Your experience in life is so influenced by your expectations for life. There's very few things that actually shape what you experience in your everyday life than your expectations. In fact, you could say that your expectations affect your life more than anything else because one of the only things you actually have control of in life is your expectations. And so we've all experienced what it's like to have misplaced expectations and then experience disappointment, frustration. This applies, by the way, to every aspect of your life: your job, your expectations in your marriage or a significant romantic relationship. Those of you who are students, your expectations with school, your expectations with your friends, your expectations with God. If your expectations are misguided or off, you are set up to have a very frustrating experience. But if you have the right expectations, you're poised to have the best possible experience in life. So here we are at the outset of a new year. We're early in 2021, and so far it's proven to be every bit as uneventful as 2020 was. Nothing really's happened, you know, it's just another year. But here we are at the beginning of another crazy year, and we have this opportunity. And the opportunity is to actually let God shape our expectations. To allow God to help us align our expectations for life this year with who he is, with what he has planned. That's what we're here to do. And this morning, we're gonna ask God to help us set an expectation in our hearts related to him. That's what we've been kind of doing week by week so far. And the expectation this morning is really simple. Expect God to do something new. Expect God to do something new. And with that in mind, if you don't mind, I'd like to pray. God, I pray that you would you would shape our expectations this morning. God, I pray that you would speak through through the scripture that we're gonna share together. I pray, Lord, that you would speak through our conversation, that you would, you would help us allow you. Give us the wisdom, Lord, and the surrender needed to allow you to shape our expectations so that we can experience what you have for us. And we pray this in your name. Amen. I want to get a little bit of a feel for the personalities in the room. And those of you watching online, by the way, comment, interact in some way so we can know where you're at on these things as well. I want to know who my free spirits are, who the wild cards in the room are versus the creatures of habit. So let's use this scenario to set this up. Let's say you're at a restaurant and it's a restaurant you really like, you've been there many different times. Are you more likely to order something you've had before, something you know is really good, you love it, you like it, you're gonna go with that because it's tried and true. Or are you more likely to say, you know what, I'm gonna roll the dice and I'm gonna order something I've never ordered before? How many of you are the wild cards? You're like, I'm ordering something I've never ordered before. Okay, I'm just getting a sense. How many of you are the creatures of habit? You're like, I'm going with what I know. Notice there are a lot more hands up on that second one. And you know, it's funny, I am I am a creature of habit, especially when it comes to food. Like I have this, I maybe you guys can relate to this. I've got some restaurants that I love to go to. Like there's this sushi place that I really love to go to. Sushi might be a bad example because I don't know how adventurous you want to be with sushi. Um, it might be one of the few few foods where you're like, no, no, no, stick to what you know. But uh, but I have this sushi restaurant, and and a friend of mine took me there two, three years ago, and it's become like a staple. Uh, it's it's amazing. It's something I like once a month, just sushi. And I have ordered the same two sushi rolls from that restaurant every single time I've eaten there. The first time I went, what I got, I loved it. I was like, this is amazing. This is the best two sushi rolls ever. And I've ordered the same two rolls every time. And I do the same thing every time I go, I get a menu. I don't know why. Um, but I get a menu and I look through it and I'll even tell myself, you know, that looks pretty good. I might try that. But then when the person comes around to take the order, I just end up going with what I know. Like, has anyone else ever had that experience where you even tell yourself, I'm gonna try something new, but then at the last minute, you're like, nah, I'm just I'm going to the familiar. Anybody else or just me? Yeah, yeah, creatures of habit, right? Now I married a wild card because Megan is one of those people like when I hear a waitress or a waiter say, Would you like to hear the specials this evening? I'm like, no. Um, I don't, because it's not on the menu. There's not a picture of the special. You know, I want to see it. I want to be as sure as I can be. But Megan's like, yes, tell me about the specials. And she is very likely to order the special, which to me is crazy because if it's a special, that means they may have never even cooked it before. They just kind of came up with this out of the ingredients they had laying around. Megan, though, she's like, bring on the special. She's kind of a wild card, but she's rare. The truth is, most of us in life are creatures of habit. Now, maybe there's one area of life that you're a little bit more adventurous in than others. But when push comes to shove, most of us as people, we really are creatures of habit. We like things that are familiar. Sometimes we desire new things, but at the same time we just tend to gravitate to what we know, to what we we feel like is safe. That can actually become a major hindrance for our growth as people. Because sometimes we recognize areas of our life where we really want things to change. We recognize aspects of our life that we say, man, I want this to be different, I want this to change, but then we're actually hesitant to make the changes needed for that thing to change. It's like we want things to change, but we just don't want to change. God, is there a way that I can have everything change without having to change anything? That's something that I don't ever verbalize, but a lot of the times that's actually what I'm trying to do. Is there a way that I can get in really good shape, but I don't have to change anything that I eat or physically do? Is there a way to do that? Like on a serious note, in my role, I'll have people sometimes come to me and say, I just want this part of my life to change, want my marriage to change. And I'll say, okay, well, we'll get counseling. I don't know. Or someone will come to me and they have an addiction and they're like, hey, I want to be free of this. And I'll say, okay, well, well, this one thing that you cut that off completely. Don't do that anymore. And they're like, ooh, I don't, I don't know. But that's human nature. It's a human nature thing. We want things to change, but we don't want to change things. The reality is we have a God who changes everything. Now, now, those of you that have been following Jesus for a while, um, how many of you have heard a phrase similar to this? God loves you the way that you are, and he just wants you to be yourself. God loves you the way you are, and he just wants you to be happy, be yourself. Has anyone ever heard some version of that? I kind of call that like Disney theology. Anything that sounds like it's a little bit of Bible, a little bit of a Disney song. You know? Because every Disney song is like, you're awesome, you're amazing, just be you, and it'll be great. And then I realize that as a 38-year-old, most of the problems in my life stem from me just being me. Um, so Disney songs haven't haven't helped me out a lot. Disney theology hasn't gotten me where I want to go. The reality is that's that's partially true. God loves you exactly the way you are. If you are here this morning, it does not matter what you've been through, what you've done. You might have shame and guilt attached to decisions that you've made in the past. You may feel like you've missed it. I want you to know, those of you watching from home, I want you to know God loves you the way you are. He's crazy about you, he adores you, he's given everything to know you, he's given his son just so that he can know you. He loves you the exact way that you are, but he wants to change literally everything about you. Because he transforms us. That's a promise that he makes. He's gonna make us new people, new creations. We're gonna talk about that this morning. God loves you the way you are. But if you said, God, do you want anything in me to change? He would go, Yeah. I want to give you a new spirit. I want to give you a new perspective. I want to give you a whole new outlook on life. I want to give you a new understanding on who you really are and what you're made for. Yes, God wants things to change, but we tend to be pretty resistant to change. Change is almost a bad word to us. When things change, we're like, something must be going wrong. Right? Things are changing. But what if things changing is actually a sign that things are going right? Because what if we have a God who changes things? I want to look at an interesting story of Jesus. It's kind of a classic, Mark chapter 2, verses 13 through 17. This is so indicative of Jesus and the confusion that he caused when he stepped onto the scene. It says, Then Jesus went out to the lake shore again and taught the crowds that were coming to him. As he walked along, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax collector's booth. Follow me and be my disciple, Jesus said to him. So Levi got up and followed him. Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. Tax collectors were kind of the worst of the worst in their culture. There were many people of this kind among Jesus' followers. But when the teachers of religious law, who were Pharisees, saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, why does he eat with such scum? When Jesus heard this, he told them, healthy people don't need a doctor, sick people do. I've come to call not those who think they're righteous, but those who know they are sinners. This is a very typical exchange that Jesus has with the religious leaders of his day, the people that are often called the Pharisees. They basically look at Jesus and they say, You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. Why do you do things this way? And then Jesus will say something so brilliant, so clever that they just cannot even respond. Right? I came to help people who know that they're sinners, not people who think that they're righteous. Like that's kind of a, like honestly, my 10-year-old would say, sick burn. Like that's what he would say to that. But they don't really have a response. See, what you have to understand about Jesus' culture is that it was not a culture that valued change. Innovation was not something that the Pharisees valued whatsoever. Their whole focus in life was preservation. Doing everything they could do to preserve the rigid religious structure that they had grown up in. It was all about preservation, it was all about fighting change. And then Jesus shows up. And it's obvious that Jesus is from God. In fact, there's an amazing interaction between Jesus and a man named Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee, and he was like one of the highest ranking Pharisees. You can read about it in John chapter 3. And Nicodemus is really blunt. He's like, we know you're from God, because that's the only way to explain what you're doing. Jesus is healing sick people, he's performing miracles, he's doing things that only God can do. And Nicodemus is like, you're clearly from God. And then he basically says, but you're not doing what we expected someone from God to do. Help me understand, because Jesus, you're from God, but you're confusing us because it doesn't seem like you value the things that we value, and we're the God people. And Jesus basically says, You're not the God people in the way that you think you are. And you're right, I don't value what you value. See, Jesus came into a culture that that fought against change and he changed everything. He changed everything, he turned everything upside down. And the religious people, they didn't have a category for Jesus, they didn't know what to do with them. So we can keep reading in in Mark chapter 2. The very next set of verses says, Once when John's disciples, this is John the Baptist, Jesus' cousin, and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came to Jesus and asked, Why don't your disciples fast like John's disciples and the Pharisees do? Again, same thing with the whole tax collectors and having dinner with them. You're doing it wrong. Why are you doing it this way, Jesus? This doesn't make any sense to us. Why are you doing this? And Jesus said, Do wedding guests fast while celebrating with the groom? Of course not. They can't fast while the groom is with them, but someday the groom will be taken away from them, then they will fast. Besides, who would patch old clothing with a new cloth? For the new patch would shrink and rip away from the old cloth, leaving an even bigger tear than before. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins, for the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost. New wine calls for new wineskins. New wineskins were flexible. So wine as it ferments will expand, and new wineskins could expand with the wine, but an old wineskin would be set in its structure and shape. And if the wine inside of it expanded, it would burst. And Jesus says, Look, guys, I'm doing something new. I'm doing something that hasn't been done before. And if I'm going to do what hasn't been done before, your old ways of thinking, your resistance to change, the fact that you're such creatures of habit that you can't even tolerate minor deviations from what you view is right or wrong, like it's just not going to work. Jesus is saying, I've come to do something that's never been done before. I've come to do something new. And the only people who can really be part of it are people who are willing to embrace change. One of the biggest misconceptions about God is that he's against change. Now, God Himself in His nature is unchanging. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So God is always good. And he's always wise. God is always right, which is inconvenient for us as people. Because sometimes when we wrestle with God and we get into those arguments with God and we're trying to figure life out with God, like we don't understand what he's doing, he's right. And it's almost always us that needs to really, oh yeah, it is always us that needs to go, oh, I see, I'm thinking about this wrong. God in his character is always dependable, but but God is also constant and that he's always working to change things, to make things better. One of the biggest misconceptions that we can have about God, even as people of faith, those of us in the room who would say, Yeah, I'm a Jesus follower, I'm a person of faith, is that we can believe that God is done changing things. That God did all the change in the past, that all the big things that God is going to do, he's already done. That all the biggest miracles, all the biggest transformations, all the real change that God desires to do, he's done all that in the past, that's all kind of over, and now we're just kind of like the Pharisees were. We're just trying to preserve the way things have been. No, no, no. God is always doing something new. We see this, for example, in Revelation chapter 21, verse 5. The one sitting on the throne said, Look, I am making everything new. Now, Revelation 21 is like basically the end of the Bible. It's the end of the story of this sort of era when Jesus comes and what he sets up and where it's all heading, and it ends with God saying, I'm starting over, I'm making a new beginning, I'm making everything new. Because God is always making things new. He's always doing something unprecedented. He's always doing something that's that's never been done before. He does that in the world at large, but he also does that with us personally. I referenced this earlier, but 2 Corinthians 5.17 says this means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone, a new life has begun. And it's really interesting because these two verses in particular were originally written in Greek. And the Greek language has two main words for new. One is neos, and the other is keinos. Now, now Neos is something all of us are familiar with. Um, Neos would be something that is new in time, it's the newest version of something. It's not new in the sense that it's never existed before, but it's it's new in time, it's fresh. For example, if you've ever bought a new car, you bought a Neos car. It's new in time. But think back to whoever the person was that bought the first car. Because like that happened. At some point in history, there was a person that was the very first person to ever purchase a car, and whenever that person pulled into their house with that, just imagine what their family would have thought. Like, oh, that's that's new. Like this is a little different. I've never seen something like this before. That that car would have been keenos new. It's new in quality. There's never been anything like it. We actually don't experience that very much. Like if I asked you how many Neos new things have you experienced in the last year, uh, many of us would would raise our hands like tons, lots of lots of new stuff. How many keinos new things? We'd be like wearing masks. Uh that's maybe it. I don't know. The truth is, keinos new is really rare because it's something that's never existed before. Guess which word is used in both of those verses that we just referenced? It's keinos, absolutely. So God says, I'm making all things new. It's not God saying, I'm just kind of slightly improving everything a little bit. Sometimes we get our wires crossed and we think that God for us is about life improvement. No, no, no, no. God is so much more invested in us than just the idea of improving our lives incrementally. God wants to transform us. God wants to transform our lives, he wants to transform this world. It's not just him going, mm, this is a little off. I want to make this a little better. No, no, God wants to make things new, canos new, never existed before. And so when he says in Revelation, I'm making all things new, just trust me that when we have that moment where we're with God and He's able to make everything new, it's going to be unlike anything we've ever experienced. We don't have categories to even understand it now because it's going to be unprecedented. And when God says that He makes us, He makes you a new creation. When you give your life to Jesus, Scripture says the Holy Spirit comes and joins with your spirit. When that happens, you become a new person. It says the old life is gone and a new life has begun. It takes time, it's a process, but it's brand new. You are a new creation. Kenos, something that's never existed before. We have a God who does new things, transformative things. We have a God who's always doing something new, who always wants to change things and make them into something they've never been before. The question is, do we want to be people who experience the new? Do we? Do you? I mean, honestly, like we have to ask ourselves that question because we all raised our hands, most of us anyway, creatures of habit. Do I really want to experience the new? Do I really want to experience the new thing that God has? Do I actually want to experience the unprecedented? Do I actually want to experience the keynote's new thing that God is up to? Do I want to be involved with it or do I want to just settle for what I've experienced so far? But maybe just a little bit better version of that. Like that's actually a deep gut check kind of question you have to ask yourself. Do I really want to be part of the new thing God is doing? Because if the answer to that question is yes, then we have to be people who embrace the change necessary to experience it. And one of the tragedies of the story of Jesus is the number of people who almost experienced the new thing that he was doing. But at the very last moment, when they recognized the change that would be required, they said, you know what, I just can't. God is doing a new thing. My wife and I had a really interesting conversation a few weeks ago, and she was talking about Moses and the burning bush, and we talked about that on our first Sunday of 2020, and it's a classic story in scripture. And uh she was talking about the fact that a lot of people have described this last year as what is known culturally as a dumpster fire. Um, you guys know that phrase? Like if someone says, hey, 2020 was kind of a dumpster fire, you're like, yeah, it kind of was in 2021. We'll see. So far, seems that the dumpster fire might, I don't know. Dumpster fire. I actually saw Christmas ornaments that you could order online, and it had it was a dumpster fire, and it said 2020. Merry Christmas. It was like, it was kind of funny. And she just made this comment, and it's like been in my mind ever since. She's like, you know, what if what if 2020? What if this season that we're in right now? What if it's not a dumpster fire? What if it's a burning bush? What if it's God trying to get our attention? Saying something is about to change. Will you be part of it? Again, it's it's tough because as people we want to change. We want to experience the new things, but we we don't want to make changes. It's hard. But how do we actually get ourselves primed and ready for the new that God wants to do? I want to share really quickly three three steps. Three steps that if we take in our hearts, we're ready for the new. Number one, this is I I think maybe the toughest. So we'll just start with it. Number one, you've got to you've got to let go of your expectations. You've got to drop your expectations. In order to experience the new thing that God is doing, if you're expecting God to do something new, that means sometimes you've got to drop what your expectations of God Himself are or have been. Really interesting conversation that we see in Matthew chapter 11. John the Baptist, who is in prison, heard about all the things that the Messiah was doing. Now, for some backstory here, John the Baptist is Jesus' cousin, and he was actually called by God to preach and sort of set the stage for Jesus. And so he's out and he's talking to people and he's telling people, hey, the Messiah, the promised one is coming. Get ready. And people are getting baptized by the hundreds, and they're just getting baptized in preparation for what's about to come. So John the Baptist was faithful, and he did everything God called him to do to get things ready for Jesus. And when Jesus showed up, John the Baptist recognized that Jesus was the Messiah. He even told some of his disciples, Stop following me, follow that guy. A few of Jesus' earliest disciples just shifted from following John to following Jesus. And when Jesus became more popular than John the Baptist, John the Baptist was excited about it. He actually said, Hey, you know what? I need to become less and less so that he can become greater and greater. John the Baptist was a great man, but but we have this really interesting exchange. It says that John the Baptist heard what Jesus was doing, so he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, are you the Messiah we've been expecting? Or should we keep looking for someone else? Now, here's what you have to understand. Ever since Jesus stepped onto the stage, things have not gotten better for John, they've gotten harder. John was a bold, a bold speaker. He was someone who was willing to say the truth, even if it was unpopular, even if it was too a powerful person, and that actually got him in some trouble. He had offended the kind of local ruler of his area and been thrown in prison. And the ruler's wife in particular just hated John and wanted him go on. And so he was in prison awaiting execution. And you know, in his mind, is he always dreamed about what would happen when the Messiah finally stepped on the stage after he had faithfully done everything God had told him to do and he set the stage perfectly, and there he is, and there's Jesus, and he shows up, and John's like, There he is, I've done what I've been called to do. Now, God, what do you have for me? And I'm in prison awaiting execution. What happened? And so he's a little disillusioned. And so he sends his remaining disciples to Jesus to say, Are you the one we've been expecting, or should we look for someone else? And Jesus answers really bluntly, hey, look around. Look what's happening, look at the results. Blind people see, deaf people hear. People who couldn't walk before, they're walking around, like, yeah, I'm the Messiah, but here's the challenge. He is the Messiah, but he's very often not the Messiah we're expecting. One of the biggest challenges we have as people is not the challenge to not create a God of our own invention. Because sometimes what happens is that we we take our expectations of God and we actually make that a sort of idol. And it's subtle, but we almost find ourselves not worshiping God, but worshiping our expectations of God. So when something happens in our life and it goes the wrong way, it's harder than we thought it would be. It's not what we ever thought God would do. It doesn't meet our expectations of what following God means. Maybe things are harder or challenging. Maybe there's tragedy in our lives. We have a crisis because our expectations have not been met, and we always thought God would do this or that, and he's gone a different direction. What do we do? It gets heavy sometimes. This is a heavy example, but when I was in college, I had a professor, uh, Dr. Chance, really, really great guy, really serious, serious professor. In fact, one of the funniest moments in my life, and I I don't even know looking back why I did this, but I ordered a pizza to his classroom one day to him. And in the middle of our class, there was a knock at the door, and he opened the door, and there was a pizza guy, and the pizza guy said, I have a pizza for Dr. Chance, and he just kind of stopped because this guy was like super serious. Um professors didn't like me, but this is a different thing. Um so we kind of turned and looked at our class, and he actually looked kind of right at me, and uh, and then he just paid for the pizza. And he said, Hey, anyone want some pizza? And I came and I took two slices. It was great. Um, I got I should do this every day in every class. Um he was just a really, I had him like five or six different times, knew him pretty well, but he was a very serious guy. Now, my freshman sophomore year, he had a son who was who was about my age at the time, he was 18 or so, and he had a son who had a long battle with cancer. And his son actually lost his life. And that really sort of solidified some stuff with with Dr. Chance. He was he was angry, he was bitter. You can understand why. You have to have compassion for that. And he had this idea of God uh that he had started to really grab a hold of and really teach. And it's something in theological circles called open theism. It's kind of a boring thing, but I'll just explain it really fast. Open theism is a limited view of God. In other words, what it is, is it's it's saying God is real, but he's not all powerful. There's things that God can't do. And you might say, why in the world would you adopt a limited view of God? Well, here's the thing if you have a limited view of God, then you have this built-in excuse for how to deal with disappointment when things don't go the way you expect them to go, because it doesn't mean that God could have and didn't. And so one day my my wife was actually taking a class with Dr. Chance. I wasn't there at the time, but I remember, I always remember this story which she told me.

Dr.

Chance was talking about this idea, and so, and this is actually pretty unfair, but he went around the whole class, and every person had to answer this question Would you rather believe in a God who could have healed your son of cancer but chose not to? Or believe in a God who would have if he could have, he just couldn't. And my wife and only one other person can answer the latter. See, Megan, I'm in this boat too. I'd rather have a God who maybe knows better. At the end of the day, I would I would rather have a God who knows better than me. Because if I have a God who always meets my expectations, who always does what I think God should do, then I might as well just be God. Right? Because clearly I'm the one who really understands the way things ought to be. But but if I believe in the real God, I have to understand that that sometimes my expectations will not be met, and sometimes that will mean disappointment. But here's the other side of that coin. Sometimes it means that my expectations will be blown away. Sometimes that means that my expectations will be defied because I'm expecting far less of God most days than he's capable of. So do I want a God who meets my expectations or do I want a God who can defy my expectations? If you want to experience the new thing that God is doing in your life and in the world around you, if you want to be part of the new creation that he's building, you have to let your expectations go. Because God reads scripture very often, he's gonna do things that no one expects him to do. Look, Jesus, he called the people to follow him that no one expected him to call. And he talked about things that no one expected him to talk about. He seemed to value things that no one thought God would value. Let your expectations go and embrace God as who is. Let him shape your expectations. And when you deal with disappointment and heart and heartache, it's hard. But you can go to him and say, God, I'm confused. I'm upset, I don't get why this happened. But I trust you because I know that you're God. You've got to drop your expectations. Number two, we'll go through the next two pretty fast. Be flexible. Like be spiritually flexible. You don't have to be physically flexible. I'm not physically uh did I say that wrong? Physically flexible. I think I said physically flexible. That's hard to say. Um be spiritually flexible. Jesus used the illustration with the people who asked him about, hey, why don't your disciples fast of wineskins? And like I said a few minutes ago, new wineskins were flexible. They could expand with the wine, but old wineskins, they they just couldn't. We have to have the humility as people to recognize that we don't know nearly as much as we think we know many times. In fact, the Apostle Paul in the New Testament says, be careful of people who claim to know everything about God, because they probably don't know much at all. I mean, the older I get, the more I realize that what I what I think I know about God is like it's so much less than I ever could even imagine. That's why I rely so heavily on scripture. That's why as a pastor I don't just talk about what I've experienced and here's my observations. We say this sometimes from time to time at his hands, like, why settle for the observations of a person when you can have the revelation of God? That's why we lean into that because it's truth, and it's truth that that's so much more than our own ability to observe what's happening in the world around us and come to conclusions. We've got to be flexible, we've got to have humility if we're gonna experience the new thing, because that new thing that God wants to do in your life, it probably means some stretching. It probably means some some challenge. And again, we tend to be people who want things to change, but we don't necessarily want to make changes. And I don't know if you've ever like, I don't know if you've ever stretched before, like really stretched. Like anyone here, like a gym person, and you you know what it's like to actually stretch. How many of you, if you're doing something physical, you skip stretching? Like you just skip it, you're like, that's I don't have time for that. Yeah. We're good. Some of you don't even want to stretch enough to raise your hand. I get it, like I understand. You're just that inflexible. No, I'm teasing. Um years ago, years ago, I I hired a personal trainer. I was on a kick to get in really good shape. Didn't work, but I it for a while. Uh and and my personal trainer, what I realized is, and I'm not talking bad about all the personal trainers in the room, but some of you are masochists. Um, because basically hiring a personal trainer is like, why don't you hire someone to torture you? You know? Hire someone to make you feel pain you've never felt in places you didn't know existed in your body. And I'll never forget the first couple sessions we stretched, and I thought the I thought it was done. I thought that was the workout. And like, no, no, no, that was the stretching for the workout. I was like, oh. Because I'm in a lot of pain right now. And I don't, this is this is not this is not going well, but I already paid the money, and so I had to do it. Um, stretching is not easy, stretching is difficult, but it's necessary. We gotta be we gotta be people who are flexible. If 2020 taught me anything, it's just be flexible. Shift with things. Okay, God's going this way. Oh man, I thought he was gonna go that way, but he's going this way. All right, let's go this way. Gotta be spiritually flexible to experience the new. Final thing, really quick. This is a big one, though. You gotta give God your yes. Here's what I mean by that. Preemptively say yes to God. I think sometimes our success in life and in all the different areas of life, it's far less about making new commitments, and it's oftentimes much more about keeping the commitments we've already made. You know, so when things get really hard in my marriage, I often have to remember, oh, I said yes to her. And I said yes to things like for better or worse. And she said yes to me in the same way. It's tough sometimes to live up to that. And sometimes as people were not able to. And there's grace for that, by the way. There's grace for that. But when it comes to your relationship with God, you gotta say yes once and for all, on the front end. In the Hebrew language, the Old Testament written in Hebrew, there's this really interesting word, and I talk about it from time to time. I actually talked about it pretty recently. Um, it's something that God just keeps bringing to my mind right now. And it's this word in our in our translation, our English language, it would be like henene or henene. Um and what it means is I'm here. It actually would literally translate English to say, um, I'm here and I'm ready to do whatever you say. Like I'm I'm ready. I'm here and I intend to perform the following action. Okay, so it's not saying I'm here like present, it's saying like I'm here, I'm ready. And we see we see this actually happen in a few different aspects of scripture. I don't have it written down here, but we do have it on the screen. So for example, Isaiah chapter 6, bring that up, guys. Isaiah says uh Isaiah hears the Lord speaking. Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us? And Isaiah says, Here I am, send me. When he says, here I am, that's not him saying, like, I'm here. That's him saying, like, I'm here, and he's like stepping forward. I am here and I intend to do whatever you say. In 1 Samuel, there's uh the story of Samuel, believe it or not. And at the time he's a really young child, really, really young kid, and he's actually in training to be a priest. And it's a really, really cool story. Bring up 1 Samuel, I think it's chapter 3. Uh, one night Eli, who was almost blind by now, Eli's the priest, had gone to bed, and the lamp of God had not yet gone out. Samuel was sleeping in the tabernacle near the ark of the Lord. Now that's a lot of language, by the way, that if you're not familiar with the Old Testament, like, what does that mean? Um, this was just like their place where they worshiped and all the stuff in the place. Okay, the ark, the lamp, all that kind of stuff. And suddenly the Lord called out, Samuel. Yes, Samuel replied, What is it? He got up and he ran to Eli. Here I am. It's the same word. Did you call me? I didn't call you, Eli replied. Go back to bed. So he did. And then the Lord called out again. Samuel. Again, Samuel got up, went to Eli, said, Here I am, did you call me? I didn't call you, my son, Eli said. Now go back to bed. Samuel did not yet know the Lord because he'd never heard a message from the Lord before. So the Lord called a third time, and once more Samuel got up. He went to Eli. Here I am, did you call me? And then Eli realized, oh, it was the Lord who was calling the boy. So he said to Samuel, Go lie down again, and if someone calls again, say, speak, Lord, your servant is listening. Okay? And then this happens. So every single time that Samuel, as this young child, hears the Lord, even thinking it's it's Eli, he just goes, Here I am, I'm I'm here, and I intend to do whatever I'm asked to do. If you want to experience the new thing that God has for you, that he has for this world, you've got to give him your yes. You have to say yes to him, and it's a preemptive yes, and it's an all-inclusive yes. It's a yes that says, Lord, I don't know what you have for me, I don't know what I'm gonna have to go through, I don't know what challenges I'm gonna have to face, but I want you to know, Lord, that whatever it is, right now, you have my yes. The answer is yes. Again, that's hard, that's challenging, because what if we don't like what God asks us to do? I've said no to God before, I'm sure you have as well. But I've learned that when I say yes to him, when I follow through on the yes that I've already given him, when I gave my life to him, I experience the joy and the blessing that he has for me. You have to give him your yes. And worship team, you guys can actually make your way out. We'll we'll wrap up here. It's the start of a new year, and it's a great time to say yes to God. It's a great time right now, January, to say, you know what, Lord, 2021, you have my yes. What does that look like? Well, for some of us, that might mean saying yes to God for the very first time. You've never actually said yes. Some of us in the room, we've we've said yes to God. You know who you are. Some of us in the room, we've said maybe to God. And it's okay, maybe sometimes is a step toward yes. Sometimes we're at the point where God's challenging us, calling us. We're like, God, I might be sort of willing, maybe, to do that. You know, but the Lord doesn't really deal in maybes. He's patient, he's gentle with us, but trust me, there will come a time where He will He will ask you, and you've got to say yes or no. You've got to say yes or no. If you read the teachings of Jesus, he doesn't actually give a lot of room for like middle ground. Like he's either the Messiah or he's not. He speaks in very certain terms. And so, in very certain terms, we have to be people who either say yes to God and say it with our whole heart fully, or we say no. And if you've never said yes to Jesus before, I want you to understand it's so it's so simple, it's so beautiful and powerful. It's not some giant ritual you have to go through. It's it's a surrender where you say, you know what, Lord, I've I've been saying maybe to you for a while, I've been saying no to you for a while, I've been trying to improvise and do it my way for a long time, but you have my yes. I surrender, I put my faith in you, I believe in you because I want to be part of the new thing you're doing, and I want to experience that new person that you promised to make me. Say yes to him and say yes to him fully. It's just a prayer in your heart, and there's a step that you take really early in that journey, and it's the step to get baptized. And here in just a moment, we have someone getting baptized. In fact, Daniel and Nicholas, you guys can go ahead and make your way out. Um, they're getting baptized. Where are they at? They're coming somewhere at some point. I don't know. Oh, yeah, there we go. Let's hear it for Daniel. He's gonna get in the tank. I'll turn it over to you guys here in just a second. But this is a this is a step that we take. This is part of that that yes, that preemptive yes to God. But if if you're here and you've already said yes to God. You're like, I've been baptized, I've been where Daniel's at, I've I've been following Jesus for years. Whatever that is, this is the time of year to say that that phrase, that henani. You have my yes. I will be flexible, I'll drop my expectations because I want to experience you. God is good, he is powerful, he is doing things. Take a look around. We're living in unprecedented times because God might be up to unprecedented things, but we've got to be the we've got to be people who can who can roll with that, who can go with that. Let go of your preconceived expectations of God. Be a new wineskin, be flexible, and give God your yes. Commit to that in your heart and watch what he does. Watch what he does. He will not disappoint you. He will stretch you, he will challenge you. At times he might frustrate you, but ultimately he will blow you away. With his love, with his power, with his wisdom, he has everything you need. With that in mind, let's pray. We're gonna hand it over to these uh these awesome guys. Lord, thank you so much for this opportunity, Lord, this opportunity to be in your presence. Thank you to everyone in this room. Thank you to everyone who's watching from home, Lord. Thank you that we have the opportunity, the ability, the freedom to worship you as who you are. You are God. Jesus, you are you are so much more than just a man. You are one of us. You lived as one of us. But forever, you are the name above all names. You are the king of kings. And we when we surrender to you, when we give you our yes preemptively, once and for all, when we give you our yes and we live that out, we experience the new things that you're doing. So, Lord, I pray that you help all of us in this room, help all of us online expect you to do something new. That we would be people, Lord, who don't get discouraged when challenges come our way. We don't get despondent or disillusioned when we see chaos in our world. That instead, Lord, we actually get excited because we recognize that you're going to do something, that you're gonna do something new, that we would actually have an expectation. We would say in our hearts, ooh, I wonder what my God is about to do. Because you are a God who makes all things new. You start with us. You start by changing us, by changing our hearts and making us the new people you promised to make us. We thank you for that. We love you. We pray all this in your name. Amen.