You Don’t Need a Fresh Start – You Need Something Better
This post is part of Blackbird Mission’s 2025 Summer of Sermons series, featuring Daron Earlewine’s most impactful church messages.
Ever catch yourself daydreaming about hitting the reset button on your life? Maybe you’re lying in bed this morning thinking about that relationship that went sideways, the career that derailed, or the parenting mistakes you can’t undo. If you could just shake your life like an old Etch A Sketch and start fresh, everything would be different, right?
Here’s the thing – there is no Etch A Sketch for life. And that’s actually better news than you think.
The common denominator in all your fresh starts
Let me ask you something: What’s the common denominator in every situation where you’ve felt like you needed a fresh start? You are. You keep showing up in all your fresh starts.
Maybe you’ve thought, “This marriage is hard – I need a fresh start with someone else.” Or “These kids are difficult – I need a fresh start at parenting.” Or even “This church has problems – we need a fresh start at a new church.” (Even though it’s the fourth church you’ve tried in five years.)
The issue isn’t external circumstances that need to be shaken away. What you need is the Word of God in you to actually transform you from the inside out.
What Joseph really needed (and what you need too)
Joseph (Jesus’ step-dad) didn’t need a fresh start. Joseph needed a fresh word from God. And that’s exactly what he got. While he was wrestling with his situation, an angel appeared in a dream and said, “Don’t hesitate to marry Mary. This child is from God, and He’s going to be Emmanuel – God with us.”
You might be thinking, “Well, that’s easy for Joseph. If an angel showed up in my bedroom tomorrow, I’d know what to do too.” But here’s the incredible truth: you actually have better access to God’s guidance than Joseph did.
You have the living Word of God – Jesus – who lived a perfect life, died on the cross, and rose from the dead. You have the written Word of God – the Bible – in your back pocket, available 24/7 in every translation imaginable. You have the Holy Spirit living inside you if you’re a follower of Jesus, guiding and directing your steps every single day.
Your Next Step
If you’re feeling like you need a fresh start, I want to encourage you: you don’t need an Etch A Sketch for life. You need a passionate pursuit of God’s purpose through your pain.
The same God who was with Joseph is with you. The same God who guided him through an impossible situation wants to guide you through yours. You were created on purpose and for a purpose, and no amount of struggle or disappointment can change that truth.
Start by getting into God’s Word regularly. Not just when you feel like it, but consistently. Let God speak truth into your situation. Surround yourself with a community that can help you process what you’re going through. And remember – you don’t need a fresh start. You need a fresh word from God.
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To connect or learn more about joining a Rogue Collective band, visit RogueCollectiveCoaching.com or email me directly at daron@daronearlewine.com.
Episode Summary:
A new year won’t change your life if you keep living from your own understanding. In this message, Daron breaks down the myth of the “fresh start” and reveals the deeper truth: what you actually need is a fresh word from God. Whether you’re facing discouragement, relational tension, or deep spiritual longing, this is a wake-up call to get back into God’s Word and walk in obedience. You don’t need to escape your circumstances—you need to let God enter them.
Key Takeaways:
⚡️ Life doesn’t offer clean slates—but God offers transformation
⚡️ Your own understanding will always be unreliable
⚡️ The Word of God is living, active, and ready to speak
⚡️ Obedience always precedes breakthrough
⚡️ Pain, when processed through God’s truth, can lead to passion and purpose
Notable Quotes:
⚡️ “You don’t need a fresh start. You need a fresh word from God.”
⚡️ “Joseph didn’t know he was in the Bible—he was just trying to survive.”
⚡️ “Success teaches you very little. It’s pain that transforms.”
⚡️ “You are the common denominator in every situation you think a fresh start will fix.”
⚡️ “Don’t bury your pain—let God redeem it.”
Episode Resources:
Connect with Daron on Social Media:
Links to the Daron Earlewine Podcast
YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Libsyn
TRANSCRIPT
Hey, welcome back to the Daron Earlewine Podcast. Daron Earlewine, your host. And hey, one thing I love to do in the summer is shake things up a little bit, right? You got four seasons and everyone’s a little different. And I like to change things up in the summer. And that’s what we’re going to do here on the Daron Earlewine Podcast. So here’s what we got for you. You know, we do a lot of purpose development stuff, whether it’s at schools, the purpose paradigm, with what we’re doing now and kind of communicating the future of Rogue Collective as we’re doing purpose and personal development in the marketplace. And one of other things that I’ve been doing, well, shoot, now for like, I don’t know, since I was 16, is going to churches or being a part of faith communities and sharing sermons out of the Bible. And so what we’ve done this summer is gotten maybe some of the greatest hits over the past year or so of me speaking at local churches and we’re going to put them together. We’re going to share them with you here on the podcast. And here’s what I hope. I hope they inspire you. I hope they help you understand how much God loves you. Okay. I hope they help awaken within you the fact that God is near you, right? That God is for you. And as we say every week on the podcast, that God has created you on purpose and for purpose. lots of different topics that will be coming this summer but hopefully just great content that’s going to inspire you. And we always love to hear from you. A very easy way for you to do that. Just email me, Daron, daron@daronearlewine.com. Love to hear what you’re learning, love to hear questions you have. Maybe there’s a topic you’d love to hear us jump into on the podcast. Please reach out, Daron at DaronEarlewine.com and enjoy the 2025 Summer of Sermons. Created on purpose and for purpose.
My name is Daron Earlewine. I get to be one of the teaching pastors here. Stoked to be with you this morning. It’s been a great morning so far. Really sweet spirit in the first service and stoked to be with you guys here at our second service. And quick question just to check in with everybody. How many of you you’re totally done with all of your Christmas shopping everything? Raise your hand, Okay, a handful of us. How many you’re gonna start tomorrow? Anybody? All right. Praise the Lord. All right.
I love putting together you know, Christmas wish list. Although the older I get, the more difficult it is, right? And I guess that’s a good thing. I I have most of what I need, but I think it’s tough because as you get older, it’s like, it’s not as easy as when you were a kid, because you’re just like asking for toys and such. We’re like, great, right? And I was thinking about Christmas lists and, you know, wish lists and stuff when I was a kid. And I had this like, my brain went back to a moment of being a kid. And when I say this, everyone who was like, near my age, you’re gonna be like, oh, so get ready. I’m about to blow your mind. Okay. Do you remember as a kid, the joy of going through the Sears catalog? Right? Yes. I hadn’t thought about a Sears catalog in like a long time. And if you’re not close to my age, you’re like, you know, a millennial or whatever, or the next, like, you’re like, I don’t even know what this bro’s talking about. Okay.
Let me educate you. Okay. There was a department store called Sears. Okay. And they had a catalog. Now, if you don’t know what a catalog was, it was the internet before there was the internet. Okay. It was actually made of this thing called paper. All right. And you would get the Sears catalog and you would flip back to the back of it. And the back was where they had the toy area and you would look through the Sears catalog, find what you want, circle it. Maybe you rip the page out, give it to mom or dad or grandma and grandpa. And it was so much was fun, okay? And I was just thinking about Christmas lists. It made me think about, like, even when our kids were little, it was so easy, because you could go buy a bunch of, like, toys that were, like, five bucks, right? And it was cool. Like, now they’re like, uh, like a PS5. And I’m like, I’d like you to have a job, all right? How about that?
And I can remember a cool presence like, you guys remember the Etch A Sketch? How good was the Etch A Sketch, right? So this week I found one and I drew that and, didn’t know I had those skills. I understand, I understand. I’m good with the dials, all right? That’s a lie, I didn’t make that at all, right? I said, Brandon, I need a picture. Brandon, you know what, Brandon, is all of our tech stuff he oversees, all of that, can we just real quick, for our whole tech team, just give them a round of applause, right? For everything to look and to sound and to be what it is, there’s a lot of people that make that happen. so I said, Brandon, give me a picture of Etch-a-Sketch. He got Jordan on there, appreciate it. But the cool part about Etch-a-Sketch, right, is you could get in there and Etch-a-Sketch, and I don’t even know what it was. I don’t know how it even works, right? Some kind of like secret powers. I don’t know how it happens. think maybe it’s a magnet and lead. I don’t know what it is, okay? But you would go in and you would draw with these dials and nowhere near that. For me, I was like, that’s a D. that’s a sketch, is you could draw whatever it was and if you totally screwed up, all you had to do was shake it and fresh start.
Do some work, make this happen. Oh, that’s terrible. Shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, Fresh start. And it got me thinking, I bet there’s a lot of us that wished this Christmas we could get like an Etch A Sketch for life. Right? I was living my twenties. Oh, disaster. Fresh start. Oh, there’s that first marriage. It’s going good there until that kind of like seven year itch thing is a real deal. And then we screwed it up. And this is disaster. Fresh start.
Oh, my kids, parenting and figuring it out. was like, man, was just, and now it’s just tough and it’s, there’s relationships that are strained and whatever. I just wish I could shake, shake, shake, shake, fresh start. career was going good, was really getting promoted, things were happening, and then I got laid off, and this happened, and whatever, now I don’t even know. It’s just like my whole career and the purpose, it’s a disaster. Shake it. Rest it.
The same way my current Christmas wish lists are more complicated than they were when I was seven or eight. Life’s more complicated. And… The facts this morning is that there is no such thing as an Etch A Sketch for life. And the longer I live, the more it sets in the gravity of this is that like life only moves in one direction. And unless somebody here has created a time machine. And if you have, please let us know. Right? Because we could go back and fix some things. But guess what? No one has created the time machine. It’s not there. So we’re all in the same spot. as we enter into this Christmas season, you have stuff, you have pains, you have different parts of your life right now that feel like a disaster. And I just want to meet you in this place for you to realize is this, is there is no fresh start. There’s your life and you’re going to continue to move through your life and there’s no way for you to shake it and just make it all start over. And that may feel this morning a little bit hopeless to you. But we’re gonna jump into the Christmas story and today I want to give you hope that is so much more real and so much more powerful than I want a fresh start.
And the reality is there’s somebody in the Christmas story that felt exactly like you and I feel today. And I love it when we can get into the word of God and find something that meets us right where we are. goes like this, we’re in the book of Matthew. It says, these are the facts concerning the birth of Jesus Christ. His mother Mary was engaged to be married to Joseph, but while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Then Joseph, her fiance, being a man of stern principle, decided to break the engagement, but do it quietly, as he didn’t want to publicly disgrace her. As he lay awake, considering this, he fell into a dream and saw an angel standing beside him, Joseph, son of David. The angel said, don’t hesitate to take Mary as your wife for the child within her has been conceived by the Holy Spirit. And she will have a son and you shall name him Jesus, meaning savior, for he will save his people from their sins. This will fulfill God’s message through his prophets. Listen, the Virgin shall conceive a child. She shall give birth to a son. and he shall be called Emmanuel, meaning God is with us. When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel commanded and brought home and brought Mary home to be his wife. But she remained a virgin until her son was born and Joseph named him Jesus. Heavenly father, I just asked that you would bring the living, powerful, reliable word of God alive this morning to us individually and as a community. In Jesus’ amen.
Joseph wanted a fresh start. This is the first Christmas. This is the first Christmas list ever made. Joseph’s number one item on his number one Christmas Christmas list was fresh start, right? Think about it, like Joseph was a average, normal, regular dude just like us. And I remind us of this often when I’m preaching is people in the Bible didn’t know they were in the Bible. Right? Like they were just doing like, Joseph was a young guy, he met a woman, he got engaged, he was excited, he had plans, he had dreams, had the way he thought his life was going to work. And he didn’t know he was in the Bible, he was just Joseph. And one day, his fiance comes back and says, hey, I’m pregnant. And he goes, it ain’t mine. And she goes, I know it’s God’s. And Joseph was like, oh, that’s cool, because that happens all the time. No, he’s going, what? I don’t know if I can trust you. This is crazy. Listen, I don’t know. You know what? Here’s what I need. I just need a fresh start. Just a fresh start. You know what? Control, alt, delete. We’re moving past this. I’ll just get out of this engagement quietly. No one has to know. I just got to start my life over.
You see, I’m not real acquainted with the Bible yet. Like, is there anything in this old book that could help me in my life? If you’ve ever felt like that, yeah there is. Let’s see if this works for us as a room. If you’re over the age of 25, stand up for me real quick. Stand up for me, okay? Let’s test this out to see if this word that we’re gonna get from God today could apply to us. Stay standing if in all of your life, your life has gone exactly the way you planned it and you’ve never experienced great disappointment or pain or just struggle or it’s like, man, what is life? It’s good, it’s good. I got the golden ticket, right? Notice no one’s standing up. Meaning every single one of us have gone through life and had a moment where we’ve gone, man, I could just really use a fresh start right now. but it’s not available.
My wife and I were on a walk the other day with our dog and have you guys noticed, those of us that are married, that it’s hard, right? Marriage is difficult. And so we’ve been going to counseling for, I don’t know, 15 years or whatever. It’s great. It’s great coaching. If you’re having struggles in your marriage and you think counseling is for like people with real problems, what you need to realize is that’s you. Right? And you need a coach. And so we’re learning a lot and growing a lot. And I feel like, you know, right now I was joking with somebody this week that I feel like we’re doing like calculus type marriage stuff now. Right? We’re out of the addition, subtraction. We’re trying to figure out calculus kind of level. How do we love each other? And we were on this walk and I said, baby said, wouldn’t it be awesome if we could take everything we know now, 23 years in and just start over? Wouldn’t that be great? Like you’d make so many less stupid mistakes. There’d be so much less pain and struggle. But you know what? You can’t.
For those of us that are parents, right, have you ever, if you have multiple kids, have you ever gotten to like kid three or four and thought to yourself, we really need to apologize to kid one. Like, hey bro, sorry, it a rookie year, didn’t know what I was doing. I’m sure as us as parents, the older you get, think, you know what would be awesome is if I could go back and get a fresh start and redo that first decade of parenting because I would not make all those mistakes. But then you realize that’s not possible. There is no etch a sketch. There is no time machine. There’s what you have created in your life, in your marriage, in your career, in your existence, and you’re in this moment right now.
Joseph wanted a fresh start. And I think we always want to think that the super good, successful times in life are gonna be the things that really help us level up. And Karine said it this week in a meeting and this quote, and I went and found it. Richard Roar says this, success has absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing to teach you spiritually after the age of 30. It just feels good. That’s all. Everything you learn at my age in my seventies now is by failure, humiliation and suffering. Things falling apart. Dissolution is the only thing that allows the soul to go to a deeper place.
That is true and difficult to sit with. Right? Because you have something in your life right now that’s causing you pain, that’s causing you struggle, that’s making you want to shake your life. And you think it’s a curse. You think it’s all bad. And it begins to lie to you when you have these moments. And what the lies tell you is you are alone in this to figure it out and fix it. It begins to lie to us about where God’s role in this is. When you’re working through pain and struggle and things you want to shake and stop and erase. God’s against me, I’m alone, I can’t do this, this is going to end bad, something’s wrong with me because I’m having these struggles, other people have it easier. We get all of these lies and the reality is it is the things that you’re going through right now that you wish you could shake and erase. that God can actually allow to become a gift for you to lead you to higher and deeper levels of breakthrough in your life.
Joseph experienced this reality. Because I want to let you know this, the truth about what you wish you could erase right now, I want you to know this, God is not scared of that. God is not surprised by that. God is not repulsed by that. God is for you in that. God is near you in that. What we will discover as we continue to read is it’s actually his name, Emmanuel, God with us.
Joseph. Joseph began to understand something that I think we need to understand is that this is that our own understanding is always unreliable. Okay. I want you to read that slowly. Okay. Our own understanding is always unreliable. You look at the story and it says in verse 20, as he lay awake considering this, what’s happening here is Joseph has a problem he wants to shake and erase. And he’s laying there thinking about this, pondering it, ruminating, just thinking through it in his own understanding. You ever do that?
For me, I don’t know what it is. For me, a lot of times if I lay in bed too long in the morning and just lay there, I’ll start getting negative ruminating thoughts. And I don’t know when it happens for you. It could be on a walk, driving, I don’t know. But for me, if I lay there too long, I’ll get thoughts about things that aren’t going great in my life, things that are frustrating, and I’ll find myself finding all of the negative about that situation, thinking through it only in my own understanding. This is what I think about it and this is this and all of a sudden the fear and the doubts and the oh and this and I’m terrible and it’s terrible. And then eventually I gotta get up. I gotta get out of this space. Joseph’s laying there awake, considering this. I do not know what I’m supposed to do. I gotta get a fresh start. I gotta get rid of this woman. I gotta get out of this situation. This is bad.
The word says it like this in Proverbs 14-12, there is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death. There’s other scriptures that speak about this too, right? In Proverbs 19 it says, many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. In your own human thoughts and wisdom, Right? You are going to come up with solutions that are unreliable if it’s only your thought and your wisdom. That’s why the word tells us later on, right? In a, let’s see here. I forgot to get this passage last last service in Proverbs three. It tells us to trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do and he will show you which path to take. Don’t be impressed with your own wisdom and said, fear the Lord and turn away from evil. Then you will have healing for your body and strength for your bones. Our own understanding is always unreliable. And in this situation, Joseph did not need a fresh start.
Joseph needed a word from God. And in our own life, you don’t need a fresh start, friend. You need a word from the living God that sustains you, that strengthens you, that guides you, that directs you. You don’t need a fresh start. You need a fresh word from God. What happens in the story? Well, he falls into a dream and an angel stands up beside him and says, Joseph, hey, don’t hesitate to marry Mary. To marry Mary? Don’t, you know, don’t hesitate. This is from the Lord, this is what’s happening. I am saving the world through this woman, right? And here’s the good news, Joseph. This is of God and he’s going to be Emmanuel. You’re about to get God with you in what you’re about to go through. Joseph didn’t need a fresh start. He needed a fresh word from God.
You say, well, Daron, that’s easy for Joseph. I mean, if I could have an angel show up in my bedroom tomorrow and tell me what to do, sure, that’s easy. I don’t have access to just that happening in my life. I’m trying to figure it out on my own. Oh yeah, you’re right. It was way easier for Joseph. Except you actually have… the living God present in your life guiding and direct. You’re not about to show up. No, actually showed up, lived a perfect life, died on the cross, came back from the dead, sent his Holy Spirit to guide and direct and actually fill you. You have that access constantly. Can you not just this one guy that says this cool Bible story happening? Every single one of us that follow Jesus have access to the living God all day, every day in our life.
And I need a word from God. Well, guess what? You have the living word and the written word of God. You have the Bible that is full of all of God’s truth. And guess what? You got it in your back pocket in every translation and every language possible accessible to you at all times, every day, any day, at any time. And this word of God, right, it says this about it, that the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and joints and marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
You see, we have it way easier than Joseph had it because every single one of us have access to the living and written word of God. And you don’t need a fresh start friend. You need a fresh word from God.
was talking to a friend recently, going through some really tough stuff in his marriage and he was talking to an older mentor. And the guy said, listen, you need to get in the word. And he said, so I did it. He said, I’ve been digging into the word every morning at like five 30. And you know what? His marriage is still in a real, real bad place. But he said, here’s what’s happening. He said, God is doing something in me as I’m filling my heart and my mind and my spirit with the word of God. And he is giving me strength to walk through what I’m walking through, even though it’s not been magically fixed.
If you’re at a place of despair this morning and you are not regularly in the word of God, the Bible, hearing the word of God for you, in you, through you, you are relying on your own understanding and it will be unreliable. Right, then this is not just like, well, I should probably have my devotions. No, this is life is really, really hard. It’s really disappointing. There are lots of struggles and on your own understanding, you will make unreliable, unwise decisions. And we get into the word of God because God is actually alive and he’s actually wanting to teach and guide and direct you to know how to live your life as it was intended to be lived. And that’s our access point to it.
You see, in our own thought, it’s like, well, this marriage is really hard. You know what? I need a fresh start. I need to get divorced and then it’ll be all better. You know what, I don’t know about these kids and the stuff we have going on. I just need a fresh start. You know, I don’t know about this church. We’ve been going to this church for a while and I tell you what, people are acting like human beings and I’m acting like a human being. You know what I think we need? These relationships are tough. You know what we need? We need a fresh start. We need a new church. That’ll fix it. Even though this is the fourth church we’ve gone to in the past five years. But this fifth one, that’ll be the fresh start we need.
Just to make it clear, what’s the common denominator in every one of your situations that you keep going through where you feel like you need a fresh start? Who keeps showing up in all of the fresh starts of your life? You do. And so I don’t need something outside, external to fix it. What I need is I need the word of God in me to actually transform me. So I don’t need a fresh start, I need a fresh word of God, and I need a fresh move of God’s spirit to move me, to allow me to step into and walk through what I’m walking through. And then I actually have to obey it. When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel commanded and brought Mary home to be his wife, but she remained a virgin until her son was born and Joseph named him Jesus. Joseph didn’t get a fresh start, he didn’t get a fresh life. What he got was a word from God, what he got was obedience to that word of God, and then he actually experienced Emmanuel, God with him.
Too often in my life, the way this story would read is, and then Daron woke up and did whatever the heck he wanted to. Daron got a word from God and what God said was, you need to forgive them. And Daron did whatever he wanted to. The word of the word, the word of Lord came to Daron and told him, you need to grow in self control and you need to grow in the fruit of the spirit and you need to do this. And this is what I’m guiding you to actually become the person you need to be in this moment for those around you and for the life I’ve created you to live. And Daron did what felt easiest. Right? And then we go, I need a fresh start. No, we need obedience to the Word of God. And that may sound old school, but it’s just true. God says, hey, don’t lie. And I wake up and lie. And then you look at your life and you go, this is not working out. I have really lost everyone’s trust in my life. Wonder why? Because I’m not obeying the Word of God.
Next year, we don’t need a fresh start. I love the phrase, right? New year, new you. That’s not true. There’s gonna be a new year here in a couple weeks. And guess what? It’s gonna be a new year. Same you. You’re showing up in your life in 2025. The good news is that in this new year, you could go into it not with a fresh start, but with a fresh savior. You could go into this new year with a fresh word living and active in your life. You could go into this next year with a fresh move of God’s spirit into your life and you could show up and not say, I need a new start. What I’m doing is I’m actually seeing the wisdom and the power of God transform, redeem the situation I’m in.
In this process, we have to embrace what our mentors taught me is this pain continuum, this pain wheel. Let me show you this graph real quick. You guys, it’s a bonus. Last service, we didn’t get to this far yet, okay? Here’s what happens often when we have something that’s a struggle, a pain, something we want a fresh start for. We bury it. I don’t like this, this is a struggle. I don’t want people to know what’s going on in our family, in my life. I’ve gone through something, it’s causing struggle in my life. What I’m gonna do is I’m gonna bury it. Act like it’s not there. And you realize that doesn’t work very well. You ever heard the quote, you’re only as sick as your secrets? It’s true.
You take this pain and you bury it. It does not work. It’s only the transformed pain of our life that we can actually begin to be transformed from. If we will not allow God to transform those things, we will transmit it to the next generation. What we have to do is we have to begin to profess these things, means speak them out loud, mean to say, this is real, I am working through this, I’m not in denial. And then the part of the profession is then I need to find out what God’s word has to say about this and then begin to speak God’s truth over my situation. I combat the lies of the devil with the truth of God’s word and I speak that into my struggle.
The next part of that is I begin to actually process this, meaning it’s not buried. It’s something that I get in counseling. I get in community. I begin to let this be something that I’m not hiding from. I take God with me, Emmanuel, into the situation and I begin to process what’s happening. Then this thing that is a pain in my life actually has the opportunity to become a present, like on your Christmas list.
And this seems counterintuitive in our own understanding, which is always unreliable. You go, Daron, how is this affair that we’re working through in our marriage, you’re going to tell me that’s going to become a present to me? I’m going to put a bow on that and see it as a gift. You’re going to say this cancer diagnosis is going to become a present to our family? My own understanding says that’s not true.
Well, friends, what I can tell you is I have seen story after story after story filled in the Word of God. And as I’ve lived over the past 46 years of people who have gone through affairs, they’ve gone through cancer things, they’ve gone through so many different processes. And what happens is they go through this process. They don’t get a fresh start. What they get is a fresh Word of God. They get the fresh Savior in their life. They get the fresh move of God’s Spirit. And God begins to transform and heal them through that process. And then somebody who may have gone through something they would have never chosen in their marriage gets to the other end of it, and now that present moves to a place of passion. And they go, you know what, we got through this. And what I’m gonna actually look for is I am unbelievably passionate now about finding younger couples to help mentor and disciple and help walk them through this process. I’m gonna walk with parents and families that are going through some pain like that because I’ve been there and God sustained me and I’m gonna be a messenger of salt and light and hope for the world. And in that passion, what you do is you begin to find purpose for your life.
You don’t need a fresh start. You need a passionate pursuit of God’s purpose through your pain. Mmm. That’s good preaching, Daron. Thank you.
So the band’s gonna come up and we’re gonna close out today with some communion. And I want to speak specifically to someone who might be here in the room and. And if you’re honest, you’re like, man, I really need a fresh start. but you’ve never come to the place of experiencing a fresh savior. I want you to know here at Mercy Road, we’re not about religion and we’re not about making, you that you come to this service and somehow going to church somehow changes your life. It doesn’t. What we’re about here is the reality of this story played out in our lives. What we’ve experienced is that Jesus really did come to earth in the Christmas story. Jesus was real and Jesus really lived a perfect life and showed us how life could be lived perfectly and he died and was brought back from the dead. And what he did is he set all things right and now has allowed there to be nothing to get in the way of God’s love for you, to give you access to allow God’s love to be real and a true experience of your life. And what we believe is that that’s the number one thing you need this Christmas. If you don’t know him, you need a savior. You need Jesus in your life.
He can redeem the pain. can give you passion. He can give you purpose. He can give you the strength that you need to walk through anything that you’re walking through right now because he is Emmanuel, God with you. We’re gonna take communion. You don’t have to be a member of our church to do it, but you do need to be a follower of Jesus. So somebody today, here’s what I’m gonna encourage you to do. If you feel like you need a fresh start, You’re looking for an etch a sketch of life. You don’t need a fresh start. You need a fresh savior. And what I want you to do is before you come up in your first act of obedience, your first celebration as a new follower of Jesus is in your seat before you go. You pray and you say, Jesus, I need a savior.
God, there’s a lot going on in my life, and if you really, if you actually love me and you will guide and you will direct my life and you could give me hope, I give you my life. You can pray it however you want, if you believe that he is who he says he is and you confess it with your mouth, you’re saved. And as your first step into that, you can come in and receive communion because on the night Jesus was betrayed, gathered with his disciples and he took bread and he broke it. So this represents my body. After dinner, he took a glass of wine. He gave thanks and he blessed. says, this wine represents my blood that will be shed for the forgiveness of sins. They told his disciples, which we are now, when you gather, do this in remembrance of me.
So we take this community, I want you to also, if you’ve already met this fresh savior, I want you to think about this. Ken is going to challenge us for 2025 that for us as a church, this would be a year of the word. That we would be in the word of God together as a community. And I want you to think about that. I want you to pray about that. I just want to ask God to speak to you is right now, would you say that you’re having a fresh experience with the word of God? And if you’re not, talk to God about that. Last thing I’d like you to consider and ask God to give you is not a fresh start, but a fresh anointing, a fresh infilling of God’s Holy Spirit into your situation right now.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for this truth. We thank you for the hope that we have a Savior who is God with us. Father, we thank you that we don’t have to wait for an angel to show up in some random situation. In every moment of every day, we have access to your Word, the living Word of God that is powerful, that is active, that can speak truth and guidance and strength into our life. We thank you for that. And I ask that you would help us to commit to it, to dive into it, make it fresh to us, Lord. And God, I thank you that you have made available the Holy Spirit to fill us, to strengthen us, to teach us, to empower us to become who we were born to be. We love you Lord. We ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.