It's great to have you guys here too, and some of you weren't here when we asked you
a little bit earlier, kind of do a straw poll by show of hands again.
How many of you were here at the beach rather last Sunday afternoon for the beach baptism?
Can I see the show of hands?
A lot of folks there.
If you weren't there in just a second, I want to show you some video highlights, but I want
to explain a couple of things.
First of all, this was unlike any beach baptism we have ever done before.
All the beach baptisms, people at first on the sand, they give testimony of why they're
being baptized, kind of a personal witness of their faith in Jesus Christ, which is beautiful.
Then we baptize them like Christians have been getting baptized for 2,000 years, only
instead of say the River Jordan, it's in our own Pacific Ocean right out here.
But this last Sunday afternoon, we did it even though there was an extreme high surf advisory,
and I kid you not, it was the first baptism where we actually had to have lifeguards out
there, because for the first time, perhaps in the history of Twin Lakes Church, people
could have gotten baptized and gone to heaven in the same instant.
But it was very exciting and thrilling.
78 people were baptized last Sunday afternoon, wonderful.
And I think you will be able to experience some of the joy that they felt when you watch
this.
Have a great day!
If everything comes down to love
Then just what am I afraid of
When I call out your name
Something inside awakes in my soul
How quickly I forget I'm yours
I'm not my own
I've been carried by you all my life
Everything I don't hope now
Everything I don't fake somehow
When the world has broken me down
Will assess me free
When my life is like a storm
Rising waters, all I want is the shore
You say I'll be okay
And make it through the rain
You are my shelter from the storm
Everything I don't hope now
Everything I don't fake somehow
When the world has broken me down
Will assess me free
I'm not my own
I've been carried by you
All my life
Everything I don't hope now
Everything I don't fake somehow
When the world has broken me down
Will assess me free
You become my heart's desire
I must see you raise the tide
Will assess me free
Will assess me free
Will assess me free
the spirit from Earth to planet Mars.
Floater relief kit created and vehicles responding.
Vehicles recovering very nice even the lift off transients.
Three, two, start.
Zero and lift off of the Delta rocket with opportunity.
A chance to explore and unlock the secrets of our neighboring planet.
The transients have lift off.
There was no strategic plan after that.
It was just, you know, take this hill, take the next hill, you know, take the next hill.
You've got to believe it's going to happen or it's just like, why am I doing this?
You kind of, you just have to sort of feed on that confidence.
It's a group, a psychosis, I guess, probably the best way to describe it.
Man, I get so stoked when I watch the kind of lunar and Mars missions and so on.
And what happened when that spacecraft actually reached the planet?
You will be amazed and I'll show that video to you in just a few minutes.
But first, did you hear what those guys said at the end of this clip?
After the launch, there was no strategic plan.
It was just get to Mars.
It was take the next hill and the next hill and the next hill with that one aim in our lives.
And then the second guy said the same thing.
He said, you just got to believe that it's going to happen.
You got to remember what you're in this for.
I love that these NASA engineers said, look, what's more important than a strategic plan
is an overarching sense of mission.
And the same is true in your life as well.
I see a lot of American Christians who have all kinds of little plans in their lives,
little minor goals, but they don't really know what they're aiming at,
what their overall purpose, what their mission in life is.
And so let's talk about it this morning.
What are you aiming at?
What is your one goal?
What are you aiming at when it comes to your spiritual life?
If you want to launch your life to a new level, you don't just press Ignition.
Because what happens is what you see in American society today.
A lot of us spend a lot of fuel and energy and don't really get anywhere important.
We're a lot of like, look at this picture, those early NASA rocket tests that spun out of control
because they have plenty of power, but the guidance systems were messed up.
So they were powerfully going in circles.
Is that an analogy of your life?
Do you have all the power you need, but your guidance system is messed up
and you're powerfully going in every different direction?
Well, what does God have to say about this?
Look at this verse, top of your notes, Ephesians 5, 15 through 17.
Let's read this out loud together.
Let me hear you.
So be careful of how you live.
Don't live like fools, but like those who are wise.
Make the most of every opportunity.
Don't act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do.
I want you to circle a couple of phrases there.
First, would you take your pen or your pencil and circle the phrase, be careful how you live?
Literally in the Greek, it means watch how you walk.
That's why the King James version, it says walk circumspectly.
The meaning is walk in your life with direction.
Don't go in circles, walk with purpose.
What purpose?
It says try to understand what God wants you to do.
Now some of you are going, no duh, I'd love to know that.
In fact, show of hands.
How many of you would say I really would like to understand what God wants me to do with my life?
Can I see you show of hands?
It's practically everybody here.
I'm tired of aiming at too many things.
I want to know God's will.
I think most of us, we're tired of running in circles.
Well listen, my goal this morning is to have you leave with a new sense of focus in life.
Where are you?
Kind of aiming the rocket mission of your spiritual life by asking three important questions there.
They're there on your outline.
And really, if you boil your life down, these are the three most important questions of life, aren't they?
Question number one is, what does God want from my life?
What does God want from me?
Well, when you read through the whole Bible, it's very consistent.
You can really summarize it in just a few words.
You can write this in.
He wants all of me.
He wants my whole life.
God wants all of you.
He's very clear about this.
There's no mystery to it, like Romans 6.13.
Give yourselves completely to God, since you have been given new life.
And use your whole body as a tool to do what is right for the glory of God.
Now again, take that pencil or pen and circle a couple of words.
Circle a word completely and circle whole body.
That's all of you.
Not just the religious part of you, not just the spiritual part of you, not just the Sunday morning at 9 a.m. part of you.
Christianity isn't just fire insurance.
You don't take it out so that you don't go to hell.
God wants to get radical.
He wants all of you.
Like C.S. Lewis once said, the only thing Christianity cannot be is moderately important.
If it's really true, then it deserves everything you got.
Like, look at the next verse.
Jesus says, no one can serve two masters.
Either he'll hate the one and love the other, or he'll be devoted to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and money.
Now, this is not an anti-money verse.
What he's saying is it's impossible to have two masters.
It's impossible to have two number one priorities in your life.
And there are lots of things besides money that can push God off of first place in your life, aren't there?
In this culture, obviously, money is a huge one.
But let me ask you this.
Can work ever push God out of first place?
Absolutely.
Can play sports, hobbies ever push God out of first place in your life?
Of course they can.
I've seen it.
Friends can, schoolwork can, dating can, Christian ministry can.
He's saying that you can't serve God and something else at the same time.
You say, well, what about all my other obligations?
Let me let you in on a little secret.
If you could put God first in your life, he will take care of everything else.
Look at the next verse, Matthew 6.33.
Jesus promises, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
He says, put me number one in your life and I'll bring it all back into focus.
No more rockets spinning out of control feeling.
And so if you want to launch your life to a new level, the first most obvious question is, what are you aiming at?
What does God want out of me?
He wants all of you, every nook and cranny and corner of your life.
All right, question number two is obvious.
So what does it take?
What does it take to really give God every single part of our lives?
Well, I'm going to say it in one word and it's a word you're not going to like.
I'll warn you ahead of time.
This is a very unpopular word.
We cringe when we hear this word.
I really don't like this word.
Are you ready for this word?
Well, come next weekend.
Let's close in prayer.
No, just kidding.
It's the word discipline.
Yes, and a groan went out across the land.
Exactly.
Now, in case you're going disciplined, I don't like that.
Let me give you a very current example of self-discipline.
Most popular internet clip last week.
Did you see this?
A Philly's baseball fan makes an amazing grab of a foul ball.
Look at that.
Did you see that catch?
Amazing.
And he hands it to his little daughter and she promptly throws it back.
Now hit pause right there.
This guy was a lifetime Philly's season ticket holder.
The first time he's ever caught a foul ball ever.
And now it's gone.
And it's on the jumbotron and it's on network TV.
And what happened next is self-discipline.
But because he looks stunned first and then he gives his daughter a hug.
And in fact, if you look at his mouth, he looks at her after this next shot and he says,
it's okay, honey.
I saw that and I thought, man, that is amazing discipline, especially when in a similar circumstance
as many of us men here would have done something else that maybe would have landed us on the Jerry Springer,
when good dads go bad episode, right?
So self-discipline is a good thing.
It actually got him on the Today Show and CMBC and so on.
Self-discipline pays off.
Look at what first Timothy 4.7 says, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness.
Proverbs 10, 17, whoever practices discipline is on the way to life.
Here's the bottom line.
You can't be a disciple without discipline.
You can't be a disciple without discipline.
Those two words share the same root, disciple and discipline.
Now, I have to say, I know that I'm talking to two totally different crews here.
Some of you are incredibly disciplined right now.
In fact, some of you are very disciplined in your work.
Man, you're sharp.
You plan your day.
You are always on time.
You got a to-do list.
You people drive me insane.
I just need to say that publicly.
But some of you are very disciplined.
Some of you are disciplined in your physical workouts.
You never miss a one.
Some of you are very disciplined in your TV watching.
You never miss a favorite show.
Many of you never miss a meal.
You are disciplined there.
A disciplined consumer of mass quantity.
Some of you are disciplined to read a half an hour before you go to sleep.
Every single night you've got that novel out.
In fact, you cannot go to sleep without a book.
My point is, you're probably already disciplined in some area.
You know where you're disciplined?
You know where you're disciplined?
This applies for everybody here.
You're disciplined in the areas you want to be disciplined.
Because there's another word for discipline, and we like this word a little bit better.
It's the word habits.
Jot that down.
Habits are simply disciplines.
And you are the sum total of your habits.
Tell me what you do habitually, and I'll tell you what your character is.
And so you change your habits, and you can change your character.
It's the old saying.
So a habit, reap a destiny.
In other words, if you want to change your life, change your habits.
Now why do I point this out?
What are the major goals of the hope experience, 50 days of hope,
that we're going to begin with a preview next weekend,
is to help you develop some new spiritual habits.
That's the whole point really.
Some new spiritual disciplines.
Again, notice what the Bible says, 1 Timothy 4-7 in the Living Bible,
spend your time and energy in the exercise of keeping spiritually fit.
Now, I say this because to a lot of people, the mere term discipline carries huge baggage.
It sounds legalistic.
Discipline.
When I was younger, and I heard about spiritual disciplines,
I usually had two responses.
Number one, I'd immediately feel guilty.
If a pastor reached a sermon about spiritual disciplines,
solitude and Bible reading, and Bible memory, and accountability,
and church attendance, he ashes on my head, and I'd feel guilty about not reading.
I don't read the Bible enough.
It's true, he's right.
And I don't pray enough.
I don't memorize the Bible enough.
I'd feel horribly guilty.
And then response two would be the big plan.
And I would say for the rest of my life, I'll get up at 5 a.m.
And I'll have an hour of silence, and I'll memorize a chapter a week,
and I'll serve at a nursing home every day.
And what happened?
Three weeks into it, total burnout, and I stopped and felt guilty,
and stopped going to church for a month because I thought I don't deserve it.
What happened there?
Anybody been there?
If we're saying that it takes discipline, let's talk about what discipline is not.
Discipline is not burning yourself out to earn favor with God, for sure.
Spiritual disciplines, developing good self-disciplining habits spiritually,
is not a way to earn extra credit with God.
God already loves you 100%.
Nothing you can possibly do will make God love you more
because he already loves you infinitely.
And in fact, the inverse is true.
Nothing you can do will make God love you less.
You won't love you less if you kind of missed your daily devotion for that day.
This is really important, you know, because for a lot of Christians,
not only can doing spiritual disciplines become legalistic,
they can become almost like, oh, I didn't do my devotion today,
so something bad is going to happen to me.
It almost becomes like witchcraft or some sort of strange obsessive-compulsive disorder.
But that's not what discipline is at all.
Discipline does not have to exist in tension with grace.
Self-discipline just means you're aiming again.
You're putting the distractions aside and you've got one aim for your life again.
Let's read this verse together, Hebrews 12-1.
Let's read this as a church.
Let us strip off every weight that slows us down,
especially the sin that so easily hinders our progress
towards circle the word weight, circle the word sin.
It's interesting that it makes sin a subset of the concept of weights.
In other words, there's two things that hold you back.
One of them is sins, the other is weights.
Now, you know what sins are, but what's a weight?
What are weights that are not sins?
Well, anything that holds you back.
A weight can be all kinds of things.
It could be a relationship.
It could be an expectation.
It could be activity.
It could be a club.
It could be a memory that embitters you, that you refuse to let go of.
It could be a fear.
It could be a job.
Basically what this means is in order to grow, I must say no.
Why do I say this?
We're getting ready again next week to add some new habits to your schedule.
A daily devotional reading of about 10 or 12 minutes a day.
They're contained in that book, The Hope Experience.
I hope every single person here before you leave picks up a copy of that book.
The donation is $10, which just pays for our printing costs
because we did it here in-house.
But do not let that keep you from getting a book.
If you don't have it with you, pay us next week.
If you can't afford it, take a book because we want every single human
in this building to take one of those, to develop a habit.
And we're also going to add the habit of a weekly meeting in small groups
for just seven weeks and a weekly verse to memorize and acts of service.
And I'm telling you right now as your pastor who cares about you,
you need to decide what weights you're going to cut out
before you start The Hope Experience.
Your life's already overcrowded, I know.
So you need to ask, what am I going to stop doing
so I can work these spiritual disciplines into my life?
You know, maybe you need to give up an hour or two a week of TV
during The Hope Experience so you can fit in your small group time.
That might kill somebody. I don't know.
But you could go home and watch friends reruns or go to a small group
and actually make friends. It's your choice.
But you can't just keep adding stuff on that is very important.
Now, again, I know what some of you are thinking.
You're saying, Renee, I know all about this already.
I'm just not a very disciplined person.
I've tried to do this stuff before and it didn't work.
Let's have a little true confession, group confession time here, all right?
How many of you would have the courage to admit by a show of hands,
you know, I'm not a very disciplined person
and I'll be the first to raise my hand because I'm not a very disciplined person.
It's about half and half. Wait, put up your hands again.
You're undisciplined people.
Now look around at the people who have their hands down
and we love those people, don't we?
No, we don't really. We don't really.
I am not by nature a very disciplined person
and this is why I got to just throw this in as a freebie.
I got so much hope from something I read the other day in a biography of Abraham Lincoln.
Amazing man.
But in terms of his office clutter, he was totally disorganized.
His room was a mess. In fact, this is true.
As president, Lincoln actually had an entire file cabinet labeled
if you can't find it anywhere else, try looking here.
That's true. He's my man.
But that's why developing these habits as a group helps.
You've tried it before and it hasn't worked.
And this is the concept behind doing all of this together as a whole church together
for just 50 days because all of us do better when we have cheerleaders, right?
Or when you try to build a workout regimen in your life.
You do better when you're in a workout group, right?
When I started running.
Man, the one thing that made me consistent was running with friends
because they cheered me on, they kept me accountable.
It was a hundred times easier running with friends and being consistent
than getting up all by myself and doing it.
And it's the exact same thing with your spiritual disciplines.
That's why as a group, as a church, if we do the hope experience together
doing the small groups, memorizing the same verses of the Bible
and doing the same daily devotions and so on, it's just going to be easier.
Now, before I leave this point and go on to our final point,
again, this is so important to me.
To correct a common misconception about spiritual disciplines.
I love the way John Orbert puts it in his book,
The Life You've Always Wanted to Live.
Have you ever been in a motorboat that was difficult to run?
How many have you ever been in a motorboat?
Ever.
Can I see a show of hands?
You know what motorboats are like.
They're smelly.
They're loud.
They're hard to start.
Kind of difficult to steer around because you're in the back
holding the little rudder and stuff most of the time.
The bottom line with motorboats is that it's all on you.
You have to fill the tank.
You have to start the engine.
You have to steer the boat.
And it's a fight the entire time that you're driving a little motorboat around.
And sometimes we think spiritual growth is like that.
And spiritual disciplines are like that.
Like it's all up to me and my willpower.
But that idea leads to the kind of legalism and burnout that we want to avoid.
And really spiritual disciplines are more like a sailboat.
You hoist the sails.
But all you're really doing is putting yourself in a position to catch the wind.
The wind is what does the work.
The wind is what has the power.
Spiritual growth, launching yourself to a new level is about little habits that help you catch the wind.
That help you open yourself up to God.
Discipline does not mean self-help.
Teeth-gritting exertion.
It means setting the sails so that the wind, God's spirit, can fill them.
Through daily habits, prayer, and Bible reading, and small group accountability,
you're just putting up the sails.
And you'll be amazed at how God's wind just blows you along.
So back to page one.
What does God want?
He wants all of you, every part of you so that you grow.
He's going to take discipline.
And question number three, why should I do it?
This is very important, two words, God's grace.
This is huge.
Because if you do this because you think you're going to earn brownie points with God,
you will hate it.
It'll be dry legalism for you.
Our motive should be God's grace, like 2 Corinthians 5.15 says.
He died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves.
You who died for them and was raised again.
You live for him who died for you.
Remember the verse we studied last week?
The Trent mentioned during his worship time, Romans 12.1 and 2.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, it's in view of God's mercy to you.
You've already got God's mercy, his free gift.
Therefore, as just as an act of thanksgiving, you offer your bodies as living sacrifices.
Holy and pleasing to God, this is your spiritual act of worship.
It's not work, it's worship.
How do I do that?
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Circle the word transformed there.
The Greek word is metamorpho, from which we get our word metamorphosis.
It means to change into another form.
It's the word used when a caterpillar turns in his cocoon into a butterfly.
That's the whole point of all this.
Not to earn brownie points with God, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds
from people flying in circles to the people with aim that God wants us to be.
This verse says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind, and that's what the hope experience is about.
Your mind is changed because you're thinking of one thing, Jesus Christ.
Let me ask you a question.
Have you ever read something and it's so touching that you just start crying?
And people around you in the bus or the airport or whatever are wondering,
wow, what's gotten in this person because you're just reading something
and all of a sudden you're going, oh, like this.
That's exactly what happened to me just this last week.
I was reading this story by Tom Schmidt that's told in John Orpert's book.
And I'd like to read a part of it to you now, but I'm taking a risk here.
Let's see if I can get through this without crying.
It's a beautiful story.
He says, let me introduce you to a friend of mine.
Her name is Mabel.
The state-run convalescent hospital is not a pleasant place to be.
It's large, understaffed and overfilled with senile, helpless, lonely people waiting to die.
On the brightest days, it seems dark inside.
It smells of sickness and stale urine.
On Mother's Day, I'd need myself visit as an active service, but I didn't really want to.
And at the end of the hallway, I saw an old woman strapped up in a wheelchair.
The empty stair and the white pupils told me that she was probably blind.
The huge hearing aid told me that she was pretty much deaf.
One side of her face was being eaten by cancer, and as a consequence, she drooled constantly.
I learned later that she was 89 years old and had been there bedridden, blind, and nearly deaf and alone for 25 years.
That was Mabel.
He says, I put a flower in her hand and said, Happy Mother's Day.
And then she spoke.
And he writes, to my surprise, her words, though somewhat garbled because of her deformity, were those of a clear mind.
She said, Thank you. It's lovely.
But can I give it to someone else? You see, I can't see it, you know. I'm blind.
I said, Well, of course. And I pushed her wheelchair until I found another patient.
And Mabel held out the flower and said, Here, this is from Jesus.
And that's what it began to dawn on me. This was no ordinary human being.
Mabel and I became friends. Some days I read to her from the Bible.
And when I would pause, she would continue reciting the passage from memory, word for word.
Or I sang hymns. And again, she would sing with me and she knew all the words with no lyrics.
Her three roommates were all human vegetables who would scream occasionally, but never talked.
They soiled their bedclothes. The stench was overpowering, yet I never heard Mabel complain.
It wasn't many weeks until I turned from a sense of, I'm helping her to a sense of wonder.
And I started to write down the wise things that she said, like during one hectic week,
my mind seemed to be pulled in ten different directions at once with all the things that I had to think about.
And it occurred to me, what in the world does Mabel have to think about in that convalescent home,
hour after hour, day after day? And so I asked her.
And she said, Oh, I think about my Jesus.
I sat there and thought about the trouble I have thinking about Jesus for even five minutes.
And so I asked her, Mabel, what do you think about Jesus?
And she replied slowly and exactly as I wrote down, I think about how good he's been to me.
I'm one of those who's mostly satisfied. I'd rather have Jesus.
He's everything. He's all the world to me. And then Mabel slowly began to sing her off the key rendition of an old hymn.
Jesus is all the world to me, my life, my joy, my awe.
He is my strength from day to day. Without him I would fall.
And a tear began to roll down her face as she continued.
When I am sad, to him I go. No other one can cheer me so.
When I am sad, he makes me glad. He's my friend.
And he writes, This is not fiction.
Incredible as it may seem, a human being really lived like this full of hope.
I knew her. How could she do it?
Well, the answer is that Mabel had something in her life that you and I,
with everything we have in our lives that she didn't have, she had something that very few of us have.
Aim.
She had one purpose, one focus, one goal.
I think about my Jesus.
And it launched her to a new level.
If that happened in Mabel's life, can it happen in yours?
Do you believe it can?
I love 2 Corinthians 318, which talks about this process.
It says, We who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory are being transformed into His likeness
with ever-increasing glory. This is just saying when we gaze at Jesus, when we behold Him,
we start reflecting His glory in ever-increasing ways in our own lives.
It's that simple.
Little Mabel did it.
Well, what about you?
That is the real goal of the hope experience.
The very first verse we read today said, Make the most of every opportunity you get.
I believe to the bottom of my heart that God has given all of us a great opportunity this fall.
Don't let it pass you by.
Don't sit on the fence.
Don't watch from the sideline.
Take this opportunity to get launched to a new level because here's what can happen.
I'll close with this.
We started with that Mars rover launch this morning.
Well, six months after the launch, the team was biting their fingernails and holding its collective breath
as that rocket prepared for landing.
Earth velocity is 12,193 miles per hour.
Over the next minute, we should begin to receive electronic tones from the spacecraft
indicating the tragedy of the acceleration.
Parachute deploy is detected.
We have positive indication of parachute deploy.
We're currently at altitude of 18,000 feet.
At this time, the radar should be active.
We expect the radar will lock up onto the ground.
We expect that the airbags will inflate approximately 20 seconds from now
for an altitude of 5,000 feet, 168 miles per hour.
4,000 feet.
Radar solution, matrix 21.
The radar has a lot of positive blocks on the ground.
We have a rocket firing solution.
There's a rocket ignition on my marker.
The rocket has fired.
We have automation on your rocket.
We are excited.
We are now awaiting confirmation of positive signals bouncing on the ground.
We're seeing it on the LTP.
We have a very positive signal in the EXPARCAN radar channel.
We're on large, everybody.
Here you have these normally fairly stoic, scientific types,
not given to great hyperbole, who are going crazy.
Oh, look at this!
Oh.
Thank you.
Oh.
Thank you.
Oh.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Holy smokes.
Oh.
I'm sorry, I'm just,
I'm just blown away by this.
I will attempt no science analysis because it looks like nothing I've ever seen before
in my life.
No, I don't too love that.
And that's how we all feel when we do something great together.
And I was looking at that and I thought, I really believe that at the end of our 50
Days of Hope, when we have our celebration service that's the weekend before Thanksgiving,
I believe there will be tears shed out of joy as we look back and see what happened in the
life of this church in what to us now is the next eight weeks.
But eight weeks from now, when we look back and we see the food that we will have raised
for the hungry, and we'll talk about that goal next weekend, we will week for joy.
I believe that when we look back and we see the people who've come to faith in Christ
in the next two months, when we see how we've been changed, when you discover the
hope God has for you, when you feel that sensation of not just existing, but of really living
of having a direction and aim in life, I believe every fiber of your being will rejoice with
a sense of sheer joy.
Because see, that's the end result of being disciplined to have an aim in life.
It's just sheer joy.
Now, are you ready for this?
Are you ready to not be satisfied with the plateau you've been on?
Are you ready to launch?
Then let's commit this time in our church's life to God together.
Would you bow in a word of prayer for me right now?
Father, we already know you're going to do some amazing things in our midst.
And we already thank you in advance as we launch into the fall.
God, you know it's my desire as a pastor to not have people in this church just be satisfied
with some minor level devotion to Jesus, but to have the joy of being able to say, Jesus
is all the world to me.
God, I don't know any other way to do it than to say, let's all do it together so that the
strong ones are helping the weak ones, and let's advance to that new level together as
a church.
But God, most of all, I just thank you for the cross because we do this for Jesus sake
because of the gift that you've given to us.
Now I invite you to pray just in your heart and say, God, I want to give you my whole
life, every part of me.
God, I need your help in developing self-discipline in my life, developing the habits I need to
have that singular aim.
So help me to let go of things that don't matter, help me to put you first in my life,
help me to know what to cut out so I have time for what's important.
Jesus, thank you for giving your life for me.
Just spend some time right now just to do some business with God.
Give to Him every nook and cranny and devote these next few weeks to really seeking to
aim after that full devotion to Christ.
God, I need your help in developing self-discipline in my life, developing the habits I need
to have that singular aim.
Lord, we thank you so much that you no longer call us servants, but we thank you for giving
us that singular aim.
Well, this morning Trent's going to sing a song for us as we take our offering this
morning.
And you know, if you're a guest, please don't put anything in the offering play.
You are our guest.
This is not like the admission-free to church or something.
We're not after your money.
This is a way that we can worship God with some of what He's given to us and support
the ministries.
The only way the ministries here at Twin Lakes Church are supported are through these voluntary
offerings.
So we really do appreciate that.
And as we take the offering, we're going to get to hear from another song from the Trent
Smith Band.
And just as a church, let's express to Trent our appreciation as he comes and ministries
right now.
I've heard the will of God described as shooting rapids in a rubber raft.
Because there's a lot of things you don't know.
The one thing you do know is that you're going to end up downriver.
You might get a little wet.
You might fall out of the boat for a while, but you're going to end up there.
And that's kind of what this song is about.
It's called I Am Yours.
It's for any of you who are facing something right now that you can't really explain.
I've been through some times like that in my life.
And it's nice to be able to cling to the things you know at that point.
And I'm gladness you greet me with each sunrise in sorrow you meet me and walk beside.
And I'm gladness you greet me with each sunrise in sorrow you meet me and walk beside.
And I'm gladness you greet me with each sunrise in sorrow you meet me and walk beside.
And I'm gladness you greet me with each sunrise in sorrow you meet me and walk beside.
And I'm gladness you greet me with each sunrise in sorrow you meet me and walk beside.
And I'm gladness you greet me with each sunrise in sorrow you meet me and walk beside.
And I'm gladness you greet me with each sunrise in sorrow you meet me and walk beside.
And I'm gladness you greet me with each sunrise in sorrow you meet me and walk beside.
And I'm gladness you greet me with each sunrise in sorrow you meet me and walk beside.
So even when the flame surrounds me I know I know I am yours.
And even when my faith is shaken even when my heart is breaking I know I know I am yours.
And even when the flame surrounds me I know I know I am yours.
And even when my faith is shaken even when my heart is breaking I know I am yours.
And even when my faith is shaken even when my heart is breaking I know I am yours.
Thank you Trent.
Would you stand with me as we conclude our time together?
I just want to remind you that you can pick up this book,
it's a great experience either in the lobby or right outside the main doors.
There's two locations.
So if there's a long line at one, go to the other one.
Also we asked Trent to bring some of his music with him
and invite you to check that out right out in the lobby.
Now go looking forward with great anticipation of what all of God is going to do in your life
and in this church over the next eight weeks.
We look forward to going through this journey with you.
Go with God's blessing.
We look forward to seeing you later.
Bye-bye.
