It’s Your Move - Grow Up
Message Description
Wexford Adult Ministry Director, Russ Brasher, continues the "It's Your Move" message series encouraging people to draw closer to God as they Grow Up in their faith.
Message Transcript
Well, good morning. It's a pleasure to be here with all of you and we're going to dive into the word of the Lord here in a minute. But I just want to share that this past Thursday night, I'm a huge Miami Dolphins fan, and we gave all you Steeler fans a gift. We beat the Ravens. You're welcome. Yes.
But we were watching the game and in the middle of the game, my wife, Lindsay, reaches over, and she hits me. I thought we were watching the game, but clearly, her mind was somewhere else because she goes, "You didn't tell me there was going to be candy apples at the year-end giving event." I was like, "What? Why does that matter?" She goes, "Well, I'm just more excited now to go than I was before." So, if you were on the fence about Sunday's year-end giving event, do you know that there's going to be candy apples afterward? Now you're in. So, we hope to see you there.
The series that we're in, It's Your Move, the hope of this series, the heart behind this series, is you don't hear that this is something that when I say we, I mean, Orchard Hill wants something from you but instead wants something for you.
This idea of what does it look like as individuals, as Christians, as believers, and as a church, to respond to the reality of who Jesus is and what Jesus has done for us. We want to look at what does it look like as Christians to show up, to grow up, and to step up.
Last week, Brady Randall, our Butler Campus Pastor kicked off this series talking about what does it look like to show up and how Jesus is the one who came and paid the price of our sin, conquered death, tore the curtain, and created an opportunity for you and me to now, once again, have full access to God. That this was a revolutionary thought to the audience that Paul was writing to, as he wrote the book of Hebrews. Because prior to Jesus, there was a sacrificial system that God put in place, that required all of these things to happen and take place and only certain people could do it, to enter into the presence of God at the tabernacle. But because of who Jesus is and what he did for us, by shedding his blood, having his body broken, and dying for us, we, because of Jesus and God's love, grace, mercy, and patience with us, have full access to God. That we can show up and inquire about who he is.
Brady must have done a pretty good job because you guys showed back up. Good job. Well done. But here's this idea. Well, now we shift to growing up.
If you've ever been in a conversation with someone and the conversation wasn't going perhaps the way you wanted it, and it started to get heated, and the person responded to you with, "Grow up." That can be offensive. We can get upset. It can get real hostile, real quick up in here when those words are thrown out.
But what my hope is within this moment, that we get to share in God's word together, is that we walk away with this understanding of, grow up, is not a harsh term. It's not necessarily even an offensive term. What this is, is an opportunity for us to realize that counterculture to how the world might define what growing up looks like, when it comes to how we grow up in Christ, we grow. Growing up is not about outgrowing our need for Christ, but embracing more and more, just how much we actually need Jesus. Again, growing up in Jesus, growing up in Christ, is not about us outgrowing our need for Christ, but embracing more and more just how much we need him.
Yesterday morning as I was cooking breakfast for my kids and by cooking, I mean putting instant LEGO Eggos or whatever they're called in a microwave. My youngest, Avery, was there, and my son, Bennett. And Bennett, for some reason looked at me and he asked me a question, "How or when was Avery born?" And I was prepared to quickly respond to my son thinking nothing of it by saying September 30th.
But before I could, Avery, the question that it was about, looked at her brother with pure joy in her heart and answered his question with, "Bennett. Let me show you." I was like, what? That's not how you say September 30th, honey. But she jumps off her stool, and she runs in the other room, and my wife is a big Chatbook fan, right? Is that what it's called? A Chatbook. It's this app where you can take pictures that you've taken and post on social media and turn them into books and it's the new modern-day version of a photo album that you don't have to work at to get. They send it to you, and it just costs you a little bit of money.
But she runs into this room, and she grabs one of the Chatbooks, and this Chatbook is a book of when she was a newborn and all the photos that we took. She brought it into the kitchen, and she began to show Bennett photos of, to quote her, "This is when I was zero, Bennett. And then this is when I was zero and X number of days." They began to look at these pictures and watched how Avery had grown from zero to now four. And time passed, and they were looking at all these photos, and they'd run and go get another book and look at more photos. My wife looked at me and she said, "That right there is a perfect picture, no pun intended, of what it looks like to grow up in Jesus."
Because you see, sometimes we get frustrated. We get confused. We start to question or doubt that when we're trying to live up or walk in a way that is glorifying to God if you call yourself a believer, you know what it was like to live apart from him and now you're trying to figure out what it's like to live life with him. Sometimes when we're just looking at one moment, or one picture, or just the day, we can easily get discouraged and frustrated. But when we begin to look, over time and see how much we've grown, from day zero to four, we begin to see that God has been at work the whole time, even if we couldn't necessarily see it or understand how in the moment, or in that season. But over time we see God is at work in our hearts and lives.
Paul begins to paint his own picture of what this looks like and that's what we're going to look at this morning in Hebrews 10:19-25. It's the same text that we used last week to look at it from the lens of showing up and what that means, and now we're to look at it from the lens of what does it look like to grow up in the same text. This picture that Paul begins to paint is painted with three, "let us" statements.
Paul's going to say in verses 22-24, "Let us draw near to God in faith. Let us hold unswerving in hope and let us consider others in love." What I would love to do over the rest of our time is kind of unpack what those statements mean and how you and I get to participate in the reality of who Jesus is and what he has already done for us. That's how you and I can grow up in Christ.
But Paul makes sure in verses 19-21 to set the table before we jump into the later statement, so let's set the table with him. He says, "Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching."
You see, Paul makes sure that you and I have to come to understand something before it has anything to do with us. Before the “let us” statements, the “you and I” statements, he talks about Jesus. He says, "It's God, first off, who opens the door. Who makes it possible for you and I to enter into." And these, “let us” statements are a way that you and I can participate and respond to a love that has already been put on display and offered to each and every one of us, through the blood of Jesus Christ and what Jesus has already done.
You see, while you and I were still sinful, while you and I were still running as far as we could from the Lord, as you and I could look at God and say, thanks, but no thanks. I think that I'm smarter than you. I think that I'm wiser than you. We might not say it literally that way, but it's what we're thinking and it's how our lives are showing that you have a plan for us, but I think that I can come up with a better one. And God, I might not necessarily be against you, but I'd rather worship the things that you've given me, than worship you.
The Bible says that we worship creation over the Creator. That we've exchanged the truth of God for a lie. But as you keep coming around and as you keep hearing the gospel message, what you begin to see is there's this moment where you and I have to respond to this love.
Can we admit that you and I are broken and sinful, in desperate need of a Savior, and even in our best days, and in our best moments, we fall terribly short of perfection? What happens sometimes at that moment is we begin to try to tell ourselves that, oh man, now we've got to start doing something. We've got to become better. We got to start fixing ourselves or cleaning ourselves up or starting to check off certain boxes to earn our way back to God, or to somehow redeem ourselves, or tomorrow's going to be different. I'm going to change things. And we put this weight and this pressure and this expectation on ourselves, that actually stunts growth because you cannot do for yourself, what Jesus has already done for you. So, Paul makes sure that we have to embrace this gospel moment, this reality. That what we get to enter into is something that Jesus has done for us, not something that we do.
Jesus granted full access to God. Galatians 2:20 says, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."
So, as we begin to look at the "let us" statements, in verse 22, the first one is, we grow up by drawing near to God in faith. We see this in verse 22. "Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure heart." Paul says, "Draw near to God with a sincere heart." The ESV uses the word, a true heart, and the original Greek defines and puts parameters around this idea of coming to God with a genuine, authentic heart, and a heart that has no other ulterior motives.
What happens when you and I do this, when you and I begin to embrace this truth, that because of who Jesus is, you and I actually have full access to the Creator and Sustainer of the universe and we get a chance to enter into, to draw near, to approach God, with a sincere heart. Here's what that means. We get to approach God, with everything that we are. All of our doubts, all of our questions, all of our concerns, all of our anxieties, all of our worries, all of our inability to see how or where he is at work, or all of our feelings of resentment or indifference towards God, or maybe even our hatred towards him, because he's not doing the things that we wish he would be doing in the timeframe that he'd be doing them and we wish things would be different. And we get to bring all of that, to God.
We get to bring who we really are and present ourselves to him. That, if God really is a God who's loving, graceful, patient, and merciful, that he can handle it. That he says, "Come to me. Draw near to me and bring everything that you are. Don't worry about fixing yourself up. Don't worry about starting or stopping, doing certain things before you draw near to me. Don't try to clean yourself up. Don't try to bring that fake smile and that false answer to, how you're doing. I'm not interested in any of that. I want you to bring you. I know who you are," God says. "I knew who you were. I knit you together in your mother's womb. I knew your name before it was given to you. I have counted every hair on your head." It doesn't and say this in the Bible, but I think this is true. Every freckle on your butt.
He knows everything about you. He's not caught off guard when we show up to him with who we really are. He says, "Draw near to me. Bring your heart to me. Tell me what's going on. Is right now, following me and believing in me, maybe for you in this season, it's like breathing oxygen."
The scriptures that talk about God say, "Come near to me," and to lay down in green pastures and everything is great, and the breeze is hitting us, and life is awesome and, we haven't really been facing much. There are seasons of that, but there are also seasons where we've felt like we have had no place to go. That what used to work with how we followed Jesus, and the things that we thought we overcame, and struggles have reared their ugly head, and how we used to draw near isn't working like it used to, and we're in a season where we feel like we're in the desert.
God says, "Draw near to me." If you look at God throughout scripture in the Bible, you see that God does some pretty cool stuff in desert moments, in desert seasons. And even when we can't see past today, God tells us that I'm in tomorrow. I know how this is going to play out. I know how this is going to work. Don't get caught up and frustrated right now. Draw near to me, bring with me everything that you are.
You see drawing near is an invitation that we must personally respond to and accept by moving towards God. It says in the scripture in verse 22, that when we do this, we begin to develop a full assurance of our faith. And what that simply means is, as we draw near to God with everything that we are, the Bible tells us that God draws near to us with everything that he is. And what we begin to see, understand, and learn through our time, through our conversations with him, through our prayers, with our vulnerability, with our honesty, is God gets just as vulnerable, and just as honest and begins to reveal to us his character, his nature, and the things that bring his heart joy. The things that break his heart. Then we begin to see a God that we are falling more and more in love with and beginning to trust, and it's coming from a place of his word that we can be understanding of who God is with a biblical, sound basis and understanding.
But you see the world doesn't help us when we think of growing up. You see the world, they attach things to what it actually means to grow up, that they technically do work in the real world. There's a sign of growing up when you no longer have to wear diapers and can wipe yourself and feed yourself. There are signs of growing up where yes, I'm no longer in kindergarten. I'm now in third grade. Or there are signs of growing up where I used to have people take care of me, but now I can do things on my own. There are natural markers for growing up that the world says matters, but sometimes what happens if we try to bring those same standards into growing up in Jesus, we miss him.
You see, growing up doesn't necessarily mean checking off boxes with God. What happens is we think that we've got to check off boxes to draw near to God. And God says, "I'm not interested in that. Just come to me with who you are." God says, "If anything, let me start checking off boxes. Let me take control of that."
You see if you've ever been in this type of relationship where maybe checking off boxes feels like transactional instead of personal. If you've ever been in a transactional relationship, you know that it's two things. It's exhausting and it's dangerous. If you're not checking off certain boxes, will they love you back? If they start not checking off certain boxes it's really hard to love them. What ends up happening is that the relationship is never what it's created and designed to be, and it typically ends with one of the two people walking away.
Growing up does not mean moving away or moving out of your parents' house. The parents are looking at me like, "Hold on, wait a minute." Let me clarify. Sometimes we think that growing up means that we become independent and self-sustaining and self-sufficient. But the reality of the gospel is that in order to grow up, we actually need to draw near, move closer. Ask God to move into our hearts. Ask God if we can move into his house.
You see drawing and growing up and moving apart from God is a sign of immaturity and growth is found when we say, "Lord, I need you and the reality is, I need you more today than I needed you yesterday." You see, we don't outgrow our need for Jesus. Growing up is not outgrowing our need for Jesus.
One of my favorite pastors and authors is a guy named Matt Chandler and he takes us one step further. He says, "Growing up makes us realize that we will actually also never outgrow our need for confession and repentance." Growing up means that we will never outgrow our need for confession or repentance and here's what it means by that. There is no space or room for growing up in Christ, where we begin to look at each other and say that, yeah, we've somehow graduated from the gospel. People say that's how they benchmark growth. Are you moving up? Are you graduating? Have you gone from middle school to high school? High school to college? College to the real-world professional? Have you developed a certain set of skills and knowledge and information? What do you know? How are you an expert or a professional in this field? And that's how we define growth.
I'm here to tell you that there is no such thing as a professional Christian. I know this because technically I'm supposed to be one and I find myself falling short, more days than I would care to admit. Because the truth is that you and I don't graduate from the gospels. We need it more and more.
The moment that you and I hear something is also the same moment that you and I forget it. If you're married in this room, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Sometimes, we even give off the impression that we're listening but we're not even listening. We need to be reminded every day, about the gospel, about God's love.
Paul, in the book of Hebrews in chapter two, says this, "We must pay the most careful attention therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it." Growing up. There's no room in the growth chart of growing up in Jesus to say, "Yeah, I've been there. Yeah, I've read that. Yeah, I've heard that. I've heard someone speak on that. I've even spoken on that. I was in a Bible study that dealt with that. I used to struggle with this, but I've overcome that."
There's no room for that because the truth is, on this side of Heaven, we are always going to struggle. You heard Chris talk about this idea of these thrones. That we are constantly creating thrones in our lives that we think are where life is found, and that's the thing that we actually find ourselves worshiping. When in reality, God is saying, "All those things that your heart naturally desires, you are meant to find those things and have those things fulfilled in your relationship with me." And how quickly do we forget that? And how fast do we sometimes run? But growth does not mean graduation. Growth does not mean knowing. Growth is submitting and saying, "I know nothing, Lord. Would you begin to show me?"
James 4:8 says, "Draw near to God and he will draw near to you." "Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.
Some of you are in a season where you are drawn near to God, and it has been a moment of great growth and insight and understanding and it just seems to be working for you. Some of us have been walking with the Lord for a really long time but all of a sudden, we just... The draw isn't there like it used to be. And the things that we used to do to draw near to God, aren't having the same effect. There are some of us in this room that don't even know where to start, where to even begin to draw near. The reality is, the truth is, that there are probably some folks in this room that didn't even have any intention of drawing near, and the people that brought them said that you were going to Starbucks, but here you now are.
But at this moment, we have an opportunity, wherever you find yourself on that spectrum, to draw near, to take one baby step towards God, being completely honest about who we are, where we're at, and the things that we're dealing with, and God's saying, "Okay. Come on."
There's this commercial that I saw the other day and man, it's one of those commercials where 30 seconds into it, you're like, why am I crying? This is a commercial. And then before you know it, the game comes back on and you're like, oh, that was interesting. But it was this moment of, it was a commercial for a Facebook portal, which is essentially one of the new fancy tech devices that allows you to stay connected with people that you love and care about even though you live far away or different things. You know what I'm talking about, right? Technology is pretty cool.
Well, in this commercial, it's Christmas, right? Obviously. There's a set of grandparents. There's a grandpa and a grandson, and the grandpa had just gifted the grandson a set of art supplies; paintbrushes and paint, stuff like that. You can see in the lap of the grandpa, that he was gifted a portal. Well, we don't know how much time passes, but we start to see this relationship taking place between the portal and the grandpa is trying to teach the grandson how to paint and the grandson's struggling and he says to his grandpa, "I don't know what to draw."
The grandpa says to his grandson, "Hey, just start with a line. Just start with a line." Then he says, "Don't get frustrated. Throw yourself into it. Just start with the line. Throw yourself in. Don't get frustrated."
And again, this is all happening in 30 second’s people. But then what happens is, again, we don't know how much time is passed, but then the scene cuts to the grandson and says, "Dad, or grandpa, I think I'm finished." The grandpa says, "Show me what you got there." And the grandson turns around this beautiful masterpiece that the grandpa, all this time had been teaching his grandson how to paint, one line at a time. Showing up, saying, "Grandpa, show me. Hey, how did you? Hey, how am I supposed to?" Grandson, grandpa slowly giving instructions. The part that made me tear up was when the grandpa sees the masterpiece, he looks at it and says, "Wow. Wow. Absolutely beautiful."
Do you know the beauty and the freedom of the gospel, is that again, not because of anything you've done or how well you've been at living this life? Or how good you are at checking off certain boxes or how your good outweighs your bad. Or what you have or haven't done. The beauty of the gospel is that because of who Jesus is and what Jesus has done when God looks at you and me, he sees the masterpiece that you and I are becoming. And when he looks at us, he doesn't see what we see when we look in the mirror. He doesn't see all of our fault flaws. He doesn't see our brokenness. He doesn't see our yesterday disappointments and our tomorrow failures. When he looks at us, he looks at you and me and he says, "Wow. Absolutely beautiful. Wow."
And it starts just with a line. Just with throwing yourself into it and not getting frustrated and asking your Father, "Hey, show me how to do this." "Hey, what's this like?" "Hey, help me understand this." "Hey God, I can't see right now what you're doing in my life, and quite frankly, I'm not even enjoying it, but I'm going to keep drawing near to you because I trust in you." Who doesn't need to hear, "Wow, absolutely beautiful," from the Creator and Sustainer of the universe?
We grow up by drawing near to God in faith. Verse 23, Paul tells us that we grow up by holding unswerving in hope. Again, verse 23, "Let us hold unswerving to the hope we profess." Listen to this part. "For he who promised is faithful." Again, as you and I begin to draw near to God, as we begin to grow in our understanding, not about how good we can be or who we are but as we grow in our understanding of who God is, we begin to see that God is faithful. That God is a promise maker and a promise keeper. That our hope is not found in this world. Our hope is found in him, and he is the one that even when we try to run away, when we try to let go, it's God who holds on to us.
It's God who promises, in his word, that one day Jesus is going to come back and, on that day, Revelations 21:4 says, "For all those who know him, he's going to come back and he is going to restore and he is going to redeem and there's going to be no more pain. There's going to be no more sorrow. There's going to be no more tears. There's going to be no more crying," and we will finally arrive at the beautiful masterpiece. But until that day comes, and we get to have hope knowing that it's coming, Jesus says, "Draw near to me," one line at a time. Throw yourself into it. Know that if you draw near to me, I'm going to draw near to you, and this masterpiece is going to go to work and you're not going to be who you were yesterday.
You're going to look back five years from now and see I'm not who I was five years ago. I'm not who I was five weeks ago, and the credit isn't for you. The credit goes to God. We draw near to God in faith. It's how we grow. We hold unswerving in our hope when we grow up, and we grow up finally by considering others in love.
We see this in verse 24. "And let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another all the more, as you see the day approaching."
You see what happens when you and I begin to draw near, when we begin to trust in who Jesus is, when we begin to see that again, it's not about us, but it's about him. It's not what we do but what he's already done. It helps us begin to take the lens off of ourselves and place it on God. We stop giving ourselves the credit, and we start crediting God.
When we begin to see that it's not us that brings any solutions to the problem. When it's not us, that we need to put our hope in. When it's not this world that we need to put our hope in. When it's God, again, it's starting to take our eyes and fix them not on ourselves, but on God, on others. See, it's not about you and me. It's not about what we bring to the table, but it's the table that God has already set for us, that he invites us to come and sit at.
You see faith and hope should naturally lead to you growing in such a way that you become more focused on other people instead of yourself. You shift from this, what do I need? To, what might others be needing right now? How can I show up? How can I start to serve? How can I begin to do something? How can I respond to what God has done in my life, in such a way, that I can be an encouragement or push someone else towards knowing what I know to be true? That, man, when you put your hope and faith in you, it only ends in disappointment. But when you put your hope and faith in God, lives are forever changed.
John 13:34-35 says, "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another just as I have loved you. You are also to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."
I don't know about you, but I have been able to experience this love, that as people draw near to God, as their hope is founded in God, they can't help but begin to consider other people. One commentator said that the healthiest thing that you can do is begin to start focusing on the needs of other people, and I have been the one who's profited from that.
A couple of summers ago, our youngest, Avery, who I mentioned earlier, got sick, and she started to have seizures and it was really scary. We didn't know why and if you're a parent in this room, you know that there's nothing more terrifying than in that moment, where you're in the hospital and the doctors can't figure out why this is happening, and it's still in that scary moment. All the things that were running through my head, I don't have time to talk about here, but here's what happened.
All of a sudden, Kurt and Faith showed up. They chose to consider others. They gave up the time. They gave up a date night. They decided to just show up, and it was in them showing up, thinking of me and my wife and my kids, and not of themselves. It did not remove the scariness of the situation. It did not take away the unknown of what's going to come next. But at that moment, I realized that I'm not alone in this. That God is with me. That he has put others in my life to go through whatever's going to come next, together.
You see, another story... Summers are just not really working well with my family. A couple of summers ago, Lindsay's dad fell, and he got really hurt. Almost died. It was a lot of going back and forth from Pittsburgh to Ohio and trying to take care of the family and figure things out. There was a moment where all of a sudden, the doorbell rang and there was a backyard barbecue, catered food, delivered to the house. That meal came from my wife's life group, a group of women who are trying to get together to gather and draw near to God from different areas of life and different walks of life. But they decided to send a meal, to my family when we were in need, and not only was it a tangible right there, who doesn't love barbecue moment, but you know what that moment did? When her life group chose to consider others, to think of me and my wife, her family began to ask questions like, "Who does that? Why do they do that? Man, that is so nice that they chose to do that. They went out of their way, that they thought of us."
I recently went to this conference in Lancaster, and they shared a Bible testimony. In that testimony, this woman said she was sitting in the church, she showed up, and when this woman went to go get baptized on stage, when the woman held her breath to be baptized, she felt this... She held her breath too. Now, this woman didn't know this woman getting baptized, but it's also this truth that when we show up, when we respond in faith, when we draw near, we don't even realize the impact it could have on someone else. It's not necessarily what I do that matters, but it matters that I do it. How do I consider others?
And as we close, remember the big idea that growing up is not about outgrowing our need for Christ, but embracing more and more, just how much we actually need Jesus. Growing up is our response to who Jesus is and what he has done. This will look different during different seasons of your life. But no matter where you find yourself, draw near to God with an open and honest heart.
I heard Kurt one time talk about this. And he said, "How we grow up will look differently. But what matters is that you and I position ourselves with a posture that is choosing to embrace Jesus, no matter what that might look like."
What is currently working for you might not work for the person. You got to be careful not to say, "Hey, well, here's how I draw near to God, so it will work for you." You don't know that. I know this to be true because I've heard men sit across the table from me and say, "Man, I draw near to God so much when I'm out in the wilderness." I was like, "Not me. I need air conditioning and plumbing to draw near to the Lord."
Some of this room you've been up since 4:00 am. Why? I have no idea, but you draw near to the Lord most in the mornings. Me, no. It's different for everybody. But the question you have to ask is, what is my response? And how am I positioning myself and putting myself in a posture to embrace Jesus?
The last thing I'll say is, again, I was talking with my wife about this, and she said she was reflecting on how frustrated she was with herself in her twenties. I mean, we met Christ when we were both teenagers, and we got married young, and man, we were trying to figure out life and what does it look like to be individual followers of Christ? What does it look like to be a married couple, a husband and wife, as Christ? And then, one month after we got married, we found out we were having our first and it was like, oh, that's how that works. And you know, but the reality was, is we found ourselves wishing that we were different. Wishing that we were more. Wishing that we were more mature. Wishing that we were more grown-up. Thinking that we could try to somehow figure it all together.
I love the heart of my wife because she admitted this the other night. She said, "If God would've given it to me all at once then, I don't think I would've been able to handle it." I have to trust that God is the one who is slowly growing me. It takes time. You can't rush it. You can't open up a photo. You can open up a photo album and go from day zero to four, but the reality is that that's four years of growth. You can't rush this.
It doesn't matter how long you've been running from God or how long you've been walking with him. Because of who Jesus is, we all have unlimited access to God and can choose to respond to him by drawing near with an honest heart, knowing that if we draw near, he promises to draw near to us.
Let me pray. Lord, thank you. Thank you that you draw near to us. Thank you for your Son. Lord, at this moment right now, would you draw near to us in such a way, that it would force us to respond, one line at a time? We ask this in your name. Amen.
