So, uh, if you have been here for the last few weeks, we've been talking about the tree of life. We're in this series right now called the Tree of Life. We are a tree of life church. For years, the tree of life has been our unofficial symbol as a church, and this year we said, let's just make it our symbol. And so it's the tree of life, and we have t-shirts. In fact, I'm wearing the red one. The red ones just came in. If you like red, get them because they're gonna be gone soon. Um, and then we'll just have to make new ones. So it's false scarcity, but whatever. Um, you know, like we just said, hey, let's, we're a tree of life church. And if you've been here for a while, you've heard us talk about that. I don't have time to recap the whole thing. I want to honor your time. We got started a little bit late this gathering, so I want to honor that and talk faster than I normally do, which is amazing. I can do that. Um, but seriously, don't have time to recap the whole thing. Essentially, it boils down to this. In the very first pages of the Bible, there's this tree called the Tree of Life. There's another tree called the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. You may be familiar with that story. We chose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That's us choosing as people to just do it our own way. That, hey, God, we we want to figure it out for ourselves. We will decide what is right and wrong for us, we will decide what is good and what is not. And we live in a world that reflects that. Our world is daily defining what is good, what is evil, what is right, what is wrong. The problem is sometimes what our world declares is right is wrong. Sometimes what our world declares is wrong is right. We're not good at defining right from wrong, good from evil, but we chose to do that. And God never intended that. He wanted us to live at the tree of life. Where it's not about the rules, it's not about the do's and don'ts, it's about a relationship with God. It's about God working in you and through you. When you try to approach God through the tree of the knowledge of the good and evil, that's you saying, I'm gonna do things for God. I'm gonna do all this stuff for God to please God. That's you striving and exhausting yourself. That's religion. And God doesn't want that. The tree of life, it's not about doing things for God, it's doing things of God. It's God working in you. Ephesians 3.20, God can do anything you know, far more than you could possibly ask or imagine, but he doesn't do it by pushing us around. He does it by working within us, his spirit deeply and gently within us. That's what God wants. We want to live at the right tree. We want to be a tree of life church. We want to have a tree of life relationship with God where we're experiencing what God promises to do. We're actually experiencing God changing us and making us into new creations, new people. And it's his work, not our own. So we've been talking about what it really means and looks like to have a tree of life relationship with God, and we've been focusing on three terms: rooted down, growing up, and reaching out. We didn't just come up with these terms in some meeting with a whiteboard. This is from Scripture, Isaiah chapter 37, 31 and 32. It's a prophecy about the people of God, and he says, one day you will put roots down, you will grow up and flourish. Some translations say, grow up and bear fruit, and you will spread out, you will you will reach out. Think about the branches of a tree. So to be a tree of life church, to have a tree of life relationship with God, it means you're rooted down in your faith. That's what we talked about last week. You have sustenance, you have stability. That means you're rooted in the love that God has for you. If you're here this morning and you don't realize that God loves you, like he absolutely loves you, and he sees all the annoying, stupid things you do and think, and he loves you. That's just true. All the stuff you try to hide from other people, he sees it all and he loves you. You can get sustenance from that. If you're rooted in his love for you, you will you will have what you need to sustain your life. You want to be rooted in his truth. Roots give a tree stability, and so when we know his truth and we're rooted in that, our lives have stability. We stay grounded. We're rooted down in our relationship with God. Today we're gonna talk about growing up. Next week, it's about reaching out, and that's what it means for us to be a tree of life. Church. Now, I brought a prop with me. I'm not usually a prop guy, but uh today I thought this would be appropriate, and it almost fell over in the first gathering, so pray that it doesn't. Although you guys are at a safe distance, so you should be fine. So this is a gigantic ruler, right? And it's it's a little misleading. I am not over six foot tall. It hangs up at my house a little bit off the ground, okay? This is in our kitchen, and we use this to uh to measure the height of our children. And I love it because I've got four kids, and so there's lots of notches on here, but there's gonna be a lot more before they they grow up and move out. Like, hopefully, statistically speaking, one of them will live at home for a very long time. But um, I'm doing my best, right? So there's lots of notches on this. If you're sitting close and you see some like squiggly lines, that's not because our kids were doing some weird growth thing. Uh, it's because I have a two-year-old who's about to be three named Judah, and he thinks that the whole world should be colored with Sharpie. And so our carpet, our furniture, our walls, and this have all been the victims of Judah's uh artwork, his handiwork. And because he wrote on this, not only will we remember how tall our children are and were, we'll remember how tall Judah was when he went through that phase. It's great. It's good to have memories. And so every year on our kids' birthdays, or right around their birthdays, we we put another notch and we measure them. And I've got a child with a birthday on February 3rd, February 21st, March 29th, and April 6th. And so in the next few months, a bunch more of these. By the way, pray for us. Because, like, we go Christmas, two birthdays in February, one birthday in March, one birthday in April. It's nuts. It's like six months of just expensive stress. Um, but it's good. It's good. Children. I I love what this represents in my home. Because it represents the certainty and the expectation of growth. Like growth is not a possibility for my children, it's a certainty. And there's an expectation for growth. Now, I I as a father have a healthy expectation for growth. When Lily turns five in just a few weeks and she steps up to be measured, it's not like I'm gonna go two inches? Seriously, Lily, two inches? Yet a whole year, a whole year, and all you could muster up was two inches? I'm not gonna do that. And like when my my oldest, when he turns nine and we put a notch around here, I'm not gonna look at him and be like, come on, man, you you say you're a basketball player. Have you seen basketball players? They're like up here, like, come on, put in the work. He's nine years old. You know, it's not like I've I've added to the the the gene pool there to help him out. So I have a healthy expectation for growth, but just as crazy as it would be for me to be upset with my kids because they're not six foot tall, it would be insane if I didn't think they were gonna grow. Like it would actually be crazy if I expected my five-year-old girl to be the same height at five that she was at four. It would be crazy if I was surprised that my nine-year-old had grown in a year. If I was like, whoa, you grew. I did not see that coming. I actually thought this was gonna be one of those years where we went down a little bit. You know? You'd be like, that doesn't happen. That's crazy. And and just the same, our Heavenly Father has a healthy expectation of our growth. He has a healthy expectation. He he believes that we should grow. He believes that we will grow. Sometimes there's this idea in our faith, and it's kind of a modern invention, it's just not found in scripture, that you know, you give your life to Jesus and you're a mess. And we are, we're all messes. We say all the time at his hands, we love messy people. We do love messy people. If we give our mess to God, he turns it into our message. But we all have a mess. And there's this idea that's developed over time that's like basically the gospel says, you're a mess, you got a lot of work that needs to be done, and look, you're really not gonna get much better, but God loves you. You give your life to Jesus and you're still a mess, and your life's still falling apart, and it's crazy, and you can't really figure it out, and you're not gonna do much better. But hey, good news, even though it's all crazy and awful, God loves you. And obviously I'm paraphrasing, that's not the words that are used, but there is this idea that we don't really change that much. We really stay the same. You know, this is just who I am, but God loves me. That is not the message of Scripture. If I gave you a Bible and you read it and you believed it, you would walk away expecting to grow. You would actually you would actually expect to become an entirely new person. You would expect God to do something in you that is so powerful, so miraculous, that the old you is is basically dead, and there is a new you that is brought to life. That's the promise of scripture that you will grow, that you will mature, that you will develop. And some of us are here today and maybe we're struggling and we're frustrated. You need to hear this. You are not done growing. You are not done growing. Listen to this promise that we see in the book of Psalms. Psalm chapter 92, verses 12 through 14. But the godly will flourish like palm trees and grow strong like the cedars of Lebanon. For they are transplanted to the Lord's own house. They flourish in the courts of God. Even in old age, they will still produce fruit, they will remain vital and green. In other words, you don't ever outgrow growth. I love the language here, by the way. It's really powerful. It says they are transplanted to the kingdom of God in his courts. And in old days, you know, kings had all the resources in the world at their disposal, and they're very impatient. So if you were a king, you weren't gonna plant seeds and wait for those to grow. You're gonna go find trees you already like, fully grown trees somewhere else, maybe someone else's trees, and you would have those trees removed and then planted, transplanted in your palace. And what it's saying is that when we give our lives to Jesus, that our very lives are transplanted and then planted in the house of God, in his presence. And there, once they're there, they're fertile and they're cared for and they grow. There's a promise and an expectation of growth. We we see this in Galatians chapter 5, verses 22 through 23, but the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things. It says that if we're connected to God, we're gonna grow and produce fruit. And there's an expectation there. It's not a what-if scenario. It's not, it's not like the the author here, Paul, is saying, Hey, wouldn't it be crazy if you became more patient? How cool would it be if God filled your life with more joy? It's not even multiple choice. It's not saying some of you are gonna get joy, some of you get patience. And those of you who who God hates get self-control. You know, that's not what it says. It says, no, no, God's gonna give all of this to all of you, that you will grow in love and joy and peace and patience and kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. This stuff's just gonna grow in your life. There's an expectation for growth. This is something that Jesus talked about often. Sometimes in really, really intense ways. I love the intensity of Jesus in Matthew chapter 7, verses 15 through 20. He's he's actually speaking out against people he calls false prophets or false teachers. These are people who act like they're from God, but they take the words of God and they twist those words to fit their own narrative. Maybe it's for their own benefit or they're ashamed of the gospel, they're ashamed of the message of Jesus because it's countercultural. So they take the message of Jesus and they adapt it and make it more like what culture says. It comes in a lot of shapes and sizes. But he says, beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves. You can identify them by their fruit, that is by the way they act. Can you pick grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? A good tree produces good fruit and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can't produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can't produce good fruit. So every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. Ooh. Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions. And we have to understand the context there. It's a warning that Jesus is giving to a specific group of people who are standing in his way. But still, you see the expectation for growth. That our God expects us to grow. Just like when I look at this, I I'm reminded my kids are gonna grow. God looks at you and he sees a future you. God looks at you and he sees the growth that you're capable of. He doesn't think you're done. He doesn't think you've you've reached full maturity. It says that even the old trees that are transplanted to the palace, they will continue to grow and produce fruit and thrive, that we never outgrow growth. And I want us to ask this simple question of ourselves this morning. Do I expect to grow? Like, think about think about the year you have ahead. We're still early in the year. Early enough that 2019 still sounds wrong, right? Like, wait, no, it's not, it can't be. It's almost 2020. It's crazy. We're still early in our year. And so when you think about this year, I have a question: do you actually expect to grow? Do you actually believe that you're capable of growth and that God wants to grow you and that God is going to grow you into a person that is not the same person that's sitting in your seat right now? Do you expect to grow? Because I hope you understand God does. And when you have a tree of life relationship with God, you grow. You just do. Now, as you ask yourself this question, do I expect to grow? Maybe you're thinking about some of the areas that you wish you would grow. Maybe you're even thinking about some areas that you thought you would have grown in by now but haven't. We all have that. And I want to be really careful. I want to make sure we guard our hearts against discouragement as we talk about this. Because here's the reality: we have an enemy, his name's Satan, and he's a jerk. God is not a jerk. Do we all believe that? He's not a jerk. He's not. Satan is. It's really basic. And we're taught in scripture that what Satan does is he accuses us. He's constantly accusing us, constantly telling us that we're we're less than we are. He lies. And he'll lie in a lot of different ways. Sometimes he'll inflate our egos, get us to believe that we're higher than God. But I think one of the things he does a lot, especially with those of us who've already said yes to Jesus, is he wants to he wants to make us feel like we're small. He wants us to feel like failure so that we're not motivated, that we're not useful, we're not doing things for God's kingdom. And so I want to be be careful because as we talk about growth and as we really, and I'm serious, I want you to challengely ask yourself, am I expecting to grow? And as we explore that, don't let Satan discourage you by by telling you that you're not gonna grow. Not you. Maybe some other people around you, but not you. You've you've messed it up, it's you're too far gone. That's not the way it works. Have your hearts be on guard for that. Because growth's kind of a it's it's a funny thing. Like, how many of us realize that growth always happens slower than we'd like it to happen, right? Anyone, anyone believe that? Like the way that you would like life to go is it's just way slower. Amen. Growth is slow sometimes. We have to remember some things. It's people we're impatient. We're the ones that invented microwaves, not God. Right? God invented fire and it's totally fine for cooking anything. And we went, takes way too long. Microwaves. Like we invented that. In God's world, things tend to grow kind of slow. And we we can get so frustrated at that. Sometimes the reason we're frustrated with our own growth is because we're expecting ourselves to grow faster than is possible or even healthy. Like if someone comes to you and says, Hey, I lost 25 pounds last year, you're like, way to go. If someone comes to you and says, I lost 25 pounds last week, you're like, go to the hospital right now. That's that's that's not supposed to happen, you know? Because a lot of times real growth, real progress, it happens slowly. A friend of mine told me once, and it was an encouragement and really like sage advice. You ever have someone that says something, you're like, if that is not a book title, it should be. I was hanging out with a friend of mine named Jeff, and it was a really funny scenario because we were in a swimming pool with our children and we were being hit uh repeatedly in the face with pool noodles, which is not where you expect someone to give you sage advice, you know, in that scenario, you know, shirtless and hairy and getting hit in the face with pool noodles, and you're like, oh, that's thanks for that life advice. I'll always remember that. Um, but we're talking about life in in between getting punched with pool noodles, and and I was expressing frustration. He, by the way, he's the hairy one. I'm not a very hairy man, but my friend Jeff can grow a beard in like a minute. Um, very hairy man. So he's talking to me, and I'm just saying, dude, it's just this isn't happening like I thought it was, this isn't going the way I thought it would go. And he said, Well, you know, pool noodle. He says, just remember, man, things that grow slowly tend to grow strong. And I was like, ooh, I'm gonna use that. But I'm giving Jeff credit. Like, things that grow slowly tend to grow strong. So don't be discouraged if you have slow growth. As I'm asking this question, as you hopefully are asking this question of yourselves, like, am I actually growing? Am I experiencing discernible growth in my life? Am I expecting to grow? Well, maybe that growth is slow. And don't be discouraged if it is. Also, be careful not to compare your growth to the growth of others, because the funny thing about growth is that it happens in spurts. Sometimes there are seasons where you grow quickly, and sometimes there's seasons where you don't. And if you compare your down season to someone else's up season, their growth spurt, you're gonna get really discouraged. See, religion likes to create a bunch of these measuring sticks for seeing how godly we are, how well we're doing in life. The world has all kinds of these. This is a measuring stick for financial success. This is a measuring stick for physical health. There's all these measuring sticks in the world, and Jesus, he doesn't have one. He kind of is the measuring stick, right? And so religion would create one, and as far as how you're doing in a relationship with God, it's like, here's Mother Teresa. She's a six-footer. Right? Where are you? Like if Mother Teresa's at six feet, do we all know who Mother Teresa is? I realize I'm old enough now that some people are like, who's that? Like, you ever have that moment sidetrack? Um, I was at the gym playing basketball, because you know, I'm such an athlete. This was a few months ago. And uh, that was a joke. And this kid, some of you are gonna get this, some of you not, but like this kid after a game looked at me and said, Man, I wish I was a little bit taller. And I said, I wish I was a baller. And some of you are like, What it early 90s rap. Um and he looked at me, confused, and I said, I wish I had a girl who looked good, I would call her. And he's just like, What are you talking about? He's like 17 years old. And I was like, Oh, I'm old. Oh, I'm now old enough that you just accidentally made a pop culture reference, and I went with it, and you have no idea. You were just, I was like, Don't, I'm don't worry about it, you know? So I say that because I say Mother Teresa, and there's probably some of us in the room young enough, like, I don't know who that is. Super godly woman, she's not alive anymore, she's in heaven. We're like super sure of that. So um, Mother Teresa, she's a spiritual six-footer. And if I'm saying Mother Teresa's here, how many of you are gonna come in and be like, I'm five, five, nine? Anyone? Anyone? No? Anyone a five-footer if Mother Teresa's at six? Okay, I got a couple five-footers. Nay, I agree with that. Um, how many of you are like, I'm I'm in the low twos, somewhere down here, right? But see, that's what religion does. It creates a measuring stick when you compare yourself to other people and judge if you're you're here and who else is there. That's not how it works in God's economy. Jesus is the measuring stick. So here's Jesus. Where are you? Yeah. Where's Mother Teresa? Yeah, same place. You know why? She is just as dependent on the blood of Jesus for salvation as you are. So, like, Jesus destroys the measuring stick. But we like measuring sticks. We like to compare ourselves. And so as we talk about growth and as you ask the question, am I growing? Am I maturing? Hey, I'm just gonna let you know up front, if you start comparing your growth to someone else's growth, you're gonna be discouraged. You're gonna be discouraged. So don't do that. Now, all that said, and we're gonna wrap this up fast. We got 10 minutes, let's do this. All that said, are you growing? Don't be discouraged if it's slow. Don't compare your growth to other people and get down and say, man, they seem like they're growing fast. Don't worry about all that. But all that said, guard your heart against that discouragement, but are you growing? Because if there is not discernible growth in your life in your relationship with God, something's gotta change. Because you're meant to grow. And he expects you to grow, and you should expect to grow. You should expect to grow and become more like Jesus. And if that's not happening, if you can't look at the last few years and see discernible growth, something has to change. Because God wants to grow you, He He wants to grow you. So I ask her, are you growing in love? Let's use that as an example. Are you growing in love? Jesus said the two most important things are to love God and love people. In fact, if you really love God, you will love people. And you really can't love people if you don't love God. Like, we need God's love to help us love people, because some people are really, really hard to love. All right? Like, are you growing in your your love for people? Because you should be. We should be. Like the idea of a Jesus follower who who likes people less and less as as he or she gets older, like that that doesn't make any sense in the world at all. In fact, in Galatians, when it says that the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, generalness, self-control, um, you can read it like a list, or the way it's written in the original language, it could also be read as if it's saying the fruit of the spirit is love, and then all those other words are descriptors of what love is. And the Holy Spirit will produce that. So are you growing in love? Do you love people? Do you love God? What about knowledge? Are you growing in your knowledge of God? There's an expectation of that. 2 Peter 3, verses uh verse 18. Rather, you must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Hebrews 6:1. Let us stop going over the basic teachings about Christ again and again. Let us go on instead and become mature in our understanding. Like, do you know about Jesus? Maybe you've been following him for years, but can you quote him? We should be able to do that. Here's the interesting thing about knowledge. When you love something, you have an amazing capacity to learn about it. And so some of you in the room might say that you're not like a genius, but you love, you love maybe a certain sport, and you can rattle off the rankings of all the teams, all the statistics of all the different players and all these kinds of things. And it's like, wow, you say you're not smart, but yet you have a crazy amount of very specific knowledge. It's because you love that thing. And when you love something, you learn about it. It's just natural. I have friends who are really into like the stock market and the economy. And I look at the stock market reports when they come up on the news, and I'm just like, cool numbers, you know? And and usually they they they make the numbers green if they're good and red if they're bad, and that's good enough for me. I'm like, oh, it was a bad day, you know? And other reasons I'm like, seems like a pretty good day. But I I'm not that guy, I'm not Mr. Investment. And so I don't know much about that, but I have friends that can tell me what all the abbreviations are for, the Dow and the NASDAQ. Like, I know the DAO, I think, but the NASDAQ, I don't even know what that means. I'm just like, oh, the NASDAQ's not going well. I don't know what that is. Sounds kind of like, is it NASA? Is it a space shuttle? I don't know what it is. Um, but like I have friends who can tell me in detail what all of this stuff is, and the reason why is because they love it. And so they learn about it. I guarantee you that in this room, every single person here is an expert, like an expert in something. And there is something you have like a near infinite amount of knowledge about because you love it so much you've taken the time to learn about it. Do you know the Lord? Do you love him? Like if you love him, you should learn about him, right? If you love him, you should want to know what he said. You should want to know what he taught. You should you should desire to grow in your knowledge of his word and what he's done and the history of all the things that God has done. Like, I love God, I should want to grow in my knowledge of God. Jesus did that. Read the teaching of Jesus. He's always quoting scripture, he's always quoting the Bible. And the reason he's quoting the Bible is because he read it. He studied the scriptures, and he didn't even have it like an iPhone with a Bible app on it. He had to go to his local synagogue and unroll a scroll. They hadn't even invented books yet. Like books didn't exist when Jesus was alive. Think about that. He had to go to a synagogue, unroll a scroll, and he poured over it. And he learned it because he loved God. When you love God, you learn about God. Are you growing in your knowledge of God? And if you're not, like, start. Watch what happens. What about obedience? What about obedience? Are you more obedient to the Lord today than you were a year ago, two years ago? As people were not naturally obedient. That's why it was really dumb for us to choose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because it's all about the law. Like we don't we don't follow the law very well. Some of us in the room are cops. I know a few of you. I'm looking, I know two cops right now that are not uniformed, and so be careful about raising your hand. Um and guys, I don't know if you can arrest me for what I'm about to say, because I don't think it was in your jurisdiction. But yesterday, I'm in downtown Atlanta, um, and uh and uh my son, my oldest and I were going to see a Georgia Tech basketball game. Um, and so it was we had to park like a mile away from where the stadium was, and it was raining, and so we're like booking it to get there. And the few times we stopped at a road, and you know, the the hand was doing this across the street, but there was like no one coming. And the hand was was red, and I'm like, hey, we can go. And we crossed once. I can just see the judgment in those two police officers' eyes. Um we crossed once, and Liam looked at me and he said, Was that illegal? I was like, Sort of. You know? And he looked at me again and I was like, Yeah, we'll wait the next time. You know, it was one of those moments where we just we do that as people, we we naturally say, Oh, yeah, I'm gonna, I believe in right and wrong, and sometimes. Because there are a lot of things that we know are right or wrong, and we choose to do it or not do it based on convenience, you know, based on the circumstances, like if it's raining or something else. Like if you love something though, you you follow it. And if you actually believe that God is God and you love Him, you should walk in obedience to Him. One of the hardest things for me to do as a pastor is sit across from people whose lives are falling apart. And maybe it's their relationships, but they're not doing their relationships the way God says to do it at all. Or maybe it's maybe it's their finances, and it's like you don't God loves you so much, He's given us instructions, and He said, Hey, if you do this, it's gonna work out for you, it's gonna go well for you, but you don't follow that. Because it's not convenient. It's not convenient to follow God, but it works. He never promises a life without troubles, but he does promise that those who walk in his footsteps, that those who follow him, he promises blessing. I'll use a great example real quick and we'll move on and wrap up. Baptism. This is a conversation I have I have often. Um we we have this concept in our culture, church-wise, today, that like you get saved, meaning you give your life to Jesus, right? You you trust him with your life, you realize I can't do it, I need help, save me, and and he does. And then people are like, and then you know, I'll figure out when I'm ready to get baptized. And that's like a modern invention. That did not exist in the early church. If you were in the early church and you got saved, if there was a river over there, we're like, let's go get baptized. You would never have said, meet me three weeks from now and I'll baptize you. And the concept we have now of like, I've given my life to Jesus, and now I'm just gonna wait until I'm ready to be baptized, that would be like if you got married to someone and said, Yeah, we just got married and we're gonna kind of wait and see when we're ready to move in together. Um, you know, which would probably work better than the other way around, but whatever. So, like, it's like that's a that's a thing that that we've kind of invented. We've put this artificial gap between going all in with Jesus and like going all in with Jesus. But baptism is just a step of obedience. That right away, when you give your life to Jesus, he says, and baptize, like baptize all nations in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, that baptism and salvation, they're not the exact same thing, but they go, they should they should happen like really quickly because there's no reason to wait. There's no reason to, it's this meaningful thing. And so I say that if you're a follower of Jesus and you haven't been baptized, get baptized. That's the next step of obedience. Just do it. Sign up today. Literally, go out in the main lobby today, sign up to be baptized. I would love it if you created a problem for us and we had to figure out how to how to get this many people baptized. We have hoses, but done. You know? No, no, seriously. We won't baptize you that way. I'm sorry. That's not because it's not biblical, actually. The the dunking and raising up, that's symbolic, it's important. But but I'm serious, if if you are a vol if you're a follower of Jesus and you haven't been baptized, why? And and you should. Because it's it's a step of obedience. If you love the Lord and you want to grow, just take the next step. Don't don't resist your own growth. There's no there's no tree that does that, by the way. In worship team, you guys can come out. There's no there's no tree that does that. There's no such thing as a tree that resists its own growth. Right? Like it all of a sudden it's the fall and it's like, no, I'm holding on to my leaves this year. You know, I like these leaves. I know these leaves. We become close. There's no there's no such thing as a tree that does that. Trees don't resist their own growth, but we do, because we have the ability to resist what God is calling us to do. But when we do that, all we're doing is resisting our own growth. Do you expect to grow this year? Do you do you want to? Does anyone want to grow? Does anyone want to be a different person a year from now than you are right now? Good. Good. I'm not saying that you're bad people, but I don't want to be the same me. I don't want to be me 12 months from now. I really, really don't like the me from like three, four years ago. We should grow. And here's the beautiful thing about it as we wrap up. You're not the one that has to make the growth happen. Because just like there is no such thing as a tree that resists its own growth, there's also no such thing as a tree that grows by its own effort. That doesn't happen. There's no such thing as a tree that's tired because it's working so hard. They just grow. But you ever think about this? I'm not a scientist, so I'm sure there's a really deep scientific explanation for this, but trees that are like 200 feet tall used to be this big. Like a seed. And it got planted in the ground, like an acorn fell, and a squirrel didn't get it. I don't know what the squirrels were doing, because it would take a long time for an acorn to like sit there and actually make its way, but whatever. Lazy squirrels. And it gets in the ground, and a few hundred years later, it still exists. It's just a giant tree. Like that's crazy. It really is when you think about it. It's a miracle. Those trees that grow to be so huge, so so tall, so powerful, they're not doing it themselves. If you could talk to that tree, which would be a useless superpower, but if you could, and you could ask it, like, man, how are you doing that? It would just go, I don't know. It just happens. And what I want you to understand is that when you connect yourself to Jesus, when you give your heart to him, when you go all in with Jesus, when you make sure that your roots in your life, that your hope and your confidence is in Jesus, you will grow. You will grow, and you won't understand it. You will not understand it. Sometimes I wish I could go back 20 years ago, 10 years ago, especially 10, to the Justin from 10 years ago and just punch him. Because I don't think I can hang out with him anymore. Like if he was around like 10 years ago, Justin, like, you ah, dude, you gotta go. What's who is it? Was that me? And my wife will tell you right now that the Justin of today really needs to not be the Justin 10 years from now. She's hoping for growth. And we should grow. You hear what I'm saying? Like, we should grow, we should expect to grow. God looks at us and he's like, I can't wait to see you grow. I've got these things prepared for you, but you won't have them unless you're you're you're you're not where you are today. I have these things prepared for you, these blessings for you, but you have to mature to be ready for them. And we we can't stunt our own growth. Jesus in Luke chapter 8, you read this later because we gotta go. Jesus in Luke chapter 8, he says that if you if you're obsessed with the cares of the world, if you're obsessed with the pursuit of wealth, if you're obsessed with the pleasures of life, that you will not grow into maturity. So there are things that you can do that can stunt your own growth. You can be obsessed with all the worries and cares and anxieties of the world, you can pursue money as if it's God, you can be obsessed with all the pleasures this life has, all the passing fleeting pleasures, or you can put all that stuff aside and you can look at Jesus and you can plant your life into Him, and if you do that, you will grow. So let's be people that grow together. Transplanted into the house of God. If you're here this morning and you've never given your life to Jesus, he is real, he is powerful, he does things, and he wants to work in your life and he wants to make you into someone that you could never become otherwise. It doesn't matter how big your goals are, how disciplined you are, it doesn't matter all the things you figured out in life. If you don't give your life to Jesus, you will never be the person you're meant to be. Because he knows who you are. He created you, he invented you, he weaved you together, he knows you. And if you give your life to him, you will grow into the person you're meant to be. But you've got to give it to him. And give it to him now, like today. Give your heart to him completely. Go sign up to be baptized right away. Like just go all in, no looking back, hold nothing back. Let's be people who grow. Are you ready to grow this year? Just give your life to him. Day by day, every day. Say, I'm yours, I'm planted in you, I'm rooted in you. Let's grow together. Do you expect to grow? Because he does. Pray with me. Jesus, thank you so much for your love. You're so good to us, God. You're so good. Thank you, Lord, for every person that's part of this place. Thank you, Lord, for all the work that you're doing. So excited next week, Lord, to see so many people going all in with you. Lord, help us have a heart as a church that celebrates that. We love you, Jesus. We're so excited about who you are and what you're doing, and we pray that you would fill our lives with everything we need to grow in you. Help us be people that have a true expectation of growth because you do, Lord. And we ask all this in your name. Amen.