Awesome, awesome. Well, good morning again. Uh, and welcome to Church at the Grove. For those of you that I haven't had the chance to meet, my name is Nathan, and I'm one of the pastors here, and I'm typically down at our social circle campus. Um, but Russ has some exciting family things that he's doing this weekend, and so I get to be up here with you guys. Jonah's down there in social circles, so we kind of traded off this morning. But man, I'm just excited to be here. I'm excited about this new facility. I'm excited about this auditorium, about the lobby space. I mean, this has been uh three years in the making. I mean, we have been praying for, we have been giving, we have been sacrificing for, we've been planning and preparing, and it's so incredible to finally be sitting and standing in this room and just celebrating all that God has done. Um, I think what I'm most excited about is our kids' ministry area. Man, we were struggling over there. You guys have a lot of kids, and it's hard to fit them in a small facility like we had over there, and so to move over here, that's just a game changer, and this is just going to be an incredible tool for ministry uh to reach this community. And so I'm excited about this building, but more than just being excited about a building, I'm excited about what God is doing. Um, this is just the tool, like we said, but I'm excited about what God is doing. I'm excited about the story that Russ just shared about Miss Vicky, and I'm excited about the baptismal waters being uh full over and over each week, it seems. I'm excited about lives being changed and marriages being transformed. I'm just excited about what God is doing. And it's it's really the same excitement that existed 20 years ago when we first started this church. I can remember being at the very first service at youth middle school as a young college student and just remembering the excitement that we had then and the excitement we had when we moved to Wana Grove High School and we built this building across the way over here, and when we started Social Circle, there was this excitement. And it's never been about a building, it's never been about a person, it's always just been an excitement about what Jesus is doing in our midst. And I'm excited about what God is gonna continue to do as we trust and serve Him. And as I was thinking about that this week and just thinking about the past and just the excitement that I've felt over the years of all that God has done, I was reminded of one of the very first times that I ever preached here at Church at the Grove and really anywhere. I had taught a lot of lessons to student ministry and even some to kids. Um, but this was like the one of the first times that I talked to like big church, you know, like you go to the adult church and you're standing in front of the adults and you're actually giving a message. And so I can remember praying and preparing and reading everything I could read and just kind of having everything memorized to my best of my ability. Walnut Grove High School auditorium, standing there, delivering this message, you know, just giving it all that I've got, walk off the stage, and I'll just be honest with you, I felt really good about the message. Um, I was kind of patting myself on the back a little bit, a little bit of pride and arrogance, probably in my young mind and heart. And I remember walking off the stage, got a few, you know, good job kind of comments in the hallway. And then my phone rang um that afternoon, and an older gentleman in our church that's no longer uh with us, he called me and he said, Hey, I would love to come over and talk about the message uh and meet with you tomorrow. Would that be okay? And I was like, sure. You can come and tell me how great I am. Like, that's fantastic. Yeah, come on. Like, you can tell me all that God did through this message. And so he calls me the next day, he comes over to my house and he sits in my living room, and for about an hour to an hour and a half, he proceeds to pretty much ring me out and rake me over the coals, telling me what a horrible job that I had done. And he even says the words, hey, I don't think you're probably gonna make it in uh ministry and preaching because you don't know how to connect with people. And honestly, there was probably a little bit of truth in what he was saying. There was probably some things that were definitely unfair and not justified. Um, but I remember being so hurt in that moment. Here I am at like 23, 24 years old, and the thing that I think God's calling me to do in my life, this older gentleman is telling me, I don't see that. I think you're gonna be a failure in that. And so I did what every good pastor and every good leader would choose to do in that moment, I avoided him at all cost. I didn't want to embrace the awkwardness. I didn't want to interact with him. And so when I would see him in the hallway, when we would see each other or come cross paths at church, I would just kind of move to the other side of the room. And it was because he had hurt me. He had said some deeply challenging and hurtful things, and it had kind of fed into some insecurities that I already had. And so as a result, I just wanted to kind of cut ties and push away as best I could to help myself move forward in life. And I wish I could tell you that that was only one time in the 20 years of being here at Church at the Grove that that's happened. Um, but in 20 years, there's been a lot of hard conversations. There's been a lot of things that people have said or done that have hurt me. And there have been times when I've addressed that really greatly, really powerfully and really appropriately, and then there have been a lot of other times when I've just kind of walked away and pushed people to the side as a result. And the one thing I've really learned in 20 years of ministry is that ministry is messy, and it's messy because it involves people, and people are messy. They were all broken. It's not just that if everybody would just think like me and act like me, then we would all get along and we would all be perfect, and it would just be this utopian society. That's not it at all. I'm broken, I'm messed up. And as a result, the people that show up on Sunday mornings, they're broken and they're messed up, and we're all coming with baggage, and we're all coming with insecurities, and we're all coming with anger or resentment or bitterness. And as a result, that affects and pours into our relationships and the ways that we relate to one another. And this isn't just a pastor problem, this is a people problem, this is a human problem. That we love community, we love our friendships, we love coming to church, we love being with one another until it gets hard, until it exposes something about us that we don't like, until it stretches us or corrects us. And then when that happens, we oftentimes push back. We we resist, we move to the side. And I've wrestled with this question: what if God's goal for our relationships isn't mainly about our comfort, but about my growth? What if it's about me actually growing into the man that God's called me to become? And see, our world and our culture teaches something that's drastically different from this. We've been discipled by the ideas that if somebody is hard, if someone is difficult, if someone challenges you or tells you something that you don't want to hear, the answer is simple that you just cut them off. And we maybe don't say it quite as harshly as that, but we say, like, hey, we're gonna protect our peace. We're gonna cut out the toxic relationship, we're gonna set up boundaries in our life. We don't owe access to our lives to anyone. And so we just kind of cut ties and move. And then listen, I understand how we've gotten there. I mean, we've all faced betrayal at times. We've all been manipulated by family members. Some of us have real, legitimate church hurt and it still stings. And as a result, what the world would tell us to do is just remove those people from our lives. But here's the problem. When we begin to remove those people from our lives and we take away any hard or toxic kind of conversation or interactions with others, if we remove every uncomfortable conversation just because it feels unsafe, anyone around us is no longer allowed to challenge us. We begin to live in an echo chamber of sorts, and we only associate with those that affirm us, and we resist the people that form us. We want the people to affirm us, but not to form us. We don't like someone that says, and so we we pick up, we pack up, we move to another place. This happens in church world all the time, right? We live in a culture where there's a church on every corner, and so if you go to church and the pastor says something or does something that you don't like or says something that's a challenge to you and you don't want that, or if there's an interaction you have with somebody in the church that you don't really necessarily agree with, what do you do? You just pack up and you go to the next place, right? You want to go and find somebody that you can click with and and have connections with. And now listen, I'm not talking about uh interactions where there's manipulation and abuse and those types of things. Those things are toxic, and we do need to be very careful in that. But what I'm talking about is normal friction, the normal conflict, the iron that is sharpening iron type of relationships, where people can speak into our lives and say, hey, you're off right now. Hey, you're you're you're you're not okay. Hey, I see some areas of growth in your life. See, the world says in those moments that we need to cut ties, but what Jesus says is that we need to use those to grow up. And so our big idea this morning is simply this spiritual maturity is forged in community, not found in comfort. Spiritual maturity is forged in community, not found in our comfort. And so, with that, I would love for us to pray before we open up God's word this morning. And so, Lord Jesus, we thank you for just this moment that we have in our week to come and just to be in your presence. As Brandon has already said, Lord, that we don't come to meet about you, but we come to meet with you. And I believe that you have a word for each and every person in the room this morning, and that you want to speak right to our moment of need. And so, Lord, would you open up our hearts and our minds to be able to hear your voice this morning? Would you remove the distractions for a moment? And Lord, that you would just glue us in and just center us in on your voice. And so, Holy Spirit, would you come now and meet with us? And it's in your name we pray. Amen. If you have a Bible, you can turn to the book of Ephesians. We're gonna be in Ephesians chapter four this morning. Um, we are the third week of this series called Rules of Engagement, and we've been talking about the relational components and how God wants us to engage with one another and how we can uh ultimately have healthy and successful relationships that grow us into maturity. And so last week we talked a lot about humility, and this week we're talking about this idea of growth, not from comfort, um, but the challenge that we're called to be found, not in comfort, but ultimately in community. And so in Ephesians chapter 4, um, we read, if I can flip to it, there we go. Ephesians chapter 4, starting in verse 7 this morning, it says, Now grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gifts. So stop right there for a second. Jesus gives grace and he gives people, as we'll see in a second. Now, the word gift right here, it might throw you off. If you've grown up in the church, you might think of gift and you might think of something more like a spiritual gift. And that's not what Paul is talking about here. He's talking about the gift of grace. It's this foundational element in our relationship with Jesus, that grace is the foundation. It's the bread and butter for our relationship with Jesus. Um we it's it's getting something that we don't deserve, right? It's it's this beautiful thing where we're where God's blessing us. We talked about this a few weeks ago from Ephesians chapter 2, the saving faith, the saving grace, where God, because of his rich mercy and love for us, he bestowed grace on us so that we could have a relationship with him. We didn't earn it, we didn't deserve it, but he gave it to us anyway. But what Paul's talking about here is a grace that goes beyond saving grace. It's a grace that's not only God's unmerited favor to save you, but it's God's grace and unmerited favor that strengthens you to live out the calling that he has for your life. It's the grace that keeps us from, keeps us walking with Christ. It's the grace that empowers you as a sinner to be transformed and to walk in obedience. It's the grace that you need that empowers you to overcome sin when temptation is strong. It's the grace that you need that empowers you to serve when you're tired. It's the grace that you need that empowers you to stick around in community when things get hard and all you want to do is run, avoid, and disappear. Grace doesn't just get you into the family, but grace is what also grows you up in the family. And so Paul's saying right here at the very beginning of this section of Scripture, grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. That it's this beautiful gift. And part of God's grace in this gift that he gives to us is the people that he puts around us. Listen to what it says in Ephesians chapter 4, jump down to verse 11. It says, and he, being Christ, himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets and some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. So what does Jesus give? Well, he gives grace, and grace looks a lot like him giving these leadership positions, these apostles and prophets and evangelists, pastors and teachers. These are leadership positions within the church. And Paul is saying, look, not not, he's not saying look at these important people. What he's saying here ultimately is Jesus is giving people to people. That Jesus is giving these gifted believers to the church as part of his grace, as part of his gift that he's bestowing upon the church. Now, in our world, in our culture today, we've got this kind of whacked-out view of what these leadership positions look like in the church. We live in a world of influencers and building platforms and acquiring followers and building podcast audience, and there's nothing necessarily inherently wrong with that, but it's easy for us to kind of put these people on a high pedestal and make them almost idolized in the church world, but these people are never meant to be the stars of the church. They're never meant to be the focus or the center of attention, they're never meant to be the pros. They aren't meant to be celebrities. Paul is saying that these are gifts, that Jesus doesn't send stars to the church, he sends servants to the church. Jesus, in all of his grace, is providing for people's needs, and he's giving them these positions and these people to help develop them to become the men and women that God has called them to be. They aren't to be admired from a distance, but they're gifts from the Lord that God wants to use as a tool to develop you for the works that he has called you on. And that's exactly what he continues saying. Look at verse 11 again, we'll read on. It says, And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God's Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ's fullness. And so, why does he give these positions? Why does he give us these people within the church? Well, it tells us very clearly it's for our maturity, which means that the goal of the church is not about attendance, it's ultimately about maturity. It's to equip the saints for the work of ministry. The word equip there is a word stronger than just teach a class or pass out a handbook of some kind. The idea of equipping here is making something fit, it's preparing something fully through training and discipline. But it also carries another picture of mending, restoring, putting something back to the way that it was supposed to be. In fact, outside of the Bible, this word is used in medical settings to talk about resetting broken bones. My son, my middle son Ben, he broke his uh toe and his ankle. He fractured his toe and ankle about seven or eight weeks ago, actually at church on a Sunday morning. So that was fantastic. Um and we knew instantly when he broke his bone, like he's pretty strong, like he doesn't let a whole lot get to him. But man, when he broke his bones, when he fractured his ankle, um, we knew immediately that something was wrong. And we didn't tell him to suck it up. We didn't tell him to pull himself together to stop crying to be a man. No, why? Because he needed somebody that was skilled to be able to put it back into place the way it was supposed to be. And that's what these leaders in the church are meant to be. They're meant to be people that are skilled in bringing things back into alignment and stabilizing things so that healing can take place. Because a lot of people come to church and they're broken. In fact, all of us come to church and are broken. We're crushed by some pain in our life. We are carrying shame, we're carrying resentment, we're stuck in patterns of sin. We've got wounds from our past family, we've got church hurt that we're carrying around with us. And Paul is saying that these leaders are given to equip part of what, which means that God is using the church to mend people back together, to restore them so that they can function the way that God intended. But mending is not the end game. He's given the church to become a healing room, but it's a healing room where people get patched up, but it's also a training room where people are healed, but then they're also equipped. And then, as they're equipped, they're sent out to be active ministers in the body. This is the goal of the church. This is the goal of Sunday morning. Sunday morning is not about this entertainment piece. It's not about lights, it's not about screens, it's not about how good the songs were, how good the message is. It's ultimately about equipping the saints for the work of ministry. And sadly, in the American church today, the church has become more of a place of entertainment and enjoyment. And for the most part, the reason that the reason that people pick a church has less to do where God's calling them and more to do with the kids' programs that they offer, or how good the messages are, or how good the programming is. And I'm not against those things. I'm not against events or programs, I'm not against incredible kids' environments or student environments. We want those things. But that's not what it's ultimately about. Those things are simply tools, but they aren't the main thing. We can falsely believe that the goal is just to build a bigger and bigger church, drawing more people on Sunday mornings. That we can just get them to attend our gatherings, and then we're successful, and then we can kind of pat ourselves on the back, but that's not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is maturity. The ultimate goal is to make disciples who are making disciples. And that has a lot less to do with the people that stand up on the stage, and a lot more to do with the people that are sitting in the seats this morning. Because here's what happens, and I'm gonna jump down, camera guys are gonna probably kill me for that, but oh, I can see you guys. It's so much better down here. Um, but this is what normally happens, right? Like we come in and we grab a seat, and there's always a lot of room at the front of the building, right? So we can sit here, and we are more spectators, right, than we are participators. And so because we're spectators, we hear a person speak, we hear, you know, incredibly talented musicians, they sing and they lead us in worship, and what we inherently do is we become spectators that are almost taking in a show. And so we start to wrestle with things, and and we we leave here on a Sunday morning and we're on the way home, and what do we begin to do? We would begin to talk about what we thought of the experience. And so we're sitting there with our spouse or with our kids or whoever, and we start to say, Well, message was okay. I really prefer Russ, the other guy. I wish he was there this morning. That would have been a lot better. Right? We say things like, well, it was a little long. You know, the clock said that we were supposed to be done at a certain time, and we went five minutes over, we're late to get to lunch plans. Or, man, they didn't sing my favorite song this morning. I don't really care for that one song. We start to criticize and critique based on what we think is right and what is our preferences. Man, she could really sing. Man, he was off key this morning. Did I enjoy it? Was it good? Did my kids have fun? Now, that's not altogether bad, but that's not the goal. It says that the goal is to equip the saints for the work of ministry. And so it's not about a group of people coming to a room like this and watching the pros and watching the professionals do ministry. My job is to train you to do the ministry. You are the saints, you are the ones that are called to do the work of ministry in what Sunday morning and this environment, and the pastors and the leaders that God has put in place here at Church of the Great. Of what our job is, is to train you and to equip you to do that. To you to do the work of ministry. And so that means that the church is a lot less like a stadium where people are coming and spectating, but the church is a team where we're working together. This is a killer of spectator Christianity. And he tells us that we're to do all of this. We're supposed to equip the saints for ministry until we reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God's Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ's fullness. So what Paul wants to see here is that a church would come to full maturity, that we wouldn't have a bunch of baby believers just walking around and settling for that for their entire lives. I mean, we obviously want to see new people come to faith. We want to see baby believers. We want to see new people that are just kind of taking their first steps and following Jesus for sure, but we don't want people to stay there. We want people to grow up. We want them to experience the fullness of God. We want them to walk in the knowledge of God's Son and walk in maturity. And spiritual maturity is not just information. It's not just you having a lot of Bible knowledge. It's not about you knowing all the Bible stories or being able to quote Scripture. Those things are really, really good. We should do those things. We should know our scripture. We should pray. We should do the spiritual disciplines. But at the end of the day, spiritual maturity is when that truth has been internalized. It's what God's thinking and what God says ultimately dominates our thinking. It starts to show itself in the way that we talk and how we forgive and how we serve and how we handle conflict and how we take our money and use our money, how we treat other people, how we respond when we're corrected by others. Paul is wanting the church to come to maturity. Because what Paul knows is that it's dangerous when we live in immaturity. Listen to what he says in verse 14. He says, then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning, with cleverness in the techniques of deceit. See, immaturity is dangerous. He says that the immature are seen as if they are little children that are tossed by the waves. It's a vivid picture. If you've ever gone to the ocean and you've maybe drifted out a little too far and there's an undertow or a current of some kind, you know that it's really hard to resist. You're just kind of swayed by the massive power of the ocean. And what Paul is saying here is that when we're immature, when we're not maturing in our relationship with Jesus and walking with him and knowing truth and doing the things that he's called us to do, then we are easily swayed. That we lack discernment and we just kind of go around our lives and we just kind of have no semblance of what is truly true. And so we settle for every new trend, becomes a new conviction. Where the TikTok theology, where you've got these guys and girls that have massive followings, that have no understanding about biblical concepts, that are giving information out, and you're just recognizing it as truth. Where it's immature is marked by unable to recognize truth, that we easily get off course. When you're immature, you're easy to move. But mature people are stable. Maturity doesn't mean that you know everything, but it does mean that you can listen without being swept away. The Hebrew writer says this in chapter 5, verse 12. He says, Although by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the basic principles of God's revelation again. You need milk, not solid food. Now, everyone who lives on milk is inexperienced with the message about righteousness because he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, for those whose senses have been trained to distinguish between good and evil. I've got three kids. I've got an 11-year-old, an eight-year-old, and a soon-to-be five-year-old. And they've grown, obviously, but but if the 11-year-old was still in diapers and all that he was eating was still only milk, there would be some problems, right? I expect him to grow and to mature. And I expect the 11-year-old to have more responsibility than the five-year-old does. There's a growth that needs to happen. There's abilities that need to be able to discern between good and evil and what is true and false. That we, if we never grow in community, never grow in maturity apart from the community that God has placed around us, because here's what we need: we need people to speak hard truths to us. We need correction at times. We need accountability. We need people that will stabilize our life. And this is seen through truth spoken in love. Growth requires truth spoken in love. Look at what verse 15 says. But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into Him who is the head Christ. We are so easily led astray by the enemy's lies. We all fall for the enemy's lies. We believe things about ourselves and about God and about our own identity. We believe lies about the future, and it's imperative that we have other people around us that can speak truth to us. I can remember not too long ago, I'm sitting at the Waffle House over here in Walnut Grove, meeting with an older, he's one of our elders, and he's an older, more mature, seasoned believer. And I'm kind of just, you know, kind of just venting, you know, just kind of some of my frustrations about life and family and church and all the kind of things that are going on in my life. And we've met, you know, pretty regularly over the years, and he finally just kind of stops me and he said, Nathan, you know you've been saying the same thing for the last three years and you've done nothing with that. And I was like, we're not gonna have any more breakfast. But he was so right, and I needed to hear that. I needed that challenge. If I didn't have someone like him speaking truth into my life, then I wouldn't be able to grow into the man that God has called me to be. And so we need people in our life that can speak truth in love. True love is seen when we speak truth to one another, and the church grows when we speak truth in love. Now, love without truth is enabling. Truth without love is brutality, but truth in love leads to our maturity. Tripp Prince says, truth gives definition and definition to direction to love. Love gives compassion and kindness to truth. We are all called to have hard conversations. Not just because we enjoy conflict, but if it's for Christ-likeness. This is important, especially in this cutoff culture that we've talked about, because it fights against spiritual maturity. That every time someone confronts you, you ghost them, or every time someone challenges you, you label them as toxic, or every time someone says something hard, you leave the church and go somewhere else. When all the ways, that's probably God's tool to challenge and grow you to become the man or the woman that he's called you to be. This is what God has for us. God wants us to grow into maturity. Growth is not just about private spirituality, it's about whether you're connected to the body and whether you're doing your part. See, just as the spiritual leaders of the house have a responsibility to train and equip, we are all called to speak the truth in love. We are all called to challenge one another, to spur one another on to good works and good deeds. We are called to speak truth and love to one another, to bear each other's burdens, to forgive one another, to show what grace and love and compassion and mercy looks like to one another. That's why God has given us the gift and the grace of the church to sharpen us, to make us into the men and women we're called to be. Proverbs 27, 17 says, iron sharpens iron as in one person sharpens another. The goal isn't for damage, the goal is for our sharpness. It's for us to grow in our maturity, grow in our relationship with Jesus. And so, taking all of that into consideration, how does this practically play out? I think the first thing that we've got to do with a scripture like this is that we've got to reframe our relationships. Some of us need to reframe the way that we evaluate our relationships. We need to recognize who God's put around us, and sometimes those people are not put around us just to make us comfortable and happy, but rather to help us grow. And we need to fill that tension. And so, am I engaging in a healthy way? Am I seeing the people that God's put around me as tools in his hand to grow me into maturity? Is there truth out there that I need to receive from other people even when it's uncomfortable? Do I need to recognize that and not just recognize that, but invite that into my life? I think we also need to practice encouraging daily. The intentional encouraging of someone every single day this week. I mean, man, just what if you just made that a habit? This is every single morning you woke up and you sent a text message to somebody, just encouraging them in where they're at in life. Just saying something like, I see you or thank you for, I'm praying for this. I know you, I want your best. I'm here for you. Let me know if you need anything. You're sending calls or making, sending notes or making calls. Maybe who's one person this week that God's prompting you to strengthen them instead of critique them? Secondly, I think that we invite feedback. Maybe you need a trusted believer, a spouse, a friend, a group leader, a coach, whoever it might be, to just invite them to speak into your life. Are you brave enough to ask this question? What's one area you think I need to grow in right now? In my men's group that I helped lead on Thursday, uh, that was asked of our men this past week. And I just said, like, they're like, the challenge was to go home and ask your spouse what's one thing I could do to be a better husband. And I said, I don't want to do that. Like, she's got a list, and I know she has a list, and I don't really want to hear that. But that's the challenge, right? If we're gonna live into God's purposes for our lives, then we've got to be people that are willing to become small and ask these hard questions, to humbly receive it, to not defend, but just to pray over it and then take the next right step. And then finally, and I think this is for all of us, we've got to stay engaged even when it's hard. And I'm not excusing abuse or toxic control and manipulation and all the mess that can be there. But I'm talking about the normal conflict intention and the challenges that we don't run, but we learn skills, conversation, forgiveness, repentance, and boundaries. Just recently, one of my very best friends, we had a pretty intense argument about some things that were going on. And I'll be honest, the flesh within me just wanted to be like, all right, I'm done. I'm walking away. But instead, it took me coming back and going, hey, would you forgive me for this? I was wrong here. I I need your grace in this. Imagine what a church would look like if we lived these things out. If when things got difficult, we didn't run, we didn't ghost, we didn't avoid, but instead that we embraced. We embraced the challenge, we embraced the difficult words that are spoken to us. Imagine a group where people aren't just accepted, but that's where truth is spoken in love. Imagine a place where marriages and friendships can grow stronger because hard conversations are happening. Imagine a place where people can resist the pull towards comfort and they will live in community even when it's uncomfortable because they value spiritual maturity over anything else. And here's a question for us. Am I primarily a consumer at church? Or am I a contributor that's being equipped for ministry? Am I being a disciple of Jesus who is making disciples of Jesus? Or am I just kind of filling a seat, being entertained, and not growing in my development? And maybe your your step this morning is just to pray for courage to re-engage, for humility to receive correction, for encouragement to live intentionally in what God has called you to do. And so let's just go to the Lord in prayer. This morning, Van's gonna come and lead us in response. But as we prayed this morning earlier, we asked the Lord to speak to us. We didn't come to meet about him, but we came to meet with him. And so, right here in the quietness of this moment, what is it that the Holy Spirit is speaking to you? It might be related to this message, it might be drastically different. But what is it the Holy Spirit is speaking to you this morning that you need to do? Do you need to restore a relationship that you've walked away from? Do you need to ask for accountability or someone to bring feedback and challenge into your life? Do you need to embrace correction? Do you need to move out of the kind of just the spiritual entertainment kind of business and engage in what God's calling you to do? For some of you, there's been things that God's been calling you to do for years, and you've failed to follow through in what he's calling you to do. You've settled being just the infant in the kingdom and not growing into maturity that he's called you to be in. And this morning, you just need to repent of that and take steps forward that he's calling you to take. So, Holy Spirit, Lord, as we just respond to you, Lord, would you speak to each and every one of us right where we're at? Lord, we want to walk in maturity. We want to be a church that's not just content with gathering in bigger rooms and having more people on a Sunday morning. That's great. We love that. But Lord, we want to grow up. We want to be mature. We want to be able to be disciples of you who are making other disciples. We want to be investing our lives in others. We don't want to just be people that are content and just consuming, but Lord, we want to be contributors to your kingdom and what you're calling us to do. And so, Lord, right now, Lord, would you just speak to each and every one of us? Help us to make the decisions that we need to make to follow your lead this morning. And we give you all the praise and all the honor. And it's in your name we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.