Ephesians

I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life, all over my life. I see promises in fulfillment. All over my life. All over my life. Help me remember when I'm weak. Fear may come, but fear will lead. You lead my heart to victory. You are my strength, and you always will be. I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. All over my life. I see your promises and fulfillment all over my life, all over my life. See the cross, the empty grave, the evidence of your goodness. Jesus. I see your promises in fulfillment all over my life, all over my life, yeah. I see your promises and fulfillment all over my life. Yeah, you're all around us. So why should I fear? The evidence is here. Why should I fear? Oh, the evidence is here. I searched the world, but it couldn't fill me. Melted deep rays, treasures of fame were never enough. Then you came along and put me back together. And every desire is now satisfied here in your love. Oh, there's nothing better than you. There's nothing better than you. Oh, there's nothing, nothing is better than you. Come on, tell them. To show you my weakness My failures and flaws Lord, you've seen them all And you still call me friend Cause the God of the mountains Is the God of the valleys There's not a place Your mercy and grace won't find me again. Oh Come on. Tell them now. Come on, choir. Oh, there's nothing better than you. Nothing. You turn bones into armies. You turn seas into highways. You're the only one who can. Somebody give a praise in this house. I don't think we're finished yet. Come on. Come on, one more can. You're the only one who can. You're the only one who can. Jesus, you're the only one. Come on, give Him one more shout of praise. When all I see is the battle, you see my victory. When all I see is the mountain, you see a mountain moon. And as I walk through the shadow, your love surrounds me. There's nothing to fear now, for I am safe with you. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees, with my head lifted high. Oh God, the battle belongs for you. Thank you, God. God, you see the end to tell. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees. With my head lifted high. Oh God, the battle belongs to you. And every fear I lay at your feet. I'll sing through the night. Oh God, the power of our God. You shine in the shadow. You win every battle. Nothing can stand against the power of our God. In all mighty fortunes, you go before us. Nothing can stand against the power of our God We wanted to let you know that our mission here at Grace is to connect people to Jesus and to connect people to people. One of the best ways to communicate with us here at Grace is through our connection cards. If you would like to speak to a pastor at Grace, if you have any prayer requests for our prayer team and our elders, or if you're not receiving our Grace Vine weekly emails, this would be a great way to fill it out and let us know. If you're watching with us online, you can click the link below and submit the connection card there. Or if you're here with us at Grace, the connection card is in the seat back pocket in front of you. Just be sure to drop it on your way out in the box next to the doors. Thanks so much for joining us this morning and we hope that this service is a blessing to you. Well, good morning, everyone. It's great to have you here at Grace Raleigh. I'd like to ask you to stand. My name is Steve Goldberg. I'm the worship pastor here at Grace, and it's great having people here in the room. It's great having people at home joining in with us. I thought that this morning we could start off with the scripture of John 3.16, that God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life, come to the well that never runs dry. Drink of the water, come and thirst no more. Come all you sinners Come find his mercy Come to the table He will satisfy Taste of his goodness Find what you're looking for. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save us. Whoever believes in Him will live forever. bring all your failures bring your addictions come lay them down at the foot of the cross Jesus is waiting there with hope in our hearts For God so loved the world praise god praise god from whom all blessings Praise Him, praise Him For the wonders of His love For God so loved the world that He gave us His one and only Son to save The power of hell forever defeated Now it is well, I'm walking in freedom Oh God so loved, God so loved the world Bring all your failures, bring your addictions. Come lay them down at the foot of the cross. Jesus is waiting. God so loved the world. Amen. God sent his son. They called him Jesus. He came to love, heal, and forgive. He lived and died. To buy my pardon. An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. he lives all fear is gone because i know he holds the future And life is worth the living Just because He lives And then one day I'll cross that river I'll fight my spine No war with me And then as death Gives way to victory I'll see the lights of glory and I'll know He lives. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow Because He lives All fear is gone Because I know He holds the future And life is worth the living Just because He lives. And life is worth the living just because He lives. Amen. Amen. All right, y'all can have a seat for a moment. Good morning, Grace Raleigh. It is fabulous to see your smiling faces in here. And welcome to those of you that have joined us online. It is a beautiful and sunny Sunday morning, Welcome to the world for this beautiful sunny weather because in two weeks, the mission committee will be here to gather all of the goodies that you choose to bring. So if you go to Grace Raleigh's events page, you will find a list of things that the mission committee is looking for for the Interfaith Food Shuttle. You will buy those. And then on either that Friday or either that, I'm sorry, that Saturday or that Sunday, you can drive through. The hours are listed on the screen. You can drive through. They will come out to your car. They will pick it up. They will bring it inside, and they will take care of it. So all you have to do is go to the grocery. And I guess these days you could even have it delivered to your house. So that is fabulous. And speaking of driving by and dropping off, if you are the parent of a 6th grader through 12th grader, today is the day you get to drive by and push them out of the car. Woo-hoo! We are so excited to announce that Grace Students is back up and running live and in person. Kyle will be here tonight in all of his fun. And we have the cool thing happening too that he's live streaming the service. So if for some reason your 6th through 12th grader can't be in the building tonight, no problem. Email Kyle, kyle at graceralee.org. And he has all the information and the links that you need to be able to be attached to the live stream and join in that way. They're now going to start into a routine of being in person one week, meeting online together the next week in person, and you get the idea. But email Kyle for any information that you guys might need. So thank you again for coming, for being a part of Grace Raleigh thisbbling together another meal just to check that off the list. Have you ever wondered if you have the balance right? Have we worked hard enough? Have we played enough? What will our children remember about us? Have you ever wondered if you've done it right? Is it possible to even really know that? Did we give our passions and energies to the right causes? Have we given ourselves to the things that matter the most? Or in the end, is it all just favor? Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody here. This is as full as the church has been since last February. That's crazy. Man, you guys, apparently, we've been going through Ecclesiastes. Y'all love depression and hopelessness. So thanks for showing up to that. You're like, I got to get out of the house now. Maybe that's what I needed to do the whole time, which is make you really, really sad. So you had to come see people. This is great. If you're still joining us at home, we're so grateful for that. This is the third part in our series called Vapor, where we're moving through the book of Ecclesiastes. We've said the whole time that we've saved the dreariest book of the Bible for the dreariest month of the year. And what's really fun is that this is the joyful sermon. This is the one, this is the good news. This is the one where we celebrate. We only did two songs up front because we want to end praising God together, and he gave us sunshine to do this. So it seems that the weather is matching the rhythm of the series, and I think that that's fantastic. In the first week, we started out and we talked about this idea of a hevel or vapor or smoke, and we concluded that Solomon would argue that a vast majority of Americans are wasting their life, right? Which means a vast majority of us are probably investing our life pursuing things that ultimately we can't grab onto or vapor or smoke. They're here one day and they're gone the next. And so that really left us with this question at the end of that week, is there a worthwhile investment of our lives? And if you have notes, you see that at the top of your notes. I think that's been a question that's been lingering in the series. Is there really a worthwhile investment of my life or is it all just a waste of time? Is everyone here just, we're all just chasing vapor? And I think that there's a good answer to that question, but last week we answered it a little bit, but we stumbled into another harsh reality. The harsh reality that even if we pursue wisdom with our life, even if we're obedient, the godliest of the godly, that does not insulate us from pain. Our godliness doesn't protect us from grief, right? And so what we learned by looking at that beautiful passage in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, there's a time for mourning and there's a time for joy. There's a time for grieving and there's a time for healing and there's a time to be hurt. There's a time to live and there's a time to die. Like we saw that passage. And what we learned is that pain is not punitive. God's not tightening the screws on us to punish us. Pain is the result of a fallen world, right? And that the harsh reality that Solomon gives us in Ecclesiastes is that no matter what we do, we're going to hurt. No matter how godly we are, there will be seasons of mourning in our life. And so that leaves us, I think, with another really difficult question. Can I ever hope for true happiness? Can I ever, on this side of eternity, grasp onto something that isn't Hevel or vapor or smoke? Can I grasp onto a joy that is immutable and unchangeable, that is resistant to circumstances in life, that even as the storms come, I can still find myself in seasons of joyfulness and contentment? Is it even possible to do those things? And I think those are the two big questions that we bring into this week. Is it possible to pursue anything that really matters? And is it possible to grab onto anything that looks like actual true contentment and joy? And the answer to those questions, I think, is yes. And Solomon answers those questions multiple times in Ecclesiastes. I think in four separate passages, he addresses those with the exact same answer. Four different times, he gives this answer, and I love this answer. I think there's so much bound up in his choice to answer the questions in this way. But like I said, he says it in four separate times. I'm going to read you two of them so that you can get a sense. They're in your notes. If you have them, they'll be on the screen if you're following along at home. But here's what he writes in Ecclesiastes, Solomon repeats this idea. That at the end of the day, what's left for us to do is enjoy our toil, enjoy our food and drink, and honor our God. The end of the book, he ends. The end of the matter is this, all has been heard, fear God and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. We talked about that last week. And it's important that as we look through what I think is kind of this formula for contentment, that we understand that when he's talking about eating and drinking, when we see eating and drinking in the Bible, that is almost always a reference to a communal activity. Eating and drinking is inherently communal. The Bible rarely talks about eating for sustenance, right? It rarely talks about food as this way to be healthy. It always talks about food and bread and gathering around a table as a form of community. And so when he says that there's nothing for man to do except to find joy in what he does and to eat and to drink. What he means is when we look around the table, when we have our meals, if we love the people who are around us, that's good. That's a gift from God. We go out to eat, we're eating with our friends, and we look around and we have genuine affection, we enjoy these people. That's a gift from God. When you look around your table and you have family there and you love that family. Now listen, we're all parts of families. We know that love isn't just sing song and fairy tales all the time. Sometimes it's hard, but at the end of the day, if you know that I love you and you love me, then that's a gift from God. And so when he's talking about food and drink, he's really referencing community. And then when he talks about toil, enjoying your toil, I have a men's group that meets on Tuesday mornings at 6.30. Anybody can join us if you want to. Just email me. Well, the more the merrier there. And we were talking about this word toil. And to a room full of men, it means career, right? It means work. It means what's your job? But Solomon uses that word a lot more broadly than that in Ecclesiastes. And the word toil really doesn't refer to your job or your career as much as it refers to the activities that you have set aside for that day, the productivity of that day, whatever it is you're going to do. Because we have some men in the group who are retired. If it's only about work, career, then they have no shot at happiness, right? They better get back to it. But really, it's broader than that. It really means, Toyo, what do you have set for yourself today? What productivity are you going to engage in today? And then in this verse, he says that we should do good. And he defines doing good as honoring God with our life, fearing God and keeping his commandments. And it's with these understandings that I kind of arrive at this conclusion of kind of Solomon's equation for contented joy and apex happiness. And I really do think it's this. People you love plus tasks you enjoy plus honoring God equals apex happiness. Listen to me. If when you eat, if as you move through your day, you look around and the people in your life bring you joy, and when you wake up, you're looking forward to the things that you're going to do in that day. Maybe not everything, but the point of the day brings you joy. And you're honoring God with your life. If those things are true of you, then I want you to know this morning, you are apex happy. It doesn't get better than that. Sometimes our problem is just that we can't see it. But I'm telling you, man, if you wake up every day and you get to have breakfast with your family or you go out to lunch with some people at work that you enjoy or you look forward to seeing some friends at small group or something like that, if you look around at your community and you're surrounded by people you love and you look at your days and God has given you something to put your hand to that you enjoy, that gives you a sense of purpose, that helps you become who he's created you to be and use your gifts and abilities to point people to Jesus as you move throughout your days, if that's what you get to do and you're honoring God as you do those things, then listen to me, you are experiencing apex happiness in your life. And I think that we get it so messed up sometimes. We do all the things that Solomon talked about in the first two chapters, and we chase all the things. We run out there and we chase all the success and all the relationships and all the money and all the fulfillment and all the pleasure and all the stuff that's out there. When really what's true is God has already given us everything we need for joy. God has already provided in our lives everything we need for joy. And listen, if you don't have those things, if you look around, you're like, I don't like any of the people in my life right now. If you don't have a fulfillment in your job, if you're not honoring God with your life, then guess what? Those things are attainable. Those things aren't out there and forever away. Those things are attainable. They're right around you. God gives us everything we need for joy within our reach. That's why I brought this chair today. This chair here is my chair from my house. This is my chair in my living room. This chair sits in the corner of our living room, and opposite me is we have a little sectional couch. There's other people who sit in this chair sometimes, but for the most part, it's me. When I sit in this chair, I get to watch dance recitals. I get to watch Lily come in with her friends, and they sing Elsa to me. And I pretend to care about Elsa. I get to watch dumb little magic tricks. We went to some restaurant and they gave her some pot with a magnet on the bottom and there's a plant that comes out of the wand and she comes in and she does the abracadabra, the whatever, and then she pulls it out and for the 37th time, I'm amazed by this magic trick, right? I sit in this chair and Jen sits on the couch and we talk about our days. We talk about what's hard and we talk about what's fun. From this chair, when someone rings the doorbell, if I angle my head just right, I can see down the hallway to the front door and I can see the little face that's there to come play with Lily. If they're all over, I can look this way out the window and I can look at them all, all the neighborhood kids jumping on the trampoline that we got to get for her. In the mornings when I'm doing life right and I'm downstairs reading like I'm supposed to, at about 6.45, 7 o'clock, I can look up the stairs and see Lily up there and motion her down to come sit in my lap and tell me what she's going to do that day. When we have friends over, which I love to do, eventually we end up in our living room and we sit around and we talk and we giggle and we laugh. In the pandemic, I worked from this chair. I set up a little table right here and I do my Zoom calls and I argue with the elders and that's pure joy except for Chris Lata. I love working from that table. I can see all the things that bring me the most joy from this chair. And if I go out there chasing joy, if I go out there trying to track everything down, what am I going to do? Buy a new house for this chair These are from old David. If this church grows to 2,000 people and I get to feel what that feels like, do my conversations with my family and friends get any better from sitting in this chair? No, man. This is it. And sometimes it's not the chair, right? Sometimes it's the kitchen. Sometimes it's when I get to cook dinner and Jen sits on the stool and we talk about our days. Sometimes it's the mornings when Ruby and Lily are on the bed and I'm in the chair in the corner of that room and we're all talking, just enjoying our times. But here's what I know. I can go out there chasing whatever I want to chase. But my times of most profound joy come when I'm right there. They come when I'm around the people that I love the most. They come when I'm soaking in the blessings that God has given me. And this is what we need to pay attention to. Solomon tells us these are God's gifts to us. If people in your life that you love, who love you, they're God's gift to you. Drink them in. Hug them more. Tell them more that you care about them. Tell them more that you're grateful for them. Tell them more that they are a gift from God in your life. You have a thing to do every day that you like to put your hand to, whether it's raising kids or volunteering somewhere or spending time in your neighborhood or going to work or looking forward to seeing your friends or whatever it is. You have things that God has given you that make you productive, that let you feel like you are living out His intended will for you? That's His gift for you. That work, that toil, that's His gift. It's designed for you. And then if we honor God, His invitation to honor Him is His gift to us because He knows that when we live a life honoring Him, we live a life of fewer regrets. We live a life of deeper gratitude. We live a life with a deeper desire for Jesus if we'll just revel in his gifts. This helps me make sense of the Honduran children I saw at one time. For years of my life, I would go down to Honduras with some regularity to take teams down to visit a pastor named Israel Gonzalez. Israel is one of my heroes. The things that he's done for the kingdom are unbelievable. And he is based in a city in central Honduras called, called, uh, Swatopeke. He and his wife have set up a free clinic there. He has a church there. And then from that church, what they do is they organize these goodwill parties and they bring teams down and you get together hot dogs and little tchotchke gifts and you go up into the hillsides. There's mountains surrounding Ciguatapeque and you go up into the mountainside and you go to these villages and he throws these goodwill parties and he hopes that by doing this, these villages that are deeply Catholic, but Catholic in such a way that shuts them off to faith rather than turns them on to faith. And so they're lost communities. And he goes and he throws these parties, and by throwing these goodwill parties, they invite him into the community to plant a church. He's planted 14 churches that way, last I checked. And I would go on these parties. And you go up into these mountains surrounding Suwatopec into a village. And that's not derogatory. It's literally a village. Homes are built of mud and wood, makeshift roofs, one or two rooms, literally dirt poor. I've had the opportunity in my life to be in a fair amount of other countries and to see poverty on multiple continents. Honduras is just about the worst. But yet when we would go there, we would get out and there would always be these children there. And these children would have the biggest, goofiest grins on their face ever. They were so joyful, and they would laugh, and they would play, and they were happy to see you, and it never got wiped off of their face. And I always wondered, kid, how can you be so happy? Don't you know you don't have a Barbie house? Don't you know you don't have a PlayStation? Don't you know your soccer ball stinks? Those kids had it figured out, man. They had people around them who loved them. They had things to do each day that they looked forward to. And they hadn't lived enough life to carry the weight of what it is to not honor God with our choices. They were walking in apex happiness. And I carry all my American wealth down there and privilege, and I look at them and I'm jealous. Because they figured out something that we haven't. And I just think that there is this profound truth that everything that we need is right there within our grasp. We don't have to run around out there chasing vapor and Hevel. God has given us these gifts already. And in that truth, in that truth that everything we need for joy is within our grasp? We answer those two questions we started with. Is there a pursuit that's actually worth investing my life in? Yes. The people you love, the tasks that give you purpose, and honoring God. You want to live a life that matters? You want to get to the end of it and wonder if it's all vapor? Or not have to wonder that? Then invest your life in the people that you love and the tasks that God has ordained for you. Ephesians 2 says that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus, that we should do good works, that we should walk in them. Walk in those good works that God intended you for and honor God with the choices that you make. Those are worthwhile pursuits. You will get to the end of your life if you pursue those things and know that it was a life well lived. And he actually doubles down on this idea of pursuing relationships with other people. I don't have a lot of time to spend here on it, but again, this is a passage that I can't just skip over as we go through the book of Ecclesiastes. He doubles down on this idea of having more folks in our life when he writes this has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Solomon doesn't take a lot of time to tell you to invest in a lot of things in Ecclesiastes. If you've been reading along with us, he doesn't tell you to do a lot of stuff there. He just kind of tells you, hey, this stuff's a waste of time. You should honor God. And then he tells you how we got to that conclusion. But here he stops and makes sure you understand the value of having people in your life who love you, who you love in return. And he sets up life as this struggle, this fight, because it is a struggle and a fight to choose to honor God with our lives. It is a struggle and a fight to keep our marriages healthy. It is a struggle and a fight to direct our kids in the right way, to love our families well, to share our faith, to be evangelists in our community, and to make disciples of the people who are around us. That's hard. And Solomon says, if you try to do this alone, woe to you when you fall and you have no one to pick you up. Woe to you when addiction creeps in and there's no one you can tell. Woe to you when doubts creep into your faith and there's no one you can talk to. How hard it must be for you when your marriage gets rocky and there's no one to fight for it. If there's two, he says, you've got a fighting chance. If there's three, that's not quickly broken. We need people in our lives to fight for us. We need to fight for the people in our lives. It seems to be a big value to us. That will help us ensure that we always have people to eat and drink with that we love and enjoy. So I thought it was worth pointing out Solomon's emphasis on this. The other question that remained from the previous weeks is, can I ever hope for true happiness? Yes. Yes, because here's the thing. If the bad things in Ecclesiastes 3 are true, then so are the good ones. Last week, I read the passage and I said, listen, pain is coming for all of us. It's going to hurt. We're going to mourn. We're going to grieve. No one gets to dodge that based on our godliness. It's going to happen to all of us. We will walk through hard times, but here's the reality. If that's true, then the flip side is true. If the bad things are true, then God says we will walk through seasons where we experience the good things. Look at the good things. There is a time to be born, to plant, to heal, to build up, to laugh, to dance, to gather things together, to embrace, to keep, to sow, to speak. A time for love and a time for peace. If we're going to have to walk through hard times, there's going to be good ones too. And I just think that the blessing from Ecclesiastes is this. It hits us with some hard realities. It's stark. It's unflinching. Hey, most of us are wasting our lives. And no matter what you do to invest it well, you're going to hurt. Those are hard truths. But I've said the whole time that if we can accept them on the other side is this joy that is waiting for us. And this is the joy. The joy is, yes, there's big things going on that we can't control. But in the midst of all that stuff that we can't control, God gives us these gifts, these moments of joy, these pockets to lean into where we celebrate him, where we're grateful for him, and we acknowledge those things as gifts. And I just think that if we accept the difficult realities from this book, then we can start to look for these little pockets of joy in our life, and they will bring us such more fulfillment than if we just move through them waiting to get to the next thing. At our house, we do a thing called Breakfast Sammy Saturday, all right? I like a good breakfast sandwich. I know it's hard to tell by looking at me, but I like a good, I put butter down, I toast the bread, I do the eggs, I do some bacon, do some cheese on there, and then I put it all together on the blackstone, cut it in half, and the good egg bleeds out onto it. It's all the goodness, and then you dip your sandwich in there. It's the best. I love breakfast Sammy Saturdays. You guys are not enthusiastic enough about this. You need breakfast Sammy Saturdays in your life. Well, I'll just let you guys sign up. Come over to the house. I'll make them for you. We love it. But it's just kind of a thing that I do. I like it. I make one for Jen and Lily, and they kind of eat half of theirs. I'm more excited about it than anybody else. But then one day, Lily brought this home from preschool, and it made me cry right on the spot. That's breakfast Sammy Saturday. She drew my griddle. She put food on it. Apparently, I make pizza there. And she brought it home to me. Now, the thing about this is, it was an assignment at preschool. She was told, just make whatever you want. It's an art project. And she made breakfast Sammy Saturday. And she brought it home to me. And she said, look, Daddy. And she told me what it was. I started crying right there on the spot. I got these big old alligator tears in my eyes looking at Jen. What a cool thing. And sure, life's going to be hard. She's going to be a teenager. She's five now, so she's kind of maxed out on cuteness, and now it's just hyper sometimes. But even though I know that there's hard times ahead, even though I know she won't always appreciate things like Breakfast Sammy Saturday, I know she does now. And I know that that's a gift from my God. And I know that what Ecclesiastes says is the best thing I can possibly do is to drink deeply of that. The best thing we can possibly do is find joy in these moments that God allows. We don't know how long we'll have them. I was talking with a friend last night who's got a new infant. And he said every time he gets up with the infant in the middle of the night and holds her, that it's a privilege. Because he doesn't know when that last time's going to be. And that's the truth of it. I think that we have so many pockets of joy in our life every day. If we have people that we love, if we have something to do that we appreciate, if we're choosing to honor God with our life. And I think that because we're so busy chasing vapor, sometimes we miss these sweet little moments that can all be had right here if we're just paying enough attention. That's why I think on the other side of these realities awaits for us this profound joy. And I think that when we realize that, that when we realize that God has designed these things to bring us happiness in our life, that what's really important is if we don't believe in a God, if we're atheistic in our worldview, then that's it. The joy terminates in those moments. That's all we have. But if we are a spiritual people who believe that God designed these things and these blessings in our life to make himself evident in our life, then our joy doesn't terminate in the moment. It turns into exuberant praise. It reminds us that we have a God that designed this for us. And the other part is, and this is incredible, that the joy that we're experiencing in that moment is only a glimpse of the eternity that he's designed for us and won for us with Jesus, which is what we're going to come back and talk about next week, is how these things are glimpses to the eternity that Jesus has already won for us. So in a few minutes, the band is going to come, and we've saved two fun, exuberant songs to praise God together. And while we do that, I want to encourage you to keep those two thoughts in your head. What are the things that I can see from my chair? What are the joys that God has given me that are within my reach from places that I already have in my life? What are the things that maybe I'm missing because I'm chasing stuff that I don't need? And then let's reflect on the reality that there is coming an eternity where that's all we experience. It's no more just pockets. It's reality. And that is something for us all to celebrate. Let me pray for us. Father, you are so very good to us. You've given us so much. Lord, I pray that we would be grateful for those blessings. I pray that you would steep us in profound gratitude for the things that we have, that you would show us what we need and what we don't. God, if there is somebody here or who can hear my voice, who doesn't have people in their life that they love, God, would you bring that to them? Would you provide that community for them even here at Grace? Would you give them the courage to slip up their hand in some way, to fill out some sheet, or to send some email, or make some phone call, or some text, and help them engage with relationships that matter to them. God, if there are people who don't have something they enjoy in their days, would you give them the courage to find that? Show them how you designed them and what you created them for. God, if we are not honoring you with our lives, I pray that you would give us the courage to do that. Let us praise you exuberantly, God, for the joys that you have given us in our lives. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. Amen, amen. Thank you, Nate. Let's all stand up. guitar solo Our God, firm foundation Our rock, the only solid ground Let's lift his name. you are the only king forever you are victorious Unmatched in all your wisdom In love and justice you will reign and every knee will bow we bring our expectations our hope is anchored in your name the name of jesus Jesus you are the only king forever forevermore you are victorious We lift our banner high. We lift the name of Jesus. From age to age you reign. Your kingdom has no end. We lift our banner high. We lift the name of Jesus. From age to age you reign. Your kingdom has no end. You are the only king forever. Mighty God, we lift you higher. You are the only king forever. Forevermore, you are the only king forever Forevermore, you are victorious. He is doing great things See what our Savior has done See how His love overcomes he has done great things. We dance in your freedom, awake and alive. Oh Jesus, our Savior, your name lifted high be faithful forever more you have done great things and I know you will do it again for your promise is yes and amen you will do great things God you do great things Oh Oh you have done great things you've done great things every captive and break every chain oh god You have done great things. You have done great things. Oh God, you guys here today. God bless. Have a great week. Thank you. Come all you weary, come all you thirsty, come to the well that never runs dry. Drink of the water, come and thirst no more. Well, come all you sinners, come find His mercy. Come to the table, He will satisfy. Taste of His goodness, find what you're looking for. For God so loved the world that He gave us, His one and only Son to save us. If you never believed in Him, you'll live forever. Here we go. We'll live forever. God so loved the world. Praise God. Praise God. From whom all blessings flow. Praise Him. Praise Him. For the wonders of His love. Praise God. Praise God. Praise God. Praise Him. Praise Him. For the wonders of His love. His amazing love. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save us Whoever believes in Him Will live forever Oh, the power of hell Forever defeated Now it is well I'm walking in freedom For God so loved the world. Amen. You are here, moving in our midst. I worship you. I worship you. You are here, working in this place. I worship you. I worship you. You are here. Working in this place. I worship you. I worship you. You are way maker. Miracle worker. Promise keeper. Light in the darkness. darkness my god that is who you are Jesus. Jesus I worship you. I worship you. You're mending every heart. You are here and you are mending every heart. I worship you. I worship you. You are here and you are way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light're the way maker. Yeah, sing it again. Oh, that is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. My Jesus. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. My Jesus. Yes, even when. Come on. You never stop. You're the way maker. Oh, that is who you are. Oh, it's who you are, my Jesus. Miracle worker. That is who you are. is above depression. His name is above loneliness. Oh, His name is above disease. His name is above cancer. His name is above every other name. That is who you are. Jesus. oh i know that is who you are When darkness tries to roll over my bones When sorrow comes to pain is all I know, oh, I won't be shaken. No, I won't be shaken. I am not captive to the light. I'm not afraid to leave my past behind. Oh, I won't be shaken. No, I won't be shaken. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. Oh, I'm standing. There's power in your name. Power in your name. There's power that can break off every chain. There's power that can empty out a grave. There's resurrection power that can save. is Thank you. I'm standing in your love. I count on one thing. The same God that never fails will not fail me now. You won't fail me now in the waiting. The same God who's never late is working you're working Yes, I will bless your name. Oh, yes, I will sing for joy. My heart is heavy God that never fails. Will not fail me now. You won't fail me now in the waiting. This ain't God who's never late. He's working all things out. You're working all things out. Oh, yes, I will lift you high in the lowest valley. Yes, I will. For all my days. Oh, yes, I will. And I choose to praise, to glorify, glorify the name of all names that nothing can stand against. And I choose to praise, to glorify, glorify the name of all Thank you. The name of all names. That nothing can stand against. And I choose to praise. To glorify, glorify the name of our names. That nothing can stand against. Oh yes, I will lift you high in the lowest valley. Yes, I will bless your name. Oh, yes, I will sing for joy when my heart is heavy. All my days. Oh, yes, I will. Thank you. Come let us bow at his feet. He has done great things..

Thank you very much. Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. There you go. Now they can see me on video. Isn't that so much better? If you are joining us online, thank you for doing that. And I would just say gently for those who are joining us online, if you're doing that consistently, there is nothing quite like worshiping together as a family. So if you can get here and worship with us, do that because it's a sweet, sweet time, and it's my favorite part of the week, every week when I get to worship with you guys. We are in the third part of our series called Traits of Grace, and these are kind of five distinctive characteristics that make grace, grace. I am a firm believer, and will wholeheartedly share it with whomever is curious that grace is not, we're not nailing it as a church. Okay. We haven't like figured out how to do church the right way and all the other churches are doing it wrong. Okay. They're, they're worse than us. You guys are the good Christians who've really figured out how to love Jesus well. And the other churches are apostate and we should pray for them. Like we don't believe that. We believe that there are plenty of churches in the city of Raleigh that are doing wonderful jobs, pushing people towards Jesus and making disciples. I would even say that there's got to be plenty of them who are doing better than us. But you guys are here this morning. So we're going to make the best of it together while you think about a better church to go to next week. But there's plenty of great churches doing plenty of great things, and so I think it's important for churches to figure out what is it that makes us us? What has God wired us to do? A few weeks ago, we talked about being kingdom builders, and I kind of left you guys with the question of what is your good work? Ephesians 2.10, for we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. And so we asked, what is your good work? And I think similarly, it's wise for churches to ask, what is our good work? Every church is supposed to make disciples, but how would God have us go about it? How has he uniquely wired and gathered and impassioned us to do it? And as we were having the discussion about what makes grace, grace last fall, we came up as a staff and then as elders with these five traits. So we've talked about the fact that partners at grace are kingdom builders. Then we talked last week about how partners at Grace are conduits of Grace. We stay connected to Jesus and we pour out all the love and all the goodness and all the grace that we receive from Jesus onto others. We are conduits of Grace. And so this week we arrive at the third trait that we feel like we are at Grace. And I realized this morning as I was reviewing and preparing that I didn't put this in your notes anywhere. So I don't know if this is going to be unofficial or something. I hope I haven't done something wrong and now this one doesn't count. But we are people of devotion. That's the third trait of grace. We are people of devotion. And when I say devotion, obviously that can mean multiple things, but it really means what it meant back in 1985. We are people who have devotions. You have heard me say many times, if you've been at grace for any period of time, that the single greatest habit that anyone can develop in their life, a lot of you can finish this sentence, is to get up every day and spend time in God's word and time in prayer. That is the most important thing, the most important habit that any single one of us can develop at any point in our life. And I believe that to be true, and we hit on that to be true, and we remind you of that all the time, because I also try to remind you that I am not enough. You can't come listen to me talk for 30 minutes a week and know the breadth and the depth of the God that's waiting for you in this text. You can't listen to whatever I choose to pick out and talk about just this little tiny snippet within here and somehow hope to understand the whole book. That's just not how that works. So it takes more than 30 minutes a week. It takes more than just one small group a week, which we'd love to say is an hour a week talking about spiritual things, but really it's about 45 minutes a week talking about whatever the heck and then about 15 minutes of good spiritual conversation. If you're in a small group, you know what I'm talking about. So that's not enough. We've got to spend time in God's Word, and we've got to spend time in God's presence through prayer. So when we thought about what are we at Grace, what do we want partners to be at Grace? We want to be people of devotion. We want to be people who develop that habit. And as we think about it this morning, I don't know about you, but I feel that when God is speaking to us, he often speaks in stereo. When someone will ask me, hey, how do I hear God's voice? How do I know what he's saying to me? How do I discern God's will for my life? I often will say, one of the first things I'll tell him is, God speaks, when he speaks to me, he speaks in stereo. He tells me from this source and this source and this source and this source, and it just kind of continues to come up in my life. And one of the themes that has been coming up for me in my life before the summer, but in particular the summer, you guys gave me the great privilege and rest of not having to preach in the month of July to just kind of settle and work on some other things in the church and allow God to refresh me a little bit. And it was wonderful. And one of the things that I brought out of there and that seems to continue to come up in my sermons that I'm preaching like when I preached on the law a couple weeks ago and I've seen it come through in themes these last couple weeks and then really we're hitting on it again in my Tuesday morning men's Bible study. I have a men's Bible study that meets on Tuesday mornings at 6 30. We meet that early to keep out the riffraff. The only thing the only thing prohibiting you from being there is laziness. So come on and join us. We're not any nicer there either. This is as nice as it gets. But I see this theme in my life and I've seen it in what we're learning at Grace and I thought it worth highlighting this morning, which is simply the beautiful simplicity of abiding. We talked about this last week. We're conduits of grace. And we looked at John 15, where Jesus is speaking to the disciples, particularly four and five. And he says, I am the vine, you are the branches. Abide in me and I in you, and you will bear much fruit. And we talked about this idea of all I have to do is stay connected to Christ, and he's going to produce the fruit in my life that I need to produce. I don't have to think about that. I just focus on abiding in Christ. And I think that there is this beautiful simplicity to that. Because we can make Christianity really complicated, can't we? It can be really challenging and difficult. It can be intimidating to look at this Bible, to open it up, to come to service on a Sunday and the pastor says, turn to Malachi. You're like, I've never even heard of that name in my life. I don't know where that is, right? Just to learn just the names of the 66 books, to learn how to find them all, that there's 37 or 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament, to learn all, what are all the sins? What are all the things I'm supposed to do? What are all the things I'm not supposed to do? Who are all the people? And how old was Paul? Did he live to be 900? Or is that some other guy? Like it can be a lot. And one of the things that I have a heart for is adults, people who have already gone through life and made a bunch of decisions. And in your 30s, 40s, 50s or later, you decide this is when I want to get serious about my faith and you start trying to learn Bible. And you don't have the background that I've been learning about this since I was old enough to talk. But it can feel like a steep bell curve when you're trying to learn faith and taking it seriously. So I love the beautiful simplicity of really what God asks us to do, which is to simply abide in him. Just simply, you just, just, just focus on Jesus. Just pursue Jesus. Just love others like Jesus loves you. Just do all that. The rest of this stuff, if you focus on abiding in Christ, the rest of this stuff, the rest of Christianity, the rest of life will take care of itself. Just focus on abiding in Christ. And this is, this is an attitude that we see throughout scripture. We're going to look at two other places today where it's pared down and it's made just this simple. One of my favorite pictures of this in the Bible is in the book of Hebrews. In the book of Hebrews, there's Hebrews chapter 12, verse 1, obviously follows. I don't know if you know this. You have to go to seminary to know this, but chapter 12 of Hebrews follows chapter 11 of Hebrews. And in chapter 11 of Hebrews, we have this really famous passage that's called the Hall of Faith, where the author of Hebrews lists out all of these heroes of the faith and the acts that they performed by faith. And then when we get into 12, and I'll read it in just a minute, but when we get into 12, we see it begin, So it's this idea that we're on the playing field of earth as those in heaven who have come before us are now watching us in real time, which I think is a really cool thought. And here's what the author of Hebrews says. He says, Because we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles and run the race that is set before us. And it's language, I think, that we can identify with. It's language that inspires. We're kind of like, okay, I'm on the playing field. I'm supposed to run this race. I'm supposed to live my life. I'm supposed to do the things that God wants me to do. How do I do that? Well, I throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles. I need to run in such a way that I can do what God wants me to do, that I can be who God wants me to be, and I need to get rid of all the things that don't help me run my race. And this, again, is an idea that is replete throughout Scripture. It shows up again and again and again. Paul tells us that we are to fight the good fight. He says that he fights the good fight. He tells us that in this race, we are to run as the one who's trying to get the prize, that we are supposed to cling to our faith. We are told to live a life worthy of the calling that we have received. Jesus tells us that other people should see our good works and so glorify our Father who is in heaven. So all throughout Scripture is this simple admonition that we need to live a life worthy of the calling that we've received. We need to run the race. We need to be who God created us to be. We need to determine what are our good works and how do we walk in them. And you can rephrase all of that and we say we need to be good Christians. We need to grow in our faith. We need to move towards Jesus. And we can identify with this. This is, to me, inspiring. It's easy to understand. Yep, I'm running a race and I do that by throwing off the sin and the weight that's so easily entangled. So I got to stop doing those things so I can do the things that God wants me to do. And sometimes, I think more often than not, that's where we stop. I'm going to try really hard at running this race. I'm going to try really hard to be a good Christian. I'm going to try really hard to be a good dad and a good husband and a good friend, a good employee or employer. I'm going to try really hard to be a good citizen. And I'm going to do that by throwing off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles. And we act like the next verse doesn't exist. How are we supposed to do that? By looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Even in Hebrews, where it uses this language about running our race, doing better, being good Christians, being who God's created us to be, it tells us, it gives us the answer right there. How do I do that? How do I run my race well? By focusing my eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. How do we produce much fruit? By abiding in Christ, by focusing on Jesus. And so I call it the beautiful simplicity of abiding because there's this thing that happens. When I decide that I want to be a better father or a better husband or a better pastor or a better human, there's a lot of growth that needs to happen in all of those areas, except for husband. I'm nailing that one. When I decide I want to be better at those things, I think our tendency is to go, okay, what do I need to do to be a better husband? And we identify things and we run and I'm going to do more of this and less of this. What do I need to do to be a better wife? I'm going to do more of this and less than this. What do I need to do to be a better mom? I'm going to do more of this and less of this. And we try to white knuckle our way to better, right? That's the American way. I want to be better at these things. I'm going to focus on those things. I'm going to come up with a plan, and I'm going to do it. And Christianity says, no, no, don't do that. Don't do that. Just focus on Jesus. Just focus on God. Just focus on abiding in Christ, and I'll take care of the rest of it. So here's how this works practically. I do have a lot of room to grow in being a husband. You know the most effective way for me to be a better husband to Jen? It's to pursue Jesus. It's to wake up tomorrow and say, Jesus, I want to honor you today as I seek to be Jen's husband. How do I honor you in that? How would you have me be a good husband today, Jesus? You want to be a better employee? You want to move up the ranks? You want your career to progress? You can spend a lot of time thinking about the best thing to do and the best person to please and the best way, the best jobs to go for or the best tasks to complete or the right people to make friends with or whatever it is you do to progress in your field. Or you can go to work every day, focus on Christ, and you can say, Jesus, how can I honor you today in my work? How can I honor you today in these meetings? How can I honor you today in these tasks? And then you honor Jesus. And you know what happens? Everything else works out. I was talking in my Bible study group about this idea. Just honor Jesus in what we do. Just pursue Jesus in what we do and let him handle the results. And they said, well, what does that mean practically? I said, for my sermons. My job is to be diligent on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday so that when I stand before you on Sunday, before God on Sunday, I know I've given my best effort. I've honored God in my preparation. I've honored Jesus in my prayer life as I approached sharing this with you guys. And I know that I've done the best that I could in the week that I was given with the time that I was allotted. And I'm honoring Jesus as I give this to you. If I can say that, what happens as a result of the sermon is completely out of my hands. I have nothing to do with that. I don't worry about that. I worry about where my heart is as I prepare, and I'll be the first to confess. Listen, I say that, and that sounds lovely, like how Nate, he's worked diligently on sermons, and he's prayed through them, and he's ready to present them. Yeah, most of the time, sometimes, y'all, I'm winging it, and I sit down, and the very first, y'all are singing, and y'all think things are good, and I sit down, and I'm like, God, I'm so sorry. I dishonored these people. That wasn't worth showering for. I can't believe that I did that to them. So sometimes I don't do it. But on the weeks that I do, then I preach the sermon, and I wash my hands of it. Now it's between you and the Spirit. And somebody in my Bible study said, well, wouldn't that be a great way to approach life? And I was like, yeah, yeah, it would. We should do that with everything. We should do that with how we lead people, with how we love people, with how we be good parents. It's the beautiful simplicity of abiding in Christ. We focus on him, and then he takes care of everything else. And I think that this is a radical message in a culture that wants to try so hard at everything, that wants to have a to-do list for everything, for all the things in life. I'm going to find a way to tackle it, and I'm going to white-knuckle my way to better. And really, the beautiful simplicity of abiding means that we try hard at pursuing Jesus. That's it. That's where we try hard. Christians, you want to know where to put your efforts? You want to know what you need to wake up thinking about? What you need to be consumed with? How you get better at life? How you do all the things that matter? You want to know how to do that? You want to know where to put your efforts? You want to know what you need to wake up thinking about? What you need to be consumed with? How you get better at life? How you do all the things that matter? You want to know how to do that? You want to know where you should put your effort? Put it in pursuing Jesus. And waking up every day and spending time in God's word and time in God's presence through prayer. Put it into pursuing Christ and everything else will take care of itself. And there's a lot of ways to pursue Jesus, okay? We do it through worship. We do it, I believe, through godly community and spiritual conversations. We have transparency and vulnerability. We ask good questions. We share pieces of ourselves. We pursue Jesus through his service, through doing his work. Jesus says whatever we do unto the least of these, we do unto him. So we pursue Jesus by helping those who can't help themselves. But I think the primary way that we pursue Jesus is through devotions. One of the primary ways we pursue Jesus is by waking up every day and spending time in God's Word and time in prayer. I think it's the fundamental way. I think one of the most frustrating things to me about trying to get in shape and fit into your old mediums. I've got one on underneath this that I have to wear a baggy shirt over it because if I don't, I'll just bring shame on my family. I can't wear this polo in front of other people in public. I used to be able to, there was a time, but when you go to get in shape, you can, you can exercise 30 minutes a day, right? And exercising to me is the easy part. That's, that's, that's the fun thing to do. That's fine. That's good. I can put in a podcast or a book or something like that. That's kind of the easy discipline to gain on. You know what the hard part is? Eating like a rabbit, man. That stinks. Eating salads. That's not fun. I don't like eating right. I just don't. I like eating wrong. Very wrong. But unless you do both, you'll never be in good shape. You won't be in good health. And you can exercise all you want, but until your diet changes, your body really doesn't. And you really don't get that healthy. You can exercise all you want and go to church and do all the things and go to Bible study and have the conversations and serve sometimes and give of yourself and tithe. You can do all the exercise you want, but until your diet changes, your spiritual health won't really either. I believe that our pursuit of Jesus begins here. And that when we do that, when we begin it here, then God handles everything else. This is actually affirmed in the book of Psalms. The very first Psalm, the one that Parker read earlier in the service, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. And then look what happens. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. David says, blessed is the man who doesn't waste his time with frivolous things, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. His delight is in God's word. And on that law, he meditates day and night. How can you meditate on it if you don't know it, if you haven't learned it, if you haven't poured yourself into it? He prays over it. He pursues Jesus in it. And because of that, he's like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season. And all that he does, he prospers. The man that David is describing in Psalm 1 did not set about to prosper. That's not the point. He set about to know Jesus. He set about to know his God, to know his law, to know his word. And the happy side effect of that was that God blesses him along his way. I want to be careful when I say that. God's blessings look different than what you think blessings might be. So I'm not preaching that if we get up every day and read God's word that we're going to have all the things that we want. That's not how that goes. But what I am saying is if we get up every day and we spend time in God's word and time in prayer, then we will become who God wants us to be. That's the blessing. And I believe that becoming the people that God has created us to be is the place of greatest peace and contentment and happiness that we can find in life. If you've ever had a season where you were moving, you were doing exactly what God wanted you to do, you know there's no greater peace or joy than that. I had lunch with somebody this week, catching up with them after a long time, and he shifted careers and got a new job. And I said, how's it going, man? And he said, God has affirmed over and over and over again that I am doing exactly what he would have me do, and I have never been happier. It's remarkable how that works. When we walk the path that God has laid out for us, lo and behold, that's where joy is found. I think Psalm 16 tells us something about there being a fullness of joy in the presence of God. And I feel like that's a joy and a peace worth having. So I would also mention to you that nothing worth having is gained by default. Nothing in this life that we have that we really value is gained by default. If you have a good marriage, like a good one, you worked hard at that, Joker. You didn't just fall into that. Unless you're like, if you've been married for like two years, you're like, my marriage is pretty good. We haven't had to work that hard. Okay, forget you. All right. You don't count. Talk to the rest of us in 10 years, rookies. If you have a good marriage, you worked hard at that. You've intentionally spent time together when the kids made it difficult. You've intentionally chosen each other when life tried to prevent it. You've had hard conversations. You've said hard things. You've heard hard things. But you're stronger for it and you have a good marriage and you worked at it. If you have kids who love you, if you have adult kids who love you and want to spend time with you, you worked hard at that. That was not easy. That did not happen by default. If you have a career that you like, that you're proud of, you worked hard at that. That didn't happen by default. If you have good, rich, deep friendships, you've prioritized and valued them over the years. You've made them important. You didn't just default into those. Why would we think that we would default into a good, healthy, vibrant relationship with Jesus? We have to work at it. We have to make time for it. So do that. Prioritize it. Make it happen. Find a time when you can spend time in God's Word and spend time in prayer. If you don't know what to read, ask somebody. Start in Proverbs. If you don't know the Bible at all and you want to read it and you don't know what to read, start in Proverbs. You don't have to know anything about anything for Proverbs to make sense. Totally out of context, just start reading it. It's great. Read a gospel, read the book of Mark. It goes very fast and it points you with Jesus very well. Or just pick up and read something you've been curious about, but start doing it. Make it a habit. Be consistent in it. Trust me when I say that there's no greater habit that anyone can develop than that, and do it. Whatever you're currently doing first in the morning isn't as good as this. And if what you're doing first in the morning is sleeping an extra 30 minutes, it's definitely not as good as this. Just hit pause on that other stuff and engage with God first and then go about your day. I do it when I get into the office. I get into the office. I tend to be the first one in the office because I'm the hardest worker on staff. And I have a kid that starts school early and I have to drop her off every day. So I get here early. But the office is quiet and that's when I have my time. That's when I'm able to pray and read God's word and get ready to prayerfully approach my day. Pick a time when you can do it too. Make it happen. Prioritize it. Value it. Last week, I said that we needed to abide in Christ and we're going to talk about how to do that. And I said that when you came back this week, I was going to light some of your faces on fire and really convict you. So here's the convicting thing. What I'm about to say, I'm not saying to you if you're new. If this is the first time you've ever heard a sermon that's imploring you to have a devotional life, then I'm not saying this next thing to you. If it's the second time, maybe the first time you weren't paying attention, or I just did a bad job with it, whatever it was, I'm not talking to you either. But if you've heard this sermon before, I've preached it plenty. Maybe not from this angle, maybe not in this way, but I've preached have devotions. I've preached that a bunch. I've joked around. I'm going to do it one day. I'm just going to walk up here on stage and I'm going to go, hey, good morning, Grace. It's good to see everybody. My name's Nate, one of the pastors here. You should read the Bible more. Let's pray. Because that's all you need because you know that I'm right. You know that we need to do this. So if that's you and you still don't have habit, as your pastor, as someone who cares about you, let me just ask you, how many more times will you need this sermon? How many more times? How many more times are you going to sit in this room or a room like this and hear this sermon and go, yeah, Monday, I need to. How many more? Can this one be it? Can this one do it for us? Because there's some people in this room who already do this. They've got a rich, vibrant devotional life, and they've been sitting in here, and they've just been cheering me on. Yes, do it. Please. It's the best. And I want all of you to cheer this sermon on every time you hear it from now on. Next time you hear this sermon, listen, I don't want it to convict you one little bit. I want you to sit in those seats feeling great because you know it's true. And now you're the cheering section because I'm never going to stop preaching this sermon. I'm going to preach it once or twice a year for the rest of my days as long as God gives me a stage to preach on to push people back into God's word and to push people back into prayer. But at Grace, as our partners, when I preach this sermon again, I want you to be the biggest cheerleaders. And I never want it to convict you again. Because I want you to hang in there and develop this habit. And I'll tell you this, okay? Just give you a little pastoral advice. Some of you, gosh, I hope, as a result of this, are going to wake up tomorrow, you're going to read your Bible. And it'll be something that you haven't done in a while. And that's great. You'll set your alarm. You'll make your coffee. You get your vibe all right, exactly where you want to be. This is good. This nice fall weather. This is great. I'm going to have the best quiet time. And you're going to open up your Bible to wherever you've decided to open up your Bible. And maybe, maybe God parts the heavens and the angels sing to you and Shekinah glory shines down directly on your head. Maybe. What's probably going to happen is you're going to get a little something out of it that's encouraging, that speaks to something in your life, or maybe nothing at all. You'll pray. If you're not used to praying, you'll pray for about two and a half minutes. You'll be like, I'm all out. Kind of run out of stuff to pray about. That's okay. And maybe it doesn't feel like the heavens parted and Shekinah glory shone down on your noggin. But I tell you what, if you get up tomorrow and you spend time in God's word and you spend time in prayer, I can promise you this, you'll have a different day than you would have had otherwise. You have a different mindset going into that day than you would have had otherwise. And if you do that several days in a row, I don't know when the heavens are gonna open and words are gonna leap off the page, but I can tell you this, if you do it several days in a row, you're gonna have a different week. And if you can manage by God's goodness and grace to hang in there and string together a couple of weeks like that, three, four weeks, you're going to have a different month. And if you start stringing together months, you're going to have a different life. And that's what we want for you at Grace. That's why we want you to be people of devotion. So let's pray that God gives us the strength of conviction to do that so that we know the only thing we need to try hard at is pursuing Jesus, and he'll take care of the rest. Let's pray. Father, we love you so much. We thank you for your word, for the way that you've chosen to reveal yourself to us. I pray that you would give us a heart for it, that you would give us a passion for it, that we would love your word, that we would love this text. God, make it exciting to us as we dive into it. Let us start to piece things together and understand where people go and where they fit and how you're revealed in your word. Let it excite us about you. God, create in us such a hunger for your word that we wake up looking forward to it. Create in us such a hunger for your presence that we desire to pray every day. May we be refreshed in your presence. May we be refreshed by your word. And God, may we become increasingly people of devotion. In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you very much. Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. There you go. Now they can see me on video. Isn't that so much better? If you are joining us online, thank you for doing that. And I would just say gently for those who are joining us online, if you're doing that consistently, there is nothing quite like worshiping together as a family. So if you can get here and worship with us, do that because it's a sweet, sweet time, and it's my favorite part of the week, every week when I get to worship with you guys. We are in the third part of our series called Traits of Grace, and these are kind of five distinctive characteristics that make grace, grace. I am a firm believer, and will wholeheartedly share it with whomever is curious that grace is not, we're not nailing it as a church. Okay. We haven't like figured out how to do church the right way and all the other churches are doing it wrong. Okay. They're, they're worse than us. You guys are the good Christians who've really figured out how to love Jesus well. And the other churches are apostate and we should pray for them. Like we don't believe that. We believe that there are plenty of churches in the city of Raleigh that are doing wonderful jobs, pushing people towards Jesus and making disciples. I would even say that there's got to be plenty of them who are doing better than us. But you guys are here this morning. So we're going to make the best of it together while you think about a better church to go to next week. But there's plenty of great churches doing plenty of great things, and so I think it's important for churches to figure out what is it that makes us us? What has God wired us to do? A few weeks ago, we talked about being kingdom builders, and I kind of left you guys with the question of what is your good work? Ephesians 2.10, for we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. And so we asked, what is your good work? And I think similarly, it's wise for churches to ask, what is our good work? Every church is supposed to make disciples, but how would God have us go about it? How has he uniquely wired and gathered and impassioned us to do it? And as we were having the discussion about what makes grace, grace last fall, we came up as a staff and then as elders with these five traits. So we've talked about the fact that partners at grace are kingdom builders. Then we talked last week about how partners at Grace are conduits of Grace. We stay connected to Jesus and we pour out all the love and all the goodness and all the grace that we receive from Jesus onto others. We are conduits of Grace. And so this week we arrive at the third trait that we feel like we are at Grace. And I realized this morning as I was reviewing and preparing that I didn't put this in your notes anywhere. So I don't know if this is going to be unofficial or something. I hope I haven't done something wrong and now this one doesn't count. But we are people of devotion. That's the third trait of grace. We are people of devotion. And when I say devotion, obviously that can mean multiple things, but it really means what it meant back in 1985. We are people who have devotions. You have heard me say many times, if you've been at grace for any period of time, that the single greatest habit that anyone can develop in their life, a lot of you can finish this sentence, is to get up every day and spend time in God's word and time in prayer. That is the most important thing, the most important habit that any single one of us can develop at any point in our life. And I believe that to be true, and we hit on that to be true, and we remind you of that all the time, because I also try to remind you that I am not enough. You can't come listen to me talk for 30 minutes a week and know the breadth and the depth of the God that's waiting for you in this text. You can't listen to whatever I choose to pick out and talk about just this little tiny snippet within here and somehow hope to understand the whole book. That's just not how that works. So it takes more than 30 minutes a week. It takes more than just one small group a week, which we'd love to say is an hour a week talking about spiritual things, but really it's about 45 minutes a week talking about whatever the heck and then about 15 minutes of good spiritual conversation. If you're in a small group, you know what I'm talking about. So that's not enough. We've got to spend time in God's Word, and we've got to spend time in God's presence through prayer. So when we thought about what are we at Grace, what do we want partners to be at Grace? We want to be people of devotion. We want to be people who develop that habit. And as we think about it this morning, I don't know about you, but I feel that when God is speaking to us, he often speaks in stereo. When someone will ask me, hey, how do I hear God's voice? How do I know what he's saying to me? How do I discern God's will for my life? I often will say, one of the first things I'll tell him is, God speaks, when he speaks to me, he speaks in stereo. He tells me from this source and this source and this source and this source, and it just kind of continues to come up in my life. And one of the themes that has been coming up for me in my life before the summer, but in particular the summer, you guys gave me the great privilege and rest of not having to preach in the month of July to just kind of settle and work on some other things in the church and allow God to refresh me a little bit. And it was wonderful. And one of the things that I brought out of there and that seems to continue to come up in my sermons that I'm preaching like when I preached on the law a couple weeks ago and I've seen it come through in themes these last couple weeks and then really we're hitting on it again in my Tuesday morning men's Bible study. I have a men's Bible study that meets on Tuesday mornings at 6 30. We meet that early to keep out the riffraff. The only thing the only thing prohibiting you from being there is laziness. So come on and join us. We're not any nicer there either. This is as nice as it gets. But I see this theme in my life and I've seen it in what we're learning at Grace and I thought it worth highlighting this morning, which is simply the beautiful simplicity of abiding. We talked about this last week. We're conduits of grace. And we looked at John 15, where Jesus is speaking to the disciples, particularly four and five. And he says, I am the vine, you are the branches. Abide in me and I in you, and you will bear much fruit. And we talked about this idea of all I have to do is stay connected to Christ, and he's going to produce the fruit in my life that I need to produce. I don't have to think about that. I just focus on abiding in Christ. And I think that there is this beautiful simplicity to that. Because we can make Christianity really complicated, can't we? It can be really challenging and difficult. It can be intimidating to look at this Bible, to open it up, to come to service on a Sunday and the pastor says, turn to Malachi. You're like, I've never even heard of that name in my life. I don't know where that is, right? Just to learn just the names of the 66 books, to learn how to find them all, that there's 37 or 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament, to learn all, what are all the sins? What are all the things I'm supposed to do? What are all the things I'm not supposed to do? Who are all the people? And how old was Paul? Did he live to be 900? Or is that some other guy? Like it can be a lot. And one of the things that I have a heart for is adults, people who have already gone through life and made a bunch of decisions. And in your 30s, 40s, 50s or later, you decide this is when I want to get serious about my faith and you start trying to learn Bible. And you don't have the background that I've been learning about this since I was old enough to talk. But it can feel like a steep bell curve when you're trying to learn faith and taking it seriously. So I love the beautiful simplicity of really what God asks us to do, which is to simply abide in him. Just simply, you just, just, just focus on Jesus. Just pursue Jesus. Just love others like Jesus loves you. Just do all that. The rest of this stuff, if you focus on abiding in Christ, the rest of this stuff, the rest of Christianity, the rest of life will take care of itself. Just focus on abiding in Christ. And this is, this is an attitude that we see throughout scripture. We're going to look at two other places today where it's pared down and it's made just this simple. One of my favorite pictures of this in the Bible is in the book of Hebrews. In the book of Hebrews, there's Hebrews chapter 12, verse 1, obviously follows. I don't know if you know this. You have to go to seminary to know this, but chapter 12 of Hebrews follows chapter 11 of Hebrews. And in chapter 11 of Hebrews, we have this really famous passage that's called the Hall of Faith, where the author of Hebrews lists out all of these heroes of the faith and the acts that they performed by faith. And then when we get into 12, and I'll read it in just a minute, but when we get into 12, we see it begin, So it's this idea that we're on the playing field of earth as those in heaven who have come before us are now watching us in real time, which I think is a really cool thought. And here's what the author of Hebrews says. He says, Because we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles and run the race that is set before us. And it's language, I think, that we can identify with. It's language that inspires. We're kind of like, okay, I'm on the playing field. I'm supposed to run this race. I'm supposed to live my life. I'm supposed to do the things that God wants me to do. How do I do that? Well, I throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles. I need to run in such a way that I can do what God wants me to do, that I can be who God wants me to be, and I need to get rid of all the things that don't help me run my race. And this, again, is an idea that is replete throughout Scripture. It shows up again and again and again. Paul tells us that we are to fight the good fight. He says that he fights the good fight. He tells us that in this race, we are to run as the one who's trying to get the prize, that we are supposed to cling to our faith. We are told to live a life worthy of the calling that we have received. Jesus tells us that other people should see our good works and so glorify our Father who is in heaven. So all throughout Scripture is this simple admonition that we need to live a life worthy of the calling that we've received. We need to run the race. We need to be who God created us to be. We need to determine what are our good works and how do we walk in them. And you can rephrase all of that and we say we need to be good Christians. We need to grow in our faith. We need to move towards Jesus. And we can identify with this. This is, to me, inspiring. It's easy to understand. Yep, I'm running a race and I do that by throwing off the sin and the weight that's so easily entangled. So I got to stop doing those things so I can do the things that God wants me to do. And sometimes, I think more often than not, that's where we stop. I'm going to try really hard at running this race. I'm going to try really hard to be a good Christian. I'm going to try really hard to be a good dad and a good husband and a good friend, a good employee or employer. I'm going to try really hard to be a good citizen. And I'm going to do that by throwing off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles. And we act like the next verse doesn't exist. How are we supposed to do that? By looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Even in Hebrews, where it uses this language about running our race, doing better, being good Christians, being who God's created us to be, it tells us, it gives us the answer right there. How do I do that? How do I run my race well? By focusing my eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. How do we produce much fruit? By abiding in Christ, by focusing on Jesus. And so I call it the beautiful simplicity of abiding because there's this thing that happens. When I decide that I want to be a better father or a better husband or a better pastor or a better human, there's a lot of growth that needs to happen in all of those areas, except for husband. I'm nailing that one. When I decide I want to be better at those things, I think our tendency is to go, okay, what do I need to do to be a better husband? And we identify things and we run and I'm going to do more of this and less of this. What do I need to do to be a better wife? I'm going to do more of this and less than this. What do I need to do to be a better mom? I'm going to do more of this and less of this. And we try to white knuckle our way to better, right? That's the American way. I want to be better at these things. I'm going to focus on those things. I'm going to come up with a plan, and I'm going to do it. And Christianity says, no, no, don't do that. Don't do that. Just focus on Jesus. Just focus on God. Just focus on abiding in Christ, and I'll take care of the rest of it. So here's how this works practically. I do have a lot of room to grow in being a husband. You know the most effective way for me to be a better husband to Jen? It's to pursue Jesus. It's to wake up tomorrow and say, Jesus, I want to honor you today as I seek to be Jen's husband. How do I honor you in that? How would you have me be a good husband today, Jesus? You want to be a better employee? You want to move up the ranks? You want your career to progress? You can spend a lot of time thinking about the best thing to do and the best person to please and the best way, the best jobs to go for or the best tasks to complete or the right people to make friends with or whatever it is you do to progress in your field. Or you can go to work every day, focus on Christ, and you can say, Jesus, how can I honor you today in my work? How can I honor you today in these meetings? How can I honor you today in these tasks? And then you honor Jesus. And you know what happens? Everything else works out. I was talking in my Bible study group about this idea. Just honor Jesus in what we do. Just pursue Jesus in what we do and let him handle the results. And they said, well, what does that mean practically? I said, for my sermons. My job is to be diligent on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday so that when I stand before you on Sunday, before God on Sunday, I know I've given my best effort. I've honored God in my preparation. I've honored Jesus in my prayer life as I approached sharing this with you guys. And I know that I've done the best that I could in the week that I was given with the time that I was allotted. And I'm honoring Jesus as I give this to you. If I can say that, what happens as a result of the sermon is completely out of my hands. I have nothing to do with that. I don't worry about that. I worry about where my heart is as I prepare, and I'll be the first to confess. Listen, I say that, and that sounds lovely, like how Nate, he's worked diligently on sermons, and he's prayed through them, and he's ready to present them. Yeah, most of the time, sometimes, y'all, I'm winging it, and I sit down, and the very first, y'all are singing, and y'all think things are good, and I sit down, and I'm like, God, I'm so sorry. I dishonored these people. That wasn't worth showering for. I can't believe that I did that to them. So sometimes I don't do it. But on the weeks that I do, then I preach the sermon, and I wash my hands of it. Now it's between you and the Spirit. And somebody in my Bible study said, well, wouldn't that be a great way to approach life? And I was like, yeah, yeah, it would. We should do that with everything. We should do that with how we lead people, with how we love people, with how we be good parents. It's the beautiful simplicity of abiding in Christ. We focus on him, and then he takes care of everything else. And I think that this is a radical message in a culture that wants to try so hard at everything, that wants to have a to-do list for everything, for all the things in life. I'm going to find a way to tackle it, and I'm going to white-knuckle my way to better. And really, the beautiful simplicity of abiding means that we try hard at pursuing Jesus. That's it. That's where we try hard. Christians, you want to know where to put your efforts? You want to know what you need to wake up thinking about? What you need to be consumed with? How you get better at life? How you do all the things that matter? You want to know how to do that? You want to know where to put your efforts? You want to know what you need to wake up thinking about? What you need to be consumed with? How you get better at life? How you do all the things that matter? You want to know how to do that? You want to know where you should put your effort? Put it in pursuing Jesus. And waking up every day and spending time in God's word and time in God's presence through prayer. Put it into pursuing Christ and everything else will take care of itself. And there's a lot of ways to pursue Jesus, okay? We do it through worship. We do it, I believe, through godly community and spiritual conversations. We have transparency and vulnerability. We ask good questions. We share pieces of ourselves. We pursue Jesus through his service, through doing his work. Jesus says whatever we do unto the least of these, we do unto him. So we pursue Jesus by helping those who can't help themselves. But I think the primary way that we pursue Jesus is through devotions. One of the primary ways we pursue Jesus is by waking up every day and spending time in God's Word and time in prayer. I think it's the fundamental way. I think one of the most frustrating things to me about trying to get in shape and fit into your old mediums. I've got one on underneath this that I have to wear a baggy shirt over it because if I don't, I'll just bring shame on my family. I can't wear this polo in front of other people in public. I used to be able to, there was a time, but when you go to get in shape, you can, you can exercise 30 minutes a day, right? And exercising to me is the easy part. That's, that's, that's the fun thing to do. That's fine. That's good. I can put in a podcast or a book or something like that. That's kind of the easy discipline to gain on. You know what the hard part is? Eating like a rabbit, man. That stinks. Eating salads. That's not fun. I don't like eating right. I just don't. I like eating wrong. Very wrong. But unless you do both, you'll never be in good shape. You won't be in good health. And you can exercise all you want, but until your diet changes, your body really doesn't. And you really don't get that healthy. You can exercise all you want and go to church and do all the things and go to Bible study and have the conversations and serve sometimes and give of yourself and tithe. You can do all the exercise you want, but until your diet changes, your spiritual health won't really either. I believe that our pursuit of Jesus begins here. And that when we do that, when we begin it here, then God handles everything else. This is actually affirmed in the book of Psalms. The very first Psalm, the one that Parker read earlier in the service, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. And then look what happens. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. David says, blessed is the man who doesn't waste his time with frivolous things, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. His delight is in God's word. And on that law, he meditates day and night. How can you meditate on it if you don't know it, if you haven't learned it, if you haven't poured yourself into it? He prays over it. He pursues Jesus in it. And because of that, he's like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season. And all that he does, he prospers. The man that David is describing in Psalm 1 did not set about to prosper. That's not the point. He set about to know Jesus. He set about to know his God, to know his law, to know his word. And the happy side effect of that was that God blesses him along his way. I want to be careful when I say that. God's blessings look different than what you think blessings might be. So I'm not preaching that if we get up every day and read God's word that we're going to have all the things that we want. That's not how that goes. But what I am saying is if we get up every day and we spend time in God's word and time in prayer, then we will become who God wants us to be. That's the blessing. And I believe that becoming the people that God has created us to be is the place of greatest peace and contentment and happiness that we can find in life. If you've ever had a season where you were moving, you were doing exactly what God wanted you to do, you know there's no greater peace or joy than that. I had lunch with somebody this week, catching up with them after a long time, and he shifted careers and got a new job. And I said, how's it going, man? And he said, God has affirmed over and over and over again that I am doing exactly what he would have me do, and I have never been happier. It's remarkable how that works. When we walk the path that God has laid out for us, lo and behold, that's where joy is found. I think Psalm 16 tells us something about there being a fullness of joy in the presence of God. And I feel like that's a joy and a peace worth having. So I would also mention to you that nothing worth having is gained by default. Nothing in this life that we have that we really value is gained by default. If you have a good marriage, like a good one, you worked hard at that, Joker. You didn't just fall into that. Unless you're like, if you've been married for like two years, you're like, my marriage is pretty good. We haven't had to work that hard. Okay, forget you. All right. You don't count. Talk to the rest of us in 10 years, rookies. If you have a good marriage, you worked hard at that. You've intentionally spent time together when the kids made it difficult. You've intentionally chosen each other when life tried to prevent it. You've had hard conversations. You've said hard things. You've heard hard things. But you're stronger for it and you have a good marriage and you worked at it. If you have kids who love you, if you have adult kids who love you and want to spend time with you, you worked hard at that. That was not easy. That did not happen by default. If you have a career that you like, that you're proud of, you worked hard at that. That didn't happen by default. If you have good, rich, deep friendships, you've prioritized and valued them over the years. You've made them important. You didn't just default into those. Why would we think that we would default into a good, healthy, vibrant relationship with Jesus? We have to work at it. We have to make time for it. So do that. Prioritize it. Make it happen. Find a time when you can spend time in God's Word and spend time in prayer. If you don't know what to read, ask somebody. Start in Proverbs. If you don't know the Bible at all and you want to read it and you don't know what to read, start in Proverbs. You don't have to know anything about anything for Proverbs to make sense. Totally out of context, just start reading it. It's great. Read a gospel, read the book of Mark. It goes very fast and it points you with Jesus very well. Or just pick up and read something you've been curious about, but start doing it. Make it a habit. Be consistent in it. Trust me when I say that there's no greater habit that anyone can develop than that, and do it. Whatever you're currently doing first in the morning isn't as good as this. And if what you're doing first in the morning is sleeping an extra 30 minutes, it's definitely not as good as this. Just hit pause on that other stuff and engage with God first and then go about your day. I do it when I get into the office. I get into the office. I tend to be the first one in the office because I'm the hardest worker on staff. And I have a kid that starts school early and I have to drop her off every day. So I get here early. But the office is quiet and that's when I have my time. That's when I'm able to pray and read God's word and get ready to prayerfully approach my day. Pick a time when you can do it too. Make it happen. Prioritize it. Value it. Last week, I said that we needed to abide in Christ and we're going to talk about how to do that. And I said that when you came back this week, I was going to light some of your faces on fire and really convict you. So here's the convicting thing. What I'm about to say, I'm not saying to you if you're new. If this is the first time you've ever heard a sermon that's imploring you to have a devotional life, then I'm not saying this next thing to you. If it's the second time, maybe the first time you weren't paying attention, or I just did a bad job with it, whatever it was, I'm not talking to you either. But if you've heard this sermon before, I've preached it plenty. Maybe not from this angle, maybe not in this way, but I've preached have devotions. I've preached that a bunch. I've joked around. I'm going to do it one day. I'm just going to walk up here on stage and I'm going to go, hey, good morning, Grace. It's good to see everybody. My name's Nate, one of the pastors here. You should read the Bible more. Let's pray. Because that's all you need because you know that I'm right. You know that we need to do this. So if that's you and you still don't have habit, as your pastor, as someone who cares about you, let me just ask you, how many more times will you need this sermon? How many more times? How many more times are you going to sit in this room or a room like this and hear this sermon and go, yeah, Monday, I need to. How many more? Can this one be it? Can this one do it for us? Because there's some people in this room who already do this. They've got a rich, vibrant devotional life, and they've been sitting in here, and they've just been cheering me on. Yes, do it. Please. It's the best. And I want all of you to cheer this sermon on every time you hear it from now on. Next time you hear this sermon, listen, I don't want it to convict you one little bit. I want you to sit in those seats feeling great because you know it's true. And now you're the cheering section because I'm never going to stop preaching this sermon. I'm going to preach it once or twice a year for the rest of my days as long as God gives me a stage to preach on to push people back into God's word and to push people back into prayer. But at Grace, as our partners, when I preach this sermon again, I want you to be the biggest cheerleaders. And I never want it to convict you again. Because I want you to hang in there and develop this habit. And I'll tell you this, okay? Just give you a little pastoral advice. Some of you, gosh, I hope, as a result of this, are going to wake up tomorrow, you're going to read your Bible. And it'll be something that you haven't done in a while. And that's great. You'll set your alarm. You'll make your coffee. You get your vibe all right, exactly where you want to be. This is good. This nice fall weather. This is great. I'm going to have the best quiet time. And you're going to open up your Bible to wherever you've decided to open up your Bible. And maybe, maybe God parts the heavens and the angels sing to you and Shekinah glory shines down directly on your head. Maybe. What's probably going to happen is you're going to get a little something out of it that's encouraging, that speaks to something in your life, or maybe nothing at all. You'll pray. If you're not used to praying, you'll pray for about two and a half minutes. You'll be like, I'm all out. Kind of run out of stuff to pray about. That's okay. And maybe it doesn't feel like the heavens parted and Shekinah glory shone down on your noggin. But I tell you what, if you get up tomorrow and you spend time in God's word and you spend time in prayer, I can promise you this, you'll have a different day than you would have had otherwise. You have a different mindset going into that day than you would have had otherwise. And if you do that several days in a row, I don't know when the heavens are gonna open and words are gonna leap off the page, but I can tell you this, if you do it several days in a row, you're gonna have a different week. And if you can manage by God's goodness and grace to hang in there and string together a couple of weeks like that, three, four weeks, you're going to have a different month. And if you start stringing together months, you're going to have a different life. And that's what we want for you at Grace. That's why we want you to be people of devotion. So let's pray that God gives us the strength of conviction to do that so that we know the only thing we need to try hard at is pursuing Jesus, and he'll take care of the rest. Let's pray. Father, we love you so much. We thank you for your word, for the way that you've chosen to reveal yourself to us. I pray that you would give us a heart for it, that you would give us a passion for it, that we would love your word, that we would love this text. God, make it exciting to us as we dive into it. Let us start to piece things together and understand where people go and where they fit and how you're revealed in your word. Let it excite us about you. God, create in us such a hunger for your word that we wake up looking forward to it. Create in us such a hunger for your presence that we desire to pray every day. May we be refreshed in your presence. May we be refreshed by your word. And God, may we become increasingly people of devotion. In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you very much. Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. There you go. Now they can see me on video. Isn't that so much better? If you are joining us online, thank you for doing that. And I would just say gently for those who are joining us online, if you're doing that consistently, there is nothing quite like worshiping together as a family. So if you can get here and worship with us, do that because it's a sweet, sweet time, and it's my favorite part of the week, every week when I get to worship with you guys. We are in the third part of our series called Traits of Grace, and these are kind of five distinctive characteristics that make grace, grace. I am a firm believer, and will wholeheartedly share it with whomever is curious that grace is not, we're not nailing it as a church. Okay. We haven't like figured out how to do church the right way and all the other churches are doing it wrong. Okay. They're, they're worse than us. You guys are the good Christians who've really figured out how to love Jesus well. And the other churches are apostate and we should pray for them. Like we don't believe that. We believe that there are plenty of churches in the city of Raleigh that are doing wonderful jobs, pushing people towards Jesus and making disciples. I would even say that there's got to be plenty of them who are doing better than us. But you guys are here this morning. So we're going to make the best of it together while you think about a better church to go to next week. But there's plenty of great churches doing plenty of great things, and so I think it's important for churches to figure out what is it that makes us us? What has God wired us to do? A few weeks ago, we talked about being kingdom builders, and I kind of left you guys with the question of what is your good work? Ephesians 2.10, for we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. And so we asked, what is your good work? And I think similarly, it's wise for churches to ask, what is our good work? Every church is supposed to make disciples, but how would God have us go about it? How has he uniquely wired and gathered and impassioned us to do it? And as we were having the discussion about what makes grace, grace last fall, we came up as a staff and then as elders with these five traits. So we've talked about the fact that partners at grace are kingdom builders. Then we talked last week about how partners at Grace are conduits of Grace. We stay connected to Jesus and we pour out all the love and all the goodness and all the grace that we receive from Jesus onto others. We are conduits of Grace. And so this week we arrive at the third trait that we feel like we are at Grace. And I realized this morning as I was reviewing and preparing that I didn't put this in your notes anywhere. So I don't know if this is going to be unofficial or something. I hope I haven't done something wrong and now this one doesn't count. But we are people of devotion. That's the third trait of grace. We are people of devotion. And when I say devotion, obviously that can mean multiple things, but it really means what it meant back in 1985. We are people who have devotions. You have heard me say many times, if you've been at grace for any period of time, that the single greatest habit that anyone can develop in their life, a lot of you can finish this sentence, is to get up every day and spend time in God's word and time in prayer. That is the most important thing, the most important habit that any single one of us can develop at any point in our life. And I believe that to be true, and we hit on that to be true, and we remind you of that all the time, because I also try to remind you that I am not enough. You can't come listen to me talk for 30 minutes a week and know the breadth and the depth of the God that's waiting for you in this text. You can't listen to whatever I choose to pick out and talk about just this little tiny snippet within here and somehow hope to understand the whole book. That's just not how that works. So it takes more than 30 minutes a week. It takes more than just one small group a week, which we'd love to say is an hour a week talking about spiritual things, but really it's about 45 minutes a week talking about whatever the heck and then about 15 minutes of good spiritual conversation. If you're in a small group, you know what I'm talking about. So that's not enough. We've got to spend time in God's Word, and we've got to spend time in God's presence through prayer. So when we thought about what are we at Grace, what do we want partners to be at Grace? We want to be people of devotion. We want to be people who develop that habit. And as we think about it this morning, I don't know about you, but I feel that when God is speaking to us, he often speaks in stereo. When someone will ask me, hey, how do I hear God's voice? How do I know what he's saying to me? How do I discern God's will for my life? I often will say, one of the first things I'll tell him is, God speaks, when he speaks to me, he speaks in stereo. He tells me from this source and this source and this source and this source, and it just kind of continues to come up in my life. And one of the themes that has been coming up for me in my life before the summer, but in particular the summer, you guys gave me the great privilege and rest of not having to preach in the month of July to just kind of settle and work on some other things in the church and allow God to refresh me a little bit. And it was wonderful. And one of the things that I brought out of there and that seems to continue to come up in my sermons that I'm preaching like when I preached on the law a couple weeks ago and I've seen it come through in themes these last couple weeks and then really we're hitting on it again in my Tuesday morning men's Bible study. I have a men's Bible study that meets on Tuesday mornings at 6 30. We meet that early to keep out the riffraff. The only thing the only thing prohibiting you from being there is laziness. So come on and join us. We're not any nicer there either. This is as nice as it gets. But I see this theme in my life and I've seen it in what we're learning at Grace and I thought it worth highlighting this morning, which is simply the beautiful simplicity of abiding. We talked about this last week. We're conduits of grace. And we looked at John 15, where Jesus is speaking to the disciples, particularly four and five. And he says, I am the vine, you are the branches. Abide in me and I in you, and you will bear much fruit. And we talked about this idea of all I have to do is stay connected to Christ, and he's going to produce the fruit in my life that I need to produce. I don't have to think about that. I just focus on abiding in Christ. And I think that there is this beautiful simplicity to that. Because we can make Christianity really complicated, can't we? It can be really challenging and difficult. It can be intimidating to look at this Bible, to open it up, to come to service on a Sunday and the pastor says, turn to Malachi. You're like, I've never even heard of that name in my life. I don't know where that is, right? Just to learn just the names of the 66 books, to learn how to find them all, that there's 37 or 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament, to learn all, what are all the sins? What are all the things I'm supposed to do? What are all the things I'm not supposed to do? Who are all the people? And how old was Paul? Did he live to be 900? Or is that some other guy? Like it can be a lot. And one of the things that I have a heart for is adults, people who have already gone through life and made a bunch of decisions. And in your 30s, 40s, 50s or later, you decide this is when I want to get serious about my faith and you start trying to learn Bible. And you don't have the background that I've been learning about this since I was old enough to talk. But it can feel like a steep bell curve when you're trying to learn faith and taking it seriously. So I love the beautiful simplicity of really what God asks us to do, which is to simply abide in him. Just simply, you just, just, just focus on Jesus. Just pursue Jesus. Just love others like Jesus loves you. Just do all that. The rest of this stuff, if you focus on abiding in Christ, the rest of this stuff, the rest of Christianity, the rest of life will take care of itself. Just focus on abiding in Christ. And this is, this is an attitude that we see throughout scripture. We're going to look at two other places today where it's pared down and it's made just this simple. One of my favorite pictures of this in the Bible is in the book of Hebrews. In the book of Hebrews, there's Hebrews chapter 12, verse 1, obviously follows. I don't know if you know this. You have to go to seminary to know this, but chapter 12 of Hebrews follows chapter 11 of Hebrews. And in chapter 11 of Hebrews, we have this really famous passage that's called the Hall of Faith, where the author of Hebrews lists out all of these heroes of the faith and the acts that they performed by faith. And then when we get into 12, and I'll read it in just a minute, but when we get into 12, we see it begin, So it's this idea that we're on the playing field of earth as those in heaven who have come before us are now watching us in real time, which I think is a really cool thought. And here's what the author of Hebrews says. He says, Because we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles and run the race that is set before us. And it's language, I think, that we can identify with. It's language that inspires. We're kind of like, okay, I'm on the playing field. I'm supposed to run this race. I'm supposed to live my life. I'm supposed to do the things that God wants me to do. How do I do that? Well, I throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles. I need to run in such a way that I can do what God wants me to do, that I can be who God wants me to be, and I need to get rid of all the things that don't help me run my race. And this, again, is an idea that is replete throughout Scripture. It shows up again and again and again. Paul tells us that we are to fight the good fight. He says that he fights the good fight. He tells us that in this race, we are to run as the one who's trying to get the prize, that we are supposed to cling to our faith. We are told to live a life worthy of the calling that we have received. Jesus tells us that other people should see our good works and so glorify our Father who is in heaven. So all throughout Scripture is this simple admonition that we need to live a life worthy of the calling that we've received. We need to run the race. We need to be who God created us to be. We need to determine what are our good works and how do we walk in them. And you can rephrase all of that and we say we need to be good Christians. We need to grow in our faith. We need to move towards Jesus. And we can identify with this. This is, to me, inspiring. It's easy to understand. Yep, I'm running a race and I do that by throwing off the sin and the weight that's so easily entangled. So I got to stop doing those things so I can do the things that God wants me to do. And sometimes, I think more often than not, that's where we stop. I'm going to try really hard at running this race. I'm going to try really hard to be a good Christian. I'm going to try really hard to be a good dad and a good husband and a good friend, a good employee or employer. I'm going to try really hard to be a good citizen. And I'm going to do that by throwing off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles. And we act like the next verse doesn't exist. How are we supposed to do that? By looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Even in Hebrews, where it uses this language about running our race, doing better, being good Christians, being who God's created us to be, it tells us, it gives us the answer right there. How do I do that? How do I run my race well? By focusing my eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. How do we produce much fruit? By abiding in Christ, by focusing on Jesus. And so I call it the beautiful simplicity of abiding because there's this thing that happens. When I decide that I want to be a better father or a better husband or a better pastor or a better human, there's a lot of growth that needs to happen in all of those areas, except for husband. I'm nailing that one. When I decide I want to be better at those things, I think our tendency is to go, okay, what do I need to do to be a better husband? And we identify things and we run and I'm going to do more of this and less of this. What do I need to do to be a better wife? I'm going to do more of this and less than this. What do I need to do to be a better mom? I'm going to do more of this and less of this. And we try to white knuckle our way to better, right? That's the American way. I want to be better at these things. I'm going to focus on those things. I'm going to come up with a plan, and I'm going to do it. And Christianity says, no, no, don't do that. Don't do that. Just focus on Jesus. Just focus on God. Just focus on abiding in Christ, and I'll take care of the rest of it. So here's how this works practically. I do have a lot of room to grow in being a husband. You know the most effective way for me to be a better husband to Jen? It's to pursue Jesus. It's to wake up tomorrow and say, Jesus, I want to honor you today as I seek to be Jen's husband. How do I honor you in that? How would you have me be a good husband today, Jesus? You want to be a better employee? You want to move up the ranks? You want your career to progress? You can spend a lot of time thinking about the best thing to do and the best person to please and the best way, the best jobs to go for or the best tasks to complete or the right people to make friends with or whatever it is you do to progress in your field. Or you can go to work every day, focus on Christ, and you can say, Jesus, how can I honor you today in my work? How can I honor you today in these meetings? How can I honor you today in these tasks? And then you honor Jesus. And you know what happens? Everything else works out. I was talking in my Bible study group about this idea. Just honor Jesus in what we do. Just pursue Jesus in what we do and let him handle the results. And they said, well, what does that mean practically? I said, for my sermons. My job is to be diligent on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday so that when I stand before you on Sunday, before God on Sunday, I know I've given my best effort. I've honored God in my preparation. I've honored Jesus in my prayer life as I approached sharing this with you guys. And I know that I've done the best that I could in the week that I was given with the time that I was allotted. And I'm honoring Jesus as I give this to you. If I can say that, what happens as a result of the sermon is completely out of my hands. I have nothing to do with that. I don't worry about that. I worry about where my heart is as I prepare, and I'll be the first to confess. Listen, I say that, and that sounds lovely, like how Nate, he's worked diligently on sermons, and he's prayed through them, and he's ready to present them. Yeah, most of the time, sometimes, y'all, I'm winging it, and I sit down, and the very first, y'all are singing, and y'all think things are good, and I sit down, and I'm like, God, I'm so sorry. I dishonored these people. That wasn't worth showering for. I can't believe that I did that to them. So sometimes I don't do it. But on the weeks that I do, then I preach the sermon, and I wash my hands of it. Now it's between you and the Spirit. And somebody in my Bible study said, well, wouldn't that be a great way to approach life? And I was like, yeah, yeah, it would. We should do that with everything. We should do that with how we lead people, with how we love people, with how we be good parents. It's the beautiful simplicity of abiding in Christ. We focus on him, and then he takes care of everything else. And I think that this is a radical message in a culture that wants to try so hard at everything, that wants to have a to-do list for everything, for all the things in life. I'm going to find a way to tackle it, and I'm going to white-knuckle my way to better. And really, the beautiful simplicity of abiding means that we try hard at pursuing Jesus. That's it. That's where we try hard. Christians, you want to know where to put your efforts? You want to know what you need to wake up thinking about? What you need to be consumed with? How you get better at life? How you do all the things that matter? You want to know how to do that? You want to know where to put your efforts? You want to know what you need to wake up thinking about? What you need to be consumed with? How you get better at life? How you do all the things that matter? You want to know how to do that? You want to know where you should put your effort? Put it in pursuing Jesus. And waking up every day and spending time in God's word and time in God's presence through prayer. Put it into pursuing Christ and everything else will take care of itself. And there's a lot of ways to pursue Jesus, okay? We do it through worship. We do it, I believe, through godly community and spiritual conversations. We have transparency and vulnerability. We ask good questions. We share pieces of ourselves. We pursue Jesus through his service, through doing his work. Jesus says whatever we do unto the least of these, we do unto him. So we pursue Jesus by helping those who can't help themselves. But I think the primary way that we pursue Jesus is through devotions. One of the primary ways we pursue Jesus is by waking up every day and spending time in God's Word and time in prayer. I think it's the fundamental way. I think one of the most frustrating things to me about trying to get in shape and fit into your old mediums. I've got one on underneath this that I have to wear a baggy shirt over it because if I don't, I'll just bring shame on my family. I can't wear this polo in front of other people in public. I used to be able to, there was a time, but when you go to get in shape, you can, you can exercise 30 minutes a day, right? And exercising to me is the easy part. That's, that's, that's the fun thing to do. That's fine. That's good. I can put in a podcast or a book or something like that. That's kind of the easy discipline to gain on. You know what the hard part is? Eating like a rabbit, man. That stinks. Eating salads. That's not fun. I don't like eating right. I just don't. I like eating wrong. Very wrong. But unless you do both, you'll never be in good shape. You won't be in good health. And you can exercise all you want, but until your diet changes, your body really doesn't. And you really don't get that healthy. You can exercise all you want and go to church and do all the things and go to Bible study and have the conversations and serve sometimes and give of yourself and tithe. You can do all the exercise you want, but until your diet changes, your spiritual health won't really either. I believe that our pursuit of Jesus begins here. And that when we do that, when we begin it here, then God handles everything else. This is actually affirmed in the book of Psalms. The very first Psalm, the one that Parker read earlier in the service, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. And then look what happens. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. David says, blessed is the man who doesn't waste his time with frivolous things, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. His delight is in God's word. And on that law, he meditates day and night. How can you meditate on it if you don't know it, if you haven't learned it, if you haven't poured yourself into it? He prays over it. He pursues Jesus in it. And because of that, he's like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season. And all that he does, he prospers. The man that David is describing in Psalm 1 did not set about to prosper. That's not the point. He set about to know Jesus. He set about to know his God, to know his law, to know his word. And the happy side effect of that was that God blesses him along his way. I want to be careful when I say that. God's blessings look different than what you think blessings might be. So I'm not preaching that if we get up every day and read God's word that we're going to have all the things that we want. That's not how that goes. But what I am saying is if we get up every day and we spend time in God's word and time in prayer, then we will become who God wants us to be. That's the blessing. And I believe that becoming the people that God has created us to be is the place of greatest peace and contentment and happiness that we can find in life. If you've ever had a season where you were moving, you were doing exactly what God wanted you to do, you know there's no greater peace or joy than that. I had lunch with somebody this week, catching up with them after a long time, and he shifted careers and got a new job. And I said, how's it going, man? And he said, God has affirmed over and over and over again that I am doing exactly what he would have me do, and I have never been happier. It's remarkable how that works. When we walk the path that God has laid out for us, lo and behold, that's where joy is found. I think Psalm 16 tells us something about there being a fullness of joy in the presence of God. And I feel like that's a joy and a peace worth having. So I would also mention to you that nothing worth having is gained by default. Nothing in this life that we have that we really value is gained by default. If you have a good marriage, like a good one, you worked hard at that, Joker. You didn't just fall into that. Unless you're like, if you've been married for like two years, you're like, my marriage is pretty good. We haven't had to work that hard. Okay, forget you. All right. You don't count. Talk to the rest of us in 10 years, rookies. If you have a good marriage, you worked hard at that. You've intentionally spent time together when the kids made it difficult. You've intentionally chosen each other when life tried to prevent it. You've had hard conversations. You've said hard things. You've heard hard things. But you're stronger for it and you have a good marriage and you worked at it. If you have kids who love you, if you have adult kids who love you and want to spend time with you, you worked hard at that. That was not easy. That did not happen by default. If you have a career that you like, that you're proud of, you worked hard at that. That didn't happen by default. If you have good, rich, deep friendships, you've prioritized and valued them over the years. You've made them important. You didn't just default into those. Why would we think that we would default into a good, healthy, vibrant relationship with Jesus? We have to work at it. We have to make time for it. So do that. Prioritize it. Make it happen. Find a time when you can spend time in God's Word and spend time in prayer. If you don't know what to read, ask somebody. Start in Proverbs. If you don't know the Bible at all and you want to read it and you don't know what to read, start in Proverbs. You don't have to know anything about anything for Proverbs to make sense. Totally out of context, just start reading it. It's great. Read a gospel, read the book of Mark. It goes very fast and it points you with Jesus very well. Or just pick up and read something you've been curious about, but start doing it. Make it a habit. Be consistent in it. Trust me when I say that there's no greater habit that anyone can develop than that, and do it. Whatever you're currently doing first in the morning isn't as good as this. And if what you're doing first in the morning is sleeping an extra 30 minutes, it's definitely not as good as this. Just hit pause on that other stuff and engage with God first and then go about your day. I do it when I get into the office. I get into the office. I tend to be the first one in the office because I'm the hardest worker on staff. And I have a kid that starts school early and I have to drop her off every day. So I get here early. But the office is quiet and that's when I have my time. That's when I'm able to pray and read God's word and get ready to prayerfully approach my day. Pick a time when you can do it too. Make it happen. Prioritize it. Value it. Last week, I said that we needed to abide in Christ and we're going to talk about how to do that. And I said that when you came back this week, I was going to light some of your faces on fire and really convict you. So here's the convicting thing. What I'm about to say, I'm not saying to you if you're new. If this is the first time you've ever heard a sermon that's imploring you to have a devotional life, then I'm not saying this next thing to you. If it's the second time, maybe the first time you weren't paying attention, or I just did a bad job with it, whatever it was, I'm not talking to you either. But if you've heard this sermon before, I've preached it plenty. Maybe not from this angle, maybe not in this way, but I've preached have devotions. I've preached that a bunch. I've joked around. I'm going to do it one day. I'm just going to walk up here on stage and I'm going to go, hey, good morning, Grace. It's good to see everybody. My name's Nate, one of the pastors here. You should read the Bible more. Let's pray. Because that's all you need because you know that I'm right. You know that we need to do this. So if that's you and you still don't have habit, as your pastor, as someone who cares about you, let me just ask you, how many more times will you need this sermon? How many more times? How many more times are you going to sit in this room or a room like this and hear this sermon and go, yeah, Monday, I need to. How many more? Can this one be it? Can this one do it for us? Because there's some people in this room who already do this. They've got a rich, vibrant devotional life, and they've been sitting in here, and they've just been cheering me on. Yes, do it. Please. It's the best. And I want all of you to cheer this sermon on every time you hear it from now on. Next time you hear this sermon, listen, I don't want it to convict you one little bit. I want you to sit in those seats feeling great because you know it's true. And now you're the cheering section because I'm never going to stop preaching this sermon. I'm going to preach it once or twice a year for the rest of my days as long as God gives me a stage to preach on to push people back into God's word and to push people back into prayer. But at Grace, as our partners, when I preach this sermon again, I want you to be the biggest cheerleaders. And I never want it to convict you again. Because I want you to hang in there and develop this habit. And I'll tell you this, okay? Just give you a little pastoral advice. Some of you, gosh, I hope, as a result of this, are going to wake up tomorrow, you're going to read your Bible. And it'll be something that you haven't done in a while. And that's great. You'll set your alarm. You'll make your coffee. You get your vibe all right, exactly where you want to be. This is good. This nice fall weather. This is great. I'm going to have the best quiet time. And you're going to open up your Bible to wherever you've decided to open up your Bible. And maybe, maybe God parts the heavens and the angels sing to you and Shekinah glory shines down directly on your head. Maybe. What's probably going to happen is you're going to get a little something out of it that's encouraging, that speaks to something in your life, or maybe nothing at all. You'll pray. If you're not used to praying, you'll pray for about two and a half minutes. You'll be like, I'm all out. Kind of run out of stuff to pray about. That's okay. And maybe it doesn't feel like the heavens parted and Shekinah glory shone down on your noggin. But I tell you what, if you get up tomorrow and you spend time in God's word and you spend time in prayer, I can promise you this, you'll have a different day than you would have had otherwise. You have a different mindset going into that day than you would have had otherwise. And if you do that several days in a row, I don't know when the heavens are gonna open and words are gonna leap off the page, but I can tell you this, if you do it several days in a row, you're gonna have a different week. And if you can manage by God's goodness and grace to hang in there and string together a couple of weeks like that, three, four weeks, you're going to have a different month. And if you start stringing together months, you're going to have a different life. And that's what we want for you at Grace. That's why we want you to be people of devotion. So let's pray that God gives us the strength of conviction to do that so that we know the only thing we need to try hard at is pursuing Jesus, and he'll take care of the rest. Let's pray. Father, we love you so much. We thank you for your word, for the way that you've chosen to reveal yourself to us. I pray that you would give us a heart for it, that you would give us a passion for it, that we would love your word, that we would love this text. God, make it exciting to us as we dive into it. Let us start to piece things together and understand where people go and where they fit and how you're revealed in your word. Let it excite us about you. God, create in us such a hunger for your word that we wake up looking forward to it. Create in us such a hunger for your presence that we desire to pray every day. May we be refreshed in your presence. May we be refreshed by your word. And God, may we become increasingly people of devotion. 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.

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

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