All right, the music is winding down. That means it's time for me to speak. I guess that's what it means. So, um, we are gonna be talking about moving forward. Uh, specifically we wanna talk about how do we get into God's will? How do we experience God? His, uh, good pleasing his perfect will. And, uh, we're gonna anchor our thoughts this morning in biblical wisdom, not in Dave's wisdom. If you're here for Dave's wisdom, then we're done. Go ahead. You can go ahead and take off, but because we're gonna be anchoring it in God's wisdom, we're gonna pull it from Proverbs chapter three. It says this, trust in the Lord with all your heart. And do not lean on your own understanding in all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. And before we dive into that completely, let me just take the opportunity to make sure that I say hello to my friends at the Grants Trail Campus. Uh, my friends at Mid Rivers and at Fenton, and those, uh, watching online as well. Um, just we're glad to be all together, uh, uh, as one church in many locations. Um, but I also wanna introduce myself. Uh, I am Dave. I'm the Director of Care Ministries here at The Crossing. And, uh, some things you need to know about me is one, I love coffee. Any coffee lovers in the house right here? Yeah. All right. Make sure you have your tasty beverage with you. And I see everybody drinking at the same time. Perfect. Uh, and I know the difference between really bad coffee and really good coffee, but I'll drink all of it. Okay. I'll even use the coffee maker in the hotel room, which you should never use, by the way. Never use that maker. 'cause who knows what. Anyway, we won't go there. All right. So I love coffee. Um, something more important about me is that I've been married to Kimberly for over 28 years. We're going on 29 in April. That's right. Woo. Excellent. That, oh, there we are. And, uh, um, we love serving, uh, people specifically in the local church, and we do that, uh, here at the Crossing. Kimberly is a pastor, spiritual formation, and she is actually serving at the Fenton campus, uh, while I serve here at Chesterfield. Now, I know just a minority of you care, but, um, she's serving there. I'm serving here. We will see each other again. Okay? It's, it is not like we have to be in the same service at the same time, but, uh, we, we see a lot of each other. And so, uh, and we love it and we love being together, but we love serving. Um, I'd also wanna make sure I acknowledge you in the room and at the campuses and online that I understand that there's some excitement moving into the new year for some of you. And, and there's hearts filled with, with, uh, satisfaction and joy and, and all of that coming out of the Christmas season. But that's not everybody in the room. Um, you may be coming out of a time of, of sadness this Christmas. That person that has always been there at your Christmas events, um, is no longer with us and wasn't there this season. And there's grief and there's a loss. Um, family dynamics are tough and maybe they've changed throughout this last Christmas season. And I understand it. I get it. I see you, I've experienced it myself. Uh, and then looking into the future, you know, some are excited about what's gonna happen, but some of you are saying if it's anything like last year with that diagnosis, that prognosis, that, um, financial stress, those relationships that were broke, whatever it was in the last year, I don't even wanna think about next year if it's gonna be like last year we see you. I see you and I'm glad that you're here this morning. And if you wouldn't mind, I would love to pray for all of us in our rooms today. Heavenly Father, we just thank you that for whatever reason we came here, you know that we're here. And you know what we need individually, you know what we need to hear specifically. And so, God, I pray that through this time that you'll speak to us, that your words will enter our heart, that will make room for you. And that you will help us to en en enjoy your hope and your presence, and that we will actually leave here change because we experienced your love. So God, speak to us specifically as we need to hear you this morning. Walk with us now. In Jesus name. Amen. Alright, so I did say we're gonna talk about moving into, um, the future and how to experience God's will in your life. But I want to, uh, launch off of last, uh, our last series called the Advent Series. All right? And if you weren't here, that's not a problem. I'm gonna simplify it, but I would encourage you to go back and watch it. Um, but if, if you boil it down to the essence of it is that, um, God's ways are surprising, unexpected, um, they're different than what we would imagine. They go beyond our intuition. Um, and, uh, in essence, God declared this through the prophet Isaiah. Uh, he said that my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways, my ways. And we saw that through the whole Christmas story. That the, that the God of the universe, the creator of all things, did something that that was unimaginable. He entered his own creation as a child, not even as a king, but as a child in humble means. It was unexpected. We saw that he was a servant, that through his life, he served his own creation. Uh, one example was, was that he washed his disciples, his followers feet. Uh, one example was that, that the God of the universe writes his name on your, on his palm, and doesn't expect you to do the opposite. That he was surprising in that he was a victorious king, but his victory was not just over the Roman empire, the temporary victory, but it was an eternal victory that he humbled himself to even death, death on a cross for you and for me to take his creations penalty of sin. And then he a rose from the dead proving that he's gonna make all things new again. It's different than what we expected or those in that time expected. If we looked at the characters of the Christmas story, and as we looked through the, the people of the New Testament, the followers of Jesus, we saw that they came with their, their deep rooted history. They came with their experiences, they came with their knowledge of who the Messiah would be to that point. And God was more than they expected. And they, when they encountered him, they experienced God's will and they experienced an adventurous life. And I think today we come into this room, all of us, we, our history, we come in with our experiences, we come in with our knowledge. And if you are new to this path and you're just exploring if Jesus is real, then you have certain expectations about what God can and cannot do. And you're sitting here wondering, can he go beyond my expectations? But let's be honest, there's people who have been following Jesus for a long time, that we have our expectations, we have our experiences, we have our history, we have our knowledge, and we've put God in a box ourselves. We're stuck thinking God cannot do more than he's already done. And so today, my hope is that we go beyond our intuition. See, our intuition is, is where we're at now. Uh, all of our knowledge, all our history, all of our experiences, um, all of our expectations. When we see something or something happens, we, we base everything on our past and where we're at till now. And then we intuit what's gonna happen in the future. And when we walk with God, he's wants to go beyond our intuition. He's counterintuitive. He wants to push us beyond our expectations. And we see that through scripture, and we see it in lives changed through a relationship with Jesus. So we're gonna play a little game, okay? We're gonna help you move your mind past your intuition, okay? So you come in with your expectations, I'm gonna show you a picture, and your mind is gonna want to just think about your past, your history, your expectations, whatever. What I want you to do is to look past the picture and to see what would be a counterintuitive activity that you might not think about when you see the picture. Okay? So we're gonna try this once, and then if it worked, we might try it again. I think it's gonna work. Okay? So here's the first picture here. Alright? You see a nature scene, all right? Already, you're starting to think of memories. You're starting to think of things that you would normally think about. But here, what is something that's counterintuitive? All right? Tell your neighbor real quick, what do you think the activity is counterintuitive to this picture? You think about it, think about it. Think about it. Alright, let's see if you were right. Did you experience, did you think about this Cat five single kayaking? Now, some of you who have the experiences of whitewater rafting, who thought of whitewater rafting when they, that's because you experienced that. That's right. Right? Part of your intuition, maybe this was bigger. Okay. Alright. That sound, are you telling me that following Jesus is a lot like kayaking in Cat five rapids? Yes. That's what I'm telling you this morning. Okay. Alright, let's try this again. Okay? And I think you got the, got the, the g gist of it and we're gonna move forward. The second picture, is this alright? I what is counterintuitive? Yeah, I can hear it already, right? All right, so did you, who's who said skydiving? Who said skydiving? Did you think of this skydiving, but did you think about skydiving with your five-year-old daughter, right? Or somebody else's five yearold daughter? No, that was not on my bingo card. Right? We're pushing the limits now of what is counterintuitive. Are you telling me, Dave, that walking with Jesus is like jumping out of an airplane? I'm saying it might be. That's what I'm saying. All right, one more, one more. This is Alcatraz Island. Alcatraz Island in the bay of San Francisco. Uh, what is the counterintuitive activity? I hear it not getting into it. That's not, not prison, not armed robbery. That's not it. Okay? I'll just tell you that's not it. What is the, what is it? Swimming. Swimming from Alcatraz to the city. Anybody think of swimming across would, does that counterintuitive? Dave, are you telling me that swimming from Alcatraz to the city is counterintuitive? It's how we walk with God. That's what I'm saying. Now, um, a little bit more about me is I, uh, dabble in triathlons. Um, and what I mean dabble, I mean I'm very slow. And do you know how you can tell if someone's a triathlete? You don't have to because they will tell you. Okay? So, and I did, I can keep my card, I keep my triathlon card right now, but I entered the escape from Alcatraz Triathlon. It's a drawing. It's impacted, it's a free drawing, but you have to get selected to do the race. And I got selected. And what you need to know about this race is one, let's see, excuse me. One is you are swimming in 50 to 55 degree water. It's what we call bur cold, okay? And it is a swim from the island, island to, uh, marina Green Beach is a 1.5 mile swim, okay? And they say that you should expect to encounter marine life, baby shark, do, do, do do, because it's in the bay. The waters are a little more shallow. So the baby sharks live out there. They say also that this is where daddy shark is down here. Do, do, do, do. That's a perfect drawing of Daddy shark right there, right? Um, so if you're on Alcatraz Island and you jump off to swim it, you have to head towards Marina Green Beach. Now, here's what I did. I went to every campus and I put a checkered flag, uh, in the corner of every campus. So it represents Marina Green Beach. So if everybody in this audience and the audiences around, look to your left and look behind you, there is the point to where we're gonna go. That's Marina Green Beach. Okay? Make sense? Make sense? That's where we're going. Everybody cheer. If you can't see it, welcome to open water swimming. Okay? That's what it's like. Now, uh, for the engineers in the room, this is not to scale. This is not 1.5 miles, right? Um, but here's the deal. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. So the goal would be getting off of Alcatraz Island and swimming straight towards Marina Green Beach. This direction to your left over here, here's what else you need to know about this swim. Um, it's what they call Eeb tide. Anybody know what that means? There is flood tide. Flood tide is when all the water's coming into the bay. EBT tide is when all of the water is going out of the bay. So what is happening while you're starting to trying to swim is that there is, um, 5 million gallons of water every second flowing out of the bay. In essence, in reality, not in essence in reality, there is a huge river that's pushing you out to sea. Now what does that mean? That means that if you were to jump off the island and you would start to swim towards Marina Green Beach, that checkered flag, if you were to swim this way, you would be washed out to sea because of this huge river that you're trying to cross. So the creators of the event know this and they designed it and they tell you that if you wanna succeed in this race, you have to do something that's very counterintuitive. Instead of charging for that swimming towards that, what you do is you jump off the island and you start swimming this way. And there's two towers that are in the city. The Fontana Towers, you can see 'em from the water, they're a big landmark. You start siding for those, you swim for seven to 10 minutes, depending on your skill level. You start swimming towards those. And then you start to look for Fort Mason, and there's a shrub bunch of trees there, and there's a white pump house and there's three piers. And you start swimming towards the, uh, Fort Mason for seven to 10 minutes based on your skill level. And then you start swimming towards the Palace of fine Arts. There's a dome that's on the hill, and you start focusing on the dome and you start swimming towards there. And then you start swimming towards the shrubbery and the bushes above the St. Francis Yacht Club, and there's a big red roof. You start focusing on there, and then you get to your destination. Marina Green Beach. Our destination is God's will. And let's just be honest. And I think we know that there is a huge river that maybe we don't even see a current that is trying to push us off course in our lives. And in order for us to really experience God's will we have to live in the world, that God can expand our intuition into a different understanding, that we can do things and, and cite things that that would, that would focus us on where he's going and how he's gonna lead us. If you were to, to just take off on your own, you would need rescue. And that brings us to our scripture. How do we get across this current in life that I think we can all agree is hard? Life is hard, and there is an enemy who wants to move us off course and keep us from reaching our destination. Keep us from experiencing God to the fullest. And that brings us to our scripture again, Proverbs chapter three, trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not lean on your own understanding in all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. So what do we do to get over there in God's will we start over here? Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Trusting God can be a difficult concept because a lot of times our trust in God, um, is equated to our experiences here on the earth, experiences with other people or institutions. And so we would say, how can I trust a God when I can't trust my friends? How can I trust a God when I can't trust my parents? How can I trust a God when I can't trust my spouse? How can I trust a God when I can't trust what's happening in the church? You know, I've been doing all these rituals all this time. I've been trying to work my way into the good graces of God and it doesn't seem to be working. How can I trust a God who doesn't accept all the things I've been doing for him? And our experiences influence our trust of God? Well, lemme say two things to that. First God is the perfection of all the imperfect things we see in every human being around us. If you've been abandoned, God will never abandon you if you've been lied to. God is always going to tell you the truth. If you've experienced unfaithfulness, God is faithful to the core and will never desert you. God is the perfection of all the imperfection we see in this world, and he is going to make it all new again. The second thing I would say is that God is not asking us to trust in humans or in rituals. He's asking us to trust in his son Jesus. It's a person. See the followers, Jesus asked him this question, how do we experience life to the fullest? How do we experience your will? God? How do we get to the places that you're telling us you're going? And Jesus answered this, I am the way, I am the truth. I am the life. There is no other way except through me. And if God had another way for us to get into a relationship with him, he would've said it. If it's doing rituals, it's if it's coming to church three times a week, he would've said, Jesus would've said, Hey, you wanna know the way, the way is going to church three times a week? That's not what he said. What he wants us to do is trust the person. The way is a person. It's a relationship with a person. It's not a ritual. And it's not another relationship besides Jesus. When I was six years old, um, I came home from church. My parents were Jesus followers and faithful Jesus followers and, and, uh, great examples to me and my brothers and my sister. And we came home from church and they had communion that Sunday morning. And I asked my mom why I couldn't take communion. She said, well, because you're not a Jesus follower, and this is for Jesus followers. You're not a Christian. I said, well, how do I become a Christian? And she explained to me how I trust in Jesus, he's forgiveness, sin, repent. Tell him that you need forgiveness. He died on the cross. Do you believe that? Yes. And and so I, I understood what it meant. And she said, okay, well let's, let's bow down. And so we knelt down next to her bed and we prayed. And that's the moment that I accepted juice and crackers into my life because I was trusting in a ritual. That's what I wanted, was juice and crackers. And then at 12 years old, I was at Drift Creek summer camp. And I can tell you, uh, that I was trusting in my parents' faith. I was doing what they wanted me to do. I was following their way. I was doing, uh, you know what they told me to do. I was in church and I was doing all the things, but I was at camp and the speaker said this said, I just want you to know that God has no grandchildren, that you need your own personal relationship. I was trusting in my parents' relationship and I realized that I needed a personal relationship with Jesus, that I needed to trust him myself. And then I knelt down over a log in the amphitheater, and that's when I put my full trust in Jesus Christ. He's asking us to trust in Jesus, not in the imperfections we see in this world. And he's also asking us not to trust ourselves. I had to learn that I can't trust myself. Citing number one is trust in Jesus with all your heart. Citing number two is do not lean on your own understanding. Don't lean on your own understanding. Has anybody watched a Hallmark movie this season or one week before that before? We can't joke about him anymore until next year. But so we might as well add a little bit. Um, do you know the plot line of a Hallmark movie? Okay, this one I'm gonna tell you, uh, is that the successful guy with a really good paying job is gonna lose the girl to a guy who is a part-time maintenance guy at the end and makes ornaments. Okay? And where's flannel? Okay, that's, that's the plot line that I see. And so here's my advice. If you're looking for a girl, if you're single and you're like, how do I get a girl move to Vermont, start working at the end and make ornaments, okay, that is free. Okay? Not in my notes at all. So, but here's what they say in, in these movies, and I heard it over and over and over again, is that just trust your heart. You'll never make a bad decision if you just trust your heart. And can I tell you that I have seen lives wrecked and even in my own life, when I trust my own heart, I see that I'm start to move out to see, because we can't trust our own heart. Um, God speaks through the prophet Jeremiah and he says, the heart is deceitful. Who can even understand it? Our heart. And if we lean on our own understanding of life and we don't look for understanding outside of that, specifically God's understanding, the creator of the universe, if we don't look for his understanding, we are apt to deceive ourselves and make bad choices. The proverb, uh, writer of Proverbs says it this way. He says, uh, guard your heart because everything that you do is gonna flow out from there. Guard it. Just don't trust it. But make sure that you're, you're watching what comes into it, but also you're putting good stuff into your heart that, that you are guarding your heart. Um, so in this escape from Alcatraz race, there is what they say, a 20%, uh, rescue rate, 20% rescue rate. So there's 2000 people that jump off the island. It's really a boat 'cause they won't let you slip on the rocks, the lawyers got involved, all that kind of stuff. But so you jump off of boat, 2000 of you and 20% of 'em are gonna need to get rescued. That's 400 people that are gonna need to get rescued. And what the, uh, designers of the race, the the race directors, the creators of the race, they say is usually, it's two reasons why this happens. The first one is arrogance, is that when they jump off the boat, their history, their experiences, their expectations is, you know what? I've done this before. I've swam this far, I've swam longer than this. I can do this on my own. I'm a really good in fast swimmer. I don't care if there's a huge river. I can make it because on my own power, I've seen it, I've done it before. The arrogance gets them. I don't have to listen to anybody else, I'm gonna do it my way. And they end up needing to get get rescued. The other thing is ignorance is those who just don't pay attention. They're just living their lives. They think they know, but they don't ask for more wisdom. They don't read the emails. They're not interested in the videos that show how to do this race. They're just kind of just living like, Hey, this is gonna be fun. Let's just do it. We got our friends here, we don't need to add any more information into our lives. Let's just, let's just have a blast 'cause this is gonna be fun swimming. And you know what? Those people get swept out and need rescue same way as followers of Jesus. The the two things those have in common is their self-sufficiency. Either arrogance or ignorance is you're trusting in yourself. And, and scripture warns against that. Don't trust in your own intuition. Now it doesn't mean that you give up questioning and looking for the truth. As a matter of fact, it means look for the truth. Ask questions. The truth does not, uh, uh, shy away from questions. If you've ever been a teenager and many of you have and you lied to your parents, did you like them asking you questions? No. 'cause lies, hate questions you don't want them investigating. But if you're telling 'em the truth, you're like, call Soandso. Look at this. Look at my phone. If you're telling the truth, you like questions, you wanna give answers 'cause you have the truth. And so trusting in God and leaning not on your understanding doesn't mean that you don't look for the truth. We love asking questions here. Explore the truth. Look, I wanna live by the truth. I don't wanna live a lie. When I was 18 years old, I started to rethink my trust in Jesus. Like what about other world religions? Are they really the answer or is Jesus the only way? So I went to my youth group leader and I asked, you know, Hey, I'm in interested in, in exploring other religions. What do you think about that? And they said, yes, explore them. Look for the truth. It's important that we look for the truth. And so we started looking at Hinduism, Islam, Mormonism, we read the Book of Mormon, we read Koran. We we investigated the world religions. He said, but the one thing you cannot do if you're gonna investigate all world religions, you cannot leave out Christianity. And so many people do when they're trying to look for the truth. You have to include Christianity in the investigation. And so we did. So we read scripture and we looked at the historical evidence and we looked at all of the evidence. And what I found was that following Jesus is the truth. All other world religions are works based. And you might have heard this said that God is on top of a mountain and all world religions, they're just different roads, but they're all working their way up to the same God. And this is what I found out in my exploration is that one, the mountain is too high to work your way up. You cannot work your way up to a perfect God. And two, Christianity following Jesus is the only religion where God came off the mountain, came down to our level, lived among us, sacrificed his life for my penalty of sin, to give me freedom and forgiveness and will make all things right that I can trust in this Jesus completely different than all other world religions. It's not what I do, it's what he did for me. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Don't lean on your understanding in all that you do in all your ways. Acknowledge him citing number three in all your ways, acknowledge him in everything that you do. Now that brings us back to our poll. Alright, new Year's resolution 2025. Let's see what the poll results are here. We have health and fitness and spiritual growth. Excellent, excellent. Now spiritual growth is pretty high up on the spectrum here. What you need to know is that, uh, I put these in order of what research would say is by percentage the highest to the lowest. So you would start at the highest. The highest is 35%. That's not evident in this group here, okay? Spiritual growth is usually 1% of the population makes a spiritual growth goal. Now, I can't tell whether it's because you're in church and you knew the pastor was gonna look at you, that you went ahead and clicked that button, that there was maybe some, uh, uh, I don't wanna say manipulation or some guilt or some shame re regarding that or we are the 1%, right? But here's what I also know is that 90% of us will not complete that one goal. Have you heard of quitting Friday in two weeks? It's quitting Friday. And it is when all of the new year resolutions are usually done in two weeks. And so here's Pastor Dave, you made a spiritual goal. I'm gonna start. Just take my my shame shovel and start like, why aren't you journaling more? Why aren't you reading the Bible more? Why aren't you going to church more? Why aren't you giving more? Why aren't you doing more? You should be, you should be, you should be. That's not how it works. Guilt is a motivator. It's a really pa bad motivator. Shame is a motivator, but that's not God's kingdom. Let me release you from that. Guilt and shame of the do, do, do. God has already done it. So in all our ways, what does that mean in all our ways? So if Jesus is the way, what do our ways look like? This is a relationship with a loving God. And so when you walk in relationship, it's a, it's a collaborative. It's it's working together to do the things of God. And what are the things, what would Jesus say you need to do? What's his commandment of doing? He says it very clearly in uh, um, John 14, I'm sorry. He says it very clearly in John chapter 13. This is what Jesus would say, A new command I give you love one another as I have loved you. So you must love one another. By this, everyone will know. Everyone will know that you are my disciples. You are my followers. If you love one another, the command is not journal more. And I heard a pastor say this before, I don't journal 'cause Jesus didn't journal. All right? And I'm on that train too, I'm on that train. But what he did say is, what's gonna set you apart is how we love, if you're gonna have any goal is to love others. But how do we get there? Jesus loved us first. We trust in his love. We grow in his love. We try to understand his love more. He says, love as I have loved you. And so what we do is we explore how much God loves us. And out of that, the overflow comes loving others. Now, I'm, I'm still working at kind of this, right? Um, what's it supposed to look like? It's supposed to look like this In chapter, uh, 13 of one Corinthians. We see what love is and the representation of love, the behaviors that love is patient love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It's not proud. It doesn't dishonor others. It's not self-seeking. It's not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrong. It's forgiving. It does not delight in evil, but it rejoices with the truth. It protects, it trusts, and it hopes. And first of all, that's all the things that Jesus does for us. Jesus is patient with you. He's kind to you. He doesn't boast. He's not proud. He's not self-seeking. He's really for you. He's forgiving. He protects He hope. That's who Jesus, that's who God is. And so as we grow in our relationship with God and understand the depth of his love for us, then those fruits, those attributes grow out of us. And like I said, I'm not really good at this in that. I, um, I came here, uh, yesterday and I practiced this. And I know some of you're surprised he practiced that it doesn't look like it. So I understand. I get it, I get it. Um, but I came here and then I went to the gym. And then I was driving home from the gym. And I'm thinking about, you know, these sightings and all I do and loving others. And, and I get into traffic and it's only like three miles. And I am just completely frustrated with all the people driving with learner's permits that are just right in front of me. And they're, I mean, they look like adults, but they look like this is the first time in the car and on the road. And I'm like wanting to honk. I think I did honk. And uh, um, I'm like, are you serious? Are you stopping right here? Are you, why are you blocking me? And all the way home? I'm like, God, I'm trying to talk about loving others tomorrow, but right now I don't like anybody on this road help me. And, and he was walking with me in that car helping me understand how to be more patient. It's in a relationship. I was talking to Jesus. I was, I was experimenting on or asking him, why, why, why am I so impatient right now? What what is going on in my life that would make me not love the people around me? Am I, am I in such a hurry? And it goes beyond the car. It goes into our relationships in every level. If we're walking in a relationship with God, we start to learn how to love others better. And our behavior should look differently. It's a difference between declaration and demonstration. See, I can declare that I trust in the Lord with all my heart and lean not on my understanding. But do my actions show something different? I can declare I love my wife and we have a great relationship. But if I demean her in public, if I look outside my marriage to meet my needs, if I do things that dishonor her, if I hold grudges against her, my demonstration of my love is not equaling what I declare. And God wants our declaration, our demonstration to match up. So yes, reading scripture will help us love better 'cause we can understand God's love for us more. I keep, um, I keep this love note from my wife, uh, in my Bible. And, um, I'm not in love with the color of this. Um, I'm not in love with the thickness and the, and the, the, the card itself. Um, there's writing inside of there. I'm not in love with, uh, the ink's choice and the specific pen it was written by. Um, the reason I love this card is 'cause it's from my wife. It's 'cause she loves me and I love her and I wanna be reminded of that. And so that's why I love this card, not because of pen and ink and paper in the same way. I love this book because it's authored by a loving God and it helps me understand his love more. So yes, there are activities coming to church and being together are gonna help us understand God's love, deeper reading scripture. And I always tell you, journaling won't. Okay? Don't worry about that. All right? Just get rid of journaling. No, I'm just kidding. There's a quiet murmur. The journals were not happy with that statement. I'm sorry. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not lean on your own understanding in all your ways. Acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. He'll get you to the finish line. He's gonna make your paths straight. You'll experience God's will for your life, his purpose, his provision, his protection. Now here's what you need to know. He says, I will make your paths straight. He did not say, I will make your paths safe. There is a current that is trying to push us out to sea and we can't escape the current of this world. There are gonna be diagnosis, there is gonna be heartache, there's gonna be pain. But here's what God wants. He wants you to work with him and go against the current this way so that you don't get swept out to see. So you don't miss out on his provision, his protection and his purpose in your life. He wants to move you forward. And so that when you're going through the current, he's with you the whole time he's walking with you. It's not necessarily gonna be safe, but it's gonna be satisfying. It's gonna be abundant. It's gonna be like kayaking in the rapids, like jumping out a plane, like swimming across the current. But you are gonna get to your destination. Let me, uh, lemme show you my path from Alcatraz to, uh, marina Green Bay. So this is actually off of my little watch here. Uh, if they say the government must not following you, uh, they're wrong. They are, they're, they're, they're tracking you. Everybody's tracking you, right? So this is my tracker from Alcatraz to Marina Green Bay. Now you can see, first of all, I did what I was told 'cause I am afraid. Okay? Um, but I did wanna succeed. I did want to experience the fullness of this race. So when I jumped off the boat, you can see man, did I take a sharp left, right there? I did. And I almost ran into the island it looks like, right? I took a sharp left. And you can see that it's not a perfectly straight line. And you can see where I started correcting myself. And that's how my life also path is as you trust in Jesus, I've experienced his will. But there are times when I jump in the water and I'm going through a circumstance and I feel that current. I'm like, I can do it myself or don't tell me anything new. I don't. I just wanna be willfully ignorant. And what I see is that I start to lose focus. I start to look like I need help. And what I've learned from age 12 to now is that the time is shortening between, uh, when he corrects me and when I say, oh, you know what? I need to start siding over here again. I need to trust in God in these circumstances. I I need more knowledge from God. I need more wisdom from God. I need to spend some time in prayer. I need wisdom and counseling and I need, I need somebody to help me. I need scripture and I adjust my life back to him. And, and the time that I start adjusting is, is shorter and shorter. See, um, we talked about the rescue rate. 20% of people are gonna need to be rescued in this race. This race is different in that the, all the other races I've done, if you get any outside help, you're disqualified. You have to do the race on your own. This race, if you need help, if you feel like you're not gonna make it, they will rescue you and they'll put you back on the path. You are not disqualified. All you have to do is raise your hand, say, I need help. They'll pick you up and they'll place you back on the path. Same thing with our God. You're not disqualified. He loves you so much that all you have to do, all you have to do is say, I need help. I wanna reorient my life. I wanna trust you. And he will pick you up and he will place you back on the path. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Don't lean on your own understanding, ending in all you do. Acknowledge him and you'll experience God and his richness and his faithfulness and his beauty in your life. The writer of, uh, Romans, the apostle Paul wrote to the Roman church and he said, don't conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by a renewing of your mind. Then you'll able to test and approve God's will for your life. His good God has good things for you, his pleasing, his perfect will for your life. I just want to give you an opportunity now to let God speak to you. I prayed for this at the beginning, that God would speak to us individually. I know in a crowd like this, uh, it's hard to get a loan. So, um, I'm just gonna ask maybe that you would consider closing your eyes just so that you don't have any distractions around you. And just ask God, what's my next step in trusting you and in any of these sightings, what is my next step? And if you're new here and you're still exploring who Jesus is, your next step is just, I'm gonna start investigating the truth. 'cause I wanna live by the truth. I'm gonna ask a lot of questions and we welcome that here. It may be, God, I I've really just been, uh, mediocre in my walk with you and I'm starting to feel off track now. Or God man, I've been off track for a long time and I need help. I need rescue. Whatever it is. We're gonna, Tim's gonna play the guitar and he's gonna sing some words over you from the song we sang earlier. You don't need to sing along at all, but this is your time, this is your moment and maybe you would consider today if you've never fully put your trust in Jesus and you know that's what you need to do today. I invite you to do that in this time as well. So spend these next several moments in conversation with God and then I'll come up and pray and we'll dismiss.