Untangling Your Day | Untangled | Addison Bevere

Ten years ago, y', all, I had cataract surgery, okay? So those of you who don't know what cataract surgery is, it's where they cut out the lens of your eye and they put in an artificial lens because something is wrong with your lens. Your vision is obstructed because there's a cloud, there's a crusty thing on your eye on that lens, and they have to cut it out, get rid of it. Sorry, y'. All.

I know we're going straight into eye stuff. There's a lot of squeamish eye people in here, I bet. I'm sorry, but stay with me. So when I was born, the doctor got a little too excited with the forceps and ended up doing some damage to my eye. So I came out with, you know, eye all swollen and shut and all that kind of stuff.

And they later realized that I had developed a trauma induced cataract from his forceps. And they knew. They're like, ah, you know, this fog on his lens, it's going to have to be removed. But we can't do it yet. We have to wait till he gets a little older because the eye continues to change.

And so when I was about 30, I finally mustered the courage to go in for cataract surgery, which, y', all, I'm so ice creamish. This is a big deal. So I go in, the doctor looks at me like, yeah, we're taking care of. This is going to be great. I'm like, wonderful.

I get the operation done. A couple days later, I realize one of my eyes isn't dilating. Like, that's not normal. I'm pretty sure my eyes should still be dilating. So I go back to the surgeon.

He looks at me, it's at the end of the day, and he goes, hmm. Well, I think we need to do an emergency operation. But the problem is my anesthesiologist has left for the day. So what I need you to do is I'm gonna numb you up really good. Don't worry, I'm gonna numb you up really good.

I need you to lie on my operating table. I need you to stare at this point on the ceiling. Now don't look away. Just stare at this point. I'm gonna hold your eye open.

I need to stitch this back together because. Because your vitreous fluid is going to leak and you're going to have retina detachment. I'm like, come again? And he said, yeah. And I said, and your anesthesiologist is left for the Day.

I'm like, call him right now. He can come back. He's like, no, we got this. We got this. Anyway, so he does that.

Had two other procedures over the next couple weeks, go to all these specialists. All these things are wrong with my eye. And finally, I'm sitting down with the surgeon after a few weeks of drama. Sitting down. And the problem is, throughout all of this, my eye, the vision through my right eye, nothing has changed.

So what a cataract looks like if you've never had a cataract. Most of y' all are young, so you probably haven't had it. But when you look through a cataract, it's like the world is obstructed. It's fogged. For me, it looks like a dark fog.

And I'm sitting down with the doctor, and I'm like, doctor, we've done all the procedures. I've done the surgery. What's going on? And my vision, it's just as fogged as it's always been. I thought I was going to have clear vision after this surgery and all these other procedures.

He looks at me and goes, hey, Adison. I'm so sorry. This is really rare. He said, but I can't make your lens any clearer. He said, your lens is as clear as it can possibly be.

He said, the problem is your brain is still convinced that you're seeing the world through a cataract. It's like, I want to. I want to make it as clear as possible. But here's the problem. Your brain is still convinced that you're seeing the world through a cataract.

Now, I had to learn an embodied lesson this day, that we don't see the world as it is. We see the world. We are. I'm going to say that again. We don't see the world as it is.

We see the world as we are. Listen to what Jesus says in Matthew 6, verse 22. He says, the eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.

If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? So, like, my question is, okay, if this is the reality, if our eye is dark, our internal state is full of darkness. How do we see what we cannot see? How do we engage the world differently? And I mentioned this in the first service.

My dad, he likes to. He likes to say something. He likes to say, the problem with deception is it's deceiving.

See, I have the benefit of knowing through my left eye, which is perfectly clear. The world does not look the way it looks through my right eye. People are not fogged over. But I live with the reality of knowing that if I just close my left eye and y', all, it's still this way. If I close my left eye, all.

You look like you're behind a fog, but you're not. So I'm forced every day to acknowledge I don't see the world as it is. I see the world as I am. So today, again, I don't want to offer you information. I want to offer you a message that I truly believe will completely transform your life.

I'm going to give you a principle and a practice. Everyone say principle and a practice. Y' all ready to do this? Okay, let's go to Psalm chapter 5, verse 1. Psalm chapter 5, verse 1.

I'm reading from the ESV. This is David speaking. Give ears to my words, O Lord. Consider my groaning. Give attention.

Everyone say attention to the sound of my cry. My King and my God, for to you do I pray. Give attention, God, to my knots. Give attention to my pains. Give attention to my failures.

Give attention to those guttural groanings. Those things I cannot articulate but are shaping my life. I don't fully understand them. I don't see them. But I know that they're there because I feel the effects of them.

God, give attention to me. Y' all, like, these are some bold prayers. Well, let me tell you something. What I've learned is when we get real with God, God has a way of becoming more real to us. Like, God doesn't need you to come in and pray.

Like, nice, simple, whatever prayers, like, super religious prayers. God likes your messy words. He likes them when they're directed at him because he's like, okay, now, now that we've articulated this, watch what I'm going to do. So, going back to Psalm 5, verse 3. Oh, Lord, in the morning, everyone say, in the morning, you hear my voice.

In the morning, I prepare a sacrifice for you. And watch. Now, let me ask you all a question. Now, I told the first service this. I'm gonna tell you, too.

I'm not going to ask you to answer this out loud, but we are in church, so I need you to answer honestly. Okay, can we do that? Can we all be honest? I need you to answer honestly. Again, not out loud, but I just need you to take a moment and answer the question in your head.

You can turn to your spouse, give them that look, if you Know what I'm talking about? If you need to answer for them, but just. Just between the two of you. You ready? How do you wake in the morning?

What do you do when you wake in the morning? I'm just gonna leave it there for a second. I know it's kind of awkward sitting in the silence, but it's okay. How do you wake in the morning? What do you do when you wake up in the morning?

Well, I'm not talking about the people in this room, but let me tell you what most people do, okay? Most people. You ready? This is what they do. Know what this is right here?

This is the scroll. What do they do? They get on their phones? They're on their phones. Depending on the data, anywhere from like five to ten minutes into the day, virtually everyone is on their phones.

Lots of people are sleeping with their phones in the bed or with an arm's reach. Now, why is this a problem? I think intuitively we understand this is a problem, and yet we all do it. Let me. Let me share some scriptures with you this morning that will reframe the reality of what is available to you first thing in the morning.

You ready? First one. Psalm 16, verse 7. I'm going to fly through these, so stay with me. I bless the Lord who gives me counsel in the night.

Also, my heart instructs me. Check that out. God is giving counsel in the night. He's instructing us in the night. Job 33, verse 14 to 15.

For God speaks in one way and in two. Though man does not perceive it in a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on men while they slumber on their beds. Psalm 17, verse 3. And verse 15. I pulled a verse from the beginning and the end of this chapter.

You have tried my heart. You have visited me by night. As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness. When I awake. I shall be satisfied with your likeness.

There's something that we don't realize about what is happening at night while we sleep. There's a poet, Wendell Berry, he says that sleep is the prayer. The body prays.

There is something that is happening inside of you. God designs you. We, in scientific terms, we use the term delta state. Your brain is in a delta state, which is a very slow state. You're unconscious.

So your unconscious experience is fully active and operative in this state. Stuff is happening inside of you that is completely outside of your control. You're not the hero of this process. You're not the villain of this process. You're just a participant you, you're just there.

You're a part of this, but clear. It's clearing cellular waste. It's triggering repair via growth hormone in your body. It's emotional integration, synthesizing experience and understanding, and it's softening your limbic system or your response, emotional response to the things of life, particularly trauma, recovery, y'. All.

All of this is happening at night while you sleep. Did you know that? Some of you know that. But here's the problem. What do most of us do first thing in the morning?

Drop on our phone. Now, when you wake in the morning, when you're coming out of sleep into wakeful state, your brain is in something called theta state. Everyone say theta state. Now, this is a slow brain wave, but you are awake. You're coming awake.

And at this point, you're actually kind of in that world between worlds. Liminality. You can understand what is happening on the unconscious level while your conscious mind is coming alive. And that is why, if you've ever noticed a phenomenon, when you wake in the morning, you start to realize things. You understand things.

Things make sense because you're actually receiving from the work that your brain's been doing while you were asleep. You understand it. It starts to come together. Here's the problem, though. If you jump on your phone, guess what happens?

You shut down theta state.

So that understanding, that knowledge, that awareness, that sensitivity to the voice of God and how God may be speaking outside of what you can see and what you can know with your conscious mind, you're missing that because you jumped straight into that state of your phone. And I know Pastor Derek, I know he's talked about ras, reticular activating system. But when you wake in the morning, your ras, which is essentially the thing that tells you what to look for. It's the tool. Like, if you're ever buying a car, it's.

And you start to notice that car everywhere. That is your ras. Your ras is very sensitive first thing in the morning. And if you put. If you scroll on it first thing in the morning, guess what?

You're telling your ras. You're telling it, hey, look for reasons to believe I'm not enough. Look for reasons to be competitive. Look for reasons to convince me that I'm a God of productivity. And what's going to happen throughout your day, you're going to see evidence of that, and you're going to respond to it.

Y' all with me still?

So I like to tell people it's really simple. Smart mornings don't include smartphones.

Smart mornings don't include smartphones. You see, if we go back to Psalm chapter 5, verse 3, David, he makes a statement. He says, I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch. This can also be translated in Hebrew. I lift a prayer to you and watch.

Let me ask you a question. Our world today, where attention is the currency of our day, y', all, do you have any idea how much companies are paying for your attention? Go look it up if you want. It's staggering. But in a world where attention is the currency of our day, what is the greatest sacrifice first thing in the morning to give God our attention?

And what David is saying, hey, if I give you my attention first thing in the morning, then I am positioned to watch and see things that I otherwise couldn't see. Because if I'm feeding something different first thing in the morning, what I'm going to see, I'm just going to see my fears, my insecurities, my lack, what I've already seen superimposed on the world around me, even if the world around me is showing something different. So I am knotted up instead of realizing, wait, God is actually inviting me to experience freedom, not just for my own sake, but in the intersection of relationship and my family and my marriage and my work. This is what he's inviting us into. And this is what is available to us if we give God the first moments of the day.

Six months ago, Dr. Angela Duckworth, who is an acclaimed researcher, psychologist, and best selling author of the book Grit, gave a 20 minute commencement speech, y', all. 20 minute commencement speech at Bates College, which is a top liberal arts school up in Maine. And she told these Bates graduates that her research leads her to believe a healthy relationship with their phone as consequential, as important as which degree they got and where they land their first job.

This is a prestigious liberal arts school. And she's saying, hey guys, I know commencement speeches are supposed to look like one thing, but I'm going to spend the entire speech talking about your relationship with your phone. Think about that. Americans now are averaging between 5 to 6 inches hours staring at their smartphones a day. The typical person touches their smartphone between 2,600 and 6,000 times a day, y'.

All. We leave, we live more connected than at any point in human history. But that connectedness has scattered the soul. It gives us the illusion, the illusion that we can stay on top of everything. Now, again, don't need to raise hands.

It's just between you and God. This is God's house. Be honest, tell me if this sounds like you okay? But don't actually tell me just in your head. I could answer every message right away.

I can know every breaking headline. I could prevent bad things by staying informed. I can change other people's behavior by posting charged comments.

I can manage people's opinions of me. I can control outcomes if I just stay plugged in. The truth is, though, my friends, the more we try to hold, the more we feel held hostage. I'm gonna say that again. The more we try to hold.

And young people, y' all know what I'm talking about. The more we feel held hostage. We carry global tragedies in our pocket. And here's the problem with that. Vicarious trauma is a real thing.

And so we wake up in the morning, and what are we doing? We're immediately diving into other people's trauma. We're experiencing vicarious trauma. And then we go into our day at negative energy levels. Then we wonder why we're freaking out on our spouse or our kids or team members.

And the truth is, when you're not empowered, when you're not positioned to do anything, it's just gonna leave you in this place of frustration. And you have no outlet for that frustration. So what do you do? You take it out on the people you love.

Amen. Okay, I'm just gonna keep going. People are just staring at me. It's okay. I get it.

This is tough. This is tough stuff. But I'm saying this because I love you. Please hear me. This has changed my life.

This has changed thousands of people's lives. And I'm saying it because I love you. All right, you ready? In the name of staying connected, y', all, I'm gonna keep going. Just stay with me.

In the name of stay connected. We've trained our nervous systems to live in a constant, anxious home. Every ping says someone needs you. Anything could be wrong. You might miss something.

But the deeper message behind all of this is this idea. You are responsible for holding your world together. Friends, that is a crushing weight. Why is that a crushing weight? Because we were never created to carry the weight of the world.

We were never created to carry omniscience, which is all knowledge, omnipresence, which is all presence, or omnipotence, which is all power. Only God carries those. And the moment we try to take his job, the moment we try to do what only he can do, we lose peace. We lose peace. We sacrifice it.

Why? Because, y'. All. This is idolatry.

We're grasping for a God likeness without being grasped by God.

We want the Power. We want the knowledge, we want the presence. But we're unwilling to give God our attention and allow him to form how we engage very difficult and meaningful situations, y'. All. A few weeks ago, one of.

One of my friends was passing, and I knew. I knew he would pass soon. And I was on the phone with his wife and multiple times that week. They live in Arizona, we live in Tennessee. And I knew going to bed that night, I knew tonight is probably the night he's going to pass.

I went to bed, I woke up in the morning, and the first thing that I want to do is I wanted to grab my phone and I wanted to see, hey, you know, what's going on. And it's been years since I've grabbed my phone first thing in the morning. I sleep with my phone in a different part of my house. And the Holy Spirit convicted me and said, no, don't do it. Don't touch that phone.

I was like, okay, but I know there's going to be text messages, calls, like, don't do it. Don't touch that phone. So I did my normal routine in the morning. About an hour, 15 minutes later, I grabbed my phone, sure enough, text message at 2am, text message at 4am, phone call at 5am and I felt this guilt. Like, man, I wasn't there.

She tried to text me multiple times, call me. I wasn't there. And the Holy Spirit told me, he's like, no, no, no, you were with me. And now I'm calling you to be with her, call her. So I picked up my phone and I called her.

And y', all, let me tell you something. I've never lost a spouse before. I don't know how in my mind, I don't know how to show up for someone who just lost a spouse. But the Holy Spirit gave me words, gave me understanding, and I was a different person. How I showed up for her was a different person because I wasn't grasping for control.

I wasn't grasping for this need to do the right thing. In that moment, I was settled. And when I called her, that was exactly what she needed to hear. And it was the time that I needed to call her. But we take the weight, y'.

All. We take this weight that is only God's weight to carry. And because of that, we miss out on the things that God is actually inviting us to do.

We're trying to do his job, and we're missing out on the grace and the strength and the empowerment he's placed within us and around us to do the things that he's called us into. Some of y' all might be like, addison, I've been doing this all wrong. You're talking about this. I'm one of those people who grabs my phone first thing in the morning. I'm feeling pretty hopeless right now, y', all, let me tell you, there's so much hope.

There is so much. I had so many people come up to me after the first service and tell me, man, I feel energized. I'm doing this different. I have senses. I knew this was a thing.

I could have put language to it. And y', all, I've helped thousands of people make this shift. I'm telling you, science tells us, theology tells us. This is the way that God designs. And science doesn't understand this, but this is how God designed us as a receptor to receive from him beyond just our limited understanding.

When we surrender to the movement of God and the ways of God, when we listen to the wisdom of God, we receive something that is beyond us, that then transforms us and allows us to become more than what we've been. I want you to hear this from a scientific standpoint. This is my friend. He's a neurosurgeon, neuroscientist. He said this.

He says modern brain imaging and neuroscience have revealed that your brain is constantly breaking and making connections between its estimated 80 to 100 billion neurons. Incredibly, a growing body of research demonstrates you can control most of the of these connections when you determine what you pay attention, everyone say, pay attention, pay attention to and how you deliberate about those things. We have this idea of the mind as something that is mechanical. Oh, my mind is broken. It doesn't work.

No, it's botanical. It's like a garden. You can tend it. It can change tomorrow. It changes right now.

It's being rewired. These knots that feel like, oh, no, this is just a part of who I am. This is who I'm always going to be. No, that is not true. Based on what you pay attention to will change your reality, my friend.

He also says that our thoughts literally become things in our body, that we are rewiring our body, how we engage reality. So I want to give y' all some very basic things to help you realize that what scripture says about God's mercies being new every morning, to help you realize that that is the banner over your life. Amen. All right, number one. Y' all ready?

Number one. I've been dancing around it. Now, I'm just gonna say it real flatly. Do not look at your phone for the first 60 minutes of the day. Some of you are like, uh, I don't even know how to do that.

I don't even know how to think about doing that. I get it. We're so entangled with our phones. But I'm telling you, if you will take a step back and just try this for a week, the gains, the effects that it'll have on your life, it'll be beyond anything you could imagine. And you're like, but, Addison, I use my phone as an alarm clock.

Amazon has a lot of alarm clocks. A lot of them. Because people aren't buying them anymore. There's a lot of them.

Get an alarm clock. Get an alarm clock. Watch what happens. You're like, but, okay, so I wake up and then like, what do I do for 60 minutes? First of all, what I tell people is, don't do anything.

Just rest. Come out of sleep. Give yourself enough time to just come out of sleep. Be sensitive to the spirit of God. Be sensitive to what's happening that day.

Like, that's not prayer. Yes, it is. Prayer is more about listening and being sensitive to God than it is about speaking.

In our world, stillness before God is the exception, not the norm. It is a reasonable act of worship, and so do the things that you need to do. Like, for me, in the morning, I get up, I make coffee, I move around the house. I'm doing different things. I pull up my Bible, I'm reading, but I'm not reading it to master it or check a box.

I'm reading it and I'm just sensing what God is doing. And then words start to come up, people start to call, and I pray, I intercede. People just come to mind. And I know this is beyond, like, just my conscious understanding, my ability to master the day, my ability to figure everything out. God gives me wisdom, he gives me ideas.

He gives me understanding. I know. Oh, I need to have a conversation with this person. Oh, I need to reach out to that person. Oh, wow.

I've been stuck here. Wow. God, in my sleep, you synthesized something for me that now I can understand. I need to respond to that instead of just getting on the self conscious feedback loop that is social media. Y' all think it's helping?

You know it's not. It's exploiting its algorithms. Exploit you so it could take advantage of you. It's not interested in you living a life of contentment and peace. Now, don't get me wrong, y'.

All. I'm not hating on smartphones. I have a Smartphone. And I'll tell y', all, I use my smartphone differently the rest of the day because I give it this time. Some of you in here, parents, you're like, man, I'm trying to help my kids with their smartphone, y'.

All. I'm telling you, you can't give what you don't have. You can't give a conviction that you haven't embodied. And if you embrace this as a family, I'm telling you, everything will change. Number two, that's number one.

Refuse to look at your phone for the first 60 minutes of your day and put it out of your room. Y', all, the wellness experts, everyone tells, out of your room. There's no good reason to have it in your room. Number two. All right, I'm gonna keep going.

Shift your attention. Shift your attention during the day, and this starts first, second in the morning by simply praying, I am here. Everyone say, I am here, y'. All. We are prone to chronological wandering.

We just are. We spend so much of our lived life in the past or the future. And the reality is only God exists in the past, present, and future. We get the present. And so what I am here.

What it does, it says, God, I'm here in this moment. I can't be in a different moment. I'm here in this space. I can't be in a different space. Only you're in multiple spaces.

Only you exist in different moments. And God, the great I am. You are here with me in this moment. I'm gonna allow that to be the thing that grounds me today. You're like, addison, that's three words.

That's not a prayer. Yes, it is. That is a prayer. God, I am here. I am here.

Watch what God does as you surrender space, time, and reality to him. The third thing is, I want y' all to get the prayer journal. 40 day prayer journal that's out there in the lobby. And y' all are like, addison, that's a bold move. You incorporated get your prayer journal into your message.

That is a bold move. And here's what I would tell you. Number one, I believe in this. I believe in this so much that I'm gonna get up here and say that I also believe in it so much that if there's anyone in this room, you tell me, hey, Addison, I'm not in a position right now from a budget standpoint where I can invest in a prayer journal, but I'm going to invest in my life, and I'm going to go through this. You go out there, you just say, gift, and they're going to give it to you.

That's how much I believe in it. Because I'm telling you, y', all, I'm telling you, I've seen tens of thousands of people embrace this way of living, and it's completely changing their lives. They're watching differently, they're waking differently. They're seeing things that other people cannot see. And I believe that God desires that for you.

Amen. So when you're waking in the morning, this first hour, we need to get away from these thoughts of performance, these thoughts of making it all about us and what we're doing and what we're not doing. This is an opportunity to just be sensitive to the spirit of God, to listen. And some of you are like, well, Addison, I'm not a morning person. I don't do mornings.

Okay, well, let me ask you a question. Are you a wake up person? It.

If you woke up, which I'm pretty sure all of you woke up today, this is for you. This is for you. Whether you get up at 5am or you get up at 9am, this is for you. It's the principle of giving God the sacrifice of attention, not doing a quiet religious duty, but giving God the sacrifice of attention so that he gives you eyes to see reality in ways that you couldn't see it before. This is how the fog on our lens is removed.

How we wake determines how we watch, determines what we see. Y' all think, Addison, I've been trying to see things different. I always see the same thing. Really. That's how your body is designed.

You see what you expect to see. But it is a powerful tool that if we fix our eyes on him, the author, the perfecter of our faith, we start to see things and participate in things that bring heaven to earth, which is my third point. How we wake determines how we watch, which determines how and who we worship see. Worship, as you all know, is so much more than what we did this morning. That was beautiful.

Worship. But our lives are worship, in Hebrew, the word for work and worship, same word. So our work, what we go about our week doing, is an act of worship. Worship literally means to esteem something worthy to the highest degree or highest extent. Like Pastor Derek was saying, it's a weightiness.

There's a weightiness to this. And what the psalmist is saying, David saying in Psalm 5 is like, in the morning, I'm going to give you my worship, my attention, because you have a weightiness to you that is going to give me the strength and the weight and the substance that I need for the day. See, the enemy of your soul is going to tell you, hey, just check out. Get on. Get on right away.

Get on the scroll. Or tell you, hey, you're only what your company's doing right now. So you better get on there and check out those performance metrics right away.

Oh, hey, you better get in that inbox and start processing those messages right away. Because you're only useful if you're doing that. That's your only value. And what's the enemy going to do? He's going to get in there and he's going to get you to engage the rest of your day through that lens.

Whereas God's like, hey, actually, watch what I'm going to do. Watch what? I've been speaking below your conscious mind. Because if I just spoke into your conscious mind, then you would think you were God. So I speak below your conscious mind, and then it rises up into your conscious mind.

And as you give me space, all of a sudden you understand things. You realize things that you couldn't understand or realize before. Why? Because we're not grasping. We're being grasped by.

Listen to this. Romans 12, 1 2. And I know y' all know this verse because Pastor Derek's been preaching on it. I've been loving this series. I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

Everyone say, living, not stale, not dead. Living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to the scroll of this world. I'm just kidding. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable, and perfect.

Three simple statements for y' all as we're closing. Number one, living prayer is more about listening and less about speaking. Praying without ceasing. Ephesians 6, 18, 1st Thessalonians 5, 17, Romans 12, 12. This idea of praying constantly, it's about praying from a place of active rest.

Our idea of prayer wouldn't even work if it was constant. Like, let's just think about it. Breaks down. But there's a connectivity, there's a sensitivity that leads to a watching that changes how we engage reality. That is an outflow of prayer.

Number two, living prayer is more about presence and less about performance. Y' all think. Y' all think God, like, wants your performance. Like, you need to have all of the check boxes checked and the motions right, and all of that no, he just wants you to show up.

Oh, God. You know, I can't show up in this way because I messed up, because I did this or that. My Bible tells me in Hebrews 4 that we should approach the throne of grace, boldness with boldly where we find mercy and grace to help in our time of need, not to shrink back in fear and shame and isolation, believing that we can get our stuff together and then maybe we'll go to God once. Once we're good enough.

You see, y', all, this really does it. Goes back. And I love how your pastor breaks this down so beautifully. Goes back to the Garden of Eden. Think about it when we engage the day as master, rather than, hey, Father, I want to see what you're doing.

Today, we engage today as master. We are eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We're saying, give me the answers. I want to know what's good, I want to know what's bad. I don't want to know what's right, wrong, what I should do, where I should go, who I should love.

All the big questions of life. We're grasping the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And God's like, no, actually, my design for wisdom, it's delivered at the pace of relationship. This isn't about performance. This isn't about a test.

I want you to walk with me in the cool of the day, and I'm going to give you wisdom that is so much greater than just knowledge at a relational frequency. So you don't weaponize knowledge, but you understand what knowledge is really all about. Now, we live in a world where knowledge is weaponized left and right. The church historically has a history. You look at the church going back to the very first apostles.

They've weaponized knowledge when they miss the work of the Spirit.

And we have to be the people who say, God, in the morning, you hear my voice because I want to walk in your way. Because living prayer, the third point, living prayer is more about getting in on what God's doing and less about what you're not doing. The religious system always points out what you're not doing. Whereas the spirit of God and the spirit of what Jesus invites us into is like, hey, I want you to see what God's doing that you haven't been able to see. I'm going to give you eyes to see, ears to hear, heart to perceive and understand.

There's so much that I want to tell you. Jesus looking at them. There's so much I want to tell you, but you can't grasp it right now. It's like, but when my spirit comes, who possesses the very nature of God, my spirit's going to make these things clear. 30.

You're going to understand them because not just an idea, it's an embodied reality. You become temple people, the microcosm where heaven is touching earth. Psalm 1:143, verse 8. Let me hear in the morning, y', all, in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know, listen to that.

Make me know the way I should go. For to you I lift up my soul. Psalm 5:8. Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness make your way straight before me, y'. All.

Let me. Let me let you in on a little secret. God is more invested in you getting life right than you are. God's not trying to hide his purpose, his healing, his plans for you. Anything that God hides from you, he's hiding for you.

He's preparing you to receive it as a gift from himself. God is going to make your path straight. And there's a connectedness here between the mornings and our ability to see the day for what it is.

This is Isaiah 50, verse 4. The Lord has given me the tongue of those who are taught that I may know how to sustain with a word. Him who is weary morning, by morning he awakens. He awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught y'. All.

I want to be someone who's ear awakened in the mornings. Amen. Would y' all bow your heads for me, please?

This isn't about a formula. This isn't about solving the equation and moving on, y'. All. This is a heart posture of daily surrender. So what Jesus is getting at in Luke 9 about taking up our cross daily.

Paul, in 1st Corinthians 15. I die daily. Every day we get the opportunity. Today is a new day. His mercies are new this morning.

So, Father, I pray over your sons and daughters as they're in this posture right now, receptivity. God, I pray that you would meet them, that you would meet them as they take a step of faith, as they say. Yes. Even if they don't fully understand what they're saying yes to, or even they don't fully see, see what is ahead of them. God, I pray that you would meet them in a miraculous way.

Those areas of their lives that feel knotted up. God, I pray for supernatural clarity, supernatural healing. God, I pray that they would realize that they are not God's productivity, that they are not gods over their formation, but rather God, I pray that they would surrender to the work of God that you are doing in their lives, in their hearts, in their families, in their in their businesses, in their teams, in their churches, in their neighborhoods, in their communities. God, may we be the ones who can sustain others. May we be the ones who have the words of someone who is taught.

May we not be so self obsessed with our own righteousness and right standing and checking the box. God, may we be sensitive to the work that is worship that you are doing through our lives, in the everyday life moments, because that is where you meet us, that is where you show yourself to be true. Open our eyes, soften our hearts and God, may we have ears to hear what you are telling us. In Jesus name, Amen.