Joy | Philippians 1

Father in heaven, this weekend, especially we who believe in Christ, I feel have a unique perspective and appreciation and gratitude for the men and women who have laid down their lives so that we could have freedom because we have staked our eternity on that exact idea, that there is a man who laid down his life so we could have freedom. And God, as believers, I believe we have a unique gratitude for the freedoms that includes the freedom to gather and worship without fear of prosecution or persecution, unlike many of our brothers and sisters around the world who are gathering right now in secret, in hiding places, because they are not able to do what we do. And so we thank you for freedom. We thank you for sacrifice. And God, as we get ready to jump into your word, we just want to tell you that as many people as there are gathered at all of our campuses, there are as many unique struggles for which we need help. And God, I pray that you teach us something good from your word today that will remind us we have grace and endless second chances, that will guide us in truth for a good step tomorrow, and we're trusting you to teach us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Well, Southland, it is great to be back. If we haven't met, my name's Carl, and I come here every so often. And I got to tell you, before we even jump into our new series, that I have been buds with Scott for, I was trying to count, 23, 25 years, something like that. I've been listening to his sermons for 25 years, and they've always been good. But I just feel the last six, eight months, they've gone to a whole new level of good. They're like, good, good, good now. And it's like more compassion, more boldness, more depth, more practical stuff, more grace, more truth. Would you just let Scott know that you agree with me, and you think his preaching is just off the chains right now? And I am so...I get to look down the rows and see everybody filling up their notebooks every week.

If you're new, we take notes here, and we have notebooks to do it because we believe that when we are that honoring of God's word that God's going to do something in and through us through the teaching of God's word every week when we come into our different campuses. If you have your notebook, the word you can write at the top for a key word is joy. We are launching a brand new series today where we are going to take the book of Philippians in the Bible, which is known to be a book of joy. Now from the jump, I got to let you know that I was misled about joy for many years as a believing Christian, and well-meaning preachers and authors and podcasters would say something along the lines of, hey, we're going to talk about joy, and there's a difference between joy and happiness, and they would talk about how happiness is external, and joy is internal, and how happiness is circumstantial, and joy is eternal, and all that sounds nice. The problem is scripturally it's just not true. One time I was doing a study on joy, and I thought, you know, I'm going to look up that idea of joy and happiness being different for myself, and I'm equipped enough in the original languages of the Bible to kind of study that, and I did a deep dive on it and found out there's no difference. It's the same. In the scriptures, the word for joy is the word for happiness, the word for happiness is the word for joy, so when you read things like Jesus saying, my joy will be in you and your joy will be complete, you could honestly kind of substitute the word happiness for it. He's saying, hey, I'm going to give you a deep happiness, and your happiness will be complete. And it doesn't mean that we don't mourn or be sad. Those things are scriptural as well, hopefully you know that, but there is a combination and overlap between joy and happiness. What there is a difference between in our world is pleasure and joy. The natural result of pleasure is I want more, the end result of joy is I have enough. The full extent of pursuing pleasure is often addiction, the full extent of pursuing joy most of the time is contentment. And the thing about the book of Philippians is that it's written by the Apostle Paul while

he is in prison. I'm going to skip to verses 18 and 20 right now to kick off. He says, I will rejoice for I know that through your prayers and the help of the spirit of Jesus Christ I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, catch this, whether by life or by death. Meaning in his jail cell for which he's unjustly incarcerated, he does not know if he's going to be executed or be set free. He's gonna live or die, he doesn't know. And here's the point, he chooses, I will rejoice. We don't always respond to that kind of uncertainty with joy, in fact, I was trying to brainstorm, like how do we typically respond when our future is uncertain, I came up with three different ways. One thing I think we do is we get stuck. I don't know if you saw the viral video this week of the Waymo driverless cars, residential Atlanta neighborhood, people looked out their window and these cars kept circling the cul-de-sac, all Waymo somehow got programmed to go to this neighborhood and it ended up being like the worst traffic jam ever, you couldn't get in or out. And I thought, that's us, sometimes. When our future's uncertain, we like go in circles or we just kind of get stuck, we don't know what to do. Another thing we do when we're uncertain is we play it safe. I read recently about a psychological term called ambiguity aversion, ambiguity aversion, and it's the idea that psychologists have studied that we would always, as humans,

choose certainty over uncertainty. So for example, if I had two jars of marbles that you couldn't see inside and I said, you have to pick a marble out and if you get a red marble, I'll give you 100 bucks, that's all you gotta do, pick a red marble, you get 100 bucks. In the first jar, I would tell you there's 50 red and 50 black, you have 50-50 shot. In the other jar, if I said, I'm not gonna tell you how many reds there are, it could be one, it could be 100, over and over when they test this idea, you know what people do? Choose the jar they know. Because they just don't want to take a chance on what they don't know, it's ambiguity aversion. Another thing we do when things are uncertain is we like to choose to be a victim. I read a news article a couple months ago that said, woman wins lawsuit against Carnival Cruise Lines and I thought, well, I've been on a cruise before, I may go again in a few years, I don't know. If Carnival's getting sued, I wanna know why I shouldn't go on their cruise. And I read the story and it was about this woman who had recently gone on a cruise and in one sitting, had drank 15 shots of tequila. She then on her way back to her cabin, fell down the stairs, shocker, and got injured. She then sued Carnival Cruise Lines saying, it's your fault that I drank too much

and the worst part of the whole story is she won and was awarded $350,000. And I immediately thought, this is what's wrong with our world. People choosing to be victims, it's always somebody else's fault. And then God kinda gave me like a little Holy Spirit nudge and said, yeah, Carl, about that, that's exactly what you do with me. When I say, God, tell me what's next. God, can you solve this relationship? God, I don't understand how you're doing this thing. I act as if I'm the victim and I don't take responsibility and we all do that. But look at the verse. Paul says, hey, I don't know if I'm gonna live or die, but I will, meaning it's a choice, rejoice. If you want kind of a title for today's sermon, more than a keyword, I would title this, choosing joy when the future is uncertain. Choosing joy when the future is uncertain. How do you choose joy when your spouse continues to lob false accusations and you're just tired? How do you choose joy as a parent when the rebellion continues to get worse? When you have a physical problem that's making your life harder every day and the doctors say, we don't know. When you're trying to do the right thing financially and the car breaks down again.

When your career has a detour you didn't plan. When you lose the election. When you get cut from the team. When she says, I'm leaving. When you realize, I can't afford to go to school anymore. What do you do? Well, 2,000 years ago, there was a traveling preacher who was unjustly imprisoned, didn't know if he would get out, didn't know if he would be executed, and while there, he sat down and penned a letter to a fledgling church in the city of Philippi in Asia Minor, and he said, hey, I'm full of joy and I wanna tell you why. So I want you to lean in and take notes today because I believe God's gonna teach you through Philippians 1, which we're gonna cover really quickly how to have joy when your future is uncertain. We're gonna start back at verse three and four. I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for y'all making my prayer with joy. So what we're gonna see from Paul is gratitude, and this is fascinating because if you read back in Acts 16 in the Bible, you see when Paul visited Philippi it didn't go so good. He got stalked by a demon-possessed woman, a mob rose up against him, he got thrown in prison unjustly,

and eventually the city leaders kick him out of the town and tell him not to come back. So if I was sitting down to write a letter to the Philippians while I'm in prison, I would say, dear Philippians, being with you stinks. I don't miss you. I'm glad I'm not there. The only thing worse than where I am is being with you. I'm chained to a Roman soldier. He doesn't use deodorant. He stinks literally. I don't even know if I'm gonna eat tomorrow. It's the only way I can get food is if people come visit me. This is a horrible situation. Please pray for me sincerely, the Apostle Paul. That would have been my prayer. But Paul says, every time I think of you, I'm so thankful. So here's a lesson we write down. Double down on gratitude. I've been doing some research on gratitude, and the data is wild. People who write in a gratitude journal every day sleep better. When soldiers come home from war, those who practice gratitude have lower levels of PTSD. People who practice gratitude are more likely to exercise. One group put together all the studies on gratitude and found, quote, people who are grateful are happier, get better grades, have better friendships,

have more energy, and their clinical depression decreases just by being grateful. Basically, gratitude's the answer to everything in life. So there's this researcher on the West Coast named Dr. Robert Emmons, and he wanted to see, okay, I see all the data on gratitude. Is it correlation or causation? Like, are some people just happen to be grateful and have all these things happen to them, or does being grateful actually lead to those good outcomes? So he spent years serving and studying thousands of people, and what he found is it's not circumstances that produce gratitude and then produce all those good things. It is gratitude in any circumstance that brings all the benefits. In fact, in the article I read this, there was a quote of a benedictine monk who said, it is not joy that makes us grateful. It's gratitude that makes us joyful. In other words, you're not a grateful person or you're not. It's do you practice being grateful, and if so, all those good benefits I just listed are available to you, the good sleep, the grades, all the things. It's why Paul, long before Dr. Robert Emmons had researched it, wrote, be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you who belong to Christ.

So often, Christians will ask, what's God's will for my life? What do you think is God's will for me? Here it is. Be thankful. That's God's will for your life. So, some of us this week ask God, what's my future hold? What Paul's showing us is we instead need to say, God, here's what I'm thankful for. So I challenge you to start every day and begin each day with simple gratitude. I think it's really simple. Doesn't have to be something complex. Just begin each day, and then each day, when you're lying in bed, end your day, literally, with thanking God. And it can be simple things. God, thank you that when I was in Target, I heard a baby laugh. It just reminded me of the innocence of life. God, thank you that in the game yesterday, my kid scored a goal. That's so fun. I know it's not the biggest problems in the world, but it's just fun. God, thank you for the podcasts I get to listen to while I walk. It's nice just to have access to that kind of information for free.

God, thank you for sweet tea at lunch today. It's just the joys of life. Bring me a smile. Listen, I know you have things in your life you're begging God to change. Me too. I know you forget to be grateful. Me too. But when we face uncertainty, that fog in front of us needs to be a reminder, according to Philippians 1, we gotta double down on gratitude for the simple things. And it'll help us get joy. Next thing is found in verse nine and following. It is my prayer that your love, and what we're gonna see is like a long, eloquent prayer. It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so you may approve of what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. So this long, eloquent prayer, but that's really the important part here, is he's praying for them. And the lesson you can write down is this, fight the spiritual battle. I too often have thought of prayer in my Christian walk as like a chore, it's like something I've gotta do,

I gotta grid it out, I gotta get through the to-do list, gotta pray for these things or these people. It's almost like eating asparagus, like I know I'm supposed to do it, so I'll do it. But the scripture does not talk about prayer that way. The scripture says we're in a war, and prayer is a weapon. Ephesians 6 is one scripture that talks about this. It says we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. In fact, my favorite story in the Bible that illustrates this is found in the Old Testament in the book of Daniel. A man, Daniel, has this weird experience. It's so troubling to him that he immediately gives up all meat and all alcohol until he gets an answer from God to understand it. He devotes himself to prayer. 21 days go by. On the 21st day, an angel of God appears to him. Daniel's absolutely terrified. The angel says, don't be afraid. And before he explains to help Daniel understand the thing, the angel says, hey, as soon as you started praying, I was dispatched by God himself, but there was a spiritual battle I encountered. And I was hung up by the enemy, but I finally broke through. So on day 21, I'm here. Here's what God wants you to know. That story is bizarre, but it tells me the feeling that every single one of us has sometimes that there's got to be more to this life than just what we see.

You're right. There is. And the scriptures at various places throughout confirm this life is not simply about getting your degree and finding a spouse and having a kid and raising them and figuring out what to do in retirement. There's a war going on. There's a line in the Lord of the Rings movie where a reluctant king says, I will not risk open war. And one of the fellowship responds, open war is upon you whether you risk it or not. And I would just tell those of you who are not yet believers, I know one of the reasons you're feeling a pull towards Christ is because you want the peace and the joy and the calm to your life that he can bring. And those are absolutely true. You will get those. But when you get up out of those baptism waters, there is a target on your soul from the enemy and open war is upon you whether you want it or not. So what Paul does is he fights a spiritual battle. So I have with me a reminder of this. I have a tomahawk that I recently got as a gift, and this thing's awesome. If you are familiar with the Jack Carr novels about James Reese, this is the weapon he uses. If you are a man who has not listened to the Jack Carr novels, there's your listing for your next road trip. You're welcome. But the reason it's in the books is because in real life, when a member of the SEAL Team Six has completed their first year of service on the SEALs, they are given one of these as part of their ongoing equipment and as a badge of honor essentially. I had some close friends circle up and present this to me for a special occasion not too long ago, and they explained to me that in their research in buying this for me that we think of a tomahawk mostly as a weapon, like to hurt somebody, defend yourself. That's only the third most common use of a tomahawk.

The second most common use of a tomahawk is to breach something. You bust down a door, you get something out of the way. The most common use of a tomahawk by SEALs and other warriors like them is to clear the way. It's just to get stuff out of the way, maybe like a machete, maybe it could be other things that are in your way so you can clear a path both for yourself and maybe more importantly for those who will follow. And ever since I got this, I keep it in the place where I pray every morning, and most every day when I'm praying for other people, I hold on to it because it's a reminder to me that what I'm doing right now is not just a spiritual checklist of eating my asparagus. I am joining a spiritual battle, and I am waging war to clear a path for the people for whom I am praying. So if you're stuck in a nursing home, if you're in long-term rehab facility, you may feel like I'm stuck and I can't be active for God's will, and I would say you absolutely can, you need to pick up your tomahawk, fight a spiritual battle, and pray for those who need you. If you have children, a part of your spiritual responsibility to them is to pray for them and clear the path for them spiritually to turn out how God wants them to. Being part of this church means that you pray for the leaders of this church, the elders, the staff, for Scott himself, and say, God, I am going to fight a battle that they'll never see, that you'll bless them and protect them and inspire them. Being married as a Christian means you don't fix your spouse through advice. It means you pray for them in the quiet place that they may never see and know the words of your prayers, but you're fighting a spiritual battle that God will clear the path and do in them what he wants to. Regardless of how you do it, recognize no matter what's uncertain, we as other believers need you to fight a spiritual battle. Third lesson I'm going to tell you before we look at the scriptures, because it's a lot of scripture and you just kind of need to frame it, it's simply this. Live on mission. Live on mission.

And I want to show you, Paul talks about this a lot in Philippians 1. So he says, I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. So he's saying... I am on mission, and people know about Christ because of it. And most of the brothers, most Christians in this city, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. So not just I, but other people here are doing this. And then he leans into them. Let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or I'm absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation and that from God. So all throughout Philippians 1, Paul says, hey, I'm living on mission. Brothers here are living on mission. I need you to live on mission. And here's the reality. If you're new to Southend, what I want you to know is you've walked into a church full of people who live on mission. It's just who you're sitting next to right now. I talked to all the campus pastors this week, and they told me about Jordan. Jordan has three different jobs. He services HVAC, he seals concrete, does wood flooring.

In addition to all that, he plays on our worship team at Georgetown, leads groups, and his main ministry is his heart for people battling depression. Brian, I heard about, doesn't just serve on Connections and lead a men's group at Nicholasville. He mentors kids in the public school, and he brings in foster kids in times of need. Aaron doesn't just serve special needs kids at Danville. She works with kids all week. Mark and Mary are a couple who are from Michigan, and they were set to retire. Knew they wanted to retire somewhere south, geography-wise, but based where they were gonna go, just on where they thought they could have the best opportunity to serve other people, they ended up at our Richmond campus. Elizabeth at Lexington campus builds relationships with students and loves on them and their families in the Woodhill community. Every Tuesday at Nicholasville, if you're outside, you'll see Rachel walking around the building. It looks like she's getting some exercise, but mentally, you don't see. She's going over specific names of leaders and students who are inside the building, have a youth group, praying for them. Hannah started serving in children's ministry in seventh grade at Richmond. She's now a high school senior who just committed to move to the Dominican Republic

for one year as a full-time missionary. John is a single father of a son with special needs. He doesn't use Sunday as a break from special needs. He gives other people a break because he devotes himself at multiple campuses to serving in our special needs ministry so he can love on everybody's kids well. Here's what I know. This is a church that loves to live on mission. The temptation is when you face a hard time or an uncertain future is to take a step back and say, well, I gotta figure me out before I worry about them. But what Paul shows and challenges us in Philippians 1 is no, no, no, in your time of greatest uncertainty is when you lean into mission the most because maybe that's when you're most effective because people are watching and listening. Look at 29 and 30. It has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake. And here's a prayer I want you to catch. Engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have. He's saying, listen, I know things are hard for you and I want you to be reminded, me too. Here's the lesson, lean on your crew. Lean on your crew. And when I say lean on your crew,

what I mean is the example of Jesus in the Gospels is Jesus had a circle of 12 and a crew of three with whom he experienced an intimacy in depth of relationship that he did not experience with anyone else. Let me illustrate this for you. I know I may make you twitch at bad memories. I'm actually gonna cuss in church right now. Do you remember when we had COVID? I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I know, I know when we had that all back in 2020, our world was falling apart and the world's leading survey group, Gallup, wanted to see what in this year of chaos in our country is helping people get mentally healthier. And they broke it down a bunch of different ways. They said, is it depend on how much money you make? No, every income level, worst mental health. Is it based on race? No, every race, worst mental health. And they broke it, is it married? No, they just broke it down every which way. There's only one group they could possibly find in the entire country who got mentally stronger in the year that was 2020. Do you know what it is? People who went to church every single week in person. And they actually measured. If you go to church monthly, does it matter? No, mental health went down.

You're in church every single week. So let me gently lean in to some of you watching online. We love pushing our content online that's primarily designed for two groups of people. It's one for your one, because when you invite your one and say, come and see, they say. I'm not going to a cult. And you say, watch this online. It's not a cult. You'll see, you'll love it, you'll come. And then you can join the cult. It'll be fantastic. The second group is for is people who can't be here. People who have a health issue that they physically can't be here. People whose boss makes them travel on a weekend for work out of their control. We love providing online tools for those people. But if you're a local, the data shows what you know in your gut. Watching on a computer is no substitute for being with your community. And I would just challenge you if you are tempted to watch Bedside Baptist on a Sunday to say no, I'm going to get there in person. I'll even give you a more extreme example because that's what I do. On Judgment Day, some of the people we're going to find ourselves lining up next to

are modern Nigerian Christians. And right now, thousands of them are being kidnapped and slaughtered every month. January 18th, 175 of them kidnapped. Week before Easter, 17 killed. Easter Sunday, during church, 15 Nigerian Christians slaughtered. So you know what they're doing today in Nigeria? They're showing up in person to worship and sing and baptize and hear the word and pray together and take communion to be reminded I need to hear other people sing to be reminded of the joy even while the world is falling apart that I have inside me. I need to hear the word of God preached because I need to know how to get through difficult times. I need to have people pray over me and be reminded I'm not alone in the struggle I have. And most importantly, they're saying I need to be reminded that I worship the one who conquered death by walking out of the empty tomb and they can slaughter me and kill me if they want but if so, I just go to a better life afterwards. That's why they gather. Because there's something in their soul that knows I need this. In fact, I can't live without it. So please don't hear me saying the goal is to get in a building.

The goal is to lean on your crew. We're doing life together. We are figuring out how do we do life with the health issue and with the kid and with the job thing and all the things. How do we follow Christ in that? And we're following the example of Jesus who had three guys that had unique experiences with him. So one time he's going into a little room to raise a little girl from the dead and he said, hey, you three, come here. I want you to experience the power of God. And another time he goes up on top of a mountain and I think he knows he's gonna encounter the voice of the Father and the spirits of Moses and Elijah in this bizarre, powerful, inspiring way and he says, hey, Peter, James, John, I want you to experience the power of God. And moments before he's arrested to be tortured and executed, he knows what awaits him. He says, my soul is overwhelmed to the point of death. He says, hey, guys, I need you three to come pray with me right now. Church means community. So lean on your crew. And this is so simple. This is, here's what this is. It's this afternoon, texting a buddy of yours you're close to and saying, hey, I just need to let you know something nobody else knows.

It's at your next Mahjong night and when everybody's drinking wine and laughing together, you say, hey, ladies, I actually have something I need you to pray for. It's at your small group with Southland that you're so excited about and does a good job of studying the Bible and praying for each other and attending each other's kids' birthday parties. You need to take a risk and say the thing that they don't know and just see how they respond. We need to lean on our crew. That's what church is. Last summer, my family of six got to do something I've been dreaming about for several years. We hopped on a plane, we flew out west and we went to Yosemite National Park for almost a whole week and it was awesome. We saw beautiful waterfalls, we had these gorgeous hikes and lakes and wildlife. We saw one afternoon, we were driving along and we saw some cars stopped and over here in the woods, pretty close to us was a black bear and it was awesome just to see that in nature. That night at dinner, one of my sons prayed, dear God, thanks for this food. Please let us see more bears. We were all kind of like, oh, okay. No lie, two minutes after we pull out of dinner, we're going down this small road,

a big daddy of a bear just walks right out in front of our van, we slow down, he starts walking next to the road, not paying a lick of attention to us. We're going about three miles an hour and then he just kind of wandered off and we saw a campsite in the distance and hopefully they were okay. But it was absolutely fantastic. The highlight of the trip was something I dreamed of the six of us doing and it was hiking the Half Dome. If you're not familiar, the Half Dome is this dome of granite that sometime years ago, we believe was cut in half by a glacier that ripped through and created Yosemite Valley. It's an eight mile, 5,000 foot. ascent to the top punctuated by a steep incline up the dome itself. So my family gets up at 3.50 a.m., we load up as much liquids as we can carry, we got our headlamps on, we start hiking. I gotta tell you something, I knew at one point my kids would surpass me in physical ability and I would be the old person slowing them down, I didn't think it would be this year. I thought it was gonna be when I was at least in my 50s, but we took a lot of breaks and most of them were for me. Anyway, we make it up, we had some great conversations, see cool waterfalls, great views, good pictures. When we get to the base of the dome itself,

all my family kinda has wide eyes and they're looking at me like, what'd you guys into? Because it's a lot steeper than I remember from the last time I'd been there. And they had these steel cables because the layperson, it's about 60 degree angle in some points, the layperson couldn't walk up it without the cables. So several of my family start, and I noticed my youngest just kinda has his head down and he's just sitting there, not moving. So I get down on one knee where I can see him and he's got big tears coming down his face. I said, oh bud, are you scared? Head nod. I said, okay. I said, you know, first of all, from past hikes that if I sense we're in true danger, I'll turn us around. You know I'll do that, right? Head nod. So I said, here's what we're gonna do. You have to start. I'm not saying we'll finish, but we're gonna give it a shot and here's how we're gonna do it. I don't want you to look to the right or left because that'll be scary in seeing just a granite sheet. I don't want you to listen to anybody else because other people may try and give you advice. I just want you to listen to my voice, okay? And we're just gonna focus on one step at a time. We're not gonna look at how far we have to go,

look down, probably will scare us. We're just gonna look at the next step we have to go. You do what I say and we'll just see what happens. So he very tentatively nods and that's what we do. We take one step at a time and he listens to me and I can hear his heart pounding from where I am but eventually we make it to the top and we have this great view and we read a psalm together and we pray together and we take some great pictures and I'm experiencing just the best of God's creation with my favorite people on the planet. And I really think what my son experienced that day is where a lot of us are because we have this mountain of uncertainty in front of us and it creates a fog of confusion and it's scary and we can't see how it ends and God, why'd you bring me here? I don't like it. It's when will we get pregnant, God? When will my spouse create a marriage I like? When will the job thing finally work out? When will we ever have the relationship we want? And I am no prophet but I believe God brought you here today to collide your situation with Philippians 1 and if I could implore you, I would say, don't get distracted by what other people are doing. Their story's not your story. God's writing something unique with you.

Don't worry about how far you have to go to get where you want. Maybe God'll take you there, maybe he won't. Worry about the step in front of you. And most important, listen to the voice of the Father and the Father alone. He wants to guide you through his word and through his people and if you listen to him and take it one step at a time, I believe that you're going to get where he wants you to get, where he wants you to get, whatever that looks like and I believe where he takes you, you'll experience the wonders of his beauty with some people that you love more than anybody else in the whole world. Don't grow weary in doing good. Stay close to the Father. He's got you. Let's pray together. Father in heaven, so many of us, when we look in front of us, it's just fog. We feel blind and we have hopes and we have dreams, we have needs and we're laying these things before you regularly And we just feel like Daniel, like stuck thinking,

where's the answer? So God, thank you for the Apostle Paul. Because I cannot imagine that he didn't face a temptation to give up and throw in the towel and doing good. But he said, no, here's what I'm gonna do. So God, help us live on mission and fight the spiritual battle and all the things. But God, most importantly, help us listen to the voice of our Father. God, we need you. We wouldn't be here if that wasn't true. We need you. Thank you that you are a good God. Thank you that you are a loving God. Thank you that you're even a suffering God so you know what we face. May we listen to your voice and your voice alone. It is in Jesus' name we pray, amen.