The God of Hope

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Good morning.

I'm Ray, and I'm happy to meet you.

Hey, can we be friends?

Yes.

Thank you.

And I thank your leaders for the privilege of serving you today in the gospel.

Jenny and I are just thrilled to be with you.

And uh the Heidelberg Catechism?

Come on.

How profound.

What is my only comfort in life and in death?

It doesn't get more intense than that, does it?

But I belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.

That's my hope and my comfort.

Heidelberg Catechism, my memory says that was written in 1563.

At this church, you can come to this church and be confident that the message you're going to hear is not two weeks old.

They're not making this up as they go.

We got deep roots.

And we go all the way back, not just to 1563, we go all the way back to Jesus and the apostles.

Through and according to Scripture.

We've got something deep and solid and lasting.

And what got those stalwarts in 1563, what got them through, is going to get us through.

We're just going to keep our Bibles open and hang in here together.

We can get through this.

And not just get by.

But prevail.

So why should he fail?

Now he won't.

Except maybe for me.

I mean, these people around me here, these are really nice people.

And but they have no idea what I'm really like.

The risen Christ above probably looks at me today and despises me.

I mean, look at me.

Look at this mess with it.

And I only see half of it.

He sees the whole of it all the way down to the depths.

If he has any self-respect at all, he will despise me.

That's the way we think.

So the gospel applies to all these wonderful people around me, but me?

Well, here's hoping.

No.

If Romans 15, 13 doesn't apply to the worst that's inside us, it doesn't apply to anything that's inside us.

Jesus said, I came to seek and save the lost.

That is hopeless cases.

Romans 15, 13 is for serious sinners like me and you.

That is the whole point.

So what I'm asking for now in the next few minutes is that we would, to the glory of Christ, dare to believe it.

Just dare to believe it.

Put everything out on the table that's horrible about us, shine the light of Romans 15, 13 on it, and say, all right, God has got.

And I have held out the empty hands of faith.

I've received him.

Satan, you sorry loser.

I'm going to heaven.

And there's nothing you can do about it.

So I'm asking that you would with me dare to believe this for the greater glory of Christ.

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Hope is in short supply these days.

I wonder what words you might use to describe our nation in these times.

I would use words like divided, angry, exhausted, for starters.

And we can take the words you would contribute, pile them up into a great big, ugly, tragic heap, take all those words, add more, and Romans 15, 13 is perfect for us right here, right now, in these times.

Jesus said, You are the light of the world.

Why?

Because we Christians are always living in a dark age.

Christianity is not for people who are already living pretty good lives and want a, oh, you know, modification, tweak it here and there, upgrade it from seven to maybe eight, even nine on a good day.

No.

Christianity is Christ the light shining in darkness.

Christianity is Christ the life reversing death.

Our sovereign Lord above does not need favorable trends here below.

He has all authority in heaven and on earth.

Everything is going his way.

And we belong to him now.

Right here, right now.

Romans 15, 13 paints the picture of a church flourishing as their world falls apart.

And flourishing because a higher world is coming down to dwell here among us by the grace of Christ.

So here is one insight into this verse that helps me savor the actual magnitude of Romans 15, 13.

In the flow of the book of Romans, the book of Romans as a whole, in its totality, chapter 15 finally explains the practical impact, the practical cash value of all the theology, all the teaching that Paul has imparted to us since chapter one.

And so as Paul concludes his teaching section, verse 13 of chapter 15 describes how all this great truth of Romans helps us, how these doctrines make us different in a world of exhaustion and failure and rage.

Here's the difference.

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So what Paul was fishing for all along, the touchdown he wanted to score as he wrote this letter was not seminary students getting a good grade on an exam, important as that is.

What Paul wanted to accomplish, what he had in mind, is churches where we believers face life as it is.

And we rejoice our fool heads off in this world, right here, right now.

We rejoice in hope.

Not in possession, in hope, not in the present, in the future.

We have a sense of ownership in the future right now.

God has taken the story of history, here we are, right here, let's say, okay?

And he has sort of tilted the future up, and some of it slides back into our experience right now.

It's called the power of the Holy Spirit.

We are the future in the present.

We are power in weakness.

So we live in this world right now, and we're tasting the powers of the age to come, the book of Hebrews says.

So we're surprising people in a world of boredom.

The pronoun you in this verse, may the God of hope fill you.

That is a plural you, not singular.

That's not me as an individual, that's us together.

In Nashville, we would say, may the God of hope fill y'all with all joy and peace.

This is a shared hope.

This is a church together, a culture of hope in a world of rage.

That's who you are.

A community of shared hope in a world of frustration and rage.

The Gospel of Romans creates churches that stand out with surprising beauty.

And you and I want that.

I mean, that's why we got in the car and drove down to church today.

We want something from above.

We want our hearts strong with hope in God.

And what we're fishing for is not a lifestyle upgrade.

Our longings are higher than that, greater than that.

What we want, even in our weakness, what we want is Jesus to be so real to us that it feels like Jesus has come to Houston because we're here.

Now you have to be a Christian to be crazy enough to believe that and to want that and dare to believe it.

So let's be crazy.

All right, let's think it through together.

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Three things about that verse.

One, who God is.

Two, what God does.

Three, how God does it.

So, first of all, who God is.

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace.

Now, what has the book of Romans already taught us about God that makes the God of hope a perfect description for him?

We have read, for example, we have read, for example, God gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that do not exist.

Great, I'm not denying it.

There he is, he's amazing, but I am defeating him by my wretchedness.

Who of us hasn't wondered that?

What else does Roman say?

It addresses that that thought.

The free gift, the free gift.

The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Let's keep receiving the free gift in our worst moments.

Let's not spiral down into rage and despair of our self-hatred.

That's not the point.

Let's look to God.

Okay, Lord, if you're giving away the free gift of eternal life, man alive, count me in.

What else does Roman say?

If God is for us, who can be against us?

What a perfect verse for weak little people like us.

In a world that's against us.

If God is for us, who can be against us?

Here's another one.

Will he not graciously give us all things?

If God above gave his beloved son for you, why would he hold out?

If God gave his priceless son for you, is God going to be reluctant after that?

Is that what we should expect?

A penny pinch in God?

Will he not freely give us all things?

That is the surprising question that breaks upon our minds when we see the magnitude of the gospel.

So let me just let me build a sidebar for just a second, okay?

Because I love this verse so much.

Romans 8 32.

Will he not give us all things?

So all things click what comes up on the screen.

We look at Revelation 20 through 22 at the end of the Bible.

We see where the Lord is taking us, we see what the all things are that he will surely give us.

And where are we?

We're in the new heavens and the new earth.

And Revelation 21 says, the kings of the earth, that is to say, the culture leaders, will bring into the holy city, the new Jerusalem, heaven above, the glory and honor of the nations.

God created us to be culture creators.

And all this culture creating that we've been doing throughout history, God, when Christ returns and brings us up into eternity, he will not delete it, he will not discard it, he will redeem it and perfect it.

So the culture that you belong to, that you identify with, that you resonate with, that you feel good about, that you want to align with, that's authentic to you, that culture, God's gonna give it back to you better than ever.

Heaven will be human.

We're not gonna be singing in masked choirs in the clouds wearing robes.

That doesn't sound like heaven to me.

I mean, I grew up in LA in the 60s.

I like credence and the Beatles and soul music.

And so the kings of the earth will bring the glory and honor of the nations into the holy city.

So in my cartoonish imagination, I'm seeing a convoy of flatbed trucks bringing the glory and honor of the nations, but redeemed and perfected.

So I love Mozart too.

We're gonna have that sparklingly classical music in heaven, but better.

Caribbean steel drum band.

That's gonna be in heaven, but amazing more than ever.

And it actually meant a lot to me to sit there in the restaurant, eat this gorgeous food, and think, you know what?

Jesus cherishes traditional Chinese culture.

This experience we're having in Beijing tonight, this is not gonna go away.

This is a preview of coming attractions.

Chinese people are going to be amazingly Chinese in heaven.

Spanish people, African people, and and and crazy California 60s kid.

And I'm not sorry.

You are going to be more you than you ever were in this world.

Nothing's gonna hold you back.

And you're gonna go through eternity in the presence of the risen Christ, and you will be meeting new friends every day.

Everyone will like you.

Each person you meet will feel like your new best friend.

And the way everybody is different and true to themselves and true to Christ at the same time will not be a problem for you.

It'll be fascinating to you.

You'll meet everybody.

The only hard part of heaven is you'll want to sit down with everybody and hear their whole story.

And they'll want to hear yours.

And we'll all rejoice together.

And we'll have resurrection bodies for crying out loud.

Incapable of fatigue, incapable of injury, incapable of death.

We're all going to be really smart.

Like, you know, IQs of ten thousand.

Oh, sense of humor?

We will be hilarious.

And we will rejoice.

We will be whole.

We will be saintly.

Our sins will not define us forever.

Our Savior will define us forever.

You know, in uh Acts chapter 10, kind of going off script here.

Acts 10 · chapter mention

Okay.

The Apostle Peter goes to the home of Cornelius, the first convert, notable convert outside the Jewish community.

So the gospel's going out to the nations.

Cornelius is like specimen A of this new humanity Jesus is going to create.

Cornelius, in his very sweet humility, here comes the great big apostle Peter from Jerusalem.

Cornelius gets down on his face and bows down to Peter.

And rightly, Peter says, gets him up, dude.

We don't do that.

We're brothers, okay?

But it was very sweet in a way.

It was wrong.

Don't ever do this.

But it was kind of endearing that Peter so pardon me, Cornelius so respected Peter.

He actually wanted to bow down.

Listen, if you're never tempted, don't ever bow down to another Christian.

But if you're never tempted to, have you thought about who they are and where they're going and what they're going to become?

I'm in the presence here of walking, breathing, human miracles.

The Holy Spirit has entered into you never to leave.

There is resident within you right now as I speak, at this moment, the power that will someday renovate the universe.

Never give up.

God has made a commitment to you.

He will see you through.

End of sidebar.

Where am I?

Okay, so anyway, no wonder God calls him or Peter, uh Paul, whoever, no wonder Cornelius calls him the God of hope.

And what he wants to be today, so deep in his heart, he wants to be the God of hope to you.

He doesn't want you thinking, man, what a cool gospel.

It's your how helpful to these other people.

No.

He is the God of hope to you.

Isn't that the whole point?

The Bible also calls him the God of peace, the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort, the God of all grace.

It's just who God is.

Listen, God is not looking at you trying to decide whether or not he'll work with you for one more day.

And it's a 5149 calculation.

And you're just lucky.

No.

This is who God is down to the deepest substratum of his being, his deepest heart.

We don't know what tomorrow will bring.

We know who God is.

We will always know.

He declared himself in Jesus.

So even for the undeserving, he is the God of hope.

What else can it mean that he's the God of hope?

He's not pushing against any door that doesn't want to open.

He's not nervously up there working on plan B.

Nothing can ever defeat his purpose of grace and glory for everyone who receives his son Jesus with the empty hands of faith simply because he is God.

Period.

And he is for you.

So you can announce that to yourself when your mind might spiral down into despair.

The God of hope is inviting you today, as you begin this new year, to be sure of him in your experience.

That's who he is.

Secondly, what God does, now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So, how does it help us right now that God is who he is?

He fills us with all joy and peace so that we, even we, abound in hope.

Now, obviously, I mean the Bible is the most realistic book in all the world.

The Bible never promises us that if we just love God enough, we'll be rich and healthy all our lives.

The Bible never promises us a zippity-doo-daw joy ride through this world.

The Bible, Jesus said, Blessed are those who mourn.

When we read the book of Psalms, there are basically just two kinds of Psalms there: Psalms of praise and psalms of lament.

When all we can do is weep.

But that word abound means, now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing so that you abound in hope.

That word means in all our losses and sorrows and tears and buffetings and so forth and our groans, we keep bouncing back to our own amazement.

We we're lying there on the ground wondering if we're even going to survive five more seconds, but we get up again.

God helps us up again.

We bounce back, we get beaten up along the way, but there is a buoyant hope that this world didn't give to us and this world can't take from us.

It is the all-in commitment of Jesus who keeps us ruggedly resilient and cheerfully defiant and calmly confident.

To our own astonishment, we keep going.

I'm really struck by this strong wording here.

All joy and peace, all thirty-one flavors for the whole range of our experiences in life, so that we abound in hope.

We keep getting back up.

Because God loves the brokenhearted.

So this verse, you know, this is not a denominational option.

This is not a verse for Baptists but not Presbyterians.

This is not a verse for Anglicans but not Baptists.

This is just mainstream, universal, interdenominational, battle-tested, time-tested, non-weird Christianity.

This is beautiful.

He gives it to all his people.

God has given this to millions of people before us.

There are so many stories of God's surprising power when everything is against us.

Corey Tenboom suffered in a Nazi concentration camp.

She came out of it saying, There is no pit so deep, but that Christ is deeper still.

We do go through living hell.

Our anguish is real.

But his joy and peace are more real.

And we will be living proof of it for our joy and his glory.

Our anguish.

This world breaks our hearts over and over again.

It's all it can do.

But our joy and peace will dance on the grave of every heartache.

Not because we gain final control, but because the risen Jesus gets the final say about every single one of us.

And your future is worth getting excited about right now.

Sometimes we might be tempted to think, joy and peace.

I'm just not like that.

Well, who of us is?

The gospel is all about ongoing miracle.

When the God of hope gets involved, our capacities are no longer the point.

His capacities are the point.

And God wants to make a prophetic statement to this generation through us, even through me, even through you, so that this suffering world can see something imperfect but real, something of his beauty in us today.

The early Christians were not wringing their hands and moaning, oh, what's the world coming to?

They were rejoicing and declaring, look who's come to the world.

I read a fascinating book by an Italian archaeologist about ancient Rome.

I did not know this.

He wrote, most people lived in apartment buildings in Rome, and they had no codes, obviously.

So these buildings were so shoddily built that the archaeologist wrote, quote, the city was constantly filled with the noise of buildings collapsing.

And the tenants of these apartment buildings lived in constant expectation of its coming down on their heads.

So if we could go in a time machine, go back and stand on the sidewalk in Rome and just listen for a while, there's a good chance that off in the distance we'd hear the low rumble of a building just collapsing.

That's where the Christians lived.

That's where the Christians raised their families.

That's where the Christians held their small groups.

Ancient Rome was not gleaming marble and flowing togas and sumptuous banquets.

Ancient Rome was a mess, a dangerous mess.

But God gave to his people there and then, and God gives to his people today, here and now, sacred powers within that no shoddy architecture can touch.

We have full acceptance through the cross.

We have the felt presence of the risen Christ.

We have a future that nothing can destroy.

At this very moment, the risen Christ above is not tired.

He's having a good day.

And you know what?

He's not tired of you.

You might be tired of you.

He's not.

And tomorrow afternoon, three o'clock, four o'clock, blood sugar is low, you hate your job to begin with, and you go to the Lord for the 19th time that day.

Lord, I need your help right now.

Lord, help me right now, please.

I just want to tell you, when you come to him yet again tomorrow, same for me, he will not see you approaching him and roll his eyes and look out his peripheral vision for an exit strategy because he doesn't want to hear again from high maintenance you or me.

He, when he sees you coming with your need, he lights up.

When those kind of people come our way, we feel depleted and threatened because we're so weak.

When people like us come his way, he feels energized.

How does that get traction within?

Let's get practical.

Number three, how he does it.

Who God is, what he does, how he does it.

Okay, number three, now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So the two parts to the how question.

In believing, that's our part, by the power of the Holy Spirit, that's his part.

So let's look at our part.

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.

What does that mean?

Well, you know, one thing I'm really thankful for, it doesn't say in deserving.

Doesn't say that.

How could we ever deserve this?

It's just in believing.

That means we read the promises of the gospel in the Bible, like will he not give us all things, for example?

And we look at it and we say, okay.

That's all we do.

That's the okay of faith.

If you say so, Lord, I mean, I cannot possibly see how that could become mine, but if you say so, I'm all in.

That's just believing.

Treating the promises of God as real and relevant and true.

If God makes that promise, he will not lie to my face.

I might be false to him at times.

He will never be false to me.

That is inconceivable.

So, Lord, if you make these promises in the Bible, that's just John 3.16 for starters.

Okay, those are the words.

I can see the words on the page.

I can read English.

Okay, Lord.

I can't deserve it.

But I can believe it.

I believe.

I believe right now.

Whatever I'm facing in my own world, in my failures, I believe it.

And sometimes we even struggle to believe, don't we?

Let's admit it, right?

So Dietrich Bonhoeffer taught us when the faith in my heart is weak, the faith in your heart is probably going to be strong and we'll switch around along the way, right?

So that's why it's so important to stick together.

We're all stumbling, but guys, we're stumbling forward.

We're stumbling toward Jesus.

We're stumbling forward together, arm in arm.

So, okay, we can get through this.

Here we go.

We're together in this.

In believing.

That's that's a team project, group project, believing together.

And then we make surprising progress.

Oh footnote.

Believing together, stumbling forward together, side by side, shoulder to shoulder.

You men here at this church have this wonderful ministry, the stand.

You know about it.

This is for men, which means all of us who are dealing with ongoing, unwanted sin in their lives.

Who of us isn't?

Who of us doesn't notice some pretty appalling things inside?

So every man here, gosh, if if we go up against that thinking, okay, this time I'm gonna prove Tim, I mean it.

This time I'm gonna re-up and I'm gonna show him how serious I really am.

If you go up against everything that's inside you just by yourself, you will fail.

But if you will gather with your allies, your brothers, and gently, respectfully, trustingly put out on the table everything that isn't going well in your life, everything that isn't working in your life, and share that honesty together and just give it all to the Lord in prayer.

Lock arms, keep going week by week.

You will prevail.

So the stand is Monday night, 6 p.m., the gathering room.

You can just show up.

Any questions, you can contact Travis Dunham, your pastor of connections.

End of footnote.

Okay.

Was that a pretty good advertisement?

I mean, guys, you know, we've we did the same thing at Emmanuel Church in Nashville.

The truth of it is, the mediocre things about Emmanuel, that's what we created.

The amazing things about Emmanuel, that's what the Lord gave us.

And honest brothers together before the Lord, that is what God gives.

You do not want to miss that.

So, how he does it, how he keeps us going, the Bible says, cast all your cares on him, for he cares for you.

He is the champion of lost causes.

He cares for you, the real you, not the prettified version of you that you want to project.

The actual mess, the anguish, the you with regrets, I'll tell you, I'm I'm I'm 73 years old.

You know what the biggest issue in my life is right now?

By this time?

Regrets.

I have been so foolish so many times.

I wish I could get a do-over, but it doesn't work that way.

So what do I do with these regrets?

I have to go to a verse, I can go to a verse like 1 Peter 5, 6.

Cast all your cares, including regrets, on him.

For he cares for that you, the you with regrets.

His broad shoulders can carry any burden we bring to him.

My son Gavin is a pastor in California.

One of the older ladies in the church said to him about her own griefs.

God never says, get over it.

What he says is, give it to me.

That's in believing.

It's us looking to the Lord and looking again, looking to the Lord, moment by moment, saying to him, Lord, here's my need right now.

I give it to you.

I look to you.

You see this, Lord.

I refer this to you.

I push it over your way.

Now, help me take my next step.

That's our part.

His part, the power of the Holy Spirit.

Man alive.

I wish we had time.

Wouldn't it be great if we could just have all day with open mics up here and we could just come share stories from our lives about how God, in his power, has met us in our weakness through the years.

How powerful and moving that would be.

There are so many stories.

God gives us successes.

We're thankful for that, but you know those things can get in the way.

It's when we bump right up against failure.

That's when we act, those can be the greatest moments in life.

Because then our hearts crack open to the power of the Holy Spirit.

And we therefore today long for and we accept and we declare for his glory that we reject every false hope that will break our hearts yet again.

We turn our eyes to the Lord and his promises, and we open up to his power to face life as it is, rejoicing, filled with hope, together by his grace for his glory.

Here's what it can look like.

And it doesn't get more real than this.

1851.

There was a shipload of uh, well, a shipload sounds like a lot.

There was a ship carrying uh, I think about a dozen British missionaries to some far-flung part of the world.

They sailed down to the very southern tip of South America, not far from the Antarctic, and a supply ship was supposed to meet them there to resupply them with food.

The supply ship was delayed, and they all died of cold and starvation.

One of them, Richard Williams, wrote in his journal, they found this when they finally showed up.

Poor and weak though we are, our abode is a very bethel to our souls, and God, we feel and know, is here.

Sometimes I wonder what's it going to be like when I die?

When you wonder that, we can know this.

God, we will feel and know will be there.

And this same man, several weeks later, as he was dying, wrote, Should anything prevent my ever adding to this, let all my loved ones at home rest assured that I was happy beyond description when I wrote these words, and I would not change situations with anyone alive.

Starving, freezing with God there, and this precious man has so made peace with God's journey for him that he says, you know, if this is how I can be living proof that Jesus is real, then sign me up.

That's Christianity.

God in grace giving the privilege to sinners like us, the privilege of being living proof in a world like this, that we are not God forsaken.

God has come.

We belong to Him.

We're gonna be okay.

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

See what I mean?

I'm gonna ask the guys to put that verse up on the screen this morning.

If you're our guest today, just relax.

We like to teach the Bible.

What's what we're ages did?

There's the gospel.

Gospel means good news.

The good news of Christianity is.

There's a God in this world, and He's the God of hope.

He's not the God of duty or hatred.

He's not out to get you.

He's the God of hope.

And He'll fill you.

Not the you that you project on Sunday morning, but the real you, the you that struggles with mental health and doesn't take your med sometimes because you think you got it and you don't got it, it's got you.

That you is the you that God, the God of hope, says, I will fill you with all joy and peace in believing.

Unless you believe the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, there are things in this world you will never experience.

And two of those are joy and peace.

This is not religion, this is a relationship.

So that by the power of the Holy Spirit, here's God's agenda for your life and my life, that you would abound in hope.

Imagine somebody at your job saying, Hey, do you know Judy?

Oh, yeah, she works in accounting.

Man, that lady abounds in hope.

That's God's desire and design for your life.

But I just want you to just think just for a moment.

We like to teach the gospel, preach the Bible, and then give you some soul space to think about it.

We'll do that in just a minute, which means I'll be quiet.

I'll shut up.

And I just want you to think about one thing.

What's the one thing that most stood out to you?

Like, I want to think about that more.

I want to better understand that.

You may be thinking, I want to ask Ray about that.

He'll be standing right down front when we're dismissed here in just a minute.

You can come up and ask him.

But I just want you to know that the God of hope will feel the real you.

And here's why he has more hope than you have to spare.

He's not gonna have his mind changed about you.

The real you is the person, the being that God wants to deal with today.

Let's just take a moment and just ask ourselves, what did God say to me today?

What's the one thing I need to think about for the next minute?

And let's think about it.

Father, we're both humbled and encouraged today by the fact that how the Bible describes you as the God of hope.

You're not a God that says, perform, and if you've done good enough, I'll let you know.

But you're the God of hope that says, I see the real you and I love and accept the real you, and I will fill you with all joy and peace.

When you believe, in believing, you experience these things.

Not in ritual or tradition, but in actual believing.

Our faith is not just a noun, it is a verb, it acts upon us with action and it empowers us to respond in believing.

So, Lord, we're comforted by that today.

Thank you for the for the beauty, the simplicity, and the reality of the gospel.

May it be applied, Holy Spirit, to our lives as needed and where needed.

And thank you for it.

We say in Jesus' name, and all God's people said, Amen.

Amen.

Again, if you're a guest, thank you for being here.

You're always welcome.

If you have any questions of anything you saw or heard this morning, Ray and some of our pastors will be available down front.

We'd love to help you process and take the next step in your faith journey.

One of the things that we do that helps people take their next step is we have different events going on in the life of our church.

We want to make you aware of those, and we do that by by way of our video announcement.

So give your attention to the screen for just one minute.

Here's a look at what's happening at Grand Parkway Baptist Church.

If you're new, text welcome to 281-626-5707.

This way we can know you're here and get you connected with the church.

Community groups begin next Sunday.

These are gatherings around our city where we have spiritual dialogue and fellowship together.

To find your group, head to Grandparkway.org.

Starting point is our class for those interested in learning more about our church or that are ready to join.

Our next starting point is January 15th.

Night to Shine is an unforgettable prime night experience centered on God's love for people with special needs, ages 14 and older.

We would love to have you join us as a volunteer.

Midweeks begin this week.

The deadline to register for child care is tonight at midnight.

We look forward to seeing you then.

D Now is our in-town retreat focused on students building relationships with their peers and connecting with God.

It's happening on February 3rd through 5th.

For all these events, register online at grandparkway.org.

If you have any questions or want someone to pray for you, find one of our pastors at the front of the stage at the conclusion of our service.

So make sure that you're available down here with your pregnant self.

Amen.

If she's still in here, where are you, Cheyenne?

There you are.

Anyway, we're glad you're here.

You're always welcome.

Okay, we'll continue our series entitled Words to Live By.

Next Sunday, I'll be preaching.

I would love for you to join us in.

We'd like to close our service with a spoken blessing.

But before I do that, let me just remind you of this, okay?

Our midweek classes, it had a little blurb in the video.

Our midweek classes start this next week.

That means Tuesday morning ladies' Bible study, Wednesday night class.

We have what's called the midweek meal.

We have Cater Chick-fil-A brought in in the building right next door.

We all eat together in the big community room and then we scatter and go to different classes.

You're gonna get an email this afternoon.

It's gonna list out all those things.

I'd love you to register.

The deadline to register for child care for ladies' Bible studies on Tuesday is tonight at midnight.

So we have to plan and prepare.

So your kids are back in school, so we need you to get back in the rhythm and register so we can know who to prepare for.

Amen?

So you're gonna get an email this afternoon and you're gonna respond.

Yes?

Don't make me come visit you.

Stand on your feet.

Hold your hands out.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.

So that by the power of the Holy Spirit, by the power of the Holy Spirit, not your determination or self hatred, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you.