Welcome to Gateway Church's podcast.

Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

If you're going to clap, do it well.

So glad you're in church today and week two of Happy But Hollow.

It's going to be a great time together.

It's been a great weekend. And today's Patriot Day. I don't know if you know that, but a time where we honor first responders, please, firefighters, EMT, EMS, nurses, all those who serve us so well. And so if you would stand, if you don't mind, we want to honor you across the room. If you would stand for us you serving that way yeah come on thank god for you bless you thank you thank you thank you what a gift you are to our communities and and we're just very, very grateful for how you selflessly serve others.

It is the very heart of Jesus.

And so thank you so much.

You can be seated.

I want to remind you that we're on this Happy But Hollow Bible reading plan.

It's really through the book of philippians and

we had so much engagement last week the team told me that it was by far um a record number of

people that engaged with the bible reading plan i think over 4700 people um have said i'm

going to start reading through the book of philippians together 1700 were brand new never engaged with anything like that through the church and you're going to do that you'm going to start reading through the book of Philippians together. 1,700 were brand new, never engaged with anything like that through the church. And you can still jump in. It's not too late to get a part of that. So text happy. You can get your phone out right now and then put it away. It'll be looking at TikTok during the message. I'm kidding. Text happy to 71010. and you'll get a link right to your phone and that's the way i used it

this week and uh enjoyed it and we give you even a simple way on how to learn to do devotions if you're

not in the habit of doing that i want you to get in the habit um if this is the only time you spiritually

have a meal every week um you're going to be weak in your faith,

just like you would be weak in your body if you only ate once a week. You need to take in the word of God every day. And so there's a simple way to do that, and we give it to you in the devotional. And it's simply the word soap. It's an acronym, and it just stands for this. The S is for scripture, so we'll give you a scripture reading. The O is for observation. It's what did God say to me in the reading? And then the A is for application. What do I need to apply to my life? Because growth happens in steps, and steps happen as you apply the Word of God into your life. And then the P is for prayer. Just close in prayer.

And here's the deal. There's no better way to start your day than in the Word of God.

And so just start somewhere. You don't have to start with an hour in prayer. Maybe you get there,

maybe you don't. But just start. Say I can get up 15 minutes earlier. I can set the coffee timer

15 minutes earlier. And I can go through this simple scripture reading, five or so verses. What did God say to me? How am I going to apply it? And then end in prayer. And I promise you, it'll start your day better. I promise you you'll know Jesus more. You'll fall more in love with him as you fall in love with his word. All right. So everybody do that.

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