The Naked Truth - Pastor Mike Smith

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey guys, this is Naim and you've reached the Mosaic Church podcast. So excited that you're part of our listening community and love for you to be even more connected. So check out our website. There's more content there and there's more opportunities for you get connected in our ministries and events as well. Also, love for you to share this content if this is blessed to you. I know that God wants to use you to bless other people with it. So share this podcast you will. Lastly, would you consider supporting this ministry? This is made possible by other people's generosity and I'd love for you to pay it forward. Join us to reclaim the message and the movement of Jesus together. So would you consider giving to this ministry? I know that God is able to do immeasurably more through us when we come together. Thank you so much. God bless you. Enjoy. [00:00:57] Speaker B: Good morning. Wow. Well, welcome. Good morning. So glad everybody's here. This morning we are continuing our series. I hope you guys are loving this. It's a little different. They're not all connected together, but if you're new, we're going through. You probably missed this. We're going through different passages of scripture in the Bible that we sometimes don't even realize we're there or we overlook or we just like, no, that couldn't be. And so we're kind of pulling those out, those odd ones, those mind blowing stories, and we're just kind of diving into them. But before we dive into our scripture for this morning, I just wanted to say I'm really envious. I'm really envious of those of you who have grown up in a church that is like Mosaic. It's really, it's life giving, it's modern. I didn't grow up in that context. And it was a little different. It wasn't bad, it was just different. But I'm really kind of envious of you. And I know the Bible says don't envy, but I'm just telling you, telling it like it is. Some of you have heard that if you grew up in a church, more like I grew up in a little bit, but I was reminded of it last Sunday. Last Sunday evening. For those of you who don't know, Elmex is our youth group. They meet on Sunday evenings. And we were having a meeting last Sunday evening and one of the leaders was sharing his story, kind of how the things evolved for him. And he's probably about 30 years old. I'm not quite sure how old he is, but he reminded me of something that I Have not heard in a long time. That was part of the church culture when I was younger. Any of you ever heard of Judgment House? All right, yeah. A few of you, but most of you have not. Let me tell you what Judgment House is. Judgment House is this drama. It's this production. And I really don't know how to say this other than just say it, but they bring you in and you watch this drama or some videos are involved in things, and their goal is essentially to scare the hell out of you so that you embrace Jesus, accept Jesus, invite him into your heart, pray the prayer, and it's all done. All good, right? And it just reminded me of the context of kind of where I grew up and the context that's here. And I'm so thankful for that. And some of you on livestream, I mean, I think about this, some of you on livestream, you love God, you love the church, but you may be your own livestream because you've been in the church and you've been felt some of the judgment sometimes. So hopefully. Hopefully, that's not what we experience here. But, you know, I was thinking, thinking about that this week, and I thought, what was the first thing that I learned in church? What was the first thing? And I realized probably the first thing I learned in church. I mean, this is very spiritual. Okay? You're not supposed to run in church, all right? Anybody know that? You're not supposed to run in church. It's impolite to run in God's house. God must live here. Got a bedroom somewhere. I don't know where. And Jesus is watching you, all right? So before I learn creation, before I learn Noah and the ark or Jonah and the well, before I learn Jesus, I learned no running in church. All right? Here's something else I learned. No talking. No giggling. No. And no laughing, because God is serious. All right? You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Because here's the context. Now, in the church I grew up in, all the adults would sit up front. They would sit close to the pulpit where the pastor was. And where'd all the kids sit? In the back, Mostly towards the back row, if not the back row. And they would be up there and we would be behind them. Y' all know what this means, right? You know what that means? That means when you get home, there's something going to be waiting for you. And why were they concerned about what we were doing all the way back on the back row? Because they knew that there were people judging them because of their kids actions and let me tell you, I can prove it. The church that I was at before I came here, one. I don't know what day it was, but one day, this mother came into my office, and she's carrying this letter, and I'm like, hey, what's going on? And she's almost in tears, and she hands me this letter. And I read this letter, and it essentially says, a group of us got together and decided that if you can't discipline your kids and keep them under control in church, you should leave them at home. I mean, it happened in a church. All the judgment. I took that letter from her, and I said, I'm keeping this. Not for ammunition. That's not why I was doing it. I'm keeping this because I don't want you to own this. This is not you. The kids are welcome. They're always welcome. We want them in church. But that was the context of kind of a church I grew up in. Some of you are familiar with the prayer list, right? It's about 10% spiritual and about 90% gossip. Okay? Some of you know what I'm talking about. It's all fine when you say, hey, will you pray for my best friend's marriage? But it goes gossip when it's like, because, oh, my gosh, you won't believe what's happening. Just stop with the first part. We just take the 10%. We're all good. I love Mosaic's prayer list. You guys send us something, and it's typically really good. We appreciate being able to pray for you. And probably the last thing that I remember was there was a dress code. All right? I don't know if you were a part of that context, but in the churches I grew up in, there was a dress code. Now, it was mostly for the women. Mostly only the thing the guys could do wrong was wear a baseball cap at the wrong time. And that's just. I don't know what. I don't even know what that is. But in that context, not too short, not too tight, and not too low. Okay? And there were fashion police in the audience. All right? A lot of times, I would be sitting up on the platform there, and you would see. I would see this. I would see the fashion police. They didn't have a badge on or anything, but they're out there. Somebody would come on with Some come in with something they didn't approve of. You knew they were in force with those eyes because they would cut right through people. And one of the deacons, this just. I can't believe he did this. One of the deacons, one of the guys actually commented on something somebody wore one time, and he said, forbidden fruit. I said, hold up. No, you cannot. Do you know what you are saying? Oh, my gosh. All right, so too much judgment. Too much. Maybe too much skin sometimes, I don't know. But that's what I wanna talk about this morning. I wanna talk about too much skin. Not in that context. What would you say if I told you that there is a story in the scriptures of a man streaking through the night, butt naked, running through the night? Okay, right. And Jesus was watching because Jesus was actually there. Now, some of you are thinking, there's no way. There's absolutely no way. He's kind of twisting this. I asked a friend of mine who grew up as a pastor's kids, all his life his father's been a pastor. I said, hey, do you know this story? He said, there's no story like that in the Bible. I said, okay, listen to this. Mark 14:51, 52. Just so you know that I'm not stretching things here. There was a young man there following Jesus, was wearing only a linen sheet wrapped around him. They tried to arrest him also, but he slipped from their grasp and ran off. What? Naked. Leaving his linen cloth in their hands. Oh, my gosh. It's there. But how many of us are living under some of the guilt and the shame of past judgment? I hope none of us. But judgment was real. Judgment is still real. There's this couple that, you know, occasionally when I'm scrolling through Instagram or something, there's this couple, they're Christian artists, they're musicians. I absolutely love their stuff. I love listening to them. I love their harmony. I love it. But I was looking at their stuff the other day and. And there was judgment in it. I couldn't believe it. I mean, what it was, was at the very beginning of the reel, there was a little blurb and it said this. It said, christian music is so shallow. In other words, everybody else's is. Ours is good. But. And I'm like, do you know what you're saying? But you know what? I didn't cancel them. I love them. I love what they do. You know, it was just one of those things. Gotta give them grace, right? Gotta give them grace. But let's be honest, most of the judgment, most of the judgment that we observe, that I have observed, comes from Christians using their Christian scripture to analyze non Christians who the scripture wasn't even written for. You do realize that, right? The scriptures were Written for Christians and not to analyze other Christians. Do you remember that scripture? Do not judge lest you be judged. The reason the scriptures were written is so that we could assess ourselves, so we could look at the scripture, we could read the scripture, so we could say, okay, and where do I fit in this? And, you know, I may be super naive, but I don't believe what I grew up in. I don't believe there was anybody trying to hurt me. They just wanted me to grow spiritually because that's what we're supposed to do, to grow spiritually closer to Jesus. But we just need to find a better way, a healthy way. And that's what I want us to do this morning. All right. I want us to do like a little checkup. Would you entertain me with that for a few minutes? Can we do a checkup this morning? Kind of like, you know, we go to the doctor. Some of you don't do this every year, but, you know, we're told we're supposed to go for a physical every single year. Now when you get my age, you're like, I don't want to go in for a physical because they want to check things. I don't really want them to check. Right. I just check my temperature, check my blood pressure. I'm good after that. And like, again, at my age, I don't really care. But to do a spiritual checkup. What if we were to think in those terms, which some of, you know, a couple years ago, my wife went into the doctor and she just went for a physical checkup. Some things were a little off. Things were a little off. And she got a call a couple days later and said, hey, Ms. Smith, you've had a heart attack. Wouldn't it be nice if there were things going on in our life that we kind of got a check up on before they went completely sideways, before something tragic happened? Well, that's what I want us to do today. I want us to look into the scriptures and see what we can find there. And we'll look at this naked guy, too, and see what's going on there. But the scriptures were written typically as a story of real life. So I can connect with the story, not with a person necessarily, but so I can connect with that story and compare the story to myself and allow the Holy Spirit to assess the commitment, my commitment as a follower of Jesus, which is exactly what I want us to do today. I want you to take a few minutes and I want us to look at a couple of real life scriptural examples and answer the question where am I spiritually? Am I in a good place? Am I in a place that needs a little. A little checkup? Do I need a little, you know, a little correction in my life? If I did some spiritual blood work this morning, how would the results come back? All right, so I wanna jump into the Gospel of Mark. I love Mark. If you don't remember, Mark wasn't with Jesus the whole time, or even any of the time, we don't think. But he connected to Peter later on. He wrote Peter's story, story, his gospel and that gospel, the name gospel. You know, we have four. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. But we talk about the Gospel because the word actually means what it means good news. And it means good news for more than just one reason. The one reason that we're normally accustomed to is the fact that Jesus came, He gave his life for us so that we would be back in this perfect communion, this perfect place with God. Back to kind of like in the garden when God was with Adam and Eve and they were together. You know, they could go and they could communicate with God. And that was why Jesus was here, to create that again for us. But there's another reason that the gospel is good news. It's. Even though as we look at the gospel, as we look at the scriptures, we see our fault, we also see the faults of other people. And what we see when we see the faults of other people is the grace. It's the grace that we give to the other people. But we see the grace and we can experience that same grace. So I want to jump in Mark, chapter 14, starting in verse 32. And here's where we are. We're right before Jesus is arrested. It's actually part of our scripture this morning. It's right before he's arrested. It's right before the crucifixion. It's before all that gosh, all that awful stuff begins to happen. And what's happened? Jesus has come to Jerusalem because it's the festival of the Passover. And they're celebrating. They've been celebrating all week. Jesus has been going to the temple to teach, and he's been going back and going to the temple and back and going to the temple. And he's teaching all. All these things. And these people are gathered around him, just droves of people gathered around him. And they're just soaking all of this up there, loving this. But there's this group of people who are not loving this. The Sadducees, the Pharisees, the religious leaders. They're looking for a way to arrest Jesus, and they're going to find a way, but they can't do it when all these people are around him. So they're looking for this way to make it happen. But Jesus and his disciples on this particular night had pulled off into a place. Jesus says, hey, let's have a. Let's celebrate the Passover together. Let's have this meal together. Let's enjoy this time together. And that's where they are. They've been in this moment, this meal. It's been amazing. It even says in the scripture that they sang a song before they came out. All right, A huge Kumbaya moment, all right? And they come out of this meal after singing the song. And Jesus says, guys, this has been fun, but you're getting ready, all of you, to just fall away. And they're like, hey, do you have to ruin the moment? All right, this was a good thing. We were having a good moment here. Don't ruin the moment. But they come out and it says this. Then Jesus led his disciples to an olive grove called Gethsemane. So out down the hill into an olive grove, this garden where he led his disciples. And as he normally did, he told the bigger group that was with him, you guys stay here. Just kind of hang out. And he took Peter, James, and John with him. He said, sit here while I pray. He took Peter, James, and John went with him. And as they went, it says, an intense feeling of great horror plunged his soul into deep sorrow. And he said to them, my heart is overwhelmed with anguish and crushed with grief. It feels as though I'm dying. And then he said to those three, I just want you to do one thing. Just one thing. I just want you to stay here and keep watch. Because here's what's going on. Jesus knows this is the night. This is the night it's gonna happen. At the meal they were having, he said, judas is gonna betray me. Judas got up and went out. The rest of the disciples thought, oh, he's just going to get some fresh air maybe. No, Jesus knows tonight it's going to happen. And Jesus says, hey, guys, don't let him surprise me. Can you just stay here and keep watch? So he leaves those three. He walked a short distance away. And being overcome with grief because he knows his time is coming, he threw himself face down on the ground. He prayed that if it were possible, he would not have to experience this hour of suffering. So he prayed this. He said, abba, my father, all things are possible for you Please remove this cup of suffering. Yet what I want is not important, for I only desire to fulfill your plan for me. You see what's happening here? It's a spiritual checkup. Even Jesus needed from time to time. You know, he would go off and pray from time to time. His disciples were like, where's he going? Jesus needed to step away for a spiritual checkup. And, you know, I love his posture. You see, he's like, you know, I really don't want this. I don't wanna go through this. This is going to be awful. But not what I desire. I want what you want. I love that posture. That's the posture that we're supposed to enter a spiritual checkup with, right? So he's there, he prays. Then he came back to his three disciples, and he found them all, what, sound asleep. Guys. What? I only asked you to do one thing, and sleep wasn't a part of it. You see what he says? He says he awakened Peter and said to him, simon, are you asleep? You see what he does there? It's really neat. I love what he does there. So you remember in the beginning, he called Simon to follow him. A little bit later, they were on this mountain, and Jesus said to Simon, to James and John, they were all there together, those three again, he said, who do people say that I am? And they said, well, I mean, they say, john the Baptist come back to life, or Elijah or one of the prophets. And he looked at him and he said, well, who do you say that I am? And you remember, Simon was the one that spoke up and said, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus says, that is exactly right. And it's that statement that's causing me to change your name. You're no longer gonna be called Simon. You're gonna be called Petros, which means the Rock. And so Jesus goes back, and all of a sudden, the rock. Okay, fantastic. You see what he does? He didn't call him Peter. He said, simon, are you asleep? Do you lack the strength to stay awake for even just an hour? Keep alert and pray that you'll be spared from this time of testing. For your spirit is eager enough, but your humanity is feeble. Why did he say that? He said that because just a few minutes ago, when they walked out of the dinner, he said, you're all gonna fall away from me. And Peter said, oh, no. No way. All the rest of them might, but I'll never fall away from you. I would fight for you. I would lie for you. I walk. I'LL die for you. You know it's true. Everything you do, I do it for you. Okay, Brian Adams said that, but that's what Peter meant. Peter said, I would die for you. There's no way I would turn my back on you. So then Jesus, he was like, okay, whatever. He left him again a second time and went to pray the same thing. Afterwards, he came back to the disciples and found them sound asleep, for they couldn't keep their eyes open. I love this part. And they didn't even know what to say anymore. Have you ever been there? Have you ever been in the place where you know what Jesus wants for you? And you're like, oh, it's so hard. I don't think I can do this. So he goes away a third time. After praying for the third time, he returned to his disciples, same story. And he woke them again saying, guys, y' all plan on sleeping the rest of the night? Come on, that's enough sleep. The end has come. The hour has arrived for me to be handed over to sinful men. Get up, let's go. I could even already see my betrayer coming in the distance. So wow. I mean, think about that. His three number one guys, Peter, James and John. Now it would be easy for us to move into judgment mode on them, right? Like, what is wrong with you guys? You can't even stay awake. But let's give em a little grace. Let's give em a little grace. I mean, what were they dealing with at the time? What was going on in their life? Yeah, they just had this awesome meal together. But what had their day been like? Had it been stressful, had it been overwhelming? With all the things that were happening every day, are they a little confused? So let's not judge them. Let's consider the similar calling rather that we have on our life to help advance the mission of Jesus in this world. Now we talk a lot about church, about having a relationship with Jesus. And that is the first step. We want people to be in relationship with Jesus. But we all know that with every relationship comes what responsibility? Whether you're in a married relationship, whether you're a boyfriend or a girlfriend, whether you're a best friend, whether you're a co worker, you all have a responsibility to whatever type of relationship that is, right? You have the responsibility to be kind, you have a responsibility to be self controlled. You have a responsibility to be faithful. And the same is true for our relationship with Jesus. We have a responsibility to advance the mission of Jesus. So as we kind of assess ourselves, would you describe your commitment to Jesus. Maybe a little sleepy. Maybe it's a little broad. Maybe we can hone that in just a little bit when you think about your relationship with Jesus. What he asked the disciples there, he said, sit here and be helpful. Sit here for just a little bit. I'm gonna go pray and keep watch. Be helpful. And what happened? They neglected their responsibility. So just let that settle for a moment. Let's keep going. Cause we haven't even got to the naked guy yet, right? We still got another guy in there, but they're standing in the garden. He's come back. He figured out they're gonna keep sleeping. So we're not gonna fight that battle anymore. But scripture says at that moment, Judas, one of the 12. So we're not talking about some random guy. We're talking about one of the twelve disciples. Judas, along with the large crowd of men armed with swords and clubs, arrived. They had been sent to arrest Jesus by order of the ruling priests, religious scholars, and the Jewish leaders. Now, Judas the traitor. Okay, Mark, little bit of judgment there, right? Judas the traitor had arranged to give them a signal that would identify Jesus. For he had told them, jesus is the man I will kiss, so arrest him and take him away. Judas quickly stepped up to Jesus and said, rabbi, my teacher. And he kissed him on both cheeks. Then the armed men seized Jesus to arrest him. All right, so you thought the sleepy Peter, James and John were bad. All right, Judas makes them look pretty good, right? But I think we have to give Judas a little bit of grace too. Because before you judge Judas too harshly, keep in mind he wasn't against Jesus. That's not what was happening. He wasn't against Jesus. He just thought he knew a better way for Jesus to accomplish his mission. Maybe that's our position. Sometimes, maybe you're not doing what you feel like God's calling you to do because you think you have a better way. All right, you're not against Jesus. You just think you're smarter than Jesus. So the first group neglected Jesus. Then Judas betrays Jesus. But then there's this last naked guy and really everyone else. Because in Mark 14, verse 50, here's what it says. At that point, these guys are there swords and clubs to arrest Jesus. At that point, all of them ran away, just like he said they would, and abandoned him. There was a young man there. Here it is following Jesus, wearing only a linen sheet wrapped around him. They tried to arrest him also, but he slipped from their grasp and ran off naked, leaving his linen cloth in their Hands. Can you imagine that now? Not too vividly. We're in church, all right? They neglected him. They betrayed Jesus, and they all abandoned him. And what did he do? He just wrote them off, right? This is the part about this whole story that I absolutely love. Jesus is arrested. He's tried, he's crucified, but then he's resurrected, and he meets the Marys. The Marys meet him on the road. Remember Mary Magdalene and Mary, the other Mary. And he says, ladies, go back. Tell everybody, meet me in Galilee. And so they went back and told the guys. They told everybody, hey, let's go to Galilee. And off they went. They gathered up the stuff, packed up two, three days, and they were back in Galilee. And they get there. Jesus said, meet me there. They get there, know Jesus. An hour passes, a day passes. I don't know. It really doesn't say. But some time passes. Finally, Peter, who is filled with patience, right? He says, guys, I don't know where Jesus is. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I've got to do something. I'm going fishing. Anybody want to go with me? James and John said, hey, we know fishing. A couple other guys probably said, hey, yeah, okay, let's do something. And so off they went. And you know this story, probably. They're out fishing all night long. They catch zero. They're rowing back in the next morning. There's this guy, some random guy standing on the shore. There's a fire. It looks like he's cooking breakfast. And he yells at them, hey, y' all catch any fish? And they're like, no, there's nothing out here. And he says, throw your net on the other side. Remember this happened a couple years earlier? Throw your net on the other side. And what happens? A whole bunch of fish. And John looks into the shore, and he says to Peter, it's the Lord. And what does Peter do? He jumps in the water. He walks right out of the boat and runs to Jesus, as much as you can run through the water into the shore and is Jesus. And, you know, I just have to think as they sat there having breakfast, because that's what Jesus was doing. Said he was cooking them breakfast. I have to think that he said, yeah, that was a tough night. That was a tough night. But I do know he said this especially to Peter. Follow. He didn't say, you know what? You abandoned me. I'm done with you. He said, follow me. And what's significant about this is they were right there in the exact same space where he Met them the first time and said, follow me, and I'll make you fishers of men. So now, three years later, they've all abandoned him, but they meet him back there, and what does he say? Do it again. I chose you the first time. I'll choose you the next. 10 times. Follow me. You are my God. That's grace. That's the grace that we have to see there. So some of you. Some of you have been doing this for a long time. You completely get what a spiritual checkup is. You understand, when God's speaking to you, you hear him vividly, even though sometimes you think you have a better way. And some of you are like, yeah, you know, I'm kind of new at this, but maybe I want to. Maybe I need a little more direction. So when you go to the doctor, they have these tools to do measurements. They have a thermometer, right? They have these sphyncometers, and I don't know why I know this word. Okay? But these blood pressure machines, and they can check your vital signs. So how do we measure? How do we assess ourselves? There's a couple ways that I think you can do it, and. And the first way is I think you can look at Scripture. All right, I'm gonna say something. And I'm still processing this. I'm not quite sure. I think this may be a little bit of an overstatement, but I think sometimes scripture just taking a passage at a time doesn't offer you a lot of grace. Like, you can look at some passages of scriptures and not feel real great, right? And so we look at stories like we did today to get a context in which to really do this assessment. But also, sometimes scripture feels a little sterile, and it assumes that we all have the same personalities or the same opportunities, and that's just not true. So Scripture is good. It's good, but it's not. I don't think it's the be all, end all. So another way you can measure yourselves is against other people. You can do that. And some of you would go out and find the three worst followers of Jesus you could. And you would be like, hey, I'm pretty good. Right? But then others of you have a different approach. You'd go out and find three of the most amazing followers, and you'd be like, I'm dirt. It's never good. Comparing yourself to others. That's a terrible measurement. Let me tell you what I think, along with some Scripture is a great way to assess yourself. I think you assess yourself by your impact or by your fruitfulness, by asking a question like this. How is the world a better place for Jesus because of me? All right? How is the world a better place for Jesus because of me? And if you want a little scripture to lean towards remembering all that we've talked about today, remembering the grace that Jesus gives, I Love Galatians, chapter 5, verse 22 and 23. You know what it is? It's not the forbidden fruit, okay? It's the good fruit. It's the fruit of the spirit passage. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. So maybe as you're doing this assessment, even right this moment in a day or two, this afternoon, I don't know, it's a good practice. Think about these. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Maybe you can identify one, and maybe one of them you're like, yeah, I'm not great at this. This patience thing. Maybe I'm a little like Peter. Maybe I need to increase my. Maybe you can choose one or two. How can you get better? Better at these? The first way you can get better is saying, God, I need help because a spirit is anxious, but my humanity is feeble. I need your help. But maybe there's a way you can step into one of those. So what are you hearing this morning? What's God saying to you this morning? Is God having a conversation that has something to do with. With neglecting who he's called you to be as a follower? Is that what he's saying to you? Or maybe it's a little more in the family of this idea of betrayal in the sense that what he wants for you, you also want. You just think you know a better way than he does. Which can I say? His way is the best way. Because, man, the story of my life, is trying to do it my way. That's what even Kristen talked about last week. Stubbornness, right? What are you hearing? Maybe you're in a season of life where it feels like you've just abandoned God. And most of the time, we turn that around, don't we? We're like, oh, God has abandoned me. I'm not sure that's true. As a matter of fact, I know God would never abandon us. We might believe that, we might think that, but most of the time it's us that have moved away from God. So are you away from God? And maybe what he's saying, maybe what you're feeling is he's calling you back to him. Or maybe it's this whole grace point. Maybe grace is not your forte, and maybe it's hard for you to give grace and have empathy for other people, or maybe it's hard for you to give grace for yourself. And what he's saying is that I want you to let me develop a heart in you like mine. So I don't know what it is, but I want to encourage you. We're gonna sing a song in just a minute. I'm gonna pray for you, but maybe what you wanna do this morning is just kinda hang out in your seats. Maybe you just wanna continue this conversation with Jesus, and maybe you wanna say, God, I know there's something. Would you just. Would you just speak to me? Maybe you want to move to a place. There's a cross on the wall here at Mosaic, and what we do there is we just go over and maybe it's something you need to let go of. Maybe it's something you need to embrace. And maybe you want to put that down and put it on the cross as an opportunity for us to pray for you this week or just to let it go. There's communion. You can always step over and kind of celebrate what Jesus has done for you this week. Good news. Or there's candles you can light. You can maybe pray for someone, or maybe you're just praying for yourself. So you can respond a ton of ways. You can stand and sing. But let me pray for you before we do that. God, God, thank you first of all for the grace that we know that you extend to us. Because we look into scripture and we see people who lived with you, who were there with you, who experienced life with you, and even they messed it up, and we didn't have that benefit. So, God, we know that. All the more, we get that same grace. And we thank you for that. But, God, we do. We want to embrace the responsibility that you're calling us to as followers of Jesus. We want to embrace that. We want to step into that. We want to be your hands and feet in this world. We want to be a representation of you. So, God, would you just take our lives? Would you shape us? Would you mold us? Would you recreate us in the places that we need to be recreated? Because we know you can do that. And would you just use us to be a light in this world and to advance your kingdom? Thank you, God, for choosing us. Pray in Jesus name. Amen. Would you respond? Thanks for listening to this message from Mosaic Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. For more audio and video content, visit us at MosaicChurch TV.