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If you've got your Bibles with you, and I hope you do, I want to invite invite you to open them up with me this morning to Genesis.
Chapter twelve is where we are going to be.
Great way to start off our morning.
This past week, we had another great time.
Our middle schoolers and high schoolers got together for our summer retreat.
I had a blast.
I was able to go, I'm still one of the old guys that they'll let come.
My wife is one of the young ladies that they'll let come with us.
I'm one of the old guys, and so I'm exhausted.
Robin Fry stopped me in the hallway.
I guess she could see it on me.
She's like, how are you doing?
Are you okay?
No, I'm not.
I hurt.
Every part of me hurts.
I was the body surfing guy out there this week, right?
And what I tried to explain to the kids, I mean, typically I rode the waves a little bit farther than they did, right?
And they're like, how do you do it, McDonald's?
Right?
You get this gravity on you, right?
And then the wave just grabs you and pulls you.
And it was really good.
But what I realized is, man, doing nothing in the ocean is a lot now.
That's where I am in life.
But we had a great time, and Joel Van Ham and his team of adults did a wonderful, wonderful job.
The entire time that we were there, the kids had a great time, and it was just a blast.
I do want to share with you kind of my highlight.
There's a lot of cool things that happened spiritually, and I want to encourage all the parents who were here this morning, if you haven't already, please take the time to debrief with your kid about what they were taught, what they.
Learned, what they process.
We had worship every evening.
I spoke every evening.
The kids had quiet times.
One of the coolest things that I watched them do was high school students led small groups.
So us as adults, we were just kind of there.
But they kind of took that and led that, and then it was really cool.
We started off each night's message by just talking about, what did you learn.
In your quiet time?
How did God speak to you?
What did you learn in your small group?
And to hear them challenge each other and speak truth to one another and listen to the Lord was just an extreme blessing.
But when we take away all the spiritual stuff all right, my highlight.
Joel and Joel.
So Burger and Van Ham had the idea of doing a neon dance party with our kids, so they challenged them to come and bring neon.
And so they brought neon.
And then in the area where we had worship, there was blacklights and there was glow sticks and all this kind of stuff.
And then Joel Van Ham got to do, I think, what just blessed his heart extremely.
He got to be the DJ for the night, right?
And so there were songs that were played throughout and kids were dancing.
And here's what I noticed that happened.
The kids way outnumbered the adults.
And as the night started off, you saw kids dancing.
And then what progressed throughout the evening was the adults out there breaking it down like it was 1992 all over again.
Right now I want to share and I'll call out a couple of people.
You had people like me, Brent Hawkins and Tijuana Dennis, and we've mastered this one dance move.
You want me show it to you?
So for like 45 minutes, this is the three of us now.
I knew where Tuana was.
Brent drifted off.
I think he might have had to go lay down and take a nap or something.
I don't know.
Music was too loud for him.
But we had this motion going on.
But I'm going to tell you all, that group of adults that got out there and boogied, all right, they were barely Baptist with how they were dancing.
That's all I'm saying, right?
They were just losing their mind out there and it was wonderful.
And what we also found out, I'll share.
This is our very own Leah Bush.
Stop her.
After church.
When someone has a talent, they like to show it and bless you with it.
She can wrap every word of Crisscross jump.
All right?
So if that late 80s, early 90s was your season, leah is your entertainment at your next birthday party.
All right?
Just invite her.
Give her a microphone, a karaoke machine, and turn her loose.
My wife came up to me that night.
She's like, you need to listen to Leah, all right?
Next day, Leah's like, oh, yeah, watch this going over there, right?
And she rapped.
And I just went because that's what I do.
All right, here we go.
I don't know how we get these places where we're going sometimes, but it's my fault, I admit that.
All right, so we're in Genesis, chapter twelve, and last Sunday we were introduced to a man named Abram, who will become Abraham.
And we're going to kind of hang a little bit back in the passage we looked at last week.
We're going to look at a few verses ahead of that as well.
But this is really important that we kind of lend on understanding who Abram is because he will become Abraham and he is a very significant individual in the Bible and still today.
All right?
So we've looked and we've seen significant people so far, and at most, maybe their life covers a couple of chapters.
But for Abram, who will become Abraham, which, by the way, let me just where we are reading, he is Abram.
But if I slip up and say Abraham, I'm talking about the same person.
Okay?
So Abram in the Bible, his life is going to be covered the details of him in Genesis from the end of Genesis eleven, where he's mentioned in the genealogy all the way to his death in Genesis chapter 25.
So we're not talking about just a couple of chapters here.
We're talking about a man of significance in this telling of the narrative in Genesis in Hebrews chapter eleven, which is commonly referred to as the hall of Faith.
It's looking at these Old Testament men and women and their faithfulness to the Lord and that they were saved by their faith and belief of who God is.
And so we see in this hall of Faith chapter, all right, noah, which we've talked about him, okay?
He gets verse seven.
That's what he gets, which is one more verse than you or I have gotten.
So it's not a critique on Noah.
Noah gets verse seven, abraham gets verses eight through 19.
All right?
So we're seeing that this man is important in Matthew's genealogy of Jesus.
It begins with Abraham.
We can't just go through and say, let's take a Sunday and look at Abraham.
This is very important for us.
He's significant in the world.
He's significant then in the world.
He's significant now in the world.
Three major world religions trace their lineage back to Abraham christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
So he's a name that's known as men and women of Christian faith gather.
He's someone who's talked about as people of other false religions gather.
He's talked about.
He's a man of significance in, in the time we, we met Abram.
The Bible gives us some some details and we're going to look at some of these more.
But what I want to remind ourselves is this in the time that we meet him, the Bible tells us that he and his wife are without child.
The Bible describes his wife Sarah as baron, and he's 75 years old, he's wealthy, he comes from a prominent family of resource and influence.
And we'll talk about this in two, in just a moment.
He's a pagan.
He's not a follower of God.
He's not someone that as we would.
Have looked through the genealogy, if God was revealing it in the way that.
He did before with Enoch and with Noah, that we would not have seen during these pre.
Genesis twelve.
Moments in his life that are that are not recorded for us, that we can gather from scripture, would have been a man who was marked in those chapters as Abram walked with God.
That's not what we have seen.
So let's jump in Genesis twelve, one through three.
Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your Father's house to the land that I will show you and I will make of you a great nation.
And I will bless you, and I will make your name great so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you, I will curse.
And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
And so what we get here is that God makes a covenant.
God makes a covenant.
It's easy for us as we go through, especially when we deal with individuals like Abraham in scripture to kind of draw and narrow down our lens and do this wonderful life study of him and learn so many things from his life.
And we are going to do that and begin to think that in the narrative of scripture, at least in the narrative of these chapters from chapter eleven to chapter 25 of Genesis, that Abraham is the focus, that Abraham is the main character, that this story is the story of Abraham, but it's not.
It's the story of God, just like every other page of this book is the story of God in God's name.
And so Abraham doesn't come to God.
And try to leverage a promise.
God comes to Abraham and makes a.
Covenant, makes a promise.
Now, Abram in this time, as we've previously stated, is a pagan man living in a pagan land, part of a pagan family we see later.
I believe it is in Joshua.
I think I could be wrong with that.
I'll check and follow up later.
But where it says that he followed, that he and his fathers followed pagan little g gods.
Not seeking the Lord, but God calls him a little subpoint for us all.
A little subpoint for that friend that, you know, a little sub point for that neighbor that you care for, a little subpoint for that family member that you're so desperately crying out for their.
Salvation is this you're never too far.
From God for God to decide to use you.
Like you could argue you don't get farther than where Abram was.
But yet God chose to use him.
God decided to use him.
And in that, what's important for us is God makes a covenant.
God makes a promise that God will fulfill in his life and through the generations.
God makes this covenant that God will fulfill.
Now, Abraham's going to be Abram's, going to be called to obedience.
But still, the story of God, he said that he's going to build a great nation.
The story of God's people.
He says that he's going to make a great name for Abram.
Two thirds of the world claim their faith from him.
He says that he's going to bless all the families through him.
It's going to come from Jesus.
That's the whole point of the genealogy.
That's the blessing of the world.
That's where it comes from, not because Abraham is something, but because God is something and Jesus is something and it's going to come through Abraham that we see.
And we see this missionary heart of God that we don't have to wait the Matthew 28 to find out about.
But God right here, it says that you're going to be a blessing to all peoples, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
And that's what we see from God.
So God scattered the people at Babel that we talked about a few weeks ago and gave them languages in that moment.
And he does that so that he can show his greatness and that his name can be known because he's going.
To sin and he's going to multiply and he's going to allow us to go and we're going to scatter.
But this time we're not going to scatter with the things that are different.
But we're going to scatter with the gospel, to take the gospel to the nations.
But also in God's covenant, in all.
Of the work that God is going to do, in all of the work that God is doing, there is still.
A call to obedience.
God says to abram.
Go from your country, go from your kindred, go from your Father's house, is.
What he tells him.
We talked about this last week, that obedience is costly, it cost things to follow the Lord.
Yes, we leave behind our sin, we leave behind our shame, we leave behind the seeking of the evil that's there.
But oftentimes God says, if you're going to walk with me, you've got to walk and you've got to leave the.
Things or even you feel are comfortable.
Good, or even the things that you believe are the blessings of your life.
And so he calls Him to do that.
In all that God is going to do, god is not dependent on Abrams obedience, but God calls Him to this in his promise with Him.
And Jesus does the same with us.
John 14 jesus says, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments.
There's this piece of who we are, of what God is doing.
And because God is doing this, our response is obedience.
Get this.
It's not that we obey so that God will do his promises.
It's that God does his promises.
And in response to his goodness, his greatness, his holiness, his kindness, his compassion, his mercy, we obey.
And when we don't, God is still all of those things and all of those things to us.
So the promises of God are not removed from the commandments of God, but the promises of God are fully dependent on the character of God.
God does what he says he will do always.
But God also calls us to live in obedience as we live in his faithfulness.
This is our part.
This is who he's called us to be.
And we can have some misunderstandings as we approach this walk with God, god saves us.
God gives us the promises of who we are, right?
And then we respond to him in that.
And the two things that we begin to fail in this in our mindset of who God is is we begin to elevate ourselves and and think too highly of ourselves in some aspect that God can only work if I'm on the team, that God can only get these things done if he has guys like me.
That's there, right?
Instead of no God's working and God's moving.
And has God worked and moved in your life?
Well, yes and amen.
And then if God's worked and moved in your life, then what you have in you is the Holy Spirit of God that changes you and transforms you and causes you to look at life, to look at things, to look at situations differently.
And our response to him is an ever growing momentum and tide of obedience to Him as a result of that.
And not well, I get it, all right, so now God will promise not I get it, all right?
So now God can work.
But we also begin to live in this misunderstanding also.
That my obedience because God is this all powerful, all working, all knowing that my obedience can just simply be situational, that I get to pick and choose, that I get to check the box, that there's moments of my life that can be marked by God and then moments of life, my life that don't have to be.
Instead of the command to go, right, our command to go is very similar.
To abram's call to go.
Now, we're not Abram, but it's not like, hey, go, put your head down, follow this map.
And the going is getting from point A to point B.
When God calls us to go and make disciples.
That's not it.
It's not go and journey through your life doing whatever you want to do and when you get the B, then you make disciples.
It's this mindset of as you live your life.
Follow me.
And that's what we're going to see through these chapters.
It's at this journey and journey we're not going to find chapter to chapter is not Abram jumping from worship service to worship service, mission project to mission project, small group to small group like it's Abram journeying on a Sunday through Saturday in his life following God.
I told the kids this week and.
I told them, parents, if you disagreed with this, if they shared this with you, that I would take the phone calls.
All right, here's what we talked about.
We talked about a little bit of this one.
Let me flush it out.
We talked about prioritizing god.
Here's what I told him and then let me explain.
I said, don't make God a priority.
I said one of the most dangerous.
Things that we can do as followers.
Of Jesus is create a list of priorities and put God number one.
I've heard this a thousand times.
God number one, my spouse number two, my family, number three.
My church, number four.
My job, number five, my friends, number six.
And then we continue on and on.
And on with the list.
And I said to them, I said, please do not make God a priority.
Because here's what happens when we make God our priority, a priority that God becomes situational.
And so I can come and I can look at that list and I can say God number one.
Well, on a Tuesday, here's what that looks like.
Quiet time, check.
Great thing, check.
Prayer, check.
Read my Bible.
Check.
Listen to a podcast, check.
Listen to nothing but Christian music, check.
Like I can check all of these boxes and then walk away from that and go, look how I prioritized God in the list of my priorities.
But now what that says is that he is separate from all of these.
So what I said to them was do not make God a priority.
Make God the priority.
And then here's what happens when God is the priority.
Then what God brings in to who he is is my wife, my kids, my family, my church, my friends, my job.
All of those things are brought in into this because my eyes and my focus are on Him.
And I want to go and I want to follow Him.
And now I don't check the box with Him, just like I don't check the box with my wife, just like I don't check the box with my kids.
But he is the priority.
And then he is good.
He is gracious and what he allows and what he blesses because he is not a number on a list, but he is the list.
Every part of the list is Him.
And Him alone to the glory of his name.
And then my obedience cannot be situational because every situation is filled with Christ.
Let's keep reading verse four.
So Abram went as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him.
Abram was 75 years old when he departed from her on.
So we see that God makes a covenant and Abram is going to make something here.
And we looked at this verse last week and we see his obedience in this and we'll talk more.
But there's also what happens here is.
Abram makes a compromise here in verse four.
I don't want to belittle what he does because he takes a step of faith, a huge step of faith.
But in his step of faith, there's a compromise.
All right?
So let's look at it.
Leave your country, check.
Leave your home, check.
Leave your family.
Now, I'm going to take a lot.
With me.
Just this small little compromise that we find here.
And what we're going to see as we continue to read through in the weeks to come is that taking Lot with Him will cause some problems for him.
And what we begin to understand as we look at this obedience to the Lord is this that small compromises can create big problems.
And this will be a theme of the life of Abram.
These little small compromises from what God has called him to do will bring big conflict, big problems in his life.
God says, do this and Abram will.
But with just this little compromise, right?
But God calls us to something different.
God calls for a divide.
We were old, now we're new.
We were dead.
Now that we are alive, we were of this world and now we're of him.
And there's this divide that we flee.
From what is evil and cling to what is good.
Here's the part that I know I know I struggle with.
And I feel like if I struggle.
With it, I'm not the only person in the room who struggles with this as well is this.
I understand flee from evil and cling to good.
But here's what I wrestle with in my life, spiritually, in my obedience to him, is the surrender that God gets to decide what is evil and what is good.
Not me.
And when I begin to define what is evil and what is good, here are the things that begin to come from me.
Is it really that bad?
I mean, just this once.
I mean, it hasn't really affected me before.
And as much as we think adults in the room, this is only things that teenagers say.
We may not vocalize this, but I'm going to tell you, you feel it and I feel it and we think it and it's this.
Everyone else is doing it right?
And that's the compromise that's you and I deciding.
No, this is what is good and.
These are the things that I can do.
Now, these may not be the things.
That we directly say, but these statements.
Oftentimes describe the conditions of our obedience to God.
And Lord, I'm going to obey you under my conditions.
Lord, I'm going to obey you, but.
When I do, it's going to be with compromise.
And we see we don't miss the obedience of Abram, but we do begin to see these little pieces of rebellion.
We begin to see these little pieces of this is what I'm going to do that just become more and more with him.
Let's continue on verse four through nine.
So Abram went as the Lord had told him, and Lott went with him.
Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran.
And Abram took Sarah, his wife, and Lott his brother's son, and all their possessions they had gathered and the people that they had acquired in Haran.
And they set out to go to the land of Canaan.
And when they came to the land of Canaan, abram passed through the land to the place at Shahim, to the oak at Marie.
At that time, the Canaanites were in the land.
And this is a verse, verse seven.
This is an underline.
This is a highlight in in your Bible.
Then the Lord, then the Lord appeared.
To Abram and hence and said to your offspring, I will give this land.
75 years old wife, baron is what the Bible tells us.
And the Lord appeared to abram.
This is such a big verse as we studied his life, to your offspring I will give this land.
Let's pause, we're going to jump back here in the next verse in just a moment.
I don't know that we understand what this means for Abram, that here in this, he begins to feel I'm not too old.
The Lord is true, there will be generations from me, not because of what Abram can do, but because who God is.
We talked with the kids this week at retreat about worship.
In that worship, as we talked through, we looked at the mind, we looked at the heart, look at the spirit in worship.
And we define worship as this.
It's not just the outside doing things, it may feel that way.
Sing outside, raise your hands outside.
Clap a little bit outside if you're like me, I like this way a little bit right outside.
But it's not just the outside, but it's what's in you, in your very soul, in your very being coming from you.
Not because of who you are, but because of who God is.
Not because of what you and I are capable of, but because of what God is doing and what God has promised and what we have our faith in that he is going to do.
That's why so many things that we sing about are future events.
Because we know, because of his faithfulness.
So back verse seven.
So he built there an altar to.
The Lord who had appeared to him.
From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the east, on the west, I'm sorry, an Ae on the east.
And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord.
And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.
And what we see here as God speaks this to Abram is Abram makes a commitment.
Abram makes a commitment.
He's made a compromise.
Yes, but he makes a commitment.
And this is what I love.
When we study the scripture and we read about men and women of faith, there's things they get wrong, there's things they get right.
The only person in scripture that gets it all right is Jesus, right?
And so we can identify, we can look from this.
So here's a man who made a compromise, but God is still faithful, right?
God didn't go, no, you messed it up.
So now you're done.
I'm just going to let you just hang out here and die in the wilderness, right?
No, that's not what God does.
God doesn't say, well, I'm going to forget my plans and my promises.
The Lord appears to him in spite of his compromise and says, this is what I'm going to do.
And Abram stops, and he makes a commitment to the Lord.
And what he does in this commitment, he does three things literally in Scripture.
The first thing he does is he goes to the land God has for him.
He trusts God.
He didn't jump on his phone and figure it out.
We left Myrtle Beach.
My family did.
I had to stay a little bit longer for a meeting, and we didn't.
Drive all the way home.
Guess where we went?
Buckies.
I love now how you can say we were leaving Myrtle Beach and, like, where do you think we go?
And no one said, like, the Pavilion.
Right?
Or like a wax theater or whatever.
They're like, oh, man, you went to Buckies.
You went to Florence.
Yes, we did.
I just put that thing in my phone, set it down, and it took me there.
Right?
That's not what Abram does.
He follows God.
He trusts God.
And just like you and I, he doesn't.
He hasn't and he will not do this perfectly, but he does it with a heart of surrender.
What made David a man after God's own heart?
David, who commits sins that you and.
I cannot possibly imagine for most of us.
But what makes him a man after God's own heart?
It's his repentance and his surrender and his love.
And this is what we see the willingness of obedience and the grace that God gives Abram and the grace that God gives us.
God, in his goodness and his righteousness does not write him off because he brought lot with him.
God will instead take Abram through a series of struggles that will sharpen abram because of his compromise, because he brought God with him.
This is the God works all things for the good, for those who love Him.
Oftentimes we cling to, and it's rightfully so in moments of suffering.
But God uses all things, even our.
Sin, as we seek to grow in Him.
That makes no sense.
Let me give you an example of this.
I meet weekly with a group of men from our church, and one of.
The things that I love, that we do in this group, and it's organically, it happens in conversation, but we confess our sins, we share our struggles.
We talk about, these are the battles that I have.
And then in doing that, we don't affirm one another's sins.
All right?
That's what the world wants us to do.
That's what the world's all about.
You got to sin.
Let me affirm you.
Nah, it's good.
You got to make your own decisions.
You got to get your bumps and bruises.
No, that's from h***.
We don't affirm one another.
We challenge one another.
We remind each other of God's grace.
We talk about how we've seen victory.
We've talked about how we've overcome and.
In spite of our foolishness in our sin, time and time again, what we see is how God is faithful again and again and again.
And so he goes, he goes and God's faithful.
The second thing that he does, he claims the inheritance God has for him.
God says, this is what I'm going to do.
Abram says, I'm all in on it.
I'm all in on it.
He does two things that may seem strange for us, but they come with meaning here.
Number one, what he does, as he claims this inheritance for himself, it says that he pitched his tent, okay?
He didn't build a house.
He didn't create a compound by now.
It says that in Haran that they got those that they acquired in Haran.
So there's this small to large community of people that are going with him, and instead, he doesn't say, like, let's cut down some trees.
Like, let's figure this out.
I don't know what it's like to build a house there, but that's not what he's doing.
What he does is he pitches a tent there in this land, establishing that this tent is what nomads would use.
He's saying, I'm still a stranger in this world.
While he sees, while he has all that God has promised him, he knows that above all, what he truly has is God.
It's God.
God is the promise giver, and God is the promise in here.
And that this world, that Abram is a stranger, that he's a sojourner in this world.
First, Peter 211 shares with us that, beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles, to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul.
Peter's talking in this passage of scripture, and he's like, understand this.
For however long you are here, for however long the Lord grants you days on this earth.
You'Re a souljourner.
You're a foreigner in a foreign land.
What you need to display, what needs to be shown of you is who you are and where you're from, from the Lord.
And so what Abram does the second thing here is he builds an altar.
He builds an altar.
I don't know if this was a thing.
This will probably really date me, but remember, sometime in your life, if you're over the age of 35, okay, whether.
It was carved into a tree or.
Written on a textbook you wrote, your name.
Was here, right?
Raise your hand if you've ever done it.
Raise your hand if you've never done that.
All right?
You're with me, right?
And I can imagine, like, Abrams can't really jump on Instagram and, like, really cool venue, right?
Look at where we're at.
Look at this landscape, right?
I just jumped from generations, right?
See what we did there?
So what does he do when he gets here?
He builds an altar and says that this is about the devotion to the Lord, and that my inheritance.
God says, a people god says a name, but Abrams says, but it's about the Lord, and it's what we're going to see.
As from this nation, from these people, there will come a blessing.
And the blessing is Jesus.
The last thing.
He keeps moving.
All right comes the Lord shows him.
The Lord tells him, he builds a tent, he builds an altar, and then it says he keeps moving.
I love this.
As I read this this morning and thinking about this and here's just kind of the reminder that it gives me.
Abraham Abram doesn't look at this step of obedience and the affirmation of God and think, I've arrived.
Right.
Taking steps of faith is huge.
One of the things that if I.
Could challenge you as a follower of Jesus, and if you were to ask me, like, like, bo, what do I need to do next?
My answer to you would be, man.
Just take another step.
I haven't moved very far.
I just go from here to here.
And that's these small steps of obedience is what we see.
And it can be common for us that when we make commitments, that when we take these steps of faith, at the end of that, to feel, man, like, I did all of these things, look at me, pat me on the back.
I can't do anymore.
I'm good.
I'm done.
I'm just going to hang here.
And then what we notice is we've stayed in this same little circle of faith our entire life because we can have this feeling that we've arrived.
But Abram doesn't arrive.
He just keeps falling.
God, it's not, nope, I'm good.
I'm just going to stay right here and here's.
The problem with the church, us, just as many fingers pointed at me as.
You, is that we can have the tendency to hit a mark of spiritual maturity.
Look at those around us and think, I've arrived and I don't need to grow anymore.
But that's not what we see in commitment.
So he's going to keep moving physically, literally.
This man just continues to journey on, and he asks the question, and it's a question you need to ask God yourself.
God, where do you want me to go?
May I not be comfortable in anywhere that I'm at and in my comfort?
Create an idol in the space where I find myself?
But, God, where do you want me to go?
So we literally need to keep moving physically and then second, to keep moving spiritually.
God, as I go where you want me to go, god, the second piece of that is, who do you desire for me to become?
What areas of my life do I need to begin to work at and work at and work at?
What areas of my life do I need to continue to bathe in prayer for you?
What areas of my life do I need to daily wake up and remind myself of that?
You've given me victory in these even though I'm fighting the battle, Lord, and pray and plead with you that you would give me the strength to overcome even in this temptations that I face.
So he keeps moving physically and spiritually.
We got a long time that we're going to be with abram and God is so good and that you and I live in a reality physically and spiritually because God, in Genesis, chapter twelve, came to this man and from the lineage of this man, sent Jesus, who died on the cross to save us of our sins, and then mobilized a group of missionaries all over the world to make his name great.
And so whether it was a preacher, a teacher, a parent or a friend, if you're a follower of Christ, somebody sat down with you and said, hey, let me tell you about Jesus, would you pray with me?
Lord, we come to you this morning, Lord, just thanking You, Lord, for this past week that we had to be able to get away with these students.
And Lord, I thank you so much for a church that prioritizes the generations that will come.
And the pouring in financially into them, pouring in spiritually into them.
So that we can continue on.
Passing on and seeing generation after generation of faithfulness and faithfulness.
Lord, I thank you for Your promises, I thank you for Your promise of us in Christ, for salvation.
I thank you that you are the promise, you are the promise giver and you are the promise that in Christ we have you, a relationship with you.
We are at ODS with you, we are at war with you, we are dead in our trespasses and sins we're now made alive in Christ or that's not what we've done, it's not what we're capable of, that's not what we can earn, but it's what You've done.
And so Lord, we thank you that you and you alone are in this book and are the focus is the point.
And, God, I pray that as we journey through this life, going after you and following you, that, Lord, we we do.
I daily make compromises.
And in my compromise, Lord, you not cast me to the side.
But, Lord, in my compromise, you love me enough to use every part of who I am who you are, Lord, to mold me and shape me more and more to who you would have me to be.
And so, Lord, I pray for us a commitment to you because we love you, Lord, that we desire to obey you because we love you, Lord we desire to see change in our lives because we love you, Lord we desire to have Your message on our tongues, to be able to share with those who we know and we love.
And Lord, those who we don't know either, and that we will go.
Whatever you take us, we will go.
We will become whatever you've called us to become.
Not for our name, not for our sake, not for our glory, but for your name, your sake and your glory.
And it's in Jesus and we pray.
Thanks again for listening, and be sure to check back next week for another episode.
In the meantime, you can visit us@willowridgechurch.org or by searching for Willow Ridgechurch on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.