Means of Grace: Public Worship

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Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But he, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until his enemies are made a footstool for his feet. For by one offering, he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us for after saying, this is the covenant which I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law on the hearts and write them on their mind. Then he says, and their sins and their lawless deeds, will no longer remember. Now, well, there is forgiveness of these things, an offering for sin is no longer required. Therefore, brothers and sisters, The great high priest. Let's approach God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let's hold firmly to the confession of our hope without wavering. For he who promised is faithful, and let's consider how to encourage each other with love and good deeds, not abandoning our own meeting together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. — Hebrews 10:11-25

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

A Season of Thinking About Health

You know, it is the season as we say around Christmas time. 'Tis the season for thinking about health. It's what people in America do. January 1, we start talking about our New Year's resolutions. And I saw a study this past week that said something like forty-four percent of Americans will make a New Year's resolution. Half of those will be about health in some way—about exercise or eating right, a change in diet or going on a diet. And this is a time of year where we think a lot about health.

This has also been a year we've thought a lot about mental health and maybe for the first time, a lot of the stigma surrounding mental health in this country is kind of beginning to fall away. And we know what to do for both of those things. We know the practices that bring about physical health and we know the practices that bring about mental health.

If you want to be more physically healthy in 2022, you have to change what you eat and move more and sleep well and drink more water. We know about mental health that you need to figure out how to handle your stress better. You need to figure out how to process your emotions, and to talk to somebody about those things.

But here's my question for us: What about your soul? Do you think about your soul, that you're a person with a soul? And how would you think about your soul flourishing this next year? What are the practices that you do to have a thriving soul, thriving spiritual health?

The Means of Grace

We're starting a series that's gonna last six weeks. What are called the means of grace. Those are the practices that God has given us. They're ordinary things done regularly by his church that sponsor for us spiritual health.

This is my passion. This is our passion as leadership in this church: that Christ be formed in you. That you would more and more be rooted deeply in Christ. That more and more the life of Christ would grow up in you and out of you. That the fruit of the Spirit would come out of your life. That's what people would see out of you.

We're gonna look at three of the public means of grace and three of the private ones. The public ones are worship and the sacraments and fellowship with other Christians. The private ones are personal prayer, personal time in God's word, and observance of the Sabbath.

But here's the first one, and I'm gonna do something I've been taught never to do in preaching school, right? You don't give the application at the beginning. But I'm just gonna go ahead and get this over with so y'all know what we're doing. That you would make a commitment to be in the local church in worship every Sunday this year, even if you're out of town. And that you would be present unless you're sick, unless it's an emergency. And obviously, this is a crazy time to preach this sermon, right? COVID is on the rise right now. This is plenty of grace for this, but that you would elevate the local church and worship with God's people to the same focus with which you make getting to work on time or getting to school on time or showing up ready for sports practice. That you would show up and be fully present to worship with the local church.

Now, this is not about me and it's not about us. I'm not saying this because I need to have a big church and I can boast to my pastor buddies. This isn't so that you can have brownie points with God or bragging rights among other Christians. This is for your flourishing.

And so I'm gonna talk about three things this morning, three headings for us. Here's my outline: cash in, opt in, and check-in.

Cash In on the Promises of God

Cash in, opt in, check-in. Cash in. So cash in on the promises of God. Now we just spent our advent time, our time coming up to Christmas talking about all these covenants that God makes with his people throughout the Old Testament. All of these promises that God makes over time, over and over.

I've heard people say this for years: "I just wish I lived in the Old Testament time. I wish that, like the people we talked about, Adam walked with God in the cool of the day. What would that be like? Or Noah talked to God and God gave him very specific instructions and he saw God deliver him and his family throughout this flood? Or Moses, who heard God from the burning bush and saw the pillar of fire and followed it through the Red Sea. And the Bible tells us he spoke to God as one speaks face to face. Or what about King David? David who heard God's voice and the promises of God establishing his kingdom." And we're like, "What would it have been like? It'd be so much. We have this kind of default: seeing is believing, hearing is believing. Belief without seeing or hearing is so hard for us."

But here's the message of the book of Hebrews in one word: better. You actually stand in a better place than Noah or Moses or Abraham or Adam or any of the Old Testament heroes of the faith. You stand in a place in history where you have access to the Holy Spirit's work in your life—if you're a Christian—in a way that people only dreamed of in the Old Testament period. What we have is better by a long shot. And I know you don't believe me. So I want you to hear from this passage what it tells us, the word "better."

You have a better priest. Verses 11 through 13 tell us:

Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But he, Jesus, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, he sat down at the right hand of God. — Hebrews 10:11-12

You have a better sacrifice. Verse 14:

By one offering, he's perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. — Hebrews 10:14

You have a better covenant. Listen to verses 16 through 18:

This is the covenant which I'll make with them after those days, declares the Lord. I'm going to put my laws on their hearts and write them on their minds, and their sins and lawless deeds I will no longer remember. — Hebrews 10:16-17

And therefore, you can have this better confidence. Listen to verses 19 to 21:

Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he inaugurated for us through the veil, that is through his flesh, since we have a great high priest of the house of God, let's approach God with a full heart. — Hebrews 10:19-21

All these promises—there's this crescendo that's building. You know, for some of you music people and some of you are not, so you may not know what a crescendo is. But you just heard it in that last song. It starts off quiet and we build and build and build. That's a crescendo, and this is what's happening throughout this passage. Since we have this and since we have this and since we have this, therefore, let's draw near. Take confidence. Since we have all this, cash in.

Now you may not be familiar with that phrase "cash in." So let me tell you a story. One of the great untold stories of 2021 didn't make major news, but in March 2021 there was a guy in Sparta, Tennessee, who just got off work and he stopped by the gas station and he bought himself a drink and a lotto ticket. He filled out all the numbers and stuck it on his dashboard and drove home. He wakes up the next morning and they announced the numbers on TV and on the radio. He pulls out the ticket and he got all five of the numbers right. $1,170,000—instantly, Nick Slaton is a millionaire. So he goes first to visit his fiancée, Michelle. This is going to radically change their wedding. He calls everybody he knows. He's running errands while he's doing all this on the phone, but he gets home and he realizes he can't find the ticket. He's lost it. He goes from someone who's instantly a millionaire to instantly not.

Now, full disclosure: don't play the lotto. Playing the lotto is wrong. I'm not endorsing the lottery. The lottery plays upon the hopes, particularly of the poor. It's exploiting. It's wrong. But I think it's a great picture of the church because I feel like the church so often is like Nick Slaton in this way. We have the promises of God. We have all these things that are given to us, but we don't know how to cash in on them. We don't know what to do to cash in on the promises of God. And this is where this passage is really, really helpful to me, and I hope will be helpful to you.

Opt In

And here's my second point: opt in. Opt in. This passage tells us how to opt in, how to access these things.

Since we have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus, since we have a great high priest, the passage gives us three invitations. And like every health food diet full of lettuce, this one has three lettuces in it. If you don't get that joke, you'll get it on the way home.

Here's the invitations:

Let us draw near with a sincere heart with full assurance. Let us hold unswerving to the hope that we profess. Let us consider how we may encourage one another, spur one another on toward love and good deeds and not neglect meeting together. — Hebrews 10:22-24

"Let us" is always an invitation. It's not an order. It's not a command. If I say, "Hey, let's go get lunch," nobody thinks I'm threatening them. You think, "Oh, he's inviting me to go along with him to get lunch." Over and over this passage shows us how the means of grace work for us. They're invitations. They're proposals. They're not demanded of you. It's not an order. It's "Let's do this."

Public worship, Bible reading, personal prayer, the sacraments, observing the Sabbath, fellowship with other Christians—let's partake of these things. These means of grace are not required to be a Christian.

So let me ask you this and test the congregation this morning. Church, do we as a church believe you can lose your salvation? No. You can't lose your salvation like a lottery ticket. Do you have to go to worship in a church to be a Christian? You're not so sure of that one, are you? No, you don't. Do you have to read the Bible in order to be a Christian? Nope. Just like my physical health, I can eat Cheetos and cheer wine for the next year and I still live. Now I won't be healthy. I'm not gonna look good or feel good. But you can be a Christian and fail to access all these different means of grace that God gives to you that are for your soul flourishing. Sure, you can do that. But do you hear the invitation? Let us opt in, opt in to the practices which promote your flourishing, your health.

Don't neglect gathering for worship. Now, that word "meeting together" in the Greek—you don't even have to be a Greek scholar to get what I'm about to say—is epi synagogue. That's all the word is in Greek. The synagogue is a place that the Jewish people went every Sabbath for worship. There are two places they went for worship: the temple and the synagogue. First century worship looked like this. The temple was the place you went on feast days and for sacrifices. But every Sabbath day, you went to the synagogue to be with God's people and you gather in a little room like this one. Somebody would open up the scroll and read it, and you would be taught about it and they would sing. The synagogue is actually the model for us for New Testament worship. That's what we do on Sundays is based on synagogue worship, not temple worship. We are in Jesus, the new temple of God, but we still gather in epi synagogue every week. This is the call of this passage. Don't neglect doing that. Opt in to worship.

So how will you cash in on the promises of God? How will you remember what's true about who you are? How are you gonna remember that God is in control of all things? How are you gonna be reminded when you're prone to doubt and self doubt about the faith that we believe? You come and worship. You come and be with God's people. It's not required. Nobody's holding a gun to your back to be here, but it's vital for your flourishing. So opt in. Opt in so you can cash in.

Check In

And finally, check-in. Listen again to those two words that I've talked about over and over again: "let us." "Let us." "Let us." It doesn't say "let me." It doesn't say "let you" singular. It's "let us," "let us" together. This is not individual. This is us together as a people.

I'm gonna give a nod here to another pastor, Scott Saul, who I've borrowed a couple of illustrations from for this. But think with me, who is "us" in this passage? The "us" is the church, but what is the church? I think that sometimes we have really distorted pictures of what the church is that really inform how we relate to it.

Abigail Van Buren says this: "The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints, nor is it a club for people who are all alike."

A hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints, or a club for people who are all alike. It makes a huge difference how you relate to the church by how you see it, by what you think about it. I think one of the biggest barriers for people opting in to church is, well, it's other people, right? What's the biggest criticism of the local church?

People there are all hypocrites. I heard somebody say it. Yeah. You know what? Barna has been in studies for fifty years and that's always been the same answer. People in the church are hypocrites. But that complaint reveals that we already have a mistaken view of what this whole thing is.

So here's the call to you: check-in. Not check-in like you check-in at a hotel, but check-in like you do at a hospital. You know, when you show up at a hospital and you check-in, what are the people behind the desk immediately trying to figure out? What's wrong with you. You're sick. There's something wrong or else you wouldn't be here. You're checking into the hospital because there's something very wrong with you. What's the requirement for being checked into a hospital? Admitting I'm a sick person. Admitting I'm a person where there's something wrong.

We say this regularly in our confession of sin in this church. This is taken from the book of common prayer. We say this:

We have left undone those things which should be done and we have done those things we shouldn't have done and there is no health in us.

There's no health in us. I'm sick.

Can you imagine if your boss told you this week, "Hey, I need you to post a job on LinkedIn and here's the job profile of what we're looking for. We want somebody who's radically unhealthy and weak, has got a lot of problems." Anybody gonna respond to that job posting? Maybe, but I don't know if you wanna hire them. But that's how the world works, right? We put our best foot forward for the world. But with Jesus, it's entirely different. He expects us, if we're gonna be part of a fellowship of believers, to put our worst foot forward.

You know, this is demonstrated every time we bring in new members into our church. There are always these two questions. "Hey, do you acknowledge yourself to be a sinner in the sight of God, justly deserving His displeasure without hope saving His sovereign mercy?" In other words, are you really sick? That's what we should start saying. "Hey, are you really sick?" And then the second question is this: "Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the savior of sinners? And do you receive and rest upon him alone for salvation as he's offered the gospel?" In other words, is Jesus absolutely the only hope you have?

I mean, we forget this so easily. This is one of the problems with long-term Christians. Not only are they sick, but then they get amnesia on top of it. The thing that brought you into fellowship with Christ, your need, your incredible need for a savior, becomes that thing that you forget over and over is true of you still. This is one of the problems with being a pastor of a church with long-term Christians. We all actually think we're pretty okay. Don't we feel okay? You guys look okay, right? No. We're incredibly sick people. This is a hospital filled with lots of sick people. A healthy church, a really healthy church, is filled with people who all know they're sick. That's bizarro.

The Leveling Work of Hospital Culture

You know, the other thing about a hospital is a hospital is a place where optics don't matter. You check into the hospital, they give you all those terrible gowns, right? The ones that have got the gap. We all know about the gap. There's no designer gowns. Nobody gets a really nice gown. If you're a millionaire or you're homeless, you get the same gown. And there's something about that that's very leveling—to say we're all sick and we all need the same thing. We all need healing.

I think it's Herman Melville said this in Moby Dick:

Heaven have mercy on us all Presbyterians and pagans alike. We are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head and sadly in need of mending.

All of us, no exceptions.

I mean, what happens in a hospital is messy. So why should we expect something different in church? Let us sick people coming together. This is gonna be kind of a mess in here. But here's the thing: if you don't have that view of church, then you're gonna be, "Hey, I'll check-in when I want to." You might give somebody visiting the hospital, "Hey, I'm here, but I don't really need this like y'all do," right? That's what your relationship will be like with worship. It's like, "I'll come kind of every once in a while when I need it" instead of "No, I desperately need this."

So let us not neglect meeting together. I think this is so timely for us right now, especially in COVID. I mean, one of the good things about COVID is it's disrupted everything. And this is good for people who are in church because I think it's caused a lot of people to ask the question, "Why do I go to church? Why am I involved?" There are a lot of people who left the church, left our church, left a lot of churches. Every church I know is down. We're sick.

We're about sixty percent of what we were pre-COVID. Every church I know is down. There are a lot of people who've been like, "Yeah, that really didn't make a difference in my life. I think I'm done." And I think actually there's something good about that because it forces us to look on the inside and ask questions.

But you may think like, "Wow, this is just such a unique time in history." No, this was the same as the early church. This is why the writer of Hebrews has to say, "Don't neglect meeting together"—because it was a temptation for them to neglect meeting together.

What were the barriers facing the first century church? Persecution. Gentiles, mostly Jewish initially. Hypocrisy of other Christians. The things that kept Christians then from coming and being part of the synagogue are just like us. And I hear this all the time: "Why can't I worship God listening to my Tim Keller sermon on podcast? Why can't I worship God on the golf course? Why can't I worship God backpacking?"

Of course, no one is saying you can't. I hope you do. Those are great things. It's true with creation.

The heavens declare the glory of God; the sky proclaims the work of his hands. — Psalm 19

There's no place where their voice is not heard. Of course, you can go in those places and worship God and we hope you do, but they are limited. The Bible over and over says there's a limit to what you can get from those worship experiences. It's not the same. It's nothing like what's happening here because worship, over and over—we see this over and over in the Bible—is meant to be embodied, with bodies, other bodies. Worship is meant to be together.

There are all these statements in Scripture about how God's presence is unmitigated and unfiltered and enhanced, and somehow greater when we're experiencing it in a greater way with the people of God.

Where two or three are gathered... — Matthew 18:20

The Hypocrisy Objection

The barrier of hypocrisy in the church—of course, the church is filled with hypocrites. My buddy Chris Hodge, who's a pastor in the PCA, one of his favorite things to say is: "The church is a club for hypocrites. We always got room for one more. Come join us."

Why is that? Because the church is the only organization whose values are aspirational. Everything we profess says, "I'm not this, and God is going to make me into that." Of course we're falling short of our profession. That's what this whole thing's about. God is transforming sinners into the likeness of Jesus. And that's not gonna be complete until we're perfected in glory. That's the one time the church will have no more hypocrites in it, because we'll all be transformed in the likeness of Jesus completely. Until then, welcome to the club. You're very welcome here.

You know, it always cracks me up when people are frustrated by the church and they say something like this: "Man, I wish I could just find a New Testament church." Like, have you read the New Testament? Which one are you interested in? You wanna go to Corinth? I mean, Corinth—they're getting drunk at communion. People are having, I'll just be careful—improper relations with family members. People are suing each other in church. I'm glad I'm not pastor of that church. I'd rather not be that New Testament church. Thanks.

We have our own problems; we're not those problems. Someone asked the pastor Eugene Peterson, "How do I find a church I'm supposed to be part of?" And he said this: "Pick one and stay."

Just pick one and stay. Now, of course, don't stay in an abusive church. But stay past the church honeymoon. Stay past when it's convenient. Stay past when you like the people—we all know that's gonna come to an end. You're gonna be annoyed with a lot of the people in the church. Stay past when you see the flaws and the mess. Church is a hospital. Check in and stay. Don't give up meeting together.

A Call to Commitment

You know that pre-pandemic, average church attendance in America by people who professed to be dedicated churchgoers was 1.7 times a month. That's incredibly low.

So here's my call: that you would make a commitment to be present and fully present in church here or somewhere else four times a month. To get here on time. To show up at the call to worship and stay through the benediction, not to leave after the sermon. If you miss your coffee, you're running late, don't get to the coffee shop—skip the coffee shop. We got coffee downstairs. It may not be as good, but who cares? Church is just not the same without you here. It really isn't.

This isn't about a show and it's not about pastor golden tongue. It's about Jesus and his people gathered, and we need you. So let's not neglect meeting together. Let's spur one another on. In this passage, in our version we just read, it says:

Let's encourage one another in love and good deeds. — Hebrews 10:24-25

I like the old NIV which I remember memorizing years ago better, "spur one another on" because it's so vivid. Think about a spur like cowboy spurs digging into a horse. It is not a nice image, is it? It's not, "Hey, horse, I just want to encourage you to go now." No, it's an irritant. It's provoking. It's sharp. And I think that we need to ask questions about how our worship should provoke us. What's that like for us?

So here's a couple of questions. When you get in the car at the end of coming to worship at CTK, you get on the bus, you're walking home—what do you talk about? Are you a critic of our worship or a consumer of our worship or a participant in our worship? Are you like, "Oh, I can't stand when they sing that song" or "the lights off the bald head"—it's just another dad joke. Really? Another dad joke? Do I need another dad joke? Or talking about your most unfavorite singer or what somebody was wearing this morning?

Truth be told, I want there to be things about our worship that you don't like. I hope there are things about our worship every Sunday that you don't like because it's the things often that provoke you or irritate you that make you grow, that make you have to mature. American Christians, we just want everything to be what we like. We want it all to be like our favorites all the time. But what if when you hear something in our service—a type of song, a particular song, a particular preacher—what if you said this, that one was for somebody else? What if that was your mantra? "That one was for somebody else."

See, when you hear a song and you're like, "I don't like this," but you look over and you see someone else really engaged, that tells you something. There's something happening here. God is at work in that person. And can you look at that and say, "I'm learning to love this person by enduring a song I don't like. I'm learning to actually engage in what's good for all of us, not just what's good for me"?

You know, for years we have been using the seventy-thirty principle in the worship of our church. This is actually a written policy of our church. Thirty percent of our worship service every week should bother you. Seventy percent you should be like, "Okay, I kinda like this." Thirty percent should bug you every week. That's actually on purpose. Thirty percent should be outside your wheelhouse—songs that you wouldn't choose to sing.

Look, I don't like doing topical series. I like exegetical. We're trying to not meet the preferences of a particular congregation. We're not trying to be authentic to our congregation's preferences. We're trying to be authentic to our city, to the place we minister in, so that all kinds of people can come in here and be like, "That's intelligible to me. That's meaningful to me. I know that kind of music. I understand what to do with that." That's what we're trying to do.

So here's what we're gonna practice right now. I'm gonna give you some complaints and you're gonna answer, "That was for someone else." You ready?

Why do we have to sing in Spanish?

Why do we have to sing those old tired hymns?

Why do we have to sing contemporary Christian music?

Why do we have to pray out loud with someone today?

You're getting it. See, what irritates you is what often will make you stronger. I'm not saying our worship should be distracting on purpose—that's not our goal. But I am really proud of our worship at our church. Danny Yancey is an incredible worship leader and he has made lots of changes this year. He's messing with our liturgy order and he's messing with our songs and stretching us. Some people don't like it. But guess what? This is part of what God is doing and it's gonna require us to be willing to be spurred, to be willing to be provoked.

So let us spur one another on. Finally, let us encourage each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching. Literally, let's pour courage into each other.

Children in Worship

Right now, I just want to talk briefly about our kids in our church. I want to talk briefly about the children who come here on Sundays. Your kids need this. Your kids need to be in worship. They need to be with God's people. Even if they're disruptive, even if they're bored.

I remember seeing a photo shoot from years ago based on the book Salvation on Sand Mountain. Salvation on Sand Mountain was a journalistic study of all the snake handling churches in Appalachia. This book came out maybe twenty-five years ago or longer. So there was a photojournalistic kind of piece that went with this—all these pictures from churches where they do snake handling. My favorite one is a picture of a kid who slumped down the pew, bored, while poisonous snakes are being passed overhead.

If you can be bored in a snake handling church, you can be bored anywhere. So even if our kids are disruptive, even if they're bored, if they don't seem to be getting anything out of it, even if they aren't behaved well, they need to be here and we need them to be here.

We as a church, when you make worship a commitment for your family every week, you're teaching your kids. You're teaching our kids—because it's not just the families that have kids. We as a church make vows that we have kids. Even if you never have kids, we got kids. We're made for God.

If you ask the question on a Sunday, "Hey, are we going to church today?" you're teaching your child that worship is optional. And that's actually not biblically true. Everybody worships something all the time, and the reality is we're all made to worship the living God. That's what we're designed for. When we bring our kids, even if they don't seem to be into it, we're communicating something about the nature of who they are and the nature of who God is.

My wife years ago, when our kids were really little, introduced what we called family worship—family devotions after dinner. We started doing it and we've done everything. We acted out all the parts of parables. We've had figurines. We've done all the Bible stories and songs, and a lot of times it was a disaster. We skipped it for weeks on end. But we've kept coming back to that over and over again.

It really came out of conviction that Susan had that we were just talking to our kids when they were bad about God. What happened over time is it began to form in our family that actually what we need most as a family is to worship. And you know who needed it the most in our family? Pastor boy, this guy right here. I'm grumpy in the evenings and irritable and I don't want to do anything. But man, I need to worship. It's been so good for my heart.

I challenge you to ask your kids what they heard on a Sunday morning. I know they're paying attention because I get pictures from them. I see they're engaged. They're hearing. When your kids show up, when you show up with your kids, you're doing something that's not about any one Sunday. You're saying to them, the church, the body of Christ is your family. It's your second family. This is why on the parking lot, we have the words "welcome home" written out there—because this is your second home.

Will you adults do your part to pour courage into our families? Don't give people a look when their kids are disruptive. Ask them how you can help. Talk to kids. Tell them. Just look them in the eye and say, "Hey, I'm so glad you're here." They need to know that they matter. Help a family with squirmy, quick kids. Help out in the children's ministry. We really need it.

Conclusion

By way of conclusion, remember Nick Slaton, the guy who won $1,170,000 and then lost his ticket. Here's the rest of the story. One of the errands he was running that morning when he bought the ticket was taking his brother to buy a car part at O'Reilly's. About an hour later, when he realized the ticket was gone, he did what your mama told you you were always supposed to do when you lose something. What is that? Retrace your steps. Exactly right. That's what we never do. We just get mad. But he retraced his steps and he drove to all the places and he pulls up in the O'Reilly's parking lot and he looks down on the ground and it's still sitting there.

Now there's an SUV parked right next to it. Anybody could have picked this thing up. And by the way, did I mention it was a windy day? The thing could have blown away. He picks it up and cashes it in.

This is my hope for us as we go through all these means of grace—that we would realize that God is and has been exactly where we left him. These means of grace are there for us to opt in, to be a part of, to take up his invitation, to access all the promises that he has made to us, that we might own those for ourselves, that we might find out God was there all along, every Sunday with his people in worship, waiting to give good gifts to his people.

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you, Father, that you are so steadfast and so constant. Lord, this thing that we do every Sunday that's so simple—gathering together with your people to worship. Lord, we pray that you would renew in us a longing to be with your people, renew in us a heart that's fully engaged. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.