The Church of Eleven22 - Amazing Grace - Worship is War: Wk 5

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

What if grace isn’t tame or polite—but powerful enough to break chains, change hearts, and carry us home? Grace isn’t a soft word for a hard world. It’s the fierce, pursuing love of God that goes first, finds us at our lowest, and refuses to let go. From John Newton’s story of rebellion and redemption to Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians, we’re reminded that grace is more than a doctrine—it’s a Person. In this final message of the Worship Is War series, Pastor Adam Flynt unpacks the truth that grace doesn’t just start our faith—it sustains it. It saves wretches, restores wanderers, and strengthens worshipers. Because when grace runs wild in our lives, the war is already won. Have you let God’s grace run wild in your life? 📣 Episode Mentions: Scripture Passage: 1 Corinthians 1:1-10 Preacher: Pastor Adam Flynt Hymns Album  📌 Supplemental Resources From This Week: The Day God Restored Her Song - Brittany's Story  Amazing Grace - Worship is War: Wk 5 The Scandal of Grace - Deepen with Pastor Joby Martin S23E5  Worship is War Sermon Series  Deepen with Pastor Joby Martin  About The Church of Eleven22 The Church of Eleven22® is a movement for all people to discover and deepen a relationship with Jesus Christ. Eleven22 is led by Pastor Joby Martin and based in Jacksonville, Florida, with multiple campuses throughout Jacksonville and the surrounding areas. To support this ministry and help us continue to reach people all around the world click here: http://coe22.com/donate

Church, how we doing? Good, all right. Hey, we are in the last week of our Worship as War series. How's it been? Been good? Yeah, I mean, we talked about some incredible hymns. I mean, we looked at week one, we looked at because he lives, because Jesus has been resurrected. There's nothing that God cannot do in our lives.

Week two, we sang it is well. Like, what do you do when life gets really? really hard, and what you do is you worship your way through it. You don't walk away from God, you worship your way to God. And those hard times. Week three, we looked at how great thou art. We looked at four things that worship is. We remember if we did our gratitude list. If you've got that, you might want to find that, get that handy. We're going to talk about that again in a few minutes. And last week, we looked at come thou fount, and that line. in there that our heart is prone to wander and the good news that Jesus keeps every single one

of those that are his. And then this week, in our final week, we're talking about the hymn of all hymns. Amazing grace. I mean, how do you do a series on hymns and not talk about amazing grace? Right? I mean, Amazing Grace is the most sung hymn ever. So arguably the most performed song ever. There are over 7,000 registered recordings, known recordings of Amazing Grace. Who knows how many there are beyond that? I mean, it's been sung from Woodstock all the way to funerals. It's been played on banjos.

It's been played on bagpipes. Listen to some of these people that have recorded and sang Amazing Grace. Elvis, Aretha, Johnny. cash, lemonheads. Some of you guys don't even know who they are. Dolly Parton, Destiny's Child, you too. I mean, it's been sung by everybody. For me, the most special time I ever got to sing this hymn was my grandmother towards the end of her life had dementia and she would call us and and she couldn't remember at the end who we were. And she kind of knew enough to get frustrated and get angry.

And so oftentimes she would just get flustered and worked up. And so what we found out worked with her is that we would sing hymns with her. Like she couldn't remember what happened five minutes ago, but she could remember hymns that she learned 75 years ago. And so we'd sit on the phone and we'd sing hymns, and we would sing amazing grace with my grandmother. So this one holds a really, really special spot in my heart. Amazing Grace was written by a guy named John Newton.

John was, well, I say John, like I know him. He was born 300 years ago this year. He's an old dude. He's born near London. It's seven years old. His mom died. His dad was a ship captain. His dad was distant.

His dad was cold. Within a couple months of his mom dying. his dad remarries. And when his dad remarries, his stepmom didn't want him around anymore. She wanted to start a new family. So she sends him off to boarding school at eight years old. And he goes to school for two years. Newton was brilliant.

Had a photographic memory, but he only had two years of schooling from eight years old to 10 years old. And then at 11 years old, he jumps on a merchant ship with his dad. Now, think about who he was around in the late 1700s at 11 years old. And 11 years old to 17 years old, he sails with his dad. And then at 17 years old, he decides, I've had enough of you, dad, this protected environment of shipping with pirates and, you know, all that. I'm going on my own.

So he goes and he becomes a mate on another ship. and he makes it his mission to sin as hard as he could. Listen, this is, I mean, he drank, he swore, he slept around. Listen, this is what he wrote. He wrote a series of letters that got collected up into what's called an authentic testimony. And this is what Newton writes about himself in this time. He says, I loved sin and was unwilling to forsake it. I did everything that might be expected from a person entirely ignorant of God's righteousness.

I did not as yet become completely degenerate, like that, but I was making large strides. I not only sinned with a high hand. How about that for it? I send with a high hand. Anybody? Amen? You send with a high hand? Did I not?

No? Okay. Only me? I not only sinned with a high hand, but I made it my study. to tempt and seduce others upon every occasion, I thought that even if the Christian religion were true, I could not be forgiven. So he starts writing these songs about his ship captain

that make fun of his ship captain, gets everybody to sing these songs. The ship captain kicks him off the ship, actually trades him. He gets drafted into the Navy. He's such a degenerate that he gets kicked out of the Navy he'd actually throw them in stocks, and they whip him and they beat him, they kick him out, and he jumps on another transatlantic slave ship. And they're heading down the west coast of Africa.

He decides he's had enough of that. So he jumps off the ship in West Africa, decides he's going to live in West Africa. He gets sick, and he actually becomes enslaved in Africa. And then at 23 years old, this all has happened by 23 years old in his life. He's 23 years old. He's sailing back to England across the North Atlantic. He almost dies in about his third or fourth shipwreck, and he comes to a genuine saving faith in Jesus.

He not only was a mate on a slave ship, he actually captained a slave ship. He ends up marrying a girl named Polly. He has a seizure. He can't go on a boat anymore, and so he becomes kind of a port captain. and he begins reading some books about Jesus. He bumps into a guy named George Whitfield,

and then another guy named John Wesley, becomes buddies with those guys. And then after 15, 17 years of trying to become a pastor, he finally becomes ordained. And then he mentors a guy named William Wilberforce. William Wilberforce is the one who goes into Parliament and ends the transatlantic slave trade in England, and it happens in the year that John Newton dies. Now, at 48 years old, John Newton writes Amazing Grace in 1773.

He writes Amazing Grace. And he writes it to go along with his New Year's Day sermon, and I found this picture. You guys can see. this is his actual handwriting of his sermon that this song is based off of, and it comes, you can hardly read it, but it says First Chronicles up there. And he writes this sermon, and they would sing it after he preached so that it would stick with what he was preaching. The tune that we sing today, it's called New Britain, it wasn't sung until 1835 here in the States. and actually one of the stanzas, one of the final stanzas in the song gets added later.

It actually comes from Uncle Tom's cabin. So this song is how to journey. But today, here's what I want to do. I want to ask, what's so amazing about grace? I mean, it's so commonly used that we can become so numb to what grace really is. Like, we sit down before a meal, what do you do? Let's say grace. Thanks, God, for this food.

Amen. And then you eat. Or we talk about, like, somebody having social graces and we think, like, oh, she walks with such grace. Or he handled himself, like, that situation was really hard. He handled himself with such grace, like poise. Or we'll say things like somebody messes up or makes a mistake or has a hard time. And we say, give him some grace.

We mean, just cut them some slack. Or we name people grace. Grace or Gracie, or if you're lucky enough to be born in the South, you know, America by birth, Southern by the grace of God, or Gator by the grace of God, if even better. I mean, we talk about having a grace period, like you get 10 days to pay your bills. But grace is anything but ordinary in common. Like, I mean, grace is stunningly mind-blowing. It runs against the fabric of everything in our culture that says you get what you deserve.

And it runs against the fabric of everything in religion, which says you need to work and earn your way in order to please God. I mean, grace, it is so wild, it is so free, it is so radical. that we, I think we have this tendency to like put a governor on it. I mean, I guarantee you some of you are going to hear me say some things in this message and you're going to be tempted to go, yeah, but what about? And you're going to write me sermons. You can send them to Ryan. But it is so radical that only God could dream up something.

something like grace. Grace is not weak. It's not letting off easy. It's not a license to sin. It's not tame. It's not docile. If there's one thing that I want for us is that I want grace to run as wild as it is in our lives. And as wild and radical as it is in this church.

So if you've got a Bible, go to 1 Corinthians chapter. one, we're going to look at some of the opening verses of this letter. 1 Corinthians chapter 1. It goes like this. Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus and our brother Sosthenes. To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. So a little back story is that Paul on his second missionary journey, around 50 AD or so, Paul founds, launches, starts the church that is in Corinth. And after a little bit of time there, he hands it off to a young pastor to take it over and

run with it. The guy's name is Apollos. Paul goes on on some of his other missionary journeys. and then he starts to get word back about some things that are going on in Corinth, and they are not good. I mean, there are divisions in Corinth. There are people in the church that are suing one another, and then they're not settling their lawsuits with other Christians. They're going out and asking the pagan officials to decide their lawsuits. They're sinning with such a high hand, Newton would probably say.

They're doing things like they're getting drunk on communion wine. Like they're showing up early and they're like, oh, it's communion Sunday. Good. Let's drink all the wine before everybody gets here. Let's eat all the bread before everybody else gets here. Paul actually writes and says, listen, you're sinning. The sexual immorality that's going on in Corinth church is so bad. that even there's kinds of it that the pagans don't even approve of.

And what he's talking about is there's a son that's sleeping with his father's wife. We don't know if that's his mother or a stepmom. We don't know. But, I mean, there's theological error. The Corinthian church is a mess. And so in the middle of that, where do you think? What do you think Paul would say when he writes a letter to a church that's got people, sleeping with their mom or mother-in-law, getting drunk on communion, doing sin that not even

the pagans in one of the most sinful cities I've ever thought of, and they're suing each other. What do you think he's going to say to him the minute he gets a hold of him and he has a chance to write him a letter? Here's what he says. Grace to you. Look at verse three. He begins with grace. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I give thanks to my God. Here he is. He's going to worship. I'm thanking God. I'm praising God always for you because. Why, Paul? Why in the midst of all of that would you praise and worship and thank God? Always for you because of the grace of God.

It's not, look what he says. it's not just grace, but it's the grace of God to you from God. Grace is so amazing because it originates and belongs to God. I had the chance, this was probably, I don't know, seven or eight years ago, I had the chance when I was in Africa to fish on the Nile River. It actually got to fish at the head of the Nile River. The Nile River is 4,100 miles-ish long. It flows at 100,000 cubic feet per second.

It is a massive river. And you know where it all starts? It all starts at a spring that's not much bigger than this stage. Everything that lives in that river, along that rivers, everything that grows, everything that comes, of what happens in that river all begins and originates in that springhead. And grace is like that. It all ushers forth and all comes from God.

It all originates with God. Grace is so amazing because it's rooted in God's character, that it's the grace of God. Peter will say in 1 Peter 5, 10 that God is the God of all grace. He's all grace. And sometimes you'll hear people say, okay, well, I mean, God was like this angry God in the Old Testament. And then he's sort of this like hippie love fest God in the New Testament. But if you look at it, there's two words for grace.

Often in the Old Testament you'll read the word favor. In the New Testament, you'll hear the word grace. They're basically the same word. word in Greek and Hebrew. And that word that means grace appears 118 times in the Old Testament and 135 times in the New Testament. God is a God of grace. He has always been a God of grace. He is a God of grace and he will forever be a God of grace. There is no shadow of turning in God. He is the same yesterday, today, today, and forever. Like God creates out of grace.

In Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve sin, he promises a serpent crusher out of grace. Noah, he saves the world out of grace. The Israelites that are enslaved by Pharaoh and Egypt, he brings them out by grace. He sends profit after profit after profit by grace. at just the right moment he sends his son into this world by grace. You and I get the Holy Spirit by grace.

We get scripture by grace. We get the church by grace. Because God is a God of grace. It's his character and it's his nature. And grace is so amazing because God, by his grace, because of his character being gracious, goes first. Like it starts, it begins with God. God initiates, right?

He says this grace is from God. So God begins it, God starts it, God goes first. Look at the lyrics. This is the original first verse of Amazing Grace. I mean, the original last verse. The earth shall soon dissolve like snow. the sun forbear to shine. But God who called me here below will be forever mine.

Like Galatians 115 says we are called by grace. Our relationship with God begins because God starts it in grace. We don't move God. God moves us. You know that, right? And grace is so amazing because God by his grace, not only goes first, but God does all the seeking. It's grace to you.

I mean, Romans 311 says, no one seeks God. No, not one. In Luke 19, Jesus says, the son of man, he's talking about himself. The son of man came to seek and save the lost. When God saved me when I was 15 years old, do you know what I wasn't doing? I wasn't seeking God. I wasn't searching for God.

I was just looking for the next cute girl at camp. So thank God he goes first. Thank God he searched me out. Philip Yancey writes, he wrote this incredible book years ago in its title What's So Amazing About Grace? And he writes this, grace like water flows to the lowest part. Grace seeks out the most broken and vulnerable. people in situations, lifting them up despite their lowest points, much like water carving

canyons by flowing to the lowest places. Grace is so amazing because by it, God goes first and God does the seeking. And by grace, God does the finding. Have you ever said, or maybe you've heard somebody say, I found God? No, you didn't. God was not lost. God in all his omniscience, God in all of his creating everything,

God in all of his omnipresence wasn't like, where am I? No, we don't find God. We're the lost ones. And God finds us. It's the whole point of the three parables that Jesus teaches in Luke 15. It tells a story about a lost coin,

a lost sheep, and lost sons. Two of them. A coin can't find the person who owned the coin. The coin gets lost and the woman goes and sweeps and searches for it. The sheep doesn't go looking for the shepherd. The shepherd goes looking for the sheep. And you go, oh, well, but the prodigal son, he came home. No, he didn't.

He came home full of excuses. He came home ready with this story where he was going to tell the dad. Dad, I'm going to work really hard. I'm going to earn your way back in. Hire me like a hired hand. He was just as lost at that front door as he was a million miles away. And so was the older brother out back. And that's God.

I once was lost, but now I'm found. And listen, that's really, really good news. If you're like me and you were lost. Grace is so amazing. this in verse 4. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus. What's given? What's given? It's not a trick question. No, come on. On Christmas, what do you get? A gift. You get a gift. Everybody's like, it's church. I have to talk about Jesus. No, on Christmas, you get gifts. Gifts are given. You don't work really hard. You don't

show up on Christmas morning as a little kid and you're like, hey, so here's all the chores I did. Now, what amount of gifts do you think this would equal for me? That's not the way it works. Gifts are given. And grace is so amazing because it is a gift. Grace is so amazing because it is an unearned, undeserved gift of God. When I handed off the lead pastor role of the church that I planted back in about 2015-16, a friend of mine here in town, I had a few months before I came and started at 1122. And a friend of mine said, hey, I know you love to go fly fishing. There's this place out in Montana.

I've made all the arrangements, I've paid for it all, you go, you go fishing. I didn't earn it. I didn't pay for it. In fact, the whole model of that fly fishing lodge is you can't just show up and pay for yourself to go. Somebody else has to pay for it so that you receive it as a gift of grace. Because grace is free. It's 100% totally free.

Now grace is free, but it isn't cheap. Let me say that again. Grace is free, but it isn't cheap. It costs Jesus his life. He paid for it. To Telestide, paid in full. The good news is that that grace isn't paid for by us. It's paid for by Jesus.

And Jesus is perfect. And he bought it with his purpose. perfect life and bought it fully for us. And grace is so amazing because it's not just unearned and it's not just undeserved. Grace is so amazing because it is the ill-deserved gift of God. Like when I went to camp, when I was 15 years old, went to Young Life camp. I told you the story before. I ran away in the middle of New York City.

Our Young Life Group decided to go to New York on the way to Young Life Camp. I ditched the entire group with my best friend David. We ran off. Do you know, I mean, think about that poor young life leader. Losing two teenage boys in New York City. And after about three or four hours later, we're walking down the street. And here comes our group with Kevin, our leader, and he walks up on us. And do you know what happened at that moment?

Man, I locked eyes with Kevin. And I thought, oh, no. we're done. Like I looked at David and I'm like, get ready. And he walked up and he put his arms around us and he hugged us and he goes, come on, let's go, get in the van, we're going to camp. And 48 hours later, do you know what happened to me? God saved me.

It wasn't just that I was undeserving. It's that I was ill deserving. Like I literally was running. You got to understand this. You and I are not morally neutral towards God apart from Jesus. We are enemies. We are at war with God in our sin. And so when God gives us grace, the gift of grace,

it's not just that it's undeserved and unearned. It's that it's ill-deserved for you and for me. And grace is so amazing because it's the lavish gift of God. It's a lavish. Like it's not just, he doesn't just kind of eke a little bit of it out. Like he just dumps it out on us in Jesus. Look at some of these verses. James 4.5, He, God, gives more grace.

Romans 520, I love this. I learned it this way. Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. Where sin abounds grace super abounds. 1st Timothy 1.14, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ overflowed for me. 2. Corinthians 9.8, God is able to make all grace abound to you. 2nd Corinthians 914, the surpassing grace of God upon you. Ephesians 1, 6, and 7, His glorious grace, the riches of his grace.

Do you hear that language? more grace, abounding grace, overflowing grace, all grace, surpassing grace, glorious grace, riches of grace, grace is lavish. And that's why it's so amazing. Now, you might object and go, well, that's not just.

And you'd be right if grace just meant being let off the hook. But it is just. when Jesus bore our sin on the cross, justice was served. Sin was punished. Holiness was upheld and our freedom was secured. Justice and grace in the economy of God are two sides of the same coin. You might object, well, okay, it's not fair.

You're right, it's not fair. You don't want fair. You realize that, right? Fair is getting what we deserve. Do you really want what we deserve? Scripture says the wages of sin is death. That God pours out his wrath on sin. We don't want fair.

What we want is free gift of God. That's what we want. grace. And you might object, okay, but, but if this grace is just so free and so lavish and so wild, I mean, won't people take advantage of it? Won't they just go and sin with a high hand? And I love this. Paul in Romans 6, too, he answers the question. Paul anticipates the question. And he says, so if grace abounds, should we sin all the more so that we get more grace? And he goes, by no means. Like if you think the free grace of God means you have a license to sin,

you completely missed grace. So he says in verse four, I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, verse five, that in every way. This grace, here's what this grace does. This grace does so that in every way you were enriched in Him, in Jesus, in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you. Just, okay, can we nerd out for a second?

This word enriched. It means to make rich. Okay, that's not the nerd part. Here's the nerd part. it's written not in the active voice it's written in the passive voice all you english teachers are like yes he listened here's what the passive voice means here's why this is so amazing the passive voice means you didn't do it it's done to you you aren't the active agent in it so you by grace don't enrich your own life you don't enrich you in every way

Because of grace, God does the enriching towards us. We're the one in which all the riches are lavished and poured out on us. We're the passive ones. He's the active one. He does everything to pour that grace out on us. And grace, that means, is so amazing. Because it's why we have every single good thing in our life. Did you guys do your gratitude list?

Who did your gratitude list? Come on, raise them high. Who did it? Look at you guys. All right. If you don't know what we're talking about, go back a couple weeks, watch the sermon. I have my gratitude list. I printed it off my phone.

I won't read it to you because there's some great stuff in there and there's some really just some things between me and Kristen in there. But here's what I want you to do. I want you to take your gratitude list and I want you to write the word grace across your gratitude list. Because everything on your gratitude list, everything that you're grateful for, it is a blood-bought gift of Jesus given freely by the grace of God. Every single bit of it.

It's grace. It's all grace. Grace is so amazing because God, by his grace, the most enriching thing we have is being saved. And God, by his grace, saves us. You know, when I was little, I mean, I must have been so little. I was out, I must have been, I don't know, four or five. I didn't know how to swim.

And I was out with my Uncle Bobby. We were hunting. And we're walking by this lake. And I fall in the lake. And I remember my uncle, I'm bobbing up and down, gasping for air. And I remember my uncle leaning over the lake going, swim! swim to which I thought in my little four-year-old brain, if I knew how to swim, I would do it. And I think most of us think that's what God is doing.

Like God's standing over us going, save yourself. I gave you a whole book. Just follow it. Just do it. And here's what we're going. If I could do it, I would have done it. But I can't do it. Here's a better picture.

12 years old, 11 years old, I don't remember my dad and I are on a Boy Scout canoeing trip down the river. We turn this big turn. The canoe goes over. My dad pops out. I go under the canoe. I'm trapped under the canoe. It's filling up with water. And do you know what my dad doesn't do?

Swim! I just feel this hand, reach down under the canoe, grab me by the back of the neck, and yank me out of the water. That's what God does for us. That when we're drowning and we're dead and we can't save ourselves by His grace, he saves us. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that's saved,

not coached, not taught, not gave tips and tricks, saved a wretch like me. And we have the salvation by grace because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. That we were created to have a right relationship with God, but we walked away from God. We stiff-armed God. We told him, I can do it better on my own, but the wages of that is death, and we can't

fix death. And so God sends his son, Jesus Christ, to live the life we should have lived. and he dies the death that you and I deserve, and he dies on the cross to purchase us for himself, that he pays for the grace in full. He drinks dry, the wrath, the cup of wrath of God, so that the justice is met. And in a great exchange,

he takes the punishment and he gives us grace that buys us into his family and adopts us as his son. sons and daughters. That's what he does. And you go, yeah, but don't I have to believe? Yes. But even the believing God is so good, even the believing is a gift of his grace. Like any feeling that you and I have towards God is a gift of his grace. I mean, the song, the amazing grace says this, "'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed? That it's that grace that causes any inkling that I want to know Jesus.

It's grace that causes me to believe in Jesus, to trust in Jesus, to walk with Jesus. Verse 7, so that, here's why this grace matters. You are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of the Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Grace is so amazing because God, by His grace, has provided everything we need to sustain us and keep us all the way to the end. He's the one that keeps. He's the, grace isn't just ABC's.

It's not just the start. It's not just the ignition. It's the A to Z of our entire life. It's the ignition, the engine, the car, the steering wheel, the gas, but it's the whole thing is grace. Now look at this, woven all the way through here. It says things like this. Verse four, the grace of God was given you in Christ Jesus. Verse five, that we are enriched in Him, in Jesus.

Verse seven, revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. Verse eight, for the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse nine, the fellowship of His son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Grace is always connected to Jesus. And grace always connects us to Jesus. Before grace is a what? Grace is a who? Grace has a name.

and the name of grace is Jesus. It's Jesus. Jesus is full of grace. He is the fullness of grace. And here's what this means. Grace means I can stop earning and be gratefully receiving. Grace means I can stop pretending and be fully accepted. Grace means I can stop performing and be perfectly at peace. grace means I can stop making excuses and be humbly repentant. Grace means I can stop hiding and be totally free. I can stop blaming and be radically forgiven. I can stop worrying about the future and be fully present. I can start hoarding and be joyfully generous.

Grace means that I can stop using people and be deeply loving. Grace means that I can stop being ashamed of the gospel and be boldly inviting. grace means I can stop denying the pain and I can start suffering well. Grace means I can stop striving to get all the credit and I can give God all the glory. And grace means I can stop demanding. I did it all except me and start declaring your grace did it all. Thank you. You know how Paul ends this letter?

He starts it with grace. You know how he ends it? grace. You know how he starts his next letter to them? Grace. You know how he ends the next letter? Grace. Look, flip over to the end of the book. Flip over to the end of the whole thing. The last sentence, the grace of Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. Do you know what that means? The last word, grace gets the last word. Amen means let it be so. the last word is grace so how does it become yours how do you know it's true for you you know it's true because of christ's death on the cross that grace was purchased in full for you and for me and you know it can be

trusted and it's believable because of the resurrection the dead guy got up and so when he says it's by grace, you can believe him. You can trust him. I remember going across this bridge, this rickety bridge in Costa Rica, walking across this thing. And I'm like, man, I don't know. I'm with my buddy Spencer. I'm like, I don't know if this thing's going to hold. And Spencer goes, man, I've been driving huge trucks across this thing for years. It'll be fine. You can walk across it. I love this. Charles Spurgeon wrote this. The bridge of grace. will bear your weight, brother. Thousands of big sinners have gone across.

Grace is enough. It's enough. And so how do you have it? How do you make it yours? Here's what you do. You receive it. You just accept it. You say you humble yourself.

God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. So you go, God, none of me, all of you. I accept what you did in Jesus. And I trust your grace to save me, to cause me to believe in you, to keep me, to sustain me, and to bring me home all the way to the end. That's how you do it. And so right now what I want to do is I want to pray for us. I want to pray two things.

One is if you've never trusted Jesus and His grace, I want to give you the opportunity to do that right now. So if you want to believe, if you want to accept, there's nothing magical about raising your hand, but would you raise your hand right now as a way of accepting, like an open hand receiving the gift of God in Jesus Christ? Amen. Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, thank you for your grace. Thank you that we are accepted on the basis of Jesus. That we don't earn it. We don't deserve it. It is a lavish gift that came at the cost of Jesus' life. And so, Lord, we thank you. We receive the gift of your grace.

And Lord, there are those of us in this room that also we need your sustaining grace. Like we're going through it, God. And we need your grace. God, there are those in our life that are just, oh, they're on our last nerve. So God, we need your grace to extend it.

To forgive, to love. So God, would you pour your grace out, not just for us, but for a world that needs to see it, a world that needs to experience it, a world that needs to know it. We pray it all in Jesus' name. Amen. So let's stand. And we're going to sing this hymn, Amazing Grace, and here's what I want.

I don't want us to sing it like we've sang it a thousand times. I want us to sing it like we believe that grace really is the most amazing thing there is. And if you need to come down here and you need to fall on your knees and beg God for grace, you know what? He'll freely give it. It will abound to you. So let's worship God. Let's sing.

Let's bring. Let's pray all because of the grace of God.