Free From the Counterfeit | Cornerstone Church | Pastor Joel Haywood

The year was 2019, and there was a new luxury shoe company that was trying to make its mark in the Southern California market. Okay? This luxury shoe company's name is Plessy. Okay? I think we actually have a photo of Plessy. K? You can tell from like the marble statue, this is like a ritzy company. Okay?

Expensive shoes like hundreds and thousands of dollars trying to make its claim in the industry with the likes of Armani

and Prada and Gucci and Balenciaga and whatever other. That's the only ones I googled. That's all I know. Okay? I'm not in the luxury shoe world, but they're trying to make their mark. Right? And so they have this plan to have this big elaborate grand opening. This is their storefront at the Los Angeles Mall and they're gonna go huge with their grand opening. Okay? And so what they decide to do is invite a bunch of people. They get models there to like showcase the shoes like Vanna White, you know, and like do this, guess. Whatever works. They invite a bunch of influencers

and celebrities and actors and actresses and famous people who can, you know, build some hype and some buzz around this new company. They are pulling out all the stops. The day of the launch comes, the day of the grand opening, and it all goes pretty well.

The celebrities show up and they're buying shoes, spending thousands of dollars on shoes. And what happens is paparazzi

actually comes and they're like taking photos of like these famous people saying, well, if they're good enough luxury shoes for them, like maybe we should tell people about it. Right? And then the influencers come and they're taking selfies with their shoes and like telling all of their followers about it. So there's all this energy and buzz.

News crews actually start showing up and interviewing people. Asking people like how does it feel to get this exclusive access to this luxury shoe company and the people are like, oh my gosh. It's amazing. It's the best day ever. Changing my life. People are spending thousands of dollars on shoes.

Convinced that they're buying the real deal, that this is gonna be the first step into the luxury fashion world for them. Cornerstone, are you ready for the punch line? Plessy is not a real company. In fact, it is just a fake storefront for them to sell what is actually Payless Shoes. Yeah.

There we go. See, some of you are laughing because you know about Payless Shoes. Others of you are not laughing, and I just wanna say, must be nice. Okay? Good for you if you don't know about Payless

shoes. If you don't, let me get you up to speed. The name says it all. These are budget friendly shoes. Okay? These are cost effective for your budget, cheaply made, decent shoes, but the funny thing is that no influencer would be caught dead in shoes. And now, they've spent hundreds and thousands of dollars

buying Payless shoes. There's actually one woman who bought a pair of shoes for $750 that sell at Payless for $19.99. Crazy.

Crazy. And so I think this is hilarious. Like, I kinda am glad that this happened to the influencers, you know, like that that's good. But what happened is this was just a big publicity stunt for Payless.

Like they were basically trying to say like, hey, our shoes aren't that bad, you know. And then what happens is the people get their money back,

they get told on the deep they get told like, hey, this was all just a publicity stunt. Like, you get your money back and you get to keep the shoes, and it was just a hilarious marketing campaign. Here's why I tell you that. I don't care about shoes at all.

I wear Vans. Like, you're not gonna catch me in high fashion shoes or expensive shoes. I will wear these shoes till the day I die. So I'm not struck by this story because of the shoes or the money or any of that. What was striking to me and honestly a little bit little bit heartbreaking to me about this story

is that it's showcasing just how easy it is for you and for me as humans to buy into counterfeit things. Things that promise that they are the real deal and yet they come up short. I believe the world presses on us messaging and ideologies

and frameworks and philosophies and belief systems and ways of living and they promise that they are the real deal when all along they're a counterfeit. And what I believe is that for us as followers of Jesus, if we buy into the counterfeit

thing, then we're gonna miss out on the beauty and the freedom of the real thing that God has for us to walk in. So what I wanna do this morning, Cornerstone, is just put a counterfeit idea in front of you that I think we have fallen victim to.

And I wanna unpack it so that we can learn the beauty of what God actually has. The counterfeit idea I just wanna lay in front of you today is what I call hustle culture.

Hustle culture. This is just to spark noted for you, the idea that I just need to be making progress at all times. Moving faster, getting there quicker, doing something new, Achieving a new goal. Just moving a 100 miles an hour at all times. I think we've fallen victim to this. And here's how I know.

After service, if I walk into the lobby and I strike up a conversation with some of you and I say, how are you? I would bet money. A lot of you are gonna say tired. We're worn down.

And then if I ask a follow-up question, if I say, oh, you're tired, like, tell me about it. What's going on in your life? I would bet the rest of my money that you would say, I've been busy.

And we may not say it out loud, but we have started to live under the truth of we need to be busy and tired. And the reason we do that is because we think that below the surface, if I say I'm tired, that means I'm working really hard and you should be proud of me. And if I'm busy, man, I must be important.

And we've started to wear busy and tired as a badge of honor. And hustle culture tells us that we need to do more, achieve more, get there faster, move quickly, do something new, achieve, be pedal to the metal, all gas, no brakes at all times. Here's the problem. God did not design you to live that way.

In fact, I believe he designed us, created us in his image in the opposite direction. He created us to be people who operate from a place of rest.

And so as we look forward to 2025 and we have all these things that we wanna chase after and see God do in our lives, I think a healthy starting point for us is to learn how we can be people operating from a place of rest. Rest that honors God and rest that actually nourishes our soul.

So I've titled our message this morning, if you're taking notes, free from the counterfeit. Free from the counterfeit. Let me pray for us. God, would you speak to us today? Amen. Amen. Short prayers work too, guys. It's okay. It's alright. It's alright. Let me just some of you are like, I'm not ready yet.

Let me just set up how this is gonna go this morning. I wanna let you know right up front, I am not a finished product on this. Like, am still very much so a work in progress when it comes to learning how to rest, how to honor God with my rest and rest in a way that actually benefits

me. And I say that just to let you know that I'm not gonna give you points today that I have figured out and you need to figure out. We are on level ground. So what I wanna do is just drop some observations in front of you

and trust that the Holy Spirit will work and that we can learn together how to honor God with our rest. And the first observation I wanna put in front of us

is that there is a wrong way and a right way to rest. One of the issues that we run into if we buy into hustle culture, and I think we know this, is that if we're just pedal to the metal 100 miles an hour for a sustained period of time, eventually we'll run out of gas.

We're gonna run out of fuel. We're gonna need to rest and recharge. We know on some level we need to rest. Right? I don't think this is groundbreaking revelation for any of us in the room. We know we need to rest. What I don't think we know is how to rest well. How to rest in a way that actually benefits

us. And the problem with that is I think God implemented rest in our lives to benefit us. So we better figure it out. Here's what it says in Mark chapter two. This is Jesus talking. Then he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

This is Jesus talking about how the Sabbath, the day of rest in Jewish culture was made to be a blessing to people, not a burden.

And so we need to understand how to rest well if we wanna experience that blessing. And so I wanna put a term in front of you that will help us unpack where we're missing the mark on this. Vacuous rest. Cornerstone, I know it's early. Can we say vacuous rest?

Vacuous rest. A plus. I love it. Vacuous rest. Let me define it for you this way. Vacuous rest is anything that we turn to and label as rest that actually drains us. It's anything that we look to thinking it will fix the problem. It will give us refreshment and rejuvenation. It will help us, but it actually

hurts us. It we look to it for rest, but it actually makes the problem worse. Any of you ever been so exhausted that you're just convinced if I could have a thirty minute nap, I would be a new person when I wake up? Anybody? And then have you ever indulged that thought,

And you take that thirty minute nap, and then you wake up half an hour later and feel like you got hit by a bus, and you're like, I thought this was supposed to make it better, but it actually made it worse? This is vacuous rest.

It's something that we turn to as a solution, but it actually makes the problem worse, and it is the wrong way to rest. It might be you scrolling through social media for hours on end.

It might be collapsing onto the couch and doing a Netflix binge. I don't know what it is for you, but audit your life and see what are you turning to hoping that it provides the refreshment you need and it comes up short or even makes it worse. Vacuous rest is something I think we do where we just wanna escape.

Our weeks are long, work is hard, and so we just wanna check out and turns our brain, turn our brains off. We're looking for something to amuse us, which doesn't sound like a problem until you think about the etymology of the word amuse where it means without thinking. All we wanna do is check out.

We run a thousand miles an hour all week and then we just wanna escape into vacuous rest and it is not working. Let me just go first, okay? I told you that I'm a work in progress here so I'm gonna need grace this morning, okay, cornerstone.

This is what it looks like for me when I'm unhealthy in my rest. I'm a pastor, so we work on the weekends. Okay? And I love it. I love being here with you guys. But this means that my day off every week is Friday. So let me just give you a flyover of my week. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, pretty standard days.

I'm in the office. I'm meeting with people. I'm writing messages. I'm working on projects for our ministry like I'm doing normal things. Pretty standard days. But then Thursday comes, and what you need to know is that Thursday is the best day of the week, but it's also the longest day of the week for me. Okay? Pause.

Free advertising. If you are 18 to 29 in the room, regardless of relationship status, single, dating, engaged, married, we have a home and a community for you on Thursday nights at 7PM. Come hang out at Young Adults. But, okay, back to regularly scheduled programming. Thursday's a long day,

because it's a full day in the office, but then after that, I come here to Cornerstone, and we have our Young Adults gathering at seven, and Young Adults stay up late, so I don't leave really till like 09:30 or ten, and then I get home and I collapse into bed and kiss my wife goodnight knowing that Friday is just a free day,

my day of rest. Then the alarm goes off Friday morning. I say goodbye to my wife because she works on Fridays, and here I am with this moment of decision knowing that I have the entire day ahead of me and nothing to do. I'm gonna rest. And the temptation for me in this moment is to roll over, grab my phone,

roll back into bed and watch basketball highlight videos for four hours. That's just me being honest. And so if I do that, now it's 11AM and I'm getting kinda hungry. Right?

And so I get out of bed, but I have a headache because I've been staring at a screen for four hours, So, I don't feel like cooking. To McDonald's I go, and I get not one, but two Big Macs. And then, as I'm biting into that second Big Mac, I'm like, it doesn't really make sense for me to go to the gym anymore because I already kinda ruined it, you know. So, now I'm gonna skip the gym, and then I go home, collapse back onto the couch, scrolling through Netflix for what feels like four hours trying to find something to watch. I finally pick something. It's horrible. I push play, but I'm really just scrolling through Instagram on my phone, or scrolling through YouTube, or playing chess, or doing whatever I can

to feel like I'm resting. And then my wife gets home after her day of work excited to connect with her husband, to maybe do a date night, whatever, because it was my day of rest. She's expecting me to be rejuvenated and I have nothing left for her. This is vacuous rest. It is anything we turn to for rest that actually

drains us, and it is the wrong way to rest. So what's the right way? How should we rest? I wanna put another term in front of you. This one's a little bit more tricky, Cornerstone. Generative rest. Everybody say generative rest.

Rest. You guys are so much smarter than the Saturday service. It's unreal. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Here's how I'll define generative rest. It is creating space in my life to reflect on God's goodness to me. Creating space in my day to day and in my week to reflect on all the ways God has moved and been good in my life.

This is generative rest, and it refreshes us. It regenerates us. It gives us new life walking into the work that we're about to enter into. Sad truth, Cornerstone. We are the most anxious and depressed people group to ever walk the planet. It's just true. And I'm not a psychologist,

so don't quote me. And I'm also trying not, I'm not trying to make light of anyone's struggle, like, that's not my heart. But I do have a hunch today. I wonder if because of how the world works, where we are bombarded with messaging at all times from all angles.

There are just companies and marketers and people and things trying to just compete and fight and demand our attention. And I wonder if because of that, they're saying, look over here, buy this product, come to this event, watch this video, and there's just no room for me to reflect on how God has been good in my life.

And because I don't have room to actually think about that, then what happens is I arrive at the conclusion, maybe he's not good after all. And I just wonder how that contributes to our emotional well-being.

Generative rest is something that's gonna take effort. I said it's creating space. You do not stumble upon generative rest. You have to fight for it. If vacuous rest is us turning our brains off and escaping, generative rest is the opposite. It is engaging our brains,

using what God has given us, and pointing our thoughts towards him and reflecting on his goodness. And the reason this is so good is because it regenerates us, it refreshes us, it ref it like store restores our souls. It connects us to the one that created us. It connects us to the source.

And this is where we need to go for rest. There is a wrong way and a right way to rest. Number two, rest has rhythms to it.

A lot of us have incorrectly assumed that work is the problem. Like if I could just work less, surely I'd be rested. Right?

If I could just convince my boss to let me work part time hours but give me a full time paycheck, surely I'd be feeling good. Right? Work is the enemy of rest. That's what we think. Like if Adam and Eve had just not eaten that apple in the garden, then I wouldn't have to go be an accountant or whatever, you know?

Can I just tell you, I don't think work is the enemy of rest? In fact, both rest and work were present and something we were called to before sin entered the world. Genesis chapter two verse 15 says, the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. So in God's perfect creation,

before sin enters the equation, his design for you and me as humans is to work. Work is not the enemy of rest. And not only does God invite us to work, he also models it for us. If we back up just a couple verses to Genesis two verse two, it says, by the seventh day, God had finished the work he had been doing.

So on the seventh day, he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. So God models work and then he invites us to work as well. Work is not the enemy of rest. So what is the enemy of rest?

I'd like to suggest to you that the problem is we don't know how to stop. We don't know how to be done working. There was a economist named John Keynes in the nineteen thirties. Okay? And he was a really brilliant dude, and what he did is he looked at the trajectory

of America, where we were headed, how technology was advancing, and he made a claim that I think is interesting. He claimed that by this time in the world, by the two thousands, human beings in America would only work fifteen hours a week. Sounds kinda nice. Right?

And then he went one step further and said, we're actually gonna work only fifteen hours a week and less than half the weeks in the year. And his thinking was that because technology would be so advanced,

because our systems will have improved, because our efficiency will go through the roof, that we won't need to work more than fifteen hours a week. Here's my question. Technology improved. Our systems got more efficient. Our

programming got better. Like, everything is heading in that direction that he predicted. Why aren't we there? Why don't we work fifteen hours a week? It's because when we got more efficient, instead of using that margin to rest, we just said, I'll just work more. I'll just fill that time with more work.

We don't know where to stop. That verse that we read, Genesis chapter two verse two where it says God's God rested from all the work that he'd been doing. That word rested translates ceased. He ceased. He stopped.

There was a clear and defined moment where God said, I'm gonna work up until here, and then I'm gonna stop and swing into a rhythm of rest. And then this is a rhythm that he invites us into. When you look at Jesus' life, it's so interesting to me. You would watch him pour out.

He would minister to people. He would heal people. He would do miracles. He would preach. And then he would immediately retreat to rest. He'd go up on the mountainside and pray. He'd cross the lake and go commune with God, and then while he's there, he's resting,

reflecting on God's goodness, his heavenly father, and then when he's rested, he swings back into a rhythm of work and goes and pours out again. There is a rhythm meant to be there for our work and our rest, but that's only possible if we know how to stop.

Some of us think that those email notifications that ding on our phone while we're at dinner with our family don't mean anything if we don't respond to them. Can I just tell you they're taking up mental real estate for you? And they're preventing you from resting, being with your family, and being present with God.

We need to learn how to stop. Rest is meant to have rhythms to it. God exemplifies this and then he invites us into it. And can I just suggest if it's a good enough rhythm for Jesus, it should be a good enough rhythm for us? Amen? Rest has rhythms to it. Number three, rest is an opportunity to trust God.

I was thinking about it for me. Like, why is it so difficult to rest? Why is that such a struggle for me? I know I should. I know it's good for me. I know it honors God. Why do I find it so hard? And the conclusion I came to, I'll just speak for myself, see if you can relate, is that on some level I really like control.

I like the idea that if I keep my hands on the steering wheel, then everything's gonna go how I want it to go. And on some level deeper than that, I'm convinced that if I take my hands off, everything's gonna fall apart. If I don't respond to that email, that client's gonna go with a different company.

If I don't answer that phone call from my boss, he might fire me. If I don't work eighty hours this week, then I'm not gonna be able to pay the bills. And can I tell you, first of all, I get it? Second of all, if that's you, can I just suggest to you that is a really elevated view of yourself

and a really small view of God?

We worship a God who is sovereign and in control and And we like to come here on Sunday and sing songs about, he won't fail. You know, like don't make me sing it. We like to do that. I trust in God. But then Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday comes, and all of a sudden we're like, but what if he does?

Do you trust God to be enough for you when you stop? When you rest? When you cease and take your hands off the steering wheel, do you trust God to be enough for you? In the Old Testament, there's all kinds of different names for God. Right? We just say one word. We say God.

But in the Old Testament, they use a bunch of different names. And I love that because each one highlights a different attribute and characteristic of our heavenly father. And one of my favorites is they called him Jehovah Jireh. And it's a name that means the Lord will provide.

Do you trust that when you take your hands off the steering wheel, he'll provide for you?

Because I think what happens is we know that rest is meant to benefit us for our bodies and our minds and our emotions, but what we don't take into account is that God also wants rest for us because it's an active opportunity for us to take our hands off the steering wheel and say, God, I am stepping back, giving you control, and trusting that you're enough for me here.

And he wants our hearts, church.

Rest is an opportunity to trust God. Here's what Jesus says in Mark chapter excuse me, Matthew chapter six. He says, look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can anyone of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

What Jesus is saying is, hey, these birds that can bring nothing to society, they contribute nothing to the earth, they're just here utilizing resources, God cares and provides for them. And yet you

are much more valuable. You are a child of God. You are the crown of God's creation made in his image. What makes you think he'll provide for the birds, but he won't take care of you? Rest is an opportunity to trust God, to take our hands off the steering wheel and say, God, I trust you to be enough for me here.

Rest is an opportunity to trust God. Number four,

rest starts with choosing better. My hope is by this point in the message, God has nudged your heart a little bit. Convicted you knowing that, man, I have not engaged in a healthy version of rest in a long time. And now I hope you're asking the question in your mind, where do I start?

What is a practical starting point for finding rest? And my guess is the knee jerk reaction is you thinking, I just need to find some margin in my life. Build in some discretionary time. I need to find margin. Can I just kindly suggest to you that it's not margin you need, it's priorities? Rest

starts with choosing better. I believe if we make better choices, we'll experience better rest. In Luke chapter 10, there's a story where Jesus is with his disciples and he's coming over to a woman named Martha's house for a dinner party. Okay? Martha has a sister named Mary and they could not be more different. Martha,

whose house it is, she is an Enneagram one. Okay? She's a type a, perfectionist, she likes things how she likes things. Okay? And so she is just there hosting

everyone, and so she's making sure the details are taken care of. She's fluffing the cushions that the disciples are sitting on. She's cleaning up the spill over here. She's making sure that the little smoky appetizers come out of the oven on time, you know, like she is taking care of really important things for this dinner party. Her sister Mary

is more of a free spirit. A little bit more carefree. And the picture that we're given is that Martha's doing all these things, making sure all the details are taken care of, and Mary is sitting on the ground in front of Jesus. And Martha gets frustrated by this.

She's like, I'm doing all this important stuff, can you tell her to help me? And the dynamic that it seems like Martha is looking at this scene through is that she's doing important things and Mary's doing nothing. That's not true.

That's not what the scripture teaches because it says that Mary is seated at the feet of Jesus. What you need to know is that's very specific wording in the Bible. When it says someone is seated at the feet of Jesus, that's what's called the rabbinic position.

It is a position of honor reserved for a student to learn from the teacher, from the rabbi.

And so the dynamic that Martha thinks is happening is that she's doing important stuff, and Mary's being lazy and doing nothing, but that's not it. It's that Martha's doing important stuff, but what Mary has chosen is more important.

And Jesus looks at her and kinda helps her understand, hey, you're missing it. This is what he says. Luke 10 verse 41, Martha, Martha, the Lord answered, you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.

Think a practical starting point for us in our moments of rest, if we wanna know how to engage in this as we move into 2025, is to look at situations and choose the better option that will lead to rest.

I have some really good friends in California named Jenna and Brian, and they're an amazing couple. I respect them for a lot of reasons, but one of my favorite things about them is that they crush it when it comes to rest.

Like you can just tell in their their pace, in their cadence, in their tone that they are just operating from a place of rest, and they actually engage in active Sabbath every Saturday, which feels really outdated to us, you know? But I actually respect them for it because man, it's working.

And so I remember living in California, and Emily and I were getting caught up in hustle culture. It was like, oh, we got places to be and things to do. Right? Go a 100 miles an hour. And so I came to Jenna and Brian and I was like, guys, can you teach us how to rest?

And they start talking to me about all these philosophies and bible verses and I'm like, hold on. No. No. No. I just need the bullet point.

I just need you to tell me, like, walk me through your day. When you get up on Saturday for your day of rest, walk me through what you do. And they said, okay Joel, well, when we get up on Saturday morning, the first thing we do is we drive down to the beach and we go surfing. And I'm like, hold on.

You didn't read your bible yet.

And it illuminated something in me, this false understanding that rest that honors God has to be, I read my bible for like six hours, then I pray for like five hours, and then I fast, and then I only watch the chosen and listen to worship music. And that's my day of rest. Right? That's what I thought.

And they helped me understand something that kind of reframed my thinking here. They said, no. No. No. Rest can be found in anything that grows your affections for him. And so surfing feels really unspiritual until you realize that you're out there floating on the waves and the same God that made all of this made you.

Then all of a sudden your heart is moved for God. And they helped me understand that rest can be found in anything that grows my affections for Jesus. And so they told me, Joel, pick three things that you will not do on your day of rest. Three things that are off limits. I will not send emails on my day of rest.

I won't go to the grocery store. I will not scroll through social media for hours on my day of rest. Like, that is off limits, and that's the invitation for you. Pick some things that you just know are vacuous. They do not help you get what you're longing for in rest. Keep them off

limits. And you'll notice that none of those are bad things inherently. It's just that they don't grow my affection for Jesus. And then on the flip side of that, you wanna keep things off limits, but you also wanna choose some things, choose better. So I will get up in the cool of the morning and take my dog for a walk.

Because there's something about the stillness of the morning that just helps me sense Jesus' peace a little better.

I will fight for time to FaceTime my best friend Mark from Colorado because I know that that conversation's gonna be life giving and he's gonna point me to Jesus, and it's gonna be something that makes me grateful to God for the friends that he's given me. I will fight for time to work out.

Some of you are like, going for a run sounds like torture. That's on the no no list. Right? But others of us understand that working out is an opportunity to steward the vessel that God has given us, and it will grow our affection for him.

Rest can be anything that grows our affections for Jesus, and it starts by choosing better. So the invitation practically for you is pick some things that you will not engage in in your moments of rest. And then pick some things that are a better choice, and you will fight for them. Rest starts with choosing

better. And then here's the last one.

True rest can only be found in the presence of Jesus. Matthew 11 verse 28 says this, come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you what? Rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Cornerstone, where does Jesus say we can find rest? Only in him. He does not say, hey, if you just make enough money, eventually you'll feel rested. You'll feel at peace.

He doesn't say, if you just get that four zero one k to the certain threshold and then you can retire, then you'll feel rested. He doesn't say, if you get enough followers or friends or likes or community, then you'll feel rested. No. He says come to me and I will give you rest. Rest for your souls. See, I think we long

so deeply for rest and peace, it's just that we try to find it in the things of the world that can never follow through. They are a counterfeit. But Jesus invites us to come to him for rest.

And then he actually goes a step further and he says, and I you'll take my yoke upon you and we'll get to lay our burdens down. I think our heavenly father knows that we're carrying things we were never meant to carry, church.

I don't know what 2024 looked like for you. I don't know the pain and the residue that's on you from that. I don't know the weight that you're coming in here with this morning, but the invitation is to set it at the feet of Jesus and receive true rest in return. Rest that you're longing for.

Rest that will actually nourish your soul. What if we did that? What if when we walk out of here and chase after all those things that God has for us in 2025, instead of keeping that burden on ourselves, we laid it down trusting that when we take our hands off the steering wheel, that's when God does his best work.

And that we'll experience rest. And as we experience rest and we chase after those things, we'll actually be healthier. We'll actually be able to get to what God is calling us to. That's my prayer for us. Let me pray that we'd be people of rest. Heavenly Father, we're grateful for you.

We're grateful that you looked down on your people and you knew that we would try to find rest and sustenance and provision and all of the things in the world and you knew that it's a counterfeit and so you let your son Jesus be explicitly clear that true rest can only be found in him.

Would we be people who take him at his word? Would we lay our burdens down this morning? All the weight and the heaviness on our shoulders represented in this room. You know that we were never meant to carry it. So would we be bold enough to leave it at your feet?

And as we walk out of here into Monday and Tuesday and the rest of 2025, would we be people who experience true rest, rest that is generative, rest that not only helps us go after our day to day lives, but it also connects us to you, first and foremost.

We wanna be people who honor you. Would people then look at our lives, people who don't know you, and would they see people who are so at peace and so full of rest that they want what we have and they want to know you? We believe you can do that and so we ask that you would. Would you give us rest this morning?

We love you. It's in Jesus mighty name we pray. Amen. Amen. Cornerstone Church, we love you so much. If you need prayer, our team will be down here and we will see you next weekend.