Slide 1
We live in a world of more:
More options. More experiences. More progress. More independence. More control. More productivity. More content.

Slide 2
But… every time we add something to our lives, something else takes a back seat. 

Slide 3
Harmon S. Palmer invented the original cinder block around 1900.
Harmon H. Palmer (his son) invented the cinder black as we know it in 1920.

Slide 4
The block didn’t become stronger by adding more.

Slide 5
It became stronger by making room for something more important.

Slide 6
Right now, what are you making room for in your life?

Slide 7
Hebrews 10:24–25 – …consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together…
1 Corinthians 14:26 – When you come together… Let all things be done for building up.
Colossians 3:16 – …singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
Ephesians 5:19-20 – …addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ

Slide 8
Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become ‘unity’ conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. 
– A.W. Tozer

Slide 9
Ephesians 4:11–16
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Slide 10
– Jesus designed the church to build people (not consumers) (v. 11–12)
– The goal is maturity together (v. 13)
– Without the body, we stay vulnerable (v. 14)

Slide 11
“Ephesus was a major Greco-Roman urban center, religiously plural, shaped by public teaching, rhetoric, and competing “truth-claims” (philosophical schools, traveling teachers, mystery cults, and the pervasive Artemis cult in the city’s identity). In that world, people were constantly being discipled by persuasive voices.”

Slide 12
– Growth happens through truth in love (v. 15)
– The body grows when each part works (v. 16)

Slide 13
Harvard Study of Adult Development
3 Big Lessons:
1. Social connections are really good for us.
2. It’s not just the number of friends you have, or if you’re in a committed relationship, but the quality of your close relationships that matters.
3. Good relationships don’t just protect our bodies, they protect our brains.

Slide 14
“The clearest lesson that we get from this 75 year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.”
– Robert Waldinger, Psychiatrist, Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development

Slide 15
And here’s the challenge:
Most of us want the strength of community without the vulnerability of community.

Slide 16
We want the reinforcement… but we haven’t made the room.

Slide 17
Step 1: Reject the “myth of more” with one concrete decision
Step 2: Shift your Sunday posture
Step 3: Move from attendance to participation
Step 4: Practice one fellowship act this week

Ha, have you noticed that? We live in a world of more everything is about more, more options, more experiences, more progress, more independence, more control, more predictivity, more content. If you look at just the internet the internet right now is doubling in size about every three to four years. Like you, you think of of the size of the internet. So every time you upload a picture, every, every time you upload a video that has a file size to it, the size of the internet right now, every three to four years doubles. Why ’cause more. We love the idea of more, but here’s a principle. Every time that we add something to our life, something else takes a backseat. This, this last 10 days where the days in January where New Year’s resolutions go to die like the first two weeks are easy. You’re like, yes, I’m excited. I’m, I’m fired up. We’re going. And then you get into beyond week two into week three into week four, and that’s where New Year’s resolutions, they just start to fade. And one of the challenges with New Year’s resolutions is we like to add things to our life. Hey, I’m going to add one hour every day of working out. But, but equally important to what we’re adding is taking a step back and saying, if I’m adding this good thing, that means that there’s something in my life I have to take away. Like there’s only 24 hours in a day. I, I don’t get a New Year’s resolution and say, and this year I’m gonna have 25 hours in every day. Like, that’s not how it works. My, my time is finite. And so if I’m adding something, it means I have to remove something. And there’s a fascinating story around the cinder block. The original cinder block was invented by a guy named Harmon s Palmer. He invented it around the year 1900. But the original cinder block was much bigger than this. It, it was so heavy that a, a, a person couldn’t pick it up. Even a couple people couldn’t pick it up. It, it actually had to be moved with a crane. And it, it helped change a lot of things in how they do construction. And yet, for that first 20 years, it was a little bit limited because it, it was so much energy and effort to get the crane and get the team and, and move everything around until 20 years later, his son, Harmon h Palmer, invented the cinder block as we know it. And the big radical change that he made is he took the big cinder block, he made it smaller, and then he made huge holes in it. Now, now I, I just want you to imagine that you are the son and you’re going to dad, and you’re like, Hey dad, I got an idea. You know, you know your invention that you have a patent on that, that has really just radically transformed how we do construction. I’ve improved on it. Like even that, that phrase right there, if you’re a dad, it’s probably like, yeah, we’ll see about that. And then his son says, let me me tell you how I improved it. I got rid of 70% of it, but I just took it out. Like, like, who needs all that stuff? I put some big holes into your cinder block, and that’s what makes it better. Like, can you imagine what that conversation would’ve been like? And yet he was a hundred percent right. Not only did he make it significantly easier for one person to stand up and carry it around her around he actually made the cinder block stronger. And the reason that he made the center block stronger was not because this CI block in and of itself is stronger, but it now allows space for something more important in construction. It would be rebar to go in those gaps. And so, so I want you to understand a, a pretty significant principle. It became stronger by making room for something that was more important. Lemme repeat that. It became stronger by making room for something that was more important. And so, so here’s the challenge for all of us, that if we wanna become stronger in our life, like you specifically look at your spiritual relationship with God. If you want to be stronger in your relationship with God, the only way that that is possible is to remove some other things in our life. And so here, here’s what I would start with just as a challenge for all of us that to wrestle with right now, in your life, in my life, what are you making room for? But what are the things that you’d say, no, this has enough value that in order for, for me to, to really do what I say that I’m going to do, I I’ve got to remove some of these other areas that are less important. And so here’s what I wanna unpack today, is we’ve been in this sermon series on spiritual disciplines, and we’ve talked about fasting and we’ve talked about scripture, and we’ve talked about just taking care of our body, that today I wanna talk about something that’s gonna feel a little cliche and it’s gonna feel a little bit self-serving. And that is simply church. Why should we go to church? That, that so often, especially in today’s culture, here’s what you hear people say, Hey, listen, you don’t need to go to church that I can, I can do this all by myself. I can get close to God all by myself. I can spend time in prayer. I can spend time in the Bible. Why do I need to go to the church? And then they’ll use this phrase, they’ll, they’ll say things like, Hey, the, the church is not a building. It’s people. And there’s parts of that, by the way, that are a hundred percent true. The church is not this building. The church is the people. And I can grow closer in my relationship with God by myself. And yet, here’s what we see in scripture. That scripture does not show us a picture of the New Testament Church that is in isolation. That every time we see the New Testament Scripture church, it is in community. And over and over again, the scriptures himself are telling us, Hey, you need to be in community. When we come together on Sunday morning, we come together to worship. What does that mean? That that, that word worship the etymology is a fascinating thing because it’s, It’s really the word worth. It’s saying that we’re ascribing worth to something. That Word Worth etymology of That would be weight. So, so it’s saying, what Is it in your life and my life that has weight? What Are the things that we are saying this has value, importance, and significance? Let’s rapid fire. Look at a few verses. In Hebrews chapter 10, verses 24 and 25, It says this, Consider How to Stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together. First Corinthians 1426, when you come together, Let All things be done for building up Colossians three 16 singing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Ephesians five 19 and 20, addressing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, Giving thanks always And For everything to God, the Father and the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here’s What’s fascinating, that, that when you think of what we do on a Sunday morning, It Really has not changed for 2000 years That what we see In the scriptures In the early church Is that Christians would gather together as community and they would sing songs of worship To God. They would pray together, they would take Lord’s supper Together, and they would hear teaching from the word that through Discipleship. If you look About a hundred years after scripture, one of the early church documents that we’ve got, not part of the Bible, but separate from that is this document called the Diday. And it shows Basically An order of service in the early church. And guess what we see? We see pretty much the same thing that we see now, that people Gather Together and they sing songs of worship. And, and they have a message that That is Teaching scripture. And they pray together and they take The Lord’s supper together. And so when we think of the, The style of church sure Our context is different. How we do it different, the style of songs is different, But the Heart behind why we Do what we do is Completely the same. I I love this quote from a w Tozer. He was a Pastor about a hundred years ago. He writes this, has it ever occurred to you That 100 pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other Thereof One accord by being tuned not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually Bow. So 100 worshipers meet together. Each One looking away to Christ are in the heart near to each other than they could possibly be, Where they To become unity conscious and turn their eyes away from God to Strive for closer Relationship or, Or closer fellowship. The, the, the idea of this Is that we’re coming together To ascribe Worth and value and weight To God That all kinds of different backgrounds, all kinds of different ethnicities and socioeconomics and politics, that all that gets laid aside. And we say that together, that Jesus is more important than anything else. And then if we will have that ideal and all chase in the same direction, that, that God does something beautiful, that he builds up something, we see this language of building over and over and over. He’s building up something in you and me individually, but he’s building something up in all of us collectively that is greater than each one individually. That, that when we all point in the same direction, we start singing the same tune and worship to him. If you’ve got a Bible, turn with me to Ephesians chapter four, Ephesians chapter four, verse 11. If you don’t have a Bible, you can fall along in the app. And, and here’s this section I think tells us the why. Like if you were just to say, Hey, why should I go to church? Why does that matter? Why can’t I do this by myself? This passage, I think, really exemplifies why we have to do church and community. Ephesians chapter four, Cerner verse 11. It says this, and he gave, now pause. ’cause The he is important. This is not talking about Paul. If you look in the context of who he’s talking about in the, the few verses above this, he’s talking about Jesus. And so when it says, and he, it’s talking about, and Jesus, Jesus gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful, deceitful schemes, rather speaking the truth in love. We are to grow in every way into him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Let’s, let’s take it kind of verse by verse and look section by section at, at really what it’s talking about, this first two verses, verses 11 and verse 12. It’s painting this idea that Jesus designed the church to build people and not consumers. And now that’s different. I think that sometimes culturally how we approach church culturally, I think oftentimes, and I’m very guilty of this, that I approach church almost like I approach a movie. Like I walk out of the movie theater and the moment I walk out of a movie theater, I turn to the person that I was looking watching the movie with, and I look at them and I say, Hey, what’d you think? And, and we start basically giving our own Rotten tomato score about the movie. But well, I liked this part of it like that, that had a really great action scene. But man, this part or that plot hole, or man, that, that made no sense to me whatsoever. And not only that, we’re kind of influenced by the group around us. Like if you ever watched a movie and like, like you watched the movie and when you first saw it, it was like, yeah, wasn’t that great? And then months later, like, everybody loves the movie, and you go back and watch it and you’re like, okay, maybe it was pretty good. I I remember that with, with the movie Napoleon Dynamite, anybody watching the Napoleon Dynamite? Like I remember watching the movie by myself or, or just with one other person in the movie theater. ’cause We’d heard just amazing things and we watched, I was like, that’s the dumbest thing that I’ve ever heard. And yet, somehow what happened in the following months is I started quoting that movie. I started using phrases from that movie and then watched it with a group. And I thought it was one of the funniest things that I’d ever seen that I was influenced by the group around me, what my opinion of that thing was. And so often we do the same thing with church. Like I walk outta church and I turn to the person next to me, I’m like, Hey, so what’d you think? And then we start giving it a rotten tomato score. They’re like, well, that sermon wasn’t as good as the sermon last week. I don’t think that that that part of the sermon made sense whatsoever, or that story, you know, it just wasn’t that good, man. He’s normally way funnier than that. And he just wasn’t very funny today or that song missed or that video. I didn’t, it didn’t make sense to me at all. Like, we naturally turn into consumers because guess what? That’s who we are in every other area of life. But what Jesus is saying is that the church is not trying to build consumers. We’re trying to, to build people. The goal is not to just come and consume church. The goal is to come and to participate in church. And one of the ways I do that is through worship. And, and here’s, here’s the crazy thing about worship. If, if the heart of worship is about ascribing worth value and weight to someone, to something other than me, then I should be able to do that regardless of the style, regardless of the song, regardless really of how well it’s sung or how poorly it’s sung because it’s a condition, it’s a posture of my heart. Secondly, it tells us in verse 13 that the goal is maturity together. Now, here’s what I want you to see. In all the language that we see in this whole section, none of it is individual language. None of it is Paul saying, here’s what you need for you. And if you do this, now, all of it is we, and together, it’s all meant to be done in community. And so there’s this idea that we are maturing to, into something. It’s saying that, Hey, stop being like little kids spiritually and instead grow into spiritually mature adults. It’s about who we are becoming that, that I should be looking at my life, life and say, am I maturing spiritually? Am I growing up Spiritually? And if I’m not, then I need to do an inward look at myself and say, Hey, what’s wrong? What, what is happening? And then it goes on in verse 14 to say that without The body, we stay vulnerable. It’s interesting that word, that word Vulnerable. They have this thing in, in, in wildlife, like if, if you think of going out and, and being by yourself out in the mountains, they have this thing called the rule Of threes That you can go For about Three minutes without oxygen. Now, some of you’re like, I can’t hold my breath out long, But your body Can go for about three minutes without Oxygen. Then you can go For about Three hours without Shelter. Like if you’re in, in extreme conditions, you got About three hours before you’ve gotta Do something to warm yourself. Your Body can go about three Days without water. Your body can go about three weeks without food. That rule of three, you Go beyond three in any one of those things and it’s really Bad for you. You become vulnerable Really quickly To the point of Death. And now, now here’s what Paul’s trying to get us to understand. He’s saying that spiritually We Become vulnerable when we are in isolation Spiritually, We become vulnerable when we are not a part Of a body that Is doing this thing Together. That Paul Is writing this letter To A church that is in a real city in the first century called Ephesus. And one historian writing about Ephesus. They wrote this To help us understand the context. They say Ephesus Was a major Greco-Roman urban center, Religiously plural, shaped by public Teaching rhetoric and competing truth claims, Philosophical schools, traveling Teachers, mystery cults, and the pervasive, Excuse Me, Artemis cult in the city’s identity. And that world, People Were constantly being discipled By persuasive voices. And so there’s, there’s This warning about this, this wind season that is coming, Hey, hey, don’t just get tossed To and fro By the wind. But, but I would argue that, that you look at The context of Ephesus, it’s, It’s very similar to the context That we have today that there’s A lot of wind trying to blow us a lot of different directions. And what the internet has done is it has given a voice To everybody, whether, whether they are qualified to have A voice or not. I mean, you got opinions all over the Place. You got podcasts all over the place, and all of those Opinions are trying to shape and form and disciple us in one direction or another. That Probably the, The clearest example of that is if you watch the news, there is no such thing as unbiased news. The news always tends to have a bias That Is pushing us one direction or another. And So Paul is saying, Hey, you’re in a culture that is Always Pushing you certain directions and instead of just being pushed to and fro that, if we’re rooted together, if we’re building something up together, if we’re locked arms together, it allows us to stay stable on the most important thing. And what’s the most important thing, Jesus, that he is our true north that we’re constantly pointing back towards. Then in verse 15, he tells us that growth happens through truth and love. Now, if you’ve been around church for, for any amount of time, you’ve heard that phrase, truth and love. And sometimes we treat it like it’s just a cute phrase, Hey, you need to speak with truth and love. Yeah, that’s great. But, but that’s actually straight from scripture. This idea of being in a community that speaks to one another in truth and love. But here’s the problem with truth and love. It sounds so much easier than it is in practice. Like if you’re a parent in here and you’ve ever had to grow up young kids, especially if you’ve got multiple kids and they’ve ever fought and you’ve had to go discipline kids, rarely does anyone receive that. Well, if you’re sitting in a room and, and all of a sudden you, you, you start to hear, most of the time you hear the argument way ahead of time, like you start to hear the yelling, it starts to rumble. You’re like, any moment now, this is probably getting outta hand. And sometimes there’s even a loud noise and sometimes there’s crying and, and eventually it gets to a point where it’s overflowed and now it comes to mom and dad and, and, and most of the time one of them runs off to mom and dad. And then, then what happens? The other one or, or the two other ones, or if you’re in a bigger family, the nine other ones, however many kids you got, they all start running because they don’t want the first one to, to be able to tell the story without them giving their context. And so the first one will come in and say, Hey, they punched me in the face. And you’ll be like, oh my goodness. They punched you in the face. And so they, you turn to the other kid say, Hey, did you punch them in the face? And what, what is the immediate reaction? Like, can I tell you what reaction I’ve never had in my family? I’ve never had the other one that just got titled on say, I’m so sorry . Like, everything that they said is completely accurate and true. That, that I was being selfish and immature and I need to do better. And I’m gonna, I’m gonna take actions in my life to make sure this doesn’t happen again. You, you know what I’m gonna, I’m gonna send myself to my room independent of you right now. ’cause I I just need some, some time alone with my thoughts so I can process. Like, that’s never happened to me. What, what does happen when you turn to the next one and say, did you do this thing that they said that you did? The, the almost every time the immediate reaction is, nuh, nope, not me. That’s not what happened. And, and then we naturally get defensive and say, let me tell you the real story, lemme tell you what actually is going on. And, and we think, well, that’s a kiddish thing that doesn’t happen to adults. But, but guess what? We do the same thing as adults. The, the, in a marriage, your, your spouse tries to say, Hey, this is something that I’m carrying. This is something that’s heavy. Like is there any way even when you work up to say it right, is there any way that, that maybe you could just do more to help out around the house? What, what is our immediate re reaction? No. Nope. Let me tell you all the things that I’m, let me explain to you what, what it is from my, like we are naturally defensive. That’s just who we are. We do not take correction well. And, and so when, when Paul tells us that one of the values of community is it’s being vulnerable enough to allow other people to speak truth in my life now, now that truth needs to be in love, but still speaking truth phrases like, Hey, I’m noticing a pattern in behavior in you that is unhealthy or, or something like, man, I I’m just noticing a, a shift in who you are. And I I wanna know what is going on. Someone that is willing to step into your life and call you out. Yeah. ’cause Here’s the reality that I, I think sometimes falsely we think I become a Christian, then man, I’m good. I’m set. But, but that’s not the biblical picture. The biblical picture is that I’m born with a sin nature. That means that I’m born selfish, focused on me, and that when I become a Christian, I’m now made in right standing relationship with God. I now have the power of the Holy Spirit in my life. But what is very evident in clear in scripture is that I will still struggle with sin for the rest of my life. Paul is way godlier than I will ever be. Paul struggles with sin. Paul got caught up into the third heaven. Like that’s never happened to me before. Like I’ve never been caught up in a vision where I experienced heaven never gonna happen in my life way godlier than me. And yet he still said that he struggled with sin. So all of us for the rest of our life will struggle with sin if that is true. And if I can recognize that, that I will never be unbiased about myself, that means that I need other people that can be unbiased for me, that they can say, Hey, I’m noticing something there, and that’s not okay. Then in verse 16, it says that the body grows when each part works, every part. I I think one of the other false ideas that we have in church is like, all right, hey, the church is gonna work really great if pastor, if you do your job right, and then, Hey, Myron, you need to sing, right? And then we, we need the, the right staff over there and the right staff over there. And then, hey, as long as we’ve got those things, everything’s good, everything’s great. But that’s, that’s not actually what scripture says. It’s saying that every part is doing work. It’s kinda this idea of a construction site. You ever go to a construction site or look at a construction site and it looks like a lot of people are standing around. Only a few people are working. That’s what most churches look like too. Like, like there’s all these bricks, they’re all just laying around and we’re all just looking at one guy like, Hey, you, hey, there’s another brick over there that you need to go pick up. Like, no. Hey, we all got to pick up bricks. If we’re gonna build something great, and that’s the picture we’re all carrying, wait, we’re all using our giftedness together to accomplish something that I can’t do by myself. There’s this amazing thing that happens when we do community together that we can build something as a whole that me by myself could never build individually. There’s this amazing study, I i, if you have never seen it, there’s a Ted talk called the, the Harvard Study of Adult Adult Development. And the guy that that runs that study he does this TED Talk talking about this study that Harvard did over 75 years. Then, now that Ted talk’s probably five years old. So for over 80 years, what Harvard has been doing is that they take college students and then they follow them for the rest of their life. 75 years ago or 80 years ago, it was just a group of men. Eventually they, they add some women into it. And so they’ve got all kinds of different people, all kinds of different backgrounds. They start when they’re young, and then they just follow ’em until they die. And so they’ll at least get on a phone call with ’em every year every few years, they’ll go, they’ll sit down and they’ll do an interview with them. And they’re simply just trying to figure out, Hey, what are the things that, when we track and we look at people, what are the things in a life that leads to a healthy life eventually, like at the end of somebody’s life, when we’re thinking of someone that had a successful life, a life that had overall high levels of satisfaction in life. When we think of those people, what are the characteristics that we found? Now, now, most of us would think that the people that are gonna be the happiest in this life are gonna be the people that, well, I would just say, well, it’s gonna be the rich people. Like they’re gonna be really happy ’cause they got so much stuff. Or, or we’re gonna say, well, the popular people, the people that, that everybody loves them or, or they’re famous, those people are gonna have great lives, but that’s not what they found. Here’s what the funny, the study found three big lessons. Lesson number one, social connections are really good for us. Like, there’s gotta be a part of you that if you were helping fund the study and they brought you their research and they said, Hey, here’s what we found. Social connections are good. Probably part of you that’s like, I could have told you that, like, this doesn’t seem like rocket science, but they’re saying that at the end of your life, if you’re looking back, the most important things, three lessons, number one for us to understand is that social connections are really good. Number two, it’s not just the number of friends you have or if you’re in a committed relationship, but the quality of your close relationships that matters. And then number three, good relationships don’t just protect our bodies, they protect our brains. Robert Waldinger, who is the director of the study, he said this, the clearest lesson that we get from this 75 year study is this, good relationships keep us happier and healthier, period. Now, I, I don’t think anybody in here is surprised by that, but, but here’s what I wanna point out. What, what modern research is telling us is the exact thing that Paul was encouraging the church of Ephesus to understand. He, he was saying, you guys shouldn’t do this alone. You shouldn’t do this in isolation. You need to do this in community together. But, but I think here’s the challenge that all of us want reinforcement. Like if you think of the cinder block and, and they stack like this, and then you get these steel beams that come up. We, we all want that reinforcement in our life. But here’s the problem. Have we made room for it? Like what, what made the cinder block work was that they hollowed it out. They made room for something that was better. We all tend to want the reinforcement, but have we made room or a different way to say it? I, I think here’s the challenge that most of us want the strength of community, but we don’t want the vulnerability of community. Like, am I willing to go into a group and give them permission to speak truth and love in my life? Let me give you four tangible steps. What could this look like? And, and by the way, obviously I’m biased. I would love for this to be Cherry Hills Community Church for you, but maybe you’re relatively new. I I’m just telling you, find a Bible teaching, Bible believing church and get plugged in. Not every church is for everybody. Like, you might come here and be like, man, I, I don’t like that guy. That Kirk guy bugs me. He’s just annoying. That’s fine. Like, I totally get it. I bug me sometimes. My encouragement was, if not here, then find a place. Jesus gave us the church as a gift. Don’t miss out on the gift. Four specific steps. Number one, reject the myth of more with one concrete decision. We just think, okay, I need more and more and more and more, but, but really for the healthiest life possible, we’ve gotta remove some things and make room for the most important things. So here’s what I challenge you. Here’s a concrete decision. Say in the next 10 weeks, I’m gonna go to church eight of those weeks, or, or make it make it smaller, more tangible for the next six weeks. I’m not gonna miss a Sunday no matter what. Like, make a concrete step of what this looks like. Step two, shift your Sunday posture. Like, like before you come in on a Sunday morning, say prayer to yourself. Hey, God, I am not here to consume. I’m here to worship. And I promise that small prayer, that small posture change changes everything. Step three, move from attendance to participation. D decide like we’ve got so many different programs, so many different opportunities. Decide today, Hey, I’m gonna try connect group, decide today I I’m gonna go to a women’s bible study. I’m gonna go to a men’s bible study. I’m gonna go to some type of a class. I’m gonna start finding discipleship. I maybe it would be, Hey, I need to start serving. I I need to find a way that I can carry my brick. What does that look like? And then step four, practice one fellowship act this week, enter into community with other people. It could be as simple as this. We, we tend to be people of pattern, people of habit. Probably the person to your left and your right person in the row, in the front of you and behind you if you come every week and sit in the same place. So do they, do you know their name? If not, man, just say, Hey, you know, we sit next to each other every week. Can I just, can I shake your hand and tell you, Hey, this is my name. I’d love to know your name. Step into it with one step. I I, I don’t know if you know this or not, but, but there’s a football game today. Here, here’s what’s interesting to me about the, the football game. So it’s outside and the news this whole week has been saying, I saw a news report yesterday. They said, Hey, just a warning, it’s gonna be 20 degrees during the game. The windchill factor is gonna make it zero degrees. There are are legit concerns about frostbite if you don’t layer up the right way in order to go to the game. But, but, but considering all that, here’s what I know about the game. Do you think it’s gonna be well attended ? Like, like every warning has been like, it’s gonna be terrible. It’s gonna be awful. It’s gonna be the worst. And yet, here’s what I’m a hundred percent confident in. When you turn on the tv, it’s gonna be packed. I mean, there are many people in this room, they’re like, that’s why I’m at their early service. So I can go. And you’ve got like a parka ready to go. Like you are, you are signed up. And why is that? It’s because of this truth. That commitment is never just willpower. It’s about worth and value. Let me unpack that for a second. Your commitment, my commitment to anything rises and falls based off how much we value worship or give worth to that thing. Why will people with terrible conditions still show up to the Broncos game? Because they have enough value or worth for the Broncos game that it allows their commitment to rise to that level. It’s very similar to what Jesus says in Matthew 6 21, for where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. So when we, when we unpack this concept of worship, it, it is tied to, in my heart, in my life, what are the things that I value? Because value creates sacrifice. Value clarifies priorities, value sustains commitments and value reveals itself in behavior. And so here’s the challenge when it comes to worship, there are so many things that make it convenient to not come to church. And, and it’s not just saying, well, I need, I need more value. I I need more commitment. I’m gonna make a better commitment than I’ve ever had before. Now really, it comes down to our heart and saying, do I ascribe worth? Do I ascribe value to it? And, and if I really believe what, what Jesus says, if I really believe that Jesus gave us the church as a gift to build one another up, to call me out for my junk, that the way that I become the most spiritually mature person that God has called me to be is through this place, that then I need to value it so that my commitment goes up. If we all do that, we had a demographics ex expert come in and look at, at our area, and he told us something that’s not that surprising. He said, Hey, you’re in a very unchurched area. And I think sometimes we’re like, well, hey, this part of Denver is more church than other parts of Denver. And that’s just not true. So you are in a very unchurched area. The call for us as Christians is how do we reach them for the gospel? And it’s not a solo sport. It’s us together living out this commitment. What can God do when we’re all building in the same direction? Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, God, thank you so much for our church. You gotta thank you for the gift that it is that you have given us. And, and God, we know that it’s not perfect and it’s got warts and it’s got issues, and yet it is your bride. And so, God, I pray for each and every one of us in this room, Lord, if not here, then somewhere that, that we, we would choose to say, I, I’m gonna value community. I’m gonna value church. I’m gonna value worship. I’m gonna make it a priority in my life. Now, what could we build together? If all of our hearts are attuned to you? It’s the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.