Bacon & Eggs - Involved or Committed?

I really enjoy bacon and eggs. It's a great way to start the day. And if you've missed out already, Wimpy is open. A Wimpy breakfast is nationally recognised as one of the finest ways to start a day. And bacon and eggs is such a complete meal. And I don't just love it for breakfast. I mean it's a great way to start the day. But I can eat bacon and eggs any time a day. I can have it for supper, I can have a full lunch, I can have it as a snack. I really don't mind. I'm not picky, I'm not classist about when I'm going to have bacon and eggs. But it's a great way to start the day off. It gives you a full meal like it's great. And so we thought that it would be great to start the year off with a series on bacon and eggs. Fortunately the series is not on bacon and eggs. Unfortunately you're not getting bacon and eggs. But the analogy is this. If you look at just simple bacon and eggs, in the making of bacon and eggs, the chicken is very involved in bacon and eggs. The chicken paid a great sacrifice. She spent a lot of time developing that egg, growing that egg, took effort out of her body to lay the egg and she gave up that egg for your breakfast. She was incredibly involved and selfless in your bacon and eggs. But the pig, the pig was committed to your bacon and egg. The pig gave everything of who he is for your bacon and eggs. So over the next three weeks as we look at this series as we start the year off, my challenge to you, is are you involved in the things of God or are you committed to the things of God? Are you like, yes I'm willing to sacrifice, I'm going to give up and I'm going to, like, it's nice, I'll be involved. Or are you like, take all of me Lord. Are you the pig or the chicken? Every time you eat bacon and eggs it's never going to be the same. Still tastes amazing but maybe the heart will sit a bit heavier. You see, we can be involved in many things. We can, we can be involved in lots of different things in our lives and it's good, it's nothing wrong with it. But to be truly committed, we can't be committed to many, many things in our lives. If you are, if you think you are committed to many things in your life, I would challenge you that you are not really giving all of yourself to any one of those things. That you are having to hold back on some of the things that you want to be committed to and that you're actually probably more involved than committed. You know that, the giving your life to it kind of committed. That, that we can really only do for one thing. Despite what you think about being able to multitask, no one is able to commit fully to more than one thing. If you've got your Barbals, once you turn with me to 1st Kings chapter 18, I love these chapters in the book of 1st Kings 18, 19 and 20, the largest confrontation with Ahab and Jezebel and what he and he goes on, what he does through those things. But let's pray just as we get going. Father God, I thank you for your word. I thank you that your word is alive and active in Jesus. I thank you, Holy Spirit, that you have authored and inspired this word. And I pray that this word would settle in our hearts this morning, that your word would settle, not mine Lord God. And I pray that we would be changed out of this morning's sermon, that we would be more enamored with you Jesus, that we would be challenged to live different because of who you are Jesus and because of what you've done for us. Help us to be those who follow wholeheartedly after you every single day Jesus. Amen. Amen. So 1 Kings 18, if you've clicked on over there, if you've got your Barbals and turned there, the story is from verses 19 to 39. I'm just going to read a few verses as we go. And what's happened is Israel under the nation of Israel under King Ahab and his wife, Jezebel. You may have heard of them. They weren't really great in leading Israel in terms of how God would measure them. And what they've done is they've led Israel astray from worshipping Yahweh only as the only God, they are worshipping Baal and Asherah. So these different gods, these gods of the surrounding nations that they are worshipping. And these gods were gods of certain areas of life. And so they were fairly easy to worship in terms of how the Israelites would go about sacrificing to them and worshipping to them and things like that. But what's happened in leading up to this point is Yahweh has spoken through Elijah the prophet and he's prophesied a drought on the land. So it's been three, three and a half years. There's been no rain in Israel. Now Israel, not the most, not the most, the whole of it is pretty desert. It's pretty dry, pretty. And so when you get three and a half years of no rain, you can imagine how desperate the people must have been for rain. It would have been starting to go to famine. It would have been difficulties around all sorts of things. Businesses would have been struggling three and a half years. And then what happens? His God says to Elijah, he's right, you're going to go back. And so Elijah goes back and he meets with Ahab and his wife, Joseph, on Mount Carmel and he has the showdown. And he says, right, you guys, you bring your prophets of Baal and your prophets of Asherah and you guys come and we all meet and the nation of Israel, you guys come and Ahab and Joseph, and we're all going to meet on Carmel and we're going to have a showdown. And we're going to see who's who in the zoo as paraphrasing. He doesn't actually say that. So from verse 8, from verse 20, one King's 18, from verse, just going to read verses 20 and 21. So Ahab sent word throughout all Israel and assembled the prophets on Mount Carmel. Elijah went before the people and said, how long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him, but if Baal is God, follow him, the people said nothing. And there's the challenge for us this morning. How long will you waver between two opinions? You see, what the Israelites were doing was they were going, man, we know Yahweh is God, but last hard and things aren't working out so well. So we're just going to incorporate some other things. These guys around us, they've got these guards that are working. So we're going to borrow a little bit from that and we're going to borrow a little bit from that and we're going to, let's do that as well. We're going to kind of hedge our bets. So Elijah then calls them out on this and he says, if God, if Yahweh's God, follow him, if Baal is God, follow him. Make a choice. Either one, but don't waver between the two. So Elijah then instructs him. He says, this is what we're going to do. We're going to get two bulls and we're going to make two altars. You're going to sacrifice your bull and I'm going to sacrifice Marble and then whichever God answers with fire, he's the true God. Yours are us. Is that good? And they say, yes, that's good. We like that. We understand it. We keen for that. And so the bulls go first. The prophets of Baal, rather, go first. And so they, they're singing and dancing. They call on the name of Baal for hours. It says, it says, they went from the morning till the noon. They were going for it. Heading it like, come on, we need the fire ball. Now is your, I don't know what they would have said. But anyway, they shot it. They danced and Elijah taunts them. He says, shout louder. Maybe he needs to be working up. Maybe you should do a bit more. They eventually go into like cutting themselves to try and get his attention. They go all the way until the time for the evening sacrifice. They're persistent. They're keen. They're sold out for Baal. But there's no response. There's no answer. And then Elijah goes and he says, right, you've had your turn. Now's my turn. He calls the people over to his side. Has this ultimatum, sits the wood, sluffs the car, puts it on top. They have a trench around the ultimatum. He says, right, before we, before we start here, what we're going to do is I want you to get, just so you know, this isn't, this isn't my doing. We're going to get some water. And we're going to pour water over the sacrifice and the whole ultimatum, everything. And they take four jars. At three times, they fill the four jars and they pour them over. So 12 jars of water poured over the sacrifice. No coincidence for the 12 tribes of Israel. You're going, each one of you wet the sacrifice. If we each tribe is a jar of water, fills the trench around the sacrifice with water. And Elijah then prays this prayer in verse 36. It says, at the time of the sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed, Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, Lord, answer me. So these people will know that you, Lord, are God. And that you are turning their hearts back again. Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice. The wood, the stones, the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried. The Lord, He is God, the Lord, He is God. Are you in need of the fire of God to fall in your life and burn up some stuff? Are you in need again of a reminder of who God is and who isn't God in your life? Maybe, maybe you once served God wholeheartedly, but you've had some difficulties. You've been through a period of drought. There's been been a few years, maybe, I've just like spiritual drought where it doesn't feel like God's answering. I'm praying for reign, but there's none. My crops are struggling. Things are not going well. I need God to come in. And maybe in that time, you started to take on some of the ways of the world and you started to incorporate some of the things that other people have seen working. And you thought, man, I'm just going to add it to what I'm doing. I'm just going to add things in. And you think, just a little bit like that. I'm just going to, I'm going to hedge my bets. You know what that means? I'm just going to place bets on both teams so that I win either way. But friends, following God is not like investing in a hedge fund or hedging our bets. You can't spread it around and see, well, I'm going to follow God, but I'm also going to do all of these things. Following God is an all-in on every investment you make with God. It's a going, I'm all-in on every hand that God deals me. No matter what happens, I'm going to trust Him for everything that comes my way. Every moment is a complete reliance on God and what He will do. Hearing Him and then doing what He says, I want to, I want to employ you and challenge you, leave the modern day bowls and asheras. It might be easy to look back at the Israelites and think, oh man, they were stupid to follow those things. But for them, those were very real possibilities and options and ways out of difficulties. They had worked for the nations around them and maybe we've got things of going, man, I'm just going to hedge my bets with my time, with my finances, with my talents, with everything that I've got with my family. Like Jesus, you can be involved, but I'm not committed. The Israelites in the largest day were involved of the things of God, but they weren't solely committed to God. You see, they had what we would call a synchrotistic faith. A synchrotism is a big fancy word. It just means a mixing together or an including of lots of other things. It's like synchronized swimming. They're all together or doing it at the same word. The synchrotistic means we're just putting all sorts of other things together and we're going there. It's kind of like Oprah where all roads will lead to God. That's not how it works. It's just not the message of the Bible. We can't follow Jesus and and and. We follow Jesus and God alone. He is the only way. He's the only one. You see, maybe you've tried to, in being involved with the things of Jesus, you've tried to add Jesus to your life. You've added him in to what you're busy with and you thought maybe, "I'm going to add him into my materialism." Oh Lord, bless me. And when you say, "Lord, bless me and keep me," the beautiful words in Scripture, you immediately go, "Could you just move the decimal point on my bank account over a little bit?" So that those zeros mean something. We want God to bless us in ways where we think, "Man, I need more than a three-bedroom house. I need more than whatever it is. We're adding God to our materialism." Maybe you want Jesus to get involved in your life. You want him to be committed to you, but Jesus is not the pig you are. See, as our as our king, we don't get to add him to our lives. Our lives are added into his and what he's busy with and what he's doing. We are called to take up our cross daily and follow him. He's not the one who follows us into what we're doing. It's like when Joshua leading the Israelites into the Promised Land, he comes into the city of Jericho. And as he's standing up there, they're about to go in and attack Jericho. And Joshua meets this incredible being. And he says to him, "Are you for us or against us?" Joshua is seeing him, and he thinks, "Man, it would be nice if you were for us." And the response from this being is neither. As the commander of the Lord's armies, I have come. And Joshua falls down and recognizes who it is that he's met with. And effectively, what that being was saying is, "I'm not for or against you. I'm for the things of God. Are you with me?" It's not about God being for you or not. The word's clear. God is for you, but are you for him? That's the challenge at the start of this year as we get going. Are you involved or committed? Are you a chicken or a pig? Are you the the egg or the bacon? Have you been holding back something from God? And this year, I want to encourage you to put all your eggs in one basket to mix analogies nicely so that you're confused. Put all your eggs in one basket. Not yours, not anyone else's, but put all your eggs in God's basket. God comes through for Elijah in this moment with the sacrifices. And he comes through with fire. He comes through with fire and God comes down, burns them up completely, burns up the alter the wood, the stones, the soil, even the water that was poured on. And God comes through for his glory. God doesn't come through to make Elijah seem important. He doesn't come through because of Elijah's insecurities. God comes through for his own glory. The fire of God, if we look at fire, fire of God coming down and fire through, our scripture is often used for a moment where we God appears. God comes in, God breaks into humanity. Often the picture or the actual presence of fire is something that happens and we see God coming in. And some things about this, this fire is that it consumes. This fire consumes everything. And the encounters with God very often, there is a burning up which happens without destroying that thing. And we think of Moses in the burning bush where Moses sees this burning, the bush on fire and he goes up, but he's curious because it's on fire, but it's not being destroyed. It's not being consumed. And so the same with the pillar of fire that the Israelites follow out of their Exodus, and the same even through the throne vision of Ezekiel and on into Acts chapter 2 with the tongues of fire that rest on the believers at Pentecost. The picture of the presence of God coming in is often used in a fire, in a consuming fire. And the consuming that it does, the burning up that God burns is things that are sinful, things that are not of him. Those are the things that the fire consumes and burns up. So interesting that Elijah chooses this moment and this method even to challenge Baal through all we might not realize is that Baal was often pictured as a God of lightning. He was a God of fire. He was a storm god depicted with lightning in his hand, kind of like thought, just a few a bit more modern with the Avengers, but he was known as the Lord of Fire. And one one tale in some of the writings about Baal says that he built his house with fire. And so the use of fire in that moment is not random. It's strategic that God is asking Elijah to do these things. Elijah is demonstrating that false gods, those things that pretend to be like God, cannot stand up to God, cannot stand up in comparison to him. They're not worth going in for, they're not even worth getting involved with. In Acts chapter 2, the tongues of fire on the disciples head at Pentecost, just like the physical fire on Mount Karma with Elijah, the spiritual tongues of fire come on these believers and the believers become the living sacrifices. And the New Testament, that's what we're called to be. We're called to be these living sacrifices that are burnt up on the altar of God. That we go out today every day and ablaze with the fire of God into a world that so desperately needs his presence. That we carry it with us. The great evangelist and preacher, Dale Moody said, he was asked how it is that he preachers so effectively and so powerfully and how he gathers so many people when he does. And he said, I don't know, but what I do know is all I do is I go out and I set myself on fire every time I preach for God and people watch me burn. And it's such a great analogy and such a great picture for us. Like, are we burning with a fire for God? Do we have that everywhere we go that it just radiates out into people around us? We are called to be living sacrifices, signs of the New Covenant. John says this of Jesus in Matthew chapter 3 verse 11, he says, I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is martyred and are who sandals are not worthy to carry. He Jesus will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. It's one of the baptisms that the New Testament speaks of is a baptism of fire. This burning up, this presence of God coming down, separating us from anything else, any different kind of sacrifice that we would give ourselves to, being consumed totally by God and His presence. Jesus baptizes us with fire in order to purify and to refine us, to burn in us that which hinders us from following Him, to remove that which is not from God. The fire brings renewal in our lives. Like a grassland that's overgrown full of weeds that desperately needs a fire to go through, a management burn, to cure away the things that don't belong there so that the plants that do belong there can seed and fruit and grow again. Do you need the fire of God in your life? See Warren Wiersby says this incredible thing about this moment with Elijah. Says Elijah was not only out to reform the people, in other words, he wasn't just looking for right belief. He didn't just want them to say yes I follow Yahweh. He wanted to revive them as well. That's what Warren Wiersby says of this and what he means is that he wanted people to become alive again with the fire for God. Not just that yes, no, I go to church, Yahweh, Jesus, I go to cross and everything like I follow, I go to tattoo, but what does your life look like? Has your life burned with the fire of God? Not involving God in your life, not bringing him in to come into certain areas of your life. Not even going how I'm going to get more involved this year with the things of God, but going, I'm going to commit my life to everything of God. How do I get completely committed? Being sold out for Jesus. Many of us might struggle with this level of commitment. I might think, oh that's great, you get paid to do it. That's for certain people in Christianity, maybe the evangelists, they can go cross-border and they can go overseas and preach the gospel, but for us, it's a little bit too radical. Just calm down, just baby calm down, just be nice, just be gentle, just kind of set the boat, just be cool. What will people think if I suddenly start acting in this way? What are they going to think of me? I used to be this one way. Now if I start thinking people are going to say I'm a hypocrite and they're going to say I'm just, it's a phase. Maybe you ask the question, what will it cost me if I do this? Maybe it's going to cost me something physically. Maybe it'll cost you some relationships. Maybe it'll cost you some pride. It's not going to cost you one or two things to do this. The answer is it's going to cost you everything. To follow Jesus, to be committed to Jesus is going to cost you everything. To truly follow him and to be committed. Maybe out of this morning you're going to be excited and you're going to be pumped up and I hope you are and you're going to be keen to follow Jesus and you're going to be like, I'm committed, I'm all in. But not too long and comfort starts calling. Comfort is allowed and persistent pursuer of our lives. We love to be comfortable. Maybe we read or we hear a sermon, read a book and you think, yes, this is the Jesus I want to follow. And then the flesh rises up. The sinful nature that is in me rears its ugly head. Maybe it's laziness. It's just like, oh, I just can't be bothered. Like it's, I'll start on Monday. Like a bad news, resolution or a diet. Maybe it's just tiring to conduit to do this all the time. Maybe it's the temptation of the flesh. Maybe it's bad habits that we don't want to put the effort into breaking because they feel good in those habits and that way of thinking and that way of living is my safe place. Do you remember Christy Hussleman's sermon on Pick Up The Mat? If you haven't listened to it, I encourage you to go and listen to that. We like to hang on to things from our past. If we're fully committed to Jesus and we're burnt up as this living sacrifice, we let go of all of those things and we follow him completely. Maybe it's patterns of thinking that we refuse to recognize that are unhelpful. Have us going around the same mountain over and over again. Like the Israelites wondering in the desert. For a journey that should have taken a few weeks, took them 40 years. It's a real battle that we face friends. To be committed is not easy. To be committed to anything is not easy. Look at the rate of marriages. How many of us go into marriages thinking man, I hope this doesn't work out. I hope someday this ends. I've not been in a marriage where the couple has started out like that. Okay, listen, till this decade does us part, that's how long we're going to be there. And I'm not being tried about if your marriage or if a relationship isn't working or hasn't worked, please don't hear what I'm not saying. But when we are committed to something, it's great and it's we're in the beginning but it's hard friends. It takes work to be committed to things. It takes effort to stay committed to something. Whatever that thing is, if you picked a diet, if you picked an exercise plan, those are trivial things and you know how hard those things are to stick to. Get a training plan and try and stick to that. It's not easy to be committed. But God doesn't call us to easy or comfortable, He calls us to following Him, to apprenticing under Jesus, to discipling Him. Now, battle is against the triple alliance, right Sir, Raniera Cantalamasa, who is the preacher to the papal household. He writes this. He says, "The world, the flesh, and the devil, the enemy around us, the enemy within us, and the enemy above us. There is a constant attack on us that is trying to pull us away from Jesus, the world, the flesh, and the devil. It's geared towards pulling us away from the devil." I did a little experiment a while ago. I got one social media up and running. I've got Instagram that I go on and I did a while ago. I put a timer on that. If you didn't know, you can set time limits on in the app in Instagram and you can say like daily. And I said a one-hour timer, but I thought never. I'm never going to reach a one-hour timer limit on Instagram. The first few days it was done by like sort of help us 10 in the morning because it pops up with a notification. You've reached your daily limit and then you can like ignore for today, extend for five minutes, extend for it. But you see everything in the world is geared to drawing our attention and our commitment away from Jesus. And it's not just social media. It's marketing around shopping, around spending, around how we do our family budget, our family time. The world tries to draw us into the things that they'll busy with. It tries to keep us busy with their things and it's good at it. And we have the flesh, the sinful nature that we still wrestle with and struggle with and we will until we are glorified in Jesus. And either he comes back or we pass them into the next life. We have this battle within us, the sinful nature that still rears its head and says, tries to draw us away from Jesus. When I see the enemy, the last thing he wants is you committed to Jesus. It is the last thing the devil wants. He will do anything to keep you away from that. Lukewarm is the best kind of person for the enemy. What will you choose today? Stop wavering between two opinions in the words of Elijah. Salvation sets us free, fortunately, from the penalty of sin, the power of sin in one day, the presence of sin, our past, our presence and our futures all dealt with in the salvation of Christ. We have been saved, we are being saved and we will be saved in the language of the New Testament. It's a tense situation for many of us. But as we fight this battle against the flesh, I'm constantly asking God to baptize me with His refinance fire. I say, "No, purify me. I need more of your presence in my life, God. I need that to come down and to set me free from who I am. I need your refinance fire to burn away that which is not of me, not of Him, in me." The sinful flesh needs holifying. So how? How do we do this? I'm going to end with this land with free practical things that we can do to be committed, to be the pig, not the chicken, to be the bacon, and not the eggs. Your bacon is better than eggs, eh? I mean, eggs go into cakes and flour, into amazing things, but bacon. And bacon goes with everything. Just be committed. Just give everything of who you are for Jesus. But how do we do that? How do we become bacon? It starts with a commitment. A commitment starts with confession. It's important what we say with our mouths. What we confess out loud is an important thing. You might think that sometimes we just say things trivially and they have no meaning. But what we say carries power, carries power into the spiritual world, and it carries power with us and people around us. The friend of mine has a beautiful saying, it says, "Words create worlds." I'm no word of faith movement kind of person. I'm not like you can, like you can just say it and believe it enough and it comes into being. That's nonsense. But there is an element of the power of our words. James speaks about how powerful the tongue is in our lives, like a rudder steering a ship, like a mesh sitting a forest on fire, or the analysis he uses. A small thing has massive control in our lives. Commitment starts with confession. Sometimes we just need to hear ourselves say it out loud. I commit to following God, to following heart off to Jesus. The second thing is it's an everyday thing. A following of Jesus, a commitment to Him is not a Sunday morning thing. It's not a Sunday thing either. It's an everyday thing. Every single day we get up and we commit to following Jesus. Find a way to remind yourself daily. Luke 9, 23 Jesus says, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." Do you know what the taking up of the cross was? That's a death sentence. It's a going to die. Every day Jesus says, "This is what we do." Put the self to death and follow Him. Every single day, deny yourself, take up a cross and follow Jesus. Every single day we commit to being more like Jesus. Say it today and every day as you begin your day. Find a way to remind yourself. Set alarms throughout your day. You can set alarms. You can set the many alarms as you like on your smartphone. Nothing going to irritate you till you look at it and you're going to go, "Yes, I'm committed to following Jesus." Set calendar reminders, tasks on your daily calendar, Google Calendar, whatever that pop up at times during the day. Stick Post-it notes if you don't like technology. Buy yourself a little pack of those yellow sticky Post-it notes. Stick it on your steering wheel. Stick it on your mirror. Your bathroom mirror. If that's where you look too much time, stick it on your bathroom mirror. I know none of you do, but I do. Find a place to stick them. Maybe make a, make an investment by a label maker and get labels that you can print and stick on things. Commit it to Jesus. Be the pig, not the chicken. How do you want to do it? Take up my cross daily. Whatever you put, put the scripture on there. Remind yourself every day. Commitment starts with confession, but it carries on within every day. Commitment. And then thirdly, don't go to loan. The quickest way to lose commitment is to go to loan. It's to try it on your own. This is why things like CrossFit work so well, because CrossFit actually uses a discipleship model. Where we all get together and we all get in this little box that's badly built and too hot, and we get in there with this equipment and we do these dangerous exercises together, probably going to injure us, but we're in it together and we're sweating and we're there, and people are checking on you and they're like, they've got their own language around it. Like, what's our word? Where are we going today? Are we in there? And it works because I'm in there with other people and they go, hey, are you going today? I'm coming. I'm at the five. What do you get? And so we hold ourselves accountable. And it's the same with our commitment and our discipleship with Jesus. Don't go to loan. If you want another analogy, it's like if you have a bribe. If you have a, if you have a call of fires, all the calls are hot in the fire. Take one call out and put it on the side and see which of the calls last long and stays hot. The ones that are all together or the one on his own. You can try on your own, but you're not going to be much good and you're going to go cold pretty quick. Find accountability. And accountability is a voluntary thing. Accountability is going to someone and saying, hey, can you, can you hold me accountable to my commitment to Jesus? And what that means is can you check in on me regularly? So a message, a phone call weekly, every couple of days, every two weeks, whatever, hey, how you doing with that thing? How's your commitment been? And then you have to choose to be honest in the accountability. You can lie, but in the accountability is not real and you're going it alone. The moment you lie and you withhold and you hold back, you're going it alone. Find someone to be accountable with. Please don't make it me. I can't be accountable, partner for everybody that's here. Find someone you love and you trust and you know loves Jesus and who will actually ask you and go, how are you doing with this thing? It's also good if it's not your spouse generally. The spouse will hold you accountable in most cases, but find someone outside of your spouse or your partner and go, will you hold me accountable on this thing? How are you doing? Let them ask these questions. How are you doing in your commitment? Is Jesus still Lord of everything in your life? And you take it at take a moment to do an inventory and go is he? Is he still Lord of everything in my life? Friends, do you need the fire of God to bring about change in your life? Today, will you stop wavering between the two opinions? Will you choose to take up your cross and follow Jesus wholeheartedly? Are you involved with the things of God or are you committed? Are you the chicken or the pig? Are you going to be chicken or are you going to be the pig? We get to choose. God gives us that beautiful love gift of choice. I want to encourage you today to choose Jesus. Let's pray. Jesus, I ask if I your spirit that you would help us, that you would help us to be committed every day to you. Remind us Holy Spirit. Remind us every day to take up that cross to deny ourselves and to follow Jesus. Jesus, we want to follow so closely after you that as you walk along the road of life that the dust that your feet kick up would get on our clothes. We want to be those who are completely sold out for you, Jesus, living in a way that is shocking maybe to the world around us as we are set ablaze for you and everywhere we go, may we set others ablaze for you too, Jesus. May our commitment be a testimony of your laying down of your life for us. I pray, Jesus, that you would not make us afraid, or that you would give us rather courage to overcome the fear that this commitment would take. That you would make us bold to step out in faith in areas where we would normally hold back. Show us what it is to be a living sacrifice Jesus. Consume always by the fire of God. I pray that out of this morning that it wouldn't just be an excitement that would carry us, but that it would be a deep soul-level commitment to following you, Jesus, every single day that would carry us out from here on foot. We pray this in your gracious name, Jesus. Amen.