Slowly But Surely

If you have your Bible, go ahead and pull it out. 2 Corinthians chapter three, 2 Corinthians. We as a church have been in a series going through the book of 2 Corinthians and we will continue that today. I wanna tell you happy new year. If you're new here, my name is Curtis and I am one of the pastors. We, if you're unfamiliar with us, we are one church that meets in many locations all across the triangle. We have locations in Raleigh and Durham and Nightdale and Alamance and Garner and West Kerry and Fuquay and Chapel Hill and Apex. And this feels kind of like an Oscar speech where you're like, I know I'm forgetting somebody, but people meet online, they meet in men's and women's prisons. We have a campus that meets in Mandarin. We have campuses that meet in Espanol and that's exciting because the gospel really is going forth in RDU and all around the world. But we are a church who every single week we gather together, we open God's word and we teach from this book called the Bible. So hopefully you've made your way there. 2 Corinthians 3, we actually only have one verse this morning, it's a really pregnant verse that we're gonna unpack together. And so 2 Corinthians 3, if you made your way there,

can we all stand at all of our locations in honor of the reading of God's word? 2 Corinthians 3, this is just one verse, verse 18, would you read it with me? Read with me. And we all with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. Summit family, this is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Look, y'all are getting good at that finally. You don't have to put it on the screen. It only took like five years, man, praise God. Recently heard a story of an Amish family who was visiting a big city for the very first time, obviously Amish family, so from kind of a rural part of town, not used to all the big spectacle of a big city. And so they come into this big city, kind of a little Amish family vacation, and they find their hotel, it's this big grand spectacle. And so the dad goes and gets them checked in and the receptionist just kind of points in this direction. So the family, when they get done checking in, they walk over in this direction and they're standing in front of an elevator, but they've never seen one before.

And so they're just wondering what these big silver doors are doing. Well, all of a sudden those silver doors open, the elevator opens, and they don't know how this thing works. And so they're just standing there staring at it, wondering how the whole thing works, when all of a sudden this small little elderly woman on her little crutch comes slowly hobbling by. She gets in that elevator, the doors close, the family's still standing there, they wait a few minutes, and all of a sudden those doors open and out walks not the old lady, but this stunningly beautiful young lady. Well, the dad kind of looks and then he looks back at the open elevator doors and without hesitation, he nudges his son and he says, son, quickly go get your mother. See, we all have things we wanna see change in our lives this year, don't we? Hopefully yours is different than that Amish dad and that completely ridiculous and made up story. But I think that story does make a point. See, that's exactly how most of us want change to work in our lives. We wanna take that thing, we wanna take the finances or the health or the relationships or the habits or the schedule

or even our faith, and what we wanna do is we wanna just put it inside of this elevator, hit a few buttons, have the door close, and a few moments later those doors open and whatever we put in there, we want that change to happen instantly. And here we are at the beginning of another year. Man, the natural time where everybody's thinking about New Year's resolutions and their word or themes for the year or the areas of your life that you wanna look different 12 months from now. And I mean, that's completely natural, right? Because on one hand, the turn of the calendar, it's a really hopeful time. It's all about fresh starts and hitting the reset button and turning over a new leaf and the whole new year, new you thing, and that's great. But on the other hand, also knows you really start getting into thinking about New Year's resolutions. It also can be a time that's pretty discouraging because maybe you have no clue what your word or theme of the year should be or when you start journaling down, all right, what are the areas I wanna see change in my life?

What you start seeing is that often so many of the areas where you want to see change are the exact areas that you also wanted to see changed in previous years. And so what happens is you start thinking things like, man, I just thought I'd be further along by now. Or you start looking at that list and you're thinking, God, God, I've tried to change that before and it just didn't stick. You're like, I really want to be different this year. I really want to change, but I'm just not sure I'm different. And so it ends up happening. Here's kind of the tension that we all end up living in. It's not that we don't want to change. It's just that we're worn out from trying, and we're not actually convinced the process really works. I mean, just last night, like my wife and I went on a quick little date night, and one of the things we were talking about is just New Year. What do we want to see God do this year? And there's just one specific area of our life consistently throughout our marriage where no matter how hard we try, no matter what we try to change, it seems like we just keep falling back into these patterns and habits. And it seems like every single January, we're talking about that same thing, and it can be incredibly frustrating. And that moment right there, wanting change but not quite knowing how to get there is where a lot of us quietly give up. Now, I want to be clear. I'm not here to give you a TED Talk on resolutions.

That's not what God has called me to do. But what I do want to do is offer you a subtle shift in your thinking. Because I think one of the reasons we're often discouraged is because we're usually trying to change the wrong things. See, so many of us at the turn of the new year, what we try to change is our circumstances. See, but what I believe is that the most important change that can happen to you this year is not something that you are going to optimize or download or biohack or resolve your way into. I believe the most important change that can happen to you this year is the change that God wants to do in you. Not just around you, not just for you, not just in your circumstances, but the change that God wants to do in you. That's why if you were here at the very end of last year, during our Christmas services and Christmas Eve services, our lead pastor, Pastor JD, really challenged you to give us, the Summit Church, one year of your life. What we mean by that is one year where you are consistently showing up, believing that God really can change things. One year where you're taking intentional steps of faith. And we're asking for one year, not because we believe that the Summit Church has all the answers or that our campus pastors have some magical pixie dust they can sprinkle on you and it's going to fix all your problems, but it's because we at the Summit Church still believe in a God who changes and transforms human beings like us. We believe in a God that can still transform and change

and redeem and restore and repair and breathe life even into the driest and deadest of bones. That's who we believe in. And so we believe if you would press in here that you're not going to be the same after a year, your family's not going to be the same, your school, your job, your work, your relationships, that none of it is going to be the same, that if you give us a year, God is going to transform you into somebody you won't even recognize at the end of 365 days. And so the question that I want you to consider this weekend is not what do I want to improve, but rather am I willing to consistently put myself in the places where God actually does his transforming work? It's exactly what the Apostle Paul is talking about in 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18. Now I told you as a church, we've been walking through 2 Corinthians, but it's been a few weeks since we've been in there. So let me just give you a quick reminder of some context around 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians was written by the Apostle Paul. He wrote this letter to the church at Corinth, which was a church that he actually helped plant. In his first letter that he wrote to them, 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians, he wrote that letter to address a bunch of issues that were going on in the church.

I mean, they had members suing each other. They got people arguing over what to wear to church and who has the best spiritual gifts. There's some dude sleeping with his step-mom. Like it's just a jacked up church. It's a mess. And so Paul writes the letter of 1 Corinthians as kind of this pastoral version of, hey, church, we need to talk. Well, it turns out they didn't love receiving that letter very much. So Paul goes on to write a few other letters along with what he calls a painful visit. And through all of that, somewhere along the line, praise God, God finally breaks through to their hearts. So now Paul writes the letter of 2 Corinthians not to shame them, but to celebrate the transformation that God has begun and remind them of some very important truths, okay? So that's what we're gonna unpack. 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18. Let's pick this thing apart. Look at the first part with me. Paul says, and we all with unveiled faces. Here's what's happening. Paul is writing to believers in the church. So he's writing to us. This includes us.

And in the context of 2 Corinthians 3 under the old covenant found in the old Testament, access to God was limited. In the old covenant. Only priests could enter into God's presence behind a thick veil in the temple, and even God's prophets like Moses had to cover their faces with a veil. And so what that veil became is a symbol of distance from God and a form of spiritual blindness. However, what Paul says is when you turn to Jesus, that veil is removed. This was symbolized by the curtain or the veil being torn in two when Jesus was crucified on the cross. And so what Paul says is he says, we all with unveiled faces, he's saying that now every believer, every person who has submitted their life under the Lordship of Jesus Christ now stands openly before God with nothing in the way. There's no veil, there's no barrier, there's no distance, there's no shame, there's no guilt, there's no fear. We don't need a priest, we don't need any rituals, we don't need any mediators beside the one mediator Jesus Christ who shed his blood to remove that veil and bring us fully into God's presence where we now have direct open access to God himself.

And what Paul says is that it's from that place of open and unhindered access that we now, look at it, behold the glory of the Lord. Your translation might say reflect the Lord's glory. That word behold or reflect literally means to look at oneself in the mirror. What Paul is saying is that if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, your unveiled face now functions like a mirror. In other words, as you look to Jesus, your life, the more you look to him, the more your life should begin to look like Jesus as his glory is reflected through you into the world. And as we reflect that glory, what he says next is our main point this weekend, look at it. He says, as we reflect that glory, we are being transformed into the same image. That word being implies a continuous process. It's ongoing. What he's saying is that as you and I continually look at Jesus, beholding the glory of the Lord, there's this ongoing process of transformation whereby God is making us look more like Jesus. We are being transformed into the same image of our savior, Jesus Christ. See, for those of you who are at church this morning and what you're trying to figure out is what is God's will for your life in 2026,

that's it right there. God's will for your life this year is to look more like Jesus at the end of this year than you do right now. And so all the sub questions that come underneath that, when you're like, well, how should I spend my time this year? The way you should spend your time is by pursuing things that form you into someone who is more present and attentive and prayerful like Jesus, not doing things that just make you constantly hurried and distracted and more anxious. When you're wondering, who should I date this year? The question you should be asking yourself is does that person help me love Jesus more? Do they point me to Jesus? Do they help me pursue holiness like Jesus? How should I invest my money this year? You should invest your money in ways that make you more generous, content, and others focused like Jesus, not use your money in ways that make you more consumed by security or status. That is God's will for you. Romans 8 29 says that God has predestined us to be conformed to the image of his son. He wants to transform you into the same image of Jesus Christ, your savior. And the way that God does that is through the process of transformation.

The word that Paul uses here for transformed is the Greek word metamorpho. It's where we get our word metamorphosis. Metamorphosis describes an outward change that comes from an inward work. In other words, what Paul's implying is that this is not behavior modification or new year's resolutions from the outside in, it's God changing us from the inside out. I mean, just think about this process of metamorphosis. Like let's go back, go back to the third grade science class with me, all right? Just think about this process. Y'all remember this? You remember this diagram? Remember like filling this thing in? So you've got the egg, which I presume comes from the adult butterfly, but you know, it's been a while, so bear with me. Of course, that egg hatches into a little beautiful caterpillar, those little squishy guys that crawl around on the ground. The process of metamorphosis, the caterpillar goes into a pupa or I believe it's called a chrysalis. I have a grad degree. And so the chrysalis is a stage that lasts about 10 to 20 days. And then after the caterpillar comes out of that thing, he comes out as a beautiful butterfly, right? And the thing is, we all want to be the beautiful butterfly.

Like, that stage is awesome, right? We all want to be the butterfly. Nobody wants to be the pupa stage. That's a gross stage. Nobody wants to be that. Although, I will tell you, the idea of getting in a cocoon for 10 to 20 days uninterrupted after being at home with my kids for two weeks sounds pretty nice about now, but here's what happens. Like, just humor me a little bit here, okay? I imagine caterpillars are constantly just crawling around, looking up at butterflies, thinking like, man, I wish I was more like that. I don't know about you. But so often, even as a pastor, I want to tell you, so often I feel like this small little spiritual caterpillar. Like, I'm over here moving slow with my slime and my squish. I'm just munching on leaves while I'm looking up at full-fledged spiritual butterflies, comparing myself and wishing I was more like them. I mean, just this morning, I ran into Chris Gaynor. Man, I wish I could pray like Chris Gaynor. I wish I had the patience of Jerry White. I wish I had the wisdom of Mike Calhoun. I wish I could parent like Jason Douglas. I wish I had the Bible knowledge of Pastor JD. Like, you guys ever feel like that? But here's the good news. According to Scripture, God's desire is to grow you into a spiritual butterfly. But you've got to go through the transformation process first. See, most of us want the butterfly outcome without first going through the caterpillar process. Listen, there is no shortcut to true transformation.

You cannot skip the process and still get the change. And I don't know why we treat God like this, because in no other area of life do we treat like this. I mean, last week, the first of the year was basically last Monday, right? Like, it's a natural time. We always joke about the health stuff and New Year's resolutions. But let's say you woke up January 1. You're like, all right, today's the day I start. And let's say you woke up that morning, and you had, you know, two whole eggs and two egg whites and with spinach and avocado, and you crushed that. And then you went to the gym, and, you know, you did a good little hour workout, and you came home and crushed your protein shake. Like, in no world do you do all that, then go look in the mirror and be like, what the heck? It didn't work, right? No. Like, you didn't decide to start investing this week, and you invested 10 bucks last week, and here we are a week later, and you're like, why is the compounding interest not working? For some reason, that's exactly how we treat God. We come to church for like two weeks. We throw up prayers for the first time in months, and we expect God to fix all of our problems. And when He doesn't move at the speed we want Him to move, when He doesn't change our circumstances, when He doesn't heal that person, when He doesn't transform us as fast as we hope, for some reason, we start wondering if anything is happening,

if change is even possible, or if God even cares. But see, the Apostle Paul anticipates that frustration, and look at what he says next. He says, believer, God really is transforming you into the image of Jesus, but look at how He's doing it. He's doing it from one degree of glory to another. He's transforming you one degree at a time. Now, one degree doesn't seem like a lot, right? But let me try to help you put that into perspective. Do a little thought experiment with me. Just think about a plane taking off that is just one degree off course, okay? So if a plane is taking off from RDU, the greatest airport in the face of the planet, if a plane is taking off from RDU, and it's just one degree off course, after about 100 yards, so about a football field, that plane is only gonna be off course by about five feet, okay? Not a huge deal, but still noticeable. Let's say that same plane off by one degree, after about a mile, that plane is gonna be off by about 100 feet, okay? So that one degree is starting to make a little bit of a difference. Let's say you wanted to fly from RDU to Asheville, okay? And when you take off in RDU, that plane is one degree off course, you're gonna miss the Asheville airport by about four miles. And I know you're like,

that doesn't seem like that crazy of a distance, but let me tell you, four miles off in Asheville is gonna put you in some weird dude's backyard who's fermenting kombucha, making his own sandals, and very eager to tell you about his crystal collection. So four miles is a very big deal in Asheville, okay? Well, you know I'm right. If you wanted to fly cross-country, RDU to LA, and you left RDU one degree off course, you're not gonna land in Hollywood, you're gonna land about 40 miles away. past Disneyland, wondering where the beach is. If you were to fly from RDU and try to aim for the moon, one degree off, you're gonna miss the moon, you're gonna overshoot it by about 4,000 miles. You try to leave the moon, come back to RDU, one degree off course, you're not gonna land at RDU, you're gonna land somewhere east of London, wondering why everybody's driving on the wrong side of the road. All because of one degree. See, if one degree in the wrong direction can take you that far off course, imagine what one degree in the right direction, practiced every single day, can do over the course of a year or even a lifetime. The same principle that makes a one degree drift so dangerous is also what makes one degree of spiritual growth so powerful. See, spiritual growth and transformation is not built

through the huge and flashy and emotionally high experiences it's built through the thousands of daily, unseen, unglamorous, one degree, faithful decisions that compound over the course of a year and a lifetime as the spirit uses those things to make you look more like Christ. Now, scripture is insanely clear that this transformation is God's work in you from start to finish. But scripture also never treats us as passive spectators in that either. Just because transformation is supernatural does not mean that we are stagnant. And so what I wanna do with the rest of our time from 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18, is I wanna show you three ways that we participate in God's transforming work in our lives. And I'm gonna put them in three very simple words for you to remember this entire year, all right? The three words are submission, discipline, and obedience. Submission, discipline, and obedience. So here's the first way, our first word is submissions. The first way we partner with God in the transforming work that he wants to do in our lives. First and foremost, submission is the posture that makes transformation possible. See, before the apostle Paul ever talks about beholding or even being transformed, he starts with a posture. Go back to the beginning of verse 18. He says, and we all with unveiled faces.

So that starting point is incredibly important because what it shows us is that submission is not a step before transformation. Rather, according to Paul, submission is the very posture that makes transformation possible. If you wanna state it another way, transformation does not begin with effort, it begins with surrender. That's why Paul says in just two verses earlier in verse 16, he says, but when one turns to the Lord, that's when the veil is removed. When you confess Jesus as Lord and Savior and submit your life under his kingship, that turning is submission. Submission is surrendering control to God and saying, God, you are Lord over all of my life. You have full access. I'm fully submitted to you in every single area. There was an illustration that one of my good buddies, a guy named Mike McKee, who's a pastor, planted out of here almost 10 years ago in Atlanta used. That man just really resonated with me because of the ages of our kids. And so I'm just gonna give it to you because why improve upon something that can't be improved upon? So for the last two weeks, my kids have been out of school, it's flu season. It's been like the wild, wild west. It's been the best of times and the worst of times

having them home. It's awesome. I've told you guys, we're pretty healthy eaters in general. So our kids, like a normal breakfast is like Greek yogurt and some granola and all this, but over break when calories don't count between like Christmas and New Year's. We have two kids, our two youngest kids who have just been obsessed with waffles and not like Kodiak cakes or like, hey, let me make you like egg whites and granola and spinach. And like, no, they want like Lego, my Eggo frozen waffles. And the two youngest, they're five and seven. They're at that wonderful age where they wanna do everything themselves, which for my wife and I, who are a little bit of control freaks, it's just a really fun little balance we play. So the five and seven year old come downstairs for the last two weeks, they come downstairs and they go straight to the freezer. They pop that thing open. They grab some waffles, throw it in the toaster oven. But then not only that, they wanna pull them out and they wanna do like their own butter and syrup and all that stuff too. So they grab the butter out of the fridge. Well, you guys know what it's like, how frustrating it is to try to put cold butter on a waffle, right?

Like you're getting there and you're picking at it and it's only getting like one square and you're trying to pick it out of the square and like move it to another square. And so what happens with kids is they end up using like half a stick of butter because they want every little square covered. It's super frustrating. And I mean, for a five-year-old, like if every square is not covered, that's like the end of the world, the day is ruined, right? But man, it's really frustrating to try to butter a waffle. This is one of the reasons I like pancakes more, they're just easier. But when you try to butter a waffle with cold butter, it's incredibly frustrating because then some of the bites are really good, but then the other bites are not as good because they don't have as much butter. Now, my kids do not have that issue with the syrup, right? They take that sucker and they start pouring it and they are not wanting in the syrup department, but they start pouring it and even if they pour it just in one square, they pour so much of that, that begins to seep into every single area of the waffle. And see what my buddy Mike says is that our lives are a lot like a waffle. Like if you think about each little square as a different area of our life.

So you've got like your marriage or your school or your sports team or your finances or your relationships or church or whatever it is. And he says, the problem is that when it comes to God, we wanna treat God like cold butter. But we only wanna give him access to a few of the little squares that we're comfortable with. So we're like, all right, God, you can have my Sunday morning for about two hours a week. You can have a prime place in my social media bio. I'll check you off on religious affiliation. You can have a few of my leftover dollars here and there. I'll pray to you on Christmas and Easter and before meals. But beyond that, like the other squares are mine. But he says, if Jesus really is Lord of our life, if we have really submitted to him, God can't be the cold butter. God has to be the syrup, right? Like submission is the difference between giving God access to just a few squares of your life versus letting him saturate your entire life. If he really is Lord, then he's the one who gets to decide what is good and right about things like money and marriage and sex and relationships and ethics. And what Paul shows us is that without submission, what ends up happening is that that veil stays on. And without an unveiled face, there's now nothing to behold. And if there's nothing to behold, then transformation can't actually begin.

That's the logical flow of Paul's argument here. That unveiled faces that we get from submitting our lives to Jesus allow us to then behold God's glory. And as we behold God's glory, we are being transformed, which means that the battleground of transformation is not willpower, it's not motivation, it is not new year's resolutions. The battleground for transformation is what we consistently give our minds and our attentions to. It is what we behold. That's why Paul says over in Romans chapter 12, verse two, he says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed, that's the exact same Greek word, metamorphosis, be transformed, how? By the renewal of your mind. You wanna be transformed, you wanna change this year. You wanna look different at the end of this year than you look right now, then Paul says, then renew your mind. The natural question is how do we do that? Well, the primary way that God renews our minds is by reshaping them as we behold his glory through his word. If you wanted a really preachy little sentence, here's one for you. When the people of God submit their lives under the word of God,

which is where we behold the glory of God, then the spirit of God transforms us to be more like the son of God. Submission begins with putting our lives under the lordship of Jesus and seeing what he says about how I should live found in his word. And so the question is this, where in my life am I still resisting God's word instead of submitting my life to it? Where have I asked God to bless my plans instead of submitting my plans to his ways and his will and his word? Are there areas of my life that maybe I've given God a little voice in but not full authority over? Have I sectioned off God to be cold butter in a few little squares instead of the syrup over my entire life? Submission is the posture that makes transformation even possible. That's our first word. Our second word is discipline. Discipline. Discipline then is the process by which true change is cultivated. See, if submission is the posture that removes the veil, then discipline is the process that keeps our eyes fixed on the right glory. I wish I could give you a whole sermon on just this idea of spiritual discipline.

Because see, Paul says that you and I are transformed, look at it with me, as we are beholding the glory of the Lord. Again, that word beholding, that is a present and ongoing thing, which means transformation is not a one-time event in your life. Transformation does not happen through occasional intensity. Transformation happens through consistent attention, and consistent attention you can summarize in the word discipline. I know for you creatives, you free thinkers, discipline just feels like an icky word, but just bear with me. Discipline is choosing again and again to keep looking at the right things long enough for the Spirit to do His transforming work in our lives. And that type of discipline, listen, takes work, it takes effort, it takes planning, and it takes intentionality. And you're like, Curtis, that sounds a whole lot like works righteousness. That's not what I'm talking about, I'll address that in a second. But if you don't trust me, look at what Scripture says. First Timothy 4 calls us to train ourselves for godliness. Colossians 3 tells me to seek and to set my mind on things that are above. Philippians 2 calls me to work out my own salvation. Training, seeking, setting, working out, I don't know about you, those sound a whole lot like action words to me. And see, we do those things through what we call spiritual disciplines. If you're unfamiliar with that phrase, spiritual disciplines are simply practices from Scripture that promote spiritual growth. They're things like Bible reading or Bible memorization, what we call having a daily quiet time. They're things like prayer or fasting or gathering with God's people weekly in corporate worship. They're things like evangelism, sharing your faith, like serving, like stewardship, being generous with your money. Those are spiritual disciplines. I love the way Tom Landry, who's one of the greatest NFL coaches of all time, he said this. He said, the job of a football coach is to make men do what they don't want to do in order to achieve what they've always wanted to be. See, much in the same way, spiritual disciplines are a way of doing what you may not always want to do in order for God to shape us into the kind of people he wants us to be. It's about choosing what we want most over what we might want right now. And I'll tell you, here's my pastoral confession. I do not always want to do the disciplines. However, I've been a Christian long enough to know this. There's only two things I can choose. I can choose discipline or I can choose drifting. There's nothing in between. Discipline or drifting. Those are my only two options. Because I know me. I know if Curtis Andresco takes his hands off the wheel of discipline, I know that I don't drift toward holiness. I don't drift toward prayer. I don't drift

toward godliness. I don't drift toward scripture. I don't drift toward obedience. No, if we are not disciplined, then what happens is that we end up drifting toward compromise, and we try to soften it up by calling it tolerance. We drift toward things like disobedience, and we just try to Christianize it up by calling it freedom in Christ. We drift toward distraction in this world, and we call it rest and relaxation and refueling and protecting our peace. Your spiritual life is like pedaling a bike uphill. You're going against the current stream of the world. So if you're pedaling a bike uphill, you're either going forward pedaling, that's discipline, or you have stopped pedaling, and you're either going to start rolling backwards or you're going to fall off. That's called the drift. Listen, one of the things I can tell you is that your growth in godliness over the next 365 days will be directly tied to your pursuit of God through the spiritual disciplines. And if you think that's overspeak, here's what I've seen over and over and over again as a pastor. Some of you have never taken the spiritual discipline seriously, which is why you've been calling yourself a Christian for 10 years, but on a maturity level, you're still only a one-year-old Christian. Discipline is how we fight the drift and fight against stagnation in the Christian life. Now, I told you, I do want to be insanely clear. Disciplines are not how we change ourselves or save ourselves. Philippians says it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Ephesians said it is by grace you have been saved through faith. This is not your own work so that no one may boast, but God is the one who saves. God is the one who transforms us, but disciplines are how you and I keep making the daily small, seemingly mundane, one degree choices to keep beholding Christ long enough for the Spirit to do his transforming work in our lives, one degree at a time. I love how Tish Warren in her little book, Liturgy of the Ordinary, says it. Look at it. She says, the crucible of our formation is in the monotony of our daily routines. Church, if I had one caution for modern-day evangelicalism, it would be for us to stop idolizing the dramatic and simultaneously stop underestimating the ordinary, to stop trying to go from emotional experience to emotional experience to emotional experience, chasing after some spiritual high and thinking that's how God changes you. In that same little book, Tish Warren talks about a sign. She was going through a monk and their monastery, and she remembers seeing a sign, and the sign

said, everyone wants a revolution, but nobody wants to do the dishes. You want real change? The Spirit uses everyday, ordinary, unsexy means to produce a revolution in your life. And so here's the question, what one discipline do I need to begin or return to this year? One. Not ten, not a whole new routine, one. One degree at a time. Maybe for you, it's finally opening your Bible, not as a way to check a box, but as a way to behold Christ. That starts with making a plan, making effort. You say, well I don't know where to find a Bible reading plan. You know what, if you've never heard of Google, never heard of ChatGPT, it's okay, we got you covered, because you can go to the App Store, you can type in the Summit Church, download the Summit Church app. When you download that, you open it up, there's a little thing right there on the front called Daily Revival. When you click Daily Revival, it's gonna open up, and every single day it's gonna give you a chapter from the Old Testament and a chapter from the New Testament. There's your Bible reading plan right there. You're like, well Curtis, I'm not really good at always remembering things. Praise God, we got you covered. We'll send you a notification via that app at 8 a.m. every single morning, okay? So you have no excuse. That may be for you, that's your one degree, getting in the Bible. You're like, mine's not so much Bible, where I really want to grow this year, my one degree should be prayer. How do I grow in prayer? Praise God, guess what? We have this thing called the Summit Church app and Daily Revival. You can go in the App Store, download it. When you click Daily Revival, Old Testament, New Testament, guess what the next little thing is when you hit next? It is prayer points specifically for you every single day. And you're like, Pastor, where I'm trying to grow is not in praying for myself, it's praying for others. Praise God, we have this thing called Daily Revival. You hit next again, guess what? It has you pray for one of our missionaries that we sent out. Then it has you pray for an unreached people group. Then if you want to keep going and be kind of super Christian, there are prayer requests from your brothers and sisters in Christ at the Summit Church who have submitted those things, and you can keep praying for those. You're like, well I don't really need that plan, I want like the

experience of prayer. Well man, in just a little over a week, we're embarking on our annual 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting. Man, what better way to kick-start your year than to participate with your church family in 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting. Maybe for you, your one degree is that. Maybe it's fasting. Maybe it's learning to say no to your appetite so they stop running your life, and you learn to start feasting after Christ. Maybe your one degree is gathering with God's people consistently this year instead of sporadically. It's finally committing to the church that you've been coming to for three years and getting baptized and becoming a member. Maybe it's joining a small group. Maybe for you, your one degree is generosity or serving. Maybe it's finally deciding to give God the first and best. Your 10% are joining a serving team. Whatever it is here, what I want to tell you, the goal here is not to try to impress God. The goal is to put yourself in the places where God has promised to work and to bless and to transform you. And if you will do and choose these small, faithful disciplines, practiced consistently, day after the day, the Spirit is gonna do more than you could ever think or possible in your life, one degree at a time. Now, here's the last word. While our habits don't change God's love for us, God's love for us should change our habits, which leads to our last word. The third word is obedience. Obedience. See, if submission is the posture and discipline is the process, then obedience is the proof of true transformation. And I need you to hear that really carefully because obedience is not the cause of transformation. Obedience is just evidence that transformation is real. And that matters a ton. Because the last thing I need you doing is walking out of these doors the first Sunday in January, thinking that you need to go do more and be better in order for God to love you. No, what the gospel shows us is that obedience is not what earns God's love,

but when we truly understand God's love, we want to be obedient. It's why St. Augustine said this. St. Augustine said, love God and do whatever you please. Not because obedience doesn't matter, but because Augustine knows that when you truly love God, doing as you please ends up meaning doing things that please God, which is what Jesus meant when he said, if you love me, you'll do what I command. See, obedience is not about earning God's love. Obedience is about responding to God's love. So here's the practical application. Let me come up in your house. When obedience is missing from your life, it's usually not because God has not spoken clearly. It usually means that you have not responded. See, so often we want God to kind of show us the next step when God is over there waiting for us to be obedient to the last step that he already made clear. And until we do, our transformation feels stalled. And what we like to do is blame God. So what we normally like to call confusion or stagnation or backsliding in the Christian life ends up being something much simpler. The great missionary, Elizabeth Elliot, used to say that a whole lot of what we call struggling in the Christian life is simply delayed obedience. That's why some of you, for most of 2025, God felt silent or like he's not working in your life.

And I wanna tell you lovingly, but pastorally, here's the reason. It's because God rarely gives new direction to people who are ignoring the direction he's already given. So again, the question is not what more do I need to do? It's what has God already made clear that I have not been obedient to yet? Or maybe even like if I soften it up, if there's an act of, is there an act of obedience that maybe you've been avoiding and you've been trying to soften it up by calling it, you know, I'm waiting on God or waiting on wisdom. But in reality, you're just delaying obedience. Is there an area of your life where obedience does not currently align with what you say you believe? Or let me flip it to the positive a little bit. How would your approach to discipline and obedience change this year? If you realize that those things, pursuing those things are not about earning God's love, but rather participating in those things, trusting that you already have God's love. If you are beholding Christ and obeying him in the daily disciplines, I wanna tell you, you are changing. God is transforming you even when you don't see it, even when you don't feel it. It's a lot like working out. Guess who the last person to realize how good you look

when you've been working out for a long time is? You, because you see yourself every day. And I know sometimes faithfulness feels like such little progress, but our role y'all is to move one degree closer to God each day and believe that those one degrees are compounding into something that is gonna be incredible change in your life. There's a short little book called 212. It's not a Christian book. It's called 212, The Extra Degree. Not a Christian book. It's actually a little self-help motivational book, but you would think the author took the idea straight from 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18. Because see, the whole idea of that book centers around the temperature of water. And kind of the point that he makes is that at 211 degrees, water's still just plain water. I mean, it's super hot, right? It can clean and soothe and be used for all sorts of things, but it's still just hot water. But he says, you move one degree more to 212 degrees and that water changes its state and begins boiling and producing steam. That one degree from 211 to 212 doesn't look impressive, but it makes all the difference. Now, a little bit of side note for all you super nerds out there. I had one of our worship volunteers,

guy named Mike, who came up after service, the first one. He said, hey, Curtis, I'm an engineer. I work with steam. Just want to let you know, from 211 to 212 is actually when water begins to boil. But steam, the way to think about it better is in BTUs, not degrees. Because at 50 to 51 BTUs, the water goes from this. And it actually takes about 800. And I was like, Mike, chill, bro. So just work with me, work with the principle, okay? Like, the principle is that one degree moves water from just hot water to boiling to producing steam. And steam has the power to operate and move engines. And engines have the power to change history. The whole book is a reminder that most of the time, the difference between the ordinary. and the transformative is not something dramatic and massive, it's something incremental. And see, in the same way, spiritual transformation rarely happens, y'all, through these sudden breakthroughs or these flashy moments or these emotional, spiritual highs when I just really feel God. No, it usually happens through the faithful, daily, one degree of obedience at a time. One more area of submission in my life. One more time meeting with God in the morning. One more time opening the word.

One more act of obedience. One more step of faith. And over time, what God does is the spirit uses those small, unseen, unflashy, one degree, faithful increments to bring about real change in your life until you get 365 days down the road and those one degree a day that didn't feel like much, you look at yourself in the mirror and you no longer see a version of yourself you even recognize because God has been so transforming you from one degree of glory to another to mold you into the image of Jesus Christ, your Savior, that now you can then reflect that out into a lost world. But see, here's the last thing I'll tell you. Good intentions are not gonna change you this year. Daily submission, discipline, and obedience to God will. And as you and I partner with God in those ways, the spirit does the transforming work in our lives one degree at a time. And so the last question I have for you is this. If you are willing to join this year, to give us one year, and if you believe that God is gonna use that year to transform you, would you just say amen? Amen and amen. Amen. Amen.