What Are You Hungry For?

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Pray with me.

God, thank you that you are a firm foundation.

We do not want to build our lives on anything else and not speak from experience in trying to.

Everything else pales in comparison to the firm foundation that you are, God.

Your word tells us that you are the rock of ages, the cleft for us.

Not only are you the firm foundation under our feet, but you're also that hiding place, that's safe and secure.

Thank you, God, for how firm you are.

Please help us to believe in that.

Please help us to live like it.

It's in your name, Jesus, that I pray this.

Amen.

Amen.

Good morning.

You may be seated.

Well, if you came in after our corporate prayer time, let me reintroduce myself.

My name is Wade Burgess.

I'm the executive pastor here.

During that corporate prayer time, what you missed was a free car giveaway.

But you also, you also missed a little bit of an update that I gave related to the kids building expansion that we're planning.

Here's what I wanted to make sure everyone saw, and I'll send out an email a little bit later today, but this is an artist rendering of what I talked about during the corporate prayer.

It's a two-story expansion, probably going to be somewhere around 10 or 12,000 square feet.

The lower part is the existing kids' building now, and that two-story would be headed like you're going back toward the warehouse.

So just wanted to give you a quick visual of what it looks like and why you should get to church early because you never know what you're going to miss.

All right?

Okay, good.

Um, let me give you one other public service announcement.

Uh if you've been with us anytime uh since May, you know that our lead pastor, Neil McClendon, has been on sabbatical.

He'll be returning in August.

Uh, but it's my privilege to be in front of you preaching this morning.

And you know that we've had various guests preaching, uh, some of our staff.

Brent Wildison, our teaching pastor, has been carrying a lot of the load going through Song of Solomon.

But I wanted to just make you aware of something.

Neil's sabbatical is never an excuse for us to miss church.

Okay?

I've tried it.

He said I couldn't use it.

So if I have to be, no, it's never an excuse for us to miss church, but it is always a reason for us to pray for him.

So as often as he comes to mind, would you be praying for his RR, for his rest, and his revelation as he prepares to return in August?

I and he and the whole church would appreciate that.

Well, on Sunday mornings, particularly during about the third service, I start getting hungry.

My breakfast has worn off, and I start getting ready for lunch.

And I will ask people as I see them, hey, what are you doing for lunch today?

Hey, where are you going for lunch?

What are you trying to do for lunch?

I'm not just trying to live vicariously through you because probably your lunch is going to be better than mine, perhaps.

But what I am doing, just a little bit of a secret exposure here, is I'm trying to figure out where we should go for lunch.

There's like 143 restaurants open in Sugarland on a Sunday.

And you know what?

We do the same three every time.

How do we do that?

It's either Popeyes or Potbelly or Payway, or you don't want that.

Oh, okay, we're going home.

And I'm like, where are you going?

Oh, that sounds so good.

Today, I want us to take a look at this idea of what are we hungry for?

And I want us to look at it from the lens of craving.

Have you ever had a craving get on you and you're like, man, I'm just, ooh, wee, I just I really want pizza, for example.

Man, I can't wait.

I want pizza and I want it, and this is what we're gonna have.

And you talk to your family, and they decide they're going to crush your dreams, and they're going to order from, you know, a takeout place, and they get pizza.

And it's stuck to the top of the box, or it's not as hot as you wanted, or it doesn't have all the toppings you wanted, and all that stuff.

And that craving is still on you.

That craving isn't satisfied until you go over to Masai's and you get that dog dish deep Chicago style with the pound of mozzarella on it, or maybe Grimaldi's or fuzzies if you decide to go into Bel Air and you get all the toppings.

That craving is very particular, and it only gets satisfied with something very particular as well.

Well, during our time together this morning, I want to draw your attention to the text of 1 Peter chapter 2.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

And I want us to consider that question.

It's going to be our overarching theme this morning.

What are you hungry for?

What are you craving?

If you have your Bibles or your devices, you're welcome to turn to 1 Peter chapter 2.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

We're just going to read the first three verses.

If you need to, the words will come up on the screen behind me.

But let me read the word of the Lord.

Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.

Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Before we talk about intake, before we talk about feeding, I want to spend just a little bit of time understanding what we should be ridding ourselves of?

What is it that we should not be hungry for?

Well, Peter gives us five things here to not be hungry for.

And the first one he says is you've got to get rid of all malice.

Now, malice is just the intention or maybe the desire to do evil.

Really, to sum it up in two words, it's just ill will.

Now, why do we need to get rid of that?

Because that has nothing to do with God.

Nothing evil has anything to do with God.

And if we are to be Christ-like examples, then ill and will are the two things we have to do away with.

The second thing Peter says we have to do away with is all deceit.

Now, deceit is really just concealing or misrepresenting the truth.

Now, this is my own explanation, so I'll give you a little slack if it doesn't make sense, okay?

But this is what I think deceit is.

It's not just lying, it is not giving the truth in the manner in which it was wished to give.

I'll say that again.

It's not just lying, it is not giving the truth in the manner in which it is wished to give, in the manner in which it was requested.

Now, um, here's an example.

Let's say you go to work on Monday and your boss comes to you and says, Hey, uh, did you call so-and-so?

Did you hear back on where we are with that update on the project?

And your response is, no, you know, I hadn't heard back.

Uh uh let me see what I can do to get a response.

You know why you haven't heard back?

Because you didn't call.

Now we don't tell the boss that.

We don't say, you know what, I forgot, I didn't call.

No, no, no.

We gave you the truth.

The truth is we haven't heard back from him.

But why we haven't heard back was really the boss is probably wondering what went on there.

Now, the reason I know that so well is because, well, uh maybe I've employed that once or twice.

Um let me, and I didn't mean to do this, but let me just confess while I'm here.

Let me practice what I preach.

I didn't show you that artist rendering because some of you came in late.

I forgot.

Now it sounded better because I'm like, well, some of you came in late, and I'd like to catch you up on.

I just forgot.

That's the way I've broken myself, by the way, of that deceit is I just out myself.

Hey, I I I messed up.

Here's another way uh that it looks.

If we're talking about hunger and food, let me stay with that theme for just a minute.

Recently, my wife uh made some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

And these things are some of the best cookies I've ever had, and she had left them on the counter in the kitchen.

Now, in my mind, that is public domain, okay?

That's that's available to you if you happen to be in the kitchen.

All right.

Well, I walk through the kitchen, then she comes through the kitchen a little while later and she says, Wade, did you eat the last cookie?

Now, here's what a lie is.

Nope, I think Alex did it.

Deceit looks like this.

The last cookie, are you kidding me?

No, I didn't eat the last cookie.

You'd think I'd be dumb enough to eat the last cookie?

How in the world did I eat the last cookie?

We've got a hundred ingredients in there.

We got chocolate chips, sugar, flour, we got eggs, we got, no way, did I eat the last cookie?

But what was she asking?

She was asking, Did you eat the last baked, ready-to-consume cookie?

Now, why did I go through all of that?

Because I think some of us are real good at deceit.

Some of us are real good at giving just enough of the truth.

And the better we are at that, the less we think it's lying.

Peter was right to warn us about it.

Let's see what else he warns us about.

He says, do away with all hypocrisy.

Now, hypocrisy is this claiming to have a moral standard or a set of beliefs, but the behavior does not match that.

You know that the church usually gets a bad rap.

Well, I'm not going down there, a bunch of hypocrites down there.

It's because we don't live out what we claim to believe.

Now, if you want to do a quick test to see if you're a hypocrite, if you might have a little bit of hypocrisy in you, just ask your kids or your spouse, hey, do I demonstrate what I claim to believe?

The way I handle bad news, the way I get frustrated when I'm tired, do I demonstrate what I claim to believe?

Peter also wrote to tell us be careful about envy, do away with it.

Now, envy is just a feeling of discontent or maybe uh resentful for something that someone else has, someone else's good fortune.

And I think a lot of us would say, man, I don't envy anybody.

You know, you throw all your problems in the air, we reach for ours first until someone comes home with a new dream in their driveway.

You know what I mean?

And then you're like, well, you know, my car has gotten all of a sudden much older.

I don't know what happened.

Envy can sneak up on us, and we need to do away with it.

Finally, Peter warns us against slander.

Now, slander is just making a false statement to damage a reputation.

A lot of us, I would think, do not have the intention of doing that.

But here's what we could do: we could be speaking ill of someone and mix in just a little bit of deceit as well.

And now it's an over-exaggeration.

Now he or she is just a little bit worse than they actually are.

And now I've damaged the reputation, not necessarily out of intent, but that's what's happened because what have I done?

I've combined slander and deceit, and I've done that.

Now, my grandmother would always fix it with, bless their heart.

I don't think that's what we ought to do.

I think we ought to do away with it.

Now, when we read these words and the definitions, I think for the most part, every one of us would nod in agreement and say, Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely got to get rid of that.

Yep, oh boy, that's a bad one.

You better believe it.

And you know what I worry about?

I worry if we're not like the smoker who's saying, Man, you got to get off them cigarettes.

Look, those things are kill you.

Look, whatever you do, don't start.

All the while they're steady smoking.

I wonder if that's us sometimes.

Not in agreement about, oh, Peter, you're so right.

We got to get rid of that.

Yeah, do away with that.

And all the while we're still continuing.

Now, I spent the time on those items because there's no way to get the proper nourishment if all we have is junk food in us.

Said another way, we will not be hungry for the proper stuff if we're not empty of the bad stuff.

You follow me?

We've got to get rid of that first before we can replace then the proper nourishment.

Now stay with me as we continue to unpack the words of the text.

Look at verse 2.

Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.

That word grow up in the Hebrew is the idea of uh again and again, this continuation of it.

Uh, it's never fully grown.

You're always in the process of growing up.

That's the Hebrew phrase that Peter was using there.

And just because it's again and again does not mean that we tire of it.

It doesn't mean it's one of those, oh, are you kidding me?

I've got to do it again.

No, no.

It's the process, the journey actually is what provokes us or propels us to continue.

I think the right analogy for this is maybe working out.

You know, you go to the gym or you go whatever you do to get your exercise.

You're going to get stronger or fitter, but you're never going to get strongest.

I never leave the gym going, well, I'm the strongest now.

You never go run or do whatever you do and go, well, that's as fit as I'll ever be.

No, no, it's a journey, it's a process.

There's always more to gain, a little bit more muscle, a little bit healthier heart, whatever it is.

That's this idea of growing up.

The improvement along the way and the understanding of the benefits is what keeps us at it.

And then in verse three, it reads, Now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Now, tasted in the English appears to be past tense.

Obviously, it's got the ED on it, but in the Greek, it actually is meant to be a timeless action for the benefit of the subject.

So it's kind of, I guess, present perfect, if you were doing today's grammar.

It's always happening, it's tasting.

And it's for the benefit of the one tasting.

When Peter uses the word the Lord is good, he used the Greek, which means kind and loving and benevolent.

So what are we doing?

We're we're constantly tasting, taking in that God is kind and good and benevolent, and I get to taste and know.

So if we have to remove or get rid of, how do we do that?

How do we get rid of that bad stuff?

How do we take on this good stuff?

How do we empty ourselves of the harmful things and instead fill up on the spiritual milk he's talking about, which I think perhaps translates maybe as life-giving nourishment to the soul?

How do we do that?

Well, the way you do it is you have to be hungry for Christ.

You have to have a craving for him.

Now recognize there is a difference between hungry and hungry for.

Every day at noon, I get hungry for lunch.

That's just a biological, God-designed, natural thing that happens.

We all get hungry.

From babies to death virtually, we get hungry on a periodic basis.

But hungry for, well, that only happens after you've tasted something.

I don't get hungry for the hamburger until after I've had a bite of it, until after I've tasted a hamburger and I know what I'm missing.

So I get every day hungry, but only the hungry for comes after I've tasted it.

So how do we hunger for Christ?

Well, first, you must be born again, to quote Jesus when he was talking to Nicodemus.

And Nicodemus said, How must I have this eternal life that you're talking about?

How do I get it?

He said, Nicodemus, you've got to be born again.

Now, what does that mean?

What it means is you say yes to Jesus as he reveals himself to you as Savior.

You surrender your life to him.

And just a footnote, by the way, about surrender.

The one that surrenders does not get to determine or define the terms of surrender.

I don't get to go to Jesus and say, now, Jesus, I surrender all except for this over here.

Or you know what, Jesus, if you'll just take care of all this stuff over here, I got the rest.

That's fine.

No, no, we're talking about a full and complete surrender, and we don't get to determine the terms of that.

When you surrender everything in the way Jesus is encouraging, in the way he dictates, and the way his word commands, that's what we're talking about, a full surrender.

And you know what'll happen?

It'll change what you treasure.

It'll change what you crave.

Do you treasure Christ in a way that demonstrates I've given up everything that's not of him?

Now I want you to notice something.

In the next two steps I'm going to give you related to how to hunger for Christ, you could, I think, maybe try to make an argument that says, well, look, I think I could do these two things you're about to mention, and I could learn certain lessons, or maybe even have some limited understanding.

I think I could, I could do that.

Therefore, if you thought that, you might ask this question, well, couldn't I do these other things you're about to mention without that first step of surrender?

I would emphatically say that without a full belief in and the complete surrender to Jesus and all that was accomplished for us on the cross, you will only have information, but never salvation.

You might have food, but never nourishment.

Here's what that leads me to think about.

So the average adult has a small intestine of about 22 feet.

That's a pretty good size.

If you take your height, multiply it by about four to five, that's about the size of your small intestine.

Do you know, even with that length, the small intestine cannot take in enough nutrients to help the body to the level that it needs to?

So what God did was He inside the small intestine are these hair-like things, they're called villa, and they just kind of do like this.

And as food and things pass by, that villa absorbs all the more.

Now, you're probably thinking, I don't know how this clown got from surrendering to Jesus to small intestine, okay?

But here's kind of my own brains tie-in.

Without a saving belief in Jesus, without a full surrender to him, the nourishment will never be absorbed at the proper level.

What nourishment am I talking about?

How do we get the soul nutrients that we need?

Well, I think a French proverb is apropos.

The proverb reads, the appetite comes with the eating.

The more we eat, the more hungry we get.

The more hungry we get, the more we eat.

Have you ever noticed that if you do without something long enough, kind of on one end of that spectrum, you do without something long enough, and the desire for it, the craving for it will start to wane.

You know, you could go through a longer fast.

About the first 12 to 24 hours, you're like, I don't know if I'm gonna make it.

I mean, I and then after that, it gets a little easier and a little easier.

Or television, for example.

If I told most of you today, you cannot turn on your TV today, we would be like, getting a poncho in a bucket.

I think I'm going through with draws.

This is not gonna be good for me.

And then by about Tuesday, we're like, eh, I don't know that I really miss it.

Now, on the other hand, the more TV we watch, the more we want to watch it, the more it's kind of become a habit.

What are we watching?

And our family's done this.

We're like, as soon as we get dinner fixed, we're sitting down going, what are we gonna watch?

I'm not sure what happened to the lost art of conversation around the dinner table.

But the more we do something, the more we want it.

You get my point, and you get why the that French proverb might be apropos related to this idea of soul nourishment as well.

The more we absorb, the more we want it.

And by the way, it comes in large feasts and in small meals.

And I want to look at how that concept of large feasting and small meals applies to this idea of how do we get the nourishment our soul needs?

How do we hunger properly for Christ?

Well, the first thing we have to do is we have to consume the word.

We've got to be about reading our Bibles.

And you could sit down and read a chapter or a book of the Bible and really dig in, man, for information and direction.

You're looking at it, who wrote it, why did they write it, what was the historical context of it?

By the way, how does it apply to us?

And what were they saying to them at that time, and what are they saying to us now?

And what, man, you should do all of that.

And in fact, we do that at Grand Parkway every Sunday at 9:30.

We have Bible studies in our kids' building, in the youth, and right here.

In fact, today we start new adult Bible studies.

They're all over this building for us to do that purpose of consuming the word together.

You could read one to several chapters if you wanted to and discuss the application of it.

You could do that on a regular basis, maybe.

A smaller group setting.

It just so happens we do that here as well.

It's called discipleship groups.

We have them for women and men and students.

We even now have them at our kids' building for fourth and third graders.

Some of our older students are coming alongside of them on Tuesday afternoons, and they're showing those younger students here's how to consume the word.

Now, I think those two things, that idea of Bible study and discipleship group in my mind, that's kind of like feasting on the word.

That's that's that's uh, you know, we've got the full table spread here.

I think also you should have small meals of the Bible.

And what I mean by that is I think maybe you should look at a few verses or maybe one chapter.

And I think you should read it three or four times a day if you want to.

By the way, you'll be surprised how often the first time you read it, you're like, yeah, that was good.

And by the third day you read that same thing, you're like, whoa, where did that come from?

Was that in there before?

Maybe you read a psalm a day, maybe you wake up and read a proverb a morning.

Whatever it is, we ought to be about a constant intake in order to consume the word.

The second thing we ought to do to be hungry for Christ is we ought to be feasting on prayer.

And look, the Bible has a lot to say about prayer.

If you were reading your Bible, you'd know that.

By the way, I had a guy call me not long ago and he said, wait, I think I want to get into reading my Bible more.

And I'm like, oh yeah, okay, that sounds great.

What causes you to think you should read it more?

He said, Well, I'm not really reading it at all.

Oh, all right.

Well, good.

We've got something to start on then.

And he was asking me, how do I do it?

What does it look like?

And my point was, hey, just start.

You can start in Genesis Revelation.

Uh uh get a 30-day devotional if you want to.

I don't really care, but just read it.

John Piper has a great book.

Uh, it's a 31-day devotional.

It's called Pierced by the Word.

And man, it is, it is awesome.

Just to take it on and read it.

I like to read it on Friday and Saturday mornings, and I just slow read that thing and just absorb fully what he's saying.

The Bible places a great deal of emphasis on prayer.

Also, just a footnote, it places a great deal of emphasis on parenting and dating, on money management, on relationships, on being raised right and well and how to influence people.

He's got a lot to say.

But what does that have to do with prayer?

Well, let me say this.

I think prayer is the second component of being hungry for Christ.

In fact, Martin Luther, kind of the original, one of the original old school guys, the original reformer, if you will, said that prayer for the Christian is like breathing.

It's both basic and vital.

I would say a lack of prayer is a lot like a lack of breathing.

Not enough of it, and you're not going to function properly.

You go long enough without it, and spiritually you're going to die.

We are designed for prayer, and too little of it can cause some significant consequences.

Now, here's what I think.

I think repetition is necessary for us to be good at something.

I think in order to be good at, if you'll allow me to use that phrase, good at prayer is not a Bible thesaurus on all these great flowery words and all these things, and oh my goodness, and it may not even be your posture.

Here's what I think good prayer looks like.

It has two components.

Number one, it's genuine, and number two, it's aligned with God's preferences.

How do I get aligned with God's preferences?

Might want to read the word and pray.

Now, I think the concept of feast and meals, you know, these small meals and these large feasts are appropriate here with prayer as well.

One, we pray corporately together.

You know that.

Every Sunday we have this corporate prayer time where we're all as a body praying around a particular theme.

We pray as a group of believers.

We do that in our community groups, which by the way will start in September.

We'll meet on the first and third Sunday of each month.

We'll gather in homes throughout the city, and we will unpack the sermon and we'll pray with and for each other.

That's what I'm talking about, about kind of big meals of prayer, but I also think we have to do it with small meals as well.

We've got to be praying every day.

You can never get the nourishment you need only from feasting.

You need everyday meals.

The body can't take in large quantities all at once, and I think that's the same with prayer.

We should not be praying only when there's trouble or praising only when it's payday.

We've got to be about a consistent everyday routine, habit, a craving, you might say.

Now, I recognize that there are other things that I could name that would increase our appetite for Christ.

Some of you right now are thinking, well, Wade, you haven't mentioned worship and you didn't mention praise, you didn't mention singing.

What about this?

What about that?

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

I don't want to overwhelm us because here's what I think.

If we focus on these first two, everything else falls into place.

We won't have to worry about our praising being enough if we've read and prayed.

We won't have to worry about anything else being out of order if we're taking on these first two in the proper order.

Now look, the problem with so many, I think, like the guy that called me about reading his Bible, I don't think it's willpower.

Some of us have used the phrase, you know, well, I want to read, I'm just not sure where to start.

Well, you know, I guess I need to read my Bible more, but I don't, you know, I really need to talk to God more, but I just don't hear from him.

So I've kind of gone, let me just say this, just another footnote here about prayer.

Sometimes you've got to be quiet.

Sometimes what you have to do on your way to work is turn off the radio and just sit in that silence.

And if you're like me, that is a learned discipline because the first few times that I did that, I'm like, I think I need to be still and know that He is God and listen.

And I turn off the radio in like 30 seconds, I'm like, well, God, you hadn't said anything, so I'll talk now.

And then I finish my list and oh, amen.

Oh, I'm already at work.

Here I am.

Oh, guess I didn't hear from you today.

Man, I don't know why God's not talking to me.

Maybe because you won't shut up.

I don't think it's willpower that you lack, I think it's the craving.

I brought a quote from a guy.

Now this guy is uh, well, you you you wouldn't know him.

His name is John Shima.

He actually is a shotgun instructor, but he's got this quote.

He says, Willpower requires the self-control to do something undesirable or to restrain an impulse.

Craving is a powerful desire to satisfy a want or need.

It's not willpower that you're lacking.

I would argue it's the craving.

Well, I guess I gotta read my Bible.

I mean, I was about to go to bed, now I'm up because I felt bad, because I got to say my prayers.

No, no, so many have to mindset versus a want-to mindset.

So many of us feel like I have to do something, I have to do that.

God doesn't want our have to, he wants our want-to.

I don't say to my son, hey, I need you to say I love you three times and give me two hugs before you leave every day, okay?

That's a have to.

What do I want him to do?

I want him every time I say bye, he says, love you.

That's the same thing God wants.

God, the intimate relationship with God is not requirements.

I would argue it's desires.

God, I desire you.

I desire to know you more, so much so that that craving gets on me and I don't want to put it down.

Because the more I feed it, the more I'm going to have it.

Now, what happens when we get full?

What if we've riddles ourselves of that junk food we talked about and we start putting in all this good stuff?

What happens?

Well, when we get full, we have production.

The Bible in Galatians 5 tells us that you will know someone as a Christian by the fruit he or she produces.

And that spiritual fruit includes gentleness and kindness.

You probably know the list: love and joy and peace and all these things.

A Christian doesn't produce a certain number of those.

A Christian doesn't say, you know, I had three acts of kindness today.

I think I'm all good.

No, what a Christian does is that they're not focused on quota or quantity, but instead they have a consistent demonstration of these things.

Folks, when we're full of the right thing, we can't help but have it come out.

A Christian does these things, the things of the fruit of the Spirit, the peace and kindness and joy and faithfulness and gentleness and all those things.

We do that because it is just, I can't help it, it's got to come out of me.

It's in our thoughts, our words, our deeds.

Where my mind goes is I think about Tom and Jerry cartoon.

So when I was growing up, every day of elementary school, I would come home between 3 and 3:30, and my mom allowed me to have one snack in 30 minutes of cartoon time.

And Tom and Jerry was on.

We got three channels, by the way, back then.

So that was about all that was on anyway.

So I turned on Tom and Jerry.

I still like Tom and Jerry.

You know, Tom the cat, he's chasing Jerry the mouse around and all the antics and shenanigans they go through.

The reason that comes to mind is there's a particular episode where Tom falls on a bed of nails and he jumps back up.

Now, at some, right then, the cat immediately gets thirsty.

I'm not sure why, but he grabs the pitcher that happens to be there and he drinks the water, and what happens?

It pours out everywhere, right?

That's what I think about when I think of a full Christian.

Kindness and goodness and gentleness and those things that the Bible tells me I should have isn't something I strain to get or, oh, I gotta try to.

Oh no.

It's pouring out of me.

At the back of our campus, there's a detention pond.

It's a pretty good-sized pond.

Uh, I'm trying to raise some ducks and bass in it for uh duck season and so I can go out fishing when I need the stress relief.

But this detention pond has been a real, well, let me say, I think the devil's in that pond, okay?

That's what I think.

When we first did the warehouse construction back in 2011, uh, the pond was built allegedly big enough for it to take on anything, any further construction we might ever need.

And you've probably heard these two phrases, 100-year flood and 500-year flood.

Do you know why we give them those numbers?

Because they'll never happen in our lifetime, Harvey.

And then somebody comes along from the drainage district.

Now, if you're a member of the drainage district, let me say how much I love and appreciate you.

I want to send my taxes directly to you.

But the drainage district, in their effort to make sure that there are no flooding, et cetera, said, you need to make that pond bigger and deeper.

And I'm like, are you kidding me?

Now, in that pond, we've got two pumps.

When the pond reaches full, those pumps kick on and they start pouring water out of them.

Why do I think that is an analogy for a full Christian?

Because here's what happens when that detention pond gets full.

Those pumps kick on, and what comes out of that is with direction and purpose.

That water is pouring out of there.

We know exactly where it's headed and it has a purpose.

That's what I think about when I think about that full Christian, that that production.

We as Christians should be filling ourselves and fueling so that we can then pour out.

And so I want to ask you, what are you hungry for today?

Are you hungry for the temporary or the permanent?

Are you hungry for the immediate or the everlasting?

Are you hungry for the unsatisfying, never enough offerings of the world or the always satisfying and abundant life of the gospel?

What are you hungry for?

Let me pray for us.

As I pray, Clyde's gonna come and play over us.

And then when I complete the prayer, I'm gonna give you just a little bit of direction.

God, thanks for creating in us hunger.

I like to eat, but God, I want to eat the right things.

I want to consume the right things.

And so, Lord, what I pray for each one of us is that we are hungry for Christ, that we get rid of the things in our lives that are distracting us from anything but you.

God, I pray that we would consume the word.

We would take it in and we would live it.

It would become our mother tongue.

Lord, I pray that we would, oh, I pray that we would pray often.

Paul told us to pray without ceasing.

God, that's how we need to do.

How every action, every deed, every thought, every word reflects you.

It reflects your character, not for our glory, but for yours.

I ask these things in your saving name, Jesus.

Amen.

Well, as you know, if you've been with us any time, we'd like to give some questions at the end of the sermon for you to just consider.

Perhaps we'll call it mental chewing gum.

I gave you five questions.

I want you just to pick out one or two that you're gonna chew on today and this week.

Take a couple of moments and consider these.

God, I pray that you would give us Jesus.

My concern is we're saying, give us Jesus and Netflix, give us Jesus and these other things, give us Jesus and the new car.

Lord, what I pray is that we would just say, give us Jesus.

Jesus, you're the only thing we need.

And oh, it's easy to say that when we get to return to a nice house with indoor plumbing, etc.

God, what we want to do is say, take all I have, take everything in this world, and give them Jesus.

Lord, if there's anything I have, it's only because of you.

And so, God, I want you to use it in the way you want to.

I want to live a productive life.

One that has your definition of success, one that gives the world Jesus.

Let each one of us be about that.

For it's in the Savior's name that I pray this, God.

Amen.

Well, normally we would have a time of video announcement to let you know what's going on in the life of our church.

This morning, what I want to tell you is that if you have any interest in knowing more about Grand Parkway, our core beliefs, who's on staff here, upcoming events, et cetera, I'd ask you to go to our website, grandparkway.org, for any information you have.

At the end of our service, myself and some of our staff will be in front.

We'd be glad to answer any questions you have about anything that you're wondering, including why is abbreviation such a long word?

If you, I'm just teasing, I don't know why.

If you're one of our first-time guests, what I'd ask you to do is take a moment, if you haven't already, and pay attention to the connection card in the seat back in front of you.

If you'd complete that before you leave today, you can drop in any of the wooden boxes on your way out.

If you're a member of Grand Parkway, you know that's also where we worship through giving.

So you can do that as well.

Now, speaking of your way out, as you exit today, if you have not already gotten a blue bracelet, this bracelet is for our group going to Portland.

It's a prayer bracelet.

Uh, we've sent a group of men, as recent as literally this morning, they left to go to Portland, Oregon to minister to a national missions partner we have there, Redeeming Church.

The church is uh in a place where I'm not even sure they could spell Christian, a well-needed place that needs these men to go do the work they're going to do.

They're gonna go refurbish a building that the church has.

They're gonna be doing bathrooms and all kinds of construction projects.

The whole week they're gone.

Here's what I would ask if you'd take one of those bracelets, and just every time you look down at that, I want you to pray.

And here's how to pray: pray for their safety and also pray for the work they're doing.

Not so much the hammering and nailing, but the planning and the watering.

I believe God has some good plans for that church and the people there, and we get to be a part of it.

It's our privilege to do so, but it's only because of your generosity and obedience and your tithes and givings that we get to even have a national partner in that.

And so I want to tell you thank you for being a part of it.

And I'd ask your continued support of it through those prayer bracelets.

Well, also is our tradition, we like to uh give a blessing before we leave.

So if you'd stand and hold out your hands as if receiving something, I'd like to offer a blessing to you.

May God feed your body and nourish your soul so that you are full to live and demonstrate to a lost and broken world so that they can taste and know that God is good.

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

Amen.

You're dismissed.