LIVING SOZOED

We challenge the way symptoms and feelings try to rename us and we anchor identity in what Christ already finished. We unpack how we can be perfected in spirit while still being transformed in daily life, then we get practical about words, perspective, and living whole while life unfolds. 
• living like it is finished while things still unfold 
• asking what we call ourselves in struggle 
• refusing to let anxiety, depression, or addiction symptoms become identity 
• Hebrews 10:14 and the “perfected” and “being sanctified” tension 
• feelings as real but unreliable leaders 
• choosing faith and truth over what contradicts God’s word 
• learning the difference between denial and identity 
• “let the weak say I am strong” as faith speech 
• healing not creating identity but revealing it 
• renewing the mind as the path to transformation 
• confession and language shaping direction 
• aligning body, soul, and spirit under spiritual leadership 

Transcript

Why Preaching Must Be Practical

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This sermon is going to speak to every single person in this room today, including myself. Okay. And I believe that's the way it should be. I've said it all, I say it all the time. My goal is not to preach a sermon that just, you know, so I can walk out and say, well, that sounded really good. My goal is to provoke people to think differently, challenge them to think beyond the norm, and to bring a practical message that you can walk out of here and actually say, you know, I can take that and apply it to my life. And not just say, well, that sounded good, but I can actually begin to live it out in my life and see the manifestation of it begin to happen and begin to change my life in some way. If we're not doing that, if we're going to church just to hear a sermon, you are missing it. Okay? And you are going to be let down if that's all you want is just to hear a good sermon. Okay. Again, I think all the sermons are good. I'm biased. Okay. But if I didn't think they was good, what's the purpose of getting up preaching them? Okay? I will never get up and say, hopefully, I will never get up and say, well, this just ain't going to be that good this morning. Okay? So I'm biased on that, but I really feel like God is leading us in a certain direction. And it's like every everything that we're preaching, it's got a certain thread to it, you know, and He's got us in a certain place. He's teaching us something specific. And I I went back and I've looked at these sermons, and I've looked at the titles of them, and I see them just building and building and building. And it's it's kind of one thing. You got to get this to understand this. And then you got to get this, and this makes more sense. And it's just like building blocks. So I believe this is uh really gonna be practical this morning, and it's really a step further from what we preached last week. That happens a lot, I don't know why, but it always happens like that. But here's the thought for today Living like it's finished while life is still unfolding. Living my life like it's finished, even though some things are still unfolding. So let me ask you something to begin this. Have you ever had a moment where something just felt like it was off? And before you knew it, your mind started telling you a story about yourself. I guarantee you, you ain't gotta raise your hand and you ain't gotta tell us, but I guarantee you every single person in this room has had that moment. You know, maybe you feel anxious and suddenly it's not just I feel anxious, it becomes something's wrong with me. It gets bigger than just a feeling. Or maybe you're struggling in a certain area, and now it's not just a little struggle, it becomes your identity. We see people every day who is going through things like this. So here's the question I want to pose to you today. What if the biggest issue isn't what you're going through, but what you're calling yourself while you're going through it? What if the biggest issue is not what you're going through, but what you're calling yourself as you're going through it? It's an important question to ask yourself. Last week we said you've been sozoued, saved, healed, delivered, and made whole. And today we're going to talk about what it means to actually be living sozoed. What does it mean to be living in a place where I realize I'm saved, I'm healed, I'm delivered, and I'm made whole? And we asked the question last week: if all of this stuff is true, why doesn't it always feel true? If this is what happened on the cross, if if Jesus actually finished it, if I've been made whole on the cross, if I've been delivered, if I've been healed, why does my body and my mind and my life not always project that? That's a question that I think most people ask at some point. When your body starts aching, you ask that question. When your finances ain't lining up the way you think they should, maybe you start asking that question. When you got people in your life that you care about and you love them and you see them going astray and you don't know what to do, they won't listen to you, they won't let you help them, you start asking that question. I can remember many times, you know, going people I cared about going through things, and I, you know, even my own son and I'd say, God, that ain't the seed I sowed. And that's the way I looked at it. That is not the seed I sowed. I want the seed that I sowed. I want the manifestation of that seed, I want the fruit of that seed that I sowed. It's difficult sometimes because we don't see life line up with what we're preaching and what we're teaching. It's not a lie. We're not just telling a fairy tale every Sunday morning, but it goes into what I said last week. And we're gonna get into it in just a few minutes, uh, a step deeper into that. I believe one place we can start is to stop letting a symptom or symptoms name us. There's symptoms to all kinds of stuff. There's symptoms to addiction, there's symptoms to anxiety, there's symptoms to depression, there's symptoms to all kinds of things. Are we letting those things begin to name us, begin to title who we are? What do I mean by that? I can tell you from experience in my years of counseling, I've seen so many people come into my office and sit down and they're having feelings of depression. They're having feelings of anxiety, they're having feelings of anger. But it really, in the end, what we discovered was it wasn't really the feeling that was the issue. It was the fact that the feeling had now begun to define their life. And it was being defined by that simple little thing that they were experiencing. And I think we should always challenge feelings. I've always said that. I think we should always challenge feelings. Just because something is happening in you doesn't mean that it is you. And too many times we let it become our identity, we let it shape our life, we let it define how we're gonna live every day of our life. But look what it says in this scripture. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 14. I love this one. It says, For by one offering, one offering, he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. Let me tell you why I love this verse right here. And I want to see if you caught what this said in here. Let me read it one more time. For by one offering, he has perfected, I'm gonna say that part again, perfected forever those who are being sanctified. Did you catch that? Perfected and being sanctified, which is the same as being transformed, all at the same time. See, we're taught one's gotta come before the other. And one's gotta come before you gotta you gotta get to this place of perfection, Christian perfection. You're never gonna reach it, so I'll help you out there. But not in the sense that we understand perfection. But we will in the sense that Jesus, that God has perfected, okay? But we think that we've got to get to this point, and then I can begin to get sanctified. But look at what he says here. It's happening at one time, it's happening together. That means there's part of you that is already settled while another part of your experience is still trying to catch up. Remember, last week I used the words already, but not yet. That's not a contradiction. It means that some things have already been established, some things have already been settled in heaven, some things have already been finished on the cross, and now we're walking in life and we're daily being transformed, daily being exposed to some new revelation, daily we're growing, and we're coming into an identity of what he finished on the cross. So two things are happening at once. The work is finished, and we're coming into an agreement and coming into an understanding of it. Into, I love the word awareness. We're coming into an awareness of what was already complete. We're not doing anything new. Asking him to come into my life and say in the ABCs of salvation, that's nothing wrong with that. Admitting that I'm a sinner, believing that he died on the cross and confessing my sins, ABC. Nothing wrong with that. But when you do that, you are not changing God's mind on anything. He's already completed that side of it. All that's doing is bringing that to an awareness to me. And now I wake up to what's already been completed. Symptoms may be present, but they do not have permission to determine your identity. We've got to realize we're not what we're feeling. I use I taught on this a long time ago, and I taught a lot on feelings. And this is something we really need to realize. Now, listen, when I say that, when I say that we're not our feelings, you gotta hear what I'm saying, and don't don't don't put words in my mouth and say something I'm not saying here. Okay? There's a part of you that is already settled, but then you feel something different. There's a part of you that's already complete, as the Bible says, but you feel something incomplete. There's a part of you that's already finished and already secured, but sometimes you feel insecure. Feelings come in. Now I'm not telling you that feelings aren't real, because they are, they're very real. They can be very strong, they can be very overwhelming at times, but feelings are also liars. I use that in counseling all the time. That's one of my number one quotes. Feelings are liars. Feelings are terrible leaders. When I'm led by emotions, my life is gonna be like a roller coaster. Because you can be up one day and down the next. You can be up one minute and somebody says something to you, and all of a sudden you're upset. If I my life is being led by feelings, man, it's gonna be a tough life. Second Corinthians 5 and 7 tells us something I think really important. For we walk by faith, not by sight. There's probably not a Christian around that can't quote this verse. We do our best to live by this verse. We walk by faith, not by sight. And we gotta understand what Paul's saying here. He's not just talking about what you see with your eyes, he's talking about anything that tries to define reality outside of what God has already established and what God has already said. That includes feelings. Here's another good one in John 8 and 32. I'm just gonna throw a couple of them up here that I want you to see. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Another very popular scripture. Everybody, most people can quote it, may not know where it's at, but they can quote the scripture. We hear people say it all the time. Sometimes they mess it up a little bit, but we hear it said all the time. Notice what it doesn't say. It doesn't say your feelings will make you free, it says truth does. Which means if feelings and truth don't agree, something has to take a back seat. If I know what the truth of the word of God says, but my feelings contradict truth, I've got a decision to make now. Which one am I going to lean on? Which one is gonna dictate my life? Which one am I gonna listen to? Can I tell you most people listen to feelings? You ain't gotta agree with me on that. I'm just telling you from years, 20 years of counseling, most people listen to feelings. And feelings will supersede the word of God. That don't mean they're not a Christian, don't mean they're not a good person, don't mean they're not going to heaven. It just means that something in their life, the feeling has become so strong, it has become their identity, and they see themselves more clearly based on what they're feeling than what the word of God actually says. That's why we teach what we teach. Because I want people to know their feelings do not define them. The word of God does. Their feeling is not their identity, the word of God is. And what our role is as people who teach a finished work theology is to help them see that it is complete in you. He has done it for you. And now you can let these feelings go, line up with the word of God, and begin to speak what? Truth into your life now. We're not gonna keep speaking lies. We're not denying the feelings there, but it's a lie. I won't even get into that, but the lies that people tell themselves every day because of a feeling. You've probably been there, you've done it too. That don't mean feelings won't speak and speak really loud. But it does mean they don't get the final say in our life. Let me be honest with you about how I how I used to think. When I was going through something specific, really anything, but I can I can remember, I'm thinking of specific things that I was going through, and how I used to take a certain verse, and man, I would grab that verse and I would hang on to it. You could not break that verse from me. I hung on to it. And the verse I'm talking about is 2 Chronicles, chapter 20, verse 15. Let me show you what I'm talking about. And he said, Listen, all of you, all you of Judah and you inhabitants of Jerusalem, and you King Jehosaphat, thus says the Lord to you, here's the part that I grabbed onto, and nobody can take it away from me. Do not be afraid nor dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours, but God's. Can I tell you how many times I went through a battle and I would quote this verse? I didn't even know it was in 2 Chronicles. I just knew that the Bible said the battle is not yours, it is God's. And I'm telling you, I would hang on to that verse. I would I would quote that verse. Every time something comes up in front of me, I'd say, This battle is not mine, it's God's. And you know what I started doing after a while? Because the battle wasn't mine according to this verse, I would deny it. Listen to me. I would deny that the battle was real. The problem with that, though, was the fact that I was denying it never caused the battle to immediately go away. It never immediately went away simply because of my denying it. And what I'm saying is, I was denying it because I was saying it's not mine anymore, it's God's. This is not a magical formula that we quote a verse and everything's boom, made right. What this is doing is saying, I'm gonna teach you who you really are, and because of that, your position and perspective will shift. When that shifts, it changes my battle. It took me a long time to learn that. And I told you last week, I used to love to battle because I felt like I was doing something. I felt amazing when I could wake up and say, this is not my fight. I could give you an example right now, and you you wouldn't believe it, but I could give you an example right now when I use that. And I can remember specifically what happened, and I said, the battle is not mine. And this this stuff just kept on happening. Day after day, I'd wake up next day, this battle is not mine, it's God's. Next day, same thing. Battle is not mine, and finally it just hit me, you dummy. It ain't going nowhere. Change your position in it. And everything shifted. One simple revelation. And that simple revelation was identity, recognizing who I really was. So trying to ignore what I was going through wasn't gonna make it disappear. But changing position changes perspective every single time. I truly have a say. This is what it really made it happen for me. I realize I truly have a say in how much the battle will or will not affect my life. Because I'm telling you, I there was times it was tough. There was times I about gave up on God. Because I said, God, I've done this for you, and I've done this for you. I've preached the word for you, I've done, I've gone overseas and preached for you, I've done all this stuff, and now this comes. Where are you at? Maybe you ain't been there. I've had that battle with God and said, Where are you? I can pray for other people and their life shifts. I can prophesy a word to somebody that just gives them peace and comfort, but then I can't speak a word into my own life. And that's a frustrating place to be. Because what was happening is the battle. I was going through on a daily basis now caused me to battle with God. And question, was he really there? And if he was, why was he forsaking me in the time that I truly needed him? That's a tough place to be. And I can remember being up two or three o'clock in the morning just walking through the woods. Just me and God talking. Or really me just talking. Because I was too busy talking. I never heard him. I never took the time to really listen to him. Because I was too angry that he wasn't helping me win this battle. And I didn't realize the whole time he was trying to say, son, understand who you are. This is not a battle. That's what he was saying. He wasn't saying the battle wasn't there. He was saying, because of who you are, this battle is nothing to you. But the problem is you don't see who you are, so therefore the battle becomes everything to you. A simple revelation of identity. That's why I teach what I teach. That's why I believe in it when somebody says, Well, you're teaching this wrong and that. I don't care what you think. That's why I teach what I teach. Because I know the impact it's made on my life. I know the impact it's made on other people's lives by simply understanding their identity in Christ. It's the same way with feelings. You don't deny what you feel. You can deny depression all day and you're going to still walk around depressed. You can deny anxiety all day long and you're still going to get anxious. Denying it is not going to make it go away. But you don't let it define who you are. In the book of Joel, it says, Let the weak say that I am strong. Now, some people, they're not going to call the Bible a lie. They would agree with that verse in Joel. But in other areas of my life, when they ask me a question, they say, Well, how are you doing? And you say, I'm blessed and highly favored. That's our number one Christian way to answer. I'm blessed and highly favored. And your life is a wreck. People look at you and say, they're lying to themselves. You know why? Because they see your life. Maybe they know you on a personal level. They know you got stuff going on in your life. You're battling with some things. You're struggling with some stuff. But yet you walk and you say, I'm blessed and highly favored. And some people look at it and say, I don't know why they keep lying to themselves. I'm not lying. I'm doing what the Bible told me to do right here in Job. It says, let the weak say, I am strong. Why? I'm not aligning with what's going on. I'm aligning with what he said. It changes perspectives. But I believe it's important. And I say this often. If we want to see what a verse is really saying, we have to first understand what the verse is not saying. Because a lot of times we have a tendency to believe something in there that it's not saying. And take that as scripture, and all of a sudden we're saying this is what the Bible says. And it never says that. So I always go back, that's just one of my study tools, the way I look at it. I always, first question I ask is, what is that not saying? And I compare it against things that I've always been taught and stuff like that. So notice what it didn't say there. It didn't say let the weak pretend they are strong. What it is saying here is say what God says, even while you feel something different. Say what God says even while you feel something different. Are you lying? No. I'm speaking those things that are not as if they are. I'm speaking in faith, substance of things hoped for, evidence of things not yet seen. I don't see it yet, I don't see the manifestation of it yet, but I'm not going to keep speaking my problems. I'm going to speak where I want to be. We speak to our problems too much. We speak to our sin nature. As people like to call it, I like to call it sin consciousness. We speak to our sin consciousness too much. And because we're so entangled in a sin consciousness, we can't understand God consciousness. We can get so caught up in our problems, the solution is right in front of us, and we can't see it. Scripture says, as he is, so are we in this world. Not when we get to heaven. Catch that verse there. As he is, so are we in this world. So it's not talking about heaven one day, but right now. That means my identity is not determined by what I feel, but by who he is. So a feeling doesn't line up with if a feeling that I'm experiencing and I'm feeling does not line up with him, it may be real, but it's not who I am. As he is, so am I in this world. So maybe my thinking, let me put it on this. You may be thinking, I don't really deal with this. I know who I am. And that's good. I hope that's true for everybody in here. But even if it is true for you, we are around people every single day that need to hear the good news. We're around people every single day that need to see things from a different perspective. Because everybody's not being taught that. A lot of people you're around may not be in church. They're not hearing anything. If we come across someone battling with addiction, they need to know that urge is not their identity. And we're around people daily with anxiety and depression, anger, guilt, all these things. We're around them every day. They need to know what they are feeling does not mean that their life is out of control. You can feel these things and still stand in peace. That sounds like an oxymoron there, but you really can. You can feel something devastating in your body and still say, I'm going to stand in peace. It's difficult sometimes. Be real. But it's possible. Think about this statement. Healing doesn't create your identity, it reveals it. Healing does not create your identity, it reveals it. Now, I'm I'm saying this because most of us, including myself, have been taught this backwards. We often think when I get healed, then I'll be made whole. I will be whole when I'm healed. But scripture flips it. Now most of us would believe that's scripture right there. That when you are healed, you are whole. But that's not what scripture tells us. It tells us in Colossians 2 10, it says, you are complete in him. That doesn't say you will be. Romans 12 2 says, be transformed by renewing of your mind. It's important that we change our thinking. Now, again, do what I always do. Notice what it didn't say there. It didn't say you'll be transformed by God fixing you. He said by renewing your mind. Why? Because the issue isn't your spirit, it's your awareness. Your spirit is perfected. We just read that a while ago. When we talk about that word perfect, it's talking about your spirit. See, we try to take that word and think our life, our body, our flesh. And I ain't met nobody yet who is perfected in the flesh. So that automatically tells me either that verse ain't talking about the flesh, or either the Bible told a lie. So we got to understand what it's saying context. We are perfected in the spirit. And now what I'm trying to do is to get my crazy mind to align with my spirit, with what my spirit already knows. Why? How do I know what my spirit knows? My spirit, according to the word of God, knows all things. It said that the Holy Spirit searched the mind of God. Yes, even the deep things of God. That always amazed me there because number one, it says he searched the mind of God and knew all things, but then even the deep things. All things, I would think, includes the deep things. But he goes further. He says, all things and even the deep things. And then the Holy Spirit, after searching the mind of God and getting all this information, comes and lives and houses himself on the inside of us. That's why the Bible can say, and I can look at you and say, you ain't got a problem that you don't already have an answer to. But do you have an awareness of that? See, most people would think I'm crazy if I said that to them. That you do not have a problem that you don't already have a solution to. They would argue with me all day, but again, they don't understand what I'm saying. I'm saying spiritually. Because your spirit is perfected, it knows all things. You don't know all things in your mind, but your spirit does. You're not becoming whole. You're learning to think like someone who already is. I'm gonna get ready to close down right here, but listen to this. Don't go to sleep yet. This is why I feel like confession is so important. I talk a lot. For years I have talked on confession, and this is why I believe it's so important. If you change your language, you will change your life. Oh, I could go off right here. Because Christians want to change churches, pastors, husbands, wives, schools, cities. They try to change everything around them, thinking their problems are going to change, and every place they go into, they can't seem to figure out why the problem follows them. The problem didn't follow you, the problem got there when you got there. Because it's inside you. The hardest thing in counseling to do, because people get mad, is to look at them and say, You're the problem. Your thinking is the problem. It ain't everybody else. You know, at some point you got to look and say, What's the common denominator here? If everywhere you go, the same problem comes up, you may be the problem. That's not mean, that's reality. But we can change that when we change our language. Proverbs 18 and 21 says death and life life are in the power of our tongue. We always reverse that. It don't matter how you say it. We always say life and death are in the power of the tongue. It actually says death and life are in the power of the tongue. Why does that matter? Because most of the time I believe the problem is what we're saying and what we're listening to. What's coming in? What's coming inside of me is my responsibility. What you're listening to is your responsibility. What you allow in to your mind is your responsibility. Maybe this week, we could spend this week not trying to fix everything. Maybe we just start by saying, I am whole even while I'm healing. I am whole even while I'm healing. And just start there. What is that doing? That's speaking to my identity. It's speaking to the truth of who I am. Maybe we can just share with someone that they don't have to wait for the feeling to change before they start walking in what's already true. You know how many people is not in church today because their life just ain't lining up yet with what church people should be like? So they stay out. Can we just tell them you can come in no matter how you feel? Even if it's not lined up yet, even if it's not in order yet, you can come in anyway. You don't have to wait on a feeling to change before you start living it. Peace doesn't begin when we feel it. Peace begins when we believe it. Joy. It doesn't start when our emotions finally cooperate. Joy starts when we choose to align with Him. So even if it doesn't feel right just yet, can we change our mindset and start living in the already? Well, I'm not there yet. I don't feel this yet. I don't think that way yet. Well, forget the yet. Let's live in what's already done. That's what I love about the finished work. See, if you don't believe in the finished work of Christ, you're always living in the wait and see what happens. You're living on emotions a lot of times. And even though I may be an emotional wreck, I can look and say, even though I'm not there emotionally, even though I don't feel it, I'm not going to worry about that right now. I'm going to live in the already. And I'll let the not yet work itself out. We flip that. And we make people think that the not yet has to be finished before you can get into the already. And if it's not, we make them feel guilty, we make them feel condemned, we make them feel bad. We're turning that around. That's all we're doing. We're not preaching a new gospel. We're just saying that if you're not already there yet, it's okay. Let's just live and rest in the already. That's it. Let the rest just sit there, put it on the shelf, and we'll get to it when we can. But the not yet don't change what he's already done. So if it doesn't feel right just yet, focus on the already. Because the truth is God is not waiting on your feelings to catch up before he calls it finished. He don't care about your feelings. That's a mean way to say it, ain't it? But I'm gonna say it anyway. He don't care about your feelings. He cares about truth. He cares about your identity. He cares about your understanding of who you are. He's not holding your identity hostage to your emotions. We are. And we're holding other people's emotions hostage. Or identity hostage. What he said about you was settled long before you ever felt anything. So I don't have to feel peace again to walk in peace. I don't have to feel joy to choose joy. I don't have to feel whole to live like I've already been made whole. I can live in the already because he already spoke it. He already finished it. He already declared it. So today, I'm not waiting for a feeling to give me permission. I'm stepping into what's already mine, regardless of what I feel. Because as he is, so are we in the world. Not someday, not eventually, not one day in the by and by, right now. And if that's true, then whatever is true of him is true of me. That is such a revelation that we need to catch. Whatever is true of him is true of me. So let's live like it. Starting today. We don't have to wait anymore. We don't have to postpone anything. We don't have to wait until everything gets perfected in the flesh, because it's not going to get there. I don't care how long you come to church. I don't care how how long you've been teaching Sunday school or how long you've been doing anything else in the church, you're not perfected in the flesh. You're not perfected in your thinking. You're perfected in your spirit. And all we're saying is let's get the body and the mind to catch up with what the spirit already knows. Spirit knows all. Spirit knows who you are. That's why sometimes you can do something really stupid or really crazy, and we've all done it. And there's something on the inside of you that says, That ain't you. You know why? Because your spirit spoke. And your spirit knows who you are. And when you do something dumb, your spirit says, uh that ain't you. It's a battle. But the battle is not here in the flesh. That's why that verse says that the battle is not in the flesh. The battle is most of the time is in our mind. It's a head thing. Letting this catch up with my spirit. I preached a sermon one time and it was I said, Body, soul, and spirit line up. And what I meant by that is. Most of us are led by our soul. My mind, my will, my emotions. Some of us, some people are led by their bodies. But the Bible says to be led by your spirit. So it's real simple. Body, soul, spirit. Come into alignment. Which one are you allowing to lead your life? If you're being led by emotions, you can change it. If you're being led by the flesh, you can change it. But the only way you can change it, and I truly believe this, is to truly know what is number one, that the Spirit lives in you, and what the Spirit knows about you. What does he know about me? All things. But I've never surprised him. I've never, I've never surprised God. I've never had to, I know this now. I didn't know this years ago because I would hide from him. I really thought I was hiding from him by not coming to church. Because my mentality is God is in the building, God is in the church. And as long as I don't go to church, I don't have to face him because of what I've done. I felt so guilty. Now I realize I'm not hiding anything from him. And he still loves me. He still cares for me. He still wants the best for me. He still speaks every day to my identity, even when I don't. When I feel a certain way, he says, son, your identity overrides that. When we can understand that, it's a game changer. It changes the way we see Him, the way we see ourselves, the way we read Scripture. Everything shifts. If we can just get to the point of now living sozod. Not just realize we are, but how do we live this way now? How do I live saved? How do I live healed? How do I live whole? Let's pray. Father God, we thank you. I thank you for the word today. I thank you for the revelation that you've given us. I pray that it goes further than this building. I pray that this word just seeks into their hearts, Father, seeks into their mind. And that as they just lay down tonight or just doing whatever today, that you bring something in this word up to their memory, Father, and that you just challenge them to go look it up, even if it's something they disagree with. If I said something that challenged them, that they disagreed with, let them have the understanding and the uh the the just to go and search it out, to look in scripture, to pray about it and say, what does it really mean? What does it really say? And Father, I thank you that you have brought a group of people here together that truly want to understand our true identity in Christ. We're not perfect, we don't always do things the right way, but Father, we are truly, truly seeking our identity in Christ. Not just for ourselves, but to lead other people out of bondage and into truth. And Father, we'll continue to be obedient to the path that you lay out for us. We'll continue to do the things that you've called us to do. We'll continue to be a forerunner in this region and in this city. And we'll continue to step through every door that you open up. And Father, I know there's people out there right now that is struggling. There's people out there, and when I say I'm struggling, I'm not just talking about addiction. I'm they're struggling in their mind, they're struggling with their identity, they're struggling with things that they're feeling. And Father, it is our purpose and it is our calling to speak life into them, to speak truth into them, and to provoke change in how they see themselves. So, Father, we thank you. And we'll be careful to give you the praise, the honor, and the glory in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. And Cooper says, Amen.