[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":268},["ShallowReactive",2],{"global-settings":3,"post-freed-to-stay":117,"happening-now-events":165},[4,34,77,98],{"metadata":5,"sys":8,"fields":29},{"tags":6,"concepts":7},[],[],{"space":9,"id":14,"type":15,"createdAt":16,"updatedAt":17,"environment":18,"publishedVersion":22,"revision":23,"contentType":24,"locale":28},{"sys":10},{"type":11,"linkType":12,"id":13},"Link","Space","bl09c27vm5k1","59so28e437Uoeo9gkqXk9","Entry","2021-02-16T04:15:20.955Z","2026-08-16T07:11:35.545Z",{"sys":19},{"id":20,"type":11,"linkType":21},"master","Environment",68,30,{"sys":25},{"type":11,"linkType":26,"id":27},"ContentType","globalSettings","en-US",{"title":30,"id":31,"enable":32,"description":33},"Service Outdoors Page","service-outdoors-page",true,"Show a page for when we do Outdoor services.",{"metadata":35,"sys":38,"fields":50},{"tags":36,"concepts":37},[],[],{"space":39,"id":41,"type":15,"createdAt":42,"updatedAt":43,"environment":44,"publishedVersion":46,"revision":47,"contentType":48,"locale":28},{"sys":40},{"type":11,"linkType":12,"id":13},"58OiZDFg26kUsBwKW4nnCv","2021-02-16T04:16:04.229Z","2026-08-15T03:00:02.656Z",{"sys":45},{"id":20,"type":11,"linkType":21},677,254,{"sys":49},{"type":11,"linkType":26,"id":27},{"title":51,"id":52,"enable":32,"relatedMedia":53,"description":76},"Bulletin","bulletin",{"metadata":54,"sys":57,"fields":67},{"tags":55,"concepts":56},[],[],{"space":58,"id":60,"type":61,"createdAt":62,"updatedAt":62,"environment":63,"publishedVersion":65,"revision":66,"locale":28},{"sys":59},{"type":11,"linkType":12,"id":13},"dKLBPoA7D28BkMMl0KEay","Asset","2026-08-15T02:57:59.409Z",{"sys":64},{"id":20,"type":11,"linkType":21},3,1,{"title":68,"description":69,"file":70},"bulletin 8-16-26","",{"url":71,"details":72,"fileName":74,"contentType":75},"\u002F\u002Fassets.ctfassets.net\u002Fbl09c27vm5k1\u002FdKLBPoA7D28BkMMl0KEay\u002F08085a3dc5eaeaa4701b752efc0bb1a7\u002Fbulletin_8-16-26.pdf",{"size":73},321811,"bulletin 8-16-26.pdf","application\u002Fpdf","Find this week's bulletin here: your guide to worship, announcements, and upcoming events. ",{"metadata":78,"sys":81,"fields":93},{"tags":79,"concepts":80},[],[],{"space":82,"id":84,"type":15,"createdAt":85,"updatedAt":86,"environment":87,"publishedVersion":89,"revision":90,"contentType":91,"locale":28},{"sys":83},{"type":11,"linkType":12,"id":13},"5grdLVvM2ucUswrOr6FIES","2021-02-16T04:14:12.874Z","2021-02-16T05:40:08.871Z",{"sys":88},{"id":20,"type":11,"linkType":21},18,7,{"sys":92},{"type":11,"linkType":26,"id":27},{"title":94,"id":95,"enable":96,"description":97},"Service Watch Page","service-watch-page",false,"Show a \"Watch\" page for online services.",{"metadata":99,"sys":102,"fields":113},{"tags":100,"concepts":101},[],[],{"space":103,"id":105,"type":15,"createdAt":106,"updatedAt":107,"environment":108,"publishedVersion":110,"revision":65,"contentType":111,"locale":28},{"sys":104},{"type":11,"linkType":12,"id":13},"7jdWJFg4ILibfA6f20j5Vl","2021-02-16T04:14:52.366Z","2021-02-16T04:28:27.164Z",{"sys":109},{"id":20,"type":11,"linkType":21},11,{"sys":112},{"type":11,"linkType":26,"id":27},{"title":114,"id":115,"enable":96,"description":116},"Service Watch Zoom","service-watch-zoom","Show a \"Zoom\" link for meetings after online services.",{"metadata":118,"sys":121,"fields":134},{"tags":119,"concepts":120},[],[],{"space":122,"id":124,"type":15,"createdAt":125,"updatedAt":126,"environment":127,"publishedVersion":129,"revision":130,"contentType":131,"locale":28},{"sys":123},{"type":11,"linkType":12,"id":13},"1TEAy1qQgizQt8MCirLYTh","2026-08-20T19:34:50.446Z","2026-08-20T19:37:05.663Z",{"sys":128},{"id":20,"type":11,"linkType":21},12,2,{"sys":132},{"type":11,"linkType":26,"id":133},"post",{"title":135,"path":136,"date":137,"primaryImage":138,"body":162,"summary":163,"metaDescription":164},"Freed to Stay","freed-to-stay","2026-08-20",{"metadata":139,"sys":142,"fields":150},{"tags":140,"concepts":141},[],[],{"space":143,"id":145,"type":61,"createdAt":146,"updatedAt":146,"environment":147,"publishedVersion":149,"revision":66,"locale":28},{"sys":144},{"type":11,"linkType":12,"id":13},"71QvuYIGL2ND9FsyoCyoz0","2026-08-20T19:34:39.574Z",{"sys":148},{"id":20,"type":11,"linkType":21},6,{"title":151,"description":152,"file":153},"Hand holding a fan of hundred-dollar bills","A hand holding a fanned spread of one hundred dollar bills.",{"url":154,"details":155,"fileName":160,"contentType":161},"\u002F\u002Fimages.ctfassets.net\u002Fbl09c27vm5k1\u002F71QvuYIGL2ND9FsyoCyoz0\u002F8804543324ec97d0298d14ba1fa3565c\u002Figal-ness-9wY2ofzQ9Us-unsplash.jpg",{"size":156,"image":157},2971915,{"width":158,"height":159},5246,3497,"igal-ness-9wY2ofzQ9Us-unsplash.jpg","image\u002Fjpeg","A few weeks back I was at [HomeGymCon](https:\u002F\u002Fhomegymcon.com\u002F), I was eating dinner alone at a Chipotle when a man walked up and asked if I would buy him a meal. Normally in that situation I go with them to order and then pay at the register myself. This time, for whatever reason, I just handed him fifteen dollars in cash and told him that would about cover it, so go ahead and get in line.\n\nHe mumbled something and headed toward the counter. I looked down at my food for a minute, then looked back up, and instead of turning right into the order line he took a left out the door.\n\nReally? I was mildly annoyed, if I am honest.\n\nThen it hit me. How often do I do exactly that to God? Take what I need from him, then walk off in my own direction, and never look back?\n\nThat question is basically the second half of Psalm 116. ([Read the whole psalm here.](https:\u002F\u002Fwww.bible.com\u002Fbible\u002F1713\u002FPSA.116.CSB)) The person who wrote it had been in serious trouble, the kind he describes as ropes of death wrapped around him. He cried out, and God pulled him out of it. So what do we do with a rescue like that? The last eight verses are his answer, and it is a question most of us never actually say out loud: now what?\n\nThis psalm also comes from a set of songs Jewish families sang every year at Passover, the same songs Jesus and his disciples were singing the night before he was crucified. Hold onto that detail, because it matters later.\n\n# The Math That Never Works\n\n> How can I repay the LORD for all the good he has done for me? (Psalm 116:12, CSB)\n\nThat does not read like a man in despair, wringing his hands over a bill he cannot pay. It sounds more like someone finally saying out loud what he has been turning over quietly for a while, now that he has caught his breath. He has been rescued, and he wants to do right by it. Who would not want that?\n\nSo how do we pay God back for saving our lives? More effort, maybe, or a better version of ourselves starting Monday? Here is the problem: there is no repayment plan for grace. We cannot amortize a gift like this over sixty easy payments. The math simply does not work, and to his credit, the psalmist does not pretend that it does. Watch what he does instead.\n\n# Take the Cup, Not the Check\n\n> I will take the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD. I will fulfill my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people. (Psalm 116:13-14, CSB)\n\nNotice the strange logic here. The answer to \"how do I repay him\" turns out to be, take more from him? Does that sound backward? He does not hand God a check; he takes the cup instead. He says thank you, out loud, in front of people, which is a strange way to settle a debt if that is really what this was.\n\nThat word \"vows\" tends to make people nervous, like the psalmist is signing himself up for a payment plan after all. He is not. A vow is a promise, not a debt, and those are not the same thing even when they look similar from a distance. Elsewhere in the Old Testament, a prophet named Jonah said almost the same thing from inside the belly of a fish, \"I will fulfill what I have vowed\" (Jonah 2:9, CSB). Keeping a promise after we have already been rescued is not earning the rescue after the fact. It is just not going back on our word once we no longer have to keep it.\n\nHere is where that Passover detail from earlier comes back around. This is one of the exact songs Jesus sang with his disciples the night before the cross. \"I will take the cup of salvation.\" He took the cup first, so that we could one day receive it from him.\n\nGo back to the guy at Chipotle for a second. He took what I gave him and walked out the door alone. The psalmist takes what he is given and stays close enough to say thank you in front of everybody. Same gift, two completely different responses to it.\n\n# Marked at the Door, Not Out It\n\n> LORD, I am indeed your servant; I am your servant, the son of your female servant. You have loosened my bonds. (Psalm 116:16, CSB)\n\nThe word behind \"servant\" here is the plain Hebrew word for slave. In the world this psalm comes from, a person could end up enslaved to pay off a debt, and the law was specific about what came next: after six years, that slave went free automatically, at no cost to himself (Exodus 21:2). He did not earn his way out. Freedom was simply owed to him, on a schedule he never controlled.\n\nBut the law had one more line to it, using that same Hebrew word for servant. What happens if the freed slave does not actually want to leave?\n\n> But if the slave declares, \"I love my master, my wife, and my children; I do not want to leave as a free man,\" his master is to bring him to the judges and then bring him to the door or doorpost. His master will pierce his ear with an awl, and he will serve his master for life. (Exodus 21:5-6, CSB)\n\nNobody made him do that. He was free to walk, no strings attached, and he walked to the doorpost instead, on purpose, and it left a mark he could not hide for the rest of his life.\n\nThat is the picture the psalmist reaches for. \"I am your servant,\" he says, twice in one breath. Not complaining, just doubling down. \"You have loosened my bonds,\" he says in that same verse, and that is the part worth sitting with for a second. He was already free to go, and the freedom itself is why he stays.\n\nAnd he does not settle this quietly, just between himself and God. \"I will fulfill my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the LORD's house\" (Psalm 116:18-19, CSB). He says it walking through the front doors, out loud, where people can hear him say it.\n\nOne more trip back to Chipotle. That guy took his freedom and walked out the door by himself, and I have not thought about him once since without also thinking about how often I do the same thing to God. The psalmist takes his freedom and gets marked for life at the doorpost instead. Same freedom, two completely different doors.\n\n# The Takeaway\n\nYou are never going to square this account, and that is not bad news. It is the whole point. This whole psalm leans on a debt that was already paid. Jesus took that same cup, on the cross, so the bill would land on him instead of you.\n\nHe did not do that so you could keep a polite distance and feel appropriately thankful. He did it so you could come close, the same way that freed slave chose the doorpost over the exit. Except Jesus takes that picture one step further.\n\n> So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then God has made you an heir (Galatians 4:7, CSB)\n\nNot just a servant who chooses to stay, loyal as that is. A son. An heir. Family. He is not interested in managing your gratitude from arm's length. He wants you close enough to sit at his table, close enough that people notice you never left.\n\nThe only response big enough is not a repayment plan. It is staying close, walking toward him instead of out the door. Maybe you have known that closeness for fifty years. Maybe you are reading this still deciding whether any of it is even true, wondering if a God who actually wants you near could possibly be real. Either way, what has he rescued you from lately, even if it feels small compared to somebody else's story?\n\nDo not keep the answer to yourself. Say it out loud this week, to him and to at least one other person.\n\n---\n\nScripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.","Psalm 116 asks a question most of us dodge: after God rescues you, what do you actually owe him? The answer turns out to be far stranger, and far freer, than any repayment plan you could come up with.","You can't repay a rescue like this one. A short, honest look at Psalm 116, and why staying close, not paying up, is the response grace actually asks for.",[166,208],{"metadata":167,"sys":170,"fields":183},{"tags":168,"concepts":169},[],[],{"space":171,"id":173,"type":15,"createdAt":174,"updatedAt":175,"environment":176,"publishedVersion":178,"revision":179,"contentType":180,"locale":28},{"sys":172},{"type":11,"linkType":12,"id":13},"3AJndt4LbrCPLkgMrMf9SY","2021-03-08T17:08:02.288Z","2026-08-20T00:15:53.385Z",{"sys":177},{"id":20,"type":11,"linkType":21},922,272,{"sys":181},{"type":11,"linkType":26,"id":182},"event",{"title":184,"path":184,"primaryImage":185,"startDate":206,"body":207},"Worship Service",{"metadata":186,"sys":189,"fields":197},{"tags":187,"concepts":188},[],[],{"space":190,"id":192,"type":61,"createdAt":193,"updatedAt":193,"environment":194,"publishedVersion":196,"revision":66,"locale":28},{"sys":191},{"type":11,"linkType":12,"id":13},"75VwoNjPPfXOzv3NfmlICk","2025-11-14T21:14:20.690Z",{"sys":195},{"id":20,"type":11,"linkType":21},24,{"title":184,"description":198,"file":199},"Join us for worship this Sunday, November 16th at 10:00 AM.\nWe gather in the Lodi Academy Chapel to worship God together through music, prayer, and teaching from His word. Whether you're new to Cornerstone Church or looking for a place to connect, we'd love to worship with you.\n\nLocation:\nLodi Academy Chapel\n1230 S. Central Ave., Lodi",{"url":200,"details":201,"fileName":205,"contentType":161},"\u002F\u002Fimages.ctfassets.net\u002Fbl09c27vm5k1\u002F75VwoNjPPfXOzv3NfmlICk\u002Fa830c056957ef82af98881bf6e9f84e3\u002Fjohn-price-RAZQiZOX3mU-unsplash__1_.jpg",{"size":202,"image":203},923907,{"width":204,"height":204},2298,"john-price-RAZQiZOX3mU-unsplash__1_.jpg","2026-08-23T10:00","__Join us for worship this Sunday, August 23rd at 10:00 AM__.\nWe gather in the Lodi Academy Chapel to worship God together through music, prayer, and teaching from His word. Whether you're new to Cornerstone Church or looking for a place to connect, we'd love to worship with you.\n\nServices will be held in the Library throughout the summer due to renovations in the main auditorium. \n\n__Location:__\nLodi Academy Chapel\n1230 S. Central Ave., Lodi\n",{"metadata":209,"sys":212,"fields":223},{"tags":210,"concepts":211},[],[],{"space":213,"id":215,"type":15,"createdAt":216,"updatedAt":217,"environment":218,"publishedVersion":196,"revision":220,"contentType":221,"locale":28},{"sys":214},{"type":11,"linkType":12,"id":13},"1C3ezHKxvOMqoOooYka2Cy","2018-04-22T04:03:32.106Z","2026-06-20T19:45:18.749Z",{"sys":219},{"id":20,"type":11,"linkType":21},4,{"sys":222},{"type":11,"linkType":26,"id":182},{"title":224,"path":225,"primaryImage":226,"startDate":248,"endDate":249,"category":250,"body":267,"link":69},"2026 Cornerstone Women's Retreat ","645-womens-retreat-2026",{"metadata":227,"sys":230,"fields":238},{"tags":228,"concepts":229},[],[],{"space":231,"id":233,"type":61,"createdAt":234,"updatedAt":234,"environment":235,"publishedVersion":237,"revision":66,"locale":28},{"sys":232},{"type":11,"linkType":12,"id":13},"3XiQ2Gt10NhqS1Y1tzF9o6","2026-06-20T18:49:44.456Z",{"sys":236},{"id":20,"type":11,"linkType":21},5,{"title":224,"description":69,"file":239},{"url":240,"details":241,"fileName":246,"contentType":247},"\u002F\u002Fimages.ctfassets.net\u002Fbl09c27vm5k1\u002F3XiQ2Gt10NhqS1Y1tzF9o6\u002F6966c5127bf0f136dce18005b9a3b892\u002F0c7c6321-2b38-40c3-8d5a-83a13bba5af4.png",{"size":242,"image":243},174731,{"width":244,"height":245},777,612,"0c7c6321-2b38-40c3-8d5a-83a13bba5af4.png","image\u002Fpng","2026-10-23T00:00","2026-10-25T00:00",{"metadata":251,"sys":254,"fields":265},{"tags":252,"concepts":253},[],[],{"space":255,"id":257,"type":15,"createdAt":258,"updatedAt":258,"environment":259,"publishedVersion":261,"revision":66,"contentType":262,"locale":28},{"sys":256},{"type":11,"linkType":12,"id":13},"1ARhiJjtK0smwIcqMSccsy","2018-04-06T23:24:38.995Z",{"sys":260},{"id":20,"type":11,"linkType":21},8,{"sys":263},{"type":11,"linkType":26,"id":264},"category",{"title":266},"Women's Ministry","Come away for a refreshing weekend at the 2026 Cornerstone Women's Retreat! Take time to grow in faith and enjoy a weekend of fellowship. Space is limited! Registration forms are available now. See a Women's Ministry Team member for more information. ",1787254673278]