Saved People, Serve People

Awesome.

Well, good morning again.

Uh my name is uh Nathan, and I'm one of the pastors here at Church at the Grove, and I'm typically down at our social circle location.

And uh it's been my privilege and honor to be up here a few times this summer with Rust being out, which by the way, I don't know if anybody saw a little sneaky Rust right here for just a moment to come in here and just see the baptisms.

He was excited to be here and just to celebrate with the families.

Uh, but it's great to be up here at Walnut Grove and to be broadcasting it down to Social Circle this morning.

So good morning, Social Circle.

And people that are watching online, thank you so much for joining us.

And I just want to take a moment for, especially for the people that are just joining us online and at Social Circle, uh, we just were able to celebrate three baptisms.

And uh that's incredible.

And for those of you that maybe haven't been with us this year the whole time, at the beginning of the year, one of the things that we just kind of asked the Lord to do uh was to allow us to baptize more people than we ever have in previous years.

And our kind of our faith goal was like we would love to see an average of one person a week get baptized.

Um, so that would be 50 or more baptisms throughout the year.

And so today we keep count of those things because we think it's important.

And today we baptized our 28th person um so far this year.

Yeah, that's phenomenal.

And uh for a church our size, man, that's just an incredible thing between both campuses to be able to baptize that many people and to celebrate life being changed and transformed right here in our midst.

And the great thing is that we're only halfway through the year and the best is yet to come, and we're believing that God's gonna provide and see more lives change and more people crash the waters of baptism.

So we're excited about that.

Uh, a couple other things, just real quick, just to kind of keep you guys up to date with some of the things that are going on behind the scenes here at Church of the Grove that you maybe don't hear and see on Sundays.

Uh, one of the things that we talked about at the beginning of the year was that we also wanted uh to be a church that was planting other churches.

And so that's kind of been at the DNA at the core of who we are as a church since the very beginning.

And so we wanted to be a church planting church.

And uh this uh past year we said we wanted to start a new local congregation in uh this kind of surrounding area.

And so through the help of Larry Black, who just read that testimony and a few other churches partnering together, um, we are on target to plant a brand new church in the metropolitan huge city of Good Hope.

Um, and so we're super excited about that.

Uh the Lord's already orchestrating some of those plans, he's opening doors and opportunities, possibly meeting location.

He's starting to bring together a team of people that have a heart for that community.

And I don't know if anybody's driven through Good Hope lately.

You probably haven't, unless you just drive through Good Hope.

And uh there's a lot of neighborhoods that are popping out over there.

And so we're excited that we kind of get to be on the forefront of planning a church there and seeing more people get connected to the Jesus and have their lives transformed over there.

And so, guys, if you can be praying for that, uh, that new venture and be praying for God to just raise up a church planner.

We've got to have somewhat of a team, um, but we need a really a leader to kind of lead that congregation.

And so just be praying with us about that.

And maybe you're in that area.

Maybe you live in the Good Hope community around Good Hope, or you just want to be in the starting phases of a new church, man.

We would encourage you to reach out to us and we'll get you more information about how you can connect and serve there.

Um, and we're excited about this fall.

This fall is gonna be great.

It's gonna be a big fall for us.

I feel like the past couple of years have been uh difficult and hard, and God's been kind of pruning us, and it's been kind of a place where it's been like, hey, we need to get healthy as a church, we need to develop leaders, we need to disciple people better.

And I feel like this fall, God's gonna open up doors and we're gonna see the fruit of some of the hard work that we have been doing as a church over the last couple of years.

And so we're excited about that, excited about some of the events that are coming up this fall and what we're kind of anticipating the Lord to do.

And um, two weeks from today, uh, Russ will be back.

Russ, who is our uh campus pastor, lead pastor here, um, he'll be back from his sabbatical after taking two months off.

And so we're excited to have him back as well in two weeks.

It's gonna be great.

But uh this morning, uh, we're continuing and coming to the end of a series called How to Bless Your Neighbor.

And over the course of this series, what we wanted to accomplish was give people practical handlebars of how you can be a blessing with the people that live nearest to you, the people you work with, the people that you do life with.

And sadly, the church has taken on a reputation where we haven't been full of love, we haven't been full of blessing.

And as a result, the church has a negative connotation a lot of times, especially with unchurched people.

And we said we wanted to be a people, we wanted to be a church that was a blessing to the communities around us.

And so we had this acronym of blessed where we said that we first we begin with prayer.

We start praying for our neighbors.

We talked about bless every home, this really cool tool that we have uh available to you guys.

You can find out more about that in our Church at the Grove app.

We talked about listening to our neighbors, not just with our ears, but also with our eyes, listening to the people around us, listening to the voice of God and the doors that He's opening up around us.

Last week, Pat and Dylan did a fantastic job breaking down what it looked like to eat.

Um, and I love we go to a church where one of the things that they tell you to do is eat.

Like, can we get an amen?

Like, that's just doesn't get any better than that.

And so it's the power of the table and the power of being able to sit across from someone else and hear their story and have walls and barriers kind of be lowered because you're sitting around each other at the over the course of a meal.

And today I want us to talk about something that's near and dear to my heart, which is serving.

Serving.

One of the greatest ways that we can show love to other people is through serving.

Now, um, I don't know if anybody has watched the show Dirtiest Jobs, but I'm a big dirtiest jobs kind of fan.

Mike Rowe is the host of that show.

He hosts several other shows.

And if you haven't seen the show, it's on the Discovery Show Network, and he goes around and he follows, he apprentices these people all across the country, and he finds out some of the most dirty jobs that you could possibly imagine.

He does them for a day.

So from cattle farming to uh picking up roadkill on the side of the road to emptying uh septic tanks to cleaning up inside of sewers.

He's done all of these things.

And we were watching this last night, and my kids were watching one of them, and they were just going, ew, that's so gross.

But that's what Mike does.

And what he wants to do is he wants to highlight some of the dirtiest jobs that people do and the impact their dirty jobs have on our everyday life.

And I heard a TED talk that Mike Rowe gave a few years back, and in the TED talk, he can is convinced of this idea that's being perpetuated in our society and our culture today, that there's this war on work.

And when he says work, what he's intentionally saying is that he wants that there's this war on people doing the dirty jobs of that need to be done.

That there's a lack of trade school people going into trade school, there's a lack of uh people working in the infrastructure, and we're seeing that kind of crumble around us.

And he's saying that there's this war on work that's ultimately all around us.

And he says that there's this lie that has been kind of sold to us and the culture at large that tells you that your job, your mission in life is just to chase after the things that make you happiest.

And so go after your passion.

Don't do anything that's going to make you uncomfortable.

Don't do anything that's going to bring pain.

Don't do anything that is going to make you have to sacrifice in your life.

And so that's kind of the lie that's been told to us over and over and over in our culture at large.

And as a result, what have we reaped?

Well, what we have reaped is more anxiety than we've ever seen before.

We've seen more depression, suicides are on the rise.

We've seen a disconnection, a pattern of loneliness that happens all around us in the communities around us.

And so we're told that chasing after our own happiness and chasing after our own dreams is the way to go.

But what it's ultimately reaped in our lives is not something that we ultimately want.

And so Mike has said this quote.

I love this quote in his TED talk.

He said, People that do dirty jobs are happy people.

They are balanced people.

Roadkill workers whistle while they work.

Um, and that's a glib statement that's meant to probably be a little funny when he's communicating it, but it has such profound truth that some of the people that do the dirtiest jobs that serve in such seemingly insignificant ways have massive impacts, and they find their joy in serving.

They find their joy in doing the dirty jobs of our world and our culture today.

Now, this shouldn't be any surprise to us because this is ultimately how Jesus told us to live.

Not how he just told us to live, but it was how he modeled his life.

He wanted us as followers of Jesus, if you put your faith and your trust in him, he wanted us to be servants.

He wanted us to follow his example.

He wanted us to love the people that are unlovable.

He wanted us to go and to do the dirty jobs of this world to make an internal impact in the world to come.

We are called to be servants.

And as I said, Jesus not only taught us this, but he modeled this.

And we see this in one of the greatest stories I feel like in Scripture in the life of Jesus, which is found in John chapter 13.

John 13 · chapter mention

If you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn there.

But Jesus is coming to the end of his life.

He's got a few hours left here on earth, and he knows that his time with his disciples are short, that the people are going to come and arrest him in a very short amount of time, and then eventually he's going to go and to hang on a cross for the sins of the world.

And so his time is coming to the end, and he is going to do the unthinkable in the midst of the least in a little bit of time that he has left.

Now, what would you do if you knew that you had only a few moments or a few hours or a few days left in your life?

Say you had good health and you could do anything you wanted to do, what would be the things that you would choose to do?

If you ever saw that movie about the bucket list, like would you go and try to check off some things off your bucket list?

Are you gonna go and skydive perhaps?

Are you gonna go and hike a mountain that you've always wanted to hike?

Are you gonna get on a plane and you're gonna fly to the beach or drive to the beach and just sit on the shores of the beach and watch the ocean come in?

Are you gonna spend time with your family?

What are you gonna do in the last minutes of your life?

Because I think it says a lot about who you are and what you value.

And Jesus, in the final moments of his life, does the unthinkable.

Him and his disciples are sharing in this Passover meal together.

It's the last time that they'll eat a meal together here on earth before he is uh resurrected.

And here he they are sitting in this room, and you would think that Jesus in this moment would have some profound thing that he would maybe say, but instead he does something that you could least expect.

This is what it says in John chapter 13.

John 13 · chapter mention

It says, before the Passover celebration, Jesus knew that his hour had come to leave this world and return to his father.

He had loved his disciples during his ministry on earth, and now he loved them to the very end.

It was time for supper, and the devil had already prompted Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus.

Jesus knew that the Father had given him authority over everything, and that he had come from God and would return to God.

So what did he do?

So he got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, and poured water into a basin.

Then he began to wash the disciples' feet, drying them with a towel he had around them.

This is one of the most profound actions that Jesus takes, other than the cross, in my opinion.

Where Jesus in this last moment will get up from the table and he goes and he washes the disciples' feet.

Now, this seems weird to us because we don't typically wash our feet, but we live in a very different society than back in biblical times in ancient Jerusalem.

Jesus and his disciples would have worn sandals everywhere they would have gone.

The streets are dusty.

They're not paved roads like we have today.

You can imagine the feet of the disciples are probably not very pleasant.

I don't think there were a whole lot of pedicure shops that were available in Jerusalem.

They had cracked feet and nails were long and they were probably yellow and just nasty feet.

And Jesus is going to get up and he's going to wash these feet.

I have this kind of just I don't like feet.

Let me just say that.

I don't like my own feet.

I don't like other people's feet.

I don't want to be around feet.

Um and uh my boys, man, they have the stinkiest feet that you can possibly imagine.

Um they're they're uh soon to be five and then seven.

And I'm telling you, like we have to get like the spray out, and we've got to spray their shoes like every time they take them off because they just smell horrendous.

It's terrible.

I don't know how if you've had boys, man, you know the pain.

And I'm sure girls too.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Girls are prettier than guys, and they take care of their feet probably a little bit better.

But one time my wife, she gave uh me a gift certificate um to go to the foot palace.

Has anybody ever been to the foot palace in Athens?

Yeah.

And so we were gonna do this like really sweet romantic thing where we both got uh a foot massage at the foot palace.

And so we show up and I'm just like, I just can't do this.

Like, this is I don't I don't want to touch my feet.

I don't really want somebody else to touch my feet.

And so I was like, is there any way like I can just use the money and you can like rub my head or something or rub my arms?

Like, just don't touch my feet.

I think I was more tense after the massage than I was before.

Um, I just don't like feet.

Feet are dirty, feet are nasty, and to think that Jesus, the moment this man that the creator of the universe, the one that sustains the world, would get up from dinner and humble himself in such a way where he would begin to wash the disciples' feet, it's just unfathomable.

To think that he would lower himself to this level.

Back in biblical times, uh, a great host would make sure that the guests' feet were washed.

But the host himself would never be the one that would wash the feet, it would always be a servant.

And so Jesus in this moment is saying, I'm not the master, but I'm the servant.

And he doesn't only wash his friends' feet, but he also it makes it very clear in uh John chapter 13, it makes it very clear that Jesus wasn't just washing his friend's feet, but he's also washing the one that he knew was about to betray him.

John 13 · chapter mention

Jesus washes his enemy's feet, the one that would betray him and rebel against him as an act of service and an act of love.

And I love what verse 3 says.

Verse 3 says, Jesus knew that the Father had given him authority over everything, and that he had come from God and would return to God, so he got up.

So he has all authority in all the world, and what does he do?

He chooses to serve.

Now, in our world, in our culture today, this is not the go-to action, right?

That the people that have power, the people that have authority, the people that have titles are not typically the ones that serve, but rather are the ones that are served.

I can remember hearing a sermon or a message from uh Andy Stanley, and uh he was invited to go to uh the inauguration of Barack Obama.

And uh before he was uh this is the first inauguration, and as he's there, there was this church service that they took part in prior to the inauguration, and Andy Stanley was invited to speak at this inaugurational event.

And so here they are, they're standing in this church chapel uh scenario, and he's talking to who will soon be the most powerful person on the planet.

And uh there's cabinet members, there's his family, there's other members of Congress, and he talked about in this interview or sermon that I was listening to, he talked about just being kind of overwhelmed with just the pressure of what do you say to this group of people?

And he said, most people, when they go and they are speaking into these moments, they typically will stay to something in the Old Testament, something about just a general kind of verse about the love of God, and they'll just kind of go with that.

But he really felt convicted that he needed to talk about Jesus, and so he came to this passage in John chapter 13 and talked about Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.

John 13 · chapter mention

He said this, he said, Stanley asked the question of the room.

He said, What do you do when you realize that you are the most powerful person in the room?

You leverage that power for the benefit of those other people in the room.

Jesus would say to do less than that would be to declare yourself greater than he is.

Mr.

President, you have an awfully big room.

My prayer to you is to leverage that power for the stewardship of our nation.

What a profound statement.

To think of the most powerful person in the room, and our job as the most powerful person is to serve.

That's what Jesus ultimately demonstrated here in John chapter 13.

John 13 · chapter mention

He humbled himself, all authority is given to him, and he washed the feet of his disciples.

Listen to what it says down in verse 12.

Uh it says, Jesus replied, A person who is bathed all over does not need to be, not need to wash except for his feet to be entirely clean.

And you, his disciples, are clean, but not all of you, for Jesus knew that one would soon betray him.

That is what he meant when he said, Not all of you are clean.

Now, verse 12.

After washing their feet, he put on his robe and sat down and asked, Do you understand what I am doing?

You call me teacher and Lord, and you are right, because that's what I am.

And since I, your teach Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other's feet.

I have given you an example to follow.

Do as I have done to you.

I tell you the truth.

Slaves are not greater than their master, nor is the messenger more important than the one who sends the message.

Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.

So Jesus not only modeled what it looked like to be a servant, but he also said that you and I are to do the same.

We are called to serve those around us.

We are called to take the lowly place in our world.

If we find ourselves as the most powerful person in the room, or if we find ourselves in any room, we seek to serve those that are around us.

This is who Jesus was.

This is how he modeled his life, and this is what he commands his followers to look like.

We take on the DNA of our Father, and we serve those around us.

I love how uh Paul puts it in Philippians chapter two, probably one of the greatest uh scriptures in all of the Bible.

Uh Philippians chapter two, it goes like this.

He says, So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affliction affliction and sympathy, uh complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord in one mind.

Then listen to this, verse three do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

Let each of you not look only to his own interest, but also to the interest of others.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed upon him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

So Paul is telling us here that we need to follow the example of Jesus as well, who was someone that humbled himself.

He was someone that emptied himself, he was someone that looked towards others and considered their needs ahead of his own.

Now, this is hard.

This is really, really difficult because there's something that's natural within us where we look to ourselves first.

We want to make sure our needs are met first.

We aren't looking for the needs of others oftentimes around us and trying to seek their welfare before we seek our own welfare.

But here's one of the core values of Church at the Grove and what we're ultimately about as a church is that saved people, people that have found Jesus, serve people.

Save people, serve people.

That's who we should be.

We should be servants of all the people that we come in contact with.

Serving requires that we empty ourselves.

You can't be full of the Holy Spirit and the love of God if you're full of the love of self.

You can't.

You can't be someone that's lowering yourself and becoming a servant of all people if you're someone that's so full of yourself and making much of who you are that you miss out on looking and seeing the needs of the people around you.

We are called to be the servants of the one those that are around us.

Jesus said it this way Matthew chapter 20, verse 26.

Matthew 20:26

He says, But among you it will be different.

Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant.

And whoever wants to be first among you must become your slave.

For even the Son of Man came not to be served.

But to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.

This is what Jesus was all about.

Jesus taught this, he modeled this, and he commands us to follow suit that we are called to serve those around us.

Now here's the sad reality.

In the modern kind of church of today, we sadly have said and equated spiritual maturity with spiritual knowledge.

And so how do you tell that somebody is spiritually mature?

Well, it's it's based on typically the information they know.

So it's about maybe how many Bible studies they've been a part of, how often they attend church, maybe some classes that they took on a certain subject that finds themselves in scripture.

It's about knowledge and it's not about action.

But true spiritual maturity is not reflected in how much spiritual knowledge we have, but rather how well we love those around us.

And the best way we love those around us is by serving them, by lowering ourselves, by considering the needs of others beyond ourselves.

This is how we show spiritual maturity.

Not by how much we know, but what we do and how we love and serve those around us.

This is what we are called to do.

This is who we are called to be as a church.

We are called to be the servants of all, to do the unthinkable and serve the people around us.

And here's the beautiful thing.

The world and the culture around us says that you chase what you value.

You make life all about yourself.

You kind of do you, you be happy, seize the day, let it be all about you.

Follow your passions, chase your dreams.

Let it be all about you feeding yourself, and you'll finally be happy.

And here's what happens: you end up not being happy and you're miserable.

But those that put others' needs ahead of their own, those that lower themselves and serve those around them, those are the ones that find true joy and happiness.

Those are the ones that ultimately find what life is all about.

If you are full of anxiety and full of just depression and different things that are kind of going on that aren't supposed to be there in your body and you're struggling with that, one of the best things you can do is serve others.

I can't tell you how many conversations I have with people that are struggling with anxiety, and in no way am I diminishing that or saying that this is a silver bullet.

I'm not saying that.

But sometimes we can get so focused in on ourselves that we're missing out on the needs of those that are around us.

And sometimes when we take the eyes off of ourselves and we start to look towards others, man, God brings freedom and life into our being.

If you want your kids to follow Jesus, man, one of the greatest things you can do is you serve Jesus and you serve those around you.

That makes the bigger impact than anything you'll probably ever teach your kids.

But by your kids seeing you serve and love those around you, you're teaching them what Jesus ultimately is about.

Sadly, in our world, in our culture today, and in the church culture in America, not only have we elevated spiritual knowledge over actually doing the action of loving and serving those around us, but we've also become just consumers.

And so we come to a gathering like this, or maybe when we're looking at what church we're gonna maybe belong to, sadly, a lot of times our mentality is that we look at the church and we go, well, what can they give to me?

What can I give?

How are the children's programs?

How's the preaching?

How's the worship?

What activities are they gonna have for my family?

And those things aren't bad in and of themselves, but when that's our heartbeat, what are we doing?

We're feeding the self.

We're making us self-focused, it's about us, it's about me, it's about my family, and that's not the way of Jesus.

The way of Jesus is saying, How can I come and how can I participate in the mission that God is calling me on?

How can I partner alongside like-minded believers and how can we reach a community for Jesus?

How can I get together with my neighbors and lovingly serve them and show them the way of Jesus?

That's what we're called to do.

When we serve others, they win because they're lifted up and we win because our pride is torn down.

That's what we're called to be about.

We are called to serve.

Serving is not what we do, it's who we are.

We are servants.

We are not spiritual consumers, we are spiritual contributors.

A church doesn't exist for the church and the people that are here.

We exist for the people that have yet to come here.

And we are called to serve them.

We are called to be a blessing to them.

When Caitlin and I first got married, um, we bought our first house not far from here, actually, in Monroe.

And uh up until that point, one of the greatest examples of servant leadership that I had ever seen was uh Pastor Russ and Jill.

Um they they made it their mission in life, and where they said they live in the Ansley Lake subdivision here in Loganville, and they said we are the chief missionaries in a hut in a town or a neighborhood of 105 huts, I think is the number.

And man, I can't tell you the number of people that they loved and prayed with and served and how many people have come to church at the Grove from Ansley Lake subdivision because of the influence that Russ and Jill had.

And so when Caitlin and I bought our first house and we moved in, man, we wanted that same mentality.

We wanted to be missionaries right in the neighborhood where we belonged.

And so the first thing we thought of was like, who can we invite to church?

And I felt like the Lord just going, Nathan, before you jump to that, why don't you just serve the people around you?

And so there was this lady that lived next door to us, she was single, and uh eventually I come to know her story, and she had had a very, very difficult past.

Um, she had uh a very terrible relationship with the church.

There was some abuse that had happened earlier in her life.

Um, she had been divorced.

I mean, just a really tragic story.

And she had not just a hatred towards followers of Jesus in the church, but I think she had this kind of tendency where she didn't want to have anything to do with God either.

And so I'm out mowing my grass one day, and I just feel like the Lord's saying, Nathan, cut her grass.

And so I drive my little Marie lawmower over there, and I cut her grass.

And then the week later, grass is up again, and I'm driving over, then I cut her grass, and this just became the routine.

It cost me an extra 20 minutes, maybe a few tanks of gas.

But I'm telling you, cutting her grass lowered walls and barriers down that had been there for years.

And I'm not saying that to pat myself on the back, I'm showing you the power of serving this morning.

And so I would cut her grass and eventually a relationship built, and she would be over at our house almost every single week, eating around our table.

And I shared Jesus with her, and we began this incredible friendship and relationship until the point where we launched the social circle campus, and one of the hardest things that Caitlin and my wife and I ever had to do was to bring her over one night and say, Hey, um, we're moving.

And we said we were moving, and I'm telling you, she just broke down in tears.

And she said, You are some of the first people that I felt like really loved me.

And she's just one story, and there's so many people that live in your neighborhood that you work with on a regular basis, people that you interact with at the store, and they're hurting and they're broken, and they don't know truly what it feels like to be loved.

And you, as a follower of Jesus, have the opportunity to lower yourself, to consider others more important than yourself and to serve.

And when you serve, you are showing the love of Jesus in a way that people desperately, desperately need.

And so, how do we bless our neighbors?

Well, we do it by beginning with prayer.

We do it by listening with our ears and with our eyes of what's going on around us.

We do that by eating with them at the table, but we do it by serving.

That's what we have been called to be.

That's the church that we are called to be, a church that serves those around us, considers others better than we consider ourselves.

And man, when we serve others and put others' people's needs ahead of our own, God does remarkable things in our midst.

Who do you need to serve this week?

Whose grass do you need to cut?

Who do you need to maybe pay for their meal at a restaurant or pick up their grocery tab or whatever it might be?

But who do you need to serve this week and what difference could it make?

How incredible would it be if we came back in here next Sunday and we had stories of ways that we had all served the people around us.

And there were people that we were bringing along with us because they were so impacted by the way that we served them that they wanted more of the love of Christ in their life.

It's not a magic bullet, it doesn't break down every wall and barrier, but I'm telling you, you serve, and God uses that faithfulness to do incredible things in the lives of people.

So who is it that you need to serve this week?

What practical thing can you do to serve those around you?

Lord Jesus, I thank you so much for who you are.

And Lord, I thank you for being a God that set the perfect example of what it looks like to be a servant.

Lord, as the King of kings and the Lord of Lords, the one that holds the world together, Lord, that you would come down to earth and just take on the form of man, blows our minds.

But then, Lord, you would just, even in the final moments of your life, Lord, that you would lower yourself to a place where you would wash the dirty feet of your disciples.

And Lord, I just know that in my life there's so often that pride gets into the way in the way, that I start getting ahead that's too big for myself, and I begin to think that I'm more important than I really am.

Lord, help me to be the person you've called me to be.

Help us all to be the people you called us to be, Lord.

Help us to be people that will humble ourselves, that will serve those around us.

And Lord, that you would take our meager efforts of serving those around us, Lord, and that you would create a beautiful relationship, Lord, and help the love of your son Jesus to bring forth incredible fruit.

Lord, I pray that you would open up doors and opportunities for us to do just that, to serve this week.

Lord, I pray even in just this moment, Lord, I pray that you would put people's faces and names in our head that we can serve this week.

And Lord, give us the wisdom and the guidance to know exactly what we need to do.

But Lord, let us be a blessing to the world around us and let us serve those around us and see you work and move in powerful ways.

Lord, we love you.

We thank you again for this word and for this morning.

It's in your name we pray.

Amen.