Radiant Church

FYT: For Your Transformation | David Perkins

“Fill your mind with the Word of God.”

Join us as Pastor David Perkins brings an encouraging and timely message just for you!

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MusicBed SyncID: MB01SMWFTC7HQ4K

Duration:: 39m
Broadcast on:: 31 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

(upbeat music) - Hey, thanks for listening to The Radiant Church Podcast. This is David Perkins and we're so glad that you're listening. Hey, if you're a part of our family meeting online or in person, we would encourage you to get connected at Radiant Church KC across all social media platforms. God is doing something incredible in Kansas City and we love connecting with you, whether it's through our app or even through all the content available on our YouTube page. Hey, our prayer is that God uses this message to change your life and that you could become a dynamic disciple of Jesus. Thanks for listening, enjoy this message. Taking this whole summer, we've been working on spiritual formation or habits or spiritual disciplines. And we've been taking one each week and the goal is to form as disciples with strength as we go into the fall. And so we've talked about serving, we've talked about prayer, last week we did fasting and aimed at the digital detox, the fasting digitally. And I wanna just encourage you, I've heard so much from so many of you about what you're actually gonna fast that that wasn't just preaching to the wind, like that took root. And there's already some different testimonies of people making dramatic shifts in their life this week. And so I'm excited about that. And so we've worked on all of those. We talked about simplicity. Today I wanna go after scripture. And so would you mind standing with me and let's read this series verse that you just saw on the screen a moment ago. I'll read it to you. Actually, let's read this one together. We've been reading this one together, just getting it into our mind. My hope is that by doing this, I think this is our seventh or eighth week in this series that we would have it memorized by the conclusion of the summer. But let's read this together. You can, let's just, let's go with me, here we go. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will. You can remain standing and I'll read Psalm one to you. We'll dive into this idea of scripture today. And here's the goal we're aiming at, last week we're aiming at that digital detox, that taking a step away from what is constant entertainment in our culture. Today I wanna stack it. I wanna add intentionally adding scripture to our lives. So Psalm one says this, "less is the one who does not walk and step with a wicked, or stand in the way that sinners take, or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night." And that person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever they do, prospers, we just stretch out your hands like this. Father in Jesus' name, we come before you and we're so grateful to be your people. We're so grateful for the work that you have done in our church, in our hearts this summer. We thank you, Lord God, for even the last 48 hours of learning how to be disciples and to make disciples. We thank you, Lord God, for the opportunity this week to serve our city. And God, I do ask that as we go into 21 days of prayer in August, I ask Lord that you would help us to be rooted. I pray, Lord God, that we would go deep in you. I pray that our devotional lives would flourish. I pray, Lord Jesus, now as we talk about Scripture today, Lord, that the word of God would live in our hearts and our minds, that we would meditate on it day and night, that we would delight in it. May it not merely be obligation, may it be our joy. We love you and we honor you in Jesus' name. Everybody say amen. You may be seated. A friend of mine was going through this season of anxiety. I don't know if you've ever been like that, but he experienced such anxiety that he wasn't able to sleep at night. And he started to go through such worry and anxiety, played itself out in a big risk that he had taken. And he was fearful about his family, he was fearful about his finances. And he started to have such anxiety that sleep kind of deprivation was first, but then he started to have suicidal thoughts. And he started to hit this rock bottom. Now this friend of mine, it's got a master's degree in theology. So he's got a lot of Bible information in his head. But there was a turning point for him in that journey when at night he began to just meditate on and pray and actually memorized Psalm 23. And so instead of getting up and getting on his phone or instead of getting up and working on his computer or getting up and even reading a book, he began in those anxious nights, in those sleepless nights. He began to close his eyes and just quote Psalm 23. So he took the idea of meditating on God's word and in the moments where he felt anxiety, in the moments where he was not able to sleep, he began to just quote it and then pray it and say it to God. I just want to read Psalm 23 because this is one of the big testimonies in his life. And this changed him and he went from being somebody who was anxious and suicidal to transformed. And now he is someone who speaks quite often about the work that God did in his life of being rooted and established in God. And he's one of the least anxious presence I know. He's one of the people that I look up to the most in terms of health. And this is Psalm 23. And I just want to read what we all are probably very familiar with, but this is what he began to first meditate on, then pray, but over time memorize. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in once. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his namesake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil why for you are with me. You're rotting, your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and that will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. This phrase of like a tree planted by waters is a metaphor, it's a picture of meditating and pulling from a water resource so that the weather patterns aren't necessarily needed for growth because the water, the root system, is sucking from the water. So it's a tree near water that pulls and the circumstance doesn't knock the tree over, the tree doesn't necessarily, isn't pulling from the snow or the rain, it's pulling, it's roots are from the near water. And the idea is, is that no matter what I go through, I'm pulling from a different source. And this idea of meditating on God's word, I meditate, I delight in it, I delight in God's word. It's no matter my circumstance 'cause in your circumstance will change, my circumstance will change. I look at my journey, I was yesterday talking with one of my old college friends who was here for the summit and we were talking about our lives and realistically compared to when we were college students in 1998, there's been a lot of changes, circumstances in his life that's different, circumstances in my life that's different. And what we have in common though is he's a missionary, he's still going strong, he made a joke to me, he's just like, man, 98, you're excited about youth conferences, you're pushing 50 and not much has changed, I said, what's up baby, same story. But I found this moment, as we were just catching up about strength for decades, but it's gotta pull from a resource 'cause both of us talked about some of the storms that have taken place in the last 25 years. And I wanna encourage you, no matter what you're tempted to be worrying about or to live in fear about, this idea of meditating on God's word, getting the scripture alive inside of you, obviously today we have so much available to us with scripture, what years, I mean, not even that many years ago, 40 years ago would have seemed insane to have the amount of scripture available to us. It's in such abundance right now and yet this is a time where oftentimes disciples of Jesus know very little scripture and I wanna invite you as a radiant disciple to flip that statistic. I wanna invite you as a disciple of Jesus in the present tense to get filled with the word of God. Meditating on God's word is saying I choose to delight in God's law. So I could delight in all the entertainment, I could delight in TikTok, I could delight in reels, I could delight in streaming something else late at night, but God, I'm gonna remember your love in the morning. I'm gonna meditate on your word, your faithfulness at night. And my aim today is to just work on that idea, to work on the idea of you and I being saturated in scripture. Meditating on God's word is not emptying your mind like we might hear in Eastern meditation. In Christian life, biblical meditation, we're filling our mind with the word of God. So it's not emptying it, it's filling it. It's filling our mind, getting as much as we can of the word of God inside of us and getting it in our heads. And so that's my invitation. My invitation is that as you go through Pastor Nathan, just a moment ago, prayed, what are you walking through? What's the battle that you're in? Now I wanna invite you to take God's word, take the scriptures and begin to think, I want to be someone that's not a warrior of circumstance, but a warrior because I have the word of God inside of my head and I'm gonna fight with it, I'm gonna battle with it. Of course, the person that we see that's the best at this is Jesus. And we see Jesus in the most difficult moments quoting scripture. We see Jesus in the wilderness and when there's the temptation of the enemy, Jesus is saying back right at the devil. Man does not live by bread alone quoting Deuteronomy. He looks right back at the enemy when tempted and says, do not put the Lord of God to the test, Deuteronomy six, he's got it in his head. So in the midst of the moment, he can say it, he can fight back. A.W. Tozer says, I talk back to the devil. Many of us don't talk back to the devil because we don't have the word of God in us. But when you meditate on it, you can talk back. You have something to say. Jesus looks back and says, worship, worship the Lord your God only. Serve him only, Deuteronomy six. I think of also Jesus even in the agony on the cross. And we see Jesus quoting Psalm 22. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And so when we get the word of God, it gives us a weapon. It gives us, we've spent time thinking on it, meditating on it, getting it in our minds. And that takes time, it takes effort. And I just want to invite you, I'm going to give you some ideas today. But as a, I like this phrase as a radiant disciple. And the reason why we come up with that word radiant, it means we're thinking about being the light of Jesus to others. So it's devotional, but it's also being a bright light. One of the ways that you'll be able to make it through the storms is when we get this in us. I was thinking about in my own journey, some of the ways that my approaches to scripture that have been something other than transformation. This idea of meditating on God's word brings transformation. And I think sometimes some of the lesser things can become first place in our lives. And they're not bad, but if it's not, if there's not a goal, an aim of transformation, some of these we can become so used to scripture for secondary motives, for me, like information. The same reason you would go to Google, right? And say, I just need some information. There's, we could go to the word of God and we can find an approach. We can have an approach that's just, I need information. But don't let that substitute for transformation. We want all the information that we can. I remember this season when I was working on my undergrad at the University of Oklahoma and I had a ferocious desire just to spend all that time studying the word of God. And I wanted it for information. So I love the information. Today I'm talking about a transformation because you've meditated on it. It changes me. Another approach I had is bluntly, seasons of just obligation. Like, oh, I'm supposed to be a good Christian. I'm supposed to read it. And so we would look at it like a contract. Oh, I know I should read all these words like you do on Apple, you know? Yeah, I agree, I agree, I agree, I agree, I agree, whatever. Okay, like, I gotta get to the bottom in order to sign. And sometimes we'll look at it that way. And it feels like obligation. And I think that some of that obligation is real because I think the truth is that we need it. But we want to get from obligation to delight. We want to get to where we love it. Another approach for me in my own journey sometimes has been, it's just like ammunition. It's just like, I love trying to figure out, you know, how to fight, right? How to make it through. But I want to invite us today to think of the idea of a heart posture that I want to be transformed God. A summer of transformation. Change me as I meditate on God's word. So I want to give you just a couple of thoughts that I see in the scriptures and they're real easy ones. But one is we study God's word and we open up our heart for a heart posture that says, God, correct me. God, change me. This is second Timothy three. All scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking and correcting. Oof, and training in righteousness. So that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. So I think that in our culture, we take the word of God and we like to take the scripture and we want to find what we want or what we believe and then we find it in the scriptures. This is common in the culture. So we take our desires, the way that we want to live and then we're gonna find Bible verses to prove, hey, this is, I'm okay, I'm justified to live this way. Where we want to be is we want to go opposite of that and let the word of God be like a sword, be like hell, I mean, fixing us, God, correct me. God, inside of me, change me. So I'm your servant and I'm reading the scripture and I'm letting it be like a scalpel that changes me. I'm letting it do surgery on me. So I have a friend that he was a, as a teenager, he read, not everybody who calls me Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he does the will of my father. And he said, as I was reading the scripture as a teenager, that verse changed my life because that was my plan. My plan was just to respond to an altar call, not do anything else and go to heaven. He grew up in the South and that was what he thought the play was. But as he read Jesus, he read that. He said, oh, obedience is a part of what I'm called to. Not everyone says, Lord, Lord, but only who does. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta flip this. So it wasn't a preacher that said it. It wasn't another book that he read. It was just reading scripture and him going, this need, this is correcting me. So when you read the word of God, many, many times, we just have an obligation approach. So we don't sit there and say, God, transform me. Change me. So we don't change the Bible to fit how we live. We change how we live to fit the Bible. We, we, okay, God, I'm reading this and I've seen, this is what you say the attitude should be. This is what you say I should meditate on. This is what you say should come out of my life. Hebrews 4, 12 says, for the word of God is alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even dividing soul and spirit, joint and marrow. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Temptation is, these are my attitudes, these are my hearts. Hey, see me, accept me, this is who I am. I deserve to be liked and that's the culture. But the disciple goes another way. Oh God, take your word. Let it be alive inside of me. Change me, change my thoughts, change my attitudes. It's alive. The word of God is alive, it's active. So do surgery on my heart, God. Do surgery on my money, God. Do surgery, change my attitude. My, the way I spend my time and I'm reading your word and as I read your word, I apply it to my life and it's God through his scripture. You get it and you start to delight in it. You start to, you'll start to see progress in your own life as you let the word of God to surgery on you. Another way for transformation is just turning the scripture into conversation. So I would say start off, and I said that because culturally I think it's abnormal. I just feel like in my journey, most of us, we want to find the scriptures that fit how we live. We want to find the scriptures that justify or some kind of proof that it's okay for me to do what I want. And that's so different than reading the word of God, having a heart that's like Play-Doh and soft and moldable and saying, God, transform me. Correct me. Imagine coming to the word of God, it would just, God, let your word rebuke me. Let it correct me. Let it change me. Let me, let me look at the way that Jesus talks and let it, let it be like water to my soul. Let me suck the life from the river and find, oh God, you're changing me. You're transforming me through your word. Second one is conversation. Jesus, he responds to the Pharisees in this way. You study the scriptures, John 539. You study the scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the various scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. So here's the goal. Taking the scriptures and turning them into conversation. So you wanna talk to a person. For me in my own journey, this has been the number one way that I have fallen in love with the word of God. It's just coming before God and turning it into conversation. For me, it's in two places. One is, and you guys know this, I say this all the time, but for me it's a prayer journal. Taking the word of God and just reading it and then dialoguing back to God. Speaking back to him that, okay, God, this is how I'm gonna apply it. This is what I see, God, and I read this in your word, and now God, let me live that out. How can I live that out today? I'm praying it, so it's a dialogue. So that it's not just a checklist of I read my Bible today, but actually dialoguing in that secret space. That's what I'm hopeful for you in the 21 days of prayer. That in your devotional life, in your time alone with God, that you have this robust relationship with Him and that you have the scriptures as a part of it. The second place where that happens for me is the model that we do at our Wednesday night prayer meeting. It's where we take the scriptures and we just pray it back to God. So that's kind of community-oriented, where we're taking the scripture and we're saying God, have your way in our church, in our families, in our city, and that's been the primary way for me to even learn the scriptures, just to memorize them and know them is in praying. So you take the word of God that's living and active and you're turning it into conversation with a person. And sometimes I think we can just go through methods of scripture reading, but it's not relational. So when I married Renata, our goal was more than just to stay married, right? Our goal was not like, hey, one day in 2025, we'll have a 25 year anniversary, let's just stay married. What's the bare minimum to stay married? It's the opposite for all the married people. You're like, no, we're working on the relationship. And then the fruit of working on the relationship is years go by and oh yeah, we'll celebrate 25 years. And many times I feel like we will take, I'm just wanna stay stave. What's the minute, how much Bible do I have to do? But I wanna invite you to think of it into a relationship that you care about and the word of God as a friend that helps you in your relationship with God. When we look at Jesus, Jesus dignified scripture. I mean, Jesus quoted it, Jesus believed it, Jesus rose. I mean, Jesus went to the cross, rose from the dead, and he, Jesus, was declaring scripture. I wanna invite you to even take the way that Jesus valued loved scripture, the way that Jesus memorized it, the way that Jesus quoted it. And even in the way that you see scripture and you are resolved to be a follower of Jesus, say, okay, God, what does it look like for me? How can I turn this scripture into conversation with you? A third one that's really fun for me is out of those two is some revelation. So Paul prays in Ephesians one, he prays for the church and Ephesus, they would have a spirit of wisdom and revelation that they would know God better, pray, open the eyes of your heart, open up your heart eyes. So in moments where you've said, okay, God, do surgery on me, correct me. If there's any way in me that doesn't look like you, I've read this, I wanna apply it to my life. And then dialogue with God, conversation, and you'll watch an increase of revelation. Aha, moments where you're just like, I've never seen that before. It's like a treasure chest, and you start to fall in love with the word of God, you start to see things. And honestly, over time, as you know the scripture more, you start to see things. So if you didn't know about the Passover before and you read about the Last Supper, you might not catch it. But when you've been a Bible student for a while and you've studied about all that took place with the Israelites getting out of Egypt and then you read about Jesus and you read about some of the ways that Jesus talks, you start to connect them and it's like a rollover, it's like a snowball, you start to see more. So it starts to grow and your love for the word of God will grow. So I think that if you'll take that idea of revelation, God, open up my mind and open up my heart, open up the eyes of my heart. Some people take highlight, they draw, go back, they have Bibles that look like all messed up, right? I mean, my dad's Bible, when I was growing up, it had so much sweat and tears in it, it was brown and falling apart. That's the aim. The goal is that you're, I mean, some of my Bibles, I put dates, not date, yeah, like the date that you encountered God, you know, and writing in ideas and thoughts. So you want to have a, it's that old phrase, whoever, you know, the person with the Bible that's marked up has a life that is successful. So you want to work on that and writing even some of the revelation that you sense like the Lord is giving you. So I just want, I have three things for you, this is a real practical lesson today. But I'm working on, I'm working on who God's called us to be and I'm dreaming about us as this summer, going through a process where we develop some of these habits and disciplines and we become different. Here's my dream for you at Radiant. I'm going to give you three things and we'll be done. First, my dream is that you would be, I made this up, so it sounds weird, sorry. An everyday engager, like that you would engage the word of God every day, every day, every day. Psalm 119, 147, I rise early before the sun is up, I cry out for help and put my hope in your words. And I want to invite you to everyday. Looks different for everybody. In this, I'm not mentioning the how, I'm just gonna invite you to engagement. A friend of mine calls his daily Bible reading, Daily Mana. And it's the idea of engaging and feasting on the bread of heaven every day. And one of the things that he says, and I like it, is he said, if you missed a day and you're in the wilderness, you wouldn't not eat the next day because you didn't eat yesterday, right? In the wilderness, if you're in the wilderness and you, for whatever reason, I don't know, you're playing pickleball and you forgot to eat that day, let's just make it up, but you know the next day, Mana came from heaven, you would certainly eat it. You would certainly, but what many of us do is we think of a Bible reading plan and we say, well, I didn't read it yesterday, I'm just off. But think of it as your daily Mana, it's something that God has available for you and you want to feast on the word of God, like daily bread every day. And so every day, God, this is a gift. If it's five minutes or 50 minutes, or that occasional one year where you get away with God for five hours. But every day, God, I want your word. Every day I want to engage with you. Second, my dream for you would be that you're a lifelong learner, just every day. Joshua 1A, keep this book of the law always on your lips. Meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. So number one, just Bible engagement every day. What could it look like? And number two, set your heart on a track that I'm gonna be a lifelong learner. I'm a disciple of Jesus Christ. I am going to know the word of God. I'm going to have it be one of the things that I do in my life is to engage with it daily and learn it, know it. I think that one of the ways you could do that is if I'll just give you some ideas. One, just if you just set, you know, like one of your daily habits is, I'm gonna engage with scripture every day. I'm gonna everyday engage her every day. Morning, whatever. But here's some of the ways. One, just to read it, just like old school, like read. Not all of you like to read, some of you do, but maybe you could read. A second one is for me, what I like to do is to take at the end of my time to meditate, I like to take one verse and just, actually not even a whole verse, but just a phrase and just have that be what I meditate on through the day. So even if there's only a short amount of time to read scripture, you take the one phrase and you meditate on it all day long. This idea of meditation could be like chewing. So you could think of it like you finish your breakfast, you finish your feast of reading God's word and then you're gonna chew on it all day long. It's like you're gonna take gum and you're gonna chew on it all day. So this phrase, but I delight in your law. That could be it. I delight in your law and all day long. That's just it. That's all your work, God, I delight in your law. It's like a cow that's chewing and a cow. Choose it, spits it up, choose it, spits it up, choose it, but you're just delight in your, I delight in your word. They delight, but I delight in this. I delight in what I read in Jesus. Ooh, I delight in the Psalms. I delight and I delight in it more than other things, but you're getting that phrase just like all day long, delighting in the word of God, chewing on it. I had one year when I had small kids where I, and this is, I went to the Christian bookstore and I just bought CDs. This tells you how long it was. But I bought CDs for the whole Bible 'cause I looked at, I just did some math on my commute versus how long it was to make it through the whole scriptures. And I decided in the new year that I was gonna just not engage in, for me, ESPN radio or any of the other, anything in my car or talking on the phone, anything in my car, other than I'm just gonna read this, I'm just gonna listen, audio to the scriptures. And so for that year, that was, that was a habit, is a way for me and I went through the whole Bible. And I remember it was early December where I finished it. And it was, it was just a year where my car became like a sanctuary. You know, it's just like my, so, so didn't go cell phone. I mean, there was some times where you had, I'm talking about when I was by myself. Although my kids did learn song song in that year, which was a whole 'nother story. (audience laughing) But that's another way. Some of you could say, oh, I do a commute. I could, it's possible for me to do less music, less podcasts or just, just, car time is feasting on God's word. Another, another way to feast on it, some of you have time for this and might love this. The capacity that we have with new, with, with Bible software is incredible. So what, the amount of Bible knowledge, and I would encourage you, some of you, if you're like, if you're, if you're left brain Greek details, Bible commentaries, I mean, the one that I use is the Logos Bible software. But that could be a gateway into falling in love with the word of God that you don't even know is out there. That, that, I've talked to some people that, that deep, detailed, and they're always like, I just went deeper, I just went deeper. And they're always looking at me like, be deeper, David, be deeper. I'm like, bro, I'm as deep as I can be. Like, and if that's you, go deep there. Go get that Logos Bible software or whatever about it. There's lots of different kinds. The online resources isn't, is another one available. Just, we actually have, I was talking to some of our team and Gabby Barker, Katie Reed. They're, they're taking these Bible classes online and they're just, they're saturating in the word of, seminary level classes, just doing it online as a bunch available. But that could wet your appetite. Here's why I'm saying this, because every single one of us, where all of us are called to be disciples and I want to invite you to be disciple makers, I want to invite you to be leaders and to get the word of God to be a fascination. We're this phrase that we say, said a moment ago and that someone, I delight in it. I meditate on it day and night. I think another one is in our small groups. Listen, we don't do Sunday school here. We do small groups, which means that you're the leaders, which means if we're going to have a Roman small group, it's going to be because you open up your house and you stream, you might teach it, you might stream it. You don't, that's one of the fun things with technology today is you could be a small group leader, you could do right now media and there's just Bible sources. The way that you could run a small group in your house is you've got a room, you've got Lacroix and you can press play. Bam, you're a small group leader, right? Now, I'm going to encourage you. We're going to watch the scriptures. Let's pray at the end and hey everybody, go live that out this week, right? At radiant, that means you could be a leader. Open up your house, really it's the gift of hospitality. Encourage them, pray for them. But I'll tell you, if you'll do that as a small group leader and then you end up doing that four or five semesters, different, you do Romans, you know, then you're, then you're going old school and you're going, I'm going to do a little like Kleasy-Hasty, some press it a little bit, right? Skip song songs, just kidding. All right, like, ha ha, just kidding. But you don't have to skip song songs, I'm just playing. But no laughter, it must not be funny. But I'm telling you, if you'll do that and then dialogue, you'll watch yourself kind of just pulling that string, falling in love more with the word of God. So I would encourage you, number one, just to be an everyday engageer as a radiant disciple, everyday, everyday, even if it's five minutes in the car, even if it's, even if it's the Bible app, audio style, British accent, three minutes. Even if it's a song a day, even if it's quoting a song, even if it's, but just everyday. God, everyday, I want to engage with your word. And then I'm a lifelong learner and then last one is this. I just call it this, it's a faithful fighter. And this is the Ephesian six. I believe in the culture, it's so challenging. I know every generation is different. I believe that our generation, fighting, having a mentality that I got to live on offense is critical to standing. And Ephesian six, we did a whole series on this, but when Paul says the word of God is like the sword of, the sword of spirit is the word of God. It's like a sword, it's active. I gotta fight with it. What I've watched in my journey is I've just watched so many of my close friends once they stopped fighting, once they were too tired or too wounded, they didn't get the word of God to them. I spoke to somebody yesterday and he told me about an old friend. I said, how are they doing? He said, not well. Deconstructed their faith, my heart broke. And my heart for you, it's just what I want for you is to get in your, you need the word of God to stay on offense. If the enemy is coming after Jesus and Jesus fights back with the word of God, no matter what cultural outrage there is, no matter what media, no matter what, if you're living and drinking from a different well and your circumstance and your circumstance is gonna be so many storms. But you're prospering because you're meditating on God's word. I would say chew on it throughout the day. Think about it, we said this last week. You're loving the morning, meditate on it. Your faithfulness at night. I reach, my dream for you is that you would reach for the word of God before you reach for your iPhone, or whatever secondary device you use. That you would pray, the last prayer before the end of the day would not be done scrolling fall asleep. When you wake up in the night and you cannot sleep, then it would not be just gonna go stream another show. David, that seems extreme. This is what we need in the middle of this day for you to be strong. We're living in an age where we gotta fight. It's wartime out there. And so I wanna get you to just get a plan. Get a plan. For me, I said this a lot this summer. For me, having those moments where I'm gonna be with God before digital, I think is so key. If you're so strong that you can handle the Bible and all the software and everything, your devotional life on a device, you're stronger than most of us. 'Cause most of us, the red dots, or the texts, or the emails, or the news. I wanna invite you, God, I'm a feast on your word. It is like my daily manna. It's like I wanna be like a tree that prospers, like streams of living water. What the word of God on my tongue. I'm gonna fight. We can get it in my head. I'm gonna chew on it all day long. I wanna delight in your law. I wanna meditate on it. I wanna fill my mind with your word. We just bow your heads, let me pray for you. Would you just take 30 seconds? Would you just dialogue with the Lord, but what he's inviting you to with his word? I'd like to invite you even to just ask God, would you give me delight in meditating on your word? God, would you correct me? I'd do surgery on my attitudes and my behaviors and my time. Jesus, I just lift up as we begin next week with our 21 days. I ask Lord Jesus that we would be planted by the stream, bearing fruit, and I pray that our roots would go so deep. I don't know that all that we're gonna face in the fall of 24, but I pray that we would be like oaks of righteousness. Rooted, established in God, the word of God in our minds and on our tongues, able to face anything. Like a sword coming out of us where we quote scripture, we know it, we love it, we delight in it, we've learned it. I pray for my friends God, help each one of us. Maybe today, you would say, I need Jesus, I need God. I feel like I am not finding my roots in God. I'm finding it in circumstance. I'm hurting, tired, and you need Christ. Jesus. So a song we sang earlier, Christ is my firm foundation. I need Jesus, I wanna build my life on Christ. I've taught you today and you wanna make a decision to follow Jesus. I wanna invite you to make a decision, just you and God seated there in your chair. And I wanna lead you in a prayer and I'd like to invite you to begin the journey as a follower of Jesus by setting out and repenting. I sing, not my way. God, I want your way. I can't save myself. Jesus, I need you to save me. I choose life in Christ instead of life on my own. That's you today and you wanna be a follower of Jesus. The good news is that for God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son, that whosoever would believe in him would not perish, but have eternal or everlasting life. And you can have eternal life because of Jesus. I wanna invite you to begin that journey by praying this prayer, you and God. Father, I come to you in the name of Jesus and I give you my life. Make me a new person. I ask for that eternal life. I pray that you would come dwell in me and make me new. I give you my life today. I surrender to you. Give my life to you. Make me new, God. Amen.