Amen. That's an anthem, right? Man, that was awesome. Oh, well, hello again. Hey, I have I have one thing before we jump into the message, what we're gonna talk about today. I have one other thing I want to mention, an announcement that I wanted to say for right now. Because you know, we we said earlier that we exist to help people get God's love, help people grow it, and then help people give it away. The message this morning is actually gonna address how we can how we can grow in that love, how we can help each other as a church grow in our relationship with God, just grow in life in general. But we have an opportunity to give some love to someone through an event that we have from time to time called Canvas. I want to talk about this for a second. Uh, one of the things we're passionate about at his hands is art. We we believe that God created. It's actually the very first thing God does if you read scripture, he just creates. And in fact, until the whole thing kind of gets messed up, all he is is the creator. And so we we love creating and we love giving creative people a chance to create, and you see a lot of art on the walls here, and pretty much all of it's done by people here at his hands. We have this event called Canvas, where we sort of combine our passion for art with a really great cause, and that's to help someone that needs some help. And we have a person that's part of our family at his hands named Lynn Walker, who is really, really special to us. And if you don't know Lynn, just give you some background. Some of you guys may have been here long enough to know Jimmy, who sings on the worship team from time to time. He moved out to Alpharetta about a year ago, so he used to be pretty much every week. Now he's just, you know, every every other month or so. It's Jimmy's uh mother-in-law. And so she's an amazing woman. She led our women's ministry here for a long time. I mean, she's just done some great things. And the last few years have been pretty hard. Her husband David, who was on our prayer team for a long time, a lot of you may have known David, uh, he battled cancer last year, and it was a really hard fight, and he passed away about midway through the year last year. And then uh two months later, a few months later, Lynn was diagnosed with cancer. And so you can just imagine how rough of a year that is. You have to, you know, say goodbye temporarily, but still it's hard to your love of your life, your husband. And you go through all the hardship of cancer and all the financial struggles that it takes. You know, they they pretty much used everything they had to treat his cancer, and he was the main provider, and so she works, and now she has cancer and she has to go through chemotherapy, so she can't work. And so we just want to come alongside her as a church and help. And here's here's the way this works: it's really simple. Canvas, this event that we have, you you pay $35 to buy a ticket. And then that $35, 100% of it goes to her. And you get to show up this Friday night at 7 o'clock here at the church, you get a canvas, and our amazing art group will be there to sort of give you a demonstration of how to paint. If you're a novice you've never painted before, you you may be amazing. You just don't know. You might be like, I mean, so you need to come just to find out, is this your talent? And probably five or seven seconds in, you'll be like, nope, it's not. But that's okay. You can still have a really good time. And they'll show you little pointers, you get to sort of paint a painting, whatever you want. We we have Marlin show people how to paint his uh his tree of life that you see all throughout the building, so you can kind of do your own version of that. And the goal is really simple. We want to get a couple hundred people to spend $35 to come and have a great night together. Uh, there's gonna be some food and some stuff like that, not dinner, just some some snacks and hors d'oeuvres, that kind of thing. And then be able to hand all those funds over to Lynn just to use uh as she is going through this stage of life. And so you can buy tickets this morning. Obviously, it's this Friday, so you need to buy tickets today, and you can grab those at the the Connect Desk on your way out. You'll see a sign that says Canvas. But but I just I really want to encourage you to do that because, man, the more people that sign up for it, the more we're able to give to her, and I'm just really excited to do that for someone so important to us, you know. So take advantage of that. Um, let's pray again real quick. Jesus, thank you so much for uh for being in this place. We are the sons and the daughters of God. That is who we are, and we're we're that because of you. Because you gave your life, because you gave it all, because you brought us into a family that we could never have claimed to belong to. You did it all for us, Lord, and we love you and we thank you. We're so grateful to you, and we just pray that you bless us throughout the rest of this morning. Open our hearts and our minds to what you want us to learn, and we ask this in your name, Jesus. Amen. Amen. Well, if you are just joining us in 2016, if this is your first Sunday, we are in a series called More. And the thought behind this series is very, very simple. John chapter 10, verse 10. This is Jesus talking, and I really like it when he talks. Here's what he says He says, I came so they could have life. He says, more and greater life, better life than they have ever dreamed of. That's what Jesus says. I've come to give you real and eternal life. And not just not just life, but more and better life than you could have ever hoped to have without me. Jesus came to give us life. He gave his life so you could have life. And so we want as people to desire what God desires. I personally think it's a pretty good idea to want what God wants. And sometimes I'll sort of self-examine my life and just ask a question: Am I desiring right now what God desires? And I feel like if I want what God wants, I'm probably in a pretty good place. And sometimes it's hard for us to remember just because we grow up amidst religion and this idea that God is a demanding God that's always telling us that we're not doing enough, that we need to be doing more for him. We forget that the message of Jesus, the message of Scripture, is that we have a God who wants to do more for us. And so you have permission to desire more in your life. You have permission from God to look at your life and say, God, I believe there's more for me, and I want more, and you can you can do that knowing that God is looking at you saying, Yes, I created you for more. Jesus said, I've come to give you more and better. So you need to you need to desire that for yourself because it's what God wants for you. So this whole month, this whole first couple months of the year, we're exploring some of the things that God wants us to have more of. And today we're gonna talk about something I think I've been saying we're gonna talk about for a few weeks, but things keep happening. We're gonna talk about how to have more growth in our lives. Today I want us to answer a very important question: How do I grow? How do I grow? We we say all the time, we're here to get love, grow love, and give love. And how do I grow in God's love? How do I take the steps necessary to see growth in my life? Because I believe this about you, and I might be making an assumption, so forgive me if I am. But I believe that deep down inside you probably not only desire more out of life, but I believe you recognize that there is more within you. I doubt there's anyone in here that believes that you've arrived, that thinks, hey, I'm I'm at my peak. I have become all that I can be. I am doing more than I ever imagined I could do, and I know there's not a single ounce of more potential within me. I don't think there's anyone in here that believes that. I think that deep down inside, we all believe that there is not just more for us outside of us, but there's actually more within us that we're capable of more. And I believe you are. God believes you are. But the reality is the only way to be able to do more, the only way to be capable of more is to have more growth. We've got to grow in our lives, and that can be a tricky thing. See, at a certain stage of life, when we're young, growth is just organic, right? If you have young children, or you have had young children, or at some point in time you were a young child, and that's all of us, that covers everyone in the room. Growth, it just sort of happens. I know I've told this story before, but I'll never forget when Liam was about a year old, he's he's about to be six, when he was one, I got home one day from work and I could hear Megan crying upstairs in his room. And so as a as a man, I got concerned. I walked up there and I kind of peeked my head in because I've learned that when she's crying, you know, just approach slowly, right? Needs to be a gentle approach. So I peeked my head in the room and I said, honey, what's what's wrong? And she turns around, she's holding a shirt of Liam's. And she goes, This doesn't fit him anymore. And I kind of had this moment of panic because I do the laundry at home, and so I'm like, oh, did I shrink it? Did I did I use the wrong, I don't know, I just kind of throw it all in there, you know. I hope it all turns out clean. And I said, Well, I'm sorry if I shrunk it. I there's there's lots of stores close by. I can go get him another shirt, don't worry about it. She says, No, no, no, you don't understand. He's getting bigger. And again, I'm a guy, so it takes me a little while to process emotional things. I kind of stopped and was like, Yeah, I think, I think babies are supposed to do that. Like, we're feeding him, and I'm pretty sure this is a good thing. We want him to grow, and she stops and she's like, No, you don't understand. You don't understand. He's growing. And I'm like, Yes, I understand this. You need to be prepared for a lot more of this happening because he's one year old, and I'm picturing how big he's going to be, and I think this is something we're gonna deal with for a while. So you've got to figure out how to cope with this. And finally, she helped me understand it. Finally, she stops me and she says, No, Justin, what I'm trying to say is that he's never gonna be this big again. That this phase of his life is is over, we're never gonna have him as as a as a baby again. And that's when as a man I said, Well, I've got great news, honey. I'm willing to make another one with you. I am willing to do that. So, problem solved, you know? Number three is on the way. So it's okay. We've got all these clothes, we'll just we'll save them, we'll use them for someone else. See, at a at a certain age, growth just sort of happens. I I've got a daughter that's almost two, and I'm blown away. Two years ago, she opened her eyes for the first time, she had never seen anything. She didn't understand language. And now at two years old, she can speak in full sentences, and she has even figured out how to emotionally manipulate me to a T. She's got me figured out. In two years, she has grown so much in her ability to think and understand. It's it's really unbelievable. But you see, with kids, it just happens. They don't they don't do that intentionally. No, no toddler wakes up and thinks, you know, today, today I'm gonna work on my fine motor skills. And and after that, I'm really gonna work on pronouncing my R's correctly because I'm really tired of saying wabbit. I want to say rabbit, and I really gotta work on that. No, no two-year-old has ever done that. They just sort of develop and grow and mature, and it's this very organic, very effortless process. But at a certain stage of life, it's not like that anymore. And this is where all of us are. Growth doesn't just sort of happen. If we want to grow in some area of our lives, it requires us being purposeful, it requires some intention on our part. We have to decide to grow, we have to put effort into it. It's a lot less organic and it becomes a lot more mechanical, to be honest. It's a lot less like a plant growing and it's more like a building being constructed. We have to do some very intentional things to grow. And I don't know what it is in your life that you want to grow in. Maybe it's joy this year. Maybe you're someone that just naturally focuses on the problems. You get really overworked and overwhelmed by all the bad things happening. It's really hard for you to find the joy in life and just breathe and enjoy things. And you want to grow in joy this year. That's a good thing. You should want that. But you're not just gonna automatically become more joyful this year. You're not gonna wake up in the mornings and just hear beautiful music and the birds chirping and all these great things and just go, wow, I'm smiling more than ever. That's not how it works. Maybe you're someone that needs to grow in initiative. Maybe you have this big list of things you want to do. You don't lack for dreams, but you have a hard time just finding the gumption to get started, to start crossing those things off your list. And this year you want to have more initiative. You want to wake up in the morning and sort of have the ability to go for it. But you're not gonna just grow initiative this year. That's not how it's gonna work. You're not just gonna wake up every day having a little bit more and a little bit more. It's not organic, it's mechanical. You have to decide to build initiative into your life. I want more discipline in my life this year. I am not a disciplined person. Naturally, not at all. In fact, I'm very impulsive. I always have been. Now, the good thing for me is that the things I want to do, the things that I have an impulse to do, happen to be things that are pretty socially acceptable. So in in college, I wanted to get really good grades. So when people would come by my room and say, hey Justin, there's this party or there's this event you want to go, and I would say, No, I'm gonna study, that was not me being disciplined. That was not me being like, oh, do I want to? But no, I gotta, I gotta do the right thing. I gotta study these books. That was me going, no, I'd rather do this. I want to get good grades. That's what I wanted to do. So I've had impulses to do good things, but the reality is I've always just done what I wanted to do. And the problem with that is there are times when I don't want to do the things that are really necessary for success in life. And I'm a little too dependent on my mood. So this year, I want to become more disciplined. I want to become more disciplined in my my health, how I eat, those kind of things, all aspects of life. But I'm not just gonna grow discipline this year. I'm not gonna wake up in the morning craving a salad. That's never gonna happen to me. Never in life. I have to build discipline into my life. I have to build it into my life. I have to be intentional. See, for us, growth, it's like building something. It's like it's like an architect saying, This is what I want to see happen, this is what I want to see built, and I'm gonna do the things necessary. I'm gonna take the steps necessary to grow. See, Jesus recognized that. Jesus, he understands life. If you want evidence, again, of Jesus being more than just a man, of being who he says he is, just read what Jesus says about life and ask yourself this question: Does he get it? Does he understand the human condition unlike anyone else ever? And he does. So we have these words of Jesus speaking to this mechanical building process we have to endure in Matthew chapter 7. Verse 24, Jesus says, Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn't obey, that person is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash. Jesus recognizes something about life that all of us really, we get it. We may not think in these terms, but we understand it. Jesus is saying, hey, look, please recognize that life is weighty, life is is heavy. And whether we do it consciously or subconsciously, whether it's intentional or unintentional, we are all building our lives right now, and we're all building our lives on some sort of foundation. And when it comes to building anything, the foundation is absolutely vital. There's nothing more important than a foundation. A few years ago, right when we found out we were pregnant with Lily, we decided to move into a new house. And moving is something my family does really well. In fact, my parents are getting ready to move again, and I think since I've been born, this will be house number like 25. It's crazy. We move a lot. We're movers, the McTears, we like to move around. So we're good at boxes and putting boxes into things and taking boxes out of things and then temporarily unpacking those boxes so that we can put them back in boxes shortly thereafter. That is what we do. So moving's not a hard process for us, and we were excited to move and we were looking at bigger houses than we'd had before, because now we're gonna have multiple kids, and we really felt like we wanted a house that we could be in for a long time, maybe for the long haul. And so we started searching. And Lisa Wall, who goes to his hand, she was our real estate agent. And Lisa, I know you're here today. I'm sorry for what we put you through because we looked at so many houses. So many houses. You watch those shows on TV about people finding houses, and it's like a half-hour show, and you don't realize sometimes that no, no, that was like a three-year process or something like that. That's how it feels anyway when you're you're actually doing it. So we looked at house after house after house, and finally we found one that we liked. And so we moved in. And we moved in aggressively. We got everything unpacked because we wanted to have everything set up for the baby. But some weird things happened. We moved in before we actually closed on the house. Some things happened on the owner's end that pushed back the closing date, but he said, no, go ahead and move in. You know, we'll get it all wrapped up and you guys will already be unpacked, and then we'll close. And then something else happened, and that date got pushed back even more. We were okay because we were unpacked, we're living there. He just had to figure out stuff on his end. And then while we're we're in that limbo process, while we're in the house, living there, unpacked, pictures on the walls, I mean, the whole nine yards, it rained, which is not that uncommon. Right? I mean, Jesus said it very clearly. When it rains, right, when the storms come, rain happens. But what doesn't tend to happen when it rains is that the rain comes into your house. And it can come into your house a variety of different ways. It could come through the roof, but this is not what happened that day. It was coming up through the basement. Nathan was actually over at our house that night. Nathan's really handy. He used to be in charge of the facility here before he did all the worship. He's a really multi-talented guy. And I don't really know much about houses or anything other than moving into them and moving out of them. Other than that, I know nothing. And so I kind of looked at Nathan and looked at the water and I wanted some reassurance. I wanted him to look at me and be like, no, no, this is not that big of a deal. We'll we can get this fixed, we can get this taken care of. And Nathan just looked at me and went, This is really bad. It's really bad. And I was like, awesome, thank you, thank you, Nathan. And so we had this decision to make. We had a person that came out and looked at our house and examined everything, and he said, Hey, it could be a couple of different things. Number one, it could be foundation issues. And then he said it could also be this and this and this, but I didn't hear anything after he said foundation issues. I can't remember another thing he said. He just said it could be an issue with the foundation. And I don't know much about building, but I'm pretty sure that you don't want issues with the foundation. I mean, honestly, I take any other issue, any other issue with that house, I wouldn't have had a problem. A roof issue, no big deal. We can patch that or we can we can get a new roof, we can figure that out. Uh, how about a plumbing issue? That's probably gross, but we can deal with that. We can manage a creepy neighbor issue. I can avoid people. All of us are good at that. There's always at least one person in the neighborhood that you just sort of do this to, and I can handle that. Done that for years, but a foundation issue, that is an issue I do not want to deal with. I don't want to mess with a faulty foundation. And we hadn't closed on that house yet, and so we decided not to. So we packed everything back up and we moved it into a storage facility. And some of my friends who are really good friends helped me out, and then we moved into Megan's parents' house for the last few weeks of her pregnancy, which was an amazing experience. It was so much fun. And then we moved back into the new house that we found the day before Megan went into labor. It was a very fun couple of months. It was awesome. And I'll never forget it. I'll never forget it. I'll say that. See, foundations are big deals. If you have issues with a foundation, you gotta make a major change. And what Jesus is recognizing here, he's saying, look, you are building life, whether you think about it that way or not, you are building a life. Some of us have have already built quite a bit. But he asks us to stop and consider the foundation that we're building on. And to think about what we have decided is carrying the weight of our lives. Because there's a lot of weight. There's problems, there's issues, there's setbacks, there's storms, but there's good weight too, there's hopes, there's dreams, there's passions. All of it, though, all of it has weight. So what are we building our lives on? See, the world will throw all kinds of stuff at us and tell us, hey, build on this. If you build on this the right way, this is gonna hold, this is solid, and it's all a lie. I mean, the classic example is money. We live in a world that tells us, hey, if you invest money the right way, and if you save up money the right way, and if you do everything right financially, then you'll have a financial foundation, you'll be able to retire, and you'll have plenty left over, and it's all gonna be good. I mean, half the commercials on TV are basically communicating to us money is a foundation you can build on. And some of us, myself included, have had seasons of life, maybe large seasons of life, where we have done that. We have built our life on a bank account. But there is a problem with money. It is not solid, it is by nature fluid. It comes and it goes. In fact, in Proverbs, the Bible says it really clearly: don't wear yourself out trying to get rich. Be wise enough to know when to quit, because in the blink of an eye, wealth disappears, for it will sprout wings and fly away like an eagle. That's money. It is not solid. It is fluid, and by definition, something that is fluid cannot be a solid foundation. Sand is fluid, it moves. It can't be a good foundation. Money, it just doesn't work. It's not strong enough to carry the weight. Money's not a bad thing. Having more money, fine. Get a raise, go for it, invest, do the wise things with your money, yes, but do not build your life on a bank account. It's not gonna work. A lot of us have learned that. Some of us have learned that the hard way. But there are other things as well. What about what about having a plan? We live in a world that values that, right? Like you've you've got to have a plan. What is your five-year plan? What is your goal for 10 years from now? What are you doing? What ideas do you have to build on? And sometimes when we get thinking really well, we we have good ideas, and we might start to build our lives and build our futures on the plans and our minds. I'm gonna go do this, and I'm gonna work this job, and then I'm gonna go here, and I'm gonna build my business like this, and I'm gonna do this and this and this and this, and we have this unbelievable plan. We have really good ideas, but the problem is that I've had a lot of good ideas that did not work. Maybe they weren't good ideas. That's possible, but I felt like they were. They seemed at the time to be really good ideas, they just didn't, they didn't pan out. And again, Proverbs tells it like it is those who trust in their own insight are foolish. In other words, you may have the best plan that anyone has ever had in life. And that plan's amazing, and you should be proud of that plan, and you should follow that plan. Go for it, but do not make that plan the foundation of your life. Don't make any idea that comes from you or a man the foundation of your life because plans change. Plans change. What about what about something really solid? What about something like the government? Right? Because let's be honest, I mean, that's what the government tells us. The government basically communicates time and time again hey, don't worry, we've got it. We've got it. Your retirement, we've got this thing called Social Security. You're good. Your health care, we're gonna take care of that. Now, we do have to borrow from your retirement to pay for your health care, but don't worry, we've got you. Just trust us. We've got you. And here's the thing: we are blessed to have the government that we have. We are blessed to have a government. As much as during election times, we kind of go, no, we're not. We have a terrible government, it's all awful. We would not trade our government for most of the governments in the world. So we're blessed. But do not make a government or an economy or anything like that the foundation of your life because governments come and go, governments rise and fall. It's not solid enough to be the foundation of your life. You have to have a foundation that can hold the weight. And it doesn't matter what you're building in your life. If you're building a marriage, do not build a marriage based on mutual attraction. It's good to be attracted to your spouse. That's a very good thing. But the Bible says beauty fades. I always say this about Megan and I. It really works for our marriage because we're kind of like salsa. Like I'm chunky and she's hot. So you put the two things together, that's good, right? So it's worked out really well on my end. I look at Megan and I'm really happy and I'm blessed, and she's gorgeous and it's awesome. But she looks at me and I know, I know. I mean, I'm doing my best. I'm doing my best. But we don't put cameras on me for a reason. You need some distance right now, okay? So here's the thing mutual attraction, wonderful. But you can't build a life on it. You can't build a marriage on it. You can't even build a marriage on feeling in love. Feeling in love is wonderful, but feelings change. And anyone who's been married for 30 plus years that tells you I've been in love with this person every day in the last 30 years is a liar. They are a liar. That is not how it works. It's just not how it works. That's why forgiveness is so important from the get-go in a marriage, because there will be times where that feeling of love will be chipped at and chipped at and chipped at. And it'll be things that are done maybe intentionally. It'll be things that the person does, big mess-ups, big mistakes, even moral failures, or it could just be really annoying things that they do. And there are so many of them that you don't even know about until you get married. It's like the day you get married, they just all come out. And the feeling, the feeling of love, it's fluid. And you cannot build a marriage on something fluid. You can't build a life on something fluid. You have to have a solid, strong foundation, something that can take the weight. And here we have Jesus, this man, who has the audacity to tell us that he himself and his teachings, what he says, that those are strong enough to build a life on. I mean, let's just think about that for a second. Because we we read Jesus and we have this amazing gift of hindsight. We get to look at Jesus from the perspective of people living 2,000 years later, knowing the story, knowing that he died and rose again, knowing that his movement has grown and grown and grown and only gained momentum over history. People have tried to stop it, it hasn't worked. So we can look at Jesus now and go, like, yeah, he knew what he was talking about, but you you put yourself in the shoes or the sandals, I guess, of the people who were there that day, who heard a man say that if you want to build your life on something solid, build it on me. That's audacious. That's almost offensive. To be so confident in yourself. I mean, I love the way it phrases it in the message version. Matthew 7.24 says, These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. Jesus says, My words, who I am, my teaching, that's what you build on. That's your foundation. And this wasn't some one-time thing. In Matthew 24, 35, he says this heaven and earth will disappear, but my words will never disappear. He's telling us that his words, that his truth is so strong, it is so powerful, that it is the only thing in heaven and on earth that we can build a life on. Jesus says, Build on me. Make me your foundation. You can have a lot of other things in your life. You can have a marriage, and you can have relationships, and you can have, you know, a business, and you can have goals, and you can have finances, and you can have all these things, and they're great additions to your life, but do not make them the foundation. Make me the foundation. That's what Jesus says. And I would imagine that many of the people there that day thought he was crazy. Because who says that? Who says that? But he wasn't crazy. Because this isn't just anyone we're talking about. This is Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ has this amazing ability to make very bold claims that no human being in history could back up except He does. And he said over and over again, I'm gonna die and get back up. That is kind of the definition of insanity. Right? Unless you do it. And so I've learned this, and I've learned it the hard way at times. I've learned that Jesus is the only thing in life strong enough to build on. Because I have built life on other things and they have not worked. I mean, I had an addiction for 10 years. Over ten years, actually. And I tried to overcome that addiction with my willpower. I tried to allow my willpower to be the foundation I was using to get over that addiction, and it did not work. It did not work. And if not for Jesus, if not for a decision that I made to make him the foundation of my life, that addiction would have overcome me. I look at my marriage. Megan and I, when we dated, we were young, we used to brag that we had never had a fight. And then we got married. And we had a fight that started like week two of our marriage and ended maybe the second week of our first anniversary, right? We had like a year-long fight. And we actually had this night, I'll never forget it. We had been married for right at a year. It may have been just after our first year anniversary, and we we were in our bedroom and things were not going well. And we looked at each other and we said it out loud. We said, hey, look, I'm not sure if maybe we shouldn't just call this thing. Because let's be honest, we don't have kids yet. If we had a child, that would create a lot of collateral damage if this thing doesn't work out. I mean, we don't have kids. We're both really young. I think I was 21, she was 20, so you know, yeah, this would be like a bad chapter of life, but we got a lot of years to move on from it. And we sat there and there were a lot of pros to calling it quits. Because the circumstances were not working out. But we had made a decision. We had made a prior decision to build our relationship on our mutual faith and trust in Jesus Christ. And we knew, we knew, as we had that conversation, God made it so clear to us that yes, we could not take it. We were struggling to hold on, but we believed that Jesus had the strength to make it work. And so we decided that day not to get divorced. We decided to stay together. We have these three amazing kids, one we haven't met yet, but he's gonna be here soon. And I have this life that I would never have had had I had I gotten divorced. And if you've been divorced, there's life after that. Because you can always start building on Jesus. But I'm grateful for the fact that I made the decision not to build my marriage on mutual attraction or not to build my marriage on feeling in love. But to build my marriage on Jesus. Because here's the thing, when Jesus is your foundation, those other things, they get to be what they're meant to be. Love is meant to be amazing and fun and enjoyable and wonderful, but it's not meant to be the foundation. And if you make it the foundation of your life, a feeling of love, you're putting a stress on it that it's not designed to bear, and it's gonna crack and it's gonna crumble. But if you put it on Jesus, he can take the weight. He's the foundation. His truth is the foundation. And so we grow our lives by building on him. And I want to talk to you for just a second about how we want to help you do that as a church. So we started today with the question, how do I grow? I want to look at that for just a second. Uh, because it's a very important question, right? How do I grow? How do I grow? So, you know, we got this picture of a building, because again, this is mechanical. Jesus said, You want to build on me. And I want you to understand this as we go through this, because I get so excited when as a church, we get to help each other do the things God's asking us to do. Because it's one thing for me to stand up here and be like, hey, y'all need to grow. So go out and grow this week, right? Go do some stuff and grow. That's that's fine. That's that's great. You might leave here really charged up and like, yeah, okay, I'm gonna do that. But but as a church, I think we have a responsibility to do what is necessary to help you grow. You can't build your life on this church, you can't build your life on any church, you can't build your life on, I mean, it's a great church, but you can't build your life on it. Our role is not to be your foundation, but it is to help you build. Because you don't have to build alone. And so with Jesus as the foundation, we want to help each other build. And we've been working as a church on doing that. So, how do we grow? Well, we've kind of covered this, but we have to start with a strong foundation. Matthew 7, 24, that's what we just read. Jesus saying, look, my truth, my words, that's what you build on. You cannot build if you don't have the right foundation. And so we're gonna make Jesus the foundation. But when Jesus says his words, what he's really talking about is the Bible. Because Jesus' words are not just the words in those four four books that happen to chronicle his life. Jesus is speaking all throughout it. It's the same God. His words have stood the test of time. I love stories about the persecution of the Bible. Because there's never been a document in history that has been attacked as much as the Bible. And it's not just in the last couple hundred years, I mean, it's been forever. In fact, there was a really famous French philosopher, a very passionate atheist named Voltaire. And during the time right before the French Revolution, 1700s, he once made a claim that within a hundred years after his life, the Bible would be irrelevant. No one would read it, it would be pretty much forgotten. And then a hundred years after he died, his house was purchased, his house in Switzerland by the Geneva Bible Society, and they printed Bibles in his house. And so, you know, it's just he was wrong. It happens. The Bible has stood the test of time, and it's done that for a reason. And so here's what we need to do to build our lives on the foundation of God's truth. We've got to study the Bible so we can know the Bible, so we can apply it to our lives, because we can't apply it if we don't know it, and we can't know it if we can't study it. If we don't study it, but here's the problem with that that is hard. I mean, I'm sure in this room there are many of us who have said at different stages of life, I this year, I'm gonna know the Bible. I'm gonna read it, I'm gonna study it, and you start, and maybe you you start at the beginning because that kind of makes sense, right? It's where most books begin. I don't thumb to the middle. You start in the beginning, but then you you get a few weeks in, and now you're reading lists of names, and you're thinking, why am I reading lists of names? Why are there all these names? What is the point of this? I don't want to read this. Is this boring, this is this is confusing, this doesn't make any sense. Or maybe this God that I'm reading about, he doesn't seem to be the God that we talk about on Sundays. He seems mad. He seems like he's always doing some pretty intense stuff. I don't know what's going on here. The Bible can be really intimidating. But we want to help with that. We want to help you study it in a way that is that is in-depth but not so intensive that it's intimidating. In-depth, but not intimidating. We want to help you know it. We want to help you learn how to engage the Bible. Some of us in here already know how to do that. You have a problem in life, and you don't go like, oh man, what am I gonna do? You go, okay, I'm gonna find what God says to do. I'm gonna find what his word tells me to do. And you actually have the knowledge necessary to know how to engage the Bible. Some of us don't have that. Some of us are trying our best, but we just maybe open to something random and hope we find the right thing. And God is so good that sometimes that works. In fact, a lot of times that works. But we want you to have what you need to actually engage with it and feel confident in that because we want you to be able to apply it to your life. So we have something coming up, starts this Wednesday night, called foundations. This is something we've been working on for months as a church. In fact, Elon even talked about it last year, how our big priority this year as a church is to help you engage God's word in a whole new way. And foundations is two things. It is both a class and a curriculum. I'll explain how that works. The class is gonna meet on Wednesday nights. We kick off this Wednesday night, 7 o'clock. We're gonna be in this room. It's gonna kick off with a big worship night. It's gonna be amazing. The whole worship team will be here, and you're all invited. Come. Even if you're sort of on the fence about taking the class, just come on Wednesday night. You're gonna hear about it. We've got child care that's provided, all that kind of stuff, like a Sunday morning. So you can drop your kids off, you can come in this room, worship, and hear what we're gonna do and make that decision. If you're 100% sure though, if you're like, I'm I'm doing this, and we've got close to 100 people that have already told us we're 100% doing this, then please go fill out a registration card at the Connect Desk. We don't need you to do that to come, but if you have kids, it'll really help us be prepared to know how many people to have in every age area. But anyway, that's a logistical issue. The main thing is just be here, we'll figure it out. So we're gonna worship, we're gonna kick things off. And then the following week, the class itself will actually begin. We're gonna do a study on God's character. We're gonna look at things like holiness and sovereignty, these concepts of God that we hear about, and we just kind of go, Yeah, I think I sort of get that. But we want to know who God really is so we can approach Him. We're gonna be studying that this session. It's gonna last about eight weeks. Then we'll do another session a few weeks after that. We'll do another session, four sessions this year, so we'll have foundations running almost the entirety of the year. It's really exciting. Every single time we start a session, we'll kick it off with a big worship night. Can't wait. The class itself, it's gonna include a personal Bible study. This is a Bible study that's actually been written by incredible people here at his hands. We have some of the most talented people. It's amazing to me how gifted, how knowledgeable you guys are. And so we have some some amazing people that wrote this Bible study, and Ben Sykes is one of the ones that Ben plays keyboards in the worship band. If you know Ben, Ben just he sees God in really cool ways. And I was actually reading the Bible study, I was reading it to critique it. And my brain forgot to do that because about two pages in, I was just reading it and underlining things, like, wow, this is awesome. Right? It's like, oh yeah, I'm supposed to, I'm supposed to tell them to change. No, it was, I'm like, Ben, this is unbelievable. I would buy this and and be blown away by it if it was published. It needs to be published, it's amazing. So you're gonna have that personal Bible study. Not only is it something to read, but it's something that is designed to help you again engage the Bible. It's gonna help you feel confident opening up the Bible and getting something out of it for yourself. There's also gonna be some teaching time in the class with QA, a chance for you to read, read the Bible the week before and be like, this makes no sense. What is this all about? And actually come to the class and ask that question. Because when I read the Bible, I have questions all the time. In fact, I write question marks in my Bible all the time. Like, what the heck, God? What does this mean? What are you doing? This makes no sense. You need to get an editor or something like that. Like, figure this out. And it's amazing how many times in life God will answer that for me, and I'll go back years later and I'll see the question mark, and I'm like, oh, I can scratch that out because God answered it. It's awesome. But I have questions all the time, so you can come and bring your questions. And then there's gonna be a chance to break up into small groups, into breakout groups and get to know people. In fact, if you're relatively new to his hands, if you're not involved in a home group connection or foundations, that is where you begin. From now on, foundations is where you start to get connected. So if you ever go, hey, I want to get connected, I want to do more, great. Start with foundations. That's always gonna be the starting point because you always begin with the foundation. And what's really gonna be cool is that as these breakout groups develop and as you kind of go, hey, I really like these people, and those people creep me out, so I'm gonna go this way, you're gonna start to form friendships. And those friendships are actually gonna break off from the foundation's class, and those are gonna become home groups. And so from now on, home groups are actually gonna sort of organically come from the foundation's class. And this is really important because home groups are a big deal here. We have over 400 people in this church involved in home groups, and I'd like to see that number be way higher because I'm in a home group, and I'll tell you, when you're sitting in someone's living room and you're living life and you're you're talking and getting to know people and you're growing in your relationship with God together, there's something about that environment and that that amazing, amazing opportunity to not just be growing in your life with God, but to do it alongside other people, to celebrate the wins and the losses, to have support. It's incredible. Home groups are are where it's at. It's it's really important. But we also understand that if you're new and you want to get connected, signing up for a home group is kind of like, hey, want to go on a blind date, right? Want to drive to someone's house, you've never met them before. We promise they're not weird. We're pretty sure they're not weird, okay? Like, why don't you just drive there? And here's what happens this is this is just normal life. We don't have to pretend in the church like we're not normal human beings. Because I love everyone, but I don't like everyone. You know? I I I love everyone, I have to love everyone. I'm called to love everyone, but God never tells me I have to like every person. There are people that I'm a Duke fan. If I showed up to a home group and I see like North Carolina stuff, I'm like, well, goodbye. I'm so sorry, but I refuse to sit in this house week in, week out, and stare at that horrific color of blue. That's the color of blue that I'm I used to joke that I would, if you're a North Carolina fan, just deal with it. Um I would, I would paint, you know, whatever I would use for spanking, and we don't really even do that that much, so I've never done this, but I would I would paint it the color North Carolina blue so that one day, just subconsciously, my children would see that color and be like, oh, I don't want that. I don't like that. So if you're a sports fan and you're into corporal punishment, that's a suggestion, okay? So home groups, home groups are are really important. But I understand the hesitation of just jumping in. That's hard to do. That's hard to do. Because you may not click, they may be awesome, you might be awesome, but you may just not click. You're not at the same stage of life, whatever. In this class, you're gonna have the chance to sort of mix around and meet different people. You're not gonna be locked in from week one to whatever group you're part of. We're gonna do some things to sort of mix it up, and you're gonna meet people, and you're gonna have the ability to say, hey, these are great people. I want to sort of hang out with them, and then home groups will sort of start from that. I think that's really, really important. It's really exciting. And so the question might be this as we wrap up, well, what if I'm already in a home group, right? Um, and here's the answer to that question: stay where you are. By no means are you to ever leave. I'm just joking. Um but but the reality is this foundations, like I said earlier, it's both the class and a curriculum. So the foundations curriculum, the same thing that's gonna be happening in the class on Wednesday night, that's what's gonna be happening in home groups. So that's gonna mean the same personal Bible study. We're gonna do uh video segments of the teaching. And so you're gonna have access to those in your group. So you guys will be able to actually kick off your group if you choose. You don't have to, but you can actually have video segments of the teaching time so you have that element as well, and you already have amazing discussion with the people you know in your home groups. So stay where you are. If you want to come on Wednesday night and go to a home group, great. If you want to come on Wednesday nights and take the class a few times before you jump into a home group, fine. But we just want you to have a place to start. That's really important. So foundation starts this Wednesday night, and I'm I'm just I'm excited to kick this off because, guys, I really do believe this. I'm gonna wrap up. But I really believe that this is, for lack of a better term, foundational for our church. We have such a great church. But we're still pretty young if you're just joining us. We we haven't been around that long. We're learning things. We're growing. We've grown by a thousand people in the last year and in some odd months. That's a lot. That's exciting. But it's not just enough for us to get together here on Sunday mornings. We gotta live life together. Because one day, a storm's gonna come and you're gonna need help. And we want to help you. We want to live life with you, we want to support you, we want to come around you, we want to pray for you, we want to be there for you, but we can't really be there for you like we need to be if we don't know you. And I think foundations is gonna change that in a big way. I'm excited. I can't tell. So this Wednesday night, be here, but sign up if you can, if you have kids, especially. But be here, and even just be here to gauge it, see if it's something you want to do. We want to grow. We want to build a life that counts. In fact, I heard a message recently. The person giving the message is a pastor I listened to in California. He said, Hey, you don't want to get to heaven one day and discover that you were meant to be a skyscraper, but you settled for a third-story tall building. You can build a great life. You should desire more, you should want more, you should you should build tall. You should recognize that as a human being created by God, you have the capacity to build and build and build. But the higher you build, the greater your dreams and your hopes and your passions, the stronger that foundation has to be. In fact, skyscrapers have incredibly large foundations. The average skyscraper has a foundation that's 150 feet deep. Think about that. This this roof right above our heads, 45 feet tall. So you just picture two more on top of it. That is how deep into the earth the foundation of a skyscraper goes. Because that's what's necessary to hold the weight. Jesus is the deep, strong foundation we need to build on. And as a church, we're gonna start building on him in a brand new way, and I'm so excited. So let's pray, and we'll wrap up with some more worship like we always do. Jesus, thank you so much for being our foundation. Thank you so much, Jesus, for being the one who had the courage to tell us how to do it. You loved us enough to come to this earth to say, hey, look, you guys have been building your lives on the wrong foundation for years. You've tried to build it on money, you've tried to build it on false gods, you've tried to build it on silly things. Build it on me and it's gonna work. Build it on me and you're gonna survive the storms. You're gonna you're gonna have something strong enough to hold the weight of your hopes and your dreams. And so, Lord, we we just want to come to you and say, we're committed to building our lives on you. Help us do it. And help us help each other do it as well. We pray for the the launch of this class foundations. We pray that you would bless it, that you would favor it, that that hundreds of people would connect with you in a brand new way because of it. And we ask all this in your name, Jesus. Amen.