Psalm 11

Hope that's going to happen. Really grateful for Russell jumping in. Russell McCutcheon, our church planner in Southeast Raleigh Knightdale, and for him preaching last week for us. It sort of rearranges our schedule a little bit, but we're back in the beatitudes this morning.

And as is our custom, we're going to read God's word aloud together. So if you'll find that either in your bulletin or on the screen, we're going to read from Matthew chapter five, verses one through six. So let the people of God read the word of God.

Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him and he opened his mouth and began to teach them, saying:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the gentle, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied."

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. — Matthew 5:1-6

Now I have a problem this morning as a preacher. When Jesus first said these words to people gathered around him, he was speaking to people in a first century context where one of the main goals of every day was to get food and clean water. It was a regular fight for people in that time and place to find food, and we just are not in that spot. We don't really know starvation in the same way. We don't know thirst in the same way.

So true confession: I come home most days after work and Susan's making dinner, or my whole family's making dinner, and I come in and I say two words—"I'm starving." Now I am not starving, right? I want something salty to eat and I'm bored, or I am grumpy, or I'm tired. But I'm not really hungry for food. I'm probably hungry for something else, but that's not what I mean by "I'm starving."

And I think that this is hard for us—this particular beatitude, or I'm calling them the beautitudes—because we don't live in that world. So I'm going to instead this morning go to Doctor Seuss to help us with this one.

Now I know that in the rearview mirror of history, there are some problematic books by Doctor Seuss, illustrations by Doctor Seuss, and I'm very aware of that. So I'm sort of cautiously doing this, but I do think his book The Sneetches is very helpful for us this morning. So please bear with me.

The Sneetches

The star-bellied sneetches had bellies with stars. The plain-bellied sneetches had none upon ours. Those stars weren't so big—they were really so small. You might think that a thing wouldn't matter at all. But because they had stars, all the star-bellied sneetches would brag: "We're the best kind of sneetch on the beaches. With their snoots in the air, they would sniff and they'd snort. We'll have nothing to do with the plain-bellied sort."

Whenever they met some, when they were out walking, they'd hike right on past them without even talking. When the star-bellied children went out to play ball, could a plain-bellied snitch get in the game? Not at all. You could only play if your bellies had stars, and the plain-bellied children had none upon ours.

When the star-bellied sneetches had frankfurter roasts or picnics or parties or marshmallow toasts, they never invited the plain-belly sneetches. They left them out cold in the dark of the beaches. They kept them away, never let them come near, and that's how they treated them year after year.

Then one day, it seems, when the plain-belly sneetches were moping and doping alone on the beaches, just sitting there wishing their bellies had stars, a stranger zipped up in the strangest of cars.

"My friends," he announced in a voice clear and keen, "my name is Sylvester McMunkey McBean, and I've heard of your troubles. I've heard you're unhappy, but I can fix that. I'm the fix-it-up chappy. I've come here to help. I have what you need, and my prices are low, and I work at great speed. And my work is 100% guaranteed."

Then quickly, Sylvester McMunkey McBean put together a very peculiar machine. And he said, "You want stars like a star-bellied snitch? My friends, you can have them for three dollars each. Just pay me your money and hop right aboard."

So they clambered inside and the big machine roared, and it clunked and it bonked and it jerked and it burked, and it bopped them out—but the thing really worked. When the plain-belly sneetches popped out, they had stars. They actually did. They had stars upon ours.

Then they yelled at the ones who had stars from the start, "We're exactly like you. You can't tell us apart. We're all just the same now, you snooty old smarties. And now we can go to your frankfurter parties."

"Good grief," groaned the ones who had stars at the first. "We're still the best sneetches, and they are the worst. But now, how in the world will we know, they all frowned, if which kind is what or the other way around?"

Then up came McBean with a very sly wink and he said, "Things are not quite so bad as you think. So you don't know who's who. That's perfectly true, but come with me friends. Do you know what I'll do? I'll make you again the best sneetches on beaches and all it will cost you is $10 each."

"Belly stars are no longer in style," said McBean. "What you need is a trip through my star-off machine. That wondrous contraption will take off your stars so you won't look like sneetches who have them on Mars." And that handy machine, working very precisely, removed all the stars from their tummies quite nicely.

Then with snoops in the air they paraded about and they opened their beaks and they let out a shout: "We know who's who. Now there isn't a doubt. The best kind of sneetches are sneetches without."

Then of course, those with stars all got frightfully mad. To be wearing a star now was frightfully bad. Then of course old Sylvester McMunkey McBean invited them into his star-off machine. Then of course, from then on, as you probably guessed, things got into a horrible mess.

All the rest of the day on those wild screaming beaches, the fix-it-up chappy kept fixing up sneetches off again, on again, in again, out again. Through the machines they raced round and about again, changing their star every minute or two. They kept paying money. They kept running through until neither the plane nor the star bellies knew whether this one was that one or that one was this one or which one was what one or what one was who.

Then when every last cent of their money was spent, the fix-it-up chappy packed up and he went. And he laughed as he drove in his car up the beach. "They never will learn. No, you can't teach a snitch."

So what's the point? You get it right. You and I were sneetches. We're all hungry and thirsty, all like sneetches. We're hungry and thirsty, and maybe not like Jesus' original audience for the next meal where that's going to come from or what we're gonna drink. Is there clean water? But we're hungry and thirsty, and I want to put it this way: I think that we are sneetches for happiness.

So when it comes to Jesus, He gives us these beatitudes, or as I'm renaming them, the beautitudes—because beatitude actually doesn't get at what these pithy sayings of Jesus really are about. You can tell that from this one particularly this morning. Beatitude sounds like, "If you will be this attitude, God will bless you." Being hungry and thirsty? What? It doesn't seem to fit. And it tells us again, these are not prescriptive; they're descriptive. It's not "do this and therefore God will reward you." It's actually a description of Jesus' giving of the beautiful life. This is the beautiful life He's holding up for us.

What's interesting is that Jesus says three really crazy things about the beautiful life that I really want you to hear. First is this: happiness is in being hungry and thirsty, not in being full. Isn't that odd? I mean, we think of goodness as being satiated or satisfied or full—feasting, not hunger, not thirst.

Second, the good life is not found in getting happiness. Now, I want to be really careful saying that because Jesus is not saying it's wrong to pursue happiness, and I want to correct a bunch of bad teaching that maybe you've heard or maybe you grew up with or maybe you thought you heard. Jesus is not against our happiness. He never says, "You're an idiot for pursuing happiness. You're a moron for wanting a life of ease and comfort." He's not saying any of those things. But the good life is not found in being full of happiness.

John Calvin said this: "Most people hold on to the erroneous belief that the happy person is the one who's free from annoyance, attains all he wishes, leads a joyful and happy life." But if we're guilty of anything, I want you to hear this as a congregation, it's not that we want to be happy too much. It's that we actually have too small an appetite, or it's too filled with other things. Desires are not wrong.

No, the good life is surprisingly not about being full. It's not anti-joy. But this is what Jesus says: the good life, the beautiful life, is being hungry and thirsty for righteousness, not happiness.

If you make your life about the pursuit of happiness as the end, it's like Bazooka Bubble Gum that I grew up with. You might remember Bazooka Bubble Gum. I remember we would beg my mom for stuff at the grocery store when I was a kid. I think this is every kid's experience—you go to the grocery store and you're supposed to do this. And we would beg for candy, and Bazooka Bubble Gum was the cheapest stuff you could buy. You could get it for like a penny or two, and you'd get the Bazooka Bubble Gum, pop it in your mouth, and it lasted six seconds before it went from bubble gum to eraser. I mean, disgusting. And you had to spit it out and get another piece. It doesn't last.

This is what we're hoping—that the pursuit of happiness will somehow satisfy us. Jesus says no. Surprisingly, the best life, the beautiful life is not about getting full. It's not even about getting full on happiness. It's being hungry and thirsty for righteousness. Jesus knows what we don't know. The pursuit of joy apart from righteousness leaves you miserable.

So listen to the beatitude here again. You want to be happy? Be a snitch for righteousness. Be a snitch for righteousness.

So let me take that a little bit further. Can I push on this? I want to show you how much Jesus wants us to hunger and thirst for righteousness. You can tell this right away—He doesn't use one word. He uses two words. He doesn't say just be hungry for righteousness. He doesn't just say be thirsty for righteousness. Hunger and thirst. That tells you something already from the start that this is deep and intense.

But the second thing I want you to see is this, and you wouldn't get this reading the English, but this is in the Greek—and I am no Greek scholar. In fact, I was a terrible, terrible Greek student in seminary. So I just read this in a book. But the word here for righteousness is not in the grammar form you would expect. See, Jesus is not saying hunger and thirst for some of righteousness. It's possessive. Some righteousness, some of righteousness. That's like when we say, I want some pizza. You know what I mean when I say I want some pizza—I want a slice of pizza, or in my case, three to five slices, in some of your cases, one to two, right? I want some of pizza. I'm not saying I have to eat the whole pizza, right?

But that's not how Jesus uses this verb. He's not saying hunger and thirst for some of righteousness. He says this: hunger and thirst for all the righteousness in the whole world. Hunger and thirst for all the pizza—not just in this restaurant, but all the pizza in the whole world. Do you hear the intensity of that?

I mean, that's not actually very nice. We're in a church and it's a normal thing for people in church to be like, "Yeah, I want some God in my life." That sounds kind of comfortable. But it's really weird if somebody wants, "I want all of the God of all in the whole world." That is intense, and that is what Jesus is saying here.

To summarize, what is Jesus saying? Happy are those who are snitches for righteousness—for all the righteousness, all the pizza in the whole world. And this morning, I just want to warn you, this is sort of a test passage. How you hear this is gonna either go one way or the other. This sermon is going to be incredibly comforting for you this morning or incredibly discomforting for you this morning. But either way, it's one of these: Jesus is not going, "Go away." He's going, "Come here. I got what you really want. I got what you really want."

What is Righteousness?

So what is righteousness? We don't use that word very often except for the word self-righteous. Does anybody here want to be called self-righteous? No. That's obviously a self-righteous person is somebody we want to be away from. So how is Jesus using this and saying you should want this—like so much that you're like all the pizza in all the world? I want all the righteousness. What is it?

Well, I'm so glad you asked. Thank you for asking. The word for righteous here has the word right in it, and it's a relationship word. So I'm just gonna very simply write: relationships. Righteousness is a right relationship with God, with other people, with yourself, and with the whole world. It's right relationships. It can mean being approved or received or accepted or right.

So let's do a little quiz. Let's say you have a really bad conflict with somebody this coming week—one of those conflicts with your boss, with a coworker, with a friend, with a spouse, with a parent, with a child. And it's one of those like it is really getting intense. The argument's getting intense. And let's pretend that I for some reason show up in your office or knock on the front door and I'm like, "Hey, time out. Can I talk to you for a second?"

And I'm like, "So right now in this argument, if you could say what outcome you wanted from this today, would you rather want to be at the end of this argument? Would you rather be forgiven or would you rather be right?"

So would you rather be forgiven because you're admitting you did something wrong, or would you rather be right? Anybody? This is not rhetorical.

Right. Right. Right. A hundred percent of the time. Who doesn't want to win, right? And there's something of that longing to be right, which is written in the DNA code for us by the creator of the universe. Righteousness, being right, is something we long for.

Now here's what we learn. True righteousness is actually the property of God alone. God is the only one who is righteous. In fact, it says to people:

There is no one righteous, not one.

We don't do good things in terms of perfect righteousness—not inherent in who we are deep down. Now that doesn't mean we don't do good things every once in a while. The blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while. I say that one all the time at home. But the blind squirrel, even the blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes. So yes, we do good things sometimes. But in terms of the deep down righteousness, that is not who we are. Only Jesus, the perfect God-man, is righteous in that kind of way.

You can tell this as you read the New Testament. Jesus is on the cross suffering and dying for sinners. A Roman centurion looks up at Jesus dying and says, "Surely this was a righteous man." Even the Roman centurion saw it.

The Gospel

Here's the essence of the gospel, and if you don't hear anything else, I want you to hear this this morning: God declares not-righteous sinners like me and you righteous in relationship to God—not based on your performance and your record, but on the basis of what Jesus has done for you. That's the gospel. It's not based on what's deep down inside of me, but on what's deep down inside of Jesus. God looks at that and counts that as if it's my own and yours.

This is why some theologians call this the alien righteousness of Christ—not because it has anything to do with scaly green guys with googly eyes, but because it's outside of you. It has nothing to do with what God sees on the inside of you. God looks at Jesus and credits that as yours. He declares you righteous. That is justification.

But do you understand the difference? This is really important. Do you understand the difference between a nice Bible Belt moralistic person and a real Christian?

A nice Bible Belt moralistic person is someone who's saying, "I want some of God. I want a little God sprinkled on my life. I want a little bit of righteousness—a slice of pizza."

A real Christian is somebody who looks deep down on the inside and says, "I have no righteousness and I want all the righteousness in the world. I want all of God's righteousness to be mine. All the pizza."

There are a lot of people who are nice Bible Belt moralistic people. We're surrounded by them in Raleigh, North Carolina. They're probably nicer than all of us are. But the difference between someone who's really a Christian and someone who's a nice person is: do I want a little bit or do I want all of it? A hunger and thirst for righteousness.

But it goes even deeper. A real Christian is someone who continues to hunger and thirst for righteousness. Because what God has declared us to be in Jesus—that's not really true of us on the inside. I wake up on Monday morning and I'm still grumpy, irritable, selfish, and mean. That's not really deep down. I'm not really righteous on the inside. God has declared this over me. So what it means to be a Christian is someone who continues, even though they've been declared righteous, to say, "God, I want more of that deep transformation on the inside of me."

Someone who hungers for righteousness isn't defeated by seeing they're selfish, angry, grumpy, and mean. They're like, "Oh, I know that. I just still want more righteousness. I still want more of God in me."

Let me use another word for righteousness: holiness. I want what's true declared over me to start to take root in me so I am changed from the inside out.

There was an old Scottish saint who put it this way: "Oh God, make me just as holy as a pardoned sinner can be." He's saying, "I already am holy in your sight, but make me holy now on the inside."

The Story of Grisha

Can I tell you a story about my friend Grisha Ivanovsky? A friend from back in the nineties. I met Grisha at a church in suburban Philadelphia when I was in seminary. Susan and I lived in suburban Philly, and Grisha was married to a woman named Madeline—still is. They have a couple of kids. They still go to that church and live there.

They had come to that church a couple of years before because Madeline had been a missionary in Siberia. While she was there, she met Grisha. They fell in love. They eventually moved back to suburban Philly and got married. After their wedding, Grisha went through the whole process to become a full American citizen.

But here's the funny thing I want to point out: Why was Grisha an American? Because Madeline loved him. Not because he'd earned it or done anything, but because she loved him and that was the pathway for him to citizenship. Do you follow me? The parallels with our faith?

But here's the funny thing: as I got to know Grisha at this little church, Grisha wanted to be an American so bad. Now he was an American, right?

That had been legally declared in his passport and he had been fully made an American citizen and yet here's Grisha and he wanted to be an American in every way, down deep. He wanted the American accent. He wanted the American humor. He wanted to dress like an American. He just wanted to be an American. He loved cowboy movies. He had a pickup truck. This is kind of weird. He had a pickup truck he painted bullet holes on because he thought that was American.

So, true story. I was married in a pair of black snake skin cowboy boots with my tux. I had two pairs of cowboy boots. Grisha loved cowboys. I gave him my black snake skin cowboy boots and you would have thought like I'd given him all the gold in the world. He's an American, and here's Grisha, he's already American, he wants to be an American.

This is what it means to be hungry for holiness, to be a snitch for righteousness. I have the righteousness of Christ, but man, I want that down deep. I want to be different on the inside. Do you get it? That's a very imperfect illustration of that.

But a Christian is one who hungers for righteousness, hungers for holiness in relationship to God, a snitch for more and more for what's declared over you to be true down deep on the inside. And really, it can be boiled down to this: it's just a person who's like, I want more of God in my life.

Eugene Peterson who paraphrased this in the Message, I like how he puts this. He says:

You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat.

Yeah. That captures some of what David says in the Psalm. He says:

As the deer pants for streams of water, my soul longs for you.

So here's the test again. Are you a good Bible Belt moralist? Are you actually a Christian? A good Bible Belt moralist this morning is like, I want some of God in my life. I'm here at this church for a little of God, a slice of God. But a real Christian is saying, I want all the God. I want all the righteousness. I'm hungering for holiness in my life. Is that you?

Hungry and Thirsty

But like they say in the game shows, that's not all. Remember, that's not all because Jesus—remember he says here, not one word hungry, but two words, hungry and thirsty. Now there are lots of places in the Bible where it describes us being hungry. Jesus says, I'm the bread of life or Jesus says, I'm the living water that will come up from within you. Those are separated in a lot of places. Right here, Jesus puts those together. And so it tells us there's a that's-not-all quality to what we're reading this morning. So hungry for holiness is part of it, but it's not all of it.

See, because remember, righteousness is a relationship category. It's not just me and Jesus, but it's also me and my neighbor. It's looking where snitches for righteousness. Yes, my relationship with God, but I'm a snitch for righteousness in my relationship to my neighbors as well. For people all around me, someone who is thirsty for righteousness wants the rightness of God to ooze into every crack and crevice of this world.

Who looks around when they see the news and goes like, I want God's reign. I want God's power. I want God's influence at every aspect of this world? And it is to thirst for everyone else's flourishing. I'm gonna put it this way: thirsting for thriving, wanting other people to experience all of the Shalom of God in every area of the world.

And you look at the news and you're like, I want this for the homeless and the poor and the weak and the destitute. I want this for those who are locked in addictions. I want this for those who are stuck in trafficking. I want this for all those areas of this life that are so broken.

You know, look, I'm you're going to God and you're saying, Lord, I am parched, thirsty. I'm not just like I need a drink of water. I am cracked lips thirsty. I am going to die if I don't get another drink thirsty. For all of you and your power and your influence to come into all the parts of this world that are so broken, that are so devastated by sin, that are so under the curse. I want all of God. I want all the end of exploitation and injustice and oppression and lack of resources.

And this is where we keep coming back. I know some of y'all are like, why we keep using this word? But we come back to the word justice because it's a God word. He made it up. His foundation of his throne is justice. It's wanting the justice of God and all of what that means, all the rightness of God to be in every area of this world.

You know, it's funny when I was preparing for this sermon, I noticed that you can tell what kind of church you're at by how they preach this passage. Conservative evangelical churches will preach the first part of this message really well. Hungry for holiness, declared righteous in the sight of God, longing for that transformation deep within you. And is that right?

Yes, that is absolutely right. Hallelujah. That's right. Hungering for holiness.

Liberal mainline churches will preach this passage and they'll spend all the time talking about wanting God's rule and reign, his rightness, thirsting for thriving in every aspect of this world, and is that right? Yes. But we don't want some of God in this church. We want all the righteousness of God. And if you preach the vertical, me and Jesus without the horizontal, or you preach the horizontal without the vertical, you're missing all of what's in view here when Jesus says hunger and thirst, hungry and thirsty for thriving, hungry for holiness—both.

So here's my question and I've got two parts to this: Why aren't we hungry and thirsty? Now the answer you're gonna expect me to say is because we eat junk food all the time. Like why aren't you hungry a lot of times? You've been eating other stuff. And that is true. There are dumb things that we give ourselves to that we think will satisfy us that don't satisfy us, right? Having the perfect body, accumulating experiences or possessions, having the approval of lots of people. Those are all things, and you expect this from a pastor. Lots of you have been in the church a long time. You know you could preach this part of the sermon. You're like, amen, bazooka bubblegum. Yes. There are lots of things that people give themselves to that don't satisfy.

And I want to say this again: it's not because our hungers are too big. It's actually because they're too small and they've been too easily satisfied by other things.

C.S. Lewis, the Oxford professor and theologian, wrote this:

We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he can't imagine what's meant by the offer of a holiday at the ocean. We're far too easily pleased.

You know this part of the sermon. Too easily satisfied with other things. But the other reason why we don't get hungry—think about your body. The other reason you don't get hungry is sometimes because you're sick. And I want to step on your toes a little bit this morning because I think this is really, really true for us as a church. It's true for people who have been in the church a long time. We get sick with cynicism.

Cynicism as Spiritual Sickness

Cynicism is a spiritual sickness for people who've been Christians a long time. And here's how it works. It works first in your relationship with God, where you begin to say, gosh, I've been a Christian a long time. And God isn't just waving the magic wand over my life and transforming all the parts that I want. He must not really care, or really may not be that powerful. And so you're jaded, you're cynical. You have long-term sin struggles that you don't seem to be able to do anything about. You open up the Bible and it seems empty. Your prayer time seems joyless. I mean, do you feel this? Am I the only one feeling this this morning? Anybody? Right?

We get sick with cynicism about me, but we also get sick with cynicism about the world because you've heard all the great sermons—God's gonna change everything—and you're like, no. You know what? It seems to be getting worse, not better, and the church is part of the problem. What a mess. And we become jaded and cynical about God's power to work in the lives of other people or in our city or in our country. And over time, cynicism makes you sick, makes you jaded, cynical, and bored. Like me, I'm starving. Not really. If you want anything from God at that point, it's like you just want a little bit, a slice of God. Maybe that means my investments don't go down as much as the rest of everybody else with the stock market, or my kids are doing okay in school. We want little answers to prayer. We don't actually believe that God is powerful at work within me or within this world, and we're cynical.

So if that's you, you're in good company this morning. Right place.

The Practice of Fasting

How do you get hungry and thirsty again? And I'm gonna give you a little hint from the ancient church that's really weird, but hang in: fasting.

Fasting is a spiritual practice that Christians throughout centuries have practiced. And I know that we think of that as going without food, but this is not about weight loss or looking better. In fact, if you think it's about that, don't do it. Fasting is about going without a good thing so you can hunger for a better thing. Fasting is about denying yourself some good created thing in order that you may build up a spiritual appetite for a better thing. And it's all about leveraging.

People can fast from all kinds of things. There may be reasons why you're like, I can't fast from food. Doesn't matter. Fast from binging TV shows. Fast from little rewards you give yourself, little entertainments, little—I need that Starbucks coffee on the way to work.

Like the little things that are good things that God says, these are gifts, but you're using that, you're leveraging it to hunger for something else. So let me give you a couple of examples. Let's say you decide for a period of time you're gonna fast from binging TV. Like your habit is to come home at the end of a hard day and you turn on a show and watch six episodes without even thinking about it. You don't even remember what you watched. This is how you fast from that. When you don't watch the TV, you pray. Every time you're longing for this, you're like, Lord, help me to want you like I want that. Right now, I just want to escape from reality. I'm trying to be present to you. Can you meet me at this place where I'm too easily satisfied?

Or maybe decide I'm gonna fast every Wednesday for lunch. This is what you do. When you're feeling the hunger pains, when you're like, oh, Jersey Mike's, that is what I really really want. Right now you're like, Lord, you pray. Lord, help me to want you and your righteousness, your holiness, the thriving of other people the way I want the Jersey Mike's 12 inch right now. You leverage it. You lean into it so that you are hungering for something greater. You leverage your hungers. And this is one of the things—it's a weird connection between actual physical hungers or things that you enjoy and longing for God. This is the way we push through, fight through cynicism, the spiritual sickness that we suffer from. We begin to look to something greater.

Let me close this morning with a hopeful word for you, fellow snitches, because I'd read some but not all of this story. Here's where I left it off. Then when every last cent of their money was spent, the fix it up chappy packed up and he went and he laughed as he drove in his car up the beach. They never will learn. No, you can't teach a snitch.

But here's the rest of the ending. But McBean was quite wrong, I'm quite happy to say. The snitches got really smart on that day. The day they decided that snitches are snitches and no kind of snitch is the best on the beaches that day. All the snitches forgot about stars and whether they had one or not upon dars. Brothers and sisters, blessed are those fortunate, lucky, happy are those who hunger and thirst not for happiness, not filled up, but are hungry and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled.

Remember, may God give you grace to be a snitch who learns a couple of things this day like the snitches here. The good life is surprisingly not about being full. The good life is not about being full on happiness. The good life is one where your longing and your hope is for righteousness and the rest comes along as well.

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your word. There's nothing like your word and it has the way to cut through all the excuses and things we tell ourselves about our hearts and to show us the mirror of who we really are and then show us what you invite us to. Father, I pray that every person this morning would more and more find themselves to be a snitch for your righteousness, to hunger for holiness on the inside, to thirst for thriving for all of our neighbors on the outside. Lord, we pray that you would transform us. Lord, make us a people who locate our joy in hungering and thirsting for your righteousness, all of it. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.