Well, good morning, Menlo Church, and welcome to the second week in a short three-part series that we started last week called The Formation Machine.
Last week, we took a look together at the curriculum of the culture that we live in and sort of what's underneath that, even who's writing it a little bit. Whether you're a Christian or not, whether you knew that was true in the world around us or not, I hope it was helpful. You can find it online if you missed it. Today's message will make a bunch more sense. We'll see you next week. If you've listened to that one, which if you didn't, I've just instantly disappointed you, but I'm glad you're here either way.
With change kind of as almost what feels like the only steady state all around us, happening at a pace that none of us can really process, what I hope is that this conversation is helpful and calibrating for you and maybe for how you walked out this last week. I've heard more from people who listened to that message—like sent me emails—than any other message ever given at Menlo. So I'm so glad for that.
And actually, I love going back and forth. It reminds me of a reality that I'm so thankful for, which is that we are a multi-site church, that there are people in Saratoga, Menlo Park, Mountain View, San Mateo, the communities around those campuses, and people literally around the world who are allowing God to speak to them and shape their perspective for life and faith together as one church in multiple locations with one mission: to bring hope to everyone as we live our identity in Christ every day.
I want to acknowledge that this series is a little heavy, and if you are new or newer to faith, no matter what you hear or learn today, I hope what you take away is the fact that there is a group of people here in Silicon Valley who love you because God loves them and loves you too, no matter what you've done or where you've been or where you find yourself today.
This week, we're going to talk about the counter-formation, how we go against the grain of that cultural curriculum because of the good news of Jesus, how pursuing Jesus in our daily lives can counter the crushing weight of what is happening in our world, whether it's the world in general or our world specifically.
You've probably heard someone in the past who's tried to get you to put your guard down by saying something to the effect of, "I don't have an agenda." But what we looked at last week is that there actually is an agenda in the culture around us, and what we're going to look at this week is God's agenda for you, His life-giving and evangelical agenda. So, let's get started.
But before we get started, I'm going to pray for us. And if you've never been here or never heard me speak before, before I speak, I pray kneeling. And part of the reason that I do that on a week like this one is because the power and love of God that we're about to talk about reminds us that God is worthy of all of our worship and our humility as we approach Him.
So, no matter where you would describe yourself in your pursuit of God, would you humble yourself in the quiet of your heart and pray?
God, thank you so much. Thank you that no matter what brought us in today, no matter what made us log on today, no matter, God, why we're willing to have a conversation with you or about you or with other people, God, you have not forgotten that as overwhelming as the world all around us can feel, it is not overwhelming to you. None of it caught you off guard this week, and none of the circumstances in this world are so big that your plan will be thwarted. Would you remind us of that today? Not just globally, but specifically in our lives as we learn to walk in light of it. It's in Jesus' name. Amen.
So, last week, I talked about this thing that we all do, which is we all ignore terms of service agreements. I literally did it for something this morning, actually. Some of you told me, "Hey, you know, we don't all—I definitely click agree after I've read everything." And I'm like, "Yeah, but you know you're not normal, right?" Like most of us, we just scroll and click agree. It doesn't make us scroll; we just click agree.
So, I mentioned that last week. I want to tell you about one other one that happens to me regularly that I find very annoying, and that's pop-ups. Not like the pop-up windows. I think we've all sort of figured out a way to get rid of those. But when I'm reading an article, the kind of window that shows up immediately over the text that I'm trying to read in the exact website, and I have to click it, and sometimes there's like multiple of them. It's very annoying.
And here's what I would say: I have severe dyslexia, and so to me, it feels personal. It feels like those web designers are like, "Phil's coming to this website. We're going to make it even more difficult." It just seems so frustrating when you're trying to focus.
And I would say we are in a moment where our attention has become more and more difficult. It's become more and more commoditized to the point that focusing seems harder than ever. Author Johan Hari puts it this way: he says, "It's not your fault you can't focus. It's by design." The truth is that you are living in a system that is pouring acid on your attention every day. Welcome to church, right?
Now, it might be true that this isn't our fault, but it's also true that it is our responsibility if we want to counteract the effects of the culture around us and its impact on the way we can gain and give attention. If we want to live differently, we have to be prepared to live differently. The distractions and the manipulations of the enemy of our soul, whether you believe he exists or not, they may be coming faster than we have ever seen before, faster than you have ever anticipated.
But this wasn't a surprise to Jesus even 2,000 years ago. As a matter of fact, this concept of the curriculum of our culture and the counter-formation of Jesus is encapsulated in one famous verse from Jesus. He says it this way: "The thief," this is the enemy of our soul, Satan himself, "comes to steal, kill, and destroy." These are not "or's" right here. This is "and." This is the only desire of the enemy of your soul. He does not have a neutral plan for you. He is not kind of ambivalent. He is trying to kill you. He's trying to take your joy. He's trying to destroy you and the reputation of God working in you.
And then Jesus says, "I, Jesus, came that they," and "they" here is future followers of him, the disciples that would come after him. Actually, he's talking about you. He says, "I came that you may have life and have it abundantly," an abundant life.
And so, you know, maybe you wouldn't call yourself a Bible scholar. I certainly wouldn't call myself that, but this isn't the hardest choice we're going to have to make this week, right? If you have two choices—being manipulated by a culture controlled by the thief who wants to steal, kill, and destroy, or a savior who died for you to give you eternal life, and in a kingdom that starts now and lasts forever to give you an abundant life—which one of these would you like? Right? That's the choice that Jesus is trying to reveal.
So, if there's this agenda all around us, what can we do? How can we live this abundant life that Jesus came to offer and counter the manipulation all around us?
Over the next few minutes, I want to show you that countering everyday manipulation takes daily formation. It's not something we can do once and forget about it. We have to continue to lean in. We can't drift into it, just like we talked about last week.
Before moving to Colorado, or before moving to California, we lived in Colorado, where there are these things called winters. And you're like, "We have winter?" Yeah. Just imagine if, like, some rain meant lots of snow. That's the difference.
And the winters that existed in Colorado were real winters, so much so that as you got ready for them, there were these seasonal things that you knew you had to prepare for. You had to check your snowblower, which I'll tell you what that is later. You had to pull out your winter clothes. I don't mean like the thin jacket from Patagonia. I mean like the really thick stuff that you take to Vail. You had to shut down sprinkler systems. You knew when this season was coming, there was preparation that was necessary in order for you to be ready for it.
The problem for a lot of us in our spiritual lives is that on this side of heaven, there is a sense in which we are living perpetually in winter. And if no one has told you that, then you are walking around in spiritually freezing temperatures in metaphorical flip-flops and wondering why you're cold. Because you think that culture is kind to you. You think that culture is compatible with your faith. You think that the things and the systems and the pressures that you feel will eventually line up to the kind of life you want to live.
The way this has shown up in church culture is that we made a decision for Jesus, choosing to follow Jesus with your life and eternity, which is amazing. But we have made that unintentionally the finish line, not the starting line. See, Jesus calls us to make a decision to follow him, absolutely. But in our journey of discipleship, that's the starting line, or what we call here at Menlo, spiritual formation.
I'm going to give you a definition for that in just a minute. So if you're a notes person or you take pictures, this will be a helpful photo for you. If that language of spiritual formation is new for you, that's kind of how we think about discipleship here at Menlo. How are you formed spiritually?
And this is just a definition you can take or leave for spiritual formation, but I think it's helpful. Spiritual formation is your lifelong transformation, not just for today, not for camp, not just for when your life is struggling. Like, that you and I would choose to be an apprentice of Jesus, not the way of Jesus, Jesus himself. He's alive and well.
By renewing the mind, I'm sorry, yeah, renewing the mind, our head, reshaping desires, our heart, and reorienting our actions, our hands, toward God's kingdom. That even though we live in a nation and in a context and in sort of lots of competing kingdoms, what it means to have spiritual formation is that you and I are committed to this lifelong transformation as apprentices of Jesus by renewing the mind, reshaping desires, and reorienting actions toward God's kingdom.
And so when we talk about what it looks like to grow into the likeness of Jesus, that's what we're talking about. Now, we've already covered the idea that you can't drift into this. If you want something that you can drift into, you should go back to last week and see what culture has in mind for you if drifting is the priority in your life.
The agenda of the world is strong and powerful, and it needs the counter-formation of Jesus. It needs the good news of Jesus to take control of our lives. If we don't adopt these implications of choosing to follow Jesus with our whole lives, then we are likely to succumb to what the early church faced, where we simply get manipulated and swallowed up by agendas and priorities of the world around us. We get twisted.
As a matter of fact, in a letter to the church at Colossae, the apostle Paul frames it this way. He says, "Remember, we talked about this last week, that with drifting, the only thing it can do is take us captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition," sort of the things of culture that can get twisted, "according to the elemental spirits of the world." It's a spiritual battle and not, here's the headline, "according to Christ."
This is the challenge for us. See, this isn't simply saying that philosophy is bad. It's not saying that philosophy is bad. It's saying that philosophy that is rooted in a life without Jesus is bad. It's not saying that human tradition is bad. It's saying that human tradition that emphasizes a life without Jesus is bad. That's where we ignore the spiritual forces at play trying to distract and destroy us. That's what's bad.
Fundamentally, Paul is encouraging us to fully integrate our lives with our faith, that where our choice to follow Jesus and be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit is given access to every part of who we are: every relationship, every priority, every scheduled item, every goal.
Every church or faith tradition has its own kind of blind spots in this. And with this in mind, a friend of mine who is a pastor in Atlanta has a line he said recently. He said, "We have big heads, shrunken hearts, and tiny hands."
Now, if you don't know this, you are smart. Like you are among the smartest people to have ever lived. You are brilliant. You live in Silicon Valley because of that. You wanted to be around like other smart people. It's amazing. I love that at Menlo, when I mention a book, you go read it. When I talk about a concept, you come to me and you're like, "I came up with it." Like you are brilliant people.
And on top of all of that, you are currently at a Presbyterian church. So it's like you're the smartest people in every room you go into. And you're like, "And I'm getting smarter." Like you are brilliant. It's amazing. You're committed to getting smarter.
And the faith of the mind, which is such an important thing here at Menlo, where our mind can inform our faith in a way that is intellectually honest and personally rigorous, it's amazing. And you're in Silicon Valley on top of it. But every strength has a shadow.
And unfortunately for us, what our minds can do is they can get so big that we rationalize why we shouldn't get too passionate in worship or why we shouldn't get too invested. And then we find ourselves so busy consuming content that we don't ever get around to letting God use it to shape our actions.
My friend who I mentioned who had come up with this line about our big heads and our shrunken hearts and our tiny hands, he didn't just leave it at a statement, and neither am I. I'm going to take his idea. He said, "Hey, we have these like really tiny little hands too, you know?" And so it looks silly because you're like, "That's Phil, that's strange. That's a strange thing that you have these really small hands." And I agree with you. Like, this isn't supposed to be how we live our lives, where we're like, "Hey, everybody, I live in Silicon Valley."
Like we, as funny as this looks, this is how funny our disintegrated faith can look right now. We want to help. We're like, "I'm coming. Let me help." I can't hold it. My hands are so tiny. We want to give, but we're like, "I can't get my hand into my pocket." I want to help in that practical area of your life, but it's like, "Oh, it's so big and so heavy and my hands are so tiny."
But we're like, "You know what I can do? I can check out the next podcast. I can read the next book. I can be so smart. My head's so big. I want to raise my hands in worship, but they're so tiny."
But you know, something that's funny is our faith is the only place we do this. When we think about our work or our hobbies, like we bring our full self, our full capacity, our full energy to that. But we put our faith in this fragmented place.
But remember, we are being manipulated. Encountering everyday manipulation takes daily formation. It takes being willing to let God have every part of our lives. So tiny hands, as awkward and weird as that is, I want you to remember that.
I don't know what applying this has looked like in my life for a long time. You know the number one complaint that pastors get? Well, that's not true. The number one complaint is usually about music. But the number two complaint that pastors get is, "You're not feeding me."
Which I'm like, "We have a lot of donuts." Or "You're not going deep enough." Now, I want to be very real with you. I take what we do, the work to dig into the scriptures with you, to study spiritual formation together here at Menlo for our heads. It's so critical. I take it very seriously.
But it's not supposed to stop there. It's actually supposed to inform our hearts and our hands. Most of us, we have consumed more spiritual calories—I mean content—than we could ever apply in a lifetime. Your spiritual breakthrough is likely not found in the next podcast that you listen to or learn from the next sermon, but it's actually in applying the last one.
For a lot of us, somewhere along the way, it just became easier to add more than to do anything about it. For most of us, if we let the renewal that God has already given our minds reshape our desires and reorient our actions, we would be unrecognizable to even our closest friends and family.
But the church, we have to take some responsibility for our part in that problem. Because without realizing it, we can contribute to it. There are two areas that I want to zero in on for just a minute about how this shows up in our lives that I think can have the power to demonstrate your connection to Jesus in your practical everyday life.
The first one is called faithful presence within, and the second is called creative resistance.
Faithful presence within is a concept from a classic Christian sociologist, and it points to the fact that as we engage in daily formation, choosing to follow Jesus every day, that we are called to be a faithful presence within whatever context God has placed us. When you look at the pages of Scripture, you see men and women who do this. They stand out, they stand up as culture looks different, more and more different. The greatest example of this is Daniel in Babylon, right?
What we do, though, is we hide. When we get into a culture that pushes against us and what we believe about the kingdom of heaven, we just take our faith and we put it away. But if you are a follower of Jesus, you are called to be unashamed of the good of Jesus in your life, to demonstrate it.
Then when work shows up and pushes you to do something that you know is unethical or counter to the will of God in your life, you are supposed to, with kindness, speak up. You go, "Well, what if that costs me something?" It might. But I'm telling you, not doing it is costing you something already.
This idea of creative resistance is not new, so this idea of how can we be a faithful presence within, well, being someone that demonstrates creative resistance is a part of that, and it was modeled by Jesus. You intentionally show up differently than the world around you. That in non-violent, overly gracious ways, society has a bar, and you are showing something that's so counter to what society has that it begs explanation.
I think there are two areas of creative resistance that can show up very strong today. One is hospitality, that not just bare minimum, that not just kind of like, "Oh, I guess we can kind of meet at that restaurant and like, let me Venmo you," and you know, "How can we make this as efficient as possible?" But welcoming people into your space, welcoming people into your home. It doesn't have to be perfect.
Showing people we really care, we've thought about you, we've prepared and planned because you matter. And even if they go like, "Well, what can I bring?" Maybe you say, "Nothing, just you. Your presence is enough."
The second thing that I think can really make us stand out in this space of creative resistance is civility. Now, I know there's a lot of wild things happening right now in the world. I get it. And maybe you're thinking, "Phil, have you seen the news?" And I'm telling you, I get it. I understand.
But is freaking out helping anyone? Demonstrating civility, even with convictions and compassion, if you are civil, imagine what God can do with it.
So as we think about spiritual formation at Menlo, we actually spent a year and a half praying about and pursuing God's plan for the future that he was calling us into as a church, as well as trying to describe what a person embracing spiritual formation and becoming a disciple of Jesus looks like. In other words, God's agenda for you at Menlo Church.
The reason that we did that is because of how easy it is to over-index in our context on our head and under-emphasize everything else. But when we do that, we ignore so much of what God has for us and through us for the world around us.
There are a lot of passages that can remind us of this integration and why it's so important. One of them is found right here, written by the Apostle Paul, when he says, "Put on," this is an idea from Paul that he taps into regularly. It's this picture that we have multiple sets of clothes. And so every day there's a daily practice of saying, "I'm going to put on not just clothes, but I'm actually going to put on armor. I'm going to prepare for the day ahead of me as God's chosen ones, holy, and beloved."
And then he gives us this list: compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with one another. If one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. That if we're followers of Jesus, all of this stuff describes us.
And you're like, "That feels like a very heavy list." He says, "I'm not done." He says, "Above all of it, like everything we've just looked at, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony."
The picture of unity is not just that list of characteristics. We all know people that on paper, their sort of personal resume looks amazing, but they have no love. And actually, what the scriptures tell us is that that's like a noisy gong. It makes a lot of noise, but it does nothing.
Paul is talking to a group of Christians who need to be reminded of who they really are, what their identity should be shaped in as they more and more follow and are apprentices of Jesus. When we remember that we are chosen by God, that we are holy, which means set apart, that we are exiles, that it doesn't matter how good your situation is, how much you go, "I love our culture, I love our nation, I love the moment we get to live in." As followers of Jesus, our primary citizenship is never the kingdom that we are most visibly in. It's the one we often can't see.
And that we are beloved by God, loved immensely and irrevocably by a God whose love will never change or extinguish. Then we can move from our head to our heart with compassion and kindness, humility, and patience.
Imagine if these were the primary ways that people saw us. Not perfect, but being perfected. That even if someone never believed, they thought, "You know what, I don't know if I can believe in this Jesus thing, but I'll tell you what, Christians are so compassionate. They're so kind. They're so patient. They're so humble. It's incredible."
I've got some bad news. We have some work to do in our PR department because that is not currently the expectation in our culture when they hear "Christian."
But imagine if it was. We would let God from our head to our hearts, and then we would move from our hearts to our hands. And we would bear with one another, not with the tiny hands, but like with the actual hands that God has shaped in our life, that we would be direct with each other, that we would be ready to forgive like we have been forgiven.
And that we would do all of it from a place of love because the love of God is what holds all of this together: our head, our heart, our hands.
So how do we do that? Well, I want to give you these four ingredients that we've kind of framed as a part of how we think about it here at Menlo. We call them kingdom qualities that we are increasingly, hopefully, building over time.
That everything here at Menlo, from weekend messages to life group content to support for our students, kids, and family, it all integrates to these four ideas. Now, these four qualities are things that we grow in over time.
And the first one is that we are increasingly transformed into the likeness of Jesus. And as we are, we become undivided followers. As an undivided follower, I am committed to seeing my time, energy, and resources through the lens of my life with Jesus.
When we live like we are followers of Jesus, we are like followers of Jesus. We are like followers of Jesus at church, and like we aren't everywhere else. We might believe in Jesus. But if we don't live like we believe in Jesus, be prepared for an uncomfortable statement. When we don't live like what we believe, we have more in common with demons than with disciples.
They believe, they tremble, and they don't live any different. And some of us, that's our version of faith. If you want the abundant life that Jesus promises, we must let him into our whole life: our head, our heart, our soul.
And if you want the abundant life that Jesus promises, the second quality is an unhurried friend, where I am glad and eager to make myself fully present with Jesus and others. In a culture that is robbing us of our attention, I think one of the most counter-cultural things we can do and say in relationship with people is, "I'm not in a hurry."
To give space and time to people who need it, to put your phone away, to make eye contact, to not be in a hurry to the next thing. I think if that's all we did, you would stand out. Spiritual practices like Sabbath and solitude, prayer, they can be deeply formative in helping us operate at the pace that we were meant to move.
Even the speed of our culture is manipulating us into thinking that there is something wrong with you if you can't keep up, all the while we acknowledge, even in the normal social sciences disconnected from faith, that culture itself is moving faster than any of us can keep up.
The third quality is a sacrificial developer, where I'm increasingly finding my identity in Jesus and empowering others to do the same, that we're being manipulated to approach every aspect of our life with a return on investment mindset, where we strive to get as much as possible and give as little as possible.
But here's the problem. Jesus says that you'll find your life when you give it away, that we need to find your life when you give it away. Follow the example that he did, which is we live surrendered. We're really going to find ourselves through that path, that we aren't trying to climb over people. We're trying to humble ourselves and serve wherever God has placed us and whoever he has put in front of us.
And finally, the fourth quality is a thoughtful witness. I am living a life that reflects the gospel, and I'm able to communicate it with conviction and compassion, that we are ready for the conversations that God brings our way as we share the reason for the hope that people see in us.
We offer ourselves as a faithful presence of Jesus in a hostile world, regardless of what our family believes, our co-workers believe, our classmates believe, our neighbors believe. We love them. We invest in them. We pray for them. We invite them into our lives. We hope that they'll see Jesus because we want them to experience this abundant life now and this eternal life waiting for a kingdom they were made for, no matter what they believe.
Now, this is it. That's the whole thing. And if you're thinking, "Well, that's pretty simple, Phil, but pretty demanding. I don't think I can do that." Well, I can do you one better. You definitely can't do that.
What I just described is completely impossible by yourself. Left to our own devices, we will be divided followers, acquaintances in a hurry, developers only when it benefits us, and witnesses that do more harm than good. But you don't have to do this alone. As a matter of fact, you weren't designed to do it alone.
Next week, we'll talk about how community plays into all of this and how without it, we are trying to live this daily formation out with our hands, our hearts, and our heads tied behind our backs.
But after last week, I received a whole bunch of emails, which was awesome. I really do love reading those and getting a chance to go back and forth with you about how people were applying this around the Bay Area and actually around the world and process it.
There was one email in particular from a new friend of mine named Ed. I did ask his permission before putting it on a giant iPad. And he said this: he said, "We swim in our thoughts and culture the way fish swim in water, usually unaware of the fact that they're swimming in the water."
And he said, "Whenever I find myself in a negative mindset, I will tell myself, 'Time to clean the aquarium tank.'" Using that image as a metaphor to remove the negative thoughts and influences that are dirtying the water I'm swimming in.
Isn't that a helpful picture? Now, whether you have fish or not, you would say, "I'm a fish person or not," we kind of all can think about a fish tank that's clear and clean with happy and healthy fish inside. And we understand the concept that without intervention, that tank is going to get cloudier and cloudier, dirtier and dirtier.
But the problem is that the incremental change will go unnoticed by the fish because they're living in it every single second. Now, this picture of, like, "It's time to clean the fish tank," right? It should remind us that this work is every moment of every day, that we pattern our very thoughts after it.
The Apostle Paul gives us a similar challenge about the need for daily formation in the mindset of constant manipulation when he says, "We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete."
In another passage, Paul says, "We should take every thought captive." Imagine if in your mind, you just had a squeegee to clean the aquarium tank, and you had the little pellets that made it better. And you thought, "I need to stop for a second because the culture around me is manipulating me. And I need to do a practice that I might be reminded of and reconnected to the power that is inside of me of the Spirit of God to connect the sacrifice that Jesus made available."
So I want to give you an aquarium cleaning practice for the week ahead. And even if you weren't a notes taker, this could be a great thing to maybe grab a phone, take a picture, or write it down.
Saint Benedict of Nursia pioneered an idea that's called the daily office, which are these times throughout the day that we set aside for prayer and reflection. And I want to end this with a prayer.
I want to encourage you to add just one daily office to your week. You could do it on your commute. You could do it as you're putting on makeup, maybe as you're drinking your morning coffee. But spend a few minutes every day this week investing in your spiritual formation by holding a daily office around these questions.
Here's the first one. With your head, ask God, "Where do you want to renew my thoughts today? And what lies am I believing?"
With your heart, ask God, "What desires do you want to reshape today that are disordered right now?"
And with your hands, ask God, "Who and how do you want me to serve today?" Simple.
Now, you're going to find that one of those is easier for you. One of those you go, "Yeah, that sounds awesome." But don't just think about the easy one. Ask all three. And ask God to direct your heart, your head, and your hands.
Now, I know that this can feel overwhelming. And if your calendar is already full of commitments that feel unshakable, you're like, "Man, how could I add anything else?" But can I tell you a secret? Most of the time, God prompts me to slow down, not speed up, to be present in situations that I can already breeze past, not to add new ones.
It requires me to say no way more than it requires me to say yes. And a lot of our stress, mine included, comes from an undisciplined yes. We've just said yes over and over and over and over again. And this is going to mean saying no to stuff. It's going to mean saying no to people that you care about. But you've been saying yes to the rest, and you're saying no to the best as a result of it.
But Jesus, he puts it this way. He says, "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. My yoke is easy. My burden is light."
Is that the life that you're living? Jesus has an unhurried way of life that we can actually live if we give God our heads, our hearts, and our hands.
Remember where we finished last week? Living as exiles in a world like the one we talked about, it's going to make waves. The only way you do not make waves is drifting.
So we're going to have to stand out. But in a culture that is poisoning us, don't you want to stand out? Don't you want to help other people to be exposed to this imperfect work of God in you because it's available to them?
Living as a thoughtful witness who is pursuing Jesus at school, in our neighborhood, with our families, at Meta, at Google, at Apple, at TikTok, at your startup, we are being formed.
And this choice to daily formation is a choice to counter-formation. Let's pray that God gives us his heart for that work. Would you pray with me?
God, thank you so much. Thank you for the tremendous hope that we have in you, that no matter what this last week has looked like, no matter what the season we're in right now feels like, that you aren't done with us.
That even where we've fallen short, even where our hands have been too small, and our heads have gotten too big, and our hearts, God, they've just shrunken up. God, would you give us a greater vision for what it means to live as integrated people for you, that our daily routines would be modeled because of the life-giving power that's available in your Son?
Thanks for the tremendous gift that we have that's always waiting for us, that your love is immeasurable and irrevocable. God, help us to live in light of that. Thank you for the kingdom you invite us into. It's in Jesus' name.
on Feb 16, 2025
