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Northview Church in Kodak, TN exists to point people to the love of Jesus Christ and help people fall in love with Jesus and love others.
So, we're back this morning in the book of James. We've been in James for a while and it took a short break. Now, we're we're hitting that home stretch. We're going to finish James. We're going to be in it through July and wrap that up.
Pastor Greg:So, I know James is is beat us up. James is a difficult book to to work through. It has challenged me and those of you who've been with us through the majority of this, I trust that it has challenged you as well because he pulls no punches, does he? He just hits you right where you need to be hit and it hurts sometimes what he's saying because it's a mirror that is shining on us. There's a pastor down in Houston, Texas You've probably seen him on TV.
Pastor Greg:You probably instantly know who I'm talking about. He's got that big, toothy grin, preaches in a stadium that seats about twenty, twenty five, zero people every week. Goes by the name of Joel Osteen and I'm sure you have heard the name before. This message is not about Joel Osteen but he wrote a book a while back that sold around 30,000,000 copies so far. Pretty influential.
Pastor Greg:He's got the word out of his mission and most of you, you've heard it, you know what it's called, your best life now. The idea is pretty simple. God wants to bless you. He wants you healthy. He wants you wealthy.
Pastor Greg:He wants you to win. And if you believe right, if you stay positive, you keep the faith, god is going to give you everything, the life you've always dreamed of. Now, we're not going to hammer Joel Osteen through this but I wanted that idea to be out there because it's not just on the best seller list. That idea has crept into the church over the last thirty years. It's got into the way that we think about god and how we feel god owes us.
Pastor Greg:Here's the thing, as we dig back in to the letter James wrote who we can all agree is one of the most blunt writers in all of scripture. James has something to say about that idea and honestly what he says is gonna hit some of us right between the eyes. Because the best life now, it is real and it is available to you right now. But it doesn't look anything like what we've been told over the last thirty years it looks like. So, James chapter four, if you got your Bibles, open em up.
Pastor Greg:Scripture will be on the screen as well. Let's dig in and see what James has for us today. Now, before we dig into it, just a little context behind what he's doing here. James doesn't write this in a vacuum. As we've seen the last couple of months, he's been building towards what we're going to look at today for three chapters and in chapter three where we're we were at a few weeks ago as we moved into this break, he just finished talking about two kinds of wisdom and if you remember the wisdom that he talked about was wisdom from heaven and wisdom from the world and he said, the wisdom of the world, what it produces in us is envy, selfish ambition, disorder, and every kind of evil practice.
Pastor Greg:And now he moves into chapter four continuing this letter and he's going to show us exactly what it looks like when it plays out for us in real life. So, James chapter four, we're going to start in verse one. We're going look at just the first part of this verse. What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? James opens this section of the letter with a question.
Pastor Greg:And if James is asking the question, it's a question that needs to be asked. He doesn't just ask it for a random reason. He's asking because this community, they're fighting. Not with the world. They're fighting with each other within the community of believers.
Pastor Greg:They are are these disagreements, these quarrels that are coming up and fights are starting to break out. Arguments are starting to break out. People in the same church, people who say they are followers of Jesus but they're at each other's throats. And if I asked you that question today, what causes quarrels? What causes fights in your life?
Pastor Greg:You could immediately start to point to what's causing them. My wife, she's causing it. We know that's probably not true but she could say, My husband's causing it. My boss is unreasonable. My kids are I'll just leave that one where it's at.
Pastor Greg:That coworker, you don't have to work with them every day. You don't know how bad they get on your nerves or or that situation, it's not going how I planned it all out. So, I'm getting a little frustrated here. We can start pointing fingers saying this is what's causing all those issues and James goes deeper. Because on the surface, it sounds like he's writing to a church because they're fighting but he's writing because of the issue that's causing the fighting.
Pastor Greg:You see this really, while it does have some to do with the disagreement, it has more to do with the heart of what's behind it. The problem isn't out there. The problem is in here. We're the problem. We're the reason that those things come up in our lives.
Pastor Greg:We are the people who were told the good life was available and we went after it with everything we had. Now, I I point the finger and say that's been happening in the church for the last thirty years. It's really been happening longer than that. It's really the definition of the American dream. The good life, it's there.
Pastor Greg:So, we chase it and this message, what James has for us, it's all about what you found when you got there. You see, it's not just an American dream. It's not just a dream at all anymore. For most of us, it's become a demand. It's become an expectation I want to ask you, be honest with yourself in this.
Pastor Greg:You don't have to say it out loud but be honest. What are you chasing right now? Now, this is an idea that we visit fairly often because I believe it's a concept, a thing in our lives that's drawing us away from the lord. What are you chasing right now? Some of you, it's financial.
Pastor Greg:You're working yourselves to death trying to get to this place in life where you feel secure. Trying to get to this place where you don't wake up at two in the morning wondering how are all these bills going to get paid and how am I going to provide for my family and my kids all that they want and all that they need. For some of you has nothing to do with finances. It's purely relational. You need this person to come through for you.
Pastor Greg:You need them to be that spouse or that friend that you want them to be. You need the marriage to feel a certain way. You need to be seen. You need to be appreciated and wanted. You need someone to finally show up the way you need them to show up.
Pastor Greg:For some of you, it's more about who am I? What's my identity? And it it's your career often times. It makes you feel like you matter. Maybe it's your kids or what your identities found in and and how are they doing?
Pastor Greg:What's their achievements? What their what are their grades look like? How are they? Whatever sport they're playing? Are they getting all that they need?
Pastor Greg:What accomplishments have they got? Maybe it's not your kids, it's your education. What's that degree that I'm working towards or I've already earned that's that shows that I've made it. Now, none of that is evil. That's all good things that we should pursue.
Pastor Greg:I want you to get the best education out there. I want your kids to have success. I want you to see financial success and I definitely want to see your marriage succeed. The problem isn't in wanting it, it's where we take the wanting. So, he continues in the second part of that first verse.
Pastor Greg:He's already asked us where are these quarrels coming from and he says, don't they come from the evil desires at war within you? Verse two, you want what you don't have. So, you scheme and kill to get it. Now, that's pretty extreme right there. I don't know if any of y'all are killing people to get what you want.
Pastor Greg:If you are, we need to have a conversation. Maybe I don't want to have that conversation but I need to call somebody who can take care of that. Says, you can scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous what others have. Now, that probably fits a lot of us.
Pastor Greg:But you can't get it so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet, you don't have what you want because you don't ask god for it. You you see the word James uses here, this desire that he's talking about. In the Greek, it's the word head on head head up. I don't know how to pronounce that word.
Pastor Greg:I'm just going to be honest. Heading on. I think it's how you say it. Craig, have I got that anywhere close? You took Greek, didn't you?
Pastor Greg:Yeah, close enough. You took Greek, didn't you? Heading on, is that anywhere near? Close enough? Alright.
Pastor Greg:Nobody else is going to know except you too. In our culture today, that word is the word we get hedonism from. In hedonism, it just looks like this. You do you. Do whatever you want to do, whatever makes you happy, whatever you need, whatever feels good, put yourself at the center, you decide what you need, you what you need, you decide what you deserve, you decide who owes you what, and what it is that they owe you, and everyone around you.
Pastor Greg:Either helps you get there or they need to get out of the way. Over in first John chapter two In verse 15, he says, do not love the world nor the things it offers you. For when you love the world, you do not have the love of the father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the father but are from this world.
Pastor Greg:What John addresses there is what most of you, if you've been in church a while, you've heard it. It's lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. It's the root of pretty much all sin. John's giving a diagnostic there in three categories and we need to hear it because I'd be willing to bet that everything you're chasing falls into one of those categories. Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, or the pride of life.
Pastor Greg:The lust of the flesh, I want to feel a certain way. Pleasure, comfort, relief, satisfaction, I need to feel loved I need to feel significant I want the feeling and I want it now. Sexual ethic, money, substance abuse. It all feeds in to all of these things, the lust of the flesh. Then, you have the lust of the eyes.
Pastor Greg:I want what I can see that house. I want their lifestyle. I want that vacation that pastor Greg just went on. You should want that by the way. It was incredible.
Pastor Greg:I want the version of someone else's life because it's better than what I got or it looks like it is because it looks awful good on social media. Although we all know what's on social media is far from what's reality is. The pride of life I need to be someone. I want to be remembered. I want people to know my name, respect my accomplishments.
Pastor Greg:I want people to validate my choices. I want to live a life that's impressive and you look at those three things and it falls into this, security, satisfaction, significance There's nothing wrong with wanting those things. The problem is we chase it from a world that was never designed to give us those things. It's not god's intention. It's not how he designed you to live.
Pastor Greg:James says, something that it should stop you in your tracks at the end of verse two. He says, you do not ask or you do not have because you do not ask. In the middle of this community that he's writing to who is at war with each other over their resources, over status, his diagnosis is this, you haven't even taken it to God. You're dealing with it on your own. So, let me ask you a question this morning.
Pastor Greg:What does your prayer life actually look like? Not the prayer that you think you should be praying. Not the Sunday morning version of the prayer life. What does your real prayer life actually look like? What are you asking God for when nobody else is listening?
Pastor Greg:Listening? James is telling us that that thing you're chasing is destroying you. Tears us down Here's the thing about the chase it doesn't just disappoint you It does something to you. It gets into your soul. It rots you.
Pastor Greg:My family, I mentioned just a few minutes ago, we just got back from a vacation. Went to the Southwest. First time I'd ever been that way, that direction. Anybody ever been to the American Southwest, Utah, Colorado? We didn't go to Colorado.
Pastor Greg:I don't know why I said that. Arizona because you went to Colorado and it's on my mind. I want to go there now. That's why I said it. We got to visit the national parks, enjoyed all of that.
Pastor Greg:We we flew in to Las Vegas and made the loop. We went to Zion National Park, went down to Bryce Canyon. I got to make a stop at Horseshoe Bend which is amazing. It's a small location but when you get out to it, it's amazing to see what god has done there and then we went to the Grand Canyon. It's a big hole in the ground.
Pastor Greg:Everybody's gotta see it but once you see it, you've seen it. We came back up through Arizona, made a stop on Route 66, which if you're under the age of, you know, 45, you don't know what that is but it's a pretty cool stop. My kids didn't think so much but I I thought it was pretty cool. Then, we came back up to Vegas and and flew out. And let me tell you, the the contrast between being out in the national parks and driving out through the desert versus Vegas.
Pastor Greg:You can't shake it when you think about it. We all know Vegas. You've seen it on television if you've never been there. It's this city It's it's meant to make people have everything they want. It's specifically engineered so that you can have everything right at your fingertips to deliver the good life.
Pastor Greg:Every desire you want. It's available in Vegas for a price. It's not a cheap place to go. I paid $150 for four hamburgers. They weren't even that great actually.
Pastor Greg:Braxton disagrees. He thought they were amazing, right? Every distraction you could want, it's right there at your fingertips. The lights literally never go off. You need some good shades in your hotel room or you're not going to sleep.
Pastor Greg:The options never run out and and you look around and people are rushing through, getting to do this, and getting to do that and they all look stressed out. Maybe it was just me. I was pretty stressed out. Everywhere we go, the restaurants, the hotels, going up the strip, people look like they're working so hard to have a good time. But they're trying so hard.
Pastor Greg:It looks like they can't even enjoy it. The machine is worth working just like it's designed to work but I don't think I saw anybody who I could look at and say, they found what they came to look for. They got that enjoyment, that relaxation, that satisfaction but then you drive out to the desert. Our first night, we we left Vegas and and we stayed at this place called the Zion Wildflower. We were in a a yurt staying in a technically camping but we had, you know, beds and shower and air conditioning.
Pastor Greg:And you sit out on that that porch that's built on this tent. You see the mountains There's just a peace there You drive down through the dunes, through the desert, and just see all that god has done It's just such a different feeling sitting there that that first night really, I think is when it hit me. We look at me and Christy are like, I've never seen anything like this. I I believe we're in a beautiful area here. It's just different.
Pastor Greg:And I just exhaled less noise, less stress, less pull that every at everything the world is selling us. And we spent a week driving through that area and we just were enjoying each other, enjoying what god has made and I think every single one of us said at some point during that week, it's the best vacation we've ever had and we've had some good ones and it wasn't because of anything we did but it we weren't chasing anything that week. We were just admiring, living in what god had created. Then we drive back to Vegas the night before we fly out. And the where I can see the city and the stress hit me.
Pastor Greg:I felt it before we checked in. Just like that. Things changed. The the world's system, it it doesn't just disappoint you eventually. It gets into you.
Pastor Greg:It shapes the way you live and the way that you breathe when you buy into it. Changes everything for us. That thing that you're chasing It's destroying you. Whatever it is but here's where it hits closer to home because the world system, it doesn't just work on us from the outside, it gets into your prayer life. Starts to affect the way you are approaching the lord.
Pastor Greg:It gets into your relationship with god himself and and there's a person sitting here right now. Maybe it's you and if it's you, you really need to hear this. You genuinely want god to speak to you. You are genuinely seeking god's answer to something in your life. So, you show up and you ask the questions, should I take this job?
Pastor Greg:Should I go to this school? Is this the relationship I need to be in? What's god calling me to do? What's my purpose? But they're not listening to what god has already said in his word not listening to what god has already spoken into them through his people because that's not satisfying.
Pastor Greg:I need a burning bush. I need a flashing neon sign with a spotlight saying, do this. Go here. They want god to show up and point them to the life they've already decided they want. Is that you?
Pastor Greg:All the while, god's been speaking the whole time He says, be obedient Follow me surrender what you're holding on to. Open your hands He's given you desires. He's given you gifts Be obedient with them. Use them for his purposes and not our own. But that answer doesn't feel like enough.
Pastor Greg:So, our conclusion is, god's just silent. He's not speaking to me right now. Verse three James hits it. Even when you ask, you don't get it because your motives are all wrong. You want only what will give you pleasure.
Pastor Greg:You adulterers, he says. It's a heavy word. Don't skate over that. You adulterers Don't you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of god. Let it sit.
Pastor Greg:Friendship with the world makes you an enemy of god As if that's not enough, he says, I say it again. If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of god. That word James uses there, adulterers. It's not an accident. He uses that word intentionally.
Pastor Greg:He's pulling it straight from the Old Testament prophets. Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, all of them described Israel as chasing other gods and described it in their language as marital betrayal. You are the people god has made a covenant with and you have been sleeping with the world, he says. Friendship with the world. It doesn't mean you live in the world.
Pastor Greg:We are called to live in the world. It means you've adopted its values. That the things that we desire are the things of this world. It's the definition of the good life. It's the answer to the question of what is really going to fill you and we've made the world our functional god.
Pastor Greg:And god, the one true real god. He's not neutral about it. He says, that's adultery. You're cheating on your relationship with god is what he says. Remember the question we asked a moment ago, what does your prayer life actually look like?
Pastor Greg:Here's the hard version of that. Are you praying for god to give you what you already decided you need? That job that relationship, that healing, that open door, that outcome you've already decided, everything hinges on. Are you praying like Jesus prayed in the garden? Matthew 26, he went on a little farther and bowed his face to the ground praying, my father, if it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me.
Pastor Greg:Yet, I want your will to be done, not mine. Jesus had a true legitimate desire He didn't really want to suffer on the cross He loved us enough to do it but he was dreading what he was getting ready to go through. He says, if there's any other way, There's nothing more human in Jesus than that prayer. Remember, Jesus was fully human and fully god. So, he goes to the father open, honest, and he just brings it to him but he wraps it in surrender Not my will but yours.
Pastor Greg:That's what right motivated prayer looks like. It's not the absence of desire. God has given us desires. Desire, it's this is desire held open handed before God. That I want this but I trust god more than my desires and more than my preferences.
Pastor Greg:The person that that James is diagnosing, he's not praying with wrong desires. We're praying with these clenched fists. Already already decided what this answer has to be. When god doesn't deliver on our terms, they either rage at god or they go quiet and draw away from god and James calls that spiritual adultery. When you chase the world, you will never have enough.
Pastor Greg:And when we chase the world, it causes the quarrels and the fights and the strife that happen in your relationships, in your home, in your church, Here's the thing, you're not wanting too much you're aiming too low Our desires just aren't as grand as god has for us. James does something here that's kind of unexpected. He doesn't hand you a 12 step program. He doesn't tell you you need to want less. He doesn't tell you to go get your act together and be better.
Pastor Greg:No. He says this in verse five, do you think the scriptures have no meaning? They say that god is passionate, that the spirit he has placed within us should be faithful to him and then he goes on. And he gives grace generously. As the scripture say, god opposes the proud but god gives grace to the humble.
Pastor Greg:Did you catch what he said? After all of this that he's diagnosed, after the warring desires, those corrupted prayers, what he calls spiritual adultery, what's his answer? It's not more effort. It's not try harder. It's more grace.
Pastor Greg:That's the hinge on where it all lies. That's where everything in this turns. God or James uses the word here opposes and it's Greek military language is what he's using. He's saying, god, he pulls up the troops against the proud. Those who are chasing the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
Pastor Greg:He's actively working against the chase not because he's cruel. Because he loves you too much to let this cheap substitute pass for what the good life is. The proud person not just missing a blessing, you've positioned yourself as god's enemy. The humble person the one who opens your hand and says, not my will but yours being filled by this inexhaustible source of everything the soul was designed for. The grace of god.
Pastor Greg:You were made for more than what you're settling for. Whatever you think this life should bring you, you were made for more than that. CS Lewis He said, we are not people who want too much. We are people who have been satisfied with too little. We're like children playing in a mud puddle when our father is standing right there offering us the ocean.
Pastor Greg:The problem was never that your desires were too big. The problem is you aimed you aimed them at things that were too small. The grace of Christ doesn't come to kill your desires. Comes to fulfill those desires at a level that the world could never touch. You were made for more than what you're selling, settling for.
Pastor Greg:You want purpose? What's the world do? It says, well, take this career, play this sport, here's this achievement. Oh, you need a title? Here you go.
Pastor Greg:You need something to pour yourself into that gives you a sense of meaning. And those are important things. But they all end. That career will expire. You're not always going be able to play that sport.
Pastor Greg:You are going to retire someday. You weren't made for a job. You were made for a purpose. You weren't made for an activity, you were made for a mission. Grace gives you that mission and it outlast your obituary.
Pastor Greg:Something that doesn't end when your career does. Something that doesn't end when your kids leave home. When your body won't perform the way that it did ten years ago. You were made for more than what you're settling for. You want hope?
Pastor Greg:The world says, here's some optimism. Optimism, it's fine. Till you get the phone call or the diagnosis or the pink slip That optimism, it's gone like that. See, the world, it gives us this hope but it's a fleeting hope, grace the grace of god unshakable anchored in the resurrection something that can't be touched by anything this world throws at you. One phone call can end what the world gave you but it never touches what god is giving you.
Pastor Greg:There's still grace and there's still hope in Jesus Christ and that is the only answer. You want abundant life? Jesus said, that's exactly why he came. John ten ten, he said this, the thief's purpose is to steal, kill, and destroy. That's what the world is doing to us.
Pastor Greg:My purpose. Give them a rich and satisfying life. An abundant life, not abundant with stuff, not abundant with comfort, not abundant with ease, not abundant with everything going your way, abundant with Jesus Christ, living in his grace, a life so full of him that the things you were chasing after, they start to loosen their grip on you. Not because you don't want them anymore but because you found what you are actually longing for all along. You see, here's here's a secret Jesus didn't come to change what you have He came to change who you are completely from the inside out, a new creation That is what he's driving towards in your life.
Pastor Greg:And it's the reversal. That you don't hear in many churches today that someone like Joel Osteen never preaches. Your best life now is not the life you build. It's the life that you receive from your savior. It's not the life where god finally gives you everything you ask for.
Pastor Greg:It's the life where you finally discover that what you are asking for was just a shadow of what he had for you. Chase the world, you will never have enough but when you live in the grace of Christ you're already satisfied nothing the world does can take that away and those quarrels and fights that James opened with, they begin to fade away. Become less important. It's not a consolation prize. That's the good life.
Pastor Greg:That's the only version of it that actually endures. So, what does this life actually look like? I'm not going to stand here and I don't think James would stand here and say it's going to be perfect We talk about that as a church a lot. It's not perfect. It's hard.
Pastor Greg:I'm not going to tell you that gas prices aren't going to go up. Although, I was surprised when I came home and they dropped since I went on vacation. I'm not going to tell you those bills are not still going to pile up. That those hard conversations are going to go away. That's not the gospel That's the other version of the gospel Here's what I will tell you.
Pastor Greg:That cynicism starts to lift. That hollow feeling of, is any of this real? Does any of this matter? You don't live there anymore. You stop asking those questions when the the thing your soul was actually looking for is found.
Pastor Greg:That conflict it will decrease. It won't go away because we're still human beings and we're still sinful but it will decrease because we stop using the people around us to get what we want. It's not about us anymore. Your relationships have room to breathe. You you stop treating your spouse like everything depends on them preserving the relationship you want.
Pastor Greg:You stop needing your kids to perform in a way that makes you feel like you're a good parent. You stop needing your boss to approve of you so that you know you matter. The pressure is lifted because you're no longer depending on any of them to hold it all together and then your prayer changes. It stops sounding like this negotiation that we have with god. Do this for me and I'll do this for you kind of thing and it just sounds like a conversation.
Pastor Greg:God, I desire this. Honestly, openly, no pretension, and no pretending but you wrap it up with those words, not my will but yours. It's not what you want, god. Let me be okay with your will. Not because you stopped wanting those things but because you found a god that you trust more than those things.
Pastor Greg:You get to this point where you can hold the things of this world, still live in the world, and hold it loosely. You can drive back into Las Vegas and the stress doesn't bog you down. Not because you're above it. Because you're anchored in something that it can never touch. In obedience That word that used to feel like a burden starts to feel like the most natural way to live.
Pastor Greg:You don't obey god to earn the good life. You obey him because you've tasted it and he is good. You're not going back to what it used to be. You see, when it all boils down to is that grace, it ends the chase of everything you're going for. I want to close us We we spent this whole message talking about what wrong desires and wrong motivated prayer looks like, how it leads to this conflict, and this these quarrels among us.
Pastor Greg:How we've already decided what we want. So, we just inform god and we don't trust him. So, we're going to close with a chance to pray like Jesus did. Together The night before he ever faced the hardest thing he would ever see Jesus knelt in the garden and he prayed. Father, if there's any other way, and he said, not my will but yours and it wasn't a prayer of weakness It was the most powerful prayer a human being has ever prayed.
Pastor Greg:The son submitting to the father and I want to pray that today with you. So, here's what it looks like. Maybe you've never surrendered your life to Christ The prayer for you of not my will but yours is the prayer of salvation. Scripture tells us that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as lord and believe in your heart that god has raised him from the dead, you will be saved but it is confessing him as lord and that is the act of not my will but yours. You're in charge.
Pastor Greg:It's the first act of humility that opens up grace into your life. Today, you're not just asking Jesus into your heart. You're surrendering the throne of your life to him. For the believers in this room who've fallen into that trap of chasing the world. You know Jesus?
Pastor Greg:Somewhere along the way, you started acting like a practical atheist. Not a lot of faith in him, not a lot of trust in him. You just go through the motions on Sunday and then chase the world's version of the good life the rest of the week. I've been through that and I know many of you are there now So, today, in the chase This is your act of repentance of getting realigned with the grace of god So, here's how I'm going to do it. In a moment, I'm going to pray.
Pastor Greg:And when I say amen at the end of that prayer, if you are ready to surrender All I'm asking you to do is stand. That is your act of not my will but yours. Pray along with me and when I close the prayer, just stand. Because grace ends the chase So, if you'd bow your heads, let's pray. Father, I pray for those in this room right now.
Pastor Greg:Those who don't know you as their lord, as their savior, who've never met Jesus, or maybe who have claimed Jesus but never really surrendered to Jesus. God, I pray right now that that idea, not my will but yours would seep into their hearts and that they would grab a hold of your grace and let go of the things of this life and keep eyes on the only thing that matters. Lord, you teach us in scripture that if we confess you as our lord, if we believe you are, who you say you are, that you will save us. So, I pray for anyone in this room that right now in this moment, they would do that. Confess you as lord Jesus, you are my lord.
Pastor Greg:Jesus, I really do believe that you died for my sins, that you rose again to pay that penalty on the cross, and then defeat death so that I can live. Not my will but yours. And lord, for those in this room who who they are believers but they've got caught up in the whirlwind of what the world offers. Chasing things that are never gonna fill us. Been praying with a clenched fist and calling it faith.
Pastor Greg:Telling you what we want but never submitting to whether it is your will. So, father, my prayer for all of us who find ourselves in that spot right now, not to to just repent of the desires. Those aren't necessarily bad but to say, god, not my will but yours. I'll be obedient. Father, I pray for those in this room who are willing to make that their declaration that as we close this morning, they will just stand in recognition of surrender, not my will but yours.
Pastor Greg:In the beautiful name of Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen. If that is you, would you just stand before we go into worship? Not my will today, god, but yours.