Amen. Amen. A couple quick things before we start the message. What a good day so far, number one. I love you guys. You guys are awesome. Number one, we have a we have a 10-year anniversary coming up really soon. It was supposed to be next Sunday, but we done moved it. To November 6th. I just want to let everyone know that. So it's going to be a big day. Here's why we moved it. We really, as we prayed about what this is supposed to be, our 10-year anniversary here in Woodstock, we we just kept hearing the word meaningful. And, you know, if you're if you're new, we're not a self-congratulatory church. We don't do a lot of like, hey, look at what we've done. We haven't done anything. God's done everything. And we just we really don't even know how to do that. So as we prayed, this this 10-year anniversary is not like a rah-rah-woo-hoo thing. It's going to be a lot of fun, don't get me wrong. It's going to be really meaningful more than that. And with that word in mind, as God just kept making that clear, meaningful. It needs to be meaningful. Um, we started asking the right questions. Okay, God, well, what would be meaningful? And he gave us an idea that it's gonna be really, really special, but it's gonna take a few more weeks to pull off. And so we just decided, you know what, let's let's move it back a few weeks and make it what it's supposed to be. Is that okay?

Yeah.

Alright, November 6th, be here though, I'm telling you, be here. Like, be here, okay? Be here. Alright? Be here. Okay. Isn't one thing real quick too, before we we jump in the message. Is Nate Snow here? Where's Nate at, by the way? Can someone point back to me? He's where? In the prayer room. Okay, so I'll have to I'll have to hug him later. So if this is just really cool. If you know Nate, Nate's been a part of our church really for the whole time. And six years ago, Nate was in a really, really terrible car accident. It's a miracle that he's alive. Um, and for the last six years, you know, five years really, because he's spent about a year not being able to come at all, uh, he's been coming in in a wheelchair. Um, it's been a lot of miracles and a lot of work. And today he actually walked in here on a walker, which is absolutely amazing. And so uh I'll try to keep my eye out for him. If I if I stop the message, you need to understand. Nate's Nate's very special to me. If I stop the message to to say hi to him as he's walking up, that's why. But uh yeah, alright. Is everyone familiar with the term life hack? You know what a life hack is? If if you're not familiar, life hack is just this this little tweak, this little external adjustment you make to your life that makes things better, makes your life a little bit better. Life hacks are really nice. I enjoy life hacks personally. In fact, I've had a few that have been really meaningful to me. Anyone here left-handed? You're a lefty. Yeah. So I'm kind of weird. You might know that if you know me very well. But uh, but I'm both left and right-handed. I write with my left hand. Always have, ever since I was a kid. I write with my left hand, but I throw and do a lot of other things with my right hand. It's just how it's always been. Those of you who are right-handed, you may not realize how much of the world is designed for you. Like pretty much all of it. Us lefties understand. When I was in school and I sat at desks, these were the desks that I sat at. Right-handed desks. And if you're right-handed, these are wonderful. The paper goes on the same side of the desk that your hand writes. But if you're a lefty like me, and you grow up with right-handed desks, you have to do this interesting thing where you sort of turn your paper sideways and you lean over, and it always looks like you're cheating on a test. It always looks like you're suspicious. Because you're kind of like hunched over and you're just like like this. Teachers are always, you know, spying on you and stuff like that. I wasn't, I was in college the first time I ever saw a left-handed desk. I walked into a classroom in college and I was like, what is that? Is that is that what I think it is? I might as well have heard angels singing from heaven, just like, oh, and I walked over and I sat down and I said, This is this is how these people have been feeling all these years. I can just lean back, I can write, this is amazing. Left-handed desk, that was a major life hack for me. Most of you are familiar with with this image. This is uh the gas gauge in a car. How many of you know this? Not everyone will, for some of you, prepare to have your mind blown. How many of you know that the arrow next to the gas symbol tells you what side of the tank the the gas is on your car? What side of the car the gas tank is? Okay? How many of you did not know that? That that arrow tells you what side of the car your gas tank is on? Right? I've been I'm 33 years old, I didn't know that until two years ago. No one ever told me that. And I never just noticed, I'm not that observant. In fact, for years, Megan and I'm hold up, Nate Snow. I love you too. That is a that is a giant among men. His faith. Oh man, okay. Gas gauges in cars. Yada yada yada. For years Megan and I had cars that had gas tanks on the on the different on different sides, and when we would drive each other's car out of habit, we'd always pull up next to the the pump on the wrong side. We'd have to get out of the car and we'd have to drive back and change sides. It was always so frustrating. Had we known about that stupid arrow, we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble. Now that we've learned that, we have cars that have the gas tank on the same exact side, so it's useless to us, but that's still a nice little life hack. Life hacks are nice. I love life hacks. If you've been with us for the last few months, we've been in a series on happiness. We're wrapping up that series today. After today, no more happiness, people. We are done with happiness. We're finished with this. The series has been good. Um, I say that with a questioning tone because it has not been what I expected it to be. I had a friend tell me last week that for him this series has been gut-wrenching. And that is not the kind of descriptor I would have used when I was thinking about a series on happiness. Let's have a gut-wrenching series on happiness. Who's up for that? Someone's like, oh, you gotta see this movie. It'll make you so happy. Like, well, tell me about it. Oh, it's gonna make you cry, it's gonna make you feel horrible, it's gonna, it's gonna like twist all your emotions around, it's gonna be so happy. I'd be like, what? No. I don't want to do that. And I think the reason for this particular person that it's been gut-wrenching is because it's it's been sort of heavy. And that's because happiness is no joke. Happiness is a serious thing. If you could be happy just by by finding the right combination of life hacks to apply to your life, everyone would be happy. That's the way most people, by the way, go about happiness. What can I change externally? What tiny adjustment can I make to finally be happy? And so few people are happy. Everyone wants to be, everyone's trying to be, but very few people find real, lasting happiness. It's kind of happiness that the Bible describes as the joy of the Lord, a joy that is to be our strength. That's what God says. A happiness so complete, so powerful that it is like strength for you. That is a happiness we cannot get through life hacks, through small external adjustments. That is a happiness that can only come when something happens in us. Not when something happens to us, not when something happens around us, but when something actually happens within us, when something happens in our hearts. Real happiness is not a matter of circumstance, it's a matter of the heart. In fact, if we can put an image of a heart up there, I just want to keep that image up there for the rest of the time so we can remember every time we look at a verse, every time we look at anything, real happiness is about our hearts. If you haven't been with us for this series, if this is your first time with us, don't worry about what you've missed. I mean, it's been good. Listen to it if you want to. I hope it's been good. Otherwise, that's my fault, I guess. But um, you don't have to encourage me, but thank you. I just want it to be good for you guys. I just wanted to be so much pressure. Um, but but even if you haven't been here, this this message today, this is really the this is the key. It's like on the PS on a letter that someone writes you or on an email. Basically, that means if you didn't pay attention to anything else before, don't miss this. It's very important. Real happiness is a matter of your heart. Sometimes I'll have conversations with people and they'll talk about what they want in church and what they want out of church. And sometimes the word substance gets thrown around. I was I love that word substance. When someone says, I just want more substance, I always want to find out what they think substance is. That's always my my first train of thought. I want to ask them questions and go, okay, you want more substance. Tell me what substance is to you. And usually when people talk about substance, they're always talking about head stuff. They want more doctrine, they want more discussion of theology, that kind of stuff. And look, I I love that stuff. I'm a weirdo. My favorite book other than the Bible, my favorite books are books about the Bible. So I go home and I either read the Bible or I read books about the Bible. And every once in a while I'll read a book that someone gives me that it's a book like you're supposed to read. Like the seven habits of highly effective people. Have you guys read that book? No one in here is effective then, because there were no effective people before that book was written. That's that's that's how we learned how to be effective when that book came. But there'll be like business books or leadership books, and someone will give me these books, and I'll be thinking, I need to read this book. This is a good book to read. I'll start reading it, and then eventually I'm like, I just want to go back and read that book about the book. Or read the book. And so I love I love head stuff. I enjoy having conversations about the head stuff. But whenever I'll talk to people and they'll say, hey, I want I want more substance, and they start talking about head stuff, I just have to stop and remind them that Jesus didn't think that stuff was very substantial. Jesus didn't think that all the all the head knowledge and all the stuff that religion gets obsessed with, doctrine and rules and regulations and traditions and all these things. He didn't he didn't think that stuff had much substance at all. See, religion, religion loves that kind of thing. Religion loves the head knowledge, religion wants all of us to be these experts and theologians and all that kind of stuff. But the problem with that is that you can you can be the best at that and be the furthest from God. You can be an expert on that stuff and not not be at all where God wants you to be. Because that's where the religious leaders of Jesus' day were. They were called the Pharisees, and they had all the head stuff, all the all the substance stuff. They had it down. But listen to what Jesus said to them in Matthew chapter 23. What sorrow awaits you, teachers of religious law, and you Pharisees. Hypocrites. For you're so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you're filthy, full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee. First wash the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will become clean too. You might be thinking, come on, Jesus, lay off a little bit, man. I mean, he's calling them hypocrites. He's he's definitely making it clear how much he values all the things that they believe are of substance. The religion, the rule. See, Jesus is saying, I don't care so much about the external stuff. I care about your heart. I care about that part of you that causes everything about you to be the way it is. There was a tradition that the Pharisees valued very much in their faith. It was the tradition of hand washing. For them, hand washing wasn't just a hygienical thing. For them, hand washing was a spiritual thing. And they had all these intricate hand washing ceremonies they would do before they would eat food or prepare food, or even after they would go and just be out in public. They were worried that they may have touched someone who was spiritually unclean, so they had to come back and do a hand washing to be spiritually clean again. And Jesus and his disciples, they would eat at Pharisees' houses and they wouldn't even wash their hands. And the Pharisees did not, they did not know what to do. They were just they were appalled. And so they asked Jesus, why don't you guys wash your hands? Why don't you observe our traditions? In Matthew 15, Jesus says, Don't you understand yet? Anything you eat passes through the stomach and then goes into the sewer. We all knew that, right? We're all good? We get that? Just want to make sure. Because if if you we can talk about that more, but I thought I think we're good. But the words you speak come from the heart. That is what defiles you. From the heart come evil thoughts and murder and adultery and all sexual morality and theft and lying and slander. These are what defile you. Eating with unwashed hands will never defile you. Jesus essentially says, I don't care so much about your hands, I care about your heart. You're so focused on the outside, but I'm looking right through that and I'm looking at your heart. That's what is of substance to me. And this wasn't really a new message for Jesus. This is how God's always been. In the Old Testament, there was a prophet named Samuel. And Samuel was this amazing prophet of God that happened to be the prophet at the worst time to be a prophet. It was the time in Israel when they decided they were kind of done with prophets and they'd rather just have a king. And they come to Samuel and they say, hey, we look at all these nations around us and they have kings and we're just led by silly old God. We'd like a king. And Samuel says, Trust me, you don't want a king. You don't. Anyone here want a king? Some of us don't even want a president, right? Want a king. And see, here's the thing about God, he's gentle. Oftentimes he gives us what we want. And so God finally says, Fine, have a king. And Samuel chooses the first king of Israel, Saul. Things go great for a very short period of time, and then it all collapses. And then Samuel is tasked by God with picking out the next king. And God, he throws Samuel a big bone. He says, Hey, look, go find a man named Jesse. Jesse has a bunch of sons. One of his sons is the king. And so Samuel goes and he meets with Jesse. He says, Jesse, bring me your sons. Jesse brings the sons, and Samuel inspects Jesse's sons. And these are boys that look like they could be kings. They fit the bill. They look the part. And so Samuel's going, man, one of these guys. I see what God's doing. I see what God's thinking. One of these guys is the king. And he goes one by one, and God tells him, No, no, no, no, no, not the king. And pretty soon all the sons are gone. And Samuel's confused because God said one of Jesse's sons is the king. So he goes up to Jesse and he says, Do you have like a son that you're hiding somewhere? And Jesse says, Well, actually, there is one more. It's David. It's kind of the runt of the litter. He's the little one. He's watching the sheep. And Jesse says, Well, or Samuel says, Well, we'll bring him. And so Samuel looks at David. It's brought to him, and God says, That's my pick. He's the one. And again, Samuel's confused. I don't understand God how this could be the king. This guy, this little guy, the crown's gonna like fall over his head, and it'll be like a necklace on him or something like that. Like, how can he be the king? But but God speaks to Samuel. In 1 Samuel 16, 7, he says, the Lord doesn't see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. He cares about the heart. Ezekiel was a prophet that lived 600 years before Jesus. And God let Ezekiel in on his greatest desire, his biggest wish regarding what he wants to do in our lives. And he told this to Ezekiel. He says, I will give you a new heart. And I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. God's biggest wish for us was that we would have new hearts. For God, it's always been about the heart. And when we want our lives to change, when we recognize the need for big change in our lives, we always have a choice to make. The choice is: am I gonna get this change through life hacks, through little external adjustments, or am I gonna get this change by allowing God to change me? To change my heart. See, there's nothing wrong with life hacks. I love life hacks. Life hacks are like band-aids, and band-aids are good. We use a lot of band-aids at my house. We have three children. Most of the time, the band-aids aren't really to fix anything, it just helps the child feel like they're okay if they have a band-aid on. If you've had kids, you know how that is. It's magic, magic band-aids are. No, band-aids are useful. Life hacks are good, but you can't perform surgery with band-aids. And when I'm struggling with real unhappiness and dissatisfaction in my life, most times it's because I I require some heart surgery. That's what I need. But I can't I can't perform heart surgery on myself. I can't do it. I can put band-aids on myself all day long, but I can't perform surgery on my own heart. I can't just make myself happy. I've tried. You've probably tried. You ever have someone come up to you when you're you're down, you're depressed, you're unhappy, and they've just told you, hey, be happy. You should be happy. And you're like, thank you. I hadn't even thought of that. Right? You know what? Now you say it when I woke up this morning, I forgot to flip the happiness switch in the back of my head on. It's all taken care of. No, it doesn't work like that. We can't just make ourselves be happy. That's because we don't have the power to change our own hearts. But that's okay because when we can't, Jesus can. Always. When you can't, he can. He can heal you inside and out. He can change your perspective. He can change the way you think. He can give you that tender, responsive heart. A heart that can receive. A heart that can respond the way that God would have you respond. Only Jesus can create the kind of change in us that we need to have real happiness and real joy. Because that kind of happiness, it only happens when your heart is right. So if you want more joy in your life, if you want to be really happy, more than anything else, you need to understand that the only way you're going to have that is if you have a heart that is right. How does that happen? How do we get a right heart? Someone said Jesus, and I agree with you. I like to think of it in a certain way. It's been really helpful for me over a long number of years. It's this illustration. This analogy that God has used with me personally. I think I've shared it here before, but it's been a few years. But it's something God has used to help me do two things really effectively in my life. Number one, recognize when there's an area in my life that is in desperate need of change. And number two, reminds me what I need to do to allow God to change me. To change my heart. I want you to picture your dream home right now. Maybe you live in your dream home. Maybe you've actually driven by a house and you've decided one day that will be my house. That is my dream home. Maybe, maybe this is just a long-term dream. You're a long way from your dream house. You know that a lot of dreams have to come through before you have your dream house. But you just have this idea of a dream house. So just get that locked in your mind. Maybe it's a colonial. I don't know. Maybe it's by a beach, maybe it's in the mountains, maybe it's one of those little tiny houses that you see on TV. But I doubt it. So your dream home. And this this home, this house, it represents your heart. That core part of you that makes you you. It's where everything about you comes from. Your hopes, your dreams, your aspirations, what you love, the way you're wired, all that. What you value, that's your heart. So this house, it's your heart. And and in your house, there are a lot of rooms. Every room represents a major area of your life. So you have a room for your romantic relationships, your dating life or your married life. You have a room and it's your finances. You have a room and it's your relationship with your parents. You have a room that's your relationship with your children. You have a room that's your relationship with your friends. There's a lot of relationship rooms. You have a room that's your career. You have a room that's your studies if you're a student. You have a room that's your passions, your hobbies, you have all these rooms in your house, in your home that represent your heart, and every single room has a door. Listen to what Jesus says in Revelation 3.20. He says, Look, I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and we will share a meal together as friends. So Jesus is standing at the door to your house, the door to your heart, and he's knocking. He's not gonna kick the door down, he's not gonna pick the lock. He's gentle, he's kind, he's knocking, and he's asking you to give him permission to come in. And at some point in time, many of us here in the room, many of us have made that decision. We could use whatever lingo we want to use, we got saved, we we repented, whatever we want to say, but but the reality is we felt Jesus knocking at some point in time, we felt him knocking, we felt him stirring, and we responded, we opened the front door and we let him in the house. Now, when Megan and I have have people over at our house, there are some rooms that we are totally okay with them being in. Right? There's the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom that's near the kitchen that we clean right before they come. And we just pretend, yeah, we always have lit candles and scents in our bathrooms. This is how we live. We have three children, but they're well trained, okay? This is how we live. There's our playroom in the basement, and we're okay with people down there. It's a little messy. It's where the kids play, but it's it's kind of expected. There's toys and stuff everywhere, but but it's okay when you know the purpose of the room. So these are the rooms that we're okay with people being in, but there are other rooms. And those doors are closed when people come over. If someone started to make their way to some of those doors, we would like to run and jump in between and be like, hey, hey, where are you going? What are you doing? You don't know. Come this way. Come this way. You don't need to know what's in there. It's because those rooms might be messy, a little embarrassing, out of sorts, and we'd rather just keep the mirage going a little longer. See, sometimes we can be like that with Jesus. Where we we invite him into our house. And we say, Jesus, I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad you're here, because look, you've got to realize, he wants to be there. He wants to live in you. I mean, look what the Bible says in Ephesians chapter 3, verse 17. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down deep into God's love and they will keep you strong. He will make his home in your heart. So stop for just a second and understand that your heart is Jesus' dream home. Your life is where he wants to live. That's powerful. That you are his dream. Which means that you have the ability to make his dream come true. When you open that door and you open it, and some of us have done this in the past, most of us here probably have at some point in time, or we're at least open to it. We open that door and we let Jesus in, and we say, Jesus, I'm so glad you're here. Make yourself at home. There's food in the fridge, and Jesus says, Oh, thank you. I'm so glad to be here. You don't know how long I've wanted to be here. But then Jesus starts to wander and explore. And he walks up to a room and the door's closed. And you kind of go, Oh, Jesus, hold on a sec. Love you. Glad you're here. Stay out of this room, please. It's not that I don't want you in it. It's just not ready. It's not ready to be seen. It's not ready to be, but don't worry, I'm working on it. I've got some things I gotta do in there. I've been meaning to get to it, but I'm gonna go in there. I'm gonna make it presentable for you, and then I'll let you in. And we do that for several different reasons. Maybe we're we're ashamed of what's in the room. Maybe that part of our life we're a little ashamed about, and we feel like, well, no, we don't feel we know that it's not what God wants, and we don't want it either. It's just we're stuck, we don't know what to do. We've been trying to change it for years, but nothing has worked, and we're just embarrassed by it. So we don't want Jesus in there because then we have to deal with that embarrassment. Maybe it's the opposite. Maybe we love what's in that room. Like we love it. We are comfortable with it, but we know, we know that it's not what God would have for us. And if we open that door and we let God in, he's gonna mess with it, he's gonna change it, and we love it. We know it's not right, but we love it. And we don't like the idea of God messing with that. Maybe it's like the door you have to an old storage room, and the only stuff in there is junk from the past that you'd rather pretend doesn't exist at all. Because if you open that door, you gotta deal with that stuff. And you'd rather just not. You'd rather go the rest of your life and avoid it all. And so you'd like Jesus to stay out of that room because going into that room is like opening up an old wound. There's a lot of different reasons that we would keep Jesus out of those parts of our life that we would keep the door closed. But see, we have to remember that Jesus, he wouldn't look at us if he went into the room and he wouldn't go like, wow. This is really bad. I gotta be honest, I've never seen a room this bad. How did this even happen? Like, how did you how did you mess it up this badly? In all my years, I've never I've never seen this. I just need a minute to to figure this out. I'm gonna go pray. That's not what would happen, right? Trust me. He has seen worse. See, Jesus, he he wants to go in that room because he's got big plans for it. He wants to go into that part of your life because he has massive plans. He wants to renovate that part of your life, not redecorate, he wants to renovate, he wants to make it amazing, he wants to make it better. He would look at you and he would say, Look, I already know what's in the room. I want to go in there with you, I want to wrap my arms around you, I want to love you, and I want to work with you, and I want to create something in that part of your life that is more amazing and more unbelievable than you could possibly imagine if you let me finish it. But Jesus can't finish what you won't let him start. And so, yeah, he asks for you to open the door. And when you open the door, he asks for complete creative control, and that's hard, right? That's hard. Number one, being open is hard. I don't think there's anything in the world that requires more courage than to be truly open. But allowing someone else to have control, to surrender that control to someone else, that that requires faith and humility and imagination. One of my favorite people on the planet is Matt Simmons. Matt Matt stands right here most Sundays, does worship. You know Matt. I love Matt. I've known Matt since he was like 16 years old. And we're really, really good friends. Matt is the most creative person I've ever met. Not just musically. Matt can play guitar like you wouldn't believe. He's a great singer. He creates music, but Matt's a visual artist. Every graphic we have here at the church, everything you see, Matt creates. In fact, that heart, he drew that as we were getting ready for today. I asked him, I said, Hey, I kind of think about having an image of a heart just to reinforce what we're talking about. Could you draw something up? But I'm not quite settled on it yet. And he drew that up, and I said, Hey, again, I'm not settled on it. I hope you didn't spend too much time. And he said, Oh no, it's like five minutes to sketch that. And I was like, Yeah, yeah, I that's I could do that in five minutes. Sure. He's an amazing painter. He's the most creative person I've ever known. A lot of what Matt does here is I I go up to Matt and I say, Hey, this is what we're doing. Can you make something? Just create something. Create a logo, create an image, create whatever. Can you make it? And there have been many times in the past where I've gone up to Matt and I've asked him to make something and I've given him a lot of stipulations. I've said, hey, I want it to be like this, I want these colors, I want it to be, you know, a little bit like this, a little bit like that. I actually found something on the on the internet, and you can use this as a reference point. I like this, and so do it this way and this way and this way and this way and make it for me, and then Matt will make it for me, he'll hand it to me, and it's exactly what I asked for, and I hate it. I mean, he he gave me exactly what I wanted, exactly what I said. He he he was obedient to every single guardrail I put in, and what he created, I do not like. But see, he's way more creative than me. And so I've learned that if I'll just go to Matt and I'll just say, hey Matt, here's what we're trying to accomplish, here's the purpose of it. Make something that you're excited about. Make something that you think is awesome. Matt will show me something that will blow me away, and I never could have even imagined doing what he did because I don't have the gifts that he has. I've learned to just give him more and more creative control to let him do what he's excited about, because he can do stuff I can't do, I can't even think of it. That's how God is. I mean, so many times we we fool ourselves into thinking we've given God control. And I do this all the time. Don't feel guilty if this is you. I do it all the time. I'm like, yeah, I've given God control, but the reality is I've given God very little freedom in terms of what he's able to do and how he's able to do it. I've said, hey God, I want I want this in my life. I want you to do this thing, but I want it to look just like this. I want it this way, this way, this way. I don't want to do that, I'm not gonna do that, I'm not going there, I'm not doing this, I'm not doing that. So just have your way, Lord. You know? Have your way. And see, again, God's gentle, he's good. That's what he did with Israel, having a king. Right? Hey God, we we want you to do big things, but we want it this way. We have this stipulation, and he's like, it's not gonna work. Well, we we think it will, okay. And it takes about two generations before they're like, God, why did you give us a king? That's what you asked for. It takes a lot of courage to open the door and say, have your way. But if we would, if you would do that in your life, if you would make the posture of your heart to simply be this. When he knocks, I open. When he knocks, I open. If that would be the posture of your heart, you would experience God changing things in ways you cannot imagine. You would experience God taking the parts of your life, the areas of your life that right now bring you nothing but unhappiness and frustration, and you would see him transform those things into something that you you couldn't wait to talk about. Because he will blow your expectations away. One of the biggest blessings in my life is Megan. And you guys have heard me talk about Megan. Usually I'm making jokes about our relationship. Um, it's very hard for me to be serious for long periods of time. Anyone else have that condition? Yeah. So, like on Sunday mornings when I go home, I'm exhausted. And it's not because this burns a lot of calories, it's just I have to be serious way more than I am in the average day. And if you've gone here long, I'm not even that serious on stage. So just pray for me. But when I talk about Megan, I'm usually talking about it in a joking way. I'm talking about some funny interaction we've had, or you know, talking about some dumb thing I've done in our relationship. Or I'm making jokes about how hot she is, and she's a stone-cold fox, and that's all true. Um but but when I talk about her that way, what sometimes I don't do enough of is talk about how incredible it is to be married to someone as wise and as godly as Megan. I've never known anyone like her. She gave her life to Jesus at a young age and she's never looked back. I mean, she's just she's just lived with her eyes on Jesus since she was a child, and the result is is it's incredible. She's probably the wisest person I know. When we were first married, I get really mad at her for popping my bubbles. That's what I would always call it. Because I'm a verbal processor if you couldn't tell, and so I'd have ideas and I just start talking about them. I'm like, hey, I was thinking just now, and I'm actually thinking as I'm talking. And so I want to do this and this and this, and then Megan would just go, and she'd go, Well, well, have you thought about this? I'm like, well, no. Dang it, now don't pop my bubbles. Let the bubbles develop. That's what I used to tell her. See, now I'm grateful when she pops a bubble. She saves me a lot of time. I'll start to talk about some idea and it's a bad idea. I have a lot of bad ideas. And she'll pop it, and I'm actually more excited now when she pops some fast. Just rip it off, right? Let's just get this over with so I can move on. She's wise. And when she doesn't agree with something, when I have an idea, something I want to do, and she thinks it's a bad idea, I've learned to not argue with her, but to stop and realize okay, the wisest person in my life isn't into this. There's a reason why. Megan hears from God. And she just hears from the Holy Spirit. And it's not because she has some special gift. It's because she listens to the Holy Spirit. She has shown God over the years that she is attentive to what he has to say. So he talks to her a lot. And to be married to someone who hears from God like she does is it's amazing. It's just incredible. There's so many times where she will say something to me that I need to hear, and it's from God, and I'm sitting there going, why didn't God just tell me? I wasn't listening. But she was. The crazy thing is that Megan and I wouldn't even be together. Like we wouldn't be together at all if we hadn't each opened the same door in our house. The same door in our heart. It happened, it happened years ago. What's crazy is it actually happened the exact same day in the exact same place, about three years before we started dating. We went to high school together. When I was a sophomore in high school, my parents moved me from public school to a Christian school. I'd never really gone to Christian school before. Always grew up in public school, and uh and in Christian school, you have to you have church in school. Because it's not enough that you have church at church if you're in Christian school. Anyone go to Christian school? You know what I'm talking about. Every Wednesday we had chapel, and twice a year we had Spiritual Emphasis Week, which meant chapel every day. Right? That's just the week we broke up with our boyfriends and girlfriends. That's what we called it. It was guilt week or something. But this one specific spiritual emphasis week was really meaningful to me. Because for some reason, what the guy was saying, it wasn't, it wasn't guilt that I was feeling, but it was actual conviction. Which is good, by the way. Guilt's terrible. Actual conviction is really, really good. And he didn't use this illustration of a house or anything like that. He just asked us, he said, hey, is there any part of your life you haven't fully surrendered to God? Any area of your life that you haven't completely given control over to God? And I was sitting there and I knew exactly what mine was. It was my dating life. I was 16 years old, and I I'd given my life to Jesus years before, but I had not surrendered that part of my life. That was a room with a door that was closed to God, it was locked, there was a deadbolt, and a keep out sign on the front of it. I I did that part of my life my way. And so my filters were all off. I didn't care if the girls I dated loved Jesus and what their values were. I cared about two things. Are they cute? Will they kiss me? That was it. And that's funny when you're in the sixth grade, but if those are your filters, it doesn't take many years before you find yourself in a place you really don't want to be. Now, Megan, she was the opposite. Her dating life was exactly like it should be. She dated the right kind of guy, she had the right kind of filters, and when they dated, they had the right kind of boundaries. In fact, this is amazing. Megan decided when she was in the sixth grade that she would not kiss anyone until she was sure it was the person she was gonna marry. So when she kissed me, I took that as a pretty good sign. I was like, okay. And seriously, I'm the only person she's ever kissed. She saved everything for me. I I gave her what I had left. And she gave me everything. Which humbles me every single day. So she's sitting there in the same room. We went to the same school. We weren't even really friends. We're in totally opposite sides of the room, oblivious to one another. And I'm sitting there, and God says, Your relationships, your dating life. And I'm like, I know, God, this is horrible. I know you want to change it. I'm just help me. I made a commitment that day. I said, All right, God, it's yours. I'm gonna open this door to you for the first time in my life. And I did, and it didn't change overnight. It was a lot of work, it was a lot of time, but it changed. And Megan's sitting in the same room, and God told her that she hadn't fully surrendered her dating life. And she was like, What are you talking about, God? All the boxes are checked, I'm doing it the right way. I'm not dating some idiot like Justin McTear, you know. And God told Megan, again, because she listens, God said, Yeah, but you've built what you want. Still not what I want. It might be good, it might be fine, but don't settle for good or fine. Don't build what you think is good. Build what I want. And she said, okay, and she was dating a guy, and she laid that relationship aside that day, and two years later, we started a relationship together. And it was right before I moved a thousand miles away to college. It was a very short window that we had. It took me two years to be dateable for her, to be honest with you. She would not have dated me and should not have dated me before the time that she did. And if I had not surrendered that part of my life, if I hadn't opened up that door to God that day, it would have been too late for Megan and I because I wouldn't have been ready yet. And if she hadn't opened that door that day, who knows? At the same moment, the same time, we both open the same door of our hearts. And the result of that is that we have this incredible relationship. We're best friends. Our life is crazy. Partially because some of you are crazy. And y'all involve us in your craziness. And we love you. We really do love you all. Honestly, you guys are amazing. But we do have a crazy life and these amazing children. And none of it would have happened, though, if we had not opened our hearts to God. That is what happens when you open yourself to him. So I just have a question: are you open? What if the posture of your heart was simply this? I'm open. What if you you told Jesus? Jesus, I'm open. My relationships, they're open to you. That door is open. My finances, open to you. My career, it's open to you. The way I should raise my kids, it's open to you. Every door, Jesus, you just go through your house and you open every single door and you leave it wide open and you say, Please, Jesus, have your way. You show me what to do and I'll do it. Tell me what you want me to do. If I'm reading the Bible and I read something and it convicts me, I'll do it. If I'm in church and I hear when someone say something and it convicts me, I'll do it. If I'm driving in my car and all of a sudden just something rings in my mind and I know it's from you, and you want me to do it, I'll do it because every single room in my house is open to you. Here's what'll happen if you do that. Psalm chapter 30. You have turned my morning into joyful dancing. You've taken away my clothes of mourning and you've clothed me with joy that I might sing praises to you and not be silent. Oh Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever. That's something that someone can write when they've given their heart to Jesus and they've opened it up to Him. And they've said, Hey, do surgery on me. Open me up, do your thing. Do what I can't do. Because notice it doesn't say that I have turned my morning into dancing. I have taken off my clothes the morning and I've clothed myself with joy. No, it says it says he has done that. He wants to do that for you. Do you believe this morning that your heart is his dream house? Do you believe that this morning that your life, your life is what he wants to call home? And he loves you so much, and he's not ashamed of you, he's not frustrated with you, he's not disappointed in you, he's not gonna walk into any room of your life and go, what's wrong with you? He has plans for you. I mean, he's literally itching to get started. He is so excited about what he wants to do in your life, and it doesn't matter if you're in your 20s or in your 70s, it's never too late to give Jesus control. It's never too late. I'm open. I'm open. Have your way in me. If you want real happiness, if you want to be clothed with joy, just be open. Just be open, pray with me. Jesus, we love you so much. And God, we thank you. We thank you, Jesus, for simply knocking. Because honestly, if you didn't knock, a lot of us wouldn't even think to look for you. You love us enough to knock, even when we're not paying attention. And Jesus, we just ask for the courage to open the door. Not just the front door of our lives, but every single door. And Lord, I do pray if there's there's anyone here right now that's never opened that initial door, if there's one person in the room that's never opened the front door, that's never let you into their life, I pray that changes now. I pray that as we sing this last song together and we we go out of this place worshiping you, I pray that that person or those people would cry out to you in their heart, I'm open for the very first time. And that they would walk out of here knowing that finally you found your dream home. But for all of us, Lord, we we want to be people that can say that we are completely open to you. But Lord, you know us, you know how hard that is for us. There's a lot of baggage, there's a lot of fear, there's a lot of worry, there's a lot of anxiety that goes along with opening some of our doors. But but give us the humility to admit that we're out of our depth when it comes to renovating certain aspects of our life, and give us the courage to ask you to do what you already want to do. You want to transform us, you want to change us, you want to give us new hearts and new spirits, and that's what we need. So have your way in us, Jesus. We are your people, and we are open, and we love you. And it's in your name, Jesus, that we pray. Amen.