Living for Today and Eternity.

We are in our Rule of Life series. Every single year as we start the new year, we pause and we talk about this idea of a rule of life. If you come to church and you hear like, this church has rules, it can be a little scary at first. So let me explain.

A rule of life is essentially a set of spiritual practices that we as a church are committed to practicing together. At the welcome table, we have a card that has the spiritual practices listed. We have different daily rhythms, as well as monthly and quarterly rhythms that we want to be intentional about practicing.

All of these are from looking at the life of Jesus and really saying, okay, New Culture Church, that word culture is in our name. Culture is all about patterns, customs, beliefs, spiritual practices that are passed down for generations. And so we want to say, what does it look like for us to look at the life of Jesus and say, when he was here on earth, what did he do? And how can we follow his example and practice those things? Things like starting our days with prayer and scripture and taking time to be present with God throughout our days and ending in gratitude. Things like fasting, things like gathering as a church together, things like serving our community and being present, not just on Sundays, but also throughout the week with one another.

We also have journals if you have yet to kind of set up your daily rhythms. We have these really nice journals that we came out with this year. So you guys can grab one on your way out if you don't have one that kind of guides you through prayers every single day.

The last thing I want to talk about is a rule of life workbook that we have kind of revamped again for this new season. That word rule comes from the Latin word trellis. And so essentially we're saying, in the same way that when you plant seeds in the ground and you put a trellis there to help them grow in the right direction, we establish different spiritual practices and rhythms in our everyday life so that when we show up here and we encounter God, when we open our word and we hear God's voice, we are helping every seed that he's planting in our life grow in the right direction.

Building your foundation

A lot of it comes from the text in Matthew 7, which we talked about last week. Let me read for us one more time today.

Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, the winds blew and beat against the house, yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house in the sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.

Matthew 7:24-27

What this is promising us here is not that we will not have storms or trials in life, but actually Jesus is speaking to his disciples and the people around and he's saying, there's going to be storms. There's going to be things that come up against you. And so the decision that we have is where are we going to build our foundation? Where are we going to plant those seeds, those deep roots so that when those things come, we do not fall, but we stand?

The text that we're going to be focusing more on today is found in 1 Timothy chapter 4. It starts in verse 6:

In pointing out these things to the brothers and sisters, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine which you have been following. But stay away from worthless stories. Rather, discipline yourselves for the purpose of godliness. For bodily training is just slightly beneficial, but godliness is beneficial for all things since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance. For it is for this we labor and strive because we have set our hope on the living God who is the Savior of all mankind, especially of believers. Prescribe and teach these things. Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity, show yourself an example of those believers. Until I come, give your attention to the public reading of exhortation and teaching. Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was granted to you through words of prophecy with the laying on of hands by the council of elders. Take pains with these things, be absorbed by them so that your progress will be evident to all. Pay close attention to yourself and the teaching. Preserve in these things. For as you do, this will save both yourself and those who hear you.

1 Timothy 4:6-16

Every single week we have a so what and now what? What is the main thing to get out of this? And today it's this: live for the present life and also for the life to come. Now what do we do with this? Well, we're going to talk about how do we start to practice these daily rhythms that are planting seeds and letting the seeds take root for not only this life, but also for the life to come.

Knowing that every single day we're not just living for the present moment, but we're living for the promise of eternity. Every time that we encounter Jesus, that we spend time in his word, we're building a relationship. Not just to help us survive until we get to heaven, but a relationship that someday when we see Jesus face to face, it can be like this great reunion. And we get to continue to be present with him for all of eternity.

Formation is a process

Now, today, as we talk about this idea of practice, we're talking a lot about this idea of formation and becoming. Last week, our so what was that anything pretty much in life. It's not when we find Jesus, it's not just about finding him, but also being formed into his likeness. We're not just trying to find something, but we're trying to form and be formed into the likeness of Jesus.

The reality is that even when we talk about having a rule of life, you'll hear us say over and over again, it's not a matter of do you have a rule of life or a set of practices that guide you. It's more of what is it? It's not a question of are you becoming? Are you growing? Are you being formed? It's who are you becoming? Who are you being formed into the likeness of?

I want you to think about for a moment and you can either take a second and just look at what you're wearing. Why are you wearing what you're wearing today? I'm glad we're all wearing clothes. That's a good thing. But why are you wearing what you're wearing today?

Now, if you just ask me, I say there wasn't a whole lot of thought that went into this. I went into my closet and I thought, "Here's something that's clean. Let's put it on," right? Now, in many ways, this is not some crazy outfit. It's not that far out from things that I normally wear every single day. And so you might just think, oh, I just found this, right? I just found this outfit hanging in my closet and I put it on today.

But even the thing that you are wearing in this moment is a result of many small decisions that you've made yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. We don't just wake up looking the way that we do, wearing the things, dressing the way that we do. But rather it's a result of small decisions and habits and places that we've looked to that have then led us to the place that we are today.

At some point, whether my consciousness is aware of it or not, I probably saw someone somewhere wearing something similar to what I'm wearing today. And then whether I was fully conscious of why I was purchasing that, it must have had some like good impact on me of saying, "I want to look like that. I want to wear that and I want to look like that." To where I went out and whether it was given to me and I decided not to pass it on and to keep it or whether I went out and purchased it myself, I went and I purchased the things that I'm wearing. So today I didn't just happen to find these things in my closet. But they were put there by me.

Many of you know that when I'm not pastoring here at New Culture, I work for a nonprofit. And recently I started working a couple months ago as a therapist. And the more that I sit with people and I sit in their stories, and we all kind of think that we just arrived to where we're at. And we think that we just wake up one day and we find ourselves in this moment. But the reality is that there's always a story of why we are the way that we are, why we talk the way that we do. And often it is a pattern of habits that have been established day after day after day to where you wake up and you think, "I just found myself this way," but you didn't find yourself this way.

You've formed yourself to be who you are and you've received formation from the people around you along the way. You start to see that in friend groups where all of a sudden you can meet and you look totally different and slowly you start to wear the same clothes. We're formed by what we look at. What we look at leads us to become who we are today.

So what do we do with this? We look to Jesus and we continue to look at the life that he lived and say, how can we live that way if we want to be people that want to encounter his presence and experience it every single day?

Now, this might feel like a little overwhelming to think about, but I'm going to go just a little bit deeper. We don't just wake up one day as selfish people. We don't wake up one day as being self-absorbed. But it's daily decisions of us feeding our selfish motives that lead us to those moments, right. We don't wake up one day with just being really angry or being upset about things. But there's all these small things. But the good news is that because of Jesus, we can change. That because of Jesus, no matter where we find ourselves today, we don't have to stay there, but we can choose to turn and to look to Jesus again and to be formed into his image.

Form your daily rhythms

So as we start today, I want you to even begin to think of what are some of the things that you do every day. Every day. If today you are living in the reality of the decisions that you have made yesterday and the day before that, then we should pay attention to today so that tomorrow we can look back and thank ourselves for who we are, for the ways that we're following Jesus, for the ways that we're living like him.

So whether it's jotting down a note or just remembering, I want you to think about it. Then at some point this week, to really think about what do you do every single day and what do those things do to you?

A couple months ago, I started running and there was a lot that kind of went into it. A lot of reasons why I started running. But a huge thing was is I realized that because I am a single individual and yes, I have a roommate, but I am like my single family unit that every single day I can really wake up and I can just kind of decide, "Do I want to do this? Do I not want to do this?" Right. Like I don't have kids that I'm taking care of. I don't have a spouse that sometimes I'm going to eat what they want to eat. And I get to eat what I want to eat. I get to make those decisions.

And so I thought, what is that doing to me? It's feeding this, "I do what I want when I want it." And it seems so small. And those decisions aren't necessarily sinful to be like, "Do I want to work out today? Do I not?" But it does something to you. So I started running for even just simple reason to say every day, I'm going to wake up and I'm going to do something that I don't want to do. And most days I don't want to do it. Most days I still don't want to do it. There's been a couple days where I'm like, "I want to do this." But it was more of a physical thing for me to say, how do I continue to plant seeds in my life that say "I do hard things" even when I want to do them so that when Jesus starts saying, "Hey, Abbie, go do this hard thing," it is an overflow of who I am. It looks natural for me to do the hard thing.

And it is natural for me to do the hard thing in the same way it's natural for me to wake up and to put this outfit on today because of the small decisions that I've made leading up to that.

Nourishment and practices

So as we're reading from Timothy, before I dive in, I want to give us a little overview of what's happening because it's kind of an out of context passage in a way. Timothy was a young Christian leader. At this point, he would have been pastoring this really large church. He's young and this letter is being written and it's coming from Paul and he's speaking to him and they had a close relationship.

So this isn't just like a stranger to a stranger. We actually read about when Timothy was first mentioned in Acts 16. So if you want to go read about that this week, you can. But at this point, Timothy, he's a young leader. His mother is mentioned in scripture as Eunice, his grandmother Lois. And they were both these devout Jewish women that raised him in the faith. We know that his father was Greek and he, Timothy, became this trusted companion of Paul on this missionary journey of spreading the gospel.

So Timothy has experienced all these different changes in his life and a lot of them really young. And so when he's receiving this letter, he's pastoring not only a large church, but this is a church that Paul planted in Ephesus. So Paul's kind of like writing to him and in a way being like, make sure you're taking care of my baby. Like he planted this church, Timothy's now leading it.

So Paul is encouraging him. The original intent of this letter was more to him as a church leader. And that's where we read of like, when you were appointed by the laying on the hands of elders and all of that. But the reason why I want to talk about it today is I think that there's still a lot in here that's really applicable to all of us when we choose to follow Jesus. Because when we say yes to following Jesus, we're saying yes to being, to follow in his likeness, to be his disciple. A disciple is someone that's in the process of becoming like their teacher.

Jesus, one of the last things he does before ascending into heaven, is he gives what we call the great commission in Matthew 28:19 and 20. Where he says:

Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach them to observe everything that I've taught you. And surely I will be with you always.

Matthew 28:19-20

So what we see happening is that Jesus calls people to follow him. All of us have the invitation to follow him, to walk with him in life. But the invitation isn't just to find relationship with Jesus, but to follow him and to continue his work of making disciples. And the promise, of course, is that he's with us. We're not alone. He left with us the power of his Holy Spirit.

So in a way, not every single person here in this room is leading a church. A few of us are, but not everybody here is leading a church. So it might just be like, well, I don't have to listen to this. But I think it's still applicable because you're all leading people somewhere. So again, it's not a matter of if you're becoming, it's who you're becoming. It's not a matter of like, am I influencing people, you are, but where are you leading them? Who are you leading them to?

So some of the things that I want to talk about here that we see is first this: that nourishment is promised to come as you spend time with Jesus. In verse 6:

I'm pointing out these things to the brothers and sisters. You will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith and the good doctrine, which you have been following. But stay away from worthless stories. Rather, discipline yourselves for the purpose of godliness.

1 Timothy 4:6-7

Sometimes I think that there can be a common fear that I hear and that I've also felt in my life is that if I continue to give everything for Jesus, will I have anything left? If I continue to serve more and to give more, if I continue to be generous in the way I forgive people, will I just be left empty? But there is this continued promise that as we follow the ways of Jesus, that we will be nourished, that we will be sustained, that we will have what we need.

But then wait. There's also a warning here to stay away from worthless stories. And I'm going to say told by anyone, stay away from worthless stories. This brought me back to when the first time in high school with one of my brothers, we decided to do a Jillian Michaels workout video. And after enduring, she's just like, kind of mean, to be honest. Like, I'm like, this is not, I think I need to be coddled a little bit when I'm working out and I'm doing intense things. Like I need a little encouragement and she's not encouraging in her style. Right. So it's like 30 minutes of her screaming at you like, come on, faster, faster, faster. And then at the end of it, she's like, and remember, just one piece of pizza erases the whole thing. And I was like, well, I really wanted pizza for lunch. So that's unfortunate.

But that is the reality. And we all know is that just adding in exercise to our routine does not necessarily cancel out all the junk that we're also letting enter our system. And now we're not going to really get into diet and all that right now because I still love my pizza. But what I'm saying is this, and what we can see from this text is this: Paul is saying, yes, as you follow me, you will be nourished. But you also have to make sure that you're continuing to nourish yourself and not also fill yourself with all of this toxicity, with all of this negativity, with all of this poison and this sin and these things that are leading you farther away from Jesus.

And so many times we wonder why it's like, I'm exercising, I'm doing the thing, but we're still eating the pizza and we're eating the cake. And we're like, well, why don't I feel better? Some things have got to go if we want to grow more into the likeness of who Jesus is. Some things we're going to have to subtract in order to make way and to make room for him to do what he wants to do in our lives.

Paul is saying to Timothy, nourishment is promised to come. But we also have to make way to receive that.

Practice is the pathway

The next I want to talk about is that practice is the pathway to becoming like Jesus.

For bodily training is just slightly beneficial, but godliness is beneficial for all things since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. It is trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance. For it is for this we labor and strive because we have set our hope on the living God who is the Savior of all mankind, especially of believers.

1 Timothy 4:8-10

I love this. It says just slightly beneficial. Now, stewarding our bodies is important and it's good. So this is not a like hop out of like we don't have to be good stewards of our bodies. That's not what this is at all. But it's saying like that is just a slight, like slightly beneficial to you. What's really beneficial to you is the spiritual nourishment. What's really beneficial for you is to practice being present with Jesus because we're getting ready to spend eternity with him.

We're getting ready to spend forever face to face with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. And what do we want that to be like? We get to practice that right here on this side of eternity. But this takes time.

You may, if you've been in church for any amount of time, you may have heard this kind of term like microwave Christianity. And I think it's so good that I feel like I repeat it all the time because we want essentially to stick a pizza roll in the microwave for 30 to 60 seconds. And we want it to come out tasting like a Chicago deep dish pizza, which is the superior pizza in the world, specifically from Luma Nota's. But we want it to come out tasting like it's been cooked, like someone's been intentional with it, right? That there was a process, that there was all of this that went into it. But we're just like, I'm just going to stick it in there and be like 30 seconds done. I want to come out looking like this.

Formation is a process and it takes time. You did not just wake up the way that you are today overnight. Now, here's what we do see in scripture is we see time and time again that, yeah, Jesus comes and he heals people in a moment. But if you read, even when Jesus comes and he encounters them, he heals them. There's usually a next step.

Zacchaeus is a great example of this. He goes and he meets with him and he spends time with him. And then after Zacchaeus is like, "Lord, I'm going to surrender to you," he then says, "Now go, right? Sell all your possessions, give them to the poor." And he does this. There was always this like response to what Jesus did. It was never this just like zap, microwave, you're good to go. But there is a process to becoming like Jesus that we need to lean into. It takes time and it takes practice.

Practically, what does this look like for us? I want to talk about the three practices that we really want to continue to lean into as a church. And the first is this, that we would be people that daily hear from God. Through scripture, through prayer. And you're going to see that in our Daily Rhythms journal every day. We have a place to say, what does it look like for us to start our days with scripture?

And I love to think of scripture as sometimes it can be overwhelming to be like, why do we read the Bible? What does it actually do to us? And one of the things that I love to think of it like this is like you're opening your day with having a conversation with God and you're letting God take the lead. When you open scripture and you start to read his words, you're letting him start the conversation with you for the rest of the day.

Starting with scripture is a way that we can start by just dwelling and sitting with God and his presence. There's different ways that we can pray scripture. If you're reading the Psalms, those are these prayers and honest conversations that people had. I often think of Mary in the gospels where we read of the story where she sat at Jesus's feet and listened to his words. And I think we can read scripture and be like, what would that be like? Well, we can do that every single day. We can open our Bibles and we can listen to the teachings of Jesus.

So here's a couple of just practical tips because as we talk about this, I don't want to just, you know, preach, but I want us to walk away too with the next step to be like, now, what do we do with this? How do we practice this? Start with the gospel. If you've never read scripture before, we actually have at the welcome table, these little brown booklets that you can grab and it just has the gospel stories. Start there. Just read a story a day. Pray the Psalms every day. Read a Psalm is another great place to start. This helps us give language to how we can communicate with God through prayer.

Because the next thing is daily talk to God. Practice talking to God and praying. Prayer is our pathway to friendship and intimacy with Jesus. Prayer is talking to God. It's our way to grow our dependency on him because it's vulnerable. Like when we come to God and sometimes we're just talking, sometimes we're just sitting, sometimes we're with him. But sometimes we're asking him to do things in our life. And that's a little vulnerable to ask for help, to depend on someone else. Prayer is a way we grow our friendship, we grow our dependency.

And then the last thing is to daily have a practice where we're surrendering to God. And this is what we encourage everyone to end the day in what's called the examine prayer. And the examine is a time that we go through. And if you open these journals, it'll kind of guide you through where we talk about replaying our days with God. Of sitting down and talking to Jesus and just talking about our day. And after that, going into a time where we really reflect on it. Where we pay attention to what did we feel today? Was there stress? Was there joy? Was there excitement? And then we go into a daily time of repentance where we take time to say, "God, is there any way that I have turned away from you today that I need to ask forgiveness and turn back to you?" And then finally ending a time and rejoicing and gratitude.

And we do this daily because in the same way that you didn't just wear what you're wearing today, sometimes we can wake up in life and we're like, yeah, how did I become so selfish? Or how did I become so angry? How did I become so addicted to this, this, and this? And it's a result of small daily decisions that you have made yesterday that led you to where you are today.

So if we daily can take time to sit at the feet of Jesus, daily ask for forgiveness, repent of our sins, daily have moments where we say like, "God, like, where am I feeling stressed?" So we don't just wake up one day overwhelmed by the anxiety and the weight and the things that we have, we want to daily practice paying attention and being present with God through examine and confession and gratitude.

Implementation

So what does it look like for us to start doing this? Well, here's a few things to kind of sum up some of the stuff we're talking about. We are always becoming. We're always becoming. And the practices that we can choose to engage with can help us become like Jesus.

Transformation, though, it does require some intentionality. Which is why as a church, every single year we start by talking about these practices. Why we keep going back to the daily rhythms and the small things is because becoming like Jesus doesn't happen accidentally, but intentionally. And recognizing that proximity is not enough. That you could show up here week after week after week and you could be around Jesus. You could start to learn a lot about Jesus. But until you start opening up your Bible, praying, spending time with Jesus, allowing him to come and transform your life, it's only going to be proximity. But you were created to encounter his presence and to have his presence dwell within you. There's so much more than just proximity.

So the first kind of step that I want to invite you into is this week to start to examine your daily rhythms. To really reflect on the things you do and what are they doing to you. And if you don't know, ask God. Talk to God. Be like, "God, what are these things doing to me? My daily rhythms."

The next thing is that you start to make a plan, and our rule of life workbook will walk you through this as our hope is that every single person will start to establish your own kind of what are my practices? What are the things that I do? It's just start where you are, not where you hope to be.

And I always love to talk about this because you recognize if you were to look around this room, we are all in different life stages and ages and our circumstances look completely different. So the way that I spend time with Jesus every single day is going to look different than the way that you spend time with Jesus every single day. We don't work at the same job. We don't have the same commute. We don't have the same living situations or the same family dynamics. It's going to look different and that's good and that's beautiful.

So don't look at somebody else and say, I want my life with Jesus to look like them. But look at where are you at and what does your life look like following Jesus? But at the same time, don't let your age or your stage of life be an excuse. I think that it's so easy to be like, well, I'm too busy or I have this or I have that, so I can't. But rather than saying that, look at how can I center the life that I do have around Jesus.

So maybe you're not in a stage where it's like, I'm waking up and I got 45 minutes. But maybe you're waking up and you're like, I can wake up 10 minutes earlier than I was before so that I can be in the word and that I can pray. What are the things that you have to do?

One of the things that I love in the scripture that we read in verse 10:

For it is for this we labor and strive because we have set our hope on the living God who is the Savior of all mankind, especially of believers.

1 Timothy 4:10

We practice for the present life and also for the life to come. And one of the ways that we do that is we can be intentional to set our hope on Jesus. This word here is so proactive. In the same way that we set our alarms, we can set our attention and our gaze to look at Jesus. And I think for many of us today, that might be the invitation is to not just keep going to sleep every night and say, I'm going to wake up when I wake up and we'll just see what happens. But to set our attention on Jesus, to make a decision, to choose to look in his direction, to become like him.

So what does it look like for us to examine our daily rhythms? To start where we're at? To create that space to meet with Jesus? And then to involve community and involve other people? And this is why we have things like this put in place as a church. This is why we gather on Sundays and we gather in communities to do this together. And so I'm going to invite the worship team to come back up as we get ready to close today.

And really going back to that why of why do we do the things that we do? Well, ultimately it's to become more like Jesus. That is why. We want to become more like Jesus. This isn't just so that we can be busier. This isn't just so that we can have more things on our to-do list or that we can check off like, yes, I have New Year's goals and resolutions. But it's to be more like Jesus.

Jesus who took time to be present with people. Jesus who showed compassion to those around him. Jesus who made way for justice when other people are looking to condemn people. Jesus who gave his life willingly on the cross. Jesus who's love is patient. He's kind. He's not envious. He doesn't delight in evil, but he rejoices with the truth.

We want to become more like Jesus. And in order to do that, we have to set our gaze, our attention to him. We have to start to practice.

Now, I love in the first passage we read that we've been centering around these past couple of weeks as well in Matthew 7. And it's where the name of our church came from with this idea of how do we not be people that just show up on Sundays and we hear about Jesus, but we truly practice the ways of Jesus. And I think about like when you show up to practice, there's a different level of safety that you have than when it's like game day. Because on game day, you're like, everybody's watching. I have to win. I have to perform. I have to be my best. So it's a little scarier to take risks. It's a little scarier to try something you've never tried before. But at practice, there's this safety where you're like, I'm just working on getting better. I'm just working on doing the next thing.

And so when we talk about all of this, the invitation that I sense for us is how can we be people that we practice the ways of Jesus? That we show up unafraid to try, unafraid to give it all that we got. Knowing that the goal is for us to just get one step closer, one step closer, one step closer to being like Jesus.

I want to invite you to stand with us today as we just kind of close in this time of worship and prayer. And the invitation that I send for us is as we look at what does it look like for us to practice these things for both the present life and the life that is to come. And I think that the first thing is is recognizing that before we start to look at what we need to add, that there's some things that need to be removed from our life.

And so I want to just invite you to take a moment and to just close your eyes and to just center your attention on Jesus. And I want you to think with both the present life that you're living and the life, the eternal life that is promised, what are things that you need to put away? And to even invite the Holy Spirit right now: Holy Spirit, would you show me? Is there anything that I need to put away? Anything that I'm doing, any places that I'm looking that's leading me farther from you? And so Holy Spirit, we just invite you now in this moment. Would you show us? Is there anything?

And then would you just invite the Holy Spirit to just show you: is there anything that you really need to be intentional to practice? Are there areas that you have just been waking up when you wake up and you're not setting an alarm? You're not being intentional? Would you just ask the Holy Spirit to speak and just show you that right now?

God, we just thank you so much of that reminder today that we're not just living for this present moment, but for the promised life that is to come. And I want to create space that if you are here and you have never actually made that decision to follow Jesus. When Jesus met his disciples along the way, the first thing that he did is he invited them to just be with him and to follow him. But every single person that encountered Jesus had a moment where they made a decision to say, yeah, I want to follow you. And to follow the lead of Jesus means to not follow the lead of everything else in our lives.

And so if you're here today and you're like, yeah, I want to follow Jesus, scripture tells us that if we believe in our hearts that he's Lord and we confess with our mouths his death and resurrection, that we can be saved. That we can have access to eternal life with him. And so if that's you today, I just want to invite you that even now you can just say, "Lord, I'm turning away from everything else. I'm not following the lead. Forgive me of my sins, forgive me for the ways that I have followed anything other than you. And just confess with your mouth, say, Lord, I'm choosing to follow you right here, right now." And this is the first, yes, this moment of surrender that then leads to this lifetime of following Jesus and an eternity with him. And if you're here today and maybe you're like, yeah, I'm waking up and I don't love what I find when I wake up. And you're just like, "Yeah, I need again to just have a moment of saying, Lord, come show me any way that I'm not living for you. Repent, turn towards him again." I want to give you space to do that as well.

So Holy Spirit, would you just continue to be so present with us in this space as you have already been? I ask, Lord, that if there are ways that we just need to receive your healing and even your grace and just that encouragement, that we don't have to stay the same. Would you help us to receive that? Would you help us to be reminded that the decisions that we make today, although we might not fully see the impact, can lead us closer to you and to your likeness? God, would you continue to show us what it looks like to not just live day to day, stumbling upon life, trying to survive until we get to heaven? But would you show us what it looks like to follow you, to practice your ways, to live for not just this present moment, but for the life that is to come? Knowing that someday we will see you face to face.

And so we set our hope on you, Jesus. We set our gaze upon you, Jesus. We lift high your name, trusting that as we look to you, that you will lead us. So we trust you as our leader.