So I want to talk to you tonight
about spiritual growth, and hopefully you're able to take a little
bit of what I talk about tonight, apply it to your life, and be
on that path of spiritual growth. Let me go ahead and pray for
us, and we'll dive in, alright? Father God in heaven, thank you
for this evening, and God, thank you for this time that you've
given us to just hear from you, God. It's you that we want to
hear from. And we pray, God, that you would open our hearts
and our ears to hear what you would have said to each of us
individually, God, and together as a body, that we would leave
these four walls, God, that we would leave this church building
different than the way that we came in. Father, we're just so
thankful for your grace and your mercy and your love in our lives
and the opportunity we have to serve you and to be part of your
plan and purpose for our lives in this world. We ask that you
would send your spirit at this time and that we would hear from
you. In Christ's name I pray. Amen.
Alright, so sort of my premise tonight is this, is that spiritual
growth, right, we become a Christian and God calls us to live more
and more for Him, and that spiritual growth that God calls us to,
and that journey is more like a path. Right all through the
scripture about seven eight hundred times actually through throughout
the scripture. We're told that life Is like
a path. It's like a journey down a path,
right? So like proverbs 3 many of us
know this particular proverb proverbs 3 says that Trust in
the Lord with all of our heart, right? And lean not on our understanding.
Acknowledge Him in all of our ways and He will direct our paths,
right? Psalm 119, there's a passage
that says, He is a light unto my feet and a lamp unto my path. Right? All through the scripture,
we're told over and over again that life is like a path in the
spiritual growth. Following God, living for God,
growing in your relationship with God is like a path. I'm going to say it's more like
a path than it is, say, like a door. Right? Because a path
is something that It's something that really can be if you're
walking a path, it's something that can be really boring actually
and sort of mundane repetitive The only way to truly walk a
path is to sort of just keep putting one foot in front of
the other. Walking down the path and it
becomes boring and monotonous. Because notice that it doesn't
say run the path. you know, skip on the path, hop
down the path, right? Do cartwheels down the path.
It doesn't say that. It says walk the path, right? Because you can run down the
path, you can skip down the path, you can hop down the path, you
can do all those things, but if you're going down a path in
that fashion, you're not going to get very far. You're going
to tire out. And that's one of the reasons
why spiritual growth, following God, developing a relationship
with God, is more like walking a path. You may not feel like
when you're walking a path that you're getting anywhere, but
if you continue to just put one foot over the other, right, left,
right, left, right, it becomes what feels like mundane, but
you look up, and you start to realize you're somewhere that
you weren't before. It takes a while, it takes time,
it can feel boring, but you just keep moving, just keep going.
Some of us have walked paths, literal paths in our life. I've had to walk all the way
to wherever, fill in the blank, and it felt like it would take
forever to get there. But you can't believe you actually
kind of like look back and you're like, man, I can't believe I've
actually walked that far. I can't believe that I've gotten that
far. And so when it comes to spiritual growth, it can feel
very mundane. It can feel boring. It can feel
like you're not getting anywhere. In fact, other people are oftentimes
able to look into your life that haven't seen you in a minute.
And they're sort of like, man, that person has really grown.
Like, man, the last time I saw you, you were a mess, right? And you've grown so much, but
yet you haven't been able to necessarily see it in your own
life, right? And that's sort of like what
spiritual growth is like. Now, I say that that is different
than sort of walking through a door, because in our culture,
I feel like we want it to be like a door. And there are passages
of scripture, right, that say that our relationship begins
like walking through the door. And when I say walking through
the door, opening the door, that's sort of like a one-time deal.
It's very quick. Turn the latch, turn the key,
turn the knob, walk in, boom. But there's nothing about spiritual
growth that is like that. It's the very opposite. You may
become a Christian in a moment, but it takes a whole lifetime
to grow wise. Becoming wise is not something
that happens overnight. it happens over time. But we
want it to happen overnight, don't we? This is why discipleship
or spiritual growth is so contrary to so much of our culture, because
we want everything right now, right here, right now, my way,
right away. Isn't that Burger King's slogan
or something? That's how we want it. We sort of are like, all right,
I surrender. Do it to me. We kind of want, give me the
pill. Give me the three steps. All right, give me the three
steps. Give me the two lessons that I've got to do in order
to be wise. But it's something that is more
like a path. It's not a latch you turn. It's
not something you just walk through. Now one of the things that scripture
actually teaches us about spirituality, one of the primary ways to walk
that path of developing a relationship with God, a deep, meaningful,
powerful, impactful relationship with God that you can grow in
and understand more of what God wants for your life is through
actually reading the scriptures. just knowing the scriptures,
knowing what, if you want to know what God says about your
life, you want to develop and relate, like, take for instance,
my wife Amber and I, right? Imagine her and I trying to have
a deep, meaningful, impactful, powerful relationship with one
another if we never talk to one another. We just never talked,
lived in the same house or whatever and, you know, put money in the
bank or what have you and did different things. But we never
talked, never communicated, never had that part of a relationship. It wouldn't be very deep, it
wouldn't be very meaningful. And so one of the primary things
that God teaches us about having a relationship with Him and growing
in that relationship is knowing the Scriptures. Knowing what
He says in the Scriptures. So one of the, I think the best
places that you can actually go to that actually explains
this is in the book 2 Timothy in chapter 3. In 2nd Timothy,
for those of you who don't know, the Apostle Paul wrote this letter
to Timothy. Timothy was like his protege,
right? The Apostle Paul, he would go all around sort of the known
world at the time and he was planting churches, he was starting
churches. And then he would raise somebody up and he would place
that person over the churches that he was starting. Now when
he writes 2nd Timothy, this is like one of my favorite letters. So the Apostle Paul, he wrote
like 80% of the entire New Testament. And much of it are letters that
the Apostle Paul wrote to churches that he started or that he wrote
to people like Timothy. We believe that those letters
were inspired by the Spirit of God, that it was the very words
of God, but they were inspired to be written through the Apostle
Paul. And what I like so much about
2 Timothy is that we know that the Apostle Paul wrote this letter
to Timothy when he was in prison. He was in prison in Rome, so
it's just a very short time. So almost all of the Apostle
Paul's ministry life, he's trying to get to Rome, because that's
like the capital of the empire, right, is going to Rome. It's
like the most influential city that he could possibly go to.
He knows that if he gets there, he's going to be able to advance
the gospel in ways that he couldn't from anywhere else. But he also
knew by getting to Rome, it was going to be like certain death
for him. And he gets to Rome. He's imprisoned. And so he knows
it's just a very short period of time. He tells Timothy this
when he's writing to him, that it's just a matter of time before
he's executed, essentially. And when Paul writes this, he's
down in a dungeon. We know that his prison cell
would have been sort of basically like a pit, a dark pit that he
had very little probably access to light, let alone other people. And we know that Paul knows he
was going to be executed in just a minute. In fact, near the end
of the letter, he says to Timothy, hey, I want you to come to Rome
and I need you to bring me some things. And a few of the things
that the apostle Paul asked him to bring with him are a cloak. He wants a jacket. He tells him
to bring the scriptures. Bring the scriptures with you.
And then he says, come before winter. And I think one of the
reasons why he says, come before winter, because if Timothy takes
too long, he's going to get to Rome and Paul won't be there
anymore. And so he's saying, come now.
Now, one of the things that Paul tells Timothy in this dying letter
that he writes to Timothy, He says this in chapter 3 in verse
14. He says, but as for you, now
he's talking about some other people right before this that
were no longer following the gospel. They were no longer faithful.
They were no longer walking the path. Some of these people that
Paul was talking about previous to this passage. He says, but
as for you, Timothy, continue in what you have learned and
firmly believed. Knowing from who you learned
it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the
sacred writings. Which are able to make you wise
for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. He says all scriptures
breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for
correction. and for training in righteousness,
that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work."
So, the Apostle Paul, we know he's about to be executed. He
wants to leave some words to Timothy that, hey, the way to
continue to grow, in order for you to continue to fulfill the
path that God has for your life, do what? Continue to learn what
you already have begun to be taught. continue to pour yourself
into the scriptures. Why is that? There's a few things
I just want to point out for a few minutes that we have left
tonight. Of what Paul, I think, really wanted to get across to
Timothy and get across to us as to why it's so important to
continue to walk that path, particularly through reading the Scripture
and pouring into that. The first is this, is that it's
through the Scriptures that you're going to actually know God. That
you can know God. Notice that in verse 16, right,
he says that all Scripture is breathed out by God. And Paul
is actually showing Timothy that, hey, if you want, how many of
us in here? I mean, I hear this all the time
as a pastor. I really want to know God's will
for my life. I really want to hear from God. How many of you
in here want to hear from God? Right. Well then read the scriptures.
I mean, really, he said, well, you know, God really has sent
us a text message. I hate this. That's kind of corny,
but it's true, right? I mean, like he really has said
something to us. And what he has said to us is
an authority. And it's through what he has
said to us in the scriptures that we can actually know God,
that we can hear from God. Now, oftentimes we look, we go
to the scriptures and we sort of think that like, that the
Bible is sort of like a magic book. You know, and we sort of
be like, open it, be like, you know, or we just sort of
like, what does it say? And then we kind of look and
it says, and then he walked out and hung himself. No, like, you
know, I mean, for real, right? I mean, like, it's not a magic
book. Like, don't over spiritualize
it. God has given us the Scriptures, but too often we're sort of just
like looking for a sign. Right? We're saying, I just wish
that I could hear from God. When He has given us everything
that we really truly need. He has told us everything that
we really need in order to know Him. But in order to truly know
Him through the Scriptures, you've got to see it as an authority
to your life. Meaning, in order to be wise
from it, you've got to submit to it. You've got to kind of
get underneath the weightiness of it. You've got to get under
it. You've got to let it weigh on
you. And this is one of the things that Paul is telling Timothy,
that all scripture is breathed out by God, right? And it's profitable for teaching. It's profitable for reproof.
It's profitable for these different things. But one of our big issues
is that we don't want to get underneath it. We want to stay
above it. So a way to say this would be sort of like in order
for somebody to perform surgery on you, you've got to get under
the knife. Now in order to have that knife,
so you can't Somebody can't use like a piece of styrofoam on
you to perform surgery. Why? Because it's too soft. It can't cut through you. It can't cut the skin. It can't
get inside you. It can't get where the problem
is. It can't perform the surgery
because it can't cut. In order for something to actually
perform surgery on you and to heal you, it's something that
you have to get under, and it's got to be something hard enough.
So, scripture has to be a hard enough truth. So, you can't distance
yourself from it or stay above it and be in authority to it.
You've got to get underneath it and allow it to have authority
over you. But in order to do that, you've got to be willing
to accept some hard truths. See, surgery can't really happen.
There's not going to be any wisdom that begins to be produced in
your heart and in your life if you're always in authority. over
the scriptures, you've got to be willing to put yourself underneath
it. Now, of course, many people say
something like this, and I'm not trying to offend anybody
in here, but if you are, I guess, whatever. Sorry. So, when people say something
like this to me, they say, I don't believe the Bible. I don't believe
the Bible. Now, I try not to be offensive,
but I'm sort of like, that's really an intellectually ignorant
statement. to say that you don't believe the Bible. And I know
that there's people in here right now, you're thinking, well, I
don't believe the Bible. Is he talking to me? Yes, I'm talking to you.
And why is that? Hold up for a minute. So over
80% of the Bible is history. Undisputed history. Over 80%
of it. And that scholars don't even
debate whether or not it was history. So for you to say, I
don't believe the Bible is to say, you don't even believe history.
So that doesn't even make sense. You see what I'm saying? It's
an intellectually ignorant statement for you to say, for me to say,
I just don't believe the Bible. You got to kind of reword that
and say, I don't like what the Bible tells me to do. That's
a different statement. That's different than saying
I don't believe the Bible. For me to say I don't like what
the Bible tells me to do or what the Bible tells me not to do
is something that I don't want to put myself underneath the
authority of to tell me how I should live my life. You see what I'm
saying? That's different. We can at least get with that.
Because that's at least an intellectually honest statement about what the
scripture teaches. But in order for you and I to
actually grow in our relationship with God, we've got to be willing
to sort of at least get underneath the authority of it and say,
I don't like that it's telling me to do that. That's not what
I want to do. I'm not saying that in order
to get underneath the authority of it is to say, I like everything
that the Bible tells me to do. Like that's just not even true.
That's not being, you know, emotionally true, right? Anymore, if we say
that. So, but in order to really truly
grow in a relationship, watch this. In order for us to grow
in a relationship, you have to be able to put yourself in a
situation We have to be able to put ourselves in a situation
where somebody is allowed to disagree with us. If you try to build a relationship
with a person who's never allowed to disagree with you, that's
not a relationship. That's a puppet. That's either
a puppet or a robot, one or the other. And a puppet or a robot,
you can't have a relationship with. So if I told Amber, my
wife again, that she was never allowed to disagree with me,
how good of a relationship is that going to be? In order to
have a relationship of depth, you have
to be able to be willing to put yourself in a situation where
somebody can disagree with you and maybe you could be wrong.
Right? Maybe you're right, maybe you're
wrong. So if this is one of the reasons why we have such a huge
problem as humans like with insecurity. So if you're like somebody who
can't ever receive any constructive criticism, let's say. Right? Anytime anybody tries to give
you any kind of constructive criticism, you sort of rebuke
it, right? You're sort of like, you disagree
with it, you get all defensive, right? And so nobody, everybody's
sort of on eggshells, like in a, well then, and you never allow
somebody to challenge you on anything. You're always left
insecure because then you never really know whether or not what
they're telling you is what they really think or feel. You see
what I'm saying? If you never give somebody a
license to tell you hey, you could have done this different,
or maybe, hey, this is how you really came off, or no, I think
you actually were wrong. Like if you never give somebody,
you just want everybody to agree with you and validate all your
feelings and thoughts about everything. You never really know if they're
ever truly telling you what they think. And then you're always
left insecure. So no matter what they say, it's
sort of like, I wonder, in your heart, whether that's what they
think. So in order to have a relationship with God that's built in insecurity,
It can't be one that is just based in God always telling me
what I want to hear. Because if it is, then I never
really can trust if he's being honest with me. You tracking
me? So any relationship of depth is always going to be something
where we're putting ourselves at least in a situation where
they're allowed to speak authoritatively to some degree in our lives,
to give us hard truths that maybe other people, or maybe we don't
even necessarily really want to hear. And in order to have
that relational depth with God, We've got to, like what I would
say, so that it's sort of just got to be hammered. It's got
to be hammered and hammered and hammered and hammered into our
lives. So for instance, Proverbs 3,
back to that passage that I mentioned earlier. Proverbs 3 verse 3 right
before 5 and 6 where it says trust in the Lord with all of
your heart and lean not on your understanding Right right before
that it says this in verse 3 let love and faithfulness Never leave
you It says bind them around your neck and write them on the
tablet of your heart See, it's sort of like, so it's not enough,
think of it like this. It's not enough for you just
to go, to show up to church one Sunday or Wednesday or whatever
and just go, oh God loves me. God loves me. Why? Because you're
going to just very easily like forget about that. If it just
stays surfacy, oh yeah, like God loves me. It's never gonna
like have a lasting impact in your life. The power of it isn't
something that's gonna have lasting impact in your life until it's
like written on the tablet of your heart. And then it begins
to have, make a huge difference. Think of it like this. You have
a big old boulder. In fact, often times in scripture, it describes
the heart of a man or a woman, right? As a man, like, our hearts
become calloused and hard, right? So, just think of a big old rock. If you have dynamite and you
want the power of that dynamite to affect that rock, if you just
throw it on the surface of that rock and light it, what's going
to happen? The power of the dynamite isn't
going to have a lasting effect on the rock. It's just going
to maybe chip off the outside of it a little bit. But, if you
want that rock to really be impacted by that dynamite, if you drill
a hole down deep into that rock, and you put that dynamite down
in there, and then you detonate it, what happens? I mean, it
just impacts the whole rock. It'll split the whole rock apart.
Now listen, this is part of the reason why I say this, why it's
so important that God's love and faithfulness is not something
that just stays surfacy in your life. That if you want to experience
a relationship with God and experience growth in that relationship,
it's something that's got to go deep, down, into your heart. And that's where the power is.
It's got to be written on the tablet of your heart. So, there
are all kinds of things that are written all over your heart.
And if we were to get real here for a few minutes, And you were
to just really examine the things that maybe you really truly believe
about yourself. Because of what your parents
wrote on your heart. What they wrote on your heart.
Some of them maybe were good, but others not so much. Maybe
there are exes in your life, past friends. people in your lives that spoke
over your heart, spoke over your life, spoke over you in a way
that carved in you. In fact, you have been telling
yourself over and over and over and over again, all kinds of
different things about yourself that may not have any basis in
truth, but yet it's affecting you because you've written it
on your heart. It's written down deep and you
can go on the outside. I don't care what people think about
me. And you do way too much because you've allowed them to speak
in a way that has just carved into your heart in a way. And that you and I, right, it's
not something that, oh, I'm just going to read about God's love
and faithfulness some one time. That's why God tells us to read. The Apostle Paul says, continue,
continue in what you've already learned. Write it deep into the
tablet of your heart. Look for ways to continue. That's
got to be repeated over and over and over and over again. If God
be for me, who can be against me? If he who did not spare his
own son also gave up his own son for me, how will he not also
graciously give me all things? Because there's all kinds of
things that are happening in this world, in our lives, that
are saying, God can't possibly be for me. If God was for me,
in fact, I can't believe I did this. God will never be for me
anymore. Think of all the things that
are just recited over in your mind, over in your heart, over
and over again. I was thinking about whether
I would even, this may be a little, maybe not too gruesome for many
people in here, so. I'll just go ahead but here's
just an example of my in my life Like so what one of the passages
scripture like that? I feel like maybe are one of
my life verses maybe many of you have just passage scripture
that really speak to you Maybe it's Proverbs 3 5 and 6 trust
the Lord with all your heart and me not in your son. My right
mine is like mark 10 27 where Jesus looks at his disciples
and he says, with man this is impossible, but not with God.
With God all things are possible. Now can I tell you something?
I've got that tattooed right here on my leg. I know, isn't
that cool? I've got it tattooed. Now this
is where it gets a little gruesome for you, but let me just... I've
got that tattooed right there. Can I tell you why I chose to
get it tattooed right there? It's not because It's hidden
so much as many of you guys know that I was a heroin addict. Can
I tell you that there were tracks all right there? Over and over
and over and over and over and over and over and over and over
and over and over. I went in there. Until it's been
a mark on there for years and years and years. And so when
I went to go get that tattoo, I said, I want it written right
over it. I want it written over the scar. That what seems impossible with
man is not with God. With God, all things are possible.
So every single time, right, I go to put on my pants, Or whatever
it is in my life, I see that again. And I'm reminded of it.
You know, most days I just brush right past it. I don't even see
it. But other days, I'm reminded of it again. God is good. God is powerful. God is for me. He is not against me. You know
what? That's something that is not
just going to, that just is going to make impact in your life by
just sort of staying on the surface. that just like a lot of things
we did in our lives were over and over and over and over and
over and over again, man, in order for you to grow in the
relationship with God that He wants for your life, it's something
that's going to have to be written over and over and over again.
And that is how you will ultimately really have a lasting, impactful,
Relationship with God because you can know God and know what
he really thinks and feels for you Let me just say this before
we finish up Now you know God you'll know yourself So you notice
that in verse 15 it says from childhood you have been acquainted
with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for
salvation through faith in Christ Jesus all scriptures breathed
out by God and profitable for teaching right for reproof Reproof
is sort of like, so not only do we need to be taught, right?
But, reproof is like, we need to be, like there's things that
we believe that are just wrong, right? How many of you, like
the older, I like to say the older I get, the wiser my dad
is, but my dad hasn't changed. You get what I'm saying? You
see what I'm saying? Like, there's some things I've
learned as I've gotten older, like dang, he was right. I had
it wrong, right? Now, if that's true for my, You
know, my biological father. How much more true is that for
my spiritual father in heaven? Of how many things he has been
teaching me for a long time. You're wrong about this. Evidently,
you don't want to hear, right? But there's certain things in
my life and your life that he is saying you're wrong. And then
you need to be corrected. God never just says you're wrong.
He corrects us in it, right? So another way to think about
this, right, in verse 15 it says that the sacred writings are
there, it'll make you wise. So the road to wisdom is sort
of like knowing you're a fool, right? Anybody sitting in here
who's going, I'm wise. You're on the road to foolishness.
That's essentially what scripture says. There's all kinds of Proverbs
that say that, right? That if you think, you know,
he who professes to be wise is a fool. But those people who
are sitting here and going, man, I've made some foolish mistakes
in my life. I've been a fool. You're on the road to wisdom.
Realizing I need to be taught. I need to be corrected I need
there's things in my life that I you know, I like to say in
fact I say this to Amber and it's kind of only partially a
joke, but I'll say things like The thing is is that I'm like
at least 80% right? I mean, you know, I mean, I'm
right at least 80% of the time my big problem is right is that
I don't know which 20% I'm wrong and And so I'm always right in my
own mind, right? But I know I'm not infallible,
right? I mean, so that's true for all
of us, right? Is that, I mean, I defend my
opinion. I defend my basis for what I
believe because I think it's right. But I know I can't be
right all the time, right? Even though I think I'm right
all the time. That is foolish to think that I'm right all the
time. Right? And so spiritual growth is going
to come from like a ruthless Self-examination so really quick
so like James chapter 1 says this like a Foolish person is
somebody who looks in the mirror somebody who like reads the Word
of God and hears it and then and just doesn't do anything
About what it says. That's what James says. That's
a foolish person and And he says it's like a person who goes and
looks at the mirror and seeing themselves, seeing that they're
dirty, gets angry at the mirror. That's a fool. Don't get angry at the mirror.
You're dirty. The mirror didn't make you dirty. Think through
that. That's a typical man. What James
is saying is that we're really easily deceived. And I think
this is funny. Let me share this with you. This
is really typical of a man here. I promise I'll be done in like
two minutes. There's these studies that I
was reading. And it says 60% of men think that they can run
a marathon. Now, that is so typical of a
man. Because most of us men sitting
here right now, I can just see a lot of your face. I mean, I
could run a marathon. What was funny about it? Right? A little practice. Stop. Watch this. 94% of college professors consider
themselves in the top 10% of their profession. Did you just
hear what I said? 70% of college seniors believe they're
in the top 20% of people who get along with others. So this
is the best one, though. Are you listening to this carefully?
So 99% of all people who are surveyed will say that the world
would be a better place if people obeyed the golden rule. You all
know what the golden rule is, right? Do unto others as you
would have done unto yourself. Now I guarantee, so basically
saying everybody in here would agree with that. That, hey, the
world would be a lot better place if people would just do unto
others as they would have done unto themselves, right? So 99% of you, but listen to
this, 99% of the people that were surveyed say that they do
in fact obey the golden rule. I mean, do you realize what that
is? I mean, what a horrible lack
of self-examination on our own part. Because if that were true,
then the world is a fine place. There's nothing wrong with the
world because everybody is living the golden rule. And that's what
would make the world a better place. Then there's no problems.
But we know that's not true. That somebody's blind. Somebody's
blind not only to the actions of others there. We're blind
to our own actions right and so The Word of God the scripture
is what God has given us to actually read and a look at it put ourselves
under the authority of it and in it actually Have some hard
truths spoken into our lives that we would actually not just
hear it but be changed by it and And it's through that, right,
that our lives can actually, we can have a foundation for
faith, right? So Jesus says this, I'll just
finish by saying this. Jesus says in Matthew chapter
seven, he says that, a person who hears my words and does them,
he is like a man who has built his house upon a rock. And that
when the storms come, when the rains come, it doesn't move. It's built on a solid foundation. It won't be washed away. Notice
that Jesus, right? He's not saying, hey, there's
for some of you, some people sitting in here, there'll be
a storm. And so it's really important for some of you to make sure
you build your house on a rock because some of you will see
a storm. Jesus doesn't say that. He says
everybody's getting a storm. Everybody, if you're living life
and you haven't felt the storm, just keep living. And eventually
you're going to feel the storm. And Jesus says, though, that,
hey, when that storm comes, don't be like the man that built his
house on sand, not on a solid like like foolishness. He says
that a man that builds his house on sand when the storms come,
it washes away. And that person is not only does
his house fall, Jesus says great is the fall of that man. that
all of us are going to have a storm come in our lives. And what is
it that we're standing on? I don't want to be standing on
my own wisdom in what I think about myself, because you know
what? I know I'm perfectly capable of getting myself into situations
that I don't know how to get myself off. And many of us have
been there. When I find myself in those situations,
right, I want to be grounded and founded, built upon the gospel. the good news, that Jesus says,
all those who hear my words and do it, that my words are the
words of life, right? That I want to be built upon
that, because that's where we can have a real foundation in
our relationship, not only with God, but a relationship with
ourselves, knowing ourselves, growing in wisdom, and actually
knowing the path to live. If you're here and you're saying,
man, I want to know what God's will is for my life. I want to
know what direction to take in my life. The scripture is what
teaches us that. It says that your word is a lamp
unto my feet and a light unto my path. Trust in the Lord with
all of your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. Acknowledge Him in every way
and He will direct your paths. Keep walking, just keep reading,
right? Take a text. Oops, wow. Take a text, take a passage of
scripture, pick a time every day and just begin to walk it. And it may feel mundane. It may
feel boring. It may feel like you're getting
nowhere. But you know what? Over a period
of time, you'll look up and realize, man, I'm somewhere where I was,
I didn't ever believe I could be. I have gotten somewhere. I'm not where I used to be. Thank
God. I'm not where I want to be, but
I'm sure not where I used to be. Let me pray. Father God,
thank you for tonight. God, thank you for your word
that you've given us. Father, I pray that you write
that word on the tablet of our hearts. that we would walk out
of here and not sin against you, but trust you, walk with you,
and be blessed, God, that all that comes with having a relationship
with you. In Christ's name I pray. Amen.