Life.Church with Craig Groeschel - I Deserve It, Part 3: I Deserve Rejection, But He Gave Me Acceptance

Episode Date: April 26, 2015

How different would the world look if everyone got what they deserved? Would your salary be the same? What would our prisons look like? Would nice guys finish first or last? God knows what we deserve. See if that's what we get in I Deserve It. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Come on, come on, until you deserve only a quarter to play. And everyone is a winner. No one walks away without the answer to the question. So there's anything we can do for her? I mean, she's a single mom, and she promises she'll have the money to us by next week. No, she is routinely late on her payments. We cannot and will not do anything to grant her an extension, period.

Well, it's great to have you with us today for, part three in a four-part message series called I deserve it. We're going to be in Luke chapter 19 today as we're looking at four different gospel stories about people who deserved one thing, but because of the grace of Jesus, he did not give them what they deserved. And today, we're going to look at a need that I believe all of us will experience at one point in our lives or another. I don't know about you, but to me, one of the worst feelings in the world is to be rejected to be left out or to be overlooked. How many would say I hate when something like that happens, all of our churches, to be rejected. In fact, you don't have to be a grown-up to be rejected.

It often hits you very early in your childhood. Two guys are picking for a sports team, and they pick everybody, and you're the last one to be picked, and you feel like the biggest loser ever, or you walk into the cafeteria, and some of you may remember this at my cafeteria in grade school, there was the popular table for all the popular kids, and there was the almost popular table for the almost popular kids, and then there was your table over in the corner. He just felt horrible, always going to that same place. Then there was being rejected by somebody else.

For example, how many of you when you were kids, you would ask someone to go with you or you'd go together? Who knows what I'm talking about you? Anybody do this at all? Just a few of you? Either the rest of you, maybe you didn't do that. which is probably a really good thing. We did this thing where you'd write a note

and you'd give it to your friend to give to a girl and we'd say, will you go with me, check yes or no? And then the first girl I asked checked yes. It was like, ah! It was great. Well, three days later, she wrote me a note and said, we're not going together anymore. What's crazy is we never went anywhere. Maybe that's why we weren't going together anymore.

I don't know. But I was devastated because we weren't going together even though we never went anywhere together and you feel like such a loser. And what's crazy is as life goes all, in the world we live in today, we've got technology and social media that can statistically prove just how rejected we are. You can look at how many followers or friends you have, and when your friends have like

three times the amount you have, you're like, oh, I'm so pathetic. Or you can be having an otherwise really nice evening enjoying yourself until you look on Instagram, and you see all your friends are somewhere and you're not there. Like, what a loser I am, why didn't anybody tell me? Or even, I don't know if any of you are like this, but even texting. You know, if you're close to someone, there's kind of like text response rules. They're not written anywhere, but they're deeply implied in our culture. For example, if I text you and it takes you three days to respond, oh, you just sent me a very clear message.

We're not even in the 24-hour text response friendship window, which tells me a lot. There are some people, man, if I don't get a response within an hour, I'm like, I thought we were one-hour text responders, but the worst is the bubble thing. Who knows what I'm talking about? The bubbles? Who knows what I'm talking about? All of our churches. Listen to me. I've been doing this all weekend long.

I'm not playing without you. Who knows what I'm talking about the bubbles? All of our churches, the bubbles. You text somebody, and they're like, oh, they're bubbles. They're responding. I see the bubbles. And then you wait, and nothing comes. Like, no, no, no, no, no.

I saw the bubbles. No, no, no, no, you bubbled me, you bubbled. There is nothing worse than a bubble pulled a text message. They were going to text you, and they didn't do it. The bubbles were there I saw. They were like, ah, I thought. We were bubble commitment friends, and you pulled the text even after I saw the bubbles. Nothing worse than that.

Well, you grow up and you grow into adulthood, and then the rejection can actually sting so much worse, right? You apply for the job and you're like, I so have this thing. I've got the gifts. I'm totally going to nail this job. And you do the interview and you're rejected. You're like, oh, that hurts. Or all of your friends are dating somebody else and you're happy for them, sort of,

because you're not and you feel so bad about it. Or your marriage was supposed to be really good and you wake up one day and it was not good. You caught him looking at something he shouldn't look at. You felt rejected. or she got eyes for somebody else and the marriage went south, or your own child doesn't want to spend time with you and doesn't take your calls, and you feel so horrible.

There are few emotions worse than feeling rejection, being left out or being overlooked. And so what we're going to do today is we're actually going to look at a guy in the Gospels that absolutely and completely 100% deserved to be rejected. but we're going to see a beautiful story where Jesus actually did not give him what he deserved, but because of God's grace gave him something else. And so let's do this. We're going to look in Luke 19 and just read from verse 1 all the way through this story

and let Luke bring the grace of Jesus alive to us. Verse 1 says this. Jesus enter Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zechias, and then Luke describes them in two ways. He says he was the chief tax collector and he was wealthy. Chief tax collector and wealthy. Now, what we need to understand is that Zakias was absolutely and completely hated in his community. In fact, he was probably the most hated guy around, and I'll explain it to you.

There are a lot of reasons. First of all, in order to become a tax collector, you actually had to bribe another tax collector to become a tax collector. So to be a tax collector, you had to be a tax collector. you had to be corrupt. Then secondly, the way you would collect taxes is you would actually collect what is owed to the Roman government, and anything that you could collect above that amount was actually yours to keep. That's how you made your living.

So imagine you go to the home of a widow, and let's say she legitimately owes $100. When you knock on her door and say, well, ma'am, I'm here to collect your taxes today, and you owe, let's see, $150. Well, she's got no way to dispute this. There's not like a mailbox that has the actual amount. And so you say she owes this amount. So she gives you 100. You give 100 to the Roman government and you keep 50 for yourself.

And that's exactly what the tax collectors did. So you can only imagine how much they hated them. To make matters worse, Zechias was actually a Jewish man collecting for the Roman government. So here he was a criminal cheating people out of money and basically committing treason, taking, blessing the Roman government, who's a president. the Jewish people, and he's a Jewish man betraying his own people, and to top it all off, he was the boss. He was the chief tax collector, meaning not only did he get his own cut, but he got a cut of the other tax collectors, making him very wealthy, and so he was totally despised.

He wouldn't have even been allowed to worship with the other worshippers. That's how much he was hated. So you can only imagine people look on at him and go, oh, this guy's got it. He's got so much money. He's got the house on the hill. He's got an infinity pool. He wears Prada. He has the big screen TV. He drives a Ferrari.

He's got it going on. He's got lots of money. He's rich. But anyone here who gets a lot of money will tell you there's not enough money in the world to make up for the lack of human interaction for intimacy, for friendships, for relationships. And I can't tell you from the text, but I can tell you by human nature. I promise you, Zakias was hurting, feeling rejected, feeling left out, being hated, being despised.

You just let somebody say one comment negative, like, why are you wearing that shirt and Instagram? My life's falling apart. Everybody hated him. Everybody hated him. He was despised and rejected by people, and that gets. really lonely. People would look on and say, oh, you look like you got it going on. They have no idea how much you was hurting, which is interesting to me because the same thing happens today

all the time, doesn't it? People will look at you and they see you one way, and they think you've got it all going on, but they have no idea that you're hurting. In the same way, you may be looking at the people next to you and think, oh, man, they've got such an awesome marriage. I mean, look at it, and they're like holding hands, and they actually look like they like each other and so many people think that they do, but no one really knows that they're kind of putting on a show that the reality it might be that there's no real intimacy in their marriage. Could be for you.

Everybody says, look at your social media presence. You look so happy and you've got so many followers and the reality is you don't even like yourself half the time. You're creating an image of yourself that's not real and you feel very disconnected and alone all the time. It could be some people look at you and they're like, oh, you know, you're so like spiritual, like, you know, the scripture flows out of your mouth and you're like, you quoted Habakkuk. Who does that?

You know, like you're amazing and you're so close to God. And the truth is, you know, right now, you're in the middle of a spiritual crisis. And you're trying to worship, but yet God feels distant to you and you've got questions and you're hurting and maybe spiritually you feel very, very alone. Chances are really, really good. Zechias was wrestling with some things like this. He had all the bling, all the stuff, but yet he didn't have relationships. Because of this, he had a spiritual curiosity.

And we can read about this in verse three. Luke tells us this. Luke says, Zekees wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was what? All of our churches, let's say it loud, but because he was vertically challenged. Okay, I'm just going to be real politically correct here because I don't want to offend anybody. because evidently I have a gift of offending people every single week. I'm just trying to preach the Bible, and yet everybody seems to get offended by something.

Because he was vertically challenged, says the new Craig translation. He could not see over the crowd. Okay. Let's call it what he was. He was not tall. In fact, if you grew up in church, maybe Sunday school, there was actually a song that some people would sing about Zekees. If you know it, you can kind of say it along with me.

It goes like this. Zacchaeus was a wee little man. A wee little man was he. Stop right there. Don't ever call a man a wee little man, no matter what you do. You cannot recover from that. I mean, that's like too much. A wee little man.

He climbed up in a sycamore tree to see what he could see. If anyone sang that song to him, oh, dear God, he's in trouble his whole life. He was vertically challenged. We're not going to make fun of him for being short. Okay, maybe a little bit. He was short. Sechias was so short. All right, I'm going to need a little bit more love than that.

Somebody in Wichita helped me out, because this crowd's kind of quiet today. So there's someone in South Tulsa, I know you're going to help me out. Sekees was so short that whenever he sneezed, he hit his head on the ground. That's how short he was. Sechias was so short that when he jumped off the toilet he broke his leg. That's how short he was. Sechias was so short

that even when he smoked dope, he couldn't get high. That's how short he was. I can keep going if you want me to because I've got more. I'll stop now. I'll stop right there. All right. We'll just stop.

I don't want to belittle him. Did I just say belittle? I can't stop myself. It's just there for the taking. Okay, just for the record, your pastor is not advocating smoking dope. Do not smoke dope. I don't care if you're in Colorado. Don't smoke dope in Colorado.

Don't be a dope. Don't smoke dope. But anyway, he was so short. In fact, if I can try to recover and bring this thing back to something that's semi-holy, he actually was so short that most scholars argue based on the language and the context that he actually wasn't just regular short, he was probably a little person. And so that's very true.

That part's actually not a joke. That he most likely was a little person. If he was, we're not sure, but you know how cruel kids can be. And in a context where there may not have been explanation or education about that, whatever the case was, he was massively rejected growing up, very likely for his height. And now he's a tax collector. He is despised. He has rejected.

The children are taught not to like or trust or go near this guy. and he's hurting on the inside. When you're hurting and rejected by people, you've really got a couple of choices. You can run back to people, hoping they'll approve you. Please approve me. Please validate me. Please make me feel special.

Or you can do what Zakias did this time, and he decided to run to Jesus instead. Watch what happens. Verse 4 says, so Zakias did what? He ran ahead and he climbed. I want to pause there and highlight the two verbs in this verse. He ran and he climbed. Let's say that.

he ran and he climbed. He ran ahead and he climbed a sycamore tree to see him since Jesus was coming that way. So I want you to notice, Zechia, as a Jewish man, ran, and he climbed. In fact, if there's a couple of things, and you need to know this, that no self-respecting Jewish man would do, two of those things would be they would never run and they would never climb. climbing in a tree basically with something only a slave would do and running, no Jewish man would ever run. They had their flowing robes and they might expose their legs. It was undignified. They would never do it. In fact, when Jesus told the story in Luke 15 about the prodigal son who rejected the father and went off and squandered the father's wealth, if you remember when the son came back,

the father who represented whom, who did the father represent? The father represented our heavenly father God. and when the son came back, who remembers what the father did? The father actually ran to the son. So when Jesus told that story, the Jewish listeners would be like, whoa, are you saying God ran? And that's exactly what Jesus was saying, that even though it was undignified,

that's how much God loved his lost one, that he would actually do something that was socially unacceptable to pursue his son. And that's exactly what Zakias does. He runs even though it's undignified, and he climbs even though that's something that no self-respecting person would do. Why? Because he had to see for himself who Jesus was. Surely he had heard about Matthew, another tax collector, who also wasn't even allowed to go under worship, that everybody else rejected, but Jesus not only accepted him, but Jesus asked Matthew to become one of his followers.

And Zekees had heard about this, certainly, and wanted to see for himself. And so he runs and he climbs. There's another great story about a woman that had an issue of blood for 12 years. And when Jesus was passing by, this woman reached out just to try to grab the hem of his garment. And she was willing to reach and stretch beyond anyone else to perhaps just touch Jesus. There's another story about four guys who wanted to get their friend to Jesus, but the crowd was too big so they couldn't get in the door. And so these four guys dug through a roof. I'm here to tell you that sometimes you need to reach for Jesus.

Sometimes you need to dig through a little something to get to Jesus. Sometimes you need to run toward him, and sometimes you need to climb. And I don't know who I'm talking to, but there may be somebody here where there's some obstacle, some bad. doubt, some insecurities, some fear, and you've got to just climb on over that fear. You've got to run through that doubt. You've got to dig through those insecurities, and you've just got to pursue Jesus. Just pursue him, just pursue him, just run after him. This was me in college. My sinfulness caught up with me. Sin's fun for a little while. They did it messes you up, right? And I was in the messed up part, and so I thought, I need to find out more about Jesus and I didn't

know how to do it. So I just started a Bible study. We're having a Bible study. I said to my fraternity brothers, and they laughed, and we did. We did it. And before long, it started growing. And then one week, it got so big that the room was full. And I read Ephesians chapter two, and we were all reading it. And Zechias climbed up a tree. I climbed out a window. Very literally. The room was so full, and I just had to be alone with God. So I just lifted up a window, and just climbed out the window and went alone to be in a softball field, and that's what I had to do. And metaphorically speaking, there is someone here that you've been kind of just passive about Jesus. You need to reach out to him.

You need to dig through something for him. You need to run to him. You need to climb over whatever that obstacle is and pursue him. And here's the good news, and this is a promise from God's word, that when you seek him, you will find him. When you pursue him, he will reveal himself to you. And there's somebody here today. It's just your time to say, I need to know for myself. You reach, you climb, you dig, you run.

You say, I'm going to pursue him. And he will, just like he did for Zechias. He will reveal himself to you. In fact, that's what we see in verse 5. Zekees runs and he climbs up in this tree. And verse 5 says, when Jesus reached that spot, he looked up at him. There's a guy up in a tree. and Jesus says, Zakias, notice, Jesus called him by name.

Jesus called him by name. Zakias, come down immediately. And Jesus says the most shocking thing this Jewish community could ever hear, I must stay at your house today. The first thing I hope you see is that Jesus called him by name. The good shepherd, Jesus, knows his sheep, and he calls them by name. In fact, I believe, spiritually speaking today,

there are those of you that you'll just hear God calling your name. He's just calling you in, drawing you toward himself. He called him by name. In fact, Zakias, he probably hadn't heard his name called very often at all. They probably called him some things I'm not going to say in church, but not Zakias. Because Zakias, the name actually means righteous one. That's what his name means. And I can guarantee you those widows weren't saying,

oh, hey, righteous one, welcome to take my money. You know? No. But Jesus calls him what he's not. Jesus call him righteous one. By faith, that's what you're going to become. Come down. I'm coming to your house today. Now, put yourself there. You're in this crowd. You've been hearing about Jesus. He's raised the dead. He's healing people like crazy. He's got this massive wisdom. We're thinking maybe he could be the Savior. There's massive crowds. He goes to the most hated guy in town and says, hey, can I stay over at your place tonight? Maybe we have to have a lot. Maybe we have to be the savior. We do this. He goes to the most hated guy in town. He says, hey, can I stay over at your place tonight? Maybe we have to have. Maybe we have. He has. some dinner, play some chess, you know. Okay, here's what you're thinking. No, no, no, no, no. Maybe you haven't heard Jesus, let me help you out. He's pathetic and I'm righteous. I go to church every week. I serve at church. I serve in the two-year-old room at church. That's how righteous I am. Okay. I'm a tither. I don't know, I'm not only just tied, but I give offerings as well. You know, I'm on the prayer team at my church. I'm an usher. You know, I am righteous. This guy's not even.

allowed into church. And Jesus, he's so cool, man. He doesn't even bring, like, context. So if I'm Jesus, I'm like going, hey, just chill out. I understand. Yeah, you, you got it going. You're cool and stuff. Okay.

But this guy, he needs grace. And so I'm on a mission trip. I'm trying to save him. Pray for him. Pray for me. He's tough. Pray for us. Jesus doesn't do that.

Jesus ignores the crowd and go straight for the wildest guy. Why? Because that's exactly who he came for. He didn't come for the righteous. he came for the sinners. He didn't come for the healthy. He came for the sick. And this blesses me so much.

He went for the most unhealthy, unrighteous sinner in the whole community and said, come on down. I'm staying at your house today. So, verse 6 says, Zakias came down at once. It's like, woo-hoo! I climbed up a tree to see what I could see.

And he's coming over to my house to be. I just made that up right there. That's how good I am. I cannot believe. The anointing is flowing just like that today. That's amazing. It amazes me. I'm not that good.

So, anyway, he comes down, and he welcomes him gladly. And all the people saw this and begin to mutter. Mudder, mutter, mutter, mutter, mutter, mutter, mutter, mutter, mutter, mutter, mutter. It's gone to be at the house, the gift of a sinner. Mudder, mutter, mutter, mutter, mutter, mutter, mutter. They're exactly right. Exactly right. This is shocking.

This is scandalous. This is beyond our ability to comprehend because Zekees absolutely and completely deserved rejection. Deserved it. He was kind of like, let's put it in context of today, he was kind of like a mafia guy. He is abusing people. He has hated. He's on the most wanted list. He's committing treasoned.

He's the worst of the worst. And Jesus did not give him what he deserves. just like when we turn to Jesus, he doesn't give us what we deserve. And D.L. Moody is kind of a famous evangelist from centuries before. He said this about Zechias, and I love this. He said that Jesus saved Zekees in the distance from the limb to the ground. From the time it took Zekees to get from the limb to the ground, Jesus changed his life. Now, how long would that take?

you know, three seconds, like one if you fall, seven if you're short and you can't barely reach the limb, I don't know, say, let's go seven seconds. In the distance from the limb to the ground, Jesus completely transformed Zechius. And I'm here to tell somebody today, in the matter of seconds, you can be totally and completely transformed by the grace of Jesus in the matter of seconds. I don't care how bad you are, how far your friends think you are from God. In a matter of seconds, You can be forgiven, transformed, spiritually healed, and made new in the presence of Jesus. From the distance from the limb to the ground, you can be transformed by the power and the grace and the approval of the Lord Jesus Christ. In a matter of seconds and moments, you can be transformed by the grace of Jesus.

And we see immediate evidence of a transformed life. Jesus says, Zechias, come on down. parties at your house today. And before the party even starts, Zekees is like, oh, it's going to be bigger than you can imagine because I've got an announcement to make to everybody. Verse 8. Zekees stood up and said to the Lord, look, Lord,

here and now I give half of my possession to the poor. What? Wait a minute. This is the guy that worships money. I give half of my possession to the poor. And if I've cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount. Boom, right there.

From the distance, from the limb to the ground, he is so transformed that now he's talking crazy talk. He's generous. He's making wrong things right. Why did he do this? Why did he do this? Don't miss it. He did not do this to get the approval of Jesus.

He did this because he just got the approval of Jesus. We don't do good things to win his approval. We do good things because he has approved of us. Thank you for that little golf clap, both of you. Because when you recognize that you do not deserve it, and yet he gives you extravagant love, the only reasonable response for extravagant love is extravagant sacrifice. I give you back my life.

I give you everything. And so what he does is so much more than the law requires. What the law said is, hey, if you're a law, benevolent Jewish person, you set aside 20% of your income for the poor. 20% for those of you that wine and graph, about 10%. Oh, that's baby step, baby step, 20%. He doesn't say I'm going to do 20%. He says, half, half.

Then the law said, if you stole from somebody, you give back what you stole plus 20% in interest. He says, I'm not going to give back 120%. I'm going to give back 400% if I stole something. Now, why did he do this? because he was not motivated by the law. At this point, he was motivated by love. This is an extravagant response to God's extravagant love. And that's what happens when you're truly transformed by Jesus.

That's not uncommon to see that. We see that kind of stuff all the time at our church. We saw a guy who was embezzling from his company, hundreds of thousands of dollars. He became a follower of Jesus. And so you know what he did? he went and confessed his crime. He said, I cannot bear the way to this. He said, I did this and let the courts do what they may.

And so they sent us him to, he ended up serving two and a half years prison time. Then he got out, he served his time, and you know what he did? He spent the next 12 years working off his debt. He wanted to repay every single penny because he said, that's what a follower of Christ would do. Who turns themselves in when they're not even caught? someone who has been transformed by the grace of Jesus and says this is the right thing to do. There's another young lady who was progressing in her career and loved it. Then she got radically messed up by Jesus in the best sort of way and started serving at our church in life kids

and became so passionate about investing her life in kids when her work came and said, we need to start working Sundays. She said, well, that's when I serve at church. And they said, well, if you want to be promoted, that's what you're going to have to do. And she said, is there any other way? And when they said, no, there's no other way. She said, well, then I'll find another job. Why?

Because she refuses to be a consumer. She is a contributor, and she has to use her gifts in church. Who does that? We can't even get a lot of people to serve an hour, ever. And she quits a job to serve because she's been so transformed by Jesus. I met a guy who was a business guy, and he became a follower of Jesus, and time went by. And then he recognized, oh, I need to return the tithe. God has blessed me, 10% is his.

And so he started tithing. and then his business got blessed even more. Then he said to his wife, wait, there was this distance where we were Christians but we weren't tithing. And so we went and added up his income for those period of years and he went and back tithed. What? Back tithe.

A preacher can't even come up with a back tithe. Where'd that come from? Who does that? That's not even in the Bible. That's just something that he decided he could do because of what God has done for him. And here's the reality. In the distance from the limb to the ground.

in the distance from a prayer for help to the answer which takes a matter of, boom, seconds, second, second, second. When you're transformed by Jesus, there is evidence. There is evidence. Suddenly, you start doing weird stuff. You start forgiving people who don't deserve forgiveness. And you start loving people that others don't seem to love. And you start caring for the outcast.

And suddenly you start using your resources to help. Help people who are in need. Sometimes those you don't even know, and you suddenly start serving, and all of a sudden your life is not your life. It belongs to God, and you do things that don't make sense. Why? Listen to me. Because extravagant love demands an extravagant response.

Zechias did not do this to gain the approval of Jesus. He did it because Jesus approved of him, and this was his response. So, you can work your tail off to get people to like you all day, but you cannot please everyone. Case in point, a lot of you, you're still mad at me about that dope comment 20 minutes ago. I'm okay with that. I live with it. Send it to my email, Craig, and I don't give a rip.com. And it'll give you an auto reply that actually says, this is a real email address, and I don't give a rip.

Why? Because I cannot please everyone, but I can please God. through Jesus Christ, we can please God. And when you recognize that, that God approves of you even though you don't deserve it, suddenly you're not living for the approval of people, but you're living for the approval of God, and that's when everything changes. So Jesus looks at Zechias and says, verse 9, today, salvation has come to this home because this man too is a son of Abraham.

For the son of man, speaking of himself, came to seek and to save whom, let's all say it allowed. He came to seek and say, the lost. Don't ever miss this. Jesus did not come for the found. He came for the lost. He didn't come for the righteous. He came for sinners. He didn't come for the healthy. He came for the sick. And when we recognize that, our only reasonable response is to give him our whole lives because he accepted us even when we did not deserve it. Father, I pray today that this message would minister to those who may be feeling rejection right now that

your presence would be transformed. All of our churches right now, some of you, you may be battling with feelings of rejection from people. You may feel a little alone, a little disconnected. Some of you might even feel spiritual rejection. You may know God's not far off, but he feels far off. At this moment, you've got some sense of rejection and this message is speaking, healing, and hope to you.

Would you lift up your hands if that's you? All of our churches just right now say, this message is speaking to me, and I want God to do, divine work in my life. All of our churches just lift those hands up. God, I pray today for those that you're really ministering to, and I pray that, especially for those who've experienced the sting of rejection, maybe someone who's losing a marriage or been betrayed by a friend or feels left out, alone, overlooked. God, maybe for those who even, who can't seem to sense your presence right now,

intellectually they know you're there but but they just can't seem to sense your presence god i pray that at this moment that you would be enough that we'd recognize that that people will ultimately reject us at one point or another but you're always faithful god that you'll never leave us that you will never forsake us and god i pray that right now by the power of your holy spirit you would bring a divine comfort into the hearts of those who are hurting today and god because of what jesus did on the cross that we can can stand before you forgiven, accepted, and changed. May your grace be all that we need. Minister God and comfort those today who are hurting. As you keep praying today, nobody looking around. What's so amazing to me is that in the whole town, Jesus went for the worst,

the most despised sinner. And this brings me such hope, because that's what I felt like years ago. I felt like I'd done so much. There are those of you who you look at your life and you think I've done so many things wrong, could God ever love me and forgive me? And this is the perfect example of not only does he love you, but he wants to forgive you. He's calling you, drawing you. Some of you, it's just a simple, not even just a running or a climbing or a digging or a reaching, but for you it's just a single step. It's one prayer away. Jesus, I want to know you. I want to give my life to you. Before we pray today, there are some of you, I want to just say this. I want you to think about this real sincerely that you may, like me, you kind of grew up in the church.

church, but you recognize there's no real evidence of true faith in Jesus. I'm so afraid that we live in a culture today where people have a self-centered version of Christianity. Yeah, yeah, Jesus, forgive me, keep me out of hell and all that kind of stuff, amen. And then they go on. That's self-centered. That's not real Christianity. Real Christianity is, yes, Jesus, be my Savior, but be my Lord, be everything. I am now your follower. I'm a disciple. I know. I know. I don't deserve it, but because of what you did for me on the cross and rose from the dead. My only reasonable response is today, take my whole life, every bit of it. I want there to be evidence.

I want to be different on the other side of all of our churches. There are those of you you recognize. You need his forgiveness and you need his grace. And today you want to reach out to him, run to him, climb over the obstacles, dig through whatever's in the way and say, Jesus, I pursue you. And today, by faith, I give my life to you. I surrender it all. Be my savior.

Be the Lord of my life. That's your prayer today. Lift your hands high right now. All of our churches and say, yes, that's my prayer. Lift your hands up and say, yes, Jesus, save me here. Both of you back over here. God bless you guys over here in this section. Others, if you leave them up for me to find you right back over here as well,

all three of you right here together. God bless you guys right over here in this section. Right back here in the back say, yes, Jesus, I surrender. Church online, you click right below me over here on this side. Others of you today say yes, I call out on him. I surrender to you. Be the Lord and Savior of my life. Would you all pray with those around you?

Everybody aloud. Pray Heavenly Father, I pursue you today and ask you to forgive me of all of my sins. Save me and make me brand new. But don't just be my Savior. I want you to be my Lord. First in every way, I am your disciple, your follower. Fill me with your spirit so I could know you. and be faithful to you.

Thank you for new life. Jesus, I give you mine. In your name, I pray. Would you all worship big, worship loud? Welcome those born into God's family today.