Memorial Day Message 2022

Awesome.

Um, what a uh great time to start already this morning.

But um my name is Nathan.

I'm one of the pastors here at Church at the Grove.

I'm typically down at our social circle location.

Um, but it is a privilege and honor to be up here this morning with you guys.

Uh Russ, our lead pastor who's typically here at this campus, uh, is out.

He's on sabbatical for uh this month of June and July, and uh we're gonna miss him for sure, but we've got a great team of people that are gonna be filling in um while he's absent.

But not only am I here with you guys this morning, but I also get to be uh uh at Social Circle this morning through video.

Um so we're thankful for the power of technology and being able to be down there this well this morning and online.

Uh we know that there's a lot of people that are out for Memorial Day weekend, and we're jealous of you.

Let's just be honest.

Uh we're jealous that they're at the beach or the lake or wherever they're at.

Um, and so it's great that they're able to tune in as well for us.

But for those of you that don't know me and my family, um, I'm married to Caitlin.

We've been married for coming up on 14 years now, and we've got three kids.

We've got Sam, who's seven, and we've got Ben, who's four, and Elizabeth, who will be one next month.

And uh and so our family is just hectic and crazy, to say the least.

Um but one of the things um that happened probably eight or nine months ago that was probably one of the most terrifying experiences as a dad, um, was uh at bedtime for about two or three straight weeks, Sam, our oldest, um, was having these like really terrible nightmares.

And so he would uh we'd put them to bed, they share a room, the boys share a room, he's on the top bunk, and so he would go to sleep.

And when he would go to sleep, about an hour after he was asleep, we would start hearing this like screaming and crying, and he was just terrified.

And so I would run back there, and he would be sitting up in his bed, and he's like trembling, like I mean, just shaking with fear.

And he's so scared, he's crying, um, he's speaking gibberish.

I mean, he's not like fully alert and awake, and he keeps pointing to the fan in his room, the ceiling fan, and he's saying, the fan is trying to get me.

Um, and he says that over and over and over and over again.

And so the first thing you do is you're kind of like, is he seeing something that I'm not seeing?

Like, is there some type of like spirit in this room that I don't quite see that he's seeing?

And then we realize that he's having a night terror.

Anybody's kids ever have night terrors before?

It is terrifying.

I mean, it is so freaky when you hear your kids have night terrors before.

And so you first try to wake them up, which you learn that that's not the right thing to do.

You just want to try to get them to go back to sleep as quickly as possible.

And so get him to lay down on his pillow and eventually he goes back to sleep.

But even still to this day, um, him and I will have arguments about a ceiling fan.

Um and he'll say every night it's warm now in the summer months, and he'll say, uh, Daddy, we can't turn on the ceiling fan because the ceiling fan gives me bad dreams.

And I'm like, Sam, it doesn't give you bad dreams.

But trying to be reasonable to a seven-year-old is pointless.

Don't even try, don't waste your time.

Um, and so we don't turn the ceiling fan oftentimes on in their room.

But that's what fear does.

Fear has this way of making us make irrational decisions at times, and we've seen that over the course of the last two years.

Um, when the pandemic first started uh in March of 2020, I can remember getting groceries delivered to our house because everybody was too afraid to actually go to the store.

So we got groceries delivered to our house, and um, my wife was on the front porch with uh Clorox wipe, wiping off all of the groceries before they came into their house.

Anyone else do that, or were we the only ones?

Okay, so there's a few people.

All right, and that's crazy, but we were afraid.

We didn't know what to expect, we didn't know what this virus was, and so it made us do what we now looking back thought was irrational.

Um, you can see over the past couple of years that uh when there's been scarcity, people have acted and done crazy things.

In 2020, it was all about toilet paper, remember?

Remember when we didn't have toilet paper and everybody was freaking out and running around to store after store trying to find toilet paper and stockpiling as much as we possibly could.

Last year it was gas.

Um remember driving from gas station to gas station, so afraid that we were gonna actually run out of gas.

This is something that's a normal part of life, fear.

Um politicians have taken advantage of us being fearful.

And so if you watch a cable news channel or if you listen to many politicians, oftentimes they'll use fear in order to get you to do something, to vote for them, to give them money, to believe a certain way.

And it's so people, so peep, so many people have been so afraid and so uh pushed into the beliefs that they have that they've actually been able to ruin relationships and friendships that they've had for decades over personal political opinions.

It's crazy what fear will get us to do.

Fear will also allow us to go out and spend more money than we make and charge up uh tons of debt on credit cards to get things so that we can fit in with everybody else.

And so that's this fear, again, of missing out.

We do this with our kids all the time.

We don't want our kids to miss out on anything that this world has to offer.

And so we sign them up for every sports and every activity and every camp and every opportunity that's presented in front of us because we don't want our kids to miss out on what this world has for them, and we run crazy and we're busy and we have no margin in life.

And a lot of times it all comes back to fear.

We fear man, we fear the things of this world, we fear so much.

And that's what we want us to talk about this morning is that we fear so much because we fear God so little.

We fear so much because we fear God so little.

Um, we uh overcome this fear of so many things in our lives by learning to fear God.

I know that sounds a little bit counterintuitive, that the way that we overcome fear is to be fearful of the right things, but that's what I want us to talk about this morning.

Edmund Burke said it this way.

He said, He that fears God fears nothing else.

And that's what I want us to see this morning.

In order for us to overcome the fears of our lives, we must first pull back and understand who the Lord is and fear him.

Now, this is something that the Lord has really been kind of working in my life over the last several weeks on this idea of fearing him.

Um, I think it's easy for us to fall into uh the trap that the enemy, I think, likes to create for us that God is just a God of love, and he absolutely 100% is a God of love.

The scriptures tell us that over and over and over again.

We see that all through the demonstration of Jesus and him giving his life as a sacrifice for our sins.

And so we know that God is a God of love, but at the same time, God is a holy God.

He is righteous, he is just, he is incredible in his power, and his might and in his strength.

And sometimes we go away from that view of God and we move to a God of love because it's more palatable towards us.

If you were to go back to churches maybe 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago, you maybe heard a message preached on the fear of the Lord, but in today's world and society, it's not something that we even talk about very much.

And I want to talk about it this morning.

It's kind of like this, it's kind of like an optical illusion of sorts.

And so I've got a couple optical illusions.

Just tell me the first thing you see when you see this picture.

What do you see?

Who sees a duck?

All right, and who sees a rabbit?

All right, that's about an even split there.

Um, so you got a duck and you got a rabbit.

When I first saw that, I saw a duck.

It took me a minute to even see the rabbit, but I see a duck when I look at that right up front.

What about the next one?

What do y'all see when y'all see this?

Apple?

Who sees an apple first?

Okay, and who sees um two faces?

All right, so good.

So you kind of are split in between.

Just so you know, in case uh you were wondering, uh, you can actually take a buzzfeed test on these optical illusions and it'll give you your personality.

And so I did that.

And if you saw a uh duck first, uh then you are ambitious but insecure.

And I don't know if those are accurate, but that's pretty accurate when it comes to me, and that's what I saw for sure.

But these images give us a picture of what I'm talking about this morning.

That it's the same picture, but it's seen from two different perspectives.

That you can see that God is a God of love, that he's Abba Father, that he's someone that promises that he's never going to leave us or forsake us.

But at the same time, you also see the picture, and from a different vantage point, you're seeing that God is holy and just and righteous.

He is the great judge, that he is someone that should be feared and someone that should be held in honor and awe.

So it's not one or the other, it's both and.

These are both facets of who God is.

So what does it mean to fear the Lord?

It says in Proverbs chapter 9, verse 10, it says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

Proverbs 9:10

So if the beginning of wisdom, which the wisdom here is um more of like a street smarts, it's not like knowledge, but it's really about street smarts, and it's about shrewdness and technical skills and experience.

And so if that's how we get uh wisdom or the street smarts, it's because of the fear of the Lord, then what is the fear of the Lord?

Tim Keller says it this way: He says, Obviously, to be in the fear of the Lord is not to be scared of the Lord, even though the Hebrew word has overtones of respect and awe.

Fear in the Bible means to be overwhelmed, to be controlled by something, to fear the Lord is to be overwhelmed with wonder before the greatness of God and his love.

It means that because of his bright holiness and magnificent love, you find him fearfully beautiful.

That is why the more we experience God's grace and forgiveness, the more we experience a trembling awe and wonder before the greatness of all that he is and all that he has done.

Fearing him means bowing before him out of amazement at his glory and his beauty.

I heard another one say it this way.

He said, The fear of the Lord is the radical God-centeredness that shapes everything else in life.

And I love that picture when we get an accurate reflection and an accurate, accurate picture of who God is, that he is 100% a loving, gracious God to us.

But at the same time, he is a God that should be feared and rev and have reverence towards, then it centers everything, it shapes everything in our lives.

And this the person, Solomon, that wrote the Proverbs, he says again, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

So if we're gonna have the wisdom, if we're gonna have the street smarts, then we're gonna have to be people that fear the Lord.

And I don't know about you, but looking around our world and our culture today, I think we could use a little bit more wisdom, right?

And so for us to get to that place, if we're gonna get to a place where we're truly wise and we're truly following the Lord, then it begins with fearing Him.

Fearing the Lord makes us makes life better and makes you better at life.

Fearing the Lord makes life better and makes you better at life.

Listen to some of these things that have said throughout the scripture, because this is a common theme all throughout the Bible.

In the Old Testament, there are 235 references to the fear of the Lord.

And don't worry, we're not going to read all of those this morning, but listen to what it says just in Proverbs and some of the Psalms.

In Proverbs 3, 7, it says, Fearing the Lord brings healing to your body and refreshment to your bones.

In Proverbs 16, 6, it says that fearing the Lord keeps us away from evil.

In Proverbs 10, 27, fearing the Lord prolongs your life.

Proverbs 14, 26 says that fearing the Lord gives us strong confidence and a place of refuge.

Proverbs 14, 27 says, fearing the Lord is the fountain of life.

In Proverbs 19, 23, fearing the Lord leads to life.

Proverbs 22, 4, the reward for fearing the Lord is riches, honor, and life.

In Psalm 34, 9, those that fear the Lord have no want.

In Psalm 103, verse 11, it says that fearing the Lord leads to us experiencing the loving, kindness, and compassion of the Lord.

Psalms 103:11

Psalm 115, 11, for those that fear the Lord, he becomes their help and their shield.

Psalm 145, 19, fearing the Lord leads to him fulfilling our desires, hearing our cries, and saving us.

Psalm 147, verse 11, fearing the Lord allows us to experience the Lord's favor.

Psalms 147:11

And Psalm 128, verse 1, fearing the Lord leads to God's blessing in our lives.

Psalms 128:1

So that's just a small little snippet of some of the Old Testament passages that talk about fearing the Lord.

And so fearing the Lord is something that we should not take lightly, but something that we should value and try to put in place in our lives because there's so much benefit and so much blessing that comes with the people that fear the Lord.

And this isn't just an Old Testament thing, this is a New Testament thing.

In Luke chapter 12, verse 4, Jesus said these words, I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do.

Luke 12:4

But I will warn you whom to fear.

Fear him who, after he has has been killed, has authority to cast into hell.

In Acts chapter 2, verse 43, the young church has experienced tremendous growth.

Acts 2:43

It says that the fear of the Lord, that they were in awe, they had this fear and reverence towards the Lord.

In Acts chapter 9, verse 31, the fear of the Lord is seeing more and more people coming to know Jesus.

Acts 9:31

In Philippians chapter 2, verse 12, we see that we are to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.

Philippians 2:12

So these things go hand in hand that if we're going to be the Christians and the followers of Jesus that we've been called to be, then there must be a fear of the Lord.

There must be this awestruck wonder at who he is, his might and his goodness and his graciousness, and just all that he is and all that he has done, and we should stand in awe of that.

But sadly, we fear so much because we fear God so little.

And in the American church today, I think that this is something that has been probably pulled out of our vocabulary.

And we we love God.

God is, you know, as the shirt said a couple of decades, a decade or more ago, that Jesus is my homeboy, right?

And and and part of that is somewhat true that he's a friend that sticks closer than a brother, right?

That there is this type of loving relationship that we have, but he is so much more than that.

And we love to talk about the love of God, but we don't talk about the majesty of God.

So this all kind of came to a head in my life personally a couple of weeks ago, where the Lord really convicted me of this idea of the fearing of the Lord.

And uh, me and Jonah and Russ and uh Dylan, who's at our uh social circle location, who just got married, um, praise the Lord on Friday.

And uh and uh we were at this conference, this preaching conference, and the guy that was speaking, um he was telling the story of Jim Baker.

Anybody remember Jim Baker, famous televangelist, uh had created this huge television network.

They actually just made a uh movie, uh, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, interesting, great movie.

Um, but uh he was highly successful, but then he got caught up in fraud and adultery, and he ended up going to prison, leaving a black eye on the church.

But Pastor John Brevere um went to go visit Jim in jail.

And he has this conversation, he had all these conversations all these questions that he wanted to ask Jim when he talked to him, and this is what he says.

He says, After we had talked for a while, I felt like I wanted to ask him some questions.

The first question I asked was, Jim, when did you fall out of love with Jesus?

When did you stop loving Jesus?

Was it when you committed adultery with Jessica Hahn seven years before you got thrown into prison?

Was it the fraud?

When did it really happen?

Because I remember he was so on fire for God in earlier years, and he looked at me and he said, John, I didn't.

I said, What do you mean you didn't?

He said, I didn't fall out of love with Jesus.

I loved him all the way through it.

And then he saw total bewilderment on my face, and I said, What do you mean?

And he said, John, I loved Jesus, but I didn't fear God.

That quote was given to us at this conference, and it just struck me right to my core.

Because I think that I'm so guilty oftentimes of loving Jesus and genuinely loving Jesus, but not fearing God.

Not recognizing God in all of his goodness and all of his glory and all of his power and all of his splendor.

That God is a God of love, but he is also a judge.

That he is a God that gives and sacrificed his son on our behalf, but he is also holy and he is set apart.

We cannot dismiss these two things.

They are two things, they are two pictures of the same person.

And so we can love God, but we simply don't fear him.

And as a result, we see, I think a lot of times an anemic church that really, for all lack of better ways to say this, are Christian atheists.

Where we say that we believe something, but maybe our actions and what we actually do show something totally different.

We love God, but we don't fear Him.

So, what is the evidence of this?

What is the evidence of not fearing the Lord?

There's two things that I just want to talk about real briefly this morning.

The first thing, the first evidence that we see in not fearing the Lord is this that there's a flippant attitude towards the presence of the Lord.

We've forgotten our deep awe in the character of God, his holiness, how he's eternal, how he's sovereign over the affairs of men.

And as a result, what we've done is we've kind of made God smaller, and we've made ourselves and our impression of ourselves bigger.

We see ourselves get more larger in our intellect and our capabilities.

We're more technologically advanced, we're more scientific.

And as we begin to prosper in life, slowly, ever so slowly, what creeps into us is this idea that we don't really need God.

We might need him or want him for our salvation, but other than that, we don't really need him.

And we take his presence very, very lightly.

Uh I'm always somebody that pushes back hard when we talk about um coming into God's house.

Like that's just my pet peeve.

Um, this is a building, it's a fine building, it's made out of metal and sheetrock, and it's got concrete floors and a foundation, but it's just a building.

We are the temple of God.

That's just a little pet peeve side kind of comment there.

But there is something significant about this place where it says in scripture where two or three are gathered, that he's with us.

Did you know that?

That right now we are in the presence of God.

Now, when you came in this morning, were you thinking that?

Were you just kind of going through the routine, or were you coming in going, I'm walking into the presence of God where we're gathering believers together and we're singing and we're celebrating who He is.

Were you coming with that expectation?

Or were you coming in such a way where it was just flippant?

Yeah, we're gonna sing three songs and we're gonna go through the motions and we're gonna kind of go, there's a new one.

That's a good song.

Okay, yeah, I like that word right there.

Was it flippant?

Or were you coming with just a great sense of awe that we were in the presence of the Lord?

There's several stories where people came flippantly into the presence of the Lord.

There's one Old Testament story of a guy named Uzzah, and uh it's found in Samuel, and uh they're they're bringing the Ark of the Covenant.

It's been captured by the enemy, and they're bringing it back into its rightful place.

The the covenant or the Ark of the Covenant was where the presence of God resided.

And so they're bringing this up into the city, and as they're bringing it up into the city, the oxen stumbles, and the Ark of the Covenant begins to tip and fall off the cart that's being it's being pulled on, which was not the way that it was supposed to be transported, by the way.

And Uzzah was this man that was following right there behind the cart.

And as he sees the Ark of the Covenant begin to fall, he steps out and he pushes his hand on the Ark of the Covenant to stabilize it, and in an instant he dies.

Now you might look at that story and go, Oh my gosh, that's that's a different God than I worship, but that's the God that we are worshiping and singing about this morning.

This is the fear of the Lord, that his presence is not to be taken lightly.

You want a New Testament example?

Let's go Acts chapter 5, I believe it is, and you got Ananias and Sapphira, and you got the early church, and you got this incredible movement of God.

Acts 5 · chapter mention

Thousands of people are coming to know Jesus.

Incredible things are happening in the midst of the early church.

Presence of God is moving, miracles are being performed.

And it says in several occasions that people were selling their possessions and they were giving the money to the church to help the needy, to help the poor, so that there was no one in their midst that had need.

And Ananias and Sapphira, they sell a piece of land, but yet they don't.

Be forthcoming with the price that they paid.

And so they come into the presence of God, they're standing there in front of the apostles, and they're gonna give this offering.

And so first the husband comes in and he says, This is how much we sold the land for.

And it wasn't the total amount.

And so he he gives the offering to the church and he lies about what he was given, and immediately he's killed.

Thirty minutes later go by, they take his body out, the wife comes in, they ask her the same question, she lies, and immediately she's killed.

Now God is a God of love, but God is also a God of justice, and he is also a God that is infinite.

He has no beginning and no end.

He is immutable, he never changes.

He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

God is a self-sufficient God.

He has no needs.

He needs no one to consult with him so he can get advice on which ways to go.

He is omnipotent, he is all powerful, he has unlimited power.

By the words of his mouth, the heavens were made.

He is the great sustainer of life, causing your heart to beat in your chest right now, whether you want it to or not.

He is omniscient, that he is all-knowing, he knows everything.

Nothing gets swept under the rug in the presence of God.

He is omnipresent, he is always everywhere, and there's nowhere that you can go to get away from him.

So he is a God of love, but he is also a God that is to be taken in great awe as we fear him because of who he is and what he has done.

The second thing that evidence of showing that we don't fear the Lord or we have a lack of the fear of the Lord, there's the flippant attitude towards the presence of the Lord, but then there's this cavalier attitude of sin.

And this is something that we're seeing all throughout our culture and our world and even within the church today, where there's just this cavalier attitude towards sin.

And sin breaks the heart of our Father.

So much so that he was willing to give his son to pay the price for us and to spill his blood to be the covering of our sins on the cross.

And so don't think that God just thinks, oh, it's no big deal.

Everybody else is doing it.

Yeah, your life just looks just like everybody else's, but don't worry about it.

That's cool.

It's normal.

That is not how God responds to sin.

And that's not someone that fears the Lord and how they respond to sin.

It's so easy for us to get wrapped up in just what everybody else is doing that we miss out on the weight of sin.

Proverbs 8 13 says that the fear of the Lord leads to the hatred of evil.

That when we fear the Lord, then we love what he loves and we hate what he hates.

God hates sin.

He doesn't hate people.

He wants to see all men and women come to a saving knowledge of him.

He wants to have a relationship with all, but he hates sin.

And sin is never something that's just to be played with.

But rather it should break our hearts.

It tells us in 1 John chapter 3, I believe, it tells us that we cannot say that we love God and continue to make a practice of sinning.

1 John 3 · chapter mention

That's kind of laughing and mocking God to his face, saying that we don't fear you.

In Romans, it tells us this incredible picture of what salvation is all about.

And then it says, Well, should we just kind of keep on sinning so that grace may abound?

And Paul says, certainly not.

But so often that's the trap that we fall into.

And it's just the little things, it's ever so slight things.

It's the little lie here to make us appear to be better than we actually are.

It's not telling the whole truth, it's it's cheating our way and kind of cutting around the rules and and trying to use things to our advantage that we were never meant to use.

I mean, there's so many things that come into place.

John Calvin said that nothing is more powerful to overcome temptation than the fear of God.

There's something that begins to shake and tremble within us when we recognize who God is and what he has done on our behalf, that we can't just tolerate sin and wickedness in our lives.

And so this message has haunted me really over the last several weeks.

And I I can remember a couple of weeks ago when I'm writing it and I'm typing it on my computer, and and I'm just like, God, I don't feel even capable or worthy to be able to stand on a platform this morning and share this.

Because this is something that I haven't totally grasped in my own life.

I mean the last few weeks has been kind of a series of um repentance for me, of just different things that I've kind of had a cavalier attitude towards sin, or I've kind of come into the presence of the Lord either in my personal time or with the church, and just kind of come with a flippant attitude.

And it's just been a series of repentance for me.

Because when we fear so much, we fear so much because we fear God so little.

But the same thing is that is true.

It's also true that he that fears God fears nothing else.

And so let us be a people that fear God.

Let us recognize who he is and all of his majesty, and let us come humbly bow before him.

Just like in Isaiah chapter six, you've got the Lord showing up in his power and his might, and what does Isaiah do?

He falls face down on the ground.

Anytime the Lord shows up in a magnificent way throughout Scripture, you see people just can't even stand before him.

Is that how you relate to the Lord?

This isn't supposed to make anyone feel guilty or shameful any in any way this morning, but rather I'm hoping to promote just a sense of fear for the Lord, awestruck wonder at who he is.

And there's two practices I think that we can participate in this morning, and this will lead us into communion.

But there's the first thing that we must do is we pray.

Psalm 86, 11 says, Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness.

Give me an undivided heart that I might fear your name.

I I I think that we underestimate prayer a lot of times, but we come before the Lord, and I think we start recognizing the fear of the Lord by saying, God, teach me that.

Teach me to fear your name.

I I maybe have minimized you and who you are and magnified myself, Lord.

Lord, give me an elevated, give me a magnified picture of who you are.

Help me to fear your name.

Create in me not an undivided heart, Lord.

Help me to rely on your faithfulness.

And the second thing, which is only natural when you think of the fear of the Lord, is repentance.

We practice repentance.

And this is one of the other sad realities in the church today.

Repentance has become a one-time occurrence at the moment of salvation.

And so we we ask Jesus to forgive us of all of our sins, and he does.

But that's where kind of our repentance ends.

But repentance is an ongoing daily deal.

And so we're constantly repenting.

We're constantly coming before the Lord and we're we're confessing our sins.

And the beautiful thing in 1 John chapter 1, verse 9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us of our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 1:9

And so this morning, as we kind of come to an end for this moment, I don't want us just to walk away and just kind of do things like we normally do.

But instead, I want us to be a people that love the Lord with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our strength, with all of our might.

We want to be those people.

But we also want to be people that fear him.

Not in a I'm scared of you, but in an awestruck wonder because of his majesty and his might.

Let's be both of those people.

Because when you think about what the Lord has done on our behalf, it should lead us to marvel in his incredible love and also at the same time tremble in his presence.

And to think about it for a second that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

I mean, just this beautiful picture of Jesus hanging on a cross for you and for me.

And as he hangs on the cross, you know, darkness invades the heavens and the earth, and everything becomes dark.

And the curtain in the temple is ripped in two, and this beautiful scene unfolds.

And it shows you the incredible love of God, but at the same time the majesty and might.

So in a second, we're going to come and we're going to take communion together.

And this is a special significant time where we, as the body of believers, if you're a follower of Jesus in the room this morning, this is an opportunity for you to come and for you to remember what Jesus has done on your behalf.

That he has died, that he has been buried in the tomb, and then three days later he rose again.

Again, the love and the might side by side, hand in hand.

And so Jesus, in his final moments here on earth, when he was having the last meal that he would have with his disciples, he broke the bread and he says, This is my body that is broken for you.

And then they drank the wine and the juice, and they drank it, and they said, This is my blood that is poured out for you.

And so when we come to the table this morning and we take in communion, I want you to do business with the Lord.

I want you to come with a place of prayer and a place of repentance.

And don't just take this flippantly.

This is significant.

Come and you can maybe step off with a family and you can pray together, and maybe you need to go and just maybe even be at the front at the altar here or in social circle wherever you're at or even at home.

Maybe you just need to get down on your knees and you just need to repent.

Maybe there's something that you've had just kind of plaguing your life, and it's some just sinful tendency that you just allow to kind of take root in your life and you haven't really done business with it.

Amen.

Today's the day of repentance.

Maybe you've kind of come with a flippant attitude and you don't recognize the might and the majesty of the Lord, and it's a time of repentance.

And so I'm gonna pray for us, and then just as you feel led, the band's gonna kind of lightly play behind us and lead us into another song.

But as you just feel led, come to the table and take in communion together, but do so, recognizing the incredibleness of who our God is and that we should fear him and his name.

Lord Jesus, I thank you.

But Lord, you are a God that is also mighty and powerful, that you are all knowing, you are ever present.

Or nothing's just kind of swept under the rug in your presence.

And Lord, we recognize that this morning.

And Lord, I'll be the first to just repent of the attitude that I oftentimes come into a room like this with.

Just a flippant kind of attitude of just walking into the presence of the Lord.

But I repent of just oftentimes not taking sin as seriously as you do, and not fearing who you are in this awestruck wonder.

And so, Lord, I pray that you would not just forgive me, but you would cleanse me and help me to recognize who you are, and that I should fear you with this awestruck wonder.

And I pray that for us in this room and in social circle and people watching at home, Lord, that you would do the same.

And Lord, that we would leave here this morning differently than the way that we came in, fearing who you are.

It's awestruck wonder, Lord.

Help us, Lord, to do that.

And maybe you're here this morning, and maybe you've um never put your faith and your trust in Jesus, and today would be an excellent day to do that.

The the Bible clearly teaches that that Jesus came and he died for our sins to pay the penalty for our sins and rose again on the third day, defeating sin, death, and the grave.

And that when we put our faith and our trust in him, we can have a restored relationship with our Father in heaven, and we can be made new into new creations and be with him for all of eternity.

And if that's the step that you need to take this morning, we'd love to have a conversation with you afterwards, or you can text the word start to follow to 97000, and we'll follow up with you this week.

But don't leave here recognizing the power of who our God is.

In your name we pray.

Amen.