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All right, well, welcome. My name is Harley Rathel, and I'm one of the pastors here at Point Community Church. And uh really glad to have this opportunity to be here with you guys today and to uh finish out the book of First John. So we have as a church through this semester gone through the book of First John, taking it like piece by piece, and and today is interesting because we finally get to the end of that whole deal. And it's kind of the conclusion of all of this stuff. Um before we get into really talking about all the nuts and bolts of that, I've got a quick favor I want to ask. Anyone on the my left side of the row, your right side of the row, if you wouldn't mind just grabbing the connection pad, it's a like a little black folder that should be under your chair. And uh if you wouldn't mind just filling that out, we just need one person per family to fill that out for us and pass it down. And then if you're on the other end of the row, just slip it on under your seat. That'd be hugely helpful for us. Uh so we're excited that this week is Thanksgiving, right? Is everybody excited about that? A little bit of turkey, a little bit of family. I don't know if everybody's excited about that. Uh turkey, family, and uh, you know, Black Friday sales, all of that sort of good stuff. You know, it's interesting because I I didn't grow up with Thanksgiving coming from Australia. Uh we don't really have anything to be thankful for. We're uh we were a prison colony, right? Uh so that's not true. We do have a lot to be thankful for. But we don't do Thanksgiving. And so when I moved here about nine or ten years ago, I started to get to experience Thanksgiving and get to, you know, be a part of that, and it was a new thing for me. And it's pretty quickly become one of my favorite holidays. I really do enjoy Thanksgiving because I feel like it's it's yeah, you've got the family element, which is really good, you've got the food, which of course is good. But then you've got also this other part, which really it's one of those holidays that really helps you slow down and to think, what am I thankful for? What's God been doing in my life? What's what are the things going on in my life? And I don't know about you, but when I stop it and do that, I pretty quickly quickly realize there's a ton of things that I can and should be thankful for. So my encouragement to you guys is this week is to find some space, get some space away from all the craziness of family and eating or whatever you're gonna do, the sales, and to really think about what is it that you're thankful for? Because I think there are a lot of things that we should be can and should be thankful for. So that's my encouragement to me and to you guys this week. Let's think about what we're thankful for this week. Well, I'm gonna pray for us and just ask that God would bless our time here together and really pray that God would uh give me wisdom and and clarity as I as I speak, and then we're gonna jump into looking at this text this morning. So if you wouldn't mind just bowing your heads one more time, we're gonna pray. God, thanks for bringing us together this morning, just on this beautiful day. God, we're just grateful to be here today. Um, God, as we jump into this busy and exciting week of Thanksgiving, I pray that this would be a sweet time for each of us. As we're reminded of your goodness and your grace towards us, all of us have things that we can and should be thankful for. And so I just pray that you'd remind us of those things. God, as we look at your word now, as we finish up the book of 1 John, I just pray that you would very clearly speak through me. Uh that you would uh just help people to uh really receive the words that they need to today in this room. God, I pray that our hearts would be open to your word and its truth. And we just ask that you would bring clarity and direction as we walk through this. Thank you. Amen. Have you guys ever seen a movie or heard a story, read a story, where you're you're going through the plot and you're trying to get what's really going on. You know that there's something more, but you can't quite get your hand on it. You're like, what's really going on here? What's what's this story? What's this movie all about? And then all of a sudden there's a twist in the plot, and you all of a sudden see everything, and you're like, oh, I get it, I I understand now. You guys know what I'm talking about? Those type of those type of storylines? Well, uh, there was a movie several years ago that came out called The Matrix, and it was a sci-fi movie, and it had that kind of storyline in it, right? So there's this main character, Neo, some of the characters call him the one, and uh Neo's the main character. He's this guy who's just going through life. By the way, it was filmed in Sydney, Australia. That doesn't really have anything to do with the story, but uh it was filmed there, and he's going through his life, and everything's just uh normal and and cruising along, but it just doesn't seem to quite click. It's not quite making sense, it doesn't seem quite real. And he's really struggling with this thought, and he's introduced to some interesting characters, and they come in and say, Hey, hey man, you've got two decisions to make in your life you've got this decision to make between two beliefs right now. You can either believe the lie in which you're living, you can just think that everything's real, ignorance is bliss, and you just keep going the way you are. Or, alternatively, we can show you that this world is fake and that everything you you've ever experienced and believed isn't real. And so, of course, he chooses the second option. There wouldn't be a movie if he didn't choose the second option. He chooses the second option, and all of a sudden, he's ejected from the matrix. He's ejected from the reality that he's known his entire life. This this it's a sci-fi movie, so this metal thing comes out of the back of his neck, and he wakes up for the first time as an adult and looks around, and it's an amazing scene in the movie because the the camera pans out and you can see all these people asleep, all plugged into the matrix, all not realizing that everything that they know, everything that they've ever believed is a lie. And he's the only one in this frame who is awake amongst millions and millions of people. And all of a sudden, when you're watching that movie, you're like, whoa, okay, I get it now. Like, that's what's going on here. And much in the same way, John, through his letter, has been trying to say to the people that he's writing, the church that he's writing this letter to, he's trying to say, hey guys, wake up. See reality, see and know and understand what really is real. And as he's been doing that, well, he's gonna actually come to the conclusion today. We're gonna come to the very last part of the book of 1 John, and he's gonna say to us, he's gonna have one more attempt at saying, hey guys, this is reality, this is what you need to believe, this is the way in which you should should perceive the world in which we live. So when you teach through a book like we are through 1 John, it's not always easy to cut it up into neat little segments. Nick will testify to this, like you'll you'll go through and and cut up a book. We typically, when we teach through a book of the Bible, a couple of us will get together, we'll pray about it, we'll read it together, and then we'll divide it up. But even when you do that, there's certain little bits and pieces that you're like, oh, that doesn't really, you know, flow nicely into a message about this. So today it's actually interesting because we're we're assigned what we're gonna cover is verse 14 through 21 of chapter 5 of 1 John, but we're gonna spend most of our time from verse 18 on. That's not to say that the stuff in verse 14, 15, 16, and 17 isn't good, and I want to tell you really quickly what's in those two. There's two thoughts in there, and I want to really quickly touch on those things, but we're gonna spend most of our time in the back end, okay? So the two thoughts are this. The first thought is this it's in 1 John chapter 5, verse 14 and 15, and it's a beautiful promise, and I want you guys to turn there in your Bibles with me if you wouldn't mind. So 1 John chapter 5. If you don't have a Bible, there should be one somewhere near you. The church owns a bunch of Bibles that we keep under the seats, or potentially the person next to you might be nice enough to let you uh share the Bible with them as you read. Okay, 1 John chapter 5, verse 14. Listen to these two verses. Now, this is right where Nick left off last week. He just talked about how our faith isn't complicated. Believing in God is not a complicated thing. We trust put our trust in Jesus. So the verse is about Jesus, and verse 14 it says this. Now, this is the confidence we have before him, that is Jesus. Whenever we ask anything, listen to this. According to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked him for. Isn't that a cool promise? That's a cool text, right? The text is telling us very simply and clearly that God hears us and God answers us. And I just wanted to be I didn't want to blast over that without at least pointing it out to you guys because I believe that in this room, a room like this today, that at least maybe somebody in this room needed to hear that today. Maybe all that you needed to hear today when you came to church was was that God hears you and he answers you. And maybe you need to come back to this passage later on today. Maybe you need to come back to this passage later this week. But know that this promise is very true. God hears us and he answers us. Much more could be said on that, but I'm gonna keep moving. The second thought is this Verse 16 and 17 tells us that the people around us who are struggling with sin, that they're struggling to believe the lies that are in the world, that we should pray for them. And so we're not gonna get bogged down in this thought either today, but simply just an encouragement here. There's an encouragement in the text in verse 16 and 17 that says, Hey guys, you should pray for those around you. And so today, my my question to you guys is who are the friends, the neighbors, the co-workers, uh, the family members that you need to be praying for that are struggling? Because the encouragement is here in the text to do that. We've been talking our whole series this this month has been love one another, okay? So that's I mean, there's nothing more loving that you can do for somebody than to point them towards Jesus. That's everybody's ultimate need, right? So just an encouragement here. Think of those people today who that who that you you need to be praying for and be encouraged today that we should be praying for them, and then also that God hears and answers our prayers. Okay, so both of these are important things, and really I believe we could preach a whole sermon on either one of those things. But today we're gonna move on to verse 18 because I believe that as we focus on John's conclusion, he's gonna help us really see the world in which the way that we should see it. John's covered a lot of ground to this point. He's talked about sin. He's talked about the struggles that we have with sin. He's talked about how how God and sin just do not God and Jesus and sin just don't have any place with each other. He's talked about uh how our lives as Christians should reflect the change that's happened inside our lives. How as Christians our words and actions should be different than the people around us. He's also talked about this concept of light, that God is light. In him there is no darkness, and if his light is in us, we should reflect that light. He's talked about this idea that we should love one another, hence our whole series on this. So we've covered a lot of ground here. And essentially, this whole book has been pointing us to the two truths we see through the whole Bible. These two truths that you hear us say all the time here from the stage are that we should love God and love people. And now as we come to the end of this book, John's trying to just one more time rally his case. So let's read it together this morning. We're going to jump straight to verse 18 and read through the end of the of the book here. So John chapter 5, verse 18. We know that everyone who has been born of God does not sin, but the one who has been born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are of God, and the whole world is under the sway of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know the true one. We are in the true one, that is, in his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true one, true God, sorry, and eternal life. Little children, guard yourselves from idols. As humans, we have this problem. We have this propensity to believe that the universe or the world around us is centered on us. I mean, let's be honest with each other here this morning. That's that's our natural selfish tendency. That life is centered on us. If if life were a movie, we would see ourselves as the leading actors or actresses, right? We're the star. But the interesting thing about this book and this this finale of this book is John's very clearly trying to point out to us that that's not the case. That we're not the leading actors, we're not the we're not the center of the universe. There's something much more and bigger going on in this story. And I don't know if you notice this, but as we read through that passage, there's the two main characters are pointed out. And I'll let you in on a secret, it's not you or me. Okay, the two main characters are the true one, that is God, Jesus. His the main character, and then the other main character is the evil one. I was trying to get my head around this passage, and I was reading it in a bunch of different translations on my computer this week. I was just going through and clicking different translations. I came back to the translation I normally use, and I clicked on it and I did a word search for the word one. And so I'm gonna ask the guys to throw this up on the screen. I found this really interesting. When I I typed in the word O-N-E one, I found that there was a bunch of different references. Obviously, this word comes up a lot in this passage, but it's interesting because it really highlighted for me the thought, the overview of this text. This text is trying to zoom us out and say, hey, there's two main characters here. We've got the one with a capital O, that's that's God, that's Jesus, and then we've got the evil one with the little o, okay? So you've got these two main characters. And really, I think John is trying to, in his concluding thoughts, remind us that life is a battle, and not only that, life is a battle, and there is no middle ground in this battle. I don't know if you noticed, but it didn't say, hey, there's the true one, the evil one, and the ones who aren't decided. Like that, that isn't an option, right? There's the true one and the evil one, and it says that the world is held under the sway of the evil one. Look at verse 19 with me again. He says that we know that we are of God. Okay, so John's writing to a bunch of his Christians, brothers and sisters, people who have put their faith in Jesus Christ. And he says, We and we know that we are of the we are of God, and the whole world is under the sway of the evil one. It was interesting. I was reading a theologian, John Stott, his view of this text, and his words were very strong. I want to read them for you. Uh he said, the picture of the world here is one where they're not fighting against the evil that holds them, but rather he says that what they're doing is they're unconsciously asleep in the embrace of Satan. Isn't that like strong language? Like it's a really strong imagery in my head. But that's what what John's trying to say. They're held in the sway of the evil one. So John's trying to zoom us out and say, hey guys, there's a lot more going on in your life than what you just see. It's not just about you and your dreams, your troubles, your the drama going on in your life. You need to zoom out and see that there is a battle going on. There is a good force, there is an evil force, and you have a part to play in this. Now it's the other thing that's interesting is that John doesn't just give us the you know this this big picture, he also reminds us of who the hero of this story is. And that hero is Jesus. Look at verse 18 with me. Verse 18 says this we know that everyone who has been born of God does not sin. Now, again, I I want to be honest with you guys this morning. I typically would read a verse or a verse like this, and I just have this ability to stop there, to read this verse and be like, okay, everybody born of God does not sin. Okay. I'm born of God in that I would call myself a Christian, so that means I'm not meant to sin, right? So I read that text and the application, I jump straight to it. But that's not where the sentence ends. Let's read it together. It says, We know that everyone who has been born of God does not sin, but the one, that is Jesus, who has been born of God. So, but Jesus, who is born of God, keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. The hero in this verse is not you or me. It's not our ability to stop ourselves from sinning, it's Jesus. Jesus is the one that says, who keeps us and stops the evil one from touching us. He is the hero in this verse. And as I was thinking about this this week, I was reminded that in the last couple of years, God's been really been doing some work in my heart and reminding me and showing me that I'm not the hero of my story. The hero of the story is Jesus. And the problem is that I grew up, I grew up as in a Christian home, and I'm grateful for that. But the problem is I grew up always applying myself into the story. I'm gonna give you a couple of really quick examples this morning. I think this is important to cover, so just bear with me. Let me give you a first example. Let's talk about Noah. Everybody, I mean, most people grew up hearing the story of Noah, right? So Noah, he comes and uh he's a guy that God comes to and says, Hey Noah, everybody around you is just so bad, and you're a good guy. Um what I want to do is I want to send a flood to destroy the world, but I'm gonna use you and your family to start over. I need you to build me an ark, and uh that's how it's gonna play out. So Noah listens to God, he obeys God amidst the adversity, okay? So this guy has to build this ark, and it takes him a big chunk of his life to literally build this ark. I mean, and and his neighbors, everybody around him would have thought he was crazy. He's building this boat, he builds the boat finally, gets inside the ark, and this huge flood comes, destroys everything and everyone, but he and his family are saved, and they start over afresh with Noah, right? That's the story of Noah. And I grew up hearing this story. I mean, I can't remember a time I didn't know the story of Noah. I grew up hearing this story, and I guess just in my personality, I naturally read a story like that, and I'm like, okay, what's the application? What does this mean for me? Like, that's I'm like one of those bottom line type people, right? And I'm like, what's the bottom line? And so I would read a story like this, and my belief was, okay, I need to be like Noah, I need to be righteous, I need to listen to God, and when he gives me direction, I need to follow it and be faithful, even in the midst of perseverance, so that God will bless me and keep me safe in the midst of a flood. That would be my application. But that thinking has really been challenged in the last few years of me because I'm I'm reminded, I've been reminded that the hero of the story isn't me. The hero of the story is Jesus, and the story of Noah is actually about Jesus. Actually, the whole Bible is about Jesus. And if you want to apply the stor Jesus to the story of Noah, you can see that Noah was a foreshadowing of Jesus. He was just the shadow of who Jesus was going to be. Jesus came, and in the midst of adversity, he listened to his father, he obeyed God amongst persecution, and came against, and he saved us from the flood of death, from the flood of sin that was coming to destroy us. And the story of Noah, I mean, there's tons of symbolism. We're not going to get into all of it today, but the story of Noah was just foreshadowing Jesus. It wasn't foreshadowing me, it was foreshadowing him. Here's the answer, here's the life. Does that make sense? So, another another quick example, the story of David and Goliath. I mean, I grew up hearing that one too. As some of you did too, I'm sure. You hear that story, you hear this story of this little boy. I mean, there's songs about it. My son Trafford, he loves this story, right? There's this guy, David, he comes down to see his brothers who are in the army. He's too young to fight himself. He comes down to bring them some food, and he sees this giant, Goliath, coming out and saying, Who's gonna fight me? He says, You know, I'm gonna fight on behalf of our army, you send somebody to fight on behalf of your f your army, and they see he just starts profaning God's name, right? And uh David's like, Okay, so who's fighting this guy? And everybody's like, uh, nobody. He's a giant and he's got thick armor and he's a seasoned warrior, and you know, we're not gonna fight him. And so David says, Well, I'm gonna fight him because he's profaning God's name. I mean, this isn't okay. And so what he does is he goes down, gets a few stones from a creek, he runs up towards the giant, and the giant literally starts laughing at him. Like, that's how ridiculous it is. He throws a stone up, the stone hits the giant in the head, David runs up to him as the giant falls over and takes the giant sword, cuts off his head, because David didn't even have a sword. I mean, it's ridiculous odds, right? And you grow up hearing this story as I did, and I'm like, okay, I need to be like David, I need to be courageous, I need to fight the giants in my life of, you know, hardship or difficulty or depression or whatever you want to insert there. And you insert yourself into the story. This is what I have a tendency to do. But what I've been challenged to believe and to know is this story again isn't about me, it's about the hero Jesus. David was foreshadowing a more perfect king. David was a king, a more perfect was gonna king was going to come and fight on behalf of his people against the giant, the biggest giant that we've ever known, death and sin. And he came and against the odds was victorious against that giant on our behalf. The story of David and Goliath is about Jesus, as is any other story that you want to point out. In the Bible. And so as my my thinking's been challenged on this, and as I've been reminded of that, I got to reading verse 18, and I'm like, again, here's my problem. I'm like, those who are born of God should not sin. And I'm like, okay, I shouldn't sin. But it goes on and says, talks about Jesus. We know that everyone who has been born of God does not sin, but the one, that is Jesus, who has been born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. So the truth here is just this Jesus is the hero. Jesus is the answer. Jesus is the life. Now some of you are probably sitting there today and you're like, okay, cool. I get this, Holly. Like you're telling me I need to zoom out and see life on a bigger scale. I need to see that there's a battle of good and evil. I need to see that there's a hero, Jesus. But what does that have to do with my marriage issues? What does that have to do with the fact that my finances are going backwards? I'm in debt? What does that have to do with the family member that I'm estranged from? We've got broken relationships. What about my addiction, my depression, my spiritual apathy? What does that have to do with any of this? And that's a good question to ask, because we all have struggles, we all have things that we battle against. And as I was looking at this text, as I was praying this week, I really was led to the thought that knowing that Jesus is the hero brings this beautiful thing that we call perspective. If you can have the perspective to see and to know, if you can have the perspective to zoom out and see that there's more to life than just the drama going on in your marriage, if you can zoom out and see that Jesus holds the answer to those things today, I really believe that there's going to be freedom and liberty that comes in your life. Let's look at verse 20 again. Verse 20 says this, and we know that the Son of God, that's Jesus, has come and has given us understanding so that we may know the true one. We are in the true one, that is, in his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. There's two key words in that, in that scripture, understanding and knowing. God gives us this perspective. God's the one who brings this perspective or can bring this perspective in our lives. To see and to understand that Jesus contains the answers to our struggles, to our problems. I could go around the room here this morning, not going to do it, but I could go around the room here this morning, and I believe that there's people in this room who could tell you about the ways that the gospel, the good news, what Jesus has done, has fixed addiction, has fixed marriages, has fixed finances, or struggles with just all of those issues, fixed relationships, all of these things, because that's what Jesus is. He is the hero. It's not us. It's not on us to be our own heroes. As I was thinking about these words, understanding and knowing and the perspective that comes with those things, I was I was reminded of a scripture I grew up hearing. It was actually a chorus we used to sing around this uh scripture. It's Psalms 46, 10. It says this Be still and know that I am God. It's God speaking. Be still and know that I am God. And I think what what the author of that was saying is, hey, we we'll get perspective when we're still and we know that God is God. We're not our own savior, we're not our own hero. As I was looking at that text, I actually went to read it in the translation I've been using lately, the Holman, and I actually like the translation a little bit better. It said, Stop your fighting and know that I am God. And as I was reading that, I was I got this picture in my head of my toddlers. We have three kids. We have a three and a half-year-old and two one and a half-year-olds. We've got twin girls. And you know, sometimes they fight us when we're trying to help them. I don't know if you guys have ever experienced this. It's not a really fun deal. I can kind of laugh about it this morning, but when it's happening, it's not cool. Uh so for example, last night we gave our girls re-fried beans for the first time ever. Wasn't a really great idea, I'll I'll be honest. They liked them. We didn't like the mess that it made, okay? So the girls have got like re-fried beans everywhere, like literally everywhere. And it's just such a mess. We're trying to clean them up. Liz, my wife, and I trying to clean the girls up, and we get my daughter over to the uh count over to the counter, and we're trying to like take her clothes off and get her washed off, and she starts fighting us. I don't know if you guys have ever experienced this, but it's like this, whoo, you know, and you're like, I'm helping you. Don't you know that? And that's the picture that I get when I think of this. Some of us are so wrapped up in our being our own heroes that we're fighting against God. We don't realize that He's trying to help us, He's trying to wake us up, He's trying to say, Hey, be still, stop your fighting and know that I am God. Have a right perspective. Let yourself zoom out and see that there's more to life than just your little world and your little problems. Have this right perspective. This week I was thinking about what is it that that stops me from having this right view? What is it that stops me from waking up in the morning and being like, oh, you know, this world is about God and there's a force of good and evil, and Jesus is the hero and he has victory in every area? Why don't I wake up in the morning and think that every day? Or throughout my the middle of my day, why aren't I remembering that? What is it that stops me from being in that head space? And pretty quickly, as I was trying to be honest with myself as I was thinking through that, I was actually driving, I came to the conclusion that it's my idolatry. It's my ability to take the things that God has blessed me with: my marriage, my children, my health, my hobbies, uh my house, you know, whatever else. I mean, you can fill in the blank. But the things that He's blessed me with and make them the most important thing in my life. As soon as I do that, perspective, this understanding that, you know, I'm in this grand battle and that Jesus is the victor, that goes out the window. It's gone. That thinking is destroyed. And as I go, as I was thinking about my idolatry and my ability to put those things into the most important place where they don't belong, to take God's place, verse 21 of this scripture made so much more sense. I don't know about you guys, but I've read through this passage a number of times. I've read the book of John before, and always when I read it, I get to that verse 21, the last verse, and I'm like, that is so random. Because you're reading along, you know, he's he's very eloquently talking about the the world and how there's a force of good and evil, and then all of a sudden it says, Little children, guide yourselves from idols. That's that's the end. He's like, guide yourselves from idols. And I've always thought that was a little bit abrupt. But as I was thinking about it this week, I'm like, that makes sense. I get it. He's trying to give us perspective, but the thing that destroys our perspective faster than anything else is it when we idolize the things that he's blessed us with. When we put when we abandon the real for the fake. So we come to the end of the book of John, and I believe today that we should be encouraged. I know that sometimes we have an ability to come into church and you hear a truth or some truth from God's work and you're like word and you're like, oh man, I don't live like that, or I need to think like that, or I need to get things organized or straightened out, and you can kind of feel beat down by it. But this word this morning is encouraging. I really do believe that because it's telling us that there is a God, that he loves us, and he wants us to be his children. It's not like he just puts up with us, oh yeah, you can tag along. No, we're actually his children. And not only that, he's ready and willing to fight for us. Remember verse 18? It tells us that he keeps us and doesn't let the evil one touch us. This is good news. This is encouraging. So specifically, whether you're a Christ follower or not today, and you're sitting in this room, if you would call yourself a Christian or you're just somebody exploring faith, maybe, either way, my prayer is that you would know today that life is not about you. But it's about Jesus. He's the true one. Because I believe that when you see that today, there's going to be a huge weight that rolls off your shoulders. Because it's hard to be your own hero, it's hard to be your own savior. That's a lot of weight on your shoulders. And today, my prayer is that all of us across this room today would have a fresh perspective, that God would give us a perspective to see. Hey, I'm not the hero in my life. Jesus is the one who has come to save and to be the hero in my life. If you're not a Christ follower, I've got two challenges. If you're not a Christ follower, as in you wouldn't call yourself a Christian, I'm really glad that you're here with us this morning. I mean, it's it's great that you're here exploring faith and just being a part of this conversation. So thank you for being here. But I want to ask you, I want to challenge you and say, are you willing today to stop fighting, to stop that kicking against, to be still and to know that God is God. To allow Him to help you to have that view. If you have questions about, you know, who God is, who Jesus is, that's a great thing. I'd love to talk to you about that some more. Nick would love to, our elders would love to talk to you about that. The person who brought you. It'd be a good conversation to have. It's good to ask questions. This is the most important area of your life to get sorted out. So if you don't know where you are spiritually, think about that this morning. And my challenge for you is, yeah, would you be willing to stop fighting and let God be the Lord of your life? If you are a Christ follower, my challenge to you is to ask this question: Where do you need to allow Jesus to have victory in your life today? Where do you need to allow Him to be your Savior today? Because all of us have a tendency, all of us have an ability to try in certain areas of our lives to be our own saviors, to fix our own problems. And yet we're told so clearly in this text that Jesus is the one who comes and saves. He has the answers. And so today I'm just going to challenge you as we go into this next song in a few moments here to just sit there, maybe. Um, I mean, you can stand, sit, get on your knees, whatever you need to do, but just say, hey, God, I'm sorry that I'm trying to be my own Savior in this area. Maybe in your marriage, maybe in your finances, maybe in, I don't know, fill in the blank, an addiction, whatever. But say, I need Jesus to have victory in this area of my life today. Would you help me? Would you show me how the gospel applies to this part of my life? The good news of who Jesus is and how he's come to rescue me. That's my challenge for you today. And and I just pray, like I said earlier, that we would all walk out of here with a fresh perspective, being reminded that life is not about us, it's about God, and it's about Jesus and what he can and has done for us. Let me pray for us.