Undivided | Matt Shetler

Your phone. Your inbox. Your to-do list. Your worries. Everything is competing for your attention — and most of the time, it's winning.

In this message, Matt explores what Jesus meant when he said "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God." An undivided heart isn't just a spiritual ideal — it's the thing that changes how you see everything. But in a world built to distract you, how do you actually get there?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:13

This past week, um, I was reflecting slash feeling frustrated about how easily I can get distracted. I know none of you ever feel distracted, but I am just aware of how often I feel pulled in so many different directions and struggle to stay kind of focused on what I'm trying to do. That's honestly something I think a lot about. I don't know for you what your life looks like, but I feel like uh I'm trying to focus on work and all of a sudden I'm scrolling on my phone. Or I get on my phone to like pay a bill or do something that actually is important. And the next thing I know, I'm jumping on my news app, or I'm checking out who the Guardians played last night, did they win? Uh, you know, who are the Browns playing with Cavs in the playoffs, whatever it is. Oh, here's the best one. I go to read my Bible in the Bible app to you know something about like contentment, right? Like learning to be content in all things. The next thing I know, I'm deep diving. Like, what's the way I can like remodel our house? What's the next best vacation? Uh, you know, like should we upgrade our car? I don't know. You know, the tension is not lost on me of like diving into contentment and then finding myself scrolling through all the things that say I shouldn't be content with my life. And to be honest, it feels like there's a battle for my attention, for my focus. Like it feels like there's a real war raging and one that I feel like I often lose. I don't know if you can relate, but it doesn't always feel neutral. It doesn't feel fair. Like the things that are vying for my focus for my attention. And I know part of the struggle is my own discipline, right? There's a discipline element to it we can grow in. I know some of it might be the way that my brain works. Um, I know there are hacks to be learned, there are apps to download, there are commitments to make. But sometimes it feels like this like compulsion. Have you ever felt that? You're just like, I just have to check this. I just have to look at this, I just have to do, I have to stop what I'm doing right now to pay attention to this one thing that just all of a sudden jumped in my mind, whether it's scrolling on social, checking my email, checking my bank account balance. All these things, things seem to be screaming for my attention. And oftentimes they're good things too. They're not always bad things, it's the way that they interrupt what we're really planning on doing. And I know for me it can feel frustrating and discouraging. And I've been sitting with this question the last couple days. What is my divided attention costing me? Where I miss moments uh with my family, with my kids. I miss moments where I actually get to like, my son loves to tell stories about what happened in his day and what he's learning, what he's interested in, all the science facts. My daughter loves to talk about things. I'll ask her a question and she'll like not answer that, but tell me about what happened at school uh and what book she's reading. And but being distracted in that way can often feel like I'm missing those moments with my kids where I actually get to hear them and see them. I like find myself thinking about what's next or scrolling on my phone, whatever it is. Or Aaron and I will talk, and at the end of the day, how was your day? Good, how was your day good? You know, but instead of actually answering with any kind of depth, I'm actually maybe still thinking about work. I'm thinking about all those things and going, I'm fine. Not really slowing down to be present to her, or when I ask her about her day, instead of asking that follow-up question, you know, you can ask, How's your day? You listen, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like if you're really engaged, you would like go, hey, tell me more about that, or how did that feel? Instead, just kind of go through because I'm already thinking about the next five things I need to do. Or sometimes the impact for us is that if you consider yourself a follower of Jesus, is that there might be that nudge that the Holy Spirit, that God might want to nudge you to like just pause for a second and stop and talk to your neighbor. Or maybe it's that coworker who you see all the time, and you're like, oh my gosh, I just I don't want to stop by their cubicle because if I do, I know I'm gonna get into a conversation and it's gonna take forever. But you just feel this little nudge, like maybe I should take those two minutes and ask how they're doing. When we're so distracted and pulled in so many different ways, and we feel so divided, sometimes it's hard to be present to God and to others. Spiritually, it might be how you experience the up and downs of your life with God. Where again, like I talked about, you're trying to pay attention as you're reading the Bible or praying, or even sitting in a community group or a discipleship class, and you're like there, but you're not really there. Right? We struggle. We're pulled in a million directions, and there's a cost to it. And the reality is this everyone wants our attention, right? Everyone wants our attention, companies, organizations, just thinking about our phones and social media. Like uh everything is created to hook us and draw us in further. And again, sometimes it might be helpful things, good things. Like we post things on social. I love our social team of Sam and Holly and Agnes. They're doing great work. We want you to stop and pay attention to the clip or to the post or whatever it might be. But all of these things, including good things, battle for our attention at the very same time. It literally feels like a competition, right? It almost seems like attention is the currency of our culture. And everybody wants it. Everybody wants our attention. Do you know that websites they used to like measure what you would click on the screen, right? So like you measure by clicks. How many clicks do I get? But now, and not just now, but in years, in recent years, they can actually measure what part of the screen you're looking at. Like where are you kind of lingering as you're scrolling? It's not just where you click, but what you're looking at. And then they're gonna give you more of whatever it is that you're looking at. And billions of dollars are spent each year to try to get us to pay attention to whatever message or product or sales they're offering. And why? Because attention, I think, is one of our most valuable resources, it's one of our scarcest resources. I'd actually argue more than time and money, because if you get my attention, you're actually gonna get my time and my money, most likely. And here's another reason why our attention is so important, because what we give our attention to forms us as people. Have you ever heard the old kind of adage of like what you look at is what you move towards? It's like if you ever tried to drive your car and like you look kind of like the side, you're eventually gonna start veering that way, unless you have the auto driving, you know, the things that are helpful now, but still pay attention to the road, it's safety first. Uh, but we find ourselves going towards what we're looking at. Our wherever our eyes are is where we move towards, and it shapes and informs us who we're becoming. And again, this is probably not new information. I'm not probably saying something you're like, oh my gosh, really? Marketers want our attention? I didn't know there's an algorithm out there. I had no idea I was easily distracted. Like, this is not new information. But if we know this and we acknowledge it, it's a real problem. Why can't we seem to break hold of it? Why can't we just say no to all the distractions? Of course, the content is designed to hook us. Of course, marketers are great at what they do. And not and marketing, this is not like an evil of marketing, by the way, or advertising. Like, that's not the case. Like, like there's good reasons we want to get people's attention and share the good news. Like, share about Jesus, share about how to be better parents, how to be better uh uh spouses, how to be better at work, how to live healthy. These are good, good things. But it's not just that marketers have great hooks. Because if we're gonna be real this morning, I think it's not only external influences that shape us, that pull us, that distract us. I think the struggle comes from something deeper, something we struggle to give our attention to, oftentimes, is because we're actually trying to avoid something. And we're afraid if we slow down too much, if we get our attention too much to one thing, if we're not kind of always moving and pulling to things that we'll have to actually face it. Like maybe what keeps pulling us all over is pain from childhood that we haven't processed. Maybe it's our insecurity or struggle of self-worth. Maybe it's anxiety. We just have to keep moving, we have to keep going. Or fear of failure, fear of getting close to others, or sometimes I think we're just easily pulled away because we just want an escape from the mundane of our life. It just feels like life is normal, average, maybe boring, and we're just easily distracted. I know I'm guilty of these things. But other times it doesn't look like we're running from things, it looks like we're running to things. We have a lot of options for that as well. We're pulled to focus on our job for the promotion, the next sales goal, plan that next vacation, that next big purchase, schedule that next experience, find the next relationship. Because all these things I think are promising the life that we want. It's kind of like you walk through an outdoor market. Ever walk through an outdoor market, even at uh at the uh Westside market in the in the produce section. But anyway, in those places, the vendors, what they want is they want to get your attention. And once they get your attention, then they go, okay, now I got their eyesight, right? And you're like, but you walk through the like, don't look, don't look, don't look, don't look. Because once they look, once you look, it's like they've got you, right? Your eyes pull to one area and they've got you. Again, not even maliciously. I'm not saying the evil produce vendors, but that's that's just like that's how it works, right? That's how it works. And when we see these things, we're pulled to them of the promise of, but in our life, we're pulled to the promise of what that promotion would look like, what it would do for us, the life that it would give us. That next thing. But what if what we're actually looking for? What if we're actually looking for what the longing actually in us is not anything that avoidance can give us, or all the things that we're kind of distracted and easily pulled away by can offer us? Like a deep sense of purpose, of security, of meaning, of love, of belonging. What if the things that we're looking for are something only that God can actually offer us? Here's what's interesting is that 2,000 years ago, Jesus spoke into a culture very different than ours. Very different. No social media, by the way, 2,000 years ago, no phones. I mean, I grew up in a time when there was no social media, so uh definitely not 2,000 years ago. But here's the challenge. It's very different than ours, but he diagnoses a similar problem. Because it's not a cultural issue, it's a human heart issue. Here, let me paint the picture here of Jesus talking. We've been talking about Jesus talking teaching on the Sermon on the Mount, and so he's on this hillside, and people are sitting on the hillside, and it's filled with regular, ordinary people living full lives, and they're pulled in lots of directions. You got married early, almost everyone was trying to have children, so you're trying to like navigate a family, navigate a household, you're thinking about work, how are we going to provide for the next meal? You're living under uh Roman oppression, so you realize that you're living in a country that's controlled by someone else. There's so many different polls, then you have religious expectations as well. Like, how do I be faithful to God? Like if we're connected to the temple or the synagogue, what do we need to do? You're polled in so many different ways. These are poor, powerless, overlooked people. Jesus would say to some of these people later, he's like, Are you burnt out on religion? Are you burnt out on all these things? Come to me and find a different way. But this day, Jesus is speaking to these ordinary people, their eyes set on just making it through the day. Not so different from us, right? And Jesus says this blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Now, anytime we hear someone say something, especially in the Bible, we kind of go, like, here are the words that I see. What do I mean by that? What do I think about that? What does it mean to be pure in heart? What does it mean to see God? And for the listeners in the first century, they would have had that as well, too. But this would not have been a new idea. This wouldn't have been a new concept. Like Jesus' teachings were incredible, but this is not something new that Jesus is like, hey, let me give you a revelatory teaching. Here's the reality is that this is actually pulled from Psalm 24. Psalm 24 is a prayer that they would have prayed often in their synagogue, in the temple. And many of the women, children, men would have had it memorized. And it's Psalm 24, verses 3 through 4. And it says this Who may ascend the hill or the mountain of the Lord? Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? In other words, like the imagery was like God is on this mountain, and who can go up to God? Who can draw close to God? Who may stand in his holy place? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not trust in an idol or swear by a false God. And they would have had a pretty clear picture of what that meant. It had been hundreds of years, maybe hundreds of years, that they would have been processing as Jewish people. How what does it look like to live with clean hands in a pure heart? And honestly, what it would have looked like is they had lists and lists of rules and rituals that they needed to follow, some from God, mostly ones they made up in order to try to follow the ones that came from God, to make sure that they were clean. When to wash their hands, when to clean food, what food was clean or unclean. There was a lot written about being clean and what made you unclean. And there were these experts in religious law called Pharisees, and they were masters of doing all these things to keep themselves clean. And it was their whole job. It was their whole, that was their life. It was their occupation was being religious leaders and scholars. And they had the time and the means to do all of these things to remain clean. They had that part dialed in. But notice when Jesus summarizes this, what does he put the emphasis on? He says, Blessed are the pure in heart. He dials it in. Because Jesus, I think, wants to bring the focus in. He didn't just talk about clean hands, a pure heart, idols swearing by these things. Because Jesus wants to dial in and say, the focus begins on what's happening inside of you. What's happening inside of us? And the way they talked about that was talking about the heart, not just the beating thing, not just the thing on Valentine's Day that like has the like gushy emotions, the heart, the summary of their whole self. And what Jesus is doing here is actually because the ordinary people, they wouldn't have been able to keep up probably with most of the rules and the laws and the rituals and trying to live everyday life. The people that could were the professionals. They could try to keep up with all the spiritual exercises they needed. And what Jesus is doing here is leveling the playing field and essentially saying, let's just for a moment, for a moment, let's just put aside rituals, kind of the ceremonial things, just for a moment. And let's say, let me talk about your heart. What's going on inside of you? Because Jesus a little bit later would call out these religious leaders and he'd actually call them hypocrites. Hypocrites. Say, you're whitewashed tombs. Imagine this. So it's like the outside of a tomb is white and clean, inside is full of dead bones. So Jesus is going to call this out. So Jesus cuts through all the externals and says, Let's start talking about your heart. Because here's what Jesus knows about us, and I think we know this about ourselves too, is that the external change often comes when the internal changes begin. That's where most of the long-lasting change happens, is when the inside changes and then the external follows. Because Jesus knows if he can capture our hearts, blessed are the pure in heart, if he can capture our hearts, if he can get our focused, our undivided attention, this is the place where real change happens. When Jesus says, Blessed are the pure in heart, he's not saying, blessed are those who have never done anything wrong. He's saying, blessed are those with an undivided heart. Blessed are those with an undivided heart. Blessed are those whose heart is fixed on God. The word for pure, where Jesus is saying, blessed are the pure in heart. This word was commonly used one way to talk about metal being purified. Think about like gold. When you dig gold out of the ground, it's not just pure gold. There's other things, other elements attached to it. So you heat it up, and then they separate gold from what is not gold. Grain, it could be used the same word. To purify the grain would be to separate the wheat from chaff. It's this, not that. Just gold. Just grain. A pure heart is then one thing that's all the way through. It's one thing all the way through, not divided, not pulled in different directions. A heart with one love. One desire. One focus. Jesus is saying, blessed are those whose heart has one love, one focus, not divided. Jesus is saying to be pure in heart is to set your heart on God alone. Your whole self, not just your emotions. Some of us go, I'm not super emotional. You know, I don't know what it means. I can give my actions and my effort to God, but like my heart, I don't really know how to do that. Like my gushy, I don't really feel emotions when I like think about God. That's not what it's saying. It's saying your whole self. Set your heart on God alone. An undivided heart set on God and his kingdom, his values, what God cares about in the world. So how do we do that? Right? How do we do this? Well, poet Mary Oliver, who wasn't a Christian but a spiritual writer, she said this attention is the beginning of devotion. Attention is the beginning of devotion. This aligns with what Jesus is saying. Jesus knows that when we set our heart on God, when we give him our attention, this is when we really begin to see God for who he is. We give our attention, and then our devotion begins to turn to who we give attention to. We begin to see that God's worth our devotion, that he's actually worthy of trusting, that he's actually worth saying yes to, that he's actually worth setting our attention on. It's in this place of God giving, of giving God our focus that we begin to see him clearly. That makes sense, right? If we want to pay attention or give our focus somewhere, we need to look at it. Like if we're trying to think, I'm gonna give my attention, I really want to see something clearly, we don't look all over the place, we look at it, we gaze at it, we spend time, and we begin to get his perspective. We begin to hear about his forgiveness and we see it. We begin to be shaped by his values and what he loves, the value of his kingdom. And I know for a lot of you, I know most of you in this room, and I know you would say, I want this. Like this is what I want. Like I don't want an undivided heart. I want to give my attention to God. I want my heart to be fixed on him and his kingdom. I want that devotion and love to be for God. But we can get easily discouraged sometimes when we feel like we're trying, right? Where we just look at our past and go, I don't know, man. I don't know what I'm doing. Because I think there's a gap sometimes between this experience of like, I want to see God, I want to see him clearly, I want to know that he loves me, I want to have all of that, I want to have set my attention on him, but it's so hard. It feels like God is so far away.

unknown 21:00

Right?

SPEAKER_01 21:01

It feels like God is so far away. Where is he? And it's not just that we maybe wouldn't say we can't see God, it's that maybe it feels like God isn't even in the vicinity. And I want to offer two things this morning. And the first, I think, is directly to connected to what we've been talking about is that first, I wonder if it isn't God who is the reason behind this experience since he's everywhere. If God is everywhere, then he's not actually gone. What if our struggle to have an undivided heart creates an awareness problem for us? Because our heart is pulled in so many ways, we struggled to be aware of God. To have this reminder, to remember that God is with us. We sing that song, Emmanuel, God with us. But because we're pulled in so many ways, we're so distracted, our attention's all over the place, and then we go, God, I don't know where you are. Why are you so far away? And that's not to throw shame at you or on me, but to say, I wonder, if if not for just a few exceptions, that most of the time when it feels like God is far. Far away, that's that's us. That's an attention thing, that's a focus thing for us, not a sense of why is God pulled away from me. And again, not that we physically removed ourselves from God or rejected him, but we just haven't cultivated an awareness of him. We haven't spent time, we haven't tried, we haven't sought God to reorient our heart where our heart is set on him. And before we just get to like, here are the steps to focus on God, or here are the three steps to an undivided heart. I just want to name what can feel incredibly daunting. It's like it can go like, how in the world, like this feels so challenging? How do I have an undivided heart, God? How do I give you my attention when there's so many things pulling me in different directions? And here's what's real is that none of us can do this on our own. None of us can do it on our own. If there's anything in the Christian life and in Christianity that we need to get to the center of who we are, is that Jesus has not invited us to just do all of these things he asks us on our own. Like do work harder, try harder, just be better. He knows that we need help. He knows that we this is what grace is, unearned favor and strength from him. We can't discipline ourselves into this undivided heart. We can't just will ourselves to keep our eyes on God all the time. If we just have enough post-it notes on the mirror, if we just have enough scripture memory verse cards with us, those are all good, by the way. You can do those things. Those are great. It's good to have that with us. But we can't put enough post-it notes up or wallpaper on your phone, you know. These are good. These are good things. But we can't surround ourselves with enough of it. We just can't will ourselves to keep our eyes on God all the time, all the time, to give him our heart and our attention. There's this famous story about Jesus in the Gospels. You've maybe heard of it before. But his disciples are in a boat. Jesus had just got done teaching. His disciples go into a boat, Jesus goes to pray, and they're going across this lake. They're going across the lake. And all of a sudden, they're like just going, and all of a sudden they're like, whoa, someone's someone's out there. They're not sure who it is. They're like, maybe it's a ghost. Maybe it's a ghost. And they're like, maybe what? Peter's like, man, is that Jesus? Is that Jesus out there? Like he can kind of make him out. You know, he's like, but this is like this dude's walking on the water. And by the way, if you're like, that seems impossible. I mean, if there's a God that exists, I feels like it's in the category of possibility. Um and Jesus is walking on this water. And Peter, the de facto leader of the disciples, he says, Jesus, if it's you, invite me to come out to you. And Jesus says, Let's go. Come on out. So Peter starts walking out on the water. He steps out of the boat and walking on the water. And he's getting closer to Jesus, and his eyes are set on Jesus, which I mean would make sense because you're literally doing the impossible. So you're not just like, oh man, it sure is nice out here. You're just like, oh, at any point this could go bad. And so you're just like fixated. And then all of a sudden, he becomes aware of what's all around him. And he sees the waves and he sees the white caps, right? He sees what Lake Erie looks like in the winter with the waves. He sees, he sees it. And all of a sudden his eyes shift from seeing Jesus to seeing what's around. He's pulled in different directions. And he starts to what?

SPEAKER_00 25:57

Sink. He starts to sink.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

Here's what I love. Here's what I love about this story. Jesus doesn't like yell from afar, hey man, look back at me. Like, hey, get your eyes up here. Over here. Over here. Hey. That's not what he does. Jesus gets close enough and he reaches down. What happens? Jesus sees that he lost his focus, so Jesus gets closer. He gets closer. Right? You know, when a baby's born, it can't see very far. You have to get close for them to focus. Or someone's eyesight gets worse. And and you have to get close so they can see. And Jesus is saying, I see you're sinking. I see you're sinking. And I'm going to get close, close enough to be reached down and to pull him up. Jesus knows that it's so hard to keep our gaze on him. It's so hard to keep our eyes fixed on him because there are so many things that pull us in different directions and different ways that divide our heart. But Jesus comes close. And can I tell you this? More than walking on the water. Here's what we believe is that God, the creator of the universe, who created everything, knew that we would struggle to understand who he is. We struggle to know can we trust him? Can we follow him? Who is he really? And so you know what he did? He said, I'm gonna become a human. I'm gonna come close, so close, so close, that you can't that you can't go, I wonder what he would be like when someone lets him down. I wonder how he might look at me when I really screw up. I wonder what God might feel like when I'm like actively saying, I'm good. Or even worse, we're his best friend, one of his best friends, closest friends, and we decide to completely abandon him. Completely turn on him. We don't have to guess because God came in Jesus so close, and he said, I don't want you to wonder what I look like. I don't want you to wonder where you're struggling to have a divided heart. We're like, I don't know if God is good enough to trust him. I get it. I don't know if God is good enough to like lay down this relationship that might not be the best for me. I don't know if I can trust God with my future job or my relationships with the way I use my money, the way I use my body, or the way I spend my time. And Jesus says, Come close. Come close. I'm gonna come close to you. I want you to see that you can trust me. Man, growing up, the biggest struggle for me was like I heard about God loving me and him being close and him being for me. And I wanted nothing more than to just see God. And I would pray so much. God, I just want to see you, I want to feel you. But God just always had this blank face when I would pray. He would just have this kind of blank face, and I just like I don't, it just felt like I was praying and I don't know this God that I couldn't see, and obviously he's invisible. And it took till I was like 30 years old to like for God just kind of wake me up and go, hey, you can see me in the face of Jesus. And the clearest way is to see me in the face of Jesus on a cross. On a cross. Because in the cross we see what God's face looks like when he's completely rejected. It looks like when someone hurts him to the depth that anyone could, that he says, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. That at the cross we see ourselves clearly that we needed him to give his life for us, to die in our place. We see what God does when we make ourselves into his enemy. And the cross, we see that his love is deeper than we could hope or imagine. Nothing else kept him on the cross other than his love for the Father and His love for us. And God says, blessed are the Jesus says, God, blessed are the pure in heart, undivided hearts, for they'll see God. And here's the beautiful thing: it's it's cyclical. Because as our heart becomes less divided, we see him more clearly. And then the more clearly we see him, the less divided our heart becomes. And then the more we see him, and the more that we have an undivided heart, it just keeps going. And it feeds into itself, and we say, God, I just want you. I just want you. Maybe you grew up in church around church, and maybe you had spiritual experiences where it was like you had those moments in prayer and worship, and you're just like, and in that moment, you're like, as sincere as I can be, God, I just want you. Right? Like we've had some of us have had those experiences. We're like, why doesn't it stick? I don't think it was because you're insincere. Or I was insincere, I didn't mean it, I just teenage emotions or whatever. I think in that moment, it's like all of a sudden our eyes, we had like an undivided heart for a moment. We saw God clearly for a moment. And it was like, oh, if this is who you are, I could give my whole life to you. Oh, if this is how good you are, then I really could trust you with all these things that I want to hold on to tightly. This is why Jesus says he wants to capture our heart and grip our heart. He came so close so we could see him, so we can know that he's trustworthy.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

And that's a love that can be seen. It can be seen. Attention, focus, our eyes on.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

Attention is the beginning of our devotion. Have you ever, maybe you struggle, maybe not, but you struggle with like, man, we sing these worship songs about how great God is, and I really struggle to like worship. Not just because you don't like music or do or don't. Worship is just challenging.

SPEAKER_00 32:51

I wonder if I wonder if the invitation is to begin to pay attention to where God is, to who he is.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

And we'll talk about that in a minute, but I want to circle back because asking the question, what is your, what is my divided heart costing me? What's my divided attention costing me? What is it costing my relationship with God? My relationship with others. So, how do we begin to give God our attention? How do we begin to give God our attention? It absolutely in our world, it looks like putting down our phones, right? It looks like turning the TV off. It looks like taking inventory of what most easily distracts you. It might mean reading from a paper Bible because you just know how your brain works. It might be keeping your phone across the room at bedtime. It might be turning off the podcast or the music while you drive, delete some apps. These are good steps and they really can be meaningful. But here's the thing: space is just the beginning. Creating the space, reducing the noise and distractions are just the beginning. The question is, what do we do with less distractions? What do we do with less noise?

SPEAKER_00 34:26

Because here's the thing: we need to see Jesus. We need to see Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

Could I offer this? Begin to read one of the Gospels, the story of Jesus' life. Just begin there. Read it slowly. Don't rush. It's not a race. You know, there's those Bible plans, like read the new, you know, the Gospels in 30 days, the New Testament in 30 days. Just read through it slowly. Just see Jesus again. Take time to journal down a few thoughts. Don't just rush through it. Take time to process a little bit. What is God speaking to me in this? Maybe find a few friends that you can share what you're learning, what you feel like God might be speaking to you about. Just slowing down. Because it helps our hearts be united to be centered. And here's what you'll find that I think will begin happening. Slowly, our hearts will begin to be captured by the bigness of God, how great He is, the love of God, the beauty of God because we see Jesus. And then what begins to happen, and it's a slow process, but our thoughts begin to fall on Jesus more often because we're filling our thoughts and our time and our mind with him. Our eyes begin to see God, not just for myself also, but for others. It's not just that I can begin to know who God says I am or how he feels towards me. I begin to see God working in the world around me. I begin to see what God might be inviting me to join him in. Where he's working in my neighborhood or at work or at school. We begin to see, like we talked about in the beginning of this year, in the becoming a river church, we begin to see where God's river is flowing, where his spirit is moving and we can partner with him. And suddenly we're on this adventure, the mission of God, the purposes of God for our life. Blessed are the pure in heart, for you'll see God. For you'll see his goodness and his love and his grace. That's for you, not far away, but the one who in Jesus comes so close so you can see him, not just in your mind, but in your heart, and to walk with him each day. And to walk with him, not just for your own self, as your best friend, your father, though he is, but he invites us into the family business of being about what the Father is doing in the world. And if we do this, if we say yes to this again, imagine what it might be like to see a community like ours, like Lakewood Vineyard, saying, We just want an undivided heart, God. We want to see you for as you are, we want to see ourselves as we are, we want to see the world as you see it, to be so transformed by your love and your grace in Jesus that we go out, we see him everywhere we go. And we just begin to join in with what he's doing as transformed daughters and sons of God. So here's the question this morning. Two questions we can reflect on. I'm gonna invite our band up. We're gonna have some worship at the end, and we'll have opportunity to pray as well. But here's what I want us to reflect on this morning. What is your divided heart costing you? And what's getting in the way of you seeing God? These are challenging questions. If you can answer them really quickly and they don't like kind of touch you in a deeper place, I encourage you to slow down. Slow down. We can read these really easy, and maybe you've been around church a long time. You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Divided hurt cost to me, I'm sure it's uh relationship, you know, whatever. Slow down. Maybe later this week and go, what is it costing me? What is it costing me?

SPEAKER_00 38:30

What is getting in the way of me seeing God?