You know what a great song to take us into a new year. Here we are, post-Christmas, just before the new year, and I think most people, when they’re looking forward to the new year, are wanting to see God do some new things in their life, to see him provide in some new ways. It may be financially, maybe you’re hoping that in the coming year, you’ll see some breakthroughs in your finances, or maybe be able to put aside some debt that’s been lingering, or oftentimes some of the big ones are. I hope to shed a few pounds this coming year., or focus on my health. We have some hopes and dreams for the coming year, and I hope they’re always rooted in my God will provide. He’s where I’m looking to for provision. In fact, as I thought about today’s message, I thought, what if, as we’re dreaming for things of the new year, as we’re dreaming of our our hopes and what we want to see God do in our lives, what if for every one of us in this room, for every person, our greatest dream, our greatest hope, our greatest desire was to see God work in our lives with an increased intimacy with him, a depth of relationship with Christ like we’ve never had before. For that to be our greatest hope, our greatest longing, our greatest desire more than any financial goals, more than any fitness goals, more than any of that. And those are great. I have those too. But for my relationship, my growth with Christ to be the thing I’m longing for in the coming year more than anything else. Imagine if that were the case here. If every one of us were overwhelmed with that longing more than anything else, what could happen in this church, in our community, in our lives? I think that’s what we all really want. That’s why you’re here. If you didn’t want that, you’d be at home watching Friends reruns, sitting on the couch, just chilling, wondering what’s going on with my life. There’s times maybe you need to do that. I get that, but you’re here because that’s what you want. I want to know Christ more than ever before. That’s what I’m longing for, isn’t it? Isn’t that true? Amen. Really? Is that what you want? That’s what I want. That’s what I want more than anything else. Now, as I say, that that’s not easy to say, because I know what that means. It’s exciting to say, and it’s a little scary to say, because I know that requires living a little differently, making some different decisions. I know that will require maybe Christ making some changes in my life that maybe I’m kind of comfortable with. I kind of like how things are. I don’t really want to change that, you know what I mean? It’s exciting and it’s scary at the same time. But listen, there’s no other way to live than to live with that kind of excitement, that kind of joy, that kind of forward looking hope. That’s my prayer for Valley View going forward. In fact, when I came here three years now, three years ago, and I thought about Valley View and I thought about how much it meant to me growing up here. I can’t tell you how much Valley View has meant to me, the way that this church poured into me as a kid, as a kid, the way I could look around the room and see some of the folks who intentionally invested in me and all that God did in my life as a result of that. You know, I want that for every person who walks in here to experience the fullness of all that God can do in your life. And I want Valley View to be a key part of that. I mean, if you’re here, my hope is that you go. My life is different because of Valley View in a good way, by the way, my hope is that everyone would be able to say that God has moved in my life. And I look at this person, I look at that person. He’s used them to invest deeply in me. I mean, imagine if that’s what this next year were about. When I first came, I sat and I thought, okay, what would that look like for that to be the case, for that to happen, what needs to be true at Valley View? And I came up with this three level or three layer vision for every member of Valley View. If all that were true, if God was working in our lives, if we were growing incredibly, if he were at work in my life, what would that look like for every member? And I’m going to walk through that today. I think that will set us up for this coming year. There’s this three part definition. We’re going to walk through it. I’m just going to read the whole thing to start with, and then we’ll break it down piece by piece. But if you are flourishing as a member of Valley View, here’s what I hope will be true. Because of how Valley View Christ has worked in your life through Valley View. Here it is. This should be up on the screen. My prayer for every member of Valley View is that they would be first a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ. And I’m not going to read off the references right now. I’m going to unpack those when we get to each of these. A fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ who is flourishing and growing spiritually, personally and emotionally. And then number three, they are passionate about serving others and proclaiming Jesus. When I thought about someone who is experiencing the fullness of all our church has to offer, I felt like those things should be true of us. Now, of course, we’ll have our ups and downs. None of us are going to be perfect Christians. We say all the time, just come as you are. We don’t expect perfection. We just hope that you are coming and growing and seeking to grow. This isn’t a place where we want people to be perfect, but we do also hope to be growing and attaining and growing in our relationship with Christ and moving forward. And when I think about each of us, my hope is that each of those statements would be true of us over time, eventually, year by year, growing in the truth of those. So let’s talk about each of those. That first one was a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ. I spent the first few sermons I did here walking through Luke 9:23 that unpacks a bit of this idea of what it means to follow Christ. If anyone wishes to come after me, he says, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. And if we are going to fully experience devotion to Christ, that means that we need to say no to ourselves. That means that we need to die to self daily. We need to submit to Christ and what he has for us. And my hope for everyone here is that Christ is not just something I’ve tacked on the side of my life that I lean on when I need to in the hard times, but that Christ is at the center of everything. Every aspect of my life is shaped by him. In fact, my life, everything about it is different and new and greater and better because he is at the core of my life, fully devoted, follower of Christ. So that’s the first layer. But the second, we’ll see. Second is that you should be. And my hope is that everyone would be flourishing and growing spiritually, personally and emotionally. And each of those words- and that sentence are very intentional- flourishing, John 10:10 is listed there. That’s where Jesus says, I have come that they may have life, and life abundantly. And you all know what this is like. There’s regular, everyday life. I’m just surviving. I’m just making it, yada yada. Everything’s going along as normal. But then there is abundant life where you feel like I am alive. I am most alive in this moment. That’s what Jesus wants for you day by day, moment by moment is the abundant life in him where you’re flourishing, in him where every day you can’t imagine that you could get any closer to him. And yet you do. I don’t know why this is, but it seems like in a lot of churches and a lot of Christian circles, people often have a quick spurt of growth as a young Christian and then just kind of hit cruise control. But growth should continue year by year, day by day, over and over again. And it should continue and grow and flourish. Now there were three words in particular there I added to be very intentional. And by the way, let me pause here and say growth and flourishing. I want to be careful not to say then. Therefore you should, for instance, always be happy. Look, we all hit hard seasons. We all have seasons where you go, I don’t know how this day is going to go. I’m not enjoying this day. And yet, I promise you God can still be working in your life. You can still be growing and flourishing through the midst of that. But it doesn’t mean we always put on the fake happy face. There are times where we go, yeah, no, actually, I’m not doing very well. And that’s okay to say that’s a part of growth. Acknowledging that, not ignoring that. But there’s three words in there. We chose very particular growing spiritually, personally and emotionally. All three are very important. Of course we want you growing spiritually. That’s what the church is primarily about. I hope that you are growing, and your understanding of what it means to follow Christ, that you’re growing in holiness, that you feel him working in your life. And you’re saying no to the things of the past and yes to the things of him that you’re growing in your understanding of God’s Word. I mean, that’s the central part of what we do as a church is we try to teach God’s Word faithfully. We want you in God’s Word reading it. In fact, each year we go through a Bible reading plan together. And you might have seen in the lobby if you were looking, because now’s the time to start into our Bible reading plan for this year. We have copies out in the lobby. We rotate through three different plans and now it’s time. I know some of you have been a little nervous. You knew it was coming back around. We’re going to read through the whole Bible again this year. And if that’s too much, look, do what you can, all right? It’s better to have a little Bible than no Bible. Do what you can. Read a day, read a little bit, read a verse, read something, pick up this plan, look at it. If it seems too intimidating, decide you know what I can do every other day, or I can do one day a week, or I can spread one day. Just be in God’s word. That’s what we want for you more than anything, just about other than knowing Christ, loving him personally, being in His Word is one of the most powerful ways you can grow as a Christian. In fact, if you are a Christian, there should be a hunger for God’s Word within you. There should be a hunger to know His Word. I remember when Julie and I first married, we went. Sometimes we’d go and visit her church. We had some folks there who were partnered in ministry with us, and I remember meeting this guy there early on. And he he was a young guy, newly married, and we were in marriage ministry. So we were talking some about that. And as we were getting to know each other, he just asked me, hey, John, what what what are you into? What are some of your hobbies? And I said, I just have one hobby that’s reading. And he said, that’s weird, but okay. It’s weird because I’ve never read a full book in my life. And I loved hearing some of the groans there. That was nice. And I said, really? How is that possible? I know you went to college. You graduated college. You played basketball in college. How did you get through college without reading a single book? And he said it. It was hard, but I did it, I made it, I persevered. He had, like, this personal commitment to actually get through college without reading a book. And so I thought, okay, you know, whatever. I can’t really relate to that. But we went our separate ways that day and I thought, I need to be praying for this guy. You know, like we come back around a year later and we had talked, we had dialogued, I had given him some resources and he could not get enough. Something had switched in him and books that would have been doorstops before he was. Now give me more. Now, look, you don’t have to be a big reader to be a Christian, all right? I’m not saying that, but there should be a hunger for for learning about the Bible, knowing the Bible, studying the Bible. If there’s none of that there, if you go, I can’t really find the strength to even open the Bible. I spent some time praying, God, would you stir up in me a hunger for your word? I want your word hidden in my heart. It’s His Word that he will bring to mind when you need His Spirit moving in your life. But we’ve got to invest His Word into our lives, and that’s a key part of growing spiritually as a church. That that’s my hope, is that each of us are growing spiritually. Of course, now the other two words added very intentionally, because if you’re growing spiritually, I also hope you’re growing personally. Meaning if that if Christ is in your work, if Christ is at work in your life growing you closer to him, then I should also be growing as an employee. I should be becoming a better employee. I should be someone who is better at serving others around me. If I’m a boss, I should be becoming better at leading the people who serve under me that they can say because he, he or she is my boss, I’ve become a better person. I should be growing as a spouse. My spouse should be able to say God is at work in their life. They’re becoming more tender and kind and loving and caring and listening. I should be grow as a child. Everybody here has parents and I, if they are still alive, I should be growing in my ability to interact with them, to love them, to serve them. I should be growing as a student. I should be growing as a neighbor. My neighbor should say, that’s someone. I don’t know what all is going in their life. That’s someone who I’m glad they live here. When we were moving away from little Rock to move here, our neighbors threw a going away party and in fact, one of my neighbors, Leo, the neighborhood mayor, presented us with a trophy as the best neighbor. I say us actually go ahead and put the image of that trophy on the screen. It was only to Julie Julie Majors, world’s best neighbor. I was like, Leo, I’m right here. Like, where’s my trophies? He’s like John, you know why you didn’t get a trophy. Leo, the neighborhood mayor. There’s something about us. If I’m growing in Christ, I should be growing as a neighbor. I should be growing personally. I should be growing. Here’s the phrase I love. I should be growing as a life giver. When people are around me, I should be giving life again. Not a fake happy thing where I’ve always got to be perfect. But in general, I should be a life giver, not a taker. This world is full of takers. People just want to take, take, take. And even if you don’t have much means, you can still be giving life to people. So there’s personally, I should be growing spiritually. I should be growing personally. And this word I’m especially burdened for. I should be growing emotionally. You. You’ve seen this in churches. Churches that give a heavy emphasis to learning, growing in theology, growing in Scripture. And I hope our church has a heavy emphasis on that. I hope you feel the emphasis on knowing God’s Word. Sometimes what happens, though, is things get out of bounds where we put so much emphasis on that. You’ll meet someone who can quote Scripture at length, who has read great depths of theology, can argue with, argue with you about the finest details of theology, and yet they’re unkind, unloving, difficult to be around, divisive. Always have a sour face. Can never smile. Those two should never be true of each other. If I’m really growing and knowing God’s Word, if I’m really growing and knowing Christ, I should become more loving, more approachable. I should be growing in character as well. We’re not dividing those I’ve grown spiritually, but not in character. Those two, if you are truly growing spiritually, you are also growing in love. You are also growing. I become I should be becoming more approachable, less defensive. I should be more quick to forgive. I should be someone who receives forgiveness more easily. I should be less quick to anger. Someone who has more self-control. Maybe of of my words and what I say. More self-control over what I consume, whether that’s visually and this one’s going to hurt in the Baptist church, but also the food I consume at certain times of year. Self-control is a part of my spiritual life. It’s an important part. We should be growing in that we should be growing emotionally as a church. That’s a key part of our growth. So that’s number two that I would be growing emotionally, personally, spiritually, growing in love, growing in love for others. And then number three and number three is number three on purpose. Because the overflow of all that should be a passion for others, a passion to serve others, and then a passion for proclaiming Christ, that should be the overflow. If Christ is at work in my life, it should be a natural desire to also serve others. We’ll talk about that one first, to pour into the life of others. Mark 10:45 Jesus said, The Son of Man did not come to be served. And I remember the day I was in church and we were in Phoenix, I was attending seminary. A guy from the seminary came and he attended the service, and I asked him afterwards, how did it go? What did you think? It was his first time there. And he goes, well, I just didn’t feel edified this morning. And I thought, but you your immediate response was, serve me. And maybe it’s okay if you don’t feel edified at times, I get that. But that was the first thing out of– serve me. The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many. And if Christ is at work in my life, the overflow of that, the excitement of that is to serve others, is to want to pour into the lives of others. And the way I think of service at church, my prayer, my burden. I’m not into guilting people into service. I have come around to some of the life groups and said, hey, we need help in the kids area because we have more kids come and we need help. We need just step in. The excitement of this is great with who will raise their hands and help out, and people do. But I’m not into guilting people into service because here’s what I want for everyone here. Here’s what I pray for often. I pray that when you wake up in the morning, you’re thinking about the ministry you get to serve in, and you’re thinking, I can’t believe I get to do this. I feel like God has made me for this. I finally have found the thing where he’s using me. I see him working in my life. I see people benefiting spiritually from the way God is using my gifts. I never thought I would find this and here I have found this area of service. That’s my prayer. That’s what I want. I want people serving from an area of strength and joy and flourishing, not guilt and condemnation because no one else would. I guess I have to. We have those seasons. But in general, I want to see you in a place where it is your joy and delight to be serving. Every week you wake up thinking about it every day you’re sitting at the office filling out some paperwork, thinking, I can’t wait to get to do the thing I feel like God has made me to do. That’s what I hope. And I know some of us have that, and some of us don’t. And some of us are going I have no idea what you’re talking about right there. But my prayer is that over time, God would direct, and that’s what service would look like. I was hanging out with Alan Johnson recently. He’s one of our members here at the church. And Alan said, when I met Kelly, one of my prayers had always been his wife, Kelly. My prayer, one of my prayers had always been that we would be able to serve in ministry together. We would be serving alongside one another. And look, not that’s not for everybody. Some people have. We serve separate for different reasons. We have different gifts. And but one of his desires is that they’d be able to serve together. And so they started serving in AWANA together. AWANA is our scripture memory program for kids on Wednesday nights. It’s great. It’s really fun to be a part of. It’s amazing to watch these kids work so hard to memorize scripture. And if you’ve helped with that, you’re sitting there going, when’s the last time I worked that hard to memorize scripture? I don’t know, it’s inspiring to watch them. Alan said. I didn’t really think that would be where I would serve in ministry, but I loved that we were serving together and I watch these kids work so hard. I watch them struggle, I saw them, and I got to give thanks to God that I got to be a part of that. And he said, let me tell you, when it made it all worth it is when I saw on a Sunday morning where a couple of them were up here getting baptized, I said, man, that made it. That made everything so worth it to know God had used me in some way in their life to see them grow. The overflow of God working in my life is to want to serve and pour into others. And then lastly is proclaiming Jesus, passionately proclaiming Jesus. If you’re excited about something, you can’t not tell others about it. And if Christ has brought about a radical life change in your life, the natural overflow of that is to want to tell others. And we have different gifts, different abilities and that. So some of us that may look more like door to door evangelism, more active, engaged evangelism. Some of it might look like serving food to a neighbor over decades until the door opens to talk about Christ. We have different gifts and abilities when it comes, but there should be within us this desire to tell others about Christ, and part of that is because of the way Jesus talked to his disciples at the end of his time on earth. Some of the last words he left them with are in Matthew. And if you have your Bibles, turn to Matthew 28. It’s Matthew’s, the first book of the New Testament, and chapter 28, the last chapter of the book of Matthew. Go ahead and turn there. We’re going to read that. Turn the Bible the right way. We’re going to read these last couple of verses. These are some of the very last words he says to his people. This is why these words are important for us. If someone as they’re leaving says, oh, by the way, do this parting words, it’s called the Great Commission. He commissions them. He gives them a mission right as he leaving, Matthew 28:18 through 20, Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the Holy Spirit. Teaching them to observe all I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. This is why missions is an important part of our church and Southern Baptists in general. In fact, Southern Baptists were actually started not as a denomination, but as a missions agency. A bunch of different Baptist groups came together and said, let’s partner together so we can reach more people in missions. Let’s pool our resources and and abilities. That’s been at the core of our church from the beginning. How are we proclaiming Christ to those all around the world, to your neighbors, to your friends, to your family? My hope is that if you are excited about what Christ is doing in your life, that you’re telling others and you all have that friend that when you’re around them, they’ve got this thing that you know they’re going to bring up. It’s just a matter of time, right? You know what I mean? For Julie right now in this season has been sourdough bread. If you’re around her five minutes, she’s going to want to talk about the intricacies of sourdough bread. If you run into Terry Young, it won’t take two minutes before he’s talking about the movie The Forge and how much men benefit from it. The funny thing about Terry is he’ll he’ll actually try to apologize for that. I’m sorry. I’m talking about this so much. We know you’re not Terry. We know you’re not sorry at all. Okay? Don’t apologize, because I love the passion. I love it, keep bringing it, keep being excited. His burden deeply is for men to know Christ. And you have something like that. And if Christ has been at work in your life. There’s so many people that want to hear that from you. Sometimes we feel like, man, no one wants to hear me prattle on about Jesus. And yet it’s the very thing they need the most. You know them. You can think of a person right now that if Christ was at the center of their life, everything would be different. Be praying that God would use you as that person to introduce them to Christ. It’s the very thing they need the most. And so, as I think of the coming year together as a church and how God might use us, man, that’s my prayer. More than any other area of growth this year, and I hope he does bless you in all the areas that we all pray for going into a new year. But I hope more than any other that at the end of 2025 you go, man, Christ worked in my life. I know him more deeply and richly than I ever have before. That’s my prayer more than anything else. In fact, we’re going to take communion together now to launch us into the New Year. If you’re a deacon who’s going to help with that, go ahead and slip out now and prepare those elements. Here’s what I want to ask that as we are taking communion together, that you would just spend some time praying for that specifically Jesus, would you keep it the forefront of my longings this year, a longing to grow spiritually, a longing to grow if I grow anywhere that it would be in knowing you more than anywhere else, while you’re waiting to take communion, be be praying for that. And here’s how we do communion here. It’s open to anyone who knows Christ. If you’ve committed to following him, if you’ve accepted him as your Lord and Savior, you are welcome to take communion with us. The men will pass the trays down the aisles and there’s two cups stacked on each other. Just take two cups. One has the bread underneath, one has the juice on top, and just hold on to those until everyone has them. And then we’ll take them together. And while you’re holding on to those in waiting, just pray. Pray for God to move and pray for growth in your life like never before in the coming year. And men if you would go ahead and start distributing those now down the aisles to everyone and spend time praying while you receive those, and we’ll take them together here in just a minute.