Well, listen, good morning guys, and uh, ma'am, welcome. No other way to start today's message. We've gotta address this. Show of hands, if you think it's gonna snow on Tuesday, come on. Okay.

Okay. We feel good over here. It's gonna snow. I believe that. I'm already looking for a sled.

I've been googling my history homemade sleds, and so, uh, I'm ready for Tuesday. I think it's at every campus, right? There's a chance that we could see snow, but I wanna start today off with a, with a little, did you know it's a fun fact and here it is. Did you know that there's more information in the Sunday edition of the New York Times than the average person living in the 18th century would've consumed in their entire life? Think about that information, right?

Information is everywhere. Uh, man, it's on our fingertips. It's, it's Google this, and we searched this. There was a day, and many of you remember this day when if you needed more information, you went to a place, it's called a library, and you would drive downtown. I remember this.

We would go to the library and you'd be all excited about getting the information until you got to the library because it took so long to find it, because you had to deal with this system called a card catalog. I'll tell you those things, it, alphabet order still gives me trouble and it, Arthur date subject. And you'd search, search, search. You're trying to find the information, you're kind of passionate about it, you're excited about getting it. Then you finally get to where the book's supposed to be in the card catalog only to find out it's checked out and you're back to ground zero.

Today is so different today. Everything that we need is right here at our fingertips. And we search, and we search and search. I got a good friend of mine that in the midst of almost every conversation, I'll watch him hear something and he'll start researching it. It's like he checks out because he's going to get some more information.

Well, here's the heartbeat behind this series. This series is different. We don't want any more information. We want transformation. And there's nothing that brings transformation in your life and in my life, like prayer.

So we've been challenging you 21 days where we would kinda start new and maybe to think about prayer in that light is different for you because prayer has kind of been routine or maybe prayer hasn't been exciting or prayer has just been a blessing. But what we're saying is that we believe prayer is different than just more information. It really is something that can bring about transformation. Now, the crazy thing about information, isn't it interesting how some little bits of information never leaves you? Uh, 6 0 1, 2 6 8, 3 5, 5 2.

I still got my home phone number. Six oh one two six eight six five five oh. It's my best friend's phone number. But what about this? Anybody know the zip code for Beverly Hills?

Uh, close 9 0 2 1 oh, right? Yeah, yeah. We remember these things and yet it's really worthless information. And so what we're trying to do is start different. We're trying to come around information that brings transformation.

That's my hope for today. Now, we've built this series. Sounds like a song. We've built this, uh, but we've built this series around a verse, and it's a theme verse that's gonna kind of carry us through these three weeks. Okay?

Maybe you, you already know it. It's in Acts, it's Acts two. I want you to see it up here. There's a couple of words in here that we're kind of zooming in on, and the first one is something really different for our culture today. It's this word devoted.

We don't really like to be devoted to things. We don't like to be kinda locked down to things. And so it's, it's a hard cry to say, I'm asking you to be devoted to things, to be committed to something, but we believe something happens when we can really be devoted. And it gives us three things that they, they was the very first church. The very first church was committed to three things.

And so we wanna be like them. It's just that simple. We're still in their formula today. And here's the three things that they did. They were devoted to the apostles teaching, okay?

They were devoted to fellowship. Now, fellowship, listen, fellowship happens every, every campus every Sunday morning. But fellowship really happens in smaller groups. I mean, this is too big for a lot of fellowship to happen. That's where Wednesday night, that's where House Church comes into play, okay?

This week, house Church starts, we'd love for you to be a part. And then they're devoted to prayer. Now, we did prayer at each campus this past Wednesday night. We're gonna pray together this morning, but I wanna start out with God's word because that's the first thing we see the apostles teaching. And so each week when you come, you can expect this of us.

We're gonna give you a fresh teaching. We're gonna give you God's word. Now, this is different for us because sometimes we get in a habit and we have to kind of break habits so that I'm sure you're, you're with me this week, today. Here's what I wanna do. When I read God's word, I'm gonna ask you to stand up.

So would you just stand with me? We don't have to do this every week, okay? This isn't gonna be something that we're gonna ask you every time, but sometimes there's a word that if I don't get your attention and ask you to do something different, it'll just be like white noise. And so instead of reading this passage over and over again, we're just gonna stand up. But I don't want you to miss it.

Alright? This is a powerful passage that's more than information. I think it could bring transformation. So let's read it together. Here we go.

We're gonna be in Ephesians two. Remember, we're talking about growing in grace. So here's what you need to know about grace. Let's read this together. Ephesians two, four.

But because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions. It's just pretty cool verse, if you hadn't never heard this, it is by grace that you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ, and he seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming age, he might show the incomparable riches of His grace. All of this is expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. Now, here's a verse.

I I have a feeling a lot of you'll be familiar with. Verse eight, for it is by grace that you have been saved through faith. And this was not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not by works, so that you could boast for we are God's workmanship, love that created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. All right, you may be seated.

That's our passage. That's the first thing that we're starting off with is God's word. But I wanna, I want to challenge you a little bit. That's why we stood up, because something kind of happens, it happens in your life, and it happens in my life when we do the same thing over and over again. It's just a habit and it kinda loses its freshness.

I mean, for many of you, I I, I see a family over here, they sit in the same section every week. Anybody else sit in the same seat almost every week? Yeah, of course you do. Yeah, I, I listen sometimes it's good. I'm gonna be honest with you.

We pray for you by where you sit. And so it's, maybe, it's, maybe it's not a bad habit, but sometimes it's hard for things to be fresh when you walk in. Maybe you've walked into this, to your campus, wherever you are today for years. Maybe you've been following Jesus for decades. Listen, that's something to be proud of.

That's not a bad thing. But I don't know about you, but when I do the same thing over and over again, sometimes it's loses its power. And I love that about the, the stories of baptism, because it's like it becomes fresh again. And maybe for you, you wanna go back in your mind when you were baptized and think about maybe the slow, the slow fade from that Sunday or that moment to today. I'm gonna tell you, there's sometimes there's a fade in my life.

It's not, I'm not judging you for that. One of the fades in my life is in God's word. Like I'll read a passage and I'll be passionate about it. But then over time, it's like the Bible kinda sits over on it shelf and I get farther and farther away from it. We become colder and colder.

The very first thing I'm gonna challenge you with today is, I, I, here's the first point. I I want you to be devoted to God's word. Now you're going, Craig, you kinda talked about that a couple weeks ago. Well, I just think if we can get back in God's word and we can begin to find a passion for this word, then it's gonna leak into other areas of our life. And I think what happens to you, because this happens to me, is it's like we, you, you meet somebody that's been practicing medicine.

And I love this because you wanna go to somebody that's seen a lot of different cases. They've got 25 years experience. They've seen it all. Somebody's been working on cars. Talk to a man today that owns two car shops over in Pervis, and he's got a lot of experience.

He's seen it all, every make and model you go, he's got a lot of confidence. But when it comes to following Christ, a lot of us don't have 20 something years or five something years of experience following Christ. We have one year repeated again and again and again. We just do the same thing again. We come back to the same seed again.

We sing the same songs again. And I need, I need you and me to, to kinda wake up a little bit and say, Hey, we wanna have another year of experience following Christ where God's word comes alive. So that's why we're starting with this passage, because nothing brings you back to life then God's grace. So look at the passage. Here's the verse.

This is Ephesians. This is the first verse that we read, and there's a couple little phrases in here that I, I wanna kind of bring alive to you because we're devoted to God's word. Here's the first one. It talks about how we were dead in our sins, Which It's good place to start. We were like coughing dead, not like, like coughing, like buried, like dead, dead.

Like, like, I need you to see a casket dead and maybe a little much on January to bring a casket and have it up here. But that's where we started. And then this verse is so cool, and this is the one that's maybe kind of, kind of gone, gone, numb to you over time because, but God, now what did God do? What He, he made us alive. Isn't it good to know where you stand if you're following Jesus, like how he sees you?

But before we can kinda celebrate how you're alive, we gotta understand where we started. Well, we started being separated from Christ because of our sins, but then God made us alive. Now, this is really important. The word that we emphasize was God who made us alive. God, here's a quick little phrase to remember.

Religion is spelled DO, Christianity is spelled DONE. Done. God did this for us. He alone makes us alive. And so as we start to get saturated in God's word, one of the things we need to remember is there's promises in here that we can claim because you and I are gonna have some difficult days.

I gotta, I mean, here's a promise. I don't know if it's gonna snow or not on Tuesday. I know you're gonna have some difficult days in 2025. Yeah, I know you're gonna be tempted. How do you know that?

Well, Jesus was tempted. And so I wanna do what Jesus did. I wanna go back to Luke four, three different times the enemy came to Jesus and he tempted him three different times. Jesus handled that temptation the same way. What did he do?

He used God's word. He weaponized Scripture in a good way. He spoke back to the enemy with promises that he could claim, but he couldn't do that unless God's word was in him. I know you're gonna face attack. I know you're gonna have fears.

I know you're gonna have voices in your head go, I'm not crazy. No, you're gonna have voices in your head that tempt you to think what if. But what I wanna do is I wanna give you some fighting words. Anybody remember fighting words on the playground? I bet I'm faster than you.

Boy, that was a good one. Little girls, I'm not your friend anymore. Fighting words. And then it, when it was really serious, you'd hear something about your mama And they were, man, they, they brought about a reaction. They were strong words.

I want you to have those kind of fighting words. They're all in here, 66 different books full of fighting words for us to take on the enemy. We've just gotta be devoted to it. Here, I'm gonna show you mine, okay? I I, I came up with my five, my first five, and I just started kind of thinking and praying.

And, and, and that's part of this, remember 21 days of prayer. Like, like you've gotta kind of, you've gotta kind of meditate on some of this. That's kind of, that feels weird. That word I, I just mean like, do you spend more time, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or thinking about God's word's gone. Maybe tiktoks gone.

There's one off the list. That's a great word. Praise God. He's getting up there. It's becoming more and more a priority.

Facebook, watch out which one has more airtime in your mind. Well, here's what I did. I came up with my five, these are my five that every morning I'm gonna look at these five. Once you see a picture of it, this is just my first page of my journal. Don't judge me.

Men, I have a journal. This is what I look at. The first part up there is my little words. Sometimes all I can take is words. Other times I need, I need more mo, I need more fight.

Now I'm gonna walk through these verses just real quick. You can steal mine, you can use mine. You can come up with your own. But these are personalized for me because these are things that I face. And so when the enemy attacks me, I wanna show you some verses.

First one's out of Ephesians, where I begin to think now to him is able to do immeasurably more, but it just takes my mind away from the fear that's right there, and it makes me think bigger. Like not the same year, 25 years of experience. No, no, I want more. God, I want you to do more. I claim that verse.

Here's the next one. I think about do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing. That's God's words. The only thing that does that, I've gotta renew my mind. I need to see that because I, I, I see myself conforming, conforming as a pastor.

Hey, it's about approval. It's about what everybody thinks. It's about how I look. It's about my words. It's about cool little phrases I don't wanna conform.

Here's another one that I'm using. Now, this one's, this one's really big for what I do. I, it's big for what you do, but sometimes we can think it's about like performance and pride. And so I, I take myself back to this one that says, only God can make things grow. I'm just showing you my cheat sheet, my five.

So you figure out what yours are. Here's the next one. Boy, this is a powerful one, right? I mean, come on. Let's be honest.

Raise your hand if you face anxiety or depression. Well then you need some ammo. You need to fight back with me. That's why we quote this verse. This is for me and my family.

I'm praying this almost every day because this is personal to us. Here's the last one. You, you, you're gonna pretty obvious who this one's for, right? My kids pray that they may grow in wisdom, in stature and in favor. I want you to have some fighting words, but I want you to pick yours and then claim 'em, right?

That's the first one. Be devote for God, which, here's the second one. This year I want us to grow in grace. How? First, by receiving grace, receiving grace, your mindset Matters.

And many of you, you walk in, you may walked in kind of with a little bit of like pop in your step and then you sit down and your cadence just begins to deflate because it's just, you're discouraged. And a lot of that's from a lie. Look how God sees you. Look at this verse that we're studying. Ephesians 6, 2, 6 says, in God raised us up with Christ and he seated us with him in the heavenly realms.

Where do you see yourself? I need you to imagine this. Like, come on, do this little exercise with me. Just think for a minute. Like, wait, how do I see Craig?

How do I see myself? Do I see myself in, in my sin? Do I see myself, you know, as, as kind of a addiction or, or in this depression, do myself like looking for approval and I can't find it. Do I see myself discouraged or do you see yourself, how God sees you? Where are you?

You're like, I'm sitting in Stone County. That's right where I am. Who's sitting next to you? Well, this person right here, my daughter, my brother, I wish that one weren't there, but that one right there, that's not where God sees You. Well, where does he see me?

He sees you sitting In the heavenly realms Next to Jesus, And you can do that. Like when you think about Jesus, you know Jesus is seated up above it. All the angels are worshiping, they're praising him. There's no sin, there's no struggle. There's no shame anymore.

And one day I'm gonna be there in heaven and I'm living for that day. But that's not enough. There's moments on this side of heaven that you've gotta see and imagine where Christ Sees you, he sees you seated up there with him Above it all. He sees you that Way, his mercy. Remember, you don't need more information.

We need to do more with the information that we have. Look at this definition from mercy. You know this little definition, mercy is not getting what we deserve. Then, then look at this grace. You know this about grace.

Grace is getting what we don't deserve. This is like foundational, but, but this is so important. It's not just information. It's like when you understand that grace is getting what we don't deserve, then you are able to walk in. You're able to see yourself differently in light of God's love.

What about this verse in, in, in the Old Testament about mercy? I love this verse. This is one I kind of wrote down on my dash, and it's pretty powerful because of the Lord's great love. We are not consumed because of the Lord's great love. Sorry, because of the Lord's great love.

We are not consumed for his compassion. Sometimes this word can be mercy. His compassion or his mercy never fail. They are, did you catch this one? Because I'm need it every day.

Like I wake up in the morning like, I need it again. Well, that's good because they are new every morning. Great Is your faithfulness. You talk about being transformed, you talk about receiving grace. Alright, here, here's what we're gonna do now.

Now hang with me. If you see somebody young around you, you're gonna need 'em for this section. I want you to grab your phone, go ahead and get your phone. Can't go to TikTok. I want you to go to your calculator.

You go to your calculator. I'm gonna walk you through a little experience. Again, if you see somebody young around you, they'll, they'll help you find your calculator. If you have a little, little struck, sorry, you know it's true. I want you to enter in your age, in your calculator.

I'm 45, so I'd put 45. I want you to multiply at times. How many days are in a year? It's 365. Then I want you to add how many days since your last birthday?

My last birthday was July the ninth. You may have to Google that. That's 189 days. Here's my number, 16,614 different strands of mercy from me. Number of years, number of days, number of days since my last birthday.

And when you add all that out, that's over 16,000 new and unique and different strands of mercy that God has for me. They're new for me. That's not even including your strands. That's unique mercy. That's new mercy that's waiting on me to receive.

All I have to do is step into that. I need you to see that number. I need you to be devoted to God's word because something happens when you begin to understand God's mercy. Now, if that wasn't enough, that's mercy. Let's talk about grace for just a minute.

Grace is getting what we do not deserve. Look at the verse about grace. We just read it. The verse about grace. He describes his grace as incomparable.

I always wanna say inconceivable, incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. You see how I'm trying to make God's word come alive in you? Think about his grace. I I really love in verse seven where it says in order that in the coming age he might show, he might show, do you see that? He might show this immeasurable, incomparable riches of his grace.

He might show that that, that, that part stood out to me because I like to show, I like to show off a little bit And uh, this week, this past week, I showed out with, with Rosie. We went and ran a mile, kinda showed out my time on the mile. I like to show out on the grill, you know, like I cook some chicken tenders and some burgers. I I, you take me to Sonic and I'll show out on the pretzels and the cheese sticks. It's pretty good.

But how does God like to show out? It says he likes to show out with the amount of grace that he has for you. That's the way that he flexes. That's the way that he shows people. Look what I can do, because think about the analogy earlier.

Where do you, do you see yourself Well up there with Jesus? That's where you are. And people think just like I think, what is Craig doing up there with Jesus? He shouldn't be up there. I know what he did.

I know about his fears. I know about the questions in his mind. He didn't earn it. Why in the world is he up there? And God says, that's the question I want because the only answer is my grace.

And man, I'm gonna have to really show out with some of you jokers, but I can do it because it's immeasurable, it's inconceivable, it's rich, it's lavishing. It's the song that we sing, like we're walking through deep muddy water with no emotion. It's amazing. It's amazing grace. We gotta receive it.

And then when we receive it and we understand that God is showing out that it's amazing, then we get to give it. It's the third one today. I want you to give grace this year. What would it be like for you to be as gracious with others as God has been with you? He said, well, where's that come from?

What comes from the same passage when look at verse eight, it says four. It is by grace that you have been saved through faith. And this is not of yourselves. It's the gift of God, not by work so that no one can boast for we are God's handiwork. Let's play with that word for just a little bit.

For we are God's handiwork. How does it feel to be God's handiwork? Yeah. Like do you see yourself as God's handy work or do you see yourself as a, like a God's failure? You're not.

You're his work. You're, you're conceived in his image. You're, you're made in his DNA. You're positioned where you are for a purpose. He's got a plan.

You are his handiwork. He has made you for a purpose. He's designed you. But part of that is it's a gift. And we receive it and we begin to understand it, that we're we're his handiwork and he's made us for purposes.

And, and the work that we should do is, it's his work, but then we've gotta give it, we've gotta share it. We can't do that until we receive it. The clearest picture is in Matthew seven. This is, this is really good. Matthew seven, one through five.

And this is a group of people that I don't think ever clearly received God's grace. It's the Pharisees. And watch the words that Jesus shared with the Pharisees. 'Cause these are kinda harsh words when I read these to you. Every one of you knows a lot of, you're gonna know this passage.

It's okay if you don't, but I need you to understand the context of it. This is a group of people that did not understand the gift of grace. Watch how they reacted to other people. Okay? This is Matthew seven, one through five.

This is what Jesus is telling these Pharisees. Would you not judge or you two would be judged for in the same way that you judge others, you will be judged. And with the measure that you use, it's gonna be measured against you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank that's in your own eye. Brother, verse four.

How can you say to your brother, lemme take that speck outta your eye when all the time there is a plank in your own eye. You hypocrite. First, take the plank outta your own eye. See God's grace, experience God's grace. And then you'll be able to see clearly to remove the spec of dust from your brother's eye here.

Here's what this looked like. We did, we did, um, uh, one of the storms that came through. We did tornado relief and we were walking through the right over here on Richburg Road. We were doing some tornado relief and, and there's a big old herd of, of our people. And, and we were helping all the different houses and, and somebody was working a chainsaw.

I wish I could say it was me, it would be way more manly, but I was probably just standing there watching them. And I got something in my eye, like I got, I got something in my eye that I could not get out. And I was walking down the street and I saw one of our guys at our church that's an eye doctor. And I stopped him and I was like, Hey, man, can you, anything you can do, would you help me with this thing in my eye? And he looked at my arm, he looked at my hand and I had a little bracelet like this, and he got the bracelet and, and he got really up close to my eye and he got the little bracelet like this.

He was so gentle, like, you want an eye doctor this gentle? And, and then he, he literally kind of pulled my eye down with this little bracelet. Can you imagine him doing this? If there's a big four by four in his eye, be pretty awkward. But because he understood, like, because the eye doctor had been on days where things got in his eye, he treated me with something in my eye so differently and just really carefully and gently, I mean, I would even use the word tenderly.

He got this little bracelet on the middle of the street on Richburg over there, and he began to kinda scrape my eye to get it out. He handled that situation with care because he knew and recognized how tender that is. When we walk outta here, this group of people, the Pharisees, they were hypocrites. They were all about pride. They were pointing out everybody's flaw, and they never received grace on their own.

So that in the way that that doctor received me, you and I can receive the people in our life. We can give grace. I think that's why Jesus used the analogy of your eye. It's that sensitive. It's that blinding.

It's that detrimental to us as Christians and believers to walk outta here, all full of pride and hypocritical. People don't see us the way they need to see us. But if we can walk outta here full of God's grace changed by God's word because we recognize we're seated above the sin and the shame that the enemy wants to see us, but Jesus, God sees us and made us differently and he placed us up there not for our pride, but so that we can help and see others and handle them with tenderness and grace and compassion. It's, it's just a real simple cycle. Here it is.

This is the, the image that we've talked about today. It's three little things. We're gonna be devoted to God's word. We're gonna receive grace. And this one's a little harder, isn't it?

We're gonna give grace. Now, we, we've been finishing these, these messages kind of the same way. And we're devoted to fellowship. We're devoted to God's word and we're devoted to prayer this cycle, especially, I don't know which I, I guess both of them. We don't do this naturally.

The enemy doesn't want us to do that because man, we become dangerous when we understand just how forgiven and loved we are. So it's the power of prayer. God help me, see me the way you see me. And then this one, this, this doesn't come naturally at all. We can't do this on our own.

So God, help me give grace. God's given you such grace. Help me be a reflection of you. So I'm gonna give you one minute to begin to pray this, because you can't do it on your own. I can't do it on my own.

So at all of our campuses, we're gonna take one minute and I'm gonna be quiet, and this is gonna be here for you to just pray about God. Put some passages on my heart that can be fighting words. God help me receive experience your grace. God, help me give grace. You got one minute.

Let's pray. Father, there is nothing that paralyzes us like our past. And there's nothing stronger in Scripture than your grace. I mean, God, you knew this. That's why you live the perfect life.

That's why you did what we couldn't do. So, God, today we, we really, we just pull our gaze away from ourself and we, we lock it into what you did on the cross. We wanna, we want to experience this mercy and this grace. So God, help us be the year that we move on. You've moved on.

You paid way too high a price to stay stuck in our past. God, you did what we couldn't do. I pray that may come alive in us. God, there's nothing harder than giving grace to people who have hurt us. There's also nothing more toxic than to be held captive by some of the past.

So God, do the supernatural in us. Help us see so clearly your grace for us, and then help us just th in that passage, God help us find freedom by letting go of some of the history that's held us in bondage. Father, this is a work of your spirit. So God, you do more than we could ask or imagine. Help us grow in wisdom and in Sta and in favor, God, we're given the word.

May you grow the seed, may your spirit come alive in us. And it's in your name we pray. Amen. Amen.