Slide 2                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Performative religion is doing religious things to look spiritual (checking boxes, saying the right words, or seeking approval) without a sincere heart of love, obedience, and trust in God. 

Slide 3                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Hosea 4:1-3 Hear the word of the Lord, O children of Israel, for the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away.

Slide 4                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Hosea 5:4-6 Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God. For the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not the Lord. The pride of Israel testifies to his face; Israel and Ephraim shall stumble in his guilt; Judah also shall stumble with them. With their flocks and herds they shall go to seek the Lord, but they will not find him; he has withdrawn from them. 

Slide 5                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Hosea 6:1-6 “Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.” What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away. Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light. For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,  the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. 

Slide 8                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                “You can tell what’s informing a society by what the tallest building is. When you approach a medieval town, the cathedral is the tallest thing in the place. When you approach an eighteenth‑century town, it is the political palace that’s the tallest thing in the place. And when you approach a modern city, the tallest places are the office buildings, the centres of economic life.”  -Joseph Campbell 

Slide 9                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       If someone a thousand years from now studied our cities like archaeologists, what would they say was at the heart of our civilization? 

Slide 10                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    If someone studied the evidence of your life or my life, what would they is at the heart of our life? 

Slide 11                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Hosea 11:1-4 When Israel was a child, I loved him,  and out of Egypt I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of kindness,  with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws,  and I bent down to them and fed them. 

Slide 12                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Hosea 11:8-9 How can I give you up, O Ephraim?  How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah?  How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. 

As a parent, there are two things that I've realized that my children really, they, they just don't understand. They just can't comprehend. One of those things is their limitations or because of their limitations, the consequences that comes from those limitations. And, and the two best examples of that are bedtime and what they eat. So when a child is going to bed, and this starts very early on, maybe you're a parent that you, you are just entering into this phase, but very early on your child becomes manipulative. And here's how they do that. Like, you put 'em in bed and you say, okay, it's time to go to sleep. And right when you think they're going to sleep, they're like, Hey, I'm, I'm so thirsty. Can I just get a little drink of water? I just, I'm just so parched, like with tears. I mean, the acting is amazing. So you say, okay, okay, go get a little bit of water. And then they get back into bed and then two minutes later they say, I, I need a tissue. I need to blow my nose. Your child that's literally never blown their nose in their entire life, all of a sudden at bedtime, it's like, I, I I just really have an affinity for blowing my nose right before bedtime. And then you finally think they're gonna sleep and they say, Hey, I need to go to the bathroom. And you say, that's why I didn't want you to drink the water. Do you understand how these things go together? So early on, they try and get out of going to bed. And here's what you know as the parent is, you know, that they need to go to bed because in the morning they're gonna be a train wreck because they didn't get enough sleep. And they don't realize that in the mor the moment that you do, and it doesn't change, they, they become a teenager. And then as a teenager now it's just a different negotiation. They're like, Hey, can I stay up a little bit later? It's the World Series. It's game seven. Can I just stay up a little bit later than I normally do to see what's gonna happen? Nevermind the fact that you haven't watched a baseball game literally the entire year, but okay, fine, we'll stay up a little bit la As long as you promise that in the morning you're gonna have a good attitude, you're gonna hop right up. There's gonna be no complaining. And does that second part ever happen? No, it does not. Why? Why? Because there's this limitation where, where kids have a hard time comprehending or understanding consequences. There are limitations. Food is the same way. I mean, right now, this week, you know what I'm talking about. It's like, can I just have one more piece of candy or one more piece of candy or one more piece of candy? And you're like, you are going to die. That is what's gonna happen. I don't think you comprehend what is going on in your stomach right now, but in the moment they're not thinking about what's gonna happen four hours later. They just think about the fact that there's chocolate bags and bags and bags of chocolate right in front of me. It's hard to understand long-term consequences. The the second thing that kids have a really hard time understanding is how much their parents love them. Like maybe you're one of those houses that they, that do the whole thing that's like, Hey, I love you. I love you more. I love you more. I love you more. And I remember as a kid the the thinking that that when my parents would say, Hey, I love you. I'd say I love you more. And now as an adult, here's what I know that's wrong. That is a hundred percent wrong. Like there's zero, zero Chance that A child loves Their parent as much as their parent loves them. Like if You've got a healthy parent Relationship With your kid, Like, I love my children so much more than they love me. They don't comprehend it right now, they don't understand it. And it's not until someday when they are a parent looking at their own kid and understanding the sacrifices they make for their Kid, that they Will start to understand the love That their parent Had for them. Like I called my parents like, Hey, You're right. You Do love me more. I get it. Like, I didn't know that. And now I do. And we're in a series on the book of Hosea. And in the book of Hosea, those Two things are true, But they're true of God's People and they're true for you and me Today as well. That we have A hard time understanding our limitations. We have a hard time understanding long-term consequences. And that's why sometimes we choose the wrong thing in the moment, but We also Have a hard time understanding and fully comprehending God's Love for us. That that God's love for Us is so much greater than We could Possibly understand or fathom. That if We would fully Embrace how amazing God's Love is for us, it would Change everything. So You've got a Bible Start turning to Hosea. We're gonna start in chapter four. I say that 'Cause it takes a While to turn to The Book of Hosea. And while you're doing that, let let's Set up a little bit of Background on the book. That the background is that If you look at this book as a theater play, there are these four specific acts That happen. So in act one of the book Of Hosea, we talked about it Two weeks ago, you Have this, this Wild thing that happens that God tells his prophet Hosea, who was a real Person, a real prophet. He tells Hosea to marry Gomer who Was a Prostitute. And, and that really did happen. And yet while it also happened, God was using it as an analogy for our relationship with him, That Hosea marries a Wife Who is continually unfaithful to him over and over and over again. And God is trying to say that in our relationship with him in the same way that Israel's relationship with him, that there was this unfaithfulness over and over and over and over again. And most of the time when we think of the book Of Hosea, we just think of those three chapters. But that's all it is. It's just three chapters. And really It's the prologue, it, It's setting up The rest of the book. So then in act two, You have this, this law case where The case is made against Israel. And then there's this pronounced punishment that that Starts in about Chapter four goes through about chapter 10. Then act three, You have Hosea Chapter 11, where you Have God Who is just in anguish demonstrating his compassion and his love For his people. Then Act four, which we will look at next week, is this resolution. It talks about this return in healing that God is offering us. And now if you are gonna think about like what, what's the main point of what we're talking about today? It's really performative religion that that what God is angry at Israel for is that on the outside they're going through the motions and everything looks good, but on the inside they're spiritually bankrupt. The performative religion is doing things to look spiritual. So all the religious motions, you're checking the boxes, you're saying the right words. You are attending church, you're memorizing the right things, but doing it without a sincere heart of love, of obedience, and of trust in God, that that was the dilemma that faced the nation of Israel. And wouldn't you say that that is the same dilemma that faces us today? That is so easy to fall into the trap of performative religion, going through the motions, looking all the right ways, and yet missing it on the inside. If you've got a Bible, Hosea chapter four, we're gonna start in verse one. It says this, here, the word of the Lord o children of Israel, for the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast. Love that word. Steadfast love is the Hebrew word has said, we talked about it a couple weeks ago, has said is hard to translate because we use the word love for everything. I love tacos. I love Colorado, I love the Broncos. I love my wife. Like we, we use the same word to mean all kinds of different things. Well, his said is steadfast love. It can be translated as mercy, but it is an unyielding love that requires action. It requires follow through. It requires faithfulness. So God's saying that there is no faithfulness or has said steadfast love with Israel. There's no knowledge of God in the land. There is swearing and lying and murder, stealing and committing adultery. They break all bounds and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore, the land mourns and all who dwell in it languish and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea are taken away. So here we have the crime. The God is saying, this is the crime of my people. And on the outside, Israel looked great. They looked like a prosperous nation. They looked like everything was going well, but God is saying on the inside you are spiritually bankrupt, that you're still going to the temple, you're still making offerings, you're still making sacrifices. And yet there is unrepentant sin in the land that your hearts are far from me. Then skip over to chapter five and pick up in verse four, Hosea chapter five, verse four. It says, their deeds do not permit them to return to their God. For the spirit of ham is within them, and they know not the Lord. The pride of Israel testifies to his face, Israel and Ephraim shall stumble in his guilt. Judah also shall stumble with him. Now pause for a moment. 'cause This is slightly confusing, but if you follow me for a second, it makes more sense. We talked about it a little bit a couple weeks ago, but after King Solomon, you have the nation of Israel splits into the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. There's all these names that get used in different ways and sometimes they're interchangeable. So the northern kingdom is often called either Israel or it's called Ephraim. Ephraim is one of the tribes. You have 12 tribes of Israel. Some of the tribes go the northern kingdom, some of the tribes go the southern kingdom. Ephraim is one of the northern kingdom tribes. So Israel and Ephraim get used interchangeably to talk about the northern kingdom. The northern kingdom, historically, about 50 years after this is written, Assyria comes in and wipes them out. And then we never hear from the northern kingdom again. The southern kingdom gets called Judah. So you have these three names, but really there's a fourth name that is occasionally used in the book of Hosea. And that sometimes Hosea uses the name Israel to talk about the northern kingdom. And sometimes Hosea uses the name Israel to talk about future Israel being the entire nation and the descendants, all kinds of different names. But if you track with it, it does make sense. The pride of Israel testifies to his face. Israel and Ephraim northern kingdom shall stumble in his guild. Judas Southern kingdom also shall stumble with them historically in the the distant future that would also happen. Verse six, with their flocks in herds, they shall go to seek the Lord, but they will not find him. He is drawn from them. So, so you have the crime in Hosea chapter four. Now you have this verdict that's starting to come in chapter five, where God is saying that they're gonna get further and further and further away from God. That's where they've gotten. And now they're turning back at the, the last moment when the Assyrians are, are coming in to wipe them up, they're gonna cry out for God. They're saying, oh, wait, wait, we didn't mean it. We're gonna turn back to God. And he's saying, Hey, you're too far gone that at that point you won't be heard. That the punishment that is coming is not going to stop. And now practically we see this with sin all the time. That, that you've seen somebody that they start going down this road towards sin or addiction or wrongdoing, and they're going further and further and further and further. And there's these warnings and there's these people saying, Hey, no, you need to come back. You need to turn from that. You need to not do that. And you, you hear people say, well, no, it's okay. I got it under control. It's not that big a deal. It's not that big of a problem. And then when it gets so disastrous and everything starts to fall apart, then it's like, oh, no, no, no, I don't want this consequence. But at that point, you can't spare the consequence. It's too far gone. Flip over to chapter six, chapter six of Hosea starting in verse one. Now we hear the punishment come, let us return to the Lord. For he has torn us that he may heal us. He has struck us down and he will bind us up. After two days, he will revive us on the third day, he will raise us up that we may live before him. Let us know, let us press onto know the Lord. His going out as sure as the dawn, he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth. What shall I do with you O Ephraim, what shall I do with you? O Judah, your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away. This picture of if you wake up early in the morning, there's, there's the mist, the dew that's on the grass and on the, the plants that, especially in Colorado, it doesn't take long before that stuff just disappears. It's gone there for a moment and then it just withers away evaporates. God's saying that his people's love for him is just like that mist there for a moment. And then it just slowly whispers away. Verse five. Therefore, I've honed them with by the prophets, I have slain them by the words of my mouth. And my judgment goes forth as the light for if you're someone who underlines their circles. Verse six is a really important line. God says, for I desire, steadfast love has said and not sacrifice the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. Now, now, Jesus would pick up that phrase two times in the New Testament, and he would quote from Hosea chapter six verse six, twice Jesus quotes and he says, I desire mercy and not sacrifice. Now, remember that word has said, can be translated as unyielding love or unfailing love, or can be translated as mercy. So that's what Jesus is saying. What are the two contexts of Jesus saying to, he's saying it to the Pharisees that then now the the Pharisees, if you grew up in the church, and we tend to think of the Pharisees as the religious bad guys, but in the first century, they were not the bad guys. They were the good guys. They were the moral teachers, and they were just the moral teachers. They were the moral followers of Jesus. They lived lives that looked on the outside flawless. They were highly moral. They went through all the motions that they were expected to go through, and they knew the word of God better than anybody. I had a seminary, professor de describing the Pharisees, and he said that there, there was no printing press. So in order to get their copy of the Torah, the Old Testament law, they would have to hand write. They, they'd have to look at the copy and then they'd have to write their own version of it. Now, I, I would guess that if that was the only way to come up with your own Bible, there'd be a whole lot less Bibles floating around today. Like it takes some dedication to say, I want this and I'm willing to sit down and write the whole thing. And they, because they wrote it, they memorized huge se huge sections of it. And, and we're not a hundred percent sure that this is true. But, but history would say that one of the tests to become a Pharisees is that they would take a nail, they would drive it through their copy of the Torah, and they would have to tell every word that that nail hit. That's what my seminary professor said. I've never been able to verify that, but it sounds really cool either way. It means that they knew the Old Testament law better than anybody. And yet who Jesus is talking to in this verse is that group of people. He says, you know the law and yet you, you're going through the sacrifices and the motions, and yet your heart is far from me. Your head's got it right. But I desire has said, I desire mercy. I desire love, unfailing love. It's this warning that he's trying to give to his people then, but it's also a warning that Jesus would have for us. Now that going through the motions does not make us godly. Going through the motions does not mean we have an intimate relationship with Jesus. It is about our heart. Then in chapter seven and chapter eight, Jose uses these, these imagery, these three pictures for us to remember. The first is he, he talks about a half baked cake in chapter seven, verse eight, that he's describing them as being impressive on the outside, like a veneer, but having an uncooked heart. Probably the best way to think about it is, have you ever cooked pancakes on a griddle? So you have like some hot griddle or, or on the stove and you, you have pancake better. And I like cooking pancakes mainly because it's easy to cook pancakes. Like there's some stuff that's hard to cook. I hate cooking chicken because I feel like if you overcook chicken, that's the worst thing in the world. It's so dry. But if you undercook it, someone could die. And that's your, like, that's the spectrum that you're dealing with when you're cooking that. Whereas pancakes very easy. You put it on there, you wait for the bubbles. Once there's enough bubbles, you flip it over. Easiest thing to cook in the world is pancakes. But imagine if you put down the, the pancake mix and it starts to cook and it starts to bubble up. And so on one side it's gonna be beautiful. It's gonna be that, that golden brown, and it's starting to get fluffy, but you never flip it over and cook the other side. You just, you just take the, the spatula and you flap that thing onto a plate on the top, it's gonna look great. Like, Hey, this is golden brown. Perfect, but if it never cooked the underneath, you're gonna take one pipe of that pancake and you're gonna decide, you know, I'm good, I'm good from here. God's saying that that imagery is what Israel was on the inside. Then on the outside, they looked great, but on the inside they were raw, they were gross, that they were disgusting then, then he describes them as having leaky strength. It says, strangers devour his strength. And he does not know that phrase, and he does not know. To me, that's the scary part of the phrase. And it's pointing out this truth that that oftentimes what we do is we compromise in really small areas, and we don't think that they're big areas like, well, hey, I'm just gonna do this and now I'm gonna do this, and now I'm gonna do this. And there's this warning that their spiritual strength has been sucked away from them. They're losing it, and they're completely unaware of that fact compromise drains us, but it drains us quietly. And then the last picture is a sowing in the wind. Ruah is the Hebrew word for wind. So it's just the picture is nothingness. So they're throwing out seeds and the wind is taking it away, but then it goes on later to talk about a whirlwind. So it's this picture that we always reap more than what we sow. So Israel was sowing nothingness. And then the picture is that this whirlwind being the Assyrian Empire would come in and wipe them out, that because they, they weren't planting, they weren't growing. The result of that would be this dire consequence. There's this historian, his name is Joseph Campbell, and when he, he does history, he does architecture. And when he looks back in history, he has this phrase or this quote where he describes how in looking at any architectural dig, you can determine pretty easily the thing that, that people valued the most. He says this, you can tell what's informing a society by what the tallest building is. When you approach a medieval town, the cathedral is the tallest thing in the place. When you approach an 18th century town, it is the political palace. That's the tallest thing in the place. And when you approach a modern city, the tallest places are the office buildings, the centers of economic life. Now, now think if you go back 4,500 years ago, we have architectural digs of things that still exist. Like the great pyramid, a Giza. I mean, 4,500 years ago, this thing was built and it's still standing strong. It's doing great. Now, what we can tell if we look at that about that people at that time is there's plenty of things we don't know about that people at that time, but we know that it took tens of thousands of people, decades and decades and decades to build this thing. And it was massive. And, and what's the point of it? That it's, it's demonstrating what they, they valued, they valued their pharaoh. They, they treated their Pharaoh as a deity. They valued the sun, the moon, and they valued the afterlife. And so they spent time, energy, and effort building something that was the focal point of their life of who they were. You, you flash forward a couple thousand years and you've got Rome, and what does Rome do? Rome builds the coum. You can go see it today. Now, the cossum that you can go see today looks nothing like it would have a couple thousand years ago, a couple thousand years ago, it was majestic a lot of the, the beautiful things that were part of the coliseum that they got taken away and added to other buildings later on. But at the moment that it was built, anybody going into Rome would've seen that and just been in awe. It dominated the landscape. The culture revolved around that place. It was the might of Rome. It was also glorifying violence and glorifying war and glorifying entertainment. You flash forward about 1700 years and you've got the Buckingham Palace. At that point in human history, we started building giant palaces and, and, and it was this way of demonstrating wealth and influence and affluence. It was this way of saying, Hey, we are a great nation and, and by being a great nation, we're gonna uplift these certain people. And so you could tell what that nation valued by looking at buildings like that. You look in our country in the 1920s and 1930s in New York, which, which became the epicenter of the economy of the entire world, they started building giant skyscrapers dominating the sky. Why? To show the whole world, this is where the money is. That was the thing that was being worshiped and valued. Now, think for a moment of 2025. If you go to a city, what tends to be the biggest, most dominating piece of architecture in a city? Now in our city? I, I would guess that it's this right here in most big cities, that's the case. Oh, wait, what's crazy about Empower Field? It's, it's huge. It's big fits A lot of people, costs a lot of money. It's a little over 20 years old and we're about to build a new one because that one not good enough anymore. Now, I've been there, it's pretty nice. Seems, seems like it's in pretty good shape to me, but we're building a new one. It's gonna cost $2 billion. That's the new stadium. And now, now don't, don't hear me wrong. I I'm not antis sports. I hope the Broncos defeat the Texans today. If anybody's curious. Yes love the Broncos love sports, but there is a concern about worship. And worship is really, it's, it's not what we think of it as a religious word, but worship is just what you give your worth to what it is that you value. And if you take a step back and say, for our culture, what is it that we value? Like, put it a different way. If someone a thousand years from now studied our cities like an archeologists, what would they say was at the heart of our civil civilization at this moment in time? Or to make it more personal? If someone studied the evidence of your life or my life, what would they say is at the heart of our life? What is that thing that we ascribe worth and value to, and not what we say we ascribe worth and value to, but if they did it, an audit of the thoughts that you're thinking every single day and where you're spending your time and your energy and your effort and your talents and your money, what really is the thing that your world revolves around? What is it that you, what is it that I am worshiping? Now, flip over to chapter 11, and we see the response of God to, to this brokenness that exists. He says, when Israel was a child, I loved him. And out of Egypt, I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away. They kept sacrificing to the bales and burning offerings to idols. And yet it was I who taught Eri to walk. I took them by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with chords of kindness, with the bands of love. And I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them. It, it wasn't until I became a parent that I understood how much it was that my parents did for me. Like I remember my, my oldest who terrible sleeper as a, as a young kid, still not a great sleeper as a 13-year-old, but as a young kid, really bad sleeper. And I remember like without exaggeration, this exact conversation where we're six months, nine months in to him being a baby and me calling my mom and just saying, Hey, I just wanna apologize because being a parent's heart, and clearly you did a lot that I was completely unaware of until now. And that has been magnified over and over and over and over again. That, that through loving my own kids and realizing how much time, energy, and effort I spend around their life, it it causes me to appreciate my own parents and how much time, energy, and effort that I know that they had to spend on me. And what God is saying is he's saying as much as that's true on an earthly sense, he, he's saying from an everlasting God sense that that, that God has been doing so much for us behind the scenes, loving us and caring for us, and yet so often we're unaware of him. Then skip down to verse eight. He says, how can I give you up O Ephraim, how can I hand you over O Israel? How can I make you like a ma? How can I treat you like zebo my heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim for I am God and not a man, the holy one in your midst. And I will not come in wrath that that if we could just comprehend how much God loves us, it changes everything that, that we have this, this temptation to think of God as this, this wrathful God that's just throwing down lightning bolts. And God is a righteous God that does pour out his wrath on unrighteousness. But instead of us being the ones that received it, he pours it out on his son Jesus on the cross. That if we could comprehend that love and that, that to me that the best way to understand it is it's like a parent that has a wayward child and that wayward child is going down a path towards destruction. And, and that parent loves their child so much that they, they look at their child and they say, if only they knew what was available to them, if only they knew their potential, if only they knew that if they would turn away from that path and come back towards us, and that we want the best for them, that God is saying that to all of us right now. That, that sometimes we go through the motions and so we look spiritual on the outside, but on the inside our heart is far from them. And God is saying, if only you knew the life available to you, if your heart would be all in and fully dedicated to me, I'm gonna end briefly with four lies and four truths. How do we take the words of Hosea and apply them practically to our life today? Line number one is this, that if I do church stuff, then I'm good, man. If I just go to church and, and I go to some Bible studies, the man, I'm, my life's good. I'm doing exactly what God wants me to do. And that's just not true. But the truth is that rituals don't replace repentance, rituals don't replace relationship. Why number two is, well, small compromises don't matter. I mean, I, I can go to church and then live the same way as everybody else Monday through Friday and, and I get a little Jesus here and then live a worldly life, and it's just not that big of a deal. You sow the wind, you reap a whirlwind, we reap more than what we sow. That's the biblical truth. Line number three is this, that look, I'll just return when I feel like it. And that was the lie that the Northern Kingdom believed. They, they thought, Hey, I'll just, I'll just, whenever I feel like it, I will go back. And then it, it eventually got too late. But the truth is that to return is a decision. It's not a feeling. It's intentionally saying, Hey, before I go so far down that path of destruction, that that my life is so wrecked. Hey, hey, I'm coming back now. And then line number four is this. Well, hey, I've gone too far. God's god's done with me. I can't get back now. But the truth is that God is merciful. He disciplines us to restore us, not to discard us. That God is looking at your life and my life and he's saying, I love you so much and I've got this future, this plan, this desire for you. But the temptation in this world is that we get so easily distracted by the things that our world elevates, our world worships, and there's always some shiny big thing that, that we can give our hearts to that thing and miss out on the life that God wants for us to live today. And that that life should look different than the world around us. But man, it is so much more fulfilling. Let's pray Heaven. Father God, I thank you that you love us more than we could ever comprehend or understand. I also thank you that you understand the consequences even when we don't. And so, Lord, I pray that you would, sir, inside of our hearts right now, God, that we truly, genuinely would evaluate and look inwardly and say, does my life look good on the outside? But what is it on the inside? Is my heart aligned? Is my worship is the center of my heart and my values? Is it you? And if not, help me to change. You gotta pray for any in the room that feels far from you that, that they would know. They would genuinely, truly know that they can never outrun your love and pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.