She Wakes Final Session | Kelly Bridges

Join Kelly Bridges as she discusses believing in Jesus and still being led around by everything else. We start with that uncomfortable truth because the question beneath much of our anxiety, comparison, and noise is simple: who is actually forming us? We talk about the things we “follow” every day, from social feeds to family habits to cultural expectations, and why our attention is never neutral. Where we put our time, money, and affection shapes our identity, whether we mean it to or not.

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Transcript

Grace You Don’t Earn

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It's not about our performance. It's not about our perfection. God, we don't have to earn or gain something from you. It's a gift that's freely given. Your love for us, salvation, your peace for us. God, I pray that we would receive that from you. God, I pray that we would know who we are as we get closer to you, as we see who you are, Jesus. Thank you so much for this time. Change our identity, open our minds, open our hearts. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Instagram Influence And Everyday Following

From Believer To Follower

The Alabaster Jar And Forgiveness

Women Disciples Who Supported Jesus

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Okay, am I on? Oh, I am on. Okay. All right, you guys, we've made it to the last session. Woo-hoo! Um, I snuck in a couple of the this seems so loud to me. But is it loud? It should be me. It's where I'm standing. Yes. I got it. Okay. Um I know Casey put me low, and I was like, I don't know how I feel about that. I'm very close. Um, I snuck in a few all of our breakout sessions, and there's something that I love so much about who I get to work with, and it's the fact that we are literally nutjobs. Okay. And what I mean by that is we are not perfect. And we came into this weekend and we've talked all about the anxiety of talking in front of people for some of us. Some of us are comfortable with that because we do it more often. Um, and then I just listened to everyone just so eloquently speak what the Lord put on their heart and just genuine. And I don't think that you guys came looking for perfection, but if you did, you probably shouldn't come back next year because it's gonna be just as sloppy. And but Jesus, you know. Um, so I want to talk to you a little bit today about um not just being a believer of Jesus, being being a follower of Jesus. And you know, we live in a day and age where we follow everyone in this room is following something or someone. And probably when I said that, of course, we go straight to social media, right? Because we're all following people there, right? It's kind of hard not to, I feel like in this day and age to be following something. Um, I'm gonna show you, I'm gonna give you a little insight into my Instagram feed. So these are a few of my faves. I couldn't put them all, but this first lady, hilarious, talks about your grown adult children, how they can't function in life and how to fix them, like right if they come home from college and like, oh, I'm sorry. Welcome to the hotel Kelly. Let me just do all the things for you. That's what my teenage, my college-age daughter wants me to do. And then the next girl, she's just great and shows you what to wear and what not to wear. Um, Sarah makes me laugh, hilarious. She takes creepy ocean animals and talks about them and does all this stuff, and then Costco hauls. You know, when you your kids are like watching other kids play uh Minecraft, and you're like, why are you doing that? We watch Costco hauls. Um okay, that next girl is Abby Young. Just learned about her. My Instagram feed is full of hair and makeup tutorials. I want long, luscious hair like that, and I haven't been able to achieve it in a long, long time. Um, and she takes, sorry, if you're a hairdresser, tune your ears down. Um, she takes all the target brands that you can use that are really, really close to the professional brands and tells you what to buy. And so that's what I do from her. And then that next girl, I like her because she is not, you know, when you're like watching a uh influencer, and they're like, I mean, you might want to size up to a zero. I had to size up. So this girl, obviously, you can see her stats there. She's not a zero, and I love her because she wears clothes from air. I my favorite source, Ari, if you don't know offline, swear at that. She wear like she's great, okay? And then the other girl, frills and drills, she built her entire house with power tools, which is really what I want to do in life, and I don't have the talent. So I love her. But my all-time favorite influencer, let me tell you, is the next girl. And this is why is she up there? Okay, this girl, does she look like me? That's because she's my twin sister. So if she does pop across your Instagram or TikTok feed and you're like, huh, not me. That's my sister. So don't be confused. But you should follow her because I really want her to become a famous influencer just because I want her to like buy houses at the beach so I can go and live there, be there with her. So give her a follow. She'll actually hate me for that. And my mom and her daughter-in-law are here, so don't tell her because she would hate that. But give her a follow. She's fun. But I tell her, like, she's like, this swimsuit's the best swimsuit, but she doesn't show it on because she doesn't want to show it on for obvious reasons. I'm like, I don't believe you. I'm gonna need to see that on you. Except we have the same body, so I already know what it looks like. Um, so you know, I think the brands obviously they have figured out that followers beget followers. It works because it works. We buy what they buy, we eat what they eat, we vacation where they vacation. We, to the most ingrained part, think the way they think because it's what we listen to and follow every day. Literally, my genes are because someone told me they're in style. So I was like, I'm gonna go to Target, I'm gonna find these genes, and I did. So we think that I think that we can be like real rebels and like, well, I don't follow anybody, but we do. And here's how I also know my name is Kelly. I was born in 1977. I'm not sure how the moms in the 70s and 80s knew that Kelly would be a popular name. I can name 10 off the top of my head that I know, and six of them come to this church, but there's probably more. So I'm like, how do the moms know that Kelly was a name? I know that my name is from a soap opera. And I also know that Jamie's name, the name Jamie, is from a soap opera. So I think the influencers were the soap operas in the 70s and 80s, and like the magazines and the TVs, maybe. Okay, see if we got some moms. But I'm like, it's been happening forever. It's just now we kind of can know more. I don't know. I was like, how did they know what to do? How did you know it was in fashion back in the day? You had to buy a magazine and then read it and then find it. JCPenney catalog. That's what it was. Sears, that's where it was, Sears catalog. So we're all following something. Um sorry, I got okay. Also, if we're not from social media, we also, it's like our family dynamics, our culture, our workplace, our friend group. That's all shaping our lives and like what we do, even if we don't know it. So let's take the Midwest for example. You guys know there are very Midwest things, which also I feel like Illinois is the middest west of the West. But I think that Michigan people think they're in the Midwest. They're not the Midwest. I don't even think Ohio is the Midwest. We are the middest of the West, right? Okay, so did you know that garage, fridges in your garage is a very Midwest thing? I actually thought when I now as an adult have a fridge in my garage that I've arrived. I didn't have that when I was a kid. Also, the keypad on my garage, doo doo, do, I've arrived. I did not have that as a child. Um, giving directions in minutes and not miles is very Midwest. If I give you directions, wherever my best friend Mary Gears is in here, she will tell you. If I'm giving you directions, you're like, well, how far is it? I'll be like, uh, 20 minutes. Everywhere's 20 minutes. I'm like, 20 minutes. How many miles? I don't know. I'm not Lewis and Clark. How am I supposed to know? That's apparently very Midwest, you guys. Um, the opening day of things like baseball, hunting, fishing, very Midwest. You know that when Columbia High School sends out, hey, it's hunting season, keep your guns at home. Very Midwest. Don't put them in your car, you'll get in trouble. Um, also, eating ranch dressing on everything, apparently very Midwest. So we do all of that like shapes who we are. So, my questions for us today is how do we get from a believer in Jesus to a follower of Jesus? And what are the followers of Jesus doing and what do they look like? So, the best obvious way to learn that is to look at the life of Jesus. Um beginning would be it's very important to be a believer, obviously, in Jesus. So in John 4, 6, he says, I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me. Believing that Jesus came to earth to live and to die and rise again, to give all people away, to be reconciled to God is to give us a path for freedom from the stronghold of sin so we can live free and be followers for his kingdom and bring more followers into his kingdom. Um, being a believer takes faith and humility. And I kind of think we could debate on this, that it's really the easier part of knowing Jesus is the believing. The Bible says even the demons believe because they know he's real. That's why they believe. Um, so we're gonna take a deeper look at what the women followers of Jesus were doing, because I am a fan of all girls. And what better way to learn from Jesus himself and the co-laborers that were women that were along with him and his mission? Um, we're first gonna be in Luke. We're Luke and John mostly. So if you want to find that. Also, because I'm approaching 50. If you know, you know. Um, so Luke's gospel, I love Luke because he features more female characters than any other gospel. And I'd really like to think, and this is just my opinion, is that Luke caught the heart of Jesus for women when he hung out with Jesus and watched how Jesus interacted with women. And that it was so brilliant and wise of God, because that's who he is, to allow Luke to then write the um experiences and the accounts of women because historically at that time, women would not have been let me find how I, you guys, I'm in perimenopause. So I can't remember what I wrote down. So I gotta find it. I asked Hope Darst last night if you were in the QA, because she was like, I'm perimenopausal, you know, and everybody laughs because you think it's a joke and it's not a joke. Um, and I asked her, have you ever forgotten the lyrics to your songs? Like you wrote them. Have you forgotten them? And she said two weeks ago, she forgot the lyrics to her most popular song that I just forgot the title of. Not teasing. And she's like, so I'm just I made them up. She's like, I'd had no way to tell them that I was I forgot the words. So she's like, I just made it up. And my manager was there, and he was like, I don't know what she's singing, and neither does hope. But this is not, and I was like, okay, see, it's a thing. It's a thing. I'm not, I'm not losing my mind. My kids think I'm losing my mind sometimes. Um, okay. Where did I write what I'm trying to say? Okay, women would not have been credible witnesses. That's what I'm trying to say. Um, they would not have been credible witnesses at the time. And so, because we have such a loving God, he allowed Luke to take and write these accounts of women that we can look at them and learn from them 2,000 years later. So we are gonna look at Luke 7, um, 36 through 39. And this is where the sinful woman comes in and she's anointing Jesus with the alabaster jar. Um, let me read it first. Luke seven, thirty-six through thirty-nine. One of the Pharisees asked Jesus, oh, I don't have a timer. We're in trouble. One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with him. So Jesus went to his home and sat down to eat. When a certain immoral woman from that city heard that he was eating there, she bought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. She knelt behind him at his feet, weeping, and tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair, and then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them. When the Pharisee who invited him saw this, he said to himself, If this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman he is touching. She is a sinner. I do want to point out that when we're reading biblical texts, it's very important to can't see. Um to uh pay attention to the details. I like details. I like details in my brain, like I like details of stories. Um, and the the Bible will never be shy to call someone out on their sin, if their sin. What we need to be careful about is putting sin on someone where it doesn't belong. And we will talk about that in a few minutes. Just that's just FYI. Okay, so this woman is immoral. There's no, then we're not shying away from that. Um, and it doesn't explicitly say what her sin is, but everyone in that room knew who she was and knew her lifestyle and knew that she was a sinner. Um so Jesus is invited there to by Simon, and this uninvited house guest shows up. And women were not invited to the table to eat either, especially in this dinner party. So she uh doesn't care who's there. She doesn't care if they're mad. She just knows that she knows who Jesus is and knows what she that she has a job to do and what it was. And you'll hear, you'll see later that Jesus chastises Simon when he's like, You invited me here and you failed to host me. You didn't wash my feet, you didn't offer me. I'm just gonna read it because I thought I would remember it and I don't. So doo doo da doo. Let me tell you where I was. Okay, it's in 44. Look at this woman kneeling here. When I entered your home, you didn't offer me water to wash the dust off my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You didn't greet me with a kiss, but from the time I came in, she has not stopped kissing me. You neglected the courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet with this rare perfume. I tell you, her sins, and they are many, have been forgiven. She has so she so she has shown much love, but a person who has forgiven little shows only little love. And then he looks at her and he says, Your sins are forgiven. And then later on, just a few verses later, he looks at her again and says, Your faith has saved you. Go in peace. Her faith moved her from believer to follower. And I I had my message typed out this week and I was feeling really good about it. And then the storm came and my computer got murdered. And so I lost it and I had to go get another computer. And so I had to rewrite it. And I had a title and I really, really loved it. It was beautiful, but I lost it and then I couldn't remember it. And so this whole week I have been polo Jody. I'm like, Jody, please pray that I remember that title because I really liked it. I don't think it matters, but I just want to know. And so I'm driving to church, I'm driving this morning, and I have on this sweatshirt, which is by the way, my favorite sweatshirt we've ever made. And I'm looking down and I was like, living proof of a living God, a loving God. I'm like, oh my gosh, it's exactly what I'm talking about. Jesus is living proof of a loving God. He took this immoral woman and he says, Go your and sin no more. Your sins are forgiven. He's living proof of a loving God. And when I tell you that the Holy Spirit has put this entire weekend together, this had nothing to do four weeks ago when we designed this sweatshirt. I had no idea what I was talking about. And the Samaritan whims on the bottom, which is my favorite, but I didn't plan on using her, but I am using her today. And it's these details where we keep saying, like, you got we aren't smart enough to pull this off, you guys. It is literally all of the Holy Spirit. That's just proof for you. Just so you know I'm not smart. Okay, so now we're gonna look at Luke 8, and we're gonna talk about there's a group of women, it's many, but we're there's specifically three, and then it says many. Okay, so Luke 8, 1 through 3, I'm gonna read it. Soon afterward, Jesus began a tour, he went on tours like hoped arst, of the nearby towns and villages preaching and announcing the good news about the kingdom of God. He took his twelve disciples with him, along with some women who have been cured of evil spirits. Among them were Mary Magdalene, who we all know very well, we should maybe, from whom he cast out seven demons, Joanna, the wife of Chusa or Chose, I don't know, Herod's business manager, and Susanna and many others who were contributing from their own resources to support Jesus and his disciples. Did you guys realize that Jesus had women disciples that were with him? It's not just the 12. There were women there. Somehow it always gets overlooked that we were there. And not only were they there, they were paying for the whole thing. You guys. Let's go, girls. We know how to spend some money. Here's the thing: there is no other biblical account where a man finances Jesus' ministry. Now, let me tell you, this is not to be women's limb. Okay. This is not woman hear me roar. These are people, women, who knew who Jesus was and followed him. Not because of their gender, because of who Jesus was. Okay. We do know that Joseph of Aramea offered his tomb that is there. But other than that, there is no other account where men are financing Jesus' ministry. Um so not only are that, they're following him, and they follow him. Okay, okay, let me back up. Okay, Mary Magdalene, we all know her very well, right? Lots of conspiracies around Mary Magdalene. Lots. Do not go down that rabbit hole. Okay, you'll get yourself in trouble, probably. She is one woman for somehow and some reason gets immoral put on her when it's not in the text. It does say that she was delivered from demons. I think there is some like scholarly debate how and some of that could have been some sickness, because they would have seen sickness at the time as demonic activity. So, you know, it doesn't necessarily make her like I always thought of her as like a harlot. I feel like that's the rap she gets. Not true. Okay, it's because it's not there. Um, so she's there, so they're following Jesus as he goes. Also, there's no other, there are no other historical or biblical evidence that rabbi rabbis had female disciples. Disciples and learning under a rabbi was specifically kept for men. So Jesus, because he's a living proof of a loving God, doesn't did not care what your gender was, what your ethnicity was, what kind of money you had, what background you came from, who you were. He cares if you come from believer to follower. Right? Um and then let's talk about Joanna for a second, okay? Joanna is the wife of Herod's business manager, just out there paying for their Jesus to do all of his good work. Okay. And so if you look over at Luke 9 through 7, again, this is me, okay. This is what I would like to speculate. I'm not telling you this is biblical truth. You probably could, you know, search that out for yourself, but I'm gonna probably choose to believe this the rest of my life. Um, seven through nine, it says when Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee, heard about everything Jesus was doing. He was puzzled. Some of them were saying he was John the Bapt John the Baptist, was raised from the dead. And others thought Jesus was Elijah or one of the other prophets risen from the dead. He knows he beheaded John the Baptist because his wife was a rotten. And the Bible, listen, the Bible will call you out, women, if you're rotten, it's going to tell you, okay? We don't get to just go out and do whatever we want. Um, so and so who is this man who I keep hearing such stories? And he kept trying to see him. My mind now goes back to Joanna. Is Joanna telling her husband what she's seeing? Is he telling Herod? And Herod's like, who's Jesus? I don't know that that's true, you guys. I just want to believe it.

unknown 22:45

Yeah.

Mary Magdalene As First Witness

The Samaritan Woman And Living Water

Using Your Voice With Self-Control

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Okay. Because I'm also gonna girls like to tell people things. And so I would assume that she would report back to her husband somehow what's happening out there. Because I'm also assuming they're not together because that we they don't have cars. So she's following Jesus, she's not maybe going home every night. I don't know how that worked, but this is just what I would really like to believe. Um so they're following Jesus, and we know if you look over to Luke 23, they follow him all the way to the tomb. And we do know this, we hear this a lot in the Easter story. We know that there are women at the foot of the cross, okay, but they have followed him from place to place to place to place. And now we're um in Galilee, and they follow his body. When his body's taken down from the cross, they follow to see where it's going to be placed. And then they go and prepare spices so they can come back in the morning to anoint his body. Okay. And this is where we see them come in. Obviously, the stone is rolled away. The angels are saying, Jesus is not here. So they go back. And among them, it tells you in 2410, among them are Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary, the mother of James, and several other women. There are several other women there. I would probably imagine Susannah is still there, but she's not in. Okay, so they follow him to the tomb. Now I want you to turn to John 20 because I love John's account at the tomb because Jesus really does something here so significant. And I feel like it gets overlooked in the resurrection story a lot. Um, John only names Mary Magdalene at the tomb that day. Let me get there. 14, 17, 20. Um, what do I want to read? Okay, so she gets there, the tomb is empty, and she runs to Simon and Peter. But what I will look at is verse 14 through 18. So we're John 20, verse 14 through 18. Um, she sees him, the angels say, Why are you crying? And she says, They've taken my Lord away. And then she turns to leave, and she sees someone standing there, and it's Jesus, but she doesn't recognize him. And he says, Dear woman, why are you crying? Jesus asked her, Who are you looking for? She thought he was the gardener. And she said, Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him and I will go get him. And he says, Mary. And she turns to him and cries out, Raboni, which means it's Hebrew for teacher. And he says, Don't cling to me, for I have yet not ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them that I am ascending to my father and your father, and to my God and your God. And Mary Magdalene went and found the disciples and said that he is she's in the Lord. Mary Magdalene is the first person, a woman, who Jesus shows up to and tells that he is risen. I don't know if that's significant to you guys. It literally lights my soul on fire. Literally. I think as women, we're told a lot. Well, I guess it depends on how you're raised, told a lot that we cannot preach the word of the Lord. False. You want to know why? Jesus just told us we could. Jesus just sent Mary, Magdalene, to the men to tell them Jesus is risen. Why again? Because he doesn't care about your gender. He's not here for that. He's care, he's here for your heart and for your life devoted to him. So she goes, gets um, you know, the story. Okay, so their encounters, those women, their encounters move them from believer to followers. And now we're gonna be again in the Gospel of John again. He has a very famous account of a certain woman, the Samaritan woman. She's my faith. Um this is another account, too, where immoral immorality gets read into the text and it's literally just not there. And I'll tell you why. Okay. Um, we're gonna look at John 4, 7 through 10. Okay. Soon a Samaritan woman came came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, Please give me a drink. He was alone at the time because his disciples had gone into the village to buy some food. The woman was surprised, for Jews refused to have anything to do with Samaritans. She said to Jesus, You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan. Why are you asking me for a drink? And Jesus replied, If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are asked, who you're speaking to, you would ask me and I would give you living water. So here we have Jesus again being very counter to his culture, as he always is, if you pay attention. Um, this conversation is the longest recorded dialogue with any other biblical character, male or female. And not only is it with a female, it's with a Samaritan female who Jews does not speak to. So here we have Jesus again demonstrating that he does not care what background you are, what ethnicity you are, where you none of it. He doesn't care. There are no rules. There are rules, but there are no rules when it comes to I want you to come and follow me and be a disciple, right? There are no rules to that. Um and this is where we find out that she there is no morality in morality here. Jesus tells her the truth about her life. He asked her a question, go get your husband. And she says, I've had five. And he said, You're right. You've had five and you're living with the sixth. That was not a lucky guess. Okay. If you were here last year, we did learn that from Dr. Kohick. This is not a lucky guess. No one in that time would have been married five times. There is no account, no historical account of anyone in that time having five husbands. If he would have said three, that would have been a lucky guess. That probably could have happened. Five was not lucky. It was literally Jesus proving to her that he knows who she is and he has a deep knowledge of her life experience. It was him saying to her, I'm divine, really, without saying it yet. Okay, we're gonna get there. So Jesus has divine knowledge of who she is. They have this really deep theological discussion, and she says, I am waiting for the Christ. She says the high the hymn in verse 25, I am waiting for the Christ. He's going to tell us I know the Messiah is coming, the one they call Christ. And when he comes, he will explain it to all of us. So here we have this actually happened first, okay, in the timeline before the tomb, obviously. Um, here we have again in verse 26 is something that he has not done. And in verse 26, Jesus introduces himself for the first time to a Samaritan woman. I am the Messiah, not to anyone else, to a Samaritan woman. Jesus models again that he will use male or female, Jew or Samaritan or Gentile to work alongside of him to bring more people into a relationship with him. He does not care about the package that you're wrapped in. He will allow people to go and find more people. He wants his followers to be get more followers because he's living proof of a loving God and a culture that did not have high esteem for women. He's living proof of a loving God to them. So the disciples show up and they're like, What is he doing? And who fed him? And she runs off and she goes back to her town, and what happens? The whole town is saved because of her what? Her testimony. She goes back and says, Come meet a man who told me everything I've ever done. Also, more proof that she wasn't immoral because her town believed her and followed her back, right? She had some esteem with her town, and they follow her back, and her town is saved because of her voice and her testimony. So her testimony moves her from believer to follower. Every account we've looked at of Jesus and the women that we've looked at today, they all have the same characteristics of the story. They all knew who Jesus was. They were all looking for the Messiah and they all had faith in him. They all have an encounter with him, they all defy cultural norms and practices and turn their encounter into action. Some of the action with their most expensive possession to anoint Jesus for death, some with their finances to fund his journey and his ministry. And then they all use their testimony to go out and tell to from them to be followers to make more followers, to bring more people into the kingdom of God. The Samaritans woman town was saved because she wasn't ashamed to use her voice. And here's the thing no one seemed to actually care that she was using her voice. No one argued with her about that. No one argued with her if she should speak to a crowd where men are because she's using her voice to what? Make more followers. We have no excuse. Even if people want to argue with you that women can't preach. Ouch. I'm gonna bet that Sean and Nathaniel and Andrew back there hopefully learned something from what I said today. Um also would place a bet. I don't think we're supposed to do that in church, but um that God nor Jesus is looking down right now saying, Oh, that's not supposed to happen.

unknown 34:57

Right.

What You Follow Shapes You

Quiet Time And Personal Faith

SPEAKER_01 34:59

Come on. I heard a lady say on a podcast a couple weeks ago, blew my mind. If God allowed a woman, if God allowed Jesus to be placed in the womb of a woman, why in the world would he not allow that same woman to use her voice to tell about him? And that doesn't mean that our voice doesn't have place, guys. Okay. Girls, we're malvi, and I'm gonna tell you something. Usually we're the problem. Okay. I say this a lot. Girls are usually the problem. So you have to know your time, you have to know your place. You have to know. I'm not super malvi. Um, I can reserve my words in my head. I can tell you off of my head. I don't need you to hear it. Um, so I can reserve, but for those of us who have a little bit more trouble controlling our tongue, we don't get that, we don't get to have an excuse. Well, I'm telling you the truth. Well, you need to have self-control because that is the fruit of the spirit. All believers, all followers of Christ, we have that same, we have the same rules, male or female. So we don't just get to go about yapping our mouths. Because if you also look in the Pauline letters, a lot of the times he is addressing some women that are yapping around their mouths, and that's actually what it seems from. Okay. So we do there are we have to have self-control and we have to have be led by the Holy Spirit. We don't just get to go out and do whatever we want. Um, what time is it? Okay, I'm gonna have Casey come back up, and this is how I want us to wrap up our time. Thank you guys for coming so much. It's been such a great weekend. I loved it. It was good for me and my soul. Um it does matter who we follow. It does matter where we spend our time. It does matter what our eyes see. It does matter what our eyes and our brains read. It does matter who we follow. It matters where we put our time, it matters where we put our money, it matters where we put our resources, it matters where we put our attention and our affection. It does all matter because we can fall easily into the trap, and then the enemy gets a foothold, and then we have all of these lies wrestling in our head, and we forget the truth of Jesus. So it does matter where you're spending your time and who you're following. That's all fun, right? It's fun. You get to have fun. There is no reason we should have the most fun, you guys. Christians should have the most fun. The world thinks fun is getting trashed. Not fun. I've never been trashed, actually. So I don't know, maybe it's fun. It doesn't look fun to me, okay? Um, not fun, but we get to have fun. So it's all fun, right? We get to enjoy life. God put us on earth to enjoy the earth. That's true. But it also matters that we are focused only on Him and no one else. No one else's opinion matters. It really doesn't matter what I look like, what you look like. Who cares? You guys, we gotta let it go. I didn't put lip gloss on because I was like, oh, I should probably put lip gloss on. None of you care if I have lip gloss on. Not one of you. I actually changed my shoes because I had on sandals and I thought I probably shouldn't speak with open-toed shoes. I don't know why in my brain that's bad. None of you care. If we could really realize that nobody actually cares. But do you know who does care? Jesus. And that's the only one that we should be aiming to please. And then, and you know, we say like everything else falls in line, right? And also it could get a little sticky because life doesn't fall in line all the time. We still live in a broken, fallen world. People get sick, people die, all of it. But Jesus still cares about it all. So I want to take a few minutes, and if we could bring the lights down lower, because I want to you guys to really spend some time just like alone. Because also, what I think we can see in these women, even though it probably doesn't explicitly like tell us all the details, is that somehow the woman that came in with the alabaster jar knew who Jesus was, which meant somehow she was spending time getting to know who he was. Whether that was watching, maybe she was sitting out of the side of the synagogue listening. I don't know if that could have happened, but maybe. Somehow she knew, right? Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, they knew because they spent time to encounter Jesus takes time. And it takes time alone. One very important part of being a Christian, this is a very important part. Do not ever overlook coming to church. It's very important to be with the body of Christ. But the other important part is that if I'm a follower of the Lord and I have to stand before God one day, I have to follow the Lord on my own. I get to have brothers and sisters in Christ that come along and like support me in that. But ultimately, my walk with the Lord is only mine. I don't get to stand before Jesus one day and him say, You were such a great wife to Jamie Bridges. And he got to preach it and was a pastor, and he was so great. So welcome into the pearly gates. That's not gonna happen for me. I'm gonna stand before the Lord, and he's either gonna say, I'm sorry I don't know you. Who are you? Or he's gonna say, Come in, good and faithful servant. And that's only on you. So you have to feed yourselves. You have to feed yourselves, which is reading the Bible slowly, understanding it. Find some good Bible teachers if you can't understand it, get some good commentaries. There's like so many ways to like study the Bible, and I know it can feel a little overwhelming, but just start somewhere. Start somewhere. Memorize the scripture, start in the Psalms, start memorizing, just get the word of God into you because then you really realize who Jesus was. And so when someone comes and says Jesus is oppressive to women, you can say, No, he's not, and I'm gonna tell you why. Because Jesus came to set us free. We get to be free from anxiety, we get to be free from depression, we get to be free from gossip, we get to be free from sexual immorality, we get to be free from murder, we get to be free from that. He came to set us free of the sin that we no longer have to live in that bondage. So we're gonna take the last song, and I want you guys to just be alone, whether that's moving out of your seat so no one's around you, whether it's closing your eyes, sitting down, whatever that looks like to you. And just encounter the Lord. Just you can sit and listen. If you've never done it, maybe there's some of you in this room and you're like, what are you even talking about right now? Encounter the Lord. What does that mean? I think we take for granted if we've grown up in church, we know what that language is. Um, but just being quiet and see what he speaks to your heart. Let him change you, let him change your thought process, let him change, I don't know. Let him just let him and have an encounter with him.