Pursue a Godly Future

Transcript

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

in Proverbs 19 this morning. We're gonna be jumping around a lot in the book of Proverbs. I was reminded this week, growing up in the 80s and 90s, which is what I did, and you probably remember this even if you didn't grow up around that time, everybody was always trying to predict the future and they would always land on the same year. They're trying to predict the year. Anybody? 80s and 90s? 2000, right, we're always gone for 2000. For some horrible reason, all through the 80s and 90s, people would always talk about the future and when they did, it was always on the year 2000. There was just something about that year, whether it was, they were predicting teleportation, they were predicting smartphones, self-driving cars, it didn't matter, it was always that year. In fact, it was so common that it landed on that year that Conan O'Brien actually did a skit called The Year 2000.

And it was so funny, they actually kept it into like 2004 and 2005. They kept trying to see all these weird predictions for the year 2000. And throughout history, people have been trying to predict the future and so I thought it would be interesting. There was a French artist, Jean-Marc Côté, who around the 1900s, made postcards about the year 2000. Thought it was interesting. And I want you to see this first picture. He predicted the Roomba.

You can see that there, it's the Roomba. He almost got it right. This is in 1900 though, trying to predict something like a self-cleaning machine. Also, here's his version of the motor home. Had the motor home going on. Full on trees in your motor home. Just saying, that's pretty grandiose. The farther that we go into the future, so this is like 110 years before, but the farther you go into the future and you try to plan in the future, you try to predict what's going to happen, the harder that is. So you can make plans for next week and they're pretty all right. Next year, a little bit more tentative. The year 3000, let's hold on. I don't know if that's going to work out.

And actually, if you look around, if you look at what gets paid money, right? Jobs that get paid money. If you're an insurance company, you have actuaries that calculate risk. They actually calculate the risk of a certain situation and determine how much money that's going to cost. You have stockbrokers that develop algorithms solely for the prediction of the market. They're just trying to get ahead. And so if you can actually predict the future, you can get paid pretty well doing it, or if you can develop something, it will be worth a lot of money. But despite our best attempts, the future is always surprising. It always kind of throws us for a loop. We always don't know exactly what it's going to be and some would call this just the hand that life has dealt us, but Proverbs describes this differently. And we see this in Proverbs 19, 21,

when it says, many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand, okay? So in wisdom, and this is what Proverbs is trying to tell us, we're going to go back to the Proverbs, but I just want to point this out. In wisdom, God puts everything into motion, everything. There is meaning in the mundane. The psalmist says that the stars and the moon were set in place. This is Psalm eight. That there is more than just meaning in the mundane, there's purpose in the pain, right? There's a God of the universe who is setting things in motion. And because God does that, that fundamentally alters how you and I plan the future.

Because God sets everything into motion, because God is in control of everything, it fundamentally alters how you and I are going to plan for the future. And not just make plans for ourselves, make plans for our families, our careers, our businesses, our churches. It changes all of that fundamentally. And the question that we're left with is, if God is in total control of everything, and we cannot know that future, right? So, I mean, we get further than a week out and we're in trouble. If those two things are true, then how exactly do we make plans?

If God knows everything, and God knows what's going to happen, but that knowledge is not available to us, in fact, we're very limited on the kind of future that we can predict, or the kind of accuracy that we can have. If both of those things are true, then why make plans at all? Woody Allen famously said, if you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans. It's often quoted, people don't know it's Woody Allen, maybe you won't quote it now, I don't know. And despite all this, despite all this, Proverbs says that we need plans. As human beings, we need plans. And we're gonna, like I said, jump around a lot of places in Proverbs, they're all gonna be up here also. Look at Proverbs 11, 14, and also Proverbs 29, 18, both of them are gonna be up there. It says, where there is no guidance, a people fails. But in an abundance of counselors, there is safety. 29, 18 says something similar,

where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint. But blessed is he who keeps the law. God has made people, you and I, so that we need plans. We need plans, you and I. We crave plans. Plans, like we see in these two verses, plans shore up safety. Plans shore up societal order. We need to know where we are going together. Plans answer that question. They answer, what am I working toward? Or as a society, what are we working toward? Those plans point toward that preferred future. And when there is no plan, or when there are no good answers to the question, what are we working toward, then bad things happen. People tend to go into despair. People tend to do terrible things. So plans, in this sense, plans help us trust that our efforts are not in vain. We can see where we're going, and we can understand. And that's why some of the most tumultuous times

in our lives are when we are dealing with a very uncertain future. You wanna meet somebody who's very stressed out? Then you need to meet somebody who doesn't know where their next meal is coming from. Or they don't know where they're gonna live in a month. Or they don't know what it's gonna be like in their marriage, okay? That's a stressed out person. That's stress. We need plans. We need to know that. So we crave a plan individually and societally. We crave a plan. God knows the future, but that future eludes us in response to this setup. We tend to do one of two things. We tend to either become tyrants or passengers, okay? Tyrants or passengers. If you don't know the future but you wanna know the future, then you become a tyrant and you try to take control of it and you get really mean and nasty and you try to make people do what you want them to do because you're trying to get a known future.

And if you're unfamiliar with this, if you are a parent trying to get your child ready for a church service on a Sunday morning, that's you, okay? But it's just maybe in a different capacity. If you're a passenger, then you functionally give up. If you're a passenger, you're just kind of waiting for something to happen. But you resist a plan, you resist all of it. You're just a passenger. These are two ditches, right? You crave a plan, you can't see the plan. Wisdom says that both of those are terrible ideas, but wisdom also says that we can make plans kind of in reverence for God. This is our third week looking at Proverbs. We've been spending some time here. We've begun our year talking about the tides of wisdom. Okay? The tides of wisdom for Proverbs for 2024. And we've established a few things about wisdom from Proverbs that's helpful. Wisdom, and number one, is God's perspective, okay?

If you're wondering what wisdom is, it's God's perspective. God created life to work a certain way, and his perspective on those things is wisdom, okay? So then to walk in wisdom is to walk in cooperation with how life was created to run, okay? But also, the wisdom that we find in Proverbs is not how life always works, it's how life works most times. It's not a promise, it's not something that's gonna happen every time. It just, it's gonna happen maybe eventually or happen most of the time. And lastly, we can talk about Proverbs that they are intended for meditation. So this is why we talk about the tides of wisdom, right? Tides wash over you, tides kind of erode bad perspectives. Okay, so as you read the Proverbs, you will find your mind changing. As you read the Proverbs, you will find bad, bad thoughts washing away, good thoughts washing in, okay? And I don't mean just positive and negative.

I mean false and true, okay? So lies that you believe about yourself will be exposed, and you'll be able to repent of them, and things that are true will wash over you. So because of that, we've been actually walking through a reading plan. If you were a new version, you could find our church on YouVersion, and then find that reading plan. The reading plan is called Wisdom from the Proverbs. It's also available through our church center app. And I will say, we're only on day 14, so it's not too late. You can read two chapters a day and make it all the way through January, okay? So even if you haven't started yet, you can read two chapters a day and have the whole Proverbs read through in January. And my encouragement to you is to read the Proverbs and let it wash over you. And really, just take your temperature, see what you're like in a month, okay? From when you start to when you finish.

And I guarantee you that the Proverbs will have washed over you in a specific way, that the Lord will speak through his word, okay? That's a promise from God that'll speak through his word. Today, our proverb is pursuing a godly future, okay? Two weeks ago, we talked about learning to fear the Lord. Last week, we talked about weighing our words, and this week, it is pursuing a godly future, okay? That we resist trying to control that future. We resist just being a passenger for that future, or trying to make God laugh with our silly plans or something. We remember, we remember instead, that God began a good work within us and is going to be faithful to complete it. We remember that God has our future waiting. It says in Lamentations 3, 21 through 23, it says, but this I call to mind. It's a great verse. We're gonna underline this. We're gonna write down this for later.

But this I call to mind, and therefore, I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. And I love those verses, and it actually reminds me of the tide, right? The tide's always coming in. You can't bring the tide in faster. You can't sweep the tide out faster. It just comes. It's not asking for your permission. It just comes. This is like the faithfulness of the Lord.

So what I wanna show you in these Proverbs is that God has a future for us, prepared for us, and that He invites us to discover that future by faith. So God has a future for us, prepared for us, and He invites us to pursue that godly future by faith. We see that all over the Proverbs, and Proverbs are gonna kinda help us put hands and feet to this thing. And one more thing before we get into it.

Anytime you talk about discerning a godly future or pursuing a godly future, you really have to be careful because you're not, you can, we're not talking about fortune telling, okay? We're not talking about tarot cards. We're not talking about astrology. We're not talking about any of that. That's pretty much trying to guess the future without God. Therefore, it's sinful, okay? Don't do it. Don't obey your astrology, okay? Your zodiac sign does not tell you a darn thing, I promise. Okay? But what we're also not gonna do is we're also not gonna gloss over maybe some, we're not gonna gloss over our future with some kinda spiritual mantra, okay? There's a guy, and there are many people like him, there's a guy, Andrew Carter of Royal City Church in LA, and this was his tweet for New Year's. He said, 2004, 2024 is going to bring healing. 2024 is gonna bring peace, it's gonna bring love

and closure and growth and opportunity and favor and happiness. Comment amen if you claim it. I got a lot of problems with that, not because that guy's trying to help people, okay, that's not my problem. He is trying to help people. He's just now trying to help people very well, and he may be short-changing kinda what people actually need to do in order to grow. You don't just claim growth, okay? You don't just claim happiness. You don't claim joy, right? There is something to be said about agreeing with the truth, but, and yes, like we talked about last week, our words have power, okay? I'm the one who said that, yes. But God is not a vending machine, okay? We don't just like pull his arm and then like joy comes out, okay, that's not how it works. God invites us to discover these things with him, okay? On a journey with him, something that takes time, effort, patience, frustration, counsel,

you admitting things that you don't wanna admit. All those things are in the soup of you and I pursuing a godly future. It doesn't come with a special prayer pose. It doesn't come with some prayer you say just the right way and magically, you know, something's gonna fall from the sky and it's gonna be everything you ever needed just because you prayed the right prayer and you claimed it. Now somehow it works. It gets you a lot of likes on Instagram, but it's not how it works, okay? God has a future prepared for us. He invites us to pursue it in faith, okay?

And if we're gonna do this and we're gonna pursue the future in faith, in God, this is going to require three, three very normal things of us, okay? We see all these in Proverbs. First, if we're gonna pursue a godly future, it's going to require collaboration. Proverbs 15, 22, again, all of these that I'm gonna quote are gonna be up here. 15, 22, it says, without counsel, plans fail, but with many advisors, they succeed. Next couple of verses, Proverbs 20, verse 18, Proverbs 24, verse 6, it says, plans are established by counsel, by wise guidance, wage war.

24, 6, for by wise guidance, you can wage war, wage your war. And in an abundance of counselors, there is victory. There's an old African proverb, it's been attributed to actually a lot of different places. It says, if you wanna go fast, go alone. And if you wanna go far, go together. That really holds true. That's there in Proverbs. That's just another way to say what we've been talking about here. Proverbs maintains this is true, that plans more often succeed when that planning is refined by a group of people who are trying to go the same direction. We call this collaboration, so we call this an abundance of counselors, that you are preparing to go forward together. And that plans, when you do that, when you pursue a godly future, you really should understand, this is not just you and your own private future. And that's tough, because a lot of things are privatized toward you.

Like your Netflix account has your name on it, and whatever that icon is, whichever one you chose, I'm not judging, but you chose it, it's you. It's individualized for you. But we're not talking about this. We're not talking about an individualized future, we're talking about something that is shared with other people. So we must understand that pursuing that future is not just your future, it's yours and many other people's future that you're kind of all sharing together. We need to understand that. The second thing that is required of us, the thing that goes with it, if we're gonna pursue a godly future, it's going to require us to acknowledge our blind spots. It's going to require us to acknowledge our blind spots. And I don't just mean risk averse versus not. I mean a lot of things. So in Proverbs 12, 15 talks about this along with 26, 12. It says, the way of a fool is right in his own eyes,

but a wise man listens to advice. 26, 12, do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him. Romans 12, 16, so the New Testament kind of echoes this idea when it says, live in harmony with one another, do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight, okay? It is not enough to seek collaboration on this future that you're going toward together with whatever big decision, and I keep talking about pursuing a godly future. Your godly future that you're pursuing always comes out in a decision. It's whether to do this or that. It's whether to go here or there. It's whether or not to take this action, to have this conversation, to do the, and so when I talk about the future, capital T, capital F, I'm really just talking about whatever decision is in front of you. This is the future that we deal with

in a practical, everyday kind of way, and it's not enough to seek collaboration for that, because you can get a bunch of collaboration and ignore everybody, okay? I've been a part of that. I've both been the ignorer and the ignoreee, okay? It's not fun. And what we really need to do is we have to leapfrog our own blind spots to actually listen to other people, which is tough. It's really tough, because, man, we like our own opinions. We like our own perspective. In fact, we took a lot of time to get there, okay? Thank you very much. We spent a little bit of time circling that, and in our 360-ing of whatever situation, we came to a few convictions, a few observations that we were convinced of, a few perspectives that we think are right, and that is hard to give up when you actually have to listen to somebody else in their perspective. It's hard. It makes it a little easier when you know

that you're all going the same direction. That's helpful, but it's still difficult. It's still difficult to do. Here's what I want to challenge you to do. If we are going to seek out collaboration and actually listen to that collaboration, okay? You are gonna need to be ready to do that. I would not recommend you calling your five friends that you're kind of all in with, and you're saying, hey, let's collaborate on something. I swear I'm gonna listen, because you probably won't.

Get yourself ready to listen by doing this. I want you to think about your last big mistake, or your last big setback, or your last big failure, or your last big loss. Think about that. Something you messed up all on your own. Okay? If you have to think really hard, maybe ask somebody else. I'm sure they can tell you. Okay? Sometimes it's hard, I'm just saying.

Then consider that, okay? Get that thing, whatever that is. Get somebody that was involved in it that knows about it, okay? Then ask somebody, really ask them, how did I contribute to that? What part did I play? What was Drew's addition to that subtraction? Okay? How did I contribute to that? And here's the, you can't just ask that. You have to promise not to say anything. You don't say anything. You don't defend yourself. You tie both hands behind your back, and you take whatever beat is coming to you, okay? Verbally, okay, not for real. But you listen to what people are saying, and you don't say anything in response, you just write it down. You just write it down. And I'm not promising that everything they say is gonna be 24 karat gold, but I am saying that you, as you go through that in prayer later, without them there, as you go through that in prayer, I think you're gonna maybe pick up on some things.

And I think you're gonna be able to begin to see, with the Lord's help, how you need help in your own perspective, things that you're going to miss. You have blind spots. I have blind spots, okay? And if you really don't know what those are, man, I mean, if you really are, and God bless you if this is you, if you're convinced that you don't have blind spots, then ask somebody that you trust what those blind spots are, okay? Just ask somebody that you trust what they could be. Maybe you're gonna start to get some kind of inkling. When you do, when you do that, you will begin to be ready to collaborate with people. You will begin to be ready to listen to what other people are saying.

And maybe the best way to put it is this. Your perspective, your estimation of a situation, I'm sure is great. It's just incomplete, right? You don't have to be, it's not like you have to sit there and pretend not to know anything. It's just to acknowledge that your perspective on something is incomplete, that you don't know everything that you need to know to have the perfect perspective on what's going on. And when you can really wrap your mind around that, that's really helpful for you to be able to listen to somebody else, okay? Okay, so those two kind of work hand in hand. It's required of us that we need collaboration. We listen, don't try to ascertain the future in private. It's not your private future anyway, okay? Don't do it. And then make sure that you're acknowledging those blind spots that you're listening to that collaboration. What's the third requirement of a godly future?

And this is probably one of the more difficult ones. Pursuing a godly future requires us to act in faith, okay? Requires us to act in faith. What all of these proverbs are saying about planning, what they all assume about planning is that we are seeking the Lord's wisdom as we are making plans, okay? Let me say it again. We don't sit down and ask the Lord to give us every answer from above and just wait and then get the whole thing and then start moving. That's not how life works. That's not how we work. It's not how it works. You are typically, what you're doing, you are seeking the Lord's wisdom as you make plans, okay?

You're not looking for something specific. And I want you to, for this, I want you to consider Gideon, okay? Gideon, if you are unfamiliar with this story, it's in Judges 6. Gideon was a judge of Israel. And we're not gonna read from there, but if you wanna go back and read the story, it's great. It's a very famous one. And God commands Gideon on behalf of the nation of Israel. He says, I want you to go and fight the Midianites, okay? Now the Midianites were the people that were just plaguing Gideon's people, the Israelites, okay? So because Gideon is nervous, what does he do? He takes a fleece, a piece of wool, okay? He takes a fleece and he puts it out, okay? And he says, and he prays for the Lord to confirm what he said. And so the first night, he leaves the fleece out. It says, so in the morning, the fleece was wet and the ground around it was bone dry, okay?

And that was what Gideon prayed for. And he goes, okay, all right, must be true, but wait. Let me just, let me do it one more time. I'm gonna do it the next night. So he puts the fleece out again and he prays for the opposite thing to happen. He wants the fleece to be bone dry and the ground all around it wet. And sure enough, the next morning, Gideon wakes up, the fleece is bone dry, the ground is all wet. And what you and I do and the way that our society actually repeats this story, which is somewhat accurate, the way that we repeat that story is, when you're unsure of what you want to do or even what you know you should do, then put your fleece out, we say. Just put your fleece out. Ask the Lord to confirm what you think the Lord's asking you to do, and that's not bad advice. Okay, so put your fleece out. Here's the part of the story that we forget. We forget that in Judges 6, in the exact same story,

a couple of verses earlier, that Gideon has first assembled the entire Israelite army to fight the Midianites. It's not like he receives the command and before he does anything, he wants to be sure about this. No, no, no, he receives the command, he goes to the 12 tribes of Israel and assembles the whole army to fight the Midianites and then the day before they go fight, he's putting fleece out. And when you consider that Gideon did all of that work before he's putting the fleece out, that probably changes how you and I need to speak about putting our fleece out, okay? The next time somebody says, you know, like, hey, I want the Lord to confirm it, I think my next question's gonna be, what have you done so far, okay? How far down the road have you gotten toward obedience? Pursuing a godly future requires us to act in faith. He was obedient, Gideon was obedient first,

and then he asked for confirmation. So there's two things, there's two things, I just want you to see it through Gideon's life. If we are going to act in faith, and pursuing a godly future is going to require us to do that, we are going to have to do things without knowing what the outcome is first. We just are, right? This is how God made life to work. We don't get all the answers and then get to walk forward in complete knowledge of everything that's going to happen. We would screw that up anyway.

Okay, two things. First, obey on what you already know is godly. That's the first thing you need to do. You need to obey on what you already know is godly. Okay, so if you are in a situation right now, or have been recently, where you are making a big decision, or you are wondering, your future is uncertain, okay, on a big thing. My encouragement to anybody in that situation is to obey on what you already know is godly.

Godly living in the New Testament, in the Old Testament even, is not mysterious, okay? It's not. Godly living is actually pretty neatly laid out, okay? You wanna live godly, okay? Act justly, do mercy, walk humbly with your God. You wanna live godly, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, love your neighbor as yourself. You wanna be godly, then abstain from sexual sin. You wanna be godly, that's the first, that's the only answer. You wanna be godly, like it's all right there.

You don't even need to dig that deep. You don't even need to know the Hebrew, okay? It's right there. There's a lot of things that you can be doing now that you are not. Obey on what you already know is godly. And whatever it is, man, whatever you feel like the Lord's asking you to do, do it in obedience to the Lord. Even if you aren't sure, even if you're a little nervous about it, if you know that this is like in the ballpark what the Lord's asking you to do, do it. Do it. See what the Lord's gonna do with it. Now don't abuse this, right? Don't be like, don't twist this around to just make the Lord kind of bless whatever you really wanna do. That's not, look, man, if it's in the Word, if the Lord, if you are reading this and it's like, hey, I should abstain from sexual sin. If you are committing sexual sin, stop doing it, okay? That's some godly living right there, that's good.

Do that, you know you need to do that, do that. The second thing, assess how God has called you. And as I'm preparing this sermon this week, I'm just running through it, running through it, running through it, and I just realize, even as I get here, I'm going, this could have been like 15 other sermons, okay? And look, there's a lot to say about discerning the will of the Lord for your future, okay? I get it, there's a lot to say and this does not do it justice at all. Or at least the length of it, but this is, we can at least talk about it this way, that God has called you, just like God called Gideon to go and defeat the Midianites, God has called you to do specific things. He has armed you with specific things. He has made you in a specific way to accomplish certain things. I will take myself, for an example, lest I get in trouble picking on any of you, okay?

I enjoy learning, okay? I enjoy speaking in public. I enjoy helping people come together as a church and accomplish great things together, okay? The Lord has made me a couple of different ways to be a pastor of a church, okay? That's good. And there's actually a lot of ways that you can be made and still be a pastor of a church. That's great, okay? But something the Lord, I'm almost positive. In fact, I would bet all my money on this, that the Lord did not really call me to be a linebacker in the NFL, okay? It's just a hunch. I don't wanna act in disobedience here. I don't wanna not have enough faith, but I'm probably not playing linebacker, okay? And from what my knees and ankles suggest, I was also not destined to be the next Michael Jordan, okay? I was not supposed to play in the NBA. I was not supposed to do much athletics for my career, and that's okay, that's okay.

But that's just a, and look, I know that's a broad thing, but there's a way that God has made you to do certain things, man, do it. In fact, I would say not just do it, but like pray forward in that. Just say like, Lord, I see how you've made me. I see these opportunities in front of me, and it seems like I'm supposed to jump on these things. It seems like I'm supposed to apply to this school. It seems like I'm supposed to start doing this thing over here. It seems like I'm supposed to involve myself with this thing over here. Do it. Do it.

That there's something good about understanding that you can pray for the things that God has made you for. Your life in front of you is very mysterious, very murky, very, you don't even know, I mean, I can't even imagine a year from now very well, much less three or my whole lifetime or what it's gonna amount to, okay? That's really hard for me, that's hard for all of us to imagine, but for the Lord God in heaven, man, he has created us a certain way and we can pray forward on that.

We can ask the Lord to help us chase his dream for our life. And look, I'm not just talking about people that are under the age of 30, okay? I don't care how old you are, the Lord has a dream for your life. I know it's weird to think about it even that way. Maybe that's just the way that we conceive of it because for God it's just knowledge, it's not a dream at all, but for us it's just kind of this unknown future. Look, the Lord wants us to pray forward in that. And if you are not dead, then the Lord still has plans for you, okay? And so my encouragement is, man, what's the Lord calling you to do? How's he made you? How's he asking you to kind of move forward, okay? So I just want to recap just a little tiny bit

that God does control everything and we need to remember that, but that should not turn us into fatalistic things, but it should help us understand that he desires us to pursue that godly future with him, okay? He invites us, not just, he doesn't invite us into the knowledge, he invites us into the journey, okay? That's really helpful. So if you want to begin today, you got to collaborate with some godly people. You got to collaborate with some godly people. Who has the Lord given you? What family members, what church, brothers and sisters in this church, who has the Lord given you? How can you begin to collaborate with those people upon the future? And sometimes, man, it's just collaborating with your spouse, okay? Like it's just collaborating with your roommate. I mean, it's not, we're not grandiose planning here. It's even just small. How do you collaborate? And then you must leapfrog over your own blind spots

and truly listen. Don't be wise in your own eyes, okay? That did not work out very well for people historically. You read the book of Judges, everybody would always get wise in their own eyes and then bad things would happen. Look, you need to doubt your estimation of a situation enough to listen. Your estimation is incomplete. As you begin to plan together, you got to act in faith. So God says that he honors this pathway, but that pathway is not always gonna be very well lit, okay? There will be moments when you need to jump and you don't know where that ending is going to be. Let me say that again. If you are following the Lord God in heaven upon a future that he has called you to,

it is guaranteed that there will be moments when you will need to jump further than you can see. It's going to happen. It's going to happen. And it doesn't mean just because something's unknown, then that must be what the Lord's calling you to. That's not, look, it takes patience. It takes collaboration. Remember, don't just jump. Act in faith. Seek God's face in prayer. Listen to godly counsel. Disbelieve your own perspective and let's pursue that future together. Let's find ways that we can pursue that future together as a church. Let's see what the Lord has for us in our own lives and lives of our family and lives of our church. Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we thank you so much for the opportunity to come before you and pray and listen to your word, be encouraged. Lord, you have a future planned out for us with our name on it. You have a way that it's working out that we can't see, but you can and you invite us on that journey. That's your name that we pray, amen. Look, during our time of response,