James | Arrogant About The Future (July 21st, 2019) - Mike Armstrong

And well, why don't you uh turn in your Bibles right now, get a copy of God's Word, uh, open to uh James uh chapter four, looking at verses uh 13 down to 17 uh today.

Now I think one of the conversations that we've probably all had with somebody over the last little while is about uh what our summer plans are uh for this year.

You know, you probably had a conversation with some friends, probably some people even here at church.

You know, what's your what's your time off look like uh this summer?

You got you know, have you have any plans?

Are you planning on going on vacation?

Are you you know you're gonna travel?

Are you gonna go camping?

You have the the cruise thing planned or heading to the cottage.

You know, for you maybe it's it's staying home and you've got some you know some house projects that you're gonna be doing, and it's not gonna feel uh nearly as much as vacation, but you're using up your vacation time to do that.

Now, these are the types of things that uh we generally plan for, right?

And usually well in advance as as they require that we would be you know strategic.

We gotta we gotta figure out our our schedules and calendars, and you're trying to line those up as a as a family, and you gotta think through and plan your your budget for these things, because obviously these things aren't cheap or free.

And then, of course, you've got to decide on you know what are the what are the specific activities that we actually want to spend our time doing.

Let's do what we did last year, let's never again do what we did last year, right?

Lots of decisions need to be made as we consider planning for the future.

Now, as you think about your future, whether that be you know thinking ahead to summer vacation plans like we mentioned, or you know, maybe for you it's where you want to go to college or where you want to go to university after you're done high school.

Maybe you're kind of thinking through proposing, you know, to your girlfriend, and I want to be able to do that in you know, six or eight months or something, I want to save up and get a ring, or as you think about your future in terms of I want to start a business, or you know, investment planning and you know, future retirement goals and all of that, when you think about these things and you strategize and you prepare for these future type ambitions, what is your attitude and what is your mindset towards them?

Because what James says to us today suggests, you know, just how easy it is for us when we when we think about the future and all these different examples of it, to essentially what we do is we can easily just kind of push God off into the background about it.

And we're like, you know, he might have some things he wants to say about that for us, but we're just like, you know what?

No, it's tunnel vision.

I'm I'm just gonna completely go after what I want, and and it can become an arrogance thing for us.

We just we just kind of charge ahead without considering how we as Christians should approach our thinking and our planning for the future in a way that actually honors the Lord, who of course holds our future in his hands.

Let's take a look at this then from James 4, like I said, starting in verse 13.

Follow along with me.

He says, Come now, you who say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.

Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.

What is your life?

For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

Instead, you ought to say, If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.

As it is, you boast in your arrogance, and all such boasting is evil.

So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him, it is sin.

God, as we think about this and we think about the future, Lord, we know that it is very easy for us to, again, just kind of push you into the ditch, push you into the background, back burner, however you want to kind of categorize that, Lord, but we don't often consider you in our planning.

And oftentimes when we think about our plans and we think about the future and what's ahead, we're often, if we're honest, just kind of thinking selfishly.

And it's what we want and what we want to build and our comfort and our pleasure and and all of that.

And Father, I pray here this morning you would uh create for yourself a church, a bride, people uh for yourself who who understand that that everything is and is is in subjection to you.

Lord, that that you indeed hold our future, Lord, and and God, what you would want for us is what we need to consider as the top priority.

And so, Father, I pray that as we uh open up these verses and and kind of pull them apart and look deeper into them, Father, I pray that you would lead us and guide us, humble us, teach us, convict us, encourage us, Lord.

We pray that you would speak to each person as as needed.

Lord, we thank you so much for this chance we have to be together today and to be with you.

We pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

Now, for the sake of uh of clarity here, let's understand, uh, first of all, that it's it's not wrong to plan.

All right, do we know that?

Do we understand that?

It's not wrong to think about the future and strategize and all of that.

It's it's not sinful to you know to make money, right?

It's not sinful, even to some degree, uh, to desire to make money, right?

That's that's not necessarily wrong.

Now, Timothy, in 1 Timothy uh chapter 6, he says, you know, the love of money is the roots of all kinds of evil, and so we need to be really careful about that and be diligent to watch where our hearts are at, and that you know, the pursuit of all of that doesn't become an idol, and it's easy for that to become an idol.

But listen, nowhere, nowhere in these verses here that we looked at does James chastise believers for you know for planning, you know, or for, again, having money.

Rather, what he's doing here is he's challenging our attitude and our mindset and our approach to these things.

Right?

Because as always in the scriptures, it it's about the heart, right?

It always comes down to the heart.

You know, is your heart functioning in such a way where it desires God's glory above your own in these matters?

Right?

In things like your finances and your hopes and in your dreams and your desires and your plans.

Right?

So it's about discerning, you know, what are the driving motivations in my heart?

Right, what are the driving motivations behind what you and I are doing as we plan ahead?

Right again, do they glorify Jesus or do they betray more of a self-centered, uh, and arrogant slant?

Right?

This may not be something that is obvious to the eye.

And so we need the Holy Spirit uh to make these things clear to us and expose our hearts, and really all of this brings us to the first thing here today in your notes.

I betray an arrogant attitude about the future when I assume that my plans will prevail, when tomorrow isn't even guaranteed.

Take a look at verse 13 with me.

Here's what James says to these believers, these entrepreneurial believers, these business-minded Christians.

Here's what he says.

He says, Come now.

Which literally just means, now listen, right?

He's inviting us to pay attention to what he's saying.

He says, Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow, we will, as in guaranteed, we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade, and definitely, if I can add that word in, make a profit.

Now, at face value, this doesn't seem so wrong, does it?

What what what James is saying here?

It doesn't seem like a wrong thing to do to plan and make a profit.

And really what he's doing here is it's it's a challenge to the presumptuous person.

All right, the person who thinks about a tomorrow and has like a like an overconfidence about it.

The person who's kind of kind of cocky about all of this, that first of all, there will be a tomorrow for sure.

Right?

That they just assume that.

And then second of all, their their grand plans to line their pockets, to turn a prophet, will like absolutely prevail as long as I put you know the blood, sweat, and tears into it.

And so what James does here is he pours basically like a cup, uh, you know, a much needed cup of cold water on that brash type of attitude, on that fire.

Take a look at verse 14.

Look what he says.

He says, Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.

It's like, man, you you don't know.

He says, What is your life?

He says, for you are a you are a mist.

Some translations say vapor.

You are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

Yeah, I'm sure a number of us uh made coffee this morning.

I have had far too much, right?

But what I did, of course, I boiled the water, right?

I boiled the water, and and as I'm watching this thing get hotter and hotter, there's there's mist, there's steam coming out, and of course, you know, it doesn't fill the entire room and it didn't linger, it wasn't staying there forever, it it disappears very quickly.

And so James says, this is really what our lifespan is really, really like.

And I mean the Bible, it conveys the brevity of life, the fragility of life all over the place, actually.

Job in Job chapter 7 says, Remember that my life is a breath.

Job 7 · chapter mention

It's a breath.

David in Psalm 39 says a number of things about it.

He says, Behold, you, God, have made my days a few hand breadths.

I had to look that up, but it's literally just the breadth of your hand, right?

Just the width of your hand, not very long.

Okay.

He says, and my lifetime, my lifetime, my entire life is as nothing before you.

Remember, God has no beginning and no end.

He is eternal.

We we had a beginning, right?

We will die.

And we think about you know, living for 80, 90 plus years, that's a long time.

Well, compared to the Lord, it's it's nothing.

But he continues, David does, he says, surely all mankind stands as a mere breath.

Surely a man goes about as a shadow.

Right?

Shadows change.

They're there one second and they're gone the next.

Now again, James isn't, let's be clear, he isn't directing this towards Christians who you know are wise and and and humble, humble in their you know, careful planning towards the future.

We should be like that and we should do that.

Rather, he's bringing the you know, the necessary uh stark perspective really to those who do so in an arrogant and smug way, right?

Reminding us that we don't have nearly as much control over what's going to happen over tomorrow than we really want.

We all crave that, and sometimes we even think we've got it.

Because, of course, even tomorrow itself isn't guaranteed.

And I mean, I think we all know that, don't we?

We all know that tomorrow is not guaranteed.

But here's the thing we don't live like we know it.

You know, I was thinking about my my calendar and I was looking at my phone and just some of the things that are coming up uh next week, right?

And I have already got my tomorrow all figured out.

It's a day off uh for myself and for my family, but I know that I have a doctor's appointment uh in the afternoon, right?

And so I know that that is something that I'm going to do.

Or rather, I know that that's something I'm going to do.

Because at the end of the day, waking up tomorrow, it's again, it's not guaranteed.

It's not to be, you know, grim about all of this.

It's just it's just reality, right?

It really is.

And that's really the problem that that James is unearthing.

This idea that we, yeah, we know on a certain level that tomorrow's not guaranteed, but but we don't live like it.

See, the thing for us is that we've lived to see so many tomorrows.

Right?

If you're here and you are alive, you've seen, probably, depending on your age, thousands of tomorrows.

You've you've woken up and you've experienced that.

And so we just get very comfortable and just, again, assume that tomorrow uh will come.

And what James is doing here is he's warning us against this, you know, having this kind of self-confident worldly mindset and attitude that can easily take over our hearts, where we make sometimes these grandiose schemes and and plans and have these great dreams under the you know kind of brazen assumption that we we absolutely can and will dictate what's gonna happen tomorrow.

Right?

I I can't I have the power to determine my future, right, and my plans will triumph as I see fit.

Right?

You can see how that how that kind of creeps into our way we think and act and believe and behave.

And it's sort of, it's basically what's happening is we develop a little bit of a God complex in all of that.

Right?

Like I might my tomorrow is guaranteed, and here's what I can do, and comes kind of the these misguided notions about what we're actually able to accomplish and do.

And it's really, you know, really the Lord only who can do these things.

And so in verse 16, actually, if you would jump down ahead there to it, he just kind of punctuates the point here that he's getting at.

He says, as it is, you boast in your arrogance.

He says, All such boasting is evil.

And so again, it's really a rebuke to the person who brags or who glories in this, you know, their sense of self-sufficiency, which is again, uh that's a worldly attitude, right?

There's nothing godly about that.

Proverbs 27 verse 1 says, Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.

Proverbs 27:1

Now, I I kind of wonder just how much our lives, our future plans, our our attitudes about all of that would change if we actually lived as though we weren't guaranteed tomorrow.

I I wonder kind of what we would change now.

You know, I think I think actually a lot would change, probably, like if we live like that.

Okay, so let's let's kind of ask ourselves some questions here.

These are gonna be uh on the screen and just kind of something for you to kind of chew on this week and talk about, you know, as you know, husbands and wives, you know, with your kids and you know, in your small groups and what have you.

But I mean, considering that our that our lives are a mist, okay, they're a vapor, they're a they're a breath.

What kind of adjustments do we need to make right now, right?

Today, in our in our thinking and in our approach to the future?

All right, so three questions, and you can jot these down.

And again, the idea is to get this to get you kind of thinking about how you might um meet might need to tweak some things.

Here's the first question: What personal goals do I need to surrender to the Lord?

Right?

Think about your personal goals in life.

It could be career goals, right?

I want to climb the corporate ladder, I want to, you know, I want to start a great business, I want to be, you know, financially independent, and I want to have, you know, I want to have money and I want to have the toys, and I want to have, you know, I want to be able to provide for my kids so that they can go to school and they they can be set and taken care of.

What are some of your goals in some of these things?

It could be about your you know, your hobbies.

Like I want to be a I want to be a scratch golfer, and I'm gonna I'm gonna pour a lot of money and uh you know a lot of time and a lot of energy and time away from you know the world, and I want to go after this and become as good as I can be when it comes to whatever hobbies.

Now, again, it's not to say that you know your career or your desire for money or or or your hobbies are sinful in and of themselves.

Again, some of these things are you know, they're fine at face value, but I think we need to ask ourselves the question do I do I want these things for the wrong reasons?

Or do I want them too much?

Have they captured my heart?

You know, as I think about my goals in all of these things, are you know do I sense the presence of arrogance in any of these things?

Is there something that I need to change now when it comes to my goals?

How about this question?

How should we shift our focus as a family?

Or maybe you as a family, you know, you you need to you need to kind of rethink some of how you live.

And you know, as a as a husband and as a father, you know, I I ask myself often the question, like what am I modeling really for my family?

Right?

What kind of values am I putting on display?

Not not just what do I say I value, but what based on my life, you know, do I value?

What are my kids really seeing at the end of the day?

You know, are we as a family, are we invested in really at the end of the day, temporal and worldly pursuits?

Right?

Is that what we're going for?

Is that what I'm setting my kids up for?

You know, am I being diligent enough in discipling my kids?

Right?

I'm pushing them in in school, which is great.

I'm pushing them in in athletics, and I and I'm pushing them to be kind and all of those things.

But are we preparing them for what they're going to face in the world?

Right?

A world that just increasingly hates Christians, hates Jesus.

Are we preparing them for that?

Is there is there a shift that needs to be made now?

Because I'm not guaranteed tomorrow.

I'm not guaranteed next week or you know, 10 or 20 years with them.

Good stuff to think about.

How about this one?

What matters most when it comes to how I spend my energy, time, and money?

What matters most?

If I'm not guaranteed tomorrow, then I probably should, as a Christ follower, live now for what matters most in God's eyes.

Right?

If I happen to be given tomorrow, that is.

As opposed to just establishing uh what is maybe little more than a building up of my own empire.

So what James is again getting us to kind of do in all of this is to evaluate and and and constantly re-evaluate our attitude and our focus.

It's basically doing uh like a system scan, you know, and looking for arrogance.

Is there any of that going on within me?

Right?

Do I automatically assume that there will be a tomorrow?

Do I do I assume that my plans and you know my schemes will automatically triumph and prevail?

Are my future goals, are my plans that I have for myself, my wife, my kids, all of that, is it even remotely godly?

Right?

These are the questions, hard questions, that we need to ask ourselves.

Or is really all of this just about me?

Right?

If we sense that you know we're a you know, we're a ways off from what God has called us to, it betrays the presence of arrogance in our hearts, which requires things like confession and and repentance and bringing all of these things back in line with the truth of the gospel, right?

Where we remind ourselves again that we have been saved to live holy lives, right?

Lives that that please him on a daily basis, right?

Right, to be to be grateful for for every single breath that that he's given us, that he graciously gives us.

And then, of course, to to use those breaths to spend those breaths for the building up of his kingdom and not our own.

Alright, here's the second thing.

I betray an arrogant attitude about the future when I overlook the fact that my plans always bow to God's sovereignty.

Okay, so he's just reminded us of the fact that our lives are you know but a mist.

Okay, so don't again presume that everything that you want to do is all automatically gonna be established.

And then he says this in verse 15.

He says, Instead, instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.

Now, James has been, I mean, driving towards this already, but here he just kind of essentially comes out with it, and really it's this God is sovereign, you and I are not.

That's what he's saying here.

Right?

God alone is supreme, right?

God alone is unlimited and unrestricted and self-governing.

He is, he is, is all-knowing and and all powerful.

Right?

All of time and and human history, past, present, and and future, everything happens according to his sovereign will, his wise plan.

I mean, that it's unescapable.

You read the scriptures from from cover to cover, from Genesis to Revelation, this is what the Bible teaches.

He is in control of all that he is, he is sovereign.

And so if this is the case and and we believe with all our hearts that it is, then when it comes to you know, little ol' you and I and all of our super important plans that we think we have for the future, then it just makes sense that we would approach all of that with a if the Lord wills type of mentality, attitude, where we hold all of it, you know, quite loosely.

Like this is what I would like to see.

Lord, this is what I'm I'm praying for, but Lord, your will be done, uh, not my will be done.

Recognizing that He is the one who ultimately allows and causes and enables all of our plans to either be established or in some cases possibly frustrated.

I love Proverbs 16, verse 9.

Proverbs 16:9

We've got this on the screen for you.

It's this the heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.

And hey, are we able to completely reconcile the tension in that?

Or are we able to totally compute how our will and and and our actions and our plans work within the framework of God's sovereignty and his control and his plans?

No, we can't, right?

We're finite creatures.

We don't totally understand the Lord.

He is greater than us, he is bigger than us, his ways are not our ways.

There's a sense of mystery here.

But honestly, we don't need to understand all of it.

We really don't.

We just need to recognize that that all of our plans, listen, even the ones that seem to be fully in line with God's will and what he would desire, even those ultimately and always bow to the sovereignty of God's will.

Right?

To what he wants.

So, do you tend to overlook the sovereignty of God throughout your days?

Or does it drive your planning?

Are you constantly thinking about that?

Does it impact the choices and and the decisions that you make as you think about and plan for tomorrow?

If we continue to overlook something so vital, I mean we'll we'll constantly be frustrated, won't we?

We'll always be off-kilter from how life is supposed to function for a Christ follower.

We we're supposed to be well aware of his sovereignty and bring everything to bear against that.

So, you can write these things down.

I will no longer overlook God's sovereignty over my future.

Instead, I will do these five things.

Here's the first one.

I will fear him more deeply.

Right?

Psalm 112, verse 1.

Psalms 112:1

I'm not going to read these Psalms, these verses that go with these here, but you can check those out on your own time.

But because God is sovereign, I will fear him.

Right?

He is the one who is in control.

I will come to him.

When we're talking about fear, we're not we're not necessarily talking about being scared and timid and running in the opposite direction, but it's a it's an awe thing.

Right?

It's respect, it's it's reverence, it's understanding his power and what he is is truly capable of.

Is there a little bit of fear in that?

Yeah, there is.

And there should be.

But as we consider the sovereignty and how incredible the Lord is, we should fear him more deeply.

Here's the second thing we'll do.

We'll praise him more passionately.

The Lord is not interested in just flippant phrases, you know, where again, we start to learn the lingo of Christianity, right?

Christianese.

We start to learn that and we know that we can say, you know, well, if the Lord wills.

But it's nothing more than empty words.

And James obviously doesn't want, that's not what he means, right?

He's not saying, oh, just say this empty phrase and then you're all good.

Right?

The Lord's not interested in that.

Remember, it's all about the heart, it's all about this being this being genuine.

And then when we start to kind of understand the sovereignty of the Lord over my future, we can praise him more passionately, praise him more honestly, with joy and worship.

Here's the third one.

I will thank him more genuinely.

When we realize that each and every breath that we are given is a gift from God that we just do not deserve.

I think that starts to you know breed gratitude in, does it not?

We realize, man, like I I can't believe I actually spent a lot of my morning griping and and complaining and using those breaths to to go against God and to go against people and and sin.

We understand that God is sovereign.

We become more grateful to him.

Every single blessing is is appreciated.

I'll no longer overlook God's sovereignty over my future.

Instead, I will trust him more completely.

Right?

We understand that the Lord holds our future, he has got the entire timeline of earth in view.

He he knows it.

Nothing escapes his eye, nothing escapes his view.

There is purpose in all of that, whether it feels like there's purpose in it to us at the time or not.

He he holds it all.

And the amazing thing is that he promises to be with us and draw near to us every single step.

And so we can trust him.

Doesn't mean that we're gonna know what tomorrow brings, doesn't mean we're gonna have every single answer right now, but God has the answer, and so we can trust him, trust him more completely.

Final thing here instead, I will follow him more fiercely.

What do we have to lose, really?

Right?

The Lord is sovereign, the Lord is in control, the Lord loves us, he's called us into a relationship with him through his son Jesus Christ.

What do we have to lose in giving him our all?

Why would we follow him half-heartedly?

Why would we mail it in?

The Lord has called us to be in the game with him, serving him, following him, being passionate about all these things.

Let's follow him with a ferocity in this.

What do we have to lose?

As you progress through your walk with Christ and you're struck by his sovereignty over all things, I mean, you will feel appropriately small.

Right?

You will feel appropriately humbled in all of that.

And I think that's a that's that's where we should be, that's where we should live.

I love Psalm 8, verse 3 and 4.

Psalms 8:3

It says this when I look at your heavens, when I look at the work of your fingers, the the moon and the stars, right?

He's taking in creation.

He's he's seeing that the Lord is all powerful, he's seeing that the Lord presides over all of it.

Here's what he says.

He says, What is man that you are mindful of him?

The son of man that you care for him.

That's exactly how we should feel in light of such an epic, strong, mighty, and sovereign God.

Final thing here today.

I betray an arrogant attitude about the future when I know the right way to respond, but fail to actually do it.

Verse uh 17, take a look.

It says, So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

This highlights for us uh the sins of omission.

You heard of that before?

Uh typically we we kind of focus on the sins of commission, which you know are all the things that we should not do, right?

All the you know, the thou shalt nots, but the things, the kind of those bad things that we end up doing anyways.

We feel tempted to do them, and so we do them.

Those are the sins of commission.

The sins of omission are the good things that we should do and are capable of doing, yet don't.

Okay, Proverbs 3.27 says this.

It says, Do not withhold good from those whom it is due when it is in your power to do it.

Now, I don't know about you, but I kind of look at verse 17, and and when I first read that at first glance, it kind of looks a little bit out of place, does it not?

Like, oh yeah, I'm kind of tracking with you know James's flow of thought here, and then you know, verse 17, you know, kind of feels like it's like kind of bolted on at the end, and it feels a little bit kind of misplaced here.

Well, maybe at face value it does, but if you think about it really, it it really does fit the context well.

Again, James has been has been urging these business-minded believers to keep the sovereignty of uh of God here in full view as they make their plans for the future.

Right?

So this would seem to say that if you and I continue to plan for the future with hearts that are you know arrogant and presumptuous and in self-aggrandizing ways, when now we know better, then we're in sin.

Right?

Because we know the right way to respond now.

We have no excuses.

We've just read the word, we've just heard the word taught.

But when we fail to do it, we're in sin.

So hey.

If you know that your financial goals are selfish, right?

And and and and that's been, you know, the Lord is kind of you know pressing you on that a little bit, and yet you continue to go down that path, uh, that for you is sin.

Right?

Again, James says be doers of the word, not hearers only.

That's a theme that's just constant throughout all of this, right?

Be doer of it.

Don't just don't just hear it, you gotta actually follow it.

Or if you know that your parenting focus is mostly about seeing your kids be successful in life, as the world defines that.

And you know that that's not totally right, yet you keep marching down that line and you keep reinforcing those things to your kids, then you're in sin.

As a pastor, speak for myself here.

Let's say that my plan here was to see this church just you know grow large and you know, multiple services, and this you know, monument of a building, and massive staff, and all of that, and and it's more about you know feeding my ego and and and looking good to other pastor friends or or whatever it might be.

And I sense, you know, there's something not right in my spirit about this, and and and the Lord is convicting me about that, and yet I keep going down that road and I don't deal with that properly before the Lord, then guess what?

Yeah, I'm in sin.

Because I know that the right response is to confess that to him, right?

That the the arrogant attitude.

Bring it to the Lord.

The move would be to prayerfully, you know, humble myself and realign my desires with God's.

But let's say I'm I'm ignoring that.

When so doing, I'm I'm failing to actually do what is right.

And I would rightly be considered uh an arrogant man.

Listen, no matter no matter what theology I happen to hold to, no matter what words I can say to impress people, right?

At the end of the day, it's it's a failure to act in accordance with with God's word, with God's will, with God's way.

It's pure pride.

Right?

It's arrogance.

So, church, listen.

Let's humble ourselves today.

That's what we have an opportunity to do.

Let's really think, again, deeply about these things.

Doing the system scan for arrogance and thinking about where the attitude of your heart is at with you know with these future things.

Has the Holy Spirit been been nudging you?

Has he been convicting you?

Maybe he's been doing that here this morning.

Maybe he's been doing it for quite a long time.

And and yet you you know that's uncomfortable, and and and I don't like that.

And you've kind of let your pride take over, and you're trying to silence him, and you're trying to shut him up, and you're trying to continue to do that.

Listen, the Lord sometimes he'll let you do it, he'll let you go down that path, he'll let you shipwreck your faith, he'll let you make a mess of your life, and you think you know what's best.

Do you?

Don't ignore the Lord in this.

If there's fear, if there's anxiety about these things, if there's worry, trust me, I get it.

I live in that place a lot.

Let's take courage today.

Let's believe that the Lord is in fact sovereign.

Let's remind ourselves that he loves us so passionately through Jesus Christ.

Let's remember his goodness to us and let's, again, get low before him and let's inch our way towards him humbly, asking him to transform us, asking him to change our hearts and change our lives.

Let's be willing to have a conversation with him.

Let's be willing to have a conversation with somebody else that we know and trust and love and just say, hey, listen, I'm struggling with this, I'm having a hard time here.

Would you kind of help me think through my plans for the future and and and how I could you know bring the Lord back into this and bring it on you know in line with the gospel and all of it?

Listen, would you be would you be honest about that here today?

Right?

Don't act like you have it all together.

You don't.

I don't.

None of us do.

Right?

We're all a little or or even a lot warped in certain areas, and maybe this is one for us.

Well, listen, there's no better way for us to kind of retrain our hearts and get our minds back in line with Christ than again to remind ourselves of his goodness.

And we've already sung a little bit about that, and we're gonna continue uh to sing about that here this morning.

And not just about that, but sing that to the Lord.

Sing to him and extol his great name for his power, his sovereignty, his control over all things, and including us and our lives and our future.