"Faith in Progress" Week 1

This week in our new series Faith in Progress, Manna Church Stafford/Quantico's Josh Gaita reminds us that real faith isn’t blind — it’s curious. Josh shares how asking questions and seeking truth can actually deepen our faith, using both biblical and modern examples of people whose journeys were shaped by their willingness to explore and learn.

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SPEAKER_02 0:02

Welcome to the Manna Church Stafford Podcast, where we're all about equipping God's people to change their world. We're thankful you're here, and we're praying that this message encourages you to love God, love others, and love the world more fervently than before. Now, let's get to it.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Good morning. I love that. Thank you. If I have not had the pleasure to meet you yet, my name is Josh Gata. I get to be part of the communication uh teaching team here at Mana. I also get to serve as the operations lead for the church, and occasionally they let me out of my box to get up here and speak. And so uh grateful to be with you this morning. I love it if we could just open up this morning and just a quick word of prayer, and then we're gonna dive right into our brand new series. Deavenly Father, we just thank you so much for this morning. We thank you for the worship that's already happened. Lord, you are the main thing this morning. This is all about you, God. And so, Lord, as we hear from the Word this morning your word, God, we just ask that you would give us ears to hear, God. Lord, just impress upon our hearts the things that you would have for us. Lord, I pray that every word that comes out of my mouth is of you, God. And Lord, just sit with us this morning, be with us. Let us walk out of here changed. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Well, Philippians, we're gonna dive right in. Philippians is Paul's letter to the church of Philippi, and he gives us an idea that is gonna be the basis of our series over the next few weeks. He's sending a letter to the church, he's thanking them for their support, he's thanking them for both support, writing letters and financial support to his ministry, but he's also thanking them for the work that they're doing to advance the gospel. And in Philippians 1, 6, he says this as part of that letter. He says, I'm sure of this to the church, that he who started a good work in you will carry it to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. He who started a good work in you will complete it. He'll carry it to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. This morning, you know, normally you like to roll these sermons out, and there's like a progression, and then you get to the big punchline. But uh this morning I'm kind of giving it to you right out of the gate, and that is simply this the starting line is not the finish line. The starting line is not the finish line. And so no matter where you are in your faith journey, we're talking about faith in progress because we're all part of this progress, this journey that's going on. There's something, there's a work that Christ is doing in us, and we're gonna talk about that over the course of this series. Our series is titled Faith in Progress. And I like the graphic we have on the screen of the of the loading bar. I think that's something that we can kind of all relate with to some degree with all the technology we have in our life right now. But we look at that progress bar and and and you know it can mean a couple different things to us. Some of us like the the progress. It's like, ooh, look how far we've come. And we and we watch that percentage kind of inch up and inch up. Some of us are like, uh, how much longer is this gonna take? I see there's still so much more to go. I'm wondering if um, I wanted to play a clip for you, if this sound is familiar to anybody. What is this? What is this clip? One of the young guys back there. Um man, for some of us, progress kind of feels a little bit like that. If that sound is not familiar to you, I'm sorry because you you missed it. You missed one of the greatest moments of the technology revolution. That's how we got online uh back in the day. Like it was a dial-up connection, and we had to wait for that thing to hit. And you were just hoping that that thing kept moving and that that little AOL thing popped up, like, hey, we're connected, because sometimes that thing would happen and you'd get to the end, and it's like, sorry, it didn't work, and you'd have to start all over again. And listen, sometimes we can feel like that. Sometimes we see the wheel spinning on the computer screen, and we're like, come on, when is this gonna be there? I want instant connection, I want instant gratification. But the reality is this bar is where we live. It's where we live in our faith journey. The loading bar is our lifetime. And do not be discouraged, the loading bar is progress. Like, just like the graphic on the screen shows you, it's like we're somewhere on this journey and progress is being made. And our faith is in progress. So here's some big ideas for us. Today, we're gonna talk about this journey of faith a little bit. For some of you, this is gonna be like, got it, I know that. Thanks. You know, is there anything else? And I'm hoping that's not most of us, but some of you might feel like that. Some of you say this might be very informational. And you say, Yeah, okay, I can see how this thing will progress. But what we're not gonna do today is we're not gonna talk about the work of salvation in our life. What we're talking about is we've accepted Christ and we are on the journey, and he is changing us and molding us, and our faith is growing. That's what we're talking about today. So I don't want you to hear anything I say as like, I've got to do X, Y, and Z to be saved all over again. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the journey that Christ has us on once we've already experienced that redeeming work. So that's today. Next week, we're gonna talk about one of the major hindrances to progressing in our faith journey. And I encourage you not to miss that. It's gonna be a really great uh sermon. Pastor Jake is gonna bring that. And um, and then we're gonna finish up with this idea of uh doubt versus unbelief. Doubt versus unbelief. Trusting God even when we still have questions. And so this is gonna be, I hope, a really formative series for us. Every week's gonna look very different. As you can tell, we've got some props and some tables behind me. Every week's gonna have its own different flair, but I'm encouraging you to be here for the whole series. The journey of faith, it looks something like this. Typically, there's a non-believer, maybe a believer in a different faith tradition, and at some point there's a moment of revelation. Jesus becomes real, our depravity, our need of a savior becomes very relevant in our life, and then we make a decision to follow Christ. That decision is more than just a momentary decision. In fact, um, I was I was thinking through this, I was like, man, that decision is a really, really big decision. Some of us can relate to big decisions because we've all probably made them, right? Like for some of us, it was we decided to get married. And we we checked the box, we got married, but we didn't know everything that was coming after we after we got married, right? We weren't prepared for every possible thing. That was a big decision we made. But there was things we had to do after the moment we said the vows. Some of us started to have families and children, and while it was a great idea, and it's still a great idea, um man, that was almost a big fail right there. Um my kids are sitting down here. Um we uh it was a great idea, right? Um but but just having the kids wasn't the end. That was the starting point, right? There was this whole raising process that had to happen. And honestly, that relationship with children like never ends. And so it was more than just the initial decision. And maybe on a lighter note, but still still relevant to what we're talking about, sometimes it's just even like a new job. You're excited, you go for it, you take the job, but you didn't realize all that would be part of that job once you started. And that's how faith kind of is to a degree. We say yes to Jesus with everything we know about Jesus in that moment, with everything we know about ourselves, and we commit ourselves to Jesus. And then there's this thing Jesus told us about following him, and it was to count the cost. Count the cost. It wasn't counting the cost to come up to the front of an auditorium like this and say a prayer at the end of the service. It was, hey, this is a big decision. There's gonna be a lot of implications of this decision. Make sure you make this decision knowing full well what the cost is. And so we go from non-believer to believer. Jesus tells us in Luke 9.23. He says, Then Jesus said to them all, If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. We see that this decision isn't a one-time deal, but it's daily picking up that cross and following him. Additionally, we follow Christ's example and water baptism and receiving the Holy Spirit, and over the course of our lifetime, we just become more and more like Christ. We can tell he is changing us, and one of the ways he changes us is just in our level of faith. And I keep using the term faith, and so I want to define that for us real quick before we jump into the rest. And I think the Bible does a great job already defining this. Hebrews 11, 1, this won't be on your screen. But it says, now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen. The NIV says it's the confidence of things hoped for, and the assurance of what is not seen. How does that grow? Why, why, what's the mechanism there? What's the picture we're talking about? When I know when I first got saved, my expectation, my confidence level of what was unseen was limited to what I knew in that moment. But I can tell you, as the journey progresses, God opens up that faith valve a little bit, and all of a sudden you say, Man, I can believe for miracles. I can believe for things to happen, that I don't know the ways or the mechanisms of those things to happen, but I believe God can do it. And what started as a faith in Jesus as just our um, as our not just, but faith in Jesus as our as our Savior then turns into this whole thing of what that offers to us. Real life here on earth, real life while we're living, and it's not just about heaven, it's what's happening here each and every day. And so our expectation grows, our confidence grows, and our assurance grows. The reality is the journey is progress, and heaven is the ultimate finish line. We're gonna continue to grow and be drawn and shaped into the image of Jesus as long as we're following and serving Him. As long as we're on this journey, a big point for today is simply this we do not achieve Christianity, but we are offered an opportunity to follow the leader. We do not achieve Christianity, we are offered an opportunity to follow the leader. Colossians paints this picture for us in uh chapter 2, verse 6 and part of 7. It says, so then just as you have received Christ as Lord, this is our confession, this is the moment that we accepted him. It says, continue to walk in him. The idea here is live under his leadership, continue to pursue him, being rooted and built up in him and established in the faith. We accept Christ, but then we continue to follow him each and every day. And I know that this probably makes a ton of sense, but the reality is life can get in the way of that sometimes. You know, when we get in our routines, we wake up, we let the dog out, we get the kids to school, maybe, we go to our job, we get home, we gotta make dinner, and next thing you know, we relax for a minute and the day's over, and we rewind it, and we just do the same thing every day. And sometimes this idea of getting closer to God and our faith expanding, sometimes it can feel like a little bit of a foreign concept. For some of us, if we're new in our belief, there's a lot of fire at the beginning, there's a lot of excitement, we commit ourselves to Christ, and then sometimes there's this idea like I had this old life and I've got this new life. God's remade me, He's given me a new identity, but there's still this tension of trying to reconcile the old with the new. And sometimes that could be challenging. And we don't know if we're really growing because we feel this tension in our lives. One of the challenges I think we have is that we question things, and we don't always know how we feel about questioning things. But I want to give you some encouragement today. Questions do not mean you're not growing in your faith. In fact, at the end of today, I hope you see it's the complete opposite. Matthew 11, verses 1 through 4, says, when Jesus had finished giving instructions to his twelve disciples, he moved on from there to teach and preach in their towns. Now, when John heard in prison what Christ was doing, this is John the Baptist, when John heard in prison what the Christ was doing, he sent a message through his disciples and asked him, Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else? This is an interesting question, because this is the same John the Baptist that's Jesus' cousin. This is the same John the Baptist that baptized Jesus. And we remember God descended like a dove in scripture and says, This is my son in whom I'm well pleased. And yet John the Baptist was now sending a question: Are you the one? Or is there somebody else who is to come? Because part of John's prophetic words he was given was talking about judgment that was going to come, and the kingdom of God was gonna come and reign, and yet what they saw in Jesus was not quite the picture of what they thought was gonna come. The encouragement this morning is if John the Baptist had a question, you're okay having questions. I'm okay having questions. In addition to questions, sometimes we just flat out don't understand. I like this uh story in Matthew chapter 16, verses 5 through 12. It'll be on your screen. It says, The disciples reached the other shore, and they had forgotten to take bread. Then Jesus told them, Watch out and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They were discussing among themselves, the disciples, we didn't bring any bread. Aware of this, Jesus said, You of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves that you do not have bread? Don't you understand yet? Don't you remember the five loaves for the five thousand and how many baskets you collected? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand and how many large baskets you collected? Why is it that you don't understand that when I told you beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, it wasn't about bread. The disciples, the closest followers of Jesus at this time. First off, there's like two major points here. One is they just didn't understand. Jesus was trying to make a point to them to beware of the teachings, beware of the Pharisees, beware of the Sadducees, and their mind was just sort of on this carnal food thing, and they just didn't even understand what Jesus was trying to tell them. And he didn't cast them aside and he didn't say, okay, next man up, you guys can't be my disciples anymore. In fact, this would go on multiple times. He'd have to explain parables to his disciples. He would teach them all along the way. That's the journey of discipleship. But I find, interestingly enough, in this story, it seemed like they so quickly forgot, even though they were focused on the carnal, the need to satisfy their human appetites, it was as if they had forgotten what they had just come through. Jesus had provided food for thousands of people, right? And they experienced it, they helped deliver the goods, and now all of a sudden it was as if, like, what are we gonna do? We don't have the resources to eat lunch right now. It's interesting that the disciples found themselves in these positions. And I don't actually place the disciples ahead of any other believer except for the fact that they had that close proximity to Jesus. And I think the reality is if they had these questions and they had these concerns, it's perfectly normal for us to have them too. And one of the challenges in where we live, I think, is we hear that and we're like, yeah, that makes sense. But there's something about our flesh, there's something about our appearance where we feel bad for having the questions, and sometimes we don't voice those questions because we don't want to look a certain way, especially in church. It's like here, we had a great worship service, we're here to worship God, hear the word, we're gonna have some meet and greet out in the lobby, we're gonna talk to our friends, we're gonna be in a small group, and sometimes we feel like if we're vulnerable enough to say, I have a question, it's gonna make us look bad, or like we're not a strong believer. And the encouragement this morning is let that go. Let that go. Jesus is drawing you. Our faith is in progress, and every single person in this room is somewhere on that bar and probably not in the same exact space. So faith is a journey. And a journey implies a change. We are different. We're gonna be in a different place over time. Uncertainty is built in. It's faith. We talked about being certain, we talked about knowing what we're hoping for, and that's true, but it's still something we can't always visibly see. And this morning to help illustrate this point in a more practical way, I wanted to um I wanted to invite somebody uh up to the stage to help me. I want somebody to share their story, a little bit of their story as it relates to faith. And so um this morning I'm excited to have my wife Chelsea join me. Yeah, can we give it up for those of you who don't know my wife Chelsea, I just need to tell you, this is the maybe the most terrifying thing she's ever done, is uh come up here and be part of be part of this. But she was a great, a great sport and willing to do it. Um I wanted her to to speak into this idea a little bit because um, well, she's got she does have a voice. It's softer, but she does have a voice, and I wanted her to share that. You do hear her though, because she was on the drums earlier, and that's what she does. She's in the cage, so yeah, absolutely. Um she rocks out in behind the scenes, but this is the first time in front. But um, but we come from a little bit of a different place. I was um I was raised uh going to church my entire life. Um, in my early formative years, um, a lot of the foundation scriptures, you know, John 3.16, and you know, some of these things that we all kind of know or here, these were all very foundational for me. By the time I got to my teenage years in my early 20s, um I was still following Christ and I was moving along that journey, and there was a lot of areas where I didn't really have questions. I I had already accepted some things as fact, and it and it really shaped my worldview and it really uh led me down the path I was in. But when I met Chelsea and we started to get together, she had been a newer believer really just a few years before uh we got together. So um I wanted you to, if you don't mind, just share a little bit about um your experience coming to faith and when that happened. And you'll have to hold that microphone close to your mouth. Yeah. Yeah, so talk about that that that early stage just a little bit. Obviously, you you got connected with a local church, they had some outreach uh elements which plug here for reaching out, folks. That's why we invite people in, because we never know the impact it's gonna have in somebody's life. Obviously, Jesus' amazing impact. But talk about those first few years. Like what was that like as a as a new believer? Um so we're in this series we just started a couple minutes ago, uh, called Faith in Progress. And so as you think about the seasons uh of your faith, you know, starting from that time and then kind of walking that out. You were a new believer when we started uh dating. Um we got married pretty young. We've been married 23 years this year, and um, and so we got married pretty young, and we were kind of you were sort of just thrust into church culture because that was my world a little bit. Um but then we had a family and had kids and and fast forward all the way to this moment right now. Can you talk a little about just some of the seasons you've had in your faith?

SPEAKER_00 19:57

There's definitely been seasons.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Um Do you think there was a key moment or a key um I don't know, what what caused that change from this sort of self, I've got to do these works to um kind of letting go and and so that you and I have had some interesting conversations. I I think um so I mentioned we kind of started from different places, but there's definitely times now where Chelsea will sort of challenge my thinking a bit on some things, or she'll be processing through some scripture and she'll be like, have you ever thought about this? And I'm like, No, I haven't. And um and it's really it's really good. Um I was wondering if you could maybe share um you know, maybe one one or or two things where you've just kind of been reading scripture and you feel God just sort of downloaded something into you.

unknown 20:45

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Um I would say that um for a while, a good chunk of the first part of my walk. Um it wasn't a very personal walk, and I during one of my challenging times I just found myself emptying myself out to God uh in a new level. In a specific moment. I guess it's the most was during the moment he was speaking the verse. You only find that out when you're tested.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

All right. I'm gonna give you one shot. Um anything else you would encourage uh the congregation with today?

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Anything else that um I would say don't rely on your uh human mind.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Can we give it up here, Chelsea? Yeah. I cannot believe she agreed to come up here. Um this is a milestone, so I'm kind of relishing that here in this moment. You know, we were having a conversation a few weeks ago, or maybe it's been a month or so ago, and she was like, Have you ever noticed, do you know why Moses didn't go into the promised land? And I'm like, no, I wasn't thinking about that today. Um and uh and she talked about um you know the name of Joshua and its meaning, and also talking about how Moses really represented the law and how the law isn't what ultimately saves us. And it was just this moment, and she's just seeing all these parallels in Old and New Testament, and um now she's you know she's jumped my bar in the progress somewhere, and I'm just trying to catch back up uh to her. So I love I love that she's thinking that way, and that's not how it started. And and that's the encourag that's an encouragement for all of us, right? Like coming to faith as a teenager, knowing only what you know at that moment, experiencing seasons of life and trying to do the things and check all the boxes, and and that's that's something for a while, but ultimately God wants to do a lot more than that in us. So as we think about one thing, uh I do want to make this abundantly clear. It's not your responsibility to make progress on that bar. It's just your responsibility to be on that bar. Alright? So you come, you make that decision for Christ, but let him do the work. And he may plant us in seasons for a period of time. There may be something we really need to learn, and we feel like I, the wheel is spinning. When's it gonna move off of this screen? And God's like, no, there's still some more work that's got to be done. And so, look, be on the bar. Commit everything you know of Christ. Pick up your cross daily, but he will be the one who will change us. So, what shall we gain from today? What's kind of our our um our takeaways as we start this series? Well, first off, faith in progress isn't a slogan. Um, it is a lifestyle. It's a lifestyle. Um and part of that lifestyle, part of that knowing that I'm gonna be different a year from now, two years from now, ten years, knowing that we'll be different causes us to have to recognize something that's very uncomfortable. There's something that we have to come to terms with, and I'm gonna make us all say it, which I know is not something everybody likes to do in church, but uh, it's so important that I'm gonna make us all say this. And so can we um maybe all together just say, I was wrong? I was wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's tough. Um I've got the notes here, and it's tough to even read my notes. Um, I was wrong. Yeah, there's gonna come a point in time where we're gonna get down the journey, and so much work has been done in us that we're gonna look back at our former selves and we're saying, man, I can't believe I acted the way I acted. I can't believe I said the things that I said. I I can't believe I thought this way about my relationship with God. And it's all part of the journey. It's all part of the journey. However, if we want to maintain a presence and an air about ourselves, that we've got it all figured out and we know everything, then this isn't gonna go very well for us. The the change is not gonna happen as much as we'd like because we haven't submitted ourselves to this idea that Christ is gonna continuously change us. And we have to embrace that. We have to embrace that idea. We've said this already multiple times. Carry your cross daily. It's not a one-time decision. And as we're questioning, as we're as we're thinking through the things we don't understand, remind yourself that a question is always an opportunity to find an answer. A question is always an opportunity to find an answer. Silence and apathy, these are the real destructive forces. If you're gonna be on this journey and you're gonna progress in your faith and you're gonna expect greater things and have Christ work on you, you've got to be willing to ask questions. You've got to be willing to dive in. Blind faith, a fruitless life, acceptance of duties without consideration of the purpose, these things will lead us to destruction. And we see this in Scripture, Matthew 7.21. It'll be on your screen. It says, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, and do so many miracles in your name. Then I will announce to them, I never knew you, depart from me, you lawbreakers. Entering the kingdom only happens when one has the kind of righteousness grounded in Christ. We have to be grounded in Christ, and it cannot be about the check boxes. We cannot control our progress on the bar, but we have to submit ourselves and allow God to change us. The great thing here is you have permission to ask and seek and knock, as it says in Matthew 7, verse 7 through 8. It says, Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and the one who knocks, the door will be opened. My encouragement to all of us this morning is to ask and seek and knock, and don't get complacent in just where we are. So this morning I want to give you a couple practical applications for this. Some action steps today. Number one, be curious. Be curious. When you think of all that is included in faith, when you think about just this the sheer amount of experiences we have in our faith from interacting with other people and Jesus changing us and expecting miracles to happen, when you just think about all the things that are out there, be curious. There is so much to explore. And God is not afraid of your questions. There's got to be things in your heart, there's got to be things in your mind that you said, man, I wish I knew a little bit more about this. I'm going to give you a really practical step right now, actually. Uh, we we just love these tap discs on the chairs, and so we we constantly encourage you to use your phone, but I'd love for you to do it one more time in this service, and this is for everybody, because what I'd like you to do is think right now for the next 30 seconds. Is there something in your heart and on your mind that you said, man, I wish I knew a little bit more about this? I don't understand this passage. I need to hear something on this theme. I need to hear God speak to me on a certain topic. If you tap that disc on the chair in front of you, um, there's gonna be a link right there that's gonna just say sermon ideas or sermon suggestions or something like that. And I literally in this moment want you to do it. I want you to tap on that uh that link, and I want you to write in there what is something I need? What would help me in my faith journey? I feel like I'm a little bit stagnant. I feel like I'm a little bit just watching the wheel spin around and around, and I would love to see breakthrough in this area. And having the church, having the leadership of the church come and either bring a message about it or giving me a resource about it would be so helpful in my journey. Take a moment. I'll give you like 10 more seconds. I know it's quick, but just put one thing. Obviously, if everybody in this room puts more than one thing, it'll take us a few years to get through all the topics, but um, we'll make sure that we we figure out a way to help. You know, we are an equipping church. We talk about that all the time. We're an equipping church. We equip the saints for ministry, and in the fullness of that ministry, our best in ministry is gonna be when we are carrying our cross daily and we have a confidence, we have an assurance, and that is growing and growing over the course of our lifetime. If you're still thinking that's okay, I'm gonna continue on. Question for you is what do you expect to happen on a Sunday morning? This is under the vein of or I'm sorry, under the topic of be curious, under the action of be curious. What do you expect to happen on a Sunday morning when you come in here? Do you are you hopeful? Are you expectant? Do you expect God to move through the worship and meet you where you are? Do you expect God to move through the the pastor and the preacher and give you something that's gonna be a light that God can use in your spirit to help you grow? Or do you just come to fulfill the obligation and to do your duty as a good Christian? Man, encouragement. Come expecting, be curious. I wonder what's gonna happen today. I can apply that to my life today. Be curious. Obviously, read the word. If you're not reading the Bible right now, read it. Even if you don't always understand it, that's okay. It's gonna give you the questions you need to experience breakthrough and connect with other people and have God work on your heart and soul. And so read the word. Another thing I would do if you are practicing being curious, I'd pick a question or a topic and just make it part of your Bible study for some length of time. If you don't have regular Bible time, I'd encourage you to just start there. But maybe it's something you say, look, this whole week, my whole devotional time, I know I've got the devotional book and I just read random topics each day, and that's awesome. But you know what, this week, every single day, I'm just gonna read the same scripture. I'm gonna look for the same topics. I'm gonna, I need to hear God's voice on this thing. And so my encouragement, spend a week, spend a month. And our teaching team, um, Guillaume looked at us and I think he was like, a month. It's taken me 10 years to pull all this research together to write a book. Um, and so it may take longer. And and the goal here is not to give you a prescribed um uh prescribed amount of time that it will take, but just practice the art of focusing on one topic, one area. And then you can always ask the church for resources. Talk to somebody at the connection center, email us, we're happy to get you whatever you need. So be curious this morning. Secondly, connect with others. David did a great job teeing this up in the in the announcements, but listen, don't miss next week. Small groups, they're gonna be featured out there. You gotta get connected in a small group. We are a small groups church. So much happens in the life of a small group. We believe you gotta be in it. You gotta be in it. And partly because if you have questions, this is a great place to ask your questions. It's also a great place to answer questions that somebody else may have. And of course, we always want to take those answers and root them in the word of God. We're not saying opinions, we're not asking just to get opinions. Everybody has an opinion. Um, but really find biblical men and women that you trust that you can you can um ask your questions to, be vulnerable with, and say, I don't have it all figured out. I love Jesus, I've accepted Jesus, I know that's a sure thing, but there's all this other stuff I don't have figured out. Small groups are a great place to talk about those kind of things. And lastly, number three this morning, note the progress and give your faith vision. Note the progress and give your faith vision. You know, the progress bar, we said this early on, it gives us two things. It kind of tells us how far we've come. And it also tells us how far we have to go. In real life, we don't see the how far we have to go. We don't know how much more work Christ has to do in our hearts. We don't know that refiners fire that scripture taught. We don't know how much more refining has to be done. We know that it will be completed at the end. But man, if you aren't tracking some progress, I'd encourage you to do that. You know, the Hebrews in the Old Testament, they would build, they would build altars and and monuments and and to where God showed up and different events happened, and it was a memorial, it was a way to know God had moved on their behalf. And maybe it's the day that you accepted Christ, maybe it's the day you got baptized. Those are key moments in your life. But there's also a day where maybe a prayer was answered. There's a day that you experienced a miracle or saw it happen. These are all things. Record those things so that you can look back and go, wow, some amazing things have happened in my life. And then personally go, yeah, you know what? Back then I would have probably handled this situation differently. Back then I would have said some things that today I would never think about saying. And when you look back and you go, wow, look at the progress. Why am I encouraging you to do this? Because it's it's it's motivating, it's encouraging, it keeps us pressing on. As Paul says, pressing on towards the mark. Our role is to follow God's commands, to carry our cross daily, making that decision daily to follow Him. His role is the rest. He'll change us. If we abide in Him, our faith will progress. So listen, I realize there may be some in the room today who maybe have never started the journey. They're not on the bar, the progress bar. You never made a decision to follow Christ. My encouragement to you this morning is don't leave here today without making that decision. We're gonna have some folks down here in just a few moments who are part of our prayer team. And before you leave the service, I would come down, meet with them, let them pray for you, let them give you some next steps. If you need a Bible, let us give you a Bible. But don't leave here today if you haven't made Jesus the Lord of your life. It's the most important decision you'll ever make. And the rest, he's gonna work it out. He's gonna work it out in you. So if you don't mind, I'd like to close us in a word of prayer. Can I have everybody just stand for this moment if you don't mind? Lord God, we thank you that you do the work. Lord, we thank you that you've offered us this invitation to follow you. And God, we actually thank you that it's not a one and done. It's not like we make this decision at one point in our life and we just check out and don't think about it ever again. But God, you've invited us into a relationship where we are following you. And we thank you for that. God, we pray that you would give us the strength to commit to that journey, to pick up our cross daily, to follow you, God. We pray we would never trivialize our decision, God. We pray that we would, Lord, learn to love you in greater, greater capacities. And God, today, for each and every, no matter where we are, God, we pray that you would grow our faith capacity, God, that our faith would truly be in progress, that we would we would continue moving in a positive direction. We wouldn't let the cares of the world get us down, God. We wouldn't let our own, Lord, decisions and schedules, Lord, bog us down into an endless cycle of of buffering, God. But Lord, we just pray that you would you would pull us forward, God, and you would change us continuously, God. And then out of that, we would get to be a light to other people and a light to our community. So, God, we love you today, Lord. I just I just ask for your blessing for this congregation. I ask that we wouldn't be the same. Lord, today when we leave, but a week from now, a year from now, God, we just pray you do your work. In Jesus' name, everybody say, Amen.

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Thank you for listening to the Mana Church Stafford Podcast. If you would like to connect with us, you can find us on the web at manastafford.church or download the Mana Church app to listen to our new episodes as they become available. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast. We would also love to meet you in person. If you are local, our services take place each Sunday at 10 a.m. We pray you have an amazing week, and we'll see you next time.