Where Your Gaze Lands

Transcript

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[0:02] Good morning. It's good to be with you guys. It is so good to be with you guys. My mind and heart are kind of racing because I'm like, oh, there's so much I want to share. And I just want to reminisce on all the sweet time here with Jill and my three kids.

[0:19] Evelyn, who's now 10. John, who's 8. Sam, who's 6. John's covering his face. But yeah, so good to be here back with you guys. I was here from 2012 to 2015, a little less than three years. I was thinking about this. I remember driving back into the valley that early spring of 2015. And so many of you helped me pack up my U-Haul. We were fortunate enough to have a little tiny house that we rented in Cupertino. I packed up the U-Haul and we headed back to Modesto. And I honestly wasn't sure what God had for me, for us as a family when we left.

[1:03] But I had to drive this U-Haul like 55 miles per hour. And I was by myself. And I remember turning it into kind of like a prayer and worship time. And as I continue to worship and pray, I sense the Lord saying, I'm here with you.

[1:20] And, you know, I'm in this. I'm with you. I have a plan for you. And as I drove, it was the moment in the valley where the almond blossoms were in full bloom. So beautiful white almond blossoms kind of greeting me into the valley. You know, because we didn't really know what was next. I left. I was an intern that ended up hanging out for a couple of years, really, because it was just such a formative, fun time for us. But going back into the valley, almond blossoms are there. The Lord's saying, I have a plan for you. And for me, that meant a lot. It meant a lot at the time to kind of hear the Lord's voice, because, again, we weren't sure what would end up happening. So I ended up getting a job as a high school English teacher, even though I had no credentials of any sort. They let me do it while I was getting my credential, my education. I ended up teaching in the small town of Ceres just outside Modesto for three years.

[2:17] In the midst of that, a few sort of life-changing things happened. My father, who... My mother, who were longtime Modesto residents where we were living, was diagnosed with brain cancer. And that was about a year or so into our time there.

[2:37] And when that happened, we were just so grateful to be in the valley through his diagnosis, his sickness, and his eventual death. And then to be there, too, you know, with my mom as she was grieving. So that was significant. Also significant was this sense... I went back thinking, you know, I do feel sort of a call to pastoral ministry, but I'm not sure how that would work out. But I had this sense that, you know, maybe it's a bivocational thing.

[3:04] Maybe it's at a church sometime, somewhere. And I remember doing spiritual direction as I was teaching. I remember sitting in my classroom, Zooming with Pastor Jim Gatterland, and him being so gracious in his direction and really encouraging for me at that time. And that was really important for me. And I did sense a calling. I was calling back into pastoral ministry. My wife and I got involved at Modesto Covenant Church, the church we grew up in. We started doing ministry with college students and young adults again, because that was our heart. And we saw that ministry grow. And eventually, after three years of teaching, Modesto Covenant asked me to come on as a full-time associate pastor. So this is about three years ago, summer of 2018.

[3:49] And so I've been serving as an associate pastor at Modesto Covenant Church. And it's been wonderful. It's been a joyful experience. It's been a wonderful time for us. A little weird, kind of being at the church you grew up in. And, you know, the ladies who changed my diapers, you know, I'm teaching them about God. It's like, well, they got some dirt on me for sure.

[4:08] Anyway, so grateful. But again, I can't say enough about how special this place is for us. Jill and I, as we drove in, we were just reminiscing about all the sweet times. There's something, I mean, even though it was just three years, it felt, it was just a really significant time in our lives. We had two boys here. Jill was pregnant when we got married. And we moved down here and served. Then we had Sam, too. It just, you know, this place has a special place in our hearts. So really sweet to be back here with you guys and share what we're up to.

[4:42] Anyway, as I said, serving as an associate pastor at Modesto Covenant Church. About six months into serving as an associate pastor, one of the pastors of another covenant church in Modesto, Covenant Grove, approached me saying, Hey, we've been praying and thinking about church planning for a good long while. This is Scott Nelson.

[5:01] And he said, Zach, would you pray about it and think about it? And I was like, well, I love the idea of church planning. Like, that's actually kind of been a long-held dream for me. But Scott had just started at Modesto Covenant Church. You know, it's not the right time. So he continued to pray about it and consider it.

[5:16] And eventually came to the point in the middle of a pandemic where I felt like God was saying, like, now is kind of the time. And so, you know, I was just like, I'm going to pray. So Scott and I continued to engage, continued to pray about it. And then Pastor Mark Krieger, who's the lead pastor of Modesto Covenant Church where I'm at, said, hey, we kind of want to be a part of this, too. And so what's happening is I'm planting a third covenant church in Modesto.

[5:41] And it's going to be a joint church planning effort from Covenant Grove Church and then Modesto Covenant Church. So we're wanting to be a church planning movement in Modesto and in the Valley. So really fun to be a part of that. Exciting. Exciting what God's doing. It's kind of the craziest time ever. I mean, look at this. We're all still trying to kind of figure out the pandemic stuff and who knows where it goes from here. But there's this sense that this is, in a strange way, kind of the perfect time for church planning. Everything's been disrupted.

[6:11] People are trying to figure out their lives, their networks, where they belong, the big questions about God and meaning. I want to be there on the ground floor as people are reconsidering life in Jesus and what it means. To live a meaningful existence here on earth. So we're excited. The reception so far has been really warm. I have a couple slides here. I think we can kind of work through this just to kind of explain a little bit about church planning. Oh, yeah. Here's just a little throwback. Look how fresh. Look at the hair. Like my hair was actually done all right there. This was before shaving it all off. So fresh faced. And then we can go back a little bit to that slide. And this is our kiddos now. So, again, that was us coming with just Jill was pregnant at the time. And now kids are growing up. All right. We can go to the next slide. Just a little bit about church planning. Again, everybody, you know, if you do any sort of dig into the data, it's obvious that church planning is needed and essential for the growth of Christ's church. You know, pacing wise, we are only planning about an eighth of the number of new churches needed to keep up with population growth.

[7:22] You've probably seen the stats. The number of unchurched Americans just precipitously is declining. Just crazy. More than 40% of Gen Z have no religious affiliation. And I think it's actually been accelerated with this pandemic quite a bit. And we'll go into why a little bit later on. We can go to the next slide. Modesto. You're like, why Modesto? You know, what do you guys know about Modesto? Well, Modesto is a city of about 250,000 people. It's not far from here. It's just that most people don't really have any occasion to go to Modesto. But you're missing out. You should come by sometime. I mean, look at that. You can see the Modesto Arch. You know, Water, Wealth, and Contempt and Health. I mean, what a beautiful landmark.

[8:03] But anyway, it's fascinating. You kind of think of Modesto or the Central Valley as being a sort of maybe a more churched area. You know, that was kind of my notion. But when you dig into it a little bit, you realize actually the Bay Area is more churched than the Central Valley and Modesto, which is fascinating to me. But we, you know, because there's great churches in Modesto. Just like there's great churches around here. And sometimes the refrain is, why plant more churches? You know, don't we have enough? Let me just sort of build up the ones that we have. Well, you know, just statistically, right, if every church in Modesto filled every single seat in their, you know, sanctuary and they filled it for two services on a Sunday morning, you would still have only the capacity for like 25% of the people. So there's great need. And church planting is a unique instrument of evangelism. We can go to the next slide here. This is fascinating. The average evangelical church sees about three people come to Christ per year for every 100 members. The average covenant church, so our tribe, right, we see about six people come to Christ per year for every 100 members. I'm like, that's pretty good. But the average new covenant church, the church plant sees about 12 people come to Christ for every 100 members.

[9:13] So it's just a unique instrument of evangelism for a lot of reasons. It's not an established community. There's the sense of, hey, we need to reach out to actually thrive, you know, to exist. And there's this sort of sense of momentum that you get with the church plant that's hard to capture in other vehicles. So we can go to the next slide at this point. So we're excited about the church plant. Right now, timeline-wise, we're forming the launch team. The Bactelians came up over here to hang out with us. It's neat seeing who God is bringing along to form this team. We have people from Covenant Grove and Modesto Covenant and people from no church affiliation who are joining us. We're looking at a lot of people. We're looking for, and this is interesting, we're trying to form a launch team of about 60 to 80 people. So you want a large launch team.

[10:00] The Covenant has kind of shown that, hey, the larger the launch team, sort of the faster the on-ramp. So we're seeing people come in. We're about, probably about 45 people or so in the launch team at this point. So we're getting there. We're getting there. And it's a diverse launch team, people who are new to Jesus, people who have been walking with Jesus for a long time.

[10:22] Folks all along the Asia. Age demographic. Different ethnic backgrounds. It's really fun to see who God is bringing together. By the time we hit about mid-September, well, I'll leave my role as an associate pastor and go on full time with the church plant. So it's been an incredibly exciting time for us as a family. Pretty busy. Pretty busy time too. And just so much to share there. But let's get talking about God's word. I'm excited to share God's word with you. I'm going to be at Psalm 34. I want to do a little kind of workup before we dive into the word, though, this morning. We have this beautiful jello mold here. Doesn't that look delicious? Don't you want a slice of that right now? No. Nobody looks excited. Oh, I see somebody. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, it looks pretty good. But you are kind of like this jello. I'm like this jello. We are all being formed.

[11:14] My daughter, Evelyn, made this beautiful batch of slime. You know, one of the things she likes to do is to make slime. Does anybody make slime here? Raise your hand if you've made slime. Anybody here ever made slime before? Kids? Yeah, I'm looking at you. Okay. So borax, glue, whatever it is you use, you make some slime. And Evelyn made this slime a couple of weeks ago, and she put it in this plastic bowl. And then I went to look at it, and it kind of like congealed a little bit. And then she flipped it over, and it fell out, and it was the perfect form of that bowl. Well, why was it the form of that bowl? Well, like this jello mold, the slime, its shape fit where it was residing. The place in which it dwelled became its form. And it got me thinking a lot about the ways in which, as human beings, we are being formed. I had a pastor 20 years ago say this, and it struck me so deeply. He said this, the heart is always becoming.

[12:14] There's no stasis when it comes to the, you know, the heart, our formation, our character. You know, there's always, you're always moving in one direction or the other. It's kind of like our bodies. It's not like you hit a certain body fat percentage or your target weight. Then you're like, I'm good. I made it. I reached the finish line, and I'm done. No, our bodies, our hearts, our souls are dynamic. We're pliable.

[12:43] So, you know, it makes me think, what is shaping me? What patterns am I conforming to? There's so many things that go into our formation. We could think about our family, our education, our personality, our God-given personality. You know, there's so many things. The circumstances of a pandemic, right? So many things go into our formation. But I think the area where we have control is simply this, what we give our attention to.

[13:16] John Mark Comer is a great spiritual writer. He writes this. I love how he puts this so simply. What we give our attention to is the person we become. What we give our attention to is the person that we become. Our attention, what we choose to set our minds upon, are sort of like the Jell-O molds for our soul.

[13:39] What we give our attention to is the person that we become. We begin to reflect, you might say it this way, we begin to reflect that upon which we gaze. So, I'm going to give you a little bit of a summary. So, of course, it's really important for us to ask, what am I setting my mind upon? What am I giving my attention to? What am I looking at?

[13:59] Deeper than that, what am I looking for? Where do I set my gaze? So as not to be conformed to the pattern of this world, right, but to be transformed by the renewing of my mind, as Paul talks about. Now, what makes this really challenging, and it's super fun for me to talk about this in Silicon Valley, you know, a couple blocks away from where Apple started, right? I don't know if that's still a tourist thing. I remember driving by, friends were in town, ooh, that's the garage right there with Steve Jobs. The neighbors were like, stop driving by.

[14:33] But we live in this time, this economy that people have termed, I think rightly so, a digital attention economy. Right? We live in an attention economy. So if what we give our attention to forms and shapes us as people, we live in this interesting economy where there's this world. There's war for our attention. Our attention equals money for other people. And there's some really smart, talented people that know how to capture your attention.

[15:01] And we have these devices, right? We call these phones, but really they should be called formation devices. And they're designed to capture our gaze. I love this idea, you heard this term, immersive, right? You want the phone to be immersive. Think about that.

[15:19] Immersive. It wants to suck our attention and capture us there. And if I'm honest, it works. I'm immersed. By the way, one little hack on making these less immersive is to turn your phone to grayscale. I've heard that if you're suffering with phone addiction.

[15:40] Less neuron stimulating when there's less color. Anyway, tech companies, you know, as you know, they're not concerned about the welfare of our souls. Regardless of what they say. Their business and your attention means money. And, you know, like Google, for example. I don't know if there's any Googlers in here. But like Google gives away products for free. Because those aren't really their products. Their product is you and your attention that they can sell to advertisers, right? So the more time that we spend on devices equals money for people. And the problem, there's a lot of problems with that.

[16:17] You know, the thing is. The things that keep us on our phones aren't necessarily good for us. In fact, the more extreme the news item or feed, the more attention it gets. So the algorithms that are figuring out what to feed us. You know, and you guys probably know this stuff. But it sucks you into kind of this more extreme position often.

[16:41] And so we see a lot of polarization in our society and culture. It's because we're being fed things. Our attention is being formed. It's because we're being formed. And so the more extreme view. It's a great documentary on Netflix called The Social Dilemma. Hopefully you guys have seen that. It's really worth watching. And one of the guys they interviewed. I think, I don't know if he said this on the documentary or elsewhere. But he said if the algorithm of the internet was a highway, it would produce car wrecks. Right?

[17:10] Think about that. What does that mean for us as a person that's becoming and being formed? If the algorithm of the internet was a highway, it would produce more car wrecks. So we're being formed by these things. And the curated posts that pop up, they're not there because they're good for us. They're good because they get our attention.

[17:33] So with all this, I think there's a kind of cultural exhaustion. You know? When it comes to these formation devices with all these screens, these things vying for our attention. I think it's really soul exhausting.

[17:46] Because there's just so much information that we're always taking in. We're being formed by this stuff. I read a statistic recently that compared to like 1986, we've taken five times the amount of information. Five times. That's just too much. Like how do we handle? I mean one way is it's amazing. Like I can tell you what Will Clark batted in 1988. You know? Like I can tell you his batting average like right now. You know?

[18:10] We have like all of human knowledge of all time right now. Right here at our access. But it's just so much to kind of handle for our souls. And there's a lot of overload. So I'm going to bring this back to church planning and the psalm. We're going to dive in here in a sec. But we really need to let scripture speak into this reality.

[18:30] You know? We've got to give our attention to scripture and let God's word form us. I was struck by this verse from the prophet Jeremiah. Chapter 6 verse 16. I think I have it up here on the slide here too. Maybe one forward. Yeah. This is what the Lord says. Stand at the crossroads and look.

[18:53] Ask for the ancient paths. Ask for the good way is. And walk in it. And you will find rest for your souls. Sounds a lot like Jesus doesn't he? If we look at Matthew chapter 11. Jesus picks this up. And he says. Come to me.

[19:11] All you who are weary and burdened. I will give you rest. I will give you peace. I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Give me your attention. Learn from me. For I am gentle and humble in heart. And you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

[19:28] The good news is that there is a way of rest. In this culture of frenetic attention. To things not worthy of our attention. And that way of rest is about turning our gaze to Jesus again. And rediscovering him.

[19:45] Our souls are restless. Until they rest in thee. As Saint Augustine says. So I have this little equation here. We are equation people here. Brian Smith is an equation person. So we have this. We can go to the next slide. Finding rest in a frenetic attention seeking culture. God's presence plus our presence. Like our gaze. Our attention. It equals rest for our souls. And actually. And this is the cool part. It is actually an invitation for others as well. As we learn to give our gaze. To our radiant God.

[20:25] You know. We have good news. In this sort of burned out culture. That there is a different way. The way of Jesus. Our seed verse for this church plant. Our church plant is called Radiant Covenant Church. You can't tell me you don't like that name. Because it is set. So you have to say. Oh cool name. Let's set. And it comes from this seed verse.

[20:48] Psalm 34 5. And there is a whole story behind this. I don't have time to go into. But it is this verse. Those who look to God are radiant. Their faces are never covered with shame. Those who look to God are radiant. Their faces are never covered with shame. We want to be a people. We want to be formed into a people. That radiate God's goodness.

[21:10] It doesn't originate from us. It comes from him. We reflect his radiance. His love. His goodness. We don't have to turn. This is the good news of the gospel. We don't have to turn away our gaze in shame. We can turn our face to God.

[21:28] Bare faced. Vulnerable. As we are. We turn our gaze to God. And we find his gaze of love. Looking at us. I love the stories in the gospels. Of Jesus seeing people. He saw Levi. He saw his wife. He saw his wife. He saw his wife He saw his wife world, a people in which he dwells, in whom he dwells. But anyway, there's a lot of things trying to form us. And the question is, are you going to allow yourself? God's actually, it's his desire to form you and shape you to become who you were created to be. And the question for us is, are we going to allow our lives to be held by the potter to shape us? Will we submit our lives to him that he could do his redeeming work in us? And the Psalms, the Psalms are just this ancient formational way. It's an invitation for us to be formed through these ancient songs. They're so good. We're going to look at Psalm 34. You can turn there, finally get into the word here a little bit. Psalm 34, from which our seed verse comes. Let's do this. Let's do a responsive reading to this. If we can, I'm going to be looking at the NIV. I'm not sure what version you have. I think I have it on. Do I have it on the slides there, Caleb? Maybe one more. Go ahead. Yeah, there we are. So how about this? I'll do the, and at home,

[23:21] I expect you guys, you know, to be doing this too. I'll do the normal print and then you guys can respond in the bold print, okay? So you can just look up here, probably the easiest way. I will extol the Lord at all times. I will glory in the Lord.

[23:42] Glorify the Lord with me. I sought the Lord and he answered me. Slide. One more. Those who look to him are radiant. This poor man called and the Lord heard him. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him. And he delivers them. Next slide. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Fear the Lord, you, his holy people. The lions may grow weak and weary and hungry.

[24:32] Come, my children, listen to me. Next slide. Whoever of you loves life, and desires to see him in good faith, keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from telling lies. Turn from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it. All right, next slide. The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous. And his ears are attentive to their cry. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. To lie on their name from fear. The righteous cry out and the Lord hears them. He delivers them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted. He saves those who are crushed and destroyed.

[25:16] But the Lord delivers him from the law. Not one of them will be broken. But those who are righteous will be forgiven. No one who takes your life will be forgiven. Amen. Lord, would you open your word to us this morning? In Jesus' name, amen.

[25:41] All right, so the Psalms, Psalm 34 in particular, as instructive, as a formational way of life. How can we submit ourselves to the ways we see in the Psalms to be formed by them? I see at least three invitations in this particular Psalm as a way, as an instrument of giving our attention to God, knowing that as we give our attention, we are formed by him. The first invitation is this, exalt his name. I love in verse three, glorify the Lord of me. Let us exalt his name together. It's so special that we're actually looking at this for the first time you guys are having sort of musically led worship here together. It's so important for our formation because worship, I believe, is the ultimate act of attention.

[26:33] In many ways, what we give attention to is our worship. Let's put it that way. James K. Smith writes in his book, and the title says it all, You Are What You Love, The Spiritual Power of Habit. James K. Smith writes this, Worship works from the top down, you might say. In worship, we don't just come to God to show our devotion, give him our praise. We are called to worship because in his encounter, God remakes and molds us from top down.

[26:58] Worship is the arena in which God recalibrates our hearts, reforms our desires, and rehabituates our loves. Worship isn't something we do. It's something where God does something, it is where God does something to us. Worship is the heart of discipleship because it is the gymnasium in which God retrains our hearts.

[27:20] I mean, we can look at verse 1 here too, right? I will extol the Lord at all times. His praise will always be on my lips. But how do we do this, right? How do we live lives of worship? I think it is possible for the praise of the Lord to always be on our lips. Now, it may not be vocalized, but it is something we carry around in our hearts.

[27:44] This makes me think of good old Brother Lawrence, you know, this 17th century monk who learned to practice the presence of God in anything he was doing. He had the job of washing dishes. And he realized that even there could be a moment of sweet communion. He writes this about exalting the Lord at all times.

[28:05] He says this, There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of continual conversation with God. Those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it. And he says this, Brother Lawrence does, He does not ask much of us, merely a thought of him from time to time, a little act of adoration, sometimes to ask for his grace, sometimes to offer him your sufferings, and other times to thank him for the graces past and present. He has bestowed on you in the midst of your troubles to take solace in him as often as you can. Lift up your heart to him during your meals and in company. The least remembrance will always be the most pleasing to him. The least little remembrance. When we not cry out very loudly, he is nearer to us than we think.

[28:48] So this praise habit throughout our days, so formational, these acts of attention to God. I remember right after graduating from college, I had a job as a pest controller. I literally walked around spraying weeds. And I did some rat catching as well. I got some amazing stories I'll tell you about.

[29:08] You guys don't seem that interested, but you know. If you ever want to sit down, I got some stories. But anyway, it was kind of a very monotonous job. Like the guy had the contract for the BART station, so I'd walk around spraying weeds. And for some reason, nobody would come near me when I was doing that, you know. I was all alone doing that. I realized, hey, I'm just going to take this moment to worship. So I learned this spiritual. It was, I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on Jesus. You guys know that one? I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on Jesus. So I would do that, then I started making my own words. I woke up this morning spraying weeds, stayed on Jesus. I was like, you just, you just, why not, right? And I noticed after a while, like my heart started to kind of catch on fire a little bit. Even as I was spraying weeds, catching rats in the BART stations, you know. Like, like Jesus is here with me, even now. He's nearer to us than we imagine. So that's a nice kind of, kind of trick. Right? This is why scripture memorization, kids especially, you don't do it just to get a gold star. The gold stars are great. You do it because, man, you have this treasure to draw upon wherever you're at. And that's different than being able to access it.

[30:25] When it's in your memory, it's part of you in a different kind of way. So even now, memorizing scripture is a wonderful thing. I always imagine like, like your memory, your mind caressing this smooth stone of scripture in your head throughout your days. You know?

[30:46] One of my favorites, if you're looking for some scripture to memorize is Psalm 92, the first couple of verses. It's good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High, to declare your steadfast love in the morning and your faithfulness by night. You know, you just kind of work this over and over in your mind, give your attention to it, and you realize, again, how near God is and your heart is changed.

[31:09] But anyway, this psalm talks about motivating one another to worship as well. There's something so powerful about being in worship together and motivating one another towards worship. It makes me think of Ephesians 5.8, you know? Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord. So there's this sense that we can stoke one another up in worship. And that's what, you know, so many of us do. So many of us have been missing during this COVID time. Just that effect of coming together for worship. And it's wonderful that we can do these things online even. But that's the challenge, right? How can we motivate one another towards worship? Because sometimes I'm not feeling it.

[31:52] Sometimes I'm not seeing it. I need a brother and sister to come along and say, let's remember how good he is. Let's remember Jesus. And that just motivates me. Frontier Ranch, so exciting. Evelyn just got back from there. I remember working there as a summer camp counselor. And I remember, you know, this growing in my worship because I saw how others worship. I'm like, I want to worship like that. And I remember this guy named Graham was a counselor there. And he prayed one morning during devotionals.

[32:24] And I thought it was just, you know, kind of morning prayer or whatever. But when Graham talked to God, he was talking to God. He was like, I don't even know what, I won't be able to recreate it, but he was like, good morning, God. It's so good to be with you right now. And I was like, man, I want what Graham has. Like, that's, like, he's talking to God. You know, and so, like, there's this effect as we see others engage in worship. I remember being a college student and watching people in deep worship. I remember this one worship pastor at Berkeley. We did a lot of campus ministry stuff all over. And I saw this worship pastor. He was like, guys, right now we have the chance to bring something to God that we've never brought before. I was like, whoa, I like that. I can bring something to God. And so he was stoking me up for worship. And I think that's what this psalm is getting at. Let us exalt his name together, the God who is in our midst. There's something so powerful about that. I need that. You need that. We all need that for our formation.

[33:25] The early Covenanters would do this to each other all the time. They would stoke one another up in worship and exalt his name together. They would say famously, are you living in Jesus today? And the Swede would say, I am living. I won't do a Swedish accent because I don't even know what that would be. But I am living in Jesus today. Are you living in Jesus today? So it was sort of this motivational thing for each other. It wasn't like a, I'm going to catch you. You better be living in Jesus. It was, I want to stoke your fire this morning when I'm walking by each other. How can we motivate each other? So the cool part is if you think about it, if you have this posture as a community, not a coercive sort of manipulative thing, but as you're looking to motivate and encourage one another, think about the fire that will build towards worship as we live this way. So first formational practice, exalt his name together.

[34:21] Second invitation in this psalm that I see as an act of attention, and this is a wonderful invitation, it's to taste and see that the Lord is good. One of my favorite Bible verses. It's a great invitation from God. Not just think about it, not just conceptualize about God's goodness. And I love Victoria's message too, thinking about the good things we experience in life.

[34:46] But we're invited by God to taste and see that he's good. To know it. To feel it. To experience God's goodness. You know, we look at this psalm, and you can see how the psalmist, how David, right, he recounts all the ways in which he's experienced God's goodness. He answers him, delivers him, saves him.

[35:13] The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous. The Lord hears, is attentive to their cry. The Lord delivers them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted. He delivers them from all. He will rescue his servants. Like all these ways in which the psalmist, which David, experiences the Lord's goodness from A to Z, right? This psalm is actually an acrostic. There's 22 verses for the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. And it's like 22 ways in which the Lord is good and he's experienced it.

[35:43] So the picture we get in this psalm, like all of scripture, is a God who is alive and active and good and involved in our lives. That's the picture of God that we get. Not a conceptual God. Not a, just a God of, you know, concept. Not a God of, you know, concept. Not a God of philosophy.

[36:04] But a God of presence. God who's more involved than we would dare imagine in our lives. He's not far off. He's closer than we could think. So we need to savor his goodness. That's our practice, is to savor his goodness.

[36:23] You know what it means to savor, right? It's like to really enjoy something. You know, one of the bonuses, and there are many bonuses, but good things about moving back to Modesto. There's this place called Mr. T's Donuts.

[36:36] Amazing. Legendary. I think they're ranked 13 in the nation. I don't know who ranks donut shops across the nation, but they're 13. They're number one in my book. But anyway, they make this thing, they make, you know, a lot of species of fritter. They have all kinds of different fritters. And, you know, they have the classic apple fritter. They have the blueberry fritter. Then they created this thing called the banana fritter. Ah, so good. It's just, you know, the caramelized outside. And then the dough's, it's not gooey, but it's just soft and moist. And, like, part of me wants to just gobble that thing down. But you got to savor it and enjoy that goodness. You know, and for us to savor, right, we need to savor and enjoy, be a connoisseur of God's goodness in our lives. You know, coming back here, I'm just overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed by God's goodness in my life.

[37:32] Sometimes, you know, and this is what Steve Jobs says, and he's right on on this part. He says, sometimes you can't connect the dots looking forward in your life, but you can look back and connect the dots. Man, I look back at all the different dots in our lives. It's like, man, I'm so grateful. God's so good. He did so many good things in us here. So many good things. And I give him. He thanks and prays for it. You know, for us, we got to be a connoisseur and remember how good God has been to us, how good he is. I mean, we can do this in our own lives and look at this trail of God's goodness and all that he's done throughout our lives. But there's also this sense, and that's really important, there's also the sense of just realizing all the good that we experience, all the good, that comes from God as well.

[38:22] Right? You know, a beautiful fresh morning in Los Altos. That's God's creative goodness. You know, the mountains, the trees, the ocean, the blade of grass, the Milky Way, all God's goodness. You know, fritter, donut, donuts, ocean waves. We have a golden doodle. She's so sweet. That's God's goodness, right? So God's so good. Paul says, whatever's true, whatever's noble, whatever's right, whatever's pure, whatever's lovely, whatever's admirable, anything excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.

[38:56] Not only that, savor his goodness. That cross is kind of hidden here. But, I mean, you want to see the goodness of God, we look at Jesus Christ. Look at what he's done for us. God has poured out his very life for us. God bleeds for us. God seeks us out. God doesn't hold anything against us because of Jesus. You want to see God's goodness, you look at Jesus. How can you look at Jesus and not say he is good? All his ways are good. You know, I'm not saying he's good.

[39:26] He's just a good person. So we just, we remember these things. We savor these things. We savor the promises of God that neither height nor depth, nor anything in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. We savor that. You enjoy that. You let that form you more than this thing.

[39:47] More than anything else. So again, this is about attention. You see how this is about attention. You know, it's what we can do. It's what we can do with this organ we call, you know, the brain or our mind. We get to choose in so many ways what we give our attention to. And this is a profound effect upon us. One last practice. I know I'm kind of going along here.

[40:12] I just get so excited being back here. It's this. It's to embody his peace. This kind of takes us back to the seed verse here a bit. 14 says, Turn from evil and do good. And then you can pursue it. But the idea is this. As our attention is engaged, as our gaze is set upon our good, radiant God, we actually become the kind of people that reflect that radiance and that goodness in the world.

[40:41] We embody his peace. As we learn to live in it. The more and more that we become people who set our lives around enjoying God, the more others can see it as a testimony. And again, it's not because we will ourselves to be good or we will ourselves to be peaceful. It's because that's who we are more and more. We're being transformed to be like Christ. This is what Paul is talking about in that scripture from 2 Corinthians 3 that Hans-Erik read earlier. We begin to reflect the glory of God in Jesus Christ as we gaze upon him. We're being transformed into his image.

[41:21] You know, this is a very important point. This talk of immersive technology, right? We want to be immersed in God's presence. And that will be winsome to others. They will be able to see it. Even if you can't. I'm struck in the Exodus verse how Moses didn't realize he was radiant. He's like, oh, I better put a veil over my face. You know, people wouldn't come near. He didn't realize it though. And I think that could be the same for us too. We don't realize. And I know so many of you. You are radiant.

[41:53] You reflect Christ's glory. We don't often hear, like, maybe we're afraid to kind of say that of one another. I don't encourage you. You do. I know from experience. Anyway, as we're immersed in God's love, we love God, we love our neighbor. Those things are inseparable.

[42:11] Henry Nouwen writes this. It's an incredible mystery of God's love that the more you know how deeply you are loved, the more you will see how deeply your sisters and your brothers and the human family are loved.

[42:24] So we're being transformed as we gaze upon him. And now we get to look at others with the eyes of blessing. This is the practice here. I don't know if this is on the slide, but really the practice here is a practice of blessing.

[42:38] And I think the biggest blessing we can give to others in this day and age, it's kind of an interesting connection here. I think the blessing that we can offer is our attention. Right? We give God our attention. We learn in so many ways that what others are actually longing for and looking for is our attention.

[43:00] Our presence with them. And again, you don't separate those two things. So many ways our attention, our presence to God allows us to be more present to other people. So in a frenetic, sort of distracted culture that we live in, one where we have all been sort of masked up, and it's funny walking in here, it's like, who is this guy? I always see his bald head. Who is this guy? But you know, the idea is that hey, this is, people are desperate for just some attention. And somehow through our attention to be able to see the presence of Christ.

[43:36] Anyhow, would you pray with me? Oh Lord, we give you our attention right now. Whatever we're coming in with this morning, as we view online or here in person, um, we know that you are good. You're worthy of our exaltation.

[43:59] You're worthy, more than anything, worthy of our, of our savoring. We're so grateful for your goodness, God. As we turn our gaze upon you, as we lift our, as we dare to lift our eyes, help us to see your face. Not be ashamed. And as you do that, Lord, would you give us the grace to be able to see your face? And would you give us the grace to reflect your love and your goodness in this world that's so desperate to taste it?

[44:29] In Jesus' name, Amen.