Rhythms of Grace

Welcome to the Grace Monroe Podcast. We are a local church in Monroe, Georgia focused on pursuing God's heart for the restoration of all things, with a vision to see the neighborhoods, nations, and next generation transformed by the love of Jesus. If you're in the area or wanna find out more about our church, simply go to graceformonroe.com. We pray you are encouraged and blessed by this week's message.

Well, good morning, Monroe. Good morning. It's great to be together this Labor Day weekend to worship God and open his word to see how he might be shaping and forming us to send us out into the week together. So you're gonna want a bible this morning as we continue in our joined series looking at what does it mean to be a member of the body of Christ as we join together, one another as a community of faith. And we're gonna be looking at if you wanna go on and go to Matthew chapter 11.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

And then also if you wanna kinda put your finger at Acts chapter two. Matthew 11 and Acts chapter two. And if you need a bible, we got plenty of them. We got some folks walking around. Just slip up a hand, they'll put a bible in your hand so you can follow along with us.

And if you don't have a bible at home, we'd love for you to to receive that as a gift. So every week, you can't imagine a better gift that we could give. So today we're gonna be looking at this deep truth that you were created to live in alignment with God's life giving rhythms. You were created. We were created.

So as we look at what does it mean to be members of a body, to be joined together, one and committed to one another, to walk in the ways of Jesus, we come to this question of how do we live together in alignment with the life giving rhythms of God. There used to be a saying in advertising, in the marketing industry that sex sells. Now over the last several decades, we've, you know, thankfully moved away from that being a driver for Madison Avenue and and marketing, though not completely. But it seems like today in the world that we live in, there's another mantra that has replaced it. And that is rest cells.

Just think about the commercials. A man in a hammock in the backyard, someone on a asleep on a couch with a a blanket pulled up tight, a woman on the beach with her eyes closed and the wind blowing through her hair. Every one of them selling the same promise, That out there somewhere is the possibility of peace. A break from the noise, calm in the discomfort of life. And they all want us to believe the same thing, that you just need the right product.

The right device, the right trip, the right app. If you buy this, then you'll finally feel what your soul is missing. But what if the one thing that our soul is aching for isn't something that we have to buy or earn or acquire? What if it's already right in front of us and all that's being asked is to receive it? What if God is inviting us into a different way of life, a true way of life?

And be honest with yourself just for a second. I mean how many of us are living exhausted, hurried, overly busy lives? You don't to raise your hand, but does that identify anybody in the room? Now I have a confession to make even that before we kinda dive in. And that is that I am preaching this sermon out of conviction, not out of competence.

I mean, though I was preparing for this week, there are multiple moments that I was like, oh, Lord, ouch. It's true, but it's not necessarily how I'm living. And so I I say this as an open invitation of discovery together. How do we learn to live in these life giving rhythms of grace? I mean, it's not just our busy calendars.

I mean, even our spiritual lives could start to feel like this endless stream of activities and have to's. And somewhere along the way, just beginning to wonder, is like, is this the abundant life that Jesus talked about? John Mark Comer in sort of his groundbreaking book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, said this, because what you give your attention to is the person you become. Put another way, the mind is the portal to the soul. And what you fill your mind with will shape the trajectory of your character.

In the end, your life is no more than the sum of what you give your attention to. And that bodes well for those apprentices of Jesus who give the bulk of their attention to him and to all that is good and beautiful and true in his world. But not for those of us who give their attention to the twenty four seven news cycle of outrage and anxiety and emotion charged drama or the nonstop feed of celebrity gossip, titillation and cultural drivel. As if we give it in the first place, much of it is stolen by a clever algorithm out to monetize our precious attention. But again, we become what we give our attention to, for better or for worse.

Now Comer also goes on to to list what he calls symptoms of hurry sickness. This epidemic plaguing our nation. Now see if any of these sound familiar. I know the first time I read this list, was like, yep. Yep.

Oh, yes. And all of them. Irritability, hypersensitivity. In other words, no emotional margin. They get, you know, rocked by the tiniest thing and it sends us over the edge.

Restlessness, workaholism, emotional numbness, out of order priorities, lack of care for our bodies, escapist behavior, slippage of spiritual disciplines, isolation or loneliness. Anyone? Yeah. Thanks. I see that ham.

But here's the good news. There is a different way. There is a different way. Now it's not a new way. It's not like I can give you a life hack or 10 steps to follow.

In fact, nothing I say this morning is going to be groundbreaking or new in any way, but it's simply an ancient path that actually goes all the way back to the very fabric of creation. All the way back to Genesis and a life that Jesus embodied and made, invited a way back into. In fact, he doesn't just point to the way. He says that he is in fact the way, the truth, and the life, that abundant life that our souls are craving. To listen to his invitation, I said turn to Matthew 11.

The end of Matthew 11 starting in verse 28, this beautiful invitation. Jesus declares, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. Praise the Lord. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Now here's the same passage in The Message, the translation by Eugene Peterson. I love the way he puts this into sort of everyday language. Are you tired, worn out, burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life.

I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. Now a few years ago, we took a deep dive into these, what we call these rhythms of grace, these rhythms of life that Jesus invites us into.

And so today, we're just gonna touch on a little bit of this. But it was actually a pretty pivotal moment in our church history as we really spent time as a community diving into what does that way of life with Jesus look like. This invitation for our souls. And I know for many of you it shifted some things in the way that you approached life, approached your morning, approached your day and your week. But as I was thinking about this invitation in into rest for our souls, into invitation into abundant life, invitation in to realigning with this rhythm of grace, this unforced rhythm of grace.

I realized that every time that I had read that invitation from Jesus or or had even, you know, taught it or had heard it spoken out loud, that I I tended to hear it as a private invitation. In other words, God's saying to me, get alone with Jesus, find some rest, recharge and then go back out into your week. And now there is some truth in that. There is an invitation to get alone with God and to be ministered to by Jesus, but I don't think that's the full picture. In fact, I think if we just take it as a personal private invitation from God, we actually miss the context of what Jesus is speaking into.

So look at that language again. Come, all who labor and are heavy laden. And what we don't get in the Greek is that or in the English that is in the Greek is that every command in this invitation every command and every invitation, every you is actually plural. The good old fashioned Georgia y'all. Come all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you all rest.

Together, take my yoke. Together, learn from me. Those are plural commands. And the rest that follows, the rest for your souls is a is a communal invitation. I'm inviting you into a way of life together in your harassed and hurried, lonely lives, where you can reorient together around my presence and it will feed your souls.

Let's learn together these ways of grace. This is never just an invitation to isolated seekers. It was actually an invitation to a desperate gathered people. Jesus isn't just inviting you to rest. He's inviting us into restoration together.

There's a piece of that that scripture that's worth pausing on. Jesus says, to take my yoke upon you all. That picture of the oxen carrying the yoke. But in ancient Jewish culture, a rabbi's yoke was shorthand for a particular interpretation of the Torah. That rabbi's teaching, the way that he applied God's law in everyday life.

So so when a student chose to follow a particular rabbi, they were said to be taking on the yoke of that rabbi. I mean, committing to that rabbi's worldview, to to memorize his words, and to to follow his way of life. So when Jesus says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, he he's not rejecting the idea of a yoke together. And it's not meant to just simply be this burden laid on them. It's actually that together side by side, we walk with Jesus into a different way of life.

We take his yoke, his worldview, his example, his teaching, his words. And he says that that yoke is easy. That that burden is light. But the reality is, is that Jesus' yoke is incredibly countercultural. I mean, it goes against everything that is modeled for us, that we've been raised up into, that that culture is trying to sell us.

And so, yes, Jesus can say, is easy and it is light. But but it's like swimming upstream when the whole world is pushing us in the opposite direction. It's not an easy turn, though it is a gift of grace. I was thinking about have you ever been caught in a a riptide when the the current is actually pushing you farther out to sea and you could swim as hard as you can against that riptide? And that's you just end up drowning.

But instead, it's in the turning, even even counterintuitive. You turn with the wave and you let it glide you back to safety. Actually, after the 09:00 service, a lady stopped me and she said, you know, when I mentioned that about the riptide that it took her back to a story from when she was a girl or a moment in her life when she was a girl and she she had gotten caught in a riptide that had actually Or sorry. She got caught in a hydraulic actually in a river and and had gotten trapped up under a rock. And and just, you know, as hard as she was fighting against it, was just kind of sucking her back under this rock.

And and she heard a voice that just said, just relax and let go. And she did. And it shot her out and out out the river and and to safety. And obviously, praise the Lord she lived to tell the story. She was saying that it wasn't till like ten years later that she recognized that voice as being the voice of God.

And he was bringing her back to that even this morning. This rest in me, surrender to me, and keep fighting. We're just gonna drown. So together, we're invited to take on this life giving teaching, the lifestyle of Jesus. Together, we learn from him Because he's strong enough to be leaned on.

That's what that word gentle means. Strong enough to be leaned against and full of mercy. But a word of caution and warning even for us as a church and for me, is that if we're building communities and systems that are driven, exhausting and draining rather than life giving and restorative, then we've missed something essential about the very life that Jesus is inviting us into. And I know even as we celebrate that the movement of God in our community and the way that God is opening doors literally around the world, that it is easy for me to get caught up in the activity and the doing and the more. And the last thing that I want you to hear even in this invitation to joining together and what it means to be members of a body is that it's just simply adding more to your life.

It's increasing your level of busyness. There's a higher bar on commitment just to to drive you know, go into the next gear and drive even faster. But at least it's spiritual. Now hear my heart. That's the last thing.

It's a different way of living the life that we've already been given. It's a different way of of what it means to to be community, discover what it means to be present with each other, to to reorient our priorities, and and and to reorient the way that we enter in to a week or that we enter in to our schedules and our responsibilities, that we learn together what it means to follow in the ways of Jesus. So what does it mean to what does it look like to say yes to taking on that yoke? Because something we need to understand is that we're we're all already saying yes to something, to many things. Every one of us.

That your life right now is the sum total of a thousand yeses, whether conscious or not. And the real question isn't whether you're saying yes to something. It's what you're saying yes to. And it's not even what you're saying yes to. It it is what is driving that yes in your life.

And we all are already living according to some kind of rhythm, whether aware of it or not. You have a morning rhythm. Maybe it's an alarm, a phone scrolling, hopefully brushing your teeth. You have an evening rhythm. Maybe it's collapse, numb, You have weekend rhythms, work rhythms, relationship rhythms.

The question isn't whether we're living by rhythms. It's whether the rhythms that we're living by are forming us into the kind of person that Jesus is inviting us to be or into someone that you don't even recognize anymore. In other words, are the rhythms that we are living in life giving or life draining? So there's sort of three postures that we can approach life by or approach life from and and just see which one feels the most familiar. The first one, and I definitely identify with this, is anxious striving.

This is the yes that is driven by fear. Fear that you're not enough, that you haven't done enough, that if you stop producing, you'll lose your value. It's a constant need to perform, to prove, to achieve, to earn your place at the table, even at God's table. It's a yes that is exhausted, but you can't stop because stopping feels like failing. And if that's you, that's me, hear this.

Jesus isn't impressed by your accomplishments. He wants your heart. He's inviting you to rest in his finished work, not to work to achieve to to gain something from him. Second is escapism. This is a yes that's driven by avoidance.

You're saying yes to anything that helps you not feel what you're actually feeling. The endless scroll, the next episode, the substance, the purchase, the distraction that numbs the ache that you can't quite name. In fact, you're not even trying to find rest, you're just trying to avoid reality. And if that's you, hear this. Jesus isn't asking you to numb your pain.

He's offering to meet you in it. And the third is presence. And this is the yes that is driven by trust. Being present to God. Being present to the people in front of us.

Being present to ourselves. Not running away from anything or striving towards something to prove your worth, but simply awake to what is and trusting that God is good and that you're his. This is what Jesus lived. It is what he invites us into. In fact, notice something about Jesus' life is that his life was really, really full.

He was constantly teaching and healing and traveling and being interrupted and meeting needs, but it never comes across as hurried. So he withdrew to pray when the crowds pressed in. He he attended weddings and celebrated with his friends. He would stop for the one person even when everyone else was wanting him to keep moving on. He prioritized these rhythms of rest and worship even when there was urgent work to do.

The late great theologian Dallas Willard famously said that hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. Ensure enough that Dallas Willard wrote and taught that decades ago. How much more so the world that we live in today. But Jesus never hurried. And he invites us into that same unhurried fullness.

We actually see the same pattern in the early church. We had told you to to put a finger at Acts chapter two. And so if you want to flip there, Acts two forty two through 47, that the spirit has fallen on the people. The word is going forth. People are coming to Jesus.

The crowds are massive. The response is massive. God is ope blowing open doors literally around from that city to around the world. They were active. They were learning together.

They were growing together. They were meeting real needs. They were sharing meals. They were watching God move in miraculous ways. But it doesn't read as busy.

It reads as full, centered, grounded, intentional. Acts two forty two, they devoted themselves. They centered their lives around the apostles teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread and prayers and awe came upon every soul. And many wonders and signs are being done to the apostles and all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings, distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.

And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day, those who were being saved. They could even feel the rhythm in that description of their life together. This is the life Jesus is inviting us into, not an empty calendar. Definitely not a stress free existence or a pain free life, but a full life rooted in his rest rather than our striving.

So how? Like what do we do? What do these rhythms look like? Now there's kind of two categories that can sort of spiritual rhythms that Jesus is inviting to reform or transform our lives around his presence and his ways. And some of those, like I said earlier, are individual.

These practices that form our soul as we live into them as a as a regular rhythm, like breathing in our day. And so there's practices like silence and solitude, prayer and scripture, fasting. When we deny our appetites in order to turn our attention to God's presence with us. Generosity. And recognize these aren't this isn't just a checklist to check off each one.

Was, oh, got that today. Got that today. This intentional way of of building into our life these pauses, this recognition of presence, this surrender. And if it the any of these are a way that if this is new to you or any way that you're wanting to grow into that, actually, I would strongly encourage you. This is what the rooted class is really focused on, that discipleship growth track class.

And I think it actually starts today, and then there's a second one on on Thursday nights, Tuesday nights. And so if that's something that is like, God is wanting is stretching you and even right now as you're hearing that, it's like, I I want to learn to live in this unhurried rhythm of grace. I don't know how. I would say that's a great great starting point. And but this morning, I wanted to move from simply this sort of individual experience of reorienting our lives around the ever present reality of Jesus to these communal rhythms.

I mean, Jesus' invitation was plural. So there are rhythms that form us as a community together in his ways of life. And those are things like worship. This weekly rhythm of opening his word together, of worshiping together, of of of being present with each other, of encouraging one another, praying for one another. There's celebration.

There's corporate prayer and scripture. Feasting as the other side of fasting and generosity, the Sabbath. You know, Jesus gives in Matthew chapter five, sermon sermon on the mount. He he lays out or Matthew six, he lays out these individual practices that are actually meant to be kept hidden. And he names three specifically, prayer, fasting, and giving.

And in all of them and in the giving one, he says, don't even let your left hand know what your right hand doing. But then we get to Acts two, and we see that together communally that they are giving to meet the needs. And so there is both a a way of generosity that is deeply individual and personal, And there's a way of generosity of giving of our lives and our resources and our energy and our time and our stories that is deeply communal. Where we recognize the needs in the community, in our own lives. And God meets those needs through one another.

But this morning, I I wanted to spend a couple minutes focused on two, Sabbath and celebration. Sabbath is twenty four hours of ceasing. Twenty four hours of presence. A twenty four hour rhythm that God built into the very fabric of creation. At the dawn of time, when after six days his word had created the world.

And he brought mankind to live with him intimately known and loved. And he gave him a mission to go and live, to take his goodness out, to flourish in the world. But after those six days, it says that God having finished his work of creation on the seventh day, he rested. And that word rested actually is the word to for the present for your presence to fill, to rest upon. It wasn't simply just the the the ceasing of activity.

It it was actually the filling of that which he had just made. And what's interesting is is that God worked for six days and then rested, filled his creation with his presence. And then he commands mankind to live in that same rhythm. But from their perspective, they entered into that rest. And from that place of rest, they actually stepped into the mandate, the work that God had given them.

In other words, you weren't made by God to rest from work. You're made by God to work from a place of rest, to flourish from a place of presence, to move forward from a place of pausing, to be filled. And so God built into the very the the very rhythm of time to say, twenty four hours a day, I need you to remember that you are human beings, not human doings. That you are bodies, not machines. That you are souls, not programs to be run.

And for twenty four hours, I need you to remember that I'm in charge, not you. I'm the one who makes the world go around, not you. The rain to fall on your crops, the one that will provide for your children. I need you every week because you're gonna forget it. In fact, it was so important to him that he baked it into the 10 commandments.

Basically, low bar for how civilization will succeed. I'm gonna give you a few things to make sure your life works out well. Don't kill each other and don't sleep with each other's spouses and remember Sabbath. Interesting that it raises to that level. And actually, it is the the most talked about of all the 10 commandments.

It gets the most words. We also remember that those commandments, the law was given to a people that were moving out of slavery in Egypt into freedom in the promised land. And God is telling his people, this life I have for you, this flourishing abundant life where you rediscover that you're human beings not human doings, that you are free people not slaves. I'm gonna give you a gift and that gift that I give you is gonna teach you how to live free and whole. And that gift is called Sabbath.

Not just simply stopping from work, but entering in to an awareness and reminder of my presence. There's a rabbi Abraham Joshua Heischel wrote a book actually called The Sabbath. And then he said that the Sabbath is to time what the temple and the tabernacle are to space. Now I love this line. The Sabbath is a cathedral in time.

If you've ever walked into like one of those glorious like ancient cathedrals with the you know, the beautiful, the glass and the the spires that rise up and they're intentionally designed almost like to drop you to your knees in awe and wonder. And you enter into that place of reverence, of quiet, of awareness that there's something bigger than ourselves. And so what rabbi Heisel is saying is that in the same way the cathedrals were built out of out of space. That Sabbath was built out of time that our souls will be drawn upward into this reminder that there's something bigger, something beautiful. So what would it look like this week to take twenty four hours?

One of my favorite rhythms in our family's week is is that we got invited in a group of families that were meeting on Saturday nights to share a meal together and to enter into Sabbath together. And so most Saturday nights, we'll light a candle and read a Psalm together and pray the Lord's Prayer together. And then we'll take our little cups of grape juice and clink them together and Shabbat Shalom, the peace of Sabbath. And our kids from little to teenagers and now 20 have grown up in this rhythm. Now it's interesting because for me, even as these families on Saturday night are entering into Sabbath where Sunday is gonna be their day of worship and play and rest and presence.

Where they set phones and devices aside and they're just there together. For me, Sunday is my workday. So even as they're entering into rest, I'm kind of ramping up for the for the next day. So for me, I've had to find a different rhythm where that actually becomes a bookend to my rest instead of the beginning of my rest. As I don't know what it looks like for you and for the rhythm of your family and and what delight and joy and encounter and presence looks like for you.

But it's definitely a conversation worth having. And what would it look like just this week to say I'm gonna carve out twenty four hours. And with this lens, that whatever I do, I'm asking the question in that twenty four hours, is this rest and is this worship? Is this rest and is this worship? Am I becoming more or less present to God and to those closest to me?

Now one last word on that. A few years ago now as even as we were younger leaders and then working with younger leaders, there's this consistent conversation that was being had probably fifteen years or so ago. And the phrase that kept getting used was this idea of work life balance. Anyone heard that? It's like, okay.

Work life balance is if there's work and then there's all the rest of life. And then if we could just figure out how to stop from the work for a little bit to enjoy life, then we won't be so exhausted and burned out. But as I've observed culturally and seen in my own life and in community that I don't think it's true anymore this question of work life balance. I think it's actually more true what we need to wrestle with is work life device balance. Because there's a lot of times we enter into things that we call rest that aren't actually filling our soul.

A few years ago or actually not few years ago, earlier this year, I so I heard about this photography study or series that honestly, it's haunted me since I I saw it for the first time. It's called Removed by photographer Eric Pickersgill. And they are photos of real people using their devices. He just digitally removed the phones and the tablets from the images. And then look at what's left.

A family at dinner, hands cupped around nothing, eyes fixed on empty space, Vacant gazes. A couple in bed together side by side but miles apart. People in the same room. Present in body but absent in every other way. That we're together but we're not present.

We're resting but we're not restored. We're celebrating but we're not connected. That our devices promise us connection but they've given us isolation. They promise us rest but they've given us distraction. They promised us presence but they've given us absence.

In fact, Pickersgill in his project description which is worth reading by the way. He says, my work is a commentary on the obsessive nature of our relationship with technology and how it is changing the way we interact with each other. It's part of the shifting cultural landscape where we are increasingly absent from our immediate surroundings. And what haunts me if I see those photos and having seen those photos is I can feel it in my body when I'm with the people that matter most to me. Sabbath requires presence.

Not performing presence, Not documenting the moment for later, but actually present to God, to each other, to this gift of being alive. And the Sabbath teaches us to rest. And the rhythm of celebration teaches us to rejoice. That God is a celebrating God. Zephaniah three seventeen says, that the Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save.

He'll rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love. He will exalt over you with loud singing. Do you hear that? That God delights over you.

He celebrates you. I mean, the father and the prodigal son doesn't just welcome his home with a handshake and a hug. He throws a party. He kills the fattened calf. He calls in the local musicians.

He celebrates. Jesus' first miracle wasn't healing someone or giving sight to the blind. It was making wine at a wedding. And not just any wine, but the best wine anyone had ever tasted. He was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard because he celebrated with people.

And so celebration is woven into God's character. And if Jesus modeled it, then maybe we need to take it a little more seriously than we do. And not just celebration as in mindless frivolity, as intentional practices of gratitude and joy. If weekly Sabbath is a time of presence and building a rhythm of intentional celebration into into our our weeks and our months and our years become a way of reminding ourselves that there is a good God even in the midst of the brokenness of this world and sometimes our lives. But here's what happens.

Life gets hard. Disappointment piles up, the world feels heavy and somewhere along the way we we start to believe that joy is irresponsible or even impossible. That if we're really paying attention to all the suffering around us, we shouldn't be rejoicing and the enemy loves that lie. Because a joyless church is a powerless church. CS Lewis puts it this way, joy is the serious business of heaven.

That when you celebrate, you're not ignoring reality. You're actually anchoring yourself in a deeper reality. The reality that God wins in the end. That death is defeated. It doesn't have the final say.

That the story ends with a wedding feast and not a funeral. This morning, I was in the prayer room in the first service as we were singing that song about the goodness of God. And it comes to that refrain that everyone just loves. I could just feel even the energy in this room as as y'all sang it. He's never gonna let me down.

He's never gonna let me down. And it just hit me in that moment. And I don't know if it's because of where I was sitting in the prayer room and the number of people I've sat in there with that they were honest, facing the worst moments of their life, facing horrific loss or betrayal, that they could sing that God has never let them down. And there may be some of you that are looking at your life for things that have happened to you or things that have happened around you and that phrase feels a little false. Rejoicing feels a little shallow.

Gratitude feels a little impossible. God is never gonna let me down. And it hit me as thinking very specifically actually about a friend who's gone through just horrific loss. And the picture that came to mind wasn't simply that God is never going to let us down, as in our world's never going to fall apart. But the picture of a father holding their little boy.

And then all of a sudden that refrain, he's never gonna let me down, Completely change meaning. Even when my world is falling apart, even when I've lost everything precious to me, even when everything under my feet is shaking, he's never going to let me down. He's never gonna let me down. Cancer or betrayal or job loss, He's never going to let me down. And from that place of a little boy curled up in a good father's arms, we can rejoice.

And we can recognize the goodness of God even in the most terrible moments of life. And maybe it's in the most terrible moments of life that we most need to recognize the goodness of God. The festivals that God built into the Old Testament, if you pay attention to them, this annual rhythm where they were meant to tell retell the stories of God, to gather from wherever they were in the world to throw a giant party. The stories that they retold, some of them are horrific stories of the most painful chapters of their lives. And yet even in that place, they encountered a God who was faithful and who was present and who was good.

And they could throw a party because that was pointing to a deeper reality that one day, one day when it's all said and done, the greatest party is waiting for you. When we sit at the wedding feast of the lamb and every tear is wiped away and sin and death are no more. So what if birthdays and holidays and even just random celebrate life parties became defining moments that we remind ourselves even in the most horrific times that there is a good God who is faithful and that we trust. And what if celebration and gratitude and joy became what defined this community. How would that change the world?

And so here's the invitation. Let's learn to celebrate again. Not because life is easy, but because God is good. Not because everything's fixed or worked out, but because ultimately Jesus is one. Not because we have it all together, but because we belong to him.

So we're invited to work from a place of rest. We're invited to engage from a place of joy. We're invited to encounter presence in the midst of the world's craziness. We're invited to give from a place of gratitude. We're invited to serve from a place of overflow.

The rhythms of grace are how we stay awake to what is most real and most true. And so as we close in worship together, I invite you to take just a moment and close your eyes. And if you're willing, just ask the Lord to search your heart. Where are the places that he's wanting to realign your rhythms? To be intentional.

With the schedules and the relationships in our lives. What would it look like to take twenty four hours this week? What would it look like to carve out a place of intentional celebration? Is there a place that Jesus is inviting you to receive, to realign around his rhythms of grace. Is there anything you're filling your life with that you need to let go of, that you're using to escape or numb or prove.

Just take a deep breath. And invite Jesus in. And when you're ready, they come to that central rhythm that has defined the church from its earliest days. We come to the table together, where we recenter our lives, we reorient our community around the body and the blood of Jesus. Jesus who took that bread and broke it saying, this is my body given for you.

Take and eat. And every time you do this, do this in remembrance of me. And he took that cup. He said, this is my blood shed for the forgiveness of your sins. Take and drink.

And every time you do this, do this in remembrance of me. So we come to the table in this weekly rhythm of surrender and receiving. So church, let's worship God together.

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