When Landin Norman stepped into the role of lead discipleship pastor, he brought with him a powerful narrative of transformation—a journey from anxiety-riddled youth to a bastion of faith within the First Baptist Church. Our latest podcast episode welcomes Landin as he shares the poignant challenges he faced during a pastoral transition and the personal evolution that guided him to where he stands today. His candid discussion sets the stage for a deeper examination of pride, its dangers, and the pursuit of humility in our spiritual lives.
We then traverse the ancient times of Hezekiah's reign, as chronicled in 2 Kings 19 and 20, to unravel the complexities of pride. From the audacious defiance of Assyrian king Sennacherib to the more subtle pitfalls of Hezekiah's later years, our conversation reveals the dual nature of pride and the transformative power of humility. The episode is rich with insights, drawing parallels to our present-day struggles and illuminating the path to finding our true worth in God rather than worldly achievements or possessions.
Concluding on a reflective note, we address the manifestations of pride and how to combat them through service and a heart aligned with God. As we anticipate the selection of a new lead pastor, the episode emphasizes the vital role of unity and collective love within the church. Through Landin’s prayer, we extend our gratitude for the church's enduring impact and seek guidance to foster a community that exudes love and unwavering dedication to servitude. Join us for an episode that not only delves into the human heart but also offers a vision for a more humble and connected spiritual journey.
When Landin Norman stepped into the role of lead discipleship pastor, he brought with him a powerful narrative of transformation—a journey from anxiety-riddled youth to a bastion of faith within the First Baptist Church. Our latest podcast episode welcomes Landin as he shares the poignant challenges he faced during a pastoral transition and the personal evolution that guided him to where he stands today. His candid discussion sets the stage for a deeper examination of pride, its dangers, and the pursuit of humility in our spiritual lives.
We then traverse the ancient times of Hezekiah's reign, as chronicled in 2 Kings 19 and 20, to unravel the complexities of pride. From the audacious defiance of Assyrian king Sennacherib to the more subtle pitfalls of Hezekiah's later years, our conversation reveals the dual nature of pride and the transformative power of humility. The episode is rich with insights, drawing parallels to our present-day struggles and illuminating the path to finding our true worth in God rather than worldly achievements or possessions.
Concluding on a reflective note, we address the manifestations of pride and how to combat them through service and a heart aligned with God. As we anticipate the selection of a new lead pastor, the episode emphasizes the vital role of unity and collective love within the church. Through Landin’s prayer, we extend our gratitude for the church's enduring impact and seek guidance to foster a community that exudes love and unwavering dedication to servitude. Join us for an episode that not only delves into the human heart but also offers a vision for a more humble and connected spiritual journey.
Hi and welcome to the FBC Eldorado Sermon Podcast. We hope God will use this week's message to both inspire and challenge you as you seek to walk closer with the Lord.
Speaker 2:Now join me as we listen into this week's sermon. Good morning, I'm Bobby Shepherd and it's my privilege today to introduce you to one of our own, landon Norman. He's been asked to bring the message today. Landon is the son of Terry Norman and Angie Norman and he grew up in our youth program here at First Baptist Church. To bring you up to date on Landon, he graduated from Eldorado High School in 2015. He graduated from Washtow in 2018, and he and his wife, sarah, now have two children Archie, who's almost three, and Ellie James, who is ten months old. Following graduation from college, he answered the call into ministry and served in churches in White Hall and Smackover. In 2019, they were called to New Hope Christian Church in Bartlett, tennessee, which is a suburb of Memphis. Their Sunday attendance is approximately a thousand, so a little larger than our church. At New Hope, landon is the lead disciple. Pastor Landon is passionate about missions, church revitalization and church planning. His heart and desire is to equip the church by making disciples that make disciples.
Speaker 2:The reason I was asked to introduce Landon is because I worked with him one summer when he served as children's intern and I was in charge of the children's activities in Vacation Bible School. Landon was so enthusiastic about children's ministry and he did a wonderful job. Anything that was asked he went above and beyond. Some of you may remember all the blue fish in the stairwell and I didn't see how he put them up, but they were all the way up the stairwell and we left them there for a year or two because they were so wonderful. But I just really appreciated Landon during that time and got to know him and Sarah because Sarah volunteered along with him at the time. They were dating but Landon's enthusiasm made the summer fun for the children and who knows how many lives he touched that summer. As I've watched Landon's life and how he's grown in his faith, it reminds me of how God can use us and grow us in his strength to accomplish his will. So I hope you'll welcome Landon with me today.
Speaker 1:I think if you do know me from growing up here, then you know that me standing up on a stage is as far from what I could have imagined as possible, and it's funny. I uh Dustin, sent me the Planing Center, which you guys don't care about, but it's the list of the songs that are going to be played. You might, if you want, to complain, you can probably email him or something, but it's fantastic. But, lord, I Need you is a special song for me, the first time I ever preached. My wife and her family sang that song at the church and it just reminds me that I used to be a guy with crippling anxiety, who didn't want to go into the crowds, who didn't want to interact with anyone. And then God came into my life and completely changed it around. Where I look, nothing like I did before. I knew Jesus. And so, as Bobby said, I get to serve as the discipleship pastor at a church in Bartlett, tennessee, and it is so much fun.
Speaker 1:Like you guys, we you're entering the process of looking for a new head pastor and we just finished our senior pastor's transition. He retired and he stepped down. He's still with us. He's a pastor emeritus and serves with our elders. But we brought in a new guy, and so I know what you guys are going through and there's like anxieties and all of these things about who's next, where's God going to lead us, and I can honestly tell you that I didn't have as much trust during the whole process as I probably should have. There were seasons where I did One of the things that helped us, as we prayed as a staff continually for that next guy, and God far, went far, far beyond our expectations and brought us a guy who is not only really smart but he's a ton of fun. You can tell I'm young by looking at me and we've got a lot of nerds on staff and so sometimes we do lightsaber battles because you've got to determine building space usage and we just happened to have a couple of laying around from our youth pastors. So we're really excited about that. And I'm so excited to be able to be here and to speak today for two reasons because it's an honor and I've always wanted to do it, and the second is I got to have spud nuts and PJs coffee. One of those is more important than the other, but I'll leave that be.
Speaker 1:This would be the church that I would be called into ministry at, my life would change. I would preach, you know, for the first time in the youth group, I would hold my first ministry job here, working in the children's ministry, and now, as of a couple of, like a weeks ago, someone that was in the children's ministry got engaged, which is so cool, and so I'm just grateful to be here. And so this morning, what I want to do and I've jokingly told my wife this is because you can't fire me is we're going to talk about one of the most prominent sins that I think has a huge effect on the church, especially when it goes undressed, unaddressed, and when this happens it can begin the slow death of a church. But before we do that we're going to be. I want to pray that God would remove me from the situation and soften my heart and yours. So let's pray, father, god, oh please remove me from the equation. God, may you ultimately become greater and I become less. Make this be about your glory and helping us, as a big C church, address the things in our lives so that we can know you and experience you fully, so that everyone and El Dorado would come to know you and to glorify your name, amen.
Speaker 1:So this morning I want to talk about pride. It's not, pride isn't something that we talk about a lot in our churches, but I think it's something that we can avoid. And as Christ followers, what we want to do is we want to know God and we want to experience him fully. But we can't do that if we have pride in our lives. And so a while ago I heard a quote and it has stuck with me ever since. I think about it constantly. It says if pride is the sin most likely to keep you, or it says pride is the sin most likely to keep you from crying out to a savior, so pride is the sin that keeps us from crying out to Jesus and our time of need. And if this is true which I believe it is then as a church we need to do everything in our power to rid that from our hearts. So what we're gonna be doing this morning is we're gonna be walking through a passage in 2 Kings, 19 and 20. So if you've got a Bible, go ahead and flip over there. It is a lot of scripture. So I encourage you later to go home and to read the rest of this passage. So what I'm gonna do this morning is we're gonna look at this story oh I'm so sorry and we're gonna define what pride is. We're gonna look at some ways that pride manifests in our life and then we're gonna look at a couple of ways that we can combat that. So I wanna set the tone for you. So, some people, what we're about to read is what some people would call the greatest battle that never happened.
Speaker 1:As a nerd, I love a good superhero story, a battle against all odds, when you don't know how the person is gonna succeed. I love stuff like that. And this is exactly what Hezekiah was facing. See, sinucherib was this wicked ruler from the kingdom of Assyria, and let me tell you something this guy was bad. He did not play games when it came to conquesting. There's tons of historical evidence of his cruelty, and he was ruthless in any efforts to claim what he thought was his. So Sinucherib had gone on this world-conquesting tour and he had claimed over 46 city-states and kingdoms, and he was just one by one knocking them off, and the next stop on his journey was Jerusalem. He was overflowing with pride about all of these accomplishments, and so, in this true showboating style, he puts a quarter of a million troops right outside the walls of Jerusalem and then sends a letter taunting Hezekiah. So in case you didn't know this, because I love Bible facts like this the entire population of Jerusalem at the time was 10,000 people. That is not that many people, and out of the 10,000 of them, only 2,000 of them would have been what we would think of as soldiers. So 2,000 to 250,000, that's a one to 120 odds or 125 odds. I don't know if you've ever tried to fight 125 people at once. It'd be pretty hard. So insurmountable odds. Don't really think you need to send a letter that says, hey, I'm gonna come beat you up, but he does.
Speaker 1:And so this Assyrian king's letter is not a humble one, and so I wanna take a peek at that. And so we'll start in 2 Kings, 1910. It says do not let the God that you depend on deceive you when he says Jerusalem will not be given to the hands of the kings of Syria. Surely you've heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the countries, destroying them completely. And will you be delivered? Did the gods of the nation that were destroyed by my predecessors deliver them? He says don't you know who I am? Don't you know what I've done. He said you should be scared because your so-called God will fail, like all the rest. Hey, buddy, that's my son back there talking to me. So he says what is your tiny little nation to the might of us? He said far bigger had fallen, and he goes on in verse 12 to name several that have fallen to the Assyrian Empire.
Speaker 1:And I think that it's important to kind of pause here and define pride, because what we just read is a prime example of one type of that pride. And so this type of pride is called high pride. Now, high pride is the most common way that pride shows itself. I think it's something that all of us are probably pretty familiar with in the room. The Assyrian leader boasting about how great he is, how good his forces are in treating out everyone like they were less than him, is a prime example of this. High pride says I am everything, it's turning all the attention onto ourselves, it's the all about me, culture, and though sometimes we might never even say it out loud, we show it in our actions. But then there's another type of pride. Now this type of pride is called low pride, and we don't really talk about this that often and it doesn't show up in our story today, but I think that it's important to note that this exists.
Speaker 1:Low pride is hard to identify because sometimes it manifests in our life as a false humility. It's the statements. And you know, whereas high-pride might say I am everything, low-pride says I'm enough, I'm nothing, I don't know enough, I won't be enough, no one will ever like me, I'm not good at doing this those type of statements which can be confusing, and it's a fine line because it's portraying this false humility. But really it's fishing for compliments. It says, you know, like, reassure me, like, give me more about myself, and it doesn't seem like pride to most people, but it's accomplishing the same goal as high-pride and that is putting all the attention on ourselves. And when pride is in our hearts, everything has to be about us.
Speaker 1:But as Christians and if you're a Christian in the room we are called to humility. We are called to take the attention off of ourselves and to put it on the one who truly deserves it, and that person is God. Now, most think that humility is thinking less of ourselves, but that's low-pride Humility is actually, as CS Lewis says, not thinking less of yourself, but thinking about yourself less, and I'll come back to that later. But I do want to clarify because I realize that there can be confusion about this that it's okay to know your worth, like it's a biblical. You're an image bearer. You're bought for and paid by the blood of Jesus and he wants you to know your worth. He just wants it to be found in him, and not all of your accolades and everything that you've done and accomplished and the things that you've accumulated. For example, at our church we have a guy who is an amazing football coach and it's okay for him to say I'm a good football coach and If that's you, like you're a football coach, say I'm a great football coach, because it's okay to say that. Just make sure that you know who gave you that ability and then you use that to glorify them when you take the credit. You, when you take the credit, you steal the glory from God and he deserves 100%, and so taking the credit is high-pride, but disregarding the amazing work that God is doing in your life Through the talents and the treasures and all the things that you, he gave you, is also taking the attention and the glory for him that he truly deserves, and both are an injustice. So we kind of have that idea there. So, high-pride I am everything and everything, I'm already back. Low-pride I am nothing, and so we're gonna jump back in at verse 14.
Speaker 1:So Hezekiah is facing insurmountable odds. So Hezekiah receives this lesson letter from the messenger and reads it, and he went up to the temple of the Lord and spread it out before him and Hezekiah prayed to the Lord, lord, the God of Israel, and thrown between the chair. You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made the heavens and the earth. Get the ear, lord, here, open your eyes, lord, and see. Listen to the words that sin of cherub has sent to ridicule the living God. It is true, lord, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste to these nations in their land. They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not gods but only wood and stone fashioned by human hands. Now, lord our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth might know that you alone, lord our God.
Speaker 1:So the Lord hears Hezekiah's prayer and he says don't worry. He says they're not gonna enter the city, they're not even gonna shoot an arrow at it. He said I will defend you, and there are many times in the Bible when people didn't trust God to protect them in similar situations and then, pridefully, they tried to do it on their own power. That would also be my job. I admit that in Myself I would have sinfully tried to do some stuff in my own power. I think I would have at least like checked all my defenses, like taking one more walk around the walls, built a couple of more Barricades, you know, just to be safe. But you know also trust God, but you know, in case his plan fails or whatever, you know, I kind of have my little thing over here, but that's not what Hezekiah did in this moment. He, he, chose to set aside his pride and choose to humbly trust God to provide for him in this moment, instead of trying in his own will, in case, you know, god's plan didn't work out. What does he do? I love this.
Speaker 1:He the Bible tells us that he and the rest of Jerusalem went to sleep. They went to sleep they have 250,000 soldiers sitting on the other side of their wall and they had an ultimate trust that God was gonna provide for them. So they went to sleep and there and became in the most vulnerable state. And that blows my mind. And do you know what happens? Verse 34?. It tells us that that night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty five thousand Assyrian people in the camp. Still they have enough remaining that they pretty much could have decimated them either way. But they were so scared, and so when they woke up the next morning, most of the enemy was dead or had fled away, and the Assyrian king had run away as well. God had protected his people. Not a single one of them had lost their lives, not a single one of them was even injured. I mean, wow, like what a crazy work I've gone. I, hezekiah, did exactly what he was supposed to do. He led his people, as a biblical leader, to give up their own will and power and let God surpass their expectations with his faithfulness. And so sometime after this, hezekiah would become very ill.
Speaker 1:In 2 Kings 20, verse 1, it tells us that he was to the point of death. It becomes so ill that the prophet Isaiah says to him put your house in order, because you're going to die. You're not going to recover, which is like the exact opposite of one of those hallmark cards. That's like feel better. He's like, nope, you're going to die. Pretty much, just start packing. I would have been like, wow, isaiah, thanks so helpful. Some prophet, could you like pray or something? But no, and so Hezekiah begins to just weep and he pleads with God. He said take away the sickness.
Speaker 1:And once again the Bible tells us in verse 20, verse 5, that the Lord hears his prayers. He said I've heard your prayers, I've seen your tears and I will heal you. And if you skip forward a little bit, god promises to add 15 years to his life, and he would. He would do just that. But then something happens In verse 12, it tells us that the king of Babylon heard about Hezekiah and that he had gotten better. So what's he do? He goes I'm going to check this out. So he puts together a little group of people and he sends these representatives out. Now, this would have been an amazing opportunity for Hezekiah to glorify God and his faithfulness, to spread it everywhere, his name and glory for saving him from the Assyrian nations, from healing him for all the sickness. But is that what he does? Does he glorify God and boast in all the things he does? No, we see his pride take over here in verse 13.
Speaker 1:The Bible says that Hezekiah received the envoys and showed them all that was in his storehouses the silver, the gold, the spices, the fine wool, his armory and everything found among his treasures. There was nothing in his palace or in his kingdom that Hezekiah did not show them. He took them across the whole palace and showed them everything that was his. He glorified himself. He not one time mentioned what God had miraculously done. It was just look at all of my accomplishments. He didn't even take them to the temple, which was beautiful. He only showed them things that he thought would glorify himself.
Speaker 1:So Isaiah, the world's best Hallmark cardwriter, comes back in after everyone's left and he rebukes him. He said what in the world are you doing? He said I just talked to God and God told me that everything that you just showed the Babylonians, they will come back one day and they will take they will even take away your descendants and turn them into eunuchs. The Lord told him, isaiah, to tell him that nothing will be left. So what was his response to this horrible news, you might ask? He said the word of the Lord that you have spoken is good. So Hezekiah hears this horrible news and he goes oh cool, that sounds great, which makes no sense at all. Unless you keep reading.
Speaker 1:The Bible reveals his inner thoughts and it said will there not be peace and security in my lifetime? See, hezekiah didn't care about his actions and how they would affect the future generations. All he cared about was whether it would affect him in this moment or not. It was a response completely made out of pride. Pride, the Bible tells us in Proverbs 16, 18, goes before destruction.
Speaker 1:And pride, many scholars would argue, is the root of all, if not most, of sin in our lives. And if this is the case which I told you, I truly believe it is then we have to do everything possible, as individuals and as a church, to rid from our lives, because we want to be a people that know God and experience Him fully. And we cannot do that if we're letting pride run freely in our heart. So we have to constantly be taking inventory and ridding that from inside of us. So pride shows up in these three ways.
Speaker 1:The first one is the all about me mentality. This is where it starts. It's when our needs, our desires, all of our feelings are more important than anything else. This mentality makes us desperate for attention and unwilling to take correction. We see this take root in Hezekiah. After God had extended his life and healed him from his sickness, he could have been boasting about his name, but instead he turned the focus back to himself when the people of Babylon came to check things out, spent the whole time attention-seeking for his wealth, his achievements, instead of using it to glorify God. When we allow pride to take this foothold in our life, it leaves us full of ourselves, and we all know times where this has happened. When this we start to see this in our lives. When we become defensive, when you're unwilling to hear the opinions or the corrections of others, pride makes you snap back at your spouse or children or your friends, anyone that points out your wrongdoings. This. Surely we couldn't have done anything that was wrong.
Speaker 1:The second way that pride manifests is in a neglect of others, and this all about me mentality. It's only the beginning. Whether it's low pride, I am nothing, or high pride, I am everything. This all about me mentality leads to the neglect of others. For Hezekiah, we saw this when he didn't care that his current actions were going to affect future generations and the demise of his people and everything that they had worked for. He didn't care that all the people around him would suffer, that his generations would be taken away. He just thought, hey, if this doesn't affect me and my current situation, then I'm good.
Speaker 1:The same thing happens to us as it did to Hezekiah a lifetime ago. We get so comfortable in our wealth and our routine that we neglect the hurting people around us and we begin to not care that people around us are suffering and dying without Jesus. And, just like Hezekiah, we say who cares if not with our words, with our actions, and then we try to avoid any situation that might make us uncomfortable or drive us to action. Pride causes us not only to focus on ourselves and not the needs of others, but it causes us to accumulate wealth through these little kingdoms for ourselves. Pride is that sin that is most likely to keep us like in our seats as a church, with a lack of interest to the world or the community around us. And it's pride that makes us and makes you guys, as a church, us like corporately.
Speaker 1:I feel like we're too busy to live out the commands of Scripture, to make disciples, to love others, to serve. In essence, we become these country clubs and not churches, and I don't say this out of like a guilt trip or whatever, because I don't really care about that. What I want for you is I want something for you, not something from you, and I want you to know God and experience him fully, and I desperately want El Dorado to see an amazing movement of Jesus. But that won't happen if we stick with an inward focus on ourselves, what's happening here and the things of sort. I'm telling you this because pride is a serious disease and it will steal the power from you as a believer and a church by disrupting your relationship with Jesus. But it doesn't stop there.
Speaker 1:Pride manifests a third way, in a critical spirit. When we're all about ourselves, we tend to think our way is the only way and we begin to judge how people live their lives, not, you know, letting sin not be sin. But just, I do this better than you. Maybe it's something simple as the way you fold the towel. If you're married, then you know you probably came into the marriage with two different ways you fold the towel the superior way and the wrong way, and you know which one's the right, one right. But then sometimes it can escalate a little bit and it could even be like how people parent their children, how they make decisions about their business, etc. Etc.
Speaker 1:Whatever it is, pride, when we let it take root in our heart, causes us to have this critical spirit of others, and this is very dangerous because what it does is it disrupts unity as believers, which Christ calls us to fight for, and unity is hard already in a church. It is even more so when we're being over critical of everything and everyone. So, whether pride manifests in our lives is an all about me mentality and neglect of others, or a critical spirit, or maybe it does in some other way. Those are just three of the most common. Whatever the case is, there's some biblical ways to combat pride. The first thing that you can do I know this is long, but I think it's important the first thing that you need to do is you need to focus on the character of God.
Speaker 1:Pride is all about taking our attention or eyes off the one who truly matters. So what better way to combat that than to do the opposite To focus on God and his character? The Bible tells us that God is faithful, compassionate, slow to anger, rich in mercy, loving, holy, and so so much more Spending time in the Word daily and in prayer. I feel like as pastors, we tell you that all the time, but I can never emphasize how important that is, to have that relationship with God. And when you do that, you have a constant reminder of who God is and who you are not. Because when we understand who God is, then we understand our place, which is not to become the center of the attention but to press his glory forward.
Speaker 1:In Hezekiah 2, 19, and 15, in response to the Assyrian King, he prayed. He said Lord the God of Israel, enthroned between the two of them, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made the heavens and the earth. In that moment, hezekiah chose to focus on the character of God. He knew that God was over every single kingdom on the earth. He knew he created them and he was in complete control. But because he was focused on the character of God, this time he made the right decision and he pushed his pride to a side and he allowed the God of the universe to come in and do what he always does faithfully.
Speaker 1:And so when we are focused on God, it makes us harder for pride to slip up in our life, because we know our place, we know our value, because we were created in this image and thus we shouldn't say that we are nothing. And we know that he is the giver of all things, so we shouldn't act like that. We are everything and we're the one that accumulated all these things for ourselves. And when you know that and you can rest in that, it's the number one way. Number two, which I love as a missions guy and a small group guy of the church, is to serve other people. It's an direct outflow of your relationship with God, and when you truly understand who he is, you want to serve other people because it's an act of worship and a direct modeling of his character. The Bible tells us that God, or that Jesus, came not to be served but to serve. You can go read John 13 or anywhere in the gospels and just see that so easily, because when we serve other people, we help foster humility inside of us.
Speaker 1:When we're struggling with pride and it's leading to disunity with another person or a group of people in the church, there are two things that you can do for them. You can pray for them by name and you can serve them sacrificially with no one knowing that you're doing it, because serving reminds us the character of God and by serving someone that way we remind ourselves that we're not too good to that we're on that same playing field at the foot of the cross. And the last way is community. If you're not in a biblical community, like in a small group, any in a Sunday school, in a group of believers that are holding you accountable, guess what? Today, best day to start, go do that. Talk to Brian, he'll put you in one.
Speaker 1:A great way that you can do it here, I know, is in Sunday schools and small groups or life groups, I think, as you call them, where people can see you in ways that you might not be able to see yourself, people that surround you and challenge you, not because they want to poke at all the things that are wrong, but because they want to help keep you accountable and push you more into the image of Jesus. Because when you are part of a Christ-centered community, like a small group, like a life group, it gives you this you know a sense of you, know a sense of you, know a sense of this opportunity to confess sin. And when you confess sin, they lose their footholds. And if you're saying, hey, I struggle with pride, I think that I am all this right and for me, mine is low.
Speaker 1:Pride is where I tend to go. Most of the time I'm saying, hey, keep me accountable for this. Like, check me when you think that this is happening, because we're always vulnerable to it. If you notice, hezekiah had plenty of times where he didn't the right thing right, but that doesn't matter if he did the right thing over and over again, because we saw there were a couple of times where he didn't do the right thing. He could have easily just said, hey, I've made the right decision over and over again, I know what I'm doing, I've got this under control right, and I think that's kind of what happened.
Speaker 1:You slip up right, and we tend to believe that we're like that, that we aren't vulnerable, and so when you're a part of the community, it helps you do that and notice those things before pride can get a foothold, because it's a serious issue. I've seen it cause destruction in my own life and the lives of family members, and countless churches that have had to close their doors because they couldn't get ahold of it, and I never say these things says I want you to be guilty and there's nothing that I want from you. But what I want for you desperately is to know God and experience Him fully and, like I said, I want El Dorado to see a crazy movement of God. But it's hard to do that if everyone in this room and everyone watching online is not checking our hearts for the pride that lives inside them, so that we can know who God truly is. So I'm going to pray a prayer over you guys and for myself, and then after that, there'll be a time of response. If you want someone to help you, if you want to step into community, if you want to join the church, if you want to take a step forward in baptism, you can come and talk to Brian down the front. But right now I want to pray over you as a church as you're going through this next season, as you're looking through head pastor and everything that's going on.
Speaker 1:Father, god, we thank you that you are good, that you are holy, that you are the God above all things. God, search our hearts, god, dig to the deepest depths inside and reveal the things that we are hiding from others, things that we might even be hiding from ourselves. God, and bring them to the light, god, soften our hearts so that we can recognize the pride that is in it, and let us cast it to the side. Let us fight for unity as a body of believers when the world around us is so crazy. Let infighting not be something that defines us, but our radical love of one another, and let that explode into the city as people are drawn into it because it's so different.
Speaker 1:God, I pray for this church, who has done so much for me over the years, that you continue to bless this church, that you just shine favor upon it, lord, that you would guide them and direct them to the next lead pastor, whoever it is. Who will be your person here, god? And we know a church isn't made in one man, whoever the next pastor will be, but a body of believers that are serving together and using their gifts. And so I pray that today would be the day that we rid pride from our lives, that we step up and we serve the people in our community, lord, that we be involved in a biblical community that would push us deeper into your image and, most importantly, that we could just love you with our whole hearts, mind, soul and strength. God, we love you and we praise you, amen.