Finding Freedom | Holiness | Pastor Jeremy DeWeerdt

Going to my message, I have a question here that I wanna start out with. How many of you grew up in church in the 1990s? I'm just curious if anybody, oh yeah, there's a few of us in here, right? Oldies but goodies in here, right? All right, I'm gonna warm your heart because there were some amazing worship songs that were played in churches in the 1990s. I was at that point a youth pastor here. In the 1990s, we sang these songs, not only in church, but in youth and things like that. So I want us to go back for a moment. How many of you recognize this song here? ♪ I shout to the Lord every word that I say ♪ Oh, come on, right? Shout to the Lord, right? I mean, this was the anthem. I'm telling you, during the 90s, there was no bigger worship song than this one. All right, how about this one? You recognize this one? This is a deep cut. ♪ Where's the dear pantyhose? ♪ Some of you remember that. As the dear panties for water. Some of the youth here are going, you sang this in youth group? Yeah, it was kind of like the light FM. You know, it was like listening to light FM.

All right, how about this one? How about this one? ♪ I'm coming back to the heart of you ♪ You remember this? Some of you, I'm taking you back. You're like getting nostalgic on me, right? All right, lastly, do you recognize this song? ♪ Refiner's fire ♪ This is a real deep cut. We sang this in the youth ministry. ♪ My heart's one desire ♪ There's no hop into this song, by the way. This is not the mosh pit song. This was... Okay, so let me explain this song. It was called Refiner's Fire. All right, Refiner's Fire. My heart's one desire is to be holy, set apart for you, my master, ready to do your will. Now, we would sing this all the time in the youth ministry here. I was one of the youth pastors. The youth ministry was called Cross Current back in the day. And we would sing this song, and we were all in. And you know what? It's a metaphor. The song is about a metaphor. It's about like gold, like the gold that you have, like a chain around your neck, or a ring on your finger, or whatever else.

It didn't come out of the ground that way. Instead, it had to be refined. So what they do is they take gold, they heat it up really, really hot. It melts all the impurities kind of come to the top. It's called dross. All the impurities come to the top. They scrape off the impurities, and what you're left with is pure gold. And that's what they make your rings, and your necklaces, and things like that out of. And so it's a metaphor saying, God, I want you to remove the impurities from my life. But that requires usually God heating things up. And there's a theologian by the name of A.W. Tozer, and he said this one time. He goes, Christians don't tell lies. They just go to church and sing them. And I will confess to you that I, in the 90s, sang that song, Refiner's Fire, like 1,000 times, and most of the time I was probably lying. Because here's the reason why. Even though I'd be like, oh, yes, God, Refiner's Fire, my heart's one desire is to be holy, but a lot of times my heart's one desire was not to be holy. I wanted to do whatever I wanted to do, right? And so I would sing that song, and it was probably a little bit of a fib. And so I want to talk about today,

the subject of that song, and the subject of many verses in the Bible, and the subject that God talks about in the Bible, and a subject that Jesus even taught about a lot in the New Testament. I want to talk about the subject of holiness today. Now, no one amened that when I said it, because no one's like, oh, good, holiness. Because the minute I say that, everybody goes, oh, crud, right? No, no, hey, listen. I'm gonna talk about it in a biblical way, but maybe a little bit different than maybe what you've had to preach that year before. I want to talk about it like this. Holiness is actually a key to realizing freedom in your life. Holiness actually produces freedom. Now, it almost seems illogical, because living holy is actually freeing instead of being restrictive. Because when you hear the word holy, you're thinking, well, this is a list of do's and don'ts, and it's like there's all these boundaries and stuff. That's not freedom. You might think that's restraint. No, I'm gonna tell you that real holiness, the kind that is biblical holiness, is actually a practice of pursuing freedom. So let's talk about it.

I want to take you on a little bit of journey in my life. I grew up way in the ancient days of going to Sunday school back in the 1970s, all right? So we're talking a long time ago. And I was like this tall, you know, going to Sunday school. I went to the church that had like a flanagraph. You know what that is? that is, a little felt board with like the little people, you know, the little felt people or whatever. That's the church I went to. And so the 70s, I learned about Jesus. 80s, I went, you know, to Sunday school still, and then I graduated into middle school, and then I eventually went into high school. Unfortunately, towards the end of my high school, I walked away from God for about a little under four years, right at four years, I walked away from God, unfortunately, I walked away from faith. That kind of led into my college years. And then about midway through my college years, I actually went on a youth and young adult retreat. It was actually a summer camp, like what the youth are gonna go on here in a little bit. And I went on that and I gave my life back to Jesus. That's when I tell people, that's when I made Jesus the leader and the forgiver of my life. I really tell people, that's when I got saved. It was July 13th, 1990. Ever since then, 1990, I've either attended church

or I've helped lead church. Maybe lead the youth, lead the leadership college, lead this church now as the senior pastor. So ever since 1990, I've been involved. And I saw something in the 90s and the early 2000s. I'm just gonna tell you what I've observed. Back in the 90s and the early 2000s, a lot of the sermons that we preached even during the youth ministry days, or preached at this church, or even in churches in the nation, like Bible-believing churches, a lot of sermons focused on conduct and holiness. Talked about things like movies, music, speech, talked about dress codes, talked about sexual behavior, talked about all these things. We preached a lot of sermons like that. And they were very specific. I mean, like some of the sermons were even like, girls should wear skirts that come down to a certain length. Or you know what, you shouldn't watch certain movies. You should only go to like G-rated or PG, or maybe sometimes PG-13. Or there were other things that took place. There's a popular book that went around in the 1990s of somebody who wrote a book called, I Kissed Dating Goodbye. And it talked about how dating was not necessarily right, and more courtship, and all this kind of stuff. And there's all these sermons.

And I think that really, they came from a good heart. I know as a youth pastor, I preached some of those sermons. And you know what, I did it from a good heart. But they tended, that tone in the church in that era, tended to kind of drift towards a little bit of a legalistic tone. Some people started to question like, well, wait a minute, is this all just about rule following? Like it's how you dress, and how you like, where you go and where you don't. Is that how it, is following God all about rules? And as long as you keep the rules, does God like you then? So people started to ask these questions. And then in like the mid 2000s, and into like 2010, and stuff like that, there became like this kind of, a little bit of a pushback. And I think some of it was actually good. But it was a pushback against that kind of preaching. And people started to push back against what became called a purity culture, in a sense. And then for the next like decade or so, there was this wrestling. And people were asking like questions, like, wait a minute, is it about legalism? Or is it about grace? And there were all these like discussions about this. And some started to question these legalistic sermons. And some of them were legalistic, you know.

And like everything else, when something is in an extreme, the way that many people will try to correct it, is go to the opposite extreme. Let me give you an example here. I'm gonna have my friend bring this out. This is a pendulum. I'm gonna take you back to science class here, in like middle school. All right. Thank you, Levi. And this is a pendulum we made for this sermon. And you know with a pendulum, the way it works is, is that, you know, something is over here, the way you let go of it, it goes to the opposite. It swings back and forth, until finally it loses momentum. And once it loses momentum, it comes to a place of balance, right? And a lot of times what was going on, and this is my opinion, I'm just telling you what I've observed in like 35 years of doing church, okay. During the 90s, and maybe the beginning of the 2000s, maybe some sermons were preached over here in this extreme. There's a lot about conduct and behavior and holiness. And sometimes some of them even maybe had a little bit of a legalistic tone, whether it was meant to be that way or not. But then what happened is, is this, is the questioning of it and things like that, which was healthy, it ended up kind of sometimes,

it's just my opinion, bringing now the pendulum, the ball over here. here, where all of a sudden what it used to be is all about rules, and now it's like, well, now it's all just, there's just grace and there's no rules. God loves me and I can do whatever I want. And it's just interesting, it's like, it's like what started over here that maybe was an error, now, in my opinion, has swung over here and is an error also. Like, we don't talk about holiness a lot anymore in churches in America. And when I say holiness, some of you think this, some of you think that is so archaic, it's so restrictive. You start talking about holiness, it almost feels like an oppressive topic, right? It's like, don't tell me how to live. That's what culture says. It's like, I'm gonna develop my truth. Don't tell me how to live. Don't impose or gaslight kind of your views or whatever. And so what happens is, is what was an error over here, in my opinion, now has become an error over here, and we still haven't found the balance of what true holiness is. One of the strongest attributes of God is his holiness. In fact, yes, he's a God of love and he's a God of grace, but in Isaiah chapter six, there's a story of Isaiah and he's a prophet and he had a vision

and he was brought into the throne room of God. And it says, he wrote down, he was standing in the corner of the throne room, he saw God on the throne and there was these myriad of angels. We get this view, maybe like this depiction that thousands of them were there. They're called seraphim. These angels are surrounding this massive throne of God and they're all singing or chanting in unison something, so much so it was shaking the room, Isaiah said. They were shouting, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come. And they just kept saying it over and over again. Every time they'd say holy, Isaiah said the ground would shake. And I think it's interesting, right now in the presence of God that there are angels that are proclaiming not his love or his grace, but his holiness. Now, listen to me, he is a God of love and he is a God of grace. And those are very strong attributes. In fact, some would argue love is the strongest attribute of God, but also he's a God of holiness. It's not one or the other. He is fully love and he's fully holy. He's fully grace and he's also fully justice. See, he's all of it. And so here's the thing, in my lived experience, being in church for decades upon decades upon decades and most of that time in leadership of some sort,

I will tell you, this is what I've observed. What the church used to weep over, it now participates in. And I sense though that there is a changing that's taking place. In the 90s, the early 2000s, it was over here. Some would argue in the 2010s and the early 2020s, it's come over here. But this is what I'm observing in the last couple of years especially. Especially with the younger generation, believe it or not. I'm sensing that there's a desire to come back to balance, not to go back over here to legalism, but to say we aren't just gonna live any way we wanna live. Why? Because society has told, especially our young people and told all of us, you live any way you want and you'll be happy. And many people tried it and guess what? They're not happy. You know, that there is such a thing as living with wisdom, which means that you live with restraint. You don't get just to do whatever you wanna do. You ask anyone who lives any way they wanna live and do whatever they wanna do, and I will tell you, they have a sick soul. Their soul is not healthy. Why? Because living any way you want damages you. It gives you memories you don't want,

regrets that you don't wanna carry. It also doesn't make you happy in the long run. And so here's the thing. We gotta understand that today's message, I'm speaking to us as the church. I am not talking about culture right now. I'm not talking about people who don't know Jesus. Culture will always continue to devolve into what the Bible calls sinful pleasures, all right? So we can't expect culture to be holy because they don't know Jesus. Today, holiness, this message, is for you and me. It's not for Larry, Bob, Johnny, or Jane that you work with or go to school with that doesn't know Jesus. This is for us. And the holiness message is not one where God is a cosmic killer. joy, trying to just make your life miserable. No, no, no, not at all. Holiness gives you freedom. It's the way that you were designed to live. You know, I may want to, I may be hungry and I eat a whole bag of Doritos. I regret that. It tastes good at first, but then I live with regret. And if you live your life going, I'm just hungry for whatever it is that I want to do, you'll fill up and then you'll have regret. So here's the thing. We're going to talk about today, living a life with restraints, living a life with some guardrails. And it actually is the best way to live. In fact, the Hebrew word in the old Testament for holy means this in English, it means set apart. It means distinct, and it means separated for God's purpose. So today, when I say we need to be holy, translate that in, you need to be separate and set apart for God's purpose. This is not just about a list of do's and don'ts. This is not a religious exercise. The difference between religion and relationship is religion is a bunch of do's and don'ts. Relationship is that you have a relationship, a friendship with God, and that you become

more and more and more like him as every day goes by. That you try to at least. We get the English word holy from the Anglo-Saxon term halig or hal, H-A-L, and it means this. It means whole with a W. It means complete. So again, today, as I say we need to be holy, translate that into we need to be complete. Your soul needs to be complete and whole, not fragmented. Holiness is not a loss. Like when you live a holy life, it's not a loss of life. It is a recovery of wholeness. It is saying, okay, I'm separating myself from the old me and maybe even the way culture is, but the old me. I'm separating myself from the old me and I'm separating myself to God. To God and from sin. And if you look at the last 2,000 years, this has been a signature of the church, of people who call themselves Christ followers. In fact, I'll even go back about 150 A.D. There was a man by the name of Justin Martyr. He was a Greek philosopher who became a Christian. He was born in Samaria, which is in now the area that we call Israel. He was trained in Greek philosophy. He was incredibly intellectual. He spent years trying to find happiness and meaning of life through Stoicism, through the teachings of Plato. He found all of them lacking and shallow. The only belief system that he felt truly answered the majority of his questions and was worth living for was Christianity. So he became a Christian. He became a Christian in about 155 to 157 A.D. There's a lot of persecution happening to Christians, mainly because they're being lied about and misunderstood. The Romans during the time, Roman Empire was really what we mostly now call Europe and the Middle East. The Romans had some misbeliefs about Christians. First of all, they believed that Christians were atheists. And you sit there and go, why? Well, it was because the Christians rejected Roman gods. So the Romans were like, those Christians are atheists, even though that's not really a true correct definition. The Romans also believed Christians were cannibals back then. You sit there and why? Well, because Christians practice communion. And when they ate the bread and they drank the wine in remembrance of Christ's body, some Romans heard that and they misinterpreted and said, these people are cannibals. They eat people. So that started to spread. And then the Romans believed that the Christians were immoral because they met in secret. Well, the reason they met in secret is they're being persecuted and killed. And so the Romans were like, they're meeting in secret and that's kind of suspicious. And they believe that Christians created social disruption. They believe that Christians were disloyal to Caesar. And so many times Christians were just condemned for being labeled a Christian. And so Justin has become a Christian now. And so

he writes an open letter called the first apology. You can look this up in history. Okay. This isn't Bible history. This is history. All right. He writes the first apology and he addresses it to the Roman emperor and the Roman Senate. This would be the equivalent of writing the president of the United States and Congress. Okay. And so what he does is he writes this open letter and it's called the first apology. Now, apology doesn't have to be the first apology. It can be the first apology. doesn't mean that he's saying sorry. Instead, apology means a reasonable defense. In other words, a reasonable defense of Christianity. What he's really doing here is he's trying to be an apologist and he's trying to defend the faith through reason, logic, and facts because he was trained as a philosopher. And he basically said this to the emperor. He said, hey, investigate Christians honestly. Don't just listen to the rumors. Don't just listen to the gossip. But instead, look at their morality, their transformed lives. Look at their treatment of others, their integrity. This was revolutionary. Let me take you back and let's walk the streets of Rome for a moment in 155 AD. This is what you would see. You would see infanticide. This is the killing of infants. This was not necessarily rare and it wasn't like really, really common either, but it was happening. Where especially if a family would have a baby girl,

baby girls were looked at as much lower in importance than baby boys. And so many times that there would be a family, a Roman family that have a baby girl, they didn't want it. They would just take the baby, the infant, leave it on the streets or throw the baby into the river. This happened all the time. And so what would Christians do? They'd go rescue those kids. Another thing in Rome, if we're walking the streets of Rome, you would see sexual exploitation, especially of women. You would see violence, gladiators, blood sport. People were dying and people would go to coliseums and watch it as entertainment. You've seen gladiator, you've seen the movies. Up, down, the person lives, the person dies. This was common. You would see also, you would see the classes would be against each other. The elite, the rich, they would treat the poor and the middle class like garbage. There was also emperor worship. They would worship the Caesar. There was widespread slavery. There was religious pluralism. They worshiped multiple gods. There were all of these things. And then there were these Christians that were living peppered in the community. And you know what they would do?

Those Christians would stay sexually faithful to their husband or their wife. They wouldn't cheat like all of the others. Because you know what, if you were a Roman guy, you had your wife, you had your prostitute. Sometimes you had your baby mama. I mean, that's just, it was just commonplace. And these Christians, they actually got married and they just only were with that person. They stayed sexually faithful. They would rescue and adopt the abandoned babies that were left on the street and bring them into their homes. The Christians would care for the widows and the poor and the elite Romans would discard those kind of people. The Christians treated slaves as equals, not lower. Said this is a human being equal to me, not someone less than me, like all the Romans believed. The Christians refused to worship the Caesar because they said we will respect Caesar, but we worship God. And so they would forgive their enemies. They would share their possessions. They would refuse to get into hedonistic entertainment. So in essence, in Rome, if you were a Christian, you were different and you were considered a little weird. And here's Justin, martyr, and he's writing the emperor in the Senate and he goes, judge the tree by its fruit. Look at all the good that Christians are doing.

You gotta know then it's a good faith. And he said this, quote, he said, Christianity produces transformed people. And I will tell you in 2026, Christianity produces transformed people. Real Christianity does. Because Christianity is not a label. It's not something that I just, you know, say that I am. But no, Christianity means we live different than the culture around us. We live in such a way that we bring good into our environments. You are the best you when you live a holy life according to God's instruction. Do you understand that? God's not creating rules to be a cosmic bummer, okay, and kill joy. He gives you rules and guidelines, and we call them commands, because it literally is the best way to live, the way that you are designed to live. And so we gotta understand something, that once we give our life to Jesus, that's only the beginning. We get saved. But then we begin a process, and by the way, it's a lifelong process, of this $10 word, sanctification. Sanctification means this. It means a lifelong journey of becoming more like Jesus

and living more like Jesus. living according to his commands. You will be on this journey for the rest of your life. I am on the journey, you're on the journey. I don't care if you're 89 years old in here, you're still on the journey, you're not like Jesus yet. All of us need to constantly be becoming more and more Jesus, like Jesus, which means that we're becoming more and more holy. In fact, God says this in 1 Peter. You shall be holy for I am holy. This is a promise and this is a command. Now I know as I'm saying this, some of you, it's quiet in here, I know some of you are like going, I don't know how to do that, this is impossible. I got old habits that don't die. I got anger problems, I got lust problems, I find myself lying all the time, whatever it is. I mean, you have these habits. And some of you might go, I don't know how to do this. And I'm glad you're asking that because we're gonna talk about that in a moment. And then some of you might be listening to this and going, man, a holy life, do I have to like sit at home and like, you know, read the Bible all night, every night? No, no, a holy life is not a boring life. It's not a life of seclusion, not at all. The lie of the enemy is this. The lie of the enemy, whether you're in church or not,

is you do what you want and you will have more fun. That's the lie of the enemy. You do what you want, you do your own thing. And guess what, you're gonna have more fun. But the truth is, is this, violate holiness and you'll eventually lose your happiness. It may take a week, a month, a year, a decade, but if you continue to feed the wrong kind of desires in your life and just blow off God's guidelines, over time, your happiness levels will begin to shrink. And it's fun to sin for a season. The Bible even says this. In fact, in Hebrews, it says, fleeting pleasures of sin. In other words, it is pleasurable for a little bit. Otherwise, you wouldn't do it. But over time, hollowness begins to enter into your heart. It is possible, ladies and gentlemen, it's possible to become more holy. And all of us need to do it. In fact, in 1 Corinthians, Paul writes about temptation. And he says this, there's no temptation in your life, no temptations that are different from what others experience. In other words, whatever you're tempted to do, yeah, I mean, you're tempted to watch porn, you're tempted to commit adultery, you're tempted to lie, you're tempted to cheat, you're tempted to whatever it is, others have also felt that before. And here, God is faithful though, Paul says. He will not allow the temptation

to be more than you can stand. In other words, you always have the ability to say no. And when you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure. So this is a good promise. That means I'm not doomed to sin every time I'm tempted. I remember a pastor saying this, kind of a cheesy illustration. You can't keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair. In other words, you can't stop temptation, but you can stop from saying yes to it, all right? So here's the thing, when you're tempted, he will always show you a way out. He understands that old habits die hard and God is there to help you. It really is a marriage of two things. It isn't over here in legalism and it isn't over here in sloppy living, but right here in the middle between holiness and grace, that's where you find God. You find him right here between holiness and grace. See, if you think rule keeping makes God love you more, that would be over here. If I just keep all the rules, if I just keep all the rules, God will love me more. If you believe that, then you're gonna live with guilt and condemnation because you're never gonna be able to be good enough. But if you're over here and you're like,

well, God loves me and I can do whatever I want. He just loves me. Well, if that's the way you believe and you believe that God allows you to live any way you want because he loves you, well, then you're gonna lack power. In fact, Paul writes this about people who think that way. He says, people will be lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying its power. Your God will never, if your God never makes you feel uncomfortable about your behavior, if your God never makes you feel uncomfortable about your behavior, you're probably not following the true God. My God makes me feel uncomfortable all the time. My God makes me feel uncomfortable about my behavior and he usually uses my wife to do it. but she'll be like, Jeremy, you shouldn't have done that. And I'm like, you're right. Here's the thing, holiness does not earn you God's love. God doesn't love you anymore if you're doing all the right things than if you're not doing all the right things, okay? He loves you. The Bible even says this, that Jesus died for you when you were still a sinner. So your love, God's love for you is not contingent upon your track record.

His love is not hinged on your holiness. However, your love for him probably is hinged on holiness. Let me give you an example. Like you can go steal and God loves you. You can cheat and God still loves you. You can live selfishly and full of pride and God still loves you. You can have sex any way you want to and God still loves you. You could be a person who is a deceiver and a manipulator and an abuser and you could be full of hate and all that and God still loves you. But here's the truth, your behavior will not determine God's love for you, but your behavior reveals how much you truly love him. See, that's really what it is. Because Jesus said this, if you love me, you'll do what I say. It's like Jen, like I tell her I love her and guess what, she expects me to then back up my words with my actions because otherwise it's just lip service. Like if I say, oh Jen, I love you, but then I'm out cheating. I'm not treating her with respect. I don't see her as a Mago Day made in the image of God. I don't care for her. I never talked to her, but oh, I love you, Jen. And then I go off and no, no, no.

She would say, I don't really love her. Jesus is saying, if you love me, you're gonna do what I tell you to do. And here's how you're supposed to live. And holiness, as I close, is God's responsibility to build in you, but it's also your responsibility to choose it. So it's not his job, it's not your job, it's both of your jobs. Jeremiah chapter 31 says it this way. God says, this is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel. After that time, declares the Lord, I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they will be my people. In other words, that's why when you give your life to Jesus and then you start living the old way, it doesn't feel right. Because guess what? God's putting his law into your heart and it's not working for you to go back and live the old way. In fact, it's like eating the bag of Doritos, right? It's making you sick. And so very simply, more God in you, less sin. The more that you say, God, I want you to be in control. I want you to be in my heart. I wanna live your way. Guess what?

Less sin. God is working, you're working. Holiness is not behavior modification through human effort alone. It is surrendering daily to the transformative work of the Holy Spirit. So it's a partnership, do you hear that? God cannot make you become holy and neither can you become holy on your own. So I wanna leave you with this last thought. This is the last slide, the last thing I'm gonna say. Holiness is not oppressive. It's not gaslighting. It is not restrictive. Holiness is God's way to experience true freedom because holiness is wholeness of your soul. It's the way God designed you to live. So what's an area that you need to work on? Take it to God. Say, God, I need you to give me a strength because I can't do it on my own. Maybe it's your motives, your speech, your actions, your behavior. Maybe it's your habits, maybe it's advice. You're just like, God, I need your help here. God is more than willing to help. It's his grace calling you into holiness. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I just thank you. I thank you that you are a holy God.

And Lord, every single one of us, whether we've been a Christian for two seconds or 20 years, all of us have areas that we need to improve. Areas we've become sloppy. Areas maybe that we've taken freedom to an extreme that's unhealthy. Lord, I just ask. that you would give us strength and power and the ability to say no to temptation and yes to the way that you want us to live. God, I ask that you would help us as city first to be a holy church, not a perfect church, not a haughty church, not a legalistic church. We just want to be more like you, Jesus. We want a wholeness in our soul. We want a life that reflects your commands. Help us to do that, I pray, in Jesus' name. And everybody said amen. Amen. Come on, let's give God a huge round of applause. Can we do that? What an amazing time together. And if you're watching and you have not yet made Jesus the leader and forgiver of your life, we want to give you the opportunity to do that right now, where it begins with a simple prayer. And you can pray this prayer after me. It's very simple. Dear Lord, I know that I've made mistakes and I need your forgiveness. I believe that you died for my sins and I now invite you to be the leader and the forgiver of my life. And in Jesus' name, amen. Come on. That's right. We are celebrating with you today. If you just prayed that prayer and made that decision, that is one of the best decisions you will ever make. And now that you prayed that prayer, we have a couple of next steps for you. Number one, tell somebody you made that decision. We are not meant to walk alone in this journey with Jesus. Secondly, we have a free resource that's just for you. It's called New Beginning. It's simply a 14-day devotional. And as you start growing in your relationship with Jesus, you'll read through this devotional and it answers some questions that you have, whether how to read the Bible, how do I pray, how do I find community. So it's a great next step for you to take. That's right. And when you sign up for this resource, you will also receive a link to a few videos from

our pastors. These videos will help guide you through how to pray and how to read the Bible and how to build a Christ-centered friendships. And as you start this journey, please let us know if you have any questions. You can drop a line in the chat or you can DM us on social media and we would love to get back to you. That's right. And after you walk through that free New Beginning resource, we want to encourage you to take the next step and jump into Growth Track. Growth Track starts at the first Sunday of every month. It happens in person and online. This is a great way to discover your God-given purpose in your design. And if you'd like more information about that, you can hop on an app or you can scan the QR code that's on your screen. That's right. And finally, if you need prayer for anything, when I say anything, I mean absolutely anything, visit the app and you can enter a prayer request. We have people praying over them constantly. The best thing you can do is come back to church. And when we gather together, we grow exponentially more. And we believe that. We're not designed to do this alone. Well, guys, we love you. We're praying for you, church. We will see you guys next week.