Spirit-Empowered Practice: Winning the War Against Your Flesh

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Good morning church family, we're so glad that you're here this morning. We have 11 people getting baptized. We're excited to celebrate with them. Sing this with me. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ I was born in the rain I was caught running ♪ ♪ Born and raised like two eyes of gold ♪ ♪ I was made for more ♪ ♪ So why would I make my bed in my shame ♪ ♪ When a fountain of grace is running my way ♪ ♪ I know I was made for more ♪ ♪ Hallelujah you call out my name I'll sing of your praise ♪ ♪ Hallelujah you paint my past I'm not going back ♪ ♪ Hallelujah you call out my name I'll sing of your praise ♪ ♪ Hallelujah you paint my past I'm not going back ♪ ♪ I wasn't made to be tinned in a grave ♪ ♪ I was born by day born and raised like two eyes of gold ♪ ♪ I was made for more ♪ ♪ So why would I make my bed in my shame ♪ ♪ When a fountain of grace is running my way ♪ ♪ I know I've been lost and I was made for more ♪ ♪ I know I've been lost and I was made for more ♪ Men it's so great to be here with you guys. It's been awesome to get to celebrate those baptisms and we have a couple of more that you'll get to see in just a moment. But my name is Micah and welcome to Church on the Move. As we continue worshiping together today and celebrating what God is doing within our church, why don't you join me as we read our call to worship out of Psalm chapter 28. Will you say these verses with me?

To you, oh Lord, I call. My rock, be not deaf to me. Lust, if you be silent to me. I become like those who go down to the pit. Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy. When I cry to you for help. When I lift up my hands towards your most holy sanctuary. Blessed be the Lord, for he has heard the voice of my pleas for mercy. The Lord is my strength and my shield. In him my heart trusts and I am held. My heart exults and with my song, I give thanks to him. The Lord is the strength of his people. He is the saving refuge of his anointed. Oh, save your people and bless your heritage. Be their shepherd and carry them forever. This is the word of the Lord and we all say, let's continue singing together today. ♪ I was a wretch, I remember who I was ♪ ♪ I was lost, I was blind, I was running out of time ♪ ♪ Sin separated, the breach was far too wide ♪ ♪ But from the far side of the chasm ♪ ♪ You held me in your sight ♪ ♪ So you, you made a way across the sea ♪ ♪ You prayed to Levi, left behind heaven's throne ♪ ♪ To build it here inside and there at the cross ♪ ♪ You paid the debt I owed, broke my chains, freed my soul ♪ ♪ For the first time I had hope, oh thank you Jesus ♪ ♪ For the blood applied, oh thank you Jesus ♪ ♪ It has washed me white, and thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus ♪

♪ You have saved my life ♪ ♪ You brought me from the darkness into glorious light ♪ Oh, thank you. ♪ So you took my place, you laid inside my tomb of sin ♪ ♪ You were buried for three days, but then you walked right out again, hallelujah ♪ ♪ Now death has no sting, oh, and life has no end ♪ ♪ For I have been transformed by the blood of the lamb ♪ ♪ Transformed by the blood of the lamb ♪ ♪ Thank you, Jesus, for the blood of life ♪ ♪ Thank you, Jesus, it has washed me white ♪ ♪ Thank you, Jesus, you have saved my life ♪ ♪ You brought me from the darkness into glorious light ♪ Oh, thank you, Jesus. ♪ Thank you, Jesus, for the blood of life ♪ ♪ Thank you, Jesus, it has washed me white ♪ ♪ Thank you, Jesus, you have saved my life ♪ ♪ You brought me from the darkness into glorious light ♪ ♪ There is nothing stronger, oh, the one, no hurricane power ♪ ♪ Oh, hope alive, hope alive ♪ ♪ That calls us sons and daughters ♪ ♪ Oh, we will rise up high and fight to the death ♪ ♪ Hope alive, hope alive ♪ ♪ There's nothing stronger than your blood ♪ ♪ There's nothing stronger than your blood ♪ ♪ There's nothing stronger, oh, the one, no hurricane power ♪ ♪ Oh, hope alive, hope alive ♪ ♪ That calls us sons and daughters ♪ ♪ Oh, we will rise up high and fight to the death ♪ ♪ Hope alive, hope alive ♪ ♪ There's nothing stronger, oh, there is nothing stronger ♪

♪ Than the one, no hurricane power ♪ ♪ Hope alive, hope alive ♪ ♪ That calls us sons and daughters ♪ ♪ Oh, we will rise up high and fight to the death ♪ ♪ Hope alive, hope alive ♪ ♪ Thank you, Jesus, for the blood of my heart ♪ ♪ Thank you, Jesus, we have what you are ♪ ♪ Thank you, Jesus, you have saved my life ♪ ♪ You brought me from the darkness into the light ♪ ♪ Thank you, Jesus, for the blood of my heart ♪ ♪ Thank you, Jesus, we have what you are ♪ ♪ Thank you, Jesus, you have saved my life ♪ ♪ You brought me from the darkness into glorious light ♪ ♪ You brought me from the darkness into glorious light ♪ ♪ You brought me from the darkness into glorious light ♪ ♪ Thank you, Jesus ♪ Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds Thy hands have made, I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed. Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee, How great Thou art, how great Thou art. Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee, How great Thou art, how great Thou art. And when I think that God His Son not sparing, Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in. That on the cross, my burdened, laughing belly, He bled and died to take away my sin. Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee, How great Thou art, how great Thou art. Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee,

How great Thou art, how great Thou art. When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation, And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart. Hallelujah! Then I shall bow in humble adoration, And I will pray, my God, how great Thou art. Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee, How great Thou art, how great Thou art. ♪ Oh great Thou art ♪ ♪ Then sings my soul my Savior to Thee ♪ ♪ Oh great Thou art ♪ ♪ Oh great Thou art ♪ ♪ When deep in sin's loss is over ♪ ♪ My Savior God to Thee ♪ ♪ Oh great Thou art ♪ ♪ Oh great Thou art ♪ ♪ Oh great Thou art ♪ ♪ Oh great Thou art ♪ Psalm nine says this, I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart. I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exult in you. I will sing praise to your name O Most High. Praising God, worshiping Him is a choice. Some days we feel like it, some days we don't. I don't know what you walked into your feeling today. Maybe today it was easy for you to praise the Lord. Maybe today it was difficult for you to praise the Lord. It really doesn't matter how we feel. What matters is that we do it.

It's part of our spiritual discipline, our practice, is that we let our choices toward the habits, the character that we want to form, we let those dictate what we're gonna do, not our feelings. Now here's what's cool. Today for me, it's a pretty easy day to praise God. Because we had a thousand guys here this weekend being formed into the image of Christ. And we got a new lobby. And a new front door. It's been the culmination of a long time dream and plan from God that we feel like we've been following. So let's just take a moment right there where you stand. Let's just do what Psalm 9 says to do. Let's just sing praise, speak to the Lord. Let's recount the deeds of the Lord, Tim. Can we just do that, practice that? Let's put it in practice. You gotta hear yourself saying out loud to God what you're thankful for. Can we just take a moment? I'm gonna step back and let you do this with your own voice. I'm gonna do it in mine, but I just want us to take a second to out loud with our mouths begin to praise the Lord. Whether we feel like it or we don't, to just stir up inside of us worship, reverence, and longing for God's goodness. Let's do that together today. Father, we thank you. We thank you.

We thank you. We thank you. We thank you. We thank you. We thank you. We thank you. We thank you. Then I shall bow In humble adoration At the cross of life My God, how great Thou art Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Come on, one more time, give Him praise. ♪♪♪ Thank You, Lord Jesus, for Your goodness, Your faithfulness, Your grace and mercy toward us. We are so grateful. Thank You how great You truly are. In Jesus' name, everybody said amen. We'll turn around, greet somebody in the name of the Lord, welcome them to Church on the Move this morning. Then you can have a seat. ♪♪♪ Good morning. If I haven't had a chance to meet you yet, my name is Priscilla.

My name is Whit. I'm the pastor here. We're glad you're here this weekend. Thanks for worshiping with us. Significant weekend for us. Big, big weekend. Mark's kind of a major milestone in a long time journey. For some of you, you're new around here, and new lobby doesn't really mean all that much to you. But for those of us that have been on this journey for a while, it's significant. Many, many of you have given sacrificially in a significant way to see that happen. And it's more than just about a little more elbow room. It's about making physical space for God to do spiritual work. God does spiritual work in physical places. We're going to learn a bit about that. Sometimes we tend to kind of discount the importance of physical places. I often tell people in the next move that God cares about physical, specific places. He told Abram to go to a land I will show you is what God said. Not just, hey, pick a land and I'll meet you there. But I have a specific place for you. I think we figured this out in 2020 when we couldn't gather, that we're more than just brains on a stick, but that we have a body for a reason, a physical presence for a reason, that there's something good, good and essential about us gathering together physically. And, of course, there are folks every week that can't join us in person. I get to sometimes connect with them and hear their story.

Maybe they're in a hospital. Maybe it's just a season or whatever. They're caring for someone that can't get out of the house or traveling or whatever and they can't physically be here. And we're grateful that we can look into a camera and say hello and welcome and that they can join. But the best, and I think what God's design is, is that we're truly connected. And that's what these places represent. They represent places for us to connect and God to form us into a community that bears witness to his goodness. And we saw that this weekend. All of us guys that got to be at the Forming Men conference, it was amazing to see not only what God did in here, but what he did out there in that space. And I look forward to the days to come where we're going to hear stories of Holy Spirit-led conversations, encounters, relationships and friendships forming because we made space for community. And God brought us together. And let the church be the church. And so I am just excited. It's a big milestone. Got a video I want to show you. In fact, you guys can go ahead and roll it. It's a little bit of a time lapse you'll see here. Kind of what's happened over the last few months. You can see just all that's happened and what's kind of taken place, ripping off the front of the building, extending out 4,000 square feet, tying all of that back together. It's been pretty remarkable what's happened in these last few months and how

quickly it has come together. And that brings us, yeah, to where we're at now in February, in this being able to open up the lobby. We're not done, as you can see. There's still more to do. And our target is to be finished by Easter, kind of everything done, the new kids' side open, new landscaping in, pergolas, fire pits, the whole thing. This is kind of our plan is just to create a little bit of heaven. Here on earth at Church on the Move, a little oasis of God's presence and goodness here where families can gather and worship the Lord and it's it's just been awesome. One more time can we just put our hands together and just say thanks to the Lord and celebrate his goodness for bringing us this far. It's been a long journey but we're really really grateful. Just a couple of things if you're new here you can text new to 23101 and if you're interested in becoming a part of Church on the Move or even what it would look like to become a part of Church on the Move you can text next to 23101 that'll get you information about the next move. It's basically where we tell you what it means to belong around here and then of course if you're giving you know that you text give to 23101 or you can so into support the EXP that's our expansion fund that's what this lobby is all about but it's also about planting other churches. Our goal is to plant yet another Church on the Move in the area and we don't know exactly where and we don't know exactly when yet but we feel like we're getting closer to that and I told you last week that's something that the Lord is stirring in us and we're listening to him and following the Holy Spirit on just what it would look like to have a fourth Church on the Move in our city somewhere and who knows maybe beyond the Tulsa area one day I'm not sure we're just kind of taking this one step at a time but it really does feel like that the Lord's hand is on us right now a lot of good things are happening we're just grateful we're riding the wave and God is good. One thing that we

really are passionate around here is about Bible study and I want to let you know about this before Pastor Blake comes out to teach he's got a great message today but we are hosting what we would just call a Bible Masterclass on February 26th so this is with a friend of mine Scott Lindsey who works for a software development company called Logos Bible Software I've been using this for years and for years Logos was kind of sort of a tool for pastors or people who were really serious about Bible study scholars that sort of thing a lot of it was because the software was really expensive it just it took quite a bit of financial investment to be able to get into this and so the average congregant really didn't it wasn't something that they could maybe were interested in or could afford but now they've moved to a subscription model which has really made it so much more accessible for like $10 a month you can have access to basically you version on steroids it is the ultimate Bible study tool I use this all the time and it's part of my sermon preparation but I really do think it could be something that many many many of you some of you who are self-professed Bible nerds but others of you who are just want to go deeper in your Bible study this could be really useful to you so Scott is gonna come in and do a training and show you how to use the software and maybe give you some some tips some tricks some hacks on how to study the scripture using their software a little bit better and as I said it's it's really approachable financially it's like $10 a month gets you in to one of these subscriptions really the price of a couple cups of coffee you could have world-class Bible study software we wanted to make this available to you so he's coming on February 26th and gonna show you how to use it but also if you'll wait to download the software some of you are already probably looking it up and I would just encourage you to hold off don't download it until the 26th because you're gonna get a little discount code from him that'll give you a couple months of free use of trial so if you want to just try it out and say is this something that works for me you can do that so anyway this is just part of our our desire to help you learn to study the Bible for yourself we

want you to have a relationship with the scriptures and know how to read scripture for yourself and this is a great great tool to be able to do that well as I said pastor Blake is going to be coming out and speaking and I am just so thankful for him as part of our church family and the ministry around here I know many of you how many of you have been through COTMU year one and you've experienced pastor Blake and actually he's amazing Bible teacher he teaches up here from time to time and I am super excited for you to get to hear this message today it is so good and it really kind of piggybacks off of what we've been talking about in this breakthrough series so you're gonna get a lot out of this today so let me pray and then we'll have pastor Blake up to preach the word father thank you so much for just your goodness your faithfulness to us you have been so good thank you now we bow our hearts this morning to receive from you let us receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save our souls Lord we commit to obey whatever it is that you ask us to do the answer is yes we want to be obedient with what we hear so Lord speak to us we're listening in Jesus name we pray and everybody said amen now will you help me welcome pastor Blake to the stage as he comes to teach the word to us today well hey church on the move 1130 it's so good to see you guys you guys doing good it's a beautiful Sunday we got the Super Bowl later at 60 degrees Man, the Lord is good. We're in this breakthrough series. I'm so excited to preach this word, and for whatever reason, I've been particularly excited to preach it to you guys at 11.30. I don't know why. I don't know what's gonna happen, but you guys are a little bit wild, and it's so much fun to preach to you. It really is.

But before we dive in, there's something I want to talk to you about. Pastor Witt just alluded to it. I haven't talked about this in a while from stage, but it's CUTMU. Now, we have a lot of new people these days at Church on the Move. I've met so many people over the last few weeks. Hey, how long have you been here? I've been here a few months, a few weeks, one to two years, and so we can no longer take for granted that everybody here has heard about CUTMU, but if you have done this, if you've done our year one program, would you just raise your hand? Let me see our year one grads in here. Awesome. So if you don't know, if you have no idea what we're talking about, I just wanted to give you a little bit of vision of what this is, why it matters for you. So several years ago, there was a few of us that went on a seminary education experience. I got my bachelor's in business, and when the Lord called me to be a minister, I knew I needed to sit under trusted Bible teachers to submit myself to them, and what we were learning,

it was just like drinking from the best kind of fire hose. It was awesome, and as we were learning, it just became a conviction of ours that this stuff is too good to keep to ourselves. It belongs to the church. The seminary is inaccessible in large part for God's people. It's expensive. It takes a lot of time, and so what we started to do about six, seven years ago is create environments for the everyday disciple of Jesus, whether you're 16, you're 25, you're 40, or you're 80, and we've had all of those ages participate in our environments. We wanted to do it for you guys, for our church, and so we started, CUTMU is a two-year discipleship program. We also have Bible studies that we do at our different churches, but we believe this is for everybody. We want everybody at Church on the Move to do this. We teach through scripture and theology in the first year to get our theology right, and then year two is more about disciplines, formation, a lot of what I'm going to talk about this morning, but we're gonna open up applications on May 1st. I know we're in February. We still have a few months away, but how many of you with kids,

you feel like the school year's already over, like we're in the middle of spring. We're moving into it. The reason why I'm talking to you about it now is I want you to talk to the Lord about if this is the right season for you. This is a commitment. Both of these years, they're 30 weeks. They run like a school year, so we'll start in the fall and mid-August. It will end in the spring. There's homework. There are papers. Yes, there are papers. We are very kind and compassionate graders. We encourage. There's no letter grades. There's no real degree. We hand you a piece of paper and give you a high five at the end. It's awesome. It's about the experience, but for some of you, this might be your year, but for some of you, this might be your year. So ask the Lord, is this me? I've heard from several people throughout the years. They've said, I heard about this five years ago, but this is my year. Friends, we're gonna keep doing this until Jesus comes back.

On that day, we won't need a theology class because we will see him for as he is, amen? We won't need pastors or teachers or anybody, but until then, on this side of glory, it is on us to explore what God has revealed about himself. So May 1st is when we're gonna open up applications. Angela's in here. Meredith's in here, too. Talk to one of us about what this program is. If anybody raises their hand, talk to them about it. But I would love if you would consider doing COTMU, okay? COTMU plug, done. If you've got your Bible, open it up to Romans 12, verse one. I'm very excited to preach this because in many ways, this is why we started COTMU. Breakthrough is a spiritual formation series. We change in moments, but then we also change over time. Following Jesus is both a process, but then there's also encounters along the way. It's both and, it's not either or. And so we're gonna read, we're gonna study the Apostle Paul, kind of his theology of how we change, his theology of formation. We've been with Peter the past few weeks. Now we turn to Paul. Romans chapter 12. Please turn there if you've got your Bibles in front of you. If you've got your paper Bible, just wave it at me.

Who brought a paper Bible to church? Awesome, awesome. Romans chapter 12, verse one. Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your, say it with me, bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true worship. This is the word of the Lord, and we all said, thanks be to God. Give a spiritual formation, pastor, which is what I am, a sermon on spiritual formation, which is what this series is, and it's like a kid in a candy store. I'm like looking at all of these things. I want to touch this. I want to eat this. This is what I think about, what I read about, and what I do around here. So I'm excited to attack it from a specific angle this morning around Paul. We're gonna do a theology of how we change, we're gonna do a theology of how we form. We'll talk about the flesh and the spirit, and then I'm going to get extremely practical with how I attempt to keep in step with the spirit throughout my days and my weeks. But first, what I wanna do is go way above to give you kind of a 30,000 foot view of how we change. We believe in this at Church on the Move.

It's in the background of pretty much everything we do. We don't talk about it publicly a whole lot, but this is how we believe people change. We didn't invent this. We adapted it from some church friends. We got real creative and called this the triangle. Ooh, ah. So let me talk about this. We believe that in order to change, all of this has to be in operation in your life. In fact, if you think back to a time in your life when you were growing in Christ, when you were experiencing spiritual growth at a pretty rapid clip, I promise you all of this was at play. So real quick, I just wanna talk about it. Can anyone guess what this little flame represents here in the middle? This is the most important part of spiritual formation. What does this represent? Holy Spirit. Friends, we have no shot at changing and becoming like Christ apart from the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. I don't know what your background is with the Holy Spirit, but let me tell you, he is at the center of the Christian life in terms of compelling you, influencing you, animating you as you do your walk with Jesus. But you got to give the Spirit some stuff to work with.

Give him some material to work with. And we believe the material that he works with are three things, learning, community, and practice. If you think back to that time in your life that you were growing, you were probably listening to podcasts, you were probably reading books, taking in new information to rearrange, to refurbish your theology about God and your theology about who you are. But learning is not enough. You are also likely in community. Rapid Christian growth, whether it was a mountain men group, whether it was a Bible study with some ladies, you were learning, but you were doing it in community. You were arm in arm with a brother or a sister. We do life together. In my opinion, the last one, practice, is the most neglected part of Christian spiritual lives today. We've got all sorts of content out there. We talk about doing life together, but we don't know what it means to fully put our faith into practice, which is why we're taking a second week. That's what we're doing today. Much to the dismay of Allen Iverson, we're gonna talk about practice again. If you don't know what I'm talking about,

don't worry about it. Practice, we don't just learn, we're not just in community, we practice. And so we're gonna go to Romans 12, one, to look at how we use our bodies. I'm gonna get very practical, very specific in how we use our bodies in spiritual formation. Look back at Romans 12, verse one. Therefore, Paul says, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, we have to stop here, because like Peter, before Paul ever tells us to do something, he tells us to look at something. He says, therefore, and if you see this word in your Bible, I heard an old preacher once say, you should ask yourself, what's the therefore? Therefore. In view of the mercies of God. That's his shorthand of Romans one through 11. So we're gonna talk about what to do, but we have to, again, like we did with Peter, we have to talk about what we are to look at. And Paul here says, keep in view, much like you might keep a picture of your family on your phone or in your wallet, so you have them in view as you live your life, you are to, as a Christian, keep God's mercies in view. Keep it right in front of you. As you're embarking on practice, as you're doing things for him,

if you lose view of that, you will think you're earning God's approval and love by what you do. But keeping this in view, it allows us to do this through grace. So what is the mercies of God? Well, there's a long version and there's a short version. The short version of Romans one through 11 is this, that all, according to Paul, have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. All means all, Jew, Gentile, young, old, everybody has fallen short of the glory of God, and according to Romans chapter six, the wages of sin is death. So all are dead in their sins, but that is not where the story stops. Paul says that God in his mercy sent his son, Jesus, to live the life that we could not live, amen, to die the death that we deserve to die, amen, and he rose to a new kind of life. But Romans one through 11 gets even better than that, because if you place your faith in Jesus and you receive the spirit, what happened to Jesus happens to you. So when Jesus goes in the grave on Good Friday, guess who went in the grave too? You did. When Jesus comes back to life on Resurrection Sunday, guess who else comes back to life on Resurrection Sunday? You do.

You carry around the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, you carry around resurrection power, but there's a catch, and we've been talking about it this series. Just because you carry around resurrection power does not mean that you automatically live a resurrection life. Just because you partake in the divine nature, as Peter talked about, does not automatically mean that that divine life affects your real life. You are going to have to do some stuff, not to earn God's approval. We're keeping God's mercies in view, but vague intentions are not enough. If you have the intention of losing weight, but the habit of eating a sleeve of Oreos every night before you go to bed, guess what's gonna happen? You're not losing weight, you're gonna gain weight. I had a friend in college, we were in the same business class together. He had the intention of passing his tests, but the habit of not studying for his tests. And so we'd walk to class and he would say, he would say this, he would say, well, it's all in God's hands now. And I'd say, bro, nothing is in God's hands. You have literally put nothing there, no hard work, no study, so many of us in our life with Christ, we've got the intention of becoming like him,

we have heaven on our mind, but we still have hell in our habits. We've got these intentions, but we haven't thought about changing our way of life so it makes sense then to what Paul says here. He's urging, like a dad to a kid, he's saying I urge you, I exhort you to present your, say it with me again, bodies as a living sacrifice. I find this interesting. He could have said here your lives, kind of a generic your life, yourself, but he uses the Greek word soma, which literally means body. And he says to present your body as a living sacrifice. Now Paul is a good Jew, he's a Pharisee, a Pharisee, he knows his Bible, he knows his Old Testament, and his favorite book, I know it's the same as yours, in Leviticus, the Bible talks about these sacrifices or these offerings that God commands the Israelites to bring to God, and there's all different kinds of offerings that we don't have time to get into. There's grain offerings, fellowship offerings, but there were animal sacrifices. It might sound archaic to our modern ears, but the Israelites would bring these sacrifices to the priests, and the priests would kill, they would slaughter the animals outside the tabernacle. They would bring the carcass inside the space,

inside the courtyard, and do you know where they would put that carcass? Anybody know where they would put it? On the altar. And then it would burn the animals. So these priests, they were like the original barbecuers. I mean, they would have been bloody, like it would have smelled amazing, but this aroma, it was believed to drift up to God and attract the divine presence. Now, do you notice the twist that Paul puts on it here? Because he's tracking with this idea, but no longer is it an animal that's to be put on the altar, what is it? It's you and I, our bodies, as a living sacrifice. Now, I know this brings up some questions. If I'm you, the questions I'm asking, what does this mean? Where is the altar? Do I need to get a bigger, like Traeger, or will my Blackstone suffice? Like, I don't really know how to do this. So I hope to answer those questions and more as we zero in on the idea of the role of your body, the role that your body has in your spiritual formation. And we're kind of confused in our culture about the body. Can anybody agree with that? Like, our culture is so confused. And I'm not just talking about sexuality and gender, I'm talking about just the role that our bodies play,

even for Christians, in our walk with Jesus. There's two ditches. On the one side, we can overemphasize the body. We can worship it as an idol. You'll see this in fitness influencers. You'll see this even in people that are obsessed with working out. They're tweaking things, they're tracking things. We have all sorts of different apps and rings and whatever to track stuff I didn't even know we could track. We're consumed with obsessing over our bodies. We wanna craft it into something perfect. I remember when I first discovered the weight room, I was like 16 or 17 years old. At first, I was upset that nobody told me that this thing existed. So I was real skinny, real scrawny, went to the weight room, and I had no idea what I was doing. But if you're a teenage boy, I mean, you could virtually walk into a weight room, eat a couple PB&Js, and you gain 15 pounds of muscle overnight. Like, it just happens. And it started this journey for me of working out. I liked it, but I got obsessed with it. I would work out six, seven days a week, and when I had to miss a day, I got furious. And this is how you know you've made an idol

out of something, how you react when it is taken away. So for me, I had overemphasized the body, seeing the body as an idol. That's one ditch we can fall into, but there's another ditch on the other side, and that's to underemphasize the role of the body, to neglect it. There's an ancient heresy. You don't need to know this term, but it's called Gnosticism. And it basically says the spiritual is good, but the physical is bad. You guys kind of heard this idea before? The spiritual is good, but the physical is bad. That's not how the Bible presents the body. So the Bible presents the body not as an idol. not as this just like temporary soul container. Do you know the biblical view of the body? The body as a temple. And I don't think we've yet to grapple with this idea. This should blow our minds that the body is a temple, but Paul is working with this all throughout the New Testament. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter six. The context here is sexual sin. People are sleeping around and they don't think that what they're doing with their bodies is affecting their souls. And what Paul says here is don't you know that your body, it's that same Greek word soma,

is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God. You are not your own, for you are bought at a price. So glorify God with your body. The body is the new temple. And in the Old Testament, the tabernacle and the temple, it was this place of beautiful, mysterious overlap where the physical intermingled with the spiritual, where heaven came to earth. That place, friends, is now your very body. I know you may not feel it all the time. I don't feel it all the time. But it sets up a statement that I wanna give you. It might surprise you at first, but I think it makes complete sense. It's this, that your physical body is where your spiritual life happens. Much like this physical space is where our spiritual life as a church happens, so too your physical body is where your personal spiritual life happens. If your spiritual life didn't happen in your body, where would it happen? Your body is now this mysterious, beautiful space of overlap between the spiritual and the physical, between heaven and earth. Your bodies matter. Dallas Willard, from whom I've learned so much on this topic, he says this about the role that our bodies play.

If salvation is to affect our lives, who we are, it can do so only by affecting our bodies. If we are to participate in the reign of God, it can only be by our actions. You don't think about a kingdom, you live in a kingdom. And our actions are physical. We live only in the processes of our bodies. To withhold our bodies from religion is to exclude religion from our lives. Said a different way, if you want to grow spiritually or if you're dissatisfied with your spiritual life, maybe it's time to change something physically. What if one could cause a change in the other? You're this place of overlap between spiritual and physical. The Holy Spirit has now come to reign and rule on the inside of you. But we gotta give him something to work with. And there is another force at play in our spiritual formation that is against this work of the Spirit. We're continuing to sketch out this idea that Paul had in the New Testament. We have the Spirit, but there's another force at play in our lives, in your very body. Does anybody know what the word is according to Paul in the New Testament? What else do you have going on? Flesh. Spirit and flesh.

But what is the flesh? Is it like your literal skin? I know some of you in midlife, you feel like your skin is literally revolting against you. I believe that's part of what it means to become an adult. Just various skin things that pop up. That's not what Paul is talking about. For Paul, there's a negative connotation to it. It is the part of us, we're gonna put together a working definition here of the flesh. It's the part of us that actively seeks independence from God. If the Spirit is leading you to dependence on God, reliance on God, then your flesh is pulling you in the opposite direction. Actively seeking independence from God. I was thinking about this idea this week and just kind of meditating on it, looking for an illustration. I was working on it at home. My 27 kids were there just kind of running around. As I was thinking about this, it hit me. I know what the flesh is. The flesh is like a toddler. Hang with me. While we're doing working definitions, let me give you my working definition for toddlers. These are creatures that actively seek independence from everyone and everything, including themselves. Can I get any young parents to say an amen?

Here's a picture of one of ours. Let me tell some stories first before you go off. I happen to be a subject matter expert on these people. I've lived with them, I've observed them, I've watched their ways, I've lived to tell the tale. Actually, we have just a couple more years before we're able to live to tell the tale. We've got an 18-month-old at home that is kind of our favorite right now, but she hasn't turned into this creature yet. Let me tell you what it's like to live with them. And I promise there's gonna be an application here for your flesh and maybe you're already starting to think about it. What is it like living with a toddler? Well, they resist commands all the time, every day, 24-7. They make commands all the time, every day, 24-7. they will beg you for a big bowl of ice cream and then after you give it to them, they will eat it, consume it, turn around and gaslight you because you gave them too much ice cream and now their tummy hurts. We've had mornings when we've been like just, we've had a wonderful, delicious breakfast, we've had worship music on, we're getting ready to go out the door, it's been an awesome morning, then bam, you get hit with the fact that your toddler, in attempting to put on their jacket, you find out that their skin is literally burning them alive

and then if you don't do something right then, they will in fact die. My personal favorite is when you're getting ready to go to an errand, to go to church, you know they're gonna be thirsty and it's always thirsty with an F, so you tell them, hey, get your water, you're gonna want it after church, they claim they're gonna be good, you go to church, you get back in the car after church and they turn into a demon because they're dying of thirst. Like this is just what it is, like what is going on? And there were regular occurrences in our young parenting, never today, but in the early seasons of parenting when I would be toe to toe with a toddler and it feels like war, you know? And they're screaming at you, they're resisting commands, they're making commands and I can feel in my very body something coming on. I want to become them. Pastor Witt talks about we become like what we behold. You stare in the face of a toddler too long, you will turn into one. You hear the screams of a toddler too long, I can feel anger just rising up in my body and I know that the way I will defeat them is by yelling them into submission, I just know it. That voice is so loud in that moment. What do I discover?

I discover that I have an inner toddler. You have an inner toddler. It's the part of us that wants what we want, when we want it and we want it now. How do you know you've got this voice? Just pay attention to your inner dialogue before you sin or do something stupid. Man, it could look something like this. My wife has an initiated physical touch and quite some time I deserve to fantasize about that coworker. Women, my husband is so emotionally disconnected, I deserve to read those books. I'm a grown woman, I can read whatever I want. You got friends and you're in high school and your friends ditch you or they don't hang out, I know it's painful but you get this voice saying they're done with you, you need to find some new friends. My question, gently but challengingly, who do you think's saying that? Can I tell you something? It ain't the spirit. Maybe you're at a basketball game with your kid and you know that your kid is the best basketball player on that team. I could spend 10 minutes here and in your mind, they haven't been on the court all quarter and so you're gonna go talk to the coach about this after the fact. If you are unconvinced that adults have an inner toddler,

go to an elementary basketball game and just turn to the stands and watch parents. The toddler comes out, we want what we want and we know that our kid is going division one and if they don't get in the game, that shot's gonna be ruined because there's NBA scouts in the stands right now that are watching. We have this voice and it's yelling at us. We've got this inner toddler. And this inner toddler, when you feed it, when you feed a toddler and you give it what it wants, it turns into a monster. When you sow to your flesh and you give your flesh what it wants, you turn into a monster. C.S. Lewis, he wrote a book called The Screwtape Letters. Anybody read The Screwtape Letters? It is phenomenal. I've heard it said that every Christian should read that book every year. And if you haven't read it, I have to set the quote up because it's written backwards. It's written upside down. C.S. Lewis is writing from the perspective of a demon. This demon's name is Screwtape and he's writing to his nephew Wormwood, giving him advice on how to tempt humans, on how to draw them back into the kingdom of darkness. And so look at what Screwtape writes to Wormwood. He's talking about some converts,

people that have placed their trust in God. He's gonna call God the enemy. So I just, are you with me? It's backwards. Here's what C.S. Lewis writes through the lens of Uncle Screwtape. There is no need to despair, he says. Hundreds of these adult converts have been reclaimed after a brief sojourn in the enemy's camp, God's camp, and are now with us. Why? Because all the habits of the patient, both mental and bodily, are still in our favor. You might have heavenly intentions, but do you have hellish habits? Your habits matter. What you do matters. I guarantee you the generation of Israelites in the wilderness had the intention of reaching the promised land, but they died out. Why? Because they didn't walk into it. They didn't trust God. Whatever you feed, guys, it will grow. The way my seminary professor talked about this was this idea of strongest desires versus deepest desires. When you receive the Holy Spirit, you are made new on the inside. We believe that in that moment. You do have, even if you may not feel it,

you have deep desires. Your deepest desire is to please God. But your strongest desire, it's the one that you feed. It's why lust feels so strong. It's why your food appetite feels so strong, because you feed it. Whatever you sow into, you will reap from. Cornelius Plantinga, he says this. Sow a thought, reap a deed. Sow a deed, reap another deed, we're snowballing here. Sow some deeds and reap a habit. Sow some habits and reap a character. If you do not like the character that you are reaping, think about what you've been sowing. You are the product. Pastor Witt said it last week. You are the product of your practices. Now there's nuances here, caveats, things that have been done to you. This is not a counseling session. But what this is, is generally speaking, most people are the result of what they have been doing. But here's the good news. If you've been practicing your way where you are now, you can practice your way out. There is encouragement here that through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can do this, but we're gonna have to fight. Galatians chapter five, this is what Paul says. We did a series a few years ago called The War Within,

talking about this battle that happens between flesh and spirit. I say then, what does he say? Say it with me. Walk by the spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh. The way that you do not carry out the desire of the flesh is by keeping in step with the spirit, walking in the spirit. For the flesh desires what is against the spirit. If you feel that war within you, within your very body, welcome to Christianity. You should be worried if you feel no fight. Before you came to faith in Christ, before you received the spirit, you were all flesh all the time. But when the spirit comes, that's when the real battle begins. So I just wanna encourage you, if you feel the fight, welcome to Christianity, but you were not made to fight and be on the struggle bus for the rest of your life. You were made to win this battle against the flesh. And the spirit desires what is against the flesh. These are opposed to each other so that you don't do what you want. You will fight this in your very body. It's time to get a sword, get a shield, get a helmet, and go to war against the enemy. The way that we do this, let me first tell you how you're not gonna do this,

how you're not going to win this battle. You're not gonna win this through more willpower alone. Your willpower is what got you where you are. How many of you know that willpower is a depleting resource? That means it runs out. That's why all the bad decisions that you've made in your life, or most of them, happen late at night. You've made decisions all throughout the day, and you're tired. That's why sometimes it's exhausting to pick what to wear in a day. Or moms, some of you, thinking about one more dinner or what you're gonna eat, it is just exhausting. Willpower is a depleting resource. We are not going to win this battle through willpower alone. Nor are we going to win it through more Bible knowledge alone. And I'm a Bible knowledge guy, but all of us know people with a lot of Bible knowledge, but very little Christ-like character. How do we win this battle? Through spirit-empowered practices. If you practice your way here, you can practice your way out. You can do what is in your power so that God can do what is in his power. John Orberg is a writer on spiritual disciplines. I love what he says about this. What is a discipline? Well, a discipline is any activity I can do

by direct effort that will help me do what I cannot do now by direct effort. What can you do? The spiritual practices. What can't you do? Transform yourself. What I wanna do for our remaining time together is walk through how I do this, how I attempt to do this on a daily or weekly basis. What we're talking about here, guys, is putting our bodies on the altar so that fire can come, so that God can do something that we cannot do. But we have to give him something to work with. So I wanna give you some stuff. Very practical. I'm not offering this as a full-blown prescription. There's no exhaustive list of spiritual disciplines in the Bible. I'm offering this as an invitation. If you feel stuck, if you feel stuck spiritually, maybe it's time to change something physically to get your body involved. So this stuff, you could adopt it tomorrow. This first one, you could adopt tonight, and it's this. Go to bed before 10 p.m. Oh, number one, I thought for sure it'd be like Bible reading or prayer. I'll tell you why I have this number one. How many of you have tried to read your Bible or pray

first thing in the morning after going to bed at 1 a.m.? The Lord is my... You can't do it. When I am sleep-deprived, I become less than human. I wake up and I... I don't hear God's voice, I hear the devil's, loud and clear, feeding my flesh, making me impatient with my family, with my kids. What if the most spiritual thing you could do is to get a good night's rest? If you are sleep deprived, studies show, like this is conclusive, guys, that it will affect your mental health. Some of you might be paying money for a counselor when a full night's sleep will suffice. Now, I'm not saying that you don't need to go see a therapist or a counselor, but going to bed at a good time, what if that becomes spiritual warfare? Men, how many times has pornography happened? You're invited to look at stuff, your willpower's low, the enemy, he strikes after 10 p.m. Those hours, nothing good happens. I think it's an invitation for God to invite us to see us as having limits, as having boundaries. Some of you claim you can operate at a high level on four to five hours of sleep. Can I just tell you something? You forgot what it feels like to be human.

Eight hours of sleep can do wonders for the soul. Getting some rest. 1 Kings 19, the prophet Elijah, I was just reading this this week. He's on the run, he's just done the showdown with the prophets of Baal, and he's terrified. He's actually depressed. He prays that he might die, so he goes into a cave. God sends an angel to visit him, and do you remember what the angel tells him? Before the whole earthquake, fire, whisper thing, the angel tells him, bro, you look like you've been through it, eat some bread, take a nap, wake up, and eat some more bread. How many of you could get down with a God that tells you to eat some bread, take a nap, and eat some more bread? Why, because God knows Elijah's a physical creature, and if you neglect your body for so long, your body will catch up to you, and you will feel depleted spiritually. Some of you need to go to bed before 10 p.m. If you want a good morning, how many of you have discovered that a good morning begins in the evening? If you wanna wake up early, go to bed early. Your inner toddler's gonna wanna stay up for one more episode, gonna wanna scroll more. You tell your inner toddler to shut up because it's time to go to bed, amen? Go to sleep before 10 p.m.

This has been a practice for me for 13 years now, college, not a chance. After college, get my first big boy job, I started to put this into practice, and it's changed me. I am who I am today because of the time that I've spent with the Lord in the morning, full stop. You will not become like Christ if you spend no time with him, dedicated face-to-face time with him. For me, that happens best in the morning. I wonder what the Lord would say to you about that. So go to bed before 10 p.m. What do you do when you wake up? What does that routine look like? For me, I recently discovered a programmable coffee maker. So before I make my coffee, I don't know if you guys know this, but there's these coffee machines where you can set the time that it will make coffee, and it's like Jesus himself is handing you a cup of coffee in the morning. Shalom, bud, let's go spend some time together. I grab that cup, I go into my office, already feeling great, and this has been a newer practice for me. What I have started to do is to just get on my knees. First thing, I'll turn on my little space heater because the presence of God is warm, right, and I'll turn on the space heater. I will also light a candle. This has been an ancient practice for Christians

for thousands of years to remind myself because I don't always remember that God is with me. Flame, Holy Spirit, he is here. So I'll do this little liturgy, this ritual, and then I'll just say a short prayer. I'll do something like the Lord's Prayer or the Jesus Prayer, if you've ever heard of the Jesus Prayer, it's very short. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. And then I'll get back up. But in that moment, you are letting your body teach your soul a lesson. If you struggle with pride or the idol of glory, nothing will fix that like coming on your knees before God. We sing, we talk about bowing before the Lord. How many of us have ever actually done this? Not just internally but externally with your very body. There's something about this. I did it this morning. My oldest rose, she came down earlier than normal and so I just invited her to do it with me. Hey, let's kneel before our space heater, before our God, and say the Lord's Prayer together. Doing something, are you guys with me? Doing something with your body, it can change what's going on spiritually. So just that simple act, it gets me in a different frame of mind. I have learned a lot about this topic from an author named Justin Early.

I don't know if you guys have heard of him, read any of these books. He's not a pastor, he's a business attorney. But for him, his body shut down in his mid-30s when he was pushing way past his limit. So he had to rewind, fix it all, look at doing a rule of life, fixing his habits. So the one on the left is called The Common Rule where he talks about a rule of life for him. That's where I got the idea to kneel during prayer. The one on the right is for families. If you're looking at, how do we do these habits? together as a family would highly recommend this book. And we will, one thing I'm excited about with this new project, we'll have these out for sale soon in our bookstore. I am, anybody excited about a bookstore? I'm gonna commandeer that space as my office. It'll become the third heaven, it'll be awesome. Start to explore this, that's why we're exposing you to books, to ideas, practices, because we don't know your season of life, we don't know where it is that you're at right now, but something around prayer for me, I have to get my body involved, going on prayer walks. Anybody love a good prayer walk that can kind of activate my mind, God brings people to mind? Get your body involved in your prayer life and see what happens. For me, with my Bible reading,

this is one practice that I do. So many people, myself included, from time to time will experience dryness in our Bible reading. We'll be reading it in our mind, we'll read a chapter, we'll have no idea what it means, no idea how Leviticus 17 connects to, and I'm picking on Leviticus, I actually love the book, we'll have no idea how it connects to our 21st century lives, we'll be discouraged, and we'll just move on. Whenever that happens to me, do you know what I do? I start to just read God's word out loud. We've taught this for years around here, that if you want to harness your mind, harness your tongue. You can't always control what's going on in your mind, but you can control your tongue. When I use my mouth to read the scriptures, in particular the Psalms, it forces me to slow down, to be present, and get this, it naturally leads to prayer. This is the biblical form of meditation, God's words in your very mouth. The Old Testament word for meditate is the Hebrew word haggah, and commentators argue that meditate is actually too weak of a word. It literally means to mutter, or my personal favorite, to growl. Get a word in your mouth and just chew on it. Like a dog chews a bone, savoring every last flavor, that is to be our posture with God's word, because how many of you know, there is nourishment there.

You gotta put it in your mouth, roll it over, savor it, suck on it, get all the flavor, get all the meaning out of it. So try it, see what happens. If your Bible reading feels dry, read the Bible out loud. So this is morning time for me. Throughout the day, I will eat a meal with people, and I've started to adopt this practice around mealtime, to eat a meal without my phone. It's no secret that we are distracted so much these days. We are present nowhere because we try to be present everywhere, and we can. If you wanna be eating lunch with a friend and paying attention to a soccer match happening halfway across the world, you can. But for me, one practice I've adopted, especially with my family at dinnertime, dads lead the way here. I know you got work stuff going on, I know people are texting you, but your job is to be there with your family. What I've started to do is just put my phone in my closet, far away across the house, come back, sit down, and if you do this for the first time, you're gonna feel the itch. Like, what's the score? Have they texted me back yet? And you're gonna make excuses like I've done, oh, Sidney, I gotta go to the bathroom real quick, and I really go to check the score of the game,

receive so and so has texted me back. You're practicing, you're fumbling your way forward. At lunch with friends, what I've started to do is to just put my phone on do not disturb. Because stuff just blows up at lunch, does it not? And it's kind of fun after you've been at lunch with a friend to see what all's blown up. Oh, call from them. But here's the lesson you're letting your body teach your soul. Faces matter more than screens. We're with people we say we love, but we spend all of our time looking at a screen when we have an image of God right in front of us. A phone is not made in the image of God, that person's face is. Be present with who you're with. Watch what happens to these relationships. I know your inner toddler's gonna wanna get on the phone, but you have to tell your toddler to shut up. It's time to be with your kids, be with your spouse, or be with your friends, amen? Okay, I've saved the toughest for last. This is one that I have just begun to practice, and it's this. Fast food for 24 hours. Now my buddy Bob came up to me last night and said, you only get to eat fast food for 24 hours? That's not what I'm saying. This does not mean you get to eat Taco Bell

for all of the meals throughout the day. Fast from food for 24 hours. Now there's a trend in the church these days to talk about fasting various things, Netflix, social media, caffeine, and I hate to break it to you, or maybe I love to break it to you, but biblically and historically speaking, whenever Christians have talked about fasting, it is from actual, literal, physical food. Now I would justify, I would say I'm fasting when really I would fast Netflix or social media. Why? It's actually very simple. I like food. Food is good. No food is no good. Some of you guys, I've heard you say, oh, I'm fasting. I was so busy today I forgot to eat lunch. Never in my life has that ever happened. Me and lunch have had a standing appointment for 35 years now. I just look forward to it all the time. I never forget to eat lunch. I remember my high school youth group, we did a fast. Our youth pastor invited us to do a fast and I abstained. Like I abstained from the fast. In my mind, it was easily justified. It was baseball season, I was a growing boy.

You know, in the weight room, I need my protein, I need my calories, and so I just didn't do it. But when I started attending Church on the Move back in 2014, and we would do the 21 days of prayer seasons, anybody around for those? We invited people to fast. I felt like, all right, it's time to start doing this. And I remember the first time I did one of these fasts. You know, I had dinner the night before, I wasn't gonna eat breakfast or lunch. It was about 9 a.m. the next day. And I was ready to abandon my faith in my God. The inner, if you are unconvinced that you have an inner toddler, fast from food and watch what happens. You figure out what you've been feeding. So many of us have been feeding the flesh for far too long, we've never starved it. And the first time you starve it, just like you might starve a toddler, they will scream and demand that you give in. So it was hard, like it was really, really hard at first. So I would only do fasting from food in these certain seasons of our church year, whether it's Holy Week, 21 days of prayer. But last year, Sidney and I, so this is for us, I present this as an invitation for you, but for us, I could not get away from the fact that all throughout church history, there has never been a generation of Christians

that have not fasted food regularly. If you read about the early church, two days out of the week, they set aside time for prayer and fasting. So we just felt the invitation from the Lord, I did not wanna do it, because again, food is good, no food is no good, but we started to do it last year. We weren't perfect, but I fasted last year more than I ever have in my life. I fasted this past Thursday, and can I tell you something? And I mean this seriously, no discipline has changed my spiritual life, like fasting from food. There's a reason why Christians have always done this, why? The lesson that your body is teaching your soul is that I do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Father. Jesus fasted, and we think that at the end of those 40 days, he was so spiritually weak because he was physically weak, nah man, Jesus was at the height of his spiritual powers. Why? Because he had been feeding the spirit, starving the flesh, so many of us were stagnated spiritually because we have indulged physically. What if it's time to take Jesus up on this? Not a doctor, you've got health complications, eating disorders of any kind, talk to your doctor about it, I wanna give those caveats, but I wonder if Jesus isn't inviting some of you

to try this. We're coming up on Easter, we're gonna invite you guys to do this during Holy Week. What if you tried to do this before? I think it can change you. These are ways, friends, that we present our bodies, our literal bodies on the altar before God, and we stay there. I've heard it said that the problem with a living sacrifice is that it tends to crawl off the altar. Stay there. Many Christians try these things one time. There's a part of us that likes novelty, we like newness. Kneeling during prayer is gonna feel a little bit exciting. Who's gonna look at me as I'm, are my kids gonna come in? Fasting once is gonna feel like a painful adventure. Many Christians do these things one time, few do them again. G.K. Chesterton has one of my all-time favorite quotes, he's a British thinker and intellectual, and he says this about the idea of just like doing the boring stuff in life. There's a little bit of a redemptive arc for kids, for toddlers here, I love how he says it. Because children have abounding vitality, in other words, so much life, because they are in spirit fierce and free, they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, do it again,

and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people, get this, are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. What does he mean by that? The boring stuff. What's boring to us may not be boring to God. It is possible that God says every morning, do it again to the sun. Every evening, do it again to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike. It may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy, for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. If God is strong enough to exult. and monotony to embrace the mundane and the ordinary than we should too. I know it's tiring. I know it's exhausting to get up and read and pray when you feel like nothing is happening. Can I tell you something? For God, it's as if that's the first time that you've met with him. I'm so glad you're here. I love our times together. I never get bored of it.

I know you've read your Bible and nothing's happened. I know you've prayed and you don't feel like you can hear my voice yet. I know you tried fasting from food and it was the worst experience of your life, but what God would invite you to do because he does it and my invitation to you is to just do it again. We're not gonna try to earn God's approval with this. I know there was a movement in the church to say, hey, I don't wanna just be about checking the boxes. Can I just say as a pastor, I think the risk in the American church is not checking too many boxes. I think it's checking too few. We're keeping God's mercies in view. How much he loves us. The grace that he's given us, but to adapt a quote from Uncle Ben, with great grace comes great responsibility. Put your body on the altar continually. String these things together and watch it work like compound interest. Those of you that started a job in your early 20s, maybe you had a mentor or a boss tell you the importance of investing in a retirement account early on, why? Because you're gonna love what you reap later on. When's the first best time to start this stuff? Long time ago. Second best time?

Now. Do it again. And here's the promise. This is what Paul tells the Galatians and it's what he tells us. Let us not get tired of doing good. For we will reap at the proper time, here's the caveat, if we do not give up. Let's pray. The invitation that I felt led to give today is for those that are tired, that have given up, you tried reading, you tried praying, and you feel like nothing was happening. Maybe you feel the invitation to just, like fast food for the first time. If you sense any kind of invitation here, I want to specifically pray for you. If that's you, would you raise your hand and keep it lifted while I pray? If that's you sensing an invitation from the Spirit, there's gonna be hands all over the place. Just keep them up, keep them up. See them in the middle. I see you guys on the right. I know some of you are tired. You're weary. I wanna pray for you. Keep them up. Father, I thank you for these people,

your sons and daughters that are catching a vision throughout this series of what full life, what real life is like in Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit. I pray on their behalf, Lord. I believe that you have spoken to them. I believe that you're gonna wanna walk this out with them. So direct them to conversations with pastors, people on the prayer team, friends, family members, to begin to put this stuff into action. Even if they have the intention of doing it today, that still isn't enough. They have to place themselves on the altar and trust the hidden work. The image that comes to my mind is somebody who's trying to build a campfire and they're bringing all these logs, all of these logs, log after log, stacking them, stacking them. Why are they doing that? Because they trust that the fire will come. I believe you're inviting people in this space to begin stacking logs, to bring some stuff to the fire. We cannot bring the fire, Lord, but we can prepare for it. So Holy Spirit, come alongside them to do the job that you love to do. Fan this into flame. You can put your hands down. Lord, thank you for this time.

I love these people so much. I love being one of their pastors. I love talking about this stuff, exploring what it means to live life in the kingdom. You are so good, Lord. I thank you for this building. I think what happened with the lobby, this addition, this renovation, it's representative of what's happening in so many people's lives in here. They've lived a life, they've come here. There's a past, there's a history, but you're doing new things. You're adding new things. You're taking away new things. You're beautifying things by the power of your spirit, and we are so thankful. All God's people said amen. We are gonna have a prayer team up front. I know many of these people. They are wise, mature Christians. If you are struggling with something and you would want to pray with them, or if you're looking for advice on any of the stuff that I talked about, I trust these people. They would love to talk to you, to walk with you, connect you to a next step. Maybe that is the first step for you. If you would, please stand to your feet.

I hope you guys have an awesome Sunday. It's gonna be a beautiful afternoon. Have fun watching the game. Spend some time outside. Get to bed before 10 p.m. Turn on that space heater. Get on your knees. Begin walking this out. I'm gonna pronounce a blessing over you. We'll put it on the screen. You can say it along with me. Let's say it together. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. God bless you, Church on the Move. Have an awesome day. finalement � kitty cleaning and fur completed thank you for really looking forward and recording playing for

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