Life.Church with Craig Groeschel - Life Is Measured in Moments | Holy Moments: Part 2

Episode Date: December 11, 2022

Have you ever had to let go of something you didn’t want to? It can be scary because you don’t have control anymore. In Proverbs 3:5, the Bible tells us to trust in the Lord with all of our heart, and not lean on our own understanding. But how is that even possible? Let’s find out what moments of surrender really look like. ABOUT THIS MESSAGEI never thought this would happen ... I have no idea what to do next. Have you ever had a moment like that? You’re face to face with a choice that feels bigger than you, and how you respond might change your life. How do you know what to do? Together, let’s learn how to turn unexpected moments into Holy Moments.NEXT STEPSHave you made a decision to follow Jesus? You may be wondering what’s next on your journey. We want to help! Let us guide you to your next steps in your walk with Christ: https://www.life.church/nextABOUT LIFE.CHURCHWherever you are in life, you have a purpose. Life.Church wants to help you find your next step. Our hope is that your journey will include joining us at a Life.Church location throughout the United States or globally online at https://www.live.life.church. Find locations, videos, and more info about us at https://www.life.church or download the Life.Church app at https://www.life.church/app. FIND US ON SOCIAL MEDIAFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/life.churchInstagram: http://www.instagram.com/life.churchTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lifechurchCONNECT WITH PASTOR CRAIGYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/craiggroeschelFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/craiggroeschelInstagram: http://www.instagram.com/craiggroeschelTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@craiggroeschel#lifechurch #craiggroeschel #surrender Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We are going to be talking about the idea of surrender through the context of the story of Mary and her encounter with the angel Gabriel. Now, this Christmas season, here's what I know. All of us have something to surrender. There is perhaps a relationship that we need to surrender. Maybe there's a job opportunity you're trying to figure out whether you should take or not and you need to surrender that. Perhaps it's your future because maybe you're,

well, about to graduate here in December or maybe coming up in May and you're trying to figure out what to do and you need to surrender that to God. Maybe it's a wayward child. Or maybe it's the idea of being generous in the context of a culture right now where it's like easy to try to hold on and control things. But we need to, God's saying you need to surrender to a lifestyle of generosity and being a blessing to people around you. But before we get started, what does surrender even look like? I mean, when I think about it, I think about white flags. I think about raising your hands. I think about tapping out. Essentially, it's giving up, right? But that has such a negative connotation sometimes with many of us. I like that someone said, surrender isn't giving up.

It's letting go. You see, my wife and I, for years and years now, have been involved in the foster care community in our state. Currently, we have an active case. And no matter what's something God called us into, but here's what I'm going to tell you, no matter what it is that God calls you into, I can tell you one thing that my wife, Jamie and I have learned over time is that surrender, it's not just a moment in time. It's moments all the time. It's daily. It's weekly. It's all the time. Surrender is not just a moment in time. It's moments all the time. You see, Pastor Craig last week talked to us and he said, you know what? Life isn't just measured necessarily in time.

He said that life is measured in moments, holy moments. I want to tell you all about a moment I had with my sons, we like to fish. We like to bass fish, actually. And I'm going to show you a picture here. This is Benjamin. He was out with him when he's 17. That's a good fish that he got one day. He would prefer me to show you this picture because, yeah, yeah, yeah, his fish is bigger than mine.

That's real funny, huh? Yeah. This is Nathan. Nathan's 15 now. Crazy thing. He caught that fish first cast of the day. Unbelievable. He caught that fish. And I thought, it's going to be a banger of a day. Only fish we caught all day long right there. That's it. And I'll tell you, we were out one time fishing out on this lake, not too far from my house. And we were up in a cove and we were trolling along this cove. Okay. And we were out there and my boys were flipping cover and were pitching out and flipping. up into little cover up by the bank. That's where fish might hide and whatnot. And so they're trying to catch something and they're going and they're getting excited. And I'm like, you know, I'm going

going to be a good dad. I'm going to let them just fish the bank. It's fine. So what I decided to do was I decided to take my rod and I decided to cast way off into the cove. So now before I tell you this, this has, okay, I fished for years. This has never happened before this moment and it has not happened after. But in this moment, I turn around, and I make sure I'm not going to hit Nathan or Ben, and I just won't go to launch. When I do, I don't know what happened, but I lost my rod, and I threw it into the lake. So I'm like, what happened? And I reach down and I can see it sinking, and my whole shoulders down in the water, and it just barely caught the tips of my fingers, and it just sunk off into the abyss. And I pull my arm back out, and I'm sucking it. And I'm

sobbing wet from the shoulder down. Ben turns around and looks at me, he's just like, did you just throw your rod and reel in the lake? Apparently, and so the boys are like, we're going to get it back. I'm like, fellas, we're in 20 feet of water, six inches of visibility. And at the bottom of this cove, there is a bunch of old brush piles and sticks and crap that it's gotten caught on. There's no way. We've lost where we are. It's impossible. It's not going to happen. But nonetheless, they rig in and start putting on big heavy weights and large hooks and

crap, and they start throwing and dragging across this cove and doing all this stuff. And you know what they did? They got caught up and lost a bunch of tackles what they did. 25 minutes in, I'm like, fellas, we're out of here. This is stupid. And so in the context of this, Nathan had run through everything. And so he ties on a little bitty, a little bitty bait. that is a quarter-ounce swim bait, and it looks like this.

He ties this on, and he starts throwing it in the cove. It's ridiculous. I'm like, Nathan, if you just full on giving up, and that's all you're doing and just trying to fish now, he's like, I might catch it, Daddy, you never know. I'm like, no, I doubt this is going to happen. So Nathan starts throwing it. 25 minutes in, we got to do it. I said, no, we're leaving.

I'm gone. And they go, no, no, no, as parents, what do kids do every time? Yeah, you got it. One more. Caste, shy, it don't matter. One more of whatever. So I'm like, no, we're leaving. I'm done. And so I go, I start the boat, and we start leaving. We are driving out of the cove. Nathan's like, Daddy, I know what we forgot. I'm like, what? He goes, we forgot to pray. And I said, no, he didn't. I ain't praying for this. This is stupid. Okay? I threw my rod and reel in the lake. I am not about to be like, hey, God, I know people are praying for a lot of really serious things right now, but I threw my rod in real late. Could you just like, for just a second, park the cove, I'll jump down, grab it, be back up, no problems. I said, Nathan, let me tell you something, son. I said, there's times in life where you're stupid, and you pay a tax for it. I call it the stupid tax, and I'm paying. This isn't about whether or not God is going to get my right. And he goes, but Daddy, God cares about the little things in life that you do.

I said, God cares about you things. I don't need to hear Pastor Craig's message. Stop it. I'm like, we're leaving. And so I go and I turn my boat on and we're leaving. And Nathan says, just starts praying out loud. Lord, may you let this cast catch Daddy rod and just throws it. I'm like, you defiant little sucker.

And he leaves the bail open on this rod, and it means it's just releasing line. And I'm like, what are you doing? Close the bail, reel that junk in. We got to go. And he closes it, and he starts reeling in, sure enough, here comes the snag. His whole rod just bends over. I'm like, that's great. I'm like, now we got to go back and get you unsnagged because you wouldn't listen.

He goes, I'm not snagged. I'm not snagged. I got something. I got something. And he goes, I think I go, you got a stick. Or you got maybe a fish bit that nonsense you threw in the water and he's like no, I think I got something So Ben and I are standing there waiting on him to reel this thing in and I'm telling you Like a darn shark's dorsal fin coming up out of the water was this reel right here starting spinning up out of the water

I'm like this is the prayer you answer this nonsense this stupidity what in the world He reels this thing in the whole time he's going, you gotta believe, you gotta believe. What is this? The Polar Express? No. Don't believe? Here's the thing. It's pretty crazy, right?

You listen to that story and you're like, that's insane. And it would be. It's pretty miraculous for something like this right here to pull that out of the water. And here's the thing. I'm going to tell you something. You're not going to believe me. Okay? And I understand because if I were you, I wouldn't believe what I'm about to say.

Because this is ridiculous. It's miraculous, truly, that this lure right here somehow snagged my rod and reel and pulled it back to the boat. While I am literally trolling out of the cove with a moving boat. That's insane. And 20 feet of water. But here's what I'm going to tell you. when he reeled this thing up to the boat, this is how it had gotten snagged.

Guys, on that tight shot, you better come in real tight. Just don't focus on the face, please. So this is the lure, folks. This is the lure. This treble hook down at the bottom right here hooked on the fourth islet from the top. That would be this one right here. I measured the inner diameter of this this morning.

It's three millimeters. or an eighth of an inch. And it had hooked it just like that and had just come up to the boat intact. The moment, all of a sudden, became holy. I showed Ben this lure earlier, and I said, what does that remind you of? He said, God's miraculous provision

and what he does, whatever, Nathan prays stuff for you. The truth of the matter is, we remember. We remember God. amazing work and goodness in the context of something as silly as that. So this Christmas season, if you have something that you need to surrender to you, that you're looking for God and you need prayer for something in your life, I can give you Nathan's cell phone number and he can pray for you because that's probably who you need praying for you, okay? I'm just going to tell you right now. Truth be known, this story about Mary and Gabriel is equally as crazy.

You've just never heard it the way I'm about to tell it to you. I have never heard it. I have never understood the context of this, and when you hear it this way, it changes the Christmas season. It changes for you what you feel about surrender, because this story is insane. You've always heard it many, many times. Even if you've not been to church, you know about, my Mary and baby Jesus or some angel involved and something happened, and then she had Jesus. Let me tell you, this is crazy. You have not heard it this way. Let's go ahead and take a look at the scripture, starting out here in Luke chapter 1 verse 26 it says in the sixth month everybody say sixth month if you got it in chat type that up into the chat for me six month why because we're coming back to the sixth month

of elizabeth's pregnancy god sent the angel gabriel gabriel shows up he's one of two named angels he shows up three times in scripture once to daniel once to zachariah who is elizabeth's husband and then right here to marry okay since angel gabriel to nazareth a village and galus I've always thought Nazareth is some bustling community, a lot of people, roads and things. As I've prepared for this, here's the thing. What archaeologists and scholars believe is that Nazareth is between 10 to 30 acres big. Let's just split the difference and say 20. 20 acres.

I own nine acres at my house. I got almost half of Nazareth at my house. But here's the deal. I know it's hard to kind of get that in your head. So here's what we're going to do. It's the World Cup season, right? It's time for the World Cup. Everybody's hyped up about it.

So here we're going to go down to Qatar here to Lusel Stadium in Qatar. That is where the final match is going to get played for the World Cup. This stadium sees about 88,000 plus people, okay? Now, guys, could you just highlight for me the parking lot and all of the... This right here, what you see right now, this is 238 acres for the stadium. Now, if you were to overlay Nazareth onto this little map, this is Nazareth. Oh, right there. You could fit a lot of Nazareth into the parking lot of this stadium.

It's crazy, little bitty. It's why all the sudden in John 1 when Jesus is out there and he's calling his disciples, he tells Philip, hey, Philip, come on, let's go. Philip's like, I'm going to get Nathaniel. And he runs over to Nathaniel, and he's like, Nathaniel, come on. We got to go. Who the Moses and the prophets talked about, that guy, Jesus, son of Joseph from Nazareth, that he's the one.

Let's go. And Nathaniel's reply is like, Nazareth, what good comes out of Nazareth? They ain't even a good road that goes into Nazareth. It's a bunch of nonsense. 20-acre Nazareth. No, there's nothing good that comes out of there. Let me tell you today, there's some of you who you're coming from a Nazareth. It may not be a small town, but it's a lot of a broken background.

It's a lot of places that you never thought you were going to be, and all of a sudden, God is pulling you out of those places, and you think, I don't have the looks, I don't have the education, I don't have the experience, but guess what? It doesn't matter. You're exactly who God can use for your circumstance and situations. So, never doubt what God can do. And it's in this context of Nazareth that the angel Gabriel comes down. Continuing on, in verse 27, He says, he comes down, he goes to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. Now, here's the thing.

I don't even last, you seriously need to go back and listen to Pastor Craig's message about obedience and Joseph, okay? He did such a great job setting up context for you to how hard this was for Joseph. It creates even more crazy dynamic to the story I'm telling you. I'm just going to pull out one thing he said last week, and that is the real. that Mary is in her mid-teens. We're talking like a 14, 15-year-old girl from a little dumpy town that's 20 acres big. Okay. Nazareth bolsted a population of somewhere between 200 to 400 people, max 400. We're talking like a little bitty place. That stadium holds 88,000 people. The people in

Nazareth couldn't even fill up the concession stand line at this place. That's where she's from. Okay. Now, think about this. Verse 28. we go back. Gabriel appeared to her and he says, greetings favored woman, the Lord is with you. Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think, what could the angel mean? Confused and disturbed. Here's the thing. I told you Gabriel appeared three times. Well, the two times before, both to Daniel and to Zechariah, the Bible records that at the sight, the very sight of Gabriel, they fell down face first to the ground. And they were short. with fear. Mary, though, the Bible records something a bit different. She was confused and disturbed by

what Gabriel said. Well, what did he say? He said, greetings, favored woman. The Lord is with you. What's so bad about all that? I mean, ladies, wouldn't you want an angel to say to you? Greetings, favored woman. That should be empowering, right? Yeah, unless you don't believe it. Unless you think, How could you come to me? I'm just this teenage girl from Nazareth. What are you even doing here? I don't get it. Sometimes God calls you in moments where you don't feel like you're callable.

But God is calling you to do his work. You're the perfect person for who God needs to do a work in. She's disturbed. the angel said, hey, the Lord is with you. In Scripture, if you ever see an angel, listen, for future reference, if an angel ever shows up to you and says, hey, greetings, favorite woman, favorite man, the Lord is with you. Guess what? That means buckle your seatbelt because it's about to get crazy. She's disturbed because she knows whatever's about to happen is going to be insane.

It's going to be crazy. And she's going to have to surrender. Not just one moment in time, but moments all. the time. So moving on here in verse 30. We see, the angel says, hey, Mary, don't be afraid. The angel told her, for you have found favor with God. Favor with God in this context is this word called caris. It's like this unmerited favor. This idea, interesting little biblical note here, the first time in the Old Testament that a character is described as having found favor in God's eyes is Noah. And Noah built the ark, if you may or may not know. And when the earth got flooded,

humanity through the ark. The first time in the New Testament that this idea is portrayed of finding favor with the character, it's Mary, who's going to have Jesus and give birth to the Messiah, the Savior of the world, and will save humanity from all of their sin. Pretty crazy how God puts those little Easter eggs up into scripture. I love it. I love it. So going on in verse 31, he says, you will conceive and give birth to a son and you will name him Jesus. Don't miss the fact this right here in Mary's mind is like, oh my gosh, he's about to, this is the fulfillment of Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14, where the scripture says, the virgin will conceive a child, she will give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us. Mary's heard this all our life,

right? Like God's going to do something big. He's going to send this Savior, and he's going to have this virgin. It's going to be boring. It's going to be amazing. And he's like, oh, wait, hold on. That's me? No way. He can't be me. You got the wrong number. I'm from Nazareth. I'm just married. Verse 32. It says, he will be great. He will be called the son of the most high. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor, David, and he will reign over Israel forever. His kingdom will never end. This is Gabriel saying, hey, there's a covenant promise back in Psalm 89 that God made to where he says that, look, I will establish your descendants as kings forever. This is about to go down, Mary.

After 400 years, though, of silence. You see, the last time God had showed up on the scene was through his prophet Malachi, way back in the Old Testament, and 400 years goes by of a big, just silence. And then Gabriel shows up, first to Zachariah, then six months later, y'all remember six months he goes to marry greetings favored woman after 400 years of nothing 400 years that's older than the establishment of the united states of america think about this 400 years there's supposed to be somebody come save you nobody's showing up they didn't show up for grandma or great grandma or great great grandma or great great grandma or great great grandma what are we doing here And then up on the scene. Greetings, favored woman. What is happening right now?

Moving on. Verse 34. Mary asked the angel. But hold on. How can this happen? I'm a virgin. That's a great question, Mary. How is that going to happen?

It's almost like, hey, Gabriel, I don't know how it. But look, this down here didn't work. It's not going to happen. I'm a virgin. Okay? He says to her, in the next verse, the angel replied, the Holy Spirit will come upon you,

and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God. I want you to understand something. A lot of times for me, for whatever reason, I just kind of stop the Christmas story right there. I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, remember that? And Gabriel told her, oh, the Holy Spirit is going to overshadow,

you're going to have a baby. But he didn't stop there, guys. Look at what he says. Right here. He says, oh, what? What's more, your relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age. People used to say she was barren, but she's conceived a son. And it's now in her, say it with me, six month.

You got it. For the word of God will never fail. Continuing on, he says, Mary responded, I am the Lord's servant. May everything you have said about me come true? And then the angel left her. What even just happened? She asked a question if you don't remember. it was like, hey, I'm a virgin, how's this going to happen?

And Gabriel's like, okay, I'll answer you. The Holy Spirit's going to overshadow you and you're going to have a baby and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then he's like, oh, wait, bonus, moreover Elizabeth, the barren one, yep, she's pregnant. Why does that matter? Because then all of a sudden Mary's response is, I am the Lord's servant. May it be done into me as the Lord has said. What just happened? Let me go back to six months for you.

You see, Mary and Elizabeth are cousins. Okay. And Elizabeth and Zachariah, as the Bible puts it, are well advanced in years. There may be a few of you listening today to feel you're well advanced in years. What does that mean? Well, at best accounts, you read a lot of scholars debate back and forth. She could have been in her late 60s. I've seen as high as early 80s. Nonetheless, it doesn't matter other than the fact that she's well past childbearing years. and did you see what Gabriel called her? He said, oh, remember the one that people called the barren one? Do you know the sting of infertility?

Imagine, Zachariah was a priest, guys. How many times did they pray? How many times? We prayed for kids. We prayed for kids. And then my wife's being called the barren one, and now she's past being able to even have kids and then Gabriel you're going to show up

and then try to tell me that Elizabeth's going to get pregnant? That's crazy. But it happens. Why does six months matter? Ladies, if you're six months pregnant, do people know? Yeah, you get the baby bump going. They know.

That's going to be key for Mary. Because the story keeps going, actually, as we see in our next verse. A few days later, everybody say a few days. Come on at all of our locations. Everybody help me out. Say a few days. Just a few days later. Mary hurried to the hill country of Judean.

To the town where Zachariah lived, she entered the house and greeted Elizabeth. At the sound of Mary's greeting, Elizabeth's child leaped within her, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. Let me point something out to you that I had never seen before. I watched the Christmas movies like you do, and I see Mary, go see Elizabeth, and Mary shows up, and she's got this pretty little pregnant belly and out of this. It was just a few days. She had no belly.

She's not showing. She's scared out of her mind. She's confused, disturbed. What is happening? Why me? I'm from Nazareth. What has even occurred? Why has this angel come to me? But Gabriel's like, Elizabeth, she's pregnant. How could that be? Mary's stinking in her head. Elizabeth,

she can't have babies. She's even called the barren one. How is that possible? God is so gracious. He's so loving to have Gabriel wait six months and go back and go tell Mary. Why? Because Mary's like us, guys. When God calls you to something big, you don't believe in yourself. She didn't believe in herself. She's like, I don't know. I mean, may it be done unto me? And I surrender, but hold up.

She said, Elizabeth, six months, I got to go see this. Takes off just a few days. And then Elizabeth greets her, right? And Elizabeth, right here, it says in the next scripture, that Elizabeth gave a glad cry and exclaimed. to marry. God has blessed you above all women, and your child is blessed. I'm just going to make a note, Elizabeth Butter been filled with the Holy Spirit, you're going to go tell some lady that don't look pregnant, is she pregnant, right? Everybody knows you don't do that. But Elizabeth tells

her, Mary's, remember, 14, 15, Mary's not even married. And she shows up thinking, I'm going to get scorned. I'm going to have to try to explain this to Elizabeth. Is she even going to believe me? But before Mary can't even say anything, Elizabeth is like, God has blessed you above all women, and your child is blessed. Who does that sound like? It sounds like Gabriel, actually. Right? When Gabriel said, oh, your greetings favored above all women. It's the same greeting. Because sometimes God's just got to remind you that you really are favored. You so don't believe it. And God's got to just remind you once again and again and again that you really are favored. Elizabeth goes on in verse 43.

And she says, why am I so honored that the mother of my Lord should visit me? Next verse. He says, when I heard your greeting the baby in my womb jump for joy, you are blessed because, watch for it. You believed that the Lord would do what he said. you believed and in your belief mary you surrender your will it's in this moment that mary goes on to not pray the most common prayer that people pray of lord change thy will but the greatest prayer of lord thy will be done i surrender i surrender to you you see mary needed to hear that encouragement don't miss it Gabriel came. He tells her, look, you're going to have a baby. You're going to fulfill all of these

prophecies. God has chosen you. Mary's like, how in the world is it true? How could it be me? Gabriel tells her Elizabeth's pregnant. She goes and sees. And it's in this moment when she walks in to see her cousin, Elizabeth. And Elizabeth says that that moment for Mary was the moment when a hook went through the eyelid of a needle. And that moment turned into a holy moment. A moment that Mary would need for the rest of her life. I am chosen. I am called because you see, Mary was going to endure all sorts of trial

as she walks and continues to process. Oh, my gosh, she's got to go back and talk about what Pastor Craig talked about last week when she goes to Joseph and face all of the public ridicule and all the things and then walk through life. And then at the end of her son's life, she sees him hang on a cross beaten and dies a death suffocating on the cross. And that's what Mary gets because Mary understands that surrender's not just a moment in time. It's moments all the time.

It's a call it a lifestyle. It's a lifestyle of surrender. So you know what? All of us have something to surrender. We've got a relationship. We need to surrender to God. we've been chasing, pursuing. You got job opportunities that set out there for you.

You got your future. You got a kid that you need to surrender. Sometimes we surrender it in a moment, but then we pick it back up, you know? And we have to remind ourselves that surrender is not just a moment in time, it's moments all the time. And God is calling you to surrender something.

And so in this day, And right now, you may have never realized why in the world you're even here listening to this message. You may come and serve every week, and it doesn't matter because every single one of us have something that God is calling us to surrender. And I pray that today is the day that God says to you, hey, look, I got you. This is a holy moment, a moment of surrender in your life. where today we surrender and say, I am the Lord's servant. May it be done unto me as you say.

I surrender. Today, surrender it to God. And the next day. And the next, because we know that surrender is not just a moment in time. It's moments all the time. Let us pray. Father, I pray for us today that we would, as we walk through a season in this Christmas time, that we would walk in a posture of surrender.

Praying today that maybe there's those of you who, you know what, you say, there's some things, Sam, as you've been talking, man, God's pushing it on my heart that I need surrender. Maybe it's that you've got things that you have surrendered in the past, but you're picking them up, no matter what it is. If you say, man, hey, I got some things. I need to surrender to God to allow him to do his work in them and in me. Just lift up your hand. I'd be honored to get to pray for you. I hands all across the room.

Father, I just pray, I pray for us that we would position ourselves like Mary, where we would say we are your servants. May it be done unto us. I pray that you would help us to daily surrender to your work in our lives. Even though sometimes that work feels hard, it feels hurtful, it feels difficult. I pray to you would give us the strength to continue to surrender, not just in a moment, but moments all the time every single day from here on now. I pray you would give us a posture of surrender. Still praying today with nobody looking around. There's others of you who, man, there is a greatest act of surrender that you can have in your life is to surrender your life to Jesus. And now why would that be important?

We'll see the scriptures are very clear that we've all sinned every single one of us and we've fallen short of God's standard. And that means that we've, what does that practically look like? Well, it means that we kind of take control. We don't surrender anything. We take control. And so we begin to try to take our lives and we try to put things into them to help them give us peace or purpose or sometimes those things are like money.

We pursue that. We pursue careers. We pursue relationships. sometimes it's substances, but at the end of the day, all of it doesn't work because there was only one plan that would work. And that is for ourselves to surrender our will to Jesus for forgiveness of sins. And in that forgiveness, we find that we can have peace, that we can have a purpose. Most importantly, we can be forgiven of our sins and made new and walk in a posture of surrender and God will give us a life that is far better than anything we could ever imagine.

If we'll simply surrender to Jesus, there are those of you today who God has called to say yes to surrendering your life to Jesus for the forgiveness of sin so that you can find that peace, find that purpose. For those of you today who would say, you know what, that's me. I need to surrender to Jesus. What I want you to do is to lift up your hand right now. Say yes to Jesus right down here on the front welcome into the family of God others of you who would say I'm here to surrender My life to Jesus. Yes sir back over here in the left those of you that are at church online or at YouTube just type in the comments I'm surrendering my life to Christ today and we will celebrate with you

So let's all do this with those who are making this decision today. Let's pray this prayer aloud with those making this decision pray after me Heavenly Father Thank you for sending Jesus to die in my place. I ask that you forgive me in my sins, make me a new creation, and help me to follow you and surrender to you daily. It's in Jesus' name I pray. Everybody said, amen. Welcome in the God's family. It's a great day.