Have you ever noticed that when you're trying to fix a problem, often your practical solution to that problem doesn't actually line up with the way things work in the real world? You know what I'm saying. Like when you're trying to solve a problem, you come up with a pathway or a solution that you think's going to work- or at least someone told you it would work- and then, as you get older, you start to realize that's just not the way things work. I'll give you an example. When I get frustrated and flustered because my life is too busy, what I do is- and this is not scientifically the way anything works, but we do it I- it's my tendency to add something that I think will be better rather than stop doing the thing that drains me most.

Have y have y'all noticed that we try to solve the problem of our dissatisfaction in life by adding something that might provide us satisfaction, but all we do is we add that thing that could be satisfying to a bunch of other things. We've already acude that we thought were going to be satisfying, but we struggled with the balance, and so we add this thing, hoping it's going to make us feel better. I know I'm confusing you. I'll tell you about my life. I got a journal this last week.

It's called a gratitude Journal. How many of you need, need, need to practice being grateful in your life? Any anyone? Yeah, me too. I didn't buy it.

My wife bought it, because her boss told her to buy it, but she gave it to me because she said I thought you could use this and I was like: thanks. So I've got this gratitude journal and it's a morning and an evening Journal. It's been really helpful for me and one of the questions that it asks, both in the morning and in the evening. In the morning it says, what can you do to make your day better? What can you do?

In the evening, it says: what can you do tomorrow that would make tomorrow better than today? Those are great questions and my tendency is to answer it like this, and here's what I say. You might identify with this. I say in both of those: for the first, like five times I did it. I put be more productive, which is a isn't.

It makes sense because I do. I think being productive will make my day better. But being more productive is this big, this, this word or phrase that encapsulates my entire life, that says I'm going to be more productive. So here's how I think being more productive works, and I hope you connect with this. If not, you're just going to think I'm crazy.

It's one of the two: crazy or connected. We're going to figure it out in the next few moments. For me, I think productive is waking up the next morning and getting getting up between 5 or 6. Yeah, some of you might agree with me. Some of you like that's not cool.

I'm an evening person, which is weird. So, anyway, get up between 5 or 6, but when I get up, I don't want to just waste my time because I got up at five or six. That's early, right? So I get up.

I want to make sure that I spend some time with the Lord or go for a run or work out in the gym, or make sure at least I do some push-ups, then maybe spend some time in concerted prayer, maybe I'll read my Bible. Here's more productivity. I'll actually go make make a breakfast rather than grabbing poptarts for me and the kids, cuz that's not healthy, right, it's full of all these things that they tell me are bad for me, that I haven't really researched, but I think they're bad for me. So I feel bad about getting poptarts. I want to make pre-planned meals, all right.

So I make these meals, and I make them for my kids and they're not going to get up yelling because I was early and I got them up and I walked them through their morning process. So then we eat breakfast, then I take them to school, or my wife Hannah takes him to school, drop them off at school. But since it was early, I got more done in the morning, so I feel better about starting my work day. So then I start working, which means I'm going to block my schedule out. That's more productive.

Why I take four hours and say I'm going work on my sermon here, I'm going to do meetings here, and so I put that all in my calendar. I've done it for the last 20 years because that's how to be more productive. Then I'll go through my day and I'll realize that I'm getting a lot of work done. But because I'm also a husband and I'm also a father, I got to be better at that. So if I spend my whole day at work, I'm feeling slightly guilty because I didn't prepare for my kids to come home and then do their homework and then make them dinner cuz I didn't do the meal prep that I should have done so to be productive.

I got to do meal prep in order to get them dinner, so then we make them dinner and then they sit down, but we don't want to put them in front of the TV, because that's what I tend to do when I'm unproductive. In order to be productive, I need to spend the next two hours concerted effort focusing on my kids to be a good father, so that you guys think when I stand on stage I'm actually legitimate as a preacher. Right, so I will parent my kids better. That's more productive. But we can't forget about my wife, because she's important in this relationship too, and I promise you, no matter what I say, I love my wife.

We have a great relationship and I date my wife, right, Hannah? Yeah, she's, she's not telling. I do not date her as much as she wants me to date her, but I do take her on dates. Some of you guys might be judging me for my lack of dates, but anytime I see you on a date, it's when you're in Starbucks after you guys had a big argument, but you decided to take a picture to show everybody how great your marriage is, but anyways, being productive. I got to love my spouse and I got to take her on trips and we got a love life.

So I want to plan the vacation, but in order to do the vacation I've got to have money. Anyone with me on that to do the vacation. But in order to have money, that means I need to be more productive and earn more money if I can at work. But if I'm capped at work, that means I need to side piece of income. Or because I'm a pastor and I write sermons every week, I guess I can figure out how to write a book.

But when am I going to get time to write a book? When am I going to get time to do side income? So let me just add other things to make me more productive. Let me read books and then, because I wanted to parent my kid well, I said I'll help out coaching the Fall Ball coach pitch team. I said I'll help.

That's what I said. Y'all heard me right. That's what I said. Then I get an email three weeks ago. They said, hey, we need help on this team.

I said, yeah, sure, I'll help coach, as long as this team has my kid on it, which makes sense to me. And then they say, okay, thank you for being the head coach of the team, and I'm like: hold up, head coach. I didn't see that beforehand. Now I'm the head coach of a team while I'm trying to start this entrepreneurial venture called a church that is both spiritual and business oriented. We have legal documentation that shows this church exists.

I've never done that before, so I'm trying to figure that one out. Well, also, now I'm going to be coaching a team- and it happens to be, in the verado area- with people who could come to the church, but I'm scared. They're not going to come to the church because my kid's not the best baseball player in the world and I'm probably not going to be the best coach in the world, and they're going to look at my kid and then he's not going to want to come to church because I'm too intense with him on the field, because I want people to not judge me. And then I come back to church. I'm sitting here thinking that my outside lifestyle is one that is not fitting for a pastor, and then I'm struggling with that internally.

Do people like me? Will people ever come to this church? Do I have any friends. I'm struggling with all of these things because everything in life- and you could say this to your neighbor- it's connected. It's connected, everything in life is connected.

And my frustration it's not that, it's not that I don't have good intentions, it's not that I'm just screwing everything up, it's that there's this myth of balance that says I'm going to figure all this stuff out one day, but then there's the reality that I'm never going to feel like I really hit a balance in life. Now. Don't hear me wrong. I didn't say there's not a solution. I said this myth of balance really is a myth and you're never going to get there because if you're successful in one area, there's going to be diminishing in another area.

And then, if you're successful in two areas, our tendency is to add another area, like coaching a team or for some reason. This is going to help me. I signed up for the Buckeye Marathon. Why? Why did I do that?

I don't know. I just I don't know why, but because that's what we do. We're illogical as creatures and that's what we do also. I think it'll help me be more productive, but then I'm going be running eight miles. On Saturdays I could be reading a book and prepping a better sermon so we could grow a better church.

But you know, I guess I'm going to run, I'll listen to a podcast or this is what we do. And I don't say that so that you think I'm crazy. I say that because my hope would be that you connect with that in some areas in your life, that you're trying, you're struggling to find this balance and feel not like you've perfected it, but that you feel satisfied. And what came to me when I was reading the text for this week was the realization that there's not really a solution to the balance issue. But the real problem isn't even that you don't have balance, it's that you don't feel satisfied, and you can feel satisfied.

There is a solution to your lack of satisfaction and I'm- I'm just going to say it- it's in the person and work of Christ Jesus, and so I'm going to be in the Bible today. I want to goe and let you guys, turn there to be in Colossians, chapter 1. Yeah, you can go, pull that stuff out. I think here's ultimately our problem. Yeah, perfect man, I appreciate you.

Say this is you- and I know you're not a surge protector, - but say this is you, with your innate capacity to do a limited amount of things and say: you've got this much bandwidth. What we tend to do in life to find satisfaction is to acrw, and these are kind of lightly representative. One of those things that I didn't bring up a second ago was man. If I'm going to, if I'm going to be productive, I've also got to eat healthy. In order to eat healthy, that means I need a meal prep, and the only time I can meal prep is on Sunday.

But Sunday I, I, I was at church for 8 hours and I'm dead tired by the time I get back there, and I'm equally, like, emotionally drained, because I preached about 60% of the sermon that I intended to preach, and so I feel like 100% of a failure. So even when it comes to meal prepping, I'm thinking about this kind of stuff, and so that's a struggle. But hey, let me just add meal prepping to it. This is me, right? My wife takt an hour to get ready the morning, but to be productive, I take 15 minutes to get ready in the morning.

I'm just throwing shade, sweetie, you're beautiful. And then. And then one of the things that we never think about is, hey, to be more productive. You actually got to get eight hours of sleep, which takes to be down, or takes me down- two hours of productivity in a day, but if I'm asleep, it's going to be more productive. And so, like this is what we do.

We're constantly shuffling and mixing and trying to figure out the Perfect combo that will get us satisfied. But here's the problem with all of this: if you start in the wrong place, you're going to be left wanting because, on your own, you lack a power source, and so my intent today would be to help you make the connection. That's my sermon title. Make the connection because when we, when we recognize that there's a power that's greater than us, that will actually help us not find balance but find satisfaction and contentment in life, and we tap into the power source, that's when things work the way we want them to work. And, I guess- because I keep forgetting to turn this on- there we go.

Yeah, I had it, I did it in the first one too, so here's my joke. Yeah, you can plug in, but if you don't lean in, then anyways, there's all right. Make the connection. I know that's simple. It might even be comical to some of you, but I think it's helpful.

Many of you are operating in your own capacity, trying to figure out your own life, mixing it, matching it, trying to figure it out, but without Christ- Jesus at the core of your life. That's why I love the vision God gave us. We want to help people find piece- that's cool, that's specific. Want to help people develop purpose- that's cool, that's specific. But here's the solution: it's by revolving everything around Jesus, like everything around him.

He is our power source and if we can recognize that, our lives will change, the trajectory of your life will, will, will radically shift, such that you will find- maybe not what you expect to find, but as you follow Jesus, you see contentment in ways that you hadn't before. And so what I want to do is I want to walk you through this passage, first by reading it to you and then by taking you through each part, and I think that the Lord would invite us to change a few things about the way we live our lives and that would help us find that satisfaction we look for. And I would encourage you: keep coming every Sunday, at least until September 8th, because we're going doing this interconnected series through that and the goal of this series is. We're going to talk today about connect to God. But we're going to talk about connecting with others, connecting at a deeper level with ourselves, connecting to the community, connecting to the church.

We're going to talk about how we can make all of these connections and, when rooted in Christ Jesus, find satisfaction, joy and excitement about the next season. So we're going to be in Colossians, chapter 1, verse 15, to start. The son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, for in him all things were created, things in heaven and on Earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones or powers or rulers or authorities. All things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together and he is the head of the body, the church.

He is the beginning and the first born from among the dead so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him and through him- that is Christ- to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth, Earth or things in Heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross. What he says first here is: the son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. My first point to you is: I'd encourage you to change your image. Now.

What I'm not saying here is you need to. You need to go change your clothing. I'm not saying you need to go to your profile picture on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube or whatever you're using and change that image. What I'm saying is you need to change your perspective or viewpoint on Jesus. The image matters, like the, the way that you view something matters.

When I was growing up, I had an image of God that was inadequate to get me to follow God. I think many of us find ourselves in that place where your image of God not rooted in Christ Jesus. It's rooted in something that you heard from somebody. It's rooted in what you've seen on CNN or Fox News or any news organization. Is rooted in what you've seen on social media or what someone said to you one time when they were trying to Trump you in a beliefs conversation.

Your view of God is limited because you have. You do not have an understanding of who God really is, and I don't say that to make you feel bad. I say that to connect with you because I get it. My view of God was of some ethal Cosmic being who set up in, whether it was space or heaven or some otherw worldly place, and he sat there with this, like staff of judgment, over a glass floor, and for some reason I saw him on the clouds and for some reason the clouds were pink like a sunset in Arizona. That was my image of God and I.

I'm not saying that the Bible doesn't give us communication about sometimes, that being the case, but when I heard that I thought I no, that doesn't connect with me, that's not my style, that's not my vibe. I don't like this judgmental God who always expects me to check every box, cross every tea and Dot every eye. I don't know that I feel connected with this God who has no Grace and is constantly judging. And that was my first image, and it took me a while to understand, by looking at the person and work of Jesus, who God really was. Some of us, we heard about the judgmental God from the people on the street corner and that's who we think God is.

But the Bible tells us that God is full of Grace, a Grace willing to forgive you in spite of all of your wrongdoing. That God is full of grace that he would send his own son to die on the cross and rise from the grave so that you and I can have an abundant life. That's Grace. But many of us have heard about the other side of things, where you people are judgmental in the church. But Jesus is cool and I want to be clear: he is cool, he's 100% cool.

I love, love Jesus. But the Jesus that they paint is one of Grace, with no truth, says: you can believe what you want, I still love you. You can do whatever you want, I still love you, which is true. But the fact is, if you talk about God being gracious without talking about the mission he wants to put you on, you have an incorrect and inadequate image of what he has for your life. Don't hear me saying God's not gracious.

He is, but let's not pretend that God is not the God of the universe, who has an expectation and a standard, and the only reason we don't have to meet that standard is because he sent his son to die on the cross. But now that we followed him, if we followed him, he's got a plan for our lives that it's just better. If we follow, the image matters. The word for image there comes from the Greek word or the word image. There is actually the Greek word econos, which is where we get the word icon.

And I love this because it gives me a helpful illustration as to how our relationship with God works. Because when I tap into the power of God, when, like like an icon in a computer- I don't know if we even call that anymore. You know the things on your phone that when you tap it, it opens up a program. Yeah, that's an icon, it is an image that is full of a program that you can do something on. And when we tap into Jesus, what we start to get access to is the full power of God, the grace of God and the truth of God.

And so when we look in Jesus- not just the law, not just the Old Testament, not just what you saw from those people who act like they read the Bible and start quoting Scriptures at you, but they don't really know the Bible, or at least they don't know the intent or heart of the Bible. No, what you see when you open the Bible and read about Jesus- Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, acts, Romans- what Paul says about Jesus helps us understand that he is loving, that he is forgiving, that he is compassionate and that he will help us. In fact, fact, he works everything together for our good because he loves us. That's what I see about God. Yes, he has standards, but he also has love, and when I click on, when I tap into, when I understand His Image, I'm in that much of a better place in my walk.

You've got to start with the proper image of God, otherwise you're going to step into the wrong Pathways. He says the son is the image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation- verse 16. For in him all things were created. In him all things were created, things in heaven and on Earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones or powers or rulers or authorities. All things have been created through him and for him.

I know when you hear that you're like: okay, that's a whole bunch of like prepositions, that's a whole bunch of like adjectives, that's a whole bunch of pronouns. Right, like, I don't quite through him, for him, by him, in him, with him, like for him, like. All of these are super confus, confusing. Scholars actually are equally confused when they read this passage. And do you mind if I go deeper for a second?

Just shake your head, yeah, if you're cool with me going deeper. No, you, that's saw two people. The rest of y'all Y not cool with it. I'll stay simple. I'll stay totally simple.

If you want me to stay simple, okay, we can go deeper. All right, we'll go deeper. When I was in my Greek studies, what we would learn is: this is about this thing called syntax. Now let me make it simple. Syntax is like just sentence.

Right, what we say, what we're saying there is, you can have parts of a sentence, but the sentence is whole, gives you the context for what you should interpret. Meaning, if I give you a word, you're limited, but if I give you a sentence, there is more context. So you have better understanding. And so when we look at prepositions- I know craziness, you haven't been in English class in a minute- when we look at prepositions, like in for by two, all those prepositions, we have basic understandings, but when you look at the syntax, you have a better understanding. Why do I tell you that?

Because in the beginning of this verse it says this: for in him. Now, that's the NIV, but if you have the nasb, it says for by him. Well, hold up, those are different. Right, I for in him, for by him, but because of, because of the way prepositions work in Greek, it's the Greek word in literally e, n or Epsilon, new right, that's in for, in him, it could be in by, for, to, with. You can literally interchange them, but the context or the sentence tax is what helps you understand it.

And so what we learned in Greek class is- and this is what our Greek Professor would say, not just me making it up- so someone way smarter than me told me this. He said: when you're in doubt, zoom out and use what we call the data of reference. And he says: instead of saying in, by, for, to, with, through, say with reference to, and I love this because here's how you would retranslate that. He says for, with reference to him. All things were created in heaven and on Earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones or powers or rulers or authorities.

All things have been created through him and for him, with reference to him. Here's my point. I think it might be beneficial for us to zoom out and recognize that everything in life needs to be in a different frame of reference. That's my point. Change your frame of reference.

Everything. Look at your neighbor, say everything is connected. And if everything is connected, and he holds all things together. That means to me that they're all in reference to him. But we've been living life plugging into the sege protector without plugging into the source.

Everything needs to be in reference to him, Matt. What do I mean by that? That's super vague and philosophical. Here's what I mean. I mean when you parent- you need a parent- in reference to Christ Jesus.

I mean when you husband or wife: you need a husband or wife in reference to Christ Jesus. I mean when, when you're driving, come on somebody when you're driving, you need to do so in reference to Christ Jesus. And I know there's a reason you had put the church bumper sticker on your, on your car yet, cuz we ain't driving in reference to Christ Jesus. Even me, I'm working on it. Guys, we're all a work in progress.

Praise the Lord, we're work in progress and he's willing to work on us and make us into his workmanship. That's cool, but right now I'm still- he's still really, really working on my driving. I know y'all live in Phoenix. It's the worst place for road rage. You need to be driving in reference to Jesus.

You need to be working at your job with reference to Jesus. You do your hobbies in reference to Jesus, like if, if we can do everything, like if all things are for him, by him, through him, with regard, with reference to him, that changes the way that I do everything and we wonder why we feel unsatisfied. It's because we're doing everything in reference to ourselves. But if we do everything in reference to someone greater, Christ Jesus- that's when things start to shift and my satisfaction becomes present. I got to do it in reference to him.

Well, you might say, h how, how can I do everything in reference to him? It's actually really simple. You don't have to know the Bible to do this. It's as simple as trying to reorient your mind to think about him. When you're doing things- like when I'm about to say that to my wife because she did something or said something or didn't do something that I wanted her to do- right, it's like don't say it.

It's when your kid gets on your last nerve. Sometimes you need more than like what the government told you to not do, what the government told you not to do. Sometimes, just being real, I want you to get the wrong ideas here and call social services on me. I'm just saying sometimes I don't, I don't think spanking your kids is as helpful as they used to think it was. I don't think yelling at your kids and emotion is as helpful as you people used to think it was.

 But what I will say is sometimes it's hard to parent my kids in relation to Jesus or in reference to Jesus. But if we can make it an automated thing where we revolve everything around him and change our frame of reference, if you can change your frame of reference, it will change every aspect of your life. And then when you get into this place where it's difficult, you're going to be about as surprised as I am whenever I see someone who knows Jesus respond to a, a sickness or an illness. I'm like: are you okay? And they're like: no, God's got me, man, you've got a different frame of reference than me.

That frame of reference helps you understand that even at the end of me, there's still power beyond me. That frame of reference that says, even when I'm at the end of my capacity, there's still capacity. It'll change everything if you change your frame of reference. In the end, that's how it's going to be anyways. So let's just get started.

Verse 17: it says this: he is before all things and in him all things hold together. I'll give you my point really quickly. You got to change your foundation, change your foundation. In him, all things hold together. I, I, I love that, and the first illustration that came to my mind was one where, like he's, he's sticky Like Glue when you get attracted to him and all this other stuff.

I know I brought that up. It wasn't a good illustration, but then, as I was going down the rabbit hole trying to figure out how to communicate this idea to each of you, I was actually looking at something that God had revealed to me back in 2015, and it was in the idea of a foundation. How many of you know what Foundation your houses here in Phoenix are mostly built on? Say it, say it loud, be confident. Come on slab, which means concrete.

Very good, y' so much better than the first service. It's just like they took a minute. I had to help them out. They really needed to shift their Foundation. They thought they were on something else.

You know? Yes, it's a slab and it's concrete. Did you know there are different of concrete out there? Yeah, some of y'all did. The rest of y'all I'm I'm explaining to you now.

I dove into the rabbit hole and I became a concrete Tour all of a sudden. I'm super excited about this stuff. So normal concrete has what they call a t strength- I'm oversimplifying here and. Then there's a concrete that's a little bit stronger and it's concrete that you fill with rebar which is like a metal pole stuck into it. Oversimplifying, I know you construction guys are like what's this pastor doing, talking about stuff he's not a professional in.

But then I did research. I was, I was researching and I found out that there's a higher level of concrete. It's, PC, It's Not Special- ultra high performance concrete. Ultra high performance, yeah, ultra high performance concrete. Here's what they do and I love it and I can't pass up a good good illustration when I see it.

So you're getting it. If it's not good, I apologize. If it is good, you're welcome. And ultra high performance concrete: what they do is they take little like particles of steel and carbon and they mix it all the way through into the mix of concrete and what that does is the concrete adheres to these metal parts and makes it four times as strong as normal concrete. And I love that illustration because a lot of us- we try to sprinkle Jesus onto our lives- say like: what do we do?

What we add? We add things hoping it's going to bring us satisfaction. So I'm going add church. A little Jesus at the end of the week is going to help me a lot. And what I think is more beneficial, because I've seen people come to church week after week after week after week and they're still not satisfied.

And it's because you added Church to the equation. You added a little bit of Jesus to the equation, but you didn't embed him into every aspect of the mix of your life. He's got to attach to every part, and when he does, that's when you begin finding satisfaction. Because it's not me who holds stuff together. If this church was contingent on me alone or our team alone, it wouldn't be good.

Like if my family was contingent on me alone, it would not be good, because it's I'm just. I'm just this, with a limited amount of output, and I plug the stuff in, but I've got to get power from somewhere. He holds all things together and when your life is splitting apart at the seams, don't try to fix it yourself because you're incapable, you have a limited amount of strength. But when you attach Jesus to every part of your being, it exponentially increases the amount of capacity that you have and it will give you Joy. I don't know I.

He holds all things together. Hebrews tells us that he holds all things together by the word of his immovable power. The word of his immovable power. If we can grasp this idea that we can change our foundation and put Jesus at the center of our Lives, that's when things begin to. I'm not saying it's all perfect, I'm saying it.

It starts to shift you and you won't even notice it until a year from now or two years from now, when you look back and you're like: oh wow, I'm Different. Jesus even tells his disciples: don't build on Sand. He says: build on the Rock. And Jesus actually says in Matthew, the same page passage or the same Scriptures that he talks about here. He says: not only build your house on the rock, but he says: the rock is the confession that we see from Peter that he is the Christ, the son of the Living God.

The rock that you're building your life on is the confession that Jesus is the center of all things. It says in verse 18. And he is the head of the body, the church, he is the beginning and the firstborn from the dead, so that in everything, he might have the supremacy. My fourth point is: you got to change your Authority. Change your Authority.

Now I want to be clear. I'm not I'm not telling you to be blind like Blind. Faith is better than no faith, I will say that. But sometimes it gets annoying when people don't know why they believe what they believe. But I think we sometimes overcorrect.

You know what I'm talking about. We live in this culture where we like to deconstruct everything. And I was telling my wife recently. I said: you know, if you construct without reconstructing, You're simply destroying, and that's what we've done with the church. It's because we distrust Authority, whether it be Church Authority or God's Authority.

I think we distrust Authority in general. I mean, it happened in the 70s with some of you older PE, no, so it is happening again, where we, I think, generation after generation, we just distrust the packaging that the former generation gives us and we have become so, that's, so normalized that we just question everything. And when you deconstruct it, it puts you into a place where you have the ingredients, but sometimes you got no power. It would I. I want to try to simplify it because the idea of deconstruction is a heavy philosophical topic, but I think when we, in figing against Authority, we disrupt or deconstruct what we're given, we then leave it in its part and then fail to see the whole.

It would be like: I and I love fancy restaurants. Anyone like fancy restaurants? I can't afford any of them, but I like them. I like the idea of them. Like I watch those shows where they put something together really, really cool in a unique way, and then I look at the price of those things and I'm like: no, not worth it for me, but I like them.

Where they get on my nerves is when they deconstruct. Like if you go to a fancy restaurant and they bring you to your table a plate with a piece of lettuce, a tomato, some bacon, then you got crumbled up, ground beef, with a little bit of sauce. Oh, it's not sauce. It's not sauce. It's tomato vinegarette with a little bit of cumin on top instead of barbecue sauce.

They're different, right, and so you, you put that on top and then you make sure to put a yeast roll next to it, and then they do something with ice in front of you and I'm sitting here paying a whole bunch of money and I'm like I, I get the deconstructing of it, but I just ordered the hamburger. You know what I'm saying, and I think that's so often how, how we miss out on our faith. It would be like God gives us something in packaging the way he intends for it to be received, but because of our questioning Spirit, one that doesn't come from Curiosity or wonder, one that comes from a challenge of the authority that he has, we say, hold on, you gave me this, but I got to understand the nuances of this and, how many of you know what this is? Oh, oh, which one did I use? I need to make sure I pull it out the right way, not deconstructed, all right.

So we're going to work here. So I'm going to deconstruct this for you. This is bread, this is cheese, this is Turkey. And then this was on it too, but I pulled it off a second: this is lettuce. And I think what happens is God gives us something perfectly in the packaging, but because we don't trust his authority, we receive it, question the nuances of it and say, okay, cool, I split it apart, I, I parsed it, so now I'm going to eat it.

That's good cheese. Good Lett of this is great turkey. I'll do the bread, even though I'm gluten intolerant. That's what we do with the tax. That's what we do with the church.

That's what we do U with some of our Traditions. I know Traditions sometimes need to adjust, but that's what we do because we don't trust Authority. We, we deconstruct and God's looking at us like, hey, you know what? There's nothing inherently wrong with you parsing these things out and understanding them at a deeper level, but you probably have enjoyed it more as a turkey sandwich and I think sometimes, because of our questioning, we fail to receive the true benefits of allowing him to be the head of the body, meaning he's got the brain power like I. I'm just an instrument and I need to trust him with how I live my life.

Again, I want to be careful because there have been people say, hey, just listen to what the Bible says, and they did it in the wrong way and it brought you into the wrong place. And now you're deconstructing because you had a bad experience. But I want you to know that when you open God's word, the word that is sharper than any two-edged sword that can Pierce through to your soul and help you grow in righteousness, when you look at God's word and listen to what it tells you. If you start with a posture of saying: you know, I'm going to trust God and then I live my life, which by nature is testing that theory of trust, you're going to find that he never fails you or forsakes you. But when we come to him questioning we, I'll do it when I don't know about this.

Then we don't even get to test whether God is a man of his word. I believe he is. Some things we just don't even need a question right. Like some things, like God, I'm worthless. I'm so worthless why didn't you make me worth more?

And God's like. You're the apple of my eye, like I knew you before your mom had you. I love you, I care about you, you're special in my eyes. Like that's not something we needed to question. You don't have to question your worth.

The Bible tells you. He tells you might say: well, I don't feel comfortable in my own body or in my own skin. It's like hold. I formed you in your mother's womb, every hair, your head. I knew, I gave you a calling before you, you, you even said anything.

I have a plan for you that's greater than you can ask, think or imagine. Maybe you don't need to question that because God created you. You might say: well, what about? What about the person I'm with? I, I married him.

But man? Well, the Bible says: what God put together, let not man separate. And I know there are exceptions, but why do we always start with the exception and the questions, rather than starting with the word of God and say: well, what does the word of God say? Well, if he ordained it a certain way, maybe it's good. And rather than starting with the questioning, I can just move forward and test the theory by trusting him.

When I say change your Authority, what I mean is stop listening to what culture says before you listen to what God says. Stop listening to even what your mommy and your daddy said before you listen to What God Says. Stop listening to what your inner thoughts say because of your bad experiences and Trauma in the past. I'm not saying: don't deal with them, hear me right. Some of these things take people to help us with, professionals to help us with, but that doesn't negate the fact that you should start with What God Says.

Change your Authority, change your foundation, change your frame of reference, and that'll even help you understand at the deeper level, the full extent of his image. And for me, it's hard for me to describe when I talk about God's image in Christ Jesus, but here's what I definitely know when I'm in my worst places. It's not Nostalgia of this one moment at church camp that gets me through, it's it's. It's a Viewpoint, a perspective of the image of God in Jesus's life, his death and resurrection and his plan for my life. That gets me through.

And here's what the text finishes with, verse 19. For God was pleased to have all his fullness, the full extent of who God is dwell in Jesus and through Jesus, to reconcile to himself everything, whether they're on Earth or in heaven. And he did this by making peace through his blood shed on the cross. Here's your ultimate solution and Pathway to satisfaction. It is believing on Christ Jesus's death on a cross, the blood that was shed for our transgressions.

The Bible makes it clear that if we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved. And when we are saved, it's not a stopping point, it's a starting point. That's where we begin this process of strengthening Our Lives by attaching Jesus to every part, and so for anyone in here who has not begun this process of trusting in Jesus and following him, I want to give you an opportunity to make that decision right now. So if everybody would bow their heads and close their eyes, I want to pray this prayer together, out loud, for the benefit of those who are praying it for real for the first time, right. So repeat after me: God, I believe, believe.

I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I believe he died on the cross. Believe the and Rose from the grave and Rose from the grave. Forgive me of my sin, forgive me of my S, make me a new creation.

And I will involve you, I will invol in every part of my life, of life. It's in Jesus's name that we pray, and God's people said: amen. If that was you, we want to celebrate that, that right now. So can we just celebrate? I know we don't know who you are, but he does.