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Foreign. Silver nation, rise and shine and give God the glory. It's Wednesday, February 25th, in the year of our Lord 2026. This is day seven of the 40 days of Lent. And we're here to meet with Jesus in the word of God today. That's what we're doing. We're here to help each other wake up to Jesus. Because this day, today is today again. And we want to be alive, alert, awake and enthusiastic. Okay? A lot of people are going to be trying to get over the hump today of this week, Wednesday. We're going to help them, but let's get ready ourselves, right? Get ready with me. That's what we're doing here. So wake up, sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. I could almost hear the kids in the backseat of the car on the way to school. I could hear your voices praying that consecration prayer with me today. So good on you. And guys, when we're praying that prayer, we're not just going through the motions. We're walking into the movement of. Of today. We are talking to him. Everything we're saying, guys, we're saying to him. He's alive, he's real, he's here. He's listening, he's leading. We're trying to follow. Okay, today we are going to day seven of the 40 days of Lent. Our. Our entry is entitled From Believing in God to Believing God. Our text is mark, verse, chapter 8, verse 29. It's going to sound familiar to you. It's the question of all questions here. Now, the word of the Lord. But what about you? He asked Jesus, who do you say I am? Peter answered, you are the Messiah, the word of the Lord. Now consider this. In the early days of the church, the 40 days before the Day of Resurrection were set apart for training and preparing new Christians for baptism. Over the years, the church began to call these baptismal candidates a strange term, catechumens. Sounds kind of like caterpillars, doesn't it? Which kind of fits. Catechumens. This word comes from the term catechesis. Catechesis is biblical and doctrinal instruction given to candidates preparing for baptism or confirmation. It is based on what is called a catechism, which is a long series of questions and answers. So reviewing confirmation is the process of catechumens going through the process of catechesis by learning the answers to a long series of biblical and doctrinal questions, accomplished by engaging and often memorizing a catechism. Now, here's what I know. A person can learn all the answers to all the questions and still fail the test. Take it a step further. A person can make an A on the test and still fail the class. In fact, if a person knows all the answers to all the questions but still misses the answer to the question of all questions, all their learning will have been for naught. You remember the question of all questions, right? But what about you? Who do you say that I am? You see, all the answers to all the questions of catechumens and catechesis and catechism are good. We might even say they are essential. However, they can so easily fall short of what Jesus might call the only necessary thing. Why? Because all the answers to all the questions keep us in the place of believing things about God. They can keep us focused on the preliminary question, who do people say I am? Which is another way of asking, what do other people believe about me? So the only necessary thing comes down to the only necessary question. It will be the question at the starting line, and at the finish line, it'll be on the final. It's not do you believe in God? It's much deeper than that. The question is, do you believe God? A sick person is cured not by believing in the medicine, but by taking it. We are not saved from the curse of sin and the problem of our sins by mentally assenting to biblical doctrine. We are not saved by trying harder to be better so that we might somehow overcome our unsolvable problem. We hear this headline, we are saved by grace through faith in the atoning life, death, resurrection, ascension and coming return of Jesus Christ. Period. Full stop. My phone started ringing in the middle of that sentence, almost like an alarm was sounding. I'm going to say it again. We are saved by grace alone, through faith, alone in the atoning life. Atoning. It means to bring at one. It's to bring things divided, separated, broken into oneness, into wholeness. The atoning life. This is Jes. Death, resurrection, ascension and coming return of Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Our Father, thank you for your son, Jesus. Lord Jesus. Your gift to us of yourself came at an unimaginable cost and is an unspeakable joy. Would you awaken us by the Holy Spirit to grasp higher, deeper, wider and longer for an understanding of you beyond our natural capacities, that we could know this gift in our heart of hearts. Praying in Jesus name. Amen. Okay, journal prompts. Have you thought of capital S sin and little S sins in the framework of sickness and symptoms before? Like capital S, sin is the sickness, but the way you know you got the sickness is the little S sins. That's what it. How it shows up. Well, how does that understanding help you better understand the fallen condition of human beings and the cure? You know, sometimes I didn't grow up with the notion of catechism and catechesis. I mean, they didn't use that terminology. It's kind of come back into vogue now. And it's. It's a good thing for sure. But just getting. Learning all this stuff is not faith. You're learning all the things that really are true about God. They're imperative and important, and you believe them about God. But the goal of all that isn't to get all the right answers to all the right questions. The goal of it is to actually get us to believe God. Okay, to take the medicine. I think that was a good question. Or I got got into in the entry today about you, you got a bad disease and the doctor gives you the medicine. And just believing in that medicine, just like, well, I believe it's this and I believe it's that, and I believe it'll cure me. I won't get it done. You gotta take it. You see, faith is taking the medicine. Faith is inviting. Jesus is like, Jesus, you. I gotta have you. You gotta come in here. You gotta. You gotta do what only you can do. Wake me up to the reality of you, not the routine of religion. Okay, religion, guys, it's not a bad thing, but it can become a substitute for the real thing. Religion is kind of like the scaffolding around a cathedral, A great building, but it's not about the scaffolding. It's about the cathedral. It's about the thing. Jesus. Speaking of medicine, I was thinking about this when I was in high school. I got. I had bad tonsils and I would get tonsillitis, and then it would somehow morph over into strep throat. Some doctors out there thinking, that's not how it works, son. Okay, here's what happened. I got the doctor, I got it bad. He prescribed me some kind of an antibiotic. I started taking the medicine. It was working. But as soon as I felt better, I stopped taking the medicine. I thought, well, I'm done. I'm better. I feel better. I just quit Taking it every day, y'. All. I got real sick at that point. I went back to the doctor and he. He diagnosed me at that point with like the tonsillitis become. The strep throat now had become rheumatic fever because I just quit. You see, this is what happens to so many Christians. It's like, well, I. I accepted Jesus as my savior. I'm good. You know, I'm going to go to heaven when I die and stop taking the medicine. And they wonder why, like, nothing's really changed in my life. Well, I'm. I'm just destined to sin, right? I'm just. I'm just going to keep fighting these symptoms the rest of my life. And Jesus is much better than that. He's like, no, we're. I'm going to first deal with the sickness. That's my blood applied to your heart. I'm going to save you from sin. Capital S, sin. I'm going to cure you from sin, cancer. And then I'm going to help you deal with all those symptoms, all those patterns that sin created in your life. I'm gonna. I'm gonna help you become truly remarkable as a human being. A person who is love, who is on fire, who does inestimable good in the world, who lights up the room when they come in. Because it's me in them secret that just keep taking the medicine every day. Jesus, wake up. Sleeper, right? Rise from the dead. He's shining. He's shining. If we don't rise from the dead, just not through us. We gotta wake up. We gotta take the medicine. We gotta receive Jesus in the deep place, in the deeper place, in the deepest place. This is the journey. It's a good one. It's not easy. It's. Well, it's. It's. It's simple, but it's. It's demanding. That's how I would put it. Takes focus attention, but just staying with it. All right, guys, it's time to sing today. You ready? All right, everybody, it's time to sing today. And you know, some people I know just maybe turn off before we sing.