Culture & Christianity: The Allen Jackson Podcast - 10 Keys to Cultivating Intentional Faith

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

Beginning a new year is the perfect time to reflect on how we can lead our lives with intentional faith. "I think we oftentimes imagine faith as a passive thing, and I don't accept that definition. I think faith has to be lived out. It has to be demonstrated to be real," Pastor Allen stated. In this podcast, Pastor Allen gives us 10 practical ways we can intentionally live out our faith in our homes, communities, workplaces, and beyond. Faith is not about worshiping with the right music, reading the right Bible version, or memorizing the right verses. It’s about making daily decisions that honor God and being obedient to His Word. Whether we're experiencing times of joy or struggle, cultivating an intentional faith will shape our behaviors, habits, and choices in every situation. More Information:Bible Reading Plan: https://allenjackson.com/bible-reading/

Well, welcome to culture and Christianity and to 2025. We have made it through a year of much turmoil and confusion and so much stuff. And here we are with a new year in front of us. It's one of the favorite times of the year for me. Right at the very beginning of January, my favorite time when I was in school was the beginning of a semester. Because for a few precious days, I wasn't behind. I mean, I was at the top of my class for a day or two.

And every time at the beginning of the year, I like that fresh calendar, a new set of opportunities. I've come to the conclusion that everybody's not like that. You know, I've led a staff team now for quite a while. And one of the more challenging times for me in coaching people is in this window of the year because a lot of times they see the beginning of the year as burdensome. It's like, oh, we've got to go do it again. And I guess it's the Lord's grace in my life. I never got caught in that.

I'm excited about the privilege that there's a clean calendar and a new set of opportunities and some objectives. And I pray that you're beginning the year that way. If you're not, that's a little bit of the purpose of the podcast today. I want to talk to you a little bit about that. We're going to talk about an intentional faith, but really just beyond faith. I have a question for you. It's the question I'm asking myself is, what do I intend to be the answer? outcome of this year. What do I hope will be the outcome or what I like the outcome to be or

what am I praying for? But what do I intend the outcome to be? Because in that, everything changes. And so often in the context of our faith, and since I'm a pastor, that's the arena that I live in and think about and work with the most, I think oftentimes faith we imagine is a passive thing. And I don't accept that as a definition of faith. I think in faith is any way. I think in faith is anything but passive. I think faith has to be lived out. It has to be demonstrated to be real. And so in intentional faith, we're talking about the intent of our faith for this year. Do we have the discipline to implement something? What I hear Christians say to me so often is, you know, well, if God wants me to have it, he'll give it to me. Or if God wants me to do it,

he'll show it to me. Or just whatever God has for me, I'm okay with that. I'm receptive to that. to which I typically respond, baloney, which is a Greek word that means I strongly disagree. I think you could go to hell with that attitude. You know, if God wants me to go to hell, he will save me. No, he won't. The Bible says that we have to believe in our heart and confess with our mouth in order to be saved. So intent matters. So as we look at our calendar year, again, the question is what do you intend to give expression to as a part of your faith this year?

Do you intend to be a more bold advocate for Jesus? Do you intend to grow spiritually? Do you intend to be more generous with your time, with your talent, with your treasure? Do you intend? What do you intend? You know, what are you dreaming about? What are you aspiring to? I'm not talking about a motivational speech.

I'm talking about reality. I like a very practical expression to my faith. In fact, there's some words I want to unpack with you. I think they'll help us get to the heart of this discussion. And then I'm going to give you a list of some things you can think about. And you could shape some intent around one or two or three or four, whatever makes sense to you. But there's some words, and I think we confuse them in the context of our Christian discussions. We talk about training and trying and sincerity.

And what I hear Christians say to me pretty frequently is, oh, you know, Pastor, I tried that and it didn't work. You know, or I mean, I really did. I tried. I was sincere. I meant it. There were tears involved. I was as earnest as I could be. And I have to be careful because you need to answer with compassion. But the real honest answer is who cares? Because you see, if the outcomes really matter, trying is not enough. If life and death is in the balance, if the significance of the outcome is going to determine the future of someone or something in a meaningful way, And the best answer you've got is I tried.

I don't want you on my team. Because trying really is not adequate. What is necessary is training. And if you've been around church much, we've had this discussion a good bit through the years. The purpose of training is to enable us to accomplish something that was previously impossible. So we would adopt a set of behaviors, practices, exercises, thoughts, learning, any number of things can go into training, but we will use the discipline to engage in a set of behaviors that would enable us to accomplish something at some point in the future that today would be impossible no matter

how desperately we tried. You could be some, you know, suppose you said to me you would give me $10 million if I could run an eight-minute mile. I probably could not take your money today. but if you would put up that money and make a commitment six months from today, I will empty your pockets. I'll find a way. I'll change my diet. I'll change my habit. I'll change my sleep schedule. I think it's been a while since I've run a mile, but I'm for $8 million, whatever, I'll get focused on the training process. You get the idea. But Christians get confused on this, and they said to me, well, I tried. And then we don't understand what trying is. Trying has a value.

Trying reveals our current ability. Trying reveals the effectiveness of our training or the lack thereof. Trying identifies areas where we want to grow. So it's not that trying is bad. Trying is a necessary component of improvement or flourishing or success. But trying is not the ultimate. measure. And if you're using trying as the boundary of what excellence is, it seems to me that it's a very childlike approach. Kids would go, well, I tried, and it didn't work, so I quit. And a part of

maturity is learning that you can develop skills or abilities or awareness or you can learn. And so I don't want to eliminate trying from your life. You know, I read once that Edison failed over 900 times in developing the light bulb, Thomas Edison. And after he was successful, a reporter asked him if he got discouraged that he had failed over 900 times. And he said, not at all. He said, I realized there was 900 steps in the development of a light bulb. And so I'm not opposed to trying.

I'm opposed to trying being what precedes quitting. Trying precedes change and improvement and determination and perseverance. You know, the other word that gets caught up in this is sincerity. And people think because they're sincere, they made their best effort. And that's just really an incomplete understanding. It's an immature understanding. The significance of sincerity is authenticity. Sustained outcomes require sincere efforts.

Authentic character. You have to have enough character. or formation to stay with it until you can actually demonstrate some improved competencies or abilities or awareness. Lacking sincerity, it's highly improbable that you will stand under pressure or when you're tired or when there's a distraction. So it isn't that sincerity is unimportant, but sincerity is not a replacement for training, for disciplined effort. So again, let's come back to the this notion of what do you intend for your life this year? Not what do you hope would happen? I'm not against hope. Hope is powerful, but hope is different than intent. Hope is future-based.

Intent speaks to my behavior today. What am I doing today so that tomorrow I'll be a step closer to the outcome that I've said is important to me. It is such an important principle. And what I love about it is it's available to everybody. You don't have to have a three-digit IQ. You don't have to have freakish physical gifts. You don't have to have a double portion of creativity. You don't have to have a special musical awareness. You don't have to have a perception of color that makes you separate from the rest of us. You can check the box at normal and everything.

And you can intend to grow and still have a pathway that will lead you towards something exceptional. So please, let's begin our year, first of all, by saying that God didn't make junk. that he gave every one of us gifts and talents and abilities and opportunities. Maybe not perfect. They may not even be the opportunities you wanted, but God has given those to us. And we can complain. We can look enviously at other people. We can be angry.

We can be resentful. We can be bitter. Many things we can choose. Or we can choose an expression of intent that says, I will cooperate with God. And I'll make 2025 the most remarkable year I've ever lived. See, I believe our decision to do that changes the nature of the experience. And when it comes to our faith, again, we have been so passive that we've had this attitude. You know, I'll just take what God gives me.

That's not my response. That's at all to God. I am determined. We've been processing this whole study on breakthroughs of late that when God puts an invitation in front of me, I am practicing saying yes. If it means that I have to change my calendar, my schedule, my workflow, if I have to, have to be willing to learn something, if I have to grow, my answer is yes. Now, I understand what you say no to is as important as what you say yes to, but I think most of us are better at saying no than we are at saying yes to the Lord. And I've stopped reciting my CV, my curriculum Vitae,

about when I was born again, when I was baptized in the spirit, when I was baptized in water, what I have done, the mission trips I've been on, how many sermons I've preached, how many times I've read my Bible. Not relevant. I mean, all may be background information, but what's really relevant is what is God inviting me to now in this calendar year, and what's my response going to be?

I'm not content. I'm not complacent. I'm not backing up. I don't intend to slow down or stop. I will serve the Lord with enthusiasm. You know, we just completed an election cycle. And we're seeing all these new names headed to Washington, D.C., we think.

assuming there is Senate approval for those that need Senate approval. And they're going with new agendas and new plans and new purposes. And depending on where you are in the political spectrum, you're either dreading that or celebrating that. Either way, there's probably a lot of emotion around that. But the reality is one individual isn't going to bring complete transformation to hold departments of government, whole segments of a government bureaucracy that's as big and unwieldy as the one that we have.

Real meaningful change will come because of good, leadership and because of a decision in the hearts of multiplied millions of people that we've been going the wrong direction. And that's the part of this equation that I've been given a privilege of speaking into. And so I'm asking you to not look at Washington, D.C. and say, you need to fix our problems. I'm asking you to look in the mirror and saying, God, I intend to honor you this year in such a way that it would please you to bring blessings, not only into my life, but into the community where I live, the home where I'm at, the school I attend, the place where I work. I intend to be engaged in your purposes. If you'll make that statement with me, I want to give you some things to think about. Just some simple expressions of faith.

Pick the ones where you think you could improve your serve. Maybe there's an opportunity where you could be better at that, or you'd be willing to allow God to help you grow. These aren't new. I've used these around the church for a while. You know, the first one has been a part of our congregation now for quite a while. I intend to read through my Bible this year. I do.

And actually, I've read my Bible before. I kind of know the story. I could probably even name the books. I can spell most of them, some of them in another language. But I intend to read my Bible this year because I understand that it keeps me grounded. It keeps me in touch with the character of God. It provides a daily opportunity for the Spirit of God to awaken, enlighten, inform. I don't feel like I have mastered the time.

topic. I'm at the pinnacle of what it means to be a person of faith. I'm a learner. And in order to keep learning, I've got to stay in touch with the text. So I want to invite you to join me in that. About 15 minutes a day, you can read through your Bible. But actually, I want to change that a little bit. I don't want to just read my Bible this year. I'm inviting other people to read their Bible with me. And I wonder if you would be willing to join me with that intent. Could you recruit somebody to read it with you? Let's do it in increments. We can read through the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, if we read about 10, 15 minutes a day, in about 60 days, see if you can recruit somebody that would read the Gospels with you over the next 60 days.

Or maybe if you think they're a little more receptive than that, we can read the whole New Testament in about 90 days. So we'd take three months, a quarter of the year, and we could read through the whole New Testament together. It doesn't mean I'm going to check in every day, but it means every week or so or with some frequency, I want to check in and go, how are you doing with the reading? What did you think about that?

You know, one of those stories we read this week was most impactful for you. I find that I get better outcomes when I'm talking about expressions of discipline if I make a commitment to another person. So here's the challenge. Recruit somebody to read your Bible with you. If we get through the New Testament, maybe we want to pick up the books of Moses. That's the first five books of the Old Testament. They set the tone for the whole rest of the Bible. That's about another quarter's worth of reading.

So if we did that, we'd be six months into the year. Here's why I think that matters. If we could get several thousand or 100,000 people reading their Bible, it would bring the blessing of God. And if we can do something that will bring the blessing of God to our home, our community, our school, our place of business, our congregation, that will add momentum to the people that are working to try to bring good changes at other levels of our culture.

That's something I can do. I haven't been elected to office. I haven't been tagged to go to D.C. They don't want me to be an ambassador anywhere, but I've got a kingdom role as an ambassador. So I'm going to read my Bible, recruit some people to read their Bible with me, and I believe God will bless us in that.

So I'm giving you that invitation. If you've never read your Bible, if you've read it every year for the last 40 years, let's go in 2025. Let's read through our Bible this year, but let's start with the Gospels. It's a biblical idea. Joshua 1-8 says,

don't let this book of the law depart out of your mouth. So let's just go practice. If you've got younger children at home, let me suggest you read it out loud with them. I know that's intrusive on your daily routine, but what if you spent 15 minutes a day in your home reading your Bible with the kids? You say, well, they'd hate it. They would, perhaps, initially, but they will come to understand the great value you attach to that. And that would be one of the greatest legacies you could give them as a parent. So one of the things we're going to intend to do is read our Bible.

The second thing I want to suggest is I intend to pray daily. Every day I want to pray. I'm just going to talk to God. I want to invite God into my life. I don't want a single day going by this year where I don't invite God into the circumstances. That just makes no sense to me. How many people do you message a day on your phone? I text through a conversation, through some sort of social media contact.

how many ways do you communicate in a day? How can we imagine a day that would go by when we don't purposefully invite God into a circumstance and yet we would say we intend to cooperate with him? That's just illogical to me. So build prayer into your routine, your habit. Maybe you want to recruit somebody to pray with you or some way to give an accountability to that, but I intend to pray. The third one is I intend to honor God in my home.

Folks, the hardest place in the world to be a Christian is in your house. Because the kids that see you kick the dog in the backyard are the same kids that hear you say, now it's time to read the Bible. Or the same spouse that you have an argument with is the same spouse that you want to pray with before you go to work or before you go to sleep. It's the hardest place in the world because the people who live with you, they are more aware of your inconsistencies than anyone else. It's also the most important place to honor the Lord. So it isn't about being perfect. In fact, it's one of the great places to cultivate authenticity. You know, I'm not always the man I want to be or the husband I want to be or the father I want to be, but I want to honor

God in my home. I want to honor him with you more than I want to honor him with anybody else. So if you would allow me, I just want to say a blessing for you before I go to work. You know, fellas, I talk to you for a minute. Before you leave the house in the morning, bless the people in your house. God, thank you for my wife. Bless her today in Jesus' name. Amen. And just hush while you're ahead. Don't pray for everything you can think up. If you've got kids that are headed to school, Father, I pray that you'll watch over the children at school today. In Jesus' name, amen.

It's a simple way to honor God in your home. You find the expression that makes sense for you. And if your house is divided, if everybody in your home doesn't share the same faith, stop being mad at that. You know, life is not perfect. It's far more difficult than I would like it to be most days. Jesus was rejected more places than he was accepted. Ultimately, they crucified him.

If giving expression to God's assignment for his life was difficult, I don't think you and I should imagine that God's assignment for us is always going to be fun or easy or simple. And if your home is complex, if you have a blended family and that adds stress, I would remind you Jesus had one of those. Jesus had a borrowed dad. You know, our heroes in the Bible, if you read their stories, some of them come, from some pretty torqued up families. So don't allow the difficulty of your circumstance to rob you of the decision to honor God

in your home. If you can't do that overtly, if you can't do it out loud because of the circumstances, you do it quietly. And you just begin to quietly, privately thank God for the place God has put you. And you say, I intend to honor you in the midst of this circumstance until you change my circumstances. God is faithful. I have absolutely confidence in Him.

So I intend to honor God in my home. The fourth one is I intend to work with integrity. Work is a part of our assignment under the sun. We're assigned to work. God, when we meet God in the opening chapters of Genesis, he's working a six-day week, and he's working 12-hour days. He's working from sun up to sundown.

As soon as there's a sun to rise and fall. So he's making a pretty significant effort. Jesus, we're told in Scripture that God is working until this day. So there is a place for rest, but I think it's been over-emphasized in our culture. And we have taken the dignity away from work. There is an innate dignity and work that cannot be built into your life any other way. And I would encourage you to begin to work with an integrity before the Lord. And Scripture says, whatever God gives you to do, do it under the Lord.

I've had some jobs in my life that were not very dignified. I cleaned stalls. I've cleaned kennels. You know, it may sound kind of fanciful or romantic to work around animals, but if that's your job and you have to do it every day, it's not so fun. But somewhere along the way I figured out I could do that as unto the Lord. There are things that are part of my job now that are part of a routine,

and they've been a routine for a long time. You can see them as intrusive and oppressive or demeaning, or you can see them as an opportunity to worship the Lord. Let's determine, let's have the intent to work with integrity. It'll change everything. If you have children, I would submit that you want to intend to teach your children to respect God and his people. That that's a primary life assignment, more than you want to teach him to be great at athletics, more than you want to teach them a lot of things.

Have the intent to teach your children to respect God and his people. I think one of the things that we do that is a great disservice to children is we let them hear us complain about our Christian friends. And when you do that, you take away from them a great deal of motivation. I'm not asking you to be deceptive or deceitful, but don't bring all your frustrations home regarding the people that you worship with and plant them in the hearts and minds of your children.

There are no perfect churches. If you found one, you couldn't join it, you'd mess it up. We all have to be in a community where we understand that we will help one another be better. Now, that's not an excuse for sloppiness or ungodliness or immorality, but it is an acknowledgement that we need community. Teach your children to respect God and his people. But the Sixthland is related to that. I intend to faithfully participate in church.

I know it's out of fashion. I can stream it. I can watch it on my phone. I can watch it on YouTube. I don't want to be bound to somebody else's schedule. I don't have to go to church to be a Christian. No, you don't. I don't have to go home tonight to be married either,

but my marriage will work better if I go home. We have gotten really sloppy with this. We are biblically told not to give up meeting together. All throughout Scripture. In the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, there's the pilgrimage feast where multiple times a year God directs the nation to go to Jerusalem, to be together as a part of worship.

In the New Testament, it says, they met daily together. You know, we need community. You're not going to reach maturity as a Christ follower by yourself, alone, isolated. So the faithful participation in a community of faith, that if you're in a church that doesn't honor the word of God, if you're in a church that doesn't honor the uniqueness of Jesus, leave.

I don't care how many generations your family's been there. I don't care what the label on the sign says. It's a false church. Jesus put it this way. If you're following a blind guide, stop. Having said that, if they are honoring the authority of Scripture and they're honoring the redemptive work of Jesus, then I think you can find a way in that community of faith to serve.

You can be fed many ways, but you need the protection, the community that comes from a group of like-minded believers. The seventh thing I would suggest you can consider for your intentional faith this year is I intend to cooperate with the Holy Spirit. We have a lot of language for the Holy Spirit, but very little intent. And I find that very unfortunate. One of the labels that used for the Holy Spirit that Jesus used was the Holy Spirit as a guide. He will teach us.

And I have traveled around the world. I've been to Israel many, many, many. many times, but I've been other nations in the world. Sometimes I'm on my own. You land in a strange city, in a strange airport, and you have to navigate everything by yourself. Other times, I have been met by someone who has local knowledge, who speaks the language. They know where the better restaurants are, where their better hotels are, where the sites of significance are, where the location where I'm supposed to go make a presentation is. And if you have a guide, everything is exponentially easier. Can I do it on my own? Yes. But it takes more time, more effort. I make more mistakes.

It's more difficult. Well, we have been given a guide. And his name is the Holy Spirit. It's not an it. It's a he. And if that offends your sensibilities, I apologize. It just happens to be biblical. But he will guide us, Jesus said, into all truth. He'll take the things we need to know and reveal them to us. Jesus got his closest friends together before his passion began and he said, I have a great deal more I need to say to you right now, more than you can bear. I have more information to give you than you're emotionally capable of receiving at the moment. But when he comes, I'll send you a comforter and when he comes,

he will guide you into all truth. So there's some things we can learn from Jesus in the scriptures, and there's some things that we have to learn. We need to learn with the help of the whole. Holy Spirit. So here's a suggestion. This year, let's intend to cooperate with him more fully than we ever have. That'll mean different things to different people. But let's at least hold that intent. I will cooperate. Number eight, I intend to tithe. This one's not complicated. I intend to honor God with my money. My opinion, you can disagree with me. We could probably both still go to

heaven. I decided many, many years ago when I was a very young man that I would give the first tenth of what the Lord gave to me to him. It isn't mine. It belongs to the Lord. I'm not giving him something. It's his. So I don't get an add-a-boy. I don't get a pat on the back. I don't get my chest puffed out because I've paid my tithes last year. I believe those resources belong to the Lord. I can take you to some scriptures, but it isn't a legalistic thing. The truth is everything I have belongs to the Lord. My life changed when I understand that my life wasn't my life. I had a life plan.

I had a life career. I was on my way to professional school. I'd done almost all the undergraduate work. I had built the applications. I knew what I wanted to do. I was well along the way with momentum. And I had this crisis of awareness that I had never said to the Lord, what do you want me to do? Because I was living as if it were my life.

And it terrified me. I didn't want to ask the Lord what he wanted me to do because I didn't want to know. And the reality is I could have lived my whole life, my days, my choice, my agenda, my way, my will. And I would have missed whatever God might have had for me. So when I was willing to say, Lord, what do you have for me? My life began to unfold in different directions. It wasn't always easy. I had some tremendous failures after that, some great pain, some heartache,

heartbreak, but God has been faithful to lead me. And a part of that was understanding that the money he entrusted to me, it's all his. And the way I give expression to that is I give him that first tenth. If you've never done it, and I think your tithe belongs to wherever you get fed. So if you have a local church where you go and you worship with those people, I believe your tithe belongs there, wherever you would go for care. If you got news, you never wanted to get, who are you going to call? but begin to practice the tide. It will change your relationship with the Lord. He will become your sustainer.

Jesus taught us to pray this way. He said, when he taught us a prayer, he said, give us this day our daily bread. He didn't tell us to trust the government or social security or my education or my hard work or my diligence or the strength of the economy or Wall Street or my investment portfolio or my broker or whomever. God is the one who sustains our future.

and the way I give expression to that faith is through my faithfulness in tithing. I would invite you to it. If you've never done it, it's a learned response. It's not intuitive. By nature, I'm selfish. Remember my parents when I was a kid, I've got two brothers.

And my parents would try to teach me to share. And I always thought it was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard. And I have a bag of M&M's. I said, don't you want to give some to your brothers? No, I don't. I wanted to eat them all. And my brothers get their own M&M and M&M. They weren't my problem.

And I had to learn the discipline of sharing. And in the same way, you have to learn the discipline of giving. But the intent to tithe will change the kind of peace that you have to live in the midst of a tumultuous world. God will secure your future. Number nine, I intend to grow in my faith and in God's involvement in my life. I have no intention this year of maintaining the status quo. I will not finish 2025 with the same routines that I'm beginning. with. I very much intend to serve the Lord in new ways. I will try to do my best to follow the

opportunities that I feel like he puts in front of me. In 2024, we started this podcast. I'd have any intention of doing that in 2023. Somebody came to me and said, we think you could do this. We would help you do this. No, I'm not really good. They said, no, there's a whole group of people that, whatever. So ultimately, I prayed. I said, okay, I'm in. I'll do that. There's several things that happened in 2024 that weren't on my to-do list, but when God put the invitation in front of me, I said, I'll make the effort, I'll find the resources, I'll do

the preparation, I'll fail enough to get better at something, I intend to grow in my faith, I want to know the Lord better, I want to serve with more enthusiasm, I want to be more available to him, I'm not holding up my past and saying, look at how well I've

done. We've got to get over ourselves, folks. Our churches have been too filled with too much self- righteous, smug, condescending Christianity, or we meet too many, I meet people all the time who knew how it should be done and they have no intention of doing it. If you don't intend to make it better, don't tell me about your perception of the problem. I'm not interested. Everybody in the bleachers is a genius. It's when you get down onto the muddy field and you're struggling for the score with the last bit of energy you've got, that your opinion becomes very relevant.

sitting in the bleachers, everybody's a genius. Get in the game. And finally, I intend to say yes to godliness and no to ungodliness. And what that is for me is really an admission that no matter where you are in your life journey or your spiritual journey, you can be a professional Christian or a novice, you can be a young person or a not so young person, and you still live in the tension between this pull between godliness and ungodliness. You never get so old that ungodliness is not appealing. And I don't think you ever get so spiritual that you're not aware of invitations to diminish your efforts towards the Lord.

I have to carry the intent daily, weekly, monthly, consistently to honor the Lord with my life. If I yield on that intent, the outcomes of my life, the expressions of my faithfulness will begin to change dramatically. I know that's a long list. There's 10 things. You can go back through this and pick them up again. I don't imagine that any of us are going to highlight all 10 of those in 2025. Pick one or two that resonate with you. Maybe pick the ones where you're the weakest.

You know, I still work out from time to time. And my least favorite exercises are the ones that expose where I'm weak. I like to do the things that show my strength. But the reality is I can't get stronger unless I work on the places where I don't have that strength. And so maybe you choose the ones that are the least appealing to you. Recruit somebody. Say, I intend to do this as a part of my routine this year. Maybe you would join me in that. There's discipline that will be reinforced if we make a commitment together. Underlying all of that is the willingness to read our Bible. It'll

bring the blessing of God to your life. We have a new year. We have a lot of changes that are being implemented in our nation and around the world. God is moving in the earth in a way. I haven't seen him move in my lifetime. I hear expressions of that from around the globe. It's humbling. It's remarkable. It's exciting. I don't want to stay on the sidelines. Don't wait until you think you have the perfect circumstance. There's never the perfect circumstance. I'm always too busy or there's just some reason. It begins with the intent in my heart. So here's my suggestion. And I'm going to wrap this up. Stop trying. If you'd say to me, you know, I have tried honoring the Lord, I've tried going to church, I've tried being godly, stop. I don't want you to try anymore.

I want you to start training. I want you to write down a protocol of choices, behaviors, attitudes that will help you gain momentum towards what you want to do with the Lord in your life. It may mean a not-to-do list. That can be as important. as your to-do list. Stop trying. Start training. You'll need sincerity to do it, but sincerity alone isn't enough.

You know, if I need to have surgery, I don't want a surgeon who tries. I want a surgeon who trained. Now, I want him to try, but if he hasn't trained, his trying won't make any difference. He can be sincere, but he can be sincerely ignorant,

and I will suffer for it. So let's make a commitment in 2025 to be as on purpose with our faith as we've ever been, to be as intentional with our faith. I hold the intent to honor God in my life this year beyond any year in my existence so far, and I want to invite you to join me. With God's help, we'll keep working on these podcasts,

and I'll introduce you to some people that can help, and I'll try to add a note of encouragement from time to time. Between now and then, we're going to take our faith impact our culture in a way that when we see the Lord, he can say well done to every one of us. God bless you and happy New Year. As we begin a new year, we have new opportunities unfolding before us to grow in our faith and make a difference for the kingdom of God. And it has never been more vital for us to lead with our faith at our kitchen tables,

our workplaces, and our communities. Join us as we read through the Bible cover to cover. Making a commitment to read your Bible daily will significantly transform your spiritual life. As you read, you'll gain a deeper understanding of the character of God and a greater awareness of what he's doing in the earth. We want to support and equip you to stand firmly in truth so you can boldly lead with your faith. You can download the app or go to the website at wchurch.org for more information.

Let's make an intentional effort to seek the Lord and invite the Holy Spirit to work in our lives as we read the Word of God together this year. Hey, thanks for joining me today. Before you go, please like the podcast and leave a comment so more people can hear about this topic too. If you haven't yet, be sure to subscribe to Alan Jackson Ministries YouTube channel and follow the Culture and Christianity podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Together, let's learn how to lead with our faith and change our culture. I'll see you next time.