So you've heard the expression that Christians aren't perfect, they're just forgiven, right? Maybe you've seen that on a bumper sticker. It's helpful when you're going 90 down George Bush. They're not perfect, they're just forgiven. Got to thinking about that some. what it means to be in Christ, what it means to be a forgiven people, what it means to be followers of the way of Jesus. When those that are brothers and sisters in Jesus around the world are suffering persecution as Bill just prayed for, what does it look like when we reduce our faith to just forgiven? What about the Christian life? What about the, The fact that pollsters have no idea how to actually get a temperature of the religious mind of these United States. Because there's really no clear definition to ask from a poll question what it means to follow Jesus. And maybe you've experienced this in your own life as well, that people who would bear the name of Christ don't seem to have lives that look anything like what Jesus said their life would look like. Maybe you, maybe you've actually experienced that yourself where you find yourself lacking any fervor or passion or anything that would kind of move you down the road. The light bulb has just gone off, the flame is turned off, there seems to be no passion, no desire. Paul would have encouraging words for you today. He would put himself right next to you and say, I'm not there either, but let's keep running. See, when you reduce the Christian life down to everything's done, you kind of get, and I know I've told you this before, I had this really weird I think sometimes in word pictures, and I had this weird picture of the Christian life almost seemed like I'm a Christian and I'm in a waiting room. I've kind of checked the box on the form that I'm a Christian and I'm in a waiting room now. Now I'm just waiting for everybody else to get to the same waiting room before the real life begins. And Paul would have hard words for me too. He would say, no, it's not a waiting room. Life isn't over. Life actually just began. So let's listen. Let's listen to Paul. Let's ask God to speak to us today. Let's ask God that crazy thing I know. Now here preachers are going to get really crazy and haven't even read his text yet. What if What if Holy Spirit actually showed up in here in such a way that what David said at the beginning of the worship service, that we would leave here as a people who had truly encountered God, what if we actually prayed that that would happen? Crazy. And what if Holy Spirit poured out in such a way that people would encounter us and know that we'd been in the presence of God and that we didn't need bumper stickers to tell us about what the Christian life was, they could actually look at our lives and see that there was something different. Crazy. Well, let's just see what happens, right? Stand if you would, Philippians chapter three, verses 12 through 16. Not that I've already obtained this, what is this by the way? Back in verse 11, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Paul says, not that I've already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. only let us hold true to what we have attained. This is God's word, let's pray. Would we, Father, never lose sight of the fact that what we believe is not merely propositions or ideas, not merely facts or history, but it is supernatural in the sense that the God of heaven and earth, who created us from nothing, who sustains us by his very spoken word, sent his one and only Son into the world to rescue and ransom and redeem us. And when he was taken up, he poured out his Spirit. So Holy Spirit, we ask of you today that you would do only that which you can do. Bring fire where there are mere embers. Bring light where there is darkness. Bring warmth where there is cold. Bring breath where the air is still. Holy Spirit, blow among us, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Be seated. Three ideas this morning. Salvation is not just that moment that faith is applied in your life. Salvation is the moment that redemption is applied. It is the journey of grace and sanctification and is culminated in its completion at the day of Christ Jesus. So what I want to talk about is how do we restlessly rest? Not only is the Christian life supernatural first and foremost, it's also paradox. How do we restlessly rest? How do we with contentment fight? How do we both be still and yearn? It's paradox. So what we want to explore in our text is that we're pressing both into who we are in Christ and who we yet long to one day be in Christ. So that we can get to the point of our desire, which is knowing Christ and all of his fullness. Let's talk about first about resting in Christ. Paul is saying right here at verse 12, I press on to make it my own. I press on to make it my own. Now this text has been, is weird to translate. So if you have an NIV or if you have a King James, there's some weird words that are going on there. I actually like the simplicity and that's weird because the ESV isn't always simple. But I like the simplicity here. Listen to what it says. It says, I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Everything that Paul is saying, everything that Paul is doing, everything that Paul is chasing hard after is because of the fact that Jesus has made Paul his. The underlying thing is Paul is straining to seize. Now, do you remember maybe when you were little, some of you that wasn't so long ago. Do you remember when some of you taught your kids how to swim? Remember paddle boards? Give me one of these. Yes. Thank you. That got weird there for a second. And so what I would do is I would be kind of the carrot and the stick in the pool. So I'd be standing here, and I'd get one of my kids in the pool, and I'd get them to start kicking, and then I'd start backing up, right? Trying to get them to keep moving forward, keep swimming, keep kicking, keep paddling. You do this? Any of you? Some of you? No? All right, good. Great sermon illustration. Some of you think that this is what God is doing to us in our life. Salvation got dangled out there, and now God's just backing up, moving the line. You haven't caught him yet, gotta keep pressing. Do you know what that feels like? It's exhausting. It's like the kid that I'm teaching how to swim. Eventually they figure out that I keep moving, and they get frustrated, and they yell at me to stop moving, because they want to catch me. So for all of us who are trying and straining hard after God, pressing hard after Him, it can feel like He keeps moving the line. And I'm going to tell you right now, that's not it at all. God is not sitting there like a carrot and a stick that you would hold in front of a donkey or a horse. He's trying to get you to dupe you into moving forward. The only reason that Paul is able to strain like a racer in a race to keep pressing forward towards something is because he knows he's already been gotten. Jesus conquered Paul's heart on the Damascus Road, made him a prisoner of war. He literally broke Paul's heart in the most beautiful way possible. So any forward progress that Paul would make now in his faith isn't because Jesus keeps backing away from him, but because rather Jesus has firmly and fully grasped him and loved him. Because Jesus has fully laid hold of Paul, Paul will now press forward with every ounce of his being so that he can return the embrace in kind. Paul mentions another place in this text, the grace that was the stimulant to get him in the race. And that's part of what we're trying to talk about this morning, that grace is actually a stimulant, not a sedative. Right? But for some, grace turns into a sedative. It becomes this whole thing of, well, my sins are forgiven, right? Christians aren't perfect, they're just forgiven. Okay, what's on Netflix? And it's not that. Grace is not a sedative. It's a stimulant. And Paul talks about it in verse 14. He talks about the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. What does that mean? He's thinking about the olive wreath, potentially, of the ancient games that are now carried on in the modern-day Olympics. But what if this is a different type of reward? What if it's not the olive wreath or the victor's crown? Think about this for a second. Who is it that saved Paul on the Damascus Road? Thank you, Jesus. Somebody whispered it. That's good. We'll take it as the consensus of the group. God did. God, through Jesus, blinded Saul, struck him down, Jesus called out to him, woke his dead heart up, and drew, and Saul, now Paul, drew living breath for the first time. So when Paul would call us to look at the call of God, it isn't a call of God where God is yelling at us like the PE coach or the swimming instructor to get it together, but rather God's standing over us for the first time, and as Jesus did, saying like he did to Lazarus, come forth. Come alive. Get out of the grave. Get out of the tomb. Get out of the ground. Get out of the pits. The call of God is not calling us to paddle harder towards Him as He backs away, but a call to look backward to the gracious way that He brought us to belief in the first place. We're saved because we're justified in Jesus. Justification means it's just as if I had never sinned, but it is also just as if I had always obeyed. We are able to receive our justification by faith alone. Faith itself is a gift of God. So God's gracious act of justifying us and granting us faith, faith is all of His initiation. There's nothing that we have ever done to merit or earn it, and we still don't. And we didn't start it, He did. And this is incredibly humbling to think of. The fact that we were well loved and well regarded by the Father because of His graciousness, when all we deserved was the contrary. God shows the foolish and the unwise things. That's me and you, by the way. just so there's no confusion. That's us. He chose the foolish and the unwise things in order to make us fully manifest His glory, grace, and grandeur in the world. So not only is it humbling, but it's also ennobling, right? It's ennobling because the God of the universe has called us by name. He's called you by name. He's called me by name. Because He's called us by name and restored us to dignity and laid before us the promise of shalom. Everything that we need for our life in God has been secured for us by Jesus. We have been saved from sin's penalty. We are being saved from sin's power. We will yet still be saved once and for all from sin's presence. And so in that confidence, Paul presses forward. He is fully secure, fully loved, fully embraced, fully known by God in Christ Jesus. But he does not yet know Jesus as fully or in like kind as he is known by Jesus. And that's the reason he presses forward. He longs to return the embrace. We are not robots who have been forced kicking and screaming against our will to worship God. Rather we've been given a great gift that the love that sought us is the same love that will sustain us. But do you not see this is why over and over and over and over again I say that we have to go back and understand the way the universe was built, the way that God relates to us as his people. Dear friends, you and I are not accidental oversights that slipped onto a guest list. We're not Jack on the Titanic. We didn't slip in and somehow get a place at this luxury party that we shouldn't have ever been a part of. We're not haphazard stowaways. We're family. We're beloved. We're well thought of. We are liked. We have the smile of our Father in heaven. We have a smile of the Father that tenderly reminds us that He loves us more fiercely and firmly than any love that we have ever known. But, many of us still, still don't know what it's like to be treasured and loved and forgiven. And that's why life seems to just lose its fire. Because a lot of us still believe that what God is ultimately after is for you and I to be good little Christians. Good and obedient. Don't drink or chew or go with girls who do. And you think that primarily God has built the way the universe operates as a checklist of behaviors. And if you think that what God is primarily after is you to be a well-behaved, well-mannered Christian, you've missed his heart. You've missed his heart. Because the heart of God, the heart of God is that longing for a mutuality of embrace. We were created and formed in the image of God so that we would be in relationship with Him. We were made to be in relationship. Sin becomes the disordered obstacle in the relationship. But morality, behavior, righteousness is not the point. Jesus is the point. The return of the embrace is the point. Anything that would hinder that embrace should be done away with so that we can have that embrace more fully. You know what this is like because you've had significant arguments with someone before, and before that relationship is fully reconciled, you've tried to go and embrace them, and you know what it's like. It's like hugging a light pole out there. You try and draw them close. They're not budging. Try and tell them that you love them, and they just kind of, you know, stare at you. like a light pole, like nothing's happening. There are obstacles to our relationship that Jesus has done away with. And you have to know, you have to know that God likes you. You have to know that the smile of the Father is not a forced smile. that we are treasured and loved and forgiven, and that this is the backstop of our lives. We don't have to anxiously fret about what God thinks of us and our efforts today. He isn't after our behavior as if He's just keeping tabs on the universe with a clipboard and a checklist. He's after our affections. He's after our love. So, grace is the backstop to our lives, but it's more, right? Because there's also that forgetting and pressing on. There's that restlessly resting part that we still have to get to. I know that you've had this experience of someone talking down to you, right? Maybe it was an employer, maybe it was a sibling, maybe it was a parent. Paul's not talking down to his church. Paul's not saying what he says from the glow of the finish line of a race well run. He puts his hands on his church's shoulders, looks them squarely in the eye and says, brothers, we're doing this together. Look at verses 13 and 14. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it, what? The end of the race, the resurrection of the dead. I don't consider that I've made it my own, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead." So we talked a little bit last week about Paul's resume, about all the things that he could have looked at to give himself a false form of confidence, right? Circumcised on the eighth day of the tribe of Benjamin, Hebrew of Hebrews. a Pharisee, a persecutor of the church, as one with zeal lacking nothing. And it is fair, right, that Paul's no longer looking at any of those things as a source of his righteousness, as a source of his confidence. But here's the other thing, too. to say that Paul is merely forgetting what lies behind his life and achievements before Christ is too reductionistic. Because I think what Paul is saying here is not only does he leave behind all the things that before Jesus could have given him a sense of comfort and security, he's also forgetting the things that in Jesus He could falsely rest on and it would give him a sense of security and hope. Think about this for a second. He can look at all of his apostolic achievements, ministry converts, success in planting churches, success in discipling and raising up elders to serve in the churches where the church plants are happening, the ways that the Holy Spirit has used him in miraculous ways. You see, Paul's refusing even to look back at all of those things as a way to say, well, race well run. He's saying even none of those things matter. I forget what's behind and I press forward to what lies ahead. He is restlessly resting, right? He's not resting in what he has done. He's not even resting in what Jesus has done in the past in his life because that's well and good, but it's not the point of his life. The point of his life is to run a race, well run. and to return the embrace that Jesus initiated. So I think what's helpful as we think about how do you apply this, how do you figure this out in terms of our lives today, I think one of the things that we can learn from Paul in terms of how he is running his race and how he is spending his time is that Paul is not running aimlessly. Paul is not running aimlessly. In 1 Corinthians 9.26 he told the church that he does not run aimlessly So what does it mean then to run with purpose? It means that it isn't so much an issue of what you're doing. It's an issue of why you're doing it now Let's caveat this one, because there's been a lot of destruction that has been done, especially in evangelical circles over the last 50 or 60 years, when you think and you hear that it's not a matter of what you're doing, but why you're doing it, that what David's really getting ready to say is the only type of running, race running, that really befits the life of a Christian is to run and fill your life up with a bunch of Jesus stuff, right? Lots of church work, Lots of church things. Toss in some evangelism every now and again for good measure. But no. No, because if we believe that Jesus has laid claim to the entire world, then we can do what God has naturally gifted us to do in this world and do it for Jesus. Here's the thing, to say that the only type of kingdom work is church work is dangerous and wrong-headed. First, because of what we just said, there's no part of the world that Jesus hasn't declared as his. Secondly, you can be doing church work just as wrongly as you can be not doing church work. That's a whole thing, too. And then the third thing is it is incredibly possible to do civics, to do business ownership, to do architecture, to do engineering, to do homemaking and schooling and biology and all the other things that we could name with a kingdom purpose, to run with a why of kingdom purpose. Because whatever it is that we are doing, as long as we are being a people that are representing and manifesting who God is in Christ Jesus in the world, then we can be the very best artisans, and craftsmen, and homemakers, and engineers, and business owners, and programmers, and law enforcement people, and aircraft mechanics. I'm just going around the back of the room. I don't know about pilots though, EJ, I'm sorry. I love you. Pilots are scary. Says the aircraft mechanic. Paul's looking at the kingdom to expand. He's looking for the church to be single-minded in how they run. Part of how they run is not turning into enclaves unto themselves, but being turned out into the world as a people of the resurrection, as a people who love as Jesus loved, who live as Jesus lived, and who run by grace, not banking on what God has previously done in their lives, but longing for what God is still going to do. Restlessly resting. It's a paradox and it's complicated. How does grace motivate though? How does grace not turn into a sedative? Here's what the world's finding out about how grace actually motivates rather than sedates people. In a TED talk some years ago, Daniel Pink gave a talk on the surprising science of motivation. And here's what he said, and this is what social science is confirming. It's really ironic, but research shows now that traditional incentives or extrinsic motivators, like rewards and punishments, carrots and sticks, actually don't work to motivate people. They don't work to motivate people in the workplace, and they don't work to motivate people in your home either. and I don't work to motivate people in the church. What does work is intrinsic motivators, inward desires that drive our behavior. So in leadership and in business, here's what social science is catching up to. Rewards and punishments demotivate people. People are instead motivated by freedom, the desire for excellence, and the desire for their actions to have meaning. What this means is the carrot and the stick produces the opposite of what they intend. The more you try to incentivize people, the poorer their performance becomes. Once a people's basic financial needs are met, Motivation can no longer be driven by what will just pay you more. Their desire then turns to connecting to something larger than themselves. Those who lead by grace set the tone for entire teams and organizations. Grace expressed as love, acceptance, and understanding increases performance in the workplace. So what is the intrinsic factor that's motivating you in your Christian life? That question should be gnawing at you right now, especially for the ones that I know we've talked before and you've said, the light bulb just seems to have gone dim. The fire seems to be just dwindling down to ember. I want to suggest to you that what we need to have recaptured for us by the Holy Spirit is instead a renewed sense of longing and yearning for that which is motivating Paul. So that's the third thing I want to talk about. What is motivating Paul? What is the internal thing that's put a fire in his belly that is pushing him down the road to forget what is behind and look forward to what's ahead? in order to know Christ in His fullness. In order to know Christ in His fullness. And that seems strange, right? Because after all, when we reduce the Christian life to, I once was lost, was now found, was blind, but now see. When we reduce the Christian life to that moment of salvation, then everything else just seems like, well, so what? But for Paul, that's because it was just a so what. That was the beginning, not the end. What Paul has his sights set on is the end of the race. In verse 11, and again, I brought this in as part of the scripture reading this morning, we talked about that by any means possible, Paul says, I may attain the resurrection from the dead. And in verse 12, he has not already obtained it yet. Resurrection, the rescue of the body itself from the last enemy, death. This is what Paul's longing for. This is what Paul is yearning for. This is the true life that we await. It's the life of the life of the world to come. Next week we'll talk more, because the passage goes on, as you can see. We'll talk more about what it means to await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our bodies to be like His glorious body. But this is only part of it, because the resurrection of our bodies also entails perfection, being with Christ and like Christ forever. This is what Paul is yearning for and longing for. And until that day comes, Paul contends with the divided nature of his own heart, the fits and starts, the gaps and gaffes of pursuing Christ and then becoming sidetracked with lesser things that offer a fool's gold of satisfaction. Fool's gold, right? look shiny and like it's worth something, but it's worth nothing. See, this is what Paul says even in Romans 7, where he says, the things that I don't want to do, those are the things that I do. And the things that I want to do, I can't ever seem to do. I'm a wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death. If you think that Paul's perfect, feel his hands on your shoulders. Not that I've already obtained all of this. But one thing I do, forget what's lying behind and strive toward what lies ahead. Part of the issue is it's hard to feel our need in the West. In Nigeria, where the church is being persecuted, it's easier to talk about need. In China, where spouses are being taken away from their families. Where children are having to see their parents taken away in chains to secret camps. We can talk about the feeling of the need, the yearning of the already and the not yet. But here in the West, it's hard. Because we feel like all of our needs are being And what I want to tell you is that can actually dull your senses. There are ways in which everything around us is not neutral. It's competing for your heart in one way or another. And you have to recognize that. It's not that it's bad, it's that you have to know how it's competing for your heart, how it's offering comfort and security, how it's offering satisfaction and delight. And that can be an anesthetic to the heart and numb you from what the heart was really made for. In our Stephen ministry training, we talked a little bit a few weeks ago about the role that a Stephen minister plays alongside of mental health professionals, if there was a case where someone needed a professional counselor or social worker or whatever. And in those types of situations, what we tell the Steven Ministers is it's always the professional's decision as to whether or not a Steven Minister is appropriate. Why? Because, let's say someone meets with a Steven Minister on Tuesday, they feel great afterwards, they feel like someone listened to them, heard them, prayed with them, And now they're going to meet with their social worker on Thursday who needs them to feel the press of the brokenness of life so they'd be willing to make a change in their life. And they go to that meeting on Thursday and go, no, I really feel good right now. See what I'm saying? The West, opulence, material good can have the same dulling effect on us. It can actually make us feel like the need that's really there has been met when it hasn't. We were made to desire to see the face of our Savior Jesus and gaze upon him forever. How does that work? How does that carry into your Monday afternoon, or later today, or next week? Because it sounds like a really distant, foreign concept. It does not pay today's bills, solve today's strife in your marriage, mend today's broken relationships with neighbors or family, or heal broken down bodies. Or does it? the pursuit, this pursuit, this longing, this desire to know Christ and gaze upon Him, this is how it answers it. This is what we were made for. every time you feel the brokenness in a relationship, every time you feel the way that your body is breaking down under you, every time you feel the pinch of your savings account dwindling down and not having enough money to get to until you get to the next paycheck or whatever the situation is, whether it's broken relationships, whether it is grief and loss, All of those things hurt, and the reason they hurt is because this is not the way the world was designed to be. You were made to be in the presence of God, gazing upon His face, and received into the dance of shalom. And it's not there, and it hurts. And to say that that desire is not there is a lie. To say that those situations being fixed makes you whole is a lie. Because those situations awaken in you the desire that is deeper than any of the others, which is to say you are not made for a world that runs broken. You are not made for fractured relationships. You are not made for poverty. You are not made for sorrow or pain or death. You are not made for any of those things. You are made to be in the presence of God and gaze upon His face. And when that's not there, you feel it all the way down to the depths of your soul. This is why C.S. Lewis said in The Weight of Glory that the problem is not that our desires are too great. The problem is that our desires are too weak. They're too small. This is the context in which Lewis is speaking. He goes on in the weight of glory, and he says this. He says this. The promises of scripture may be very roughly reduced to five heads. It is promised, firstly, that we shall be with Christ. Secondly, that we shall be like him. Thirdly, with an enormous wealth of imagery, that we shall have glory. Fourthly, that we shall, in some sense, be fed or feasted or entertained. And finally, we shall have some sort of official position in the universe. This is what we were made for and this is where our heart's desire lies. Here's the last thing I'm going to say about this text and we're going to do the Lord's table and ask him for help. I've stayed away some from the running imagery because I need you to not get into that gear of this is my race to run. The running, as Paul envisions it, is a team sport. It's more like cross country. It's more like an endeavor where we would have a relay race rather than individual sprints. So here's the mindset that we must all have as fellow believers as we strive towards this end. We are in this together, and this is where we're going to land in terms of this text. Verse 15, let those of us who are mature think of this, think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained. All right? So three things as we close. in running this together as a team sport, in pressing on towards the thing that we were made for, of beholding Christ in the fullness of His glory, three ideas. Let's be humble, let's be patient, and let's be persistent. Okay? Let's be humble, let's be patient, let's be persistent. First, Paul invites the mature, verse 15. The word means not any longer childish, but far from perfect. Okay? mature. To see themselves as Paul does. How does Paul see himself? Paul sees himself as, wait for it, imperfect. Paul sees himself as imperfect. All Christians in this life, because you are on this side of the finish line, you are what? Imperfect. You are imperfect. So let's let that fact define all of us. We aren't there yet and we are all in the grand scheme of things in the same estate together. Secondly, patience. we can deal with our imperfection, our incompleteness together, patiently, without frustration, and yet without complacency. Again, verse 15, if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. There's going to be areas where we're going to have to grow. but God is the one that is doing the growing in us. Paul knows that we don't all grow at the same time, in the same way, and yet he's also convinced that the Spirit is at work in us and is going to make us exactly who we should be at the time that we should be it. And since we are all works in progress and we are all in the same race together, we're to be persistent and hang in there together. Verse 16, let us hold true, let us keep pace to what we have already attained. Don't give up, don't settle, don't become sidetracked, don't lose pace. So what do you do? What do you do with all of this? I think it's worthwhile asking the question, have we set our sights too low? Have we just slipped into a survival gear rather than a pressing forward gear? Where have we settled for good enough? Where have we operated out of fear or out of a slavish mentality to keeping up appearances? Where have we dropped out of the race altogether? What does it mean for us to know Christ, to desire Him, and that our greatest motivator is to see Him and gaze upon Him? I'll close with this. quote, Elyse Fitzpatrick, back some years ago, had a marvelous book entitled, Give Them Grace, Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus. Here's what she says. The one thing that our children really need is the gospel of grace. They need to be absolutely dazzled by the kind of love that would suffer the way Christ suffered, forgive the way that he forgives, and bless the way that he blesses. She goes on and she writes this. She says, Martin Luther wrote that it is grace that brings us forgiveness of sins, which produces peace of conscience. The words are simple, but during temptation, to be convinced in our hearts that we have forgiveness of sins and peace with God by grace alone is the hardest thing. She goes on. Living and parenting in grace is not the easy road. In fact, it's much harder to rest in His promises of grace than it is to make a list and try to live by it. Some parents may think that giving grace to their children equates to giving them a pass. But she says just the opposite is true. Giving grace to children is an exercise of faith, and faith is always more difficult than works. It flows out of humility, a character trait that none of us comes by naturally. That's why most people miss it And why works, not faith, is the stumbling block of the cross. You are not slacking off when you tell them of His dazzling love. You're doing the hardest thing. So go ahead, freely dazzle your babies with the cross of Christ. Give them grace when they succeed and grace when they fail. Show them how much He loves little children like you. So, remember I prayed at the beginning. I prayed for God to show up in a supernatural way. I prayed for the spirit to blow fresh wind and fire. You were made, you were made for the embrace of God. And if you are in Christ today, you are not outside of that embrace. He longs for you, not what you can do for him, but for you yourself, because you are his treasured possession. If you're not in Christ, dear friends, would today be the day that for the first time you gave up running aimlessly and instead restlessly rested in Jesus alone? How do we do that? Well, it's by faith, right? Because you were really hoping I was going to give you a checklist of all the ways that I can make all the anxiety and pain and frustration come out of your life. And I can't do that. But Jesus can.