Discipleship

Sermon Transcript:

Good, good morning and Happy Mother's Day. It is so fun to celebrate Mother's Day, and it's not raining outside, so you can like go and explore and have fun or stay in the house. I don't know what do you wanna do? But Happy Mother's Day for every, for all the women today, we wanna make an announcement.

We're glad that you're here. We have a gift for you after the service at either one of the doors. Um, you can feel free to pick up a gift. Uh, I think they're chocolate bars and they probably are very, very good. I wasn't here all week, so I have no idea really what I'm talking about. But they might not be chocolate bars at all.

They might just be fake, so hopefully they're not, but I'm glad you're here. Pastor Craig's on vacation and he's graciously letting, letting me preach this morning and I love that. I am super excited to preach. I love getting this opportunity. And if you like to follow along in your Bibles or on your Bible app, we're gonna be reading out of Luke chapter nine today.

So Luke chapter nine, I'll give you a couple minutes to get there. Um, where we are up there. Nice. Okay. So I wanna start out by telling you a story. So many of you know, and maybe you don't, but you're gonna learn. So learn something. I have two boys. I have a wife and two boys, and their names are Daxton and Roman.

And they're three years old and one year old, and they are awesome. And Daxton is at the age where he's, uh, interested in everything. Just everything. If it is exists, he wants to know about it. Um, and he'll always ask me, how's, how's it do? He wants to know how everything works. And so the other day as I was getting ready, I was ironing my clothes and getting all the wrinkles out, and Dax comes over, he's like, how's it do?

What are you doing? And I tell him like, I'm ironing clothes. It gets really hot. I put it on the iron, or I put the, put the iron on the clothes and they get the wrinkles out. And he goes, okay. And he just like, walks away and goes in place. So he, he learned it and then he comes back when I'm transitioning to get my shirt over here and my pants over here.

He goes to try to grab it, tries to grab the iron, and I'm like, no, don't, don't grab it. And I kind of like sternly like, don't, cuz I don't want him to get burned. Right. So he, he goes, he goes, why? And I said, because I don't want you to get burned. I don't want you to get hurt. And he said the sweetest thing.

He said, daddy, it's okay if it falls on me, he'll rescue me. And I was like, buddy, that's so sweet. I will, I will rescue you, but I don't want to, I don't, I don't want to have to do, I will. I, I would gladly, I would put my hand on a hot iron a hundred times so it didn't have to touch him. He's prone to burns by the way.

He's burned himself so many times. He's dealing with one right now cuz he touched the grill, uh, when it was on. So he'll learn eventually, hopefully. But, but I, I, I, I saw that and I heard him say that, and I was just like, he has so much faith that I will protect him. And I, I love that and I love that my son knows that I would protect him.

I would put my life on the line so that he was safe. Um, and I'd put my hand in front of a burning. Ironed so that he didn't have to get touched by it. But again, I don't want, I don't want that, but he said, it's okay. If it falls, you'll rescue me. And I got to thinking how, how, how does he look at me? That he sees me, he trusts me.

And, and how am I going to make the most of this, this moment? Because I have, I have a three-year-old and a one-year-old, and I want to make the most of this, this time with them. And so I got to thinking, they look up to me. My words mean something, but my actions mean something greater. And so how am I going to disciple them as my children?

How are they gonna learn about Jesus at such a young age, and how can I be that example for them? And so for the last three or four weeks we've been in this series, uh, called We Are Church and we're exploring and we're embracing the way of Jesus. And, and Pastor Craig gave us a, uh, a memory verse to do so I want to do that this morning.

Let's see. Is it gonna go? There it is. So let's say this together. I say to you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. And the gates of Hades will not overpower it. Matthew 1618. And so this is our memory verse. This is something that we want to, pastor Craig gives us to us. Every, every series that we do, we have a new memory verse.

It's something that we can take with us during the week and we can know that this is something that we can apply to our lives. So we've been in this series for the last three or four weeks. We're focusing on how we as the church can embrace the way of Jesus and be a light in our community. How, how is our community better because of our church in our existence?

And so today we're gonna explore the, the topic of discipleship. And so I want to talk to you today about that. So we're gonna read out of, um, Out of Luke chapter nine, starting at verse 57, and I'll have it on the screen here for you. So let's read together. As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, I will follow you wherever you go.

Jesus replied, foxes have dens and birds have nest. But the son of man has no place to lay his head. He said to another man, follow me, but he replied, Lord, first let me go and bury my father. Jesus said to him, let the dead bury their own dead. But you go and proclaim the kingdom of God. And still another said, I will follow you Lord, but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.

And Jesus replied, nobody who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God. So this is our scripture that we're gonna be working through today. And I wanna start out by saying that there is, um, there's a lot going on in this passage. It's a really fast one, and it can go by really fast.

And we read it and it seems like all of this is happening in the span of like 20 seconds. It took us maybe, maybe 30 seconds to read that whole scripture, right? But we have to know that they're, they're walking along this path. Jesus' reputation has gone before him. People are starting to hear about the things that he's doing.

There's stories of him working miracles and healing people. And there's talk of him being the Messiah, the promised one, and, and the one who's gonna lead the people of Israel into victory. And so, so his, his name precedes him. His reputation goes before and, And people are kind of coming around and saying, I want to, I wanna meet Jesus.

I wanna see what this guy's about. So there's, they're, they're on this road. They're traveling him and all of his disciples and, and a bunch of other people are walking along this road. And there's three separate examples here, three separate conversations that we're introduced to. And the first one, this man says, I will follow you wherever you go.

And as I read that, I was like, what does that, does it really mean wherever? Did he really say wherever you go? So I looked into the word. The word literally means where so ever you find yourself. So this man is saying, Jesus, if you take a step, I'm gonna take a step. If you sit, I'm gonna sit wherever you go, I'm gonna be there as well.

So he's passionate about this. He sees Jesus, he hears what he's about. He he has seen him for himself, and he wants to be all in. And Jesus' reply. Is boxes have dens and birds have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. So in other words, all of these animals, they have a place to stay. They have a place to live.

But me, I don't know where I'm gonna sleep tonight. And if you follow me, you're on this journey with me, you're gonna be in the same situation. Things are gonna be uncertain if you follow me. When, when Lindy and I were living in California, we moved up here about, uh, little two and a half years ago, maybe in mid 2020.

We lived in California for a few years. We lived in this apartment, our first apartment. It was great. It was our first spot after we got married. It was awesome. We had lots of memories there. Um, something came up and, and we had to, to move. It was, it was our decision to move and we decided to give the apartment complex 30 days notice.

We're gonna be out of the apartment in 30 days. And they said, okay. And then, then, then I had the, the task of finding a new place to live cuz I didn't think we needed a place to live before we told the apartment complex that we needed to be out. Wendy's rolling her eyes. So then began the search and it lasted a long time.

Southern California, there's a lot of people there. There's not a lot of spots to live, and so, so we were, we were seeking out places to live over in Long Beach area, trying to find a place that would, that would suit us, that we could, I mean, any place would do, honestly, at that point we're like, we gotta get outta here.

We don't have a place to live. I forgot to mention she was pregnant at the time, so, so my pregnant wife and I had, had 30 days to get out of this apartment and we had no place to to live. Um, weeks go by, there's no leads. Another week goes by, there's no leads, and Lindy has to take a trip over to the other side of the country to go to South Carolina to finish her board exams.

And while she's over there, I get a phone call from our pastor down there and he said, Hey, I need you to meet me at this address. Come here as soon as you can. I was like, sure. It was, he said it was the, somebody, an elderly couple in our church and I figured they needed help and, and, and stuff like that.

So we go over there. The couple's not there, but Brad is our, our pastor. He's like, this is your place. This is where you're gonna stay. And I was like, all right. And so I look at it and the outside looks decent. It's not awful. But you walked inside and it was bad. It was, it was it, you wouldn't have wanted to live there.

I couldn't take my, what, six month pregnant wife at the time to live there. And so, and this is three days before we have to be outta the apartment. So I'm scrambling. I'm calling Lindy. I'm like, we found a place, we got a place and I'm gonna show it to you when you get back and hope that you approve. Um, but long story short, we ended up, uh, Brad and I ended up ripping the carpet out of the, the place we got it livable for, uh, Lindy and I to move in.

We got out of the apartment on time, but it was one of those moments where we got to live out this scripture where God is saying, Jesus literally says, There's people who have a place to stay, and I don't, if you're gonna follow me, you're gonna have to be okay with, with my terms and my timing. And that's what we learned.

We learned that God's timing is perfect. It's not what we would've chosen for ourselves, but it ended up being better for us in the long run. It looked weird at the beginning and it smelled bad, but it was, it was a beautiful blessing because we got to, we got to remodel it, and we got to help out a family by living there, and they helped us out by not.

Making us pay rent. So that was great, a huge blessing. But what Jesus says to this man, foxes have holes, birds have nest, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. And so following Jesus means putting your faith in him to lead and to guide even when it means that you could lose everything, even when it means you could lose everything.

You could lose your reputation with your friends. You can lose the house that you're living in. You can lose money, you can lose finances, you can lose your job. But all of those things, if you follow Jesus, a greater reward waits for you and God is gonna take care of you. God is taking care of us to this day.

Right. That's, I mean, we're all here. God is taking care of us. He's provided for us. It would, it's hard. Jesus didn't say it would be easy, but He's provided for us every step of the way. And so, so I, I imagine, I imagine this conversation going about as well as it would if you said, Hey, I wanna follow you.

And you're like, come be homeless with me. Let's go. And then Jesus turns to another guy and says, you follow me? So you're hearing this, the crowd is hearing all of this happen, and then Jesus points to another person and says, you follow me in his reply, this is the second encounter. Says, Lord, before I follow you, let me go and bury my father.

And so he's, he's, he's saying, I'm interested, but I have stuff I, I need to get done first.

And Jesus's reply to this man was let the dead bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God. So this man is asking to go back home. He wants to go back home, but Jesus is telling him to go somewhere else instead. And, and oftentimes this, this can tear at us because we, we have our wills, we have the things that we want to hold onto and the things that we want to do, but God is calling us to do something, something greater.

So he gives the this man two instructions. He says, leave the dead to bury their dead and go and proclaim the kingdom of God. He's telling this man essentially to deny the law of that day, the Jewish law, uh, of, of burying the dead. And, and we don't know if this guy's dad or his father was, was dead recently or dying.

And so he wanted to wait until his father had passed in order to bury him. But either way, he's trying to, he's trying to get some more time to get his life in order to get things put together so that, that he can. Follow Jesus. He, he can make sure his family's taken care of and, and he can follow Jesus.

But so, so he's torn between following the law. Jewish law was you had to bury the dead within 24 hours. There were exceptions in order to get the family there in time. So, so follow the law or follow Jesus.

The man knows what he wants to do, which is to follow Jesus. He's there for a reason. He's there in the crowd walking with Jesus because he wants to follow him, but he also knows what he must do according to the law. And if you break the law, then you're a sinner. But Dietrich Bon Hoffer, who is a great theologian, says it this way in his book, the Cost of Discipleship, he says, according to the law, Nope, sorry.

According to this, a definite legal ordinance acts as a barrier between Jesus and the man He is called. But the call of Jesus is stronger than the barrier. Now, if never before, the law must be broken for the sake of Jesus. The law forfeits all of its rights if it acts as a barrier to discipleship. I'll say that again.

The, the law forfeits all of its rights if it acts as a barrier between yourself and Jesus. If it acts as a barrier to discipleship. So I, I used my son as an example at the beginning of the message, so I'm gonna use him again. If, if I'm talking to my son and I'm trying to tell him about Jesus and I'm, I'm at the same time, like, we're reading the Bible stories before bed.

We're praying, he's memorizing prayers, he's memorizing scripture and songs and all that stuff, but at the same time, he sees me blow up like five times throughout the day, over little things. What thing, what, what do you think he's gonna experience and what, what do you think he's gonna remember more? He's, he is gonna remember the way I acted that, that that's a barrier.

If I can't show self-control and love and patience and kindness, if I let little things get to me and I have these, these massive outbursts, he's not gonna remember the, the Bible stories or what, what I talked about. Jesus, he's gonna be thinking this. My dad talks about Jesus. He must know Jesus. And the way he's acting right now is the way Jesus would act when in reality it's not that that shouldn't be the the case.

But if I, if I create a barrier, whether it's fear or whether it's anger or frustration or impatience, there's the, the discipleship can't happen in that space. If there's a barrier there, the barrier needs to be removed. And, and sometimes there's rules that we give our kids like, don't touch the hot iron.

Don't put, don't put screwdrivers in the light socket. Right? Don't do those things. They're there for a reason. But if there's rules and, and, and my son asks, why? Like, why can't I do that? And the only thing I say is because I said, so that's. That's not discipleship. There, there needs to be a back and forth.

There needs to be a conversation that happens. There needs to be learning that happens. And so, so again, the law forfeits all of its rights if it acts as a barrier to discipleship. And now today, it's not necessarily a law that we need to bury the dead. It's, it's something that we do. It's a custom that we have to have.

Funeral services, memorials. The graveside services, it's more for us to have closure and to lay them to rest and to, to do all that. But it's not necessarily a, a law. But the point Jesus is trying to make to this man is that following him is going to cost him. It's going to cost him his, his will, his desires, his his passions.

It's going to require him to leave his family and pursue a, a path of following Jesus. Cost of following Jesus is to lay down your life daily. And a lot of us can say that I, I, I know people who love to say that. They love to say it. I just gotta lay down my life. I gotta take up my cross today. They don't like to do it.

They like to say it and they like to tell other people to do it, but they don't like to do it. But to be fair, nobody wakes up in the morning and says like, I want to take up my cross today and suffer. You know, nobody wakes up that way. But it's a, it's an act of telling yourself, if I have something that I want to do, if there's a will in my life, I need to put that in the light of Christ.

I have to place that at the foot of the cross and say, is this going to help my relationship with Jesus? Is this gonna help other people's relationship with Jesus? Or if is this going to take me away from the discipleship journey that I'm on with, with myself and with Jesus, or with the people that I'm discipling?

So we have to make sure that our decisions are in line with the light and the, the decisions and will of Christ. So this means we have to die to ourselves. We have to die to our will and our passions, and we have to let go of the need in our lives to be right. We have to let that go. We, we love being right.

We, we, we crave being right. And we can see it all over social media in the comment section. Nobody's trying to have a conversation. Everybody's just trying to one up one each, each other. But we need to let go and die to that need to be right. We need to welcome questions. We need to embrace them. If somebody asks us a question, we need to embrace it.

We're, we're embracing the way of Jesus. And Jesus always welcomed questions, and he often answered with questions. The, the dialogue wasn't so much I need to prove to you that I'm right, but it's let's both come to this understanding. Jesus knew what was going on, he knew the answers, and he was trying to get other people to know the answers as well.

And it wasn't just, here's the answer. It's, let's think about this. Let's, let's ask a question. Let's think about this together. If, if my son, if Dax comes to me and asks me a question, and he says, he says, dad, can I turn on the oven? And I'm gonna say, no, you can't. And if he asks why? And all I say is because I said so.

There's no answers there. There's no, there's no, there's no reconciliation there. He doesn't know why. He just knows that his dad's a control freak. And doesn't want him playing with the stove. But if I tell him, no, you can't turn on the stove because it gets really hot and it's a gas stove. So if you don't turn it on all the way the, the house fills with gas and then it could just explode.

And then none of us would be here and we wouldn't have a house. So, but trying to explain things like that to say, I'm, I'm, I'm welcoming this question. I want to process this. I want to think about this. I wanna process it with you. And let's dialogue together. Instead of getting a question asked of you and then just firing back with a No, this is what the Bible says, or this is what I believe and it says it so I believe it, and let's, that's the end of it, right?

We don't want to have conversations like that because that's a conversation ender. Jesus never ended conversations when they started. He always let them run their course. Some people would agree. At the end of the conversation, and some people would disagree, some people would choose to follow him, and some people would lower their head and walk away and defeat because they couldn't let go of their pride.

They couldn't let go of their desires when they wanted to follow Jesus. So he says, let the dead bury their dead. And this, this scripture, this passage specifically, this idea of letting the dead bury their dead. Could be interpreted a number of ways. And the, the most common one is that Jesus was really saying, let the spiritually dead bury the dead.

But as for you, I have a task for you. Go and proclaim the kingdom of God. And we read right after this in chapter 10 of, of Luke, that Jesus sends 72 people out to the region to spread the gospel, to proclaim the good news. And I, I believe that this is one of the men who he sends. I think that this is one who, who believes that, that Jesus has a greater message that needs to be told.

That there's, there's people that need to hear this message, and I, I believe he's one of them, that that goes,

and this passage has been hard for me in the past because this is another one that I got to the opportunity to kind of live out and experience for myself. As I was in college, I was reading through the Bible as you do when you're preparing for ministry. You read through the Bible and I got to Luke. I was, I was reading the book of Luke, and, and, and during this time I got a phone call from my family back home saying that my, my grandfather was, was dying and he had a couple days to live and so I made plans and made arrangements to try to make it back over here and, and, and say goodbye and, And then the day I was gonna come back over here, I got a phone call saying that he had died.

Um, he passed away and, and I didn't get the opportunity to say goodbye. So, so funeral arrangements were made, there's a service day and, and time and all that. So I was planning on going there, but the problem was that it was at the same time and same weekend that I had another, uh, commitment with a ministry group that I was a part of to go to a conference down in Oregon and lead worship there.

And so I was torn. I wanted to be up at my grandfather's funeral. I also wanted to honor the commitment that I had with my team and the, the ministry group that we were with, and ultimately, I ended up making that decision to go to Oregon and, and miss my grandfather's memorial service. But it gave me peace as I was praying about it, the Lord gave me peace because he said, you're not gonna see your grandfather there.

He's not there. He's not there anymore, but you will see him again Sunday. And you'll be able to say hello to him again someday. And that gave me peace about the situation. I, I, I, I missed being with family up here. I did and I wanted to be up there. But the things that God was doing when we were in Oregon, we saw lives change.

We saw people saved. We saw teens give their life to Christ. And it was just a powerful moment. And God was reminding me, there's work to be done. It's urgent. And that passage, let the dead bury their dead. As for you going proclaim the gospel. That really stuck in my heart. In the end, I chose to honor that commitment and, and it cost me saying goodbye to my grandfather and fe and feeling that kind of closure.

But there was something greater in store and it deepened my understanding of the, the idea and the phrase, God, not my will, but yours be done because my will was to be up here. I had split wills. I wanted to be in both places, but I really wanted to be up here. But God had a greater plan and greater purpose, and I was able to be a part of that.

And that was a great, a great blessing. And finally there was a third encounter with Jesus, sorry, a third encounter with Jesus, who this man says, Lord, I will follow you, but first let me go say goodbye to those at my house. I'm gonna follow you, but I got other plans first. And I feel like this is kind of bold to say like, you're with Jesus, you know, he's the king of King and Lord of lords.

And you're like, I'm gonna follow you, but I gotta go make sure my family's okay first because I don't trust you to make sure that they're taken care of while I'm here with you, because I have to go back and make sure they're taken care of and say goodbye and tell 'em where I'm gonna be and all that stuff.

And, and so it'll be a couple days. And Jesus replies, no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.

This is the second conversation that we read that was initiated by another person in Jesus's reply to this man, nobody who puts his hand to the plow, which is a farming term. So if you, you're plowing a, a field, you gotta make sure those lines are straight. You gotta make sure they're even, because you gotta make sure you get the most crop and you that, that everything can grow, right?

If they're all weird and squiggly, then the crops won't grow, right? You won't get as many shooting up and, and, and it just won't, the field won't be usable. If you put your hand in the plow and you look back, you're not fit for service in the kingdom of God. And that's, that's, that's harsh, but, Imagine this.

You're driving to work and you can only look through the rear view mirror, or you can only turn around and look behind you while you're driving. You're not gonna get anywhere. It won't work. He, he responds by, by letting him know that. You want to keep looking back at your past, you want to keep looking back at the things that, that you can't change.

You can't take care of that. It's, it's in the past, but I have something in store for you that's ahead of you. You need to be laser focused on what's in front of you. You need to keep that, that hand on the plow and you need to keep your head forward so that you can look at me and you can follow me directly.

I'll use another example. I like to mow the lawn. I don't off, I lindy's been doing it, which is great because I have really bad allergies and the grass just gets to me. And, but I love mowing the lawn. And at the end of the day you kind of look back at your, your yard and you see all the nice lines and it's really nice.

But I, I imagine trying to mow the lawn and looking back and the lines, you're gonna miss places and there's gonna be like little, little mohawk grasses through the lines and, and all that. And it's just not gonna look good. And. And that's, that's kind of the, the same, the same concept. If you keep looking back, you're, you're gonna miss what God has in store for you in the front.

And if you keep looking back, you're gonna miss the people that are in front of you that you can disciple. And if, if I told Dax in like, Hey buddy, I know that, that you wanna hold this kitchen knife, but the last time you held a kitchen knife, you cut yourself. And I only remind him of that whenever he's, whenever he's in the kitchen, he's never gonna grow up to know how to use a kitchen knife if all he knows is that kitchen knife's cut me.

Right? So we need to teach people, we need to disciple our people. And, and if you're a parent, I wanna tell you this, if you're a parent or grandparent, you have grandchildren, you have nieces or nephews. If you're a school teacher and you have little kids that are, that are looking up to you, you have influence over their lives.

You have influence and they look up to you and you might be saying, Nope, my teenagers don't look up to me. They don't listen to a word I say, but they listen to somebody and somebody else's kids might be in the same situation and they look up to you. And so I would encourage you, I want to end with, with a challenge for, for everybody today, mothers, I want you to have spiritual conversations with your kids.

Help them to understand the ways that God is moving and working in their lives. Tell them about the things that God has done in your family, in your life to get you to where you are today. I know one day when Dax is old enough, we'll tell him about the ways that God provided a house for us in California so that we could live there and we could have a place to take him home to.

And then how God provided for us when we moved up here to generations and how it didn't look like it, we thought it would, and we, we didn't have a place to stay when we got up here, but God provided a place and we didn't have a places to work. But God provided places. God is always providing and he's always showing up.

And so mothers have spiritual conversations with your kids. Help them to open their eyes to the ways that God is moving in your life. And fathers, I want to challenge you. Be present with your families. I know guys, it's easy to, to kind of retreat and go to your own space, but be present with your kids. Be present with your spouse.

Oh, we're, we're to be an example to our families of the way that Christ loves the church. And so support your family. Love them, cherish them. Do things with them. Honor and support your spouse the way that Christ loves the church because your kids are watching. I know every time Lindy and I, if I just like give her a kiss in the kitchen, Dax gets so giddy.

He's like, he like, he loves it. He thinks it's the greatest thing. And then he goes over to Lindy. He goes, my turn. And he is like, so he loves it. He, he loves the, the fact that we are affectionate towards each other and, and so your kids are watching.

Teach your kids to keep their hearts and eyes fixed on Jesus. I know I'm talking a lot about kids today, and we're talking about discipleship, but discipleship starts at home. Discipleship starts with your family. Discipleship grows when your kids grow and they become friends with their friends and they, you start to see.

The discipleship group forming, and, and then you go to work and you have your discipleship group and, and it, it doesn't have to be super formal, it's just the way that we live life together. We embrace the way of Jesus by discipling those around us. And for most of us, those around us are our kids or our grandkids.

And so be a light, be an example, I think of the way my son trusts me and I want to trust Jesus like that. I want to come to a place where, where I know that if I get in trouble, if I, if I put myself in a bad situation, not intentionally, but just if I get in that place, I know God will rescue me and I know he will.

I know he'll be there for me and it might not be immediate, but in the end, progressively God will be there and I don't know how it'll look, but I know that God is providing. And the reason we're all here this morning is because somebody took the call of discipleship to go into all the world and make disciples.

They took that call Seriously. Each one of us is here because somebody told us about Jesus. We're all here this morning for a purpose, and so I want to challenge you as we leave these walls today, as we go out into the world, let's pour out the love of Jesus into the lives of those around us. Let's, let's, let's pour out our love onto our kids and our grandkids.

Let's pour out our love onto the children that are around us. Let's pour out our love into the communities or those who work with us. Let's tell them about God. Tell them about the great things that God has done in your life. Share a story of in the past where, where God has provided for you, where, where God has shown up and you were like, I didn't know how we were gonna get out of this situation, but somehow we did and, and God is good and he provided for us.

Let's share stories like that. Because when we share stories of the light of Christ, we'll see our community changed. Much like the ways that the community changed when Jesus was sharing the gospel in those days. And so I wanna leave you with this. Let's go this morning and make disciples. If our, if our worship team would come out, we're gonna sing one last song.

We're gonna sing great as your faithfulness because God is faithful. Amen. God has been there. During this next song, I want to encourage you think of the ways. If you have a pen, if you've all got paper right in front of you, write it on the back of a welcome card. Keep it with you. Write down the ways that God has been faithful.

Write down the ways that that God has provided and, and write down the name of somebody that you want to continue to disciple this morning. Somebody that, that you really want to, to, to dive into and to lift up and encourage to, to put them on the straight path of, of following Jesus to keep their eyes fixed forward.

Because when we do that, when we tell the next generation, that's the lifeblood of this church, that's our mission and we've done it so well. We have kids down the kids' wing, they're learning about Jesus. They're being told of the wonderful things that God has done, and they're in turn gonna tell their friends and their kids and their children's children.

So let's go and make disciples. Let's build our discipleship group and let's see God's kingdom come on Earth as it is in heaven. Let's stand and sing this morning.