Ephesians | Life In The Light

My name is Caleb. I'm the worship director here.

It's an honor to be here today to see all your faces.

I hope you're staying cool. And one thing about me in my

early 20s, I was at what I would say is probably a dead end job.

I and, and it was a dead end job mostly because of my own

motivation. It was in the healthcare

industry. I had no shout out to all our

healthcare workers, but that was not my passion.

I was not knowledgeable or gifted in that area and I I was

not getting paid that much. I wasn't having fulfillment.

I really had no mentorship or no upward mobility at the job.

And so it was a dead end job. I eventually went for a job in

telecommunications trying to get another job, change my field, up

my pay, up my vocational kind of equity and value.

It was a long shot. It was a job I had I knew

nothing about and and considering my demographic,

there wasn't many people that looked like me, talk like me,

sounded like me, were like me at this job that I was going for.

I got the job by God's grace. It was also probably through

some divine intervention. It was a friend of the church

who was also a vice president at the job who later alerted me

that the CEO had some not so good things to say about me

coming onto their team. But that's another story for a

different day. But I got the job.

I was so excited the the pay was double what I was making.

You get your own computer, your laptop, BlackBerry.

I know I'm aging myself, but for for those that don't know,

BlackBerry is kind of like an iPhone refrigerator kind of

thing that goes on your. I travelled a lot.

There was opportunity for upward mobility.

It was a very high profile job. It was selling contracts to the

government, selling telecommunications and

communications contracts to the government.

I was so grateful and very quickly I realized that I did

not know how to operate in an adult professional environment.

Like seriously. Now my parents, they taught me a

lot. I am so grateful for everything

that they have taught me and instilled in me.

But unfortunately, that wasn't many conversations we had had is

how to be an actual professional, how to advocate

for yourself vocationally. My jobs before that had been

working as a clerk in the medical records office, working

as a muffin man in a bakery, a couple camp counselor jobs.

And to be quite honest, it probably would be defined as a

profession. It was it was selling marijuana

around the neighborhood. And that was that was before,

that was before it was trendy and cool and there was

dispensaries everywhere. So it was actually frowned upon.

I actually tried to write a paper on that in college and

didn't do so well. But anyway, so I was grateful.

I was grateful for the job, but didn't know professional

etiquette. I didn't know the, the, the, the

lingo. I didn't know how to communicate

with people in the right way. I didn't know some of the, the,

the, the ways in which to run meetings.

And I was really weak in Google Suite and, and Microsoft Suite.

I was grateful, but I did not know how to operate.

And maybe some of y'all have felt like that, whether it be a

new job, a new relationship, a new city, a new marriage, a new

something that you're really grateful for.

Thank God I have this, but I don't really know how to

operate. I need instructions, I need

mentorship, I need discipleship. I don't know what I'm doing.

And this is kind of where we find ourselves in this passage

as Paul writes to the Ephesians, their newfound faith, they're

grateful for it. He talks about how Jesus died

and, and brings you into this new family where your sins are

forgiven, where you're where you're able to celebrate

diversity and you're able to be sanctified.

Just meaning that that God is sculpting you into the kind of

people that he wants you to be. They're grateful for it, but but

they don't really know how to do it.

And, and how many, you know, when you mix people that have

not been at probably at the most maturity and some entitlement

and and different levels of diversity, there could be

issues. Amen.

You wouldn't know nothing about that.

We can be grateful for it, but not know how to operate.

And so the next part of Paul, the first part of Paul's letter

is just defining the new job. But the next part is that

basically Paul's saying, I know you don't know how to operate,

so let me put you on. And that's where we find

ourselves when we talk about walking in the light.

An equally powerful metaphor is when Paul talks about taking off

our old selves and putting on our new selves in verses 22 and

24, Taking off our old selves and putting on our new selves.

How many sneaker any sneaker heads out here?

Any all right, we got some sneaker heads.

Well, regardless if you're a sneaker head or you know, the,

the sensation of putting on sneakers for the first time, you

might like the sneakers, right? But at first they, they don't

feel right sometimes, right, even when they they're actually

technically your size, right? They don't feel right.

You got to what? Break them in right And at the

same time, sometimes your old dusty, dirty tongue flapping,

you know, souls kind of scraping off.

Those are really comfortable, right?

I don't want to get rid of those sneakers.

This can be true with our lives. Amen.

We can want this new restorative mindset.

We can want success in every areas of our lives.

We can want a relationship with Jesus.

But when you first put on this new, it can feel uncomfortable

and it can feel like I'd, I'd, I'd so much rather go back to my

old dirty sneakers. They, they, they're fit to my

foot, right? They know that one leg is longer

than the other. Like, you know, I'm fitting to

them. This can be our lives.

And it's important to note that it's not just removing the old

as not just putting on the new. If I went to Foot Locker and was

just like, I want a pair of new sneakers and refuse to take off

my old sneakers, that would be a problem, right?

I'd be walking. I don't, I don't know.

At the same time, if I went to Foot Locker and said I'd like to

try on a pair of new sneakers, took off my old sneakers and

just walked out in my socks, that would be a dirty situation.

And so this duality of taking off our old self and putting on

our new selves, God is clothing us with newness.

He's giving us new mindsets, new giftings, but at the same time,

there's stuff in our lives that doesn't fit.

And this was true to with the Ephesians.

He's saying, take off your old selves, your old way of doing,

your old way of thinking, your old way of being in community.

Take it off as you get clothed with this new self.

But this metaphor is a little bit incomplete for a couple

reasons. One is the process is

continuous. It's not a one and done.

I take off my old sneakers and put on my new sneakers.

It's a daily responsibility, Amen.

And another way this metaphor is incomplete is that instead of

your foot or, or instead of the sneaker breaking into your foot,

Amen. Your foot is changing.

Amen. It's our hearts, our mindsets,

our desires that are changing to mold into this newness.

And that was Paul's word to the Ephesians.

Partner with the Lord Jesus as He makes you new.

And I know it's hard now. I know it's uncomfortable.

I know you got to look down every time you're afraid there's

a scuff sneaker. Here's what I'm talking about.

I know every, every time you like bend down, you got to like

to you know what I'm talking about when you got to do this so

it doesn't crease. Some of you're like, what is he

talking about? Some of you know what I'm

talking about. And so the way Paul talks about

how to focus, how to 0 in on that is saying restrain from the

wrong so you can focus on the right, restrain from the wrong

so you can focus on the right. John Olinger, I don't want to

mispronounce his name, but John Olinger, I think is the

pronunciation. He's a, he was a, a Nike

executive also did marketing for Kobe, the late great Kobe

Bryant. And I actually get the

opportunity to talk to him in a few days, which I'm excited

about as a, for another project. But he's a believer.

He's a Jesus follower and he, he talks about worthy wins.

He says define what your success is because everybody has a

different idea of what success looks like in their life.

Get clear on what success looks like in this case in the spirit

and the natural. Get clear on what success looks

like. And that way when you have to

shed things, when you have to not do, when you have to

restrain, when you have to forego, it doesn't seem that bad

because I have this goal in mind.

I know what I'm, I'm know what I'm fighting for.

So I saw several areas where Paul encourages us to take off

the old and put on the new. This is not exhaustive.

This is just what I extracted and what jumped out to me as the

text. And I know the magic number

usually is 3, but there's six of them.

So just bear with me, Church, All right?

I saw falsehood, anger, stealing, bad language, lust and

intoxication. Falsehood, anger, stealing, bad

language, lust and intoxication. You know, when I first came to

face, and probably many of you might think like this, when I

first came to faith, the Christian faith looked like a

list of do's and don't mostly don'ts actually.

And, and I've been blessed both culturally and and and and and

and in a lot of ways to have a pretty full life.

Some I'm proud of, some I'm not proud of.

But coming into the Christian faith just felt like it was like

I was trying to fit into this box of no, I can't.

No, I can't, no, I can't. Life kind of felt boring and

confusing and less attractive. I mean, and if that's the

paradigm that we're in, of course it feels like that,

right? Imagine somebody like you're

trying to evangelize to somebody.

You're like, hey, bro, hey sis, would you like to have a lot

less sex and not get drunk and never be able to express your

anger? It's just like, no, that's lame.

You're weird, but that was sometimes how I digested the

Christian faith, right? I love how Sho Baraka, who's I

think chief editor, he works at Christianity Today.

He's an author, he's a rapper. He's a really insightful guy.

I love how he puts it, he says. When I first came to faith, my

main concern was to abstain from sexual immorality, drug use and

fits a rage. I would soon learn that the

Christian faith is about so much more than avoiding sin.

As my brother Dottie said, I'll put it, Jesus didn't die for us

to avoid, just to avoid sin and fleet temptation.

He died for us to push back the darkness and be able to walk

amongst the grotesque. And he's not talking about

people, he's just talking about this.

Life gets hard. Amen.

He goes on to say. The truth is that God makes us

new. He gives us new joys and new

gifts that we should open and celebrate like a kid on

Christmas. The Gospel redeems and reforms

us, but it doesn't remove our compassion and awareness about

the darkness of this world. So you're not just fitting into

a weird box, you're actually becoming stronger and how to

engage the darkness in this world.

You're not pretending things don't exist.

You're not totally denying your full humanity of the person that

God's made you to be. So again, falsehood, anger,

stealing, bad language, lusted, intoxication.

Let's go through these quickly. And each one of these can be,

it's probably its own sermon, so I'm just going to unpack as it

relates to taking off the old, putting on the new.

But there's a lot more to be said about each one of these

areas. Falsehood, he said instead of

falsehood, speak truth and gratitude, speak truth instead

of falsehood. I started to think about the

metaphor of the body. You know, we often talk about

Christ's body. It's a body.

There's different functions, there's different ways of being.

There's different people with different gifts.

Falsehood, speak truth. One of the interesting things I

think about is an allergic reaction.

When an allergic reaction happens, the interesting thing

is it's not about the actual food that you're eating.

It is, but it's not. It's about the signal that your

body is sending, the false signal that your body is sending

to create that reaction in your body.

That's why some people can eat whatever almonds and some people

can. It's your own body that is lying

to another part of your body that is creating that allergic

reaction. It's not the content, it's the

fact that there's a falsehood in our body and we all, anybody who

struggle with health or or or or chronic issues knows the

difference between when your body's working correctly,

sending right signals, and when it's not so much more with our

lives and our interactions with each other.

Putting on a true self. A lot of us know how refreshing

it is to be able to be your true self around people and know how

stifling and exhausting it is when you have to fake the funk.

A lot of loneliness I feel like is not just about the volume of

people around us, but how well we're known and how well we know

others true selves. So speak truth, be your true

self. That doesn't mean remain in

toxic behaviors, but speak truth, be be, be, be transformed

as God molds us in our true selves.

Instead of anger, address it and view it as an invitation.

Now some of us on one extreme need to watch out for fits of

rage, ration on people, all of the above.

But then some of us on the other end of the spectrum need to

learn how to express our anger and advocate for ourselves and

be courageous. They both have in common is

learning how to address anger in healthy ways.

Anger can be an invitation. And I know they, we, we, we've

probably all heard like, don't let the sun go down on your

anger. It's funny, I read it.

It was some book that a couple was like, we tried that

literally early in our marriage and we didn't sleep for three

days. I don't think he's literally

saying don't get sleep because I don't know, Christina and I

might relate. Is, is trying to resolve anger

when you're low on sleep is usually counterproductive

anyway. And so, but what he's saying is

don't let it turn into bitterness.

Don't let it start to rot. You know the difference when

you're angry and you're working through it versus like it's just

sitting, it's sitting in the pit of your stomach.

And this anger is not doing me any good.

You ever, you ever, you ever pretended like something didn't

bother you, like, it ain't a big deal.

And then you get home. Morgan Freeman narration.

But it was a big deal. I'm glad y'all caught that.

Yeah. Learn how to advocate for your

anger without going into rage or to bitterness.

Anger can be an invitation. Later.

In, in, in, in, elsewhere in. I think Matthew Paul talks about

stories that you may win your brother over so that you may

deepen the relationship. I can't tell tell you how many

times conflict has been an invitation to deepen the

relationship. So we got anger, we have

falsehood. And he talks about stealing

instead of stealing, generosity so that folks would have

everything they need. So you can give to folks in need

and stealing. I'm sure he's talking about

several kinds, right? He's talking about petty thief,

which is, yes, don't take other people's stuff that doesn't

belong to you without their consent.

Yes, but also there was a contingent that was wealthy

here. And we know from in in Ephesus,

there was it was not all just poor people.

And we also know from Matthew in the story of Zacchaeus that they

were aware of not just stealing, as in like personal stealing,

but systems of stealing, systems that exploited poor people,

systems that exploited 1 ethnic group, systems that marginalized

people and left whole groups of people without what they needed.

And so we might look and say, well, I'm not a thief.

I'm not a petty thief. But he invites us to examine,

are we participating in systems that damage people?

And the goal here is so that everyone can have what they

need. The goal here is abundance.

Stop stealing. Check your heart so that

everyone can thrive. Bad language, which sounds kind

of weird. And, and I'll, I'll take a stab

here and say I do not think that Paul was talking about American

English curse words. Now, I'm not saying this gives

us the license to go curse somebody out, but this was

several thousand years ago when the paradigm of bad language is

a little bit different and not to mention American.

The English curse words actually have an interesting history that

can be a whole other rabbit trail.

But the point here is I think he's talking less about what you

say and more about why you say it.

Now, again, I'm not telling you to go to Pastor Josh.

You'd be like, yo, that was great.

I'm not saying all that, but it's less about what you say and

why you less about what you say, but why you say it.

You know, a lot of one of one of the checks and balances I use

for my language is intent and impact.

Intent and impact. What was my intention of saying

said thing? I can say a nice thing.

You, oh, you, you look, you look good today.

You know I can say a nice thing sonically, right?

What was my intention for saying that?

Where was my heart when I said that thing?

We can play each other all we want, but we can't play

ourselves in our own heart and what we meant when we said

something. And the impact.

You might have the best intentions, but take a second to

reflect. How was this going to land on

said people or person? What is the intent and what is

the impact? You can say the same thing with

different intentions and that can determine the morality of

it. I can say in vernacular to

somebody that understands me, like, oh man, you could tell a

funny joke and I'm like, oh, you stupid, you're funny, you're

wise, you're witty. Or I could be like, yo, you're

stupid. That's the same thing.

Different intent and probably different impact.

And so if your words are not landing the way that you want

them to, it's usually one of those two things or both.

You might want to check why you're saying the thing or you

might need better communication skills or knowledge of who

you're communicating to to have a better impact.

And now for everyone's favorite lust into self-control.

This obviously could be a whole nother sermon.

But what I will say is, you know, back back in this time,

obviously nothing like this time where somebody who comes into

power has a bunch of less powerful people at their beck

and call, starts to use them for sexual and labour and

exploitative needs. And and and and the feds raid

their mansion, I mean castle and and find a bunch of baby oil.

It's not so different as in powerful power that is not

checked. Objectification not checked

turns into lust that destroys things and people.

And nowadays you have to intentionally fight.

I, I know there's whole scores of conversation about the ethics

around Christian sexuality. But one thing I, I, I really

will stand on and I'll fight for at this time is the, the, the,

the saturation of, of, of sexuality in our faces all the

time. Just not even just our faults,

just the availability of the, the, the, the ability to be able

to see any and everything at any given notice.

I don't think that's healthy for him.

And there's complicated relationships.

We need the Internet, we need online.

And that's for all of us. I'm saying for a lot of us, it's

not even our fault. And for a lot of us, there are

things that we've been exposed to that didn't have our consent,

that we didn't even want to be exposed to.

And so I'm not saying this is a shame or a blame, but I'm saying

is if our goal is a healthy relationship with ourselves, a

healthy relationship with each other, and for those that desire

to be married or are married, a healthy relationship with our

spouse. Unchecked lust is darkness.

I've heard especially guys talking about like, I haven't

met the right one yet. I haven't met the right one.

And my question is always, are you the right one?

Have you become the right one? Unchecked lust makes it so hard

to love correctly. And then intoxication, he says

instead of intoxication, be filled with the Spirit and make

the most of every opportunity. Again, there's some nuance

around drinking. He says don't get drunk.

But we do know Jesus like to sip, sip every now and then.

And there's even more nuance nowadays with the legalization

of certain recreational drugs. Again, that could be a separate

conversation, but I will. What I will say is if you are

constantly inebriated, it is hard to make the most of every

opportunity. And that could be anything.

That could be back to lust, that could be to anger.

That could especially be with alcohol, with recreational

drugs, with hard drugs, with food.

It is hard to make the most of every opportunity.

I remember one time I used to go to the studio.

I still go to the studio a lot, but I used to get drunk and go

to the studio. I remember one time I was so

excited about going to the studio, about recording this new

song, and I was like, we should celebrate early before we go to

the studio. We celebrated way too hard.

I remember waking up listening to what we did in the studio and

I was like, why did the engineer ever let us record this?

This is terrible. My intoxication was not making

the most of that opportunity, especially when you're paying by

the hour. Make the most of every

opportunity, be filled with the spirit.

And you know, I've seen examples again, back to taking off the

old and and putting on the new. You know, there's kind of AI say

like a, a lane of, of masculinity now that there's a

lot of emphasizes abstaining, abstaining from could be lost,

abstaining from drugs, abstaining from food and, and

really beating your body into submission.

And I think parts of that's OK, but I know I have some people in

mind right now that have gotten really good at abstaining, but

it hasn't made them more kind, more wise, more loving, more

humble, more generous. And so I'm like, what are you?

What are you abstaining for? Take a drink, bro, Goodness

gracious. At the same time, I'd like to

shout out my brother who couldn't make it today.

He's coming up on two years of alcohol sobriety and he gave me

permission to to share this and I I love my brother.

I love him at one point and it's actually several points that

addiction or abuse had put him in some darkness and and and put

us as a the darkness has spread, right?

He was the darkness was affecting me.

He made the decision. I don't think it was the

attractiveness of not having alcohol, but it was him seeing

his new self and imagining with God what he could be.

And I think this example holds true because he's become he was

already a good father. He's become a great father, he's

become a better friend, he's become a better leader.

He's become more intentional, a better husband, more reliable.

There's so many things that doors that have opened up in his

life that we probably wouldn't even have related to alcohol.

But it's just part of taking off the the darkness and seeing

clearly and seeing and imagining with God what there could be for

you. And I don't want to idolize

just, again, I don't want to idolize abstaining.

Most of anybody that's been around recovery know it's a

daily thing. So you don't want to make the

abstaining the idol, right? But I'm proud to witness folks

that because of their abstinence, because of their

self-control, it has opened up beautiful possibilities for them

to draw closer to God and each other.

So now we get to this dark and light back in the day.

I'm a city kid. I was born and raised in

Dorchester Common Square. And although I've been to like

rural areas, when when I say dark, my concept usually is

like, yeah, I don't know, like the city when it's dark, there's

still lights. It's not dark dark.

Anybody grew up in rural America around here?

So y'all know what dark is, right?

I'm not talking spiritually, metaphorically I'm I'm but y'all

know y'all know dark dark, right?

Like our my concept of dark. It's hard to actually think

about what outside dark is because all throughout

Dorchester there's a light everywhere right now.

You go back 2000 years without electricity.

If you ain't brought your torch, it's dark.

And so when Paul gives his imagery of darkness, it's really

scary and dangerous. It's not just like, oh, let me

go over here and flick on a light switch, right?

When you're in the dark, you're none the wiser.

You're vulnerable. Somebody can attack you.

You don't know. I could go behind you and tell

you you're surrounded. And you have no way of verifying

that the darkness is a dangerous place, as Paul's talking about

it. In the darkness, you can't see

yourself clearly. You can't see others clearly.

You can't see your own. What's tripping you up very

clearly? How many of y'all have got up to

go to the bathroom in the night and just stubbed your toe?

Like, Oh my God, that's the darkness.

And Paul uses this language about being deceived, right?

He says deceived. He's not saying like all these

people are just terrible, rotten, disgraceful people.

He's talking about these people in the darkness.

You've been deceived. So, so the interesting thing is

some of us, including myself, sometimes we want these good

things for ourselves. We want to be able to have

healthy relationships, We want self-control, we want to be have

healthy marriages. We want, we want to be generous.

And so we have good intentions, but we're just missing it.

The word sin is an archery term that just means missing the

mark. So it's not even necessarily

saying that like all the time you're doing something bad

because you're bad and, and, and you should just be shamed.

It's saying you're actually just, you're missing it.

There's a vision problem, there's an accuracy problem.

J. Cole, really talented rapper, he

said. The good news is you came a long

way. The bad news is you went the

wrong way. You could be have the best

intentions, right and fight hard.

I heard another rapper. Was it, I don't even remember

who it was thinking saying who we were listening to.

We were listening to somebody. Oh, Toby, he said.

I know people that stood 10 toes down, meaning they stood solid

on sinking sand. We can have the best intentions,

but in the darkness, we don't always know.

Are we going toward the goal? Are we doing well?

Are we, are we loving people the way they should be loved?

Are we, are we succeeding? That's what the darkness does.

But in the light, Amen Church, in the lights, you can see

yourself. You can see yourself clearly,

you can see, you can see your own beauty.

You can see your imperfect. You know, I do a lot of video

work with a lot of videographers.

And you know, one of the things one of the guys said was like,

folks are mature, more seasoned Saints, right?

Older folks are just so beautiful to look at through

these high definition lenses, you can see the age, the wisdom,

you can see the beauty of people.

So I'm not just talking about like stereotypical

attractiveness, but seeing people, seeing the, the wrinkles

in their face, seeing their facial expressions, seeing their

eye color, right? And I'm not trying to be weird

or anything, but just seeing the beauty of people when it's

light, we can see ourselves, we can see each other.

I just got the the imagery of right for those of you that I

mean, most of us haven't gone to a nightclub because we are so

wholly and sanctified. But for those of you I could put

you on, if you've never been to a nightclub, there's always just

like funny mantra of like folks, we've been in the dark, we're

dancing, dancing, dancing and then the lights come on and we

all just look like zombies, right?

There's sweaty hair everywhere, there's makeup everywhere.

You can also see some of your imperfections of what you got to

deal with in the light. Amen.

I know y'all know about that. You can see obstacles and

opportunities in the light. You can see I trip.

You know what I tripped right there.

Let me hop over that next time. A lot of times you know I've

I've dealt with recovery in several areas of my life.

I've dealt with frustration and doing the same thing over and

over again. And sometimes I just want to be

in the dark. I want to ignore the problem,

but that actually makes me do it over and over and over and over

and over again. Sometimes it takes courage to

look at the problem and say, I've I've tripped up here and I

keep tripping right here. I have to look at it not from a

shameful perspective, but to know, God, what are you telling

me to do in this moment? That's what the light can do for

us. A lot of us are trying to to

dream and see and imagine what we look like as we become

restored. We're trying to imagine how

where God will take us. We're trying to imagine if as

what it would look like if we if we're whether it be married or

get that next job or just draw closer to Jesus, have closer

friendships. But but the darkness can make it

hard to even have those dreams. The darkness can make it hard to

even have that imagination in, in, in 317 in Ephesians, he says

exceedingly, abundantly beyond what we can ask or think.

I, I really think that's literal saying.

Like when you're in the darkness, it's hard to even

imagine what you could be doing in the light.

If you, there's some folks in here that have known me for some

years. If I had told you they were

coming to hear me preach, they would have, they would have not

believed me. They would have been like, say,

come on, man, let's go back to the studio, getting out of the

darkness. And it's not like a transaction

of reward, but it's just God opening our eyes, removing those

scales, saying, let me, let me let me open up your imagination

for what life looks like in the light.

And it's really hard. So some of us have been

discouraged because we're trying to like exactly plot the course

of exactly what I'll look like and what I'll do.

And sometimes God's like, hey, partner with me as I remove

these unhealthy things from your life and your imagination will

start to open. It's interesting.

He ends. He ends the verse talking about

singing. Be filled with the Spirit

addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,

singing and making melody. To the Lord with your heart and

give thanks. You know, I've, I've served here

for a couple years. It's just been an honor to serve

with the worship team. It's been an honor to sing with

you all. It's been an honor to, to, to,

to, to, to curate and, and try to store it the, the, the little

place that God has me. And, and you've been a blessing

to work with every member of the worship team and those that have

that have partnered. And so I, I don't take that

lightly. I often tell the worship team

to, to drop out singing and let the congregation hear themselves

sing because it's something about when you hear your voice

saying these words to God. And, and I understand some of us

are able to make a joyful noise in others, no shade.

But there's something about hearing and seeing that and,

and, and, and digesting those words that you're saying.

This is why one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about hip

hop and Christian artistry, because we need, we need things

to come to our mind about forgiveness, about restoration,

about conflict resolution, about God's holiness.

We need these things to come to our mind.

I just so happens that some friends of mine, Jalen and and

Roy, we're here and we've and we've, we connected through

music, but it's gone so much deeper than that because there's

something, there's something special, there's something

intimate as you're creating songs and singing to the Lord.

And, and I think there's a couple extremes that we want to

avoid, right? I'm not saying like we, we

don't, we don't want to center a whole discipleship of formation

around music production. I don't think that's healthy.

And some churches fall that way. But I also don't think, I also

think we don't want to undermine the importance of singing songs

together. It's biblical people.

NT Wright, theologian, historian, says if you don't

want your garden to grow weeds, one of the best ways to keep it

well stocked with strong, sturdy flowers and shrubs.

If you is to keep it well stocked with strong, sturdy

flowers and shrubs. If you don't want your mind and

heart to go wandering off into the realms of darkness, one of

the best ways is to keep it stocked with wise and thankful

themes so that comfort, words of comfort, guidance, and good

judgement come bubbling up, unbidding from the memory and

the subconscious. We want to store these songs in

our hearts. So part of part of, I guess the

resource that we'll offer you to as a playlist, we're going to

send out a playlist in the next newsletter that has many of the

spiritual songs that we've been singing.

And so I hope it aids in your formation.

I hope that you can, you probably know a lot of these

songs already, but I hope it helps bring these things out of

your subconscious and helps in your spiritual walk.

I'm certainly familiar how it does it negatively.

I'm, I'm a millennial. I think the, the song and, and

phrase Yolo probably like was responsible for 70% of bad

decisions in the 2000 tens. Everything was Yolo, bad

decision. If I really dig in the crates

and for those that really like hip hop, see something hip hop

knock if you buck was thank you. I'm glad somebody laughed about

that. It's a song that really just

encourages fighting in the club and people took that literally

like and so music and songs and words have power.

I'm not talking about some new age spiritual manifestation, but

I'm saying that if you continually replay something in

your subconscious, that starts to shape your mindset.

So the invitation here is for all of us, no matter where we

find ourselves in the spiritual journey, it's to come out of the

darkness and to step into the light.

It's for everybody, whether it be we're thinking our lives

holistically or this area where you're like, I don't yet have an

imagination for this God. Are you asking me to reshape my

thinking? Are you asking me to remove

something from my life? Remember, God looks at the

heart. So even if these areas,

intoxication, lust, bad language, stealing, anger,

falsehood, even if on the surface you don't do these

things, all of us, all of us struggle with these things in

our heart on some level. And it's the continued process

of inviting God in to say, God, have your way with these areas

and let me step into your imagination as you show me what

healthy relationships look like, as you show me what self-control

and beauty looks like, as you, as you show me what generosity

looks like. So I invite you to ponder and to

pray. I invite you to ponder and to

pray. Ponder or pray.

Think about darkness and light. The goal here is not just to

step out the darkness. The goal here is not just to

take off the old self. The goal here is not just to

restrain and abstain. The goal here is to partner with

God in the beauty and the justice and the restoration and

the holiness that He is Co creating.

And so I invite you to ponder on that.

God, what's my part? What are the areas in which you

are removing from me? Not to hurt me, not to make me

bored, but to make my life more beautiful, To do exceedingly,

abundantly, be abundantly beyond what I can ask or think.

And then I invite you to pray, To pray that God would give you

a holy imagination of your true self in the light.

Not, not some like Christianese kind of version that you're

trying to conform to, that you may think it needs to be, but

what your true self looks like in the light.

Like I said, a lot of us, including myself, I need God to

give me that imagination. I would not have imagined the

weird daily stuff I do now. I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have

dreamt it. I'm sure many of you could even

pray a prayer of gratitude of like where I might right now.

I wouldn't have imagined that. And so when God, we're always

growing, you might, there might. There is another level of

imagination now, my son, my daughter.

Now that we've done that, I'm inviting you to take off more

old and put on more new.