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Foreign. Sower Nation. It's J.D. walt. Here it is, Thursday, February 26th, in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt. This is your wake up call today again. And what do we want to do today? We want to wake up to Jesus. That's it. If we can wake up to him and rise up in him, man, it's going to be a good day, maybe a hard one, but it'll be good. So let's begin this day in consecration. 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. You know, I imagine Jesus responding to that prayer back to us. What he said even before we prayed it, he says, I belong to you. And you know what if he belongs to us and we belong to him, we won. We, we won the morning, we won the day, we won the life. And so we're walking it out here and our entry today is entitled. This is day 8 of 40. It's entitled it's your turn. You're sitting at the, at the checkerboard and, or the chessboard and, and somebody's done their turn and they going to look back at you and say, it's your turn. I think Jesus is saying that to us. It's your turn, right? He says, I belong to you. I've just shown you in every conceivable possible way that I belong to you. It's turn now. Let's go. Our text today is Matthew 16, verse 16. Another short one here, but profound. Hear now the word of the Lord. Simon Peter answered, you are the Messiah, the son of the living God, the word of the Lord. Now consider this. But what about you? Who do you say that I am? I know it's the third day I've asked this question. Why? Because it is the question of all questions. And because it is a question whose answer is meant to grow larger and more expansive with each passing year. But here's something I have discovered and I suspect you have too. Just because we're growing more in our knowledge about Jesus doesn't mean we are growing to know Jesus more. Most of us have been well trained in an approach to education that focuses on building knowledge. We love facts and data and information and we have gathered a lot of it over the years. Even when it comes to God. Certainly knowledge about God and the Bible is a good thing, but it is not the main thing. The Bible is clear. The goal is not to amass knowledge about something. The goal is to grow in knowing someone, namely Jesus. It's why Jesus comes close. Maybe too close for comfort. I picture him putting his hands on each of my shoulders as he looks into my eyes and and asks me up close and personal, but what about you, John David? Who do you say that I am? He's not looking for me to recall what it might say on his about page. He's not asking for a recital of the Apostles Creed. He's not looking for an affirmation of faith. He's looking for a demonstration of faith. He wants to know where we are in our relationship. It's like he's asking, who am I in relationship to you? He is asking you and me to define the relationship DTR based on how we know him and how we perceive he knows us. That day at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus was not talking to the crowds, but to the 12. He was not looking for a group response, but a personal revelation. We get the impression Peter all but lunged forward with his exuberant response. Simon Peter answered, you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Peter was not giving Jesus a textbook answer, but a transformational affirmation. It was coming not from a place of information, but from revelation. We get the impression Jesus all but lunged forward with his exclamatory reply. Jesus replied, blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. That's verse 17. Peter had given Jesus not an affirmation of the information of faith, but an activation of the revelation of faith itself. Can I say that again, Maxi Dunham style? Let me say that again. Peter had given Jesus not an affirmation of the information of faith, but an activation of the revelation of faith itself. So here we are face to face with Jesus. His hands are on our shoulders. He knows us and he loves us. But he wants to know where we are with him. What is the nature of the relationship? Where is our faith? Who am I to you? He humbly asks, but what about you? Insert your name here. But what about you, Mary? But what about you, Tom? But what about you, Julie? Who do you say that I am? Remember, he's seeking not your knowledge, but your knowing. Not information, but revelation. Not the answer of your head, but the response of your heart. Okay, I'll go first. I noticed in in the prayer about to pray looks like in the editing process someone took it from my first person language to more of a plural language. So I'm going to flip it back because I'm going first. Our Father, thank you for your son, Jesus, and now Lord Jesus, you are the one. I'm just telling you, Jesus, who you are to me, you're the one who never leaves. You're my light and my life. You are my savior and my Lord. You are my all in all, indeed. You're my reason for living. You're my source, you're my strength. You're my joy in sadness, you're my peace in anxiety. Jesus, you are my reason. Jesus, you are my friend. That's it. That's who you are to me. You're my friend. You're my wisdom, you are my confidence. You are my sort of my or. You're my whole orientation to life, to love, to the past, to the future. You're my everything. And I'm praying in your name, Jesus. Amen. And thanks for letting me go there today with you. And something tells me you're going there today with me, with Jesus. More importantly, journal prompts, Today it is your turn. Now it's your turn. How do you respond to Jesus Question, but what about you? Who do you say that I am? I encourage you to just to, to write that, just to let your pen, your pencil just flow free across the page and just begin to say to him, just get right in touch with him, his hands on your shoulders, and you got a chance to just tell him today. And you know what? You can also. And it's really what's most important. It's not. Prayer isn't sort of posing for who we think we ought to be. That's. That's a mask. Just keep it real. Just be who you are, where you are. Jesus cannot deal with the you that you think you ought to be. He can only deal with the you that you really are. And guys, this just. There's no substitute for simple honesty. You know, you can say to him, jesus, you're not who you used to be. To me, I have just found myself slowly drifting, slowly backing away. Some people listening to this, you've. You probably, maybe you're in or you've gone through or going through some kind of a shedding of the religious skin of your past. And you're like, I'm deconstructing is the word. And I'm like, well, good. That probably needed to go. That faith of long ago is not going to get you through now and into your future. You can't deconstruct Jesus. You can't. You can deconstruct a bad understanding of him. You can deconstruct a sort of a fictional framework of Christian faith, but you can't deconstruct him. He's. He. He's indestructible, guys. He went to the cross. That's what we tried to do, to destroy him. Came back from the dead. Oh, my gosh. He is ascended at the right hand of God. He's just right through the veil. He's right here right now, and he's like, you know, I'll take the ashes of that sort of religious construct that maybe you had at one time in your life. Let's just throw that on the ash heap. Let's rebuild now today, with me. With you. That's what we're doing here. We're waking up to the real Jesus because that's where the real you is. That's where the real you and the real me comes forth when we meet and wake up to. And rise up in. And start showing up in our lives in the real Jesus. All right, you ready to sing? We're going to sing today.