Life.Church with Craig Groeschel - Why Didn’t God Answer My Prayer? | Ever Wonder Why: Part 3

Episode Date: November 28, 2021

The Bible tells us that with God, all things are possible (Matthew 19:26 NIV). But if that's true, why do you have unanswered prayers? Does it mean you did something wrong? Or that God doesn't care? Let's talk about it as we continue our series, Ever Wonder Why?ABOUT THIS MESSAGEHave you ever had a question so hard you wouldn’t even say it out loud? Or a doubt so big you didn’t feel like you could share it—especially at church? Maybe it’s time to ask the tough questions together in our new series, Ever Wonder Why?WE’RE OPENWe’re continuing to monitor guidelines and best practices for gathering in a safe way. Learn more about everything we're doing to keep you safe and how you can help by using hand sanitizer, washing your hands often, and more: https://www.life.church/updatesFind a time and attend a service with us: http://www.life.church/locationsNEXT 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.churchTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/lifechurchTikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@lifechurchCONNECT WITH PASTOR CRAIGYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIId...Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/craiggroeschelInstagram: http://www.instagram.com/craiggroeschelTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/craiggroeschelTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@craiggroeschel#lifechurch #craiggroeschel  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How many of you believe in the power of prayer? Raise your hands. I'm incredibly thankful, and I hope you are too, for a God to whom all things are possible. And I am thankful that, as a follower of Jesus, I have seen God miraculously answer so many prayers over the years. And the good news is that prayer is incredibly powerful. The bad news is that prayer can also be confusing.

Prayer is powerful, but at times it's confusing. Because if you're anything like me, you may have seen God answer some prayers where you say, wow, God, you showed up and you showed off. And then other times when you pray in a similar way with a similar type of faith, believing in the same God, he didn't do what you thought he should do and knew he could do. and it can be confusing. Especially when I contrast some of the miraculous answered prayers in Scripture with some of my own unanswered prayers in life,

prayer can be powerful and it can be confusing. For example, in Joshua 10 in the Old Testament, Joshua prayed that the sun would stand still and God caused the sun to stand still. and Amy and I prayed for our close friends whose marriage was struggling and instead of their marriage getting better, their marriage ended in divorce. In the Old Testament, 1 Kings 18, Elijah called for fire from heaven. And fire came from heaven and burned 800 false prophets that worship the false God of Bail. and Amy and I pleaded to God in prayer

on behalf of my pastor, Pastor Nick, a hero in the faith who was sick in the hospital and ended up not coming back to his earthly home. Daniel chapter 6, Daniel in the lion's den, prayed and God took starving lions and put them on a diet. And I was invited to pray at a sporting event. and prayed for good sportsmanship and safety. And a fight broke out so severe they canceled the game.

And I was never invited back to pray at that particular sporting event. Prayer can be powerful and occasionally it's confusing. In fact, when you look at the words of Jesus, he says something that builds my faith and also confuses me at the same time. in John's Gospel, chapter 14, verses 13 and 14th, Jesus said, and I will do whatever you ask in my name. What a promise. So that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

So why is it that sometimes I ask him to do something in his name and believe that he would do it? And he didn't. Have you ever prayed for something? And you knew God could do it, and he thought he would. But he didn't do it. And you ask yourself, did I do something wrong? Is God not listening? Is he mad at me?

Does he not care? That's why the title for today's message is this. Why didn't God answer my prayer? Father, we ask, even if our faith is struggling, that you would hear the cries of our heart, and by the truth of your word and the presence of your spirit, that you would build our faith, that you are a God that hears and responds to the prayers of your people. Build our faith, God, to be people pursuing you intimately in prayer. And God will give you all the glory for every answered prayer in Jesus' name.

And everybody said, amen, amen. What I want to do today is try to build an understanding of the nature of God and the purpose of prayer. And what I'm going to tell you is not something that you probably want to hear. In our very self-centered culture, we like everything to be about us. But when we look at the story of Scripture, we need to understand that you are not the man. character in the story. And neither am I. When you look at the glory of God in creation and the narrative of his story in the Bible, unfortunately, we are not the main character. God is the main character, and we need to embrace the reality that God does not exist to serve

us. On the contrary, the truth is that we exist to serve and glorify him. And And when we recognize that he doesn't exist for us, but the reality is that we exist for him, it helps us to understand the purpose and the meaning behind why it is that we pray. And so I want to build a foundation of understanding today and then look at a lot of scripture. You think you can handle some word today? We're going to look at a lot of scripture today, and let's define what the purpose of prayer is not, so we can understand what the purpose of prayer is. Let's start with what it's not.

The purpose of prayer isn't, believe it or not, to get God to do our will. He's not a puppet on our strings who is at our beck and call. The purpose of prayer is not to get God to do our will. The purpose of prayer is to know God so we can do His will. The purpose of prayer is to get to know him intimately because he is an intimate and a relational God. we serve him. He is not here to serve us. In other words, contrary to cultural belief, God isn't our spiritual Santa Claus.

In other words, if we're good all year and do the right things and go to church and we're in a life group and we do our U-Virgin Bible study, then we pray to God and God with a beard in the Santa suit says, yes, you've been a good boy and girl, therefore you get everything you want this Christmas. That's not God. And if you're bad and you cuss. or even if you think cuss words, because you may not say it, but God hears it because he knows what you're thinking. Or you flip somebody off in the church parking lot after church.

Have you ever done that? I hope not, but I've actually seen it done before. Or worse yet, you're so bad, you lose your U-Virgin Bible streak. And so God says, I can't bless that at all. God is not some kind of a spiritual Santa Claus. He's not your drive-through God where you pull up to God in the box, you know, and you say, I've got a need, and you press the button, and you place your order, and an angel comes out and says,

by pleasure, here's your, whatever you ask for. We need to understand that God is not a button to be pushed, but a relationship to be pursued. He is a relational God. He is loved. He created us to love us and to be loved. by us. Therefore, the purpose of prayer at its root is not to get God to do our will. The purpose of prayer is for us to know him and be conformed to his will and to do his will. Now, we read a verse

earlier that could be really confusing because Jesus said, if you ask anything in my name, I will give it to you. And yet so often, that's not the way it goes. Was Jesus lying? Does he not care. And this is an important thing for us to understand as followers of Jesus, that when we study God's word, when we read God's word, we need to accurately interpret what's in the word. And so just briefly, some ideas that I've learned along the way that are really, really important, is we never build our theology around one verse that we just pluck out of context. You never just take any verse and just like pick it out of the Bible and say, we're going to build our system of belief around a single verse. What we want to do when we're understanding the big beliefs of the Bible is we want to

clearly understand the context of what's being said. In other words, who was it that was writing this? To whom, what was it written? What were the bigger historical ideas going on at the time? And perhaps the biggest idea in understanding the Bible is this, that what we do to understand the Bible is we use the Bible to interpret the Bible. We use scripture through all of the Bible to build our beliefs about an idea. So if we have one verse on prayer, we may say, okay, I've got some questions about this. So we're going to look at some other verses on prayer, and as many verses on prayer that we can have. We're going to look at what Paul said in the epistles and what Jesus said in the Gospels.

And we're going to look at Proverbs and Psalms. We're going to look at the Old Testament history literature. And we're going to take the Bible to interpret the Bible. So we see the total narrative of what God is trying to say under the, under the umbrella of his goodness, and that's how we interpret scripture. So when we're dealing with this very weighty question that causes some people to walk away from their faith, I prayed for my grandma and she died. I prayed for my best friend and he took his life. I prayed for whatever, and God didn't answer. Why did God not answer my prayer? What we're going to

do today is we're going to let the Bible interpret the Bible, and we're going to look at a lot of different verses. So you may be saying, I prayed and I believed and I thought I did everything right. And God didn't do what I knew he could do. Why? Why didn't God answer my prayer? And I want to say as clearly as I can, I don't know as your pastor. That's above my pay grade. I cannot tell you specifically why God didn't do what he could have done, and he might have done it for somebody else or another situation. I do not know, but what I can do is show you in the Bible at least four possible reasons why God didn't do what you asked him to do. We're going to let the Bible speak and let the Bible interpret the Bible. Why didn't God answer your prayer?

Four possibilities. The first possibility is that maybe you have a broken relationship. Maybe you have a broken relationship that's hindering your intimacy with God, and therefore, in this case, perhaps that might be a reason he didn't answer a prayer. Let me try to explain it to you. In Mark Chapter 11, Jesus was talking to his disciples, and he was giving them a lesson on faith. And he was saying, basically, hey, if you really have faith, you can ask something as crazy as for a mountain to be moved. And if you don't doubt in your heart, I'll do what you ask to do. And Jesus said this in verse 24.

He said, therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you've received it and it will be yours. That sounds a lot like the other verse we read. Then in verse 25, he says, and when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them. So your father in heaven may forgive your sin. Now, wait a minute. It seems like Jesus is adding a little bit on to his teaching about faith. It seems to be that Jesus is implying that our relationship with other people might matter when we pray to God, which that makes a little bit of sense to me, those of you that have kids,

if your kids are ever like fighting, and they come in screaming bloody murder, he did this and she did this and I'm a la la la blah blah blah blah. And then they say, can we have a friend over tonight? What's your answer? No, you can't. Can we go to a movie? No, you can't. Can we stay up late?

No, you can't. Why? Because you're fighting. You're my children, whom I love, in my house, and at this point, I'm not going to give you what you're asking for when you're not doing what I told you to do. And that is I really need you to value each other and love each other because that's what we do in our family. So perhaps Jesus is implying that your relationship with people could impact your relationship with God. Give you another example. In Matthew chapter 5, Jesus was talking about going to give your gift.

Verse 23, he says, therefore, if you're offering your gift at the altar, and remember, your brother or sister has something against you, what do you do? You leave your gift in front of the altar and then you what? say it with me first the first thing you do before you give your gift is go and be reconciled make up with the person that you've got a problem with and then come and offer your gift it seems like jesus is saying that your relationship with other people could impact your relationship with god if that's not enough gentlemen those of you that are married here's a verse to get all up into your business if i had one for the wives i would give one for the wives as well this one probably would apply to both, but men, this is directly to you. It essentially says,

if thou are a jerketh, God might not answer your prayers. That's the King James translation of this, which says, 1 Peter 3, 7, husbands, in the same way, be considered as you live with your wives and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life. Why? So that nothing will hinder your prayers. It seems that when we let the Bible interpret the Bible, scripture implies that your relationship with other people might impact your relationship with God. So why did God not answer your prayer? Again, I can't answer and tell you specifically, but perhaps you have a broken relationship that could be impacting your intimacy with God. Another reason that God might not have

answer your prayers, maybe you just got the wrong motives. Now, I don't know about you because you're probably so holy. You've never done that, but I have prayed some selfish prayers. I might have prayed for several cute girls who were far from God in college to maybe get close to God in college, and my goal was not for their salvation as much as it was for selfish motives. I hate to tell you that, but it's not uncommon to see people pray self-centered prayers with the wrong motives. The Pharisees did this all the time. You can read about it in the Gospels. They would go out in their flowing robes and stand on the street corners and pray these long, elaborate prayers, not because they really loved God, but because they loved the applause of people who say, oh, you're so spiritual when you

pray this way. And I don't know how it might apply in your life, but it might be the person in business who says, God, bless my business, but they're not willing to tithe. Bless my business, but there's no generosity to help anybody in need. Or it could even be just something silly. God, I just pray in the name of Jesus that my hair would be thicker and my nails would be longer and my income higher, all for the glory of God. Why did God not answer a prayer? Well, maybe it's because you have a broken relationship. Maybe you had the wrong motives.

Another possible reason is maybe when you prayed you didn't believe God would actually do it. Maybe you don't believe God will. You're lacking faith. And I'll show you a very, very powerful portion of scripture that I can identify in Mark's Gospel, Mark chapter 9, there was this dad who had his son, and this poor boy was possessed by an evil spirit. And so the boy couldn't talk, and he would foam at the mouth, and the spirit would like thrash them around like crazy.

And this evil spirit tried to kill the boy, tried to throw him into the fire and the water. And so the dad, as you can imagine, you know, he is beside himself. Can anyone help my boy? And so he goes up to the disciples. I going, hey, you're the guys with Jesus. Do you guys have power? Can you cast this demon out? And the disciples couldn't do it.

And Jesus looked on and you could almost see like he was kind of like concerned or maybe disappointed with the disciples like going, don't you guys have faith? If you had faith, you could drive out this demon. And in Mark chapter 9, verse 22, the father explains to situation to Jesus about the demon. He says, hey, it's often tried to throw my son into the fire of the water to kill him. And then I love the honesty of this dad. He says to Jesus, listen to his big faith. But if you can do anything, like no one has, and I'm not sure you can. If by chance you can do anything, take pity on us and help us. And Jesus, again, kind of looks on like, come on, really,

man, like you haven't seen what I've been doing all over the place? If you can, Jesus says, everything is possible for the one who believes. And I love the honesty of verse 24. Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, I do believe, sort of, right? I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief. I kind of have faith, but I'm not sure it's the faith that you're looking for. It's a kind of sort of faith.

And I love this honesty because I can't speak for anybody else, but I'll tell you, even as a pastor and as a person who's walked with Jesus for a long time, there are moments when my faith is weaker than others. And you need to hear me when I tell you, I have seen God do miraculous things. I've seen God heal blindness. I've seen people at stage four terminal cancer cancer vanish. I've seen God miraculously provide for people when there was no other way.

It was obviously the hand of God. I've seen God show up and show up. I've seen God take people that no one ever thought could be changed or different or sobered or healed or whole and God completely transformed lives. I have seen God answer prayer after prayer after prayer after prayer. But there is this one specific terminal illness that when I've been around it and prayed for it, is never turned out good. And as pastors, Amy and I, we're pretty much,

we don't see a lot of normal life. We're called in on the highs of the lows. I've never gotten a phone call going, help, pastor, I'm having a normal day again. That's not what happens. And so it's the highs of the lows that we get called in on. And on a particular low, there was a gentleman with a specific terminal illness.

And we have probably ministered to, I'd say, seven or eight different people over a 30-year period with this exact thing, and every time prayed and every time believed and every time gone to their funeral. And so I'm embarrassed to tell you this, but we went into this guy's house to pray for him, and they said, Pastor Craig, would you pray?

And I just looked at the situation, and I said, I think Amy would love to pray. And it's not funny. I just thought, I know God can heal that man. but in the moment, I just didn't have faith for it. And what we need to understand is that our faith really matters to God. And this is really, really tricky, and so I want to be really, really clear. Your faith matters to God.

Scripture says, without faith, it's impossible to please God. The way that you're made right with God is by God. faith. It's faith in a God you can't see. It's faith in a God. You may not feel its faith. Faith honors God. In fact, over and over and over again in Scripture we see, it said, Jesus said, according to your what? According to your faith, may it be done unto you. Your faith matters so much to God. In fact, I want to give you just a few examples. Three examples. There was a woman who had an issue of, she was bleeding for 12 years, 12 years, 12 years, 12 years. And she touched the hymn of the garment of Jesus.

And Jesus said to her, your faith has healed you. There was an immoral woman who knelt down and worshipped at the feet of Jesus and poured expensive perfume or oil over him. And Jesus looked to her and said, your faith has saved you. There were two blind men who couldn't see. And they said, heal us, heal us, heal us. And Jesus said, do you believe that I can? They said, yes, we do believe that you can.

And Jesus said, according to your faith, let it be done into you, and their sight was restored. Your faith matters to God. I want to be clear, it matters. But at the same time, we have to remember, God is still God, period. And in theological circles, there's what sometimes called the prosperity gospel or faith healing that will teach what I would consider to be a distorted message, and that is, if you have enough faith, and God has to do what you want. God has to heal you.

God has to bless you. And everyone's going to be rich if you have enough faith. And if you don't have enough faith, it's on you, it's not on God. And I believe that is a dangerous distortion of what Scripture says because we interpret the Bible in light of the Bible. So we don't put our faith in faith. We put our faith in God. And at the same time, we understand that our faith does matter to God. So you might say, well, my relationships are good.

I'm pretty good with everybody. I got some crazy people in the family, but everybody has that, okay? I have the right motives. I believe that my motives are pure. And I really do have faith, but God still hasn't answered my prayer. Why didn't God answer my prayer? And the fourth reason I see in scripture that God may not have answered your prayer is maybe simply because God has something different.

Maybe in your case, even though you really want it and really think it's best and all logic tells you it's best, maybe God has something different. And we see evidence of this in 1 John chapter 5 verses 14 and 15 that tells us this amazing promise that this is the confidence that we have in approaching God. confidence in this, that if we ask anything according to our wisdom, according to what we want, according to our desires, no, scripture says, if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we ask, of him. Maybe as much as you want what you want and as right as you think it is,

maybe God has something different in his overall plan and his will, not just for you, but for the people around you. And perhaps the most emotional story to me that illustrates this is the Apostle Paul in the New Testament who had what he described as a thorn in his flesh. we don't know what the thorn was. Scholars make some good educated guesses based on other thing in scripture. They say it might have been an eye problem because it appears that he didn't have good eyesight.

Some think it might have been malaria or migraine, some epilepsy. Some say because he said, I didn't have eloquent speech, it might have been a speech disability. Some people think it was a person. And if you have a foreign called a person, right? Because he said,

Alex the Coppersmith did me a great deal of harm. We don't know what the thorn was, but what we know is that three times, and I don't believe it's like three prayers, like, you know, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but like three seasons of prayer, Paul pleaded with God, would you take this away? I've seen you do the miraculous. I know you can do this. This is slowing me, hurting me, whatever it is. It's tormenting me, he says. It's tormenting me. Day and night, please, God, I know you can't.

Take it away. This is Paul, the guy that preached the gospel for 30 years in every major city on the Mediterranean basin. This is Paul, the one who encountered the risen Christ and served him so faithfully and during an incredibly high price, shipwrecked and beaten and stoned and imprisoned. And this is the Paul that wrote a third of the New Testament. Like the New Testament. Like if you have a coffee mug with a verse, thank Paul for it. Your verses from Paul. And he prayed and he begged and he pleaded.

And his relationships were probably as good as he could, as far as it depended on him, they were good. And his motives were pure. His faith was strong. And God didn't do it. And God revealed to Paul what he said, that my God showed me that he, His grace is sufficient for me.

It's enough. And his power is made perfect in my weakness, my brokenness. Therefore, I'll boast all the more in my weakness because his strength, his goodness, his glory is made perfect when I don't get what I want. and what I don't understand. So I don't know what it would be for you. We got to have this house.

I got to have that job. Oh, I got to marry this person. And so you pray and you pray and you pray and it doesn't happen. And in the moment, you may not understand. You may not like it. You may ask some very legitimate questions which I believe God welcomes.

why didn't you remove that thorn? And God may, in his own way, in his own times, show you that he is still sufficient. His grace is still what you need. So you asked and you believed and you didn't get it. And one day you just recognize, God had something different. It'd be really fun for me to preach better, right?

because I could probably get you shouting with better. Sometimes it's just different. Sometimes it's just different. So that raises the very important question. Why am the world bothered praying? If it's so complicated, there's a guy, I have this right and that right and pray it just right. And God appears like he's going to do whatever he wants anyway. We have to understand this, that the purpose of prayer is not to get God,

to do what we want. The purpose of prayer is relational. Is to get to know God. Is to know Him intimately so that we can do His will. And what I've found in my own life, if nothing else, and there's always something else that's good, but if there was nothing else, we're nothing else. Prayer, it reminds me all the time.

I am not in control. and it keeps me close to the one who is. The purpose is to know him and to do his will. So all that being said, I am coming out of what I call a prayer slump. How do you like that? I don't know if you've ever been in a prayer slump. You know like an athlete gets in a slump

and they can't hit the ball or whatever. I felt like I was in a prayer slump. I told Amy, said, I do not doubt the power of prayer, but I just don't feel like God's answering my prayers right now. and we talked about it. And with what I'd call partial faith, I just kept praying and just kept praying. And I had the most beautiful answer prayer

with my friend who was in the hospital for 37 days battling COVID. And we've been around this enough in all the people in the church that once you hit a certain point, the odds of coming back to your home go way, way, way down. And I texted him every day and I prayed every single day.

And midway through, I told Amy, he said, I am, my faith is low, but I'm continuing to press into God. And when he got out, he called me one morning. I was driving into work, picked up the call at the beginning of my driveway and I just stopped my car. And he said, what I want you to know is on day such and such, he told me the exact day. He said, God told me clearly that he heard your prayers and that I'd be coming home. And at that moment, I just thanked God again with everything in me. is powerful. And it can be confusing.

But I have to remember, God didn't here to serve me. I'm here to serve him. And the purpose of prayer isn't to get him to do my little will. The purpose of prayer is relational is for me to know him and to know his will. So with everything in me when I pray,

I always believe God can. And I always believe that God will. And even if he doesn't, the good news is, I came to tell somebody, I still believe. I still believe. I still believe. I still believe with everything in me, with every fiber in my body,

because my faith is not based on what I see. My faith is based on who God is. It's not in a what. It's always in a who. It's in the goodness, the glory, the nature of God. And so if you find yourself in a little prayer slump, what do you do? You just keep on praying.

Because the ultimate purpose of prayer is not to get God to do what you want, but to know Him and His goodness and be conformed to His will. And so when you pray, believe He can, believe He will. And if he doesn't, you still will. you still believe, because without faith, it is impossible to please God.

So God, we honor you today with our faith. All of our church is praying and those of you, anywhere in the world online, God, we ask that in this moment, with all of our questions and all of the power of answered prayers and all of the confusion of the unanswered ones, we ask that you would build our faith. No matter where you're willing, watching from today. You may be a prayer warrior with a lot of faith or you may be like me.

Maybe you feel like you're in a slump wondering, does it even matter? Why do I do this? It feel like I should do something instead of just talk. Wherever you are on your prayer journey, if you say, I'd like to be even more intimate with God and prayer. Would you lift up your hands right now? Just wherever you are, you can type that in the comment section, help me be closer to God and prayer, whatever you'd like to today. Father, I thank you that there are people right now, that really want to even grow in their faith. I thank you, God, that in some unusual way that even an unanswered prayer can build our faith.

So God, I ask that we would maybe reposition ourselves in the list of priorities and recognize that you are the main character, you are God. And God, forgive me for the times when I'm disappointed when you didn't do what I wanted because I have to remind myself that you're not here to do what I want. I'm here to do your will.

So God is with that, that heart to serve you, that we come to you today in prayer and just say, hear our prayer, God. When we don't have words, hear the cries of our heart, hear the sighs, hear the brokenness. Hear a prayer through our tears, God. And God, we thank you that you draw close to the brokenhearted. That when we draw near to you, you draw near to us.

So even more than just using a prayer as a tool to get you to move and power on our behalf. God, help us to see prayer is the greatest way we get to know you, opening your word and talking to you in prayer. So we could know you, God, and do your will and all that we do. God, for any of those in a prayer slump,

I pray God, they would continue pressing in and somehow somewhere just like you showed up for me, show enough of your goodness, enough of your power. to keep us pressing in. God build our faith, build our faith. As you keep, just in a heart for prayer right now, no matter where you're watching from, some of you, if we sat down and talked

about where you are with God, you might say, I kind of believe maybe, I'm not sure, blah, blah, blah, I don't know where I stand, I'm trying to be good, I'm trying not to be bad, I don't know why God did this, lots and lots of questions. If you're going to pray, let me tell you a prayer that God always answers,

always answers, always says yes to. When you pray out to God and ask him to forgive you, he always forgives you. When you ask God to reveal himself to you, he'll always meet you where you are. When you ask God to take over your life, he's always ready to step in and be first. No matter where you're watching from,

you might feel the weight of something you said that you wish you hadn't have said, something you've done that you wish you having to have done. We've all sinned. And the good news is God showed his love for us when he sent his son Jesus, who was perfect in every way and died on a cross for the forgiveness of our sins. God raised him from the dead.

Why? So we could be forgiven so we could know him. God sent Jesus so we could know him. He's a relational God. Wherever you're watching from today, those who would say, I want to know him, I want to know him. When you call out and ask for forgiveness, he removes the barrier which separates you

from him, he removes and covers your sins, and he'll reveal himself to you. Those today who say, I wanna know him, I need forgiveness, today I surrender my life. If that's your prayer, you're ready to know him, you're ready to meet him. You need his forgiveness, you want his grace. You say yes, today by faith, today by faith.

You're saved by grace through faith. Today by faith, I surrender my life to him. I wanna put him first, that's your prayer today. Those who say, yes, I give my life to him. Would you lift your hands high right now? All over the place, come on, lift them up. Somebody, Somebody give God some glory as we have hands going up all over.

Our churches today, oh my gosh, those of you online, wherever you are, just type it in the chat. I'm surrendering my life to Jesus. Just saying I'm giving my life to Jesus. By faith, I'm trusting him today. Would you pray with those around you? We're gonna celebrate the goodness of God. Pray Heavenly Father, forgive all of my sins.

Jesus saved me. By faith, I trust. trust you. By faith, I give my life to you. By faith, I surrender to you. Fill me with your spirit so I could know you and serve you. Help me to know you personally and to show your love and all I do. By faith, I give you my life. In Jesus name, I pray. Because somebody celebrate loud right now. Welcome those from all over the world into God's family.