Loss

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Hello, my name is Hope. I'm going to be reading the Scripture for today. Give me one second. So I will be reading out of Luke today, and it says, away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine." Then an angel from heaven appeared and strengthened him. He prayed more fervently, sorry about that, and he was in such agony of spirit that his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood. At last he stood up again and returned to the disciples, only to find them asleep, exhausted from grief. Why are you sleeping? He asked them. Get up and pray so that you will not give into temptation. But even as Jesus said this, a crowd approached led by Judas, one of the twelve disciples. Judas walked over to Jesus to greet him with a kiss, but Jesus said, Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss? When the other disciples saw what was about to happen, they exclaimed, Lord, should we fight? We

brought the swords. And one of them struck at the high priest's slave slashing off his right ear. But Jesus said, no more of this, and he touched the man's ear and healed him. Then Jesus spoke to the leading priests, the captains of the temple guard, and the elders who had come for him. Am I some dangerous revolutionary, he asked, that you come with swords and clubs to arrest me? Why didn't you arrest me in the temple? I was there every day, but this is your moment, the time when the power of darkness reigns. And this is the Lord of God and the Bible, thank you. Thank you Hope. If you were to survey the Bible, if you were to look through scripture, and if your question was how does scripture talk about learning spiritual maturity? How does the Bible describe the process of growing in your faith? What does it mean to become more mature? And you didn't come kind of with all of your own words.

You came just asking the question, what does the Bible say? How does the Bible describe it? You would not find a bunch of how tos. In fact, you would find a bunch of metaphors. You would find a bunch of descriptions, a bunch of allegory. You would find a bunch of those things, a couple of things that you would find, you would find the metaphor of physical growth. So whenever it talks about God in Deuteronomy 32,

for example, God gave birth to this nation. New Testament, 1 Peter 2 is talking about like being on pure milk versus being able to handle mature food, being able to handle spiritual meat. So you'd find this metaphysical growth, sorry, a physical growth. You'd also find a metaphor of family where it talks about, you know, one time you were a stranger, but now you are part of the family. Like you are, you are married to God and his people. So Hosea is talking about that. Also Ephesians five is talking about that. Right? So you have these, these metaphors, one more. And this is one of my favorites. It's talking about a journey, right? So you're from the beginning of the journey to the end of the journey. So Psalm 119, for example, says, your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. It's not talking about a physical path. It's talking about this idea

of learning spiritual maturity, of developing, of growing in your faith, right? And so all these metaphors kind of just pour forth. But the metaphor that you would find most often. So all those metaphors I just listed, they're all great. But far and away the metaphor most often used in the whole Bible to talk about learning spiritual maturity is gardening. It's the metaphor of gardening. It is everywhere in Scripture. Genesis 1, what does God tell Adam and Eve? He says be fruitful and multiply that is a direct reference to gardening Okay, be fruitful and multiply Psalm 1 what is a righteous man like a righteous man is like a tree planted by streams of living water bears fruit in season Isaiah 5 God's people are likened to a vineyard That happens many many many times throughout the prophets God's people like him to have in your Jesus in Mark 4 what does Jesus say says the gospel is

a seed that is planted in the soil of your hearts gardening again Jesus in John 15 what does he say he says I am the vine you are the branches right we're back to gardening Romans 7 talks about being joined with Jesus and bearing fruit that's a gardening metaphor Galatians 5 says to walk in the spirit and bear the fruit of the spirit love joy peace patience kindness goodness gentleness faithfulness and self-control the fruit of the Spirit. This metaphor of gardening, it's sown all the way through Scripture. And the reason that we see the gardening metaphor so often is because it gives us a very rich description for how we learn spiritual maturity. There are many lessons that we can take from that. Also gardening is something that a lot of us, I mean look we're not in an agrarian society right now, but we still know how plants grow all right I have a black thumb not a green one a black one. I kill things that I touch in the garden, okay

But even I know how plants grow even I know how seeds work. I miss it's like science 101, right? I want to notice I want to know it's three of these things and I want to kind of build that corollary for you to understand this gardening metaphor and then also how we learn spiritual maturity because this is where we're gonna kind of be today. I want to tell you that it is indirect. Learning spiritual maturity is indirect. If I am hungry, I can eat. If I'm thirsty, I can drink. If I want to mature spiritually, there's not a lot of direct action I can take. Okay, I can't take a maturity pill. Okay. And if anybody says they can give you a pill to make you more spiritual mature, run. That's not okay. That's not good. They're lying to you. They're smelling, selling snake oil. In fact, it actually, spiritual learning, spiritual maturity is actually directing attention away from yourself, right? You're actually

thinking about yourself less often in spiritual maturity. The other thing, or Another thing about spiritual maturity and the way it's like gardening is that it's difficult to measure very difficult to measure Time-lapse cameras can help us kind of forget this fact, you know, we've seen the the flower grow quickly, you know But man even a flower even just like a weed like a like a daisy. I mean that thing it takes a Process to germinate right it takes time to grow

But even whenever you tend to garden Even whenever you are really good at plants, there are times when you go back out to the garden and you're surprised. There's something there that's like grown up overnight. You're like, how'd that get there? Well, like, well, okay, this is how seeds work. No, you know how it got there, but you don't know how it got there that fast. It's very difficult to measure. It's very difficult to know. I mean, even an experienced farmer is going to throw seed and you're going to say, okay, which of these seeds is going to sprout? I'm just throwing seed. It's really difficult to measure. Frustratingly so, actually, if you try.

What's weird is that flowers, even just flowers, they grow predictably. They grow, you know, in time, they will eventually grow, but there's not like this tight schedule. There's not a clock that they're on. And so spiritual maturity, learning spiritual maturity, difficult to measure. Also, lastly, it is impossible to manufacture. impossible to manufacture trying to manufacture spiritual maturity is like stapling fruit to a tree okay it doesn't really do anything for the tree it doesn't really like make it mature and it actually might fool some people but really it's going to kill the tree okay you have a bigger problem if you're stapling fruit to trees okay in the same way spiritual maturity can't be forced You can't staple fruit onto your life. You can't say, oh I have this spiritual habit now I'm mature. I'm where I need to be because of this particular kind of fruit.

And anybody who says, yeah if you work really hard, you can gain spiritual maturity if you do these things. No, spiritual maturity happens from a relationship. Relationships, I don't know if you've been into many of those, but they're really difficult to control. Really hard to manufacture a real relationship with somebody. It's actually really tough to do. So spiritual maturity actually can't be faked and it can't be forced. It's impossible to manufacture. Another way to put that would be to just say. Another way to kind of put all three of those things would be to just say that learning spiritual maturity is seasonal learning spiritual maturity is seasonal it is Non-linear if we were to chart our spiritual maturity over time If all you are is up and to the right either you're a liar or you don't have a real understanding of how you've grown spiritually

Okay, because it doesn't work that way It is non linear progress on spiritual maturity does not look like up and to the right Okay, it's not like you know, it's not like starting a company or anything like that There are ups and downs there is ebb and flow there is expectation and then rebuilding it is frustrating often in in in spiritual maturity it is seasonal and we've all Experienced these seasons. We've all gone through that there's an ebb and a flow to learning spiritual maturity But if we don't understand the context if we don't have an understanding for what's going on It can feel like a roller coaster Right now some of us like roller coasters. Okay, any of you out there love roller coasters? Okay, who absolutely hates roller coasters? Yeah, okay. Yep. There's It happens. It happens.

Roller coasters are not fun for most, they are fun for some of you psychos, but not most normal people. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Actually, I like a roller coaster like once a year, and then I'm done. When our spiritual maturity, when that journey, is a roller coaster, that can be really frustrating because however we feel, if we don't have understanding or context, if we don't know that it's supposed to have up and downs, then what we do, what we feel, we project onto God. So when we are feeling good, we say, okay God's near me, God has favored toward me, God's working things out, and when we feel lonely, when we feel bad, well then God is distant, God doesn't care, God's aloof, God isn't powerful, God, you know. So we're up and down if we don't understand, but what if we could understand. What if we could have the context for our learning our spiritual maturity to understand that there are ups and downs and that's not

bad. Your ups and downs aren't the result of you being dumb. Okay? News flash, we're all dumb all the time. Okay? So if your spiritual maturity depended on how smart you were, we'd all go not up and to the right. It'd be the other direction. Okay? wouldn't be, it would not be a pretty picture. We can have that understanding, we can have that context for our own ebbs and flows. At our church we talk about this, we talk about people being on a spiritual journey and so we have actually lined out phases for that journey. We talk about the phase, the explore phase, the commit phase, the learn phase, and the disciple phase, right? I'm not going to get into all those phases, I will simply say that what I I want to do is to focus here on the learn phase. Right? So we explore, we explore the gospel, commit, we're committing to Jesus. Learning we are learning the way of Jesus.

Okay? We're learning, in other words, we're learning how it is to work with the Lord, to cooperate with the Spirit, to listen to Jesus, to read our Bibles, to pray like we mean it. Those are the things that we are learning to name a few. really it's this it really is kind of a general understanding. So what I want us to see what I really want to just grind into all of us for this week in the next three weeks is that we learn in seasons. We learn in seasons. Your ebb and flow to your spiritual life is normal. In the middle so let's just take the physical seasons right now in the middle of winter if you are outside wondering why your tree doesn't have leaves on it that is your fault you are ignorant of something that is seasonal right you are expecting something in the wrong season do you understand that when you have understanding in context you can look at

and say oh okay this tree it's winter this tree is dormant that's okay I don't need to freak out. I don't need to think my tree is dead. However, if it's in the middle of spring and that tree looks the exact same, that's when you worry, right? That's when you're like, when do I dig this up? Okay, because it should be flowering, it should be blossoming. I should have fruit on this tree in some capacity. There is no fruit. That tree is dead. But the season matters. You can't make that same assumption in the winter that you are making in the spring. So we learn in seasons, our learning, our path to spiritual maturity, it has seasons. Those seasons are not winter, spring, summer, fall. They don't really correlate that. Rather, we learn on a path that travels from the cross to the church. We learn on a path that goes from the cross, starts with the cross, goes to the church.

I want you to see these seasons. This is where we're going to be for this week and the next three weeks. And as we make our way from the cross in Luke 22, all the way to the establishment of the church in in Acts 2 and beyond into the New Testament epistles, right? As we do that, it's going to help us see these seasons of learning that we're gonna describe in a second, these seasons of learning are baked in. They happen everywhere, all the time. It is a phenomena, like a spiritual season, just like spring, summer, winter, fall. They don't always all last the same time. They're always different. You know, you can't predict what one summer's going to be like from another, but you know it's summer. This in the same way, we're going to be talking about these seasons, these ups and these downs that they happen universally. And we'll be able to see that as we look from the cross to the church.

But there's plenty other places in scripture where you can see this kind of this seasonal process up down thing happen. And what I hope, what I hope as we go through this for the next three weeks is that you gain understanding on your own ups and downs. You gain context for the fact that things don't feel the same as they felt a year and a half ago. And why is that? Is it my fault? Is it somebody else's fault? Where am I at? I'm on the roller coaster and I don't know where this thing is going. But if you understand your seasons, it can feel less like a roller coaster and more like a spring to enjoy or a winter to endure, right? Or a fall to work. Instead of just always feeling like you're just getting pulled in a million directions and emotionally you don't even know where you're at. If you understand your season, you can keep those emotions in check.

You can be able to focus on what the Lord is doing and work with the Lord on that season, as opposed to just kind of being beholden to the ups and the downs. Here are the four seasons. There are four. And again, I'm talking about these, like these are hard and fast things. I'm really just describing a pattern of a phenomena that we see in scripture all over. And so, you know, I'm not going to, we're not patenting these things. This is just to help us understand. The first season is lost. We're going to be talking about that today a little bit. The next season is revival. The third season is increase. The fourth season is organization. Boss, revival, increase, organization. organization comes lost again. So it's a repeating pattern. You see it all really all over the place and that those four seasons they build on each other. I realize revival and increase sound a lot more fun than organization does but we

need all four. We need them and each season in its own way helps us learn the way of Jesus and helps us become more like him every season. And so we begin with loss. We begin with the first season here. I want to say two things about loss. First, that loss is always the beginning. Loss is always the beginning. The second thing I want to say is that all transformation feels like loss. Loss is always the beginning and every major transformation, every big change we go through feels like loss. Need to know these two things about loss. The first thing, loss is always the beginning. That is to say loss is always how we begin with Jesus. Loss, I realize, look, I realize that's not something I'm going to put like on a social media ad, okay? That's not like, let's put that on the banner, let's change our, you know, you know, that's not, it's not really, I understand, it's not fun to hear, but it is really helpful

to understand that that loss is always how we begin with Jesus. Either how we begin with Jesus for the very first time or how we begin again. But it always starts with loss and I want to prove it to you in Scripture. By the way the verses that Hope read are the are the verses that we're going to be getting to later but that was a small kind of like window into the loss that Jesus experienced. Okay, even in just those few verses that she read, there were losses losing the disciples, losing his freedom, losing really knowing that he's losing his life in the garden, sweating drops of blood. He's losing. That's a lot of loss. We're gonna get to that in a minute. What I want to say is that there's a couple ways I want to show you that that loss always begins anybody who follows Jesus Jesus says to them that they must lose first anybody that follows Jesus Jesus says to them they must lose first mark 8 34 35 Jesus

said anybody would come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Cross instrument of torture. Okay, so Jesus, you know, you want to follow me? Pick up your instrument of torture and follow. Okay, for whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the Gospels will save it. Jesus is not waiting for people to say, yeah sure I'll follow you and then giving them the fine print. Oh by the way, you're gonna need to lose your life. Okay, that's not how Jesus does it. He says lose your life for my sake and for the gospel. What does that mean? What does that mean for us to lose our life? Maybe we can just think of it this way. Every one of us has a plan for their own life. Each of you in here, you have an idea, a plan for your own life. Even if your plan is to be left alone. That's still a plan. Even if your plan is for the picturesque

American dream, even if you don't say it, you have a plan for your own life and you act on that plan. You do. You have, and it's not a sin, I'm not trying to call you out here, it's a thing that we all do. We all have a plan. We all act on on that plan. Following Jesus means that we at a moment's notice can sacrifice that plan completely. Following Jesus means the kind of loss that it's talking about is you kind of thought, oh okay, my life is going to be about this, I'm going to do this, I'm going Following Jesus means we say without condition your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven and What that is that is a that is a positive like I'm gonna follow you Jesus no matter where you go But on the negative side that is a sacrifice of whatever plan that you had in your head

Jesus has better plans for you than you can imagine But it takes you putting a knife in your own plans for you to embrace the other set. Does that make sense? You can't hold on to both. Jesus is saying, I've got a plan for you, but that plan, that's going to require you to lose your life. That's going to require you to hang up whatever you need to hang up. And it's not just once either, the loss continues. continues anybody who followed Jesus is is called to lose continually look at first Peter 2 verses 21 and 23 for to this you have been called this loss because Christ also suffered for you leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps Jesus is saying look I lose I suffer I'm the son of God I didn't deserve to suffer I didn't deserve all that I've got but I still took it I I still suffered and I'm your example Jesus says to us. 23, when he was reviled, he did not revile in return.

When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued in trusting himself to the one who judges justly. As people who follow Jesus, losing is the norm. Losing is the norm. This is true even whenever you look in the Old Testament. Look at the life of Joseph. Old Testament, Joseph, not New Testament, Joseph. Old Testament Joseph years in servitude before he's coming out on top. Look at the life of David years in the wilderness before he became king. Look at the life of David. Daniel, excuse me, he was persecuted. He was relegated to prison or to a different part, couldn't do things. And he was proved right in the end. But all three of those guys, patriarchs, man, I mean, like they are Hall of Faith saints and they suffered. Loss is not something that we lean into when it's convenient. This is not like eating healthy or taking vitamins or exercising. This is something we do all the time.

This is our way of life, and you could say it this way. That loss is square one. Loss is square one. Look at Jesus' words in Matthew 7, 13, and 14. It's up on the screen for you. Jesus is saying, enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy That leads to destruction and those who enter by it are many for the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to Life and those who find it are few loss Here is the gate Through which we must pass to actually follow Jesus. It's not that the gate is easy and the finish line is narrow Right, it's not Jesus isn't saying like yeah I mean it's all big but then like we kind of whittle out at the end no, man. He's saying the gate The entry is narrow. The way in is difficult. And after I've said all that, I feel compelled to say this. Yes, in the Christian life, there is joy. Hallelujah. Say hallelujah if you've got joy.

There you go. Okay, we got joy today. And we do have hope today. I'm not going to make you say hallelujah on everyone. We have eternal life in Christ. It starts now. And it is a beautiful, wonderful thing to live in, this joy, this hope, this eternal life. But it is always joy and hope and eternal life in the midst of loss. It's always those things in the midst of loss. If anybody should ever tell you that following Jesus is like riding the rainbow of having all your dreams come true, again, run. They're selling something. I mean, that's not what you see in scripture, right? It's not what you have in the Bible. The Bible doesn't talk about that, Jesus doesn't talk about following him that way. He talks about it in terms of loss. He says that loss is square one. And the final proof that loss is square one is the cross. And it's not just the cross as the events leading up to the cross,

but along with the resurrection, The cross is Jesus's greatest accomplishment, if we can talk about it that way. And think about that. Our Lord and Savior's, one of his greatest accomplishments was losing. Greatest accomplishments. And look, the story of the cross is very, very familiar to us. We kind of go through it almost every Easter, But what I want to do is I want to read through some of these scriptures and I want you to experience the loss that Jesus goes through, the one that he's experienced. And what Hope Parrington has already read,

Jesus is agonizing over a decision. Jesus, you know, his 12 closest friends can't pray for him. One of his closest friends, Judas, betrays him. So I'm gonna read more of parts of Luke 22 and 23. And they're not gonna be up on the screen for a reason. I just want you to listen. You can close your eyes if it's gonna help you. If you go to sleep, then that's a holy nap, that's okay.

I want you to consider all that Jesus took on and I wanna read it from Luke 22 and 23. Jesus talking to disciples in Luke 22 starting verse 31. Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded to have you. that he might sift you like wheat, but I prayed for you, that your faith may not fail. And when you've turned again, strengthen your brothers. Peter said, damn Lord, I'm ready to go with you both to prison and to death. Jesus said, I tell you Peter, the rooster will not crow this day until you deny me three times,

until you deny three times that you know me. So it's closest guy, Peter is going to deny it. Skip down to verse 63. Now the men who were holding Jesus in custody were mocking him as they beat him. They also blindfolded him and kept asking him, prophesy, who is it that struck you? And they said many other things against him, blaspheming him, the indignity he's suffering right here. Skip down to the cross of Luke 23 verse 44. It says, it was now about the sixth hour and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour while the sun's light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn into, then Jesus calling out with a loud voice said, "'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.'" And having said this, he breathed his last. Now when the Serturians saw what had taken place, he praised God saying, "'Certainly, this man was innocent, and all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle,

when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts. Then all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things. These are the things that Jesus suffered. This is the loss. When you read Luke 22 and Luke 23, it's loss after loss after loss after loss after loss. There's like 10 in a row. And you're kind of reading it going like, man, can it all unravel this fast? Is it there's people that I mean just to put it in perspective There's people that were chanting Hosanna when Jesus came into Jerusalem that Three days later are chanting crucify him a lot of the same people

Right, so he's his rate of loss is staggering personally You know leadership credibility the people that he's invested in they're all leaving him They're all betraying Him. And for us, for us, as we read, this is the beginning of our own story. This is where our victory was won through a loss on the cross. Colossians 2, 13 and 14 really puts it well. It says, and you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven all your trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. Loss is scary. No denying it. To lose things that we hold dear, really lose those things is scary, but it's the only way to begin. Today if you feel the spirit telling you like it's time that it's time for you to sacrifice something It's time for you to lose it's time for you to make that decision

During our invitation time which I happen in a few minutes. I want to encourage you To just come forward to pray with somebody that's next to you to to deal with that in some capacity Make a step toward that sacrifice Because listen if you're holding on to something and the Lord's calling you right the Lord calling you to do something about it. The Lord's calling you, I don't know exactly what that is, but I guarantee you it has something to do with sacrifice. It has something to do with you putting away something that you hold dear. You getting rid of something that you think you can't live without. It's that. I don't know what version of story that is, but it does begin with loss. Make the decision to lose what you need to lose to follow him. One more thing about loss, I said there was two. The first is that loss is always the beginning. The second is that all transformation feels like loss.

All transformation feels like loss. Even after reading through all the loss that Jesus endured, and we felt that, right? It's still difficult for us to really get into it because we know the end of the story. We know the resurrection happens. We know the cross leads to something better. We know the rest of the story. It turns out for good. In fact, the cross is the inauguration. It's the greatest transformation of all that Jesus's death on the cross translates, translates, transforms how we relate to God. It's I can't even possibly overstate it It changes everything about how we relate to God and made a way for us to relate to God It was the beginning of a beautiful transformation. We know the whole story We can see the whole equation the loss and the benefit But if we could stay just for a second in In the moment with the disciples, in the moment with the women watching on, on this side of the pain, without the transformation in view, it just hurts.

As I imagine the disciples looking at the cross, it just hurts. And we see that. We know that. We feel that. The cancer diagnosis. It hurts. It just hurts. All we can see is what we no longer have, or what we will eventually no longer have. The job loss hurts. The failed marriage hurts. The estranged friend hurts. It hurts. It should. It's painful. And all of these things are a transition. They're all a change, right? When we hit that change, all we can see is what we are losing. If somebody would try to come up to someone who's grieving and say, you know, it's just better this way, that's not the thing to say at the funeral, okay? Just pro tip, if you're ever at a funeral, You know, talking about how this is a really, really good thing, it's just not time. It's true, but it's not time. It's still there. And that pain is okay. The reality, though, it's that it's not just a loss, that that loss is going to lead to

transformation. And the beginning of that transformation, again, it's always going to hurt because we can't see the other side. We go through the job loss and we don't see that in six months we're going to have a different job that's better and that the Lord's going to work a lot of things out. No, we can't see that. We really, really can't see that. It's not that we're ignoring it, but that we just can't see it. We can trust Him for it, but we can't see it. All we are is on this side of it going, this hurts. This is transformation. I'm unhappy about it and it's difficult and it hurts. I can only see what I'm losing. Even on a lesser scale, like even if it's not a job loss, but even if it's a job reorganization, even if it's a family in transition, even if it's a church that's changing, it's going to feel like loss. It's going to hurt because what you can see, all we can see on this side is what isn't

there anymore. It's a gaping hole and we feel it and it hurts. And it's easy to imagine, very actually, easy to imagine the disciples as they saw Jesus hanging there and they're thinking to themselves, what will we do now? Where do we go from here? What does life look like now? What do we have if we don't have Jesus physically here with us? They don't see what's coming. We know what's coming, but don't go there yet. Just be in that moment.

They don't know what amazing things wait for them, but they do know on this side, it just hurts. It just feels like loss. The hope that we have is that the Lord God in heaven is not looking at your transition, looking at your loss going, oh, I did not see that coming. That totally surprised me. That's not what's happening. God is in total control of all that. We talk about all the time, but it's really really helpful to remember. That transition in your life, that thing that is happening, whether it's a whether you're feeling it like a loss or it's just uncomfortable, however you're feeling it, you can know that the Lord, God in heaven, does not move you through a major transition, does not transform your life without taking something away, without you sacrificing something. Those things go hand in hand. If you want all the transformation and none of the loss, well, have fun, but that's gonna be really

frustrating for you because you're not gonna want to lose those things or you're gonna be mad when you lose them and you're not gonna want this transformation because all you're worried about is what's losing over here. You can't hold on to both. You can't do it. It's impossible. You're gonna be stagnant. You're gonna not change and you're gonna not lose and you're gonna be like stale bread and over time you're gonna begin to feel that it's gonna begin to hurt. What we need to understand and just let it sit man just let the first season sit. Ups and downs they happen. That first thing usually is a down and it hurts and it's loss. The good news in the midst of the loss is that It is a necessary beginning to something beautiful Some of us in here today and I obviously I know a lot of your stories I don't know everything though. I don't everything going on. There's a lot of loss

Right that you're probably going through something that you're looking at even just as a transition or a transformation you're going I'm not sure though that that's worth it. I'm not sure what I'm being asked to sacrifice is gonna be worth it in the end I'm not sure I want to commit to that. I'm not sure I'm just I'm scared of all this change, I'm scared of losing what I'm going to lose. The reality is, you can't hold on to it anyway. I have no power over my life. I can't control how people feel, how people think. I can't control what people do. And those things affect me. What people think, say, and do affect me. They affect you too. We can't control those things. Change happens, and it's going to feel like loss. And in the ups and downs, again, it's often a down that it begins on. But truly, we can take hope in this fact that loss is the beginning, the beginning of learning spiritual maturity.

It is the beginning of something that God is doing in your life, but it is not the end. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much for today. Thank you for the ways that you are bringing us into your likeness, that you are making us look like you and that you're doing that through very difficult transition, that you are doing that in ways that we don't expect and oftentimes we do not like.

But you are in control of all of it. You help us. You listen to us. You are there with us as we cry, as we are frustrated. And you say that you are near to the brokenhearted and that you're not just placating us. You're not just telling us what we wanna hear, but that you, in our pain, that you are feeling it, you are with us in it. I pray that today as we consider our own lives and whatever loss we are dealing with, even as we lose the summer. Even as the summer is now in the rear view mirror, that you would help us understand. It is the beginning, it is not the end. It is the beginning of something that you are doing in us.

That's your name that we pray, amen. During our time of invitation, I'm gonna be right here. If you need to pray, if you need to talk to somebody, it's gonna be an extended time. We're gonna sing a couple of songs. I just wanna encourage you, it's open. You can come up and pray at any time.