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We are week three into a series that we just started on first John and it’s titled The New Generation. And here John is writing, uh, and he’s, he’s towards the end of his life. He’s an old man at this point. They’re propping him up and holding him up just so he can have the strength to sit up and teach them. And he’s teaching to a new generation of believers who weren’t necessarily there first hand to see Christ and to learn directly from him. Um, and a lot of what First John is teaching, uh, these, these younger believers, these this new generation of Christians is still very pertinent to us today. Um, one of the reasons I really, really enjoy the Book of First John is because John’s kind of circular in his in his teaching method, he kind of starts with a topic and he’ll expound on that. And then he kind of moves to something that’s not directly related. But you can see how somewhere in his mind he might have made the connection. And then he teaches on that before he kind of resolves that, he moves on to the next thing, and then all of a sudden he’s back over here and he kind of jumps all around, and it’s just kind of a big wheel. And it’s not very like Paul, if you read any of the epistles of Paul, he’s very linear. This is why I’m writing here’s point A, here’s sub .123, here’s point B, and John, I don’t know if it’s because he was getting older and he was having trouble keeping his thoughts together.
If he had Add, I don’t know what it was, but I kind of have Add. So I really appreciate the way that John writes, because I can relate to how he would follow that thought process, and I like that. Um, so if you aren’t Add and you don’t really like that thought process, it’s okay, because we have breaks in between each week. So you’ll you won’t have to try and follow it all the way through. But if you read the whole book of first John in one sitting, it’s kind of like, okay, that didn’t really seem like it flowed, but all right, that’s good. So last week, last week we looked at, uh, what it meant to be a Christian. And one of the ways that we signify that we are a Christian and that we follow Christ, is that we obey him and we we do the things that he told us to do, not out of obligation or out of necessity for salvation, but out of a love for him and the fact that he has changed us and saved us. And we do that out of gratitude for him. And one of the things that marks a Christian is obedience to God. If you say you’re a Christian but you don’t live like it.
Where’s the credibility in that? I can tell you guys that I’m the starting point guard for the Chicago Bulls, but I’m barely six foot on a good day, and I’m a little out of shape, and I’m not Derrick Rose. So you guys are pretty sure if you go through the checklist. I don’t play for the Chicago Bulls. I might be able to pick up a spot on the jazz, but no, just kidding, just kidding, just kidding. But you get the idea. Okay, if you’re a Christian, the the picture needs to look the same is what you’re saying. You need to live what you’re saying. You can’t just say, yeah, I’m a Christian and then live however you want. And that’s what John is reminding his readers of. And as we jump in this week, we’re in chapter two. We’re going to be in verse 12 through 17 today. And as we look here, John, um, John is going to address three different groups. And then he’s going to kind of give them all one final command before he moves on to his next point. But starting I don’t know if you can read that. If not, there should be Bible in the Bible in the front of your, um, chair in the back of the chair in front of you there. But it says in verse 12, I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake.
I am writing to you fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you children because you know the father. I write to you fathers because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the Word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. For all that the that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride and possessions is not from the father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires. But whoever does the will of God abides forever. Now, this passage, there’s a little bit of debate on it, on who he’s referring to, whether it’s three distinct different groups, whether it’s there’s a few different opinions. But whatever your point of who the young children are, who the young men are and who the fathers are, the application of these verses is all the same. And that’s what’s important. But he starts with young children or little children, and he says, I’m writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake.
Now we know by reading the rest of the book of First John that when John talks about little children or children, he’s talking to all of his audience, his entire audience. He refers to them as his little children because he felt like he was kind of their their adopted father. You know, he kind of trained them up and taught them. And so he viewed them as his children. So we know that this is addressed to all of his readers. And he says that I’m writing to you because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake. Um, the forgiveness of sins is the foundation of being a Christian. If you if you haven’t understood that and you haven’t gotten to the point where you understand what the forgiveness of sins is, then you can’t build on that. You don’t have a solid foundation. And no matter where you’re at in your Christian walk, whether you’ve been a Christian for ten minutes, ten days, ten years, whatever. The forgiveness of sins is something that we all need to be firmly rooted and reminded of. Um, I was pretty much born in church. My dad’s a pastor, so church has been pretty much a thing of my life since I was a kid. Um, I mean, when I was two weeks old, I was already going out on Bible retreats and things like that. It was a women’s retreat, but that’s that doesn’t matter.
The point is, I’ve been I’ve been in church for a long time, and one of the things I’ve been a Christian for 18 years now, and one of the things that I still love to hear about and still love to learn about and teach about is the forgiveness of sins. Knowing that I’m a wretched sinner, lost and dead in my sins and transgressions. But God, being rich in his mercy, reached down, and he saved me. So no matter where you’re at, this is a fundamental issue that we need to be constantly reminded of. Satan tries to distract and will try and discourage you and remind you of your sinful past and the things that you used to do. But if you’re rooted in the forgiveness of sins, whether you’re a new believer or you’ve been on this journey with Christ for a while, it’s good to be reminded that those sins are in the past. They are forgiven, and they they can’t be brought up against you anymore. But what’s interesting is he says that the reasons our sins forgiven are forgiven. He says, little children, your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake. The reason Christ forgives our sins is for his glory and for his honor. If you read throughout the Bible, first Timothy 114 b through 15 says, Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners of who I am the foremost. And this is the Apostle Paul writing.
And he says in verse 15, but I received mercy for this reason, that in me as the foremost Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. Paul realized that his salvation was so that he could proclaim the name of Jesus Christ. He realized that as the chief sinner is what he calls himself as the worst sinner. Christ saved me not so he can say, not so I can say, look at me, I got saved, but so I can say, look at what Christ did for me. Look at Christ, not me. That’s what Paul is saying. And in Galatians 614 Paul says again, but far be it from me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The only thing that Paul had as a man, and this is the guy who wrote pretty much most of your New Testament and brought the gospel to a lot of the known world. Um, and he says, the only thing that I have to boast in is the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, Christ. Salvation was the most important, and it was the reason that Paul saw Christ. Salvation was so that he could make Christ known. In Ephesians two eight and nine, it’s a very familiar verse says, for by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing.
It is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no 1st May boast in our salvation. We have nothing to be proud of in ourselves. We have nothing in ourselves that we can say, look at me. All we can say is look at what Jesus did. This is where I was. This is what he did for me. And this is where I am now because of him. Not because of my own strength, not because of my own righteousness, not because of anything that I can do, but because of Christ. I remember being on vacation with my family. I was probably around ten years old, and some of our friends from Minnesota went with us, and we went down to Florida to visit. And our friend Kenny was swimming. We were all swimming in the ocean. We stopped at Daytona Beach because most of us hadn’t been to the ocean at that point. And so Kenny was swimming and he got caught up in an undertow, and he got started getting taken out, and it was really scary. We were freaking out. The lifeguards saw him and jumped in and they swam out and they got him and brought him back and they did their thing. And if you go to my parents house, you can still I can grab the photo album and I can pull it out and I can show you the picture. There’s a picture of Kenny sitting on the tailgate of the lifeguard truck while they’re checking his vitals, making sure he’s okay, and the little caption that my mom wrote.
I’m not exactly sure what it says, but I know it doesn’t say Kenny was great at getting rescued and almost dying. Um, it says the lifeguards were awesome and saved Kenny’s life. Doesn’t say man, Kenny. Kenny almost died. Better than anybody could have almost died, you know. Okay. In our salvation, we have nothing to be proud of. We’re all sinners. We’re all really good at sinning. But Christ saved us. He jumped into the water and he swam out, and he saved us. We’re like Kenny. We’re We’re stuck out there in the ocean getting carried away, thinking, well, all right, here we go. And then all of a sudden, the lifeguard comes, Jesus comes, and he saves us. He does his best, David Hasselhoff, and dives into the ocean, swims out and drags us back. David Hasselhoff before the. Anyway, you know, okay, he saves us and we praise him for that. We don’t praise ourselves for almost dying and getting saved. We praise him for that. It’s Christ in our salvation. The reason that we’re saved in John’s reminding all of his readers, look, the reason that you were saved was for his name’s sake, so that in your life, in your salvation, by the forgiveness of your sins, you can praise Jesus and point others to that same salvation and that same forgiveness, not point others to you and say, look at who I used to be and look at who I am now, but point others to Jesus.
Um, I did that on purpose. It’s okay. Um, so just put it on the ground. That’s fine. Um, but get my train of thought here, okay? All right. So it’s so much about Christ in our salvation. Salvation is so much based on him that Romans 815 tells us that when you are saved, it says that you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry out, ABBA, father, when we’re saved. It’s so much about Christ that he adopts us into our family so we no longer have our name. When a child is adopted, they take the last name of the person that adopted them, and it says that God adopts us into his family. We’re now by adoption, God’s children. It’s about his name. It’s about us becoming part of his story. You know, I think a lot of times when you read biographies of people, um, as as new people are introduced into their lives, it’s about that person becoming part of their story, and it’s still their story. But in salvation, it’s not about Christ becoming part of our story and joining us in our life, but it’s about us abandoning our life and becoming part of Christ’s story. And we’re adopted into him.
And because of that, we’re able to cry out, ABBA, father! Which is really daddy father. It’s a term of endearment that a small child would use to cry out to his dad. And because of that adoption, because of what Christ has done for us, we’re able to cry out to God, ABBA, father, daddy! And one thing that you notice about small children is it’s hard for them to recognize different people. It’s hard for a baby to recognize who their father is, who their mother is. Over time, as they grow, they can start to recognize the difference. And in verse 13, John addresses his children, his readers again. But instead of using the word little children, he says children. The. There’s two different Greek words. The first one is Technion, which is like an infant, a baby, a newborn. And then he uses another word which is paidion, which is more of a toddler, um, slightly older. It literally is translated like a half grown boy, but it’s a small a small child but slightly older. And it says that you children have known the father. And it’s it’s this transition from your sins are forgiven. And now you can know the father because your sins are forgiven. You’ve grown up a little bit as you as you’re a Christian, your faith should mature and you should grow, and you should begin to understand and see the difference and begin to recognize God more clearly.
If you’ve ever spent time around me and my brother Brent at the same time, it’s one of the things that stands out and his father in law always makes fun of whenever I go visit is the fact that we look and sound incredibly similar. He has a little bit more hair on top. I have a lot more hair on bottom here, but but he we look and sound very, very similar and one of the favorite games of his friends in Florida. To play when I come visit is close your eyes and guess who’s talking. Um, so we look really similar. And this, this proved really problematic for my niece. Um, my brother’s first kid. When she was she was a baby. I would go visit and she had just started to kind of crawl and could kind of stand up on her own, and she would be in the other room with my sister in law. Me and my, my brother would be outside or whatever, and I would say something and she’d perk up and she’d crawl into the other room really excited, and then look up and be like, wait a minute, you look like dad. You sound like dad, but something’s kind of different. And then my brother would come in the room at the same time and she’d be like, what just happened? Like, her eyes got huge and like, and oh my gosh, there’s two of them.
Um, but but as as she grew up now, um, she has no problem recognizing who Uncle Richie is and who her dad is. She knows full well when she. When we’re out playing and she falls and scrapes her knee that she goes running to dad. As Christians, we need to get past the point where we know who God is, but it’s kind of hard to recognize him and we need to recognize fully who Christ is. We need to grow in that knowledge and in that relationship. That’s what eternal life is, is growing in that knowledge. John 17 three says, and this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. In Philippians 310, Paul again writes, talking about his deepest desires in life is that I may know him. In Second Peter 318 but grow in peace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It’s about a relationship and growing in that relationship. The first day that I met Greg and I didn’t know very much about her. Okay, I still remember it was the first day I moved to Utah. I went over to Stacy and Nathaniel’s for pizza, and I remember meeting Greg and and learning very little about her. The only thing that I really remembered was that Nathaniel asked if we wanted to play Halo, and she said yes. And I was like, that’s awesome.
Um, but since then I found out and grown in that relationship. And there’s a lot more awesome about Gregson than the fact that she likes to play Halo. But if I wouldn’t have put in the effort to learn more about Gregson, to study her, to to listen to her, to talk to her, to interact. The relationship wouldn’t have grown. God wants a relationship with you, and he wants your relationship with him to change and to mature and to evolve. And he doesn’t want it to stay the same like a baby. He wants you to grow. So much so that knowing God is so much a part of the Christian faith, that when John narrows his focus from all of his readers down to fathers, which when he’s referring to fathers, he’s talking to to the believers that have been been Christians for a while. They’re a little bit more mature in their faith. They’ve grown. And he says that I’m writing to you, fathers because you know him who is from the beginning. It’s all about knowing Christ. It’s not about what you know. It’s about who you know. It’s about having that relationship. It’s about growing in that relationship, diving deeper, learning more, finding out what else there is that we can learn about God, about salvation, about who he is. Paul was the foremost sinner. We looked at that already in first Timothy. He wrote the majority of the New Testament.
He performed. He healed people. He cast out demons. He did all these great things. And he says in Philippians that his goal is that he might know God and this great man, this great Christian, that we look up to says in Philippians 312, not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on. I strive for, I push toward to make it my own because Christ, because he has made me his own brothers. I do not consider that I have already made it my own. But one thing I do forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. Paul, this great Christian that we all look up to and say, wow, if I could have the faith and the knowledge and the courage that Paul had says that look, I haven’t even gotten there yet. I got a long way to go. But what I’m doing is pushing for that. I want to dive deeper into my knowledge of God. Paul saw Christ on the road to Damascus. He saw Christ, and he said, that’s not enough, I want more. I got to get more. I want to know. I want to learn. This is a theme that we see all throughout Scripture, especially if you read through the Psalms over and over. But Psalms 42 one says, as the deer pants for flowing streams, so my, so pants, my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. A lot of times, um, I don’t think we get the picture here, but if you’ve ever come between a starving animal and water or food, it’s a dangerous place to be because they’re going to do whatever they can to get to that water. It’s not a pretty serene picture with the mountains and a flowing brook and a deer, you know, getting a little drink and being. It’s a ravenous, fierce desire to get to that water, to get to God, to know more. And Psalm 63 one it says, O God, you are my God eternally. I seek you, my soul thirst for you. My flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I remember the first, uh, first summer I had in Utah. I was here in August, and we were. We did a lot of outdoor ministry. We did. We played with kids in the park and had a little VBS for them. And there were a few times I’ve been that thirsty. Um, but being in the desert, you realize how important having a bottle of water is every time we left the house or wherever we were going, everybody would make sure they would grab a bottle of water. Because when you ran out, man, you wanted that water and you see everybody else drinking their water and you’d be like, oh my gosh, will they share with me? Will they care if I put my mouth on the lip? I don’t care, I’m thirsty.
Give me some. That’s the way we need to be with God. We need to desire him like water. When we’re in the desert. We need to seek after him. Pursue him violently. It’s not just okay, I’m going to follow after God and seek him. It’s a violent, passionate pursuit. It’s chasing after him. Isaiah 26 nine says, my soul yearns for you in the night. My spirit within me earnestly seeks you. It’s it’s violent. It’s it’s out of control. Passion to seek God in the New Testament. If you read in Luke eight, there’s the story of a woman who was ill. She was she had a chronic illness. And she it says that she spent all of her money on physicians trying to make her well, and they couldn’t do anything for her. And she knows that Christ is in town, and she knows that Christ can make her well. And she fights her way through the crowd just to touch his robe and by touching his robe she was healed. But she fought her way through the crowd just to not even shake his hand and say hi and introduce herself, just to get a touch of his robe. She fought through the crowd for that, and in Mark two, you have the story of the men who needed to get their friend to Jesus.
But there was a great crowd, so they climbed up on the roof and tore the roof off of this guy’s house and lowered their friend in just so he could get close to Jesus. When’s the last time that you were willing to tear the roof off of anything? To get to anything? We need to be willing to tear the roof off to get to Christ. We need to violently and passionately as individuals and as a church body, pursue him and seek him. That’s how you mature in your faith. That’s how you can grow, is by pursuing that knowledge and that relationship. And that’s why he addresses the older group as knowing him who is from the beginning, because they they’re in this process, they’re in this journey where they’re violently pursuing Christ. They’re passionately with everything that they have seeking him. And if we ever forget that, if we ever lose sight of that, if we ever forget our goal in life to grow and learn more about him, we become stagnant and we lose the point. And we realize that we’re not growing, but we’re staying like little babies. Um, and that’s not that’s not what we want. Hebrews 13 eight says, Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t stop learning about him. That just means that he doesn’t change. But what’s amazing about God is that you can never, ever fully comprehend, no matter how much studying you do, no matter how much you learn, no matter how much you grow.
And no, you can’t stop learning more. And what you find is the more that you learn and grow and know, the more that you want to do that, all the more, because there’s so much more to get into. And the last group that he addresses here, he challenges them. He addresses the first two and says everybody needs to be reminded of the forgiveness of sins. And then he says, remember, fathers, that you know the father. And then he speaks to the group in the middle, the young men who aren’t necessarily the new believers, but they haven’t matured as much. And he says, see, look, this is where you’ve been. This is where you need to be, and this is what you’re doing right now. And he says that he commends the young men because they have overcome the world. And if you read, you understand that we as Christians have overcome the world. Because if you read in John 1633, Jesus says, have courage. I, Jesus, have overcome the world. We can overcome the world, the temptations, the pitfalls, the the sin and the wickedness of the world because Jesus has already overcome that. And our salvation is in him. It’s not about us, it’s about him and what he can do and what he has done.
And we see that he addresses this group because he wants to show them, look, this is where you were, this is where you need to be. But don’t ever stop doing this. Don’t ever stop relying on Christ to overcome what’s in your way, to overcome sin and temptation, and to overcome the obstacles that hinder you from growing in him and in that relationship. The second time he mentions this group of young men, he says that they were able to overcome the evil one because the Word of God abided in them. The best way to grow in your relationship with God is to read his letter to you, to read what he has to say, to understand, to study, to memorize Scripture. If you read in Psalm one 1911, it says, Thy Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you. And in Psalm 119 105 it says, thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. God’s word is a Christian. As we grow is essential. You can’t say, well, I’m going to learn more about Jesus and never open up your Bible. If your Bible is only open on Sunday and you want to grow with Jesus, you need to start opening it up on Monday and Tuesday and throughout the week. You can’t just you can’t just live with just this little glimpse that you get on Sunday morning.
We need to dive into his word. We need to study his word. We need to apply it to our lives. It says in the Psalms that they, the psalmist, has hid his God’s Word in their heart because it helps him from sinning against him, because he knows he’s reminded. When temptation comes, he’s reminded of Scripture and says no and walks away. He turns away because he knows it’s sin. He knows it’s sin. And in Luke four one through 13, Jesus himself. He’s out in the wilderness, and he’s being tempted by the devil. And every time the devil tempts him, Jesus responds by quoting Scripture. And he says, and he quotes Scripture, the devil will give him a temptation. He says, no, because the Word of God says this. So then in the last temptation, Satan twists the Word of God and takes it out of context and misapplies it in. Christ says, no, no, no, that’s not what that means. And this is what the Word of God says. I’m not going to fall into temptation. And that’s an example to us that even Christ used Scripture to fight sin. We can’t fight sin on our own. Okay, it’s just like the movie The Matrix from forever ago. Whenever you see an agent, just run. Don’t take them on. Right? Whenever you see sin, don’t take them on. On your own. Grab the Bible. Use God’s word. Study it, memorize it.
Hide it in your heart. Use it as a lamp to light your path so that you don’t trip and fall and fall into a pit. In Ephesians six, Paul still talking about the Word of God. He’s telling us Christians that we’re in the middle of a battle and we need to put on the full armor of God. And in that full armor, the only weapon that he gives us, the only offensive weapon that he lists is the Word of God. The Bible is powerful Bible, and knowing God’s Word is essential not only in growth as a Christian, but in fighting off the the attacks of Satan and in fighting off temptation. If you try and stand on your own strength and your own wisdom, you’re going to fall every time. Trust me, I’ve been there. But when you rely on God’s Word for strength, for guidance as a tool, you can make it through. It’s the only way. And so John reminds his readers, he lists these three groups that our sins are forgiven and we can know God, and that we can know him as we grow in him, and that we need to overcome evil through him. And then he reminds us, after he’s addressed all the groups, do not love the world or the things in the world. You see the world around us. And he’s not talking about the physical planet, the world. He’s talking about Satan.
He’s talking about evil. He’s talking about the temptations of life. The world robs us of our fellowship with God. They rob us of that relationship. The world and the things that the world has to offer takes our focus off from Christ and turns it to other things. Whether those things are inherently evil or not doesn’t matter. It’s not a bad thing to want to have a nice house for your family, that they can be safe and warm. But if that takes your focus off of Christ, that’s not a good thing. It’s not a bad thing to want to have a job, to be able to earn a living. That’s good. The Bible commands us to do that. But if you’re so focused on earning a living and having money that it distracts you from your relationship and knowing God and pursuing him, then that’s a bad thing. And he says, don’t love the world or the things that the world has to offer. When we get caught up in the things of this life, we forget the importance of that relationship with God. We forget the importance of knowing him and growing in our relationship. And I think in the history of the world, we’ve never been an era where there’s more distractions than right now. Everywhere you go, there’s something pulling at your attention and trying to draw you away from that relationship. How many people have Facebook on your phone? Okay, Facebook was the worst thing for me in college because I had to type a paper, you know? But I just got to make sure to check everybody’s statuses, make sure everybody’s doing okay.
Right. Two hours later at three in the morning, freaking out because I got to have a paper done in two hours so I can get at least an hour of sleep before I go to class. Now, that distraction is not even when I’m sitting at a computer. I got it in my pocket every day. Okay, that’s a distraction. Mcdonald’s has Wi-Fi now because we got to be connected. We got to go somewhere where we can get on the internet and do whatever. We have to be connected. We’re a connected society. And what all that connection does, while it’s great and it’s really convenient to be able to type in an address in my phone and know where I’m going, it can be really bad because it can draw my focus from God to whatever. The things of this world are temporary. When God. When John addressed his father, the fathers in this passage, he says, remember, you know him who is from the beginning. He reminds them, God is eternal. God’s from the beginning. He was here before time. God is eternal past, present future. God is. The world is just a tiny little speck on that timeline. And yet we get so focused on this speck that we forget about growing in our relationship that’s going to last for eternity.
We get so focused on the little distractions of life in this little blip of time that James says, is just a vapor. That we forget about growing in our relationship, that it’s not just about staying where you’re at and becoming a Christian, but it’s about becoming a Christian and growing in knowledge and growing in God’s grace and growing in understanding of him and growing in your relationship with him. And we let this world distract us and the things that this world has to offer with the desires of the flesh, those things that feel good to us, with the desires of our eyes, the things that look good and make us say, I want that. I got to have that with the pride and possessions and focusing on material wealth. These are all temporary. God is eternal. Knowing God and growing in that relationship and investing in that lasts forever. Don’t let the temporary rob you of what’s eternal. Don’t let what seems important now and only lasts for a season rob you of what you can enjoy for all eternity. That’s what John’s warning us. Warning us about is having that taken away from us. That desire to grow, that desire to learn more. When we forget about God and who he is, and we start to focus on the things of this world, we stop to learn and we stop growing.
And he says, keep focused. Don’t let these distractions ruin it for you. Um, one of the things that as a church, we want to really focus on this year is one on one discipleship. And having younger believers who who are new in their faith come up alongside a believer who maybe is a little bit more mature and getting into God’s Word together and studying together so that they can grow and advance, and then they can take someone who’s a little bit less mature than them in their faith and and teach them and grow them. And then everybody can start to grow each other. And it it starts a chain. And what Nathaniel has done is he’s actually created a series of little booklets, um, to help us in this. The first one is conveniently titled Know God. And I want to challenge you this week and today as we go home to pray, seriously pray and consider being discipled or being a disciple. Find someone who knows more and is grown in their faith and is more mature than you, that you can come underneath and say, look, I want to follow God. I want to know more about him. Will you help me? We’ve created this booklet. It only takes a couple of weeks to go through. If you met once a week, if you met more than once a week, you could get them done a lot quicker.
But they’re designed to help you learn and grow in that knowledge of Christ. And we want to encourage you in that. We want to encourage you in that relationship as a church. And that’s why we’ve come up with this curriculum. If you’re interested in in knowing more about the program itself or just you want to be discipled, you say, yes, that’s what I’ve been looking for. Um, see? See Nathaniel or Mark or Russ or myself. And we’ll find somebody that can meet with you and can share with you from God’s Word and show you how to grow and help you learn and grow. And what’s awesome about discipleship is that it’s not just for the one being discipled, but that the person doing the discipling often learns a lot too. So if you’re interested in learning more about how you can grow in that relationship and how you can grow in Christ, please let one of us know we’d We’d be thrilled to to get you set up with somebody, and that can help you and show you from God’s Word how that works. I guess I don’t really have a main takeaway written down, but if I could challenge you with one thing today to remember in all my ramblings that I’ve had today. Life is about what Christ has done for us. Growing in that relationship that he’s allowed us to be a part of. Violently. Passionately. Lustfully seeking him and not letting this world drag you down and pull you away.