A New Discipline - Made New (Week 6)

Good morning, Mid Cities Church.

Good morning.

It is lovely to be with you guys again.

This is becoming a regular occurrence of mine, getting to come and to be with you guys here, which is a deep joy for me.

My wife gets to come with me today, Hannah, and we just adore Daniel and Kayla and getting to spend time with them.

So thank you for having us.

This is uh gonna be a fun time together.

Although it was a little bit of a unique circumstance that brought us this time, in that uh my son plays football for Western Oregon University, who played your beloved University of Texas premium basin Falcons last night.

And you guys are a great team.

You're like a really great team.

We feared you coming in, and uh it just didn't go great for you last night.

But don't let that discourage you.

Um I uh this was uh I don't know if you can sum up some level of Jesus in your hearts to rejoice with me, but uh my son, my son Jackson, this is uh his first year playing, and he got his first catch and first touchdown last night.

So that was um we're not able to travel to all of his away games, but this one we were at and got to see it in person and got to see it with the Stevens, and uh it was just it was really, really special moment.

So sorry it was kind of at your expense.

But uh it was great.

So uh really special time to be with here, uh to be here with you guys.

And uh I would love to give you a little bit of an update on my family because we also have lots of other cool things happening for us at the moment.

Here's a picture of the latest and greatest of the Trimmer clan.

Um, so that's my son that plays football over there on the left.

That wasn't somewhat obvious, he's much bigger now.

Uh, but uh my son Kaden, who's right there uh on the right of me, just got engaged to uh to Talen, and uh they're amazing.

And so we're really excited about that.

My daughter on the right uh is 14, that's my wife Hannah, and my son Malachi is a senior in high school, and he just had his rivalry game on Friday night, and they won by one point.

So woo-hoo indeed.

Uh that was uh it's been a good weekend for the Tremors.

So watch out, devil.

Uh here we go.

Um, yeah, things have been really great.

Now, uh I uh I do adore coming here, and I have said so many positive things, and Daniel, Pastor Daniel said so many positive things about me.

He's a friendship that I deeply adore, but I do need to bring an accusation here this morning.

I do, and I need you to hear it with some objectivity uh and some level of uh conviction.

But a few years ago, on one of my one of my times of being here with you guys, you guys always have a great hospitality team, by the way, that always kind of welcomes me, gives me a little gift basket of goodies and whatnot.

And a couple years ago, there was a Mid-Cities Yetis mug in it.

Yeah, I think I have reached the big time.

And then I came the next year and had another gift bag.

And guess what was in that gift bag?

Yet another Mid-Cities Yeti mug.

I now have two Mid-Cities Yetis mugs, and uh, which works out great.

It's a his and hers situation.

My wife and I have our each individual Mid-Cities Yetis mugs, and they are the they are employed every single day in our house.

They are the first cup of tea and coffee that we drink every single morning as we're reading our Bible and praying every single day.

It's uh it's just this beautiful blessing gift.

But I here is my accusation.

I used to think this was just a generous gift that was just given with all innocence and sincerity, but now I think there was something else going on.

I was looking through my prayer journal recently and I started to notice a pattern that I have been disproportionately praying for Mid-Cities Church, and I just think that there was an intentional subliminal messaging that was implanted into my home.

Like a spiritual agent, you know what I mean?

It's like, hmm, Lord, what should I pray for today?

Ooh, this tea is great.

Mid-Cities Church is coming to mind for some strange reason.

Y'all have been getting some significant prayers coming off of Corvallis organ your way.

So there you go.

I'm glad you feel blessed.

I feel slightly used, but okay, I guess whatever is in the mix.

But we do we do love our Yeti mugs, I can't deny it.

So, um, all right.

Let's uh let's dive into this series here and let's talk about how beautiful it is that you guys actually, as a church, are going through that.

And I mean that with total sincerity.

The foundations of the faith are sometimes the things that churches can balk at because we all want new and amazing and dazzling new information we haven't heard before.

Very few people would ask to say, like, hey, can we go through the foundations once again?

But it's just the tried and true cliche that is true like profoundly at all levels, that the foundations of our lives really do determine the quality of our lives.

Everything we build on our lives is determined by the quality of its foundation.

And when we lay the spiritual foundations of our faith, that's not just a one-time shot that you do, and then you get to move on necessarily, but there's always a revisiting to make sure that they're right and they're set correctly.

And even if you're in this room and this has been something that it has been set for you, and that it has been revisited, and you feel like you're pretty clear on the fundamentals of the Christian faith and the life with God that you're called to walk.

Well, the beauty of the Christian life is that just as we have laid our foundations, we are then called to help others do the same.

The life that God pours into us is meant to be multiplied and shared with others.

And that can seem really intimidating, but the essence of discipleship is really just allowing whatever God has put into us to be shared with somebody else, helping them to take their next step of faith.

And so if you've got your foundation secure, this is a great way in which you can really grow to learn, to understand, to apply, and then to help and assist others to do the same.

And it's a really, really amazing thing that your church desires to do that so that you can actually not just be people that gorge themselves on spiritual ideas, but actually love and serve Jesus really well.

But this week is a turn where we talk about not just laying the foundations of the lordship of Jesus or salvation or baptism, repentance, all super critical topics.

But this week we take a turn into a new devotion and specifically into the spiritual habits or practices that Christians are known for.

What is it that a Christian life actually looks like beyond the moment we say, okay, yes, Jesus, I want to follow you and serve you with the rest of my life.

I believe in my heart that you've forgiven me of my sin, that you've risen from the dead, you are Lord.

What next is the big question.

And this week is going to address that at least in one fashion by giving us like a picture or a window into exactly what a Christian lifestyle has looked like and really could look like in our lives if we allow it to.

So this is our passage here from this morning.

This is coming out of the book of Acts, chapter 2, verse 42, which gives us a glimpse into the birthday of the church and literally what the earliest Christians were doing with their daily life after their radical encounter with God.

Acts 2:42

And this is what it says that they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

Now that seems like a relatively simple list of spiritual activity.

Apostles' teaching, which we can relate to now through the word of God itself.

We have it recorded for us.

To fellowship, to coming to church, to being together as God's people, building meaningful spiritual friendships in this room, to the breaking of bread, to celebrating communion, to enjoying meals and our lives with one another, and to prayer, having an ongoing, deep and intimate level of conversation with God.

But here's where things can go off the rails very quickly.

The second we begin to describe Christianity in terms of behavioral activity, there is a way in which that message becomes so easily distorted in so many of our ears that it becomes very difficult to maintain the heart of this passage that it's actually intended to bring to us.

And here's how it all happens.

If I were to ask you all here sitting in this room, you don't have to raise a hand, but just imagine that, you know, if you could raise a hand, how many of you feel like that your time of reading your Bible is a 10 out of 10?

No notes.

I mean, you are up daily, you spend significant time, I mean, you set your alarm early enough so that you have a good amount of time to really read through the text.

I mean, you're blitzing through the Bible at an extraordinary rate of speed, your comprehension is high, your prayer life is powerful.

You pray consistently, ongoingly, never ceasingly, the way the Bible describes.

There's like an intimacy, like Jesus and you are like actual BFFs.

Like you really talk, you have inside jokes, you can, you have nonverbal level of communication in prayer.

How many of you feel like your consistency at church and your involvement in the spiritual family of God?

Everything from your private devotions to your personal prayer life to your participation in church, 10 out of 10.

Yeah, me neither.

What do we do with a gap?

This isn't rocket science, right?

Like none of these things, like if you've known Jesus for like about 15 minutes, is rocket science.

I remember when I gave my life to Christ, I was 20 years old, and I did not grow up in church at all.

I mean, I had no clue like what the lowercase T hanging from people's necklaces was all about for the majority of my life.

And when I gave my life first to Jesus, even I figured out within 24 hours that I should probably get a Bible and read it.

Figured it out.

That seems like a good thing to do.

This doesn't, it's not rocket science.

We all know these are things that we quote unquote should probably be doing.

And that's where the problem begins.

It's because the immediately when we speak of all of these spiritual activities, it can quickly begin to feel like a list of things.

We're already well behind on doing well, and we just need to get better at.

And the message, especially from pastors like me, messages that maybe unfortunately I've even preached in the past, sounds something like here's everything a good Christian should be doing.

You really, really stink at doing all these things.

I myself do these things so much better than you, and listen to a few illustrations of my life of how I've done these things really well.

And then here's where I'm going to challenge you to try harder at these things so that you too can be a good Christian, you know, like me.

And the message becomes try harder.

You say, but I'm having a hard time understanding my Bible.

My life is is busy, and I don't really know where to know to start from prayer.

And sometimes it doesn't feel like God is listening to prayer.

Like, try harder.

Well, I've got a lot of things going on.

I've got a lot of young kids growing up in my house.

I'm trying to finish my college degree, figure out my career, the economy's really crazy, I don't know how to make ends meet.

Try harder.

And if you're really sincere about Jesus and you're here at church, which means it's like, you know, you're not a zero.

And you think yourself, yep, you're right, that's probably the problem.

Jesus probably isn't the problem.

I'm probably the problem.

I will.

Try harder.

And how long does that last?

The good news that I want to offer you today is that Acts 2.42 is not a list of things that you're to go to apply your best efforts at, and if you work really hard, then maybe you can grow to become a pretty decent Christian.

I believe the message of Acts 2.42 in its proper context is that it's ultimately about discovering and rediscovering the God who is worthy to seek with our whole heart.

And to look at it through a new lens.

If we bring the passage back up from Acts 2, there's one word I want you to focus on.

It's easy to start underlying all the activities that you should start prioritizing next week.

But I want you to look at the one word that precedes all the activities, and that's the word devotion.

They devoted themselves.

Devoted themselves.

Now that's a very interesting word to use.

Devoted.

There's lots of words that could be used, but they use the word devoted.

Devoted has the connotation.

This isn't just something they felt obligated to do, but this is something they were passionate about doing.

This is something that they actually desired to do, wanted to do.

This wasn't necessarily something they were commanded to do, but this was something that somehow organically actually came out of them to do.

That something happened in a radical encounter with the good news about Jesus that produced this lifestyle.

And what it was not was a guilt-fueled, fear-ridden, shame-infused sermon that just obligated these people to manufacture their daily disciplines.

And discipline is a very different word, isn't it?

I'm not mad at the word, but can we just admit that discipline and devotion are similar but different?

You know what discipline is, right?

You hate it, but you know what it is.

I hate it too, but I know what it is.

It means you do things you don't want to do in order to get things you do want.

It means I don't eat ice cream at 9 p.m.

before I go to bed, so that I don't have to talk to my doctor about diabetes.

Or it's like I withhold things.

I there's things I really want to do that I don't do because there's something more that I want later on.

That's discipline, yeah?

Like there's blessings I really want from God, and so I'll read my Bible, even though I don't really want to, because there's things I want instead.

That's discipline.

Everybody needs a little bit of discipline in their life.

But is that all that there is?

Is that all that Jesus offers?

Just one more category that you need to be more disciplined at.

That you're already failing at all your other disciplines.

This is just one more to ultimately and eternally fail at.

Devotion is different.

Devotion implies that something has happened to these particular people, that this is how they're living.

Not fueled by guilt, but devotion.

Not shame, but devotion.

Not fear.

This isn't I should really.

I have to.

I have to do this or else.

This is something else.

This is I get to, I want to, that I'm passionate about.

It's very different language.

So how do you actually get there?

How would that actually even happen?

How could we transform the good news of the lifestyle of all these practices and devotions into being something that is actually life-giving versus just draining?

Well, I think it's by paying attention to what all of us in the room have walked through in our lives spiritually.

I think we all follow a very similar spiritual path.

Look, I've been in ministry for a few years.

Actually, one of the things that Pastor Daniel and I share in common is he uh became a lead pastor at the age of 26, me at 27.

So, right around the same season of life, we got assigned like some pretty big responsibility.

And one of the implications of that is that we've now had like a lot of years under our belts of doing this thing, and a lot of people that we have encountered.

And though people are all unique snowflakes in all their own ways, they're shockingly similar in many others.

The spiritual paths that we walk really are not new.

They're quite relatable.

Our circumstances might be unique, but the path themselves is very similar.

And here is what I have observed, both in my life and in the countless numbers of people that I have interacted with over the last 20 years.

Next slide.

That first everybody starts on their spiritual journey with a commitment to living on their own terms.

This is how everybody starts.

This is when you were born.

The moment you come out of the womb, you slowly start to become self-aware and develop a commitment to living life on your own terms.

How many of you have young kids in your home?

Babies, toddlers, and so forth?

How many of you realize that nobody had to teach them to be self-centered?

They figured that one out.

There's something in them about that.

And they just realized about how do they live their best life on their own terms?

Well, they have opinions about that.

And they're going to demand that you provide that for them.

And if you say no to them, that you're doing a violence to them.

And they appropriately will demonstrate their protest loudly with the kicking and the screaming and everything else, eventually wearing down all your perseverance until indeed they shall be eating donuts for lunch and dinner.

But we really don't grow up out of that.

I mean, we grow up out of the things that we want and the things that make us happy, but we really don't grow out of the commitment to making life work on our own terms, to pursuing our own values, our own dreams, or accomplishing our own uh goals, like in our own way, in our own timing.

The things that we want and what we want out of life, we pursue, we decide what life is about, and we go after it.

We are committed to making life work on our own terms until it doesn't work.

And then it doesn't work.

You gotta, now you gotta have some real conversations with yourself.

Yeah?

Some of you have hit this moment in life before when you realize how hard it is to make life work on your own terms, to maximize pleasure and to minimize pain.

It's hard to do.

And you realize the big problem of it all is control.

And how little of it I have.

How many of you can control your past and change all the things you wish you could undo?

Nope.

None of you?

None of you doing like a thano snap and just going back in time?

Nope.

How many of you can control your future?

What's to come?

Now I know some of you are really anxious about it and worry about it all the time, but that's not actually controlling the future.

You're aware of this, correct?

How many of you control your present?

Like, oh, yeah.

How much of your present?

Can you control any other human being in your life?

Look, I made four human beings.

I supply all of their physical needs to remain alive.

How much control do I have over them?

Almost none.

And you realize really quickly, like, oh, I am committed to making life work however I want to make it work, and to each their own.

But I don't have any control.

And there's so many things I can't control.

And disasters happen, painful things happen, disappointments happen all the time.

And so therefore we decide I'm going to commit myself not just to living life on my own terms, but you know, what about if there was a higher power I could employ to help make my terms work?

God becomes the next topic conversation.

Atheists start to pray random Hail Mary prayers.

God, if you're real, I could use some help.

People start to consider a church and the friends that might have invited them at one time to come.

Maybe we go back to the faith of our parents or our grandfathers and blow off the dust of our Bibles and crack them open and think to ourselves, look, if there is a God who does have all of the control, maybe, maybe there's a way that I could actually gain some sort of access to his blessing or control to actually make life work the way I want it to.

If Jesus is on the main line, why don't I just tell him what I want?

And it might feel on some levels like this sincere spiritual experience, and it's all in the name of Jesus, and it seems like it's it seems like it matches all the forms of godliness that even the Bible itself and good preachers talk about, and yet it can be totally empty of power, void of any love.

And in reality, it's about can I get God to do what I want him to do to make my life work?

And sometimes God responds to those prayers in shockingly gracious and powerful ways.

And we're like, well, yes, Jesus is good all of the time, and all the time Jesus is good.

And by all the time, I mean for about the next 48 hours.

Because the next big thing I'm praying for, the next crisis my family is going through, he answered one prayer, it doesn't feel like he's even listening to the next.

And he let something really tragic happen to me, or to someone that I deeply love, or there's loss, or there's pain, or there's worry, or there's fear, and it doesn't seem like Jesus is really, really doing what he's supposed to be doing here.

His end of the bargain is to control what I can't and to make my life work.

Isn't that how it goes?

The answer is no, which is when you hit your third moment on this journey of just deep disappointment when God doesn't come through.

And you have to ask yourself a question Does God not care about me?

Is he just too weak to do anything?

Or is the problem me?

Like, what is going on here?

How do I get God to do the things he used to do for me?

How do I get him to keep doing those things?

How do I get God to keep answering my prayers?

And we sit with this disappointment.

And some of us go through some real angst moments here where we have to wonder, like deep theological questions.

Or maybe even create an adult version of a spiritual tantrum where we say something in the effect of, yo God, look at your boy.

Haven't I been doing all the right things lately?

I've been trying way harder to be a nicer person, to tip the 18% the Brees is always asking for, and I never actually want to give because I'm just standing to the order.

I'm not even sitting down, but I've been doing it anyway.

Dear God, haven't I been showing up to church more regularly?

Maybe even picking up a little bit of trash around the building?

Haven't I been signing up for the things that they're trying to do around there?

Haven't I?

I started giving.

I'm being really generous.

I'm not just spending all my money on me anymore.

Haven't I done enough for you?

Can't you pay attention to me?

I don't have control of any of this.

You have control of all of it.

You said, you said, you said.

It's like, well, maybe, maybe you're not, maybe you're not real.

Ever tried to leverage atheism in your tantrum against God?

Like that's gonna be like, oh, oh no, oh, well, well, let me answer that prayer now.

Are you gonna not believe in me?

Oh, like you're gonna really get God like all anxious and insecure.

Oh, oh no, I can't lose their belief.

Like, you know, you know what I mean?

I've tried it.

Doesn't work great.

Don't recommend it.

So, what do we do with that disappointment?

Well, for many of us, we show up to a moment like this, and we hear about the disciples being devoted to the word of God, studying their Bible, prayer, fellowship, breaking of bread, communion.

We hear that, and we say, like, that's it.

You know how I overcome this disappointing God, not giving me everything I want, when I want, how I want.

You know how I do that?

I'm gonna try harder.

Yeah, I'm gonna read my Bible so much, I'm gonna start praying so much, I'm gonna start going to church the most.

Maybe even both services.

And then if I live well, maybe God will be obligated to make my life go well.

If I do enough, maybe I'll earn God moving in my family or in my relationships, delivering me the husband of my dreams or the job I've always wanted, or maybe helping me overcome my anxiety or my depression, finally getting me out of bed in the morning, or maybe I will get God to give me that thing I've really, really always wanted.

The problem is that moving from the disappointment of God that might have an agenda slightly altered from ours, into just trying harder to force God back into our agenda is not what Acts chapter 2 is talking about.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

There is a step that we skipped, and it's understanding the context of why the disciples were devoted in the first place.

If you just looked above Acts 2.42, it gives you the answer.

It was the very first birthday of the church, and the first sermon of the church is preached by Peter to a crowd of people, and he declares to them this this Jesus whom you have crucified is both Lord and Messiah.

He's the savior of the world, and the only thing you contributed to your own salvation was driving the nails through his hands.

Congratulations.

And it says that the people in verse 37 were cut to the heart.

It cut through all of the shallow ways that they've thought about God or spirituality or even their own lives to realize that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son.

And it cut them, it cut them to someplace deep inside of them.

And they therefore said, What are we gonna do?

I mean, they ran out of options.

Managing their emotions wasn't working, adjusting their behaviors wasn't working, and trying to change their circumstances wasn't gonna work.

All of that was just managing the superficial.

They were cut to the heart about the death of Jesus.

And so they said, What?

What is there even to do?

And the answer was repent.

Return proper allegiance to God, let him be on the throne instead of yourself.

Give up the control you've always been committed to and give it to him.

Stop forcing him into your agenda and allow yourself to follow Jesus on his agenda.

That's repentance.

And then what happens?

The people are so flooded with the mercy and the grace and the love and the spirit of Jesus that devotion comes out of them.

And they start wanting to live together in a relational intimacy that boggles the mind.

They want to read their Bible and they want to pray and they want to go to church and they want to give and they want to celebrate communion.

They want to do the thing, they're devoted to these things.

Why?

Because they were cut to the heart.

And they got through their disappointment about God not being controllable to realizing everything that God had already done for them in Christ.

And how the perfect display of the love of God was demonstrated through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And that pierced them.

And that changed them.

And so, what if the idea of reading our Bibles in prayer and even coming together as a church had nothing to do with guilt or fear?

What if we totally removed every sense of shame and obligation from the room?

What if it just gone in a moment, vanished?

And what if we could allow our hearts to be pierced and cut deep down, just but beyond the surface where we're trying to make everything work, into the deepest place of our heart.

The place in our heart that only God is meant to fill.

The place in our God that we try to fill it with all kinds of other things on our own, in our own way, on our own terms, God comes to fill that place.

And it's as if all of our anxious restlessness finds its rest in him.

And what if the love of God so deeply saturating you would actually flow out from you back to him?

And what if when you woke up in the morning, your one desire was not to check off a to-do list, but it was to meet with the God that loved you, died for you, was raised for you, and has given you new life to live with him forever?

What if you wanted to know the greater of all the cosmos?

What if you wanted to spend a little bit of time with him because he wanted to spend time with you?

What if you actually got up excited because every single strand of your DNA was known by him?

What if you wanted to meet with him because he loves you more deeply and powerfully than anyone else ever has, including your mama and especially yourself?

What if he is the love that you cannot really know and possess?

It's the ocean in which you swim, it's the thimble that you try to swallow, realizing there's never enough life and power contained within us to fully comprehend all that God is, and his glory and his beauty and his wonder.

And that God is for you and loves you and sent his son for you.

And when you were at your worst, died for you.

All the things you try to pretend that aren't really happening in your life, he sees it.

And he still likes you.

All the faces that you put on to everyone else that he sees right through, he's not impressed by any of that.

But he does love you.

Which is why devotion in the morning.

It's about, I get to spend time with my Heavenly Father.

In a complicated book that's difficult to understand, but that doesn't mean there's nothing that I can understand.

And no matter where I am in my life, there's something for me to learn about Him or what He says about me, or what my life was made for.

And so rather than coming to the Bible to read it for three hours and try to read through the whole thing in about two weeks, I just read it until I read it until I see something about God that's worth talking to him about.

Or see something that he says about me that's worth talking to him about.

Or see something that he's calling me to do that I need to talk to him about.

And then we're having communion, we're conversing.

He's my best friend who's waiting for me in my living room every morning, who's waiting for you in your apartment or your dorm.

He's the one that's waiting for you the moment that you rise, saying good morning to you, and ready to talk to you about the most important things in your soul.

He's ready to establish a relationship with you that not only will it not fade, it will glow from glory to glory and faith to faith.

He's ready to meet you with blessings that you'll never be aware of or ever even give thanks for.

He's ready to shower you with his grace and his love and supply to you all that you deeply need for that day.

And he's eager to commune and to converse with you, to actually have a conversation with you, to hear your hearts and your thoughts, as twisted and distorted as they often are, and to speak to you, and to respond to you.

What if every morning was a chance to say, Oh, Father, who is in heaven?

Hallowed be your name.

Hallow your name.

Make it so great in my life and through my life, and let your kingdom come and your will be done here in Midland and Odessa as it is in heaven.

Lord, today there's a lot that I need that I can't provide for myself, that I need from you and you alone.

Would you give me daily bread?

And would you forgive me, Lord, for all the things that I have done and the things that I have left undone?

Would your grace be new to me this morning?

And would you lead me not into temptation?

Would you deliver me from evil, from all the things that I can't control in the world and all the things I can't control beyond this world, Father, would you guide my life and help me to walk closely with you?

And once your heart has changed from trying to make life work at all costs to the desire to know Jesus at all costs, you win.

Jesus told a parable about someone who came across a treasure buried in a field.

And when he found it, the treasure was so great he went and sold everything that he had just to buy the field and get the treasure.

That's him.

And when you're cut to the heart, when his love actually penetrates beneath your pride and self-centeredness to the deepest place that you've always needed.

I'm not seeking what he can give.

I'm seeking him.

Not his hand, but his face.

I'm in love with him.

I adore him.

I appreciate him.

Of course he's for me.

If he's not spared his one and only son, how much more will he give me all things?

He's not poor, he's not reluctant.

But Jesus says to seek first the kingdom and his righteousness.

And all these things will be added unto you.

I'm telling you today that none of us in this room walked in doing great at our spiritual devotions.

None of us.

And those of us that feel like we kind of are need to have a conversation about pride, but that's another moment.

But all of us have an opportunity.

And for some of us, that opportunity is going to happen tomorrow morning.

Who do you get to go meet with?

Who do you get to talk to?

Who do you get to bring your genuine disappointments to?

Who do you get to bring your sorrow and your sadness to?

Who do you get to bring your joy and your celebrations to?

Who do you get to bring your gratitude and your worship to?

And who do you get the chance to get to know the unfathomable mystery of the God of the universe that made you in his image and loves you and has an incredible purpose for you?

I'll bet you've got some things you should say to him.

Yeah?

I'll bet he has some things that he's eager to say to you.

You think?

I'll bet coming together with God's people so that you can get outside of your head and be together with all that God is doing in this community would be a really good thing, don't you?

I wonder if God could change our distorted guilt into redeemed devotion.

Father, that's what I ask.

You did it way back then.

You've been doing it all along.

Would you do it again?

Do it again here.

Father, cut through whatever callousness of our heart you need to.

Get to the deepest places of our life.

Where the love of God actually comes to the places where it's most needed in us, and where our love for you could actually be released.

I pray, Father, that you would come and meet with everybody in this room.

All that are about to make room, time, space to meet with you, opening their Bibles, talking to you in prayer, gathering in small groups or coming together as the church, Father, I pray that you would come and meet with us.

Jesus, if you're not in the room, it's meaningless and pointless.

But I believe you are eager and you're already there waiting for us to come and meet with you.

Thank you for the devotion of this church.

Renew it.

And I pray against all the religious guilt that so quickly wants to attach itself to that lifestyle.

And I pray that in this house grace would abound.

Life and joy and peace and the love of God would abound more and more and more.

Thank you for all these things.

In the incredible name of Jesus.

Is there an amen in this room?

Amen to that.