Growing Relationship - Northland's Mission

Many of you have been around here for a while. You kind of know our family's kind of story. If you knew, that's one of my sons, Micah. Some of the other day said, I didn't know. Michael was your son. They'd been coming for a few weeks and his twin brothers sometimes in the drum aquarium over there. And we've been here, their whole life, they were born. Some of you were even around that many years ago. They were born premature and spent the 1st 2.5 months of their life in the NICU at the hospital. Micah weighed £one 15 ounces when he was born. And Mason weighed £one, 8 ounces when he was born. And so it was a really kind of touch and go the early weeks of their life. And I remember when they were in the hospital. We would ask the doctors and the nurses, hey, when do we get to take them home? Like, what are the markers before they get to come home with us? And one of those was wait. And they ended up setting a goal that they never got to. They never did hit that weight, they let us take them home anyway. But they told us at that time, they got to get to 2000 grams. When they hit 2000 grams, you get to take them home. So every day was like, I'd ask, how much did they waited? Every day to go to the hospital, how much they weigh today, checking that every single day. And one day I went home and I said, I'm going to make a chart. Now this is real sophisticated for those of you that are really into like charts and graphs. Isn't this really cool? This is graph paper. This is what I did back in that day. I got out graph paper and markers and a ruler. And I made a little chart, and we hung onto it, sent our little file cabinet at home. And every day I would put, I put at the top, how big did they have to be to go home? What was the goal? And then every day, I would call the hospital, we'd go to the hospital, and I'd write down on this piece of paper how many grams they weighed that day, and I'd bring it over my little chart, I'd get up my little ruler, and I'd draw the little line, and I made that little chart, every day, how are we doing? There were ups, there were downs, there were some days it didn't change. But what I wanted to see is over the course of time, that line slowly moving up, so they'd hit that goal, and they'd get to be able to come home. And you'd still do that with your kids, maybe not calling the NICU to find out, but we have grandkids now. And when our kids go to a doctor visit, my wife will say, what they weigh today? What, they wait a day? Do that with kids all the time. Well, eventually we quit doing that. Russ didn't said he went to the doctor. What'd you weigh today? You know, we quit asking that question eventually, but when they're little, we want to see, are they growing? Are they getting bigger every day? Are they getting bigger every year? Let me ask you a question. If somehow, I don't know how we do it, but if somehow you could chart your spiritual growth. There was a way to get out a piece of graph paper or to get on your computer and put a dot at the day that you started following Jesus. And then we looked at your life today, would there be an upward line of growth and maturity in your life? Could you say, from the day I started following Jesus, I've been growing? Maybe say I've had some good seasons, some maybe some low seasons, but overall, you ups and downs, if you charted the progress of my spiritual life, I would be growing in my faith with Jesus. Can you look back a year ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, to where you were in your relationship with Jesus, and can you see a pattern of growth in your life? You see that you're looking more and more like Jesus as you walk with him? Today we're going to talk about what we have to do to grow in our relationship with Jesus. This is the 2nd week of a 4 week series we're doing on our mission statement. We're talking about our mission statement at Northland, put it on the screen for you here again. You hear us talk about this a lot. It's actually on the wall. When you go out, you walk right underneath it every single Sunday. There are 4 things. We want people to experience in our Northland family. Number one, we want people to experience a transforming relationship with Jesus. We exist for people to have a transforming relationship with Jesus, a encounter we God through Jesus. We wanted to have a growing relationship with Jesus. We wanted to find authentic community with others, and we want people to discover fulfilling ways to serve Jesus. This is the thing that we're talking about talking about the next few weeks. Last week, Russell talked about having a transforming encounter with God through faith in Jesus Christ. That's where it all starts. He talked about our need to turn to Jesus, that relationship that was broken between mankind and their creator, and how we live in a broken relationship with God, because of our sin, but because of what Jesus did, our relationship with God can be restored. We can turn from our sin and our rebellion, and we can turn to Jesus, and in faith and repentance, begin to follow Jesus as the Lord and Savior of our life. If you never done that. We want to talk to you more about that. What does it mean to turn from our sin and to trust Jesus to follow Jesus? We'd love to have that further conversation with you. But if you are a follower of Jesus. You say, I have turned from my sin, I've repented and put my faith in Jesus, what happens next? Are you growing in that relationship? When you give your life to Jesus, you enter into a relationship, it's not a one time decision, but the beginning of a lifelong commitment of walking with Jesus. We have a baby. You don't say, this is awesome. We've always wanted to have a baby, and now we went through this joy of having a baby. And then we say, oh, so now we get to the hospital, and you have the baby say, so what now? We just leave this baby with you. You're like, no, you take the baby home with you. And you raise this baby, you watch this baby grow. You don't just have a baby because you just want to have a baby. You have a baby because you want to raise this child and see it grow. When you get married, you don't plan your whole wedding. My daughter got married three weeks ago, well, a lot of work went into planning that wedding. A lot of people helped us put on this beautiful wedding. And we get to the end of the night and go, well, that was cool. And Gatlin didn't say to Kaylin, all right, have a nice life. We had a wedding. No, it was the beginning of a relationship. And so it is with our relationship with Jesus. When we are born again, It's the beginning of a relationship, we're going to grow in. We commit our life to Jesus. It's the beginning of a relationship that we want to grow in our life. Is that taking place in your life? Today's mess is very simple. Very simple. Nothing particularly deep. We're going to talk about what it takes to grow on our relationship with Jesus. Here's a good news about the Christian life. The Christian life is not easy. But the Christian life is not complicated. This is not rocket science. What it takes to grow in our faith with Jesus is very simple. You know, there's a difference between something being complicated and something being difficult. right? I'll give you an analogy. I think that math is complicated. I think that running is difficult. There's a difference between math, let's say, a difference between math and a marathon, all right? I find math complicated. I'm never really good at math. My boys asked me one time in high school. They said, dad, did you ever have algebra 2? And I said, yeah, I've had 2 years of algebra. No, I said, I've had 2 years of algebra. They said, so you had algebra too? I said, no, listen very carefully. I had 2 years of algebra. That's different than having algebra 2. I think math is complicated. I think running is not complicated, but it's difficult. If I said I'm going to run a marathon, I've not run a marathon. I bet a couple half marathons. Someone's gonna run a marathon. I know some people in the real I see have run marathons. That's running is not that complicated. You just, you've been running since you were, what, 2 years old. You've been running, but running a marathon is difficult to do. The Christian life is a marathon. It's not math. Okay? It's not complicated to figure this out. It's simple to figure out, but it's hard. It's difficult as we grow in our relationship with Jesus. So we're talking about the very simple thing we can do to grow daily in our walk with Jesus. Nothing new. We're going to look at some passage of scripture that we've looked at here before, from 3 books of the Bible that we've preached through before. There's things that maybe if you've been a Christian for a while, I'm sure you've probably heard all of this before. There's nothing new. In fact, you've been coming to Northland for a while. I'm probably gonna say things you've heard me say from this very pulpit before at Northland, but there are things we need to be reminded of. Why is growth in our Christian life important, and what is that going to take? Two simple questions today. Why? Why should I grow in my faith? And two, how do I do that? How do I do that? Okay? very simple. I'm going to dive into 3 passes. First can be Matthew 28. Matthew 28. going to ask the question, why is a growing relationship important? Two simple things I want to see from this passage today. This is often called the Great Commission. It was some of the final words of Jesus. The crucifixion has happened. He's resurrected from the dead. He's spent a few days, the final days on earth as a resurrected Lord and Savior, and I was going to send back into heaven of the Father, give me these final instructions to his followers, to take the good news of his message to the nations. And there are 2 things I want us to notice. I want you to notice in here this morning. The 1st is this, that we are called to make disciples, not converts. We're called to make disciples, not converts. There's a difference. Now, it's maybe semantics the way we use those. I think about the way we often use those words, there's a difference between somebody making a one-time decision to convert, to embrace Jesus, to believe the claims of Jesus, to walking daily in discipleship. This says in Matthew 28, 19. Matthew 28, 19, it's a typo on the slide. Sorry about that. 28, 19. My fault there. Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations. Baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Go therefore and make disciples. Now, what is the disciple? A disciple is one who's a fully devoted follower of Jesus, a person who's actively seeking to learn to grow and to live their life according to the teachings of Jesus. We define it at Northland this way. disciples a baptized follower of Jesus, who's pursuing Christ likeness by obeying God's word, loving other people, and helping others do the same. I am committed to following after Jesus' wasn't a one time past experience that I talk about, but it's a daily walk with Jesus. It's a fully devoted commitment to walk and live, walk with and live like Jesus. Sometimes someone will talk about a person and they'll say, well, you know, I don't really know where they were for sure, but no, they didn't go to church, and I know they didn't really kind of act like a very religious person. In fact, probably wouldn't think they're a Christian, but I know way back when they were little at Bible school, they made this, they prayed this prayer. They way back when they were in the youth group. They made this commitment. We can't look back at way back past experiences. Is there evidence in my life that I'm walking with Jesus? I'm devoted to Jesus? Not a past conversion story, but a lifestyle of discipleship. That's what Jesus has called us to make disciples. We should talk, I believe the word Christian. I don't even like the label so much Christian because it sounds like a box on a survey to me. Like, what is your religion? Well, I guess I'm Christian. You go to a single people go to a dating app. I want to find the guys who are Christians. They checked that box. There's a difference between saying you're a Christian and living a life as a Christ follower. A disciple is a Christ follower. Not someone who said, I gave my life to Jesus, but someone said, I begin following Jesus. And I'm following after him. And he said, we're to make disciples. Those are gonna be fully devoted followers of Jesus. And the 1st step he says, get baptized. Make disciples of all nations, baptize him. Now, what is the connection between baptism and discipleship? Walk you with Jesus? Baptism is that very 1st step. Baptism is our public profession that I've died to my old life, and I've been raised up to live a new life and follow Jesus. That's the very 1st steps. I would say today, by the way, if you've not been baptized. And you say, I'm trying to grow in my faith. You've skipped step one in this Bible verse. which is get baptized. Go public with this. Say, not just, I privately have believed in Jesus, but I'm publicly saying, I have been raised up to live a new life and follow him. Let me just encourage you to do that. I know a lot of people consider that. We'll even have people say things like this. Hey, I've really been praying about that. Can I just give you some good news, take something off your to-do list here. You don't have to pray about getting baptized. You know, there's a few times I can tell you, the pastor, to stop praying. And this will be what I want. Because Jesus just told you to do it. You don't have to pray about it. Did you ever say your daughter, you go clean your room? Did you ever say, mom, I'll pray about that. No, that no one's going to fly. That wasn't going to fly. And we can't do that with Jesus. We can't say, yeah, Jesus, I know you told me to. Let me pray about that. No, stop praying. Just take that burden off of you right now. If you feel like you're praying about whether you should do this. You should just do this. Step one, get baptized. All right? That's the 1st step. Don't feel like you got to grow in maturity. Sometimes people say to me, I just want to be sure I'm really, really serious. No, they got baptized. You sit in the Bible, sometimes I'm going to follow Jesus, they got baptized. I want to make this public, and I'm going to follow after Jesus. Have you taken that 1st step? Have you put your faith in Jesus, trusted him as your savior, professed that through your baptism, and now what does it take to continue to grow? Look what he says next. His 2nd point of what you see. That we're called to transformation, not education. We're called to make disciples, not converts, and in the life of discipleship, it's a life of transformation, not education. Let me show you what I mean. Matthew 28, 20. Notice this distinction here. Teaching him to observe, observe all that I have commanded you. Some translate it this way. Teach them to follow all that I've commanded you, or teach them to obey everything that I have commanded you. Observe, follow, obey, translate different ways in English. What he's saying is, take what I've told you and put that into action in your life. Knowing the Bible is important. Reading your Bible daily is important. Studying the Bible is important. Come in and hearing a sermon is important. Go into your life group, go into a Bible study. Go to a ladies Bible study or a men's Bible study. We have men up at the men's retreat right now, coming back probably right now for the men's retreat. That's important, but the goal is not to get smarter. The goal is to have your life transformed by the Word of God. See, we make the mistake sometimes of thinking that teaching the Bible is discipleship. Teaching the Bible is the 1st step. Discipleship is obedience to God's word. Don't confuse academic depth with spiritual depth. Don't confuse education and transformation. Don't think this is about getting smarter. It's about growing spiritually. I think sometimes we can be someone once said, we can be a mile wide, but an inch deep. We got a mile wide of knowledge of the Bible. We're about an inch deep and applying it to our lives. It's about transformation that takes place in our life. Are we being transformed by the Word of God? We're up at the men's retreat. And Alan Lindholt was our speaker. He was one of our pastors here a few years ago. He's now a chaplain in the United States army. We brought him back to speak to our men. And he walked up to me ahead his phone and he goes, hey, Matt, someone wants to say hi to you. And he turned around his phone around and he was FaceTiming his family. you remember Allie? You remember the little kids? Miles and Jackson and Lydia. And they've grown so much. I was like, wow, you guys have gotten so big. You guys have really changed since we last saw you. You know, you want to see someone you haven't seen in a while. And you say, man, they have really changed. That should happen in our spiritual life. Someone should be able to look at you who hasn't seen you in a few years and say, wow, your life has really changed. You were really growing. Jesus is really making a difference in your life. You want to say like, wow, you've gotten really smart. You've learned a lot of Bible verses. You've learned a lot of Bible stories. Now you want to say, your life is being transformed by the Word of God. Jesus didn't say, go out there and just teach what I said. He said, teach people to follow what I said. This is why growth is important. We're to be disciples of Jesus. not just converts to some religion, adherents of some religion, but fully devoted followers of Jesus. And we want to be growing in our obedience to Jesus, not just our knowledge of the things he's taught. So how do we do that? Let me give you just a simple, the thing that I think is the key. The main key here. to growing in our relationship with Jesus is a passionate commitment to learning and applying God's word. The key to a growing relationship is a passionate commitment to learning and applying God's word. Now, it starts with our faith in Jesus. You don't joke what time this little boy asked his friend, why does your grandmother read her Bible so much? And he said, I think she's studying for her final exam. This isn't, it's not a final exam and you get to heaven and there's like a task. And did you, do you know, your only hope, my only hope is to have a relationship with God is faith in Jesus Christ in Christ alone. Now, after you've put your faith in Jesus, our hope for growth is to live according to the word of God. So we don't live according to the Bible to be saved, we live according to the Bible as followers of Jesus. Now you say, aren't there a lot of other spiritual disciplines? There certainly are. There's a lot of other things you can do. But I will make the case that everything is built on this foundation. What I mean by that? Well, you said, what about memorizing scripture? Isn't that important? That's great. But you got to read it before you memorize it, don't you? You say, What about journaling? I found it's really helpful to, like, journal. Well, what are you writing in that journal? It should be what gods teach you in his word. You say, what about meditating on the Word of God? Well, how are you gonna meditate on the Word of God? If you haven't first learned the Word of God? You say, what about worship? That's something we should do, yeah, but what is worship, but a response to what we see, how we see God reveal himself in his word. Well, worshiping, who God has revealed himself to be. So we're in the word, we can worship. So what about sharing my faith with people? What equips you to share your faith with people, but time in God's word? That's the only thing you could argue to be maybe on par would be prayer. So people will say, what's more important, reading the Bible or praying? Billy Graham said, that's like asking, which wing of the airplane is more important. The left or the right, okay? That's what he said. But I could make a case that I might put prayer as a very, very close second to time in the word, simply for the reason that I think it's more important that I hear from God than he hears from me. And I think that prayer, as I hear from God, shapes the prayers that I pray to God. So I think everything is built on, everything flows from this, a passionate commitment to get in God's word and apply it to our lives. Why? Let's start with why it's important to learn God's word. Why is it important to learn the word of God? Well, 3 reasons we find in 1st Peter. one Peter chapter one. Adwell read a little portion of it for us. 1st Peter chapter one. These last few verses of chapter one, the 1st 3 verses of chapter 2, give us some reasons why the word of God should be a passionate commitment of our life. Number one, it leads to eternal life. It leads to eternal life. First Peter one, 23, says, you have been born again, not of a perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God. So we're born again by the word of God. We read the word of God. The Spirit of God takes the word of God and produces salvation in us. If you're a follower of Jesus today. If you're born again, Christian today, it's because somewhere along the way, someone shared the Bible with you. It might have been someone opened up a Bible and showed you some verses. It might have been that someone taught you what the Bible teaches. It might have been a sermon you heard about the Bible. You might have walked into a hotel room and found a Gideon Bible and opened it up and there read about the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news of Jesus. Somehow, you encountered the Word of God, and you saw in the Word of God the salvation that Jesus Christ offers you. And we struggle in our walk with Jesus. Sometimes we have doubts and questions. We go back to the word of God, the word of God that saved us at the word of God that gives us assurance. It's by the word of God that we lead other people to Jesus. And so we learn the word of God, and we share the word of God, and other people can end the relationship with God. It's all from the Bible. It's the most important book you'll ever read. Stephen Cochrane is a member of our staff. He is a librarian at Chin Elementary. I put him on the spot and says, Steve, you know how many books are in the world? Oh, he goes, then he came back afterwards. He goes, in the Chin library, there are 11,000. So he can answer that question. If you go to Chin Elementary right at the road, there are 11,000 books. There's a lot more than that in the world. I'm going to tell you of all the books ever written, all the books ever read. The Bible's the most important book ever. Why? So one book that will point you to eternal relationship with God. There's a lot of good books. You read books, help you with your finances, help you strengthen your marriage, make you a better parent, help you be healthier, books on leadership. books on every kind of topic you can imagine. The most important thing we should want to know is, am I right with God, the Bible is what answers that question for us, what it takes to be right with our creator. It's the most important book. It's a book that leads to eternal life. We should be passionately devoted to the word of God above all else. Second, the word of God never changes. Man, isn't that good news? Get worn out by the pace of change sometimes. This verse is, is, uh, really encouraging me. All flesh is like grass, all its glory like the flower of grass, the grass withers, the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever. We're up at the men's retreat, sitting around. Guys of all different ages, sitting around talking, and somebody mentioned something about a collect call. And one of the young adults in the group leaned over and said, what's a collect call? How many people know what a collect call is? Okay, how many people, you've heard it, but you don't know what it means. That's what my, well, my son said, I've heard people say that, but I never knew what it meant. How many people have never heard that word before in your life? The world's changing. So I explained what a collect call is. And then I talked about how we went from collect calls to then calling cards, and then a calling card, you jump into the numbers, and now it's all different. We talked about cell phones and how that's changed. I can call anywhere. And then Larry placed it was in the circle. He said, I can beat all of that. He goes, I've talked on a party line. They would say, what's that? They're always talking about. literally was like, I did this and talked on the phone. He said, y'all think you're fancy with your conference calls. He said, we were making conference calls years ago on the party line in the neighborhood. The world is changing every day. changing. Technology's changing. Innovation is changing. Where's me out sometime of what's coming next? And then we can say, wait a minute, wait, there's one thing in my life that's not going to change. And that's the word of God. So word of God. What do you, I mean, I just, I invest my time in things that just don't matter. I wake up in the morning, grab my phone, I'll look at the weather. They don't have a clue. That's gonna change. You start looking at the 48 hour forecast. That's a waste of everyone's time. Looking at sports, headlines. Who do they think the Chiefs? How many hours are we going to give? folks, this week to who the Chiefs are going to draft. And none of us are going to get it right, and none of it's going to matter. Oh, look at what the stock market's doing. That's going to change. I look at the news headlines, those are going to change. And so much time trying to look at something that's not going to be there tomorrow, invest your life in the word of God. It's the one thing that won't change. Finally, we can invest our time in the word of God, learning the word of God, because it's our means of spiritual growth. Peter continues on into chapter 2, verse 2. He says this, like new mord infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it, you may grow up in your salvation. It's in that same context of the word of God. He said, it saved you. It's never going to change. He said, what's going to help you grow. And he compares that. The analogy gives a newborn infant. We've talked about this verse before and other times, but what he's saying here is that we should have a desire for the word of God that's equal to the unrestrained hunger of a healthy baby for milk. Anybody ever had a baby in your house? And when a baby wants milk, someone's going to give that baby milk. Like that baby is going to be really persistent. We brought Mason and Micah home from the hospital. We put, I think it was, if I remember right, Micah on Carrie's side of the bed, and Mason on my side of the bed, and we just made a deal that if your kid wakes up, you get up. That's the way we're going to run a zone defense here with these kids. And I remember like waking up, you ever, are you coming out of that fog and you're just kind of, you hear a baby crying, you can't really tell yet where it's coming from. And in my waking moments, I would pray, dear Jesus. Don't let that be my baby. Please, please let it be her baby. Why? Because you couldn't go, hey, buddy, just go back to sleep. I'll take care of you in the morning, all right? Just go back to, you know, a baby wants milk, the baby's getting milk. Can I get an amen from some parents in the room? This is what he said. That's the hunger that a follower of Jesus ought to have for the word of God. You'd have that hunger for the word of God that a baby has for milk. And by that hunger, that desire. That's how we're going to grow. That baby has that desire for milk. We meet that desire of that baby, and by that desire of being melt, that baby's going to grow. We grow by our time in the Word of God. We're not going to grow spiritually until we spend time, regularly spending time learning the word of God in the word of God. But, again, learning's not the goal. The goal is application. We start by being committed to it so we can learn it and know it. The goal ultimately is to observe it, to be obedient to it. Why is it important to apply the word of God to our life? James answers that question for us, James chapter one. James chapter one. We find 2 things about application of the Word of God. Why is it important? Number one, because if we learn it, but we don't apply it, We miss the point. If you walk out of here, you walk out of a sermon, without some action step, you miss the whole point of what we're doing here. Okay? If you go to your life group tonight and you eat some good food, have a good time, and you talk about the, I bet you walk away from your life group without some action step, you miss the whole point of the night. If you read your Bible tomorrow, and you read it and shut it and go about your day without some takeaway from it, you've missed the point. Look what he says. James 122, be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer, of the word and not a doer, he's like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror, for he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he looks like. So he said, you're not to be a hearer only. You ought to be a hearer, but not a hearer only, but you're rather to be a doer. I love that the way that's translated here, be a doer of the word. There's a difference between doing what the Bible says and being a doer of what the Bible says. Yeah, anybody can accidentally do what the Bible says once in a while. You know, they say a broken clock is right twice a day. You've got friends who are far from God who will just accidentally do stuff that's in the Bible. But you wouldn't say their life is marked by a lifestyle of doing the word of God. We're to be doers of the word of God. Hearing the word of God is important, but just being a listener and not a doer, it'd be like watching a workout video from the couch. And say, man, I don't know what's wrong. Everybody told me that this. I remember years ago, P90X was real popular. My wife did Tybo back in the day. Any anybody do Thaibo? Those were scary times. My wife was a kickboxer. But, uh, You say, I sat and watched this, people told me they did this thing and it changed their life. I watched 7 days of this workout video. Hadn't done a thing to my the physical shape. I mean, that's what's listened to the Bible not doing it, it's like. like watching a workout video. Where to be doers of it. Is it characterizing your lifestyle? Some of you in the room run. Can't, most people in this room can run. Some do run, and some are runners. Eli, you're a runner. What was that day I caught you up here? You want to come to church and get warm? It was like 10 below 0 and you ran and got cold and we let you in here to survive? Like that, no, I'm not running when it's -10 because I'm not a runner. I run. He's a runner. Dan Morton is a runner. I asked him today, did you run a race yesterday? He goes, no, not yesterday, but next week? Probably 2 weekends out of the year? He's got a bib pinned to his shirt. He's a runner. And all of us can do the word of God. Are we doers of the word of God? Does it characterize our lifestyle, that we're committed to daily living our lives according to the word of God? If you're not, he says you deceive yourselves. deceive yourselves. That word comes from the word of the world of mathematics, it meant to miscalculate. If you've said, I can hear a sermon and not do it. He said, you've miscalculated. I could read the Bible, but not walk away with an action step. That's like 2 +2 equals five. You've miscalculated what this whole thing is really about. Verse 23 says, if you're a hearer and not a doer, you're like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and then forgets what he looks like. What's the purpose of looking in a mirror? The purpose of looking in a mirror is to see the reflection and see, what do I need to change about myself? If you looked in a mirror today, I'm guessing most of you did, some of you I wonder if you did. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding, guys. It's to say, is my makeup right? Is my hair right? Do I need to shave? You looked in there and said, is there something about myself that I need to change based on what I'm seeing in this mirror? That's the word of God. You look at the word of God, not to just look at words on a page, but to say, is this reflecting back to me, something about my life that needs to change? That's the reason we're looking at the mirror. The purpose is the application of it. Second, he says, if you just learn it, but not apply it, you miss the blessing of it. Really, the joy of it all is obedience. The one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being not a hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. You look at it, you remember it, you do it, then you're blessed. The joy of the Christian life is found in obedience to the Word of God as we learn to live according to what it reflects back to us. So what do I do with this? Let me think this is really simple. Let me give you just some simple steps that you can take. Number one, get baptized. So what I have to do to grow in my faith. Well, Jesus said that those who are wont to be disciples should make that public through their baptism. They should... I had someone ask me at the men's retreat, a guy say, hey, give me some keys to having a healthy marriage. What does it look kind of good when we were talking about some things? I just imagine, what if a guy came up to me and said, hey, how can I be a better husband? And I go, wait, you're married? And he goes, yeah, you didn't know I was married? I said, no. He goes, ah, yeah, we didn't tell anyone. Like, wait a minute, wait a minute. Why don't we start by you telling people that you're married? And then we'll talk about how you can have a healthy marriage. Maybe step one is making this public that you just got married, okay? That's what it's like to say, I'm going to follow Jesus, but I don't want to take this step. I'd want to do this. And so just let me take that burden off of you, to quit, like, wondering about this and studying it, and praying about it, and just, just, it's simple. I'm gonna follow Jesus, tell people that you're following Jesus. And how do I do that? It's real simple at Northland. You grab that connect card out of the chair in front of you. There's a little box that says baptism. You check that box with a pin, and one of our pastors reaches out to you, and we talk about that. We set up a time to talk more, and then we schedule. I tell Nathan, hey, Nathan, fill the fill the tank. We have 2 baptisms in the next service. someone that checked that box a couple weeks ago, said, I want to take this step and get baptized. Second, get into community. Now, we're going to talk about this next week, and the 3rd point of our mission statement, but there's a connection between your spiritual growth and your commitment to community with other believers. When you get into community, you begin to learn the word of God, study the word or to God, talk about the word of God with other believers. It gives you a fuller understanding of the Bible, as others are able to help you, learn what the gaps that you might be missing. You get to look at the example of other people who are striving to live out the word of God. You get the encouragement from other believers who are going to spur you on in your walk with Jesus. You get the accountability as you share with people. Here's where I'm struggling, and can you pray for me? And I'm striving to do this. Getting community, join a life group. Find some people and make it as form of discipleship group. Come to the abide conference this weekend and find community there and come on the next forge gathering. A young adult event, get your kids in student ministry, get in community with other Christians. We're gonna help each other grow. And then we'll end on this last point, the very simple takeaway here, get into God's word daily. Get into God's word daily, make a commitment, to get in the word every day. Now you say, that's so simple. Don't everybody know that? I know you know that. I know you know that, but I'm not going to ask for confessions here, but I'm guessing a lot, don't do that. USA Today did a survey that sent only 11% of people read their Bibles daily. George Barna, who pulls Christians quite a bit, said 18% of Christians read their Bible daily. And I just know I don't need stats. I know people. I know my own life enough to tell you Christians don't read their Bible every day like we should. Make a commitment today. Someone once said the worst dust storm in history would happen if every Christian ran right now and grabbed their Bible. Get in the word of God. Make a plan. Say, what does that look like? Let me tell you, when I was a kid, people would say I should have a quiet time. I said, that's a phrase they would use. And I said, okay. And I wasn't doing it. And one day, we did a youth fundraiser where you could hire kids in the youth group to come do some chores around your house for money for camp, and the worship leader hired me to come. He's going to make a donation to camp if I'd come over there and do some yard work. I showed up to his door, ring the doorbell. He opened the door and he said, good morning, he said, have you had your quiet time yet? And I went, he goes, oh, looks like you haven't. And he said, let's start with having a quiet time. And he gave me a Bible and he put me in his office and he said, let me know when you're done with your quiet time. And I thought, I don't know what to do. I just had this Bible in my hand. Let me tell you, I don't know what to do. Let me give you a very, there's a lot of things you can do. Let me give you a very simple formula. Pick a pick a place to start reading the Bible. He said, where should I start? I'd start with Northland's reading plan. I'd start Galatians today. That's where we are this week at Northland. And just say I'm going to read a chapter every day. I'm just going to start. I'm gonna read a chapter every day. You say, well, I won't get through the whole Bible this year. I know that You do that another year. Right now you're not reading the Bible. We gonna start with a chapter. Just a chapter today. And when you're reading that chapter, get a pen out or highlighter, and say, I'm going to find a verse, in this one chapter, I'm going to try to find one verse, and it really jumps out at me, say, how will I know it? You'll just know it when you read it. You'll just know that's something that God wanted you to hear today. And then you say, I'm going to apply that to my life. read one chapter, find one verse, and find one way to apply it. You know what will happen? You'll start growing. You'll start growing daily in your walk with Jesus. Now you say, how do I apply it to my life? How do I find that, how do I find the application of it? Let me give you something. very simple that I learned? I don't know where I got it. I wish I could, could, um, to give credit here, but someone taught me this years ago, the acronym space. And so what I try to do when I'm reading the Bible, I'm trying to ask 5 questions in my mind to see if there's what's the takeaway for me today, the action step for me today. Number one, is there a sin that I need to confess? I'm reading the Bible, and I read a verse, I go, man, I need man, I'm bad at that. God just said this is something that shouldn't be doing, and I'm guilty of that, and I'm just, my, my action step today is to confess this sin to God that I've got in my life. Sometimes it's that simple. Sometimes it's a promise to claim. You're going through a difficult time, uncertain time, maybe you're in a fearful season right now, and there's just a promise from the Word of God. That's what I needed today. I'm going to have some peace today because of this. have some confidence today, because I'm going to quit walking in anxiety and fear because I've got this promise that God gave me in his word that I can claim in my life that's going to encourage me. Sometimes it's an attitude to change. I just had a bad, I had a bad attitude at work. I had a bad attitude with my kids. I've had a bad attitude toward my spouse. And something's going on, and I just had just a terrible attitude, and God just showed me that I need to be joyful, or I need to be humble, or I need to, whatever it might be. And you say, I'm God, today just change my attitude. I see here that I need to have a different attitude than I have in this situation. Sometimes it's a commando obey. Just a very direct, do this. Thou shalt do this. And you're like, you got it. This is an easy one today. Sometimes you read it, you say, there's not any like direct commands in here, and it's not any kind of direct teaching. It's just a story about in the Old Testament. I'm reading this story about this guy. I'm reading the gospels, a story about something that happened. What am I doing there? I'm looking for an example to follow. It's not going to be a direct command, but there's a story being told about a person and God's put it in his word and that person's life. Maybe it's an example. And by the way, sometimes people's example, there can be an example to follow, and sometimes someone's life is an example to avoid when you read the Bible. And sometimes say, is this someone God has put this story in the Bible because he wants me to be like this person, or he's put this in the Bible because he says, don't be like this person. Is there an example? If you don't open up the Bible every day, and you say, God, is there some sin I need to confess, is there some promises, or an attitude, and my heart needs to change? Some, you do this every day, you'll start growing in your faith. And you know why we don't? We don't just, we just, we just lose our focus. And maybe today is just a reminder to you. I've gotten out of the habit of this. I need to get back to this. This is important. is the most important thing I'll do. If you if you have any. You know, we know we'll know all kinds of useless facts about what's going on in the world, pop culture, whatever else, and not be in the word of God. I don't know how many times I've had, uh, if you if you know like timely, if you if you have a pretty good idea of who's going to be the top 10 players picked in the draft and you didn't read your Bible, you should turn off the TV or put down the app and pick up the Bible. All right? Like, let's just put down whatever we're reading, that we've let replace this time and let's get into the word. RC Sproll said, here then is the real problem of our negligence. We fail in our duty to study God's word, not so much because it's difficult to understand, not so much because it's dull and boring, but because it's work. It just work. He says our problem is not a lack of intelligence or a lack of passion. Our problem is we're lazy. And that's what it'll be this week for me, if I'm honest with you. If I get through this week without getting through a Galatians and Ephesians. Those are the 2 books on our reading plan this week. It won't be because I was busy. It won't be because it was difficult or it was complicated. It's because I got lazy. And I chose to invest my time in something less important than the enduring word of God. But if we'll take the time this week, to open up the Bible every day, to get in community every week. I don't know what that, what that chart, how we'd even measure it. But I'm going to tell you a year from now, you'll say somehow there's been growth in my life. Wasn't dramatic? wasn't a mountaintop kind of experience. It was a daily commitment to say, God, what are you saying in your word and what do I need to do about it today? We're going to pray together. After that, the band's going to come. If you want to pray, we'll have someone back in our prayer corner for us. If you want prayer just with someone every Sunday morning, at the end of the service, we have our pastors or deacon couples back in the prayer corner. So I just set something on my life weighing on me. Let's pray for you. Just let us just say a word prayer where you come back there. You want to talk more? You got the connect card there. Check that box. I want to talk to a pastor. Let's dig in more to what God is saying to you. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for the transforming power of the good news of Jesus, that we can have a transforming encounter with you through faith in Jesus. We thank you that it wasn't just a momentary thing, but it was the beginning of a life of discipleship. God help us to take an honest look at our lives. Are we growing in our walk right now? Is our experience with you kind of a highlight reel of what you've done in the past, or is it a daily lifestyle of walking with you? God, get us in your word this week. Remind us of the importance that the most important thing we'll read all week is your word. The most important thing we'll do all week is get in the word, and then let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that the goal is to read it, but show us by your Holy Spirit, open our eyes, reveal to us the action steps that we need to take, that we would become doers of your word and see spiritual growth in our life. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.