"Four Ways to Keep Pace with Grace" - Proverbs 8:34-36

Are you keeping pace with God's grace in your life right now?

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We are obviously transitioning. Hopefully, everybody made it through the first week of school okay. I feel so blessed and privileged to be a part of this community. To have my daughter part of an awesome Christ-centered school system. And I'm just excited for what lies ahead. But as as I've been mentioning the last few weeks, typically in the month of August, we've had we have a lot of guest speakers. We've had some missionaries come and speak. I'm very grateful as we get towards the end of the month. I believe that our associational missionary Jeff Parmer is going to come and speak. And also the end of the month, Jim and Shelly are going to have a chance to share with us as we lay hands on them and send them out to do God's work wherever it is that God is calling them. So for the month of August, I've been kind of, when I'm preaching, sharing from the overflow of my devotional life. These are things that I'm wrestling with with the Lord in my prayer closet. And these passages are ones that God has whispered into my ears, and so I'm going to try to whisper them into yours with the help of God's Spirit. And today we're going to be in the Proverbs. I love the Proverbs. Proverbs are simple but never easy. And we're in Proverbs chapter 8, verses 34 through 36. And our title here this morning is Four Ways to Keep Pace with Grace. Four ways to keep pace with grace. Now, one thing I have a burden for, as someone, again, who did not come grow up in a church but came to true faith in my late 20s and early 30s, is a lot of times we read principles and we detach them from practices. There's lots of things the Bible tells us to do, but we don't always know how to do it. And one of the things the Bible talks about is walking with God. The Bible says to walk in the Spirit. The Bible says to walk in his ways. The Bible says to walk in faith. Now, if I were to look at you and say, go walk in the spirit right now. How do I do this? Well, it's something that God does in us, but we are not robots who are completely inactive. We are in partnership. We keep in step. Alright, I've always said that, I've heard it said, that the Holy Spirit is our dance partner. Now, he's the one that's supposed to lead, and we often step on his toes, but there is a way that we can interact with him and let him lead the dance. Now, guess what I know about the Holy Spirit? He dances at the pace of grace. And I can guarantee you it's slower than most of us live our daily lives. So one of two things has to happen. Either A, God needs to speed up or we need to slow down. And guess what? God is perfect. I don't think He's changing his routine. So you and I need to learn to live at the pace of grace, but we've got to do this practically. Every Sunday I go back to my office when I'm done preaching, and I think to myself, is anybody gonna respond to this message by actually trying to do something different? Well, today I'm gonna give you four things that you can actually do. You may choose to do one of them or all four of them. You may be doing many of these things, and so maybe today's an encouragement to stay after it in dry times. But whatever the case may be, this is why I love the Proverbs and why we need practical wisdom to live at the pace of God's grace. So, let's get right after it. What's our big idea as we look at Proverbs chapter 8, verses 34 through 36? In one sentence, here it is. We keep pace with God's grace by learning to seek him daily through listening, watching, waiting, and trusting. Say it again. We keep pace with God's grace by learning to seek him daily through listening, watching, waiting, and trusting. So if you want to know more about how we can do these things, would you join me by turning to the book of Proverbs? Love the Proverbs, okay? Close to the middle of your Bible. It is after the Psalms, it is before Ecclesiastes. If you don't have a Bible, grab the Pew Bible in front of you or beside you. We're on page 632 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 Proverbs chapter 8, starting in verse 34, working our way towards the end of the chapter in verse 36. Hear God's word to us, starting in verse 34. Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord. But he who fails to find me injures himself. All who hate me love death. Let's pray. Lord, you say seek and you will find. And we are here today seeking you, hoping to find you, Lord, at the pace of your grace. Lord, as we walk through this very short passage, my prayer is that everybody in this room, myself included, Lord, would learn to put these practical steps in place, to live in relationship with you, to grow in our walk with you, to become more like your son. Lord, we are a distracted bunch. Our hearts are restless right now. This has been a transitional season, and all of us are trying to fit all the pieces together. Help us to come completely to a standstill right now, Lord. What has to happen later this afternoon is not important right now. What has to happen even an hour from now is not important right now. What is important right now is you, your word, your presence, and your promises. Be with us, Lord. Clear out the distractions. Help us to be attentive to what you want to say. Speak for your servants who are listening. We pray all this in Jesus' name. And God's people said. Amen. So a key word, if we're going to be talking about walking with God and a pace that He walks in, we got to talk about the word grace. I've come to the understanding that this is one of the most important words that God wants me to pursue with everything I have, and I recognize I'm going to spend the rest of my life and not fully understand this word. When I say grace, what are the first things that come to your mind? Now, again, I preach on this a lot because I'm learning a lot. I understand grace a lot more than I did when I first started shepherding the flock here. And I hope that each of us, if we're walking with God, we're understanding grace more each day. Because that's what the Christian life is all about. Living in union with God and enabling him to do what he wants to do in our lives. So let me define grace. I use this definition a lot. Grace is God working in us, through us, and for us to accomplish what we cannot on our own. I'll say it again. Grace is God working in us through us and for us to accomplish what we cannot on our own. Now, when I say grace, most of you think about a prayer that we pray over our food. Some of you may be thinking about the forgiveness that we have from our sins, that we can be with God in heaven forever. Those are absolutely part of grace. Now, if you want to use an I like to use acronyms or abbreviations or alliterations to help me remember things. If you remember the letter P, there's three major aspects to grace. That's pardon, which is forgiveness. Provision, God gives us what we need, and power. God working in us to do what we can't do. Again, pardon, he forgives our sins. Provision, he gives us what we need, and power, he works through us in amazing ways if we open up to him and let him. All right, so those are the three things I think about when I think about grace. And grace is something God does. We don't make him do anything. But you, again, just like dancing with the Holy Spirit, you can let him lead the dance, or you can step on his toes and stop the flow of God's grace. And guess what? We are in the business of toe-stepping all the time. God's used to it, he's not surprised by it. Since Adam and Eve, we've all struggled to walk at the pace of grace, to stay in step with the Holy Spirit. But if you read the Word of God, you'll see these practical things that God gives us to understand how we can re-enter the dance. You know, the Apostle Paul has a lot to say about this. The Apostle Paul was incredibly gifted. Scholars believe that he was the most intelligent person on planet earth in the first century, and yes, he was full-blown type A. Assertive, go-getter, highly productive, a Hebrew of Hebrews, studied under the best, all right, produced great things in the Jewish faith, and then all of a sudden, after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, he's persecuting Christians, and then he has a Damascus Road experience. Jesus knocks him off his donkey and he says to him, Why are you persecuting me? And when he comes to know the risen Lord and Savior Jesus as the true Messiah and the fulfillment of every promise made to the nation of Israel, he begins to understand a whole new life. And it's not a life where he had to try harder and be smarter and work longer. No, it was a life of understanding that he can't do what God's calling him to do. That he needed to open up to God working in him to do what he could not do himself. This brilliant, incredibly productive, dynamic leader looked at what God called him to do and said, I can't do it. And God said, Great! Now you can begin to understand my grace. And Paul said in 2 Corinthians 12 9, God said to Paul, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. If you're in this room right now and you are exhausted, and you think in this sermon, I'm gonna tell you you've got to do all these things on top of what you're already doing. Take a deep breath. That's not what we're doing here today. That's not what we're doing here today. Today is practical application on how you can let God do what He wants to do in your life. In fact, we're gonna use four verbs today, and none of these verbs call for immediate physical action. They call for spiritual awareness. Listen to the verbs. Listen, watch, wait, and trust. Listen, watch, wait, trust. How many of those things are calling you to immediate action right now? None of them. What they're calling you and I to do is be spiritually aware of what God is doing in your life right now, what he's doing in your family right now, what he's doing at your job right now, what he's doing with your finances right now, what he's doing with your health right now, all the things that God is either doing or allowing in his sovereign will, right now, he's up to something. Nothing is happenstance, nothing is coincidence. And I'm just going to tell you, most of us are ignorant and blind to what he wants to do in our life, which is why we go through the same issues over and over and over again. Because God is intent on making sure we understand what he wants to teach us, even if we're slow in the uptake, and all of us are to some degree. So let's walk through this together. Let's look at those four words, and I'm going to try to make this as practical as I can. If everyone in this room has even one takeaway that you can go home with today and actually put into practice, it would, I'd be overwhelmed with joy to know that you're growing at the pace of grace. So here's the first. Number one, to keep pace with God's grace, listen to God's word. Look at the first part of verse 34. God says this blessed is the one who listens to me. Blessed is the one who listens to me. You and I need to listen to the voice of God. Easier said than done. Now, I want to say, as I stand behind the sacred desk here, God speaks to everybody in this room a little bit differently. Alright? Some of you hear God speak through other people a lot. Some of you hear God speak through circumstances. Some of you hear God speak through that still small voice when you're in prayer. But I want to say the primary way, the number one way, the most consistent way that you and I should seek to hear the voice of God is through reading his word. It is the way that he has chosen to primarily speak to us as his children. We look at this as the last resort, not the first one. But if this book was entirely inspired from beginning to end by the Holy Spirit, and you and I have the Holy Spirit living inside of us, when we read it, read it for listening for his voice, he will speak. He will speak. You say, Bo, I read the Bible, but I don't hear God's voice. Well, let me say this. There is a major difference between studying the Bible for information and listening in the Bible for a personal relationship. There's a big difference, and I've done a lot of both over the years, and I can tell you, both are needed, by the way. I'm not saying that we shouldn't study the Bible, all right? But trust me, as someone who went to Bible college and seminary, I've been around a lot of men and women who have studied this Bible. They can regurgitate any Bible fact you want to hear, but they don't know God. They don't know what He's doing in their life because they read for information. They read for facts, they want to be smart, they want to be answer questions when people ask, but they're not listening to hear from a person. There's a major difference. And I'm grateful that God has been helping me with this. You say, Bo, what's the difference? How can I read to listen instead of read to study? Well, if you're gonna read to listen for the voice of God, the first thing that you gotta do is get quiet. Get quiet. Clear out distractions. Second thing you got to do is be still. You can be loud and you can be studying and voraciously looking at all these books and never hear the voice of God because you're not quiet enough and you're not still enough. Reading the Bible quietly and reading it from a place of spiritual stillness means I'm gonna put my phone on do not disturb, even if it's for 15 or 20 minutes. I'm gonna slowly read these words out loud and I'm gonna wait for God to grip me when I come across a certain word. Now, I'm just gonna say I know God speaks to us differently, but for me, when I'm reading, I slowly read through a passage, and when there's a key word or a key thought, and I'm ready to move on to the next one, it's almost like God says, no, go back here. When God begins to tell me to really focus in on a word, that's where that's a gateway for me to enter into a conversation with Him. Now, let me say, a lot of people have said to me over the years, I just don't know how to read the Bible. And let me just say this: I empathize. Nobody in this room is a master at reading the Bible. The whole purpose of reading the Bible is that it masters us, but I know we need practical tools. So let me just say this. If you struggle to read the Bible, here's just one practical application you can make. If you decide not to do it, that's okay. Make a commitment for maybe 30 minutes in the morning, if that's your best time of the day, to read one proverb. Okay, what's the day of the month? Go to that day of the month, and there's a there's 31 proverbs, so there's a proverb for every day of the month. Just read that chapter slowly. Read a psalm. Start with the day of the month. Now, if you read a psalm and it's it's a heavy psalm about death, and you're like, yeah, I'm having a good day, this ain't really hit me where I'm at. Add the number 30, and you can keep doing that five times. And out of five psalms in one day, one of those five is going to meet you right where you are. So read a Proverb, read a psalm, and read a section of a gospel. When I say section, I mean one little paragraph. Right now I'm reading the Psalms, the Proverbs, and I'm in like John 13, and I'm reading one paragraph at a time. Read it slowly and then talk to God about it. Why am I so intent on this Proverbs 8? Because I prayed this in my prayer closet. God has been putting this on my heart. There's been many years that I read the Proverbs and I blew through the passage we're reading at warp speed because it didn't seem like deep theology, and I wanted to study and be a scholar. But when you read this prayerfully, he will speak to you. It may just be one word. And God has a different word for each of us. But that's a practical way. Even if you're new to the Bible, you bought your first Bible today. You may not understand Leviticus. That's okay. You can read a proverb, and you can understand at least on a basic level what he's saying. Also the Psalms, and again, the gospel's to hear the heart of Jesus Christ. Now, again, there's many different ways to read the Bible. I'm just giving you one practical application. If you do it differently and yet you feel like you're hearing the voice of God in your life, stay after it. That's just after years of walking with several people, I found this to be super helpful. I think that's why, by the way, when the Gideons hand out Bibles, they got the New Testament with the Psalms and the Proverbs, because it's a great place for new believers to start and even old believers to go deeper in hearing the voice of God. That's number one, to keep pace with God's grace, listen to God's word. Don't just read it, don't just study it, listen to it. Pray it back to Him. You know, before I move on to point two, let me just model this, right? Verse 34 that we just read says, Blessed is the one who listens to me. It might look like this if you're if you're praying to God. Blessed is the one who listens to me. Lord, I want to stop right now. Am I listening to you right now? Am I going too fast and am I too active to hear you speak? Lord, I'm going to sit here right now and I'm just going to ask that if you want to say something, I'm here, Lord. Please speak to me. And give him time. And then you can move on to the next verse. I'm going to say this again. I've been with many people that know that Bible, but I've been with few people that know that voice. And you can't speed it up. That's number one. To keep pace with God's grace, listen to God's word. Number two, to keep pace with God's grace, watch for God's presence. This is a huge one. Second part of verse 34 says, watching daily at my gates. God says, watch for me. I don't want you to just listen. I do want you to listen first, but then I want you to watch and see where I am at work. And I'm telling you this right now, after years of walking through this with a lot of different people, when people come for counsel and they share with the issue in their life, and then they share with me what they really think the problem is. A lot of times I'm thinking to myself, you are, you're not hearing God. Spiritually speaking, we struggle to read the room. All right? But when we're walking at the pace of grace, we can begin to notice where God is at work in our lives. The whole Christian life is noticing where God is at work and then agreeing to participate with Him in that work. Sometimes you and I want something so bad we will stop at nothing to do what we really want, and it's completely the opposite of what God wants for our life. And so we get angry when things don't happen the way we want them to. A lot of us we try harder and we go farther down a path that God has not chosen for us, and yet everyone else around us can see it's obvious God is doing this, but we're doing that. He's zigging and we're zagging. We need to recognize, pay attention, what's happening in your family right now, in this season? What's happening with your children or your grandchildren? What kind of conversations are you having? What kind of decisions are you making? None of this is by accident. All this is happening in this season because God is at work in a different way. And it may be really good and it may be really painful, but even in the pain, God wants to change you in the situation that you're in. Are you paying attention? You know, it sounds silly to say this, uh, but I'll share with you 2011. When I came to be the youth pastor here. Now, I know the regular members here are probably tired of me saying this. There's always a guest here, so I feel like I want to share my story. Most of you have tired of hearing it, I'm sure. But I am not a denominational guy, I'm a kingdom guy. I believe that. I love at this church in the last 10 years, we have, and even over the years, we've gained so many people from different denominations. We've got Reformed Presbyterians, we've got primitive Baptists, we have Pentecostals, we have Methodists, we have a lot of interdenominational Christians. And I love that. That's so healthy to get all these different perspectives and all these different ways in which we worship. I think that's a good, healthy balance for a local church. Well, for me, as most of you know, raised Catholic, and by the way, I went to a really good Catholic church when I was growing up. I was just lost. And when I came to faith at 27, I became a Lutheran. And I had a really good two-year experience in a Lutheran church. And then I went to Grace Community Church here in Statesboro and had a great experience. I was baptized by Mike Holt, and Amy Holt gave me my first chance to teach. Kids Jam, third through fifth grade, is my first chance to ever teach in a church. All these were good experiences. I loved every single one of them. But as Eddie mentioned behind the pulpit, and I didn't know he was going to do that today, but uh as Eddie mentioned behind the pulpit, I go to Pineland Telephone, and I meet Brother Eddie, and I meet Vicky Aldridge, and they're inviting me to Cedar Street, and I come and speak, and people are coming up and asking me to come back, and then I go to the Guido Bible College, and most of my professors are Southern Baptists, and I remember I was one night I was in my office at Pineland Telephone praying about should I leave Grace and come to Cedar Street? And I felt God say to me, not in an audible voice, but at a strong impression in my heart, Bo, pay attention. What's happening in your life right now? What kind of people did I put in your circle right now? Who are the teachers that I put in your life right now? Do you think all this is a coincidence? And it was like, God woke me out of a like a coma, and it was like, well, duh, coming here was just paying attention to what God was doing. There are some of you fighting the will of God because whatever decision it is that God wants you to make in this season, there's what you want and there's what he wants, and what he wants may be different, but pay attention to his presence. Where is he at work? That's only going to happen when you sit quietly and think through what's happening in your life. For me, journaling really helps. It gets me quiet enough to get my thoughts on paper. Sometimes it's asking other people around you, getting counsel from other people. But he says, to watch for me at my gate. Look for the presence of God. Where is God moving in your family, in your life, in Candler County, Georgia? And how can you participate in what he's doing? We need to wait and we need to watch for the presence of God. My question before we move on to point three is what is God doing in your life right now that you have not slowed down to notice? That you have not slowed down to notice. It's worth praying about. I guarantee this if you took the next seven days and just asked the question, God, what are you doing and how can I participate? Oh, he will answer that prayer. He's been waiting on that prayer for a while. That's number two. To keep pace with God's grace, watch for God's presence. Now, third is even harder. We might listen and we might watch, but this is a word we don't do well. Number three, to keep pace with God's grace, wait for God's guidance. Third part of verse 34, he says, waiting beside my doors. Waiting for God to give guidance, waiting for God to give a green light before you move forward, or waiting for God to give a red light so you can stop one direction and start another. If I had to say on a scale, you know, on one scale, people that wait too long to do things for God, or on the other scale, they get ahead of God. I'd say nine out of ten people struggle with getting ahead. Maybe there's the rare person that is so scared to take the next step that they just don't step out in faith. That happens, but most of the time, most of the time, we miss out on experiencing God's grace because we're five steps ahead of him. And he says, wait, wait. You know what I've learned when you're making a big transition in your life? Whether it's moving to a new church, moving to a new school, moving to a new neighborhood, moving somewhere, doing something different. God will give you as much peace about leaving as he will about going. As much peace about the group or the situation that you're leaving. He'll give you as much peace about that as he will about where you're headed. Most of us, we change things because we are running from God. Frantically running from God. And I will tell you this: running will give you a nice distraction for a short period of time, but all the baggage is going to follow you. And it will be there when you get to the next place you're going. You and I need to wait for him. I'm telling you, from 90% of you in this room that feel stressed out, God's not telling you to do more. The sermon is not do more. It's be quiet and let him remove from you the things that he never intended for you to do anyway. Wait for him. Wait for God to show you where he wants you to go next. This is a universal issue that we struggle with. Think about the life of Jesus. They asked Professor Dallas Willard, I know I've mentioned this before. They asked a professor at USC, a philosopher named Dallas Willard, what is the one thing you notice most about Jesus when you read the Gospels? His answer was not, well, Jesus is loving, even though he is. Jesus is powerful even though he is. He said, When I read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, I see Jesus is unhurried. And so another person asked him, then if I need to grow in my spiritual life, what's the one piece of advice you would give me? And Dallas Willard said this ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. In fact, one of his disciples, a guy named John Mark Comer, actually wrote a book by that title. Thomas, I remember you telling me you read that before. Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. It doesn't mean we're not diligent. It doesn't mean we don't work hard. It means we're not hurried. We're not rushing from one thing to another. We're not constantly letting things fall through the cracks, doing more than God wants us to do because we're scared to death to stay still long enough to actually listen to God. You have enough time every day to do God's will. If you feel rushed, if you feel overwhelmed, I guarantee somewhere you're putting more on your schedule than God intends. That hurried, rushed, that's not walking at the pace of grace. That is not keeping in step with the Spirit. So you and I, we got to unload some things, and He's gonna show us what they are if we wait for Him. So let me ask this before we look at our final point. If waiting for God is a weakness for you, what one thing will you change this week to wait for Him? What one thing will you stop doing to slow down to experience His grace? What's one practical? This is not just conviction mode. All right, if you hug my neck at the end of service and say you stepped on my toes today, I just want to say this. Well, then what are you gonna do about it Monday? What's one practical thing that you can stop doing or start doing to wait for God? Trust me when I say he's hit me between the eyeballs on this. This last one is gonna wrap it all up here. Number four, to keep pace with God's grace, we not only have to listen to his word, watch for his presence, wait for his guidance, we have to, number four, trust in God's promise. Trust in God's promises. Listen to verses 35 through 36. This is a promise and a warning. For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord. But he who fails to find me injures himself. All who hate me love death. The Christian life can be summed up in one word. Trust. In fact, I like that word even more than faith. Because trust is faith in action. Trust means I put all of my life into the hands of Jesus, and I believe he did more for me than I could ever do for myself. I trust in him for my salvation. He's lived perfectly for me to be forgiven, and he's died, and he rose from the dead, and I am saved, and I am sealed, and it's promised that I have eternal life. But I trust that he's going to give me enough power to do what I need to do today. And I trust that if I wait in obedience, he will give me his very best. In fact, that is my prayer. I've mentioned it here many times. Psalm 84, 11. The Lord is a son and a shield, he bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold to those who walk uprightly. I'm just going to say this. Part of our sin nature is we don't want to wait for God because we think he's holding back something good. Alright? Genesis chapter 3, verses 4 through 5, when this whole mess got started. Genesis 3, verses 4 through 5, when Satan came into the garden as a sly serpent, he said to Eve, when she said, I can't eat that fruit. God told me not to. What did Satan say? He said, You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Here's what God was saying. Obeying God the way that you are, Eve, you're missing out on your greatest blessing. God is withholding something good from you. You can't trust Him. So go and partake and take the blessing for yourself. I'll just say we do this all the time. We do this all the time. We spend money that we do not have because we have to have the blessing now. We can't trust and wait that God will provide not only what we need, but can we all be honest, He gives us far more than we need. But instantaneous gratification, we have to have it now. You know, when I counsel young couples are getting ready for marriage, the Bible is clear there is no permission from God to have any intimacy outside of marriage. None. But we want it on our terms. So we rewrite the Word of God to say, it's wrong, but for me it's okay. Doesn't work that way. Why do we do it? It's because we feel like if we obey God, we're gonna miss out on this blessing. And God says, no, you do it your way and you're never gonna have peace. You do it my way, you may have to wait, you may not have instantaneous gratification, but you'll have the deepest, most fulfilling blessing you could ever have. You know, on a practical level, for those of us that struggle with eating more than we should, we know this. Nobody in this room has to be told if you want to have a healthy, fit body, that sleep, diet, and exercise are the way to do it. No, I don't think anybody in this room would say, I've never heard this. We know sleep, diet, and exercise are how you can have a physically fit body. Why do we not get good sleep? Because it's easy to stay up late and Netflix binge or whatever you're watching, because it's instantaneous. Why do we eat what we want to eat instead of what we should eat? Because it's easy and it tastes good. And why don't we exercise? Because it's hard. It's exactly why we don't. Well, the same thing is true spiritually. The same thing is true spiritually. If you and I can learn to delay blessings and trust that he's gonna give his very best to those who wait on him, that is living at the pace of grace. And I want to say there are some things I'm waiting on in my life. I've got a wait list of blessings that I know God's gonna pour out, and it may be years before he does. But I'm gonna ask him to help me to be faithful right where I am right now. And I want to wait for his very best. I'm not gonna try to take it by force because that's not God's will for our life. So let me sum it up. Let me land the plane here. To sum it up in one sentence to keep pace with grace, look to Jesus, who always listened, watched, waited, and trusted in the Father. To keep pace with grace, look to Jesus, who always listened, watched, waited, and trusted in the Father. I want to read these passages and then we'll and then we'll pray out. But I want this is all from the Gospel of John, from the Apostle John, inspired of the Holy Spirit, who had his ear on the heartbeat of Jesus. Listen to how many times Jesus says, I don't do what I want to do, I do what the Father wants me to do. Listen to what listen to this. John 5 19. The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. John 8 28, I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me. John 12 49, for I have spoken not on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a command what to say and what to speak. And John 14 10, the words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Over and over and over and over, Jesus says, I came to fulfill the Father's mission. So I'm gonna speak the words that he gives me. I'm gonna do the things that he calls me to do. All right, I'm gonna let him lead my life. And you know what that means? I'm gonna miss out on some things. The disciples constantly said, Jesus, don't go there, go here. Here's where the crowd is, here's where they love you, here's where they can't wait to hear you. And he goes, Oh, really? Well, we're gonna go this way. Because the father didn't say go this way and get more pats on the back. The father said, There's people over here that don't know me. I think it would drive us crazy if we walk with Jesus. How many times he didn't do what we thought he should do? But he walked at the pace of grace. He was never hurried, he didn't follow crowds. Now, some days he got up early and prayed a long time, sometimes he stayed up late and prayed a long time. And sometimes he slept on the boat when everybody else was freaking out. But he was always in the will of the Father, living at the pace of grace. And you know why he did? Because he knows you can't, and I can't. So here's the good news. If you're in this room right now under deep conviction, let me just say this: God loves you more than I could ever, ever express. There's nothing that you have done or are doing that will change his love for you. Nothing. Nothing. Guilt is not a good motivation for Christian growth. But God may be saying, I do have blessings, and you're not going to experience them until you do it my way. Will you say yes to God today? No matter how hard it is, no matter what changes you need to make in your life, will you say yes to Him? That's the question as we get ready to pray out. This is how we keep pace with God's grace. So here's the invitation. Pretty simple. You can't make five changes at once. Of everything you've heard today and where God is speaking to you today, what is one thing that you can take with you back to your house today? One thing, and say, God, I hear you, and with your help, I'm gonna do this. Or I hear you, and with your help, I'm gonna stop doing this. Or Lord, I hear you and I'm gonna be with you. I'm gonna watch for you. I don't know. One thing God has spoken to you during this time. In this invitation, as you enter into this time of silence, maybe let God speak to you about one thing you can change to live at the pace of grace. Father, as we enter into this time of invitation, I know hearts are heavy in this room. I know things are difficult right now. Everybody in this room is in a time of transition. And Lord, you know I do not do transitions well. Would you speak to us right now? Would you speak to us and tell us one thing we can do to open our lives to you in a greater way that we could truly live at the pace of grace? Speaker Lord, your servants are still listening.