"Follow the Flow of God's Grace" - Isaiah 57:15

Can you follow the flow of God's grace in your life?

Copyright Disclaimer:
The owners of all media in this production have granted permission and hold the copyright: shiftworship.com, epidemicsound.com, CCLI 20811957 / CVLI 20811964, and Artlist.io. This production is not being monetized in any way.

Thanks for listening. Be sure to visit cedarstreet.org for more information.

Listen to more audio sermons HERE.

Connect with us HERE.

E-mail us at info@cedarstreet.org

FACEBOOK
INSTAGRAM
YOUTUBE

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, Cedar Street, once again, I love you so very much. It's my joy to be with you here this morning. You know, we've um, as I mentioned last week, we finished a long journey together as we were in the book of 2 Samuel. We went through from top to bottom. I think it ended up being 15 weeks together as we hit all the high notes, the highs, the lows, and the buffaloes of uh King David. Uh we saw how he was a faithful man who ran after God's own heart, but a flawed man who ran after God's amazing grace. And so it is true for many of us. There's times that we're faithful. But you can look in the mirror and say, Oh, we are deeply flawed. That's a great transition for where we're going to be today. So, what I typically like to do here, uh, unless the Holy Spirit moves me in a different direction, which he has all permission to do, is typically in the months of January and in the months of July, as I'm transitioning out of a series, I like to preach from the overflow of my own devotional life. These are passages that I'm reading and praying through. These are things that I'm wrestling with in the prayer closet, writing down in my own prayer journal, and it's a way for me to share with you what God is speaking to me. And so today, as you can see the picture of that water fountain, we're going to be in Isaiah chapter 57, verse 15. And the title of our message here this morning is Follow the Flow of God's Grace. Follow the flow of God's grace. Grace, I'm learning more every single week of my walk with Jesus, is one of those absolute essential words in the Christian vocabulary that we need the most and that we misunderstand the most. I believe all of us struggle to fully understand how grace works in our daily life. We can never hear this word enough. We can never learn enough. You know, again, in this life, we are all students. None of us are teachers when it comes to grace. Now, if you were here last week in our final message in 2 Samuel, we talked a lot about pride. And the illustration I used is that if our heart is a garden, that pride is that persistent weed that never goes away. And you rip it at the root on one end of the garden and all of a sudden something pops up on the other side of the garden. And I and we typically become the most prideful when we are corrected in the area that we find the most identity. Ladies, if I if I question how you parent your daughter or your son, I'm going to find out where your pride is. Men, if I question that you're not as successful as you think you are, or that you could have done the job that you did all those years, that you could have done it better, and here's how you could have done it, your pride will rise up. Why? Because we have a fallen nature and we misplace our identity in so many different things. If we were walking completely in the truth, we would understand there's nothing that we have, whether the gifts that God has given us, or even the limitations and weaknesses that God has allowed us to have, all of those are part of God's grace. Well, today we're going to shift from pride to humility. We know a lot about pride. We talked about pride. We all have pride. We're all called to be humble. And that's incredibly difficult. In fact, it is not natural, it is supernatural. You can't simply become humble. You need the help of God, and He's happy to help us to become humble. Because that's the only position that He can truly bless us. And that's what we're going to talk about today. So if last week's illustration was the persistent weed in the garden of your heart, which is pride, today as I talk about grace, I want you to think about grace as living water that starts high and runs as low as low gets. Now, anybody in this room who's worked on building and grounds can tell you this. Water doesn't run up, it runs down. All right. In this room, we had a horrible flood with a sewage back up years ago. In the other building, recently, of course, we had to replace everything. We had a flood because we had a toilet that was running and it just ran over and then flooded the entire building. We don't need a lesson on this. We can all agree on this. Water doesn't run up, it runs down. Well, it's the same way with God's grace. He does not give grace to the proud, he gives grace to the humble. Grace starts high where God is and it runs lower and lower and lower until it finds its lowest place. And so the question I'm going to keep asking you throughout this message: are you low enough to be in the flow of God's grace? Give you a silly example to get us started here. When I was about eight or nine years old, this I think was Christmas of 1988, one of the gifts that I got in my stocking. Most kids my age got cartoons and all kinds of things. I used to watch sports videos. I know that's a huge shock. And I got a VHS of my favorite basketball player of all time, Julius Irving. Most people know him as Dr. J. And the and the video was called Dr. J's Basketball Stuff. And half the video was highlights of his career, and the other half was him coaching you as you're watching the video on how you can be a better basketball player. Well, one of the parts he talked about jumping higher, and he said you ought to keep a journal and chart how high you're jumping and you ought to do exercises, and I thought, man, this is great. Eight years old, I'm like, by the time I'm a teenager, I'm going to be tomahawk jamming on a 10-foot rim. Well, I don't know where that journal is, but I stopped marking my progress because I realized that wasn't going to happen. But one thing he said in the video, I'll never forget, I don't know why I remember this all these years later. When he was doing a section on defense, he went like this, and he said, never forget this is the position of readiness. The position of readiness, your feet spread apart, your palms open, your eyes on the hips of your uh of the player that you're guarding, not his eyes, and just constantly, wherever, wherever you're supposed to go, that's the position of readiness. Well, today we're going to talk about the position of readiness spiritually when you are seeking to experience the grace of God in your life. Let me show you what it is. It's right here. It's right here. Now, physically we do this sometimes, and sometimes we don't. God cares more about the posture of your heart than he does the posture of your knees, but I'm just trying to give you a visual. This is the position of readiness when you want to experience the grace of God in your life. And if you want to grow closer to God, congratulations, he's going to put you in a position that brings you right here. And I look around this room as someone who's been in this church 16 years. I don't know everything, but I could probably point in every pew and see areas where God has handed you trials and you don't realize it's the exact tool that He wants to use to put you in a position to receive His grace. We don't understand grace. We don't. We don't, we don't, most of us don't even want grace. We just want prosperity. We don't want to depend on God. We just want to, in our own strength, to enjoy as much comfort and success and pleasure, and we'll worry about heaven when we get there. We don't want God. We want what God can give us. But when we're in desperate times, that's when we start calling out. And I'm not here to call anybody in this room a hypocrite because guess what? There are plenty of people who are in desperate times and they're not calling out to God, they're cursing God. So if you're in this room today because you're desperate and you're calling out to God, you're in a good place. Get in that position of readiness. Because God does want to pour out his grace. I believe that. I believe that we're going to be in heaven one day and we're going to realize all this grace that God wanted to give to us, but our pride got in the way. So what's our big idea? In one sentence, here it is. Follow the flow of God's grace and you'll see an overflowing fountain of living water running to the lowest places. Follow the flow of God's grace, and you'll see an overflowing fountain of living water running to the lowest places. So if you want to know more about how you and I can get in the flow of God's grace, turn with me, if you could, to the book of Isaiah. We're going to see how this works in the nation of Israel, and then we're going to see how it works in our life today. The book of Isaiah, if you're new to the Bible, Isaiah comes after the Song of Solomon and before Jeremiah. If you don't have a Bible, or if you didn't bring your Bible, grab the Pew Bible in front of you or beside you. We're on page 733 in your Pew Bible. And if you would stand at this time, out of the reverence to the reading of God's holy, infallible, inerrant, and fully sufficient word, we're in Isaiah chapter 57. I'm going to read just one verse. There is plenty of meat on this bone. In verse 15, hear God's word to us. For thus says the one who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite. Let's pray. Oh Lord, how many Sundays have we come into this place and we have sang about your grace? And we have taught and preached and shared about your grace. We've even tasted and experienced your grace. But then we've gone back to being prideful and self-sufficient, and we've put up barriers to experiencing that living water that you want to pour out on our lives. Lord, I don't know everything. You know every hair on the head of everyone here, and you know every ache and their pain and every sigh in their soul. Lord, I pray right now that you would speak through me, that the words would be yours, the glory would be yours, and the grace that is yours would be poured out, that you would bring us to a place low enough and pour out your grace full enough that we could truly say we have been revived. And we're going to respond with a deeper surrender to you. Be with us right now, I pray. In Jesus' name. God's people said amen. Now, I always like to, this is the part in the sermon where I always like to define my terms. I don't expect that everybody in this room is on the same, in the same place in their spiritual journey. Perhaps there are some of you here that are new to the Bible, maybe those of you watching on live stream, maybe some of you listening to this podcast don't know the word grace. When I say grace, what do I mean? I don't just mean the blessing you pray over your food, although that's an important thing. Grace, looking at what all of Scripture has to teach, I've used this definition for years. Grace is God working in us and through us to accomplish what we cannot on our own. I'll say it again. Grace is God working in us and through us to accomplish what we cannot on our own. Now, there are some aspects of grace that even a new Christian understands, and then there's other aspects of grace that I've met Christians who've been in the pew 50 years and they still have not grasped this. All right? When you think of grace, think of his provision, his power, and his presence. Now, most people I think understand forgiveness. That's the one aspect of grace. When we sing amazing grace, the heartbeat of that famous hymn is one of the forgiveness of our sins. It's what Brother Eddie just sang when he talked about being covered in the red of Christ's blood, that we are forgiven. Is that grace you better believe it's grace? But I listen to Christians over and over, and that's the only grace they talk about. I'm forgiven of my sins, forgiven of my sins, forgiven of my sins, forgiven of my sins. Well, you should be thinking about that every day because until you stop sinning, that grace is still needed. And so we're always going to need God's grace. We should always thank Him for forgiveness of sins, but there's so much more to His grace than just being forgiven. And this is why people pray to receive Christ. They join a church and then they abandon the church because they're I've been forgiven, I've received God's grace, I'm good. And they don't experience all the aspects of God's grace. It's not just forgiveness, it's power to live the Christian life. You have a mission that God has called you on, and you cannot do it apart from his grace. Trust me. Give it a try. Do what you really think God's calling you to do without asking for God's help, and you'll find out just how fast you'll fall flat on your face. You cannot do God's work apart from his help. Now, you may have a lot of gifts and you may be able to get by for a season, but he's always going to ask you to do something that you can't do, and you need to ask for his help. That's the power of God's grace. And then, and then, oh, the sweetness, the epicenter of this is the presence of God and his grace. That's what I'm running after more than anything else in my life right now. I want to experience the presence of God in the depths of my soul. I know he's there. He doesn't leave me, he doesn't leave you. But I want the grace to taste just how good he is. I want the grace to be able to enjoy things with him. You know, I was thinking about this last night. I was with some friends of mine and I left their house early because I don't like driving in the dark, so I missed the fireworks, and that's okay. I'm okay with that. I'm a 90-year-old man in a 46-year-old body, and that's one of those nights that my 90-year-old comes out. So it's 9 o'clock on July 4th, and I'm in a dark kitchen scrubbing dishes. And I was just praying last night as I'm scrubbing dishes in my in my you know quiet, empty house, I was just saying, Lord, even scrubbing dishes is something I can find joy in if we do this together. If you are with me, even the quietest, darkest moments can be a joy. But Lord, if you're not with me, even being in a fireworks show with 50 of my favorite people will not be what my heart desires. I want you. And he gives that to the people that seek it because that's grace. When we're living in pride, we don't want God. We want to be God. That's the nature of our hearts. And so if God's grace is his provision, okay, that may be his forgiveness, that may be providing financially, that may be providing physically, emotionally, relationally, providing something that you desperately need. It could be his power, giving you the strength to do what you cannot do on your own, and it may just be his presence, the grace of intimacy with him, which is my heart's desire. Now, if that's God's grace, I want you to think of it as living water. It has to run downward. It doesn't run upward. Listen, start in Genesis and go to Revelation and do a study of arrogance and pride and find out God don't do God don't do pride. God does humility. And by the way, Jesus Christ is the portrait of humility. He's the most humble being in the universe. He's the most approachable being in the universe. We want to be more like Jesus because we want to be humble enough to experience the grace that Jesus did in his earthly ministry. He shows us the way. Now, as we look in the book of Isaiah, in this one passage, Isaiah contrasts the high, exalted place of pride and then the lowly place of grace, where hearts and spirits are truly revived. What was Israel's issue? Well, their issue is the same as ours. Idolatry. Israel, when they're blessed by God, they got fat, they got lazy, they got prideful, and they looked to themselves. And then God would lead them into great trial. He'd hand them over to their enemies, and they would get desperate again. And then God would pour out a blessing again. You don't see this any more clearly than in the book of Judges. Over and over and over is a cycle, and it says they did what was right in their own eyes, pride. They celebrated their prosperity. In some way, they believe that they're the one that made it happen. And then God leads them into a situation that is bigger than them, they cannot fix, and all of a sudden they're back on their knees again. And God said, Why did you ever get off your knees? I blessed you the first time when you were on your knees. Why did you elevate yourself to a place of pride? I can't bless you when you're there. And you and I are just like Israel. When things are going great, we don't praise God, we praise prosperity. And we don't give God credit. In some way, we think we're the ones that made it happen. Have you ever prayed really hard for something and then it happened? And somewhere in your mind for just a second you said, that probably was going to happen anyway. Even if I didn't pray, that would have happened anyway. I kind of made that happen. Don't you tell me you've never thought that. It's until God leads us into a place that we absolutely cannot fix with our own hands. And then we see God move, and then we recognize everything is his grace. Everything. The thing is, God doesn't want us to get off our knees spiritually. He doesn't want us to get to a place where we don't need him anymore. And we're going to find out today if we're in the right position to be in the flow of the grace that God wants to pour out in our lives. So I want to jump right in as we look, number one. Look up to see the fountain of God's grace. We're going to look at the fountain, the flow, and the fruit. So let's start with the fountain. Look up to see the fountain of God's grace. First part of verse 15 is all about God. And what does it say about God, who's the source and fountain of grace? It says, For thus says the one who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy. All right, what does that say about God, our God? He's in a place where he's not going to share that throne with any of us. He is the one, the one who is high, exalted, eternal, and holy. Now, what does it mean that he's high? Think about your life right now. When it says that God is high, I want you to think that he is above and beyond every earthly circumstance that you're struggling with right now. He's higher than any issue that you have. He can see it from 30,000 feet. He's in control of it. He is higher than your issue. We said this a couple weeks ago in Psalm 61. In the midst of a storm, you need to get high perspective. That's why David said, lead me to the rock that is higher than I. You've got to get perspective when you're in the midst of pain. And you got to look to God who's higher than you are, who's higher than your problem is. He's high and lifted up. What else does it say about God? It says that he's exalted. That means he's Lord. Means he has authority. He knows what you want more than you know to ask for it. He knows. You think he doesn't know what you're praying for? You think he doesn't know what your heart aches for at night? Now, does that mean we should stop praying? Of course not. Sometimes he's waiting for that thousandth prayer to crack the rock and to pour out that grace. But we shouldn't pray as if we if God doesn't know what we desire. He's exalted. He has authority over everything that we're praying for right now. He's also eternal. That means he's got a foot in eternity and a foot here on earth at the same time. He already knows the beginning and the middle and the end. Are you going to trust your perspective? Most of us are fuzzy about what happened in the past. We can see nothing about what's happening in the future, and yet we try to control things and say, God, I got it from here. You think you should control your situation more than God? He sees everything. He knows exactly what is going on. He's not surprised by what you're dealing with right now. Because he's eternal and he's also holy, which means he can see your earthly circumstances without any sinful bias. You and I, we don't know ourselves completely. The Bible says the heart is wicked and deceitful. It's desperately sick, another translation says. You don't know you as well as you think you know you. God knows everything about you. He knows everything you think that you do and things that you didn't do that you could have done, but he prevented you from doing. I've gotten to this point right now. Hopefully we can all get to this point. When I make a wrong turn with my truck and I get off the path, I tell myself, well, that was dumb. But you know, Lord, you let me go, you let me take this wrong turn, because if I stayed on the right path, I might be going somewhere I don't need to go right now. Even in the wrong turns, you need to trust that God knows. He knows everything. Absolutely everything. And if you want to experience his grace, the first thing that you need to do is look up. He's the fountain. He's the source. That's where all the grace begins. We don't look inward for all the answers. We don't look in the mirror to try to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and try to fix everything that's happening in our life. You know, there's something to be said about changing things up once in a while. I'm not opposed to that, but I find that when people are trying to, with white knuckle effort trying to change their life, they change everything. They sell their house, they get a haircut, they change their wardrobe, they get new vehicles. They're always trying to change something. And they're trying to change what they can because they know they don't have the power to change the things they really want to change. And sometimes we need to be still. We need to stop moving around. Stop looking on Amazon. Stop whatever it is that we do to distract ourselves and look up and wait for God to move. So before we look to number two, are you willing to stop looking around and look up to the grace that your heart desires? Israel looked to themselves and they became idolatrous and prideful. And God said, if you won't look at me, I'm going to lead you into a situation where you don't have no other choice. That's number one. Look up to see the fountain of God's grace. Now, number two, follow with me here as we look at the second part of verse 15. Look down to see the flow of God's grace. We went from the fountain to the flow. How does the grace of God work? It starts up and goes down. It doesn't start down and go up. All right, listen to this. It says, I dwell in the high and holy place. That's where it starts. And I also, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit. Again, the grace of God is like water. It's always looking for the lowest place it can find. God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. He gives his best to those who leave all situations up to him. But then he uses some vocabulary here that's super important. He says contrite and lowly. When he says contrite, do you know what that means? All right. How many times have you, for those of you that have grown children, when you had children or grandchildren and they got caught, were they sorry for what they did or were they sorry they got caught? When I was uh 15 years old, actually I was 14, there was a 17-year-old that I met at a camp. Name was Carrie. And my mother did not like me dating Carrie. No one has a 14-year-old and is happy that they're dating a 17-year-old. I thought it was cool. I was the only kid that had a girlfriend driving him to Little League. My mother said, Something's wrong with this. I don't you don't need to be seeing her. So I cooked up a scheme and I decided to meet her at my buddy Dean's house, who lived on about a block away. Well, the problem is we met at Dean's house, but then her mother had to pick her up because her car broke down, and her mother went to my house instead of Dean's to get her. And when my mother saw her mother, she put two and two together. And she gave me, whoo, she gave me, we talked about it when I went home this summer. This talk and two is one of the best ones I ever had. She sounded like Claire Huxtable from the Cosby show. She said, You are a liar. And I will not tolerate a liar in my house. And I put my head down and I went to my room. Now, I'll be honest with you. I was sorry I got caught. I wasn't sorry what I did. Now eventually things didn't work out with Carrie, and that's okay. But that that frown went to a smile when I got to my bedroom. Guess what contrite means? You're not just sorry you got caught. At a soul level, you are sorry that you hurt the heart of God. That's contrite. God, I don't want to dishonor you. I don't want to disobey you after what you've done for me. I am so sorry, Lord, that I dishonored your name. That's contrite. And that's the kind of great, that's the kind of posture where God can pour out his grace. And then lowly, I think we misunderstand this. Now, Jesus in his human, when he was, you know, in his earthly ministry, it says in Matthew 11, he the only time he ever talked about his heart in the Bible. It's the only verse in the New Testament where Jesus talks about himself. We should listen, because he can describe himself better than we can. And what does he say? Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. But he says, I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Now, Jesus didn't have to be contrite, because there was no sin for him to confess, but he said he was lowly. So there's an aspect of lowliness that you don't have to be in sin to be lowly. So what does it mean if Jesus is lowly? It doesn't mean timid, okay? Jesus was not timid. We see plenty of examples where Jesus was definitely not timid. Lowly means that you are fully dependent on the grace of God. Now he teaches us this in another passage in Matthew. He says in Matthew 18, 3, Jesus says, Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. A child is lowly. Not out of ignorance, by the way. Let me say this. I had somebody rebuke me when I said I was going to seminary because they said if you get an education, you're going to be prideful and you'll never be childlike. Well, being called childlike in the kingdom doesn't mean willful ignorance. The Bible says in Proverbs, go get wisdom. So it doesn't mean ignorance, it means dependence. There's a difference. Children are dependent. Can you remember changing your children's diapers? Can you remember the way they looked up at you? There is no way that an infant could change their own diaper. And they're looking up at you like, if you don't fix this, it's going to be this way until you do. That's dependence. That's lowly. That is how God created us. Moment by moment, needy for him, yearning for him, begging him, trusting him, childlike dependence. That's what he wants for each of us in this room. That's where the flow of grace goes. Man, time is really getting away from us here. Lord, give me grace. So will you let your current struggle keep you low enough to be in the flow of God's grace? Maybe you're on your knees right now, but God knows that if he were to bless you right now, a month from now, you would leave and you wouldn't darken the doors of a church again. There's something about trials that bring you into the house of God, and then when things go well, let's see you later. What's going to keep you on your knees, surrendered to God, committed to him, committed to his kingdom, committed to his people? Are we low enough to stay in the grace of God? Now, third and finally, as we wrap up here, we looked up to see the fountain of God's grace, we looked down to see the flow of God's grace. Third, we look out to see the fruit of God's grace. And in one word, the fruit of God's grace is revival. It says that he pours out his grace to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. That's the fruit of grace, revival. And revival is not just feeling excited about God, but being focused on God's kingdom. If revival were to wave, were to wash into this church or this community, it wouldn't just be people marching up and down the street singing. It would be people whose priorities would be focused on God. That's evidence of revival. Now, I know in this church and in this community over the last 16 years that I've been here, I've heard a lot of people talk about that word and then they say things that make it make it seem like we're never gonna experience that word. Revival doesn't happen through morality. I've heard people say, we've gotta get serious about God, we gotta get revival. That's the evidence that's the same way of saying we've gotta get God's grace, we've gotta force God to do what only God can do. You don't bring revival. You can't get revival by singing the third verse of a song over and over, or getting angry and getting frustrated and standing on a soapbox and going to political rallies. That does not bring revival. What brings revival? Repentance. Getting on your face about your sin, not the sin of everybody else that you're disgusted with. How do you know revival's not gonna come when you start with we instead of I? He says he's going to revive the hearts of the contrite, not the ones that are contrite over other people's sin. But when you're broken over your own sin, and when you're broken over your own sin, and when you're yearning for God to move in your life, and you're desperate for him, I mean desperate for him, that's when he pours out his grace. That's been my prayer lately. Lord, give me desperate faith. You know, I there's a little clip from the chosen, I've watched it 50 times on YouTube, of the of the hemorrhaging woman who reaches out for the hem of his garment. And what I love about that scene, I get emotional thinking about it. How she did not care what anybody thought, she broke right through the crowd, she dove right after the fringe of his garment, and then when he when he said to her, Look up, daughter, and she said, I'm no one's daughter, he said, Look up, yes, you are. And I know how hard you've struggled. You are clean. And I looked, I look at I look at the actress who played in that role and just the facial expression that she makes, the desperation in her face. I want to be that way the rest of my life. May the Lord never give me a single blessing that will keep me from being that desperate. And may he do the same for everybody in this room. Desperate faith. Desperate faith. Let me sum it up. Getting low enough to stay in the constant flow of God's grace does not require self-hatred, but self-surrender. Getting low enough to stay in the constant flow of God's grace does not require self-hatred, but self-surrender. Maybe you've heard this and you're like, you're right, Bo. I'm I'm the chief of sinners, I'm scum of the earth. That's not what God's looking for. He's not looking for you to beat yourself up to a pulp. That could actually become pride. He's looking for you to say, I can't, but you can. Help me. This is exactly what Jesus is talking about in John 15. This was my life verse for a long time. Now it's one of my life verses. Jesus says, I am the vine, you are the branches, whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me, what? You can do nothing. There it is. Right there. That's the type of heart where God's gonna pour out his grace. Apart from me, you can do nothing. When you really believe that, when you really trust that, and that leads you to asking him every day for enough grace to make it 24 more hours, that's when you're gonna experience the flow of God's grace. So here's the invitation. What situation in your life right now? I don't care what it is, it's different for everybody in this room. For some of you, it's physical. For some of you, it's spiritual. For some of you, it's financial. For some of you, it's relational. For some of you, it's a combination of every single category I just mentioned. God knows that situation better than you do. And there's nothing wrong with you praying for the desire of your heart for God to change it. And the answer is God may or may not change it the way that you want. He doesn't make that promise on this side of heaven. But he does make the promise that he knows it, he's allowed it, and he's working through it. But you need to seek him in it. What you really need right now is not his hand, it's his heart. You need God. I need God more than anything else. So as we as we enter into this invitation, remain in the flow of his grace. Humble yourself before him. Repent of the sins that you know about, ask for his help, but trust that he's gonna do what's best if you leave the circumstances to him. Let's pray. God, right now, in the name of Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit, we acknowledge you as the fountain of grace. You are high and lifted up, you are exalted, you are holy, you are set apart, you are the source of everything that is good. And we are in desperate need of your grace. And we forfeit it all the time, Lord, because we're prideful, we're self-sufficient, we're self-dependent, we can do it ourselves. And yet, Lord, you know that we can't. Every one of us is in a position right now that we cannot fix, we cannot change, and so we are just completely dependent like children on you. And so we bow before you, Lord, and we ask that you hear the cry of our heart, that you'd pour out living water into contrite and lowly spirits and hearts in this room, that you would revive us, that would restore to us the joy of your salvation, and uphold us with willing spirits to seek more of your grace tomorrow than we did today. Speak to us right now, I pray. In Jesus' name. Amen.