The Daily Sh’ma: A Call to Love God Fully

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[Pastor Jesse]
Alright, we have a special guest—Gary, Gary Abbott. Our church is in an exciting time of transition where we are really looking at who we are, who we have been, how that has made us, who we’re becoming, and looking to the future. One group that is helping us do that is VCM—Vital Church Ministries.

Gary, are you officially the Executive Director of Vital Church Ministries? More than that, I’ve gotten to spend time with Gary. We got to go on a hike—Saturday, Friday—and spent some time together. Gary, he’s the real deal. At first I wasn’t sure—you know, you never know when someone comes in—but now I know. He’s the real deal. He loves Jesus, he loves his family, he loves people, and he really, really does love the church. Just getting to spend time with him and talk with him about God, the kingdom, the church—it stirred in me faith, it stirred in me hope.

I’m really thankful that you’re here. I’m thankful that he can speak into our life, into the life of this community in this season. So would you come on up here, Gary, and lead us forward?

[Gary Abbott]
Jesse—oh yeah, thank you, thank you. Thanks for having me. It is an absolute honor. Anytime I get to stand in front of anyone at any church and talk about the things of the Lord, it’s a humbling—it’s an honor.

Today is a unique day for me. A couple of things going on—we all bring multiple things in on a Sunday morning, right? A couple of things going on for me: one, my brother-in-law is running the New York City Marathon right now. So I’ve been tracking him—he’s doing awesome. A little too awesome—I don’t like him doing that great—but he’s doing great.

Then I also just got a text that my grandmother, who’s 102 and she’s amazing, has just moved into hospice care. So there’s a lot going on this morning. I don’t know if you identify, but if you would just be graceful with me as we walk through this time, I definitely have my sweet grandmother on my mind.

As Jesse said, I come to you as the Executive Director of Vital Church Ministry. This is a ministry that’s been around for 30 years or so, in some form or fashion, helping churches thrive in and through transition by helping cultivate clarity, purpose, and hope. That’s what we’re doing as we interact with you.

We love this work and we believe in this work because we have seen God’s redemptive work—Jesus redeeming situations and people and churches in real time. So this idea that Jesus redeems, that resurrection is—it’s not just kind of theoretical for us. We’ve actually seen it happen.

Two years ago, I joined the organization after 16 years of pastoral ministry in Orlando, Florida. What I like to say about my time in Orlando is I saw God do the best of what he can do in and through people—and the worst of what people can do to each other.

We experienced very significant, very painful, very public crisis and transition at the leadership level. I saw that God can bring beauty from ashes. I saw in real time that

when people seek the Lord, God is an ever-present help in times of trouble.

I’ve seen that. My heart beats for this work. I’m so grateful to be here with you as we journey together in the focusing process.

I’ll tell you—the Sunday after we got news that I never would have anticipated about our lead pastor no longer being a part of our church, and choosing things we never would have imagined he would have chosen, I stood up in front of the congregation. I was sad, and I was confused, and I was angry. And I said probably a lot of things—most of them unhelpful.

But one thing I did say was: as a church, we are going to continue to be led by the same man that has led us from the beginning—the same man who leads his church forward. Jesus Christ is the lead pastor of our church. We’re going to continue to cling to Him in the season of transition, get as close to Him as we possibly can, and invite Him to guide us into what comes next.

And I saw Him work His redemption.

So with what little time I have with you today, I want us to try to do that—get as close to and cling to Jesus as best as we possibly can in this transition season. And to do that, we want to look at what Jesus says is most important.

If we’re trying to get as close to Jesus as we possibly can, let’s look at what He says is most important. In the Gospels of Mark and Matthew and Luke, some people come up to Jesus and they ask Him a question: “What’s the greatest commandment?” Essentially: what should we build our lives on? What’s the foundation? What’s the bedrock when everything else is shifting and changing around us? When there’s so much uncertainty around us, what’s the foundation of who we are?

Jesus recites Deuteronomy 6:4–5. It says—what should we be rooted in? What should our lives be about? Jesus says:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength.”

This is called the Shema. It’s a really significant piece of scripture that we’ll unpack a little bit. But Jesus says that the Shema—that’s the greatest commandment. That’s the thing that all the other commands, all the word of God, it all hangs on—this verse, these two verses. This is how life is intended to be.

The Shema was foundational to Jesus. So if we want to get close to Jesus, we have to get close to this.

This command was originally given by God 1,500 years before Jesus was born—through Moses to His people after they’d been freed from slavery in Egypt. Remember, for 400 years they’d been slaves in Egypt, and the only value they had was: eat, work, sleep, then do it all over again. Repeat. And then, when you can’t work anymore, you’re no longer valuable. That was the whole framework of their existence.

Now they’re free, and God’s trying to remind these people what it means to be free in Him—to follow Him. What does life abundant actually look like? So He gives this command called the Shema.

“Shema” is the Hebrew word for “listen” or “hear”—that first word of verse 4. Moses, right after the Shema, says to his people, “These words I’m giving you will be on your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”

So for Jewish people, this became a prayer that you would pray—recite—first thing in the morning and last thing before you went to bed, every single day. And you’d pray it with your kids. As soon as they were old enough to memorize anything, they would memorize this.

So Jesus, as a Jewish man, would have likely prayed this day and night. He certainly would have memorized the Shema. So when asked, “What’s the most important command?” Jesus’s mind naturally traveled to this.

Even though we’re familiar with the words of this command, they can actually be a bit difficult to understand. Part of what makes this command difficult to understand—let alone live out—is that word “love.” It’s such a common word.

The Avett Brothers—you might know the Avett Brothers. Jesse, I bet you know the Avett Brothers. You should listen to them. They’re a great band. Anyway, they say, “Love is a word that’s said too often and not enough.”

I mean, I can love my kids and I can love charcuterie. Same word: love. But it’s not the same thing. Although meat and cheese laid out on a wood board is fantastic, it’s not the same thing as loving your children, right?

So we use the same word, but it’s a very different context. What kind of love is the Shema talking about? What does it mean when it says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength”?

To understand what the Shema is talking about when it says to love the Lord this way, you actually have to start with God’s love. Because that’s where this starts—”The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” So it starts with God. Let’s start there as well.

In Deuteronomy, Moses says to Israel: “God chose you because of His great love for you.”

God’s love for His people doesn’t come because they earned it or because it felt right at the time—it originates from His actual character.

Jeremiah says God’s love is everlasting. Love was the force by which God created the world. It was the motivator for God saving His people from slavery. And it was what led Jesus—who was the full expression of God, as Paul says in Colossians—it’s what led Jesus to leave the heights of heaven and take on a Roman cross to save us from all the ways we turn from Him.

That’s His love.

Richard Hays, who wrote a book called The Moral Vision of the New Testament, says, “What the New Testament means by love is embodied concretely in the cross.”

So love is not intended to be an occasional act. God doesn’t love you occasionally, or when it feels right to Him. And I don’t know what your circumstances are—what you walked in with, what others have said about you—but maybe the most important thing I say today is going to be said right now. So lock into this:

Right where you are, the Lord our God chooses to love you. That’s what’s most true about Him, and that’s what’s most true about you. God chooses to love you.

I’ve heard it said before, “If you love someone, don’t make them guess how you feel about them.” I love that. And we don’t have to guess how God feels about us—we can look at the cross. We can see His sacrificial, unending love for us.

So what the Shema says is: that’s the kind of love we’re called to—sacrificial, unending love for God. And it isn’t some preemptive strike that says, “If we love God like this, He’s forced to love us.” No. It’s a response to God already loving us to death.

In response to that truth, we’re invited to love God with all of our heart.

I actually want to park on that a little bit. So, we know the extent of God’s love. And we know that’s the type of love we’re supposed to show to God. But what does it mean to love Him with all of our heart?

Well, the Hebrew word there is “lev.” Different cultures have different concepts about what the heart is and what it does.

Ancient Hebrew people knew the heart was an organ in the chest that sustained life—they knew that medically. But biblical authors also talk about the heart in other ways, different from how we might today.

First, there’s no word for “brain” in ancient Hebrew. So all intellectual activity happens in the heart. You know in your heart. You understand in your heart. Proverbs says wisdom dwells in the heart. The Bible says Solomon used his heart to discern.

And if that seems ridiculous to you—if you’re thinking, “I don’t think with my heart, I think with my brain”—we say things like, “Go with your gut.” You’ve heard that one?

That’s kind of a weird one, right? “Go with your gut.” My gut tells me I should eat six pieces of pizza. So maybe don’t go with your gut—that’s a terrible decision-making process.

So we think with our heart. If we’re an ancient Hebrew, we feel with our heart. A “broken heart” is actually a phrase that comes from ancient biblical Hebrew.

You can have fear in your heart. Your heart’s where you experience joy. Jeremiah 15 says the heart of joy.

So all this to say—your physical life, your thoughts, your emotions, your desires—all flow from your heart.

We don’t have to agree medically with the ancient Hebrew worldview—and we shouldn’t—but to understand the call of the Shema, we have to put ourselves in that context.

The call of the Shema is that every day, morning and night, devote all of yourself—your physical body, your mind, your decisions, your emotions, your desires.

Submit all of that. Devote all of that to God. That’s what this is calling us to.

Maybe you hear all that and say, “Okay, I get it. God’s love is unending, sacrificial love. His sacrificial love is supposed to be a catalyst for me loving Him in response as an act of love. But honestly, I’m not buying it.”

And we wouldn’t say that—because we’re in church—but maybe your philosophy is, “Look out for number one, because no one else is going to.” That’s kind of how you get through every day. Like, it’s kind of lonely out there, so you have to put yourself first or you’re not even going to get by. That’s how you navigate life.

But…

What if loving God with all our heart is actually the only way to navigate life?

A few years back, I chose to do something I hadn’t done before—read the Bible as fast as I possibly could. Not take a year, but do it in like two, three months. And it was very difficult. It was harder than I thought it would be.

It was like listening to the Bible in the shower, first thing when I got up, reading. Last thing before bed, reading. On the car drives, put in the Bible. A very challenging process. But I was able to get through it, and I was thankful that I did.

One of the things I saw in reading the Bible at this quick pace is that by the time you get to Deuteronomy 6—by the time you get to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength”—you see how obvious it is to make that choice with your life.

Because by the time you get to Deuteronomy 6 in the Bible, you realize it’s the only hope we have—to love the Lord our God with all our heart.

I mean, what else is going to stop us from killing each other and hating each other and hurting each other? What other choice do we have?

By the time you get to this command in the Bible—“Love the Lord your God with all your heart”—you’ve seen deceit that has torn families apart. You’ve seen lies. You’ve seen hurt. You’ve seen destruction. You’ve seen wars. You’ve seen people hurting other people.

You’ve seen drunkenness that leads to people treating others as less than human. You’ve seen hate. You’ve seen confusion. You’ve seen lack of gratitude to God, lack of care for others.

And there is grace in every single one of those broken moments—praise God—but all that happens when people don’t love God with all their hearts. When their physical life and their thoughts and their emotions and their desires are rooted in something other than the love of God.

When they maybe love God with part of themselves—but they try to navigate some other part without Him.

I mean, Cain gave an offering to God—but said, “You don’t get my anger. God, I’m going to give an offering to you. I’m going to love you, but you don’t get my anger. I’m going to manage that on my own.” And it led him to murderous rage.

Abraham had faith that was credited to him as righteousness. But he also said, “God, you don’t get my fear. I’m going to manage that one on my own. I’m going to lie, and I’m going to say that my wife is my sister. And I’m going to give her to Pharaoh so I can save myself.”

That, by the way, became a generational curse—because Abraham’s son, Isaac, did the same thing.

Side note—and this is an important one because we’re talking about loving God with all of ourselves: our physical life, our thoughts, our emotions, our desires—the places we don’t.

This impacts more than ourselves.

So it’s worth asking as we move through the rest of this time: what do I want to pass on to my family and my friends and my coworkers and my classmates? What do I want them to learn about God by how I’m loving Him?

Because they’re going to learn something.

Maybe those things aren’t a threat for you—like lying and telling people your wife is your sister so Pharaoh doesn’t kill you. If you relate to that one, raise your hand. I would love to talk to you after service—your life is fascinating.

So that’s probably not a threat. But maybe you say, “God, you don’t get my disappointment. Not now. You can have all of me, but you can’t have my disappointment. I’m going to manage that on my own. I’m going to let bitterness build up in my heart—for that person and for you, God, for letting things go that way.”

Or maybe you say, “God, you can have all of me, but not what I eat and drink. That’s my thing. I’m not going to ask You if that honors You. That’s my own thing I’ve got going on over here.”

“God, you can have all of me, but you can’t have my grief. I’m going to plug away at that one on my own. I’ll get back to You when I’m better, when I’m healed up. You’d probably be disappointed with me anyway because of what I’m struggling with. So I’ll just get better, and then we’ll talk again.”

“You can have all of me, God, but you can’t have my anger. Not at that person. I’m going to give full vent to my anger at that person.” (Which, by the way, the Bible calls that foolishness.) “But I’m going to give full vent to my anger at that person. Everything else—I’ll consult You. I’ll honor You with everything else. But I’m just too mad to let You have this one. I’m going to do this one on my own.”

“I don’t have to look at how You sacrificially took a cross for me and for them. I don’t have to ask how You might want me to be sacrificing for them right now. They’re wrong, and I’m right. So I’m going to handle justice on my own on this one, God. You don’t get that space.”

“God, You can have all of me, but You don’t get my hate. I’m going to keep death-scrolling on social. I’m going to be consumed with all that vitriol. You don’t get to speak into that part of my life.”

“God, You can have everything else—but that—I’m going full bore there. You don’t get my ambition. I’m going to keep pursuing wealth above all else. And if there’s wreckage left behind me, so be it. God, You don’t get to speak into that part of my life.”

Or maybe, more broadly, you say, “God, You can have all of me—but not this one thing. And I know it’s sin. I know it doesn’t honor You. But I’ll follow You everywhere else. This thing I’ve got going on—I’m going to manage this one on my own. And honestly, I’m not sure I’m ready to give it up.”

This is when we give God all of ourselves—except.

I have one of my youngest children, my son—he kind of lives his life with this motto: “I’ll handle it on my own. I’m good.” He says, “I’m good,” all the time. I’ll see him skateboarding down the street, and he flips and falls in a gutter. I’m like, “You okay?” He’s like, “I’m good. I got it.” Dusts himself off—which is somewhat admirable, but it also leads to some dangerous places when he could ask for help, but doesn’t. He wants to just handle it on his own.

I’ll give you a quintessential example of that. One day, I walk into the kitchen, and he’s got a piece of paper that’s flaming. He’s just waving it around the kitchen—a flaming piece of paper.

Let me back up a little bit. We like candles a lot in my house. I’m pretty obsessed with my house smelling good. I kept Bath & Body Works in business for a while. I felt like that was my contribution to society—kind of keeping the economy rolling there. So anyway, we always have candles going—or at least we used to—all around the house.

So my son saw the flame in the candle, and he was like, “You know what would be awesome? More of that.” So he grabs a piece of paper and lights it on fire. And guess what? It burns pretty quickly, and now he’s holding the flame. I imagine in his mind, he thought, “This isn’t perfect.” Or maybe he thought, “This is perfect.” I don’t really know. But he starts waving it around—I assume to get it out, but not necessarily. Maybe he just wanted a bigger flame. I’m not sure.

Anyway, I asked him this question after we got the fire out. I said, “What were you thinking?” Which is a silly question, because the real answer is: “I wasn’t.”

But the real, real answer to that is this: “It seemed like something good to do. And then it got out of hand. And I decided to try to navigate it on my own.” Because he didn’t want to ask questions, and he didn’t want to ask for help.

And that’s essentially what we do when we see something that offers us a little relief, or a little distraction, or a little validation. We say, “I wonder what would happen if I get close to that thing.” And we let that thing have our attention, or the affection of our heart, or our emotions or desires.

Then we realize—maybe, just maybe—that wasn’t the best way to navigate things.

Sometimes we can make it a bigger and more damaging issue when we don’t ask for help. Instead of saying, “God, I need Your help with this. I need help navigating this,” we don’t invite our community into it—which is what we need to do.

We often just wave the flame around in the air, hoping it’ll go out before anyone notices—before anyone walks into the room and catches us.

But it also means we should be on the lookout for places that we don’t open our hearts up to Him—things we try to manage on our own. The parts of our heart that are closed off to Him. The things that we’re going to handle over here by ourselves—we’re not going to invite Him in, or invite His community in.

You may say, “Look man, life’s been tough for the last five years. I found some equilibrium in my life. My work has changed. The way I do life has changed since COVID. Every time I turn on the TV or open my phone, it’s like hate that I see—and hurt—and that’s given me constant anxiety. So yeah, I’m trying to love God and have a few things over here that I just kind of manage on my own. I just take care of those. How about you stop messing with that? It’s not that big of a deal.”

And I think we do that because we forget what’s at stake.

At the end of Deuteronomy, Moses is on the edge of the Promised Land. He’s led the people through the desert after Egypt to the land that God had promised them they would thrive in. And he stands on the edge of the Promised Land and he says this:

“See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to Him, to keep His commands, decrees, and laws. Then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.
But if your heart turns away, if you are not obedient, if you are drawn away, you will be destroyed.”

Did you hear that?

If any part of you gets away from God, it will lead to death.

And you might not have to wait for eternity to begin to experience it.

You might say, “That’s a bit dramatic, preacher man.” But is that thing you aren’t giving God access to—bringing you joy and fulfillment? Or are you left with shame and guilt and less hope?

Does it maybe feel a little bit like being drawn away? A little bit like being destroyed?

Trying to manage that part of your life on your own—not letting God into that, not inviting Him to speak into that, not letting community support you in that?

Wisdom, experience, history—it all says that it leads to death.

We forget what’s at stake.

The Bible shows us: because the Lord is one, He is the one worthy of giving our whole selves to. It’s not just wise—it’s just not wise to try to live a divided or disintegrated life where we give parts of ourselves to God, and parts of it we keep to ourselves over here.

We shouldn’t make the mistake of racing ahead, apathetically shrugging our shoulders and saying, “Well, this is just who I am. This is just how it is.”

We should slow down.

We should consider where we are.

We should look at the grace of Jesus, and we should receive it—not just as an idea. Receive it for yourself.

See the danger if we don’t.

Proverbs 4 says:

“Guard your heart, for out of it flows your whole life.”

Jeremiah 17 says:

“The heart of the human is deceitful above all else. Who can even understand it?”

Jeremiah says that because he’s watched a generation turn away from God and toward all kinds of other things. It led to these wild things—like sacrificing their own children because they thought it would appease the gods for their own personal benefit.

Before you say, “Well, we’ve evolved past that. That’s not a very practical example for us”—have you ever missed time with your kids to do a little extra work you didn’t have to do?

Have you ever seen imagery of vulnerable children and turned away because you’re like, “I do not have time to care about that”?

So the only hope we have is renewal of our heart.

Ezekiel 36 says we have hearts of stone that God needs to remove and replace with hearts of flesh.

We, I think, have been trained to not look at where we fall short of the glory of God. We’ve been trained by the world around us to numb out, to justify, or to just do another Bible study until we can no longer feel the pain that distance from God creates.

Nothing against Bible studies—I love them. But we need to look at it. We need to open up—the good and the bad and the ugly. We need to open all of that up to God. Move from navigating aspects of our life on our own toward moving with God, trusting God with our heart, our thoughts, our emotions, our desires.

We put ourselves in a place where we can cling to Jesus and be overwhelmed by the grace of Jesus for us—and be moved to let Him transform us.

But we have to open up to Him for any of that to actually happen.

If we want to be led by God as a church, we have to individually do that work of opening ourselves up to God—the good, the bad, and the ugly

And say, “God, what do You want to do with this? I’m going to consult You first.”

We have to look at the truth that, for God, love was not an occasional act. He chooses to love us—not because of what we do, good, bad, or ugly. He chooses to love us because it’s who He is.

We can trust Him.

And then, in response to that love, we make that turn—that turn from being closed off to opening up to God. That’s what repentance is. It’s making that turn.

It’s a slow turn that we should do in community. We actually need community for this. We need people to speak into our lives. I always say: get people around you who love Jesus and at least like you. That’s the kind of people you need around you.

So the Shema—what it’s doing—it’s inviting us to open ourselves up to God, to love Him with all our heart, and to have that love shape our lives.

So here’s what I want us to do with this. Let’s move into: what do I do with that?

“Okay, that’s good. Got it. A little better understanding of the Shema—thanks a lot. What do I do with that?”

I want to encourage you for the next two weeks to begin your day and end your day with the Shema.

For two weeks—try it. It takes a few seconds. But the repetition might help you open some things up to God that maybe you haven’t.

So every morning and every night:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength.”

And in the morning say, “God, would You please help me do that? I know I can’t do it on my own. I know there have been places that have been blocked off to You—things I’ve been trying to manage on my own, get right. Can You take those? Help me open those up to You.”

And then at night:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength.”

“God, how’d I do at that today? Where did I fall short today? Thank You for Your grace. Help me tomorrow.”

Do it for two weeks. See what God might do.

If we’re going to be led by God, Jesus says this is how you get close.

Just kind of a side note—I don’t know if this is anybody in the room, but it might be. If you’re here and you’re not a follower of Jesus, a couple of things:

One—really glad you’re here. This is a safe place to take your next right step, no matter what that step is.

Two—if your tendency is this, I’m going to ask you to try, please, to avoid a cynical response to those of us in this room who are going to try this. Many of us—including myself—have tried all kinds of different ways to navigate life, and they all felt a lot like death.

I need this. We need this.

So if you’re here and you’re like, “I don’t know if I’m buying any of this stuff,” if you could please, for our sake, just avoid a cynical response to this—that would be incredibly helpful.

And then third, if you’re here and you’re not a follower of Jesus—if you are willing, pray. Morning and night—join us in this.

My first prayer, when I was 18, 19 years old—I didn’t grow up in the church, I wasn’t a follower of Jesus—my first prayer sounded like this:

“God, if You’re there—I don’t believe You are—but if You are there, would You please show me something worth living for?”

And He began to answer that prayer that very day. And He’s answered it every single day since, in large part by putting people in my life that reflect His character.

So I prayed before I believed—and God answered that prayer.

If you would do this process with us, maybe God will say something to you also.

So: pray the Shema a couple of times a day. And as you do, consider honestly those places that you haven’t given God access to. Maybe you’ve given Him 90% of yourself—but there’s this one thing over here that you just haven’t opened up to Him. You’re managing that on your own.

If you find those things, I would encourage you: write those down. List those places in yourself that you haven’t considered God’s thoughts on, or haven’t opened up to Him.

Say, “God, help me want to open myself up to You in these places. Maybe it’s my physical life. Maybe it’s this thought about these people. Maybe it’s this emotion or desire that I’ve been guiding myself through—and I haven’t even consulted You on.”

Then say, “God, would You help me make that turn?”

And know that when you ask God, He wants to hear from you. And please know that you’re safe, even in the places you’re struggling—because He loves you.

To close, this comes back to the season that we’re in as a church here at Foothills.

This is absolutely about our individual relationship with God, and it’s about our community—because we’re doing it together—but it also has to do with this season that we’re in as a church, this transition season. And how do you navigate a transition season being God-led?

I’m going to use an analogy.

My wife and I, for multiple years in a row, did a marriage retreat every year. I’m kind of confessing that we haven’t done it the last couple of years, but that’s an important part of our plan for health and longevity—along with counseling and coaching and some other things. My wife and I do an annual retreat. So you can hold me accountable that I do it next year.

But the last time we did it—a couple of years back—we were in the woods in Georgia at this retreat center. And the last part of the day, the last part of the three-day span, we went down and walked in the woods to this labyrinth.

Do you guys know what a labyrinth is? I’m going to show you—like, a labyrinth—is that familiar to you?

It’s an ancient kind of meditative process where you walk along the path and eventually make it to the center. Christians have been doing this for many, many years. It was this process we did together in silence.

We finally make it to the center, and I said to my wife, Abby, “How did that feel for you? How did you experience that?”

And she goes, “Oh, it was so relaxing and refreshing. I felt like I got to just listen to the birds and the sound of the leaves. I felt God’s presence—it was so restorative.”

I said, “That’s great.” And she asked, “How did it feel for you?”

I said, “Oh, super frustrating. The whole time—just incredibly frustrated.”

She said, “What do you mean?”

I said, “Well, so I start here, and I can see the center—it’s right there. I could just step over those stones and be done, and we could be on the road. It’s just right there. But what a labyrinth does is—you come in, and you actually get really close to the center, and then the pathway takes you back out to the perimeter. And it takes a lot longer than you think to get to the center, even though you can see it.”

And I said, “It was just a really frustrating experience.”

We laughed about that a little bit.

Then, there was this little plaque in the center, and it had Proverbs 3:5–6 on it:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to Him, and He will direct your paths.”

To love the Lord with all your heart is not going to be a sprint in a straight line.

It can be frustrating—submitting to Him, having Him direct your path. You’re no longer in control of your path. He’s actually guiding you. You may have some struggles that don’t go away—they seem to keep going and going.

But here’s what I’ve experienced—and I was reminded of this at that labyrinth, particularly when I read that scripture from Proverbs:

In a world that can be confusing and hard to navigate, when we daily, repeatedly commit to love Him—life isn’t a maze.

That’s the thing about a labyrinth: it’s not a maze. You’ll get there. If you trust the path, if you stay on the path, you will get there.

It’s not a maze. You can’t get lost.

When we love the Lord with all our heart—as a church—we can’t get lost. It might be long. It may be frustrating. There might be hills you have to climb that you’re not looking forward to.

But… 

You can’t get lost if you’re rooted in love. If you love the Lord your God with all your heart—you can’t get lost.

This is how you get close to and cling to Jesus in a season of transition—and in a season not of transition. You trust the Lord with all your heart. You give every bit of yourself to Him. You let Him guide—and He will direct your paths.

Here’s my confident claim to you: if you love the Lord with all your heart, collectively—if you encourage each other in this, toward love and good deeds—I promise you, Foothills Fellowship will not get lost.

Let me pray that that would be the case.

Father God, thank You for Your Word. Thank You that it’s a gift. You didn’t owe that gift to us, but You give that gift to us. You say, “These are words that bring life,” and so we’re grateful for them.

God, this world is challenging. It’s challenging to navigate. There’s so much coming at us. There are so many different perspectives. There are so many different voices. It seems so difficult to navigate sometimes.

But God, You are there.

You promise that if we love You with all our heart—our physical life, our emotions, our thoughts, our desires—if we submit all of that to You, devote all of that to You, Your promise is: it will go well with us. We will live.

You don’t promise us ease, but You do promise us life.

So I pray for Foothills Fellowship—every single person in this room, every single person not currently in this room. I pray that collectively, they would spur each other on toward love and good deeds as they submit their hearts to You, and that You would bless them with clarity, purpose, and hope for the road ahead.

That You would direct their path. That they would be the people You have called them to be, displaying the love You have called them to show—for Your glory and the good of the people You’ve given them to love.

We pray this in the powerful and present and redemptive name of Jesus. Amen.