Last Sunday of 2014, we do want to make our lives count. If you are a dog owner, what if your dog could talk to you? Have you ever wondered what is your dog thinking? And if your dog could speak, what would it say? Technology today is absolutely crazy. Watch this news story, if you would, please. So imagine if your dog could tell you what he is thinking. Do you really want to know what he's thinking? Sure you do. Local 15 web content specialist Karen Reed has more on this new device that claims to translate animal thoughts into human language. Tell us more. It does sound crazy, right Kelly? But no more wolf promises to deliver. So let's see what it's all about. Scandinavian designers NSID, which stands for the Nordic Society for Invention and Discovery, designed what's essentially a headset for your dog. Here's how it works. There are small sensors on the top with EEG recorders. It reads the currents in the dog's brain. Those frequencies are then picked up by a microcomputer inside the headset and translated into words. The developer, Eric Cauldron, says it's actually very simple. Well, it's really not that complicated as it might seem. It's just the use of existing technologies, but in a new area, the electrodes here are securely placed around the scalp of the dog. And this has actually been one of the hardest challenges so far. No More Wolf only translates into English right now, and the developers and the entire team say it is a work in progress, so there will be some hiccups along the way. So, you put a headset on your dog, And it analyzes and translates your dog's brainwaves into human speech. I think if it worked, which I doubt it will, but I think if it worked, the first thing a dog would say is, would you get this silly headset off my head, please? Do we really want to know what our dogs are thinking with all? You know, one thing nice about a dog is that they don't talk. You know, I mean, do we really want their two cents worth? I think the whole talking dog thing, they're just barking up the wrong tree. Happy New Year to you, too. What if animals could talk? I mean, what if birds and animals and insects and reptiles can talk? Well, guess what? They can. And in the Bible today, we're going to let some of God's creatures speak to us. We don't need any headsets. They're not going to speak to us through their words. They're going to speak to us through their actions. It's incredible. This last Sunday of 2014, God translates the actions of some animals, of some creatures to teach you and I how to not waste our lives, but how to live our lives in God's wisdom in the coming new year. I'm excited to share this because I need God's wisdom in my life. I don't want to waste my life into the new year. And the amazing thing about God is he takes these little creatures. and says they have something to say and something to say to you and to me. We're looking, as I mentioned earlier, in the book of Proverbs. Here's what Proverbs is all about there. Simply, there's only two ways to live life. Either we live life our way or we live life God's way. Proverbs is about God's wisdom for living life God's way on a daily basis. Let me say it again. The whole book of Proverbs, God's wisdom for living life, not our way, but living life God's way. And we're looking at Proverbs chapter 30. We're going to look at verses 24 through 28. Now, what sets up versus 24 through 28 is verse 24. It lays the foundation. And then we're going to see in verse twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven, twenty eight. There's four different creatures mentioned that speak to us through their actions. But look at chapter 30, verse 24 of the book of Proverbs and keep your Bibles opened here. It says there are four things which are little on the earth. In other words, God's going to introduce us to four small, simple creatures. There are four things which are little on the earth, but they are exceedingly wise. In other words, the actions of these four simple, small creatures teach you and I wisdom for living life God's way. Now, if we'll learn and apply the lessons of the actions from these four critters that God puts in his word, I promise you in the new year it can bless you. It can bless your family. It can bless this church if we will learn and apply the lessons that God wants to speak to us through these four creatures. So once again, last Sunday of the year heading into the new year, let's have some wisdom for wise living in the new year. OK, now I've got the four critters back here and the first one in verse twenty five is talking about the ant. God wants us to learn something. to live God's way by God's wisdom from an ant. We all know what an ant is. So here's our lesson. The ant in the new year use time wisely today, knowing that it impacts tomorrow again in the new year. Use time wisely today, knowing that it impacts tomorrow. Look at verse twenty five. It says the ants are a people not strong. You may be saying, wait a minute, can an ant lift like 50 times its own body weight or something like that? Well, yeah, but according to you and I, they're not very strong because we can squish them with our pinkies if we want to. So ants are a people not strong yet. This is the key word that we learn from ants. Look at verse twenty five. They prepare their food in the summer. They prepare their food in the summer. Have you ever seen an ant on break? Have you ever seen an ant just kind of kicking back, taking it easy? Have you ever seen an ant in an SUV with luggage on top going on vacation? Ants are always on the move. Ants are always hard working. God built inside the ant to work hard because ants know inside that winter is coming. That's why when you and I go on our summer picnics and we see all these ants running around, they grab a little crumb of our potato chips and run off with it in the summertime because ants are always spending their time searching for food, gathering food and storing food. Because inside of a little ant, God made them so wise to know that you've got to take advantage of the opportunities that you have in life. You've got to use your time wisely because winter's coming in the summers when you work, winter's coming when you can't work. Ants are all in, hardworking, taking care of business. while they have an opportunity to do it. Now, we're supposed to be a smarter smarter than ants. Ants have ant brains and an ant brain is very, very tiny. An ant brain has about 250,000 brain cells. A human, most people have about 100 billion brain cells. So it takes 400,000 ants brains to equal one human brain. God's given us a lot bigger brain than an ant. And plus, if we are followers of Christ, we have the mind of Christ. So we need to learn lessons from the ant. We need to apply ant lessons to our life from verse twenty five. And the first one is this. Be prepared. Again, in verse twenty five, it says they prepare their food in the summer and prepare while they can. And the number one wisdom in all the world, the number one wisdom to leave 2014 and the number one wisdom to enter 2015 is this to know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. In Amos, chapter four, verse 12, it said, prepare to meet thy God. Same word, prepare. You see, something's going to happen in your life and something's going to happen in my life. I don't know if it's going to happen in 2015. It may. Either we will die or the Lord will return. It's going to happen to all of us eventually. Are you prepared for that? A little ant brain God put in them to know that I need to prepare myself for what's ahead. And are you prepared? Are are you trusting in your work to be right with God? Are you trusting in the work that Jesus did on the cross to be right with God? We're just coming out of Christmas several days in the rearview mirror. It could have never would have never been said in the Bible. He is risen if it had first not been said in the Bible, Behold, born to you this day. See, Jesus was born in the manger to die on the cross and he loves you and he loves me and our sins separate us from God. And the Bible says, prepare to meet your God. And the way we prepare is not by working hard like an ant. The way we prepare is trusting in the work that Jesus did for us. Is Jesus Christ your savior? Have you trusted in him dying on the cross for our sins alive, risen from the grave in victory? Is he your personal savior? That's the most important thing you can do preparing for the new year. Prepare. ants are prepared, be prepared. Believers, you and I should be prepared. We should go into the new year every day, preparing ourselves for what life's going to throw at us. We should prepare ourselves by being in the Bible every day, by praying every day, by connecting our life to the life of the church. We should take advantage of all the opportunities that God's going to give us in the new year to grow in Jesus, to love God, to love people, to advance the gospel. We must be like the ant continually preparing ourselves for what lies ahead. Like the ant, we must use our time wisely and be hard workers. God has given us one life, one life. Let's make it count for him. I've said many times the greatest fear in the life of a Christian should not be dying. It should be wasting our life. We have one life. Let's let's make it count. Let's don't waste our life on lesser things. Let's make sure that we keep Jesus and the gospel in his church, in his glory, in his worship, that we keep that the main thing in our life. Don't let this is such a pressure on American culture today. Don't allow the busyness of life. The busyness of life to squeeze, to squeeze you and to squeeze me from what really matters in life. Let's be as busy for the Lord through his church as ants on an anthill. Let's be hardworking for the Lord's glory like a bunch of ants on an anthill. Don't let the business of life squeeze you out of serving the Lord. Don't let it happen. Man, answer focused. They're doing the deal that God created them to do. Let's maximize our use of time. Let's maximize our resources and our offerings and our love and our prayer and our ministry and our service. Let's work hard as ants on an ant hill. And the final thing, the lesson from an ant is to look to our future. You know, ants live their life, always looking to the future. I mean, they're they're looking ahead when it's summertime, they're gathering, storing food because they know that winter is coming. Well, as you and I look to our future in 2015, here's one thing all of us know. Winter sure does come in this world. I do not know what you're going to face in 2015. It may be a pretty kickback, smooth sailing year. But I guarantee in the life of this church. Some of you are going to face some tough times in 2015. See, in this world, winter always comes. But aren't you glad, believer, that in the next world, heaven's coming? That's really what matters the most. An ant knows how to look to the future. An ant keeps its eye on the future. And we've got to know that winter is coming and how we face the winters and the struggles and the hard times of this world as we prepare ourselves. We were an ever growing disciple in Jesus each and every day of our lives, preparing for winter when it comes. Keep your eye on the fact that tomorrow is coming. We have this day and that day. I don't know what life on this planet is going to bring to you or life on this planet is going to bring to me. But I know that heaven is coming. See, ants, all an ant thinks about in the future is on this planet there. An ant's future is thinking about winter when they're working, collecting their potato chip crumbs in the summer. In other words, you're never going to see a bunch of ants sitting around singing when we all get to heaven. And you could spray an entire ant colony with ant killer and you're never going to watch a bunch of ants walk up to their dead ant buddies and go, well, absent from the bodies present with the Lord, because ants don't have that future. But believers, we do have that future for us, absent from the body is being present with the Lord. And as we look at the wisdom of an ant is saying, I want to not waste my life. I want to use my time wisely. I want to take advantage of all the opportunities God's given me. I want to be hard working for the things that's most important to God, because I know in my future heaven is coming. One of our dear members, Richard Gildahouse, went home to be with the Lord yesterday and. Pastor Brad Bean and myself got to his home with his dear wife, Dolores, about the same time, and she shared with me that some of the last words he spoke before he left this life, he had been battling cancer. He looked at his dear wife and said these words, I'm going home. You talk about having wisdom, does anything else matter more than the fact whatever this world may throw at you? One of these days when Jesus comes back or he calls us home, we're going home. Ants are looking to the future. Let's learn from the ant. Well, there's a second critter that has something to say to us. Go to verse 26 and it's the rock badger. Here's our second lesson for living for the new year. God is translating their actions to bless our families, to bless our lives. He's translating their actions so you and I can live God's way by God's wisdom in the new year. He's translating their lives so we don't waste our lives, but we live in a wise manner. The Rock Badger. Here's our truth in the new year. Dwell in the power of Christ, our rock. in the new year dwell in the power of Christ or rock. It says in verse twenty six, the rock badgers are feeble folk, but they make their homes in the crags. Now, what is a rock badger? A rock badger is in our world today. They're called a rock hyrax. Actually, the zoo I worked at, we had these little guys here. They're kind of like a big guinea pig. And the Bible says that the rock badger is feeble folk. In other words, these are very timid, defenseless animals. There is no rock hyraxes that are MMA fighters. You're never going to be a sign that says warning property protected by rock badgers. OK, they're really timid, really soft, really pretty much defenseless animals for a predator like a fox or an eagle. This guy is an easy breakfast. If they live their life out in the open, if the old rock, high racks, rock badger just goes walking around, you know, on the mountain, it's not very long until it's dead meat. But the wisdom of the rock badger is found in its name. It's the word rock. That's where their wisdom comes from. Look what it says in verse twenty five. The rock badgers are feeble folk. They're not strong at all. They're timid and defenseless, but they make their homes. That's important. In other words, they're not visiting there. They're not just kind of popping in once in a while. It's where they live. It says that they dwell, they make their homes in the crags. That word crag in the Hebrew language means a rock. It means a mountain. You see, a rock badger goes deep inside of the mountain, goes deep inside the rock. That's that's where it finds its security and its safety. It just doesn't wander around out in the open. It goes deep inside of the mountain. For safety, this isn't a picture of whack-a-mole. Remember the old game where it pops its head up and you try to smack it? This isn't like that. They're not always popping up their heads. For the bulk of their life, they go in the mountain and they stay inside the mountain. The mountain is their escape. Going into the rock is where they run to. It's their safety and their life. The Bible's telling us the rock badger is wise. They're wise because, number one, they've got a good estimate of themselves. They know they're not strong. They're wise because, number two, they don't live their life out in the open unprotected. Number three, they're wise because they go deep and dwell inside the mountain. They dwell inside the rock because the rock badger knows this. If a predator like a fox or an eagle is going to eat the rock badger, it's got to tear through the mountain first. You and I, we as Christ followers, we live in a hard, hostile world. We live in a world that is filled with many different enemies that would love to have our faith and our families for breakfast. But guess what? We have a rock. Remember what the Bible said in first Corinthians 10 for it said the rock was Christ. When we got saved, we are in Christ and Christ is in us. You and I are in the rock. The key question for us in 2015, the wisdom for the rock badger is, will I live my life out in the open, unprotected, or will I live my life deep in the rock? The security that that brings. Now, when I say not live our life out in the open, I'm not talking about our faith in the gospel. Of course, we take our faith in the gospel out in the open public. Absolutely. I'm talking about not living our life in the open, meaning this, that we make a decision that I'm going to face 2015 in my wisdom. I'm going to face 2015 in my power. I'm going to try to control my life. I'm going to try to make it all work out. I'm going to live my life out in the open. I'm going to wander away from Jesus, wander away from my commitment to his church, wander away from my small group, wander away from serving the Lord, because I'm going to get busy and all these other things. And I want to warn you lovingly as your pastor. If you wander away from the rock in your life, you are putting your faith and your family at great risk of being eaten. No, man, we've got the wisdom of a rock badger. We know that we're weak. But we know that Jesus is strong and in 2015, we want to live in dependency on his power, not our power. And in 2015, we want to go deep. We want to dwell in Christ the rock. We want to be ever growing disciples again, committed to word and to prayer on a daily basis, to church life of in our small groups and study. I pray that 2015 is going to be the single greatest year of connected with the Lord's bride, the Lord's body, the church and serving him through the church, your own personal quiet time, your corporate time with God's body. If we wander away from the rock. That's when bad things happen, but man, these little guys are smart. And I'll make you a promise, if we dwell in the rock. If anything's going to get to you or get to your family, it's going to have to go through Jesus first. Maybe you heard of Greenbrier in. in West Virginia. Greenbrier Inn is a really exclusive resort. And for decades, people were talking about there's always weird things going on at Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia. Well, now we know why. During the Eisenhower administration, while they were building a wing onto the Greenbrier Resort, the United States government was building a secret bunker underneath that resort. It was a bunker that if we ever had a national catastrophe, say like a nuclear attack or whatever, it was big enough that all the Congress and all the Senate would go live under Greenbrier in this. I mean, it's like this huge bank vault underground. It was massive. It had a commissary, a medical clinic, rooms for them to live. There were people that were always at Greenbrier, government employees who who were always there in case a disaster happened where they could work. They passed themselves off as being TV repairmen, as the report I read. Well, it's now all out in the open. And matter of fact, today you can tour Greenbrier, this old government bunker that we had for decades. It's a tourist attraction. Personally, I'm glad that it's a refuge we never used. I'm glad we didn't have to send our Congress and our Senate deep underground because we were under some kind of an attack. That's a good story of an unused refuge in 2015. Let's don't make Jesus an unused refuge. Let's go, let's run to him. He is our escape. He is where we dwell. Let's go deep and let's dwell in Christ, the rock. That's where our protection lies. That's where. Our joy lies not in living life in the open, unprotected, Psalm 61, two says from the end of the earth, will I cry into the when my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than I. OK, the third critter we're looking at here is the locust. The locust kind of the grasshopper looking guy. OK, now the truth of the locust is this. The locust is in the new year. Let's be committed to our church and sweep the land with the gospel and the new year be committed to the church and sweep the land with the gospel. Verse 27 says this, here's God says, I want you to learn from the actions of this small, simple creature, because this little creature gives you and I the wisdom to live life and not waste our life. This little creature, if we learn and apply its lessons, will bless us and our families and our homes and our church. What does the locust have to teach us? Verse 27, the locust have no king, yet they all A.L.L., they all advance in ranks. Now, one locust by itself, outside of me using it to scare my daughter or my wife, really doesn't amount to much. But you put these babies in a swarm. You get a bunch of locusts united. Committed. And watch out. You know, when locusts come together in unity, they show up on Doppler radar, they can block the sun. They can be the difference between a nation starving or not starving, that when these guys get together as a swarm, they can ruin the economy of a nation. One little locust by itself is not going to do much, but when they get together, it's pretty unbelievable. Look what it says in verse 27. They have no king. In other words, there's not the one locust general out there with some kind of locust bullhorn saying attention, attention, all locust, all locust. OK, we're going to swarm at seven thirty. You should have received the email. Green locust in the center, red locust on the right, yellow locust on the left. Everybody come in line. We're going to meet at seven fifteen. We're all going to get together. Any questions? Talk to you. I mean, they don't have that. But look what they do. They have no king, but the Bible says they advance in ranks. In other words, God again has put into them this invisible force inside of a locust where they know that they come together, they fly together, they march together as one. The locusts are not in conflict with each other. The locusts are not in competition with each other. The locusts cooperate and fly together as a swarm and they change the world around them. Locusts, as one community, change the world for bad. The church, as one community, we change the world for good. The locusts, when they are united, they sweep the land with the bad news of destruction. When the church is united, we sweep the land with the good news of the gospel. See, we must learn from the locusts. The locusts has no king. Folks, we do have a king. We have Jesus, the King of Kings, and we have his Holy Spirit in us and we have his marching orders in the Bible. And he wants us like the locusts. He wants us to be united. He wants us in our ranks as a church. He wants us to advance, as it says in verse 27. He wants us to advance as we grow in Christ. He wants us to advance the gospel to our neighbors and to the nations. In 2015 as a church and in 2015 as families and individuals, I'll make you some promises. There will be changes. We all know life changes and there will be challenges. Those things are going to happen in your life, in my life. But let's prioritize our commitment to Jesus and his church. Alone, you and I as a believer will not have much impact at all, just like a locust being by itself. But when the church comes together and God's blessed us with decades of unity, when the church comes together in unity, when we gather as a community, when we're together as one swarm following our king, advancing the gospel, when we're not in conflict with one another, when we're not in competition with others, when we cooperate in unity to advance the gospel, It's incredible what God will do in the lives of other people. It's a beautiful, powerful thing when God's people cooperate in unity, the locusts, everything they do brings destruction, but the church, what we do when we're one united community, we bring life, the life of Christ. I read a story of two ladies, Margaret Patrick, and Ruth Innsberg. Now, Margaret Patrick and Ruth Innsberg had two things in common. Number one, they were both incredible pianist. And number two, both Margaret and Ruth had very severe strokes. Seventy four year old Margaret had a severe stroke and she was paralyzed on her right side. Eighty six year old Ruth had a severe stroke and she was paralyzed on her left side. And both ladies stopped playing the pianos. That's until they met a woman whose name was Millie McHugh at the Southeast Senior Center for Independent Living in Englewood, New Jersey. McHugh introduced them to each other, realized that they both loved playing the piano, and she had an idea. She says, why don't you guys sit side by side and work together? Margaret could sit on the piano bench because her right side was paralyzed. She could play with her left hand. Ruth could sit next to her in the piano bench because her left side was paralyzed. She could play the piano with her right hand. And these two ladies cooperating together. Filled the halls of that senior center with music that it had never heard before. Matter of fact, at seventy four and eighty six, they went on tour, they did concerts all over New Jersey. Filling everywhere they went, they said in their own words, The most beautiful music they'd ever been allowed to make. They had challenges. They had changes in their life. That they sat down side by side in cooperation. And made beautiful music and first Baptist Arnold, God has blessed us with unity for decades, and as we went to 2015, let's protect that unity, let's promote that unity. God, with all the I'm telling you, there's going to be changes in 2015. I've been here 10 years, I hope and I think I know you that say, Pastor Kenny, we love you when you do everything the way we've always done it. But I wonder if you're going to love me if we do some things different. We'll find out. But let's be united. Let's go forward. We have gathered around as one community, as one, and don't let that freak you out, it's not like anything really way out there, but it's going to be some changes. It's good. Brother Lee, we don't want to get stale, do we? No, we want to we want to keep reaching people with the gospel. Let's swarm. Let's swarm together. Welcome to the swarm. We sound like an NBA team or something. Let's march as one and sweep the land with the gospel. Finally, we have the lizard. This cute little guy and I want to have a lizard here, we have a lizard in here in this aquarium. Because, you know, Baptists, we don't handle snakes, we handle lizards. We got a nice little lizard guy in here. Isn't he cute? Now, this is one we had three, but I don't know where the other two are. I think they got out. You might you might look under your pews. What does the Bible have to say about the lizard? Well, here's the truth. Live in the amazement that we belong to the king and live in the king's palace. live in the amazement that we belong to the king and lives in the king's palace. Verse 28 says this, the spider and you're going to wait a minute, wait a minute. The Bible says spider, but you're saying lizard. Well, understand this. Let me explain that to you. The word in the Hebrew for spider there is Simomir, Simomir, Simomir. Simomir is a lizard that has spider like capabilities. In other words, there were lizards in the Near East who could climb straight up a wall and they gave them the name of a spider, not because they were a spider, but because they were spider like in their abilities. The word in the Hebrew clearly means lizard. Now, the lizard it's talking about here in verse 28, it says the spider, the lizard, the spider like lizard, if you will, skillfully grasp with its hands. And it is in King's palaces. You know this lizard. Well, most people believe this is probably the most well-known lizard in the world. He's the little green lizard that spends all this time trying to get you to switch your car insurance. It's the gecko. It's the the little green gecko lizard. Now, what's amazing, it says that they skillfully grasp with their hands. If if if you could see this clearly, it's amazing how God made the gecko. It's got on its toes these little adhesive glue like sacks that allows them to go straight up a wall and even hang upside down on a ceiling. God, God made them that way. In matter of fact, I read this yesterday, there was an engineer in Stanford who developed what he calls gecko gloves. He he studied the toes of a gecko and he made a pair of gloves that allows him to go straight up a wall, kind of like Spider-Man or something. Anyway, what can we learn, learn from the gecko? Well, number one is the ability to hang on. Look at verse twenty eight. The spider, the lizard skillfully grasped with its hands. God made the gecko with the ability to hang on. And in 2015, once again, I do not know what you're going to face. But I know that the God who put little glue sacks in the toes of a little small, insignificant lizard is the only glue that can hold your life together in my life together. And I want you to hear me, what some of you are facing now and what you're going to face in 2015. You can't hang on. You can't hold on. But Jesus, through you, you can, because his grace is sufficient. In 2015, this little lizard. The God who made those little toes is alive in you and in me and through Jesus, we can hang on, even when the world looks upside down. He's the only one that can hold it together for us. The second thing that we can learn about the lizard, look what it says, and it is in king's palaces. Now, the palace of the king is not a place you would expect to find a little lizard, maybe in an aquarium like this. But you wouldn't expect to see because, I mean, a gecko is this small, insignificant little creature and the most significant place in the land was the palace and the most significant person was the king. And who would expect to find this little lizard hanging out in the palace with the king? I mean, it makes no sense. In the Bible days, the gecko, the lizard was an unwanted guest in the palace of the king. But God made them in such a way with their climbing abilities and they're small. You couldn't keep them out of the palace. You didn't expect to see him there. They were not welcome there, but you could not keep them out of the palace. Now, think about us. You want to talk about the most insignificant people who now has access to the most significant place and the most significant person. It's us as believers. Because we were sinners separated from God, we did not belong. But God alone in his love for us, he gave us access to the king and to the palace through Jesus on the cross. And now through our relationship with Jesus Christ, we know God and we belong to the king. And like the lizard, we are not an unwanted guest in the palace of the king. Because of Jesus, we now are beloved children of the king. And you know what's amazing in 2015, you know, the wonder of all that it's not that this little lizard ends up hanging out in the palace of the king. It's that a sinner like me is going to spend forever and ever and ever in heaven with the king of kings, Jesus. God made that possible. In 2015, don't lose the amazement of that. Don't lose the wonder. Of the fact. That one of these days we're going to be in front of the king's throne. In the king's palace called Heaven, seeing the king face to face. That's amazing, that king is so wonderful in this life, he allows us he's the glue that holds it all together, that allows us to hang on. And we're going to be with him forever in his palace, you know, back in the 1500s, the world power of that day was the Ottoman Empire. And of all the sultans of the Ottoman Empire, what an incredible world power it was in its day. There was one sultan who they called the magnificent in his name was Suleiman Suleiman, the sultan, the magnificent of the Ottoman Empire. Well, history tells us when the sultan Suleiman died. The leaders of the Ottoman Empire were so afraid that the army would be discouraged and the people would be afraid they did something really crazy. They embalmed the king, dressed him in his royal robe and his crown and put him seated on his throne. And for a pretty extended period of time, they would let people come into the throne room a distance from him. But here was the dead embalmed king sitting on his throne. And all these people would come in and tell their stories and share what was going on in their life. And, of course, the people near the king would give some kind of a response that the king supposedly said, while the king is dead and bombed on his throne. Wow, what a different king we have believers, he's on his throne, but he's not dead and bombed. He's risen from the grave. He is in total control. He's the king of kings, the Lord of Lords. He is so intimately involved in our lives. He loves us so much that through Jesus, we can approach his throne any time we want to. He loves us so much. He is the one who created this universe. He's the one who keeps it running. He's the one who holds it all together. He is the one in 2015. That's the glue to allow us to hang on and hold us together. And he is the one he's living. He's on his throne. He's alive, trusting no matter what. He's fully trustworthy. He is the one we belong to. He is our savior. And one of these days, again, not a little lizard in the palace of a king. You're going to see a born again center. In front of the king's throne in the king's palace, seeing the king face to face. I thank Jesus for 2014 corporately as a church. I'm excited about 2015 corporately as a church. I'm thankful that God loves us so much that he speaks to us through four simple creatures. God wants us to be hardworking and to use our time wisely and to not waste our life on lesser things, but to live our life, look looking towards tomorrow, because we know what tomorrow is for us. It's a place called heaven. I'm so grateful that God has taught us that if we try to live life out in the open and our own power and our own wisdom, it's not going to work. But Jesus is the rock and we can go deep and dwell in his power. We don't have to live life by our power, but by his power in 2015. I am so grateful that the Lord reminds us that we were never saved to be just these independent Lone Ranger Christians. Always in the Bible, it's the body of Christ, the body of Christ. When we come together in unity and cooperation as a swarm to sweep the land with the love and the good news of Jesus, loving God and loving people, it makes beautiful music. And I'm so glad that we have a God who loves us so much. He holds it all together. He allows us to hang on. And one of these days we're going to be in the palace with our king. I do not need a headset to make my golden retriever, Millie, talk. I'll just let the animals and God's word speak to me. And it's going to be a great new year as we live wise for the Lord. Let's apply this to our lives. Let's pray. Father, we love you and we're so grateful that in your word you made a decision to take four small, simple creatures and say, this is an example of my way of life. It's your wisdom for daily living and Lord, we do not want to live life our way. We want to live life your way as a church. We do not want to go our own way. We want to hear your voice and follow you. Scott, thank you. Thank you for the lessons that you have taught us through the actions of these simple, small creatures that you created. Thank you that we're created in your image. Thank you that we're new creatures in Christ Jesus. Thank you that every believer is indwelt by your Holy Spirit. Thank you. As we look at 2015, that you do have a plan for us, that you do have a purpose for our lives, that you love us and that we can trust you each and every day, that no matter what happens to us, we're saved and we belong to you and it's settled forever and heaven is our home and God, we just surrender ourselves to you. Lord, the ant is prepared. Is everyone in this room prepared to meet their God? God, if that day was today, is everyone in this room prepared? Thank you, Jesus, that you made all the preparations for us. We can't prepare ourselves. We simply in faith accept the work you did on the cross through your death and resurrection for our sins. Lord, thank you for believers that God, we want to obey you in baptism and we want to obey you in being part of a local New Testament church. We want to obey you and being dependent on you and your power. And we want to obey you and being ever growing disciples, daily spending time in prayer, daily spending time in the word. God, we want to not allow the busyness of this life to squeeze us away from serving you through your local church. God, give us a strong commitment to your church and to church life and to small groups and to ministry teams as we look at 2015. God, make us a generous church, generous with our offerings, generous with our times, generous with our love, generous with our prayers, generous with our abilities. Lord, we love you. Lord, 2015, will we see you face to face because you call us home? Will we see you face to face because you, Lord Jesus, return? Until that day, we have this day and we want to live it for your glory. God, we do not want to waste our lives. We want it to count each day, one day at a time, counting for you. Thank you for this church family. Thank you for the blessings of 2014. And God, for your glory, we want to follow you. That's all we want to do is your will. Nothing more, nothing else, nothing less than your will in 2015. We ask it on Jesus name.