Loving Like Jesus: Love is Patient with Rev. Nicole Unice

Good morning, everyone. Good to see you guys this morning. My name is Nicole Yunis. I'm part of the teaching team here. I get to come up and be with you guys from sunny Virginia where it was 68 degrees when I left, which meant I was highly unprepared this morning, but very happy to be here.

Love the way that you helped me usher in winter, so thank you so much. It's kind of a running joke now. We all talk about it because if you know I'm coming, so is the snow, because it's always gonna come when I'm here. So, which I love. So we're in this, great series right now about relationships, about love.

We get to hear this beautiful passage, first Corinthians 13, in its entirety this morning, and maybe you're like looking for a bride like I am, because this is a a chapter that's often read at weddings. And I love doing weddings, love doing weddings for people all along the spectrum of life, but particularly in my life right now, have a lot of young people, like young people weddings. They keep seeming to be younger, but I think it's just because I'm getting older. And so the babies come down the aisle, and they stand there, and they hold each other's hands, and I'm standing there with them. And a lot of times this passage is being read, and I'm like, oh, you have no idea.

Because it's such a beautiful poetic passage, and in some ways I wish the Apostle Paul had not been so inspired by the Spirit to make it so poetic because what we can miss is what this whole thing is actually about. Because what this passage is actually about is what spiritual transformation looks like, and it is a rigorous journey. So today I want to talk about what spiritual growth requires. We're going go backward a little bit in our in our series just to make sure we've got our principles in place. And then we're going to talk about patience this morning, an understanding of patience, and then the connection of patience and this idea of being not easily angered.

We're going to talk about the purpose of anger in our life and how it can surprisingly ignite our spiritual growth. So let's get into it together this morning. I want to give us a little bit of context. I know Scott did before, but I'm going take us back just a little bit. We heard this whole chapter.

Right? And it's all about what love looks like. It also talks about what life is like without love. That we can be gifted, that we can have abundance in our life, that we can even be sort of pursuing a virtuous life. And still under it, if there is not love, then it doesn't matter.

And what he actually says at the end of chapter 12 before we get into chapter 13 is this, but earnestly desire the higher gifts, and I will show you a still more excellent way. And so what he's been talking about is is the spiritual gifts of administration and healing and teaching and all the things that God gives us to build up the body of Christ while we're here on earth. But then before we start talking about love, he says desire these higher things, these eternal things, the things that we're actually talking about when we talk about what it looks like to love people. And this this idea of a more excellent way, the visual picture of that would be imagine standing shoulder to shoulder with the Holy Spirit who's with you, who says, okay, we're gonna go do this life. And in front of you is a mountain range.

There's like some hills right there. And just imagine those hills as kind of your spiritual gifts and your way of life. And then he's like, I want you to look through the mountain pass, and I'm gonna show you a higher way, a more excellent way. That's the that's the mountain range in the back there. We're actually gonna journey together through this more excellent way.

We're gonna pass through these temporal things because what really matters is the eternal things, faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love. What Paul is really saying when we enter into this chapter is that you can be morally gifted. You can look really good on the outside and still be spiritually poor. You can be interested in being virtuous.

You can want better relationships. You can want the things that first Corinthians 13 talks about, but you can still be bereft on the inside of what it actually takes to be transformed by Christ. And I wanna start there because if you're exploring a relationship with Christ or you're not sure about a relationship with Christ, it could be easy for this to sound like some, like, helpful relationship tips, which they are. But they are absolutely impossible outside of the love and power of Jesus Christ. And so we can make, like, moves toward being these people, but what Paul's really telling us is that the kind of love that we're talking about that God gives us is the kind of love that is transformative from the inside out.

And he uses everyday life to lead us on that journey. So I want to talk about where we really are first. This is a very practical sermon. This is a great if you have like notes or you have a notes app or you want to chat with your family member during some of this part. I I encourage you too because we're going to workshop together a few things.

And the first thing that we need to know as best as we can ascertain is where we actually are on the journey of being transformed. And this can change in circumstances and in seasons. So there's no condemnation here. There's no shame here. There's just some reality.

This is just a reality check, and this is how I've experienced my own heart with God. So I've got a little matrix for you that we put together. And on this matrix, we've got on the vertical, there's aware and unaware. So this is basically how aware am I of my issues and my character slash unaware. And then on the horizontal, we have willing and unwilling.

How actually interested am I in growing? And you'll see here that if you're unwilling and unaware you're asleep, I will tell you there's probably a family member right here with us who'd be happy to wake you up. Just ask them, and they'll tell you any places that you could grow. So if we're asleep or just not aware at all of what's happening in our lives, and we go through seasons like this, and then we'll look at this next one. And if you're willing but unaware, then your heart is open to change.

Like, you're interested, but you might actually not be that aware of how you come across to yourself or to others in relationship. But this is a good place to be. We can ask God, and in his this is a prayer I guarantee you God will answer. If you ask God to open your eyes to the ways that he might be asking you to grow in love, he will do it so fast. It'll probably happen before you leave this room.

So you can be open. And then over here, we have aware but unwilling. This is a place where we might, if we're really honest with ourselves, begin to engage the objections that we actually have with thinking about living a life like this. Like, I think about some people in my life and some places I've been in my own life where I would have objections to the idea that I can always be patient, that I can always be unprovoked, as another scripture translation says about being not easily angered. Maybe you're thinking, you don't understand my situation, you don't understand my family, you don't understand what my work requires.

That's good because you're being honest. But that's the resisting of our heart toward the transformation of the spirit. And then finally, aware and willing is a place of surrender. This is where we say, yeah, I really do. I really do wanna grow.

I really do wanna love like Jesus loves. I wanna know how to engage my family members who don't agree with me politically or my coworkers who are atheist or the person in my life who's just I just find myself irritated even though I don't want to be. When you're there, you're surrendered to the place where the spirit of God begins to move into your life. It's a beautiful place to be. I think we all move around in this, and I think you'll be able to find yourself better on this particular topic in just a moment as we start to get into it.

So what I want to talk about today is, why is this actually so hard to do? Why is it hard to be a patient person? Why is it hard to understand what we can do with our anger? And then how God might be able to move into that. So let's talk about patience for a minute.

This was very illuminating to me to actually look deeper into not just thinking about the word patient. I don't know if a person maybe comes to mind in your life that you're like, that person is a patient person. Usually I think about that, and I'm like, and I'm not like them at all. You know? So let me give you a few more a few more words to describe patience.

Four aspects of patience. And here's my invitation to you. I'm gonna invite you to rate yourself zero to 100 on each of these aspects of patience. The first one is calm endurance. This is the capacity to remain calm even when facing adversity, suffering, or delay.

Maybe here you could ask yourself, do you remember a time that you stayed calm in a situation recently that in your past you would not have stayed calm in. Maybe you're seeing some growth in this area as you as you get older, maybe a little wiser. You're like, alright, I'm not quite as quick on the fuse. I'm growing in this place, or maybe that's a growth area for you. Second aspect of patience is perseverance.

This idea is a steadiness and a consistency. Another way to talk about perseverance is its patience over time. There's actually been a lot of studies done on the character that has perseverance. Angela Duckworth is a social psychologist who talks about grit. And this idea of grit or perseverance actually predicts our long term success more strongly than talent or IQ.

Having hardship in which you are able to endure over time actually is a predictor of long term success. A third kind of patience is the ability to govern emotions and reactions of frustration, anger, or discontent. This is self control. This is our ability, and the the word governor is perfect there because a governor on public transportation, like buses, city buses, have what they call governors on them. It means that the bus can only go a certain speed.

And the way that they actually rig that inside of the bus is that they restrict how much fuel gets to the engine. So I want you to imagine that anger is this fuel that's fueling reactions in you. Self control is when you have a governor on those reactions. And you're able to feel yourself getting impatient or irritated, actually control it. You can govern those reactions to difficult people or situations.

The final one is long term focus. The ability to wait for long term rewards or outcomes rather than seeking immediate gratification. Now this is a difficult one. This is one actually that has also been studied. A very famous social psychology test that happened at Stanford University was called the marshmallow test.

It was very simple. Children from the day care came in, and they had one big fat marshmallow in front of them. And the only instructions were, if you can wait fifteen minutes, you will get a second big fat marshmallow. And here is how that went. I don't know if you've experienced this kaleidoscope of emotions in your own heart and in your own mind.

They found that two thirds of the children couldn't wait. Some of them just ate it right away. Some of them gave up over time. Some of them started to lick it and nibble it till they just had to eat it. One third of them were able to resist the temptation.

Now, because they were there at Stanford, this was a longitudinal study, they were able to be studied over time, and the ability to delay gratification as a child was directly correlated to long term outcomes of higher grades, better social skills, overall success. And here we are in this very instant gratification world. They recently duplicated this study, and they found they added one measure. And what they added was pairing up the children and having one of the children promise that they would not eat their marshmallow, which made both of them not eat their marshmallow, like way, way up, which is a whole different sermon series on the power of community. So how are you at patience?

The Greek word that's used here doesn't have a great synonym in English. It's it's sort of like the power to act, but in love choosing not to do so. Patience is the power to act, to have some power to make something happen, but in love choosing not to do so. So most of us at this point have perhaps disqualified ourselves from being patient people. But I want you to know that there is a transforming power that can change even the most irritated of us, even the most impatient of us, I'll be the first to raise my hand.

But specifically this morning, because this passage uses the concept of love is not easily angered, I wanna talk about how patience, that irritation in us, and anger, how those are connected, and how anger teaches us about places that God is transforming us spiritually. So a word on anger. In this passage it says love is not easily angered. It does not say that love is never angry because anger is an emotion that's wired into us by God. Anger has a strength to it.

It has a force to us. It can be protective. And when it's used and channeled properly, it can be a force for good. Anger is natural response to stimuli in our life. Anger is like a check engine light on the dashboard of your soul.

It's a chance to stop and ask, what is happening here? We want to understand what causes our soul to overheat and why that's happening. Anger is a symptom, not a sin. The opposite of anger is not love. The opposite of love, as we're talking about in this context, the opposite of love is apathy.

The opposite of love is not caring enough to be angry. It's just like that situation or person doesn't matter enough to you to even be involved with any kind of passion. We are wired for passion. We're wired for desire. God's made us that way.

There is a force for good that is underneath that angry, but we are easily confused by our anger and by what it is what the symptoms are, the root cause underneath that's causing that anger, and that's why we need to examine it. Aristotle said, anybody can become angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose and in the right way, that is not within everyone's power, and it is not easy. So when we're talking about this kind of anger in this this translation sometimes is love is not easily angered or love is not easily provoked.

And I like the word provoked because that is the concept of there being an external stimuli that you are tempted to engage with, that you are tempted to react to. Because, this is a hard truth, no one can cause you to be angry. Anger is a reaction to a stimuli. You are in charge of that. No one can make you react, but man, are we an easily provoked society.

It is easy to get under our skin, isn't it? Whether it's a taunt or traffic or taxes, there's just so much to be offended by right now. And so when the apostle Paul says, let me show you a more excellent way, a higher way, this truly is a rigorous conversation about how God is asking us to be transformed in His love. Psalm four verse four says this, be angry and do not sin. So we've got that disconnect.

That anger, the emotion, is a symptom, and it causes it can it can lead to a reaction. The reaction may be sin, but anger itself is not the problem. Be angry and do not sin is the way that we're told to engage with this powerful emotion. That same exact verse is again used in Ephesians four. Anger is a sin that actually or anger is a symptom, and to understand it and to truly govern it requires discipline.

It requires some training, like some endurance. If you wanted to anyone run a marathon in here? Has anyone run a marathon? I always love to call out the marathon people. I feel like they'll always tell you if they have.

It's it's something to be proud of. I agree. No. I don't think any okay. Whatever.

If you've run anything let's imagine let's imagine you're running a marathon. If you were gonna run a marathon, would you wake up tomorrow and say, today is the day I run a marathon? No. You would not succeed. If you have to run a marathon for any reason, whether self or others inflicted, you would want to train for it.

You wouldn't just get up one morning and be like, this is the morning I run a marathon. You would probably get 100 or 200 mornings before that and endure training to get yourself to that place. And so when you imagine remember that picture at the beginning. The Holy Spirit is standing with us, and when we say yes to Jesus, the Holy Spirit says, now we're gonna walk together. And the Spirit says, I'm gonna show you a more excellent way.

We are training toward that higher way. And so the first thing that we have to do if we wanna take the guidance of God seriously when it comes to love in our life, the first thing we have to do is that we have to resolve. We have to make up our mind that we want to grow in this area. We have to decide that we wanna grow. James chapter four says this, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?

Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask, and you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your own passions. You see, when we just think that the world is happening to us, and we're like, no, I mean, I can't control that part of me.

It's just who I am. I was I'm just quick tempered. I just have a short fuse. It's just who I am. We are actually entering into this this chapter from James where we're not actually reflecting and asking, do I want to be made into the image of Christ?

Here's how I know this in my own personal life. I can remember a specific moment when my kids were little, and we were trying to get out the door. Everybody understands if you have children or you've ever been around children, you understand that there is nothing more difficult to do than to try to put children into a car and get somewhere on time. Some something about that is is one of the most rigorous journeys a human being can take. So I'm trying to get my kids.

I'm trying to get my daughter to practice, and I could tell, like, we're we're missing something. She's moved. We're going to gymnastics. She has these hand grips. She's moved the hand grips when I've told her not to move the hand grips.

And I'm I'm get I can feel myself boiling up, and I take this deep breath. I am ready to scream up the steps. I told you not to move your hand grips. As the words start to come out of my mouth, the babysitter opens the door. And I swallowed that down so fast, was like, peace be with you and also with you.

If I can do that, that means that I'm not as out of control as I think. Because with the with the right external stimulus, I was able to govern my reaction. Amen? You know what I'm saying? So we have to decide first.

We have to resolve that we actually do wanna be different. That's what that matrix was about at the beginning. We have to say, I want to grow in this area. And then after we do that, the second thing that we can do is really the the main thing that we do, which is we be we begin to reflect. We begin to look inward and ask the question before I react in anger or maybe more likely after I've reacted in anger.

I'm interested in learning and growing with why I'm reacting the way that I am. The rest of Psalm four actually says this. I love it. Be angry and do not sin. Ponder in your own heart on your beds and be silent.

The concept of reflecting and trying to understand is not a psychology concept. It's a biblical concept. It's basically the idea of saying, I'm interested in learning why I do the things I do and why God and how God might want to change that in me. So when we are angry or after we've been angry or irritated or frustrated, whatever word you want to use, we want to address the root problem. And my theory for you this morning, again, back to the workshop, is that there are only five root causes to your anger.

There's one for every finger on your hand. So we're gonna we're gonna learn these, and come chat with me after. If you think there's any others, I'd love to hear about it. But let's let's go with these five today. Okay?

So five reasons that you get irritated or impatient or frustrated. Here's the first one. Put your thumb up. K. First one, look at your thumb.

The first one is because we get hurt. I use the thumb so you can imagine getting hit with a hammer. We're hurt. We're physically hurt. We're emotionally hurt.

Something has happened that has hurt us. Anybody ever I do this all the time. I don't know why, but I I hit my head on the kitchen cabinet. Well, I leave the cabinets open. Step one.

Cabinets are open. I hit my head on a kitchen cabinet. Have you ever done something where you hit the thing back? Like, after you get hurt, you're like, stop it. Like, is that that's gonna help?

You just you lash out. Right? It happens. I I got hit in the head with a volleyball at a volleyball game last week, and I turned around like somebody was, like, trying to hit me in the head with a volleyball. Like, these poor kids are just warming up for their game.

I'm the person not facing them. Hit in the head, and I turn around like, who did that? You know? You've got this part of you. It's a reaction.

It's a physical reaction to hurt. So the first thing is sometimes we're hurt, And and it's it feels better. Honestly, it feels better to vent our hurt through a strong emotion like anger than it does to be vulnerable and to actually say, that hurt me. That hurts me when you say it that way. So the first is hurt.

The second go ahead and put your put your pointer finger up. The second one and now you have to take that pointer finger and point it at yourself. The second root cause of anger is a me problem. It's pride. Pride says, I have a way that I want things to go.

I have a way of doing things, and the way that I do things is just the right way. We deserve things to go our way. We want them to go the way we want them to go, and we want them to go in the time that we were thinking. And I know I'm saying that very clearly because I understand, and I've been in my own heart and lived in my own reality for so long. Oftentimes we have this way that says, my way is the right way, and you should stop driving like that.

Like, if you're gonna drive like that, get out of the left lane. That is me saying that my way is the right way. Now some of you all are like, you're right, Nicole. That is the right way. But that's not the point.

The point is, if I allow that stimuli to get me frustrated, me angry, me impatient, I use a very mild example, you can ratchet up that example to whatever you want it to be. I have to ask, is this a me problem? Am I living with this deep desire that things need to go the way I want them to go? Not only that, but things need to go the way I want them to go even to the sacrifice of others. If I need to get where I'm going, you should get out of the way.

If I need to talk about something right now, you should listen. If I think that you're not living into the values that I have for you, you're gonna need to get in line. That's pride. That's pride. It's the part of me that says that I wanna be in control, which is closely linked to our third one.

Now don't put this finger up, everyone, but it is it is the right finger for the next one. But let's let's keep him a partner with our pride. Okay? And this third one right here is a partner to our pride. This third one is frustration.

Frustration is when you get irritated because you're thwarted toward a goal. You're forced to wait. Nothing is working, and you're trying to make something happen. You're trying to reach a goal, and you're getting frustrated. You're starting to get angry.

You feel yourself boiling because you want things to be a certain way, and they're not getting there. If you're a high control person, you are likely also an angry person. And I have no I'm not putting any judgment on being high control. Most of our leaders in the world are high control. We're we're the leaders can see there's a way I want things to go and a way that we can all get there together.

And so we need high control people. If you're a low control person, this is probably not an issue for you. You have other issues, but this might not be it. But if you're a high control person, you are frustrated. You think to yourself, who decided that this is how IKEA furniture should be put together?

You know what I mean? And you're like you're like cursing the person who wrote that diagram because you're like, this doesn't work. What were you thinking? You are thwarted toward a goal, and you're frustrated because you're wanting to be in control. But here's the problem with control.

We actually have so little control in life. We didn't choose where to be born or who to be born to. We didn't choose our parents. We won't choose when we die. We didn't choose our giftedness.

We didn't choose our limitations. We didn't choose our temperament. We have all these things we have to live with that we didn't choose. And if you have not reckoned with that reality, meaning if you have not taken that finger and realized that your issue might be with God, then you have not entered in to the beauty and magnitude and amazing freedom that is the grace of Jesus Christ. Because oftentimes we can just have all of these frustrations are like kindling in our soul, and we're just we're so mad at traffic, but the reality is we're so mad because we never forgave our parents for that thing.

And it's just bubbling up in us, and we're just simmering with all of this stuff that God invites us to be healed from, but not all of us have taken that journey. And so we feel frustrated, and we're actually quite angry. The fourth one, this is the weak one. This guy's hard to get up there sometimes. Doesn't do much.

Your ring finger. This is fear. We get angry when we feel threatened, when we feel trapped, when we feel afraid. We get angry when we are insecure. Insecure and angry insecurity and anger go together.

The more insecure you are in life, the more prone you are to be angry. When you base your feelings about yourself on how others feel about you, when you give that power away, when you deeply desire and need other people to meet your needs so that you feel okay about yourself, that's insecurity. And the problem with insecurity is that you're looking to other people to meet needs that only God can meet. No one can meet all of your physical needs, your emotional needs, your spiritual needs. No one could speak your five love languages perfectly every time.

No one could live into the expectations. No one can appreciate you enough. No one can encourage you enough. No one can compliment you enough when you've given the power of your identity away to other people. Therefore, you live disappointed.

Disappointed with yourself, disappointed with other people, and that's just another word for anger. I'm frustrated with the way life has gone. Hurt, pride, frustration, fear, and the last one. This little one because this is less likely, but it's still there. It's the good one.

This is the hopeful part. The fifth one is actually holiness, that we can have an anger that actually is this righteous indignation. The best translation I could say is that we can have an anger against evil that thwarts God's love in the world. Do you know that you can actually feel this deep feeling that something is not right in the world? You can be in this service and hear the thing, and we could celebrate that we fed 05/1985 families last week.

But we can also feel this deep feeling, why is the world this way? And that is holiness. Jesus experienced this kind of anger. It's this deep compassion. To me, it's like a it's like a compassion that almost physically hurts because you see that all is not right in the world.

That is wired in you by God, and it can be used for good. When it's not recognized, it can make things very difficult for you. But if you can recognize it, if you can understand it, if you can know that God has wired you to have this deep desire for things to be right in the world. We see it in Jesus, Mark chapter three. Jesus is in front of the Pharisees.

There's a man with a withered hand who comes to him. It's a Sabbath. He turns to these religious officials. He says, what's the right thing to do here? Is it right to do good?

Is it right to kill and destroy or to bring life? Is it right to do good or do evil on the Sabbath? And they won't answer him. They stay silent. And it says in the passage that Jesus looked around at them in anger, and then he had the man stretch out his hand.

It says he was deeply distressed by their stubborn hearts. And anger can be this this deep, deep, deep feeling of like things are not right in the world, and when God's love is thwarted in the world, we feel it. In another chapter in Mark, it says that the disciples now were the ones to whom Jesus, entered his anger because he said, let the little children come to me. They were keeping the children away. It says Jesus was indignant with them.

He was like, do not thwart God's love for these people. So there is a way that anger can be used, and the difference here is so important. All four of these are a destructive kind of anger. This anger can create. This is the only anger that can make more love in the world.

The rest of these make less love. Make less love in the world. These things burn out the love in you. We all know that anger has a violence and a destruction to it that can undo lots of good things that have happened in your life. Perhaps you've been on the receiving end of that, or you've seen it yourself.

You know it in your heart. So we have these anger that give us an opportunity to reflect and to ask these questions when next time we're irritated. What going on with me? Which of these is my issue, and how might God be using my everyday situations so that I can grow? And then we practice new responses because irritations and offensives offenses in our life are training ground.

This is how we say to God, here is my real heart. Here is who I really am. This entire section of love in first Corinthians is designed to lead us to person. This whole section is designed to lead us to the person of Jesus. Do you think Paul was thinking about himself when he wrote this?

No. He was thinking of Jesus. Jesus is patient. He's patient with us. He's patient with his disciples.

He's patient with the people who wanted more signs. He was also not provoked. He was unprovoked with the chief priests and officials who wanted to kill him even when they accused him. He was unprovoked with Pilate who completely misunderstood his authority and thought that he was the one who had the power over Jesus. He was unprovoked with those who mocked him.

He was patient when he cried out to God on the cross, and he was patient when he said to the thief next to him, today you'll be with me in paradise. Jesus shows us what real love is. And anytime you have an opportunity to grow in your understanding of why you're irritated, why you're impatient, why you're provoked, ask yourself, do I know the love of Jesus? Can I focus on the love of Jesus? Right here in this training ground as we take one step at a time, one day at a time, how is Jesus becoming more real to me even in this moment?

This morning, I was driving in to to preach here. Was thinking about my message, and I was excited because it was snowing, and I usually get out of the car at the coffee shop because I don't like to wait in any lines. And the line was empty in the drive through, so I was like, great. Don't have to get out. Someone pulled right in front of me right as I was to get that get there.

That person decided to put in a very complicated order and also didn't know how to use their app. And I'm sitting there, and I'm gritting my teeth. I'm literally rehearsing my sermon. What a mighty name of Jesus is playing on my radio, and I am not connecting the dots. This is how unaware we can be of our own sin nature.

The next thing that happens, I I turn out to drive. The person in front me doesn't use the turn signal. I promise you guys, these are real examples that just happened this morning. And I'm driving, and I'm behind someone who's going like 38 and a 45. I get it.

It's snowing. I got it. The person just inexplicably slows down to 20. All the way here, guys. All the way.

This person did not turn in here. I I still would have told this story, but they didn't. And I thought to myself, wait a second, Nicole. Wait a second. This is it.

This is your heavenly father. This is the Holy Spirit who walks with you and says, what are you gonna do right now? Is your life more important than these lives? What are you gonna do right now? Are you going to love?

And I'm like, okay. I'm literally start singing out loud. What am I in the name of Jesus? And then I'm like, look at this beautiful snow. Look at this beautiful tree.

Isn't it great that I get to drive this slow? I'm so happy to be here. It's practice. It's practice. It's practice.

I've been practicing and practicing, and I'm still impatient, and I'm still irritated, but I know my savior who is the one who dwells in me. And I know a God who is transforming me into his likeness inch by inch, step by step, day by day, and that is what it means to follow Jesus. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for the opportunity to be here together, to take this rigorous journey together, to realize, wow, God, we're so far from the kind of love that you've given us a vision for. It is a faraway mountain range, but praise God, you just you're so good to us and so patient with us that you say, will show you a more excellent way, and I'm gonna show you day by day in the life that you're living.

Lord, help us to have surrendered hearts. Help us to see the way that you are transforming us bit by bit into your image. In Jesus' name, amen.