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[0:00] Well, good morning, church. You enjoy the service so far? Why don't we give a hand to Jared and Lindsey for coming out and lead us in worship today?

[0:14] That's not all they've done here. They also taught the youth in Sunday school this morning, and we are working through with our search committee right now. They're kind of the one candidate we're looking at right now, so we're not asking for a vote or anything today, but we just wanted them to be able to come out and experience our church and us get to experience them, and so we've just been enjoying them this morning.

[0:37] And they're fairly local from Iowa Park, so that's nice to have somebody who kind of understands this corner of Texas up here. Well, we are continuing on with our series called New Life, A Fresh Beginning with Jesus.

[0:51] And just by a way of recap, our series text, and actually our text for today has been 2nd Corinthians 5, 17. If y'all wouldn't mind, let's read it together off the screen.

[1:02] Ready? Begin. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, and see, the new has come.

[1:15] Man, what an awesome, awesome thing that we get to begin each day new and fresh with Jesus. Jesus. Now, by way of recap, we started this series off by understanding that God is doing a new thing.

[1:31] If you need any more evidence of that, you look at the baptisms that are continuing to happen in our church. You look at new faces that are showing up and stories of life change that are happening across our church and in our community.

[1:42] And you see that God is doing something new. And man, for God to be able to take a church that's been around since 1876 and do something new, that's pretty awesome. That says something great about our God, right?

[1:54] Most churches don't make it that long. And our church not only has made it that long, but God has seen fit to continue to do a new thing in our church. And we believe he's got us around for a long time to come.

[2:05] And that's the plan. So God is doing a new thing. Do we see it? And then we said we need to stop trying and start what? Training. Stop trying and start training.

[2:17] Some of you, if you follow me on Facebook, I don't know if I'd recommend it, but I would say you have seen that, you know, I'm trying to get out there and train for a 5K. And as you can tell, I'm a lifelong runner and I've run many 5Ks in my life.

[2:32] Working on it, all right? I'm training. I'm training. I've been trying my whole life and not getting anywhere. So now I am training. God's training me to become who he wants me to be.

[2:42] And I dare say that God is training our church to be who he wants us to be now. He's had us be different things throughout our long history.

[2:52] But now in 2024 and beyond, what does God want our church to be? He's training us now. So we depend on him. And then we got into the identity and behavior.

[3:04] And we said we do what we do because of what we think of us. Let's read it together. Can we? You do what you do because of what you think of you. And that is so true.

[3:15] What we think of ourselves determines how we behave. What would someone like me do in a situation like this? We compute this really fast in our minds. And then we act according to what we think of ourselves.

[3:27] But in reality, we got to have a mind shift there. We need to think according to how God thinks of us, how God views us, and then act according to that.

[3:40] So identity determines behavior. Then we got into this little three-part sub-series on running the race. And we said, first of all, from Hebrews 12 and Philippians 3, we need to lay aside our weights.

[3:53] And, you know, that was a memorable Sunday in the life of our church because I lost the foot race to one of our teenage boys sitting right down here. Anyway, raced down the front to the front of the auditorium.

[4:06] He just smoked me. I mean, blew me away. And so then I gave myself a nice advantage and loaded him up with all kinds of ankle weights and a weight vest and carrying all these weights.

[4:17] And I barely beat him. So that was a lot of fun. But we learned that weights do slow us down, don't they? Of course. So there might be something in our life that needs, that is slowing us down, holding us back.

[4:30] So we ask the two questions. What are you holding on to? The Bible says lay aside every one of those weights. And then secondly, what is holding on to you?

[4:40] There's something from your past, something deep inside that's got its grip on you. And you've got to let it go. Forget what lies behind. And then we moved on to the next part of those passages and said, let us run.

[4:53] Let us run. Number one, start moving. Might be something in your life that you've been putting off. And God wants you to begin. Start moving.

[5:04] Reaching forward to what lies ahead is what the scripture says. And then it says, keep going. Run with endurance the race that is set before you. And then thirdly, just a few Sundays ago, we said, look at Jesus.

[5:18] Finally, look at Jesus. Lay aside the weights. Let us run the race. And all the time we are looking at Jesus. So we need to get our eyes up, don't we?

[5:29] Eyes up. Looking at the one who ran this race before us. The one who enables us every day to run this race. And then we press toward the prize of the upward call of God.

[5:42] He's calling us, drawing us eternally upward toward him as he trains us into who he wants us to be. Now, you're caught up. Okay? You're caught up.

[5:54] I'm going to give you a quiz on all that in just a minute. So I hope you wrote it all down. Just kidding. Today, we're going to talk about secret agents.

[6:08] You never know what you're in for when you come to church on a given Sunday. All right? Can y'all tell me the name of these gentlemen? Notice I didn't say names.

[6:20] I said name. What is the name of these guys? Bond. James Bond. And you've got to say it that way. All right? The name's Bond. James Bond.

[6:31] I'm not going to try to do the British accent. That's not going to work out well. Yes, all these guys portrayed on the screen an iconic secret agent, the British spy James Bond, right?

[6:45] Maybe that's who comes to mind when you think of a secret agent. Maybe it's somebody else. But today, we're going to talk about secret agents, specifically agents of change.

[6:57] Now, I always wanted to be a spy when I was growing up. And that never worked out for me, which is exactly what a spy would tell you. I always wanted to be the CIA, man.

[7:10] That was my, as soon as I figured out what it was, that was my goal. I want to be a spy. I want to be a secret agent. And then finally, when I figured out what the reality of that life is and not just the glamour of it, I didn't want to do that anymore.

[7:23] So God called me to ministry, and I'm so grateful that he did. But today, I'm going to challenge all of us to be agents. We need to be agents of change.

[7:34] Every person, every man, woman, and child in this room and anybody in between. That child and man and woman stage. So y'all down there.

[7:45] We need to be agents of change, every one of us. What do we mean by that? Well, let's think about change. Is change a dirty word? Can be, right? Nobody likes change.

[7:57] But let me tell you this. Change is inevitable. Change is constant. Former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli said this. Change is inevitable.

[8:09] Change is constant. Change always happens. Do y'all understand that you and I embrace change every day of our life? In the simplest of ways.

[8:22] Because most of you are wearing something different today than you did last Sunday. And I hope you're wearing something different today than you did yesterday. Especially those camp boys. But listen.

[8:38] We change every day, don't we? We don't eat the same meal every day. We like variety. We like to spice things up with different options.

[8:50] But there are certain things that it's hard for us to accept change. There are certain areas where we're like, man, don't touch that. I'll change my outfit.

[9:02] I'll change my clothes. Ladies, maybe you rearrange the furniture in your house. Maybe it's just my wife. But I feel like you do that sometimes. We've redecorated I don't know how many times since we got married.

[9:14] And that's all right. Keeps it new. I like it. Change is inevitable. Change is constant. But I heard this quote recently.

[9:26] And it grabbed my attention. What people resist is not change per se, but loss. Because like we've already understood, change is something we all experience every day.

[9:43] What we're scared of in these areas where we try to avoid change, we're scared of losing something. We're scared of losing a memory, an experience, something that we fondly remember or are comfortable with.

[9:59] Take a little bit of a dark turn here, but why is it sometimes that victims of abuse never leave their abuser or don't for a long time?

[10:14] Because they're afraid of losing maybe a provider, maybe someone who protects them from someone else, even though they do it in a terrible way.

[10:26] There's all kinds of reasons why we hold on to something that is maybe not even healthy for us.

[10:37] Maybe not even good for us. But we're scared of the unknown. We've gotten used to this. We're comfortable with this. So don't take this away from me because what if the alternative isn't as good?

[10:53] So what people resist is not always change itself, but it's losing something. Let's look back at 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and let's back up in the chapter now before we get down to our text, our series text, verse 17.

[11:12] Let's look at 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 1. If you wouldn't mind just joining me and standing out of honor of God's word, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

[11:24] The Bible says we want to give honor to God's word as we read it together. You follow along in your Bible as I read. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 1. For we know that if our earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal dwelling in the heavens, not made with hands.

[11:46] Indeed, we groan in this tent, desiring to put on our heavenly dwelling. Since when we have taken it off, we will not be found naked. Indeed, we groan while we are in this tent, burdened as we are, because we don't want to be unclothed but clothed, so that mortality may be swallowed up by life.

[12:08] Now the one who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave us the spirit as a down payment. Verse 6. So while we are always confident and we know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord.

[12:26] Watch this. For we walk by faith, not by sight. Now, let's jump down to verse 11.

[12:40] Therefore, since we know the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade people.

[12:50] For sake of time, we can't read and explain this entire chapter this morning, so I want to highlight these select verses. We finished verse 7.

[13:03] We walk by faith, not by sight. We finished verse 11. We try to persuade people. Let's skip down the rest of verse 11, past 12 and 13. Let's jump into 14.

[13:14] Ready? Verse 14. For the love of Christ compels us. Since we have reached this conclusion, that if one died for all, then all died.

[13:26] And if he died for all, those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for the one who died for them and was raised.

[13:37] From now on then, we don't know anyone from a worldly perspective. Even if we have known Christ from a worldly perspective, yet now we no longer know him in this way.

[13:51] Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, and see, the new has come. Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ, has given us the ministry of reconciliation.

[14:10] That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. And he has committed the message of reconciliation to us.

[14:21] Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. Since God is making his appeal through us, we plead on Christ's behalf. Be reconciled to God.

[14:33] He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us. So that in him, we might become the righteousness of God. That is the gospel.

[14:45] That's what saves us. That's what gives us hope and new life. Let's thank God for his word together. God, we love you. We thank you for providing us this place to gather and meet.

[14:56] We thank you for the people that make up this church. Thank you for Henrietta. We thank you for Clay County, for this area, this community that you've given to us. God, I pray that you would move mightily in our church.

[15:08] That you would show us that you are the God of change. And that if we walk closely with you, you're going to change us. You're going to transform us.

[15:19] Help us to follow you. Speak to us from your word this morning in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Thank you for standing. Number one in your bulletins this morning, God's mission changes us from the inside out.

[15:35] Verses one through seven describe how God's mission changes us from the inside out. Now, oftentimes, you and I will be more concerned about changing from the outside in.

[15:51] Right? If we want to change something, we think about the exterior. I want to get healthier. I want to drop some weight.

[16:01] So I'm starting to train. Right? I'm trying to reshape my body so it looks different. But oftentimes, we are the sickest.

[16:15] We are the most in need of change on the inside. And that's God's mission. God says bodily exercise profits a little.

[16:28] There is profit to it. It's a small amount. But God is mostly concerned with the interior. He's mostly concerned with the inside.

[16:39] Changing our hearts. Transforming us from the inside out. We're not trying. We're training. Right? So God's mission changes us over time from the inside out.

[16:52] So, verses one through seven. We're not going to read it all again. But when you look back at this, it paints this picture. If you want to go home and read back through this whole chapter and read the verses we didn't have time for today.

[17:04] But kind of take it all in context and get this big picture of our future after death. Of the ministry of reconciliation. Of the past, present, and future of our standing with God.

[17:19] Then you start to see the big picture of God's mission for us. And that's life change. Transforming into his image.

[17:31] So, let's look at verse six. Highlight it real quick. We are always confident. And we know that while we're at home in the body, we're away from the Lord. Right? Now, we have God's presence with us if we are his children.

[17:44] I don't just want to assume that everybody in this room is a bona fide Christian and saying, yes, I put my faith in Jesus. I am a Jesus follower. I understand that I'm a sinner. I know that God died for me when Jesus hung on that cross.

[17:58] I understand that he rose from the dead. I believe he's God. I put my faith in him for the forgiveness of my sins to become his child. Now, if that's you, then you're one of us.

[18:09] You're a Jesus follower. And God has a mission for you to change you to become more like him. To change us to become more like him.

[18:21] So, while we are here in this body, walking around on this earth, we're away from the presence of our Father in heaven, even though his spirit goes with us. We have God's presence everywhere we go.

[18:32] But someday, it's all going to become real. Someday, we'll see him face to face. Someday, we'll gather at home in heaven. It'll be a wonderful eternity together with our Lord.

[18:45] So, right now, verse 7 says, we walk by faith, not by sight. Have you ever tried to change? Have you ever ultimately decided on a change that needed to happen?

[19:02] And you embarked on this journey of change? And then have these words ever left your mouth? Have you ever said, man, I wish it could all just happen now?

[19:16] I wish we could skip ahead to the good part. Because change is hard, isn't it? The journey to change, the transformation, is difficult.

[19:32] And it's no different when God's trying to change us. There's pain. There's fatigue. There's distress sometimes.

[19:45] When God is molding us and shaping us, as that happens, it might hurt a little bit. But you know that the end result is going to be worth it.

[19:59] Right? So sometimes we say, man, I wish I could just skip all this hard part and get to the good part. But the journey is a journey of faith.

[20:12] Verse 7, we walk by faith, not by sight. When you can't see it yet, faith carries you on. Maybe it's a journey of restoring a broken relationship.

[20:25] Maybe it's your kid. Maybe it's your grandkid. Maybe it's a friend or a family member or a co-worker. Or whatever it is. Maybe God is bringing you along a journey of faith.

[20:36] And it hasn't all appeared yet. It hasn't all rectified or resolved itself yet. It's still broken. It still hurts. But God says we walk by faith, not by sight.

[20:48] Let Him take you through this change. Let Him take you through this transformation. That person may need to change the most. But God might be changing you too along the way. So God's mission changes us from the inside out.

[21:04] We're staying in 2 Corinthians. But back just one chapter. 2 Corinthians 4, verses 16 through 18. You can just look across the page probably in your Bible. Therefore, we do not give up.

[21:16] Even though our outer person is being destroyed, the inner person is being renewed day by day. I can promise you that this last week there were times I felt like I might be being destroyed out there at camp.

[21:31] Right? Like, man, I'm not 20 anymore. You know? Much less 10 like these kids. When I'm out there running trying to train for this 5K, sometimes it feels like I'm destroying my body.

[21:46] Somebody was asking, hey, you guys went on vacation recently. Did you keep running on vacation? Like, wow, thank you for keeping me accountable. And by that I mean not thank you, but actually thank you because I need it.

[21:59] Yes, I did. I started running. I kept it going. Actually, all my wife's family out there was patting me on the back. Man, I can't believe you're getting up before everybody else. And out there running, I'm like, well, it's California.

[22:10] The weather's nice. So I might as well take advantage of it while I can before I have to go back and run in Texas in the summertime. Anyway. But after a few days, I thought I had a stress fracture in the bottom of my foot.

[22:26] I'm like, unbelievable. Trying to make some life change here and my body's fighting back against me. Felt like I was being destroyed, right? But our inner person is being renewed.

[22:39] Every time I still got up and ran, every time during camp, counselors, when we got up and faced another day or tried to put out another squabble between the kids or, you know, make sure they actually brushed their teeth or whatever.

[22:54] We're being renewed day by day. Every struggle, every hardship, every time you persevere and keep going, every time you face that broken relationship again and don't abandon it, every time you open up your mouth and speak the name of Jesus to somebody in your life who needs to hear it when it's hard and difficult and awkward and uncomfortable, every time these things happen, we are being renewed day by day.

[23:29] God is transforming us. He's changing us even though it's difficult. So, verse 17, 2 Corinthians 4. Our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable weight, eternal weight of glory.

[23:49] So, we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. You know why we try and we fail? Because we focus on what is seen, not what is unseen.

[24:00] God says, I'm training you to do a mental shift to focus on what is unseen, what you can't see happening. But by faith, we walk by faith, not by sight.

[24:11] By faith, you trust that I am working in you and I am changing you. I'm transforming you. He's doing it to me, y'all. And I know He's doing it to many of you. He is changing us.

[24:24] And we focus on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary. The pain in my foot went away. The fatigue from camp will go away.

[24:35] The burdens we carry will eventually be laid down. But what is unseen is eternal. The glory that came from carrying those burdens, the glory that comes, the glory of God that comes from persevering in those relationships, from going ahead and sharing the good news of Jesus, that glory is eternal.

[25:03] It will never go away. It is here forever. So God's mission is changing us. And it's going from the unseen to the seen, from the inside out.

[25:18] Number two, God's mission replaces our own. God's mission replaces our own. You and I have a mission. Our mission changes all the time.

[25:33] When I was a kid, my mission was to be a spy. At some point in time, I wanted to be an Olympic athlete, a bicycle, a cyclist. I wanted to be a cyclist, an Olympic cyclist, because I saw them riding those cool bikes.

[25:46] I thought it was awesome. Eventually, that mission changed. Our mission for ourselves changes all the time. You have a mission for yourself right now.

[25:59] You have an agenda. You have a dream. You have goals. God's mission replaces those. Now, the cool thing is, sometimes God's mission helps you achieve goals that you never thought possible for yourself.

[26:14] That's not promised, because your goals might not be healthy for you. It might not be the best outcome. But God's mission always will be. So God's mission replaces our own.

[26:25] Let's look back at verse 11 in 2 Corinthians 5, back where we begin. Therefore, since we know the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade people. That's God's mission.

[26:37] Us persuading people. Now, when I say us, I'm talking to the Christians in the room. All right? The children of God, the Jesus followers. Our mission from God is to persuade others of the goodness of God.

[26:51] And verse 14. Skip down again, verse 14. For the love of Christ compels us. Man, we are compelled to do this. Why?

[27:03] Because he died for us. If one died for all, then all died. And he did die for all. Jesus died for all men everywhere. Man, if you ever heard anybody say that Jesus only died for certain people, that's so not true.

[27:16] Jesus died for everybody. He died for the whole world. Is everyone going to turn to him? No. Some will not. Some will choose to not turn to him. But Jesus died for all of us.

[27:30] And he died for all. So that those who live should no longer live for themselves, in my mission, but for the ones who died for them and was raised, from now on then, we don't know anyone from a worldly perspective, even if we have known Christ from a worldly perspective, yet we now no longer know him in this way.

[27:53] So, I want to explain what that last verse means. Knowing Christ from a worldly perspective.

[28:06] If you go to an average person across Texas, there's a chance they've heard of Jesus. A chance they've heard of Christ, God, probably been to church at some point in their life, even if they're not faithfully attending now.

[28:22] May or may not have given their life to Christ, but at some point along the way, they've heard of him. They know what you're talking about, most people. They have probably a worldly perspective of Christ, of Jesus.

[28:38] Yeah, he's from the Bible, he's God, et cetera, et cetera, fill in the blank. The interesting thing though, is if you poll all of the people in this room right now, you might find a similar worldly perspective.

[28:56] Far more than we would want to admit. If you ask me at different points in my life, and I've been walking with Jesus since I gave my life to him at age seven.

[29:11] There's been ups and downs. There's been times when I strayed further and further away from him, and his will for my life. And in those moments, I can promise you, my perspective of God was a worldly perspective.

[29:27] Even though my dad was a pastor, I knew just about all there was to know, on paper, could answer all the Bible trivia. But I still had a worldly perspective in my heart of God.

[29:44] Sometimes that perspective might be that God's the big judge up in the sky waiting for you to mess up so he can get you. And that's as far from who God is as you could possibly get.

[29:59] It also minimizes sin. Our sin doesn't call God to get us. Our sin condemns us to an eternal death and suffering in hell.

[30:12] And there's nothing we can do to change that. God himself had to change it. And it cost his son's life.

[30:27] Sin is a massive deal. It's a huge thing. It's not a small thing in God's eyes. It cost Jesus his blood. It cost Jesus his suffering.

[30:39] It cost Jesus, the son of God, his very life. So a correct view of God, not a worldly view of God, is that God loves us more than we can possibly imagine.

[30:53] And he showed it on the cross. And then he showed his power and his deity by rising from the dead and being available to us. And says, listen, I want you.

[31:06] I have a plan for you. I have value for you. I have a meaning for your life. My mission must now replace yours.

[31:17] He has given us a mission. I want to show you this quote. Not so much that the church has a mission, it's that the mission of God has a church.

[31:34] It's a great writer named Alan Hirsch. And I really enjoy the thought behind this quote. It's not so much that God looked down at our church and said, hey, here's a mission for y'all.

[31:47] It's that there is this mission that already exists. And God established the church for it. He established the church. He gathers us together, not for a social club.

[32:00] He gathers us together, not just for a group who can hang out sometimes. Now, should we hang out? Absolutely, man. We feed off each other when we hang out. We sharpen each other.

[32:10] Iron sharpens iron, right? But God established this church to carry his mission across the world. We are the vehicle for advancing the kingdom of God on earth.

[32:24] Not all his children have been brought into the fold yet. Not all the saints have come home. And so God says, I have this mission. It's all part of the plan that was established before the foundation of the world, before any of you or I existed.

[32:40] God had this plan in place. He had this mission. And he says, now I have my church to go out and propagate it. Now I have my church to go out and spread the good news.

[32:51] And so that's where your circle of the world comes into play. That's where the people in your life become incredibly important, become this divine purpose.

[33:02] You say, my life? My life seems so dull. My life seems so boring. My life seems so small. No, no, no. It's your part of God's mission for this entire world.

[33:15] And if you don't accomplish your mission, that part struggles. Somebody else has to come along. Because God uses people.

[33:26] God uses us. So the mission of God has a church. And that's where you and I come in. God's mission must replace our own.

[33:39] And then that brings us right into number three. Final point this morning. God's mission is continual change. I knew we were going to get back to the change part eventually, all right?

[33:51] God's mission is continual change. What do we mean by that? Look at verse 17. We're changing how we view Christ, not from a worldly perspective, from an intimate, personal knowledge that is ever-increasing, an affection that's ever-growing stronger because we know God's not shaking his fist at us.

[34:17] He's not pointing his finger at us. He knows the worst about us. And he loves us anyway. And so our perspective has changed. And as we walk with him, we experience continual change.

[34:30] Verse 17. Here we go. If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. Change began when Jesus saved your soul. Change began when you placed your faith in God.

[34:46] Now the old has passed away and the new is here. The new has come. So verse 18. Everything is from God. He has reconciled us to himself through Christ.

[34:58] He's given us the ministry of reconciliation. Remember that? Ministry of reconciliation. In Christ, verse 19, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against us, against them, and he has committed the, here we go, message of reconciliation to us.

[35:17] What are we talking about? Ministry of reconciliation and message of reconciliation. Do you realize that reconciliation is change? What does it mean to reconcile something?

[35:30] Anybody still use a checkbook? You ever reconcile your checkbook? I think it happened during my lifetime where we like went away from the checkbook because I grew up with that and then at some point along the way most people stopped using checkbooks.

[35:47] If you still use checkbooks, that's all right. People just know you're old. So part of it's one of those things, man. I don't know. Is there anybody here under the age of 30 who uses a checkbook?

[36:00] Look at you go. Caden, come on, man. I love it. It's an old soul right there. It's awesome. When we reconcile something, we're making it match, right?

[36:11] We're taking something that's not reconciled. It doesn't match up. Whoa. Doesn't match up. Doesn't work together. There's two entities that are not resolved.

[36:24] Well, that was us and God, right? Us and our sin. God and his perfection. We could not mesh. Didn't work. So Jesus reconciled us by his blood.

[36:36] When he shed his blood on the cross, that was the payment for your sin and for mine. So now he's given us the same ministry, the ministry of reconciliation.

[36:47] So we're supposed to be reconcilers. You and I are reconcilers. You've probably never called yourself that before. You've probably never called anybody else that before.

[36:59] We're supposed to be peacemakers. We're supposed to be reconcilers. We have the ministry of reconciliation, and we all have the same message of reconciliation. It's the same message of reconciliation that saved my soul and yours.

[37:13] So God's mission is that we are ministers of reconciliation carrying the message of reconciliation. Now go back two chapters, 2 Corinthians 3, 16 through 18, or you can just look at the screen.

[37:25] That's fine. Whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. For the Lord is the Spirit. And wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom, reconciliation, it all comes together.

[37:43] Verse 18. So all of us who have had that veil removed can see. But it's not just about us.

[37:54] It's not just about us being able to see. What else does it say? Look at the screen, would you? All of us who have had that veil removed can see and what? Reflect.

[38:06] For the benefit of others. So they can see too. Because someone reflected it for us. And now we get to be reflectors.

[38:17] So we're reconcilers and we're reflectors, aren't we? Then we can reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord who is the Spirit makes us more and more as He trains us, as we're walking on this journey, more and more like Him as we are, here's that dirty word, ready?

[38:40] Let's say it together. Changed into His glorious image. God is a God of change. And I thank God because I can't change on my own.

[39:01] God changes me. God changes you. God wants to change you more. He wants to change our church. Man, change is scary.

[39:13] What's it going to be? Well, if we're walking with Jesus, it's going to be great. His change is going to be so much better than if we stayed the same or if we figured out our own change.

[39:27] It's the last thought and we're done. We've been talking about this verse and we're going to keep talking about it. If you're tired of it, I'm sorry. It's God's Word. Here we go. Romans 12, 2. Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way we think.

[39:48] Then we'll learn to know God's will for us and it's good and it's pleasing and it's perfect. Let God change your thinking. Let God change your thinking.

[40:00] Let God change the way you are a husband. Let God change the way you're a spouse. Let God change the way you run a business. Let God change the way you treat your employees.

[40:11] Let God change the way you treat your boss or talk about him or her. Let God change the way you treat your children. Let God change the way you act in the dark.

[40:22] You act when no one's watching. let God change the way you think about him let God change the way you think about this church we had a new worship guy get up here didn't we different right change we've had new people getting baptized we've had new people coming into the church that's all change let God change the way we think about that here's the takeaway today God change me to fit what you want to do in my life in our church and in this world change me to fit what you want to do in my life in this church and in this world would you bow your heads with me please God I pray that you would change us please change us God we don't want to change for change's sake we want to change because that's what you want to do with us you want to transform us we want to be changed into your image God show us what that looks like in Henrietta Texas in 2024 show us what that looks like in Clay County in 2024 show us what that looks like as parents as siblings sons and daughters friends neighbors employees co-workers show us what that looks like in our world to be changed by you we'll give you all the glory for it

[41:50]  God you're going to bring us into a future that is so much better than whatever we could have gotten to on our own in Jesus name we pray amen church would you keep your seats keep your seats and just enter into a moment of prayer our ACeven we'll bring you on say