God, we thank you for this morning. We thank you that you are our firm foundation. There are so many other things we try to stand on and they’re not firm. Thank you that you are holy, dependable. You are true. You are trustworthy. You are eternal. And no matter what we face, you are always there. God help us to be faithful. Help us to hear from you today. We love you, Jesus. Amen. Amen. Well, it’s great to have you here this morning. You can go ahead and be seated for those who are here. Thank you for venturing out and braving the massive snowstorm that swept through this morning. If it feels a little empty, 46 people are gone this weekend at our winter retreat, students and leaders. Which is really exciting. Yeah, they’re in Gatlinburg having a great time together, sleeping some, I think. I’m glad I’m not there missing out on sleep, but how many of you parents have kids off this weekend at Winter retreat? Yeah. All right. Good. How many of you have no kids in the house as a result, this weekend because of winter retreat. Okay, because of winter retreat. Let me clarify. We’ve been a little confused. This is one of the first times I think for us where we have no kids at home because they’re all gone. And so we’re kind of like, what do we do? I don’t know, you know, but we figured it out. We make it. Well, listen, it’s great to be together today as we’re talking about to start our new year together. Who are we? If you meet someone new and they ask you, hey, tell me a little bit about yourself. Who are you? Sometimes that can be a little intimidating. It can be a little hard to go, well, what do I say? You know, I don’t want to really say who I am, because then I might come off a little weird. Let me think of some things to say that I think they’ll like about me. Or sometimes you just lay it out there and don’t care. This is who I am. But sometimes that can be a struggle. Who am I? The way you can answer that question is first to know who you are. The phrase we used last weekend – Know Thyself. In fact, enable… in order to be able to move forward, you got to know who you are and where you are and what we’re talking about over these next last week and this week is who is Valley View, because each of us individually has an identity. But collectively as a church, there is an identity. Who is Valley View? When someone asks you, what’s your church like? What do you say? What do you tell them? Last week we talked about three things. First, come as you are. We hope anyone comes as they are. We we want you to come. But second, so that you don’t have to stay as you are. None of us want to stay as we are. We want to keep growing. Yeah, come as you are, but we want to keep growing. And how do you really know? The third point was, how do you know who you are? You got to know who he is. That’s ultimately how you know who you are. We’re going to look at six other identities of Valley View, six other things that describe who Valley View is. And I’ll say it this way at our best, right? Because we all have our ups and downs, but this is what we’re striving for. This is who we hope we are at our best. Six things in Second Peter chapter one. And if you have one of our church Bibles, that page number should be on the screen, if not second, Peter’s near the end of the Bible. It’s on page 957. If you don’t have a Bible, I’ll be reading directly from the Bible and you can follow along with the church Bible. Those are out in the connection corner. Slip out any time and grab one those are free for you. You can keep that or return it whatever you want at the end of the service. But we want you in God’s Word, reading God’s Word, absorbing his words, his eternal words, his firm foundation to us. And we’re going to see six ways to grow and know who we are in 2025. And second Peter chapter one. So here we go. Second Peter chapter one. We’re going to start by looking at verses three and four. That’ll give us our first area of knowing who we are as a church. So look at verse three. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises. The first identity of Valley View. The first point to make about who we are. In fact, I hope that when we think of who we are as a church, we don’t think about who we are because it’s not about us. That’s the first point to make. In fact, I wanted to bring this out. It’s a bummer the students aren’t here because I think they would appreciate this. If you ever go to the Wednesday night service, I promise I’m coming back. I’m not leaving. If you go to the Wednesday night service for the students, they have this sitting out in the lobby. They meet in the chapel over there, and this is sitting right there. Now imagine it says it’s not about you. Imagine showing up. That’s the first thing you see. Hey, this isn’t about you. Thanks a lot. Why am I what am I doing here? What if you got that got your mind around that reality in high school or middle school that it’s ultimately not all about me. You know, there was a book written by Rick Warren. It’s one of the most widely distributed books of all time. And he starts that book out, The Purpose Driven Life. The very one of the very first statements in the book is you got to get your reality, your mind around the reality that life’s not just all about you. And that can be hard to hear, because I don’t know about you, but I love to make it about me at times. But there’s no worse place to be in life. When life is all got to be all about me. And you’ve been there. You know people who are stuck there and they’re miserable people. Life ultimately is not about us. And the way we see this here in Second Peter, if you look back at that passage I read verse three, his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Also in verse four, by which he has granted to us every precious promise. It’s not like because I was so smart, because I was so special, I was able to figure out how great God is and go toward him. No. Because of how great he is He came to me, he rescued me. He came and found me. He granted to me the ability to even be able to acknowledge who he is. We’ve got to start there. Now, of course, we have a role in our relationship with him. He calls us to act, obey. It’s not like we do nothing but the starting place is the recognition that is, it’s not about me, it’s about him. And as a church, I hope that Valley View never makes it about Valley View. Look at how great we are. No. I hope, and I think at our best, Valley View makes it about Look at how great He is. If something great happens here, thank you Lord. You are at work. It’s not because of how special or how great we are. In fact, it’s probably because of the opposite. We know left to ourselves, we’re going to mess it up. But it’s not about us. It’s a great place to start. I think it’s true of who we are as a church. Second point, look here. We’re going to look at verse five and eight, but I’ll just read it before because I want you to be looking for something in these verses. The second thing I think that describes who we are is forward facing growth, in fact, forward facing gracious growth. Those words are really important in that sentence. Forward facing, facing gracious growth. I’m going to read through verses five through eight. We read these last week, I know, but really I could read these every day of my life and still not have read them enough. I’m going to read verses five through eight again. As I’m reading, look for words that are growth focused. Try to draw these out in your own mind. You see the repetitiveness of growth in this passage, verses five through eight. Look at verse five. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control, with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. I love the focus on growth in this passage. Supplement your faith. Make every effort to keep growing. These qualities should be yours and increasing. There’s this huge emphasis on growth here, and that’s the theme of our church. Come as you are, but we don’t want to stay as we are. We want to keep growing. That’s our theme for 2025. Grow into oaks of righteousness. Keep growing. We don’t want to stay the same and we’re not after perfection. None of us will be perfect. But the emphasis here is on how do we keep growing? How do we keep moving towards Christ? How do we keep growing in our faith, our virtue, our knowledge, our self-control? And now the hard part of that is the past is relevant. The past does matter. We want to be forward facing in our growth, but also we all have a past. We want to acknowledge the reality of that past, but we don’t want to stay stuck there, whether good or bad. We’re not stuck in 1985, when the worship center was built as a church, we’re looking forward. We’re going to celebrate that. We love that. I love the history of this church. It’s meant so much to me. I talk about how the church has shaped me. I grew up here. I talk about that all the time, but I don’t want to stay stuck back there. We’re facing forward, and we’re also have a posture of grace in our growth because we’re all in different places. Some of us are more mature spiritually than others. Some of us have been walking with the Lord for decades. Some of us have trouble finding even the difference between the New and the Old Testament. And that’s okay. It’s we’re in different places. That’s okay. We want to be gracious in our growth. A few weeks ago, I came into the service and ran into a guy who was very upset, very upset. He’d had a difficult conversation with someone and and was quite emotional. And I said, Look, do we need to talk about it? He said, you know what I think it would be best if we talked later. Let me just kind of see if I can process this. Calm down. Let’s talk tomorrow. Okay. That sounds good to me. No problem. So the next day, I call him. Hey, are you ready to talk? How can I help? What do we need to try to press into? And he said, you know what, John, I’m doing a lot better. I had some time to process and pray, and I was able to talk with a few others. And I’m in a lot better place now, so I don’t I don’t really need to talk about it. Then he said, this, I got to tell you, John, this was a huge step forward in growth for me. Because even a year ago I would have stormed out and said, forget them. I don’t want anything to do with them again, someone offended me. How dare they? I don’t I don’t ever want to see that place again. Huge step of growth for me, you know. Yeah. The big praise. I really on the phone was going. Yes. It was so cool to hear because how often does that happen? We get offended and we’re we’re done with them. It could be a person. It could be an entire church. I’m done with them. Instead of pressing into the conflict moving forward. And he recognized it in himself that that was growth. We need to be gracious with one another and forward facing in growth. And I think that’s a priority for our church. Keep growing. It’s okay. You messed up. Keep growing, keep moving forward. Maybe you took a step back, keep growing, keep moving forward, keep increasing in the knowledge of him, and he’s going to continue to work in your life. He will. So that’s the second one. Now let’s look at the third. And this one. It’s probably not going to come across the right way at first, but let me explain. I think one way we could describe Valley View is humble and authentic. Okay, that sounds a little prideful to call yourself humble. Let me explain. Look back in the Bible here. Look at verse nine. I’m going to read this first and then talk about what I mean by humble and authentic. Verse nine for who… For whoever lacks these qualities, the qualities that were all listed in verse five, whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. We’ve all been there at times where you’re blind. And by the way, we all have blind spots right now, even, and you don’t know about them because they’re a blind spot. You you don’t know. But we all have them, and some have been exposed at times graciously, some not so much. But to say that if you don’t have these qualities, that’s a blind spot. Especially if we’ve forgotten how God has worked in our lives. But I think at Valley View in general, there’s a measure of just a humble awareness that without God, we really have nothing. There’s the sense that if he doesn’t move in my life, there’s nothing really special about me. Apart from him, I don’t have anything to offer. You know, first Corinthians talked about not many of you are wise. Not many of you were noble. Not many of you, and not many of us by the world’s standards, are highly praised. I have people come to me all the time. John, I don’t have much money. I don’t have many talents. But I’m leaning on Christ and depending on him, and I hope to watch him work. In fact, there’s a verse that struck me this week. If you’ve been reading through the Bible reading plan, flip over to Genesis, Genesis, the first book of the Bible. So this is just going to be a few pages into the Bible. The end of chapter 39, Joseph, who was sold by his brothers into slavery. I mean, talk about a rough start to life, sold into slavery by his brothers. But here’s what happens. The end of chapter 39. The keeper of the prison paid no attention to anything that was in Joseph’s charge, meaning he gave him free reign. You’re in charge because the Lord was with him, and whatever he did, the Lord made it succeed. You know, when I read that, I thought, Lord, I want that to be my prayer in the coming months. You make it succeed. I want to walk in humility of going it, it’s not about what I do. Of course, Yes. In fact, Joseph was in charge. Joseph did have tasks to do. Joseph was at work. But look who made it succeed. The Lord is the one who made it succeed. I think as a church, there is a measure of humility that we tend to walk in, going, thank you, Lord, you’ve done this. Not not us. Yes, we put forth effort, but you’ve done this. You’re the one that’s working. And we give him great praise for that. Now, I think another measure of humility, though. That I love seeing in any church, is just this ability to enjoy life and ability to laugh with one another. Not at. Maybe a little bit of laughing at one another, but to be able to enjoy one another. This week I called one of our guys here, Jim Newton. We were talking about something that was last week, actually, and I said, how are you surviving the snow? He said, oh, I hate the snow. It’s terrible. Don’t want anything to do with it. I thought, bah humbug. You know, here we are out playing in it, throwing snowballs at each other, having a blast with the kids. I said, you know what you need? You need a good snowball fight to make you appreciate the snow. Dick Clark lives down below you. Why don’t you launch some snowballs down at his house? Well, I can’t I can’t launch them that far. He’s down below me, but it’s still a ways up. So I sent him plans for a cannon. A snowball cannon. These are online. You can use a leaf blower. Create your own snowball cannon. I think you can get there with those. Let’s see what you can do. I thought I better give Dick Clark a heads up. He may want to retaliate. I texted Dick, I said, watch out, there may be a snowball coming towards your house. And he said, if a snowball comes, we will show no mercy. I thought, oh, man, this is getting good. I can’t wait to see. I said, look, just so we have a level playing field, here’s the plans to the snowball cannon because you’re shooting uphill. You need this. And he said, you know what? If I can use it from my recliner, I’m good. I believe in you, Dick. I believe you can, really. The sad part of all this is that Dick came to me a little later, and he said, we have signed a non-aggression pact between us. Okay. Thank you. I love here in the aws and the rivalry is over. I’m praying for more snow that we can stir it up again. But here’s the point. We got to be able to laugh together. We got to be able to enjoy one another, not walk on eggshells around one another, worried about saying the wrong thing or offending someone. We got to be able to laugh. That’s a sign of humility. Of course, none of us are perfectly humble, but I hope we can walk in the humility of knowing that we’re in Christ and he’s the one that’s working through us at the end of the day, not us. It’s him working through us. We get to participate in that. But it’s him, humble and authentic, real about who we are, real about where we are. And now, number four, what’s a fourth way to describe who we are as a church? Look at verse 12 and 13. Therefore, I intend always to remind you of these qualities. This is Peter telling his audience, here’s what I hope to do in my role in serving you. I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. Even if you know something, even if you are established, rooted in God’s Word, even if you believe it is my absolute authority in life, I still got to be reminded of His Word. It’s so easy to forget. I can’t just say, well, I read that back in 1994. I know John 3:16. I’ve heard it before. No no no no. We need constant ready reminders. And here’s what he hopes to do. I think it right as long as I am in this body to stir you up by way of reminder. That’s part of the power of reminding people who Christ is. It’s to stir them up towards love and good deeds. This, Hebrews talks about Hebrews 10:24. Let us constantly be about stirring one up toward stirring one another up towards love and good deeds. Also, Ephesians 4:29 talks about this. I want to make every effort to build up the body. Don’t use any words that tear down, but only words that build up, that edify, that give grace. And that’s that’s what we’re about. In fact, one of the things I think that describes us is we are life giving multipliers. Again, at our best, the church hopes to be life giving multipliers and who else do you want to be around in life than someone that’s life giving? Those are the people that I want to be around. That’s part of what I look forward to Sunday morning, is knowing I’m going to be around people who are giving life. They’re not taking, they’re giving. So much of this world is about taking, I mean, you know, the people, they’ve got to tear you down to feel better about themselves. They don’t know. They can’t handle giving you a compliment because then that makes them feel worse about themselves. They’ve got a tear down others to make themselves feel better. And that’s sad. But we’re about giving life to others, giving life freely, pouring it into others. I was at a funeral recently. I’ve got a group of guys. I went through college with, four guys. We went through almost every class together. We stayed in touch. One of the guys lost his mother, the the first of us for to lose a parent, and we go to the funeral and we’re talking with them and we start connecting. One of the guys’ dads is just hilarious. You know, here we are in the funeral home, and we’re trying to keep our laughter tamped down because we’re he is just making us all laugh so hard. He walks up to one of my buddies and he goes, you still can’t tackle. You know, he watched him play football in high school. We’re all just dying laughing. That doesn’t sound like life giving, but it was in the moment, I promise. We left there on the drive home and my friend said, you know, Ned’s a guy– that’s his name, Ned, this guy’s other guy’s dad– Ned’s a guy, he worked for him in high school. Ned’s a guy that I’ve always wanted to have more time with. Every time I’ve been around him, I thought, I just want to keep being around him. Every minute I spend around this guy, he makes me better. And we both just sit there thinking about that. How many people can you say that of? I want that said of me, that’s a guy that when I’m around gives life, makes me better, pours into me and I can’t get enough around him. I hope as a church and I think as a church, when people come to Valley View, they feel that, others are wanting to give, not take. They want to be givers. Now we’re not just giving to say we’re good givers. Look at me. Look at how great I am at giving life. There’s a purpose. There’s a point. That’s why we’re life giving multipliers, life giving multipliers. And one of the emphases of our church for this year is that we would be about pouring into others spiritually. We looked last week at the end of the New Testament, the end not of the New Testament, the end of the book of Matthew, where Jesus gives the Great Commission. He says, go, make disciples, baptize, teach in my name. That’s our calling. And we want to be multipliers. We want to be producing more followers of Christ. If you are an oak of righteousness, a healthy oak is a multiplier. It’s dropping acorns. It’s creating more trees around it. We want to be multiplying followers of Christ in all that we do. We’re not here just to soak in for ourselves. We’re here to soak in, to pour out. And you know what’s this like? Think of the moments in your life when you’re growing the most spiritually. You’re also pouring into someone else. And that’s hard. That can be intimidating because part of you goes, what do I have to offer? I got my own flaws, but you know that when you’re pouring into someone else that calls you up, that calls you up to go, I better be living it too. This better mean something to me. I think that’s my favorite part of being a pastor, actually, is that when I’m getting ready to prepare a sermon, to come up here and talk about the Bible, there’s always this moment, usually about late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, where it’s like the Lord going, John, this better means something to you. Don’t just get up there and peddle pretty words. This better mean something to you. You better be living some part of this. You’re not doing it perfectly, but it better mean something to you. It better be real. I love that that good, healthy pressure, that weight. It pushes me to grow, to not be complacent, to not get isolated. We want to be life giving multipliers pouring into others. And there’s going to be opportunities for that. I’m going to come to some of you at times and say, you need to be pouring into this person and you’ll go, no, I, I’m not ready. Yes you are. No you’re not. But yes you are. None of us are. Here, here’s a resource. Meet with them. Pour into them. We all need that. We all need people pour pouring into us. We all need people we’re pouring into to be life giving multipliers. That’s number four. And now number five. Look at verse 15. And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things. I love where he says here I will make every effort. Peter’s burden here is to serve. And one of our burdens as a church is we are set on service, set on serving others. Some of our most robust ministries as a church are service focused ministries. We have things like Project Hope, Project Hope. They distribute furniture. I call them furniture ninjas because they slip in and out in the night like you don’t even know where they got the stuff from or where it’s going. And they’re just constantly on the move. Taking furniture to someone, picking it up because you have people in need. You have a single mother who has fled an abusive home and has nothing. My son and I were talking about this this week. I said, imagine if tomorrow morning, Julie, my wife, got up and said, guys, go get in the car, go get in the car right now. Why? Just get in the car. Okay. And that was the last you saw of your house and everything you have. It’s so hard to imagine people in that situation. Some in this room have been in that situation. We have a ministry that goes, we want to love on you. We want to serve you. We are set on serving you. That’s Project Hope. We have lots of service ministries. Dare to Care. I love it when someone is in need for food. Man, go over to that house on Thursday around 11- noon. We’ll give you a box of food. We want to love on you. We want to serve on you. We have a group of folks who go out on Monday nights and give food to homeless downtown. They find different homeless camps and they distribute food. In fact, Mike Bell, who one of the guys who helped heads that up, said to me recently, we’re out there serving food and a guy comes up I hadn’t seen in a while and a guy said, yeah, I’ve been in prison. But let me tell you, dreaming about your bread pudding is what got me through it. Yeah. And then another guy came up and said, I’m not here for the food. I’m here for the word. Bring me the word. Bring me what will nourish. Service ministries. We’re here about serving others. In fact, even this morning, we’re able to worship together because of a team of people who are serving us by putting the right words up on the screen, making sure the instruments are well tuned and practiced and ready. That takes a lot of work. It takes so much work and we just walk in and get to absorb it. They’re serving us. Children’s ministry. Here’s what I love about children’s ministry. You know, I’ll have someone come who wants to learn about the church. I do a pastor’s class about once a quarter to introduce people to the church, and they’ll say, I’d love to come, but what do I do with my kids? We’ve got a place for your kids. We are serving them. And what I love about our children’s ministry is it’s not entertainment, it’s not childcare, it’s ministry. We are infusing their hearts with the Word of God from the moment that you put them in our care, we’re teaching them God’s Word. Those kids are being pushed to memorize Scripture, to grow, to know God. They’re serving you. They’re serving your children, helping them grow. Our church is set on service, and one thing I love about our church is every week someone’s like, we need to be doing this other ministry. There’s 100 other ministries that we all want to see being done. I love that. We can’t do them all, but I love that we all want to see more service. We want to see more done. We want to do whatever we’re doing with excellence. So we choose wisely. I want to make sure we have good leadership. We have support. We can launch it. I mean, last year we were set to launch a ministry and it just didn’t come together. And so we said, now’s not the time. That’s okay. We’re trusting that God is in control through this, but our burden is to serve. Now, the last one, of course, those are five very important dynamics, aspects, descriptors of who we are as a church. All of those are important. But this last one, all the others can be true. But if the last one is not true, they don’t matter at all. Not a bit. Look with me at verse 11, for in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Here’s one phrase that I hope is always descriptive of who Valley View is. It’s that we’re Christ centered in all that we do. Our goal, our aim, the aim of our instruction, our goal is Christ. Last week I talked at length about how you got to be in God’s Word. You got to know His Word. Everything we do here is based on His Word. But the goal is not just Bible knowledge. Satan could quote scripture. He knew who Jesus is. In fact, he knew who he is. He knew who he is. But he didn’t believe in him. The goal is not just Bible knowledge. The goal is to know Christ, to know him personally, to walk with him, to grow closer to closer to him, to be dependent on him. And there’s… Look, there’s a gigantic difference between knowing about someone and knowing them personally. Huge difference. I could learn a lot about my wife, Julie, by just reading her social media. I could know so much about her and and not know her at all. If I said, let me tell you about Julie and I only read back to you things I read on Facebook. You would call that a shallow relationship, but to know her. That’s a whole nother level. And our goal in knowing Scripture is to know Christ, not just know him, not just to know of him, but to believe that he is the Savior of the world. He is the one that rescues me from sin and death. Where I’m headed naturally, on my own, I’m running toward sin and death. He is the one who will rescue me to believe in him, to trust in him completely, to depend on him fully. There is no greater hope and joy in life than that. And that’s what we’re about as a church. And if you don’t know him, maybe you know some about him. That’s a good starting point. But if you don’t know him personally, if you don’t believe that he is your Lord and Savior, don’t let another day go by where that’s up in the air. Maybe you need to keep growing to a point where you’re ready to do that. Maybe you’re not ready to do that today, but that’s something you’ve been putting off. Don’t let another day go by. There’s no greater decision you make in life than to follow him, to say, Jesus, I’m going to follow you completely. I’m going to depend on you completely. I won’t be perfect, I know that, but I’m going to depend on you and trust on you. Don’t let another day go by. In fact, after I pray, I’ve got a couple of things to mention. But I’m always down front here. I’m always available to talk to anyone as long as you want. I’d love to talk with you about what that means. And if you don’t want to talk today, fill out a connection card. In fact, I’m meeting with a guy this afternoon who wants to talk about baptism. I’d love to meet with you any time you tell me what works for you. We’ll talk about the gospel, about following Jesus whenever you want. Don’t let another day go by. Let’s pray. God, thank you for this morning. Thank you that we can worship you first and foremost, and then talk about who we are as a church because of who you are. We’re not talking about who we are to make us feel good about ourselves. It’s to make us feel great about who you are. Help us to continue to grow in the coming year. Each of these areas that we described, we want to grow in. We’re not perfect. These might describe us in some ways, and we want to keep growing. And God, I pray for everyone who’s here today that they will have heard from you how you want to grow in them specifically this year. What you want to do in their life. May they become more dependent on you, more open to you working in their life. Would you move today? Give them that step of courage to say, I’m going to move forward in walking with Christ. I’m not going to let another day go by. I love you, Jesus. Amen.