Fight the Drift! - July 20, 2025

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast.

I have made the Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6.19, Pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me, so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

For some reason, this picture freaks me out.

All right. One, I don't like water that much. Don't swim that well. I sink to the bottom.

But also, man, the guy's interrupting a beautiful waterfall scene right here.

And it just makes you wonder, how did this guy get here?

This dude's just kicking back, playing on his cell phone, oblivious to everything

else going on around him.

When you consider it, you just wonder how, why?

I don't see any people around in the picture. Maybe whoever took the photograph is one of the people.

And, you know, I don't know if he's like two feet from the shore,

if he's just going to go off the edge here.

But, boy, it just brings to mind a lot more questions than it answers here when we think about it.

And, you know, I even blew the picture up just a little bit so I could try to

make out some more of it. And the guy looks like a cool guy.

He's dressed neat. And you just wonder how a cool guy like this end up in a boat alone.

You know, what game is he playing that he's so enthralled with that he's going

to go over the edge of a waterfall?

You know, maybe he's reading or looking at the church center app and he's just

so enthralled in that, checking his sermon notes because he knows he's going

over the edge of the waterfall.

I don't know what it is, but I do know in looking at this picture, the guy's alone.

He's all by himself. And, you know, I know what it says in Genesis 2.18,

And the Lord God created man and created him in the garden.

And then looking around, he said, it is not good for the man to be alone.

I will make a helper suitable for him. But just that first phrase,

it is not good for the man to be alone. Amen to that.

You see, God has created us for connection.

We've all been created for connection, male or female.

But we drift toward isolation. And that's really what this picture represents,

the drift away from safety, the drift away from being anchored and around other people.

When we get isolated, that's when we get into danger.

When we separate ourselves from other people, we don't have others to connect with.

Even though this wonderful communication device is supposed to connect us to

others, it also isolates us so much.

When we can all be in the same room and at the same time be in our own little

bubble So oblivious to everything else going on that we're just focused here and.

You know, we've got to really fight against the drift. And that's what I want

to encourage you today, is to never stand alone.

And to never stand alone, you've got to fight that drift. You'll notice that

the boat has some oars there.

That guy could be rowing away from the danger in the waterfall.

But yet he isolated himself. He was there by himself.

And of course, this is all fictitious. You're not going to find this on Google

or anything. You can find the image, or at least I created the image with an AI thing.

It's one of my first times trying it out, and boy, that's scary to me.

But listen to what the Scripture says, because the Scripture passage shows us

that we are, especially as believers in Jesus Christ, we're to be connected to one another.

Ephesians 2, verses 19 through 22. If you're willing and to,

Ephesians 2:19–22

you want to respect the Lord's Word through standing, please do so now.

But the scripture says this, Ephesians 2, verses 19 through 22.

Ephesians 2:19–22

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens,

but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household,

built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself

as the chief cornerstone.

In Him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.

And in Him, you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God

lives by His Holy Spirit.

Father, thank You for Your Word today. Lord, the Word that connects us to You,

the Word that connects us to one another.

And Lord, we pray that we will take Your message to heart this morning.

And we ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Thank you. You could be seated this morning. Did you catch all the words in

this passage here, which are just amazing?

When we think about, and I read this verse last week or the week before as part

of the sermon, but you're no longer foreigners and aliens. You're no longer aliens and strangers.

You're no longer not part of the kingdom of God, but in Christ,

you are part of his kingdom.

And as part of his kingdom, as part of the church, he gives this illustration

of being built up into a building.

And that every single one of you is like a mighty part of that.

You're a mighty piece. If you consider, since the imagery here was you become

a dwelling place or become a temple of the Holy Spirit, I don't know if you've

ever looked closely at the ruins of the temple in Jerusalem,

but the stones with which they built that temple are not tiny rocks.

They are massive, massive stones

that were specifically cut and placed right where they needed to be.

When I think about the imagery of the ruins of the temple of Jerusalem,

I think about the imagery here, that you're just not a small,

insignificant rock, but you are a mighty,

precisely cut stone that's part of God's kingdom, that's part of God's dwelling.

Each one of you is important. I was looking at my fireplace outside this week,

a couple days ago, and I noticed there's some mortar missing.

And I didn't want to go and investigate because I was afraid I'd pull out a

brick and then the whole thing would come down on me. It's an older home,

you know, almost 100 years old.

But I thought about how every single brick on that fireplace is important,

how it provides support for the others, and how the mortar that keeps us all together,

it keeps all the bricks together is so vital that it's going to need to be replaced.

Something's going to have to go in there.

We think about the church and what this is describing.

This is describing us as the building of God, the place where the Holy Spirit

dwells, where God himself dwells within each one of us individually, but collectively.

And so this morning, I just want to offer you three ways that we can fight the drift.

Three ways that we can fight against isolation and really come together for

the connection that God planned from the beginning,

from Adam, that we should not be alone, but that we should be connected with one another.

And the beauty of this, it's not just for the people in here or everyone that

makes up Mountain View Church, but it's for God's kingdom throughout the world, all the churches.

And so when we think about this this morning, first of all, the first way to

fight the drift is to remember the faithfulness of God.

If we look back to verse 20, it says, we are built on the foundation of the

apostles and the prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.

Christ Jesus as the way in which we measure the alignment of the rest of the

building, how we line up with God.

And each one of us is aligned with Christ when we place our faith in him,

when we're trusting him.

And it says how God has been faithful in the past.

It says we're built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.

Well, what's the apostles and the prophets? How do we know about them?

Well, we know about them right here from the scripture.

This is our foundation for our relationship with Jesus Christ.

It starts right here in this book.

God has been faithful enough to give us the story, His story,

in the pages of Scripture from the very beginning all the way to a hint of what's coming at the end.

And we could trust God in His faithfulness in that.

This book has been tried, this book has been tested, and yet it still stands.

It stands so much that it's even been translated into just about every known

language, or it's well on its way.

The faith come by hearing folks say it's getting closer and closer to every known language.

When they get close, then they discover some new people groups who have a new

language they have to translate for.

But it's been tested. It's been tried, and it's been shared.

God has been faithful. If you're going to fight the drift away from others,

boy, we've got to remember how faithful that God is.

And I hope that your story includes an element in that story about how God's

people have been faithful to come alongside you.

If you're new to this church, I can tell you that this might be the chapter

for you of how God's people will be faithful to God and come around you in your

time of distress, heck, in your time of joy.

Hey, even in times where you just don't know what's going on now.

We can trust in God's faithfulness built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.

I want to tell you this morning that everybody needs God. Don't we believe that?

Everybody needs God. Every single one of us.

Not only us in here in this building, we know we need God, but there's people

that we're out in the community with, they don't know that they need God yet.

Some of them are so full of self, they don't have room for God in their life.

Some are just so beat down and broken down, beat up, that they don't know that

there's a God that they can love and that they can trust. But all of us need God.

We think about that God is faithful. It brings to mind the verse that I quote

several times and that you know by heart as well, and that's 1 John 1,

9, that if we confess our sin,

he is faithful, God is faithful and just and will forgive us those sins and

cleanse us from all that unrighteousness, from all that stuff that doesn't line

up with the chief cornerstone.

God forgives us if we'll just go to him. What does it say about God and his

character? God is faithful.

I love that it says in the scripture that he will never leave us nor forsake us.

God will never leave us, nor will he take us for granted.

You know, I think about a faithfulness in the terms of remembering what God

has done, and I reflect back into the Old Testament.

You know, God was faithful for Moses and the children of Israel leaving Egypt.

When they got to the Red Sea and they saw no way to cross it, God came through.

God was faithful to his people, leading them out of bondage in Israel and leading

them toward the promised land. When they came to the Red Sea,

they had no way across, and the Egyptian army was coming after them.

God was faithful in that moment. And if we remember back to the story of what

happened, when Moses got his feet wet there and God came through, the waters parted.

The children of Israel, the Israelites marched through on dry ground.

Now that is kind of reflected in the later story that I want to share with you.

A same kind of miracle here in the book of Joshua.

As Joshua, Moses has passed, Joshua is the new leader of Israel.

And he's getting ready for them to actually enter into the promised land to

receive the promise of God.

And in this instant, they encounter their own Red Sea, but on a more miniature scale.

Not so much more miniature because it's still an obstacle for them to get to

where God has promised them to go.

And in the midst of that, God does another Red Sea kind of miracle.

Here at the Jordan River at flood stage, We've seen some pretty crazy pictures

lately of some flash floods and the damage that it does.

Well, here they're at a flood stage of the Jordan River, very fast moving river.

But what are we going to do? Well, God comes through.

God gives the instructions to Joshua. Joshua follows it, and the Jordan River

parts for them to cross that river.

And while they cross, Joshua gives instructions to pick up stones,

12 stones, 12 big rocks to carry to the other side.

And then we read this in the book of Joshua chapter 4 to explain a little bit

Joshua 4 · chapter mention

of what those rocks were all about. And Joshua set up at Gilgal the 12 stones

they had taken out of the Jordan. He said to the Israelites.

Those stones were there as a monument to God's faithfulness,

not just there at the Jordan River, but in the past over at the Red Sea.

And now for them that were living, dwelling in the land that God had promised

them, it was the fulfillment of God's promise.

God was faithful in what he said he was going to do.

So I want to ask you, what stones help you remember God's faithfulness?

What are the things in your life

that you can anchor to where you remember how God was faithful to you?

Maybe it was a time where you came and knelt down at an altar of prayer and

God gave you a promise and he fulfilled that promise.

Maybe it was another time to where you didn't know what you were going to do,

but through a brother or sister, through godly counsel, God gave you the wisdom

you needed to make a decision that changed the trajectory of your life.

Whatever it was, what is it in your life that's a stone of God's faithfulness?

Maybe it's a praying mom, a praying spouse, a praying grandma that would not

give up on you, and she prayed and prayed and prayed until you accepted Christ

as your own personal Savior.

Maybe it was a pastor that bugged you and bugged you and bugged you over and

over again, just to volunteer.

And then you finally relented and said, okay, shut up, I'm going to do it.

And God blessed you through a new ministry that you discovered of what you could do.

Maybe it was just a quiet moment in a service like this where God spoke to your

heart, spoke to your inner deepest longing that you had,

not just for a need for a savior, but a calling in life. And you answered that call.

And again, God changed your life through that.

Folks, what stones do you have to anchor to, to remember that you're not gonna

drift far from God and God's faithfulness because you've got these stones that

you anchor to, these things that God has done in your life.

Maybe you're here this morning like, man, I ain't got no rocks.

I don't have any stones to hang on to.

Well, hang in there because God's going to give you some. Hang in there because God is faithful.

Listen to that small, still voice. He's not always going to be in the tornado, in the mighty things.

Sometimes it's just the small, still voice that he's speaking to you and saying, do this, don't do this.

Wait. Listen. Read.

God's faithful, guys. Sometimes we might not have the faith at certain points

in our life, or we might be questioning things.

That's where we've got to rely on the faith of our brother and sisters,

to know how God works, to know how God moves and how He gets through to us.

So the first way to fight the drift is remember our foundation.

That's the faithfulness of God.

Secondly, and I kind of alluded to this as a lead into it, is we have got to rely on God's people.

Verse 21, again, it talks about stones being pieced together to create a solid structure.

The scripture says, In him the whole building is joined together and rises to

become a holy temple in the Lord.

I loved on the video when they were stacking up the cups and it got about as

high as one of the kids right there.

And was it James or Robbie? I can't remember who was on there.

But man, they're so excited that they got it that high. You know,

when God's creating the building that is the church, not the physical structure,

but spiritually speaking, you and I, he's adding stone upon stone upon stone.

It's not just one single tower that can flop over easy when the first wind comes along to blow it down.

It's side by side, stacked on top of each other all the way up.

We think about how do we stop from drifting or falling over or falling away?

We've got to rely on one another.

We've got to rely on God's people. Remember, I said everybody needs God,

but everybody needs somebody.

You need somebody, whether you're

a loner or not. Each one of us needs someone, someone we can count on.

The difference between who you are and where God wants you to be depends on

having the right people in your life.

You catch that? Not just anyone, but the right people.

One of the verses I learned as a child, Psalm 1, 1 through 3,

a powerful message here.

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,

or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord.

And on his law, he meditates day and night.

He's like a tree planted by streams of water, which yield its fruit in season,

and whose leaves do not wither, whatever he does prospers.

I'm glad I learned this lesson early on. Blessed is the one or the man who does

not walk in the counsel of the wicked.

And you've got a whole picture here.

You know, you're just walking along, singing a song, oh, it's a good day.

And you know, there's a group of people you're just strolling down the boulevard with.

But what kind of people are you strolling down the boulevard with?

The psalmist says, do not walk, does not walk in the counsel of the wicked.

We're not supposed to stroll along with wicked advice. We're not supposed to

strut our stuff with those that aren't giving us godly advice or righteous advice.

We're not supposed to listen to counselors who aren't listening to God,

who aren't hearing from the Lord.

Okay, so you're walking along, singing a song, a wicked song,

but then there's a time where it stops because it says, or stand in the way of sinners.

We're just hanging out with them now. You're just cruising along walking,

but now you've found a place to hang out and heckle other people that are walking

by, you know, catcalling, throwing rocks, whatever the wicked do.

I don't know. It says stand in the way of sinners.

When it denotes way, it means a way of living, a way of belonging,

a way of being with other people.

I don't know about you, but some of you maybe got caught up with the wrong crowd

in high school or post high school or that kind of thing in college or just at the job.

And pretty soon you're kind of

drifting toward being like them instead of being who God wants you to be.

It goes on to say, or sit in the seat of mockers.

So we were walking, then we stopped,

and now we're just sitting and being grumpy and mocking everybody.

Ah, bunch of hypocrites. Yeah, you think you're all holy and righteous.

Ah, I know what it's all about being in this church. We get this bad attitude.

When we don't do what the Scripture says, we drift away.

We don't realize that we need those that are godly. I mean, it could be said maybe a different way.

Blessed is the man who walks in the counsel of the wise or who stands in the

way of the saints or who sits in the seat of the righteous.

See, I think it works the other way too. If you're going to walk,

walk with those who are giving you godly advice, who are giving you wisdom.

If you're going to stand, stand with those that aren't sinners,

but that are saints who are pondering, how can we live a holy life that pleases

God? How can we make wise decisions?

And when we sit around and we talk, we want to sit around and talk with those

that are righteous, with those that are lined up with the chief cornerstone

again, that are square on with Jesus, that want to do the right things,

that want to be right in their heart.

We've got to rely on God's people. Everybody needs somebody,

but the somebodies are important.

The somebody's got to be people that reflect God's faithfulness.

So how do you find these right people?

Three steps, and it could be five or 10 or 20, but I just thought of three here.

First of all, to start serving.

Wait, I thought this was about connecting. You want me to take my time and you

wanted me to donate it and serve other people? Well, yeah.

Not just because I'm a pastor and we always need help.

But when you say, hey, I want to just try this, I want to help serve,

then you're going to find other people that just want to help serve too and

that maybe have the same calling, same giftings, maybe even the same passion that you have.

And it's when you start to serve and give of yourself, give of your time,

that's really when you begin to form friendships, the right kind of friendships.

I love VBS because every year there's new people that want to come and they want to help out.

And they get blessed in doing that. That's not just VBS, but other things.

I love when we go on short-term mission trips and someone's never been on one before.

And they go and they're just, they give so much of themselves,

but they come back so blessed because they didn't know they could give that much.

They didn't know there was these kind of needs out there, but God just does

a work within them. So start serving.

Find a place to plug in. Go beyond yourself and what focuses on you and start

to focus on the needs of other people.

When you do that, I can guarantee you're going to find somebody,

and you're going to realize you need somebody to come alongside you.

Secondly, get in a grace group. What's a grace group?

Well, it's the term I coined last week when we were talking about joining a

Sunday school class, coming to a Bible study, being part of a life group that

meets outside the building of the church, but for the purpose to encourage and

to do life with one another.

Find a group of people that want to get into the Word, that want to pray for

you, that just want to be together and help you to live the life that God has called us all to.

Boy, if you, again, do the Connect card, if you have the Church Center app,

it's going to tell you the schedule of the different groups going on.

And they're always changing. There's always new topics. There's always some

great things that are happening.

And maybe God's calling you to start a group. You're like, Mike,

I want to do this Christian Bible study skydivers group.

Well, I'm not leading that, but maybe you will.

I know they have a plane that leaves out of Parma all the time. And.

Hey, there's a place for it. I don't know if God's calling any of us to that,

but maybe you want to start something.

You're like, I really need just to get around people and we need to pray for

each other and study the Bible and go skydiving or whatever.

Hey, it could be a fishing group, a hunting group. I mean, there's a lot that you could do.

Last, get real with someone. Just get real with someone. Be vulnerable.

Someone you could trust.

Someone that we know that's not going to blab it all over the place,

what you're going through, but someone that will hear you out.

A place where you can be seen and be heard, where you can be raw about your feelings.

There's a lot of feelings that we try to sort through.

Feelings might not always express adequately what we're going through,

but it's good to have someone else to bounce those off of.

The best place to do that is in a place like this, where you're with other godly

people who aren't here to judge you, but they're here to love you and to help

you grow into the person that God wants you to be. Grow up into Jesus.

So don't be afraid for that vulnerability. Now, it's not always easy to stand

up in front of a church and do that, but that's why if you find your brother

or sister that you can connect with, that's the perfect place.

Go to a men's breakfast. Start to build relationships with the guys.

Ladies, go to the ladies' breakfast.

Or what's it called? Coffee, sorry. it's not a full-blown breakfast or else

the guys would probably be there go there build relationships.

Folks, each and every one of us, we've got room for somebody else.

All right, let's not get stuck on point two, but everybody needs God.

Everybody needs somebody. And I want to tell you that somebody needs you.

We look at verse 22, the scripture says, and in him, that is in Christ,

you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit.

We're being built together. It's not just, oh, God's building up the pasture

and we sit by and watch, or God's building up the church board or the church leadership.

No, God's building all of us together.

We all need each other, but somebody needs you. Somebody needs your support.

Somebody needs your prayers.

We are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives.

We believe in the infilling of the Holy Spirit of God for the believers, don't we?

Is that something that we believe that the Holy Spirit is present and active

in the life of every single person who places faith in Him?

If that's the case, then we've got the power of a story of what God's done in our life to share.

Because I can tell you from firsthand experience, well, when God moves in my

life, when God moves in my heart, there's stuff to give up.

There's stuff that's freed up so that I can have more of God in my life.

And that's just one guy in this church.

You've all got a story of what God has done or what God is doing,

or hopefully both of what God did in your life, but what he's doing now and how he's moving now.

Each and every one of us, we have a story to tell.

Somebody needs you. Like I said, somebody needs to hear your story. Psalm 66, 16.

Come and listen. All you who fear God, let me tell you what he has done for me.

Is that your story? God did a work in you, such a mighty work that you can't

wait to tell somebody else about.

Oh, let me tell you how he saved me. Let me tell you how he's come through for me.

He's answered my prayer, how he's gifted me and how he sent me out to serve.

Somebody needs to see God's power at work in your life.

Don't keep it all bottled up inside. It's not a private matter.

You're part of the structure that God has built.

Stone upon stone, life upon life. And we've got to support one another.

We've got to rely on one another.

And somebody needs to rely on you just like you've relied on others.

1 Corinthians 2, verses 1 through 5 says this, When I came to you,

1 Corinthians 2:1–5

this is the Apostle Paul talking, writing, When I came to you,

brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to

you the testimony about God.

For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and

Him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear and with much trembling.

My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words,

but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power,

so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.

Somebody needs to see the power of God at work in you, and it's not always going

to be through your strength.

Through what you're good at. It's going to be in those things that you're not so strong in.

It's going to be in those things where you're maybe embarrassed about.

Maybe it'll be in those things that have happened to you in your life where

you felt so weak, but yet God made you strong in that.

And it's something you're not proud of, but you're going to proclaim it and share it.

I told you often about the irony of me being called to preach. Very ironic.

Because I'm like a sound guy in the back that doesn't have to interact with anybody.

That's who I am in my natural self and my natural man. Give me just a little

group of people I can hang with and I'm good.

But God says, uh-uh, you're going to preach. You're going to preach in front of people.

Except during COVID and we preach in front of a camera. That was only a short time.

You know, I'm the kid that got

a low grade in speech class because I hate standing up in front of people.

And so when I preach, it's not me that takes credit for it because this is not

where I want to be up in front of everybody.

But it's the calling of God to say, this is what you're going to do and I'm

going to power you through the power of the Holy Spirit.

It's not always through our strengths. God uses your strengths.

Please don't get me wrong. But God's going to use your weaknesses.

Why? We can't brag about our weaknesses.

We can't. We can boast in what Christ does through our weaknesses.

And we can glorify God through that and in that.

And that's what Paul was saying. Hey, I didn't come to you with eloquence of speech.

I didn't come to you saying, I'm Professor Paul, listen to me.

He says he came with fear and trembling.

I can relate to that. He came to the church at Corinth in weakness and fear,

but the messages he preached were empowered by the Holy Spirit of God and made a change.

All right. I wanted you to know too on this final point here that someone needs

an example of Christ's righteousness to follow.

People need to know what godly marriages look like. People need to know what

a godly family looks like and a relationship between a husband and wife and their children.

People need to see examples of serving others in a righteous way,

not for gain, not for profit, but out of love.

Why would you give up your time to come for a week and hang out with a bunch

of kids that are loud, that have a lot of energy?

Why would you do that? Well, because they found a place to serve,

and they love God, and they love kids.

That's just one example. We could go on and on and on, but whether we like it

or not, we're examples to other people. Listen to Psalm 71.

My mouth will tell of your righteousness, of your salvation all day long,

though I don't know its measure.

I will come and proclaim your mighty acts, O sovereign Lord.

I will proclaim your righteousness, yours alone, Since my youth,

O God, you have taught me, and to this day I declare your marvelous deeds.

Even when I'm old and gray, do not forsake me, O God, till I declare your power

to the next generation, your might to all who are to come.

You know what I love about this church when I first came is not the fact that

there were several funerals, but it's what happened at those funerals that really

exemplifies this point I want to make.

At the funerals, we had proclamations of how people lived for Christ,

how they dedicated their time, if they couldn't go on the mission field,

to doing stuff to help further those that wanted to go to the mission field.

We heard about people who had such a righteous testimony that they led others to Christ,

how their service and their work within the congregation and stood as like 12

stones as a memorial to what God will do with the life and in the life of a person.

Folks, somebody needs you. They need to hear your story.

I talk to people all the time. I talk to them about Jesus. I talk to them about

what God did with me, but it's not going to resonate with everyone.

They're not into the same things I was into or I'm into.

They don't like sci-fi kind of stuff. Everyone doesn't like that.

Or old westerns, or that kind of thing.

But I can guarantee what you do is going to resonate with someone that I can't

reach, but only you could reach them.

They're going to need to see your example of faithfulness and righteousness,

of your testimony. They need to hear that.

Somebody needs you outside of these walls.

They need to connect with you.

Kind of imagine a big dinner table.

And you've got it filled with your family. You've got it filled with people from work.

And I hope you always have just one extra seat at the table for that person

yet to come along that needs to sup with you, that needs to eat with you, so to speak,

that needs to learn of your life and your story, that needs to hear about how

God has impacted your life and how God is moving and working even now.

Hey, it starts at home with your family. It extends out from there even to the

people here in church. but we've got to get outside of these walls and make

sure we still have one chair at the table left for them.

I can guarantee you in God's kingdom, there's a lot of chairs that are open for a lot of people.

Man, even look around this morning, there's a lot of empty space that could

be filled with others that can experience the same God that you've experienced.

Maybe in the same way, maybe in a whole different way.

But are you available to connect with someone?

Are you available? More than are you available, are you willing?

Are you willing to connect with someone new for the sake of the kingdom of God,

for God's glory, and to see their life transformed?

Well, I just want you to remember as I wrap this up here, we are created for connection.

Each and every one of us. Can't get away from it. It's how God made us as people.

We might connect differently, but we're all made for connection.

Fight the drift. Please fight the drift toward isolation.

Don't let yourself become alone. Become just by yourself for extended periods of time.

Don't jump in a boat with your cell phone that has a waterfall nearby and lose

track of space and time. Could be dangerous.

Don't let the enemy trick you into those kind of things. Remember, everybody needs God.

Everybody needs somebody. And somebody needs you.

Would you connect with someone today? If not today, connect with someone this week.

Just tell them how much God loves them, or better yet, show them how much God loves them.

Let me pray for us. Father, thank you for the time that we've had together,

Lord, hearing from your word.

Lord, the time that we've had together this morning, Lord, just praising you.

And God, we're so grateful to you for how you're moving and for what you're doing.

And Lord, I just pray in the mighty name of Jesus that as we get ready to go

to the different things we've got going on today, dinner with family or friends

or, Lord, a quick Nazarene nap.

Lord, whatever we're doing, prepare

for this week. May we leave room for connection with somebody else.

Lord, leave room for connection with people here in our church family,

but Lord, also people that are not yet part of the kingdom of God,

that are not yet part of the church.

And Lord, we just, we praise you and we thank you for what you're doing and what you're going to do.

And it's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. Amen.

I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast. You can find a copy

of today's sermon, as well as other sermons, and the sermon outline from today

on our church's website,

www.mvcnaz.org.

It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that recognizes the authority of the Bible.