Spiritual Formation // Condition of the Heart

Week 2 – Spiritual Formation

Main Scripture:

• Romans 12:1–2 – “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice… be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”

Big Idea

This message continues the Spiritual Formation series, emphasizing that everyone is being formed—either intentionally by God or passively by the world. Spiritual practices are not the goal themselves but means to draw near to God’s presence and allow Him to transform us, especially through our minds and hearts.

Key Concepts

1. Spiritual Practices Are Only Tools

Practices like Bible reading, prayer, fasting, silence, and solitude are essential but ineffective if your heart is not healthy or open to God. The end goal isn’t religious routine—it’s relationship and transformation.

2. Formation Is Both Mental and Emotional

Spiritual formation isn't just about thinking differently (left brain), but about transforming emotional responses (right brain) too. Your heart (biblically and neurologically) includes your emotional reactions and memories—and God wants to renew that part as well.

The Condition of the Heart Matters

Referencing Jesus’ parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1–23), Pastor taught that your heart must be healthy soil for transformation to happen. Otherwise, the Word won't take root, or it will be crowded out.

"No amount of spiritual practice will work if the heart is hurting and unprepared."

Neuroscience + Scripture: What Prepares the Heart?

Pastor introduced insights from neurotheology (the intersection of brain science and faith). He outlined four conditions that prepare your heart (or brain) for lasting spiritual growth:

1. Joy (explored this week)
2. Attachment (introduced this week)
3. Group identity (coming soon)
4. Loving, non-shame-based correction (coming soon)

Focus This Week: JOY

What is Joy?

• Not merely an emotion.
• It's the relational experience of being delighted in by someone.
• Neuroscience defines joy as seeing someone's face light up when they see you.
• Joy is often formed in early childhood and is essential for healthy emotional development.

Joy in Scripture:

• Nehemiah 8:10 – “The joy of the Lord is your strength.”
• Numbers 6:24–26 – “The Lord bless you… make His face shine on you…”
• Psalm 16:11, Psalm 21:6, Psalm 89:15 – joy and blessing come from the face of God.
• Genesis 4:14 – Cain grieved losing God’s face.
• 2 Corinthians 4:6 – “The light… in the face of Christ.”

Takeaway: God’s face shines on you. That’s how He communicates His joy, His love, and His relational delight in you.

Joy Is the Foundation of Attachment

Joy leads to secure relationships—with God and others. And God doesn’t stop at attachment; He offers chesed: loyal, covenant love that endures.

“Even when I walk into a room feeling unworthy or broken, God’s face still shines on me.”

Practical Application

Before jumping into spiritual disciplines, ask God to prepare your heart:

• Let His joy shine on your sadness.
• Invite His presence into hidden pain.
• Let your time with God (Bible reading, prayer, etc.) be a space where you are seen and loved, not just productive.

Key Takeaways

• Spiritual formation begins with a healthy, joy-filled heart.
• Joy = God’s face shining on you, not dependent on emotions.
• Practices are only effective when your heart is healed and relationally connected to God.
• You are deeply loved, securely attached, and joyfully seen by the God of the universe.

Hey, good morning, church. Good morning. Good seeing you today.

Did you notice our band trying to sneak some Star Wars in there?

If you don't know why it's May 4th, may the 4th be with you.

 You get it. (Applause) It's a thing. It's exciting. I'm excited about it, but I'm also a nerd. Hey, stand with me to your feet for the reading of today's scripture.

 We're going to be reading out of Romans chapter 12 again. I'm going to just let you think about these words and how they affect you and what they mean to you in this moment.

 Verse 1 says this, "Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy,

 to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing and perfect will.

 Father, we thank you so much for today.

 Lord, we invite you into this moment and to our hearts and our minds. Help this message that we're about to walk through together as a church. Lord, shape our imagination and inspire our hearts, Father.

 We thank you that you're here in this place. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.

 Okay, well, listen, this is week two of our new series that we started last week, Spiritual Formation. If you missed last week, if you were out of town, if you were gone, if you just missed it, I encourage you to go back and check it out. It kind of sets up this idea because we are moving into this new season as a church. We are walking through and learning about spiritual formation and what does that mean and what does that look like? We're going to look at spiritual practices and we have a whole bunch of different exciting things coming up as we move forward. And I talked a lot about it last week, but today we're going to kind of continue this idea because here's the thing about spiritual formation, just formation in general. This talks about don't be conformed by the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And the thing that we all have to come to grasp on is everyone in this room is being formed in one way or another. It's either you're being formed intentionally because you are making an effort and a purpose of what is allowing, what you're allowing to form you, or it is unintentional and you are allowing the world around you to form you. And you're allowing things and influences that are around you to form you. And so spiritual formation, this whole process, this whole journey is an opportunity for us to be intentional about the process by which we engage with God. And here's the biggest thing, though we're going to talk about scriptures and we're going to talk about sermons and we're going to talk about spiritual practices and we're going to talk about scripture reading and prayer and silence and solitude and fasting and different things over this process and this journey.

 All of them are just a means to an end.

 The real purpose, the real reason that we are participating in this idea and the real reason we want you to walk on this journey with us is because we are trying to create an opportunity in the space where we can become more aware of God's presence in our lives,

 where we can allow moments in time where God can make himself known to us and we can make our hearts known to him and that we can be content in his presence.

 And so it doesn't matter what the practice is, it doesn't matter what the thing is, if we're just doing the practice, just to do the practice to check it off of our daily ritual and it doesn't lead to time in the presence of God, then it was for nothing. I told one of my sons this week, as this example, we as a family like to do a lot of different things. We do activities, we go to sports games, we go on vacations, we do all these things and they all have these really specific forms of what we're doing. But I asked him, what is the main goal of going on a vacation or going out to dinner or going to play pickleball or whatever it is, what is the main goal? And he said to spend time together. We go to the beach and we go play these games and we do these different things, those are the activities, but the activities are the conduit which allow our relationships to have time and the presence of each other so that we can grow closer together. Spiritual formation of this entire journey and some of the practical steps that we'll walk through, they only are as good as what the end result is. If you're only looking at them from the surface level, then you're missing the point. We are desperately wanting to become closer to God through time and proximity with Him.

 And our spiritual formation journey is a way in which we get to walk through that. And so that's what we're going to talk about. But here's before we get into this, before we even start to talk about some of these things, there's something we have to understand and we're going to get a little nerdy this morning. So I hope you've got your Bill Nye the Science guy hat on with you today because it's going to be nerdy. Because here's the thing, we could go through and we could set out all sorts of habits, good habits that would help you grow in your maturity and your relationship with God. Things like reading the Bible every day or taking a set time of day to pray or some of the other different habits that we can see pattern in the life of Jesus. That would be really good. But here's the problem.

 They will be minimally or completely ineffective if your heart is not prepared to receive and to grow.

 If your heart is not prepared and your heart is not in a good place.

 And here's what we need to know. Here's what we need to know. And this is I'm going to really take a lot and kind of down. You know, I love the fact that I have this this incredible honor of being called to be a pastor and being called specifically to be a pastor of this church. I think it's incredible. But if there was another title that I think is just really cool because I'm a real big nerd of a role that I think is cool and I'm not qualified in either role. But it's a neat title. It's this new title that's coming out like some people are walking into. It's this idea of a neuro theologian. A neuro theologian. I am neither a neuroscience expert nor a theologian. So I'm unqualified in both parts of the title. But I think it'd be really cool to be both of those things together. But but here's what's really interesting. There's this study this pursuit of understanding how does our brain work as neuroscience. Right. How does our brain work. How do we learn. How do we grow. How do we adapt. How do we change. Right. But there's these people who are saying hey God made the brain and God understands the brain. How does neuroscience and how our brains work integrate and match with theology of our scripture. Right. And how does that work. And so there's these incredible guys who are making some incredible jumps in this field. It's really fun to learn and grow. But I'm going to give you just a real just really 50,000 level view like high end idea. So your brain and maybe you've heard about this. You've heard about this whole left brain right brain. And like maybe you grew up with this whole idea of like I'm one side or the other. Just I don't want to like ruin what your mom told you. Actually you use both sides of your brain all the time. You're not half a brain. You're also not using 10 percent of your brain. That's a myth. You're using a lot of your brain. Your brain is used and you are both sides of your brain. But each side of your brain is used for different things. It is used for different things. So the left side of your brain. This is what they call the slower side of your brain the slower thinking process your brain. That is where you're going to be having just logical thought. That's where you're going to have beliefs. That's where you're going to formulate ideas and conversations. But it's a slow response. Like we think about these things. You use it when you're studying in school. Like that is the left side of your brain.

 But the right side of your brain. This is something that is very quick and very instinctual and it moves very fast and it process emotions and feelings and it reads things very quickly and makes ideas. It can read facial expressions and everything's very very fast and it's a very fast thinking idea. And it's this emotional quick response idea of how these things are gone. And it governs what we would call your implicit behavior. How you react to certain things and how you react to certain stimulus and how you react in certain environments. I'll give you an example, a personal example that happened to me just this week. I won't have time to unpack all of it but just this week. So Friday was my youngest son Felix's birthday. He turned seven. Which is awesome. And we love him very much. And it was a really good day. And so for one of his birthday things that we did is he got out of school and we got to go pick up some lunch and we went to have lunch with my wife at ORU on their campus. And so we went and we went to have lunch. It was great. And Friday, this whole weekend at ORU was the graduation for ORU and Friday was the hooding ceremony. So all these students are walking around in their caps and gowns and they're going to get hooded in this whole process and the kids are all excited and parents are there and proud and all this stuff's happening. It's just lots of activity. And I'm sitting there eating lunch and I'm seeing all these kids start to pile in and I'm recognizing the different colleges because I graduated from ORU and I'm seeing the ones who are from the school business. They got the same hood, like in the same thing. They got the tassel. The College of Business tassels the worst. It's called the color for their tassels called drab, which is literally the lamest color drab. Like you probably didn't know it's a color. It's just it is and it's a statement. It's ugly. It's just brown.

 But they're walking around and like everyone's excited. The weather is perfect. It's a beautiful sunshine day and I'm sitting there and I am overwhelmed with sadness.

 And I'm like why am I so sad?

 And I even told my wife, you know, there's nothing about college graduation that makes me really sad.

 Like really sad.

 And to be fair, she was busy and she was having to get back to work and all this kind of stuff. We didn't have a lot of time and we were there to celebrate Felix and so I just moved on. But I went and dropped off and I had to help another student move some stuff out of their dorm. And I'm just sitting there and I'm seeing all these kids and everyone's excited and I'm still I'm like overwhelmingly sad.

 And I'm like God, what is going on? And we talked about this week. Instead of just saying, oh, just going to ignore it. I'm going to put on a pack. I'm going to move on. I said, God, I need to I need to press into what's going on here. And I need to ask you, what is what is what is happening? I'm not. There's nothing around me that should be sad. No one is sad. Teachers are excited. Students are leaving. Students are excited. The students are leaving. Parents are excited. They don't have to pay for college. Like it's a really good day.

 Everyone's excited except for me.

 And I'm sad.

 I took some time and I just praise like God, this is something that's not from today.

 This is something that I'm carrying in my heart.

 This is something that I'm carrying inside of me from something back. And I don't have time to go through the whole journey, but I went through and I realized how much disappointment and how much sadness was associated with with my own season of graduation and the transition and some things that didn't end the way that I hoped that they would end and they didn't go the way that I thought they would go in some relationships that I lost at the end of what caused like that. And I never gave myself time to walk through, to feel, to mourn and to grieve what that season looked like. And so now 20 something years later or about 20 years later, I show up and my heart is just like it was then that I ignored.

 That is what your right brain does.

 You see a stimulus and it immediately brings you right back and it brings these feelings back. And I'm going to make a big statement. This is a big statement.

 Okay. In the Bible, the Bible talks about your heart.

 With our, we obviously know that the heart has no feelings. It's just the muscle that pumps blood, right? Like that's what we know about. But you feel feelings and emotions in your chest.

 My sadness was here. And that's why they'd be like, well, I guess it's the heart.

 But modern day, the heart and your right brain, they're like the same thing.

 The thing that is processing these feelings and these emotions, that's this instant idea, this instant response is the same thing, which is why you can know that you're supposed to not get angry. But then when something happens, you immediately become angry. It is your heart is your right brain is this process that is immediately reacting to this idea. And we are both halves of these things. We are these learned, slow, logical thoughts. And we are also these immediate reactions. And what God wants to do is not just create habits that change your daily patterns of how you think and what you do. He wants to get inside of you so that your emotional reactions, everything about you are completely transformed.

 When he says that you are able to have the mind of Christ, that you are able to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. It's not just one half, it's both halves. So that when you give your heart to him, he's saying that my heart is no longer ruled by what I feel, but instead he will make a new heart inside of me. And he'll transform me.

 And you see, before we start to walk into some ideas of habits, which would be good for you to do, some of us have to understand that our heart, our right brain, this idea, they need to be healthy.

 They need to have certain things for the soil of your heart to be ready to have these seeds planted or else they'll be not effective. And in fact, maybe you're like, I went through it, a year I was in the word every day and nothing changed.

 Jesus has a parable about that.

 You know the parable we talked about the seed for the sowers and the four different types of ground?

 And you remember how he explained it?

 He said there's four types of grounds. He said the first one it goes and it gets eaten up. There's nothing there. The second one it goes and they're really joyous about it, but then it fades away because there's no roots and then all of a sudden there was one, there was too much stuff overgrowing and so yeah, it took root, but there's too many other things that overcrowded it. And then finally there's the fourth ground, the good ground that was ready to receive it. You see, no amount of spiritual practices will transform your heart whenever your heart is hurting and is unhealthy.

 And when your mind is not ready to process this. And what science will tell us, what neuroscience will tell us, and I'm going to give you a case that the Bible says the exact same thing. Is that there's four things you need to make sure that your heart or that your soil is prepared. Four things. We're going to talk about two of them today. The first one is joy.

 The second one is attachment. The third one is group identity. And the fourth one is loving, non-shame correction. That those four things, that if you have those four things in your life, you are then prepared to walk through and to be able to experience change in your life. But if you're lacking some of those things, if you're missing out on some of those things because of your past, because of trauma, because of different things that you've experienced, you, it doesn't matter how many times you read the Bible or how many times you fast or how many, like you will be missing because there's something in your brain that's not firing correctly. But God is not surprised by this. Just because our text is thousands years old, the author and the finisher of our faith, the one who designed you, who intricately knew you, who knew your mind and how you were created before you were ever born, who spoke the world into existence, knew exactly what it takes to be in relationship with you, to allow you to experience his life-altering presence in your life.

 So I want to talk about a couple of those things today because it, because it, it matters. It matters. You see, traditional church ideas and traditional church discipleship and church, like it very much focuses on a lot of left-brain ideas. Come to church, read this Bible, say, do this plan, and this and this are all really good. But if the right side of your brain is not firing correctly, if the inside, the way you respond, if your heart is not ready to receive the seed, then it doesn't matter how many times you are like that footpath that is broken. You're like the place where the thorns are growing. It's not there. It's not ready.

 So the heart has to be ready. So we say, "Oh, good God, how do we look at this?" The first one, the first thing I want to talk to you about is joy. Joy. Now, I know you're sitting here thinking, "I did not tell Pastor Isaiah this.

 That just happens to be how he ends worship. That just happens to be that I count the joy come every battle because I know that's where you'll be." That's the song that we end. I didn't tell him. He had no idea. He hasn't seen my notes. I keep it secret, lock and key because that's just who I am.

 And look what the Spirit does. But here's what I mean by joy. And we've talked about joy every Christmas we talk about joy. And if you want to reference any of those things, you can because all of them are true. But we're going to look at it from a different perspective today because here's the definition of joy. And when we look at like a neurological idea of what joy is, okay? And by the way, if you want to read a lot more about this, there's a great book. There's a great book that I highly recommend. It's called The Other Half of Church by Jim Wilder and Michael Hendricks. Incredible book. Incredible book. And they're way smarter and way more intelligent. Maddie, calm down. She just read it. She's about to die. It's like it's a powerful thing. You can go through it. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. Joy is not an emotion. It's not like inside out, okay? It's not that that's not joy. Okay? Joy is not one of our emotions. We're going to talk about the emotions in a second because it does. Joy has to do with our emotions. But joy is something different. And neurologically, let me tell you what joy is. Joy is what you experience when you walk into a room and someone sees you and they make eye contact with you and their face lights up. Their face lights up and you know that they're happy to

 see you. That is joy. What you feel in that moment. And you've experienced it. Maybe it's been a while, but you've experienced it where you walk into a room and someone sees you and the moment they see that you're there, they light up and you're just like they're in like the feeling that you get. Like that is firing inside your body. Joy is saying that that person is delighted and excited to see me. That's joy.

 And listen, we see that at one of the most beautiful relationships. Joy has to do with like babies. Babies see that on their face because if you've ever seen a mom, like moms can't help but look at their kids with joy. And so all that kids sees is every time mom looks at me, every time dad looks at me, they're like so joyful and so they get joy. And then the parents get excited because then the baby learns that that person loves me. So when they see that person, that baby then all of a sudden begins to smile and then you see that and it just completely melts you and like your whole life, like it's this joy cycle with young children. Which is why as a mom or as a dad, you're willing to not sleep, not eat, have a broken back, carry people, do the craziest things, drive around the neighborhood so they'll get a nap, like you'll do anything for them. Why? Because like they create joy inside of you.

 They create joy inside of you.

 And that's this idea, this ideal. And unfortunately we know that there's some children and there's some parents that they don't get that.

 And it's detrimental to development. It's detrimental.

 So joy is this nonverbal, deeply neurological idea that is most identified through the face. You see it in the face. You experience through the face. You experience it through eye contact. I am so happy. You've maybe experienced the opposite. You've walked into a room and everyone's like, oh, God. The opposite of joy. They're here. And you're like, nothing's more like just saddening than that. When you're like, hey, guys. It's like when Toby walks in the room in the office, it's just like the worst. And it's just like so demoralizing. Like, oh, no. Like they're here. But the opposite is like I walk in and they see me. They see me. They see my face. Maybe you remember when you were young and you were in love and you were still dating and your significant other walked in the room and how excited you were to see them. And when they saw you and they lit up and they smiled, there was literally nothing great. It was like you could hear the birds chirping and you could hear the angels singing and things were happening. You're floating.

 It's joy. It's joy. And what's amazing is it can come like this. It doesn't matter what your day is looking like. It doesn't matter how hard it's been. It doesn't matter what the environment looks like. The moment that you see it, the moment that that thing happens, that experience, and you see that face shining that light on you, your day has changed. Your moment has changed. Joy has entered in. And so here's what's interesting. The Bible, we're going to start real service level. We're going to go deeper and deeper and deeper. Nehemiah chapter 8.10 is a really famous verse, the second half of it. It says, "Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength." The joy of the Lord is your strength. The joy of God, the joy of your heavenly Father is your strength. And at first you like listen, just hold on to your hands. Get ready. Okay, number 6. This is the big blessing that Aaron and the disciples are supposed to say. It says, "May the Lord bless you and keep you. May he make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. And may he lift up his

 countenance on you and give you peace." Now here's what's wrong. So first of all, you see in the first part, he says, "May his face shine on you. May the face of God, the creator and the heavens of the universe, may his face look at your face and may the light of his face shine on the light of your face because he delights in you." But you see the second part where it says, "Let his countenance, lift up his

 countenance on you and give you peace." The word countenance there, guess what that word is in Hebrew? Face. Do you know that they take the word face and they translate it countenance, glory. They translate it a bunch of ways because it doesn't make sense in English. It takes delight. If we look through the Old Testament, there are scripture after scripture after scripture that the Bible says that God's face is on you. It is shining on you. It is delighting on you. His face is in love with you. His light is pouring on you. Listen, here's just a couple. This is just a couple. Psalms chapter 16 verses 11. It says, "You will make known to me the path of life in your presence." No. "In your face is the fullness of joy and in your right hand there's pleasure forever." Psalms 21.6, "For you make him most blessed forever. You make him joyful with gladness in your present." No. "In your face." In your face. Psalm 89.15, "How blessed are the people who know the joyful sounds. Oh Lord, they walk in the light of your face." The opposite is true too. Do you remember when Cain murdered Abel? Do you remember what Cain said? Genesis 4.14, "Behold, you have driven me this day from the face of the ground and from your face I'll be hidden. Your face will never shine on me again because of what I just did. I'll never have the joy of God shining on me anymore. And I'll be fragrant and wondering the earth and whoever finds me will kill me." What about Jacob? We always say to God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And Jacob was like a terrible deceiver but the thing that Jacob did was he decided that when he saw that angel of the Lord he decided to wrestle with them and hold onto them and he named the place where he wrestled with them and got the blessing from God and had his name changed. Do you know what he named it? Face. Because I saw God's face here and I didn't die.

 And he changed his name and he changed his future. He changed his face and that's why we say you are the God who we seek face to face. What about this? Second Corinthians 4 chapter 6, "For God who said, "Light shall shine out of darkness" is the one who has shown in our hearts to give light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." In the face of Christ. Maybe you're here and you're like, "I don't have anyone who gets excited when I walk in the room. I'm lacking joy. I didn't have a good relationship with my mom or dad. My marriage ended. My kids are angry. I don't have that thing." That's the opposite. When I walk in there's something. "The creator of the heaven of universe who says that you are his." He says, "My face is here shining on you to bestow on you joy. To bring you joy. To give you good tidings of comfort and joy. That Jesus, that even knowing that he was going to cross for the joy that was before him both and knowing that his heavenly Father's face was shining on him and seeing in the future that through the blood of his work he could look at your face and could show love to you. He endured the cross so that you could have joy."

 So that you could have joy. And here's the thing about joy. Joy is not a feeling.

 Joy is found in the relationship that we have with God. It's found and guess what? It can be attached to all of our feelings. It can be attached to everything that we experience. So because here's the thing. Again, psychology knows there's six big emotions, right? Happiness, anger, fear, sadness, disgust, and surprise. And here's what's amazing.

 Joy has nothing to do with which with those emotions you're experiencing.

 In fact, the thing that God says is, "My face shines on you when you're happy. My face shines on you when you're sad. My face shines on you when you're angry. My face shines on you when you're disgusted. My face shines on you when you're fearful. And my face is always shining on you." You can have joy in the middle of anything, which is why Paul says we have joy in the Lord. Even in the middle of persecutions or trials or troubles, I can have joy because joy is not based on my emotions, what I'm feeling in the right of my heart or what I'm thinking in the right of my brain. Joy is based on the fact that God loves me and he has shined his face on me. So I can be joyful in sorrow and joyful in happiness and joyful in anger because in those moments, it is joy that is going to allow my heart to be transformed and to process and to heal and to walk through that place so that it doesn't become like I was 20 something years later, realizing that I had undelt with sorrow and sadness.

 And do you know what brought me to that place? His joy. In the midst of being sorrowful of wanting, what did I experience 20 years that's bringing me so much sadness?

 His love, his joy shining on me invites me. Would you like my light to shine onto that so that we can process it and heal it even 20 years later?

 Would you like my joy to process through that? Would you like to walk through that and let it be something that moves forward?

 And so the joy of the Lord is my strength because the joy of God is what allows me to process all these changes. And do you know, and we won't have full time to go all the way through this, but do you know why? Do you know why joy is so important? Because when you see someone and their face shines up, do you know what that does in the relationship? When I see my wife and her face shines and she sees me, she thinks I'm so handsome, it's like crazy what happens when I walk into the room. She swoons every time to this day.

 It makes me know that her relationship is secure.

 Remember I talked about the second thing that you need is attachment, and attachment is great, but God goes one better. And we talked about this, we talked about this at Easter. What does God offer you? Not attachment. That's pretty good. Attachment is good. He offers you, "Haseid," covenant, loyalty, faithfulness, love, and attachment that knows and who ends even when you fall short.

 So his joy shines on you so that you can be assured that your relationship with him is good. So through the work of the cross, I am united with Christ and my relationship with God is secure. So his face is constantly, every day in and day out, no matter what I'm experiencing, shining on me so that my heart, my heart can be ready and prepared and healed. So that it can be ground so that when the word of God is spoken out, that seed take hold. And it's not snatched by the devourer. And it's not quickly sprouting up and then dies because it has no roots. And it's not rooted but then amongst other thorns and crowded out. It's good ground that's been prepared by the work of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit who's allowed me to heal from different things so that I can experience his goodness.

 And you know what God told me this morning when it comes down to the four grounds, the footpath, that's the person who's unprepared. They don't have any kind of thing going on. They're unprepared. They show up, they hear the message, and there's just nothing. Nothing takes root. And then it says the first person, it says they hear it joyously, but then they have no roots.

 So when they hear it, their right-sided brain is excited to hear about what God's doing, but they have no habits to help grow and make sure that those things mature. So it dies. And then the second person, they've got plenty of habits, so many habits that everything in this world has overwhelmed their field so the good things can't be separated from the bad things.

 And the habits mean nothing anymore. But then there's good ground in which my heart can be prepared so I can joyously hear what's happening. But I also can couple those things with the habits that God has for me so that I can continue to see the results and to have things deeply rooted in my life. And so that even whenever I'm walking through different experiences, I can know that my relationship, my head said with him, is solid and that he's shining his face on me and that every time I walk into the room. And that's why when we couple those things, the spiritual practice, when I go to read the word of God, I'm not just going to read the word of God so that I can have an encounter that at that moment and at that time I can see and sense and experience. The light of God shining on me and his face saying, "I'm so thankful that you're here in this time with me." And that's what happens in that moment and that practice of reading Scripture.

 That's what happens in that moment.

 I experience transformation, the light of God shining through the darkness that's all around me.

 Why do you think Jesus was kept on healing blind people?

 He needed them to see his face.

 Why do you think Jesus lived three years full time with those disciples?

 He could have just said, "Meet me here at eight. I'm going to preach and then leave."

 But he did it. He spent all day, every day in their presence so that they could see his face, so that they could know, "I love you," so that Peter could know even more.

 And when you deny him, Jesus came and found him and forgave him and looked at him face to face and said, "I forgive you, Peter. My face is shining on you."

 Today, we have these ideas and we're going to be doing these spiritual formation classes in which we learn some spiritual habits that we see in the life of Jesus that helps you deeply root certain things. But I want to tell you, those things will not be effective if you don't allow the love of Jesus Christ to transform your heart in the way that you think.

 They'll just become habits. They'll just become dead works. They'll just become rituals. They won't work. You have to understand that both of these things go together and the Holy Spirit wants to transform you. He wants you to know how joyful you are, how loving he is, how much his light shines on you. He wants you to know that his has said endures forever, that he is attached to you.

 And we're going to talk about those other two conditions later because they're just as powerful.

 But this morning, we get an opportunity to invite God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit into these places.

 And as a church, as a church, we don't just create programs where it's like, "Here's how to read the Bible," which is good. It's important. You guys know me. I'm the biggest Bible nerd probably in the room or maybe top five.

 But we have to create other things. We create opportunities where there's face-to-face time, where there's relationship-building opportunities, where there's stories of thankfulness and gratitude, where we can worship together, eat together, have experience together, so that we value relationship depth over activities. We value these things and we want to create more and we're becoming more and more intentional about these things because we want you to have the opportunity to see and experience and have conversations face-to-face so that you can know not only does God's love shine on me, we are a community in which we get to experience this.

 Which is why we have small groups, which is why we're going to create other groups, this is why we wanted to create this opportunity so that you can be here and you can have someone who can look on you and their face can shine with you.

 That you realize that this is a long-term commitment, that we're in this relationship with you, we want to walk along with you in this journey because that's what friendship is and relationship is.

 And that we don't quit just because it gets hard.

 If people around me quit when my life got hard, I wouldn't be here. But they walk with me. God doesn't quit on you and our relationships don't quit on each other. We get to walk through those together.

 And so today, right where you're at, I just want to pray. And if you're here and you're like, "Man, I could use some joy."

 I could use God's face shining on me today. I'm going to pray for you. I'm going to pray for you. So let's just bow our heads right where we're at.

 Father, I thank you for today's message. I thank you for today's work. I thank you for the elimination of your scripture. I thank you that you know how we're designed.

 And you create ways in which we can find healing and health and wholeness of God through you and the work of the cross and the Holy Spirit.

 I thank you that your face shines on me.

 But not just me.

 Every person who's in this room, Lord, thank you that your face is shining on them. That we can experience your joy. That affirms the deep attachment relationship, the connection, the love that you have for us. Your has said faithfulness.

 Lord, if there's places in our hearts that are dark,

 that have troubles, that have hurts, that have wounds,

 and they need the light of your joy to shine on them. Lord, help us be brave and open them to you.

 Lord, help us be brave and invite you into those places so we can experience healing and freedom.

 We love you, Father. In Jesus' holy name we pray. Amen and amen.

 Hey, listen, church, I got one more thing before we dismiss, and it's a bit of a quick shift, but for time's sake, I'm just going to jump right into it because I think this is important. And I want to make sure that you guys know about it. So some of you guys remember over the last couple of months, we've had several just big wind storms, right? Wind storms, winds coming out of every direction. And as a result, we've had a significant amount of our fence be damaged. We have a lot of fence line around here, and we have a significant amount of our fence line. And we are in the--historically, we've always replaced sections piece by piece, section by section as we go, but the job over these last couple of storms has become so big, it's a little bigger than we can handle in a reasonable amount of time that we need to get it done. And so we're looking to go and to raise some funds to be able to have this taken care of in a relatively quick manner. And the total job costs for repair, everything that we need to get repaired, it's just about $12,000 is what it's going to take to be able to do it. And like I said, we have a big--it's a big fence. It's annoying how big our fence is. You think your fence is big.

 All the fence you can see is our fence. It's like the Promised Land of fences. But I just want to encourage you. I know there's a lot of people, there's a lot of families, there's a lot of men and women who said, "Hey, when those things come up and they're unusual expenses, we want to be able to know and we want to be able to partner with the church to be able to give financially, to be able to make those things happen." And so if you're visiting today, listen, this is for people who visit their church home. I mean, if God puts on their heart, that's between you and him. But this is for people, this is our church family. This is an unusual thing that we need to do, but we're just in this process and in this place of needing to experience this. And so if you would like to participate today, everything that comes into this offering is going to be able to go. You can give online. And I believe you can just click on the building fund if you want to give via the online portal. You can do that as well. Just make sure you highlight building everything that comes today. We're going to put towards the fences and hopefully get it fixed within the next few weeks. So I appreciate you and your faithfulness and be able to do that and see this. So we love you. And so I'm just going to pray and I'm going to bless you. And then we're going to go ahead and be done for our day. Father, we thank you for today. Lord, we thank you for this wonderful facility we've given you, Lord, that you've given us. Lord, we thank you that you are the one who is our provider, the one of abundance, Father, and everywhere we look. Lord, we thank you and we just see that the resources for this fence comes in, Lord, so that we can get this completed and repaired, Father God, in a timely fashion, Lord, we just are so thankful for who you are. So in Jesus' name we pray, amen and amen. Ushers can pass the buckets. As those are passing, just a couple more things. Don't forget, this week we've got the next men's meeting. It's going to be super fun. Next week on Sunday, it's going to be Mother's Day. It's going to be an awesome time. We've got a lot of really great things to honor. Mom, spiritual moms, grandmoms, it's going to be an awesome day. So make sure you invite someone because we're going to have a lot of fun. The message is going to be really great as well. And we've got a lot of really cool, meaningful things that we're going to walk through to honor that day. The following week we've got the next daughters on Tuesday. It's going to be awesome. We know that May is a busy, wild, full season, but it is going to be a really, really great season. So I know the bug is still passing, but stand with me to your feet. Let me bless you. And then you guys can consider yourself dismissed. Father God, we just thank you for who you are.

 Lord, I thank you that your face shines on us, that your countenance is all around us. Lord, help us walk in your peace and your joy and your goodness this week. Our hearts are yours. It's in your holy name we pray. Amen and amen. You guys are dismissed. Have a great rest of your Sunday.