Well, we're continuing our series in the Gospel of Mark and we'll be in this series. Actually, it's a verse by verse series through Mark, so it'll be very interesting to really learn this book. Well, and we'll be here until kind of we get into Advent. But I'm excited about it and it's been actually deeply enjoyable to go through it at this speed, but a little piece of history. In 1675, post climate 10, David declared the Coliseum, the Roman Colosseum, to be a sacred site of martyrdom for all Christians who had perished there. And a cross was put in the center of the arena. 75 years later, Pope Benedict XIV dedicated the Coliseum to the Passion of the Christ and the holy Martyrs and installed a 14 stations of the Cross around the perimeter of the arena. Now, there's some irony here because there's, there's actually not much evidence that any Christians were actually martyred in the Coliseum. However, that popular belief led to the preservation of the Colosseum, and because as once there were Christian dedications, there was a desire from the church in Rome to maintain it. And so that plaque sits out there even though no Christians were martyred there. But what I find fascinating about this piece of history is that if I were to ask you to come up with something which we often talk about the Gospel being preached in the empire of Rome, and if I were to ask you what is the central thing you think of when you think of the Roman Empire, we wouldn't get very far down the list before we would say the Coliseum. It's this when we think of Rome, right, we think of, you know, gladiators, we think of the Coliseum. It just tends to be how we think about it. And what I find interesting about that is that here we are, you know, now, you know, over what, 350 years, 350 years ago, was the first time that that symbol of Roman culture, that, that central thing that we would remember Rome by, would have a cross, a Christian cross in the center of it, that it would be dedicated to, to the Christian church. And the reason why I find it fascinating, and I'm not the first preacher to point this out, but is that this reality, that the Coliseum itself would be dedicated to Christians is an idea that would have been absolutely unthinkable to anybody in Jesus. ORIGINAL AUDIENCE the idea that that center point of Roman culture would not just no longer be primarily a Roman idea, but that a symb of this movement of Christians would sit at the center of it, that in two separate times it would be dedicated not to an emperor, not to some form of state power, but that there would be a cross in the Roman Coliseum. And like I said, I'm not the first preacher to point it out. In fact, I remember hearing it in a sermon and thinking, yes, that is interesting. And as we continue our series in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is at the beginning of his ministry. And if you were with us last week, he's begun to teach in parables to tell his followers about the nature of the kingdom of God, Right? So the immediate audience that we have are his initial 12 followers. This very small, very ragtag, very much not popular movement of people. And they're kind of making their way along. And he's saying that the kingdom of God has come. But for many of these people, they thought the kingdom of God was going to be a political or a military reality. Certainly not a small group of people gathered in the desert just talking about spirituality. And yet that is what happens. And that is what is happening. And the Book of Mark, right? The Gospel of Mark had the audience of actually Christians in Rome who were possibly in Rome and being persecuted for their faith. And so I find the kind of Roman angle of this interesting. And you'll see, kind of as we unpack the text, why I chose to pull that out. Because we have to understand that the church that's hearing these parables isn't us. Right? Like. Like. And what I mean is that our idea of what Christianity is, that that I can assume that if I move into a new town, there's going to be a church. And I can assume that, you know, my political leaders are at least going to be loosely respectful of the fact that I have faith. Or I can assume that I would say that I am a Christian and the person I am talking to will know what I am talking about. All of those thoughts would have been fairly foreign to both the audience of this gospel and also to Jesus's immediate audience of the disciples. And yet in these parables, he's talking about the kingdom of God and the coming kingdom of God and the growing kingdom of God. And it's a long chunk of text. So what I want to do is for us to go through. We're going to be in Mark, chapter four, and I want to go through kind of the entire chunk of text that we're going to look at, which is going to be, I believe, 21 to 34. I think 34 is where we stop and I want to kind of go through and what we're going to do is we're going to kind of explain it, understand it together. And then actually, when we talk about how we're going to apply it to us today, I kind of want to move in reverse because I think that's the way it made the most sense to me. So if you're like me, good news. If you're not, hang in there. So that's generally true with, you know, if you're listening to somebody preach, you hope that you think more or less like them, right? So we're starting in verse 21, and I'm reading from the NIV. He that is Jesus said to them, do you bring a lamp and put it under bring in a lamp and put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead you put it on its stand for whatever is hidden. Instead, don't you put it on its stand for whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. So this one is pretty simple. Jesus kind of first idea that he wants to get across is that we are not telling secrets here. We are proclaiming the kingdom of God. This is actually for everyone. And remember, pretty much this whole chapter is Jesus teaching in parables. And if you were here last week, in the verse right before this, he says, parables are difficult to understand and they require you to to be curious. They require you to have a posture of curiosity to be willing to come to Jesus and humbly say, I don't yet understand this. And so it's almost like Jesus is giving a caveat where he's saying, hey, I don't want you to misunderstand me, disciples. I don't want you to think that I'm trying to hide myself from people. In fact, what I'm doing is I will be heard by everybody. This is the light of the world, and the point of light is to bring it to everyone. He's saying, get confused. The message here is meant for everyone. And so that's the first idea. It's a promise that the kingdom of God is for everyone and a warning to say to the disciples, hey, make sure you guys are listening, because it's going to be important that you're going to be able to relay what I'm teaching to you. And then verse 24, he continues, consider carefully what you hear. He continued, with the measure you use, it will be measured to you and even more. Whoever has will be given more, and whoever does not have, even what they have, will be taken from them. Now this is another kind of confusing saying by Jesus because it sounds like he's saying, why would you take from somebody who doesn't have and what is a measure and all of that? Basically, what we need to hear here is that Jesus is saying that we have to choose to continue to dive in to the teachings of Jesus. We have to be like the disciples who showed up and said, what do these parables mean? We have to choose to have kind of a posture of learning and growing and understanding. And he's saying to his disciples that if you choose to be among the crowds on the outside that have a hard heart, what will eventually happen is you will drift away even from what you have now, right? Because the very act of showing up to hear Jesus teach was itself an act of curiosity, right? The crowds came from wherever they were. They showed up to hear from Jesus, and then they heard him teach. And then at that point, they had an opportunity. And that opportunity was, am I gonna go further in or am I gonna not go further in? And what Jesus is saying is that for those people, when they chose not to go further in, it actually led to them drifting away from Jesus, right? And what Jesus is saying is to his disciples, when he says, with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. What would happen when you would buy grain in the ancient near east in the first century? The merchant would have a measure, some type of cup or some type of bag, and that was the measure they would use. You would ask, how much for that measure? He or she would tell you, and you would pay that amount. So Jesus is kind of flipping that idea on his head and saying, you're the one who brings the measure to the transaction, right? He's saying, with the measure you use, it'll be measured to you. In other words, the amount that you get out of your faith. This is what he's communicating his disciples. The amount that you will get out of being one of my disciples will be. He doesn't say proportional, because he actually says you'll get even more will be related to kind of the level of curiosity and wonder and interest that you bring. But the inverse is also true that. That if you come with a hard heart and you say, well, I don't know about this Jesus thing, that eventually what happens is even your curiosity erodes that those crowds that were on the outside, they weren't gonna continue to be on the outside and say, well, I'm just kind of like an outside Jesus follower. I'm not like one of the disciples. I'm not over there talking to him. But I'll go to the big events and I'll go to the. If I see a healing, I'll stop what he's saying. What Jesus is saying is that basically he's teaching them something about human nature where he's saying, yeah, you guys don't work like that. If you keep Jesus at arm's length, he doesn't stay at arm's length, you actually drift away from him. And so that's kind of the first part of this is he's giving kind of double promises and double warnings. The first idea is this idea that. The first idea, and this is really well summarized by N.T. wright. The first idea is that I'm telling you these things now, and I'm reading directly from. I'm telling you these things now in secret. But the reason for announcing the kingdom, for bringing God's light into the world, is so that everyone will see it. So that's the first kind of lamp on a stand idea. And then the second idea, if they grasp what Jesus is saying and go deeper and deeper into it, they will get more and more from it. But if they remain at the superficial level, like the incomprehending crowds, they will lose even the sense that God is of God doing something new in their midst, which they have at present. So the first two ideas are kind of, yes, it is for everyone. And secondly, if you dive in, you will get more, but if you consistently stand on the outside, you will naturally drift away. So this is another point in chapter four when Jesus is kind of teaching us how to hear. He's teaching us how to understand parables. And then he's going to dive into a parable about two different parables about the kingdom of God. And I know we've read a lot of text. Hang with me. I want to make sure we're understanding and then we'll talk about kind of what to do with it. So verse 26, he also said, this is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground night and day. Whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself, the soil produces grain. First the salt, first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it because the harvest has come. Now, if you were here last week, I know I keep referencing it, but we're kind of talking about parables. I talked about how parables generally have one big point right that parables generally have one big point and usually it's about the nature of the kingdom of God, though sometimes it's about kind of our nature as people. So the simple point of this parable is that seed grows no matter what, right? And he's saying that's how the kingdom of God is. He is saying, hey guys, it's not your job to work this into existence. He's not saying to the disciples, hey, the kingdom is really important. So I need you guys to get out there and I need you guys. You know, he's not like, Jesus isn't like a multi level marketer telling him like, you really got to work your downline and you know, you got to recruit people who recruit people who recruit people because we really need you to grow the kingdom of God. No, what he is saying is, he is saying that as the word is scattered out into the world, the kingdom of God grows and grows. And the parable says, he gets up, he gets up, he goes to bed. He doesn't even understand why the seed grows. But that's what seed does. Seed grows. That is what it does in its very nature. And so that's its first idea. And then the next parable again, he said, what shall we say the kingdom of God is like? Or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on the earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants with such big branches that the birds can perch in his shade. So again, the reason why I talked about, you know, the Roman Colosseum and the cross and kind of the situation of the first century church is it would have been very easy for them to look at Jesus and say, hey, Jesus, are we going to get down to business at some point? Because if this is important, doesn't seem important to you because we're really not getting out there enough. We're not big enough yet. We need to be more powerful, we need to be more significant. And Jesus message to them through this parable is, you guys have to understand that small beginnings don't mean small endings. A mustard seed is a small seed, but it becomes a huge bush like tree. And if you look up a picture of a mustard, I had to Google a couple things. I think mustard tree is what finally got it for me. It's this little, you know, this little trunk and just this big huge tree. And Jesus is saying, just like that, that is what the kingdom of God is like that just because something has small beginnings does not mean that it has small endings. And so. And then it says, and with many similar parables, Jesus spoke the word to them as much as they could understand. He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything, which is kind of a big summary statement before they kind of close up these parable sections. So now we've kind of gone through the verse and we understand it. Now let's ask how we could apply these. And like I said, I think it works the best if we kind of work in reverse from the verse that we were just at. So first, this idea of mustard seeds, of not despising small beginnings, we said this last week, but the Jesus movement didn't look the way that people thought it would look. They thought it was a military thing or a political thing, or at very least a force thing. But what they got was a guy who has 12 immediate followers and the crowds are showing up, but he's telling people, yeah, well, don't really tell anybody about me. And I can imagine the disciples sitting there going, well, what are we doing? Are we going to kind of get after it at some point? And then I think if we expand it to his Roman audience, right where the Gospel of Mark was written to, you can imagine them reading it, and they're being persecuted and they're wondering, man, am I spending my life for something that's not ultimately going to matter for much? Because now it's been. You know, the early dating of the Gospel of Mark is probably like 80, 60. It's like, it's been 30 years since Jesus was here. And I don't really feel like we haven't made a lot of progress, right? Like, Rome is still in charge. And, you know, and it's. And like, yeah, I mean, there's house, churches and stuff, but this is the kingdom of God. This is what it is. And Jesus answer to that, based on this parable, is, you don't understand how the kingdom of God works. What Jesus would tell us is he would say, don't despise small beginnings. Don't despise small beginnings. The point is to start. The point is to do. And there are so many areas in life where this is true, where if we were to list them all, you'd say, well, yeah, it's all over the place, right? Like, if I were to. If I. I've always wanted to learn guitar, it's something that. It's something I've always wanted to do. And I don't Know how to do it for the reason that every other person who wants to learn how to guitar, play guitar doesn't know how to do it. Because I sit there every time I've sat down and I've tried, it's been hard. And I stop because I'm like, well, I'm just not good at this. I guess it's not gonna work. But what would you tell me if I said, man, I really wanna learn? You would say, well, yeah, just like, 30 minutes a day, play a little bit, be bad at it. Be comfortable being bad at it, and, you know, grow little by little, and eventually you'll be better. And then eventually you'll be even better. And eventually you'll be even better, right? Like, that's what you would say to me if I was learning music. If you were, you might have met Josh March, who owns Empowered Fitness. Empowered Fitness Solutions. It might just be called Empowered Fitness. He owns a gym in Manheim Township. And when I was talking to him about, like, weight loss and getting in shape, he said, you know, the first thing we tell people is, we tell people, buy. Might have. Buy multivitamins and fish oil and take it every day and do that for 30 days and don't worry about doing anything else. And he was like, it's not going to do anything. And he goes, but it's helpful for you to do something for 30 days every day and make progress on that, right? Like, and that's how we know fitness to work, right? Like, if you were to. If you were to, you know, say, like, oh, I really want to, you know, grow in the. I really want to run a 5K. I wouldn't say, well, go out and run six miles and try not to die. I would say, okay, well, you know, run around your block, right? And then, like, oh, you feel comfortable, okay, now two times around the. Right. We would work our way to it. If we. If we think about, like, money, right? If I asked you, well, I want to manage money better, you'd be like, well, try saving 5%, right? You wouldn't be like, well, you really want to make sure you have, like, your 401k set up. You want to make sure you're taking advantage of your match. You want to make sure. You want to make sure that you're maxing that out every year. And then if you max that out, you got to make sure you set up your Roth ira. Nobody's going to do that, right? You're just going to say, well, just try to save a little more. Do you Have a budget. We would talk about basic things, you see, and this would be true of any good habit. The point is kind of faithfulness in the moment and it is showing up. And it's a general principle of life. And what Jesus is saying is, is that it is definitely true of movements of God. Friends, no church in the world can do everything. No church in the world can do everything. But we can do something and we can try to do something, right? Like if we set out as Trinity EC church and said, man, every week needs to be perfect and we need to have great production and we have great transitions and we need perfectly made songbooks. Check. But, you know, I'm just kidding. But like, you know, we would drive ourselves crazy, right? And imagine if every week, the minute that something wasn't perfect, we said, sorry, guys, church isn't going to work this week. Let's go home. I mean, we would never get a service in, right? And if we did, everybody would be exhausted. But the fact is, is what Jesus would say is, don't despise small beginnings. What Jesus would say. And I think this is a crazy sentence, but I wrote it, so I want to read it. If we let our inability to do everything stop us from doing, we will never do anything, right? Like, if we let our inability to do everything stop us from doing something, we will never do anything. And friends, I don't just think Jesus is okay with small beginnings. I think he loves them. This is something I say all the time to people when I'm talking about faith. You know, people will struggle with their faith and they'll say, you know, Addison, I just feel like my prayers, they just don't. Like, I just don't feel like I'm getting through. I don't feel like, you know, what you hear all the time is like, you know, I'm not smart, like one of these, one of these pastors, or I'm not like, you know, I'm not really studied and I've never really dug into it. And it's almost like they're apologizing for trying. And I always want to say to them, do you think God is your father? Like, do you think? And then we'd say, well, yeah, I think God is my father. Okay. My daughter, my 3 year old has really, like, is talking more, right? Like at 3 years old, they start talking more. She says, Banella, like, not vanilla, but Bunella. Right? And imagine if I was. And I think it's impossibly cute, just to be very, very clear, right? But imagine if you were with me. And you saw me, and you saw Eliza talking to me and she was like struggling through, like three year olds do. And she like stumbled over words. And I said, eliza, the word is vanilla. And you know what? If you're not going to be able to talk right, I need you to just wait. Because if you're going to talk out in public, you got to be like representing the family. Well. And you got to be talking, right? You'd be like, that's. You'd call CY s. You know what I mean? Like, you'd be like, that guy's not doing okay. Right? Like, you know what I mean? You would immediately. Here's the thing, we're laughing about it, but some of us think that God is that way. Some of us think that your good Father in heaven is disappointed by your efforts. And what Jesus would say to you is, I love you and you're my child, and I love watching you try. And it means so much that you even get out there. It means so much that you even grab on. And we know this because Jesus said it here, but he said it over and over again. Remember the verse, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. Jesus isn't looking for us to be perfect in our churches. Jesus isn't looking for us to be perfect in our spiritual walk. Jesus is looking for us to make an effort. And it's not that he's looking for us to make an effort because he needs us to prove something to them. He's saying, I've invited you into my family. I've given you access. I've given you peace and joy and grace and welcome, and I just want you to enjoy it. And meanwhile, we sit on the outside and we say, well, I can't be perfect, so I'm not going to engage. And what Jesus would say is, no, no, no, don't despise small beginnings. He would say it to me as a pastor, he would say it to you as a. He would say it to us as a church. We will not do things perfectly. We will not do things cleanly. We will do things excellently, and we will make our best effort to do them well. But I would certainly rather make loud mistakes than not make any noise at all. And that, you know, we talk about that. I grew up in concert bands playing saxophone and, you know, that's something a teacher, any music teacher will say. Like, I'd rather you make confident mistakes because then I can correct them rather than sit there and just pretend to play. And friends, when we talk about church ministry, our job isn't to sit here and pretend to play. Our job is to run in direction and try and not get scared and not get fearful and instead to let Jesus work in the midst of our efforts. So our first job is to not despise small beginnings. Our second job is simply faithfulness. We go back to the seed parable. We don't have to understand how it works. We just have to keep chipping away. And God is the one who does the work. God is the one who grows his kingdom. God is the one who grows the influence of his kingdom. So keep doing the work. Keep being kind to that co worker who is difficult to be kind to keep having, you know, have a little bit more grace with that family member if you can. Keep sharing the gospel, keep being patient, keep allowing yourself to follow Jesus in your day to day life, right? Yes, in the big things, but also in the little things. Keep chipping away. Because your job isn't to work the kingdom into existence. Your job is to remain faithful to God and keep on keeping on. Right? To just kind of continue to try, to continue to make an effort, to not disqualify yourself, to just keep trying. You know, I didn't talk about it in the first one, but I always tell that with people with like study of scripture, right? Like, I love like reading, you know, classic Christian apology, like CS Lewis types and stuff. And whenever people sometimes pick them up, they're like, ah, that's dense. And it is, it's incredibly dense. It's a tough read. There's times where I'm like, man, I got through like a page. That guy's way smarter than I'll ever be. Like, you know, and like, to be fair, he didn't have Netflix, so I feel like I should get credit. But you know, there was nothing to do. It was 1940 and. But you know, but the point is that, you know, when we talk about a deeper study of scripture, people like dive into it and they get kind of, they get kind of weird and they're like, oh, I'm just not smart enough. I mean, who said that, right? Like, you know what I mean? Like when we talk about studying who God is and what God would reveal to you and look, I'm not telling you to do something you don't enjoy. What I'm telling you is that like, don't disqualify yourself because of the things that you can chip away at, right? Like God has called you into, you know, into knowing him and learning about him. And we don't need to be afraid to remain faithful and keep on keeping on. So the first thing we learned was not to despise small beginnings. The second thing was that our job is faithfulness. And the third thing comes from the warnings and the promises, right? So what he's saying is, yes, this is for everyone. So get ready. And then if you dive in, you'll get more. If you consistently stand on the outside, you will actually naturally drift away. Remember, that's what we talked about just a few minutes ago. So the last idea that I want to point towards is that we have to choose to see the kingdom of God. We have to choose to see the kingdom of God and to step on toes for just a minute. And I'm stepping on my own toes as well. We have to stop with our constantly negative attitudes. You ever talk to somebody who's a Christian and it's like, man, that person has like, you know, how do they feel when they sing the hymn that says strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow? Because there's not an ounce of bright hope in that person, you know what I mean? Like, it's just like, because they'll just tell you about, like, I remember, I forget where I was or when it was, but I remember a guy was just telling me, oh, Lord's come back soon. Lord's come back soon. World's getting worse, World's just getting worse. Lord's come back soon. You know that. Lord's come back soon. You know, the world's just getting, world is getting so much worse. And he could just point to me all the ways the world was getting worse and all the ways that, you know, the devil was winning and all the ways that things were bad and his, it was almost like that was like just where he was worked up to. People get worked up and, you know, frankly the news will get us all worked up, right? Like I tell people all the time, we weren't supposed to have 24 hour news channels. Like, just like it's, it's just not, you don't need to know, you know, and if you find yourself, you're sitting there watching it. And I got to make a confession. A couple of years ago, I gave up. This is really going to make you lose respect for me. So hang in. Probably it was Eliza's eight, Isley's eight. So probably five, six years ago I gave up playing the Madden NFL football video games online. And the reason I did is because, like, more often than Not. I would just get very mad about how much better than me people were at the game. And I had a moment where I was like, why am I doing something in leisure time that's making me mad? At other times, like, why. Why am I doing that to myself? And. And, like, you know, I felt convicted. And I've more like, you know, we had our. We had a house fire back in 2024, I think, and when we had a house fire, you have to take everything off your walls because they come in and they clean. And I just never put my PlayStation back together. You know what I mean? Like, I just never, you know, because I was like, I haven't played it in a while, and then I'll get it out when I want to play it. And I just realized, yeah, why would I make myself miserable? Friends, if the news is just constantly on and you're constantly looking at it thinking, oh, man, the world's so bad. The world's so bad. We're just hopeless. We're so hopeless. We're just. That's not how Jesus wants you to think about the world. That's not how Jesus wants you to think about the world. And what Jesus would say to us is, if you focus, if you get all worked up, if you focus on all of the things that are bad, you won't see me working anywhere. Even what he has, even that will be taken from him. But the inverse is also true, is if we focus on the ways that Jesus is working in us and in the world around us, we will see it more and more and more. That if we choose to instead turn our attention to all the ways that God is working, we will see it more and more and more. Just as an example, many of you are familiar with the Afghan Resettlement initiative. They meet right up here at Brightside. What it is, is there were several Afghan people who are resettled here in Lancaster county as a result of our withdrawal from Afghanistan. And we are getting an opportunity through the ministry of Kim Pulliam and Juan and Rose Cardena. I'm not going to say her last name right, but it's Cardeno or something like that. We are getting an opportunity as the EC Church, to have, through Team World missions, to have a role in caring for and discipling these people and helping them to see the hope of Jesus. Right? That is an opportunity. God has brought the nations to our door and given us a chance to minister to them. Inside of this building, two multilingual services happen. Our Haitian friends, Pastor Shazir is here and he And Marshall lead a Haitian congregation that meets in this building. There's a Spanish congregation that meets in this building. And, you know, we could look at just this past week at Mission Church, the Ambassador Football Camp, which is a. It's a worldwide organization that does a soccer camp right here in Lancaster county every year, where kids learn about soccer but also learn about Jesus. Right. We have conversations where that are encouraging. Right. I just had a conversation with a friend this week where she was telling me about kind of some challenges with her relationship with her adult mother. And maybe you would not think of that as a place of hope, but where I found as a place of hope is I have specifically with my father. Right. I have a challenging relationship. My dad was an alcoholic from the time he was probably 14, 15 until the time he was 43, 45. And so not much of a relationship there. He's not really capable of reforming that relationship. So we could talk about it more when I'm not being recorded. No, but the point is, is that that is a bad thing that happened to me that I have no control over. But what I was able to say to this person I was talking to is I was able to say, yeah, I mean, I know what it feels like. I know what it feels like to think about your relationship with a parent and be concerned about how you're gonna feel when you hear that they pass. Because that means the opportunity for the relationship to be healed is gone. And I know what that fear feels like. I know what it feels like to kind of navigate that complication and that challenge. And in that moment, God took a tiny piece of something that I had suffered, and he made it not wasted. Because I was able to say to that person, I see you. I know what you're going through. I know how you feel. Right? And in our communities, we could focus on the crime and the challenges, or we can focus on the ways that we're seeing people work for the good of their neighborhoods, for the people who care. Because the reality is there's far more people who care than people who don't care. But we have to learn to see it. So let's talk about how we do this. Right? How do we learn to see it? We learn to see it through a variety of ways. But I'm going to give you one that's in the bulletin, and it's called the Ignatian Examine. Now, if you're normal, you can completely forget the name of it, because you're not going to. You're going to be like, I didn't neither of those words are English. Like both of those are getting spell checked in my phone, Addison. But what this is, is it's kind of like a daily prayer ritual to kind of teach yourself to, I think, to see this type of stuff. So the first idea is Thanksgiving, right? I stop and I thank God for something, something in my day that I want to thank God for, right? The weather, my family, you know, whatever, right? And then review, go through your day and talk to God about it. Examination. Pick one big thing and pray about it. Number four, ask for sorrow and healing. Ask for forgiveness of pain that you have caused and healing of pain that you have experienced. And finally, look ahead, pray about tomorrow. And if you, if you're saying, I want to do this, I want to be the type of person who sees the kingdom of God working in my day to day life, and I'm looking for one small thing. Take the bulletin with you. And every day this week, you know, end of the day, beginning of the day, while you're driving, whatever, do this, you know, thank God. Review. Pick one thing, pray about it. Ask for forgiveness of things that I've done to hurt others and ask for healing of things that others have done to hurt me. And then look ahead and pray about the next day that is coming up. And I know that's like overly simple. Maybe you're like, I wish you were more spiritual. I hear you. But, you know, these types of habits teach us to see things differently and see God work in our lives and in our communities. So as we close, let's pray together. Lord, we thank you for today. We thank you for your goodness and your grace and your love and your kindness. Lord, whenever I talk about it, I'm so taken back by your patience and your grace with us that, Lord, you. You forgive us, that all of my sin is forgiven, that any sin that I committed and any sin that I will commit was covered at the cross. And then you still walk with me. That you didn't just forgive me and say good luck, but that you still walk with me. But Lord, we need a transformation of our perspectives because we don't see your. We don't see you the way we ought to see you. We don't see your kingdom the way we ought to see it. And Lord, I'm like everybody else. I can get negative, I can focus on the bad stuff. But Lord, I want you to transform my heart and my mind so that I see your kingdom the way that you would have me see it. Lord, help me to do the work of choosing to see the ways that you are working. Help me to choose. To help me to choose. Curiosity that goes back to you and says, I still have something to learn. And, Lord, I pray, Lord, for all the ministries that we mentioned and the ones we didn't mention, Lord, all throughout Lancaster County. Lord, your kingdom is growing and working and changing lives. And, Lord, it is not without our barriers, Lord, it is not without barriers. It is not without challenges, Lord, but we get up, we go to sleep, and your kingdom grows and grows and grows. And, Lord, there is a cross at the center of the Roman coliseum, something that would have been unthinkable to your first 12 followers, but, Lord, it wasn't unthinkable to you, because that was the seed, and the mustard seed was still growing and was still breaking through the ground. So, Lord, we trust you to continue to build your kingdom until we are all together, Lord, in the new Jerusalem, Lord, until we are all redeemed and made whole. And, Lord, we trust you for that. And we pray that you would change our mind to reveal to us your kingdom. We ask all this in your name. Amen.