Life.Church with Craig Groeschel - Pray, Part 2: Active In Sharing Your Faith

Episode Date: May 9, 2015

Prayers aren't empty words hurled at the sky. They’re conversations—in fact, they're the most important conversations of our lives. Find out just how much it matters when you Pray. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers because I hear about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints. I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. Your love has given me great joy and encouragement because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the saints. It is fantastic to have all of you with us at all of our life churches and our network churches across the world. Those of you on the other side of computer screens at church online, I hope that there are those of you who will show some love with me today as we welcome the 24th LifeChurch.tv campus in Shawnee, Oklahoma, overflowing in services with tons of people coming to Christ. We love you guys and welcome you to the Life Church family. Today we're in part two of a four-part message series called Pray.

and what we're doing is we're looking at four specific prayers that the Apostle Paul prayed, and we're not going to pray safe, small, general prayers as passionate followers of Jesus. We're going to pray big, God-honoring, faith-filled, and specific prayers just like Paul prayed. And what's interesting is when you study the prayers of Paul, you're going to find a very common rhythm that he's going to pray for something specific, and then you're going to see the words so, that, and he's going to show you the desired result. For example, last week we saw him say, I pray that you would be filled with power so that Christ may dwell in your inner beings. And every time he prays, we see the word so that and we see the end result. So last week, we were praying

for power, and I hope that you continue to pray for power. The interesting thing is when you look at what many of us pray for, sometimes our prayers are just kind of benign, safe, small, in general. Quite honestly, a lot of times the things people pray for, to me, are actually kind of funny. Think about this. Many of you, your parents probably prayed this prayer with you when you were young. Some of you might pray this prayer with your youngsters. Think about how unusual this prayer is. Take your three-year-old, put them in a dark room before you're going to leave them and pray this with them. You can pray along if you know it. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die, before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Nighty night, precious. See in the morning if you survive the night. What is that? What is that? It's crazy. You pray that and I look, yes, if you don't die tonight. And then to me, what's really funny, I don't mean to offend any of you, but it just cracks me up to see people pray over their food.

Do Lord God, Heavenly Father, pray that you have blessed this food to the nourishment of our bodies. All right. I've seen what some of you eat. You're asking God to nourish your body with that crap. It's like, that takes more faith than praying for the red seed apart. I mean, where I live, a lot of people go to the State Fair, and I'm just, I'm visualizing this. Dear Lord God, bless this greasy double bacon cheese burger with chili fries and a superside

mountain dew. Lord God, as I shove fried Doritos, fried twinkies and fried cheese into my greedy body, do a miracle, Lord. Bless it to nourish my body like I'd be eating. eaten, grilled, chicken breast, broccoli, and kale. Amen? It was ridiculous, you know. Like, blessed that would nourish my body. If that offends you, you can go ahead and send it directly to my favorite email,

which is Craig at I don't give a rip.com. It is a real email, and it will give you an auto response. It says, really, I don't give a rip. And so if we move to more serious notes on prayer, I want to talk today about a specific prayer that the Apostle Paul prayed, that it's one of the most important things that you can pray for Christians that you love. In fact, I'm going to ask you a question. I want all of our churches to participate. You guys in Shawnee, help me out, Southern Florida, help me out, Fort Worth, help me out.

If there was a specific prayer you could pray for other Jesus followers that would help them have a full understanding of every good thing they have in Christ, how many of you would want to pray that prayer? I hope every hand would go up all over the place because I would want to pray that prayer. If you want the Christians that you love to have a full understanding of every good thing they have in Christ, then you should pray for them that they would continue to be active in sharing their faith. I want to say it again. If you want to see somebody you love have a full understanding of every good thing that they have in Christ, you should pray that they would be active in sharing their faith in Jesus.

Now, why would I say that? I want to give you the backstory of an amazing little book in the Bible, tied to a little book called Philemon. This was actually a personal letter that Paul wrote to his friend Philemon. It's the only personal letter that was written to a person, not to a group of churches that's in the Bible, that we have record of Paul writing. And so Paul wrote to Philemon,

who was quite honestly a successful kind of businessman who hosted a small house church every single week. And so if you can picture this, you've got a business guy who kind of has a life group meeting in his home. Well, one of his slaves, because they owned slaves at that time, escaped, his name was Onesimus, and Onesimus ran away from Philemon, ran all the way to Rome where he met up with the Apostle Paul. And we don't know exactly how it happened, but what we do know, is that the Apostle Paul led the slave into a relationship with Jesus. And this guy is like massively transformed. This is totally the real deal.

And so Onesimus is like, man, I need to go back to Philemon. I need to make things right. This is, you know, Jesus has changed me, and I need to go and do the right things. And so what Paul does is Paul writes to Philemon, because he's a friend of Paul, a letter vouching for Onesimus. Basically, Philemon, you need to understand Jesus has changed. this guy's life, he's coming back. I want you to receive him as a brother in the Lord, because that's exactly what he is. And so Paul is writing this very heartfelt, very emotional

plea to his friend, the business owner, a letter on behalf of this slave whose life has been transformed. And we're going to look at just a few portions of this story. We'll start in verse four, and this is what Paul says to his buddy Phileman. He says, I always thank God as I remember you in my prayers. And then he says, I thank him for two reasons. One is, because I hear about your faith in the Lord Jesus. Okay. The second reason, and I want you all to say this aloud, is because of what? He says, it's because of your love for all the saints. I want you to think about this. I thank God, Philemon, because I hear you love other Christians in such a beautiful way. I thank God because of your faith in Jesus and because you have a deep love for other Jesus followers.

Then in verse six, this is what Paul prays. He says, I pray, everybody say I pray. He says, I pray that you may be what? Everybody don't say it aloud. Somebody in Stillwater, help me out. He says, I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith. Why? Don't miss it.

So that. I pray you'd be active in sharing your faith. So that, what will you have? So that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. One more time, he says, I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith. Why? So that you will have a full understanding of every good thing you have in Christ. So why did he pray this?

The answer is right there in front of you. So that you have a full understanding of every good thing you have in Christ. Now, what I want to do for a moment is I want to read into this story. This is what I often try to do as I learn the backstory. I try to ask questions as to what else could have been going. going on that would lead to this prayer. And I'm gonna give you my theory. And what I want you to know is, this is only my theory.

This is not documented, this is not in the Bible. But here's what I think very likely could have happened. Imagine this. The slave runs away, gets to Rome, meets Paul. He's maybe hurting or asking questions or afraid or spiritually lost or something. Paul hits it off with this guy. Paul tells him, oh my gosh, I was like you. I used to hate Christians, but then I met the risen Christ in this powerful way and you need to know him.

and something happens in the slaves, like, yes, I need that. And he prays him, boom, he's transformed. And Paul starts talking to him, like, where would you come from? He goes, well, I actually worked for a guy named Phileman. Philemon, dude, I know him. Oh my gosh, he's amazing. He's got a house church in his home. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

You work for Philemon and you're not a follower of Jesus. Didn't Philemon ever tell you about Jesus? He didn't. Philemon, I thank God that I hear about your faith in Jesus and your love for the saints. You're like, you're really loving Christians. But if you're reading into this, perhaps Paul's going, wait a minute, don't forget to share your faith, especially with those who you're with every single day.

I pray that you'll continue to share your faith. And the reason I think perhaps Paul was doing this is because he knew as well as it's true today that one of the most dangerous places for Christians to get is an inward-looking, self-centered version of Christianity, where instead of loving those who are far from God, we start judging those who are far from God. Instead of having an attitude of trying to reach out, we have an attitude of trying to retreat and run from them. And before long, a lot of people are like, stay away from the world.

The world is bad. Stay away from those people. They're non-Christians. The ones that watch rated R movies. And listen to secular music. and some of their kids watch SpongeBob Squarepants. Keep your kids away from them. And there's just kind of retreatism and run and hide and all this kind of stuff.

And here's the deal. The last thing Jesus said before he ascended into heaven was not Christians, go into your houses and hide. What he said is go into the world and shine. He said, go into the world and preach the gospel, baptized people. In the name of the Father's Son and Holy Spirit, make disciples of them. He said, you are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. You don't run from darkness.

You shine into darkness. But the problem is so often we become inward looking and start arguing over stupid things like, that's not the way we do church. And the Greek word didn't really say that. That's not the right version of the Bible and all this stuff. And Paul, you can almost hear him saying, don't do that, Philemon. Be active. Always be active in sharing your faith.

So, if you're a Jesus. follower, you would have to say, I know that is important. I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, but the reality is if we kind of took a survey today and I talked to all of you in all the different locations, I'm guessing that maybe one in 10 or so, actually very directly in the last seven days boldly shared their faith in Christ, just a wild guess. And so if we know it's important and yet we don't do it, the question kind of arises, why don't we do it more often? Why don't we share our faith? And there are any number of reasons.

I think one of the reason is we just get busy. You know, we life happens and we kind of forget about the importance of it. I think one of the reasons is that we don't want to be that weird person, you know, the Jesus loves you. You know, like, oh, there's that guy. You know, we don't want to force our beliefs on people, and that's absolutely fair. But I think probably the biggest reason that most of us don't more often share our faith in Christ is we just don't feel like we know enough.

We feel like if we knew more, then we would do it more, but I don't feel like I know enough. And here's the tension that I want you to see. We think if I understood more, then I would share my faith. But Paul is implying through this prayer that that's not what happens. He's saying, when you share your faith, then what happens? You understand more. In fact, I want to illustrate it in a moment on just a board, so you'll kind of see how this plays out in your everyday life. And so if I can have the board real quick, thank you very much.

This is kind of what it looks like, and you can jot this down in your notes as well if it helps you. What happens is Paul's praying that we would constantly do what? He's praying that we would constantly share our faith in Jesus. And when we share our faith in Jesus, something very positive happens, and that is that lives are impacted. Lives are changed. And it may only be that you're planting a seed in somebody's life. It may be that you're watering the seed, but God is making a difference in people's lives. And as you do this, Paul is showing us something else amazing happens is that as you share your faith, you actually get a full understanding of every good thing.

that you have in Christ. And suddenly you're growing deeper in your relationship with Jesus. You're falling more in love with Him. You're understanding just what it means to walk by the Spirit. And so you want to share your faith even more. So what happens is you get a very outward,

evangelistic, loving, focus toward other people. And when you have this, these are kind of the big two. We're called to love God and love people. Love God, love people. Then what happens is you want to share. your faith even more, and more lives are impacted, and you grow deeper in your understanding,

and you have more of an outward focus, and then you share your faith, and it's very, very positive. But here's what often happens. Unfortunately, we feel like we don't know enough, we're not ready, we're not good enough, so we don't share our faith. Lives are not really impacted because we're just doing our own little inward-looking Christian thing. We don't grow spiritually in a deeper understanding of what we're not. we have in Christ. Therefore, instead of an outward focus, we become inward-looking Christians, which arguably, that's kind of an oxymoron in itself, and then we're no longer sharing our faith,

and suddenly we become very lukewarm in what we do. This is one of the reasons why I believe Paul was praying for Philemon. Man, you love your church. Yes, you love the believers, but do not forget. Always share your faith. As lives are changed, you will have a full understanding of every good thing you have in Christ, and then you'll have an outward focus and you'll have very positive spiritual momentum in your life as you do so. So, we are a church full of people that pray.

Last week, we started praying daily for what? We're praying for power. You keep praying for power. Today, we're going to add something new that we pray for. And what's going to happen is over time, you're going to develop a very rich arsenal of spiritual things to focus on in prayer. Today we're going to add this.

We're praying for other believers that we love. We're praying for ourselves that we would continue to share our faith. Pray for your teenagers. Pray for your eight-year-old. Pray for your spouse. Pray for your pastors. Pray for the Christians that you work with.

Pray for the people in your life group. Pray for me. Pray for you that you would continue to share your faith in Christ. You would be active in sharing your faith in Christ. And when you do, you'll have a full understanding of every good thing you have in Christ. So let me warn you. And let me just warn you clearly. When you start praying for this, you will have opportunities this week, multiple ones, and they're going to come your way. So what I want to do is, since many people don't fully feel equipped, I want to give you four

very simple ways to share your faith based loosely on some stories in the Bible. So when God gives you those moments in response to your prayer, you're going to be adequately prepared to share your faith, get a deeper understanding, and suddenly you're going to see forged spiritual momentum in your life as God uses you to impact others. Different ways to share your faith for them very quickly. First of all, if you're taking notes, you can be loving but direct. You can be very loving, but there will be a time to be direct. In fact, in Acts chapter 2, this is what Peter did when he preached to thousands of people. He was loving, but he was direct.

He said to them this. He said, you need to repent of your sins and turn to God and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Boom! Hashtag direct. What he didn't say was, you know, hey, guys, I'm thinking about, you ought to, like, explore your spiritual options and maybe, you know, think about what would happen.

I mean, he's just direct as can be. You need to repent of your sins, turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus. Jesus Christ. It's as direct as you can be. And there will be times when the Holy Spirit will lead you to be direct like that and you obey the prompting of the Spirit. You don't do it all the time. If you do it all the time, you're jerk-o-Christian-o, okay? You do it when God leads you and you're very, very direct. In fact, I actually took a class in seminary. I went to two different seminaries. One was a Baptist seminary. And, you know, one thing that the Baptists are really focused on is sharing

the gospel. And so I took a class called Christian Witness Training, I think, was the name of it. And we had to be very direct and go door to door, knock on the door, and share our faith with complete strangers while the professor scored us from, you know, watching us do this whole deal. Okay. We had to memorize this script. The only line I remember was the opening line. Knock, knock, knock.

Hello, perfect stranger. Have you come to a place in your life where you know for certain if you died tonight? You spend eternity in heaven or hell. Okay. I still remember it. And the professor would say, before you knock, always pray. I want you to know I prayed every single time. In the name of Jesus, God, I pray nobody is at home when I knock on this door.

That's what I always prayed, because that was pressure. When God leads you, you be loving and you be direct. The second way you can share your faith in every one of you can do that's any time, you can share your story. Every one of you have a very powerful story if you were a follower of Jesus. In fact, in John's Gospel, the 9th chapter, It's an amazing story of a guy that was born blind, and Jesus comes and opens his eyes so that he can see. All of a sudden, all the Pharisees are, like, debating this, going, whose fault was it, that he was blind?

Is his parents' fault? Jesus healed on the Sabbath that Jesus must be a sinner. Maybe he wasn't really blind, and so they questioned this guy, and he's like, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't understand the deeper meanings, all these theological debates that you're having is that all I can tell you is I was blind. but now I see. You can argue all you want, but if you want to know my story, is yesterday I couldn't see you.

Today I can. You're kind of ugly when you're mean, but I can see you. All I know is I was blind, but now I see. And some of you, that's your greatest love weapon. It's all I know is I used to be an addict, but because of Jesus, I'm not.

All I know is I used to be hurting, but because of Jesus, I have peace. All I know is I used to be lost, but because of Jesus now, I'm found, and you tell your story. Some of you, you've got like really wild, wild, wild stories. Tell your story. I used to smoke weed.

I used to drink whiskey, and I used to shoot heroin. But Jesus saved me. Some of you is not that dramatic. You know, I used to smoke Cheetos and drink NyQuil and shoot squirrels. But Jesus saved me, whatever it is. I mean, you tell your version of your story and watch as God. uses it to impact other people. It's amazing how often your story will interact and kind of overlap their story. Oh, I lost a child too. Oh, I lost a marriage too. I was rejected by church

too. Oh, I had this happen to me too. And let me tell you what God did. You can be loving and you can be direct. You can share your story. A third thing is very simple. You can invite people to church. I mean, it doesn't get any easier than this. Man, just come with me. Hour and five minutes. Come with me to church. It's that easy. In fact, this is essentially what this woman did in John's gospel, recorded it in the fourth chapter. Jesus had an interaction with a Samaritan sinful woman, which a Jewish man would have never even done that.

He's loving this woman. And he says to her, he said, man, you've had five husbands, and the guy you're shacking up, but he's not your husband. And she's like, oh, how does he know this stuff? And basically, he says, you're thirsting for something more, and you're just kind of using regular water. He said, I will give you living water and you'll never thirst again. And she's so moved by this.

What she does, she runs back to her community. And all she says is, come and see the man who told me everything I've done. Just come and see. Just come with me and meet this guy. And that's what you can do. Just come with me. Just come to church. Just give it a try.

Give it a try. I do this all the time. I'm telling you, I invite people all the time. But it's really awkward when I invite them to come to my church to hear me speak. I'm like, come. Come, come, man, come hear me speak. my mom says, I'm amazing. That's massively awkward.

So to be honest, when someone doesn't even know what I do, I just invite him to church. And I never tell him I'm the pastor. And I met a guy at the gym, and he was new to town. So we were talking. And he said, I'm having a hard time finding friends. I'm like, why don't you come to church with me? He's like, I'm not a church guy.

I'm like, dude, you know, what's the big deal? Just one time, try it. I'll meet you there. I'll sit with you. All right. So I'll be sitting over here. I'll be on this row. And so we're sitting there and he's like, man, this music's good.

I didn't know church music was like this. Like, yeah, I think great. So glad you're here. And I started walking off. He goes, where are you going? I'm like, I'll be back in about 35 minutes. And so I'm just preaching away. I'm looking over his eyes like, ooh.

And I walked back. He goes, I thought you were in construction. Like, you didn't know about that whole disposal incident, did you? You know, like that's just the way. And so it's just the way. It's that easy, man. Just come with me. So what could happen?

And you simply invite, when we give you a little invitation cards, make it as easy as we can. How do you share your faith? One thing you can do is invite somebody to church. And then the fourth thing, if you're taking notes, is this. You can live a life that other people will want. You can live a life that other people will want. In fact, Paul and Silas, they did this.

It's a crazy story you can read about an axe. They get arrested and they're in prison. And what do these crazy guys do? These Jesus followers, they're in the middle of jail, in prison, and they just hold a worship service. And so they're just worshipping God. And the jailer's looking on, and most people don't worship God when they're in jail.

Suddenly an earthquake comes. God sends his deal. The jail doors fly open, and they're free. And so the jailer's like, well, if they escape, they're going to kill me, so I might as well kill myself. And then Paul's like, don't kill yourself. No, no, no, it's cool. We're still here.

And they're showing love to this guy. He looks at him and basically says, I want what you have and ask the question. What must I do to be saved? In other words, I've seen that you all have something that I do not have. I want what you have. And there are those of you that when you just kind of live with God in such a way that, I mean, you find out you have cancer and you're not rocked by it. You have this peace through it.

How do you do that? People will ask you, you tell them I've got the grace of Jesus carrying me. I've got a friend like this. that he just, he just, there's something about him that people always say, what do you have? What's different about you? And he just, not in a creepy, weird way, he just tells him, man, the grace of God has transformed my life. And if you want to know what I have, I would love to share it with you. And people ask them and they want it all the time.

You can live in such a way that others are hungry for what you have. And that's one of the reasons we're going to pray, God, every day give us opportunities to share our faith. May we be active. God, we pray for those we love that they would be active in sharing their faith. God, we pray that every day you would give us eyes to see divine opportunity so we could share our faith. Why? So that we'll have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ with an outward focus. We share our faith even more and we'll have positive spiritual momentum. This week every day, we pray. God, give us opportunity to share our faith, and he will. And when you do, let me show you three things that will happen. The first thing is this. You get to play a part

in a divine story. This is so awesome. You get to play a part in someone else's spiritual story. And you may simply be planting a seed. You may be the guy that waters the seed. You may just play a very small part, you may be there at the harvest, but you get to make a difference in someone else's life, and when you do, oh, man, that brings spiritual momentum and faith into your heart. You get to play a role in someone else's story. You are a part of a divine story. The second thing is, when you share your faith, your faith grows. Your faith grows and grows and grows and grows. You're having a conversation with someone, and you don't know what to say next, and you're like, oh, what do I say? And then boom, this Bible verse just like pops into your brain, like, who!

Where did that come from? Must be God. And then you're praying for that person and you're praying for more people. And all of a sudden your faith is growing and faith starts to expand. In fact, this is exactly what happened to my mom and dad. I mean, I can tell you with great pride that the last five years of their lives have been the most spiritually productive lives of two people in their 70s. They divorced years ago and both remarried.

My mom's husband just unfortunately recently passed away, but I watched their faith skyrocket as mom and Jack went to the hospital to pray for a guy who was about to die who didn't know Christ. And they very graciously told him about the grace of Jesus, and this guy, near his death, prayed to receive forgiveness and grace, and you could visibly see the transformation in this guy's last days. visibly you could see the transformation. They were so lit with passion.

They said, I think we have a gift of leading dying people to Christ. And so they started going to hospitals and literally were just fine people and go in their room. And in the last year, they led 12 people to Christ, these crazy 70-something-year-old people. And their faith grew, their faith grew. And then my dad and his wife were the same way. I mean, like, I didn't know this guy, this, like, passionate, faithful about Jesus. And I had two people this last week tell me, yeah, your dad led me to Christ.

Yeah, your dad helped me get off alcohol. And he was 100 miles away, and this happens, like, where did that come from? What happened is they started sharing their faith. And the next thing you know, they're leading an alcohol and drug addiction recovery group with 90 to 120 people that come every week. The next thing you know, they started a prison ministry. And I'm going, my dad, who is this guy? Like, pastor dad guy going into prisons leading people to Christ.

And what happened? His faith skyrocketed. Why? Because when you share your faith, lives are changed. And you get a deeper understanding of every good thing you have in Christ. And you're an outward loving focus to people who are far from God. And therefore, you want to do more and more of it. And the final thing, if you're taking notes, is this.

When you share your faith, you are reminded of what you have in Christ. You're reminded of what you have in Christ. That's why you have a full understanding. There are some of you, there was a time in your life, when you are really passionate about Jesus, and now you're not. And I can guarantee you from the time you're passionate until this moment right now, you stop sharing your faith. I can guarantee you.

Because when you're sharing your faith, something happens on the inside. You're telling people the story of the gospel, and you're talking about forgiveness of sins to people that have never realized that God could forgive their sins. And it's like you're hearing it for the first time when you tell it again. And then you talk about the promises of God. God. And you tell them, yeah, God's not going to give you the perfect life and you're never going to have problems again, but instead you're like, no, in the middle of those problems,

God gives you a supernatural peace that goes beyond your human ability to understand. That the very spirit of God moves into the life of the Jesus follower. And that spirit convicts you and loves you and equips you and comforts you and empowers you. And suddenly you start walking by faith and not by side. And you don't just like serve this God who's out to get you, but you have a loving relationship with a God that you can know, a God who speaks to you and a God who cares about you. All of a sudden, when you're on the front lines talking about the goodness of God, you cannot be lukewarm.

You are filled with the fullness of all that God has. And suddenly, you're having a deeper understanding and a deeper understanding of every good thing you have in Christ. And so when you share, lives are changed. You have a deeper understanding. you have an outward focus and you want to share even more. That's why I'm praying every day for you for power because you need spiritual power.

And I'm praying for our church community that you would be active in sharing your faith in Christ because when you do, you will see lives changed. And when you are active in sharing your faith in Christ, you will have a full understanding of every good thing you have in Christ. Therefore, you can better please God in all that you do. So Father today, I ask that this community would be active in sharing their faith.

And I thank you in advance, God, that this week there would be opportunity after opportunity after opportunity for us to share the good news and love of Jesus. All of our churches today, for those of you that are followers of Jesus, I want to ask, if you would add this to the things that you pray for, would you simply pray every single day, every single day this week for those that you love and pray it for yourself that we would be active in sharing our faith. Would you lift up your hands if you'll do that with me? All of our churches just lift them up and fantastic. I cannot even imagine all the great answers to this prayer that we're going to see as God hears the cries of his church. Father, I thank you in advance

that those that we love are going to grow closer to you as you hear this prayer and they see opportunities to share their faith. God, I thank you that we as we pray for opportunities, we're going to see them. God, I thank you that even before this day ends, that many of us are going to have multiple opportunities to serve someone in the name of Jesus, to love someone in the name of Jesus, to encourage someone in the name of Jesus, to pray for someone in the name of Jesus, to listen to someone who is hurting and to point them toward the goodness of your son, Jesus. God, I pray that you would give us eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart of your heart. to discern the right times to share the goodness of Jesus. And God, I pray that every single day,

this would be a part of our prayer lives, that we would be active, looking for those divine opportunities to share our faith so that lives would be changed and so that we would continue to grow in an understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. As you keep praying today at all of our different churches, there are some of you right now that, that you hear about what is possible in Christ and you think, I don't have that. The reality is you can be a church person and not have that. That was the story of my parents. That was my story. We went to church, but we didn't have an understanding. We didn't know God personally. There are those of you, you're like, I'm not a religious person. I'm not a church guy. So, you know, even if I were going to

come to God, I'd have to like clean my life up first. Again, that's the wrong order. It's just like you don't wait until you understand to share. You share and then you understand. You don't clean yourself up to come to God. You come to God first, and he cleans you up. And there are those of you right now, you may say, I don't really have a spiritual story. Guess what? You are here today because your story is about to start.

That's why you're here. And your story will go something like this. I was hurting and I was lost, and I went to this church thing, and I prayed to God, and boom, everything changed. I was dying under the weight of my sin, and I never really thought I could be forgiven, and I prayed for forgiveness. And I believe, and I know in my heart that Jesus,

forgave you, boom, that's your story. I was addicted, I was lost, I was hurting, my marriage was falling apart, I didn't know which way to turn. I turned my life over to Jesus, and I'll tell you, he invaded my life with his love, and I've never, ever been the same. And all of our churches, there are those of you, your spiritual story is about to begin. Why? Because you recognize your sinfulness, and you recognize your need for a savior, the love of God who sent Jesus, who was without sin, to become sin for us on the cross, and on the third, day when the stone was rolled away, the tomb was empty, Jesus was risen, why? So that anyone, and this includes you, who calls on his name, would be saved. And all of our churches there,

those of you you recognize, my story is about to begin. I need his grace. I need his forgiveness today by faith. I give my life to him. That's your prayer. Lift your hands high right now all over the place and say, yes, that's my prayer right here in the middle section, both of you, God bless you guys. Others of you today say yes. Right back over here. God bless you as well. Right over here in the back. Back here as well. Over here in the back, all the way back over here. God bless you guys. Others of you. Way back over here. Way back over here. I surrender. Over here on this side as well. Others today. I need his grace. I need his forgiveness right over here in this section. God bless you. God loves you. He hears your cry right over here.

Blessings to you. Others today who said yes, I surrender. Would you pray with those around you? nobody prays alone. Everybody pray aloud. Heavenly Father, forgive my sins. Make me new. I believe. Jesus died for me so I could live for you. Today I trust you with my whole life. Fill me with your spirit so I could know you, serve you, and follow you. My life is not my own. I give it to you. Thank you for new life. In Jesus' name, I pray. Would you worship, big worship loud? Welcome those born into God's family today. We celebrate new life in Christ.