and faithfully ministered and served as elders and small group leaders and made coffee and did the announcements and played the bass. Those 26 people are the ones on whom that church was built. Paul got to play a part in that church and it was an essential part, but make no mistake about it, all those people who are simply listed by name and then forgotten to history, they had so much more to do with the building of the church in Rome through quiet and consistent obedience than Paul ever did. The here's the thing. We never know the results, what the results of what quiet, humble obedience will be. We can never fathom what the results of our obedience will be. We do not know what chess pieces God is moving around the board. We do not know what he intends to do with the next step that he is asking us to take. But here's what we know from Joseph. If he doesn't obey God in the first place and stay with Mary, then she has to live in shame with her parents, likely for the rest of her life, and Jesus grows up a fatherless child. That's likely what happens if he doesn't obey God there. If he doesn't obey God the second time, what could happen is Herod could kill Jesus and the evil one wins early. If he doesn't obey God the third time and go back, then the prophecy that says God will call his son out of Egypt never takes place and isn't fulfilled and Jesus isn't who he says he is and the scriptures are proof false. There's no way Joseph could possibly know those things hinged on his obedience. He just knew that he was the man who did what God asked him to do, and so he did it. You don't know how God is building the kingdom through your faithful, quiet obedience, and you won't know this side of eternity. But I can promise you this. With every step you take of obedience in him, he's laying one more brick to build his kingdom. And it is pushed forward by the kind of faithful obedience that Joseph lived out and that my mom all lived out and that I see so many of you living out. So let's resolve in light of this to be like Joseph, to continue our humble, quiet, consistent, often unseen and unappreciated obedience, believing that God is using those things to build his very kingdom in ways that we cannot fathom. Let's pray. Father, thank you for Joseph. Thank you for what you tell us about him, for what we see in him and can learn from him. Thank you for his example. Lord, I pray that you would help us be doers of the word, not just hearers. But that when you ask us to take a step of obedience, we would have the courage and the faith and the discipline to wake up the next morning, the very next hour, and do it. And God, would you let us experience what it is to be used by you to build your kingdom as we simply do the next thing that you've placed in front of us. Father, we love you and we pray these things in your son's name. Amen.

Good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for joining us this November. Whenever I'm supposed to come up without a bumper video, the video that we played between the last song and the sermon is called a bumper video. Whenever I'm supposed to come up during a prayer and there's not a bumper video, I'm always terrified that I'm standing on the stage at the wrong time. There was a time at my old church where I was the host. I had Haley's job. They paid me for it. She does it for free. And I was in the front row, and I thought that the guy gave me the nod. You know, just this is it after this. And I was like, okay. So I come up, and he's standing back looking at me, and he goes, and he just strums the next song and goes, and I literally just walked up and looked at him in horror and then walked off the other side of the stage and sat down over there. And that was a congregation of like 700 people and they were all laughing at me. And I deserved it. That's germane to nothing. I'm just inviting you into the fear that I still fear, feel when I'm standing right here as Aaron is praying. Thank you to Kyle, our student pastor, who stepped in for me last week and did a phenomenal job as he continued on with the series. I appreciate that, man. We are in a series called The Songs We Sing, looking at some of the songs that we sing as a congregation, finding them in Scripture, allowing Scripture to imbue them with a greater meaning for us. And it's been really, really fun to move through this series, hear you guys responding, hear you guys singing, know that these things are connecting and that these songs can have deeper meaning for us. I continue to believe and emphasize that getting together and singing together on a Sunday morning as a body of believers is the most important thing that we do on Sunday mornings together. So I'm glad that we're continuing to do that. This week, we're looking at a song called The Battle Belongs. Next week, I'm preaching on a Christmas song, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, kind of to transition us into the Christmas season. So I'm looking forward to sharing that with you guys next week. But this week, as I said, we're focused on a song called The Battle Belongs. It's one that we've sung around here for a while. You probably know it, but in case you don't, I'm just going to read you the chorus. This will not be on the screen, so you'll just be forced to pay attention to me. But the chorus goes like this. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees with my hands lifted high. Did you guys think I was going to sing this to you? No way. Oh, God, the battle belongs to you. In every fear I lay at your feet, I'll sing through the night. Oh, God, the battle belongs to you. This song comes directly out of, I think, two stories in the Old Testament. Now, as we sing this song, there's songs about you guiding me through the shadow and through the valley. That comes from Psalm 23. There's words about his ways being higher than our ways. That comes from Romans 11, that if God is for us, who can be against us? That comes from Romans 8. So there's different lyrics in the song that come from different places in scripture, but the heart of the song itself comes from two fantastic stories in the Old Testament. Now, if you spent any time at all at Grace, you know that I love my Old Testament. I love my Old Testament stories. It's a really, it tends to be a more entertaining read than the New Testament once you get past Acts, right? So I love the narrative stories of the Old Testament. So if you have a Bible, the one I'm going to focus on primarily today is in 2 Chronicles chapter 20. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you. 2 Chronicles can be hard for some of us to find because maybe we don't have a lot of experience there. It's in the first third of the Bible. There's a lot of pages in 1 and 2 Chronicles, so you're bound to find it if you thumb through a little bit. If you see kings, you're gaining on it. And if you see Ezra or Nehemiah, you've gone too far. All right. So Chronicles chapter 20. And in Chronicles chapter 20, there's a guy who's the king named Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat is the king of Judah. By this point in history, the kingdom has split. After David, we have Solomon. And after Solomon is the king, we have Rehoboam. Rehoboam was a cruddy king. He was a jerk. He was a dummy. And so Jeroboam took the northern kingdoms referred to for the rest of the Old Testament typically as Israel. And Rehoboam kept the southern kingdom typically referred to as Judah. For the rest of the lines of those kings and those stories are told in 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles. The northern tribes of Israel had no good kings. They all did what was right in their own eyes. They all betrayed God. Southern Israel, depending on who you talk to, Judah had between three and five good kings. As I kind of dug into the research, in my opinion, they had three good kings. We're going to talk about two of them this morning. One of them was Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat, 2 Chronicles chapter 20, receives word that the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Ammonites and the Meubites, I don't know how to say the last one, Meubites, were gathering together to attack him. Clearly, they felt like they had seen a weakness and they were ready to exploit it. Now, Judah is not a geopolitical player. They're just trying to carve out their place in the world. They're by no means a superpower. They're not scaring anyone. And so these three tribes assemble against him and decide now's the time we're going to strike. We're going to come in and we're going to conquer Judah. We're going to conquer Jerusalem and overthrow Jehoshaphat. And so word of this planned attack and the three tribes uniting against Jehoshaphat gets back to him., these three tribes have amassed against you. They're coming in to take over. They probably have the advantage. What do you want to do? His very first reaction is he was afraid. After he processes the fact that he's afraid, what should I do? He prays. He prays and he assembles all of Judah. Everyone from the different towns, the different tribes in Judah, come to Jerusalem, fast with me. Implicit in fasting is praying. Pray with me. Let's seek the face of the Lord and what we should do. So that's what they did. All the people of Judah gathered in Jerusalem. And they got on their hands and their knees and they cried out to God and they said, what do we do? God, what do we do here? We're going to be attacked. What should we do? And so they respond in prayer. And God answers them in this way on down the passage, verses 15 through 18. And he said, We say the battle belongs to the Lord. That's where it comes from. It's from the high priest reassuring Jehoshaphat, don't worry about it. Do not be afraid. Do not be dismayed. This battle's not yours anyways. This battle belongs to God. Verse 16. And here's the scene. Jehoshaphat gets word that the Moabites, Ammonites, and the Miites are coming to attack them and overthrow them. He's scared. He prays. He gathers the people of Judah to pray with him. Father, what would you have us do here? At the end of the prayer, the high priest says, the Lord has directed me. And you're supposed to do not be afraid. Do not be dismayed. This is not your battle. This is God's. Go out and align yourself for battle. And the instructions that follow are, lead with the Levites and let them sing worship. Lead with worship and lead with praise. And that's what they did. He fell on his face. He praised God with all the people. And it's important that we understand that worship isn't just singing. Worship can be praying. Worship can be a posture. Worship is living a life of sacrifice. Worship has a large definition. And so he falls on his face. If you're hearing these instructions, he falls on his face with the rest of Judah and they pray to God. And then the next morning they get up. They're not fearful. They go out to the battle lines. They put in front of them the worship pastors, which has to be the worst possible idea, right? Like if we needed to defend grace, would you want Aaron and Greg to do it? Or would you want people with like military experience? I'm just asking the question. I don't think you would want me to do it, but they're not the tops on the list is all I'm saying. But they put the skinny jeans and the beards out in front. This is who we're going to lead with. By the way, all these jokes, none of this is my insight. These are all Aaron's jokes. I'm stealing them. This is a sermon he's done before, this part of it. So I'm authorized to use these things. I mean, just so we're all clear about how tough I am, I raked for like 45 minutes last week. My arm was sore for a day, and I got a blister on one of my fingies, even though I was wearing gloves. All right, so that's what we're dealing with here. But they put the worship leaders out in front, and they praise God. And as they praise God, God incites a riot in the camp of the three different tribes. They conquer each other, and they walk away dismayed. God's army doesn't have to fire a single arrow or throw a single spear. The battle is won because it belongs to the Lord. There's another wonderful example of this, and I believe it's referenced in the chorus when it says, everything I lay at your feet. And I think the most descriptive example of this is in 2 Kings chapter 19. It's a story of Hezekiah. Hezekiah was another one of the good kings of Jerusalem, or yeah, of Jerusalem and of Judah. And what's going on here is that Hezekiah receives word that the king of Assyria, Sennacherib, is sweeping through the Middle East and is storming towards Jerusalem intent on conquering it. And this isn't three random roving tribes that happen to exist around you, Moab and Amman. It's not those places. This is Assyria, the precursor to the Persian empire. This is Sennacherib, a name that strikes fear in everyone that hears it. This is a big deal. And Sennacherib on his way deploys basically propaganda in Jerusalem. It's a letter that he sends that he writes to the people of Jerusalem that says, hey, you're going to want to get out of Dodge because I'm coming to wreck shop. And if you're still there when I get there, you and your family's going to die, just so you know. And someone takes that letter and they hand it to Hezekiah. And this is Hezekiah's response in verse 14. Verse 19. The propaganda letter is brought to King Hezekiah. Hezekiah knows. If Sennacherib wants Jerusalem, he's going to take it. They have as much chance of defending Jerusalem from Sennacherib as my daughter Lily has defending her Reese's peanut butter cups at Halloween from me. I'm going to win that fight. And so what does Hezekiah do? He doesn't do what you think he should do. What he should do is assemble the generals right away. Assemble the quartermaster right away. Assemble the treasurer right away. Whoever's in charge of agriculture, how we're going to feed the people, get them in the room. He needs to assemble the cabinet right away. How do we defend Jerusalem? Someone start boiling some oil. I saw that on Netflix one time. That seems to be a thing you should do when you're defending the city. Get everybody together and let's come up with a plan to repel the Assyrian army. That's what we need to do. That's not what he does. He takes the letter. He goes to the temple. He lays it down at the feet of the Lord, and he prays. And he says, God, this is an affront to you. What would you have us do? His first response is to pray. And similarly to Jehoshaphat, God directs Hezekiah, don't do anything. Don't fire an arrow. Just watch, and I'll win. And the next morning, he incites a riot in the camp of the Assyrians. They rout each other, and they walk back to Assyria licking their wounds. God's armies didn't have to fire an arrow. Because they're good kings, Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah responded in prayer to everything that came their way. And so, of course, when I read these stories and I reflect on them, and I think about these were put here over a thousand years ago for us today. What is it that I should take from them? I think there's myriad applications here. But the biggest one to me is to simply ask, is this what I do? Is this what we do? When I encounter a situation that gives me pause, is my reflexive response to pray? When I'm fearful, like Jehoshaphat was, is my first response to go and pray, or is my first response to go and plan? I don't know about you, but when I'm in a stressful situation, when I feel disappointed or when I feel overwhelmed or when I feel like there's a big task in front of me, the very first thing I do is come up with a plan that I believe in. As soon as I have a plan that I can work, I feel very comforted in life. So the first thing I do in stress is I sit down, I think it through, I make a plan, and then I begin to work the plan. The problem is, prayer didn't precede that plan. It didn't follow that plan. It's just my plan. And I'm not, certainly didn't bring anybody here to make you feel bad about your prayer life. So I'll let you join in judging me about mine. And if it applies to you, fine. But when I read these passages, I can't help but ask myself, how much of my parenthood is prayerless and just reflexive? How much of my marriage and my love for Jen is prayerless and just a representation of my effort? How much of my career? How much of my interactions with others? How many of my important, maybe even difficult conversations? How many small groups in Bible studies have I led prayerlessly just going into them on my own? Is it my reflex in times of stress, in times of trepidation, in times of challenge, in times of fear, in times of uncertainty? Is my reflex to pray or is it to plan? Is it to seek the face of the Lord? Or is it to call a friend? How much in your life, this is where I'll put it on you, how much in your life, in your coming and in your going, as you enter into situations, as you face new situations, when you get phone calls, as you respond, how much in your life do you stop and you pause and you lay down at the foot of God and you say, God, I need you here. I'm not big enough for this. How much of that do you do and how much of it do you just take on yourself and charge right ahead without ever once stopping to pause and pray? I've joked often, and I will do it one day, that one day I'm going to give a sermon on reading the Bible. And I'm going to come out. I'm going to say, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. You should read your Bible more. Let's pray. I'm going to do that one day. Because I genuinely think that when I come out here and I tell a group full of Christians who in your heart love and seek out God's word, when I say, hey guys, we should read the Bible more often, that the Holy Spirit can take it from there. He doesn't need me to talk for 29 and a half more minutes to make that an effective message. I'm probably just going to mess it up. That's enough for the Holy Spirit to go and work. And similarly, this morning is simply that. Hey guys, pray more. Pray more reflexively. Pray more regularly. And grain it into yourselves. Let the Holy Spirit work it into your psyche. Pray more. Because here's what happens when we pray more. I was reflecting as I was preparing. If we can be more like Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah, if we can be people who respond in prayer and not panic or plans, what can happen for us? Because remember, everything that God tells us to do, he tells us to do because it's best for us. So why is it best for us to stop at every moment, every day, and pray multiple times a day? Why is it better for us to pray and consider more? Here's what I think. Prayer provides perspective, place, peace, and priorities. Prayer provides perspective, place, peace, and priorities. Not for nothing. That's the greatest alliterative sentence I've ever written in my life. I'm going to graduate now as a pastor. I've reached the mountaintop, I think. Prayer provides us with perspective. It puts things in their proper focus. I have a son, John, he's two and a half, and he's in that season where every time we go up the stairs, it's an adventure, right? And you always ask him when you're about to go up the stairs, you don't want to upset his delicate sensibilities. Johnny, do you want to hold my hand? You want to do it yourself? And he usually says, I do it myself. Okay. And so he uses the wall and the railings and different things, and he takes the steps one at a time. And I'm right behind him. If he falls, I'm going to catch him. It's going to be okay. But he likes to say, I do it myself. And then I let him do it himself. Listen, every time we go into a situation or circumstance or a scenario, and we do it prayerlessly, what we've just done is we've looked at God and we've said, I do it myself. Do you need help with your career? No, I got this. I'll do it myself. Do you need help in your marriage? No, I got this. I'll do it myself. I can hold your hand. I can guide you through this. I can show you the way. No, it's good. I'll do it myself. This big goal in your life, I'll do it myself. Reconciling a relationship, I'll do it myself. Raising your children, I'll do it myself. Every time we enter into anything prayerlessly, we are saying to God, I'll do it myself. Thanks. When we don't pray, we make ourselves too big and God too small. When we don't pray, when we don't pray about whatever it is, about a health issue, about a relationship, about a career, about parenthood, about our marriage, about trying to transition into being adult parents of adult kids, and that relationship is different, and I don't really know what to do with my hands anymore. I just need to know I need to give them some space. When we approach that prayerlessly, we make God too big and ourselves too small. We forget who we are and who he is. But I want us to actually acknowledge and admit that that any time we approach anything, whether it's just a small sales meeting, a regular business meeting in our place of work, a board meeting or an elder meeting, when we approach a small group, when we approach a delicate conversation with our spouse or with our kids, when we sit at our desk or wherever it is we sit on Monday morning and think about the week ahead, when we do any of those things prayerlessly, we make ourselves far too big and God far too small. And we say to him, I've got this. I'll do it myself. God in his goodness climbs those stairs right behind us, but he's willing to hold our hand and walk us up there if we'll reach for him in prayer. So not only does prayer give us perspective, but prayer puts everything in its proper place, right? Because when we pray, here's what we admit, whether we consciously acknowledge this or not. God is in charge. I am not. This situation is in his hands. When we pray, that's what we acknowledge. God's in charge. I am not. This situation is in his hands. God's the creator of the universe. I'm not the creator of the universe. He's in charge. I am not. And this situation is in his hands and better off for it. When I think about this, that prayer puts us in our proper place, I'm reminded of Genesis 1. Genesis 1.1. God created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And I love to ask the question, why does the Bible begin that way? I don't think it just begins that way because that's where the story begins. I think it begins that way because it sets up the fundamental relationship throughout all of Bible and all of life. God is the creator. We are the creation. This is it. All sin in our life is getting confused about that relationship. That's all it is. God is the Lord. I am not. God is the creator. I am the created. All sin in our life is when we choose to ignore that and say, no, no, no, I'm more important than him. That's it. And so what prayer does is put us in our proper place. What prayer does for us in a humble, quiet way is what God had to do for Job in a bombastic way in Job chapter 38. When Job's tired of life, he's tired of suffering and goes to God and he's like, hey man, you owe me some answers. And so in Job 38 and on, God gives Job those answers, but they're not the ones he wants. He says, Job, you've forgotten your place, pal. You don't know who you are and who I am. You've forgotten. And then Paul reiterates this in Romans 11, when he says, who can understand the mind of God? His ways are higher than our ways. And so when we humble ourselves in prayer, particularly when we bow on our knees if we can, it puts everything in its proper place. You are God. I am not. You're in charge. I'm reliant on you. The situation is bigger than me. It is not bigger than you. I know that you know my kids better than I could ever know them. I know you love them more than I could ever love them. So I'm trusting them with you. Tell me what my part is and I'll do it. Often your part is to hang back and sing worship music and let God do the dirty work. I know that you know my wife better than I'll ever know her and that you love her more than I can ever love her. So can you just show me what my part is in loving her? Can you just help me with that? God, I know that my career, for whatever reason, is important to you. I don't know why it's important to you. I don't know what the end game of it is. I don't know what you would have me to learn or gain there, but I know that it matters to you where I work, who I work for, and how I carry myself in the workplace. I know that matters to you, God. So I'm going to trust you with it and walk in the steps that you would lay out for me. When we pray, it gives us the proper perspective and it puts everything in its proper place. And then, when everything's in its proper place, prayer gives us peace. It offers us peace. I love that in worship, sometimes the Holy Spirit does things like this. In worship, Aaron referenced Philippians 4, 8. Finally, brothers, whatsoever things are true, noble, of good report, honorable, godly, trustworthy, think upon these things. And he was right. That verse is preceded by two verses that tell us what we should do in times of worry. Philippians 4, 6, and 7. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, through prayer and supplication, and with thanksgiving, present your request to God, and the God of peace, who transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. So Paul writes in Philippians, don't be anxious for anything, which for most dudes, it's like, okay. And for most women, it's like, what are you talking about? Like, I'm anxious about you saying that. Be anxious for nothing. But in everything, through prayer and petition and with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And what will happen when in everything we present our request to God, when in everything we pray, when in every circumstance we reflectively fall on our feet and say, God, what would you have us do? What happens when for everything we present our petitions to God and we have the proper perspective with that thing and who God is and we put ourselves in our proper place and we put God in his proper place and we put the situation in its proper place, then what happens is we are given the peace of God that passes all understanding and he guards our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. Prayerful people are able to walk in a peace that no one else can understand. Why? Because that peace is guarded by God. Because they walk in an understanding that God's got this and I don't and it's okay. The people in your life who pray the most are probably the most peaceful. They have the hardest feathers to ruffle. Now some of my friends are the most anxious and the most prayerful. Those things go hand in hand for them. But at least they've learned to reflexively pray. But when we are people of prayer and we're assured of perspective and place, we can't help but feel peace that follows that. I remember very vividly coming to Grace in April of 2017. And when I got here, I made this point before, I will not belabor it. Things were comically bad. We were going to shut the, if they didn't hire a senior pastor in April, they weren't making it out of May, no doubt about it. And no one who was here at that time would argue that. And I remember getting here and finding out more about how dire it was and going, whoa, well, this is career suicide because no one is going to look at the resume of a guy who's been a senior pastor exactly one time and ran it into the ground in six weeks. That's lifelong small group pastor territory. And then when I get old, they make me care pastor. That's what that is. But in prayer, I honestly, like I wasn't nervous. I wasn't worried. I didn't even really care because it was out of my hands. I knew that God loved this place. I knew that God cares about me and he cares about the people who call this place home. And I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is where God wanted me to be. And so I literally thought back in April of 2017, well, God, you brought me here on purpose. I know you did. It was either to grow it or to kill it. Either way, it's what you want. Let's ride. Let's see what happens. Now, we still don't know that he didn't bring me here to kill it, but so far, it's been to grow. So far, he's walked alongside us, and he's shown up again and again. Whenever we sing that song, Evidence, those are the kinds of things I think about. When we put things in their proper perspective, and we put ourselves in our place through prayer, we can be given the peace of God through prayer. And once we are walking in the peace of God through prayer, when we reflexively go to pray, we can pray with the proper perspective. It gives us the right perspective from which to pray. Because if I want to kneel down and pray for my children, John and Lily, I need to first acknowledge, God, you know them better than I'll ever know them. You see their entire future laid out in front of them. I don't know what they're going to do today. Hopefully, shut up, because we have a seven-hour drive. But I don't know what they're going to do today. You know what they're going to do in 30 years. I don't know how to best love their little hearts and souls. You knit them together. You know them intimately. So it inclines me with that admission to say, God, how would you have me pray for my children? God, what should my heart for Lily be? God, how can I best pray for John? And so when we walk in prayer, it inclines us towards his wisdom and we begin to blanket our prayers with this question of what is wise to pray. Not reflexively, what do I want to pray? What do I feel like praying? What do I want most in the moment? But God, because I know that you know this situation, you know me, you know the other people, you know everything happening, you know them intimately, because I that you know way more than I do about all the things what God is wise to pray. And that question begins to mature our prayers. When I pray for Sunday mornings, I never ever pray that the sermon would be good. I've never once prayed that I would do well. I think that's the wrong perspective. I pray and I write it every week to the elders. Every week to the elders I send out, let's all on these days, let's pray for this thing together. And Sunday has never changed. The prayer for Sunday is always, would the service be exactly what God wants it to be? Good, bad, or ugly, would what happens in here be what God wants to happen in here? When I pray for the band, when we have our pre-service meeting at 915, and sometimes I'm asked to pray over that, I always pray, God, would you help us to care about the things that you care about and not care about the things that you don't care about? Which is code speak for, if the host messes up, but it doesn't detract from the spiritual point of the service, who cares? If the basis starts with the wrong note, don't get bent out of shape about it. God doesn't care about it. You shouldn't either. Let's pursue the throne and praise God together. God, help us to care about what you care about and not care about what you don't care about. The more we walk in prayer, the more we keep the perspective in place right, the more peace we experience. And in that peace, we begin to pray wise prayers. God, how can I pray in accordance with your will about this? So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to invite Aaron and the band, Greg, back up. Back up. And instead of me finishing my sermon on prayer in prayer, I'm going to invite you to a time of prayer. I'm pretty certain if you're a thinking person that at some point during this sermon as I've talked about, hey, in this situation do you respond in prayer? Have you offered that up to prayer? Have you been trying to do this prayerlessly or with your own plans? I would be willing to bet that God has brought something to mind for you. That there's something or someone or some things in your life that probably do need some prayer. And maybe you haven't given them the prayer that they need. Maybe there are things you've been praying for very regularly for a long time, but you just want to lift them up again. So I'm going to step off the stage, and I'm going to give us all some time to pray. Lift those things up to God. Your children, your spouse, your loved ones, the family you'll see this Thanksgiving, that career thing that's just been eating at you, the bills that you don't know how you're going to pay, the health issues of you and your loved one that are just driving you nuts. Whatever it might be that God's brought to mind, take a few minutes and pray for that. And as you pray, Aaron's going to sing over us a little bit, and then at some point he'll invite us to stand. And we'll close out singing The Battle Belongs. And we'll let that be our battle cry that reminds us that our very first reaction, our very first reflex, no matter what's happening in our life, should be to go to God in prayer. Let's pray together, silently.

My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. This is the second part of our series called The Songs We Sing. Last week, we opened up and we did Graves in the Gardens. I gave you kind of a background of worship, and I started to, it's kind of trickled into me some good feedback that you guys are excited about this series, looking forward to it, looking forward to seeing what we've been singing in the Bible, what we will be singing in the Bible. And so I am thrilled to be going through this series with you because like I said, it's one that I've been wanting to do for a while. And last week when I got done preaching and we sang together, I was so encouraged at the voices being lifted up. And this morning we'll have the same opportunity. I'm going to preach about the song that we just sang because it's pulled straight out of Psalm chapter 8. And then we'll sing it again, knowing it better, having a better understanding of what it means in a full-throated, open-hearted way. And then we'll sing some other songs that are really special to us. And then we'll go into our week. So I'm feeling really good about this Sunday. And I just feel like it's worth saying sometimes that I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for my church. I'm so grateful for the love and the community that we experience here, for the handshakes and hugs and laughter and the lobby for the stories of the team coming back from Mexico I'm just grateful for y'all I'm grateful to be here and I'm excited to teach to you out of the book of Psalms this morning now to do a series focused on worship and to not have at least one morning out of the book of Psalms would be sacrilegious. It would be absolutely awful because Psalms is the hymn book of the Old Testament. It is the hymn book of the Hebrew people. It is intended to be sung. A vast majority of the Psalms are intended to be sung. And sometimes there's even instructions about it at the beginning of eight. You don't have to look there yet, but the very first thing it says is to the choir master, according to the Giddeth, nobody knows what that is, a Psalm of David, but they think it's a certain tune to which it's supposed to be sung. So David is even giving this to the choir master. I wrote this to praise our God. Let's sing it to this tune. Let's sing it together. A vast majority of the Psalms were written with the intention of God's body of believers singing them his words back to him, which I think is remarkable. And Psalms is a remarkable book. It sits in the dead center of our Bible. It's the longest book in the Bible with 150 chapters. It's divided into five separate books within the book of Psalms. It has the longest chapter in the Bible in Psalm 119, which comes in at, I believe, 176 verses. It's a super long chapter of the Bible because it's a beautiful Hebrew poem. There's 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and Psalm 119 has 22 stanzas, and each stanza, every line begins with that letter of the alphabet as the psalmist moves through. It's the one thing in the Bible that really makes me want to learn original Hebrew so I could hear that psalm read and sung in the original language in which it was intended because I've got a feeling that it is beautiful. I'll just wait until I get to heaven. I'm not actually going to do the work to learn Hebrew. That seems super hard. The seminary I chose, I chose it so I didn't have to learn original languages, so I'm not about to reverse course now, you know? But it's the longest book with the longest chapter, and it's filled with songs. And they're not all praise songs. They're divided up in different ways depending on who you ask and who's doing the dividing. You can find some people that divide them into five different types of Psalms, some as many as 20 and everything in between. But just a few examples of the types of Psalms that you can find in your Bible as you read through Psalms. And shame on me, I realize I haven't done a series in Psalms in the six and a half years I've been here. Shame on me for that. So I am promising you that coming up, we will do a series in Psalms at some point. But if you want to know some of the divisions of the book of Psalms, the different types that we have, there's Psalms of praise. Obviously, there's royal Psalms, Psalms of lament. And we're actually going to talk about those next week. I'm so grateful that our Bible has Psalms of lament, expressions of sadness and grief. There's what's called imprecatory psalms or psalms that are prayed and sung to seek vengeance over our enemies. David had a lot of reason to sing those. You probably don't. You probably don't have many enemies that you should sing imprecatory songs over, but they're in there. Psalms of enthronement and then psalms of pilgrimage. And I think these psalms of pilgrimage are really interesting. And I want to actually point you towards a book for my people who are readers. There's this book by a pastor named Eugene Peterson. Eugene Peterson is the pastor that faithfully translated the message to make scriptures a little bit more approachable for people who have never encountered them before. I read his biography last year, and I think it was an autobiography, a memoir, and it was one of the more moving books I've read in a long time. I was really, really touched by the heart of Eugene Peterson. And probably his most famous book is a book called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. And A Long Obedience in the Same Direction actually moves through what's called the Psalms of Ascent, this group of pilgrimage psalms And I've wanted to, that may be the Psalm series that we do. I'm either going to do it as a series as we walk through the book together, or I'm going to do it as like a Wednesday night course where those that want to come and we move through it together. But if you're a reader, I would highly encourage you to go grab or write down or put in your Goodreads, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. But in the book of Psalms, we have all these different categories. We have all these different verses. And one of the things we see that I think is remarkable is that a majority of them are written by David. They're not all written by David. There's some authors that are just referred to as the sons of Asaph. And Asaph was, I believe, the choir master, the worship leader. And then these are his sons that he has passed this responsibility down to. And they've written their own Psalms in there. But one of the remarkable things about the book of Psalms is to see the heart of David just kind of filleted open on the table for you. And I love that God in his goodness includes the Psalms to offset the other stories of David. Because if you read the story of David in 1 and 2 Samuel, you can also see the stories in 1st Kings but more of details of the story are in 1st and 2nd Samuel and if you read the story of David you see this traditionally masculine macho guy who's fighting and killing and he kills Goliath and he fights lions and bears with his bare hands which you know who hasn't and then there's a song about him him. David has killed his tens of thousands. Saul has killed his thousands. It's just like, yeah, spear-throwing, meat-eating dude. And then you open Psalms, and here's a guy that's brokenhearted. Here's a guy that's highly emotional, highly vulnerable, who displays his tears and his lament and his repentance and his hopes and his fears and his deepest prayers for all of time to see. And the juxtaposition of Psalms and 1 and 2 Samuel kind of brings together this vision of what we can be as people and how multifaceted we can be. So I'm grateful that Psalms reads almost like a prayer journal of David at times. But to me, the most remarkable thing about the book of Psalms is that when we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. When we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. And you can sing the Psalms. Write this down if you want to, if you want something else to listen to. There's this, I don't know, I guess they're just a duet, a duo, I don't know the rules, a band, Shane and Shane. And they have an album called Psalms, where they have set the Psalms to music, and it's one of my favorites. I love it. I've loved it for years and years. You can go find it. It's on Spotify. It's on all the things. And you can sing the Psalms. I would highly recommend it. When we sing the Psalms, understand this, we are joining in to an ancient chorus of all the saints. I spoke last week about how when we worship, when we praise, when we sing out, that we join our brothers and sisters in Christ in unity. It unifies us according to the high priestly prayer of Jesus in John chapter 17. When we sing together, it unifies us in this remarkable way. When we walk in Republican and Democrat, we walk in 80 and 20. We walk in stressed and not stressed, successful and not successful in a season of plenty and a season of need. And we lay all of those things down and we praise our God together and it unifies us. And I've just, I just got to tell you, I shared this with the band and the tech team before the service. But this is just a, just such a good picture of how it unifies us. if I don't say it I might die a little on the inside. So I'm just gonna have to Yesterday I was at the funeral for a friend of mine's wife 40 years old perfectly healthy Went on a girl's trip Heart heart attack, died in the bathroom. No other explanation. Incredibly sad thing. Two kids, sixth grader, third grader. So I drive down, I go to the funeral, and the husband's name, my buddy's name is Jeff. There's about 750 people in the room. And in between speakers, they put up a slideshow of Jodi and her family. And they started playing under that slideshow a song called Gratitude. We've sang it here a couple of times. It's going to be the last song that we sing this morning. They started playing Gratitude. And when that song started, Jeff, the husband who lost his wife a week ago, stood up and raised his hands in worship. And so, if you're at a funeral and the husband of the deceased woman stands up and raises his hands, you stand up and you raise your hands. So 750 people stand up and raise their hands to this song too. And then they spontaneously started singing it. And I'm six hours away from my church family, with my old church family, singing a song with myriad other church families, with our hands raised, choosing to praise in a moment of grief, and it just unifies you in a way that nothing else can. It was a remarkable moment. And when we sing it this morning, we join them and their praises to a God in spite of grief. We join Jeff in our prayers for him. We join the other congregations that sing that too. So when we sing the Psalms, we join into the ancient chorus of all the saints. Do you understand? When we sing in a few minutes, Psalm 8, back to God, we are singing it with David. We are singing it with the generations of David and Solomon and the faithful generations of Jeroboam and Rehoboam. We're singing it with Hezekiah and King Asa. We are singing it with the faithful generations, with the remnant that gets taken to Babylon. We are singing these psalms with Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego. We are singing these psalms with the Maccabees who lit the menorah in Roman oppression. We are singing these psalms with the generations that cried out in the 400 years of silence between Malachi and Matthew We are singing these songs with Jesus himself and with the disciples And with the early churches that met in the basements in Rome when we sing the Psalms We are joining with the underground churches in China and in Lebanon and in Istanbul, singing God's songs back to him. One of my favorite quotes about the Psalms is by Charles Spurgeon, and I'll tell you why he deserves to be the one who writes this in a second. Also, I'm just going to compose myself. We've got a long way to go here. This is premature. I can't afford this. I only have one tissue. Jen's laughing at me the hardest, she knows. It's been an emotional weekend. Back off. All right. Spurgeon writes this, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. I love that. The book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. That when we sing Psalms, we are mounted on wings of eagles and we soar in the presence of God. Now let me tell you why Spurgeon has a right to write that sentence and should rightly be pointed out in any sermon on Psalms. If you don't know who Charles Haddon Spurgeon is, he was a preacher. He was loud. He had combed back hair and a beard and a belly, and he suffered from gout, and he liked to drink whiskey. So, just saying, he was called. He was and is called the Prince of Preachers. He holds the world record for preaching to the most people in one space at one time without a microphone and being heard. One time he was preaching in an auditorium. This is in the late 1800s in London. He was preaching in an auditorium, going through what he wanted to say, and some janitor in a hallway that he couldn't see bowed on his knees right there and accepted Jesus listening to Charles go through his sermon. It's an amazing story. The volume of work of Charles Spurgeon is unbelievable. The amount of books that he wrote. You can look up any of his sermons online, and they're long, wordy, lengthy sermons. And it was said of him that people would come from all over the world to hear him preach, and what they would say is, yeah, the sermon's great, but you need to listen to the man pray. He was known all over the world. He wrote tons of books. He ran a seminary out of his church. He wrote books for the seminarians that I have, that I refer to regularly, that still help me and my approach to pastoring and preaching and all the things. But his whole life, he worked on one book that became a three-volume set called The Treasury of David. It's a commentary on the book of Psalms. And he carried it with him wherever he went. He worked on it for decades. He would work on it for a bit. He'd put it back down, he'd pick it back up. You better believe that I've got the treasury of David in my office. And that every time I preach out of a psalm, that's the first place I go. If you're someone who appreciates materials like that, go get it. It's not like super expensive. Find it on Amazon with a cheesy cover. And he writes in the intro to his magnum opus, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. The book of Psalms is worthy of our study and it's worthy of our singing. And we ought to acknowledge when we're singing it back to God because when we do, we join into that ancient chorus of all the saints through all the decades. Now this morning, we're going to be in Psalm chapter 8. So if you have a Bible with you, I would encourage you to turn there. And I'm going to say this this morning. I don't try to get you to do a lot of stuff because I want it to matter when I ask you to do something. So I intentionally don't try to put pressure on you to do things. I just want you to be a good Christian adult and do what you want to do and do as the Spirit moves you. But I'm going to encourage us as a church to begin to bring our Bibles to church for Sunday mornings. Some of you like to read through apps. That's fine. Read your app. Bring it. Have your phone out. I'm giving you permission to have your phone out in church. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not scrolling something that you shouldn't be scrolling during a church service. And if you are someone who likes to read the Bible on your phone, that's fine to have it out. Just make sure that the screen is visible to the people next to you, okay? So that they can smack you if you're cheating and you're checking a score or something. But let's be people who bring our Bible to church. Because here's what I want for you. I want you to sit, and I want you to have your Bible open. And when something strikes you, I want you to be able to write a note. When you see a verse that you like, that you want to remember, I want you to be able to highlight it. I want your Bibles to serve you as kind of these spiritual journals where when you flip through them, you see where you've been. You know that God's spoken to you there before. When you go to different places, you have notes on the sides and you have dates and you have prayers so that as you flip through your Bible years from now, you see times when God was faithful. I can't tell you how many passages I have written beside them. What does this mean? God help me understand. And then I'll hear sermon on it, or I'll hear somebody teach about it. I'll read a book on it, and I'll turn to that passage, and I'll go, oh, I think I understand this now. Thank you, God, for your faithfulness. I want to encourage you to bring your Bible to church. Open it up. Make notes about what I'm saying or what God is saying to you. And then let me just tell you this. If things get boring, as they often do, you can start flipping through your Bible like you're source checking me or you're just interested in something. And then you look double spiritual. The people in your row are going to be like, yo, they're cross-referencing Nate. That's, look at, look at them. That's super spiritual. So just bring it, man. We'll probably make you an elder if you start doing that stuff. And you're just doing it because you're bored. It's so many benefits. Let's start bringing our Bibles if we don't already. But right now, what I want you to do is grab the Bible. If you don't have one, grab the one in front of you and let's read Psalm 8 together. It's only nine verses and I thought it would be well worth it to spend some time reading it together this morning. Find Psalm 8. It says this. When I look at your heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. Verse 9, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. What a wonderful, declarative psalm of praise. This is the psalm that we sing from. This is the psalm that when I'm done talking, we will sing from again. And as we look through it and we go through it together and see what it has to offer, I think there's such depth of wisdom and goodness here. I love the way that the psalm starts. Verse 1, if you look at it in your Bibles, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name and all the earth. What I love about this, and this is a point that Spurgeon made, not me. What I love about this is the inadequacy of that declaration. This is a psalm that is clearly meant to glorify the majesty of God, that is clearly meant to frame him up among the stars, that is clearly meant to swoop us up and to carry us away into a reverent awe of the majesty of God. This is a big deal psalm. This needs to resound through the generations. And so we would expect some honorifics to go along with the Lord's name, wouldn't we? We would expect some more adjectives to be there. How majestic and all of your grandeur and the worthiness of your ways and whatever else. We would expect it to be this grand entrance as we open this declaration about God. And yet it's not that. It's this humble, oh Lord, our Lord. That's the best David could muster. Oh Lord, our Lord. It feels so inadequate for the moment, but that's why it's so good. Because to start a majestic psalm that way, so humbly, is to confess without even having to say it out loud, my words are inadequate for your greatness, oh God. What else could David say but oh Lord, our Lord? What else is fitting? What honorifics should he put there that would adequately capture who our creator God is? There's nothing worthy enough of writing. So he just humbly puts, oh Lord, our Lord. And so when we sing those words in a few minutes, when we say, oh Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name, we are admitting in that song and in that declaration and with our voices and in our hearts that we are inadequate to adequately title God's glory and goodness. We are inadequate to adequately express and explain and capture who he is. And so we surrender to the simple, humble, oh Lord, our Lord. How majestic is your name. It's such a good beginning of the psalm to start it with humility and with simplicity as we confess through our words and our spirits, our inadequacy to capture who our creator God is. Verse two, we're actually going to look at in a second. That becomes important when we start to think about how Jesus employed this psalm. But verse 3, I love, when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. Psalm 8 proclaims that God has told the story of himself through his creation. The song that we are singing based out of Psalm 8 is called Tell the Story. And it talks about how creation tells the story of God and how we participate in that. When we look at creation, when we look at a sunset or a sunrise, when we're on a plane and we can look out and get that unique view of God's creation and his earth, when we hike and we see beautiful things, when we look into the heavens and we marvel at God, when we get away from the city and we can actually see the stars, when we do those things, the heavens are declaring the glory of God. They're preaching to us about the presence of God. The purpose of creation is to tell the story of the creator. And since you are his creation and you are the only one imbued with a voice and entrusted with a voice, then it is our responsibility to cry out to God in ways that the rest of creation cannot do. It is our responsibility to make sure that the rocks don't have to cry out to our God because we're going to do that because we are the part of his creation that was made to praise him. And so we do it loudly. We do it vigorously. We do it openheartedly. And I'm reminded in verse three, as it points to God's creation, kind of declaring who he is of Romans one, Paul writes about this. Paul in Romans 1 says that the Lord has revealed himself in creation so that no man is without excuse. Through the millennia, men and women and children have looked at God's creation and marveled at the creator. The sun, the moon, and the stars tell the story of our God and who he is. And then we move into verses four and following what could be a little bit of a confusing portion. Because as I read it earlier, you may have picked up on the difference. If you were following along in an NIV, if you're using one of our Bibles this morning, then you're reading an N NIV maybe you pulled up an NIV on your app or that's what you carried in this morning but what you saw is in verse 4 when it says what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him your version says them so the ESV and some other versions say him and your version and some other versions say them. And so the question becomes, why is there a difference there? Why does that matter? Why is that important? Well, the Hebrew word there can be translated either way. And so some translations choose to say them because clearly some of these verses are referring to us, to humankind. I mean, when we read it, especially verse 4, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? That's not talking about Jesus. Who is Jesus that you would care about him, that you are mindful of him? Obviously, it's not talking about Jesus. It's us. Who are we that you would care about us? And to this point, just to bring this home, I do like that verse. I'm going to pause here. We're going to get back to him and them. But I like this thought, who am I that you would care for me? Why do I matter to you? I don't know if you've ever experienced someone singling you out in a way that made you feel special. You're like, why are you paying attention to me? Years ago, a few months before I moved to Raleigh, my pastor growing up died. He had had an aortic aneurysm, survived for a few years, developed an infection, and he passed away. He was very old, though. He was about 62, I think. He was too young. And his church had grown pretty significantly, and they had started other churches. So the people who were there were in the thousands. There was so many people who wanted to pay their respects for Pastor Buddy that they had to have a visitation the night before at the church. And the line was over an hour long to talk to the family. And when I got there, I hadn't been going to that church in years. I worked at another church. I grew up with, I grew up at that church and Buddy has three kids, Gabe, Joy, and Spring. Joy's my age. Gabe's a few years older than me. But Gabe and I, we were buddies growing up. We played Goldeneye together. He was my Goldeneye buddy. I don't know if that resonates with any of you. Like four of you, they're like, yes, Goldeneye buddies. But we weren't like super tight. And I really didn't expect to talk to anybody. I was just showing up because I have a lot of respect for Buddy and I love that family. And before I could get in line, I heard Gabe call my name. And I'm like, cool, I get to skip the line, which I love doing. And I go up to Gabe, and he hugs me, and he says, it's such a funny question. He goes, dude, what are you doing? Like, you got anything going on? I'm like, I'm at your dad's visitation, man. This is what I'm doing. You know, like, I didn't say that, but I said, no, I'm not busy. And he goes, come on. And so he leaves the line, and he takes me back to a hospitality room where there's Zaxby's. I'd love to say it was Chick-fil-A. It wasn't. There's Zaxby's. And he sits down, and he just wants to talk with me. And I just remember thinking, why are you talking with me of all these people why do i why am i the one that gets your time why are you treating me like this and in that case i really do think it was because i knew him when we remember growing up we we were at the church running around together we were the ones running around in in the service after it was over before there was thousands of people going there. And I guess nobody else kind of knew the family like I did. But the whole time I'm sitting there, I just felt such privilege of why in the world do you care about talking to me right now? And I feel like that's what the author of Psalms, David, is describing. God, why do you even notice us? Why are you calling me out in a crowd? Why do we matter to you? That should not be something that's lost on us, that God sees us, that he calls our name, and he says, hey, come here, let's talk. That's a remarkable thing. And so back to the he, him, and them. There are some verses that are very clearly talking about humankind, us. But there are some verses that are very clearly talking about Jesus. Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You gave him dominion over the works of your hand. You have put all things under his feet. Clearly that's talking about Jesus. And so the question becomes in Psalm chapter 8, in verse 5, is the psalmist talking about us or Jesus? Yes. He's talking about both things. He's talking about both us and Christ. Again, because clearly there are some verses here that could not apply to Christ. Who is Christ that you should consider him? That doesn't really work out. He's part of the Trinity. So that has to be for us. But he has not put everything under our feet. He's put everything under Jesus' feet. So clearly that's for Jesus. And I'll tell you how I know that's for Jesus, because Jesus, Paul, and the author of Hebrews also thought that it was for Jesus. If you turn to Hebrews, you'll see, I forget the chapter. I think maybe I wrote it down somewhere. Yeah, chapter 2. The author of Hebrews is comparing Jesus to the angels, saying that he's superior to the angels. To do that, he quotes Psalm 8 and uses it to point back to Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15, verses 25 through 27, this is one of the times that you could flip and check me if you're bored and you'd look super spiritual. Paul is talking about Jesus and he's telling the people this is who Jesus is. He's the one that Psalm 8 was referring to. He's the Messiah that we are waiting on. The whole earth is in subjection to him. That is who we serve. And then Jesus himself uses this psalm to prove to a group of Pharisees that he's actually Jesus. He uses it to tick them off, which, you know, I'm a fan of. But this is what he says. Matthew 21 verses 15 and 16. I cheated. I had it marked. So I got there extra fast. Jesus says this, well, this isn't Jesus yet, but he'll talk soon. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant. Now they're indignant because for, for someone to declare Hosanna to the Son of David is to declare them the Messiah. It is to declare them God incarnate. And they were not willing to accept that about Jesus. So the children acknowledged who Jesus was before the adults were willing to acknowledge it. They were indignant. Verse 16. And they said to him, Do you hear what these are saying? Like, you need to tell them to be quiet if you have any sense. And Jesus said to them, Yes. Have you never read? Which is hilarious. Have you never read? That's like asking a Tennessee fan if they don't know that they got their tails kicked yesterday. Yes, of course they know that. Of course they do. Have you never read? It's ridiculous. Have you never read? Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise. It is a direct reference to Psalm chapter 8, where Jesus says, yeah, have you not read that Psalm? It's about me. So how can I be sure that Psalm 8 is about us and Jesus? Because Jesus told me. He uses it as a proof text to say, yeah, I am Hosanna, the son of David. And so what this means, what all this means, and I don't want you guys to miss this. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of our God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. That's what's packed into these nine verses. We declare the majesty of God. Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. We declare God is grand. God is big. God is huge. We declare it along with the churches down through the centuries. We declare glory unto God. We marvel at his wonder for us. Who are we that you should pick us out of a crowd, that you should call us, that you should talk to us, that you should care about us, that you should know us, that you would want my praise. Who am I that I matter to you, God? Why in the world did you send your son for me? So we marvel at God's love as we sing. And then, and then we declared glory for the risen Savior. We shine him in glory, understanding that Psalm 8 is also a messianic psalm that talks about Jesus and declares his glory and puts him in dominion and says the world is under his feet and we are in that world so we are subservient to him. So in this psalm, as we sing it and as we move through it, we declare the glory of God. We wonder at his love for us and we declare the glory of our risen Savior all in those nine verses. And if this all doesn't stir your soul to sing, I can't help but think I must be a terrible pastor. Because as I studied this, as I prepared this morning, as I thought through this, I couldn't wait to sing with you guys. If I were you, I would want me to shut up so I could start singing. That's what I would want right now. And so I'm going to do that right before I do. I just want to show you the words we're about to sing. And I want to show you the verses that they come from. So when we sing this song together, when we, in a few minutes, join the ancient chorus of believers who have been singing this song through the centuries. When we join the churches all over the world who have been singing this song and who might even sing this song or sing from the songs this morning. I want us to know what we're singing. So let's look. The first verse, the first words, O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name. That comes directly out of verse 1. Directly out of verse 1. We're singing that right back to God. And then the words right after that in the song are your glory on display. The works of your hands show us who you are. That's verses 2 and 3. Do you see? That's verses two and three when it says the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. We're singing those words back to God. That's where they're pulled from. On down we see verse three highlighted again where it says, O Lord, our Lord, you light up our world, the sun, moon, and stars. Declare who you are. Declare who you are. And then finally, we see verse 4, and O who am I, unworthy one, that you would give your only son? Who are you to care for me? Amazing love, how can it be? That's where directly out of verse 4, we wonder and marvel at the love that God has for us, that he would notice us and care about us. And then the whole psalm declares the glory of Jesus. Anytime we sing about Jesus, who am I that you would send your only son? That's Jesus. That's who we're singing about. And then we say and we declare, tell the story. As we sing, God use me to tell your story of creation. I would remind you, all of creation was made to tell the story of God and declare praise for him. We're the only part of that creation that was given a voice to praise him. So let's use it together as we close out in these songs together. I'm going to pray and then Aaron and the band's going to come and we're going to sing together. Father, you are worthy of our praise. You are worthy of our adoration. Our words and our praise and our declarations are insufficient for you. They are inadequate for you and who you are. We admit that, God, as we look to sing to you. Lord, would you fill our lungs with praise for you? Would you fill our hearts with your grace and your goodness and your love that we might pour it back out to you? Would what we experience as we sing now not simply be something that makes our Sunday morning better, but will it carry us on a wave of praise into our weeks and maybe wash back up on these shores next week ready to praise again. God, fill our hearts with praise. Fill our hearts with joy. And let us do now, God, what you created us to do, to sing your praises back to you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning. My name is Nate again, and if I haven't got a chance to meet you, I would love to do that. You came on the perfect Sunday to meet people. It's Hootenanny Sunday. So after this, we go to that parking lot there and we just kind of celebrate God and his goodness, reflect on the year that we've had. This is something that we do every year. We call it the sometimes annual Hootenanny because COVID made us not have it. So it would be dishonest to call it the annual Hootenanny. And we care about honesty here. So it's this sometimes annual Hootenanny. And I hope that you'll stick around and talk to some folks and say, hey, and again, if I haven't gotten the chance to meet you, I would love to do that. This morning is going to look a little different. You can see I'm going to be talking to a couple of different folks within the church this morning about service and about volunteering. One of the things that we realized, I guess it was in August, I was talking with Aaron Winston, our children's pastor, and we realized that we hadn't highlighted service at Grace and volunteering at Grace in a really long time. And we said, it's high time we do this. And then we thought, well, how do we want to do it? Normally, you just preach a sermon about serving and servanthood. And God wanted us to partner with the local church and things like that. And I would bet 75% of you could predict most of the things that I would say in that kind of a sermon. And because of that, and also because I'm always looking for ways to get other voices up here and in front of the church so that we can hear from one another and learn from one another, we thought it would be good and interesting to do this kind of like Ministry Partner Sunday. So in the summer, we have Ministry Partner Sunday where we highlight the different ministry partners that we have outside the walls of the church, and I'll bring them up and talk to them about what they do. And so we thought we would do that with some of our volunteers this morning. Before we do that, just to kind of set up the conversation to set you guys up as you consider your role at Grace or any local church, I did have some thoughts from 1 Corinthians. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there, 1 Corinthians chapter 12. I'm going to start in verse 18. The idea of the church being a body is all over scripture. It's all throughout, particularly the New Testament, particularly the writings of Paul. And there's some seminal passages where he talks about this, but this or Romans are probably the two, and this has a little bit more detail. So in chapter 12, Paul is detailing the spiritual gifts. He talks about this idea that God has given each of us gifts that we are to use in his kingdom. One of the verses I highlight often and say to you guys often is Ephesians 2.10, where it says that we are Christ's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, that we should walk in them. And so the idea is that as we live the Christian life, we are trying to determine, God, what are my good works and how do I walk in them? What do you have for me to do and to walk in? And so that ties in here in this idea that we're all part of a body. We all have a part to play. We all have a role to fill. We all have something to do. And so it's incumbent upon us to figure out what that is. This is what Paul says. But as it is, he's just talked about the body and the ear needs the eyes and the eyes need the feet and the feet needs the hands and none of them can exist without the other. And then he says, but as it is in verse 18, God arranged the members of the body, each one of them as he says, of you, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable, we bestow greater honor. I love this passage, particularly as a pastor, because I addressed this a few weeks ago, I think when we were talking about Hebrews in August. But we can make pastors more important than they should be, more valuable to the church than they really are. We can start to feel like staff, the people who work here, we're the most important people, and everybody else is kind of auxiliary, and they're helping. I know that when I grew up in my church, I kind of sensed that. And it's really important for me to point out, as often as I can, in God's kingdom, nobody's more important than anybody else. Nobody plays a more crucial role than anybody else. Leaders are to have a higher degree of accountability because it's our job to teach truth. But that's not a higher value in God's kingdom. And so I believe in grace. All of our partners are equally valuable. Everything we do is equally valuable in God's kingdom and in God's eyes. And so you can't, there's some, sometimes there are people who serve behind the scenes and I will get from them that they don't, that they feel like what they do is kind of small potatoes and it's not. It's hugely important. Everything that we do as the body of Christ is hugely important and matters in eternity and matters to God and is valued by God. Because of that, I wanted us to hear from different portions of our body that play different parts and different roles, and maybe we can relate to some of them. Maybe we'll be inspired to serve. We all have this sheet in our seat, and I'll be going through this at the end of the sermon time today. But I wanted us to hear from people in the church who serve and kind of get to know them a little bit. I felt like it was appropriate on Hootenanny Sunday because we're going out to talk and to be communal and to be a family. So this is kind of a family meeting this morning. Mike and Holly, if you guys want to go ahead and make your way up here and grab that microphone. Oh, you have it? Okay. Is there a microphone over there? There it is. Okay, good. I wanted you guys to hear from parts of the body as well. These are Mike and Holly. This is Mike and Holly Anderson. Just to kind of... I want to say wet your whistle a little bit, but that feels like I don't want to say that. Just at the Hootenanny, ask Mike and Holly what their email names are for each other, okay? I'm just going to, I learned that when they first started coming here. We met for lunch, and I saw what their email names were for each other, and they're great. So ask them what they are. I'm not going to say them from stage because there's children in the room, but just ask them what they are. Mike and Holly, you guys have been coming to Grace for how long? Two and a half. Two and a half years. Two and a half years. And in what capacity do you guys serve? So we fill your tummies every Sunday with yum, warm, yummy coffee. That's what we do. And what made you guys decide that we want to do coffee every Sunday? Because they literally do it every Sunday. I'm like, we can get you extra help. They're like, we're good. We like it. We'll do it every Sunday. So what made you decide, let's get involved, and let's get involved at the coffee level? Okay, so my wife and I, we own our own businesses. so we have an opportunity to do every year, like you do in corporate America, is we do a goal-setting session. And so we go through all of our business plans and all of our personal plans about what we want to get accomplished. And so we usually do that the end of November, early December, every year. And so the year that we were doing this, our personal plans was how do we invest more time, resources, money to Grace? That's kind of where we were. And this was our first. We were eight months, nine months into Grace at that point in time. And just trying to figure out where can we get plugged in? What can we do? How can we get more involved? Small group is definitely something we had just started. And we wanted to figure out how to get further more engaged and so the sunday of after setting those sessions on um that service was all about not being a consumer of grace and how do you be more of a provider as a partner and it really hit it hit us real quick and we shot nate a quick email you guys were just you were just leeching off the the system. We were just little leeching. Yeah, you were dead weight. And so we had lunch with Nate and we said, how can we help? What do we, we want to get plugged in somewhere somehow. And he tried to put us back there in that big old booth back there. And we know nothing about that booth. So we weren't going down that road. And so coffee, obviously with COVID and being very sensitive to what was going on in the world. We thought, you know, that would be a great way for us to kind of really get plugged in and start that back up and really move on. So we just kind of jumped on it and went from there. Now, tell me, Holly, I think it's helpful to get a little bit of y'all's background. Not like, how'd you meet? Not that, but you guys met doing a similar job, and I think that the job that you did contributes to how you guys approach how you do coffee. So what did you do when you met, and how does that help what you do here? Yeah, sure. So Mike and I met. We did sports tourism industry for a long time, so the hospitality industry. We worked for convention and visitors bureaus, and it's all about hospitality and service. And we approach everything in our life like that, our new career now. So we expect a high-level, high-touch service. And so it's the little things, like writing the messages on the cups and having a flavor of the month in creamer. So we never go here. We're always, like, way over the edge, sometimes too much. But it comes from our past and how we met and just high-touch customer service, and we wanted to bring just our love of that to the people that we love here at Grace. Yeah, and that's why you guys are discovering in real time right now that you're going to be planning the golf tournament for us in the spring when we do that. We've both done that before. They're perfect for it. And so they take their professional background and they apply it to coffee. Now, coffee is underwhelming. That is a small thing compared to what you normally organize. But one of the things I noticed right away is the writing on the cups. I don't know if you guys have noticed the writing on the cups, but we don't buy them like that. They do it. And which one of you does it? Mike does it. I have the worst handwriting ever. That's his penmanship on the cups. And I saw him back there this morning. He's got a note on his phone where he's typed up the little messages that he's brainstormed, and then he's just alternating as he's writing those on your cups, just bringing a little bit extra to it every Sunday morning. How have you guys, it's a combo question, so answer it however you like. How have you guys personally benefited from getting to do that for now, close to a year and a half, almost two years? And then most importantly, how have you watched God work to use that bit of service to bring you closer to him? Yeah, we kind of talked about how those kind of coincided, we felt like. And I think so much of it is we love coming here. We love sitting in this building with people that we've just really grown to see as family and friends. And it's been cool in the short amount of time we've been here. And so there's a selfish part of it that's like, I have to get up and go. Like, if I just want to put my PJs on and have coffee and watch Nate for my house, even though he'll give me business about it later, I at least, like, I can't even think that way, right? Like, I know that I have a reason to be here. So there's that selfish reason of I know I have to be because I've committed, but it's also because we want to be here. So I think it's helped that, and it's just helped plug us in. Like, just being here in the morning, I think we've gotten to know, you know, you guys and staff better, which has been really cool, but also the people that serve, too, and really get to see what it takes to make this all happen on Sunday. And it's been really, you know, really neat. We were talking that the church that I was most involved with when I was a little kid and my family was really involved. This is the first time as an adult that I've been plugged in. And it has just felt like the most perfect place. I call my mom all the time and I'm like, I can't believe God brought us here. This is just, it's perfect and amazing. And what I've been looking for for a long time. So That's great. That's great. I love to hear that. Well, we're grateful to you guys for serving. We're grateful to you for planning the golf tournament. And it'll be in the end of April. And we're grateful for the coffee. But if you want to sign up for coffee, they've agreed to relinquish some rights for Sunday mornings. So if you want to partner with them and help or just give them some reprieve and do coffee with them, we would love for you to do that. Now, you've got to rise to their standards, okay? They're tough bosses, but we can still use some help there if that's something you guys want to do. Thanks so much. I'm going to call up Jacob and Elena Farmer. Where are they? Okay. Jacob and Elena are so committed that they drove straight from the beach this morning to be here to do this. Is that true? Yesterday. Yesterday. Oh, yeah, because their dog got a little bit of a struggle. There you go. They've been in here for two weeks. Elena couldn't be less interested in being on the stage right now. I couldn't believe. I knew that Jacob would be game. Jacob's fine. But I couldn't believe. I was like, if Elena wants to do it, I think people would benefit. And I knew that you were going to be like, no, not a chance. And then Jacob said, yeah, we'll be there. And I thought, okay, I'm not going to ask any questions. I didn't ask permission. Yeah, sure. Sure. So, um, a little bit of background on them and I didn't have time, nor did I think it was appropriate and sure service, but it would have been fun. Jacob is a huge birdwatcher. So if you like birds, talk to Jacob at the hootenanny and he will love to talk to you about it. I know. And I almost, I wanted to do a slideshow of birds and see if you could identify them, but maybe another time, maybe another time. But after they had been going here a while, Jacob and I got lunch and he told me a little bit about his background, and he kind of let it slip that he could play guitar, that he could lead worship. And whenever, in my position, you hear that someone's musically talented, you kind of go, okay, you want to get involved? I mean, that's a high skill position. That's pretty tough. But I kind of told him, like, I'm not going to tell Aaron. I'm just going to let you sit on it. You let us know when you're ready. And so Jacob's story, and it's one of the reasons I wanted you all to hear from him, is I'm kind of, I'm teeing this up for you a little bit. He had done it a lot, gotten burned out, found a new place, and wasn't sure when he wanted to re-engage and if he even trusted doing that. And so I thought his perspective on why you decided to like, yeah, let's go ahead and sign back up and play guitar and all that stuff. So if you kind of want to fill in the blanks there for that story, that's great. Yeah, sure. So, um, yes, long story short, I've been in praise and worship since seventh grade. So whatever, whatever age that is, 13, um, got burned out. I mean, every, every church I was involved with was a, was a plant we were tearing up, sitting down every Sunday. We were serving multiple roles. Um, and then adding onto that, I kind of got burned a little bit at church as well. So I kind of had a sour taste in my mouth. And we were out of church for a long time. And I was not playing for a long time. In fact, I think the first thing I told Aaron was I probably haven't played in a band setting in close to 10 years. So we can tell, but you're getting there. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So my, my first practice Aaron, Aaron's like, yeah, come, come, come sit in. And then he's like, Oh, see you Sunday. I'm like, Oh, that wasn't at all talked about. Um, but, uh, but yeah, so for me, I guess leading up to it as a series of things, my wife dragging me here into church when I was stubbornly not wanting to be here, her volunteering to serve initially in the children's ministry, you know, just all these things that were poking me. My parents, my dad actually had been borrowing my guitar for over a year, and he brought it back to me at the beach vacation last year in September. And he's like, I think you're going to need this. And so everyone around me was seeing the writing on the wall, and I was feeling kind of the tug on my heart. And I think our conversation, which I was intentionally coming here and hiding. I didn't want to be known. I wanted to be unknown. Because the second you find out, you play guitar. That's right. Yeah, a need. Right. Um, so I was, I mean, and that was impacting my ability to connect. Um, I was, I mean, I think you even made the comments like, Hey, you've been like here for a year or more and I don't know a thing about you. I think that's how you preface like, let's get lunch. That sounds right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But there was something else you said at lunch, um, that I think it was a week later. I talked to Aaron after service and I'm going to paraphrase it. And you probably said it much more eloquently than I'm going to do. Basically, basically you said you want grace to be a place to heal, but not hide somewhere along those lines. No, that's better than I would say. Yeah. You know, and I'm going to actually, and that was just like the final like stab of like, okay, you're, you're hiding you know, you're healed. You there's, there's writing all on the wall that you need to jump back into this. And so that was, you know, the series of events that led up to me jumping back into worship. But I think a couple months before that, I had worked as an usher a couple times, kind of dipped my toe back into the service realm. Yeah. Yeah. And, Miss Elena, in what ways do you volunteer here? This is active service for her to be here right now. Yes. Yes. Right this second is how she's doing it. I volunteer with the kids ministry. Yeah. Yeah. Elena does a kids' men, but we're going to bring up Shane and Carter to talk about that. You don't have to talk about kids' men. We don't even care about that. That's what on my notes are. Oh, that's okay. That's okay. I want your notes, but I also, one of the reasons that I think her perspective is so great is because if you are also a person who would literally hate to be sitting where she's sitting and having me talking about you right now, like my wife, Jen, everybody look at Jen. She hates this moment. Like if that's you, sometimes it feels like you got to be out front or whatever. And like you don't. Elena, she's remarkably crafty and creative. And so, yes, yes. And so two summers ago, and I hope I don't hurt anybody's feelings with this, but two summers ago, the Summer Extreme theme was Under the Sea. Is that right? And every week, every year, the week before Summer Extreme, the Sunday before, we decorate, and then we kind of add to it throughout the week, and then we do the stage. And when we did Under the Sea, I walked through here the Monday after they got done decorating and was like, who'd we hire? Like, what happened? Like, anybody who comes every year knows that was amazing. And they were like, Elena Farmer. And, like, she started coming. I was like, this was her idea? And so then we got her going on Summer Extreme for this year. Last year, I didn't even know she was going to do this. I don't know if you all remember, but the Christmas theme was Not Home Alone. And it's kind of a Home Alone feel. She did the auditorium in Home Alone stuff. There was paint buckets, and there was a war map on the drum thing. I didn't even know she was going to do it. I just showed up, and it was done. So quietly behind the scenes, she's using this gift and this skill to make the church better. And she's able to do it without ever having to do this or even get any public feedback for it. And then she's already working on the theme for next year's Summer Extreme, I heard. So we're excited about that. But, yeah, when you guys started coming, you jumped in pretty much right away, just kind of helping wherever you could help. What made you want to do that? I knew, so I guess we had, we'd been married for a while, but we had just had Wren, and so I think she was maybe a year or so. And I knew I wanted to have kids, our kids and future kids involved in church and growing up around church. I wanted them to see that God was like important in our family and to us, and it was a priority. I also knew that I wouldn't be committed and prioritized coming to church if I didn't get involved. So it was very important to me to jump in somewhere and get involved so I would be accountable to come. Now, which one is more fun for you? Is it the decorating part? Because there was one day this year where she and I think Faith and maybe Liz were here until like 1.30 a.m. decorating and getting it done. So y'all get after it. Like y'all work hard. And I would imagine there's an element of that that's fun. At least I hope there is. Absolutely. Which one do you find that you enjoy more? Do you enjoy them the same differently? What do you get from kids ministry? What do you get from doing that behind the scenes stuff? I absolutely love doing the decorating. Like that is, I think having a goal and an idea and just being able to plan it and then doing it with my best friends. Like it's just, it's like a girl's party at night at church and nobody's here with no kids. It's amazing. That's right. They tell their husbands, just need a couple more touch-ups. It's great. A few more clouds. Sometimes he brings ice cream. I mean, it's great. For the kids' side, I love it just because I don't know who I was telling, I guess maybe Aaron a few months ago, that it's amazing to hear the kids retell the stories that they hear and then just to know that you kind of had a part in that relationship that they're developing with God. So that's really cool to see and to be a part of. And what age kids are you with usually? So I am now back with two, three, but I had been with the K through, I guess three, K through two. Yeah, K through third. Yeah. And Jacob, or to either one of you, whoever wants to answer, she's very happy to give that up. How has God used stepping out in faith and serving, going, okay, for consistency's sake, I'm going to do this, or God, I feel like you're just pushing me in this direction. How has God used that to encourage you to draw you close to him, to, to build you up as a, as a believer? Yeah. So existing in that kind of rub or the friction that I was in coming to church, but not wanting to commit, I mean, intentionally, um, hiding, I wasn't, I don't think I was receptive to sermons. I was certainly not connecting to people. Um, and you know, you mentioned, I mean, intentionally, hiding. I don't think I was receptive to sermons. I was certainly not connecting to people. And, you know, you mentioned, I guess, what 1 Corinthians, but I think 1 Peter also mentioned something about gifts, about whatever gifts you received, you know, basically serve others and demonstrate God's grace in its various forms, paraphrased. That's good. But for me, I mean, the same reason I've always wanted to be a leader at work is the connection to people and be able to influence people and be able to connect with people to understand how I can best serve people. And that's foundational. I mean, that's arguably one of the biggest parts of my walk, period, right? I mean, I got saved in seventh grade. I started playing place in worship in seventh grade. So, I mean, it's been quite literally foundational to my walk. And so to connect back to that, you know, it's opened my heart in the sermons. It's opened my heart in prayer and quiet time. I found joy in understanding how I can serve others. And I think something else that we really hadn't discussed, but I was thinking about out there, is how his presence fills our home. My kids were six before they heard me play the guitar, right? So, or Wren was six years old. So, and now Praise and Worship is played constantly. I mean, they know what a metronome sounds like now and they probably hate it, but praise and worship fills our house every week. Even the weeks I don't serve, I enjoy tagging along and practicing and playing. So, I think an unintended benefit, right? And so my kids are singing along and they know more of the words to the songs that I play than I do. So that's great. It's unintended. And I think a huge benefit to kind of serving. I love hearing that. And is it just for the record is Aaron now writing you like a rented mule? I mean, are we just driving you right back to burnout? Oh, no, no, no, no. So, well, well, I don't know. Yeah, we have a real discussion here. So, you know, I had never played with in-ears, never played with tracks, you know, hadn't played with a band. He's like, you know, one week of practice and I'm on stage. And then he's like, part of the story, it was before Christmas and I think it was an acoustic set and it was Greg and Carly and Jordan up here. And I remember thinking the whole I was like I probably could play acoustic guitar would probably be nice and that was another thing that kind of pushed me on this journey and I mentioned that to Aaron and he wasted no time and giving me that opportunity to be the solo acoustic guitar up here so I mean I'm improving as a musician selfishly it's nice to have a praise and worship team that's pushing me there. And so, yeah, I enjoy it. And I guess kind of to connect further on to wanting to serve, and I guess people that are maybe apprehensive, everyone's super, super accommodating, right? I mean, I just took three weeks off. I just blocked entire months off, and he hates it, but I do it. And I send him pictures of all the fish I'm catching at the beach. And the birds you're seeing. And the birds, yeah, well, no one cares about that. In fact, if I could get as good as evangelizing the gospel as I could about birds, I think I would be in a better place. That's a separate service. Yeah, right. Yeah. Elena, what would you say, and the last question, what would you say to anybody who's considering serving, not just in kids, although you could, but anywhere who's not serving yet but they're thinking about it? This is more intimidating, sitting up here. I would say just do it. Try it, and if you don't like it, then try a different spot or try somewhere else. I don't know. I don't feel like... That's not what I had in my notes. That's not what I had in my notes. It's all geared toward kids. I don't know. You put me on... Yeah, you put me on the spot. Sorry, Elena. She's never doing this again. Never, ever, ever. This is the one time. No, but I think, and I think we would agree on this. There's a sense of accomplishment, right? There's like, there's plenty of days at work that I leave work and just battered and tired. And I'm like, what did I actually get done? I have no clue. But I think we both feel a sense of accomplishment. You know know we mentioned how we're impacting how she's impacting the kids and and the summer extreme and I doubt I'm impacting anybody musically but I have fun yeah but being part of a team right and and and and just having a sense of pride and what we're accomplishing here and what we're doing here at Grace. Yeah, I like that. Thanks, guys. I like that. You can leave, Elena. Shane and Carter. This is Shane and Carter Smith. They serve in children's ministry together. They've also served as small group leaders. Carter actually served on our architectural committee and helped us come up with the design of the floor plan for the building. So she was there for all the meetings. And really, we should just be talking to Carter. She's a lot more valuable to us than you. If we had to pick one. Carter does a tremendous amount behind the scenes. We have a few people who work behind the scenes that whenever I hear their name brought up for something else, I always say to the staff or to the elders or whoever, like, just be careful. Like, they do so much. Like, please don't ask them. Like, offer to take something else off their plate before we ask them to do this other thing. And Carter is one of those. She's, she's, do what? Yeah, right, right, to do this. And then Shane, Shane used to be a bouncer, so he's in charge of security all the time around here, and he's a Panthers fan, and we beat them two weeks ago, and that's great. Thanks for being up here. What's up, Wake Forest? Okay, Shane and Carter, where do you guys serve? Because you guys serve together. Carter, you're on the children's ministry leadership team too, correct? Okay, but you guys serve together. So I started out actually ushering, I don't know, five or six years ago as a way to kind of get involved. And then Erin kept sending us some nagging emails about how much help she needed on the children's side. So being a coach, I was like, I guess I can try helping over there. And I don't know, it was pretty fun serving over there too. Carter, for everyone else, can you tell us what over there is? We teach K-3, and that's the other wing. K-3, so kindergarten through third grade meet over there. Yes, so we teach the kids over there, large group and small group on Sundays. What does that typically look like? Because that can sound pretty intimidating to go teach. Sometimes know, sometimes it's eight, sometimes it's 20 elementary age kids. You get the lesson during the week. What kind of prep goes into it? Like, what are you guys doing behind the scenes so that you're ready for Sunday morning? And then how does a typical Sunday morning go? Well, Aaron and Julie set up absolutely everything and their team. They have a team behind them. They have everything set up. They email you the lesson plans. They email you kind of an outline for the morning and are available to offer and ask and answer any questions that you have. The kids come in. You do a little activity. You get to sing and dance with them and they get a lot more wild than we do in here. And then we teach them large group and then we break into small group for second and third grade and kindergarten and first grade. And sometimes it's five kids total and sometimes it's 25 total and we just get to all cram back in there. That's great. And Shane, besides Carter Volland telling you probably to do it, what made you decide? because one of the reasons I wanted us to hear from Shane is because we we get we get women to volunteer in the children's ministry more often than we do men and frankly men probably need to just step up to the plate because there's there's not for nothing there's there's there's two genders in all of classrooms, and they should probably be able to look up to both genders as they lead them and guide them and teach them about Jesus. So I think it's good for our boys to see men in their teaching. I think it's good for our girls to see women in their teaching and vice versa. And so we're always grateful when a dad steps up and says, yeah, this is something I want to be a part of. So what made you decide like, okay, yeah, I'm going to do that? Because I didn't, I didn't, I meant to mention this up front. I've asked the volunteers to come up in ascending order of difficulty. So Mike and Holly Anderson running the coffee, and I ran this by Mike beforehand. That's compared now, if we really wanted to get easy, we do like ushers. Okay. But I didn't bring up any ushers. But then the coffee team, right? And then there's the security team, which you just stand out there, and you don't have to listen to the sermon. It's a nice team, actually. And then being in the band, that takes some skill, but I think the hardest ask in the church, honestly, is what you guys do, the K-3. That's super intimidating. It's really difficult, And I think we just disqualify ourselves from the jump, but I don't think we need to. And so I just wanted to hear from you, what made you decide like, yeah, I'm going to take that plunge and go volunteer in that room. Yeah. I think again, just being involved with coaching, you know, coaching different baseball teams and football, I kind of knew what to expect from kids. And I felt like, you know, I could at least teach them. Like I said, Aaron makes it pretty easy on us. She gives you basically a sheet of paper, and as long as you read from it, you can pretty much teach kids a class. For me, I felt like it was almost a way to answer the question of being a disciple making disciples too because I don't feel like I'm ever going to be like a street preacher. I'm not going to go out there, and it's hard to talk to adults, you know, about those situations. But going over there and teaching the kids some of the basic stuff, I just feel like that's a way that you can grow. Just feel like you're, you know, making disciples, somebody else that's hopefully going to grow up and lead this church as well. I love that. I love that a lot. And, Carter, you know, I mean, you guys were here when I got here. Y'all, y'all, y'all been here a long time. You've been serving the whole time that y'all have been here. So it's a part of your DNA and who you are. What is it that makes you continue to serve, continue to come back, continue to sign up and let us put you up on stage and things like that? Like what, what's the joy that you get out of it? Why do you continue to do it? Um, I don't think Aaron would allow me to keep coming to Grace if I didn't serve in the kids ministry. No, we get, I used to teach first grade before I had my oldest son, Cason. So I think that's part of it is selfishly. It's something I do enjoy and I enjoy doing it more for an hour than a nine to five. But we get poured into here every Sunday and it's just a chance to pour into kids. And they are just like little sponges and so excited to be there and so excited to learn and learn about Jesus. They have no hesitation asking hard questions. They have no hesitation expressing their joy through dancing and singing. And they're just genuinely excited to be there. And I find that excitement contagious. And my favorite Sunday to teach back there is Easter Sunday. Oh, wow. Why is that? I mean, I've heard Easter sermons for 30 years. They're pretty good. They're pretty good over here. They're pretty great. The podcast is great. But no, they are so excited. And for some of them, it's their first time hearing it. For some of them, they've heard it for a few years, but each time, something new is clicking for them. The story is unfolding, and they are more excited about the Bible than most of the adults I know. I love that. And last question for you guys. How has God used your opportunities at service, whether it's leading a small group, serving on a leadership team behind the scenes, or serving in the kids? How has God been using that over the years to draw you closer to him and build up your faith? So, I mean, it's for us, obviously, it's been a way to get to know a lot of people in the church. You know, and it's also a way that we feel like, as Carter mentioned, you know, the church pours into us so much. It's a way that we can give back and really help this whole community grow. I mean, we're all here to try and, you know, promote the kingdom. So I feel like it's a way for us to be able to give back. And again, I'm not going to be up on stage doing any preaching anytime soon. So, you know, teaching the kids is a lot easier. Just let me know when you want to. For me, I think teaching takes the focus off of me. It makes me be less self-centered in when I'm getting ready to come to church on Sunday in my prayer life. I'm thinking about the kids, praying for them, praying over what I'm going to be teaching. And so I think any opportunity I can take to be less self-centered is a good one for me spiritually. Well, thank you guys. I appreciate it. Thanks for coming up and for sharing. As we wrap up the morning, just a couple of thoughts. And I say this with some hesitancy because I want to be careful with my words, and I don't want them to be self-serving. That's not my heart at all. But I do think that based on the body passages, body of Christ, spiritual gifts mentioned, he mentioned, Jacob mentioned some in Peter, they're in Romans, they're in Corinthians, they're in Ephesians. They're all over the place. Because we have good works to walk in, because God calls us to be a part of a local church, I don't think it's optional to serve in a local church. And when I say that, I say local church intentionally because I'm not trying to leverage this and the Bible to get you to guiltily serve at grace. But what I can tell you as a pastor and someone who cares about you is, it is God's will for you to be using your gifts to benefit his kingdom. I know that for sure. It is God's will for you to be using the gifts and the talents and the abilities that he gave you to grow his kingdom. Now, many of you are doing that outside the walls of grace, and that's great. I would not reduce serving God and using your gifts to things that can be done here. But I would say that there's a reason that we have partners and we don't have members. Members tend to consume, partners tend to contribute. One of the things I am so humbled by in this church is that it doesn't go with just staff. Unless people are giving of their time, talent, and treasure during the week to sit on elder boards, to sit on committees, to be thoughtful about the church. We have some people because of their professional backgrounds who kind of mentor or pour into or befriend different people on staff. I've watched people in the church come alongside Aaron and begin to help him and give him some advice. I've watched them come alongside Kyle or Aaron Winston or me. And so there's different ways to serve the church and they're not all reduced to this sheet, okay? But here's what I would say. You ought to be doing something. You ought to be doing something to allow God to use the time and the talents and the treasures that he gave you to serve his church and build his kingdom. I don't know why. Well, I would want you to be going to a local church that you love so much that you wanted to partner with them and serve in some way. That's what I would say. Now, what Jacob said is true. And Jacob, the way you said it is better than I said it. We do want grace to be a place for you to heal, but not necessarily to hide. I know that there are people here because I've spoken with you. You have been burned by church. You have been worn out by church. You have been chewed up and spit out and something hurt you or something wore you out or whatever. And this can absolutely be a place to come and rest. But it ought to be restorative rest so that when you're ready to go again, you get going. So I would ask you guys to prayerfully consider, and in a minute I'm going to pray, Tamir's going to come up and give us a little bit more instructions, and then we're going to have a song sung over us while we kind of look over this and think about what we might want to do. Really quickly, if you want to grab this sheet, anything that might not be clear, Worship Team Tech and Production is back there. Those are, besides sound, largely low-skilled jobs, so you can do them, all right? I was joking around with David. David's running the live feed this morning and, uh, there's somebody else here. He's, he's being, he's being, uh, shadowed. Somebody's watching him to make sure that David doesn't mess it up. David runs a software company. So I'm pretty sure he can handle the live stream. And I was joking around with him beforehand. Like, dude, if you get stressed and you need to take a minute and get out of the sound booth, like go ahead. And we were laughing about it. So if you want to get, if you volunteer back there, that's, that's great. You can do that, but that's what the tech and production team is. And it's a vital team that we need greeters and ushers. That's if you're new or you've been coming here for a while, but you're not really plugged in, join one of those teams. It's a great entry point to join one of those teams, start meeting new people. It really doesn't impact your schedule a whole heck of a lot. You get here 15 minutes before you normally would unless you're late all the time, then you need to get here 25 minutes before you normally would and then you don't necessarily have to stay later but you get to meet a bunch of people, learn a bunch of names, shake a bunch of hands. That's a great way to get plugged in and involved. The prayer team is pretty obvious. We send prayer requests out to that. The care team is a big one, too, because we don't want people slipping through the cracks with care. And so the way that care works at Grace is first your small group leader is kind of responsible for you but sometimes people require ongoing care sometimes people are not in a small group sometimes the need is greater than what a small group can provide and we like to have a team that we can call on to go visit people who aren't able to leave their house or where they're living to make some phone calls. We even have a wonderful team of people that serve in something called Stephen Ministry that exists throughout a bunch of churches. And they provide ongoing pastoral care in ways that pastors just simply can't and don't have time for. And there's a whole training process with them. And they do incredible, incredible addition to that things that are not on here we have committees we have a finance committee that helped with the with the money at grace to make sure that everything's happening the way it's supposed to happen we have a personnel committee that serves as kind of the HR department at grace while we're while we're healthy and the staff development department so if you have a background in that, that's a great way to serve. We have a missions committee that determines who we get involved with and what activities we do outside the walls of Grace. So there's different ways that we can help and different things that we can do. But my heart would be, and what I would ask is, if you call Grace home, then prayerfully consider how you might jump in if you're not doing that already. If you call Grace home, take a few minutes right now, and prayerfully consider, God, what would you have me do at the local church where I go, where I can pour myself into? Maybe it's not on here. This sheet is a starting point. Maybe it's something else. Maybe you want to have a conversation about it. That's fine. I'd love to have that conversation. Maybe you can make us a little note on this and tell us what you'd like to talk about or what you think you'd like to offer. That's great too. But if you call Grace home, partner with us, let's work together and let's build God's kingdom together and move this place forward. Let me pray and then Tamera's going to come up and give us some more instructions. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for your servants that we got to see this morning and hear from. Thank you for the ones that are doing your work right now so that we could be in here. Thank you for the hands that set up tables and chairs. Thank you for the hands that will be cooking and prepping the meals for us. Thank you for the worship team that's leading us into worship, God. Just thank you for the workers in all the children's rooms who are pouring into our children so that we might be in here and hopefully you're pouring into us. God, we just thank you for this morning. We thank you for grace. We thank you for all that you've done here and all that you are, the way that you're so faithful to us. And God, we pray that in return, we would continue to be faithful to you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Grace, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. It's a big morning for us. Just to keep the tension going for you guys, I'm not showing you the building until after the sermon. So just relax. Because there's some stuff I want to say to you before we do that. And we get excited about that. If it's your first Sunday here, we as a church have been looking forward to this Sunday for a while. We started a campaign in February of 2020 to raise some money to build a building or to purchase a building to have our own permanent home after 20 years of wandering and wandering from rental to rental. And we were able to get some land, and now we have been developing some plans to put a building on that piece of land, and this is the morning that we're going to show the church what we intend to build. So if it's your first Sunday with us, this is not typical, and I'm going to say some stuff. You're kind of sitting in on a family meeting. So this feels a little bit different than a normal Sunday. And I've actually been talking about this sermon since I got back from sabbatical in July, which is probably a mistake because I think I've overhyped it. I can't possibly deliver on whatever you guys expect me to do this morning. But as I was thinking about what I wanted to share with y'all, it's really not helpful for me to think about it in terms of good or bad, but to think about this morning in terms of helpful and true and authentic. And so where I'd like to start is in that sabbatical. In the month of July, you guys were gracious enough to give me the month to not work and just kind of reflect and recharge and all the things that you'd like to do when you don't have to work. And I've felt, I've carried guilt for that all year and still do. And I'm not sure I'll ever do a sabbatical again because I still just feel bad because most professions don't get those. Most of you had to like keep working while I was in Chicago playing video games. But, but I've also known since being given that time that it would be appropriate at some point to share with you guys, the church, what God impressed upon me during that sabbatical break. And as I processed what it was and realized what it was, because it's not like I was going through sabbatical going, God, what do you have for me? What do you want me to see? What's like the one thing that you want me to take away? I was just, honestly, I was just going through sabbatical, enjoying pursuing God as a not professional Christian, having quiet times that I didn't have to then go and preach about just, just pursuing God for me. And I had a lot of great experiences. I went to churches that I wouldn't normally go to. And, and, and, and God kind of imparted on me a bigger vision for church and church world and Christendom and just how supportive we need to be of one another and how gross it is when we seek to criticize other churches for not doing it the way that we doing it with the way that we do it and that's a whole other thing but when I realized what the main thing was that I carried away from sabbatical I knew that this was the morning that I wanted to share it with you guys. It feels appropriate on NFL kickoff Sunday, the single greatest Sunday of the year every year, to start the sermon with an illustration from Hard Knocks. Hard Knocks is a show, it's an HBO show, and I know that pastors don't normally tell you to go watch shows on HBO on Sunday mornings, but that's not even the worst show I'm going to recommend this morning in this sermon, so get ready. But Hard Knocks is a documentary series. They follow a different NFL team every year through the preseason as they prepare for the regular season. And inevitably, I think this year is a little bit different. They framed this year's up a little bit different, but almost always in the show, they chronicle some rookies. They highlight some rookies that have come to training camp for the first time. They're trying to make their name for themselves in the NFL. And there's always in the show, two kinds of rookies. There's one rookie that sees this as the opportunity of a lifetime, who's hounding the veterans, asking tons of questions, taking diligent notes, coming to meetings early, getting to practice early, doing all the extra things, trying to get in all the extra reps, doing all the little things behind the scenes to be excellent and to make the team. And that rookie always makes the team. And then there's this other kind of rookie who's just kind of coasted on talent his whole life, didn't really have to work that hard in college, and he shows up to the NFL and he's playing. He wants to spend his money. He wants to goof off. He wants to make jokes in meetings. He's not asking the veterans questions. He's not doing the extra little things. He's not coming early and staying late. And I always watch that show and see that rookie with so much frustration because I think to myself, dude, what are you doing? This is the opportunity of a lifetime. If you can't pour yourself out for this, if you can't get pumped up about this, what are you doing? Like, do you know that what people would give to have the chance that you have, and you're just going to fritter it away having fun? Like, this is the time when you push. This is the time when you run. This is the time when you go. What's the matter with you? And I realized over sabbatical that that's me. That I'm the one coasting. I'm not saying I'm coasting on talent because I don't have much. My family likes to joke, me and Jen like to joke, that there's no one on earth with more confidence for less reason than me. Oh, by the way, the notes that you have in your bulletin, you can just fold those up and tuck those away. I'm not using those this morning. As I looked at them at the end of this week, they just felt too rigid. And I just want to speak to you guys from the heart. But I realized that that was me. Have you guys ever had a job where once you figured it out, you could do that job to the expectations of the people around you and your boss to the degree that it needed to be done without giving your whole effort. You ever had that job that you could just kind of shift it into autopilot? Do a couple of things and you don't have to give 100% every week because it doesn't require that of you. And you find yourself just kind of coasting in that job. That's me. That's what I realized I've been doing. And I wanted to say that publicly because I wanted to apologize to you publicly for not putting all of myself into this. And I know that you guys are kind and you're nice. And some of you are going to have a heart to tell me afterwards, Nate, you're doing great. We feel like you're giving 100%. Don't be so hard on yourself. You can't give 100% all the time. So to that, thanks. Keep it to yourself. I know me. And I know what I can do. And I haven't been doing it. Over sabbatical, I watch this show. This is the bad one. Called The Bear on Hulu. Bill's seen it. He's seen it. He knows. It's about a chef. I'm not officially recommending it because there's a lot of cuss words and it's rough. It's intense. I came across it a couple of years ago and started to watch it and liked it, but it was a little bit too intense and I let it go. And somewhere in the month of July, a buddy of mine that I really trust said, hey, this might be the best show I've ever watched. And I thought, okay, I'll give it another go. And I watched it in like three days. I was on sabbatical. I didn't have anything else to do. And I know that as a good Christian pastor, that inspiration is supposed to come through the book on prayer that I read or the commentaries that I was studying. But it didn't. It came from a Hulu show called The Bear. And in the second season, I cried every episode. Every episode I watched, I cried. Because what was happening is these people on this show were galvanizing around a purpose, a restaurant, and they were given everything they had. It's what they thought about when they woke up in the morning. It's what they sold themselves out to during the day. It's what they were thinking about when they went to bed at night, and they gave it everything they had, and it showed how just gradually their lives started to change as they pursued this, and they started to become better humans as they rallied around this thing, and I just found it, for whatever reason, I'm shaky now as I'm talking about it, for whatever reason, I found it so very deeply inspirational. And I came out of sabbatical more determined than ever to do my best work. Because if this isn't worth pouring yourself out for, what is? If God's kingdom isn't worth your whole life, then what's worth it? If this isn't the time for me to go, when is? What could be more important than building God's church, than declaring his word, than loving people towards Jesus? What could be higher stakes than that? There's this verse, it's a couple of verses in 2 Timothy. Paul is writing a letter to Timothy, this guy that he trained, and now he's left him as pastor of a church. And he's writing him two letters of advice, 1 and 2 Timothy. And at the end of 2 Timothy in chapter 4, Paul confesses and acknowledges that he's reaching the end of his life. I don't think he was reaching retirement because I don't think retirement was a thing for Paul. I think he knew that he was reaching the end of his usable years. And he writes this to Timothy and it's always to me been one of the most intimidating verses. He's encouraging him in verse 5. He says, the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. And I have in my Bible, I don't know when I wrote this, years ago, just this little note, oh, to say this, to get to the end of my race and say that, that I have been poured out like a drink offering, that I've fought the good fight, that I've kept the faith, and I finished the race. But that's an incredibly intimidating verse, isn't it? When in our lives have we felt like we were poured out like a drink offering? Besides parenthood, which by default forces you to pour yourself out like a drink offering, whether you want to or not, that kid is tipping you over, man. Besides that, what have we done? What experiences do we have? When we look back at something and we say, I poured myself out like a drink offering. I've fought the good fight. I've finished the race. When do we get to say that? And I'm coming out of sabbatical reminded of this verse,izing that there has certainly been more seasons, more weeks than not, where I've not been pouring myself out for grace. Where I've not been the pastor that I believe I'm supposed to be. Because I figured out how to do my job without giving it all that I've got. And I'm telling you guys, I'm sorry, and I'm done with that nonsense. I'm going to pour myself out like a drink offering. I'm going to give this place all I got. Because if I don't, the crap am I waiting on? So here we go. Now, what does that mean? This is an important question. And you'll see in a minute why I've opened up a sermon on the building about myself. Okay, just relax. What does it mean that I intend to try my best? I'm going to preach better sermons? No, because I'll be honest with you, I don't know how to preach better sermons. Okay, if y'all got tips, give them to me. But I don't know how to preach better sermons than I already preach. So I'm not going to tell you I'm going to preach better sermons. I can't do that. I'm actually trying as hard as I can on most sermons. It's all the other stuff that you don't see that I need to step up to the plate on. And so what I've committed to, and I pulled staff together and I told them this coming out of sabbatical, what I've committed to is that every spare minute that I have, that I could fritter away on something else, or I could go home and just not do as many hours of work that day. All the spare minutes that I have in my work week are going to go towards two things. Reading on behalf of the church, learning, and just being a learner and a reader, because when I read, it makes me better. I'm not going to get into all that. But the other thing is writing. I need to write. And there's a lot that I need to write. My first goal was to get three weeks ahead on sermons. I am. So if I preach a sermon and I look lost in the middle of it. It's because I wrote it three weeks ago. And I've not thought about it since. So sermons actually might get worse. I don't know. But what I really need to write is stuff that I'm thinking about. I kind of think about it as the discipleship pathway materials. Right now at Grace, if someone comes to the door and they're a new believer or non-believer, but they come into faith and like, how do I grow spiritually? Our answer is get in a small group. What are we doing in the small group? Whatever the small group leader wants to do. We're doing 1 Samuel this semester in my small group. Great. How do I grow spiritually? We just, you know, we just hope it happens. Just go to small group, get into some good relationships, come on Sunday, we'll preach the Bible, we'll sing together, and God's going to grow you. And God in his goodness has grown us. He's grown a lot of people at Grace. He's worked in that sanctification process. Sanctification has become more like Jesus in character. But that's no longer an acceptable answer to me. This conviction started last fall, and I won't get into all the things that led to it, but it was an unexpected trip where I made two unexpected friends, and one of the unexpected friends spoke for Ministry Partner Sunday, Ru Sin. And through my relationship with him, I've really seen and been inspired that the next thing that grace needs to do, the next stage of the growth at grace is to develop all the things that need to happen behind the scenes. So that church on Sunday is just something that we do where we gather together, but the real church is taking place all throughout the week. And so what we need at grace is a discipleship pathway. What we need is materials, Bible studies, sometimes curated books, sometimes curated studies that other people have done. Sometimes it will be things that I've written. Sometimes it will be things that people in the church have written. But what we need is a pathway, is materials to put in people's hands, directions to encourage people who come to grace, direction to encourage you so that everybody who walks through those doors within about three or five years of coming here, even if they didn't know anything about the faith walking into grace, three to five years down the road, we've given them everything that they need so that they can be someone who is spiritually mature enough to be an elder of the church. Now, I'm not saying that every one of you in this room should be an elder. But what I'm saying is I want a church full of people who are capable of it if God calls on them to do it, who are spiritually ready and spiritually mature and ready to get there. And my part in that is to quit hoping that spiritual growth happens organically and to start writing out a pathway for us to begin to pursue Jesus together with all that we've got. And here's why I think that this is really important work for me to do. Here's why I think it's the most important work for me to do. And I would even say, if my sermons do get worse, but I'm writing this stuff faithfully, and I'm going to send the staff what I'm writing every week, they're going to see and they're going to know. I'm being held accountable for this. I would say that actually serves the church better. Now, I'm going to try to not preach worse, but, you know, we'll see what happens. I think it's so important that I do that now because of what lays ahead for us. In a few more minutes, I'm going to show you the building that we think God wants us to build. And when we get there, we're going to get bigger. I've heard people say, not to me, because people don't say things like this to the pastor, but they say it to you, and then you tell me what they said. That you've had friends come here, and they'll be like, place is cool, like the vibe, like the church, music's good, preaching is acceptable, and we'd like to go there, but your facilities stink. I'd rather not get stuck behind a pole. Our location is not good. They'd rather not walk outside and sometimes in the rain to get their children past the aquarium store. And I've seen young families come in for the first time. And they'll go in that hallway when all the young families are here at once. And they're holding their two-year-old and they're looking at the zoo of two-year-olds in the room. And the tears and the three of them that want to break out. Sometimes it looks like they're prisoners of wars back there. They're like holding the bars and there's tears streaming down their face. Please anyone just get me out of here. These people are terrible. They're hitting me. Like it looks rough. And I've watched young families like reluctantly hand their child into that room. And I've thought like good luck next week when you try that other church because you ain't coming back here. Our facilities are sometimes a barrier between four people who would consider grace. And I understand that. And on one hand, we could say like, well, you know, they're not committed enough. And yeah, they're not. That's the whole point. Frankly, I think if you won't go to a church because of the facilities, that's silly and you need to grow up. But that's what church does. We grow people up in Christ. And so maybe that's part of the maturation process that needs to happen with folks. When we get into a new building, that barrier is down. When we get there, there's going to be people in the community that see us building it and they're going to want to come kick the tires. There's going to be old grace folks, some OG grace people who came over from St. Andrews and helped plant in 2000. They're going to hear about it. They're going to want to come see it. You're going to invite your friends because you're going to want them to see it. And we're going to have more people coming here than we ever had, at least for a little bit. And when that happens, I want to be ready. I want to have systems in place. I've said since the day, I said in my interview that I believe in the role of pastor as shepherd. And every person who walks through those doors is a soul that we need to be shepherds and stewards of. And I want to be good stewards of those souls. And if we don't have a plan in place to grow people through small groups and through relationships and through Bible studies and through educational materials and through access to information and through encouraging in their next step and by loving them closer to Jesus, if we don't have an intentional way to do that, then we're not being as good of stewards of those souls as we can be. And so I want to be ready. I'm reminded of the scene in Matthew chapter 4. I believe it's in verses 20 through 22, where Jesus is calling the disciples. And he goes and he finds James and John, the sons of Zebedee, and he finds them mending the nets. And I've always loved the imagery of that. Of the idea that before these men are going to be sent out to do a great work, they're mending the nets, getting ready for their catch. Now they think they're going to catch fish, and Jesus says they're going to go catch men. They're going to be fishers of men, but they're mending the nets. They're getting ready for the work that God has had them to do. There's another place in Scripture where Paul writes a church, and he says, I've been wanting to come to you. I think it's Ephesus. I've been wanting to come to you, but I have to stay here right now, for the Lord has opened a wide door for a great work. That building is opening for us a wide door for a great work, and I want us to be ready. I want us to be discipled up. I want us to be trained. I want us to be ready to lead the Bible studies. I want our families ready to accept the new families. I want the kids over there in that room to know what it is to be kind and generous and gracious when new children show up and to integrate them. I want our small groups to be ready and open for other people to come in as we take on their spiritual growth and their spiritual development. I want us to be ready. We need to mend the nets so that we are ready for the great work that God has for us. Now, here's my biggest fear with starting this campaign and looking to build a building. My biggest fear is that as a church, we start to think that the greatest thing we can do is build something. And in one way, we're right. But we're wrong if we think it's building a building. The most important thing we can do is build disciples. The most important thing we can do is build people who love Jesus, who know him, who follow him, who passionately pursue him and love others. And if we never get a building, we're still going to do that as hard as we can every week. I'm committed to it. And if we think that building a building is the most important thing that we can do as a church in this season of church, then what we're going to do is we're going to spend the next however long it takes, however long it takes to raise the money we need to raise. We need to raise $2 million to build that building. So however long it takes to raise $2 million, if we think that's the most important thing that we can do, we're going to sit in here week in and week out just kind of waiting for the one day and skipping over what's happening right now. It's not about one day. Church doesn't start when we build what I'm about to show you. Church has been going on for 2,000 years. It'll keep going on and it needs to happen every week here. We need to build ourselves up. We need to be ready. We need to grow in our faith. The most important thing that can happen in the church is that we build disciples, and we can do that right now as we mend our nets and get ready for this great work. But the great work doesn't just start when we get there. The great work starts right now as we galvanize around growing ourselves into disciples and really more pointedly, allowing God to grow us as we get out of his way and allow him to pour us out like a drink offering and we learn what that feels like. So I'm going to do my work behind the, to prepare the lattice to direct the growth that the Spirit is going to bring. And this is where this applies to you too. Here's my challenge to you over this time and kind of what could feel like the land between now and when we build. Is to not think of it that way. Think of this as time to prepare ourselves and to get our butts in gear too. Here's the challenge to you guys. I don't know if any of you have a background in karate. I have thought about this illustration for years. It's been something that rattles around in my mind, and I wish that I had a better one. I don't. This one makes my point better than anything else I can think of, so we're going with karate this morning. I don't know if any of you have a background in karate. I do not because I have friends, but if you do have a background in karate, then you know that there's a belt system, right? Like the first belt you get when you go do karate is you get a white belt, I think. You get the white belt, and that means like you're in the door, you're part of the dojo. I think that's a thing. You get the little thing that you wear, and you're in. You're a karate guy or a girl. Good for you. And then you start to learn skills, and you get like another belt. I don't know, a yellow belt, and then maybe a purple one, and then a blue one, and then I think there's a brown one, and I think there's a brown one. I actually researched this. There's a brown one with a black stripe. It's pretty fancy. That's real close to black belt. And then you get to be black belt, right? And I think some people, I don't know what the matriculation rate is for karate and the belts. I don't know where everybody stops. But not everybody becomes a black belt, right? Because black belts are bad jokers. I remember in elementary school that there was a rumor going around our school. Like I heard this old wives tale. Maybe it's true. I don't know. But I heard somebody said that whenever you achieved black belt, you had to register your hands with the federal government as deadly weapons, which is hilarious. And I went ahead and took care of it when I was younger so that I wouldn't have to mess with it later on in life. But black belts are like, man, they're the top. They're the best. But that's not for everybody. Some people get the blue belt, and they're like, that was fun. I'm going to try soccer now. I'm just going to go on to the next thing. And they don't keep progressing. They're not a yellow belt. They learned some skills. They did some stuff. Now they're a blue belt. And I'm good. I want to go do something else. I'm comfortable with my current level of karate skill. I see how I chopped like that. This is a layered sermon. The church, this one, all of them, church has a lot of blue belt Christians. Church has a lot of folks who got their white belt. They're new. They're in. Got the suit. Ready to go. And then they started learning a couple of things. Started attending church regularly, making that a priority. Prioritizing church and their schedules with their kids. Started making small group important. Maybe even started to give and tithe. Small groups, Bible studies. Maybe they even actually read spiritual books like on their own without anyone asking them to. And they're moving up the ranks. They get to about blue belt and they're like, you know what, I'm pretty good. Pretty good. I don't look like I did before I became a Christian. I've made some progress, doing some good things. Got some good habits. Got some good skills. And I see some black belts. Those men and women, those are some serious Christians. Those are like missionaries. Those people have degrees. They went to seminary. They got doctorates. They are serious about their faith. Like at my church, Nate, we got Nate. He's not even a black belt. Like he's definitely brown, maybe with a black star. Probably not. Black belts are serious Christians. And I'm comfortable. I got other things I want to do. I want to go try soccer now. A lot of us are cruising through our spiritual life, comfortable with who we are and where we're at. And every now and again, God will poke us and kind of tell us something that we need to work on. And maybe we even begrudgingly go, okay, all right. And we give in to that conviction. But we're not sold out for our faith. We're not giving it everything we have. We're not pouring ourselves out like a drink offering. We're going to get to the end of the race and we're going to be like, well, I finished it. I wasn't really trying to win. And here's the problem with blue belt, middle of the road, comfortable Christianity. The Bible makes absolutely no space for that. There is not one single inch of space in the Bible's description of a life of faith that makes room for one day in the middle road. There's actually a verse that haunts me, and it should haunt you too. Revelation 3.16, he convicts a whole church. Jesus says he convicts a whole church, and he says, the one thing with you is you are lukewarm. You're neither hot nor cold. You're sitting on the fence. You're right in the middle. You're comfortable Christianity. You're on cruise. And because you were lukewarm, I will vomit you out of my mouth. God makes no space for comfortable Christianity. He makes no space for people who are not all the way sold out. Listen, look, just a couple of the verses that I thought about that make this point. Jesus says himself, he's preaching, and his mother and brother show up, and they need him. They're worried about him because he's kind of making a name for himself, and they feel like he's embarrassing himself. And they tell him, hey, your mother and your brother are waiting for you. And he says something to the effect of, if you do not hate your mother and your brother compared to me, then you are not prepared to enter into the kingdom of heaven. You are not ready for this life. You are not ready to sign up for this. Somebody comes to him and they say, hey, Jesus, I believe in you. I want to follow you. What do I need to do? And he says, follow me. Let's go. And he says, okay, but my dad just died. I need to go do his funeral. And Jesus says, let the dead bury their own dead and let's get going. No one puts their hand to the plow of the faith and then turns their head and looks behind them. We have to go. We are moving. We are all in on this. Paul writes about the faith and he tells us that we are to run in such a way to get the prize. He says, all runners run, but we need to run to win the race, which is look that we don't get participation trophies in Christianity. And then he says to Timothy at the end of his life, I've poured myself out like a drink offering. I'm done. I'm spent. There is no more juice in this lemon. I fought the good fight. I kept the faith. I finished the course. I won. I don't know what it means to you or how it sits on you when I say that there is zero space in our faith for comfortable middle-of-the-road Christianity. All I know is that I'm the poster child for that kind of faith. And I need to let God get to work in here. And I don't know how you feel about it. But here's what I want to find out. What would happen in your life if you gave all of yourself to your faith? Last week I preached out of Jude and I said the message of Jude is that we should contend for the faith with our whole life, with everything we have. What would happen if you did that? What would you look like if you actually gave yourself all the way over to the faith and you said, Jesus, I'm all in. I'm two feet in on this, Jesus. Whatever you want me to do, wherever you want me to go, however you want me to do it, I'm in. I'll do it. What if you joined me there and we did this together? What if you joined the people on the row with you and you said, you know what, from here on out, all in. No middle of the road. no blue belt nonsense. I'm all in on this. What could happen if we allow God to build a church full of disciples who are sold out to him? Because we finally got ourselves out of the way, we finally let him make us uncomfortable, and we finally started doing the things that he asked us to do. What could happen in this new space if there was a church full of people sold out to him, ready to accept the community that's going to come there? What kind of generational ministry can we do in that place as we prepare ourselves for the great work that's going to be open to us? I am committing to you that I will pour myself out like a drink offering for our Jesus and for this place. I'm going to ask you to come with me Because Lord knows none of us can grow this place alone. None of us can proclaim Jesus alone. None of us can move this church forward alone. Least of all me. So who's with me? Who's all in? Who's ready to get to work? Husbands, go love your wives like you've never loved her before. Go model for your children what they should do and what they deserve. Let her see a man who loves God and who pursues him, who prays fervently and consistently. Wives, let your husband see a woman who loves the Lord, who loves his word, who's diligent in prayer. Let him know that there is no one who loves him and respects him more than you do. And show him the love of Jesus in the way that you treat him every day. Parents, love your children as hard as you can. Be present for them. Model for them what godly Christianity is. Show them what a godly man looks like. Show them what a godly mother looks like. Show them what a godly friend looks like. Show them what it looks like to steward and to marshal your finances the way that God wants you to do that. Show them what it looks like to love other people who don't look like you or think like you. Show them what it looks like to gracefully disagree. Show them what it looks like to be gracious lovers of others. Show them what it looks like to build a life passionately pursuing Jesus. It's not too late to start showing them. And it's not too late to admit to them, hey, I've been coasting and I'm sorry, but I'm all in on this and I'm all in on you and I want you to follow me. It's not too late to do that. You can do that anytime you want. But leave from here. If you're all in, leave from here and go love the people in your life well. Leave from here and dadgummit, if you don't have a devotional habit by now and you've been here for years and you've heard me say over and over again, the single most important habit that anyone can develop in their life is to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and time in prayer. And you're still not doing it? Shame on you. Go do it. Come on. Go read your Bible. Darn it. Thank you. Get in God's word. Devote yourself to prayer. Let's be all in. Not on the building. I think that God wants us to build a building. I think the amount of money that we have to raise to build a building is absurd. And I think if we're going to build it, you guys are going to have to believe that too, and you're going to have to give. But I'm not going to talk about that a whole lot, because I think God's going to do the work that he needs to to do and that if he wants us to build a building, we're going to be in the building. If he doesn't want us to be in the building, we won't be in the building. I just kind of think he wants us to be in the building. In the meantime, you know what I really care a lot about? Us growing closer to Jesus together. Let's be all in on that. Come with me. Let's see what happens. And let's see what God does. Alright. Let me pray for us. Then we'll show you the stuff. God, on behalf of those who have cruised, who have set our faith on autopilot, I am sorry. We are sorry. God, we, I ask that if we feel a fresh conviction to pursue you relentlessly, that that conviction would not wear off as we leave this room, as we walk out of this space and the concerns of life begin to drown out the noise of this fresh conviction. God, would you put it at the forefront of our awareness and of our thoughts? Would you force us to wrestle this to the ground? Would you let it haunt them as it haunts me that there is no space in your gospel for half-hearted Christianity? I pray that for each person in this room, that you would lay before us the next thing you want us to do to pursue you, and that we would do it. Big or small, we would do it, eagerly and obediently. And once we do it, that we would say, God, what's the next thing? And what's the next thing? And what's the next thing? Let us not be a church full of cultural, casual, complacent Christians. But let grace be a place that is filled with people who love you and who desperately want others to love you too. Be with us as we go, God. In Jesus' name, amen.