Amen. Well, guys, we are almost done with the series that we started just a few weeks back. We've been going through the book of Galatians really fast. It's six chapters, and I think we're going to do six chapters in seven weeks. So that's that's like a chapter a week almost, which is great. We've called this series Jesus not religion. Jesus not religion. And some of that has to do with our 20th anniversary because the very first banner that ever got put on our building when we launched as a church said party on Sunday. And that was our declaration that this was going to be a place where people could enjoy their relationship with God. But the second banner that ever got put on our building said Jesus not religion. And it wasn't just some marketing thing, it wasn't just a clever phrase. It was a deep conviction that we have as a church. That this would be a place where people would know Jesus personally. That they would have a relationship with the God who created them, that this would not just be a place where you get a list of rules, you get a list of religious sort of observances, and as long as you do things the right way, as long as you toe the line, you're fine, step out of line, and you're not. This would be a place that wouldn't be about religion, but it would be about Jesus. And it seems like those things would go together. It seems like, I mean, yeah, of course, God, religion, they go together. Well, it's amazing how often they don't. I mean, who did Jesus fight the hardest and who fought the hardest against him? It was the religious leaders. Because when you get so solidified into a religious mindset, God is no longer the point. God is no longer at the center of your life, but you are. It's your ability, it's your performance, it's your track record. And those things and the rules and the standards and all of that, which are important, have their place, those things become the point. And they were never the point. The point is to know God and be known by God. It's a relationship. Jesus did not come to establish a religion or to update a religion. He came to give us a relationship with Him. And so, Galatians, this letter that the Apostle Paul, one of the leaders of the early church, writes to one of the first churches that ever got started. This is one of the earliest churches in human history. This is a group of people who love the Lord and they've been given the message of Jesus and they've accepted it, but they've started to sort of drift back into religion. And Paul won't stand for it. And so he writes this letter that we call Galatians, and it's a plea and a challenge for them to remember what they have, who they are, and whose they are, and to never settle for something less than a relationship with God. It's Jesus, not religion. It's freedom, not control, and as we'll see today, it is spirit and not flesh. Meaning it is a move of God, not the result of our own human effort. And so with that said, I'm going to read all of Galatians 5, and then we'll unpack it together. So here we go. So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free and don't get tied up again in slavery to the law, and we could substitute religion there. Listen, I, Paul, tell you this. If you're counting on circumcision or really any rule to make you right with God, then Christ will be of no benefit to you. I'll say it again. If you're trying to find favor with God by being circumcised, you must obey every regulation in the whole law of Moses. For context, there's a group of people that have come into this church, and they are trying to convince these people who are followers of Jesus, but they're not Jewish, and in their culture, that means they haven't been circumcised. Fun topic for us to all talk about together on a Sunday morning. They're trying to tell these people, no, you have to be circumcised in order to be one of us, to be the church. You can't follow Jesus unless you follow all of these Jewish regulations. And for Paul, this is silly. I mean, the law served a purpose, but Jesus has come, he's fulfilled it. They don't need to do that. And so Paul is addressing this issue. He says, if you're trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you've been cut off from Christ. You've fallen away from God's grace. Now, pause there again. I know I'm pausing a lot. But when we hear that phrase, fall away from God's grace, if we describe someone as having fallen, they've fallen away, we're almost always talking about someone who maybe has fallen into temptation, someone who has traded in following Jesus for their life being maybe dominated by an obvious sin or wild living. But that's not what he's saying. He's saying you've fallen away from grace. The origin of this phrase, fallen away, is not someone giving their lives over to what we would describe as obvious sin and immorality. It is someone trading the gospel for religion. They're trading grace for law. Instead of relying on faith in Jesus to make them right with God, they're gonna do it themselves. And he's saying that's the opposite of grace. You've fallen away. You've fallen away. So, we'll go on, verse 5, and I'll stop pausing every verse, I promise. Okay, here we go. Uh, but we who live by the Spirit eagerly wait to receive faith, to receive by faith the righteousness God has promised to us. For when we place our faith in Christ Jesus, there's no benefit in being circumcised or uncircumcised. What is important is faith expressing itself in love. You were running the race so well. Who has held you back from following the truth? It certainly isn't God, for He's the one who called you to freedom. This false teaching is like a little yeast that spreads through the whole batch of dough. And I'm trusting the Lord to keep you from believing false teachings. God will judge that person, whoever he is, who's been confusing you. Dear brothers and sisters, if I were still preaching to you that you must be circumcised, as some say I do, why am I still being persecuted? If I were no longer preaching salvation through the cross of Christ, no one would be offended. I just wish that those troublemakers who want to mutilate you by circumcision would mutilate themselves. And some translations say, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves. And so that's in the Bible, and I just want you to know that. Okay? Verse 13 For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters, but don't use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. For the whole law can be summed up in this one command love your neighbor as yourself. But if you're always biting and devouring one another, watch out. Beware of destroying one another. So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives, and then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are that are not free to carry out your good intention. Oh, sorry, the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you're not free to carry out your good intentions. I skip the line. But when you're directed by the Spirit, you're not under obligation to the law of Moses. When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear. Sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outburst of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There's no law against these things. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucify them there. Since we are living by the Spirit, let us now follow the Spirit's leading in every part of our lives. Let us not become conceited or provoke one another or be jealous of one another. Now, there you have it. That's Galatians 5, and there's a lot there, and we could spend a lot of time talking about a lot of that. There's this concept of your sinful nature, that part of you that exists apart from the work of God in your life. We all have that. We all know that. That part of us that genuinely desires to do things that do not line up with God's will for our lives. Some of those things are a lot of fun but fleeting. Some of those things are destructive, and we know they're destructive, maybe even self-destructive, and yet part of us is still pulled to it. And then there's that spirit inside of us. The Bible says when you give your life to Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit comes into your life to affirm that you are God's child. It's the deposit of all that God will do in your life in the days to come and ultimately in eternity. But you have the spirit, and the spirit desires different things. That's one of the reasons, guys, it is so hard to be a follower of Jesus. Because we got two things going on inside of us all the time. Right? Like you're conflicted. If you're a Jesus follower, you know this well. Because there's a part of you that wants to do the old stuff, and then there's this new part of you that craves different things, and they are at war with one another, and it is messy. It's tough. But over time, what we do is we say yes to the Spirit, we follow the Spirit, and the flesh begins to wither and die. Whichever one we feed will be the one that grows ultimately. But we want to live by the Spirit. This is not our own effort. This is a surrender to the work that God is doing inside of us, and it's challenging because that old nature is still there. I wish I could tell you it's easy. I wish I could tell you there's three steps to never deal with your flesh again, but unfortunately, uh, until your flesh dies, you will deal with it. But the spirit inside of you is more powerful than the flesh. We don't often think in these terms. We often define ourselves by our flesh. A great example of this would be addiction. You know, I've I've dealt with addiction, many of us have, and one of the powerful things in addiction is to own your addiction. You gotta be able to say, I'm an addict. But it's it's a little bit more complex than that if you follow Jesus, because if I say I'm an addict, if I were to say I'm an alcoholic, well, kind of. My flesh is an alcoholic. But the spirit isn't an alcoholic. Like if you deal with anxiety, you might say, I have anxiety. No, no, no, your flesh has anxiety. The spirit inside of you is anxious for nothing. And if we can learn to see the spirit in us as the real us, because it is and will be, the flesh is temporary, the spirit is eternal. If we could define it like that in our own minds and recognize that no, no, the flesh in me is weak. Jesus put it this way to his disciples once. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. If we can learn to see it like that, to say, oh, all my struggles, all my all the dumb stuff I do, that's my flesh. But I won't let the flesh define me. It's the spirit. So when you're afraid, instead of saying, oh, I'm afraid, no, no, your flesh is afraid, your spirit is fearless. When you say that you're weak, no, your flesh is weak, your spirit is strong. So see it that way. That's what Galatians is teaching us. That we have these dual natures inside of us, but the spirit will win. The spirit will triumph. Even if it doesn't feel like that today, the spirit in you will triumph, especially if you feed it, if you listen to it, and if you follow it. And if there's one thought I would have us lock into today, it would be Galatians chapter 5, verse 25. This thought, we're gonna spend some time on this. It says, Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit's leading in every part of our lives. Now, here in a minute, I'm gonna pull up this same scripture in a bunch of different translations. All right? It's kind of a can you guys nerd out with me for just a second, and I'll explain like why we have different translations and what the values are? Because if you're new to Jesus, you might be like, well, what you guys read this translation, there's this translation. How many of you grew up in church? Just out of curiosity, show of hands. How many of you guys grew up with the King James Version and you have a family member that thinks if you're not reading that, you're not reading the Bible? Anyone in that cat, right? But then you're like the these and the ths and the thighs, and you know, we don't talk like that anymore. Um there's a variety of translations, and there are a few, by the way, that are not good. And uh and I don't want to go into all that. I could I could put something out there. Uh maybe I'll send an email or something and put something together that kind of helps serve as a guide for that. If that would be helpful to you, I'll gladly do that. In fact, actually, Madison and I did a whole podcast on Bible translations that you can go listen to on our YouTube channel or on any podcast app that you have, you can find that. Um, but there's two main, uh really three, I guess, three main categories of Bible translations. You have word for word, thought for thought, and then paraphrases. And so the message would be a very, if you've ever read the message version of the Bible, that's a very popular paraphrase. It is, I I like the message. I wouldn't read it as my main uh translation because it's really a paraphrase. The man who did it, his name was Eugene Peterson, loved the Lord. He was a scholar, it is a scholarly work, but it is not a translation of the Bible as much as it's one person sort of or a team of people putting it into their own words, translating it in a very loose way. But it's helpful in certain situations. You have word-for-word translations, and you might be thinking, well, why would we ever use anything other than a word-for-word translation? Well, it's because the meaning of words and phrases changes over time, and sometimes you'll read a phrase, and the word-for-word translation actually gives you a different idea in your mind of what the thought that was trying to be communicated was. Let me give you an example. My wife's mother was uh grew up in Bolivia, and so Spanish is her first language. She grew up as the daughter of a missionary, and so uh I didn't know she doesn't look like Spanish would be her first language, and I didn't know that until she got really mad one day and started speaking in a different language. Um that's when I saw it come out. We started dating, and I think we were in a car, and she was not happy with the road situation and the way that her husband was driving, and so all of a sudden, out of nowhere, fluent Spanish just comes out of her mouth in a very angry tone, and I was like, what just happened? Right? It was crazy, it was awesome. Well, because Spanish is her first language, sometimes, um, and I just full disclosure, I did not ask permission to share this, so probably should have. I'm realizing that now. We all make mistakes. That was my flesh, not my spirit. So um, but I know that the spirit in her will forgive my flesh in this moment, okay? So sometimes she'll just say things and she's she's saying phrases that in English, like, they just don't translate one to one in another language. So one time, for example, you know that phrase, uh, the straw that broke the camel's back. Okay, well, if you don't know what that phrase means, the word-for-word translation of that wouldn't help you at all. If someone said, Oh, the straw that broke the camel's back, you know we're not talking about a literal straw that broke a camel's back. That phrase means like the last thing that finally breaks you. You know, you're doing all this work, you're tired, and one more thing happens, and like, that's it, I'm done. That's what that means. That's the thought. But the word for word would be that. Well, she was trying to tell us that was going on in her life, and she said, you know, it's like that string that killed the camel. And string that killed the camel. Oh, she's saying the straw that broke the camel. Yeah, okay. Sometimes word for word gets a little interesting. So uh some very, very well-known word-for-word translations would be like the New American Standard Version, and I read that a lot. It's great. And then you have Thought for Thought, which is the New Living Translation. The New Living Translation is what we use a lot here at the church. It's a phenomenal translation, very scholarly, very accurate. But there are times where it will do some interpretive work for you and say, hey, here's the words, but here's what those words meant at that time, and here's the closest language we have in our words today that communicate the same thought, so that you don't read the word for word and come away with a totally different picture. Does that make sense? All right, so the reason I say all that is I want to read this verse in a few different translations because I actually think that uh the the new living, in trying so hard to give us the thought in a in a weird way, actually may cause us to think of something that we should think of differently. Okay, I'm not saying it's wrong, it isn't. None of these, by the way, that I'm about to read are inaccurate. It's just about finding the best picture for us. Okay, so here we go. So if we were to go word for word in the New American Standard Version, it's if we live by the Spirit, let's follow the Spirit as well, and that is accurate. It's talking about following someone, following the Spirit. Okay, but it's a more specific word than even that. There's an idea behind the word we translate follow that this translation doesn't really give us. Um, if you were to read the message version, which is a paraphrase, it would say this: Since this is the kind of life we've chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. And that's really good, but it's kind of wordy. Okay? By the way, the message version is like every small verse becomes two sentences. So just know that. If you're gonna read it, it's longer. But let's look at like the ESV and then the NIV, and these would be, I think, a really good kind of word for word, thought for thought, somewhere in the middle of those if I were describing it to someone. So the ESV, the English Standard Version, says, if we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. In step. And the NIV says something very similar, since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Now, what's happening here is there's a Greek word, I'm gonna put it on the screen. I believe it's pronounced stoichomen, and what that says is stoichomen means walk. It means to walk. But it has this implication, which is why these other translations try to say something other than just walk. It doesn't just mean take a walk with someone, it means walk with them, follow them, imitate them. And that's why I love that that language of walk in step with them. The idea today is that we are meant to walk, to live in step with the Holy Spirit. That if you're following Jesus, we're called to live in step with God. And I think if we explore this idea, it'll make a lot of sense to all of us because we all know what it feels like to, at the very least, be out of step with someone. Have you ever been out of step with someone in your life? Let me ask a different question. Have you ever been married? Um that's a really easy one, right? Are you sitting next to someone that you are out of step with right now? It gets awkward pretty fast. No, I've been married for 21 years. 21 years. And I love my wife more than anything. We have absolutely been out of step in lots of moments, lots of whole seasons of life. In fact, one of the moments I remember the most clearly, the most out of step I think we've ever been, was before we got married. We took a ballroom dance class together. We went to the same college, we actually got college credit for this class, and we thought, I thought, this will be like romantic. You know what I mean? Like I'm A, I'm getting college credit, B, I'm dancing with my future wife. Like we weren't engaged yet, but we were serious, and so I thought this was just gonna be, she's gonna look in my eyes and just fall more and more deeply in love, and the same would happen. And actually, it was a disaster for a few reasons. One, and hear me out, you guys are gonna, you're gonna be tempted. Oh, just do whatever you do. I'm not gonna try to control you. Um, my wife was not a good dancer. Um, now hold on. Not because she isn't capable of being a good dancer, she just did not have dance experience. Okay, so that made it hard, but not as hard as the fact that I am not a good dancer, never will be a good dancer, could not be a good dancer because I don't have anything within me that is capable of dancing. Uh, I don't have what you might describe as rhythm. Like, you know, guys, you know when we do like a worship song and they start to clap? Okay, like any of you guys, you know what I'm talking about, there's that thing that happens in church sometimes. Let's just be honest, let's own it. Like, herb will start to clap, and then we'll all start to clap, and then that like goes away about five seconds after that. We're like, we because we don't have rhythm and we can't keep it going. Those of us that don't have rhythm are like, I'm not confident anymore. Okay, that's me. Right? When actually, when we do that as a church, when we all clap together, I just I visually use hand-eye coordination to time it. I just watch the people around me, and I'm like, but if you stop, I'm like, we're going off my rhythm. No, no way. Megan actually told me, by the way, that she sometimes starts clapping offbeat just to see if I'll do it with her. She told me that, which is cruel and mean. Because I don't have any rhythm. So, so here's the thing we we take this ballroom dance class, and this is supposed to be us like moving together, and you know, and and we're young. We were like 19 years old. We're just gonna fall in love, and and you know, I was hoping that every night she'd probably make out with me afterwards. That was the goal. That was why I was taking the class, just gonna be honest, but that didn't happen at all. Uh because every single class was just a big fight. And here's the person I really blame. It was this jerk named Kenny. Kenny was the dance instructor, and I'm pretty sure he had eyes on Megan. He was like five years older. There were two times in college that a guy genuinely, I think, tried to take my girl from me. Once was this is a true story, was it a Taco Bell? We ate Taco Bell because it was college budget, and Megan wanted a caramel apple empanada, which was like the Taco Bell dessert. I don't know if it still exists. I go up and I order one. The guy working the counter brings two. Not for me and for Megan. And he looks at Megan. This really happened. You can ask her. He goes, Looks like someone got an extra empanada. And then he walked away. And I was right there. And I'm trying to process, like, okay, hold up. Is this guy trying to take my girl with one extra caramel apple empanada? Is does he think that that's all it would take? Did he look at me and go, you know, this guy is clearly out of his league? I bet I could get her with just an extra dessert. You know? But it had that, it was weird. It was really good. I just sit there and she gave that one to me. I just ate it staring at the guy, like I got the extra empanada. You get no empanada. And then there was Kenny. And if your name is Kenny, you're great, but this Kenny was not. Uh Kenny was a he was so, guys, look, this is what Kenny would do. He would come up to me, because we would learn a new dance each week, and he would come up to me and be like, hey Justin, uh, what you're gonna do is like, then he'd like do this thing. And he's like, was that too fast for you? Do you need do you need me to slow that down for you? And I would be there with my girl, like, yes, Kenny. I don't know how to do the samba, okay, or whatever stupid dance we're doing today. So please slow it down for me. And then he would be like, okay, well, and he'd kind of look at Megan like, sorry. And freaking Kenny. Uh, you know? Like, and so I had to sit there week in and week out and endure Kenny and not Samba, and then we would dance and I would do it wrong, and Megan would just go, nope. Nope. I would like to take it, nope. And I was like, I'm supposed to lead, and she would say, You don't know what you're doing, and zero making out. Uh, just lots of fights. I'm sorry. We were not in step, is my point. We were very out of step while trying to step together in dance class. That was rough. We had fights, but our marriage, we made it. I'm sure if you've been married or any type of relationship, you know what it feels like to be out of step. If it can be out of step with your parents, out of step with your friends, out of step with your boss. Have you ever, though, been in step with someone? And like what the example I'll use is my marriage. Because while there have been moments where we are out of step, man, when Megan and I are in step, like we are a team, and it's pretty awesome. In fact, we had a situation recently that God brought to us that we both felt strongly that we needed to say yes to him about, and it was a big thing that we needed to do. And it would require us, like we just knew, if we say yes to this, it's going to require us to lock together and work together, and there is no real room for any type of out of step, out of sync. We just have to work as a team to make this happen. And it was God that put it on our hearts. We both knew it, we agreed, and since that moment, we have just been lockstep, moving in the same direction, getting it done. And there is nothing better than that. When you're in step with someone, oh, okay, thank you. Yeah. I feel like that's the applause of surprise. Like, wow, Justin, good for you. You're figuring it out. Thank you. No, like when you're in step with someone, it's powerful. Like it's powerful when two people together, working together, moving together, you could accomplish so much, and it's and it's enjoyable. Even if what you're doing is hard, even if what you're doing is challenging and tiring, but you're doing it with someone and you're lockstep, there is something in that that energizes you, it makes you powerful, and you can accomplish more than you could ever accomplish on your own. And there's no person I'd rather be in step with than my wife, by the way. She's my best friend. We are called to be in step with God, to live in step with God. To be led by him, but also to be walking with him. To follow him, but not in the way that we often imagine. And that's why I think that just translating this follow, while accurate, like when the New Living tries to get that thought, this means follow him in every aspect of your life. That is true, but but we have the word follow can be a loaded word depending on what type of leader you've had in your life. Like I don't know the people that you've followed or had to follow. You may have had to follow an idiot at some point in your life. Sometimes they're your boss. I'm sure none of us would feel that way right now. And I'm I'm being playful, I wouldn't just call someone an idiot. Uh, but you know what it you know what it's like to have to follow someone and you're like, they don't know what they're doing. You know what I mean? Like, come on. I got like it's it's hard. It's really hard to follow someone who doesn't have a clue what they're doing, but they have authority. Somehow they got authority, and you have to follow their lead. Like when you hear the word follow, I don't want you to think of that. Also, we know what it's like to follow someone who's domineering. How many of us have had to follow someone, work for someone, live under the authority of someone who is domineering, and it was their way or the highway, and there's they don't listen to you, they're not interested in your opinion, there's no partnership, there's no grace, no love. It is just do what I say or else. A lot of us have had that experience. And when you think about following God, I don't want you to picture that because that's not the picture that God gives us. Sometimes you you follow someone who's all about themselves. Like it's all about what benefits them. They tell you what to do, but it's only because what they want you to do serves their interest and no one else. You can follow all types of people, and there's all types of broken leadership models that we have in this world. And I don't want us to picture anything like that at all whenever we're called to follow the Spirit, because that is not the picture that we're given in God's word. It is not a corporate leadership, it is not domineering, like coach player, that's not the dynamic that we would have. That's not the picture that you should have in your mind. It's not even really like parent, but maybe in that way that it's like a strong parent that just tells you what to do and tells you to go there and do that. It's not even that at all. It's something very, very different. In fact, Jesus himself gives us the picture that we're supposed to have in our minds when we think of what it means to follow or to walk in step with him. It's in Matthew chapter 11, verses 28 and 30. He says, Come to me all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. He says, For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. My yoke is easy and my burden is light. I love that idea. Now, um anyone grow up on a farm, just out of curiosity, any of us at all? A small number of us, cool. Um, I did not. My parents did, and growing up, they would often be upset with me that I wasn't doing farm work that we didn't have to do. That was always a hard dynamic. Like I'm a child of the 80s and 90s, so I would wake up on a Saturday morning in our small suburban home and I would like turn on my Sega Genesis. And sometimes that would make my parents mad. They'd be like, I didn't have that when I was a kid. I was milking cows at five in the morning. I'm like, we don't have any cows. We don't have there's no cows for me to milk. I have no cows. What am I supposed to do right now? But I never asked that question because my dad would have said yard work, and um, we did a lot of yard work. No, it's all good. I didn't grow up on a farm, but so for me, I don't have a lot of agricultural experience, but when you read the Bible, there's agricultural uh analogies and illustrations all the time because that's the society that they lived in, and this is one of those. And if you grew up on a farm, maybe you can have a picture of this to some degree that I don't have. Uh obviously, this is much more ancient agriculture, but the idea that Jesus gives here is being yoked with someone. He says, My yoke, take my yoke upon you. And I don't know if you know what a yoke is, but I'm gonna show you a picture. This is the picture that everyone would have had in Jesus' day, all right? These are two oxen yoked together. Now, which one is the leader? Well, clearly it's the one on the left, right? Like it's obvious. I don't know, I don't know. Actually, I don't know, I'm just joking. Um, no, which one is the leader? Because one of them is. But you can't see. Because the leader does not walk in front, the leader walks beside. And what they would actually do in farm settings is when they had an ox that they were training and growing and getting stronger, they would actually yoke that ox to a stronger ox, and that stronger ox would walk beside the weaker ox, but that weaker ox would learn to walk with the stronger ox. And together they would pull weight that that weaker ox could never have pulled, and that weaker ox would get stronger bit by bit, bit by bit, as he was yoked to the strong ox. They would walk beside each other in step. And so the picture that Jesus decides to use for his leadership model in our life and the work of the Spirit in our life is not a leader who's demanding and domineering and pulling and pushing and yelling and motivating in any of those kinds of ways. It is take my yoke upon you, let me walk beside you, learn from me, walk with me, and I will teach you how to live freely and lightly. That's the picture we're given. Being yoked to our Savior. Walking in step with our leader, with our savior, with our king, with our Lord. And so when the Apostle Paul says we are to walk in step with the Spirit, that's the picture we need. We're to follow the Spirit, but again, we're following the Spirit within us and with us and next to us and walking in life together. And if we can learn to live that way, oh my goodness, is it a beautiful thing? And it is an adventure. Psalm 23, one of the most famous scriptures that we have in all of God's word, gives us a picture of this as well. Slightly different picture, but it's uh it's close enough, it's similar. The Lord is my shepherd. I have all that I need. He lets me rest in green meadows, he leads me beside peaceful streams, he renews my strength, he guides me along right paths, bringing honor to his name. Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid because you are close beside me. Now, by the way, one of my favorite scriptures right here. Because it says, even, well, right before it says, even when I walk through the darkest valley, it says, He guides me along right paths. It's interesting to me that immediately after it says he guides us along right paths, we find ourselves in dark valleys. You might be in a dark valley right now, you might be in a hard season, a hard situation, and you don't know why you're there, and it's easy in those moments to think like, God, why would you put me here? Why have you left me here? Why have you abandoned me? Maybe, maybe that dark valley is part of the right path for your life so that you become the person that you're meant to be, and maybe, and I don't believe this actually is a maybe, he's right there beside you. That he's walking with you. And you're gonna get through that dark valley because you are strengthened by the one who is beside you and with you and never leaves you. And you walk with him. He says, Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me. You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies, you honor me by anointing my head with oil, my cup overflows with blessings. Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord forever. He walks beside us, he's with us, and we are called to walk in step. And so, my my question for all of us as we wrap up I mean, in some ways it's it's a simple question, but it's kind of a challenging one. And it's a challenging one for me, too. And I've I've had to do some soul searching this week as I prepared this, I'll be honest with you. Are you walking in step with the spirit? Like, what what are what are you yoked to? We're gonna go all in with these analogies today. Like, what are you yoked to right now, honestly? If you were to examine your life, examine your heart, and say, what am I yoked to? Who is the one that I have tied myself to? What are what are the ideas? What are the the thoughts, the goals that I've I've tied myself to, and that's really what's sort of pulling me along as I live my life. Is it the Lord? Is it the Spirit? Or is it something else? It's hard to reflect on that sometimes because we live in a really chaotic world and we all have a lot on our plates, and we have deadlines and demands, and we got to pay bills, we gotta get stuff done. We live in this world that gives us a very different rhythm to life than the rhythm that God would have us live. And sometimes we're just at the mercy of the moment, right? Sometimes we're just at the mercy of what needs done today and now, and I got the next deadline, the next thing that needs accomplished, right? The next huge thing. I got four kids, and so I'm always driving somewhere, taking someone somewhere, fixing something. This kid's hurt, they need to go to the doctor, this kid's, you know, got all this stuff going on, I gotta do this, this kid's great, and then you you move and focus on another kid, and now the kid that was great, they need something, it's just chaos. It's hard in that world to just live in step with Jesus, but we have to be really intentional about this. We have to be intentional and mindful of how we're living and ask the question am I yoked to you? Am I following you? Am I walking with you? I'll give you a few thoughts, just as we can kind of put categories to it, and then we'll wrap up for good. We've got one more person going all in with Jesus, so we got to celebrate that. Um if you're willing to do some soul searching this week and you're willing to wrestle with God a little bit and examine your heart and go, am I doing this? Am I am I walking with you? Am I letting you lead me? Am I walking beside you? Or have I attached myself to something else? A couple basic thoughts. One, ask the Lord to lead you. Ask him to lead you. One of my favorite scriptures is in Revelation chapter 3, and Jesus says, uh, I stand at the door and knock. And if he'll open the door, I will come in and we will share a meal together as friends. He doesn't kick the door down, he doesn't force his way in, he doesn't make you do anything, there's an invitation. He knocks. And if you open, if you open, he comes in. One of the most incredible things about God is he's all powerful, he can do anything, and yet he never forces us to follow him. He gives us choice, he gives us freedom, he is a God of freedom. And so have you have you asked him to lead you recently? Have you surrendered to him in a very intentional way and said, Lord, have you reflected on the season of your life and said, Lord, here I am, this is my life right now, these are all the things I have to do, but in the midst of all of it, please lead me. Show me what to do. I'm following you, I'm listening to you, I'm yoking myself to you, I'm attaching myself to you, I'm asking you to lead me, and I want to walk in step with you. Lord, lead my life. Have you asked him to lead you? Have you given him permission to lead you recently? Have you affirmed that in your heart recently? And if the answer is no, I encourage you, do it today. Like just spend a few moments with him and just reaffirm that. Lord, I am yours, I belong to you, I have attached myself to you, I believe in you, I am going to follow you. Let's walk together, Jesus. I want to walk in step with you. But I can't encourage you enough to do that. And just know when you do that, don't be surprised when he calls you to do something that you might not want to do. That's always the hard thing about following Jesus, is you don't always know where you're following him to. You don't know where he's gonna lead you. That's one of the hardest things when God calls you to do something, you have to do it because you can't like pray about it. Like when a person asks me to do something, I can always say, Let me pray about it. And that always has two meanings. One is like, that sounds really interesting. I really like the idea of that. Just let me pray about it to make sure. But the usual meaning of that phrase is I don't want to do that at all. And so uh let me pray about it, and I'm pretty sure God's gonna tell me not to do that, but I'll still give him the opportunity to, you know, tell me. Uh, that's what we usually mean by let me pray about that. But when God tells you to do something, you can't be like, well, Lord, let me pray about it first. What does that even mean? God says, do this. You're like, let me just spend some time in prayer on this, Lord, to you, and let me ask you to, you know, all right. And he's he's loving and kind, and he will uh he'll work with us and be patient with us. So if you are if you are praying about something God has told you to do, by all means do it. Just know that He's He's not gonna change, He's gonna still tell you to do it. Um, so I would just do it. When you ask Him to lead you, He will do it. He will lead you, and He will lead you in surprising places. And if you're craving a very safe life, don't follow Jesus. But if you're craving a life that has meaning and purpose, maybe some adventure. Maybe you find yourself in places like those dark valleys that Psalm 23 mentioned, where the only way through it is faith in Him. Where your own intellect, your own strength, your own gifting is not enough. And you have to live in daily dependence on God to get you through it. Maybe that's where you'll find yourself. And that's an awesome place to be. I've been there. I feel like I am there right now and I love it. It grows you in a way that a safer life can't. So that's number one. Ask him to lead you. Number two, in worship team, you can make your way out. Is eliminate anything in your life that keeps you from following him. Like, get rid of it. Look. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 1 puts it really clearly. Therefore, since we're surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down. Especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. Sin trips us up. Unhealthy behaviors, unhealthy desires, addictions, you name it, habits even, they trip us up. They keep us from being in step with God. It's like we're trying to, it's like we're running a three-legged race, but we have a broken ankle. It doesn't work well. If you have anything in your life and you know it's not good, I'm not talking about shame and guilt. I'm not saying you should be ashamed of yourself. How could you? No, look, we all we all make mistakes. We are all broken people, we all have sin. Like I said, that sin nature doesn't go away. It's in there. But if there's something in your life and you know this is not good, this is not God, the longer it's in your life, the longer you're going to be out of step with the Spirit. The harder it's going to be for you to be in step with God. And He desperately desires you to be in step with Him because He's going to lead you to places you could never go yourself. So if there's any behavior, make it your purpose, your mission to get rid of it. And that might mean doing something really simple. I mean, for some of us, maybe it's not even like an obvious sin, it's a huge distraction. For some of us, it's like there's a couple apps that just need to get deleted on your phone today. They don't do you any good, they're a huge distraction, they lead you to stupid thoughts, and just get rid of them. Just delete it. For some of us, maybe it's more deeply ingrained behaviors and tendencies that we might need counseling for. By the way, as a church, we help with that all the time. And if you ever come to us and say, I got a problem, um, after we're done shaming you, we'll help you. Okay? No. You come to us and say you have a problem, like, guess what? So does your pastor. So do I. We all do. We all need help. Maybe you have something tripping you up all the time and it's something you've tried your best on your own to fix and it hasn't worked. Get help. We're by the way, we're here. Love you, love all of you. We're here to help. Even if it's super messy and hard. Great, let's go. Let's do it together. That's what a church is. But if there's anything that's tripping you up that's keeping you from being in step with God, get rid of it. And I have a feeling that most of us, if we have that, you know exactly what it is right now. And maybe you're afraid to let it go because it's a comfort to you. Maybe you've tried before and you feel like a failure. Let's try again. Because being in step with God, man, as awesome as it is to be in step with my wife, there's nothing like being in step with my creator. Walking lockstep with the Holy Spirit, going wherever he leads you, and knowing that your life is on the right path, even if that path means some dark valleys from time to time. That's the life that I want. Anybody else want that life? Anybody crave that life? Anyone want to live that life and never settle for anything but that life? Because if that's you, I'm with you. And that's the life that he gives us. Alright, with that said, we're gonna take Lord's Supper, and then we're gonna celebrate someone going on with Jesus. Alright? And by the way, I'm proud of myself because it says 1117, and we ended 1120, and I've been late like the last three weeks. So here, growth. That means I have to do this really fast. Alright, so we do this every week. We take this meal together. If you're new to his hands, you can grab this on your way in. There's still some at the back if you want to grab some or grab it next week. This piece of bread represents Jesus' body, and the juice represents his blood. He died for us. And he died to free us, to free us from the power of sin and the power of death. He died so that we could live and live a new life. He paid the price for my sin so that I could walk with him, unburdened by all of that. That's what we're called to do. And so let's take this and thank him for that opportunity. So, Jesus, we thank you for this bread. Lord, we thank you that you surrendered your body, that you sacrificed yourself so that we could know you. So that we could walk with you, live with you, be in step with you. And Jesus, we just ask that as we take this, that we would submit to you, that we would renew that dedication that each of us needs to have and maybe does have, but even just in a moment, we would say, I'm all in with you, Jesus. Once again, just like yesterday, I'm all in with you. Or maybe we've been out of step for a while, and we're saying, I'm ready to get in step with you because you are with me. You are with me. Help us do that, Lord. Let's take the bread. And now the juice. Lord, we thank you for this cup. This is your blood spilled on our behalf, your life poured out, so that we could live. And we don't live aimless, we don't wander. We live led by you, Jesus, by your spirit. And we want to live in step. So help us do that. Help us daily surrender to you and ask you to lead us. Help us strip off anything that slows us down or trips us up, especially the sin that gets in the way. Help us get rid of everything, Lord, so that we can follow you completely and totally unburdened, ready to go. We love you, Jesus. Let's take the juice.