Sermons tagged with Gratitude

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. What a powerful thing that is. I just want us to pause and reflect a little bit for a room full of people to cry out together with no other music going on, just our voices. There's nothing better than you. Oh Lord, there's nothing better than you as we declare that together. I wish I had planned to preach on that. And the profundity of that and how if that would truly resonate through our days and our weeks, the choices that we would make, the priorities that we would set, what would it really look like if we lived our lives like we just declared, where there's nothing better than you and what you have to offer me? But that's not what I have to preach about today. What I have to preach about today is actually something that is near and dear to my heart and something I look for an opportunity to do whenever I can. What I get to preach about today is celebration. This is the third part of our series called The Table, where we're looking at the Gospel of Luke and how Jesus employs the table for different means and methods throughout the Gospel to accomplish different portions of his ministry. And one of the things we see Jesus use the table for in the book of Luke, and we'll get to the passage where we see that, and we see that in his life in other areas. We'll talk about that too. But we see Jesus use the table for celebration. And when I think about celebration in the Bible, I think of one particular scene of exuberant celebration that we find in 2 Samuel chapter 6. Now what's going on here is David is dancing before the ark of the Lord. So in the Old Testament, the ark is where the presence of God rested. It was representative of and emblematic, and even it actually was where the presence of God was. So the presence of God was with his people in Israel. It was the most sacred thing on the planet. And the Philistines had conquered maybe Shiloh where they kept the ark and taken it back to Philistia. And David mounted an army and he went and they conquered and they reclaimed it back and they were bringing it back to Israel to put it where it belonged. And what we see in the verses preceding what I'm going to read is David was throwing a party every night wherever the army was encamped as they caravaned back to Jerusalem. The harp was going and the lyre and the cymbals and the tambourines, which I guess is a big deal when you get the lyre fired up. They were partying every night. Huge celebration because the Ark of the Covenant was with them. And it says that David, when they would proceed in the processional, that David was dancing with all of his might, which I don't know what that is. I've never once in my life danced with all my might. I would be mortified to see what that would look like. But David didn't care. He was dancing with all of his might, and he was dancing in a linen ephod, which is basically Hebrew underwear. So dude, boxers, undershirt, just dancing before the Ark of the Covenant. And this is the king. This isn't just some crazy guy. This is the king totally undignified in front of the Ark as it parades back into Jerusalem. And this is where we pick up the story. Chapter 6 of 2 Samuel, verse 16. and inside the tent that David had pitched for it. And David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord. And when David had finished offering the burnt offerings and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord of hosts and distributed among all the people, the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, a cake of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins to each one. Then all the people departed, each to his house. So this processional comes ushering into Jerusalem. And then this procession comes ushering into Jerusalem. David's been dancing before the ark in his underwear for the whole journey. and now Michal, his wife, sees him and despises him. You know she gives him that look. You wives know what I'm talking about, and you husbands really know what I'm talking about. That look that you get from your wife, you're being an idiot. Stop it. I get this probably with more regularity than most of you, besides you. I know you and I are pretty neck and neck there. I get that look pretty regularly. I know what it is. She looked upon him and she despised him. I do not blame you. I understand what I'm doing right now is unconscionable. But this is the look that McCall gives David. David finishes, and it's a great combination of the celebratory praise, right, and this somber worship. He offers the offerings. He does that. He hits pause on the party, on the celebration, and he offers the offering. And then as soon as he's done, what does he do? Nationwide feast. Everyone gets a cake of bread and a piece of meat and a cake of raisins, which if you want to make my day, give me a cake of raisins. That's fantastic. So everybody goes home. They celebrate. The whole nation celebrates the arrival of the Ark of the Covenant because the presence of God is here. And this is how David responds. And what follows is this insight into David's marriage and personal life. And I would just say this, David has many good traits. David provides us with many good examples. We're looking at the example of celebratory praise today. David was a pretty bad father and a terrible husband. So we're going to see that here. But look, I just love this conversation that follows. Verse 20, and David returned to bless his household. But Michal, the daughter of Saul, came out to meet David and said, this is all sarcasm, by the way. This is complete, it's just dripping. How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants, female servants, as one of the vulgar fellows shamelessly uncovers himself. And listen to this. So she just said, oh, big king, big important king, how you honored yourself today, stripping down and dancing in front of the female servants where you could be seen by anyone, you dummy. And then David says this. I love it. And David said to Michal, it was before the Lord who chose me above your father and above all his house. So Saul was the king, And David said, no, no, no, I don't want him or his line to be the king. I'm going to make David the king. So then David says, oh yeah, McCall, were you embarrassed about me dancing? Well, I wasn't dancing for the female servants. I was dancing before the Lord, the same Lord that chose me over your dad and you. And so that's why I was dancing. It's just great trash talk. And then he says, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord, and I will make Mary before the Lord. I will make myself yet more contemptible than this. That's what I tell my wife. It doesn't work the same way. And I will be a base in your eyes, but the female servants of whom you have spoken by them I shall be held in honor. So it's this great scene of the arrival of the presence of God in Israel. And for the entire processional home, feasting, celebrating, partying, dancing, music, and joy. It's this great, however many day long celebration. And then when McCall calls him out for it, have a little bit of dignity, have a little bit of class, which in McCall's defense, I think that if you put us in that story, we would be Team McCall. If we saw that happening, we would be on her side. And the side that says, hey, listen, it's okay that you're happy. Just have a little bit of dignity, okay? You're a king. Carry yourself like it. Act like a man, don't do that. Have a little bit of self-respect. And I know that we would be on McCall's side because in here, when we exuberantly praise the Lord, the absolute apex expression of our joyous praise is when we go from this to this. This is normal worship. This is, I'm about to lose my mind and start crying. I love God so much. That's all it is. That's the whole difference. So if you think you're not on team McCall, you're full of it. You are. I've seen you. And David's response is, no, no, I will dance before the Lord. I will be less dignified than this. And you know what God does? For all of this, all of his showing out, for all of his exuberant praise, for all of his lack of dignity, the very next chapter over, we see what's called the Davidic covenant, where God comes to David and he promises him, the Messiah is going to sit on your throne. Your name will go on forever and ever as I honor it through bringing the Messiah through your line and he will sit on your throne one day. Your kingdom, your throne will last forever. God, instead of being miffed by that praise, he honors it. And I think that this is an important story to remind ourselves of, because as we think about our own expressions of faith, I think we would agree that for whatever reason, we tend to think of faith and the expression of faith as this austere thing. Faith is a pious thing. It is somber and sober. It is serious. It is serious, quiet, personal prayers. It is early morning, quiet Bible study. It is sitting with someone as they hurt and sitting with them. It is being serious in church. And maybe it's because our biggest habit of the expression of our faith is to come to church every week and sit quietly while we do stuff. then sometimes you're allowed to sing but please don't make any other noise besides that because it's distracting. Maybe that's why our expression of our faith is so serious and so somber and so pious. But I think over the centuries, they understand. I think over the centuries, we have assigned this seriousness to our faith that God never intended. And I think that if we look carefully at Scripture, what we find is that celebrations play a vital role in the Bible. Our God is not a God that demands seriousness of us all the time. In fact, our God invented joy. He invented laughter. He's the author of it. And if we look carefully, we see that celebrations play a vital role in all of Scripture. If we think about God's role in celebration, there's a parable in the New Testament, Luke chapter 15 of the prodigal son, and I'm not going to belabor it. If you don't know the parable, I'm sorry. Come another time, I'm sure we'll tell it eventually. But the son who went off and was sinning and who squandered his money comes back. And when he comes back to the father, he has a speech prepared that basically says, I'm not even worthy to be called your son anymore. Will you hire me as a servant? Can I at least live in your house? And the father, who is representative in that story of God the Father, sweeps that aside, embraces his son, puts his robe on him, kills the fattened calf, put on his slippers and his ring. And what does he do? He throws a party. God says there is a party in heaven every time someone comes to know him. Our God throws feasts. When we see God depicted in the Bible, he is depicted as one who celebrates. As a matter of fact, when one day we go up to heaven, when he sends Jesus back and we're all called up into heaven, Lily, my daughter, she's seven, she was asking me yesterday, when is Jesus going to come back? And I said, baby, nobody knows. And she was like, oh, I want to know. I'm like, I know, I get it. And she's like, is it going to be soon? I said, I don't know. She said, could it be a hundred years? I said, yes. And she was like, oh, that's too long. She's ready to go. So whenever, I mean, if I was your dad, wouldn't you be ready to go? So whenever God comes to get us and he takes us all up to heaven, do you know what our first planned group activity is? Feast, marriage supper of the lamb. It's priority number one. It's the very first thing we're going to do. He's going to get his family together in heaven, and we're having the feast of all feasts. It's the very first thing God wants to do. He doesn't want to put us in a church service. He doesn't want to do some sort of meet your neighbor thing because we've got the new houses and the new bodies. What he wants to do is have a party and feast. It's the first planned group activity in heaven. And then we can look at the way that David describes this God. David says in Psalms that better is one day in his courts than thousands elsewhere. And I've got to believe that if that's true, that in God's courts there is exuberance and there's praise and there's joy and there's laughter. Otherwise, how could it be better than everything else? And then David says in Psalm 1611, and I remind you guys of this psalm regularly, that in God's presence there is fullness of joy. At his right hand are pleasures forevermore. Doesn't that describe a God of joy and a God of celebration and a God of laughter and a God of exuberance? And God the Son is no different. What was Jesus' first miracle? I know my Baptist friends are uncomfortable with the reality of this miracle and we would like to make it Welch's grape juice that he put in those vats. It was not. Jesus' first miracle was at a wedding in Cana when the host ran out of wine and was very embarrassed. And his mom said, hey, do the thing where you make the water wine. He had been saving the money for years, I guess, on wine. And she said, do the thing where you change water to wine. He says, no, no, no, it's not yet my time. And she puts that mom pressure on him, and so he does it. And he changes the water into wine. His very first miracle, he broke his silence by keeping the party going. And I do think that says a lot about our Savior. It reminds me of my father-in-law. My father-in-law, sometime in the 80s, decided that he didn't want to go to the movie theater anymore. It wasn't worth his time. It wasn't a wise investment of his time. So the last movie he saw in the theater was like Raiders of the Lost Ark. And then he takes this 20-year hiatus where he doesn't go see anything, not going to do it, not worth my time, not interested. And somewhere in the mid-aughts, he broke his silence. Do you know what he broke? A movie, my father-in-law, very serious. He was one of the vice presidents of AT&T. He was a pretty serious, straightforward guy. Do you know what he broke his silence for? Talladega Nights, The Legend of Ricky Bobby. And I loved it. I thought it was great. It said so much about, to me, it said so much about John, what he broke his silence for. He's got a sense of humor. He doesn't take himself too seriously. It was really great. I think it actually does say something about our Savior. What did he break his silence for? Well, it was primarily so that the host wouldn't be embarrassed and probably to please his mom a little bit, but he knew what he was doing. As a matter of fact, the guests were surprised because they were like, this is the good stuff. You're supposed to give us the good stuff first and then the other stuff after because we can't really tell the difference anymore. Jesus' first miracle was to continue a celebration. At another point in his life, some of the disciples from John come to Jesus and they're like, what's the deal? We've been fasting with John. We fast and we mourn and we pray. And the expression of our faith is very somber and very pious, kind of the way we would expect the expression of faith to go. And Jesus says, and they said, why don't your disciples do that? You guys go around feasting and partying with everybody. Why is that? And Jesus says, because I'm the bridegroom. And when I'm present, it's not the time to fast. It's the time to celebrate. It's the time to enjoy. It's the time to have fun. It's the time to respond with exuberant praise. God the Father and God the Son are gods of celebration. They're gods of joy. They are gods of merriment. That's why Matthew's response to Jesus when he gets called to be a disciple is the appropriate response. Now, we're going to see in this passage that I'm about to read that Matthew or Levi is a tax collector. Now, tax collectors were particularly abhorrent in ancient Israel because the ancient Israelites were, they were basically a province of the Roman Empire. They were governed by a Roman governor. That's why we see Pilate later in the story. And they resented this Roman rule, but there was nothing they could do about it. To pay for their armies, the Romans needed to tax the folks that they ruled over. And to collect those taxes, they hired locals. They hired indigenous people to become tax collectors and to collect that tax from the people that they were from. So to be a tax collector already meant that you were a little bit traitorous because you're working for the Roman government. But then, this is the way it was explained to me. I could be wrong about this, but the way it was explained to me is that the way tax collectors made money is that they would create a little margin extra of what the Roman government actually said. So if you went to them, they said, how much do I owe? The Roman government says we want to exact a 20% tax on the populace. Then Levi, the tax collector, might say, well, it's 25% this year. I'm so, so sorry. He sends the 20% to Rome, and he takes the five for himself, the 22.5. He takes the 2.5% for him and 20% to Rome. That's how they made their money on the backs of an impoverished people in Israel. So they were a despised people. That's Matthew or Levi, the tax collector. And when Levi encounters Jesus, this is what happens in Luke chapter 5, verses 27 through 32. After this, speaking of Jesus. So Jesus' statement there at the end about coming for those who are sick, not the well, is what we focused on in the first week of our series, and we won't belabor again here today, but I do want to be honest and say that's the point of the passage. Jesus making that statement is the point of the passage. However, what we see in the statement also is Levi's reaction to being called. When Jesus shows up in his life, what is the first thing he does? We've to throw a party. We got to have a feast. We got to celebrate. And in that, he models for us that celebratory praise is the only right response to the arrival of Jesus. Celebratory praise is the only right response to the arrival of Jesus. That's one of the reasons I started with the story of David in the Old Testament. The ark is back. The presence of God is here. What does David do? He dances with all his might for days and days. He throws a party. They have a feast. It's a nationwide celebration. What does Levi do when Jesus shows up? He throws a party. It's a feast. It's the only right response to the arrival of Jesus in our life. What does the father do when the repentant son comes home and what's lost is now found? The arrival of Jesus in this person's life, he throws a party. It's the only right response. What do we do when we get to heaven and we're finally with Jesus? We have a party. We have a feast. It's the only right response to the presence of Jesus in our life. This is why I would argue that Christians ought to be a people of celebration. Christians ought to be known for our joy, irrepressible, undeniable, contagious joy. We should be a people of celebration. When we come to church on Sunday, it should be a good time. When we get together, when we have barbecues, and we have big night out on Friday or on Saturday, it should be a good time. We should be a people of celebration because the only right response when we acknowledge in different ways, at different times, and different avenues, to different effect, when Jesus shows up in our life, we ought to respond with exuberant praise. We should be a people of celebration. We should be the Easter people because Easter reminds us that we can celebrate no matter what. So first and foremost, I want us to acknowledge through these stories, through the table of celebration, through what we're talking about today, that Christians should be a people of celebration. We should be a people of joy. Now, I understand that it doesn't feel right to celebrate all the time. Ecclesiastes tells us there's a time to dance and sing, and there's a time to mourn and be sad. Joyful, exuberant celebration isn't appropriate all the time. Sometimes it would look mean. It would look crazy. It would look insensitive. Just this week, we had a dear lady in the church have a stroke. I think it was a very early Monday morning. And I called on the family. I called her daughter. Her daughter goes here too. And I said, how's your mom? What's going on? And there was a lot of fear there and a lot of trepidation. And the first time she regained consciousness after the stroke, there was nothing there. Her eyes were open, but it didn't seem like anything was registering. It was a really scary thing. She went back under. The next time she came out, she was talking. And then the next day, she was walking. And then her voice got stronger. Now she's home. She's struggling with recollection, but she's continuing to gain on things. Praise God that she's progressed that far, that quickly, and the family is very hopeful. But when I'm on the phone with her daughter, when I go to the hospital room and visit, that's not the time for celebratory praise. I get that. I was talking with somebody else this week who is getting older, and they fell and needed a shoulder replacement. It just stinks. We've got somebody else in the church whose both of his parents have fallen and injured themselves in the past weeks. And I can't help but think how hard it is to be in a season of life where you have to realize that you can't trust your own balance anymore. Where just getting from here to there is a real trial. I can't imagine what it feels like when your body begins to betray you like that and you have to slowly let go of the independence that you have. That's got to be a tough season. And so when you enter into the midst of that and someone's crying because they know the rehab that they're facing, that's not the time for celebratory praise. When we sit with someone in loss, a diagnosis, and shattered dreams, those are not times for celebratory praise. And yet, here's what we know, and here's why we should be a joyful people. Because we can celebrate in the midst of crisis because Jesus claimed the final word. If we want to, when it's appropriate, when we're ready to acknowledge it, in the midst of crisis, we can celebrate because Jesus has claimed the final word. No matter what was to happen with that stroke and the results of it, because that lady knows Jesus, that stroke does not get the final word in her life. That is not the end of her story. That is not all that is written. There will be a one day when she sits at the table of the marriage supper of the Lamb and she is completely stroke free. Because Jesus defeated death, because Easter is true, these hard things that seem like they get the final word don't get the final word. Death has lost its sting. Sin has lost its shackles. Do you see? Even as we age and our body betrays us and it can't be trusted anymore, we have the glimmer of hope that on the other side of eternity, we will be given new bodies and a new heaven and a new earth, and they will not betray us. And my time in this rickety thing is limited, and I will not have to do this all the time. Even in the midst of crisis, because of Easter, because of Jesus, because of what Jesus claimed, there is still hope, and we can still celebrate. This is why that quote from John Paul II is my favorite. We do not give way to despair for we are the Easter people and Alleluia is our song. Because of Jesus, even in the midst of crisis, in the midst of loss, in the midst of frustration, in the midst of sadness, we can still, in spite of what Paul calls this light and momentary affliction, be a people who praise and a people who celebrate. So I would say that we need to look for reasons early and often to celebrate as much as we can. And one of the reasons, maybe the biggest reason, that we are a people of celebration is because of what it does when we celebrate well, when we celebrate as Christians should. Because Christian celebration turns horizontal joy into vertical praise. It takes the joy that we're experiencing here and then at some point or another attributes it to the author of that joy. Yesterday, we're just sitting around the house, just me and Jen, and I've got a daughter, Lily, she's seven, and a son, John, who's almost two. And we're just sitting around in our living room and Lily figured out this thing to do with her face and her tongue to make this sound that I will not replicate for you right now or ever that made John crack up. And if you've ever seen a two-year-old just losing it, it was John's very first spit take. He took a sip of milk from a sippy cup and then just all over the living room and nobody cared. It was great. And Lily's just making this face and making this noise. John's losing his mind, laughing so hard. And Jen and I are looking at each other, cracking up, and it's like the happy, fun, joyful tears. Not because we were so moved by the moment. We were just laughing that hard that our eyes started tearing up. And don't you think the joy that I was taking in John's laughter and Lily's laughter is the joy that God takes in us when his children laugh, when his children experience joy. And in the midst of that moment, because I try to be in the habit of this whenever I'm experiencing part of the good things in life, I didn't just let my joy in there and be like, oh man, isn't this great? But in my head, just kind of quietly, I stopped and I praised God. Thank you for moments like this. Thank you for my children. Thank you for a wife to share it with. Thank you that I get to be the one that watches them grow up. Thank you for the moments like this that you authored, God. So when we are in moments of joy, it does us good to be in the habit of acknowledging the author of that joy. It's why when I do a wedding, I always pray and I pray over the reception and I pray that it would be a good time, that it would be celebratory, that it would be fun, but that the joy would not terminate in this space. It would not terminate horizontally, but be turned into eternal vertical praise to the author of that joy. I think we celebrate to remind us to praise the God who gave us that reason to celebrate. And here's the thing, if we don't do that, if we just let all of our joy terminate here and we never turn it to praise, then I think we start to take for granted the things that bring us joy here. I think we start to get muted to that. I think it takes us more and more to get excited about if we won't express gratitude to God for authoring the joy that we're experiencing now. So I would encourage you, when you're having a good time, when you're making merry, when you're feasting, when you're with your friends, when you have a good laugh, when praise moves you, when something good happens and you get the happy tears, man, pause and make that a moment of praise to God. We're going to have a chance to do that right now this morning. In a minute, the band is going to come up and we're going to sing a song together. We're going to sing that song, There's Joy in the House of the Lord. And it's going to be big and it's going to be exuberant and I want this place to be loud. And I want you, as we sing this song, as we declare this as a people of celebration, I would encourage you to think of the things that God has given you in your life that bring you joy. Think of the kids that you're grateful for, the grandchildren that you get to watch, that you get to hold. Think of the relationships that you have, the friends that you share and do life with. Think of all the good things that God has done in your life as we declare this joy to God. So I'm gonna invite you to stand. Go ahead and stand with us. And we're gonna go right into this song. I'm not even going to pray to close out the sermon. I'd like for this prayer that we offer together in exuberant praise, I would like for this praise to be our prayer that we offer back up to God as we are a people of celebration and declare our joy for him in the house of the Lord.

All right, well, good morning. As I said earlier, my name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. I will be speaking this week. Like I said, last week we did a silent sermon, and I've got largely good feedback from that, some really encouraging things. I've had some people who have been honest and said, hey, you know, it wasn't for me. And then I've got another section of people who said that was a pretty clever way to take a Sunday off. But let's not do that anymore. So I appreciate your honesty. I'm going to try my best to get through this sermon. I'm going to give you all the voice I got left for today. So Jen is in luck because I'm not going to be able to say a thing when I get done with this. But let's go. This is part five of our series called Powerful Prayers, where we're just looking at different prayers throughout Scripture and asking, what can we learn from these prayers? And the one that we're looking at this morning is one that is very near and dear to my heart. It's the one that when I went to Jen and I said, hey, I'm doing a series on powerful prayers, which prayer would you point me to? Because she's my number one sermon consultant, and she said the prayer of Hannah. She pointed me to this one because this one means a lot to us. The prayer of Hannah is found in 1 Samuel chapter 1. So if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn there. There's one in the seat back in front of you if you don't. But Hannah was married to a guy named Elkanah, and she wanted to have children and could not. She wanted desperately to have a child, to experience motherhood, and couldn't. She just couldn't conceive. And that's near and dear to our heart because part of mine and Jen's story is that for about six or seven years, we desperately wanted children. And the Lord, it just didn't work out. We couldn't get pregnant. We couldn't have one. And so we walked through that pain. And so to this day, when I encounter a couple that really desperately wants to experience parenthood and they can't, it's just not happening for them yet, my heart breaks for them. I immediately start praying for them. I immediately follow up for them, sometimes in borderline inappropriate and invasive ways. How you doing? How you doing? How you doing? It burdens me so much because I know the private pain of struggling to have children. I know what it is to go into lunch meetings, to go into one-on-ones, knowing they're going to ask me about it. They're going to ask me why we can't have kids yet, and I'm going to have to give them some canned answer, and it's the last thing in the world I want to talk about. Like, I know that pain. And so Hannah's pain resonates with me in her prayers in 1 Samuel. We don't hear all the words of her prayer in the first chapter, and then she sings a song of praise in the second chapter, but we're going to focus on what she was praying about and how it was processed, how it was interpreted by the priest, Eli, when she prayed it. So it's helpful if we think of what we're about to read. These are Hannah's earnest prayers for a child, but I think all of us have things in our life at different times that we want to. Sometimes it's for a child. And I know a couple of couples in the room and maybe some watching online who have prayed and prayed and prayed and they're sitting in the middle of blessing. We've got a couple of folks who I prayed for and they're pregnant and they're finally pregnant and God is good and that's wonderful. And now we're praying like crazy that they get to hold that healthy baby in the appropriate amount of weeks. Not too many, because mom's going to get tired of it, and not too few, because that's not good, but that they hold that healthy baby in the appropriate amount of weeks. We're praying hard for that. But I also know there's other things that we ardently pray for. Healing of loved ones. When we hear the C word, cancer, we hit our knees and we pray, right? We pray for, I know of another family in the church that their schedule is just untenable because the husband's job is just takes them away too much and he desperately needs another job. And so we're praying for that, that God will open up something there. I love that last song that we ended with, you make a way when there was no way. And you've done it before, we believe you'll do it again. And so we pray those prayers and we trust them to God. And I know that in this room, there's situations that are just driving you insane. I know another family that's dealing with aging parents and mom has no resources. The grandma has no resources. They have no more bandwidth. It seems like it's an impossible situation. What are we going to do? Well, we're going to have to pray about it. And so it's helpful for us when we look at the story of Hannah, if we think about the things in our own life that we genuinely want, that we deeply want, that we deeply need, that we're petitioning God for. God, will you please make a way? Will you please give? Will you please do? That's the mindset we need to be in as we encounter the prayers of Hannah. So in 1 Samuel 1, Hannah goes to the temple and she begins to pray fervently and ardently that God would bless her with a child. And while she's praying, the priest, Eli, notices her and accuses her of being drunk because her lips are moving, but there's no words coming out, and she looks like a crazy person. So he goes up to her, and he's like, hey, you got to get out of here. Like, go home. Go home, you worthless woman. You can't be here in the church. And it sounds harsh of Eli to do this, but I'm telling you from experience as a pastor, you got to keep your head on a swivel sometimes. One Wednesday night during rehearsal for our band, this was three, four years ago, pre-COVID, and I checked this with Jeffy, the guy who was singing. I call him Jeffy. His name's Jeff. I also call him SB. You can ask me what that means later. But Jeff was here this night, so he verified this this morning. Several years ago during rehearsal on a Wednesday night, a gentleman that had been kind of visiting the church, who's not coming anymore, you'll see why, came in and asked if this was an open rehearsal. And our worship pastor at the time was like, sure. So dude sat down. It was very clear that that guy got an early start on his evening, if you know what I mean. Yeah. And so he just starts barking out like suggestions to the band. You should do this song this way. They're like, what in the world? And so finally they had to say like, hey man, this is now a closed rehearsal. We're sorry. You got to go. And he went right outside to the bushes and began his purification process. And then he went on his merry way. So you got to, I don't blame Eli, right? You got to keep your head on a swivel. Sometimes it happens. So he goes to Hannah and he's like, hey, you're drunk. You need to get out of here. And this is Hannah's response in 1 Samuel 1, verse 15. So she goes up to the temple. She's praying ardently for a child. So ardently that the priest misinterprets her passion for drunkenness and confronts her. And I love that she says, she says, no, no, no, I'm just, I'm praying out of utter anxiety and vexation. I'm pouring it out unto the Lord. I don't know what else to do. It's this earnest and honest prayer. And Eli's response is wonderful. Eli's response is, may God bless your prayers because she's praying out of this honest spirit. And so the first thing we learn and see, I think, from Hannah's prayer and this experience in the temple is that God desires our honest prayers. He desires our honest prayers. He wants us to tell him what we're thinking and what we're feeling. He doesn't ask for us to hold back our anxiety and frustration and vexation. He welcomes our honest prayers. I know that this is true because I've seen honest prayers over the years that are cried out of just this honest place where we strip down all of the intricacies that we put up when we go to God in prayer and we just cry out earnestly to him. There's a story in my family. There's a story in my family. I think it's my great aunt or my great, great aunt. I don't know. It's one of those stories that's like, maybe it's like a 30% shot that it's true, but it's been passed down. And so I'm going to tell you, because for all I know, this happened. So there's some great aunt that I had in Southern Georgia or Southern Mississippi. That's where my family is from, which is why I'm so smart. And she was a church lady, man. She was a church lady through and through. She was there every time the doors were open. She told her neighbors about Jesus all the time. She loved God, and she was fiery and whatever. And she was a widow, and she didn't have very much money, and her roof was in shambles. It's leaking. It's clearly visible. She needs a new roof. She can't come close to affording one. And one day in frustration, she walks out into the front yard and she says loud enough for everybody to hear, God, all of my neighbors know that I'm your daughter. And if this is how you want them to see you taking care of your family, then so be it. But I wouldn't think you'd like my roof the way it is. And she walks back in the house. That was her prayer. Then I'm not kidding you. The next day, two dudes show up at the front door. Hey man, we're just here in the neighborhood. We're new roofers in the area. And we think that your house would really make a great kind of model home. So we'd love to redo your roof for free if that's okay with you. The very next day, it's as if God went, okay, Aunt So-and-so, you make a great point. Here you go. God desires our honest prayers. He desires our earnest prayers. And it's so funny when we pray. Sometimes, have you ever heard those people who when they pray, they start to use a vocabulary unknown to any of their friends outside of their prayers? These and thous and henceforth and Father God this and Father God that. And you're like, I never hear you say that outside of praying. We take on like this different language when we pray. We get more austere and serious when we pray. Now, we do need to approach the throne with a degree of respect, and I'm not advocating prayers like my great aunt prayed. I don't think that's really the design there. But we can go to God with honesty. We can go to God and we can tell him, I'm frustrated with you. I'm frustrated with you, God. I did when we were struggling to get pregnant. I would go to him and I would say, there's so many people who seem to be just getting pregnant on accident. Students that I taught that are dummies. And I know that that kid is going to struggle and end up in therapy, God, and you know it too. Why won't you bless us with kids? What's the deal? Like, I would go to him and be honest, and you can do that with God, because it's not like he doesn't know. It's not like he doesn't know that you're frustrated with him. It's not as if he doesn't know that you're doubting sometimes that these words are even reaching his ears. It's not like God doesn't know what we're doing, that we're living these duplicitous lives of sometimes I'm holy church guy and other times I'm just this shadowy version of myself that I don't like and don't identify with. It's not like God doesn't know that when we pray. It's not as if he doesn't know that when we sin. As a matter of fact, when we go to God and we try to put on this veneer and we try to act like we're full of faith when we're not, or that we're full of confidence when we're not, or that we're at total peace when we're really losing our minds, when we go to God dishonestly in word and in attitude and in emotion, I think we resemble the Cheetos kid from the commercial a few years back. It's one of my favorite commercials of all time. This dad's in a living room, right? There's a lot of white furniture and there's Cheeto dust all over everything. There's a bag of Cheetos there, Cheeto dust all over everything. And he's sitting there just kind of looking around going, good gravy, what in the world? And then his kids run through. And the last one that runs through is a redheaded kid, because of course it was a redheaded kid. And they're wearing, the redheaded kid is wearing all white, right? Cheeto dust just exploded all over this kid, all over his fingertips, wiped all over his shirt, yada, yada, yada. And his dad goes, hey, and catches him by the arm. And he goes, you know anything about this? And the kid goes, no, and then runs off, right? It's great. When we go to God and we try to be what we're not, we try to act more together than we are. We try to act less concerned or more faithful or more confident or less sinful than we are. We're the Cheetos kid. God's going, you know you can just tell me the truth, right? It's not like you're going to surprise me. I know every thought that you've ever had. I know you better than you. You can just tell me the truth. So I love the model of prayer from Hannah of going to the temple and praying out of her emotions. God, I want this. And what's so wonderful about her prayer is that Hannah was clearly a holy person. She was a spiritual person. And if you don't think of yourself as holy, the Bible defines you as holy once you become a Christian. If you believe that Jesus is who he says he is, that he did what he said he did, and that he's going to do what he says he's going to do, then you're a believer. And God says, and the scripture says that when God looks at you, he sees you clothed in the righteousness of Christ, that you are holy. So as a Christian, when you offer prayers, those prayers are holy prayers offered by a holy person. Hannah was a holy person, praying spiritually motivated good prayers, aligning with the heart of God that she would experience the blessing of parenthood so she could raise that child according to God's standards. And she was asking for a thing. And in this story, God grants her a son. The son's name is Samuel. Samuel goes on to be the last judge and the first high priest in a long time of Israel. He was David's priest. Incredibly influential in the Old Testament. And what I also love about this prayer of Hannah is that once she learns that she's pregnant, she goes back to the temple and she worships. And it's such a good model for us. Because I wonder about us in our prayer life, when do you pray the most? Is it when you need the most or is it when you're the most grateful? What activates you into prayer more than anything else? Is it that you're overwhelmed with God's goodness and you just have to pour out praise to him? Or is it, I need, I need, I need, I'm scared, I'm scared, I'm scared, I want, I want, I want. And so the model of Hannah is a good time to ask this question, do we go to God in want and in celebration? It's good, it's good to go to God in need. We've got to do that. But once he answers that prayer, once he relieves that stress, once he relieves those tensions, do we go back to him in gratitude? I would encourage you to track those things because it can be a special thing when you do. As I was looking at this prayer this week, I have some notes in my Bible. Underneath the highlighted prayer of Hannah for a child, it was highlighted because Jen and I had been praying that prayer for a long time, for seven years. And we found out that we were pregnant the first time on October 15th, 2014. And I wrote out to the side, God is good, next to that date. But on December the 8th, we found out that we miscarried that child. At the time, that was the hardest thing we'd ever walked through. But here's the thing, and I'll talk more about this later. When we lost that first child, whose name was going to be Samuel, God was still good. God was still good. I'll talk more about that in a second. Then I've got another date, May 12th, 2015, a couple days after Mother's Day. And it just says again, we're pregnant. That was Lily. And then another one. January 15th, 2016. She's yours, God. Thank you for Lily and Grace. When we pray for things that we ardently desire, it is right and good and helpful, not only just the right thing to do, but helpful for our faith to mark those times so that we go back and we can sing songs like what we just sung in earnesty. I've seen you move, and I know you'll do it again. And I've told you guys this before. When we put John and Lily down for bed, we sing. The last song we always sing is God is so good. God is so good, he's so good to me. There's a lot of variations to that. I shouldn't tell you this, but I'm going to because I'm a child. Whenever we're having Asian that night, whether it's Japanese or Chinese or whatever, I always sing the verse of God loves miso. He loves miso because I think of miso soup. And I'm like, God likes Asian food too, to celebrate the Asian food we had that night. Because I'm a moron. I'm a moron. But the last stanza that I always finish with, no matter what, before I put each kid down to remind myself of God's goodness, is he answers prayer. He answers prayer. He answers prayer. When God answers prayers in our life, we need to come back and mark those so that they can be reminders and harbingers for our faith. Because the other side of this that's not so fun to preach about, but we've all encountered, is this reality. Sometimes God says no to earnest prayers born out of godly desire and prayed by holy people. Sometimes the thing we pray for, and it's not a bad thing. It's not a selfish thing. It's not a give me the promotion so I can get the boat thing, which is a fine prayer if you want to pray for the boat. I don't care if you have a boat or not. I'm just saying that's a little bit different prayer than I'd love to experience parenthood, okay? When you're praying for holy things, that our children would come to know Christ, that he would heal the cancer, that this disease would go away, that this situation would be alleviated, that this untenable part of my life would be healed, that whatever it is, sometimes we go to God and we pray those things earnestly, and then the answer's no. And it sucks. I remember when I was teaching school, this would be in 2010, there's a kid in my class named Alex who I was really close with. I loved him a lot. His dad was Ron and Ron had cancer. And Ron had had cancer since 2008, Alex's sophomore year. And Alex, even though he was a senior, had two little brothers in like first grade and third grade. And Ron was dying. And we prayed for Ron a lot. And I remember one day at the school, I think it was after practice, we had Ron come in, because Ron used to set up a chair and watch football practice. We had Ron come into my classroom, and men there from different denominations but involved in the school gathered around Ron. And one Pentecostal brother even brought some oil. I had never seen prayer oil before, but I thought, you know, it can't hurt. I mean, it can't be bad for the prayer. Let's do it. And we lay our hands on Ron, and holy people prayed earnest prayers with holy motivations. And Ron died. And God said no. And it was really hard to look at Alex and be his chaplain and try to see his faith through that time. It was really hard to understand why God would choose to say no when there's two young kids still at the house. We prayed hard for God to heal my father-in-law two years ago. And he could have. He could have. He didn't. That'll do a number on your faith. You've heard no too. You've got the bad news too. You've prayed earnest, fervent, ardent, wholly motivated prayers, and God said no. And it left you feeling confused and bewildered and probably betrayed by God. So we can't bring up, pray earnest prayers, and you'll move mountains without going, yeah, but what do we do when he doesn't? I think the best answer for this is found in the prayers of John the Baptist. Now, I'm being presumptuous in assuming that John prayed about this. Nowhere in scripture, I'm just telling you honestly, okay, hear me. Nowhere in Scripture are we told directly that John the Baptist prayed about this particular situation. But I think it's safe to assume that he did. Because John was a man of prayer, this was a dire situation. John had been arrested by King Herod. He was in the king's dungeon, and he knew he was going to die. But John knew of a prophecy in Isaiah 35 that says, And John knows that Jesus is the Messiah. He's the coming one. He's the one that they were talking about in Isaiah 35. And I'm a prisoner, so I should be set free. But here I sit. And so he sends some representatives to Jesus to ask him, are you the guy or did I mess this up? Let's look in Matthew. We'll pick up the story in chapter 11. Chapter 11, verse 2. The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk. Lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me. Other translations say, blessed is the one who does not fall away on my account. What's he telling John? He says, go tell John all the things in that prophecy are happening. Deaf people here. People are being raised from the dead. Blind people see. And prisoners are being set free. But you're not going to be one of them, John. And then, that all-important line, blessed are those who do not fall away because of me. Which is Jesus' little tip to John. Keep the faith. I'm the one. I'm just not going to do what you think I'm going to do here. I'm just going to let you down a little bit here. And I think that this story is so vitally important to the Christian faith. Because what Jesus is saying here to echo, to reverberate through all the centuries is, Christians, there will come a time when I disappoint you because I don't do the thing that you think I'm going to do. Do you hear me? If you're a believer, you will reach a point in your faith when you are disappointed in Jesus, when you are let down by God, when he doesn't do a thing. It's within his power to heal my dad, and he didn't do it. You're going to reach that point, and you're going to be ticked, and you're going to be confused, and faith is going to be hard. And what does Jesus say to us in that moment? Blessed are those who do not fall away because of me. I'm gonna disappoint you because I'm not gonna do what you expect. And if you can keep the faith, you are blessed. So what do we do when God's answer is no to our earnest prayers? We cling to him. We cling to Jesus. We do what Peter did. I love this story. I should have put it in your notes. Jesus was teaching the crowds one day, and in the cryptic way that Jesus teaches, he thinned the crowd. And he said, I'm telling you the truth. Unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. And the people who had been following him was like, all right, that's weird, man. We're been pretty cool with the miracles, but we're, we'll see you. They left him because that is weird. They know what he's talking about. We know he's talking about communion because we're smarter than they are. But they didn't know. That's not true. They didn't know about communion yet. So then he goes to the disciples and he says, are you guys going to leave me too? And Peter's response is, you're Jesus. Where are we going to go? Isn't that great? If I ever get a tattoo, that's what I'm going to get. You're Jesus. Where am I going to go? There's so much in that. I don't understand what you just said, man. That was weird that you want people to eat you. I don't get it. I'm totally confused. I have no idea what you're doing. I have no idea where you want us to go, but I know you're Jesus. I know you're the Messiah. I know that. I'm just here. I'm in. Wherever we're going. Wherever you want to go, I'm in. It's just weird, man, and I don't get it. When our prayers aren't answered the way we want them to be answered, it's entirely okay to pray, you're Jesus, and I'm in. But I don't get it, man. I don't know what you're doing. That's an okay prayer. That might be the most honest needed prayer that you've ever prayed. Jesus, I know you're Jesus. And I know you died for me. And I know you've promised me a future. And I know you could have done something that you didn't do. And I don't understand it, but where else am I going to go? Because you're Jesus. When he doesn't move the mountain, we cling to the promises. Because here's the reality of it. We pray prayers in this life. Jesus answers prayers in eternity. One way of looking at it is that when we prayed for John to be healed, for my father-in-law to be healed from his cancer, he wasn't because he died. But the other way to look at that is to say he was because he lives in heaven for eternity. And his life is markedly better than ours right now. And I can't help but think, Jen and I talk about this all the time, it creates such sadness for her family that their dad, their patriarch, isn't with them anymore. But I can't help but think that when we get into eternity and we realize what a blip on the radar screen our life is compared to all of time, that the fact that he left early won't matter one little bit once they're with them in heaven for all of eternity. I can't help but think, as callous as that sounds sounds that it just won't matter as much. I think that's why Paul refers to hardships as though you struggle for a little while, though you endure this light momentary affliction. Oh, you mean like decades of cancer, like that light and momentary affliction? Oh, you mean like being an orphan, that light and momentary affliction, you jerk? Yeah, that one. Because when we get to eternity, God answers all of our prayers. One day, God will grant all of our prayers. This is the hope that we cling to in Jesus. That's why I always say that what it means to be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God and he came to earth. He sits on the throne at the right hand of the father. We believe that he did what he said he did. He said that he died and he rose again on the third day. And we believe that he's going to do what he said he's going to do, which is to come back one day and make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue and to answer our prayers in eternity. So when he doesn't move the mountain and when the answer is no, and when we've prayed earnestly and honestly and we've poured our guts out to the Father. And he still says not right now. And we don't get it. We're sitting there like Peter going, you're Jesus, I don't understand what you're doing and I'm pretty mad at you right now, but where else am I gonna go? The promise of Christianity and of our faith is that those prayers will be answered in eternity. And that one day there is issued a forever yes and amen. And we cling to that day. And we cling to that hope. That even though, God, I don't understand why you would let this family walk through that, why you would let Alex lose his father, why you would say no to this earnest prayer request from this wonderful couple who desperately wants children. Even though, God, I don't understand your timing or why you're making them wait or why you've said no, even though I don't understand, I cling to you and I know that you're good and I know that if I knew everything that you knew that I would understand this decision exactly. And so we cling to him and we cling to his goodness. And we remember that God is good all the time. I've talked with people recently who were waiting on results of tests. Pregnancy tests, tests for cancer, body scans, whatever it was. And it comes back with good news, all clear. Or we're pregnant and it's healthy or whatever it is. And what immediately follows is God is good. Yes, God is good. But if he doesn't cure it, and if you're still barren, and if you don't get it, God's still good. And that's the promise and reality that we cling to even when nothing around us makes sense. Is knowing that one day, whether in this life or the next, it will. Because God is faithful and God keeps his promises. Let's pray. Father, we don't deserve you. We don't deserve your goodness and your grace and yet you shower it upon us. We thank you so much for who you are, for what you do, for how you love us. Lord, let us be people who pray honestly and openly and trust you with our emotions and trust you with our words. Let us be people of gratitude who come back to you in celebration when you grant us the thing that our heart longed for. But God, in the middle of a no, in the middle of a mountain that's not moving, walls that are not falling down, paths that are not being made, would you give us the faith to cling to you, to trust you, to know that one day everything will be yes and amen? For those walking through that right now, God, who have heard the no or who sit in the desperation and in the stress of the what if. God, would you just strengthen their faith today? Let them cling and hold tightly just a little bit longer as you minister to their broken spirit. It's in your son's name we ask all these things. Amen.

All right, well, good morning, and thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors at Grace, and if I haven't gotten the chance to meet you, I would love to get to do that. This is officially a summer Sunday, so you guys really mean it. I'm grateful for your being here as we move into the summer, and I'm excited about our upcoming summer series that starts week after next called Kids Stories for Grownups, where we look at some of the Bible stories that many of us learned when we were younger that we've all heard of, and we kind of revisit those and wonder what we can still learn from them as fully formed, intelligent adults. So that should be exciting. And I love it because the stories from the Bible and the Old Testament are some of my favorite things to examine. So we're excited to get into that series here in a couple of weeks. And I'm excited for the end of this service when we'll take communion together. We're going to take it the old-fashioned way for the first time in over two years. And I know there's many of you here who have never partaken in communion at Grace in the way in which we will do it and have always done it for years. So I'm excited for us to do that as a family, and I'll explain more about that later. But right now, we're going to get into the first part of a two-part sermon based in 2 Peter 1, verses 5 through 8. So if you have a Bible, you can open there, and we'll be looking at that text this morning. This morning, we're going to look at verses 5 through 7, and the next week we're going to look just at verse 8. And I know that I say this a lot, and you guys will chuckle at me, but this is one of my favorite passages in all the Bible. I love this passage, and I told you if you get the grace vine and read that this week, so that's two big ifs. Okay, so if you get it and if you actually read it, then you would have seen that I said in the grace vine, if you don't get it, fill out a connection card or something and make sure that you get on our weekly email list so you know what's going on. Unless you don't want that in your inbox, then don't fill it out and we won't send you anything. But I said in there that this passage sums up so much of what we need for the Christian life, for Christian behavior, for Christian expectations, and for Christian purpose. This passage kind of just succinctly encapsulates for us where we need to be focused and what happens when we focus on these things. And for me, I just love it. I've always loved this passage. And it's a big reason that we're doing a series in Peter, and this is what I said in the Grace Find, is so that I can preach these two things. I was actually in a conversation with our new worship pastor, Aaron, about this passage and said, man, I don't know how to condense it to one sermon. And I kind of told him the two things I was thinking. He was like, you got to do two. And I'm like, great, two-parter. I'm in charge of the sermons anyway. So it just became a two-part sermon. So here we go. We're going to dive in, but I want to dive in with some reflections on what the Bible has to say about love, because that's what we're going to be building to today is the way that we're instructed to love according to Peter in 2 Peter. So as we think about the biblical idea of love, it's kind of Christian 101, one of the very first things you learn when you are a believer. After God loved you and Jesus died on the cross for you, and after those things, the thing you learn about what you're supposed to do is love other people, right? We all know. That's the very first thing we're told. Love God, love others. This is what we learn immediately, right? I'm reminded of the conversation that Jesus has early in his ministry where a younger person comes up to him and they say, what do you say is the greatest commandment? And they have a little conversation about it. And it's settled upon that Jesus agrees that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, amen, and to love your neighbor as yourself. These are the two greatest commandments. And Jesus says that in those commandments is captured the whole law and the prophets. Meaning, if we'll do those two things, then we'll do everything we're supposed to do in this book. Those two things, just love God, love others, will capture everything in this book. And so I've always loved that teaching because it distills something very complicated, very detailed, down to its most basic elements. It takes everything in this book that we're supposed to do from cover to cover, all the behaviors that we're supposed to have, all the prayers that we're supposed to pray, all the things we're supposed to start doing, all the things we're supposed to stop doing, all the things we're supposed to think, all the ways that our character needs to change. It takes all of that and it boils it down to two simple commandments. Just love God and love others. And in doing that, you'll take care of everything here. And that's something that is probably not new information for a vast majority of you. You know that, you've been taught that, you're aware of it. If I asked many of you what the greatest commandments were, you would tell me those things. But Jesus, later in his ministry, distills those commandments down even more to just one thing. In John chapter 13, verse 35, at the end of his ministry, he's teaching the disciples. He's been with them for three years and he tells them this, a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another. So he says, he gets them, he sits them down and another week they're going to have the last supper. They're going to do communion. They're going to start communion that we're going to observe at the end of the service. And after he spent three years with them, modeling for them what ministry is, teaching them, discipling them, he sits them down. He says, this is the new commandment that I give to you. And that's a huge word, new commandment. That's not just a passive phrase that he's saying to get to the point. What he's saying is the greatest commandments are to love God and love others. The 10 commandments we learned in Exodus. I'm gonna give you a new commandment that hasn't been given for thousands of years. There's been no new commandments for 4,000 years. I, Jesus, the son of God, I'm gonna give you a new commandment. This one's fresh, listen to me. The way I've loved you for the last three years, I, Jesus, the son of God, I'm going to give you a new commandment. This one's fresh. Listen to me. The way I've loved you for the last three years, go love other people like that. That's it. That's the commandment. But what about all the other things? If you do this, if you go love other people like I've loved you, you'll do all the other things. And in our, some of our theological minds, we'll go, well, Jesus, wait a second. We need to love you too though, right? We can't just go love other people because then that's not Christian, that's just kindness. And Jesus goes, yeah, but go try to love other people the way I've loved the disciples without first loving me. And so Jesus knows that baked into offering Christ-like love to those around us is the necessity that we would fall deeply in love with him, that we would love him earnestly and passionately and sincerely in a steadfast way. It is impossible to live out the new prepping this week, just as an aside, how powerful would it be to live your life in such a way that after you spent time with people, after your kids grew up in your home and you sent them out into the world, what if as a mama or a daddy, you were able to look at those kids and you would say, sweetheart, the way that I've loved you for these last, hopefully just 18 years and then get out, right? But the way that I've loved you for these last 18 years, you go and love other people like I've loved you. What if you could, the people who worked for you, when they moved on to bigger and better and you gave them some parting advice, what if you could look at them and say, the way that I've loved you when you've been with me, go love other people like that. What if you could say that if you moved away? What if you could say that to your small group? What if you could say that to the people that you've been associated with? What if you could say that if you're changing roles, if you're leaving one company and go to the next one, what if you could look at your co-workers and say, all I would ask is that you love people the way that I have loved you. What if you lived a life powerful enough to be able to say that? I could not say that to people. But what if we lived our life in such a way that we could look at the people around us and say, the way that I've loved you and cared for you and prayed for you, now go and do that to other people. And that be the very will of God. It's such a powerful example that Jesus sets there to be able to say that to the disciples. But he tells them very clearly, love is the most important thing. You go love. You go offer the kind of love that I've offered you. You go offer that to everyone around you, to your neighbors, to your brothers, to everyone around you. And that's the commandment. That's what God needs of you. Because if you'll just simply do that one thing, then you will have done all of these things. Jesus knows this. And so he's setting up love as the apex value. And as if that's not clear enough, Paul in his writings in Corinthians, and we're going to get to the love passage in Corinthians 13, but at the end of this passage where he's written about spiritual gifts and he's saying, but spiritual gifts really don't compare to Christian values and of the Christian values of the virtues, really there's only three that remain. He says this in 1 Corinthians 13, 13. And now these three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. Paul makes it very clear. Love is the apex virtue. I always think that there's got to be some family with triplet girls named faith, hope, and love. And you know which one is the favorite, right? Faith and Hope, they're fine. But Love, she's great. These three remain, Faith, Hope, and Love, and the greatest of these is Love. So Paul makes it very clear, in addition to all the teachings of Jesus, where it's very clear throughout the Gospels that Love really is the apex value. And so so we tell new Christians, when you become a Christian, Christianity 101, what do I need to do? What's expected of me? Go love God, go love others. And then if you really want to get technical about it, Jesus gives us one commandment, go and love other people as Jesus has loved you. That's what we are to do. That's what we're instructed to do. That's what we see in scripture over and over and over again is like, okay, you're a believer now. You're a Christian. You believe that God is your father and Jesus is your savior. And just to be very clear, the simplest way I know to understand what it means to be a Christian is to believe that Jesus was who he says he was, that he is who he says he is, that he did what he said he did, and that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. You believe in those things, you're a Christian. Once you believe those things, go love as Jesus loved you. He died for us. Go sacrificially love others. Offer a Christ-like love to your neighbor. But I don't know about you. I know about me. That's hard. I'm not very good. I'm not very good at loving people that I love. I'm really not good at loving people I don't care for. And so that's a challenging command. And it makes me wonder if we've ever considered this. Have you ever considered that maybe love is the end of a journey rather than the beginning? Maybe we build towards love. Maybe Jesus, when he told us to just go love other people, maybe he knew the layers of intricacy and nuance that lay underneath that, that that is a situation where it is far more easily said than done. What if actually offering Christ-like love to others is the end of a journey and it's not the place where we begin? And I can't help but think that that's true, that when we first become Christians, when we become believers, or as we go through our Christian life and God is forming our character and sanctifying us, as he does that, I can't help but think it's true that maybe love is the goal and not the starting place. And 1 Corinthians 13, where we learn the most about love and what it is, actually makes this point for me. I'll remind you of what is written in 1 Corinthians 13 verses four through eight. Now, this is usually read at weddings and that's fine and appropriate and good, but this is not romantic love. This is the love that is required of all believers. And this is the love we are to offer. This is what Paul says about it. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth that always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. So I would ask you this. Have you ever loved anybody like that? Have you ever actually loved anyone with a love that is not envious, that doesn't boast, that is not easily angered, that isn't rude, that takes no record of wrongs. So if you're married, that one's out. As I was asking myself, have I ever offered anyone this love? The most pure love I can think of is the love that a parent has for a child. Just the way that we've had two kids, and both times, as soon as they're born and they place them on Jen's chest and you're looking at this new life, my heart was instantly so full of love. It's nothing that you can describe. You can't really explain it. You just have to experience it. And when it happens, it just fills you up with so much joy and so much love. And it's just there. And the kid can't do anything but be annoying for like four years. So it's just there. You just love them, right? But even in that pure love, when my one-year-old son, John, is teething and fussy for three days straight, I really fail at not easily angered. I fall off the wagon there. I don't offer him that love. When my six-year-old Lily asks me how to pronounce a word in Spanish, and I tell her, and she says, no, you're wrong. Based on nothing, nothing. She doesn't even know how to say English words all the time. And listen, I don't want to brag. I took Spanish two twice in high school. And I've been to Mexico like a lot. All right. So I know Spanish pronunciations. And then she asked me how to say it. And I tell her, she's like, no, that's not it. And I just, I was easily angered in that moment. Maybe that wasn't easily angered. That was justified anger. I take it back. She deserved it. Have you ever loved anybody like we're told in Corinthians to love? Those things, those things are hard. Being patient and kind and not envious and not keeping any record of wrong and not boastful. That kind of love is hard. And loving others as Christ loves us, who condescended from heaven and took on human form and put up with us for three years, for 33 years, and faultlessly loved everyone around him, selflessly giving of himself. Have you ever loved anyone like that? And I'm belaboring the point to get us to this thought, that telling a new Christian to love like Jesus is like telling a crawling baby to run a marathon. Telling a newly formed Christian, someone who's just come into the faith, whether they're eight or 18 or 48, looking at them and going, okay, you believe that Jesus is who he says he is, did what he said he did and is going to do what he says he's going to do? Yes, I do. I absolutely do. Okay, then go in love exactly as he did. See you later. That's like looking at my son, John, and telling him to run a marathon. John crawls, and he crawls like really good. He's the best crawler that I've ever seen. He's a better crawler than all of your children. He crawls, and he can start to, like, stand a little bit, but he's fat, so he's got to develop some muscle before he can really get going. It would be like looking at him and being like, oh, you're crawling now, buddy? Well, how about a marathon? There's a lot of things that need to take place in his development before he can even think about that. Standing would be good without grabbing the couch or my pant leg. There's a start. Taking steps. Once you take steps, stay on your feet. Learn to actually run. And then there's this funny thing with kids where they have to learn to moderate their speed, right? If you've seen a little kid learn to run, they have one speed, sprint, full out sprint. There's no jogging. It's just the hardest possible steps, and they sprint to wherever they're going. There's no moderate in the middle. So you've got to learn how to jog and moderate your speed. You've got to let your body develop. You've got to build up lung capacity. You should probably try to eat healthy because it's hard to run a marathon on cheeseburgers. You have to start going distances. You have to work towards it. You have to build towards it. And to me, looking at a church full of people and saying, hey, we need to love others as Christ loved us, is in a lot of ways looking at developing children and saying you need to run a marathon. And I'm not looking to denigrate any new believers at all. I'm just trying to think of an illustration that could help us understand the path that needs to be traveled so that we can love as Jesus loves others. And we should understand it as a process, not a starting point, as a goal, not necessarily where we begin. And this is why I love the passage in 2 Peter so much. Because in 2 Peter, what we have is a roadmap to be able to love. Loving like Jesus loves feels impossible. Offering the type of love described in 1 Corinthians 13 feels like too big of a challenge. How could we ever do that? Well, this is where Peter comes in and he shows us and he tells us, hey, if you want to love, here's how you get there. So let's look at what I believe are building blocks of Peter telling God's children, here's how we begin the path towards love. Here's the journey that we take. 2 Peter 1, verses 5-7. For this very reason, make every effort. Let me stop right there. If I hadn't been lazy in my notes, I would have made this a point. And if you are a note taker, I would love for you to write this down. For this very reason, make every effort. Listen to me. Christian character is not developed by default. Christian character is not developed by default. We do not coast into godliness. We do not become a Christian, start going to church, and then slip it into neutral and just coast for the rest of our lives. And I think so many of us get stymied in our Christian walk. So many of us feel like we're in a rut. I know that I'm guilty of this because I somehow assume that developing Christian character and the process of sanctification, which is becoming more like God in character, that that process just happens by default. If I just claim faith for long enough, if I pray a couple of prayers, if I start to bless my meal, if I go to small group, if I go to church, that Christian faith will just develop by default in my life. And I'm just going to grow closer to Christ and experience the spiritual maturity and depth just by simply going through the motions and attending the things I'm supposed to attend. And I just want to tell you, there's a reason that he writes, make every effort. Sometimes we got to try. Christian character is not developed by default. We intentionally and ardently work at it our whole lives. He says this, for this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. We went through this passage in my men's Bible study, and there was a little bit of discussion of, are these things that we're supposed to pursue to make every effort to add to ourselves, our faith, virtue, virtue, knowledge, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly affection, love, are those things that we're supposed to pursue all together at the same time, just kind of haphazardly in our life, kind of like the fruits of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We just kind of pursue all of these things at once. And I just happen to think that that's not the intention of this passage. I think that these are actual building blocks. And I think that because of the word supplement, because Peter says, for this very reason, I want you to supplement your faith with virtue, then supplement your virtue with knowledge, then supplement your knowledge with self-control, then supplement, I think because of that word supplement that he's saying that these things intentionally build on one another. I also think that because he starts with faith. Without faith, none of the rest of this matters. Without faith, how in the world can we be virtuous? If virtuous is dictated to us by the desires of God and who he wants us to be and how he wants us to behave, then how can we possibly do that without faith? What are we being steadfast in? What are we persevering in if it's not faith? How can we possibly offer but move towards godliness without faith? Faith is the essential building block for all of this. It is also the starting point of all salvation. So if we think of new believers, what do they have? They have faith that Jesus is who he says he is, that he did what he said he did, and he's going to do what he says he's going to do. They have faith. And Peter says, good. Instead of going and loving your neighbor as Jesus loved you, how about we do this? How about to that faith, we add virtue? Work on supplementing your faith with virtue. Virtue, simplest way I can understand it, is to be aware of the things that we're supposed to start doing and aware of the things that we're supposed to stop doing. When you are a believer, when you convert to Christianity, there's no doubt that you carry in some behaviors into your new faith that do not belong in your new faith, that ought not be there. And so there's, to be a Christian is to kind of have a constantly running list of things in your head, right? Of things that you're supposed to start doing and things that you should stop doing. And so to be virtuous is to take that seriously and just start to move towards God and character. And then he says, add to your virtue, knowledge, learn about your faith. And I would just slide this in there. I feel like many of us, I've spent my whole life in the church. And I would honestly tell you that I think, and this includes me many times in my life, I think most Christians just stall out right there. I think most Christians come to a faith, yep, I believe Jesus. And then kind of look around and be like, okay, there's some ways I'm supposed to behave. I need to stop doing that stuff. I need to start doing this stuff. And then that's it. And then we just put it on cruise control into eternity. I would be willing to bet that if you're here or you're listening, and sometimes faith feels hard, and it doesn't seem to click with you like it clicks with other people, and I'm just kind of in a rut, or maybe I'm just kind of going through the motions, or maybe I'm not really sure what I believe, I would be willing to bet that part of that is that you just stalled out right here. We started with faith. We added to faith the ways that I'm supposed to behave. And now let's just see what happens until I get to heaven. And there's so much more after that, that we are to make every effort to develop. He says, add to your virtue knowledge. This one's important. I don't think I can stress this too much. Christians, we need to learn about our faith. We need to know our faith. We need to understand our faith. We need to know some basic theology. We need to know some basic things about the Bible and the construction of Scripture and how we know we can trust it. We need to know about the triune God, Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. We need to know what words like faith and sanctification mean. We need to understand these things. And there's a lot of us who we don't really make much of an effort to do that. We don't really make much of an effort to learn. We just kind of soak in whatever I say, which that's sorry for you guys, and whatever's said in small groups and all those things. And we don't challenge ourselves with personal study. We need to learn and we need to grow. I talked about this, I preached about this a couple of weeks ago, that we need to be prepared with a why. When someone says, hey, why do you have faith? We need to be prepared with an answer. We are to add to our virtue knowledge. We ought to be learners of and about our faith. And if that's a place where you feel like you are lacking or you don't know where to go, please reach out to me and I'll do my best to point you towards some resources that won't all be books, some videos and some podcasts and stuff like that, depending on what kind of learner you are. But we need to grow in our knowledge of our faith. And then to that knowledge, we're to add self-control. The discipline of just continuing to do it, of denying ourself for the sake of something later, for the sake of something better. And then to self-control, we had said fastness or perseverance. This is another reason why I think it's actually building blocks because perseverance isn't required in the infancy of faith, right? If you ever have the privilege and the joy of being with someone in the moment when they convert and they pray to receive Christ and you say amen and then you look at them and you put your hand on their shoulder and you go, hey, listen, just hang in there, buddy. You're bad at that, all right? You're bad at giving advice. If fresh out of the gates, the first place you go to is just cling to hope. Until you've been disappointed by God, until you've been in a spiritual rut, until you've walked through a personal valley of the shadow of death, that advice and that encouragement rings hollow. But when I preached about suffering at the beginning of the book, and we talked about the fact that suffering is a fact of life. The encouragement that I gave you was to persevere. Cling to hope. Don't lose faith. When we addressed Uvalde last week and we said, what's the role of the church? Our role is to persevere and to cling to the hope and so beat back the darkness in the world with the hope that we cling to. We are to persevere. So these things build. And then to perseverance, godliness, becoming more like God in character. And then to godliness. And this is important. When I think about godliness, it's more than just virtue and it's more than just self-control. Because virtue and self-control, those address behaviors. Those address how we behave. But godliness is about who we are. It's about our being. Godliness is when we do the inner heart and soul work to figure out what is it inside of us that's broken that's motivating me to need virtue and to need self-control? What is it inside me that's not right? How is my heart unhealthy? Where are the pockets of darkness in my life that I have not addressed? Maybe we go through the motions of Christianity for years and years and years, and we're good at being virtuous, and we're good at being self-controlled, but there's this voice that kind of tells us when we start to pursue godliness, like, hey, you know the only reason that you've ever really gone through all the religious machinations is to get all the people around you to like you and respect you, right? And that you're really not super sincere in your faith. I'm not saying that that's occurred to me, but I've heard that it occurs to weaker Christians, perhaps. It's when we allow the Holy Spirit to really do the work in our hearts and we cry out to God. When we pursue godliness is when we realize how wretched we are. The person who wrote Amazing Grace, it said, Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I promise they had pursued godliness because when you do that, you start to realize that you might have mastered the behaviors, but what's in here is gross. And so you ask God to come in and do the work. And as he works on your heart in that way, he says, now add to your godliness brotherly affection, which is familial affection, brotherly and sisterly affection. And it means the family of God for other Christian brothers and sisters now work on loving the church. And the Christian love that we're supposed to offer the church is powerful enough and strong enough. The unification that we have in Christ and the love that we can offer in Christ supersedes all the other divisions that would seek to drive a wedge within God's church. The love that we have for Christ and the love that we have for one another should overcome any political divide that we would experience between our Republican or Democrat or Libertarian or Independent brothers and sisters. None of that should matter when we come together as a church. The love of Christ, the brotherly affection that we are instructed to offer overcomes ethnicity. It overcomes socioeconomic divides. It overcomes divides of just doing life different than one another. The people who just live lives that you would never ever choose and you don't get them and you don't understand them and you think they're dumb. Well, guess what? They think you're dumb too, but the love of Christ unites us. It should cover over those things. And how could we possibly offer the love of Christ to a fallen and lost and broken world when we can't even offer it to the people who share our faith? And I think it's worth pointing out that in our country and in our culture that is as divided as I can ever remember. As far as I can tell, in most churches, that division in the world is mirrored in the church 100%. All the divisions that exist out there, we bring in here. They bring in there. They bring in there. And unless we can learn as believers to offer brotherly affection to the Christians who think differently than us, to be humble enough to do that, how could we possibly offer brotherly affection to a lost and broken world with whom we have very little in common. So we pursue brotherly affection, loving God's church, loving God's people, allowing the love of Christ to bridge any gaps that exist between us. And then, once we do those things, we supplement them with the love of Christ. Now go and love others as Jesus loved you. But love, you see, is the end of the journey. It is not where we start. Jesus starts us there. Go love as I loved you, but he knows all the things that we have to learn along the way before we can be remotely capable of offering others the kind of love that he loved us. And so I don't know where you are. If we use 2 Peter 1, verses 5 through 7 as some sort of crude diagnostic tool, I don't know where you are. I don't know where you look at that and go, gosh, that's really where I need to focus in on. That's really what I need to work on. But we're instructed that we are to make every effort, that these things are not just going to happen by osmosis. They're not just going to happen by sitting in the sermon and be like, yep, that was good. I learned from that. And then we go and never, ever work on these things. They'll never, ever happen. So I would strongly encourage you to go home. Take some time today or maybe tomorrow morning and sit down with this passage and say, Father, where am I? Father, what do I need? Do I need more faith? Father, do I need more virtue? Do I need more knowledge? Do I not know enough? God, maybe I need to start learning intentionally. Do I need to just simply cling to and persevere and learn how to flex that muscle because it's really important to me right now? Do I need to forgive some other believers and offer them brotherly or sisterly affection? Do I need to bridge the gap within my own church and let my love of Christ cover over any other divisions that exist? Or God, am I ready to begin to go out and start to offer the love that you offered me? Please do. Sit down with the passage and ask God, where am I? What do I need to do? Where should I place my effort? And it's my hope and my prayer and what I've been praying this whole week that we would do this. Let us commit together to make every effort, every effort to build towards love. Understanding that love is the apex, it's the end of the journey, and it's a path that we are all on to grow to there. Let us go this week and make every effort to build towards being people who offer Christ-like love to everyone around them. Who, after spending time with people, you are able to look at them and say, now go and love others as I have loved you. Let's pursue being those kinds of people and that kind of church with eyes wide open as we understand the journey that that is. In a minute, we're going to take communion and reflect on that love. But first, I'm going to pray for us. Father, thank you for loving us. Thank you for being love. Your word tells us that while we were still sinners, before we knew you, before we had any capacity of affection for you, that you died for us anyways. Let us be grateful for and fueled by that love. God, give us the discipline and desire to make every effort to build towards a capacity to love others as you have loved us. I pray all these things in your son's name. Amen. Next week when we come back, we're gonna look at what happens, at what the promise is when we pursue love in that way. Because it's not just a simple commandment to love. There's a payoff. And it's remarkable. I'm going to share that with you next week.

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

Good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here on this cold February morning on Super Bowl Sunday. I hope everybody's got fun plans, or if you don't care about the Super Bowl at all, I hope you have a nice dinner planned for yourself. This is the third part in our series going through the book of Colossians. And this week, as we approach it, I wanted to approach the text with this kind of idea in mind. We're going to be in Colossians chapter 2 and then on through chapter 3 in some different portions of it. So if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn there. And then if you're at home, please turn there. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you. I would also call your attention to the bulletin. The bulletin looks a little bit different this week. There's no place for you to take notes. So note takers, you're going to have to get creative. Instead, I've put a prayer on the bulletin that we're going to pray at the end of the service together. You'll pray silently as I pray it aloud. And by the time we get there, hopefully the prayer makes a lot more sense and is meaningful and is something that you will carry home with you. But we'll talk more about that at the end of the service. If you're watching online, this bulletin is attached to the grace find that you should have received this week. So you can download that if you want to, or you can just email someone on staff and we'll be happy to send it over to you if you find it helpful and want to pray it throughout your week. But as we approach the text this week, I wanted to start here. I'm not sure if any of you have ever tried to eat healthy, okay? By the looks of most of us, this has been an effort at least at some portion of our life, but there have been a lot of times in my life when I have decided that I'm going to begin to eat with some wisdom. I'm going to start to eat well. I'm a person who's had a lot of day one workouts, and I've had a lot of day one diets. Okay, there's more in my future. Maybe tomorrow. Who knows? Not today. It's Super Bowl Sunday. This is not the day to start a diet, but tomorrow is fresh and hope springs eternal. But whenever I decide that I'm going to eat well, right? I'm going to eat responsibly, which is like a rabbit. Whenever I decide I'm going to do that, I feel like I am a person who is at war with myself. I feel like I am two separate people. I am one person who wants to eat well, and I am another person who just loves food so much that he's angered by me who wants to eat well. Because I love food. I don't know about your relationship with food. Mine is probably not healthy. If I know that I'm going to have a certain dinner that night or that we're going somewhere like a restaurant or something like that, I already know what I'm getting and I wake up thinking about it. Like I look forward to it throughout the day. That's how much I love food. For the Super Bowl tonight, we're going to have pigs in a blanket. I'm going to dip them in spicy mustard. I'm going to eat more than I should. I'm already excited about it, okay? That's just how I am about food. So when I decide that I want to eat well, it's really difficult for me. And I don't know about you, but I have certain stumbling blocks. It's pretty easy for me to eat well around the house. I kind of do a good job not snacking when I'm not supposed to. I don't drink the soda and stuff when I'm not supposed to. I drink black coffee and water, and that's pretty much it during the day. That's not very challenging. But what is challenging is when I'm trying to eat well, and my sweet wife on a Friday or Saturday will say, you want to go Chick-fil-A and get a biscuit? Yeah, yeah, I do, okay? I always want to go to Chick-fil-A and get a biscuit. That answer is never no, okay? You ask me, Nate, do you want a biscuit? Yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah, I do. But you just had three. I don't care. You're offering me one. I want another biscuit. I like biscuits in the morning. So that's tough, all right? The other time it's tough is when I go out to eat. Because I'll go out to eat. I'll go to places that I like, and they have food there that I like. And one of the places I think of is Piper's. I go to Piper's because I meet people there for lunch with a lot of regularity. That's kind of my default spot. And they have salads, like I see them on the menu, right? They got grilled chicken and some fruit or some whatever, some balsamic whatever, less delicious thing that they have there. And I know that I need to order it. And I have girded my loins. I'm ready for this choice. And I go in there and I don't even look at the meat. I look at just the salads. I don't look at the other things. But see, here's the thing. This Piper's has one of the best Reuben's in the city. They really do. It's delicious. And that's what I want, right? I want the Reuben. And I've been thinking all day about how I shouldn't have the Reuben. And I've made the decision, I'm going to get the salad. I'm going to eat the thing that I don't want. But then it's like Satan's working against me or God's just giving me a special grace and telling me it's okay. I'm not sure which sign. And the table next to me will receive a piping hot, crispy toasted Reuben. As I'm sitting there trying to muster up the discipline to order my salad. And I look at that Reuben and I look at those fries and I look at that ketchup and the waitress says, what do you have? That! I want that Reuben. I did not want a salad. And I cave, right? So for me to be on a diet is for me to live at war with myself. I bring that up because I think that you'll know that this is true. Those of you who have been a Christian for any amount of time, to be a Christian is to be at war with yourself. To be a Christian, to be a believer, is to know the good you ought to do and yet still struggle to do it. I even think, and this is a sad reality, it should not be the case, and hopefully God can deliver us from this, and hopefully this sermon moves the needle on this a little bit, but I even think that to be a believer is to be constantly disappointed with how spiritually mature you are and how spiritually mature you think you should be by now. Because we know the good things we're supposed to do. We know the kindness we're supposed to show. We know the greed we're not supposed to have and the pride that we're supposed to iron out. And we know all the different things and our hidden sins and the stuff that we look at and whatever it is, the stuff that we consume. We know what we're not supposed to do and we know what we are supposed to do. And we try like heck to be that person, but we are a person who feels at war with ourself because there is the person within us who wants to eat right and there is the person within us who really loves a good Reuben, whatever that might be for you. And they exist at war with each other. I am convinced that to be a believer means to live in a state of tension within yourself of who you know you should be, of who you know God created you to be, of who you know God designed you to be, and yet not being able to walk in that. There's a verse that's super challenging for me where Paul tells us that we should live a life worthy of the calling that we have received. And I don't know about you, but I don't get to the end of too many days, much less weeks, where I look back on that week and I go, yeah, this week I was obedient to that verse. And if we're honest as Christians, it gets tiring to know that that's true. It gets exhausting to constantly fall short. Paul actually describes this tension in one of my favorite passages. It's one of the most human things to me that's written in the Bible, particularly by Paul in Romans chapter 7. In Romans chapter 7, Paul writes specifically about this tension in the Christian life when, in my inner being, but I see in my members another regenerated person as God has rescued my heart and claimed it and one day will whisk me up to heaven. He's given me eternal life and I'm living as a new creature that we're going to talk about more in a minute. I feel in this inner being a desire to live the righteous life that God has called me to live. And yet, also in my body, is a desire to revert back to my old self. It is a desire to revert to who I am without Jesus. It is a desire to indulge the flesh. It is a desire for the things that I used to consume that I know I don't need to consume anymore. That exists within us. And then he exclaims at the end of it, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Who will finally give me victory? How will I finally live the life that I'm supposed to live? And so that's where we arrive this morning. In Colossians, is this age-old question that all Christians face, that Francis Schaeffer, an author in the 20th century, framed up in a book entitled, How Should We Then Live? Meaning, in light of the gospel, in light of what we talked about in week one, the picture of Jesus that Paul paints for the Colossians, remember, they're facing pressure from within and without to go back to rules and aestheticism and to be legalistic and add on more rules than what is necessary so that they can live a righteous life, and then pressure from the more liberal part of their community to say none of the rules matter, how we live doesn't matter at all. You have total grace to do whatever it is you want to do. And so Paul, to that pressure, paints a picture of Christ as the apex of history and the apex of hope, as the connection point and nexus between the spiritual realm and the physical realm, how he is the creator God over everything, this majestic picture of Christ. And so the question becomes, how do we live in light of that picture? How do we live in light of the gospel? I am saved. I am a new creature. God has breathed new life into me. I am no longer a slave to sin, as Paul describes in Romans, but now I have this option to move forward with the power of Christ and the Holy Spirit in me and to live a life worthy of the calling that I have received. Now, how do I do it? How do I do it? That's the question that we come to in Colossians. And it should be a question that matters to each and every Christian. Father, how do I live a life worthy of the calling that I've received? How do I grow into spiritual maturity? What do I do practically? How do I live the Christian life? And it's an important question because it dictates how we pursue God. And to this question, I think we often answer it in the same way that we're trained to answer any other question in our life about how we get better at a particular thing. If you want to get better at exercising, what do you need? You need more discipline. You need to wake up. You need to do it. You need to be more disciplined in the way you pursue exercise. If you want to eat better, what do you need to do? You need to be more disciplined. You want to do better at time management. You need more discipline in time management. You want to be more focused. You want to be more productive. You want whatever it is, however it is, you want to grow and be better. What is the fundamental requirement of that pursuit of better? It's discipline. We need to do better. We need to come up with structures and systems that we follow, and I'm going to white knuckle my way to success here. And the most disciplined people within our field, they achieve the most success. The most disciplined people at the gym look the best in a t-shirt. The most disciplined people, when they go out to eat, they have the healthiest hearts. Like discipline is the root to how we accomplish success. And so, because that's true, and so very many areas of our life, even though we could philosophically talk about whether or not that's true, because we think that's true in so many areas of our life, we also just by default apply that to our spiritual life. If I want to be more godly, then I need to be more disciplined. I'm going to set up more rules, more regulations. I'm going to get up at this time. I'm going to do these things. I'm going to be the type of person that is defined by these things. We focus on our behavior and our self-discipline. And I think when we are faced with the question of how do I then live? How do I become the Christian that God has created and designed me to be? I think that in our culture, our default answer is to attempt to white-knuckle discipline our way to godliness. And here's what Paul says about that knee-jerk reaction that all perish as they are used, according to human precepts and teachings. Listen, these have indeed an appearance of wisdom and promoting self- we be the people that God asks us to be? And their response, it seems, at least initially, was white-knuckle discipline, aestheticism, following the rules. The better you follow the rules, the more God loves you. It's a very simple exchange. That's what legalism says. And so they're just going to be try-hards. They're just going to be do-betters. That's just what they're going to do. And to help them try really hard, they set up all these rules and parameters around their life. And they say, whoever can follow these rules the best is the greatest Christian. But Paul says, that's fine. Set up your rules. Have all your standards. Set the boundaries really far away from the actual boundary. He says, but all those rules and all that, the way that it looks, the way that you're living, just dotting all the T's and crossing all the I's and really, really, really having these policies in life that keep you on the straight and narrow. Paul says, yeah, those have the appearance of wisdom. And I would add in our vernacular, godliness, but they do nothing. They do nothing to stop the indulgence of the flesh that is the reason for the sinning that we need the rules for. For instance, let's say that what you struggle with is pride. Okay, I'm having to make some assumptions here because I don't have the struggle, but if you do, let's say that something that you struggle with is pride and you go, you know what, God, I gotta get rid of this. I gotta be better. I'm gonna be better at being more humble. I'm gonna try to push out my pride. And so we take intentional steps. Maybe we're people who will maybe kind of fish for compliments sometime, or maybe we'll ask people what they thought about something. And really all we want them to do is tell them that we did a good job or that we're good at this or that we're good at that. And there's ways, if you're a prideful person, there are ways to go through your life and get the people in your life to affirm you. And if you are this person, you're exhausting, okay? I've exhausted others. I say that as a friend. That's not a good road to walk. But let's say that you're a prideful person, and so you need other people to affirm you all the time and the things that you're good at, but you realize in light of the gospel and in light of God's word that pride is not good, and so we need to iron this out of our life. So we go, I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm not going to ask other people for compliments. I'm not going to ask other people to affirm me. I'm not going to seek my value in other places. And then once you get really good at that and you haven't done that in a couple of weeks and you still feel good about yourself, then what do you do? Boy, I am proud of myself for not needing other people to tell me I'm good. Now we're taking pride in a new thing. What Paul says is there is this part of our flesh that is going to manifest negative things in our life, pride, greed, selfishness, lust, whatever it is. And we can put parameters around those things, but they're going to leak out somewhere. You can follow whatever rules you want to follow. You can white knuckle yourself into some good discipline. I've seen some people who can keep themselves on the straight and narrow for years, but those negative traits that exist within you, those things are going to leak out somewhere else. And I know this because I've met a lot of people who can follow the rules really well, and they're jerks. It's just their flesh leaking out in other ways. So what Paul says is we cannot white knuckle our way to godliness. Discipline, self-control, more rules, more standards. Those do not get us to spiritual maturity. Those do not put us in a place where we can live a life worthy of the calling that we have received. That's not the answer. In chapter 3, thankfully, I believe that he gives us the answer. And I think it's a refreshing one. Because when we try to get to godliness by white-knuckle discipline, just I'm going to be a try-hard, I'm going to be a do-better, what happens is not good. Because if you have ever in your life decided, yeah, I'm going to be a better Christian, and I'm going to do it by taking these steps. I'm going to do it by instilling these standards in my life. I'm going to do it by my own effort and me trying hard. And maybe we pray a prayer, God, I am never going to do this again. God, I am always going to do this moving forward. God, I swear that that will never be a part of my life again. And we make these big promises and we make these big claims. And listen, we mean them. But here's what I know about you. If you've ever promised God that you will never or that you will always, then you have failed. That's what I know about you. If we ever have promised God, I will never do blank. I will always do blank, we have failed in those promises because we can't keep those commitments, because we're broken. Because of Romans 7, the things that I do not want to do, I do, because it's part of our nature to fail in that way. And because that's true, after we make up our mind enough times that God, I'm never going to, or God, I'm always going to, and then we fail, we get to a place where either we just feel like this broken, wretched Christian, and we're thinking, God, I'll never be good enough for you. I don't think I'll ever be good enough for you. Just please let me be saved. Just please let me just hang on until I get to the end of my life. Please usher me into heaven. I know I'll never be who I'm supposed to be. I know that I can't pursue those things, but please just accept me as I am. And we kind of just live this broken down, hopeless Christian life where we feel like we're limping our way to heaven. Or worse than that, we try so hard and we fail so many times that we get so tired of trying that we can't find it within ourselves to do it anymore. And then we conclude, God, your word says that I'm a new creature. Your word says that you will help me. Your word says that you will empower me. And yet I fail over and over and over again. So I can only conclude that you don't keep your word. And then we just wander away from the faith and we give up on God because righteousness is too hard because we've only ever tried it by ourself and we've never invited God in in the way that he needs to be invited in, and our white-knuckle disciplining to try to be better and more godly to pursue the faith that we want so earnestly ends up costing us our faith. So that's not the way. We find the way in Colossians 3. And I would sum it up like this. We grow to maturity by focusing on being rather than behaving. We grow to maturity by focusing on being rather than behaving, by focusing on who we are rather than how we behave. And here's what I mean. In this chapter, we're going to see this idea introduced here by Paul, but introduced in plenty of other places by Paul in the New Testament, of the old and the new. The old you and the new you. The old you is who you were without Jesus. The new you is who you are with Jesus. The old you, the Bible says, was a slave to sin. I had no choice but to do things that displeased God. I had no chance at all. But the new you infused with Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit does have the chance every day when you wake up to walk that day according to the life that God has called you to. We have a chance when we wake up to live today in honoring God and actually finish the day living a life worthy of the calling that we have received that day. We've got a chance. There's a new us. And the new us desperately wants to please God. And so this is what Paul says about old self and new self in Colossians chapter three. This is what he says about being versus behaving. Look at Colossians chapter three, verses five through eight first. Put to death, Paul says, therefore, what is earthly in you? Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, and covetousness, which is idol rules. But here's what we need to do. We need to put to death these things, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, covetousness, anger, slander, all these things. And at first, it sounds like that's a little bit in tension with what he just said. He said, if you want to be godly, if you want to be who God created you to be, it's not about following the rules. It has an appearance of wisdom, but that's not really helping any indulgence of the flesh. And then the very next chapter over, he's saying, put to death these things, which feels like rules and standards that he's giving us, except he's not giving us behaviors. He's telling us to put things to death. Remember how I said that if you follow rules, if you're trying to break yourself of pridefulness and you put rules around your pridefulness and then it just leaks out and into another area of your life. Jesus is, Paul is acknowledging that. See, it's not about trying to follow the rules because those unhealthy things just leak into other portions of your life. It's about actually putting the pride to death. It's about actually putting greed and lust to death in your heart so that in your heart there is no place for them to dwell. And if there is no place for them to dwell, then they will not produce the behaviors that you're trying so desperately to control. So the first thing is to acknowledge that we don't need to put parameters around our old self. We need to put our old self to death. And we do this by focusing on being. How do we put those things to death? This is what Paul says in Colossians 3. I'm going to read verses 12 through 17. Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you. So you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, we live a life worthy of the calling that we have received? In the phrasing of Hebrews 12, verse 1, What the world do I live the life that you want me to live? I think what Jesus would say is, look at me. Look at me. Look at me. Jesus, what rules should I follow in this new life that you've called me to? How do I run the race that you've set before me? Jesus says, just look at me. Just keep your eyes on Christ. This is actually in complete harmony with Romans 12 that tells us that we should run the race and that we should throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles us by, in verse 2, focusing your eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of your faith. So how do we live the life that God calls us to live? We daily make ourselves aware of Christ's love for us. We daily make ourselves aware of what God has done for us. If we will daily reflect on the fact that Jesus in heavenly form condescended and took on flesh and lived amongst us for 33 years and put up with everything that we have to offer and continues to walk with us and continues to love us and continues to sit at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for you as an individual, leans into God's ears and says, she's good. She's with me. She loves you, Father. I died for her. If we will let that reality wash over us daily, how could we not put to death the pride that exists in us by walking in humility at the love of God that we receive? If we are struggling with anger towards other people and frustration and impatience, how is it possible to spend a portion of your day every day focusing on the reality of God's patience with you? Focusing on the reality that as many times as you've said, God, I will never, or God, I will always, and then you failed, that God has been right there to help you clean up the mess every time. How can we not grow in forgiveness of others when we constantly remind ourselves of how forgiven we are? How can we not grow in patience to others when we constantly are focused on the patience that God has to us? If we will focus on God's overwhelming grace, that he died for us while we were still sinners, that he pursues us while we run away from him, that even though we fail him over and over again, he continues to love us with a reckless love, that God loves us while we were unlovely, that God sees us fully and knows us completely and still loves us unconditionally. If we let those things wash over us every day, how could we not look at other people and be more loving and patient towards them in light of how loving and patient God is towards us? Do you understand that these things that we clothe ourself with in Colossians 12 through 17 necessarily put to death our old self that Paul tells us to rid ourself of. So if we want to get rid of malice, what do we do? We focus on Christ. If we want to get rid of pride, do we put parameters around our pride? No, we focus on Jesus and who he is and realize that we have no right to our pride. If we want to be more gracious people, what do we do? We focus on Jesus' grace to us. Say, Jesus, how in the world do I live the life that you call me to live? Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? And Jesus says, focus on me. Focus on me. So I would tell you, if you are a Christian who lives at war with yourself, you do not have a discipline issue, you have a focus issue. If you are someone who struggles with greed, you don't have a greed issue. You have a focus issue. If we try to be more godly and more pleasing to him by focusing on the behaviors that we need to do better, we will fail over and over and over again. But if we can put our focus on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith and let his grace and goodness and mercy and love wash over us daily, then those things will necessarily put to death the very root of the behaviors that we do not like. So again, if we are struggling in our walk with God, we do not have a discipline issue. We do not have a sin issue. We have a focus issue. We need to focus our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We need to pursue him more with more urgency. We need to let the truths of how he loves us wash over us more. And those will necessarily put to death the elements of our character that we do not like, that produce the behaviors that we do not want to do. You can think of it this way. Our old self cannot survive where our new self thrives. Our problem is we have a new self and we have an old self and we feed them both the same amount of food. We give in to them both equally. And so they both just exist in this tension and if we ever want to put to death our old self, then our new self has to thrive. And our new self thrives by clothing ourselves in the characteristics of Christ and we clothe ourselves in those characteristics by focusing him and daily letting his goodness wash over us. So it's very simple. How should we then live? How do we get to the end of a single day? Living a life worthy of the calling that we have received that day? By focusing our eyes on Jesus on that day. By looking at him that day. And letting everything else fade away and take care of itself. Because it's that simple, and because that's what we need to do, I wrote a prayer for us as a church. In a few minutes, I'm going to read it and pray it over us as a church and invite you to read it along with me. If you find it helpful, I would love to invite you to put this prayer somewhere where you can see it, where this is a thing that you will pray daily. Put it on your desk, or in your car, or on your mirror. If this is helpful to you, I would encourage you to pray this every day until it's not helpful to you, until the principles of this prayer are so ingrained in you that it is part of your daily prayer. But if we want to live a life as Christians that we are called to live, then I am convinced that this needs to be a fundamental prayer that we focus on very regularly. Not necessarily the words that I've chosen here, but the ethos and the attitude and the posture that's presented in this prayer and the acknowledgments of the truths that are in this prayer that are from Colossians chapter three and other portions of scripture as we seek to live the life that God calls us to live. So I'm gonna pray this over us and invite you to pray it along with me. Father, I know I am your child and that in you I am a new creation. Though I know this, I struggle to believe it. Because I struggle to believe, I struggle to walk as you would have me walk. So Father, help me learn to walk in this new self. As I put on the new self, I ask that you would help me see others through your eyes and so clothe me in your compassion. Help me regard others as your beloved children as you clothe me in your kindness. Remind me of the way you love me when I am unlovely in order that I might humbly love others in the way I am loved. Remind me today, Father, of who I am in you. As you clothe me in these things, let them put to death in me the remnants of my old self. Let your humility drive out my impatience, my anger, and my pride. Let your compassion and kindness suffocate my jealous and selfish heart. Let the way you see me overshadow and obscure the way I see myself. Help's name, Father. Amen.