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[0:00] Good morning, everyone. Again, I guess I said that earlier, didn't I? I really am blessed to see you guys talking together, interacting.

[0:14] ! It's awesome. But every once in a while we gotta stop and listen, maybe. So anyway, awesome.

[0:27] Yeah, welcome once again to Tri-State. My name is John Juan Snyder. That's a German name. I like Bratz, so I'm not sure how that got by me, because we should always have Bratz, don't you think? What do you guys think?

[0:42] Right, okay. So we'll try to change that, see what we can do. So a few weeks ago we did our all-church meeting, our annual family meeting, and one of the things we talked about is our kind of our approach to preaching, and we talked about how when we're doing a series, like right now we're going through the book of Colossians, Pastor John Hopkins is going to do the majority of the teaching on the series, and he's going to literally walk us through, expositorially, the book of Colossians, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, that kind of thing.

[1:27] Pastor Tim and I, we're of course, as I mentioned before, Pastor John Hopkins is full-time. We as a church pay him to be our full-time pastor. Tim and I both serve in more of a part-time capacity.

[1:40] We both have day jobs. But Tim and I are going to preach about once a month. So I'll preach one month, he'll preach another month, that kind of thing. We may have others as well.

[1:51] And then Tim and I are going to, we're going to do things related or not necessarily related. We're not actually going to be a part of the flow of the exposition of Colossians necessarily, although we can.

[2:05] But the reason for that is Pastor John is laboring, he's praying, he's studying, he's building momentum, and he's building continuity.

[2:19] And it's not that we're not a part of that, because we are. We talk about it every week. We contribute. He runs things past us. So it's a joint effort. It's a team effort, the three pastors together.

[2:32] But primarily John's going to be doing the expository. I am going to be pulling from Colossians today though, so we have that. Alright. So, the title that I've given this, Become More Like Jesus, that of course comes from our mission statement again.

[2:51] You know, striving together to become more like Jesus every day. And I had this the last time I taught, which was a couple months ago. So this is kind of a part two of that.

[3:02] So, the last time I taught, we talked about God's mechanism for sanctification. Alright. I don't know if you remember that. So, just kind of as a reminder, sanctification is, the word actually means set apart for holy use.

[3:22] Set apart for God's use. Sanctification. And there's two types of sanctification. The one is called the positional sanctification. The fact that we have been sanctified, we've been made perfect in God's eyes because we've trusted Christ.

[3:40] Because we've invited Christ into our life. When God sees us, He sees Jesus. The perfection of Jesus. We have been sanctified. That is our position. Alright.

[3:51] But, we still sin, don't we? We still sin. On earth, we still are being sanctified.

[4:02] We're being made more like Jesus as we spend time with, as we get to know Him. He's making us more like Jesus. They call that progressive sanctification.

[4:13] So, positional sanctification is who we are. It's what God sees when He looks at us. Our position is we're sanctified. We're perfect in His sight because of Jesus.

[4:25] But, progressively, we are being made more and more like Him in a practical level. Alright. Sanctification. Does that make sense? To me, this verse explains it really well.

[4:39] Hebrews 10, 14 says, For by one sacrifice, He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. Alright.

[4:50] Sanctification. Both types are explained there. We are positionally sanctified. We're perfect forever. And we are being made holy as we, again, as we walk with Jesus.

[5:05] Alright. So, last time, we talked about this passage. Alright. And this was kind of the center of it.

[5:16] God talked about, again, it's the mechanism for sanctification is put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be made renewed, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness.

[5:40] So, that progressive sanctification is something that is happening over time as we put off the old self, as we put on the new self.

[5:51] Alright. And remember, the center of that, the heart of that is right there in green, be renewed in the spirit of your minds. It's about mind renewal. It's about how we think, what we think about.

[6:03] That's what, He's working on how we think. And as we learn to think more like Jesus, He's changing us. He's making us more like Jesus.

[6:14] It's about mind renewal. Last time we looked at Romans 12, it says, Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world.

[6:25] Put off your old self. Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world. Be transformed. Put on the new self. Remember what He said, be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

[6:37] It's about mind renewal. So, that's what we're going to talk about. So, last time it was the mechanism put off, put on. This time we're going to talk about God's promise of sanctification.

[6:48] God literally promises to be involved in changing us. And He makes specific promises. And we're going to look at some scriptures that talk about those specific promises.

[7:01] So, and the truth is we all need this. Every one of us. Every one of us still sins. All right? We're all involved in sin.

[7:12] We all still sin. We all need to be made more like Jesus. None of us have arrived. Those guys that John was talking about, what did you say? 50 years walking with God?

[7:23] They'll tell you right now, they have not arrived. They still struggle with sin as well. We all do. We all need this. We all need this. We all need sanctification. Once again, I'm going to get kind of technical.

[7:36] So, buckle your seat belts. I like to get technical. Some good stuff here. All right, let's pray. Dear Jesus, we thank you so much, God, that you are here with us, God.

[7:58] You are here in the praises of your people as we sang praises, as we prayed during the breaking of bread service. You are here, God. You're here with us right now.

[8:10] You're inside each of us. If we've trusted Christ, you live in us, in the person of the Holy Spirit. We ask, God, that you speak to us now. Speak through your word, through your spirit.

[8:25] Give us new truths, God. Something new, something different, or something challenging, something that will help us to become more like you, God. We ask you, sanctification, sanctify us through the scriptures today.

[8:39] In Jesus' name, amen. All right. Got a little story to tell you about me. When I was in high school, I was dating a girl for a year and a half.

[8:53] And about the middle of that is when I met the Lord. My brother came from college. He shared the gospel with, he was involved with the Navigators. And he shared the gospel with me. And about a week later, I decided to trust Christ as my personal Lord and Savior.

[9:08] And God started changing me. Now, I held on to the girlfriend for a while and finally she broke up with me. Right around graduation, she broke up with me.

[9:21] And not an easy time. Anyone that's been through that, they know. One thing that I knew though is I knew I wanted to pursue God. I knew I wanted to pursue Jesus.

[9:33] And so that was graduation. I was going away to college. So I grew up in suburban Milwaukee. I was going to college at University of Wisconsin-Plattville. It was about a half hour up the road, up 151.

[9:45] But I knew I wanted to pursue God, kind of like my brother encouraged me to. And I had made a decision that I wasn't going to pursue another relationship, like a girlfriend relationship.

[9:57] I decided I wanted to pursue God. I did not want a girlfriend. That was the decision that I had made. So about a year into college, I think it was my freshman year, there was a young lady that invited me.

[10:13] She and her roommate invited me and another guy on a little date. All right? We went to the Fine Arts Center and watched a show. I think it was a string quartet or something like that.

[10:25] Went out for Chinese food. And what happened with that is I started kind of, my heart started kind of gravitating toward this young lady. All right? And again, I was still like, I'm pursuing God, but okay, you know, what's going on here?

[10:42] There was one time where I asked her to cut my hair. My brother encouraged me. He said, hey, why spend the money cutting her? Find a sister that can cut your hair from church, you know? I said, yeah, why don't you cut my hair?

[10:53] She'd never cut anyone's hair before. And I didn't know that. I didn't, at the time, really care. And it probably didn't look all that great, but she cut my hair. Another time, we went for a drive.

[11:06] I think we were on campus together and it was a clear night. We decided to go out and take a look at the stars out, you know, away from the city lights. And we were standing there looking at the stars and all of a sudden, this is what I said to her.

[11:19] I said, oh, we should probably go back. She goes, oh, why is that? I go, too romantic out here. I actually said that to her. It's too romantic out here. She's like, we wouldn't want that. You know, obviously she liked me, you know, and she was kind of hoping maybe there'd be some romance.

[11:33] But again, I was, you know, I wanted to pursue God. But my heart was starting to go there, you know. My heart was starting to gravitate.

[11:44] Another time, we went to a Christian coffee house in Platteville. That used to be a thing. There were Christian coffee houses. They had ministry. They have artists or people that would perform and then share.

[11:56] And so we went there together. And I didn't really, like, call it a date necessarily, you know. But we just, we kind of went to this Christian coffee house. Well, while we were there, this guy comes up and he was a friend of hers from, he had graduated like the year before or something.

[12:15] So he was a good friend of hers from the previous semester. And they hugged and they just started talking and everything. And I started having these feelings. Have you been there?

[12:27] You know what I'm talking about? I was like, whoa, what's this? And to me, it was like, you know, I don't need that, you know. I don't need that kind of thing. But again, my heart was moving in that direction.

[12:39] So I started feeling jealous. I ended up leaving. I didn't say anything to her. I just left. Not very nice.

[12:50] I feel bad. I still feel bad. But I just left. And I got alone with God and I'm like, God, what's going on? And I think the next several days I was praying, reading the word, trying to figure it out.

[13:02] You know how it is. When your heart's there, it's not something you can just switch off, right? And that's what I was dealing with. And so one thing that I like to do is I like to, there was a cemetery right in the middle of campus.

[13:17] You know, there's buildings around and all of a sudden there's this cemetery, huge cemetery. And I would like to go for a prayer walks. I still like to go for prayer walks. Just go walking, you know, somewhere and I'm talking to God out loud.

[13:29] I just like to do that. Actually, I get a lot of good thoughts and nuggets and teaching stuff from my prayer walks. That's what I like to do.

[13:40] So anyway, I was out walking in the cemetery and praying and studying the scriptures and God gave me a passage. And this is the passage. It's one from Colossians 3, 1 through 4.

[13:52] Pastor John Hopkins, when he introduced Colossians, he talked about this being kind of the heart of Colossians. And it was certainly impactful for me that day. Since then you have been raised with Christ.

[14:05] Set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things, for you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

[14:18] When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Powerful, powerful passage. And so I'm dealing with my heart.

[14:30] This is in my heart. And I can't do anything about it. I can't just switch it off. Right there, what does it say? Set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

[14:43] And I was like, wow, that's it. That's it. That's my answer right there. But still, it's not very helpful, is it? Because again, it's a part of my heart.

[14:54] You don't just switch that off. It's a part of your heart. But the next verse gives the answer on how to do it. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.

[15:05] Once again, it's about mind renewal. It's about where we let our minds go, where we spend time, what we think about. And so God just made it clear, if you're struggling with something in your heart, it comes down to what you think about, where you let your mind go.

[15:24] Mind renewal. God is going to change us through mind renewal. And this is true, I think anyone that has had an addiction or anything, anything, you know, addiction is kind of like a heart tugging towards something.

[15:39] It's kind of the same thing. This is true for any of that. We need to, it's about where our mind goes. It's about what we think about. All right.

[15:51] So we're going to look at four passages of Scripture, and where we can learn more about this. So the passages are Titus 2, Galatians 5, 2 Peter 1, and then Ephesians 4.

[16:06] There are portions from that. So if you want, you can put your fingers in the Bible for these four passages. Put your fingers in your device, in your app, if you're not sure how you do that.

[16:18] But, and we're going to look at these passages. So what we're going to look at is each one of these passages give a promise, or a couple of promises, and that's God's part.

[16:32] This is what God is going to do to help to sanctify us, to help to change you, transform us. God's part.

[16:43] And what we'll find is that each one refers to a putting off of the old self and a putting on of the new self. All right. It's the same thing.

[16:54] And again, it's through mind renewal. Put off the old self, put on the new self. The thing about promises, so the scholars say that there are about 8,800 different promises contained in the Bible from God.

[17:10] Promises from God, 8,800. That's a lot. Things like, ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you.

[17:21] Those are promises from God. God is making promises to us. Hebrews 4. That was in Matthew 7, by the way. Hebrews 4, it says, That's a promise.

[17:41] Promise from God. One of the songs we sing sometimes, all your promises are yes and amen. It's true. All of God's promises are yes and amen.

[17:52] God is a faithful God. He's faithful to his promises. That actually comes from the Bible too, 2 Corinthians 1. So why does God give us promises? Why are they there?

[18:03] What are they there for? He wants us to claim those promises. He wants us to find those promises and claim them.

[18:15] That's what it's about. That's what promises are there for. The gospel isn't just about going to heaven. You know, it's not just a ticket to heaven. Part of the good news is that God will help us right now to become more like him.

[18:31] And he makes promises along those lines as well. So one thing we're going to notice is with these promises we're going to look at, there also is a condition.

[18:43] All right? So God's part is the promises. This is what God's going to do. But what's our part? There's a condition. There's something that we have to do in order to mine those, to see those promises become reality in our life.

[18:59] All right? And it's not automatic. God doesn't automatically make us like Jesus. I mean, he does a lot. There's a lot of changes. But some of that requires us to do something.

[19:11] So we're going to take a look at that. All right, you guys with me? Does that make sense? All right. So we've got his promises, his part. Okay?

[19:22] A lot of it has to do with putting off the old self, putting on the new self. God helps us to do that. But there are conditions. So we're going to take a look at that. First passage is Titus 2, 11 through 14.

[19:37] And I'll just read it. Verse 13. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, who are zealous for good works.

[20:12] All right. In this passage, there are some promises. All right. So one of them says, this is something God can work into our lives, the ability to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions.

[20:26] All right. So I'm going to put that in the category here for God's part, put off the old self, allowing us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions.

[20:39] Okay. The second promise, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age. All right.

[20:50] That is the second promise. Again, it's putting off the old self, putting on the new self. And I know what you're thinking. Wait a minute. Those don't sound like God's part.

[21:01] Those sound like our part, don't they? I need to renounce ungodliness and worldly possessions. I need to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives. Right? Isn't that what he's saying there?

[21:14] So let's take a look at the passage again. And right in the passage, at the beginning there, what does he say? For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives.

[21:40] It's the grace of God that appears. It's the grace of God that trains us to do these things. So these are promises from God that can happen.

[21:51] He could change our lives, but it's really, it's the grace of God. So what does that mean practically? Well, first of all, I do want to mention a little bit about grace. So we throw that around, the word grace, the grace of God.

[22:03] And I don't think we always know what it means. So whenever I see or hear the word grace, I kind of replace it with the word givingness, or generosity. It's God's givingness, God's generosity.

[22:16] But it also, the other component is, it's undeserved. We don't deserve it. So grace is His genera, His givingness, without our deserving it.

[22:27] All right? The grace of God. It's the grace of God that trains us. All right? So, so you could see where, where the promises are, He's going to train us to renounce ungodliness.

[22:43] He's going to train us to live self. And it's by His grace that He's training us. All right? So what does that mean? So, Titus 2, what is our part on that?

[22:57] What do we do? How does that become our part? Okay, what does the Bible say for, by grace you have been saved through, I heard it somewhere.

[23:10] By grace you've been saved through faith. It's through faith. It's always through faith. Anything we do has to be through faith. Bible says, without faith it's impossible to please God.

[23:22] The Bible says that, that anything done not in faith is sin, it actually says. It's got to be in faith. All right?

[23:33] We've got to trust, we've got to trust God. So, the first thing is really, how do you, how do you, how do you display faith? You ask, you pray. Prayer is all about demonstrated faith.

[23:45] The reason I'm praying is because I trust God and I need to go to Him. So, if we want the grace of God to help us, we need to ask. First, ask God to change you.

[23:57] Have you ever done that? Do you ask Him to change your life? Do you ask Him to make you more like Christ? We need to do that.

[24:09] We need to make that a part of our practice. Grace, of course, is His givingness. It's His gifting. His gifts. Do we depend on His gifts? And we're going to look at three, the three other passages, kind of refer to some gifts that God gives us, again, to help along the same lines.

[24:28] All right. We talked about this passage a few times. I'm just going to read it again. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

[24:39] For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit. The desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

[24:50] But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. Now, the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

[25:09] Some of those are pretty common, aren't they? Even in our lives, some of those are pretty common. He says, All right.

[25:35] All right. So, we've talked about this passage a few times. What's the promise that he gives us in this passage? Well, one of them is, you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

[25:47] Once again, it's a putting off the old self kind of promise. You will not gratify the desires of the flesh. It's a promise. The other one, so we put that up there with the promises from God.

[26:03] God's part, the old self, you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. It's a promise from God. The other one is down here. It's, we call it the fruit of the Spirit. What does that mean?

[26:14] Well, it's something that comes from God, from his Spirit inside us. Again, it's not me mustering up these things. It's him working in me. So, those are promised from us.

[26:27] We're going to not gratify the desires of the flesh. And we're going to exhibit these character qualities. What's the condition? All right. We've looked at this before.

[26:38] The condition is, walk by the Spirit. He says, but I say, walk by the Spirit, and this will be the result. You will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

[26:51] The fruit of the Spirit will be manifest. What's required is that we, that we walk by the Spirit. So, that's, that's the condition. How do we put that into practice?

[27:02] What does that actually mean? Walk by the Spirit. So, Titus 2, we talked about first, ask God to change you. Pray. Second one is trust the Spirit moment by moment.

[27:14] Trust him. He's God. He lives inside you. God lives inside you in the personal Holy Spirit. He wants to help you. He wants to help us. He's there to help us.

[27:25] He wants us more than we do. He wants to build into our lives. John 14 says he lives in you. He says he will teach you all things. John 16 says that he will guide you into all truths.

[27:39] He's there to do that for us. Ezekiel 36, I will put my Spirit in you and cause you to walk in my statutes.

[27:50] Notice what he says. I will put my Spirit in you and through the Spirit, you're going to have this ability to walk in his statutes. So, we need to trust the Spirit.

[28:01] Trust the Spirit. And it's a moment by moment thing as we go about our day, moment by moment. All right. Next passage, 2 Peter 1.

[28:14] His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world.

[28:37] And the promise here is right there. He says, you may become partakers of the divine nature. What does that mean? Putting on the new self. So, he's actually kind of reversing the order here. It's putting on the new self.

[28:48] Putting on Christ. You will become partakers of the divine nature. It's a promise. It's a promise. And the next one is, you may become, I'm sorry.

[29:02] The next one is, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desires. That's putting off the old self. So, he's just kind of reversed it, but he's essentially saying the same thing.

[29:14] I'm promising that you will become partakers of the divine nature. I'm promising that you will have escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

[29:27] All right. But what is the condition for that? Here's the condition. His promises. His promises. So, what does he say? He's granted to us his promises, which are precious and very great, so that through them, through them, through the promises, we talked about this too, you may have these results.

[29:51] Putting off the old self. Putting on the new self. His promises. The word of God has to be a part of it. So, we got these two things. Ask God to change us.

[30:03] Again, it's the grace of God that does it. It's not me trying to be good. Trust in the spirit moment by moment, who lives in us, who's working in us. And then we need to depend on his promises.

[30:17] And so, what does that mean? It means that we need to be reading the Bible regularly, daily. All right. The word says that the word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow.

[30:37] Does it really do that? Does the Bible do that? As we read the Bible, is it dividing our soul and our spirit? Is it penetrating our bones and our marrow, separating?

[30:48] It's a metaphor. What he's saying is the word of God is going to change you. He's going to work in your life. It's going to...

[31:02] What's the word I'm looking for? Transform us. The other word. Sanctify us. That's the word. It's going to sanctify us.

[31:14] Sanctification. Dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. All right. You're wondering if I'm going to get through this, aren't you? He's got a whole other verse to go through.

[31:25] All right. This one will be familiar to us as well. Ephesians 4, 11 through 16. So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers to equip his people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

[31:54] Then we will no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.

[32:07] Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is Christ. From him, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work.

[32:28] So a whole lot of things in there. Actually, there's a lot of promises here. I'm just going to key on kind of some summary promises, you might say. Attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

[32:40] Again, God is progressively working to sanctify us, building us to attain to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Something that God is doing in us.

[32:53] It's a promise from him. Again, here we're talking about putting on the new self first. All right. And then the next part of that, again, this is kind of more of a summary promise.

[33:05] No longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves. All right. These are promises from God. He's going to do this in our lives.

[33:16] All right. These are promises. This is his part. What's our part? What's our part of this? Our part is this. It's right there.

[33:27] What's he talking about?

[33:41] What's he referring to? What is the body? What are the parts of the body? That's us. It's all of us. It's you guys. It's me. It's all of us.

[33:51] As we are doing our part, God is building in us. He's transforming us. Again, putting off the old self.

[34:02] Putting on the new self. Attaining to the full measure. He's building that into our lives. We are no longer being infants tossed back and forth. From the whole body.

[34:13] Grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. As I said, there's a whole lot in here. Obviously, we found God led us to develop our mission statement based on this chapter, Ephesians 4.

[34:29] And this, of course, was a big part of it. You look at it. I'm going to try this thing here. How do we do this? There it is. Is it working? So, at the beginning there, what does he say?

[34:41] Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets. Went off. Prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. So, got to make the note that these are gifts.

[34:55] These are not positions. It's not talking about us as positions. It's talking about gifted leaders. So, that's pastors. That's elders. That's deacons as well.

[35:07] There it is. Because notice what he says. These gifts. And it's people who are letting God use them to influence people for Christ.

[35:19] But it certainly includes the elders and the deacons. Must have a time limit on it. But what does he say? To equip his people. Who's that?

[35:32] That's all of us. To equip his people for what? For works of service. So, this is all of us. This is about all of us, isn't it?

[35:43] It's about all of us. All right. So, the condition for these promises, conditions. What's our part?

[35:54] I've got to ask God to change me. I've got to expect him to change me. It's the grace of God that does it. It's not you trying really hard to be good. Trust God.

[36:07] Trust the grace of God. Trust the spirit. Moment by moment, he lives in you. He's God. He'll help you. He wants this more than you do. Depend on his promises. Read his promises daily.

[36:20] Then the last one, we need to connect with his people. And once again, this is about mind renewal. It's about mind renewal. As we do these things, he's going to be fulfilling those promises in our lives.

[36:36] He's going to be building into us, helping us to put off the old self. Helping us to put on the new self. This is foundational for sanctification.

[36:50] Obviously, it's not everything. But every one of us, if we're interested in God changing us, if we're interested in experiencing more of the abundant life he's called us to, peace, joy, purpose, meaning, if we're interested in being involved in his work, this is sanctification.

[37:11] He's made promises. They're literally right there. But he's given us conditions. We need to do it. We need to ask him. We need to trust the spirit. Depend on his promises. Connect with his people on a regular basis.

[37:24] So, statistically, they say about a third of church-going Christians regularly read the word.

[37:40] About a third. I think maybe we do a little better than that at Tri-State. But generally speaking, that's what they say. About a third of church-going Christians regularly read the word.

[37:51] And what they say and what I found out is a lot of times the reason people don't is because they really don't know how. They've never been shown, never been taught.

[38:03] You know, maybe they think it's like a regular novel. I've got to start at the beginning, Genesis 1, and just read through it. And that's not the case. The Bible is meant to be absorbed in a much different way.

[38:17] And so, what I'd like to do is I'd like to ask for a show of hands here. And this isn't about guilt. I'm not trying to guilt anyone. You need to read your Bible. I think sometimes we have a tendency to think that's what the pastor's doing.

[38:30] Trying to get me to feel guilty enough that I've got to start reading the word. No, this is about an opportunity for us. An opportunity to experience his abundant life more. An opportunity to be involved in his work.

[38:43] Opportunity for him to change us. So, the show of hands is this. I'd like for you, if you are interested in helping somebody else, learn how to read the Bible.

[38:55] Learn how to have time with God regularly. Learn what it looks like to have a quiet time. Have a devotional. If you're interested in helping somebody else, I'd like you to raise your hand.

[39:08] So, anyone that's interested, raise them up high. If you're interested in helping others, keep them up. Keep them up. Keep them up. If you're interested in helping others, to learn how to have a quiet time, basically.

[39:24] Okay. The rest of you, keep your hands up, guys. I want you to look around. I want you to take note of the people that have their hands up.

[39:34] All right. And what, I didn't put a homework assignment in the bulletin. Here's your homework assignment. Keep those hands up. That's not it.

[39:46] But, so, if you don't have your hand up, look around. Take note of somebody who's interested in helping others. And here's what we're talking about here.

[39:58] We exist to glorify God. Walking closely with him. Striving together to become more like Jesus every day.

[40:10] So, hands up. Come on. Come on, you guys. All of you, get your hands up. So, the rest of you, take note of those people that their hands are up. And here's your homework assignment.

[40:20] This week, I want you to reach out to one of those people. Somehow, reach out. And, hands up. Come on, you guys. People need to see you. Reach out.

[40:33] And ask them maybe when we can meet. Find somebody the same sex, the same gender. We don't want to mix it up. And reach out to them and ask them, hey, when can I meet with you?

[40:43] I'd like you to show me how to do this. All right. All right. Homework assignment for you people that had your hand up? Answer the phone. Or the text.

[40:55] Or the email. All right. Let's pray. God, we thank you so much that you love us so much, God. Thank you that you desire this more than we do.

[41:08] You desire for us to get to know you. You desire for us to connect with each other. You desire for us to learn from your word, Lord.

[41:19] It's your grace. It's your grace. It's you working in us that changes us. We've got to depend on you. You live inside us, your spirit.

[41:30] You give us your word. You give us each other. Help us all to grow and to do these things and to get to know you better. We thank you in Jesus' name.

[41:43]  Amen. Amen.