Well, good morning Crossing Church.
How are you doing today? Some of you might remember me.
It's so good to be. Here.
It is so good to be with you. I've had the opportunity to
preach in a couple of churches in the last month, or so one in
Arizona, it was like, they were having the worst cold snap of
course. In Arizona bows, great to speak
with them and then in Lincoln Nebraska and it was havin,
they're havin a big warm snap. So that's, you know,
everything's topsy-turvy but there's no place like being
home. And this is home and just so
glad that we get to be together and we get to be in God's word
together. I want to welcome all of our
locations all around this region.
So, thankful for each and every one of you of your Insider
online. We love you.
And and just so happy to be able to share with you this fine
Lord's day as well. And just one thing I want to
remind you of is that in the month of March, there are two
more marriage. Retreats.
And I'm going to be talking about marriage today.
And there is nothing that you could do.
Better than just to invest yourself in a marriage Retreat.
Let God speak into your life. Let us word speak into your life
to focus on that. That's homework worth doing and
it can totally totally change your life, your marriage, your
kids, your grandkids, who knows the blessings that God will give
through that whole process. So we're in this series, I love
the Title of this series and its reclaimed.
I love the word reclaim so much. I feel like biblically that is
encapsulated in that word reclaim and I Was preparing for
this message today and I saw these two little tag lines that
they kind of did some artistic work with.
You can see, just make some kind of hard to read, but it's
restoring what was lost and fixing.
What is broken. Restoring what was lost and
fixing, what is broken. And Those those words that word
reclaim and those two taglines, they kind of hit me because
there's an assumption that's being made in that word.
The word reclaim and the assumption is that you want.
Whatever is broken or whatever was lost that you that you want
that back, right? Whether you you earned it,
whether you paid a lot for it. Whether it was just precious to
your what that you want that back.
You want to reclaim that. And I'm contextualizing that in
my life and in my context, in my circumstances and I wonder how
you might feel about those words.
Do you sense? Culturally.
That we are surrounded by broken things.
Do you feel like we've lost things like some really
necessary things and they seem to be lost or forgotten.
I wonder if you might feel that way, is an American like in our
country. You might feel that way as a
complete Community member like in your community.
All these communities that we represent at the Crossing, all
of network in or maybe even personally things that are lost
or broken inside of you, I want you to know that I feel that
way. That's a burden on me.
And I want to do something right now that maybe I would encourage
you to do today and that is I'm going to confess something to
you. And that is that sometimes.
I feel like the things that I so that I feel so deeply, They
Don't Really resonate sometimes with younger generations, and it
makes me wonder if there is even a desire out there to reclaim
anything. Instead, I see this non-stop
indoctrination to move American culture away from reclaiming and
instead embracing new ideas about sexual identity, about
historical identity about national identity, about social
identity and about Civility and so many other things and I don't
want to be classified. I know I'm 63 years old but I
don't want to be that guy. Who's morning the good old days.
But can't help believe but believe that so much that is so
valuable has been broken and lost.
And I confess to you that sometimes I feel like that any
desire to want to reclaim any of those things is just a pipe
dream. so then I hear about something happening in Wilmore
Kentucky, Went viral a couple weeks ago.
Everyone, that has a pulse knows what I'm talking about.
Asbury University students refused to leave their weekly
Chapel service. They have three Chapel Services
a week and instead continued to worship and praise God in their
chapel and they miss their classes to continue to worship
and praise God. And I know that that you've
heard about it, like just one post on social media had over.
80 million views. So everybody's heard about this
and the more I saw, the more I actually heard about mostly with
social media. I wanted to investigate it
myself. So I'm the publisher of
Christian standard magazine and and I have an editor that lives
in Louisville Kentucky and that's only about an hour from
Wilmore which is just a like 15 minutes.
South west of Lexington Kentucky to ask him.
Hey if you would go down there and take a look at that and
maybe I said something about, it will pay your expenses and he
said to me, his name is Mike Mac and he said, actually, I just
got back. I was there for seven hours and
it was life-changing. It was so powerful and I came
there and, and you could just feel it, like, it was palpable.
And, and people I was out on the lawn.
I never even made it in the building.
I was out on the lawn and people have started praying together
and a guy came up to me and I said you owe me to pray with
you. I started praying with him.
Feel just art, you'll spontaneously Ministering to one
another, with a holy spirit was powerful.
And I went, wow. So I felt this need inside of me
to go there to experience that myself.
So I thought about a couple of guys who might have the time to
be able to go with me and I called Walt wilcoxon and then I
was going to call Jim Dennis. So I called Walt and I said,
hey, you want to go? And he goes yeah, I'd love to go
and I go I'm going to call Jim. Dennis, he goes, don't bother.
He's already there. True story.
He's actually on his way back. So we are making arrangements to
go and I called Jim and he's on the road, coming back and he was
like this was not. He goes he was crazy and it was
it was incredible. He started telling me about his
experience and then he said, you know, they had food.
It was provided, they had pizza, they had, they had snacks, they
had drinks had all this stuff and I went, I tried to pay for
it and they go, no, it's been provided.
Like are you kidding me? They wouldn't take your money to
know said it's been provided. Like somebody had just ponied up
the money for like all these restrooms and you know all this
stuff and he goes I felt so bad. It goes I put some I said you
just take donations and they said, well, we'll take a
donation so he handed him some money.
And he said, maybe the crossing could do something to help this
out. So I called Clayton.
And I said, what do you think the crossing could could help
pay for all the stuff that they're doing?
And he said, just come to the office and we'll cut you a check
for five thousand dollars. So you don't know it until now,
but as a church we participated in the Asbury.
Revival. You were paying for toilets.
You are paying for pizza. You're paying for bottled water.
So that people could just continue to pray and seek the
Lord. Incredible.
So we're in the car, you know, we jumped in the car on Friday
morning and we made the seven-hour trip that was last
Friday, and in the car, I was talking to Walt about what I was
going to be preaching about, which is how to pick and be the
right spouse. How do you pick the right
spouse? And how can you be the right
spouse? And and Walt said, well, I'm
really excited about half that sermon.
How come they got it over there but you guys are still quiet.
I don't know, any way we get to the decision time for.
Maybe you. Okay.
Anyway, I love his gift of encouragement anyway, so we got
there and we got there as it was getting toward evening.
And then as night fell, I mean I took a few videos, but this is
the video that I took when night fell.
So look at the screens right now and you can see what I was
experiencing. That's the lawn and right there
is Hughes Auditorium on your left.
And that's where the if you seen those videos that's where
they're happening and you can see a line you can, stat line is
for people wide. And it goes over half a mile.
6/10 of a mile and it is not moving because once you get in
the auditorium, people don't want to leave.
But people are willing to stand. And by the way, it's 28 degrees.
When I took that video And people have filled that Lon and
they're praying outside, you see that?
They put like this Jumbotron thing out there so you can see
and that was amazing and and all of the local churches didn't
matter what the sign was out front.
Didn't matter what denomination they were.
There's an amazing thing. They all simulcast it.
I went into one a Baptist Church and you can tell they don't they
don't they don't do the whole video on the wall thing.
So I mean it was old school. It was Use and it was organ and
piano, right? But they had a chair sitting on
the left side and they had a, they had a video projector
sitting on the chair shooting up against the wall.
And so I mean, I mean that's that's pretty rudimentary right?
And and there was a couple of there were people up, you know,
that we're praying and confessing their sins and stuff
happening up front and there was a couple over there and there
was a guy that was leading them helping them like we would do
that when like praying with them.
And and he kneels to pray and he sticks his rear end right in
front of the, of the video projector.
And so, and so, you only see half of like, and nobody said
anything nobody cared. And about every other verse that
they were singing that was being simulcast.
The the internet was so bad that it would buffer.
And it would just freeze and buffer.
Nobody cared. They just kept saying and it was
amazing that when it, when it quit buffering, we were right
with him again. It was absolutely astounding to
me. so, What was what was amazing was there was no
production. I mean, it was there was not
produced at all. It was just a bunch of a bunch
of people in a room and most of them, seventy percent of them
were under the age of 22. And there was no musical
excellence. I mean they weren't picking
people who are just great. Just somebody, if you get up
there with a guitar and there were somebody maybe on the piano
and they had their phone, they're trying to find, You
Know, chords. And there was a guy on a beatbox
and that was about it. And they're leading worship that
didn't matter. I mean, all they had to do with
start, all they had to do was start a song.
There was no words on any screen, so you didn't have words
to go with you, you know, didn't matter.
I mean, they, they sing like a bar to an everybody would just
pick it up and then start singing.
There was no special lighting. There was no famous people,
there is no comfortable chairs. There was no Posh accommodations
and none of it mattered. It was completely student-led
and the, The Faculty of Asbury did their best to maintain that
there were people that tried to get some stage time.
Lots of people that tried to do that.
Some of them famous like Kari, Jobe cane and one of the things
they said, no, this is student-led Tucker Carlson came
with a film. What came with a film crew?
Wanted to do film? They said no completely
student-led That was that day. I thought it was amazing how
they kept that the way it was and what you saw instead was
students worshiping in song confessing their sins, publicly
dropping to their knees at the altar and repentance giving
their testimonies reading scripture.
And this is how they would read scripture.
I mean, they would line up, they would line up to read a
scripture. And the president of the college
was standing in front and they have a kind of a tradition at
Asbury when they read scripture and when that scripture is read,
the president would raise his hand and say, this is the word
of God. And then everybody, all those
students would say and we believe it Like thunderously,
they would say that and then another one come up and another
one would come up, they have 1020 in a line just having a
scripture on their heart that they wanted to read.
So, the faculty made sure that there were no outside
distractions that kept keep it, orderly, the rejected people who
wanted that stage time. And eventually, I mean the town
of wilmore's only 3,300 people and they were having 15,000 a
day so it overwhelmed the community.
So eventually they had to say take the Revival out because he
can't just stay here. But absolutely beautiful.
The Holy Spirit was so thick. It was like, James, Earl, Jones
and Field of Dreams when he said you'd have to brush it away from
your face, you just walk into those spaces, you start crying.
Was powerful. And I know I needed to be there.
I needed to be there because of what I just confessed to you.
I was there for hope. Mike Max said I was there for
Unity. I saw Unity.
What I saw was hope hope for a new generation.
TriMet predominately 18 to 22 year, olds crying out for the
Lord's presence confessing their sins to him publicly repenting
of their sins and praying. but there are a whole heart for him
to move because that is what this word is all about.
Revival is reclaiming. Repentance is reclaiming.
Confession is reclaiming obedience to God.
And His word is reclaiming. I confess to you that many
times, I have felt like Elijah under the broom tree thinking,
everyone else is broken and lost who's left.
And I was reminded that God told Elijah when he was feeling sorry
for himself that he had reserved 7000 who had not bowed the knee
to Baal and I saw thousands and thousands of young people take
up the Cross of Christ and deny themselves.
Now, that is not the topic that I was assigned for this series.
But it literally has everything to do with it.
Finding or being the spouse. That honors.
God requires obedience to him. Obedience to him.
Over the things of this world and over culture and gen Z is
under greater pressure than any previous generation that we know
of to bow down to the idol of culture and worldly acceptance.
But that trip to Asbury. Showed me that the smallest
Taste of the spirit of God is so much more powerful than any of
those idols and any of those cultures, See God's word is true
and it's infallible and it stood the test of time for thousands
of years regardless of culture culture on the other hand has
little if any shelf life it is so temporary and it is so
disposable. The culture of this generation
once this generation to be known as the generation of anxiety,
the generation of depression, the generation of suicide, but
God can and will speak life into this generation.
And it begins with God's word so that's where I want to start
today when it comes to being a spouse or finding a spouse.
And so we're going to start in the most basic truths about
that. Now, I'm going to step out from
behind this table and you've all been on a airplane flight and
the flight attendant comes up and they have a seat belt.
And they show you. How to operate a seat belt?
Right. And some of us are like, well,
that's really dumb. I don't need to do that mean,
look at me. I mean, I understand how to
operate a seat belt. But sometimes we might want to
wonder when we're trying to reclaim something.
If we still need to know how to operate seat belt.
When the oxygen mask comes down, they show you how to put it on
even though you ought to know how to put it on.
Right, so there's going to be some stuff.
I'm going to say. And some of you might recoil.
And I just want you to put your seatbelt on and make sure, you
know, where your oxygen mask is okay.
Because that's what's going to happen and I'm not going to
waste any time doing it, ready. I'm going to tell you three
things about marriage. Here's the first one, male and
female. Just that.
Male and female. I'm going to encourage you today
to do the same discipline, the same traditional discipline that
as very students do, because when I'm done reading the
scripture, I'm going to say this is the word of God.
Matthew 19:4 through six, these words, by the way are in read.
In my Bible that means there are the words of Jesus ready?
Having you read, he replied that at the beginning, the Creator
made them. Male and female and said, for
this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be
United to his wife. And the two will become one
flesh. So they are no longer two, but
one therefore what God has joined together?
Let man not separate. This is the word of God.
There are two Sexes assigned at birth.
That's the way that God created you and designed you.
It goes. Clear down to the cellular level
men, have an X chromosome, and the Y chromosome in every cell.
Women have, an X chromosome in another X chromosome in every
cell, That's how your made even down to the cellular level.
Now, I know there are people who are same-sex attracted and I
know there are all sorts of cultural variations with regards
to sexual identity, but that is not how you or made and that's
down to every cell in your body. I know what the world says, and
I know what culture says, but the world and culture will pass
away. We just read what Jesus says and
Jesus is alive forever. And for those of you that are
worried about being judged by culture, I want you to know
something you will never stand before culture and be judged,
but you and I will stand before. God?
We will all stand before God. And we will be judged according
to his word and this is not my opinion.
This is what the Bible says. I know that for some of you this
is like, how do you, how do you Buckle a seatbelt?
But that is not the case in our culture.
Orange in Zee. Number two.
To be unified in faith for life to understand male and female.
And then, to be unified in faith for life.
I don't know what you did, or what you feel like you ought to
do, if you ever find a spouse or when you found a spouse, or when
you ask someone to be your spouse, but the first question
you should find out is where are they in their faith?
Before you like their clothes, their hairstyle, their body
shape. How will they have a
conversation? Where do they stand on their
faith? The Apostle Paul said, do not be
yoked together with unbelievers for what do righteousness and
wickedness have in common or what Fellowship can light have
with Darkness. This should be the first thing
that you look for. You need to be it and you to
look for it. Listen to me, it is essential to
be in a one flesh in spirit as well as in body because without
it, you'll never be on the same page.
Now, I know some of you that are younger, you might think that
marriage is balloons and lollipops and rainbows, but
those of us that have been in the war called marriage, We know
that it's not always easy and sometimes it's hard.
As a matter of fact, it can be the hardest things, the hardest
things that you ever experienced in life could happen, inside
that one flesh, relationship and the place you go for Hope and
peace and strength. Is God and his word.
And if you're not on the same page there, let me tell you.
I've had enough people in in my office prove to me that when
you're not on that same page, somebody bears that alone.
And that is not the way that God designed it.
It's the first thing you should have in common.
Your faith. Number three.
You need to be committed to The Godly order of things.
There is no disorder in God and there is no confusion in God.
None zero. And so we need to understand
that with God, you don't have confusion, you have something
else. Instead, the Bible says, God is
not the author of confusion but he's the author of peace and
when you follow God, you can be at peace, not in confusion.
What do I mean? And how does that apply.
Well, I'm going to read 1st Corinthians, chapter 6 verses 18
to 20. He's the words of the Apostle.
Paul. Flee from sexual immorality.
All other sins. A man commits are outside of his
body. Now, this is important.
I want you to raise your hand. If you've heard.
Somebody say all sins the same, all Sin is Sin.
Yeah, that's only partly true and partly false because sin is
not the same. When it comes to consequences,
all sin separates you from God? In that sense?
That's true. But there are some sins that
make a lot bigger Mark in your life than others.
And that's what the Apostle Paul is saying here, right?
Let's look at it all other sins. A man commits are outside of his
body but he used in sexually sins against his own body.
Do you not know that your body is the Temple of the Holy
Spirit? Who is in you whom you've
received from God? You are not your own, you were
bought at a price, therefore honor God with your body.
So we have to flee, sexual sin. So I said, male and female, I
said that we need to be unified in faith for life.
And third, be committed to Godly order.
And that's what this scripture is.
Defining now a few months ago, I showed you this is called the
ram model and this is the way that a relationship is supposed
to form. You're supposed to get to know
somebody. And when you know them well
enough, you begin to trust them because what trust is is what
you think about what you know, I've had a lot of people come to
me. Their marriages are falling
apart and they said, well, I really thought that I knew that
person. Because that's what trust is it.
When trust is broken. It means that what you thought
you knew you really didn't. So those knowing and then
there's what you think about, you know, trust then Reliance is
what you do based on what you think about what you know How
you actually act not just what you think.
And then, if all of that goes, well, you come down here to
Commitment you say, I want to get, I'm going to get that
person off of the market. I want that one to be mine.
I want that one to be forever. I want that.
I netwo, yes. Sign me up, right?
That's commitment. That's why you're taking all
these O's. When you get married, that's
commitment. And then, and then, and then
this Touch. Yeah.
That's the way it's supposed to work.
Now there's a lot of reasons for that because when you get these
in the wrong order, Things become very confusing and very
destructive. And Satan is the author of
confusion. Not God And I'll tell you why
that is because just like the X and Y chromosomes and all these
things that God did when he when you were created.
He also created you that way in every way including your married
life. so, when a woman gives birth, Her body delivers, 10
times, the amount of normal of oxytocin hormone into her body.
She just gets this huge rush soon as that babies, born of
oxytocin and they put that baby on mommy's tummy.
And something happens. Something miraculous happens.
Bonding. And it's bonding for life and
it's because God designed her to release 10 times the oxytocin in
that moment. So there is a chemical
scientific response that God has designed inside of a woman to do
that. She also releases that in sexual
intimacy. A man in sexual intimacy
releases vasopressin a hormone that is also called the monogamy
molecule. Because as a species human
beings were designed to mate for life.
Wow, cool. Now, maybe not so much because
how many relationships do you know, started that way and did
that? Or did we go to the bar?
Hoping we get lucky. We picked someone up.
It's dark. You're drunk or drinking in the
dark, they look pretty good. You wake up in the morning
you're going. Oh my goodness.
But all that hormonal stuff happened and you do that over
and over and over and over again.
What happens? This is not how you were
designed. This is not how I was designed
and right now you're going. Oh, stop preaching.
Killing me. Cuz I haven't done that.
I'm broken. I'm lost.
I don't know what to do reclaim Reclaim because God has the
ability to fix what is broken? He has the ability to recover.
What has been lost, only he can do that, we have got to reclaim
and you're going, okay? Okay.
How do I do it? Okay.
Here's an acrostic, an acronym, ready, re-see laim reclaim.
I'm going to give you a word and a statement for every one of
those. So you can remember it, you
might want to write them down. Down.
Number one. Are what does it stand for
repent of your sins? Repent of your sins to repent
means to turn. Literally, the Greek word means
to turn And and there's a scripture that actually has the
definition within the scripture. It's in Acts chapter 3 verses 19
to 20. It says repent then and turn to
God so that your sins may be wiped out.
You want your sins wiped out? I do.
How do I get my sins wiped out? I Repent that your sins may be
wiped out. How many you want?
The next thing that times of refreshing may come from the
Lord? That's Revival.
That's where God fixes your heart times of refreshing come
from the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah.
Who has been appointed for you? Even Jesus to feel the presence
of Jesus. To repent.
I want that. Yeah, you're broken.
Something's lost, repent. Number 2 or e the letter e
experience experience the cross. experience the cross because
that's where the sacrifice for your sins are If you know that
you're carrying all these sins, you know, you've got all this
stuff, maybe nobody else knows, maybe it's a secret thing, you
don't, you know as and it's just you that knows it.
What do I do with it? I've owned this regret.
I have all this hurt. I have all this pain.
What do I do with it? You take that right to the Cross
experience, the cross, because it was at the cross where Jesus
shed his blood and his blood is enough to cover every one of
your sins, it doesn't require anything more than what Jesus
did when he gave himself as a sacrifice for your sins.
So experience the cross because that is where the payment is for
your sins, see? Confess your sin.
Confess your sin, which means to admit your sin before.
God, first John 1:9 says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful
and just and will what you want that?
I want that. I want my sins to be wiped out.
I want a time of refreshing from the Lord.
I want him to send the Lord, the Messiah into my heart that he's
appointed for me. And I want to know that he's
forgiven me, and it doesn't say he will forgive us of our sins.
Only, it says, he will purify us.
And not just from some of our sin.
It says all unrighteousness. When we confess our sins, I need
to do that. Oh yeah, I'm going to repent,
I'm going to embrace the cross and experience the cross, and
I'm going to confess my sins and in the L, and reclaim is a
definition. It's to understand your sin from
God's point of view. Look, it's for look is the L
look. At yourself from God's point of
view, See. Everything is just so biased
inside of us because we're always about our point of view.
We're so self-focused as a culture, but we need to get out
of ourselves and we need to get into God's point of view.
And when you see things from God's point of view, you agree
with him. And when you agree with him,
you're in the right place and that is where there is
incredible beauty. Because the beauty of Truth is
healing. It heals you?
Some people think, well, you know, I'm forever scarred.
I've been victimized. And I've been forever scarred.
I'm not saying that you haven't endured a lot of hard things and
that you haven't been victimized, but I'm telling you,
there isn't coping in the Holy Spirit, there's victory in the
Holy Spirit. There, he remakes you and only
he can do that. There's healing in it.
A is for accept. This is where it gets really
good. Except the power of God's
Amazing. Grace.
In Romans chapter 5 verses 9 to 11, it says, since we have been
justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved?
From God's Wrath through him, I want to be saved from God's
Wrath. For if, while we were God's
enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his
son. How much more having been
reconciled shall we be saved through his life Not only is
this so but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ
through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Wow. I is for imagine, imagine the
you That God sees. You know, a lot of times we
think that God looks citizen, all he sees is all of our
shortcomings, in all of our, all the bad things that we've done.
But you know what? That's Satan limiting you to
what God sees, because God sees you as a completed work.
God sees you with all of your potential realized.
The Bible says that we are as far as he is concerned, we are
already seated with him in the Heavenly realms.
So God doesn't just see you as his broken up, busted up, dumb
kid. He sees you experiencing all of
the potential that he has in your life.
All of that realized impacting other people for the kingdom for
all time. Imagine that true because it's
true. And finally, move em is move
toward Jesus. You see, the thing about Sin is
that makes it even more confusing.
Is we realize we've done something wrong and we realize
we're broken because of it realized stuff's been lost
because of it and then we just run but we're aimless, we just
kind of just run. And a lot of times when you run
from a sin, you run into a worse one.
And what God is trying to help us to understand is that he
gives us. He doesn't just tell us to flee.
He doesn't just tell us to run. He tells us where we're supposed
to run, and that's to Jesus. Because I can tell you this, if
you're running to Jesus, you're always running in the right
direction. And if you're running to Jesus,
you're putting the right amount of distance between you and
that's in so move. Toward Jesus.
I'm going to close with this. We sing the song We sang it last
week. I think I'm praying.
God, come and turn this thing around.
God. Turn it around.
Lord, turn it around, right.
And you know what? That's putting all the
responsibility on him. Like, would you come and fix all
this? And if we were to hear the voice
of Jesus Christ, he would say, excuse me.
I've already been there. I've already been there.
I put on a human form. I walked on your Earth for 33
years. I endured the worst.
That a person could give another person.
I died for you on the cross. I was buried for you in a
borrowed to I rose from the dead and I ascended to my Father in
heaven. And I'm there right now,
pleading your case. So maybe when we sing I'm
praying God come maybe we should just point her finger like this
and say and turn this thing around.
God turn this around. Turn me around.
Like the students in Asbury were
broken, people were lost people. So am I?
But when the spirit comes and we submit to that Spirit, something
happens. something wonderful happens because the church
begins to look beautiful. With all of her beautiful
messiness. I'm talking about marriage and
some people would say, you know, but Jesus was never married, the
whole reason. Jesus came to this Earth was to
get married. And you are his bride.
And he gave his life up. For his bride.
And he's coming back for his bride, because there is nothing
in this world more beautiful than the Bride of Jesus Christ.
We're moving to a time of decision.
There are people in this room. Struggling right now.
Hurting right now. Wrestling right now.
Oh, you might be a Christian, you may have said the words, you
may have made the decision. That's all great.
I appreciate that so much. But you know what I mean?
Because life happens like we call it the lower Story.
The lower story happens, right? And I'm just going to invite you
to do something today because these steps.
Have been. They've been preyed on and
they've been wept on. For years.
And it is where the lower story. Gets enveloped by the upper
story. because when you get low, Before the Lord, you see the
heights like you never did before. when you get down, he
lifts you up. Because this is a place of
repentance. And it's a place of confession.
And it's a place of Grace. And if you've got something on
your heart, maybe you're carrying it for yourself where
you're carrying it for somebody that you love, bring it to the
Lord, just bring it to the Lord. And I know you can do that in
your seat, but it's something profound when we get down on our
knees. And we don't care who sees us
like those students when they start confessing their sins
publicly with a microphone. I don't care who sees it, I
don't care who hears it because I want him to hear it.
Some of you here today and you've never accepted Lord Jesus
as your savior and your lord. You never come in to an intimate
personal relationship with him. And right over there by that
baptistry, there's going to be somebody to talk to you and
there is nothing in this world. I can't, I can't ever put any
words together in a sermon. That would even begin to match
the sermon that is preached when a person is immersed in raised
up in that water, it's the most profound powerful sermon, you'll
hear. Is that?
Just the sound of water. And a smile enjoy.
And that's available for you right now.
Would you stand with me? Let's pray together.
Heavenly father in Jesus name. We come to you.
Father, we reject the things of this world.
We reject the things of this culture and we embrace the
culture of Heaven. We Embrace citizenship in
heaven, we embrace your word because it is the inerrant
infallible truth in our Authority for life.
It's Eternal thing that you gave us in this temporary world.
We hear your words. We want your words to see deep
inside of our hearts. So I pray father and this moment
will respond to you in Jesus name.
Amen.