What is "Woke" and Does it Work? Confounding the Woke Mindset | June 28th 26 | Pastor Gary Georgeson

Thank you. Thank you so much. This is a particular

joy for me to come and share with you this morning.

I always love to bring the word to my wonderful

church family. But this particular topic is actually near and

dear to me. Back in January of this year, beginning

of the year, the new word for me was partnership.

The Lord gives me a word every year that I

walk out. And then as part of that, he said,

I want you to begin to really pray for those

people in your life and those that you know, family, friends,

who are woke. I want you to pray for them.

And so I've been doing that ever since. And then

when Pastor Dwayne gave me the opportunity, I was like, wow,

now I know why the Lord wanted me to pray,

because he wanted to prepare my heart. You know, I

can't tell you how much I love my woke friends

and family. And I feel like this is for all

of us, for God's instruction today, I get my inner

nerd activated as well as at the same time, you're

going to get a lot of data thrown at you.

But on the other hand, I feel like it is

a love letter from the Father to those who are woke,

particularly his own children, I think we should pray now. Father,

in Jesus' name, I ask that you would come and

you would speak to us, that you would not allow

us to have any walls to what you want to

say to us. For those of us, whether we're woke

or not here this morning or online, that we would

be willing to hear what you might have to say.

Bless the giving of the word, Father, in Jesus' name. Amen. Now,

we live in a world today that has clashes constantly

between worldviews, between ideologies, right? A bill recently passed by

New York State was a bill that changed all the

official documents and took out the words mother and father

and replaced them with gestating and non-gestating parents. That's right.

Right now, also, many of you know that the US

Congress is currently involved in a fierce debate regarding bans

on gender transition for children. So these are the kind

of things that you can look on the news every

day and you're going to pick up something else regarding

this world view and other world views that are happening.

We're going to talk about woke this morning, and woke,

or sometimes people talk about wokeism, and what it is,

it's part of the series of messages. I'm going to

give you more of a global picture. I'm not going

to dive into any particular element of it, but I'm

going to give you a wide picture. And my title

of my sermon this morning is, What is Woke and

Does It Work?, And maybe you're here thinking, well, I'm

not quite sure what woke is. This is for you.

If you're here and you're sure what woke is, it's

for you. Whether or not you're woke or not, this

is for you. This is for every one of us

because I believe God has something for all of us

to learn this morning. So what is woke? Here's a

definition I found online that I think is pretty appropriate,

and we'll start there. Woke is a modern social and

political worldview or ideology that views society through identity groups

and power dynamics and sees systematic oppression as the root

to virtually all inequalities. And, of course, it asserts that

one of the most important truths or all the important

truths about society can be found in group identities. And

so whether it's race or gender or sexuality or sexuality.

Woke originally meant being alerts to social injustice back decades ago,

especially racism, but then it's broadened and deepened in the

last decade or so. Over time now, it addresses systematic injustice,

identity-based inequality, and see it as a moral duty to

correct injustices. Okay? Okay? So we're challenging different norms like gender, sexuality, family,

and identity. Those are being challenged by wokeism. And reevaluating,

of course, historical narratives like slavery, patriarchy, colonialism. So those

are going on right now as part of the woke vision.

Wokeism is highly organized and it's very well-funded. And they're

serious about this. And they're aiming for cultural, institutional, and

political change. And so they're doing that through laws, through education,

entertainment industry, through news media, and, of course, social media

of absolutely every kind. Now, this worldview or identity, ideology,

is held by many people. And pretty much any age

group or educational level, places of power and so forth,

it's strongly held here in the United States and, of course,

many parts of the world, the Western world, and certainly

here in Western Washington. We are particularly strong in that

woke ideology. And for some, to be honest, it is

a secular religion. It is... It's something that influences people

as much as any religion might influence them. You and

I have friends, we have family members, we have co-workers, bosses,

who consider themselves woke or have some level of woke views.

And you may consider yourself woke today and not hold

all the views of wokeism, and that's certainly possible. But

I'm glad you're here, no matter who you are or listening,

watching online. Again, please listen with an open heart and mind.

Colossians 2.8 is the center word for this morning. Here's

what it says. See to it that no one takes

you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on

human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world

rather than Christ. The Apostle Paul here is warning Christians

in particular to not be led away from Jesus. We

sang this morning about, we sang only Jesus, all about Jesus.

And Paul's saying that here when it comes to what

you believe, what you put your trust in in terms

of philosophy, ideology. Two sources of truth. Human tradition is

compared to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, whose revelation

and foundation is truth. Hollow and deceptive philosophy. Paul is

talking about teachings that are empty. They look full, but

they're empty. And they mislead people away from Jesus Christ.

Human tradition. It's the action and belief that people can

change the world. That we have the power and ability

in and of ourselves to change the world and without

God or his word. Elemental spiritual forces of this world,

these are the systems, the ideologies that have spiritual forces

behind them. Believe me, they do. Every ideology, every worldview

has spiritual forces working behind them. And either they are

good or they're bad. Apostle Paul says, what is good

is Jesus. So we ought to be careful about what

ideologies we pick up along the way in our lives.

Some we do consciously, some we do unconsciously. Some we

do because culture teaches us that and we pick them up.

There's a lot of different ways to do that, right?

But we need to be careful because we can be

taken captive, Paul says. We can be trapped, we can

be stopped, and we can be led astray by them.

So this week I woke up in the middle of

the night and the Lord often does, wakes me up and,

and downloads something to me. And I woke up in

the middle of the night and, uh, immediately the memory

came to me of something in my childhood when I

was a young, a young teen, uh, an event that

happened in my family. And I'm going to share that. Um, and, uh, the,

it's a story that I call, uh, the mouse in

the tuba. And, uh, You'll see in a moment why

I call it that, but that was going to be

my original title, but my wife Lori said, no, no

one will know what that means. So stick with the

woke title. So I did that, and I think that

was wisdom. But I had a little white mouse. I

had lots of different animals when I was growing up,

pets and stuff, but I had this particular white mouse

that I would take out and out of the little

cage and play with and everything else I had a

friend of mine who was over and you know we

were two teens that had nothing to do we were

just like had no time to spend yeah alright and

you know that's a danger that's danger time and we're

just like sitting about playing with the mouse and he's

crawling up inside your shirt and we just had a

great time And one of us had this idea, and

the guilty party, who it actually was, is lost to history,

and maybe I blocked it out. But I was still

responsible because it was my mouse, it was my room

we were hanging out in, and it was my brother's

brand new tuba. And one of us had the idea,

let's put the mouse in the tuba and see what

he does. This, again, brand new E-flat-based tuba. And it

seemed like a good idea at the time, right? And

in retrospect, I understand it wasn't so smart. I wasn't

thinking ahead. But we did. We took the mouse, took

him over, and we put him on the edge of

the tuba, a nice big opening. And he started crawling in.

This was very inviting to him. It's darker. The more

he went in, the darker it got. Mice like little

dark holes to crawl in, right? So, you know, unfamiliar with,

you know, tuba geometry and mouthpiece size, it didn't apparently

occur to this mouse that he was going in a

dangerous direction. A dead-end path, if you will, because the

mouthpiece is smaller than the mouse. And so you get it.

He kept going and going. He liked it so much,

it was so attractive to him that he kept going

until he got wedged in the tuba, towards the end

of the tuba, towards the mouthpiece. He was probably looking out,

seeing the end of the tunnel, but not being able

to get there. we knew that he was stuck when

we tried to blow into the tuba and we could

get no air into it. And so we started shaking it,

turning it, kind of bouncing it, trying to get him out.

And everything we tried, nothing happened. We could not get

him out of that tuba. This mouse was truly stuck. Now,

this picture right here I want to give you is

a picture that I think God wants to give you

of what happens when we begin to follow the wrong ideology. OK?

I'm going to tell you the end of the story

at the end. So if you're irritated with me in

the beginning, you'll probably still stick around to hear, because

you want to hear the end of the mouse and

the tuba story. But Colossians 2.8 says, be careful not

to get captive, right? Proverbs 14, 12 hits us even harder.

There is a way that appears to be right, but

the end leads to death. Now, you can apply this

verse to a mouse in a tuba, right? Or you

can apply it to you. God is applying it to

each one of us. He's saying, he's giving us a

warning here. There is a way, it appears right, it

appears good, but it leads to death. So about woke,

does it work? I have five key questions. They're both

biblical questions and logical questions. They're kind of Charlie Kirk

style questions. but they're the ones that I believe the

Lord has given me to share with you. And there

are ways to evaluate any ideology, but we're going to

evaluate wokeism. Okay? Can you put up the chart? The

five criteria for evaluating social ideology. Here they are. The

view of human nature. Real world outcomes. The openness to

debate and correction. View of the individual and relationship to truth.

We're going to apply those criteria with questions, each one

of those, to wokeism. First, the view of human nature.

The question, does this ideology have a realistic understanding of

human nature? The woke view of the world, in that view,

people are basically good. Well, in particular, people who are

on the fringes, people who are vulnerable, people who are poor,

people who are not in the center of power, people

who are victims of victimizers. Those people are morally good. Now,

the victimizers are not. The oppressors are not. They're the

evil ones. But everybody else... is morally good. If you're

poor or underprivileged or an immigrant or an ethnic person,

you know, in woke's view, you are good. And pretty

much most anything you do is okay. Bible's pretty clear.

Jeremiah 17, 9. The heart is deceitful above all things

and beyond cure. Who can understand it? We are all sinners.

None of us are good. There's not a good person

in this room or online right now without the goodness

being imputed to us by Jesus Christ. Mark 7, 21

to 23. For it is from within and out of

a person's heart that evil thoughts come. It's from within.

And he mentions all these different things there. You can

read it. All these evils, verse 23, come from inside

and defile a person. There it is. That is biblical ideology.

That is biblical theology right there. See, wokeism misdiagnoses the

root human problem and replaces sin with social oppression. Social

oppression is really the only bad sin. You can go

and do anything else. You can live your lifestyle any

way you want. You can treat people any way you

want as long as you don't socially oppress. That is true.

So sin becomes privilege. It becomes bias. It becomes inequity.

It becomes power imbalance in the woke ideology. But the

Bible teaches that sin is rebellion against God. That's what

it is. It's universal. It's personal. It's moral. It's social.

It's not sociological. Now, systems can be unjust, but they're

unjust because people are unjust. So after this first question

in regards to the woke's view of human nature, I

don't give them a very good big grade. I wouldn't

give it. You can decide. Let's go to number two,

real-world outcomes. The key question here is, does this ideology

produce good outcomes when it is applied, especially for the vulnerable?

A good sociological ideology would have good outcomes when applied,

and it'd be especially helpful for the vulnerable, the ones

that are trying to help. Intentions are not good enough.

And I assume, you know, I've learned to assume, I

believe it's the Lord's heart that we assume good intentions

of people. Right? Because we don't know their hearts. God does.

And so I go in assuming good intentions for woke ideology.

Good intentions for people who have them. Okay? I assume that.

But outcomes are the real test. Does ideology, does it

produce justice and peace and flourishing or something else? This

is what the Bible calls fruit. Right? The Bible calls fruit.

Is fruit consistent with goodness and righteousness? James 3, 17

and 18. The wisdom that comes from heaven is, first

of all, pure and peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy

and good fruit. impartial, and sincere. In Matthew 7, 16,

by their fruit, you will recognize them. Do people pick

grapes from thorn bushes or figs or from thistles? By

their fruit. And so this is a great number two

question here. It's a great one. And so woke ideology

gets something right, something very right. That is deeply biblical,

Isaiah 117. Learn to do right. Seek justice. Defend the oppressed.

Take up the cause of the fatherless. Plead the case

of the widow. That is the right intention. That is justice.

is right from the Lord's heart. It's in God's word.

Micah 6.8. He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.

And what does the Lord require of you? To act

justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with

your God. This is right. This is to do right.

This is right. We know that. And social injustice is

not right. But it is the method you use to

attain a goal. It's not just having a particular goal

that happens to be good. And that is the critical thing.

Good intentions do not prevent bad results. Now, you might

be surprised about, you know, if you take the good

intentions of people who are woke, I found something very surprising.

It turns out, and studies have shown this very clearly,

it turns out that a woke person's on average, I'm

not saying you or somebody you know, but on average,

a woke person is less charitable, they give less, they

volunteer less, they help the poor less than and they

are less civically engaged other than online activism than the

average person in America. So intentions alone aren't enough. Actions.

So if we look at the actual behavior, does the

ideology produce good fruit, good outcomes in life? Next chart.

And now when I looked at this chart, this is

the first half of two parts, I was surprised at

how many key, not just minor, but key woke policies

produce outcomes that have harmed many, many people. And maybe

you just don't hear that in the news or you

don't see a lot, but you can read it for yourself.

Transgender policy in women's sports, we know how that has

hurt women, girls. Youth gender transitions, we know how many now,

it's how much is coming out of the hurt that's happened.

It's just heartbreaking. Immigration and border policy, we know how

much that's hurt our nation in the terms of... All

the killings that have happened and all the crime that's

happened and allowing groups in that have done... I could

go on. I won't. Woke education and campus speech. This

has affected academia. It's affected universities. It's affected our elementary schools.

I mean, this... They've hurt the youth and children. And

then part two... anti-Semitism on campus, victim of pressure framework,

you can read it, progressive economic policies, defunding or restricting

the police. These have hurt the people that they've wanted

to help the most. The people in big cities, the

people that are struggling with poverty, the people that need

police in their neighborhoods. DEI programs, those have mostly generally

failed in business. Mental health impacts on youth. There's higher anxiety,

identity confusion, fragility. It used to be that youth grew

up kind of tough. Today, we are training our children

to be weak because we're making sure that nobody says

anything bad to them making sure that they're safe in

every possible way. And then, of course, culture and national identity,

how that's divided us. This is sad. This is heartbreaking.

I know this wasn't intended, but look how much damage.

But what saddens me the most, what saddens me the

most is that those who have been harmed the most,

the group of people who have been harmed the most

Next chart. These are the people who are the focus

of woke ideology to help. These are the ones they say,

these are the most important people and we want to

help them. Their intention is to help these people. These

are the people who have been harmed the most. Children, youth, women,

the poor, ethnic minorities, immigrants with conservative values, and students

in vulnerable environments. These are the ones that hurt the most,

the one they want to help the most. So when

you're doing something that your intention is to do it

and to help these people, and you're putting your heart

and soul into that, and instead those same people are

hurt the most, something's wrong. Something's desperately wrong. So I

wouldn't give them a very high score and good outcomes. Okay,

third question has to do with openness to debate and correction.

The key question is, can this ideology be questioned, debated,

or corrected? Healthy ideologies welcome scrutiny. Unhealthy ones suppress disagreement

and alternative views. Woke ideology supports things like speech codes,

It encourages and been the prime mover behind cancel culture.

Dissent has been punished. If you speak out at your

job in the past, now the administration has changed that,

but not long ago, you speak out at your job,

you'd be let go. If there's against in any way,

the DEI or against, believe me, and we all know that,

I won't spend a lot, but I'll go on. Universities

have been narrowed down and dumbed down because of limiting

what can be taught, what can be studied, what the

science is actually. Believe me, real science has been squished

into one corner so that the full science has been

pushed down. Okay, I don't have to go much further

than that. Silence about unfairness. So if you're silent about unfairness,

you're considered complicit in social injustice. Okay, it goes that far.

And if you're neutral, you're siding with the oppressor. So

I would say the dissent, debate, and correction is not

very good. Proverbs 27, 17, iron sharpens iron, so one

person sharpens another. We hold each other accountable, right? And

that's how we help each other grow. Proverbs 10, 17,

whoever heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever

ignores correction leads others astray down the tuba. Proverbs 8.2,

I added that. That's not God's word. Proverbs 18.2, a

fool has no delight in understanding. They only want to

express their own opinions. See, the wise ideology seeks the truth.

welcomes correction, values honest debate. You know, Charlie Kirk debate,

values those kind of things. A foolish ideology rejects correction,

trusts only in its opinion, is unteachable, and leads blind

people towards destruction or the small end of the tuba.

An ideology that does these things undermines itself and its followers.

So I would give that a low score. Openness to debate. Okay,

number four, a view of the individual. Does the ideology

treat people as individuals or reduce them to groups? Major

dividing line between healthy and unhealthy worldviews. The ones that

put them in groups. You could add Marxism, fascism, racial supremacy.

Those put people in groups. Those are not healthy ideologies.

Not ones you want to follow. The biblical standard says

We're all in God's image, Genesis 127. So God created

humankind in his own image. In the image of God,

he created them. Male and female, he created them. We're

all created equal. God shows no favoritism. Each person is

accountable for their own sin, Romans 14, 12. So then,

each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.

That means God sees you as a unique moral agent

with personal responsibility and dignity. Each one of you. Nobody

gets off the hook in this thing. Woke world view

has no place for the individual this came out of

roots with critical theory and critical race theory where they

put everything in groups based on race class gender and

so forth group based moral judgment it leads to injustice

it leads to resentment and division And so what happens

is you get oppressor versus oppressed, victim versus victimizer, race

versus race, class versus class, identity versus identity. And it

inevitably produces resentment, polarization, tribalism, breakdown of society. So I

don't think that one does it very well either. Number five.

This has to do with relationship to the truth. The

key question is does this ideology align with objective truth

or does it redefine truth based on its ideology? Or

I would add emotions or feelings. The biblical standard of

walking in truth is that's the mark of genuine faith, right?

3 John 4, John says, I have no greater joy

to hear my children are walking in the truth. And

that is God speaking through him. I want my children

to walk in the truth. And this is truth that

not just believe, but I want to walk them out.

I want them to live the truth. So we're talking

about living the truth here, not only believing it. Ephesians 4, 25,

and he's speaking to believers here, Paul is. Therefore, each

one of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully

to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.

So this is about walking in truth, living in truth,

speaking the truth, even when it's hard. Even when it's hard.

This is so critical. We need that. And so we

don't want truth to be determined by emotion or the

majority opinion or political pressure. But we want to ask,

does the ideology follow the facts? Or does it redefine

the truth based on feelings? Does it acknowledge objective, moral,

and scientific realities? Any ideology that rejects truth will eventually

harm people and harm the people you're trying to help. Postmodern,

we're in postmodern world now and woke ideology is rooted

in that. It denies objective truth and a universal morality.

It denies those things and says truth is socially constructed

and shaped by power. And different for each identity group too,

by the way. So truth is subjective and identity-based, and

that leads to the kind of things we've talked about here,

including speech codes and emotional reasoning and fragility for those

who are emotionally overprotected. Proverbs 27.6 says, Wounds from a

friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses. You know,

that's wounds from a friend. I mean, this is to

speak up. is a loving thing to do. And to

be able to receive what somebody is saying that you

don't agree with or don't feel good about, but to

receive that and to listen. I always say that all

feedback's a gift. Because it is. Even if it's harsh,

at least now you know how that person feels and

you can dialogue about it. So wokeism is like a

very compassionate physician who misdiagnoses the disease, gets out the treatment,

and applies it to the patient, and then kills the patient.

Woke I... A wokeism is like a very compassionate physician, right,

who missed this diagnosis of the disease. So it gets

the disease wrong, right? And then gives a cure to

the patient and it kills them because he got the

diagnosis wrong. That's what's happening here. Whereas the biblical worldview

gives a true diagnosis, true identity for us, and true

justice is spoken and given to us impartial, righteous, and

based on what God has spoken. Amen? All right. So

number five, wokeism didn't do that well either, right? Okay.

To help make things clearer for us, I put on my, again,

I let my nerd side out a little bit. And

I said, okay, I'm going to score these. I'm going

to give a numerical score. And I like that score

to be between one and five. I'm going to score

each of those five. And I can use this to

score other ideologies as well. And so that's what I did.

But I went to my AI co-pilot. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Well,

I knew that co-pilot would at least be not as

biased as I would be towards Christianity. So I said, okay,

I asked to be completely unbiased and based just on

that information alone of the five and the results that

were all gathered, again, from information that was available to me.

And so... Human nature, outcomes, descent, individuals, and the truth.

All those things. Scale from 1 to 5. And so

you could get up a score up to 25 if

they all got 5, right? And down to 5 if

they all just got 1. So here are the results.

Woke ideology. Here are the results. This is totally objective.

This is not... My co-pilot AI is not a Christian.

And these are the scores, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2.

And I thought, well, that's about what I would have

scored it. But this makes it a little more objective. Ultimately,

anything under 10, according to AI, is a high risk

of harmful outcomes. Under five, it's like this ideology is dangerous.

Run from it. I mean, really. So does woke work?

You can judge for yourself. So let's compare that to,

I ran the biblical worldview through it as well. Again, unbiased.

I just gave them what the Bible said. I gave

them the verses. I said, here, tell me what you

think about this ideology. The scores for ideology, the scores

for biblical worldview. 25 out of 25. Do you believe that?

You know, God's pretty smart, and he knows what he's doing.

You know, his word is absolutely amazing. It is powerful.

It is supernatural. It is truth. It is perfect truth.

And it is his gift to us. When this result

came out, it just blew my mind just how amazing. Now, yeah,

so you run through another AI and you would have

got 24 maybe. Who knows? I don't know. But the

high score here, it just speaks to the blessing that

you and I have been given in the word of God.

An amazing and beautiful gift. And so, again, my inner nerd,

even though I wasn't talking on this, I looked at socialism.

10 out of 25. I looked at communism. 5 out

of 25. If you have any ideologies you want to evaluate,

let me know and I'll run it through. But you

get the point. Nothing compares to what we believe and

what we live. Nothing compares. Not even close. One more

question I have. What about those who are woke? How

does having wokeism help you? Does woke work for the woke?

I'm going to summarize what George Barna, Pew Research, Harvard University,

Duke University, Gallup, all these other evaluators did for both

woke and Christianity. I asked them to do it for both.

And to give me the results compared to the general population,

the well-being of people who hold to these ideals. And

I understand there's some overlap. I don't think there should be,

but there's overlap. There are... Christians, many Christians who are woke.

I understand that. I just divided those two. You can

kind of average if you want. Impact of worldview on

well-being chart. If you are woke, on average, every individual

is different, but on average, you are more depressed, you

have more anxiety, more loneliness, less life satisfaction, and and

greater suicide risk relative to the average person in America.

If you're a devoted Christian, you can see how amazing,

blessed we are. You can see it right there. For

the sake of time, I'm going to move quickly. I

will say this. One of my closest friends, many of

my closest friends who are woke, And whom I love deeply,

I see these things. I see anxiety. I see stress.

I see things in them that frustration. I see anger.

Several of them, many of the ones that I know

and I love very much, they're online all the time.

And angry statements against people they see as oppressors. Angry

statements against Christians. They're stuck. They're stuck near the end

of the tuba So when it comes to bitterness, the

Bible talks about that. I don't know if I'm going

to jump through. I won't use the scripture there. But

we do know in Matthew 18, Jesus talks about the

unforgiving servant and how he's given over to the torturers.

And I think there's a spiritual element that tortures people

who are bitter, unforgiving, and judgmental. And if you've got bitterness, unforgiveness,

or judgmentalness in you, get it out. Impact of world... Okay,

generosity and civic engagement. I already talked about how if

you're woke, you're much less likely to be generous and giving,

so we'll pass that chart up. Other outcomes you can see. Longevity,

hope for the future, community strength, isolation, divorce rates, marital satisfaction.

They're all worse than the average... the average person in America.

And you can see how much further blessed we are

with these. Yeah, look at that, right? Look at that.

So we began with Colossians 2.8. I'll come back to it.

See to it. No one takes you captive to a

hollow deception philosophy which depends on human tradition, the elemental spirits,

spiritual forces of this world rather than Christ. See to it.

finished the mouse tuba story after all attempts to unlock

and set free our entrenched mouse. And we had no

good idea at how long that mouse in the tuba

would last. But we knew at some point we had

to go talk to our dad and fess up in

what we did. And so we did do that. And

we went to our father. There's a prophetic message there.

And said, help us. Help us, dad. Our mouse is stuck.

And so he got us in the car, got the

tuba and the mouse in the car, and we drove

to the gas station. And he went over to the

refill hose, the air hose. And he put it in

the mouth of the tuba and boom. The mouse was freed.

He wasn't out yet, but he was freed. And dad

could blow into the tuba. And oh, OK, we got

some freedom here. But it still took shaking. OK, this

is also prophetic, by the way. Shaking and turning and

knocking it down on the ground. Clank, clank, clank to

get him knocked around. And unfortunately, my brother John, his

brand new tuba was dented up. And so there are

costs to pay. But he got that mouse out. That

little mouse came out. He had lost an eye. Probably

the air, who knows? Or being jostled, I don't know.

But he lost an eye. But other than that, he

was perfectly fine. And he lived many years longer. End

of the story. Please all stand. Wow. Wow. Thank you

for listening this morning. You know, if you're here and

you've been listening and you have considered yourself woke or

have some woke world views, I ask you to reconsider. This,

in a way, has been the Lord's love gift to

you to be able to reconsider. Okay? And for all

of us who have friends and family we have a

burden for, you've been thinking about them all through the sermon, right?

The things that we ought to be doing, you know them.

First of all, we ought to be loving them just

for who they are. It doesn't matter if you agree

with them or not. So ask God for love. Pray

for them. Pray for them. Prayer for my woke friends

has changed my heart. You pray for them, right? And then...

Besides doing those things, there's one other point I wanted

to make, but that's all that matters. Well, in conversations,

ask God for conversations with them and assume best intentions.

If you do that, that brings the wall down. When

you approach somebody with, oh, look at what you're doing,

this or that or this or whatever, that never works.

Assume best intentions. Come in with grace. All right? Let's

pray for them now. Father, in the name of Jesus,

We lift up all our woke friends and family and

coworkers to you. And Lord, we say that in your

love that you would reach out to them. You would

blow on them your Holy Spirit, high power air. Blow

on them, Lord, and set them free. And that you

would work in their hearts and lives and whatever you

need to do to get them out, Lord, of where

they're in. We pray that you'd do that. You'd open

up the hearts and lives of our nation, of our state,

our leaders, and ourselves. So we give ourselves to you.

We thank you for the gracious gift of Jesus Christ,

who is above all ideologies and all worldviews. And we

acknowledge him today. And in his name we pray. Amen.