It's Not All On You by Justin McTeer

Happy New Year, everybody.

Yeah.

2011.

Doesn't that seem crazy?

2011.

Every time it's the New Year, I I literally for two weeks I feel like I'm living in the future.

It just doesn't quite you know, and especially now, we're living in years where when I was a kid and and there were movies uh about the future, a lot of the the years that those futuristic movies would be taking place in would be now.

And I remember being a kid and it would say, you know, in 2010, and you're like, whoa, that's crazy.

And and now here we are, and I'm looking around wondering where all the hover cars are and and all that stuff.

I'm like, they got it wrong.

We do have iPads though, so that's good.

We're moving in the right direction.

Um but it is always kind of strange at the first of the year.

It doesn't feel like, it doesn't feel like 2011 for a while.

It takes a little while to get used to that when you're writing down the date and you just look at it and you're like, is it really 2011?

But it is.

It's a new year, and it's exciting.

There's something about a new year that's just really exciting because a new year means a fresh start.

A new year means new possibilities.

Anything can happen.

You know, we we have a chance to plan ahead a little bit, to think about what we want, what we hope happens this year, and start taking steps towards that happening.

And I'm sure a lot of us in here, hopefully, we all had fantastic 2010s.

I'm sure some of us had had a 2010 that we are just relieved that it's over and that 2011 is here, and that may be because 2010 was hard and a lot of stuff happened, and it was a tough year, but we got through it.

Maybe it was a great year, it was just very full.

I think about my in-laws, uh, my wife's parents.

They had an incredibly full 2010.

Uh, they have three children.

There's my wife who's the oldest, and then there's a daughter that's a couple years younger than her, and then a son a few years younger than that.

And my wife and I had our first child and their first grandchild halfway through the year, two, three months later, their second daughter got married, two, three months later, the son got married, so they had two weddings and a baby in one year.

That's a full year.

And I know that they're definitely like 2011, everyone take it easy.

Um but I'm sure a lot of us are like that.

I'm sure a lot of us are just, man, it's here, it's 2011 and it's a start.

Last year's over, this year has begun.

And there's just something about a new year that just gets us thinking about life differently than we normally do.

At least it does for me, and I think it's pretty normal for all of us.

There's just something about it where we tend to get into this kind of goal setting mode of some kind.

Now, maybe you're big into New Year's resolutions, and you're the type of person that you've already made two or three New Year's resolutions.

It's the second day in January, so you may have already broken one or two, that's okay.

But but you make New Year's resolutions, you come up with a list of things that you are going to accomplish this year, and that's great.

Some of us, we are not big on New Year's resolutions.

We've sworn off of them.

Maybe if if if you're in that boat, maybe the only New Year's resolution you would ever make is to never make a New Year's resolution.

And if you're in that boat, that's okay too.

But I think whether we make hard and fast resolutions or whether or whether we don't, there's just something about the beginning of the year that makes us step back, look at the last year that we had, or maybe the last few years, and we kind of self-evaluate.

We look and we say, okay, where am I?

Is this where I wanted to be?

Is this where I had planned to be at the start of 2011?

Or where do I want to get to?

What do I want to change in my life?

What do I want to get better?

There's just something about this time of the year that does that to us.

And in fact, not only do we think more about what's ahead and what we could accomplish or what we could do, you know, we we actually feel, at least at this time of the year, more hopeful and more motivated to get those things done.

You know, we say to ourselves, this is the year that I'm gonna do this.

Or this is the year that I'm gonna quit doing this, I'm gonna stop that this year.

Or this year I'm gonna focus a little bit more on this and a little bit less on that.

There's just something about a new year that has us doing that.

And so with that in mind, coming into this morning, when I found out I was speaking and it was gonna be the first Sunday of the new year, and I'm like, okay, we're all gonna be on that thinking ahead kind of mode, or you might be trying to keep yourself from doing that, but we just do it anyway.

I wanted to find something that we could talk about this morning that would help all of us stay motivated to see those things through.

Stay motivated to see those things that we were planning, the things we want to happen this year.

How can we see those things through and actually see them realized?

And so I opened up the Bible and I'm looking for all these verses, and the Bible is full of inspiring, motivating, amazing stories and quotes and all that kind of stuff, and so it's a good place to start.

And I kind of honed in on this one verse that I got really excited about because it's the perfect New Year's verse.

I mean, I read it and it was almost like it was written for New Year's, and it's Proverbs 16, 3.

Here's what it says commit your actions to the Lord and your plans will succeed.

Commit your actions to the Lord and your plans will succeed.

I was thinking about that and saying, hey, there it is.

It's a new year, and whether we call them resolutions, whether we call them goals, whether we don't want to call them anything at all, we all have plans.

We all have things that we would like to see happen this year.

Things that we would like to see change.

And almost always, those are really good plans.

We want to be better husbands and better wives.

We want to do well in our careers, we want to do well financially.

We want to have healthy relationships with our kids, healthy relationships with our parents.

If you're a student, you want to do well in school this year.

There might be kind of a special goal that you have in mind, something that you want to accomplish.

But but we all have a plan of some kind.

We all have something we we either want to start doing, stop doing something.

And here's this verse, and it's it's like perfect.

Commit your actions to the Lord, and your plans will succeed.

And so I got very excited about this verse because it seems like such a perfect fit, and I was talking about it with Steve very enthusiastically, and he kind of stopped me and he said, I wonder what commit your actions to the Lord actually means.

And I kind of paused, I didn't really have an answer.

So all my enthusiasm and excitement was kind of like deflated because here I am, like, it is a perfect verse.

I have no clue what it means.

And so I thought about it for a while, and I'm like, commit your actions to the Lord, what does that mean?

And so what popped in my head at first, and I think about the word commit, you know, commit your actions to the Lord, and kind of thinking about how I grew up thinking about God and stuff, and I'm like, okay, it's like you gotta you've gotta bear down and just you gotta do it.

You've gotta get it done.

You've got to go all out, work as hard as you can, and you've got to get it done for God.

It can't just be for you.

You know, you can't just lose 15 pounds for you.

You've got to lose those for God, too.

Not that he needs to lose any weight, you know.

It's like whatever you're doing, you gotta do it.

You gotta work hard, but you gotta do it for God.

I thought about that for a while.

That's kind of how I grew up seeing a lot of things like I'm gonna do this for the Lord, and I'm gonna commit your actions to the Lord.

Okay, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna commit them to God, and so work hard, bear down, get it done, and do it with God in mind.

And and as I thought about that, it just didn't sit right.

You know, this year I'm the one that needs to lower my cholesterol, not God, so I don't know how that it just didn't it didn't work in my head.

And so I decided to do some research and look into it and I and figure out, okay, what does this mean?

What does it mean to commit our actions to the Lord?

And I I found something, and it when I when I found it and read it and thought about it, it was kind of like one of those light bulb moments where I was like, whoa, this is totally different than what I was thinking about.

And this is actually not just totally different, this makes so much more sense.

This is awesome, and this is encouraging and exciting, and I got very excited about it.

I should probably tell you.

Um so I was online and I found that the Hebrew word that we translate, commit here.

Now I'll stop, but I I don't know Hebrew, I don't pretend to know Hebrew, so I'm not saying, you know, in the Hebrew or anything like that.

Um Google knows Hebrew, not me.

So just Googled it.

And actually, as a quick aside, you know, it's one of the great things about the day and age we live in, is sometimes you might be reading something in the Bible and you might be like, what does this mean?

And you can get online and honestly, you can find some really interesting stuff pretty quickly about it that actually helps you sort it out.

And so that's just something that I do from time to time.

So I got online, I look it up, and I start reading about the Hebrew word that we translate, commit, and it's so cool.

Because this word actually comes from another Hebrew word that literally meant to roll something away.

To roll away.

And I'm so I'm going, how do we get from commit to roll away to commit?

How does that happen?

So I'm looking at it more, and it says that the word that comes from that word that means to roll away, and it was a word that was used to describe someone who had a heavy object that they would roll onto something else that was strong enough to hold it.

So something that they could not lift on their own, and they would roll something onto something that could support it.

That's what the word was used for.

And then this other word that came from that word gets translated commit, and it it always, as I as I looked it up, it always means to commit or to trust, but every single time it has the connotation of rolling your troubles or rolling your burdens onto someone else who can help you.

Giving your stress and your burdens and all that stuff, giving it to someone who can actually carry the burden.

And so when it says commit your actions to the Lord, it's not saying, hey, just get it done and focus and do it, do it for God, because that just adds extra pressure.

Now not only do we have to do something, we have to get it done for ourselves, we also have to do it for God, and that's just extra pressure, and it's frustrating, and it's now it's it's harder.

It's the opposite of that, it's so much better.

It's let go of all the responsibility.

Let go of all the pressure, let go of all of that, roll that on to God and let Him carry it with you.

Commit your actions to God, give the burden to God, and your plans will succeed.

I read that and I was like, yes, that is so much better than what I was thinking.

And I was relieved.

The first thought that ran through my head when I read that, I almost breathed, almost just a sigh of relief, and I thought to myself, it's not all on me.

And that's that's all of us this morning.

Commit your actions to the Lord and your plans will succeed.

It's not all on you.

Whatever it is that you want to see happen this year, whether it's something work-related, whether it's kicking an addiction, whether it's it's getting healthier, it doesn't matter what it is.

It's not all on you.

God doesn't want it to be all on your shoulders.

And we can commit our actions to the Lord, roll the burden away, and let Him carry it.

And that makes so much sense to me because isn't it amazing how often our plans end up feeling like a burden at some point in time?

Even the ones that we're excited about.

You know, it's the start of a year, and you make a plan, you're like, I'm gonna do this.

And at first you're all in, you're excited, you're all smiles, but eventually, as the year goes on, that plan that you were excited about, and it's a good plan, it's something that's gonna help your life.

Now you're you're starting to slow down a little bit, you're like, oh man.

It feels like a burden.

Two years ago, I made a list of about 20 New Year's resolutions at the start of 2008, 20.

I was ambitious.

And uh and the list was a little bit all over the place.

I had every I had important things on this list.

I had read the Bible every day, that was part of my list.

Read a new book every month, that was on my list.

I had lose 15 pounds, that's always there.

Um I had uh I oh I had I had some random things on there, some things that don't matter, but I had get a tan.

Because I I am not a joke, I have not had a tan for at least 20 years at all.

And I just thought, this, you know, this year I'm gonna get a tan.

And so my list was 20 items long, all over the place, no focus.

But here was my thought.

My thought was it's like New Year's resolution, one is not good enough.

My I want to have the best year of my life in 2008.

I'm like, I'm gonna have the best year I've ever had.

And I came up with a list of everything that I thought would make 2008 the best year of my life.

And I was pumped about it.

I mean, it was early January, and I was so excited about it, I shared it with the high school group on Thursday.

Because I wanted them to have, I wanted to like inspire them to have the great year I was gonna have.

So I was like, guys, this is what you gotta do.

Plan this out.

A couple weeks later, I was I was really wishing I hadn't shared it with the high school students.

Um of it was obvious, you know.

A month in they're like, how's that 15 pounds coming?

I'm like, leave me alone, you know, don't ask about it.

But I was the excitement that I originally felt, all the all the like, you know, the feeling of, man, I can't wait to get this done, all the excitement of my plan as time went on, faded.

And it started to feel like a burden because pretty soon I was I was way off the whole read the Bible everyday thing.

I was on more of a read a book every six to seven months track.

I hadn't lost any weight.

I was still holding out for the tan, though, because it's summertime.

That can that can happen.

But but my point is, by mid-year, I didn't even want to think about my list.

I didn't even want to think about my plans because it it the reality of where I was was so far off of what I had planned, it was just painful to think about at all.

My my list of resolutions, it was a list of regrets.

And it felt like a burden.

And that happens so often to us.

We make a plan, we're excited, and over time it feels like a burden.

Maybe our plan is to get out of debt.

And at first, we are excited, we're saying no to things we used to spend money on, eating out a lot, taking vacations, whatever, and we're using that money to pay off loans and a credit card, and at first we're like, this is great, this is awesome, we're paying this off, but after a while, we've said no to a lot of things that we really enjoy.

And that plan that we have starts to feel like a weight, starts to feel like a burden.

And now someone says, Hey, let's go out to dinner, and you're like, Oh, I get out of debt and I can't go out to dinner, or if we do it, we feel guilty.

Our plan has become a burden.

Commit your actions to the Lord and your plans will succeed.

That's God telling us, I know that our plans become burdens.

Give the burden to me, and your plans will succeed.

I'll see you through.

God is all about relieving our burdens.

Jesus showed us that.

When Jesus was here and he was on earth as a person, as one of us, he was relieving burdens left and right.

That's what he did.

You see it all over the place in Matthew chapter 23, verses 1 through 4, it says, Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses.

Matthew 23:1–4

So practice and obey whatever they tell you.

But don't follow their example.

For they don't practice what they teach, they crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden.

And what was going on here was the Pharisees were giving people all these man-made religious rules and saying, if you have to follow these things to please God.

If you want God to be happy with you, you have to do all these things.

And it was a long list, impossible for anyone to follow everything.

And so people felt like they were disappointments to God.

They were crushed by the burden of all those things.

And Jesus couldn't stand it.

He could not stand how oppressed and how just heavy burdened the people were.

And so he helped.

He put the Pharisees in their place and he told everybody, look, forget about that.

Love God, love people.

And it wasn't just that example.

I mean, there's there's examples all over the place.

Jesus lifted burdens that came from disease, he lifted burdens that came from lifestyle choices people had made.

Jesus lifted burdens left and right.

That's why he said in Matthew 11, 28, Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

1 Peter 5, 7.

It says, give all your worries and cares to God.

For he cares about you.

That last verse is so cool because it kind of tells us why God wants us to give him our burden.

Because he cares about us.

That's why.

It's really simple.

It makes sense that he wants to help us because he loves us.

He's for us.

And so we can be extremely confident when we roll our burdens onto God.

We can be extremely confident that our plans are gonna succeed, we're gonna do better.

Because we're rolling our burdens and all of that, all that responsibility, we're rolling that onto someone who is committed to our success.

It's easy for me to forget that sometimes.

That God is my father.

The Bible tells us he has adopted us as his actual sons and daughters.

He is our father.

And like any good father, he's committed to our success.

I have a son now, and he's nine months old, and he's learning how to walk and do all these things, and I'm committed to his success.

I'm committed to helping him, doing whatever I can to help him be successful at what he's doing.

Whether that's holding his hands, letting him practice walking or removing things with sharp, jagged objects that he could fall on, I mean anything to help him be successful at what he's trying to do.

I'm committed to that.

God is committed to our success.

Whatever our plans are, yeah, we might have plans every once in a while that aren't what God has planned for us.

They might be a distraction, or maybe it's something that is really important to us, and God might say it's not as important as you think it is, but most of the time, God is 100% behind our plans.

Because most of our plans are good.

You think about a New Year's resolution, almost always a New Year's resolution is to either eliminate a negative in our life or add a positive.

Maybe we're addicted to something and we're trying to end that this year.

God is a hundred percent behind that.

He is committed to you being successful, eliminating an addiction or something that's unhealthy in your life.

If you want to have a better relationship with your husband or your wife or someone in your life, God is a hundred percent committed to your success in that.

He is all behind you with that.

Even in your career, God is committed to you being successful in your career and being able to provide for your family and all that.

He is committed to that.

So when we when we roll our burdens onto God, when we give him the burden, commit those to him, we're committing them to someone who is already committed to our success.

Already behind us.

Because he cares about us.

He's for us.

So we don't have to convince him, we don't have to give him a sales pitch, we don't have to do anything to prove that we're worth God helping us out.

We don't have to earn it.

He already cares.

A person I was talking to recently, a really wise person that helps me out in my life, helped me understand something about my wife Megan that I never fully understood.

And it's such a duffing that I just didn't get, but it was that Megan is she's for me.

She's on my side.

She wants me to enjoy life and have a great time.

And I it's never like I thought Megan was my enemy.

I'm sure none of us have ever thought about our spouses as the one that gets in the way of me doing what I want to do.

Um, I never thought about her like that.

Maybe every once in a while.

Um, but I had never fully understood how for me she was.

And it was a really simple reason, and I just didn't understand why I was thinking about it this way, but it's because Megan says no to me a lot.

And it's good.

It's good, and I'm not.

She's and and she's in the room this morning, so I'm I'm being careful.

And but but she does, and the reason why is really simple.

I'm extremely impulsive.

I am one of the most impulsive people that that I've ever met, and what I mean by that is when I want to do something, I have to do it now, and when I when I see something that I want and I think I need, I gotta have it now, and so I push for things, and I'm like, I gotta do this, and I'm I'm trying to persuade her.

And Megan is not impulsive, which is great, because she actually thinks about things like, can we afford this?

Do we have time for this?

Like, pretty basic things.

And so sometimes I'll come to Megan and I will be trying to convince her and sell her on something so that she'll help me out, she'll help me achieve whatever I'm planning to do.

And I would get frustrated if she would say no to me.

I wouldn't understand why she was saying it.

So I used to go to her.

If I would have something I wanted to do, I would try to convince her of things and come up with these ways to phrase things.

And I think of an example when we were, we've been married about a year, and we had never had cable television.

We were young and still in college, and I had just gotten my first full-time job, and and and so we had a little bit more money.

And so college basketball season was approaching, and I needed ESPN.

I mean, like, you don't understand how bad I needed this.

And so I've got to get Megan aboard this decision, and my first thought is she's gonna say no because of finances or whatever.

And even though in my head, I'm like, we can afford this now.

And so I'm like, I can't just go to Megan and say, hey, can we get cable?

Because I would really like to watch basketball and that would bless me, or anything like that.

I had to figure out a sales pitch, at least I thought.

And so I had this really creative way that I brought it to her.

I actually tried to convince.

Her that if we got cable, we would save money every year.

And here was my here was my awesome rationale for that.

It was that I'm gonna watch basketball games.

I'm either gonna watch them here or I'm gonna go to a restaurant that has the game on.

And if I go to a restaurant, I'm gonna spend money on food, and you know, I got a tip, and so I mean, you know, I spend like 30 bucks a game every time I go watch one, and so if we get cable, I don't have to go to those restaurants anymore and watch the game.

I can watch it here, and it's so much cheaper.

I was like, you see, I just care about our finances.

I just want us to be okay.

That's all I want.

And so that's what I told him Megan, and she said yes.

She said, yes, we can get cable.

But you know what?

She didn't say yes because I had tricked her, because she was she's smarter than me.

I'll just admit that.

She knew that we weren't saving money by going and getting cable television.

She said yes because she loves me and because she cares about me, and she looked and she said, Yeah, we can afford that, and it would really bless you.

And if I would have gone to her and just said, hey, honey, I was thinking, I think we can afford cable TV now.

I know we don't have a lot of extra money, but it would be nice, and and I love watching games, and that would be really something I would enjoy after work.

And if I would have said it to her like that, she would have said yes the same way.

And I would have actually had more joy than what I had because I would have known, wow, my wife loves me, cares about me, and all that.

And so I just use that to say something is that sometimes when I have something I'm trying to accomplish in life and I want God to get behind me on it and help me, I forget that He's already on my side.

He's already committed to my joy.

He's like that with all of us.

Just like my wife is committed to my joy, she's already for me, she's already on my side.

When we have something we're trying to do and we need God to get behind us and help us out with that, we don't have to convince him.

We don't have to prove something to him, we don't have to make agreements with God.

If I do this, then will you do this?

And I promise you that if this happens, I'm gonna give this much money to the poor.

I mean, we don't have to do that.

He's already on your side, he's already committed to you.

He loves you, he cares about you, he wants you to succeed, he wants you to have a life full of joy.

And so you can commit your actions to him, give the burden of all your plans to him, and know he's already on board, he's ready.

Jesus committed his actions to God all the time.

And there's actually this really cool, um, really cool set of uh of verses in in John chapter 17.

John 17 · chapter mention

And this is Jesus praying right before he gets arrested.

And here's what he prays.

Starts in verse 13 of John 17.

It says, Now I am coming to you.

I told them many things while I was with them in this world, so they would be filled with my joy.

I have given them your word, and the world hates them because they do not belong to the world.

Just as I do not belong to the world.

I'm not asking you to take them out of the world, but keep them safe from the evil one.

They do not belong to this world any more than I do.

Make them holy by your truth, teach them your word, which is truth.

Just as you sent me into the world, I am sending them into the world, and I give myself as a holy sacrifice for them, so they can be made holy by your truth.

I am praying not only for these disciples, but for all who will ever believe in me through their message.

I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one, as you are in me, Father, and I am in you.

And they may they be in us, so that the world will believe you sent me.

So here we have Jesus, and he's preparing to go back to God.

His time on earth as one of us is coming to an end.

But there are still things to do.

Important things.

Like he said, he's not just thinking of his disciples, he was thinking about us, anyone who would ever believe in him.

And all the work, all the things that he has set out to do, he is giving the responsibility of seeing those things through to God.

And he says, now I'm giving them to you.

You teach them.

You keep them safe.

You do the things that I've been doing.

He's making what was his responsibility, it's a shared responsibility between he and God.

And God kept his end of the bargain.

God does teach us, he gave us the Holy Spirit.

I mean, he's done that.

But here we have Jesus with his plans, and no one ever had bigger plans than Jesus.

He's the only person that ever woke up on the first of a new year and the New Year's resolution, save the world.

I mean, no one had bigger plans than Jesus.

And he didn't do it on his own.

It wasn't all on him.

He gave it to God.

He rolled the burden of it.

Here we see him.

He's giving God the responsibility and the burden of doing that.

And we can all we can all follow his example.

It wasn't all on Jesus.

It's certainly not all on us.

If the worship team would come back up and get ready to send us out.

It's funny, all the worship team people always say if they would come back up, and one of them said the other day, what if we say no?

Oh my god, I never thought of that.

Um, you guys don't get up here.

Um it wasn't all on Jesus.

It wasn't.

It's not all on us either.

Whatever your plan is, I don't know what your plans are this morning, but it's not all on you.

If your plan is to get healthier this year, it's not all on you.

God is with you in that.

He's behind you on that.

He's he's committed to your success.

If you're trying to get over an addiction this year, God is with you.

It is not all on you to do that.

You do not have to do that on your own.

If it's something in your job, it's not all on you.

If it's something with your family, it's not all on you.

It's not all on your shoulders.

I think probably one of the most amazing feelings we ever have in life is when we have this task that we think we have to do by ourselves, and someone shows up to help.

You know that sense of relief that you feel when that happens?

You have something you're trying to do, and it's a big thing, and you're looking at it, and you're like, man, this is gonna be really hard and difficult, and then all of a sudden someone shows up and says, I'll help, and you're just like, Yes.

Because now not only do you have someone to help you, it's gonna get done faster, but you have someone to talk to as you do it, and it's and it's more enjoyable, and that's that's what God wants.

For some of us this morning, the idea of committing something, giving God our burdens and asking Him to carry the load with us, that might be a first-time thing.

And so our first step in that might just be committing our lives to God.

It's funny as I was thinking about committing our actions to God and looking what that meant, it kind of made that whole commit your life to God make a lot more sense to me, too, because it's it's what we do.

And we commit our lives to God for the first time.

We are we are rolling all of our hopes and fears and burdens and sin and everything we have, we're giving all of that to God and saying, You take it and you help me out and you do it.

We're saying, I'm not in charge anymore.

I'm not the only one responsible for this.

I'm giving you the responsibility.

You help me.

And He does it.

So for some of us this morning, maybe that's where it starts.

And the great thing about that is there's no ritual, there's no magic prayer, there's no walking down an aisle or anything like that.

That's just you and your heart saying, God, I'm ready and I commit to you, and I want to start this with you.

I want to have a relationship with you.

I need your help.

Some of us in here have already done that.

We've already committed our lives to God, and now it's just reminding ourselves that He is with us.

And when we get overwhelmed and stressed out by the plans that we have, when they start to feel like a burden, whether it's tomorrow or six months from now, it's stopping and saying, It's not all on me.

God, you you you do this, you you help me get through today.

Because I can't do this on my own.

It's not all on me.

It's not.

He is on your side, he is on your team.

And so we're gonna worship him this morning and close.

And as we do it, it's just it's just amazing to know that here we are worshiping a God who is committed to our success.

He loves us, he cares about us.

It's not all on us.

He's gonna do it.

So commit our actions to the Lord, give the burden to him, and our plans will succeed.

Let's pray.

Jesus, thank you so much that you offer to take our burdens.

You you it's not something we have to earn.

We can't earn that.

You love us and you care about us, and and you ask us to give you the burden.

And so give us the ability to just do that.

Whatever we've got planned, whatever we're trying to do, to have a life that's better and full of more joy, God, we just we commit our actions to you and we thank you that you take that and you help us through.

We just ask that you keep all of us safe this year and let us have a year where we we get closer to you than we ever have.

And we ask all this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.