How People Change: Repentance Part 2 - Change Requires Community

How People Change: Repentance Part 2 - Change Requires Community

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When I hear myself sigh, I guess it knows the I know the mic's on. Um sorry about that. We good? All right. Welcome. Um for those of you who don't know, my name's Tim. Uh I'm one of the elders here. Um not the primary preacher up here, um, but I like to chip in where I can. And um if you've been coming here for a while, you know that we've been going through this uh series on change. And we've been taking a closer look at uh just the the dynamics, the process of of uh just heart change and how we're supposed to grow and be more godlike or more Christ-like. Not godlike. Um godly. Godly. Thank you, Alex. See, this is good. Um and so just as a quick review, um the these these messages are meant to build on one another. And so uh we we kicked off a few weeks ago and we looked at that why change. And um we we explored sort of the the motivations behind why we often uh want to change. And so uh we tend to want to change to prove ourselves to ourselves, or we want to change to prove ourselves to God, we want to prove ourselves to each other. And the true uh foundation for for why change is a response. It's a response for what Christ has done for us, it's a response out of gratitude, and we rightly see our sin and rightly see how much God truly knows us at our worst and loves us anyway. And that's when we um internalize that, we we want to change, we want to be more Christ-like. Um and then the following week we'll look at that the gospel as the power to change, um, and the need not to just understand the gospel at a head level, where we can maybe recite some verses or or you know, say what we maybe learned in Sunday school, but it's more than words. It's living in light of the gospel, it's having it reduced to that belief level in our hearts and living um uh within the implications of the gospel, why it's true and how it makes a difference for us. Uh last week Nick talked about how to change. I mean, we examined the dynamics of repentance and how we um want to just find created things and idolize them. And uh it could be a variety of different things, but but you know, having this or or being this gives me meaning, gives me purpose, gives me function. And the act of repentance isn't just saying that's bad, but it's turning away from that and towards uh the gospel and a truth and implication of that. Um so this message, if these are kind of like like a funnel, we're kind of getting and dialing in. Uh and so this message today, uh it's gonna be aimed right at the heart, and hopefully, if if if it goes the way I hope it goes, very, very practical. Uh, we're gonna look at how conflicts in community help us feel our need uh for change. And uh let me just right off the bat, I was looking at the bulletin. It says Galatians 2. Uh I goofed on that. Uh it we're not gonna be in Galatians, it's gonna be James 4. And I just want to get out ahead of that because I know some of you are gonna be the whole time. When's he gonna get to Galatians? When's he gonna get there? And it's just gonna be a distraction. So, right up front, I goofed on that. No Galatians, and uh I promise it'll be okay. Um before I begin, just let me pray. Uh Father, we we love you and we thank you for the chance to gather here together. We know we need you, and I just pray in this these minutes to come that we would feel our need and that we would really um come to know and understand and appreciate your love and your grace, God. And we thank you that the Holy Spirit is here and active and in our midst. And I just pray um that you would just prepare even what uh excuse me, every one of our hearts uh to receive uh what it is you have for us here, God. Help us to grow and to be um what you've called us to be as a people. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. I want to begin with a story. Um you're sitting across from me, whether it's a coffee shop or or you know, one of our uh life groups, something like that. Uh as I tell you the story, and imagine I'm I'm telling you this story wanting help. Uh I'm kind of just relaying something that happened and I just don't know how to process it. And you know, I'm just confiding in you. Uh and as I tell the story, I want you to think about what you would say to me, uh, someone in my position. Okay? Uh got it. Um to begin. Um for those of you who don't know me, I do, I'm I'm a sports fan, like many of you. Um I enjoy watching sports on TV. I've definitely mellowed over the years as I've hit 40 and uh other important things in life, but uh I still enjoy watching watching sports. And uh historically I've always been passionate about two teams in in my time in Austin, uh UT's kind of crept in there, but my two teams from from childhood. I was raised in Massachusetts and I love the Red Sox, and I was born in Syracuse, and I love Syracuse University, and that's been an exercise in pain for the most of the last 20 years, but I love them nonetheless. Um so this story was uh probably I guess five years ago or so. Um and there was a Syracuse football game, and I wanted to see it. Um in hindsight, why? I don't know, because they probably lost, but I just all week long was looking forward to it. Um I would think about it, and not a day went by where I wouldn't kind of look forward to it. And I would think about the the things I would want to make, the things I would want to eat, where my my lucky spot was, what I was gonna wear, just all the things that go into this. I I just would come and meditate on that. Um I knew I would be alone. My my wife worked uh the UT football game, so I would be home with my children who were about three and four at the time. Um and on game day, I I wake up that Saturday and that thought just popped in my head. I am gonna watch my game in a couple hours. And I go and I'm pumped and I'm ready to go. And I've arranged my seat, I've arranged my food and drink, and as kickoff comes in, uh I could not have been any happier. I was ready for this, I'd waited all week for it. Shortly after kickoff, my my four-year-old kind of wanders in. Uh hey dad, how's it going? Uh I'm slightly irritated uh at this unwelcome intrusion, but I'm a good dad. Slow to anger. Uh, you know, uh I tell him that daddy is watching a football game and go play. Solid parenting, there right. Uh he didn't get the hint. Why are you watching a football game? That classic child question of why. Um I wasn't in the mood at that moment to plumb the depths of why I love Syracuse football and explain that to my my four-year-old as to why I like watching football. It wasn't part of my agenda at the moment. So I dismissed him with a more emphatic because daddy likes watching football. Now go play. As he wandered off, right, the the flood of thoughts start coming in. You work hard all week. Is it really so bad to take a few hours to yourself? Watch something you enjoy? Nothing wrong with that. You deserve this. You're a good dad. You're always spending time with your kids, you're always playing with them. They need to learn to play independently. It's part of raising good kids. The flood of thoughts start coming in. Feeling properly self-justified, I slip back into watching my game. About a half hour later, uh, I hear a voice coming out from the toy room. Dad! Dad, come look at the train track I build. In a little uh no sense of third down or time and distance and score. Uh he persists in calling me away from my game. Uh, and he wanted me to come to his toy room to see his creation. And after about the third or fourth time, I finally just storm in there in anger, and I tell him, I told you to go and play quietly. You need to obey your dad. You're not doing that right now. Okay. Cut scene. Okay. So as I relate that story uh and seek your counsel, what would you say to me? Um, would you say, nobody's perfect? You love your kids, you're a good dad. They're looking to have you as a dad. Don't be so hard on yourself. Maybe uh you'd point out to me that that anger is a sin, and you'd drop a verse on me from Proverbs or somewhere about how anger is destructive. Uh maybe you'd say, sure, no doubt. Shouldn't have yelled. But there's nothing wrong with wanting some time for yourself, and your kids do need to learn that they're not the center of the universe. Any of those, maybe Rigabelle, or something that you would find yourself saying? We're gonna take a look and see what uh James would say, and uh, we'll have the scripture up here, but this is coming from James chapter four, verses one to four. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and you do not have, so you murder. You covet and you cannot obtain, so you fight and you quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Tell us how you really feel, James, right? Uh James points the finger right at my heart. Okay? James understands the human heart. We're creatures of constant, active desire. What we desire in our hearts, we then work and try to obtain. And when we fail to obtain the object of desire in our heart, conflict happens. Put simply, there's a craving underneath every conflict. Okay? And we gotta just get that into our minds. We need to see conflict in those terms, that there's a craving underneath every conflict. Craving, conflict, craving underneath conflict. Um there's a truth that we need to carry, right? Every interaction, that this craving is under conflict. Um, the craving doesn't have to be a physical thing, and in fact, in most cases, it's not uh a physical thing. Uh in my story, I I was craving control. I wanted control over my carefully constructed TV watching domain. I wanted control over my child. I craved respect and I craved obedience, and I wanted my desires to be gratified in the form of them leaving me alone and being quiet. I was wanting to be a little god in my little kingdom, and when my demands and desires weren't met, I lashed out. So as I say that, I'm hoping you're you're thinking and your mind's going, what are some of your sinful passions and desires? We all have them. Chances are there's some that you're particularly prone to. Um do you crave significance? Do you want people to think that you're important? Do you want people to think you're smart? Funny? Creative? Do you need respect? Do you have a craving for autonomy? That you need to be completely independent and lash out when you feel that people expect something from you? Do you crave affirmation? Do you want people to tell you how good you are? How attractive you are? Do you want to be in control like me? And I think this raises the question: is all desire bad? Not according to James. He writes in verse 3, you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. The Christians that James was writing to, they had desires, and James doesn't fault them for that, and in fact, even chastises them for not asking. Unlike some Eastern philosophies, James isn't telling his people to stifle desire, to try to drain yourself of desire, discipline yourself to not feel anything. He knows that's futile. He knows that in the human heart, desire, it just conjures up from within. Uh, it's not rational, and it's in our heart. James is saying that some of their desires are not being gratified because they're not asking God. And he's saying to others that their desires are not being gratified because they're asking God to gratify desires that they've channeled in sinful directions. Take, for instance, um the desire to get married, or the desire to have children, or the desire to excel in the workplace. They can all be perfectly good, even noble desires. Uh, sometimes even good desires can be corrupted. We can slip into feeling that our worth as people is tied into our status as being married, or our status as being a parent, or a status as being a high achiever at work. When we can't find a spouse or have children or advance at work, we feel despair. Okay? We feel anxiety. Uh and what this passage is saying is that God, because he loves us so much, he's never gonna grant us the deep lasting fulfillment out of these created things that we desire. Like we can get married and we can have kids, we can excel or achieve at work. And that might have like a good thing, right? No one's saying these things are bad things or that we shouldn't feel good for a moment, or not even for a moment. We feel good about having these things, but they're not ultimate. God reserves that ultimate sense of belonging, of being known, of being loved, of being worth something in Him and in only Himself. So, how can we tell when our desires are good and when our desires are bad? James points out uh in that passage that there's two directions for our desires to go. We can either be friends with the world or friends with God. There's no, and this is important, there's no blending the two. Okay, our desires and our affections and our worship, it's either directed to God or it's directed to lesser created worldly things. And so I want to take a minute um and explore, I think it's the obvious next step or next question. What does friendship with the world mean? Uh, I think that might be uh a scary thing or uh maybe something that's uh maybe been misunderstood. Uh I know in my past I certainly misunderstood it for a long time. Uh there's gonna be a lot of confusion uh on that point. Friendship in the world with the world does not mean not having non-Christian friends. Um friendship with the world does not mean enjoying and participating uh in our culture. Uh it doesn't mean right not having, I know a lot of times CDs and people burn CDs because it's the wrong kind of music or things like that. That's not what I mean, and what I believe James means by friendship with the world. Um, James, and if you read the whole book, it's one of my favorite books of the Bible, it's focused on the heart. And he's meaning that in light of that focus on the heart. Friendship with the world, it means adopting the mindset of the world. It means adopting the wisdom of the world, the values that the world holds dear. Okay, in this, it differs. Worldly wisdom differs by by culture, it differs by historical period uh over time. But the wisdom of the world never ever brings someone to worship God. The wisdom of the world always tells the individual to worship and desire created things instead of the creator God. As I know some of you appreciate this. Uh as the filmmaker uh Terence Malik put it in his masterpiece, and I did say masterpiece, uh, Tree of Life, there's two ways to go through life. There's the way of grace and the way of nature. Grace doesn't try to please itself and accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. It accepts insults and injury. Nature only wants to please itself, get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them, to have its own way, to find reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. In our time and culture, friendship with the world often means buying into self-glorification. The world tells us we need to pursue our own happiness as we see fit, that we're autonomous. We live to build our own little kingdoms and rule over them like little gods and insist on our own way. And the world encourages and blesses this action. The world tells us that what you feel is the ultimate thing of what matters, that what you decide, that what your experiences are determine that you're truth. And it's about you and funneling everything through you in your perspective, and that anyone who encroaches on that is a threat to you, in your personhood. Uh the wisdom of the world wants us to isolate that way. It wants us to um what I love about that that quote, um, the malquote was finding reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. We're more aware of all the things that aren't measuring up to us, that aren't the way we want it to be as we determine it. Right? You see how that adopts that that worldly mindset. Um and what we have in God, what we have in our reality, what we have in that that way of grace, the reason you can accept slights, the reason that you can accept insults, it's not a blank check to be abused. That's that's not what I'm saying at all. Um and we deal with sin, and we uh because God deals with sin. But when we understand that we've been forgiven and what we truly are and what we've been forgiven toward, and that we're not the ones in control, we can accept those things. We don't have to be the one wielding the sword and making everything funnel through us in a way that's pleasing to us. We know that God is the one, and it allows us to exude grace and exude gentleness and fight against the wisdom of the world. So circling back um to the common desires, uh, I listed a few uh a few moments ago. Um I was talking about my story. Um it wasn't friendship with the world to want to watch a football game. Okay, it was friendship with the world when I adopted the mindset that I deserved peace and quiet in uninterrupted time with which to indulge my desire. You see the difference? Okay, we we can only look at the surface of things and have sort of approved and not approved, or worldly or not worldly, but so many and those things exist, don't get me wrong. Certain things are just always bad. But the vast majority is in that gray area where football or whatever you want to do, it's okay. It's not inherently that way. But when we smuggle things into it, right, and how we treat each other and how we understand our time and ourselves, when we raise ourselves up to being the little mini god who gets to exert his will and over whatever dominion we carve out, that's the world whispering to us. That's our enemy whispering to us. You're the one that matters. You, you, you. Okay, what you want, what you're feeling, and you need to make it happen. Okay, and we lie to ourselves. All those justification questions you're a good dad. Yeah, the kids need to have their time. They they need to learn how to play independently. The best lies have elements of truth in them, okay? And those things have elements of truth. Kids do need to learn how to play independently, you know. It is, I can't put everything, uh my identity being a father on my performance in every single moment, right? These things, but when we try to use them to cover, right, and distract from what we really want. And then in that moment in my story, I really wanted peace and quiet, right? Um see kind of how these dynamics, right? I'm hoping this is getting uh clear, the way the human heart, we're we're very devious in the way that we uh try to, I guess, listen to the wisdom of the world and lie to ourselves. Um and given the battle with these sinful passions in our hearts, um, and the constant barrage of lies that we face from the world, in order to grow in fighting sin, um, and in order to grow and be more like Christ, we need community. Um the best way I I know how my favorite word picture about this is uh imagine we're all like uh kind of rocks, just scuffed rough around the edges, just rocks. And if you take uh enough of those rocks and you put them in a bag and you start shaking that bag, right, what's gonna happen? The rocks are gonna bang together, right? They're gonna collide, they're gonna do all that. But over time, that act of banging together and rubbing together, it's gonna make a polished rock. Okay, it's gonna smooth that out. And and and that's like us, okay, with with with our sin. Um we all have rough edges. We're all none of us are polished, right? And if we try to just improve on our own, we're not gonna get into conflict, we're not gonna be challenged, we're not gonna have things come up. My kids weren't pressing on my time. I'd have happily sat there watching football, not even realized that I was idolizing it. Okay. I needed someone else to come in and for that to rise up out of the depths of my heart so I could see it. Right? And so we we need that. Um in conflict, it's inevitable. Okay. I'm a sinner, everyone here is a sinner, everyone who's ever walked this earth is a sinner, okay? And so when sinners are in relationship with sinners, they're gonna sin. In sin, it's inevitable. And it doesn't mean we desire it, and this isn't a license to go uh and kind of what is it, festivists from from Seinfeld, where it's just the airing of grievances, and we just launch in and just start like attacking each other. We don't want to glorify sin and we don't want to pursue it for the sake of gratifying sin, but we have to accept that it's inevitable. Um and that rather than steer away from it, because sin in dealing with conflict can be awkward, uh, it can feel threatening. We don't want someone to not like us, we don't want someone to look at us the wrong way. And even that reluctance is evidence of misplaced affections. When I'm mindful that God knows and loves and accepts me no matter what, my opinion of you, I can serve you. It's not about managing that I'm liked or that I'm respected or that I'm understood, right? I'm free to let those things go. And so we need to steer into conflicts and we need to engage in it redemptively. Okay, there's a way where conflict where I'm self-centered and you're self-centered, and we have a kind of a conflict and a fight, and then we both kind of walk away feeling justified or get a load of that person. Can you believe that? And there's no redemptive part of it. It was about who's stronger, who's the bigger mini God in your shared little mini universe. We need to enter into conflict in a redemptive sense where God is at the center of it and a desire for one another to grow, that we can use this conflict as a way of understanding ourselves better, but ultimately as a way of being able to repent of something that came to the surface and to grow in Christ-likeness. That's the goal. Okay, it's not peaceable relationships. That's a nice side effect of this, but it's not the primary goal. Um and so around that, I I with the time I have left, um, I just came up with a, I think, six. Um, don't freak out. This is meant to be bullet pointed. I would love, trust me, I would love to go in depth into these six. Um, but I wanted to just bring some some helpful, hopefully, um marks of of what a true gospel-formed community that's that's trying and aspiring to enter into conflict redemptively to the glory of God. Okay, so the first one we need to understand we do not see ourselves accurately. Okay. Uh that's sometimes the hardest thing to believe because we we we kind of know what's going on under our surface, and um we we like to believe that we can rightly interpret ourselves, but that's not true. Uh and the reality is we think that when we we look into the mirror, right, and we see a reflection of ourselves, when it comes to our heart and determining the the motives and and what we're really doing at a heart level, it's like looking into a funhouse mirror, right? You know, those curvy ones where it's like your head looks like the little tiny pin, and then you're like 15 feet wide and look like a weird, I don't know, crazy clown or something, and then like your feet, you know, you're just you're all warped. And it there's elements of truth in there, right? Like you can kind of like that's sort of what I look like, but it's it's distorted and it's not accurate. It's a fun house mirror, it's meant to be funny, right? But that's how we are when we look at ourselves. Like we can get some work done, right? I'm not saying don't look at your heart. We we need to do that, we need to grow, and there's things that we can do to sharpen that, and the spirit can can help that. But we need each other because we can observe things in each other better than what we can self-determine. Okay, it's we need both, not one or the other. We need both. Okay. And the flip side of that, if we don't, if we think that we see ourselves accurately, we we we don't value and need input from others. It's like, hey, I got it. I know what's going on here, and that no, you're wrong. I mean and me alone, I know this. Or me, you know, I'm praying, and the two of us, me and the spirit, we just decided, you know, that's it. We need each other, okay? We need to like not have that mindset. We need to start from a place that we don't see ourselves accurately. Second one, we need to be more aware of our sin towards God than anyone else's sin, towards us or to others. Um, we can only observe other people. Um, and of course, right, we can observe or even experience their sin. It's not that we don't have any insight or any, you know, I just got done saying we did. Um, however, we know ourselves in a way that nobody else can. We know our our thoughts, we know our motives, we know our inner thought life. Um, and as we start to see how sinful we are at a heart level, all the ways that we idolize created things, all the ways that we're seeking to find meaning and purpose and things that aren't God, all the ways that we you know succumb to being friends with the world in that mindset, um we understand our need for grace, right? Though the right the greater we appreciate our sin, the greater and more grateful we are for the grace that we have in Christ. And when we see ourselves accurately that way, when we see ourselves as a sinner in desperate need of grace, first and foremost, it changes our attitudes towards how we see and address sin in a brother or sister. Okay, it doesn't remove it, right? Like, but it allows us from that point, we come in with a caring place. We come in um with with a wanting them to thrive, wanting them to experience uh, you know, and be free from from the sin and experience God uh the way it was intended. Um when we lose sight of that one, um that's that's where pride really takes root. We fall into a de facto kind of ranking system, and we kind of gauge ourselves and where we fall in, and we gauge each other, and you know, subtly, we would never put this on paper or anything, but in our hearts, there's like people who can talk to me, and then there's people who can't. And there's people I can talk to, and then there's people I can't. That's not from the Lord. That is not community, that is not the gospel. We are all equals at the foot of the cross. We all need one another. We are all the worst sinners we know, okay? And I might know some really, you know, egregious sin in my midst. I still can't know right what's going on in their heart. I can only observe. Me, on the other hand, right? Every football game, every time that someone cuts me off in traffic, like I have access to the sin that people will never know about. I am the worst sinner I know. Okay? And when we all start there and engage, it allows us to treat sin in a way that's loving. It's a way that that's shoulder to shoulder, like we've talked about, as opposed to top-down looking down on someone in a judgmental place. Number three, and this is related, um, we need to be approachable. Um, if sin's the enemy and we want to grow in godliness and we can't do it alone, we should want input. We should desire input. We shouldn't kind of have something happen and then be like, oh man, I hope no one saw that and you know, kind of hope we don't get called out on it, right? When we want to be respected or we want to be thought well of or we want to be admired, all these things, right? We want to manage people's perception of us. We want to manage kind of their access to the sin or how they can see or observe or perceive my sin. When I see myself as known entirely by God, loved deeply by God, and as a response, I want to grow in godliness, then any input is welcome. Okay, any input is helping me on that that journey. Okay. When I see myself in the center, the input is a knockdown, a couple of rungs. That's not welcome, right? And so it all stems from that intense holding and valuing of the gospel first and foremost. Number four, um this one can be hard. Um none of us is the Holy Spirit. Uh, we can challenge, we can love each other, we can persuade, uh, we can call each other out, um, but we're not the Holy Spirit, and we cannot convict. Um it can be hard sometimes, uh, especially when it feels so obvious to me and so obvious to someone else. There's a part of us that that wants to just hammer away until the light comes on. And we want to we'll we'll slip into kind of power dynamics or manipulation or control. Just what can I do to make you see this? And that's crossing the line, okay? That that's us going from being a faithful brother and sister who, aware of our own sin, wants to see you thrive and wants to bring something to your attention so you can deal with it, into effectively trying to take the role of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's the one that convicts, okay? Um, and so we can pray for each other and we can want that, we can plead, and it can take time and we can be committed to one another. But that last piece of just not letting go until someone sees something, that's trying to be the Holy Spirit. And we if we fall into that as a community, right, that's where uh you know you can push someone into that defensive place, or that's where things can turn uh abusive, because you're you're sinning when you cross into that. Um, and so plea, argue, debate, you know, uh exhort, all those things, but we cannot compel, we cannot convict. Number five, um I just put this as what are we oriented around? Um, in our groups, and we've been spending a lot of time this summer. I know a lot of you are uh have been coming to our Sunday night uh trainings, and we're really focusing um on our groups and on these communities because of how important community is. And one of the things you'll find in groups, um it can very easily we can slip away from being oriented around the gospel and kind of the things that we're talking about into lesser things that we elevate and treat as primary things that are non-gospel issues. Um and so trying to think. Um sometimes in over my life I've seen it in a bunch of different ways, but um parenting philosophies. Some people have different parenting philosophies, and and they're all have merit, or I don't know, maybe I shouldn't say all most, you know, the mainstream ones are I don't know, I'm digging myself as I'm up here. Um not trying to do any of that. Uh but parenting on we can hold those as primary, and then we can be like, okay, well I homeschool, and then I go to public school because I believe being on mission and I want private school, and then we have all these different things, and we can, before we realize it, kind of have my homeschool click over here, and then we have our public school people over here, and we have our private school people over here, and you know, can you get a load of these people really think that? And oh my gosh, you know, and you start judging each other's kids. It can go all the way down, right? Those aren't gospel issues, and yet we orient around those, and sooner or later the community will drift, right? And you'll have a small group of the homeschool people and a small group of the public school, right? You know, so on and so forth. Uh we see it with politics. Um not trying to step on it, but we're going, might as well go all the way, right? Uh politics, not the gospel, okay? To be a Christian, you don't have to be a Republican. It's just not true. Um now, should our faith and our things inform our views? Absolutely. Okay, but we can have a diversity of political opinions and be in a group. And if you can't be in a group with someone who doesn't agree with you politically, you've raised politics to a gospel level. Okay? That's not community, that's not what we're about. That's not redemptively coming together so we can grow and be in Christ-like. That's raising, it's gospel plus, okay. Um, and if we orient around these lesser things, we lose our witness to the world. We lose our our our saltiness, we lose our our um what's the word I'm looking for? Our contrast. Okay. Because the world, people inherently want friends, and people inherently want community. People inherently want to gather and be together. And so we can see that all over, right? You know, there's clubs for all kinds of things, okay. The church in our community here is when we're oriented around the gospel, we should have people of different socio-economic backgrounds, of different races and ethnicities, of different political persuasions, of different, you know, household choices or family choices. All of these things, when we're different and yet deeply bonded and loving and for one another, that's a picture of what it is to be Christ, right? And it's why we dig in, it's why we press in as opposed to fleeing. Because this person's difficult. Can you believe what they posted on Facebook? You know, I'm gonna go hang out with these non-crazy people over here, and right, and you start doing that, right? It breaks down what God's intended for us to grow and to be into who He's called us to be, and then for what we are supposed to be in the world. Last, um, and this one I just think needs to be everywhere. We need to trust our Savior. Um, I've laid out all kinds of things, right? Uh, all these heart desires for right, watching a football game. I'm unpacking all this sin, right? And this is what's going on for all of us all the time, every day. And when we're around group, if I'm in a group of 15 people sitting in my living room for small group, there's 15 people, each fighting the same fight, each having the same battle, each you know, warring against their own hearts, warring against our you know, Satan and the demons, warring against worldliness and the influences of what it's whispering in our ears. Here's how you're gonna be important, right? And it's easy to focus on the enormity of sin, and it's easy to feel hopeless, or it's even easy to feel just helpless. Um, we need to trust our Savior. Okay, this is God's design. The battle has been won. And even in difficult relationships or with people who we don't feel chemistry with, or people who maybe are threatening, um, and again, we deal with sin. That's not a blank check to be abused, but people who who rub us the wrong way or step on different idols that we have, we can do right. It's a slow process, uh, it's a painful process, but it's a worthy process, and it's God's process. Okay. Uh let me pray. Father, I I thank you for calling us together. I thank you for solving our our biggest problem, which is our separation from you. Um all other problems in life pale in comparison to that, God. And I thank you for um for bridging that gap in a way that we never could. And I pray that that that beauty, that love filter all the way to the very depths of our soul. God, thank you for for the freedom, thank you for the love, thank you that we get to serve one another, that we get to be engaged in the lives of one another, that we can um find deep satisfaction in in these relationships, but that ultimately we get to point one another back to you and back to just how intensely practical and applicable the gospel is in every area of life. Um I pray that we would grow as a family, as a body in these things, that point would be a place where we can come and people, whoever they are, um, can come in and feel the love and acceptance that comes in the gospel and have encounter people who live in light of that every day. Um, but that we're not content to just be polite around each other, that we want to strain and yearn for growth and for godliness. We pray that that that appetite and desire would be just placed deep in our hearts, God. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. I can't think of a better segue, I guess, into communion. Um communion is the family meal of God's people. Um we're gonna move into that time. Uh I pray that we can just take a moment. Uh uh, we know the spirit's here, and every one of us has pockets in our lives where we we are listening to the world, that we are wanting to build our lives around ourselves and our desires and uh what we think is gonna make us happy instead of God. And I just pray, take a moment right now to just pray to linger on that thought, um, to linger maybe on conflicts, and maybe this gives us a different way of approaching them or seeing them or understanding them. Uh the Spirit has something for you. Um take a moment and pray and repent where needed and um express gratitude where appropriate, and then come. Um we're gonna have, we have, I think, is it five stations, um, juice and and crackers for the body and blood of Christ. And uh we're not defined by our sin. We're loved and known and perfectly accepted in Christ because of what those elements represent. I pray that we can enter into that joyful. Um I'll be in the back. Anyone who wants to pray or anyone who wants to share anything or have anything on their heart, I'd love to hear from you or to visit with you. I know there'll be a couple others. Um for the glory of God. Amen.