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[Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] hey there is today your first time here or maybe your first time in a while if so maybe you're wondering exactly who we are and what this church is all about well we'd like you to know that we're a group of ordinary people who are on an amazing journey together following christ our guide is the bible because it's the divinely inspired word of god and it will never take us in the wrong direction along the way we hope you'll see that we are welcoming and spiritually passionate and that getting to know you is a big deal to us we know that the road is rough sometimes but we'll work really hard to bring you practical and relevant messages to equip and encourage you through life's ups and downs we want you to know that we care about this community and we believe that it's our job to make it a better place so no matter who you are or where you've been we're glad you're here with us today and we hope that you'll join us on our journey following christ and living out his plan for us so welcome to church [Music] well good morning welcome back to the shores church i'm so excited for this last week in this series at the table this is going to be a series that you're going to continue to see come up we're going to come back to this topic but this is the last week of part one of at the table and so far we've talked about the ideas of what we can find at the table who jesus wants at the table and we've been looking through the book of luke as we have touched on those two topics today i want to get very practical that we're going gonna look at the book of luke again but we're gonna look at chapter one verse one and we're gonna look at this from a different angle because ultimately there's things that we can find at the table there's individuals that jesus wants at the table which like we said last week is everybody but ultimately it's our job to invite people to the table and sometimes that feels intimidating sometimes we don't know how to do it so i want to get very practical it's very simple and so i want to talk through this today so before we dive into luke chapter 1 i just want you to repeat after me your word is written in my mind your word is hidden in my heart your word is a lamp onto my feet and a light onto my path i will seek you with all of my strength i choose to live my life according to your word your word oh lord is eternal one of the big concepts i want us to understand today is that we each have our own sphere of influence and it's up to us to influence that sphere now it's easy to say well i don't have all the knowledge or i don't have this or i don't have that that's why as a church as a body of believers we work together to help disciple people to help introduce christ to people but we all need to be influencing our sphere to help them know and help them meet and understand who jesus christ is so this morning as we jump into this i want you to to hear what happens in luke chapter one we've been using it as our example up until now but i want you to hear luke chapter one starting in verse one we're gonna go through verse four in as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word had delivered them to us it seemed good to me also having followed all things closely for some time past to write an orderly account for you most excellent theophilus that you may have certainty concerning the things you've been taught now that's it in the english standard version that's the version i normally use i want you to hear it just slightly different in the new international readers version so same passage different version right now many people have attempted to write about the things that have taken place among us reports of these things were handed down to us there were people who saw these things for themselves from the beginning they saw them and then passed the word on with this in mind i myself have carefully looked into everything from the beginning so i also decided to write down an orderly report of exactly what happened i'm doing this for you most excellent theophilus i want you to know that the things you have been taught are true the first point that i really want to pull out of this passage this morning is that every follower of christ must take the initiative to tell people about christ hear that again every follower of christ must take the initiative to tell people about christ this isn't just sharing something that somebody else said or something that somebody else did this is a matter of you need to be telling people who jesus is you need to be sharing your experience with jesus christ with others what we can take away from this introduction is that luke uniquely experienced christ that it's something that he was involved with something that he part took in that something that he studied and he put together this book of luke of all the experiences that he has either experienced or that he has heard from those who experience them firsthand we're going to see later on that he also authored the book of acts and he's much more present in the activity in the book of acts but luke and acts kind of go hand in hand into part one and part two where luke is part one about jesus and what jesus did in acts is about what luke and the all the other disciples the apostles that the church was doing so luke is about jesus acts is about the church so the question is is who is luke talking to in this passage now when we look at the gospels there's four of them matthew mark luke and john each one of them is written to a very unique audience when we look at matthew we see that he's writing to the jews the jews loved the old testament which to them was the torah they love their scriptures they love the prophecies of god they love looking forward to who is this messiah and when's this messiah going to come and so matthew's gospel is really linking the good news of jesus christ to the old testament and to the prophecies and to the genealogies and the lineages that help the jews understand that jesus is the one that they were looking for we have mark and mark was primarily writing to the romans that they were leaders and leadership in action impressed them they knew nothing of the scriptures but they knew everything about power so for the romans mark really wrote it as an action-packed gospel of the powerful ministry of jesus christ so matthew's to the jews mark is to the romans when we look at john john really wrote it more so for the idea that everybody for all times because we may not fit today in the category of the jewish people or the roman people but we fit into the category of everybody it's why he goes so hard after the love of god is that the love of god encompasses all people that jesus loves all people so that we can meet who jesus is so that we should then love all people because jesus loves all people it's not a coincidence that john 3 16 is one of the most well known verses that for god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish my everlasting life so matthew is to the jews mark is to the romans john is essentially for all time for everybody but mark's gospel is a little bit i'm sorry luke's gospel is a little bit different luke's gospel is not to an overarching grouping of people luke's is to an individual that we see here that he's writing to most excellent theophilus now theophilus is a is a greek name but there's some thought that theophilus because of the title of most excellent that he might be roman so he might be roman he might be greek but ultimately luke is writing to an individual and what we can understand here is that as luke writes this he is writing this to try and convince somebody of who jesus christ is he is writing this as an ability to try and share his faith that luke is taking initiative because he has been influenced by jesus christ and now for you and i what are we going to do how are we going to influence other people that we we look at this and we can realize that there is so much intentional writing here to try and win somebody the christ that try and help them understand that the idea of this whole passage and we'll talk about this a little more in a little bit but the book of luke was 25 feet long in scroll he wrote a he took a scroll and wrote 25 feet worth of writing to try and convince somebody how long are some of our text messages to some people of like jesus loves you and that's all we're going to give them luke wrote a 25 foot long scroll of information proving who jesus is sharing what jesus did how jesus wants to come in and change your life and impact because he cared about theophilus that much that you could hear this and say well luke is a passionate preacher that luke is a passionate minister that he loves let me hold on for a second because when we look at luke and we can study and we see this uh in in the entirety of his writings of luke and acts luke is not a preacher luke is not a minister when we say the five-fold ministry of the church it would keep bringing up that apostles evangelists pastors teachers um prophet said when we look at that grouping of people he doesn't fall in there he's a lay person he's in us and somebody's sitting in the pew luke's a doctor luke is a medical doctor but look at what luke is doing he is sharing with theophilus he is making a difference that he is coming into this and saying you know what i believe this so much i've got to do something about this because theophilus needs to know the good news of jesus christ we have a layperson we have somebody who's sitting in the pew on sunday morning who ends up writing two books of the new testament and you can you realize the fact that luke is still impacting the world today because he wrote the book of luke and because he wrote the book of acts that we can hear what jesus did and we can hear what the uh the the church did and that we can look even in the book of acts in chapter 16 10 we see the fact that luke begins to accompany paul on his missionary journey on the third journey his trip to jerusalem and was with him in rome at the end so luke is somebody who heard the good news got excited about the good news and began serving and began sharing his faith he took initiative to share with others the good news of jesus christ you and i need to do that if we are believers we need to take the initiative and start sharing the good news with people now i want to share an example of somebody in maybe more recent american history who did something similar to this all of us probably know the heinz family there's quite a few products between ketchup and mustard and heinz 57 different sauces different condiments but henry hines the the founder of this heinz organization that he he created these 57 different products and realistically you have used some of them you've been influenced by his family and purchasing some of these different products but one of the things you need to know about him is he was a christian and that he would attend church and that there was one time where he was at a revival meeting and while he was at the revival meeting the minister looked at him and said you are a christian man why aren't you up and at it that he believed it but he wasn't backing it up he wasn't sharing his faith he wasn't telling people about who jesus christ was and he hears this from this minister and he gets mad he goes home he goes to bed but he can't fall asleep and finally at about four o'clock in the morning he begins praying and saying god would you make me stronger and make me more confident in sharing my faith so that i can go and tell other people and then he was finally able to fall asleep at the next meeting of the bank presidents that he had to go to he sat down next to a man that he knew and he turned and spoke to him about his christian life his friend looked at him in amazement and said i've wondered many times why you never spoke to me about this if you really are a christian i wonder how many of our friends and how many of our family and how many of our co-workers know that we go to church know that we follow jesus but we never talk to them about jesus it becomes a core part of our life but we never share it we must take the initiative now here's the thing is he uh henry hymes wins that individual to christ and then he goes on to individually share his faith and win 267 individuals to jesus christ he goes from not sharing his faith to sharing with 267 individuals and probably more but 267 that accept christ because of his witness because of his testimony because he took initiative it doesn't take a lot of math to realize that if you and i were to each share our faith at the same pace that henry hines did this world could be won over for christ that we could see something change in our world if we were willing to live the way that henry hines did you and i must take initiative on a consistent regular basis that luke wrote the book of luke in the book of acts theophilus so that he could understand who jesus was and understand what the church was doing that we look at henry hines who began sharing his faith because he was challenged by a minister and he shared his faith with the banker and it began changing how he acted how he lived so you must take initiative just like they took initiative so now the question comes up that i hear quite often is how do i share my faith that we feel like we don't have it all together and because we don't have it all together we don't want to share because we might say the wrong thing we might not understand everything somebody might ask us a question that we don't have the answer to what do i do it's almost easier for me to not share and to me i look at that as the the enemy saying you know what i'm going to take you out that you might not have the right tools the right weapons you might have to go and ask somebody so let me just convince you not to fight whatsoever let me get you to throw in the towel before you even start there's so many things in life where you don't have the right answers you don't have all the facts and you'll argue that topic still that you'll still passionately believe in your side even when you know that you're wrong but when it comes to our faith so often we're so afraid of what happens that we don't share that we say well that person is ever going to accept christ anyways but what if they would what if that was their moment and we don't share our faith with them because we're afraid well they just might think i'm crazy or they might say no anyways i've already told them 10 times but what about number 11 what if number 11 is the moment that they are waiting for that god is about to move in their life so how do i do it i want to share a couple things i feel like this is very practical but at the same time i think this will help you out in how you share your faith when you take initiative to tell people about jesus the first one is this it's build spiritual habits building spiritual habits now as you hear this point it's going to feel very obvious because i feel like i say these things all the time but i really mean them that if you want to be able to take initiative and share your faith with others you need to do what i'm about to say that if you want to share your faith if you want to impact people you need stronger spiritual habits you need to spend time in prayer you need to be one-on-one talking with god how can i tell somebody about some somebody my god if i don't spend any time with him how can i answer questions if i don't even spend time with him that we need to spend time in scriptures you want to know who jesus christ is you want to know what god did for you this book has all the answers now i know obviously this is a big book and just going through four or five chapters a day would get you through the book in in about a year and that's about 15 20 minutes a day if you dedicate that time and say you know what i'm going to study it and i'm going to study it i'm going to study i'm going to really pour into it you're not going to have all the answers tomorrow but tomorrow you'll have more answers than you did today and then a week from now you'll have more answers than you did today in a month from now you'll have more answers than you did today and five years from now 10 years from now you'll know so much more than you know today but it's a process that you have to begin so we need to spend time in prayer talking one-on-one with god sharing our hearts sharing our hurts we need to spend time in scripture learning about what god has already done for us and in turn what god is going to do for us we need to spend time fasting that when we talk about fasting the first monday of every month or a meal the first monday of every month if you haven't done it yet give it a shot do it give it a try what are you waiting for that you may say well this is going to be hard yeah there's a lot of things in life that are hard but we'll do them if they're important to us and if god has called us to fast if god has called us to spend time in his word if god has been called us to spend time in prayer then we should do those things we should memorize scripture and i know for some of you memorizing scripture is easy that you could start rolling off the scripture verses and the reference points i a lot of times have a difficult time remember what was in this exact book in this exact verse but all of a sudden when scripture comes back to my my heart into my mind where i may not remember the exact reference but i know i could find it in a moment that the the scripture starts coming alive in my heart and my mind and will challenge me when all of a sudden i don't know what to do and god brings something back to my mind he can't bring something back to your mind if it wasn't in your mind in the first place so memorize scripture start internalizing it let me share an idea with you that technology wise i'm a fan of apple i've got my ipad right here that i have an iphone my macbook pro is sitting over across the room right now i even just recently moved from a garmin watch to an apple watch and you may say well that's that's a lot of apple products there is a time where i couldn't stand apple that i was a freshman in college i had just got a brand new computer i had a roommate who jumped on my computer and i still to this they don't know what all he downloaded i think he was just trying to download some games but he got viruses all over my computer i took it to my computer science professors i happened to be taking a computer science class that semester and i said what do i need to do what program do i need to put on my computer in order to fix my computer and he looked me in the face and said you need an mac i'm like well what's an mac you need a mac and i remember feeling so angry because here's my perfectly good brand new computer and you're not helping me you're supposed to be my professor you're supposed to be my teacher you're supposed to help me with this and instead you're just looking at me and telling me no you were wrong for buying that you should have got this i'm not going to help you and the attitude that came from him i swore off mac products i didn't want anything to do with it i'm like if this is my teacher and this is how smug he is in regards to an apple product then i don't want that i don't want to be a part of that and even when mp3 players because when i was in college that's when the the ipods and all of the other brands were coming out that i went to get my first mp3 player and i looked at all the different things in the the store and i made the decision i am not getting an ipod because that's a mac product and i want nothing to do with that and so instead i went with whatever the product was it doesn't exist anymore because it was that big of a piece of garbage i took it back and i think i probably spent six or seven hours trying to get one cd onto it i think when i was all done i got a song onto this thing it was horrible it was difficult it was a challenge and i threw in the tongue like i'm taking this back and i went back and i looked at all the other products and nothing else looked like it was even possible to work well and then finally i'm like you know what i'm going to get this ipod i'm not happy about this i'm going to give it a try and i want to be able to say that this doesn't work either so i get it i take it back to my dorm room i start putting music on it and within just two or three hours i had a significant amount of my music already on it it worked so amazing and i was mad i was mad that it was working so well but at the same time it was working so well it was accomplishing the purpose that i needed it to do and so when we look at this you start seeing me being won over to something even when i'm still not necessarily a fan of it and here's the thing that i and this is the reason why i bring this up is i may not have all the answers yet i may not be completely committed to it yet but as i started that journey all of a sudden i went from somebody who didn't want anything to do with mac to now mac is the the environment that i use for my digital products and the same thing is true with with scripture first we need to get our feet wet we need to get into scripture we need to get into prayer we need to get into fasting we need to do the things that god has called us to do so that we can fully enter in to the environment spiritually that god would have for us then in turn here's the other connection i want to do i want to go back to my professor because there is a moment where i was a non-apple uh product user now that i am what i don't want to do if i'm trying to convince somebody to buy a mac product what i can't do is say you know what you should buy an mac you bought the wrong thing because all of a sudden i'm going to potentially turn them off to what i enjoy using the way i was turned off in the past the same thing is true for christianity so often we have this attitude well you're just a sinner you're messed up and there's no hope for you we give that kind of a response of like well you better change or you're going to go to hell no let's sell the good news yes there's a hell yes if you don't know who jesus is you're going to go there but that's not what we should be selling we have the best product on the face of the planet my mac products will eventually break that if the rapture were to happen i don't get to take them with me i get to take people with me and we get the push the best product jesus christ that's out there we get to tell people about jesus i should be more excited telling people about jesus than i am telling them about mac products than i am about my favorite sports team that i am about fill in the blank my favorite vacation destination my work whatever it is my excitement about jesus should be greater than any of those things and i should take initiative to tell people because i have spent time building my spiritual muscles so that i am prepared to tell people about jesus in that exact moment number two in order to tell people about jesus is that you need to pray for opportunity and then you need to seize it pray for the opportunity and seize it if you remember a couple minutes ago with the story of henry hines that he prayed and said god i need you to give me some strength i need you to give me some opportunity i need you to change me and then all of a sudden he goes to that next meeting that next bankers meeting and he sits down and he begins sharing his life he begins sharing who he is in christ and then all of a sudden here's an opportunity and things begin to change we need to have that kind of attitude with other people that we are going to share our faith we're going to share who we are we're going to share our heart so that they can meet christ they can have that same excitement for jesus that if you make like statements to people and you're trying to convince them of things of yeah jesus he changed me i do the same things i always did but he changed me don't you build that spiritual muscle from doing all the spiritual practices and growing spiritually and then you start saying you know what i want opportunities now i may not have it together yet but god give me an opportunity let me share and then all of a sudden when i can share and someone says well yeah but you don't have this fixed you're still doing this yeah but this is where i was i'm not where i want to be but i'm not where i used to be i'm on a journey i'm moving in the direction that god has for me that i'm farther along my path than it was a month ago than i was a year ago if you see me now you should have saw me then my god has made this move in me and i know he can make this move in me as well we see that opportunity we seize it that that henry wasn't messing around he began sharing his faith when we look at theophilus in luke here that luke sees somebody who needs to know and needs to understand who jesus is and he writes a 25 foot long scroll depicting everything that jesus did that he has memory of that he has knowledge of that he potentially saw that he he shares all this and ultimately is inviting him to a table now here's the thing the table and as we've talked about it this month it's easy to think of a table like let me invite you to this table we're going to sit and share a meal we're going to sit and share a drink a cup of coffee but the same time a table could also be one of your kids events that all of a sudden you're sitting with somebody at a soccer game you're sitting at somebody with a a dance class a ballet recital fill in the blank whatever your kids do that that could be a table where you share a moment with somebody or you share a moment with a grocery store or another store that you go in all the time you get that same cashier and you begin building a relationship and you start sharing who you are and sharing your life you don't know the impact of a smile that you can have on somebody that all of a sudden you start chipping away at the hardness of a heart and you open a way of saying you know what jesus loves you and begin opening that and encouraging them and then maybe all of a sudden it's a matter of saying you know what jesus loves you i love you to join me at church someday and you begin opening that opportunity i don't know what it looks like every time but we pray for opportunity and when we see opportunity we seize it and we seize the day it may not always end the way you expect it to and a lot of times in life a lot of the things we do don't end the way we expect them to but if we just are consistent in planting a seed and taking opportunity somebody else may get the water somebody else may get the harvest you may get the water with somebody else planted you may get the harvest with somebody else planted and watered but ultimately the crop grows that people come into the kingdom and heaven gets a little bit bigger how exciting and then the third thing this morning is this in order to take initiative and to tell people about jesus christ is that you need to stay consistent and don't give up you never know when you share your faith if this is going to be the moment that this is going to be the time where they accept this might be the moment where they say the sinner's prayer or this might be the moment where they pray yet again for you to go away i don't know which one's going to happen in that particular moment but what i do know will happen is that if we are consistent and we share our faith with other people then all of a sudden they will begin experiencing jesus christ a little bit by little bit until things change you need to stay consistent though and you need to not give up we keep going back to this idea this morning that luke wrote a 25 foot long scroll for theophilus now in scripture we we see a lot of scholars think that theophilus accepted jesus because in uh luke chapter one it says the most excellent theophilus he's luke is almost using a title for theophilus that when we get to acts 1 and we see kind of this reintroduction he's referring to him as theophilus he's not referring as the most excellent theophilus anymore so the tone shifted it went from a place of honor to a place of moral friendship that the scholars believed that theophilus accepted christ between the book of luke and between acts almost as if here's what jesus did okay i accept jesus and now here's what the church is doing now theophilus go and do is what the church is doing but even if theophilus never accepted christ the book of luke is not for lost that this book is still being read by individuals all around the world every single day people have accepted christ because of the words in luke's gospel a doctor who was sitting in the church who cared about his friend enough that he was going to write the good news of jesus christ down you don't know the impact you might just think well i just told this one person and they finally accepted christ or maybe they'll never accept christ you don't see the impact of what that means in eternity you stay consistent you may say well that one person accepted christ and you don't get to see that they share their faith with one more person and that person begins telling everybody all of a sudden the next billy graham the next major preacher comes out of you sharing your faith with somebody who shares their faith with somebody you don't know the impact so you stay consistent you do not give up you do not throw in the towel because if we are consistent we can see a multiplying effect that we don't understand henry heinz shared his faith in 250 plus people all of a sudden began to understand who jesus christ was that let's just say that each one of those people was a separate family 250 plus families that now all of a sudden have somebody who's following after jesus that now they go and let's just say that in each of their families if they were to win their family immediate families that let's say their families are uh four people 200 one person goes to 250 that goes to a thousand and now they start sharing their faith the impact of one person being consistent and doing what the holy spirit tells them to do has a multiplying effect that we don't understand on this side of heaven but someday when you get to heaven there will be people who will have met christ because of your consistency to tell one person and then tell the next and then tell the next and pray and not give up build those spiritual muscles that when we are willing to say i'm going to build my spiritual muscles that i'm going to pray for opportunities and seize them and i'm not going to give up all of a sudden we begin taking the initiative we begin telling people about jesus we begin seeing the kingdom change forever that here's the thing is we can we can look at individuals and be shocked that you don't have it all together but you want to come to church but think back to when you first met christ you didn't have it all together that somebody shared faith with you that there might have been somebody in the church like they don't have it all together yet i don't know if they should be here no everybody is welcome in church and the holy spirit will begin working things out of people's lives we just need to be consistent and faithful and share our faith and watch what can happen that sometimes the church might look messy because there is growth and there's rapid growth but the beautiful thing is the ability of all of us being disciples all of us growing will then help us disciple those people who need discipling that need growing and then all of a sudden they can continue the cycle of telling the next person and telling the next person and they can help disciple those people we start growing as we intentionally say it is more important that somebody meets christ then i get what i want that's a difficult thing to hear but if all of a sudden a change fundamentally in how a church operates allows more people to hear the gospel then that church better change that church better do something different that church needs to grow so this morning here's here's the way i want to end is that live in church this morning i'm handing out little business card uh type cards to people to be invite cards to other people if you missed church this morning you're welcome that son to come in and grab a pack of of them and i want you to pray over them and i want you to give them the the people and invite them to church and start building that relationship if you're in a spot where you're still not comfortable being back in the building that's totally fine what i need you to do though is i need you to share this link with people email it to somebody uh begin sharing your faith with individuals begin whether you're on social media begin sharing about who jesus is to you on social media begin making jesus famous in some way some form some fashion call somebody up today text somebody email them but we need to be intentional about telling people about who jesus christ is so that jesus can be made known that they can have their lives radically change and transform and accept jesus christ so this morning this is what i want to pray for you that if you've never accepted christ before all you need to do is this i want you to invite jesus in and say you know what jesus i messed up i am a sinner but you came for me that would you come into my life and forgive me of everything that i've ever done wrong and set me free and help me live for you and invite him in and that's all you need to do it's a simple prayer pray that prayer then i want you to go to myshores.church and there's a link there that says how to start my christian journey and i want you to begin studying i want you to begin seeing these are the things that christ did for you this is how i can grow this is how i can begin reading my bible this is how i can begin doing in building these spiritual muscles that i've been talking about this morning but for the rest of you i want to pray over you that the same way as henry hines that would you give me more power would you give me the ability would you give me the confidence would you give me the boldness to share my faith because we need to do this so that other individuals can enter into the kingdom it's not about the shores church becoming the biggest church in the area it's about the shores church impacting people so that they go to heaven i ultimately don't care where they go to church i ultimately care that they go to heaven and not to hell and so this morning this is my challenge i don't care if it's somebody you're praying for that lives on the other side of the country or on the other side of the state or on the other side of town i want you to pray for the people that got places on your heart and begin sharing your faith with them so let me pray for you to encourage you to challenge you and then we're going to say the great commission together as we close heavenly father lord i pray for my friends as they watch this message this morning lord would you just challenge them in the the same way as henry hines was challenged to go and share his faith and then he began going and sharing his faith with others and individuals met you and they had their lives and they had their families lives radically changed and transformed but i pray that that very same story can happen again for person after person in our church that they would feel the confidence and the boldness of henry hines and begin sharing what you've done in their life and have their life radically change and transform forever lord be with us challenge us give us opportunities help us grow our spiritual muscles so that we have total confidence in jesus's mighty and incredible name amen all right let's say the great commission together today as we go to close go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit teaching them to observe all that i have commanded you and behold i am with you always to the end of the age all right it was great being with you this morning make sure that you go out and you share your faith with somebody this week i'll talk with you next time give to our church online if you want to give a quick gift enter an amount select a fund then enter your email address and your first and last name then enter your payment details and click give and that's it we'll send a receipt to your email address to use a saved payment method or manage a recurring donation you'll want to log in click the login button and we'll send a code to your phone or email account verify the code and you're in now your payment info is ready to go when you want to make a donation to manage your giving details switch over to the my giving page here you'll see more ways you can give you can also add a payment method a bank account or a debit card set up a recurring donation and view your giving history [Music] me [Music] [Music] you