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Hey, hey, welcome to Prairie Lakes and happy New Year to all of you. We're so very glad that you are joining us, and, uh, and we'll say this, okay? Uh, no better way to kick off 2024 than what you're doing right now, okay?

Then being together at church with one another, with God and his word. Okay? So it's a good job. Uh, happy New Year. Welcome to 2024. Glad that you're here. Okay? Hey, uh, I am sure that the holiday season of 2023, um, brought a mix of things your way, all right?

Um, but I do hope there was some good things in that mix. I hope that you got a little bit of time off. Um, I hope you had some good time with family, if, I hope that wasn't all challenging. Uh, maybe did a little bit of, of, of traveling, reconnected with some friends, hopefully, hopefully also some time, just some of that quiet time reflecting.

Um, hope you got a little bit of that, reflecting on who God is and just how good he has been. Um, which I actually wanna do just a little bit here, um, before we get into too, too many other things. Okay? So, um, I, I wanna just, I wanna reflect on how good God has been to us here at, uh, at Prairie Lakes.

Um, couple of different ways. So, so first, um, back in the very beginning of December, uh, a lot of you might remember me putting a sobering dollar amount on this screen next to me. And, um, the dollar amount was $190,000, okay? And I threw that up on the screen because that's the amount of revenue we had lost in a single month, month of November.

And, uh, and a good chunk of that course was due to a lot of us being a little slow to make, make a switch over to our new giving system. But I do have some good news I wanna share with you, okay? Um, we did have a very strong December and, uh, we were able to, to play a little bit of catch up to that, okay?

So not, I'm not gonna turn this into a financial report. And, and, and, and, and to be completely honest, we still have some very significant financial headwinds, alright? Um, but nevertheless, uh, so many of you, at the end of 2023, you pushed through, you made the switch, um, and then several of you decided that you were gonna give over and above, um, so that we could just kind of keep moving forward.

And, uh, thank you. Okay? Thank you for being obedient. Thank you for being generous. Thanks for being faithful. Um, we are very grateful and, uh, and God is very good. Okay? So, uh, that's the first thing. Here's the second Christmas Eve.

I wanna talk to you just about God's goodness to us, uh, on Christmas Eve. And I'm gonna do Christmas Eve a little bit by the numbers, okay? So here's the first number I wanna share with you. It's the number 24.

That is the amount of services we did across Iowa. It's just mind blowing right now. Why do I, why do I share that? Well, I share that for my own ego, honestly. It's just, uh, makes me feel good about me, makes us feel good about us.

No, um, here's, here's what's really actually really cool about that. Number 24 opportunities for people to come to know who Jesus is at Christmas, across a third of our state. And beyond that, my friends, is a big wide kingdom net.

So that was cool. Okay, 24 and it gets better. Here's the next number. Um, 5,894. That is how many people, adults and kids attended, one of those 24 surfaces. And, and about three, 400 of those are, uh, unique IP addresses of people who joined us online.

And so we know there's usually, there's usually more than one behind the screen. Um, so we, it's safe to say we, we, we reached a at least 6,000 people, uh, at Christmas Eve, which super cool. Okay? Um, next number is this, this is kind of a fun one.

Uh, 2,762. So part of the reason we had to make the switch in our financial system was we made a switch in our kinda, our database system. And, uh, and we made that switch because it allows for us, this new system we got, allows for us to do kind of cool, kind of creative kind of silly things like, um, integration with text in polls, right?

So now we can do stuff like that. And if you came to one of our Christmas Eve services, you were invited to vote on your, Chris, your favorite Christmas movie. And, and, uh, I don't know where you were, but where I was elf one, like, every single time.

But 2000 of us texted in, so 2000 people participated in that poll. We know that now. And, and, and, and of those 2,762 of those numbers are, are new numbers to us. Like we didn't have 'em in our database anywhere.

And I'm not saying that that's seven 60 to 62 new people, but there's a lot of new people that, that participated. And, uh, we got a chance to just text them a thank you for attending and we gotta text them an invite to weekend services to the service. So that was, that was super cool. And here's the last one.

Okay? My favorite number of all is this 1 91. We had 91 people fill out a card, give us their name and their number so that we could reach out to 'em and tell us that they stepped across the faith line, they've confessed, they've believed, and they've started to follow Jesus.

God reached, God reached 91 people at Prairie Lakes at Christmas Eve and made them, his sons and daughters. God's family got bigger by 91 at least, right? So listen, praise God, praise God for all of that. Um, and then, and then to you. Good job. Good job. Praying.

Good job inviting. Good job showing up. Good job giving. Look at what God can do with just a little bit of obedience, right? Always, always. Okay. So, uh, that is as good of a segue as any to what we're talking about as we kick off, uh, 2024 here at Prairie Lake.

So as we launch in 2024, we're kicking off a new series, uh, in which we'll be walking through the book of Ephesians. Um, so that's where we're gonna be. Book of Ephesians. Go ahead and open your Bibles up to Ephesians. We're gonna be starting in chapter one here in just a second.

Um, we do have Bibles in the seats for you as well, if you want to kind of start diving in there. Um, a lot of us do that on our phone, which is great. We'll have 'em on the screen for you as well. So however you want to interact, we, we do want you interacting with this.

But the series in Ephesians, uh, here's what we're calling it. We're calling it, everything is different. Everything is different. Um, and, uh, with this number still on the screen here, it's a really good illustration.

'cause for 91 people, Christmas Eve 2023 will forever be the day where everything was different that started for them. If you were one of those 91 people who stepped across the faith line couple of weeks ago, everything is now different for you.

Um, and I I wanna just share from Ephesians, here's why that's true for you. Here's how that's true for you. I want you to take a look at Ephesians one with me. We're actually gonna jump kind of in the middle. We're gonna start, start in verse 13. Okay?

So everything is different. Here's what, here's what it says. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, when you believed you were marked in him with a seal.

The, the, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit, guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are in God's possession to the praise of His glory. Okay? So, so, so this is what it means to cross the faith line, biblically speaking.

Uh, first what did you do? You heard, you heard the message of truth, you heard the gospel. You heard about, uh, who Jesus is, why God sent him to this earth and what he, what he came to do. But you didn't just hear it. What did you do?

And you believed it. And there's a difference, isn't there? 'cause you probably heard that message a lot. Maybe, maybe you heard it for the first time. Maybe it was, maybe it was like hearing it for the first time, or maybe you heard it a lot and something was different in such a way that you came to believe it.

You believe that God sent Jesus to this earth. You believe that Jesus came to make a way back to God by dying on the cross for your sin. You confessed that your sin separated you from God, but that because of Jesus and because of his death on the cross, your sin was paid for and no longer stands in the way.

There's nothing any longer that stands in the way between you and God because you believe in what Jesus is has done. And you believe that what Jesus did for you, not what you need to do, but what Jesus did for you makes all the difference.

Everything is different for you now because of that. And now, just like Ephesians describes it, you're what? You are, God's possession. You're his Right. You're his, he's got you. And, and in fact, he's, he's marked you, he's tattooed you, so to speak.

And he did that by, by putting, putting his Holy Spirit in you as a deposit. You, you have his spirit now in you and starting to work on you and starting to speak to you. And it's gonna begin a process. Um, Until one day, your redemption from the power of sin is, Is complete. You Know, it's guaranteed.

For 91 of you, Christmas Eve was the day that everything changed Was, was Everything's now different because in Christ and your belief in him, God began a process in you to make you different, that he will be sure to complete.

You can rest in that and, and it gets even better, okay? Because, you know, same, same chapter, chapter one of Ephesians, but now we're gonna jump back almost to the top. Jump back to verse three with me. There's a lot of things that are different for you and for those of us who've crossed that line of faith and put our, put our trust in Christ, when you believe in him, here's what Jesus has done for you.

Verse three, praise bee to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who's blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Okay? Every spiritual blessing. Like what? Well, verse four, let's, let's start the list here. Four.

He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. Okay? So if you've been following Jesus for two weeks, um, this is very fresh for you. Um, Very real for you Because You just experienced this.

Uh, when you confess your sin and the need that it created for Jesus, and then you put your trust in what Jesus did for you, you probably felt it like literally, like literally felt it in your heart and your mind and your mindset.

You felt his peace, you felt washed, clean. You know, you, you stop trying to hide or pretend that you didn't need him or pretend that you were okay or pretend that you were in, you know, you stopped all of that.

Matt, you, you took off all of your masks, right? You surrendered to your need. You took off this burden that you were and you just surrendered. I need Jesus. It probably felt lighter. That's what this verse is describing, right?

In God's sight, because of what Jesus has done for you and because of your belief in what he's done for you, you are now holy, which means you're set apart to be different. Ho holiness is in this, this, this individual effort to keep ourselves pure holiness is, is being set apart because Jesus made you pure and in God's sight because of what Jesus has done.

You are not only holy, but you're also blameless, Which Is just mind blowing, right? God does not hold any of your sin against you, but instead has considered all of it paid for by Jesus past, present, and future. You're holy and blameless in God's sight.

That's true of who you are. Everything's different. And this is, this is what God chose, right? This didn't, this didn't, this didn't accidentally happen. This isn't like some sort of like backdoor in the contract. You know, this, this clause at the very bottom, God looks at you and goes, how'd you get in here?

Nope. No. He knew exactly. Maybe, maybe you felt like you snuck in. Maybe you felt like you stumbled in, but you didn't. Not really. I Jesus Happened to you because God wanted him to happen to you.

Every spiritual blessing in Christ. Verse five, verse five, In love, he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace in which he has freely given us in the one he loves.

Okay? Adoption to sonship. Lemme just talk to you about this phrase just for a second. Okay. The book of Ephesians was originally a letter written by a man named Paul, and he wrote it to the churches in this big city of Ephesus. That's really what it was.

Um, and so, uh, Ephesus, Ephesus, like almost any big city 2000 years ago, was established and governed by the Roman Empire. And so a lot of times what Paul will do is he will borrow phrases from the Roman culture and then he will commandeer them and make mean something spiritually.

And this is one of those, okay, this phrase, adoption to sum chip is actually a Roman legal term, um, that Paul Commandeers, and he uses it to describe something that's true for those of us who have put our trust in Jesus. Here's what it means. It means that you have the full legal rights of an heir, including an inheritance.

So if you were adopted into a family, you'd have equal rights as any other son or any other daughter, including whatever wealth your father has to pass on, he's passed it on to you just the same as everybody else. It means that you've been following Jesus for five minutes.

You have the same status and access as someone who's been following him for five decades, right? You get Jesus and his spirit now just like everybody else. You get heaven later just like everybody else, and then you get his kingdom now later and forever just like everybody else.

And you get all of this right? You get all of this, um, because you are the platinum level and, and, and, and you've spent a bunch of money and you've tithed and, and you've cleaned yourself. No, you get all of this because it just makes God happy. It just makes him happy. He loves it.

You know, it's like, it's like the joy. Some of us, this is super fresh for us, right? Because what do we do? We watched our kids open presents on Christmas morning, or we watched our nieces and nephews, or we watched our, uh, cousins or our grandkids.

We, we, we got to watch this happen in real time. I watched my daughter lay eyes on a new writing desk and chair for her room, and she's a little artist, and it, her eyes got super big and it took about two and a half seconds for her to start creating a little art nook there.

I love that. I watched my son kind of unwrap his scratch programmable robot and immediately dive into kind of creating that and programming it and figuring it out, right? That feeling when you watch someone you love, open a gift, just a sliver of what God has in his heart, just a sliver of what God has in his heart.

And When he watches us, look at the gift of his son Jesus, and receive it and accept him and believe In him. He takes such great pleasure and just giving him freely to you, to me. And he does it just, just 'cause He loves you.

Finally, verse seven and eight, every spiritual blessing, right? Verse seven and eight, in him, in Jesus, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us. Okay? What's redemption?

Redemption is being rescued from the power and the control that sin has over our lives and our destinies, redemption being rescued from the power and control of sin. Okay? And then forgiveness, of course, is God saying that the debt of sin that our sin created with him, the debt is forgiven, it's canceled, it's paid for Fully Like a sacrificial lamb.

Jesus paid our debt and I'm full. Okay? So every spiritual blessing, if you're keeping score, here's what your scorecard looks like in Christ when you believe everything is different, because God blesses you with all of this, okay? Chosen, holy, blameless, adopted love, grace, freely given redemption and a forgiveness.

Everything is different for you. Everything is different for you. Imagine, uh, kind of belaboring our Christmas metaphor here, but imagine unwrapping every single one of those gifts in one morning.

It's just, it's like the best Christmas ever, right? Like, be so, so overwhelming and it'd, it'd be an incredible haul. Um, Here's the thing, it's not a catch, okay? It's Not a catch. But here's the thing. These gifts are absolutely for you.

And they're not just for you, okay? They're For you for sure, but they're not just for you. Um, I don't know if you, uh, you probably have, maybe you did had the pleasure of doing extended family Christmases, um, where there's three generations in the room, or four generations in the room and you know, we've got, you know, grandparents and adult children and grandchildren, someone with great-grandchildren.

Um, and then all of the little ones are opening up presence, right? Okay. So if you've experienced this, um, and if you've experienced this as a parent of one of those little ones who are opening up presents with maybe all their cousins or whatever, um, it's a really cool moment as a parent to just watch this, right?

And it's also kind of nerve wracking, right? It's A parent. 'cause what are you thinking? You do not want your be your kid. You do not want your kid to be the one who, um, acts disappointed with what they got. Right? Like, you, your eyes are on 'em.

Um, you don't want, you don't want your kid to be the one who doesn't say thank you. Uh, you don't want your kid to be the one who doesn't let their cousins play with. Fill in the blank, you know? Right? Family Christmas gets awkward when we get more attached to the gift than the giver.

Yes, same is true for God's family. These gifts are for us, but they're meant to be shared. That's the whole, that's kinda the whole reason that he gave 'em to us, right? Get, get this in verse nine, okay? Get this in verse nine, in all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will, his design according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the times reached their fulfillment.

Here's the whole point of all of these gifts right here, to bring unity to all things in heaven And on earth under Christ, to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Jesus. That's the purpose of all of these gifts.

Um, the Christmas Eve moment that 91 of you had, okay? That was the moment that changed everything for you. There's no doubt about it, but it's not just for you. Uh, maybe your moment wasn't Christmas Eve two weeks ago. Maybe it was Christmas Eve two years ago or 20 years ago, or maybe it was longer than that.

But God doesn't just want everything to be different just for you. He wants everything to be different. Period. Here, here's the big idea, okay? The gospel cannot stop with me. It must go to we.

Is that grammatically incorrect? Yes, but it rhymes. And so it's fine. The gospel cannot stop with me. It has to go beyond me. To we, God's vision is to save you, but it's not just to save you. He wants to save everyone and everything.

Everyone and everything. And he wants us, his adopted kids to be unified around that Vision, To be unified Around the, the scope of It, unified around the all inclusive scope of that vision.

He wants us, his adopted kids, to see that vision and pursue that vision and participate with him in realizing that vision. Everyone in everything, everyone in everything, all things in heaven and on earth, under Christ, under Jesus's gracious kingdom rule, nobody gets written off, nothing gets neglected.

Everyone and everything, everyone and everything, it's right there in the text, all things in heaven, on earth, under Christ. Hey, this isn't so much for the 91 of you who just made this decision. This is more for those of you for whom you made this decision a long time ago.

I, I hope the first 1520 minutes of this has been encouraging to you, but I'm guessing that you are, uh, feeling a little bit left out potentially. So I wanna include you, but I need to include you in kind of a challenging way. So tune in when you and I reduce this gospel of Jesus Down To only what God has done for me, And He's done so much for you and me, right?

But when we start to think that the gospel is about what individual people believe, so that they might get to heaven, and that's it, that's what it's, if that's it, that's the biggest story we're telling ourselves. It's not the whole world top to bottom. It's not all things in heaven on earth.

It's not everything is different when, when our gospel doesn't include nations and politics and economies and societies. When my gospel doesn't include, uh, my jerk of a boss or my ungrateful kid, or my resentful ex, or the people on the other side of the aisle, or the people who don't share my values, everyone and everything, it's right there in the text, right?

Unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. That's the vision. But when we compress and reduce that grand vision down to some sort of individual decision, and that's the biggest story we're telling ourselves, that's the only thing we're really unified around.

When someone says they believe individually, that's not really a gospel at all. That's not really good news. I mean, 'cause why does that matter? You, you, you think you're going to heaven, great. I, it grew good for you.

But when you believe that you're going to heaven because of what Jesus has done, and you believe that through Jesus, God wants to bring heaven down to earth so that all things in heaven and on earth are under the rule of Jesus, what happens to you is that you start to look at everything differently.

You're gonna start looking at the next presidential election that's coming up as not the most critical election of our time and the world history is gonna, no, here's what you're gonna look at it as. You're gonna look at it as an opportunity to love people who wanna spread hate.

If everything is different because of Jesus. That's what you're gonna look at it as. You're gonna look at poverty as an opportunity to be generous. You're gonna look at struggling public schools as an opportunity to serve.

You're gonna look at financial uncertainty as an, as a chance to be content with what you have. And to be faithful. You're gonna look at racial strife as a chance to immerse yourself in someone else's story and experience, you know, to wrap that towel around your waist and go wash some people's feet.

You're gonna look at your own broken relationships as a chance to love your enemies. You're gonna look at your horrible boss as a chance to bless those who curse you. 'cause everything is different. You're gonna look at your neighbor who has the wrong candidate sign in their front yard.

You're gonna look at them as a human being made in God's image for whom Jesus died. First and foremost, everything's different. Everyone and everything, everyone and everything. Here's the question, are we known, you and me collectively as prairie Lakers?

Are we known as the church that believes and worships and gives and serves and loves like God wants to save everyone and every Thing? Or is it just kind of about me, what I need, what I want, what my family needs, what my tribe believes, my little soap boxes?

There's no doubt about this. God loves you and me individually so much, and he's so delighted to give us this wonderful gift of his son Jesus. And he wants to do amazing things in your life. A hundred percent true. And he wants you desperately to see that his vision goes well beyond you, and he wants you to be a part of realizing it.

And he wants us to do that together, to be known about that together, to have our identity Be participating in his grand vision, to save everyone and everything. Put everything under Jesus. Okay? So here's what we're gonna do as, as we close, um, uh, Paul ends the first chapter with, with really kind of a, a prayer.

And I, I, I would love to just pray this prayer over you as we kind of wind down. Okay? So if you've got Bibles open, go ahead and close them. Get yourself in a good spot. We're gonna do this together, um, right now, in this moment, just as, as as one church.

Okay? So when you're ready, go ahead and bow your head, close your eyes. Take a deep breath if you need to. And before I read this, just silently to yourself, if you could just ask God, Hey God, uh, could you kinda work through the noise that's in my mind and my heart?

And could you maybe through your word shed light on something I need to hear? Go ahead and just pray a version of that prayer right now. Here's the prayer. Ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God's people, I've not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he's called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people and his incomparably great power.

For those of us who believe That power is the same as the mighty strength, he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age, but also in the age to come.

And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of Him who feels everything in every way. God, that's our prayer. Enlarge our vision. Jesus, thank you for doing everything for us.

Help us to be about what you want to do. In everyone and everything. In your name we pray, amen.