Investing in the Everlasting

So, it's the last Sunday of the year. I guess that's 52 times we've gathered together. And a couple of weeks ago, I was given the mandate by our senior pastor to preach on whatever I wanted.

So, you better believe it's going to be something in the Sermon on the Mount. And it's going to be something Dallas Wheel Art based. And that is in fact what we have.

I've been thinking that this time of year is a time of year where we do maybe two things. We make reflections and resolutions. We look back at the year that was 2025 and everything that happened.

And then we look ahead to the year that is to come. And we think about the type of person that we want to become. We want to make resolutions and do all sorts of different things.

And so this morning, as I was thinking about and praying about what we might think about, what passage we might read, I thought we might do those two things. We might look backwards in reflection and then look forwards with resolutions.

So firstly, reflections. Looking back at 2025, I wonder what kind of year you've had. Courtney and I have had a big year.

We welcomed our daughter Esther, who's asleep in the corner, I hope. Hopefully the sound of my voice is soothing to her. We had a big year as a community of faith.

At this church, we had births, deaths and marriages and everything in between. It's been a big year for us. This year at Northern Life, we've had a vision theme that we've called everlasting.

We've had this word because I guess as a community, we're conscious of the fact that another 25 years of this 21st century have passed. Time is moving quickly. Our world is changing fast.

And there's a sense in which we need to come back to the truth that our God is everlasting. So Meredith has read for us Psalm 90. Moses says in verse one, Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.

Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. This is the nature of the God that we walk with. He is outside of time.

He sees the end from the beginning. He is everlasting. And I guess this year, we have tried to hold on to that truth and the other truth that Psalm 90 tells us.

In the very next verse, verse three of Psalm 90, You turn people back to dust, saying, Return to dust, you mortals.

A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by or like a watch in the night, yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death. They are like the new grass of the morning.

In the morning it springs up new, but by evening it's dry and withered. Psalm 90 holds these two things together, that our God is everlasting and we are not.

And that juxtaposition between those two things, I guess has been the heart of our vision this year as a church.

You might, if you've been around this year, you would know that we have studied 10 books of the Bible in January Colossians and then Psalms, Proverbs, Hebrews, Acts, Hosea, Titus, Ecclesiastes, 2 Corinthians and Ruth.

And as we have worked through these 10 of the books of the Bible, our heart has been what it says in verse 12, that the Lord would teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

As we look to the God who is everlasting, whose kingdom endures forever, and as we look at our own lives that are so not everlasting, we've come to the word of God for wisdom to number our days and to teach us wisdom, which I think brings us from

reflections to resolutions. I wonder if you might, in a couple of words, shout out, what's your resolution for 2026? Not to make it. No resolutions, nice.

That's a good one, to do first. Always human kindness. Any other resolutions?

Go on the phone list, that's a good one. I'll take that. Read more.

Resolutions are good. We're thinking about the type of person we are and about the type of person that we want to become. Or, and so we make resolutions, or in this case, we don't make resolutions to become that type of person.

As a church, as mom has already said, we have a vision for the next two years called Always Ready. And I won't say anything about that, apart from you should be here next week.

We have books available at the foyer for $12, and you're going to want to bring your book next week because we start on page one.

I think in holding these two things together, looking forward to the year that is to come, making resolutions and looking back with reflections, it prompts us to ask the question, what is the best resolution that we could make in the light of the

everlasting God that we walk with? If it is really true that God is everlasting and we are not, how does that change the way that we make resolutions at this time of year? How does that change the type of person that we want to become?

Well, Jesus is the smartest person who ever lived. And here's what he says in Matthew 6, the Sermon on the Mount. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.

But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal, for where your treasure is there, your heart will be also.

Jesus is inviting us, I think, especially at this time of year, to expand our horizon, to lift our eyes beyond the material, temporal life that we live now, and onto the everlasting life that God has for us.

And it's not that reading more, being on the phone less, not making any resolutions, it's not that they're bad things, they are good things. But I think Jesus would put them in the context of eternity.

He would say, it's good to live a good life here, but we're wanting to frame that life, frame these resolutions in the context of the everlasting God that we walk with.

How do you become the type of person who has an everlasting impact for God and for his kingdom? That's the question that we have this morning. In other words, how do you invest in the everlasting?

Invest in the everlasting, that's our sermon title.

I want to put forward three things. To invest in the everlasting, number one, get your life together. Number two, give your life away.

And number three, give your death away. Get your life together, give your life away, and give your death away.

These three points are adapted from father Ronald Rolheiser, who's a Catholic priest, his book Domestic Monastery, which is essential reading if you are a young parent. I've read it twice this year and probably gonna do it again in January.

Ronald Rolheiser says that these three points are really the three stages of life. Every person wants to move through these three stages.

And I put it to you this morning that if we will be people, we will be a church that get our lives together so that we can give them away and so that we can give our death away, we will have an everlasting impact for God and His Kingdom.

So let's jump into this. To invest in the everlasting. Number one, get your life together.

This is the first stage of life, from birth to sort of adolescence and young adulthood, to that point in time where you leave home. Now, often in young adulthood, that's a literal thing. You literally leave home with Sydney property prices.

Maybe it's more symbolic, that you symbolically leave mom and dad's home. But it's this time in life where we stand on our own two feet, and we have to deal with all these complex parts of life and to get our life together.

And when I say that, when Rollheiser says that, it's not a shame kind of thing of get your life together. It's just the fact of early adulthood. The fact of adolescence is you're asking questions like, Who am I?

What am I going to do with my life? Who are my people? Do I want to be married?

Who am I going to be married to? You're getting the pieces of your life together. I think the pieces of the puzzle in this stage of life is home life, work life, love life, health life, study life, money life.

These are the big questions that young adults are asking in this tumultuous time. So that's practically, I mean, that's an enormous thing to get your life together in your 20s and to learn how to put all these pieces together.

But there's a second dimension to this stage of life, which I think is more fundamental than the practical dimension. And that is the spiritual dimension.

Paul says in Romans chapter 7, he has this little insane paragraph which somebody said, I saw a YouTube video that said it's the most debated passage of scripture in the whole Bible, as in more commentaries and more smart Bible people have reflected

on this passage than any other passage in the Bible. And in Romans chapter 7, Paul is kind of doing a dramatic thing where he writes from the perspective of somebody else.

And he's writing from the perspective of someone who does not have the Spirit of God, who is not a Christian and who does not have their life together. So this is what Paul says in Romans 7. I do not understand what I do.

For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good, as it is. It's no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.

For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good that I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do, I do.

This I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. Sorry to read that so quick, but you get the picture.

Paul is wrestling kind of in character with what someone's life is like when it is not together. They have a will to do good. They want to do good, but their body, the habits of the body keeps doing the thing they don't want to do.

So Paul is wrestling with what this disintegrated person's life is like. Paul is wrestling with what it means to get your life together.

And here the pieces of the puzzle are not work life, home life, study life, love life, but they're the components of the person, of personhood. Here's, so we've had the sermon on the mount, here's the Dallas Willard part of the sermon.

This is a diagram that you'll be familiar with. This is Dallas Willard who was a philosopher and theologian. This is his understanding of the different aspects of the human person and the way that they relate together.

So right in the middle we have the will, the heart, the spirit, and then outside of that the mind, which is the emotions and the thought, and then the body, and then the social context, the way that I show up in this room and the way that you form me

and change me and I do the same to you, and all of that is integrated by the soul. This is what Paul is reflecting on. In Romans 7 he says, I desire to do what is good. Think about the will.

I want to do what is good, but in my body and my mind, I am fragmented and I do what I don't want to do. He's wrestling with a life that is not put together. Jesus says in John 8 verse 34, that everyone who sins is a slave to sin.

That passage was the passage I first preached on in 2019. My first ever sermon was on this passage.

What I think Jesus is saying is that, unless you have been set free from the power of sin, and we'll get to that, that if you are sinning, if you do one sin, one wrong thing, it's not just that you do one wrong thing, but you are actually under the

power of sin. That's what Paul is reflecting on in Roman 7. Under the power of sin, we are fragmented, because that's what sin does to us.

It means that we want to do good, but we can't do good because our body goes this way, and our mind goes this way, and our will goes this way. Sin is a power that fragments us.

Until Jesus says in verse 35, a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed. And that's the good news.

That's what God has done for us in Christ. He has set us free. He has made us born again.

He has regenerated our spirit, so that we come together again. And so go back to this diagram. God, by his spirit, through the work of Jesus on the cross, brings us together again.

He integrates our soul, so that the truest thing about you now, if you're a Christian, is not Romans 7. It's not the disintegrated life of, I wanna do what is good, but I can't do it, because my body goes this way and my will goes this way.

The truest thing about you, if you know Jesus, is Romans 8 verse 1, which says, therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit that gives life has set us free from the

law of sin and death. And so the transformation that God does by his Spirit is to put our lives together again. When we live under the power of sin, it fragments us, but God puts us back together again.

And as we think about what it means to have an everlasting impact for God and for his kingdom, I think this is where it has to start.

It has to start with the work of God by his grace alone, making us alive and bringing us together, making us whole again. So back one more time to the diagram. This is how God transforms us.

It starts with the heart. Ezekiel, the prophet of the Old Testament, looked forward to a time when God would take away the hearts of stone that his people have, and he would give them a heart of flesh, a living heart.

Ephesians 2, Paul says that we were dead in our transgressions and sins, which means that heart in the middle is a dead heart. It cannot will the good or carry it through to completion. But God has made us alive, Paul says in Ephesians.

And then we come to the next level, which is the renewal of the mind. Paul says in Romans 12, 2, that we are to be transformed by the renewal of our mind.

He also says in Philippians 4, that whatever is true, noble, right, lovely, pure and admirable, if anything is excellent or praise worthy, think about those things.

The invitation of God is that we would think about the good things that God has done, think about scripture and it would renew our mind, which will affect our body.

Eventually the habits of our body, the ingrained practices that we live with will be transformed. And that affects the way that we show up in a social context.

If we are transformed in the will, the mind and the body, it affects the way that we relate to people. And all of that is integrated by the transformed soul.

As we think about investing in the everlasting, there's a whole lot of practical stuff of like, you're probably going to need a job living here in Sydney in 2025. If you hope to own a house one day, you're probably going to need a job.

All these practical pieces of young adulthood life, and we get to talk about that sort of thing in young adult ministry.

But more fundamentally, to receive the gift of grace that God has for us in bringing our soul together, so that we're not fragmented by sin, and we have a will that can respond to the spirit's prompting and a body that can carry out his will.

To invest in the everlasting. Number one, get your life together. And number two, give your life away.

This is the second stage of life, and it's the stage that probably dominates the most of your life. And it builds on the first stage, because insofar as you have your life together, in the way of Jesus, we're called to give our life away.

Now, I've been thinking about these ideas for a couple of months, and realizing that it's not like you complete level one, and then your life is together forever.

And then you give your life away, and then you've got it, and then you give your death away.

It's much more like a trampoline kind of thing, where you have your life together, and then you have a baby, and your life kind of falls apart a little bit, and then it comes back together again, and then something happens.

So there's some fluidity here. But in the way of Jesus, the question becomes not, how can I gather more and more onto myself? How can I get my life together?

But how can I give it away? Jesus says in Mark chapter 8, or Mark says, Jesus called the crowd to him along with his disciples, and Jesus said, whoever wants to be my disciple, must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

Again, Jesus is the wisest human who's ever lived, and he's inviting us to expand our thinking, to see our life from an eternal perspective. When you do that, you realize there are two things that you could invest your life in.

You could invest your life once you've got it together, more or less, invest your life in gaining the whole world, accumulating more and more and more and more. But Jesus says, you're going to lose your soul if you do that.

And so in the way of Jesus, we're called to invest our life in God and his kingdom, to give our lives away the way that Jesus did. Jesus said it's more blessed to give than to receive, to give our lives away.

At NorthernLife, we have a core value, his grace is enough. And the subtitle is Abundance. The key idea behind this value is that the grace of God is sufficient.

In fact, it's more than sufficient. It is an overflowing resource. We live in an abundant kingdom.

And so as we think about what it means for us to invest in the everlasting by giving our lives away, I think this core value comes up because it matters the way we think about the grace of God.

I put it to you, there are maybe two ways you could think about grace. The first is as a candle or as a coin. Do you think of the grace of God as a candle or a coin?

So think about a coin. I have one right here. If the grace of God were like a coin, then that is zero sum, meaning, Lindsay, do you have a coin right now?

Lindsay has no coin. I have a coin. If we understand the grace of God like a coin, then when I give the coin to Lindsay, you can keep that, by the way.

It's only 20 cents. Lindsay has a coin. I don't have a coin.

It levels out in the end. If we understand the grace of God as a finite resource, we will be hesitant to give our lives away because we will lose out and we will have nothing left. Instead, think about a candle.

I don't have a candle because there's a smoke alarm right there and I have trauma from a fire alarm going off in the middle of one of my sermons. So there's no fire. But imagine I have a candle that's lit and Linda has a candle that's not lit.

What happens when I do this? I still have a candle and now Linda has a candle. That's what the grace of God is like.

It is an overflowing, abundant resource. It's like a candle, not like a coin. Lindsay has the coin that I do not any longer have, even though I'm preaching tonight.

So I have a second coin, but don't worry about that. But now Linda and I both have a candle.

If we are to follow in the way of Jesus and give our lives away the way that Jesus did, we must understand that the grace of God grows in us the more that we give it away. It's like a flame.

You could light everyone's flame, giving away your life, and it will take nothing away from you. In fact, if we believe Jesus, then we would, in some way, our candle grows bigger the more that we give it away.

Our capacity for grace grows the more that we give it away to other people. That is the kingdom that we live in. It is a kingdom of abundant grace, like a candle, not like a coin.

Do you remember the story of the rich young ruler in the Gospels? It's recorded in the first three Gospels. Jesus is walking around teaching, and a man comes up to him and says, teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

Jesus says, well, you know the commandments, don't murder, don't commit adultery, all the Ten Commandments. He says, I'm perfect. I haven't done any of those things.

I've kept those commands since I was a kid. Jesus looked at him and said, one thing you lack, give everything you have to the poor, and then you'll get eternal life. He went away sad because he had great wealth.

Jesus turns to his disciples and says, how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.

And then Paul says here, sorry, Peter says here in Mark chapter 10, the obvious question that any of the followers of Jesus in that moment would be asking, hang on, what about us?

If it's hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of God, we have nothing. He says, we have left all we had to follow you.

And Jesus says, truly I tell you, no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the everlasting kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and in the age to come eternal life.

Jesus is turning our economics on their head. It's not the economy of the coin where Lindsay has it and I don't have it. It's the economy of the candle that as we give our lives away, we gain so much more.

That's the life that Jesus calls us to. So, what does it look like in your household, your university, your workplace, your relationships to give your life away?

If you understand that the grace of God is an abundant, overflowing resource for you to pour out, how could you give your life away?

To invest in the everlasting, get your life together, give your life away, and thirdly, give your death away. This is the third stage of life.

And I am obviously, I feel unqualified to talk about any of these three, but certainly this stage, because this is the final stage of life.

That as we, as if you were at this stage, I'm guessing the main question in your life is not, where am I going to live? What am I going to do with my life? Who am I going to marry?

How are my kids going to turn out? Maybe those are the questions, but probably the question that you're more thinking about is, what is my legacy? What is the impact that I leave behind on this world once I'm gone?

That's what it means to give your death away, to ask these questions. I was looking at family tree stuff this week. I think I'm the person in my family that likes family trees.

And I was looking at my great, great, great, great grandfather, the seven children that he had. He was John Small, who was one of the convicts who came in the first fleet. He had seven children.

And I come from the line of William Small, all the way down through my dad's mom, through my dad to me, seven generations, I think. But John Small had a daughter who married a person with a familiar last name.

And so at Family Christmas this year, I asked my brother-in-law, who has this last name, do you descend from the first fleet? And he does. Turns out, my brother-in-law is my sixth cousin.

We descend all the way back from the first fleet. We're both convicts. And it was funny, because my father-in-law said that his family are all free settlers, not convicts, but both of his daughters have married convicts.

So that was, you know, that was some family conflicts over Christmas. So I've been thinking a lot about genetic legacy this week. And looking at these names, I have two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, 16, 32.

The numbers get so, so big. But to me, they're just a name on a screen with two dates, the date they were born and the date that they passed away. I'll never know them until I meet them in heaven one day, hopefully.

But they have changed my life. It goes without saying, I'm only here because they lived. And it's the same for all of you, all of us.

We're only here because of the people that we came from. And not all of those people are good people. In fact, there's famous stories of someone in the line who was not a very good person, who was famously not a good person.

Not all of those people in my line walked with the Lord, but some of them did. I only know the Lord because my parents did. Do.

They only know the Lord because their parents did, and their parents did, and their parents did. Paul says to Timothy, I thank God whom I serve as my ancestors did. He's conscious of passing the faith on from generation to generation.

I thank God with a clear conscience as night and day, I constantly remember you in my prayers. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy.

I'm reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded now lives in you also. And if Timothy had kids, he would pass it on and pass it on and pass it on.

As we think about what it means one day to give our deaths away, the most important thing you could pass on is the knowledge of God. As you have walked with the Lord to pass that on from generation to generation, and that is not a genetic thing.

It is, it's genetic sometimes in the way that parents pass it on to their children, but you could have such a massive spiritual impact in another person that you've never even, or maybe the person that you have met, but you don't know the people that

they will impact, and they will impact, and they will impact. As a case in point, the joke is that I always quote Dallas Willard. He died in 2013. My dad got to meet him.

I never got to meet him. But I have been so formed by that man's life that I will never meet until heaven. He has passed on the gospel to the next generation through his books and through his life.

That's what it means to give our death away, is that the stories of God's faithfulness pass down from generation to generation. That's what it says in Psalm 145. Great is Yahweh and most worthy of praise.

His greatness no one can fathom. One generation commends your works to another. They tell of your mighty acts.

They speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty, and I will meditate on your wonderful works. They tell of the power of your awesome works, and I will proclaim your great deeds.

They celebrate your abundant goodness and joyfully sing of your righteousness. So who are you pouring your life into? What stories of God's faithfulness in your life are you passing on to the next generation?

That's what it is to give our death away, that even when we're gone, our life may continue to be a blessing to the next generation. Does the name Jim Elliot mean anything to you?

Jim Elliot was one of five young men in the 1950s who were missionaries in Ecuador. And they were missionaries to the Waorani people.

And for years, I think some of them were pilots, for years they would deliver essential kind of medical goods and resources like that, to these people from afar. And always their intention was to share the gospel with this unreached people.

So for years they planned and planned and planned. And then eventually they finally landed the plane and made contact with the Waorani people for the first time, to share the good news of Jesus with them.

And all five men were speared to death right where they stood. And we look at that story and we think, what a waste of a death. What was the point of that?

Apart from the nature of the god that they walked with, as the story unfolds, Jim Elliot's wife, her name was Elizabeth Elliot, they had a sister, and the wives of these missionaries that were speared to death continued to build relationship with the

Waorani people until the point where many of them came to know the Lord. And the entire village was transformed by the power of the gospel.

And so the lives, in fact, the death of five men became the seed of so much transformation by the power of God. That's what it looks like to give your life away and to give your death away.

And so Jim Elliott says these famous words, He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.

These five men and their wives and families did not consider their lives something that they should hold on to, but something that should be given away for the glory of God and for his everlasting kingdom. And God honoured that.

He blessed them and he transformed a whole people group because of their faithfulness. To invest in the everlasting, get your life together, give your life away, and give your death away. Those are the three stages of life.

I'm probably in the middle stage, and then sometimes I regress back into the first stage, and then I come back to the middle stage again. The three stages of life.

All of us are somewhere in this journey, learning what it is to give our lives away in the way of Jesus. The fact is that unless the Lord returns, we will all sleep in death and depart to be with the Lord.

Moses says in verse 10 of Psalm 90, our days may come to 70 years or 80 if our strength endures, yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass and we fly away.

So cheerful, but he's just being honest, that we all sleep in death and await the resurrection. But in death, the seed of our life falls into the soil.

Jesus says in John 12, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds, and that is the God that we walk with.

The God who can take our life and he can take our death and he can multiply it far beyond anything that we could ever imagine.

I think of my own life, of people who sowed a little seed in me, just a tiny act of some kind of opportunity that they gave me and the way that that has transformed me.

When I was eight years old, Catherine Broughton, who was the service coordinator at the church I grew up in, invited me to read Psalm 100 in Big Church. And so I memorized the whole thing, so I wouldn't have to hold a piece of paper.

And I read the Bible in Big Church for the first time, and I was so nervous. But by God's grace, now 20 something years later, I read the Bible in church a lot, and I'm less nervous.

When I was 12 years old, Lawson Wallace, my High School Sunday group leader, led a study on the Sermon on the Mount. Now that's my favorite part of the Bible, the part that I go to more than any other.

When I was 14, Sam Walker, my worship pastor, gave me a go playing electric guitar for the first time, and it was terrible. I did so badly.

My guitar was out of tune by semitone, and I didn't know it, so I'm strumming, and it was awful, but he gave me a go. Ten years later, I've played guitar in church hundreds of times.

When I was 16, my youth pastor, Rachel Lee, invited me to lead worship at Youth Group for the first time, and it was terrible. I did not do a good job. But by God's grace, I've been doing that now for about ten years, hundreds of times.

When I was 18, my dad ran the preaching farm, and I got to preach on John 8, 34 to 36 for the first time. And it was not a good message. I kept on swaying like this, and I had long hair, and I looked like a loser.

And it was not a good message, but he gave me a go. And now by God's grace, seven years later, I've been preaching for a couple of years.

When I was 21, Courtney Haddon invited me to go for a coffee, and I thought it was to talk about something at church. Turns out she liked me. Five years later, we're married and we have a 10-week-old daughter.

These tiny little moments, quite insignificant to the person who sows into the life of another. They have no idea the impact that God has used those seeds to change me.

And so my prayer for my life is that I might pass that on to the next generation and the next generation and the next generation. This is not a story about me.

It's a story about the God that we walk with, the God who takes our faithfulness and he multiplies it for his kingdom. Do you remember in Genesis 12, God picks, he appears to how many people? One.

God came to one man called Abram, and he says, through you, one man, all peoples on earth will be blessed.

This is the God of the thousand generations that we walk with, the one who takes our faithful seed sowing and he multiplies it for his everlasting kingdom.

I'm sure we could fill this room with stories of seeds that other people have sown in us, that God has used for his glory. Our job is not to handle the fruitfulness. That's God's job.

Our job is to be faithful and to sow these seeds, to invest our lives in the everlasting, to give our lives away and give our death away. So as we finish, who are you going to invest your life in?

Where are you going to invest what God has given you, the candle that God has given you? Who and where are you going to pass that on to? What if it was one person?

God can do a lot with one person. He blesses all nations through one person.

What if it was one person in one year that you pick someone, God leads you by the Spirit to meet up with them for a coffee every fortnight, every week, and invest your life into this person?

Pray for them, share your life with them, ask them questions, disciple them, give your life away to them by the grace of God. And what if you were to do that again the next year with a different person, and then again and again, and again and again?

God could do something through that kind of faithfulness. Lord God, we thank you for your great faithfulness. You've been faithful throughout all generations.

We're only here because of the faithfulness of your hand and of your people for 2,000 years. Lord, we thank you for those who poured their lives away in us, and we want to do the same for others.

So, this end of year period, as we get into 2026, would you show us how to pour our lives away, how to give our lives away and invest in the everlasting? We thank you that your grace is an infinite and abundant resource that we can give away.

We thank you for these words in Ephesians 3. To him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us.

To him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations for ever and ever. And all the people said, Amen. Let's worship.

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