The Four I will's of Psalm 9 - Motto Text 2023

[0:00] I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart. I will tell of all your wonderful deeds.! I will be glad and exult in you.

[0:11] ! I will sing praise to your name, O Most High. So the four I wills, next slide. The four I wills, which for me feel like a bit of a New Year's resolution.

[0:24] And the great I wills are there to be said regardless of how you feel. So you can say these in suffering.

[0:37] You can say these in grief. You can say these in trouble. You can say these when you don't feel it. Because it is a resolution of the heart, a determination of the will.

[0:49] It is an expression of a desire, not the expression of a fulfillment. But something that is said in advance of the trouble.

[1:00] Or in advance of the suffering. Or in advance of the difficulties. This is what I resolve to be by the grace of God. This is what I resolve to do. The four I wills of a New Year's resolution.

[1:13] Now I don't know what you think about New Year's resolutions. They're easy to make, aren't they? And very difficult to keep. I do. I am in the habit of making resolutions.

[1:24] And I have varying successes with them. But I wonder why this is. And the other day when I was traveling up to South Shields, I was listening to a podcast. And it was all about habits.

[1:37] And I thought, oh, this is really interesting given what I'm thinking about. And it is something I've read before. So I was kind of interested in. Because I've used this research before with teachers, with school leaders.

[1:51] And schools are concerned about how to change systems. When systems don't work. When things aren't working as they're meant to work. Then schools are concerned to kind of say, how do we change habits?

[2:03] The habits of teachers. The habits of students. To make for better schools. And they're pretty good at doing that sometimes. And not so good at other times. And the reason that they're pretty good at doing it sometimes.

[2:15] And not so good at other times. Is just the same reason why you and I don't keep to our New Year's resolutions. You're dealing with human beings. And you're dealing with fallen, flawed human beings.

[2:28] With all of their inconsistencies. So how long does it take to change a habit? How many days do you reckon? Six weeks.

[2:40] Okay. So some of you have brought into the old myth that it takes 21 days to change a habit. And you've brought into that because somebody told you that a long time ago. In the 1950s.

[2:53] A medical doctor called Maxwell Maltz. Maltz. He was a plastic surgeon, believe it or not. And when he operated on people, like doing operations on people's noses.

[3:07] He discovered that it took them 21 days to get used to their new nose. So they looked in the mirror every day and, do I like it? Do I not like it? 21 days until they go, that's my nose.

[3:19] All right. He also noticed that if people had their limbs removed, so an arm or a leg, that it took them about 21 days until they got used to the fact that that limb wasn't there.

[3:33] So the phantom limb syndrome disappeared. And then he observed his own habits and he, guess what, decided it took 21 days for him to change his habits.

[3:43] So then he wrote a book and the book went viral in the 1950s. And everybody then believed that it took 21 days to change a habit.

[3:56] And it was commonly stated that that was the truth. So that's good news when you're making New Year's resolutions, okay? So if you decide you want to eat well, you're going to eat healthy.

[4:08] 21 days of healthy eating should make you a healthy eater. Or if you decide you want to, I don't know, be fit, 21 days of fitness regime should make you an Adonis for the rest of your life.

[4:24] But it doesn't, does it? It doesn't. And that made other experts in the field decide that this needs to look at more carefully.

[4:36] And so this piece of research I use quite a lot with educationalists. This is by Dr. Philip Alali, who did some research at the University College of London. Relatively recently, it was written in the European Journal of Social Psychology.

[4:49] That's for Sophie, who does psychology, if she wants to follow it up later. And they observed, in a controlled environment, 96 people, different people, you know, with different levels of fitness, different age groups, different range of interest and so on, different health conditions.

[5:09] They observed 96 people over a 12-week period. Each person chose one new habit for 12 weeks and reported each day on whether or not they did the behavior and how automatic the behavior felt.

[5:24] Because once your behavior is natural, automatic, then it's a habit, right? Some people chose simple habits like drinking a bottle of water with lunch. Others chose more difficult tasks like running for 15 minutes before dinner.

[5:40] At the end of 12 weeks, the researchers analyzed the data to determine how long it took each person to go from starting a new behavior to automatically doing it. And the answer was, on average, on average, it takes more than two months before a new behavior becomes automatic.

[5:59] To be precise, 66 days. And that's a bit harder than 21, isn't it? But it varied depending on the person.

[6:10] So for some people, it might only take 18 days. But for others, it took 254 days for people to form a new habit.

[6:25] So if you want to change something in your life, you want to adopt a practice in your life, it can take anywhere between two to eight months to build a new behavior.

[6:37] Not 21 days, sadly. So before you decide that it's too hard to change a habit so you're not going to bother, it's worth noting that Lally also discovered that if you change a habit and you do quite well at it, but you mess up occasionally, you still should carry on.

[7:00] Because the more you do something, the more likely you are to keep it going. All that to say you don't need to give up on your New Year's resolutions just because you mess up one day.

[7:12] So if you decide, I'm going to eat healthily for 2023, but last Wednesday you went to McDonald's, and that is not healthy eating, really isn't, then don't despair.

[7:25] Or if you decide you're going to have a dry January, but then somebody gave you a gin, it doesn't mean you have to give up on the dry January. I meet a lot of people who suggest that, well, that's pointless because I had a gin or a whiskey or whatever.

[7:37] Yeah? If you want to adopt a new habit, just keep at it. You just do it. And you do it even if you mess up, and you do it when sometimes things go wrong.

[7:50] So habits are really about becoming healthier, becoming fitter, becoming happier.

[8:01] And sometimes we think in order to do those things, we have to deprive ourselves of certain things and then do other things that will make us healthier, happier, or fitter. I couldn't think of anything else.

[8:12] I know I could have put richer there, but then usually we choose to be richer in order to be happier. Yeah? Yeah? And actually, richer makes you healthier too, generally speaking.

[8:23] All of the evidence would suggest that, wouldn't it, for obvious reasons. So we want to do those things, and all of us want to be healthier, happier, and fitter, I'm sure, at least healthier and happier.

[8:35] Some people might not want to be fitter, I get that. And we want to do that because they make for a more fulfilling, more purposeful life. They make us better people, we think.

[8:50] And so we adopt habits that allow us to do that. So, next slide, please. Don't underestimate... Next slide, sorry, Josh. Don't underestimate the importance of good habits.

[9:05] This is James Clear. He's written... He was the man I was listening to on the podcast. I've got his book now, and I'm reading it. The book's very good, although I kind of... I really read it because I heard the podcast, and he just says the same things.

[9:16] But there we go. A slight change in your daily habits can guide your life to a different destination. Making a choice that is 1% better or 1% worse is insignificant in the moment.

[9:31] But over the span of moments that make up a lifetime, these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be. It's quite right, isn't it?

[9:43] You see, the problem is that we think, oh, it takes two to eight months to change. I'm not going to bother. That's too hard. But actually, when you put it all down, you say, well, actually, it's only deciding to make a good choice repeatedly every day, even just for a few moments.

[10:03] So you say, well, you know, I want to get fit. But I went to the gym, and I saw all of these people kind of pumping weights and kind of running on the treadmill, and I looked there, and I thought, oh, I'm not going to bother.

[10:16] Okay, you don't have to start by running 25 miles on a treadmill or lifting double your body weight. You can start by, you know, running for a minute, and the next day try to run for a minute and 10 seconds or a minute and a half, and just try to build it up slowly.

[10:34] Nobody becomes a marathon runner overnight. A little change goes a long way. So obviously, this has to relate in some way to what I'm saying, doesn't it?

[10:49] Making the difference between who you are and who you could be is really important when we come to consider our motto text. I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart.

[11:02] I will tell of all your wonderful deeds. I will be glad in exalting you. I will sing praise to your name most high. This is what I will do.

[11:15] This is my determination. This is going to become my daily habit. So when we think about the language of the psalm, the implication here, of course, is that the psalmist may or may not be satisfied with his current level of spirituality.

[11:38] He may have known days when he's been half-hearted. Who hasn't? He may have known days when all he ever did was moan and complain about what God was not doing in his life.

[11:52] Who hasn't? He may have known days when he's felt flat and disinterested and dispirited and downcast.

[12:03] Who hasn't? There may have been days when he couldn't raise a word of praise. Who hasn't? Had those days.

[12:16] But he determines that he will change his habits in order to become the person that God wants him to be. To make up the gap between who you are and who you could be.

[12:33] So let's think about Psalm 9 for a moment. It's in two parts. Verses 1 to 12. It's all about praise to God for past deliverance. And then verses 13 to 20 is all about prayer for future deliverance.

[12:48] And those two things are connected. Because the more we experience the presence of God in our lives, the more we expect that. If we have been through difficult times in the past and God has delivered us as a result of our praying to him and resting upon him, then when we face trouble, we think, what should I do about it?

[13:09] I should turn to God. I may not feel like it. I may feel, oh no, not again, Lord. But I know that this is the source of my strength.

[13:19] This is the source of my deliverance. When I am in need, I turn to God. And he wants to praise God. And he doesn't want that to be half-hearted. The thing I love about our church services is the praise is really not half-hearted.

[13:37] You know, even when I'm half-hearted, it's not half-hearted. And sometimes that can be quite annoying, can't it? When you kind of think, everybody's praising God. Look at Carol with her arms up.

[13:48] My, I can't raise my arms. I can hardly stand up. But actually, I get encouragement to see Carol's arms up in the air. That's an encouragement to me. It's a reminder to me that praise is independent upon how I feel.

[14:03] It is something that ought to be done regardless of how I feel. When I first started to come to Whitby Christian Fellowship back in the Coliseum days, my oldest daughter used to come at the time, and she used to refer to Whitby Christian Fellowship as the singing church.

[14:23] One of my younger daughters, I don't know which of the two it was there, used to refer to Marilyn as Dancing Marilyn. What a great thing to be known as. There's the singing church with Dancing Marilyn.

[14:36] Yeah? Fabulous, isn't it, Carl? Yeah? A heart that praises God. A heart that rejoices in God. A heart that is not half-hearted.

[14:47] That should characterize the people of God when they come together. But we have to be careful with the word praise. Because the word praise and worship sometimes gives us the impression that that means dancing all the time and raising your arms in the air.

[15:04] But it clearly doesn't. Because when you read the Psalms, you can see in the Psalms, for example, a third of the Psalms are what we call lament Psalms.

[15:16] That is when people are not kind of traditionally praising, but calling out to God for deliverance. Asking God questions like, Why? Why are you doing this?

[15:26] Why have you let me down? Or crying out, Why is my heart so downcast? Why are you doing this? But they find their way in the Hebrew book of prayers. They're all meant to be sung.

[15:40] So I mentioned New Year's resolutions. My New Year's resolution is not a particularly difficult one. My New Year's resolution is to read through the Psalms in a year.

[15:51] Now there's only 150 and there are 365 days, so I don't even have to do one a day. Remember when we went through the Bible in a year, that was hard. 150 Psalms in 365 days, that's not so difficult.

[16:04] Some of the Psalms are long, but some are very short. But here's another New Year's resolution that thankfully you don't have to listen to. It's also my resolution to sing through all the Psalms in a year.

[16:16] Now that's really tricky. There are some good modern ones, but try and sing through some of the Psalms. It's really hard. So I'm going to kind of find some Gregorian chant somewhere and go with it.

[16:30] Maybe even in Latin, I don't know. It still sounds wonderful, I'm sure. Noise is coming from my room. It's called antithonal singing.

[16:42] Somebody's meant to sing it once and somebody else is meant to repeat it back. So Lisa, do you want to join me? I don't think she does. Now the reason for that is I want to learn to praise.

[16:57] And I want to learn to praise in the full experience, the full human experience, that also includes grief and lament and distress and despair, in order that I might discover what it's like for me to experience those things in the way that the world experiences those things and give me a deeper resonance with people who suffer.

[17:19] So the Psalms is a lived out worship of God, a day-to-day, everyday thing that allows us to determine in the depths of our being, I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart.

[17:36] I will tell of you all your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exalting you. I will sing praise to your name, O Most High. And I will do that when I lose my job.

[17:46] And I will do that when I will lose my health. And I will do that when I lose a person I love. I will do that as a determination of my spirit within me.

[17:59] And so let us apply this. Next slide, please. I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart. For me, this means, and I hope you'll take this on board, I resolve to stop being half-hearted in the worship of God.

[18:17] You see, it's very easy to be half-hearted. Worship is the dedication of our whole being to God and to his service.

[18:29] When Jesus was asked, what does it mean to love God? What does it mean, sorry, to obey the law? He said, it is to love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.

[18:45] And to love your neighbor as yourself. It is the dedication of your whole being as a human being to God. Everything that you have, heart, soul, mind strength, is to be dedicated to the worship of God.

[19:03] Paul calls it spiritual worship. It involves a repudiation of the world's thinking and attitudes and the transformation of the mind as we offer our ideas, our lives as living sacrifices to God, which is, Paul says, are acceptable or reasonable.

[19:23] Reasonable, another way of translating that, rational worship. That is the way you ought to do it. That is the way your mind says it ought to be, because this is God we're talking about.

[19:34] And this is what I do regardless of how I feel. It is my reasonable worship. So when we make New Year's resolutions, and sometimes when we fail in the making of these New Year resolutions, it's because we are not forming habits that make those things happen.

[19:59] So what kind of habits do we form to make sure that our resolve to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength becomes a reality? You see, it won't happen just by turning up on Sunday and singing songs and being happy in church.

[20:16] It won't happen just because we've resolved to do it. It will happen because we do something to make it happen. We read the Bible every day.

[20:26] We communicate with God every day. I like the word communicate rather than pray. Pray is a beautiful word. But we sometimes think that when we're praying, we have to be formally on our knees or something.

[20:38] You can pray to God when you're walking the dog. I frequently pray to God when I'm walking the dog. If you've ever walked Maggie, you realize sometimes you just have to. Or she'll pull you into a ditch somewhere.

[20:52] You can pray when you're sitting, contemplating the world. You can pray when you're driving your car. So we worship, we pray, we read the Bible.

[21:05] We spend time contemplating the Almighty. We think of Him constantly. We turn our mind to Him. Even, Brother Lawrence used to say in the practice of the presence of God, when you're washing the pots.

[21:21] In every moment of every day, we make a resolve to seek God and to put Him first in our lives. And even in those times when we're not thinking about Him or anything, really, if we have begun our day and dedicating ourselves to the service of God, we can trust the Almighty to overshadow our lives and keep us in His will.

[21:46] Jesus, right into the church. Imagine that. Jesus, right into the church, wrote this about them in Revelation 2 about the church at Ephesus. To the angel of the church in Ephesus write, the words of Him who holds the seven stars in His right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.

[22:07] I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and have found them to be false.

[22:19] I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary, but I have this against you, that you have abandoned your first love.

[22:34] Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen. Repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.

[22:46] And I find that immensely challenging. Jesus says, I know all about you. I know all the good things you've done. I know how faithful you've been.

[22:59] I commend you for it. But I have this against you. You've lost your first love. And holding on to your love is the most important thing that you can do.

[23:13] God is much more interested in the love of our hearts than he is in the works of our hands. But we only ever demonstrate the love of our hearts in the works of our hands.

[23:25] It takes discipline to maintain your love for God. Jesus didn't say to them, you've lost your first love, so now work it up as a feeling. He says, repent and do the first works.

[23:38] So if you stopped reading your Bible and stopped praying, if you stopped living a disciplined Christian life, you need to repent, as I need to repent every day, in order that I might love God with a purer devotion.

[23:56] I will give thanks to the Lord with all of my heart. According to a much-traveled analogy, if we put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will immediately hop out.

[24:11] But put the frog in water that's at room temperature and heat it slowly, and the creature will stay there until it boils to death. Put him in a lethal environment suddenly, and he will escape.

[24:23] But introduce the danger gradually, and he will never notice. The truth is that the dangers to which we are most vulnerable are generally not the sudden, dramatic, obvious ones.

[24:35] They are the ones that creep up on us, that are so much a part of our environment, that we don't even notice them. If we get an everyday environment, an everyday diet, of scrolling through social media, of listening to the latest gossip, of watching endless kind of programs on Netflix or Amazon.

[24:59] I do all of these things from time to time. I'm not down on them. Of reading the newspapers, of spending time chatting about all kinds of things, but never thinking about God.

[25:11] Of forming all our desires based on the things that the world can provide. Don't be surprised if we backstay. What you put in is what you get out.

[25:26] See, people used to despise the good old daily habit of a quiet time. But what would you replace it with? Having a good old daily habit of a quiet time is a really good habit to have.

[25:41] Reading your Bible and praying every day, it can become legalistic. Of course it can. But everything can. The thing that prevents us becoming legalistic is having a heart that desires to know God better.

[25:57] And so if you have got into really bad habits, don't think that those habits are somehow irrelevant. They are gradually leading you away from God. Worldly habits are cleverly designed by the devil to rob us of our first love.

[26:15] So we need to examine our ways, examine our habits, and repent if we have left our first love. And this quote from John Ortberg.

[26:27] Next slide, please, Josh. For many of us, the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. Most of us wouldn't dream of doing that. Even just for sure.

[26:40] Because what will people think of us? It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it.

[26:55] And in 2023, we have to resolve not to be mediocre. The world needs us to be on fire because the world is going to hell and what it needs is Christians on fire.

[27:11] The second I will, in application, I will tell of all your wonderful deeds, which translates for me, I resolve to speak more openly of the greatness of God.

[27:25] I resolve to speak more openly of the greatness of God. Come and see, the psalmist says, what God has done, his awesome deeds for mankind.

[27:39] When something good happens to you, you can't wait to tell somebody, can you? Oh, we're going to have a grandchild. That was you too. Well done.

[27:51] Oh, we're going to have a baby. Wonderful. Great. Of course you want to tell people. I've just got a new job. And a pay rise. Fantastic. I've just got the all clear from the doctor.

[28:04] Isn't that great? Yes, wonderful. I've just come to know the Lord. I need to tell you that. Can you remember when you felt you just had to tell everybody?

[28:20] I've told you before, I went around every door on my street. I just had to tell everybody. My mom said, everybody will think you're mad. Didn't matter. I said, mom, they're going to hell.

[28:33] I need to tell people. Come and see what the Lord has done for me. How wonderful his works to the children of men. And it's amazing what this desire will do.

[28:46] Let me show you the next slide. This is John Geddy. John Geddy was born in Banff, in Bucken, in Scotland. And he went to Canada when he was a young boy with his family.

[28:59] He became a Presbyterian minister in the Church of Canada. And then he went in 1846 to the South Sea Islands to be a missionary to cannibals.

[29:12] Who would do that in their right mind? Took his wife and his two children. He ended up having five children who were all born on these islands. Traveled 20,000 miles by sea and arrived at Anitam, which is now Vanuatu, in the South Sea Islands.

[29:33] 20 British crew members had just recently been eaten by the cannibals when he arrived. They set up a mission station and they began to preach.

[29:45] And there were no Christians. But notice what happens. In his memorial stone outside of the church in which he first preached, it has these words.

[29:55] In memory of John Getty D.D., born in Scotland in 1815, minister in Prince Edward Island seven years, missionary sent from Nova Scotia to Anitiam for 24 years.

[30:07] When he landed in 1848, there were no Christians here. And when he left in 1872, there were no heathen. He was willing to lay down his life so that other people could be saved.

[30:23] He wanted to tell at the wonderful deeds of God. And you know, for all that this life has to offer us and it has to offer us so many wonderful things to enjoy, there will come a time when the only thing that matters to every living being is whether their soul is saved by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

[30:47] The only thing people take with them when they die is their soul. And where their soul is in relation to Jesus is the only thing that matters. The only thing that matters.

[31:00] What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world but lose his soul? And what can a man give in exchange for his soul? And if I believe that, I will make every effort to tell people the gospel of Jesus Christ.

[31:17] Jesus Christ. And I resolve to speak more of the wonderful deeds of God. Third, I will. I will be glad and exalting you, which translates for me, I resolve to live a life of gratitude before God.

[31:36] See, if you read the self-help people, they will tell you that the best thing you can do if your life is miserable is to get up every day and thank yourself, usually thank yourself, for something.

[31:52] Every time I try to thank myself for anything, I remember that I only exist because of my mom and dad. And every time I think about the fact that I only exist because of my mom and dad, I realize I only exist because of God.

[32:05] So, let me change that and say, every time you get up in the morning, look in the mirror and thank God for something that you like about yourself.

[32:17] That's fine. That's getting better. Love your neighbor as yourself. Nobody's meant to hate themselves. It's not natural, it's not right, it's not good.

[32:29] We are not to live without hope. Jesus is our hope, so we can look in the mirror and we can love ourselves and we ought to love ourselves. But thank God for who you are.

[32:42] And there's always something to find to praise God for. Always something. No matter how dark and miserable the day, there's always something. The fact that you're still alive, that's a pretty good thing to thank God for.

[32:54] I'm sure you can, unless you really don't like yourself, then, or you're really, really suffering in some way and forgive me if you are, most of us are grateful that we're alive.

[33:06] That we have our health, that we have something to eat, that we have a family that loves us. We really have an awful lot to thank God for. And the reason why we're advised to praise God, or sorry, to live a life of gratitude is because it's good for us.

[33:25] It makes a difference in your day to the kind of person that you're going to be that day. make it a daily habit of thanking God for something.

[33:38] As you begin to do that, guess what? You'll begin to become a person who is thankful. Just a little bit every day makes a difference.

[33:50] God, I thank you that I'm alive one day. Might become a psalm in a month. Might become the book of psalms in a year. Finding something to be grateful for in your life.

[34:04] Just think for a moment, just now, stop and think. What am I thankful for? Who am I really grateful for today?

[34:18] And then ask yourself, what can you be glad and exalting when it comes to God and His relationship to you? When you think of God, what is the first thought that comes to mind?

[34:36] That will tell you a lot about your relationship with Him. It will tell you a lot about how honest you've been with yourself.

[34:48] Let us resolve to live a life of gratitude to God. And then, the final, I will. I will sing praise to your name almost high. Translates for me, I resolve to give God the praise He deserves.

[35:05] I resolve to give God the praise that He deserves. You know, sometimes when you think about it, we like to have God on our own terms, don't we?

[35:19] We like to have a God who excuses all our bad behaviors. In fact, if you look at the modern world, especially if you do spend time on Twitter, which is, I have a love-hate relationship to it, I'm going to resolve to get off it, I think.

[35:32] It triggers me so many times. But, I read all of these people making declarative statements about what they believe about God. And I think to myself from time to time, I thought we were made in the image of God.

[35:46] I didn't realize we were making God in the image of what we wanted. but so often we reduce God to our own ideas about how he ought to be rather than how he is.

[36:00] Well, you can have a God in the image that you decide is worthy of you, but of course, that's not real God at all. That's just the God of our imagination.

[36:15] There are many, many things about God when I read the Bible that I think, wow, I find that really tricky. But it doesn't entitle me to say, I don't believe it or I'm going to reject you because of it.

[36:29] I accept God for who he is. That's the deal. And I realize that the problem is not with God, it's with me and my own attempts to downgrade who he is to the level of my unrighteousness.

[36:45] unrighteousness and lack of holiness and godliness. God deserves to be praised as he deserves for who he is and for what he means to us regardless of whether or not I find it pleasurable.

[37:05] A.W. Tozer once famously asked, what comes into our minds when we think about God? He says, that is the most important thing about us. The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion and a man's spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.

[37:28] Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God. For this reason, the gravest question before the church is always God himself and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.

[37:49] We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian but of the company of Christians that compass the church.

[38:01] Always the most revealing things about the church is her idea of God. and he's absolutely right. The churches that downgrade the true nature of God die in the end and church history is replete with examples of that.

[38:22] Churches that begin to deny the Bible begin to tell the people in the church that parts of the Bible don't matter you look at it they are the churches across the world die. And they die because they lose God because they drive Jesus away from his own church.

[38:43] It is not our job to apologize for God or the Bible it is our job to preach the truth and say this is our God and it is down to us to worship him as he is as he deserves not as we want him to be.

[39:00] I resolve to give God the praise that is due to his name and I must never rest until everything in me worships God.

[39:13] So to close next slide these are my resolutions for this year these I think are a reflection of our motto text these I hope will also be your resolutions too to stop being half hearted in the worship of God to speak openly of the greatness of God to live a life of gratitude before God and to give God the praise he deserves.

[39:46] These align with our purposes and values as a church these reflect the purposes and values of Jesus and they should reflect the values and purposes of Christian believers who want to be with Jesus become like Jesus and do what Jesus does.

[40:05] And just a couple of quotes to end. I wonder if you can reflect that John Ortberg the life you've always wanted he said I am disappointed with myself I am disappointed not so much with the particular things I have done as with the aspects of who I have become I have a nagging sense that all is not as it should be.

[40:35] I wonder if you can relate to that I often relate to that I'm not what I was but I'm not as I should be and I want to be better and then the last slide from John Ortberg to grow spiritually means to live increasingly as Jesus would in our unique place to perceive what Jesus would perceive if he looked through our eyes to think what he would think to feel what he would feel and therefore to do what he would do.

[41:14] I really want to know what it is to live a life of Jesus in me living through me looking at the world through my eyes that I might experience his heart and know him in a deeper and more intimate way.

[41:36] Let us pray. Amen.