Word & Deed: Wonder

radiantvisalia.com
Word & Deed, We are Worshipers: Wonder
with Jerrod Turner

This sermon explores the connection between wonder and worship, emphasizing the importance of cultivating a sense of awe and amazement in our relationship with God. The message encourages believers to be open to surprise interactions with God, to appreciate the beauty around them, and to embrace the gift of other people in their lives.

Key Points:

• We were created to worship: Worship is an essential part of our human nature, and we will inevitably worship something or someone.
• Wonder is the spark of worship: A sense of awe and amazement fuels our desire to praise and adore God.
• Sin corrupts our wonder: We often misdirect our wonder towards created things rather than the Creator.
• Christmas is a season of wonder: The story of Jesus' birth is filled with awe-inspiring events and calls us to rediscover the wonder of God's love.
• We need to cultivate wonder: We can do this by being open to surprise interactions with God, appreciating the beauty around us, and embracing the gift of other people.

How to Cultivate Wonder:

1. Be open to surprise interactions with God: Don't assume you know everything about God or have heard it all before. Expect Him to speak to you in new and unexpected ways.
2. Be open to the beauty around you: Take time to appreciate the natural world and the wonders of God's creation. Let these experiences draw you closer to Him.
3. Be open to the gift of other people: See people through the eyes of faith, recognizing their potential for transformation and God's love for them.

The sermon concludes with a prayer for a renewed sense of wonder and a deeper connection with God, especially during the Christmas season.

Transcript

Hey, good morning everybody. My name's Jared, Jared Turner, and it is good to be with you guys this morning. I'm from Radiant Tulare, down the road. The foreign country called Tulare, we're over there. 

I am not the only one here from Radiant Tulare. Our whole church was very excited about me coming here this morning. So excited that some of them came with me. 

I've got an entourage, a posse. So you might remember some of them if you guys have been here for some time. The Jollies, Chris and Leslie, yeah, Annie Braun is here. The Smiths, Marty and Becky Smith are here with me. And my lovely ladies, Rachel, Zoe, Abigail and Stevie. 

So we don't, we don't travel light anymore, okay? It's really good to be with you. We have the same last name, or I guess the same first name, but it's a little different here. Like there was no seats in the front. I couldn't find a seat to sit in the front row. That is not a problem that we have at Radiant Tulare. Just so you know, if you come to visit, there's lots of room in the very front row. So go straight there. You'll get a seat. 

I promise. We're thrilled at what Jesus is doing in Radiant Tulare. We're thrilled, and it's a privilege to serve him and the city that we live in right alongside of you. As you serve Jesus and serve this city that you're planted in here, it is a joy to be partnered together. We're a family, and it's awesome that our extended family from legacy is here too. I mean, what a joy it is that we have one Father, one spirit. We have one name that we live and thrive in. It's so good to be a part of. You're not just joining like a little social club with cool activities for your kids so they don't become idiots or go to jail or it's not a promise. So we're part of something so much more. 

It's such a joy to be shoulder to shoulder with you guys. You've been in a series on discipleship, and right now the word is that you guys are talking about worship. This is a part of our discipleship. It's a part of what it means to be a follower of Jesus is that we worship God. You were born a worshipper, and this is a great season to talk about worship. Christmas is a season of worship. 

It is a wonderful background for this. Christmas, in the scriptures, it's loaded with worship. It just erupts with song, with joy, with making much of God. I love Christmas. Anybody else a big Christmas fan in here? 

Yeah, I mean, it's beautiful in here. I love Christmas cookies. I love Christmas parties. I love Christmas sweaters. I love it all. I love everything Christmas. And the challenge with loving this season and just living in this season is that it can become so familiar. 

Like how many of you have traditions that are like on your list, you're doing it? You feel the pressure right now. It's like already. 

We're already into December. You still haven't done all the things you need to do. You got to get to it right now. You wish I'd stop talking just so you can go and do it right now. The problem is that when we get so caught up in just doing the same thing, we can miss that Jesus is still alive and still at work in this season. He's not on Christmas vacation. 

He's not like, I just play the hits. Just watch the reruns. It's great. 

You know the story. The Holy Spirit is alive and well today, discipling us, leading us, all of us in this season. If we have eyes to see and ears to hear, we will get something new in this season. You can stick with the old stuff. That's great as long as it leads you to Jesus, but be open to the new things that Jesus would want to do in this season. A.W. Tozer said, a man can die of starvation knowing all about bread, and a man can remain spiritually dead while knowing all the historical facts of Christianity. 

Zing! You can go through a whole series like, I don't know, a year and a half, two years, and discipleship series that you're going to be in. Just a heads up. Maybe you guys didn't know that. Maybe I wasn't supposed to say that. 

2027 is going to be a great year for you guys. You can go through this whole series on discipleship, learn all the facts, all the facets of this, and you can still miss Jesus. You and I were created to worship. That's a part of our creation, to make much of our Creator, to give glory and honor and thanks to Him. But if we don't give it to Him, we will give it to something or someone. It's just in our nature. 

It's just what we do. You are a worshipper. You may look around and think like, those people are worshipers? 

You know, like the full extended arms? Those people are worshipers. These people are almost worshipers. These people are your people. 

Right here. It's my people. You are a worshipper. You are giving your worship to something or someone. To live a life of worship, what I want to talk about this morning is to actually live a life of wonder. Wonder is the spark of worship for us. This season's prime for wonder, like the song's not lying to us. It's the most... Come on of the year. Come on, let's buddy the elf this thing. 

Let's do this. There are lots of words that describe this season, right? Peace, joy, love, tamales, like if you don't know what words describe this season, you could go to Hobby Lobby and they will sell you a bunch of stuff that will remind you every day. What about the other things this season brings? 

Family drama, stress, rec diets, depression, debt, anxiety, those things that like you won't find at Hobby Lobby on a mug. It's a strange season, right? Mixed with bright lights and beautiful songs and beef sticks and then, you know, dysfunctional family gatherings all in one month. 

It's great. The good news of Christmas is not that Jesus shows up and then removes all of this stuff from you. If that's the good news that you've bought into, you've got a different story. The good news of Christmas is that Jesus was actually born right in the middle of our mess. Jesus came, Galatians said, he was born through the pains of childbirth. 

He lived under the law. He knows he's acquainted with our pain. He knows the pressure of living under the expectation of God. 

The good news is that Jesus came into our problems. He's not helping you steer away from them. He doesn't take us out of pain or out of trial or out of difficulty that often, actually. What he does instead is leads us through it because he was led through it. Isaiah 53, 4-5, surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering. Yet we consider them punished by God. 

You ever consider yourself punished by God when things are not going right? Stricken by him and afflicted, but he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. So good to hear men testifying of being healed through his wounds this morning. Some of us are facing really extreme seasons of life right now. I got a really terrible text last night from someone in our artillery family, and their father-in-law just passed away suddenly. It's like there's never a good time for that, but Christmas time, right? 

It's like, golly. Some of you are walking through difficult things, and you need a heck of a lot more than a Hobby Lobby sign to get you through it. You need a whole lot more than just Christmas carols on repeat. 

You need a whole lot more, and praise God, we have a whole lot more in Jesus. This is the good news of Christmas. There's nothing wrong with Christmas songs. There's nothing wrong with Christmas cookies. There's nothing wrong with those sentiments. There's nothing wrong with shopping at Hobby Lobby. 

Please don't go away from this. Like, that guy hates that store. I actually like it a lot. You can talk to my wife about that. 

She'll let you know. I'm the reason we stay longer, so. There's a lot of wonder. There's a lot of joy. There's a lot of goodness. 

There's a lot of charity at this time of year, and it's beautiful. It's beautiful, but it can leave us wanting more. It leaves us a little bit dissatisfied, right? 

Or just maybe uncertain, like, if we did it right. We get through like Christmas, like, did we do Christmas? Was that Christmas? 

Was that it? We did everything we're supposed to do? You just have this feeling like, okay, well, we just spent so much time putting up fake green stuff in our house. Now we got to take it all down and put it in boxes, and then they're going to get dirty again. We're going to do it all over again. Like, this is it? This is what we committed to do? Okay, great. Was it good for you? 

All right. The reason that there is attention in us, like, it's good, but like, is it really good, or is there more? The reason that that's there is because we were actually wired for wonder. This is what drives worship for us. If you have a worship problem, I'm here today to let you know you might have a wonder problem. We try to find it in things, traditions, religion, sex, drugs, rock and roll. 

We try to find it in loads of other things, but there's only one thing that was actually designed to satisfy that wonder inside of us. So when you have those feelings of kind of let down from these moments, these holidays, these festivities, it's not the, it's not Christmas' fault. It's not the moment's fault. It's just that these moments were actually, they're supposed to lead us to the one who can satisfy our wonder and the one who truly deserves our worship. 

They're just things, they're springboards for us to get to him. If you're having a difficult time with worship, I want to talk about our wonder, our wonder of who he is. Here's a working definition for us of wonder. A feeling of surprise mingled with admiration caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or remarkable. 

Another definition is to desire or be curious to know something. This is wonder. Wonder is, as John Tyson says, disruptive delight. When was the last time you were delighted by the disruptiveness of God in your life? We see it all throughout Scripture when humans encounter God. Psalm 33.8, let all the earth fear the Lord. 

Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe, or that word can also be translated wonder of the Him. Exodus 15.11, who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic and holiness, awesome and glorious deeds doing wonders? Jesus enters the scene and he has a ministry of wonder. Luke 5.26, an amazement, seized them all when Jesus showed up. And the glorified God, and we're filled with awe and wonder, saying, we have seen extraordinary things today. 

Jesus was recapturing people's hearts with the wonder of God. You know, you're around it so much that you can lose sight of the fact that the person you're sitting next to was fearfully and wonderfully made. They're just who they always have been. You've just lost sight of the wonder that actually lives in them, the wonder that God's created all around us. The church carries on, this ministry of wonder in Acts 2.43, everyone kept feeling a sense of awe, and many wonders and signs were taking place. What Jesus began, it continues on. We as a church have a ministry, not to have good sing, song sessions, but to create a hunger and a thirst for the wonder of God here in Visalia, here in the central valley, here on planet earth. 

When people look at you, look at this church, they should begin to wonder about God. Who is this? It's remarkable what he is doing. What captures your wonder the most will direct your life the most. What gets your wonder will get your worship. It'll get your affection, devotion, it'll get your highest praise. 

Whatever you're fascinated with, you will begin to give your worship in that direction. The problem is that sins corrupted our hearts, so we all now have begun to worship and give our wonder to created things instead of our Creator. That's what Romans says. Romans 1.25, they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator. We were created to worship, and wonder is the spark of our worship. The reason that we're created for wonder and awe is that we were created to actually know God. 

Did you know that? It wasn't just some special people that were created to know Him and enjoy Him and experience Him. Every single one of you were created to know your Maker. 

Not just know about Him, but know Him intimately. This isn't just a Christian thing. This is a human thing. 

This is open for all. This is just inside of us. If you don't think this is true, then watch kids in this season. Get really close and observe them. Every time they see lights or every time they see all those presents starting to stack up underneath the tree, wonder is going to just ooze out of them. 

You don't have to try with a kid. It just bubbles out of them. They marvel at everything. I did a magic show for Abigail, my oldest daughter's birthday last year, and it was mediocre at best. She thought it was awesome. Her friends thought it was amazing. 

I got it on Amazon. And you know what? For a split second, when that little flame turned into a rose, I kind of had a little bit of wonder too. I was wondering if my hand was going to catch on fire, but it was there. I mean, you just watch kids. It doesn't take much. Take them to the ocean. They wonder at this. Take them to the desert. 

Show them all the stars. Wonder. Take them to the zoo. Wonder. Drop them in Disneyland. 

Wonder, wonder, that costs a lot, a lot of money, right? We all were like this at some point in your life. You were just like this. Some of you are still like this. 

God bless you. And keep you. But the rest of us all grew up. But we never stopped living with wonder and awe. We actually just started getting it from different sources. There's a war for our wonder right now. It's not that we don't have it. It's not that you're just walking around wonderless. It's that we may not be aware of who or what has captured it in our lives. What brings you alive? 

What gives you the feels? Check your bank statement. Where is your money going? That's where your wonder is going. We were designed to have our wonder satisfied in God. This is the cry that we sang this morning actually. Out of Psalm 87, all my fountains are in thee. Another translation, the source of my life comes from you. Another translation, my whole source of joy is in you. Every good thing that you've experienced in this life is rooted in a good God. That's the only reason you've got to experience something good here is because he is good. 

Augustine said, you stir man to take pleasure in praising you because you've made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. There's a war raging to get your wonder right now. When you walk out of this place, it's on baby. 

It's on the enemy of your soul would love to siphon off your wonder into anywhere else other than Jesus. He doesn't care where it goes. He's not greedy. He just hates God and he does. He wants to disconnect that because if he can disconnect your wonder of God, then he will disconnect your worship and disconnect your obedience. There's two places that I think the enemy loves to just siphon our wonder off to. Anything in this world and you who the invitation to find the greatest wonder in ourselves is great in this culture. Are you kidding me? 

This will sell baby. You know how you spend all your time just finding who you really are. No, no, no, hey, yeah, just invest. This is the most important journey you can go on is to find out who you really are and it's not true. The most important journey you can go on is to find out who your maker is and when you find out who he is, he will tell you who you are. You won't have to wonder about that part. 

He'll let you know. Oh, no, no, you're just so special. Oh, gosh, my little boy, you're just so special. There's nobody like you. 

Nobody. We've heard this message a whole lot and it's not just from our moms, right? It's from big corporations. It's from small shops. It's from anywhere in the world that wants your wonder because they want your wallet. 

That's what it wants. Jeremiah 10, 6 says this, no one is like you, Lord. You are great and your name is mighty in power. And the enemy of your soul and the world that we're swimming in right now would love for you to believe this about you and not him. 

Propaganda is running high and we buy it hook, line and sinker. As awesome as you are, as fearfully and wonderfully made as you are, you still have your source in God. You're creative. You have so much to give to this world, but it's only because you were created by a creating God that you have that. You have a great destiny on your life, but it's because he spoke it into existence. You didn't go find it somewhere to give it to us as a gift. He gave it to you as a gift and he will lead you into it. God's created a world full of breathtaking wonder. It's beautiful out there. I know it's dark and bad, but let's not think about that for a second. Let's just think about the beauty that exists in this world. 

Honestly, and this whole creation was meant to produce this wonder and worship inside of us, but every horizontal wonder that we encounter and experience in our days is meant to drive us to a vertical wonder. The mountains are amazing. They're beautiful. 

Some of you are obsessed with them. You'd rather be there than here, but who made the mountains? Look, I love a ribeye and with a little side of bourbon and it's amazing. But who gave us taste buds and who gave man culinary creativity to do any of this? God is the source of every good thing. Your satisfaction for anything in this world will not last. It will leave you hungry for more. You'll go to lunch right after this and you won't, this is how I'm gonna know who my people are. 

How many of you at lunch will talk about what you're having for dinner? Right? Yes. My people. You'll be at Christmas enjoying your roast beef or whatever you have, bologna sandwiches. 

I don't know. And you'll be thinking about Easter. What are we gonna cook for Easter? This is how it rolls in the Smith House. Onto the next, baby. We are hungry for more. That was good, but what's next? Nothing satisfies. 

Every earthly wonder leaves us hungry for more. And it's not that those things are bad. It's not that those things are bad at all. Food, sex, national parks, music, sunsets. It's just that those things were gifts to us to help drive our wonder and worship to the one, to the one who gave us those. 

The propaganda of our enemy in this war is this. You can be satisfied. You can find joy in this life, but you have to keep indulging. You just have to keep going. Just one more cookie, just one more nap, just one more national park. 

You don't wanna see one. You gotta get the whole scratch map, right? And then, then you will find the satisfaction that you're looking for. The end goal of our enemy is to lead us to a place where we are so filled with wonder for this world or for ourselves, we will see no need for God. And we will reject him and we will reject his son, and then we will get the wrath that's coming for him. This is the end goal of our enemy. The only salvation we have is in Christ. 

The only source that our wonder and our worship can actually be satisfied in is him. Christmas isn't the problem. Decorations aren't the problem. Cookies are not the problem, okay? Parties aren't the problem. Little plastic reindeer's aren't the problem. 

And I know that is the problem. We don't have to take Christmas back from anybody. It's ours, it's his, it belongs to him. Everything belongs to him. You don't have to be afraid of any of that stuff. I'm here as buddy of the elf to tell you go to more parties and eat more cookies. 

You're welcome. Because all of those things exist, we have all of those because he actually came. We know the reason and we don't stop short and just get caught up in all of the hustle and bustle of this. We actually just use that to elevate our hearts and our minds to him, to get to the real prize, to get to the real satisfaction, to get to the real joy that is in our life. 

We have to learn to redirect our wonder to the right places. Do all the Christmas festivities you want, but use it as a springboard to get to him. Don't forget him. Don't stop short. 

In this season of so much that goes on, pulls you in every direction. While it's not good enough to just get a tree, you gotta chop down a tree. It's not good enough just to get photos off your phone. You gotta go take really expensive photos of your family that's a lie because you don't ever look that good and nobody smiles that much ever. And then you send it to all your friends. So they just like you and love you and it's great. 

It's wonderful. We're getting pulled in so many directions. How, this is the question, how do we cultivate a life of God wonder in the midst of all of this pulling on us to wonder at everything else? 

There's one thing that I think we can do. There's no magic tricks to it. This is it. Be open. Be open. 

Who is the tall man with the shiny head that testified? Love you. Be open. Be open. 

This is it. Are you open? Are you open? Or have you seen it all before when it comes to God? Have you been in church since 1969 and you know all there is to know about this? Are you open to wonder and surprise with God? This is the posture that we have to take. 

If you wanna be real worshipers, true worshipers, you've got to be open to the Lord. Are you curious? Do you ask questions? Are you open to being surprised? Or have you heard it all? Seen it all? 

Been to all the conferences, done all of the things before. We're talking about taking on a posture like Mary did in the story, right? She had a heart of pondering. This crazy, terrible, wonderful things gonna happen to you, Mary. 

Gonna jack up your whole life. Oh, what does she do? Freak out. 

Just get on Facebook and start ranting. No, she pondered it in her heart. She took this posture of wondering, what does this mean? Not just for me, what does this mean for the world? What does this mean for every hurting soul? What does this mean? What could this look like? 

Who is this child? We've got to be open. Here's three areas I want to press in on. 

I'm gonna pray for us. Three areas to be open to. We've got to be open to surprise interactions with God. 

We've got to be open to the beauty around us and we've got to be open to the gift of other people in our lives. Are you open to surprise interactions with God? Or do you know enough? Have heard enough sermons? Have done enough Advent devotionals? I've been to enough conferences. I've done it. I'm good. I'm solid. You can't surprise me. I probably know what you're gonna say next. I know what verse you're gonna use. 

I know it all. I hate watching movies with people like that. I just like, oh yeah, this person's gonna die. 

You don't know that. And then they die, but it's like, don't say it. Just don't. Just enjoy the ride, man. 

Just enjoy the ride. Do you know? Do you know all there is to know about God? 

You probably know enough to say no, right? Have you heard enough sermons? Have you read enough scripture? 

Have you been to enough conferences? Just keep going up. Be open to the possibility of God. Just risk it in this season. Just risk that you maybe don't know everything. Just risk that Google maybe won't come through for you. 

Just risk it. Be open to the possibility that there's more in the ordinary moments of your life. The ordinary moments. You don't have to go to the mountain to get some extraordinary thing. The most extraordinary thing in human history is that God came down from the mountain for you and I. Repost yourself in your ordinary times with God. 

I'm talking like six AM when you're not sure if God's awake yet. Like, why am I doing this? Reading in numbers, like, I don't, what's happening? Be open to the possibility that the living God could speak through his living word to you in that moment. 

Just be open. Again, don't assume of God anymore. Don't fill in the blanks for him. Oh, I know what you're gonna say. I know you love me. 

I know that I'm forgiven. Do you? Do you? 

Because if you did, then things might be looking a little bit different as you walk out of this room. Don't speak for him. Let him speak for himself. 

God is always speaking through his word. Always, when you read it, expect surprise. You should crack this thing up and go, wow, I did not know that that was in there. You should also expect offense. Just so you know, it's not like all, like butterflies and rainbows, like, oh, back scratch. That feels so good. Thank you, Psalm 113. Appreciate that so much. Expect offense, expect correction, expect like a chiropractic adjustment in your life when you come to the word. 

Do not spend your time standing over the word. Oh, I gotta get to see what all the facts are. I gotta get that answer that I'm looking for because I'm really looking for that answer and where is it inside of there? Don't stand over the word like you're in charge. You stand under the word. 

You walk under the word of God. He's in charge. He's speaking and directing our lives. 

He's in the driver's seat. We spend so much time walking over the word. Yeah, I know that. Yeah, I've been there. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Walk under the word. Let it be a light unto your path. Be open to surprise interactions. 

Be open to beauty around you. Some of us just need to take a walk in the woods. It's been a while, huh? 

We just heard 12 guys say it's been a while and it was good and it was worth it. Get God beauty in front of your eyes this week. You're probably like me and you spend a lot of time with like this little shiny device in front of your face all day long. And it's nice and it's kinda cool and it's shiny. But it's not like true beauty, right? 

It's synthetic. Like these are great lights. They're not like the sun, right? You know that. You can't get what you need, like everything you need from these things. Get in front of real beauty. The world has its version of beauty, but the only reason they make things shiny and bright is because they wanna make a buck off of you. They want your loyalty. 

And you can have everything your little heart desires and it only costs you $9.99 a month for the rest of your life. They don't, the world doesn't care about you. The world doesn't care that you're inspired. It just cares that you buy the stuff. Just cares that you have brand loyalty. 

That's all. Get God made beauty into your eyes and let it usher you into worshiping the Creator and not just created things. Geek out on the one who made all things, not just all the little gadgets that you have in front of you. 

Here's the last thing I'm gonna press on and then we'll pray. If you're gonna be open, if you're gonna actually get God wonder reestablished in your life, then you have to be open to the gift of other people. If you want a life of God wonder, you have to stop putting people in boxes. 

You limiting others is you limiting God. They'll never change. They're always like this. They'll never be. 

They're always be. Have you ever used like definitive negative labels for people? Let's just have a confession moment just quietly right now amongst all of us. Anytime in the last 365 days, have you used a definitive negative label over someone? You are a dumpster fire. 

Your whole life. You just a jerk. You always be a jerk. You're just a gossip. 

You're just a... If you're not open to people becoming something different than you think that they are, you're on a slippery slope. This is not a healthy or a good posture that's gonna lead to life and joy abundantly. You're limiting others. We'll begin by you just saying, now you can't be or do anything else. You'll always be a screw up. 

That's going to eventually lead to you limiting yourself. Well, I'll always be. I'll always struggle with this. Well, I'll always be a... I'll just always cuss a little bit. 

I'll always just struggle here or there. And you begin to agree with a demonic cap on your life. And ultimately what you're doing is you're limiting God. You're saying that he's a liar. You're saying that he can't. 

I know Jesus said it already. With man, it's impossible for you to become something new. But with God, all things are possible. 

Even for that person that you just put on the shelf and said, good freaking luck to you. All things are possible. Revelation 21.5, behold. 

Look, drink it in people. I'm making everything new. Is this not his plan? Is this not the trajectory of life? 

Is he a man of his word or not? We don't limit what God can do. We get familiar with our own limits, but we don't put those on God. Don't lose your wonder of what God can do with the life. Don't lose your wonder of God's heart for every person on this planet, including you. Don't radiant, Vyselja. Do not lose your wonder of John 3.16. 

Do not do it in these days. That God so loved this place. He so loved the world that he gave his only son. And if you believe in him, then you'll have everlasting life. Not on a cloud someday. Right now you will have life eternal gushing from you every step of the way. 

Would you stand to your feet? I'm gonna pray. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna close this whole thing down. Just looking for confirmation from the front. Okay. 

Maybe you're here this morning and you're thinking like, yeah, I am definitely taking a trip down the Wunderless River. Like, I just wanna invite you to just open your hands. This is not something you and I have to drum up on our own. We receive from God every good thing. You receive every good thing from God. You don't earn it. 

You don't work your way towards it. You receive it. It's gonna require you to step beyond what you're comfortable and even what you can see, but I'm telling you, you will receive it. You're not gonna wrestle it out of his hand. You're gonna receive it. Father, thank you. 

Thank you for life. Holy Spirit, you're here. Anything is possible. Holy Spirit, you're alive. And anything is possible. Holy Spirit, you are moving. And anything is possible. I just pray right now, Lord, I'm asking from my heart, from my friend's hearts this morning, would you shift our posture just to be surprised in this season? 

We don't know everything. You're the one that's coming into our lives. You're the good news. 

You're the bright light that's dawned on us, God. You're the one that's knocking on the door. Surprise, something new's coming. You're the one who came in a manger. Surprise, a new way's coming. 

Lord, let it be said of radiant Vicaia. They're the most curious people in this city. They're the most wonderful people walking the streets here. I just, I pray right now for those that are just up against it. 

Sickness, death, addiction, divorce papers. You're up against it right now. And Jesus is the way. He is the truth and He is the life. And I pray that wonder would be restored in every one of those areas for every person here this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you. Hey, we've missed you. 

And you've grown as a preacher. We're so proud of the work in Tulare. So proud of you guys. So thankful for the work.

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