And we're gonna work through verse 12 down through verse number 17 tonight. Is this on, John? Okay. Just seem quiet. The world sells us illusions like fame, wealth, success. That's what we were talking about to our teens Wednesday night in class. We were looking at the life of Joseph, and we were talking about how he had to go through some tests in life. And the first test that Joseph had to go through, we talked about the test of adversity. He went through some problems and some difficulties, but sometimes something that's harder for people to handle is not just adversity, but it's when we get success. And the world tries to sell us success. But deep down, even if you're chasing success and fame and fortune, people are still lost and they're searching for meaning. People are searching for purpose. People are searching for belonging. I know based on this crowd, some of your age is in here. Any of you folks were fans of Neil Diamond back in the day? Okay, I mean, who doesn't like a little sweet Caroline? Okay, good, all right, yeah, all right, don't just leave me hanging. He wrote a song in 1971, you remember this one? It was called I Am, I Said. It's kind of a heartbreaking song. It's about a man that's crying out for meaning, but he feels unheard. He's talking to himself and he knows that nobody's listening. and he's searching for meaning and purpose and he's longing for something real, he can't seem to find it. He says in one of the lines, he says, I am, I said to no one there and no one heard at all, not even the chair. He says in another line that he never cared for the sound of being alone. In another place he cries out and I am lost. That's the world, isn't it? That's what they're saying. That song, I mean, it just captures everything that the world says. And that's the picture that we see today, that people are lost, they're lonely, they're searching for meaning, but they're unheard and they're unseen, they feel like. But notice, let's just flip back to the beginning of John chapter 15. I thought this was kind of interesting. I heard that song, somebody mentioned it last week. Of course, I am much too young to have ever known anything about that song. So I looked it up and listened to it. And it struck me. The entire song is based on those two words, I am, over and over again. But how does Jesus start John chapter 15? He uses the same exact two words, doesn't he? Look at it. He says, I am the true vine. Jesus, unlike the man in Neil Diamond's song that was searching for identity, Jesus was not searching for identity. He is the identity. Jesus, he wasn't lost. He is the way, he says. Jesus, he's the one who gives direction. He's the one who gives purpose. He's the one who gives life. And so while the man in the song was struggling to find himself, Jesus says, I am. And it's in him that we find our purpose and our meaning and our life. Jesus says, abide in me and you'll discover who I created you to be. That's the deepest part. That's what man longs for. They want to know, why am I here on earth? What is my purpose in being here? And in John chapter 15, as we've worked our way through this, Jesus gives us the answer to every longing of the human heart. He tells us you don't have to be alone because I call you my friend. You don't have to be lost because I've chosen you for a purpose. You don't have to search for meaning because I've ordained you to bear fruit that will last for eternity. So when the world tells you that you have to go find your own truth, Jesus tells you that the truth has already been given to you. And the world tells you that you have to make your life matter. And Jesus tells you, your life already matters in him. And your life was meant to matter. So that's what we're preaching on tonight is your life was meant to matter. Not because of what you do, not because of what you do, not because of what I do, but because of who called you because of what he has planned for you. So let's look down to verse number 12 and we'll read through verse 17. Jesus speaking to his disciples as he's talking about abiding, he's talking about joy, he's talking about thriving and life. And he says, this is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth. But I have called you friends, for all the things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit. and that your fruit should remain. And that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you that ye love one another. So tonight we're going to preach on your life was meant to matter. We're going to look at some of the unshakable realities of the abiding Christian life. Let's bow for prayer. Lord, we ask that you would bless the reading of your word. We ask that you bless the preaching of your word tonight, Lord. We pray that you would just send your spirit with us. We know that what we're doing is in vain unless you empower this tonight. So, Lord, just allow everything that's said and done to be what you would have said and done. Allow it to work in our lives. Lord, let us leave here changed because of what we've seen through the word of God. In Jesus' name, amen. Now take a moment to think about God's love. We've sung about it in all of our songs tonight. We've sung about the love of God. And just think about God's love for a moment, and then make it really personal. What was that last song that we sung tonight? Jesus loves even me. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. That's an incredible truth, isn't it, that God knows me, that God knows you and still chooses to love you, to love me, the God of the universe, the author of creation, the author of the word of God, the savior of the world and he cares for us. And one of the things that he wanted for his disciples even after he was gone here in John chapter 15, he wants to still abide with them. He still wants to have a relationship with them and it carries on to us. Now we've all had days in our lives probably where we feel like we're less than good. We have heartache, disappointment, regret. But the one truth that can sustain us through all of life's trials and all of life's problems is the fact that God loves me. God loves me. Would you say that with me tonight? God loves me. That's what the world needs to know, isn't it? They need to know that God loves them. The man in Neil Diamond's song needed to know that there was somebody that heard him, there was somebody that saw him, there was somebody that cared about him. God loved him. God cared about him. Sometimes, you know, people will put it on their bumper sticker, you know, that God loves you. But it's more than just something that's a bumper sticker. This is a reality that God loves me. These disciples that Jesus was talking to here in John chapter 15, these were common men. I mean, you remember what their occupations were? They were just rough, tough fishermen and, I mean, tax collectors. I mean, these were just ordinary people. But God loved him. God loved him. And one of the great characteristics of God is that his love is a love that gives. Jesus didn't just talk about love, but he showed love. That's how he starts there in verse number 13. He talks about how he showed love. Amy Carmichael, she was a missionary to India for 56 years. She's very well known for this quote. You can give without loving. but you can't love without giving. And true Christian love always expresses itself in love. And true love involves an act of my will to meet the needs of somebody else. If you're a husband and you tell your wife that you love her, you have to back that up by using your will to meet her needs, or it's just a bunch of words, isn't it? And so we're going to look at three unshakable realities of an abiding Christian life. And when we live in these realities, we make them real to us. We make it personal. It's not just something that we say or we think about from time to time. We'll go from just existing to thriving. And if your life was meant to matter, and I believe that it does, or God wouldn't have created you and put you here, your life matters. Everybody needs to know that. It means, though, that if your life is going to matter, you have to first be saved from your sin, don't you? Without that, life kind of is meaningless. You'll never find true purpose until you start way back here with redemption. And so the first reality of an abiding Christian, for your life to matter, is that you are redeemed. As we think about the reality of Christ's sacrifice, the fact that we're redeemed, he says in verse number 13, Jesus begins with the greatest love that was ever demonstrated. This was a love that cost him his life. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. The foundation of everything in the Christian life is the cross. We focus on the cross. We'll be thinking about the cross coming up next month quite a bit. We'll have a communion where we're around the Lord's table together and we'll reflect on his death. The very night that Jesus spoke these words, he would be arrested in those proceedings before the crucifixion would begin. And we'll think about that as we partake of the Lord's table together next month. But before we can ever abide in Christ, we have to be redeemed by him. Sometimes we sing that song here at church. I think we sang it last week. Redeemed, how I love to proclaim it. It's a wonderful word, redeemed. There's pardon that is found in Christ. And without abiding, without redemption, there's no abiding. Without abiding, there's no purpose. And everything starts with that, that we were bought with a price. And in order, as believers, for us to recognize the significance to live in the reality that we are redeemed, we have to go back and remember that all men deserve judgment. There may be people that are listening to this message that have never accepted Christ as Savior. And that's where it all begins, is realizing that our sin carries a price. Our sin requires judgment. That's what we deserve. And sometimes people wonder, you know, why did Jesus die? To answer that question, we have to go all the way back to the Garden of Eden. We have to go back to Adam and Eve. God created them as sinless human beings. They fellowshiped with God in the Garden of Eden. They walked with him. You know, sometimes people often ask, well, if God is such a good God, then why did he create a world where there's all this sin and sickness and suffering and sorrow and disease? If you're a Christian, you know the answer to that is what? He did. He did. That's what he created. So the answer is not that God created a broken world. God created a perfect world and man broke it. We messed it up. And Adam and Eve, they had no pain, no sin, no sickness, no death, no suffering, no separation from God. They walked with Him every single day. but one act of disobedience that kind of severed that relationship between man and God and they end up kicked out of the Garden of Eden because of that. The Bible tells us that after Adam and Eve ate of the fruit, Romans chapter 5, wherefore as by one man's sin entered into the world and death by sin so that death passed upon all men for that all have sinned. That's why redemption is necessary because we're sinners. Sin, some people think that sin just makes us bad. Sin doesn't just make us bad, sin makes us dead. We're dead. The day that Adam and Eve, you remember what God told Adam and Eve would happen the day that they ate the fruit in the garden? He said, in the day that you eat, you'll die. And it says that death passed upon all men. sin makes us dead. Paul tells us in the book of Ephesians that you hath he quickened who were dead in sins and trespasses. Before Christ, before you met Jesus, You weren't just a person who was in need of improvement. Some people think that's what they need in life, that they need to improve, that they need to work on things, they need to turn over a new leaf. But no, that's not what you need. Before you meet Jesus, what you need is resurrection. You need to be raised to new life. And that's why Jesus died, so that we could live. We're all born sinners. For the wages of sin is death. For all have sin, Romans 3.23 says. and comes short of the glory of God. So the payment for sin is death. Every man deserves judgment. I like that saying. It says that if you're born once, you'll die twice. But if you're born twice, you'll die once. What does that mean? Well, some people, they kind of scratch their head. There was a very religious man named Nicodemus that wondered that very thing. John chapter three, Jesus talks with him about that. And we talk about being born again. When you accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, that's the moment that you place your faith and your trust in Him. The Bible says that a man who dies physically with Christ only dies that one time. That's the end of death for us. We go on to live forever. But the man who dies without Christ, you can go to the book of Revelation and you read where you have that second death. And it talks about it in Revelation chapter 20. It's quite frightening to read about that. And it ought to keep anybody who doesn't know Christ from wanting to ever experience what the Bible talks about is that great white throne judgment, the lake of fire that those who die without Christ will experience. But at one point, all of us were dead in sin. We were guilty. We were deserving of judgment. And the only hope that was there for us was the atonement of Jesus and required that somebody pay for our sin. And that was Jesus. When we think about our life and that it matters, we got to remember the fact that we're redeemed. That changes things. That changes things. That he stood in our place and he took our punishment. He took the wrath that I deserved. And he gave me his righteousness when I didn't deserve it. And for many people, you know, the cross is kind of a historical event. But it shouldn't just be a historical event. The cross ought to be personal to us. When we gather around the Lord's table next month and we think about the crucifixion and we think about His death and we think about His resurrection, it's personal for us. We're not just reading history. This is something that happened inside of me. And He didn't just die for the world. He died for me. He didn't just carry the sin of the world, He carried my sin. It wasn't just sin in general that nailed Him to the cross, it was my sin that nailed Him to the cross. You see how personal that becomes when I start to think of it that way? Jesus didn't just suffer for the sins of everyone, He was there suffering for me. In Calvary, it'll only change your life when you realize that it was for you. And that's why we're grateful, that's why we're thankful, that's why we live the way that we live, because the cross was personal for us. And so, until you see yourself as the guilty one, you'll never see Jesus as the Redeemer. What does the line in that song say? What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Only the blood of Christ can pardon us. And if redemption gives your life worth, then relationship gives it depth. Because your life, it was never just meant to be lived at a distance. The second reality that we want to look at tonight is the fact that not only are you redeemed, but you are called. You're called, the reality of your relationship. Look back over to verse number 14. This is what Jesus says, ye are my friends if you do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth, but I have called you friends. For all things that I have heard of my father I've made known unto you. A lot of times when we think of a king and his subjects we really don't think about friendship. A king's kind of high and exalted and we don't really get very close to him. And the king's subjects serve from a distance. But here in John chapter 15, Jesus, he moves us from being servants to he says he calls us friends. Friends. It's a very intimate invitation in scripture here, that Jesus would invite his disciples to be his friend. He'd invite any of his followers to be his friend. The word friend here, it means friend in the court or friend in the inner circle. You can think of it this way, that when you trusted Jesus Christ as your savior, you became friends with the king. Well, that's quite something, isn't it? In ancient times, you know, a king would have a lot of subjects, but he would have some very close friends. And those close friends, they would be granted access to his bed chambers. They would be granted access to the throne room. They could come and go with the king. They would talk with the king at their will. Many times they would be let in on what the king's plans were, what was going on. But not all of his subjects were, but he had this close group of friends that were that way. They had access to the king. That's what Jesus offers us, and not just being a servant that's out there somewhere in the distance. No, Jesus invites us in to be his friend. He wants to have a close, personal relationship with us. There's things that he wants us to know about him, and he shares his plans with us, and he tells us about the abundant, thriving life that he has in store for us. And he doesn't want us just to work for him, but he says, hey, I want you to work with me. Paul, flip over to 1 Corinthians 3, look at this passage. Friendship with Jesus is not just about walking around or talking. It's about working with him. Notice what Paul writes here in 1 Corinthians 3, verse 9. What does he say? For we are laborers together. with God. It doesn't say we're working for God, we're co-laborers with Christ. That's a wonderful thought. God doesn't need us. God could, He could carry His entire plan on without me, He could carry it on without you. God doesn't need me, but you know what? He chooses to work along the side of us. We'll probably hear this verse used some next month as we go into our Missions Emphasis Month. We think about how we are co-laborers together, how we're laborers with God, reaching the world for Him. He calls us to serve Him. Friends of a king, they're still close to Him, but they're still subject to Him. You can be a friend and a servant at the same time. Think about a guy like Nehemiah. Nehemiah, he was the cupbearer for the king during the captivity period there of the Jewish people. The Bible tells us he was a friend of the king, but at the same time, he was also a servant of the king. He worked for the king. You remember in the book of Genesis, if you read in the book of James, I think it says this, you remember what the Bible calls Abraham? It says that Abraham was a friend of God. A friend of God. Now the Bible also tells us that Abraham was also the servant of God. So you can be a servant and a friend at the same time. That's what Jesus wants. You think about, to try to put it together, David, he had a lot of mighty men around him. They were his servants, but they loved David. They were his friend. Remember that one time that he wished that he had a drink of water? He wanted some of that water. And those guys, what did they do? They went and they fought and battled their way to bring a cup of water back to him. They were friends, but they were serving him at the same time. What kind of friend are you to Jesus? You've been called to be his friend. Sometimes we think about friends and we think, you know, am I a good friend? Don't you want to be a good friend to Jesus? Are you an abiding friend? A friend is somebody that's got to spend time with you, right? It's kind of hard to be a friend if you don't ever spend time with them. Do you actively work for the kingdom? Are you serving? Are you obedient? Do you listen when he speaks? Jesus calls those who are saved his friends. And what sometimes we feel like, well, you know what Jesus is asking me to do, that just seems like a little too much. be a little too much sacrifice on my end. But we just finished talking about how He redeemed us. If Jesus went to the cross and if He did all of that for me, shouldn't I be able to sacrifice something for Him? That's what friends do for each other. Friends sacrifice. Friends give. Friends serve. And if I'm in the inner court with Jesus, my delight ought to be in serving Him. So the next time that you feel the Lord asking you to do something, to get involved with something, maybe here at church, maybe He's trying to get you to step up and do a little bit more, lead a little bit more, serve a little bit more. Maybe He's prompting you to witness to a friend, share your faith a little bit more. Maybe instead of saying, yeah, you know, I really don't want to do that. I want to be a friend of Jesus. A friend, what would he do? If we're friends of Jesus, we'll delight in obeying and serving him, and we'll have that partnership with him. He wants to partner with us. That ought to change the way that we look at life. It reminds us that our life matters, that God wants to partner with me to reach the world. And then here's the last one. Not only are we redeemed, not only are we called, but he asks us to join him in his mission and he tells us that we're sent. You are sent, the reality of your mission. Verse number 16, Jesus said, you have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and have ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain. When Jesus spoke these words, he wasn't just giving the disciples a motivational speech. Sometimes we think that that's, you know, that that's what church is. Well, we just we hear a little motivational speech, but that wasn't no. Jesus was giving them a mission at this point. He would close out. We think of the book of Luke, we think of Mark, we see it in Matthew, what we call the Great Commission. Again, we'll hear a lot about this in April. He gave them a mission. And they didn't choose him. Jesus said he chose them. And He didn't just choose them to be saved, He chose them to serve. And if you are saved, the Bible says that you are also sent. As we move into Missions Month, sometimes we think about missionaries. We think of the fact that that means that God's going to call somebody to serve Him and to take the gospel to somebody else. That's the wrong view. Now God does call some people to go to some other place on the globe, take the message. But He's called every single one of us. He's told all of us that we're to be sent. He tells all of us, see, when you're saved, salvation's not the finish line. Salvation is the starting point. We go from there. So if you've been saved, you know, it's kind of time to move from, you know, you've heard of a couch potato. We'll call these pew potatoes, okay? We don't want to be pew potato Christians that are just sitting around here. No, it's not a spectator sport. You're sent. You have a mission. He wants you involved. He wants you actively serving him. He didn't just save us to, as John Goetsch says, to sit sour and soak. I think some Christians think that's what it's about. He says, no, God saved us to stand, strive, and to serve. And he gives us this direct command here in verse number 16. He says, go and bring forth fruit. That seems pretty simple there, doesn't it? It's pretty plain. There's no other option. He says, now, I've told you, you're my friends. I want you to serve me. I want you to work with me. We're going to partner together. Now go and bring forth fruit. Go and bring forth fruit. It's a calling. See, our lives, they have an eternal impact. Some people here in the world, maybe the man in Neil Diamond's song, people who don't know Jesus, they go through life and they chase things that are temporary, that are just fleeting, they don't last very long. But as a believer, as a friend of God, he says your life ought to have an eternal impact. It shouldn't just be for temporary things here on earth, but it ought to keep going and going and going. And so he calls us to be involved in his mission. Many, many years ago, there was a man who worked in Boston for the Salvation Army named Samuel Bringle, and he was walking by a saloon on his way home from work one day when a man inside chunked a brick out and hit him in the head with it. It was such a severe injury, it took him 18 months to recover from it. He spent a lot of time in the hospital. And during that time, he wrote a little book that was called Helps to Holiness. And it was published and a lot of people had read it and people would interact with him from time to time and see him and thank him for writing that book. And he said his response when somebody would thank him for it was this. He would say, if there had been no little brick, there would be no little book. He could have wasted his suffering that he was going through, but instead he used that time to serve God for his glory. He didn't get bitter. When he got hit in the head and 18 months of his life went by before it was back to normal, he became fruitful instead. God wants us to be fruitful in our lives. Instead of asking why me a lot of times, it would be good if we were going through something. Sometimes we ought to ask God, what could God do through me in this situation? What we see in the life of Joseph is what we're talking with the teens about on Wednesdays. It models that kind of life. Joseph, he wasn't one who got bitter because of his circumstances, because of his suffering, because of his problems. No, Joseph, he got busy and he became fruitful in what he was doing. It was a place that he didn't want to be, but he was fruitful. Every saved person is chosen to bring forth fruit. Now, I'll just tell you, sometimes people take this verse, they'll try to twist this one and say that, you know, this verse proves that God chooses some people to go to heaven and he chooses some people to go to hell. That's not what the Bible's teaching. This verse is not about salvation. This verse is about service, okay? So if you hear somebody tell you that, you know that they just don't understand scripture and it's been twisted there. There's plenty of verses that back it up. Last week, read Revelation chapter 22, came to the end of the Bible. I like how the Bible ends. It reminds us of this, that Jesus says, and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. That's how the canon of Scripture closes, reminding us that whosoever, anybody, anywhere, they can come to Jesus, alright? So this verse we're talking about, this isn't about salvation. But God has a purpose for your life, and He reveals that purpose as you abide in Him, as you spend time with Him. Notice what He says there in verse number 16, He says that He's ordained you. The word ordained, that means placed into ministry. Sometimes, if you're a pew potato Christian, you think that being ordained is just for pastors or deacons or missionaries. We ordain those people to go into service. No, Jesus says he's ordained each of us. For what? To bring forth fruit. Ministry's not for somebody else. Ministry's for me. Ministry's for you. If you're saved, you're in the ministry. It may not be your full-time vocation, but you're in the ministry. You're to be serving God. That's your mission. He saved you to serve. If you're a businessman, you're in the ministry. If you're a stay-at-home mom, you have a ministry. If you are a student, you have a ministry. If you're a factory worker, you've got a ministry. Your life is your ministry. The question, it's really not, am I in ministry? The question that every single believer, every one of us is sitting here tonight, the question that we ought to ask is, am I fulfilling the ministry that God's given me? Am I fulfilling the ministry that God gave to me? My sphere of influence, my circle, it's different than your circle. Am I fulfilling the ministry that God gave to me with the people that I interact with? Am I doing what God wants me to do? Jesus wants every Christian to serve him in ministry. Why? Look back there at verse number 16. He gives us the answer that you should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain. Jesus wants fruit in your life, fruit that remains. We talked tonight about how your life matters. It was meant to matter. As believers, we ought to remember that. The world's asking, does my life matter? They need to know that it does. They tell us that three of the primary reasons that people consider suicide is first that they feel that nobody loves them. They feel that they have no true friends. And they believe that they have no real purpose in life, that there's no reason to go on living. You know, it's kind of amazing that the three things that the human heart cries out for the most Jesus answers and He says, He tells us that He has the answer to all of those things. Before we even realize that's what they are, that that's what we're crying for, Jesus already has answered that. He invites us into an abiding relationship with Him. When we come into that abiding relationship with Him, we'll find a true friend. The Bible tells us He's a friend that sticks closer than a brother. He'll never leave us, He'll never forsake us. The Bible says that we'll experience true love. The Bible tells us that we'll have close friendship. The Bible tells us that we'll have an eternal purpose. If you don't feel like your life matters, become a Christian. Your life will have all sorts of purpose and meaning and mission. There's a whole world out there that needs to know about Jesus. Your life matters. Sometimes as believers, we know that, but sometimes we forget it. Harriet Beecher Stowe in her booklet, How to Live for Christ, she made this statement, how does the branch bear fruit? Not by incessant effort for sunshine and air, not by vain struggles, it simply abides in the vine in silent and undisturbed union and blossoms and fruit appear as of spontaneous growth. You see, when you abide in Christ, when you live out what we've been talking about in John chapter 15, that transformation begins to take place in your life and you'll start to look more like Jesus. That's what He wants. He wants us to look like Him. He wanted His disciples to look like Him. We're told that we're to be conformed to the image, we're to be made into the image of Jesus. Next week we'll kind of start, we're gonna work our way through some of the ways that we can be conformed. We've talked about abiding for five or six weeks now. Now we're gonna kind of move into the thriving stage and how this transformation takes place and what some of that looks like, how that abiding relationship changes us to be more like Jesus. But tonight, the question is, does life matter? And the answer is yes, your life matters. The question is, what will it matter for? Spowerheads. We'll have the music play. We'll just have a moment here where it's quiet. This is just time for you and Jesus to talk. You can pray at the altar, you can pray in your seats. But this is the opportunity right here as the music's playing. Think about your life and how it matters. See, you can spend your life chasing comfort, you can chase success, you can chase approval of people, but that's a bitchy little thing. You can try to accumulate things, you can try to build your own little kingdom here on earth, but it's not gonna last. A better option is to spend your life abiding in Christ, so you can bury turtle fruit and you can impact lives with the gospel of Christ, and it'll last forever. So what option will you choose? It's never too late. The time to start a fire is now. If you have it, it's today. The time to start bearing fruit is today. The time to say, yes, Lord, you speak is this moment. If you're online, you're watching this message, if you've never accepted Christ as your Savior, the time for that is today. It's not too late. If you're hearing this, it's not too late for you. So Lord, we thank you tonight for the truth of your word, for these unshakable realities that we've seen tonight. Thank you that in Christ we are redeemed, that we are called, that we are sent. Lord, thank you that you've given us a mission not to just exist, but to bear fruit that remains. So Lord, when we sometimes suffer less than what you want from us, Lord, I pray that you would help us to get that right in our lives. Help us to pull away from the distractions. Help us to focus on abiding in you. Help us to live daily in the reality of the fact that we are living with the sacrifice that you made for us. Help us to know that you call us your friend, that you invite us into this relationship where we work together, that you care enough about me, that you allow us to be co-workers. Let's embrace our calling to bear fruit. Stir our hearts. Don't just stir them. Help us, Lord, to take what we hear.