Life.Church with Craig Groeschel - You Are Not Alone in Feeling Alone | Find Your People, Love Your Neighbor | Part 2

Episode Date: October 15, 2023

If you’re dealing with loneliness, you’re not alone. Sometimes when we're feeling lonely, we isolate ourselves even more. You can get through loneliness with God's help and with the support of others. Let's talk about it in this message. Take a step today to find the community God has for you. LifeGroups create a space for people to intentionally share their lives with others, grow spiritually together, and encourage each other through the highs and lows of life. Find yours today: https://life.church/lifegroupsABOUT THIS MESSAGEGod created us to need and know each other. But what does that look like? How do you build lasting friendships that make life better? Let’s find out in our new series, Find Your People, Love Your Neighbor.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/nextCONNECT WITH A PASTORDo you need prayer? Would you like to find out how you can get involved at Life.Church? One of our pastors would love to meet with you. Schedule a video call with a pastor: https://www.life.church/meetwithusABOUT 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.churchFind locations, videos, and more info about us at https://www.life.church or download the Life.Church app at https://www.life.church/appFIND US ON SOCIAL MEDIAFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/life.churchInstagram: http://www.instagram.com/life.churchTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lifechurchYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LCNowCONNECT 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 #loneliness Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Y'all, I'm really excited to be here with you today. I'm really, really honored and humbled to get to be welcomed into your community. I also know that most of you don't know who I am, and I don't know who most of you are. But one of the really cool things is that I do know we share some things in common, right? First off, I know for many of us, we probably love Jesus or we're at least interested or intrigued. I also know that we have lived. through something together over the last few years, right? I know every single person in this room actually lived through kind of the same experience that I did. That's why it's called a pandemic. Right. So pan, the word pan actually means all, or including all members of a group, right? So we all kind of lived through this thing together. And I feel like we all kind of did some of the same things to cope with that thing that happened to us, right? especially in those very early days of the quarantine period of the pandemic, those COVID quarantine coping trends, you know?

There were some bandwagon that I hopped on. There were some others that I did not. Like I am oddly proud to tell you that I made it through the entire quarantine, never having learned how to make sourdough bread. Not in the cards for me, not something that I did. I am less proud to tell you. I hope I don't lose credibility so early on. that I did watch the entire season of Tiger King.

So I'm not one of my finest moments. But listen, there were two legitimately awesome trends that happened during that time, two bandwagon that we hopped on that without a doubt changed the course of our entire life. One is, you know, probably like many of you, my husband and I, we were stuck at home all day, every day, tried as we might.

we eventually got that, I think we called it the social distancing fatigue, remember that, which we now, of course, know significantly increases the likelihood. That at some point you're going to test positive for pregnancy. So that was our Christmas card from 2020, because we definitely hopped on the bandwagon, had a quarantine baby. I really don't know if we would have without it. Super grateful. It was a great decision.

The next is, in the height. of toilet paper gate. Do you remember that? When the shelves were like emptied of toilet paper, I still don't understand why. But I know that I was staring down a very bleak future of living in a house full of boys without toilet paper. And so I did something I never thought I would do, but I saw other people doing it. I went and I bought us a bidet. And I have to say, it changed our life. Okay. Now listen, I don't want to be. I don't want to be. I don't want to to stand up here on stage and act like I have it all together that I have it all figured out. I don't want you to feel shame because I was once you. I was where you are. I thought the

best we could do to take care of business was kind of do it and then wipe a dry piece of paper around and just call it good. No, y'all, no, there is a better way. Okay, maybe the whole reason that I am here on a Sunday is to let you know that there is life. B-B, it's before the B-D-A-B, okay? And while my husband Ben, he actually started out, I'm sure like many of you as a big skeptic, not only did he convert, he eventually became our chief bidet officer, okay?

I realized this, when after they started lifting the travel restrictions and we started traveling again, my husband, unbeknownst to me, went and bought himself a travel bidet. I mean, can you imagine, in the conversations that he is having in the TSA line these days, like, um, sir, what is this? Well, officer, that's my portable butt washer.

I do not leave home without it. But that is just how committed. That is how committed he is to never going back to our old ways. So our son, baby Jack, our love for the batte, there were some things. We would consider these our quarantine wins. But of course, we know that there were a lot of loss. a lot of setbacks, a lot of things that happened culturally and socially, a lot of things that we were already dealing with that got really exasperated or exaggerated

during this season that we lived in together. And listen, the idea of going back to the way things were, that's not a real thing. It's never a real thing. You can never go back, but what we can do is pay very careful attention to where we are and we can tweak the design so that we can get better results in the future, right? But in order to do that, we have to be really honest about where we are now and how things are working out for us, right? So we're going to talk about something.

We're going to talk about a struggle that can elicit some shame and some embarrassment. It's also really serious. It is a really serious threat. In fact, the Surgeon General of the United States of America issued an 80-page advisory, naming this as the single biggest threat facing our mental and physical health in America. It is more dangerous to our physical health than diabetes, then obesity, than smoking 14 cigarettes a day. The problem is loneliness.

It's loneliness. We all know it. We have all felt it. For our purposes today, we are defining it as that kind of consistent. psychological state that arises when we lack the intimate and authentic relationships that we need to thrive. And guess what? Two out of three people in America today would say that they are lonely. Two out of three people. And here's how we know there's still some shame and stigma attached to it is while over 66% of people feel it, less than 12% of people will admit it and talk about it.

So here's what we're going to do. I'm not going to ask. you to stand up if you're lonely because I know only 12% of you will tell the truth. I am going to ask you to stand up in this room if your last name starts with an A all the way through P, as in Peter or Paul. Will you stand up if your last name is an A through a P? And I want you to look around this room and understand this is where we are at. This is your church. This is your school community. this is your employees, your volunteers, your neighborhood, two out of three people would say that they are currently struggling with loneliness. So while you stay standing and looking around this room, I think the first thing that I want to say to you before we say anything else about the topic

is that if you are feeling alone, you are not alone in feeling alone, okay? You are not lonely because you're not successful enough or not good enough. It is not because you are unlikable or unlovable. It is not because you are unlucky or unworthy, right? You are not difficult. You are not annoying. I mean, you probably are a little bit of both of those things, but not more than the rest of us. You don't need to feel ashamed or embarrassed because our loneliness is not an accusation of our unworthiness. It is simply a signal. It is our mind in our body that is telling us we have an unmet need for connection, which is how God designed us. Right? Our loneliness isn't a sign that something is wrong with you.

It is actually a sign that the signals are working. Right? Your body, and you can all sit down now, your body, thank you. I appreciate that. I feel like you guys would have just been with me for the rest, the talk, okay? Your body is honoring actually the way that God created you by raising the red flag and just going, hey, hey, this thing, it's not okay. There's more. We can do better. We need to make some changes, okay? I also want to reposition loneliness is not,

it's not a you problem. It's not a me problem. It's actually an us problem. Okay? Our collective loneliness, it's actually the result of a culture that all of us in this room are co-creating and building

and designing together. This isn't actually something that somebody else is doing to you. All right, we are replacing our front porches with attached garages and bigger and bigger lot sizes and seeing our neighbors less than we ever have before. We are keeping our faces and our phones and on social media.

We are relying on things like DoorDash and Uber. We are designing an entire culture with the primary values of convenience, of independence, of privacy, of comfort, and while none of those things are inherently wrong or bad, when we prioritize certain values, above other values, we are going to get certain results from that design in the long run. I want to take a look at one of those results.

This is a look at the rapid decline in time spent specifically with friends, an increase in time spent alone that we have seen just over the last decade. Okay, in 2010, adults were spending, about six and a half hours a week with their friends. Just about one decade later, and you can see this really starts to accelerate around 2012, which, by the way, is when smartphone penetration in America hit over 50%. That has decreased in less than 10 years by 59% to about 2 hours a week. And it's impacting all of us.

every age group and demographic in the United States is lonelier than ever before. 70% of people in leadership would say that they're lonely. I read this statistic that less than one out of every five moms feels like they can trust their community with their faults and their weaknesses. Men in particular are five times lonelier in friendship than they were in 1990. And get this, perhaps most of the most of them, alarmingly for the first time in recorded human history, our young people are lonelier than the sick and the elderly. We are indeed in the midst of an epidemic. There is a great need. There is also

an incredible opportunity for us, specifically as believers, to simply live according to God's design for us. Live according to the instruction that we see all throughout. scripture, right? In a world full of really lonely, isolated people, I personally, I cannot imagine a greater winsome witness than to be a people who live

increasingly, counterculturally, in a way that prioritizes connection and community in radically caring and knowing and showing up for one another. Now, I know I'm talking to a room full of very busy and very important people, and probably one of the things that you're thinking, is like, I don't get, you're going to get up here on stage and tell me to hang out with my friends more.

Like, that feels a little fluffy. That feels a little extra. I am very busy. And frankly, prioritizing relationships and specifically friendships can kind of feel like you're asking me to do a U-turn on a freeway, right? Because we live in this society that glorifies busyness and success and the accumulation of wealth and power and safety and comfort and convenience and independence. and I get that. I totally hear you and I am here too. I live in that culture and I feel that. But one of the things that I want to share, I'm going to tell you a little bit about my lived experience. Pastor Craig kind of mentioned it, but when I was about 20-ish years old, I quit my first corporate job. I had a journalism degree. I bought a one-way plane ticket and I moved to Uganda because I was

really interested in the issues facing women and girls living in extreme poverty and in conflict and post-conflict. I ended up meeting an incredible group of young women in between high school and university. They tested into college, but they couldn't afford to go. So I taught them how to make these sandals, and I made them a promise that changed the trajectory of all of our lives. I said, hey, if you make these sandals for the next nine months between high school and college, I promise that you'll go to university next fall. And then I came back home to the U.S. and started slinging sandals out of the back of my car.

I eventually went on to build a global, sustainable fashion brand. created dignified fair wage jobs for thousands of artisans across the globe and enabled women all across the globe to continue on to university. But one of the best parts of my vocational journey is that I have had the opportunity to live and to work and to be in communities all across the world. And that experience, I am the messenger coming back and telling you the loneliness we are experiencing is not inevitable. It is not inevitable. While across the globe, there are a lot of other cultures that are also trending in the wrong direction like us, I do think it is worth humbly paying attention to the staggering research that says 78% of young people in America

are lonely. And that is compared to only about 10 to 15% of young people in places like the Netherlands, in Ghana, in Austria, in Indonesia, because within these cultures, whether kind of not by choice, there's forced interdependence, or because there is a value in a principle of community and connection, people are less lonely. I have been so influenced by these observations. I told you I have a journalism background, so I'm just always taking notes and making observations. And I noticed kind of a handful of consistent things that people were doing

who are not struggling with loneliness in the way that we are. And so I decided when I moved back to the U.S. and settled down, by the way, in a brand new city where I knew no one, I wanted to put these principles and observations into practice and see how they might translate into like modern America, which is my, that's my home culture. So speaking of home, a few months ago, my oldest son, he's seven, he was asked to draw a picture of his home.

And what he drew was this. While that gray house there in the middle is ours, apparently when my seven-year-old thinks of home, he doesn't actually think about his individual house. he thinks about his community, his neighborhood. And that's because about 12 years ago, we started laying the groundwork for what would eventually become what we half jokingly refer to as our urban commune.

Urban because we live right in the middle of a city. We took a normal, single-family lot and managed to fit these three kind of awkwardly skinny homes on there, and we started building from there. Our neighborhood kind of now consists of about seven core families and friends. We've got a few singles, even some grandparents in the mix now. We share property. We share our finances. We share our daily responsibilities of just parenting and adulting. The joys and the sorrows, we really do share it all. And that's because it's pretty hard

to hide your dirty laundry from your neighbors when you've designed a life where you live eight feet apart from one another and you literally share the clothesline in the backyard. The point is we are intentionally making design choices that are very very very much. We're valuing interdependence over independence. We are prioritizing the value of community over convenience and comfort. We are intentionally valuing transparency and honesty and authenticity over the temptation that we all feel to impress each other or to keep it together or to get ahead, right? Now, when I tell people about my commune life, I think some people assume we're like we're pretty radical, right? They make some assumptions. I don't. I don't,

don't know. Maybe they think we're like communists. I have started and run multiple for-profit companies. Not a communist. I'd love for you to engage with capitalism. www. www.noondaycollection.com. No, I'm just kidding. Some people think we're like homesteaders, you know, like living off the land. It's really extreme. But I told you guys that I don't even know how to make sourdough bread. I'm not a homesteader. I wear way too much jewelry for that. increasingly, here's a cultural movement. I feel like a lot of people assume there must be something going on. I think they think we're like some swingers or something.

And certainly, like I concede it isn't normal to live this way. And it's statistically speaking not normal to live this way, especially if you're a relatively upwardly mobile, middle age, like normal American. And we all have these normal jobs in the real world. We like drive cars. We shop at grocery stores. We do all happen to be big family.

of monogamy just for the record. I mean, can you imagine my water bill? If I had a bunch of brother husbands up in there trying to use my bidet? No, no, thank you. Okay. So I get it. I get that it's not a normal way to live, but here's the deal. If you actually zoom out and you understand how humans have been living literally since the beginning of time, and you have an idea of actually how billions of our brothers and sisters across the globe are living, what you start to realize is what is actually very unique and, dare I say, kind of radical in untested territory, is the way that most of us are doing life at this moment in human history. We are doing it in a way that has never been done before, and here's the thing,

the results are starting to come in. And it's not working out super well. There are some flaws in the design. You know what is working out well? What's working out well is just last year, I merged my company Seiko with another company called Noonday Collection. If you've ever led thousands of people through a merge, you know, oh my gosh, I was working 16 hours a day.

It was so stressful. I literally didn't have time to stop and eat. And I would regularly walk outside my home office door almost every day. There would be a bowl of chili or a smoothie waiting for me for my neighbor who lives eight feet away and makes lunch for herself most days anyways. What's working is when another one of my best friends has a newborn baby, and she is just in that soul-crushing season of exhaustion. And my kids, they're mostly sleeping through the night by now,

so it really isn't that big of a deal for me to go across the backyard, do a little handoff with sweet baby Freddie, take him for several hours so his mom and dad can get a much-needed stretch of sleep. And then I can be back home before my own kids even wake up. what's working, and this is going to make some of you, including myself, a little uncomfortable, is when my husband and I were in our hardest season of marriage, when we were just totally stuck in this cycle of just like hurt and misunderstanding. And, you know, of course, our instinct is to kind of duke it out behind the scenes,

and then we show up and we smile and we save face and we don't want to be a burden on anybody. But one night, we're in our kitchen, we are literally right in the middle of this fight. and it's like the same fight that we've been having over and over again. And we literally called a time out. Right in the middle of the fight, we called a time out. We walked out our back door, across the backyard, we knocked on our neighbors back door to their living room where they were in their living room watching TV

and with tears streaming down our face. We said, hey, can we just come in and share? Like, we just, we need some perspective. We need some help. From some people that we knew could see the messy parts of us. and who wouldn't leave the room. Now trust me, for this like relatively introverted, Enneagram 8 who hates to show vulnerability

or need of any kind, in the short term, it is honestly a little bit torturous. But in the long term, it's working. Yes, it is messy. And yes, it is so scary. And yes, it is very inconvenient. Especially if you're the one trying to watch TED laugh. on a Tuesday night when you're crying neighbors come knocking on your back door, you know?

But in the long run, it's producing the results that we want to see. Now, I am not saying that this is the only way to design for connection. I am just sharing the results of my 15-year-long lived experience to bolster my pretty bold claim that loneliness is not inevitable. We can actually do better in designing lives that prioritize connection. And in that, we can become healthier and happier people. We can raise healthier and happier kids. And perhaps most importantly, we can be a light in a lonely world that is so full of comparison and social isolation and competition. We actually, by doing this, are fulfilling the new commandment that has put out for us in scripture. Literally in scripture,

the new commandment, the one that Jesus really wanted us to know, was to love one another in the same way that I have loved you. Love one another. This is actually how everyone, that's what says. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples when they see the love you have for each other. Okay? You come to know the love of Jesus, not through our success, not through our wealth, not through how well behaved our children are. not through the titles that we hold, not through the number of followers that we have, not through the size of our ministry or our companies or our homes, not through the brand of our clothes or the brand of our politics,

not through how much money we make or how much money we spend or how much money we give, not through how well we obey whatever the most important religious rules of the day are or whatever the hot social and cultural ideologies we subscribe to, but people will come to know that we are disciples by the way we love each other. hold the new commandant and become a winsome witness to those who do not know the love of Jesus by designing lives that prioritize one another and community and connection. Okay, but how? How do we do this? Well, you are probably not going to like this part.

Some hard news. I am going to say, you probably aren't actually ever going to find community. You're probably not going to discover it. but you can build it. Okay, but what that means is most likely you're going to have to go first. Okay? From a logistical standpoint, that means you got to go first. You got to make the changes in your own life that you need to create space, to build and to prioritize, and to tend to people and to community.

You got to take the initiative. You got to make the plans. You got to commit. You got to keep showing up, even when people, reject you, when they flake, when they bail? Because trust me, I am telling you that will happen over and over again. And from a relational perspective, it means you going first, you leading with authenticity and with vulnerability. I keep thinking about that statistic that I read from the Barner group that said that less than 20% of moms feel like they can trust their

community with their faults and with their weaknesses. Do you know how to create a community of people who feel like they can trust their community with their faults and their weaknesses? Guess what? You got to go first with yours. Because here's the thing. You can say, just call me if you need anything until you are blue in your ever-loving servant-hearted face. Okay? You can bring all of the meals. You can say all of the prayers. And that is so great. Like do it. Keep doing it. But here's the thing. If you don't actually lead by example, if you don't go first in confessing your sins, in sharing your grief, in sharing your longings, in sharing about your fears, and sharing your disappointments and your burdens, in saying, I need help in accepting help from your people, you will not be able to build or enjoy a community where other people actually believe that they can do the same. While there are literally hundreds of verses in scripture that encourage us to walk together,

in unity and compassion and sacrifice and commitment to one another, there is one example that I think is particularly powerful about what it means to go first in this way. And it's a story from Matthew 26. And listen, if you were to ask me to retell this story, just kind of off the cuff, even up to a couple months ago, I think I would have said something like this. I think I would have said, okay, so it's the night before Jesus is going to be crucified.

And he's in the garden and he's with his disciples. And he really wants to go spend some time with God. He wants to go pray. But before he goes to have his solitude, he kind of says to the disciples, hey, I'm going to go pray. Can you all just like stay awake? It's like not a lot to ask, considering what I'm about to do for you tomorrow, you know? And so he goes off to pray, and then he comes back and he finds that the disciples have fallen asleep on him. And I kind of think I thought the whole point of the story was like an illustration of like, man, Jesus is like awesome, and we can't even stay awake. And then just a few months ago,

I was reading in scripture. And I came across this verse from Matthew 26. And it just knocked the wind right out of me. I literally can't believe that I haven't seen it like this before. Because now, if I had to retell the story, I think I would tell you that Jesus

was with his to tell us. disciples. I don't make it a point to tell you that he actually pulled a small group of them aside. There were three men that he pulled aside. By the way, one of whom he knew would go on to betray him. And he said something to this small group that I now imagine, after reading that scripture, actually sounded something more like this. Hey, so I am not okay. I am honestly just really, really overwhelmed by everything that I'm carrying right now. And frankly, like, I'm just really, really sad. And I know that there is nothing that you can do to change or fix the situation. And I know it's late, but man, I was just wondering, like, would you just please stay awake

with me tonight? I just really don't want to be alone right now. Right here. In his last hours on earth. The God of the universe is showing us that we were actually created to need one another. This is what Jesus did. Obviously, it is not a sin, it is not a failure, it is not a weakness, it is not a flaw, it is a feature of being made in the image of God. It's part of the design. He is showing us what it looks like to lead by going first. Not with power, not with privilege, not with having it all together, but with humility and with honesty and with vulnerability. He asks his friends for help in the midst of a really dark night.

You know, same as probably many of you in this room, especially over the last few years. I've had some pretty dark nights of my own. I know I told you that in 2020, we got pregnant with our third son. What I didn't share is that when I was in my third trimester with Jack, I ended up getting COVID. I got so sick. My oxygen levels plummeted so low that they ended up having to induce me early. My labor with Jack was an absolute nightmare, as you can imagine. But the moment he was born and he actually started crying, I just wept with a relief and gratefulness that I've literally never known.

But as my oxygen continued to drop, instead of getting to spend time with him, they immediately separated us. They rushed me to the ICU where I was on 100% oxygen support. Over the course of the following days and weeks, my husband Ben and baby Jack were allowed to visit me in these little hazmat suits for 20 minutes a day. And other than that, I was just completely and entirely alone. So during my time in the ICU, I would kind of seemingly stabilize. and then I would take these turns for the worst again and again and again.

And these turns for the worst always seemed to happen around 3 o'clock in the morning. The darkest part of night when everyone around me was sleeping and when I was just really, really scared and really alone. You know what I did? I reached out to my friends in India and in Uganda and in Ethiopia because here is the wild thing about time zones when I was literally in the middle of my darkest night that felt like it would never end.

My friends across the globe were actually right in the middle of their day. So I could reach out and in the middle of my darkest night my phone would almost immediately light up with these replies, right? With thoughts, with prayers, with scriptures and encouragement, with remedies requiring that they ship me special Ugandan lemon. But all of it was saying the same thing, which is you are not alone. Morning is coming and we will be here until it does. Y'all, this is why we were created to do life together, right? Because my darkest night might be right in the middle of the day when you have a little capacity and strength that I don't.

When you've got some hope that I can borrow until sunrise. You know what I'm I think at the end of the day, Christians are. I think the whole point, we're just a bunch of hope dealers, right? Just borrowing and lending to and from one another, just reminding each other that no matter how dark the night, mourning is coming. Now, your dark night, it might not be a near-death experience. It could be financial stress.

Maybe it's challenges in your marriage. Maybe you are caring for aging parents, or you have a teenager making really heartbreaking decisions. Maybe you are exhausted from raising young kids. Maybe it's losing your job. Maybe it's waiting for the diagnosis. Maybe it is holding the death of a really precious dream. But all of it, it's just too much. It is too much to carry on your own.

But brothers and sisters, this is not a flaw. This is a feature of how God designed us. And while it is, it truly is so scary to go first and to lead with vulnerability and to ask for help, I want you to remember that we're pretty much all, whether we admit it or not, asking ourselves a really brave, tender question, which is some variation of what would you think if I would you think if I'd, saying out of tune, would you stand up and walk out on me? So how good is that? Can you guys tell Liz? Thank you again. So you're not going to find the community. You're not going to stumble on a community. You're not going to get lucky and

have community. You're going to have to build it. You're going to have to create it. And so I'm just going to tell you very, very clearly. Some of you, you know what it is. You got to go first. You have to go first. You have to go first. And I'll just tell you that your message touched me so much because sometimes people will look on and say like, look at our kids and say, how'd you raise six kids that love Jesus, love the church? And like, we didn't. Who did? Like, our church did. Our community. We, we are who we are. We have what we have. Our marriage is what it is because of our community. Our family is what it is because of our community. Our intimacy is our intimacy with God is not our personal intimacy. It's a shared intimacy. It's community. So what do you you need to do, you need to go first. There'll be a QR code on the screen. Your campus pastor will tell you more, but it's time to stop thinking about it. It's time to stop considering it. It's time to create it. Start a life group, lead a life group. Get it, get in community because this is how you're created to need it. And so, Father, we start with you and we thank you that you're

drawing us. That you, you God, in many ways, you're a community. You are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. you're three and one, and you're a relational God. So God help us to start with you. As you're praying today at all of our churches, those of you that might say, I don't really know where I stand with God, or I kind of maybe believe in God, or I knew about God, but I don't know him personally.

God wants to reveal himself to you. He created you to love you, for you to be loved by him and for you to know him. So today, if you wonder where you stand, and it seems like there's something stopping you from him, There really is because all of us we've messed up. The Bible calls it sin. Sin separates us from God.

And here's the amazing thing. God is so loving that he didn't shout his love from heaven, but he showed his love on earth. He became one of us in the person of his son, Jesus, who was without sin and wanted his disciples with him the night before. And the day after he gave his life on a cross, the innocent sacrifice, and God raised him from the dead so that anybody, this includes you,

matter where you've been, doesn't matter how low you are. Anyone who calls on his name would be saved. Sometimes I think God may let us get into a place where we feel so broken and so alone, but all we can do is look up. If that's where you are today, look up. Reach out to him. He's already reaching out to you. Call on him when you do. When you step away from your sin, when you call on Jesus, he'll hear your prayer. And it's amazing, but he'll forgive you. Like you've never sinned before. He is that good. Today, if you need that, you need a relationship with him. We're just going to step toward him. We're going to go first. He actually, technically, he went first, but now

we're responding. We're saying, yes, I want to know you. I give my life to you. That's your prayer. You need them today, and you're ready to say yes. But you just lift up your hands right now at all of our churches, right now all over the room. We've got people today saying yes to Jesus online.

Just type it in your own words. I want to know him. I'm surrendering my life to him. And let's all just look up here. Let's look this way. He went first. He sent Jesus. And now we say yes. And then I want to encourage you, knowing God is not all there is, take a step toward community. And that's where we best experience him. So together in one community we pray, Heavenly Father, I need you. I need Jesus. Jesus save me from my sins. Make me brand new. I give you my life. And I should. share my life with your people. In Jesus' name, I pray. And all God's people said, amen, amen.