Vision Sunday 2021

Vision 2021. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Vision Sunday. Today's Vision Sunday.

We really see this as kind of the living room. If you don't know, Grove started in a living room, started in our basement in 2013. We started a thing called House Group. And then it just started growing into 2015.

There was 90 people in our living room. And we were like, what do we do? And so we moved here around 2015. And we love having Vision Sunday, because we really call it like, hey, let's picture this as if it's a living room moment, just like our roots.

So yeah, we're excited about that. The heart behind why we do Vision Sunday is this is our moment to celebrate what God has done and remember what he's done the year before. But also look ahead and let him remind us of who we are and where we're headed and what he has said over us as a community. And so that's what tonight is for.

We are going to start with one of our favorite things. And that is celebrating what he has done. We've been trying to figure out what even do we celebrate? It was such a wild year.

And there were so many hard things that happened. But there was so much fruit over this last year. And so we were even having a hard time narrowing down how many things we wanted to celebrate. And so we could keep you here for two hours, but we're just going to breeze through celebrating you guys in our community and what we have seen God doing through you and your spheres.

We're going to celebrate the different departments at Groove and what we've seen God doing through them too. Come on, come on. We want to begin by just celebrating the everyday believers of our community. And a lot of times what can happen is you're celebrating the last year and it's like, man, we had all, we had this many butts in the seats, right?

And as a community, we just want to celebrate all of the influence that many of our business leaders in the community started experiencing in 2020. And obviously it was a difficult year, but we saw so many business leaders going, I just had to keep hiring more people. And I had to, my books were just getting so big, I had to hire someone to do administration because I couldn't deal with all the work that I was taking on. And I got promoted into being a manager and so on and so forth.

And that was happening all over our community. And I want us to remember that you are not a business leader, a business man or woman, your primary ministry isn't making money to give to the church. That is not your call, even though it's amazing. That's amazing that we all want to be generous.

We all want to sew into the kingdom financially, and that's awesome. But you get to sew seeds of the kingdom in your workplace. And your ministry is actually your nine to five. If you're a business owner, it's your 24 seven.

But you are stepping into the call of God when you show up to work. And it's not about the money that you give. And we just want to celebrate all of the advancement of influence that happened in the spheres of business. I mean, I just even think about our nurses and our doctors.

Oh my goodness. There's hospitals around our city that we're full, that we're friends and family. We're not allowed into the hospitals with patients. And we saw our nurses throughout our community, our medical community here at Grove praying together, taking the place of intercession for one another, and them showing up to truly be the family of God, carrying the heart of God into rooms, praying for individuals, being family for them when they didn't have family.

And Jesus just walking into rooms all throughout hospitals and clinics in our city. These are when we're talking about we're doing it. That's what we're talking about. You on mission and every day.

That's it. That's what we're going after. You being you in everyday life in Christ in Jesus. I usually don't say in Christ, but in the Messiah King.

Let's go. How about teachers 2020? Oh my goodness. Wow.

Never signed up for Zoom calls with 20 kids. Did you? You didn't sign up for that. You can't even decorate the classroom behind you and stuff like that.

I don't know why I brought that up. It doesn't make any sense. But man, I just think about our teachers. I think about all of our leaders that just said, I'm actually going to be faithful in all of the mundane this year.

And we just want to honor how God use you. I think we can also honor the families that navigated this year. Some of our families who were kids were in school and you had to learn pretty much home school and distance learning at the same time. All of that craziness with our children and coming home.

And then all of the emotions that we're navigating as adults, but then also to navigate that would enshuperate your children through it. As families, it feels like nothing could have prepared us in some ways for this year. But we have watched our families really hone in on the value of family first and cultivating a healthy home in the midst of being squeezed in such a significant way, even with needing to work from home. So you just got the whole family at home and try.

And we just know it's been crazy. But the way that we've seen the fruit of families at Grow feeling like we actually have been strengthened this year is so just a testimony of the Lord. But also your yes to him is so good. Yeah, come on.

I'm just so, when I think about 2020, I think about all of the stories of generosity in our community, there was thousands upon thousands of dollars that were given from household to household. Family to family, it's not organized by Grow. We're just hearing about, as leaders, we're just hearing about it through the great mind, that there's needs that we're taking care of, that we had no idea about. But it's like, hey, I posted this need.

We have this person in our community that has a need. Our community, like we didn't raise money. We gave to this person that's a need. But we opened it up.

And there's all of these needs that we're being met. I'm talking about thousands upon thousands of dollars that were given. We cannot underestimate how significant that is. That's New Testament, like book of acts, type stuff.

Like when you go out to your mailbox, and some of you guys are like, yes, make this happen to me. But you go out to your mailbox, and there's like thousands of dollars in your mailbox. And you're like, what? But how fun is it to be the sneaky person that nobody knows that you did it?

But all of a sudden, there's like, you're dropping $1,000 bills. Do they make $1,000 bills? Man, Katie, Katie, totally, has a stash of thousands. Like, yeah, they make them.

But we get to, as a people, just walk in generosity like that. And that's not just for COVID. That's like a people of God thing that we get to continue to step into. I think of just in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, and how our community, we had this temptation of, I just want to do something.

And we actually stepped in, and we were serving our city, and that's amazing. But the greatest fruit in that season, and continuing is for us to just stop, and start going low and listening. And we did that. I think so many of our families, so many of the kids of our community, parents, singles, whatever stage of life you're in, we just said, let's stop, and listen, and learn, and lean in.

And we just get to continue to do that as a community. How many of you know it's easy when it's on the news to go like, man, I'm really passionate about this. I'm reading this book. But how many of you know it's, the time where the church shines is when we keep on going after God's heart of justice, and it's hard for diversity, where we actually start carrying that beyond 2020.

When it's not the buzzword, it's not the thing, and there's not things happening in the streets, but there's still things happening in the streets. And God's actually calling us to go, I want, yeah, just to continue to step into that space, continue to learn, continue to listen, continue to develop relationships with people that are different than us, and it not be tokenism, but actually stepping in, and just doing community with people. And so that's what we're excited about that continuing. Yeah, I want to celebrate some of our departments at Grove, and just what has happened this year.

I'll start with youth and celebrating what has happened with youth this year. We have some of the best students. There's so much hunger in them, and we've seen that in them since the beginning. And so, throughout this last year, they continued to gather even through COVID under Dan and Megan Nielsen's leadership, and then we hired a youth pastor, Alex Cruz, he's here.

And our youth is rallying together right now, and we continue to just see them marked by hunger. We love our youth students. I want to celebrate our creative community, and that team was pretty much formed through COVID, like during that season, which is so challenging to do. If we think like a year ago, we didn't even have a YouTube channel, and now look at just the ways that our creative team, because they were willing to serve and roll up their sleeves, we all were able to gather when we weren't able to gather in person, and now there's people that are sitting at home right now engaging with us from their living room all because of our creative team, being able to just serve so radically in this community.

It's been so significant. I want to celebrate our community leaders and the way that they served through COVID. So many of our communities went on Zoom, and that is so brutal. We all know how brutal that was, and just the way that they said, hey, right now more than ever, people need each other and need to find each other.

And so even though it's uncomfortable, I'm still gonna gather and create a space for people to cultivate community, and so I just wanna honor our community leaders and the way that they have stayed so faithful through this last season, worship. We are giving worship so much air time right now. Do you guys remember soaking sets? We aren't able to have service, and the worship team's like, we've got this.

We'll actually come through your living room every day instead of just on Sundays, and we just were able to encounter the Lord in such significant ways because of those soaking sets, and then the way that they've weathered this transition of leadership in this season, and as we are all experiencing, they are just stepping in, and stepping just into their call in really significant ways right now that we get to just stand witness to and be a part of with our worship community. Yeah, come on, Grove Kids. Oh my goodness. Grove Kids, you guys, what God is doing on that side of the building is mind blowing.

I mean, our kids are encountering God. They're starting to understand who they are, and then they're going beyond just understanding like, okay, I'm starting to get who God is and his story. I'm starting to see me through the gospel, but now they're actually stepping out and going, I'm thinking about the other person in my life. I'm thinking about my friends that don't know Jesus, and I'm nine, right?

God is actually raising up little young fiery messengers, and they're just, they're like soft spoken, and then they're laying hands on kids on the playground that are sick or fell down and praying and healing. It's like that type of thing is happening, and it's unreal to just watch what God is doing with all of our kids, but how about the owners of Grove Kids? The owners of Grove Kids are unreal. Last week we were talking about Grove Kids and how the ratio between men, Grove leaders, and women is now 50, 50 in Grove Kids.

Time out, time out. There's more guys now? Oh, oh, it needs a bigger applause. She doesn't need this and more of a response, I know.

Come on, 50, 50 is right. Just to pause and think, if you grew up going to church when you were a kid, how many men did you see in the children's ministry? We've literally got men that are working day in and day out, and they show up on a Sunday, and they go, hey, you're six, and you're worth my investment. You can look at me, I'm passionate for Jesus, I love Jesus, and I'm a businessman, I'm a salesman, I'm a student, whatever it is, wherever they're at in their journey, and these six-year-olds and seven-year-olds are going, whoa, I see someone that might look like me, I see someone that is inspiring, that's living a life in pursuit after Jesus, and he's humble enough to go, I'm choosing to spend my time with you, and I think you're worth my investment.

I mean, that's something that women have been doing for years in children's ministry, but we gotta pause and go, this is the calling of our house to raise up young little main men that are pursuing Jesus and going after Jesus, women that are young ladies that are pursuing Jesus that are the salt of the earth. Come on, but there's something happening, and I believe that young boys are gonna turn into young men that accept responsibility, that lead courageously, that are rejecting passivity, and fueled by the future of going, I see something ahead, and I know that it's not weird for me to be passionate about Jesus, that it's just how it was always meant to be. Yeah, if you're a growth kid's owner, why don't you just stand up, we wanna honor you guys. Let's go.

Stand up, don't be shy, don't be shy. I want you guys to keep on standing, let's just keep on standing, I wanna pray, I wanna just pray for these growth kid leaders. Let's just pray really quick for these growth kid owners. Lord, we just thank you for growth kids, and Lord, we thank you for these owners that are refreshing our children, refreshing the next generation, and we thank you for a double refreshing for them in their relationship with you, in their everyday lives.

Lord, we thank you for all of the questions that they're having, and Lord, we thank you for inviting them into greater intimacy, that just blows their mind in 2021, that it would just be like, man, everything started locking into place in my relationship with Jesus, so we just blessed them, and everyone said amen. Amen, amen, amen, we love you guys, man. We wanna just look at, we're gonna look forward, and each Vision Sunday, we talk about baby steps that we're gonna take forward towards what we're building here, we're building what we call a base for our city to come and gather around, and so each Vision Sunday, we're seeking the Lord on what are the next baby steps that you want us to take? And when we look at last year, it was an intense year, under state month of the year, it was a very intense year in so many different ways, but when we look at Vision Sunday last year, some of the steps that we took forward were pretty significant.

Do you guys remember that at last Vision Sunday, we announced that we were taking 10 global trips last year, that's what we were gonna do? 10, how many did we take? Zero, one, who said one? Was that in that year?

It was last year, whoa. Three 30 did not catch that, you're right, India was last year, I was thinking it was before. See? India, and how fruitful was that India trip?

Oh my goodness. It was insane. That was crazy, the testimony is from India. That's right, it's from India.

Wow, how dare us. I am so sorry, I thought that was in 2019. Okay, how many, okay, we'll try it again. 10 global trips, how many did we take?

One, are we canceled the rest of them literally the night before Philippines were gonna leave? Just such an intense moment for us as a community, so disappointing. We were at last Vision Sunday, we were launching more soul care sessions, we were like doubling our amount of soul care sessions that we could offer in a night. We had more communities than we ever had before.

We added a second night of the prayer room, we were advancing, there was forward motion, we were believing that we were gonna find a building in 2020, we didn't find a building in 2020. We're just, 2021 is our year, okay? We're just, please. Please, Jesus.

Yeah, just give it up at that time. Believing for that, absolutely, but it was the epitome of the whole like two steps forward, 200 steps backwards, just like a brutal year. And I think that in a season like that, it can feel, it's just way too easy to lose vision. It's way too easy to lose sight of where we're headed because we're surrounded by what looks nothing like what's actually in our heart.

And that is 100% what marks this last season for us. And so what we want to do is just remind us what we are building here and encourage you as our community to not lose heart in doing good, to not lose heart in being faithful to what God's put in front of you. We believe that even though we look around right now, it doesn't look anything like the base that's in our heart, we are still standing our ground believing that he who has promised is faithful, that he has deposited things in this community, that he will carry out to completion. And so I believe there is going to be a day, and it's like I just wanna infuse us with this.

There's gonna be a day that you don't have to drive to Kansas City for the week to spend a week in the prayer room because it's gonna be right here in your own city. I believe that there's going to be a time where we don't have to send our college students to Kona to go to Y-WAM, to go to school, but there's gonna be a school right here for them that will catalyze them into everyday mission and going to the nations. I believe that there will be a day that we don't have to wait for the next conference to come out of Bethel because you know that there's a conference 10 minutes down the street from your house and a couple of weekends for you to go to. We believe that God is establishing a space for our city that would be a gift to believers and to the lost, that we would be able to rally around this space, but it is not yet.

And we're sitting in that tension and it doesn't look like that right now, but we need to keep it in front of us that we are not here to play church. We are not here to come for a good Sunday night service, even though it's amazing. These services are meant to catalyze the more of your everyday life. And I believe that we are stepping in.

It's even though there are these baby steps. It's significant, but I want us to remember what those baby steps are unto. Does that make sense? Yeah, when I think about the base vision that we have, I think about the everyday believers, the things that I talked about, even at the start, you being faithful and not despising the day of small beginnings.

In whatever you're putting your hand to, God is actually using that. And he's going to multiply that story a thousand times over, a million times over. So maybe you're a plumber, Monday through Saturday. And maybe sometimes it's Sundays and you get paid double, right?

Come on. But you being faithful as a plumber is going to have an impact in a way that you wouldn't even dream of if you continue to be faithful with the small things. And it's an everyday call of, I'm going to be faithful with what's in front of me. I'm just going to be myself unique in God.

But there's stories that God is writing through everyday believers, through your life. God wants to spread your story. It's not going to be that the stories that are going to be remembered are not Josh and Katie's story or somebody from the platform, but God is actually going to multiply your story. It's an everyday believer movement that we're a part of.

There's a great activation of the 97% of Christians in America that are not in full-time ministry. God is actually going to activate all of them to live into their destiny. Live as messengers in the fields. And we get to be this incubator.

We get to incubate that lifestyle here in our community. And I just want to encourage you. There's this base vision that we have, but the base vision, it's all about, like the destination is not moving into a building. The destination isn't getting promoted.

The destination is him. Tomorrow, it's him, right? And so 20 years later, it's still going to be him. Whether the promotion happened, whether the building happens, whether it's always just going to be him.

And I just want to encourage us. We have vision, but there's something that anchors us, right? And that's the thing that tethers us, is our relationship with him, that we get to make the main thing. Yes.

So we're going to talk about those baby steps. Like we do each year. What are the baby steps that we're taking as a community, but we want you to have where we're headed in mind, so that you understand the why behind those steps. So the big thing that we are moving towards this year is we are bolstering our Wednesday night expression as a community.

And so Wednesdays are going to have two things happening right here in the sanctuary. We are going to have class every Wednesday night at six, and we're going to have the prayer room every Wednesday at eight. So let me break down a little bit what this is going to look like. We're going to talk about what class looks like here.

So remembering that this is unto eventually different types of schools operating out of our space. And so in the future, we hope to be offering multiple classes a week for people. But right now we are going to offer one class a week for our community with the heart of empowering and activating the everyday believers. So for example, this Wednesday we have DNA cultures.

Yeah, you guys have the calendar right behind me. DNA cultures is this Wednesday. So that's an example of a class. How many of you have been to DNA cultures class before?

If you are new here, this is the class to go to. This is where you hear our story, meet our staff, understand our culture more, and we can answer the questions for you as you're going, wait, you said you're building a base, what does that mean? And we're going to lay all of that out. So cultures is definitely the thing to come to if you're new.

On February 10th, we are going to have Connect Night. This is a new thing that we are rolling out in this season when connection has become a little more challenging in the season that we find ourselves in. And so we've been praying and rallying together as a staff and even connecting with different ones of you guys in the community to go, what makes sense to get people more connected on a night like this? And so if you are new, it's a great night for you to come to.

Or if you've been here for the last three years, but you just want to meet more people, or you don't feel like you found your spot yet, or you're just looking to connect more, it's a perfect night for you to come to. And we've worked hard to make sure that it's not awkward. And can you just give me an amen on that? If you're trying to meet new people, you're not trying to have an awkward night.

So just trust our team that we're going to facilitate, a not awkward, not weird night, but you're going to leave knowing people better by the end. So good. And then Gospel class is after that. Oh my goodness, Gospel class.

I just even look at this lineup. If you're new at Grove, you know what you're doing on Wednesday nights. It's just like, this is what you need to be at because Gospel class is a class that will change your life. Scott Van Der Wurff, he's the teacher.

He's been teaching at Grove for a really long time. He's incredible. And what he does is he breaks down what your identity is because of what Jesus did. And it is so powerful.

I'm telling you, he takes you from Genesis to Revelation on the story of God, the story of history, and weaves it all together, and all of a sudden, it just blows your mind. I've been at Gospel class three times, at least. And every single time I show up, I'm like, oh my goodness, and my heart is burning, and my mind is breaking. It's so, it makes the word just come alive.

It's so good. So I want to encourage you, go to Gospel class. All three weeks are worth your investment. I'm telling you, if you invest the time of showing up to Gospel class, the fruit is going to last for decades.

I'm not exaggerating. I'm actually being honest. It will change your life. So go to Gospel class.

Other classes that I know are in the lineup that we don't have up on the screen right now is we have a class called food freedom, that Brooke Peterson will be teaching that is so good. We have a class called Notic's name, Nurture, where we dive into that tool, which is like a soul health, soul care tool that we use at Grove, and we have a Bible study methods class that Mark Herringshaw is going to be teaching. If you're going, I want to read my Bible. I don't know where to start.

Just equip me, and how to do this. That is the type of class for you. So as you can see, there's classes that are just a one night class, a three week class, and they're going to cover all different types of topics that would actually activate us as everyday believers, and it's really, really practical. So Wednesdays at six, right here in the sanctuary, those go from six to 745, and then from eight to 10 is the prayer room every week.

Yeah, I'm excited about the prayer room. Prayer room, Katie and I are going to be prayer leading every week, we've got full worship teams that are going to be leading us in prayer. And if you at the start of the year, you're going, God, I just, one of my new year's resolutions is I want to spend more time with you, or I want to like get to know you more. I want to read my Bible more.

I just want to encourage you, Mark Wednesdays off on your calendar, like Wednesday night, eight o'clock, I'm there every single week, and just have it be part of a spiritual discipline for you. And it's this perfect opportunity to go, yeah, that's what I'm going to do as a next step. Maybe you fell off the horse and you're like, okay, I'm re-signing up and just make it to the prayer room. We believe that the prayer room is actually going to be the thing that everything else in our community is going to be built around.

That the place of prayer and worship is taking that center stage and that it's just going to be this thing that we do as a community. Like, yeah, we go to the prayer room, at least a couple of times a week. You know, there's going to be times, there's going to be a day where we're going to have prayer rooms that's every single night. And during the day, there's going to be, you know, stay at home dads and moms that can come, they can bring their kids, we'll do like childcare or something.

And they get to be in the prayer room for two hours, you know? Like there's going to be a day that we look at and go, that's going to happen. But right now, this is our baby step of Wednesday night to eight o'clock that we're just going to dive in. So prayer room, it's going to be good.

We're so excited to rally around Wednesdays. Our whole staff is going to be here every Wednesday. And we think it's just such significant timing for our community. We have so many people right now that are sitting at home watching service online because we're still needing to ticket for our services.

And so having Wednesdays as that alternate option, if you weren't able to get to service and you can still come to a Wednesday and you can come to both. And so we're excited to be able to offer that as a community. Last update, and then we're going to get into, we're going to close with our word for the year, which is always so fun. Our last update is this year, a big step that we are taking is our rebrand.

If you guys remember, we haven't talked about it in a few months. And so maybe you have forgotten that this is happening. But the rebrand is actually done. And it's all finished.

But we're not going to show it to you. And we're not going to tell you what the name is or anything like that. But we thought it would be fun to give you a sneak peek. The reason we're not rolling it out yet is there's a lot of work to be done to actually roll it out with excellence as things will all look different and be named something different.

And so it will be a few months before that. But when it's coming towards launch Sunday to launch our new name, we will make sure you guys know so that you guys can all be there. But we want to give you a sneak peek. And I will also give you the caveat.

It's a very small. Very small sneak peek. Yes. Sneaky, sneaky peek.

OK, sneaky peek. OK, are we ready? You want to see it? All right, maybe you don't really want to see it that much.

We don't have to. We can't let's go to the word for the year. OK, we'll show it to you. Ready?

Here we go. Let's see it. Ooh. Whoa.

It's a new day. It's a new day. Wow, just kind of look at it. Yeah, interpret it.

What does this mean? I see the curiosity. Yeah. No questions.

No questions. Not a Q&A. Sorry. I want to give a little bit of a background of the why.

Why are we doing a rebrand? For the last four years, Katie and I have felt that we have been wanting to rebrand for that long, for about four years, and to rename our church community. And the reason why is because there's this been this name that's been in our hearts for that whole time that we feel like actually describes who we are more than the name growth. Now, it's not like we hate growth or anything like that, but we feel like once we roll out this new name, that everyone in the community is going to feel like, oh, that fits us.

That actually, like that's who we are. And so I want to encourage you that it's not going to be like, what? How could they change our name to that? You know, it's going to be everyone's going to be on the same page.

Oh, whoa. Yes. I'm so happy that actually makes sense. That is who we are as a community.

And so we're filled with excitement leading up to, I see all of you guys are like talking like, oh, I think this is it. I see those sevens. Yeah. OK.

But we're excited. And we're just grateful that we get to have all of you on the journey once we start sharing things and once we really dive into this new chapter. You guys ready for the word of the year? Every year, we pray about what God is saying over our community for the following year.

And most of the time, we come in and we have some ideas about what that word might mean or entail for our community. But it's really always very open-ended. And it takes shape throughout the year. And as we look back, we can see that every word that we've had has marked our community and become part of our DNA and our culture in a significant way.

And so we're going to look back at old words together. Joe, you can come up if you want to. But let's just look back. Starting in 2016, our word was times two.

X2, times two lifestyle. We talked about times two and that being that we get to live lives that multiply. That we are always meant to disciple others and raise others up and multiply our stories. The times two times two lifestyle.

2017 was healthy homes, which you've heard us say so many times. Come on, healthy hearts, healthy relationships, healthy homes are actually the key to changing culture. Is through that. 2018 was the year of positioning.

That is the year we started looking for a building. Whoa. Yeah. Wow.

That's encouraging. Yeah. Super encouraging. Yes.

2018, great. No, the year of positioning. Yes. Hey, we can be honest about it.

That is a warm-up. That's real. It's okay. Yes.

Just wait. The year of the year of positioning, we got the phrase at his feet, at his table, and in his counsel. It was the three phrases that we got for year of positioning. Oh, do you want me to say some more about that?

2019, sorry, I forgot my part. 2019, family first. Family first. God was really inviting our whole community to go, hey, I'm actually going to step towards my family.

I'm going to invest in my family. I'm going to put my family first in this year. And there is so much fruit that came from family first. It's amazing.

In 2020, we all remember it. All for one. All for one. I think when we look at 2020, the all for one phrase, it took on two meanings, right?

Whereas it's all for one. It's all for the one, the one that doesn't know Jesus as the prodigal, and God's going after the one. But I think what God is starting to highlight and start to highlight at the end of the year is it's all for him. It's all for one, right?

The capital O one. And that God is actually saying, all of this, all of your everyday is actually for me because I'm worthy. It's all for one. And so I just believe that that's actually going to be this word that continues to carry us moving forward.

That's a word that we're just going to have that themes us moving forward as a church community, got all for one. It's going to live on for sure. Yes. 2021.

We want you guys to stand because we're going to commission out of this as we share the word for 2021. Yes, 2021. Do we do it like a drum roll or something? Give us a drum roll.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Raise the white flag 2021.

Let's go, man. Raise the white flag. We just felt like God was giving us this picture of us as a people raising the flag of surrender over our lives. And I just see us as a people following, following the leader, where we're flying the flag of surrender behind our leader, the lamb.

And I believe that it's a we're following this leader and we're just like little children. That was another phrase that we just felt from the Lord, under this, raise the white flag like a child. We're going to follow him. And oftentimes what happens is we start getting older, we start growing up, and we start thinking that we're pretty smart.

And the Lord is calling us as a people to go, why don't you just surrender all the wisdom that you think you have? And I'm going to lead you into the foolishness of my spirit. I take the foolish things of the spirit, and I shame the wise. I take the weak things, and I shame the strong.

And I believe that God is actually inviting us into that. Things like praying first. Things like I'm going to go low and choose his way of praying and connecting with him more. These are the things that we feel like God is just inviting us into as a community.

And so what I want to do is I want to commission us out and just pray over us for this word that it would be a reality, not just in our lives individually, but corporately. So Lord, we just thank you that we have the opportunity as children to choose to follow the leader and raise the white flag over our lives. Lord, we declare that you're the leader that we want. You're the king that we want.

You're the one that is the essence and the embodiment of wisdom. You're the one that actually gets the way to go. Lord, you're the shepherd, you're the leader, you're the father, and we want to be like little children. Waving the flag of surrender.

Waving the white flag of surrender over our lives in our everyday lives, not just at church services, not just in the religion sphere. Lord, we want the flag of surrender to be our anthem over every day, over Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday Lord, we want you to be our leader that leads us and guides us. So we just want to be the people that is found leaning, not on our own understanding, but found leaning on you. And so this year we thank you for making this reality in our own hearts and just corporately.

We raise the white flag to you. In Jesus name, everybody, say amen. Amen. Amen.