Children are Gifts From God, Not Got - Luke 14 - Caught Up

What are the things that can so easily entangle us or that we can get caught up in? And that's what we're gonna be hitting in this sermon series. What's up Mercy Hill? My name is Pastor Bobby.

I just want to welcome you if you're at one of our campuses this weekend. As Pastor Andrew said, this sermon series in a sentence is really this. God calls us to engage in the mission, not become entangled with the world. And in this series we're gonna talk about how easy it is in this life to sort of get entangled and end up kind of getting moved away from our mission in life, which is to please and to serve God. And we're not just trying to be kind of catchy with this title, it actually comes from 2 Timothy 2 where it says, no soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.

It'd be silly for a soldier to get entangled in civilian pursuits, because that's not the aim of their calling as a soldier. And for us as followers of Jesus, we too have a calling, but it's so easy to get distracted. It's so easy to get entangled in different things. And it's funny when I think about this, I think we're all kind of wired differently.

Some people can get distracted super easy, and some people can get kind of hyper focused, and they almost get distracted that way. So my wife is the first category, I'm in the second category. So my wife Allison, if I'm like, hey babe, I need you to go out to the garage, get me a screwdriver. Well 30 minutes goes by and I'm like, okay, she's still not back with the screwdriver, so I go out there and, you know, I realize she's looking through a box of photos. And I'm like, what are you doing? She's like, well, I walked out here and I saw the lid off of the box of photos, and I started looking at them, I realized they weren't organized.

And so I started organizing them, and then I saw this one from high school. Do you remember when we took that trip to the beach? I was like, yeah, I remember that. She's like, well, it got me thinking about our trip to the beach coming up here in August, so I called your mom to talk about to the trip to the beach. And I was like, well, what about the screwdriver?

She's like, well, I totally forgot about the screwdriver. I'm kind of the opposite of this, where I can get so hyper focused. I've been on, it's embarrassing to say, I've been in multiple trail races where I'm in the race, I'm running the race, and then all of a sudden I realize, man, I've been just so focused on running, at some point there was a turn, and I missed it.

And I don't know where it was, but I've been running, and I don't know how long I've not actually been on the course. And so there's so many different ways we can get distracted in life, but the good thing is, the Bible warns us about what some of the very common ways that we get distracted in these different stages of life. And that's really what this sermon series is all about. Things that can distract us, like family, worldly wants and desires, singleness, later stages in life. And some of these things are really good things, you know, unless they take our aim away from pleasing God.

And today we're gonna look at probably one of the most difficult ones that can entangle us, and that's family. And so let's go ahead and turn to Luke 14, verse 25 to 33. I'm just gonna warn you right now, if you're here today at all of our campuses, this has got to be one of the most challenging teachings from Jesus, and one of the most challenging passages in the Bible, full stop. And so I really want to do two things with this text today. The first thing that I really want to do, I want to spend a lot of time just making sure we understand conceptually what Jesus is talking about when he's talking about giving up everything to follow him.

Because it's pretty straightforward, but it's a tough pill to swallow, you're gonna see in this verse how challenging it is. And so we're gonna spend a lot of time just making sure conceptually we understand what Jesus is getting at. And then secondly, we're gonna relate this truth to our family relationships, specifically the relationship to our kids, okay?

So here's the big idea today. Following Jesus means loving God more than our families. Following Jesus means loving God more than our families. Let's go ahead and dive into verse 25. It says, Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and he said to them, If anyone comes to me and does not, look at this word, hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

All right, what's going on here? So these crowds that are following Jesus, you could just imagine thousands of people following Jesus, following the miracles, they want to hear the teaching, and Jesus is gonna begin to make this point that just because you follow Jesus around and hear the teachings does not make you a follower. And it's not all that different. Honestly, 2,000 years later, I mean, you just think about Mercy Hill. Over the course of a month, we may have, you know, 5,000 different people attend the church. You know, we have 19,000 people in our database that have attended the church in the last three years. So lots of people coming to church, listening to teaching, intrigued by the sayings of Jesus, but listening to teaching and hearing sermons is not the same thing as following Jesus as a disciple. And really, that's what all of this is about. That's what Jesus is trying to draw out. So let's go back to maybe the most difficult of all these, verse 26. If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life.

So everybody's included in here. Even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. All right, what is Jesus saying here?

It's just hard. It's hard to wrap our minds around this, right? There's so much in the Bible about honoring your father and mother and loving your family and your kids and Ephesians 5 and your marriage and all this stuff, and now all of a sudden Jesus is talking about hating your family.

What is he saying here? Okay, obviously he's using a sort of like hyperbole when he's teaching, but I think what he's trying to get at is this, your devotion to Jesus should be so intense that it makes your love for everything else, namely family, look like hate. Okay? Our devotion to Jesus and our devotion to our families, the gap between those is so wide that our love and devotion for Jesus should look like love, and what we have for our families should look like hate. Okay? This is a challenging teaching.

All right, let me illustrate it this way, okay? Who has ever had like a car or truck they've really loved? All right, so I used to have this truck and I nicknamed it the Black Stallion. It was a Toyota T-100, it had 3,000 miles, it was an awesome, awesome truck. I love this truck, my dad owned the truck before me, but over time it started to have some different issues, you know? One of the windows wouldn't roll down anymore, the AC stopped working, and then eventually the worst thing, one of my friends yanked on the passenger door before he got in and he broke it, and so you could only get in the driver's side door. And so that wasn't that bad when I was by myself, right? But when I ever went to pick someone up for lunch, and some different people in Mercy Hill got to experience this, you'd have to crawl through the driver's seat, this wasn't very easy, and get into the passenger seat.

And the straw that sort of broke the camel's back was when my wife was nine months pregnant, and it was summertime, and she had to crawl through the driver's seat to get into the passenger seat, so eventually had to get rid of the Black Stallion. Now you all may have a car or truck like that you think about in your past, and if somebody said, hey Bobby, who do you love more, your truck or your kids? I would say, all right, we're using the same word here, love, but these are just wholly different categories. Like the love that I have for my kids, and saying I love the Black Stallion, these are just like ontologically, at their very essence, they're different things. And this is what Jesus is trying to get us to see, that our love for God and our love for our families, that's how separate those should be.

This is challenging, okay? If you're not challenged by this, and this isn't ruffling your feathers, I don't actually think that you understand what Jesus is actually saying here. And if you're like, okay, is this all I have to give up, just my family, to make Jesus first? Now you get to verse 27. What does he say in verse 27? If you're okay with all that, he says, whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

What is he getting at here? The cross is a one-way trip to death, okay? You and I, we're not literally gonna carry a cross. It's a symbolic thing, saying we are fully devoted to Jesus, that we are carrying the symbol of death on our back. The cross represents there is no limit to our devotion to Jesus.

We give our entire lives to Jesus. And this is the cost he's talking about, that we have to count before we actually follow him. And so if we still don't get the picture, Jesus being one of the greatest teachers that has ever lived, he uses two illustrations to even further kind of help us understand what he's saying about counting the cost. So look at verse 28. He uses this first illustration about counting the cost of building something.

He says, for which of you, now this is kind of old times, right? We don't build towers anymore, but the concept's the same. Which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost? Whether he has enough to complete it, otherwise when he's laid the foundation and he's not able to finish it, then people are gonna start mocking him, right? Saying, look at this fool. He started to build this tower and now he's not able to finish.

A good example of this, okay? Most of you know that Mercy Hills, building a new home and a new hub, okay? It took us nine months to count the cost of what the building would actually cost. Nine full months of a team of designers and engineers and our staff to figure out what is every piece of steel, every piece of wood, every screw, all of the grading, all of the materials, what does all of that cost?

It took us nine months to count that cost. Jesus is asking that we would give up our life. How more important is it that we count the cost and understand what it is that he's asking of us, okay? Here's the second illustration that he gives to make sure we understand this concept of counting the cost. He says, well what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he's able with 10,000 to meet him who comes against him with 20,000? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.

So if you're gonna go to war, you better count the cost to know if you can win the war or not. I remember when I was in seventh grade, this is a very embarrassing story, I don't know my kids if you've never heard this story, but I was small for my age in seventh grade. I wore a size 5 shoe and I was about a hundred pounds. And I ended up at recess bumping into this kid and he sort of knocked me over and he kind of made me embarrassed and feel inferior, so I was like, you know what, after the next bell rings, I'm gonna go with my two friends and just like show up at his class, you know, after he comes out of class. I didn't know what I was gonna do, but I took my two friends and we were gonna go show up just because he embarrassed me, he made me feel silly.

I showed up there with my two friends and no lie, I'm not lying. This guy was like Mike Tyson. You know when somebody gets jumped like three on one, this was the opposite of getting jumped where one person beats up three people. He beat up me and my three friends right there. I'm not kidding you, black eyes, bloody nose, I mean just right there. We went straight to the office and told him he beat us up. Right man, we were in this hallway and this kid came and jumped us.

I don't know if you can get jumped when you got three verse one, but he had been training with his dad for the last ten years in boxing and I just picked the wrong person to think that I could stand up to. So if you're gonna get in a fight, if you're gonna go to war, you better count the cost. And that's what Jesus is saying here, you better count the cost before following him. The conclusion to all of this is verse 33. He sort of sums it all up.

He says, so therefore any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. See the math problem here of counting the cost, when you think about it, it's actually much simpler than the two examples that Jesus gives here, right? Because counting the cost of building something could be somewhat complex to actually count the cost, right? I mean it's very challenging for the church with inflation and everything else to actually count the cost and figure out what it's gonna cost. To count the cost to go to war, that obviously is notoriously difficult.

I mean you just think of all the wars that have gone on around the world and how many years and how many lives and what it costs way more than anybody expected, but it's not that complicated when it comes to the math problem of counting the cost to follow Jesus because he just makes it very clear. He says, anybody that does not renounce all. How much is all? It's all. That's it. It's everything. He makes it very simple.

Like you can't hold anything back. Like the fee to follow me, it's everything. Like everything you have, that's what the cost is.

One maybe simple way to think about this, you know, our culture has sort of changed with YouTube and all of this. Like you can go and kind of learn anything these days, like if you want to, right? And you can find anybody that's willing to teach you something, you may have to pay them something, and the more value they bring to you, the more you may be willing to pay them for that thing, right? So some of you know, like I'll do some running coaching on the side and I may charge someone a hundred bucks to coach them in running. It's like, okay, it brings, you know, it's worth to them a hundred dollars so they're willing to pay a hundred dollars for it. You have coaches that coach entrepreneurs and millionaires where they may pay the coach five hundred thousand dollars, because if that coach helps them make ten million dollars, then to them it's worth it to pay a coach five hundred thousand dollars, okay?

Now think about this with Jesus. How much is sort of the value proposition here? If what you pay is in proportion to the value you receive, what's the entry fee for Jesus's mastermind?

What is the entry fee to follow him? Well it's everything. Like it's everything. It's not a thousand dollars, it's not ten thousand dollars, it's everything. It costs no more than that, but it costs everything that you have. That's the cost to follow Jesus.

And see, when we think about this, here's what we think. You know, because it talks about, you know, fathers and brothers and mothers and all that, we think, okay, I've got to be willing to do that to follow Jesus. But what does verse 33 says?

Any of you who does not renounce. So he's not saying, no, one day you have to be willing. No, it actually starts with giving it all over to Jesus. It's not like you start following him, and then if it sort of is demanded of you, then you'll do it. No, no, it starts at the very beginning. It's a sort of a belief in the heart of like, hey, to follow, you've got to start with open hands.

You've got to start with being willing, not just being willing, but to actually give it all over to him. And it includes everything. It includes your money, your relationships, your time, your family, your gifts. Everything that you have is the cost to follow Jesus. You know, we're doing baptisms this weekend across all of our campuses at Mercy Hill, and one of the things that we ask somebody when they get into the water to get baptized is, will you follow Jesus as Lord of your life? You see, baptism equates to death.

I mean, that's why somebody is going down in the water. You think about what Romans 6-4 says, we were buried therefore with him by baptism into death. In order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead to the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Remember, think about that. The value you pay corresponds to the value you receive. And so to follow Jesus and what baptism pictures is like, no, you got to be all in to the point of death of self.

Death of self, that's the payment to follow Jesus. All right, does everybody understand the concept? Let me see, even at the campuses this weekend, raise your hand if you understand the concept.

All right, so about 60% of you, great. Okay, I was hoping I would have got more, but 60% of you understand this concept. The payment to follow Jesus, to be his disciple, the cost is everything that you have. Okay, that's the concept. Like I said, I wanted to take a good chunk of this sermon to make sure conceptually we understand what it is that Jesus is saying.

Now we're gonna put a face to this concept, okay? So if the entry fee to following Jesus is giving him your entire life, this includes your kids. There's obviously lots of directions we can go here in this moment, in this passage, right? It talks about mothers and fathers and self and brothers and sisters and spouses, but I just want to specifically talk about our kids. Because this is one of the places, think about what we've titled the sermon series, Entangled or Caught Up, this is one of the places where people just end up, and we've seen it so many times, getting entangled to where at one point their life was centered on the kingdom of God, and then God blessed them with these wonderful kids, and now all of a sudden those kids have displaced the kingdom of God being at the center, and the kids end up being at the center. And so here's the application for today, devote yourself to Jesus more than you devote yourself to your kids. You gotta really let that sink in, devote yourself to Jesus more than you devote yourself to your kids. You see the greatest blessings in our life can become the greatest idols in our life.

That is just the reality of it. We see this all throughout the Bible, that when God blesses somebody with something, that thing is potentially gonna compete with being at the center of somebody's life. And it's not uncommon, I'm living this, it's not uncommon that our kids end up becoming the thing that we worship.

And Jesus is trying to free us from that in this passage. I mean that can also apply to spouse, it can also apply to parents, it also can apply to self, but I'm gonna specifically talk about with our kids. I've seen it so many times, Pastor Andrew and I have talked about this so many times over the last 11 years at Mercy Hill, where we see a family that is just centered. They're orbiting around the kingdom of God and serving Him, and then God blesses them with some kids. Those kids begin to grow up, they begin to be in elementary school and middle school, and then all the sudden that family, they're no longer at church, they're no longer in group, they're no longer giving, they're no longer serving, and it's like this wonderful blessing that God has given them has just displaced God being at the center of their lives. And here's what will happen, placing your kids at the center of your world like they are God, it's gonna do two things. It's gonna leave you unsatisfied, and it's gonna leave your kids broken.

And that's what I really want to kind of draw out here. Here's this truth, your kids cannot hold the weight of your worship. And I want to talk about that truth really from two perspectives. From our perspective as parents, and then from the perspective of a kid that has been put in this place that is trying to provide salvation for their parents because their parents have put them at the center of their lives.

So let's look at it from the parents perspective. Only Jesus can hold the weight of our worship. Only Jesus can handle us being all in on Him. Only Jesus can handle your sin. Only Jesus can fully provide you joy.

Only Jesus can have you placing your hopes and dreams on Him. Because the reality is your kids can. And, you know, they're babies and then they're small kids and then they're young men and young women, and it's easier and easier to end up wanting to sort of make them the center of the universe. Wanting to make them the center of the household, the center of your life. And I think this is why verses like this in the Bible exist. I mean you think about Abraham and Isaac, you think about this first. I mean such a common, man kids are such a blessing, but they also so easily can become an idol in our lives. Like I said it's so common, I've seen this story so many times, where a Christian family ends up trading community, trading their tithes, even their faith for like activities and success.

Because they can draw us out so easily. You know I'll share a story for my own life just how I've kind of just felt this recently. So most of you know I coach my kids and running and track and we have a team and and one of my sons have been hurt this season.

He dealt with a small, not a huge thing, a small calf injury and I've been kind of shocked how much it's affected me. Like how much it has emotionally affected me. You know not realizing how much I've tied my own joy to their success. My own joy to how well they do. And a lot of you have probably felt that. Where it's like man if your kids are doing well, then you're doing well.

If kids aren't doing well, then you're not doing well. Guys that's idol worship. That's what they call that.

That's exactly what that is, right? When the idols doing good, you're good. When the idols not doing good, you're not doing good. And see the thing is, when we treat our kids like they're God and we put this pressure on them, they shouldn't have to carry that. And what we end up doing, we try to control them, right? Because they're our God. We try to smother them.

We're close-handed with them. I mean here's one of the saddest things I'll just kind of tell you from like church leadership perspective. The number one reason we get from high school and college students and young professionals as to why they're not going out on mission on a mission trip. You know planting a church, going overseas, is their parents. Their parents don't want them to do that. If that's not close-handed with your kids, we should all be thanking God if our kids are in the position that their relationship with God is so great that God would be willing to call them to be the tip of the spear for the mission of God.

And yet so many times parents are like, nope. It's gonna threaten the idol, you know? It's gonna threaten safety.

It's gonna threaten something else. See we can't set our kids up to love God with all their hearts if we don't love God with all our hearts. Because they're gonna feel that, they're gonna see that. You know the story of Abraham and Isaac, this is the story, right? God promised to bless Abraham with this lineage and what God is gonna do, and seemingly it was coming through his son, and in many ways it actually did come through his son, but God wanted to be very clear in testing him that Abraham would understand, yes it's coming through your son, but it's it's actually coming through me.

And I'm gonna test whether or not you actually believe that. And that's what God wants us to do, it's no different for us. I mean we have got to be like willing to open our hands of our kids on that proverbial altar and say, God whatever you want to do with them, whatever you want to do with their life, I am willing to allow you to do that because they are yours more than they are mine. So that's from the perspective of the parents. What is it like from the perspective of the kids if you're trying to make your kids hold the weight of your worship? Let's look at it from their perspective. If you try to make your kids hold the weight of your worship, they're gonna feel it, they're gonna know it, they're gonna know that they're at the center.

I think one of two things will end up happening. The first thing that will happen is the kids may just snap. You know, when you try to place a burden, a weight on something it can't bear, then the thing kind of is just gonna snap maybe. Like your kid cannot bear the weight of being your Savior. And your kids can feel if your emotions are riding on their behavior. Your kids can feel when you overreact when they're not doing well. Your kids can feel when your happiness is riding on their success. Your kids can feel when we get embarrassed because they didn't do something right, you know, and they kind of put shame back on us.

We've got to allow our kids to be kids and not have to bear the weight of being our little saviors, of being our salvation, our joy, our happiness. What's the other thing that can potentially happen? Okay, they can just snap, that's not good, okay. The other thing that can happen is maybe worse, they start believing they are God.

Like for real. Because you treat them like that long enough, they are smart enough to see, okay, if they're putting me at the center of everything, well, maybe I am at the center of everything. And that's maybe even worse than our kids actually like snapping. Because here's the reality, the fact is, it's God's world and they're not the center of everything. But if they believe they're the center of everything, that's what we call a narcissist.

And if you remember from the book of Daniel, God is not super fond of narcissists that think the world revolves around them. I mean, I'll just be honest, I've started this kind of new thing in our household, this is kind of funny, it's kind of not funny, but you know, with three boys, Allison and I are outnumbered at this point, right? And so as they've gotten older and they have more will, we've gotten a lot more of like, I don't want, I don't like, I'm not doing this, I'm not doing this, and it got to a point and it was so consistent where I was like, I'm just shutting this down altogether. Like, I care about your feelings, but it was becoming so kind of prominent where I just began to imagine, and we all know adults like this, I began to imagine this adult that thinks they're at the center of the world, and they're mad at God because it's raining today, and they're mad at God because they lost their job, and they're mad at God because the gas prices, and they don't like this, and they don't like this, and they think the whole world serves them, and they're the center, and even God serves them. I just kind of became committed with my kids, I'm like, you ain't saying that once, not one time.

You say, I don't like, I don't want, one time screens are gone. Because man, thinking the world revolves around you is maybe okay when you're in the home, when you're outside the home, you ain't gonna do real well when you think the world revolves around you, because no one else will, and God certainly doesn't revolve around you. And so we've got to help our kids believe that they exist to serve God and not the other way around, and we're gonna be the picture of that for much of their early life. And we don't want them to think, okay, when I think about authority, I think about authority serving me. When it comes to God, we want them to think, man, I exist, I am here to serve and to worship God.

And so we don't want to set them up to have this poor relationship with the world and this poor relationship with God. So how do we know how we're doing with this? Like, how do we know if God's kingdom is at the center, or like, the kids are at the center? I was just kind of thinking about this, and I think one of the helpful ways is honestly like the simple tool that we've created here at Mercy Hill that comes right from Acts 2.

I think this is a pretty decent barometer. You know, Acts 2 is all about what it looks like to be on mission for God. What it looks like to see the church exploding and to be, to see people that have their lives centered on God. Acts 2 talks about gathering like we are right now in church. Acts 2 talks about being in community. It talks about living generously.

It talks about living on mission. All of us can pretty easily just say, okay, where is our family at related to those things? Because unfortunately, and there's grace and there's mercy for this, unfortunately I think some people are gonna look in and they're gonna say, well, church not doing too good, got this kid's thing, got this kid's thing, got this kid's thing. Well, community group, no, I can't be in a group, got this kid's thing, got this kid's thing, got this kid's thing. Well, we used to give, we don't give anymore, got this kid's thing, this kid's thing, this kid's thing.

Living on mission, no, man, we used to, but maybe one day we will again. And I would say, man, if that's the barometer and that's the answers, it's like, okay, we've got to get something kind of shifted today, you know? What a great opportunity that we gather every single week so that if there is something in our life that we're entangled in, that's out of order, God is so gracious to us that we're here today. That we can alter that, we can shift that, and here's what's gonna happen, we all know this, when we actually put God at the center and our kids aren't at the center, we are gonna be so much better parents to them and they're gonna have such a better opportunity to grow up with high character and grow up to serve the Lord if they're not actually the center.

It's gonna allow us to do the hard things, it's gonna allow us to discipline, it's gonna allow us to invest in them so that they can end up being the people that we actually hope and pray that they will be. I love to close with this tonight, you know, thinking about this story today from Luke chapter 14, it's very common with Jesus to challenge people in this way. Like, hey, you can't come follow me unless you give it all up. And we see like multiple iterations of that story throughout Jesus's ministry, and only a couple chapters later we get something really interesting. We get, I think, a little bit of like a little bit of a secret that Jesus gives us about what it actually looks like to give everything up.

A lot of you may remember this story, it's very similar to the story we talked about today of the rich young ruler, right? This young man that comes to Jesus and he wants to follow Jesus and seemingly he's done all the things right, and just like us, you know, Jesus is gonna nail down onto whatever that thing he trusts more than anything else. And for most of us, the greatest asset we have is probably not our wealth, for some of us maybe it is.

You know, for me, I would say my greatest assets, my family, my kids, my wife, but for this young man, his greatest asset was his wealth. And so, man, just like all of us, Jesus is gonna go right at the heart of it and basically tell him, hey, to follow me, this is what you in particular have to give up. Because there's nothing that can be more important than me. And so that's how Jesus challenges him, and then what happens? The guy walks away because it was too hard and it was too difficult. Well, what we get right after that is what I want to close with today, because Peter makes this kind of interesting, off-the-cuff comment about Jesus, look at what we've given up to follow you, and then Jesus says something very, very interesting. Listen what Jesus says, truly I say to you, and I almost think it's like he's correcting Peter, or he's correcting the way that we think about sacrificing for Jesus.

He says, truly I say to you, there's not one person who's left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time and in the age to come eternal life. So I know it could feel heavy to think, man, the cost is giving up everything. The cost is giving up everything that I have, but not really. At the end of the day, when it comes down to it, like Jesus says, man, we're gonna gain so much more by living with open hands than if we wouldn't, because we're gonna receive tenfold in eternity in terms of what we are willing to give up.

It may look like losing your life, losing your family, losing your most important asset, but in the end of the day it's just not gonna be. And we're gonna be so much better for it, and our kids are gonna be so much better for it. Let me pray for you today. Lord, we just thank you for your word. God, we never would come up with truths and challenges that are this difficult for us, but we know that you do because you love us and you care about us and you don't want us placing our hope onto something that's not ultimately gonna satisfy us. And so, Lord, I thank you.

I thank you for these truths, God. I pray that we would count the cost today and it would be totally worth it. It would be totally worth it that every single thing, Lord, that you've given us, we'd be willing to give it back to you. I pray this for myself, for my family, for our pastoral staff. I pray this for our church. I pray this for everybody that's here today across all of our campuses. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.