Becoming Everyday Disciples 2026 - Examine Your Life Daily

We're kicking off. We do this every year, actually. This has been like,

I think this is the fourth year we've done it.

A discipleship series, and it's called the same thing every time.

It's called Becoming Everyday Disciples, but that's Becoming Everyday Disciples 2026.

It's like, you know, updating each year.

And so what we're doing is like, we had been going through Matthew,

which is what we typically do.

We go through a book of the Bible generally, just chapter by chapter,

verse by verse, you know, pick up where we left off the last time.

But every now and then we switch things up. And what we're doing is we're pausing

that. And over the next month, We're just going to be thinking through some

questions around discipleship. Questions like, what does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus?

Do you even need to be a disciple of Jesus? Is that something that you're supposed to do?

And how is it, if it is something you're supposed to do, how is it that you can go about doing that?

So it's more of a practical series. And my hope is not just to ask and answer

those questions, but to actually encourage and equip all of us to take a few

very specific discipleship practices.

These are sort of things that four years ago, I just like was praying through

the church and the particular challenges and the challenges of following Jesus

in Western Washington in the post-COVID era. That's big words, right?

And so I just was thinking of like, what is it that we need and how can we equip

ourselves to follow Jesus?

And I'm not trying to argue that these things, these six things that I'm encouraging

us to do are the only things that disciples do.

There are definitely things that I think part of your faith and expression of

your faith in Jesus that are also going to be asked of you.

But I think these are particular things, a certain set of habits that are really

tailored to help us as a particular people in a particular moment follow Jesus together.

These are things for this church, and they come from just my heart as a pastor

for this church and for us as a particular people.

And if I were you and I were sitting, listening to a pastor talk about his six

point plan for your life, I'd be rolling my eyes.

I've done it so many times over the years. I've been at this game a while,

grew up in the church. And, you know, I am not temperamentally,

I want to make this very clear, I am not the sort of person who likes discipline

and habits and structure.

I'm a, I like jazz, you know, I can't snap, but I like jazz.

I don't really like jazz. I like to improvise. I like to just wander my way

through life. People who know me find it very infuriating.

I am not the sort of person who likes structure. I get bored easily.

I built, I think, I'm just going to read this. I think it's funny.

I built my whole personality around doing things my own way and not doing things

other people do, including grooming.

So anyways that's me but here is the thing trying to follow jesus for over 30

years now and i've just come to realize,

that improvising my way into a healthy spiritual life it just doesn't work at

least it doesn't work for very long and it certainly doesn't work consistently over time.

So if you've given your life to Jesus, if you've received the invitation of

the gospel, which is the free gift of salvation by faith in Jesus,

this is me just coming, hearing the good news that God has done something to

you to invite him into your family.

He's died on the cross to take away your sin, to remove any separation eternally between you and him.

And he's now bringing you into your family. And all you need to do is say,

yes, Jesus, I want that. I'm going to give you my life. I'm going to give you

my hope. I'm going to put it in you.

If you've heard that, if you've received the invitation of the gospel,

if you are trusting in Jesus, you know that there's something really good you've been offered.

And like the more you go down this road, you just pass the initial yes, please.

You hear the even better news. I'm like not to diminish the good news of forgiveness

in any way, but you hear the even better news that you've been given a whole

new life, a whole new way of life, a whole new way of relationship with God.

In Ephesians 4, verse 20, Paul talks about this, the invitation of the gospel.

Ephesians 4:20

He says, You heard about Jesus, and you were taught by him,

skipping a little bit ahead, to take off your former way of life,

the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires,

to be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and to put on a new self,

one created according to God's likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.

Paul understands, I mean, the great pastor of the New Testament,

who's bringing the mission forward into the world after Jesus' death and resurrection.

Paul understands that gospel people, people who have heard the good news,

people who are responding in faith to Jesus' invitation, are doing this thing.

They're all, we're all called to this thing, taking off the old self,

putting on the new self, the new self recreated in the image of God by the power of the Spirit.

So, I mean, that's a command, right? He's encouraging the disciples,

the followers of Jesus in his time, the Ephesians in this case,

to do this thing, to take off your former way of life.

And I think that is a command that remains important to us today.

We need to take off the former way of life.

So how do we do that? Let's think through it. I mean, when we first come to

Jesus, I think if we're paying attention, I think Jesus makes it clear that

this is important. Like we hear this part loud and clear.

We know that many of the habits, like we're convicted by the Spirit,

that many of the habits that we used to walk in, the things that we did just

without thinking, the practices that we,

have done before have to stop because they're inconsistent with the good news

that Jesus has given me life.

He's given me purpose. He's called me to repent and to welcome the kingdom in

my life. He's called me to be washed clean of sin. So we have this understanding

that things have to change right off the bat, that we have to walk in a new way of life.

And that requires, it's honestly, faith. Like we receive the gift of life in

Jesus Christ by faith, but we respond by having a new way of life,

by making choices and changing the way our lives.

We live our life. In high school, I had everyone fooled. I had my parents fooled.

Actually just my parents. They thought I was just a good, obedient kid because I did fine in school.

But I'll tell you, on the weekends, I was the life of the party.

And the parties weren't good things. They were the sort of things that if the

police showed up, you will want to get out of the party, those sorts of parties.

And I had them fooled. I fooled myself in a lot of ways.

But after college came along, I got to college. God just was like,

okay, we're done with that now.

He stopped me in my tracks. And I had to, just deeply convicted that in order

to go forward with Jesus, I had to take off this former way of life.

And you know what? It wasn't that hard to do. Instead of going to a frat house on a Tuesday, I studied.

That was a choice. It was an easy choice.

Instead of hanging out with a bunch of people who were not going to be a positive

influence on me, I made some Christian friends and I got into a Bible study.

I hung out with different people. It was things that I could choose.

I was able to take off this former way of life and start to steer my feet,

make choices, arrange my calendar and my attention and my time around something

else. I made better choices.

But it did not take me long to figure out that there were still other things

in the way in my pursuit of this taking off the old and putting on the new.

Paul encourages the Ephesians not only to take off the old self that's corrupted

by deceitful desires, but to put on the new.

So it was easy to choose a different lifestyle.

But after some time I found out, man, there's a lot of limits to my willpower.

I think that's the hardest part about being a Christian is you can choose to

do some good things, but at some point you hit a ceiling of what you can do

in your willpower alone.

Paul talks about that in Romans 7, verse 15. He says, I don't understand what

Romans 7:15

I'm doing because I don't practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate.

For I desire to do what is good, the desire to do what is good is with me,

but there is no ability to do it.

For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do.

That was my life after college. Okay, I can make some good choices,

but in the end, there are some things that I am just stuck in.

I want to do better. I want to change. I want to live a different way.

I want to think a different way. I want to want different things.

But how do you change what you want to want? It is a difficult problem.

You can change your life, but can you change your heart? Can you,

in your own self, in your own strength, change your desires?

How do I take off the old man? How do I put on the new man? How do I do that

when my willpower is simply failing? It is not able to accomplish what I know I need to do.

Well, the correct answer, which is the biblical answer, like if you read the

Bible, it becomes clear.

It's what Paul points to at the next chapter in the book of Romans.

It's that it's the Holy Spirit that's going to do something in you.

Later on in Galatians 5, a similar book with similar themes,

Paul is talking about what we're to do, how we are to pursue this new and renewed

life. In Galatians 5, 16, he says, walk by the Spirit, and you will certainly

not carry out the desires of the flesh.

For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh.

And these are opposed to each other, so that you don't do what you want.

Elaborating on this problem he talked about in Romans 7, He clearly understands

that there is a power. It's not your power. It's the power of the Spirit.

And the action step is to walk by the Spirit.

And I think Christians, and especially those who have a little bit of a charismatic

bent, which guilty is charged, really embrace walking with the Spirit.

And both, I think, because I think the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit

are really just clear in Scripture.

I think the agent of change in your life and in my life and in the Christian

life is the Spirit at work within you. I think that is just very clear in the

Scriptures, that we don't do all the work.

We can only do a little bit, but the Holy Spirit does the deep things and transforms

us. So it's very clear because of that.

And I believe that also because just I've experienced this throughout my life

in different ways and in different times.

I have seen how the Spirit does the work of changing my heart,

that as I put on the Spirit, and we'll talk about what that looks like in just

a second, as I walk in the Spirit, God is doing something within me.

I heard a pastor recently say, and I just was like, yes, this is true.

He said, one moment with Jesus can answer a lifetime of questions.

One moment in the presence of the Spirit.

When the Holy Spirit does something in your life, it can change things that

you've been stuck in for a long time.

And that has been my experience, and I think it's what the Bible testifies to.

Because I left college, I had found the end of my willpower,

I had changed some things in my own power, but I didn't know how to change deeper things.

I changed my way of life, but I couldn't change my heart.

And I was really frustrated by that. Very, very frustrated by that.

And after a year of just like seeking the Lord and basically saying to God,

look, you need to do something.

And I mean, like, like this is

a time in my life where I, where that was what I did with my whole life.

God showed up powerfully in a moment. And I'm just saying, like,

I've not been the same since then. When the Holy Spirit did something in my

life, he changed me in ways that I can't explain. He changed desires within

me that I have had my whole life and I didn't have them anymore up to that point.

And that was an amazing thing. And I also just got to understand something about

God, that he is so kind. He is so kind.

And he is just a deep well of holy love. And I knew this about that in my head,

but God showed me that in my heart.

And that, I think, changed a lot about what I loved and what I was going after

and what I thought was really good for me deep within myself.

Okay, I am in no way embarrassed to talk about my story because it's something that God did.

And so glory be to God. But I'm going to say this, as a pastor,

I don't talk about that that often.

I'm hesitant to share this like really special thing because it was like life changing.

Because I know so many people who desperately want to change.

And so I think it's not like, like I can't prescribe you a dose of the Holy Spirit.

I don't want my experience to become like a formula for you.

I feel like so much of my life in the evangelical church was like,

oh, I just got to work myself up into some kind of experience or some kind of sense.

And if I feel the right things, then God will finally make good on his promises.

And that is, I think, unkind to you.

I don't think that's good for you. I 100% believe that your hope should be in

the power of the Holy Spirit to transform the deepest stuff and to heal the

brokenness of your sin and to bring about this new man, this new person in your life.

100% pursue that absolutely to the maximum degree that you could possibly muster.

Set your hope on that. Set your hope in him. But don't try to live the life

that I've lived. I want to just like...

I was in a certain time and a place where I was able to give all my attention.

I wasn't married yet. I didn't have children.

I didn't have a job. I didn't read that much.

I had the privilege of being in a spot where I could put the pause button on

my whole life and I sought the Lord.

And as I did that, God showed up and I cannot prescribe that to you.

That is not good advice for you.

So what can you do though? What can you do in the life that you have right now

to pursue the spirit, to put on the new man? Like, I can't just say take a dose

of the Holy Spirit, but I can tell you this, and this is where these spiritual

disciplines, these practices come in.

You can do things to set your life on a collision course with God. That's what this is.

This is me understanding that it is so easy to go through life and just ignore God.

And I'm saying habits and practices will actually help you pay attention to

God, pay attention to the one to pursue the one who can actually do the stuff,

actually satisfy the longings, actually change the desires and the inward stuff.

And so much of my time and your time is spent ignoring God, rehearsing his absence

instead of practicing his presence.

So I can't prescribe you my experience or my emotional state or all the things

that I went through at that time when I was, you know, had no responsibilities

whatsoever. but I can tell you.

As I've been trying to continue to pursue the Lord over time,

practices that point me in the direction of looking for and knowing God more.

These are the things that I can prescribe to you pastorally.

And these six practices that I'm asking to build in your life,

it's not a checklist. It's not a formula. It's not like you do this and God

will be extra happy with you. It's not that.

These are things that are getting your attention and your focus onto the Lord.

They are habits that will shape your life and lead you towards a more interactive

life with God, where you're able to listen to the Spirit, where you're able

to hear from Him, because we are just distractible by nature.

We try to do things in our own strength. And in the end, the best thing that

we can do is to point ourselves towards the Lord.

And I think these things will help you notice God, remember His grace in your life.

They will help you to walk in the freedom of his forgiveness and help you to

take joy in the part that you get to play in his mission in the world.

This is kind of the motives behind these things. So I'm not prescribing a formula.

I don't want to have you live my life in the same way, but I want you to set

your path on a collision course with God. And I think this is a way that you can do that.

Look, if I go back and you look at church history, if you've done any studying

about great renewal movements and movements of the spirit throughout the history

of the church, they've always come along with practices.

Always come along with practices.

If you like the 18th and 19th century Methodism, this huge movement went from

a small renewal movement within the Anglican church to a denomination that just

really, I mean, just a lot of people, millions and millions of people followed that.

And yeah, so Methodism was a spiritual renewal, but you know what else Methodism was about? Methods.

Wesley was like, yeah, we worship Jesus. We believe all these things that the

Anglican church teaches, but we have a way of life that we teach to people that's

about a collision course with God.

So they had certain methods that were appropriate to the time and place and

the culture that they were bringing the gospel into, and they're prescribing these things.

And what happened is not, oh, we checked off the right boxes and God was happy.

No, they got people's attention on the Lord.

They taught people to seek him, to seek the kingdom first. They broke through

people's apathy and busyness and idolatry and said, no, seek the thing that

can really change. Seek the Lord.

So there was methodology, but the secret isn't the methodology.

It's that those methods pointed people to Jesus, pointed people to the spirit,

put them on a collision course with God.

I'm a child of 90s evangelicalism. Anyone else?

I grew up in big successful churches My mom, if you want to know how big of

a deal I am My mom worked for Promise Keepers Oh, that's right I went to those

stadium things I went to those stadium tours We got to use the women's room,

Because nobody did Except for my mom and us Didn't have to wait in that line,

If you don't know what I'm talking about It's fine Just forget what I said.

It's like we went to big successful churches We did all this stuff. And here's the thing.

Like we went to churches and this was, I think, what we did in the 90s.

We go to church and we get fired up for Jesus. That was our discipleship plan.

That's what I was learning. You know, this is how I move forward in my faith.

Go to church, get fired up for Jesus. And I'm not against it.

I'm still here. It worked out. I'm not against it necessarily.

The church should be a place where you go and you gather and you're encouraged

and where the spirit is uniquely at work. And that is true.

But my issue is it didn't help me. And I think it has not helped a lot of people

follow Jesus all the rest of the week.

And it didn't help me when I'm going through doubts and when I show up at the

church and I'm just stuck.

It didn't help me when I feel shame and condemnation.

You know, it didn't help me have an interactive relationship with God.

Like, I had to show up to a place and the worship leader had to be great and

the pastor had to be super charismatic. And if those two things were a miss,

then I didn't get to meet God that day.

Like, it was not a good system, I think, in that respect. It depended too much.

It was too much bottled neck into, like, an experience on a Sunday.

And I think we're still kind of in that in the evangelical world.

I think we should starting to move out of that.

Because I think, here's the thing, like, I like going to church and getting

fired up. we need fire. We need fire. We need passion. We care about these things.

We need to be excited about our faith. We need to gather together and fan the

flame for each other. We need to pray for each other. We need to build each

other up. We need more of that.

But to borrow a phrase from Pastor Mark Sayers, he says this,

that we need fire and we need form.

You need both of those things. I think for a sustainable life with Jesus,

you need fire, but you also need form.

And that's what discipleship is. It is form. It is a way of life with Jesus.

It's seeking the spirit. It's habitually practicing things that will be my willpower

when I don't have the will,

that will point me to Jesus when I don't want to point myself to Jesus,

that will, because I built them in as habits, like they're going to be ways

to get me out of the funks and the ruts and the doubts that come along with faith.

They're things that will help bring form and bring fire when I don't have it,

when I don't have the passion.

These are a way of life with Jesus. Seeking the Spirit, being attentive to God,

and doing that, especially when you don't feel the fire.

Because you know what? The older I get, the less fire I feel. I'm much less fiery.

But I also think there's a great invitation to learn to, through habit,

just continue to seek the Lord.

And it's honestly, it's better now than it was for me when I was young,

when I was always firing myself up and then falling down on my face and feeling

like, Like, oh, I got to go back in this thing.

Like, it is better because I'm learning the habits through form and through

discipline of tending my own heart,

and taking my spiritual life in my own hands. Not my own hands, right?

My own hands in the sense of pointing it to the one who can actually do something about it.

Pointing my life in the direction of the Spirit. Henry Nouwen says this,

pointing to the life of Jesus. In his practice, he says, Jesus' life was a life of obedience.

He was always listening to the Father. He was always attentive to his voice.

He was always alert for his directions.

Jesus was all ears.

And that is true prayer. Being all ears for God, the core of prayer is indeed

listening, obediently, standing in the presence of God.

A spiritual discipline is the concentrated effort to create some inner and outer

space in our lives where this obedience can be practiced.

Through a spiritual discipline, we prevent the world from filling our lives

to such an extent that there is no place left to listen.

A spiritual discipline sets us free to pray or, to say it better.

Allows the Spirit of God to pray in us.

I think discipleship practices, like these ones that I'm encouraging you to

do, are designed to help you, like Nowen says here, make space in your life to listen to the Spirit.

It requires discipline. Just like my children don't always listen to me. Can you believe it?

They require some training and some discipline. Caleb always listens. He's the good one.

They need some training. They need some discipline. They need to learn the habits

of listening to their parents.

Likewise, we need to develop the habits of listening to our Father,

to practice God's presence, not constantly be rehearsing His absence.

And I'll say this, it's the final part of this, I think that is all the more

urgent in the world that we live in.

I mean, like, when I was a kid, we gave everybody the internet all of a sudden,

and our parents were like, what's the worst that could happen? And we found out.

We found out what was on there. piracy a lot of piracy,

not the ocean kind kind of the fbi warns you about right,

yeah like like expose ourselves to a lot of things not but in this day and age

not only do we have i mean the internet we have cell phones in our pockets all

the time we are we are always having things notify us of things that we need

to worry about right now and if we don't.

Things will happen, which creates a lot of anxiety within us, right?

We have technological innovations that are just advancing.

I mean, and now with AI, like it's crazy to me what's going on because I think

AI, you know, I'm like, I'm not like, I'm not for AI.

I certainly, I'm not against AI, but I think the threat of AI is that it has

really the power to rob us of our inner lives.

I mean, because like if every question you ask, you have someone you could just

go and ask and get an answer to and just take that answer and roll with it.

How do you wonder? How are you curious? How are you talking with God?

How is there space in your life enough to just sit with God and say, I don't have an answer.

And so I'm going to keep pressing in and seeking the Lord for an answer when

there's always this thing in our pocket, which is trying to very confidently,

Tell us what the answer is and how smart we are to ask that question, right? Great.

I think that the technology has always had the power, at least the way it's pursued.

In our day and age, it has the power,

to rob us of our inner lives with Jesus because of the endless distraction,

because of the increased anxiety and just constantly feeling like,

no, we have to keep up with all the notifications and because we are being primed

to delegate our inner lives to external devices.

And that is not I don't want to be judgy about this like I use AI in some things

I'm not like trying to be sanctimonious but I do believe and I think I said

it last week that the modern world is a conspiracy against the inner life.

It is so distracting and I saw it it's actually interesting I saw like some

piece in some secular newspaper talking about and gosh no,

offense to young people when I say this because the offense should be against

the old people who are not putting boundaries around this,

But like talking about a college professor who's like getting this new class

of freshmen and he said this, not as a Christian, he said, they have no inner lives.

He was shocked by how unreflective they are.

And that's again, not a condemnation against those people like any of us brought

up in the midst of all this technological change. Like it's depriving you of

something to just sit and to wonder and to go deep in things.

I'm not saying you have to be that way. You can organize your life to resist

some of that, but there's so much inertia towards this in these technologies that I think it does.

It does erode our abilities to just be alone, to be quiet, and to have an inner life with the Lord.

So what I want to do with our remaining time is to talk through one of these

particular disciplines with you.

That's the sixth one. It's the last one. You have these cards in front of you.

You can take these home. They're not special. I'll make more if we need more.

The last one is examine your life every day. And I just want to talk through

this. And we're actually going to do this together, which I know.

Eye roll, making me do things. But don't worry, you don't have to talk to anyone else.

Put you at ease. You're just talking to the Lord. So maybe you're thinking,

examine your life every day.

And maybe you hear that and you think, that is the last thing I need because

I am already judging my life constantly.

I'm already feeling bad about the choices that I make. I'm already feeling bad,

about everything I'm doing. So I'm examining my life, not just daily,

but constantly. But here is the thing.

I have some good news for you. When I say examine your life every day,

I'm not asking you to rehearse all your failures and to think about all the

things you didn't do right in the day.

I am specifically insisting that you shut that voice up and that you actually

instead take an inventory of grace. This is what I want to call it, an inventory of grace.

Take account of what God has done in your life today.

Not how bad you felt, not all the things you did wrong, but what has God done in your life today?

That is the goal of this. And the point of this is not to develop optimism.

The point of this is to develop, I think, the most fundamental skill.

I think the most fundamental skill in walking with Jesus and in walking by the

Spirit, which is to notice what God is doing around you.

I really consider that to be extremely important to make sense of your life with God.

Jesus teaches his disciples particular skills, particular habits and abilities.

If you read Matthew 11, 29, like great verse that we find very comforting.

He says this, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me because I'm lowly and humble in heart.

And you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

I think we can take this and we can take it out of context and think,

oh, Jesus is just being nice and he's comforting us.

But what is the particular comfort that Jesus is offering to his disciples is

that he can teach them how to live their lives in such a way that their life

is no longer a burden, but becomes restful.

Because they're not taking all the weight of all their decisions and trying

to own their destiny, but instead they're yoking themselves.

Like there's an agrarian image there, right? Of two oxen coming together.

And the one oxen who knows how to live, how to do, how to work the field is

yoked together with the one who is less experienced.

And the older one, because they're connected, teaches the younger one how to

live, how to bear the burdens of life. Jesus isn't saying everything will be fine. Be an optimist.

Jesus is saying there is a way to go through life.

So you don't feel it as such a burden.

And Jesus exhibited and lived those things because when Jesus taught and when

he went through the world, he astounded people because Jesus had this huge confidence.

I mean, you see it in the Sermon on the Mount, this huge confidence that God

was not absent in the world. He was exceedingly present.

He had this expectation that people, broken people, poor people,

people who are down and out, the people who in the world we would think are

least likely to be well off, he says, those people can be well off, not because,

oh, up is down and down is up, but because God is near them.

The kingdom is near them.

God is present in the world. He's not absent.

Jesus had this deep confidence. And I think it is the place where his joy and

his peace and his power came from. Sure, God himself in the flesh,

there's some advantages there.

But I mean, I love that Lenore spontaneously read Philippians 2 this morning.

He emptied himself. He became as a bondservant.

He became low. And I think Jesus models for us what it is to be a person who

trusts themselves to the Father and to the Spirit.

Jesus lived his life in obedience to the Father, looking for his leading and

his empowering. And I think that is the secret of the easy yoke that he is trying to teach us.

We see that in John 5, 19 through 20, Jesus says this, he explains to his disciples.

Where his power and where all this stuff is coming from him.

He says, truly, I tell you, the son is not able to do anything on his own,

but only what he sees the father doing.

For whatever the father does, the son does likewise those things.

For the father loves the son and shows him everything he does.

Jesus went through life with his confidence because he had developed the ability

to notice what God was up to and to partner with God.

To just say, all right, God, you want to do something? Here's my life.

Here's my obedience. Here's my hope. Leave me.

Do something in my life. And I think that is a skill that we are called to have too.

You know, you can say, well, that's Jesus and we're different.

And yeah, I mean, certainly that's true.

But the gift that you have, adoption into his life, like makes you a son in

the kingdom. He's your brother.

You're his sister or brother. Like you have so much good and like you have the

father and the spirit within you, like the spirit is at work leading you in

the same way that Jesus was relying to and looking to God, like you can rely and look to God.

This is, I think, the easy life that we're called to.

But what happens to us is not that we don't have the spirit within us,

like testifying to the love and power and in guidance of God.

It's that we don't pay attention and we have not learned the discipline of paying attention.

And so this discipline is a simple thing to just try to get you to pay more

attention to what God is doing.

I have super bad ADHD. Yeah, we know, right? But the hardest thing for me in

life is initiating things.

It's like so draining for me to start something.

And it's the hardest thing for you too, whether you have ADHD or not.

But I think the easy way that Jesus lays out and like the amazing way that we

can follow after him is that we don't have to start everything and we don't

have to save people and we don't have to bring about God's plan and his power.

He's already at work in the world.

He's already doing things. All the people you're praying for,

all your neighbors you love, all your coworkers, all your family,

people who you want to know Jesus, who you want them to have this freedom,

God's already got a plan.

And you just need to just pay attention to what he's doing.

You need to pray, you need to pay attention, and you need to be willing to obey

and creating enough space to hear from the Lord.

And that's what we're doing, paying attention to what God is up to.

So you've got little things like this in front of you. This is a four-step practice,

and we're just going to do it together.

It's funny because one of the things, Like I want this to be quiet and I want

it to be slow. I also want to give you pointers. So I'm going to talk throughout

it. So that's really annoying. And I'm sorry when you do it next time,

I won't be there to annoy you.

So what I want us to do is I want us just to walk through this,

just to talk through it, to talk through some of the challenges that are going

to come up as you're praying and just waiting for the Lord and to do this together.

Okay. So let's just pray for a minute.

And the first thing we want to do is just invite the Holy Spirit.

And I like saying like the simplest way is to pray this prayer, come Holy Spirit.

It's the oldest written Christian prayer.

The first records of a Christian prayer that we find outside the Bible is just

the simple prayer, come Holy Spirit. The church has been praying,

come Holy Spirit, for a long time, even though they're confident that they have the Spirit.

When we say, come Holy Spirit, we're just saying to the Lord,

okay, we need your presence. We are reminding ourselves that everything that

we have, all the forward progress in faith, it's going to come from God doing the work within us.

And so let's just start with that simple prayer. We'll just say,

come Holy Spirit. I like to open my hands when I pray a little bit. You can do what you want.

And then just wait. That's the hardest part. And as you wait, you'll get distracted.

And that's okay. You can just undistract yourself and not feel bad about it. And just keep waiting.

And you're not trying to wait for a feeling.

You're just trying to get quiet and make space. Make some space to hear from the Lord.

And then just think over your day. Look back on your day and ask yourself this question.

When did you experience God's presence, His grace? or his kindness.

Don't think about the failures.

Don't think about things you should have done differently.

Take an inventory of God's grace.

And I know it's 1040 in the morning or whatever. The day hasn't gone far.

Might be good to have a pen in your hands. If you're like a writing processor,

you can write down thoughts, just write them down and then just keep waiting

on the Lord. Don't need to go follow them down, but just to just,

again, if you're taking in an inventory, write down the inventory,

things where God showed up.

So I think about tomorrow, yesterday in my own life and like,

man, what a beautiful day.

And I, it was my daughter's birthday yesterday. And I can think about the ways

that she's been, like with all my children, just a great, beautiful surprise.

I can be thankful for that. I can be thankful for the people who have come into

my life, friends who check in with us, friends who celebrate my children.

Be thankful for my wife, thankful for the place we live, just listing in gratitude,

the things that God has done.

And then as you're just giving that in thankfulness to God, you can just stop,

and ask this question, God, what are you doing in my life right now?

What are the people, the circumstances, the things that have happened?

And maybe at this point, you can let God bring to mind some difficult things,

things that maybe are hard, like you don't need to shut those things out.

But you can bring those in knowing full well that God has them in hand and that

he is a God who's not absent, he's present.

And you can wonder, I think curiosity is such an important part.

You can be curious about God, what are you going to do? What about the people

in my life who are just much on my mind? What are you going to do with them?

You can wonder, what about the circumstances at work or the circumstances in

my home, in my marriage, with my children, with my parents, these things that weigh heavily on me.

Lord, don't let the weight sit on me, but Lord, give me an imagination to imagine

what you could do to change these things.

And are you doing those things? Or is it just, I need to just wait?

We can sit with God. We can notice what he's doing. And then finally,

just consider your response.

There might be some practical steps.

As you sit and God highlights things, brings issues, people,

things that you're carrying, things that are great to your mind,

ask yourself, God, what do you want to do with these things?

Is there a step? How do you want to do with these?

If I'm seeing you do something, Father, if Holy Spirit, you're at work in my

life, where do I need to position myself?

Where do I need to be in order to partner in what you're doing?

Not get in the way of it, but to be a part of this mission.

So maybe you need to pray. You need to keep praying about something.

Maybe something's in your mind you don't know. You need more clarity.

You can hold on to that and you can pray about it. Maybe, oh, fasting.

We talked last week about how much I love cheeseburgers, which means that I

really don't like fasting.

But I've seen that oftentimes, Jesus makes this clear, prayer and fasting is

a very real way that we can intervene in circumstances that don't seem to want to change.

Is there something I should pray and fast for?

Is there a conversation I need to have?

Somebody who's brought to my mind, I just need to just check in with that person

and see, how are they? What is going on with them?

Is there some way I can serve someone? Can I call them? Can I bring them a meal?

Can I just take somebody out for coffee just to check in with them?

Is there something that I can give to someone that will bless them and encourage

them, somebody who's going through a hard time?

We're just asking these questions, bringing them before the Lord,

and waiting for His answer. I think that's the thing.

Especially if you are the kind of person who is very driven to solve problems,

I think it is very important that you resist the urge to solve all the problems. I'm not a problem.

So when I come up with something from the Lord, I'm like, yeah,

I probably should do that. That's a matter of obedience. But maybe obedience

to you is waiting for the clarity of what God is actually putting on your heart.

What is the thing you're actually called to be a part of?

And this is maybe going to take you five, 10 minutes at the end of your day.

But I want to encourage you to try it out this week. Just try it out this week.

You can take this home, and at the end you say, thank you, Lord.

Like you just get in that posture of wanting to respond and to move out with

him through your day. Hey, worship team is going to come up here.

We're going to wrap up here.

Take this home if you want. I honestly like, I know, again, pastor has a plan

for my life. I've already got things going on.

Would you just give it one week? Would you give it one week?

Do you think you could do that for me?

And just see how this goes. Again, we are just trying to pay attention and notice

what God is up to. And here's the thing.

He's doing things all around you. I think maybe you'll be surprised and maybe

a little embarrassed that you thought he was so absent.

I don't want that for you. I don't want you to be embarrassed.

But the more I do things like this, the more I try to sit with the Lord and

just look for him at work, I am shocked every time that he is overseeing my

life and he is at work around me.

And a lot of times I just need to repent, like not of some serious thing,

but really just my failure to expect him at all.

This is meant to stamp that out. You should expect God to be at work in your life.

And I hope that you see that this week. So Lord, send us out.

Lord, as we worship right now, Lord, would you encourage us?

Would you build us up by your spirit?

Holy Spirit, teach us to be disciples. Teach us to be people who keep coming back to you.

Teach us, Lord, what it means to follow after you.

So send us out in Jesus' name. Amen. Hey, let's stand. Let's worship together.