SPEAKER_00 0:00

But when we give and we give consistently, God uses it to great effect. He uses it for us, for this church, but also for this whole community. One of the things that we do every single month here is that we give 10% of whatever comes here back to the community, no strings attached. So if you grew up in church and you heard about tithing, we believe in tithing the tithe, if that makes any sense. And we have several organizations that we support, and uh and I'm really excited today because Cindy O'Leary, who leads the Hope Center, which is a local ministry, it's a crisis pregnancy center. Uh, she's here today just to share with us for a second about what they do. And so, Cindy, if you'll come out, give her a big round of applause. I thought it would be weird if we stood the whole time, and so I'm gonna do my best impression of like a talk show host. So uh I've never done this before, just forgive me in advance. But this is Cindy, and uh, and Cindy, I just thank you for being here, number one. I want to give you a chance to share a little bit about the Hope Center in your own words so we can hear it from your perspective. Tell us what the Hope Center is. Why do you exist?

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Well, thank you for the opportunity. I really appreciate being here today. Um, the overarching reason that the Hope Center exists is to share the love of Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Which is, I think we can be behind that just a little bit, so that's good.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

And you know, we have our kingdom niche, and uh we are a medical clinic specializing in pregnancy diagnosis and decision support. There are probably three words that could best describe the Hope Center help, hope, and healing. And the help and hope come into play for those who may be experiencing an unplanned, an unwanted, an unexpected pregnancy, and need someone to talk that through with to help with those decisions, even to confirm. So we have the pregnancy testing and ultrasound. The healing comes into play for those who may have experienced abortion or maybe are walking through a season with someone who has been pushing it down and wants to fully receive the forgiveness that is offered and walk in that beauty of a forgiven and healed life.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

That's awesome. That's awesome. Um, can you tell us a little bit about some of your successes and wins this last year?

SPEAKER_01 2:19

I sure can. Um one comes to mind just because it was so recently conveyed to me. We actually had a training class for our advocates here on Friday. And um I'm sure we all experience this from time to time. The enemy comes against us and says, You're not making any difference, you're spinning your wheels, you're not. Well, this is the experience of an advocate who came that day to the Hope Center. And she was just kind of like, Lord, I just I know I shouldn't ask to see fruit, but I need to see fruit. Well, she, her first client that she spoke with was just beaming. She said, How are you? She said, I'm fantastic. I got married on Friday. And that's just one of those things that, you know, not all unplanned pregnancies end up in any certain way, but that's one of the things that we celebrate. And then later that day, she had both the female and the male client she was serving make professions of faith in Jesus Christ. So God gave it to her.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

So if uh if if you're not familiar with with the Hope Center, they do so many things. They have a uh they have a mobile unit that goes out that provides free ultrasounds for for young women who are pregnant, and it gives them a chance to see their child before they make that important decision to keep the child. Uh they also help with with anyone that's had a baby, you can take classes and you earn credit to get free baby supplies, diapers, formula, clothes, I mean that kind of thing. You shared in the first service the number of children this last year uh that exist because of the Hope Center. What was that number again? Because I can't remember it.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Yes. And you share in that because we have been so blessed all through 2013, all through 2014 to be the recipients of your financial donations. We have among you a prayer intercessor and volunteers, and you've welcomed people from the ministry. But that number that I shared, and this is just, you know, it can only go up because the most one recent one that I ran was that 193 life decisions were made among abortion vulnerable or abortion-minded men and women.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Wow, that's awesome. One of the things that that Cindy has shared with me is that it uh I think it was through an email, is that it costs uh $1,500 on average per child in order to get them from you know the point where their their mom is debating the options to going all the way through with that pregnancy, and and that's something that hopefully we're able to help you guys with and can continue to do that.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Absolutely. And that particular statistic came right off of our mobile initiative, which we launched in 2013 with your support. And um that the Hope Center, which in case you don't know, is right across the street. Like literally right there, including the Baby and Moore store. Um, as you mentioned, we continue on with our moms and dads until the baby is two years old. So it's not just it's not just about a life decision, it's about ongoing life decisions. Um, but yes, that is the mobile initiative, and that mobile unit goes out and primarily in Fulton County, where there's a 32% abortion rate. And so we're not only welcoming those who come to us, we're also going out and reaching out.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Well, you're doing a great job, and I think all of us uh can definitely celebrate Cindy and what she's doing at the Hope Center. So let's give her another round of applause. Thank you so much for being with us.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Um, I just didn't want to miss the chance to invite any who wanted to be a part of what we're doing. Already you are by your financial giving, and many of you are because of your prayers. Um we're starting both an advocate training um in January. We offer those typically three times a year. We also have Men of Hope who serve with the ministry. We also have the baby store, which donations and donations and donations are wonderful, and then they all need to be processed and go back out. So thank you in every way that you're supporting us. Thank you in any way that the Lord tenders your heart to continue. We just so appreciate your leadership as well.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Well, you're doing a great job. Thank you very much, Cindy. We look forward to helping you out as the years go on. One of the reasons I was so glad to have Cindy here is because it's so important for us to help our community. But it's important, I think, for us to remember that these aren't just nameless, faceless organizations. There are people that are giving their lives to these causes, and I think it's an honor for us to stand with them. So thank you for giving. Thank you for continuing in that way, because those are the kind of things that are gonna happen as a result. That was the longest announcement uh I've ever given. Is anyone still with me mentally? Is anyone still honed in? You're here? Okay. All right, let's pray. We're gonna jump into what we're gonna talk about today. Um, Jesus, thank you so much for this amazing group of people. Every single Sunday, it doesn't matter if it's rain, shine, or if water's pouring through the roof like last week. You are with us, you are here, and we are blessed just to be a family that can learn from you. Holy Spirit, we ask that you speak to our hearts right now. Make sure that we leave this place better than when we walked in. And we ask all this in your name, Jesus. Amen. Well, last Sunday we started a brand new series called First Things First. We are going to have a really good 2015. And I want you to know that I believe very much God wants you to have a good 2015. Good and easy are not the same thing. In fact, it's often when we have things very easy that we have a difficult time appreciating how good our lives are. I know many people who will look back on 2014 and say it was the hardest year of their life. They experienced tragedy, they experienced very difficult circumstances, but we have a God that is so much bigger than our circumstances. That's one of the reasons we're here today, is that we have a hope that's bigger than any problem we could ever face. And we have a God that wants good things for us. In fact, in Ephesians 2.10, the Bible says we are God's masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. How awesome is it that we have a God that not only knows us, that not only knows our names, but a God that's actually planned good things for our lives. We're gonna have a good year this year because God has planned good things for us. But we've got to make sure we enjoy those good things. I've had seasons in my life where great things were happening, I had blessings, galore, but I couldn't enjoy any of it. I couldn't just sit there and bask in the greatness of all that God was doing because my mind was elsewhere. I was focused on my problems, I was I was discouraged, you name it. So having these good things that God wants to give us is great, but we've got to make sure that we enjoy them. That's what we're gonna talk about this morning is how do we safeguard the joy in our lives. This series is called First Things First, because we're looking at all the things in Scripture that Jesus tells us to do first. Jesus very much understood the importance of the order of things. And I'm someone that can get things out of order very easily. There are many situations in life where I forget to do an important early step and I pay for it down the road. My wife is a teacher, and so she's really studied how people learn, and there's all these different ways that our brains work and they have different names. One of those is spatial intelligence. I have zero spatial intelligence. So my wife has told me. And what spatial intelligence means is that you can look at something and you can really understand how large it is, how it would fit in a space, how things go together. I cannot do that at all. I can't tell you how many times I've been at a store and I've bought something only to find that when I take it to my car, it does not fit in my car. Now I drive my car every single day. We've had it since 2007, I believe, 2008. So I've spent a lot of time in this car, and I'm not talking about something that's barely too big for my car. I've had times where where an employee at Target or somewhere has walked out with me to help me load this in, and he looks at my car and he looks at the item that I bought, and he's like, seriously? And I just say, Oh, we're not taking your car? I'm sorry, I was, you know, I thought, it's embarrassing. I have to play it off. I do that all the time. In fact, a few years ago, I was out of town and I saw this shirt that I thought my son, who was one year old at the time, would love, and I thought Megan would think it was really cute. So I bought it, and it looks amazing on him this year as a four-year-old. It's awesome. It's a great shirt. I brought it home, and I'll never forget this because I brought it home and I said, Look at this shirt I got Liam, and Megan just sort of looked at me, puzzled. And I said, What's wrong? Don't you like the shirt? She said, Yes, but that's like three times his size. And I looked at it and I said, Really? Are you sure? And you know, we picked him up and she looked at me, she said, You hold him every night, you rock him to sleep. How could you look at this shirt and not know it was too big? And I just said, Hey, don't worry, he'll grow into it. And he has, and it's great. As a side note, that is why I never buy clothes for my wife. Because can you imagine, can you imagine me holding up a pair of pants? I saw these, I thought they were cute. Don't worry, you'll grow into them. That would never would never fly in my marriage. So I never buy clothes for my wife. I never do it because I just think things are way, way smaller than they actually are, and that would not work out well for me. In my life, measuring something, checking what size someone in our family is before I buy, that is an important early step, and I have to do it, or I pay the price. Life is so much like that. There are so many things that are very, very crucial that we need to do early on in order to experience those good things that God has for us. Last week we looked at Matthew 6.33, and Jesus said, Seek first the kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Those things, by the way, are the cares that we have in life. It's our needs being met. And Jesus says, if you seek God's kingdom first, and another way to say that is if you desire what God desires, you will have your needs met. Today we're gonna look at another first thing, something Jesus actually tells us to do first. It's in Matthew chapter 7. So if you have a Bible, turn there or your phone, bring up the app. We'll put the verses on the screen as well. Matthew 7, I'm gonna be in the New Living Translation, starting in verse 1. Jesus says, Do not judge others and you will not be judged. For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged. And why worry about a speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend, Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye when you can't see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite. First get rid of the log in your own eye, and then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend's eye. Now, if it sounds like Jesus is being intense here, it's because he is. If you read the Gospels, sometimes you get this impression of Jesus like he is the moodiest person that has ever lived. Because at times he's saying things like, You're blessed when you're meek, because you're gonna inherit the kingdom of God, and it's very uplifting, and it sounds like he's being very soft-spoken, and then other times he's saying things like hypocrite and brood of snakes and really intense things. And Jesus is not schizophrenic, Jesus, we have to remember, is someone who spent a lot of time talking to a lot of different people, and when you read the gospels, it's three years of his life condensed into a very small package. You can almost draw this perfect line in the Gospels and see times when Jesus is speaking really intensely. Where he's saying things like hypocrite, he's talking to the Pharisees, he's talking to the hyper-religious people who loved to use their their pious lives as a way of showing others how how far away from God they were. They love to put others down, make others feel small. Jesus did not get along so much with them. And when Jesus is speaking and he's encouraging and he's soft-spoken and he's tender, he's speaking to everyday people like you and me who have long since stopped pretending that we're perfect. You can almost draw a perfect line in the gospels and know who he's talking to by the tone of his voice. And here he's talking to these Pharisees, these people that use their knowledge of God to oppress other people. And he says, Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. The standard by which you use to judge someone else is the standard they will judge you by. The way you see the world is the way the world will see you. The lens through which you view others is the lens through which they will view you. And I love that because it's so intensely practical. It's just so true. This is one of the most important things that Jesus ever said, and tragically, it's something that many people in history who have associated themselves with Jesus have chosen to ignore. And let me just say, first and foremost, that if you're someone who has been judged harshly by people who claim to be close to Jesus, I'm really sorry. But this is a place where you will be loved. We believe in loving people to Jesus. That doesn't mean that he doesn't have plenty of things he needs to work on in us. We'll talk about that in a little bit. What we mean is that we believe that it's his love that leads us into a relationship with him. And so if you're new here, please know what you're gonna receive is love, not judgment, because we believe very seriously in doing what Jesus says. And he says, Don't judge and you won't be judged, because the way you judge others is the way you will be judged. We have this amazing ability as people to easily see the flaws in the people around us, even the people we love the most. We don't have to work very hard to see things in others that we believe they really need to work on. I can be like that, for sure. We also have this ability to even project our own flaws onto other people. So we get frustrated with other people for doing things that we do ourselves. In Genesis chapter 4, we see the very first sibling rivalry that ever existed, Cain and Abel. It doesn't go well if you know the story. Cain becomes very envious and jealous of his younger brother Abel, so he murders Abel, and God banishes him from the garden, banishes him from the place in which they live. And in verse 14, this is Cain's response to God. He says, You have banished me from the land and from your presence. You've made me a homeless wanderer. Anyone who finds me will kill me. And this is so interesting because at this point in history, Cain is the only person who has ever murdered anyone. He's the only killer on the earth, and yet in his mind, everyone out there is a killer. Everyone's gonna murder him. We have this very natural ability to see in others the things that we really struggle with ourselves. And when we focus on those things in others, it distracts us from our ability to actually work on those issues personally. I know many of us have experienced that, where you've you've maybe gotten mad at someone for either doing something or not doing something. In other words, you've been married, and uh, and then in your in your argument with them, maybe you've discovered that what you were upset about with them was actually your fault. Have you ever had that experience? So I had that happen last week. I shared with you last week that I have a gift for losing things. One of the things I talked about was uh the fact that we used to have eight or nine screwdrivers at my house. I lose tools all the time, and now we have one. On Monday, I got to my desk and there were like 15 screwdrivers on my desk. So, to whatever anonymous people left those, either you were making fun of me or you were wanting to help me. Um it seemed a bit extreme, but thank you. I now have a plethora of screwdrivers, and I still know where most of them are. So uh I appreciate it. I actually used them last week. Well, last Sunday, when we got home, we had some people that were coming over to our house and we needed to get some things ready. Megan needed to go to the store to pick up some things, but she could not find her debit card. And we didn't have much time. I got a little frustrated. I didn't get mad, I wasn't yelling, it wasn't worth that, but I very, very obviously, in my tone and words, communicated my irritation. And so I started saying things like, seriously, honey, people are gonna be here any minute. We do not have time to look for your debit card. It's your debit card. This is our money. You can't you can't just lose that. Where is it? She said, Oh, I think it's in my purse. And as a guy, let me just say, men, you might be with me. I do not understand the concept of a purse at all. My wife is the most organized woman I have ever met. For Christmas, what she wanted most was a new planner for 2015. A planner. And she got one, and it's like the Cadillac of planners. It is color-coded, it's cute, it has like interchangeable covers, and she and her friends got the same planner, and yesterday they're at my house having a planner party. They are they're at my house, they are planning how they're going to use their planners. And they've decided to meet monthly about this. Monthly to plan how they're gonna use the thing that they use to plan. I love parties, and I can think of many occasions worth a party. Organization, not one of them. And yet, my wife, who believes so passionately in organization, carries this giant bag full of everything with her everywhere we go, and when we need something, she's like, hold on, and she starts digging in it. Sometimes it's like a cartoon, like an anvil's gonna come out of it, or something that shouldn't fit. And I'm blown away by by times where she says, It's in my purse. Guys, you're with me, right? It's in my purse. And you're like, oh, how long could that take? And you're, where's the bottom of this thing, right? When is it gonna end? And it doesn't sometimes. And so we dumped her purse out, we couldn't find it. And at this point, I'm I'm getting really, really irritated. And so I said, Oh, come on, Megan, retrace your steps. Where have you been? Did you use it for lunch? And she said, No. I didn't. Did you use it for breakfast? She said no. And then she asked me this question. This is pretty bad. Um, she said, Did you use it for breakfast? And then all of a sudden, my memory was jogged. And I remember distinctly handing my wife's debit card to the person at Dunkin' Donuts, and I remember the person handing it back to me. And then it's dark from that point on. I have no idea what happened afterwards. And you might ask yourself, why were you using her debit card for breakfast? And the answer is simple, I lost mine. Okay? I don't know where it is. It's very easy to understand. But see, here's the thing. Had I had I gone to Megan when she first came to me and said, I don't know where my debit card is, saying, honey, if anyone knows what it's like to lose something, it's me. Don't worry. Not a big deal. We'll find it. It's replaceable. We can call right now and have another one to us in a heartbeat. We can go to Bank of America tomorrow and get a temporary card, which is what I did this week for me. And uh we still haven't found hers. It's okay. You know, had I gone to her and been understanding and sweet, it probably would have been really okay when she realized that I was the one that lost it. But that is not how I did it. That was not my tone. And because I chose to communicate frustration and irritation whenever I thought she lost it, when she discovered that it was me, oh my goodness. We are still married, we love each other very much. But I was in the doghouse for about two days, not literally in a doghouse. We don't have a doghouse, we don't have a dog, but but I was I was walking around the house like, is there anything I can do for you? You look beautiful. When you stand to the side, I can't even see you. Like, how can I make this up to you? What do you? I mean, it was it was bad, it was bad, but she's a loving, beautiful woman. She forgets. Gave me, and we're going forward from here. The standard we use to judge others is the standard that they use to judge us. And when Jesus talks about this, he's really talking about having a critical spirit. He's saying to us that if we want to have joy in our lives, do not have a critical spirit. Don't look at this world and pay attention to all the problems. Don't see all the issues. Be someone that is not defined by having a critical spirit. Because I'll tell you this, there is nothing, there is nothing that will threaten your joy more this year than a critical spirit. Your circumstances, the biggest problems you can imagine, do not have as much power over your ability to experience joy as a critical spirit will have. I know people who are going through and have gone through unspeakable difficulties in the last year and yet they have joy in their lives. I know others that I love very much who have really, really good lives, but they're so focused on the one or two things that aren't the way they should be, they can't enjoy any of it. A critical spirit robs us of joy. A critical spirit is something that threatens our ability to enjoy the good things that God has for us, so we have to guard against having a critical spirit. The problem though is it's not like we wake up in the morning and go, hey, today I'm gonna be critical. Today I'm gonna look at my spouse and I'm gonna say, what needs to change in this person, right? I'm gonna go to work today and I'm gonna focus on all the things my employees or employers or coworkers do that just bug me. That's my day. We don't do that, it just sort of sneaks up on us. Some days, at the end of the day, people might say, Why are you in such a bad mood? And we're like, I don't know. It's been a good day. I just, I'm critically minded right now. I'm just seeing everything that frustrates me. It's so easy to fall into that. I've had a critical spirit in so many seasons in my life. One of the things I can be the most critical of is actually church culture. I love, I love this church. And if you're new here, please know that this church is a family, and we believe very much that this should be a church that Jesus would love to be at, right? So we want to make it that. That's why Jesus is the only one that gets famous here. We love Jesus. We're all about loving one another like him. But I'm young. And so in my youth, uh I have this amazing ability to be arrogant at times, and I've looked at other church cultures that I have no part of, that I've never been a part of, and I've just gone, ah, see, they do it wrong. And I used to say things like this a lot. I'd say things with my friends like, you know what the problem with the church in America is today? And that would be followed by some stupid statement. And now, now I've realized through through God convicting me, through other people in my life convicting me, which I'm all about. I need people in my life to hold me accountable. People in my life who have helped me see the truth. Now I know what the real problem with the church is in America. You know what the real problem with the church in America is? People who say things like, you know what the problem with the church in America is? That's the problem. It's a critical spirit. We got to guard against it. But thankfully, thankfully, Jesus tells us exactly how. We go back to Matthew chapter 7. We'll start in verse 3. He says, Why worry about a speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend, let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye when you can't see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite. First, that's our first thing. First, get rid of the log in your own eye. Then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friends. Jesus says, Hey, you want to safeguard your joy? You want to guard against a critical spirit? Here's how. Be a me first person. I want us to be the most me first church that has ever existed. And what I mean by that is really simple. We are going to be people that when we are tempted to point out the flaws in someone else, we say, no, me first. God, what do I need to work on? God, what do you want to change in me? When we look at the people in our lives and we see problems and we see things that really need to change, maybe things that even offend us. Before we even think about bringing those things up to them, we say, God, me first. Show me what I need to change. Show me what you want to do in me. That's what Jesus says to do. First, deal with yourself. Then you'll be able to worry about what other people struggle with. And here's the wonderful beauty of that. If we spend our time saying, me first, God, what do I need to work on now? We'll have very little time to worry about what other people struggle with because there will always be something God wants to work on. And I hope you know that that's a beautiful thing. God working on our issues. It may not sound like it, that doesn't sound like an amazing experience. Hey, how would you like God to work on your issues today? No, thank you, right? Ephesians 3.20, and we don't have this on the screens, this is the message version. Ephesians 3.20 says, God can do anything, far more than you could ever imagine. He does it not by pushing us around, but by working within us, his spirit deeply and gently within us. So when we say, God, me first, this person is really getting on my nerves. God, this person is doing something and I really dislike it. I want to tell them about it. But before I even worry about that, me first. Work on me, the way that looks is God's spirit coming into us and deeply and gently working within us. It is not God saying, do this, fix this, change this, or else. It's God saying, Let me partner with you. Let me come into your life. Let me be within you, and deeply and gently I'm gonna do this with you. Does that sound like an experience that we would like to have? For me, it is. Because I don't want this year to be a year where I miss out on the joy of all the good things that my God has planned for me because I have a critical spirit. A critical spirit will help me none in my marriage. How many of us say, hey, you know what would really help my marriage? If I could just see more of the flaws in my spouse, that would change things. That would be a game changer this year. What about our careers? There's this idea in the business world that being really critically minded, that seeing problems is really valuable. And there are times where seeing a problem is valuable, not as valuable as seeing a solution. Right? One of the first CEOs in America to ever be paid a salary of a million dollars a year was a man named Charles Schwab. You might be familiar with that name. I think there's an investment firm named after Mr. Schwab. He worked for a man named Andrew Carnegie, famous for Carnegie Steel. And in 1921, Andrew Carnegie hired Mr. Schwab and paid him $1 million a year. Now, if you have a $1 million per year salary today, you're doing well. Congratulations. You've won. In 1921, just understand this. In 1921, a loaf of bread cost nine cents. A new car, not a used car, I don't think there were that many used cars in 1921. Like the originals were still running, right? A new car, $500. In 1921, a new house, and I'm talking about a pretty good-sized house, let's say a four-bedroom house, $8,000. And Mr. Schwab got paid $1 million a year. This was also in a time before an income tax. Okay, so just think about that. Now, what was it about Charles Schwab that made him so valuable, that made him worth that kind of salary? In his own words, Charles Schwab in a great book called How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, no relation to Andrew Carnegie. It was written in the 30s. If you haven't read it, it's a great book.

unknown 29:51

Mr.

SPEAKER_00 29:51

Schwab said this I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people the greatest asset I possess. And the way to develop the best in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors. I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. I am anxious to praise, but loath to find faults. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise. Alright, raise your hand if you would like to work for Charles Schwab. Okay? He's dead, you can't. But it's impossible. So here's a man, one of the first men ever to be paid a million dollars at a time when in today's economy that'd be like getting a salary of 20 billion a year. I mean, it's probably I'm not a math major, so check that or not later, but you get the idea. And he says, I never criticize anyone. I look for anything I can find and I praise it. I love it when people quote the Bible and they may not even know it. It's one of my favorite things. Ephesians 4, 29 says, Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them. I'm not saying there aren't times where we need to speak up. Kids, students, do not go home today, and when your parents tell you to do something, say, hey, why don't you worry about the log in your own eye before you that will not go well for you, okay? There are situations in life where we do need to speak up. There are people that we might love, and we see their decisions and we see them leading to ruin, and we have to love them enough to have a hard conversation. We have to hold one another accountable. But but what Jesus is saying here is that the vast majority of the problems we see in other people, those are not things we need to concern ourselves with. We need to have me first approaches to criticism. Before any of that, God deal with me. In fact, in 1 John 5, 16, the Bible says, if you see a fellow believer sinning in a way that does not lead to death, in other words, this is not going to ruin their life, you should pray. And God will give that person life. You should pray. Pray for one another. Pray with one another. When the vast majority of the time, when we see something in someone else that's bothering us, upsetting us, annoying us, Jesus says, me first. Before I worry about that, I'm going to focus on me and I'm going to let God work deeply and gently within me. We're about to pray and wrap up this morning. A critical spirit can go by a lot of different names. So maybe we say, hey, I'm not critical, I'm just a realist. I have spent much of my life being a realist. I'm a recovering realist. Okay? If you're a realist today, there is freedom, there is hope. Because I'll tell you this, when I'm being a realist, I can see things for how they are. I think pretty accurately. But I have no ability to see things for what they could be. When I look at someone as a realist, I can see the specks of dust in their eye, but I can't see the soul behind their eyes. And I've learned this very much that God is not a realist. Can you imagine if God looked at us realistically? If God looked at us and he said, hey, I'm just going to look at them and see them for exactly who they are. God does not do that. He looks at you and He sees you for who you are, but He sees you for who you will be, for who you can be. There has never been a bigger optimist than God. God looks at us, He looks at this world, and He sees a world worth saving. Sometimes we have this amazing ability to devalue this world in a way that God does not. We see others and we see them so differently than God does. God looked at us and he said, They are worth the death of my son on the cross. I believe in them that much. That is not the attitude of a realist. That is the attitude of an optimist. We serve the most optimistic God. And as his followers, we are going to be optimistic people. We're going to see life. We're going to see the beauty in the world around us. We're going to see a world that doesn't even exist yet. So that we can help make that world a reality. That is why we're on this earth. But a critical spirit will do nothing but stand in our way. And so we've got a lot of 2015 left. And I would just like to know as a church, as a family, can we be the most optimistic church this year that this world has ever seen? Can we be a group of people that say absolutely no to a critical spirit? Can we be people that say we're going to be we're going to be people of hope? We're going to see this world for better than it actually is, so that we can help this world be that. Can we do that as a church this year? Anyone in? Good. And all of it, all of it starts with us. That happens when we start saying, Me first, God, before I worry about them, deal with me. And he does it deeply and gently within us. So pray with me. We're going to worship with one more song. Jesus, thank you so much for this amazing family, this amazing group of people. Thank you for uh for all the life that's in this room. And as we as we celebrate you a little bit more, we just ask that you bless us today. Let us enjoy the rest of our day. And we ask this in your name, Jesus. Amen.