Good morning, Mission Boulevard. It is a pleasure to see you. Let's have some prayer and read some things in God's Word. Heavenly Father, thank you for the blessing it is to be in your house. Thank you for the ability we have together here. I pray that you would today give us something, something that you intend for us and not something that we've developed ourselves. We do too much of that, Lord, and we want to focus on what you have for us. Pray that you would guide the thoughts that we have today and that they would be honoring to you. I pray these things in your name. Amen. So I talked with you guys, it's been months ago. I know that some of you have really good memories, but the rest of you, I'll say this for your sakes. We talked months ago about the idea of being stirred up. And I saw a picture the other day from, Carrie has a couple of uncles that live in Nebraska. And in Nebraska, I don't know if you know about the topography of Nebraska at all. If you've ever entered Nebraska, you can look when you first cross the border into Nebraska, and you can look and you can see any other state that you want, because Nebraska is completely flat. There is nothing there. There's also very little foliage or anything. There are humans. Sorry, babe. She's giving me a look. But it's interesting that a lot of people enjoy water features in Nebraska. They have a lot of sports that feature in the water. They like to fish. They like to go boating. And they like to do all the things associated with that. And so water becomes a very important feature for them. And one of Carrie's uncles that lives up there has made a pond. And I did not realize this before, but when you go to make a pond yourself, if you do not make it a certain depth, then do you know what happens to the surface of the pond? You look at the surface when you first make it, and there's water in it, and it's this nice water, and you feel like, I might could take a dip in that water, or catch a fish that came out of that water. But if you leave it for just a little while, it develops this film of this nice, green, gross-looking stuff, and it stays that way for the rest of its life. I thought this was just a natural occurrence that always happened and there was no way to avoid it, that somehow because of the fact that Nebraska was so flat, it also just had green ponds. This is not the case, and I found this out because one of Kerry's uncles was talking to me about the idea that he had specifically had this excavated to a certain depth. And sure enough, there are two pawns you could see on his property. And there is one that you could see that was not done correctly. And sure enough, it has this nice green film over the top, which probably would look good in some pictures, depending on what colors you were wearing. But other than that, it doesn't look all that great. And then you have another one that he took the time and effort to do correctly, and that one is a nice-looking pond. I would go take a dip in that pond. Not right now, because it's probably too cold, but normally, for sure. And it brought to mind a couple of verses here. The first one, both are from 2 Peter, actually. 2 Peter chapter one and verse 12. It says, wherefore, I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though you know them, and be established in the present truth. Yea, I thank it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance. And the next one is from 2 Peter as well, but jumping up to chapter three. And verse one starts out, this second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance. And then I'm gonna skip us way down in that chapter to verse 11. Verse 11 says, seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, all the earthly things, what manner of persons ought she to be in all holy conversation and godliness? If you're not familiar with the word conversation in the Scripture, conversation does not just mean you communicating with somebody else. What it means is your lifestyle. What kind of person should you be in a holy lifestyle and godliness? And then I'm skipping down again in the chapter to verses 17 and 18. seeing ye know these things before. Beware lest ye, also being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness. But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and forever. Amen. When we live our Christian lives, in the same manner that we've always lived in, we can often get stagnant, like the ponds there. You know, you don't see that green scummy stuff on flowing water because it carries it away. It's not that it never develops there, it's just it gets carried away. As Christians in our lives, we can develop a lot of that green scummy stuff. It happens a lot. And no one is exempt from this process. So when you look at all of your leaders in the church, they are busy collecting green scum. It happens every day of their lives. However, what happens is there are two things that they have that one pond doesn't. One is the idea of the flowing water. If you are continually allowing the water of life to flow through you, it carries away the impurities that otherwise would build up in your life. The other thing is your depth. We talked about how whenever your pond gets to a certain depth, it manages to avoid that scum developing there. How deep is your relationship with Jesus Christ? And some of you, I think what's happened is when you first excavated your pond, you made it deep enough so that the surface looked like this wonderful, nice, relaxing water. And over time, what happened is things started accumulating in your life. It was almost like somebody went and took a front end loader and just started shoving stuff into your pond. And so slowly over time, your pond lost the depth that it used to have. And so you're sitting here right now as a Christian who at one point had a relationship with Jesus Christ that was so deep that those impurities were things that were quickly dealt with and gone. And instead, your relationship has gotten more shallow. And as it got more shallow, you lost the ability to get rid of those impurities the same way that you did before. And so you're sitting here as a Christian person having those impurities in your life. because you don't have the depth that you need to. So my challenge for you today is look at the pond of your life and see whether maybe you need to go in there and do some excavating once again and reach that level of depth that God really wants you to be at. Because when you reach that level of depth, when you are able to communicate with him on that deeper level, That is something that keeps those impurities from being able to develop in your life, because if you have the presence of God that deeply in your life, you won't be able to focus on sin the same way that you do now. Turn with me in your Bibles to Revelation chapter 18. I'll begin reading in verse one.