Woo! All I have to say. We can just keep doing that. Steve actually does have something to share today, though. But God is so worthy of all of our praise, isn't he? He's so awesome. He loves us. Woo! Steve said I could share for a minute and then um and then if there's any time left, and he was actually what I what I wanted to share, just take a second. Um there's he's gonna share a little bit about this, but we had a lot of things. It's a new year. It's a fresh start, it's the beginning of a lot of things. It's gonna be an awesome year. I really believe that. No matter what last year was like, it's gonna be an awesome year. God is with us. God is with each of us, and he's doing some awesome things. So Steve's gonna share some about that today. Some things happen in some of the areas with all different ages of kids. It's it's incredible. And one of the things I wanted to personally thank a lot of people that are sitting in here is we we don't have a nursery back there anymore. Just want everybody to know that. We do not have a nursery back there where the nursery is. We have a garden, a beautiful garden. And that was the vision that God gave for the for the nursery back there. And so we've a lot of us, I'm looking around, I see a lot of different people, boy, put a lot of time, sacrifice, energy, money, a lot of things into that nursery, and it is incredible. It truly, I think, reveals the beauty of God, the creativity of God, the vision of God, and I do believe God gave the vision for that nursery through Megan McTear and then a lot of other people, helped her to implement that vision that God gave. And that vision is, and you'll see it right when you walk in, but the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. Get this. When it is sown, even though it is the smallest of seeds, it grows into the largest of all the garden plants so that even the birds of the air can nest in its shade. And so we got a whole bunch of gardeners back there today and they are sowing seeds today. And it's really awesome. And so our littlest seedlings, I really believe, will grow with God into the largest of trees. Largest of trees, and it's really awesome. But I just wanted to thank everybody who participated in that. It was a huge effort. And um, and I do think you can walk through the nurse, we got to keep safety and security. But if you want to walk through and look at that, all that everyone, all the love and the vision that God gave. Um, you can go after 1140 after all the kids are checked out if you want to walk through there. But I just want to thank God for giving vision. I just want to thank him for giving vision because he cares about we care about other people. I hope all of us in her do and love other people, but he does even more. Okay. And especially those those children, he cares about them. And so I thank God for the vision, and I thank all of you who implemented that vision. Thank you.

Good morning. Happy New Year. I was uh, you know, the wild card playoff started uh yesterday, and there was they're showing a play, it was when the Titans won, and they call it the Music City Miracle, and it's the last play, and it's a big lateral, and they score, and I think it's a year they ended up playing in the Super Bowl in Atlanta. But I was thinking yesterday that uh that was a great play, but uh what's happened the last few weeks here really is a miracle. And any of us, probably all of us have been involved in big projects, and it's always more difficult and takes more time, and and uh just so much has happened. And really, the nursery's just been transformed and and um you know certainly not physically, there's just so much thought and and inspiration and love that has gone into that, and not just uh there, but really in every area in every area that affects our kids. Uh in his kids, we've got a new Team Five Clubhouse, and that's for the fifth graders. And uh starting today, the fifth graders have their own space to start out, and they get together, and then they get incorporated into uh the worship and into the teaching, and they have an opportunity to bribe to to lead and encourage the younger kids, and that's gonna be an exciting thing. Uh this morning over on this side, uh w the youth area we call it the arena, um, for whatever reason. But um we, I guess, broadcast the worship live over there for the first time um today, and so uh the junior high students over there worshiping uh with us at the same time, and they're all super excited about that. And all that took so much uh um time, and there's so many people that gave uh just hours and hours and and equipment and companies that loaned uh their employees and uh did things at cost, and then so many of you uh gave financially, but just an exciting, exciting thing to see, and exciting to see that like Susan was talking about vision and and just the love for kids. You know, God loves kids so much, and so for us to be able to love on them uh is really exciting. And I will say, uh one group that really aren't kids anymore are the high school students, and uh y'all have gone from I guess maybe being loved on to to loving others and really helping a lot of people, and we're really proud of you and thankful for you as well. Well, if it's your first time here, hope you can tell you just relax and uh and be yourself. I do agree with Susan. I think we're gonna have a great year, a great year together, um, a great year for for each of us individually. Um I was thinking about what I wanted to share this morning. To me, it's important because I really want us to start the year off, you know, uh right. And so I got went back and and forth about different different things, and I always kept coming back uh to the same thing. And it's so it's it's something we've talked about somewhere between some and a lot, but it uh is such a foundational truth. And and for me this week, thinking about it again, even though uh I've thought about it in the past, was just so great and uh encouraging uh for me. And so, what I want to talk about is the tree of life. And I really believe that I might say it is impossible to understand God without going back and understanding the Garden of Eden and what happened with people and God's uh relationship and and why and where God wants to take it now and uh and why. And it's a foundational thing in the Bible, it's really become foundational here. You know, in the talk about the kids area in um uh in his kids in the playground, there's a big tree of life uh uh clubhouse or tree house in the check-in area now. There's a big tree of life right in the middle. In in uh Marlin painted a beautiful tree of life in what is now a baby uh uh gym that you can see right as you walk in. In each room in the nursery, uh there's a a tree of life uh painted on the wall. Uh throughout the whole building, you can see where really the Holy Spirit, I believe, just flew, flowed, flew, flowed, I guess, uh, through Marlin, who just has created all these beautiful uh uh uh depictions of uh of the tree of life. And in many ways, the Bible begins and ends with the tree of life. Um in Genesis 2, we find the first tree of life. And then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had made. The Lord God made all sorts of trees grow up from the ground, trees that were beautiful and that produced delicious fruit. In the middle of the garden he placed the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So that's at the beginning of the Bible. It's the very end of the Bible in Revelation. It says, Then the angel showed me water of life river, crystal bright. It flowed from the throne of God and the Lamb, right down the middle of the street. The tree of life was planted on each side of the river, producing twelve kinds of fruit, a ripe fruit each month. The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. So it's one of the keys to understand what God is really like, how he designed things, how he intended things, and what's important to him. Um so we'll start at the beginning in Genesis 1. So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. So whether we're a guy or whether we're a gal, you know, we may not like the way we look, we may not like uh some of the different gifts that God gave us or didn't give us, but one thing you can know for sure, and that is that you are created in the image of God. Part of God Himself is imprinted upon you, is imprinted upon your heart. You know, sometimes we think we're just so inherently uh bad, and it's not true. You're created in the image of God, inherently good, and so a lot of the things that uh that we experience, joy when we give, uh desire sometimes to be parents or grandparents, a desire to help others, to pick up the underdog, desire to do things of lasting importance, those all come from God. Those all are part of you because you are created in the image of God. And different things that we we uh think about, different things that really reflect art, art and music and uh nature, all those things can reflect God, but nothing reflects God more than you. Because you're created in his very image. And it was true of Adam and Eve. They were created in the image of God. Um it's interesting that the vision for the nursery is God's garden and uh with all the trees of life. But God did plant a garden, and it was a it was an amazing place. Said, we read part of this, and the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had made. The Lord God made all sorts of trees, grow up from the ground, trees that were beautiful and that produced delicious fruit. In the middle of the garden, he placed the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed from the land of Eden, watering the garden and then dividing into four branches. It's where Adam and Eve lived, and they really weren't that much different than us. You know, they had uh dreams and they had cares and they had responsibilities, and they also had a relationship with God. It says that God would come down in the cool of the evening and he'd walk and he would talk with Adam and Eve. The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it. But the Lord God warned him, You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you're sure to die. It wasn't so much him saying, This is going to be your punishment, it was him knowing how everything was created and said, This is gonna be the result. And so it's this beautiful garden, probably a bit unimaginable for us. And in the middle, there's these two prominent trees. One is the tree of life, they can eat freely from that tree, live under the tree if uh if they want. Um, the other tree, uh, the forbidden fruit, if you will, uh we don't think about it much what the other tree is. In fact, we usually think of it uh wrongly. You know, we think of Eve and an apple and the forbidden fruit, and it might come to mind that, oh, it's some sort of selfishness, some sort of sexual sin, you know, some greed. You know, but the fruit and the forbidden fruit, what it was, uh, is critically important. It wasn't the tree of sexual desire, it wasn't greed, it wasn't the tree of drugs and alcohol abuse, although none of that gives life. It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That was, we might say that is the forbidden fruit. It's kind of weird, isn't it? Of all things, of all things that God would forbid, why would it be what we would call the rules? This is good, this is evil. Do this, don't do that. The knowledge of good and evil. It happens to be the one thing that religion tends to focus on the most. The thing that is the forbidden fruit. We'll talk about that in more in a minute, but it's a choice. The choice was relationship and life or rules. Satan was going to come along soon and deceive them. Uh Satan's a liar, and so pretty much everything he says to them is some form of lie. One day he asked the woman, Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden? Well, of course, God didn't say that. It was just the one. Of course, we may eat from the trees in the garden, the woman replied, It's only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we're not allowed to eat. God said you must not eat it or even touch it. If you do, you'll die. And Eve embellished a little bit because he actually didn't say not touch it. He just said, Not eat it. But then here goes Satan again, you won't die, the serpent replied to the woman. God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil. And that was the big lie. It is still the big lie that you will be like God. We would say godly. We will be godly if we just know what is good, what is evil. Learn what to do, determine to do more of that, learn what not to do, stop doing so much of that, and over time we become more and more godly, more and more like God. And it makes sense, really. I mean, God's good, so we do more good, we become more like Him. It's the big lie. It is the basis for most religion. It's uh a lie that invades much of Christianity, that we can become godly by learning all about what is good and what is evil. And so we can go to church and we can memorize um what's good, what's evil, to stop doing the evil. It's not God's plan. God's plan is embracing God's love and relationship with Him. You know, we can even become the morality police if we want, not only study it ourselves, make sure everybody around us knows what is good and what is evil. But it's not God's plan. In Philippians 3, it says, yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my master. Firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant. Dog dung. I've dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I don't want some petty inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ, God's righteousness. Rules and religion and appearances. I mean, there is no life. But that is the tree that Adam and Eve chose. It's the the lie that they believed. And even then, God didn't abandon them. He clothed them and took care of them, but it was never set the same living at the wrong tree. And so for 4,000 years, people were stuck at that tree. And we look at the Old Testament, and um, I think if we were to be honest, God seems kind of schizophrenic. You know, in the Old Testament, the way the way he was, compared to what we talk about uh in the New Testament. What we don't see is that a lot of the things that God did that we consider God's laws were actually things that he didn't necessarily want to do, but he was accommodating people. Uh it doesn't, the law doesn't always reflect God's heart. So there's a time when Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and they questioned about a law, and he says, you know, that law was only given because of your hard hearts. And the overall purpose of the law was was not to show people how to be godly and what it looks like to be godly. It was to prove to us that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is a dead-end street. To get us back to the tree of life. And Romans 3.20 says, For no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands. The law simply shows us how sinful we are. Colossus 2.20 says, So why don't you keep on following the rules of the world, such as don't handle, don't taste, don't touch. Such rules are mere human teachings about things that deteriorate as we use them. These rules may seem wise because they require strong devotion, pious self-denial, and severe bodily discipline, but they provide no help in conquering a person's evil desires. It's the difference between life and relationship and religion and rules. If we can get a hold of this, it really does change our life. If we just celebrated Christmas, and what Jesus did when he came to earth was to put us all back in the garden. So now we're not stuck with Adam and Eve's choice. Now we get to make our own choice. Is it going to be Jesus and God and love and life? Or is it going to be religion and rules and a focus on what's good and evil? And even, this is a little aside, but I mentioned God seeming schizophrenic, which he isn't. Um, but God's always been love. He showed so much mercy in the Old Testament, so much of the things that we don't understand, like why did he allow this or why did he do this is all intended to get us back to the tree of life. And so things like we've talked about this before, but like in uh the flood, where most of the of the people in the world were killed. It's a short-term situation. It says in 1 Peter 4, and it's hard to understand, but it says that Jesus went back and preached to those that were killed in the flood. And those that were destined uh for death now have eternal life. So God's plan has always been, even through the Old Testament, even through the Old Law, is to get us back to the garden, back to the tree of life, back in a relationship with God. And so we all have that choice. We just kind of naturally think that if we can get our act together, we can have a better relationship with God. But so much of what God does and the way God is is counterintuitive to us as people. Because the opposite's true. If we can just develop a deeper relationship with God, then He will help us over time get it together, change us from the inside out. And then we can have real life, you know, freedom forever with God kind of life. You know, in a real relationship where we can feel his presence and we can experience his peace and his joy life. And so what we can see at the very start, the beginning of Genesis, is we don't become godly by memorizing a bunch of rules. We dive into a relationship with Jesus, and then he starts to change us from the inside out. John 10, it says, I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of. John 11, 25 said, I am the resurrection and the life. John 6, Jesus replied, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. John 5, you search the scriptures because you think they give you eternal life, but the scriptures point to me. John 14, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus is the tree of life. And we all get to choose for ourselves religion and rules, or Jesus and a relationship with the living God. And the somewhat surprising thing is when we choose the relationship with God our Father, the Holy Spirit, with Jesus, we do become more godly. We do become more like God, which is to say, more like He made us, more in His image, more loving, more giving, more caring, less selfish. And of course there's choices that God wants us to make, and they're for our own good, but it's kind of a which comes first, the chicken or the egg sort of thing. Do we get it together and then connect with God? Or do we connect with God and then he changes us? So this time of year, I tell you, you know, not everybody does resolutions. I do, but mostly it's because of procrastination. Where like September I think, you know, I really need to start eating better. I'm like, well, it's almost New Year's, so I'll just wait till then. Um but I do, I've got a bunch of goals, uh, eating better, getting in shape, spending more time with Jesus, you know, being a uh a better husband and dad and granddad and that type of things, um, ways that I want to lead better here. Uh but the most important thing I can do is not to muster up more self discipline, it's to get closer to Jesus to talk to him about everything, talk to him each day, develop our relationship. Paul had goals and he had plans. He talks about that in Romans. It says, it happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Part of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question? The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but I'm pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different. With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ being here for us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a faded lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death. This is God trying to give us life, real life, his life. You know, we can just not get it together and then go to God. You know, in our own words, in our own way, it's Jesus, I need you. Jesus help me. Jesus, save me. And then we are creating God's image with the Spirit inside of us. That Spirit comes alive. And then He starts doing the heavy lifting. He starts changing us from the inside out. It says in Ephesians 3.20, God can do anything you know, far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams. He does it not by pushing us around, but by working within us. His spirit deeply and gently within us. And so the key to 2013 being my best year ever, being all of our best years ever, being our best year as a family together, is developing our relationship with Jesus. Spending time with him, talking with him about everything. You know, 2 Peter says, everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know personally and intimately the one who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received. Jesus says, Live in me, make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can't bear grapes by itself, but only by being joined to the vine, you can't bear fruit unless you're joined with me. I am the vine, you are the branches. When you've joined with me and I with you, the relationship intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. So our best New Year's resolution, if we do resolutions, is to live 2013 at the Tree of Life. You know, in a life-giving relationship with Jesus. I've talked before about kind of the difference in my life living it at uh one tree or another. And I grew up in church, and uh it really was all about the rules. And not only that, but we actually felt like we knew the rules, no one else cared enough to really know um themselves. And so we learned the right rules, and then we tried to do the right rules, and there wasn't a lot of life, but that's how I grew up grew up, and that was my thought process, and so it affected all areas of my life. Um like when I became a dad, I wanted to be a good dad, and I had a list in my mind of what makes a good dad. You know, it's gonna be we're gonna pray at meals, I'm gonna pray with the kids at bedtime, and I'm gonna coach their teams, and and I'm gonna go to their games and performances, and um and I did all those things. But sometime, probably about two-thirds, uh too late for them to really enjoy it, but uh two-thirds into their uh their lives, I really met Jesus for the first time, and he started changing me, and I started to move to the other tree. See, that was the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This is what a good dad does, this is what a good dad doesn't do. I'm gonna do what a good dad does, and therefore I'll be a good dad. Um, but when I moved to that other tree, I just fell in love with my kids, you know, and I wanted to know them, and I wanted to spend time with them, and I wanted to know what they were thinking about, I wanted to know what they were afraid of, I wanted to know what their dreams are and and and that type of thing. And the other stuff happened too, you know, but it just happened naturally. And our relationship became one of life. You know, it's so easy with our spouses, you know, all relationships, but especially with our spouses, to live at the tree of knowledge of good and evil, where we view our spouse as, you know, a constant list of, okay, I come home from work on time, that's good. I'm grumpy, that's evil. I take out the trash, good. Lose my temper, evil. Good and evil, good and evil. We're always evaluating our spouse as you know, is it more good than evil? You know, but we can move our entire relationship to the tree of life, where we just love each other, where we see that that we're created in the in God's image. And we notice the flaws and mistakes, and we take it upon ourselves to uh to fill in the gap and to provide strength and and and encouragement. And so we help each other in the areas that that we need and we appreciate each other uh the way that God's uh wired us. And then we just let Jesus fill us up with his life and his love and then pour that into each other. And we live life together. We can do it at work at our at our company. In fact, I would say that the people that I've known that have been, and the companies I've known that have been successful are people that live their business at the tree of life, or their careers at the tree of life, where it's not so much about, okay, I gotta do this, I gotta do that, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. It's more about helping and serving and and and and uh just pouring in to other people. We've got, at our company, we've got three books that each new person has to read. Uh one before they start and two in the uh in the first 30 days um after they start. One I mentioned before, it's a book called Um The Energy Bus. And it's by John Gordon. And uh I first heard of this book because Coach Rick, George's coach, was asked about how they turned their season around. And he said that Mike Smith, the coach of the Falcons, had given him a book that the whole staff of the Falcons reads, and he had ended up having his whole staff and team, and it just made a huge difference. It's this book called Energy Boss. And it's really a pretty simple book, it's kind of a novel, if you will. Um, but it's all about how we see things, you know, from what perspective, and and how if we live life in a positive way and see the best and see the good and see the opportunities and that type of thing, it affects um our whole life. And it it is so true. It is so true. And at work we can live at the tree of life. You know, we're we're encouraging our, we're not resenting our boss, we're encouraging our boss, and and we're not just competing with our co-workers, we're helping and encouraging and loving on our co-workers and our customers and and everybody around us. We can let Jesus fill up us up with his love and then pour it out at work as too. You know, in Philippians 4.8, it says, sum it all up, friends. I'd say you do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious, the best, not the worst, the beautiful, not the ugly, things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God who makes everything work together will work you into his most excellent harmonies. You know, it's true with our really both our weaknesses and and good desires. You know, it's what tree do we want to live at? You know, it could be that um it could be that I get on my computer and uh look at pornography. And then it's like, you know what, that's evil. I'm evil. You know, God must hate me right now. And the relationship just gets further and further apart with God and I. Or it could be, you know, that probably saddens God, but he loves me, you know, and so I go to him. You know what? I don't want to be like this. You know, I'm not gonna just determine never to do it again. It's God, I need your help. I need you to help me see things differently. I need you to be my comfort. I need you, you know, it's it's true with anything. It could be alcohol, it could be prescription drugs, it could be any area of weakness in our life. And just determining not to do something again and feeling like, okay, that's evil, I'm evil, is of no help. We've got to get to the tree of life. You know, where we, you know, in fact, I'd say uh the greatest recovery programs, that is the principle. It's that it's not enough just to decide to do better. I've got to abandon myself to God. I've got to allow God to change me, um, to uh to live with Him. But that all happens at the tree of life. It can be it can be with good desires. You know, uh God talks about generosity as a gift that some people have more naturally than others. And I be, you know, I really want to be more giving, I really want to be more generous, but you know, I just have trouble with it. A lot of times that that's really a trust issue. Do I really trust that God's gonna take uh care of me? But that's the type of thing, you know, God, you're generous. I want to be generous. You know, help me to trust you, change me. You know, it could be uh I grew up reading uh where reading the Bible every day was was uh kind of a big deal. And the problem with that is I hated it. And uh and so I decide, you know, okay, I'm gonna read the Bible, and I'd make it about a week, and then it was so boring. Um I would just put it down. You know, and so I was like, you know, I know God's not happy with me. I know that to please him, I've got to be reading his word every day, and it's good for me and all that type of stuff. But it just didn't happen. And that was living at the tree of knowledge and good and evil. Reading it's good, not reading it evil, reading good, not reading evil. Until one day, I took my Bible and myself over to the tree of life and said, you know, I know that this is good for me, and I know you say that it's good for me, but it just bores me to tears. And so I'm gonna need your help. I'm gonna need to help in seeing things differently, I'm gonna need to help and understand some of the stuff that doesn't make sense to me. I'm gonna need the grace to skip over all the names in Leviticus or whatever. Um, but mostly, God, I need you to make me give me the desire to read your word. Make it exciting to me, make it life-giving to me. Make it so it's not a chore, make it something I love and enjoy. And you know, he did. And and literally, every time I read God's word now, it's supernatural. It's supernatural. I come away encouraged, I come away peaceful, I come away excited, and it's rarely ever does it feel like a chore. You know, it's living at the tree of life. This is what I want to be, this is how I want to be, God. We're buds. I need your help. Change me. Here's my good things, here's my bad things. It's all there. Just change me. You know, religion and rules and boring tradition does not make us who God created us to be. That only comes from living at the tree of life, where we stop trying to impress God and stop focusing on this is good, this is evil, this is good, this is evil. Instead, focus on our life-given relationship with Jesus, where we live every day just talking to Him about everything about our hopes, our fears, our weaknesses, our strengths, our relationships, our jobs, our kids, our lives, everything. Living at the tree of life. So if the worship team will come up, that's my hope for me and us this year is that we could just live this lot year at the tree of life. And it sounds I don't to me, the difference between the tree of life and the knowledge of good and evil is so weird it doesn't even make sense. It's almost like a can that really be true? Well, can that be true? Because it's been drummed into my head my whole life. It is true. See, and here's the thing is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is still the forbidden fruit. Nothing's changed. God's put us back in the garden. We get to choose. And what's it gonna be? Do we really want a relationship with God? Do we really want to live our life with Jesus? And that's the only life there is. It's the difference between the forbidden fruit and the tree of life. And so that's probably new for some of us. Um and uh it's probably just a reminder for many of us. You know, but it's it's what God is really about. I mean, of course, there's ways God wants us to live. But it's not about the rules, it's about the relationship, allowing Him into our lives, allowing Him to transform us from the inside out. And so in John 10, Jesus said that He came to give us more and better life than we could ever imagine. To me, that probably sums up most of our New Year's resolutions. More and better life than uh we could ever imagine. And that only comes of the tree of life, where we walk with God, experience him, and uh everything that he created. So I think this year is going to be a special year for each of us. I think it's a special year for us together as a church and family, and thank God for Jesus who tells us, I am the way, the truth, and the life. I want to make sure that today was the day that we're doing the last song. But let's stand and let's pray. And we'll sing one last song together and really kick off this year right. So, Jesus, we praise you. We thank you for not being like we've been told. We thank you for being life, for being the tree of life, for coming and giving it all just so we could be back in the garden and have a relationship with you. We praise you. And we do ask you just to stir up our heart, to change us, to make us want to have a relationship with you. Help us to trust you, help us to fall more and more in love with you. Help us to live this year with you at the Tree of Life. Amen.