My Brother's Keeper

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Man, what a great day.

Sunday.

It's going to be amazing.

My name is Brandon.

And I'm Cody.

Yeah, and we are just pumped that you're here and that we had worshiped together this morning.

If you've been tracking with us, man, you know we've been.

We just started a series last Sunday called Community.

So we're kicking the fall off with talking about what it means to be in the family of God and that's how we relate to God.

That's kind of what we talked about this past Sunday.

And then this week we're moving into how do we relate to each other as the family of God.

And so it's going to be really good.

We highly encourage you to go back and listen to last week's message if you missed that so you can catch up.

But today we're jumping into week two.

And so we'll be coming at you live from the Walnut Grove campus in just a minute.

But before we get there, just a couple things for you to know.

Yeah, we're going to download the Church of Grove app because again we're in the fall.

New sermon series.

It's the best place for you to stay connected, to figure out what's coming up, be able to download those sermon notes that we talk about every week, fill those out.

And it's just a great tool to um just to be engaged, be plugged in throughout the week whenever you're not here on campus or watching online.

And so um it's just a fantastic um way to stay engaged.

Yep, and some amazing.

And so if you don't have the app, you will see some things that are coming up.

Uh, first of all, we have a Covenant family membership uh dinner, and so that's just really a dinner for anyone who is really kicking the tires on what it looks like to be a part of our church family.

You want to know a little bit about what we're about, and even more importantly, we would love to just be able to sit across the table with you and learn more of your story and what God's doing in your life.

Um, and so if you're interested in that, we're having that.

It's coming up uh August 19th, I believe.

It's Saturday night.

And uh so you can find the details on the app or the website.

And then also that next day, we are having a uh Covenant family gathering, uh dinner.

So for those of you who are family members and you are a part of our church, um we're having an exciting dinner coming up on the 20th, that Sunday evening, uh, with some really exciting news and just some things that God is doing in our church.

And so we're pumped about that.

And we'd love to invite you to that.

And again, you can find all that info on the app.

So yeah, like Cody said, it's the one-stop shop for all things and going on in the life of our church.

Yep, it's amazing.

It's fantastic.

Yes.

So wait, we're gonna jump in.

Week two.

Week two community, numeral adults.

What's French?

Duh duh.

Not numeral bills.

What's numeral?

What's numeral?

I don't know.

Yeah, we took a whole year of it, and can't remember another.

Part two.

Sum it up.

And we'll be guys on the other side.

Yeah.

Russ, if I hadn't had a chance to meet you, um, welcome to church at the Grove.

Uh, today, if it's your possibly your first or second time, we're we're especially glad that you're here.

Um, we want you to experience the presence of Jesus.

Uh, we want you to experience the warmth of friendship and our fellowship, but but but it's really all about Jesus.

Everything Jesus, nothing but Jesus.

And so we're um in week two of this series titled Community.

And I came across this statement in a podcast this week that is so perfect.

It says, How do we talking about the church?

And I need to make sure you know when I'm talking about the church, I'm not talking about a building, I'm not talking about an address, not talking about a denomination, not talking about an institution, I'm talking about the people of God, the called-out people of God, the ecclesia, the church that Jesus said that that would be birthed and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

How do we, how do we become the church of we in the age of me?

How do we become the church of we in the age of we?

Last week I opened with this this this premise with two questions that are found in Genesis that I said that are the core of our relationship with God and others.

And the first question is, where are you?

Genesis 3.9, where are you?

Where are you?

Adam and Eve had tasted and taken the fruit from the tree, and they hid themselves.

They covered themselves and they hid themselves.

And God comes to them in their shame, and he says, Where are you?

I talked about the significance of that question.

It really gives us some insight to how we are separated and there is now a barrier between us and God.

But it also gives us an insight into the heart of God.

Where are you?

I'm coming for you, I'm I'm going to find you.

I'm going to I'm going to initiate a way of reconciliation.

And so the second question that we will address today is the next chapter.

First question is Genesis 3.9.

The second question is Genesis 4.9.

And it's the question of where is your brother?

And we we might be familiar with that story where Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve, they come to bring an offering to the Lord.

Um Cain brings an offering from produce.

And Abel brings an offering from that that has called, you know, from an animal that has spilled blood.

And so for whatever reason, and I don't think we, I don't know that we know.

We don't really know for sure exactly why, but Cain's sac Cain's offering, Cain's sacrifice, Cain's, what he brought to the Lord was unacceptable, and what Abel brought was acceptable to the Lord.

There was strife.

All of a sudden, in their relationship, Cain kills Abel.

First murder in the Bible.

And God comes to Cain.

And you think God that didn't know what happened?

No, he asks a question because he's a God of relationship and and and he he's got something he wants us to learn and understand.

The question is, where are where is your brother?

Where is your brother?

Where is your brother?

So how can we become the church of we and the age of me?

Where is your brother?

The first question deals with Adam and Eve's disobedience and rebellion and breaking the one rule that they had in this beautiful garden where they walked with God in the cool of the day.

The second question is asked of Cain in response to the murder of his brother, and so this life is taken in anger.

Genesis 4, 8 and 9.

One day Cain suggested to his brother, let's go out into the fields.

And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.

Afterward, the Lord asked Cain, Where is your brother?

Where is Abel?

I don't know, Cain says.

He does not know God very well.

And here he asks the question, and the New Living Translation says, am I my brother's guardian?

But but the English Standard Version, which is, you know, that's the version that I study out of.

It stands for extra spiritual version.

And um but but that that's that's my that's my study version.

That's that's you know, um, and but but it says, am I my brother's keeper?

Am I my brother's keeper?

And so here's here's something that was shared with me from Michael, my friend Michael over here.

You've got Genesis 3-9, you've got Genesis 4-9, and write 11 verses on each, 11 verses from Genesis 3-9 forward, 11 verses from Genesis 4-9 backwards, is Genesis 15, 3.15, Genesis 3.15, which is the first prophetic word of the coming of the Messiah, that says, I'm just gonna read it, it's not on the screen.

I'm gonna read it, it says, It says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head, speaking of the enemy about Jesus, and then it says, and you shall, no, he said, he shall bruise your head, speaking of Jesus against the enemy, the offspring of the woman.

He shall bruise your head.

The literal translation is he is going to crush and stomp your head.

And it says that you, the enemy, shall bruise his heel.

He's speaking to the devil.

He's wrought about that temptation.

I just thought, man, that I have reminisced and ruminated over just what Michael shared with me.

Thank you, Michael, for sharing that with me.

That that was, I think, significant.

But what we have here is a family that is shattered.

The first family to experience not only division, discontent, and disagreement, but the first family to experience spilled blood and murder.

Now, let's take murder out of the equation, but has your family ever experienced any division, discontent, or disagreement?

Has your family ever experienced that?

You ever been to a family reunion?

You ever been to family Christmas?

You ever been to family Thanksgiving?

You know, you got all the extended family there.

I mean, everybody's got one of those uncles, right?

Or a cousin, an aunt.

We got somebody.

Don't look at your spouse.

That shouldn't be, you know, that that shouldn't be the division, the source.

But it's there, there's division and discontent.

And so ever there's there's this fractured and broken and divided family.

And ever since this first experience of a broken family, where there is pain and hurt, even to the point of death, humanity has longed to seek reconciliation and wholeness.

There is something inside of us that looks at this broken world and we say, man, what there is something not right.

There's something broken, there's something right.

We need to seek something that is transformation.

It's a person.

Last week we talked about Genesis 2, 25, where the result of sin left Adam and Eve finding themselves hidden before the sin.

They're naked and unashamed.

And those words, that word nakedness is way more than physical.

You know, without clothing, it's exposing.

It's really becoming known.

And the word shame is this, you can't experience the joy that God offers in life.

And so they are without joy.

They're unashamed.

They're exposed.

They can't be accepted.

And so Adam and Eve now know that the innocence is broken.

They understand that they are divided from God.

And I said last week, shame shatters relationships.

Shame shatters.

Relationships.

And as a result, they're banished from the Garden of Eden in the presence of God.

Genesis 3.23, Adam and Eve in the chapter in chapter 4 of Genesis, they had their first children.

Cain is born and then Abel and eight, in just eight verses, they're coming to bring their offerings to God.

And eight verses, they come to a place of contempt and anger.

Cain kills Abel.

God comes to him and says, Where is your brother?

And so the second significant question from the beginning of Scripture that is at the core of our relationship with God is, where is your brother?

The first family to experience death and pain and division and brokenness.

And as a result, generations of families of all kinds of cultures and backgrounds have experienced the same brokenness throughout history.

In the midst of brokenness, and that there's this desperation for reconciliation.

But the truth is, sinful hearts are self-centered hearts.

Sinful hearts are self-centered hearts.

Let me go back.

What I said the very first part of the sermon.

How do we become the church of we in the age of me?

How do we do that?

How do we do that?

Society and culture.

Inside the story of God and outside the story of God seeks all kinds of avenues to repair brokenness and to fill the void left by sin and rebellion and the fractured family.

Since the beginning of time up till modern day, in today's modern culture, the central message of our culture is follow your heart.

Follow your heart.

Forget about God.

Follow your heart.

Proverbs 4, 23 says, guard your heart.

Guard your heart.

But the world says, follow your heart.

Hey, just you do you.

You do you and you follow your heart until you are happy.

And do you think a little bit of that has seeped into the culture of the church?

Especially in our Western American church?

How do we become the church of we in the age of me?

So, so come across Nathan, I come across a book written by the scholar, Pastor Joseph Hellerman, When the Church Was a Family, is the title of the book.

When the church was the family.

And so he he taught, he's he this this is gonna this is gonna challenge you a little bit, but but he says there is no place in the scriptures where you find the phrase personal relationship with Jesus.

There's nowhere those words in that way are found.

But we we now let me before you go, I I know, before you just go crazy and think I'm a heretic, I know we have access to God.

The writer of Hebrews said, because of what happened.

Last week I talked, I shared about the temple, and when Jesus died on the cross, the temple was torn.

There are no more, there are no more barriers.

All of us can go straight to the throne, straight to the mercy seat.

We don't, listen, you don't need a pastor, you don't need a priest, you don't need a religious system.

You can go straight to God.

So I know I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, so I'm not, don't, don't freak out.

I have a personal relationship with Jesus because I can go straight to the throne.

But I want you to understand as we understand the context of what Jesus is building in the church, it is a community that is built on we over me.

Jesus never designed it to just be you and him.

Our faith is only lived out in community, really.

The power of our faith is community.

In fact, we can even go one step further and say you can't live out your faith without community.

This is what fuels surface-level consumer Christianity is when you say you're gonna follow Jesus or you're gonna have some kind of relationship with God outside of the community of the church.

That's consumerism.

Consumerism.

Here's what Joseph Hellerman says.

Here's a quote from his book, When the Church was a family, title of the book.

As church-going Americans, we have been socialized to believe that our individual fulfillment and our personal relationship with God are more important than any connection we might have with our fellow human beings, whether in the home or in the church, we have in a most subtle and insidious way been conformed to the world.

Ouch.

So how do we become the church of we in the age of me?

And deep down within us, there's still a desire to experience genuine wholeness that comes from, by the way, God exists in community.

You know that God exists in community, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

You go back to creation, read the Bible, starting in Genesis, and you'll just you have that in your mind.

There's God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

And so genuine truthful reconciliation that includes restoration of us with God and with us and one another, our brother, our sister.

Where is your brother?

That's the second question.

Where is your sister?

That's the second question.

So we we're desperate for that.

Ernest Hemingway tells the story of a Spanish father and his teenage son, and we know these stories.

I mean, it's it's it's it transcends culture, and the relationship with the father and son became strained and eventually, you know, was was shattered.

And so when the rebellious son, his name was Paco, a common Spanish name, he runs away from home.

His father began this his father began to pursue him, this long search, arduous search to find his son.

And as a last resort, the exhausted father placed an ad in a Madrid newspaper.

Now, this is this story, I've had this story for a long time.

So we don't place ads in newspapers anymore.

But he places an ad in a newspaper.

Today it would be he would post it on Facebook or Snapchat or TikTok.

And it and it but he he posts this ad in the Madrid newspaper.

Here's the ad.

Dear Paco, please meet me in front of the newspaper office at noon.

All is forgiven, love Father.

Now, as as Hemingway tells the story, the next day at noon, in front of the newspaper office, there were 800 young men, all named Paco, who came to seek forgiveness from their father.

You see what I'm getting at?

There's a hunger for reconciliation.

So what does God do?

Last week, we we answered the question.

He asked, Where are you?

We concluded we shared Jesus is the answer to the first question we address.

Where are you?

The question reveals the separation between humanity and God.

It also reveals God's heart of pursuit, culminating in Jesus.

God becoming man.

And the baby of Jesus born that first Christmas, he lives this perfect life.

He surrenders to the Roman and Jewish leadership to be beaten and crucified.

And in so he takes all of sin, all of brokenness, all of shame upon himself.

So that is the answer to the question: where are you?

So what does God do to begin to answer the second question?

It really is the same.

It's the gospel.

But here's what he does: he bursts, he brings into existence a new family based on a new covenant.

See, God is already at work at the beginning to answer the dilemma of family.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were all involved in creation.

I'll just mention that.

And so he birthed this new family, the church.

And so we we see in the New Testament where Jesus begins to build this new family.

He picks 12.

And he goes, he just, you know, the way of Jesus.

You hear us talk about the up in and out, up in and out, the triangle.

Some of that, some of you are familiar with that.

You come to our membership class, we really explain it, which is a shameless plug for next Saturday night.

And so the up in and out, so so up is with the Father.

Jesus went, he spent time, he pulled away to go be with his father.

And so he comes back, and his disciples are all standing there, and they say, Jesus, would you teach us to pray?

Jesus says, Sure.

Why would I not want to teach you the way of God and the things of God and how to come to God?

And so he goes into what we call the Lord's Prayer, right?

My Father who art in heaven.

My Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Any problem?

Did I miss out?

Did I miss a word?

Oh, oh, is it not my father?

He said, pray this way.

Not my not my father.

Our father.

Our father.

Who is in heaven?

Hallowed be thy name.

The apostle Paul.

You read Paul's letters.

The Apostle Paul was not one of the original twelve.

He he is radically saved.

He persecutes the church in the early, uh, the early stages of the church.

He's persecuting the church.

And God radically, radically saves him.

And so he writes much of the New Testament.

He travels, plants churches, goes to another area.

He writes a letter back to the church that he plants.

And so he's writing all these letters.

He writes letters to individuals.

But in Paul's letter, the phrase our Lord occurs 53 times.

The phrase, as Paul is talking about God, he uses the phrase our Lord 53 times.

Now, how many times do you think he used the phrase my Lord?

One time.

One time.

Is it wrong?

Is it wrong to come to God?

It's not because, you know, I'm I'm I'm going to teach this afternoon on the 23rd Psalm.

And that psalm begins with the sentence, the Lord is my shepherd.

You know, that whole song is from the perspective of a sheep.

We are sheep.

So it's not wrong to for you to approach God personally and to say, my Lord.

It's not wrong.

I'm trying to get you to understand the significance of we in the age of me.

Now back to God's question: where is your brother?

And Cain's question back to the father.

Am I my brother's keeper?

Am I my brother's keeper?

What's the answer?

What should the answer be?

Yes.

A big yes.

An emphatic yes.

You are your brother's keeper.

You can't love God without loving others.

And it starts in the family of God.

Went back to a little book that I've had for four or five years.

The title of the book is Responsible Siblings, written by a guy here from Atlanta named Jorge Mendoza.

And the whole book is about in the church.

We are all brothers and sisters, and we are meant to be responsible siblings.

So I am the baby of three boys.

And so my oldest brother still lives in his community.

He's nine years older than me.

He probably doesn't look nine years older than me because my hair is super white.

His is still black.

Don't understand that.

He loves it.

It's fine.

But I had another brother that was seven years older than me.

And listen, they used to abuse me and terrorize me as I grew up.

I mean, they did.

They abused me and terrorized me.

Sinfully.

But what do you think they did when somebody else wanted to mess with me, pick on me, and and and threaten me?

Listen, my brother Butch and Eddie, they were scared of nothing.

Scared of nothing.

Butch is a little guy.

He's a little guy, like I'm a big guy.

But I I mean, I, you know, he we all come out of construction work.

Eddie was an engineer.

I mean, my my daddy spanked me one time because I wouldn't stand up for myself and fight another boy.

And the next day I whipped his toe.

I just, my point is we looked out for one another.

In the age of me, how do we become focused on the we?

1 John 4, 20 and 21.

If someone says, I love God, but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar.

For if we don't love people, we can see.

How can we love God whom we cannot see?

And He has given us this command.

Those who love God must also love their fellow believers.

Now, hear me on this.

Jesus didn't die on the cross for you just to forgive you of your sins so you can go to heaven when you die.

Hear me on this.

The gospel is not a ticket to heaven.

The gospel is about bringing heaven to earth.

We, your kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

So he saves you and he puts you in a community so that community would, the power of community can reflect the heart of Jesus better than the individual can.

Cyprian of Carthage, one of the early church fathers, he says, you cannot have God for your father unless you have the church for your mother.

That's an interesting quote, isn't it?

Now here's so here's what I need a couple of things.

About to finish here.

We experience what we know as sanctification through community.

What is sanctification?

Sanctification is the process of us becoming and taking on the character of Jesus, becoming like Jesus and taking on the character of Jesus.

So you are outside of the family of God, you don't know God, you hear the gospel, you respond to the gospel, and you are now a part of the community of faith called the church, but you are rough around the edges.

You're rough around the edges.

And it might take a little while, and it takes being in relationship with others to hone you and to shape you.

That's the gift and the purpose of marriage.

Marriage is not given to us by God just for our happiness, it's given to us for us to become holy.

And nothing exposes you like marriage.

And all the married people said that's why listen, I don't I don't do a lot of counseling.

I just don't.

It's just not my gift.

I love to do premarital counseling.

I love to do premarital preparation.

I love it.

Why?

Because they are so happy.

They are so happy.

They're giddy.

They're giddy.

They are in love.

They don't have a clue about what is going to happen.

They don't.

When they come back to the honeymoon, they have no clue.

And you come back and the process of sanctification begins to happen, doesn't it?

I love it.

So I love I love Russ, if you do a wedding, I mean I have I require counseling because I'm like, I'm not going to.

Let's prepare you as much as we can.

But I enjoy it because they're happy they're giddy.

I mean, it's fun.

Sanctification.

Here's what Joseph Hellerman says.

He says, spiritual formation, which is spiritual growth, growing into the image of Christ, it occurs primarily in the context of community.

It has to.

You don't sit by yourself or live by yourself as a hermit, and you don't have any way to rub shoulders with people and become aware of your shortcomings.

People who remain connected with their brothers and sisters in the local church almost invariably grow in self-understanding.

They mature in their ability to relate in healthy ways to God and to their fellow human beings.

This is especially the case for those courageous Christians who stick it out through the often messy process of interpersonal discord and conflict resolution.

Long-term interpersonal relationships are the crucible of genuine progress in the Christian life.

People who stay grow.

People who leave do not grow.

Let me preface.

Matthew 8, 15 through 20.

Let me just kind of abbreviate that passage for the sake of time.

If someone sins against you, if there is an issue, you go to them.

You don't go to gossip and talk to somebody else about it.

If there is an offense, you go to that person.

If there is an offense, you got a problem with me, don't talk.

Come to me.

I want to be an approachable person.

And I have, I have, I mean, people, I've said things, I mean, I've had conflict with people in the church.

I mean, I've had disagreements.

Some of my best friends, they're just, you know, we've had some different, you know, we've had some disagreements or or or things that we didn't agree on.

Don't talk with others.

You go to them hoping that there's reconciliation.

If it doesn't work, you go back with somebody else for the two of you.

Then if he or she want to accept the church's decision, treat that person as a pagan.

Now, this is a very, this is a this is an outlier.

This is one the severe situation.

But here's what he says.

This is what Jesus says.

I tell you the truth.

Whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven.

Whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.

I'm still chewing on that.

But here's what it tells me is the way that we live here, there are consequences.

It affects heavenly, it affects what happens in a heavenly realm.

I tell you, I'd also tell you this: if two of you agree on earth concerning anything you ask, my Father in heaven will do it for you.

If how many of you?

Two or more, for wherever, for where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.

He says this in the context of discipline and correction.

Martin Lord Jones, famous preacher, said a great test of whether we are truly Christian is our willingness to seek reconciliation with a brother who has sinned against us.

Diedrich Bonhoeffer, you've heard I quoted him before.

He says, Nothing, this is so interesting how he says this, nothing can be more cruel than the leniency which abandons others to sin.

Nothing can be more cruel than the leniency that abandoned others to sin.

Here's what it says if I know, if I know that somebody has sinned in their life, if I'm not willing to sit down with them, it's cruel.

That's what he says.

Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one's community back from the path of sin.

Now we we don't think correction and discipline is a good thing.

And that might be that might be the product of the culture of me.

Who are you to correct me?

Where the question, what we're talking about, is how can we become the church of we in the age of me?

So three things, three, three application steps.

Number one is this life is meant to be shared.

Life is shared.

Doesn't happen automatically, vulnerability and true life.

Some of you have it.

Some of you have relationships in your community.

You have those close relationships.

Sometimes it's organized, sometimes it's more organic.

Number two, conflict does not have to have the last word.

Conflict does not have to have the last word.

Conflict is normal, it comes up, but it does not have to win.

Number three, we carry each other to God.

We carry each other to God.

We carry each other to God.

And when the church, listen, when the church gets this in our culture, we will potentially wake up and experience spiritual awakening, potentially revival.

Is because of the influence of our church family.

There's really no other, there's really really no other explanation.

It's because this church has loved and served the community of Walnut Grove High School and the community of education in all of Walton County.

That's the only reason.

Because of that, I had I've had the chance to build a relationship with a couple members of this family.

And in a in a and in a midst of tragedy.

Has opened a door.

And so I want you to pray for the Callahan family.

I want us to, as a community, pray for the Callahan family.

Pray for them.

A mother and a wife taken at way too young of an age.

Eight-year-old and a five-year-old child.

Pray for them.

Pray that today that they will be comforted and the gospel will be proclaimed.

So would y'all would y'all pray?

Let's pray together.

Father, God, would you bring us to a place where in this age of me that the church would really become about we.

So how do we do that?

We we the gospel itself says we we surrender, we we surrender ourselves, we humble ourselves, we come to the end of ourselves, we come to the end of ourselves.

And when we are at the end of ourselves, we're broken down, then you promise to build us up, to build us up into a community, a community that even the gates of hell will not prevail against.

A community that reflects Jesus, a community that carries the power of the gospel and the word of God and the presence of God as we live with the Spirit of God inside of us.

And so, Father, would you do a work this morning, maybe for the person that's never put their faith in Jesus?

God, would you do a work in the heart of someone this morning that is holding on to a grudge that has been there for years and they out of conviction, they they need to come and let go of that, and sometimes it's come to the altar and physically saying, I am gonna leave it here and I'm gonna seek reconciliation.

There might be a need for some of you to walk across the room and share a word of reconciliation with someone.

There might be the need for you on the way out today to make a phone call and ask for forgiveness and seek reconciliation.

When we listen, we've got to stop being defensive, we've got to stop being victims, and we've got to stand on the truth of the word of God and surrender to what he has spoken and how he has worked.

Where is your brother?

Where's your brother?

It's right here.

He's right here, where's your sister?

She's right here, and I'm gonna carry, I'm gonna carry the burdens with them.

I'm gonna carry my brother, I'm gonna carry my sister.

So, Father, would you work?

Build us into a community of faith that reflects the character of Jesus in Jesus' name.

And we really consider it a privilege.

We know that you could do anything with your time.

And so the fact that you're uh tuning in with us, we we just we really appreciate it, and we're so grateful for you doing that.

And really hope that God spoke to you and that you were challenged around his word this morning as we've talked about uh really what it means to be an authentic, real community, and how God is calling us not into just relationship with him, but he's also calling us into relationship with others.

And I love this idea that man uh we're the city set on the hill and that people will know us by our love for one another.

And so it's how we actually relate to each other within the family of God that will be a light to those around us.

And so uh we hope for your challenge and encouraged around this idea, and we we beg you, we say it all the time that we can't you can't do this life alone.

And so um, man, we would highly challenge you to find some community somewhere.

Um, and we offer groups here at church.

This is one of the things that we do.

We offer a group life, and so if you're looking to be a part of a community group, we're kicking those off soon.

Um we have tons of groups that you can be a part of.

And listen, we know it's messy and not any group is perfect because people aren't perfect, but it's God's design, and you will grow when you are sitting in a group and you are doing life with people.

That's the way we do it, and so um, that's the way growth happens.

And so if you're looking to take next steps on your journey, um, we would highly encourage that one.

Jump into a group this fall, and if Or uh reviewing for the first time, or if you just decided to follow Jesus for the first time and you want to surrender your life to him and journey the rest of your life with him.

We'd love to give you some resources for that.

So if you would start to follow the 97000, start to follow our 97000.

And again, we just want to partner with you, give you some resources for your journey.

Uh because that's what this thing is.

It is a lifelong journey of taking steps towards Jesus and all that he's calling us into.

So we'd love to invite you into that.

Awesome.

Yeah.

So if there's anything that we can do for you, please let us know.

We're always happy to help.

Um come join us next Sunday in person.

That'd be fantastic.

We're we don't bite.

Um we're not weird like that.

So just come hang out with us.

And uh and we just would love to meet you, love to shake a hand.

Um and uh yeah.

So come hang out with us.

If there's anything we can do for you this week, please let us know.

And um we'll see you next week.