All Things New - 1.05.2020 Sermon

Father.

Thank you for today.

Thank you for this morning.

God, thank you for the words that we just sang.

That in a world of empty promises, in a world of false hope, all of you is exactly what we need.

Holler.

You know I'm up here this morning.

You know my heart.

We know the fears, the anxiety, the weakness and I so often hide

[inaudible].

Father, I pray for this morning.

Lord, I pray that for all of us that our hearts would be laid bare.

What I pray that any, any lies that we may be holding onto this morning, any false hopes that we may be clinging to this morning.

Father, I pray that your truth would invade our very souls.

Father, I pray that this morning we would be changed, that you would continue to mold us into shape us to be more like your son.

Alright, well I proclaim that in the name of Jesus Christ there is power.

There's power over sin, there is power over death.

There is power over addictions.

So father, we come this morning with hope deep in our hearts that no matter our circumstances, things will always not be this way, that we are healed, that we are whole and that a day is coming when we will celebrate forever.

Your goodness.

Continue to transform us this morning.

It's in your name we pray.

Amen.

All right, well have a seat.

Good morning.

Welcome to hillside a fellowship.

If you are a guest or a visitor here this morning, we're so glad you're here.

My name is Alan Anderson.

If I haven't had a chance to meet you yet, I'm glad you're here.

And uh, I get the opportunity, um, every once in a while to fill in.

Uh, Dave is back next Sunday as we kick off the new series.

I do have as we start one quick announcement to make, um, we put this together.

So one of the things we're going to be doing this year is walking through the book of acts, uh, which is an awesome, uh, it's just an awesome thing to be able to do.

And as we walk through acts, uh, we put together this devotional, it's 26 weeks.

And so we've got, uh, for each week here we've got basically a devotional that just walks us through, um, sections of acts that we'll be walking through and going through.

And there's actually an insert in here, uh, that kind of takes you through a reading plan.

If you don't have one of these, haven't gotten one of these, you can grab one on your way out.

Um, if you have one, you lost it, misplaced it.

Like that's what I often do.

Uh, you can get one also online, you can get another copy or if you just like to have it digitally, you can go to our website and get it there as well.

But, uh, team did a phenomenal job in putting this together.

So, um, make, make, make a point to grab this if you can.

Uh, so today we're going to be in Luke chapter 17.

Luke 17 · chapter mention

If you want to turn there, we're going to go through verses 11 through 19.

And so as we go there, I wanted to start off by saying not only happy new year, but happy new decade, right?

We, we just turned a new decade.

And so one of the things we did, uh, my, my wife and I, uh, this, this past week is we went through and cleaned out our closet.

And evidently after I took a whole bunch of stuff to Goodwill and found out that evidently we're all doing that same thing.

Goodwill was like inundated with stuff.

But one of the things I was reflecting on right when new decade was like, wow, 10 years past, 10 years ago, what was I doing?

So I look at a picture of myself 10 years ago, or last decade, a little more than 10 years ago actually, but last decade, I look at myself now, which is, if you've ever done that, don't do it.

If you haven't, it's a scary thing.

A couple of things hit me.

The first one is, I'm looking at the picture of me now and I'm looking at the picture of me before.

The first thing that hit me is it looks like this guy ate that guy, right?

It's like, what happened?

This guy's like skinny, everything like this is wow.

And then it's like this guy said, I'm hungry, I'm gonna eat that dude.

The second thing is I found out that in fact I didn't lose my hair.

It just moved it because last decade it was all up here and now it's like all here and what I'm finding out, I turned 40 this past October.

What I found out also is that that hair continues to move.

It wasn't that long ago that I was looking in the mirror and out of the top of my ear there was that thing.

It was like long, I don't know where it came from.

I don't know if it grew over night, but it's just like popped up.

So evidently as I get older, hair is just going to continue to move all over the place.

But, but you know, it's funny as we do that right, we take, we tend to, as Lee was Sharon, um, we tend to take these like idea of resolutions, happy new year.

It's new beginnings and so in doing this research, as I walked through, uh, new year's resolutions, here's the most popular new year's resolutions.

First of all, statistics say that about 60% of us actually seriously make new year's resolutions.

8% of us have any success at it.

Most popular new year's resolution, exercise more and lose weight.

The second spend less and save more money.

The third is to learn a new skill or hobby for is to quit smoking, drink less.

Five, find a new job and the sixth one, spend more time with friends and family.

Now those are boring.

Everybody knows about those.

I also came across some funny resolutions, which I think are a little bit more realistic.

This one says, my resolution this year is to read more, so I'm going to put subtitles on my TV.

Another one said, my resolution is to help all of my friends gain 10 pounds, so I look skinnier.

Another one, my resolution is to make a handful of people believe normal before blindsiding them with my actual personality.

Another one.

My resolution is to slowly follow joggers around in the car blasting eye of the tiger for encouragement.

Last one, my resolution this year is to become a doctor and changed my last name to Aquila so that together it will be Dracula, but we do this right?

New year's resolutions.

The reality is most of us will take our best effort and and some of us, we may actually experience some change with them, but then for a lot of us, right?

We fall right back into the behaviors and patterns that we had once before.

A lot of us already as we're here this morning, if we're honest, we know, man, we still need to change.

We need doc another new year to come next week so we can make more resolutions.

We're all in constant need of renewal and change and I think as we walk through this passage this morning, what we're going to see is we're going to come across 10 individuals who basically have the same problem.

They're in desperate need of real change.

Question is for you is when you look at your life, what do you see?

Do you see?

Do you see hope, brokenness?

Do you see peace or chaos?

Do you see humility or do you see pride?

What do you see in your life?

Where in your life this morning?

Where in your heart?

If you're honest with yourself this morning, where do you look at and say, golly, that needs to change?

Let's see.

When we approached change in our life transformation, we often fall into one of two camps.

The first camp is over here and the first camp says, well, you know what?

I just might be enough.

I mean, I need a little work.

I need Jesus to, you know, to change me a little bit here or a little bit there, but you know, I just might be enough if Jesus would just make me, you know, a little more patient.

The reality is that's a lie because just like the carrot in front of the horse, right?

Every year we think, well, if I could just change these three things, I would be a better person.

I can be okay on the next year we'll crud.

Now it's like peeling layers back of an onion.

There's just a little bit more, just a little bit further.

So we believe that lie.

The other extreme is over here and the other extreme is says, you know what, if anybody around me truly knew how broken I was, they would know that I'm beyond all help.

Now, if I'm honest, this morning I bounce four back and forth, oftentimes between both of those lies

[inaudible]

even this morning, even as I'm standing here sharing with you guys, there is a part of my heart that's over here going, you know what Alan, if they truly knew just at times how scared you were, how, how, how, how afraid you were of being rejected, if they truly knew that everybody in this room would get up and walk out.

And so because of that, we often create these veneers, these layers over our lives.

Well then they'll never see that.

We'll never see me weak.

They'll never see me cry.

They'll never see me make a mistake or we or we tend to go over here and I'll bounce over here.

And it's like, well, Alan, you're not really that bad.

I mean if I just had a few more zeroes in my bank account, if I just, you know what I need, I need to read that brand new book out.

I need to get that new book and I just need, you know, I just, every morning I'm going to start with the Paramus.

Say, Jesus, just make me more patient today cause that's all I really need.

It just a little tweaking.

But I'm pretty close as pride.

See the reality, if we see Paul talks about it in second Corinthians five 17 he talks about it again and he says, Hey, if we're in Christ, we're neither of these.

We're a new creation.

The old has gone.

The newest com Paul then goes on also to say, he says, Hey, I, I'm dead to myself.

Essentially.

There's no longer I who live but it's Christ who lives within me.

So we're going to see this morning is these two extremes where we often find ourselves, Jesus invites us not to make this one a little bit better.

And Jesus doesn't stare at us here and say, well, you're hopeless and helpless.

Jesus invites us to say, Hey, I can make a new creation

[inaudible]

and I can come to live inside of you and transform your heart into something that is pure and beautiful because that's what I do and we're going to see that with the story of the lepers today.

So Luke chapter 17 verse 11 we're just going to jump right in and start to walk through it.

Luke 17:11

It says here, Luke writes chapter 17 verse 11 he says, on the way to Jerusalem, he was passing along between Marissa and Galilee.

Now what Luke is doing here is he's setting up what's taking place, right?

Luke, when he does this, he does this several times in his book where he says on the way to Jerusalem, see Jesus, his ministry is now kind of switching.

He is now orienting to the cross and so everything that Luke is going to write from this point, everything that Luke is going to walk us through is under the reality that Jesus is going to die.

And that Jesus is not only going to die, but he's not going to stay dead, but he is going to defeat death.

And sin once and for all.

The second part, he says as he was passing along between Samarria and galley, he is on the outskirts already.

Jesus is walking through.

He's on his way to Jerusalem, but he's on the outskirts in verse 12 and it says, and as he entered a village, he was met by 10 lepers who stood at a distance.

So Jesus, his disciples, the people that are following him, they're moving along and it says that they encounter these 10 lepers.

Now, that idea of leprosy and the old Testament was actually not just one skin disease.

It could be several different skin diseases.

If you read through Leviticus chapter 13 in Leviticus chapter 14 it walks you through in the old Testament what the Israel lights were supposed to do when they encountered this group of skin diseases called leprosy.

Leviticus 13 · chapter mention Leviticus 14 · chapter mention

And chapter 13 was essentially the diagnosis in chapter 14 of Leviticus basically said, here's what it meant to be cleansed or healed or restored.

Now some of these diseases were temporary and didn't last, but some of these diseases, this one in particular, when they refer to leprosy, was horrific.

And the way it worked is it would start simply on your skin and it would move internally all the way into the depths of your bone and it would basically kill your flesh.

It would, it would.

It would take the nerves and your hands and in your extremities and it would kill those so that oftentimes the people who had this form of leprosy, they would injure themselves and not even know it.

[inaudible] what would also happen, and not only would they not know it, but then their, their fingers and their hair and their arms.

All of those appendages would die.

The bones would literally dissolve and those appendages could either be reabsorbed back into the body or even just fall off.

It was a horrific thing to see and according to the old Testament, when somebody had that level of skin disease, they were to be set apart from everybody else.

They were unclean.

And that's, we see here,

think about these 10 individuals when Luke writes and he says, and he was met by 10 lepers who stood at a distance.

It's easy to just read this and to not even put a face to it, but think about this.

These 10 individuals were husbands, some of them were fathers, probably, maybe some of them were business owners.

Their entire life was destroyed by this disease.

[inaudible]

they were ripped apart from their communities, their families, birthday parties, festivals, get togethers.

They could no longer be a part of it.

Luke says 10 lepers who stood in.

He uses the term, it says distant.

The term there is there were far off.

There's almost this idea of being completely cut off and disconnected.

Why am I bringing this up is because when I read this and I think about this, C w leprosy for us today is not something we think about, but internally are we not all the same way.

We're all distant.

Some of us this morning, we're sitting, we're sitting next to a spouse whom we may feel distant from and we may be in proximity too, but there's so much distance between us.

I don't even know you.

For some of us, it may be a child.

We feel distant set apart.

That distance doesn't just happen in our relationships.

It also happens with God.

That's why we spend our lives exhausting ourselves, trying to find something that will fix that distance.

In that brokenness, whether it's an addiction, whether it's control, power, whatever it may be, money, material, possessions, whatever it is, we spend our lives because we are distant, we are set apart.

We are disconnected from our creator.

That disconnection, that breaking even happens in our own selves, in our internally, so that we begin to live in these two extremes, hating ourselves, hiding ourselves, covering up parts of our life that we don't want other people to see.

Creating a whole new identity, creating a whole new reality of, of what we want people to think about us.

So much so that I can stand here this morning and think about how can I broadcast to a face that says, Hey, I have it all together as a man, as a husband, as a father.

I don't want you to know that I get angry with my kids and I say hurtful things to my wife.

I'm selfish.

I don't want you to know that we're all distant and these lepers in that distance.

Verse 13 Luke writes and it says,"and they lifted up their voices saying, Jesus, master have mercy on us." Is not that the cry of our hearts this morning Have mercy on us.

The question is not so much.

Is that what you do?

Because the reality is the truthful painful.

The reality is every single one of us live our lives with this cry we do.

The question is where do you cry out to or who do you cry out to?

Doesn't take much.

To look at our world and to look at our lives and to realize brokenness and Dee and distance is all around us.

Question is, who do you cry out to for help?

Who do you cry out to for mercy?

Maybe it's yourself.

Pull myself up by my own bootstraps cause I'm the only person I won't let myself down.

Maybe it's somebody else.

Maybe it's a codependent relationship.

Maybe it's an addiction.

Maybe it's pornography.

Maybe...Whatever it may be, it's, it can be alcohol, it can be a some other substance.

Maybe it's simply what sometimes can be the most addicting, heinous thing of all, and that's material possessions.

Maybe that's where we cry for mercy.

Where do you cry out for mercy this morning?

What we see with these 10 lepers is they cry out to Jesus and they say, Jesus, master have mercy on us.

In verse 14 Luke says that when he saw them, when Jesus saw them, so they're added distance.

When Jesus sees them, Jesus responds and he says to them, go and show yourselves to the priest, priests, and as they went, they were cleansed.

That's a, that's an odd thing.

Why doesn't Jesus just say, Hey, be healed, but Jesus says, go show yourself to the priest.

Here's why, because back again, if you look at Leviticus 13 and 14 to be cleansed or to be healed from leprosy, see that the priest back then, they not only were the religious leaders of the faith, they were also in a lot of ways, health inspectors.

And so their job was to diagnose in Leviticus 13 leprosy.

And they had a set of standards they had to follow.

But also their job was to declare when people were healed, were cleansed from leprosy.

So for these 10 individuals, the only way back to life, the only way back to their families, the only way back to their businesses, their jobs, their communities, their neighbors, their friends.

The only way back was through a priest, because even if they were healed just on the outside, for them to go back to their community, they had to get a stamp, a clean bill of health from the priest.

Otherwise they couldn't go back.

So Jesus says, go show yourself to the priest.

Go.

And it's interesting.

Luke writes, and he says, and as they went, they were cleansed.

Can you imagine for a second, that moment when 10 individuals whose lives were completely torn apart by this disease started walking to the priest and they were cleanse the leprosy went away.

Can you imagine the hope they felt in that moment?

I may get back to my family.

I may get to see my son grow up.

After all, I may get to see my daughter grow up.

I may, I may get to talk to my parents again.

I may get to talk to my friends.

I may get back to business.

This is amazing, but I would argue this something still wasn't quite right because here's the reality.

All 10 of those individuals, when they went back to the priests and they were declared clean and they went back to their lives, was it happily ever after?

See, Disney likes to tell us like, man, then the story ends and happily ever after life was good.

No, the reality is right.

Those 10 individuals where their lives changed, absolutely.

Did they still suffer with probably from being angry, probably have conflict with their family members.

Probably have awkward Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.

Probably have have arguments with their bosses and their employees.

Probably.

You see they were still at a distance.

They were cleansed, but there was still something off.

And the reason I bring that up is as we continue on, we're going to see this transition.

Verse 15 Luke writes, as he brings this out, he says then when one, then one of them, and Luke says, when he saw that he was healed, that's a key word saw.

It means to perceive, to understand, it means to not just see with my eyes, to not just see with my head, but it means to feel it deep internally in the very core of my being.

When he saw, when he understood there was a light bulb moment that switched on for him.

Little later on in verse 20 and 21 we're gonna jump down there real quick cause I think Jesus is going to pull out what this leper saw.

And verse 20 Luke writes, he says, being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them.

The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, look, here it is or there for behold, this is what Jesus says to the Pharisees.

The kingdom of God is in the midst of you.

[inaudible]

Jesus is telling the fairs, he's, it's right here.

You're looking at him.

You want to know where hope and where joy can be found.

It's right in front of you.

It's me.

And so when we jumped back into that 15 what did that one leper see?

And we're going to see that this leper does something totally different than the other nine.

Do what was so profound to him that made him do something totally different.

And I think what it is is that he sees Jesus for who he truly is, the hope of the world.

Now this is also interesting what Luke does.

Luke writes really interesting here.

He's a doctor, so he knows medical terms.

In verse 14 he uses the word cleansed was they went, they were cleansed.

It's the same word there.

If you were to translate it, it's where we get the word cauterize.

[inaudible] to be on the outside, patched up, cleaned up, ready to go again.

But in verse 15 Luke doesn't use the same word and I don't believe it was by accident, says then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, Luke writes, I, Oh man.

And this is not an external cauterization.

It is an internal restoration of life.

[inaudible]

not just a patch but a brand new life.

So it's cute.

A few weeks ago, right?

We celebrated Christmas and I wanted to share with you guys when thinking about this, I wanted to tell you guys, show you guys my Christmas present.

Some of you all who know me, you know I'm a tech person, right?

I love gadgets.

I love devices.

Very cool.

So for Christmas, and I've got a picture of it, you can't see it up here.

What I got was POM M one Oh five if any of y'all are tech people, you will know the poem M one Oh five came out in 2001 and it was a revolutionary device.

And this actually wasn't my Christmas present.

I'm just joking because that would be absurd and crazy.

But when this device came out, it was, it was revolutionary.

There's so many things you could do on this and had these buttons.

The first one was a calendar.

You could put in your appointments on here, the next one, and it had a phone, but you really couldn't call people.

You could just store contact information, you could put it to do list on here.

And then this was the mind blowing thing.

You ready for this in the back?

There's a subtle thing you pop out, it's called a stylist and you can write on the bottom part of the screen and it will appear on the other part of this screen.

It was mindblowing.

Now the reason I have this, and the reason I brought this today is imagine if I was sitting with you and we were having coffee and you brought out, I had got side by side comparison and you got out your iPhone XR and you were taking a picture or you were doing a FaceTime video chat.

And I stood there and I, I looked at you with my son.

I said, man, how, how do I want to do that on this?

When you said, well, no, I've got this app, this app takes the pictures and you know, and then you can actually share it with people online and yeah, I want to do it with this.

Can I get that app?

What does it call?

Well, I'm the one, I use Instagram or Oh, okay, can I put Instagram on this?

You would say, yeah, no, that's not going to work.

No, no, no.

I just want the app.

Just put the app on here and then I'll be happy you, you would hopefully still be patient and say, yeah, that's not how that's going to work.

You can't put an app on there because that software won't run it.

Oh, I got it.

So put a new new new operating system on here.

Can I just link up to the Apple and you know, download the Apple software so that I can do all that.

Your response would still be no.

Well why not?

I just want to patch the software.

Come on, just help me out.

No.

If you truly were trying to help me, you would say the best thing you can do, Alan, is to take that and throw it away because the device itself is not, it's broken.

It's not going to work.

You need an entirely new device.

It's, I think that's what we're walking him through.

When Luke is talking today, I think this is the realization that the leper has, is that oftentimes we go to Jesus just like with this, with our old poems, and we say, Hey Jesus, can you, can you just help me be more patient?

Uh, no.

I'm not the most patient guy.

Can you help Jesus?

Can you help me not to cuss.

That's just I, I'm pretty good guy.

I just just, just tell me not to cuss.

Hey Jesus, can you just do this one thing for me or maybe we want the operating system instead of the app and we're like, I'm going to go get that brand new devotional that just came out and I'm going to 10 minutes every morning.

I'm going to read my devotional.

I'm going to say this quick little prayer and I'm going to be set to go for my day and that's going to fix me.

[inaudible]

some of us may look at this and have so much shame and guilt that we hide it.

We don't even want to bring it out.

We don't even want to ask for help, but what Jesus offers the leper, all the lepers and what the one leper realized is that Jesus came not to patch, not to make this work better.

He came to offer an entirely brand new life and creation.

He didn't just come to fix.

He came to save.

He came to create an entirely new life, new creation.

That's what he tells me.

He says, Hey, you've got to be born again.

That's what we see today and I believe that's what that leper saw and when the leper encounters that when he sees that he was totally and completely healed, something different happened.

He does four things that I think this morning we can see and we can take one.

Well, the first thing he does, verse 15 it says, when he saw that he was healed, first thing he does is he turns back.

Remember he had been told to go show himself to the priest.

He was headed this direction was life restoration for him.

And in that moment when the light bulb goes off and he sees Jesus for who he truly is, he turns his back on all of that and he returns to Jesus.

I would say he, he, I would say it this way.

He leaves behind all of the false hope in his life.

The second thing he does praising God with a loud voice screen, like he's coming back and he is screaming.

He is saying, God, you're amazing to God be the glory.

Remember I said, who do you cry out to for mercy?

He happened to cry out to Jesus.

And the answer he got was mind blowing and amazing and he went back praising God.

So the first thing he did is he leaves false hope.

He identifies the source of true hope.

The third thing he does is he falls on his face at Jesus's feet.

He follows Jesus to fall on his face at Jesus's feet was to identify to everybody that was there.

Everybody that was seeing what was going on, it was for him to proclaim again, Jesus, you are the Messiah.

You singing that song.

You are everything.

All of you is what I need.

He follows the Messiah and then lastly says giving him thanks and he didn't give Jesus money, right.

He didn't just turn around and give Jesus a high five.

He didn't give Jesus a letter of promise that he was going to work really, really hard for the rest of his life.

What does he say?

Just gives him thanks.

Now this word's fascinating cause this is not like, Hey, the prayer we pray right before a meal, just kind of usually as an afterthought saying thank you.

The word Luke uses here is eucharisteo.

It's where we get the term Eucharist.

It's where we get the idea of this, that we just celebrated communion.

He didn't just say thank you Jesus.

He took that moment that that term Eucharist comes from the word grace and it has its root in the word joy, undeserved favor.

This is joy.

He didn't do some grand thing.

He simply just said, thank you.

What if church family?

What if this morning, what if today the actually the most important thing we do all day is what we did a few minutes ago?

What if the thing that was the most important thing was simply not running off to do our 800 tasks and projects and to do at to attempt these monumental things.

What if the most central and important thing was actually not doing anything?

Just simply giving things.

Jesus responds to the leper when he does these things, when he leaves behind false hope, when he identifies the source of true hope, when he follows the Messiah and when he embraces the gift of grace, I believe he experiences real life.

Jesus responds to him and as he wraps up says then Jesus answered were not 10 cleansed.

Where are the nine?

And I think that question applies to you and me this morning in our hearts.

Where are you?

Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner.

And he said to him, rise and go your way.

Your faith has made you well, I wrap up and I end with this.

Think about this.

He said, rise and go your way.

He did not say rise and you better work hard.

You better get busy.

I'm gonna be watching you.

He didn't say rise and now go lead the world says go your way.

You see this miraculous moment.

Where did it lead?

Right back to his life, his own way.

It led back to the mundane

[inaudible],

right?

Cause this leper, we know nothing else about this leper.

He goes back to his life.

He probably ends up at the priest.

He probably is declared clean.

He probably goes back to being a father, a husband, brother C, whatever, whatever he's going to be.

He probably goes back to being that, but he's changed.

You see, the miraculous didn't take away the mundane, the miraculous brought meaning to the mundane.

Sometimes we as a church, we can get caught up and just overwhelmed by this.

When we see massive change, when, when we see radical transformation, and that is amazing when God works that way.

But God doesn't just work that way sometimes.

And oftentimes I believe that God works through the 10,000 everyday moments of our life, slowly changing and transforming us, slowly changing, transforming us, making us into the image of his son.

And we often don't see it.

We often don't feel it, but it does show up when we, when we leave false hope, when we identify this true source of hope, when we follow the Messiah and we embrace the guest grift of grace, I think we experienced true life and transformation, not because of what we do, but because of what he did.

Lastly, I want you guys to end with this.

So when, when Amanda and I, when we were pregnant with our first, uh, Hannah and, uh, we actually went through a scare.

We thought we were going to lose her.

And so we ended up at the emergency room.

We had to run a bunch of tests and it just so happened that we had to go right when we were just out of college wrapping up school.

And it was right before the week before I started a new job.

So we did not have health insurance and it was an enormous medical bill because of the test they ran and everything else.

And I remember when we got that first letter, everything, the pregnancy, everything turned out okay.

It was, it was a gift from God.

We got that first letter, that first bill and man, it was a punch in the gut.

I don't know.

I'm 20 some odd years old.

I don't know.

However, I'm going to repay this.

I don't know how we're going to dig out from this.

Like this is not just simply, Hey, just maybe get this dude that like this.

I don't know how we get out from this.

We got another letter.

Never forget.

We opened the letter up.

There's from the hospital fully expecting to see bill part two and it said these words, your bill has been paid, your debt has been forgiven.

We were not expecting that.

[inaudible]

and in that moment of just that moment of release to realize that somebody who I to this day don't know who loved us so much, not because of something we did, but loved us so much that they stepped in and paid our entire bill and gave us new life in that I share that because every single one of us, that's what Jesus does for us.

He doesn't come to just kind of help out.

It doesn't come just to kind of make some things a little bit better.

He comes to bring new life, to pay the debt and the bill of sin once and for all.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for today.

Thank you for your word.

Thank you for your truth.

Thank you for loving us.

Thank you for caring for us.

Father, I pray this morning that your words would ring true, that they would stick with us, that they would stay with us.

I pray that as we go out today, father, I pray that you would continue to peel back the layers of our hearts, that we would be honest and open and vulnerable in front of you.

Father, I pray that you would bring healing and hope to those who most need it this morning.

Father, I pray that you would remind me that you love me, not because of what I do or what I'm capable of or how strong I am, but that's you love me simply because I'm yours.

Father, I pray that you would change hearts, transform lives.

She would make us more like you this morning.

It's in your name we pray.

Amen.