"Trinity Bible in 2025: Submit. Grow. Build" - Psalm 1:1-3

If you have a Bible, we're going to jump around a little bit more than we usually

do. We're going to start in James chapter 4.

James 4 · chapter mention

We'll go to Psalms 1, and then we'll finish in Matthew 28. What I wanted to

do on the first Sunday of 2025 is just kind to lay some foundations and maybe

go back to some things we've talked about in the first four months of our church plant,

some things that as we get ready to move into, you could call it the next phase

of what Trinity Bible is going to be,

to start taking some real steps and building this church the way that we believe

God has called us to build it.

Just some things that I want us to keep in mind as we do that.

Things that I truly believe that if we'll do these things, if we'll keep this kind of mindset,

then regardless of where we go in 2025, what God puts in front of us,

what things that we take on, and what things that come our way,

what challenges we face, we will honor the Lord with this church if we do these things.

Hope nobody didn't want rain because you are stuck now.

Tell you what, I'll make you a deal. I'll just keep preaching until it stops.

All right, that'll just be our deal. There's no reason to leave anyway.

I think it was supposed to lighten up around three, so we'll just buckle in here.

So I got three words, right? Super simple, three words that I want to talk about.

Submit, grow, and build in that order for that reason. And, you know,

when we decided to plant the church, there's always things that you think about,

things that you want to do, an idea in your head that you have of how you want it to go.

And to be completely honest with you, it's gone better than how I thought it would go.

We have so many wonderful people. So much of that is due to you guys in the

room, the work you've put into it, the graciousness you've shown during it.

But we know that this isn't the end. Like it's exciting to start something,

but it's hard to build something.

I liken this to having kids, you know, when we had both our kids,

it was incredibly exciting.

I'm not saying I'm not so excited about them. I am. I'm not saying when we had

them, it was incredibly exciting. And then we took them home.

You know, I was like, oh, now we have to take care of this child and raise this child.

And you get used to that. And then they start talking and you're like,

okay, that's a whole new thing we got to worry about. And then they start talking

back and you're like, that's a whole new thing that we're going to need to handle swiftly.

And I'm sure as they grow older, many of you could attest that the challenges

just change and they get bigger and there's different things you got to deal with.

And I think much in the same way, a church takes on a life of its own.

And as it grows, there's different challenges, different things that need to take place.

And I think for many guys that I talked to that have planted churches,

and honestly, I tried to talk to more guys that planted churches that it didn't

go well than those that did.

They talked a lot about, hey, what's the initial excitement of planting a church

got over and people realized, oh, this is a lot of work.

The Sundays are like waves on a beach, man. They just come one after the other.

And there's things that need to take place. And money is a real thing. And time is a real thing.

And figuring out what you're going to do and what decisions you're going to make.

And people move and people move themselves around and people get upset.

Because people are people.

And so what I don't want to spend a ton of time doing is trying to get ahead

of all of that and saying, here's what we do if this happens,

and here's what we do if this happens,

and here's what we do if this happens, because the truth is we could do that

for 10 weeks in a row, and then the first thing that happened would be something

that none of those 10 weeks were.

We'd all go, well, we're not really prepared for this. And so again,

what I would like to do is just think more of the mindset that we have,

the heart that we have towards this church and towards each other.

So first thing, first we'll call it a mindset. Submission.

Submission. Submission is not a fun word to talk about, especially in the world we live in.

We've talked about this before, but living in America is one thing.

Living in Texas is a complete different one.

I see as many come and take it flags as I do Texas flags. That's really quite

the theological statement too.

And I'm not saying I'm against it for the record. But what I am saying is when

we hear the word submission, we don't usually unite positive things to it.

The idea that we would submit ourselves to something means that what we're saying

is you're greater than I am.

What you say matters more than

what I say. What you want me to do matters more than what I want to do.

Listen to how James talks about submission. He's in this context,

James chapter four, he's talking to a group of people and he wants to warn them

against worldliness, right?

He's heard about the people in this church that they're drawn to what the world wants them to do.

They're okay with Jesus. They like Jesus. They like being saved.

They like being a Christian, but they also really like the things the world offers.

And so they've kind of got their foot in both camps. You're going to hear some

strong language in here, and that's why James does that.

Let me just read James 4, starting in verse 5. Verse 5.

Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously

over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us?

In other words, James starts this logic by saying, listen, God has made the

spirit of God to dwell in you. You didn't do that.

He did that for you. He put the spirit of God inside of you,

and he says he yearns jealously for it.

In other words, that's his spirit that lives in you.

It's not yours. does not belong to you.

And how you live your life with his spirit inside you matters to him.

So he says in verse six, but he gives more grace.

Thank God. Therefore, it says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

Of course, my pages are sticking together. New Bible, new Bible, new Bible.

It's okay. I've got it right here. So verse seven, submit yourselves therefore.

I've never seen that over like a sanctuary door.

You know, I've never seen that on a church sign, except for the kind of church

sign that you know what I'm talking about.

I've never seen that on a Christian bumper sticker. I've seen,

draw near to God and he will draw near to you, but they usually leave out,

cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Be wretched and mourn and weep and let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.

All right, come to church. Come to church. Let your laughter be turned into

mourning, guys. This is what it's all about.

Do you ever hear this as a mission statement for a church?

And I think it would be a tough sell, but at the same time, what James,

again, is trying to do is saying, listen, if you have sin in your life that you know is there,

you know there's sin there, you know that there's things in your life where

you love the world more than you love God, and because of that,

you're living a certain way,

doing a certain thing, maybe behind closed doors and no one else knows about

it, but you're doing things that the Spirit of God is not drawing you to do.

James says, if that's you, you should be wretched and mourn and weep because

that's a terrible place to be, a terrible place to be.

So he reiterates in verse 10 what he says in verse 7, right?

He begins by saying, submit yourselves therefore to God.

Resist the devil, he will flee from you. Verse 10, humble yourselves before

the Lord and he will exalt you.

The idea that James puts in front

of us about submission is the church is submitted to the Spirit of God.

The church is submitted to the Word of God. The church is submitted to the personal work of Christ.

We will always and should always submit to Him.

And the danger we have, bless you, the danger we have when we're planting a

church is, you know what we really need is people.

We need people. We need to grow. We need to get better.

This is why you plant a church, right? And I'm pro-growth, right?

I didn't plant a church to be a group of 30 people that I really like to hang out with.

I want to grow. But again, the danger is, well, how can we get people?

Well, oftentimes what that turns into is, well, we probably shouldn't talk about this.

Because you know what most people don't want to hear? Listen,

if you have sin in your life, you should be mourning and weeping over it because

it's going to cost you your eternal life if you continue in it.

It's so much easier to say, listen, God wants you to love Him.

He wants you to do your absolute best. But the things in your life that you

know are sinful that you just can't figure out, you know what,

God loves you, it'll work itself out in the end.

But the Bible never says that. It never gives you an out to say, I'm submitted enough.

I'm humble enough.

Exactly. Right? You know how much pride it takes to say I'm humble.

I think I'm humble enough.

And this is kind of the lie the world likes to believe too.

It's an easy place to sell people on because people love being told,

hey, I'm not saying you're perfect.

I'm just saying you're fine just the way you are.

I would say to you, we will love you exactly the way you are.

If someone walks in here off the street, if they've just gotten out of prison,

if they're heading to prison, whatever it is, We should love them exactly where

they are, but we should love them enough to be able to tell them,

hey, it's not okay to stay where you are.

It is not okay to stay where you are. It doesn't matter if you're eight or 80.

If you are alive, it's not okay to throw up your hands and go, I'm good.

I'm good. I've made it far enough. I've done enough things. Again, I'm humble enough.

I've read enough of the Bible. I'm good.

You hear this a lot, the phrase, you need to make Jesus the Lord of your life.

Now, I don't think that's wrong at all. Let me be fully clear.

I will say that, I'm sure again, what I would say is there's a bit of nuance

in that because when we say that, what we're usually asking people to do is

to submit themselves to God, to humble themselves to God.

I think a better way to say that is God does not call men to make Jesus Lord.

Jesus is the Lord over everyone's life. He is. He's in charge of everyone.

We just read that in Psalm 95.

Everything belongs to him. What we should be calling people to do is submit

to Jesus because he is the Lord.

And they go, well, I'm not going to submit to him. That's fine.

That doesn't mean he's not the Lord. He is the Lord.

And that little shift makes a massive difference in the way that you live your Christian life.

Because it's going to change you from somebody that's going,

okay, what do I need to do?

What do I need to do today to make Jesus Christ Lord of my life?

To Jesus is the Lord of my life.

He is that. He has rescued me. He has redeemed me. He has brought me into his

family. Now, what should I do in light of what he's done for me?

Not what should I do to make him something, but what should I do because he is something?

C.S. Lewis says it this way.

We must lay before him what is in us, not what ought to be within us.

And again, it's so under the current at times, we don't even realize it,

but our Christian lives turn into, okay, I need to become something else so

that God can use me in a different way, so that God can do something for me.

When in actuality, what God says is, you just need to come.

You just need to come here. You need to submit to me. You need to get under my authority.

Whatever it is, wherever you're at, wherever you're at in life,

whatever you're bringing to the table,

whatever struggles you have, whatever anger you have, whatever pain you have,

whatever church hurt you have, whatever it is, you just need to bring that under

submission to God and let Him work it out.

And stop trying to sit around and figure out, okay, what do I need to do?

What do I need to say? What do I need to go?

You don't know what you need to do. The Lord does. The Lord knows.

Heart that's surrendered to God, is a heart that is bent on doing whatever God asked them to do.

And so again, we can sit down and we can plan, and we have some plans,

we have some things we want to do, but just know our mindset and our heart towards

God is, listen, whatever happens, whatever you want to do, we're submitted to you.

We're submitted to what you want to do.

A secondary point I would make here is we submit to God first and foremost,

but we also submit to each other.

Ephesians 5, 18-21 says, And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery,

but 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, giving thanks always

and everything to God the Father.

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, listen, submitting to one another out

of reverence for Christ.

What does submitting to one another look like? Well, submitting to someone else

should never look like submitting yourself to anything that God would not call you to.

So if someone's asking you to submit to them and they're asking you to sin,

they're asking to lead you into a place that God would not call you,

they're asking you to do something that you know God's asked you not to do,

do not submit to that person.

What Paul's talking about in Ephesians is, hey, you're a church.

You're all supposed to be submitted to Christ already.

You're supposed to be submitted to his lordship in your life.

And if that's true, then secondarily, submit yourself to one another.

Was reading one of those big, thick 3,000-page commentaries,

and I'm looking for some awesome nugget.

And what he said in there was this, this is another way of saying,

learn how to put up with each other, because you're not that awesome either.

It's one of those weird things where you're like, you wrote a 3,000-page book,

and that was the sentence you came up with right there.

But I loved it because it's so simple. It's so simple. It's the act of looking

at one another and saying, hey, you know what? I may disagree.

I might think they're wrong. I might be indifferent to it, but they are loved

by Christ the exact same way I'm loved by Christ. So I'm going to submit to them here.

And all that means is I'm not going to go talk about them behind their back.

I'm not going to go and sabotage them.

I'm not going to go and do something to them that Christ wouldn't have done to me.

But again, it's so important that we start with, are we submitted to God, because if not, we will.

I promise you, the second we stop submitting to God, the first questions we'll

start asking is, how can we just make people happy? Let's just make people happy, man.

Let's just do everything we can to make people happy. We'll be trying to talk

Aaron and Leanne into cooking steaks every Sunday for everybody,

and they'll do it because they love us.

So the first thing we do is we submit to God, and secondarily,

we submit to each other. Number two, we grow.

We grow. We build on top of each other. Submission is the foundation,

and growth is the plan, right? We want to grow.

We've talked about this before, but when I say grow, the first sense in which

I mean that is, I want us to grow spiritually.

We have a lot of friends that do a lot of stuff with fostering kids and fostering

collective and things like that. And.

I'm adopted, and I know plenty of other kids that are adopted.

And so one of the things that you realize real quick is it does them no good.

It does a child no good to be adopted into an unhealthy family.

It does a child no good to be adopted into an unhealthy family.

And in the same way, it does us no good to invite people to be members of something that's not healthy.

What we're essentially saying is, hey, we're not healthy, but do you want to

come be unhealthy with us?

Hey, we're not really growing spiritually, but do you want to come not grow

spiritually with us? It's going to be a lot of fun.

So again, when I say grow, the first sense I mean that is, are you growing spiritually?

Psalm 1, 1 through 3, that's the verse I put in your worship guide for a reason.

If I could ask you to do one thing this week or this month even, memorize Psalm 1.

Memorize Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,

nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers,

but his delight is in the law of the Lord.

And on his law, he meditates day and night. Listen, this is the growth.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season.

Its leaf does not wither, and all that he does, he prospers.

That's what growth looks like.

Growth means I'm going to do what God asked me to do.

I'm going to plant myself beside this stream. And when God sees fit,

when God sees fit, He will provide the growth.

It says, that yields its fruit in due season.

The struggle here is that the psalm starts with blessed is the man.

And when we think of being blessed, we rarely think of obedience.

We don't think about what it looks like to be a blessed person means just to

do what God is asking us to do.

What does it look like for you to be blessed? What does it look like for our church to be blessed?

What does it look like for a church to say, listen, we are going to plant ourselves

by the stream of living water.

We're going to delight ourselves in God's word. We're going to delight ourselves

in what God has asked us to do.

And we are just going to plant ourselves here. And then when God sees fit in

the season that he's laid out, we will yield the fruit that he has asked us to yield.

But in the meantime, our leaves will not wither.

Our tree will not die. because we will be fed by streams of living water.

Again, not by some sort of outside motivation or events or whatever it is that

churches could get excited about.

We're excited about being planned next to streams.

I love this quote by Ian Bounds. He says, The church is looking for better methods,

and God is looking for better men.

The church is looking for better methods, but God is looking for better men and women.

That's when we say grow, that's what we want. We want to be more godly men and women.

And then we want to invite people into that and say, listen,

God has been so gracious to us and he's been so good to us.

And here's how he's changed my life. And here's how I live differently today

than I did a year ago or two years ago or five years ago because of what God has done.

If you want to be a part of that, we want you to be a part of this.

To bring people in and say then, listen, we're not better than you,

but we worship a God who is above all things, right?

We're not looking to be a better church than other churches.

We're looking to be the godliest men and women that we can possibly be.

And in turn, we'll be the church that God asks us to be.

We'll be the church that God asks us to be.

Last thing, build.

Submission is our foundation and growing is our plan and our goal.

It's then, really only then, we can start thinking about what we should build TBC into.

To go off the point I just made, so often when we talk about church planning

and what that can be and what we want to be, it can quickly divulge into,

well, what do we not want to be?

Let's be honest. We live in East Texas. There's plenty of examples of churches

around there, and we can just start making our list.

And you know, say, you know what I don't like is what this church does.

You know what I do like is what this church does. And we're never going to be

like that church. Let's be more like this church.

But I don't like all what this church does. So let's just take some of this

church and this church and just make sure that we're not this church.

And what really happens is churches get planted and they become just a different

version of a church that they kind of liked, but didn't want to go to.

Or they get planted and they just become the exact opposite of the church they

left that they didn't like.

And they go from one ditch to the other.

That's not the way to build something. It's not the way to build something.

How do we build something? Matthew 28, 18-20, a verse that you know well,

the great commission and Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven

and on earth has been given to me.

Right? Remember, he's the king. This is Psalm 95 paraphrased by Christ.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of

the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

Behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.

When I was in college, church planning was a massive deal.

They were trying to talk every single one of us into church planning.

And I shouldn't have said this at the time because every time I've said this

in my life, God's had me do it. But I was like, I will never do that.

I will never do that. The same way I said, I will never get married before 25.

I'll never have kids before 30.

I'd say never a lot. And then I look like an idiot. And so I've just stopped saying that.

But we would go to these conferences. I'm at Dallas Baptist.

And so we get to go for free and we could go to what they call them church planning boot camps.

And they were weekends and they would let us go for free and they would feed

us and they would train us for eight hours a day on what does church planning look like?

And then you could go to a different company that does church planning.

And they were just trying to recruit all these different guys,

do all these different things.

And when you're 18, 19, and 20, it sounds incredible because they're really

jazzing you up. They're really pumping your ego.

We're looking for guys just like you. And all 3,000 of us in the room think,

he's talking right to me.

I know there's other guys in the room, but this has got to be my thing.

But what they turn into is strategies and fundraising and who to bring in and

what kind of relationships you need to have in the community and making sure

you're getting with the chamber of commerce and making sure that you're in with

the school and making sure that you're in with all these different things.

And once you do all of those things, then you really need to start thinking

about what is your church going to look like?

Now, again, at the time, I thought that that was the wisest thing I'd ever heard.

Right. Oh, yeah, you got it. You got to do that.

You got to have all this money. You got to have funding set up for five years.

I mean, if you don't have that, you know, what an idiot.

You got it. You got to have somebody at your church that's, you know,

the mayor or the chamber or something. You got to do that.

You realize so often is that it becomes not ways to build a church that makes

disciples that obey the Lord,

but rather the goal is just to build a church that has a lot of people there

so that we can say, man, look what's going on.

Look how awesome it is. Look how many people we have. Look how all this worked out.

You can even go as far as to say, look what God is doing.

But listen, if you're not making disciples that want to obey the teachings of

Christ, then it doesn't matter how many people you have.

It doesn't matter how big your church is. It doesn't matter how cool it is.

It doesn't matter that you're sending people out.

One of the worst things you can do is go on mission trips with no intention of making disciples.

If what you want to do is take people on mission trips so they can see how poor

the rest of the world is so they can come back and be humbled by how good they

have it, take a vacation there.

Missions and evangelism and all the things that we want to do,

their purpose is not to make sure that our church is going to get bigger.

Their purpose is to make sure that God's name is made known,

that God's glory is honored,

that more people would come under His authority, that more people would submit

to him, that more people would grow,

and that more people would go and make disciples of all the nations and baptize

them and teach them to observe all that they have commanded you with the encouragement

that Christ is with them.

That's the goal. That's the goal.

Charles Spurgeon says, I do not think the devil cares how many churches you

build, how many pastors there are, or how many people say they are Christians,

if only you have lukewarm preachers, people, and churches in them.

In other words, the devil loves when people plant churches that don't make disciples.

Doesn't need to do any work. His job is done for him because not only do people

feel good about themselves because they're going to church or because they're

a part of a Christian organization, they feel good about it and yet nothing's happening.

The devil's like, man, that's a win-win. That's a win-win.

So again, our goal when we say let's build a church is to make disciples.

If that means that someone that we know or someone in our church is sinful,

then we go to them and give them the advice that James gave the people he loved.

Man, you need to be mourning and weeping. This is not a joyful situation you find yourself in.

You need to humble yourself before God. You need to come back to Him.

You need to bow your knee once again to the Lord.

Bless you. You need to do that.

Right maybe we're past that maybe we're in a good place we're not openly struggling

with sin we're not doing everything that god's asking us not to do and then

we say okay well how do we grow,

that's going to look different for a lot of people it's going to look different for a lot of people,

now i would argue it always involves reading your bible studying the word it

always involves prayer and it always involves someone else right you should

always be doing that with someone else but it may look different.

The last thing, what do we want to build? What do we want to build?

What is God calling us to do?

There's a lot of practical things we could talk about. You know,

we joke, one of our running jokes around here is, I don't know how anybody's come.

We've not advertised except for a sign that keeps falling off the fence out there.

That's about all we've got. And so there's obviously things we are planning

on doing and have already kind of started putting in motion about kind of getting

our name out, letting people know that we exist,

that we're welcoming people in.

But one of the things that, and we'll talk about this a little bit afterwards

too, that I wanted to just kind of put in this section of the sermon is we want

to hire a children's physician.

We want to hire somebody that can be here every Sunday and be in the kids area,

which I should have verified this before, it's five and under.

Is that right? Four and under? Five and under?

Five and under. And that's one of the first things that we really believe that

God's calling us to do is to hire somebody that can come in every Sunday,

that can be in charge of that,

that can provide time for our moms that have littles to just come to church

and sit in the service and listen and not kind of be on the hook for doing everything

that they're doing all week long.

So that's something that we're actively looking for. That's something that we're

trying to fill as soon as we can possibly fill it.

That'll be our first staff member. So I would say we're not in a hurry because

we don't want to do it wrong, but we are actively seeking that position now.

I think number two, something you'll see is we're just going to get a little

more aggressive about trying to get the word out that Trinity Bible Church exists

and that we love the Lord. We want to make disciples.

Each part of that will be, you know, just us as a church committing to doing that.

I know most of us in the room are more towards the introverted side, and I get that.

Usually I'm trying to figure out a way to get out of a conversation,

not a way to make it last 30 minutes longer.

And one surefire way I have found is if you tell someone, hey,

yeah, we're planting a church.

Very rarely does that go, oh, cool. I'm just going to walk away,

not even ask you about how that's going.

But along with all those things, we had an elders meeting last week and we talked

about some of the things that, about meeting spaces and what that would look

like in the future, about moving things around, about building some different

things and making some different spaces.

I've had conversations about student ministry stuff and whether or not we want

to do camp or if we want to do something a little different this year.

I mean, all of these conversations are happening, all these things that need to take place.

And I'll be honest, it's really exciting to have those conversations.

It gets really exciting to walk out and go, man, that's a good plan.

And I'm really excited that God's given us the financial means to do that.

Or I'm really excited that God's caused us to grow enough to start asking questions

like, hey, we may really consider if we need to find a little more space here pretty soon.

I may be most excited about the fact that, man, we've got enough kids coming.

We've got enough littles coming that we really need to hire somebody that can

be back there with those kids.

Those are great problems to have. and I am excited about those problems.

I say it over and over again. I love that noise.

I think it's great. I love hearing kids in here.

But I also know that if we get so wrapped up in those kinds of things,

we'll quickly forget about submitting and growing.

We'll only focus on building. We'll only focus on how can we build this thing? What's the next step?

What's the next financial need that we need? What's the next space we need?

That happens, again, it will inevitably become us not submitting to God,

but submitting to what people want from us.

Because the goal becomes, man, I just want more people to come.

Not, I just want God to be glorified.

I just want God to be glorified. I just want people to worship Him for the King that He is.

I just want people to come and know that they need to submit their lives to Him,

that they need to be growing in godliness, and that they need to be making disciples

of all nations and teaching them to obey everything that Christ has commanded us.

If we'll do those things, we'll honor the Lord. And on a personal note,

I fully believe that we'll grow.

I think people are looking for it. I think people are hungry for it.

I think a lot of people, especially in East Texas, have gotten pretty tired

of being a Christian in name only.

I think they've realized that just because they wear cross necklaces and pray before meals—.

Hasn't changed their life the way that everyone told them it would.

And I think they're looking for a place that will be honest with them,

that will be forthright, that won't beat around the bush, that'll be straightforward,

and that will just press them into saying, listen,

we want you to come to church for sure.

We want you here, but we love you too much to say that we want you here more

than we want you to know who God is.

And we're not going to bait and switch people. We're not going to bring them

in and say, hey, we're going to get them in. We're going to keep them comfortable.

And then six months later, we're going to be like, oh yeah, if you have sin

in your life, you should repent.

They're going to go, whoa, that wasn't part of the deal.

That wasn't part of the deal. You never said that on the front end.

I thought you said you love me just as I am. We sang the song nine times.

Okay. I thought that was how this works.

No, I want us to be a church that honors the Lord. So again,

just in conclusion, we submit to God first and foremost.

Anything He asks us to do in His Word, anything He asks us to do as a church,

we have to do it. It's not a question.

It's not open for debate. When God tells us to do something,

when God has called us to do things, we will do it.

And secondarily, we will submit to each other, right?

We won't think we're better than each other. We won't think that just because

maybe we've been around a little longer, We've seen a few more things that we

naturally should be in a better place than someone else. We will submit to each other.

Number two, we'll commit to growing both individually and corporately.

I've said this a bunch of times in the last four months, but the greatest thing,

the greatest thing you can do to serve Trinity Bible Church,

the absolute greatest thing you can do is grow in your walk with the Lord.

Grow in your walk with the Lord. more than any dollar amount you can give us

or any service you can offer to us or anything you can do.

If you will commit to growing in your walk with the Lord, it will serve Trinity

Bible Church greater than any other way. I promise you that.

Kills churches faster than anything is not money. It's not time.

It's not services. It's not music. It's people that decide those things are

more important than growing in godliness.

A group of people collectively saying, we are going to grow in godliness will

not let any of those things affect

how they do that because none of those things affect how you do that.

Having $10 billion doesn't help you grow in godliness.

Having a building doesn't help you grow in godliness. Having music the way you

want it or a service the way you want it or a room the way you want it doesn't

help you grow in godliness.

We can do all those things regardless of what God has in store for us.

And last, we're going to build something.

We're going to build something. I don't know exactly what that's going to look

like. I know what the next step is. Again, we want to hire this children's position.

We want to get some student ministry stuff lined out. We want to really lay

those things down in stone.

But my commitment to you guys is that we want to build Trinity Bible Church.

We want it to grow. We want people to come.

We want to look back in a year. We want to look back in five years and 10 years

and say, man, how incredible is it about what God did with some people that

just got together and said, God, we're going to do whatever you want us to do.

We're going to do whatever it is you want us to do.

So submit, grow, and let's build something. Let's pray.

Father, thank you for today. Thank you for a chance just to come in and talk about this next year.

I pray more than anything that we would be a people that submit to you.

God, that we recognize that whether we make you the Lord of our lives or not,

you are the Lord of our lives, that you are the King of kings.

God, that the king's heart is like a river in your hands that you point where whichever way you want.

God, that even the greatest kings that have ever lived are nothing compared

to you, whether it's an Egyptian pharaoh or it's King Nebuchadnezzar.

God, when you want to move, when you want to act on behalf of your people,

nothing stands in your way.

So we submit ourselves to you. We submit ourselves to your lordship and bring

to you whatever it is that we have, whatever sins and struggles we have,

whatever talents we have, whatever we can bring to the table,

God, we just bring them in front of you and say, God, this is all yours.

This is all yours. I have sins that need to be forgiven. I have struggles that

I need help with. I have talents that can be used.

I have things that I can put on the table. God, would you use them however you choose?

After we submit to you, would we submit to growing both individually and corporately?

Would we not be a church that settles for just being here, existing, shaking hands?

Would we be a church that's truly trying to grow in godliness,

truly trying to be different, truly trying to grow into whatever it is you would have us?

Like the psalmist says, would we plant ourselves by the streams that you offer?

We delight ourselves in your word and trust

that in due season we will yield the fruit that

you've called us to yield but in the meantime not one leaf

will fall off our tree because we will be alive and vibrant again

lastly god that we would build well the great commission would always be on

the front of our minds that it wouldn't be about building a church it'd be about

making disciples and then in making disciples we would have a healthy church

that we wouldn't shy away from the second half of the mission that you've given us,

that we wouldn't shy away from teaching people to obey all that you have commanded them.

God, because you love them more than we love them.

You care for them more than we care for them. You knitted them in their mother's womb.

You know the hairs on every single person's head that come in here.

And you have told us that the greatest way we can love them is to tell them,

you need to obey Christ, even if it means saying something that we know is going

to hurt their feelings. It's going to hurt their lifestyle.

It's going to hurt the things that they would like to do.

God, you've shown us the way to love them well, and that is to teach them to

obey you. Stay in our prayer. Amen.