The Wisdom We Need

Man, it is such a joy to be with you.

For those of you who don't know, my name is Justin.

I'm one of the pastors here, and I get the honor and privilege to be able to bring God's word to us.

But before we dive into the text this morning, uh, we want to let you know that we are in the middle of what we call Mission Vision Month.

And what we do is we try to take a few times throughout the year to pause and recalibrate our minds and hearts around the vision and mission that we believe God has given us to this church.

We want to be a people who are sent on mission to make disciples and plant churches so that all may know the joy of his salvation.

And so we want to continue to remind ourselves of that end.

We want to work toward that end in unity together.

And so one of the ways that we work to do that is by having these prayer and worship nights at the end of the month.

So over the next couple of Wednesdays, May 21st and 28th, uh, we'll be here at 7 p.m.

uh worshiping Jesus, praying, being together as a church community.

And we would love to invite you to come and be a part of that with us.

We we want to seek the Lord to the end that he would use us for the glory of his name and the good of his people.

And so we'd love to have you out with us.

Make sure you mark that in your calendar the next two Wednesdays, 21st and 28th, 7 p.m., right here in our gathering space.

Next month is a month we call mission milestones.

So again, we take a few times out of the year to be able to really celebrate these milestones in people's spiritual life.

One of the things that we do is we launch new terms of mission groups.

Mission groups are really where we do life in this biblical community, fostering this identity of a family together, a family who unites around studying God's word, praying together, worshiping together, sharing meals together.

This is a place where we live out the gospel's call to be in community with one another.

And so a new term of groups will be launching.

We've got 17 groups throughout the northern Cincinnati area.

We'd love to connect you to one.

If you're not in a group, this is a great time to jump into one as they start a new term.

If you've kind of suffered of participation and being active in a group over last term, this is a great opportunity to re-up that engagement and commitment to uh being in community with other people here at Sacred Mission, or maybe you're discovering a season of time in life that's shifting your schedule, and you need to actually jump into a different group that meets in a different night, different time.

That's a great opportunity for that as well.

All that to say, we desire every person and beyond Sacred Mission to be in groups in community with one another.

And so, new group term launch coming.

Then also a couple things that we're doing is baptisms in June.

If you want to meet with a pastor to see if baptism is the right next step for you in your faith, we'd love to meet with you and talk with you about that.

Uh, we'll be celebrating baptisms in June.

You can sign up for those through the app.

And then lastly, we'll have membership class.

Uh, membership class is going to be at the end of the month on a Saturday morning.

It is, hands down, the best way for you to discover and gain a sense of confidence on if Sacred Mission is the place that you should call home.

And so we want to invite you to that class to learn the why behind everything we do so that you can have that confidence.

And our hope would be that you would joyfully be a member here at Sacred Mission Church.

So lots happening over the next six weeks.

We want to invite you to participate in as much as you are able to.

So make sure you check out the app uh so that you can stay in the loop and register for those things.

Amen?

Got it?

Yep.

Uh-huh.

Yep, we do.

Yes.

Good job.

All right.

Well, hey, we're gonna dive into Daniel 2.

So we got a lot to unpack this morning.

Uh yesterday or last week, sorry, last Sunday, we opened up Daniel with chapter one.

And at the end of chapter one, what we discovered was that Daniel and his three friends, they they took this posture of faithfulness to the Lord.

But they also have this agreeable participation with the secular culture that they have been exiled in.

And there's this tension and dance that we're gonna continue to see throughout the book of Daniel, where God is clear in his word, in his law and commandments for his people.

Daniel draws this line and he says, I'm not gonna defile myself to the king's table, I'm not gonna bow my knee and worship, I'm not gonna do these things because the Lord is clear on how we're supposed to live.

And so he remains faithful to the Lord while this other tension resides in the life of Daniel, where he agreeably participates with the secular culture he now finds himself in.

And this dance leads Daniel to this place of favor and honor and blessing before the king, right?

This is what the end of chapter one shows us.

In verses 19 through 20, we see this.

And the king spoke with them, and among all of them, none was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.

Therefore, they stood before the king, and in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom.

So, so understand this for a moment.

Daniel and his friends stood among all of the council of people that the king had before him, but they stood apart from them.

I think that's a key thing about how we live in culture today, as exiles ourselves.

We might find ourselves among the culture, but we should stand apart from the culture.

In the way that we're faithful unto the Lord.

There's a holiness that needs to be fostered within our lives that causes us to stand apart.

You see, Daniel and his friends, they were held in high esteem, and their understanding and wisdom from God caused them to stand apart, stand apart from the pagan diviners and enchanters who all stood in the king's court with them.

And in many ways, Daniel's faithfulness to the Lord, right?

We talked about this, and his agreeable participation with the secular culture he was exiled in was actually providing Daniel with a good life.

Daniel was reaping the benefit of being recognized and seen by the king.

But that good life that Daniel and his three friends were living would be rather short-lived.

As only two years after being held in the king's court in high honor, Daniel and his friends, their very lives would be endangered by the king's frustration and fury.

That's where we find ourselves this morning in chapter two of Daniel.

So King Nebuchadnezzar, right?

He's gonna spend this series of restless nights, tossing and turning, haunted by this vivid dream that he could not escape, but he also couldn't grasp the full awareness and understanding of it either.

But the king was determined.

He was determined to uncover its meaning, and so he summons his courts, magicians, enchanters, sorcerers, and Chaldeans.

And he he does it, he doesn't only demand the interpretation of the dream, but he actually demands for the very content of the dream.

Because he wants to test them, to make sure that they're not just buying time, to make sure that they're not just speaking these words of fluff, right, to try and gain the king's favor and honor.

No, he wants to test them.

But what he presents before them is a test that we soon discover nobody was going to be able to pass this test because the king purposely withheld details from this council that he called before him.

You see, the king had summoned these wise men, and they would use all of their diverse methods to try and soothe Nebuchadnezzar's despair.

He had astrologers present who would look to the stars and try to observe these patterns in the heavenly bodies to discern some type of message in the cosmos.

He had magicians who had these thick books that they called omen manuals, and they would look all throughout its pages, trying to seek some kind of sign or symbol or event, hoping that it would produce some interpretation for them.

He had enchanters that would study the entrails of animals, specifically for some reason, sheep's livers.

They would pull them out of these sacrificed animals and examine its condition in this attempt to read some encoded meaning.

He had diviners that would take these willow branches and wave them in the air, intending to be pointed in the right direction of an answer.

Each of these men working to produce an explanation for the king of what his dream was and what the interpretation of it might be.

And any failure to relieve the king's frustration would be met with his fury.

But there's a flip side of this.

If one of them was able to actually meet his demands, the king promised that he would lavish them with this embarrassment of riches.

You see, Nebuchadnezzar was the most powerful man at the moment, and all of the resources of creation was under his dominion.

It was believed that there was not one aspect of the known world that he didn't rule over.

And so he he presents them with both this warning if you don't do what I need you to, I'm going to bring you to ruin.

But if you are able to produce this for me, then I'm going to lavish you with riches.

We see this in Daniel 2, 5 through 6.

The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, the word for me is firm.

The reason why he says this is because he's had this dream multiple times.

And so in their tradition and understanding, that meant that this was an established reality, right?

He had this multiple times.

The word for me is firm.

If you do not make known to me the dream and its interpretation, you shall be torn limb from limb, and your houses shall be laid in ruins.

But if you show the dream and its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor.

Therefore, show me the dream and its interpretation.

I think what we need to see, what Nebuchadnezzar is doing here, is that in front of him is all this uncertainty.

Right?

There's crisis and chaos, there's this dream that's haunting him.

He doesn't know exactly what it was, and he definitely doesn't know what it meant.

And what's the first thing the king does?

He tries to throw his strength and his resources at the uncertainty that lies before him.

And he calls all this council of wise men to use their rituals and their craftiness to try and have some type of gain of wisdom that seems out of his reach.

And here, this, right?

This fear and this panic, you can sense that it actually gripped the very palace as these wise men and these magicians, their own trickery and rituals, left them without any satisfactory response to the king.

And so what was the result?

The king's fury was commissioned.

And it was commissioned to have all the wise men of Babylon executed.

Verse 12, if you're following along with us in Scripture.

Because of this, the king was angry and very furious, and commanded that all the wise men of Babylon be destroyed.

So the decree went out, and the wise men were about to be killed, and they sought Daniel and his companions to kill them.

Now, Daniel is somewhat caught off guard.

He's not in this original meeting, right?

And so there comes this executioner knocking at his door with a decree in one hand and a sword in the other.

And when this executioner comes for Daniel, Daniel calmly requests time.

Give me time, and if you are able to allot that to me, I promise that I'm going to actually reveal the dream for you.

And that night, Daniel and his three friends, they prayed fervently.

And God granted Daniel a vision of the dream and its interpretation.

Now, the dream, right?

The dream unfolded this towering figure, this statue with a head of gold, a chest of silver, a belly of iron or bronze, legs of iron, and feet of mixed iron and clay.

And then all of a sudden, in this dream, there was this stone that was untouched by human hands, comes forth and strikes the statue's feet, shattering it to dust.

And then that stone grew into this mountain and it and it filled the earth.

So the next day, Daniel he stands before Nebuchadnezzar.

And he tells them that this dream actually reveals the future.

The statue's parts are kingdoms.

He tells Nebuchadnezzar that you are the head of gold.

You are the head of gold and you rule now.

Your dominion covers the earth.

But there are other empires coming.

Yes, they are lesser, but they are strong and they are mighty, and they will follow after you, Nebuchadnezzar.

And this feet of iron and clay show this divided kingdom, this fragile empire in those days.

And at that time, God's eternal kingdom, the stone, will arise, crushing all of these earthly powers, standing forever, and its glory will fill the earth.

You can imagine what Dan uh what Nebuchadnezzar might have been thinking in that moment, right?

This this young Hebrew boy who he has captured and brought into captivity and exiled, he's standing before him and saying, Hey, look, I know you think you're the stuff, right?

You're the guy who rules over all of known creation, but I want to tell you something.

You're gonna be replaced.

You're gonna be replaced by a lesser kingdom that's still strong and powerful, and then that kingdom, that kingdom's gonna be replaced, and then that kingdom is gonna be replaced, and then all of a sudden, all of the kingdoms of this world will turn to dust by the stone uncarved by human hands that brings them to ruin.

You see, I believe that Nebuchadnezzar will have been awestruck by Daniel's content of the dream and interpretation of it.

And what does he do?

He actually spares Daniel's life and not just his, but his friends and all of the wise men of Babylon.

And he elevates them to this place of high honor, marveling at the God who reveals mysteries.

You see, Daniel and his friends, they were they were facing death.

Death literally was knocking at their door, and they needed wisdom to be able to obtain life.

And what we see in Daniel 2 is that he goes before the Lord, and the Lord freely gives him the wisdom that he needs that he might find the life that he so desires.

You see, we we need the revelation of God's wisdom in our own life.

As a people who face death, we need the wisdom of God to produce the life that our hearts and souls long for, that we so desperately need.

We need the revelation of God's wisdom.

You see, the king's wise men not only cried out in despair, pleading with the king for mercy, but they also revealed a very central theme to this passage.

Let's let's look at verses 10 and 11 again.

The Chaldeans answered the king and said, There's not a man on earth who can meet the king's demands.

For no great and powerful king has asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean.

And here, here's the focus of the text, verse 11.

The thing that the king asked is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods whose dwelling is not with flesh.

You see, they they they knew that the king's demand exceeded their craftiness.

And so what do they do?

They shift their blame, they shift their blame on their inabilities onto these false gods who are said to be too distant to be any real help to their people.

Their smoke had cleared out, their mirrors were shattered, they had nowhere to hide from the king.

And so they point the finger at these idols, these false gods.

But Daniel didn't seek to hide, nor did he plead for mercy.

Instead, Daniel gathered his friends and prayed.

Prayed to a God who was with his people, who was near to them and present in their affliction.

Daniel prayed to the God who reveals wisdom.

You see, he knew that only the Lord would be able to give him the wisdom they he desperately needed in this moment.

So Daniel determined not to rely on some cheap magician's trick or to blame some dead idol that is altogether powerless.

No, Daniel goes before a greater king than Nebuchadnezzar.

He seeks the counsel of infinite wisdom.

He bows before the God who is near and present.

And I love when Daniel stands before Nebuchadnezzar's throne, he declares this no wise men, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has asked, but there is a God.

There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days.

And Daniel stands before this power and boldly declares and proclaims that there is a greater power than him.

That the power and wisdom of God has made known to him what he was seeking.

And here's Nebuchadnezzar is left with one response.

Right?

It's here truly your God is God of gods and Lord of kings and revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this mystery.

That is so powerful.

At the end of all this uncertainty of the crisis and chaos that was before Nebuchadnezzar, where he's just trying to throw everything within his grasp at this problem to bring some resolve.

What is he?

When he's at the end of himself, he's only able to declare one thing.

Your God is God of gods.

You serve the Lord of kings.

There is no other God but yours.

You see, God alone is the possessor of all true wisdom.

And the beautiful thing about who he is is that he actually graciously reveals this wisdom to all who seek after him.

This is what is so good about God.

That he reveals life-giving truth out of the very kindness of his character.

He doesn't leave us.

He doesn't leave us to our own striving and speculation to try and uncover truth, right?

We don't have to mine the earth to try and discover some sign or symbol that would reveal what we need so desperately.

No.

God freely reveals it by his spirit through his word.

He is the God who doesn't remain concealed and hidden from his people, but he graciously reveals himself to us that we might know him and not just know him but be rightly known by him.

You see, we don't need the diviners of our day to give us insight, nor we didn't need to scour the earth looking for the right enchanted influencer to guide us towards some intimate knowledge.

No, we only need to rely on God who freely gives us the wisdom that we need so that we might know true and everlasting life.

Yet so often we rely on everything else but God to give us the wisdom that we're searching for.

Right?

This is what you're gonna discover about the Old Testament preaching.

Um you're never the hero, you're always the bad guy.

Right?

You're not Daniel in this story.

You're Nebuchadnezzar and his council of fools.

Jesus has to be the hero for us.

This is the beauty of the gospel that.

Left to ourselves, we were only going to try and be like Nebuchadnezzar.

We're going to throw our strength and resources at the uncertainty that lies before us.

We're going to scour through all these tricks and rituals and craftiness to try and understand and gain the knowledge we need.

That's what we would do left to ourselves.

Because if we're able to be honest and reflect rightly this morning, we rely on worldly wisdom, resources, and strength, especially in the face of uncertainty and crisis.

Think about a time when the future was uncertain for you.

The first emotion you probably felt was an absence of control.

That's anxiety.

You want to know what anxiety is?

It's I can't control this right now.

We love control.

We love control.

And so when uncertainty hits us, when crisis and chaos flood our purview, we're going to discover where our reliance is really at.

You see, we rarely, if ever, actually begin our pursuit for clarity and answers, wisdom with a reliance upon God.

You see, unlike Daniel, who turned to God first through prayer, we turn to the thing that deep down we actually have the most perceived confidence in.

Let me help us understand this.

Consider this for just a moment.

Why do we, and you and I, turn to lesser things than God in a moment of crisis or chaos?

Here's what I want to submit to, and we're going to wrestle through over the next X amount of time, right?

I would submit this that it's because we functionally have a greater confidence in the lesser things' ability to help us in our time of need.

You see, for many of us, we're more like Nebuchadnezzar and his council of fools who acknowledge God's presence and power at the end of their situation.

When everything else didn't work, when we've been brought to ruin, it's then that we acknowledge that He alone is God.

Rather than like Daniel, who bowed before the God of all power who is present with his people first.

You see, many of us we rely on worldly wisdom.

We rely on worldly wisdom.

Let's remember verse 2 for just a moment.

Then the king commanded that the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans be summoned to tell the king his dreams.

So they came in and stood before the king.

Now, I know if you're going through Daniel and your devotional time with us, right, you might read through that passage and find no connection with it, right?

You might not see any relevance in this.

You might just skip over it, like, yeah, those guys were idiots, right?

But many of us, we actually seek out modern day reflections of these practices and these individuals regularly.

We may not turn to astrology for answers in the sky.

Maybe you do, right?

But but even if we don't, we do turn to spiritual imposters to tell us the signs of the times.

Look at what's happening in these foreign countries, look what's happening with these rulers, look what's going on around.

This is a sign of the times, it's a sign of the times, right?

And we're fed in this insatiable pursuit of novelty by the empty prophetic utterances of digital influencers.

Maybe we don't open the scrolls of omen manuals, but we do doom scroll through influencers, thought leaders, content creators on these platforms for insight on life, for guidance through difficult times, for self-care counsel.

And like enchanters who tried to decode the mystery of life through a sheep's liver.

We tried to decode the mystery of our own identity through the latest trending personality assessment.

And we probably don't go around waving willow branches, hoping to be pointed in the right direction, but many of us will freely and gladly wave a group or party flag, hoping that their direction is the right one.

You're just a more civilized version of these council of fools.

That's us.

We go to everything but God.

You see, when the uncertainty of the present or the future grips us, we rarely turn to the already revealed wisdom of God in his word.

We rarely turn to him in prayer that by his spirit he might give us the knowledge and insight that we're desperately searching for, right?

To get us out of this situation of death and into the life that our hearts long for.

And the Bible tells us so.

This is the crazy part about it.

The God of infinite wisdom is so generous with his people.

He's eager to supply his wisdom to all who ask.

James 1 through 5 makes this as clear as it possibly can.

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who what?

Gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.

Why is it?

I mean, really wrestle with this in your heart.

Why is it that we allow these lesser and often deceptive sources of insight to have priority above the God of all wisdom?

As the apostle Paul declared, oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.

It is unsearchable.

Now you may be sitting in your seat and say, I'm not convinced that that's me.

I'm not convinced that I'm the one who relies on these cultural prophets and gurus that promise insight to me.

No, I'm not that type of person.

But I think you will be very hard-pressed to convince yourself that you don't rely on your resources and strength in the faces of uncertainty.

Right?

Again, I want to put forward this notion.

The thing that we turn to first in the face of uncertainty is the thing that we functionally rely on most.

Let me say that again.

The thing we turn to first in the face of uncertainty, crisis, chaos, absence of control, is the thing that we functionally rely on the most.

This is why we have so little prayer in our life.

The reason that we have so little prayer in our life is because we have so little reliance upon God.

I mean, look at us.

We don't need God.

That's how your heart is fostered on a daily basis.

You have an embarrassment of riches at your disposal.

You have more than you could ever need.

We have bank accounts and retirement plans and homes and automobiles and educations, and list goes on and on and on.

When I'm facing uncertainty, the last thing I need to do is rely on God.

You see, the amount of prayer in our life has a direct relationship with our reliance upon other things than Him.

And many of us were a lot like King Nebuchadnezzar, who relied on his own resources and strength to get him through the uncertainty that stood before him.

Let's revisit verses five and six.

The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, The word from me is firm.

If you do not make known to me the dream and its interpretation, you shall be torn limb from limb, and your houses shall be laid in ruins.

But if you show the dream and its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor.

Therefore, show me the dream and its interpretation.

Man, can we relate to this at all?

Is there anyone in the room who can be honest like me for a moment and say, when uncertainty is in front of me, man, anger rises up because I want to take control as fast as I possibly can?

You see, for this is what I find for myself.

That in the midst of uncertainty and crisis, I have no greater reliance than on my own strength.

Man, I'm good.

I'm able to find out a way when it doesn't seem like there is one.

I'm able to put my head down and power through it.

I'm able to work hard.

I'm able to clear a path forward.

On my own strength, I will crush the uncertainty that's before me.

But this is the sad part of it, right?

The deceptive nature of this is that over and over again I find that my strength is radically insufficient.

And the terrible part of it all is that when I'm working out of my own strength to bring control around the uncertainty in front of me, I often wound others around me.

Because in my fear, in my anxiousness, I don't see right.

And here's the thing: I wield my strength against people that I love.

Because in my inability to see clearly, I've confused them for an enemy.

What about our resources?

As I said, we have an absolute embarrassment of riches at our disposal.

We functionally live as if we don't need God because our daily reliance is fixed upon all the stuff that we have immediate access to.

When we don't know what to do, when we don't know what the future holds, our first instinct isn't to bow our knee and fold our hands in prayer, but it's to reach out our hand and grasp around the very thing that we believe can bring comfort and resolve to our situation.

You see, like King Nebuchadnezzar, when we're faced with uncertainty, we throw our strength and resources at the problem rather than to run to God with it.

And we fail to rely on God because our affluent culture, our abundant lives, they've cultivated in our heart a reliance upon ourselves and our stuff.

If you struggle with prayer in your life, it's because your reliance is on someone or something else other than God.

Yeah, here's the reality.

King Nebuchadnezzar discovered through both the proclamation of Daniel and the revealing of his dream that God's wisdom and God's strength ultimately crushes any sense of our ability to rely on ourselves.

The wisdom and strength of God brings self-reliance down to rubble.

Because there's a stone.

There's a stone that was not cut by human hand that turns our self-reliance into dust.

In church, Jesus is the all-sufficient strength and wisdom of God.

I love studying this because I saw this parallel of Daniel 2 and Paul writing to the church in Corinth and 1 Corinthians chapter 1.

1 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention

In the two, what we see is this reality where you and I are going to continually try to discover what we perceive we need in the things of this world.

But Jesus confounds these attempts.

He brings them to ruin.

You see, in the king's dream, there was this stone that comes out uncarved by human hands and it crushes the kingdoms of this world, causing their very dust to be scattered by the wind, while its own majesty and glory are established like a mountain that fills the earth.

You see, that stone is Jesus, the rock of our salvation.

He is the fullness of God's wisdom revealed and the fullness of his strength expressed.

And it's so hard for us to see and realize the all-sufficient nature of Jesus.

Because the Bible's not trying to dance around this, it's not trying to write a soften this.

The Bible lets us understand the gospel is foolishness.

It's absolute foolishness.

You're saying that I can receive eternal life and forgiveness of sin by simply believing and having faith?

No, no, no, no.

I've got to do everything right.

I've got to work harder.

I've got to, in my own self-righteousness, try to produce my own right standing before God.

I need to be the one to have the credit here.

And then, isn't the gospel weak?

This is who you call your king?

This suffering servant who is nailed to a tree, who is crushed.

Isn't that weakness?

They don't realize that it's not Christ being crushed, it's Christ doing the crushing.

Driving the cross into the head of the devil, right?

This is the power that they don't be aware of or recognize because the gospel's weak, the gospel's foolish.

The gospel has been revealed through means so contrary to our culture and our understanding.

And this is what Paul helps the church in Corinth see because they seem to struggle with the very same principle.

Look at 1 Corinthians 1, 27 through 29.

But God chose what is foolish in the world to what?

To shame the wise.

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.

So that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

Christ is the fullness of the knowledge of God.

He is the fullness of his strength expressed.

And he brings to nothing all of our self-reliance.

You see, the wisdom of this world can never bring clarity to the uncertainty of our future.

Our own strength can never bring control to our crisis.

Only Jesus, the wisdom and strength of God, could give us the certainty of a glorious future that stands before us.

Right?

This is what is so glorious about the gospel.

Where there was uncertainty in front of us, now there's clarity, and it's the clarity of this glorious kingdom where the Lamb sits on the throne, and he is the light of all of his dominion.

And his people are with him, and he is their God.

You see, that's what we look forward to.

That's the clarity that's brought, and it's brought and obtained for us by the wisdom of the gospel, the strength of his finished work.

That's why we're so committed to preaching the cross, that sacred mission.

That's why we're so committed to the utter foolishness of the gospel, because it alone brings clarity to our uncertainty.

Look at what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1, 23 through 24.

But what do we do?

We preach Christ crucified.

A stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is what?

He is the all-sufficient power, strength of God, and the wisdom of God.

So my hope is in him.

And my hope for us is that we would rely more and more on God.

And I think the best way that we can start cultivating that in our life is just through prayer.

I want to put forward this simple principle.

The amount of prayer in your life is directly related to the amount you rely on God to move.

Like that's that's one plus one spiritual math, right?

But it's not easy.

I get that.

I get that.

But but Jesus has to become bigger.

Is Jesus in your vision bigger than your stuff?

Is Jesus bigger than your strength?

Is Jesus bigger in your life?

Because if Jesus continues to stay small and yourself or your stuff continues to be big in your vision, then you're going to continue to rely on them instead of him.

Jesus is the all-sufficient strength and wisdom of God.

And so we need to cultivate our reliance upon him by getting a bigger vision of him that drives us to prayer in the face of uncertainty, crisis, and chaos.

I want to leave us with a quote from H.B.

Charles Jr.

He's the lead pastor of Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida.

He has this to say about the relationship between prayer and reliance.

Prayer is arguably the most objective measurement of our dependence upon God.

The things you pray about are the things you trust God to handle.

The things you neglect to pray about are the things you trust you can handle on your own.

Church, Jesus has to become bigger.

Bigger than ourselves, bigger than our stuff.

And it has to drive us to prayer because we rely only on Him.

Amen.