Good morning. How is everybody? We good? Wonderful, wonderful. Well, hey, thank you so much for being here this morning. If it is your very first time at his hands, we want to start by saying welcome. We're so glad you're here. If you want more information about who we are, just ask someone. Or you can go to the info desk and grab a first-time visitor packet and we'll have some some information in there that might be relevant to you as you're sort of figuring things out, whether or not this is a place that you want to be part of. Man, if you experience anything like I have over the last several years, this is a place that you want to be part of because God is doing some amazing, some incredible, and some really important things in this church through all of you. It's so exciting to be part of it. I've got I've got a few really quick announcements before we jump into what we're gonna talk about today. Number one, give a kid a chance. Or as we've called it for years, gakik. That's you know, can you see that? Um it's an amazing ministry that we've been part of for probably seven or eight years. What they do is really simple. They make sure that needy kids in our area start school with all the supplies they need. Because a lot of families can't afford a new backpack and all the school supplies that go along with the school year. And so how we help is really simple. Uh anyone that wants to can go to the info desk, grab a supply list, and it'll tell you what to go to the store and buy. You buy a backpack, you buy some school supplies, you bring it back here to the church by next Sunday, and then give a kid a chance, we'll come and pick it up, and they will take that to the kids in need. Uh do that today if you'd like. We appreciate you doing that. It makes a big difference in a lot of families' lives. Something else that I'm really excited about coming up soon on July 10th is an event called Canvas. And this is something we've done a few times, but we've never actually announced it on a Sunday. Many of you know that we love art here at His Hands. We have a lot of art on the walls. Uh Marlon Yoder leads our art group, and Marlon is the one that has painted all the Tree of Life paintings that you'll see everywhere. The trees that look like they're exploding with life. They're pretty aptly named. And Marlon leads that group on Wednesday nights. Incredible artists, incredibly gifted people, and then a lot of us who just sort of wish we were gifted, but were there and we're enjoying it, we're having a good time, as Marlon and the other master artists do their Bob Ross impressions and teach us how to paint trees and things like that. Well, this group not only exists to create art, but they want to help people. And so they put this event on a few times a year, and it's really simple. You you buy a ticket to it. There are, I think the tickets are $30. You can get one today at the desk out by the source. And you come, you're gonna get a canvas, you're gonna get to paint whatever you want on it, but they'll be there to sort of show you how, and Marlon will even teach you how to do one of his Tree of Life paintings if you want to do your best uh impression of that. You get to take that home with you. There's refreshments, there's some some snacks, there's some foods that you can have there as well. It's a really good time. Marlon actually is gonna provide one of his Tree of Life paintings that there will be a dollar raffle for. So if you've ever been someone that uh can afford real art, good for you. Great job. You have done so well in life. I'm not where you are right now, so a dollar raffle is the only chance I have of buying a true piece of art. But there will be one of those paintings that you can you can put a ticket in. The cool thing about all this though is that all the proceeds, all of it, goes to a situation, to a family that that has a need. And we have these families in our church that pop up from time to time that have something happen in their lives, and we want to come alongside them, we want to help, and so we do these events to raise funds to help them. That's a really exciting thing to do. The family that we're helping out right now, many of you know, Dale and Linda Morris, they are unbelievable people. Clap for them. Clap for them, because I'll tell you why. So if you've ever noticed, one of the things, it's a small thing, but when you're part of a place for a long time, there's little things that you start to notice. I love our floors here. Like the floors in the lobby and down that hallway, there's just something about looking at that giant hallway that brings up the four-year-old child inside of me. And I want to run, but I hold back, you know, I try to keep myself contained. Well, Dale, for years, I want to say six, seven years, Dale has volunteered his time, and he comes here and he he buffs all the floors. He waxes all the floors. And frequently we'll have events where the floors will get really scratched up, and we call Dale and we say, Hey, we're so sorry, but can you come and fix it? And Dale's like, Yeah, I'll be there. He does so much, the whole family does so much. They they all come together and do it. Well, on January 2nd, Linda, Dale's wife, who's a big part of our family here as well, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. And so I want to read this God story that Dale wrote this morning, actually. He said, It all started on January 2nd. He said, The wife, I love that's so Dale, if you know Dale Morris. The wife was having a pain in her side. The doctor couldn't see her, so we had to go to the ER, and the ER went crazy. They said her oxygen levels were really low in the low 80s, which is really bad. Things were a little bit bleak. So uh they sent us and gave us a diagnosis. Bottom line is she was diagnosed with single-cell lung cancer stage four. And she had a mass the size of an apple on the outside of her lung. It was inoperable. And so she was given 90 days to live, if not addressed aggressively. So the hospital pushed things extremely fast. We went to the hospital, uh, we were in there for 15 days before she had a complete round of chemo. The people here at his hands were wonderfully fantastic and supportive between the visits, the prayers, the laying on of hands. I can't I can't thank everyone enough. Less than five months later, all of her tests for cancer are negative. She is completely healed and cancer-free. So we uh we we have a very, very big God, and they are so excited for what God has done, for that healing that's taken place in their lives. But as you can imagine, it hasn't been easy. Chemotherapy and all the doctor visits and the disruption of life, and so we just want to come alongside them and we want to help them. So this event, Canvas, it's for the Morrises. Uh, buy a ticket. I think there's only like 60 tickets available because we only have so much space in the art studio. But uh, but buy a ticket, be there, you'll have a blast, and it's all gonna go to them as a big thank you. Um, and I think they they deserve that. So we love you guys, and we're excited about that on the 10th. Um, July 4th is right around the corner as well. It is Saturday. How crazy is that? That Saturday is July 4th. And if you've never been here on the 4th of July, you need to be because this is the place to be in Woodstock. The city of Woodstock shoots off their official fireworks right above our building. We have a front row seat, and we just take advantage of it. We have a lot of fun. We'll have music, we'll have inflatables and games for kids all inside, air conditioned, that kind of thing. Um, Elon said last week we don't believe in porta potties, and that's true. We believe they exist, they are real. We just don't want to use them. So uh so we will we will open up our building, you know, the restrooms will be open, we'll have food. The Salisbury's are gonna be there uh cooking their barbecue, their stuff like always. They're gonna have redneck tacos. And um, has anyone had the redneck tacos? Does anyone know what this is? Okay, we need to I need to proselytize some people to redneck tacos. That's a word I've never used before. Um so this is this is what a redneck taco is. They invented this, okay? It is pulled barbecue, right? Pulled pork in a in a tortilla with sriracha coleslaw on top. And guys, there are emotions you've never felt before, okay? Until you taste the redneck tacos. I I actually have it on my to-do list to eat 10 of them this year. Uh, that's gonna be exciting. If that's not your thing, hot dog heaven will be here, they'll have their food truck here, Kona Ice will be here. So we'll have a lot of great stuff happening in the parking lot. It's just gonna be a party. So be here on the fourth. Doors open at five o'clock, the fireworks start at dusk. But if you want to set up a tent or lawn chairs or anything like that, feel free to come as early as you'd like. If you want a spot on the walkway, I don't even know how early to tell you to get here, because you guys are crazy. You keep getting here earlier every single year. It will not shock me if there's someone there tomorrow. It really won't. Um it'll be awkward, but it won't shock me. So just be here for that. We'll set up a huge section of the parking lot, though. We'll reserve it for people that want to bring lawn chairs and stuff. You'll have a spot for sure, but it's gonna be a blast, so be here for that. Final thing I want to say is a big thank you to everyone who helps out financially. You were so generous. You know, as a church, if you're new, we don't believe in peer pressure, we do not believe in manipulation, we don't use those things to generate anything like that at all. We believe in generosity. So we don't pass a plate, we don't do big giving campaigns and things like that. What we ask is really simple. We ask that if this is your church, that you pray and ask God to tell you how much he wants you to give, to commit to a percentage. That could be 2%, it could be 5%, it could be more. It's up to you and God. That's between, that's between you. But to commit to whatever he puts on your heart and just commit to it every month. And if we do that, it's so simple. If we do that, number one, God promises to bless us, but number two, we have enough. We have enough as a church to do what we do. We have enough to give to the community. Those of you who are new, we give 10% of everything that comes here back to the community, no strings attached. It's exciting to do it. So thank you for your generosity. Keep it up. Uh, there are four columns at the back of the room where you can give or you can give online at hishandschurch.com. Okay, pray with me and then we'll we'll talk for a little bit. Jesus, thank you so much for for your love, for your grace, for your patience, for everything that you give us. Holy Spirit, we ask that right now you would you would work in our hearts. We're all in different places, we're all coming from different spots in life, but we want you to make us open to your truth. We are open to you challenging us, but we are we're in desperate need of your encouragement, of the hope that you have for us today. So we just ask for that. Lord, we ask that you give that to us with abundance. We're your people, and we want to follow you, we want to grow. We love you, Jesus. Amen. Well, for the last several weeks, we've been talking about prayer as part of our series, How to. We want to know how to grow. We want to know how to advance in life, and God wants that for us. He is so good to us that not only, not only does God tell us what to do, not only does he call us to live a certain life, but he actually tells us how to do it. And so specifically, we're looking at Matthew chapter 6, at Jesus' how-to teachings. He tells us how to give. We covered that for a few weeks. He tells us how to pray. We're still gonna talk about prayer for a while because prayer is a big deal. And he tells us how to fast. He basically says, here's how to be generous, here's how to communicate with God, and here's how to have self-control. Those are three things that, when applied to our lives, produce incredible results. And so I'm excited to talk more about prayer this morning. I do want to take a few minutes, though, and talk about the Supreme Court decision that happened this last week. And here's why I want to talk about it. It's really simple. Because I believe very much in transparency. And I believe that if there's an elephant in the room, you need to talk about it. If there was a physical elephant in this room right now, I would tell you. If it was behind you, I would be like, back row, careful, there's an elephant back there. You have to do that. That's just kindness, right? That's decency. But see, right now, I it's an amazing moment in our history as a nation. It's an amazing moment for the church because all eyes right now are on the church in America. How is the church going to respond? How is the church going to react? And I think we can be very honest and open as followers of God to say that the church has not always done a great job responding and reacting to our culture in the past. I don't mean this church, I don't mean his hands, but I mean the church in general. See, there was a time when when the church stopped looking like Jesus. Because Jesus tells us in his word that the world will know that we belong to him because of our love. That's what he said. Those are his words. But for whole generations, the church was not characterized by love. The church was characterized by judgment. And it makes sense, it happens when you believe you have a majority, when you believe you have power, you stop caring so much that other people really know God, you just start caring that they act like they know God. And the message that the church started to send to our culture was, hey, we really don't care if you know Jesus, we just want you to behave like you do, because if you don't, it offends us. And see, Jesus was impossible to offend. It took a lot to offend Jesus. In fact, the only people that really offended Jesus were the hyper-religious people that kept others from God. But Jesus was not someone that walked around saying, Hey, your sin, your behavior, it really bothers me. So the church stopped caring about the love that Jesus modeled and started making it its job to judge the world. But see, there's a problem with that, is we're not the judge. We're not called to be the moral police of this world. We're not. I'll tell you, this is scripture. Paul wrote this in Romans chapter 2. He said, You may think you can condemn such people, but you're just as bad. And you have no excuse because when you say they are wicked and they should be punished, you're condemning yourself. For you who judge others do the very same thing, and we know that God in his justice will punish anyone who does such things. Since you judge others for doing these things, why do you think you can avoid God's judgment when you do the same? Don't you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can't you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from sin? In other words, it's really simple. God is the judge. And he makes no apologies for that. God is a judge. He will judge this world, he judges our lives. He has the right to, he is God. But we are not the judge. And when we try when we try to do God's job for him, it never works out. It just doesn't. When we try to do what God is the only one to do it, when we try to take over God's job, it doesn't work out. And see, as a result of people doing that, as a result of us failing to look past the issues in other people, we forget that God has looked past the issues in us. He has kindness toward us, he has forgiven us, and so we should be quick to forgive. We should be quick to look past whatever issues we see and see who people really are, and that is the children of God. So, how do we respond as a church? Now, I want to be I want to be really clear. Loving people does not mean that we have to agree with everything. Loving people, the way that Jesus loves people, does not mean that we set our convictions aside. Not in the slightest. Because the truth is to follow Jesus means to submit our lives to Jesus. It means to submit our lives to the Word of God. I have to do that in my life, and it's very inconvenient. It just is, because the standard that God has for me, it's higher than the standard I would choose for myself, and it's much higher than the standard that our culture sets for us. It just is. I've shared this many times with you before. I I had a 10-year-long plus addiction to pornography. And here's the thing my government did not tell me that I was wrong. I broke no laws. But I'm not called to live my life based on the standard of what is legal. Our culture did not condemn me. In fact, our culture would say, ah, it's not a big deal. You're not you're not hurting anyone, you're not having an affair with your wife, you're you're just being a boy, right? Boys will be boys. That's what culture said, but but I was compelled to change. I was compelled to move away from that behavior. Not because the government said I should, and not because our culture compelled me to, but because I knew the word of God did not support my behavior. And I know that as a follower of Jesus, the very word follower means I will submit to you and I will follow you. And if you lead me to a place that I wouldn't go otherwise, so be it. And so loving people and staying with the standard of God's word, it's totally possible. The church has not done a very good job of it in the past, but I believe, personally and proudly, that this church is uniquely equipped to do just that. I really do. And so when there are moments in church culture, when there are moments in our culture that we have the opportunity to be like Jesus and to show this world who Jesus really is, to say to the world, hey, if the church has wounded you, I'm really sorry because the church was never meant to be an instrument of harm, but an instrument of healing. We have to take that chance. So how do we do that? How do we walk the line where we hold on to love but also stay true to the standards that God gives us? Because I promise you that right now in this country, there are conversations happening in churches all over the place that are taking many different shapes, many different forms. Some churches are abandoning love for people in the name of the standards that we're gonna live by. Some churches are abandoning standards from Scripture in the name of love. But Jesus calls us to both. Jesus lived both. And we can be like Jesus. I believe it boils down to four words. Four words that we can all use to have some agreement. And I want to say this as a disclaimer: if you have any questions about any of this, feel free to ask me. We are very accessible here, we are open books, and you can talk to me after we're done today. I do have a meeting, so I won't be available for long, but send me an email, call me, I'll call you, I'll have as many conversations as we can because I want us as a church to have clarity, because it is hard to be aggressive if you're confused. Four words love, acceptance, agreement, and endorsement. Our culture has this message that it sends to us all the time right now, and the message is this anything short of endorsement is hate. Anything short of endorsement is judgment, and that's simply not true. In fact, it's a really childish idea because I'm married. And so there are so many things my wife does not agree with me about. There are so many things within me that my wife would love to change. She does not endorse all my behavior, not in the slightest, but we have love and acceptance. The question is: can we have love and acceptance, even if we don't have complete agreement and endorsement? And the answer is absolutely yes. We love everyone. We love everyone. You know that saying, love the sinner, hate the sin? Jesus never said that. That is not in the Bible. I believe that God hates sin, but I believe he hates it for very different reasons than most Christians tend to. We hate sin because it it annoys us, it makes us feel uncomfortable, it offends us. God hates sin because it separates the people he created to be loved by him from him. That's why God hates it. Because it stands in his way to a relationship with them. The love of Jesus is complete, it is for everyone, and he does not hold back love. Jesus did not discriminate when it came to love. So we love everyone. We love people. Period. People. Absolutely. The next word is acceptance. We accept virtually anyone here. I say virtually. Uh, if you're new here, we don't have an official membership or anything like that. If you're family, you're family. I say virtually because I can't imagine a few scenarios in which we wouldn't, and we've actually had some of these play out a few years ago, for example. Someone that I actually knew pretty well was here, and they were obviously under the influence of drugs, and they were acting very erratically, making a lot of people nervous. And so we have an amazing safety team that came and grabbed me for some unknown reason. Um and uh and so I had a conversation with them and I said, Look, I love you. I mean, I knew this person, you know, first name basis. I love you, but you can't be here today. Because we have kids here. And this this has to be a safe place. And your behavior right now is not making it a safe place. So you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to go. But we love you, we support you, we want to help you, we want to help you heal from this, we want to help you get the treatment you need, but today you you can't be here. There are situations like that, but they're so few and far between that they might as well be like a tenth of a percentage. We love everyone, 100% of people, no matter the issue, past, present, or future. We accept virtually everyone. And that brings us to the word agreement. Do we have to agree to get along? Do we have to agree with everything to worship alongside one another? To come alongside people in our community, to serve this community the way that Jesus calls us to? And the answer is no. Even if other people believe that, that oh, if you don't have perfect agreement with me, you can't love and accept me. That's not true. I don't live my life that way. I have so many people that I love and accept. And they do not agree with me. They don't agree with my convictions, they don't agree with my faith, but I do not require agreement for love and acceptance. And we should never do the same. You know, when it comes to the issue of same-sex marriage, we agree, as a church, that all people, regardless of anything, should be treated with decency and with fairness, because people are people. We are all made in God's image, not some of us. We are all made in his image. We do not, as a church, agree that that is the lifestyle God wants us to live. We don't agree with that. And that's okay. Because we don't have to have agreement for love and acceptance. We really don't. Endorsement is a whole other category. I can only endorse things in my own life. I can only endorse things in my life that Scripture supports. 1 Corinthians chapter 6. It's a really stupid verse because it's. You'll see why. I have the right to do anything, you say. But not everything is beneficial. I have the right to do anything, but I will not be mastered by anything. This is one of those verses that I love and I hate. I hate it because it's inconvenient. Because this is God saying, yes, you're covered by grace. You can live how you want to, technically. But at the same time, I have called you to live a certain way, and I want you to live that way. And I can only endorse the behaviors in my own life that Scripture supports. And that means that I have to look in the mirror a lot. There are a lot of things inside of me that I know God does not endorse. Scripture is the standard that my life has to be under. That's the standard that God has called me to. And so as a church, do we endorse same-sex marriage? We don't. Because Scripture doesn't support it. And that may not be popular. It may not be, but here's the thing I believe we're called to live with a higher standard than popular. But I also believe, at my core, that love and acceptance are not optional. And the concept of the church looking at people that we disagree with and saying, I'm sorry, because we don't have agreement, we don't accept, and our love is not for you, that couldn't be further from the person of Jesus. Our mission as a church is to love people to Jesus. We will continue doing that. Everyone is welcome here. Everyone is welcome to worship here. Everyone belongs here because this place was built for people. And as a church, if we're able, even even those of us that may have different opinions than than me, as a church, if we're able to say, hey, I don't require agreement for love and acceptance, then we'll be able to handle pretty much any situation that our culture presents us with in a way that would make God proud. So that's what we're going to do. Does that make sense to everyone? Does that work? Okay. Again, if you have questions, because I know that this is a very divisive topic. The only reason I wanted to talk about it, I use wanted in and uh I don't really want to talk about it. Um I had a friend one time that said, leaders have to have hard conversations, and that's like the biggest undersell that I've ever been given in life. But I want us as a church to have to have unity. I want us to be able to move forward in this world, to make an impact on this world, and we can only do that. We can only do that with love and with acceptance and with understanding. And so if you have any questions, if you need anything else, explain, let me know. I will talk to you as long as we need to. I talk really fast though, so if it's okay, it'll probably be pretty short. Um I love you guys so much. Can we pray one more time? Who's gonna say no? Okay, Jesus, thank you so much for this place. God, I I love this church. I love the hearts of the people here. And Lord, it is it is our it is our privilege to be a church that reshapes what the word church means to people in this country. To be a church that is willing to lay aside differences for the sake of love, but a church that is not going to lay aside the life that you have called us to. So, Lord Jesus, make us people who have a heart for anyone that needs you. Make us people who are compassionate, who understand. Make us people who look like you, Jesus. We ask all this in your name. Amen.

Amen.

Well, hey, thank you for that few minutes. Um, now we can talk about prayer. Is that okay? Can we talk about prayer now? All right, good, because it's what I plan to talk about. So, prayer, really important, awesome. We've talked about it for the last few weeks. One of my favorite things about prayer is this simple thing. It moves us forward in life. And forward is the best direction to go. I think we can all have agreement there. Forward is fun. There are times in life where you need to move sideways. Dodgeball in elementary school is a great example of that. Mastering the side-to-side movement is essential for survival in dodgeball. Backwards is even appropriate sometimes. Sometimes you do have to retreat in order to advance. When I make a wrong turn, when I'm driving somewhere. Sometimes I have to go right back to where I was in order to go the right direction. So backwards is okay. But forwards is fun. Forward is the right direction. That is why God puts your eyeballs on the front of your head. He wants you to go in that direction. Right? That is why children learn how to walk forward long before they start walking backwards. My daughter is just over a year old. She never walks backwards. That doesn't make sense to her. In fact, babies don't develop the ability to walk backwards until months and months and months after they walk forward, because forward is the direction we're supposed to go. My daughter knows that. When I pick her up in the morning, she always does the same exact thing. She rubs her eyes like this, and then she just points. She goes, uh, that way. As if I'm her steed or something like that, and I'm just going to obey to her every whim, which I do, uh, because she's so pretty. She's a girl, and she has me wrapped around her finger, right? This is going to be a problem later in life, but we'll deal with it when it comes. Forward is the direction we're supposed to go, and prayer moves us forward. Prayer is meant for us. We're meant to engage with prayer. We're meant to have such a natural relationship with prayer that it might as well be breathing. But see, religion gets in the way and prayer becomes complicated, prayer becomes intimidating and confusing or monotonous and routine. We start going through the motions. And we don't experience the excitement and the joy and the passion that we're meant to when it comes to our conversations with God. And so we want to do away with that. We want all of us by the end of this next few weeks to be able to say, you know what, prayer's my thing. I get prayer, I love prayer, I live to pray. Two weeks ago we talked about praying simple prayers. Religion loves extravagance. Religion loves elaborate things, but often in relationship, which is what God wants, we value simplicity. Whenever it's an anniversary or Mother's Day, I always go to the store to get a card from Megan, usually at the very last possible moment. And I know that because there's a lot of other men in the aisle at the same time I am, and we're frantically looking for whatever's left, right? The leftovers of the cards. And it's so hard to find a card that expresses what I want to express because they're so complicated. You'll get cards and they'll have like five pages of soliloquy and poetry, and I'm sure it sounds very nice, but it's just not me. It doesn't sound like anything I would say. If I could just find a card that said, I love you, you're hot. I would buy it every time. I would buy it every time. I just want to communicate what I feel. That's all I want to do. And when it comes to prayer, we can pray simple prayers. We can pray in our own words. We don't have to pray long, elaborate prayers. There's nothing wrong with praying for a long time. It's great. But Jesus gave us the model for prayer in Matthew chapter 6. We can look at it again. It's Matthew chapter 6, starting in verse 9. Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. May your kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today the food that we need and forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those who sin against us. And don't let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one. We timed that prayer a few weeks ago, 17 seconds. We don't have to outdo Jesus, so it's okay if you pray for a few seconds here and there and that's all you've got, fine. Because in relationships, simple communication, it's foundational. Last Sunday we talked about praying honest prayers. We can go to God with exactly what we have, with whatever emotion we're feeling. Religion tells us, no, no, no, God wants us to be stoic. Lay your emotions aside and pray to God without them. You can't pray angry, you can't pray discouraged, you can't complain to God. But we looked at the life of David, who wrote the Psalms, these beautiful songs, and they were prayers of David to God. The Bible said he was a man after God's own heart. That's how close he was with God. And David was a huge whiner. Big time. I mean, you read some of the Psalms, and he's like, no one likes me, the whole world is collapsing. God, you've abandoned me. He prayed, he prayed upset, he prayed complaints, he prayed anger. He even expressed anger to God, and religion would say, Whoa, whoa, whoa, I don't know if that's okay, but relationships are built on honesty. It's okay to pray with whatever emotion we have. God wants us to have a relationship with him, and we have to be honest. In Isaiah chapter 61, verse 3. Isaiah wrote to all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. In their righteousness they will be like great oaks that the Lord has planted for his own glory. There's this exchange that happens. It's beauty for ashes. We get hope and joy instead of despair, but here's the thing: we cannot exchange our ashes for his beauty if we don't bring him our ashes. We have to be honest with God and bring him what we have for him to replace it with what he has. Today I want to talk about praying small prayers. We've talked about praying simply, praying honestly. Today I want to talk about praying small prayers, praying for small things. There's a line of thinking that tells us that we should not be bothered by small things in life. We should have perspective, right? When something happens to us, we should stop and say, you know what, it's not that bad. Let's consider all the plight of all the people in the world, and let's look at ourselves and really keep things in perspective and realize that this is really small, it should not bother us at all. And I believe that's true. We should do that. Now, do we do that? No, we don't. We can try really hard. The truth of the matter is that small things affect us, both positive and negative. This last week I was driving through the drive-thru at Del Taco because I love authentic Mexican food. I'm such a passionate person for that. And you can laugh, but Del Taco is a hundred percent more authentic than Taco Bell because both words are in Spanish at Del Taco. So I know, I know I'm getting the real thing when I go there. I drove through the drive-thru, I ordered what I always order there because I'm a creature of habit: three chicken soft tacos and an unsweet tea. I'm from the north, we drink unsweet tea, I know it tastes like dirty water, but when you grow up drinking unsweet tea and you have southern sweet tea, your body goes into shock. It's crazy how much sugar is in there. I can't adjust to it, okay? So I order what I order. It's always like $4.35. Very, very cheap. I pull up to the window to pay, and the woman says, Do you have any cash? Because our card reader just stopped working. I took Dave Ramsey, and I am supposed to have cash. But I did not that day. And so I said, No, I'm sorry, I don't have any cash. And she just looked confused and said, Well, um, okay, here, just take it. And isn't it amazing how much more, how much better free food tastes than food you pay for? I mean, I didn't in that moment you could have told me you're having filet mignon, and I would have believed you because free food, it just tastes so good. I felt like I was on top of the world. I mean, I was I was eating chicken soft tacos, I'm drinking my unsweet tea. $4.35 should not buy me that much happiness. But it did. It did, because small things affect us in big ways. It's true with positive things, it's true with negative things as well. Yes, we should be people that hypothetically aren't bothered by the little stuff in life, but how many of us have had really good days? 99% of what happened to us was great, but then one thing, one comment, one extra hour in traffic. And someone says, How was your day? You're like, terrible. It was a horrible day. Little things affect us. So the question is, do little things matter to God? Because religion would say, do not bring your small stuff to God. He is a big God. And if you've ever had a thought in your mind, like, oh, I don't know if I want to pray about this, this doesn't seem worthy of prayer. This doesn't seem like something that God should be bothered with because look at all the problems in the world that God has to deal with. How can I bring this inconsequential thing to God? Does God care about the small stuff? I believe he does very much. The Bible says he's our father. He's Abba Father. That word Abba means daddy, and I'm a daddy. Every single night I go through a bedtime routine with my son. We've done this every night for five plus years. But every night you would swear it's the first time he's ever gone to bed. Every single night. And it's a battle, man. And there are so many tactics that he has. He is smart, my son. Every night, I swear he does this on purpose. Every night he'll say, Oh, Dad, I want to take this one toy, this one toy with me to bed. And I think he hides those toys in advance. I think it's a plan that he has because it's always this one toy that we haven't seen for days. Right? And usually it's not even the coolest toy he has. I mean, we bought him some cool stuff. His grandparents have given him cool stuff. He's got toys that have lights and sounds, and they transform into things and they shoot missiles and they talk to you, but he never wants those toys because those are the easy ones to find. He wants that tiny piece of plastic that we just bought for the sake of it because it was a dollar or something like that. And we haven't seen it for weeks. It has one leg that's broken. He doesn't care. That's the one he wants. And every single night, I don't know how it happens, but I find myself digging through the couch to find those toys. Going, why am I doing this? This doesn't matter. You need to go to bed, go to bed. But but I do, for some reason, because it's important to him, it's important to me. Is God like that? I think we would all like to think he is. That's a nice sentiment, but is he really like that? And like I said earlier, scripture, scripture's our authority. And I believe scripture teaches us that yes, indeed, God cares about the small things. For example, Matthew chapter 25, Jesus is telling a story. Many of you have heard it before. It's a story of these three servants, and the master is going out of town, the master represents God, and he's gonna be gone for a long time, maybe years, and he entrusts a percentage of his wealth with each servant depending on their ability. The first two servants, they they do a great job. The last servant, he just sort of sits on it. And to the first two servants, this is what he says the master was full of praise. Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let's celebrate together. How incredible would it be to look God in the eye one day and hear him say, Well done, my good and faithful servant. Well done, let's celebrate. And what was it that made the master in this story so full of praise? It was that the servants were faithful with something small. There are so many people in life that want more. And I totally understand that. There are so many times in my life where I am dissatisfied because I want more, because my eyes are on what I don't have. I want bigger things, but but for so many people, God is looking and saying, if you will value the small things, I will give you the big things. If you will treat the small things like they're big, I will give you more because God values small things. God even does miracles for small things. One of my favorite characters in the Bible is a man named Elisha. Not to be confused with Elijah, Elijah and Elisha were good friends, and I guarantee you they used that similarity in names to mess with a lot of people. It's just too good. Elisha came after Elijah. They were friends, but Elisha was the prophet, Elisha was the understudy, and one day Elisha took over. And he, like Elijah, did some amazing things. He performed some incredible miracles. He raised someone from the dead. He did miracles that if Hollywood were to make a movie about him, they would have to use some serious CG to replicate what the Bible says. But in the midst of all these crazy huge miracles, there's this one that's recorded in 2 Kings, and it I don't know why this is in the Bible. There are moments when I read the Bible and I'm like, God, why did you put this in here? Because if I was making edits, not that I would with the Bible, God has not entrusted me with anything that important in life. I just say, hey, maybe this is something we should put in the director's cut. Maybe this is something that we'll put in later, but I just don't know if this should make the cut. 2 Kings chapter 6. This is a riveting story. Listen to this. One day the group of prophets came to Elisha and told him, as you can see, the place where we meet, it's too small. Let's go down to the Jordan River, where there are plenty of logs. There we can build a new place for us to meet. Suspenseful moment. All right, he told them. Go ahead. Wait, it gets better. You're gonna be on the edge of your seat. Please come with us, someone suggested. I will, he said. Okay. So he went with them. When they arrived at the Jordan, they began cutting down trees. But one of them was, while one of them was cutting a tree, the axe head fell into the river. His axe head, the the metal head of the axe, fell off the handle, flew into the river. Oh sir, he cried, it was a borrowed axe. That's not my axe, is what he says. Where did it fall? The man of God asked. When he showed him the place, Elisha cut a stick and threw it into the water at that spot. I think just for the heck of it, I don't think that did anything. I think he was just having fun at this point. Then the axe head floated to the surface. Grab it, Elisha said. And the man reached out and grabbed it. This axe head did not hit anyone. There was no injury that took place. A tool fell into a river. And God performed a miracle so this man could get his axe head. I have lost 3,000 screwdrivers in my life. And not one time has God performed a miracle to give one of them back to me. I've never seen one float. I've never seen a light come on in a room that says it's right here. But God performs a miracle. He makes a piece of metal float so this man can have his tool back to give back to his friend. Why is that in the Bible? Maybe it's to show us that God cares about small things. That God is willing to do a miracle for something so inconsequential. See, it's it's us. We're the ones that undervalue the small things in life. We're the ones that become so focused on what we don't have, become so focused on the big things that we desire that we neglect the small stuff. God loves the small things. He delights in small things. I think the best example of that in scripture is a story about a man named Zerubbabel. That's a fun name, by the way. Zerubbabel, and I'm about to say it a bunch of times, and you have to say Zerubbabel really fast, so just forgive me if uh if it comes out wrong. Zerubbabel is an interesting man. To understand his story, you have to know the history of Israel and Judah, and I'm not a history teacher, so bear with me. This will be fast. There used to be one nation, the nation of Israel. We're talking Old Testament times. But the kings of Israel stopped following God, they started worshiping gods of other nations, false gods, and so Judah, this tribe that was part of Israel, broke away. They broke away from Israel, they became independent, became the nation of Judah and Jerusalem. The historic city where God had done so many things, and the temple of God that was in Jerusalem went with Judah. Israel continued down their downward spiral, and eventually they were invaded and conquered by another nation. Judah held out for a while longer, but crazy as it sounds, they eventually started following other gods as well, and things didn't work out so well for them, and they were conquered by the Babylonians. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came and he laid waste to Judah. He destroyed the city of Jerusalem. He destroyed its walls, he completely demolished the temple, the most precious building that had ever existed in the history of God's people, in the history of the world, perhaps. He laid it flat. And to make it worse, he forced all the Jewish people to scatter. He forced them to relocate to other parts of the empire in Babylon. And so all the Jewish people had to leave their home, their promised land, that they had worked so hard to get and worked so hard to keep, they had to leave. But just a few years later, another nation, Persia, conquered Babylon. And Israel exchanged hands. A generation later, the king of Persia, Cyrus, felt God moving in his heart and he decided to let the Jewish people go back home and rebuild their city, rebuild the temple. And he chose a man named Zerubbabel to be the governor in charge of that. Zerubbabel just so happened to be the grandson of the last king that ever reigned in Judah. So he gets to lead his people back home to the place where his ancestors had reigned. Jesus would one day come from the family line of Zerubbabel. He had the responsibility of building the temple. And that must have been a huge honor, but man, you talk about pressure. That would be like if a natural disaster destroyed the White House and you owned a construction company and they said, hey, we're giving you the contract, you get to rebuild the White House. You would be so excited, but you'd be a little bit nervous too. This project better go really smoothly. Because everyone's going to be watching. Things went smoothly for a while. But eventually, some people that hated Israel, some people that wanted to stand in Israel's way, used their political clout to cause the building of the temple to stop. In a short period of time, Zerubbabel had built the foundation, he had built an altar. But the building stopped for almost 20 years. 20 years, zero progress was made. For 20 years, Arubbabel had to wake up, he had to look at a foundation and be reminded of his failure. He had to endure the ridicule and the contempt and the disapproval of other people. He had to feel like such an embarrassment, like such a failure, and every day he had to stare that failure in the face. Feeling like he was never going to finish what he started. How many of us here today just need God to tell us he will help us finish what we've started? The kids that you've been raising, absolutely will. God always finishes what he starts. I mean, the kids that you're raising right now, the kids you've poured into, when it looks like it's not working out, God wants you to know he will finish what he started. You will see the completion, the work that you have begun. Those of you who are young and you're trying to make it in this world, you're trying to have a career, you're trying to get past the stage of life where you have no idea what you're gonna do, you want to grab a hold of life and enjoy it and have success. It may feel like you're going nowhere. It may feel like you're treading water, but God wants you to know that He will help you finish what you've started. We need that. But sometimes when we look at our lives, we don't see any progress. We just see a foundation that's unfinished. That is what Zerubbabel saw. But then Zechariah, a prophet, got a vision from God. And this vision was for Zerubbabel. We see it in Zechariah 4, verse 6. This is what the Lord says to Zerubbabel, it is not by force nor by strength, but by my spirit, says the Lord of heaven's armies. Nothing, not even a mighty mountain, will stand in Zerubbabel's way. It will become a level plain before him. And when Zerubbabel, not if, but when Zerubbabel sets the final stone of the temple in place, the people will shout, May God bless it, may God bless it. Then another message came to me from the Lord. Zerubbabel is the one who laid the foundation of this temple and he will complete it. Then you will know that the Lord of heaven's armies has sent me, do not despise the small beginnings. For the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel's hand. God says, Do not despise the small beginnings. The Hebrew word for small beginnings is katan. It literally means insignificant. And we may look at our lives and we may see a lot of insignificant progress. We might feel like we're going nowhere, but God says, do not despise the small beginnings. Because I love, I love to see it when my people begin their work. What seems small and inconsequential to us, what may even feel like failure to us, can be the very thing that God looks at with pride in your life because he is proud of your small beginnings. He is proud of the insignificant small things that we do as we grow. That is God. He values the small stuff, so we should not hold back the small things from God. If there's anything in your life that may seem small, but it's having a big effect on you, and you've thought to yourself, can I really pray about this? Yes, you can. God loves the small things. In fact, those small things will one day become big. Anyone a fan of dominoes? Not the pizza, the little blocks. We all know what the domino effect is, right? Put a domino on the ground, line a bunch of others up, and you knock it down and it's fun and it's cool. There's a lot of videos on YouTube of it. See, the domino effect is a lot more than just one domino knocking down another domino. One domino can actually knock down a domino that's a little bit bigger, which can then knock down a domino that's also a little bit bigger. In fact, science says that the domino effect is that something can knock down something else that is 50% larger and heavier than it is, which can then knock down something that's 50% larger than it is, and it keeps going and going and going. That's the domino effect. If you started with the domino, you put it on the ground, you had it knock down something else that was 50% larger, and then that thing knocked down something else that was 50% larger, and so on and so forth. Do you know how many dominoes it would take to knock down the Empire State Building? 29. That's it. The Empire State Building, by the way, weighs 730 million pounds. And the 29th domino, ever increasing in size, would be strong enough to knock it down. The 57th domino would bridge the distance between the Earth and the Moon. So if we have Empire State Building sized problems in our lives, we need to start with domino-sized prayers. Because it's that small, inconsequential thing that you pray for that begins a whole process of change. Big problems are solved when God's people will pray small prayers. That's why I want to encourage you this week to pray small. To go to God with every little thing that's happening in your day. To go to God with every tiny little problem. He will not get annoyed with you. Because if you think about the closest relationship you have with someone, what percentage of that relationship is eaten up by you talking about big things? It's probably very small. But how much time do you talk about tiny inconsequential things all the time? What are we gonna eat tonight? I don't care. What do you want? I don't care. That's like half the conversations we have with our spouses. And men, when your wife says she doesn't care, she actually does. Just know that. Because you'll pick a place and she'll say, no, not there. And so she cares and you're just stuck. Small things we can bring to God. All of us can do it. Pray small. We have a big God, so yes, pray for the big things in life, but big progress is made with small steps. So this week, pray small. If there is anything going on in your life today, pray for it. Pray for the smallest problems you can even think of. Pray for the tiniest issues in your life. Because when we have empire state building-sized problems, they're solved with domino-sized prayers. Pray with me. Jesus, thank you so much for your love. Thank you so much for this amazing, amazing church, this group of people that simply wants to move forward in our lives with you, God. We live in a time and in a place where it can be really confusing to know how. It's hard to know how to move forward sometimes. But Lord, you know how. You love us, you will equip us, you will empower us to grow, and we love you, and we are excited about the life that you have for us. If we're honest with you, God, little things bother us. And you know that, and you're willing to meet us where we are. So give us the ability this week to put religion aside and stop thinking thoughts like this isn't big enough to bring to God. And remember that we are your kids. Help us remember that we're your children. And if a small thing is big to us, it's big to you. We love you so much, Jesus. We ask all this in your name. Amen. Amen.