Yeah. Yeah. and and and and and and and and and Yeah. So, So when we were young, we used to play cards in the town And we used to play cards in the town And we used to play cards in the town And we used to play cards in the town And we used to play cards in the town And we used to play cards in the town So, It's a long way down Well, good morning. This is great. I thought maybe with that frosty weather, some of you look at the thermostat and go, nah. We're tough though. Wisconsin, right? And if you don't like it here, you can go south about 100 miles, right? foot of snow okay all right just a couple things here we're back we finished off 24 really well but now we're into 25 we have a lot of blank spaces and I know some of you wanted to sign up for church snow shoveling in May, but it's not on here. But we do have opportunities in January. Okay, so I'll start shoveling one side and we'll do cleaning on the other. If you sign somebody else's name, just tell them. Also, out there on the foyer, there are, well, there's two things. If you want Bible reading schedule, there's this one here that you kind of bounce around a little bit, Old Testament, New Testament, poetry books. But if you want to just plow right in there and go straight through, Pardon the coffee stain here, I slapped a little bit. But it just goes straight through and you can check it off as you go, okay? Got two sheets. If we run out, I didn't know how many to run off. If we run out, we'll run off some more of them. But yeah, there's two sheets worth here. Looks like about three chapters a day or so. So you're, you know, 15 behind to start with, but you catch up. So, anyway, if we do run out, let me know and we'll run off some more. Okay? And do check your mailboxes. If you didn't get it last week, it's probably still there. New missionary prayer cards, all... What do I want to say? Laminated. Okay. I was going to say, I don't think plasticized is a word, unless you're in Scrabble, you know. But yeah, four missionaries one side, home-based missionaries on the other. Got to remember to pray for these folks. Sometimes, you know, they're needing prayer. In between the prayer letters, you know, we hear about it after it's all over with you know, whatever they're going through but Know that they would appreciate you praying for them. Okay, so now you're all tuned up ready to sing How about 202 to start with Chris gonna come and lead us here amazing grace 202 Well, good morning, everyone. If you don't mind, please stand and we'll sing all five verses. Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see. T'was grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace I feared relieved. How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed. The Lord hath promised good to me, His word my hope secures, He will my shield and potion be, As long as life endures. Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come. Grace has brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home. When we've been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun, We've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun. And turn back a few pages to hymn number 195 and we'll sing all four verses of Nothing But the Blood. What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow that makes me white as snow. No other fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus. For thy pardon this I seek, nothing but the blood of Jesus. All my cleansing, this my plea, Nothing but the blood of Jesus. O precious is the flow That makes me white as snow, No other found I know, Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Nothing can for sin atone, nothing but the blood of Jesus. Not of good that I am done, nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow that makes me white as snow. No other fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus. This is all my hope and peace, nothing but the blood of Jesus. This is all my righteousness, nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow, man makes me wide and slow. And all of God's people said, Amen. You may be seated. Anybody need a communion cup? Anybody else? Raise your hand. OK. Let me get my head start here on it. Okay. Anybody have a word of praise that they're all excited about and just waiting to tell somebody? Now you've got lots of ears to hear. Do it all at once. Yes, sir. I just want to praise the Lord for the last session I had with my health concerns and how he made everything come together in a timely manner. Things could have been so much different. His timing's perfect, isn't it? Sometimes we're kind of running ahead. Come on, Lord, catch up. I need your help right this minute. He said, tomorrow will be fine. All right, Chris? There's a friend of my grandson who we've been praying for. We just called him by his first name, Garrett. And he had an extremely severe brain injury. And as we look at the daily updates and the pictures of him, he looks like nothing was ever wrong with him. He still has a ways to go, but they actually had to take the top of his skull off and let his brain And as far as I'm concerned, we've been praying that his healing would convince his doctors, nurses, health care, therapy people to realize that this is a miracle, and that he's a living, breathing result of prayer. Amen. So yeah, I guess his doctors told his parents that he would never make it. But not only did he make it, but yeah. Yeah, okay. Lord's in charge. He's the great physician. You know, there are times when, not too often do the doctors admit that we don't know what to do or whatever, but sometimes they come face to... Well, in their experience, you know, it's like somebody else was telling me here the other day about some relative they'd given them Well, maybe it was you, Chris, the fellow in Tennessee or whatever. Three months to live. I think they told... I don't know where he is. Carol's not here, but I think it was Harold's brother or something. They gave him something like that. You know, 15 years later, he's still around. They don't know it all. Okay. Well, good thing the Lord is we can come to Him with whatever our needs are, large, small. Nothing's too small or insignificant to pray about. Yes? stage four esophagus cancer and stage four bone cancer. He's had some success with the chemo for the esophagus cancer and has reduced some of the tumors in his esophagus, so that's doing better. The radiation hasn't helped the bone cancer much. He said it feels like he's got a shark fin growing out of his back because it's down his spine now. But he's not giving up hope and he knows there's a lot of people praying for him. He's staying positive, which the doctors say is very good for him. And so he's just praying for the best. We're all praying for the best. But the chemo is helping the esophagus cancer. Well, it's tough when you've got two things going at once. All right. Well, we want to look here at 1 Corinthians chapter 11. and remind us of that last night the Lord Jesus was meeting with his disciples and they'd understand this better after it was all over, but he shares with them some important truths about his soon coming death and what was gonna happen. And so we read there in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, Paul sharing with the Corinthian believers. He says there in verse 23 He says for I have received the Lord that which I delivered unto you that the Lord Jesus that same night in which he was betrayed took bread Let's ask the blessing on the bread gracious Heavenly Father we thank you for our This passage of Scripture and we thank you for Jesus Christ, who was that living bread that allowed himself to be nailed upon that cross. He died in our place. He became our substitute. Your word tells us the wages of sin is death. We deserve to die because of our sin. And yet Jesus Christ went to the cross to provide salvation for all who choose to believe. It's not automatic that Jesus died on the cross so we all get to go to heaven. It's that he died on the cross for me, for each and every one of us, everybody on the face of this earth, if we'll but place our faith and trust in him for our salvation. And so, Lord, we thank you for his willingness to go to the cross for us. And we ask this in Jesus' name, amen. He says, and when he had given thanks, he break it and said, take eat, this is my body, which is broken for you, this do in remembrance of me. We see after the same manner, verse 25, after the same manner also, he took the cup. Let's ask the blessing on the cup. Heavenly Father, again, we thank you for the cup, what it represents. This is not the body or the blood of the Lord Jesus. Doesn't become that. But it reminds us of what he's done for us. We thank you for the cup that reminds us it's the shed blood of Jesus Christ there on the cross that's able to cleanse away our sin. Nothing we can do that can remove one sin, let alone a lifetime of sin. but the shed blood of Jesus Christ is able us as we place our faith and trust in him alone for our salvation. So Lord, we thank you for the shed blood of Jesus and we thank you for this cup now and what it represents in Jesus' name, amen. After the same manner, he also took the cup, which he'd sup saying, this cup is the new testament in my blood. This do you as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord's death till he come. Okay. This is kind of a reminder here coming up a bit later in the month. It'll be here before we know it. On the 19th, we'll have our church potluck after the morning service, and then we'll have our annual business meeting. Hopefully we'll have your financial report in your mailboxes. the Sunday before that which should be next Sunday and so you can look that over try to answer any questions you might have and we'll enjoy a good time of Fellowship there. I didn't write that in there, but some may not have been a part of our potlucks This is not a sign up thing But usually we ask if you can bring a main dish and either a salad or a dessert that usually makes plenty of food for everybody lots of choices that way And we'll have a good time there Okay, so oh It's that conservative in me. I'm always trying to conserve the bulb. So here it goes. Great are you, Lord. OK. Holy Lord, holy Lord, you are worthy of my praise. Holy Lord, holy Lord, you are worthy of my praise. Holy Lord, holy Lord, you are worthy of my praise. Okay, next one here is, he is able. And if you're able, why don't you stand up with us, okay? If not, you can remain seated. Oh And there's so much more than I could ever dream. He is able, more than anyone, to make me what he wants me to be. Let's sing that once more. He is able, more than anyone, to accomplish what he sets his dreams to be. You say you want more than me, Lord, and the way you lead them out of my way. You say you want more than me, Lord, and you want more than I could ever ask. All right, why don't you greet those around you? th th th Okay. Regardless of how this might seem to start out like, it may sound like we're getting the best of, or it's summer reruns or something. I am using the same verses that we used last week. You might hear a few things that we repeated, we said last week, but it's not gonna be a rerun, okay? We're going a little bit different direction talking about how to have a fresh start in our Christian life as we come into this new year. And so we're looking at this same portion of scripture, but we're going to kind of give you some how to's, you know, some things that you might consider for things to turn out differently than maybe they did this last year. And so, Thinking of a couple of things here we might want to pray for. Might be praying for Karen Norcross. She's got some kind of a bug that's lingering on a bit, and I'm sure she would appreciate some prayer for that. Am I going to get in trouble for this? You can hit me later, Dan. Dan's going for an interview. It's one of these deals. You're not sure if you want the job or not, but he's going to go interview anyway. And on Monday, so you might pray that if that's where the Lord wants him, he'll get that job, be a little bit closer to home. And some have asked about if we heard anything about Maureen's scan. No. They usually send her a text when something's been posted, and as often is the case, even if they post something, you don't know what it means. So, but we haven't heard anything, so maybe here early this week we'll find out. You know, there's not a chapter and verse for that, but you've kind of heard the old saying, no news is good news. Sometimes if there's something really wrong, they're calling you real quick like, but so anyway, we'll take whatever comes, Lord knows, and they help us deal with that. But so, and let's see. I think there was another one here I was going to bring up here. Well, let's pray for these and then we'll go ahead. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your goodness to us. Thank you for the way that you do provide for us as individuals and as a church, as families. We thank you for healthy bodies and good minds, ability to be here today. We thank you for the many miles that people have traveled, getting them safely to their destination, driving or flying here these last a month or so, and looks like everybody's safely where they're supposed to be at this point. We do pray you'll continue to give strength and healing there to Karen, and if Carol's still struggling, that you help her to be gaining strength as well. We'd ask that you might give us some good news from Marine Scan, be able to deal with it however it comes out. And you'll guide us as we look at this portion of scripture here. We come into a new year. It's just another day, but it's a good time to kind of reassess where we've been, where we're at, where we want to go in the new year. Help us be making right choices. And we thank you for your help. In Jesus name. Amen. Okay. We like to have a fresh start, okay? And we've all made mistakes, bad choices somewhere along the line. Not necessarily all sin, but we probably maybe could have made a better choice somewhere along the way. We have setbacks from time to time. We have failures. throughout our lives. And sometimes those get us down and discourage us so that we kind of wonder, is it worth moving ahead? But the Lord tells us, he's got something better in mind. He tells us there in John 10, 10, Jesus said, I am come that you might have life. not just any old life, but he goes on to say, and have it more abundantly, okay? God wants us to have a, not just a hum, drum, barely get by by the skin of your teeth kind of life, but he wants us to have an abundant life. That doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be rich and famous or something, but he's going to supply the needs that we have. He knows what they are. And he goes on to tell us, though, that there is an adversary out there, the devil, and that he has something else in mind for us, that he seeks to steal, to kill, to destroy life. And the devil is pretty good about, I guess you got to give him credit where credit's due. He's got a pretty good record of reminding us about our failures. And he does so, so that we will get down and discouraged and want to just kind of give up. He doesn't want us to have a fresh start. You know, he wants us to, you know, quit before we ever get started. But the Lord tells us here that I want to give you a fresh start. He tells us there again in Isaiah 43 verse 18 and 19. He says, remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, which it shall spring forth and you shall not know it. I will even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert." So he's going to do some new things, you know, and you might be wondering what those are. Well, stick around in 25 and we'll find out what they are, okay? And he wants us to have a new start here. Aren't you glad that God hasn't just said, well, I've been trying for years, this or that person, and I'm not getting very far. I guess I'll just give up on them and go on to something new. But he doesn't, he doesn't give up on us. And we saw this part here last week, you know, about the fact that he has something new in mind for us. He doesn't want us to get hung up on what's happened in the past. You can't go back and change the past. There's no do-overs, all right? And so sometimes we may have set goals back in say January of 2024 and things like, well, I'm going to grow in my relationship to the Lord. I'm going to get more involved in church. I am going to pray more, read my Bible more, get more involved in my, spend more time with my family. And you could go on with that list, and yet sometimes we've made some maybe poor choices along the way, things, life has gotten in the way somehow or another that's kept us from being able to fulfill some of those. But you remember one of the things that we mentioned here when we talked about goals is trying to make them measurable. You know, this idea of, well, I'm going to grow in my relationship with the Lord. Well, that sounds good, but how are you going to know if you're growing? Or I'm going to read my Bible more. Well, how much you read last year? How much more are you going to read this year? How much time you pray last year? How much, how are you going to know if you pray in any more of the new year? You know, make a measurable. But this morning there's good news as we look here that he wants to do a new thing in our lives. And basically, you know, I've used the word forget with somebody. We're not forgetting, we can still remember certain things in our minds, but the idea is don't go back there and live there. Don't go back and relive everything again. You know, and again, we tend to have selective memories. We remember the good stuff and kind of forget the rough spots. But he tells us there in verse 18, he says, remember ye not. Isn't that kind of like forgetting? Or at least don't dwell on it. Don't just be living in the past. Now, Israel had made some mistakes along the way. And they had sinned and yet God is saying, okay, let's put that behind you. And we need to understand that God is far more interested in our future than he is in our past. Because again, you can't change the past, but God can make our future a whole lot different. And some people though are kind of stuck in the past and they think kind of that's where God's at too. But it's more often not, it's the devil that's reminding us of our mistakes and our sins. Because the Lord tells us that if we've recognized our sin, and we need to, and confessed it, we've admitted to it, and asked for forgiveness, that God will forgive us. He tells us as far as from the East is from the West, in the depths of the deepest sea, He's never going to bring it up again. And Satan will, but God won't. And so he's interested in our future. And so he's saying, forget the former things, everything that's happened in the past, let's look on ahead. And Israel, again, had sinned and they were being disciplined by the Lord because of their rebellion against God, but God's trying to encourage them. He's not trying to beat them, kick them while they're down. He's trying to encourage them. And he wants people to, one of the people to understand that, yes, you're being disciplined at this particular time, but you know, that's going to come to an end. And I've got some new things in mind for you. And he wanted to give them a fresh new start. Now, Israel and as individuals, we may, get discouraged, again, thinking, well, I guess I've kind of come to the end of my rope here. I've gone too far, I've sinned too much, I rebelled too much against the Lord, that, you know, God's not gonna be there for me anymore. And they may have thought that, you know, I've experienced God's deliverance in the past, but I've kind of used all those up. But then they started remembering. And that's one of the things that, Remembering can be a good thing too. And remember how that God has delivered us in the past. Remember how he's been there for us at the right time, doing the right thing. Douglas says, all these things kind of fit together. It wasn't that he was lucky. No, God put all these medical things together, right? Same way with Frank. It's not just lucky that the chemo's working, right? And you never know when they plug that stuff in. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But we can trust the Lord. God's in charge of these things. And they can remember how God had delivered them when they got to the Red Sea and the Egyptian armies coming up fast and furious behind them. It'd be real easy to be, they were sitting ducks. They could be easy to be wiped out. But God made a way for them. He opened up that Red Sea and allowed them to get safely on the other side. God had helped them out a number of times through the years. And so he's saying, I'm not done with that. There are other ways that I can deliver you. And so when God says that, we ought to set up and pay attention because he's got something new in mind. And this morning, I want to share some thoughts about this, having a new beginning. And where's a good place to start? Well, the starting place, right? So we're going to try to make it a little easier for you. We're going to use an acrostic. We're going to use the word start, okay? And see what we come up with each of these letters. Aren't you glad I picked a short word? Actually, the sermon's too long, and I whacked out a lot of stuff. So your outline may not match all the time. You say, where's he at? Well, I skipped that part. Keep going. But we're going to talk about this start. We think about what we ought to do regardless of our failures. There are opportunities to start over. And the first thing that we need to do with the S is to stop making excuses. Okay, see, you guys could fill this out without me. We're just called done, go home, right? No, but sometimes we need to remember because I think we all do it. I can come up with all kinds of excuses. You know, Maureen's wife, you know, how come this isn't done yet? That's amazing. But it's a fresh new start. We got to stop making excuses for our failures. And sometimes we take the blame. Other times, we're looking around for somebody else to blame. And, you know, it's not my fault. I mean, and this started a long time ago. Can't you Madame Adam? you know, they sit in the garden, you know, and they're face to face with the Lord and He's, you know, it's that woman you gave me, you know, not my fault, it's hers, you know, and things haven't changed that much. Not that the guys are always blaming the wives, but that we're always looking for somebody else to blame it on. We don't want to take responsibility for, we want to, you know, somehow if we could just become the victim, you know, and then people feel sorry for us or our circumstances. But, you know, other people can hurt us. They can harm us in different ways. They can leave scars behind. But nobody else can ruin your life but you. You have a choice on how you're going to respond to those hurts. And, you know, we can become angry and bitter, or we can kind of move ahead. You know, we look at how they treated Jesus or how they treated Paul. You know, they had excuses why they could have just said, you know, people aren't being very nice to me, I'm just gonna quit. But it was a starting point. And be honest, accept responsibility. If there's a problem, you know, there's usually more than one side to it. And Proverbs 28, 13 says, he that covereth, and I'm kind of, not necessarily substituting a word, but the idea's there. He either covers his sins, okay, he's trying to cover it up. He's going to make excuses for his sins, says, he shall not prosper, but he that confesses and forsaketh them shall have mercy. And we're able to get a fresh start when we confess our sins. God's not going to keep holding it against us and bringing it up, saying, man, this is an umpteenth time you come to me with this. But we have to be honest when we've sinned to admit it. And sometimes it's hard for people to admit that they're wrong. They don't like to admit it. And I made a mistake. I made wrong choices. You know, and we finally get down to, yeah, I sinned. But you know, there are times when God does give us another opportunity. And part of that is because God is merciful. He's long-suffering. He gives us some time to make right choices and turn things around. You know, we can't correct every bad choice that we make, but there are times when we can change things. And we realize that the choice we made wasn't a good one, and we can go kind of get a rerun of it, all right? A number of reasons why we fail. is one of those is that we don't prepare well for problems that we may face. We just go merrily on our way and then when a problem arises, we're taken by surprise. We've never thought that there'd ever be such a problem in our life. But, you know, we need to think ahead a little bit. And sometimes people get in trouble because they don't think ahead very far. And we won't take time to read that, but in Luke 14, 28 talks about they were going to build a tower. Well, and it says, if you're going to build a tower, you need to sit down and think through how much is this thing going to cost me? And so that you don't end up with a half built tower because you ran out of money. Well, that same kind of thinking applies to a lot of things in life. Sometimes people, you know, we get a credit card and they go kind of nuts with it and say, oh, okay, well, I'm going to pay that thing off. They pay it off. But if you don't change your habits, you don't change your thinking, you're going to turn around and run that bill right back up again. And so sometimes we don't prepare well. And to think ahead, And not to say that I always do everything right. I'm sure there are things along the way. But I tend to prepare for the worst and hope I don't need it. So when we go on vacation, you hear me kind of joke about that. But I pretty much take every tool I own. The car's kind of leaning because that's where all the tools are in this. And if I come back from vacation, how was your vacation? The tools stayed in the toolbox. It was a good vacation. But it's like, I wish I had that tool. Where's it at? Oh, it's at home. Well, no, it's here. I got to dig a while to find it, but it's in here somewhere. But preparing ahead of time. Think about it. Not just negative all the time, you know, what could go wrong, but thinking ahead, you know, plan for it. Because sometimes, again, we're taken by surprise because we never thought it might happen. Secondly, we don't always listen to other people. Sometimes God will send along some people with some good advice for us, but we kind of shake it off. The Bible says, and this is my kind of paraphrase of it, that plans fail without good advice. But in Proverbs 15, 32, it talks about that, that we need to get all the good advice that we can. You know, you're not gonna probably respond to everybody and everybody's, you know, cause you're gonna get a variety of different inputs from people. And you gotta sort through that a little bit. Some's gonna be better than others. But in Proverbs 15 and verse 32, it says, he that refuses instruction, despises his own soul, but he that heareth reproof, getteth understanding. So, you know, sometimes we need to be instructed. There are people who went through similar problems and figured out there's a right or wrong way to deal with some of these things. And, but you know, sometimes, my dad used to call it being bullheaded, okay? Stubborn, however you want to call it. And we don't want to take the advice of other people. And one of the things that we can have to be careful of is pride or our ego. Somebody said ego stands for edging God's out. Okay? God may send somebody along that gives us some wisdom and insight, but we think we've got a corner on knowledge. We don't need that. I figure it all out by myself. And then we find ourselves, well, maybe I should have listened to what they had to say. So we need to prepare. We fail when we fail to, let me try again here, okay. We fail to prepare and sometimes we fail to listen and we fail as a result of that. And another thing too is sometimes we give up too soon. We'll see some causes of failure of giving up too soon. Proverbs 24.10 says, if thou faint in the day of adversity, okay, you faint when things get tough, he says thy strength is small. And you've heard the saying, it's always too soon to quit, right? Well, I don't always remember where that came from, so I looked it up. And this will mean something to some of you folks, because this guy had been around a long time ago, but Norman Vincent Peale, he's not something I'd probably normally be following, but that phrase that he come up with is true. Sometimes we quit too soon. If we just stuck with it a little bit longer, we could have made a go out of it. And you know, this works in all different areas of life. And I come up with this quote from Michael Jordan, okay? I don't know all the current guys, but I remember him. But he said, so we think of him as some kind of basketball hero, you know, three pointers and so on. He says, I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I don't think I've ever taken 9,000 and he's missed that many. He says, I've lost almost 300 games, 26 times I've been entrusted to take the game winning shot and I missed. I failed over and over and over again in my life. That's why I succeed. Because he didn't quit. He just kept at it. All right. And sometimes we need to follow that same kind of thinking here that we don't quit too soon. And oftentimes failure is the path of least resistance. We just kind of give up. And we quit trying. And somebody said, you're never a failure until you give up. And again, sometimes it's because we give up too soon. A lot of things wouldn't be invented if they quit too soon. I couldn't remember how long it was. I knew it had taken Edison a long time. to come up with the right kind of filament for the light bulb. And he searched all, you know, and had other people searching places all around the world to bring back stuff to try to see if it would work. And I'd read that it was around a thousand different things. He said, I don't count them as failures. He just knows that there's a thousand things that don't work, right? But he stuck with it. Aren't you glad? You know, we could be sitting around here with a little candle, you know, hoping the wax doesn't drip on us. No, but you have a lot of things, you know, people stuck with it and they end up something worthwhile as a result of it. So first of all, stop making excuses. Secondly, T, take inventory of my life. We need to kind of evaluate our experiences. We need to look at, see what's kind of left in our, what we've got to work with, maybe after a failure. We need to see what experiences we've got. Galatians 3, 4 says, have you suffered so many things in vain? In other words, didn't you learn anything through this? Haven't you suffered so many things in vain, if it yet in vain? So we need to learn from our mistakes. Failure can be our friend or our foe. It kind of depends on what we do with it. and how we react to it. We can choose to learn from it saying, okay, I did it this way, it failed, I better try something else the next time out. Or we can get down and discouraged and we just keep doing kind of the same old thing over and over again. And God uses all kinds of experiences in our life. He uses personal experiences, the way that we grew up, things that we learned from our moms and dads, your husband, your wife, even your kids, you can learn from them too. And sometimes it's from your work, things that you do something for a long time, again, you find out some things that work, some of it doesn't, or your education somewhere along the way. Sometimes it uses spiritual experiences that you've went through somewhere. Maybe it's something that you learned in church or another believer taught you. Maybe you went away to camp for a week or a retreat and you learned something. God can use a lot of different ways. Sometimes we learn from painful experiences. Some of those are the ones that we tend to remember. It's really kind of stuck in our minds. You know, The Christian life is not all fun, always exciting. Sometimes it's painful, but again, we remember those. And things that we can ask ourselves, what have I learned? Okay, it depends on how old you are, but you may know people that are 40, 50 years old, and they don't seem to have 40 or 50 years worth of experience. They've kind of got one year experience. They just keep doing the same thing over and over and over, even if it's wrong. And they didn't learn from their past experiences. What are my assets? What have I got to work for? You know, I've got my health, hopefully. Uh, got a sound mind. We've got freedoms to make choices. Um, got some friends. Hopefully you have people that you can reach out to that will give you some help along the way. Uh, help give you some good advice. You know, the Proverbs 18 24 says a man that hath friends must first show himself friendly. You can't just sit there and expect everybody to come to you. You need to make the effort to be friendly towards other people. And that kind of comes along next is who can help us? Who can you reach out to? Most times, if we're gonna have a fresh new start, we're gonna need some help along the way. If nothing else, somebody to help motivate us, okay? That's why they tell you, oftentimes, if you're going to exercise, you're going to, you probably do better and last longer if you're, say you're running, if you've got somebody you can run with or exercise with or do something along those lines, so that if you just don't feel like it, well, the other guy does, and so it kind of motivates you to stick with it. But, you know, the Lord's always going to be there for us. He's promised to never leave us or forsake us, and He can help us get started outright. The A is for act in faith, and this is kind of zero. We're not talking so much about our salvation, that faith, but faith for the future, that God can and will help us, bring about changes in our life, get us started outright. And we need to believe that things can be different. If 24 was kind of a, A negative year for you doesn't mean 25 has to be just like that, that 25 can be a better year. You know, he may or may not change our circumstances. Sometimes it's our outlook on our circumstances. But believe again, that God can make things happen. And Jesus says in Matthew 9, 29, according to your faith, be it unto you. Kind of a simple statement, but it's powerful. What are you expecting in life? Do you expect things to get better or worse? Are they going to be the same? Are you going to act in faith? Are you going to do something positive to ensure that you don't repeat some of the same mistakes that you did before? And so again, taking positive action, God can help us to know what to do. Sometimes we're just, where do I start? What do I do? Well, God can give us some help in that. And one of the things though that will help us is we start acting in faith is to stop having a pity party. Because sometimes we kind of dig ourselves into a hole. And we got to stop feeling sorry for ourself. Poor me. And I'm a victim and life's unfair. Maybe you can know where it's at, but I haven't found that in scripture. There's a verse somewhere that says life's fair. As long as there's a sin around, life's not going to be fair, okay? Bad things happen to good people. Just a suggestion though, but don't, don't air your whole life on Facebook. You know, you may want some sympathy or understanding, but that's probably not the place to get it. Yeah. So God never said world's going to be fair to us. And, but we have to go on with life anyway. You know, Maureen was saying here a while back, she says, I don't understand. You know, we probably all have your own version of that. But since my mom lived to be 96, my dad was into his 90s, I never smoked, drank, you know, any of this stuff, and I get cancer. How come, you know? I don't have the answer for that one. On that one, you know, but yeah, things are going to happen. But do you just kind of throw up your hands and give up? No, you make the best of it. Ask the Lord for help. You know, if everything was going fine and dandy for us all, we might get kind of independent and think we don't need God all that much. You know, but all he has to do is throw one little pothole out there in front of us and we fall in it and it's like, whoa, help me out, Lord. I need some help here. And so, Again, pity party, just kind of rehearsing the past, rehearsing the hurts and the concerns. And they said this, and they said that. And if you weren't depressed before you got started, you are when you get done. And again, sometimes people don't act in faith because they've been paralyzed by fear of past failures. I failed before, I don't want to fail again. So if I don't do anything, then I'll be safe. We might think that, I mean, we could come up with some kind of strange way of life thinking, man, as long as I never go outside, I'll be safe. Nobody will take a truck and run me over like they did to people down in New Orleans or some other places. I won't let my kids go to school because something might happen to them at school. We just all stay home. What do they say? Isn't it most accidents happen at home? So yeah, we can get fear to do anything, but God doesn't want us to live in a state of fear. And that's part of what this third step acting in faith is all about. Faith is not acting in the absence of fear. It's moving ahead in spite of the fears, okay? You know, sometimes we do the things that we fear the most, you know? And we trust the Lord in it. And I hate to keep, I'm not trying to ask for sympathy or something, but I usually am picking on somebody else. I'm usually picking on Keith or somebody or Bob or somebody. But you know, it's like, okay, when Maureen went through this chemo stuff, You know, sitting in that chair the first time and they put all these bags of stuff they're going to pump in you, you know, is this going to cure me or kill me? You know, what's it going to do? Don't know, you know? And yeah, I mean, I'll confess, I'm kind of a wimp when it comes to surgery or procedures. You know, when I had to have cataracts here, what's a year and a half, two years ago, whatever, I did not want to have that done. I can see fine now. You know, they can mess up and I might not be able to see. And if they do that, I'm done. You know, I don't know braille. So, okay. Yeah, I didn't want to, and it turned out it was fine. and uh here what was it last month i had to go in and uh before that i'd had a sore tooth and so the doctor wanted me to go to this other place to have it checked out to see if i needed a root canal that send chills up and down my spine, because I had one of those. I never want to do one of those again. Well, I went there and checked it out. It's fine. They did the cap, and it was fine. No problems. You know, if you get enough Novocaine, it's fine, you know? And they fixed the chairs. You used to be able to get a hold of the chairs and kind of go, well, now they're all hinged, you know? So that doesn't. But yeah, you know, we can get fearful and we just, ah, you know, I kicked that can down the road. They told me a couple of years ago, you need to get a crown on that thing if we're, you know, I've waited and waited and waited. Okay, now's the time, just do it. Yeah, well, Proverbs 29, 25 says, a fear bringeth a snare, but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe. We've got to have our, you know, you need to trust your doctor and your dentist and stuff, but our ultimate trust needs to be in the Lord. He's the ones in control of all that. Okay, got to talk faster. Refocus. R is for refocus. Need to refocus our thoughts. If we want to change our life, we've got to have some different thoughts. Proverbs 4.23 says, keep or guard thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life. So we have to be careful what we think about. Our life is shaped by our thoughts. So the way you think There's a natural progression, but it starts here, okay? You know, because sometimes people just want to change the habits. No, you got to start with a mind, okay? What you think determines on how you feel and how you feel determines on how you act. So if you want to act differently, you got to go backwards and think differently. If you want to change your actions, you have to change the way you think. And inevitably it will change your actions. If you're depressed, you're discouraged, you're distressed, maybe it's because you're thinking depressed and discouraging and distressing thoughts. You need to change that. It's a choice. You don't have to think those thoughts. If you're fearful, it may be because you're thinking fearful thoughts. You know, like me, oh, I'm going to have to have a root canal. Oh no. Yeah, no. Not everybody has to have a root canal. Anybody else had a root canal? Oh, look at all those hands. Anybody want another one? No, okay, I settle it. No, but we can change our thought pattern, all right? We have to have the Lord's help to do so, because we might be in that rut, all right? And we need to get out of it. And so Romans 12 too says, tells us to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. We've got to have a renewed mind. We have to have some fresh new thoughts. instead of keep rehearsing the same old thing. You know, it's kind of like the broken record, just keeps playing the same thing over and over and over again. And so we've got to come, and we have to get our attention on something else. Philippians chapter four, I don't think that's in your notes, Philippians four, verses six to eight tells us, think on these things, okay? I kind of look at the mind as like a TV screen. And you've heard me share that before, but you're looking through the TV, you're clicking, and you're looking at something, oh, that doesn't look very good. Do you have to just keep staring at it? No, change channels, put something else up there, okay? Same thing in our minds. You got some bad thoughts going through your mind, kick them out, put something good up there instead. And, Joshua was having this struggle. Moses died. He's taken over. He's got all the big responsibilities and he's nervous about it. His knees are knocking and the Lord's telling him that you need to have courage. And he tells us there, let me just read that here for you. In Joshua 1, verse eight, he says, this book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate there in day and night, thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written in. Okay, so read it, understand it, do it. And then he goes on to say, for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous and then thou shalt have good success. Most of us want to be prosperous or happy. Most of us want to have good success. Well, how does that come about? Well, it tells us right there that we need to meditate on God's word. That means you don't just run it through there once and away you go and don't remember five minutes later what you read. No, he wants you to think about it. Let it run through your mind. Think about it. And notice somebody else said, it's interesting what the Bible does not say. It says, if you read the book, you'll be happy and successful. It doesn't say that, does it? Or if you listen to the book through a sermon, that you'll be happy and successful. No, it says if you meditate, you think about God's word, you allow it to go through your mind and not just memorize it, but to say, okay, this is what God's word said. This is what it means to me. This is how I need to apply it to my life. This is what needs to change in my life to bring it back in line with God's word. And so he can bring about a change of mind for us. Last one here. You thought we'd never get there, did you? T, trust, okay? Trust the Lord. Oh, that could have been the first one, but it didn't start with T, did it? So we need to depend on the Lord. Sometimes we're too dependent on ourselves. I can do it. I can do it. No, I can't do it. Okay. We've already proven that we can't do it. That's why we failed and failed and failed. And so sometimes people stumble and fall when they fail and they get up and say, I'm just going to try harder. Well, that's like, Going over, you know, I want to knock this wall down. You know, and I've already tried once to bang my head against the wall to see if I can knock that wall down, and it didn't work. So I'm just going to try harder, right? Bang, bang. Make a lot of sense? No. But, you know, they say that's what the definition of insanity is, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Okay. You know, it's, no, we got to think differently. We got to quit depending so much on ourselves and depend on the Lord. He's there for us. He wants to help us. He can bring about changes in our lives. Changes maybe we don't even realize that we need to change. And it's not just trying harder, but it's living smarter. And that's giving God control of your life. Zachariah 4.6 says, then he answered and spake unto me saying, this is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel. saying, not by might or power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. It's God's spirit that makes the difference, you know? And so when we become a Christian, God changes us. You know, we don't always look that much different in the mirror. I don't know, we might smile more, I don't know. But he changes us from the inside out. He tells us there in 2 Corinthians 5, 17, that you become new creatures in Christ. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things become new. He gives us a whole new start. Wipes the slate clean when we trust Christ for our salvation. He cleanses away our sin. He gives us a fresh new start. We have a new beginning. And God didn't say, I want you to turn over a new leaf. You know? Somewhere out there, there's a pile of old dead leaves. And we probably got a pile of old dead leaves that we've turned over the last umpteen years that didn't change much of anything in our lives. No, he says, I want to give you a whole new life. And so if we want a whole new start, we have to make sure that we've taken that first step to trust Jesus Christ alone for our salvation. Not in our baptism, not in our church membership or anything else we might've done somewhere along the way, but trusting him alone to forgive us our sins. He's the only one who can do it. You know, I've told people, I could stand up here and I could say, your sins are forgiven. Anybody gonna believe that? Can I forgive your sin? No. You're gonna go out of here with the same sin you walked in with. He's the one who's able to forgive us our sins. He's the one who died on the cross as our substitute. He's the one who shed his blood that can cleanse away our sin. I can't forgive your sins, but he can. So let's start there. And then if we want to start moving ahead, we want to make things different than 25. You know, 25 could be the best year of our life. You realize that? You know, it might be the year that we go home, you know? I kind of like for us all go together though. I'm not in a hurry to lead the pack here, but let's think about start, okay? First of all, stop making excuses, all right? Take some inventory of your life. See what you got going for you. You might be surprised what's available. God's given you a good mind, healthy body. Maybe you just need a little motivation. to making right choices. Act in faith. Thinking about the future. Don't get buried in the past somewhere. Rerunning all the old bad decisions you made somewhere else. You can't change it. Just move ahead. And refocus your thoughts. Again, make God's word a part of that. Meditate on it, okay? I'm not talking about you going to, you know, Dick's or someplace and buying a little mat to sit on and sit there and cross your legs. Some of you never get up again. We're not doing, we're thinking about, okay, I read this verse. What does it say? What does it mean? You know, when God says, I'll supply all your needs, we got to trust him to do that, you know, and refocus our thought and trust the Lord. Folks, don't let that be your spare tire when all else fails, pray. Wow, pray first. It might remove a lot of pain and hurt along the way if we prayed more about some things, okay? Instead of waiting till we're in a mess and we're hollering for God to bail us out. Well, hopefully this start will help you out or maybe you can share it with somebody else. Let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you that even though we may find ourselves making bad choices along the way, we find ourselves in a bad rut, We don't have to stay there. We can get out of that with your help. And Lord, that you have some new things in mind for us. We pray that you'll continue to encourage our hearts, help us not to just be living in the past, even maybe if, again, we tend to camp on the good times and we forget some of the problems and heartaches along the way, but that we think about what does God wanna do in my life this year? And am I going to cooperate with him of this? We just pray that you'd help this year to be an awesome one for each and every one of us. It's going to be different for everybody, but help us to learn to trust you more and make you a vital part of our day-to-day life, not just something we do on Sunday. We thank you for the help you'll provide now in Jesus name. Amen. All right. Would you sing with me? Living for Jesus. All that I can is true, so I plead to be true in all that I do. Believe, O Patrons, that I am here and for thee. This is the pathway of mercy. ♪ Just a little sleep now, and then I shall be free ♪ ♪ Oh, how I love that empty night ♪ ♪ Please don't cry so for me ♪ ♪ I will go and I will return ♪ ♪ My house shall be my home ♪ ♪ I like my new place more to be ♪ see me Amen, amen. If you want one of those, pray through the Bible. You might need that, too. Read through the Bible. There's some on the table. If we run out, we'll get some more. I know.