Hearts and Minds - Ephesians 4:17-24

Have you ever had your heart captured by something? that you heard about something, found out about something, and you realize that you were just kind of attracted to it, and that you're thinking, then began to focus on that thing. You thought more about it. And then your actions began to align itself with this thing that had captured your heart. We just finished here in Kansas City, our time with the World Cup. And if you go back, you know, even a year, 6 months. There are some rumblings about this idea of football coming to Kansas City. And some of you are really excited because you were already kind of a fan of the sport. Others were like, whatever, you know, we'll see what happens. As it got closer and closer, right? Many of you, I imagine, began to go, I'm really excited about this. You started feeling some emotions about what was going to happen. And then you started thinking about it more. Maybe you went online and said, I got to figure out how this game works. I got to understand who the teams are, like, why do these teams matter, who's the best, who's, who, what's gonna happen, what's the U.S. gonna do? And then maybe even your actions began to change. You went on Stubhub and said, I wonder how much it would cost to go see a game. I wonder if I could get into a game and watch one of these games, or maybe just go downtown to the World Cup celebration area and be a part of all that was happening each time. That happened in Kansas City. Our heart got attached to a thing. Our minds started to think about it, and then our actions started to follow. John Adams, one of the founding fathers of our country, wrote these words. It says the revolution, the American Revolution, was affected before the war commenced. The revolution was in the mines and hearts of the people. Before they ever put their hands into action in the revolution, their minds and their hearts were already committed to that. John Adams understood that for any meaningful change to happen in someone's life, the heart must be attached to that change. And the mind must be thinking about that change before the outward actions begin to show that change. Paul says the same thing in Ephesians chapter 4. is he writes to the Ephesians. He was saying, look, guys, the Gentiles, the other nations who weren't following God, the God of the Old Testament, the Gentiles live differently than we live. Because they think differently than we think, because their heart is devoted to something different than our heart is devoted towards. Then as Paul writes to the Ephesians, He's also writing to us. That what is our heart devoted to? What is your heart? ultimately devoted to, where is your mind? What occupies your thinking? How is your mind processing, what your heart's devoted to, and then outwardly, how is that being manifested? If you have your Bible turned to Ephesians chapter four, We're going to be in verses 17 to 24 today. As you're turning there. The main idea of this message is very simple. Paul's wanting us to know that you must devote your heart and mind to Jesus to walk faithfully. You must devote your heart and your mind to Jesus to walk faithfully. If you look back in verse one of chapter 4. Paul says, we are to walk in a manner worthy of our calling. He was writing to the church in Ephesus, and probably to surrounding churches in the area they would have passed this letter around. And these would have been people who predominantly were Gentiles. Gentile would have been just someone who's not Jewish. So the Jewish people would have said, there's our people. And then there's all the other ethnoses. That's the word that's used, which is just the nations, the other peoples. And he says, that's who the Gentiles are. And that would have been the majority of the church in Ephesus, they would have come out of a lifestyle devoted to Artemis, one of the goddesses, her temple in Ephesus, was one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world, just this magnificent architectural structure. There would have been committed to Artemis or Zeus or Apollo, any hosts of other gods. And he tells them in chapter 4, verse one, walk in a manner worthy of the calling you have in Jesus. Chapters one to 3 of Ephesians. Paul explains who we are as followers of Christ, who Jesus is, what he's done for us on the cross, and who we are, and then in chapters 4 to 6, He unpacks. What does that mean for our life? So let me tell you the truth of who God is and what he's done and who you are as a Christian. Now let's live that truth out. Everything we're going to say in sermons from now to the end of Ephesians is controlled by Ephesians 41, walk in a manner worthy of your calling. Last week, Craig unpacked the passage right before this one, which has to do with being equipped, being trained to go out and do the things God's called us to do. Paul now kind of backtracks a bit with the Ephesians to help them see that there's 2 things that they could be devoted to. It's either devoted to God or devoted to those things that are not God. And he starts by looking in verses 17 to 19, this idea that a hardened heart and darkened mind leads to an impure walk. A hardened heart and a darkened mind leads to an impure walk. Look what he says. Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of heart. They become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice, every kind of impurity. Paul is known, and he does this regularly of putting a whole lot of information into a very small space. Last week, my family and I went to Chicago, and we went around to various places like the Shed Aquarium. We went over to the field museum, which is this massive museum that has all sorts of historical artifacts in it. And there's 2 ways to go to a museum. If you go to the Nelson Atkins here in Kansas City, There's really two ways to approach a museum. You can say, I want to see as much as I can possibly see, which really involves just walking past and going, that's an amazing painting. That's an amazing work of art. That's great, moving on, going to see the next thing. We did the field museum that way. like, that's cool. That's awesome. We never stopped really and said, I want to read and deeply study. You should read Ephesians that way. Just say, I want to read the whole book in one pass. I want to see everything. But there are times where we want to stop and go, I've entered into this room in the museum, and I just want to read every single plaque. I want to really look at the painting and see what it says. That's what we're going to do with Paul. He's loaded a ton of stuff into this room called a darkened heart and a hardened heart and a darkened mind leads to an impure walk. So let's take each step and see what he says. He 1st says, this I say and testify in the Lord. Simply to say, Paul is going, look, guys, this is from Jesus. This is what he says. If you have a problem with it, take it up with Jesus. This is his marching orders for his people. He says, I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do. For Paul, as we said, in the last several weeks, when he speaks of walking, it's just your normal everyday routine. It's the normal gait of your life. It's a normal pattern of your life. He says, you can't walk like the other nations do. Don't walk like them. These would have been people who had come out of those groups, by the way. So he wasn't speaking to just Jewish people who had accepted Jesus. He's speaking to Gentiles who came out of this false worship, and we're now following Jesus, but their whole life had been conditioned by this other walk. The other way of doing. He says, no longer are you to walk like this. And then he explains what that walk looks like. And he talks about their mind and their hearts and the actual outward actions. Look what he says. They are walking in the futility of their minds. They are walking in the futility of their minds. That word futility, by the way. So just a little lesson in the original languages. Don't want to confuse you. So the book of Ephesians was written in Greek. The word Paul uses here is also used in the Old Testament. So if you go read the book of Ecclesiastes, if you haven't, you should read it. It's just this amazing book that says, here's what life is like without God. And he starts with vanity of vanity, everything's vanity. It's like a myth. The word in Hebrew, which is what ecclesiastes was written in, is heavil. And it just means that it's like a mist, a vapor. You're trying to grab it, but you can't. He said, life is vanity. It's just this vapor that we're chasing that we can never grasp. And the whole book is explaining, life without God is meaningless. It's pointless. That word and the original Hebrew was heavil. The Hebrew got translated into Greek before the time of Jesus. And we call that translation, the subtuagent, because 70 guys translated it. It's up to it just means 70. The Greek word they use to translate heavil, futility vanity is the same word Paul uses. I think Paul understands. He knows the Old Testament really well, and he's going, look, I'm saying the same thing that Ecclesiastes says, they are in the futility of their minds. Now, futility doesn't mean inactivity. We were in Chicago last week. I don't know Chicago that well. So anytime we went somewhere, we got our phone out, we opened Google Maps, and we said, tell us where to go. And off we would go. We just follow Google Maps and where it took us is where we went. Now, imagine if you typed in the wrong address. And you thought it was the rightest, and maybe some of you have done that before. said, I'm on a trip, I've typed it in, and I'm just following where we're going. And you're in a place that you don't know that well, so you're not aware that this is not how you get there. This is just wrong. And you're following it. If you're following the wrong Google Map coordinates, you're doing just as much work as the person following the right map coordinates. You're walking, you're riding the train, you're getting on the bus, you're waiting for the bus, all the things are happening. But everything you're doing is futile. It's useless. It's not going to get you where you were intended to go. Paul's saying that the Gentiles thinking, their minds are futile. They are milling around doing a lot of things, being busy, building great temples, doing all these things, and the futility of their minds. They have the wrong coordinates, plugged in to what their life is. He says, don't walk that way, like the Gentiles in the futility of their minds. It says they are darkened in their understanding. They're very understanding of life is darkened. They're not seeing things clearly. I'm sure you've walked around a dark room before. and probably run into something, unless you're just really aware of your surroundings. Once it's dark, everything becomes difficult. Everything becomes harder to understand. Everything becomes harder to navigate. He says, they're darkened in their understanding. In the 17th and 18th century. We went through what we call the enlightenment. If you've studied history, you're like, okay, we came out of the Dark Ages and then we had the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment did some great things for us. Things that we are very much fans of. The whole scientific method comes out of the Enlightenment. It gives us things like air conditioning. And cell phones. And we like those kind of things. It also gave us a skepticism, a deep skepticism about God's existence. And we call this time the enlightenment. And our culture has pushed more and more into that enlightenment. In some ways, it's good. We have air conditioning. We have buildings that are solid. In other ways, it's really bad. And what we think is enlightened. People walking around going, there is no God. It's just dark, futile thinking. He says, they're darkened in their understanding. Because of that, they are alienated from the life of God. The cutoff from God's life. Now, when you read scripture, the Bible's really clear. God is the source of life. The only reason you are here today, on this earth, the only reason there is an earth that we can be on, the only reason there is a universe that this earth can be in is because God created it and sustains it. Apart from him, nothing exists. And he says they have alienated themselves from the life of God. from his goodness, from his mercy, from his grace, from his love, that they're futile in their thinking, they're darkened in their understanding. They don't have the light they need, to see the truth of the way things are, and that they are now alienated from the life of God. Why? He says because of the ignorance that is in them. This idea of ignorance is played out in scripture quite often. So they just don't know the truth. They're ignorant to the way things really are in the world because they don't know the truth. Now, Paul's gonna tell us the futility of their mind. is based on this idea of ignorance, that they're darkened in their understanding so they can't see the right way. But he doesn't say that they're passive in that activity, as if they have not contributed to it themselves, as if they haven't bought into the lie, that they are living themselves. Look what he says. It says they're alienated from God because of the ignorance that is in them. due to the hardness of heart. Why do they have ignorance in them? It's due to their hardness of heart. Paul is very clear. It starts with their affections. And where their heart is attached and attracted. He says they have a hard heart. He says they have become callous. in their heart. Now, calluses in some places are good things. How many of you play a stringed instrument of any sort? Like a guitar, violin, something like that. Yeah. Those are wonderful instruments. I love Micah's playing. I play guitar. There is a beginning phase of playing a stringed instrument like the guitar. Kelby will get this way, your fingers hurt. And you just go, I just want to quit. It hurts. This is no fun. I don't want to play guitar because when you squeeze the strings, your fingers, the nerves on the end, they're really sensitive and the strings hurt and it's unpleasant. And so what your instructor's going to tell you is just play. The more you can play, the more you can roughen up your fingers and build a callus, the sooner you'll not feel that pain anymore. And that's a good thing when you play an instrument. You want to have a callus on your finger. If you use tools, you want to have calloused hands so that they're not just hurting you all the time. What you don't want to have is a calloused heart towards God. Because what that means is through repeated activities, of your heart, and your thinking, and your actions, you've actually desensitized yourself to God. We've all experienced this. If you think back to the 1st time you recognize that you told a lie, the 1st time you realize I have told a lie to a friend or my parents. It probably bugs you a whole lot. You were like, this, I don't like the feeling. It hurts. Maybe I shouldn't do that anymore. But then maybe you told another lie. You did another thing that was wrong. And the more you do that, the more your heart, your conscience becomes hardened. to what God is saying is right and wrong. He said, this is what the Gentiles, the Ephesians had done. He says, look, they're walking in the futility of their mind. They're not thinking right. Their understanding's darkened. They're alienated from God. They, by their actions have hardened their own heart. So now they're desensitized to the truths that God's already told them. Paul says a very similar thing in Romans chapter one, if you want to go home today and read Romans one. Ephesians 4, 17, 24, is kind of a snapshot of Romans one. Here's what he says in Romans 118 to 23. It says, for the wrath of God, is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. It's not just that they don't know it, it's that they're actively suppressing it, saying, I don't want to know the truth. It's the language here is like a coiled up spring. Imagine there's a huge spring over here, and it's fully out, and that's the truth, and you can see it, that if you pushed it all the way in. And the spring's wanting to pop back out, right? It wants to uncoil, but you're leaned against it. You're actively suppressing that spring. Paul's saying this is what humanity does. But God's telling us the truth in his creation, in his world, and we're suppressing it. Look what he says, for what can be known about God is plain to them. Because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made, so they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking. And the foolish hearts were darkened. Hear the language? Exact same idea. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. and exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, and birds, and animals, and creeping things. They said, we are going to suppress the truth of who God is, and in his place, we'll create other gods. Other gods that are far less than the creator of the universe. They're futile in their thinking, darkened in their understanding, alienated from God's life because of the ignorance that is in them. They have hardened their hearts. And then it says, and have given themselves up to sensuality. Greedy to practice every kind of impurity because they've hardened their hearts. They become more and more greedy to practice ungodly things. And Paul says, this is what you came out of, Ephesians. It's how you were living. You can't walk that way anymore because a hardened heart. And a darkened mind leads to an impure walk. But Paul doesn't end there. He says, but, says, but this is not who you are. He shows us in verses 20 to 24 that a godly heart in mind leads to a faithful walk. A godly heart in mind leads to a faithful walk. Paul said, look, here is the old Google map destination. You had put in your phones, Ephesians. Now, God has given you a different one. It's going to change where you're going. It's going to change what you're seeing. It's going to change how you're walking. Look what he says, but that is not the way you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and we're taught in him as the truth is in Jesus. to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life, and is corrupt through deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God, and true righteousness, and holiness. He says, that's not the way you learned Christ. You saw someone how we've learned something. He said, this is the way you were walking. This is what you had learned. before you met Jesus, and here's how you're learning Christ. If someone picks up an instrument. Kelly Mop, who plays violin force, teaches violin. And she told me, she said, you can have people who can learn an instrument on their own and they may learn it wrong. Like the technique's wrong. And you're going to always be limited because you're holding the instrument wrong. You're doing something wrong. You're never going to actually achieve what you could, and that she has to spend time unlearning some behaviors, so that you can now learn the correct way. Paul saying, this isn't how you learn Christ. What you were doing was wrong. That's not what we've told you to do. That's not how you learn Christ. And then he says, if in fact, you've heard about him. and were taught in him. Paul doesn't say this because he hasn't already called the Ephesians believers. He told them in chapter one, you're in Christ, your follower of Christ. That's his assumption. But Paul is also very clear that just because someone outwardly comes says, hey, I'm a follower of Jesus. If their lifestyle is so out of step with Jesus. that he would go, have you actually heard about him? Do you actually know him? Just because you got baptized in water? If your life isn't reflective of Christ, it's appropriate to go. Did you like really mean it when you got in that water of baptism? What was going on? Because the way you're living, isn't the commitment that you've made. He says, if in fact, you've heard of him, if in fact, you've learned of Christ, to do what? To put off your old self. To put off your old man. This is language from kind of clothing. The idea of put off is a clothing term that just means to take off your clothes and put on new clothes. Paul uses this analogy a lot. That in our day and age, the clothes we wear don't often say a lot about who we are, we got fortunate enough to volunteer to go to the last World Cup game here in Kansas City. So we were part of the volunteer crew. And when they sent out all the instructions, they said, look, here's the uniform that FIFA has you wearing as a volunteer. It was black shorts, a white shirt, no logos at all, and white shoes, no logos unless it was Adidas. That's the outfit, that's the uniform. Then we got a vest that said event staff. And so when we walked around, everyone knew, we were a volunteer in this kind of group doing this certain thing, and our vest showed that. So as we walked around the stadium, you could tell who we were. We could also tell as we walked around the stadium who people were cheering for. 99.9% were cheering for Argentina, and about, you know, 0.01%, were cheering for Switzerland, and Argentina won, thankfully, so we didn't need a riot. And we had a great time. What we wore told people who we were. That goes like with uniforms, if you're in the military. What you wear says who you are. In Roman culture, it was more common throughout just daily life that what you wore reflected who you were, what status and life you had. And so Paul can use this metaphor. Look, you have put off your old self. You've taken off your old team jersey. Of team Artemis, our team Apollo, our team self, and you've put on a New Jersey. Team Jesus is what he's saying. So he says, you've taken off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life. It represents all that you used to do, and is corrupt through deceitful desires. That it was corrupt. It's leading. He says, that old team? That's how the Gentiles walked, is a path that's leading to death. It's corrupt. Why? Through deceitful desires. God gave humanity desires, and they're good. Humanity twists and corrupts those desires, and so they lead to death. And we have these deceitful desires that think something that is bad for us is actually good for us. It's like a fishing lure, and we're just the fish. We see the bait, we don't see the hook. And when the hook gets us, we're trapped. But the bait looked good initially. No one, maybe a few, maybe somebody's in the world going, what's the worst thing I could do? What's the least pleasurable thing I can do? What's the thing I can do that will bring me the most pain, the most suffering, the most unhappiness, the worst thing in life? I'll do that. People are going, how can I find happiness? How can I find peace? How can I find contentment? And the thing they look at looks good. It's just deceitful, Paul was saying, that your old path was deceitful. It appeared good, but it was corrupt. It says, this is how you used to walk. He says, but you need to be renewed. says, that's not who you are anymore. You need to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, to put on the new self. You've put on the team Jesus jersey, and now you have to be renewed in the spirit of your minds. It says your heart, your affections have already been given to Jesus. You have to change your thinking though. You have to change how you're processing the world. You have to change how you understand right and wrong, who God is. Their views of God, the Gentiles views of God, who had become Christians, these Ephesians, who had now followed Christ, would have looked at the temple of Artemis and said, that's what God is like. This is a goddess. There's a multitude of gods, and this is how the world works within that. They follow Jesus and they have to unlearn all of that and realize that was all wrong. This is the right way. This is the correct way. They were fully committed to this lifestyle. And the futile thinking, they were still doing things. They had built the temple of Artemis. And Paul's saying, you have to renew your minds. You have to think correctly about God. And you put on the new self, and that new self is created after the likeness of God. And true righteousness. And holiness and true righteousness and holiness. They thought they were heading that way. They thought they had the right destination in their spiritual Google map. And they had the wrong one, and now they have the right one. And Paul says, you need to now walk in that reality. In the likeness of God that you've been created in. Humanity, God originally created in the image of God, Genesis one, said, human's purpose, our purpose, your purpose, my purpose is to reflect God into the world. to each other. So that who he is is seen by others. That was the image of God. And humans, you and me, have corrupted that. And we've chased after false gods, and the image we give is not of what God's like, but of what fallen humans are like. And then we start worshiping things that aren't God. But he says, in Christ, you've been created in the likeness of God. The Bible, Paul especially tells us there's kind of 2 groups of humans. There are those who are in Adam, and his way leads to death, and there are those who are in Jesus. And his way leads to life. And he says, now Ephesians, you're in Jesus. You've renewed your mind. You've been created after the likeness of God. A godly heart and mind leads to a faithful walk. Again, the point of this message is easy. You must devote your heart in mind to Jesus to walk faithfully. My question to you as to who or what is your heart and mind devoted. What has your attention? And again, we talked about the World Cup. It came. We were excited about it for a little bit, and it went. And if you're like me, You kind of quit thinking about it. They took down all the things covering all the chiefs logos in the stadium. And you said, okay, now we're getting ready for real football to start soon. It's July. My mind's already drifting to college football. I'm starting to think about it more. I really like college football. I like the Alabama Crimson Tide. And now I'm trying to think more about it. Getting ready. Who's going to start in QB? I'm sure many of you are like the chiefs are going to start playing. They've taken down all of the weird grass on the field. Let's get the real football grass back on there. And Patrick Mahomes can show up. that you'll start thinking about that more. Like, what has your heart, not just something that you like, but what ultimately is the most important thing in your life? That's what Paul is wanting to ask. Where's your heart really at? Jesus said it this way in Matthew 22. A man came up to him and asked this question. said, teach you, which is a great commandment in the law? And Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart. And with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and 1st commandment. Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. So what do we do with this? Very simply, we do what Paul has called us to do, what you got from Jesus? First, give your heart to Jesus. God's not like an idea or a philosophy. I can run into a lot of people who will say things like, man, I believe there's a God. This whole world is too complicated. It's too complex just to have happened by chance. So I think something created us, but, you know, that's it. It's a good philosophy. It helps me understand, right from wrong, a famous philosopher, Emmanuel Kant, said the only reason we can have more rally is it has to be a higher power. So he's good for that, but other than that, whatever. It's just an idea. It's just a thought. that can help us get along with life. That's not what God wants. God is a person who wants a relationship with you. He wants your heart. He's not just an idea that's out there. The psalmist in Psalm 73 says this, to whom, whom have I in heaven but you. And there's nothing on earth that I desire beside you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. When we gather here each Sunday, to worship, connect with Jesus. Because we love him. Because he 1st loved us. that our heart is devoting him. Give your heart to Jesus. If you're here and you've never done that. I want to encourage you, Jesus is God in the flesh, died for your sins, rose again so that you can be in the place that God created you to be in as an image bearer of him that's reflecting him into the world. that you can have as the top of your pyramid of devotion and your heart's affection, God himself, the true God, not a false God, not a feudal God. If you're hearing, you've never given your life to Christ, when our worship team comes up, we'll have people in the back that can pray with you and talk with you. And counsel with you about what that means, what that looks like, answer questions you may have. Give your heart to Jesus. But then second, set your mind on Jesus. The Christian faith is not this. I really love Jesus. Now let me turn my brain off and not think about anything. I just love you. No one does that. No one goes, I love something and I don't want to know anything about it. My mind doesn't get engaged with it. If you got excited about the World Cup in Kansas City. At first, this would be kind of cool. Your heart kind of got worked up, but then eventually you started doing, if you really cared about it, you started paying attention to how it all operates, how it works, who the players are, why they matter, what's going on. You want to set your mind. on Jesus. You give your heart to Jesus because God is a person and he wants a relationship with you. You then set your mind on Jesus. Like, what are you thinking about? How do we do this? We say it every week here at Northland, so we're gonna say it again. Pick up your Bible and read it. Pick up your Bible and say, God, I love you, and you wrote me this book. I want to dig into it to understand who you are. Because there are a lot of gods on display in the world. There are a lot of gods in Ephesus. And they had a certain idea of what they were like. And Paul said, no, no, no, no, no. Here's the God we're talking about. Here's the true God. The God who created the universe, the God who called Abraham, the God who said, David, you'll always have a son on the throne, the God who became human in Jesus Christ and died on a cross and rose again. That God, dig into his word and say, I want to know that God, more and more. I want to read his word. I want to talk about it with other people. If you're reading the Bible and you have questions, reach out. Text one of your pastors, text one of your friends who you go, I think they may know the answer. that you just want to unpack what it means to be a follower of Christ, to understand more and more who he is. Grab other books that are about our faith. Grab devotionals and theology books and say, I want to know more and more about God. God's shown us who he is in this book. This is where we start. And then we say, I want to learn this and I want to hear what others have thought about it. Again, if you love something. Football team, the World Cup, you probably talked with other people about it. Where your heart is, is where your thinking's going to be. And you may go, my heart's just kind of brand new with Jesus. And it's, my thinking's still all difficult and hard. It's like learning an instrument. When you 1st start playing, your fingers don't move right. But you say, I love this idea. I love this instrument. And over time, they begin to move more smoothly. As your mind can do the things that your hand is wanting to do, that your heart is wanting to do, because you've practiced, you've worked on it. You've talked to others. Give your heart to Jesus, set your mind on Jesus, and then finally walk faithfully in Jesus, with your heart set on God, in your mind thinking about him. Our outward walk begins to reflect him more and more. Some of that involves putting away things we shouldn't be doing. getting rid of bad practices, not just for the sake of getting rid of bad practices, again, if you learn an instrument, you get rid of bad habits so that you can play better. The end goal of learning an instrument isn't to go, well, I don't do bad things. I make beautiful music. The end goal of the Christian life is living faithfully to God, living into the world with his beauty, with his healing, with his care. God gave us this example when Jesus became human. He came to this earth. He didn't kind of squirrel himself away in the corner and say, well, I'm just here to devote myself to God and nothing else matters. He went into the world and he had meals with broken people. who were confused and darkened in their understanding. He healed those who were hurting. He humbled himself. He sacrificed himself, and he calls us to live faithfully into the same. with a mind thinking of him, renewed by him, with a heart committed to him. And then a walk that day by day, week by week, year by year, more and more reflects the righteousness and holiness that is God. That's what he's called us to. That's what I call us too. Let us devote ourselves in both heart and mind to our Savior, Jesus Christ, and then walk faithfully in him. Will you join me in prayer? Father, we love you. We thank you for your son. for his death and resurrection that saves us. It makes us new. Father, that Paul calls us to put off the old self and put on the new, and we know that in Christ you do that for us, and then you call us to live out this reality. And you give us your spirit to empower us to do that. Father, I pray that we would set our hearts on you. And if someone hasn't done that, that they would do that today. Father, you would renew our minds each day. Help us understand you correctly, to know you correctly, in the world, the way you have made it. And Father, help us to walk each day faithfully to you, and all the things you have asked us to do, and all the ways you have placed us in this world in Kansas City, to be your image, so that others may see and know you. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.