Pastor Bill Vecchio, Jr.
Fort Myers Community Church Podcast
Joshua 1:6-18 "Blessing in Obedience"
You are listening to Sermon Audio from Fort Myers Community Church. For more information about how to get involved in the life of this church family, please visit www.fmcc.life. Well, good morning. So, I've encouraged our worship team before and just tell them how often it's amazing just to come into this place and worship the Lord together. But I want to thank the AVL team. You guys make it sound so good. And so, I know that they're kind of the hidden people in the back. But thank you guys so much for all of your hard work. Does anybody ever put together IKEA furniture? Yeah, IKEA is my kryptonite. I mean, just flat out, just want you to know, like every Superman has their kryptonite, that's mine. Right? So, their new concept that they're writing into their instructions is even more cryptic than what it used to be. So, here it is. This is their new concept. They've decided to write in, is it going to come up, write in aliens into this process. So, I don't know what their thinking is. I don't know if they want to make it more fun because it's not. But here, zoom in a little more. I mean, this is what I look like, I think, when I'm trying to figure these things out. There's pieces all over my living room. And so, often when I'm putting together a piece of furniture, whether I'm doing a work project around my house, I ask a lot of questions and often it has to do with the instructions. Do I really need to follow the instructions? I mean, is it going to just slow me down? What will happen if I don't use the instructions? Like, what's the consequences? Like, if I don't follow these instructions, what's really going to happen? Won't I have the same end result if I don't follow these instructions? These questions, honestly, reek of self-pride, right? They reek of self-sufficiency. And the IKEA makers, the people who are putting this furniture together, who are building it, the creators, they know what they're doing. They count out every single piece. If you have a whole handful of leftover pieces with IKEA furniture, you've done something wrong. Like, they know what to do, how to do it. They've created these instructions for a purpose. God made us. He is the creator. He made the world that we exist in, the land in which we dwell, and he knows what's best. He knows how we are to survive, not only barely survive, but actually thrive in this world. And he gives us the instruction manual so that we may know how to live this life. But do we actually use it? Why would we? I mean, do we truly trust the creator that wrote these instructions for us to be able to know how to thrive and prosper in this world? So, as Dave said, we're looking at the book of Joshua. And the theme of this is in verse 9, "God is with you wherever you go." So if you're here today and you believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior, he has adopted you as his child, and he is with you wherever you go. Whatever life circumstance you're in, whatever you're struggling with, whether you're trying to juke people on the football field and you twist an ankle or you're in financial crisis, the Lord is with you wherever you go. So, last week, we talked about how God calls us. And when he calls us, he transforms us, he equips us, and he protects us. And then this week, God, we see gives us a guide, these commands, that ultimately lead us to experience blessing and success. So what I want to do is I want to pray, and I want to jump in to see what the Lord has for us today. We talk about how do we thrive in the world that we live in today. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you for giving us the example of Joshua that we get to look at as someone who has come before Jesus as a foreshadowing of who Jesus is ultimately going to be. And so, God, I pray that we would see that you are the God who leads us into the promised land. You are the God that ushers us into eternity. You are the God who is with us wherever we go. And I pray that this morning that we wouldn't look at the Bible as do's and don'ts that hinder our life in some way, shape or form, but actually the instructions that we follow so that we may receive blessing and success wherever we go. Father, we lift up all of the church plant partners that you have allowed us to come alongside and be a part of helping see new churches form all throughout Southwest Florida. God, I just think of Gene as he is setting out to plant beacon community church in Cape Coral. God, I pray that you are with him and Robin as they are seeking your face and building a team to go bring your gospel to every person in Cape Coral. God, I thank you for Josh Stewart down in Naples at Oaks Community Church. God, I thank you for his faithfulness to shepherd and love his people so well. God, I thank you for Will Peterson. God, at Redeemer Church in Astero, as they were looking to launch sometime in January 2025, God, I pray that you would do a mighty work in these churches, then you would continue to allow us as a church to plant more churches because there are so many people that need you, that don't know who you are, have not heard your name. And so God, I pray that we would see more churches planted so that your name may be made great. We love you. It's in your name. We pray, amen. Now right off the bat, I want to just address something before we dive in to looking at God's instructions for our life. All of this happens inside of a relationship with Jesus. I think often when we're looking at our world today, we see Christianity as a religion to follow, that there are a list of things we have to do to somehow earn God's favor. And that's not what the Bible says. The Bible does not speak of you and I earning the favor of God. And so when we're looking at following God's instructions, that's coming out of an overflow of a relationship that we already have with God. And so we don't follow instructions so God loves us, we love God so we follow His instructions. Very similar to a parent-child relationship where I don't want my kids just to obey me out of obligation. I want them to obey me because I want them to know that I am for them and I know it's best for them. And I've lived the life before them and I could see them heading towards destruction and so I'm helping steer them not only towards things that are going to do well for them, but also that I'm going to lead them to the feet of Jesus. And so often I think when we initially first off come to a place like this and we start hearing about rules, instructions, manuals, all of a sudden that something goes on inside us like, you can't tell me how to live, don't you tell me how to live my life? And I want you to know that God loves you and He wants a relationship with you. And once we begin to understand the relationship that God has for us and how much He truly loves us so much so that He sent His Son from eternity to come down to a place that is fallen and broken. In heaven He was worshiped day and night, in heaven there was ultimate perfection. In heaven He didn't experience pain or suffering, but then He came and wrapped Himself in flesh and He experienced hurt and pain. He experienced tiredness and ultimately death. But He rose again so that you and I can have a relationship with Him. And so everything we're talking about is founded on, grounded on a relationship with Jesus. Sound good? Do we got that straight? So I don't have to continue to go back to the fact that I'm speaking of these things post relationship with God. I'm thinking about these things. We follow His instructions because we already have a relationship with God. And so now we see that because God loves me and He desires what's best for me, I will not stray. I will not stray. I mean, look at what He's saying in verses 7 and 8. He says do not turn to the right or to the left, this idea here is the idea of strength. Strength from what we know the right course is. We have been set in a direction to go forward and He's saying don't go to the right, don't go to the left, but stay the course on what I have laid out for you because this is the best course. In college, a couple of my buddies and I, we wanted to, I don't know, earn a man card or something. And so we decided that we wanted to go live off the land. For 10 days or a week, we were going to, there's 10 guys for a week that wanted to go live off the land. And so we rented a houseboat, had a little dinghy behind it, like a little small boat. And we were going to go on to the water, live on the water for seven days. We didn't want to bring anything with us. And we were going to go fish and find food and live off the land. Apparently no one tipped off the fish that we were trying to earn a man card. And so the first night, no fish caught, we didn't know what we were doing. We ordered pizza, I think. And so it didn't go well. But in that trip, we decided that we needed to go supply, we needed to go for supplies. One of our guys was a boat captain, like he had his license of being a boat captain. And so he took out this map and he showed us all the places and he said, I want you to go in this direction. And so he pointed us in the direction, we had to get to the store and he said, you want to follow your, I don't know what they call it, I'm sorry, I'm not a boater. But it was like a compass and it had degrees on it. And he said, you need to follow this at this degree and just go straight. And then he said, if you follow this, he's like, you'll end up running right directly into where you need to go. So me and two other guys, we jump on this dinghy and we take off to go resupply. And as we're going, we end up like kind of running almost dead end into a sandbar in the middle of the water. And so we didn't run into it, but we saw it coming and it went, it looked like it stressed for miles. And we're like, there's no way around this. And so what did we do as guys? We got out of the boat and we dragged the boat across the sandbar and we kept going. All of a sudden cop, like police cop car or cop boat came up and like pulled us over and was like, what are you doing? Somehow we had found ourselves in this protected area of the keys. That was like a felony to be inside of this little thing that they had surrounded with the sandbar. There was like some kind of protected grass in there, I don't know, seagrass. And he's like, he was fuming. And so he realized we were just dumb kids. And so we took out our map and we're like, here's how we ended up here. We were two degrees off, two degrees off of where he had set us to go. That's not just a silly story. That literally is what life is like, because often we know where God has set the place for us to go. We know where we're supposed to be, but somehow we find ourselves just a little bit off. You know what this word, stray means? Means to compromise. To make compromises. We make these little compromises daily. These are things that we just fill our life with and it's a little compromise and a little compromise after another. Maybe it's in private, maybe it's at work, maybe it's with your eyes. And then your defense attorney comes out, the inner defense attorney that you have inside of you, that's constantly saying, eh, it'll be all right. It's not that big of a deal, it's only two degrees. We're still headed in the direction, ish. So we compromise our time with God, our intentionality in everyday life with endless escapism and mindless scrolling. We compromise what we eat, how we exercise if we exercise, what we're watching and filling our hearts and our minds with. Well, I love what the young theologian Logan Cobb said in our staff meeting this week. He said, not every compromise is sin, but every sin is compromise. And how true is that? We often may compromise after compromise, sin after sin, and we stray a little bit to the right, a little bit to the left. God had watched his people leave Egypt, told him where to go from the Promised Land, and he just watched them make compromise after compromise after compromise. How do we know God's instruction? It's the word of God. But you can't imagine how many people I meet with on a given week, our community leaders meet with on a given week, our pastoral staff and our leaders meet with, and people that we meet with that don't open the Bible. They don't open this up. We don't open this up when we're dealing with a problem, a situation, a circumstance. We pull from like the knowledge of a sermon or a podcast or from something that we heard when we were a kid, but we don't go to the source ourselves. How do we know how not to stray? It's this front to back, left to right, up to down. It's reading this book. It's always applicable in every circumstance, and I think often the problem, the reason why we don't go to it, is because we don't want to hear what it has to say. Because we know it's going to say we're off course, and sometimes I think we just feel like we're too far away to get on the right track, but that's never the case. That's never the case with God. He actually meets you exactly where you're at to set you on the right course. And the question I think comes up, well, what if I'm feeling like some sort of conviction in my life? Well, then what I would say is trust the Spirit, trust the Spirit in your life. Conviction will always lead you to Jesus. The Bible says there is therefore no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. Condemnation will always make you run from God. Condemnation will always make you isolate from other believers. That's what condemnation is. It's a trick of the enemy, the devil. He will make you want to feel condemned so that you never go to church, that you, oh, you know what? I'm too tired. I'm too busy. I'm feeling this condemnation because of the sin that so easily dwells and entangles you. The Spirit of God convicts you and the Spirit of God will always lead you back to the feet of Jesus, always back to the Word of God, always back into biblical community. So trust the conviction of the Spirit when something's off. If you feel like you're doing something off, then trust the Spirit in you and begin to seek the Lord. When you ignore the Spirit or you delay your obedience, that is disobedience. Do I need to say that again? When you ignore the Spirit or you delay your obedience, that is disobedience. What if I don't obey? What's the consequence? Well, I love James' analogy that he says James is Jesus' half-brother and he said it's like a person who looks in the mirror and forgets their face. You ever go out to dinner with your friends or something and then all of a sudden when you're past the mirror, you kind of do one of the teeth checks and you see that little thing in your teeth that you've got to get out? It will be like you have nothing to get it with so you're like, oh, I have something at the table to get it with and you walk back to the table and you forget it's there. So now you're just walking around with stuff in your teeth all day. Like that's the analogy that James uses when we're not listening to the Word of God and we're not obeying the Word of God because the Word of God is like a mirror. The Word of God shows us where we've spilled something on us. The Word of God shows us our sin and then when we walk away and we forget what we look like, when we forget that sin or if we forget our depravity, then we just look foolish. And so God issues this morning. Don't stray. He wants to lead you into destruction so don't stray. A love with the author and pastor, he's also a leadership coach, Craig Rochelle says. He says, "If you want to run from God, the enemy will always offer you a ride." Always waiting like an Uber to take you wherever you want to go. But James encourages us, submit yourselves to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. So because God loves me and desires what's best for me, I will not stray. But here's another declaration that I want us to hold on to today as we're looking at these verses, because God loves me and desires what's best for me, I will stand firm. Think of verse 9, "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened and do not be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. What a promise that we can hold on to every minute, every second of our lives that God is with you here right now in this moment. In the moments where you're feeling at your worst he is with you. This is a call to be confident in God's instruction. Do not be timid. Do not be frightened. Do not be discouraged. We're in a battle. Does anybody else understand that and know that? We are in a battle. The enemy is shooting at us and those shots are not always kill shots. The enemy, the Bible talks about, shoots flaming arrows. These flaming arrows are actually meant to miss us and hit the stuff around us to distract us from what God has called us to. The enemy is shooting at us. He's trying to distract us. He's trying to make us to run and hide. He's trying to make us to go to where we aren't supposed to be when God has set forth a path for us. He said, "Do not be frightened. Do not be dismayed. Go where I tell you because I am with you. I am protect you." There's trust there. There's hope there to realize and remember in the hardest of circumstances that God, the creator of all things, the God of the cosmos is with you wherever you go. What do we stand firm on? We stand firm on Jesus, His life, His death, His resurrection. I'm not called to stand firm on my own gifts, my own abilities, my own willpower. I know I speak to men often with this. We can do it too, is that we want to control, we want to do it ourselves. We want to say, "I've got this." God calls us to surrender. He wants to remind us we don't have this and it's okay because He does. There's a picture of a lighthouse and I love this picture because there is a guy standing and if you zoom in more closely to this picture, you see this guy standing in the doorway as this major storm is surging around this lighthouse. His name is Theodore Malgorn. He's waiting to be rescued because this storm is so bad and this picture was captured because he's just chilling out there on this lighthouse. He knew the strength of this lighthouse. He was confident in that this lighthouse was going to hold him. This is a silly example, and all analogies break down, but I want you to know that the Lord, constantly over and over again in Scripture, has talked about being a firm foundation, a fortress, a lighthouse on which we can stand a strong tower, that when the storms of life rage and foam, when the mountains crumble into the depths of the sea, He is with us. So God says do not be dismayed, do not be frightened by the circumstances around you. God is my firm foundation. He is the rock upon which I stand. I want to speak to those that often let their past make us doubt God is our firm foundation. I think often we can let our past define our future. We could have gone through a situation in our life that was really difficult, really hard, and then all of a sudden somehow we've allowed that to define what we know is true of God. Do not let your past define your future. If you have failed, let me say that a different way, you have failed. I have failed, and God has already forgiven you. In fact, throughout Scripture, it says God has forgiven you. He is forgiving you, and He will forgive you. The language used in Scripture is past, present, future. So we can stand firm and confident that our past does not define us, but that we can stand firm on the promises of God because He has always been faithful. Do I need to say that again? God has always been faithful. And that's why we read this because we see His faithfulness through every story, through every word, that He is a faithful God that has never let us down. I don't like the mindset where we have where it's like, "Oh, I'm such a failure." Once an addict, always an addict, stop it. You are a child of God. You have been forgiven. The Spirit lives in you. You are a new creation. So we stand firm in the promises of God. So because God loves me and desires respect for me, the declaration we make is I will stand firm. I may mess up, but I'm going to continue to stand firm. And when I mess up, He's there. He's holding me. He's lifting me back up. I will not stray. And here's the last thing, because God loves me and desires respect for me. I will help others fulfill their calling. I will help others fulfill their calling. You know, verses 12 through 18, it's a lot. There's a lot in there. As you're reading the story and you're like, "Okay, I'm trying to understand what this is saying." So there's three different people groups. So the people of God have been wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. Moses dies. Joshua takes over and God says, "Now you're going to lead them into the Promised Land." You know what separates them from going into the Promised Land? The Jordan River. And so He's going to lead them into the Promised Land, but they have to walk through the Jordan River. So God has to do what He's already done. Remember the faithfulness of God that I talked about? He's already part of the Red Sea. So He's like, "I'm going to do it again. I'm going to open up the Jordan River. You're going to walk through on dry ground." But there's a people, three people groups, that I have given an inheritance to on this side of the Jordan. So technically, they're already home. Technically they're doing well. Technically like, "Hey, you guys could settle your roots. You could set roots. You could build homes. You could start your farms." On this side of the Jordan, you don't have to actually go into the Promised Land. This is your inheritance right here where we are before heading in. Guess what? Not only do we have to walk through a river, but then there's going to be a bunch of armies over there that want to kill us. And so we've got to fight all these battles, and people are going to die. But God's given us that as the Promised Land, and we're actually called to go in there and take over this whole territory. I know that you guys are home, but you need to come with us. You need to help your brothers cross the Jordan. You need to help your sisters and mothers and grandmothers cross over, and you have to help them in battle. And you have to help them fight so that they may also find home, so that they may also get to see and fulfill the promises that God has for them. Like you've got to help them. You've got to serve them. But wouldn't it be easier if we just stayed here? Yep. Couldn't we just settle, yeah, yeah. But I'm calling you to go help and serve others. But it's so much easier to sit in this room than to go deal with those crying kids up there. Yep. It is. But you know, for the third week in a row, that young mom who is exhausted from her kids all week is still up there serving because no one else is. Where we're going to two services, now we've got to double the amount of volunteers that are not only serving in there, but out in the parking lot, oh, but it's so hot out there. Can I come in here? It's air condition. You all complain about how cold it is in here anyway. Go outside. Get all sweaty before coming in. Isn't it easier? Yeah. Isn't it more comfortable? Yep. But what does God called me to? He's called me to serve and help my brothers and sisters to fulfill what God has called them to fulfill. That's why even in Scripture, when talking about leadership, he's saying submit to your elders. Why? For they're the ones that keep watch over your souls. They're the ones that do this joyfully. Why are leaders, elders supposed to do this? Because they're supposed to call, they're called to serve the body, lift the body up, help the body, and equip the saints to do the work of the ministry. We as the church are called to help others fulfill their calling. So what's the result in all of this? Joshua 1 has received these declarations and I will not stray and I will stand firm and I will help others fulfill their calling. Well, the result is that there's blessing in obedience. Give verse 8, blessing in obedience. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate it on a day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success. And guess what? This isn't prosperity gospel. Well, what do I mean by that? Well, well, there is a gospel that's out there right now that talks about health, wealth, and happiness. The focus of the prosperity gospel is worldly health, wealth, and happiness. And here's the thing about worldly health, worldly wealth, and worldly happiness. It is always circle that temporary. It doesn't last. The stock market is going to go up and down. The house market is going to go up and down. We're going to end up in hundreds of years from now. No one's going to remember how hard you worked to get that cool car or that big house. We strive for these generational wealth and prosperity in this world. It's all temporary. So when he's talking about blessing and he's talking about success, we have to remember that this prosper and this success is not financial wealth, positional status here and now, but it's actually a pursuit after God and his own heart and understanding who he is and what he's done for us and serving others and caring for others and loving others. You know, I've traveled around the world. I've had the blessing of traveling around the world. And I've remembered so clearly when I was down in Haiti that when we went to the slums and the ghettos of the city of Jeremy where, oh, the point, that's what it's called, the point where there was some of the happiest people that I've ever met in my entire life. Some of the most generous people, there was one trip that we took where we went up this mountain and we hiked forever and we got up there and the community, the whole community, there was a few hundred people in that community, they had one goat to their community and they slaughtered it to cook us a meal just for coming. Mark was freaking out. He was like, what are you doing? Like, why are you wasting this on us? Because they just wanted to give, they just wanted to serve and being around them, they were so free, they were free of all the stuff that we pursue. We're talking about success and prospering, it's about the joy that God gives us in our hearts and our minds and our soul. There's nothing like serving somebody else and the Lord God giving you a big hug in those moments knowing that we are serving Him and Him alone. That's what we're talking about here. And I think that as we're going through this and we're talking about success, we have to understand that success for these people, success for the Israelites, success for the church, success for us today is for us to fulfill our God-given purpose, that's success. Seeing your God-given purpose, knowing what God has created you and why are you for so that you can pursue His purpose for your life and fulfill what He has called you to do. But here's the problem, in our world, in this life, we are thrown, the enemy throws at us a dual purpose. When we're born, we're born in sin and in sin we pursue the desires of the flesh. And that's our purpose. Our purpose is to try harder, do better, build successful businesses, make more money, get the nice stuff, and so as we are living our lives, like this truly is the success that the world has to offer us. But then we're met with something, we're met with the gospel. And the gospel invites us to leave our flesh, to leave the desires of this world, this temporary satisfaction that's always going to let us down. And it calls us to find a new purpose, a new hope. It calls us to find our hope in Jesus. It calls us to find our hope in serving one another and loving one another. It calls us to find joy and joy alone in Jesus Christ alone. It's not what this process actually looks like for most of us. What ends up happening is we end up pulling one of these. Now herein lies the rub, as life continues on, we try to find this joint dual purpose. We try to figure out ways that we can have purpose and success and these worldly pleasures but also pursue what God's calling us to do. And here's what happens. We start pulling one of these. This is not going to be very comfortable. And I promise you, and you're walk with the Lord, this is where most of you are. Because eventually I'm going to have to make a choice. Eventually, I'm not talking about earning God's favor. I'm not talking about trying to raise the ladder of the goodness of God and like making Him see me for like, no, this is, I'm talking about our purpose. God already loves me. I'm already in relationship with God. He's already forgiven me. But after a while, I have to make a choice. After a while, I can't continue in this pattern. I can't have dual purposes. Jesus actually talks about this where He says you cannot serve both God and money. And so what ends up happening, I don't even think I can do this. I'm not very flexible. You can ask my wife. Eventually we have to make a choice. And so our job begins to pull at us. And the sports programs begin to pull at us. And the world begins to pull at us. And the enemy tries to convince you that, hey, listen, it's just the season. It's just the season. Just do this for now. Just continue in this way. Like, yeah, you're going to be the best athlete in the entire world. So continue doing these things and then you can serve the Lord. And then you can fulfill your God-given purpose. This was told to me when I first felt called into full-time ministry. I was on track to be a lawyer. And someone said to me, well, listen, just become a lawyer, make your money, and then you can serve the Lord. That was the mindset. And you know what? It sounded logical. Just do this for now, knowing that God is always there. He's always going to forgive me. It's fine, but we find ourselves splitting our purpose and our lives, trying to teeter back and forth. This is where escapism lies because we know what God has called us to. We know that we're called to full surrender over here, but we're not doing it. We come up with all these excuses. Our inner lawyer comes out and says, it's okay, you're fine. And so what do we do? We straight just a little bit. Well, a couple of compromises here, like, yeah, we can't be in a community group now because, you know, we've got all the things. We can't come to church every week because, you know, we've got the Disney Passes for the year, so we've got to use them. We all have these things. I could probably name four or five or six that I have right now in my life that are constantly pulling me back towards the purpose that the world has for me. But God calls us to surrender. And what is the promise that there is blessing with His instruction? And so church, do you have a dual purpose? Are you trying to serve two masters? Are you trying to fulfill the desires of the flesh and also trying to maybe sprinkle God in there somewhere? It's never going to work. Because there's one thing I could tell you right now is don't live like that for the rest of your life. Don't waste your life pursuing temporary pleasures that are one day going to be gone. Pursue what is eternal. Pursue Jesus. Pursue His Word. He is madly in love with you and He just wants to sit with you and pour out His love and His blessing. Test a minute. You're like, no, no, no. Start spending time in the Word. I promise you that God is going to do something mighty through the power of the Holy Spirit in His Word in your life. Give yourself to Jesus. All of you. Hold nothing back. Don't pull a 50/50, a 60/40, a 90/10, leave nothing left in the world. Notice the fulfillment and the blessing that there is in obedience. Can I pray for us? In fact, this is what I want to do. I want to actually set up some time for us to just reflect. If you're anything like me, I think that after going through this passage of Scripture, there may be hopefully the Spirit of God convicting you in some areas of your life that you need to step away from. That's just what I want to do. We have a prayer team. Our prayer team is awesome. Kim, you can come on up. And I want to open up this front area. There's nothing special up here other than an open area that we can pray for one another. If you want to come and you want to kneel, you can kneel. If you want to stand, you can stand. And we have a prayer team that's just going to come and pray for you. If you don't feel comfortable talking or sharing, they'll just pray. If you want to share and talk to them, then share. But for all of us, I want to use this as a time of reflection. I want to use this as a time for us to be able to go before the Lord and ask for forgiveness for the things that we know he's already forgiven, but the ways in our lives that we haven't fully submitted to him and his instruction in our lives. The ways that we've strayed may be a little bit to the right and a little bit to the left. For some of us, it's major. For some of us, it's minor. Look how it calls us and invites us to pursue him, and there is blessing and obedience. So let's pray and reflect right now. If you want and you're comfortable with it, we did this last week, you can get on your knees right where you're at. If you want to come forward and you want to have prayer during this last song, you can do that as well. But let me pray for us as we open up this time of reflection and confession. Father, I truly understand how. Intimidating, it could be in an environment like this setting to be on our knees or to come, ask for prayer, but God, I pray that your spirit would stir something in us. Holy Spirit, stir this where we can't stay seated in our chair. Stir something within us where we want to go with our brothers and sisters for help, to serve one another, to love one another. God, we all need this. We all need you. We all have ways that we have strayed. If someone's not comfortable coming forward, God, I pray that they would turn to the neighbor to the right and to the left and ask them to pray for them. Could you have invited us into a church community, a church family, that we are empowered to serve one another? So God, I pray that confession would be a staple in this church family. I pray that we as a church would be comfortable confessing to one another, being transparent to being vulnerable so that we may find rest and hope in you. In the areas where we've strayed, Lord, I pray that the spirit would stir in us obedience, not so that you love us, but because you already love us. Thank you, Father, for the promises. Thank you for being a sure foundation on which we stand. Thank you for the blessing that comes in the obedience to your Word. I pray for a fresh new season for our whole church family, for every person in this room. We would fall in love with you, we would pursue your word more, we would pray, we would fast. We would live in a Biblical community together. We love you. It's in your name that we pray, amen. (gentle music)