So a few years ago, the Tim Tebow Foundation started this event called A Night to Shine. And what they do is they put on essentially like a prom this to the nines incredible experience for special needs kids all over the world. And this year we're partnering with the Tim Tebow Foundation and Woodstock First Baptist, which is really cool. Church is working together, like that should happen a lot. And we're putting on a night to shine together here in Woodstock, and it takes place here in just a couple of months, here in February, actually. And so we talked about it a lot at the end of the year, but in case you weren't here, there is still time to get involved. We need volunteers. It's gonna take about 2,000 volunteers to pull this off. That's how big it is, which is exciting. And we need people to help with everything from parking to setting up and tearing down. And if you're someone that does hair and makeup, like they need they need help with that. Um, every single special needs child that comes to this event has has a buddy, has someone that's with them the whole time to make sure that they have everything they need. That might be something you want to do. There are so many different ways to get involved. If you want to get involved, do us a favor, go to our website, hishandschurch.com. You'll see a link to a night to shine right on the homepage. Click that. You can fill out a form, or you can text Shine to that number. It's the same number we always have you text to, and we'll give you the information. We'll send you a link that you can sign up via that route if you want as well. But that's coming up soon, so let's just be praying for that, praying that God uses that to touch a lot of people, to show them who they are in his eyes, just like we we just sang, to show them who they are in God's eyes, who he says they are. All right, I want to start the message this morning with a weird question. I'm just gonna let you know on the forefront. This is a very bizarre question. Um, what are your thoughts on cannibalism? That's a weird question, right? So someone just said delicious in the front row and makes me nervous. All right. So that that question actually has uh like a personal connection for me, oddly enough, because when I interviewed here to work here 12 years ago, the very first question that Steve, who was the the lead pastor in those days, the very first question he ever asked me. I'd never met him before, never talked to him, not once. First question out of his mouth. What are your thoughts on cannibalism? And uh I didn't I didn't know what to say. I'm like, what in the what kind of question is this? I I was so nervous about interviewing here. I wanted to be here so badly. I I saw what God was doing here, and I wanted to be here. I was 23 years old, very little experience, didn't think I had a chance. I thought through all the possible questions he might ask. I I, you know, practiced. I was like, oh, if he asked about this, I'll say this, you know, and and I was thinking maybe he might ask something like really deep and theological, like, what are my beliefs about this and cannibalism? That's the question. And it caught me off guard, and I think that was the purpose, that was the point. We have always had a culture as a church where we take God very seriously, but we do not take ourselves very seriously. And I think he wanted to make sure that I was I was okay with that. Um, my answer, by the way, was I'm against it. I took like three seconds and I said, I'm against it. And hopefully we all are. Hopefully that's something we're all against. You know, it was just a joke. He asked it as a joke, but but honestly, for those of you who are employers, it is really good to have a cannibal free workplace. So feel free to throw that question in your interview process. I'll never forget the process of me interviewing to be here because it was one of the weirdest experiences of my life. It was just bizarre. I I never had anything like it. I interviewed with like 13 different people. I kept talking to different people. They'd be like, hey, we want you to meet with this person and talk. And I'd be like, okay, and we go out to lunch, and I go out with this person, and then hey, this person wants to talk to you. Go talk with them for a little while. One day, they had me come to the building because they wanted me to meet with a guy named Penn, who was our children's pastor back in those days. And Penn had two electric scooters, and he said, Hey, hop on, let's ride around the building as we talk. I'd never ridden an electric scooter in my life. I was like semi-terrified because they go pretty fast. And I was not prepared to ride around this building on an electric scooter having a conversation with a man I'd never met before. It was just, it was just odd. It was just odd. And it culminated, it culminated with Megan and I getting in our car to go back to Kansas City. Steve and Susan, who started the church, they said, Hey, we'll be in touch, but but before we talk with you again, we want you to listen to these three messages. And they handed us three CDs. And they said, Listen to those three messages because those messages will really help you understand the culture of our church. And we want you to listen to those before we talk. We said, okay, we decided we just listened to them on our drive back to Kansas City. And I remember we put the first CD in and it was blank. There was nothing on it. And Megan was like, oh, someone made a mistake. And I said, Oh, no, no, no, not these people. You know, no, no, no, no. Not these electric scooter cannibal question people. No, no, no. This is right in line with the way this whole process has been. I bet this is a test. They're gonna say, What'd you think of those three messages? And if I say they're great, they'll go, aha. One of them was a decoy. You're a liar, and we will not hire you. Um turns out no, one was just a mistake. Um wasn't a big plan. The second message we listened to, I do not remember at all. I can't tell you what Steve talked about. I can't remember a single thing about it. That's probably because the third message deeply, deeply impacted my life. The third message was this teaching that Steve gave on the tree of life. And it was a message that really became a foundational teaching for who we are as a church. You walk around the building, you see all the tree paintings, our youngest area of kids is called the garden, then we have the grove, then we have the tree house. There's all this tree imagery, yet we're his hands. And that's because that the Holy Spirit gave Steve this teaching on the tree of life really early on in our church's history, and it became a huge foundational part of who we are and the way that we want to relate with God and approach God and know God. And I'm a I'm a kid who who grew up in church for the most part. We started going to church in the fourth grade when I was in the fourth grade. My parents were way older than that. Um, started going to church when I was in the fourth grade because our neighbor invited us to church, and the very next week he was arrested by the police, and so he seemed like a really nice guy. He invited my family, he said, You guys should come to our church. And we said, Okay, he's great. And then the police came and took him away, and we never saw him again. But we kept going to the church. Kept going to the church. And so, you know, maybe he's in a jail cell right now, being like, I really messed up, but he's got something working for him. Like, our family went to church. That's good. And I grew up in church, and I remember the story of Adam and Eve and the tree of life. You probably heard the story. Even if you haven't grown up in church, you've heard the story of the tree of life, the garden of Eden, the forbidden fruit, all that stuff. It gets told all the time in lots of different ways. We find it in scripture in Genesis chapter 2, really early on. It's one of the first stories that we're given. It says, Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east. And there he placed the man he had made. The Lord God made all sorts of trees grow up from the ground, trees that were beautiful, that produced delicious fruit. In the middle of the garden, he placed the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There are these two very, very specific trees, very important trees. In Genesis 2.15, it goes on to say the Lord God placed man in the garden to tend and watch over it. But the Lord God warned him, you may eat freely from every tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruits, you are sure to die. One of my downfalls as a leader sometimes is that I'm really bad at giving specific instructions. I speak in very general statements. So I might say something to the team like, Hey, let's really bring out the big guns. And they're like, What does that mean? I'm like, I don't know. Um I think just do your best, you know? Like, yeah. Uh God's not like that. God gives very specific instructions. He's like, hey, see all these trees? Have at it. See that one tree? Don't. If you do, you'll die. You cannot be more clear than that. And yet, you know the story. You've heard this before. How does it end? They stay away from the tree. They listen to God's warnings. They they live connected to Him. It's great, it's wonderful. No. They eat from that, that stupid tree. They eat the forbidden fruit. Everything kind of goes to pot. It's just it's the story of humanity. And that's how I read that story growing up in church. Every time I'd hear it, every time I'd open up my Bible and read Genesis, I'd be like, oh, that's a story of how mankind just can't get it right. Mankind messes up, God makes a perfect world, He hands it to us, and we just mess it up. That's what we do. That's about as deep as that story had ever penetrated my heart. That's about it. But I put this CD in my car driving to Kansas City, Missouri, 12 years ago. And I heard Steve give this message on the tree of life. And it's a message that used the tree of life to frame God's God's heart for people, his intention for our relationship with us, this symbol of what it actually looks like to have a life-giving relationship with God. I never heard a teaching like it. It literally changed my life. It became this filter that I started looking at life through. Am I living at the right tree? And this morning I want us to go back to that teaching. I want us to revisit something that the Holy Spirit gave us years and years ago. You know, at the beginning of a year, we have a lot of words that begin with the letters Ari that we get excited about, or maybe we don't get excited about, but we think we need them, like resolution. You know, we want to be re-energized, we want to be renewed, we want to be rejuvenated. Well, sometimes the best way to have that happen is just to revisit something that God has already said. And so I want to do that this morning. And and some of you maybe you've never met Steve before. Um, a couple years ago, Steve came by here and we sat down and interviewed him and we filmed him talking about the history of our church. We were having our 10-year anniversary at the time. And so we brought Steve in, and one of the things he talked about at length was the tree of life and this teaching that God gave us, gifted to us as a church that's defined who we are. And so what I want to do for just a few minutes is show you a clip from that interview, give you a chance to hear it directly from the horse's mouth. In this case, the horse is Steve. Um and uh, you know, he's probably gonna listen to this and said, You call me a horse, and you know what? He owes me ten bucks. And so I'm he actually doesn't uh at all. I don't know why I said that. But uh but he's he's the horse in this analogy. So let's listen to the horse and then we'll come back together and keep talking. Sound good?

Understanding the tree of life and God's word, I think, is the key to understanding all of God's word. It's actually the key to understanding our relationship with God. Um there's a tree at the very beginning of the Bible in the garden, the tree of life. There's two trees of life at the very end of the Bible in Revelation, they're on either side of uh of a river. In fact, those leaves of those two trees of life heal the world, it says, that heal the nations, or the world is as we would say it. But the story of the tree of life is so misunderstood, and God so clearly started uh his communication with us with that story. And so you know the story. The there's this uh beautiful garden, Adam and Eve are there, they've got a relationship with God, they walk with him in the morning, they talk with him. Uh they're completely free, they're not worried about what they're wearing, they're not worried about their appearance. Uh they've got someone that they love, they're in a loving relationship with God, they're in a beautiful place, they've got responsibilities that they enjoy. And there's two trees in the garden. One is this tree of life that God says, you know, you can eat freely from this tree. Come, you can, you know, picnic under the tree, you can just uh be with this tree of life. And uh the other tree had this forbidden fruit. It was the one that if you eat from this tree, it it says you will surely die. And so when we think of this tree, we have a lot of things to jump in our mind. You know, what kind of forbidden fruit? Is that a sexual sin? Is that greed? Is that envy? You know, what what types of possible things could be this forbidden fruit? But the tree was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Uh it was simply the rules. Uh that is the tree that would cause death. You know, Satan came along and said, hey, this will make you like God or godly, we would say, if you just know the rules. But God and his ultimate wisdom and how he created us, uh, he knew that we had this choice. The choice was do we want to be in relationship with God, a life-giving, loving relationship, or do we want to focus on the rules? And so Adam and Eve got to choose for us, and they didn't do so bad because we've all made the same choice, probably would have made that same choice in their position. But they chose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and immediately uh things changed. Uh, all of a sudden, you know, what they wore was good or it was bad, how they looked was good or how or or or was bad. Everything was through this filter of good or bad. And and and so from that sprung the old law. And so we look at God, many of us, I would say most people, and we view God as schizophrenic, and we don't really understand it, and we're not sure which God to believe, because we've got this harsh, mean God in the Old Testament that would uh wipe out nations, he would do all these types of things, he would demand all these types of things, and then all of a sudden Jesus comes along, and he's nothing like that. You know, he's loving, he's merciful, he's compassionate, he's for the uh for the for the underdog. So so what should which is the real God? And the question is not which is the real God, the question is which is the right tree. Because what God was giving us was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Here's the rules. This is what happens when you decide that you're gonna justify when I decide I'm gonna justify myself by the rules. And you know, sometimes whole nations aren't living by the rules, and so in that case, I guess they get wiped out. Thankfully, the New Testament talks about Jesus coming and and and preaching to people and saving whole nations. But the the point is God has never been a schizophrenic God. He's never been an unloving God. That even in the Old Testament, a lot of people he healed, a lot of people he blessed weren't even necessarily Jewish people that even knew his law. There are people with good hearts that were seeking him. Um and so the the idea that we can pursue right and wrong, that where most religion falls. It's this is good, this is bad. Do good, you're good with God, do bad, you're not. And that is living at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Well what we need to do, and I think with his hands, what we try our best to do is live at the tree of life. We're encouraging each other. We're talking about the good things. You know, Paul goes on to discourse in the New Testament saying, he lists all the all these good stuff. He says, think on these things, you know? And so that's that's the place to live, is at the tree of life. And so when Jesus comes along, over and over he calls himself life. Um, and then now all of a sudden, we're not under this curse that Adam and Eve chose. We get to choose ourselves. We get to decide where we want to live. Do I want to live in shame? Do I want to live in guilt? Do I want to live in remorse? Do I want to live separating myself from God's love? Uh or do I want to pick the tree of life? Is that where I want to live? Do I want to get back where I can picnique under that tree, where I can eat that fruit, where I can hang out with God? There's a natural pull in the world to get away from the tree of life, to get back to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But if somehow together as a family, we can all say, hey, no, we're gonna live at the tree of life, it it changes everything. And and God sharing that with us has changed my life, it's changed the church, you know, it's done so much. I think that uh Marlin took that uh message from from the Holy Spirit and uh painted all these beautiful uh trees. The the first one uh he did um was when When God Laughs, and it's one that I have, and and uh cherries, you can see them all through the halls. And if it's somebody's first time here, you might be what's with all the the trees, and that's what it is. It's just different depictions of the tree of life and how we're committed uh with God's help to live at that tree. And thankful. I'm I mean, just thankful that God would show that to us. And so we can no longer be living under that curse of the rules, but enjoy the freedom and life of a real relationship with God.

You know, Steve's still one of my absolute best friends and uh this mentor in my life. He was my pastor for seven years. I'm really grateful to him, and I'm grateful that he heard from the Holy Spirit. That's one of the things that I learned from Steve and Susan is to value what God says above anything else. And if God speaks something and it's clear and it's discerned, and and wise people who are godly, who walk closely with the Lord, they they are in agreement with that. Then you you go with that even if everyone else disagrees. And they did a great job starting this church, and I'm so glad that that teaching is something that God gave to them because, like I said, it became this whole filter for my life. I heard that teaching for the first time and I realized that even though I love the Lord greatly, I was living at the wrong tree almost all the time. That my life was really defined by striving, by me trying in my own strength, out of my own effort, out of my own desires and willpower to live the life that God wanted me to live. Or sometimes it was some goal that I had in my mind, something that I wanted to accomplish, not something that God had necessarily told me to do or put in my heart, but just something I wanted to do, and with my own strength, my own willpower, I'm gonna make this happen. And every time I did that, I was making the same choice that Adam and Eve made, the same choice that I looked at and condemned and thought they were idiots for making in the first place. I made that choice all the time. Because I live my life essentially saying, hey, I can figure this out, I can do this, I've got this, I can work hard enough and I can strive and I can I can apply myself and I can use all that I have, all my intellect, all my ability, all my talent, and I can make it happen. And when we do that, even when we're doing that for God, we're living at the wrong tree. And that kind of life, that's exhausting. That's exhausting. I mean, how many of us have started a year? Here we are at the beginning of a year. How many of us have started a year having this list of things that we're gonna do? And maybe they're all good things. I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. Maybe they're they're great things. Maybe it's like I'm gonna be a better father, I'm gonna be a better mother, a better spouse, I'm gonna be a better employee, I'm gonna work harder, I'm gonna be healthier, I'm gonna spend more time with God, and we we have all these things that we want to do, and they're good things. But remember, it wasn't just the tree of the knowledge of evil, it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Even us striving to do good things in our own strength is often our downfall. And we get tired and burned out. That's why Jesus said, Come to me, all of you who are weary, who are burned out on religion. How many of us have started a year with lofty expectations and goals, and just a few months out, we're exhausted because we're doing it in our own strength. I don't know about you, but I want to have a life that's spent at the right tree. I want my 2019 to be a tree of life year. I want to live at the right tree. I want a relationship with God that's defined by the love and the work that He wants to do in and through me. You can think about a healthy tree. There's never been a healthy tree or a tree if it could talk that would tell you if you asked it. If you walked up to a tree and in this scenario, this this tree can talk. Are we are we all together? Were you with me on this? It's a weird scenario. So you go up to the tree and you say, Hey, are you tired? And that tree says, I'm exhausted. Because you know what? At the beginning of the year, I set some goals. I decided at the beginning of the year that I'm gonna grow two feet and I'm gonna I'm gonna develop new branches, I'm gonna produce more fruit than I've ever produced before, and I have been busting it since the beginning of the year, doing everything I can, everything I can to accomplish this. But the weather is not cooperating, and there have been storms and it's been really hard, but I'm just I'm spent. There's no tree that would answer you like that. Because the growth that a tree has, it's organic, it's being done within it. It's this beautiful, mysterious thing. But the Bible describes the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives very much the same way. That the Holy Spirit, God's actual spirit that lives inside of you when you give your life to Jesus, that the Holy Spirit will produce wonderful fruit in your life, that the Holy Spirit will grow you and mature you. It's not on your own strength, it's the work of God in you, and it's relaxing. There's freedom. You can breathe, it's enjoyable. I spent my 2018 doing a lot of reflecting, a lot of prayer about where we are as a church and who we are and where we're going, because in so many ways we've grown. We've got a lot more people, we've got a lot of things that we're doing in the community that a few years ago we were never doing. I mean, we're doing a lot of good. I'm proud of this church. I believe God's proud of this church. And it's good for us to have all these things. In the next few weeks, we're gonna talk about the start of community groups, and we're gonna talk about classes that we have coming up and all kinds of things that are gonna happen this year. We're gonna have so many ways for you to get plugged in and get involved. It's gonna be great. But I want to make sure that even as a church, we don't try to do a lot of good things. With good intentions, but wander away from the tree of life. That we need to be intentional, corporately and individually, that we're living at the right tree and we're letting God do the work in us and through us. And so we're gonna talk about our church this way. Really simply. We're his hands, a tree of life church. We're a tree of life church. In fact, I talked to a few artists who go here, there's so many talented people here, and uh and asked them if they could come up with like a graphic, an image that just represented that. And this is actually what they they came up with. Um I'm actually wearing it on a shirt. You can get those at the source if you want, but any second, there you go. Um that cool, by the way. Don't you wish if you're someone who can't draw, you're like, yeah, draw. And so Marlin painted a painting, and then he took that and we gave that to Matt, who leads our worship team. A lot of you may not know this, but Matt's like, he's super annoying because he is hyper talented. He can he can sing, he can play guitar, he can play, he's an amazing drummer, he can paint, he does all the digital art for the church pretty much, and he's like the most humble person I know, which makes him like super annoying. You know what I mean? Because like just a little bit of pride would be okay, but none. He's got like none. No, he he took that from Marlin, he did some work on it, and then he got to a point where he handed it to this artist named Britney, who actually lives in Nashville, but she's been part of our church for years, still comes back here when she visits, and she kind of finished it up, and this was their collaborative effort, is is his hands a tree of life church. We're going to spend our year at the tree of life. And my prayer for you is that this year would be a tree of life year for you. That you would spend your time sitting at the feet of Jesus, letting him speak into your life, letting him breathe his spirit into you, letting him do the work, letting him do the heavy lifting. That you could come to him and give him the burden of being the one who has to do it all and accomplish it all, and you could rest and let him do the work within you. I want I want all of us to spend our year at the right tree. Back in in June, I was praying about this and reading the Bible, which by the way is a really good thing to do, especially in tandem. Pray, read scripture, pray, read scripture. It's like God speaks through it or something. It's what he does. He speaks through his word. And I get to Isaiah, who's this prophet that lived centuries before Jesus, yet talked about Jesus a lot, which is really cool. And I read this collection of verses, two verses. They jumped off the page to me, probably because I was praying about this very thing and the tree of life. And Lord, have we gotten away from this? And how can we really intentionally get back to this? And what does it even look like to be a tree of life church? And God, why aren't we just called tree of life church? Because we're his hands, and there's all these paintings of trees, and it drives me nuts, you know, and I hadn't seen that picture yet, or this picture, whatever. So I was just praying about all this stuff, and that's probably why this jumped off. The Holy Spirit spoke through it. Isaiah 37, 31 through 32. You who are left in Judah, who have escaped the ravages of the siege, he's prophesying about the people of God at that time who had been greatly, greatly hurt. He says, You will put roots down in your own soil, you will grow up and flourish. For a remnant of my people will spread out from Jerusalem, a group of survivors from Mount Zion. The passionate commitment of the Lord of heaven's armies will make this happen. And if you look at that, it's a picture of a tree. He's painting this picture of a tree. He says, You will put your roots down. You will grow up and flourish. Some translations say, grow up and bear fruit, you'll mature. He says, You will spread out. Think about the branches of a tree. What are they doing? They're spreading out. We might say in our vernacular, reach out. And here I am in June, and I'm I'm praying about coming back to the tree of life and how we all need to do that. We've got to live at the right tree. And Lord, what does that look like? What does that mean? Because I need things broken down for me. I'm I'm that person. Like I'm not an artistic person. I don't look at paintings and go, oh, I see the juxtaposition of light and dark. And I'm like, what is that even? I need like charts and lists. That's the kind of person I am. And I'm so grateful to the Lord because it's like He showed me this is what it looks like, Justin, to live at the tree. You have deep roots in your relationship with me. You're rooted down. You're growing up and maturing. And you're reaching out. And it's established by God. That's what it says at the end, right? This will happen. This is going to happen because the Lord of heaven's armies will make it happen. One of my favorite things about our church is that God established this church. He did miraculous, crazy things for us to be here. He's done really crazy things, some things you may not even know about, for us to continue to exist. It's established by God. Your relationship with Jesus, it's been established by God. That's the cool thing. He's planted this. But if you want to live at the tree, if you want this year to be a year where it's restful and joyful, where God's working through you and in you, and you're accomplishing more than you could ever dream of because God's doing the work, then you need to be rooted down in your faith. You need to be growing and maturing, and you need to be reaching out. That's what it looks like to be at the tree of life. And so for the next few weeks, we're going to talk about those things. Next week, we're going to talk about what it means to be rooted in our faith. The week after that, we're going to talk about growing up and maturing. The next week we're going to talk about what it really looks like to reach out and be the church. That's the language we're going to use as we talk about the life that God wants us to have. We want to be rooted down, growing up and reaching out. Does that sound good to anyone, by the way? Living a life like that? This sounds so good to me. And what I want to do with the small amount of time we have left, we're going to transition into worship. And worship team, you guys can go ahead and come on out. We have this spotlight over here, by the way, because I was thinking maybe about giving the message from here today. I don't know. What do you guys think? No? Sorry. I just noticed that weird light. I was like, what's that for? And then I went over there. Um so as the worship team plays a little bit, all I want to do this morning as we wrap up is ask a few questions. Which kind of drives me crazy as a teacher because teachers are supposed to give you answers. But if you actually read Jesus, a lot of the times Jesus is just asking questions and really like hard questions, and then he doesn't give the answers. Because sometimes, sometimes, the best way to learn is just to ask a lot of questions. And so we're gonna answer these questions as best we can with the help of the Holy Spirit. We're gonna answer these questions in the next few weeks. So I really encourage you, challenge you even to be here. Start your year off focused on God. Like be here for the next few weeks. We're gonna have a good time. But you know, if you think about soil, before something is planted in soil, it's tilled, it's stirred up. And it's that stirring process that actually gets it ready to have something planted inside of it that will grow. And so it's important for us sometimes to just let God stir our hearts. And that's what these questions are intended to do. They're not they're not intended to offend, although they might. But if they offend you in a way that makes you feel accused and small, then that's just the enemy. That's just Satan trying to speak to you disguised as God. He does that. Don't listen to that. But if you feel challenged to grow and simultaneously excited, because you have faith that God is going to do this in you and through you, that's the Lord. That's the Holy Spirit. So listen to that. These questions are just designed to help stir our hearts, to prepare our hearts for the growth that I believe God wants to do in our lives this year. I don't know where you're at today, I don't know what's going on in your life, I don't know where you're coming from necessarily. I know some of your stories. By the way, I love you guys a lot. It's so good to be together again. But I know this God wants to grow you. God wants to make you a new person. Whoever you are today, he loves you. But make no mistake, you are not the person he intends you to be yet. Because you're still here. He's still growing you, he's still working with you. It doesn't matter if you're in your your teens, your eighties, he's still working on you. He's not done yet. There's growth that he wants to see happen in your life, there's freedom, there's joy, there's there's life itself. And so be open to God, stirring your heart a little bit as preparation for the new thing that he wants to plant inside of you. So, question one where are your roots? Where are your roots? Jeremiah chapter 17. Jeremiah's a prophet who lived centuries before Jesus. He says, This is what the Lord says. Always pay attention to scripture when it says this is what the Lord says. That's big. Cursed. Ooh. Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans, who rely on human strength and turn their hearts away from the Lord. To rely on human strength, by the way, is to turn your heart from the Lord. It's to say, no, no, no, I think people, myself, whoever else, they've got it. I've got it. I don't really need you right now. They are like shrubs in the desert with no hope for the future. They will live in the barren wilderness in an uninhabited, salty land. But blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence. They are like trees planted along a riverbank with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green and they never stop producing fruit. You want to be a tree with deep roots or a shrub that's withering and dying. And the choice that it presents is clear. What have you put your hope in? Where is your confidence placed? Wherever your confidence is placed, that's where your roots are. And so through Jeremiah, the Lord, God says, if you put your trust and your hope in mere humans, and I don't know about you, but I'm a mere human. If you put your trust in mere humans, if you put your trust in human strength, in human ingenuity and creativity, in human resources, in money, in some organization, in some political system, if you put your confidence and your hope in anything short of God, the result is you will wither and die. But if your hope is in the Lord, if what you're counting on this year is God showing up, are you counting on God showing up this year? Or is it your plan or someone else's plan? He says that if your hope is in the Lord, you will be like a tree with deep roots right by a river. And it doesn't matter that the sun beats down on it, it doesn't matter that there's there's drought. That's gonna happen, but the tree's fine, and it continues to produce fruit because it's deeply rooted. Where are your roots today? Are they are they wrapped around your hope in the Lord or in something less than Jesus? Never settle for something less than Jesus. Question two. Are you growing? Are you growing? And look, growth is is an interesting thing. Because sometimes I look at one of my kids and I'm like, what happened? They look like they've they've grown overnight. Sometimes months go by and it seems like there's no change. Growth is kind of a sneaky thing, but but over time you can see it. And so I ask, are you growing? Do you love the Lord more than you did a year ago? Are you more obedient to God than you were a few years ago? Do you have a hunger and a thirst to know him? Do you desire to know him so much that you just you want to dive into what he said, into his word? Do you worship him? Do you have more spiritual discernment than you did a while back? Is there evidence of growth? Scripture says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Are those things growing in your life? And if the answer is no, then I would just ask, like, do you want to grow? Do you want that? Because the Lord wants it for you. In fact, in James chapter 1, verses 2 through 4. He writes, Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow. For when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. That is God's heart for you. That is his desire for you this year to be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. Lacking nothing. Come on. But we got to be able to ask the question Am I growing? Am I growing? Question three. Do I reach out? Do I reach out beyond myself? Most people, this is true, and it's sad, but it's true. Most people never do never do much that doesn't directly benefit them. Even maybe when they do an act of generosity or kindness, it's also sort of self-focused, right? So they can post about it on Facebook, so they can take a picture of it, so they can pat themselves on the back and be like, look at the good thing I did. They feel better for a minute. But very few people actually do something for someone that's not them, expecting nothing in return. But it's interesting, no tree produces fruit for itself. It's not a thing. There's no tree that eats its own fruit. When a tree produces fruit, it's for the benefit of others, always. Are you reaching out? Jesus had a conversation with his disciple Simon Peter right after he was resurrected, and Peter was downtrodden, Peter was on the brink of walking away from his calling. And so Jesus meets with them, has breakfast with them, and says, after breakfast, Jesus asked Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? Yes, Lord, Peter replied, You know I love you. Then feed my lambs, Jesus told him. Jesus repeated the question, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Yes, Lord, Peter said, You know I love you. Then take care of my sheep, Jesus said. A third time he asked him, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Simon, Peter was hurt that Jesus asked the question a third time. He said, Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you, then feed my sheep. Three times Jesus says, Do you love me? And three times Peter gives him lip service and says, Yeah, of course I love you. You know that. And he says, Then feed my sheep. Serve my people. Jesus always connected loving God with loving people. And so if you wanna if you want to show your love to the Lord, then you've got to serve people. You've got to reach out beyond yourself. You've got to see your time and your talent and your resources as something that exists not just for your own sake, but for for the people around you, for the work that God's doing in this world, for those those people in this world that have less, that have need. Do you reach out? Those are questions that are meant to stir, not sting. Stir. And I'm sure that if we're honest, I'm sure that for all of us, there's at least one of those that we're like, yeah, you know what? That's that's got to change in my life. My roots, they're not in the right place. I gotta put my roots in the Lord. Or you know what, I'm not growing like I should. My growth is being stunted. There's all kinds of things you can do to stunt your growth. Or maybe you're sitting here going, you know what, I do love the Lord. I really do. I promise I love the Lord, but I feel like Peter. And if Jesus were face to face with me and he said, Do you love me? I'd say, Absolutely, I love you. And he would say, Do you feed my sheep? And I'd be like, you know, it's kind of a crazy time of life, Lord. You know, the kids are in baseball, and it's like, it's it's a lot. It's not really a good, it's a busy season. And if you said that to Jesus, you know what he would say? Do you love me? Then feed my sheep. Now here's the beautiful thing in all this. God can do anything. Far more than we could possibly imagine or hope. And so if we look at our lives and we say, you know what, Lord, I've been living at the wrong tree. I've been doing it in my own strength. I've been putting in all this work, and Lord, I'll be honest, I'm exhausted, I'm tired, I'm burned out. I don't think I can do another year that that's like the years before where I have all these goals and dreams that I never reach because I'm doing it on my own strength. And I need to change, Lord. I need to move trees. I need to sit under the shade of the tree of life. I need to spend time with you. I need to sit at your feet, Jesus, and let you speak into me. I need to let you do your work in me, Lord. And I'm sorry that I've resisted that. I haven't intended to, I haven't meant to. It just happened. If that's you this morning, here's the beautiful thing. God's gonna change it. He's gonna do it. He wants to do a work inside of you, he wants to make you a whole new person. He wants to do things that that are so impossible to the to the outside world that they look at it and they say, That has to be God. You couldn't have done that by yourself. Like, like if you have a dream for your year, and I hope you do, by the way, if you have a dream for your year and you can accomplish it without prayer, without depending on the Lord, that's a sucky dream. That's a terrible dream. Because God wants to put in your heart a dream that you need Him for. Like He He wants to birth inside of you a vision of your future that makes your life an adventure, where you look at it and you say, I can't do that. And I say this in complete humility. Seven years ago, if you would have shown me a picture of my life today, I would have said, No, thanks. Because I didn't know I was gonna be a pastor, and I was decided that we were gonna have two children and stop. And if you'd have told me seven years, seven years from now, Justin, you're gonna be the pastor and you're gonna have four kids. I'd have said, no. But God will do things that make you depend on Him. And you can depend on Him. I want to spend my year at the Tree of Life. That's why I'm wearing this shirt. You can get one if you want today. I want to spend my year at the tree of life. We're a tree of life church. I want to have a tree of life relationship with God. Is anybody with me? Let's do that. Let's do that. Amen. I'm gonna take a cue from the Holy Spirit and stop talking. Um we're gonna pray. The last song that we sang right before the message was I am who you say I am. And that's a very powerful song because it reminds us that what God says has authority, what God does, what God establishes, what God, what God ordains it happens. And again, that that tree of life scripture that God was so good to give to give to us, Isaiah, you know, it says you'll be rooted down, you'll be growing up, you'll be reaching out, but but it finishes by reminding us that the Lord of heaven's armies, who needs reminder that he's got an army at his disposal, that the Lord of heaven's armies will make this happen. And so if in your heart you sit at the tree and you look at Jesus and you say, Make it happen, do your work in my heart, he will do it. You are who he says you are, you are chosen, not forsaken. You are who he says you are, and and I want us to worship for just a few more moments and declare together that when our God says something is true, it is true. When our God says something is established, it is established. And he has planted a tree of life in this place, and it will grow. Pray with me. Jesus, thank you for this church, thank you for the work that you're doing here. I can feel your spirit right now, Lord. You are moving in this place, you are stirring hearts. Lord, bring us to a place of total surrender right now. Lord, total and complete surrender. We are we are laying at the cross, Jesus, our will, our strength, our intelligence, our plans, our hopes, our dreams, our future. We are laying it all at your feet, Jesus. And we're asking you to take that and replace it with what you desire in us. Lord, give us your strength, give us your wisdom, give us your vision for the future, give us your dreams for our lives, give us your love, give us your passion. God, take what we have and replace it with what you have, Lord. We want to live at the right tree this year. We are depending on you, and we are anxious and excited in anticipation for what you're gonna do in our hearts this year, Lord. We love you. We love you. Be our tree of life this year, Jesus. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Love you guys.