December 6, 2020 GracePointe Full Service
Scott Brockett [00:00:00] Hello, my name is Scott Brockett and I'm the Creative Arts Pastor here. I want to welcome you to our online service. I'm so glad you joined us today as we gather together online to encourage one another and worship God with our hearts and minds.
Scott Brockett [00:00:15] I ask that you take time today to fill out the Connect Card using the link near the video. We love knowing you are here with us each and every week and coming alongside you to pray and provide support for you in any way. One of the ways we come together as a community, as a family is through prayer. And I want to quickly tell you why prayer is important in our walk with Christ. When we pray, we pause our busy lives to listen to what God would say to us. We rejoice and give reverence to an Almighty God. We ask God for help. We ask him to come to our rescue. And finally we yield to God and we declare that it is not our way, but his way. So, friends, I just ask you to pray with us, put on that Connect Card anything that you need prayer for and let us come together through prayer.
Scott Brockett [00:01:12] One of our Community Impact Partners is Prison Fellowship, and we are letting you know of an awesome way to help others through the program, Angel Tree. Please call the office at 503-654-9593 to get signed up for a child. As we have a goal of helping twenty one children this year, you can also donate twenty five dollar gift cards to those families all across the state in the Angel Tree program who don't have a church to support them all. Sign ups and donations will be accepted until December 10th. Thank you so much for your generosity in helping others. The latest way to get connected to GracePointe is through the Church Center app. Whether you're on Android or iOS Church Center is available and ready for you to watch services, read sermon notes, communicate with the church and much, much more. Just look for the Church Center app in the Android or iOS store. Once downloaded, search for GracePointe Church and click connect. And that is it. We are excited for this new way to connect with you at GracePointe. We'll be continuing our series When Life Doesn't Make Sense and focusing on Ecclesiastes, an often overlooked book of the Bible. We will look at how God desires for us to let go of our need of control and trust in God's faithfulness and love.
Scott Brockett [00:02:31] In this we find meaning even when life doesn't make sense.
Scott Brockett [00:02:36] Finally, GracePointe, please be on the lookout for upcoming emails regarding plans for meeting back together in person. That's right. Please, I'm going to repeat it. Please be on the lookout for upcoming emails regarding plans for meeting back together in person. We have been hard at work to come up with a plan to meet back together, a plan that's permissible, a plan that's attainable, and finally a plan that reflects our dependency upon God.
Scott Brockett [00:03:03] Does it have a sense of humility?
Scott Brockett [00:03:05] We have been working hard on that plan. So please be on the lookout next week for an email regarding our plans for Christmas Eve as well as future in- person gatherings. Thank you for your patience, your grace and your kind encouragement as we look to get back together as well as keep people healthy and safe. And with that, let us shift to hearing our advent reading of the day, I had a great time inviting my family to light the candle and give the advent reading.
Benjamin Brockett [00:03:36] On the second Sunday of Advent, we realized the prophecy candle. And then we light the second candle, the candle of Angels, which reminds us of their proclamation of peace with God.
Scott Brockett [00:03:51] Luke 2:8-14 says and there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night, an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause you great joy for all the people.
Jen & Charlie Brockett [00:04:14] Today in the town of David, a savior has been born to you. He is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be assigned to you. You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. Suddenly, a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest heaven.
Jen Brockett [00:04:34] And on earth, peace to those on whom his favor rests.
Scott Brockett [00:04:40] Will you pray with me? Heavenly Father, thank you so much for family. Thank you for your many, many blessings. Lord, during this season, we honor you. We honor the beginning of your rescue plan for all of us. God, thank you so much for all that you do. And we praise you now in your name, amen.
Worship Team [00:05:31] Angels We Have Heard on High
Worship Team [00:05:56] My Jesus, My Saviour
Worship Team [00:09:12] This is My Desire
Michael Beuving [00:16:52] As we remember the sacrifice that Jesus made for us on the cross, we're going to sing the song Take My Life, and I think it's such a great reminder that when we think of what Jesus did for us, his body broken for us, absorbing the wrath of God that we deserved and shedding his blood because without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.
Michael Beuving [00:17:13] The only reasonable response from us is to say, take my life, take my life, all that I am, everything that I have. It's all yours, Jesus. And so as we prepare to remember Jesus sacrifice, I would encourage you now to to sing the words of this song or think through the words of this song. And I would ask you to consider whether they are are true of you this morning.
Worship Team [00:18:07] Take My Life
Michael Beuving [00:20:14] And on the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread and he broke it and he told his disciples, this is my body broken for you, do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, also, he took the cup and he said, this is my blood shed for you, do this in remembrance of me.
Michael Beuving [00:20:46] Father, thank you for sending your son to live the life, the sinless life that we could never live. To take the punishment that we deserved so that we could have the relationship with you and the eternal life that you in your love for us wanted to give us.
Michael Beuving [00:21:05] Father, I pray that you would help us be people that appreciate that and offer our lives back to you as a sacrifice of gratitude for everything you've done for us in Christ name, I pray. Amen.
Michael Beuving [00:21:22] So when was the last time that you just felt anxious, miserable, frustrated, agitated, and you just wanted things to get better? Another way to think about it is when was the last time that you thought or said, man, life is not going the way I wanted it to? You know, we have a problem of creating elaborate expectations for our life, both short term and long term, and then adopting formulas that we think will get us there. And when it doesn't happen, when things start to crumble, we get really frustrated and agitated and desperate and we start clinging for things that we think will satisfy. This morning, the teacher is going to give us four suggestions for how to recalibrate or adjust when life isn't making sense. Basically, the idea is how to get better when life isn't making sense now. I said the teacher, if you remember the book of Ecclesiastes, the word Ecclesiastes actually means teacher. It's Greek for the Hebrew word Conjola, which means teacher. So really, the book of Ecclesiastes is the observations of this individual, the teacher, maybe Solomon, or maybe somebody using Solomon sort of as a pseudonym, a literate literary device to communicate kind of the absurdity of life under the sun. So we're going to look at Ecclesiastes 4:4-5:7 this morning. And as I read through it, I wanted to encourage you to look for the four different ways that the teacher says this is better than that or this way is better than that way. There's going to be four of them. Just watch for them. Listen to him. The clue is really to look for the word better. And remember that we're not looking for formulas. There are no formulas, no certainties in life this morning. We're really just trying to see how we can bring our lives more in line with the way God designed life to be. I remember the some of the things that we see in the book of Ecclesiastes as he talks about things under the sun and whenever he says Under the Sun, he's trying to draw our attention to how we have a tendency to live life apart from God. And one of the things he says is when we're living life under the sun, we do a lot of things that are like chasing the wind, completely silly, stupid, pointless, uses the word, the Hebrew word heaven over and over and over again about forty times, which is translated a number of different ways, meaningless, vanity, vapor, futile. It's the idea that we cling to these things that look like they're going to have substance and meaning and are going to answer our questions and give us satisfaction in life. But as soon as we depend on them, they dissipate and they disappoint us. So let's go ahead and read chapter four, verse four through five seven. And remember to watch for the for better or better than statements in this section.
[00:24:09] Then I observed that most people are motivated to success because they envy their neighbors, but this, too, is meaningless, like chasing the wind, fools fold their idle hands, leading them to ruin and yet better to have one hand full with quietness than two handfuls with hard work and chasing the wind. I observed yet another example of something meaningless under the sun. This is the case of a man who is all alone without a child or a brother, yet who works hard to gain as much wealth as he can. But then he asks himself, Who am I working for? Why am I giving up so much pleasure now? It is also meaningless and depressing to people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble. Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone? A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back to back and conquer. Three, or even better for a triple braided cord is not easily broken. It is better to be a poor but wise youth than an old and foolish king who refuses all advice. Such a youth could rise from poverty and succeed.
[00:25:15] You might even become king, though he has been in prison. But then everyone rushes to the side of yet another youth who replaces him. Endless crowds stand around him, and then another generation grows up and rejects him too. So it is all meaningless, like chasing the wind as you enter the house of God, keep your ears open and your mouth shut. It is evil to make mindless offerings to God. Don't make rash promises and don't be hasty in bringing matters before God. After all, God is in heaven and you are here on Earth. So let your words be for you. Too much activity gives you restless dreams. Too many words make you a fool when you make a promise to God, don't delay. And following through for God takes no pleasure in fools. Keep all the promises you make to him. It is better to say nothing than to make a promise and not keep it. Don't let your mouths make you sin and don't defend yourself by telling the Temple Messenger that the promise you made was a mistake that would make got angry and he might wipe out everything you have achieved. Talk is cheap, like daydreams and other useless activities. Fear God instead.
Michael Beuving [00:26:16] So did you catch the four different better than statements, the four ways that are better than other ways, the four ways that bring us more in line with God's design than what we typically do when we're living life apart from God?
Michael Beuving [00:26:30] The first one is that simplicity is better than extravagance. If you look at verses four through six, the teacher contrasts two different ways that people in this world tend to live. One is to be a workaholic to to work so hard that you can achieve as much as you possibly can. And the other way is to be lazy and to do nothing and expect other people to provide for you. And it's interesting, when he talks about the lazy person, he says the fool folds their idle hands, leading them to ruin that Hebrew phrase there is actually consumes their own flesh. Such a great word picture that somebody is so lazy that they don't have anything even to eat. So they just start eating themselves and destroy themselves. But, you know, laziness, I would I would guess, is not really going to be the biggest problem with the people that are going to be watching this video. The people of GracePointe that take time to watch the service on Sunday mornings, I would guess, are more like me and have a tendency towards maybe working too much. And it's interesting, the teacher says that he observed that most people are motivated to success by envy.
Michael Beuving [00:27:35] And I thought, boy, you know, I just don't think I have a problem with envy. That's not something that I identify with. I just don't identify with the idea of being mad that somebody else has something that I want and maybe scheming to figure out how I can take it from them. That's just not something that that really resonates with me. And then I realize that that's probably more about where I live than about my character, that I live in a country where there's lots of opportunity. And if I see something that somebody else has that I want, you know what I do? I figure out how to go get it. Either work more to make more money so that I can buy it or he's a credit card, go in debt and I get it that way. And I think that's more the tendency that we have. You know, we have this sense of the more things we have, the higher status that we show people are worth by our possessions. And Dave Ramsey said, and I really like this, he says we buy things we don't need with money. We don't have to impress people we don't know. And that makes absolutely no sense.
Michael Beuving [00:28:37] A.W.Tozer, one of my favorite authors, said this. I've read a number of his books. This is in pursuit of God. He said things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God's gifts now take the place of God in the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution. Simplicity is better than extravagance. You see, we have a problem of stuff in our culture. Just as an example over the last 60 years. Think about it. Sixty years ago, credit card debt was zero. Nobody had any credit card debt. 60, 60 years isn't that long. Many people watching this video are within that range for their lifespan. Sixty years ago, there was zero dollars in credit card debt. Now, today, the average credit card debt per person is around fifteen to sixteen thousand dollars. That's not because everybody's out of work. That's not because there's a bunch of seasonal workers that make a lot of money in certain seasons and then not in other seasons. That's because we have a problem of living beyond our means of spending more money than we make on things that we don't need. And to further exacerbate this problem, think about this. Sixty years ago, again, there were no storage facilities in the United States. And over the last 60 years, we've been building storage facilities at about a thousand per year. There are now about a 60000 thousand storage facilities in the United States. So the things that we're buying with money that we don't have, the things that we don't need, that we don't have room in our houses so that we rent a garage to store them in. And then we add to that that over the same period of time, houses have more than doubled.
Michael Beuving [00:30:18] It used to be perfectly adequate to have a house that was nine hundred square feet or eight hundred or a thousand square feet. And now you need to have a house that's twenty five hundred square feet and you still don't have enough space to store all the stuff that you have. And on top of that, family size has shrunk by about one person per family unit. Some of that's by the fragmentation of the family and some of that's by having less children.
Michael Beuving [00:30:42] But we have less people living in bigger houses that aren't big enough to contain all the stuff that we have. And so we rent storage units to keep our stuff in. We have a problem with stuff in our country. And so the teacher brings us back to the importance of simplicity, he says. In inverse six, he says, Better to have one hand full with quietness, meaning better to have just what you need with a simple life, a simple work schedule with margin for the people in your life. I love the way the author of Proverbs says it. Solomon says, second, give me neither poverty nor riches. Give me just enough to satisfy my needs. For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, Who is the Lord? And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God's holy name. There's real value in having just what we need, living simply within our means so that we have time and space in our lives to the things that God wants us to be and do. So No. One, simplicity is better than extravagance. No two people are better than possessions. And that might seem like a no brainer. But we really struggle with this, I think, in a lot of different ways. I heard somebody say once God created people to be loved and things to be used. But one of the reasons the world is in chaos is because we love things and we use people. And I think that's true in a lot of ways. Versus seven through twelve. Highlight this. The teacher gives the observation of a man who his whole life, he just worked so hard that he neglects all human relationships, he neglects family and friends. He chooses not to get married. He doesn't have kids, but he accumulates a tremendous amount of wealth and he gets to the end and he looks at all this wealthy has and no people to enjoy it with. And he says, oh, my gosh, that was absolutely Hedgesville like chasing the wind. It was depressing because we were created for community. We were created to be in relationship with other people. And so it's absolutely pointless to work hard to achieve all of these things when that takes the place of the people in our life. And so the teacher highlights that two is better than one. Being in relationship is better, and he lists a number of different ways. He says we can help each other succeed. Teamwork, the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. What we can accomplish together is far greater than what we can accomplish alone, he says. If somebody gets injured, you have somebody there to help them up and to recover from their injury. And if it's cold, you can warm each other. Basically, you're an encouragement to one another. And then he talks about protection from danger that all of those things are reasons why we need people in our life, meaningful, lasting relationships. But we have a problem with isolation in our culture. And if we're going to get more in line with the way God designed us and created us, we need to focus on people, not possessions. I went to a place called City Impact. It's in San Francisco a number of years ago. It's a church in the middle of the Tenderloin district. The Tenderloin district is the most densely populated, impoverished square mile in the United States, or that's what I've heard. And we were there working with this church, with the people in that community who struggle tremendously with isolation. It's an incredibly broken place. While we were there, we saw somebody get mugged. Somebody ran up behind a person, hit them in the back of the head. They fell over and they took their wallet and their phone and ran off. Police were called, but they never came. This person lost their phone in their wallet. I personally saw somebody shooting up, probably heroin with a needle and snorting something. It's a very, very broken place. And as we were working with the people of City Impact, what we did is we went around door to door in these huge housing projects, these sky high rise buildings where people are isolated into their little tiny apartments where they don't have meaningful and healthy relationships with other people.
Michael Beuving [00:34:36] And what the people of City Impact told us is that there's so much value in knocking on a door saying hi, asking people how they're doing and how you can pray for them, inviting them to church, because if you can break that isolation, you can break the cycles of self-destruction that these people are living in.
Michael Beuving [00:34:52] Isolation is incredibly destructive to the human soul and even to our physical health and technology. And social media hasn't made it any better. If you think about it. I heard somebody say once social media brings the far near, but it also brings the near far as we sit around the dining room table or in the living room with people in our life on our phone, communicating with people that are far away, but being isolated by the people from the people that are right next to us. It also makes relationships more disposable and superficial. We have a real problem with isolation in our culture. Even before COVID, 40 percent of adults reported feeling isolated, which is twice as much as in the nineteen eighties. And I can only imagine how bad it is now with COVID isolation is deadlier than smoking or being overweight. Notice I didn't say smoking and being overweight. That would be really bad. But basically scientists, doctors have identified that it would be better to be overweight, but surrounded with people that you have meaningful relationships with that would be better for your health or to smoke and have meaningful relationships. It doesn't matter how physically healthy you are. If you're isolated, that's really bad for your health. Another study in 2006 discovered that women with breast cancer had a five times better chance of recovering if they had a healthy relational support system in their life. Five times greater isolation is incredibly destructive to the human soul. And so what I would encourage you to do is to think of instead of collecting things, collect people. That sounds a little creepy. I realize that, but hopefully it sticks. You see, the thing is, is the more things we have in our life, the less space and time we have for people, the more time we spend organizing and reorganizing our things, protecting, cleaning our things, categorizing our things, storing our things the less time we have for people, spending time with people, inviting people in.
Michael Beuving [00:36:42] And so I would suggest that we focus on collecting people, not things. Just think about the people around you, maybe at work, you know, somebody who's isolated and lonely, maybe they're a little awkward. And so you haven't really invited them into your life yet, but you realize that they really need to be invited into life with you. Or maybe there's a houseless person that you cross paths with on a regular basis and maybe you don't want to invite them to. Stay with you, but you could have a meal with them on a regular basis, take them out to fast food and listen to their story and talk with them, inviting them into your life, shut ins or even something like refugees. We have refugees from other countries and organizations that work with refugees. And how cool would it be to welcome them to our country in the name of Christ? There are isolated, lonely people all around us, and it would do good for our souls and for theirs if we would invite them into relationship with us.
Michael Beuving [00:37:36] Think about it like this. It is way better to have a full house and an empty bank account than a full bank account and an empty house. Number three, being teachable is better than accomplishments. It's interesting here. The teacher says it's better to be poor. But why is youth then an old foolish king who refuses to listen to advice? It's better to be teachable, intellectually flexible than to think you know it all and have great accomplishments that you can show other people. Think about this with me. If I was to ask you which age demographic tends to be rebellious and stubborn, unwilling to listen to anybody who doesn't agree with them and thinks they know it all, you might say teenagers, right? That's of course, that's teenagers. I've had the opportunity in 21 years of ministry to work extensively with both teenagers and adults. And I will tell you, that's not my personal experience. My personal experience is that us adults tend to be rebellious and stubborn and unwilling to listen to anybody that doesn't agree with us. And we think we know it all. And teenagers. Now, to clarify, your teenager living in your house will definitely treat you that way because, well, that's just the way it works. We all behave most poorly at home. Right. But teenagers will listen to people that care about them and offer reasonable explanations for life. They will listen and reconsider the ways they're thinking. They'll change their whole value systems. They'll change their whole trajectories in life. They're far more intellectually flexible than adults tend to be. And that's exactly what the teacher is saying here. It's better to be a poor young person who's willing to listen and consider other people's advice and ideas and perspectives. I heard a pastor say once that if you want to make disciples look for poor people, broken people or young people. Now here's the good news. You can control two of those things no matter what you do. You can't be any younger than you are right now. No surgeries, no supplements. They won't make a difference. But you can be poor and you can be broken, especially the broken part. Here's what I'd like to suggest to you.
Michael Beuving [00:39:44] We have this way of establishing our ourselves as being without flaws. We put on these facades. We pretend to be things that we're not deep down. We know that we're very broken, but we hide that as best we possibly can and put a show on for the people around us that's so harmful to our souls and to the community that we're in. It's be so much more beneficial to everybody. If we would let our guard down, if we would be real and honest about who we are and what we struggle with, with our flaws and our failures and our shortcomings, if we just can acknowledge that we are all quirky, I'm quirky, you're quirky whether you knew it or not. And once we allow ourselves to be real like that, we start to create an environment where everybody can be more real and more teachable and more flexible and can grow and learn to be teachable is so much better than to have accomplishments.
Michael Beuving [00:40:38] Number four is quiet, obedience is better than religious noise. I couldn't decide here. Also, quiet faith is better than religious noise. I like both of them. The teacher in chapter five, verse one goes on to draw this contrast between this blustery, noisy, bragging, rash faith versus a quiet, reverent, obedient faith. He says in chapter five, verse one, As you enter the house of God, keep your ears open and your mouth shut. I love the beautiful bluntness of that verse. Think about our Sunday mornings. We're all really eager to get back to worshiping together on Sunday mornings. We're excited about it. But think about what Sunday mornings are often like when we get together on Sunday mornings. There's plenty of us that struggle with kind of empty platitudes and using lots of words that we don't necessarily mean or agree with when we sing songs in here. We love worshiping God, but how often are we singing a song and not even thinking about anything that we're saying as we're singing? We're thinking about the fight that we got in with our spouse on the way to church or the football game after church, empty, meaningless words that have no value to God. We fill the morning with cliches in ways. We say things like, I'll be praying for you when in fact we never actually pray for each other. And so what the author here is highlighting is how important it is to be quiet so that the words of your mouth and the thoughts of your heart are not in a disconnect or not out of sync. He highlights four ways in this section that we should make sure that we have a quiet obedience or a quiet faith rather than a noisy religion. First, he says, real worship is about a heart that is surrendered and obedient. Verse one, it says. It is evil to make mindless offerings to God, wow, evil, evil to make mindless offerings to God. It's better. Real worship is to have a heart that's surrendered and obedient. Romans 12:1 says, Because of the mercies of God, I urge you to offer your bodies as living sacrifices. This is your spiritual act of worship that real worship is a heart motivated by God's mercies to surrender your whole self to God. Real worship is a heart surrendered and obedient no to hear in this passage we see it says, Don't try to manipulate God. Verse two says, Don't make rash promises. The idea of rash promises here is God. If you'll just let me marry that person, I promise I will tithe for the rest of my life. For God. If you'll just let me have that car, I promise I will go to church every Sunday for the rest of my life. That's manipulating God, that's attempting to control God. Like we would manipulate an impulsive parent. That's paganism. Don't try to manipulate God. Just have a heart of reverence before God accepting what he has for your life. Number three versus three three fours is to always keep your promises to God, and if you don't, God sees you as a fool or an idiot. Look at verses three and four. Too much activity gives you restless dreams. Too many words make you a fool when you make a promise to God, don't delay. And following through for God takes no pleasure in fools. Keep all the promises that you make to him. So first of all, be very careful about ever making a promise to God. But then when you do make a promise, make sure that you follow through on that promise. Because when you don't, God sees you as a fool, an idiot, and he takes no pleasure in you. It says here and think about the promises that we make to God. Two that came to my mind as I was thinking about this is as we stand up here in front of our church family and we dedicate children, we promise to God and to our church family that we will do everything in our power by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit to lead these children to love and follow the Lord above all else, that the way that we live our lives in, the way that we talk and the priorities that we have in our family and the things that we do will lead our children to love and follow the Lord. We make that promise. We better keep that promise. We also stand up here in front of our friends, in our family, and we get married promising to God before our friends, in our family that we will remain faithful to our spouse because that's God's will for us and we make that promise to God. And if we make that promise to stay faithful to that spouse, we better keep that promise. So number three is to always keep our promises to God. And then the fourth one under a quiet obedience is better than noisy religion is to say this is kind of a fun one. Don't be defensive or make excuses with your pastor. Don't be defensive or make excuses with your pastor. Don't be difficult with your pastor. Now, I'm not making this up. I'm just delivering the mail. It says it right here. He says, don't let your mouth make you sin and don't defend yourself by telling the Temple Messenger that the promise you made was a mistake. It's right there. The Temple Messenger, the equivalent to a pastor. Don't be difficult with your pastor. Hebrews 13 says the same thing. It says, don't be difficult with your pastor because God has entrusted them with your soul. Make it easy on them to lead you and to guide you. All of this, to bring us back to God designed us. God's design is for us to have a quiet obedience, a quiet faith, and not a noisy religion. He takes no pleasure in empty sacrifice. He wants a surrendered heart. So as we continue now in this Christmas season, things are getting busy. It's the first week of December. We're thinking about gifts and parties. I want to encourage you that if things have been feeling a little off, if if life isn't really making sense and you want things to get better, to fall more in line with God's design, that you would keep it simple, that you would love people, that you would stay humble and that you would be still and know that God is in control and that you would share that with other people in your life. Let me pray for us. Father, thank you so much for your love. Thank you for this time of year as we celebrate the birth of our savior, that you would send Jesus to live the sinless life that we could never live and to die the brutal death that we deserved so that we could have eternal life and forgiveness through him.
Michael Beuving [00:47:14] God, you're so good and I thank you for the way that you love us and provide for us, and I pray now, Father, for my friends and the people that are struggling right now with whatever anxieties or frustrations or discouragement that they're struggling with. And I pray your blessing on them. I ask that you would fill their lives with your hope and your peace and that for all of us, father, where we're a little out of whack, where things are a little out of adjustment, that you could help us to bring our lives a little bit more in line with your design for us. Father, we offer ourselves to you and we give you the rest of this day in Christ name, I pray. Amen.
Scott Brockett [00:47:54] I hope all of us are encouraged today to seek God and encourage one another, we all have opportunities to invest in people rather than things. I hope that this season we can all take time and listen to God. Can we hear him? And can we look for the people around us that need investing rather than more stuff? Loving God and loving others is the central part of our mission here at GracePointe. And we hope that this Christmas, each and every one of us is living that mission out. Before we end our time today, we just had a few quick announcements. You know, speaking of Christmas, we begin our Christmas series next week. It is called Hope Has a Name and centers on the fact that even in our grief, our confusion, even in the darkest of night, there is a hope that provides peace, provides clarity and a bright, bright light that hope has a name and his name is Jesus. We look forward to learning more about this special time of year starting next week. This is a great time to invite others to check out our online services. You can direct them to our website at www.gpointe.com for more info.
Scott Brockett [00:49:09] You know, one of the ways that we communicate with you is through email a few times a month, we send out an email with upcoming events. If you haven't already, please fill out a Connect Card and asked to be included on the email list. We'd also ask that you look in your email for an invite to our new online directory. If you received an invite, we ask that you respond to no later than Friday, December 11th. And let me remind you that please be on the lookout for an email next week regarding our in- person gatherings, both for Christmas Eve as well as going into the New Year. Thank you for taking time to check out community and Global Impact Partners at www.gpointe.com/reach-out partners such as Jim Caminata with the Eternal Truth Ministries, who we are praying for as he transitions to this ministry in the States. See how Eternal Truth Ministries partners to renew and encourage local churches all over the United States by reorienting the focus back to God. Find out more about this ministry and other global impact partners at www.gpointe.com/reach-out.
Scott Brockett [00:50:14] On behalf of GracePointe Church, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for continuing to be faithful and supportive of our vision to eradicate hopelessness in Milwaukie and beyond with the relentless love of Jesus.
Scott Brockett [00:50:28] You have been stepping up and being the church in new and flexible ways. And we are seeing people come to know Christ and grow in their relationship with him. We have so much to be thankful for even during this crazy year of craziness. It is because of your generosity that we can say yes to helping those in need from events such as Angel Tree to our Community Impact such as LoveOne Laundry, Global Partners, Embrace Oregon. There's so much that we're involved in and we are helping bring hope to those who do not have it.
Scott Brockett [00:51:04] And in this vision, we can see how we are helping create disciples who love God and love people. And during this time of year, my family and I are looking to give above and beyond our normal giving as we want to lean in to what God is doing in our community. I would ask that you prayerfully consider giving more this month as we look to see what God will do in the year ahead to give towards this vision, you can do that in a couple of ways. You can go to Gpointe.com, give you can text any amount to 84321. You can also mail your gift to the church GracePointe. Thanks again for joining me today. After the service, there will be some additional questions on the screen. We hope that you will take time now to look over those discussion questions with your family and friends as you look to put your trust and hope in Jesus. Thanks again, and we'll plan on seeing you next week.