Called and Consecrated

So, what we’re going to do is we’re now as we go into congregational prayer, let’s just pray for Matt and the net ministry, praying specifically that God would use this group, this organization to be a blessing to our community. So, grab a neighbor, partner up like you know how to do, and just pray for a few moments that God will bless Matt and the net ministry. Thank y’all.

Holy Spirit, thank you so much. Thank you that as you bring a church together, you you bring it together with just a variety of members. One of the metaphors that you use in the Bible to describe the church is a body. Lord, my body needs every single organ I got. I need my eyes. I need my pinkies. I need my spleen. Need everything I have. And how much more so does Southern Baptist not need every type of member? Lord, if if the church was purely made up of evangelists, yeah, God, we’d share the gospel a whole lot, but we wouldn’t know how to meet the tangible needs of our community. God, if our church was only business people, yeah, our numbers might look really good and we would have good financial nest eggs and always be making great investments, but where would our kids and the kids workers be? Lord, I thank you that you brought Matt and Kimble Vain to our church. I thank you specifically for how Matt’s gifts look different than mine. God, it it takes me hours to accomplish anything with my hands. I am not the guy that somebody needs to call whenever the acute crisis happens in their house. But Lord, I thank you that there are guys like Matt Mulvaney who know how to do things, who know how to meet tangible needs. God, I love sitting down with somebody and talking about their emotional problems. I could do that all day, but Lord, to actually get the the fallen tree out of the driveway, I may not be the first pick. God, thank you. Thank you that there are a multitude of gifts here. Thank you for the net ministry. I thank you in advance for the situations that our church is going to have access to because we are now able to leverage organized help to our community. And I’m begging that as we meet those needs that you would give those evangelistic opportunities, you would give those disciplehip opportunities, that as we take care of the acute crises and the chronic difficulties that you would use sodium to walk people from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of light because we don’t just want to make people happy on their way to hell. We don’t just want to alleviate their physical suffering with their spiritual state never changing. God, we got to do both. Jesus, you did both. You met tangible needs. You fed the hungry. You healed the sick. But you also struck at the spiritual heart of the matter when you preach the gospel and call people to believe in you for life. Let us do both. I pray that you’ll bless this ministry. I pray that you’ll bless the net, that you would use us to do great things for your your name’s sake here in our part of Charleston. And Holy Spirit, I’m also begging that you would get a hold of this moment right now as I share your word. You and I have wrestled this week. We’ve worked together this week in preparing a message. And I’m praying that right now you and I would continue working together and you’d get me out of the way ultimately. Holy Spirit, for the person here who does not know Jesus as Lord and Savior, that you would use these few moments to get a hold of them, and for the those that do know Jesus as Lord and Savior that you would you would grab them and you would help them see what their next step of walking with you is. Please, God, we love you. Thank you for loving us. It’s in your great name that we pray. Amen. Amen.

Well, you go ahead and return to your seats, open back up to the book of Judges, Judges 13, where Sam read from earlier. That’s where we’re going to be preaching from. Judges chapter 13. I want to kind of catch you up to what’s been going on so far. The book of Judges is what I’ve been calling this hinge moment in the life of Israel. This is before all the kings. So Saul, David, Solomon, they’re not around yet, but this is after the people of Israel have come into the promised land. It’s these 12 Tribes kind of dispersed throughout what we would call modern-day Israel, and they need leaders because there are foreign armies that are coming in and oppressing them and attacking them and marauding and raiding. So God in His kindness keeps raising up what we call judges. These judges were not merely legal arbiters like we might think of a judge. They were also military leaders. They were in some cases spiritual advisers. So God has been raising up all these judges, and we’re going to look at the life of another one. Samson is who we’re going to be looking at over the next few weeks. Samson gets a lot of airtime in the book of Judges. Four chapters are dedicated to his life.

Whenever you think about some of the big macho guys of the Old Testament, Samson probably makes your short list. He’s on your top 10 at least. Today we’re going to look at a miraculous birth of Samson. You’re going to, as we read the scripture, you’re going to note some similarities between Samson’s birth and the births of other miraculous sons in the Bible. In chapters 14 and 15, though, Samson shows just how broken he is as a savior whenever he marries one of the Philistine ladies and he has some early drama with her family. And then in chapter 16, Samson will set his sights on another woman named Delilah, and Delilah will spell his ultimate downfall, and then Samson totally redeems himself with a sacrificial death, and that’ll be in chapter 16. But like I said, today, chapter 13, we are looking at the birth narrative of Samson.

I want to go ahead and give you the main point of today’s message. If you’re a notetaker, if you want something to report over lunch or talk about with mom on the phone later, this would be it: God calls, we consecrate. God calls and we consecrate. Call is, you know, it’s a word that a lot of us have an idea with. God called me to do something. I, you know, Pastor Al and myself, we would say that God has called us to be pastors. You know, Matt might say that God has called him to start this new ministry here. Or you might even say next week, “Hey, God called me to have a conversation with my family.” To be called by God is simply God has impressed upon you in a variety of ways an assignment for your life. It could be a short-term moment, a single conversation. It could be the whole direction of your life, a calling to some sort of ministry. God calls. We get that. We get that idea.

But I also believe that we consecrate. Consecrate is a word that we don’t really use a whole lot in daily language. To consecrate something means to set it apart for a specific purpose. If you enlist in the military, you spend two-ish months in a season of consecration called basic training where you are training, you are learning, you are getting into the culture. You are consecrating yourself to a mission, to an assignment. In the Bible, you see people consecrate themselves all the time. They are setting themselves apart for a special purpose.

We’re in a season of our life here as a church where we are seeing this dynamic too: God calling and us consecrating. I think about Michael Foster, God called to become our music director, and he has consecrated himself to that purpose. I think about my wife Becca, who God has called to lead our student ministry, and she is dedicating herself to that role. I think about Robbie, who God has called to start Celebrate Recovery, and therefore he is giving his life to that. I think about the Gordens and the Odums, whom God is calling to start the senior adult ministry. They’re giving themselves to it. I think about Matt, who God has placed this assignment, this burden, the net ministry, and he’s consecrating himself to it. So we’re going to look at that dynamic lived out in scripture this morning. Judges 13. I’m just going to start off with the first two verses. Read it with me.

The Israelites again did what was evil in the Lord’s sight, so the Lord handed them over to the Philistines 40 years. There was a certain man from Zorah from the family of Dan whose name was Manoah. His wife was unable to conceive and had no children.

God’s call will come at a barren situation because Israel is back at it again. For the fourth time in the book of Judges, the author says that Israel did evil in the Lord’s sight. All the other three times so far, when Israel does evil in the Lord’s sight, when it’s said this way, God answers Israel’s evil with His discipline. And His discipline is in the form of one of these foreign armies coming in and oppressing the people of Israel. The same happens here. It says, “God handed the people of Israel over to the Philistines, but for 40 years.” That’s a long time. That’s two generations. 40 years is long enough for you to be born at year zero, live to your 20, get married because things happened earlier back then, and get pregnant, and raise another child up to marriable age themselves. 40 years is a long time. It’s a long time for God’s people to be oppressed by a foreign nation. But this nation of the Philistines, we already knew from a couple chapters ago that they were going to come in. It’ll be on the screen. Chapter 10, verses 6 and 7. The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. They worshiped the Baals, the Asherahs, the god of Aram, Sidon, and Moab, and the gods of the Ammonites and the Philistines. They abandoned the Lord and did not worship Him. So the Lord’s anger burned against Israel and He sold them to the Philistines and the Ammonites. You that might remind you of the past couple weeks. We looked at the life of a guy named Jephthah. Jephthah was a judge that God called to fight against the Ammonites on Israel’s east. At the same time, the Philistines are attacking on Israel’s west. So the idea here is that while Jephthah is fighting the Ammonites on the east, you have all these Philistines on the west 40 years. The interesting thing is every other time God disciplines Israel, they eventually come to their senses. They cry out and they repent to God. It might take two years, six years, eight years. This time after 40 years, there are no cries for mercy, no national days of prayer, no widespread moments of repentance. God’s people are so poor off spiritually they can’t even come to their senses. Obviously, this would highlight how bad things are going for Israel spiritually. And that national spiritual state is mirrored in a particular woman’s physical state, her infertility. Verse two, there’s a certain man from Zorah, from the family of Dan. This is an Israelite whose name was Manoah. His wife was unable to conceive and had no children. You see, just like the nation Israel was spiritually barren, unable to even produce repentance, this woman was physically barren, unable to have any children. Her state is Israel’s state, one and the same. In the ancient Near East, whenever a woman was infertile, they deduced that there was judgment from the gods. That’s why in the Old Testament, you see all these people giving offerings to the fertility gods because they want the gods to bless them with kids so that the kids can help work the land and carry on their name and provide for them in their old age. So in the ancient Near East at the time this is being written, if you were infertile, you start making offerings to all these gods, including the gods of the Philistines. Now, for us, I wouldn’t be a good pastor if I didn’t take a few moments and address how infertility might feel today. I think for us, modern times, infertility isn’t so much judgment from God. It might feel a little bit more like a gaping hole in your life. You may not be consumed so much with why is God angry with me? You might more so be asking the question of what’s wrong with me? God has blessed my family. Three kids, a fourth on the way. I don’t really have a whole lot of credibility on a personal stance to look at anybody in the room who’s dealt with infertility and say, “I know what you mean, or I know how you feel.” I don’t. But I do want to say there is a really good God who knows exactly what you feel. There’s a God that knows exactly what it’s like to go without kids. There’s a God that knows exactly what it’s like to have unmet dreams and expectations and desires. For everybody in the room that’s dealt with infertility, I just want to say God sees you and He loves you. I want to take it further though. For anybody in the room that’s unmarried, you never had kids because you never had a spouse, God sees you and He loves you. And I want to look finally to the parent of a child who’s left the faith altogether. And spiritually you might feel infertile even though physically you are. And I want to say God sees you and He loves you. God has grace for people going through difficult situations. We just sang about it. And there will be a day when the storm of this life, whether it’s physical infertility or something else, there will be a day when that passes. And we will be whole and right in the presence of God, totally satisfied in Him. You see what God does? He looks at barren situations and He creates life. That’s what He does here in Judges 13. Return to the passage with me. Judges 13:3-5. Remember, Israel is spiritually barren. This woman is physically barren. So verse three, the angel of the Lord appears to the woman and says to her, “Although you are unable to conceive and you have no children, you will conceive and you will give birth to a son. Now please be careful. Do not drink wine or beer. Do not eat anything unclean. For indeed you will conceive and give birth to a son. You must never cut his hair because the boy will be a Nazarite to God from birth.” We’ll come back to that. “He will begin to save Israel from the power of the Philistines.” Man, what a promise. In the midst of this barrenness and this emptiness, God gives a promise of life. And the son is going to fulfill multiple needs. Man, if you’re a notetaker, I want you to write these things down. This promised child is going to fulfill incredible needs for this family and for the people.

First, he’s going to fulfill a need of reversing divine judgment on this woman. I’m not going to sit here and say that she is barren because God was judging her. However, what I do know is that for her who would have thought that she was barren because God was judging her, to have a promise from the angel of the Lord that she was now going to have a child means that that previous assumption of judgment is totally being reversed and wiped away. God was targeting the woman’s greatest source of pain and disappointment. Not ignoring it, but putting His finger on it and saying, “I’m going to heal you there.” God was mercifully covering her spiritual darkness through giving her a gift of unmerited favor in this son.

But the son would also provide a reversal of divine judgment on all of Israel. Remember, Israel is being oppressed by the Philistines for 40 years, and they never once cry out to God for mercy or for help. God has been judging them through the Philistines. Without request, though, God is going to begin to deliver Israel from the Philistines and from their sin again through this promised son.

That takes us to the third need that the son is going to fulfill. He is going to begin to deliver Israel from the Philistines. You see, the people of northern Israel have been dominated for decades and generations by this clan from the Mediterranean Sea, the Philistines. Two generations worth of oppression, God is going to fix it. This dark, bleak, hopeless situation, God is totally going to deliver them from.

And then finally, this need that the son fulfills, man, he’s going to become at least ideally a model for consecrated service starting in utero. This child is called to live a special life of consecration to God. Later on, write down Numbers chapter 6. Numbers chapter 6 is where God gives instructions on the Nazarites. God told this woman that this child is going to become a Nazarite to God. To become a Nazarite is just a special act of self-consecration. It was meant to only last for a temporary period of time. It affected just your life. But what’s happening here in this moment is that God is saying this child will be a Nazarite for life.

The promised call comes to Manoah’s unnamed wife. So when the angel finishes the promise, Manoah’s wife runs to Manoah, tells him everything he said. So then Manoah prays, asking God to repeat this call. God hears Manoah’s prayers. I’m going to just kind of summarize the next few verses. God hears Manoah’s prayers and sends the angel of the Lord again to repeat all that He had already told the wife. So as a way to thank God and as a way to thank this angel, Manoah wants to make a special food offering to this God, to the angel. He wants to serve Him some food. He says, “Hey, you’ve been so kind to us. Let me make you some Good food before you leave, before you go on your journey.” Now look at verses 15-20. Let’s read this. Please stay here. Manoah tells him we’ll prepare a young goat for you. The angel of the Lord said to him, “If I stay, I won’t eat your food. But if you want to prepare a burnt offering, offer it to the Lord.” Manoah did not know he was the angel of the Lord. 17 When Manoah then Manoah said to him, “What is your name so that we may honor you when your words come true?” “Why do you ask my name?” The angel of the Lord asked him, “Since it is beyond understanding.” Manoah took a young goat and a grain offering and offered them on a rock to the Lord who did something miraculous while Manoah and his wife were watching. Verse 20, this is what he did. When the flame went up from the altar to the sky, the angel of the Lord went up in its flame. When Manoah and his wife saw this, they fall face down on the ground. Man, this wonderful angel displays God’s incredible approval of this couple. He consumes this offering on this makeshift altar. And the angel uses the fire as the back door to leave. I don’t really know what this means. This past week, I tried to visualize what in the world this meant. I don’t really have anything for you. But we know that instead of consuming the couple in God’s glorious and holy and pure presence, God accepts their offering. People that we don’t think are actually asking God for mercy. People who it seems aren’t calling on God for kindness and grace. People who are part of a nation who’ve yet to humble themselves before the Lord and they offer this burnt offering and God accepts it. God says, “Yeah, all the details may not be right, but your heart’s in the right place and I’m going to accept that. You could push that too far, but that seems to be what’s going on here.” And then this crazy birth narrative closes with God fulfilling His promise. Look at verses 21-22. The angel of the Lord did not appear again to Manoah and his wife. Then Manoah realized that it was the angel of the Lord. “We are going to die,” he said to his wife. “We have seen God.” But his wife said to him, “If the Lord had intended to kill us, He wouldn’t have accepted the burnt offering and the grain offering from us. He would not have shown us all these things. He wouldn’t have spoken to us like this.” So the woman gave birth to a son and named him Samson. The boy grew and the Lord blessed him. Verse 25, the spirit of the Lord began to stir him in the camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol. The promised calling from God is fulfilled. God always keeps His promises. He made a promise to this couple. He’s going to keep it. And He fulfills this promise. Yet Manoah’s fear is understandable. When Manoah realizes that he had been in the presence of God, he felt the right thing and his posture became the right posture. You see, the Bible says that no one can be in the presence of God and live. You see that in Exodus 33:20, in Isaiah 6:5, even in the New Testament, 1 Timothy 6:16. No one can be in God’s presence and live. To a degree, we all ought to feel the fear that Manoah feels right now in this moment. We all should recognize that we are sinful. We are godless. We are disobedient people. None of us deserve to live when there’s an infinite, holy, and perfect God who sees everything we do. Every little mistake you’ve ever made, God saw. Every cross word that you spoke to your spouse or your enemy, God heard. Every thought that you thought getting cut off in traffic or coming out of the meeting with somebody, God was aware of. Everything that you watched on the computer or on TV or on your phone last week, God was right there watching it with you. Not a one of us deserves to continue to live when there’s a perfect, holy God watching all that we do. Manoah felt the right thing and his posture became the right posture. Man, this is Manoah one moment standing up talking with this. He doesn’t realize it’s an angel. He doesn’t realize that am I understanding this is God Himself? He doesn’t realize this. He’s talking. He’s making this offering to God.

And then the angel who he thinks is just a man steps into the fire and travels up to heaven through this fire. When Manoah realizes that, he gets on his face. We are going to die. When was the last time you had that posture before God? Like for real, man. Like when was the last time where you recognized, man, God, you’re holy. You’re perfect. I am sinful and unholy, and I do not deserve anything good from you. The beauty of the gospel is that while we do not deserve any good thing from God, God continues to dish grace and mercy and kindness on us.

Man, you might be here this morning and you’re like, “Dude, that’s just not me.” Honestly, Jeremy, I think I’m doing pretty good. I try to be a good person. Never cheated on my spouse. I don’t try to fudge my tax returns too much. I never speed. Man, some of y’all are starting to volunteer. I appreciate this. You know, it’s interesting. When God laid out His law in the Ten Commandments, shall not murder. Okay, I bet I’ll say 99.9% of us haven’t murdered anybody. Okay, holding out hope for what? Or, you know, holding space for maybe one. God says, “You shall not commit adultery.” Okay, couple of those big ones we can all probably check off and say, “Okay, yeah, that’s that’s I’m good there.” And then God starts to get in our business. He says, “You shouldn’t covet,” i.e., you shouldn’t want your neighbor’s things. And God starts stepping on our toes.

And then Jesus takes it a step further in the Sermon on the Mount. You’ve heard it said you should not murder. Yeah, they were good Jews. They heard that. That was direct from God Himself. Jesus says, you have heard it said you shall not murder. But I’m telling you, anybody that’s angry with his brother has already murdered him in his heart. Any anybody else ever been angry with somebody? They didn’t deserve it. I’ve got five truthful people and 95 untruthful people. Jesus says, “You’ve heard it said, you shouldn’t commit adultery.” I say to you, anybody that’s looked at a woman with lust in his heart’s already committed adultery with her in his heart. Fellas, can we be real? Any other fella in the room ever committed lust? Man, you may not see yourself as a murderer and an adulterer, but because God is so holy and so perfect before Him and His holy standard, that’s what we are. Yet, God is constantly restraining what we deserve and offering us what we don’t.

God’s grace comes through clear in this couple when He provides them this miraculous son, a promised son who will deliver God’s people from their greatest enemy. God gave Manoah and his wife what they don’t deserve. And He is still doing that today. Truth be told, you and me, we are all like Manoah’s wife. Spiritually infertile, unable to produce any life on our own. Yet because of God’s boundless love, His sovereign grace, and His infinite mercy, God moves toward sinners, you and me, He moves towards us and offers us a promised son who lived the perfectly consecrated life to deliver us from our greatest enemy so that we could live and have a future.

You see, Samson isn’t the real promised son. Yeah, Samson’s the character who gets his name in the book, but this book isn’t actually about Samson because Samson’s going to fail time and time again. The people of God need a different promised son who would live a holy life unto God and conquer God’s people’s greatest problem. You see, the life of Samson is meant to point us forward to another son who would come to another infertile woman, or at least a woman that shouldn’t have had babies. A woman who would give birth to a baby named Jesus Christ in a town of Bethlehem. See, the life of Samson is supposed to direct our attention not on the the the the exploits and the heroics of a guy thousands of years ago. But the life of Samson is supposed to point us to a suffering servant who would give His life for us on the cross. People who do not deserve the mercy and the kindness and the grace of God that God continually steps towards. And God says, “Don’t you see how much I love you, man?”

I’m talking with my kids the other day and I did it. I’ve done the I did the thing that every parent in this room’s ever done. I said, “Luke, how much do I love you?” He says, “How much?” I said, “This much, bud.”

And he totally gets it. And God is looking at you. And God is saying, “Hey, how much do I love you?” And He says, “This much. In fact, my hands stay here because they were nailed to the cross. Man, I’m never going to close these arms ever against you in judgment or in anger. Instead, my arms are always outstretched, showing you just how deeply I love you.” And on that cross, Jesus would die an ultimate sacrificial death for us, so that anybody who would rest in this man, anybody who would say, “Yes, I am a sinner who does not deserve the grace and kindness of God,” anybody who would give their life to God, Jesus in His resurrected body would take those arms and embrace in love and kindness forever.

God had a unique calling on the life of Samson, and it was Samson’s job to consecrate himself to it. I fully believe that God is still calling us to unique assignments, and our job is to consecrate ourselves to Him. Hebrews 12:1-2 says this: “Therefore, since we also have such a large crowd or cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of our faith. For the joy that lay before Him, He endured the cross. He despised the shame, and He sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Jesus has already done everything necessary to save us from our sin and to transform us from enemies of God to friends of God. The question is, what is God now calling you to do? I want to ask it again. What is God calling you to do?

God had a supernatural assignment for Samson to deliver Israel from the Philistines. But God has not stopped using willing people to accomplish miraculous plans. Samson stepped into his calling when the Holy Spirit stirred him up. God bothered Samson because of Israel’s suffering. Man, you want to know what you’re called to do? Ask God, “God, what do you bother me about? What bothers you, man?” Are you bothered over the spiritual state of a family member or a friend? Are you bothered by a needy ministry here at Sauldam that needs volunteers? Or are you bothered because Sauldam doesn’t yet have a ministry that we need so that we can be all that God wants us to be? Man, what’s God calling you to? He might be calling you to have that evangelistic conversation with your brother. He might be calling you to sign up for Sauldam Kids and to love on our youngest disciples. He might be calling you to start something new for our church that we don’t know about yet. What’s God calling you to do?

I want to ask you another question. How do you need to consecrate? To be consecrated is set apart for the Lord to have a distinct purpose in God’s plan. It means to live a life of dedication to God where you would forgo some things that other people enjoy, and you would practice some things other people don’t do. How do you need to consecrate? For Samson to step into his calling, he had to be consecrated. For you to faithfully step into God’s assignment, you’ve got to be consecrated, too.

The New Testament uses “put off” and “put on” to describe this reality. There are things that we put off. The book of Hebrews in chapter 12:1, it says, “We put off every hindrance and every sin that ensnares us.” I want you to imagine a high school track team running a baton relay around the track. The whole goal of a relay is to be first. Or when I ran track, my whole goal was to not be last. Now, I was going to do everything necessary to set myself up for success. I was going to lay aside every weight and everything that would ensnare me from running well. So, I wasn’t going to wear a weighted jacket. I wasn’t going to run in full sweatpants. I was only going to run in my uniform. I wasn’t going to carry anything except for the baton.

The Christian life is supposed to look the same. Don’t carry anything that’s going to slow you down. Get rid of everything that’s going to make it hard for you to run after Jesus. So that when your time comes, when the baton is being passed from our spiritual forefathers to us, when it’s our time to rise up and be God’s people in this world for His purposes, we Wouldn’t have anything distracting or slowing us down. Man, how do you need to consecrate yourself? What do you need to put off? You put off anything that makes it hard for you to run your race. And you need to start putting on everything that would help you run well. Man, for some of us that means we need to put off spending all of our money on ourselves and we need to put on a spiritual rhythm of fasting from spending money. For some of us, we need to put off an over obsession with our careers and we need to put on serving here at church. Some of us need to put off our habits we are hiding in the dark that make us feel gross on the inside. And we need to put on drawing near to God through reading the Bible and spending time in prayer.

Man, for you to accomplish God’s calling for you, you got to be consecrated to Himself. You got to be consecrated to Him. I want to close with an invitation. Man, I normally close with some sort of evangelistic moment where I invite people to come forward during the final song. I want to close a little differently. We do this just occasionally. Man, if you’re like me, you woke up this morning, affections may be a little low for Jesus, a little distracted by the things of church or of this life, and you just need a moment to reset. If that’s you, I want to invite you during this final song. You come forward and we’re going to have a reset and I’m going to, as best I can, I’m going to make my posture match the posture of Manoah and his wife. I’m going to be here and I’m going to just, I’m just going to kneel here at the front. My prayer is going to be, God, what are You calling me to? God, how can I consecrate myself to You? This isn’t for everybody, but it’s for everybody that wants more of Jesus. Michael, Lindsay, Miss Mary Lou, I invite you all to go ahead and come forward.

Let’s do this. Let’s pray for a moment. Ask the Holy Spirit to speak and to move. And then when the music begins, we’ll just take a few moments. Anybody that wants to come and join me up front, you come and join me and we’ll just kneel here and pray and ask God to just reset us and show us what He’s calling us to. Please bow your heads and pray.

Holy Spirit, I need more of my life to be given to You. I need more of my life to be consecrated to You. You’re holy. I’m not. You are good. I’m not. You’re big. I’m not. But I so often want to make life about me and my purposes and my little mission in this world. I’m sorry. Holy Spirit, I’m asking that You would reveal my sin to me. God, reveal our sin. Reveal how we’re not living for You. I pray for everybody that needs it this morning. You would draw them forward to the front. They spend a few moments in prayer consecrating themselves to You again. Please, Lord. Amen.