October 26 - Vision: Being Shaped by Burden and Belief - Eric Geiger

[MUSIC] Welcome to Mariner's Church Weekend Message Podcast, inspiring people to follow Jesus and fearlessly change the world. Discover your purpose and get connected by visiting mariner's church dot org or click the link in the show notes. [MUSIC] >> Thank you guys. [APPLAUSE] >> People were like asking, "What are you, 59?" I'm excited about my 50s. I really have a vision for this next season of my life. And I'm thankful for what God's doing in my family. I'm thankful for what He's doing in our church. And you're one of the reasons I'm excited about this next season, because I enjoy what I'm doing so much because of you. You are my joy. I love being the pastor of this church. And so I'm thankful for the opportunity to teach God's words to you today. I'm going to jump in. My Pilates instructor inspires me. [LAUGHTER] She does. I tell K that often when we go to the car, my wife and I go to Pilates twice a week and I know some of you guys are like, "That's not really working out." You're only saying that because you have a bent. If you go, you will know how hard it is. And so we go twice a week, K and I do. And our instructor is so inspiring. I mean, she is passionate about what she does. And her passion and spills over and makes me passionate. And I'm excited about things I don't even know to be excited about. I serve the tray and the magic circle. I don't even know about those things till Pilates. But her passion inspires me and her compassion for everyone in the class also inspires me. I've told K on the way home. It makes me the way she teaches the class challenges me as a preacher. I want to be that passionate. I should be this passionate for teaching God's word. Her compassion inspires me. She is a great leader. She is my Pilates instructor. If you believe, as many have defined leadership, that leadership is influence. That leadership is not about position or title. That leadership is about influencing someone else. The ability to influence another person in a direction is leadership, which means that some people are leaders who don't have the title leader. And some people who have the title leader aren't really leaders at all because they're not influencing someone in any direction at all. John Maxwell, a famous leadership author, he quipped, that if you think you're a leader and you turn around and no one is following you, you only have been taking a walk. You're not actually a leader. And some people in organizations have a title leader, but they're not actually influencing anyone else. John Maxwell is one of the authors who has said leadership is influence. And he joins me for this week's, if I had more time podcasts. We have a podcast we release every week. I encourage you to listen to this one. John Maxwell is the best-selling leadership author in American history. He's written like 90 leadership books and he's been a friend and a mentor to me. And so he joins me for this week's podcast. We actually have two podcasts this week. So I encourage you to listen to both. One is my interview with Maxwell. The other is an overview of the book in the Amaya, which will really help. But if John Maxwell is right, that leadership is influence and I believe he is, this means that all of us who are Christians by that definition are leaders. Because Christ not only saved you when you became his, when you believed in him and received his forgiveness, but he also has sent you into this world. That where you are right now, whatever stage of life you are in or the role you're in in your profession or with your family or the home that you live in, he, by his wisdom and providence, sent you there to serve others, to influence others. Leadership being defined as influence changes and actually broadens the number of people that we perceive to be leaders. If leadership is influence, this means that all parents are leaders. Youth soccer coaches, teachers, tech entrepreneurs, civil servants, business owners, medical professionals, and profit leaders, counselors and therapists, construction foremen, restaurant managers, and the barista at your favorite coffee shop who sets the tone for the entire shop, all are leaders, if leadership is influence. And if leadership is influence and I believe that it is, this means the question for you is a Christian, is not Amaya leader, but instead is Amaya fruitful leader? Amaya an effective leader. This weekend we start this teaching series How To Lead and we're going to walk through the book of Nehemiah. I believe this is going to be really encouraging and helpful for you. Nehemiah has been a mentor to me. Some of you would love to have breakfast with a leader like Nehemiah, but what you have in the book of Nehemiah is his leadership journals. You have better than just one breakfast with them. You have his wisdom and his insight. And the reason that I believe Nehemiah is going to inspire many of you is that Nehemiah is more like you than he's like me. What I mean is is that Nehemiah was a marketplace leader. He wasn't a prophet or a priest. Very few in the kingdom of God do what I do. Very few are clergy or pastors or preachers. Most are marketplace leaders like you and of all the books in the Bible. There are 66 books. The Bible is one overarching story that gets us to Jesus, but of the 66 different books, there's one book typically associated with leadership and it's the book of Nehemiah. And the one book associated with leadership in the Bible features a marketplace leader, not somebody like me, somebody like you. Somebody who leads in the marketplace is who God holds up as an example. So this can be really inspiring for you. This also reminds us that God cares about all spears of life. Yes, he cares about church. He does. He cares about this, but he also cares about where you work. He cares about your industry. He cares about you and all of the influence that you have throughout your career and then your life and in your neighborhood. He cares about all spears of life. So we're going to see the fruit in Nehemiah's leadership as we walk through the book of Nehemiah. We're going to spend time in the text and each week I'm going to pull from the text a fruit in Nehemiah's life, a characteristic of leaders that leaders want and their followers want the leaders to have. If you want to get an overview of what we're going to be talking about, look at page 14 and 15. It's an article that I wrote in your magazine and the top of page 15, the top right corner, you will see the seven fruit that we're going to walk through over the next seven weeks. The first week we will talk about vision, which is an important fruit for any leader to have. Many have said that vision is the differentiator between a follower and a leader. That if you don't have vision, you're not a leader, you're a follower that a leader has vision. In the recent marketplace, best selling book, CEO Excellence, the researchers concluded that vision is lacking in most organizations. It's very much needed and yet it's also the competency that most new leaders struggle to have. The author said, we need more vision in organizations, yet this is a competency that is woefully lacking in new leaders. They were saying we need leaders who have vision, the researchers concluded. If you're going to build anything, you need vision for what you're going to build. Nehemiah, you're going to see builds a wall. In fact, the reason he builds a wall around the city of Jerusalem is that the wall had been broken down and this meant that all of God's people were constantly worried for their lives. Nehemiah is going to build a wall. Everyone said it was impossible. It only is going to take him 52 days to pull it off. The beginning of the book in Nehemiah is a short term vision. It's not Nehemiah getting a vision for his whole life, although that's great too. It's Nehemiah having a vision for the specific task that he's going to accomplish. He builds a wall. If you want to build something in your life, you need vision. If you want to build a family, you need vision for your family. What kind of family are you going to build? You want to build a business, a career, a life that honors God. You want to build influence in your local community. You need vision. But vision is often misunderstood. In fact, the word vision can be overwhelming. Maybe you've been asked what your vision and even the question can paralyze you. Maybe you've been asked by your boss at work, "Hey, you're going to take this new project. You're going to be the lead on this project." In our next quarterly team meeting, I want you to share your vision. You're like, "I don't know. Where do I start? I think Nehemiah is going to help you." Maybe you're interviewing for a job and someone says, "If you take this role, what's your vision for this role?" Sometimes we don't know how to answer. Or you feel as a leader, people are asking me. I'm asking investors to invest and they're asking me, "What's my vision?" I always need to be able to say what my vision is. The problem is that some get confused by vision because we have this, in some cases, this mental impression of how vision works that doesn't actually work this way. Here's how some people have thought vision works. A leader gets away on a vision retreat, goes into a vision room, and there's a dry erase board and vision ears. I mean, all these words are used and he's going to write all these words in the board and there's smoke and fire in the background and these words are going to appear and he's going to get, "Yes, this amazing slogan, he's going to walk away from his vision retreat and he's going to walk in front of all of his team and he's going to share this new slogan and they're going to rise to their feet, tears stream down their face and they're going to applaud and everyone lives happily ever after." This is how, in some books, even vision is presented, but it's not. And vision never works that way. It's never been my experience and it's not Nehemiah's experience at all. Nehemiah chapter one, you're going to see how Nehemiah receives a vision that's going to really change the trajectory of his life and all of God's people. Now his vision, there's been many books written about Nehemiah and vision. In fact, if you research Nehemiah, many will say he's an incredible visionary leader, but you have to be careful that you don't think the role of the leader is to shape the vision when you study Nehemiah, what you conclude is the vision shapes Nehemiah, not Nehemiah shapes the vision. That real vision shapes the leader more than the leader shapes the vision. We'll see you in Nehemiah chapter one. I need to give you a little bit of background before I start reading Nehemiah, though he's Jewish, lives in Persia. Because his ancestors were dragged away in the Babylonian captivity. This guided promised his people when they lived in Israel, listen, if you worship little G gods instead of Yahweh, the one true God, I'm going to use neighboring nations to drag you into captivity. God always keeps his promises, the people kept worshiping other gods other than God, and he was patient with them. He sent prophets to warn them, but they keep this obeying God. So God kept his promises and dragged them into Babylonian captivity. He used Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon for that to happen. Then Persia takes over Babylon. And so now God's people who've been dragged away into captivity are in Persian captivity. If you remember in our teaching series about reading the Bible, we passed out a timeline for you, and there was a section that's called the exile. This is the exile. And so God's people are in exile, and the king of Persia gives permission for those who want to go back. They can go back. Well, some have gone back. Nehemiah is still though staying in Persia, though some have gone back to Jerusalem. And now he's about to be overwhelmed with news about what's really going on in Jerusalem. So here is the word of the Lord. It's also Nehemiah's leadership journal. This is amazing. Verse 1 of Nehemiah chapter 1, we're on page 22. The words of Nehemiah, son of Hackelia, during the month of Chislev in the 20th year, when I was in the fortress city of Susah. Now Susah was the winter palace of the king of Persia. I was in the fortress city of Susah. Hananiah, one of my brothers, arrived with men from Judah. And I questioned them about Jerusalem and the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile. They said to me, "The remnant in the Provenants who survived the exile are in great trouble and disgrace. Jerusalem's wall has been broken down and its gates have been burned. When I heard these words, I sat down and wept. I mourned for a number of days fasting and praying before the God of the heavens. This is the word of the Lord. I'm going to stop here for a moment and pull out a really important lesson about vision. And here it is, vision begins with burden. Real vision starts with a burden. In fact, Nehemiah does not get away on a visionary treat. It doesn't have a whiteboard session with a group of friends over lattes. He hears some news. He's blindsided by some news that ruins his day. He's overwhelmed with a burden because the wall in Jerusalem is down. This meant that all of the neighboring nations could attack Jerusalem at any moment. This meant that mothers were constantly worried about the lives of their children. Their dads were worried about their wives and their kids that everyone was living with disgrace and fear. And this bothered Nehemiah. This was this righteous burden. This anger, no, no, no, no. This is not how it's supposed to be. Jerusalem is supposed to be the city that all the neighboring nations looked to and know that Yahweh is God. Jerusalem is supposed to be the place where God's people bless the world. It's a place of disgrace. This is not what it should be like. He was so overwhelmed, we just read that he sat down and he wept and for a number of days he prayed and fasted before God. This was not a cute, fun, everyone wears the same matching t-shirt, visionary treat. This is him having his day ruined by a burden. The wall being down was a symbol of their disgrace and a reason for their distress. Vision for Nehemiah began with burden and it does for you as well. So I'm speaking to you about a vision that you will have for life or for this season of leadership in whatever spear of life you are in. If you skip over burden to get to vision, you'll arrive at vision without conviction. Vision begins with burden. It must begin with burden for you. And if you skip over burden, you'll get to a vision that you don't really believe in and then you'll change directions frequently because you never believe in the vision to begin with. Which is one reason many leaders are constantly shifting priorities and shifting directions because they don't really believe in the vision that they shared to begin with. Because it didn't start with a deep burden vision must begin with burden. If you get to vision without burden, you don't really own the vision. You're renting someone else's vision. Some other leaders vision or some other companies website slogan. You're grabbing some vision elsewhere, not from the burden that you have received. And you know you don't treat something that you rent with the same care that you treat something that you own. I apologize to the rental car companies that I've rented cars from. This is not the best example but I have of my own integrity but I have not treated the cars as well as I treat the cars that I own. I don't want to go to a car. I own one car. I don't treat it the same as I treat a car that I own. But there's a speed bump in a rental car. The speed bump is a suggestion. It's a suggestion. And I enjoy, like I enjoy it for I know. The check engine light, it doesn't bother me in a rental car. I'm turning the car in the next day. But in a car that I own, I treat that car very differently. You were going to treat vision that you just grab from someone else very differently from vision that begins with you having a burden. The most fruitful visions I've been a part of as a leader all began with burden. When I was pastoring in Miami, I lived there for eight years. A group of friends, we were burdened by the state of our city. At that point in Miami's history, there were, it was the city in the US with the greatest income disparity between the wealthy and the poor. And so we were overwhelmed with a burden to care for the impoverished and the marginalized in our city. We had data on 600,000 people in Miami-Dade County who had very little access to basic medical and dental services. And that burden just crushed us. It impacted us. It overwhelmed us so much that we ended up launching a non-for-profit, not-for-profit called Carrying for Miami, that is still in the city today, still serving the marginalized in that city. But we didn't begin with a vision for a non-profit, a slogan and a logo and a website. We were crushed by a burden to care for the poor and the marginalized. And then it caused us to, we have to do something. We must do something. When I was in the marketplace, I was serving as Senior Vice President at a publishing company. Several friends of mine, we were burdened about kids' ministries and churches across the US, hearing in their kids' ministry curriculum, their studies school classes, or their kids' church, hearing Bible stories but never the story of the Bible. And that their curriculum was teaching kids how to be good little kids, moral boys and girls. Like, here's a Bible story. You should be more responsible. Here's a Bible story. You should be more kind. And this bothered us. We were like, "No, this is not right. Kids need to hear the overall story of the Bible and have their hearts refreshed by the grace of Jesus. They need to know that there's all points to Jesus that we can't qualify ourselves before God in our goodness, that we need the goodness of Jesus." And he loved us so much that he came here for us. We need kids to know the heart of Jesus for them. And so this led us to launch a curriculum that is still today. Today, it's a Sunday. We'll be used by more than a million kids across the US called the Gospel Project. It was so fruitful. But it began not with us getting together in a room and whiteboarding, what the logo would look like or what the marking promise would be or working on marketing copy. That's not what it started with. It started with our hearts being overwhelmed with a burden. All great visions in your life are going to begin with your heart being overwhelmed with some burden. It's one of the reasons that your church is taking our church and launching congregations in different cities throughout Southern California. Listen, we do not want to be a church that just collects a bunch of Christians. We want to be a church that is in cities throughout Southern California to bless those cities and make those cities better, to be salt and light in the name of Jesus in our cities. It's one of the reasons you're going to be invited to seek the good of local cities. You're going to be invited to be a part of what we're doing to serve cities. Understand that Nehemiah was positioned by God in Persia. So he could go talk to the king and then eventually be sent to rebuild the wall. He was placed there in the marketplace and you've been placed where you're placed as well. God chose when you would be born and where you would live and you are here right now for a reason. You are to bless people around you. If you are a Christian, you have been sent by him. So you want to listen to what the burden he's giving you is. A burden that he gave several of our pastors here at our church. three years ago, is we start having an overwhelming burden for the young adults in our church and our cities. This did not begin with an idea for Thursday nights at Mariners. It began with a burden and us seeking him and hearing from him. And then it turned into Thursday nights at Mariners, our young adult service, which began 20 months ago with like 1200 young adults. Now we can't fit all the young adults in this room. We also meet in here and out on the lawn. And in January, we're going to take Thursday nights at Mariners to other congregations throughout Southern California. All of the fruitful visions I've been a part of, they all began with burden. And this is going to be true for you as well. A vision that you're going to have from him is going to begin with burden. Teenagers, listen, some of you have a burden for friends at your school who do not know Jesus. Listen to the burden he's given you. This is going to turn into vision for you of what you're going to do in your high school life at your school. Many of you in our church are coaches. I'm so proud of you for being a coach at your local school and caring for teenagers, young men and young women. And you have this desire, this burden from him, not only to care about the wins and the column and the losses and the column. You have a desire to shepherd young men or young women really well. Some of you have this burden to be a fatherly example to the young men on your team. That's God giving you a burden. Pay attention to the burden that he's given you. It's going to give you vision for the season in your life. Many of you are managers. You work under someone, but you oversee a large team. Some of you are team leaders or associate directors and you are responsible for a group of people. You hire and you fire and you shepherd people and you achieve results through groups of people. That's what you do. And you have a burden. I hope you have this burden. You have a burden because some people wonder if a Christian can be a great leader in the marketplace. Like, like, can Christians be good at this stuff? And you have a burden to show, of course, because I ultimately work for the everlasting eternal king. I can be really good at my job. He's given me the skill. I'm good at this craft. And you sometimes feel like your boss only cares about the results. And you want to prove that you can deliver great results and care for the team at the same time. That you can do both. That you can care for the people under your supervision. And you can deliver great results. That's a burden that God's given you, which is going to be the vision for you for this next season. In your career, some of your entrepreneurs, you're in the series A phase or the startup phase. And many of the great entrepreneurs in our world, what makes them so skilled in entrepreneurship is they recognize a broken wall that needs to be fixed. They see a problem in society that they believe they can step in and make better. God's given you a burden. The most important burden that he has given me, that God has given me over the last 18 years, has been to raise my daughters to love Jesus and care for people. To be passionate for God and compassionate towards others. The most important meeting that I lead every week has never been a meeting around a boardroom table or even a meeting with our pastors. The most important meeting that I lead is when our family sits down to dinner. And that is true for you as well. For you to influence your family, to care for your family. So vision begins with burden, but it doesn't end with burden. I want you to see what has to be combined with burden. So vision for you in your life and in your leadership and whatever spear of life you're in begins with burden, but you need something else, you need something else for it to be really fruitful vision. Let's see what the something else is as we go back to Nehemiah. Verse 5, "Nehemiah is going to pray." The rest of Nehemiah chapter 1 is Nehemiah's prayer to God and it is amazing. And in the prayer you're going to see him believe that the same God who used Nebuchadnezzar to drag the people into captivity is going to use Artisersis, the current King of Persia to bring people back to Jerusalem for the wall to be rebuilt. In other words, Nehemiah is praying in faith that he believes that the broken wall is not the end. That God is going to do something amazing and beautiful in this season. So this is what he prays. I said, "Lord the God of the heavens, the great and all inspiring God, who keeps His gracious covenant with those who love Him and keep His commands. Let your eyes be open and your ears be attentive to hear your servant's prayer that I now pray to you day and night for your servants, the Israelites. I confess the sins we have committed against you. Both I and my father's family have sinned. We have acted cruelly towards you and have not kept the command, statutes and ordinances you gave your servant Moses. Please remember what you commanded your servant Moses. This is what God had told Moses. If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples. But if you return to me and carefully observe my commands, even though your exiles were banished to the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place where I chose to have my name dwell. So he's remembering God's memory. We're supposed to go back to Jerusalem. There, your servants and your people, you redeem them by your great power in strong hand. Please let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant and to that of your servants who delight to revere your name. Give your servant success today and grant him compassion in the presence of this man. At that time, I was the king's cupbearer. Nehemiah is going to go to the king artisercces next week in chapter 2. You're going to see his request to artisercces. But before he goes to the human king, he goes to the everlasting king. All leaders have a bent towards action. But Nehemiah's first action is to go to the everlasting king to pray. All leaders have a bias towards, "I've got to get something done." But notice Nehemiah's first action is to pray. And if you are going to be an influential leader who follows after Jesus, your first action is going to be to seek him to pray. In fact, if you want to get a glimpse of Nehemiah's prayer, if you turn the page, you'll get to page 25 and you'll see an acronym that we use. If you're going through rooted right now, you'll recognize this or if you've been through rooted. You can really see Nehemiah pray this way. He says, "Lord, you're the God of the heavens, the great, all-inspiring God." He repents, "And I confess I've sinned, my family has sinned against you." He asks, "Lord, please remember what you commanded your servant Moses. Please keep your promise." And then he yields. He says, "God, I need you to be attentive to the prayer of your servant." This is on you. I can't pull this off. He's going to go to Artisers, he's the king, and he needs the hand of God on him. Nehemiah's believing that just as God used the pagan king to drag the people into exile, he can use the pagan king to bring the people back to Jerusalem. And his prayer, you see that Nehemiah believes God. So he has a burden, but he also has belief. And here's what vision is. Vision is the intermingling of burden and belief. It's the combining together of both. Everyone wants the fruit of vision, and here's what it looks like. Here's the fruit. There's a lot written. In fact, if you look on Amazon, you will see like 60,000 books on vision. There's so many books on vision. But to get vision, you need the intermingling roots beneath the surface. Of burden and belief, you must be shaped by both. And you must be shaped by both. It's so hard to hold both at the same time. belief is hopeless leadership. Some of you have worked for a leader like this, where everything is always broken. The leader's always mad. There's always data that is telling a negative story, but the person never has belief that the wall can be fixed and some of you have tried to lead this way. Listen, if you're gonna try and lead this way, you're gonna be a hopeless leader. If you're always pointing to the wall being broken and if you're never leading with faith and with optimism, people are not gonna be inspired by you and they won't follow for very long. Birdon without belief is hopelessness. And if you constantly are leading with, "Oh, what was me? The wall is broken down. My life is miserable. You're gonna position yourself as if you have no passion or belief or what can be and no one will want to follow." So you want burden, but you can't have burden without belief. You need belief as well. But if you have belief and you don't have burden, well then that's purposeless leadership. Basically, you're coming with this visionary statement. Here's where we're gonna accomplish. But if it's not connected to you having this holy burden from God, you'll change vision directions when a challenge comes in a heartbeat. Purpliceless leadership means there's not a burden that is driving you. But real visionary leadership is the combination of both burden and belief. And this is what makes vision very rare because it's really challenging the whole burden and belief at the same time. It's so challenging to confel this oraning. I'm upset by the brokenness, but I believe this can change. It's so hard to hold both at once. But you know who should be the most equipped to hold both burden and belief simultaneously? I'll go ahead and tell you since you didn't answer. Christian, should be the absolute, we are the absolute best at holding both burden and belief at the same time because our faith teaches that we hold burden and belief at the same time. This is one reason that in the marketplace, if you have person A and person B and person A is a follower of Jesus and person B is not a follower of Jesus. Now this is assuming equal level of competency between person A and person B. The one the person of these two who should be excelling that visionary leadership is person A because person A, the faith of person A has taught person A that I hold all of the time burden and belief simultaneously. I live with the tension of burden and belief. The Christian faith lives with the tension of burden and belief because we believe the walls are broken down and we believe that God is able to do a measurably more than we ask or imagine. We believe that the world is dark and we believe that Jesus is the light of the world and he has sent us into the world to be light. We believe even of ourselves that sin has messed everything up even us that we are broken, that all of us have fallen short, that we're burdened by our own faults and at the same time we believe that Jesus has made all things new and we are fully forgiven before him by his grace. We hold all of this together. (congregation applauding) You as a Christian, you should excel in vision because you know what it means to hold both burden and belief at the same time. It's really challenging, but Christians are best equipped to do so. So as you think about vision, the wrong question to ask yourself is, what vision should I shape? The better question is, what vision is shaping me? Nehemiah didn't shape a vision, a vision shaped Nehemiah. And 52 days after arriving in Jerusalem, there's a wall that was built. In fact, 2,500 years later, I've been to the old city of Jerusalem, there's a wall around the old city. It's not exactly the same wall, but the framework was essentially laid 2,500 years ago. You know, many of the great companies that are written about, like in Jim Collins's book, "Build to last" are good to great. They're gone within a generation. This wall has been there 2,500 years. 52 days. Birdon belief shaped Nehemiah a visionary leader. What is shaping you? Here's two questions to ask yourself as I want to be helpful for you during this teaching series. What burdens you that you believe can change? Maybe take a moment before God right now. And just we gave you plenty of space. Right now, it answers to these two questions. Take some time now. What burdens you? So what's the broken wall that burdens you? That you believe can change. Now, not many people believe the wall could be built, but Nehemiah did. There were a lot of people burdened by it, but Nehemiah believed it could be built. But didn't only believe it could be built, he also was burdened for it. It's both. His burden and belief coming together. Maybe you've been in our church for a while, and you keep, every time you hear about teenagers in our church, you have this burden. 'Cause you've heard that there's some teenagers who leave the Christian faith when they go off to college, and you think, "No, if these teenagers understood who they are, and how amazing God is, they would hold tightly to him throughout college." Pay attention to that burden. God's doing something in you to give you that burden. Maybe that burden's gonna turn into a vision of you being a high school guy's life group leader. Maybe that's what God is doing. What's burdening you? Maybe in the marketplace, you're constantly around the same leadership table. You're a vice president, or you're a COO, and it feels like you are hearing the same conversations every six months. Conversation is like, why do we keep having to go external to higher talent? I feel like we are only by leaders instead of build leaders. Like, why? Well, maybe that burden is God gonna use you to put in a leadership development system, or a pipeline to raise the value of developing and deploying young leaders in your organization, and you're gonna be one who steps forward, and becomes a mentor to a bunch of young leaders. Maybe that's what God's doing. I don't know what he's doing, but there's something, there's some broken wall in your life. Pay attention to what's burdening you. More than you're shaping a vision of vision, shaping you, but you believe it can change, Nehemiah believed. Gosh, this wall is broken, and I believe I can step in. I believe this must change. I pray that over this teaching series, you'll embrace that divine design that God has for your life. I believe in you, in the marketplace, in your family, in your community, in your neighborhood, that God has placed you there just as He placed Nehemiah right where He placed Him. And God wants to use you to influence others. The best way for you to be used is for you to be constantly formed more into His image, and one way we do that is we spend time with Him together. So let's stand and let's worship our Savior. All right, extend your hands, please, and let me pray, pray, for blessing over you as we go. Jesus, I pray you bless your sons and daughters this week, that you would remind them that you were gentle and approachable and that you loved them. Cause your face to shine on them, I pray they will experience your mercy and your joy this new week, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen, go in peace, have a great week. Thanks for tuning in to the Mariners Weekend Message Podcast. To support the Ministry of Mariners Church, you can click the link in the show notes or download the Mariners app at your favorite app store. If you've been navigating God's wisdom with us through this year's annual read, and would like to hear personal reflections from pastors in your community, check out the Gospel Everyday Podcast. Imagine feeding your heart, mind, and soul with the kind of practical wisdom that will change your life. If you haven't picked up the annual read yet, visit MarinersChurch.org or download the Mariners app for more information on where to find it.