Faith IRL - Real Faith Acts - James 1:19–27

Welcome to South Sub Church. We are so glad that you've decided to worship with us today. Whether you're in the room right now or watching from home, wherever it is, we're just so glad that we get to spend this time together and worship the Lord together as one. Here at South Sub Church, we believe we are one church with two expressions of worship, but we have one mission to bring people to Jesus Christ and together become passionate followers of him. Another way that we worship is through our tithes and offerings. And here at Southsub Church, we believe that we give the Lord back what he gives us. And there's a couple ways that I want to invite you to do that this morning. One is giving online at southub.urch/g. Another way is by texting the number that's on the screen right now. Or there's an envelope in your seat back pocket. And here's what I want to invite you to do. No matter what gift you give, big or small, we believe that whatever we give, the Lord multiplies that and we are able to be the hands and feet of Jesus here where we are right now. If you're new, we invite you to fill out a connect card. We would love to get to know you, pray for you, and find a way for you to get more connected with our church. And if you're watching us online, make sure you leave a comment wherever you are. Maybe you're going to the mountains, maybe you have a soccer game to go to. Whatever it is, we're just so glad that you've decided to join us for worship. You picked a great week to be here. Let's jump into God's word together. Let's worship him today. [Music] Heat

up here.

[Music] Well, good morning again. You know, I can pretty well guess what most of you were doing yesterday about 2:30 in the afternoon, right? Yeah. we were all watching the Broncos games and I was right there with you. In fact, I don't know if you're were on social media at all. Um, but I I posted a few pictures um of just kind of my experience yesterday. So, there's one right there. And then I had another one that I just had to post. I sent out a text to everybody. I got so many comments, so many just questions from people just like, "Oh my gosh, how did you get tickets? What was experience like? Was it the best day of your whole life?" I have a confession to make to you. Um, that wasn't where I was at. In fact, there's another picture of where I was at yesterday. It was right there. So, here's what I did. I had a few special friends that were at the game. And so, I texted them while they're at the game and I said, "Hey, can you send me a picture of what it's really like to be there?" And so, I got these pictures and I got so many comments. Some were positive about me being there. Some questioned that they knew I was too cheap to ever buy tickets to be there. So, I had all kind of questions. But here's here's the real deal. If you're at the game, you've had a much better experience than I did on the couch because you were really there. Now, I share that with you because interesting, last week, we began a brand new sermon series in the book of James and it's talking about real faith. And so, if you were at the game, your experience was a whole lot better than mine was sitting on the couch. Yet, I wonder how many times in mine in your life when it comes to faith. Do we are we more like a maybe a couch Christian than a real fan of the game? That we can post the right pictures on social media. We can say the right things around people. We can lead them to believe where we really are in our faith, but we're not really experiencing it in real life. Are you with me? And so we're going to continue our study the second week in the book of James. If you missed us last week, that's okay. We're just now getting started in the whole thing, but we're going to just jump into it and we're looking together. What is faith in real life? Not the stuff that we talk about on Sundays. Not the things that you think about you wish you were, but what does faith look like in real life? And so if you've got your Bibles or we'll have the passage up here on the screen or you have in your handout that you came with. We're going to start in James chapter 1 and we're going to be starting in verse 19. Now just to give you a little recap, James is actually the halfb brotherther of Jesus. And so he had just this real life experience. I mean he was right there watching the whole just Jesus thing take place from the time he was born all the way until the time that he was crucified on the cross and resurrected. And so James gives us this like in-person view of what it really means to have real life faith. And so here's what he says in verse 19. He says, ' Know this, my beloved brothers. Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. For the anger of a man does not produce the righteousness of God. And so here's what we're going to discover as we continue our study in the book of James that that the the author James, he just gives us all these like action steps. Here's what it means to have real life faith. Here's what it looks like to have real life fa real life faith. And so he's going to start describing here in verse 19. This is what it looks like if you have real life faith. And so the first thing he says there is quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. Now there's a couple of ways that we can look at this particular verse here and apply to our lives. First of all, there's the interpersonal way, right? I mean all of us if we took all the relationships in our lives and we applied this principle be quick to hear slow to speak and slow to act um we we would come out a lot better wouldn't we and in fact the Bible gives us just suggestions and gives us just affirmations and gives us wisdom on doing that way in our life but here's what we need to understand that when James was writing this here in his letter he was not specifically talking about interpersonal relationships again while that's a great just just addage to add to your life, some great wisdom to add to your life that the Bible talks about in this particular instance. He's not talking about mind and your relationships with one another. When James says there in there that we should be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger, he's really talking about our relationship with God. He's talking about the word of God and the way the word of God applies to our life. He uses that phrase quick to hear. And here's what he's trying to describe. Has somebody ever walked up to you and said, "Hey, I got to tell you a secret." And what do you usually do when somebody tells you, "I have I have to tell you a secret." You stop whatever you're doing. And you listen in and you try to take in everything they have to say. And so what James is telling us is when it comes to the word of God in our lives is that we should be quick to hear that when the word of God is read, when the word of God is is is preached, when the word of God is heard, no matter how you encounter the word of God in your life, that as soon as it comes up, we should stop what we're doing and listen and lean in to get as much of it as we can. And here's what he's trying to tell us. when we don't refer, when we don't respond to God's word and are quick to listen and we're more apt to like just speak really quick and talk about what we think about things, often times we respond in an angry way. And here's why. Because when we're not when we're not quick to listen to what God's word says, we take him off of the throne of our lives and we place ourselves on that throne. And the moment that I place myself on the throne of my life and I remove God from that place, I become a lot more reactionary in the way I think things. I become a lot more pushing back to people when they say something to me. Here's what it boils down to. I have a lot more angst that turns into anger in my life when I'm sitting on the throne of my life. And so what James is telling us, if we want real life faith, not just something that we wear the t-shirt and tell everybody we have it, not just something that we show up to church on a Sunday and we think that's good enough for faith. If we want the faith that lives out loud on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday is that we need to be quick to listen, we need to be leaning into God's word and not be so reactive to it by putting God at the center of that of our life and going, "God, tell me what I need to know. Tell me what I need to know. And before I respond, before I speak, let me take as much of it into my life. that way it can come out of my life. Bottom line, he says this, if you want to have real faith, you have to have to actively and intentionally be taking in God's word. Let me just if if you're here this week and weren't last week, let me just tell you two resources that we're we're providing for you to help you with that. One is we've just purchased the book of James, which is just one of the many books within the Bible, but we've just purchased the book of James that you can buy it out there for $5 just to carry it around with you. What I've done with this is I put it on my desk and it's more of a visual reminder, Keith, don't just let it sit there. Get into it. And the other thing, when you came in, when you received a handout, every week we're providing and producing a devotional that you can study and read and reflect on the very verses that we talk about today. So, in your handout is a page that looks just like this. Take this home. On Monday, there's a five minute devotional you can walk through. On Tuesday, there's another devotional that you can walk through. But what we're trying to do is this. We're trying to understand and realize and apply in all of our lives that when we hear God's word, we have to actively be trying to put it in our lives more and more and more. That's exactly what James was saying. And then he goes on to say in the next verse in verse 24, he goes, "Therefore, because you're actively trying to put God's word into your life, you've taken yourself off the throne. You've placed God on the throne and you're actively trying to put God's word in your life." He goes, "Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness then planted word which is able to save your soul." Let me just break that down for you. He says this, "Real faith not only involves planting God's word in your life. It also means taking out the weeds in our lives, all the filthiness and what he says, the wickedness." I remember in third grade we had our science fair and to kind of get us ready to understand what the different kind of science projects we could do. We did one as a class and probably every one of you did this at some point in your life. The teacher brought a whole sack of sweet potatoes. And she brought a whole bunch of mason jars and some toothpicks. You know what we did with those? We cut those sweet potatoes in half. We put the toothpicks in it. You filled the mason jar with some water. You put the sweet potato in the jar. And she goes, "Now, let's watch what happens, class." And you've been there before. You've seen it. You've probably done that project before. And within a couple of weeks, all of a sudden, you could see through that glass mason jar. You could see the roots coming out of that sweet potato. And then a week or so later, all the leaves begin to grow. And the teacher is trying to show us that's what happens when you take a seed and you implant into the ground that seed. You don't see underneath the dirt, but all those roots are taking place there. And once those roots get established, then the leaves begin to grow. As a third grader, I thought that was the coolest thing in the whole wide world, watching this right there in that that glass mason food jar. And then one Friday, she said, "Okay, everybody can take your science projects home." And so I carefully carried my mason jar home and I thought if it grows so well in this mason food jar, what would it do in the dirt? So when I got home that afternoon, I went to the very back of the backyard. I didn't want to mess with mom's flower beds because I knew I'd get in trouble for that. So I went in the very back. There was just it was a part of our backyard that has some dirt, but it's really just a bunch of weeds. Okay? There was no really grass or sod there. Just a bunch of weeds. So, I took the sweet potato that already had the roots because it had been implanted. And I moved some dirt around, kind of moved some weeds, just kind of tore some weeds out in a spot. And I planted that big sweet potato seed right there in the dirt. And I'm thinking, if it grew that much in a jar, what's it going to do in our backyard? And every day I would come from from home come home from school and I would look to see what was going on. In the first few days, I'm thinking, "This thing is doing great." And then day three and day four and day five, by two weeks, the plant was dead. Do you know why? I always watered it. The sunshine was shining. You know why it died? Because all the weeds. I didn't think through that enough. The teacher didn't teach us part two of the science experiment that if you plant the seed and you implant the seed, you also have to get the weeds out or the weeds will choke it out. And that's exactly what happened to my sweet potato plant. Now listen to me. When James is writing to you and I, just like he was writing 2,000 years ago, because it's just as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago, he says this. You've got to take the word of God. Take yourself off the throne. Put God on the throne. Take his word. Let it be implanted into your soul. Let it be implanted into your mind. Let it be implanted into your heart. It must be implanted into your whole entire life. But you can't just plant it and not weed it also. And that's why he's saying that you have to get rid of all the the the the filthiness and all the rampant wickedness here in James chapter 1 21. Let me read it for you in the New Living or in the living Bible translation. It says, "So get rid of all that is wrong in your life, both inside and outside, and humbly be glad for the wonderful message we have received, for it is able to save our souls as it takes hold of our hearts." He said, "Get rid of all that is wrong in your life, both on the inside and the outside." How many times do we get rid of the outside stuff that people see, but we never think about weeding the inside stuff that nobody else sees? But the inside weeds can be just as choking to our spiritual souls as the outside weeds. In fact, I thought about this. Here's some weeds that might be in some of our lives. Ongoing sin. is that entangling sin that the book of Hebrews talks about. That one that just grabs you and grabs you and you try to do better and it grabs you and grabs you. It could be small or it could be big. But those entangling sins, those ongoing sins are often weeds that will choke out the spiritual life of our faith. In addition to ongoing sin, what about that ignored conviction? You ever had that opportunity in your life that you feel like the Holy Spirit's knocking at your door going, you need to consider that? You need to think about that. Probably not the best choice you're making. You're being convicted of something and often times those convictions can only be or oftenimes they're temptations and the Holy Spirit's going to go, "You're getting too close. You're getting too close." So the weeds can be ongoing sin, ignored conviction. What about this one? Delayed obedience. God shows you you shouldn't be doing this or you should change the way you're doing something. You're like, "Okay, I'll get to it on another day." Or here's one for you, a weed in our life. Just spiritual complacency. I know I'm saved. I don't know. I'll go to heaven one day and I'm a lot better than this person, that person, this person. So, God, I'll just kind of live my life this way. And all of those are weeds that if we're not careful will come in and choke the spiritual life out of us. And our faith turns into more of an empty religion than an active lifestyle of living like Jesus. Hebrews chapter 3:12 says this. So watch your step. Make sure there's no evil unbelief lying around that will trip you up and throw you off course, diverting you from the living God. You see, here's what we need to remember about this verse that Paul or that James is talking about. Real life faith takes both addition and subtraction in our life. We need to be adding God's words into our life, God's wisdom into our life. But at the same time, we need to be taking out of our lives, those very things that could be choking out what God is trying to do in and through us. Now, James doesn't stop there because he goes on in verse 22-2. He says, "But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in the mirror. For he looks at himself and he goes away and at once he forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in doing this. Here's what we need to realize when it comes to God's word. It is not a window that we view the word. It is a mirror that we view ourselves. Let me say that again. Because oftentimes we want to try to figure out what the world and our culture and how do we respond to it. So we look at God's word as a mirror going or a window going, "Okay, if I take God's word and I and I use God's word almost as a filter and I view everything and everyone around me, I'll know how to respond to him." That's not bad. But more than a window to view the outside world, God's word is designed to be a mirror to view your own life. For some reason, in the last few weeks, I have been craving barbecue. Okay? I know there's got to be good barbecue here in Denver. I've not found it yet, but I've been craving good barbecue. And so, I'm really doing this as kind of the suggestion. If somebody wants to invite me for a good barbecue place, I'm all with you, okay? Let's just do fellowship. But I want you to imagine for a second that that we go eat barbecue and they've just got the best ribs. They've got the best corn on the cob. They've got the best baked beans to go with it. Like it is the best barbecue place in the world. And I've been craving it. And you're sitting across the table from me. And we're having amazing time just laughing, talking, and really I'm liking you, but I'm loving the barbecue better. And my favorite barbecue ribs. Okay, I'll take brisket. I I'll take chicken. That's great. Whatever, but give me ribs. Okay. Okay. So, we're eating barbecue and you can tell I'm enjoying it. And so, as I'm eating, I've got my ribs and I'm on like rib number five. You know, like you there's no more napkin left to wipe your hands. You know what I'm talking about with the good good ribs? And I'm eating those ribs and I'm eating that corn on the cob. And after a few minutes, I'm like, "Hey, can you excuse me? I need to go to the restroom." And so, I go to the restroom and I look in the mirror and I got barbecue just wiped sauce just wiped on the side of my mouth there. I'm going, "Oh my goodness." And I smile and I got corn stuck right there between my teeth. That's what you've been looking at the whole time we've been eating. Okay. And I'm looking this going, "Oh my goodness, what a horrible sight." And I look again and that barbecue sauce is almost to my ear. And I don't just have one corn kernel. I got another one on the matching one on this side over here. I wash my hands and I head back to the table. Now, while I was gone to the restroom, you're going, "Thank you, Jesus." I didn't want to embarrass Keith by telling him he looked that way. But thank you that he went to the bathroom. He's got the mirror. You know where I'm going with the story, don't you? Remember I said as I look in the mirror, I never clean my teeth. I never clean the side of my mouth side of my face. All that barbecue sauce. And I sit back down going, "Man, let's get some dessert. I got corn just stuck on my teeth. I got barbecue sauce wrapped on the side of my face." You're thinking to yourself, "Did he even look in the mirror?" And maybe you're bold enough said, "Hey, um, they got some really nice bathrooms. Did you check out the mirrors?" And I look at you going, "Of course I looked in the mirror." You're going to walk away from that lunch going, "Never again will I go to lunch with him." Okay, you see the stupidity of the story, right? I mean, it's a mirror. We use a mirror to do a reflection of what we look like and to change what things aren't right. And here's what James is saying. That's exactly what the word of God should be in our life. That we dig into it. We read it. We listen to it. And it's not to kind of, oh, nice thought there, Jesus, and set it to the side. It is to look and compare our life to it, and we adjust our life accordingly. Now, think about this for a second. What if you left here today and you got your $5 out of your pocket going, "Hey, I want one of those little just just individual just books of the book of James." So, you grab that and you're like, "Man, this is really awesome. I'm gonna start reading this every day. You even grab the devotionals. You're going, "That's a great idea. I'm glad the church is is is providing that for us." So, you go home and you sit down Monday and you read the passage that's described on on for Monday. You do the devotional and it just like, whoa, I needed to hear that. I mean, there's some things in my life I need to adjust. There's some things in my life that I need to just kind of move around a little bit. And after five minutes reading and looking and thinking and hearing, you set it down and you go to work and you don't think about or do anything with it until the next day. Are you with me? That's as ludicrous as eating barbecue and going to the bathroom and never picking your teeth and wiping the barbecue sauce off. And what James is saying, don't just be hearers of the word, be doers of the word. In fact, he uses a word in the Greek that's hearer. It's almost like if you've ever gone to a college class and most people in there are taking that class to get a grade, they're taking the test and they're actively involved in it. But oftentimes, you can go to a college course and there's what as what they call an auditor in there. It's someone who just goes to that course. They're not taking that course for credit. They're not taking a test. They never have to prove they even listen to the professor. They're just going in there to learn something with it. And he goes, "When you're a hearer of the word, you're nothing more than an auditor of God's word. And God's word was never designed to be that way in our lives. In fact, he says this, "If you have real faith, you will be a hearer of God's word, but you will be a doer of God's word."

Then he goes on, he's not finished there. In verse 26, he if anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless. One of the characteristics about this letter, the book of James, that we're reading and studying together over the next few weeks, James just goes from this thing to this thing to this thing to this thing oftenimes are not like continuous thoughts. And so what we're finding today as we study the James, like as we study the rest of it, he'll just give us four or five, six different things that are related but unrelated. What it means to have real life faith. And what he's saying right here is this. Real life faith watches what comes out of your mouth. If you want to quickly elbow somebody next to you, feel free to right now and be the Holy Spirit. Real life faith watches what comes out of your mouth. But can we dig down a little bit deeper in this? Many times speech, what comes of our out of our mouth is not the problem. It's a root of the problem. It's a I'm sorry, it's a symptom of the problem. And here's what James says. Many times what comes out of our mouth has nothing to do with the words we use but the heart that it comes from. And that's why he says if anyone thinks he's religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless. When I was 16 years old, I got my driver's license and my dad said, "Okay, here's how you put the gas in. You check your tires. if anything ever comes up on this on the on the dashboard, red lights, you be sure and let me know. So, I've had my license driving the family car that was given to me and about two months into it, there's a little red message that said check engine. It was little bitty message. It wasn't blinking. It wasn't flashing. It wasn't even making any noise. Check engine. So, guess what I did? I ignored it. But after a while driving, the little red message check engines kind of was just frustrating. So I got some black electrical tape and I put it on the dashboard so this little bitty teeny tiny check engine message wouldn't bother me because it was so small and it didn't seem like a big deal. Do I need to finish the story? No, not at all. I don't need to finish it at all. Um because here's the deal. That message check engine was really a sign telling me of a bigger problem. You with me on this one, church? Get ready. If you have a problem with your speech, not just in what you say, but how you say it, the tone you use, the often the many times you may say the same thing over. If you have a problem with your speech, here's what James says. There's a good chance that's not a problem with your speech. It's a problem with your heart. And he goes on to say something pretty strong there. He says, 'The one who can't control their tongue, the one who can't control what comes out of their mouth, he goes, that individual's religion is worthless. Like, James, can you ease up a little bit? James, wouldn't it be better to say that person's religion may need a little selfcorrection? Wouldn't it be better to say that person's religion kind of has a sharp part they need to think about? But one of the things that we agreed on as we started the book of James, it is scripture. Scripture gives us authority. Scripture when we read it is not for us to negotiate. It is for us to move our life to. And James clearly says right there, when we have a problem with what comes out of our lips, it's probably a heart problem. But worse than that, it may be just worthless religion you're following. Because true religion changes our heart. True religion starts down deep and it comes from what's on the inside and that's what comes on the outside. Here's what it says in Matthew 12:35. A good man's speech reveals the treasures within him. An evilhearted man is filled with venom and his speech reveals it. If you struggle with your speech, it's time to do a heart check. Don't just go change the words you say or how you say them. Put a little please piece of black tape on the dashboard. But do a little heart check. An easy question is just Jesus. What's inside my heart that's making me speak that way? Jesus, what's going on inside of me that's making me react that way? Jesus, what's inside of me that makes me think those are better words to use than these words over here? Then James keeps on. Remember I said he's going to give you this and this. So he keeps going on. He says, "Religion is pure." Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep one's un oneself unstained from the world. So he's going, if you've got bad speech, it means you just may have a worthless religion. But while I'm on the on topic, let me go ahead and tell you what good religion is. And he gives you two things there. The first one is this. He says real faith, real faith proves itself. You see, back in those days, widows and orphans were probably the most vulnerable people in society. If you're an orphan and both your parents died, there were no social systems to help pay for things to grow you up. You were going to be a beggar on the street. If you're a widow and your husband died, you probably didn't work. And so, there was no means to make money. And so, they were extremely extremely vulnerable. And and here's what James is saying. You want to check your heart to see if you have true religion. How are you taking care of the vulnerable people around you? In today's society, I still think widows are definitely a vulnerable society. They're left without a partner. They're left without a mate. And they may need some extra help. They may need extra company. I think orphans in our society are definitely definitely vulnerable, but we could fill in the blank with so many other vulnerable people in our society. And God just really just saying this when James is saying this um he's going just how are you taking care of the people around you? Is your life so selffocused that you don't even see the need of the next door neighbor? Is your life so focused you're not aware of the people around you that might need a little encouragement. They might need a little financial assistance. They might just need a little bit of social interaction. Someone said true religion don't measure it by what comes out of your mouth. Measure by what you're doing, how you're proving it. But he also made the other comment as well. Real faith not only proves itself. Real faith protects itself.

He said religion that is pure and undefiled before God the father is this to visit orphans and widows in their affliction. And then he said this and to keep oneself unstained from the world. James is warning us to be aware of ways of thinking acting and believing that run contrary to God's holiness and purpose in our lives.

Go back 2,000 years ago when James wrote this. Remember we we we learned in the first chapter that he was writing it to Christians had that had been dispersed. They no longer had their safe community they could kind of huddle in huddle up in and keep one another safe because of persecution that was coming their way. They really had to scatter because they were much safer physically if they weren't all together. And so they were living in a world that people didn't think, believe or talk or do what Jesus had instructed them to do. Do you see why this letter of James written 2,000 years ago is so relevant to us today? We live in a world that society comes in, culture comes in and is trying to influence in us in every way but the way that God walks, talks, and goes. And here's what James is saying. True religion, true religion is an untainted religion that we do have to protect our hearts. We do have to protect ourselves from the ways of the world. It's that balance. We live in the world but not of the world. We interact with the world but we don't become the world. And James has just given us the admonition, be careful, be aware that you don't look more like the world than you look like Jesus.

And so this whole idea that James is writing, he's going real faith and he just lists all these things what real faith is. Now, here's my problem with it. I'm trying to hold all of it, right? Like, have you ever had somebody and you toss them a ball and they catch that ball and you toss them another ball and they catch that ball and you toss them the third ball and they're going, "Oh, which ball do I hang on to?" And sometimes you can catch three balls. You toss them toss them four, you toss them five, you toss them six. And here's what happens to most people. they just drop all the balls. So instead of grabbing hold of one or two, they just drop them all. And so this week as you digest this passage in James, the devotions in your reading, let me just give you three. If you're taking notes, this is your fill in the blanks. Let me give you three simple to-dos. Easy, easy, easy. Here's your three simple to-dos. First, God's word. Soak it in. Just soak it in. Listen, this is a way, not the way, but read God's word this week. Do the devotion. Don't just listen to today and then go on your merry way, but let it keep soaking in. Someone said, "Well, Keith, why don't you do the devotion for the upcoming um passage?" We could, but this lesson just keep taking what we learned today and just keep letting us just kind of regurgitate it. So, number one, seek it in, soak it in. Number two, work it through. Don't just listen one time, but meditate on it. That's one of the reasons why I like during this series that we have just the book of James pulled out of scripture. We have it right here because I carry it around with me. Put it in your car. Take it to work with you. Stick it in your bag. Now, just because you carry it doesn't mean it's soaking it through, but it's reminding you. So, work through it. Think through it. Talk to people about it. We're starting our small groups up and several of our small groups in their small group conversation, they will take this week's sermon and they'll talk about it and apply it and going, "Okay, how does this really work in our life when it come rubber meets the road?" And then here's the last thing. Live it out.

Live it out. If you could take those three simple things and that's the way you approach God's word this week, you'll be doing exactly what James says and our faith will become real on Monday and Tuesday and the rest of the week. So church, what's the first one? What's number two? Number three, you sound like a bunch of people that just found out that your quarterback broke his ankle for next week's conference game. What's the first one, church? What's the second one? What's the third one? Live it out. Lord Jesus, we come to you today and first, thank you for your word. Your word in scripture, your word in teaching, your word in devotions, just your word in general. God, thank you that you brought yourself to us in written word. And may we be more than just hearers of your word. May we be doers of your word. And may our faith be real. And we pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen.