Words To Live By "Be True To Yourself" | November 23 2025 (Part 4) (Jacob Deboer)

How many of you here have been to the zoo before?

Throw up your hand If you have another zoo, that's a pretty

good good number. Have you ever stopped long

enough at one of the exhibits to notice an animal just pacing

back and forth and back and forth, just kind of aimlessly,

obsessively back and forth? If you have, you've noticed

something that's called zoochosis, a portmanteau of zoo

and psychosis. This is something that happens,

say, to a lion and an exhibit when it's in an environment that

wasn't designed to be in. It's on a continent it was never

supposed to be on. It's smelling things like hot

dogs and churros that it wasn't meant to smell it.

Seeing all these people taking pictures of it and pointing at

it. It's in confinement.

It's in a cage. It's not, you know, just

wandering the plains of the Serengeti or whatever.

It's not hunting for its food. It's just being fed a diet.

And so, yeah, the result is this zoochosis, this obsessive pacing

back and forth is meaningless existence in a cage with the

lions. In many ways, the the

environment is good. It's a pretty good life for the

lion, right? It has a kind of easy life, a

lot of conveniences, that sort of thing.

But it suffers from this, this supposes, this kind of

psychosis. And I wonder if some of you have

maybe felt a little bit like that lion, like in some sense

you are living in an environment that isn't quite designed for

you and you're flourishing. Maybe you notice it.

Not an obsessive physical pacing back and forth, but in doom

scrolling, just pacing through your social media feed.

Maybe it's the daily cycle that you're in of going back and

forth between the job that you're less than excited about

that's slowly killing you and some mind numbing entertainment

to sort of soothe that. Maybe it's just the hurried life

of, you know, going back and forth from thing to thing to

thing and never feeling like you have a moment to slow down.

There's often this kind of undercurrent of restlessness in

the sense of something missing in our modern life and the

environment that we're living in, and it it comes to bear and

burnout, chronic exhaustion, fatigue, depression, anxiety,

mental illness, loneliness. Even though we have a pretty

good life, we're kind of getting killed by it.

Alan Noble, who's a book I'm gonna be drawing on heavily,

just so you know, I'm not gonna quote him all the time, but I'd

rather just read you guys the book.

But I don't have time for that. But I will be trying happily for

him. This is he.

This illustration comes from him.

He says the difference between US and the lion is simply that

we're more successful at treating our zoochosis and

adapting to our environment. We don't mind pacing back and

forth, especially if we can listen to a podcast while we do.

So my argument, and I think what we've maybe been seeing a little

bit in this series is that these these sayings, these secular

sayings, these words to live by that we've been looking at are

symptoms of a culture that is inhuman.

It's actually not designed to promote our flourishing as human

beings. And these grand deceptions that

we've been looking at actually leads to a kind of life that

isn't good for us. And this is partially because of

faulty assumptions that they're making about the nature of

reality and humanity. So we've looked at a few of

these, these secular sayings that are part of this

environment. This is zoo that we're in that's

leading to our zoochosis. We've looked at believe in

yourself. We've looked at love is love.

We've looked at manifest your destiny Today and this last one

of the series, we're going to be looking at the saying be true to

yourself. This is definitely a a popular

slogan in our culture. It's part and parcel of our

culture storytelling in many ways.

This kind of self discovery of who am I and how can I be true

to myself and not conform to the pressure of other people to tell

me who I am is sort of the modern day heroes journey for

us, right? You see it in kids movies like

frozen or into the spider verse or High School Musical or The

Little Mermaid. It's also, you know, the motif

of some of the great fiction of the 20th and 21st century, like

Placed the Bell Jar, Emerson's The Invisible Man.

It's definitely, definitely a slogan that whether or not we

use it rings true of how how we view ourselves and our lives in

this world. And I think hopefully we're

going to see that it's actually a slogan that while there's a

grain of truth to it, it is ultimately deceptive.

And it's not going to lead to our flourishing if we abide by

the assumptions that are underlying it.

Today. The main tax that we're going to

be focusing on is First Corinthians chapter 6, verses 19

1 Corinthians 6:19–20

through 20. Um, so I'll write you to turn

there. We're not gonna get to it quite

yet. I'll just tell you outright now

sort of the outline of what we're, what we're gonna go

through today. We're going to look first, as we

have in the rest of the sermons in this series, at the good

intention behind the saying, be true to yourself.

So we're going to look at kind of the kernel of truth that's

there. What's the common grace that's

operative in this saying? What can we take from it that's

good? Then we're going to go into the

grand deception. What is it that there's actually

something effective about this saying that that's wrong headed.

That's where we're really gonna dive into this text.

So keep your finger in in the text there in First Corinthians

619 through 20. But just know we're not gonna

get to it quite yet. First, we're going to look at

the good intention of this saying be true to yourself.

So what is the good intention of this saying be true to yourself?

Well, I think there's two things at least tried to pare it down

to two things that that are actually good about this saying

that we can we can say, yeah, that's that's a good thing.

The first one is this emphasis on individuality.

Be true to yourself. There's a there's a idea here in

this saying, be true to yourself that there's a uniqueness to

each human being and there's a dignity that each individual

has. God has created and designed

each of us uniquely, that we shouldn't be a uniform group of

people, even if we're united, but that each one has their own

unique gifts and capacities and that we ought to celebrate those

things and lean into those things and not shy away from

them. Say First Corinthians 12 versus

12 through 20, right? We see this analogy that Paul

makes of the body. I think we've got that up there,

Ruben faces just as a body, though one has many parts, but

all its many parts form 1 body. So it is with Christ.

But in fact, God has placed the parts in the body, every one of

them, just as he wanted them to be.

If they were all one part, where would the body be?

As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

And so you can see, we see that this idea is biblical, right?

That there's there's a goodness to the individuality of each

person, right? If all of us were just eyes,

then that would be a pretty useless body.

We all have to play our own part in our own role as individuals.

See another example of this in in the vision of the throne or

the vision of the end times in Revelation.

John says, after this, I looked and there was before me a great

multitude that no one could count from every nation, tribe,

people and language standing before the throne and before the

Lamb. They were wearing white robes

and were holding palm branches in their hands.

So if this picture of God is glorified fully only when every

nation, tribe and tongue is there worshipping him in their

own tongue, right? It's not this picture of this

homogeneous glob of people who are all the same, right?

It's these cultures and these people who are in some sense are

being true to themselves. They're speaking in the

languages that God gave them. They're worshipping him in the

cultural forms that that God's given them and something good to

that. And I think in some ways this

this kind of a saying of be true to yourself as a reaction

against some of the abuses of authority hierarchy even in

religious spheres, right, That there's been, you know, kind of

a pressure to conform to a standard that maybe maybe isn't

good for all people. Second thing that I think is is

good about this saying is that it has an emphasis on

authenticity. Just be true to yourself.

There's a the idea here and the saying of honesty, of integrity,

of living a fully integrated life.

It's a calling to live to a certain standard, right?

To be true to our faithful, to some kind of standard that

you're being measured against. We see in Genesis 127 that God

created mankind in his image, in the image of God.

He created them male and female. He created them, right?

God created us with a specific design and intention and purpose

that we're meant to be true to. And so there is a sense to which

this saying is capturing something good, that we are

meant to be true and faithful to something.

Romans 12/1 says, right, Don't conform to the pattern of this

world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

And we see, you know, examples of these kinds of stories and

scriptures, say in the book of Daniel, the story of Shadrack,

Meshach and Abednego, not conforming to the idolatry of of

Babylon, but being true to who God has called them to be.

So there is something good going on here, both in the

individuality and the authenticity that this this

saying displays. But I think the key distinction

needs to come in where we get our standard from, of what we're

called to be true to, and where are unique individual calling

comes from. There's this brilliant guy, I

don't know if you've heard of him, John Digiovanni, but he

sent me, he sent me some of his notes on a similar sermon he

preached 8 years ago. He said we need to distinguish

between God's image of us and our image of us.

We have to be willing to give up our own image of ourselves to

break embrace the image of God in us.

And so that's kind of the question when it comes to being

true to myself, it's what is my true self and who gets to decide

who that is? It's not so much that it's bad

to try to be true to something and for that something to be who

you really are. But the question is, is who I

really am something that I decide or is it something that

God decides? So now we're going to jump into

into our text, First Corinthians chapter 619 through 20.

We're going to start to look a little bit at at the grand

deception and I will say we're gonna go on a little bit of an

excursion, a little bit of an excavation.

I guess I really chose this saying be true to yourself.

Not so much because I wanted to talk about the saying be true to

yourself, but I wanted to talk about the, the assumption that

is underlying this saying be true to yourself.

And that is the assumption that we belong to ourselves.

And there's actually a whole host of sayings that I was

thinking of choosing because I think that they display this.

I think we've got a bunch of them up on the screen there.

There we go. Yeah.

So take a look at all of those, right?

There's a bunch of these, a bunch of these things you do.

You manifest your destiny. Like Jonas was talking about

lots of different things. Follow your heart, be true to

yourself is just one of these sayings that is predicated on

this assumption that you belong to yourself.

The problem is you belong to yourself isn't actually a slogan

that anyone uses. So I couldn't, I couldn't go

with that. But that's the deception that

we're really looking at today, is this idea that you belong to

yourself. And so with that in mind, let's

take a look at our passage today.

First Corinthians 619 says, or do you not know that your body

is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from

God? You are not your own, for you

are bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

What's Paul talking about here? This is a little out of context,

so I'll give you some of the context.

First Corinthians is this letter.

Paul spent a year and a half in the city and Corn has a

missionary establishing the church there.

Since then, he's left to go establish the church in other

parts of the world, and he's getting these reports that

things aren't going great in Corinth.

There's a number of issues going on with regards to arguments

about food, misunderstandings about the resurrection, the way

that they're worshipping and gathering together to worship,

as well as sexual immorality. There's still a bunch of people

in the church in Corinth who are sleeping with temple

prostitutes, as well as one guy who's sleeping with his

mother-in-law. And so Paul's hearing this, he's

like, Oh my goodness, what's going on?

I need to write a letter to these people to set them

straight. So that's what he's doing.

And he's kind of taking on these issues one at a time throughout

the letter. And so this second section that

First Corinthians 619 through 20 is in is the section where he's

dealing with sexual immorality. That's not what we're going to

be talking about today. Don't worry, we've been there

and done that. But I do think that what Paul is

saying here about sexual immorality is more broadly

applicable to our lives in general.

So if we look up at verse 12, we see kind of the argument that's

been going on in the church in Corinth.

They they're not only engaging in sexual immorality, but

there's a bunch of them who are saying all things are lawful for

me. But then Paul says in response,

but not all things are helpful. And so there's this kind of

argument of of liberality with regards to sexuality.

It's like, well, we're covered by the grace of God, so let's

just do whatever we want with our bodies.

It doesn't matter. And Paul is saying, no, no, this

is wrong headed. And so he's gonna argue against

this. And these two verses that we're

looking at aren't the whole of his argument, but it is a really

interesting part of his argument.

Where does he go to argue against this idea that that I

can engage in sexual immorality and that it's lawful for me?

He doesn't say, well, you know, temple prostitution is really an

exploitative thing. And it's actually not really

that consensual because, you know, these these women are

forced into it. I mean, you could go there,

right? But he doesn't.

Instead, he goes to this idea that you don't belong to

yourself. You are not your own, but your

body belongs to God. Really interesting here.

Paul is using this, this Exodus language of, of redemption here,

right? He says that you were bought

with a price. There's this sense in which Paul

is saying, look, you guys were like, you guys were like the

Israelites in Egypt before you were in bondage to your passions

to sin, to death. You were in the wrongful

possession of those things. You were slaves to those things.

But now God through Jesus, has come and set you free from that

bondage and that slavery. But the freedom that he's

brought you into is a freedom of belonging to the true Master,

right? You belong to Him now.

So This is why you're not free to use your body however you

want it. Your true freedom is going to be

found. Your true flourishing is going

to be found and using your body in a way that honors God because

you belong to Him now. So this is this is Paul's

argument. It's a little bit strange to us,

I think in the modern day, cause we don't like to think of

freedom as belonging to the true master.

But this is the biblical idea of what freedom is.

We're going to unpack that a little bit more later, but this

is Paul's argument. So how does this relate to to

our saying be true to yourself? How does this relate to the idea

that you belong to yourself? I think there's 22 grand

deceptions in this saying of being true to yourself and this

idea that you belong to yourself that we're going to tackle

today, that that Paul, what he said here has something to say

about the first is just the myth of self belonging.

So this idea that you belong to yourself, that you're

responsible for your own existence, first of all, is just

a myth. It's a lie outright, as Paul is

arguing here, We can't actually belong to ourselves.

We can't actually have autonomy. It's either that we belong to

God or we're gonna belong to and be slaves to something else.

Bob Dylan, right, said you're gonna have to serve somebody.

And the biblical imaginary here that Paul is is working with is

that, you know, you're either going to belong to Pharaoh or

you're going to belong to Yahweh.

You're going to belong to sin and death or you're going to

belong to Jesus. Leslie Newbigin puts this really

well in his book Foolishness to the Greeks when he says from the

point of view of the Enlightenment, the biblical idea

of freedom is paradoxical, a freedom of the one who serves

the true master, right. So that's not how we in a post

Enlightenment world think of freedom as serving the true

master, but that's how the Bible thinks about freedom.

He goes on to say from the point of view of the Bible, the

freedom celebrated in the Enlightenment is the freedom

offered by the serpent in Eden, the freedom to make one's own

decisions about what is good. And ultimately, while it tastes

and it feels like freedom in the moment, that's what Paul would

call being a slave to sin, right?

Where we're choosing to come under the dominion and the power

of our passions of sin, and we're not actually living the

lives we were meant to live in. That's actually a kind of

bondage. So theologically speaking, the

idea that you can you can belong to yourself is a myth.

We were made to be like God, and this is where our true freedom

and flourishing is found. And there's not really this

neutral ground of I'm just serving and belonging to myself.

I'm either serving sin or I'm serving Jesus.

But practically as well, not just theologically, I think the

idea that I can belong to myself, that I can really be

true to myself is also kind of a myth, right?

We like to think that we are these great rugged

individualists who, you know, are just going deep and

discovering who we are and crafting this identity that's

true to ourselves and our authentic core.

But the reality is, is that most of these identities that we try

aren't are pre selected for us by the market.

They're fed to us through social media, movies.

We're just putting on an amalgamation of things we've

seen from other people, right? So societies foisting upon us

these responsibilities of self belonging.

And then it provides us with a selection of choices of the self

that you can be through to. And so we like to kind of

deceive ourselves into thinking that I've crafted this really

unique identity that I'm really belonging to myself and making

myself my own. But practically speaking, that's

not really what's going on. 2nd deception that we're going to

look at is the burden of self belonging, said the lie.

I think that's operative in this idea that you belong to yourself

and that it's a good thing to be true to yourself is that we find

our greatest fulfillment and breaking from external norms.

So this is the idea, right? That that if you belong to

yourself, if you can break free from all external expectations,

if you can be true to yourself, then that's a kind of freedom.

That's a liberation, right? That this is a good thing.

You're going to find fulfillment if you do this.

It's actually like an ethical imperative to be authentic, to

discover who you are, to not conform to some other standard

from outside yourself. But what I want to argue is that

this isn't actually a freedom and a fulfillment, but it's a

it's an incredible burden. George McDonald, an author who I

love and was a great influence on CS Lewis, for example, said

the one principle of hell is that I am my own.

There's this idea that that belonging to yourself is

actually not good for you. It's actually going to result in

a lot of suffering and pain because it's extending ourselves

beyond our limitations and bringing a burden upon ourselves

that we were never meant to bear as human beings.

Our fusions 420 through 2 through 24 says you were taught

with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old

self which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be

made new in the attitude of your minds, and to put on the new

self created to be like God and true righteousness and holiness.

So there's two ideas that I wanna wanna look at here.

First of all is that your former self is corrupted by deceitful

desires. It is human beings.

We we might think that we have this great sense internally of

who we are and what we want and what's going to be good for us.

But Paul says here that our desires are deceitful, that

sometimes when we're trying the hardest to be true to ourselves,

that's when we're the least like ourselves.

Because as he goes on to say, we're created by God to be like

God to for a certain purpose, right?

And so this other sense is that we were actually created with a

certain purpose, with a certain goal in mind.

And if we're not living into that, it's actually going to be

a burden on us. It's like going against the

grain of the universe and getting splinters.

So I think what we need to do is make a distinction between what

feels like our strongest desires and what's actually our deepest

desires, right? We, we were created with a

desire for God, right? Augustine says.

Our hearts are restless until we rest in you because we were made

for you. Sometimes that doesn't feel like

our strongest desire, though. Sometimes my strongest desire

just feels like I'm hungry and I want to eat something or I want

to sin because it will feel good in the moment.

And so our desires, they can be these deceptive things that it

feels like, well, it would be authentic to me right now to,

you know, explode and be angry at this person because it feels

right. But my deepest desire is

actually to be in right relationship with this person

and be in right relationship with God.

And so we're not often very good at at figuring out how how we

can be true to ourselves and what that looks like.

Now, I think that this ends up becoming a burden because of

what Alan Noble calls the responsibilities of self

belonging. If I my own and I belong to

myself and I don't belong to God, then I have to justify my

own existence, right? I have to.

I have to be the one to justify why I'm here on this planet.

I have to look good enough or be smart enough or make enough

money or make a positive enough contribution in order for my

existence to be worth something, right?

That's on me now. I belong to myself.

I am my own. I have to do these things.

I have to define my own morality.

I have to decide what's right and what's wrong.

I have to define my own identity.

God can't tell me who I am if I belong to myself.

I have to figure that out for myself, and I have to express it

as well. In order for that to be

validated by other people, I have to create my own sense of

meaning and purpose. And I have to exist in a world

of voluntary social ties, right? Nobody can tell me who I belong

to and who I don't belong to in terms of other people, right?

I don't belong to the, to the family of God by virtue of being

in union with Christ. All my ties are voluntary ties

that I choose. And so I think what, what ends

up happening is that this ends up being a great burden upon us.

I think when we when we wake up every single day and we have to

face, OK, I need to define who I am.

I need to create meaning. I need to create my sense of

purpose. I have to justify my existence

today that actually ends up really wearing on us.

To live authentically ends up meaning to justify our

existence, express our identity, interpret meaning, judge

according to our own moral compass, and belong only where

we choose. And this wears us out in the

end. It becomes a burden, a daily

burden, to discover and express ourselves.

That's just too much to cope with.

There's no objective standard against which we can measure

whether or not we're doing well. Alan Noble says that to be true

to ourselves is categorically different from being true in an

empirical or logical sense, because there's no external or

objective way to judge or reassure ourselves, right?

So we can judge if something's true in an external or logical

sense based on something external to it, right?

Like is this, you know, is this line true, right?

We can measure it with a ruler. There's something external to it

to measure it against. But if you belong to yourself,

then the only thing that you can measure against is yourself.

How can you ever be sure that you're being true to yourself?

How can you ever know if you're being authentic?

You're utterly alone in your judgment, sovereign, but alone.

And to make matters worse, you can't trust yourself because the

human mind is capable of tremendous self deception.

Maybe you are at least true to yourself when you're trying to

be like yourself, Alan Noble says.

So the question is, is there any good news for us?

Is there any good news for us as we as we try to bear this burden

of the responsibility of self belonging?

And I believe the answer is yes, but it's not not a a gospel of

cheap grace that we're going to be looking at today.

So we remember our verse in First Corinthians 6.

It says that we belong to God, we belong to Christ.

We actually have to give something up.

So the gospel of grace, the good news that we belong to Christ

means we have to give up that that right to autonomy to the

illusion at least that I get to decide all of these things for

myself. The the illusion of freedom that

that comes with if we want to be relieved of the burden of self

belonging. I think the call of the gospel

again, it's not an easy call, but ultimately it's a call that

will lead to greater joy and fulfillment and satisfaction on

the other side as not to be true to yourself, but to deny

yourself to take up your cross and to follow Jesus.

Matthew 1624 through 25. Jesus says whoever wants to be

my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and

follow me. For whoever wants to save their

life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find

it, right? There's the there's the paradox

of the gospel of grace and following Jesus, that when we're

trying so hard to to be true to ourselves, to find who we are,

to hold so tightly on to this inner sense and conviction of

this is who I am, we actually end up losing our lives.

But when we let go of that, when we belong fully to Jesus, when

we die to ourselves and give something up, that's when we

actually find our lives. If we belong to God, then that

means that we exist in the world in a way that there's actually

limits on ourselves that aren't freely chosen by us.

But I think this is good news because we aren't God, right?

We're made to be like God, to be in his image, but we aren't

Gods, right? We were never made to to justify

our own existence and create our own meaning in our own identity.

And so there's actually such a freedom in having these external

limits that aren't freely chosen by us, but are given.

It's a gracious gift to us by God.

Matthew 1128 through 30 is one of my favorite verses.

Jesus says, come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and

I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn

from me, for I am gentle and humble and heart, and you will

find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and My

burden is light. It was really interesting here

is that Jesus isn't talking about or he isn't offering an

option of being burden less, right?

The two options that he's offering are like, look, you're

you're heavy laden and burdened. You're carrying your, you know,

the maybe in our case, the responsibilities of self

belonging on your back. But it doesn't say I'll set you

free from that. So you can just be wandering

around with nothing on your shoulders.

He says no, take my yoke upon you.

But it's actually a yoke that's easy and light and it's going to

lead to rest for your souls. When we take the burden of Jesus

upon us, when we belong to him, when we allow him to set these

limits on our life and our existence and define us in some

way, then we no longer find ourselves having to engage in

the the competition of expressive individualism, right?

I don't have to continue to shout into the void along with

everyone else on social media and everything else, trying to

justify my own existence and show that I'm good enough and

receive validation for the identity that I've chosen for

myself. I can just rest.

And the fact that I belong to Jesus, that I belong to God and

to his people. So we'll just look at a few few

quick ways here that that the gospel of grace is operative 1

is in this area of justification, right?

This is obviously like a theological thing that were made

right with God and with others through the blood of Jesus that

were justified before God. But also that our existence like

existentially were justified, right?

When we belong to God, when we recognize I'm created by Him and

He loves me and created me, then I'm inherently valuable and

dignified and justify it. I don't have to try to show

everybody and prove to myself that I ought to be around

because God has created me and is continuing to create and

sustain me every day, and He's the one who justifies my

existence by making me my identity.

I don't have to create my own identity anymore.

I don't have to wonder, is this who I really am?

Is this good enough? I can just rest in the identity

that I'm a beloved child of God meaning.

I don't have to try to create my own meaning and have it be as a

slippery, subjective thing that's changing all the time and

isn't really meaning because I made it.

I can actually find purpose in life and living as a part of

God's mission and imaging Him values.

I don't have to be the one to decide what's right and wrong,

what's good and what's not good. I can rest in knowing there's a

God who's determined what's what's right and what's wrong,

and that burden is not on me. And belonging, I don't have to

have to go out and earn belonging with other people.

I don't have to live in this world where where every tie that

I have with people is something that they've really chosen, that

I've really chosen, and can be severed at any moment.

But there's actually a really true and mysterious sense in

which I belong to God's people and I belong to him, and I can

rest in that. I don't have to earn belonging

with people, but I'm part of God's family no matter what

because I'm in Christ. So I think, um, it's a

paradoxical thing. It's a strange thing for us to

follow. And we were really living at the

crossroads of two very different ways of seeing the world and two

very different ideas of what freedom is.

So it's a strange, strange pill for us to swallow.

But I really do think that when we come to recognize our

contingency, our dependence upon God, that this is actually the

way of grace. I mean, doesn't free us from the

obligation of living rightly, right?

Like we still, we still need to live rightly.

We still need to live the way that God's called us to.

But it does change the terms of our, our duty as human beings,

of our ethical duty, living rightly before God.

It's a way of living honestly in the world and of being our true

self. It doesn't justify our

existence. It doesn't define our identity

like what we do and, and how we operate ethically, but it is an

outflow of truth in the practice of grace.

Um, yeah. So I think this is a, this is a

strange idea for us to, to try to really, really get deep into

our souls because, right, the stories of self belonging and

the stories of being true to yourself are so prevalent in our

culture. That's such a, a major, major

story that we're hearing all the time.

And so I was thinking about how do you make this sermon

practical? Jacob, this is so heady.

This is such a sermon that's like, yeah, believe the right

thing, but but what do we do with this?

Where do we go from here? How do we get this gospel of

grace into our bones? How do we go from here,

continuing to believe this, recognizing that we might be

slipping into thinking the way that the world thinks, into the

pattern of the world? I think my, my practice is

actually kind of a non practice. It's to not do anything.

It's simply to rest, right, to stop, stop the striving.

And in particular, I think like Sabbath is a great, a great

practice of ritualizing this and making it consistent pattern

rhythm in your life to to remind yourself that I don't belong to

anybody but God. My time belongs to God, my

existence belongs to God. But just in general, taking time

to just stop to realize, like man, I'm working so hard and

trying so hard and caught up in the rat race of trying to

express my own unique individual identity and and justify my own

existence. Taking a day, taking moments

throughout the day to simply stop and be present to God and

come before him and just not do anything but just be.

I think it's such a powerful way to to remind ourselves and to

get into our bones this idea that I belong to God and that is

a gift of grace. Yeah.

So that's that's all I have for you today.

Just wanna end in in prayer. Yeah, there we do ask that.

Yeah, you would help us to help us to accept the gospel of

grace. God, Lord, would you help us to

continue to see where the stories, where the ideas of our

culture are actually deceptive and aren't going to lead to our

flourishing? God, we ask that you would give

us your eyes to see that the wisdom to discern those things.

And God, we ask in particular today, would you help us to rest

in the fact that we belong to You That we don't have to decide

who we are and strive to be true to an ever shifting standard

that comes from within, but that we can rest in the grace of of

the love of your Son for us and the fact that that you have a

calling for us. Yeah, I got I pray that that you

would help us to, to resist the the pull and the idolatry of our

culture God and to yeah, Lord, really find true rest in you and

to to make it a priority to practice rhythms of rest in our

lives. God, we pray this in Jesus name,

Amen.