Great Responsibility

Transcript

Childhood Labels And Identity Shifts

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, uh let's jump into what we're gonna talk about today. A little bit about me as like an introduction. So as a kid, um, most people don't believe this, I was fairly quiet and reserved. Um I just kind of, you know, kind of hid in the corner a little bit more. Um, but one thing about me as a kid, I also hated sports, okay? And as I was trying to think of why this was, I think part of the reason is I was very tall, so I was like a head taller than everyone in my class. And when you're tall, everyone thinks you're gonna be good at basketball. And at recess or in gym class, they say, Oh, I pick Cameron first on my team and then regret their decision the whole rest of recess. Because I'm terrible at basketball. I'm not coordinated, I'm not like very competitive. When I played football in high school, the common refrain was, quit playing patty cakes out there and hit someone. Right? That's just not me. I don't have that like drive to want to murder someone in a sport. Um, I'm not from a super sporty family, so I thought all growing up that I hated sports because it was like I'd had these bad experiences. I'm like, I'm just not good at this, I don't enjoy it. Um until uh I was in middle school and I had a friend say, hey, you should try out for football. He kind of like forced me, use the friend who got me out of my shell and forced me to do things. Um and then I found, hey, I actually kind of like this. This is fun. Um I share this because how we see ourselves affects how we live our life. Right? So when I saw myself as a kid who just wasn't good at any of this and didn't like it, I just didn't try anything or put myself out there because I didn't enjoy it. And once I realized, like, oh, hey, maybe it's just I don't like basketball or some of these things that I had played, um, I realized like, hey, I tried more things and liked them. As like how I saw myself changed, I was able to do more and I wanted to do more. Uh there's a word for this idea, which is our identity, right? How we think about who we are as a person. So a couple of things for me as an identity marker. Like I see nine years or eight years ago, um, we had a kid. I know I should know her how old she is. Uh we had a kid. Uh, so I see myself as a dad, right? That was a significant identity shift for me. That I'm just, you know, not just married and on my own, you know, kind of I now I'm responsible for a child. And that shifted how I spend my time, how I spend my money, how I prioritize things in my life. Um, my dad was just in town visiting. Um, many of you were asking about him and our relationship and stuff. So as I was thinking about this, I realized I don't think of myself as a son. Like, that's not a big part of my identity. Obviously, I am a son, like, you know, that's like biologically. But like, I just don't think about that day to day, and that affects the way I live, in that I'm really bad at keeping in touch with my dad. So I know all of you with adult children are probably like, shame on you, Cameron, get it together. But to be fair, he never calls me either. We talk like every couple months. It's kind of like our relationship. Um, you might notice this if you go to work somewhere, and a company can have its own culture, and it wants to like instill that culture in you so you see yourself as part of the company because hopefully that will affect how you operate in the company. Some families have a really strong family culture. Like our family does this, or we don't do these kinds of things, right? And that that affects how you live. Uh related to this, I promise this is going somewhere, um, our false identities can also affect how we live and how we like experience life day to day. So when we see ourselves as something other than what we are, uh it can be bad, right? Like there are many people who see themselves as much younger and more athletic than they are, and so they go out to do a sport and then get an injury and hurt themselves, right? There are people who think of themselves as really good singers that go on American Idol and the results are disastrous. Um, for me, when I was in school, uh I was always saw myself as a really good test taker. Like I just didn't have to study for tests very much. So when I took the AP test, like for you know, to get college credit, I was like, I'm a great test taker, I don't have to study for this, and then failed miserably, right? So our identity affects how we spend our time, the kind of choices we make. Uh also changing how we see ourselves can affect how we live life. So an example I was thinking of for this is uh if people in recovery, there is a significant moment going from I struggle with alcohol sometimes, sometimes I drink too much, sometimes it goes too far, to saying I am an alcoholic. Right? That is a significant identity shifting moment that says this isn't something I'm just have to get together and figure out how to manage. It's saying I can't manage this anymore. And now there are a whole like host of life choices that are off the table for me because this is who I am. It's like a catalyst for a lot of change. When I get into an argument with my wife, I usually go in thinking I'm a pretty good husband and leave the argument feeling a little differently sometimes, right? Hey, maybe there are ways I've dropped the ball. Maybe I'm not as great as I thought it was, maybe I'm not as thoughtful as I used to be, those kinds of things. And when you shift your identity, there's the potential for change, right? It doesn't have to be a bad thing. Saying like, hey, I'm I have maybe haven't been a great husband can be a catalyst for deeper change.

How Identity Shapes Daily Choices

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Now, why are we talking about this? Because I think the same thing is true for as individuals as for us as a community, as churches, that how we see ourselves as a church affects how we live as a church, how we do life together, how we the way we spend our time, the things we organize around. And Paul, in our passage today in 1 Corinthians, is going to talk about um kind of how we should see ourselves as a church. He's gonna give us a metaphor and an image and a picture for us to like just kind of expand our imagination for what it means to be a church community. But before we do that, I want to talk about some of the common ways I think we tend to think about the church today. And these aren't all like wrong necessarily, but they're like partially true. Um so I think one common one, especially in our broader culture, is we see the church as a building for religious rituals. Like that's where that's the place where the religious stuff happens, especially if you grew up Catholic or Lutheran. Uh, it's the place where there's weddings, funerals, baptisms, you take communion, all of that kind of stuff. And there's some truth to that, right? We're we're all about the religious stuff here too. We like that. Um, but we're also more than just that. And the church is not a building, it is a people. I think a second common one is to see the church as a social club. Like it's the place where I go to find community, where I connect with people, where I have friendships, right? And that's awesome. Like my wife and I are from the Northwest, and so coming here, like our church is like our family and our main connections we have. So it's a good thing. Um, but the church is meant to be more than a social club, more than a place just for community and friendship, right? It's not just like a social institution that's good for our country and for our communities, it's supposed to be bigger than that. Um, and so another kind of uh uh way that we can view the church is that the church is a place of shared mission where we just like get together and we volunteer and we do some good stuff in the world, right? And that's awesome. That's who we want to be. Like, that's part of a God's mission, is what births the church, and we want to be a part of God's mission and all of that. But when we only see the church this way, uh we can get frustrated by all the community stuff. Like, why are we spending time doing this and we could be feeding people or evangelizing or whatever it might be? Some churches even go as far as to say, why do we need to get hung up on theology and really like all the God stuff? Like, really, all we want to do is be volunteering and serving people, right? And the church is bigger than just a shared mission. Probably the most common in the evangelical church is to see the church as entertainment, a place to go to be entertained, right? To go hear a sermon that kind of sounds like a TED talk, it's kind of funny, you got a couple good points and it makes you think about something. To go hear some music that sounds kind of like a concert and is really good and putting on the big show. And there's not, again, this isn't all wrong. Like, my hope is you don't come to CrossPoint and are bored to tears. Like, hopefully you're engaged and like being here. Hopefully things are relevant. But if our goal as a church is to entertain ourselves or to entertain you, or entertain your friends that you bring, uh there's a problem there. Like, that is not because I mean Jesus is not interested in just entertaining us, right? Often uh like discipleship requires some hard truth that sometimes hurts or is convicting. Uh, there's whole accounts on social media following megachurches that try to put on shows. Like I saw one uh I was looking this morning, I was like, Can I find a funny video? I was like, ah, it is a little too tricky. There's one where a guy is like they had a roller coaster built on the stage, and the pastor comes out like riding on a roller coaster because the sermon series was about like life's roller coasters, and he gets out and everyone's cheering, he's like, Let's praise Jesus. I'm like, I don't think anyone's praising Jesus. I think they're like clapping at the show they just watched, right? Or like motorcycle jumps in the sanctuary, right? It's like that's cool, but like the point of the church is not just to be entertaining. And I think this one, because it's so ingrained in like evangelical culture, this can be a really subconscious thing too. Like, I would never say, I believe the church exists to entertain me. But if I'm honest, when the church doesn't entertain me, I get a little grumpy about it. When the sermon's boring, when the song isn't something I like, like it's not a song I like or a style isn't something I like, it's easy to feel like frustrated by that. And it reveals that underneath it, like maybe I actually think this, believe this more than I want to give credit to. All right, and the last one that is one I hear a lot, actually, probably the most, and again, it's not all bad, it's just partially true, is to think of the church as a spiritual gas station. Like life gets you down, you're running on empty, and so you come to the church to get filled back up, right? To hear some worship, hear a good message, so you can get back out into the world and like do your thing until you run on empty again. For some people, this shows up as like, hey, I had a life crisis, and so I come back to church, and then the crisis is over, and it's like, all right, see you in five to ten years when the next crisis happens. Um, for some people, this looks like every, you know, they come every week, but they see like this is a place where I get filled up. And again, I don't want to be critical of this because in a lot of ways, this is beautiful. I love that people come here and feel filled up and feel like, man, I'm ready to like face the week and like tackle whatever God has for me. But again, I think we're called to be more than just this. This is just a piece of what it means to be the church.

Church Misconceptions We Normalize

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Okay, which leads us to our passage today. So uh, for those of you who don't know, we're in a series on 1 Corinthians where Paul is writing a letter to this church in a city called Corinth. Um, and there's a lot of jacked-up stuff happening. Um, and so he's correcting their behaviors, but he's also correcting their theology. So the things they believe about God and like the church and about community together, as a way of saying, like, if you understand this in a deeper way, it'll affect how you live and how you live this stuff out. So he's already uh so he's correcting them and how they view themselves as a church community. He's already compared them to a field, and like the leaders of the church are like workers in the field working for God. He's compared them to a building, which is what Katie talked about last week, like the foundation being Christ and the building needs to be built like Christ. But in this passage, he's drilling down a little bit deeper into this image of what type of building the church is. And the thing he says is that we are meant to be a temple. So here's what he says in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, verses 16 through 21. It says, Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person. For God's temple is sacred, and you together are that temple. Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. This is the thing Paul's been talking about for quite a bit over these last few chapters. That the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight, that we don't want to seek after the wisdom of this world, because God has wisdom and power that's rooted in the cross. As it is written, he catches the wise in their craftiness. And again, the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise are futile. So he's like referencing uh scriptures from the Old Testament to show his point that like this has always been true, that God's wisdom is greater than uh the world's wisdom. The world's wisdom is foolishness. So then, no more boasting about human leaders. Right? So they've been they've been fighting and dividing over which human leader they're gonna follow. Now we're gonna, there's a few more verses that we'll read at the end of our time together. Uh but I want to sit in this image a little bit where Paul calls us or calls the church a temple. Uh and he says, Don't you know, like, don't you know this is true? Uh and this is like he says this a lot in 1 Corinthians, and it's not just like here, let me teach you a new fact. He's saying, like, think through the implications of this. Right? There's an assumption, they probably knew, like Paul had called them a temple before. He's like, you have to think through the implications of who you are. And for the Corinthians, this would be a huge shift, okay? So from what we've seen so far, it sounds like a lot of the Corinthians viewed church more as like uh an entertainment place, like a TED talk, right? They wanted the one, the preacher who had the best wisdom or the preacher who most related to them in their social status. Uh they wanted, uh, we'll see that they want like big, bombastic spiritual experiences to be a part of. And Paul's saying, no, forget all of that. You are a temple. You are where God's spirit dwells in Corinth. Uh he's saying this uh not to them as individuals, but collectively. He's like, you all are the temple. So it's not like you're a temple, you're a temple, you're a temple. It's like, no, we together are a temple. We are the temple of God. Um, and this word, uh, Paul has a few words he could have used to say this. Uh, the Greek word he uses is naos and means like the dwelling place of the God in a temple. So this is something the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers would have had a box for, because you know, even the pagan temples had a place where like the God dwelled in the temple. So it's not just like the building, or it's not even just like kind of the area where all the temple, it's like the place where the God's presence and spirit lies. Paul's saying he's drawing on some really rich imagery throughout the Old Testament and throughout their culture that they would understand that they are the temple, the dwelling place of God in Corinth. Uh, I really liked one commentator uh said the impact of Paul's metaphor, that this picture he's showing, is to dignify them. Right? It's kind of crazy to think that there's this dysfunctional little group of believers in the city of Corinth, and he's saying, You guys, you crazy dysfunctional people that are driving me crazy, are God's temple. Like he's he's erasing the stakes about who they are. Um, it's that you are this glorious building that had such spiritual significance for the Jews. So Paul uses this image a couple other times. Uh in Ephesians 2, he says, In him, in Christ, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him, you two are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit. That the church gathered together is the dwelling place of God. In 2 Corinthians 6, Paul also uses this image, but he actually references some Old Testament passage in 2 Corinthians 6 to kind of back it up. And it shows that this idea is actually something that has roots all the way back to the beginning of the Bible. So Leviticus 26 says, I, this is God promising to the people, I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. So, like what Paul is talking about, like us as the church being the temple, is the fulfillment of what God promised all the way back in the beginning of the Bible. And then in Ezekiel 37, right, when things were all going crazy with the nation of Israel, um, Ezekiel and God says this my dwelling place will be with them, I will be their God, and they will be my people. So Paul in 2 Corinthians references both of these Old Testament passages to say who you are is a fulfillment of what God has been doing for thousands of years. And at the time of Paul's writing, there was a lot of theology built up around the temple that people believed, that especially the Jewish believers would have understood. They believed like the temple's foundation, they almost saw the temple as this like eternal building that existed outside of time. They'd said its foundations belonged to creation itself. Like it was bigger, it was like a part of the original creation. The Psalms talk about the temple lasting forever. And in some of the prophets, we see that the destinies of all the nations will be decided at the temple. So the temple is the place where all the nations will come to be judged, but also to be given grace and redemption. And there's verses in the Old Testament that talk about the well-being of the whole earth depended on God being in his temple, like God reigning over everything. And the temple is where he reigned. So the church, like who we are as a church, is both a fulfillment of what was said in the Old Testament, what was promised, these echoes of what we see. And if you went back and read the Old Testament, you'd see a whole lot of rich stuff about the temple and how the Jews, you know, venerated the temple and like kept after it and all these things. But it's also a foretaste of what is to come. So if you were to read the book of Revelation, which is kind of a crazy book, but it has a lot of vivid imagery and like metaphor around what like the end of time will be like, what it will be like to be in heaven with God forever, we get a lot of temple uh imagery. So here's from Revelation 21. And I heard, this is John who wrote Revelation, a loud voice from the throne saying, Look, God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. And there's this one of my favorite verses He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. And later on in Revelation 21, he says, This I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. So when Paul uses this imagery of you are a temple, it has rich historical significance and looks towards this glorious future that we have to look forward to. This beautiful image. Now, the place in Corinth, uh the church in Corinth, this Paul's like saying, you are the place in Corinth where the rest of the nations, all the people around you. Remember, Corinth was like a trade town, so lots of people coming through. You are the people and the place where people will come to meet the God of the universe. The place that was supposed to be an alternative to the corruption and the pagan idolatry and all these other things happening in Corinth. Now, of course, as we read the letter, we see they're doing a terrible job of being the temple, right? There's a lot of corruption going on, there's all sorts of jacked-up stuff happening in their church. Um, but he is calling them to something bigger, to something bigger than they are right now, so they can live into their identity and their calling. Right? Paul is wanting to shift their imagination and how they see themselves as the church. And he's also making the implication in this passage that by dividing the church, which is something we've talked about a lot over the last several chapters, they're not just ruining a social club, right? They're not disrupting a concert, they are destroying God's temple. Right? This thing that God really says. Seems to care about a whole lot and is really important in the grand scheme of human history. Your squabbles are destroying the temple. So just like the leaders we talked about a couple weeks ago ultimately work for God, the temple is God's. He's like, you might want to be careful before you destroy God's temple. He's not going to be very happy about this, right? They're pursuing worldly wisdom in order to build the church, but they think they're building the church, they're actually destroying it. And judgment is coming, is what Paul is saying. One of the little parts in this passage I love is he says, you know, don't be deceived. I think they think they're doing the right thing, right? Their motives might even be pure. To want to, like, oh, build up the church in the world's wisdom. But he's saying, yeah, even like your good motives or like having the right heart behind something, it does not necessarily mean what you're doing is good. Um, it reminds me, my dad was here, you know, we uh talked about some funny memories and things he said to both my mom and Megan, my wife. One of the habits he has is after someone spends a lot of time cooking a meal for him, he says, Do you know what would have made this really good? Right? His motive might be good, right? To make the meal better, wrong time to say that, you know? Uh in the same way the Corinthians, their motives might be great. They're probably not, but they might be. Let's be charitable. It might be great. They're trying to build up the church, but he's like, you need to stop. You're actually destroying it, and this is a big deal, and God's gonna be very angry about this. So, no, Paul is correcting them, he's correcting their theology, he's also raising the stakes of their role in the city of Corinth. That in the way they lead, in the way they conduct themselves as a church, and the way they live out their life and their relationships, all of this has huge stakes. They are the temple in Corinth. So they better start acting like it. And they need to be the place where the nations can come to meet the God of the universe. So our bottom line, borrowed from Spider-Man, is with great power comes great responsibility. Right? Available to the Corinthians. You can't say it better than that. I don't know. I don't know how to. Uh the Corinthians have access to the power of the universe. They are the temple, they are this significant place, they have access to the power of God, but with that comes an immense responsibility to be the people of God in the world. Um, it reminds me of when I was working at my old church in Oregon, um we used to lead a mission trip down to Mexico every year. And for a few years at this point, I was kind of like the second in-command person, and my boss was the one leading the trip. There'd be like, you know, 30, maybe 40 people going internationally, flights, van rentals, building project, like all this big stuff. And one year, uh I remember him, I remember where we were. We were in like a certain parking lot. He had been in the in the process of an international adoption and just found out the week that he needed to go to like adopt his son was the week of this trip. It was only a few weeks away. And and I was like, oh, okay, what are we gonna do? And he's looking at me, I'm like, oh, I'm now the person that's supposed to be leading this, right? And in that moment, I remember thinking, like, I really gotta bring my A game. Like, I the stakes are now much bigger for me than they were like five minutes ago when I was like, I still had responsibilities, but it's like there was a different level of responsibility I felt in that moment. I think that's like what Paul is trying to do to the Corinthians, is say, like, hey, you need to like bring your A game, you need to kick it up a notch, like you need to start acting like who you actually are.

The Temple Identity And Its Weight

SPEAKER_00 25:37

Now, we don't have the same issues that the Corinthians did, but I think as I think, as I was thinking about what are the implications for us today, like what is it that means? Like, we're supposed to be the temple of God. What does that mean for us? There was one big thing uh that just really kept sticking out to me, and that is that being the church is more significant than we realize. I think we live in a culture and an age where it's really easy to just kind of treat church as something optional that we're a part of. Like something I go to if I like or if I feel up for it that day, something I get involved with if I want to, but I don't really have to. Like we kind of treat it as optional. But being the church matters. It's a big deal. Like we, it's not just the Corinthians, we are God's temple here in Okanowa, gathering together. And if we're the temple, then what we do is hugely important, right? In ways I don't think we can really fully understand that there's a spiritual significance to being a part of a church that is deeper than like our brains can just logically comprehend. There's something significantly spiritual going on. And so we need to make sure we're treating being a part of a church with the weight that it has, with the stakes that exist there, and the way we worship, right? Worship isn't something we kind of like saunter into late with my coffee, and I just kind of like scroll on my phone because I don't like this song, right? It's something we're doing together to praise the God of the universe. Uh we need to we need to raise the stakes and how we care for each other, right? That we're supposed to be uh a model community in how we care and how we live out the ethics of Jesus, right? How each and every one of us lives our personal life and the decisions we make has an impact on our structural integrity as the temple and our witness in the world around us. Because the church has the responsibility to embody the way of Jesus to the world around us. We might be as the temple, we might be someone's primary encounter with God. Like they might be going through something significant in their life and come into contact with our church, whether it's here on a Sunday, whether it's with you individually, whether it's at one of the community events we're a part of joining a group, and the stakes are high, not that we need to like be anxious about making sure we say all the right things, but that we're present as the temple to whoever comes through our doors or whoever we encounter. That we can embody the way of Jesus in the world. This is part of why Paul was so mad at the Corinthians, because in Corinth, a very secular city with all sorts of jacked up stuff going on, it's like they were supposed to be the spot people could go to find the God of the universe. And if they destroy that or if they don't live into their responsibility, there are all sorts of people who are gonna miss out on that. And so I think for us, we need to remember that belonging to a church is a foundational commitment. It's not just another one of our optional activities that we can kind of like pick and choose from and be like, yeah, I don't know if I really feel like being a part of a church for the next couple years. Like, it's supposed to be a bedrock foundational part of our life. That's what it means to be the temple together. Um, and in a world that is driven by consumerism, right, and there's less social pressure to like go to church to be a part of a church, uh, there's more things pulling us in different directions, it's difficult to prioritize that and to make it happen, right? Because for all intents and purposes, it feels pretty optional to be a part of a church or not. And yet, there's something spiritually significant about making that commitment together as a temple. Right? I think of me. I don't say this as someone who's like has a vested interest in getting you to come more often. I say this partially as someone who I feel really blessed that I'm forced to be here as much as I am. Because if it was just up to me, you know those snowy days that there's like 10 people here, I would be asleep in my bed if it were just up to me. But I have something like forcing me to be here. Right? There's days I like last night, I woke up for like two and a half hours in the middle of the night. I was super tired. If it was just up to me, I probably would have slept in today, and who knows if I would have made it. But something forcing me to be here, I actually feel blessed and lucky that it's not just up to my own whims whether or not I'm part of a church community. I feel kind of like sorry for you guys that all of that responsibility is on you because it's so easy just to make the easy choice. So I just want to encourage you to take part of being a part of this community. Like this is a bigger deal than you might realize. Not in a guilty way, but in a there is so much opportunity here. When you invest in a church community and be the temple together, we have available to us something bigger than we could ever get if we just kind of pick and choose our own spirituality. And Paul ends this passage with like a call to like a reminder of what we have in Christ. So this is the last little section of the passage. So he's like, no more boasting about human leaders. All things are yours, right? If you're gonna be the temple, all things are yours. Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God. Like if we are in Christ, we have everything available to us. Right? And the world around us will try to trick us into thinking real life is found in all these other places, but the real, true, abundant, beautiful life that God has for you is found in part being part of his temple here at Cross Point, here in Okonawalk. You know, we don't want to spend all of our time squabbling and arguing about who we're gonna follow or like searching after worldly wisdom and power. Paul's kind of bringing all this together. He's like, don't argue about which leader you belong to. The leaders actually belong to you because you belong to Christ and Christ has given you everything. Your arguments are petty compared to the glorious riches God has for you, is what Paul is saying here. We need to remember that all that we're looking for in the world and in life is ultimately found in Christ. Not everywhere else, not even trying to create our church as the coolest church or the smartest church or the most wise church or the most successful church. Everything we want, everything our heart desires is ultimately found in Christ. So why would we seek out worldly wisdom and power when God has something so much better for us? Why would we only give him access to little parts of our heart and our soul when he wants to transform our whole life into something better than we can even imagine? Why would we treat church involvement as something we do a few times a year, or just like once a week, or a couple times a month, when Jesus has this abundant full life waiting for us as a community? All right, couple uh action

Practical Next Steps And Prayer

SPEAKER_00 32:41

steps. I would love if you would just take some time this week uh to pray with these questions. You can find them online on our sermons part of our website. But like which of those views of the church is most tempting for you to believe? Right? For me, again, I would never say it, but like I sometimes treat the church as a place to entertain me, and I don't necessarily like that, but being honest about that allows God to transform that part of me. And then if you were just really honest, you know, no one's gonna be overhearing your prayers, where does being the church fall on your list of priorities? What other things do you put above that? Why do you think that is? And and what might God be wanting to say to you about it? And then it's just a really practical thing. Um, this is partly because what I love Paul is doing is he's like peeling back the curtain and showing the Corinthians, hey, you are a temple, like what you're doing matters. He's raising the stakes. And I have found in my spiritual life, especially if I do something over and over and over again, it's really easy to get into like the routine and it just feels rote, and you're just kind of doing the thing. But for this next week, before you engage in a spiritual practice or church activity, just take a minute to pause and remember what you're doing. So, for example, sometimes for me when prayer feels really just like kind of like, okay, I'm just going through the thing, as I stop before I pray and remember, God, I'm about to talk to the God of the universe right now who wants to talk to me and wants to connect with me. And then I pray and I'm like, whoa, that actually like with me having more meaning behind it, I'm way more engaged. Or before you come into church next Sunday to worship, say, God, we are gathering all walks of life, all the different types of people to sing our praises out to you. Like that'll change the way you worship. At VBS this week, instead of being like, all right, I gotta like do a bunch of stuff for these kids that are gonna be wild and crazy, be like, God, I am going to invest in the next generation and teach them who Jesus is. And I can guarantee that will change the way you show up for that, for those responsibilities, for reading scripture, for whatever it might be. Just take a minute to pause and remember the significance of what you're doing. All right, let me pray for us. And I'd encourage you this week, please be praying for BBS, even if you're not involved. Um, it's from four to six every night, Monday through Thursday. So just be praying for the kids that come through the door that they can experience Jesus. So let me pray for us. Uh, God, thank you so much uh for this day. God, we thank you for your word that convicts us and challenges us as individuals, but also as a community. And God, I just ask that you would help us as a church to live into the thing that we are, to live, to live into that calling that you've created for us. God, that we wouldn't settle for being a social club or a place for some really uh good entertainment or any of those other things, God, but that we would only settle for being your temple here in Oconum Walk. God, so give us the vision of how to do that and the courage to step in so that we can experience that kind of community together. God's in your name we pray. Amen. Thanks, guys.