April 26, 2026 | Traditional Worship | Your Algorithm - Wk 3: Colossians 2:6–8, Gal. 5:22–23

``Every single one of us should check our direction regularly. There should be a daily inventory, but you could say weekly inventory. Where am I drifting? If you do this intentionally, you will never find yourself very far where God wants you from to be. I mean, you you're gonna be in alignment because you're doing this on a weekly inventory. Think about this. This is the truth. We don't often think about it this way, but spiritual drift is what happens when repentance is absent from your life. And a lot of times we think repentance is all about the sins and the sins that it's more than that. Okay? Repentance is turning from something that you're focused on and focusing back on God. [01:01:04] (45 seconds)  #SpiritualCheckup

The fruits of the spirit are not a list of what we should achieve. We want them in our life but you can't just achieve these things. They're more evidence that reveals our ongoing sanctification and Christ likeness. Because we are following Christ, we're aligned with Christ, we're doing the things that Christ wants us to be about and the influences that are coming in our life, that we have peace, we have joy, we have kindness, we're loving. Again, not behavioral management. It's like I'm gonna be that. No. It's it's not personality trait stuff. This is spiritual fruit is evidence of formation that is happening in your life. It's not produced by trying harder, white knuckling it, as we said last week. It comes from surrender. [00:59:06] (57 seconds)  #FruitOfFormation

No one ever says the bait's dangerous about fishing. I mean, look at this thing. This is a lure. Right? This is this thing's kinda pretty, you know. It's got a little worm thing going on. It's I mean, it's pretty. It's appealing. It's not obviously dangerous, but we all know what lies in there, inside there, is that big old hook. Right? See, danger we danger is never, you know, it seems like the bait. But danger is hidden on the inside. See, we don't we don't just drift. What we do is we a lot of times we get hooked. We get hooked, don't we? And that's that's the thing of spiritual life is we gotta be real careful where we're gonna get hooked. Small little bites become captivity in our life. [00:55:01] (57 seconds)  #DontGetHooked

Spiritual reality for all of us who call ourselves followers of Christ is that we don't wake up one day and just think, I'm gonna just walk away from God. I mean, I'm tired of it. That might happen in your life. There might be some people who have had that in life, but that's not what we do. Most we just spiritually drift, we compromise on little things along the way and our spiritual life is not just determined by our intentions. Boy, we can have some great intentions. Right? We can have some hopes and we can have some wants, but direction determines our destination. As we've talked about before in other series, direction determines our destination. And Paul knows that, doesn't he? [00:55:58] (45 seconds)  #DirectionDeterminesDestination

Slightly drifting off course is not even acceptable. And slightly drifting off course is not dramatic. I mean, you're just gonna have these little tiny things that go unnoticed. You have to notice those. In uncorrected drift, you end up way off course. I think it's the same with a spiritual life. That's what happens. Because most of us in here don't have the danger of just like rejecting God. We're we're here. We're we're we're trying to get you know, go grow closer to God. We're trying to walk this path of following Jesus. But the danger in our life is slow drift. That's really the danger. And drift happens because we're unintentional. [00:44:30] (55 seconds)  #WatchTheDrift

I watch football a lot and if you ever watch football, you know, you'll see a wide receiver who slips coming out of a turn. That is not always the field, it's how they have stepped and which foot they've stepped with because they have not grounded and stabilized themselves before they make a move. And so this is the same in our spiritual understanding. Spiritual foundations in our lives are essential. So again, depth before direction. Jesus Paul says, hey, let let your lives be built on him. Jesus talked about that all the time. He he said, you know, we know best where he says, you know, build your life in a rock, not on sand because that is shifting. [00:51:59] (47 seconds)  #DepthBeforeDirection

It comes from allowing ourselves to be fully connected to God and surrendering of ourselves. We don't just we don't just get it. We can talk about it all day long. We can have great intentions but we don't get that stuff. That's why there's so many Christians that they're like, have you met them? You know, it's like where's the joy? Where's the kindness? Right? Where's the patience? We all deal with that. And so we have a diagnostic tool here. And when we're connected, it's the very same spirit that produces the fruit of the spirits in us that also gives us these godly desires that we should we want to be a part of something that produces that. [01:00:03] (44 seconds)  #ConnectedToChrist

And for all of us, the life that you want tomorrow is shaped by what you align with today. So let's go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly father, we thank you for wise words. We thank you That you give us gauges and measurements and ways that we can judge whether we have drifted off because we're in a relationship with you. We don't always know. We don't always feel when we're getting bombarded by the world, you know, exactly where you are and where we are and how everything's going. And sometimes we just need to be checked. We need to be measured. We need to have these gauges. And so we thank you for the beauty of the scriptures. We thank you for these wide wise words of Paul. [01:07:37] (51 seconds)  #AlignTodayForTomorrow