First Week At Shady Grove

Zach, Sean, thank y'all very much.

Bless you.

Bless you.

Y'all can have a seat.

Welcome to Christ Community Church.

I greet you in the name of my Savior.

And I'm happy, very happy that you're here.

I'm happy that we're here.

This has been an exciting journey to get here.

But the Lord is faithful, and I'm just happy to be here.

If you're a student, you are dismissed to go and find your fearless leader, Miss Morgan and Miss Hannah.

Weldon.

And Weldon, yeah, sorry.

And Weldon.

And y'all can go and oh, let's see.

Did I get my?

Yeah.

Okay.

Everybody, good.

All right.

It's a new spot.

It's a new spot.

I was just thinking about that song that Bethany sang a minute ago.

That I am who God says I am.

I think that's a really important question.

We're not going to talk about it today because I just heard it.

But wonder what, I wonder who God says you are.

You know, we live in a world where everybody labels everybody else.

You're smart, you're dumb, you're a Republican, you're a Democrat, you're rich, you're poor, you're black, you're white, you're something related to some past experience or habit that you've had in your life, or maybe some success that you've had in your life.

But uh I wonder what God calls us.

Wonder who God says that we are, and how different that is than how we or who we say each other are.

Absolutely has nothing to do with how we look or what we've done, own.

Or what we've experienced.

Or, you know, as important as uh who do not only is important what you or who you say I am, but who do I say I am?

An addict, a failure, a success, smart, rich.

Yeah.

That's a great song.

That's a great song.

Dang.

You can expect a sermon on that one.

Yeah, we'll we'll talk about that down the road.

Uh we sure will, Lord willing.

Let me make sure I got that ain't it.

Hold on a minute.

Huh.

Yeah, here we go.

I gotta get rid of some of those old lessons.

And get used to it.

New podium and new chairs and new chairs and Kathy Johnson was not gonna thrive until we got a different uh what do you call it?

Lectured.

It's good.

She calls it.

Uh so anyway, so that's that's that's good.

It is at least it's a little more room.

Yep.

So good.

Again, welcome.

Thank you for being here.

Um, Father God, I just bless you today for uh being a a person that keeps his word.

You would do something ever made a promise that you didn't keep.

You've never told us you would do something that you didn't do, you're never too busy, you never make excuses, you never get distracted, you never forget.

You've promised to meet our needs and to be our provider.

And uh we needed a new place to live or to to gather.

I actually we needed a new place to live, a new place to find life and to experience life together.

I like that.

And you have been very faithful and kind to provide that.

And I just want to acknowledge that, declare that, and thank you for that.

Speak to us now from your word.

We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

And to that point, real quickly before the sermon begins, there's just so many people that have made this happen.

Oh gosh.

Won't be named today, but the leadership and the uh group and just person after person after person who's shown up and delivered and said we need this, and just look around you, it's all new.

And someone did that, and it wasn't me.

And um, so you do thank you but uh yes, they're that we're here.

Yeah, and there were 20 people here this morning at 8 30 to make this happen, and uh I want to give a special word of thanks to the finance committee because I've scared them to death.

I've not spent any money in nine years, and I've spent more, I've literally spent more money in the last month than I've spent uh related to the church in nine years, and so I know I've scared them to death, but we needed some things, and the Lord has been kind.

Uh, he's always kind to bless us as a church.

We've never not had enough money.

God's always provided.

Uh we still don't have enough to buy gold and commodes, and I need a new Rolls-Royce and a jet and some other things.

But other than that, God has been very faithful through you.

All you really need is a car wash.

That's all you really need.

Yes, yes, that would be a blessing.

But anyway, so thank y'all.

Thank you very much.

Um I've struggled for two weeks to know what we should talk about today.

And I have come up with dozens of different things that I started down the road of preparing for us today.

Um, but at the end of the day, I uh felt like we as a church with this new location and this new beginning should really go back to square one.

And just I wanted to challenge you.

None of you will be surprised, those of you that know me, none of you will be surprised about what I want to talk to you or what we're gonna talk to you about today.

Um there's nothing in my life, and I mean this with all of my heart, my bridle tell you, there's nothing in my life that's more important to me than um reading this book every day and reading through it every year.

Uh and there's nothing more important for the people that I love the most to do that to.

My wife, my daughter, uh, before my grandson reaches high school, he he'll he's gonna join in.

Um and you.

It's there's nothing in the world that I would rather you do than read the Bible uh every day and read through it uh this year, this new year.

And there's nothing that gives me more joy than getting emails and text and phone calls from many of you who've said, Larry, I'm gonna join you this year.

I'm gonna read through the Bible with you this year.

And um it really does fill my heart with joy.

And I have people now all over the world.

No kidding.

I got text and emails from people all over the country and a few from around the world of people saying, uh, I'm gonna read through the Bible with you this year.

And that that gives me great joy.

Um the testimony of my life and the testimony of many people in this room uh is that reading through God's word, reading it every day, and reading through it every year, there's nothing that'll change your life like that.

It will change your life in ways that nothing else ever will.

Um David says in Psalm 119, Lord God, I need help.

I need help with deceit, and I need grace.

Teach me your laws.

I love that.

Isn't that what you need and what I need?

I do.

I need deceit.

I need help with deceit.

Self-deception and dealing with the deception of other people.

I need grace.

And David, or whoever wrote Psalm 119, he saw a connection between God's word entering in his life and the ability to cut through the deceit and the lies and the distortions in his own life and in the lives of others, and he saw God's word as a primary means of receiving God's grace.

Jeremiah says in chapter 15, Thy words were found, and I did eat them, and they became the joy and the rejoicing of my heart.

You need some joy?

Man, I do.

Jeremiah would say there's a connection between people who feed regularly on God's word, and people that go through life not without problems, but they have joy.

In spite of the problems, through the problems, they experience joy.

Psalm 119 again says, All those that love thy law have great peace, and nothing causes them to permanently stumble.

I fall down every day because I walk a lot.

Sometimes I literally fall down, especially if it's spicy.

But I fall down every day.

I fall in my relationship with her, I fall in my relationship with you, I fall in my relationship with my daughter, I fall in my relationship with my enemies, my friends, people that I go to church with.

I fall down every day.

But the psalmist says people that feed on God's word, they put it in their lives on a regular basis.

They might fall down, but they don't fall down permanently.

They get back up.

My grandson and I have a little language that we say to each other, and that is, we call that idea having a big heart.

When you're hurting or you're scared or you're in need and you want to lay down, you need to have a big heart.

Teddy, where's your heart?

Where's your big heart?

Lad, where's your big heart?

We say that to each other.

Jeremiah would say, or the psalmist would say, God's word will make our hearts big.

And then my favorite verse, I guess, in the Bible related to God's Word is in Psalm 1, where the psalmist says that people that meditate on and read and study and ponder God's word on a regular basis, they become like that tree in the Garden of Eden.

They become a tree of life.

They become that person that everybody else goes to when they need life, when they need lumber, when they need fruit, when they need shade, when they need some uh strong, safe, secure ground to stand on when everything else is eroding away in the rainstorms.

And a person that fills their life on a regular basis with the word of God, they become that tree of life.

And the metaphor for light.

You are the light of the world, a light on a hill when everything else is dark.

Yes, the same idea.

Yes, yes.

I wasn't thinking about that.

That's that's great.

Well, in my uh journey through the Word of God in 2023, guess where I started?

Genesis 1.

That'll surprise everybody.

And I started reading.

And I got through chapter one, and I got through chapter two, and I got through chapter three, and I stopped.

Not stopped reading, but I stopped thinking about what it is that I wanted us to talk about today.

And um, there were just four things that jumped out at me just as I began this new year in God's Word, that they weren't new to me, but they had become such a part of me that I I no longer thought about them.

But they're things that help me, motivate me, challenge me, encourage me.

I thought, well, deadgum it, read the Bible every day, and as I read through the Bible every year.

And I thought, well, deadgum it, maybe this will encourage you and challenge you and help you in your journey through God's Word.

And so that's what I wanted to talk about with you for just, or I wanted us to talk about with you for just a few minutes.

Um my bride, for there's a couple of you that don't know, but my bride is a uh English teacher, and she's taught for 40 some odd years, started when she was three.

That's correct.

And um uh she teaches you know all kinds of very smart literature.

And uh I I want to ask you a question.

Okay.

Okay.

In reading the works of Shakespeare, Chaucer, Tolstoy, Dickens, whoever, how important is it in your mind for us to get the most out of it?

How important is it for us to really understand who wrote that and who they were writing it to?

What do you think about that?

Audience is what you're talking about.

Yeah, the audience, yeah, because he didn't Dickens didn't write Taylor Two Cities to Me.

He had it, but he had a he had an audience, right, that he was writing to, right?

Which is interesting because it's the difference when you look at literature, it's the difference between theme, which crosses all time boundary, or can, should, um, and audience, which actually is very pointed.

So, for example, with you mentioned Chaucer.

So when Chaucer writes or wrote the Canterbury Tables, we still, believe it or not, we still read that stuff all these years, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years later.

But the audience was a group of people who in part, um, part of the message was the corruption of the church, you know, kind of pointing out the corruption of the church.

Um, and he's he's fair with that because there's a kind of a criminal element in the stories.

There's also a a parson who's generous and lovely, so he's he's kind of fair about it.

But the audience were people who'd already knew the church was corrupt in their situation, and so adding some some, I don't know, some truth to it or some affirmation to it, same sort of Shakespeare, maybe not so much with the the church, but um, there's so much in Shakespeare that's actually uh about the King of England because he needed things from the King of England or the Queen.

Well, everybody needs money to keep their playhouse open.

And um a nod from the crown doesn't hurt that any so but the audience knew that.

So when there was a joke about the king or a kind of a an off-handed compliment about the king, the audience understood what they were hearing and would would you know laugh at that or or be appalled by that or whatever.

Okay.

So is that what you mean?

Well, yeah, no, I just wanted to know what you thought about that, because in my mind, as I read the Bible, it's very important that I understand and remember who wrote these 66 books and who they were writing to.

Okay?

Yes, God wrote it to us, but he did it through a very specific historical person, man or lady, somebody, wrote each of these books, and they wrote them to specific people.

And it just hit me again this year as I was beginning my reading journey that the books of the Bible were written by people, and the books of the Bible were written to people who had experienced the grace of God in a very real way.

The Bible was not written by people or to people to try to win them over to God.

Now, I think people can read the Bible and be one over to God.

I'm not taking away from that.

But that's not who the Isaiah and Moses and Hosea and Peter and John, these were not people who wrote these books searching for God.

They knew God.

They had experienced God, and they weren't writing to people that were searching for God.

They were writing to people who knew God, had been, they, they had experienced God's salvation, God's light.

They knew that God loved them.

They knew that God was with them.

They knew that God was at work in their life.

They knew that God was trustworthy and good.

They knew that the people that wrote these books and the people that they were writing to, they knew.

Were they perfect?

No.

Did they have all kinds of screw-up problems?

Just like me and you, yes.

But the Bible was not written by people or to people who did not have a personal experience with God.

They knew that God was good and that he loved them and that he could be trusted with their lives and their futures.

The reason that's very important is because of this.

And I really hope that you'll hear me.

I talk to people every day.

And one of the things that I talked to a dude just the other day, and I won't get into the details because some of y'all it'll offend you, but I'll just say this.

When he knew, when he discovered some of the things that I believed about the historical events in the Old Testament, he shut down like a bank on Sunday.

If you believe that, we have nothing more to talk about.

That was basically what he said.

If you believe that, if you believe in a historical Noah, I don't even know what you're talking about, but if you believe in a historical Noah, if you believe in a historical Daniel, if you believe in a historical David, if you really think David slew a, we have nothing to talk about.

Because that's all fiction.

That's all problematic.

Nobody that's educated, nobody that's smart, nobody that's reasonable would believe any of that.

So we have nothing to talk about.

I said, okay.

You brought it up.

I didn't.

Uh but I told him.

Um I would just say to you that the Bible was written to people who had had an encounter with God, and they believed that he was good, and they believed that he had committed that goodness to them, and that he was worthy of trusting.

They believed that.

And so the overwhelming, there are some exceptions, but the overwhelming majority of the Bible does not focus on the wins, the hows, or the whys.

If you read the Bible through carefully, you will be shocked at how infrequently the Bible addresses when things are going to happen.

And there's a lot of knotheads on Christian TV that are trying to tell us when things are going to happen.

Flee from all that shenanigan.

That's craziness.

Don't listen to them.

The Bible doesn't focus on the wins.

The Bible doesn't focus on the whys.

The Bible doesn't focus on the hows.

The Bible focuses on what?

What has God said to me?

And am I willing to embrace that and walk in that?

That's what the Bible focuses on.

When God said, No, I want you to build a boat.

Well, now, God, it's never rained.

Let's have a discussion about precipitation.

What's Doctor doing?

No, you need to build a boat.

It's a really big deal that you build a boat.

Abraham, I want you to take your son, your only son Isaac, and I want you to go to Mount Moriah and offer him as a sacrifice.

Well, now, God, man, we got all kinds of problems going on with that.

With those instructions, I need some whose whys and some hows and some wins.

Abraham, you just follow my instructions.

That's all that matters.

You do what I say when you understand that I'm speaking to you.

Okay.

It seems like there's logic that answers.

It is logic that answers when, why, how.

And it is faith who can release that.

Seems to me the difference between reason and faith.

Right there.

Yes, and it's faith not in my under ability to understand, but my faith in the goodness of the one that I know is talking to me.

That's where the faith is.

I don't understand what you're saying, God.

I don't know why you would say this, and I really would like to know when you're going to come through.

And God says, I'm not going to tell you that.

But I will tell you what I want you to do.

Moses, I want you to go to Egypt and set my people free.

Oh no, Lord, that won't work.

That's impossible.

There's no way that I got a lot of whys and hows and wins.

No, Moses?

I just want you to go.

And if you go, if you will walk in the revelation that I give you, I promise you, it'll work out just right.

Moms, dads, employees, bosses, friends.

God's not going to tell you, God, should I buy a new car?

God, I need to understand the whys of what's going on in my life.

I need to know some dates of when you're going to do what I'm trusting you to do.

That's not the way it works.

But God will speak to us.

It will give him the opportunity.

But what he's going to focus on and what the writers of the Bible focused on and what the readers of the Bible focused on was what is God saying to me personally, intimately?

And am I going to respond in faith and obedience to that?

Happy are you if you do them, not if you understand them.

If you know these things, you know what God's saying.

Happy are you if you do them.

John said it over and over again in the Gospel of John and in the epistles of John.

He equated obedience with understanding.

No.

John consistently and continually equated obedience with love.

If you understand how much God loves you, you'll want to obey.

And if you are learning to love him, you will want to obey him.

C.S.

Lewis put it this way: My problem, this is C.S.

Lewis.

Okay?

My problem isn't my intelligence.

My problem is my will.

My problem is not my understanding.

My problem is my willingness to surrender.

I just want to appeal to all of us.

That in our journey through the Bible, let me say it this way, just real quickly.

For those of you that are sitting there going, well, I do struggle.

I do struggle with a lot of what the Bible says.

I struggle with the genocide in the Bible.

I struggle with the six days of creation.

I struggle with Noah.

I struggle with David and Goliath.

I struggle with these things.

You're in good company.

Any serious student of God's word that's honest struggles with these things too.

But if you are struggling with those that don't read that stuff, and that's coming out of the mouth of somebody that has read that stuff every year for, I remember 40 long time, 47 years.

I've read it every year, and I believe it all.

But if you're struggling with some of those things, stay in the Gospels.

Stay in the Gospels.

Stay in the Gospels until you're convinced that the Son of God loves you.

Loves you, loves you, loves you, just like you are.

Stay in the Gospels until you're convinced that that Son of God loves you so much that he came and gave his life as a sacrifice so that you could be adopted into the family of God.

And as you grow in your understanding of how much that person loves you and how committed he is to you, and how actively he is involved in your life, doing great things for you, as your faith in that person grows, then you can start spreading out and exposing yourself.

Well, you mean Jesus?

He actually believed in that Moses.

He actually believed in that Noah.

He actually believed in that David and Goliath.

Wow, I'll start reading those things.

But I would just appeal to all of us.

Remember who wrote the Bible, or at least who God used to write the Bible, and remember who the Bible was written to.

To people that had experienced the grace of God, trusted his love, and were willing to lay down the what's or the or the whys and the hows and the whens, and to focus on what God was telling them and how God wanted them to respond.

Second thing that I would just challenge us on, hopefully we won't spend that much time, and that is this.

I don't know if you were listening to Robin read Psalm 19.

Says that the heavens declare the glory of God.

Genesis chapter 2, which I ask y'all to read, says that the heavens and the earth declare the glory of God.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

And I believe that.

She really enjoys beholding the heavenly host and the beauty of the of the creation that God made and letting that speak life into you.

Yeah, well, it's it's his good work.

I mean it's just God's good, beautiful created work, and that we don't spend enough time considering that is something that has become very important in my life in the last, you know.

Number of years.

Yeah, definitely.

And I'm learning, she's teaching me to appreciate the heavens and the earth and to let those speak into my life.

Light, wisdom, grace, healing, wiz, you know, on and on.

But I want to I want to just declare to you, remind you or challenge you, one of the things you can take your pick.

The heavens and the earth, according to Genesis 1 and 2, do declare the glory of God.

It teaches us who God is.

It teaches us about his wisdom, his power, his glory, his character.

But I want to remind you that it's not the heavens and the earth that teach us about God's love.

It is having intimate time with Him.

You and God.

God's number one tool of revelation.

God can reveal himself to us through myriads of ways.

But God's number one way of revealing himself to us is by finding a quiet place and opening up this book and letting him speak to us.

Letting him speak to us.

Adam and Eve learned about God from his creation.

But I'm telling you this Adam and Eve learned more about God from their daily walks with God.

For me, that daily walk with God is early every morning.

I get up and I have this little chair, or this chair that I sit in and I read God's word, and that's where I learn about God in ways that I will never learn, looking at trees or stars or oceans or mountains.

I'm not minimizing those in any way, but if you want to get to know God intimately and personally and individually, you're gonna have to go to the book that he wrote that expresses to you how he feels about you and what he's doing in your life, and how committed he is to you and the plans that he has for you.

Isaiah 30 says, the sovereign Lord says, In repentance and rest is your salvation, and in quietness and trust is your strength.

In 1 Kings 19, the Bible says that Yahweh did not reveal himself to Elijah in the wind or the earthquake or the fire, but he revealed himself to Elijah through a gentle whisper.

In Psalm 16, the psalmist says, In your presence there is fullness of joy, and at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

David says in Psalm 46, be still and know that I am God.

And the person who, there's only one person that could say, I can get up today and I can live life on my own.

The Lord Jesus.

Do you find it not remarkable that the person that possessed all wisdom, all power, all righteousness, all goodness, is the very person that all four gospels declare it was his habit to get up early in the morning and withdraw to a quiet place to pray?

You mean the Lord Jesus recognized his need to get up early in the morning and withdraw to a quiet place and spend time with his Father to receive fresh life from him.

My goodness, if the Lord Jesus knew that, how much more do I need that?

Third thing that I would like to challenge us on and remind us on is this.

When you read the Bible on a regular basis, one of the things that you will discover is that God delights in sharing good gifts with us.

It makes him happy.

Those of you that are parents in this room and grandparents in this room, isn't it fun to go to Target or get on Amazon and order stuff for your kids and your grandkids and give it to them?

I love it.

One of my favorite things in the world to do.

Well, whatever that is, whatever that is that makes that so fun, and she's over here pulling me back, saying, stop, stop, stop.

And I've got, well, I can't.

I can't help it.

I can't help it.

God delights in doing that for us as well.

And I was just reading in Genesis 2, where that passage discusses and describes how God put Adam to sleep and he made this partner for him.

What I took away from that is, number one, God loves to give us good stuff.

God gave me a wife, and I'm so happy with her, and I'm so thankful for her, and I take her as a good gift from God.

And did you notice what was Adam doing when God gave that gift to him?

He was asleep.

Well, that's not right.

He should have been giving money to the church, or he should have been out witnessing, or he should have been fighting spiritual giants, or he should have been working hard for the kingdom.

And then if you do all that good stuff, you get a reward.

You earn a good wage.

But see, that's the amazing thing about God.

God's not some king, shallow, angry, needy, tyrant king looking for servants, looking for workers, looking for soldiers.

No.

He's a dad looking for sons and daughters.

A dad that delights in blessing us with good gifts that are free.

He doesn't want us to earn.

He doesn't want us to earn a wage or receive a reward for faithful service.

No, he delights in giving us wonderful blessings.

Isaiah 64 says, no one has ever heard or seen of a God like you who works for those who wait for him.

Wait a minute.

We're supposed to be working for God.

We're little workers for God, right?

Serve, serve, serve, serve, serve.

And I find joy in serving my God, just like I find joy in serving my bride or my daughter or my grandson.

But it's out of love.

It's not out of obligation.

It's not out of duty.

God's the one working for us, not the other way around.

God is a well of abundant living water.

He's not looking for me and you to go get cups and buckets of water and go fill up the well.

He's the well with all this water, and he delights in sharing it with us.

That's why Jesus says in John 7, let all who are thirsty come and drink.

And in Isaiah 55, God says, Come all you who are thirsty, come to my waters, you with no money, come and eat, come and drink without cost.

Don't labor for what's not satisfying.

Listen to me and eat what is good and delight in my abundance.

It just is an incredible encouragement to me, personally, to get up in the morning and to come into the presence of my God with an excitement and an anticipation.

What are you going to share with me today, God?

You don't need anything from me, but I need from you, and luckily, you find great joy in sharing with me out of your abundance.

Anything you want to say about that?

No, what crossed my mind, and I think it was the fact that you said something about water, is um, you know, it's not what we bring to God, but it is what he does through our faith.

The the story of Gideon came to mind where he brings all this stuff and all these people, you know, to the needs for the battle.

And God, you remember that story keeps coming in, that's too many people.

Oh, that's too many people.

The problem's is getting rid of all the crap that we're bringing.

He doesn't need that.

That's exactly right.

Yeah.

That's what comes in mind.

And finally they're left with what, 300, and the Midianites have a gabelion.

Yeah.

And um Gideon's like, You this cannot be.

And God's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's it.

I'll do the work.

I want to give the gifts.

Um you don't have to bring very much.

I love that.

I don't have to bring nothing.

Last one, we're running out of time.

Fourth thing that just jumped out at me as I began my journey this year is simply this.

And I mean this with all of my heart.

If you read Genesis 1 and 2, you can't help but see that God, He starts creating stuff.

And He starts real big and general, and every day it gets more intense and specific and more glorious.

It gets better and better and better.

So here's my question.

What was God's last creation?

It's not a trick question.

What was God's last creation?

Come on.

Ah, now there's a wise fellow right back there.

Yes.

You most people would say man.

That's not God's last creation.

No, no, no.

God's last creation was not man.

Sorry, fellas.

God's last creation was Eve.

He saved the best for last.

Well, I know we can we can joke and laugh about that, and I want you to.

I want you to laugh.

But that's the experience of my life.

The best thing God ever gave me was her.

He's given me a lot of great things.

But at the end of the day, he gave me her.

And he saved the best thing.

In fact, the story of Genesis 2 is God said to Adam, here's all creation.

Here's all these animals.

Start naming all these animals and you know, looking over all the land.

It's all yours.

But out of all that stuff, the Bible says, God or Adam could not find the perfect match for him.

And God said, Okay, I've got one more thing.

I've got one more thing that I've got for you.

You go to sleep, and when you wake up, oh, you're gonna be so happy.

And he was.

That's

Not just an event, it's also a principle that runs through the Bible.

That God created something wonderful.

We have messed it up, and now God is restoring it, and He's saving the best for last.

1 Corinthians chapter 2 says, No one has seen, no one has heard, no one has dreamed of all the things that God is preparing for those who love him.

1 Corinthians 2 · chapter mention

In Joel chapter 2, rejoice, my people, in the Lord your God, for he will faithfully give you all of your needed reins, and fill your threshing floors with grain and your vats with new wine and oil.

Joel 2 · chapter mention

He'll repay you for your years of loss, and you will have plenty to eat till you are full, and you will praise your God's name, who has worked wonders for you, and you will never again be ashamed, and you will know that the Lord your God is with you.

Isn't that the whole point of Jesus' very first miracle?

In almost all of Jesus' parables.

Isn't there something, not in every one, but the overwhelming majority, there's some image in all of Jesus' parables about the dad or the king or the boss.

He's preparing a party, preparing a feast, preparing a wedding.

He's got this great thing that he's preparing for his children, his workers, his family.

And I just want to remind us all whether we're in a good place or a bad place, whether we are full of joy or full of pain, whether we are real clear about what God's doing in our lives right now, or we're as confused as all get out.

I think it's very, very important, and I see this as I read the Bible every morning.

God is preparing something good for me.

There is goodness on the horizon.

There is goodness in the future.

Today there could be some weeping.

Or tonight there can be some weeping, but there's joy in the morning.

It's coming, it's coming.

I might see it with my physical eyes, or I might have to wait till I get some new eyes.

But it's coming.

And people that read his word on a regular basis, they hear that.

They see that.

And when you hear it and see it enough, just maybe will start to believe it.

That there is good things coming.

And those that wait on God will experience them.

I want to encourage you.

Listening to me, yeah.

Listening to others, trying to figure out life on your own.

Give it your best shot.

But God wrote a book, and he's given it to his people to give them hope and peace and wisdom and power to live life in ways that is victorious and better and more wonderful than living life without it.

And I just want to encourage us all to think about that and to just rededicate ourselves to spending time in the place where God has chosen to reveal Himself to us most.

Can I add, friend?

I promise you it's worth it.

Amen.

Anything you want to add, friend?

Thanks be to God.

Thanks be to God for his glorious word.

Yes.

Okay.

We are going to celebrate the Lord's Supper.

And Timothy, would you and Esther come up and help me?

One of y'all can stand on that side.

One of you can, oh, thank you, Zachary.

We uh celebrate the Lord's Supper every Sunday, and we do it for various reasons.

Main reason is because the Lord invited us to do so.

He says, when you gather together, I want you to take bread and wine, and I want you to eat and drink and remember what I did for you.

Remember how much I love you.

Remember how committed I am to you.

Remember that I am at work doing good things in your lives, things that you can see and things that you can't see.

Things that you understand, things that you don't understand.

But I'm there, and I love you.

I love you so much that I died for you.

He says, when you get together, I want you to eat and drink and remember that.

We eat and we drink as a way of just declaring to ourselves and declaring to one another.

That God's light is greater than all darkness.

His truth is greater than all lies.

His love is greater than all hate.

And his life is greater than all death.

And if that is the testimony of your life, I didn't ask you if you were a good person.

I didn't ask you if you've done real good this week or done terrible.

I didn't ask if you were a member of some church.

What I'm asking you is, is the testimony of your life that you have experienced the grace of God.

And you know him as your Savior and as your friend.

And it's your desire and intent to know him better and to love him and live for him.

If that is the desire and the intent of your life, then I invite you to come.

And we have um uh wine and bread that are in little packets, and then we also have uh just open containers of wine, and I'll give you some bread uh if if you'd like that.

But you come and uh eat and drink and remember and give thanks if that's the desire of your heart.

You come.