Weekly Recap: The Law and Prevenient Grace

All right, we're live. Okay, Hi Brian, Hi, we are

live. I mean we're live right now. Okay, you and I are

live. The people that are listening to this later, we are not live.

This is is this the pre live? I guess for them. Whatever

you want, what you want, whatever, whatever you want it to be

in your little world, live off Mike whatever. Everyone may just appreciate if

I stay off Mike. That's all right. So the inaugural episode of I

don't even remember what we call this thing, the FBC Woodlawn Weekly. Yeah

that works. Yeah, okay, So we finally got the Sunday services out

in podcast land, so everybody can go back and watch those on YouTube,

or they can get the audio version if they just wanting to listen to the

you know, like me, I drive a lot, so audio versions work

better than YouTube versions for me. So hopefully this helps somebody. If you've

further road a lot or something like that, or you know, cooking dinner

and you want to listen to what happened on Sunday, then you can do

that. But also this, this separate recording kind of gives us a chance

to sit down and kind of recap Sunday. So it's Wednesday right now.

I don't know what day we'll release this, hopefully before next Sunday, but

I kind of want to do a recap of Sunday, maybe touch on some

notes, maybe expand on some things, maybe you know, grab an idea

that was given and and you know something that maybe it needs a little further

explanation, but also talk about you know, maybe upcoming stuff, things going

on at the church locally, you know, for our regular attenders that they

might find useful, but also stuff that might the guy in Zimbabwe that's going

to find this someday down the road, maybe he'll find some benefit from this.

So that's kind of our goal with all of this is kind of a

midweek recap, but also hopefully something that you know that gospel centrically is,

did I that's a bad use of words, that gospel centrically. You have

amazed me with numerous vocabulary selections over the last I don't know however long we've

known each other and and met together and in situations like this. So yeah,

so gospel centrically is I don't think that's a word within the realm of

my my vocabularical expectations. I think I just pulled at George w and created

a word. So speaking of words that were created. So last Sunday,

you're in Romans right now, which we've been in Romans for three and a

half years. Do you like it? About four months? I guess.

So let me let me go back and ask that question. What what made

you settle on Romans? Well, I took about three weeks off from preaching

to really seek the Lord for the next direction because I didn't have it and

you understand that, you know, and so I wanted to to get that

confirmation from God. Romans was in the back of my mind and I didn't

know if I wanted to tackle Romans or not, you know, but I

really felt like the Lord confirmed that in me to do so. And so

that's what I have have done. And it's a challenge for me to presus

when you're talking about what people what many people think is Paul's namies in in

New Testament gospelization. So anyway, it it's a I mean, it is

a challenge because you know, Paul refers to the law a lot which is

which which he is an expert, and uh, but I felt like it

was something that God wanted me to preach on to so people would hear the

clear part of the gospel that Jesus Christ himself is the righteousness of God.

That the righteousness is not found in adherence to the law, because the law

is impossible to to obey from a human standborn. I can't can't do it

Romans three twenty three. I think I have. I have referenced every sermon

in this series. All have fallen short of the glory of God, all

have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And so so to

tackle the law and the righteousness in Jesus alone. It has a very basic

foundational theme to it, but also it gets pretty deep, as Paul tends

to do. So it felt like I was supposed to do it. Good.

Thank you for for being obedient to the hard thing, even though when

it's not always maybe the first thing you would choose. Sometimes we need to

do the hard thing, you know, we really do, because I think

so often. You know, I don't consider myself a professional preacher. You

know, I have a I guess this is your full time, it is,

but you're a professional. I am very upfront about the fact that I

have not had seminary train, you know. And so my training or my

education, if you will, it just comes from being in church all my

life, sitting under great teachers and whom I consider a strong theologians. And

so I've had great teachers, but just not a formal education. Speaking of

you made the comment about, you know, the impossibility of keeping God's law,

the impossibility of trying to follow the Old Testament requirements that God placed on

Israel. And you've highlighted that over the last couple of weeks, and you

really highlighted that this last Sunday. One of the things you said was to

remain in covenant with God, the entirety of the law must be kept.

That is a weighty statement. Well, that's what scripture says. That's what

Paul said, he said, and again I don't have the scripture right in

front of me, but it says that if you fail in one aspect of

the law, then you are guilty of the whole of law, the whole

of the law, and you are accountable for all of it. And so

the Old Testament records some six hundred and thirteen laws in covenant with God,

and the requirement is to please God, to keep all of them, and

then if you fail in one, then you have failed in awe. And

so that's why, Yeah, did that answer your question? It did.

So there's another question that I think it has to be asked. And this

may seem elementary, but it's an important question. I think that we need

to ask. Are we under the law? And when I when we say

the law, we're talking about the Old Testament, you know, the six

hundred and six hundred and thirteen laws of the Old Testament, not just the

ten Commandments. When we say the ten Commandments, people think that's the law,

but no, it was much more broad, much much more detailed,

much more specific. That's where that impossibility comes from. Are we still under

the law? And if we are, to what extent? Well, Christ

came to fulfill the law. Jesus came, and through his perfect life and

through his sacrifice of dying on the cross, he fulfilled the law. Right,

That's what Scripture says, that the law is fulfilled in Christ. So

in Christ, no, we are no longer bound by the law. Scripture

is very clear about that. Now apart from Christ, those who are apart

from Christ, who have rejected the free gift of God, the free gift

of salvation that has found only in Christ. That is considered the unpardonable sin

right to reject Christ. So those who reject Christ, then yes, they

are still under the law because the way to God is through perfection, right,

I mean, we come to Christ full of flaws. Christ is our

righteousness. In his perfection, His blood has cleansed us of every sin.

So now I stand you stand, all who are in Christ. We stand

before God, free and clear in the righteousness of Christ. We stand perfect

and as bart Millard of Mercy Me says, flawless, we stand flawless in

the presence of God only because of Jesus. And so we recognize that,

and we preach that. We preach Christ crucified, Crucify. Those who reject

Christ are still under the law, right, I mean it isn't so they

will still be judged by They'll still be judged by the requirements of the law.

Okay, So I need to track with you on that, because I'm

not sure I understood that statement. When you say that they're still under the

law, are you talking about the specificity of their Are you talking about the

specific points of Are this if a person that's outside of Christ. Are they

still required to wear certain clothing, avoid certain foods or are we talking about

the imputed righteousness? Well, I think that's what we're talking about, because

because no, I don't believe, and again no expert here, but I

don't believe God is looking at those who are lost and saying, well that

one of those are many of those six hundred and thirteen laws that talk about

certain animals and dress and the unmarried or whatever the case may be, all

of those, all of those laws. No, I believe that we will

be judged according to the perfection of Christ right because He is the fulfillment of

the law. And so we if we reject, if we reject Jesus,

then we are guilty of rejecting and failing at keeping the law. And we're

guilty of We're guilty of the entire law. Yestriper says, we are we

are without redemption because we have nothing more than the law to use as our

guide. Paul spoke about this a Galatians three. He said, now,

before faith came, we were held captive under the law. That's a strong

word image to use. We were held captive, We were slaves to the

law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So without Christ,

we spiritually are imprisoned. Well there's a curse, yeah, right, the

curse of sin. And so yeah, I think those I think the little

go hand in hand. Yeah. He goes on to say, so,

then the law was I'm reading from the ESV here it says so then the

law was our guardian, the king James version. I like the way it

uses the word school master in this. The task of the school master was

not just to teach school, but the task of the school master was to

go collect the children in the morning and then take them to school and then

take them back home at night. So the school master actually had the responsibility

of protecting the children and leading them to school, not just being there present

when they arrived, but leading them to that to the education they would get.

So when it gives us that word picture of the law was the school

master, and to Christ came it's the law. Was that thing that showed

us how deeply without hope we were. Yeah, it's it's the thing that

shows us how flawed we are, how broken and a mess we are.

Is bound, Yeah, being bound. So that leads us into another thing,

talking about words that are new to us. I heard a word from

you that was new to me Sunday, and I love to hear new words

because it makes me go into my deep rabbit holes. And that's where I

went this week. So you made a comment and it was a quote from

a w Tozer and you you mentioned provenient grace. So I looked into this

because I had never heard the term provenient grace. And this is one of

those things I always challenge people with, and that's it's one of the reasons

I'm really excited that we're doing this is because I think a lot of Christians

we get hung up on things we don't know, so we just kind of

forget. We just brush those things off. We don't even write a note.

Well convince most people in church to take notes to begin with, But

that's a different argument. I enjoy keeping notes on the things I don't understand.

So the words that I hear that I've never heard, that's the things

I keep notes of. And I had never heard provenient grace. So provenient

comes from a Latin word that meant to proceed or to come before something.

So Tosar and I. You used a quote from Tosar. Do you have

that handy. Yes, what was that quote that you used? He calls

provenient grace. It says, before a man can seek God, God must

have first sought the man. Before a sinful man can think a right thought

of God, there must have been a work of enlightenment done within him.

He says, we pursue God because he first put the urge in us to

do so. Okay, that's his Yeah, take on it. Yeah.

I don't know that he was directly referring to prevenient grace in this book,

But there's a book by a debutozer called The Pursuit of God, and he

references something in the beginning pages of that book that applied to this. He

said, we pursue God because and only because He had first put an urge

within us that spurs us to the pursuit. No man can come to me,

said our Lord, except the Father which has drawn, which has sent

me draw him. It is by this very provenient drawing. There it is

provenient drawing that God takes from us every vestige of credit from the act of

coming. The impulse to pursue God originates with God, but the outworking of

that impulse is our following hard after him, and all the time we are

pursuing him, we are already in his hand, thy right hand upholdeth me.

He quotes Palm sixty three eight. So what is the importance of provenient

grace? What is provenient grace? And what's the importance of it? I

choose to believe. And I keep things very simple, don't you know me?

I keep things very simple. I think as a pastor and as a

preacher, I believe that, you know, we don't need to show off

what we know in Greek, which I know nothing. But I don't think

we're up there to show off. I think we're there to present the Gospel

as clearly as as we can, and to keep it simpleely, and so

that's the way. That's the way I approach it. And I believe,

as Scripture teaches, that God is sovereign, and I believe that without I

believe when Jesus said in John six forty four that no man come to me

unless the Father who sent me draws him. I believe that in all things.

I believe that to even come to Christ in the first place, there

has to be a drawing right that if I have a if a lost person

has a thought of God. They did not think of that on their own.

God put that in them to have a thought of Him. I choose

to believe that because with me, it's either all God or it's no God.

I don't want to take in I don't want to take any glory or

take any part in patting myself on the back and say that, well I

did that part, you know. And I do believe, I do believe

that I have a responsibility, that you have a responsibility to respond that every

man, every person who gets that nudge from God, whether it is a

knowing that the Holy Spirit gives or something in this in scripture that moves us,

we have a responsibility to respond. And I think that comes in salvation

as well. You know, God initiates, God draws, but we have

to respond, and we have to take responsibility in that. So uh so

so prevenient. You know, the word was new to me when I when

I read it for the first time several years ago as well. But it

but it's but it struck me that that all this this spiritual activity is first

initiated by God. Right. I love reading A w. Tozer. I've

read quite a bit of the things he wrote In fact, my son's name

is Aiden, which is a w to's first name. That was completely by

accident. Though it sounds really deep. You didn't have to say that.

You could have just gone with it. Yeah, it sounds really deep to

say I have a son named Aiden, you know, a w Tozer,

so that you know, like my friends that have kids that they name you

know, Spurgeon, you know. But it was not on purpose, law,

But there's an important point to be made here, and you touched on

it. So Tozar said, the impulse to pursue God originates with God,

which is what you said. So God, according to Tosar, God puts

an impulse inside of us. He puts something in us that desires him.

And we could argue the different theological camps of how you view this. But

I love this idea of prevenient grace because it highlights the way grace precedes us.

That grace, the work of grace, was being done before we were

ever here, before there was ever a Brian or a Cory, God was

already working out the covenant and the promise of grace on our behalf. You

can see the unfolding of grace all the way back through the old Testament into

the early page of the scripture. Yeah, and even look at Romans five

eight. You know, while we were still sinners, while we were still

dead in our sins, Christ died for us. And so the work of

the work of salvation, the work of redemption, was was put in place.

You know, I'll say, before the foundation of the universe. You

know, God knew that Adam and Eve were going to fall. You know,

I choose to believe that, and that the plan of redemption was always

was always God's plan. A And how that unfolds and how that what that

looks like, I can't I can't explain it, you know, But but

yeah, I believe that before there was a Cory, before there was a

Brian, there was a plan of redemption in place. But also when you

use the word responsibility, and that's good word, and that's absolutely it,

because I believe that Scripture. You know, Scripture teaches us that while grace

is given by God freely, and while mercy is handed to us by God

completely outside of ourselves. That's the difference in grace and mercy. I used

to preach this. In fact, this is one of the coolest things.

That's one of those nuggets that you take with you throughout the rest of your

life. You know, as a pastor, you hope and pray, are

you know, And wondered sometimes of people getting what I'm saying. And I

remember teaching on grace and mercy, and one of the guys at the church,

it had been several years since I had preached that, he remembered and

he quoted me, and he said, well, didn't you say that grace

is the divine favor of God and mercy is the divine protection of God?

And I had forgotten that I had said that, but he had remembered that

for years and kept that with him, and it was one of those nugget

moments. Okay, someone someone's getting it. Someone got something. But you

know, that's that's grace and mercy. Mercy is is the protection of God.

It's that thing that keeps us when we don't know how Grace is that

favor of God over us, that that came long before the foundations of the

world. Even but that doesn't that doesn't eliminate the fact we still have a

responsibility, that we have some skin in the game, so to speak.

And while my salvation is not dependent on me because of me is why I

needed it. So obviously, you know my flesh that was so depraved and

without God. That's why I need salvation because I'm cur I'm under that curse.

But there's still a level of a responsibility that God has given us that

we still after that urge has been put inside of us, we have to

do something with that for that love to be genuine, that relationship that we're

going to enter into with Christ, not to be something that was forced upon

us or a robotic thing that we just had no choice in the matter,

but it's genuinely something where we were provoked with a holy love and then an

understanding of justice was given and we had to respond by faith to that right.

And I think that's what provenient grace really highlights, is that grace that

came before that proceeded. That's a deep rabbit hole that you know, everybody

can go down later if you want to. But by the same token,

it is important, I think, to under understand that the work of God

is is of revenient work. Before we have that thought of him, He

is at work to give us that, to give us that nudge, or

to give us that whatever you called it. You called it something I don't

know what. I call it impulse, impulse, you know the aw Telser

said impulse. Okay, I quote it. You used it, So let's

uh, let's finish up this part of the conversation, and I'll finish with

another quote from my favorite pastor Brian Ford. You said, our measurement that

we use is Jesus. Period. When we measure ourselves in light of Jesus,

we get an accurate measure of our desperate need for grace? Man,

can you believe you said that? I can't believe I said that, you

know, because you know I because that tears me up right now talking about

it again, because it's true, you know, and you know we and

I think the point I made before that was, you know, I asked,

do you compare yourself with other people? Do you, as a Christian?

Do you compare yourself with other Christians? And say, well, at

least I don't do what they do, you know, which we're all guilty

of that, all of us. But when we when we measure ourselves against

Christ, we see how miserable we are. We see how we treat our

spouse in light of our measurement against Christ, and all these things, so

that that is our measurement. And if we're measuring ourselves as followers of Jesus

against anything else, because He is the law perfected, he is the volume

of scripture was written of him. It's all about him, it's all about

his the redemptive plan in Christ. And if we measure ourselves against anything else

but Christ, then we are we are just out of out of alignment.

Yeah, that's good, and it's a sobering thought because I think we we

tend to, you know, thank God, I'm not like the publicans that

pray loudly. You know, we tend to compare ourselves to every other person

around us, and we justify who we are because of the saddest state of

everyone around us. And we look at the shortcomings and the failings of everyone

else, and we use that as justification for ourselves, and we say,

well, at least I'm not as bad as you know, dot dot,

And we use other people as our measuring stick. But little do we realize

that we're using a broken measuring stick to measure another broken measuring stick. Yeah.

And in case in point, I jump in here and say this,

I'm speaking with an ongoing conversation with somebody who's having some issues in their marriage,

and it's a he said, she said kind of thing, which it

usually is. And so I just so I had a book I wanted him

to read that it's all drenched in scripture, but instead of being a book

that was about the marriage relationship, it was a book about the glory of

God. And when we view Christ in the way that we are meant to

view Christ in his glory, everything else in our life will have its rightful

place and just like and one of the examples this book gives is that if

the son of our solar system was out of place, everything else in the

solar system would become I can't remember the exact exact word, but everything else

would be out of alignment. Everything would be thrown just out of place.

And if the sun son, if the son son is not in this proper

place in our life, then all the other aspects of our life will be

out of place. And so it was important that I lead him into his

alignment with his Creator, with Jesus Christ, and instead of just figuring out

all the problems in his marriage, you know, and it didn't take long

through reading through this book that he was, he found himself getting more and

more aligned with Jesus, which in natural course, is putting his marriage back

into alignment. You so a pretty beautiful thing. I'm very thankful that God

led me in that direction. It's amazing when we recognize that our identity is

in Christ and Christ alone. And that's something I've went through in my life

where I've went through that identity crisis of you know, through ministry and through

marriage and you know, just through life and we I you know, we

kind of label ourselves and identify ourselves with you know, this is my identity.

You know, I am a pastor, I am you know, a

preacher, I am a teacher, I am a husband. Well, no,

you're you're you are a child of God. You are the bride of

Christ, first foremost, and that's the only lens that we can view ourselves

through if we identify you know, I don't want to get in a tangent

here. This might be a completely different podcast discussion. You know, you

start when you start to label yourself as anything but a child of God.

You take the glory away from God and you place it on that other thing,

because that's the thing that's highlighted whenever you know, whenever you are a

Baptist, first you've taken the glory away from God, and you've glorified your

denomination. Whenever you're a member of the White Church, or the Black Church

or the Hispanic Church, You've now glorified your ethnicity. You've taken the glory

away from what matters. And what matters is I am a Christian. I

am centered around Christ and Him crucified, and that's the only place that I

can find my true identity. That's the only place that I can label myself

because it's the only thing that matters. And if I measure myself against anything

or anyone else, I rob God of his glory. For years, for

most of my life, I was in music, and that was my pursuit

Christian music, you know, ministry. But for most of my life,

that was my identity in Christian music, and God required that of me.

I woke up one morning very clearly understanding that He was requiring that of me

and that will no longer be part of my life. And I found myself

really encouraged because I'd heard God speak to me and very clear was it a

voice? Pretty clear? I mean I hear. I heard it pretty clear

clearly, and so so I was excited the fact that I really heard God

very clearly about something. But what happened was he removed that identity from me,

because that's how people recognized me, was my identity in music. And

still to this day, twenty five years later, I still have people asked

me about my music and I said to me anymore, Wow, and they

can't understand why you should be singing. I don't do that anymore. That's

not my identity. Right, That's good. And so he will do that.

And those who choose to follow him and submit to his authority, he

will remove things. He will prune things from your life to make your life

better, I will say, for his glory. Yeah. Yeah, that's

the hard that's the hardest thing is, especially in today's culture, especially in

a culture that's been soaked and saturated in social media and the theology that comes

with social media. There's a whole I believe there's a whole world of theology

that has been birthed out of the social media era. And I think a

lot of it began with our parents in you know, the birth of Christian

television, and it went crazy then, and it's got crazier now because if

you platform someone with anything, there are people that will cling to that.

And I think it's harder now to develop a robust and sorry, a strong

and a meaningful theology that is based in rooted in scripture and proper doctrine.

It's harder now than it's ever been because there's so much garbage that's available,

so many voices. Yeah, but that being said, we have to make

sure that whatever we're hearing, whatever we're receiving, whatever we are soaking ourselves

in, its proper it's biblical, and that it and that we can put

its foundation in Christ, in Christ alone. And that's not popular that I

mean to say that is it popular? Because that knocks the mysticism off of

the religion, that knocks the believe what you want to believe is off of

things. And it makes us look at a it makes us look at the

standard, and our standard is Christ. Our standard is Scripture, and that's

our authority. And I think we need to get to a place where it's

popular again to be narrow minded enough to say this is the way, this

is the truth, this is the life. And I'm not going to budge

from that, and I hope that you know, hopefully what we do here

helps it should I know, like you say, there's a tendency to go

in a rabbit hole, and but the Gospel is simple, and the Holy

Spirit gives revelation into the depths, the wits, and the heights of scripture,

and and I believe those moments come to us when we when we need,

when we need, when we need them, and when we will get

when you know, the Holy Spirit is he is, he is kind,

and he's generous, and for those who seek him, they will find him,

you know. And he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him,

as hebrew says. And so the simplicity of the Gospel can can come

across very very simple. But also there's such a depth to it that we

will never exhaust the search, you know. And I love that. That's

that's an aspect of Bible study and conversations like this that I love than in

certain moments a depth will just hit you, and it's great to share that

with with others. It is. And if you want more of the exegetical

herminutical depths of this, you can come to our Bible study and they're all

selfical and they're all selvafically important. You U, this would be a good

time to invite everyone to our Bible study on Sunday nights led by Golf Thompson,

who will give you the proper herminutical exogetical explanation to say that, yes,

the hermonutics of love. We love golf. I love Golf. I

hope he listens to this, I really do. I want to tell him

there's a rap. There's a little Easter egg in there for you, Golf,

but he got to get to the very end to find it. Yeah,

And just to piggyback on that, our Sunday night Bible study is an

in depth look into scripture where we have eight or ten people around the table

who want to dig deeper into scripture really without a preconceived idea of where we

might go. Because that's what happens when you have well, you mentioned denominational

or whatever the case may be. But sometimes scripture isn't denominational. Did I

just say that? But say again, it's enough. Times scripture is not

denominational. And those moments when you when truth just explodes and it just it

just spurs you to seek even deeper. That's a very special moment and I

love when we experience those. It is. Yeah, So if you're not

coming to our Sunday night Bible study, you are only you're missing out.

The only person that you're You're you're the only person that's being offended by not

coming. We would love to have you. We have plenty of chairs.

We can move into a bigger room if we need to. I mean,

there is plenty of room. And I'm telling you, y'all are missing out

on that. And you know, I have a bad habit of going too

deep down the rabbit hole. I probably went too deep in the rabbit hole

today. But this is the type of diving that we do on Sunday nights.

It's that more, you know. It's we use the words exegetical and

hermoneutical, but those are important words, and they just mean the proper way

to interpret scripture and how we come to an understanding and letting scripture interpret itself.

That's all it means. Yeah, again, very we're trying to simplify

very hard things, and you know, things like prevenia grace matter, but

there's a simple way to explain it without using the great, big ten dollars

words. I just like to use them because it makes me sound smart.

People believe them him. I just hope they don't look at my high school

GPA. So all right, let's wrap this up. Take a few minutes.

Tell us what are we going on? We got at stuff coming up

and we're calling it the summer to remember here at first Baptist Church, Woodlawn,

and God kind of laid these things in our lap. It started this

past Sunday night with Renee in concert Fantastic Colors. It was wonderful. It

was a lot of a lot of energy and just a good time, great

fellowship as well. And we didn't get blown away. We did not know

get bone to a storm on the outside of Bruin. We kept our eye

on the radar and we did endure that. Coming up next on Sunday,

June Night, is a community night of worship that everyone is invited to come

to. It's going to be a great night again, a fellowship of ministry

and worship. And I have a couple of fellow pastors who are just going

to give quick words. But the most important thing is that we would be

in the flow of what the Holy Spirit is is doing in our midst So

we are excited about that. That's Sunday, June ninth at six thirty VBS.

Coming up July fifteenth through the nineteenth. You can visit our website Fbcwoodlawn

dot org for more information and we have other things as well. August second,

we have scheduled another a night of worship and September first, that is

a Sunday night. Josh Wilson, recording artist is going to be here in

concert that night. That's gonna be and more information on all that stuff we'll

follow. But yeah, it will be a summer too. Remember God is

good all the time, and we rejoice in his goodness and we just want

to jump in and be in the flow of where He takes us. Yeah.

Amen, Yeah, all right, I think we did. Okay,

yeah we did. We didn't mention service time Sunday morning, Sunday school at

nine, church at ten, and we have a tween church and kids church

at ten o'clock as well after the worship portion. So if you have kids

and we got kids, we got kids. We got kids. Oh,

we got kids. We'll give you a couple of kids if you want it.

I mean, we've got extra. I've got two. I'm willing to

let y'all have one for the weekend. But we have vibrant children's ministry here

and they love to be in our worship service with us. And again,

it is exciting to be a part of what God is doing. We're very,

very thankful for God's goodness to us. Amen. Yeah, this is

I've only been at this church for a couple of years. I've been you

know, I was in pastoral ministry for fifteen years before this. You know,

still preach. I'm not out of the ministry. Don't anyone thinking I

jumped into the world of heresy and left ministry, but you know, just

in a different season of my life and ministry right now, and so happy,

so so happy to be here with you doing ministry, doing life together.

Not just able to call you my pastor though it's you know, I

love to call you my pastor, but I'm able to call you my friend.

And I love this, love being able to hang out like this,

but also we love hanging out with you guys, and we hope that you'll

come hang out with us on a Sunday morning. If not, then you

can hang out with us here and on YouTube, and I don't know.

I'm sure someday we'll be in the middle of the Metaverse. We'll figure that

out as the time comes near. You're not gonna be in the metaverse.

We could be there now, somebody takes me there. How to get there

myself? I couldn't find a flight on anywhere for the metaverse. One way

trip to the Metaverse? Please? All right, love you guys, thanks

for tuning in. So we're gonna try to do this every week. Hopefully,

we're gonna try. Let's don't make promises we can't keep. We'll just

say we'll be back until next time. Until then,