Spend Time With Jesus in 2024 - John 15:4-5 - Coleton Segars

The teaching text for today is John fifteen, verses three and four, a short teaching text.

This is Jesus' words, and he says, Remain in me as I also remain in you.

No branch can bear fruit by itself.

It must remain in the vine.

Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

There was a man online that was airing his frustrations about New Year's resolutions.

And he went viral because of what he said.

But his post was basically like, here's why New Year's resolutions don't work.

And then he gave four consecutive years of his personal New Year's resolutions.

And it's humorous and it's funny.

And so feel free to laugh.

It's sad for the man and his experience, but he talks about it in a funny way, and it went viral, so I'm certain he's living his best life now.

But that wasn't funny either.

Okay.

This is what he said.

New Year's resolutions don't work.

2009.

These were his 2009 resolutions.

Lose weight.

Get fit.

Give up alcohol.

Stand up to boss.

Be nicer to wife.

2010.

Lose some weight.

Get fit.

Give up alcohol and cigarettes.

Oh boy.

Stand up to boss.

Be nicer to my wife.

2011.

Lose any weight at all.

Get fit.

Give up alcohol.

I think he gave up cigarettes.

Fine job.

He finally stood up to his boss, though, y'all.

Finally stood up to his boss.

Fine job.

And then number five, try to be nicer to my wife.

2012, lose weight again.

Put it back on.

Get fit next year.

Just drink less.

Fine job.

Try to be nicer to my ex-wife.

His point, which I thought was really funny.

His point was, and who knows how real this is, y'all.

I mean, it's online, it did go, whatever.

But his point was, uh, he doesn't think that New Year's resolutions are all that effective.

Uh, and I think that that he was just trying to state that out loud.

And I don't necessarily think they're all that effective either.

If that's your thing, if that's what you like doing, I think that's great.

Um I just don't know that it's the most effective way to spend our time.

But if you do that, that's great.

But what I want to do today is gonna sound like I'm giving you, I don't, I don't think they work, and it's gonna sound like I'm giving you a New Year's resolution, and I'm not.

I want to give you a theme for the year, which is different.

I promise it's different.

Okay.

Uh what I want you to make 2024, I want you to make 2024 a year of spending time with Jesus.

Spending time with him.

And again, it sounds like a resolution.

It's not, it's different, it's a theme.

So make 2024 a year of spending time with Jesus, primarily through reading the scriptures and through prayer.

And I'm gonna harp on prayer a lot because one, that's my thing, and I think that the Bible actually talks more about that and gives us more specific ways to pray and to press in.

And it's Paul says, devote yourself to prayer, be constantly in prayer, be unceasing in prayer.

Um, and in our culture and in our time, especially in the South, we give a lot of time to read through the Bible in a year, read through the Bible in a year, which is fine to do that.

It's just not a biblical command to read through the Bible in a year, and yet it is a biblical command to pray unceasingly, pray without stopping, be devoted to prayer, be devoted to prayer and all these different things.

When you pray, when you fast, all these different stuff.

And so I want us to make 2024 a year of spending time with Jesus.

And so to help you navigate this theme and to get to this space, what I want to do is really offer you two reasons, very important whys, why I think you need to make this a year of spending time with him in these ways, two reasons why that I think are really important and will help you get started in that.

Uh, and even just to move forward in that space at all.

And then I want to give you just a handful of practices on reading the scriptures that maybe you haven't done before, and a handful of practices on how to pray that I think are uncommon for modern-day Protestants and modern-day Christians that were something that was practiced by the early church and early church fathers and so on and so forth.

And so I want to give those things to us as well in hopes that you see this thing as like read your Bible and not this like one linear way of doing it and read and pray kind of like Rainey was talking about earlier.

She basically just stole my second point without knowing it.

Um, but and pray, and you have to do it in this way.

There's only one way to pray, there's only one way to read the Bible, and that's just not true.

Uh, we're all different, we're all based on different.

I have a relationship with my son, and some of you have relationships with my son.

Our relationship is very different.

How we respond to Teddy and deal with Teddy is very, very different than how I do it.

Um, and that makes sense because we're relationally in a different type of relationship.

Jesus is in a different type of relationship with you than he is with me.

He created you, and you are created with a personality and you're fearfully and wonderfully made.

You're completely different than me in many, many ways.

And so the way he's going to respond to you, speak into you, talk to you, all those different things, it's going to look like the unique relationship that you have with him.

And so for you to ever, in your life, to look at somebody else's life and go, if I'm not that, then I'm not spiritual, or if I'm not like that person in the way that they're hearing from God, then maybe there's something wrong with me.

And I mean, at the end of the day, there should be archetypes that we look at and say, hey, that's a person that I can, you know, I kind of want to be like that person.

I want their prayer life, I want that kind of thing, and that's great.

But yours will uniquely look like your personality and your build and your makeup and all the rest of it because you are a different person, and it is not a one size fits all.

It is a relationship, and there's no relationship that you have that's exactly the same from person to person to person.

Um, and so with all that said, I want to give you just a bunch of different ways on how to pray, how to read the scriptures that hopefully set you free a little bit, and then offer some um maybe some enjoyment and just some adventure in doing these things that I think are really, really beneficial for your faith, will grow your faith, um, and will be a space where this year could be the space where you uh experience a time with Jesus.

And it's 2024 was the year I really began spending time with this man who can transform my life.

And so, with all that intro, um, why?

Why do I think that you need to spend time with Jesus?

First reason is called the social proximity effect.

The social proximity effect basically says that people become like the people they're around.

You will become like the people that you are around.

And so, Jim Rohn, who's an author and motivational speaker, he says, you are the average, you, each person, you are the average of the top five people you spend the most time with.

You're the average of the top.

So the way that you the idea is if you want to save more money, and you're terrible at saving money, like I was when I met Rainey, uh, if you want to begin saving more money, just spend time with people who do save money really well, and they will rub off on you.

That's the idea.

And so the social proximity effect suggests and says, there's studies about it that says that you become like the people that you're around.

We experienced this with Teddy the other day, and this really just this monumental moment uh for me, just as a father who loves country music.

Um, Rainey asked him, Who's your favorite singer?

And he was like, Oh, that's easy, Garth Brooks.

And I just, you know, I hit my knees and just like, Lord, I can I can die now.

Like, this is I've asked for wonder and you gave it to me.

Like, I just can't believe that's my favorite.

I grew up loving Garth Brooks, my dad loved Garth Brooks, I grew up loving Garth Brooks, and if you're like, Garth Brooks' the worst, we'll fight after.

He's phenomenal.

Um anyway, so Teddy, Teddy uh was like, yeah, my favorite country singer, or my favorite singer of all time is Garth Brooks, and I was super excited.

But the truth is, like, I didn't force him to like Garth Brooks.

Like, I didn't tell him, like, hey, if you do this, you'll get Oreos.

Like, it wasn't, I didn't do any of that.

We just, I take him to school and I pick him up from school and we ride in the Jeep together and all those different things.

And Garth Brooks comes on and I sing it, and he just developed this love for this song, and his favorite song is Standing Outside the Fire, not the original version, the live version, because it's so good.

Any Garth Brooks fans?

I just want to know I'm not behind okay, I'm not by myself.

Okay, all right, all right.

Love you guys so much.

Okay.

Special place in heaven.

Um but we experienced it.

Like he just he just loved it because I loved it, and I rubbed off on him, and he had no idea that actually I said, like, oh, that's my favorite country singer too.

And he was like, Oh, really?

I didn't know that.

I'm like, yeah, like he's I was like, that's mine as well.

And he's like, that's really cool.

And then we moved on.

But for us, it was like we've just we we he just he has taken the shape of us.

Those things have just rubbed off on him.

And what normally happens for us if we want to change, and if you want to change and if I want to change, what normally happens is, especially around this time of the year, people pick resolutions like this guy who picked a resolution.

And so we say, like, I want to read more books, I want to learn a new language, I want to uh complain less, I want to eat better, work out more, I want to save more money, I want to do these things.

You know, I want to get a job, leave a job, make more money, whatever.

Like we we always we're trying to change.

And so what we end up doing is we aim at our will.

It's like, in order to change, I need to aim at my own willpower.

And so we buy ourselves new workout gear, we sign up for new gym memberships, and we do all this stuff in order to do all these different things.

The issue with that is if you aim at the will, our willpower fades really fast.

And I think we know this, I mean, just in general, of trying to do this in some sense.

And December 31st is probably the highest peak of willpower because people look at it's just another day tomorrow, but they look at today and tomorrow as completely chasm spaces between each other, like that was last year, and this is the new year.

And it's like, yeah, but it was really just one more click on the clock, right?

Like it's it's the same.

But for but for people have this experience of willpower moving into the new year because it's like that was the old me in 2023.

Now the clock has ticked, and now this is the new me in 2024.

And so they move in this willpower to go, like, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this, and this is gonna happen.

That was old, this is new, I was old, this is new.

And we wind up in this space where we're doing all of these different things.

The issue is New Year's resolutions don't work long term.

The stats on this are actually pretty terrible.

Um, New Year's resolution stats, nearly 25% of people abandoned their resolutions after the first week.

Not a strong start.

Nearly 50% by the end of January, and then by the end of the year, only 9% actually met their goals.

Um, and that's just not great stats for us if we're trying to change ourselves and we want to see change actually take shape in our lives or the lives of those around us, just to set new willpower goals.

Like I'm just gonna will it and make it happen.

But the stats for spending time with people and watching change take over your life are actually really great.

There's this David McClellan from Harvard University says the people you habitually associate with determine as much as 95% of your life.

And I realize I'm giving you a bunch of stats, but I think it's actually genuinely important to look at, like, Jesus isn't saying something random when he says, abide in me.

Like you will experience life from me if you abide in me.

He's actually saying something that has that was true back then, that we just now have the science to actually prove and go, hey, what Jesus said is true.

What Solomon said that walk with the wise and you'll become wise, like that's true.

It was just written 6,000 years ago and this was, you know, a couple, you know, dozen years ago.

That kind of thing.

And so the idea though, it's like if you really genuinely want to see change, the way that you would experience that primarily isn't by setting new goals for yourself.

It's just by spending time with people who have those things taking shape in their lives, and then you just have those things being built in your lives.

And again, I think this is why Jesus says, don't aim at your will.

Don't try and change yourself from the outside in.

Just spend time with me.

I will transform your heart, and that will transform your actions, and that will transform your will.

We try and do it the other way.

We try and like, I'm gonna willpower this thing, hoping that it transforms our heart.

It works for two weeks, then we get tired, and then we just go back to who we actually are in our hearts.

And Jesus goes, I'm gonna do this the other way.

I'm gonna start in the heart, I'm gonna transform your heart slowly over time, so that your actions, your the way that you walk, the way that you talk, the way that you do things, the way that you think, the way that you desire things, all those different things, all of those things take shape because I'm gonna transform who you are internally, and it's gonna take place externally through your hands, your feet, your eyes, your ears, and all the rest of it.

And so this is what he's saying.

There's this great quote by David Guzzick.

I've read it before, but uh I want to read it again.

Um he says, Everyone wants to know how I how can I change?

How can I change?

He says the best and most enduring change comes into our lives when we are transformed by time spent with the Lord.

There are other ways to change, such as guilt, willpower, or coercion.

I can never get that right.

But none of these methods bring change that is as deep and lasts as long as the transformation that comes by the Spirit of God if we spend time in the presence of the Lord.

This is God's great design in our salvation.

For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed into the image of his son.

So another space where Paul says it is the will of God to be conformed into his image.

And so there's all of this thought and idea of like, what's the will of God?

Should I take this job?

Should I go to this college?

Should I do this thing?

Should I do this and this?

What's the will of God?

And it's like the will of God has nothing to do with your college, it has a lot to do with you.

Here it is.

He wants to form you into his image so that the college you choose, so that the work that you do, so that decisions that you make, so the relationships you press into are made and pressed into from a heart that actually loves him and desires what he desires.

He's not trying to say, pick this one, this is the right one, it's 50-50.

If you pick this one, it's gonna go really well for you.

If you pick this one, it's gonna go really terrible.

That's not how God works.

He's like, I want you, I want to shape you and form you into a way to now you're actually experiencing, whether you choose this one or this one, you're gonna know what I'm actually hoping for you to experience in this thing because I have shaped your heart and changed you from inside.

And now you're just moving and walking forward.

He is ordering your steps in this thing.

It's actually a lot easier that way than like just you know flipping a coin or casting lots or something like that and trying to figure out what's God's will for me.

He wants to make you like him so that in your mind and in your heart you just move like he does, so that you're always walking in the will of God.

Whether you're doing this decision or this decision, you're always moving because you're moving as he did.

You've been conformed and made into his image.

That's what he wants for you.

So spend time with him and you will become like him.

Time with him will affect how you talk, how you spend your money, how you interact with your spouse, how you interact with your kids.

If you want to be patient, he will make you patient, not by beating it into you, but by shaping you and forming you into somebody who's patient.

He will make you humble, he will make you confident, and he will be able to separate the difference in you between arrogance and confidence.

He will shape those things in you because you've spent time with him and he's just rubbed off on you.

And if this is foreign to you, that like God is like some ethereal thing out in the earth or somewhere beyond, I I have good news.

He's not that.

He is actually very near.

He is with us always, and there's a space that we can just press into that, spending time with him, hearing his voice spoken to us through his word, speaking back to him in prayer, and then watching him respond to those prayers in the world, and then understanding and seeing the invisible way that God moves and acts and speaks.

And all of a sudden you're like, oh, I know exactly who he is because I've spent time with him and I've become like him.

And so that's what I want for you.

Not seeking to change because you're aiming at your will and going, like, I need to make this better.

Not that.

It won't work.

It'll work for a little bit.

And if you're type A, Enneagram one, like you may like really crush it and then look down on everybody who can't do it.

But normally that's not the way that it works for everybody.

Everybody else is formed.

95% of who you are is formed by who you spend time with.

Spend time with him.

You you will see things change slowly over time.

I said this at some point, um, but Teddy is eight now, and the we wanted to shape him and form him, obviously.

If you have kids, you want to shape and form them.

But right now, at eight years old, like we're working on like, hey, say thank you, manners.

He's getting pretty good at those things.

He still needs to be reminded here and there.

Uh, we're working on like toilet seat up and down kind of stuff, you know?

Um and cleaning up and and that kind of thing, and you know, what to do with bullies and all, you know, that stuff.

When he was a baby, we didn't we didn't talk about any of that stuff.

Like we didn't form him in putting the toilet seat up or down.

We just tried not to get sprayed with the oncoming onslaught of changing his diapers and all the rest of it.

Like it was like more just like keep the thing alive.

Like, just do that.

That's what we did.

And then at age one, we started working on this other thing that we're dealing with, and age two and age three, and like here's how to talk, here's how to do that.

Age four, like every year it was incremental change over and over, forming him.

And the Lord wants to do that to you.

He's not gonna sit there and look at your life and go, like, all right, I'm gonna change everything day one, because it'd crush you and it would kill you.

If I was telling a baby teddy, like, hey, make sure you put the toilet seat down when you're eight years old, like he wouldn't under one, he wouldn't understand that.

And then two, like, that's just not gonna do that.

The expectation of that type of change and that type of formation would crush him.

And Jesus is the same way with us.

He is going to form you, but it's gonna be over time, very slowly, in a way that you can stand.

Because if he want, if he changes you and glorifies you in the way that he's going to do in heaven, he will crush you here and now because we can't take all of that.

And so what he does slowly over time as you spend time with him.

It's incremental change over and over and over.

And so if you don't see it right away in our give it to me now, two days prime culture, if you don't see it right now, it doesn't mean that it's not happening.

He's just shaping you slowly, but he shapes you primarily by spending time with him.

That's the first one.

Okay.

The second reason I want you to spend time with Jesus, and this one is primarily based on prayer, is because of the splash zone paradigm.

And it's a silly illustration or reference, but I do think it actually really sticks.

The splash zone paradigm.

Anybody been to SeaWorld, Disney World, any of those things?

Okay.

Um if you go there, there's normally like these seats at SeaWorld that are called the splash zone or like the soak zone.

We have a picture.

There it is.

That's Shamu doing his thing.

Uh but those are the those are the splash zone seats.

And they label them.

They're like, hey, if you sit here, you might get splashed.

And the the the idea is you may not get splashed, but if you are going to get splashed, this is the only place that it takes place.

It doesn't, you it might not happen today, but if it's going to happen, it would happen here.

And so they label those things and saying that.

And so I think it's the same with prayer.

I think if you're going to experience God's power and presence in your life, prayer is the splash zone for experiencing God's power and prayer in your life.

And I'm going to give you a bunch of examples from the scriptures where you see that.

But prayer is the space where you experience his power and his presence breaking into your life.

It just happens to be the splash zone of those things.

And again, I know it's a silly metaphor, but I promise it's it's it's real.

Okay.

So I want to give you a bunch of examples from just the book of Acts, okay?

It's I think it's 16 examples, and I'm going to go rather fast through them.

But just look how this is proved in the scriptures.

Um, this is the disciples either going to prayer in prayer or after prayer.

Number one, all the disciples are together praying, and the Holy Spirit comes.

Okay, that's one.

Uh the healing of the lame man happened while people were on their way to prayer.

Uh, the room where the people were the disciples were praying was shaken after prayer.

The Lord speaks to Philip in prayer to get up and go to Gaza, and there he meets the Ethiopian who comes to faith.

Ananias and Saul are both praying and receive visions from God.

Peter prays for Dorcas and she's raised to life.

Cornelius is praying and receives a vision of God about Peter.

Peter's praying on the roof, receives a vision of God that the gospel isn't just for Jewish people.

This whole thing, number eight, changes the entire course of the church.

Number nine, the church prays, and jail cells are broken open and the apostles escape.

Number ten, in prayer, the Holy Spirit speaks.

Barnabas and Paul are called to go preach.

On the way to the place of prayer, Paul and Lydia, uh, Paul meets Lydia and she comes to faith.

On the way to prayer, Paul meets a slave who's possessed by a demon and he heals her.

Paul and Silas prayed in prison and shook the uh and the prison shook and their chains came off, and the jailers asked how they could be saved, and their whole household came to faith.

In prayer, uh the Lord spoke to Paul to stay in Corinth and preach, and the Corinthian church was formed.

In prayer, the Lord encouraged Paul that he would proclaim the gospel in Rome, and then finally, Paul prayed in Malta for a man who was sick and he healed him.

There's sixteen moments there, and they're either on their way to prayer, they're either in prayer, or they're leaving prayer.

Prayer is just the splashstone.

If you're going to experience his power or presence breaking into your life, if you want that and you want to hear his voice and you want to experience those things, you want to see things shift and change, it's just the space where those things happen.

There's just not another space mentioned in the scriptures where it's like, but we could also do, it's like, find it and show it to me.

But primarily, the place where you're going to experience those things is primarily in prayer.

On their way to prayer, they experience power that's given, people are healed, wisdom's given, people are transformed, the church is transformed, guidance is given, encouragement is given, healing is given, jails are open, and people come to faith.

This is just what's true of prayer.

And so I want you to not only pray because you're spending time with him and that's gonna form you.

I want you to pray so that you actually, these things that we talk about, the fame and deeds of God in our time, so that these things become real to you and not this something like, yeah, I heard that God did this stuff way back in the day, and I heard that other people can have experienced God speaking to them at their specific time.

It's like, but I've never really experienced that.

Great.

Press into prayer.

It is the space.

It might not happen every single time, and I don't think that it will happen every single time.

There's 16, what is it, 16 moments of this, and and acts takes place over 32 years, 16 substantial miracles and acts take place over 32 years.

But they prayed three times a day for an hour, every single day.

That means that in two years they experienced one, if you just do the math, 16 or 32 divided by 16.

Two, is that right?

Damn it, doing that right?

Yeah.

Two each year.

Yeah, and so one, one every two years is what they experienced, but they were still every single day going to the place of prayer, going in the place of prayer, not experiencing breakthrough and people coming to faith the entire time that they did that.

But as they pressed in, it still didn't change the fact that they experienced the power and presence of God primarily on their way in prayer or leaving prayer.

And so there's something to that for us as well that we should look at and follow.

Because if you want to experience those things, I believe.

Prayer is a splash zone of those things.

This is why we have a prayer room that meets on Mondays because I want to experience those things in my life.

I want our church to experience those things, and I want other people to be like, oh, I have heard that this God still does things, but I I finally now I've seen it.

I've heard with my ears, but now I see with my own eyes.

He still does this stuff that he said that he would do.

And so I want that for us.

And so my encouragement to you is to spend time with him so that you become like him, and then to pray so that you experience the power and presence of God in your own life.

All right.

How to practice reading the Bible.

How to practice reading the Bible.

Here's what the Bible says about reading the Bible.

Psalm 1.

Next slide.

Psalm 1 says, Blessed is the one whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on that law he meditates day and night.

Blessed is the one.

The one whose the promise is that you will be blessed, not for reading your Bible through in a year, which again, the Lord bless you for doing that if you do that.

But the blessing and the promise comes for delight.

Those who delight in the law of the Lord and who meditate on it day and night, the promise is given to those people that you're blessed and you experience blessing from delighting in it and from meditating on it.

And so the goal for us as we read the scriptures should not be read through the Bible in a year.

If that's what you do, that's fine, but that should not be the goal.

If you read through the Bible in a year and you didn't delight in it and you didn't meditate on it, you will not experience the promise of the blessing.

There are no promises for reading the scriptures.

There's no promises for reading the scriptures in a year.

There's no promises in the scriptures about that, but there is promise available to those who delight in God's word and who meditate on it.

And so the goal for you as you seek to read the scriptures should be do I delight in the scriptures?

Do I wake up in the morning going, ah God, I gotta read it again?

Like three and a half chapters, I'm gonna kill myself.

This is terrible.

Like I don't want to do it.

Like if that's how you wake up and you're like, I'd be excited to meet that person too.

Like I can't wait for somebody to show up to lunch and they're going, ugh, this again.

Like I'd hate that.

And I don't think the Lord loves that either.

And I think for us, like what He wants for us is this space where it's like, I want you to delight in God's word.

I want you to delight in what I've written for you.

And so for us, the goal should be to delight in it and to meditate on them.

Um for me, I read two chapters a day.

I'm gonna do this next year, and I did it last year.

I read two chapters a day.

And don't like take mine and be like, I'm amazing.

I read two chapters.

It's not like that.

I read two chapters at two chapters a day, and then the commentary that comes with it, so that my experience is I'm learning a little bit from the scriptures, and then I'm learning from what other people have spoken about the scriptures because I delight in what I can understand.

I like having other people's thoughts.

And so it makes me delight in the scriptures simply because I'm learning something.

I'm not just, I'm I just finished.

Anybody reading the one year Bible and just read Revelation and just blew your mind in a bad way, and you're like, what is this?

What am I even reading?

Uh and so I'm like going to the commentaries and I think we should all read it.

I think every word of God has life in it, and we should read the entire Bible.

Um, but for me, I delight to read what I understand.

And so reading a smaller chunk and then doing that thing.

Rainy does, she reads a chapter a day or a section a day, and then reads the commentary that comes with it because she delights in what she can understand.

And for you, I think you need to figure out what is it for you that leads you to delight in it.

And so I have a couple of them that I want to give you.

Oh, by the way, next year I will finish the Bible in a year and a half, and Rainy will finish it at her plan in three years.

I'm clearly better than she is for doing that.

That's a joke.

Um, but no, it has nothing to do with how fast you finish.

Like, I finished it in six months.

I'm like, okay, I don't know.

Like, I don't think that's anything.

That's great, but uh it's a weird brag.

Um so for you, here's a couple of practices.

I would I would just encourage you to find some scriptures that you like to find, find and read a small sampling of it.

Read it, read them, uh, meditate on them.

Even if you just open, these are, I'm gonna get to these in a second.

Even if you just open the Bible app, the UVersion app, and it has the verse a day, even if your experience is like, I'm just gonna open that, read that verse, and then just think about it and meditate on it, that is included in the promise that blessed are those who delight in my word and meditate on it day and night.

You could do that with just a single verse.

Again, I think you should read the whole Bible at some point because it's hard to make sense of Galatians without reading Genesis.

They're connected.

Um, but you can delight on it and meditate on it without having to read the whole thing through in a year.

So for you.

Uh the three-year plan, one chapter a day from commentary, that's what Rainey's doing.

Uh the five by five plan, uh, it's five minutes of reading.

It doesn't matter how fast you go, it doesn't matter how long you get into it, five minutes of reading, five days a week, and then five questions to help you meditate on what you read so that you are actually doing the thing that the scriptures tell you to do.

It's not like I crushed eight chapters today.

God must really love me.

It's nothing to do with God's love for you.

It's all about delighting and meditating on those things.

And so those are good ways to do it.

Um, go to the next one.

Um, for some of you who hate reading, um, I have something for you.

You should listen to the scriptures.

Get the Bible Is app.

It's free.

Um and you can just listen to the scriptures being spoken to you.

If this works for your commute, if this works for you while you're working out, if this works for you in the morning when you wake up, whatever.

If you wake up and you're like, I need coffee, but I couldn't possibly read anything, just turn it on.

It's this great app.

Um, all the way, also, uh, I created uh uh just a website on our website, a little page on our website.

All of these resources are on there, and I'll tell you how to get there in just a second.

So if you want to download this app, there's click buttons that you can do that.

If you want to practice these plans, there's all these different things on there.

That it's titled, it's up there on the top called Be With Jesus, but we'll get there in a second.

But this is an incredible one.

And faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

And so anybody that would look down and you're like, oh, I read the Bible, you just listen to it.

It's like, hey man, faith comes from hearing and hearing from the word of God.

Like, I'm supposed to have this spoken into me.

The way that I'm going to experience growth in my faith is by having it spoken into me.

And so if you hate reading, because personality types are different, that's fine.

There was a time in the history of the, of the, of the world where people didn't have their own Bibles.

Like, that's not how they processed the scriptures.

They didn't read them because one, they didn't know how to read, and then two, the Bible wasn't finished yet.

And so there were other spaces.

What they did was tell stories and all these different things.

And so for you, listen to the scriptures if that's what works for you, if that is better than reading, if that's what you delight in.

Uh, next one, um, meditate on biblical art.

Again, this used to be called, this is why they did um, I would love it in here, stained glass.

That's why they did stained glass, because it was called the poor man's Bible.

You can look it up.

The poor man's Bible was like, you don't know how to read, and you can't afford your own Bible because there was only a handful of them around.

And so what they did was they created these mosaics, or they sculpted things, or they drew incredible art that uh I got a couple here.

Go to the next slide.

Uh so this is one of them.

This is just a painting of the Magi kissing Jesus' feet.

And so people would just stare at this thing, and that would be their experience of like uh the advent and like Christmas, is just watching the Magi kiss this baby's feet.

And if you can see, the magi has a servant holding his robe, but he's but the magi himself is on his knee kissing the foot of a baby.

And it's like, man, what kind of baby is this that a king would bow the knee while somebody else has to hold his robe?

And they just stirred their hearts with affection for Jesus and wonder of him because it's like this is incredible.

There's another one uh right here.

This is 21 different, I believe that's right, 21 different images of Jesus.

Um I believe it's at a church, some I can't remember where it is.

Um, but it's all the way from like the announcement of Jesus' birth to the resurrection of Jesus, and this is how they taught the scriptures to people.

It was like you we don't have them to give you, you can't read if we did.

And so use this to learn about the life of Jesus, 21 different segments of his life to picture and meditate on, and allow that to be this space where you are still delighting in God's word, you're delighting in the law of the Lord, you're hearing the story, and then you're meditating on who Jesus actually is.

If you are, some of you are like, I hate art, I'll never do this, and honestly, I'm not gonna do this a ton either.

Um, but there are people that like really like this, hits a space in their brain where they get something different.

They could just stare at art for their entire lives, and like that's not me, that's probably my son.

Um, but this is an incredible, incredible thing.

Yeah, Colin loves it.

I know, yeah.

Thanks, man.

Thank you from the back.

Thanks.

But do that.

What a beautiful thing that you could do that.

And that the Lord doesn't look at them like, oh, well, I read through mine in a year, you just looked at pictures, like you child.

Like, no, he doesn't do that.

He's like, I'm thank you, like you delight in my word, you delight in my life, and you're meditating on who I am and what I've done, and this uses you this is a way to do that.

This is, I mean, I'll talk about this in a second, but this is what I do in prayer.

I have this book, and I have another one coming of Rembrandt's paintings of uh different uh biblical moments, but I use that in prayer, and I'll just stare at one of the images, and we've done this, some of my students are here from the last church.

We've done this in the prayer room, or we've just looked at an image and then had the story kind of um in our minds of like Jesus and the uh walking on the waves or anything like that.

And then just looking at the painting itself and allowing that to stir up prayers that we that come from that.

It's called Visio Divinio.

We'll talk about that in a second.

But um, man, what a gift that this is a way that you could do that.

Okay.

What time is it?

I need to, I don't have my watch.

Okay, I gotta go a little faster.

All right, prayer.

So that's reading the Bible.

Find one that works for you, find one that works for you.

Um, pray.

Here's a couple of ways to pray.

How can we practice prayer?

I love what Rainey said.

I think a lot of people are like, if I pray, I have to bow my head, close my eyes.

Um, there's tons of ways to pray in the scriptures.

The only one that's not mentioned is bow your heads and close your eyes.

I don't know why we do this, but it's and it's fine that we do it.

It's just not mentioned.

That's not the way people normally pray with their hands raised up like this in the New Testament.

That's how they prayed.

Uh, or they're laying flat on the floor with their face to the ground, which would be a ton of fun for us to do, but it's dirty and the floor is dirty.

Um but there's a space, there is a space where when we consider how to pray, I think there's more for us than just bow your heads, close your eyes, and try and pray for everything you can think of, even Biden.

Like there's there's more to I just tossed that one in there real fast.

All right.

Which we should pray for our president.

Uh the good news is that there are tons of different ways to pray.

So I'm gonna give you nine different ones.

The first is breath prayer.

Rainey talked about this short prayer that really takes no thought.

You can do this while you're running.

So I need you, I need you, I need you.

Uh St.

Francis had this, my God and my all, my God in my all, my God in my all.

The Jesus prayer.

Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill my heart with your love.

It's just this easy, just very, very simple way of just engaging with the Lord.

And it makes sense that Paul was able to say, pray without ceasing, because as you breathe, this is a space where you're able to pray.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill my heart.

Um one of the uh another one is the Jesus prayers.

I think this is next.

Yeah, Jesus prayers.

And this is using Jesus' interactions with others in the gospels and and uh elsewhere to ask Jesus to do certain things.

And so, for example, Jesus, you softened Saul's unbelieving heart.

Would you do that for, and then the name of the person that you want a soft heart for?

Jesus, your kindness transformed the woman at the well.

Would so-and-so experience your kindness like that to transform them?

Jesus, you drove out the darkness no one else could drive out.

Would you do that for me?

It's just looking at the stories of Jesus in the scriptures and being like, man, I want that for myself.

I want that for my family, I want that for my people.

And just looking at the things that he did that nobody else was able to do.

And all these the demoniac in Mark V, it's like, man, everybody was like, get him out of here, put him in the tombs, chain him up.

And Jesus is like, I am not afraid of that man.

I actually love him.

I'm gonna go chase him down until he is healed and restored.

And it's like, everybody in my life has done that either with me or done that with them, and like, Lord, you're the only person that would chase that person down.

I have to go faster, sorry.

Um, but that's a really good one.

Uh, palm up, palm down, palm down, palm up prayer.

Very simple.

You're sitting somewhere at your desk and you just want to just rage at your boss, or I don't know, maybe you are the boss and everybody's raging at you.

You can do palms down just very comfortably, just sitting there, palms down on your uh legs, and that's just your space of giving.

You're just giving all of the junk of your day, whatever you got, you're just giving it to him, and not worrying about the fact that like what you're saying is a lot of complaining and a lot of anxieties and a lot of that, like palms down, take everything I got because I can't carry this anymore.

And then taking a moment to go palms up and ask the Lord to give you what you need, to receive from him what you need, the peace that you need, the joy that you need, the patience that you need.

So palms down, palms up prayer.

Uh the prayer of examine, uh, St.

Ignatius of Loyola came up with prayer of examine.

It's a beautiful prayer.

It's a prayer of remembering.

You reflect on the last 24 hours of your day.

You can do this at the beginning of your day, you can do it at the end of your day.

Um, but it's four movements.

It's presence, gratitude, review, and respond.

And so in presence, you just sit with God and just acknowledge that He's with you.

And it's just this small thing of like, I'm not alone.

You were here, invisible in this space.

You're here.

Gratitude, you just look back with gratitude on the past day.

And don't pray those things yet.

Just what makes you thankful, having those things in your mind?

Review your day with two things.

Where, two questions.

Where did you feel?

Joy, peace, life, close to God.

And then the second, where did you feel drained, discouraged, far from God, scared, and just having those things in your mind?

And then finally, after doing all of the reflection, you respond.

And all you do is you just express that gratitude to them.

Then you talk to them about those spaces that you felt joy.

Lord, I felt joy when I was with my family last night.

But Lord, I felt afraid when I was whatever.

You know, you're just able to talk to them about those things, and then that's it.

And it can take as long as you want it to take.

It can take two hours and it can also take 20 seconds if you go rather quickly.

Um, but a beautiful way to reflect.

We're supposed to remember and reflect, anyways, it's in the scriptures.

That's a prayer for examining.

Time prayers, um, setting alarms on your phone at certain times to pray for certain things.

Uh these are mine.

901, I pray for the city of Memphis because 901.

Uh 8 a.m.

Uh is pray for Teddy because he's eight years old.

I'm not very creative, so this is what I can come up with.

Uh 1236, I pray for Rainey because uh we've been married for 12 years and she's 36.

Sorry about that.

Um just told you her age.

Um and then 536, I pray for the church and the school because uh the address here is uh 5360, and there's no, you know, there's no zero in the time clock.

So um, but that that works for me.

And I have a couple more, just different ones.

But I mean, like, it's just a simple way.

Like I mean, this thing pops up on my phone.

I probably have a few of them now.

Um yeah, Matthew 938.

At 938 it pops up and it says, Lord of the harvest, send out workers into your harvest field, Matthew 9.38.

And the reason is because we need a couple of workers to work with our youth, and so I just pray for that at 9.38 every single day.

Um but just easy reminders.

Like just set one and do that thing.

It's just a way to engage with the Lord.

Psalm prayer.

Uh, this is taking a psalm and praying through it.

Um, Psalm 23 is a good one.

Uh Lord, Lord is my shepherd, I have everything I need.

Lord, would you provide for me and protect me like a shepherd does his flock?

Would you help me to trust you that I have everything I need because you're a good shepherd?

Like just taking a psalm.

The psalms are prayers set to music.

That's what they are.

They're just prayers to God that David was like, and I got the learn and did his thing.

Like that's what it was.

And so just take a prayer that somebody else prayed and use that for yourself.

You don't have to get creative, just read it back to them.

Uh Lectio Divinia prayer is uh taking a passive script.

This is what we do in the prayer room.

If you ever join us on Mondays from 12 to 1, this is what we do.

Lectio Divinia is using the scriptures to stir up prayer so that we're praying from the scriptures.

Bonhoeffer says, do not pray from the, we shouldn't pray from the poverty of our own hearts, but from the riches of God's word.

And so his word is supposed to be the thing that stirs us.

Um and then Visio Divinia is intentionally seeking God by praying with images, paintings, and all these different things.

Um Colin and I talked a ton about this, but um we do students of mine in the last church I was at, we would do this at the beach and just looking at the waves and then grasping the sand, and then using like just your nature itself to do it's declaring the glory of God to you and allowing that to be a space that stirs you to pray.

But you can do this with images, you can do this with paintings, you can do this with anything that you have for you.

Especially, again, I do this with with paintings.

Uh, and I on the website that I that we have, C3 Memphis, go to the go to the slide that has the that thing.

Yeah, that's our website with uh and the slash be with Jesus.

There's all this stuff.

It'll have like Bible reading on one, Bible reading on this side for you guys, and then prayer on this side, and all these different practices.

Uh one of them is to um meditate on God's word through images, and one of them is pray Visio Divinia.

Uh it goes to the same website, but it's every single artist that has biblical art.

And you can just go to the artist and do it.

And if you go there, just know that there's gonna be some naked people in it because that's how artists painted back then, and so Adam and Eve, Eve is naked, and so, anyways, just so you know that.

If you take your kids there with you to look at these things, just know, you know.

Um back then they didn't really care about that.

The the like Michael Michelangelo's David, like they obviously, um, and so, anyways, but it's a wonderful thing to pray using the scriptures.

Um I don't have time to I'll read this quote, that's fine.

Um I love this quote by uh Adele Calhoun.

Uh she says, uh Visio divinia, holy scene, is a way to pray with the eyes.

Creation speaks, it speaks elegantly, it pours forth speech of God.

God ambushes people on riverbanks, mountaintops, and wilderness wasteland, whirlwinds, burning bushes, and rushing winds, and she's referencing the scriptures.

That's where God ambushes people in the scriptures.

The house of God stretches from the view out my window to the edge of the universe and beyond.

All we have to do is see it.

Jesus did this when he considered the birds and the lilies and how they reveal God's care for us.

For centuries, the church has put the cross, stained glass, mosaics, art, and statues in church and churches as invitations to pray to God with the eyes.

And I realize that we are in a school, which I actually think is beautiful, and we're partnering with a school in the city and doing this thing.

Um, but I love the idea that they're they used to create churches that were beautiful, not for themselves.

Like they created churches that were beautiful so that other people who would drive by wouldn't be like, oh, look at that cool church, I want to go there.

It wasn't that.

It was like, look how beautiful it is that makes me believe that God is beautiful.

That was the original vision behind creating anything with beauty.

And so there's all those ornate ways that they built churches back in the day, it was all to the glory of God so that people could experience the glory of God and they could worship him with their eyes.

And I think that's something for us as well.

Last one is um if you're an artist uh or you just love or you have kids that love art, praying in color is a really cool book.

It teaches you how to pray through drawing.

Go to the next slide.

Uh this is one of them.

It's gratitude, and it looks like a turkey.

Um, and they just, you know, just put their hand up there, gratitude in the center, and then started writing all the things they're thankful for.

And it was just this space where it's like, I hate praying, I hate closing my eyes and doing this thing, I hate doing that.

It's like, what if you just drew a hand that made it look like a turkey and then it you wrote all the people you're thankful for and it was like done?

Like people love this.

And so to me, I'm like, this is somebody's experience with Jesus that that's unique to them and not me.

I couldn't do that if I wanted to.

Um but the idea is like my son will love this, there's uh Colin would love this.

Like there are people that just and they've been at some point in the in the in the way that we've done church over the last 200 years, maybe, it's been formed, fit into this thing.

You've got to read like this, you've got to pray like this, and the scriptures are robust, and there's something there for everybody because he knows I created you fearfully and wonderfully, and you are different than that person.

And so your experience with me can also be different.

And so there's something for you, and the point isn't all this.

Find a way that leads you to delight in God's word.

Find a way that helps you go.

Like I want to press into these spaces of prayer.

I can't do that thing at all because that's not me, but I can do this and I want to do this.

He wants time with you.

And his time with you is not something that he's sitting there going, well, that was a good time, that was a bad time.

My son comes, he's he's at my mom's right now.

But when he comes home, we will sit together and we will do random stuff and talk about random things.

And I never judge the productivity of our time together.

I'm not like, well, that wasn't really all that great.

We really just talked about Mario.

Like, I don't do that.

I'm just thankful to be with him, and whether it was a short time or a long time, and the conversation was here or there, the father sees you the exact same way.

And so find a space that you enjoy going to and visit that place often so that you actually spend time with him in the scriptures and in prayer.

You will be formed.

There are things in your life that you want to see changed, that he wants to do those things as well, and he does those things not by demanding and coming at you like that, but by just slowly over time spending time with you.

And then prayer is the space.

You need God's power and presence in your life, and his presence is fullness of joy, his power is the thing that you're supposed to live by, not your own.

Prayer is the splash zone for those things.

That's where you'll experience that.

And so press in, find one that works for you, and then press into those things.

Let me pray.

Lord Jesus.

I do pray for our church.

Uh, Lord, that we would be a church that just um enjoys spending time with you, that this year would be uh just a renewal um in each of our lives of um just a renewed joy.

I just I I I don't know that I've ever enjoyed spending time with Jesus the way that I do this year.

I would love that to be true in this next year.

I'd love for it to be true consecutive years, uh, just consistently.

The longer we get to know you, the more we get to know you, the more we enjoy our time with you.

And so, God, I just pray that you would begin that, that you would speak that over our church and into the hearts of our people.

That this would be a space in a year where we begin enjoying even more than we have in the past.

We enjoy it more by pressing into some of these different practices and just feeling the freedom to be with you the way that we want to be with you.

Uh because at the end of the day, you're a father who just likes being with his kids, you're a father who likes hearing his kids talk, you're a father who likes sitting with them.

And so, Father, I just pray that that would be their experience with you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

We're gonna take communion.

Say this liturgy.

Uh, one of the reasons that we get to enter in so easily into God's presence and just be with him is because on a cross, one day, when Jesus died, the first thing that God did, his son dies, breathes his last breath, and then bows his head and dies.

The first thing that happens, it says, and then immediately the curtain was torn in two from top to bottom.

Like I don't know what what y'all would do and what I would do as soon as someone killed my kid, that my first response, but it would not be a kind act.

And his act, when his son was killed and crucified, the first act was an act of kindness.

He tears the curtain in two and is like, now you're welcome back in.

Now this thing.

It was an act of kindness and not retribution.

It's like, who kind of love is this?

And so we get to experience that kind of love.

We get to enter in and walk into this space as easily and freely as we want to, without priests or blood of sacrifices or any of those things, because he was the high priest and his sacrifice was the blood that paid for all the sin.

And so now we just get to walk in freely and color in his presence, y'all.

Like, this is crazy that this is our experience, and like that we have this space.

Or it's like, how do you want to spend time with?

I don't know.

I kind of want to listen to some classical music and maybe a little garth and enjoy Jesus.

And it's like, you can do that.

And it's like, man, what that's crazy that that's available to us, and it is available to us, and there's freedom in his presence, and there's life there, and we just have to get there and believe that that's true.

And the only reason that's available is because Jesus did a really great thing years and years and years ago that still speaks a better word to us than anything that's ever been spoken to us in our lives.

And it's like, you are welcome here with me.

You can experience life here with me.

And so come in, come often and experience life with me.

It's because his body was broken, it's because his blood was shed.

So let's say this together.

Jesus was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.

The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

And then what can wash away my sin?

What can nothing but the blood of Jesus?

What can make me whole again?

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Amen.

Come and take communion.

Celebrate the fact that we can enter in whenever we feel like it.

And if you help set up communion today, please come and serve.

Thank you.