[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to the message podcast of High Ridge Church, Longview, where our vision is to help, you know, God, find freedom, discover purpose, and ultimately make a difference. We are so glad that you're here and we pray that this message impacts your life as you apply the spiritual truths from God's word in practical ways. Let's listen in.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Good morning, High Ridge family. Good morning. Welcome, all of you guys. We love you guys. And those that are joining us online or will be joining us at some point online, welcome. I'm so proud of our church. I love our church.
You guys have been very encouraging to me personally over this last week. I've gotten a lot of text messages and just words that. Just saying you're praying and supporting this. And thankful for our pastor and our leadership here. And Brother Tim is. Pastor Tim's just taking a huge risk here. I know I'm not a pastor. This is not my thing. Usually a middle school principal. And so, you know, there's just no telling what might come out of my mouth. I'm just saying. So I just.
It's just the way that it is. But I do feel right at home here. Cause I see some of you guys are like, you're middle school minded too, as well. So.
Yeah, you know, as a middle school principal, I want to speak to you today. We're going to talk a little bit about thriving in exile. So that sounds kind of funny because I didn't have that in mind necessarily. But it's what it means to live your best life right now where you are living your best life. So it's summertime and everyone's taking their trips and their vacation and posting all their little pictures of their toes in the sand and all of that kind of stuff. We're getting all of that out, you know, and some are looking at, you know, well, I.
Geez, I went to Gilmer for vacation and you know, they're off in Cabo. I don't know what's wrong. I'm not living my best life. Deborah and I, we were able to take our family here this last week. We went up to Coeur d' Alene, and so this is my wife Deborah sitting right over here. And so we went up to Coeur d' Alene and found a coffee shop. Now, you guys know I'm a coffee drinker, but I thought it was real appropriate that we found this coffee shop because it had. This is the inspiration for this message. A coffee shop? No, not really.
We've got that slide up there. The Best Life, the Best Life coffee shop. Can you get any better than that? So there we are, living our best life in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho. But as I thought about that, and we had a great time. We did, really did. And it's good to get away. I appreciate what our pastor said about the need to take time, even if you don't have the means or the time necessarily to go away and do something, you know, off and get. Get way away, you know, take time and give yourself a rest where you are. You need that. And we need to be healthy. We all need to be healthy, especially after what we're going to talk about today. Because it's very important that you take care of yourself because you want to thrive. You want to live your best life. And you cannot live your best life unless you're taking care of yourself.
And so I want to spend a little bit of time talking about that and in light of that, thinking about what was said last week from Pastor Tim. If you watched online or if you were here or you caught up on the message our church is, we have some four fundamentals. And one of those is what Pastor Tim talked about last week about finding freedom. It's very important that you find freedom. The first one is knowing God well. That's obviously very important. And then you find freedom as you know God. But I want to talk a little bit about your purpose, about discovering your purpose. And so I would start with just a simple question. Do you really believe. Do you believe that. That God has a plan for your life? Do you really believe that? I mean, I think a lot of people wanna believe it. A lot of people wanna know that. In fact, a few years ago it was put out on. I think it was New York Post that put that out as a question. And it was the number one question that not just Christians but people would ask, does my life have meaning? Is there a purpose for my life? But I think most of us in this room, I've heard a few of you say, you would agree that God has a plan for your life.
I agree with that, too. In fact, we have a biblical basis for that. It's from Jeremiah 29:11. Most of you are probably familiar with it. It says, for I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. That's a great verse. Is that not a great verse? And some of you guys probably cling to it, just like we did when Deborah and I married.
That was our life verse that we Chose. And we had this calligraphy picture or something. It's around the house somewhere. We have that. And she's like shaking her head. It's like, well, we have that in our house.
But I also have in my office the one who penned this verse, Jeremiah. I have a picture of him in my office. I want to talk a little bit about that more because we need to also understand that while God has great promises for us is that we need to ask ourselves the question, well, what happens when those plans, those plans that we feel like God has for us, they don't turn out the way that God the way that we had anticipated. They take us to a place where we didn't want to go. What happens when you find yourself in life? Now I'm going to share, as I share today, a little bit. You'll see my story in there because I'm going to tell you, as a middle school principal, I didn't sit in high school. When I talked to my high school counselors and they said, hey, okay, so what do you want to do when you get older and grow? What do you want to be? I never, never said, you know, middle school principal. That is my dream job.
That is my place of purpose. That is that I'm going for it. From day one, I was. God brought me into public education kicking and screaming, right? You know, I have to go. And even when he did as a teacher, I, you know, I thought, okay, yeah, I'm going to go. And I'm mid life changer, career changer. So I didn't even, I mean, it took me years to get to this point. And then I'm like, that is, that's not really what I want to do. And I sure don't want to be an administrator. I, you know, it's enough to have a classroom of kids, much less a school full of kids and teachers and families and all the rest that we have to deal with. So that's not, that just wasn't my place.
So.
So God took me down a bit of a broken road to get me to where I am today. And so in my office I have this picture of Jeremiah in there. It's a Raphael picture and it's kind of a big gaudy looking frame, but it's a, you know, it's there, people walk in. Why do you got this picture of this old man sitting there crying? And it's like, it's so, it's if you know Raphael's painting, it's Jeremiah weeping over the destruction of Jerusalem, the prophet. And that's what happened during this time. And so it reminds me. It reminds me. I look at that and remind me that our plans don't always go the way that we thought. So sometimes that's going to take you to a difficult job, a difficult season, a difficult relationship, a difficult child, an unexpected expense or a health issue.
Sometimes it's a place God takes you to, a place that feels more like you're in exile than in the promised land, A place where the best life with a coffee mug in Coeur d', Alene, the best life seems like is so far away and that the best that you have in your place is just survival.
I know some. I know I'm not the only one who feels that way someday. I'm not that way every day. But some days I just like, I'm just gonna make it through the day. I'm in survival mode, you know, I'm gonna give it best. So what so in order for us to really understand this meaning of this verse, I want to go back and let's look at the context a little bit. So I want to go back at this Jeremiah 29:11 promise and see who it was written to first. So let's look at Jeremiah 29:1 7.
Okay, so here's the Here are the verses prior to this 2911 promise that we all love so much. But let's look at who it was written to. These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles, and to the priests and the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. This was after King Jeconiah and the queen mother, the eunuchs and the officials of Judah and Jerusalem, and and the craftsmen and the metal workers had departed from Jerusalem. The letter was sent by the hand of Elisha, the son of Shaphan, and Gemariah, the son of Hilkiah, and whom Zedekiah, king of Judah, sent to Babylon. To Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, it said. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent and into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce, take wives, and have sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters, and multiply there, and do not decrease, but seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
You notice a common recurring theme through that. You hear an echo of a certain word in there to the exiles, the exiles. Now, we don't maybe know a lot about what that means today, but very simply, I mean the word exile, that just means you've been displaced, not by your own. It's not like to the people who are on vacation, to the people who have just chosen to go live in another place.
It's the people who were taken in captivity, in bondage, as slaves, taken away from their homeland, taken away from their families, taken away from their hopes, taken away from their dreams, drug across through the desert and all that over to Babylon and placed not only just in Babylon as slaves, building bricks and digging ditches, but placed in a place that they were expected to serve the king of Babylon, serving the king, the one who had come to their town, destroyed their temple, looted and robbed all of the good things out of the temple and killed their relatives.
And now you take me to a place from serving the living God in Jerusalem to a place that serves idols, pagan worship.
So now these people were taken there.
It was written to these Jews, that's who this promise, this Jeremiah 29 promise was written to. They were taken as slaves, captive to Babylon, this place of exile and of loss and hurt. And so it's literally the enemy going to serve the enemy.
And it wasn't just any and every random. They didn't just go up and round up everybody. They were very, they, they very targeted in those that they brought into captivity. So let's look at Daniel 1. So we're going to flip over there for a second just to see, because Daniel. So if you. If just A Little Bible 101 Jeremiah and Daniel. This book of Jeremiah is written during this time when the fall of Jerusalem came. Daniel was involved in this and his three friends. We'll get to that here in a second. And Jeremiah's writing to these people, these Daniel and his friends. So let's look at Daniel 1, 3, 4.
So the king commanded Ashpenaz. Now that's the king Nebuchadnezzar that we just read about, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding and learning, and competent to stand in the king's palace and to teach them the literature and the language of the Chaldeans.
Now, among these noble, skillful, wise young men that they took, that they targeted from the royal family. So Daniel and his friends, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego are the ones that we know most famously. Right? And you read. I would encourage you, take some time, maybe this afternoon, and go back and reread especially the first nine chapters or so of Daniel. And a lot of people think of Daniel as just this prophetic book that talks about the end times and things. No, it's for today.
The lesson that we're learning from Daniel is for today because these young men, they were taken away from their hopes and dreams. You can imagine when they were young, they were taught, you are of royal family, you are of nobility, you are a leader among God's people here in Jerusalem. You're going to the finest school, you wear the finest clothes.
You've got hopes and dreams of being a leader for this nation.
That's the ones that they targeted. And now they're drug off into the king's service. And not only that, but they were expected to then to serve that king. So they had lost everything that they had in Jerusalem, maybe even some of their own family members, to go serve this wicked king. But here's what they did do.
They lost everything, but they kept their faith. They didn't lose their faith.
They hung onto their faith.
They also hung onto their identity. They are men of God.
They represent the king of kings, not the king of Babylon, not the king of Israel.
They refused to forget who they were.
And so.
And all in all of that, they refuse. And guys, you know the story. I mean, you know, we could go on, just spend the whole time talking about those stories because you know, the story of the. Of Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego and the fiery furnace and all of that. We know Daniel in the lion's den and how they stood for their faith and suffered because of it. Even in this place, they would rather die than compromise.
They were willing to lay their lives down rather than compromise on their faith. But what we don't spend a lot of time thinking about is what they did do, what they did do.
And that is they.
They listened to and lived out this promise of Jeremiah 29, or actually this command of Jeremiah 29. So let's look back at that one more time, okay?
They were called, they were put in this place, in Babylon, to seek the welfare, to seek the prosperity.
And the Hebrew word for that is the shalom, the peace, the blessings of that place where I have sent you into exile, says the Lord. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its prosperity, in its welfare, you will Find your prosperity. They believed it.
They believed it so much that they were willing to serve in an evil empire.
I mean, think about that. If some one of the enemies of America came into America and took control and went to MIT and our best and brightest universities and schools and got our best and brightest and said, you know what? You're really smart guys. You're really good guys. You're. Now you're going to work on technology for us. You're going to make our kingdom better. You're going to make our place better.
You can imagine what that'd be. You know, I like the idea of, you know, no, we're not going to do that. We're going Wolverine right here. You know, they're going to come in here. I'm going undercover. You know, I'm going to go live in the woods and get my buddies together and we're going to go resist, you know, the anarchy. I'm not going to serve a foreign king. But you know what? They went and they served and they served well.
And they stood for things that they were against, but they stood for things that they could do that they knew would not compromise their faith. And in fact, that Daniel 1:20 says that whenever they were brought before the king to be examined by King Nebuchadnezzar, and he had them all out there and he quizzed them and he tested them and he looked them over physically to see how they were doing. It says that he found these four Hebrew boys 10 times better than anybody else. All of the people over all the world that he had conquered at that time and brought into service. The best, the brightest of all of the people that he had conquered. These were 10 times better than anybody else, 10 times better. And I think about that, I wonder if that could be said of us by our bosses, by that boss that we really can't stand, by that leader.
They're 10 times better. They work 10 times harder than anybody here on this place.
Can that be said of you? I mean, because they didn't just try, hey, you know, I'm just getting by. I'm just here for the paycheck, man. I'm just riding the clock. Just pay me. I'm going.
I got no interest in this place.
But Jeremiah says, seek the prosperity, seek the welfare, seek the peace, the benefit of the place where you have been sent, where you're called. They didn't just survive, they thrived.
They thrived in a hard and difficult place.
They served 10 times better, and in it they found favor and they found their prosperity. In fact, if you read on through that Daniel, you'll see that Daniel himself served under four different wicked, evil kings.
Kings that would just as soon cut somebody's head off or throw them the lines in or fiery furnace as anything else. These weren't nice guys. But Daniel served and he gained the favor so much under King Darius, he was put second in command. And Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were given leadership in all the provinces.
I mean, these are Israelites. These were the Jews and their leaders in the land of Babylon. How does that ever happen? How could they be trusted for that?
I mean, we could say the same thing for the story of Joseph, right? You know the story of Joseph. Same thing sold into slavery, ended up going into prison.
Everywhere he went, he gave it his best. He rose when he was a slave, he became the best among the slaves. But when he was in prison, he was the best among the prisoners. You know what? He rose to be the second in command over all of Egypt, the most powerful land in the country. But that wasn't the promised land. That wasn't the place Abraham had been sent to and said, this is the place. These are the people and the place where I'm going to prosper you.
He prospered in Egypt. Daniel and his friends prospered in Babylon. Why? Because that's where they served the Lord. And so they discovered the goodness of God's plan and God's purpose in the place of exile, in the place away from the promised land.
So even in exile, even in exile, God's plan is still good.
Can you say that in your place of exile? And can you say that in your difficult place? You know what? I never chose to be here. I didn't expect this was going to happen, be how my life turned out. But you know what? God's still on the throne and his plan is good.
So what does this mean for us today? That's another context. But what does this really mean for us today when we're stuck in jobs that we didn't dream about, or seasons of our life that we never wanted, we never asked for?
Maybe when we go back to that verse, maybe we need to redefine what it means to walk in our purpose to walk. Maybe because we tend to think of our purpose as being something that, you know, we sit down as a child, I was telling someone a minute ago, you know, I thought instead of being a middle school principal, I thought at this point in my life, at this age, I had my little map plan, I was going to go do missions around the world, which I've done that part. I was gonna finish my doctorate in seminary. I was going to have this sort of retirement seminary professor life with a big office with lots of books all around and a pipe. Right.
I don't know where the pipe came in, but yeah, I'm gonna sit and then I'm gonna go walk down the halls of my seminary and I'm going to lecture to some up and coming missionaries and talk to them about all of the things that God has planned for them in the missions. And then I'm going to go back and smoke my pipe. That now, as a middle school principal, sometimes I wanted to smoke something else, but it wasn't. It wasn't a pipe. I could say that. I know my wife's embarrassed and things just come out. I'm telling you, things just come out of my mouth. I'm not smoking a pipe or anything else. I promise you.
The best life.
The best life isn't about coffee shops in Coeur d', Alene, smoking a pipe in an office. The best life is not about leisure and comfort. It's about living life knowing that you're doing exactly what God has for you to do in the moment. I should add to that in that day. It's about making a difference where you are today in whatever realm or whatever sphere of influence that you have in that place, that's where God has called you. You say, well, I don't know if God's calling me. I can tell you where God's calling you. Where are you going to be tomorrow? That's where he's calling you.
That's the place. I'm not saying you shouldn't have goals and ambitions. Start a business, get a degree, all of those things, that's great. But while you're working towards those things, serve God faithfully in the place that he has called you today.
So let's listen again to this Jeremiah 29:4 passage.
It says to all the exiles. I just want to reinforce this because this is what he says.
You may think, well, I'm just in the place I'm in because I had this circumstance or that circumstance, or bad things happen to me. Can you say that wherever you are today, And I'm not just talking about people who are, you know, working in different jobs around, like you may be retired or you may be a stay at home mom or whatever, that's your realm, that's your sphere. That's where God has placed you. For today. It may change. I may not be at Judson Middle School Principal this time next year, I don't know what God has. I mean, I just trust God day to day. But you know what? I'm going to show up there tomorrow and the next day and the next day until God moves me or does something different with me, that's up to him. But I'm going to serve faithfully where he's called me, because God sent me there. So for those exiles, it wasn't Nebuchadnezzar, it wasn't fate, it wasn't bad luck, it wasn't a career misstep that got them there. God sent them there. And so if God has sent you where you are today and put you where you are today, whether it was by your choice or not, that is his calling. That's where he has you. So what do they do? What do we do? Well, let's look at the verse again.
We build houses, we plant gardens, we get married, we raise families, we seek the peace of the city where I place you in. In other words, God's calling and God's purpose is found in the mundane, the everyday faithfulness, plowing, sowing, doing the normal, everyday things that you do and doing it honorably as unto the Lord.
So in other words, go out and just do the routine that you've got, the mundane things, ordinary things. And as you go, pray, pray for that place you're in, Pray for your bosses, pray for your companies, seek the prosperity. How many of us really, I mean, would go to our boss, say, what can I do to help this your business, be more prosperous?
What can I do to make this a better place?
What can I do to help? I've done that. I did that with the principal that was there before me. I told her, I said, my job is to make you and Longview ISD and Judson Steam Academy look good and be good. That's my job. That's what I'm called to do.
So his calling, God's calling, isn't about the position, it's not about the paycheck, but it's about living life in your purpose.
And we're worried sometimes about, you know. Well, I'm just. I'm just working for the paycheck or I'm just seeking the next position or whatever. But are you living in your purpose? Are you finding your purpose?
Well, I can tell you what his purpose is, and it's in the verse again. It's to bring the shalom, the peace, the blessing, the prosperity to wherever it is that you are, even if it feels more Like Babylon than Jerusalem, than the Promised Land. Even if it feels more like hell than heaven, Right? Maybe today that's how you feel. Exactly. Maybe you're living in a place like you're living in exile, far away from home, far away from a place that you thought you would be at this time. Exile doesn't always mean your chains or your captivity.
For us, it might feel like being stuck and overlooked and out of place or far from whatever it is that we have ever imagined.
Exile can be a season, not a sentence.
It's a place of pruning and not punishment.
I mean, sometimes we think, well, God must hate me.
I had all these plans. I had all. Didn't go. But God mistake me. No, God loves you enough that he wants to prune you and prepare you and get you in a place of your calling and your blessing.
So you may not feel valued in your place. You may not feel appreciated at all. But your workplace, your community, Longview, Texas, your neighborhood, your. Even that boss, even that boss needs you.
They need you. Wherever it is, whatever it is you're doing, you find yourself doing, that's where you are needed. Never underestimate your influence in your place, you have influence, and your influence may only be one or two people. You may not work with 600 kids and nearly 100 staff and families and all that. I always tell everyone I've got the largest youth group. I'm a youth pastor at Judson Steam Academy. I have the largest youth group. And they all come, they all show up. I don't have to worry about it every day.
And not everyone has that opportunity. I don't take that for granted or lightly. You may only have one or two people that you. But you have influence.
You have influence. So don't underestimate it and don't let your circumstances dictate your attitude.
And you don't like your paycheck, or you don't like your hours, or you don't like whatever. Fill in the blank.
Don't let that.
Don't allow that to dictate or determine your attitude, which is going to affect your influence. It's hard to be an influence for good, for peace, for light, for life, for hope. In your realm of influence, when you've got a bad attitude, when you're blaming God or blaming everybody else for your bad situation. Imagine what would happen if every believer in Jesus, if everyone in this room, everyone listening online, just went to their workplace tomorrow, went, got up and whatever it is you find yourself doing tomorrow, and you said, how can I be 10 times better.
How can I do better than I've ever done before? How can I be a blessing to this place?
What would happen if you treated your job like that?
Yes. That job that stinks, that you really just can't. I mean, there are days, I'll be honest, there are days, you know, I'm like, driving to work, going, oh, Lord, are you sure? Are you sure?
Is this where I'm supposed to be? And God's yes is yes. God's plan isn't always about escape, but it's about presence. It's about being there and being present. It's about being the shalom. In that place, you find your purpose not by chasing it, but by serving others where you are.
You find your peace not by escaping, but by seeking peace for other people. By being the peace, by being the shalom for others.
Purpose is a process of discovery, more than a product of your ambition.
You don't find your purpose because you're like, I'm setting some goals. I'm gonna be out there and that's my purpose. Your purpose isn't off, off somewhere off in the distance. Your purpose is right in front of you today. It's sweeping the floor. It's teaching a classroom. It's brewing coffee. It's changing diapers. It's where God has you right now. It's not easy. It's not always glamorous, but it's good.
But it's good because you're in your purpose, because you're doing what God's called you to do. And that's good. So what do you do? Here's my challenge to you. You build where you're planted.
Build where you are. You plant where you are. You serve where you are. You prosper where you are today and seek the shalom where you are. Serve well. Serve well in your place of influence. Not because you're trying to earn favor, but because you already have it. You have favor. Serve well.
Represent our king.
This plan may not look like what you expected. However, it is better than you imagined.
So start today.
Start today, living your best life right where he has planted you. And then see where God takes you from there.
That's my prayer for you. That's my hope for you. I'm so thankful to be a part of this church where we do that as a body, we do it corporately. Our pastor, our leadership. We want to be a blessing to our city and our community. And we work hard to do that. And so I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful for your Prayers not only for me personally, but for our city and our community and be a part of. Of what God's doing right here in Longview, Texas, through High Ridge Church. I'm going to ask Brother Bill to come and close us out now.
I appreciate all you guys. I appreciate Brother Tim. He may be listening. Brother Tim, if you're listening, I hope I didn't embarrass you. Too bad.
We'll be all right. Hey, he took a chance with me. But you know what? We take a chance with him every week, right? Don't we?
We. We love him. All right, Brother Bill, you come on.
Good job.
[00:32:06] Speaker C: Oh, man. Thank you for timely message. You know, I'm reminded of the scripture that says, whatsoever you do, you do it heartily as unto the Lord and not unto men.
So I wonder if we could take a moment, maybe just bow your head, close your eyes, and I'm going to just ask you if you're honest with me today and those of you watching with us online.
I don't always give my best.
Sometimes I fall prey to the complaining or the disappointments or the wish it were betters.
But I want to be better.
I want to be able to be one of those ten time better.
If that's you with heads bowed and eyes closed, you say, that message spoke to me and I want to receive this message from my heart today. Could you just lift your hand?
Father, I pray for all of those whose hands are lifted.
Lord, I pray right now that you would help us to recognize that there is purpose in every situation and circumstance we find ourselves in. Because you're in it with us.
You said, I'll never leave you. I'll never forsake you.
You are right here with us.
Not just when we have what we want, but right now when maybe we don't have what we want.
I pray, Father, in the name of Jesus, every person listening online and those here in this room today, we would find the encouragement of purpose in the.
[00:33:41] Speaker B: Present.
[00:33:43] Speaker C: That we will choose to be faithful and to be light and to be salt because you're worthy of our best in Jesus name.
Maybe you're here today with heads bowed, eyes closed. Maybe you're here today and you say, bill, I'm hearing about this purpose, that God gives this purpose. And I don't know that I have the kind of relationship, relationship with God that gives me confidence that I have purpose.
I mean, I'm familiar with church maybe, maybe I've seen church people, but I don't know about this relationship with Jesus, but I would like to friend, if that's you here in this room or watching online, I would like to offer you the opportunity to come into that kind of relationship with Jesus, to discover purpose and meaning in your life.
If that's you, would you just simply pray this prayer with me? In fact, we're all going to pray it out loud together.
It goes just like this. Jesus, as Pastor Tim would say, come on now. Say it like you mean it.
Jesus, I believe that you're the son of God.
I believe you died for my sin and that you rose again that I might have victory over death.
I ask you to come into my life.
Forgive me for my sin.
I welcome you to be my Lord and savior.
I give my life to you.
Thank you for hearing me and saving me right now.
Friend, if you prayed that prayer with me and it was your first time and you meant it, there's nothing magic in the words. It's about whether your heart, you believe what you prayed.
And if that's you today and you prayed that prayer with me for the first time or you're coming back to God, would you just simply raise your hand wherever you might be, look up at me and raise your hand here in the room. I prayed that, Bill. I did. I prayed that prayer. Thank you.
Thank you.
We have some resources that we'd like to make available to you if you prayed that prayer with me. Those of you watching online, this is available to you as well.
If you just text the words I prayed all one word to 844-HRCTXT. We have some resources we'd like to put in your hand that help you know what your next steps are.
So proud of you that you made that decision today. The scripture says all heaven right now is rejoicing that you made this decision.
We want to celebrate with you High Ridge family. If you'd look up at me, we had one in this service. We had four in early service that raised their hand that they prayed this prayer. Amen.
That's. That's good news. Good news. Why don't you stand with me? I'm going to invite our elders and wives forward for prayer. If you would like someone to pray with you, something that's related to today's message or maybe something completely unrelated. We always want to be available to you if you need prayer.
Also want to remind you that unite coming up in September.
I think we got this coming up. Taryn Wells is going to be here a night with him. He's a worship leader. He's going to speak. He's going to do some sanging. We're in East Texas. We sang.
So the tickets are available now, so you can click on the QR code, you can go to the Belcher center site, but you can begin making your reservations to be there for that night. It's gonna be wonderful. Those of you watching online, you can do just exactly that as well. Well, let me speak a blessing over you and we'll be dismissed. Father, thank you so much for every household, every family represented here today and those watching us online.
And Father, we pray right now that each of us would go out with a renewed commitment to embrace now as a time that matters, that we can serve now. Thank you for the message today. Seal it in our hearts as we go. In Jesus name, amen.
[00:38:18] Speaker A: Thank you so much for listening in today. Our prayer is that you are encouraged and strengthened by the message. If you haven't done so yet, be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave us a review wherever you're listening. If you want to be a part of our online community, connect with us through Facebook or Instagram with the handle hyridgelv or you can check out our
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We appreciate your support and we're believing with you today for God's best in your life. Have an incredible week and we will see you next time.
