Open Windows, Part 1: The Secret to Seeing from God's Perspective

Hi, welcome to the Vine Life Church podcast.

We're in Baltimore, Colorado, and we're following Jesus by staying lived in his presence, following his family and living in his mission so that hearts are awakened with his almost fire.

And if we can help you in any way, reach out to usfinalife.com.

For now, here's a short sermon from Last Week in my life.

Again, thanks for joining us.

Alright, if you have your Bibles, go ahead and open up to the Old Testament.

We're gonna open up to the book of Daniel together.

If you have your Bibles, you can open up your Bible app.

I typically read from the English Standard Version unless I find a version I like better.

But we typically start with ESV around here.

And uh and um today we're launching uh a new teaching series for the next several weeks called Open Windows.

It's a new series called Open Windows, and we have quite a bit we're gonna read today, so I'm just gonna jump right in, and we're gonna read the bulk of chapter one here.

So this is quite a lot, but it's all important for understanding the context of what's happening in Daniel.

First one says this In the third year of the reign of Jehochim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it, and the Lord gave Jehochim, king of Judah, into his hand with some of the vessels of the house of God, and he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his God, and placed the vessels in the treasury of his God.

Then the king commanded Ashpenes, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, youths without blemish, of good appearance, and skilful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding, learning, and competent, to stand in the king's palace, and to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans.

The king assigned them a daily portion of the food the king ate, and of the wine that he drank.

They were to be educated for three years, and at the end of that time they were to stand before the king.

Among these were Daniel, Hananiah, Meshael, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah.

And the chief of the eunuchs gave them names.

Daniel he called Belteshazzar, Hananiah he called Shadrach, Meshael he called Meshach, and Azariah he called Abednego.

But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself in the king's food, or with the wine that he drank.

Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself, and God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chiefs of the eunuchs.

And the chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, I fear my lord the king, who assigned you food and your drink, for why should he see that you were in worse condition than the youths of those of your own age?

So you would endanger my head with the king.

Then Daniel said to the steward, whom the chief of the eunuchs had assigned over Daniel, Hananiah, Meshael, and Azariah, Test your servants for ten days.

Let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink, then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king's food be observed by you, and deal with your servants according to what you see.

So he listened to them in this matter and tested them for ten days.

At the end of the ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh.

It's good to be fat, by the way.

Fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king's food.

So the steward took away their food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables.

As for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom.

And Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.

Let's pray together.

Father, we ask that you would open up your word to us.

As we share this space together, we thank you, Holy Spirit.

We invite you to come speak not just to our minds, but to our inmost being.

We thank you for your word to come alive and animate us from the inside out.

Change us with your voice, God.

Let us be sleeped in your thoughts and your perspective.

I thank you for a Daniel moment in 2023.

That you're raising up Daniel in this community and beyond.

Those who love you and seek your face.

Let it be so with us here today, God.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

So the book of Daniel, most of many of you guys would know that he's considered a minor prophet in the Old Testament.

And what this is, is we're coming into this beginning of a narrative of when the people of Israel, judgment comes upon the people of Israel because of their disobedience.

And uh and this is kind of the first narrative what happens when the nation of Israel falls to Nebuchadnezzar, they're besieged, and young men are taken captive and taken into Babylon.

And the first seven chapters of the book of Daniel is the chronicle of Daniel and these few other men.

Why were they chosen?

It says in the text that we just read, they were chosen because there is no physical defects.

They were handsome, they're good at learning, intelligent, right?

So these are like cream of the crop, a lot like Josh Robertson over here, all right?

I mean, just charming, good looking, ripped, right?

Good with the ladies, right?

I mean, that whole thing.

Um, and so they took the cream of the crop from Jerusalem and said, we want you guys, we're gonna take you into Babylon and we're gonna train you.

And so Babylon's goal was to thoroughly train and convert the Jews into Babylonian citizens.

How did they do this?

Here's a few things we just read.

Here's Babylon's plan.

Number one, they renamed them after Babylonian gods.

So Daniel, whose name is God will judge, got named Beltheshazzar.

And there's a there's a few different interpretations of this.

Some people say it means protect the king, which means the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar.

Others say it means Baal, protect the king.

So you're no longer, your name no longer means God will judge.

Now you exist to protect the king of Babylon.

Hananiah, whose name was God is gracious, was your name Shadrach, which means command of the moon god.

Mishhael, whose name was who is like God, or what would later become Michael, was named Meshach, who, which means who is, basically, who was like Aku, who was another Babylonian god.

Azariah, whose name meant God is helped, got changed to Abednego, which means servant of Nabu.

So the first thing that happens when they come into Babylon, they're like, all right, this is how you are known.

Now we are going to name you after one of our gods, and that's your name from here on out.

Okay.

Number two, they trained these young boys for three years in their language and literature.

In other words, we're going to show you how we do things around here.

And so you have your own texts, you have your own philosophers, you have your own spiritual guides, prophets, law, all that.

You're going to set that aside.

We're going to show you how we do things in Babylon.

So they trained them for about three years in their wisdom and literature.

Third thing they did was they changed their diet.

And it was another way of saying, it's time that you forget your old way of life.

We're going to show you, uh, show you a new way to eat.

Now, specifically, we read that they start feeding these young men what the king ate: wine and luxurious food.

What's interesting is out of all three things, the one that finally causes Daniel to draw the line and say, all right, Buck stops here, is the food.

So we read that they allow them to rename them.

They said, you know, in other words, you can call us whatever you want to call us.

We don't care.

Call us what you're going to call us.

We'll read your stuff, right?

We'll listen to your podcasts.

We'll we'll we'll get trained.

We'll get trained in wisdom.

They weren't scared about that because the Jewish way of thought, they weren't actually intimidated by other types of wisdom.

They just knew that God's wisdom was better than other other types of wisdom.

So they weren't afraid of other kinds of wisdom.

So that didn't scare them.

Where he drew the line, though, was the diet, because there's something about it that was actually defiling.

We don't entirely know why in this, but we know that he said, listen, you can do what you're going to do.

We're not eating your food.

So here's what we're going to eat.

And uh and we'll show you how that works out for us.

And obviously, we see that even as they, as Daniel stood ground in kind of a holy defiance, God protected them in that moment.

So there's certain things they accommodated, other things they said, we're not going to do that, right?

And so we we get this picture immediately as these boys are taken into Babylon, that Babylon, what they were doing is they actually created a discipleship culture.

They actually had a plan on how they were going to thoroughly convert these Jews into good Babylonian boys.

They trained the Jews as to say, your attention is now on Babylon.

You came from one way of life, and we're going to show you another way of life that we think is actually better.

Now, all of that is good context for us for where we're going this week in the next several weeks, because we need to be reminded, I believe, that though our context, 2023, United States, Colorado, our context is much different than Babylon and Jerusalem.

In a lot of ways, we deal with some of the same types of things.

We need to be reminded, as a people, that every day we are being discipled into a way of life.

It's not a question of if you're being discipled.

It's a question of which culture are you being discipled into.

And this is a massive thing for us.

We don't get to choose if we're being discipled into a way of life.

We are all being discipled, but we have to be very clear of which culture are we being discipled into.

And maybe you've had experiences like this in explicit ways.

Maybe you've joined a new company and they have a whole onboarding process and they're going to show you here's how we do things, here's how we communicate, here's the books you're going to read, right?

Has anybody been to Chick-fil-A?

They're really good at discipling you into their culture, right?

It's amazing because you go through their drive-thru and you order the spicy chicken sandwich and you're thrilled.

And so you say thank you, but they do not say you're welcome.

They say, My pleasure.

See?

My pleasure.

It's my pleasure.

I said, Yeah, it's your pleasure.

And then I devour the chicken sandwich.

It should have been in the Ark of the Covenant, this chicken sandwich.

It's so good.

It's holy.

I feel so enriched.

Thank you, Chick-fil-A.

Thank you for your culture.

Imagine being, imagine if we were besieged by like a vicious nation, like a hostile, oppressive nation.

Like imagine if a nation came over the border and attacked us, something like Canada.

Right?

And they started making oppressive demands.

Like you're gonna eat maple syrup on everything.

Every sentence will end with a, you know, you're not doing this to me, Canada.

Um it would have an effect on us, right?

But more seriously, every day we are all being discipled into a world view, a view of how reality actually works.

Most of us aren't aware of that, and that's part of the problem.

We think that it's just the way things are.

We're being discipled into a version of this is what happiness looks like, we're a version of this is what success looks like, and what you should lay your life down for, and the lives of your children down for.

Some of us are being discipled to a vision of this is what freedom looks like.

And we start kind of overlaying the politics stuff, it starts getting really tricky.

Because some of us are being discipled into a vision of a nation that, like, the real problem is all those undocumented immigrants and refugees, that's the problem that we're actually facing.

Other people are being discipled into this thing of the real enemy are those Trump supporters because they're all actually white supremacists that are ushering in the Fourth Reich.

And I kind of say that tongue in cheek, but you know what I'm talking about.

Other voices have much to say about the way that we view gender and sexuality.

And they're happy to teach our kids about what the high moral ground for you know for gender and sexuality is these days.

Others are obsessed with money and riches and gain.

Others will champion free love and how oppressive institutions like marriage are, because they're just artifacts of the past used to actually bind us into this uh this property, you know, property transaction thing, but they only hold us back from a life that we deserve and actual happiness and free love.

Are you guys hearing me here today?

And so we every day, every time you turn on Netflix, every time you pull up your your phone, every time you're encountering a message from our culture, these types of things, there's versions of reality that are just peppered in there.

And over time, over time, over time, over time, it just becomes the way things are.

And so as we're launching into 2023, these are foundational questions for us.

Not to sound over dramatic that we're like exactly like Daniel going into Babylon, but in some ways, sometimes it feels like that.

And the questions that come to mind for me are how do we live and flourish in a time where there is a clash of kingdoms?

How do we cultivate a resilient faith in a time where no one is there to applaud you?

Good job, you went to church today.

Good job, you tithe.

Nobody's there.

Woo! Look at you.

How do you keep a resilient faith?

How do you, while you're in Babylon, quote unquote, bring blessing and influence to your cities and the places where God has called you to dwell, yet still remain remain distinct in your identity and conviction and faith.

How do we become people who extend and push out the blessing of God in a time where it doesn't always feel like we're at home in the places that we live?

I think these are really good questions that we need to be asking.

And so when we look at Daniel, even though Daniel was living in a foreign city that had no values for the ways of the Jewish people, even though he was trained in new language and literature, his identity was still anchored in his allegiance to Yahweh.

And so it's amazing when you spend time in the life of Daniel, you get the sense that he just remains steady, unwavering, and focused.

How many of you want to live a grounded life?

How many of you are tired of being tossed back and forth through every opinion and wind and wave of thought and philosophy and doctrine?

I think it's possible.

I think Daniel's showing us how.

I think the Holy Spirit has been given to us to anchor us in our deepest identity so we know how to live steadily in the time in which God has called us to live.

Not only did Daniel stay grounded in his identity, though, he became a valuable aid to the rulers of Babylon.

The text says he was smart, intelligent, savvy, wise, integrated in the city, gifted in dreaming and interpreting dreams.

So much so that he earned the favor of four different rulers in Babylon.

Do you guys see that?

Over the course of this whole book, he actually serves.

He's loved, not just serves, but he's like loved and honored by four different rulers in Babylon.

Even when he refuses to bow down to them, they still reluctantly punish him.

You guys get this?

This is such a key principle for us.

Because for Daniel to live in Babylon, it wasn't just self-preservation.

How am I going to cow over here and protect what I have in God?

But he was living from a vision of as long as I'm here, God's called me to be a blessing to this city, to do what God's called me to do, to walk in wisdom and intelligence, to be savvy and smart and quick.

We need some savvy, smart, quick Christians in the world today who are sown into spheres of influence, not just not just to cower, not just to not just to play on the defense, but to play on the offense, to actually live with influences in the city, in the neighborhoods, and the workplaces that God has given us.

That's what He's called us to do.

He's called us to live distinct, but live as people of consequence, that our lives actually are consequential on the places He's called us to.

And so, what was Daniel's secret in all these things?

How did he cultivate this kind of life?

We don't get a whole lot about his actual life with the Lord, but we get some.

So later on in chapter 6, we read that he had so much favor, it created competition and envy among the other advisors.

They wanted to be favored like Daniel was.

And so they set a trap for him.

And they got the king to rewrite a law that says, hey, everybody should be paying attention to you, nobody else.

So we need a new law.

And that law should basically say that if you are caught praying to any god or man, you are gonna be punished by being torn apart by lions.

We're gonna feed you to lions.

And the king said, That's a great idea, let's do that.

So they enacted it, and Daniel heard about it.

And Daniel 6, chapter chapter 6, verse 10 says this When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem.

He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously.

So the decree was clear that no one was to pray for 30 days.

So that triggers something in Daniel.

Immediately he goes to his room with his open windows, and he looks towards Jerusalem and he prays.

And he didn't open his window so others could see in, though he wasn't ashamed of that.

He opened his window because in 2 Chronicles it talks about how if the peop if God's people were ever to find themselves carried away captive, they were to pray towards Jerusalem.

Why?

Because Jerusalem was the location of the presence of God and the promises of God and the restoration of God.

If you're ever carried away, I want you to turn towards the place of promise and orient your life again.

So that's what he did.

So what was the secret?

He he didn't retreat from Babylon in pious isolation or hyper-spiritual distancing, nor did he simply go with the flow and under underestimate the power and influence of Babylon on his actual soul.

See what Daniel shows us to live on this tight rope.

We read that he maintained the practice of returning to an open window three times a day.

He would get on his knees and he would look out this window towards the place of God's dwelling and promise, and in doing so, reorient his life towards God and God's reality.

No matter what they named him, what was expected of him, he had the discipline of returning to his open windows in vulnerability, honesty, trust, and three times a day he would enter back into the slipstream of heaven's perspective.

He was living in a deluge of enculturation.

But he had a habit.

If nothing else, he had a habit.

Three times a day, he would come up and he would look out his windows, and he would get on his knees, and he would petition the God of heaven, and he would give thanks.

And somehow.

In some way, this habit was an anchoring point for him.

To remember where he was living from.

See, living in Babylon without losing your soul requires this kind of habit of daily returning your vision to God multiple times a day.

A purposeful disruption to your life.

To remember where you're living from and return to his voice, his ways, his purposes, and his promises.

I believe one of the greatest battles we will fight in our generation is around the stewardship of our attention.

We will be dealing with this the rest of our lives in a way that no other generation has.

One of the greatest battles, one of the greatest obstacles and enemies of our discipleship to the King, the Lord, his name is Jesus, is around the stewardship of our attention.

And where we invest our thoughts, where we invest our concerns and our worries, where our hearts are located, what has our deepest affection and our deepest desire.

And there is no shortage, there is absolutely no shortage of people and places and kingdoms that are vying for that same attention.

But I believe that we are in a time and a place where God is teaching us how to reserve our attention for Him again.

Because I know this for myself.

Forgetting who God is and what he has done is one of the enemy's greatest plans to deform us and destroy us.

And we hear this all the time.

Even kids that grow up in church, you had your two hours of church on a Sunday morning and two hours of youth group at night, that it wasn't quite enough when you get to college and all of a sudden everything gets ripped apart.

Because it's about a stewardship of attention.

When we forget who God is and what he's done and what he is doing, it actually deforms us and that will destroy us.

That it doesn't have to be that way.

Hebrews 12, too, the writer of Hebrews says this.

We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.

We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus.

Because he initiates, he's the author and perfecter of our faith.

He started it and he's going to fulfill it, he's going to complete it.

And that's why we say week after week, our vision is Jesus.

Not because he needs to hear that, we need to hear that.

We come here to reorient our lives and our the attention of our hearts into a plumb line.

And so we say over and over again, our vision is Jesus.

And by saying that, we're actually indexing ourselves again towards a person.

Why?

Because what we behold is what we become.

What we behold, what is worth your attention, will have the greatest effect on your life.

What your attention goes to has the greatest effect on the kind of person you are becoming.

What we behold is what we become.

And so why would we behold anything else but the person of Jesus?

And I get that sometimes that sounds like the churchy cute answer.

Of course the vision is Jesus.

But there's nothing cute about it.

It's not just the Sunday school answer, you know, or the answer to every question.

It's Jesus.

Who died on the cross?

Jesus.

Who multiplied the food?

Jesus.

Who got swallowed by a whale?

Jesus.

I don't know, but let's go with it.

But in the end, it's not this head in the sand, disembodied, disconnected vision.

Like Daniel, when we say our vision is Jesus and we mean it, it's actually an act of defiance in a world that demands that we pay attention to everything else but him.

It's a battle cry.

It's about holy.

It's about setting our attention upon the one who actually deserves it.

And so not only is it an act of holy righteous indignation and holy defiance and resistance, but also we say our vision is Jesus because it's too easy to forget why we do what we do, especially in the church world.

Pete Gregg said this some of us need to stop being Christians for a bit.

We're just too good at it.

It's become habitual, he said.

He said, The vision is Jesus, not Christianity, not rules and religion, not prayer and mission and justice, not even miracles or mission or worship, just Jesus.

He said, I'm not really into church, but I am into Jesus, so I like his people.

They're a little weird, but so am I.

He said, I'm not into worship, all of those soft acoustic rock songs over and over again.

But I am into Jesus, so when I see him, I smile and I bow, and yes, my heart comes alive and I sing.

He's like, I'm not really into social justice, I'm into Jesus, so I find myself picking fights with his enemies.

I'm not into evangelism.

I hate evangelism, but I am into Jesus, so I can't help but talk to people about him.

He said, I'm actually not into prayer.

Mind you, this guy leads the 24-7 prayer movement globally.

He said, I'm actually not into prayer.

I'm into Jesus, so we talk.

I don't believe in the power of prayer, I believe in the power of God, so I ask for his help a lot.

It's easy for us to forget the plot.

And even when we gather here and we sing, it's easy, it's just so easy for us to forget why are we doing this again?

Can I just remind us, we don't worship because we're obsessed with worship, we worship because we're obsessed with Jesus.

Now, it is possible to be obsessed with just worship.

It's possible to be obsessed with just social justice or just this part or just this part, but all of those things are pathways because our deepest desire, they're all actually pathways to his eyes and his face.

Because when when all is said and done, when we are standing before him, everything else is going to fade away.

The only thing in that list is actually going to maintain is worship.

Everything else, all of our projects and initiatives, they're all temporary assignments on our way to extending more of the life of Jesus in our life.

Because when we stand before him, he's all we get.

And that's got to be enough.

And it is enough.

Amen.

So when the vision is Jesus, you'll actually do all of those things.

You'll pray and worship and go to church and preach the gospel and reach the lost and heal the sick and cast out demons.

You serve the poor, you bless the city in which you live, because all of that actually brings you closer to him.

The vision is Jesus.

So Daniel, every day, to remind himself of his deepest vision, he would go to his upper room and he'd have his open windows and he would pray towards Jerusalem.

But here's the interesting thing.

Daniel was not in Jerusalem.

He would pray towards Jerusalem, but he was not in Jerusalem, and he could not see Jerusalem.

He didn't know that Babylon was at least 550 miles from Jerusalem, separated by the Arabian Desert.

So when he looked out the windows, he saw a city that was not Jerusalem.

But his heart saw Jerusalem.

See, when Jesus becomes our vision, we every part of our lives, when Jesus is our vision, we see we see every part of our lives with transformed eyes.

Prayer is our portable window we take with us wherever we go.

And when we look out the open windows of God's heart, even the face-value thing of what we see, we actually see through it towards the direction of God's purposes and promises.

So if you want to preserve your heart for God in a hostile environment, you should open a window.

If you want to learn how to love your enemies, you should open a window.

If you want to walk in favor with God and man, open a window.

If you want to excel in your work and your business in favor, open a window.

If you want to live a life of holy resolve and righteous defiance, open a window.

If you want to see your city like God sees it, not as you see it, but as God sees it, you gotta open a window.

Some of you are unsatisfied with your life because you're perceiving it at face value, not what God is building in you.

It's time to open a window.

Some of you feel stuck in a broken relationship because that's all you can see, and everything is filtered through a lens of why it's broken, why it will always be broken.

But God wants you to see, to be able to re-see your relationships through the lens of restoration and redemption, and you do that by opening a window.

Am I preaching?

Some of us, some of you see your nine to five job as a tedious grind rather than a ministry unto the Lord in which he led you for a specific purpose in a season and know you don't know why you're there, but it doesn't matter because God is good and he sent you as a sent one on mission with him.

Doesn't matter what you're doing from nine to five, you are there in this time, in this season, and it's time that you open a window and stop diminishing your work and start calling it into the fullness of what God had in mind for you when he sent you there.

It's time to reclaim your everyday life, your Monday through Friday, your nine to five, you're waking and you're sleeping and you're working and you're relaxing and you're resting and you're playing as all holy unto God.

There is no sacred and secular in the kingdom of God.

When we open a window, we see everything with the transformed eyes.

We see our lives like Jesus sees them.

Some of us men, we live in a perpetual shame from just not being enough, or providing enough, or being emotionally available enough.

And we have people to remind us of that, including ourselves.

And so when we live in that, we're tempted to give up or lay low or lower the expectations so as not to create further disappointment with ourselves or with others.

And it turns into this kind of lethargy that we live in.

But I'm telling you, man, those days are over.

It's time to open a window and get God's perspective.

He's made you for way more than that.

He's made me for way more than that.

And I'm not talking to you like I'm not one of them.

I face the same types of things.

I face my own insecurities and fears.

I rarely feel good enough, but I thank God that He has called me His Son and He's told me you don't have to be good enough because you're my beloved.

The way out is to open a window and see the Father who calls you his beloved and to live into a life of overflow.

Some of you women are just constantly comparing yourselves to others, wondering why your life doesn't look different.

Rather than walking in the rich identity of God's beloved.

So if you haven't picked it up yet, I really believe this is a year of open windows.

And what it requires from us is number one, the ability to know that we're not in a neutral point of time.

You can't just hop in a river and expect to not go one way or the other.

We live in a time where there is a current that is taking us somewhere.

It's taking you somewhere.

You are being taken somewhere by someone, but we're in a moment where we have to decide that that person that is leading us, the current that we are in, is the current of the kingdom of God, with a clear vision of the ways and the heart and the posture of Jesus.

He said, if we are not intentionally discipled by Jesus, we will be unintentionally discipled by the world.

And so what that does is it requires a sober-mindedness that there is no such thing as going with the flow, but that's okay, because as we read in Hebrews, he is the author and the perfector of our faith.

And so we fix our eyes on Jesus and we run towards him because he is the God who is full of grace and mercy.

He has not hidden his ways from us, he has opened his heart to us freely for all who will call on his name and humble ourselves before him.

And like Daniel, maybe get on our knees a few times a day and say, God, I'm ready to reorient my being into you.

Amen.

So how do we do that?

That's what we're talking about next week.

That's the cliffhanger, right?

So for the next few weeks, we're gonna talk about some practical things this year as a community that we're doing to steward our attention that we're going to do together.

That we believe that the Lord is inviting us into.

And I want you to come back and we're gonna you can learn about some of that over the next few weeks.

But for today, if you hear nothing else, just remember you were made.

You were made to live with a full heart and bright eyes, confident in who you are in God, and confident in the places that He has called you to, the neighborhoods He's called you to, the people that are in your life are not by accident.

Stop treating them like that.

The people, the circumstances that are in your life are not, God is not distant from them.

He has led you into things, and he's calling all of us in this season as we go about this year to live with a new level of intentionality, to not dismiss any detail of our lives as if it's separate from the purposes of God, but to call our attention back to him and watch him as he extends his blessing into the entire world.

Amen.

Let's stand together.

Let's stand together.

And as always, we are gifted, we are gifted with these beautiful windows.

When we look out these windows, we're not just looking at boulder, we're not just looking at the mountains.

Every time we look at these windows, we are being given an invitation to see from a higher perspective, to see from a deeper and further perspective, and to reorient, to call ourselves back into the purposes of God.

So I just want to pray for us today.

So around the room, if you're okay with it, you don't have to do this, but I invite you to do it as if you're receiving a gift.

Just put your hands out like this.

Sometimes we do things like this just to get out of our minds, we're gonna get into our bodies a little sound.

We're receiving a gift, we're receiving the gift of vision, but we're receiving the gift of resilience and endurance and faithfulness and righteousness and holiness, not because of our own work, but because God is setting us apart for Him.

So, God, I thank you.

I thank you today.

As we embark into a new year, I thank you that you have given us open windows, and those open windows we take with us throughout our days.

I thank you that any given point of the day we can drop to our knees and open a window to see things like you see them.

I pray for my brothers and my sisters here in this place that this is a year full of blessing, that this is a year even in unideal circumstances.

I don't know what everybody's going through, but I know that some of us are not living in ideal circumstances, and that's okay because you have called us to live from an upstairs perspective, an upper room perspective.

You have given us a high altitude perspective.

So I thank you for transformed eyes to see the land in which we're living, to living, not to be complainers, not to be diminishers, not to be belittlers, but to be the ones who believe that you are not done with what you started.

I thank you, Lord God, that transformation is not yet complete in us or in our cities or in our nation.

So you are giving faith to your people again to live into your promises and your purposes.

And I say, let it be so in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Amen.