Sunday 8th February 2026

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNIJkMGTSVA

Nollamara Church Of Christ Sermons.

Raw transcript of meeting:

Date Of Sermon: 8^th February 2026

Speaker: Jamie Boland

Sermon Title: Something New

Scripture Reading: Isaiah 43:14-19

 Um, today's reading is taken from Isaiah chapter 43 verses 14 to 19. This is what the Lord says, your redeemer, the holy one of Israel. For your sake, I will send to baby Babylon and bring down as fugitives or the Babylonians in the ships in which they took pride. I am the Lord your holy one, Israel's creator, your king.

This is what the Lord says. He who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters, who drew out the chariots and horses, the army and reinforcements together, and they lay there never to rise again. Distinguished, snuffed out like a week. Forget the former things. Do not dwell on the past. See, I'm doing a new thing now.

It spring up. Do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wastelands. May God bless his reading.

Thank you for the reading May Fong. So last week we wrapped up our look at the Exodus story. Today I want us to look at something similar, but different. And the title of our message is something New. Let's, let's commit this Time to the Lord. Father, we thank you that we can gather today. Here is your people.

Lord, we invite you to speak Holy Spirit. Let us have ears to hear what it is you would say to us as a church father, we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, I came a across this picture recently. Can you see this? I think it's gonna resonate with most of us here. It says, my ability to remember song lyrics from the 1980s far exceeds my ability to remember why I walked into the kitchen.

Now I think most of us here know what I'm talking about. Yeah. Now maybe we could eat. Stretch this a little to include everyone. This one simply says the sixties, seventies, and eighties. But as I look around, there's a few younger faces today, maybe you can't identify with this. Now, you're probably gonna laugh because you know, you think, I'm so young.

Every time I talk about aging, you guys look at me and say, I, you know, I've got no idea what I'm talking about. But here's a fact. As I get older, this is increasingly becoming my experience. You know, I'll be sitting at the table, I'm doing something, I, I move to another room. And by the time I get there, I've completely forgotten why I went there.

What I, you know what it is I was meant to do. And so I end up retracing my footsteps in order to jog my memory. Now you definitely know what I'm talking about. Yes, yes. Now, maybe some of you who are a bit younger are saying, I have no idea. Now, here's a reality. As we get older, our cognitive ability begins to decline.

Okay. We start off in life. We've got this exponential growth potential. We grow, grow, grow when we're young, and as we get older, we have that same exponential growth, but in reverse. It's a decline. Now it's something I've encountered as I do visitations. You know, I'm sitting with people and I'm seeing firsthand this fear of forgetting.

We don't want to forget. Amen. We want to remember. And it's painful. It's painful as people sit there and watch as loved ones lose touch with precious memories. We want to remember just as equally as we want to be remembered and, and as you get older and as you forget, there's a sense of loss. You feel this sense of loss as your memory fails, you.

Now you may have seen this filmed The Notebook. Anyone seen the Notebook? Now maybe you've seen it, you've just forgotten. But you know, it's this beautiful story. It's this beautiful story of an elderly man, uh, named Noah. And you can see there, that's James Garner. He reads from a notebook to an elderly woman named Ali.

Now, the book that he's reading, it tells a story of two young kids from very different backgrounds. Here they are. She's rich, he's from the wrong side of the tracks, and you know, they fall in love. One summer there's this whirlwind romance. Of course her parents don't approve. They even at one point the mother calls him trash and then summer ends, she goes off to college and they separate.

He soon heads off to Europe to fight. In the second World War, she gets engaged to a man who's from money. And of course this pleases mom and dad, but fate. As we have it reunites them and eventually against all the odds they make things work and they share this wonderful life together. Now as the film unfolds, you realize that the story he's reading to her is their story.

Okay, spoiler alert. Alert, if you've not yet seen it, it's been out long enough for me to, to bring the spoiler. So he's reading their story to her. The problem is she has Alzheimer's and she doesn't even, you know, remember his name, let alone their, you know, their shared life together. Now there's this beautiful scene towards the end of the film where he finishes the book, and I actually just skipped the movie the other day just to watch this scene.

And I'm thinking, I'm not crying. You are crying. I haven't seen this for so long. And I watched just a snippet. I watched this snippet and I burst into tears because as he finishes the book, she remembers. She remembers, and it's a beautiful scene. And she says his name, she says No. And he says, Ali, and they embrace.

And as I said, I'm not crying. You are crying. Now here's the thing. Despite the painful loss, you know, of her memory caused by Alzheimer's, she remembers and life flickers within her again, and she remembers. Sadly, it's only for a moment now I wonder. When was the last time you failed to remember something significant?

Maybe it's happening more and more as time passes on. Okay, maybe you forget to take your medication. You forget to keep an appointment. Worse still, you forget a birthday or heaven forbid, a wedding anniversary. Now, I'm not gonna ask for a show of hands. That was Spanish philosopher. His name's George Santiana.

He said this, he famously said, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. The truth is when we fail to remember, we end up repeating the mistakes of our past and we don't learn the lessons that life could teach us. And in this sense, memory is vital to our lives and growths as, as human beings.

Now, memory is also significant for our spiritual lives. In fact, when you go through the Bible, it's a, a prominent theme from, from Genesis to Revelation. God constantly tells his people to remember certain things and not forget. Lemme give some examples. God says, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

Remember, never forget you were slaves in Egypt. Remember the Lord your God. He's the one who gives you the power to get wealth. Remember and don't forget how you provoke the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness. You don't wanna forget that. Remember what the Lord did to Miriam. There's a warning. And lastly, remember his covenant forever.

So you can see clearly from these verses that God wants us to remember who he is and what he's done. Okay? It's clearly an important part of our spiritual life. We need to remember, we even have practices that we include in worship that you know, help us to remember. We've just come around the Lord's table every week.

We share communion. And what did Jesus say? Jesus said, this is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Okay. Jesus wants us to remember him. Here's a reality. If you drift too far from the cross, if you forget about Jesus, then you can be far from where God wants you to be. I look back on my Christian life, my Christian journey, when I've forgotten about Jesus and what he's done in my life.

When I drift too far from the cross, I can find myself not being in a place where God wants me to be. The Bible even warns us. Bad things happen when God's people forget what he's done. The book of Judges, people of Israel did not remember the Lord. And what do they do? They prostituted themselves to the BALs.

Now, if you understand how the bal worship happened, it's a pretty bad thing. They've actually gone and done Psalm 106. Our fathers did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love, but but rebelled by the Red Sea. When you forget God's love poured against you, you will turn your back upon God and you'll end up rebelling.

And Jesus wants two of the seven churches in the Book of Revelation by saying, remember the height from which you've fallen and repent. It's, it's, it's something we can forget. He said, remember what you received and heard. Obey it and repent. The apostle Peter even says, those who are not producing spiritual fruit do so because they're nearsighted and blind.

They're forgotten. They've been cleansed from their past sin. So you can see from all of this how serious remembering is we want to be a people who remember, we don't want to forget who God is and what God's done. 'cause if we do that, there's a danger will we are gonna fall. Okay, so I'm establishing something here.

We're a people who are called to remember. We don't want to forget. Now, today I wanna focus on a text that may come as a shock, given everything we've just heard. Listen afresh to these words from Isaiah Chapter 43, verse 18. God says, do not remember the form of things or consider the things of old.

Whereas the NIV says, forget the form. Things do not dwell on the past. So having told his people to remember, remember, remember why? Now would God turn around and say, Hey, forget the former things. Don't dwell on the past. Today what I want to do is I want to ex explore this idea of, you know, of what it means to forget.

Okay? And it doesn't remember that not, you know, remembering is not important because remembering is. But there are times when God's, you know, as God's people, he's gonna call us to let go of the past so that we can move forward into all that God has for us. Have you ever met anyone there clinging onto the past?

The good old days? I could ask people, do you have a testimony? And they'll say, yes. Is it fresh? Or is it 5, 10, 15, 20 years old? They're clinging to the past the good old days, and if we hold onto the past, we're not gonna move forward into what God has for us. We're not gonna expect God to do something new.

Now, let's start by considering what it is that God was telling his people not to remember. Let me reread. God says, I am the Lord. Your holy one. Israel's creator, your king. This is what the Lord says. He who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters. We sang about it today, our first two songs, way maker, whatever the second song was, I've forgotten already, but we sang about this God making a way.

Who drew out the chariots and horses, the army and reinforcements together, and they lay there never to rise again. Extinguished, snuffed out like a wick. Forget the former things. Do not dwell on the past. Now, we've been looking at the Exodus story these past few weeks, so this language should be familiar.

God reminds his people that it's me. I am the one who delivered you. I'm the one who made a path through the sea. I'm the one who snuffed out the Egyptian armies like a wick. What an image that is. Have you ever taken a candle and just gone like that with your fingers? That's the power of God. He snuffed out the Egyptian armies like a wick.

And throughout the Old Testament, this is the one thing that God tells these people over and over again to remember. Remember the exodus. Remember what I did for you? Remember how I delivered you? It's the one event that defines who they are as God's people. This is their identity. I'm the Lord your God, who brought you up out of Egypt.

And this is exactly how the 10 Commandments begins. It begins with God saying these very words. I brought you out of Egypt outta the land of slavery. Therefore. I fought for you, I rescued you. Now I want you to live as my holy people. And it's the Exodus event that God draws his people back to time and time again.

When he wants to put his finger on, you know, on their behavior, read the prophets, the prophets will come and say, thus says the Lord. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt and you have broken covenants. This is the one event he wants them to remember. And every year, even to this day, the Jewish people get together to celebrate.

Remember the Passover festival? So why does God now tell them not to remember the Exodus? Why does he tell them to forget the, you know, the former things? The key verse is verse 19, God says, see, I'm doing a new thing now. It springs up. Do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert.

Through the prophet, God says, I'm about to do something new. It's springing up. It's about to spring up on the horizon, and he's asking them, can you perceive it? I find this interesting. God wants his people to be alert and in tune with what it is he wants to do. And this new thing God is going to do is gonna be different from the former thing.

Now, let me explain this by way of comparison. You've got the first exodus. We've looked at this. God's rescuing his people from Egypt. They're enslaved. Pharaoh says, I'm not gonna let your people go. I don't, don't know who Yahweh is. He refuses to let the people go. And so what does God do? He sends plague upon plague, and then he makes a way through the sea so they can pass through miraculously on dry land.

Centuries later, you've got God's people. They again find themselves in trouble. They break covenant, and so into exile, they go. God warned them when he gave them Torah. He said, if you disobey me into exile, you will go. And here they are, but God is faithfully. He won't abandon his people. He's gonna deliver them once more, but it won't be like before.

In this second exodus, God's gonna make a way in the wilderness and provide streams in the desert. Now the language, of course, here is figurative and it reflects that God's gonna do things differently this time round. Now, think about the two journeys here. When they left Egypt, how did they go? What was the direction?

They went through the sea to get to the wilderness and, and Moses first went to Pharaoh and says, Yahweh says, let my people go so they can worship me in the desert. And now centuries later, they're back in the wilderness. They're an exile. And God says he's gonna provide a way for them. In the desert streams will flow.

Think of the imagery. God is gonna bring life in a place that is lifeless. And maybe that's something you need in your life right now. The desert is a place of death. That's what the wilderness is. Nothing grows in the wilderness. And God says, here I am gonna bring streams in the desert life where there is no life.

Now, in the first Exodus, God brings down a, an evil empire, but in his second exodus, he's gonna raise up Cyrus the Persian king. He's not gonna harden his heart and destroy him like he did to Pharaoh. Instead, he's actually gonna make him prosper. And God uses this pagan king to destroy the Babylonians and to restore his people back to their homeland.

Can you see the difference here? Cyrus will even help, you know, pay to have the Jerusalem temple rebuilt. This is God bringing streams in the desert. So both in the first and second Exodus, God is at work setting his people free from slavery. But what do we notice? We notice that the methods are very different now.

There's a spiritual principle here. The danger for Israel will be if they focused on how God set them free in the past and expect God to do it the same way again. The challenge they face is for them to trust that God will act as set as free without expecting him to do it in the same way. Has that ever been your experience?

I only trust that God's gonna act in my life like he did in the past. You're trusting in God's methods rather than trusting in God. Do you see that? It's a new season. It's a new day and they're called to trust that God's gonna do something new and not just bring a repeat performance. Now, here's the principle.

If they get stuck on the idea that God is gonna do the same thing he did in the past in the very same way, then they will miss this new thing that God is about to do. Yeah, that's the, that's the principle. That's why they're told to forget the form of things. Not because they're unimportant, but because if they hold onto them, they're gonna stick to this rigid idea that God can only work in a particular way like you did in the past, and they won't perceive this new thing that God wants to do in this second exodus, are you with me?

How often is this our experience? We reminisce on the good old days the way God moved, and we can miss the way God wants to move in our midst in the new season. Lemme put it like this. If we expect God to always work in the same way he did in the past, then we are gonna come to trust in God's methods rather than in God himself.

And there is a huge difference. Lemme break this down. Religion is people who think God's gonna do the same thing again and again. In every situation, all we need to do is apply the same technique, the same formula, and hey, presto, God's gonna deliver. That's religion. That's what I've seen in Africa from all our time there.

You go to the shaman, you go to the witch doctor, he recites a formula, a sacrifice, a chicken or a goat. Hey, Presto, the spirits deliver. That's religion, and we can do this too. I will just do the same thing over and over again and just expect God to deliver. He's like, he's the genie of the lamp. Faith, on the other hand, is trusting God as a personal being, being in relationship with him and discerning his direction for life in the here and now.

Can you see the difference? One is static tries to repeat the past. The other is dynamic. It's walking day by day with Jesus. The first one requires, you know, tradition and knowledge. The second one requires discernment and trust. I wonder, are you daily plugging into what Jesus has for you or are you just living out of what Jesus might have done for you in the past?

I like this quote from the economist, John Maynard Keynes. He says this, and he's talking about the ability to accept new concepts. He says The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones. Faithfulness to God involves what? It involves trusting him, not the methods he used.

Are you with me? Let me summarize this 'cause I'm going somewhere. The God of the first exodus is the God who you know, he hears the cries of his people. He prepares a great salvation to set them free. The method is bringing down Pharaoh, parting the Red Sea, making a way through the waters. The God of the second Exodus is the God who hears the cries of his people, and he too prepares a great salvation, sets them free.

How does he do it? It's a very different way. He raises up Cyrus and provides water for them in the desert. In each situation they're called to trust God and how he's leading them, but in their own generation, the methods may change, but God does not. Now, there's a danger here. When we get stuck on God's method and when we, you know, God's methods and when we put our trust in the way God has acted in the past, then what we're gonna do is we're gonna look for God to do the same thing in the same way.

Even though it's a brand new day, our focus needs to be on God and how he's doing things now. And for that we need to hear for from him. And for that we need to, to pray. Are you hearing God afresh? Now, there has of course been a third Exodus. At his transfiguration, mos, Moses and Elijah, they're with Jesus on the mountain.

And Luke tells us that they spoke about his departure, which he was going to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. So what we have here, there's Moses, Elijah, the two great prophets of the past that were Jesus on the mountain. They're actually talking about Jesus' death, you know, on the cross in Jerusalem.

Now, does anyone know what the Greek word here for departure is? Exodus, it's Exodus, God's people set free from sin and death and all the stuff that separates us from life with him. Now, here's where I want us to land. This was not something that God's people perceived. He came to his own, but his own did not receive him.

They didn't perceive this move of God, this new exodus through a crucified Messiah. Why? Because what they expected was a carbon copy repeat of what God did in the past. They wanted a king who was gonna do to the Romans what God did to the Egyptians. And so because of that, many of them missed it. They missed it because Jesus didn't fit the mold.

They thought, you know Jesus, if the Messiah comes, he's gotta fit the mold of the way we expect God to work, and we expect Him to work like he did in the past. They look to the past and they missed what God was doing in the present. It's all been building up to this. We don't want to miss what God is doing.

Amen. Amen. Amen. He came to his own, they didn't receive him. They had these preconceived expectations. God acts a certain way and if he doesn't act this way, then it's not of God and they miss Jesus. We don't want that to be our experience, do we? We don't want to be holding onto old ways. It's gotta be done the way we did it in the 1960s, Billy Graham, him books, et cetera.

Those methods were good for their time, but it's a brand new day. And we need to hear from God, perceive a new thing and get on board with what God is doing. Amen. Now here what I'm not saying, I'm not knocking what God did in the past 'cause God was doing it and it was good. But if we wanna hold onto that and not let go of it, we may miss the way in which God wants to move in our neighborhood in our time today.

You with me? Yeah. Now, let me personalize this for a moment. I wanna make this personal. We follow Jesus. We walk with God. We have good times. We have times that are not so good. We can sometimes find ourselves having a wilderness experience. Maybe you're in one at the moment. We all have these barren seasons where we feel isolated and far from what God might have for us, whether it be, you know, emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually, we can be just feeling that we're not getting the presence of God like we used to have in the past.

Things aren't right and we can go through this and it can feel like rescue is a long way away, but God would say, I am doing a new thing. Yeah. God is in the business of healing past wounds. God is in the business of tearing down strongholds and shining light and darkness. Do you believe it? Yes. And so if you are going through that barren season where God doesn't feel close for whatever reason it may be, do you believe that God might say to you today, I will do a new thing.

Perhaps the greatest new thing God can do in our lives is, you know, he's giving us a renewed living hope that, you know, life can turn around even when the situation seems utterly hopeless. And this is what it means to experience streams in the desert. What new thing do you need in your life right now? I don't know where you're at.

Maybe you're on the mountain. Life is good. God's done something wonderful. Maybe you're going through this experience where you're thinking, God, I need you to do something. Do you believe that God can do something new in your life? I don't care how old you are. You are still drawing breath. I keep saying that God can still do something new.

Amen. Amen. You don't have to live out of the testimonies that God did 50 years ago. I don't have to live out of the experiences God gave me when I first came to faith. As wonderful as they were, I can look to God and and, and just get excited about him doing something new that requires faith. Will you receive it?

Yeah. You know, for the past 12 months we've had a, a project team working with an external consultant. You know, we've got together, we're thinking about the future of the church and how we can move forward. Now, look around. You can see we're an older congregation, but I believe in my heart of hearts that God has a future for no Mara Church.

Amen. Don't have to ask whether you believe that. I believe that God is with us and I believe that God is leading us and guiding us. In the two and a half years I've been here, I've seen the way in which God's hand is upon us. God is with us. Now. When we sat with a consultant, there were a couple of major recommendations that flowed from our time together.

One of them was the development of a ministry track targeting young adults. Now, this is definitely something new in the context of who we are as a church right now. Okay? We don't have young adults look around, okay? And, and this is gonna involve some, you know, thinking outside of the square and without being alarmist.

This is something that is vital for the survival of this church. If we don't do this, then at some point we're gonna need to close our doors. Shut up, shop. The reality is no church has a lifespan beyond that of its members. Now, I can tell you this is a massive undertaking. It's almost overwhelming and daunting as I try to process all this.

And here's the problem. You know, I can preach, I can visit people, I can care for them, I can love on them, but I have absolutely no experience when it comes to developing this kind of ministry from scratch. This is not a string I have on my bow. And as I said, when I look around, I don't see any young adults, let alone the resources we're gonna need to sustain and run this sort of ministry.

Now, let me express this positively. Yes, this is a massive undertaking, but there's also a massive God factor. That's exciting. Amen. If we had something to work with, I might put my hope and trust in that and what I can do, but I can't do any of this 'cause we don't have it. And so there's a massive, massive God factor and that gets me excited as I think about this major recommendation for the life and future of this church.

I'm thinking if God doesn't get involved, it's not gonna happen. So God's gonna have to get involved. Now think about the messages I've preached for these past two weeks, two weeks ago. What did I talk about? Anyone remember? This is a test. Two weeks ago, I talked about being thrown in the deep end.

Remember, God's people, they're trapped between the Red Sea, the desert, the Egyptian army. They're powerless. They're gonna die unless God does something. And what did we see? We saw that God deliberately led his people to a place where there were in way over their heads. Their situation was so far beyond what they could handle, that they cried out, Lord, this situation is hopeless, and Lord, we are hopeless.

And as I prepared that message and as I preached that message, I thought, Lord, this is how I feel. And yet, what did we see two weeks ago? We saw that they were right where God wanted them to be. And I remember saying in the sermon I said this, we are so used to being in control that most of the time we only look to God when we get to the end of ourselves, when we've exhausted all that we can do.

Someone once said, God wants us to climb trees 'cause he likes it when we're out on the limb. And that's kind of where we are right now. We're in a situation where unless God moves, we're stuck. Now it's confession time. I feel like I'm in way over my head. I dunno what to do, how to do it, or even where to begin.

Yes, I'm having conversations with people from other churches within our movement. We're exploring options, but above all that we can do. We need God to move. We need to seek God and and ask him to lead the way and do something new. And I like what we heard in our passage today. God invites us to hear his voice and perceive a new thing that he wants to do.

Last week I spoke about what? Come on guys. I work hard to prepare these messages. I spoke about faith, trusting in where God has brought us and moving forward into all God has for us. You, sorry, took us from the Red Sea to numbers, the possession of the promised land. And what? What happened with Joshua and Caleb?

They saw the giants in the land, but they also saw that the hand of God was with them. They alone had faith to move forward into the promises of God. Now I believe that God's hand is upon us, and that as a church we have a future. Our call is to respond like Joshua and Caleb in faith. We need to seek God in prayer, discern the ways in which he's leading us.

Can I tell you this is not my call alone. I can lead the way, but if the people won't follow, it's just gonna be Joshua and Caleb in the land. It might just be me. Huh? Moved on. I dunno. This is a call for all of us, a commitment to seek the Lord in prayer. We need to pray for open doors, divine appointments.

We need to pray. That's God's gonna lead us to the right people who can help establish a ministry to the next generation. The other major recommendation our consultant made relates to who we are as a church. Now. As we got together, we gathered, you know, we are thinking about the future and naturally we, we spoke about the past.

We talked about the highs, the lows, the former glories, the past hurts, who we are, how do we get here, where are we going? And as that consultant, Chris, he's a wonderful British man, very pastoral. As he listened to us, he recommended that we have a, a moment where we draw a line in the sand. He said, I want you to have a symbolic movement where we look to God and move forward.

'cause that's what Exodus is. Exodus is about moving on, moving forward into what God has for us. And that's why we've had these messages as a church. We're 67 years old. And for those of you who have reached that age, you realize that when you get, when you get to whatever age you are, you realize that your life is the sum of all the things that have shaped and define you.

And I can tell you, a church is no different. And as a church in Alara has experienced some pretty significant events in its life events that are ranging from incredibly positive. I've heard the stories of the Golden Days. At one stage, this church was the flagship Church of Christ in Perth. We've had some pretty overwhelming positive events, but we've also had some devastatingly negative events, and we don't need to go into details.

Now, here's the thing. If not dealt with these things can create a lasting ripple effect that will hold us back. And as your pastor, I don't want us to be held back. I want us to move forward into what God has for us. So in closing today, we're gonna close. I'm gonna ask some of the members from the project team to come forward.

We're gonna, they're gonna lead us in prayer. It's a prayer where we release past hurts and former glories, forget the former things and I want us to. Hear this prayer and step together forward in faith. D's gonna start the microphone's just in front of you and then Ian and Leslie will follow. Thank you.

Faithful and gracious God, you are the Lord of yesterday, today, and tomorrow we come before you, honest and humble carrying memories that still make and victories that still define us. Yet you say to us, forget the former things. Do not dwell on the past. See, I'm doing a new thing. Today by your grace, we draw a line in the sand.

We choose not to live imprisoned by old worms, disappointments, misunderstandings, or offenses. We lay them foot of the cross, trusting your promise as far as the east is from the west. So far have you removed our transgressions from us?

Lord, we also release our former glories. We thank you for them, but we refuse to idolize what you did yesterday and miss out what you long to do today. Teach us like Paul to say, forgetting what is behind and straining forward to what is ahead. I press on toward the goal, heal what has been broken among us, where there has been bitterness, plant forgiveness, where there has been weariness.

Breathe new strength, creating us clean hearts, oh God, and renew a right spirit within us.

Bind us together in love. Not uniformity, but unity. Let your word rule among us so that we may bear with one another and forgive one another. As the Lord has forgiven us, Jesus, we declare that we are not defined by our past, not by our failures, not by our fractures.

Or even our finest moments, we belong to you and because we are in Christ, the old has gone and the new has come.

Holy Spirit, we ask that you would lead us forward. Give us courage to step into unfamiliar territory, faith, to trust you where the path is not yet clear and obedience, Lord God, to walk together as one body, establish our steps according to your word, and let your purposes not our memories.

Let your purposes shape our future. Father, we set our hearts and what you're doing now and we entrust tomorrow full into your hands. Lord, we thank you that your mercies are never exhausted for they are you every morning, great is your faithfulness. Father, we offer this prayer, this simple prayer humbly to you, in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who makes all things new.

And all God's people said, amen. Thank you.