So, let's do a cry of our hearts. That's our prayer. It's only you, Jesus. It's only you for our lives, for our families, for our work, and for our church. You're the one we seek. You're the only thing we're after. You are our one thing. We love you. Let me invite you to go ahead and take your seats. Let me welcome you to Valley Creek Church. It is good to be together. It is good to be in church, and it's good to be the church. And my name is Jason. I get to serve as the campus pastor here. If this is your first time with us, or if you've been here a while, I just declare over you; hope is here. Everyone is welcome. And Jesus changes everything. And He changes everything about our life. And so, there's hope for you today because we're having a season three recap today.

You see, we've been in a series all year long called A Different Way. And we're just finishing up season three. Kind of like your favorite TV shows have multiple seasons to them, we've been experiencing that all year long. And season three has been a season of simplicity. Season three has been a season of removing. It's been a season of focusing on Jesus as the one thing. And it's been beautiful. He's shown us and done profound things among us. And so, we'll continue on and have just one more season after this, season four. But today, we're going to focus on the goodness of God and all He's spoken to us during these past six weeks. I just want to start by just sharing some stories to build your faith. Can I just tell you? Hope is on the move at Valley Creek Church. Jesus is doing amazing things among us. I've heard so many stories of people stepping into the practices. Things like people saying, "I'm fasting for the first time ever. I'm practicing silence and solitude by doing things like turning off the radio, turning off podcasts, and driving to work just trying to be aware of Jesus."

I've heard people rearranging their life to try to practice sabbath. Things like spouses trading the jobs, like the wife doing maybe the lawn and the husband doing the laundry, so they can create space to actually have a sabbath week in and week out. Just that by itself is profound. Just that by itself is great. But man, I've got some stories for you today. So, here's one for you. I've heard stories of people doing all kinds of rearranging during season three. I love this one. One of our leaders got a text from someone that said, "I just canceled Netflix. It asked me to tell them why I'm canceling. And so, I typed, I'm simplifying my life to be more like Jesus." He goes, "Boy, I hope somebody in the company reads that." Me too. Here's a story for you. This week, we were asked to consider giving away something significant. And I know that's not easy.

But man, it's a great practice to simplify. And so, we heard a story of somebody who gave away an AR rifle because it was sitting on the shelf just collecting dust. Now, if you know anything about that, that's a big giveaway. But here's the profound part. The reason he chose to do it is because he remembered that he bought the rifle right around the time of COVID. And he bought it based out of fear and a sense of protection. And over these past few weeks, he's even realized that Jesus is speaking to him and saying, "I am your protection. I am your security. I am your strong tower." And so, he just decides, like, "Yeah, I don't need to hold on to something that makes me think back on fear. I don't need to be bound by that anymore." And so, he gave away his rifle. That's awesome. He says, "Not a gun, God." That's beautiful. And so that's just one of the ways that we're hearing people stepping into giving away things. Here's another one for you. This is one of my friends this week. They're familiar with a couple here, there's a younger couple, that's been in really difficult financial straits. I mean, it's everything from like car troubles to foundation repair to medical bills.

And so, they decided to give away something significant by giving them their car. So, they gave them their very new Honda CRV, and it's going to be a huge blessing to them because they have the means to do that, and they knew that they could be the church to somebody who really needed it. And all these stories are leading to things that are even kind of more miraculous. We heard a story recently of parents that were given basically a medical diagnosis for their baby, that the baby missed a hearing test in one ear, so basically didn't pass the hearing test. The baby did that six times over two different sessions where it did not pass the hearing test in the one ear. And so, the parents just decided, "Well, we're not going to pray that they are not deaf. We're just going to pray that Jesus is going to heal them." And so, they began to pray exactly that, that there would be a miraculous healing. And maybe the most beautiful part of the story is that the dad, just by faith, just started declaring over the child, "He who has ears, let him hear. He who has ears, let him hear."

And so, on the seventh test, lo and behold, the nurse was like, "Well, I don't know what happened on the other ones, but they passed the hearing test." So, let's go. Let's go. One more, one more. There is a couple that was here for about two years, just greatly impacted by what God did among them. Just a beautiful journey with Jesus. So much to celebrate. And they knew that they'd just been richly blessed. They knew that they wanted to be a blessing. And so, they're trying to ask the Lord for a way to be generous. Well, it turns out that the couple that had been discipling them was a couple that was really trying to rearrange their life, to get out of debt, to shrink down their expenses, literally like sold a house, moved into a smaller house. A lot of things they're trying to do to prepare themselves for the next season. They believe their next season is that God may be calling him the dad into full-time vocational ministry.

So, you have to prepare a lot to be able to say yes to that. So, the couple that had been discipled by them said, "Well, maybe it's them." So, one day they were together helping to basically clean up their yard, and they're helping them with some yard work. And at the end of like an afternoon of yard work, the one couple says, "Hey, can I just ask you, how much, like, consumer debt do you guys still have? Like, what do you have left?" And they were like, "Like, you really want to know? Because it was like a lot. We're fighting through it. We're scrapping." They're like, "Yeah, we want to know." They're like, "We have $24,000." And so right then and there, the couple that had been discipled by them, the one that had been impacted over these two years in the Valley Creek family, pulled out a checkbook and wrote a check for $24,000 and completely cleared all their consumer debt, setting them on a path of freedom in this next season. So can I just tell you, Jesus is doing some amazing things. He's changing hearts and minds.

He's freeing. He's renewing. Those are some of the stories of what he's doing among us in this family. But you know what? He's writing a story in your life. He's doing something amazing inside of you also. You see, season three was very intimate. It was personal and it was powerful and it was profound. And so, to have a date like this where we just simplify, where we had this personal moment with Jesus, the reason we're doing that is because if you want to live this powerful and profound life, you must choose to lean in and have these intimate and personal moments with Jesus. That's the way Jesus did it. He would go away. He'd have these personal moments with the Father. And man, did he live a powerful and profound life. So today, during this season three recap, we want to just look back on some of the things that Jesus has spoken to us. So, here's what I want to do now. I want to give you six to seven minutes to look back on your notes that you took over this season. You might think, "Well, I've only been here two weeks." No problem.

We got you covered. On the seat back in front of you, if you scan that QR code, you can scan that with your phone and you can click season three notes. All the notes from all the weeks that we're talking about are in there. We'll give you about six to seven minutes to just look back on what the Lord has already spoken to you. Some time to let Jesus speak to you about what He's already been speaking to you. Go ahead and take this time. Let's read back and reflect and hear from the Lord.

Now, they've taken a few minutes to reflect on what God has spoken to you. I want to invite you to another step, which is to ask the Holy Spirit what He's been speaking to you personally. What's He been saying to you? How has He been moving in your heart and your mind? What is He revealed over the last few weeks in your life? See, the Holy Spirit has a lot to say. And if we quiet ourselves to listen, He will speak. Holy Spirit, would you tell us what you've been saying to us?

If you haven't already done it, go ahead and write down in your journal or in your notes that you're taking, maybe what you think the Holy Spirit's been speaking. You want to have that and you want to hold on to that because one word from God can change everything in our life. Then the last invite that I have for your invitation, is that now that you've looked at some of the notes, now that you've looked through some of the weeks of season three, what's the summary statement? What is your season three summary statement? We've been doing this all year long. We've been asking the Lord to reveal to us a way to bring together all the things He's been speaking. He speaks to each one of us individually. But what's your summary statement? What's it been like for you? Take about three minutes and write that down and try to bring it all together. We're learning more and more that deep things require deep thinking. So that's what we're practicing right now. Go ahead and write that down, your season three summary statement.

So, as we think about these practices of Jesus, I just want to remind all of us this is not trying harder. It's not doing more. It's not trying to check the box or be a "good Christian." These are means of grace. These are means of the goodness of God. It's always about the grace. It's always about the grace of Jesus just flowing in our life. Look at this out of Titus, “for the grace of God has appeared and offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.” His grace, it reaches us. It teaches us. It reaches out and grabs ahold of us and it helps pull us into the life that Jesus has called us to. And this verse is really special because it actually just was the memorization verse for our student leadership for this first part of their semester. They did it. They knocked it out. They are hiding God's Word in their heart.

But why do we start with a verse like that for them? Because it's all about grace. Why do we start with a verse like that and let that be the first one they memorize this year? Because it's not try harder, do better, work, work, work more. It's the grace of Jesus that reaches us and teaches us. It transforms us. And so, we want to take today communion together as a reminder of the means of grace of Jesus so our teams can come forward. And as they do and as we take the elements and we get ready to take communion, I just want to remind you. When we take communion as a church family, it's like fresh grace just poured all over our church, over our lives. Communions for anybody who has placed their faith in Jesus and said, "Jesus is Lord." If that's you, you are welcome to take here at Valley Creek. And every time we do, every time we have communion, we're reminded of grace.

We're reminded that what Jesus has done and what He continues to do in our life is give us more of himself, more of his grace. You see, communion, the finished work of Jesus, His broken body and His shed blood is something we could have never achieved or done on our own. There's only one way we were ever going to get it. It was through what He did, who He is, His grace in our life. And so even as we prepare to take it, I just want to remind you what makes something like communion so beautiful is it's just like this reminder of how much we don't get to just control everything. We don't get to do it on our own. We don't get to make our own way. Jesus has made a way. Jesus has done it for us. He's finished everything that had to be finished to bring us back to God. That's the beauty of communion.

I'll tell you on just a personal level, this season's been interesting because I've heard so many people that I feel like are playing like the shame game in their own minds. Like, "Oh, I didn't do it. I didn't have enough time. My life's not arranged this way. And I don't think I can." So, I just want to take a second even before we move forward to just say to you, in Jesus' name, receive His grace. In Jesus name, receive. The fact that we can't do anything in the first place. So, when we practice His ways, when we try to learn to become more like him, when we do the things that Jesus did so we can do the things that Jesus did, that's by grace. That's all it is. And any little whisper in your ears or your mind that says, "You're not enough, you can't do enough, you haven't done enough, you haven't made it," that's got to go.

And it's got to be replaced with like the love and the grace of Jesus just pouring all over your life. It's Jesus. It's always been Jesus. It always will be Jesus. So, in your life, it's Jesus. It's His grace. Any part of you that lives in any kind of shame and condemnation or lives with a performance mindset, I just declare that's being removed and today it's being replaced with Jesus. It's being replaced with a reminder of who He is and what He's done for us. So, the scriptures are really clear that on the night He was betrayed, Jesus grabbed a hold of the bread and He told His guys, He said, "This is going to be my body broken for you." That is, "I'm going to be broken so that you're going to be made whole. I'm going to do the work so that you can stop working.

I'm going to face the hurt so your heart can be healed. I'm going to sweat, strive, and be in pain so that you can live like this life of ease, freedom, and joy. It's all about Jesus. Let's take the bread together. The same way, grabbed a hold of the cup and He said, "This is a cup of a new covenant, and a new agreement between God and man. No longer will your life or your perceived worth or your forgiveness be based on what you have done, but be based on what I have done and I'm going to do this. This is a cup that represents the fresh grace of Jesus."

Let's take it together. So, Jesus, thanks for all of it. What you're doing, how you're moving, this profound experience that we've experienced as a church, doing things a different way. You are rearranging us so that we can experience more of you. You are showing us a different way. Man, may we just continue to walk in it faithfully through obedience by grace what you have done. Thank you, Lord, for the beauty, the simplicity, the intimacy, and the profoundness of the season of time. We know it was a gift from you and we know you are a gift for us. We love you Jesus. Amen.