For those of you who are new, my name is Miles, and I get the incredible privilege of being the lead pastor of Auburn Community Church.

We're a church that's coming up on five years in existence, y'all.

Five years ago, my wife and I were packing up a ginormous U-Haul and moving from a four-bedroom house in Kennesaw, Georgia to a three-bedroom apartment

in Auburn, Alabama. Shout out to the Arbor's. It doesn't even exist anymore in Auburn. I think

it's called 1322 North Dean, because now it's trendy for your apartment building to just have a number

and the name of a road attached to it. So let's just all name our apartments that.

Thanks for being creative, Auburn.

It's great.

That's the thing.

It's fine.

But so much of my message today, I think, coincides with our journey as a church because as much as it is my tendency to recall the stories of the past five years

and look back on what God has done so

far, I truly believe that God is thinking way more about the next five. And he is thinking about

your role in my role and what he is about to do in and through the life of this church. And we

exist so that people far from God would have barriers

removed between where they are and where Jesus is. And we don't remove any barriers for anybody.

We just announce from our stage that the barrier has been removed. Jesus has died. It is finished

and God is available to you. And so he's going to do that for so many other people. And I'm ready to step into all that he has next. And in this moment, I'm so much more concerned about this moment than any of the moments that we've had together previously. I feel like God has something fresh today. And if you have your Bible, you already know what to do. Hold it up all over this room.

Hold it up, hold it up.

Now, here's what I want to say about this.

Hold it up high. Hold it up high. Shame those who did not bring theirs. Do it. It's okay. Hope you feel this. Don't hold up your phone. It does not count. It's not God breathed. It's inspired, but not God breathed.

I'm just kidding.

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