SPEAKER_00 0:04

What's up guys? Thanks for tuning into North Rock Church's Young Adult Service, The Gathering. Whether you're at home, at work, or on the road, we hope you find this message encouraging and helpful. If you're a young adult between the ages of 18 and 30 in the greater San Antonio area, we'd love for you to come check out the gathering. We meet on the first and third Tuesday of every month at 7 p.m. Be sure to follow us on our Instagram at NorthrockYA for more details and to stay up to date on all things young adults. Now let's take out our pens and our Bibles and let's get into the message.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

We're so grateful that you're in the house tonight. My name is Winston. If we haven't had the privilege of meeting, I get to lead our Midtown campus. And uh yeah, shout out Midtown, shout out Spring Branch, shout out Stone Oak, all one church, meeting in three locations, lifting up the name of Jesus. And uh man, just a little bit about me. Um I I was just thinking about it while uh while we were worshiping. Uh I walked into a North Rock church 10, going on 11 years ago, 2015. And when I walked in uh to North Rock, man, I was uh just so broken. Uh just uh wrestling with all kinds of insecurities, still dude, trying to figure life out, trying to figure out, man, like what does God have for me? How do I make sense of my life? Um, all kinds of battles, all kinds of things, just searching, just searching. And uh, can I just say, man, Jesus has met me in this house. Jesus has met me in gatherings like this, he's uh challenged me in gatherings like this, he's encouraged me in chat in gatherings like this, he's revealed himself to me in gatherings like this. And so can I just encourage you that, man, spaces like this, anything is possible. Jesus can drop a word, Jesus can uh speak something that'll change the course of your life. And uh man, I'm not up here if I'm not in a gathering like this, and I'm just listening for what does God have for me today? And so I just want to encourage you, well, wherever you're at, whatever you walked in with, um, man, just have an open heart because man, God wants to speak to you. Amen. God wants to speak to you. I want to start tonight um with uh a name of God that I think is gonna take us uh somewhere. This this name is uh a type of name, an epithet, an epithet. An epithet is an adjective that becomes part of someone's name because it describes them. Uh it's it's something like the dark knight. The dark night is Batman. We got any Batman fans in the house, any Batman, any any Marvel in general, any any fans of anything at all? Anybody, anybody, okay. Um yeah, yeah, we got the dark knight, we got uh honest Abe. Uh it was an adjective, right? It described him. He was an honest guy, but it becomes part of his name. Then we have Air Jordan, Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time. I don't want to hear any silly responses. I don't want to hear any silly responses, uh, the greatest basketball player of all time, Air Jordan, an epithet, something that described them, but then it became part of how they were identified. We we have a name in Scripture. Um, in the Hebrew, it's El Elion. El Elion. God Most High. God Most High. You probably sung this in a song, you've probably read it in scripture, but I'll give you some scripture here. Genesis 14 and 20, and praise be to God most high, who delivered your enemies into your hand. Um, this this phrase, this this name, this description of God. I really want to kind of center us around God most high. Specifically that that most high, because I believe uh there's this most high desire in all of us. All of us have a desire uh for the most high. I was uh doing some research looking at something called Karens, uh, not to be confused with Karens, not Karens, but Karens. Uh there are stacks of stones or heaps of stones. Uh if you've ever gone hiking or been out in nature and you've seen like stones stacked up, this is what we're talking about. And there's actually a a uh study that was found in the 1800s, and it found these heaps of stones in four different countries: Britain, Ireland, Norway, and Sweden. And all of them had these cairns, these stacks of stones that were built by unsupervised children. These children uh apparently just had a lot of time on their hands and their parents didn't care where they were, and so they went out and they stacked these stones. But what was interesting about where these kids stacked these stones, once again, four different countries, these kids would not know each other. They all chose to go to the highest local place and stack these stones. The highest local place to build something. And I just believe that because we are created in the image of God, God most high, there is a desire in us to seek out the most high, the high places, the high points, the high things of life. There is a uh place in Slovenia called the Eliaj Tower, the Eliaj Tower. And this tower was created by a Slovenian Roman Catholic priest named Jacob Eliaj. And he started one day just picking up random scraps of metal and just pieces of substances and taking them up to the highest point in Slovenia. And he hand-carried this and he built this 130 years ago, and it still stands to this day. He never gave a reason why he built this, and this is actually a tourist attraction in this place. Um but but it seems to reason that this is another kind of idea or picture of the desire that we all have to go to high places and try to build things. High places and try to build things. For some people want to go to the top of Mount Everest and you know plant a flag. Others, you know supposedly have gone to the moon. I don't know if we have any uh conspiracy theorists in the room, but um that there's reasons why. There's desires that that we want to conquer things, that we want to climb things, that we want to go to the high places. And if you're taking notes, you can write this down. We all have a desire to go higher, but we struggle to live out that desire. We all have a desire to go higher, but we struggle to live out that that desire. That desire. Some of us are in the room and you have a notification on your phone or your computer for an update, and you have not updated your phone or your computer. Can you show me your hands? Who are those who just you just don't, okay? The whole room is not updated, your devices, right, right, right. Some of us, you know, you run out of storage on your phone, and uh, but you won't delete anything. You won't do anything about the storage, you just you know upgrade your phone, apparently, and instead of doing some maintenance on your phone. That's my wife 100%. She's like, Well, I just my phone's not working, and you literally have 78,000 pictures of our daughter. It's all the same picture. You could just delete one, just delete, delete one. We all have this desire to upgrade, but we don't always know how.

unknown 7:25

Right?

SPEAKER_01 7:25

We have this desire to upgrade, but we don't always go about it the right way. And uh, we have a story in scripture, Genesis 11, and uh it's this very odd story. Um, it's it's called the Tower of Babel. And uh what happens is we have a group of people and they they make a decision to build. Verse 4, it says, Then they said, Come, let us build ourselves, everybody say ourselves. Build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise, we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth. But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people were building. And the Lord said, If as one people speak in the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so that they will not understand each other. So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. They stopped building the city. Now, this seems kind of like a random, just weird Old Testament, like weird Bible Jenga story. Like, what are we talking about? Like they're building something and God comes and tears it down. I'm not not not quite understanding. I think the story speaks to the tension in our lives. Like, could our activity be an effort to reach heaven? Could our activity, though though we aren't building a tower, but we're trying to build a life? We're trying to build things, we're trying to achieve things, we're trying to attain things, maybe it's promotions, maybe it's degrees, maybe it's finding the spouse. Whatever going to the top is for you. Good things, but if we're not careful, the origin of our effort can be wrong, can be misplaced. Right? Like the scripture said that they were building for themselves, and the foundation of what they're building was them. That they were building something towards heaven, but it was about them, it was for them, it was their motives, it was their desires, and the same can be true for us. We can get off into building our own lives, and we want to reach heaven, we we want to see God, we want we want God to see it, and maybe even in the hope of doing more good and and doing the things that I think God will bless, and and and me doing all of these things, maybe God will accept me. Like maybe God will see me, maybe God will be pleased with what I'm doing, and what can happen is we can easily be building something that didn't have its foundation in Jesus. We can get off into building a life, and once again, though it's a good thing, a good career, a good desire, the things that we're supposed to be doing, it might not be on the foundation of Jesus. Um, I had a mentor share with me once, um, and we were actually talking about a big decision my wife had to make at one point in her in her career. Um, she was an SLPA, a speech and language pathologist assistant, and she wanted to get her master's degree, go back to school, and be an SLP. Um what was that? Come on, let's go. And uh and so she ends up getting uh accepted into the master's program at the same exact time I got hired here at North Rock. And the school she got hired, uh got uh the invitation to do a master's program at was Stephen F. Austin in Nacados, Texas, which is about five hours away from here. And so we kind of had to make a decision. Like, we weren't gonna do a long distance thing, we're already married, and so we were kind of at this crossroads. Like, am I gonna stay in ministry or is she gonna pursue her what was then her dream? And we were kind of at this like weird, like, man, like what is what is God doing here? And my mentor was kind of giving me some advice to to give us to consider, and he said, the thing that she's pursuing, when did it start? She wants to be a speech and language pathologist, she she believes that that is her her assignment, her her purpose, her career, but at what point did that desire begin? And what we kind of started to unravel was she had basically gone all in with Jesus after she had started that career path. And so now we're coming to a point in our life where we're having to make a decision and we're trying to not follow what I want to do and not follow what she wants to do. We're trying to follow what Jesus wants us to do. And so we kind of had to reverse engineer this and think about okay, like for me, ministry was not a plan for me. This was once again me being in this church, me serving, me just looking for what Jesus wanted me to do, and it just kind of happened. And we're looking over here, like, okay, God seems to be in this, is God in this? And long story short, what we came to the conclusion of was my wife's desires did not originate with God. That her desires maybe originated with growing up in a not wealthy home, and her parents maybe were implying that she needed to get the type of job that would make her better than her family. Or the origin was I want to have status or I want to live a certain life, but the origin was not, this is what God gave me. This is what God planted in me, this is what God is leading me to. And if you're taking notes, you can write this down. If we try to build by ourselves, we will build for ourselves. If we try to build by ourselves, we will build for ourselves. And I just might pose the question: how do we know we are building what God wants us to build? How do we know we're building what God wants us to build? I was talking to Pastor Matt yesterday, and we were talking about like sin nature. We're just having this random like theology discussion, and he gave me this example. He was he was talking about being made in the image of God and and how that image got distorted through Adam, through the act of disobedience in Genesis, where uh him and and Eve eat the apple, and he gave me this image of a baking pan. And a baking pan, you you know, you bake a cake or whatever that treat is, uh, you put it in the pan, it's gonna take the shape of the pan. Anything you put in that pan is gonna take the shape of the pan. If you drop the pan and the pan dents, now anything that you put in that pan is gonna take the shape of the pan. So anything in that pan now that you are baking is going to have a dent in it. And the same goes for us because of Adam's sin nature, the dent in our soul. Now we have this dent or bent towards sin. Now everything that we see or do our desires has this sin filter. You could say this desire to pursue the things we want instead of pursuing the things God wants. Like just in origin of our desires, where we start is always with ourselves and not with God. And the challenging part for us can be when we do the right things, like we all kind of know what the wrong things are, but when we start pursuing good things, what can happen is we might get caught up in what is called legalism. Legalism, which simply means I think I can earn my way to heaven. I think I can build a tower, I think I can get to a high place and start building towards God. I think I can earn my way towards Jesus accepting me. Jesus tells a parable about this in Luke 18, verses 10 through 14. He says, Two men went up to the temple to pray. Everybody said to pray. One, a Pharisee, which a Pharisee was a religious leader in the day. They knew the Torah, which is the essentially the first five books of the Old Testament, like it was their Bible at that time. Uh, just you know, the most religious person possible, if you will. The the modern version of this would be the best Christian you know, right? And the other was a tax collector. A tax collector was like the scum, like they were not accepted, they were looked down upon because they were Jewish, but they were working for the Roman government and getting taxes from the Jewish people. So they were kind of like traitors, they were going against their own people, and and um the Romans kind of used them, and the Jews kind of hated them, and it was a whole situation. So you have a basically a really good guy and a really bad guy. The Pharisees stood there by himself and prayed, God, I thank you that I'm not like other people. Robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even this tax collector. I fast twice a week and I give a tenth of all that I get. He's like, Man, I'm good. Like, I'm doing all the right things. I do exactly what I'm supposed to do. I do the God stuff. But this tax collector stood at a distance, and he would not even look up to heaven. He beat his breast and said, God have mercy on me, a sinner. And Jesus says, I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified, accepted before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. If you take a note, you can write this down. We need honesty before activity. We need honesty before activity. The Pharisee had all the activity, the prayers, the spiritual discipline, the theology, you know, modern day. He probably listened to all the podcasts, did the 30-day devotional, you know, wore all the church merch, tithed, did everything he was supposed to do. But what's implied here is that the Pharisee put his confidence in his works, legalism. He thought his works could save him. He thought his works could cover his sin or his desire to sin, that dent, his pattern of choosing self. And this is what can happen to us. We can unknowingly put so much value in our works that we think that's what makes us acceptable to God. That God accepts us when he sees us doing all of the right things. What I want us to catch here is that we can never do enough right things to get to God. We can never do enough good works to make us acceptable to God. We can never close that gap. We can never build a tower high enough to get to God. The only way that we can get to God is realizing that He came to us first. Right? He closed the gap. Jesus put on flesh. God put on flesh in Jesus and came to us and died on a cross. He did the good work, and now we are accepted when we accept his good work. When we accept his good work. But what do I do in response to what Jesus has done? Because what's dangerous about depending on your good works is that the tower you're building, it can cause you to believe that God owes you. Right? When we really put all of our weight and all of our confidence in what we're able to do, the good works that we're able to do, we can start feeling like maybe there's some entitlement, right? Like you might not say it, but one way you might know if this is true is if you start getting frustrated when you expect things to happen and they don't. When you think, okay, like I'm doing X, Y, and Z, and so why isn't X, Y, and Z happening? Like God, I'm holding up my end of the bargain and I don't see any return from that. And at some point, you're doing good works is connected to you wanting to get good things. You're doing good works and you're expecting this transaction, and instead of being satisfied with just a love relationship with Jesus. Like, I don't do good works because I want good things to happen. I do good works because I love Jesus. Like I just I just love him. Like if you think about anybody that you love, you you just want to please them. You're not doing it so that they can love you. And I want somebody to cast this, Jesus already loves you the most, he will ever love you right now. Right, right now. There's nothing that you could do to make them love you more or make him love you less. Like he loves you the most right now. Jesus said the tax collector, the bad guy, was accepted because of his prayer, but it wasn't just his prayer, it was his heart posture. The tax collector went low. Like he wouldn't even look up. That's how much he was disgusted by his sin. That's how much he was broken by his desires, about his ways, about his life. And he admitted that his foundation was faulty, that he had had that dent like the cake pan. And so he didn't start with his achievements to depend on God to be acceptable. He he started with an honesty. He said, I'm I'm so sinful. Have mercy on me, God. I'm a broken individual. That was where he started. Before all the activity of the Pharisee, he got low and he just started with an honest place. Lamentations 3 and 40 says, Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord. Let us examine our ways. And our culture, man, that there's just so much to do. There's all kinds of stuff that can keep us busy and we're busy people and we can get occupied and preoccupied and we want to do things faster and we want to see results faster. And we can get so in a hurry that we don't always take time to examine what we're doing. Why we're doing it. Where did this start? Where did this start? Anybody love like going to the doctor? No. Nobody loves going to the doctor. Nobody's go loves going to get an exam, right? Like, what's the most awkward, weird thing to me is being in like the waiting room where there's like five other people in there, and like y'all just act like each other's not there. Like you just straight up ignoring other other humans, right? And it's like you make awkward contact eye contact with somebody, you're like, oh, okay. All right. Um, yeah, we're all like not here, but we are here. It's just so uncomfortable, and just the anxiety about the unknown. Like, what if the doctor finds something? Right? The exam is so uncomfortable, but spiritually, God invites us to examine ourselves. And we see so often don't because we're scared of what we might find. And so we try to cover that with activity, just more activity, more building, more. Can I get closer to God if I do the right thing? And God's like, I need you to slow down. I need you to examine yourself. I need you to test what you're doing and return to the Lord. Make sure that you're building on the right foundation. Whether it's bad religion or lack of examination, we can start doing things and believing it will earn us God's blessing. We can start doing things and thinking, oh, okay, like God is God is with me because I'm doing the right thing. But watch this. You could be doing something for God and not with Him. Matthew 7. I'm just gonna warn you, this is a kind of a heavy passage, kind of a weighty passage. So prepare your heart, verse 21, Jesus speaking. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. But the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven, on that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. Jesus says, You did things and you put my name on it, but we didn't have a relationship. I didn't know you. Like I could imagine that conversation sounded something like I didn't know you, but I would love to have known you. I would have loved to spend some time together and share my heart with you and exchange your desires for my desires. There were times you did things that I never asked you to do. There were times when you could have been honest with me, but instead you just tried to outwork your sin. Outperform your insecurities. Instead of just repenting and admitting your fears and your pain and letting me forgive you, you just did more. Activity without honesty. And God invites us to get honest first. And so I just encourage everybody in the room to check your heart. What are you doing and why are you doing it? Honesty before activity. And the desire to go higher and to build and to create and to do good works isn't wrong, but it does require honesty, and then it requires humility. So if you're taking notes, you can write this down. We need humility before elevation. Humility before elevation. Luke 18, verse 14, we just read this: for all those who will exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Humility is an interesting thing. I was uh going to lunch the other day to firehouse subs down 1604, and I was pulling into this parking spot that had two cars on each side of it, and as I pull in, all I hear is I'm like, oh, look over, and somebody had opened their door right as I was pulling in. It's a whole situation. And if you know firehouse subs the way it's situated, the parking spots are right up against the glass, so everybody in there saw everything. So I get out and you know, uh exchange information with the guy, and I go in there and just feel like everybody's eyes are on me. Just like, look at this guy, this rookie. What is he doing? And I could hear the people that are working there talking about it. And I was humbled. So much so that I just left. I was like, I don't even want a sandwich anymore. I'm just gonna get up out of here. I'm just gonna get up out of here. I ain't even hungry. I don't even gotta go figure out my insurance. I don't know what to do right now. Humility. I don't know what elevation looks like. I don't know what growing and getting better looks like. Maybe it's the promotion, maybe it's being seen as a leader, maybe it's making a certain amount of money or getting the family or the degree. But whatever you are wanting to build or do for God, or you believe what God wants you to do is gonna require humility. Anything that you do related to the kingdom of God will require humility. But what does that look like, right? I think we kind of understand the concept of humility, but how do you live that out? I just want to give you something real, real practical. This might sound like a cuss word though. Submission. Submission. Hebrews 13 and 17 says, obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls. Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they're keeping watch over your souls. What does submission look like for you right now? Who are you submitted to? Submission is the language of the kingdom. Watch this, independence is the language of the culture. Right? The culture tells us to man build the business, start the podcast, make the merch line, create the social media accounts, start your own Bible study, or start your own ministry. And once again, while those are good things, the God thing requires submission. Submission. Submission simply means being sub to the mission. Being under the mission. So whose mission are you under? Whose mission are you trying to support, trying to lift up? Because what I've learned and what I've lived, what I've seen God do in my life, is that the quickest way to find your purpose or gifting or passion is to serve someone else's. The quickest way to find your purpose and your gifting and your passion is to serve someone else's. That can seem like a contradiction, and some of y'all might even now, as I'm saying it, be like, I don't know if I agree with that. And I want to tell you that that's the culture in the kingdom wrestling. Culture will tell you go out, do your own thing, you know, build it, go for it. But I want to say who's your spiritual covering? Who's praying for you? Who's walking with you? Who has the ability to speak into your soul? And so often submission can seem like weakness because it feels restrictive. And I'd much rather do my own thing for Jesus, create my own path where I don't have to answer to anyone, but I'd caution you that the blessing is in submission. The blessing is in submission. Start finding someone to serve and to follow and be willing to be led. Because so often we want to lead, but we don't want to be led. And how can you lead if you've never been led? And the way that I learn to lead is I learn to first and foremost follow Jesus. But sometimes I can get really abstract. And so, how do I know I'm really following Jesus if I'm following the person God put over me? If I'm following the leadership that God has placed over me. And sometimes we don't, the math doesn't math, and sometimes it just seems weird. So I'm trying to make this really, really practical. For those of us in the room who are like wanting a spouse and working towards a spouse and that whole situation, one of the core characteristics of marriage is mutual submission. How do you think you prepare to be the type of spouse that can have mutual submission? By exercising submission. So you don't get better or become the type of spouse that's going to be in a relationship that has mutual submission when you get there. You have to become that person before you get there. So sometimes I have conversations with people and I'm hearing them and they're like, man, you know, I'm trying to, I'm trying to, you know, prepare myself and I'm trying to be this person, and you know, I just keep dating the wrong people, or I just, you know, I can't. In my mind, I'm like, but you're not submitted right now. Like you want to be in a healthy relationship, but you're not serving people. Because you're gonna have to serve your spouse. But you think you're just gonna wake up one day with a desire to serve your spouse? No, you're gonna have to use the opportunities God gives you to serve the people where you're at right now. You have to practice submission right now. You have to serve people right now, so when you get the spouse God has for you, you'll already be the type of person that is willing to serve your spouse. Is that making sense? Am I helping anybody? We have a generation of what I would call spiritual entrepreneurs. And what can happen is you don't have a safety net to fail when life happens. But what I love about the church is that Jesus designed the church to be the safety net. And he places leaders above you not to make you do things, but the scripture said to watch over your souls. Who's watching over your soul? Who are you following? Who is leading you towards Jesus? And I'm not talking about grandmama, and I'm not talking about Dia and Apolita, I'm talking about who in the church is leading you to Jesus. But who have you submitted to in the church? Humility before elevation, humility before elevation. God loves you so much that he wants to put people in your life to lead you on his behalf. That's how much he loves you. And it takes humility to say, I'd rather submit to somebody else's mission than to try to be the leader of my own mission. And what can happen is it can feel like, man, I'm I'm I'm buried. I'm burying my dreams, I'm burying my desires, but what actually is happening is I'm planting. Being buried and being planted look very similar, but the one thing is that God is faithful to resurrect what is planted. Right? The world would tell you, man, you're you're you're just gonna let your dreams die, and it's like, no, I'm gonna trust God with my dreams, and He'll bring to life what He wants to bring to life. Humility before elevation. As we close, this this last part here is probably the most important. Jesus went low so we could go high. Jesus went low so we could go high. Philippians 2, 7 and 8. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled, everybody say humbled. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. All the stuff we're talking about, right? This this need for humility, this need for honesty, this need for submission, Jesus went first. Jesus went first. Our good works, once again, don't get us closer to Jesus. We we can't do enough, we can't earn enough, we can't attend church enough, we can't do all of the religious things that we're supposed to do, but his good work brought him to us. He did enough. Whenever you get to a place where you're just feeling stuck or feeling frustrated or you got questions, man, I would encourage you to get back to this reality. He did enough. If you were here, about knowing him. And if I want to know what I'm supposed to do, if I want to know who I am, if I want to know what I was created for, it starts with knowing him. And if I want to know him, I have to go low. I have to go low because he went low. I have to go to the places that he goes. So often we think, man, Jesus is on the mountaintop, and it's like, no, he's he's in the low places, he's in the places of service, where you're sacrificing your desires to make sure somebody else's desires get met. He's in the places of obscurity where you're not in the spotlight, where nobody sees what you're doing, but he sees what you're doing. He sees your motives, he sees your heart. He's in the places of not being on the platform. I I don't know him more from being up here, I know him more from being in my living room, on my knees, my face in the couch before the sun comes up. Low. I gotta go low because he went low. He went the lowest. He subjected himself to a humiliating death. For you and for me, he he subjected himself, he was spat on, he was made fun of, he was subjected to an ending not fit for a king. King Jesus mocked a crown of thorns put on his head. He went low so that you and I can go high. He went low so that you and I don't have to try to get to him. But because he is with us now, now I can do everything. Now I can do everything that he is marked out for me, that he is ordered for me, that he has graced my life for. Can I tell you there's some things that I've done that I'm like, his grace wasn't on that. I'm way too exhausted, and that was not even that hard. But then there's some stuff that I'm like, there's no way I could do that. But he called me to it, and then he graces me for it, he gives me the energy, he gives me the resources, and it's like, oh, that was not as hard as I thought it was. Because it was about him, not about me. And so we gotta just stay in this posture of how do I get lower? Because that's where Jesus is. Jesus is like, would you meet me in in the submission, would you meet me in the sacrifice, would you meet me in the places the world won't go? But if you meet me there, I'll take you to the world. I'll send you to where I need you to be so you can be a light to your friends, a light to your family, a light to your coworkers, a light to your neighborhood. But it starts with being low first. Meeting with him, getting out of your rhythm and sacrificing time and sacrificing energy and just you go low with Jesus. I want to pray for us. Lord, we love you, we thank you for your word. And just pray that you would just reveal yourself to us in these moments, Lord. We pray that anything that was encouraging, anything that spoke to us, Lord, you would seal it to our hearts. And that you would help us, Lord, to not try to build in our own power, not try to go high in our own efforts, but to go low. To make ourselves available to you, to find humility, Lord God, to follow your steps and your desires, Lord, for us, Lord. You your word says that you give us the desires of our heart, but what you mean is you give our heart desires. Your desires and not ours, Lord. So we just pray that we want what you want. We love what you love, Lord God. As I continue to pray, I just want to make room for anybody in the room that man just needs to start fresh with Jesus, needs to go low, and just needs to humble themselves and just say, I need to declare Jesus' Lord and Savior. Maybe for the first time or the first time in a while, if that's you in the room, what a special moment. I would love to lead you in a prayer just to solidify, to seal this moment. Confirm, amen. I just want to follow Jesus. So if that's you in the room and and you just want to start fresh with Jesus, or you want to recommit your life to him, would you just signify that with a lifted hand? Anybody in the room that just wants to start fresh, beautiful hands going up. Anyone want to join? These hands, beautiful hands going up. Alright, you can put your hands down now, you can pray this prayer with me, or say it in your own words. Lord, forgive me of my sin. Make me clean like only you can. I believe you died for me and you rose again. I'm starting over and I'm following you. I love you. You are my Lord and my Savior. In Jesus' name. Amen and amen. Come on, let's clap it up for all those who just took that step of faith.