Ephesians 4

All right, good morning, everyone. As Steve said, my name is Kyle. I'm the student pastor here at Grace. And before I get started, not for nothing, when Aaron announced that we're starting kids back, your woos were very weak. So, I mean, I was just like, just sitting and just listening to a lot of weak woos. So you owe Aaron a much more hearty woo after the service is over. That's all I have to say. But I'm thrilled to be able to be up here this morning. I'm thrilled to be able to go through James as we are doing so as a church. I'm thankful to Nate who, you know, since I'm the student pastor, kind of tossed up the softball of being able to have the opportunity to talk about taming the tongue. I mean, certainly a very easy thing to be discussing and going through. Obviously, I'm kidding. But that's kind of as is the way of James. This morning, we're going to be going through James 3, mostly focusing on verses 3 through 8. If you have your Bible or if there's a Bible in front of you, I would love for you to grab that. I would love for you to go ahead and open up to that section as that is where we are going to be parked for this morning. As the video talked about last weekend that we watched in our introduction to James, the Bible Project put it as, James is a beautifully crafted punch to the gut. And I hate to tell you, but this is certainly no different. As we get into this, it's going to be pretty overwhelming to read, but I think we're going to get through it. So hopefully we can get through it together. Let me see some thumbs up. Yeah, good, good. Glad to hear it. Glad to hear you're with me. Let's go ahead and jump in. We're going to start with verse 3. Go all the way through verse 8 of James chapter 3. When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one's life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. So I'm just going to let us all take a quick collective breath as we just read all of those verses together. That is certainly strong language. Those are certainly incredibly powerful images basically saying that the tongue is like the small bit inside of a horse that steers the horse and makes it turn anywhere you want it to go. That it's the rudder, the tiny rudder on a ship that regardless of wind, regardless of sea, you can change the direction of an entire ship with this small rudder. It's like a small spark that creates a giant forest fire that it can corrupt every part of us and it can corrupt anyone else who's around to get burned. And it's funny because these are beautiful illustrations, but they're pretty heightened. They're pretty strong, but as I read them, and the first time that I read through this, my response wasn't, man, James is wilding out right now. My response was, yes, certainly this is a lot, but I don't see any hyperbole here. As I read that, I kind of just shrugged, nodded my head and said, yeah, he's right. The tongue has immense and incredible power to do evil. I imagine that you guys probably feel the same way as I just got done reading and as you just got done reading along with me. I bet that none of you were like, okay, that seems a little bit intense. I can almost guarantee you everyone in here fully agrees with everything he just said. Why? Because we've experienced it. We've experienced someone using just a few words to completely light us on fire. We've experienced being completely broken down to our core because of a simple phrase uttered to us. Even more of a bummer, we know we've done it to other people. That in a moment of frustration, in a moment of a lack of willpower, whatever it may be, we slip up, we say something that you probably have those things that ring back in your mind right now that you still regret that you said five years ago. The author William Barclay, who wrote a commentary on James, puts it this way. He says, Once again, that's a big and that's a bold claim, but I don't see any lies there. The sin that comes out of our mouth is something that can have dire consequences, not only in that moment, but for years to come. And as he starts it, and as I think is so beautifully put, there is no sin into which is easier to fall, right? Because when we're wronged, when we're angry, when we're upset, when something happens to us, we want, and so often our knee-jerk reaction is to respond. Setting ablaze a large fire by a small spark. So what do we do? I mean, with how heightened this language, with how heightened this diction is, it feels like the only thing that we could possibly do is just stop talking altogether, right? The classic, if my tongue causes me to sin, let me cut it off. And I'm going to walk over here, as Nate has taught me, I'm going to go over here to say that while this is certainly not the purpose and the point of what I'm talking about, I do believe and I do think that there is very distinct and very clear merit and wisdom that comes from all human beings, but especially believers, knowing when to respond in silence, when to simply be quiet, when to simply hold their tongue and respond in listening as opposed to responding with being the first to say something. I don't say that to put you guys on blast. I say that to put myself on blast. If you look around and find anyone who I've ever been in a small group with or who's ever sat in a staff meeting with me, you will see emphatic nodding because Kyle is at the top of that list of people slash believers who needs to learn sometimes how to just be quiet. Thank you for that amen in the back. I love being made to feel great by my fellow staff members. But obviously we can't do that, right? Obviously we can't stop talking, we can't just cut out our tongues because that would hurt. But obvious issues of practicality aside, there's other issues with that. There's other issues with simply stopping and abstaining from talking. The main one is that the tongue's immense power isn't limited to evil, but also to do substantial good. Paul reminds us of this in Ephesians 4.29 as he writes, What Paul encourages us to do here and is all through Scripture. Every writer and the Lord himself and Jesus, they are encouraging us not simply to give up our evil discussions and our evil talking, but instead to replace those with good. Instead to replace those with speaking life and speaking love and speaking encouragement to any and every one of us around, and that doesn't happen if we just stop talking. The same commentator, William Barclay, puts it this way. He says, I'll say that again. Abstention from anything is never a complete substitute for control in its use. Simply abstaining from speaking isn't enough. The goal is not to be quiet. The goal is to be able to control the things that come out of our mouth so that not only are we getting rid of the evil that comes out of our mouths, but we are replacing it with good and with love and with all great things. So the question obviously is how? Because I know, I'm 100% certain that every person in this room, every person watching at home, every person wherever you are, has done just as I've tried to do in trying to do it, in trying to tame the tongue, in trying my very hardest to hold back the things that I'm feeling and instead to change those and to still show love to people, still encouraging people even when I don't want to. Trying my best to speak humility even though I feel a sense of arrogance or ego. Trying my best to live by the old saying of if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. But what happens? We try to be silent or we try to replace our speech. We try to replace and hold back how we actually feel to instead be uplifting and encouraging, instead being loving. And that just builds up and it erodes our insides, it erodes our heart. And then at some point, whether it be the person who's actually causing you anger and frustration, or whether it just be the first person to look at you wrong that you just blow up on, right? Small words, huge fires. So what do we do? James in verse 8 literally says, no human being can tame the tongue. It would be incredibly unwise for me to stand up here and try to argue to you guys that he's wrong. It'd be unwise for me to say, yeah, you're the half-brother of Jesus, you wrote James, which is in the Bible, but I think, you know, like, I'm Kyle, I know more. But, what I will argue is I think that this statement, this claim that he makes is a bit more nuanced than how it sounds by simply reading it once. Growing up, if me, if myself, my brother, and my dad were all riding together in my dad's car, we were almost always listening to one of two cassette tapes. The first, License to Ill by the Beastie Boys. I think it probably won't surprise you that that's not the one that we're going to focus on this morning. We can talk about that afterwards. I'll pass you the mic and you can show me what you got. The other, probably the exact opposite, I guess, was this old sermon from 1995 by this pastor named Tony Evans that he gave at some men's conference. I'm sure anyone who's sitting here listening to me run my mouth, especially if you've never heard a sermon before today or like why in the world would anyone ever want to re-listen to a sermon? But I can assure you that this is a sermon to be listened to. This is a sermon to get excited about. Tony Evans has a way with illustrations and a way with both telling stories and connecting stories to this greater and larger point that I think is unparalleled and unmatched. This sermon is as entertaining as it is powerful. And as a three-year-old child, I'm sitting in this car just quoting along with Tony Evans this sermon. I'm hyping it up a lot. Reach out to me and I'll send it to you because I promise you I will not do this justice. But as I went through this and as I was preparing, I kept coming back to this story that Tony Evans opens his sermon by telling. The story starts off by him having a problem in his bedroom because he's got a crack in the wall of his bedroom. Can I get an aww? Yeah, that's a bummer, right? But hey, you know, easy fix. He reaches out to a painter. The painter comes. He says, my man, I've got a crack in the bedroom. Can you fix it? He said, yeah, of course. He does what he does to fix a crack in the wall. He replasters it. He paints it. It's all good. Beautiful wall. Zero cracks available. Everything's great. Pays him along the way. A month later, guess who's back? The crack. The crack is back. And so as he so eloquently puts it, somewhat evangelically ticked off, he calls the painter back. He says, sir, the crack is back. Can you please come fix it? So he apologizes. I'm sorry. I'll come and fix it. He goes, does his thing, replasters, paints it. Good to go. Month and a half goes by and the crack reappears. As he says, this time, this crack that is in the wall has been visited by all of its nieces and nephews. There are now a family of cracks living on his walls. So out of frustration, he goes, okay, clearly this painter has no clue what he's doing. Let me get another one. Calls another one. He's like, I've got cracks in my walls. Can you please come and fix it? The guy comes. He takes a look at the wall. He looks at him. He says, I can't help you. And he's like, sir, what do you mean you can't help me? You're a painter. He goes, yeah, but the problem is you don't have a problem with cracks in your wall. And to which Tony replies, to which Tony looks up quietly at the cracks in his walls. And as he says, he looks back at the crack standing in front of him, telling him he doesn't have a problem with cracks in his walls. And he says, sir, you see cracks. I see cracks. All God's children see cracks. How are you going to tell me I don't have a problem with cracks on my walls? And he says, I can fix this. I can replaster your wall. I can make it to where you don't have any cracks on your wall, but the problem is not with your walls. The problem is not with cracks. The problem is you have a shifting foundation. And until you fix your foundation, you will always be fixing cracks in your walls. Until you fix your foundation, you will always be fixing cracks in your walls. When it comes to our tongue, we try so hard. We try to edit our language. We try to replace how we feel with what we say. We try so hard to bury all of that down so that we can be as kind and as godly as possible when we have interactions and when we have conversations. We hold back our actual thoughts and our feelings. But the problem is that we don't have a problem with our tongue. And when we think we do, it's never going to be eradicated. You see, taming the tongue has nothing to do with the tongue. The tongue is simply a vehicle for the heart to speak. We attempt to tame our tongue through our own willpower and we focus so much on what comes out. We focus on the outside. We focus on the words that leave our mouths when our foundation, our hearts, are corrupted. If our hearts are harboring ill will, if they're harboring hatred, helplessness, negativity, arrogance, impatience, curses, and or doubts, we don't have a willpower that is strong enough to prevent the tongue from slipping up and expressing these things. If that evil rests inside of our hearts, at some point it's going to make its way out of our mouths. And until our hearts begin to reflect God's heart, we will never be able to control our tongues. And so the goal becomes our hearts. We have to fix our hearts or we can never fix our tongues. Taming the tongue is no longer about our speech. It's not about changing your speech. It's about allowing God to change our hearts. It's about allowing God to mold our hearts. It's about allowing Christ to come and to shape our hearts into what it should be. We give our hearts to Christ. We learn, we realize, and we continue to grow in our joyful understanding of the fact that God created every one of us. And even though we sin, even though we deserve hell, we deserve eternity in hell, God sends his perfect son to live and then to die in our place. All so that we can live forever with him in a relationship with him, our hearts are changed. And as our hearts are changed, they continue to be molded as we realize that this gospel truth that God created us, that God sent his son to die for me. That same gospel truth is also true of literally every single person you will ever make contact with. In the same way God created you, in the same way God loves you, in the same way that Christ died for you, he also did all of those things for every single person you will ever interact with. And when we start to look at people that way, as God's children, as our hearts are being molded into seeing people the way that God sees them, our tongues are going to respond in kind. No pun intended, because I think our tongues are going to also respond with much more kindness. And as we continue to read through the Gospels and read through Jesus's life and with the memory and with the knowledge that Jesus not only died for us, but he lived on earth to give us a measure of this is what it should look like for you to live. This is how you glorify God through your language. This is how you glorify God with the way that you see and the way that you treat people with the openness and with the grace that you show people and the love that you show each and every person. And our goal becomes just trying to be more Christ-like. And that starts at the heart. And it all culminates with constant prayer. As Nate talked about, what, two or three weeks ago, that we continue to keep God at the center of our hearts and we continue to think through and pray with him and have him on our minds, meditating in scripture and meditating in prayer so that God is always at the forefront because if God is at the forefront of our hearts and if he is at the forefront of our minds, I think it means we are going to speak differently. And when we allow God to change and to mold and to shape our hearts in this way, we are able to replace both in our hearts and in our speech, ill will and hatred with love, helplessness with hope, negativity with positivity, arrogance with humility, impatience with patience, curses with blessings, and doubt with faith. And most importantly, when our hearts have been transformed by the gospel of Christ, our tongues have no choice but to rejoice and to proclaim that gospel. Will you pray with me? Lord, I pray that as we try to glorify you in our words, in our actions, as we try to glorify you through our prayers to you, but God, also our words and our prayers, our words and just the way that we interact with any and everyone. The way we talk to people, the way that we talk about people, the way that we talk about ourselves. Lord, I pray that we put aside and we stop worrying about and we stop trying to fix our tongues by simply our own power and our own willpower because, God, we know it's never going to work. God, instead, allow us to come to you. Allow your heart to shape, mold, impact our hearts, God. Allow our hearts to look more like yours so that our speech can do the same. We love you. Amen.

All right, good morning, everyone. As Steve said, my name is Kyle. I'm the student pastor here at Grace. And before I get started, not for nothing, when Aaron announced that we're starting kids back, your woos were very weak. So, I mean, I was just like, just sitting and just listening to a lot of weak woos. So you owe Aaron a much more hearty woo after the service is over. That's all I have to say. But I'm thrilled to be able to be up here this morning. I'm thrilled to be able to go through James as we are doing so as a church. I'm thankful to Nate who, you know, since I'm the student pastor, kind of tossed up the softball of being able to have the opportunity to talk about taming the tongue. I mean, certainly a very easy thing to be discussing and going through. Obviously, I'm kidding. But that's kind of as is the way of James. This morning, we're going to be going through James 3, mostly focusing on verses 3 through 8. If you have your Bible or if there's a Bible in front of you, I would love for you to grab that. I would love for you to go ahead and open up to that section as that is where we are going to be parked for this morning. As the video talked about last weekend that we watched in our introduction to James, the Bible Project put it as, James is a beautifully crafted punch to the gut. And I hate to tell you, but this is certainly no different. As we get into this, it's going to be pretty overwhelming to read, but I think we're going to get through it. So hopefully we can get through it together. Let me see some thumbs up. Yeah, good, good. Glad to hear it. Glad to hear you're with me. Let's go ahead and jump in. We're going to start with verse 3. Go all the way through verse 8 of James chapter 3. When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one's life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. So I'm just going to let us all take a quick collective breath as we just read all of those verses together. That is certainly strong language. Those are certainly incredibly powerful images basically saying that the tongue is like the small bit inside of a horse that steers the horse and makes it turn anywhere you want it to go. That it's the rudder, the tiny rudder on a ship that regardless of wind, regardless of sea, you can change the direction of an entire ship with this small rudder. It's like a small spark that creates a giant forest fire that it can corrupt every part of us and it can corrupt anyone else who's around to get burned. And it's funny because these are beautiful illustrations, but they're pretty heightened. They're pretty strong, but as I read them, and the first time that I read through this, my response wasn't, man, James is wilding out right now. My response was, yes, certainly this is a lot, but I don't see any hyperbole here. As I read that, I kind of just shrugged, nodded my head and said, yeah, he's right. The tongue has immense and incredible power to do evil. I imagine that you guys probably feel the same way as I just got done reading and as you just got done reading along with me. I bet that none of you were like, okay, that seems a little bit intense. I can almost guarantee you everyone in here fully agrees with everything he just said. Why? Because we've experienced it. We've experienced someone using just a few words to completely light us on fire. We've experienced being completely broken down to our core because of a simple phrase uttered to us. Even more of a bummer, we know we've done it to other people. That in a moment of frustration, in a moment of a lack of willpower, whatever it may be, we slip up, we say something that you probably have those things that ring back in your mind right now that you still regret that you said five years ago. The author William Barclay, who wrote a commentary on James, puts it this way. He says, Once again, that's a big and that's a bold claim, but I don't see any lies there. The sin that comes out of our mouth is something that can have dire consequences, not only in that moment, but for years to come. And as he starts it, and as I think is so beautifully put, there is no sin into which is easier to fall, right? Because when we're wronged, when we're angry, when we're upset, when something happens to us, we want, and so often our knee-jerk reaction is to respond. Setting ablaze a large fire by a small spark. So what do we do? I mean, with how heightened this language, with how heightened this diction is, it feels like the only thing that we could possibly do is just stop talking altogether, right? The classic, if my tongue causes me to sin, let me cut it off. And I'm going to walk over here, as Nate has taught me, I'm going to go over here to say that while this is certainly not the purpose and the point of what I'm talking about, I do believe and I do think that there is very distinct and very clear merit and wisdom that comes from all human beings, but especially believers, knowing when to respond in silence, when to simply be quiet, when to simply hold their tongue and respond in listening as opposed to responding with being the first to say something. I don't say that to put you guys on blast. I say that to put myself on blast. If you look around and find anyone who I've ever been in a small group with or who's ever sat in a staff meeting with me, you will see emphatic nodding because Kyle is at the top of that list of people slash believers who needs to learn sometimes how to just be quiet. Thank you for that amen in the back. I love being made to feel great by my fellow staff members. But obviously we can't do that, right? Obviously we can't stop talking, we can't just cut out our tongues because that would hurt. But obvious issues of practicality aside, there's other issues with that. There's other issues with simply stopping and abstaining from talking. The main one is that the tongue's immense power isn't limited to evil, but also to do substantial good. Paul reminds us of this in Ephesians 4.29 as he writes, What Paul encourages us to do here and is all through Scripture. Every writer and the Lord himself and Jesus, they are encouraging us not simply to give up our evil discussions and our evil talking, but instead to replace those with good. Instead to replace those with speaking life and speaking love and speaking encouragement to any and every one of us around, and that doesn't happen if we just stop talking. The same commentator, William Barclay, puts it this way. He says, I'll say that again. Abstention from anything is never a complete substitute for control in its use. Simply abstaining from speaking isn't enough. The goal is not to be quiet. The goal is to be able to control the things that come out of our mouth so that not only are we getting rid of the evil that comes out of our mouths, but we are replacing it with good and with love and with all great things. So the question obviously is how? Because I know, I'm 100% certain that every person in this room, every person watching at home, every person wherever you are, has done just as I've tried to do in trying to do it, in trying to tame the tongue, in trying my very hardest to hold back the things that I'm feeling and instead to change those and to still show love to people, still encouraging people even when I don't want to. Trying my best to speak humility even though I feel a sense of arrogance or ego. Trying my best to live by the old saying of if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. But what happens? We try to be silent or we try to replace our speech. We try to replace and hold back how we actually feel to instead be uplifting and encouraging, instead being loving. And that just builds up and it erodes our insides, it erodes our heart. And then at some point, whether it be the person who's actually causing you anger and frustration, or whether it just be the first person to look at you wrong that you just blow up on, right? Small words, huge fires. So what do we do? James in verse 8 literally says, no human being can tame the tongue. It would be incredibly unwise for me to stand up here and try to argue to you guys that he's wrong. It'd be unwise for me to say, yeah, you're the half-brother of Jesus, you wrote James, which is in the Bible, but I think, you know, like, I'm Kyle, I know more. But, what I will argue is I think that this statement, this claim that he makes is a bit more nuanced than how it sounds by simply reading it once. Growing up, if me, if myself, my brother, and my dad were all riding together in my dad's car, we were almost always listening to one of two cassette tapes. The first, License to Ill by the Beastie Boys. I think it probably won't surprise you that that's not the one that we're going to focus on this morning. We can talk about that afterwards. I'll pass you the mic and you can show me what you got. The other, probably the exact opposite, I guess, was this old sermon from 1995 by this pastor named Tony Evans that he gave at some men's conference. I'm sure anyone who's sitting here listening to me run my mouth, especially if you've never heard a sermon before today or like why in the world would anyone ever want to re-listen to a sermon? But I can assure you that this is a sermon to be listened to. This is a sermon to get excited about. Tony Evans has a way with illustrations and a way with both telling stories and connecting stories to this greater and larger point that I think is unparalleled and unmatched. This sermon is as entertaining as it is powerful. And as a three-year-old child, I'm sitting in this car just quoting along with Tony Evans this sermon. I'm hyping it up a lot. Reach out to me and I'll send it to you because I promise you I will not do this justice. But as I went through this and as I was preparing, I kept coming back to this story that Tony Evans opens his sermon by telling. The story starts off by him having a problem in his bedroom because he's got a crack in the wall of his bedroom. Can I get an aww? Yeah, that's a bummer, right? But hey, you know, easy fix. He reaches out to a painter. The painter comes. He says, my man, I've got a crack in the bedroom. Can you fix it? He said, yeah, of course. He does what he does to fix a crack in the wall. He replasters it. He paints it. It's all good. Beautiful wall. Zero cracks available. Everything's great. Pays him along the way. A month later, guess who's back? The crack. The crack is back. And so as he so eloquently puts it, somewhat evangelically ticked off, he calls the painter back. He says, sir, the crack is back. Can you please come fix it? So he apologizes. I'm sorry. I'll come and fix it. He goes, does his thing, replasters, paints it. Good to go. Month and a half goes by and the crack reappears. As he says, this time, this crack that is in the wall has been visited by all of its nieces and nephews. There are now a family of cracks living on his walls. So out of frustration, he goes, okay, clearly this painter has no clue what he's doing. Let me get another one. Calls another one. He's like, I've got cracks in my walls. Can you please come and fix it? The guy comes. He takes a look at the wall. He looks at him. He says, I can't help you. And he's like, sir, what do you mean you can't help me? You're a painter. He goes, yeah, but the problem is you don't have a problem with cracks in your wall. And to which Tony replies, to which Tony looks up quietly at the cracks in his walls. And as he says, he looks back at the crack standing in front of him, telling him he doesn't have a problem with cracks in his walls. And he says, sir, you see cracks. I see cracks. All God's children see cracks. How are you going to tell me I don't have a problem with cracks on my walls? And he says, I can fix this. I can replaster your wall. I can make it to where you don't have any cracks on your wall, but the problem is not with your walls. The problem is not with cracks. The problem is you have a shifting foundation. And until you fix your foundation, you will always be fixing cracks in your walls. Until you fix your foundation, you will always be fixing cracks in your walls. When it comes to our tongue, we try so hard. We try to edit our language. We try to replace how we feel with what we say. We try so hard to bury all of that down so that we can be as kind and as godly as possible when we have interactions and when we have conversations. We hold back our actual thoughts and our feelings. But the problem is that we don't have a problem with our tongue. And when we think we do, it's never going to be eradicated. You see, taming the tongue has nothing to do with the tongue. The tongue is simply a vehicle for the heart to speak. We attempt to tame our tongue through our own willpower and we focus so much on what comes out. We focus on the outside. We focus on the words that leave our mouths when our foundation, our hearts, are corrupted. If our hearts are harboring ill will, if they're harboring hatred, helplessness, negativity, arrogance, impatience, curses, and or doubts, we don't have a willpower that is strong enough to prevent the tongue from slipping up and expressing these things. If that evil rests inside of our hearts, at some point it's going to make its way out of our mouths. And until our hearts begin to reflect God's heart, we will never be able to control our tongues. And so the goal becomes our hearts. We have to fix our hearts or we can never fix our tongues. Taming the tongue is no longer about our speech. It's not about changing your speech. It's about allowing God to change our hearts. It's about allowing God to mold our hearts. It's about allowing Christ to come and to shape our hearts into what it should be. We give our hearts to Christ. We learn, we realize, and we continue to grow in our joyful understanding of the fact that God created every one of us. And even though we sin, even though we deserve hell, we deserve eternity in hell, God sends his perfect son to live and then to die in our place. All so that we can live forever with him in a relationship with him, our hearts are changed. And as our hearts are changed, they continue to be molded as we realize that this gospel truth that God created us, that God sent his son to die for me. That same gospel truth is also true of literally every single person you will ever make contact with. In the same way God created you, in the same way God loves you, in the same way that Christ died for you, he also did all of those things for every single person you will ever interact with. And when we start to look at people that way, as God's children, as our hearts are being molded into seeing people the way that God sees them, our tongues are going to respond in kind. No pun intended, because I think our tongues are going to also respond with much more kindness. And as we continue to read through the Gospels and read through Jesus's life and with the memory and with the knowledge that Jesus not only died for us, but he lived on earth to give us a measure of this is what it should look like for you to live. This is how you glorify God through your language. This is how you glorify God with the way that you see and the way that you treat people with the openness and with the grace that you show people and the love that you show each and every person. And our goal becomes just trying to be more Christ-like. And that starts at the heart. And it all culminates with constant prayer. As Nate talked about, what, two or three weeks ago, that we continue to keep God at the center of our hearts and we continue to think through and pray with him and have him on our minds, meditating in scripture and meditating in prayer so that God is always at the forefront because if God is at the forefront of our hearts and if he is at the forefront of our minds, I think it means we are going to speak differently. And when we allow God to change and to mold and to shape our hearts in this way, we are able to replace both in our hearts and in our speech, ill will and hatred with love, helplessness with hope, negativity with positivity, arrogance with humility, impatience with patience, curses with blessings, and doubt with faith. And most importantly, when our hearts have been transformed by the gospel of Christ, our tongues have no choice but to rejoice and to proclaim that gospel. Will you pray with me? Lord, I pray that as we try to glorify you in our words, in our actions, as we try to glorify you through our prayers to you, but God, also our words and our prayers, our words and just the way that we interact with any and everyone. The way we talk to people, the way that we talk about people, the way that we talk about ourselves. Lord, I pray that we put aside and we stop worrying about and we stop trying to fix our tongues by simply our own power and our own willpower because, God, we know it's never going to work. God, instead, allow us to come to you. Allow your heart to shape, mold, impact our hearts, God. Allow our hearts to look more like yours so that our speech can do the same. We love you. Amen.

11 years ago, I revealed to my wife that I had been having an affair for a year and a half. She calmly responded, I love you. We can make it through this. Today we're going to be talking about marriage. My name is Steve Goldberg. I'm the worship pastor here at Grace Raleigh, and it's an honor to bring the third message in our series, I Want a Better Life, entitled I Want a Better Marriage. For those of you who are first-time guests with us today, or maybe you're not familiar with my story. Surprise! In addition to being the worship pastor here at Grace, my wife and I also started a non-profit called Side-by-Side Ministry about five years ago, where we share our testimony, our story, our journey from hurt to hope. And it's our mission to inspire and encourage hurting couples to value, nurture, and restore their marriages. Now, to give you a little background, when my wife and I got married, neither one of us was following our childhood religions. I was raised Jewish in Massachusetts, hence the name Goldberg. My wife was raised Lutheran in Wisconsin. Both of us came from broken homes. Lisa's parents divorced when she was two years old. My parents divorced when I was three years old. We did not have good role models for marriage in our lives. And so for me, I just thought that marriage was kind of the next stage in the relationship. And if it worked out, great. If it didn't, well, okay. So it's no surprise that when our marriage started deteriorating after the first few years, I wasn't all that committed. During that time, there was a big void in our marriage. Lisa chose to fill that void by going back to church. She joined an in-depth Bible study. She surrounded herself with Christian women. She rededicated her life to Christ. I, on the other hand, decided to spend as much time away from my marriage and my wife as possible. I filled my life with my friends, my band, and ended up having an affair for a year and a half. During that time when our marriage was not going well at all, before the reveal of my affair, we took a trip to Mexico. Now, to be a little bit more forthright, my wife actually begged me to go to Mexico. I did not want to go. Our friends were getting married at a destination wedding there, and I didn't want to do it. But she begged me, and I said, you know what? Okay, fine. I'll go. So here's a picture from that trip. Now, side note, this was taken a long time ago, okay? I mean, look at that hair. I mean, you know, like, look at the smiles there. Like, this was taken with a digital camera, like a legit digital camera. Like, I'm not saying that we invented the selfie, but like, we were definitely early promoters of it. So, you know, a little credit. So, but this trip was tough. It was very stressful for us. You would never know that this couple in this picture was barely talking to each other, and that in less than six months' time, they would be separated. The truth is that when you look at this picture, it reminds me that not everything is as it seems. And I'd be willing to bet that behind the smiles and the small talk here this morning, there are hurting marriages. Divorce is very common in our society. We know the statistic, half of all marriages end in divorce. People don't have the, they don't put the importance on marriage anymore. It's very much an individualistic society about your own happiness, your own pleasure. But the truth is, is that the fastest growing demographic of divorce is empty nesters, which is shocking. These people have spent their whole marriages, 20, 30 years, focusing on things other than each other. Maybe it's the kids, maybe it's the career, maybe it's something else. And when they get to the point where the kids are out of the house, they say, who are you? They don't have that connection anymore. You know, when Lisa and I went to a marriage intensive, it was run by a Christian ministry called Retrovive, went to this marriage intensive shortly after the reveal of the affair. We were shocked that we were among the youngest people there. Most of the people were in their 50s and 60s. In fact, check this out. There was one couple there that actually, this guy, this guy brought the divorce papers with him to the marriage intensive. And I can only figure that he was like, well, this way I can say I've tried everything, okay? But at the end of the intensive, we rejoiced with them as they tore up the divorce papers. It was an amazing moment, God working through that marriage. But sadly, that's not the case for all marriages. One of the things that we learned during this intensive was that there are four stages of a relationship. This was eye-opening for me. It's been eye-opening for couples that we've talked to over the years, and I think it'll be eye-opening for you today. In a relationship, there are four stages. The first stage is called romance. This otherwise known as the attraction stage, or my personal favorite, the euphoric stage. Okay, you know this stage. This is the stage where you meet someone, you fall in love, everything is perfect. I mean, the birds are singing, the sun's out. You know, this person can't do anything wrong. You can't wait to see them. You have butterflies in your stomach every time you think of them. When Lisa and I met, I was living in Boston, she was living in New York at the time. We met in Orlando at a wedding that was kind of like an extended vacation. I mean, most of the people in our age bracket that went down to this wedding stayed there for three, four days. I will never forget, on the first day, I walked into the room, and there she was, Lisa, right over here. And I remember when I saw her, my stomach sank. I mean, I think I lost my breath. My eyes opened. I just said, wow. Her recount of the situation is a little bit different, but you'll have to ask her about that. We know this stage. We know this stage. This is when you fall in love. This is great. During that stage, there are special hormones, chemicals that are released in our bodies that only happens during that time of that relationship. It will never happen again. And it only lasts for about 18 months to two years. The next stage of marriage, disillusionment. Disillusionment. This got sad quick, didn't it? Disillusionment. This is when our eyes are opened. It's like, wait a second, who is this person? All the things that were cute aren't necessarily cute anymore, right? They start to get on your nerves a little bit. All those things your parents were telling you the whole time, you're just like, oh, okay, I get it. This is disillusionment. Sadly, lots of relationships end in this stage. They're missing that euphoric part of the relationship. It ends. My buddy Dane Joneshill, he's a brilliant songwriter. He wrote a song called We Lie Together about a couple in this stage. And listen to these lyrics. It used to be you thought my faults were funny. We'd laugh at how forgetful I could be. But the last time I forgot about your birthday, you lost the humor for that sort of thing. Sad. That's a couple in the disillusionment stage. If the couple stays together, they move on to misery. The misery stage, also known as the numbness stage. Now, this stage can last a very short time, or it can last years. This is the stage where the couple, where the marriage, is basically like a partnership. Kind of two ships in the night, roommates together. There's no real intimacy in the relationship anymore. In fact, a lot of people say that it's in this stage that they're not sure whether it's better to get a divorce or to stay married. But a lot of people choose on their own convictions to stay married, stick it out until the kids are out of school. Hence the rise in divorce among empty nesters. In this stage, it's very common for people to try to escape their marriage. They can escape their marriage in all kinds of ways. They can focus more on work, focus on the kids, their family, drugs, drinking, gambling. I mean, really, house projects. I had a neighbor once who would do house projects. I mean, like you've never seen. This guy was constantly working on his house. It was exhausting watching him avoid his wife. But listen, this is the stage. It's a fertile ground for affairs to happen. Because what happens when you're in that misery stage or numbness stage? You have no connection with your spouse or very little connection at all. And somebody else comes into the picture. You have that spark again. Remember the euphoric phase, those chemical reactions that only happen with somebody, with that relationship once, that happens. And then all of a sudden we're blinded. We think that, oh, this is the one. This is the one I should be married with. I feel happy again. Affairs can happen. That's what happened to me. And just so we're clear about affairs, an affair doesn't have to be physical. An affair occurs whenever a person other than your spouse is fulfilling a marital need or duty. So affairs can be emotional as well. In fact, I would argue that they're just as common, if not more common, and just as damaging as physical affairs. Sounds pretty bad so far, doesn't it? Well, the next stage, this is the goal to get to. This is the awakening stage. This is when our eyes are open to the reality of what a long-term relationship in marriage looks like. This is the stage when true intimacy and depth can occur. This is the stage when love changes from being just a feeling to being an action and a choice. But listen, no matter what stage your marriage is in, there's good news. It can be better. No matter what stage your marriage is in, it can be better. A marriage is better with God at the center. A marriage is better with God at the center. A marriage is better with God at the center. So if we're going to look at marriage with God at the center, I think it's a good idea that we open up the Bible and take a look at that. If you have a Bible, take it out. We're going to be starting in Genesis 2. If you don't have a Bible, there's probably one on your device, on your phone. You can pull that up. If you'd like to grab the Bible in front of you, there's one in the seat back pocket. Listen, if you don't have a paper Bible at home, take this Bible with you. It's our gift to you. We believe that every home should have a legitimate Bible. Okay. Genesis 2. So God has just created the world, everything in it, right? The heavens, the earth. He's created the oceans, the land, the animals. As our four-year-old Ford said in the Christmas video, the two little donkeys and that big bird. Okay? He's created everything. All right. But he hasn't created a woman yet. So in verse 18, he says, Now before we get caught up on the word helper, a more accurate translation would be companion. I just want to make it, put it out there that in God's eyes, man, woman, completely equal in God's eyes, of equal value. Now in a marriage, we have different strengths, different weaknesses, both of us in different roles. But as far as having value in God's eyes and in the marriage, equally valuable. So God makes a woman. He puts Adam to sleep, makes Eve, and I can picture it, right? Like if this were a movie that we're jumping down to verse 29. If this were a movie, I could see Adam opening his eyes. The song At Last by Etta James is rolling in the background. He his partner for the first time. He's excited. He's excited about this. Of course, this is before the fall. They were naked and unashamed, so that probably helped as well. It goes on to say, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. They shall become one flesh. Now, when this was written, the term shall leave his father and mother, I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. Because at the time, families would have family businesses. And so a son who is of marrying age would be married, and they would go live and work on the family business, whether a farmer or something else. So really what this is saying here is that the man shall prioritize his spouse. Prioritize. So the first thing, if we want a God-centered marriage, prioritize your spouse. This is something that I struggled with early on, especially in our marriage, but continue to struggle with it. I would prioritize my parents over my wife. I wouldn't even know I was doing it. My wife knew, but I did not know that I was doing it. But it's important to prioritize your spouse over your parents. This can be incredibly hard for younger people. They've just grown up in the house with their parents. Their parents have been the ones guiding them, leading them, telling them right from wrong, supporting them. And then all of a sudden, they're on a team with someone their own age who barely knows as much as they do. And they're supposed to be the team, the unit together. It's hard. It's hard to prioritize your spouse. But it's a good thing to do if you want a God-centered marriage. I had a friend once who was telling me about how when she was newly married in her younger 20s, she sat down at the table with her new husband and her father, and her father said, let's say your new husband and I have a disagreement. Whose side are you going to be on? And she said, well, my husband's. He said, good. And he said, okay, let's say your husband and I have a disagreement and you know I'm right. Now whose side are you on? And she grabbed her husband's hand and said, my husband's. You guys are a team. You're a unit together. If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to love your spouse. Love your spouse. If we want to know what love looks like, we're its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to love your spouse unconditionally. During the time when our marriage was in a really dark place, I was leading a secret life. Lisa had gone back to church. She loved me unconditionally. And it's funny sometimes when we talk to couples and we say, okay, you know, you guys got to try. You got to, you know, put in your best. You got to love them as if they're doing the right things. And somebody, one of the people will say, all right, I'll do everything I can for six months. That's a condition. You're putting a condition on your love. God loves us unconditionally. Now, I should mention, or I want to mention, that abuse has no business being in marriage at all. If you're in an abusive relationship, seek professional help and guidance and get to a safe place. There's no reason that abuse should be there. If you want to have a God-centered marriage, you need to serve your spouse. Serve your can be a tough thing to do. Aaron Keyes, who's the founder of the 10,000 Fathers Worship School that I attended, has a great quote. And he says, everyone loves being a servant until they're treated like one. And it's true. Everyone loves being a servant until they're treated like one. Servants are not treated well. Jesus is washing feet. Like, do you know how nasty feet were? Like, they're nasty now. Like, think about how nasty they were like back then. Like, disgusting. Dirt, grime, everything on their feet. So to wash someone's feet was really a humbling thing. And for Jesus, our Lord and Savior, to do it, set a good example. While I was being terrible to my wife during that time, she would serve me by literally choosing to wake up early in the morning and make me an omelet before work, which is not the sort of thing that she would necessarily do earlier in our marriage. If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to forgive your spouse. Forgive your spouse. Ephesians 4, verse 32. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. If you fully understand the amount of what you've been forgiven of, you need to turn around and do that to your spouse. And it's a constant thing, forgiveness. It's not a one-time thing. I felt forgiveness almost immediately or a part of it when my wife said, I love you, we can make it through this. I later went to church with her and three months later gave my life to Christ. We have a thing in our home that helps us is that we actually ask for each other's forgiveness. Not just say, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. But we say, will you forgive me? If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to forgive your spouse. And the last one on the list here, if you want a God-centered marriage, you need to grow with your spouse. Grow with your spouse. 1 Thessalonians 5.11. not tend to it, and expect great results. Nobody would build a house, never maintain it, and expect it to stay in new condition. Just like a garden or a house, we need to constantly work on our marriages and grow in our marriages. If you notice at all there today, I did not mention a passage in Ephesians, which is Ephesians 5, which is the longest passage of Scripture on marriage in the Bible. The reason I didn't mention it today is because my wife and I are starting a marriage small group here at Grace. We're starting on February 9th, and four o'clock in the afternoon, childcare provided, and it's free to attend, the more the merrier. That study that we're going to do is called Love and Respect. We've gone through it four times. We've taught it once, and it's been incredibly beneficial each time. And so I have a little promo for you or significant other, you feel unloved at that moment or disrespected. 83% of the men say they feel disrespected. 72% of the women say they feel unloved. Now, it's very important that I say this. We all need love and respect equally. But the felt need during conflict is as different as pink is from blue, night is from day, male is from female. If you were to ask us to pinpoint one moment where your relationship with one another did a 180, it's absolutely when we did the love and respect. If we knew ahead of time that there was something available like this, it would have made those first 12, 13 years of our marriage so much smoother I think. a workbook for you. The workbook provides additional information that will enable you to apply this simple message. We include discussion questions, stories to read and discuss. There's a couple called Missy and Stu. A devotional for each session and then there's the pertinent information that will be available to you for quick review and reference. Love and Respect really gives you a lot of insight into this is what men think and this is what women think and this is how they thrive. And that perspective had never been explained to us before, especially in such a comical and easy to understand way. It took a biblical approach to a lot of problems that we have. And when you can apply the Bible to marital problems, it always helps. You get a chance to learn how you think as a male and how your spouse thinks as a female and to understand that those differences in thinking are just that. It's not wrong or right, it's just different. It really helped us to decode who we're married to and that's something that I want to share with everybody. They're gonna give you you the tools. They're going to give you what you need. Now what you do with it is up to you. You can walk out the door and you can throw it all away if you want to, or you can take it and you can make it become a part of who you are and begin to have the marriage that you deserve and the marriage that God wants you to have. The last time we led this study, there were 80 people that showed up to it at our last church. There were some young, some old, some newly married, some that were in hurting situations, but most of the people that came to it were in this awakening stage. The thing is, is that those people knew that it's a strength to work on your marriage, not a weakness. It shows strength, not weakness. So as we close up today, we've been talking about marriage is better with God at the center. Marriage is better with God at the center. One last thought. Make no mistake. God doesn't exist to make your marriage good. Your marriage exists to express the goodness of God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, what an honor it is to be here today to speak about marriage. God, I'm living proof of how miraculous your love is, how you can change us, how the old is gone and the new has come with Jesus at the center of our lives. God, I pray especially for all the marriages here today. Lord, come into them in a powerful way. And God, let us see our spouses as beautiful as you see us. We pray all of this in the matchless name of Jesus. Amen.

11 years ago, I revealed to my wife that I had been having an affair for a year and a half. She calmly responded, I love you. We can make it through this. Today we're going to be talking about marriage. My name is Steve Goldberg. I'm the worship pastor here at Grace Raleigh, and it's an honor to bring the third message in our series, I Want a Better Life, entitled I Want a Better Marriage. For those of you who are first-time guests with us today, or maybe you're not familiar with my story. Surprise! In addition to being the worship pastor here at Grace, my wife and I also started a non-profit called Side-by-Side Ministry about five years ago, where we share our testimony, our story, our journey from hurt to hope. And it's our mission to inspire and encourage hurting couples to value, nurture, and restore their marriages. Now, to give you a little background, when my wife and I got married, neither one of us was following our childhood religions. I was raised Jewish in Massachusetts, hence the name Goldberg. My wife was raised Lutheran in Wisconsin. Both of us came from broken homes. Lisa's parents divorced when she was two years old. My parents divorced when I was three years old. We did not have good role models for marriage in our lives. And so for me, I just thought that marriage was kind of the next stage in the relationship. And if it worked out, great. If it didn't, well, okay. So it's no surprise that when our marriage started deteriorating after the first few years, I wasn't all that committed. During that time, there was a big void in our marriage. Lisa chose to fill that void by going back to church. She joined an in-depth Bible study. She surrounded herself with Christian women. She rededicated her life to Christ. I, on the other hand, decided to spend as much time away from my marriage and my wife as possible. I filled my life with my friends, my band, and ended up having an affair for a year and a half. During that time when our marriage was not going well at all, before the reveal of my affair, we took a trip to Mexico. Now, to be a little bit more forthright, my wife actually begged me to go to Mexico. I did not want to go. Our friends were getting married at a destination wedding there, and I didn't want to do it. But she begged me, and I said, you know what? Okay, fine. I'll go. So here's a picture from that trip. Now, side note, this was taken a long time ago, okay? I mean, look at that hair. I mean, you know, like, look at the smiles there. Like, this was taken with a digital camera, like a legit digital camera. Like, I'm not saying that we invented the selfie, but like, we were definitely early promoters of it. So, you know, a little credit. So, but this trip was tough. It was very stressful for us. You would never know that this couple in this picture was barely talking to each other, and that in less than six months' time, they would be separated. The truth is that when you look at this picture, it reminds me that not everything is as it seems. And I'd be willing to bet that behind the smiles and the small talk here this morning, there are hurting marriages. Divorce is very common in our society. We know the statistic, half of all marriages end in divorce. People don't have the, they don't put the importance on marriage anymore. It's very much an individualistic society about your own happiness, your own pleasure. But the truth is, is that the fastest growing demographic of divorce is empty nesters, which is shocking. These people have spent their whole marriages, 20, 30 years, focusing on things other than each other. Maybe it's the kids, maybe it's the career, maybe it's something else. And when they get to the point where the kids are out of the house, they say, who are you? They don't have that connection anymore. You know, when Lisa and I went to a marriage intensive, it was run by a Christian ministry called Retrovive, went to this marriage intensive shortly after the reveal of the affair. We were shocked that we were among the youngest people there. Most of the people were in their 50s and 60s. In fact, check this out. There was one couple there that actually, this guy, this guy brought the divorce papers with him to the marriage intensive. And I can only figure that he was like, well, this way I can say I've tried everything, okay? But at the end of the intensive, we rejoiced with them as they tore up the divorce papers. It was an amazing moment, God working through that marriage. But sadly, that's not the case for all marriages. One of the things that we learned during this intensive was that there are four stages of a relationship. This was eye-opening for me. It's been eye-opening for couples that we've talked to over the years, and I think it'll be eye-opening for you today. In a relationship, there are four stages. The first stage is called romance. This otherwise known as the attraction stage, or my personal favorite, the euphoric stage. Okay, you know this stage. This is the stage where you meet someone, you fall in love, everything is perfect. I mean, the birds are singing, the sun's out. You know, this person can't do anything wrong. You can't wait to see them. You have butterflies in your stomach every time you think of them. When Lisa and I met, I was living in Boston, she was living in New York at the time. We met in Orlando at a wedding that was kind of like an extended vacation. I mean, most of the people in our age bracket that went down to this wedding stayed there for three, four days. I will never forget, on the first day, I walked into the room, and there she was, Lisa, right over here. And I remember when I saw her, my stomach sank. I mean, I think I lost my breath. My eyes opened. I just said, wow. Her recount of the situation is a little bit different, but you'll have to ask her about that. We know this stage. We know this stage. This is when you fall in love. This is great. During that stage, there are special hormones, chemicals that are released in our bodies that only happens during that time of that relationship. It will never happen again. And it only lasts for about 18 months to two years. The next stage of marriage, disillusionment. Disillusionment. This got sad quick, didn't it? Disillusionment. This is when our eyes are opened. It's like, wait a second, who is this person? All the things that were cute aren't necessarily cute anymore, right? They start to get on your nerves a little bit. All those things your parents were telling you the whole time, you're just like, oh, okay, I get it. This is disillusionment. Sadly, lots of relationships end in this stage. They're missing that euphoric part of the relationship. It ends. My buddy Dane Joneshill, he's a brilliant songwriter. He wrote a song called We Lie Together about a couple in this stage. And listen to these lyrics. It used to be you thought my faults were funny. We'd laugh at how forgetful I could be. But the last time I forgot about your birthday, you lost the humor for that sort of thing. Sad. That's a couple in the disillusionment stage. If the couple stays together, they move on to misery. The misery stage, also known as the numbness stage. Now, this stage can last a very short time, or it can last years. This is the stage where the couple, where the marriage, is basically like a partnership. Kind of two ships in the night, roommates together. There's no real intimacy in the relationship anymore. In fact, a lot of people say that it's in this stage that they're not sure whether it's better to get a divorce or to stay married. But a lot of people choose on their own convictions to stay married, stick it out until the kids are out of school. Hence the rise in divorce among empty nesters. In this stage, it's very common for people to try to escape their marriage. They can escape their marriage in all kinds of ways. They can focus more on work, focus on the kids, their family, drugs, drinking, gambling. I mean, really, house projects. I had a neighbor once who would do house projects. I mean, like you've never seen. This guy was constantly working on his house. It was exhausting watching him avoid his wife. But listen, this is the stage. It's a fertile ground for affairs to happen. Because what happens when you're in that misery stage or numbness stage? You have no connection with your spouse or very little connection at all. And somebody else comes into the picture. You have that spark again. Remember the euphoric phase, those chemical reactions that only happen with somebody, with that relationship once, that happens. And then all of a sudden we're blinded. We think that, oh, this is the one. This is the one I should be married with. I feel happy again. Affairs can happen. That's what happened to me. And just so we're clear about affairs, an affair doesn't have to be physical. An affair occurs whenever a person other than your spouse is fulfilling a marital need or duty. So affairs can be emotional as well. In fact, I would argue that they're just as common, if not more common, and just as damaging as physical affairs. Sounds pretty bad so far, doesn't it? Well, the next stage, this is the goal to get to. This is the awakening stage. This is when our eyes are open to the reality of what a long-term relationship in marriage looks like. This is the stage when true intimacy and depth can occur. This is the stage when love changes from being just a feeling to being an action and a choice. But listen, no matter what stage your marriage is in, there's good news. It can be better. No matter what stage your marriage is in, it can be better. A marriage is better with God at the center. A marriage is better with God at the center. A marriage is better with God at the center. So if we're going to look at marriage with God at the center, I think it's a good idea that we open up the Bible and take a look at that. If you have a Bible, take it out. We're going to be starting in Genesis 2. If you don't have a Bible, there's probably one on your device, on your phone. You can pull that up. If you'd like to grab the Bible in front of you, there's one in the seat back pocket. Listen, if you don't have a paper Bible at home, take this Bible with you. It's our gift to you. We believe that every home should have a legitimate Bible. Okay. Genesis 2. So God has just created the world, everything in it, right? The heavens, the earth. He's created the oceans, the land, the animals. As our four-year-old Ford said in the Christmas video, the two little donkeys and that big bird. Okay? He's created everything. All right. But he hasn't created a woman yet. So in verse 18, he says, Now before we get caught up on the word helper, a more accurate translation would be companion. I just want to make it, put it out there that in God's eyes, man, woman, completely equal in God's eyes, of equal value. Now in a marriage, we have different strengths, different weaknesses, both of us in different roles. But as far as having value in God's eyes and in the marriage, equally valuable. So God makes a woman. He puts Adam to sleep, makes Eve, and I can picture it, right? Like if this were a movie that we're jumping down to verse 29. If this were a movie, I could see Adam opening his eyes. The song At Last by Etta James is rolling in the background. He his partner for the first time. He's excited. He's excited about this. Of course, this is before the fall. They were naked and unashamed, so that probably helped as well. It goes on to say, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. They shall become one flesh. Now, when this was written, the term shall leave his father and mother, I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. Because at the time, families would have family businesses. And so a son who is of marrying age would be married, and they would go live and work on the family business, whether a farmer or something else. So really what this is saying here is that the man shall prioritize his spouse. Prioritize. So the first thing, if we want a God-centered marriage, prioritize your spouse. This is something that I struggled with early on, especially in our marriage, but continue to struggle with it. I would prioritize my parents over my wife. I wouldn't even know I was doing it. My wife knew, but I did not know that I was doing it. But it's important to prioritize your spouse over your parents. This can be incredibly hard for younger people. They've just grown up in the house with their parents. Their parents have been the ones guiding them, leading them, telling them right from wrong, supporting them. And then all of a sudden, they're on a team with someone their own age who barely knows as much as they do. And they're supposed to be the team, the unit together. It's hard. It's hard to prioritize your spouse. But it's a good thing to do if you want a God-centered marriage. I had a friend once who was telling me about how when she was newly married in her younger 20s, she sat down at the table with her new husband and her father, and her father said, let's say your new husband and I have a disagreement. Whose side are you going to be on? And she said, well, my husband's. He said, good. And he said, okay, let's say your husband and I have a disagreement and you know I'm right. Now whose side are you on? And she grabbed her husband's hand and said, my husband's. You guys are a team. You're a unit together. If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to love your spouse. Love your spouse. If we want to know what love looks like, we're its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to love your spouse unconditionally. During the time when our marriage was in a really dark place, I was leading a secret life. Lisa had gone back to church. She loved me unconditionally. And it's funny sometimes when we talk to couples and we say, okay, you know, you guys got to try. You got to, you know, put in your best. You got to love them as if they're doing the right things. And somebody, one of the people will say, all right, I'll do everything I can for six months. That's a condition. You're putting a condition on your love. God loves us unconditionally. Now, I should mention, or I want to mention, that abuse has no business being in marriage at all. If you're in an abusive relationship, seek professional help and guidance and get to a safe place. There's no reason that abuse should be there. If you want to have a God-centered marriage, you need to serve your spouse. Serve your can be a tough thing to do. Aaron Keyes, who's the founder of the 10,000 Fathers Worship School that I attended, has a great quote. And he says, everyone loves being a servant until they're treated like one. And it's true. Everyone loves being a servant until they're treated like one. Servants are not treated well. Jesus is washing feet. Like, do you know how nasty feet were? Like, they're nasty now. Like, think about how nasty they were like back then. Like, disgusting. Dirt, grime, everything on their feet. So to wash someone's feet was really a humbling thing. And for Jesus, our Lord and Savior, to do it, set a good example. While I was being terrible to my wife during that time, she would serve me by literally choosing to wake up early in the morning and make me an omelet before work, which is not the sort of thing that she would necessarily do earlier in our marriage. If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to forgive your spouse. Forgive your spouse. Ephesians 4, verse 32. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. If you fully understand the amount of what you've been forgiven of, you need to turn around and do that to your spouse. And it's a constant thing, forgiveness. It's not a one-time thing. I felt forgiveness almost immediately or a part of it when my wife said, I love you, we can make it through this. I later went to church with her and three months later gave my life to Christ. We have a thing in our home that helps us is that we actually ask for each other's forgiveness. Not just say, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. But we say, will you forgive me? If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to forgive your spouse. And the last one on the list here, if you want a God-centered marriage, you need to grow with your spouse. Grow with your spouse. 1 Thessalonians 5.11. not tend to it, and expect great results. Nobody would build a house, never maintain it, and expect it to stay in new condition. Just like a garden or a house, we need to constantly work on our marriages and grow in our marriages. If you notice at all there today, I did not mention a passage in Ephesians, which is Ephesians 5, which is the longest passage of Scripture on marriage in the Bible. The reason I didn't mention it today is because my wife and I are starting a marriage small group here at Grace. We're starting on February 9th, and four o'clock in the afternoon, childcare provided, and it's free to attend, the more the merrier. That study that we're going to do is called Love and Respect. We've gone through it four times. We've taught it once, and it's been incredibly beneficial each time. And so I have a little promo for you or significant other, you feel unloved at that moment or disrespected. 83% of the men say they feel disrespected. 72% of the women say they feel unloved. Now, it's very important that I say this. We all need love and respect equally. But the felt need during conflict is as different as pink is from blue, night is from day, male is from female. If you were to ask us to pinpoint one moment where your relationship with one another did a 180, it's absolutely when we did the love and respect. If we knew ahead of time that there was something available like this, it would have made those first 12, 13 years of our marriage so much smoother I think. a workbook for you. The workbook provides additional information that will enable you to apply this simple message. We include discussion questions, stories to read and discuss. There's a couple called Missy and Stu. A devotional for each session and then there's the pertinent information that will be available to you for quick review and reference. Love and Respect really gives you a lot of insight into this is what men think and this is what women think and this is how they thrive. And that perspective had never been explained to us before, especially in such a comical and easy to understand way. It took a biblical approach to a lot of problems that we have. And when you can apply the Bible to marital problems, it always helps. You get a chance to learn how you think as a male and how your spouse thinks as a female and to understand that those differences in thinking are just that. It's not wrong or right, it's just different. It really helped us to decode who we're married to and that's something that I want to share with everybody. They're gonna give you you the tools. They're going to give you what you need. Now what you do with it is up to you. You can walk out the door and you can throw it all away if you want to, or you can take it and you can make it become a part of who you are and begin to have the marriage that you deserve and the marriage that God wants you to have. The last time we led this study, there were 80 people that showed up to it at our last church. There were some young, some old, some newly married, some that were in hurting situations, but most of the people that came to it were in this awakening stage. The thing is, is that those people knew that it's a strength to work on your marriage, not a weakness. It shows strength, not weakness. So as we close up today, we've been talking about marriage is better with God at the center. Marriage is better with God at the center. One last thought. Make no mistake. God doesn't exist to make your marriage good. Your marriage exists to express the goodness of God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, what an honor it is to be here today to speak about marriage. God, I'm living proof of how miraculous your love is, how you can change us, how the old is gone and the new has come with Jesus at the center of our lives. God, I pray especially for all the marriages here today. Lord, come into them in a powerful way. And God, let us see our spouses as beautiful as you see us. We pray all of this in the matchless name of Jesus. Amen.

11 years ago, I revealed to my wife that I had been having an affair for a year and a half. She calmly responded, I love you. We can make it through this. Today we're going to be talking about marriage. My name is Steve Goldberg. I'm the worship pastor here at Grace Raleigh, and it's an honor to bring the third message in our series, I Want a Better Life, entitled I Want a Better Marriage. For those of you who are first-time guests with us today, or maybe you're not familiar with my story. Surprise! In addition to being the worship pastor here at Grace, my wife and I also started a non-profit called Side-by-Side Ministry about five years ago, where we share our testimony, our story, our journey from hurt to hope. And it's our mission to inspire and encourage hurting couples to value, nurture, and restore their marriages. Now, to give you a little background, when my wife and I got married, neither one of us was following our childhood religions. I was raised Jewish in Massachusetts, hence the name Goldberg. My wife was raised Lutheran in Wisconsin. Both of us came from broken homes. Lisa's parents divorced when she was two years old. My parents divorced when I was three years old. We did not have good role models for marriage in our lives. And so for me, I just thought that marriage was kind of the next stage in the relationship. And if it worked out, great. If it didn't, well, okay. So it's no surprise that when our marriage started deteriorating after the first few years, I wasn't all that committed. During that time, there was a big void in our marriage. Lisa chose to fill that void by going back to church. She joined an in-depth Bible study. She surrounded herself with Christian women. She rededicated her life to Christ. I, on the other hand, decided to spend as much time away from my marriage and my wife as possible. I filled my life with my friends, my band, and ended up having an affair for a year and a half. During that time when our marriage was not going well at all, before the reveal of my affair, we took a trip to Mexico. Now, to be a little bit more forthright, my wife actually begged me to go to Mexico. I did not want to go. Our friends were getting married at a destination wedding there, and I didn't want to do it. But she begged me, and I said, you know what? Okay, fine. I'll go. So here's a picture from that trip. Now, side note, this was taken a long time ago, okay? I mean, look at that hair. I mean, you know, like, look at the smiles there. Like, this was taken with a digital camera, like a legit digital camera. Like, I'm not saying that we invented the selfie, but like, we were definitely early promoters of it. So, you know, a little credit. So, but this trip was tough. It was very stressful for us. You would never know that this couple in this picture was barely talking to each other, and that in less than six months' time, they would be separated. The truth is that when you look at this picture, it reminds me that not everything is as it seems. And I'd be willing to bet that behind the smiles and the small talk here this morning, there are hurting marriages. Divorce is very common in our society. We know the statistic, half of all marriages end in divorce. People don't have the, they don't put the importance on marriage anymore. It's very much an individualistic society about your own happiness, your own pleasure. But the truth is, is that the fastest growing demographic of divorce is empty nesters, which is shocking. These people have spent their whole marriages, 20, 30 years, focusing on things other than each other. Maybe it's the kids, maybe it's the career, maybe it's something else. And when they get to the point where the kids are out of the house, they say, who are you? They don't have that connection anymore. You know, when Lisa and I went to a marriage intensive, it was run by a Christian ministry called Retrovive, went to this marriage intensive shortly after the reveal of the affair. We were shocked that we were among the youngest people there. Most of the people were in their 50s and 60s. In fact, check this out. There was one couple there that actually, this guy, this guy brought the divorce papers with him to the marriage intensive. And I can only figure that he was like, well, this way I can say I've tried everything, okay? But at the end of the intensive, we rejoiced with them as they tore up the divorce papers. It was an amazing moment, God working through that marriage. But sadly, that's not the case for all marriages. One of the things that we learned during this intensive was that there are four stages of a relationship. This was eye-opening for me. It's been eye-opening for couples that we've talked to over the years, and I think it'll be eye-opening for you today. In a relationship, there are four stages. The first stage is called romance. This otherwise known as the attraction stage, or my personal favorite, the euphoric stage. Okay, you know this stage. This is the stage where you meet someone, you fall in love, everything is perfect. I mean, the birds are singing, the sun's out. You know, this person can't do anything wrong. You can't wait to see them. You have butterflies in your stomach every time you think of them. When Lisa and I met, I was living in Boston, she was living in New York at the time. We met in Orlando at a wedding that was kind of like an extended vacation. I mean, most of the people in our age bracket that went down to this wedding stayed there for three, four days. I will never forget, on the first day, I walked into the room, and there she was, Lisa, right over here. And I remember when I saw her, my stomach sank. I mean, I think I lost my breath. My eyes opened. I just said, wow. Her recount of the situation is a little bit different, but you'll have to ask her about that. We know this stage. We know this stage. This is when you fall in love. This is great. During that stage, there are special hormones, chemicals that are released in our bodies that only happens during that time of that relationship. It will never happen again. And it only lasts for about 18 months to two years. The next stage of marriage, disillusionment. Disillusionment. This got sad quick, didn't it? Disillusionment. This is when our eyes are opened. It's like, wait a second, who is this person? All the things that were cute aren't necessarily cute anymore, right? They start to get on your nerves a little bit. All those things your parents were telling you the whole time, you're just like, oh, okay, I get it. This is disillusionment. Sadly, lots of relationships end in this stage. They're missing that euphoric part of the relationship. It ends. My buddy Dane Joneshill, he's a brilliant songwriter. He wrote a song called We Lie Together about a couple in this stage. And listen to these lyrics. It used to be you thought my faults were funny. We'd laugh at how forgetful I could be. But the last time I forgot about your birthday, you lost the humor for that sort of thing. Sad. That's a couple in the disillusionment stage. If the couple stays together, they move on to misery. The misery stage, also known as the numbness stage. Now, this stage can last a very short time, or it can last years. This is the stage where the couple, where the marriage, is basically like a partnership. Kind of two ships in the night, roommates together. There's no real intimacy in the relationship anymore. In fact, a lot of people say that it's in this stage that they're not sure whether it's better to get a divorce or to stay married. But a lot of people choose on their own convictions to stay married, stick it out until the kids are out of school. Hence the rise in divorce among empty nesters. In this stage, it's very common for people to try to escape their marriage. They can escape their marriage in all kinds of ways. They can focus more on work, focus on the kids, their family, drugs, drinking, gambling. I mean, really, house projects. I had a neighbor once who would do house projects. I mean, like you've never seen. This guy was constantly working on his house. It was exhausting watching him avoid his wife. But listen, this is the stage. It's a fertile ground for affairs to happen. Because what happens when you're in that misery stage or numbness stage? You have no connection with your spouse or very little connection at all. And somebody else comes into the picture. You have that spark again. Remember the euphoric phase, those chemical reactions that only happen with somebody, with that relationship once, that happens. And then all of a sudden we're blinded. We think that, oh, this is the one. This is the one I should be married with. I feel happy again. Affairs can happen. That's what happened to me. And just so we're clear about affairs, an affair doesn't have to be physical. An affair occurs whenever a person other than your spouse is fulfilling a marital need or duty. So affairs can be emotional as well. In fact, I would argue that they're just as common, if not more common, and just as damaging as physical affairs. Sounds pretty bad so far, doesn't it? Well, the next stage, this is the goal to get to. This is the awakening stage. This is when our eyes are open to the reality of what a long-term relationship in marriage looks like. This is the stage when true intimacy and depth can occur. This is the stage when love changes from being just a feeling to being an action and a choice. But listen, no matter what stage your marriage is in, there's good news. It can be better. No matter what stage your marriage is in, it can be better. A marriage is better with God at the center. A marriage is better with God at the center. A marriage is better with God at the center. So if we're going to look at marriage with God at the center, I think it's a good idea that we open up the Bible and take a look at that. If you have a Bible, take it out. We're going to be starting in Genesis 2. If you don't have a Bible, there's probably one on your device, on your phone. You can pull that up. If you'd like to grab the Bible in front of you, there's one in the seat back pocket. Listen, if you don't have a paper Bible at home, take this Bible with you. It's our gift to you. We believe that every home should have a legitimate Bible. Okay. Genesis 2. So God has just created the world, everything in it, right? The heavens, the earth. He's created the oceans, the land, the animals. As our four-year-old Ford said in the Christmas video, the two little donkeys and that big bird. Okay? He's created everything. All right. But he hasn't created a woman yet. So in verse 18, he says, Now before we get caught up on the word helper, a more accurate translation would be companion. I just want to make it, put it out there that in God's eyes, man, woman, completely equal in God's eyes, of equal value. Now in a marriage, we have different strengths, different weaknesses, both of us in different roles. But as far as having value in God's eyes and in the marriage, equally valuable. So God makes a woman. He puts Adam to sleep, makes Eve, and I can picture it, right? Like if this were a movie that we're jumping down to verse 29. If this were a movie, I could see Adam opening his eyes. The song At Last by Etta James is rolling in the background. He his partner for the first time. He's excited. He's excited about this. Of course, this is before the fall. They were naked and unashamed, so that probably helped as well. It goes on to say, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. They shall become one flesh. Now, when this was written, the term shall leave his father and mother, I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. Because at the time, families would have family businesses. And so a son who is of marrying age would be married, and they would go live and work on the family business, whether a farmer or something else. So really what this is saying here is that the man shall prioritize his spouse. Prioritize. So the first thing, if we want a God-centered marriage, prioritize your spouse. This is something that I struggled with early on, especially in our marriage, but continue to struggle with it. I would prioritize my parents over my wife. I wouldn't even know I was doing it. My wife knew, but I did not know that I was doing it. But it's important to prioritize your spouse over your parents. This can be incredibly hard for younger people. They've just grown up in the house with their parents. Their parents have been the ones guiding them, leading them, telling them right from wrong, supporting them. And then all of a sudden, they're on a team with someone their own age who barely knows as much as they do. And they're supposed to be the team, the unit together. It's hard. It's hard to prioritize your spouse. But it's a good thing to do if you want a God-centered marriage. I had a friend once who was telling me about how when she was newly married in her younger 20s, she sat down at the table with her new husband and her father, and her father said, let's say your new husband and I have a disagreement. Whose side are you going to be on? And she said, well, my husband's. He said, good. And he said, okay, let's say your husband and I have a disagreement and you know I'm right. Now whose side are you on? And she grabbed her husband's hand and said, my husband's. You guys are a team. You're a unit together. If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to love your spouse. Love your spouse. If we want to know what love looks like, we're its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to love your spouse unconditionally. During the time when our marriage was in a really dark place, I was leading a secret life. Lisa had gone back to church. She loved me unconditionally. And it's funny sometimes when we talk to couples and we say, okay, you know, you guys got to try. You got to, you know, put in your best. You got to love them as if they're doing the right things. And somebody, one of the people will say, all right, I'll do everything I can for six months. That's a condition. You're putting a condition on your love. God loves us unconditionally. Now, I should mention, or I want to mention, that abuse has no business being in marriage at all. If you're in an abusive relationship, seek professional help and guidance and get to a safe place. There's no reason that abuse should be there. If you want to have a God-centered marriage, you need to serve your spouse. Serve your can be a tough thing to do. Aaron Keyes, who's the founder of the 10,000 Fathers Worship School that I attended, has a great quote. And he says, everyone loves being a servant until they're treated like one. And it's true. Everyone loves being a servant until they're treated like one. Servants are not treated well. Jesus is washing feet. Like, do you know how nasty feet were? Like, they're nasty now. Like, think about how nasty they were like back then. Like, disgusting. Dirt, grime, everything on their feet. So to wash someone's feet was really a humbling thing. And for Jesus, our Lord and Savior, to do it, set a good example. While I was being terrible to my wife during that time, she would serve me by literally choosing to wake up early in the morning and make me an omelet before work, which is not the sort of thing that she would necessarily do earlier in our marriage. If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to forgive your spouse. Forgive your spouse. Ephesians 4, verse 32. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. If you fully understand the amount of what you've been forgiven of, you need to turn around and do that to your spouse. And it's a constant thing, forgiveness. It's not a one-time thing. I felt forgiveness almost immediately or a part of it when my wife said, I love you, we can make it through this. I later went to church with her and three months later gave my life to Christ. We have a thing in our home that helps us is that we actually ask for each other's forgiveness. Not just say, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. But we say, will you forgive me? If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to forgive your spouse. And the last one on the list here, if you want a God-centered marriage, you need to grow with your spouse. Grow with your spouse. 1 Thessalonians 5.11. not tend to it, and expect great results. Nobody would build a house, never maintain it, and expect it to stay in new condition. Just like a garden or a house, we need to constantly work on our marriages and grow in our marriages. If you notice at all there today, I did not mention a passage in Ephesians, which is Ephesians 5, which is the longest passage of Scripture on marriage in the Bible. The reason I didn't mention it today is because my wife and I are starting a marriage small group here at Grace. We're starting on February 9th, and four o'clock in the afternoon, childcare provided, and it's free to attend, the more the merrier. That study that we're going to do is called Love and Respect. We've gone through it four times. We've taught it once, and it's been incredibly beneficial each time. And so I have a little promo for you or significant other, you feel unloved at that moment or disrespected. 83% of the men say they feel disrespected. 72% of the women say they feel unloved. Now, it's very important that I say this. We all need love and respect equally. But the felt need during conflict is as different as pink is from blue, night is from day, male is from female. If you were to ask us to pinpoint one moment where your relationship with one another did a 180, it's absolutely when we did the love and respect. If we knew ahead of time that there was something available like this, it would have made those first 12, 13 years of our marriage so much smoother I think. a workbook for you. The workbook provides additional information that will enable you to apply this simple message. We include discussion questions, stories to read and discuss. There's a couple called Missy and Stu. A devotional for each session and then there's the pertinent information that will be available to you for quick review and reference. Love and Respect really gives you a lot of insight into this is what men think and this is what women think and this is how they thrive. And that perspective had never been explained to us before, especially in such a comical and easy to understand way. It took a biblical approach to a lot of problems that we have. And when you can apply the Bible to marital problems, it always helps. You get a chance to learn how you think as a male and how your spouse thinks as a female and to understand that those differences in thinking are just that. It's not wrong or right, it's just different. It really helped us to decode who we're married to and that's something that I want to share with everybody. They're gonna give you you the tools. They're going to give you what you need. Now what you do with it is up to you. You can walk out the door and you can throw it all away if you want to, or you can take it and you can make it become a part of who you are and begin to have the marriage that you deserve and the marriage that God wants you to have. The last time we led this study, there were 80 people that showed up to it at our last church. There were some young, some old, some newly married, some that were in hurting situations, but most of the people that came to it were in this awakening stage. The thing is, is that those people knew that it's a strength to work on your marriage, not a weakness. It shows strength, not weakness. So as we close up today, we've been talking about marriage is better with God at the center. Marriage is better with God at the center. One last thought. Make no mistake. God doesn't exist to make your marriage good. Your marriage exists to express the goodness of God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, what an honor it is to be here today to speak about marriage. God, I'm living proof of how miraculous your love is, how you can change us, how the old is gone and the new has come with Jesus at the center of our lives. God, I pray especially for all the marriages here today. Lord, come into them in a powerful way. And God, let us see our spouses as beautiful as you see us. We pray all of this in the matchless name of Jesus. Amen.

11 years ago, I revealed to my wife that I had been having an affair for a year and a half. She calmly responded, I love you. We can make it through this. Today we're going to be talking about marriage. My name is Steve Goldberg. I'm the worship pastor here at Grace Raleigh, and it's an honor to bring the third message in our series, I Want a Better Life, entitled I Want a Better Marriage. For those of you who are first-time guests with us today, or maybe you're not familiar with my story. Surprise! In addition to being the worship pastor here at Grace, my wife and I also started a non-profit called Side-by-Side Ministry about five years ago, where we share our testimony, our story, our journey from hurt to hope. And it's our mission to inspire and encourage hurting couples to value, nurture, and restore their marriages. Now, to give you a little background, when my wife and I got married, neither one of us was following our childhood religions. I was raised Jewish in Massachusetts, hence the name Goldberg. My wife was raised Lutheran in Wisconsin. Both of us came from broken homes. Lisa's parents divorced when she was two years old. My parents divorced when I was three years old. We did not have good role models for marriage in our lives. And so for me, I just thought that marriage was kind of the next stage in the relationship. And if it worked out, great. If it didn't, well, okay. So it's no surprise that when our marriage started deteriorating after the first few years, I wasn't all that committed. During that time, there was a big void in our marriage. Lisa chose to fill that void by going back to church. She joined an in-depth Bible study. She surrounded herself with Christian women. She rededicated her life to Christ. I, on the other hand, decided to spend as much time away from my marriage and my wife as possible. I filled my life with my friends, my band, and ended up having an affair for a year and a half. During that time when our marriage was not going well at all, before the reveal of my affair, we took a trip to Mexico. Now, to be a little bit more forthright, my wife actually begged me to go to Mexico. I did not want to go. Our friends were getting married at a destination wedding there, and I didn't want to do it. But she begged me, and I said, you know what? Okay, fine. I'll go. So here's a picture from that trip. Now, side note, this was taken a long time ago, okay? I mean, look at that hair. I mean, you know, like, look at the smiles there. Like, this was taken with a digital camera, like a legit digital camera. Like, I'm not saying that we invented the selfie, but like, we were definitely early promoters of it. So, you know, a little credit. So, but this trip was tough. It was very stressful for us. You would never know that this couple in this picture was barely talking to each other, and that in less than six months' time, they would be separated. The truth is that when you look at this picture, it reminds me that not everything is as it seems. And I'd be willing to bet that behind the smiles and the small talk here this morning, there are hurting marriages. Divorce is very common in our society. We know the statistic, half of all marriages end in divorce. People don't have the, they don't put the importance on marriage anymore. It's very much an individualistic society about your own happiness, your own pleasure. But the truth is, is that the fastest growing demographic of divorce is empty nesters, which is shocking. These people have spent their whole marriages, 20, 30 years, focusing on things other than each other. Maybe it's the kids, maybe it's the career, maybe it's something else. And when they get to the point where the kids are out of the house, they say, who are you? They don't have that connection anymore. You know, when Lisa and I went to a marriage intensive, it was run by a Christian ministry called Retrovive, went to this marriage intensive shortly after the reveal of the affair. We were shocked that we were among the youngest people there. Most of the people were in their 50s and 60s. In fact, check this out. There was one couple there that actually, this guy, this guy brought the divorce papers with him to the marriage intensive. And I can only figure that he was like, well, this way I can say I've tried everything, okay? But at the end of the intensive, we rejoiced with them as they tore up the divorce papers. It was an amazing moment, God working through that marriage. But sadly, that's not the case for all marriages. One of the things that we learned during this intensive was that there are four stages of a relationship. This was eye-opening for me. It's been eye-opening for couples that we've talked to over the years, and I think it'll be eye-opening for you today. In a relationship, there are four stages. The first stage is called romance. This otherwise known as the attraction stage, or my personal favorite, the euphoric stage. Okay, you know this stage. This is the stage where you meet someone, you fall in love, everything is perfect. I mean, the birds are singing, the sun's out. You know, this person can't do anything wrong. You can't wait to see them. You have butterflies in your stomach every time you think of them. When Lisa and I met, I was living in Boston, she was living in New York at the time. We met in Orlando at a wedding that was kind of like an extended vacation. I mean, most of the people in our age bracket that went down to this wedding stayed there for three, four days. I will never forget, on the first day, I walked into the room, and there she was, Lisa, right over here. And I remember when I saw her, my stomach sank. I mean, I think I lost my breath. My eyes opened. I just said, wow. Her recount of the situation is a little bit different, but you'll have to ask her about that. We know this stage. We know this stage. This is when you fall in love. This is great. During that stage, there are special hormones, chemicals that are released in our bodies that only happens during that time of that relationship. It will never happen again. And it only lasts for about 18 months to two years. The next stage of marriage, disillusionment. Disillusionment. This got sad quick, didn't it? Disillusionment. This is when our eyes are opened. It's like, wait a second, who is this person? All the things that were cute aren't necessarily cute anymore, right? They start to get on your nerves a little bit. All those things your parents were telling you the whole time, you're just like, oh, okay, I get it. This is disillusionment. Sadly, lots of relationships end in this stage. They're missing that euphoric part of the relationship. It ends. My buddy Dane Joneshill, he's a brilliant songwriter. He wrote a song called We Lie Together about a couple in this stage. And listen to these lyrics. It used to be you thought my faults were funny. We'd laugh at how forgetful I could be. But the last time I forgot about your birthday, you lost the humor for that sort of thing. Sad. That's a couple in the disillusionment stage. If the couple stays together, they move on to misery. The misery stage, also known as the numbness stage. Now, this stage can last a very short time, or it can last years. This is the stage where the couple, where the marriage, is basically like a partnership. Kind of two ships in the night, roommates together. There's no real intimacy in the relationship anymore. In fact, a lot of people say that it's in this stage that they're not sure whether it's better to get a divorce or to stay married. But a lot of people choose on their own convictions to stay married, stick it out until the kids are out of school. Hence the rise in divorce among empty nesters. In this stage, it's very common for people to try to escape their marriage. They can escape their marriage in all kinds of ways. They can focus more on work, focus on the kids, their family, drugs, drinking, gambling. I mean, really, house projects. I had a neighbor once who would do house projects. I mean, like you've never seen. This guy was constantly working on his house. It was exhausting watching him avoid his wife. But listen, this is the stage. It's a fertile ground for affairs to happen. Because what happens when you're in that misery stage or numbness stage? You have no connection with your spouse or very little connection at all. And somebody else comes into the picture. You have that spark again. Remember the euphoric phase, those chemical reactions that only happen with somebody, with that relationship once, that happens. And then all of a sudden we're blinded. We think that, oh, this is the one. This is the one I should be married with. I feel happy again. Affairs can happen. That's what happened to me. And just so we're clear about affairs, an affair doesn't have to be physical. An affair occurs whenever a person other than your spouse is fulfilling a marital need or duty. So affairs can be emotional as well. In fact, I would argue that they're just as common, if not more common, and just as damaging as physical affairs. Sounds pretty bad so far, doesn't it? Well, the next stage, this is the goal to get to. This is the awakening stage. This is when our eyes are open to the reality of what a long-term relationship in marriage looks like. This is the stage when true intimacy and depth can occur. This is the stage when love changes from being just a feeling to being an action and a choice. But listen, no matter what stage your marriage is in, there's good news. It can be better. No matter what stage your marriage is in, it can be better. A marriage is better with God at the center. A marriage is better with God at the center. A marriage is better with God at the center. So if we're going to look at marriage with God at the center, I think it's a good idea that we open up the Bible and take a look at that. If you have a Bible, take it out. We're going to be starting in Genesis 2. If you don't have a Bible, there's probably one on your device, on your phone. You can pull that up. If you'd like to grab the Bible in front of you, there's one in the seat back pocket. Listen, if you don't have a paper Bible at home, take this Bible with you. It's our gift to you. We believe that every home should have a legitimate Bible. Okay. Genesis 2. So God has just created the world, everything in it, right? The heavens, the earth. He's created the oceans, the land, the animals. As our four-year-old Ford said in the Christmas video, the two little donkeys and that big bird. Okay? He's created everything. All right. But he hasn't created a woman yet. So in verse 18, he says, Now before we get caught up on the word helper, a more accurate translation would be companion. I just want to make it, put it out there that in God's eyes, man, woman, completely equal in God's eyes, of equal value. Now in a marriage, we have different strengths, different weaknesses, both of us in different roles. But as far as having value in God's eyes and in the marriage, equally valuable. So God makes a woman. He puts Adam to sleep, makes Eve, and I can picture it, right? Like if this were a movie that we're jumping down to verse 29. If this were a movie, I could see Adam opening his eyes. The song At Last by Etta James is rolling in the background. He his partner for the first time. He's excited. He's excited about this. Of course, this is before the fall. They were naked and unashamed, so that probably helped as well. It goes on to say, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. They shall become one flesh. Now, when this was written, the term shall leave his father and mother, I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. Because at the time, families would have family businesses. And so a son who is of marrying age would be married, and they would go live and work on the family business, whether a farmer or something else. So really what this is saying here is that the man shall prioritize his spouse. Prioritize. So the first thing, if we want a God-centered marriage, prioritize your spouse. This is something that I struggled with early on, especially in our marriage, but continue to struggle with it. I would prioritize my parents over my wife. I wouldn't even know I was doing it. My wife knew, but I did not know that I was doing it. But it's important to prioritize your spouse over your parents. This can be incredibly hard for younger people. They've just grown up in the house with their parents. Their parents have been the ones guiding them, leading them, telling them right from wrong, supporting them. And then all of a sudden, they're on a team with someone their own age who barely knows as much as they do. And they're supposed to be the team, the unit together. It's hard. It's hard to prioritize your spouse. But it's a good thing to do if you want a God-centered marriage. I had a friend once who was telling me about how when she was newly married in her younger 20s, she sat down at the table with her new husband and her father, and her father said, let's say your new husband and I have a disagreement. Whose side are you going to be on? And she said, well, my husband's. He said, good. And he said, okay, let's say your husband and I have a disagreement and you know I'm right. Now whose side are you on? And she grabbed her husband's hand and said, my husband's. You guys are a team. You're a unit together. If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to love your spouse. Love your spouse. If we want to know what love looks like, we're its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to love your spouse unconditionally. During the time when our marriage was in a really dark place, I was leading a secret life. Lisa had gone back to church. She loved me unconditionally. And it's funny sometimes when we talk to couples and we say, okay, you know, you guys got to try. You got to, you know, put in your best. You got to love them as if they're doing the right things. And somebody, one of the people will say, all right, I'll do everything I can for six months. That's a condition. You're putting a condition on your love. God loves us unconditionally. Now, I should mention, or I want to mention, that abuse has no business being in marriage at all. If you're in an abusive relationship, seek professional help and guidance and get to a safe place. There's no reason that abuse should be there. If you want to have a God-centered marriage, you need to serve your spouse. Serve your can be a tough thing to do. Aaron Keyes, who's the founder of the 10,000 Fathers Worship School that I attended, has a great quote. And he says, everyone loves being a servant until they're treated like one. And it's true. Everyone loves being a servant until they're treated like one. Servants are not treated well. Jesus is washing feet. Like, do you know how nasty feet were? Like, they're nasty now. Like, think about how nasty they were like back then. Like, disgusting. Dirt, grime, everything on their feet. So to wash someone's feet was really a humbling thing. And for Jesus, our Lord and Savior, to do it, set a good example. While I was being terrible to my wife during that time, she would serve me by literally choosing to wake up early in the morning and make me an omelet before work, which is not the sort of thing that she would necessarily do earlier in our marriage. If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to forgive your spouse. Forgive your spouse. Ephesians 4, verse 32. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. If you fully understand the amount of what you've been forgiven of, you need to turn around and do that to your spouse. And it's a constant thing, forgiveness. It's not a one-time thing. I felt forgiveness almost immediately or a part of it when my wife said, I love you, we can make it through this. I later went to church with her and three months later gave my life to Christ. We have a thing in our home that helps us is that we actually ask for each other's forgiveness. Not just say, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. But we say, will you forgive me? If you want a God-centered marriage, you need to forgive your spouse. And the last one on the list here, if you want a God-centered marriage, you need to grow with your spouse. Grow with your spouse. 1 Thessalonians 5.11. not tend to it, and expect great results. Nobody would build a house, never maintain it, and expect it to stay in new condition. Just like a garden or a house, we need to constantly work on our marriages and grow in our marriages. If you notice at all there today, I did not mention a passage in Ephesians, which is Ephesians 5, which is the longest passage of Scripture on marriage in the Bible. The reason I didn't mention it today is because my wife and I are starting a marriage small group here at Grace. We're starting on February 9th, and four o'clock in the afternoon, childcare provided, and it's free to attend, the more the merrier. That study that we're going to do is called Love and Respect. We've gone through it four times. We've taught it once, and it's been incredibly beneficial each time. And so I have a little promo for you or significant other, you feel unloved at that moment or disrespected. 83% of the men say they feel disrespected. 72% of the women say they feel unloved. Now, it's very important that I say this. We all need love and respect equally. But the felt need during conflict is as different as pink is from blue, night is from day, male is from female. If you were to ask us to pinpoint one moment where your relationship with one another did a 180, it's absolutely when we did the love and respect. If we knew ahead of time that there was something available like this, it would have made those first 12, 13 years of our marriage so much smoother I think. a workbook for you. The workbook provides additional information that will enable you to apply this simple message. We include discussion questions, stories to read and discuss. There's a couple called Missy and Stu. A devotional for each session and then there's the pertinent information that will be available to you for quick review and reference. Love and Respect really gives you a lot of insight into this is what men think and this is what women think and this is how they thrive. And that perspective had never been explained to us before, especially in such a comical and easy to understand way. It took a biblical approach to a lot of problems that we have. And when you can apply the Bible to marital problems, it always helps. You get a chance to learn how you think as a male and how your spouse thinks as a female and to understand that those differences in thinking are just that. It's not wrong or right, it's just different. It really helped us to decode who we're married to and that's something that I want to share with everybody. They're gonna give you you the tools. They're going to give you what you need. Now what you do with it is up to you. You can walk out the door and you can throw it all away if you want to, or you can take it and you can make it become a part of who you are and begin to have the marriage that you deserve and the marriage that God wants you to have. The last time we led this study, there were 80 people that showed up to it at our last church. There were some young, some old, some newly married, some that were in hurting situations, but most of the people that came to it were in this awakening stage. The thing is, is that those people knew that it's a strength to work on your marriage, not a weakness. It shows strength, not weakness. So as we close up today, we've been talking about marriage is better with God at the center. Marriage is better with God at the center. One last thought. Make no mistake. God doesn't exist to make your marriage good. Your marriage exists to express the goodness of God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, what an honor it is to be here today to speak about marriage. God, I'm living proof of how miraculous your love is, how you can change us, how the old is gone and the new has come with Jesus at the center of our lives. God, I pray especially for all the marriages here today. Lord, come into them in a powerful way. And God, let us see our spouses as beautiful as you see us. We pray all of this in the matchless name of Jesus. Amen.

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you've been following along, you know that normally I preach, but the past few weeks I haven't been doing that. So it's very good to be back and get to see you guys from up here. It was fun to prepare a message this week, and I'm excited to share that with you. The other thing I'm excited about right now is the Olympics. Who else has been watching every possible minute of Olympic coverage? It's been fantastic. We love it in our house and it's been really special this time around. Lily, our daughter, is eight so she can enjoy it with us. We stay up late and watch it and then we hit pause and then we get up in the morning and we finish and it's just been really, really fun. And for those of you who have been following along, you know that one of the stories of the Olympics so far has been the United States men's gymnastics team. In the all-around competition earlier this week for those who have been hiding under a rock and don't know this I want to set the scene for you. In the men's all-around competition what they do is members of the team, three members of the team, it's a five-man team, participate in all of the events, and then the highest cumulative score wins the medal. They win the gold medal. And going into the event, you know that China and Japan are going to win gold and silver. There's really no one else that can touch them. But the U.S. has a chance to medal, to get the bronze for the first time in 16 years. And so hopes are high. And we are watching this earlier in the week. I think it was maybe Monday or Tuesday. We're watching it and it was so fun. We're so enthusiastic about it. And everyone's doing what they're supposed to do. Everyone's doing their routines like they're supposed to do their routines. They're hitting their prime position. And then it gets to the final event. The final event is the pommel horse, which if you don't know what the pommel horse is, you're not missing much. It's real stupid. I don't know why it's an event. It doesn't make any sense to me. They spin around, and then they're on the ground. Fine. Listen, incredible amount of talent. It's just dumb to watch. That's the final event. And we've got one person who did pommel horse in college. They're never coming back. Sorry. It's the final event. And the Americans have this one guy on their team. And his specialty is the pommel horse. This is the only reason he's on the team. He doesn't participate in anything else. He's only there as a pommel horse assassin. That's his whole job. And he's the last one to go, the last event of the night. And all night, they keep panning over to him, telling him he's coming up. He's the pommel horse guy, and they're showing him, and he's just sitting in the back brooding. He's not looking at anything or anybody. He's totally expressionless. Every now and again you can tell he's mentally going through his routine and he's just sitting there stiff all night. And then he gets up and he does his routine and he nails it. And it was great. There was tears in our house. And listen, a lot of you probably know the story. You probably know who I'm talking about. But if you don't, I want you to picture in your head the hero of American gymnastics and national sport in general. And I want you to picture what you think this athletic hero looks like. Because whatever you're picturing ain't this. It's not that guy. That's not who you had in your head. That guy looks like an NC State grad who's writing code at a startup. That's what he looks like. If he didn't have that medal around his neck, you'd just think he was there for fun, like as a fan. But that's the guy, Steven Nedarosik. That's the guy. And he, the reason I bring him up is he embodies to me what is one of my favorite principles in life, which is this idea that no matter what people see in you, no matter what people say about you, no matter what you might say about yourself, don't try to convince them they're wrong with your words. Just put your head down, do the work, and let the results speak for themselves. Don't worry about what other people say. Don't worry about what other people might think. Just put your head down, control what you can control, do your work, and let the outcome of that work and of that effort speak for itself. And that's what he did. He steps up to the pommel horse, and he takes his glasses off, and he gets real squinty. And Chris Rock, in his commentary, said, don't tell him. He thinks he's doing the rings right now. He can't see nothing. But you're looking at this guy and you're like, this can't be the guy. But he put his head down. He did the work. And he was the guy. The results speak for themselves. I love this principle in life. I think it's such an important one that gets us through a lot of seasons and allows us to accomplish a lot of things. And one of the reasons I love this principle is because it's a very Christian principle. That principle of put your head down, do the work, don't worry about what other people think, just let the results speak for themselves. That's a very biblical principle. As a matter of fact, you can pull that right out of the book of 1 Timothy. So if you have a Bible, I'd love to invite you to turn to 1 Timothy 4, verse 12. It's going to be on the screen. If you have a Bible, if you read the one in front of you, it's the NIV. I learned this verse. It's been an important verse to me for most of my life. If you've ever done any youth ministry, this is a big, important verse. It's on the other side of that wall right there in our fourth and fifth grade classroom. But I memorized it young at a Baptist church in the King's English. So if you don't mind, I'm going to say it like that, but you guys read along. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 4.12, let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example to the believers in word and conversation and charity and spirit and faith and in purity. So a little context for this verse so you understand a little bit more about what's going on and what Paul is saying specifically to Timothy. We're in a series now called 27 where last summer and this summer we took one book a week and we're going through all the books of the New Testament the 27 books of the New Testament last summer in this summer trying to give you a synopsis or a sense of what each book is about so for those who are not super familiar with the Bible maybe it becomes a little bit more approachable because you know what the books are about you know what you're gonna read when you sit down to read it's to raise the biblical literacy of the partnership of grace and our hope is if you know the Bible books are about, you know what you're going to read when you sit down to read it. It's to raise the biblical literacy of the partnership of grace. And our hope is if you know the Bible well, that as we highlight these books, that you see them through fresh eyes and maybe it inspires you to dive back into scripture on your own. This Sunday, we're actually going to cover or talk about, not going to cover, talk about the books of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. Because together, those make up what are referred to as the pastoral epistles. Those are letters, most of Paul's letters were written to churches. To the church in Ephesus, to the church in Galatia, to the church in Thessalonica, and so on and so on. But these books, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, were written to individuals. 1 and 2 Timothy, you can figure out who that was written to. Titus, you know who that was written to. It's written to those men in particular that Paul had left behind and installed essentially as senior pastors over the churches that he had been planting. And so the letters to Timothy are to him as he takes over the church in Ephesus, one of the most impactful churches in early Christendom. Early Christendom may not have survived without the church in Ephesus. And so he installs Timothy as the pastor there, and he writes in these two letters as books of advice, words of advice to a young disciple as he takes over a church. And in that is a lot of wonderful things about what church should be and how it should operate and what the qualifications for the elders should be. We see that in Timothy and in Titus. If you're an elder at the church, you should be very familiar with these books. If you're a believer, you should be very interested in these books. But there was no way to group them together and cover everything in them. But what I thought we could do is pull out this one verse in 1 Timothy 4 and talk about that, because that is a verse that is universally applicable to every Christian. That's not pastoral advice. That's Christian advice. Let no man despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word and conversation and charity charity and spirit and faith and in purity. And word and conversation means the way that you carry yourself, the way that you interact with people. In charity and in spirit, charity is love. It means the way that you love others. In spirit, it's the way that you carry yourself. In purity, it's this pursuit of holiness. So the way that I would sum this up is that Paul is telling Timothy, I know you think you're young. And I know you think that it's going to be difficult for people to listen to you. And trust me, this has been a very encouraging verse for me. Right now, I'm the ripe old age of 43, and I look every bit 46. But when I took the church over, I was 36. And I was worried about this. And this verse brought me comfort. Because Paul says, put your head down, do the work, be an example to those around you in your pursuit of holiness and the way you love others. That's a really simple way to understand it. Put your head down, do the work, and be an example to the believers in the way that you pursue holiness and in the way that you love others. And I believe that this verse applies to all of us equally. That when Paul is telling Timothy to do that, he's telling all Christians for all time to do that. And here's why I think this is true and why I think we need this advice from Paul this morning. Because there's two things about each and every one of you that are here right now or that can hear my voice right now from your home or wherever you're listening further into this week as you catch up. Here's something I know to be true of every single person who can hear me. Two things. The first is we are called and created to live spiritually impactful lives. Every single one of you, no matter how much you know it, no matter how much you admit it to yourself, no matter how comfortable or uncomfortable you are with that. Even if you're here this morning and you wouldn't yet call yourself a believer, you're here to support family, you're here because you're curious, you're here because church is nice, whatever brought you here, I believe that God has a purpose for your life. The Bible teaches that God has a purpose for your life, that you are called to live a spiritually impactful life that matters for all of eternity. Every single one is called to that, whether you realize it or acknowledge it or not. And I know this to be true because in myriad places and myriad ways throughout scripture, the authors emphasize this point. In 1 Corinthians chapters 12 and 13, we see this big long list of spiritual gifts. We're taught about the church as the body of Christ and how every part of the body has a part to play and a job to do, has a responsibility. And we're told that the Holy Spirit actually gifts us upon salvation to play our part, to contribute to God's kingdom. And that's not for pastors. That's not for leaders. That's not for the charismatic. That's not for the people who are bold and out there and in front of you. That's not an instruction for the elite few, for the spiritual Marines. That's not for them. It's for everyone. We are all given gifts. In Ephesians chapter four, those are the gifts of the spirit we see in first Corinthians 12 and 13 and we see again in Romans. But in Ephesians 4, we're told that Christ gives us gifts. That every one of us is gifted to be either an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, a shepherd, or a teacher. That Christ himself imbues us with those gifts to be used in his kingdom to build his kingdom. Every one of us, I'm going to talk about this in a few weeks, every one of us is a kingdom builder of the kingdom of God. And we've been gifted to that end. And if those two things don't convince you, then maybe the verse that I bring up all the time will help you see. Ephesians 2.10, I love to remind you of this verse. It says that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that you might walk in them. It teaches me that my job as a parent to John and Lily is not to craft them into who I want them to be. It's not to mold them into who I think they should be. It's to raise them in such a way that they can identify their good works and walk in those that were prepared for them before time. You, each of you, each and every one of you, it's absolutely true of you that when God knit you in your mother's womb, he knew your story, the gifts that he was going to give you, and the role that he had you to play in his kingdom. He's purposed every single one of you to live a spiritually impactful life, to impact the people around you for Christ. I'm reminded of the verse in Colossians that says that we are led in triumphal procession by Christ and through us will spread the fragrance of the knowledge of God. Each one of us as a believer is designed, created, called, and purposed to live lives that impact the people around us towards Christ. Every single one of us. I know that to be true of you. I know it to be true of you that you are called and created to live a spiritually impactful life. Here's the other thing I know to be true of you. We all doubt our capacity to actually do it. Every single one of us, as I'm up here ranting about your purpose to live a spiritually impactful life, all but the most arrogant and least self-aware of us are thinking to ourselves all the reasons why we can't make an impact, but we can't make that big of an impact. All of us have disqualifying voices in our life that keep us from fully embracing that. Timothy's disqualifying voice was, I might be too young. They might not listen. And Paul says, hey, don't listen to that voice. Put your head down, be an example to the believers in the way that you pursue purity and in the way that you love others. Let the outcome of those actions speak for themselves. As I sit here and tell you, you are called to live a spiritually impactful life. There is no doubt in my mind that all kinds of things are running through your head as to why you can't live a spiritually impactful life as that person over there. Each of you thinks that your counterpart on the other side of the room has a better chance of living a spiritually impactful life than you do, and you're all wrong. We're all called to that, but we all, here's the problem, have in our life these disqualifying voices that we're tempted to listen to. And more often than not, the loudest voice of disqualification is in your own head. The loudest voice that tells you, I really don't have much of a shot at making a difference in God's kingdom. I really am not going to be that impactful in my life. That voice, more often than not, comes from you, not the world. And we think things like maybe when you hear me talk about that, maybe your thought is Timothy's thought. I'm too young. No one will listen to me. I don't have enough experience. I don't have the resume to be spiritually impactful, to impact people towards Christ. Maybe you're on the other end of the spectrum. I'm too old. All my years are behind me. Whatever chance I had to make an impact has passed. I've missed my sweet spot. Now I'm just cruising it to home. There's nothing left for me to do. Maybe you think to yourself, I'm not that articulate. I don't like being in front of people. I'm not winsome. I'm not charismatic. Maybe when I talk about making a spiritual impact, you think, yeah, well, I'm a stay-at-home mom. And my world is so very small right now. And this sermon is for other people. It's not for me. Maybe you would disqualify yourself with your past. Say, yeah, man, you don't know what I've been and what I've done and where I've come from. Ain't nobody listening to me. Maybe you're new to Christianity. Maybe you're not new to Christianity, but you're new to taking it seriously. And so when I open up the Bible and talk about the different books in the Bible, you're not really familiar with them at all. And you're just thinking, I'm just trying to play catch up here, man. I'm not ready to go impact other people. I'm new to this. I don't know. They're going to ask me questions and I'm not going to know the answers. So I can't make an impact yet. I don't know what your disqualifying voice is trying to convince you of to make you step out of the race and not believe about yourself that you were created to live a spiritually impactful life. I don't know what's trying to convince you that you don't have a part to play in building God's kingdom while you're here on earth. But I do know that to our doubts, Paul tells us to put our heads down and pursue holiness. To whatever doubts you have in your head, to whatever your disqualifying voice is from spiritual service, Paul says to that voice, ignore it, put your head down, pursue holiness, love others, and watch what God does. He says to you, Paul says, let no man despise your past. Judge you based on mistakes that you've made before. Put your head down, pursue holiness, love others well, and watch what God does. Let nobody look down on your inexperience. You know the remedy to a past? A pure future. You know the remedy to inexperience? Experience. You know the remedy to thinking that you're too old or you're too young? Get in the ring and watch what God does. We write ourselves off from living spiritually impactful lives for so many reasons. And they're all lies. They're all lies that you tell yourself and that the enemy tells us to disqualify you from service in God's kingdom. And here's a really scary thing that dawned on me as I was preparing this. When we listen to the disqualifying voices, we do harm to those we love the most. Do you understand this? When we allow the voices from within and from without to convince us that we can't really take our faith that seriously because no one takes us seriously and God doesn't really have something he wants me to do and people he wants me to impact. When we believe that, when we fall prey to that and we step out of the ring and we're just coasting through our spiritual lives, we do the most harm to the people we love the most. What would have happened in Ephesus if Timothy had let those voices win? If Timothy had convinced himself that he was too young to be effective, and he stepped into the pulpit with timidity? Would Ephesus have slowly crumbled and dissolved away without leadership? I don't know. But if he was to choose to listen to those disqualifying voices, then he would not have served the people nearly like he needed to. More pointedly, parents, listen to me. If you don't take seriously your call to live a spiritually impactful life, if you let the voices talk you out of putting your head down and pursuing holiness and loving other people well. If you mail in your spiritual life and be content to be slightly above average. I'm good enough to check the box. I'm a good person. I'm going to heaven. My kids are going to heaven. If you just mail it in and go into cruise control for the rest of your life without pursuing God. Who's going to disciple your kids? Who's going to show your kids how to follow Christ? Who's going to model it for your children? If you refuse to put your head down and pursue holiness and love others well and let God in to let him use the gifts that he's given you, if you refuse to engage spiritually and don't take your spiritual health seriously and don't believe that you were placed in the life of your children to impact them towards Christ, if you won't do that for them, who will? Aaron? Children's pastor? Kyle? They get your kids for one hour a week. And let's just be honest about this. That's not even 52 weeks a year, okay? I've seen your church attendance. Let's be generous and call it like 40. They get your kids for 40 hours a year. They're going to disciple a kid in 40 hours a year? You get your kids for 100 hours a week. There is no one in your child's life better postured to love them towards Jesus than you. And when you refuse to engage in your own spiritual growth because the voices talk you out of it, you abscond on your duty to raise your kids in Christ and you thrust it on someone else and we shortchange them. When we choose to believe the disqualifying voices in our life, we hurt the people around us the most. The Bible tells us that marriage is to be a picture that reminds us of the way that Christ sacrificially loves the church. If you don't show your spouse day in and day out how Jesus loves the church by sacrificially loving them, if you're not trying to do that every day, if you're not taking seriously the call to impact your spouse towards Christ and watch God work in them, who's going to do that for you? If you don't take seriously the call in scripture to live a life building God's kingdom, pursuing holiness and loving others well, and letting God do what he will with the gifts, with the people around you? Who's going to be the pastor that your workplace so desperately needs? Who is your coworker going to come to when they need prayer because their mom's in the hospital? Who's going to invite your neighbor to the thing that's going to ignite them spiritually and reengage them with the church? Who's going to work in your circles of influence as only you can to impact people towards Christ? If you choose to allow the voices that disqualify you from Christian service, if you choose to allow them to win, if we don't take seriously this call from Paul to be an example to the believers in word and conversation and charity and spirit and faith and purity, if we don't do that, who's going to step in and do our job for us? We are all called to live spiritually impactful lives. And we must take seriously that call. Now, on the flip side, can you imagine what could happen if we choose to pursue holiness and allow God to use the gifts he's given you. Can you imagine what could happen in your life if you left here and you said, okay, God, listen, I don't know what your plan is for me. I'm not even sure what the gifts you've given me are. I have no idea. But I'm going to put my head down. I'm going to pursue holiness. I'm going to love others well. I'm going to make my life available to you. You use my life to impact the people around me however you want. God, I want to live the rest of my life building your kingdom. What would happen if you left this place and you got on your knees this afternoon, tonight, tomorrow morning, and you said, God, I'm yours. Use me. I don't know to what end. I'm not convinced that I'm going to make any great impact. But I am convinced that I need to live the rest of my life opened up to the possibility that you want to use me in the lives of the people around me. So here, it's yours. I'm going to put my head down. I'm not going to listen to my disqualifying voices. I'm not going to listen to the disqualifying voices of the people around me. I'm going to put my head down. I'm going to do the work. I'm going to pursue holiness. I'm going to be an example to the believers in the way that I love others. And I'm going to trust you with the results and let those speak for themselves. What could happen if we let God in our lives to use the gifts that he's given us? Well, I'll tell you one thing that could happen because we've seen it happen in real time here in this church over the last five or so years. I'm about to just, she probably will never come back to the church. But she's on staff, so she has to. I'm going to embarrass the heck out of Carly. You can leave the room now if you want to, Carly. I don't know how long ago it was that she started singing. Carly was the lady singing right here this morning. I don't know how long ago it was that she started singing, four or five years ago. But her origin story is she was our previous worship pastor's wife, Lisa, was in the restroom on a Sunday morning and heard an angelic voice coming out of a stall and stalked her and said, we need you on the worship team. You should try out. And Carly had to be cajoled. She had to be talked into it. Because she's not big on, she's not the first one to raise her hand and be like, yes, I would like to be in front of others and let them hear my voice every Sunday publicly. That's not her jam. So she had to be talked into it. And she reluctantly agreed. She auditioned. She did well. Let's get you on the team. So she starts coming up and leading worship. And here's the thing. I'm pretty sure that Carly led worship for about two full years before I actually heard her voice. Because it takes, it's true, isn't it? I don't know if you guys have ever thought about this. I've watched it happen whenever we recruit someone new to the team. It's one thing to have a pretty voice and be told that you have a nice voice. It's another thing to sing loudly enough and confidently enough into the microphone in front of other people to be heard above the mix. When there's someone up here singing and you can't hear them, it's not because Cindy doesn't have them turned up loud enough. It's because their Sunday morning voice is a little bit different than their Wednesday night voice. There's people in the room. It takes guts to step into that. But over time and over the years, Carly trusted us with her gift. She started to believe in God's purpose for her life in this area. And she started to trust it to God. And she started to trust it to us. And in the last, I would say, six to eight months, now when Carly leads a song, buddy, she's leading. She's belting. She's letting it rip. And every time she does it, I'm getting emotional right now. Every time she does it, I get emotional. And I get emotional because I think it's so beautiful when a child of God is using their gift from God to do exactly what he gave that gift to them to do. It is so powerful to think about the fact that when she was knit in her mother's womb, God says, I'm going to give this one a voice. And he didn't give her a voice so that she could sing pretty and entertain people. He didn't give her a voice so that she could bring attention to herself. Do you know why he gave her a voice? He gave her a voice so that he could hear it sing praises to him, so that he could hear his daughter sing to him in a way that he enjoyed. And he gave her a voice for his daughter to use to bring his other children into praise before his throne, into his presence. When she sings on Sunday and belts it out and lets it rip, she's using the gift that God gave her for the exact reason he gave it to her, and it's beautiful. And we would never experience it and be led into worship through her and through her gifting if she allowed the disqualifying voices to talk her out of it when she auditioned. If she allowed the disqualifying voice in her head to talk her out of it in the early years as she was getting her feet wet. And so we see what can happen in real time when we say, God, I don't know what you have for me and I don't know what my purpose is here, but I'm going to make my gifts available for you to use however you want to use them. In the meantime, I'm going to be an example to the believers in the way that I pursue you and in the way that I love others. Can you imagine what a church could look like if everyone in that church prayed that prayer and said, God, I don't know what you have for me to do. I don't even know how you've gifted me to do it. But I'm going to pursue you and I'm going to love others and whatever impact you want me to have, God, I'm ready to have it. Can you imagine what could happen with a church full of people who believe that? I'll tell you this. I'd like to find out. Let's pray. Father, we love you. Thank you for imbuing our lives with purpose that's bigger than us. Thank you for always encouraging us to put our heads down and to trust you with the gifts that you've given us. Thank you for being a steady voice in our life that tells us we don't have to believe the disqualifying things about ourselves. God, I pray that every person in here, whether it's today or five years from now, would allow you to open their eyes to the fact that you've called and created them to live spiritually impactful lives. Would those of us who've just been cruising, not taking things seriously, not being engaged, God, would we re-engage with you? Would we make disciples of our children? Would we be a pastor to our communities? Show us how you can use us if we simply get our doubts and our fears and our hesitancies out of the way and let you begin to work. God, I pray that you would bring it about. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you've been following along, you know that normally I preach, but the past few weeks I haven't been doing that. So it's very good to be back and get to see you guys from up here. It was fun to prepare a message this week, and I'm excited to share that with you. The other thing I'm excited about right now is the Olympics. Who else has been watching every possible minute of Olympic coverage? It's been fantastic. We love it in our house and it's been really special this time around. Lily, our daughter, is eight so she can enjoy it with us. We stay up late and watch it and then we hit pause and then we get up in the morning and we finish and it's just been really, really fun. And for those of you who have been following along, you know that one of the stories of the Olympics so far has been the United States men's gymnastics team. In the all-around competition earlier this week for those who have been hiding under a rock and don't know this I want to set the scene for you. In the men's all-around competition what they do is members of the team, three members of the team, it's a five-man team, participate in all of the events, and then the highest cumulative score wins the medal. They win the gold medal. And going into the event, you know that China and Japan are going to win gold and silver. There's really no one else that can touch them. But the U.S. has a chance to medal, to get the bronze for the first time in 16 years. And so hopes are high. And we are watching this earlier in the week. I think it was maybe Monday or Tuesday. We're watching it and it was so fun. We're so enthusiastic about it. And everyone's doing what they're supposed to do. Everyone's doing their routines like they're supposed to do their routines. They're hitting their prime position. And then it gets to the final event. The final event is the pommel horse, which if you don't know what the pommel horse is, you're not missing much. It's real stupid. I don't know why it's an event. It doesn't make any sense to me. They spin around, and then they're on the ground. Fine. Listen, incredible amount of talent. It's just dumb to watch. That's the final event. And we've got one person who did pommel horse in college. They're never coming back. Sorry. It's the final event. And the Americans have this one guy on their team. And his specialty is the pommel horse. This is the only reason he's on the team. He doesn't participate in anything else. He's only there as a pommel horse assassin. That's his whole job. And he's the last one to go, the last event of the night. And all night, they keep panning over to him, telling him he's coming up. He's the pommel horse guy, and they're showing him, and he's just sitting in the back brooding. He's not looking at anything or anybody. He's totally expressionless. Every now and again you can tell he's mentally going through his routine and he's just sitting there stiff all night. And then he gets up and he does his routine and he nails it. And it was great. There was tears in our house. And listen, a lot of you probably know the story. You probably know who I'm talking about. But if you don't, I want you to picture in your head the hero of American gymnastics and national sport in general. And I want you to picture what you think this athletic hero looks like. Because whatever you're picturing ain't this. It's not that guy. That's not who you had in your head. That guy looks like an NC State grad who's writing code at a startup. That's what he looks like. If he didn't have that medal around his neck, you'd just think he was there for fun, like as a fan. But that's the guy, Steven Nedarosik. That's the guy. And he, the reason I bring him up is he embodies to me what is one of my favorite principles in life, which is this idea that no matter what people see in you, no matter what people say about you, no matter what you might say about yourself, don't try to convince them they're wrong with your words. Just put your head down, do the work, and let the results speak for themselves. Don't worry about what other people say. Don't worry about what other people might think. Just put your head down, control what you can control, do your work, and let the outcome of that work and of that effort speak for itself. And that's what he did. He steps up to the pommel horse, and he takes his glasses off, and he gets real squinty. And Chris Rock, in his commentary, said, don't tell him. He thinks he's doing the rings right now. He can't see nothing. But you're looking at this guy and you're like, this can't be the guy. But he put his head down. He did the work. And he was the guy. The results speak for themselves. I love this principle in life. I think it's such an important one that gets us through a lot of seasons and allows us to accomplish a lot of things. And one of the reasons I love this principle is because it's a very Christian principle. That principle of put your head down, do the work, don't worry about what other people think, just let the results speak for themselves. That's a very biblical principle. As a matter of fact, you can pull that right out of the book of 1 Timothy. So if you have a Bible, I'd love to invite you to turn to 1 Timothy 4, verse 12. It's going to be on the screen. If you have a Bible, if you read the one in front of you, it's the NIV. I learned this verse. It's been an important verse to me for most of my life. If you've ever done any youth ministry, this is a big, important verse. It's on the other side of that wall right there in our fourth and fifth grade classroom. But I memorized it young at a Baptist church in the King's English. So if you don't mind, I'm going to say it like that, but you guys read along. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 4.12, let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example to the believers in word and conversation and charity and spirit and faith and in purity. So a little context for this verse so you understand a little bit more about what's going on and what Paul is saying specifically to Timothy. We're in a series now called 27 where last summer and this summer we took one book a week and we're going through all the books of the New Testament the 27 books of the New Testament last summer in this summer trying to give you a synopsis or a sense of what each book is about so for those who are not super familiar with the Bible maybe it becomes a little bit more approachable because you know what the books are about you know what you're gonna read when you sit down to read it's to raise the biblical literacy of the partnership of grace and our hope is if you know the Bible books are about, you know what you're going to read when you sit down to read it. It's to raise the biblical literacy of the partnership of grace. And our hope is if you know the Bible well, that as we highlight these books, that you see them through fresh eyes and maybe it inspires you to dive back into scripture on your own. This Sunday, we're actually going to cover or talk about, not going to cover, talk about the books of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. Because together, those make up what are referred to as the pastoral epistles. Those are letters, most of Paul's letters were written to churches. To the church in Ephesus, to the church in Galatia, to the church in Thessalonica, and so on and so on. But these books, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, were written to individuals. 1 and 2 Timothy, you can figure out who that was written to. Titus, you know who that was written to. It's written to those men in particular that Paul had left behind and installed essentially as senior pastors over the churches that he had been planting. And so the letters to Timothy are to him as he takes over the church in Ephesus, one of the most impactful churches in early Christendom. Early Christendom may not have survived without the church in Ephesus. And so he installs Timothy as the pastor there, and he writes in these two letters as books of advice, words of advice to a young disciple as he takes over a church. And in that is a lot of wonderful things about what church should be and how it should operate and what the qualifications for the elders should be. We see that in Timothy and in Titus. If you're an elder at the church, you should be very familiar with these books. If you're a believer, you should be very interested in these books. But there was no way to group them together and cover everything in them. But what I thought we could do is pull out this one verse in 1 Timothy 4 and talk about that, because that is a verse that is universally applicable to every Christian. That's not pastoral advice. That's Christian advice. Let no man despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word and conversation and charity charity and spirit and faith and in purity. And word and conversation means the way that you carry yourself, the way that you interact with people. In charity and in spirit, charity is love. It means the way that you love others. In spirit, it's the way that you carry yourself. In purity, it's this pursuit of holiness. So the way that I would sum this up is that Paul is telling Timothy, I know you think you're young. And I know you think that it's going to be difficult for people to listen to you. And trust me, this has been a very encouraging verse for me. Right now, I'm the ripe old age of 43, and I look every bit 46. But when I took the church over, I was 36. And I was worried about this. And this verse brought me comfort. Because Paul says, put your head down, do the work, be an example to those around you in your pursuit of holiness and the way you love others. That's a really simple way to understand it. Put your head down, do the work, and be an example to the believers in the way that you pursue holiness and in the way that you love others. And I believe that this verse applies to all of us equally. That when Paul is telling Timothy to do that, he's telling all Christians for all time to do that. And here's why I think this is true and why I think we need this advice from Paul this morning. Because there's two things about each and every one of you that are here right now or that can hear my voice right now from your home or wherever you're listening further into this week as you catch up. Here's something I know to be true of every single person who can hear me. Two things. The first is we are called and created to live spiritually impactful lives. Every single one of you, no matter how much you know it, no matter how much you admit it to yourself, no matter how comfortable or uncomfortable you are with that. Even if you're here this morning and you wouldn't yet call yourself a believer, you're here to support family, you're here because you're curious, you're here because church is nice, whatever brought you here, I believe that God has a purpose for your life. The Bible teaches that God has a purpose for your life, that you are called to live a spiritually impactful life that matters for all of eternity. Every single one is called to that, whether you realize it or acknowledge it or not. And I know this to be true because in myriad places and myriad ways throughout scripture, the authors emphasize this point. In 1 Corinthians chapters 12 and 13, we see this big long list of spiritual gifts. We're taught about the church as the body of Christ and how every part of the body has a part to play and a job to do, has a responsibility. And we're told that the Holy Spirit actually gifts us upon salvation to play our part, to contribute to God's kingdom. And that's not for pastors. That's not for leaders. That's not for the charismatic. That's not for the people who are bold and out there and in front of you. That's not an instruction for the elite few, for the spiritual Marines. That's not for them. It's for everyone. We are all given gifts. In Ephesians chapter four, those are the gifts of the spirit we see in first Corinthians 12 and 13 and we see again in Romans. But in Ephesians 4, we're told that Christ gives us gifts. That every one of us is gifted to be either an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, a shepherd, or a teacher. That Christ himself imbues us with those gifts to be used in his kingdom to build his kingdom. Every one of us, I'm going to talk about this in a few weeks, every one of us is a kingdom builder of the kingdom of God. And we've been gifted to that end. And if those two things don't convince you, then maybe the verse that I bring up all the time will help you see. Ephesians 2.10, I love to remind you of this verse. It says that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that you might walk in them. It teaches me that my job as a parent to John and Lily is not to craft them into who I want them to be. It's not to mold them into who I think they should be. It's to raise them in such a way that they can identify their good works and walk in those that were prepared for them before time. You, each of you, each and every one of you, it's absolutely true of you that when God knit you in your mother's womb, he knew your story, the gifts that he was going to give you, and the role that he had you to play in his kingdom. He's purposed every single one of you to live a spiritually impactful life, to impact the people around you for Christ. I'm reminded of the verse in Colossians that says that we are led in triumphal procession by Christ and through us will spread the fragrance of the knowledge of God. Each one of us as a believer is designed, created, called, and purposed to live lives that impact the people around us towards Christ. Every single one of us. I know that to be true of you. I know it to be true of you that you are called and created to live a spiritually impactful life. Here's the other thing I know to be true of you. We all doubt our capacity to actually do it. Every single one of us, as I'm up here ranting about your purpose to live a spiritually impactful life, all but the most arrogant and least self-aware of us are thinking to ourselves all the reasons why we can't make an impact, but we can't make that big of an impact. All of us have disqualifying voices in our life that keep us from fully embracing that. Timothy's disqualifying voice was, I might be too young. They might not listen. And Paul says, hey, don't listen to that voice. Put your head down, be an example to the believers in the way that you pursue purity and in the way that you love others. Let the outcome of those actions speak for themselves. As I sit here and tell you, you are called to live a spiritually impactful life. There is no doubt in my mind that all kinds of things are running through your head as to why you can't live a spiritually impactful life as that person over there. Each of you thinks that your counterpart on the other side of the room has a better chance of living a spiritually impactful life than you do, and you're all wrong. We're all called to that, but we all, here's the problem, have in our life these disqualifying voices that we're tempted to listen to. And more often than not, the loudest voice of disqualification is in your own head. The loudest voice that tells you, I really don't have much of a shot at making a difference in God's kingdom. I really am not going to be that impactful in my life. That voice, more often than not, comes from you, not the world. And we think things like maybe when you hear me talk about that, maybe your thought is Timothy's thought. I'm too young. No one will listen to me. I don't have enough experience. I don't have the resume to be spiritually impactful, to impact people towards Christ. Maybe you're on the other end of the spectrum. I'm too old. All my years are behind me. Whatever chance I had to make an impact has passed. I've missed my sweet spot. Now I'm just cruising it to home. There's nothing left for me to do. Maybe you think to yourself, I'm not that articulate. I don't like being in front of people. I'm not winsome. I'm not charismatic. Maybe when I talk about making a spiritual impact, you think, yeah, well, I'm a stay-at-home mom. And my world is so very small right now. And this sermon is for other people. It's not for me. Maybe you would disqualify yourself with your past. Say, yeah, man, you don't know what I've been and what I've done and where I've come from. Ain't nobody listening to me. Maybe you're new to Christianity. Maybe you're not new to Christianity, but you're new to taking it seriously. And so when I open up the Bible and talk about the different books in the Bible, you're not really familiar with them at all. And you're just thinking, I'm just trying to play catch up here, man. I'm not ready to go impact other people. I'm new to this. I don't know. They're going to ask me questions and I'm not going to know the answers. So I can't make an impact yet. I don't know what your disqualifying voice is trying to convince you of to make you step out of the race and not believe about yourself that you were created to live a spiritually impactful life. I don't know what's trying to convince you that you don't have a part to play in building God's kingdom while you're here on earth. But I do know that to our doubts, Paul tells us to put our heads down and pursue holiness. To whatever doubts you have in your head, to whatever your disqualifying voice is from spiritual service, Paul says to that voice, ignore it, put your head down, pursue holiness, love others, and watch what God does. He says to you, Paul says, let no man despise your past. Judge you based on mistakes that you've made before. Put your head down, pursue holiness, love others well, and watch what God does. Let nobody look down on your inexperience. You know the remedy to a past? A pure future. You know the remedy to inexperience? Experience. You know the remedy to thinking that you're too old or you're too young? Get in the ring and watch what God does. We write ourselves off from living spiritually impactful lives for so many reasons. And they're all lies. They're all lies that you tell yourself and that the enemy tells us to disqualify you from service in God's kingdom. And here's a really scary thing that dawned on me as I was preparing this. When we listen to the disqualifying voices, we do harm to those we love the most. Do you understand this? When we allow the voices from within and from without to convince us that we can't really take our faith that seriously because no one takes us seriously and God doesn't really have something he wants me to do and people he wants me to impact. When we believe that, when we fall prey to that and we step out of the ring and we're just coasting through our spiritual lives, we do the most harm to the people we love the most. What would have happened in Ephesus if Timothy had let those voices win? If Timothy had convinced himself that he was too young to be effective, and he stepped into the pulpit with timidity? Would Ephesus have slowly crumbled and dissolved away without leadership? I don't know. But if he was to choose to listen to those disqualifying voices, then he would not have served the people nearly like he needed to. More pointedly, parents, listen to me. If you don't take seriously your call to live a spiritually impactful life, if you let the voices talk you out of putting your head down and pursuing holiness and loving other people well. If you mail in your spiritual life and be content to be slightly above average. I'm good enough to check the box. I'm a good person. I'm going to heaven. My kids are going to heaven. If you just mail it in and go into cruise control for the rest of your life without pursuing God. Who's going to disciple your kids? Who's going to show your kids how to follow Christ? Who's going to model it for your children? If you refuse to put your head down and pursue holiness and love others well and let God in to let him use the gifts that he's given you, if you refuse to engage spiritually and don't take your spiritual health seriously and don't believe that you were placed in the life of your children to impact them towards Christ, if you won't do that for them, who will? Aaron? Children's pastor? Kyle? They get your kids for one hour a week. And let's just be honest about this. That's not even 52 weeks a year, okay? I've seen your church attendance. Let's be generous and call it like 40. They get your kids for 40 hours a year. They're going to disciple a kid in 40 hours a year? You get your kids for 100 hours a week. There is no one in your child's life better postured to love them towards Jesus than you. And when you refuse to engage in your own spiritual growth because the voices talk you out of it, you abscond on your duty to raise your kids in Christ and you thrust it on someone else and we shortchange them. When we choose to believe the disqualifying voices in our life, we hurt the people around us the most. The Bible tells us that marriage is to be a picture that reminds us of the way that Christ sacrificially loves the church. If you don't show your spouse day in and day out how Jesus loves the church by sacrificially loving them, if you're not trying to do that every day, if you're not taking seriously the call to impact your spouse towards Christ and watch God work in them, who's going to do that for you? If you don't take seriously the call in scripture to live a life building God's kingdom, pursuing holiness and loving others well, and letting God do what he will with the gifts, with the people around you? Who's going to be the pastor that your workplace so desperately needs? Who is your coworker going to come to when they need prayer because their mom's in the hospital? Who's going to invite your neighbor to the thing that's going to ignite them spiritually and reengage them with the church? Who's going to work in your circles of influence as only you can to impact people towards Christ? If you choose to allow the voices that disqualify you from Christian service, if you choose to allow them to win, if we don't take seriously this call from Paul to be an example to the believers in word and conversation and charity and spirit and faith and purity, if we don't do that, who's going to step in and do our job for us? We are all called to live spiritually impactful lives. And we must take seriously that call. Now, on the flip side, can you imagine what could happen if we choose to pursue holiness and allow God to use the gifts he's given you. Can you imagine what could happen in your life if you left here and you said, okay, God, listen, I don't know what your plan is for me. I'm not even sure what the gifts you've given me are. I have no idea. But I'm going to put my head down. I'm going to pursue holiness. I'm going to love others well. I'm going to make my life available to you. You use my life to impact the people around me however you want. God, I want to live the rest of my life building your kingdom. What would happen if you left this place and you got on your knees this afternoon, tonight, tomorrow morning, and you said, God, I'm yours. Use me. I don't know to what end. I'm not convinced that I'm going to make any great impact. But I am convinced that I need to live the rest of my life opened up to the possibility that you want to use me in the lives of the people around me. So here, it's yours. I'm going to put my head down. I'm not going to listen to my disqualifying voices. I'm not going to listen to the disqualifying voices of the people around me. I'm going to put my head down. I'm going to do the work. I'm going to pursue holiness. I'm going to be an example to the believers in the way that I love others. And I'm going to trust you with the results and let those speak for themselves. What could happen if we let God in our lives to use the gifts that he's given us? Well, I'll tell you one thing that could happen because we've seen it happen in real time here in this church over the last five or so years. I'm about to just, she probably will never come back to the church. But she's on staff, so she has to. I'm going to embarrass the heck out of Carly. You can leave the room now if you want to, Carly. I don't know how long ago it was that she started singing. Carly was the lady singing right here this morning. I don't know how long ago it was that she started singing, four or five years ago. But her origin story is she was our previous worship pastor's wife, Lisa, was in the restroom on a Sunday morning and heard an angelic voice coming out of a stall and stalked her and said, we need you on the worship team. You should try out. And Carly had to be cajoled. She had to be talked into it. Because she's not big on, she's not the first one to raise her hand and be like, yes, I would like to be in front of others and let them hear my voice every Sunday publicly. That's not her jam. So she had to be talked into it. And she reluctantly agreed. She auditioned. She did well. Let's get you on the team. So she starts coming up and leading worship. And here's the thing. I'm pretty sure that Carly led worship for about two full years before I actually heard her voice. Because it takes, it's true, isn't it? I don't know if you guys have ever thought about this. I've watched it happen whenever we recruit someone new to the team. It's one thing to have a pretty voice and be told that you have a nice voice. It's another thing to sing loudly enough and confidently enough into the microphone in front of other people to be heard above the mix. When there's someone up here singing and you can't hear them, it's not because Cindy doesn't have them turned up loud enough. It's because their Sunday morning voice is a little bit different than their Wednesday night voice. There's people in the room. It takes guts to step into that. But over time and over the years, Carly trusted us with her gift. She started to believe in God's purpose for her life in this area. And she started to trust it to God. And she started to trust it to us. And in the last, I would say, six to eight months, now when Carly leads a song, buddy, she's leading. She's belting. She's letting it rip. And every time she does it, I'm getting emotional right now. Every time she does it, I get emotional. And I get emotional because I think it's so beautiful when a child of God is using their gift from God to do exactly what he gave that gift to them to do. It is so powerful to think about the fact that when she was knit in her mother's womb, God says, I'm going to give this one a voice. And he didn't give her a voice so that she could sing pretty and entertain people. He didn't give her a voice so that she could bring attention to herself. Do you know why he gave her a voice? He gave her a voice so that he could hear it sing praises to him, so that he could hear his daughter sing to him in a way that he enjoyed. And he gave her a voice for his daughter to use to bring his other children into praise before his throne, into his presence. When she sings on Sunday and belts it out and lets it rip, she's using the gift that God gave her for the exact reason he gave it to her, and it's beautiful. And we would never experience it and be led into worship through her and through her gifting if she allowed the disqualifying voices to talk her out of it when she auditioned. If she allowed the disqualifying voice in her head to talk her out of it in the early years as she was getting her feet wet. And so we see what can happen in real time when we say, God, I don't know what you have for me and I don't know what my purpose is here, but I'm going to make my gifts available for you to use however you want to use them. In the meantime, I'm going to be an example to the believers in the way that I pursue you and in the way that I love others. Can you imagine what a church could look like if everyone in that church prayed that prayer and said, God, I don't know what you have for me to do. I don't even know how you've gifted me to do it. But I'm going to pursue you and I'm going to love others and whatever impact you want me to have, God, I'm ready to have it. Can you imagine what could happen with a church full of people who believe that? I'll tell you this. I'd like to find out. Let's pray. Father, we love you. Thank you for imbuing our lives with purpose that's bigger than us. Thank you for always encouraging us to put our heads down and to trust you with the gifts that you've given us. Thank you for being a steady voice in our life that tells us we don't have to believe the disqualifying things about ourselves. God, I pray that every person in here, whether it's today or five years from now, would allow you to open their eyes to the fact that you've called and created them to live spiritually impactful lives. Would those of us who've just been cruising, not taking things seriously, not being engaged, God, would we re-engage with you? Would we make disciples of our children? Would we be a pastor to our communities? Show us how you can use us if we simply get our doubts and our fears and our hesitancies out of the way and let you begin to work. God, I pray that you would bring it about. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you've been following along, you know that normally I preach, but the past few weeks I haven't been doing that. So it's very good to be back and get to see you guys from up here. It was fun to prepare a message this week, and I'm excited to share that with you. The other thing I'm excited about right now is the Olympics. Who else has been watching every possible minute of Olympic coverage? It's been fantastic. We love it in our house and it's been really special this time around. Lily, our daughter, is eight so she can enjoy it with us. We stay up late and watch it and then we hit pause and then we get up in the morning and we finish and it's just been really, really fun. And for those of you who have been following along, you know that one of the stories of the Olympics so far has been the United States men's gymnastics team. In the all-around competition earlier this week for those who have been hiding under a rock and don't know this I want to set the scene for you. In the men's all-around competition what they do is members of the team, three members of the team, it's a five-man team, participate in all of the events, and then the highest cumulative score wins the medal. They win the gold medal. And going into the event, you know that China and Japan are going to win gold and silver. There's really no one else that can touch them. But the U.S. has a chance to medal, to get the bronze for the first time in 16 years. And so hopes are high. And we are watching this earlier in the week. I think it was maybe Monday or Tuesday. We're watching it and it was so fun. We're so enthusiastic about it. And everyone's doing what they're supposed to do. Everyone's doing their routines like they're supposed to do their routines. They're hitting their prime position. And then it gets to the final event. The final event is the pommel horse, which if you don't know what the pommel horse is, you're not missing much. It's real stupid. I don't know why it's an event. It doesn't make any sense to me. They spin around, and then they're on the ground. Fine. Listen, incredible amount of talent. It's just dumb to watch. That's the final event. And we've got one person who did pommel horse in college. They're never coming back. Sorry. It's the final event. And the Americans have this one guy on their team. And his specialty is the pommel horse. This is the only reason he's on the team. He doesn't participate in anything else. He's only there as a pommel horse assassin. That's his whole job. And he's the last one to go, the last event of the night. And all night, they keep panning over to him, telling him he's coming up. He's the pommel horse guy, and they're showing him, and he's just sitting in the back brooding. He's not looking at anything or anybody. He's totally expressionless. Every now and again you can tell he's mentally going through his routine and he's just sitting there stiff all night. And then he gets up and he does his routine and he nails it. And it was great. There was tears in our house. And listen, a lot of you probably know the story. You probably know who I'm talking about. But if you don't, I want you to picture in your head the hero of American gymnastics and national sport in general. And I want you to picture what you think this athletic hero looks like. Because whatever you're picturing ain't this. It's not that guy. That's not who you had in your head. That guy looks like an NC State grad who's writing code at a startup. That's what he looks like. If he didn't have that medal around his neck, you'd just think he was there for fun, like as a fan. But that's the guy, Steven Nedarosik. That's the guy. And he, the reason I bring him up is he embodies to me what is one of my favorite principles in life, which is this idea that no matter what people see in you, no matter what people say about you, no matter what you might say about yourself, don't try to convince them they're wrong with your words. Just put your head down, do the work, and let the results speak for themselves. Don't worry about what other people say. Don't worry about what other people might think. Just put your head down, control what you can control, do your work, and let the outcome of that work and of that effort speak for itself. And that's what he did. He steps up to the pommel horse, and he takes his glasses off, and he gets real squinty. And Chris Rock, in his commentary, said, don't tell him. He thinks he's doing the rings right now. He can't see nothing. But you're looking at this guy and you're like, this can't be the guy. But he put his head down. He did the work. And he was the guy. The results speak for themselves. I love this principle in life. I think it's such an important one that gets us through a lot of seasons and allows us to accomplish a lot of things. And one of the reasons I love this principle is because it's a very Christian principle. That principle of put your head down, do the work, don't worry about what other people think, just let the results speak for themselves. That's a very biblical principle. As a matter of fact, you can pull that right out of the book of 1 Timothy. So if you have a Bible, I'd love to invite you to turn to 1 Timothy 4, verse 12. It's going to be on the screen. If you have a Bible, if you read the one in front of you, it's the NIV. I learned this verse. It's been an important verse to me for most of my life. If you've ever done any youth ministry, this is a big, important verse. It's on the other side of that wall right there in our fourth and fifth grade classroom. But I memorized it young at a Baptist church in the King's English. So if you don't mind, I'm going to say it like that, but you guys read along. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 4.12, let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example to the believers in word and conversation and charity and spirit and faith and in purity. So a little context for this verse so you understand a little bit more about what's going on and what Paul is saying specifically to Timothy. We're in a series now called 27 where last summer and this summer we took one book a week and we're going through all the books of the New Testament the 27 books of the New Testament last summer in this summer trying to give you a synopsis or a sense of what each book is about so for those who are not super familiar with the Bible maybe it becomes a little bit more approachable because you know what the books are about you know what you're gonna read when you sit down to read it's to raise the biblical literacy of the partnership of grace and our hope is if you know the Bible books are about, you know what you're going to read when you sit down to read it. It's to raise the biblical literacy of the partnership of grace. And our hope is if you know the Bible well, that as we highlight these books, that you see them through fresh eyes and maybe it inspires you to dive back into scripture on your own. This Sunday, we're actually going to cover or talk about, not going to cover, talk about the books of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. Because together, those make up what are referred to as the pastoral epistles. Those are letters, most of Paul's letters were written to churches. To the church in Ephesus, to the church in Galatia, to the church in Thessalonica, and so on and so on. But these books, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, were written to individuals. 1 and 2 Timothy, you can figure out who that was written to. Titus, you know who that was written to. It's written to those men in particular that Paul had left behind and installed essentially as senior pastors over the churches that he had been planting. And so the letters to Timothy are to him as he takes over the church in Ephesus, one of the most impactful churches in early Christendom. Early Christendom may not have survived without the church in Ephesus. And so he installs Timothy as the pastor there, and he writes in these two letters as books of advice, words of advice to a young disciple as he takes over a church. And in that is a lot of wonderful things about what church should be and how it should operate and what the qualifications for the elders should be. We see that in Timothy and in Titus. If you're an elder at the church, you should be very familiar with these books. If you're a believer, you should be very interested in these books. But there was no way to group them together and cover everything in them. But what I thought we could do is pull out this one verse in 1 Timothy 4 and talk about that, because that is a verse that is universally applicable to every Christian. That's not pastoral advice. That's Christian advice. Let no man despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word and conversation and charity charity and spirit and faith and in purity. And word and conversation means the way that you carry yourself, the way that you interact with people. In charity and in spirit, charity is love. It means the way that you love others. In spirit, it's the way that you carry yourself. In purity, it's this pursuit of holiness. So the way that I would sum this up is that Paul is telling Timothy, I know you think you're young. And I know you think that it's going to be difficult for people to listen to you. And trust me, this has been a very encouraging verse for me. Right now, I'm the ripe old age of 43, and I look every bit 46. But when I took the church over, I was 36. And I was worried about this. And this verse brought me comfort. Because Paul says, put your head down, do the work, be an example to those around you in your pursuit of holiness and the way you love others. That's a really simple way to understand it. Put your head down, do the work, and be an example to the believers in the way that you pursue holiness and in the way that you love others. And I believe that this verse applies to all of us equally. That when Paul is telling Timothy to do that, he's telling all Christians for all time to do that. And here's why I think this is true and why I think we need this advice from Paul this morning. Because there's two things about each and every one of you that are here right now or that can hear my voice right now from your home or wherever you're listening further into this week as you catch up. Here's something I know to be true of every single person who can hear me. Two things. The first is we are called and created to live spiritually impactful lives. Every single one of you, no matter how much you know it, no matter how much you admit it to yourself, no matter how comfortable or uncomfortable you are with that. Even if you're here this morning and you wouldn't yet call yourself a believer, you're here to support family, you're here because you're curious, you're here because church is nice, whatever brought you here, I believe that God has a purpose for your life. The Bible teaches that God has a purpose for your life, that you are called to live a spiritually impactful life that matters for all of eternity. Every single one is called to that, whether you realize it or acknowledge it or not. And I know this to be true because in myriad places and myriad ways throughout scripture, the authors emphasize this point. In 1 Corinthians chapters 12 and 13, we see this big long list of spiritual gifts. We're taught about the church as the body of Christ and how every part of the body has a part to play and a job to do, has a responsibility. And we're told that the Holy Spirit actually gifts us upon salvation to play our part, to contribute to God's kingdom. And that's not for pastors. That's not for leaders. That's not for the charismatic. That's not for the people who are bold and out there and in front of you. That's not an instruction for the elite few, for the spiritual Marines. That's not for them. It's for everyone. We are all given gifts. In Ephesians chapter four, those are the gifts of the spirit we see in first Corinthians 12 and 13 and we see again in Romans. But in Ephesians 4, we're told that Christ gives us gifts. That every one of us is gifted to be either an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, a shepherd, or a teacher. That Christ himself imbues us with those gifts to be used in his kingdom to build his kingdom. Every one of us, I'm going to talk about this in a few weeks, every one of us is a kingdom builder of the kingdom of God. And we've been gifted to that end. And if those two things don't convince you, then maybe the verse that I bring up all the time will help you see. Ephesians 2.10, I love to remind you of this verse. It says that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that you might walk in them. It teaches me that my job as a parent to John and Lily is not to craft them into who I want them to be. It's not to mold them into who I think they should be. It's to raise them in such a way that they can identify their good works and walk in those that were prepared for them before time. You, each of you, each and every one of you, it's absolutely true of you that when God knit you in your mother's womb, he knew your story, the gifts that he was going to give you, and the role that he had you to play in his kingdom. He's purposed every single one of you to live a spiritually impactful life, to impact the people around you for Christ. I'm reminded of the verse in Colossians that says that we are led in triumphal procession by Christ and through us will spread the fragrance of the knowledge of God. Each one of us as a believer is designed, created, called, and purposed to live lives that impact the people around us towards Christ. Every single one of us. I know that to be true of you. I know it to be true of you that you are called and created to live a spiritually impactful life. Here's the other thing I know to be true of you. We all doubt our capacity to actually do it. Every single one of us, as I'm up here ranting about your purpose to live a spiritually impactful life, all but the most arrogant and least self-aware of us are thinking to ourselves all the reasons why we can't make an impact, but we can't make that big of an impact. All of us have disqualifying voices in our life that keep us from fully embracing that. Timothy's disqualifying voice was, I might be too young. They might not listen. And Paul says, hey, don't listen to that voice. Put your head down, be an example to the believers in the way that you pursue purity and in the way that you love others. Let the outcome of those actions speak for themselves. As I sit here and tell you, you are called to live a spiritually impactful life. There is no doubt in my mind that all kinds of things are running through your head as to why you can't live a spiritually impactful life as that person over there. Each of you thinks that your counterpart on the other side of the room has a better chance of living a spiritually impactful life than you do, and you're all wrong. We're all called to that, but we all, here's the problem, have in our life these disqualifying voices that we're tempted to listen to. And more often than not, the loudest voice of disqualification is in your own head. The loudest voice that tells you, I really don't have much of a shot at making a difference in God's kingdom. I really am not going to be that impactful in my life. That voice, more often than not, comes from you, not the world. And we think things like maybe when you hear me talk about that, maybe your thought is Timothy's thought. I'm too young. No one will listen to me. I don't have enough experience. I don't have the resume to be spiritually impactful, to impact people towards Christ. Maybe you're on the other end of the spectrum. I'm too old. All my years are behind me. Whatever chance I had to make an impact has passed. I've missed my sweet spot. Now I'm just cruising it to home. There's nothing left for me to do. Maybe you think to yourself, I'm not that articulate. I don't like being in front of people. I'm not winsome. I'm not charismatic. Maybe when I talk about making a spiritual impact, you think, yeah, well, I'm a stay-at-home mom. And my world is so very small right now. And this sermon is for other people. It's not for me. Maybe you would disqualify yourself with your past. Say, yeah, man, you don't know what I've been and what I've done and where I've come from. Ain't nobody listening to me. Maybe you're new to Christianity. Maybe you're not new to Christianity, but you're new to taking it seriously. And so when I open up the Bible and talk about the different books in the Bible, you're not really familiar with them at all. And you're just thinking, I'm just trying to play catch up here, man. I'm not ready to go impact other people. I'm new to this. I don't know. They're going to ask me questions and I'm not going to know the answers. So I can't make an impact yet. I don't know what your disqualifying voice is trying to convince you of to make you step out of the race and not believe about yourself that you were created to live a spiritually impactful life. I don't know what's trying to convince you that you don't have a part to play in building God's kingdom while you're here on earth. But I do know that to our doubts, Paul tells us to put our heads down and pursue holiness. To whatever doubts you have in your head, to whatever your disqualifying voice is from spiritual service, Paul says to that voice, ignore it, put your head down, pursue holiness, love others, and watch what God does. He says to you, Paul says, let no man despise your past. Judge you based on mistakes that you've made before. Put your head down, pursue holiness, love others well, and watch what God does. Let nobody look down on your inexperience. You know the remedy to a past? A pure future. You know the remedy to inexperience? Experience. You know the remedy to thinking that you're too old or you're too young? Get in the ring and watch what God does. We write ourselves off from living spiritually impactful lives for so many reasons. And they're all lies. They're all lies that you tell yourself and that the enemy tells us to disqualify you from service in God's kingdom. And here's a really scary thing that dawned on me as I was preparing this. When we listen to the disqualifying voices, we do harm to those we love the most. Do you understand this? When we allow the voices from within and from without to convince us that we can't really take our faith that seriously because no one takes us seriously and God doesn't really have something he wants me to do and people he wants me to impact. When we believe that, when we fall prey to that and we step out of the ring and we're just coasting through our spiritual lives, we do the most harm to the people we love the most. What would have happened in Ephesus if Timothy had let those voices win? If Timothy had convinced himself that he was too young to be effective, and he stepped into the pulpit with timidity? Would Ephesus have slowly crumbled and dissolved away without leadership? I don't know. But if he was to choose to listen to those disqualifying voices, then he would not have served the people nearly like he needed to. More pointedly, parents, listen to me. If you don't take seriously your call to live a spiritually impactful life, if you let the voices talk you out of putting your head down and pursuing holiness and loving other people well. If you mail in your spiritual life and be content to be slightly above average. I'm good enough to check the box. I'm a good person. I'm going to heaven. My kids are going to heaven. If you just mail it in and go into cruise control for the rest of your life without pursuing God. Who's going to disciple your kids? Who's going to show your kids how to follow Christ? Who's going to model it for your children? If you refuse to put your head down and pursue holiness and love others well and let God in to let him use the gifts that he's given you, if you refuse to engage spiritually and don't take your spiritual health seriously and don't believe that you were placed in the life of your children to impact them towards Christ, if you won't do that for them, who will? Aaron? Children's pastor? Kyle? They get your kids for one hour a week. And let's just be honest about this. That's not even 52 weeks a year, okay? I've seen your church attendance. Let's be generous and call it like 40. They get your kids for 40 hours a year. They're going to disciple a kid in 40 hours a year? You get your kids for 100 hours a week. There is no one in your child's life better postured to love them towards Jesus than you. And when you refuse to engage in your own spiritual growth because the voices talk you out of it, you abscond on your duty to raise your kids in Christ and you thrust it on someone else and we shortchange them. When we choose to believe the disqualifying voices in our life, we hurt the people around us the most. The Bible tells us that marriage is to be a picture that reminds us of the way that Christ sacrificially loves the church. If you don't show your spouse day in and day out how Jesus loves the church by sacrificially loving them, if you're not trying to do that every day, if you're not taking seriously the call to impact your spouse towards Christ and watch God work in them, who's going to do that for you? If you don't take seriously the call in scripture to live a life building God's kingdom, pursuing holiness and loving others well, and letting God do what he will with the gifts, with the people around you? Who's going to be the pastor that your workplace so desperately needs? Who is your coworker going to come to when they need prayer because their mom's in the hospital? Who's going to invite your neighbor to the thing that's going to ignite them spiritually and reengage them with the church? Who's going to work in your circles of influence as only you can to impact people towards Christ? If you choose to allow the voices that disqualify you from Christian service, if you choose to allow them to win, if we don't take seriously this call from Paul to be an example to the believers in word and conversation and charity and spirit and faith and purity, if we don't do that, who's going to step in and do our job for us? We are all called to live spiritually impactful lives. And we must take seriously that call. Now, on the flip side, can you imagine what could happen if we choose to pursue holiness and allow God to use the gifts he's given you. Can you imagine what could happen in your life if you left here and you said, okay, God, listen, I don't know what your plan is for me. I'm not even sure what the gifts you've given me are. I have no idea. But I'm going to put my head down. I'm going to pursue holiness. I'm going to love others well. I'm going to make my life available to you. You use my life to impact the people around me however you want. God, I want to live the rest of my life building your kingdom. What would happen if you left this place and you got on your knees this afternoon, tonight, tomorrow morning, and you said, God, I'm yours. Use me. I don't know to what end. I'm not convinced that I'm going to make any great impact. But I am convinced that I need to live the rest of my life opened up to the possibility that you want to use me in the lives of the people around me. So here, it's yours. I'm going to put my head down. I'm not going to listen to my disqualifying voices. I'm not going to listen to the disqualifying voices of the people around me. I'm going to put my head down. I'm going to do the work. I'm going to pursue holiness. I'm going to be an example to the believers in the way that I love others. And I'm going to trust you with the results and let those speak for themselves. What could happen if we let God in our lives to use the gifts that he's given us? Well, I'll tell you one thing that could happen because we've seen it happen in real time here in this church over the last five or so years. I'm about to just, she probably will never come back to the church. But she's on staff, so she has to. I'm going to embarrass the heck out of Carly. You can leave the room now if you want to, Carly. I don't know how long ago it was that she started singing. Carly was the lady singing right here this morning. I don't know how long ago it was that she started singing, four or five years ago. But her origin story is she was our previous worship pastor's wife, Lisa, was in the restroom on a Sunday morning and heard an angelic voice coming out of a stall and stalked her and said, we need you on the worship team. You should try out. And Carly had to be cajoled. She had to be talked into it. Because she's not big on, she's not the first one to raise her hand and be like, yes, I would like to be in front of others and let them hear my voice every Sunday publicly. That's not her jam. So she had to be talked into it. And she reluctantly agreed. She auditioned. She did well. Let's get you on the team. So she starts coming up and leading worship. And here's the thing. I'm pretty sure that Carly led worship for about two full years before I actually heard her voice. Because it takes, it's true, isn't it? I don't know if you guys have ever thought about this. I've watched it happen whenever we recruit someone new to the team. It's one thing to have a pretty voice and be told that you have a nice voice. It's another thing to sing loudly enough and confidently enough into the microphone in front of other people to be heard above the mix. When there's someone up here singing and you can't hear them, it's not because Cindy doesn't have them turned up loud enough. It's because their Sunday morning voice is a little bit different than their Wednesday night voice. There's people in the room. It takes guts to step into that. But over time and over the years, Carly trusted us with her gift. She started to believe in God's purpose for her life in this area. And she started to trust it to God. And she started to trust it to us. And in the last, I would say, six to eight months, now when Carly leads a song, buddy, she's leading. She's belting. She's letting it rip. And every time she does it, I'm getting emotional right now. Every time she does it, I get emotional. And I get emotional because I think it's so beautiful when a child of God is using their gift from God to do exactly what he gave that gift to them to do. It is so powerful to think about the fact that when she was knit in her mother's womb, God says, I'm going to give this one a voice. And he didn't give her a voice so that she could sing pretty and entertain people. He didn't give her a voice so that she could bring attention to herself. Do you know why he gave her a voice? He gave her a voice so that he could hear it sing praises to him, so that he could hear his daughter sing to him in a way that he enjoyed. And he gave her a voice for his daughter to use to bring his other children into praise before his throne, into his presence. When she sings on Sunday and belts it out and lets it rip, she's using the gift that God gave her for the exact reason he gave it to her, and it's beautiful. And we would never experience it and be led into worship through her and through her gifting if she allowed the disqualifying voices to talk her out of it when she auditioned. If she allowed the disqualifying voice in her head to talk her out of it in the early years as she was getting her feet wet. And so we see what can happen in real time when we say, God, I don't know what you have for me and I don't know what my purpose is here, but I'm going to make my gifts available for you to use however you want to use them. In the meantime, I'm going to be an example to the believers in the way that I pursue you and in the way that I love others. Can you imagine what a church could look like if everyone in that church prayed that prayer and said, God, I don't know what you have for me to do. I don't even know how you've gifted me to do it. But I'm going to pursue you and I'm going to love others and whatever impact you want me to have, God, I'm ready to have it. Can you imagine what could happen with a church full of people who believe that? I'll tell you this. I'd like to find out. Let's pray. Father, we love you. Thank you for imbuing our lives with purpose that's bigger than us. Thank you for always encouraging us to put our heads down and to trust you with the gifts that you've given us. Thank you for being a steady voice in our life that tells us we don't have to believe the disqualifying things about ourselves. God, I pray that every person in here, whether it's today or five years from now, would allow you to open their eyes to the fact that you've called and created them to live spiritually impactful lives. Would those of us who've just been cruising, not taking things seriously, not being engaged, God, would we re-engage with you? Would we make disciples of our children? Would we be a pastor to our communities? Show us how you can use us if we simply get our doubts and our fears and our hesitancies out of the way and let you begin to work. God, I pray that you would bring it about. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you've been following along, you know that normally I preach, but the past few weeks I haven't been doing that. So it's very good to be back and get to see you guys from up here. It was fun to prepare a message this week, and I'm excited to share that with you. The other thing I'm excited about right now is the Olympics. Who else has been watching every possible minute of Olympic coverage? It's been fantastic. We love it in our house and it's been really special this time around. Lily, our daughter, is eight so she can enjoy it with us. We stay up late and watch it and then we hit pause and then we get up in the morning and we finish and it's just been really, really fun. And for those of you who have been following along, you know that one of the stories of the Olympics so far has been the United States men's gymnastics team. In the all-around competition earlier this week for those who have been hiding under a rock and don't know this I want to set the scene for you. In the men's all-around competition what they do is members of the team, three members of the team, it's a five-man team, participate in all of the events, and then the highest cumulative score wins the medal. They win the gold medal. And going into the event, you know that China and Japan are going to win gold and silver. There's really no one else that can touch them. But the U.S. has a chance to medal, to get the bronze for the first time in 16 years. And so hopes are high. And we are watching this earlier in the week. I think it was maybe Monday or Tuesday. We're watching it and it was so fun. We're so enthusiastic about it. And everyone's doing what they're supposed to do. Everyone's doing their routines like they're supposed to do their routines. They're hitting their prime position. And then it gets to the final event. The final event is the pommel horse, which if you don't know what the pommel horse is, you're not missing much. It's real stupid. I don't know why it's an event. It doesn't make any sense to me. They spin around, and then they're on the ground. Fine. Listen, incredible amount of talent. It's just dumb to watch. That's the final event. And we've got one person who did pommel horse in college. They're never coming back. Sorry. It's the final event. And the Americans have this one guy on their team. And his specialty is the pommel horse. This is the only reason he's on the team. He doesn't participate in anything else. He's only there as a pommel horse assassin. That's his whole job. And he's the last one to go, the last event of the night. And all night, they keep panning over to him, telling him he's coming up. He's the pommel horse guy, and they're showing him, and he's just sitting in the back brooding. He's not looking at anything or anybody. He's totally expressionless. Every now and again you can tell he's mentally going through his routine and he's just sitting there stiff all night. And then he gets up and he does his routine and he nails it. And it was great. There was tears in our house. And listen, a lot of you probably know the story. You probably know who I'm talking about. But if you don't, I want you to picture in your head the hero of American gymnastics and national sport in general. And I want you to picture what you think this athletic hero looks like. Because whatever you're picturing ain't this. It's not that guy. That's not who you had in your head. That guy looks like an NC State grad who's writing code at a startup. That's what he looks like. If he didn't have that medal around his neck, you'd just think he was there for fun, like as a fan. But that's the guy, Steven Nedarosik. That's the guy. And he, the reason I bring him up is he embodies to me what is one of my favorite principles in life, which is this idea that no matter what people see in you, no matter what people say about you, no matter what you might say about yourself, don't try to convince them they're wrong with your words. Just put your head down, do the work, and let the results speak for themselves. Don't worry about what other people say. Don't worry about what other people might think. Just put your head down, control what you can control, do your work, and let the outcome of that work and of that effort speak for itself. And that's what he did. He steps up to the pommel horse, and he takes his glasses off, and he gets real squinty. And Chris Rock, in his commentary, said, don't tell him. He thinks he's doing the rings right now. He can't see nothing. But you're looking at this guy and you're like, this can't be the guy. But he put his head down. He did the work. And he was the guy. The results speak for themselves. I love this principle in life. I think it's such an important one that gets us through a lot of seasons and allows us to accomplish a lot of things. And one of the reasons I love this principle is because it's a very Christian principle. That principle of put your head down, do the work, don't worry about what other people think, just let the results speak for themselves. That's a very biblical principle. As a matter of fact, you can pull that right out of the book of 1 Timothy. So if you have a Bible, I'd love to invite you to turn to 1 Timothy 4, verse 12. It's going to be on the screen. If you have a Bible, if you read the one in front of you, it's the NIV. I learned this verse. It's been an important verse to me for most of my life. If you've ever done any youth ministry, this is a big, important verse. It's on the other side of that wall right there in our fourth and fifth grade classroom. But I memorized it young at a Baptist church in the King's English. So if you don't mind, I'm going to say it like that, but you guys read along. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 4.12, let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example to the believers in word and conversation and charity and spirit and faith and in purity. So a little context for this verse so you understand a little bit more about what's going on and what Paul is saying specifically to Timothy. We're in a series now called 27 where last summer and this summer we took one book a week and we're going through all the books of the New Testament the 27 books of the New Testament last summer in this summer trying to give you a synopsis or a sense of what each book is about so for those who are not super familiar with the Bible maybe it becomes a little bit more approachable because you know what the books are about you know what you're gonna read when you sit down to read it's to raise the biblical literacy of the partnership of grace and our hope is if you know the Bible books are about, you know what you're going to read when you sit down to read it. It's to raise the biblical literacy of the partnership of grace. And our hope is if you know the Bible well, that as we highlight these books, that you see them through fresh eyes and maybe it inspires you to dive back into scripture on your own. This Sunday, we're actually going to cover or talk about, not going to cover, talk about the books of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. Because together, those make up what are referred to as the pastoral epistles. Those are letters, most of Paul's letters were written to churches. To the church in Ephesus, to the church in Galatia, to the church in Thessalonica, and so on and so on. But these books, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, were written to individuals. 1 and 2 Timothy, you can figure out who that was written to. Titus, you know who that was written to. It's written to those men in particular that Paul had left behind and installed essentially as senior pastors over the churches that he had been planting. And so the letters to Timothy are to him as he takes over the church in Ephesus, one of the most impactful churches in early Christendom. Early Christendom may not have survived without the church in Ephesus. And so he installs Timothy as the pastor there, and he writes in these two letters as books of advice, words of advice to a young disciple as he takes over a church. And in that is a lot of wonderful things about what church should be and how it should operate and what the qualifications for the elders should be. We see that in Timothy and in Titus. If you're an elder at the church, you should be very familiar with these books. If you're a believer, you should be very interested in these books. But there was no way to group them together and cover everything in them. But what I thought we could do is pull out this one verse in 1 Timothy 4 and talk about that, because that is a verse that is universally applicable to every Christian. That's not pastoral advice. That's Christian advice. Let no man despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word and conversation and charity charity and spirit and faith and in purity. And word and conversation means the way that you carry yourself, the way that you interact with people. In charity and in spirit, charity is love. It means the way that you love others. In spirit, it's the way that you carry yourself. In purity, it's this pursuit of holiness. So the way that I would sum this up is that Paul is telling Timothy, I know you think you're young. And I know you think that it's going to be difficult for people to listen to you. And trust me, this has been a very encouraging verse for me. Right now, I'm the ripe old age of 43, and I look every bit 46. But when I took the church over, I was 36. And I was worried about this. And this verse brought me comfort. Because Paul says, put your head down, do the work, be an example to those around you in your pursuit of holiness and the way you love others. That's a really simple way to understand it. Put your head down, do the work, and be an example to the believers in the way that you pursue holiness and in the way that you love others. And I believe that this verse applies to all of us equally. That when Paul is telling Timothy to do that, he's telling all Christians for all time to do that. And here's why I think this is true and why I think we need this advice from Paul this morning. Because there's two things about each and every one of you that are here right now or that can hear my voice right now from your home or wherever you're listening further into this week as you catch up. Here's something I know to be true of every single person who can hear me. Two things. The first is we are called and created to live spiritually impactful lives. Every single one of you, no matter how much you know it, no matter how much you admit it to yourself, no matter how comfortable or uncomfortable you are with that. Even if you're here this morning and you wouldn't yet call yourself a believer, you're here to support family, you're here because you're curious, you're here because church is nice, whatever brought you here, I believe that God has a purpose for your life. The Bible teaches that God has a purpose for your life, that you are called to live a spiritually impactful life that matters for all of eternity. Every single one is called to that, whether you realize it or acknowledge it or not. And I know this to be true because in myriad places and myriad ways throughout scripture, the authors emphasize this point. In 1 Corinthians chapters 12 and 13, we see this big long list of spiritual gifts. We're taught about the church as the body of Christ and how every part of the body has a part to play and a job to do, has a responsibility. And we're told that the Holy Spirit actually gifts us upon salvation to play our part, to contribute to God's kingdom. And that's not for pastors. That's not for leaders. That's not for the charismatic. That's not for the people who are bold and out there and in front of you. That's not an instruction for the elite few, for the spiritual Marines. That's not for them. It's for everyone. We are all given gifts. In Ephesians chapter four, those are the gifts of the spirit we see in first Corinthians 12 and 13 and we see again in Romans. But in Ephesians 4, we're told that Christ gives us gifts. That every one of us is gifted to be either an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, a shepherd, or a teacher. That Christ himself imbues us with those gifts to be used in his kingdom to build his kingdom. Every one of us, I'm going to talk about this in a few weeks, every one of us is a kingdom builder of the kingdom of God. And we've been gifted to that end. And if those two things don't convince you, then maybe the verse that I bring up all the time will help you see. Ephesians 2.10, I love to remind you of this verse. It says that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that you might walk in them. It teaches me that my job as a parent to John and Lily is not to craft them into who I want them to be. It's not to mold them into who I think they should be. It's to raise them in such a way that they can identify their good works and walk in those that were prepared for them before time. You, each of you, each and every one of you, it's absolutely true of you that when God knit you in your mother's womb, he knew your story, the gifts that he was going to give you, and the role that he had you to play in his kingdom. He's purposed every single one of you to live a spiritually impactful life, to impact the people around you for Christ. I'm reminded of the verse in Colossians that says that we are led in triumphal procession by Christ and through us will spread the fragrance of the knowledge of God. Each one of us as a believer is designed, created, called, and purposed to live lives that impact the people around us towards Christ. Every single one of us. I know that to be true of you. I know it to be true of you that you are called and created to live a spiritually impactful life. Here's the other thing I know to be true of you. We all doubt our capacity to actually do it. Every single one of us, as I'm up here ranting about your purpose to live a spiritually impactful life, all but the most arrogant and least self-aware of us are thinking to ourselves all the reasons why we can't make an impact, but we can't make that big of an impact. All of us have disqualifying voices in our life that keep us from fully embracing that. Timothy's disqualifying voice was, I might be too young. They might not listen. And Paul says, hey, don't listen to that voice. Put your head down, be an example to the believers in the way that you pursue purity and in the way that you love others. Let the outcome of those actions speak for themselves. As I sit here and tell you, you are called to live a spiritually impactful life. There is no doubt in my mind that all kinds of things are running through your head as to why you can't live a spiritually impactful life as that person over there. Each of you thinks that your counterpart on the other side of the room has a better chance of living a spiritually impactful life than you do, and you're all wrong. We're all called to that, but we all, here's the problem, have in our life these disqualifying voices that we're tempted to listen to. And more often than not, the loudest voice of disqualification is in your own head. The loudest voice that tells you, I really don't have much of a shot at making a difference in God's kingdom. I really am not going to be that impactful in my life. That voice, more often than not, comes from you, not the world. And we think things like maybe when you hear me talk about that, maybe your thought is Timothy's thought. I'm too young. No one will listen to me. I don't have enough experience. I don't have the resume to be spiritually impactful, to impact people towards Christ. Maybe you're on the other end of the spectrum. I'm too old. All my years are behind me. Whatever chance I had to make an impact has passed. I've missed my sweet spot. Now I'm just cruising it to home. There's nothing left for me to do. Maybe you think to yourself, I'm not that articulate. I don't like being in front of people. I'm not winsome. I'm not charismatic. Maybe when I talk about making a spiritual impact, you think, yeah, well, I'm a stay-at-home mom. And my world is so very small right now. And this sermon is for other people. It's not for me. Maybe you would disqualify yourself with your past. Say, yeah, man, you don't know what I've been and what I've done and where I've come from. Ain't nobody listening to me. Maybe you're new to Christianity. Maybe you're not new to Christianity, but you're new to taking it seriously. And so when I open up the Bible and talk about the different books in the Bible, you're not really familiar with them at all. And you're just thinking, I'm just trying to play catch up here, man. I'm not ready to go impact other people. I'm new to this. I don't know. They're going to ask me questions and I'm not going to know the answers. So I can't make an impact yet. I don't know what your disqualifying voice is trying to convince you of to make you step out of the race and not believe about yourself that you were created to live a spiritually impactful life. I don't know what's trying to convince you that you don't have a part to play in building God's kingdom while you're here on earth. But I do know that to our doubts, Paul tells us to put our heads down and pursue holiness. To whatever doubts you have in your head, to whatever your disqualifying voice is from spiritual service, Paul says to that voice, ignore it, put your head down, pursue holiness, love others, and watch what God does. He says to you, Paul says, let no man despise your past. Judge you based on mistakes that you've made before. Put your head down, pursue holiness, love others well, and watch what God does. Let nobody look down on your inexperience. You know the remedy to a past? A pure future. You know the remedy to inexperience? Experience. You know the remedy to thinking that you're too old or you're too young? Get in the ring and watch what God does. We write ourselves off from living spiritually impactful lives for so many reasons. And they're all lies. They're all lies that you tell yourself and that the enemy tells us to disqualify you from service in God's kingdom. And here's a really scary thing that dawned on me as I was preparing this. When we listen to the disqualifying voices, we do harm to those we love the most. Do you understand this? When we allow the voices from within and from without to convince us that we can't really take our faith that seriously because no one takes us seriously and God doesn't really have something he wants me to do and people he wants me to impact. When we believe that, when we fall prey to that and we step out of the ring and we're just coasting through our spiritual lives, we do the most harm to the people we love the most. What would have happened in Ephesus if Timothy had let those voices win? If Timothy had convinced himself that he was too young to be effective, and he stepped into the pulpit with timidity? Would Ephesus have slowly crumbled and dissolved away without leadership? I don't know. But if he was to choose to listen to those disqualifying voices, then he would not have served the people nearly like he needed to. More pointedly, parents, listen to me. If you don't take seriously your call to live a spiritually impactful life, if you let the voices talk you out of putting your head down and pursuing holiness and loving other people well. If you mail in your spiritual life and be content to be slightly above average. I'm good enough to check the box. I'm a good person. I'm going to heaven. My kids are going to heaven. If you just mail it in and go into cruise control for the rest of your life without pursuing God. Who's going to disciple your kids? Who's going to show your kids how to follow Christ? Who's going to model it for your children? If you refuse to put your head down and pursue holiness and love others well and let God in to let him use the gifts that he's given you, if you refuse to engage spiritually and don't take your spiritual health seriously and don't believe that you were placed in the life of your children to impact them towards Christ, if you won't do that for them, who will? Aaron? Children's pastor? Kyle? They get your kids for one hour a week. And let's just be honest about this. That's not even 52 weeks a year, okay? I've seen your church attendance. Let's be generous and call it like 40. They get your kids for 40 hours a year. They're going to disciple a kid in 40 hours a year? You get your kids for 100 hours a week. There is no one in your child's life better postured to love them towards Jesus than you. And when you refuse to engage in your own spiritual growth because the voices talk you out of it, you abscond on your duty to raise your kids in Christ and you thrust it on someone else and we shortchange them. When we choose to believe the disqualifying voices in our life, we hurt the people around us the most. The Bible tells us that marriage is to be a picture that reminds us of the way that Christ sacrificially loves the church. If you don't show your spouse day in and day out how Jesus loves the church by sacrificially loving them, if you're not trying to do that every day, if you're not taking seriously the call to impact your spouse towards Christ and watch God work in them, who's going to do that for you? If you don't take seriously the call in scripture to live a life building God's kingdom, pursuing holiness and loving others well, and letting God do what he will with the gifts, with the people around you? Who's going to be the pastor that your workplace so desperately needs? Who is your coworker going to come to when they need prayer because their mom's in the hospital? Who's going to invite your neighbor to the thing that's going to ignite them spiritually and reengage them with the church? Who's going to work in your circles of influence as only you can to impact people towards Christ? If you choose to allow the voices that disqualify you from Christian service, if you choose to allow them to win, if we don't take seriously this call from Paul to be an example to the believers in word and conversation and charity and spirit and faith and purity, if we don't do that, who's going to step in and do our job for us? We are all called to live spiritually impactful lives. And we must take seriously that call. Now, on the flip side, can you imagine what could happen if we choose to pursue holiness and allow God to use the gifts he's given you. Can you imagine what could happen in your life if you left here and you said, okay, God, listen, I don't know what your plan is for me. I'm not even sure what the gifts you've given me are. I have no idea. But I'm going to put my head down. I'm going to pursue holiness. I'm going to love others well. I'm going to make my life available to you. You use my life to impact the people around me however you want. God, I want to live the rest of my life building your kingdom. What would happen if you left this place and you got on your knees this afternoon, tonight, tomorrow morning, and you said, God, I'm yours. Use me. I don't know to what end. I'm not convinced that I'm going to make any great impact. But I am convinced that I need to live the rest of my life opened up to the possibility that you want to use me in the lives of the people around me. So here, it's yours. I'm going to put my head down. I'm not going to listen to my disqualifying voices. I'm not going to listen to the disqualifying voices of the people around me. I'm going to put my head down. I'm going to do the work. I'm going to pursue holiness. I'm going to be an example to the believers in the way that I love others. And I'm going to trust you with the results and let those speak for themselves. What could happen if we let God in our lives to use the gifts that he's given us? Well, I'll tell you one thing that could happen because we've seen it happen in real time here in this church over the last five or so years. I'm about to just, she probably will never come back to the church. But she's on staff, so she has to. I'm going to embarrass the heck out of Carly. You can leave the room now if you want to, Carly. I don't know how long ago it was that she started singing. Carly was the lady singing right here this morning. I don't know how long ago it was that she started singing, four or five years ago. But her origin story is she was our previous worship pastor's wife, Lisa, was in the restroom on a Sunday morning and heard an angelic voice coming out of a stall and stalked her and said, we need you on the worship team. You should try out. And Carly had to be cajoled. She had to be talked into it. Because she's not big on, she's not the first one to raise her hand and be like, yes, I would like to be in front of others and let them hear my voice every Sunday publicly. That's not her jam. So she had to be talked into it. And she reluctantly agreed. She auditioned. She did well. Let's get you on the team. So she starts coming up and leading worship. And here's the thing. I'm pretty sure that Carly led worship for about two full years before I actually heard her voice. Because it takes, it's true, isn't it? I don't know if you guys have ever thought about this. I've watched it happen whenever we recruit someone new to the team. It's one thing to have a pretty voice and be told that you have a nice voice. It's another thing to sing loudly enough and confidently enough into the microphone in front of other people to be heard above the mix. When there's someone up here singing and you can't hear them, it's not because Cindy doesn't have them turned up loud enough. It's because their Sunday morning voice is a little bit different than their Wednesday night voice. There's people in the room. It takes guts to step into that. But over time and over the years, Carly trusted us with her gift. She started to believe in God's purpose for her life in this area. And she started to trust it to God. And she started to trust it to us. And in the last, I would say, six to eight months, now when Carly leads a song, buddy, she's leading. She's belting. She's letting it rip. And every time she does it, I'm getting emotional right now. Every time she does it, I get emotional. And I get emotional because I think it's so beautiful when a child of God is using their gift from God to do exactly what he gave that gift to them to do. It is so powerful to think about the fact that when she was knit in her mother's womb, God says, I'm going to give this one a voice. And he didn't give her a voice so that she could sing pretty and entertain people. He didn't give her a voice so that she could bring attention to herself. Do you know why he gave her a voice? He gave her a voice so that he could hear it sing praises to him, so that he could hear his daughter sing to him in a way that he enjoyed. And he gave her a voice for his daughter to use to bring his other children into praise before his throne, into his presence. When she sings on Sunday and belts it out and lets it rip, she's using the gift that God gave her for the exact reason he gave it to her, and it's beautiful. And we would never experience it and be led into worship through her and through her gifting if she allowed the disqualifying voices to talk her out of it when she auditioned. If she allowed the disqualifying voice in her head to talk her out of it in the early years as she was getting her feet wet. And so we see what can happen in real time when we say, God, I don't know what you have for me and I don't know what my purpose is here, but I'm going to make my gifts available for you to use however you want to use them. In the meantime, I'm going to be an example to the believers in the way that I pursue you and in the way that I love others. Can you imagine what a church could look like if everyone in that church prayed that prayer and said, God, I don't know what you have for me to do. I don't even know how you've gifted me to do it. But I'm going to pursue you and I'm going to love others and whatever impact you want me to have, God, I'm ready to have it. Can you imagine what could happen with a church full of people who believe that? I'll tell you this. I'd like to find out. Let's pray. Father, we love you. Thank you for imbuing our lives with purpose that's bigger than us. Thank you for always encouraging us to put our heads down and to trust you with the gifts that you've given us. Thank you for being a steady voice in our life that tells us we don't have to believe the disqualifying things about ourselves. God, I pray that every person in here, whether it's today or five years from now, would allow you to open their eyes to the fact that you've called and created them to live spiritually impactful lives. Would those of us who've just been cruising, not taking things seriously, not being engaged, God, would we re-engage with you? Would we make disciples of our children? Would we be a pastor to our communities? Show us how you can use us if we simply get our doubts and our fears and our hesitancies out of the way and let you begin to work. God, I pray that you would bring it about. In Jesus' name, amen.