Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor Sermon Podcast
Twelve Steps:Takin' Out the Trash (Step 10)
Well, we are going through here in 2004, vineyard the 12 steps, which were made famous by alcoholics anonymous and then spun off in many different applications around the world. And we're looking at this as a spiritual discipline for transformation. And we've been taking the first full weekend every month and going through one of the 12 steps. So this being October, we're going to be looking at the tenth step. But I just wanted to give you a little bit of a review of what material we've covered. Take a look at the first nine steps before we launch. Step one says this, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol. Here you can insert whatever monkeys on your back that our lives had become unmanageable. Step two, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Step three, made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. Step four, here's where it gets serious, made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our lives. [laughter] Karen, I keep getting that wrong. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Step five, admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs. Step six, we're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Kevin Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings, made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. Then step nine, we considered last month, made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. And then today, step ten, continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. Imagine that someone gave you a beautiful apartment at one of these shows that makes people feel good. You get a beautiful apartment all for yourself, it's in Manhattan maybe or a dream house. It's equipped to the max, beautifully furnished, wonderful appliances, multimedia system. And as you move in though, you develop an obsessive disorder, a very strange obsessive disorder where you literally can't bring yourself to dispose of any trash. You can't use the garbage disposal, you can't take the garbage out, the trash out every week, you can't flush the toilet. Now how long would it take your dream house to turn into a hell hole? Well that depends on a lot of factors that I don't want to go through right now, but it wouldn't take very long, would it? Taking out the trash is one of the essentials of all living organisms. Every living thing builds up waste products that have to be disposed of daily. Every breath we're taking in oxygen, we're excreting carbon dioxide. Every cell goes through this process every moment of every day. Step ten is about taking out the trash. And that you're married to someone or you have a roommate who took daily personal inventory in this way. So if they reacted to you and angered during the day or coughed an attitude or dropped the ball on something you were counting on them for, before the day was over they would promptly admit it to you. Step ten is about being the kind of person that you would want to have as your roommate or the kind of person that you would want to be married to. Someone who takes the trash out every day. One of the early letters in the Jesus movement opens with a celebration, an exposition of the good news called the Gospel. God doing for us what we couldn't do for ourselves says in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with his grace which he lavished on us. And then later in the letter it moves toward the transformed life that this grace accepted produces over time and we have this in the fourth chapter of the letter to the Ephesians. Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. In your anger do not sin, don't let the sun go down while you're still angry and don't give the devil a foothold. He who has been stealing must steal no longer but must work doing something useful with his own hands that he may have something to share with those in need. Isn't that just amazing that Jesus' brand spirituality is so oriented around sharing and around giving that the reason for work is so that we can have something to share with those in need. Don't let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs. I'm talking with someone I think, oh yeah, they have a need and the conversation isn't just about my need to express what I want to have to say, according to their needs that it may benefit those who listen and don't grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander along with every form of malice, be kind and compassionate with one another, et cetera. The context of course of this chapter four is to everyday life and interactions that we have every single day with people. In step 10, you could think of as a powerful tool to put this verse into practice, verse 26, in your anger, do not sin, do not let the sun go down while you are still angry. Now as I look at that text, I see two ways of putting this into practice. One is to let go of your anger and sometimes that seems like a really hard thing to do because sometimes anger has such a hold on you that to let go of it seems like the hardest thing in the world but thankfully there is another option that's in the text here. If it doesn't work for you to let go of your anger, you have another option, you can prevent the sun going down and still walk this out. So God always gives us choices, whichever one you want to choose, you go with that. It's all about taking out the trash, get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander along with every form of malice. These are the waste products, I don't know about you, but these are the waste products that we accumulate every day of our lives it seems. Isn't it interesting that so much of this trash is tied in one way or another to anger and the wonderful modern insights concerning anger is that it is an emotion that has a real use and it's okay to be angry and all that. Anyone who's been born before 1970 or in the last generation or so from Mr. Rogers and others has got that down but there's another side to the anger coin and it comes out here in the twelve steps and the twelve traditions, a great little introduction to the twelve steps. I just recommend it as wonderful spiritual reading for anyone. The writer says, "Is this Bill W who put this together?" Not sure. It's a movement that's called Alcoholics Anonymous, it's sometimes hard to figure out who wrote what but it is a spiritual axiom that every time we're disturbed no matter what the cause, there's something wrong with us. Is somebody hurts us and we're sore, we're in the wrong also. Strong statement, but are there no exceptions to this rule? What about justifiable anger? If somebody cheats us, aren't we entitled to be mad? For us of AA, these are dangerous exceptions. We have found that justified anger ought to be left to those better qualified to handle it than we. Isn't that just a wonderfully humble perspective you find here and it's really a biblical caution as well. Anger is like every emotion intrinsically good. God Himself experiences anger and that's part of His holiness. Jesus experienced anger, holy anger. In fact, there are times in the gospel where it says the healing of Jesus is always rooted in His compassion but sometimes it's rooted in compassion but it comes also through anger. There were specific episodes in the gospel accounts when Jesus was provoked to anger and out of that healed somebody and you can read about that if you read the gospel's highly recommended reading for you. So anger is obviously something that is good but what this author is saying is our brokenness is such that we often drive a truck through that. You know, either we have one response to anger which is any time I'm angry, I must be wrong and I can't be angry and then you just repress it and then it pops out in all sorts of ridiculous ways and sprays people in your life left and right, you're not even aware of it. Or often, especially more recently, so we've gotten the idea that anger is something to express is we justify anger and all of our anger feels to us just entirely justified. Anger is the most empowering of the emotions. When you feel it, it's like a fire and it's like, yes, this is the way the world works and you always feel very justified sometimes in the grip of anger and that's really the ugliness of a lot of religious anger, so-called righteous indignation is often infested with an awful lot of our stuff and a lot of our ego. That's why James, the brother of Jesus, wrote, "The anger of man does not work the righteousness of God." I know a few weekends ago, I was talking about what it means that we are empowered evangelicals and I was trying to differentiate our movement, the vineyard, others like it from the charismatic and Pentecostal movements and I was saying that we're interested in the spirit and the healing and those things that are the specialty of Charismatics and Pentecostals, but we don't want to get into the foolishness of some Charismatic and Pentecostal methodologies and some of the doctrinal distinctives and whatnot and part of that is just because I turn on the cable TV and I see these guys that are doing a thing and it's just so much foolishness to me sometimes and it irks me and I've sat under some of that and I've done some of that and I know what that is and I know it's just not something that brings honor to Jesus, it's such a mixture of stuff and so I had a couple of people afterward and said, "Hey, I went to a Pentecostal church and I just thought those people were wonderful and oh yeah, I forgot to mention like the person who mentored me when I was a brand new Christian that age 18 was a Pentecostal man from India or that most of what the vineyard has learned about healing and the power of the spirit are things that were first pressed out by Pentecostals and Charismatics in the 20th century. You want to read a wonderful book about the Pentecostal movement, read a book called Fire from Heaven by Harvey Cox, Professor of Religion at Harvard who is part of the God is dead movement and in the introduction to his book Fire on Heaven, a study of Pentecostalism worldwide, he says we were wrong about that God is dead, thing he's alive and well and he's working all over the world so but that's the way anger is, it's easy for us to drive a truck through it so there's this caution in the 12 steps and the 12 traditions. This is all part of the trash that we have to dispose of most of us every day. I want to just to recommend an exercise for doing this, for actually making step 10 a reality in your everyday life and call it the bedtime exercise of daily awareness. I'm very pleased with because it is an acronym that says bed, bedtime exercise of daily awareness. So it's better to go to bed with the bedtime exercise of daily awareness and I'm very pleased with myself. This is rooted in Psalm 4 which is sometimes called the bedtime Psalm. In your anger do not sin, it's not familiar. When you are on your bed search your hearts and be silent. Offer right sacrifices and trust in the Lord and the Psalm ends, I will lie down in peace for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety. This is the Psalm that is echoing in Ephesians chapter 4. In your anger do not sin, don't let the sun go down on your anger. Now the way I do it is I do my little night prayers. The way I used to do night prayers was go to bed a little bit later than I wanted to, want to get to sleep real fast and so I think about something that was tough the day and I go, "O Lord Jesus!" And like sigh, "Dear Lord Jesus!" And then I try to go to sleep. I did that for years, that was my night prayers. I thought, "You know there has got to be a better way." At the whole point of like walking with God is that you could like get his perspective as part of your perspective. So I picked up this, have I mentioned? And you know if you are intimidated by like doing this twice a day or three or four times a day which are the options, it's really worth it just to do the night prayers. You just have it at your bed stand and they are the simplest of the prayers. So like last night, Saturday night here, they call it "compline." This is why the liturgical churches need help, there is just some marketing things there. Nobody knows what "compline" is but it means "night prayers" I guess so. May the Lord almighty grant me and those I love a peaceful night in a perfect den. Our health is in the name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. Oh yeah, I forgot. And then often there is this little prayer, "Almighty God, it's a little confession of faith. My heavenly Father, I have sinned against you through my own fault and thought and word and deed and in what I have left undone. For this sake of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, forgive me all my offenses and grant that I may serve you a newness of life to the glory of your name." And that kind of gets you warmed up for this whole idea of doing a step nine in your bedtime exercise of daily awareness. And then it's got a few other things and you're done with your night prayers. Well I usually park this bedtime exercise of daily awareness right in the middle of my night prayers. I'm able to do this most nights and it's been working great. And here's like four little steps for this little exercise. You begin by inviting the Holy Spirit to shine in your heart as you walk through your day event by event. And when I say this, I don't mean it as a mere formality. I mean you invite the Holy Spirit to shine in your heart and He will do that. If you like, take a deep breath, kind of relax, calm down, take a moment maybe to be still in your bed. Here when you're inviting the Holy Spirit to be that light in your heart, who the Holy Spirit is. He is the Spirit of Jesus it says in the New Testament. The Spirit of Truth is referred to as the counselor. Holy Spirit is the advocate. The Greek is paraclete. It means literally the defense attorney. So the Holy Spirit is there not only to shine light on maybe some of the things that you did wrong that night but also to defend you against your own voice of condemnation or accusation or the dark powers of this world that try to jump on our case with accusing voices and really paralyze us from dealing with our stuff. So this is a good presence to have working in your heart for this exercise. So invite the Holy Spirit to shine in your heart. Secondly, begin to walk through your day in your heart, in your mind, event by event. I do it starting with the morning and go forward. You might want to start from where you are at night and go backward. But whatever way you can just recall what happened through your day event by event. And first of all, you're looking for blessings. You're looking for gifts from God during the day, maybe that you didn't have an opportunity to thank Him for because you were in such a hurry. You know, in modern life we just go through this hurry thing all the time. Eugene Peterson says, "Hurry is violence committed against time." I like that. Hurry is violence committed against time by meditating on your bed, by going through your day, looking for the gifts, thanking God for the gifts you're offering right sacrifices, thanksgiving sacrifices, and your heart is getting reoriented towards trusting in the Lord. You can savor those blessings that you blew past in the day through a little time of thanksgiving at night. So for me, I always start with waking up in the morning and seeing, usually, Grace is the first person I see, my daughter, and I thank God for her, and just whatever interaction we had. I can't see, I usually see second, and I just thank God for my wife, and then, you know, I'm sorry, I thank God every time I do this for my morning coffee, because I just so enjoy my morning coffee, and if I had a little quiet time with God, with the coffee, I thank God for that. And then whatever meetings I had through the day, or people I interacted, and some, you know, thankful thing I have to offer, and then as you're going through the day, though, you're going to note some disturbance in your emotional force field, whether it be anger, or anxiety, or fear, or irritation, or confusion, or sadness, or frustration, or something like that, that one of those events evokes as you're recalling them. This requires, a little sidebar, this does require an awareness of feelings. I just figured this out recently, that feelings are called feelings, because we're supposed to feel them. I thought feelings were like these distractions that would crowd my day, and I needed to, you know, note them, and observe them, and analyze them, and push them out of the way, and what are they called? They're called feelings. I wonder why they're called feelings. Maybe because we're meant to feel them. Oh, that's interesting. How would you do that? And someone shared with me this idea that feelings are things that we experience in our bodies. I would tend to think of it as well, it's all happening in my mind. But feelings are things that we actually experience all over our body. So I would maybe occasionally wake up in the middle of the night, and I have an intense ache in my thigh or my calf that's not a Charlie horse, and I've learned that's fear. Or I've learned that I feel a worry in my, just kind of in my gut, a kind of a vague, uneasy feeling right here, or apprehension tends to be like in the back of my neck or joy. I kind of, well, it just all sorts of different ways that you feel your feelings and your body, and as you just tune into that, you can become more aware of your feelings. Now, I'm speaking here, especially to members of my own gender, because I very much suffer from male pattern, maleness. And for those of us with male pattern, maleness, there's sometimes a little kind of a limitation that we experience in the area of feelings like that kind of gives you the idea. So being aware of your feelings doesn't mean you become subject to your feelings or preoccupied by the awareness of your feelings, is when you can just use them and go with them and also not be ruled by them. So pick the most prominent emotional force field disturbance as you go through the day and talk it over with God. This is a spiritual discipline. You're talking it over with God. You will probably, as you start this, lapse back into mulling it over in your mind by yourself. But you always want to go back to talking whatever it is over with God. So if you're angry with someone through an interaction, well, complain to God about them. Just whatever it is that you're thinking, complain to God about them. The Psalms are filled with complaints of the psalmist towards all sorts of people around them. And the complaints are kind of petty sometimes. They're overstated at other times. They're not balanced. They're not with like really clear perspective because God wants to be involved in our lives. There's a wonderful line in the Psalms in the evening, in the morning, and at noon day, I will complain and lament, "He will bring me safely back." I think from whatever tangent I am on internally, God who is enthroned of all, who's been there, who's done that, who's seen it all, God will hear me. You don't have to like engineer some kind of a pious feeling in your mind for God to hear you, God who is enthroned of all, who's seen it all, who's done it all, he will hear you with your complaint and with your lense. So make it to him directly. Now while you're talking over whatever your emotional force field disturbance may be, you will become aware perhaps of your own fault in the interaction. That's a gift from God. Do that gift, let yourself feel sorry, sorrow for that fault of yours, and admit it freely to God. He may nudge you in that process to admit your fault to whoever you faulted that day. That person's lying next to you. You might want to take care of it right there, but someone that you work with, you make a mental note, and you take care of that tomorrow, but that's essentially your step 10 is happening in this framework, continue to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. Now here's that we should have another sidebar on promptly admitted it. Maybe your capacity to admit something promptly is like a rusty old hinge, is rusted from disuse perhaps. It's a wonderful song, a pop song, a baronaked ladies, fall male pop group named the baronaked ladies, I guess. It's one week, one week since you looked at me, cocked your head to the side and said I'm angry. Five days since you laughed at me saying, get that together, come back and see me. Three days since the living room I realized it's all my fault, but couldn't tell you. Yesterday, you'd forgiven me, but it'll still be two days till I say I'm sorry. That guy had a rusty hinge didn't he, I mean, he needed some oil, he needed some WD-40 for his rusty hinge. He needed some penetrating oil, he needed to be oiled by the Holy Spirit, by the love of God poured out in his heart, so if the first movement of your rusty hinge might be kind of rough, there might be some resistance to admitting these wrongs, but the more you oil it with God's love and then work it, oil it, work it just like you do a rusty hinge. Put the oil in first and work it to get it around, more oil, more weight pretty soon. Your capacity to admit things freely and quickly just comes along like you wouldn't believe. In time, you're able to promptly admit what it used to take you years to admit. You're taken out the trash, you know, like it's meant to be taken out every day or in smaller portions, so you walk through your day like that, then you finish your walk through the day, mindful of the gifts thanking him as they occur to you. Now, if you think this sounds like a really onerous exercise, let me just gently suggest that you might be missing something. It could be that your hinge is a little rusty, so this idea of moving it to freely admit, promptly admit something might be a little overwhelming to you. It could be that you're missing the pleasure of Thanksgiving in your life. I've been, in my journey, I've been asking God to just make me more thankful. And a couple of weeks ago, I had a wonderful moment, I was driving my daughter Grace's eleven to her ballet class in the Detroit area, it's kind of a long drive. On the way back, we were working on our multiplication tables, she was reviewing them for sixth grade, and then the rest of the ride home, maybe ten or fifteen minutes, it was just quiet in the car, and the sun was going down, and it was that nice sunset type time, post-sunset where it's like really dark on the horizon, and then the deep blue of the sky, and you kind of imagine that there are stars, like people used to see stars before they lived in cities, and out of that kind of stillness from the back seat, Grace just pipes up and says, "Thank you, Daddy." And wow, did that feel good, I had to think, I wonder what she's thanking me for. I guess it was driving her to ballet, or maybe helping her with her multiplication table. And I felt such intense pleasure at being thanked, it caught me off guard, and then I realized this is how God experiences it when I thank Him. I thought, "Wow, I've got some power to just do this for God to give Him this pleasure, isn't that sweet?" And then it was like one week later, I was talking to my mother, daughter, I won't mention her name because she's sitting right over there. And you could maybe go up to afterwards and say, "I didn't know you were Ken's daughter, and that must be really hard living in the fush fishbowl, and I sure hope you're perfect, you know? I don't think you should experience any doubts because you're a pastor's kid, and your behavior should be really, you know, perfect, and do that after you've had your chance to blast on with the pastor's opinion, now I'm kidding, you guys wouldn't do that. Where was I? Oh, so I'm talking to Amy on the phone, and at the end of the conversation, I think she invited some friends of hers to church, and they came and they liked it, and she was just happy about that, and sharing that with me, and at the end of the conversation she said, "Thanks, Dad, for having a church that I'd like bringing my friends to." And I said, "Well, you're a welcome." And then when I hung up, I realized, "Man, she had a sweet spot for me," because that's like one of the driving motivations of my life, is to have a church that my kids want to bring their friends to, and their kids, and that's even, in a sense, it's one of my conscious motivations, it's like right down the center of the middle of what I'm spending my life doing, and without probably even realizing it, Amy hit my sweet spot with a word of thanks, and I just thought, "Wow, I could do that for God." I could have some understanding of what motivates his heart, and when I experience something that is the result of his heart's motivated love for me, I could say thanks to him in a way that would touch that in him, and it would be even more powerful. And then I read, "I've got a spiritual director," because I'm a special case, I need extra help. And my spiritual director wrote a book, Don Postamized, he's right here in town, seven year old retired pastor, and it's from Louis Sneads, who passed away recently, was out of fuller seminary, and Sneads had just gotten me all clear, I think maybe he had cancer or something, he got me all clear from his doctor, and he writes this, "I was seized with a frenzy of gratitude." He's an old guy at this point, so you get a picture of this, "Possessed, my arms rose straight up by themselves, a hundred pound weight couldn't have held them at my side, my open hands, my fingers spread, waving, twisting, while I blessed the Lord above for all the almost unbearable goodness of being alive, and this good earth, and this good body at the present time, I was flying outside of myself high, held in weightless lightness as if my earthly existence needed no ground to rest in, but was hung in space with only love to keep it aloft. It was then I learned that gratitude is the best feeling I would ever have, the ultimate joy of living. It was better than sex, better than winning the lottery, better than watching your daughter graduate from college, better and deeper than any other feeling. It perhaps is the genesis of all other really good feelings in the human repertoire. Maybe he's exaggerating, but if it's half true, it means that we've got this pleasure available to us every single day if we only just take the time to go through our day, and if we've heard past a blessing to thank God for it, I like the availability of this particular pleasure every single day, isn't it? So I'm thinking if this seems like an onerous exercise to you, maybe a rusty hinge there, or more like you just haven't tasted lately the sheer pleasure of thanksgiving in this way. Then the final thing is you close with a closing prayer, which for me is like, "Oh Lord, help." So just to go through it, these are available online under Ken's Corner at our web page, and I made a few extra copies that are on the soundboard there, that black soundboard. If you want to pick one up, a bedtime exercise for daily awareness, invite the Holy Spirit to shine in your heart as you review the day's events, walk through the day in your mind, event by event, pay attention to the blessings, thank God for them, pick an event that brought up a negative feeling, talk it over with God, admit any wrong, move on, finish your walk through the day, mind flow the guests, thank you as they occur to you, close with prayer. Now if you find that you can't do this because it's just overwhelming to you, this is a good thing to try because it's a kind of a diagnostic for your life. If this stirs up too much trash so that to do it night after night is just overwhelming to you and you'd rather avoid it, that may be a sign that you need to do a step four and a step five from the twelve steps. If you've got a lot of trash that is accumulated over the years, you may need to take special measures to get rid of what's built up there. You've got more than you can fit into your Ann Arbor City allotted 30 gallon two containers for a week. You need to take special measures, you need to rent a big dumpster maybe to fill that up, that's what step four and step five are all about. So if this feels overwhelming to you, then that might be diagnostic for you. Unless it's close with the text we began with, "In your anger, do not sin. When you are on your bed, search your hearts and be silent. Offer right sacrifices and trust in the Lord. I will lie down in peace for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety." I think of another text from Philippians that I might just read for you to ponder that I think is this exercise is a way of actually expressing in your life every day, goes like this, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything. Buy prayer and petition with thanksgiving." Not by mulling alone by yourself, but oh boy, I'm starting another sermon I can see. through the text. In everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving present your request to God and the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable. If anything is excellent or praise worthy, let your mind dwell on these things and the God of peace will be with you. We're going to ask the band to come up and we're going to close with communion and some time for worship. I just like to maybe close with a word to people who are maybe starting off their walk with God through the modality of the twelve steps. Maybe you're coming to grips with alcoholism or you're suffered as part of an alcoholic family and needing to get some internal things rewired or dealing with some other kind of an addictive process that's got you by the tail. You've been finding that the twelve steps is really like a pathway to sobriety. Maybe you've come up to this whole business of surrendering to God as you understand Him and you're trying to figure out, well, how do I understand Him? Because your answer to that question is a very important one. The twelve steps doesn't deal with the content of God's character except by implication, but how do you understand God? And what Jesus brand spirituality is all about. It's saying that we see the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus, this person in space and time, that God Himself wants to come into space and time where we live our lives. And Jesus is the way He comes into space and time, into our lives. Well, think about who is it you want to spend the rest of your life with doing a step ten, going over your day with, promptly admitting your own faults to and with. Who would you like to do that with? Who do you want to do that with for the rest of your life's sake? And I've been doing that with Jesus. And this is why I think I would recommend Him. I'll just be honest, I would recommend Him as the highest of the higher powers for this reason. Jesus is the one who first of all identifies with sinners. He was baptized at the beginning of his ministry for the forgiveness of sins, John's baptism. He, the sinless one, took on baptism because he was coming down to sinners level, identifying with us. That's powerful. Not coming at us from over and above, but coming us alongside, identifying with us, almost like he taken sinner as his last name, the family name of the human race. He identified with sinners. And then as the gospels unfold, it's clear he befriended sinners. Like he liked sinners. He made friends of sinners. Abraham, it says, is the friend of God, but Abraham was a righteous man in his generation. Jesus befriended sinners. He befriended me as a sinner. I like that. And then third Jesus saved us as sinners by his sacrifice on the cross, where somehow, mysteriously, all the pain of the world, he absorbed in that crucifixion, all the sins of the world. In some mysterious way, he just drew on to himself as the representative of the sinful human race, taking on everything, all the way of that sin. That's why when we take our sin to that crucified Jesus, it offloads. We can release it to him. He saves sinners. And I'm just thinking, wow, this really qualifies him for being our higher power. If we're dealing with the stuff that we're dealing with every day, maybe you can concoct some better image of God that is philosophically more neat and tidy, or that you could write a book about and get lots of money. But for my money and for my life, I just want to recommend him. That's all I want to say. And so if you want to make him your higher power, what I just encourage you to do is, why don't we stand up now? And we're going to have communion. And as you come forward to maybe receive this communion, that you would understand you are receiving the body of Christ, broken for you, the blood of Christ, shed for you, and that you would really just, by an act of your will, an act of surrender, make room for Jesus as the Lord, as the high one in your heart. And then begin to live that life with him, if it would be meaningful for you. We'll have some people over on the sides here. And as you come forward for communion, you want to just stop off and get some prayer and tell them that you want to connect with God in this way. They can help you to kind of pray through that or make that connection. If you have any needs today, especially I think if God has been stirring in your heart about just some trash that needs to be taken out, maybe some anger related stuff or whatever. I just want to encourage you if you need some, just oiling of your heart to deal with that stuff. That's the role of the Holy Spirit. As you come forward, you'd be more than welcome to stop off at the side for some prayer for someone from the prayer team to pray with you. If you have any physical needs, like healing today, we'd be so honored if you would allow us to pray for healing for you. So Father, we thank you for this time. We thank you for this meal, which has been set before us in the presence of everything in our lives that is arrayed against us as a sign that you God are for us through your Son. We thank you for what this signifies, the body of your Son broken for us, the blood of your Son shed for us, God doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. And we pray, Lord Jesus, as we share in this meal with you, we'd experience intimacy again with you, the friend of sinners, and that we could take you on and follow you and let you do your work in our lives to the glory of your name. Ask this Father in Jesus' precious name, amen. So we'll just form two lines down the center aisle, maybe the ground floor first, and then as you come by, just go to whoever's open, take some of the bread, or this is obviously America. So if this is meaningful for you, you're invited. And then back to your seeds, or again, stop off at the side if you want some prayer. [BLANK_AUDIO]