- Good morning, Harbor family. How's everybody doing today? You guys enjoying the final moments of July? My name is Brian, it's Joel said. I'm one of the pastors here at Harbor. And I'm excited to be here with you today. I know Joel said this, but I just wanna say it too. If it's your first time with us, if you're watching with us online for the first time, welcome home. You've picked the perfect time to come and join Harbor. As Joel said, we've got a men's event on Monday, a ladies event coming up. And we've got our favorite event of the year, the block party at the end of August. We're launching groups in the fall. I can actually say that fall is almost here. Who's ready for it with me, anybody? Come on, somebody. Best time of year football's about to start. We've got the Olympics on TV. It is a great, great time of the year. And I'm excited to be here as we wrap up our last man standing series, which is all about the simple truths for a lasting faith that a guy named John has to share with a local church and with us. And we've talked in this series about some of the foundational truths, this foundational things that a life of faith brings. Things like community and obedience and commitment. And today I get to wrap up the series by talking about love. Who loves the topic of love? I think we all do. Am I right? And as I think about this topic, I'm reminded of my first crush. Before I ever loved Kelly Clarkson in college, before I loved Melissa Joan Hart in elementary school, I loved a woman by the name of Whitney Houston. Anybody with me? Come on. (audience applauds) The greatest song that has ever been written besides since you've been gone by Kelly Clarkson is I will always love you. Man, when I was seven years old when that song came out, the real version, not the Dolly Parton version, the Whitney Houston version, I'm sorry. I could sing the high notes better than any other seven year old in existence, man. I was good. And what's interesting about my life, and I think all of our lives, is that I learned a very early lesson about love that contradicted the message of that song. I learned that love was conditional. The same year that that song came out, and I fell in love with Whitney and all of her beautiful words. My parents got divorced. My parents divorced when I was seven years old, and the message that I internalized, was that love is conditional, that we don't always, always love people. And you may have come from an intact home, maybe your parents didn't get divorced, but I bet you learned a very similar message as you lived your life. Because very early in life, we find that friends and family abandon us and hurt us, don't we? We find that love is conditional. There's a lie that we buy into, and it's the lie that we must earn love. I will always love you as a great song, but it's not the truth that we often experience in this world, is it? And we get rejected by family members and friends. People walk away from us. Our friends decide to gossip about us, to betray us, to walk away from relationships. Often because we don't look the right way, or dress the right way, or come from the right neighborhoods. We're not athletic enough to, or gifted enough, or friendly enough. We live oftentimes by the lie that we must earn love. And this lesson that we learn early in life is an unlivable lie that leads to misery for those that abide by it. And it's a lie that's existed for centuries, for millennia. And it's a lie that the guy who writes this letter that we've been looking at first John used to live by before he met Jesus. This lie that we must earn love. And we know this because as we examine his life early on, as he began to get to know Jesus, as he lived with Jesus in ministry, we see the way that he acted in front of other people. There's a point in time in the Gospel of Luke, where John is interacting with some of the people that Jesus is ministering to. It's a crazy moment. As Jesus begins to it, this is after two and a half years of Jesus ministering with James and his brother, John, the guy who writes this letter. They're traveling to Jerusalem as Jesus prepares for his crucifixion. And one of the craziest things that's written in the Gospel accounts I'm about to read now is as the time approach for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. And he sent messengers on ahead who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him. Jesus was a Jew, Samaritans were sort of half, half Jew and half other ethnicities. And so there was tension here. And what we see is that the people there did not welcome him because he was heading for Jerusalem to be crucified. And when the disciples, James and John saw this, they asked one of the most audacious questions I've ever heard in history. They said, Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them? That's crazy, crazy. We actually, if you read through Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, you find that James and John, his brother, were called the sons of thunder. And we don't know all of the reasons why they were called this, but here we see one of the reasons. They had a quick hot temper, James and his brother John. They were very, very hard charging. They had huge aspirations, they had big goals. They were loud and in charge. And you knew when James and John were gonna come in the room. And here, what we see is one of the problems of living by the lie that we must earn love. You see, when we must earn love, we struggle to show grace. We struggle to show grace. It sounds crazy to us that they might call down fire from heaven in response to the reaction of the Samaritans, but don't we do the same thing oftentimes when people hurt us and ignore us and reject us? We do this in our relationships. If my wife must earn my love, then I'll give her the silent treatment when she disappoints me. If my kids must earn my love, then I'll blow up in anger when they disobey me. If my friends must earn my love, I'll walk away when they don't bring value to my life. If my neighbors must earn my love, then I'll be hostile towards them when they don't do what I want. If my political opponents must earn my love, I'll cancel them when they are stupidly wrong. And if my church must earn my love, then I'll leave when I'm ignored, offended or mistreated. When we must earn love, we struggle to show grace. We can't give people the benefit of it out. We can't assume the best, but there are other problems with living by this unlivable lie that leads to misery in our lives. And in Mark chapter 10, verses 35 through 37, we get another snapshot of this guy James and his brother, John. And it's interesting, in one of the other passages, we find that it's not just James and John that approach Jesus, they also bring their mommy too. And in verse 35, it says this, "Then James and John, the sons of David, "the sons of thunder, came to Jesus with their mom." And they said, "Teacher, we want you to do for us, "whatever you ask." And if somebody ever comes to you and asks a question, and they say, before the question, they preface it by saying, "I want you to say yes to whatever I say, "and their mom standing right there." How many of you know the answer to the question is probably no, 'cause it's probably a dumb, stupid, audacious question. And what we see here as Jesus responds by asking, what do you want me to do for you? They reply with, let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in glory. Crazy question, they're asking Jesus because they assume that Jesus has come to restore Israel's glory, to overthrow Roman rule and to take over power. And they think that love is earned. And as Jesus is in her circle, they want the positions on his right and on his left because they know their love by being successful, by being glorified, by being honored and esteemed. And so they sneak around their friends' backs, the other disciples. They scheme and connive with their mom, and they work for hours to approach Jesus in such a way where he'll approve of it. Don't we do the same thing in our life oftentimes? We scratch and claw for approval. We want people to think that we have it all together because if love must be earned, then we have to reach positions of prestige and power. And do you know something? This is anxiety-inducing. This is crippling for us. If we have to live this way, we're filled with fear and anxiety. When we must earn love, in fact, we experience constant anxiety. We don't just struggle to show grace. We also experience constant fear, constant struggle and constant anxiety. When we must earn love, we worry about the opinions of others. We get offended over the slightest of insults. We obsess over our carefully curated digital life. And we worry about the comments that other people say and how many likes we're getting. And we fall apart at the smallest failures at work. We revisit our past hurts persistently. We fear failure and rejection more than anything else. And we live in a constant state of dissatisfaction and fear that will be exposed for who we really are because we live under the lie that love must be earned. And it gets worse than just those two things because eventually what happens is our struggle to show grace as we experience constant anxiety, leads to something drastic. And again, we see this in the life of James and John and the other disciples. In Matthew chapter 26, as Jesus is sharing a final meal with his friends and his brothers, he shares this, then Jesus told them, "This very night, "you will all fall away on account of me. "For it is written, I will strike the shepherd "and the sheep of the flock will be scattered." And when Jesus stopped bringing value to the disciples, when he stopped earning their love, when he was betrayed and arrested and humiliated and crucified, every single one of them walked away. They disconnected from Jesus. And when we live by this unlivable lie that we must earn love, we will not only struggle to show grace, we will not only experience constant anxiety, when we must earn love, we will disconnect from community. When we must earn love, we write off those who rejected us. We isolate after people hurt us. We reject those who think poorly of us. We abandon those who disappoint us. We walk away when things don't go our way and we condemn those who mistreat us. And what happens in our lives as we live around other people is that relationships become performative. As we struggle to show grace, if you please me and if you earn my love, I'll stay in your good graces. But as soon as you disappoint me, I walk away. Our internal life becomes ruled by anxiety rather than peace. And we begin to watch life. And we watch church as we disconnect from the body of Jesus and we end up miserable because there's a central truth to this idea, this lie that we must earn love. The graceless, anxious, lonely life that comes as a result of believing this lie is miserable. It's miserable. No one wants to live this way. And as performative as John viewed love, even though he lived by this lie early in his life, it's not how we know John today. As we look at John's later writings in his first, second, and third letters here, we've been examining first John. We see someone who is entirely different in his own gospel account. We looked at Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They refer in the first three to him as the son of thunder. But in his own gospel account in the book of John three times, John calls himself the one whom Jesus loved. Here in the book of first John, the word that is most prominent is the word love because John learned a freeing, life-giving, joyful truth. And the truth is this. We receive love freely by faith. We receive love freely by faith. And this truth changed John. It turned him from a graceless, anxious, and lonely person into a loving, confident, and cared for individual. It drastically changed his life. We don't remember him as the bold, brash, angry person. We remember him as the kindest, most loving follower of Jesus in the New Testament. And the way I think about this, the way I view a little bit of God's love is kind of like how we view our keepsakes. Have you ever gone through your old childhood family heirlooms? I was going through keepsake boxes the summer ago because I was trying to purge stuff in my basement. And I pulled this out with my family, my kids, and my wife. If you've never done this, I'd recommend you do it. It was my keepsake box was filled with old blankets and teddy bears and cringy, awkward karate trophies and swimming trophies and pictures of me in a speedo and cards that I had from childhood and Whitney Houston's old CD. And I wish I would have had that thing autographs somehow. It would have been amazing. But my kids and my wife are looking at this stuff. It's stuff that I love and cherish and remember. And my kids are looking at this stuff with just a cringy look on their face because all of this stuff is worthless to everyone but me. My little teddy bear has holes in it. My blankets are like moth-eaten and they smell really bad. The trophies are a lot smaller than I remembered it. Like seventh place, who the heck keeps this stuff? And my wife's just looking at this like what the heck is this thing? But I love it and I keep it around. And this is how God loves us. He doesn't love us because we're valuable. Everyone else might look at us and think that we have flaws, failures. We're a brutal hot mess that we're kept together with duct tape that we're completely worthless. And yet God loves us because he loves us. He sees everything about us. The messes, the flaws, the broken nature. He sees the scars on the outside. He sees the secrets on the inside. And yet he loves us. Not because we've earned it. Not because we deserve it. Not because we've worked really hard and achieved it but because it's part of his very nature. And this is the truth that John learned, that we receive love freely by faith. And he writes about this at the end of his letter. It's the most important thing for John in all of this. And we know this because of how consistently he mentions it. In first John chapter four, verse seven, he starts off by talking about it. And in this passage, he says, dear friends, let us love one another. For love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God because God is love. And by the end of today, you're gonna be tired of that word love. Because John mentions it 30 times. In the span of three paragraphs, he mentions this word love over and over and over again because it's central to God's nature. More than anything else that John learned about God, he learned that God is at his very essence love. And it's how he ends the sentence there. When he says three simple words that we stand by and love and cherish today. He says God is love. And if I were to ask people about who you are, if we were to fill in the blanks for different people in the room, if we were to say Chris is blank or Kaya is blank or Kevin is blank or Ryan is blank, you'd get a variety of answers. You might get things like gifted, funny, intelligent, smart, kind, witty, or depending on how people have interacted with you, you might get things like rude, mean, short, right? Love being kind, but at no point in history has anyone ever said about a human being and filled in the blanks with love. No one has ever said Kevin is love or Brad is love or Ryan is love. There's something unique about who God is and about who his son Jesus is. God at his very essence and core is love. You see, ultimately we're love because God is love. We receive love freely by faith because God at his very core and nature is love. He is the source of all love. It comes from him because it's who he is. John Piper said that love is from God, the way heat is from fire or the way light is from the sun. Love belongs to God's nature. It's woven into what he is. It's part of what it means to be God. And this is important. It may seem basic, right? The first song that we all learn is Jesus loves me, right? Every single one of us can quote that song. I think so often we get tired of hearing this, but it is absolutely foundational and vital to life as a follower of Jesus. And it's important to talk about this because often we have a view of God the Father based on our own personal experiences and our cultural moment and the beliefs around us. And we usually trend towards one of two categories. Often we tend to think of God as some sort of isolated angry figure who we have to please in order to earn his love. We think that he's really distant and removed. And in order to spend time with him, he's some sort of passive aggressive deity who only spends time with thoughts when we do the right things. And when we jump through the right hoops and when we say and accomplish the right tasks. Or we trend towards the other extreme. We think of God as some sort of kind grandfather who just sort of exists in the distance. He's happy and he wants us to be happy and to experience love. But he's not really close to us and close to our lives. And what John experienced, what we see in scripture is that God is close to us, that he cares for us, that he wants the best for us, that we come into a relationship with him by faith. And we see this, John over and over again, if you've read through this letter with us, if you read through this passage, John goes through painstaking measures to talk about God in three ways. He talks about God as the father. He talks about God as the son Jesus, whom he saw, whom he witnessed, whom he touched, whom he served with. And he talks about the spirit. And he does this, I believe intentionally, because we call this the doctrine of the Trinity. It's essential to God's very character and nature that he is three persons in one. It's not just some sort of esoteric theological idea that we bring up to sound smart. It is central to God's very nature. God in and of himself is a community that has existed for eternity in loving kindness and intimacy and sacrifice and honor for eternity. God the father, God the son and God the spirit have been in relationship for all of time, loving one another. God did not create you and I to feel some need in and of himself. He's not distant and removed from creation. He created us out of his loving kindness. He created the world we see and all that's in it. And he took special care with you and I. He made us in his image. Love flows out of who God is. Love creates and expands and moves out. And as John continues here, we see that. He says in the verses that follow, first John four, nine and 10. He says this is how God showed his love among us. He said it's one and only son into the world that we might live through him. This is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. And I find it interesting how John approaches this because we live in a feelings-based world. And feelings are certainly a component of love. That's really important. We're going to talk about that in a second. But as John defines love, he doesn't center it in a feeling. He could have talked about Psalm 139 when David talks about how God's thoughts about us outnumber the grains of sand on the seashore. God loves you and thinks about you constantly. He has you in mind with everything that he does. He wants what's good and right and noble for each of us. He doesn't want any of us to perish. He wants all of us to experience life and life abundantly with him. But here in this passage, he describes love as an action. It's rooted in his sending of his son. My favorite definition of love, it comes from a guy named Bodhi Bakam. He says, love is an act of the will, accompanied by emotion that leads to action on behalf of its object. Love is an action. It moves out and flows out of who God is and who we are in our very essence. It leads to action on behalf of its object. And God loves us, he is loved. So he chose to do one thing. He chose to send his son to live among us. He sent his son Jesus into enemy territory, a world that had become hostile to him because of the sin that we see around us. He sent his son to live on the world while we were sinners, while we were enemies of God. Jesus lived the perfect life that we could never live. And he died the death that we deserved. Jesus came to bring us life. And he did it through the death of Jesus. In that second sentence, he goes painstakingly through defining what love is and it's in three parts. He says that in that second sentence, he says, this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us. Jesus loved us before we loved him. We didn't earn it, we don't deserve it. We receive it by grace through faith. There's nothing we can do to merit the favor of a holy God. He wants us and cares for us and wants relationship with us, but we are hot, messy, broken, sinful people. We need a savior so that a holy God can spend time with us. And if you look at world religions, if you look at the history of the world, the stereotype that we often see is the first picture I gave you of an angry deity, far removed from creation who needs humanity to please him or her before he'll come into relationship with them. We see sacrifices throughout history, right? Of people, of animals, of possessions so that God might be pleased. And what we find here as we see the God who is love, who offers love freely by faith, is that he didn't expect a sacrifice from us. No, in this passage, it says that God loved us and he sent his son into the world so that we might receive life through him. And he sent his son in that last sentence as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Your version of the Bible may be different. It may say propitiation, propitiation, a toning sacrifice. In essence, God sent his son Jesus to die for us in our place, taking upon the punishment and wrath of God that our sins deserve so that by his sacrifice, we might be made right. That's what an atoning sacrifice is. That's what propitiation means. It means to turn away the wrath of God by means of an offering. We're loved because God is love. And we know what and who love is because Jesus died for our sins. And this is the truth as John comes to the end of his letter that he wants to make abundantly clear to people that love is an act of the will. But you know what, love is also accompanied by emotion. And if you've been in church for any length of time, this is a very simple, basic gospel message, isn't it? We've all heard this before. In fact, you may have just tuned me out at some point because you're like, "Yeah, man, I get it. "I get it. God is love." Like, can we just move on to other things? Can we get to the deeper, richer things of Scripture? Can we get back to worship? I wanna experience God's love, right? I need to spend time in his presence. I need to get out in nature. I need to get off by myself. And John, in his passage as he closes this paragraph, identifies with some of the struggles that we all feel. You see, it's one thing to know in our hearts and in our minds to believe intellectually that we are loved, to understand the truth that Jesus died for us, that he loves us. And it's quite another thing to experience that love on a regular and consistent basis. I've been married for 14 years. My wife and I just had our anniversary this week. And I know on an intellectual level that my wife loves me and is committed to me. And I believe it wholeheartedly. But how many of you know you've been married for a while? Sometimes you don't really feel and experience the love of your significant other. Can I get an amen from all the husbands in the room anyways? I oftentimes, I know my love, I know my wife loves me. I'm not always sure she really likes me. And sometimes I kind of deserve it, right? And one of the things that John writes here, he identifies with the struggle we have as followers of Jesus. Because we can't see or touch Jesus. God is this invisible, ethereal person that we cannot see and really experience on a tangible level. And it's at this point that John makes one of the most profound statements I find in scripture. He goes on to say this, dear friends, since God so loved us, in other words, since God loved us like this, giving his son for us, we also ought to love one another. As Jesus has, sacrificing our lives for him, dying to self. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. That is an amazingly profound statement. Because when I sit here today, when the early church sat there just a few decades after the time of Jesus, they sort of envy John. John was Jesus, his closest friend. He turned in, he transitioned from the son of thunder to the apostle of love, because he got to touch and see and experience Jesus. And he writes about it in John chapter one. In verse 18, he says, "No one has ever seen God, but the one and only son who is himself God in his enclosest relationship with the Father has made him known." In other words, "Hey people, I saw Jesus, I touched him, I experienced him." And Jesus showed me the character of the God who is love and I can vouch for him. And he gave us his spirit and you can trust him deeply. But for the early church listening to this, struggling with their faith, they wanted to have the same experience that John did. And so John writes this letter and he says something incredibly profound. Can you throw that verse back up? He says, "No one has ever seen God the exact same statement in the original Greek language and in this passage as we see in John 1. But he says this, "But if we love one another, not if we worship together, not if we get off alone and have a quiet time, not if we listen to sermon podcast during the week, not if we try really hard." All of those things are good. He says this, "If we love one another as the God who is love has, if we will die to self and love other people in action as Jesus has, then God will live in us and his love will be made complete in us." That is a profound statement. We get to connect here, as John talks about this, the actions and emotions of love and the key to doing it is not getting off by ourselves and figuring life out. We experience love as we pass Jesus' love onto others. And this is one of the central points that John makes in this passage. We get to experience God's tangible presence and we get to abide in his love and we get to become mature, complete Christians, not by checking off a bunch of boxes, not by getting off by ourselves and doing life on our own, but by living in community and loving other people just as Jesus has loved us sacrificially and completely. There's such a huge payoff here for us as John wraps up this letter in how we are to live and to love other people. And the benefit for us isn't just communal. It isn't just that we can come together as we love one another and experience life in its fullness. It's that Jesus and the Father transform our heart and mind so that we don't just act loving. We feel the immeasurable and immense love of Jesus. And John gives us the payoff at the end of this passage. He says, and so we know in verse 15, he says, and so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love, whoever lives in love, lives in God and God in them. And he's wrapping up his message in here. And he says, this is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment. In this world, we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. And as we, he wraps up this message as we come to understand and believe in and trust in Jesus. As we understand the picture, he gives us of a God who is love. As we begin to understand and define who and what love is through Jesus' sacrifice for us, as we experience that love and pass it on to others, we experience the opposite of the graceless and anxious and lonely life. You see, when we receive love freely by faith and we begin to put it into practice like this, there are a couple of amazing things that happen in our lives. We begin to show grace to others first and foremost. Do you hear that and see that in the passage? We stop treating others as if love must be earned. And we learn to extend forgiveness and mercy. We learn to assume the best. We begin to see other people, not for who they are in the moment, but for who God has called them to be. We see their flaws and their failures, but we know that God loves them anyway. And we know who they can become. And we're confident in all circumstances. I'm gonna fail epically and publicly and miserably in so many ways in my life. I'm not gonna measure up. I'm still a hot mess. I'm broken. I'm gonna screw up and fail. Other people are gonna betray me, but you know what? Nothing can touch the love that God has for me in Jesus. And I can be confident in that. I don't need to be anxious and fearful. I can trust who he has called me to be. And I can also, as I love other people and experience God's love, I can remember that I am never alone. I'm never abandoned. I'm never forsaken. Jesus sees me, loves me, and knows me. And as the band comes back up, as we wrap up this simple gospel message that John closes his letter with that was more important to him than anything else that he had to write, that he wanted his readers, his listeners to know and know fully. I'm gonna give us two very simple, intangible action steps. And really, these action steps are different based on who you are and what you've experienced. And I wanna speak first to those of you here in the room who've been far from Jesus, and maybe it's your first time in church. Maybe you're watching with us online and this whole Jesus thing is new to you. All of this is brand new. You've never heard the message of God's love for you or maybe you're here with us and you've been away from Jesus for a long time. And you're just coming back to faith and you can't imagine that God would love you but you sure wanna believe it. Can I encourage you? Would you receive the love of Jesus today? Would you receive that love? He offers it to us freely by faith. It's not something we earn, it's not something we deserve. It's not something that we've figured out how to achieve and strive really hard for. We receive love freely by faith. I know you may be here today and you feel like a hot mess. That's the way I felt about 15 years ago when I came back to Jesus. Felt like a hot mess, felt like I didn't deserve his love. Was miserable, anxious, lonely, graceless in a hard moment. Would you come before him now? Would you just cry out to him in your own heart mind? And would you tell him, Jesus, I want your love for me. I accept that you are who we've read about today. That you are the God who loves me and sees me and knows me and that I can be made right with you. I can have life as I come before you and confess my sin and accept your love. And if that's you here today, if you need to receive the love of Jesus, if you just did that, would you, if you're here in the room, go talk to Pastor Joel, talk to me, go visit the welcome wall. We have a Bible we'd love to give you. We're having baptism in a few short weeks, which is one of the first steps we take as followers. And Jesus, if you're watching online, would you visit harborchurch.life/Jesus? Would you go and see what it means to receive love freely by faith and follow Jesus? And second, I want to speak to those of us in the room who are more like me. You've been in church for a long time and you've heard this message a hundred different times. And you might have tuned me out halfway through. You might be a little bored at this point because again, this is so foundational, so simple. Would you take a step today? Would you pass Jesus' love onto others? Though so often as we've been in church for years and decades, we begin to, in a healthy way sometimes, make our faith more individualistic. We begin to own our faith. We read scripture in the morning or at night, depending on what kind of personality you have. We learn to pray on our own. We seek to grow and understand. We begin to move past the elemental things. Well, what can also often happen is that we begin to privatize and individualize our walk with Jesus. We quit sharing with other people. 'Cause the longer you've been in church, how many of you know the more you've been hurt by Christians? And sometimes we don't live perfectly and so we begin to disconnect from other people or we harbor bitterness in our hearts. And what I believe God is calling us to today. Now this is a really terrible action step because it's so vague, so vague. But I did that on purpose because I think what God's calling each of us in the room to as we wrap up this series is different. John didn't get specific. Maybe you're here today and there's a neighbor who God's been nudging you to invite over for dinner and you've been avoiding it 'cause they're kind of obnoxious and they drive you crazy. Maybe you've experienced past hurt in the church. Maybe Christians have hurt you. Maybe you need to process forgiveness with a Stephen minister. We have Stephen minister here at the church. You need to get together one-on-one before you're ready for a community. Maybe there's somebody at work that God's just been telling you, man, you gotta take that personal lunch. You gotta say some kind. There's a little bit of hatred in your heart and you need to take a step there. Maybe you're here this morning and you've pulled away from community. Again, hurt, privatizing your faith, individualizing things and you need to join a group. We've got life groups, study groups, interest groups, launching in the fall. Praise God at the beginning of September. Lastly, maybe you're here today and you just stop serving. You stopped acting in love towards others in the church and your community and it's time for you to step into that. I trust the Holy Spirit will speak to each of us in what God's calling us to as we wrap up in worship here today. Would you stand with me? I just wanna pray for each of us as we close. Father, we love you and thank you for this day. We thank you that you, God, are so good to us. So good to us. Lord, I thank you that you love us. Not because of what we've done, but because of who you are and that you demonstrated it so tangible. I pray you to help us too in response. Lord, pass your love on to others to make Jesus you tangible. Speak to us clearly on what our action steps look like here as we close and worship you. And we give you this time in Jesus' name. Amen.
