Is knowing everything the key to true contentment?
WATCH
The War With Pride, 4 of 5 from November 23, 2025
“In a world clamoring for extraordinary insights we are content with Jesus.”
2 Corinthians 12:1-2 by Michael Lockstampfor (@miklocks)
SUMMARY
This sermon explores the tension between having unlimited knowledge in the "information age" and the Biblical call to find contentment in Christ. Pastor Michael discusses 2 Corinthians 12, where Paul shares a vision of the third heaven and boasts in his weaknesses. It emphasizes that our "unknowing" points us back to God and urges believers to find sufficiency in Jesus, cautioning against pride and the tendency to place ourselves in God's role by demanding He meets our expectations instead of submitting to His will.
REFLECTION & DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
💬 What expectations are we putting on Jesus which put us in God’s place?
💬 What are we most tempted to exaggerate?
💬 Are we content with Jesus’ love and provision?
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
📖 Extraordinary “Ability” (2 Corinthians 12:1-4)
📖 Ordinary “Disability” (2 Corinthians 12:5-7)
📖 “Ordinary” Enough (2 Corinthians 12:8-10)
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Good morning, church, and welcome to our neighbors. I'm glad to be together with you. If we haven't met yet. My name is Michael. I'm one of the pastors here.
Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Lockstanfer.
We live. I don't know if you've heard this term. It's. It's pretty common, especially if you. If you go to a place like Disney, you might have heard of that place.
We live in the information age. Like, we have so much information. I've got a pastor friend who says, like, we have access to every single bad idea in human history, like, in our pockets all the time. And it would be fine if we could just, like, carry it in our pocket, but, oh, no, we can't just carry it in our pocket. It has to be beeping at us and buzzing at us and constantly sending us messages, like, we have.
So does anybody ever feel overwhelmed by how much data they have to process in a week? There is news about places I didn't know existed that I feel so badly about, but I couldn't even find the place on the map. And, like, I pray for them because Jesus knows where they're at, but it's like, how can I operate in my life and the things that I have a responsibility for when I know about everything that's broken in the world and I know about every bad idea about how to fix what's broken in the world, and I know how every bad idea, like, wants to say that, like, Jesus is not a good answer for the things that are broken in the world. Like, we have a lot of information, but what we do not have is wisdom. We know a lot, man.
We know so much. And if you don't know how much we know, just ask a teenager and they will let you know.
I say that kind of tongue in cheek, but I was talking with a student in the youth group on Wednesday, and I was talking about an assignment that I had to do when I was in school and how difficult that was for me. And she's just got this super confused look on her face, and I'm like, okay, she's not understanding. So I'm explaining the work that I had to put in and, like, the thought and blah, blah, blah. And she just is more and more confused. And then I see the light bulb go.
She goes, oh, you had to do school before, AI.
I thought, oh, no, we're doomed. We've got all of the information, but none of the wisdom. We can know anything at any given time, but we may not know the Best way to kind of organize that information, to put it together in a way that is A, meaningful, but then B honors God. We've been in a series that we've called the War with Pride. And I'll give you some introduction.
But like, this idea is like the world is striving and grasping and trying to get at something that is going to fill their soul. And we think that more information or better information is going to fill us up. But there's a hidden. A hidden driver behind that train. And it's our pride thinking, if I can know everything, then maybe I don't need God to tell me anything.
He doesn't get to tell me how to live my life if I don't need him. But it's crazy to me. I thought we had learned a couple of years ago that it doesn't matter what you know about germ theory, if the Lord has made it so that you can't get hand sanitizer to the doctors, it doesn't matter what you know. Right. So I don't know.
That's a little bit what we're going to dig into a little bit this morning. If you'll go with me. I ask you to pray together with me. It's our habit as neighborhood church to pray the disciples prayer. And these aren't like magic words or anything like that.
But Jesus said that this is how you ought to pray. And I'm simple enough to just do that. I mean, it's helpful if we're going to do that together, for us to say the same words. And so you don't have to have this memorized. It's not about saying the right words.
It's not about it being the same words your grandma taught you. It's about the ideas and the thoughts of your heart being geared towards this prayer. And so let's just take a moment. I've taken several, but let's take a moment and take just a deep breath together.
Jesus, we remember that you were king of all and God of heaven, that you have made all things, and you've made us too, and you've brought us to this morning.
We submit this time to you and ask that you would use it for your purpose. And we pray together with one voice. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Yours is the kingdom and the power and the. And the glory forever. Amen.
Would you navigate with me to the book of 2 Corinthians? And we're going to be in 2nd Corinthians, chapter 12 this morning. My clicker's not a clicking.
Sweet. And so as you turn there, we have been talking. I'm going to leave it there. As you turn there, we've been talking about this letter we're going to pick up in chapter 12, and it's going to start off at a run. And so I just want to give you a little bit of background before we read these verses so that you can kind of know what's going on.
The Apostle Paul is writing this letter, and he's a guy who, early in his life, hunted Christians, arrested them, made sure they got beat up for believing what they believed. Then Jesus met him on the road and changed his mind. And so he became a missionary. And as he traveled, he would start churches. And one of the cities he traveled to was a city called Corinth.
And Corinth had a reputation of being a city with loose morals and lots of money. So when I think of Corinth, I think of Las Vegas or maybe Amsterdam or some city like that. And so this new missionary came to a city like Las Vegas and started a church like preached Jesus, and people trusted Jesus in that kind of a city. But he's a missionary, so he left them, left some leadership in charge. And then he has moved to a different location.
And as he left, there were a couple of, like, influencers that came in after him. They saw that the gospel had taken root or that there were some people that were excited, excited about this new religion that was starting up. And they're like, ooh, a startup. I can get some influence in there. And so they started to try to cause division between the people in the church in Corinth.
We call them the Corinthians. And with Paul, the one who had started their church. And so the letter that we're reading is called Second Corinthians, but it's probably at least the fourth letter that he's written to them about these different things. And it's kind of his last ditch effort of, like, giving them some correction before he shows up in person. Like, he said, I'm coming, I'm on my way, and I want to write these things to you so that you guys can fix what's going on before I get there.
Okay? So that's if he's addressing this false teaching and undermining and trying to prep them for his arrival. Okay, so that's a little bit of what's going on. Okay, we good? All right, let's read Second Corinthians, chapter 12.
If you're using the blue Bibles, it's on page 1210 and the blue Bibles here. Second Corinthians, chapter 10. Let's start with the first four verses here.
I must go on boasting, though there's nothing to be gained by it. I'll go on to visions and Revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up to the third heaven, whether in. In the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows.
And I know that this man was caught up into paradise, whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows. And he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. So we'll pause there. This is strange.
This is a strange verse in the Bible. This is a strange situation that we're talking into. I actually don't think there's any other place in the scriptures that kind of that. That the way that God communicates his word is. Is through this way.
Sometimes God has, like, a pattern of doing things, and this is something that's outside of the pattern of how God. How God usually chooses to communicate his Word. And so Paul is, as he's correcting some of the. The false teaching. He is saying, like, I, if you guys are going to be silly and you guys are going to boast and you guys are going to be prideful, I'll boast too, but I'll boast in the things that show my weakness.
And he said, and apparently one of the things that these false teachers had talked about was how they had received, like a special information about God. So they had received some kind of divine Revelation, some kind of supernatural information from heaven. And that's how they were trying to show the Corinthians that they were better than Paul. And so Paul says, look, I'm going to go on boasting. I'll keep being a little bit silly.
I'm going to meet your ridiculous claims with a little bit of ridiculousness. I know a guy who had a Revelation who got to see things, who was caught up to the third heaven.
He says, I know a guy. And it's kind of an interesting phrase. He says, I know a guy, and it's not clear who he's talking about. Now, this is the Apostle Paul. He probably, like, he had rubbed shoulders and met with the Apostle John, who's The guy who wrote the Book of Revelation, like, he's got access to the Apostle Peter.
Like, he's got some friends who have seen some things. And so it's not clear exactly who he's talking about, but he says, I know a guy who got caught up into the third heaven. I don't know if he actually, like, was transported there physically or whether he just went there in his spirit, whether he just saw it in his mind's eye or whether he was physically present. I have no idea whether he actually got there or not. But God knows exactly what happened, and he got caught up to the third heaven.
The third heaven is kind of an ancient way of describing the spiritual realm. So if you were to think about layers of a cake, the bottom layer would be the first heaven. They call it first because it's first.
Groundbreaking. I know. And the first heaven is the kind of the air and the atmosphere that you can see on earth. This would be where things like birds fly. Like, that's the first heaven.
I can see the sky. But then we kind of know that beyond where the birds are, there are more things in our sky that our birds are not flying in. Right. So the second heaven is called second because it's the second, right? Yeah, yeah.
And that's the one where, like, the sun and the moon and the stars are. So we as modern, sophisticated people, we would call, like, Earth's atmosphere the first heaven, and then we'd call space the second heaven. Right. And then the third heaven is the place where the spiritual realities that actually hold all of the material realities kind of are seen. So he says this guy got transported to the third heaven.
He got transported to a different dimension where he could see spiritually things that were going on. He calls it. He calls it the third heaven in verse two, and in verse three, he calls it paradise. These are two. Like, he's calling the same thing.
He's describing the same thing with two terms, third heaven and paradise. Now, if you're familiar with Jesus story, when Jesus is being crucified, he's talking to a guy who confesses. Like, he says, jesus, I trust you, or I think that you are who you said you are. And. And he says, you will be with me today in paradise as they are dying together.
So we're talking about the place of the dead. We're talking about spiritual reality. We're talking about someplace that you don't get to go and then come back. So he says, I know a guy who got to go and see an incredible vision in heaven. Like, the Heaven of heavens.
And I don't know whether he actually physically showed up there or whether he just got to see it in his mind's eye. I don't know. God knows what he did. And verse four, and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.
I know a guy who went and he saw some things, and the things he saw he cannot even describe. There is not vocabulary to describe the things that are there. Do you know, friends, that there are things that you can experience and not describe? And do you know that there are things that you can know and not be able to say? And did you know that there are things that you cannot know?
I don't say that to be mean. I'm not insulting your intelligence, but it feels that way because our world is the information age. We can know everything, everything that is known, and it's processed by an artificial intelligence. Like, that's the world that we live in. But the scriptures say that there are things that are hidden and known only to God.
My friends, our unknowing reminds us, who is God. Now, autocorrect thinks I spelled that wrong, but I wrote it that way on purpose. Our unknowing reminds us who is God. They want me to say, our unknowing reminds us who God is, but who is God? If you could know all that God knows, you would be God.
So when we come to things that we don't know or can't describe or cannot perceive exactly, or put into words, our unknowing reminds us who is God? And it isn't me. And so if you operate in your world as though there's nothing that you have ever not known, then you have, unintentionally, I hope, considered yourself to be God of the universe. If your answer to every, like, new piece of information is, oh, I already knew that. Like, there's a danger there.
There's a pride underneath that that I would just like to warn you of. And the reason why I know it's a pride, the reason why I know it's a deadly danger is because that has been me. I got rebuked so hard by a guy who isn't even a Christian. I was working for a guy, and I was a caretaker on his estate. And so, like, he would tell me what to do, and then I'd go and take care of whatever the property issues were.
And he came and he told me something, and I was like, yeah, yeah, I've got that on my list. That's on my things to do. He says, michael, do you know that every time I give you instructions, you tell me that you already know and that you're already planning to do it. Every single time he says, if you knew it and you were going to do it, you'd have done it. Stop telling me.
You know, you sound like a jerk.
He was not a Christian, but the Lord used that mightily in me where I was like, oh, I didn't realize. I didn't realize that I was so insecure that when somebody gave me information that I had not really put into priority and I had to cover up my insecurity.
But our unknowing reminds us who is God. And it is God's mercy that he reminds you that you are not him.
But the world is clamoring for unlimited information. Like, we gotta know all the data. We gotta process the information. We gotta get the charts. Like, this is how we're gonna succeed.
This is how we're gonna conquer. And you're like, I don't do that. Like, that's for people who are, like, into crypto mining and things. Like, I'm not trying to do all that kind of stuff. It's like, I'm just trying to live my life.
I don't need to know everything. But the prevalence of, like, the fact that psychics and tarot readers continue to exist and our horoscopes still are a defining characteristic of our age tell me that our world is clamoring for something extraordinary that's going to solve their unknowing.
And in a world clamoring for extraordinary insights, we are content with Jesus.
In a world clamoring for extraordinary insights, we are content with Jesus. Now, friends, the advertisers don't want you to be content. I don't know if you know that. Have you ever had an ad that you thought, oh, like, I have everything that I need? Like, no.
They are trying to make you feel like you don't have enough. They're trying to make you feel like you're missing something. They're trying to make you feel like their widget is the one gadget that's actually gonna fix all your problems. If the last model iPhone didn't fix it, then the next one won't either. But it's gonna be really pretty penny for you.
And it's not just iPhones. You know, Apple does it or not Apple, the Android stuff does it too. But in a world clamoring for extraordinary insights, we are content with Jesus. Here's the deal. This is hard.
You're going to have to chew on this one a little bit, you're probably going to have to get together with like a trusted friend who knows you more than like the surface level stuff. To answer this question, you're going to have to chew on this one. What expectations are we putting on Jesus which puts us in God's place?
What expectations do we put on Jesus which put us in God's place? Because sometimes when we pray, we pray to Jesus as if we are the Father and we tell Jesus what he needs to do for me, because these are the outcomes that I want. What expectations do we put on Jesus that put us in God's place? Because we can pray with, with a whole heart and we can know that Jesus is the only one who can answer our prayers while also putting our hope and our ability to pray well enough to get our prayers answered.
The heart is deceptive and wicked above all things. It can turn any godly endeavor into something that is self serving. And I just want you to know, because it's in me. And if it's in you, I want you to know and call it out and surrender that to Jesus. What expectations are we putting on Jesus which put us in God's place when he teaches us to pray?
Our Father, you are the one in heaven, not me. Let your name be magnified and glorified and held as holy and distinct.
Let's read a couple more verses.
Paul continues in verse five, he's talking about this guy who's seen this extraordinary vision with this extraordinary ability.
He says, on behalf of this man, I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast except in my weakness. Though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the Revelations, a thorn was given to me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me to keep me from becoming conceited. So Paul here is saying, I'll boast on behalf of, of the guy who's had these great visions, but I'm not gonna boast for myself.
Like I'm not. The only things that I'm gonna take credit for, I'm gonna boast in, are the things that highlight my weakness. Which if you're like, that's a weird idea. We talked about that last week and I can't preach what I did last week. That was a one time thing.
And so I encourage you to check the podcast, check the website if you wanna catch up on that. But, like, boasting in our weakness is what makes. Gives Jesus the opportunity to show off his greatness. And he says, so I'm not going to boast. I'll boast on behalf of the guy who had the vision, but I'm not going to boast on my own behalf because I don't want anybody to think that.
I don't want anybody to think more of me than would be appropriate. He's like, I know that there's a temptation in people generally to elevate other people. And he says, I don't want that. I want you to evaluate me as I should. But then notice what he does here, though.
If I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the Revelations. Hold on. To keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the Revelation.
I thought the Revelations were the other guys. So here it seems like Paul is kind of letting the peek in behind the curtain that he is the one who, 14 years ago, had a vision of heaven. And he doesn't know whether he was standing in the throne room of the presence of God physically or whether he was seeing it in his mind. But he's saying, I was there 14 years ago. And this.
If it's 14 years ago and it is Paul, then this was right before he got called into missionary service, right before he started, like, going around and starting new churches. He had this Revelation. He's saying, but the way that he's communicated this is so goofy. And you can be. And we can take this text and kind of interrogate it and be like, well, what are the visions?
You got to say more. Who is the person? You got to say more? And he doesn't. Because the point isn't the visions, and the point isn't who they came to.
The point is the one that they're meant to glorify. In a world bragging of its own greatness, we disclose our weakness to highlight Jesus strength. But he says, any boasting we make must be grounded in reality.
I think that's how I put it in my notes, but I'm not able to click. Any boasting that we make must be grounded in reality. He says, if I were going to boast or if I was going to boast for myself, I wouldn't be boasting. It wouldn't. I wouldn't make me foolish because I would be telling you what's true.
If I happened to be the guy who saw these incredible visions and I told you about these incredible visions that I saw, then I wouldn't be making a fool of myself because I actually saw them. And so he's got this kind of backdoor way of saying, like, I can compete with those influencers, but I will not use their self aggrandizement against them. If I'm going to boast anything, it's going to be in something that's a little bit confusing and hard to get your mind around. So that instead of, instead of being impressed by how great I communicate, you're impressed by God, who would use me in spite of myself.
Any boasting we make must be grounded in reality. He's like leaning into this temptation we have to make much of other people. If I were to tell you I had a dream last night and this is what happened, and I told you, you'd be like, oh, man, Michael, so spiritual. God speaks to him in dreams, right? Like, yeah, God knows the future.
It's not hard for him to just tell somebody. But we're like, no, no, no, that doesn't happen to me. So he must be great. It's like we have this. This temptation to make much of the people, the instruments that God's using, as opposed to the craftsman who's using the instruments.
We have this kind of twisted exaggeration mechanism in us that wants to make much of people and less of God.
And he's fighting against that. He's saying, I don't want to give that a Runway. I don't want to give that space to grow. And we can do that with people we admire. And we can put people up on pedestals.
And we can be sorely disappointed when we find out that all humans are human.
And we can do that with people we are disappointed with. And we can exaggerate their flaws and their mistakes. And we can grind them down into the dust and be sorely disappointed when we discover that all humans are human and made in the image of the glory of God.
It's not an easy black and white. But what are we most tempted to exaggerate?
It might be ourselves. Are we tempted to exaggerate our own successes or our own knowledge? Are we tempted to exaggerate the successes of others and put people up on a pedestal? Are we Tempted to exaggerate the failures and the flaws of others? Are we tempted to exaggerate our own failures and flaws?
Because if we're going to boast in anything before the Lord, we have to boast in something that's grounded in reality.
So he says, in order to keep me from being conceited, because of the surpassing greatness of the Revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh. A messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. He says, the Lord in his mercy gave me a little. Barbara gave me a thorn in my flesh that I couldn't. I couldn't quite get out so that I didn't get so puffed up that my ego popped.
He made it so that I couldn't inflate all the way. He gave me this weakness. Now, this is one of those verses where I'm like, Paul, come on, you gotta give us more. I need some details. What are we talking about?
Are we talking about your eyesight? Because we know that you couldn't see very well. We're talking about your arthritis because we know your hands hurt. Well, you got beat so many times.
Are we talking about, like, your nightmares? Because, remember, he hunted Christians and then he started planting churches. And if you think that the enemy didn't try to keep him up at night with all of the ways that he had done harm to the church while he was on mission for the church now, then you're mistaken. The enemy's going to take that and run with it. I don't know what the form of the thought, but I know he carried it with him in order to keep him from becoming conceited.
Because he, too, is susceptible to the exaggeration of the human heart. Because all humans are human.
Romans, chapter 12. He writes it this way. For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. Like your thoughts about other people should be grounded in reality. Who has done something that you think was a good thing?
I've done some good things in my life. How many of you have done something that you don't think was very good? I've done some things that I know 100% were bad and wrong and harmful to me and to others. Okay. Both of those realities are true.
And yet God, in His mercy, has taken each human and entrusted them not only with life in Jesus as we come to trust him, but also entrusted them with the most important mission in eternity to be ministers of his grace to one another and to the lost.
I wish I wanted to hold on, Michael. I want it to be black and white. I need to know what the rules are. The rules are love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Well, what does that look like? Yes, exactly. Yes. What does it look like is the question that our whole lives are trying to answer. We put it in our reading too.
He says, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others as more significant than yourselves. And he's saying, the way that I did that was because the Lord graciously provided in me a thorn in my side to keep me from getting conceited in a world that's clamoring for extraordinary insights. We are content with Jesus. So what does he do with this thorn? How does the great apostle Paul deal with a thorn in his flesh that keeps him from becoming conceited?
Does he just embrace it and hug it and say, oh, thank you Jesus for this dose of humiliation that keeps me humble? What does he do? Let's read verse eight. This sounds like me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this that it should leave me.
Does that sound like prayers? Lord, this is hard. Get me out of it.
Don't be with me through the valley of the shadow of death. Lead me around it through the peaks of golden glory and rainbows. The Lord is my shepherd. I have more than I need, he says. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this that it should leave me.
But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then I'm content with weakness, weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
In a world clamoring for extraordinary insights, we are content with Jesus.
We're content with the information that Jesus gives us, even when it doesn't answer the question the way that we wanted it to. We're content with the provision that he gives us, even when it would have been more comfortable to have just a little bit more.
But my friends, it may be that God permits uncomfortable situations in your life so that you will depend upon Him.
There's a verse that's been taken out of context and a lot of non Christians know it, and it makes me uncomfortable. And there's a lot of Christians who use it wrongly. And so it's a verse out of Romans, like you find it later on. But the way that it's usually said is, God will never give you more than you can handle, my friends. God will give you more than you can handle so that you come to Him.
If you could do your life by yourself, you would, and he knows that. And you were created for community. You were created for community with other humans in the garden before sin entered. It was not good that man could be alone. You were created to be in relationships with other people, and you were created to be in community with God.
If you have cut God out of your life, there is nothing on earth that will satisfy.
You were created to be in fellowship with him. And the enemy wants to draw you away, to get you to work on your own, to get you to trust in yourself.
And sometimes God gives us difficult situations in order to correct us back into trusting and leaning into Him. And not because he's mean. It's because there's nowhere better for us to go.
If God wanted to be mean, do you know that he could, like, you know, it doesn't take much for our back pain to be such that we cannot get out of bed. How many of us know that, right? If he wanted to be mean, he could cripple you like that. If God wanted to squash you like a bug, you'd be flat. He's not trying to be mean.
He is trying to provide for you. The only thing that will satisfy your soul, and that's a relationship with Jesus, walking in fellowship with him, together with his family.
This is a picture from inside the most recent hurricane. Melissa's not here today, so I can't make a joke about her. But it's a big storm, right? And right in the middle of the hurricane, it's calm, powerful, devastating winds, rain, floodwater, all that kind of stuff. Tearing up islands, decimating homes, taking human life.
But in the middle of it, there's a calm.
And it may be that God will not calm the storm in your life, but he will hold you there in the middle, in his place. Peace in a world clamoring for extraordinary insights. We are content with Jesus.
And I think that's the question. Like, are we content with Jesus's love and his provision? Is it enough that the Creator of the Universe, Almighty God, infinite Master of creation, who speaks, and galaxies exist in perfect motion, perfectly balanced. Is it enough that. That God would put on skin, Allow himself to be hungry, allow Himself to feel the pain and effect of gravity that he would Submit himself to human parents who did not know it all when he literally did?
Is it enough that the God of the universe would become a man in order to win men to himself, to offer to you freely the only thing your soul needs and that which is well beyond your ability to pay for yourself?
Is it enough that Jesus loves you, that he died to make things right between you and your maker?
And is it enough that he's given you just what you need for the day, even when it feels like it's not enough?
Are we content with Jesus love and provision? And I just, like, circle back to where we started? What expectations as we wrestle with that, are we putting on Jesus, which put us in God's place?
This is not easy. Here's what I know you're gonna forget. I've said it a bunch of times, but you're not gonna remember when we walk out of this room in a world clamoring for extraordinary insights, we're content with Jesus. You won't remember. It's okay.
I'm not hurt by that. I've done made peace with it, and it's not your fault. I can't remember it next week either. So it's good we're going to have turkey before then. But one of the things that Jesus has, one of the gifts he's given to us, is the gift of music.
And there's a song that, for the last year or so, has just come back to me over and over again in moments of weakness and moments of moments where I have been wrestling with how I relate to Jesus. And so I asked Carlos and the band if they would learn it. And it's kind of late in the week, but they did it. And so I want us to learn this song and sing it together, because this is the thing that you can take with you even if you forget every point of this sermon, even if you forget every illustration. Like, may the Lord embed this song in your heart so that he brings it to you in a moment where you really need it.
I am not what I make. I am who you have made me to be.
Jesus, you are enough with nothing. I have everything, Jesus. You're enough for me. Almighty God, we pray that as we are leaving from this place. God, that you would embed your word in us, Father, that you'd give us a good grasp of reality, to see ourselves and others in your light, so that we can be realistic about our failures and about our successes.
But the Lord above all else, we would love you, Jesus. This is not something that we can do by ourselves. We don't know enough. We don't know what we don't know. And so I pray that you would encourage and strengthen our hearts.
And Lord, as this word, as this song reflects your word, I pray that it would come back to us in a moment of need. It's in Jesus name we pray
