This is what I learned when I stopped going to church

Hello my brothers and my sisters. In this video, I'm going to be sharing a little story. Uh, so first of all, a while back, something happened in my life, and it involved the church I was going to. So, I felt strongly led to just take a step back. Uh, this happens once in a while in our lives where we feel drawn to take a step back from everything and everyone and just really tune in to God's voice for clarity and direction. So, this is what happened to me a while back, and as a result, I stumbled upon some valuable lessons, and that is what I'm going to share with you in this video.

Uh, my intention with this video is not to discourage anyone away from church, because it is very important. We should desire fellowship. However, we should have more of a hunger to hear from the Holy Spirit than from anybody else. We should have more of a reverence for God's word than, um, a desire to people-please or go along with cultural Christian trends. And all of this wasn't as illuminated to me until I took a step back from church and really evaluated everything I've learned against the word of God. So, I'm going to share with you three big points. And this is what happened to me when I took a step back from church. Now, I still, now today, I go to church. I love it. It's, um, it feeds me. It's edifying.

Uh, but here's the first point. You need intentional daily devotional time. And I didn't realize this when I took a step back from going to church. I said to myself, "Okay, well, I'm not going to Bible study. I'm not going to Sunday service. So, I need now to take it into my own hands and start reading and praying more." What happened was, I started building a muscle that I never had. Okay? At first, this didn't come natural to me. At first, I was fighting my flesh to read one chapter before the day would start. Okay? As a follower of Christ, if you're not in that habit, it's going to be a little bit of a fight to get into that habit. This is normal. So, I started setting aside about 20 minutes each morning. And it started with just reading one proverb a day. There's 31 proverbs, one for each day. So, I started very simple, practical wisdom. And then it started to stir up my desire to go deeper, to start studying the gospels, to study the life of Jesus. And then it just takes you deeper and deeper. Okay? It's a muscle that you build spending this morning time every day with the Lord. And then add on to that. Put aside 20 minutes before bed. Read a psalm before bed, something peaceful, something that, um, enhances your faith in God, rather than scrolling on the phone and seeing all the evil, disgusting things going on in the world right now. All right, we've all done this right before bed, and some of us end up having nightmares. Um, it's disgusting what's going on right now, what's being revealed. I guarantee you, it's just the tip of the iceberg. So, to end your night with scripture before bed has just helped my mind not dwell on things that are temporary. Right? We've already won the victory through Christ. So, always let your mind come back to that, even though you see evil going on and whatever's happening in your life in the external. Um, pray that God opens your eyes to the, the internal, to the spiritual side of that, so that you don't get stressed out and suffer for no reason. Okay. So, having this, um, muscle built morning and night to come back to the truth, back to our hope, back to the things of eternal that will last forever, rather than fixing our mind on things that are temporary. Okay, we might have important responsibilities in our life, but they are also temporary. They're of this world. Okay, one day they will all be gone.

Now, as a result of this intentional devotional time that I didn't have beforehand, my relationship with God began to strengthen. Faith began to strengthen. And what happens when your faith strengthens? Your obedience becomes more natural because you're trusting and relying on God to do what he said he will do. So, I would start to confess my sin quicker, rather than hide from it or, um, keep it going and then let myself become a slave to it. Right? We deal with sin quicker when we, um, grow in our relationship with God, instead of letting it linger and creating distance from God and, and hurting our growth, hindering our blessings. Um, we're always going to sin, right? But what matters is that we humble ourselves and we confess it and we come back to relying on God. So, I noticed a huge difference in my spiritual aliveness by getting fed daily, as opposed to just relying on church Sunday or online sermons. And I really want everyone to hear this. It is great to hear from teachers that are gifted by God. It is, it is great to listen, but you need to make sure you are first and primarily under the teaching of the Holy Spirit more than others. And I want to read to you 1 John chapter 2. Before I do, let me just say that out of the, uh, is it 26 or 27 books in the New Testament, all of the books in the New Testament except for one warn us about false teachers. And we have to think, if that was such a huge central theme back then, can you imagine how important it is even now to cling to the original teaching that we've been given here, to stand firm in what we were originally taught, because there are all these little half-truths creeping into the church. And if we don't know what this book says, we're just going to go along with it with good intentions. And that produces rotten fruit in our lives and all different shapes and forms. So, 1 John chapter 2, verse 24. I'm going to start at, "You must remain faithful to what you have been taught from the beginning. If you do, you will remain in fellowship with the Son and the Father. And in this fellowship, we enjoy the eternal life he promised us. I am writing these things to warn you about those who want to lead you astray. But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you. So you don't need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true. It is not a lie. So, just as he has taught you, remain in fellowship with Christ." Okay? So, we're reading this in the context of, uh, antichrist-like teachers. And we know in general, one of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to teach us, to counsel us, to guide us, right? The Holy Spirit will bring verses to your mind throughout the day to instruct and direct you, to remind you to choose Christ over the flesh when you're faced with a decision. Do I act out of impulse? Do I follow this? Do I commit to this? Do I agree to this? And the Holy Spirit so lovingly just nudges us with, with the word, with the truth. And then we have the choice to follow that or reject it. Another topic. But my point here is saying that the Holy Spirit is the best teacher, and that he will guide you personally in your reading by highlighting the central themes. Okay? What is most imperative for us to fix our mind on in the word. The Holy Spirit also reveals the message behind the message, meaning deep divine wisdom to be gained just reading one passage under the leading of the Holy Spirit. So, by remaining in fellowship, by clinging to this original faith, we're not going to get swept away by false doctrine. And if you continually stay in fellowship with the Lord, you're going to be protected, um, when something is off. Okay? You don't need, what I'm saying is, you don't need to be a scholar, a biblical scholar, to detect false teaching. Wisdom protects you. The wisdom of Christ within you is going to protect you from false teachings. And let me go back to this word fellowship. If you're remaining in fellowship with the Son and with the Father, that denotes a humbled heart. We're reliant like children. And we remain teachable. Meaning, "Holy Spirit, you can correct me. Um, even if I'm wrong on something, I want to be corrected." We should desire correction and instruction for the sake of not being led astray by lies. And I know that's not easy to do, but it's so necessary for us to grow. So, let's reflect on this first point. Do we desire and hunger to know God's word in a way in which it's shaping our attitudes? In which we're saying, "Lord, you can open up my heart and and cut out whatever you see that is not aligned with the truth of your word and with the character of Christ, because I trust that you have better for me, even if it's uncomfortable, right?" Being cut with the truth doesn't always feel good. Uh, but God is, is loving, and he is gentle when we are humble to him and, and allow him to do what he does.

Now, something you can do, uh, if you're short on time to have this devotional time with God, to allow the Holy Spirit to, to do the work, the transformative work on you. Say you're in a time crunch. Put the Bible on while you're driving to work. When you're in the car, this is something I do. I'm very tempted to always listen to a Christian podcast or a Christian book or worship music. And that's great. But let me just encourage you to sometimes put aside all of that and just listen to the word of God and just pray a simple, "Holy Spirit, speak to me right now. I invite you to examine me, to point out where I'm going astray right now, because I know that you just want to protect me and give me better." Okay.

So, point number two. When I stopped going to church, I stepped away and I started reading the Bible more for myself and studying it myself. I started to see all the different ways I was falsely indoctrinated over time, um, through various online teachers, pastors, churches, even things I had learned from people close to me. I'm like, "Wow, I, I never realized that I was being given a half-truth." And now, I know falsely indoctrinated sounds harsh, but let me word it like this. Um, people who didn't know any better, that were probably falsely indoctrinated themselves and had nothing but good intentions were trying to teach. They're trying to teach me. And now, were they all good intentions? I don't know. I can't say for sure. But I will say this. When I started to read the Bible and see that things I have learned from people I loved and respected weren't 100% true, I started to feel disappointed in myself. You know, I was like, "Wow, I feel kind of naive, kind of fooled, and I don't want to feel like that again. It's not a good feeling." So, I was determined now to become like a Berean. All right, if you don't know what I'm talking about, Acts 17:11. The people of Berea were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, and they listened eagerly to Paul's message. They searched the scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth. What an excellent model for us to, um, have in our own lives. You know, we're so quick to just accept what our pastor says or what our favorite YouTuber says. And I'll throw out a disclaimer right now. Anything I say on this channel, go study for yourself. You know, people have corrected me many times in the comments section, and it's very humbling. But when someone, when you're able to correct somebody with truth and with love and not come across like a Pharisee pointing the finger, um, people who, who desire truth and wisdom love that, you know, like, "I want to be corrected." Um, you know, there's a way to go about it. But when we're listening to our pastors at church, do we ever say to ourselves, "This sounds great. Sounds truthful, but let me do a little, let me do my own Bible study on what's being said here to see if this is really what the text is trying to communicate." Okay, this is how we don't get led astray by false doctrines where people take one verse, take it out of context, create a whole doctrine out of it, and all of a sudden you have all these other people teaching the same thing, and it's just making believers look ridiculous. It's making us look like we don't know what our own book says. So, I'm trying to encourage us all to, to want to know the word, not to put anybody down. And once I realized all this indoctrination I had and I said, "I don't want this to happen anymore." If God's truth and character is consistent, then nothing should contradict in the word. There shouldn't be confusion. There shouldn't be contradiction. And if it does, if there does seem to be contradiction, then we're missing the main message, right? Something is being misunderstood because God, if something I learned about God's character, he is coherent. There is this harmony to his character. And the same goes for his word. Now, has the Bible been altered over time? Have there been things removed and put in? I'm sure. But the main central messages remain the same. Okay.

Now, something to do if you want to have this, this, uh, tool to really decipher truth and lies, whether you're being in church or a family, a friend is telling you, start reading the Bible from beginning to end. And I know it sounds daunting. You do it, you could do it over the course of a year, two years, whatever. But start from the beginning. And what you're going to see is how a lot of us have created our own concept of God. We unknowingly, right? We are too lazy to read the book, especially certain books that are very hard to get through. But we've created our own concept of God. So now everything we read in the Bible, we're seeing through this lens of this misconception of God that we created. And this is why it's so important to understand the character of God and, uh, and then see the scriptures through his consistent character. When we are maturing in our faith, desiring to grow in knowledge of the word, reading the whole Bible for what it is, we're not just doing this for head knowledge, but we want an, we want an intimate knowing of who he is, right? We are so blessed that God even gave us the Bible to reveal his character, to reveal his promises to us, to give us these comforting words, these words of warning, these words of instruction to help us. These are all tools to help us. So when you, when you have this intimate knowing of God, this is the relationship part of our walk. And it's knowing the truth. Knowing Jesus is knowing the truth. And the truth highlights what is not in alignment. I want to read to you Ephesians 4:11. Now, these are the gifts Christ gave to the church. The apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, the teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God's Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. Notice unity in our faith, knowledge of God's Son. That's talking about an intimate knowing of God, of God's Son, Jesus. And this leads to maturity, as opposed to verse 14, "Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won't be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ who is the head of his body, the church." So, immaturity in our growth, meaning being stunted in our growth, will lead to us being tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. It will lead to us being influenced by people who try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. This should encourage us to want to grow in our knowledge of Jesus and to become more like him. And we will know that we're becoming more like Jesus when we can speak the truth in love. Now, the truth is sometimes harsh, but you can say it in a way where the, the undercurrent of it is love, right? It's for correction. It's for edification. Colossians 2, verse 6. "And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him." Right? Follow in the pattern that Jesus put before us. If you want to go back to what that is, you need a refresher. Um, read Matthew 5, 6, 7. Okay? Jesus outlined a way for us, and it has to do with the attitude of the heart. Verse 7, "Let your roots grow down into him. Let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness. Don't let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world rather than from Christ." So, if something is not harmonizing with the character of Christ and it sounds like, this sounds like a man-made teaching, this sounds like something that is contradicting the Bible. Let me do a, a little Bible study on that. Let me ask the Holy Spirit to point out, to give me wisdom on this topic, to reveal to me the truth. Right? That should be our, our response when we have a little alarm go off. Because I've had that alarm go off before. I ignored it, and I witnessed the rotten fruit that came after that. So now I'm quicker to take heed when I see something, when I get an aroma of, "This isn't lining up with, with who God has revealed himself as, with the central themes of the Bible. It's not lining up." So, we're developing spiritual sensitivity. When you become like a Berean, you want to know the word. You want to read the whole Bible for what it is. It's going to give you a super clear radio signal. You're constantly attuning your mind to the word of God while humbling yourself, right? Because it's not all about head knowledge. It's, it's humbling ourselves to really understand what God is trying to communicate to us, his children, that he loves so much. Now, keep in mind, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. So, there are so many false teachings that are popular today, and I never talk about them on this channel because I don't, I don't feel called to do that. I really feel that we have an individual responsibility to humble ourselves before God and say, "Lord, is there anything I think is truth that isn't?" Because I want to know the truth. I love the truth. That should be our attitude individually. And if you do notice somebody who's preaching something false, um, I'm not telling you to go point your finger at them and call them a heretic, but you should be skeptical of everything for the sake of protecting your brain. Because I'll tell you what, our brains were designed to be very absorbent, like a sponge. So we're easily brainwashed. And whatever you're listening to repetitively, you're listening to the same pastor, the same teacher, their ideologies are going to embed into your subconscious, and you're going to now read the scripture through their lens because you're listening to them so much. Again, I still listen to pastors, teachers, preachers, but I always come back to, "Well, what does the word say in light of what they're saying, and not the opposite." Okay? So, I could give you so many examples of the ways that I was falsely indoctrinated, not even realizing it, and I'm still being renewed in my mind. My mind is still coming out of these false teachings that were told to me were biblical, but are actually not. So, we need to just stay in the word more than ever. Deception is just going to pick up in this world. And, uh, if you do feel like you want to confront someone who's teaching something that isn't true, let me give you some advice on that. Pray about it and wait on God. Because if you don't consult God on how to go about saying something to someone, like in a warning or, uh, corrective teaching, rebuking type of way, if you don't consult God first on how to say that in a way where it will be received, not only will it not be received, but you're going to cause so much damage, mostly to yourself. You're going to bring shame to yourself by by jumping ahead and acting out of anger or acting out of upsetness. And yeah, you end up hurting yourself in the end. So, pray about it before you open your mouth. If you don't have peace about it, then don't do it. You know, maybe God is going to reveal it to them individually. Just pray that God reveals it to them. Um, maybe you're very close to the person, and you do have a way to speak the truth in love. Their response will be very telling. Okay. But if God doesn't give you peace, maybe you have to remove yourself from the situation entirely. Uh, maybe God has someone else prepared to confront that person. This is why we have to wait on the Lord and listen to his guiding. Okay.

Uh, someone who truly has reverence for the Lord will want to explore a topic that they are being corrected on. That's from my own experience. If, if someone challenges me and says, "Hey, I, I don't think you're actually right on what you teach, what you're teaching here," automatically I am afraid of not lining up with God's truth. Not afraid of the person, not upset or disappointed in myself for sounding ignorant, but I have a fear of the Lord. We should all have this fear of the Lord where I don't want to be preaching a different gospel. Okay? I don't want to be adding things of my own ideas into his word or taking anything away, because there are curses and warnings to those types of people. So, I want to stay away from that. We should all want to stay away from that. Now, if you or someone else has been heavily, heavily indoctrinated on something, you might be met with cognitive dissonance. Now, if you're not familiar with that word, I'm just going to give you the definition. The mental discomfort, stress, or psychological tension experienced when holding two or more contradictory beliefs, values, or attitudes. So, basically, say someone is indoctrinated to something, maybe it's someone in your family, and you're like, "Oh, I have a really loving way to share the truth with them. I'm just going to show them what the word of God says, right?" You show them the truth, and they have a whole emotional, "I don't want to hear it. And how could you say that?" And, you know, they just react. That's cognitive dissonance. Okay? There's, there's something now contradicting with something they have held to, and it's usually an emotional reason. Okay? And this is where we need to ask ourselves, what's more important? The, the truth of God's word, or pleasing people, or, um, emotional experiences, right? Because God's truth trumps emotional experiences. So, here's some reflective questions for this second point. What were the first doctrines that you were under in the church? Okay, I could think of a couple of them that weren't completely true. Some of them were very extreme, and the word of God has tempered that, has balanced me out in that. Now, have you scrutinized what you've learned against the truth? Saying, "I'm willing to be wrong out of my reverence for God." Have you taken the time to study the things you are telling others are biblical? Have you taken that time before you're telling others verses, you're weaponizing scripture against other people, have you sat with the Holy Spirit and said, "Well, let me make sure I'm correct on this before I go on telling others this is true." [snorts] Okay, remember Paul said, "If my concern was pleasing people, I wouldn't be Christ's servant." So, are we a servant of Christ, or are we a servant of people, or a servant of self? Right? We want to be a servants of Christ.

Number three point is, I realized when I started reading the Bible more, I realized I was taking verses out of context unknowingly. And this was so humbling. So, not only did I have false indoctrination that I had to be retaught and renewed by the Holy Spirit, but I myself was misinterpreting verses left and right because I wasn't reading the Bible as a piece of literature. Right? It is the inspired word of God, yes, but there are basic literary elements at play all throughout the Bible. So, we have a responsibility to properly understand the gospel, right? Faith and repentance, so that we can share the gospel accurately with people, so that we don't give people a half-truth and make people think that they're saved when they're not. That would be so unloving. So, we need to properly understand the gospel first and foremost. Now, go deeper. If we're going to start sharing knowledge of the Bible in a broader sense, like what I'm doing here on this channel, it would be, we have a greater responsibility first of all, and it would be much wiser to not teach on something you don't fully understand. It would be much wiser to say, "You know what, I don't really know what's going to happen in the end times," than to act like I do and be so confident in my scriptural opinion of that. For example, in order to understand scripture, to really get the message behind the message, we need to have a humble heart. And I just want to read to you Psalm 119. Psalm 119 is one of the most invigorating Psalms when it comes to love, the, the admiration for God's instruction, for God's way. And in the first few verses of Psalm 119, it says, "Open my eyes to see the wonderful truths in your instructions. Help me understand the meaning of your commandments. Give me the privilege of knowing your instructions. Um, give me understanding." Right? There's this constant request, petition to open up the meaning of what is being said, and that is a humble heart before God, rather than just assuming we know what it means. We come into the word saying, "Open this up for me. Reveal to me your heart behind this message." You know, um, when you're reading difficult chapters or books, like, for example, the book of Judges, "God, reveal to me what are you trying to say about your character, about how you are towards us." You know, things like that. So, we do this so that we don't mishandle his word. And not only are we to seek understanding through his leading, but like I said, we need to consider basic literary elements. For example, poetic language throughout the whole Old Testament. Um, reading it, realizing how ancient that culture is, okay? What sounds, what was normal to them sounds so foreign and barbaric to us. That comes with just knowing the culture at the time. And in the New Testament, Paul uses hyperbole over and over again. Like when, uh, he mentions tongues of angels, he's not implying that there's a prayer language. What he's saying in a dramatic contrasting exaggeration, hyperbole, is that anything done without the leading of love is just noise. It's, it's meaningless. Okay? So, Paul uses hyperbole all throughout his writing to drive home points. [snorts] Jesus uses allegory, like in the parables. He uses symbolism, irony, metaphors to communicate central themes. All this to say that we need to consider basic literary elements when we want to properly interpret a verse and not take it out of context and say it means something other than it doesn't. We don't want to mishandle God's word because we have reverence for God. Here's another point. You go into a library, you take a book off a shelf, right? You open the book up, you read one sentence, and you assume you think you know what it means. That's ridiculous, right? You need to read the entire book to understand really what a sentence is saying. And while you know you can read that book of the Bible, uh, to understand the verse, it's not going to give you the full meaning. What I'm trying to say is, until I read the Old Testament, I didn't fully understand the New Testament. And it's the New Testament builds off of the Old Testament. It refers back to it over and over again. So, the two go together harmonically. Uh, let me take it a step further. Until I started looking at the original languages, this is a whole another rabbit hole. Did I not really understand the verses that I was reading? Okay. So, don't let anyone deceive you into thinking that there's a better translation. Every English translation of the Bible falls short because it's just a translation. Okay? We're missing out on the depth and the beauty of the original language. And not saying you have to go learn Hebrew and Greek, but we have the tools now. Praise God. We have these tools to open up a verse in the deepest way possible. When it comes to interpreting a verse, and I'm almost done here. Um, when we are reading a verse, we need to ask ourselves, who is the audience? What is going on in the culture at the time? [snorts] Is this verse descriptive of what's going on, or is it an actual instruction for all Christians for all time? Okay. Is this verse being spoken to this specific group or person, which sometimes it is, or is it meant to be directed at me in 2026? Is it meant for everyone, for all time? Now, if it's the latter of the two, more questioning is required because that's serious. If this applies to me now, then where do I see the theme being repeated? We need to ask ourselves that. Where is this being repeated? Something you can appreciate about God's word is that what is most important is repeated over and over again in different words, meaning it is a central theme. So, we need to ask ourselves, what are the central themes of the Bible when you're reading it, right? God's sovereignty and holiness, for example. [snorts] Um, faith and repentance, for example. So, you can go on and on about all the central themes that God has highlighted to us that we should be most fixated on.

One last point, and then we'll wrap it up. When we are interpreting a verse or a passage and we think we know what it means, we have to ask ourselves, does it contradict with any other verses? Because if it does, I'm not understanding it correctly. Something I love about the word is that there is no contradiction in the central themes of the Bible. Okay, so it's just another thing to ask ourselves. I'm going to end this with Psalm 119, verse 161. "Powerful people harass me without cause, but my heart trembles only at your word. I rejoice in your word like one who discovers a great treasure. I hate and abhor all falsehood, but I love your instructions." My brothers and my sisters, as deception increases in this world, with AI, with everything going on, deception is only going to pick up. Our hunger and desire for the truth should increase as a response to that. We have precious time right now, okay? Right in front of you, you have the most valuable thing, time to be sewing into the renewal of your mind, to the truth. Not saying you have to memorize everything in the Bible, but to, to know the central themes, what God has highlighted as importance. One of those most important things being the way we treat others, the way we conduct ourselves in practical living, as, um, growing to become more Christlike, right? These day-to-day mundane things that we overlook tend to be one of the most highlighted things in the Bible. So, instead of looking so far out, think about, "What can I do in my day today to be more Christlike? What can I do right now that would be pleasing to God?" Not because it's going to save me or it's going to earn me anything, but it's just my response to his love for me, because of the love he has initiated. And, uh, you know, the more you come to know God's word, the more you become a student of the word, you are going to be so blessed, and that it is so protective to you. It is life-giving, uh, comforting, instructive. It never ends. What is revealed to you through the word will, it'll never cease to amaze you. So, and we do it not because we just want to know. You know, there's people who know a lot of scripture and they don't demonstrate Christlikeness. So, it's not about just knowing it for head knowledge, right? It's because we want to know Jesus, to know him. That's what we want. John 17:3, "And this is the way to eternal life: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth." So, so let's end on that. Do we truly know him? Are we coming to know Jesus more and more every day? That's the goal. And, and the word leads us to that. The Holy Spirit through the word leads us to that. I want to tell you something interesting about that word "know." To know him, "ginosko." Okay, this is a personal experience knowing. This is a firsthand personal knowing. It's the same Greek word used in Luke 1:34 when Mary said to the angel, "How will this be since I do not know a man?" Okay, it she's talking about sexually knowing a man. So, "ginosko" is an intimate knowing of. All right. So, I, I just want to encourage us all to continue walking closely with Jesus, staying in the word, staying in prayer. Uh, I know everything going on is so disturbing in the world right now. And it'll probably get worse. It always does before it gets better. But we know how the story ends, okay? We have a hope. We have something so to be so excited about. So, just, just know that all these little trials that you're experiencing in life, they are only to grow you. And the trials you experience now, the Bible says this, are only going to produce for you a future glory that nothing can touch. Right? We have an eternal glory, an eternal inheritance that is untouchable. So, let me just encourage you. Whatever you're going through right now, whatever is challenging you, pressing on you, whatever is, um, making you agitated and reactive, I just want to tell you, hand it over to the Lord. Give it to him, and, and allow him to do the work. Okay? We, we wait on the Lord. Waiting is active. And in that waiting, we are pursuing the character of Christ. We're pursuing Christlikeness. All right. So, let's wrap it up with a prayer. Anyone who's watching, if you want to pray with me right now. [sighs] Oh, heavenly Father, we, we praise you for who you are, for your revealed holiness, that you are the God, the supreme, the Ancient of Days, and yet you intimately, individually love us. That is so profound. And we just thank you for your love. Just to be loved by you, Lord, is enough. It's sufficient. It, it moves us. Let it move us, Lord, into acts of love. Let it move us into obedience today. Just for today. Help us. You said today is enough for today. So, Lord, we ask for anyone who's listening right now that you would give us the grace and the strength and, and the humility to desire to be like Christ to those around us in our inner circle today, our family, friends, co-workers, bosses, anyone. And, uh, that we would just keep shining Jesus and being the light that you've called us to be. Help us to do that more in Jesus name. We all say amen. All right. Thank you for being here, and I will see you in the next video.