The 5 Habits of a Christian Life: Living in the Word

So good to be in the house of the Lord, especially when it’s 13 degrees outside, but it’s warm inside. Right? Hey, look at this hip working. Look at this hip working. Come on, Jesus. I’m not quite there, but I’m getting back there, getting back there. So three new Bible studies starting next Sunday, as well as on Wednesday night, we have a new series. So we just want to encourage you about three or four times a year. We always try to promote new small groups, new Bible studies, because we love it when you’re here on Sunday. We love it when you’re here on Sunday, but we really want to help you get involved in a Bible study, get involved in a, in a fellowship time. So praise the Lord. Well, this morning we are continuing our series, the five habits of the Christian life. We’ve been focused as we begin 2026, we’ve been focused on habits that can help us build our relationship with God. And so this morning, the title of the message is living in the word, living in the word. And our, our key text comes from James chapter one. Let’s go ahead and stand this morning. And we’re going to read from James chapter one, verse 21 through 25 and Psalms chapter one, verse three, James chapter one, verse 21, therefore get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. Do not barely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word, but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in the mirror. And after looking at himself goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it, not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it, they will be blessed in what they do. Praise God. And then Psalms chapter one, Psalms chapter one. I’m just going to read verse three. That person is referring to the blessed person. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit and season and whose leave does not wither. Whatever they do prospers. Will you pray with me, Lord? We just thank you today that we can focus on your word. Lord, we know that your word, your word is living. It’s active. It’s sharper than any two edged sword and your word. Lord can penetrate our heart. It can be planted in our heart to bring change, to be, bring faith, to bring hope and love. And Lord, I pray today that each of us here would live in the word. Lord, that we would live in Jesus and we’d live in the words of Jesus and it would bring transformation to our life. We give you praise and glory in Jesus name. Amen. The Lord bless you as you’re seated. The five habits help us build a relationship with God. There’s the habit of prayer, which we talked about last week. This morning we’re focused on the habit of living in the word. And I specifically have not said just the habit of Bible study, because there’s a lot of people that read the Bible and nothing seems to come across to them. That’s a good start to read the Bible. It’s a good start to be in a Bible study and try to understand the Bible. But what I really want to talk to us about this morning is living in the word, abiding in the word, letting God’s word get into your life, get into your heart, get into your mind so that when you face the trials and trouble of life, the word of God just starts bubbling out because you’re living in the word. Next week we’ll look at the habit of serving and sharing hope and then the habit of investing in church life. And then of course the habit of enjoying generosity and learning to be a good steward. But this morning we’re focused on the Bible. The Bible is God’s word. And as God’s word, it’s a creative force. It’s eternal and true. We know the scripture tells us that God’s word is God breathed. When God spoke through the prophets in the Old Testament, it was like God was breathing on them by his spirit, giving them the words, giving them the thoughts to share with God’s people. God’s word, Hebrews tells us is living and active. Psalms tells us that God’s word guides us. It’s like a lamp to our feet. It guides us away from evil and into righteousness. And I love John chapter three with that reminds us that it’s the word of God and the spirit of God that regenerates us and gives us that born again, born a new experience so that when we go even to the word and begin to read, we’re not reading it alone, but the Holy spirit is there with us as we read the word of God so that God’s word can jump off the page into our life and give us revelation and give us knowledge and give us wisdom for, for everything we face in our daily lives. We also know that it’s God’s word that produces faith. Romans 10 talks about, um, that it comes through the hearing and, and when we hear the word of God, that’s when we have faith growing in our lives. God’s word also sets us free. We’ll talk about that this morning. God’s word sanctifies us. God’s word is the sword of the spirit. According to Ephesians chapter six, verse 17, you know, the Bible is an amazing book. It has transformed lives wherever it’s been sold, wherever it’s been read, wherever it’s been shared. The Bible is a transformative book. It lifts people out of depression, out of discouragement, out of hopelessness and hurt. It gives them a new life of joy and faith and hope and love. Every book of the Bible is centered on Jesus. I like to say the old Testament conceals Jesus. The new Testament reveals Jesus. There’s so many powerful stories. I know in my own life, the Bible has impacted my life in a huge way. When I was a little boy, I used to love to read the Bible. I would, even as a teenager, I would, before I went to bed at night, I would read a chapter from my living Bible and a chapter from the King James version. I have no idea how I read the King James version because now I try to read it and I’m like, Whoa, that’s some really old English. But when I was a kid, I would read the living Bible, which was more of a paraphrase and it read like a story. It was so cool. I got to read about things in the Bible that my parents wouldn’t even talk with me about. I mean, it had some pretty cool stories in it like, Whoa. And I would read that living Bible and it just, I love those stories. And then of course I would read the King James because if you were going to memorize a verse of scripture, King James was just beautiful English and you know, you could quote it and it just sounded so wonderful. And you probably have a story in your own life of how the Bible has transformed your thoughts and your heart and made a huge difference in your life. When I was thinking about testimonies related to the Bible, I was reminded of the story of Bishop Ron Archer. If you’ve never heard his story, he talks about being a trick baby and a trick baby. He says is someone who was an accident. A prostitute makes a business deal with someone and by accident, a baby is born. And he tells the story of a trick baby who was born with all kinds of health problems because he was born immature or premature. And he grew up really until he was about 10 years old in special education, had all kinds of problems until one day God brought a teacher into his life who gave him, yes, a Gideon Bible. It’s a true story. You can Google it this afternoon. His name is Bishop Ron Archer. And that dear teacher, when she gave him the Gideon Bible, began to tell him Bible stories about people like Moses, who was also a stutter stutterer because Ron had a lot of emotional problems. He was a stutterer. And if you read the story of Moses, Moses was a stutterer. Moses had problems and yet God called Moses to be used and to be useful in the hands of God. And so this teacher started sharing stories from the Bible. And guess what? Ron started believing those stories that, well, if God can use Moses and God can use Abraham and God can do something in the life of Jacob, then maybe God can do something in my life. You really do need to Google it because he says it a lot better than I do. But as he shares that he’s talking about it as if it’s someone else. And then he says, I’m that trick baby. I’m that trick baby. And so I hope you have a testimony of what the Bible has done in your life. I can tell you in my own life, it’s made all the difference. But you know, if you’re not reading the Bible, it won’t make any difference. And so I want to encourage you. That’s a great place to start. Spend time in the in the Bible. Spend time reading different versions of the Bible. If you’ve got a version of the Bible that you don’t understand or it’s hard for you to read, get one in more modern English that is easier for you to read. Read the Bible. The Bible is an amazing book. It’s also really a miraculous book. Yes, it’s a book full of supernatural miracles, but it’s also miraculous in how the Bible was put together. It’s comprised of like sixty six different books written by over forty authors over a period of almost two thousand years, like sixteen hundred years. And these authors came from different cultures, different languages. And yet when you read the Bible, you see a message of hope, a message of redemption, a message that leads to Jesus. It all comes together. Why? Because the Bible is God’s book. It’s it’s God’s love letter to you and to me. The Bible is an amazing book, a miraculous book. I remember the story of Voltaire, a French philosopher, and he was a deist. So he kind of believed in God, but he didn’t really believe God was really a part of anything. And he was really anti-Christian. He Voltaire in the seventeen hundreds. He died around seventeen seventy eight. He liked to point out the flaws in Christianity. In fact, Voltaire is famous for predicting that maybe within a hundred years after his death, the Bible would be no more. French philosopher Voltaire. Well, ironically, his own house was later used to store Bibles and to print Bibles. It’s true. It’s a true story. True story. When we served in the former Soviet Union in those days, there were lots of stories from decades ago of how Stalin and other Soviet leaders had tried to stamp out the Bible. But instead, you couldn’t stamp out the Bible. Christians would memorize it. Christians would write it. Christians would share portions of the Bible. And so down through the ages, those who have attacked Christianity and attacked the Bible have tried to do away with it. But the Bible is God’s book. You can’t get rid of it. You can’t get rid of it. And I want to encourage us as Christians this morning, as we look into James chapter one, to not just read the Bible and not just study the Bible, but live in the Bible. Live in the word. The word is Jesus himself. Jesus is the living word. And the Bible is the written word of God. And we need to abide. We need to remain. We need to live in the word of God. How do we do that? Well, let’s dig into James chapter one. The first way we do that is by setting aside sin and evil. Look at verse 21. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent. And the way the Greek grammar reads here is it’s kind of it goes together. It’s like as you are getting rid of moral filth, what’s moral filth? Well, that’s impurity. Anything that doesn’t line up with the character and the nature of God in your life or in your interaction with other people, we’ve got to lay that aside. We’ve got to get rid of that. So again, the way the grammar reads is as you’re getting rid, as God’s helping you get rid of moral filth and wickedness in your life and in your relationships, that’s how you live in the word. In other words, you’re not just reading the word and then ignoring the impurity in your life, but you are at the same time, you’re reading the word and memorizing the word and living in the word. You’re setting aside sin and evil. That’s what the book of Hebrews says is that we should throw off. It’s kind of that Hebrews talks about Hebrews chapter 12. It’s like this image of a runner. And as you’re running your journey of faith, you’re throwing off every weight of sin and evil that so easily entangles you. And it’s going to keep you from running the race that God wants you to run. And so you’re setting aside sin and evil. And James says it’s so prevalent. It can come from your own heart, your own emotions. It can come from the relationships with people around you. It can come from the culture of our world or can be a demonic attack. The Bible tells us, and we believe it, that there’s a real spiritual world and there’s a real Satan and there’s real demons that are working against God’s work in your life. And so don’t be deceived to think that you’re not in a spiritual battle. You are. And if we’re going to live in the word, we start with laying aside, setting aside sin and evil. And I just want to encourage all of us today to recognize that we all are struggling with something and that’s okay. Don’t let that discourage you. Don’t let that cause you to think, well, everybody else has it together and I’m the only person that struggles. We are all struggling. This morning in our Sunday school class, we talked about Jacob wrestling with God and how Paul said in Philippians, we all have to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. So we don’t all struggle with the same things, but here’s the good news. Jesus came down on the cross, walked among us and he’s struggling with you. That’s what the cross teaches us. He’s here to struggle with you. He holds onto you, especially in your times of struggle. He doesn’t let you go just because you’ve tripped or you’ve fallen or you’ve struggled. Jesus is right there struggling with you. He loves you and he wants to pull you up to the other side and help you live a whole new life with a whole new heart. But we start with setting aside sin and evil. You see, our culture winks at sin. The Bible doesn’t. Our culture says that everything’s okay and that love is just accepting anything and everything. The Bible doesn’t do that. The Bible says there’s right and wrong. The Bible says there’s righteousness and there’s evil. And the Bible calls us to come closer to the Lord. Even James chapter four verse eight, draw near to God. He’ll draw near to you. How do we do that? It goes on. You wash your hands. You purify your heart. You throw off those things that are keeping you distant from the Lord. Secondly, how do we live in the word? James goes on in verse 21. He says, humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. See, humility invites the word of God. Humility invites the presence of God into your life. The Bible says humble yourself in the sight of the Lord and he will lift you up. James four verse 10. And so it’s the humble person that asks for help. It’s the humble person that is a learner. It’s a humble person that wants to get around other people and learn how to be successful in their walk with the Lord. Yesterday at the men’s breakfast, we had a great time hearing from Tim Paulson, who’s a co-CEO of Emory Sappin Sons. And one of the things I took away was how important it is if I want to be successful in my marriage to get around people who are successful in their marriage. Not perfect in their marriage, but they’ve weathered the storm and they’ve stuck together and they’ve made sure that Jesus is first in their lives and they’ve kept their commitments. If I want to be successful in my parenting, you might want to get around some people who have raised some kids and been successful and have some advice they could give you. If you want to be successful in your finances, you might want to get around some people who are successful in their finances. You see, oftentimes we do the opposite. We struggle in an area and then we don’t want to talk to anybody about that. We kind of hide. I remember at times in my life, years ago, in fact, when I would share with someone about, hey, have you been listening to Dave Ramsey? I sure enjoy listening to him. And somebody would say, I don’t want to listen to that. Okay, 10 years later, 15 years later, you need to give, you’re struggling in an area, get around someone who’s figured out how to overcome in that area. Don’t just hide in pride. You see, it’s pride that says, I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing. It’s not working, but I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing. I’m going to do it my way. It’s humility that says I need some of God’s wisdom in my life. I need some of God’s wisdom in my marriage. I need some of God’s wisdom in my finances and in my relationships. And so James advises us, humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. Now the word save is again, the Greek sozo. It’s deliver, it’s save, just like we would say in English, but it’s this idea of God coming in and rescuing you from sin, rescuing you from the evil of this world, rescuing you from the untruths that can get into your mind. And the word of God, I love this kind of metaphor here. James says the word of God is planted in you. Friend, that’s what I’m trying to say this morning. Don’t just read the word, let the word of God be planted in you. Your heart is either good soil or it’s bad soil. It’s either soil that’s been prepared and ready to receive the seed or your heart is hard soil that the seed tries to get in there and nothing happens. Nothing grows. You see, that’s where repentance comes in, right? That’s where humility comes in. When we have a humble heart, we have a repentant heart. We have a heart that’s open to receive. We have, we have soil that’s ready to receive the seed because James is giving us this beautiful picture of how God works in our life. The word of God wants to plant itself in your life. So it’s not just about reading a scripture at church on Sunday. It’s not just about, yes, hearing the pastor preach on Sunday. It’s, it’s about, and it’s not even about opening up and, and, and studying a portion of scripture at home. All of that helps. What it’s about is learning to just live in the word so that the word of God fills your mind. It fills your heart. And the truth of God, the wisdom of God will flow out of your life when you’re facing trials and troubles and, and difficulties. That’s what it means to live in the word. How do you do it? By humbly receiving God’s word into your life. And James tells us that word can save you. It can save you from anxiety. It can save you from fear. It can save you from all of the emotional entanglements that we have in life that might be keeping us from being successful. It can save you from your brokenness and your dysfunction. It can save you, yes, from your selfishness. Come on. When I think about sin in my own life, that’s usually where I start. I can be selfish. I am selfish. Don’t call me a narcissist and I’ll get really upset if you do. There’s some terms that get overused, I think, but we’re all, can we at least admit we’re all selfish? Like we’re all, we all look to ourselves first, but it’s humility that says, God, I got to stop looking to myself. I got to start looking to you and, and glorifying you and saying, God, how can I make you smile in my life? And how can I help other people around me? It all begins by humbly receiving the word, which can deliver and rescue and save you. And then here’s where James gets good. The third truth, how do we live in the word? Well, we live in the word by pushing back deception. We live in the word by not being deceived. Look at verses 22 through 24. Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word, but it does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror. And after looking at themselves, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. Now we’ve all been there, right? You wake up one morning and you look in the mirror and you’re like, I’m going to go away and immediately forget what I look like. I hope that’s not just me, but, uh, well, I’ve done that a few times. It’s like, whoa, I need a haircut or I need to tell my face I’m awake, right? James is telling us here in these verses that there is power in the doing. I don’t really like this phrase, but I’m going to use it anyways. Fake it till you make it. I don’t really like that because I don’t think God wants us to fake anything, but I do believe that there’s power in the doing. You can’t just listen and receive, listen and receive, listen and receive. At some point, you have to start taking action with what you’ve been receiving from the word of God. You’ve got to start taking that home into your marriage relationship. It’s got to start. The word of God starts to, has to start to be implanted and infect and impact the way you treat your kids. Even here, James, right before our passage, it says, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Therefore get rid verse 21 of all moral filth. So even right before our passage in verse 21, James is being very practical. He’s saying we need to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger. What did James know? James knows that because we’re selfish, we tend to focus on ourselves. We get angry. We don’t want to hear what other people think. We want to, we want to speak. So when we hear the word of God, we’ve got to take that back home and say, Lord, I need you to change me. I need you to transform me. If I’m a yeller, I got to stop yelling. If I’m getting angry at all the time in my relationships, if I can’t just hear what the Bible says, I’ve got to take that home and do something about it. There’s power in the doing. And so I don’t like the phrase fake it till you make it. But I do like the idea that there are times when you got to tell your emotions to get in line. And so what I’m saying there, what I believe the Bible teaches don’t live by your emotions. There are times when you got to tell your emotions to get in line, Lord, here’s how I’m feeling, but I’m not going to do that. What I’m going to do is what your word, which has been implanted in my heart is, is instructing me to do. And then as I do that, here’s what happens. And I, I learned this years ago. If I wait to serve other people until I feel like serving them, I may wait a long time, but if I just start serving, something starts happening. When I start serving, I call it lid to serve, serve to grow. When I start serving, God starts doing something in my heart. I get into the middle of those dishes or I get into the middle of cleaning that floor or cleaning the restrooms or whatever it may be. And I start serving and then something changes in my heart. Amen. Bless you. And God can do it. God can do it. There’s power in the doing. So, so again, James is saying, don’t really listen to the word. And so deceive yourself. There is a deception that can come over all of us who have been Christians for a long time, or we’re just beginning our journey of faith as a Christian or in our cultural culture at large. There’s a deception that can come over us where we just talk a good talk. We, we hear things. Oh yeah, that sounds great, but we never actually apply it to our lives. And that’s why, and I’ve seen it year over year, church after church, there can, there’s people that can sit and hear the preaching. They can come to Bible studies and you, nothing seems to ever change in their lives. They have the same problems in year one that they have in year five. And they don’t seem to be able to overcome. They don’t seem to be able to get to a point of spiritual abundance or prosperity. Why is that? Well, somebody’s not applying. What they heard. Somebody’s not actually walking that out and living that out. So James tells us, don’t be deceived. If you want to live in the word, you got to listen here and do you got to walk it out. May the Lord help us. A fourth truth for how we can live in the word is right here at the end is that living in the word produces blessing. Look at this. This is wonderful verse 25, but whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom. I’m going to stop there. I love that. Now the perfect law here, James could be referring to the law of Moses, but I really think he’s referring to the teaching of Jesus. He’s referencing how Jesus has, has not changed the law of Moses, but helped us understand it. And you can think about the sermon on the mountain. So what is the perfect law? It’s the teaching of Jesus. And it’s the teaching of Jesus that sets us free. Come on now, this is where we can start preaching. I mean, I love the gospel because there is a power in the gospel to change your life and to set you free from sin. Yes. And, and again, when we say sin, so often we think of a list of do’s and don’ts, but it’s so much more than that. Sin is anything that falls short of God’s best for your life. And many times that, that many times what that means is it’s leaning into those fears and those anxieties and those negative emotions that God didn’t give you. Maybe previous trauma has given you maybe some previous dysfunction or brokenness in your life has caused you to always feel that way. Those things aren’t of God. And so I know a lot of times when you hear a pastor say, well, let’s get rid of sin. You’re thinking, okay, that’s item one, two, you know, I’m not supposed to think this way. I’m not supposed to do that. It’s, it’s all this list of do’s and don’ts. But what about just those emotional struggles that you’re having that yes, are common to all of us, right? That you’re human and we have emotions, but are we being deceived by our emotions? Are we allowing the word of God to even impact the hurt and the brokenness in our emotions? Because that’s where healing can come is when we let the word of God bring blessing into our lives. Not just with the things we’re saying, no, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to think that, but what about those areas of our life where we’re letting other emotions that are not of God rule and have mastery over us? God wants to bring healing into your life. He wants to bring the word of God to those things. He wants to bring truth where there’s deception. Some of us are walking around believing that we’re no good, that we have no future, that we’ll never get over that hurt from the past. God’s word speaks to that and says, that’s not true. You’re a child of God. You have hope. You have a future. I have plans for your life. Some of us have faced disappointments and discouragement that right now we’re thinking, well, God’s never going to come through. That’s not, that’s what your emotions are saying. That’s not what God’s word says. God’s word says, I always come through. And so I don’t want you to fake it till you make it, but I do want you to, to act out on the word of God. And I want to stop acting out on my negative emotions. I want to stop acting out on all of those carnal fleshly emotions that are tied to my hurts and tied to my selfishness that caused me to, to hurt others at times. Caused me to put myself caused me to put myself in the center of life rather than just believing the word of God, believing who God is and letting God’s word flow into my life like an ointment, like a bomb of healing for my emotions. See, when you live in the word, it’ll produce blessing. You’ll be blessed. Now, a lot of people don’t like the translation happy, but that is one, if you look at the Greek or the Hebrew word for this word, bless blessed or blessing, whether it’s in, in Psalms one or it’s Matthew chapter five, the beatitudes, one of the translations is happy. Oh, the happiness of the person who does this or lives like this. And we see it again here in James. When you, when you receive with humility, the word of God into your life, when you look intently into God’s word, as if it’s a mirror, because that’s what the God, that’s what God’s word is. God’s word is like a mirror. It will reveal things about your life, about your motives, about what’s going on with you. That at first is like, Lord, I don’t want to, I don’t want to think about that. I don’t want to look at that. Can I say to you that the word of God is the best counselor you’ll ever have? And it doesn’t cost anything to read it. It’s the best psychiatrist you’ll ever have. If you’ll just get into the word of God and begin to read the truth of God, let God’s word speak to you. James says, God’s word is like a mirror. It will reveal things about your life. It will is like a mirror. It will reveal things in your life that can transform your life. I want to wrap up with just a picture of blessings and blessing. And we read this in Psalms chapter one. So if somebody could just slip to the piano and just begin to play Psalms chapter one, I love Psalms chapter one. It’s a picture of a blessed person. And I’m going to go back and read the first few verses before we read verse three, Psalms one verse one blesses, the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that centers take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord and who meditates on his law day and night. And the first verse talks about the blessed person kind of in what they don’t do. But I love verse two, because it really shows us the heart of the matter. It says this person, their delight is in the law of the Lord. Now that word delight, it’s a passion word, like delight is what you desire. It’s what you love. It’s what your attention is given to another new Testament word. And like acts two, four would be devoted. Like the early church was devoted to the apostles teaching. Right. And so the Psalmist here is saying the person that is devoted and delights in the word of the Lord. That’s the person verse three. Now that is like a tree planted by streams of water. Now what’s the stream of water. That’s the Lord. And I’m imagining the, from just being in Israel, it’s a pretty dry, arid place in a lot of places. So I’m thinking the Psalmist they’re thinking of a little stream that trickles through the desert, or maybe even a canal of water, a man-made canal. I don’t know, but somehow or other, there’s a tree right next to that source of water that just keeps flowing. And we know that Jesus is that source of living water. So that person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit and season. So that, that person is fruitful, right? Whose leaf does not wither. That person is an evergreen tree. Their leaves are always green and whatever they do prospers. Man, I want to believe that. I said it that way on purpose. Do you ever go through times in life where you just don’t believe that? Lord, I’m not prospering. Come on, let’s be real. I’ve lived my life on that passage. I believe God can prosper your life. It starts spiritual. It doesn’t start financial, anything like that. It’s not like, Lord, prosper me. I get to drive a Cadillac. I don’t even know if a Cadillac is what we want to drive anymore. I don’t, I don’t know. But when I was a kid, if you really had finances, you drove a Cadillac. But you know, when I read that this morning, I’ve been through some times in my own life where it’s like, Lord, I believe that, but man, I’m not seeing it. All I see is struggle. All I see is disappointment. All I see is prayers that don’t seem answered. And you, you likewise, I know we all go through difficult seasons, but I want to encourage you this morning again, not fake it till you make it, again, not fake it till you make it, but just begin to act on the word of God, because it’s true. Even if your emotions are telling you, I don’t feel that right now. I don’t feel like I’m prospering. I don’t feel like I’m overcoming. I don’t feel like I’m blessed. I don’t feel like I have an abundance. John chapter 10, verse 10, Jesus promised friends. I don’t want you to focus on what you feel. I want you to focus on what you know is true from God’s word. God says in his word, if you will delight in the word of the Lord, if you will meditate on the laws of God, if you will put God first in your life and begin to pursue him and seek him, God said, not me, I will bless you. I will bless you. I will prosper you. Your soul will begin to prosper. So I’m praying today that regardless of where you are in your journey of faith, whatever you’re feeling, you may be full of faith this morning. You may be full of doubt. You may be full of joy. You may be full of hurt and bitterness, but whatever you’re feeling today, I want you to put that aside. Say, Lord, I’m going to trust you. I’m going to trust that your word is true. And I’m going to push back the deception. I’m going to look intently into the word of God like it’s a mirror. I’m going to let it reflect who I really am so that the Holy Spirit and the word of God can begin to work in my life. Amen. Will you stand with me this morning? The worship team would come. They have a song they prepared that we’ll sing in just a moment, but I want to pray with us today. And earlier this morning, the Lord was leading me that we should come to the Lord today just to glorify him and say, Lord, I want you to get the glory in my life. And I want to give a similar call this morning. If you’re here today and you’ve been going through a struggle, I want to encourage you to take a step of faith today and just say, Lord, I’m going through a struggle and I’ve not been feeling it. I’ve not been feeling a lot of spiritual prosperity or I’ve not been really seeing what I want you to do in my life. I want you to take a step of faith today that may just be making a prayer to the Lord. Say, Lord, I’m going to love you anyways. Lord, I’m going to surrender my life to you anyways. Lord, I’m going to glorify you with my life no matter what I’m feeling or no matter what I’m seeing. And some of you maybe even should step out and just say, Lord, I’m going to take this step of faith and say, Lord, you are going to get the glory in my life. Will you pray with me, Lord Jesus? We thank you, Lord, that you are good. Lord, we thank you that you’re always good. You’re always working towards the good. And Lord, you know what each person is going through today. Some of us are on a mountaintop. We’re full of joy and we’re full of faith and others are here today and we’re struggling and we need your help, Lord. But from our heart today, we just want to say, Lord, you get the glory in our lives. We’re going to live for you no matter what. If you never answered another prayer, we’re going to serve you. We’re going to glorify you because you’re so good. Thank you, Jesus. We’re going to sing and worship, but I want to encourage you. If the Lord’s dealing with your heart today, certainly right where you’re at, you can begin to pray, begin to talk to the Lord. But if you’d like to step out, others will come and pray with you at the altar today. So I want to encourage you to step out, surrender your heart to the Lord, glorify him, and he’s going to do a work in your life. Thank you, Lord. And he’s going to do a work in your life. Thank you, Lord. Hi, I’m Pastor Tom Ragsdale. I’m Pastor Ellis Bennis. And we’re from Columbia First Assembly. We are a church that’s on mission with Jesus. Our vision is simple. We want to make Jesus famous in your heart and in our community. Absolutely. Thank you so much for connecting with us online. We would also love to connect with you in person. We are located at 1100 North 7th Street, right in the heart of Columbia, Missouri, right across the street from Hickman High School. So if you’re in the central Missouri area and you’re looking for a home church, come hang out with us. If you’re just connecting online and you’re nowhere near us, then please connect with us in the comments. If you have a prayer request, if you have a question, if you’re wondering anything about the Lord or Christianity, please let us know and we would be happy to engage with you in the comments. We believe God’s doing something special at our church, and we want you to be a part of it. We’re a multi-generational church. We have people from all different backgrounds. We’re a church of the Word. We’re a church of the Spirit. We believe Jesus can transform your life. That’s why we’re on mission with Him, and we want to help you know God. We want to help you grow in God, and we want to share hope in our community. So connect with us, and we want to connect with you. Awesome. Have a wonderful and a blessed day.