Latest / Vine Worship at Kingwood Methodist / Remembering For The Sake of Trust (1 Samuel 17) | Cabe Matthews

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Remembering For The Sake of Trust (1 Samuel 17) | Cabe Matthews · Vine Worship at Kingwood Methodist

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Music.
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Hello, family, and welcome to Kingwood Methodist. In John 4.23,
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Jesus states that a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers
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will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.
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As we gather at church and open God's word, we are not just coming together
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for the sake of gathering, but also to learn the truth of God and how we can
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grow to love God with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength.
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As we continually surrender our lives to the Word of God by the power of the
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Holy Spirit, we become the type of worshipers our Heavenly Father seeks. Let's dive in together.
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Music.
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I always hate to break up the conversation. It's just like, it's music to my ears.
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But am I rushing you, Jeannie? Am I rushing you? We'll wait.
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We'll just work around your schedule today.
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I can do that. I can do that with Jeannie because I know her pretty well.
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So welcome. Good morning, Vine family. Such a joy to get to worship together with you.
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Thank you so much for being here in worship together. This is the moment in
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our service where we release kindergarten through second grade to go and hang
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out in children's church.
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I see Miss Whitney back there to collect you to go and have a great time.
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So this is that moment of the service.
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And so they will go and enjoy. While they're figuring all that out,
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let's bow our heads and pray.
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Gracious and merciful God, pour out your Holy Spirit on all of us who are gathered
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here. God, that as we open up your scriptures.
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We just ask that you would open us up, open up our hearts, open up our ears,
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open up our eyes, open up our minds, to hear, to receive, to see,
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to be moved by, to be transformed by whatever it is that you would show us today,
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this morning, here in this place. God, pour out your spirit on your people.
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We're here, our hands, our hearts, our minds.
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God, move in power. In the name of your son, Jesus, and in the power of your spirit, I pray. Amen.
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So in most areas, in most things, experience is one of the best teachers that you've got.
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Experience is really, it informs the way we behave, the way we live,
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the way we operate in the world in so many areas.
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I was thinking about like, if you are, if it's your first day of school,
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if you go to the same high school for four years, if it's your first day of
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school, that feels one way as a freshman, feels a completely different way by
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the time you're a senior, right?
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You're just different level of experience.
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You know, your way around, you know, where the things are, you know how to do,
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you know what you're doing. And it's, it's not as big of a deal, is it?
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I was thinking about this with respect to parenting and my own parenting journey.
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My wife and I are both middle children.
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She is, she has an older, older brother and a younger brother.
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I have an older sister and a younger sister.
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So we are, we're both middle children, which is why we're so incredible as people, actually. It's true.
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But we just, we, I think halfway jokingly, and I think maybe more than halfway
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seriously, we were just convinced that if God was going to bless us with a second
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kid, we were going to treat our second child just exactly the same as we treated our first child.
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It was going to be even, it was going to be equity across the board,
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right? Everything was going to be fair and wonderful.
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I hear some chuckles. We're three years into this having a second kid adventure that we've been on.
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And I'm here to tell you this morning, we do not treat our two children the same.
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For lots of, we have not really, we have not treated our two kids the same and
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we won't, and really we can't in so many different ways for so many different reasons.
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For one thing, they are two very different kids, right? They're just two different
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kids. You know, I mean, one's a boy, one's a girl.
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One is really, one is really outgoing and is going to get in your face if you
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give her the opportunity.
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The other one is maybe a little more reserved, maybe.
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One is really bold socially, but timid physically.
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The other one is the exact opposite, you know. One has a really high tolerance
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for pain, and the other one has a seemingly pretty low tolerance for pain.
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They're just different, right? We could just go down the line.
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We could name some other categories, and we could do that for a lot of different areas.
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They're just different kids, and so they need to be kind of interacted with a little differently.
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They've got different strengths, different weaknesses, you know,
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different things they need help with and different things they want to be left
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alone with, you know, right? It just, that's just, they're just two different kids.
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Another, another reason why we can't treat our two kids the same is because
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with the first kid, at least for the first two and a half years,
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we had, she had us to herself, you know, when the second kid came along,
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lo and behold, the first kid didn't go anywhere. She was still there.
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So we were dealing with, With one, with the first kid, we were just dealing
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with a baby and whatever adult responsibilities we had to deal with.
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It wasn't a big, we could juggle all that and we were kind of fine.
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With the second kid, we were dealing with a baby and our adult responsibilities, whatever that was.
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And we also had this like two and a half year old who was very insistent on
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needing quite a bit of attention at the time, right? And still is.
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So just, so that's another, but another reason why really we have not treated
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and really we can't interact with our kids in the same way is that with the
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second kid, we have some experience.
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With a second kid, I'm not saying we're, we're not writing parenting books yet.
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I'm getting one of these for my wife.
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But, but like, but we, we have learned a trick or two, you know,
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maybe not three, but at least a trick or two, right? We've learned some things, right?
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So with, with our, with our daughter, I remember, Stephanie reminded me the
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other day, we went to the pediatrician one time for, I think this was just for a checkup or something.
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And, and, you know, they always ask, you know, do you have any questions,
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whatever, this, this kind of thing. And, well, she's kind of making some weird
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noises. And we described the noises to the pediatrician.
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Sort of felt like going to the mechanic because you got like that your car is
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making a weird rattling sound. And you're like, is that normal?
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You know, what do we do with that? I don't know. We don't know what we're doing with that.
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And the pediatrician was very reassuring. She was very positive,
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very helpful, and assured us that nothing was wrong and that babies are just weird.
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That was, I believe, a more or less direct quote from our pediatrician at the
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time. So with the second kid, we haven't really had as much of that,
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you know, and we've just been able to, you know, just kind of roll with it a little better.
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Experience is the best teacher. And when our daughter was little,
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when our five-year-old was little,
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we leaned a lot on the experiences of parents and friends and other family and
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our pediatrician, other people in our lives who had been around and who had seen it.
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With our youngest, with Joshua, we're still doing that. We still benefit a lot
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from the people around us, the community that we have.
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But also we've gained our own experience. And it's just different,
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you understand. So experience is the best...
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Teacher, I think, in many areas of life. This is true in parenting.
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It's true in lots of different areas.
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It's also true in discipleship. If you are following Jesus, experience,
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again, is one of the best teachers, really.
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So our series right now, what we've been kind of talking about,
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what we've been wrestling with these past, really, I mean, almost two months
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now, these past eight weeks, we've been talking about discipleship.
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We've been talking about these eight markers of what a disciple is,
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what a disciple looks like in the world.
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And so we've just kind of gone down this list.
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And the first three are a disciple of Jesus is someone who professes Jesus as
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Lord, who trusts the Holy Spirit, and who pursues holiness of heart and life.
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These are like bedrock, baseline level commitments.
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These are commitments sort of through which everything else gets kind of filtered.
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These three things aren't really things that you like kind of do once and then
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you're done. And that's not exactly that you're doing them over and over.
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They're sort of things through which you do everything else,
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right? They're just like basic baseline.
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This is what it is. What it means to follow Jesus is you're someone who at just
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baseline, basic, basic, basic trust, you profess Jesus as the Lord,
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you trust the spirit and you're pursuing holiness.
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That's what it is to be a disciple.
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But there are habits. There are things that you can do over and over.
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There are rhythms, behaviors, there are things that you can cultivate in your life.
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And when you do that, it tends to increase and make it even a little easier
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to profess Jesus as Lord, to trust the Spirit, to pursue holiness, these kinds of things.
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And these are some examples.
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Disciples of Jesus are people who live lives of prayer and worship,
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who believe in and study the Bible
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as the word of God, who are giving generously, who are serving others.
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And today we're going to talk about disciples of Jesus are people who share
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the story of God's faithfulness in their lives.
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So again, the more we do these five things, the easier it becomes to be people
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who profess Jesus as Lord and do the other first three things.
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And the more seriously and the more deeply we're professing Jesus,
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the more seriously we're taking Jesus to be the Lord of our life,
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the more deeply we're trusting God's Spirit,
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the more fully we are pursuing holiness in our life, the more we'll be drawn
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into these five things and maybe some other things like them, right?
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Does that make sense? So it creates a virtuous cycle. It's a virtuous cycle.
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The more we do these things, the more our life is characterized by the first three things.
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The more our life is characterized by the first three things,
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the more we'll be drawn into doing these five things and others like them.
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Does that make sense? Everybody on board?
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Cool. For the five of you that are on board, I appreciate it.
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Okay. So with that, today we're going to talk about sharing the story of God's
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faithfulness in our lives.
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Sharing the stories of God's faithfulness in our life. to get at this,
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we're going to look at a passage of scripture.
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So if you've got your Bibles with you and you want to follow along,
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you've got a paper Bible, turn to 1 Samuel 17. You've got a Bible app, same thing.
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Tap your way over there. 1 Samuel 17, I'm going to start in verse 32.
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But first, kind of a bit of introduction, a bit of background.
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Set the stage a little bit.
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This is a familiar story to many people.
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Many people are going to find this to be a familiar story. This is something
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that I imagine probably most people have heard this story in one form or another in there.
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We tell this story to kids. One reason why we tell the story to kids is because
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the main human character in the story is a kid.
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It's the story of David and Goliath. It's the story of David and Goliath.
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But we're going to, when you read this, and if you read it in the Bible, it's 1 Samuel 17.
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It's pretty long, actually. There's a lot of details, lots of ins and lots of
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outs for something that, you know, you can make short work of on a felt board
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in five or so minutes. Right.
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But in the story is really quite long.
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And if you read it, if you read first Samuel 17, just straight through,
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you might miss this few paragraphs that we're going to talk about today.
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So, so we're just going to kind of focus on one, one aspect of the story that
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that's kind of easy to, easy to miss when you just kind of read it through.
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So, but first again, just set the stage a little bit. So what we have is we have, we have a battle.
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We have a battle that's been going on for a long time, at least 40 days that we know of.
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And on one hill side, you've got the Israelite army.
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This is God's people. These are our, these are our protagonists.
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These are our heroes over here. These are the people that we're rooting for in the Bible.
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On the other side, you got the Philistines, you got the Philistines and they
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have been fighting again for at least 40 days that we know of.
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And the reason why we know they've been fighting for at least 40 days is because
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we know that every day for 40 days, something significant has happened.
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Something that was memorable to everybody there happened.
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And that is every day for 40 days in a row, a person whose name is Goliath walked
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down from the Philistine camp and he stood at the battle line and he called
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up to the Israelites and he basically called them out.
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He called them a bunch of cowards. He called them a bunch of sissies.
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He calls them mean names.
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He says unkind things to them. He probably uses all kinds of words that are
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not acceptable for polite company.
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Goliath, he is calling them out. He's calling them to the carpet.
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And he's saying, hey, send down your champion. Send out your best guy.
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And I'm going to fight him. And if I win, then you be our slaves. If he wins, that's fine.
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You know, my people be your slaves. That's fine. That's how we're going to settle
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this. one of the detail about Goliath you need to know that,
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again, since it's a familiar story, I think we all already know,
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or at least most of us already know.
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Goliath is, he's a tall guy. He's a tall fella. He's a big fella.
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He is, you know, your Bible, different translations have different kind of units
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of measurement, but because they didn't have like feet and yards in the ancient world, go figure.
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So, but as best we can figure, he's somewhere around nine or 10 feet tall. He's a big guy.
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He's a big guy. In a world where fighting is mostly,
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almost exclusively hand-to-hand combat, in a world where it's spears and shields,
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and you're just down, you got to be down within a few feet of your enemy to fight.
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It's a very intense form of combat.
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Goliath is not somebody you want to face, is it? He's not someone you want to
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challenge to a arm wrestling match.
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Definitely not a dunking contest.
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And for sure, hand-to-hand combat is not interested, right? Like,
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let's, the case we change the subject, we should talk about something else, right?
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Doesn't seem like that would go well. He's nine or 10 feet tall,
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again, in a world where people are on average shorter than they are now.
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So he is, there are many people in Israel's army that are half the height,
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half the size of Goliath.
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And he is standing there and he is calling them out every day for 40 days.
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In a row. This is some serious psychological warfare. This is some serious,
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like, he has got to be in their heads.
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He has got to be. There are some of those guys on the Israel side,
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they are losing sleep every night, worrying about Goliath and just dreading
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this whole situation, this challenge.
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And this whole time he's making fun of them.
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And so this is what's going on in the background.
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Meanwhile, so that's what you got on one side. On the other side, we have David.
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David's just a kid. He's just a kid. He is the youngest of eight brothers.
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He's the youngest of eight brothers.
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And the only reason why he even shows up here at all is because his dad sends
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him with a care package to go deliver to his brothers that are in the army.
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David, it seems, is too young to be a part of the army.
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But it's not just that David is too young to be a part of the army.
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Again, he's the youngest of eight.
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He has three brothers who are in the army. Now, think about that.
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The youngest of eight, he's got three brothers.
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And it's his three oldest brothers. he has four older
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brothers who are also seem to
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be too young to be in the army how young
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must david be if he has he is five him and four of his brothers are all too
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young to be and he's the youngest of all of them right how old how old do you
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think david is he like i can't imagine him being 12 10 he could be eight he
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i could i like it's hard for me to imagine just based on what happens in this
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story, that he's any younger than eight.
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But just like, but I mean, just like he's a little guy.
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So again, think about the heights in play here.
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Nine or 10 feet on the one hand, David, who is probably not fully grown.
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He's probably not reached his full adult height.
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David was not famous for being tall in the ancient world as an adult.
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He has not yet reached his full adult height, probably.
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He is definitely less than half as tall as Goliath. Almost certainly,
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right? Everybody on board with that?
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David is, he's a kid. He is a kid.
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But he shows up one day to deliver some care packages to his three brothers,
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and he's delivering some nicer
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things, some wine and cheese to the commanders of his brother's unit.
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You know, dad's trying to butter him up, I guess. I don't know.
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But so this is what David is doing.
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Meanwhile, while he's there, again, just being pretty much like Uber Eats delivery
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boy at this point, while he's there, he hears Goliath come out and do his daily
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thing that he's done for 40 days.
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And he comes out and he calls the Israelites a bunch of sissies and they're
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all weak. They're all a bunch of wusses. And he's going to, you know,
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he could take all of them.
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And he just dares somebody to come down and fight him. And David is just appalled at this.
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David is just really, again, as a kid, but he's just like bothered by this.
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And he is talking this up in the camp.
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And this gets around to his brothers that he's talking about this guy,
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Goliath, and how somebody needs to go fight him. And his brothers are really
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like kind of angry and annoyed at their little brother, as you might imagine,
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some family dynamics coming into play there.
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But word gets to Saul, who's the king, word gets to King Saul that there is
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someone in the camp who's just really interested in this Goliath thing,
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and it seems like he wants to do something about it.
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And so Saul summons David.
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That sets the stage. That's where we're at.
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Saul is going to summon David. He's going to bring him into his tent,
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his court, his presence, and to talk about this Goliath situation.
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And I imagine maybe Saul is expecting someone else, but what he gets is David.
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So Saul summons David, and this is their conversation.
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This is the record of their conversation as our Bibles have it here.
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So again, I'm in 1 Samuel 17. I'm starting in verse 32.
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We read, David said to Saul, let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine.
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Your servant will go and fight him. Your servant is kind of his sort of,
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that's kind of in the ancient world, this is how you talk to a king.
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You've referred to yourself as your servant, right?
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So David's basically saying, hey, don't worry about, don't worry about that big jerk Goliath.
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I'll take care of him for you. No big deal.
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That's what David is saying. And again, Saul is looking at this kid.
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Saul's sitting on a throne. He's looking at a child.
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So Saul replies the way probably most of us would reply if we were faced with a similar situation.
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Saul, verse 33, replies, You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him.
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You are only a young man, and he has been a warrior from his youth.
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So again, Saul sees things really logically. He sees the situation,
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and he knows how the world works,
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and he knows how fighting works, and he knows that that 10-foot guy is not going
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to be beat by that 4-foot kid. He just knows that's the case.
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Saul thinks in the world and in life like most of us think oftentimes in our lives and in our world.
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Saul is looking at the world like what we might call a practical atheist.
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Saul sees the setup. He sees the situation in a purely human kind of way.
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And he knows how the world works. He's a king. He's been around the block a time or two.
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He understands fighting. He gets it. And he actually is a pretty tall guy himself.
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Saul had that reputation in
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his day. And he sees this little kid and he knows this is a terrible idea.
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Saul approaches the world as if there were no God.
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Saul sees the battle, sees the fight in front of him as if it would just be,
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this proposal, it would just be, you know, like whatever fourth grader versus 10-footer, you know?
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That's all Saul sees. And he calls it like he sees it, right?
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It's pretty easy to figure that one out, right? Well, David,
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you don't stand a chance.
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That's not how David sees the world. That's not how David thinks about this.
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Here's how David responds. So, well, before I get to that, just David comes
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and says, hey, I'll take care of that big jerk for you.
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Saul looks at him and he says, no, you won't. Who are you kidding?
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He's going to stomp you like a little bug.
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This is how David responds to that.
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Starting in verse 34, we read, but David said to Saul, your servant,
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again, he's talking about himself there, has been keeping his father's sheep.
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Not maybe the strongest start, but bear with him. Okay. bear with him.
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Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep.
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When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock,
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I went after it, struck it, and rescued the sheep from its mouth.
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When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it, and killed it.
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Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear.
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This uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied
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the armies of the living God.
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The Lord, and this is key here, the Lord who rescued me from the paw of the
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lion and from the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.
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Saul said to David, go, and the Lord be with you.
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So David has to have at least enough of a head on his shoulders to see the same
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kind of interpretation of events that Saul sees.
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He has to know roughly how tall he is and roughly how tall that giant is,
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right? He has to know that in an arm wrestling match, this is no contest.
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But David also sees something else.
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David also has something else.
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David has a story. David has a history.
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David knows that he has faced impossible situations before,
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David knows that, you know, when the lion came and carried off the sheep You
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know, something snapped and he went and took care of it and it was okay,
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And that when the bear came and tried to carry off a sheep that he did the same
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thing and it was all right It turned out okay But David isn't looking at this
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and he isn't saying like Hey, I've beat up guys that are bigger than me before
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I've handled a bear and a lion.
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I can handle a giant, you know, because I'm smart or I think about things in
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a different way. I've got creativity. I've got creative problem solving.
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He's looking at things one way. I'm looking at things. David doesn't come at it like that.
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David isn't saying I'm going to outsmart him. He's not saying any of that.
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What David is saying, he's saying that God's been with me.
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He's saying that the Lord, the God who protected me from the lion,
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the God who protected me from the bear can handle this big buffoon over here.
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David is saying, I've been in impossible situations before.
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I've been through really hard things before. I've faced down terrifying foes before.
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And the fact that nobody else here is willing to face down this one makes me feel called to do so.
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I've faced terrifying foes before. And so I believe that the God who was with
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me in that previous fight, the God who helped me when I faced somebody who was
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bigger and stronger than me before, can help me,
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can be with me, is going to see me through this.
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David is certain. David feels like his cause is right and righteous, and it was.
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David seems to feel like a calling, like a burden to this.
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But I can't imagine that he would have been willing to go through with it,
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except that he remembers that God was with him in the past.
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I've been through impossible things before. I've faced a terrifying foe before.
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And the God who carried me through that is going to carry me through this.
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And then what happens? Two things happen.
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Saul, I think David remembering this story, remembering this fact that,
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hey, I've been through these, I've faced a scary foe before, and God saw me through.
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David's faith is strengthened. And suddenly, because of that history,
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because he knows he has a God who can bring a people down through the Red Sea,
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because he knows he has a God who can part the seas, because he knows that he has a God who,
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was always with Moses, who was with his ancestors, Abraham, Isaac,
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and Jacob, because he knows he has a God who is with his people because he knows
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he has a God who's been with him.
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David is able to have the faith to know that God's gonna be with him in the
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next thing, to know that God's gonna be with him and gonna walk and gonna see
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him through the next fight.
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So David remembering his story with the bears and the lions,
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his faith is empowered to face what's coming next.
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But also his story, David's story doesn't just encourage himself.
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David's story doesn't just call out faith and trust in his own heart and life,
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it calls it out in Saul too.
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Saul, who again was seeing things at a very basic, like obvious kind of level,
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the way that most of us see most of our lives most of the time.
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And Saul knows that a four foot kid can't beat a 10 foot seasoned warrior. Saul knows that.
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Suddenly hearing David's story, hearing the story of how God has seen David
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through, suddenly Saul realizes that the opposite is the case. right?
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Saul realizes that what's impossible for people is possible with God.
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And so Saul says, okay, go for it. And may God be with you.
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And again, probably most of us know the rest of the story.
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Saul, David, David does. He goes through with it. He goes down to the river.
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He picks out five smooth stones.
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This is probably would have been like a little creek or stream kind of through
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the middle of the valley. Again, you got two armies camped on hillsides.
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You got a valley down the middle, probably a stream down the middle.
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David goes down, he picks out five smooth stones, and that's about four more
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than he needed, because he just takes one go at it with a sling,
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and bang, right between the eyes,
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Goliath falls, and that's it.
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David is able to face Goliath, not because he's bigger, stronger than Goliath,
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but because he has a story.
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He knows that God has been with him in the past and he believes that God is
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going to be with him in the future. And friends, it's the same way with us.
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Many of us in here, most of us, maybe all of us in here, have some kind of a
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story, some kind of a thing that you can point to and you can say, God was with me in that.
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I don't know how I got through that except by the grace of God.
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And maybe it's a story of salvation, a story of just like, I was low, but God lifted me up.
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I was at the end of my rope, but God pulled me up.
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I was dead, but now I'm alive.
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I was useless. I was a selfish sinner, but God has made me into something else.
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God's transformed me. Maybe that's your story. Or maybe you're thinking,
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and or, maybe you're thinking about just some hard times you've been through in your life.
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Diagnosis, a sickness, some kind of challenge.
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And you've seen how God carried you through.
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And that can strengthen you to believe that God's going to carry you through the next thing.
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Thinking about our lives right now a little bit.
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We own a house a little over about an hour away or so. We listed it for sale
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on May the 1st and have hardly gotten a nibble.
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But we're here. And we believed that God was calling us here.
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And we also knew that we had someone who was planning on starting kindergarten.
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So we kind of wanted to be settled before the school year started.
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So we just took it on trust and we moved back in July.
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And maybe a week or two or so later, we listed our house for rent.
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And again, hardly a nibble.
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Apparently not timing the market super great on this whole job transition in
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our lives, right? Which it just isn't, it just isn't happening.
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And, and you may, you probably should not be surprised to learn that an associate
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pastor and an educator can't really juggle two mortgages for a long period of
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time, right? Like we're not set up for that. We're just not.
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And yet we, you know, we've, we've done this. We've, we've moved forward in
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spite of all, you know, surface appearances.
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And in spite of all surface appearances, like we've actually,
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the most amazing thing about this whole thing actually has been just how not
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terrified by it we've both been really, like we're just putting one foot in front of the other.
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We're just doing what we think needs to be done and just trusting that God is going to see us through.
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And the reason why we're able to do that is not because we're magic and it's
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not, I hope, because we're fools.
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I don't think we are, but it's because we can look back and we can see,
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especially in these last few
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years, how God has been so good and so faithful to us and to our family.
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How God has seen us through some really intense, weird challenges that we weren't
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expecting and how he's brought us through on the other side.
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We did some crazy things in the last few years. We started a church.
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We got some friends from that church that we started that were a part of that
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here with us this morning. We started a church and it was nuts.
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It was a big risk. But what we kept telling ourselves and what we kept telling
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everybody who took a risk and joined us in that adventure was that when we step
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out in faith, God honors that and God blesses that.
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And that when the Holy Spirit calls you out on a limb, when you go out on a
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limb with the Holy Spirit, there's no safer place for you to be.
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And maybe it's just repeating it over and over, but we really believe it.
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And here we are. We believe that really the culmination of this journey—God,
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we hope it's the culmination of this journey.
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We really believe the culmination of this journey is being here.
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We're so excited to be here.
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We believe that God has brought us here, and we believe that God who brought
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us here is faithful, and he's going to see it through.
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And so I had in the back of my mind the likelihood that I was probably going to share some of that.
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And lo and behold, this week we actually might have a renter, maybe.
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I checked my email during the worship set just to see if I'd gotten an email
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with a lease that we needed to sign on the other end. You know what I mean?
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But regardless of whether that had been the case or not, like...
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I still believe that. Even if this deal falls through, God is faithful.
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And our job is to just keep moving forward as faithfully as best we know how.
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So friends, that's my invitation. That's my challenge to you,
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is to remember those times, to remember those places, remember those situations,
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where God has been faithful to you.
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We sing in that one song, The Goodness of God, All my life you have been faithful
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All my life you have been so, so good And he is, right?
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He is Remember those stories Hold on to those stories I hope you're thinking
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of those stories right now And if you're not,
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I want to challenge I want to encourage you to think about those times Those
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places where God has been with you In the valleys and seen you through where God has pulled you up,
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lifted you up, and given you and graced you with things that you didn't deserve.
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I mean, starting with his love, starting with his favor, starting with his grace.
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If you don't have a story like that, I want to encourage you to lean on your
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community, lean on your church, listen for other people around you and their
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stories, because this is what those stories are for.
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When we share our stories, we have an opportunity to strengthen our own faith.
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We also have an opportunity to strengthen other people's faith.
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So I wanna challenge you to do that. First of all, figure out what your story is.
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Second of all, share it. Share it for your own self, but also share it for people
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around you and listen to other people's stories.
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Friends, we live in a world of giants, but we have a God who is bigger than the giants.
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Bow your heads, pray with me. Graciously merciful God, we are just so in awe
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of all the ways that you have blessed us with your gifts, with your grace,
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with your love, with your forgiveness.
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God, the ways that you have journeyed with us in life.
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And God, if we can't think of a story like that in our lives,
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God, if somebody in here doesn't have something like that, that they can point
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to, God, I just pray that you would pour out your Holy Spirit on them, God.
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That you would just, you would do something. You would work something in their
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heart, in their family, in their lives, such that they just wouldn't even believe
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if somebody was going to tell them that was going to happen this morning.
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God, move among your people in power. And help us to remember those stories
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of how you've moved among us in power in the past so that we might be empowered,
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emboldened, inspired to just take big risks, take big swings for your kingdom.
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God, glorify you. Glorify yourself. glorify your name through us,
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your servants. In the name of your son, Jesus, I'm going to.
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Music.