Life.Church with Craig Groeschel - How to Neighbor, Part 3: Empowering The Poor

Episode Date: May 15, 2016

As the world grows more connected, our neighbors are closer than ever. But how close are we to our neighbors? You might not share a fence, but you can still share their burdens and joys. Now’s the time to show the world How to Neighbor. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Thanks for joining us here at Life Church, where we are one church meeting in multiple locations and reaching around the world through church online. If you'd like to learn more or see if there's a location in your area, all you have to do is go to life. com. Coming up, we'll join our senior pastor, Craig Rochelle, as he teaches us that helping the poor begins by understanding that poverty is rooted in brokenness in part three of the message, how to enable. Well, I am very, very excited to teach today, part three of a four-part message series called How to Neighbor. What's overwhelming to me is to be a part of a church community that cares so much about helping people. In week number one, we talked about racism, and we got tremendous response of people who want to be a part of the solution and resist this massive problem.

Last week we talked about adopting and fostering. Next week, we're going to talk about relational poverty and how do we love the lonely. Today, what I want to do is address an issue that I believe is going to be close to so many of your hearts. All of us want to make a difference in those lives of people who are in need. A lot of times we say the language, we want to help those who are poor.

We want to do more than help those who are poor. We want to empower the poor to take steps out of poverty. into the life that God designed for them. And so the title of today's message is just that, empowering the poor. I know there are many of you who would say, you might even be struggling right now. I went on Twitter just for fun

and searched the words, I'm so broke, just to see what people around the world might be saying about their struggles. And I wanted to share a few of those with you just for fun. You may have to be 40 years of age to get this first one.

So if you don't get it, just say I'm too young for that one. But this person actually said on Twitter, I'm so broke, my baloney has no first name. There are a lot of you over 40, I guess, because you do get that one. This person said this, I'm so poor I can't even get a sugar daddy.

All I can afford is a Splendid Daddy. This next one says, I'm so poor, I rub cologne from magazines on my shirt. And when they say, oh, you smell good, what is that? I say page five. Now, this poor person says, I'm so broke, I go to KFC to lick other people's fingers after they eat.

That's just broke and nasty. Everybody say broken nasty. Okay, if you're broke, just be broke, don't be nasty. Okay, that's just nasty. You know, the reality is that there are many people in our own backyards that are struggling financially. many of you may say I really am in a deep place of need right now. What do I do?

Some of you, like me, you've been to developing nations, and you've seen poverty in a way that's much different than poverty maybe down the street from us. If you've ever been to a place like this, you'll see one room, very unstable shacks that maybe six, seven, eight, nine people would live in. They may be the size of a closet in many of our homes.

They're made of metal scraps. There may be a sheet for a door. There might be a bucket in the corner, and that's the toilet. That's where people go to the bathroom. They don't have access to water. They might have to travel several miles to a community place to get water to bathe in

or water to drink. While we might say there's no food in the refrigerator, they would never say that. They're hoping that a bag of flour and some rice or something might get them through the week. because it's very, very, very, very difficult. Whether it's poverty like that or poverty of someone who's unemployed down the street from us,

all poverty is real. And I want to talk about how do we empower those who are in need in a way that would honor Christ? What's really interesting to me is that in Matthew 25, Jesus tells a parable about what it will be like when he returns for his people. Essentially, he said, I'll separate those who are mine from me. those who are not mine, and I'll speak to those who are mine, the sheep is what he calls them. And he says, I'll say to them, when I was hungry, you gave me something to eat, when I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink, when I was homeless, you gave me a place to stay. And those who belonged to him will say, when did we do this?

When did we give you Jesus something to eat? When did we give you a place to stay? When did we give you a drink? When did we put clothes on your back? When did we visit you? And Jesus said to them in Matthew 25, verse 40, he said, whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, say it with me, all of our churches. Jesus said, you did for me.

I want you to imagine that for a moment, that whenever you use what you have to empower someone who doesn't have something that they need, you are actually ministering to and blessing Jesus. Can you imagine? That's how special it is to use what we have to make a good. a difference in the world. Perhaps this is why Proverbs 1917 says this. If you help the poor, what are you doing? You are lending to the Lord. You're literally serving God by serving people who are in need. First John chapter 3, verse 17 and 18, is a verse that could stun you into

silence as you listen to the power behind this verse. John said, if any, Anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need, but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? It's pretty strong, huh? It goes on to say this. Dear children, let us not love with what? Let's say it aloud. Do not love with just words or speech, but how are we called to love?

Not just with words or speech, but with what? With actions and in truth. We're not just going to say, oh, somebody should do something. and we will one day and maybe we could. We're not just going to talk about this, but I believe that God calls us the church to be the hope of the world to take the resources that God has put within our care, our management, and to love others out of poverty into a place of wholeness.

How do we do this? I know you want to. I know every single one of you, when you're exposed to deep needs, it moves you, it makes you ache, You care about it, you want to do something, but the problem is many times we don't know what to do, we don't know how to do it, we don't really know how to get it right. So in order to get it right, what I want to do is start by building a foundation and truly getting our minds around what poverty is. What is poverty?

In fact, there's a book, if you want to study about this, of all the books I've read, my favorite book is called When Helping Harts. when helping hurts, fantastic book that really it will empower you with knowledge to make a difference in a way that truly lifts people up. And in this book, the authors state this, which I thought was very interesting, what is poverty? They say this, most Americans define poverty as a lack of something material. If I ask most of you, what is poverty? You might say, well, it's when someone doesn't make enough money to survive, or they don't have, they've got inadequate housing or they don't have access to the right clean water or such. They don't have good health care.

Your 14-year-old might say, we're so poor, I can't afford an iPhone. Whatever it is, it may be relative to where you are, but most Americans would say poverty is lacking something material. On the other hand, there was a group that surveyed 60,000 poor people in low-income countries. and this is how the poor people defined poverty. The truly poor defined poverty as a mindset. They never said it was lacking something material. I can't afford a nice pair of jeans.

They never said that. It's truly a mindset. It's the way they think. Here's what they said over and over and over again. They said it's a deep sense of shame. I feel very ashamed that I can't do more. I can't make it out of this. They said there's an ongoing feeling of

worthlessness. They use the word fear over and over and over again. They use the word humiliation. They use the word hopeless again and again. It's a sense of being trapped. It's not like, you know, hey, I just wish I had a car that had a, you know, a backup camera and then, you know, I'd be safer. It's not that. It's a, I don't know how to get out of this. I don't have access to education. I don't have any kind of transportation. I don't have any hope to, I just want to try to feed my family today. It's a mindset more than it is a lack of something material. So what we need to understand,

but we want to help empower those who are struggling, we need to understand that we don't just need to give what someone needs to get through the day. We need to help change the way people think. We need to really help turn a mindset from a sense of hopelessness to a hope that God has given me what I need to get out of the situation.

that I'm currently in. And so what we want to do is we want to give in a way that helps, never in a way that hurts. And the problem is, as North Americans, we often think we know what helps, but we often give in a way that hurts. Like the time years ago, we sent a group of people to a developing nation

with hundreds of T-shirts. Look at all these cool T-shirts. All the kids line up for three T-shirts. But what we didn't realize until day three is that there were three women in town that actually made shirts in order to sell and we came in and undermined their business in an effort to do good. Do you see how we often have good intentions,

but the result may not be so helpful? Many of you have probably had an example, something like this. This just happened to me in my own home. I've got a 15-year-old who wants a car at the age of 16. So Sam, it will be the fourth gross shell kid on the road. So about seven, eight months from now, just watch out because there's another one loose, okay?

And so he's saving his money to pay for half of his car. Anywhere there's a job, he's working, working, working, working, working, trying to get a car that's going to be worth more than $1,000. So he's working to save his money. Well, I read this really good book, and I wanted him to read it because I thought it would be really helpful to him and some other of my kids. So I says, hey, Sam, I'll give you $100 toward your car if you read this book, write a short report on it and discuss it with me, okay?

No-brainer. Sam said, I don't think so. I'm actually not so sure I was asking your opinion. I'd like for you to read this book, and I'd give you $100 for your car. And he said, no, no, no. And he never talks back. And he said, I'll read the book, but I don't want the $100.

Now I'm totally and completely confused. I'm offering you this. I'll read the book, but I don't want the $100. I said, I don't get it. And he said, Dad, if I'm going to read a book that's going to help me get better, I want to get better, but I don't want to get paid for it. Well, Buki or Stephen, he's 13. He said, I'll do it for $100.

And he read half the book by 8 o'clock that night, okay? He wanted him. So I don't know which kid to be proud of and which one to be disappointed in. But the whole point is, Sam wanted to do better, but he didn't want a handout to do something that would help him. And I need to respect that. And a lot of times we want to come and want to help somebody,

but without knowing it by giving them a hand out, we're actually insulting them in the process. I give you an example, and this is quite embarrassing to me, but chances are many of you have done something similar to this. Years ago, we were a part of this really cool life group, and we always wanted to do things to help people. And so one of the things we'd do is we'd call it adopting a family around Christmas time, and we'd find a family that was in need,

and we'd all go out and go shopping and bless this family with things they could never afford. Every year, we would feel quite good about this because it didn't take a lot of time, and didn't cost a lot of money, and we knew we were just changing some family to Christmas. Aren't we amazing Jesus followers? Well, the one year that we went to deliver the gifts,

I realized, oh my gosh, what we thought was helping was actually incredibly painful for this family. We came in with gifts in this little house, and I realized walking up, all these presents might actually overwhelm the size of the house. And then we came in, and the kids were really, really excited, And I watched as the dad sat down over in the corner in the sofa,

put his face down into his hands and just looked totally broken and humiliated. And what I didn't recognize is in our good intentions, we basically said to him in front of his wife and kids, you are incapable of providing for your family, so therefore we're going to do it for you. Totally good intentions. Totally good intentions. We brought shame onto a man who is,

was doing the best he could, and we ended up hurting someone that we were trying to help. Here's what we have to recognize, that all poverty is a result of brokenness. If you're taking notes, I want you to write that down. We need to understand that the root of poverty is a result of brokenness. All of us, guess what, are broken in some way. The root of every type of poverty, and there's more than that. just material poverty. There's relational poverty.

Some of you, if you go to a developing nation, you're going to go, oh, they don't have anything, and then you're going to look around and go, but they love each other and have this community, and I don't have that. It's all different types of poverty. And the root of it all is brokenness. It starts with a broken relationship with God.

When Adam and Eve sinned against God, creation was in a sense broken and tainted by sin. and therefore some people are without today because of the brokenness of sin. It's also a result of brokenness with self. If I've got a bad self-esteem, I don't feel like I have what it takes. I don't recognize I'm born in the image of God

and have access to his power within me that I don't feel like I have what it takes to better myself, to better my family, and therefore I'm hopeless in all that I do. It's also a result of broken relationships. In other words, if you have a specific need in your life, but you're too ashamed to ask for help. And I could meet that need,

but I'm too self-absorbed in my own little lifestyle, then suddenly because of broken relationships, when we could actually serve one another, we don't do it. Why? Because it's the root of all poverty is found in brokenness. That's why it was so life-changing. When Jesus rolls into Nazareth,

comes into the temple, and opens up a scroll, and he reads, out of the book of Isaiah, and this is recorded in the New Testament in Luke chapter 4, and Jesus declares this, the spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim, what did he say? Jesus said, the spirit of the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind. He sent me to set the oppressed free and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Then, recorded a couple of verses later, this is what Jesus said.

Today, those verses are fulfilled in your midst. In other words, I and the fulfillment of those verses. What was Jesus saying? That is me. I came to bring good news for the poor. I came to set the prisoner free. What we need to understand is this. Christ saves.

Christ heals the brokenhearted. Christ is the one who sets us free. The root problem of poverty is brokenness. And Jesus is the one who binds up the brokenhearted. When we understand that at its root, that poverty is more of a mindset than a lack of something material, that it's a root of, from the root of brokenness, and that Jesus is the answer. That changes how we try to help and empower people who are in need.

We're called to this, and we need to understand that as Jesus followers, every single one of us are called to empower the poor. That includes you. We are all called to this. Our church is called to this. The church is called to this. So how do we live this out? What do we do? What do we do when there's a guy?

on the street and any needs money. What do we do when you cross someone downtown that is apparently in need of a place to stay? What do you do when someone in your small group loses a job? What do you do when you recognize there's some global need that for X number of thousand dollars,

we could get clean drinking water to somewhere? Or for a few cents we could get mosquito nets or some vaccines? What do you do when you're overwhelmed with some need? How do we help in a way that doesn't hurt? three thoughts that I hope will be helpful to you as we seek Jesus to get this right. Number one, we need to recognize that we are called

to serve others, not save others. Don't miss this. We are called to serve others, not save others. It's insulting and dangerous to think that we are someone's answer. We are not the answer. Jesus is the answer, we are the servants. Don't miss this.

Jesus is the answer, we are the servants. Jesus is the power, we are the conduit to his. power. We don't save people. We serve people. Jesus saves people. And how does he want us to serve? And this is really important. What I want to do is break it down into two thoughts. This is language that we use behind the scenes at the church all the time. And I would love to get this into our vocabulary so we as a church would understand us. How do we serve others? We serve essentially doing two things, offering relief and working to restore. Relief and restoration.

Relief and restoration. They're different, but both are very important. What is relief? Relief is immediate, temporary help during and after a crisis. It's immediate help. It's temporary during and after a crisis. A tornado wipes out a neighborhood.

A hurricane hits a city. An earthquake demolishes a village. In your world, it might be someone loses a job. A relative discovers they have stage four cancer. Someone gets hit in a car and is in really bad shape in the hospital. Relief. It's immediate and temporary help to help them be sustained through a crisis. Then there's restoration.

And restoration is a little bit different, both important. Restoration is a long-term relationship to rebuild wholeness. It's a long-term relationship to rebuild wholeness. The tornado hits, the hurricane hits, the earthquake hits. And there's a lot of news and a lot of attention, and it lasts for five, six days. Then the world moves on, and there's still tons of people

that are trying to rebuild their lives. The church stays when the news goes on to report something else. We want to help people to rebuild their lives. This is now, okay, we got you at a hotel, we've got your food to eat, We've got you, you know, close to where. Now what do you do in the meantime when your house needs to rebuild?

Now what do we do when your whole city needs to be rebuilt? This is restoration. And essentially, this is what the Good Samaritan did to the Jewish man who was beaten up and left for dead. He offered relief in restoration. He came by to the guy who was beaten so badly he might die, and he immediately offered relief. Here's some oil for your wounds.

Here's some bandages. Let me do what I can to help you survive. Then what he did is he put him on his donkey, essentially took him to a bed and breakfast, said, I'll pay for this, I've got to go take care of some business, but I'm going to come back. Why? Because I want to help you rebuild your life. I will provide relief and restoration. Now, if I can just talk for a minute, almost off the record, this is why we have a place

to give offerings known as relief and restoration in the church. In other words, we believe that the first 10% of what God blesses us with, we return. back to him in the tithe. This is an act of worship and it is a privilege for us to worship God with the tithe. Then we give offerings above the tithe. And one of the places that we can give to is known as relief and restoration. And what Amy and I do is we have our tithe. Then we have a significant, predetermined amount that we give every year above the tithe and we give to six compassion kids. we give to her house called Branch 15 to help women who are coming out of dire situations. We build a water well.

We give to the U-Virginbi about different places. But the biggest portion of what we give, we give to relief and restoration. And the reason is because we have full-time team members that scan the whole world to find the best ministries that we can partner with, the best ones. Because I don't have the time or the ability to do this. and rather than just giving to the last person to ask, oh, here's a whatever, and I react. Oh, here's a can you help and I react.

Instead, what I want to do is I want to give to those who are trained to study it because like you, we all work hard for what we have, and I want the best return for my dollar invested in and make a difference. And so the places the church gives to all make the local church the hero, all empower people to get better rather than just giving them a hand out. And therefore, that's my strategy that the vast majority of our personal offering dollars go to relief and restoration because I don't want to be a responsive giver. I want to be a proactive giver. I want to give to a place that has the highest return.

When you give, and I know that all of you want to, be proactive. Think ahead of time. Don't just wait for something to come to you. Think, pray, strategize. How can I use what I invest to a. invested in the place that will get the best return and help the most people without hurting them. We are called to serve others, not save others. Jesus saves, we serve. Number two, we're called to relate with people, not rescue people. And this is so important. We're called to relate with them,

to love them, to care for them. And this, do not miss this. This may be the most important thing for many of you. Listen, those who are struggling are not projects you help. They are people you love. Get that. They're not projects you help. They're people you love. There will be a time when I will need support from somebody. There'll be a tragedy of hurt, something in my life, and I will need somebody. I don't want to be your project. I don't want to say, oh, here's our little thing. Don't we feel good about ourselves? Those who are hurting are not projects we help. There are people we love. And when we understand that, that changes everything. Let me give you another example of how I made a mistake as a leader of the church. Years ago, there was in our community a totally run-down

apartment complex. People were in really, really bad conditions. And so we thought as a church, we're going to go and change their world. So we took tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of hundreds of people. We all wore the same shirts. We came in there with our kids. We put on our Christian music and we made their apartment just like we would want ours to be. We put in an incredibly cool playground. We landscaped the whole place. We painted places. And in a whole weekend, we did like a extreme home makeover. Now, what was the mistake? The mistake is we didn't get to know the people who were there. We didn't talk to anybody. We never said, and this a massive mistake. We never said, what would help your life get better? What do you need? We never asked

that. If we had asked that, here's what we might have heard. We might have heard, you know, a 25-year-old single guy say, well, if I could just learn to read, I might be able to get a better job and I could provide for my family. We might have heard some guy say, well, if I could just get off meth, it would make a massive difference. We might have heard a young mom say, well, you know, if I could just get some type of transportation so I could get a job that pays more than minimum wage, I might be able to whatever. What they might have said, maybe, probably not, but what they might have said is if we just had a really cool playground and some flowers, right, that would change our lives. They might have. If they did, then what we should have done

is said, how can we help you achieve that? See, what we would have done is we would have included them, they would have brought what they had, they would have had more pride in it, we would have helped them accomplish what they wanted to accomplish, and then two years later it wouldn't have been run down like it was because we came in as a hero's into something that wasn't really helpful. We need to get to know people. What can we do to help you accomplish your dreams? What do you need and how can we partner with you to make it better? In other words, we're never going to do for someone else what they can do for themselves. Don't miss that. Apply this to your kids. It'll change their lives. We're not going to do for someone else what they can do for

themselves. We're going to help them accomplish what they want to do that gives them dignity, pride, and a sense of forward movement. Those who are struggling are not projects we help. They are people that we love. We're called to serve others, not save others. Relate with people, not rescue people. And number three, we're called to reach out. We never reach down. We're called to reach out. We never, ever reached down. We're reaching out because we care. We're never reaching down because we're better than someone else. When we're reaching out, what we're essentially saying is, hey, I'm poor too. I'm a struggler too. I'm not the hero. I don't have all the answers. I'm reaching out simply because I love you and because I care about you as a person.

In fact, I love what Bray Brown, she's a researcher and author said about this particular subject. She says, we've divided the world into those who need help and those who offer help. The truth is, we are both. I love that. We're both. We offer help and we need help because we are poor. To me, one of the most meaningful personal examples of this is it was probably 15 years ago or so that a dear friend of ours lost their dad. He was probably 45 or so at the time. His name was

Bill. I was there with him on his deathbed. And he asked me, would you take care of my family? And I looked the man in the eye before he died and said, absolutely. And when Bill died, he left Cheryl with five children overnight, single mom with five. kids and there was a community of people that came around Cheryl and her kids and said, we're going to be the church for you. My role, because it was a strength for me, was to help her with the finances. And so what I did is she had a small amount of money from life insurance. I helped her secure an inexpensive and affordable home paid for in cash, took the rest of the money and helped her invested in a place that would give her income to help live very modestly.

when most people probably couldn't do it, we set it up in such a way that she could. That was my role. Everyone else had a different role. And so for a couple of years, most financial decisions I played a part of. Now, 15 years later, I continue to play a part of advising her on business matters,

helping her with ministry, and continue to be the person she bounces ideas off when she needs financial help. Guess what? She was poor and needed what I had. Then, every time I looked at Amy, every time I'd do this to her, she'd get pregnant. It's a craziest thing.

Every single time. And one day we woke up with six little kids, and it was overwhelming to us. And guess what? We were poor and in need of help. Well, Cheryl became Amy's number one mentor and spoke into her life, spoken to my life. And now what's so amazing to me is that my family is different. My marriage is different. because we were able to reach out to Cheryl who was in need

because she was poor and needed our help. And then guess what? We were in trouble, hurting, overwhelmed, and needing support. And she reached back into our lives because we were poor and needy and she had something to offer. And that's how you love your neighbor. We never swoop in as a hero's reaching down. We're always fellow brothers and sisters in Christ reaching out.

We reach out because we care and because we love. So at all of our churches, at all of our churches, all 25 life churches, we have community partners pre-selected where we don't go and have to start something, oh, we got to feed the poor, oh, we got to do, oh, we got to, listen, we don't need to start everything. We go and find someone who's doing it well, and we partner with them. So the next time you have a desire to do something in your community, you might just talk to someone in your life group and at your campus and say, who are we partnering with?

Then you take what you have, your time, your financial resources, your heart, your talent, and you reach out to someone who is in need. At the same time, you recognize you're in need too. And when you give to others, oftentimes they give even more back to you. And that's how we neighbor. We love God with all our heart, mind, soul. and strength. And what do we do? We love our neighbor as ourself. We have poor neighbors right next door and poor neighbors across the sea. And at the same time, we are poor in many ways.

So we freely give and we freely receive. And that is how we love one another. Father, we ask that you would empower us as your church to get this right in our communities and all around the world. And all of our churches today, I'm going to assume that all of you want to help. I know you do. I know it's in your heart. When you see a need, you want to meet it.

The problem is we often meet the needs in a way that truly doesn't help. What I want to do is ask, how many of you want to be proactive and prayerful? Don't raise your hands yet, but think about it. I want to be proactive and helpful. What that means is you actually pray. You think about it.

Every year we have an annual meeting. We look at our budget, and we say, this is where we're going to put this amount, and this amount, and this amount, and this amount. So through the year we're not reacting to what's coming. We are prayerfully strategized where we put our finances. The same is going to be true with our time, the same at our life churches.

We're going to go select those in the community that we really believe are doing the best work, and we want to proactively go and support what they are doing. And all of our churches, those who say, you know what, I do want to help. And I don't want to just react to whatever comes in, but I want this to be a calling on my life, and it's so important to me,

I want to prayerfully, proactively ask God, what can I do to make a difference? And I will be prepared to offer relief, and I will love enough to offer restoration. I'll stick around when everyone else goes home because we want to make a difference in this world. All of our churches, if you say yes, I want to be one who makes this a part of my calling.

I'm going to seek God. I'm going to talk about it in my life group, and we're going to be intentional, proactive, seeking God how we can make a difference. Would you raise your hands right now? All of our churches? Oh, my goodness. Father, thank you for thousands and thousands of people

who want to say yes to the call to empower the poor, recognizing God that the poor is often us. Give us eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to care, seeing needs around us. God, may we never be overwhelmed thinking, oh, I cannot meet these needs because we recognize you're the one that meets the needs. We're the conduit for the power of Jesus.

help us to serve knowing God that you're the one who will save. Make us as your church the salt and the light of this world, shining the light of Jesus, meeting physical needs, meeting spiritual needs, and doing it all in the name of the one who met our needs. Jesus, help us to share him in a very practical way that people would say yes to him and you would meet their needs,

helping them to step out of poverty, empowered to step into their divine potential, making a difference, God, in this world. Use us, your church, to do so. We ask and believe you will. As you keep praying today, we talk about different types of poverty. One of the types of poverty many people never think about is spiritual poverty. Spiritual poverty. In fact, some of you right now, if I said, you know, how are you spiritually?

You're like, ah, not so hot. maybe you're spiritually poor. You might say, well, I kind of feel dead spiritually. Here's some really, really good news. Jesus is your answer. Jesus came that we may have life and life more abundantly. Jesus doesn't wait for you to get it right. Jesus is going to come and offer his life for you.

2,000 years ago, this is exactly what he did. He was born of a virgin without sin, perfect in every way. Jesus died on the cross for the forgiveness of our sin, was raised again so we could be made new in Christ. Jesus paid the price for our sins, and there's one thing he can't do for you, and that one thing you need to do is you need to turn from your sins and say yes to what he offers.

When you say yes, Jesus, I want to give my life to you. He partners with you and did everything spiritually, and you simply receive the free gift of eternal life. At all of our churches, there are those of you who recognize, I am spiritually poor. I am dead in my sins. Today by faith, I turn toward Jesus. And when you do, he will hear your prayer, forgive your sins, and you'll be brand new.

Those of you who say, yes, that's me. I want his grace. Today, I do what I can do because he did what he can do. I turn from my sins and say, yes, Jesus, take my life. I give it to you. That's your prayer. Lift your hands high right now. All of our churches say yes.

Right here, God bless you. Others of you say yes, that's my prayer. Right back here in the middle section, both of you guys here, Right back over here, praise God for you, others of you. Way back here toward the back. Others who say, yes, Jesus, I surrender to you. Right back over here, bless you, sir. Church online, you click right below me.

Over here on the side, God bless you as well. Everybody pray aloud, will you? With those around you, pray, Heavenly Father, today by faith, I give you my life. Jesus save me, forgive me, transform me. fill me with your spirit so I could serve you, follow you, make you known. Help me to love you with all of my heart and to love my neighbor as myself because my life is not my own. Today I give it to you.

In Jesus' name I pray, would you all worship big today? All of our churches worship big. Welcome those born into God's family. We are honored to play a very small part in all that God is. doing in and through your life, and we would love to continue with you on that journey. To find out what your next steps could be in your relationship with Christ, all you have to do is go to life.church slash next. And if you'd like to learn more about how you can be a loving neighbor in your community, Life Church has created an all new reading plan for the U-Version Bible

app. All you have to do is search how to neighbor and you can start that reading plan today. Recently, I had a chance to sit down with rap artist Dylan Chase and learn how his local church saved him from a broken past, and now he uses his story and his talent to point others to Christ. Well, Dylan, thanks for taking some time out of your schedule on the road to hang out and sit down with us. Our church has loved getting to know you, getting you to know your story, but we'd love to know even more. Tell us some of your backstory. Grew up in a home that was broken. You know, both my parents really wrestled hard with drug and alcohol addiction, so there's a lot

of chaos that goes with that. Music became a big part of my life. I was a very creative kid. I created as like a survival instinct. I had to create in order to try to just make something meaningful out of a really messy life. Things got really bad going into high school. So where I just made the choice to leave my house when I was 16 and a family took me in and they embraced me. And a year after that, God embraced me.

And so once God changed my heart, my music kind of naturally started to change after that. I see that the agent of change that God has always used to change the world is through his people. And where are his people gathered today? They're gathered in the church. And then God began to gift me in a unique way with the music to write stuff that was rap, but it was fitting for a worship setting, which you just have to see it to understand it. And part of your music now is geared towards a message of being different. Help us understand how we can be a part of that.

How can we be different? Be different, you know, do something, you know, be empowered. The Spirit that rose Christ from the dead dwells in you. What excuse can I give you? What excuse can I give to God, you know? I know it's overwhelming to try to do everything. God's not telling you to do everything. He's telling you to do something.

I love that. We can't do everything, but we can't do something. Yes. And collectively, the church can really meet the needs of the world. Right. Life change stories are the reason we do, what we do. And if you have an amazing life change story, we'd love to hear about it. All you have to do is send us an email to Stories atlife.church.

You know, it's our mission and our passion here to lead people, to become, fully devoted followers of Christ, and we do all of it, because we believe whoever finds God finds life.