Father in heaven, this weekend, especially we who believe in Christ, I feel, have a unique perspective and appreciation and gratitude for the men and women who have laid down their lives so that we could have freedom, because we have staked our eternity on that exact idea.

That there is a man who laid down his life so we could have freedom.

And God is believers, I believe we have a unique gratitude for the freedoms that includes the freedom to gather and worship without fear of prosecution or persecution.

Unlike many of our brothers and sisters around the world

who are gathering right now in secret, in hiding places, because they are not able to do what we do.

And so we thank you for freedom. We thank you for sacrifice. And God, as we get ready to

jump into your word, we just want to tell you that as many

people as there are gathered at all of our campuses, there are as many unique struggles for which

we need help. And God, I pray that you teach us something good from your word today that will

remind us we have grace and in the second chances that will

guide us in truth for a good step tomorrow and we're trusting you to teach us it's in jesus

name we pray amen well southland it is great to be back if we haven't met my name's carl and i come

here every so often um and i i gotta tell you, before we even jump into our new series, that I have been buds with Scott for, I was trying to count, 23, 25 years, something like that. I've been listening to his sermons for 25 years, and they've always been good. But I just feel the last six, eight months, they've gone to a whole new level

of good. They're like good, good, good now. And it's like more compassion, more boldness, more depth,

more practical stuff, more grace, more truth. Would you just let Scott know that you agree with me

and you think his preaching is just off the chains right now.

And I am so, I get to look down the rows and see everybody filling up their notebooks every week.

If you're new, we take notes here.

And we have notebooks to do it because we believe that when we are that honoring of God's word,

that God's going to do something in and through us through the teaching of God's word every week when we come into our different campuses. If you have your notebook, the word you can write at the top for our key word is joy. We're launching a brand new

series today where we are going to take the book of Philippians in the Bible, which is known to be

a book of joy. Now from the jump which is known to be a book of joy.

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