Two Sundays ago, we started a series called People. And basically, what we're doing is we're spending our summer as a church saying this is what we think about people. And this is so important. It's just as important for us to be clear on where we stand with people as it is for us to be clear on where we stand with God. Because what we think about people actually reveals what we really think about God. If you want to see what someone really thinks about God, watch how they treat people. And the thing is, Jesus, who is the exact representation of God, he is the clearest picture of God we will ever have because he's God. Jesus believes in people. And so if you don't believe in people, you actually don't believe Jesus. Because Jesus believes in people. And so for the last few weeks, we've said, as a church, we believe in people. Specifically a couple weeks ago, we started by saying, we believe in messy people. This is not a church where you've got to worry about getting everything fixed up and neat and tidy to come and worship, to come and be part, to come and play a role. Jesus recruited messy people. He didn't recruit the people that had it all together because the truth is no one has it all together. Some are just better at acting like they have it all together. Jesus wanted to work with people who were willing to admit the mess. And so we believe in messy people. And I'm so glad as a church we believe in messy people because that means this church actually believes in me. That's nice. Okay? Last week we said that we believe in young people. We have amazing young people at this church. We invest in them heavily because we believe so much in them. Someone asked me this week if today was going to be we believe in old people. And uh and to answer that question, yes, we do believe in old people. We believe in people of all ages. That's not what the message is today, but I will say this. We said this last week. We need those of us who are who are older to invest in the young people we have here at his hands. We need spiritual big brothers and sisters, we need spiritual moms, we need spiritual grandparents investing in our kids week in and week out, giving them the wisdom that they have, the perspective that they have. We need that. And so last week I encouraged you, if you're not on a team here, if you've never volunteered, you're not volunteering, join a kids team. Just take the plunge and have that experience. It will it will be amazing, it will change you, it will change what church means to you. I'll promise you that, because that's what it did for me. We had 24 people, by the way, that signed up to join a kids team last week, which is so exciting. It is. But that doesn't mean you're off the hook. So I'm just joking. Just, you know, whatever God tells you to do, just do it. But we love young people here. Today, we're making another statement, a statement of belief. And it's a very simple statement, but it's also very powerful, especially if we let it sink in, especially if we actually believe this and put it into practice. And it's this we believe people are plan A. We believe people are plan A. Have you ever noticed that our world works really hard to bypass people as often as possible? We're always trying to find a way to do things without having to interact with people. And I'm all for technology and I'm all for efficiency. Like I don't mind the self-checkout stand at the grocery store. I often go to that stand. We have self-check-in stands in our kids' areas, right? Where you can just come in and check yourself in, you know, it's it's fine. Back in the day, Megan was the navigator for me when we would go on on road trips, and that did not work out well for our marriage. That was not that was not good. So I'm really grateful for smartphones because today Siri is my navigator. And it's ironic because there's still a woman telling me what to do, but but this woman doesn't comment on how I'm doing it as she tells me what to do. Like she just gives me the play-by-play. Megan would always add in color commentary. Megan would be like, you're gonna turn left. And then she would make a comment about the speed that I was going or the way I was driving or that my blinker was on, and I'm just like, ah. And so I would end up angry with Megan. I still get angry with Siri, but it's just better for my marriage that I'm angry with Siri and not Megan. So it's good. It's good. I'm saying that sometimes that technology bypassing people is a good thing, but oftentimes it goes way too far. Like, when's the last time you called a customer service line for maybe your bank or some business that you subscribe to, and you have to go through the automated process, right? Where they have a computer-generated voice that's trying to fool you into thinking you're having a conversation with a person. And they ask you all these questions and it takes forever. And there are all these you know prompts like if you're a new customer, please say yes, or press one, and you're like, no. And then they say, okay, if you're an existing customer, I already established that. I said no. And you have to answer all these questions, and it's just yes, no, one five seven two. That is not my pin number. Okay, or maybe it is, I don't know. You'll find out. And you just keep going and you keep having that. I can't I cannot I cannot stand that experience. I just want to talk to a person. I just want to have a conversation, and I want to tell someone where I'm coming from, maybe why I'm upset, maybe I want to vent a little bit, and the longer I have to talk to the computer, the more I want to vent. So just give me to a person as fast as possible. That's the way I feel. Does anyone else feel that way? Does anyone else share that? Okay, good. Praise Jesus. Right? So I have a strategy that you're free to use. And I'm not making this up. I do this often. Megan can attest to this. It's my strategy for getting to a person as fast as possible. When I call a number and those automated prompts come up, I just answer with really loud, indistinguishable sounds. Okay? I do this all the time. And so I'll call and it'll say, you know, if you're a new customer, please say yes or press one, and I'll just go blah blah blah. And then there'll be a pause and it'll say, I'm sorry, I couldn't understand your response. If you're a new customer, please say yes or press one. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Please hold while we connect you to a customer service representative. And I'm like, yes, yes, it works. Use it. That's a life hack you can take with you today. Because I just want to talk to a person. You know? If you read the Bible, one thing becomes really clear. God does not believe in bypassing people at all. God has not organized his kingdom, his world, his will in a way that bypasses people. God uses people. In fact, we are his primary method for doing his will in this world. We are God's plan A. We are what He wants to use more than anything else to do the things in this world that He wants to see done. And it's so funny because as Jesus followers, as Christians, you know, God believers, whatever word you want to use, we so often pray that God will do amazing things but bypass people in the process, right? We want God to just instant download, deliver it. If I say, God, you know, help me figure this out, what I don't mean is God send a really wise person into my life to give me advice and help me along the way. No. I just want you to download your wisdom into my brain so that I know what to do. Like we're always praying that God would just do things immediately and bypass people, and he can do that. He's God, he can do whatever he wants, but his main method of doing his will, his work in this world is people. And it's an interesting thing to think about because we could ask ourselves this question: does God need us to do the things he wants to do? And I think the answer pretty safely is no. He doesn't need us. Like he's God. He can do what he wants. In fact, the very first story in the Bible is the story of creation. And God creates everything and it plays out in this really poetic way, and on the first day, he makes this, and the second day, we don't show up till day six. And day seven is the day off. So it's like our first day there, you know, we have day one, we kind of get accustomed to things, and we're like, all right, God, what do you want us to do? And he's like, Yeah, there's nothing left to do. Just chill, hang out, relax, rest, enjoy what I've made. Days one through five, that's when God's doing like the crazy stuff. That's when he's creating the universe and the earth. And he's making things like light and water and all the elements that we have in this world, and he creates life on this planet, and he creates vegetation, he creates the animals and the birds and the fish, all of it, and we're not even there yet. So, so technically speaking, God does not need us to do anything. He has all the power and all the self-sufficiency he needs to do it on his own. And yet, he chooses to use us to be the primary method for the work he wants done in this world. He has made that choice. It's so interesting. For example, you can look at 1 Corinthians chapter 12. Paul wrote this, Paul was a leader in the early church. We owe so much to Paul. And he said, starting in verse 7, a spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other. So God gives us spiritual gifts, abilities, talents, you might say, and they're given to us for the purpose of helping us, helping each other. To one person, the spirit gives the ability to give wise advice. To another person, the same spirit gives a message of special knowledge. The same spirit gives great faith to another, and to someone else, the one spirit gives the gift of healing. He gives one person the power to perform miracles, and another the ability to prophesy. He gives someone else the ability to discern whether a message is from the Spirit of God or from another spirit. Still, another person is given the ability to speak in an unknown language, while another is given the ability to interpret what is being said. It is the one and only spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have. Now, this is not an exhaustive list. There's a ton of spiritual gifts in the Bible. There's a ton, like administration is a spiritual gift. You don't see a lot of people who are administrators have people around them go, wow, that person is filled with the Holy Spirit. Look at the way, look at that filing cabot, look at the way they have color-coded. This is this spreadsheet is of God, right? But it's a spiritual gift. Working with your hands and being a craftsman is listed in the Bible as being a spiritual gift. Like God, God gives all of us these abilities, and He gives us these abilities to do His work in this world. The God of the universe, who has all the power in the world, gives us abilities, gifts, so that we can do what He wants to see done in this world. We are His plan A. He wants to use us. And that is so powerful if you actually let that sink in. God has chosen you to be the method he wants to use to do his work in this world. Your plan A. It's so amazing because very, very rarely do we actually, deep down inside, at least I'm talking about myself, believe that. That people are our plan A. See, usually in our minds, plan A is for God just to do it. Plan B is a person getting involved. I hinted about that earlier. So let's say someone is sick. And I've seen this happen, by the way. Let's say someone is sick and we pray for God to heal that person. And let's say that the person just gets better. That happened to my son when he was in the NICU when he was firstborn. I've told that story a bunch of times. I won't tell it to you again, even though it's like my favorite story. I told it the last time, I think, on Easter, so go listen to that podcast if you want to hear it. But but I've seen God do that, where the doctors are like, we don't know what happened, he's just better, and we're like, we know what happened. We prayed to Jesus, and Jesus delivered, and it was awesome, and we were all like, Praise God, and it was amazing. But then if we have someone that's sick and we pray that God would heal them, and and God uses a doctor to do that, like he gifts someone with the ability to heal and to understand what's going on and to diagnose it and to give treatment, to give medicine, and the person is healed. You know, we'll still say praise God, but it's kind of like this semi-passive aggressive praise God. It's like, well, you know, praise God. He he healed me, technically, you know. But there's this disappointment because in our minds, somewhere, somewhere deep down inside, it's less of a God thing if a person is involved. If a person is involved in our minds, it's just not, it doesn't rank as high. It's less of a God thing. And that's because deep down inside, we don't really believe that people are plan A. We think people are the backup plan for when God doesn't actually show up in some really cool way. But like, like what if it was the opposite? What if the moments where God shows up and does it himself are the result of him wanting to use a person, but the person not being available, and God's like, ah, come on, man, do this. I want you to be involved in this, I want you to do it. And the person's like, I'm not willing, I don't, I don't know. He's like, I don't have time, I just gotta do it. Right? And God's not a formula, God doesn't do things the same way every time. I'm using this as an illustration, but but I think if you look at scripture, if you look at the the history we have of God's interactions in this world, what you find is a God who very, very, very much prefers to work with people. And it's a powerful thing when he does. Because think about it this way: if God just did it all himself, he gets all the glory, he gets all the credit, but he's the only one that has the satisfaction and the joy that comes from solving a problem. You ever solve a problem and feel that? You ever create a problem? Anyone here? Problem creators? Anyway? All right, like I know how that feels. At home, we have this water issue that's going on where uh one of our walls is just there's water in it. And so I first found this out because there was mold growing around a light switch, and I was like, that's gross. That probably shouldn't happen. I don't know much about lots of things, but I don't know much about house stuff at all. And I'm like, I just know that mold, bad. Mold is bad. That's what I know. And so I started pushing on the drywall, and it was like soft and it was moving, and I'm like, that seems less stable than it should be. And and you know, I figured out water's getting in somewhere, so I called a friend of mine who works on roofs, and he come, is it roofs or roofs? Roofs? Whatever. The thing on your house. He uh he came, he looked at it, he's like, man, it looks good, your roof looks fine. It's just, I mean, I can see a few things, I'll just go ahead and tweak those, but I I just I don't think it's pretty minor. I'm like, okay, well, let's try it, let's see if that fixes it. And and no, it did not. And I'm staring at this wall and I'm trying to figure out what's going on because the roof is fine, water is getting in, and I'm like, it's not getting in way up here. It's like the water is starting like right mid-level on the wall. And it's it's wet from there down, and it's like right where I hung this shelf for Megan a few months ago. She went shopping. Megan likes antique stuff, so she'll go shopping and she'll find a piece of furniture. And it's been built by someone a long time ago, and it's made of like solid wood, okay? And there's nothing there to help you hang it. And she's just like, Can you hang it on the wall? And I'm like, Yes, but it's so heavy, and I kind of freak out when I hang heavy things. And so I'll hang it on a couple studs, and I'll be like, Man, what if those studs aren't studly or whatever? And so I'll end up just putting a few extra screws in for good measure. You know, I'll put some anchors in, I'm just like, ah, screw can go here. Here's another place for a screw. So that's what I did. Funny thing about walls, there's things behind them. Sometimes those things are pipes with water in them. And so what happened was I I drilled a hole directly through a water pipe that happens to be the drainage pipe from our upstairs uh plumbing, which is gross. So I I ripped off the shelf, I pulled out the wall, and there it was, this PVC water pipe with a hole, dead center, like I was trying, like I was attempting, it was dead center, and I did that, I created this problem, and I gotta handle all the fallout, I made this problem. I know how it feels to create a problem, it feels bad. But when you actually are part of a solution, when you solve something, even even just discovering the problem I created gave me a little bit of satisfaction. I'm like, ah, I have solved the mystery of what I did, right? See, it's so so beautiful because God is so generous that God actually allows us to share in some of the credit and some of the joy that goes with doing his work in this world. If he just did it all himself, he would be the only one that had that satisfaction, but he actually allows us to share in that. And it's amazing. I mean, think about the heroes of Scripture, the people who are used by God to do amazing things, like Moses. Moses parts the Red Sea, right? Oh no, God parted the Red Sea. That wasn't Moses, but yet we still say that Moses parted the Red Sea, and we're not being inaccurate when we say that, because God used Moses. Moses got to experience the rush and the satisfaction of walking up to that water and putting his staff in the water and being like, whoa! And God didn't need to use Moses, God could have just done it, but He He chose to use Moses. Why? Because God uses people. People are God's plan A. And if you need more evidence, just look at Jesus. Think about all the miracles that Jesus did. I mean, he did so many amazing things. He healed people, he raised people to life, he walked on water, he he talked to the weather and it obeyed, he miraculously multiplied food. Not just his miracles, though, his teachings. Like Jesus said things that are so profound, that are life-changing, that have shaped history. Jesus did all of that. And ask yourself, how many of the teachings or miracles of Jesus did he do independent of a human being being directly involved? And the answer is zero. For a very obvious reason. Jesus was a human being. I mean, John chapter 1, verse 14. So the word became human and made his home among us. Jesus, being God, became one of us to work among us, to do his work in this world. How revealing is it that people are God's plan A, that God Himself became a person to do his most important work? Every miracle Jesus performed was done at the hands of a human being because Jesus became a human being. People are plan A. And that means you are plan A. You are God's plan A in this world for something. For someone. And do you believe that? We have this tendency as people to vastly underestimate our importance in God's kingdom. And we can never be that as a church. We can never be people who have a high opinion of God, but a low opinion of people and of ourselves. In fact, the greatest damage that's ever been done by the church has been done at the hands of people who had a high opinion of God, or so they thought, but a low opinion of people. Do you believe that you are God's plan A? Because you are. You know, the word that we get church from literally means those who have been called out. So the church are the people who have heard the call of God to step out of the life they were living and step into a relationship with God. We're the ones who have who have been called out. We're the ones who have answered the call. And that means that if you are part of the church, if you've given your life to Jesus, you have a calling on your life. Your life has a calling on it. God wants to use you to do something, something important, something of vast importance. You are God's plan A for someone or for something. But one of the great tragedies of the history of the church is that so often we we outsource our calling to someone else. And we outsource our calling to someone who seems more qualified, maybe to a person, maybe to the church as an organization. I love it when someone comes to me and says, you know what the church ought to be doing? Like talking about his hands. Like, you know what, you know, you know what the church ought to be? And I'm like, I got great news for you. You're the church. So maybe you should do that. And then the church is doing it. Problem solved, right? But we just we just don't think that way. We're not conditioned, we're not taught to think that way. That's not how I've thought for most of my life. I look at the church, and I see it as an organization, and the pastor, the person on the stage, that's that's the person that God speaks to, and that person's job is to tell all of us what we're supposed to be doing and hearing from God. That is never the way it was supposed to be. In Exodus chapter 20, Moses has led the nation of Israel out of Egypt, and they're in the wilderness, and God wants to speak to them. And so God shows up, he shows up to speak to the people in Israel, and it's it's epic, it's awesome. There is smoke and there is lightning, it is like special effects, galore. God wants to speak, but the people get scared. And in Exodus 20, they said to Moses, Speak, you speak to us, and we will listen. But please don't let God speak directly to us, or we will die. And they greatly misjudged God and themselves. And they got so afraid, they said, You know what, Moses? Uh we would like to outsource our relationship with God to you. We would like to outsource what it's like to hear from God and just let you do that, and then you tell us what he says. You be the middleman, and we'll just we'll do what you say. And that was a tragedy. That's what began this whole tradition of there being prophets. This small handful of people who hear from God, and the rest of the people are just dependent on them to get a word. That's not how it was supposed to be. It's not what God wanted, it's not what Moses wanted. In fact, there's a story in Numbers a little while later, really interesting story. It's still Moses and the people of Israel, it says that Moses went out and reported the Lord's words to the people. That's what he would do. He would go hang out with God, hear God speak, and then tell the people what God said. He gathered the seventy elders and he stationed them around the tabernacle. And the Lord came down in the cloud and he spoke to Moses, and then he gave the seventy elders the same spirit that was upon Moses. And when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But this never happened again. And I love this is my favorite part. Two men, Eldad and Medad, had stayed behind in the camp. They were listed among the elders, but they had not gone to the tabernacle. In other words, they didn't show up. They slept in, whatever, they just didn't go. So they don't show up. Yet the spirit Rested upon them as well. So they prophesied in the camp. And a young man ran and reported to Moses, Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp. And Joshua, the son of Nun, who had been Moses' assistant since his youth, protested, Moses, my master, make them stop. But Moses replied, Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on all of them. See, that's God's heart, that's his will. That all of his people, all of his people, would be filled with his spirit, that all of his people would have the same access to God, that all of his people would be able to equally hear from God and act accordingly, that all of his people would hear the calling that God is placing on their lives. Not that they would outsource that to some organization or some person. One of the greatest joys in my life is hearing God speak. I don't think there's any experience I've had in life that is as powerful or as meaningful as when I hear God speak to me. But I want you guys to know something. This is important. God does not speak to me because I'm a pastor. God speaks to me because I'm a person. Okay? And you're a person. God wants to speak to you. He wants you to hear the calling that he's placed on your life. He wants you to hear the mission that he has for you in this world. He wants you to hear that so that you know that he gave it to you. So that you know that he chose you, that you are his plan A, that He's picked you for His team. He wants you to have that experience. And that's a difficult thing for us to do sometimes because it's hard to discern whether or not it's really God or it's us. We get all confused. You know, sometimes it's easy. I don't have to wonder whether or not God is calling me to be a good father or a good husband. He is. That's just clear. He's made that clear to me, to all of us. We're called to our families. I don't have to wonder whether or not I need to work hard. I don't wake up in the morning and go, God, you want me to work hard today? You just want me to like waste time at work. What do you want me to do? Because the Bible says that no matter what we do, no matter what we do, we're all in ministry, all of us. No matter what we do, work as if you're working for the Lord. So when you go to work, when you do your job, do it as if you are working directly for Jesus Himself, because the way you do your job will show people who Jesus really is. So we know those things. That's clear, but sometimes we feel this calling, and it's for something more, for something that we can't quite put our finger on, or for something that we know nothing about and that intimidates us, and we think we're crazy. We start thinking thoughts like, who am I to do this? I'm not qualified, I'm not an expert on this. But you know, there were people in Jesus' day who were the quote-unquote experts on God. And Jesus did not pick them to be his followers because they weren't really experts at all. There was one who was like the expert of the experts. His name was Saul, and God did pick him to be a follower after he rose. After Jesus rose, he picks Saul, Saul becomes Paul. But before Saul could really become Paul and be the expert that he was meant to be with God, he had to unlearn everything he had learned and start from scratch and realize that he was no expert at all. See, the world we live in conditions us to believe expertise is required for action. Ben Sykes and I were talking about that this last week. Ben's one of my best friends, he's awesome. And he was just talking about how we live in this very expertise-driven world where we're all trying to be an expert, pretend like we're an expert. You have to be an expert before you can do something effectively. But in God's kingdom, it's always the opposite. In God's world, first you say yes, and then he gives you the expertise you need as you go. That's just how it works. It is super inconvenient, by the way. But it's what he does. It's an adventure. And it's awesome, all jokes aside. You're the church. You're the called ones. And my hope for today, I believe God's hope for today is that you would believe that you are plan A. That you're enough. You might ask yourself, who am I? I'll tell you who you are. You're God's plan A. That means you're enough. That means you're capable. That means if God calls you to do something, He's going to be faithful, He's going to give you what you need to do it. And it's kind of our job as the church to help you with that. You know, the way it normally works in church is pretty simple. The person who's in leadership or the person who's leading a specific area of the church will hear something from God and say, I think we're supposed to do this. I think God's putting this on my heart. And then that person tells the church. And the church collectively gets behind it, there's a rally cry, you know, you join a team, you give financially, you do those kind of things, and we go and we do it, and we go, yes, we did it. And that's good. It's always gonna be that way. God's always gonna do the whole top-down thing. It's not a hierarchy in terms of importance, but just in terms of structure. God is always going to give people and leadership vision to tell everyone else, hey, I feel like we need to do this. And that's common, and that happens here a lot, and you guys are really faithful, you're awesome. But it should be every bit as common. In fact, I think it should be more common, just because of the ratios, that you, individually, as the church, you personally have a calling on your life. You hear God asking you to do something, and you're like, I have no idea how to do it, and we collectively come alongside you to help you do what God is calling you to do. And I've never seen this happen in church before, because I've never seen this be normal in church because we love control as human beings. We all love control, right? And there's so many things in life that we do, if we're really honest, the reason we do it is because we just don't want to open that can of worms, right? Like, oh man, if you do that, it could be really cool, but it could also be this big mess, and you're gonna have to figure it out as you go, and it's just ah, don't want to open a can of worms. And I get that. Worms are pretty gross, but they're useful. Right? I mean, if you go fishing, worms are useful. Sometimes you just have to open the can. And so what I'm saying is this there will be times that God is gonna give me or someone else in leadership here a vision for something that we need to do. And I'm gonna, when that happens, I'm gonna come to you and I'm just gonna shamelessly go, guys, we need to get behind this, we need to do this. And I trust you to respond. God trusts you to respond. But just as often I believe God's gonna put things on your hearts. And when he does, you need to let us as a church collectively know what's going on so that we can support you, so that we can help you do what God's calling you to do. It's not a one-way thing, it needs to work both ways. Practically, here's what we're gonna do to make this happen. We have these cards. I dropped mine on the floor. You see these cards? You see the card? Is it clear to all of you in the back? See what's written on it? I'm joking, it's obviously not, it's a small card. Um, but but these are at the back four columns in the room. And they're gonna be from now on. This is not some like mad rush. I'm not saying everyone go fill one of these out. No, no. Just trust and wait for the right time when God really puts something on your heart. But these cards just say this: I'm feeling called. And then what you do on the back, there's a space for your name, your phone number, your social security number, your pin number, your uh, I'm just joking. Just your name, your phone number, your email address. And then there's this one question what do you feel called to? Like what's going through your mind? What's on your heart? And in your own words, just let us know. And here's what we're gonna do: we're gonna talk to you. We're gonna give you a call. We're gonna ask you questions, and we're gonna figure out how we as a church, collectively, can help empower you to do what God is calling you to do personally. Because we believe your plan A. And it's gonna look different depending on the situation. Some of us are gonna get a call, and we're gonna have some questions, we're like, man, maybe, maybe I'm maybe I'm not hearing quite right. That happens to me all the time, by the way. I have learned that when I really think God is telling me something, I have a few people I go to and I say, hey, this is what I feel like I'm hearing from God. Will you pray about it with me? I need some confirmation. And oftentimes in that process, I get the opposite of confirmation. And sometimes God is so clear that it's like, oh, even I can just tell exactly what God wants to do. But sometimes we need someone alongside of us just to say, hey, let's, before we do this, let's really think through this. Let's look. God gave us brains for a reason. He gives us a heart and a brain. In fact, in the Hebrew, heart and brain are the same exact words. So when it says that God put something on someone's heart, no different than if he put something on someone's mind, okay? So we're gonna think through it with you and help you and strategize with you. Sometimes we're just gonna connect you to other people. You might have a calling to do this one thing, and we know of people in the church who are doing that exact same thing, and we're like, let's put you guys together, because two heads are better than one, and a quarter of three strands is not easily broken. That's in the Bible. So we'll do that. Sometimes we're gonna pray with you and we're just gonna be aware. We're just gonna we're just gonna know what you're doing and be mindful so that we can be watchful for an opportunity to come alongside you and help in some way. Sometimes God might put something on your heart that is so powerful that the entire church needs to know about it. And I need to stand here and I need to tell everybody what it is that we're going to do as a church. But it doesn't have to start with me or with someone in leadership. You are the church, you are God's plan A, but you need to believe that you're called to something. And then make it your life's purpose to find out what that calling is, and then just do it and know that when you do, you will not be walking alone because you've got a church. I want to open that can of worms today. And then I'm gonna ask a woman named Sheila to deal with it. So pray for Sheila. Do you guys know Sheila by the way? Sheila Keith? That woman is amazing. She is awesome. She's been on our team for a few years. We change her job every year because, you know, she's good at a lot of things, and we just need her to help with stuff. Her new job here, it's just still here. We just keep changing her title and we don't even have titles. I'm getting way off track. Her job is what we call care and outreach. She is here to help meet needs in the church, work with people who are struggling with anything, meet needs in our community, but then empower people to go out and do what God has called them to do. And she is a she is a force of nature. Like she is amazing, she is powerful, she hears from the Lord, and she's from Valdasta, so she talks funny, and it's awesome. Just, I mean, literally, 30 minutes ago, I'm in the office and she's talking about making peach pie, but she's like, I want to make some peach pie. And I'm like, peach what? Peach pie. What is pie? Pie, you know, you cut it into slices. Pie. She's talking about pie. That's what I realized. And so if you get a phone call from that voice, that Sheila, you need to talk to her. She's gonna help you do what God is calling you to do. We're gonna wrap up with worship, sing one more song. If we don't believe in people, we don't believe Jesus. Because Jesus believes in people. Jesus believes in people so much that he has made people, he has made you, he has made us his plan A. And by the way, that is every bit as miraculous as him doing it himself. In fact, it's more impressive because using us is kind of like him tying his hand behind his back, right? Because he could either do it himself or he could use us. And we're we're messy, we've talked about that. The fact that I am of any use to God is a miracle. Ask my wife. What an honor it is to be the one part of creation that God has looked at and said, I want you to be intimately involved in what I'm doing in this world. I want you to feel the joy and the satisfaction of accomplishing my work. Will you come with me? Will you answer the call? I just want you to know today that when you do that, you have a church that will support you. You have a God that will support you even more. So let's pray together. Jesus, thank you so much for making us plan A. Because to be honest, Lord, I don't think we would make ourselves plan A if it was up to us. We'd be the fallback option for sure. But you look at us and you see something in us, Lord, that we struggle to see ourselves. You see a value and a capability in us that we have such a hard time coming to grips with, Lord, but it's so clear. And you want to use us, and you promise to give us gifts and abilities and empower us by your spirit to do whatever you've called us to do, Lord. So make us a church, make us a family of people who are hungry and eager to hear you call. And make us a group of people who will say in advance that when you call, we will answer and we will say yes, even when we we have no idea how to do it. Help us be for each other, help us support each other, help us encourage and empower each other to do what you've called us to do because we do believe, Lord, that we are your plan A for this community. And we love you. You're awesome. Amen.