Come on baby. Oh, crossing Nation, go ahead
and have a seat. I am so glad that you are here.
This is my this is the closest I'm going to get to being
ripped. Got my bubble wubber.
It's going to be a good day. I want to welcome those of you
joining at all of our different locations, those of you watching
online and inside. We are so stinking glad that you
guys are here. And our hope today is very
simple. We're hoping that today each and
every single person here will grow closer into an intimate
personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
I'd like to welcome those of you who are new here, whether it's
your first time or your first time in a long time.
And my hope is that before you leave today, you would spend
just a little bit of time at the New here booth in all of our
lobbies. The other thing I would like to
do is I would like to welcome Mr. Samson.
Would you guys give Samson a round of applause?
We got a shot of Samson. Oh, Samson, you are going to do
a mighty, mighty work. You know, when Jesus was
teaching, he used parables. He used the power of a story to
release a profound spiritual truth.
And in just a few moments, that is exactly what is going to take
place in this round pen. The horse, Samson is going to be
us. And it is going to be an
opportunity for us to see a horse navigate what it means to
actually trust, obey, and surrender.
And my friend Todd, he's going to personify God who is trying
to woo Samson into a meaningful, trusting relationship.
And this horse's life will never experience its full purpose or
potential until it yields to Todd.
And you and I will never experience our full potential
and purpose until we yield our lives to God.
So would you guys give a warm crossing Welcome to my friend
Todd. Todd, I cannot tell you how
thankful I am that you are here. You have brought a lightning rod
of excitement. Oh, thank you Samson and Grace
to this church and what I want to do is I'm going to ask
everybody would you if you're at if you're here at 48th St. would
you extend your hands towards Todd If you're at one of our
locations would use this thing your hand towards the screen and
we're going to pray God, I ask that you would use the next 50
minutes in a mighty powerful transformative way and your name
I pray Amen. You ready bud, get to it.
I don't know if you are on or not, but if I reach in there,
they're going to remember that too.
How about now? There you go, giddy up.
Apologize sound guys, I can't seem to get that part right.
Good morning y'all. We're family right?
I know y'all don't know me yet, but there's just something about
being human that makes it to where we have a whole lot in
common. But there's something about just
gathering together for one reason, and that is that we all
want to have our life significantly impacted so that
we can become better versions of ourselves.
And you maybe didn't have that language coming in here this
morning. It might have been more just
another day that you're trying to get together with some
people, maybe see something that's interesting.
But I think this is a unique gift that I have that I have
such high expectation that comes with so much gratitude of what
it is that God's done in my life.
But I just know that this song that we just sang, that there
was something about me that is always just saying that I know
that I'm made for more. I can learn how to love better.
I can I can tend to my wife and demonstrate the heart of God to
her better. I can interact with my sons in a
way that makes them feel more powerful.
And so if you're a man here today, I'm going to just single
out the men because I just really feel very little
permission to speak directly to women, especially in the context
of this. So it's not a sexist thing.
I promise you that my wife beats me up all the time.
So I but man, if you're here this morning and, and you want
to become a better man, raise your hand.
I hope everybody rose their hand.
You're going to get a elbow on your ribs if you didn't.
But this I, I have never met this horse.
I first time I saw it was when I came in here.
And you can tell that he's been working way harder than any of
us this morning. I think that one, he's just a
super enthusiastic horse and two, this is a really unique
environment for him. He's only seeing a few people at
a time and there's a lot of y'all and he's in a building and
there's lights and noise. But because I'm like to the core
who I am, I'm an animal lover. And I promise you that we're not
going to do anything but take care of this dude and that Sam
has stood in the middle of thunderstorms and wind storms
and lightning storms, and he can handle it.
He was built to to deal with adversity that very few of us
will ever experience. And so the invitation for Sam
this morning was that Samson, is that what I heard?
I love that. Is that Samson?
You've spent your whole life doing what you're doing right
now, which is beautiful. You're full of life and ambition
and you've understood what it's like to be around people.
So I love that she can stand right here in the middle of this
whole thing. But there's going to be an
invitation for you and I've, I won't force it on you, but if
you decide you want to, I want to show you something that's so
special and so sacred that it's going to give you a brand new
vision for what it is that you're capable of.
Is life not just like this, guys, We're, we're just cruising
through life and there's all sorts of activity and things to
do. And I think he's actually even
getting a little bit tired just because he's imposed so much
pressure on himself. And
I'm not sure where your pressure is coming from or why it is that
you put so much pressure on yourself.
But I want him to just feel for a second that for a moment, when
he changed directions right there, he looked at me and he
asked a question for the first time, first time ever for me.
It's the first time he's ever asked me for anything.
And it wasn't even something that he could well, he don't
have many words anyway, if you hadn't noticed.
But the thought that would go through his mind is, what do you
want from me? And every one of us are sitting
here in this room, And it's a question that we're all going to
have to figure out is really God, What is it that you want
from me? And religion has done so much
damage to that, that it's almost like one of the most violent
forces on the planet. It's not the enemy that's out
there that's invading our country or what's coming through
the Internet or all of the other threats.
To me, it's something that would look so close to godliness, but
it would deny the power of God that we would get trapped in a
thinking that looks like a religion that keeps God at a
distance and keeps everybody feeling shame and control.
And Jesus walks onto the scene after thousands of years of
people thinking that they knew what God wanted.
And then Jesus presented it to them in such a different way
that he said, I am those words that you've been reading made
flesh. And I'm going to present myself
to you in a way that you're going to finally understand the
significance of why it is that the law was what it was.
He wanted to guard our heart in perfect peace.
He wanted us to understand that there was something about it
when He created us that He made it to where we're never going to
be whole apart from Him. And that wholeness becoming what
it is that we were designed to become was only going to come
when we embrace this, this God of wonders who presented himself
in the form of Jesus. And Jesus didn't just show up in
a lightning storm doing, I don't know, the genie out of the
bottle thing. Jesus showed up as this kind,
gentle, capable man that knew how to work hard, knew how to
engage with people and enjoy sitting around a table, would do
common things, but have normal conversations.
He'd walk into the bar and hang out with the folks.
He'd go into the churches and they'd usually kick him out.
But he presented himself the way He said that he made us.
He made us in his likeness, male and female, both, that he
created us in the likeness of God.
And then he presented himself to us again as God that looked very
much like just a man. But then this man started doing
things that they didn't know what to do with, like crazy
stuff. He started healing the sick and
raising the dead and talking about a Kingdom, A Kingdom that
was going to last forever. And people kept putting it into
just like what sort of imagery that they could put to it, but
they just really weren't getting the point.
I see you. I do.
So they're beautiful. Because every one of us were
broken apart from God. Jesus was going to model to us
what it looked like to be whole, and then he was going to invite
us to become just like him. And that's something that 2000
years later, we're still fascinated with the reality that
there's something inside of me that it's like heavens inside of
me. And it's wanting to come out.
There's an anticipation that I can, I can be more than this.
Like I'm going to learn how to love to such a degree that no
matter what's going on outside of me, what's going on around
me, that my heart's going to stay steady.
And it's what I love to be able to demonstrate right here.
And I hope you never can get like, I hope you can't Unsee
this because nothing that he's doing is causing a reaction from
me. I'll respond to him with love,
but I'm not going to react to his anxiety.
And what he's finding is that in every other realm that he's
lived in, people responded to his anxiety.
If he got anxious, the horse next to him got anxious.
If the horse next to him got anxious, he got anxious.
It was just a vicious cycle and it's how they controlled each
other, it's how they felt safe, it's how they moved each other.
But he's settling in to me. He's living in response to
what's going on inside of me. And this is exactly what Jesus
did. People would be just so chaotic
and losing their minds, and Jesus just didn't move.
He was the same. Now I'm not saying that he
didn't express crazy emotion. Like he laughed and he cried and
like wept. He got angry without sin and
turned some tables over just to make sure that people realize
that this can't stand. Not in my house.
You can do whatever y'all want to do out there, but in my house
you don't get to do that. And it wasn't bullying somehow,
and I don't, I haven't figured out how to do it yet.
If I tried to run y'all out of here with a whip, I think
someone accused me of being a bully.
But Jesus did all of that without sin.
It was like a beautiful expression of love.
And I don't think I got time to get into it right now, but I've
got some really dear friends that worked with a ministry
called the Free Burma Rangers. Anybody ever heard of them?
Look it up on Prime Video and watch the Free Burma Ranger
documentary. You're going to understand what
I'm talking about. It's what it's like to stand in
the middle of a place where there's a whole bunch of
enemies, people doing horrible things, and rather than hating
them, you love them. But sometimes that love requires
you to do things to stop them from doing what's evil.
And if we're going to heal, so many of you are in this room
right now. You've got bitterness and
anxiety around your own past and the people that have hurt you,
the ways that you've been deceived and lied to, the ways
that God's been misrepresented to you, the times when someone
that should have been taking care of you abused you.
This isn't small stuff. It impacts us and it makes it
where it's in the way. And I believe by the power of
the Holy Spirit, that is when within me and within so many of
you, that we're going to get some breakthroughs today and
that the past and the experiences isn't going to
continue to control your story, impact your life to this degree.
Especially I was trying to talk to you about that a minute ago,
that you weren't listening because I can have some
influence from here. Jesus had influence.
People listen to his teachings and we're still reading his
teachings and we're influenced because what he's saying is
true. And it's really good that we get
the information. And there is such a thing as
people perishing for the lack of knowledge.
But in an age where we've put such a high priority on
information, we've missed the encounter.
And it's kind of like reading a menu but never eating a meal.
It's like reading a romance novel but never falling in love.
And I can't stand the thought of him thinking that this is what I
want to do is simply influence him.
I don't. I want to consume him.
I want him to know what it's like to become one.
And that's what Jesus said. It was all worth it for him not
to start a religion or a movement or a new belief system.
He wanted us to understand that we were created to carry his
power and that it's something different than what we thought
it was. I don't know if you're going to
let me get on you, are you? It's all right.
I don't know if you can see how wide his eyes are, if you can
see the white around their eyes. It's kind of like a Oh my gosh,
this is really exactly just like that.
I know, man, it's wild. I promise you, you're going to
love it. And this trust thing, it's, I
get it, Like all of your experience, all of your
instincts are all saying no, but your heart's saying yes.
That's good. All need to me for I have drawn
me to you. Pull on the strings in my heart
for I long to respond to you. Draw near to me, for I had drawn
near to you for long straight in my life, for I long to respond
to you. All my love is for you and all
my love is yours. All my love is for you.
All my love is. No steps away, licking his lips
the best way he knows how to communicate.
It's just like a great big deep sigh.
He needs to know that I am and that I'm a rewarder.
I'm good. It's exactly what the Bible said
is he said. If anyone's going to come to me,
they're going to have to first of all, know these two things.
And you might even be struggling with the reality that there is a
God and you've got lots of reasons to doubt.
It's OK. And I promise you, you don't
have to believe what I believe for me to love you, for me to
believe in you. Right now, he doesn't believe
the way I believe. It's not going to change the
fact that I've got an opportunity to have an
interaction with him. And I hope that he understands
to the degree where he'll he'll become a new creation.
Because a horse with a rider is not not just two things, you
become one. And over time he learns to see
what I see and love what I love. And it all comes with me
releasing these things that are inside of him.
I've got three sons and I used to think that it was like I
didn't like the word ADD, but whether I like the word or not,
I was going to figure out what to do with sons that had so much
more energy than. That was good.
I don't normally ride like that, but that was a lot of fun.
Good, same side. I remember this guy, his name
was John Mitchell. Isn't there a John Mitchell
here? For real, this dude's name was
John Mitchell. No.
Well, if those hit me, it hurts me, OK?
You can't kick me like you can your brothers and sisters.
And he came to me and he said, did you know that God loves you
and that he has a plan for your life?
And it wasn't like a man told me that when I heard those words, I
couldn't unhear them and I couldn't find a way to hide from
it. If I could have forgot it, I
would have because I was a really happy alcoholic and had
a, you know, everything. That 19 year old kid at 1:00,
that's a lot. That's a lot.
But because I couldn't unhear it, I had to decide what I was
going to do with it. And it was scary because
everything about me was not like Jesus.
It was going to cost me everything to call of Jesus, and
that's what Samson feels like right now.
It's going to cost him everything.
But when he understands the reward in it, the joy that comes
in it, don't hold your breath, Not now.
What you anticipated at that time, that wasn't fair.
This is where I wish that we had a little bit more time because
when he comes, when he gets it, he's going to come so fast.
He's going to go so far. And to him, this is still just
playful. Got an itch?
You're going to do it. You're going to do it.
If I were to say, if only to whisper mountain sheep.
Jesus, I hope and straight that's.
When? You made a way.
You unlock these chains here in your present strongholds, freed
by the Lord, you gay. We give you the highest.
You deserve it all. You deserve it all.
We give you the highest. You deserve it all.
There on a tree, merciful King,
broken and shamed for all to see.
The Father lay down his son. Darkness to light, death lost to
light, Heaven and earth will join and sing.
Jesus has overcome. So we give you the highs phrase.
You deserve it all. Jesus, so with every left that's
in my lungs, my heart cries out to you belongs the glory, the
glory. To every loss, O victory, my
soul will rise to only bring you glory.
Bring you glory. Wow y'all are stubborn.
I love it. The most beautiful thing about
people that are like this is it. Once they get it, it ain't
getting undone. These are the kind of men that
Jesus went after. The kind of women that Jesus
went after. Everybody else gave up on him.
Everybody else said that they're unqualified.
All they can do is just go make money.
That woman ain't worth it. And Jesus gathered those people
up. These kind of people that fought
against every system. They'd been hurt enough or fire
and enough fire inside of them that they weren't going to just
say yes, ma'am, yes, Sir, and play the game that everybody
else was playing. And I'm speaking to you today
because we ain't going to let this just be a horse that's this
way. He's representing something.
And when we pray diligently into what horse to bring, Papa picked
the perfect horse for that person so that they don't miss
it. We can't stand the thought of
somebody walking out of here, missing it.
And just because the world has said no to you, I'll do this all
day long. Well, clearly I won't.
I got 15 minutes, But I would. Until he learns to relax.
Until he knows that this is actually the safest thing in the
world for him, just for him to become one with me and I can
turn him loose and just let him go do his thing again.
But at best, he's going to live to be 30 years old and fat and
ate a lot of grass. He ain't even got any tools to
breed anymore. So I don't know what he's going
to do this time, but it'll be a wasted life.
But by God, he'll have it his way.
Pretty soon. We realize that that's not
working for us. The reason I keep coming right
back to him is I don't want him to feel separation based on his
reactions. I need to stay close to him.
I don't want him to run off too far to where he feels like he's
alone again. And this ruthless pursuit of God
on us, it's like we can do whatever we want to do.
Literally, He gives us permission to do whatever we
want to do. But I'm never going to leave
you. I'm never going to forsake you.
Don't make a theology out of it. But even death itself can't
separate you from the love of God.
I don't want them to forget this.
Like it's that time that God just revealed that I actually am
good. And I'm sorry for all the pain
that you've been through. I'm sorry for the confusion and
the fear that seems to keep gripping your heart.
I promise I didn't do that. But if I love, I'm going to have
to give you guys freedom that you're being called into this.
This is your moment. It's
OK, right here. It's a little bit hard to watch,
but consider yourself, where are you in this?
Thank God you're right there. You've even said yes to him, but
it still feels like this. It's cute.
It's cute until it hits me. And here you got my blouse all
dirty. There's not another way, and if
it was maybe with someone else and the Todd Pierce that would
have presented himself to this animal, I would get him to obey.
I promise you I know enough tricks with ropes and that I can
make him do what I asked him to do.
All of this is an invitation that I'm going to keep extending
to him because soon as he loses the idea that this is his
choice, then he just has another Master.
And although Jesus is my Lord and my Master, first of all, I'm
his Son. And it's a huge difference
because that's His Son. I've got permission to access
him whether I'm falling apart or whether I just won the biggest
game of my life and he just never moves.
I want him to enjoy that freedom because he's not my slave and he
won't be my servant. Primarily, He will be a son,
someone that gets to do what it is that Jesus did.
And he said, I found all my delight in only doing what the
Father says. Peace.
It's OK.
It's OK. It's OK.
Don't clap. I'm glad I did My abs.
Yes, Sir. Yes, Sir.
Yes, Sir, I love you, I promise you.
If you think that following Jesus is boring and that His
ultimate goal is to get you to just figure out how to sit down
and keep your mouth shut, get some good manners.
You missed Jesus, I promise you. You know what it required for
his disciples, both male and female, to follow Him.
It wasn't a game to them for sure.
For the sake of the children in the audience, I won't describe
what happened to those people, but it was more than losing
their job over the deal or having family members not like
them. It cost them everything,
including their own lives. Has he got Arabian in him?
This is. From here you can see the world
from eternity, and I'm going to show you things that have never
crossed your mind and that you will become the exceedingly
abundantly above anything that could be hoped for, imagined.
Don't ever lose your fire. Just decide what you're going to
do with it. They're
still there. He got caught up in the 3rd
heaven. I don't know what that was like
for Paul, but he talks about a time when he had an experience
where he doesn't know if he was actually still in his body or
out of his body. But it was so surreal to him.
It was as though eternity is not that far away.
It's actually within me. We're spiritual beings, and
you're either filled with just the spirit of man or worship a
foul spirit, or you're filled with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit
of God. And Jesus walked around carrying
his spirit, and then he came back and he breathed into his
people. And they went from just normal
dudes, normal ladies going about their business, trying to do
their best to people that had a power that nobody could stop
them. You, you can't even kill them.
Oh man, I really want to walk with him,
but we're out of time. If you want this radical
conversion, transformation, no longer just a man or a woman, a
child of God, a son or a daughter that gets to be endowed
with His power. You may have been saved for a
long time, but if you want that, I want you to stand up.
Maybe you didn't hear me. If you don't want this, stay
seated. How about we say that, and I
know there's a bunch of there now you got to stand because
it's peer pressure and I'm going to be the stupid guy that's
still sitting down. Not you, Sir.
But we got to look around the room and just decide, OK, there
is a natural battle going on. There's a war and it's trying to
destroy lives and it's deceiving people and it's making it to
where tolerance looks like love and it's not.
But neither is your aggressive accusations and punishment and
shame that you're using to try to get people to modify their
behavior. You want to stand against woke
love? Somebody figure out a way to do
it to where you're not making it to where you're the one that's
right and they're wrong, that you're going to use your shame
and your manipulation to get them to come into your camp.
It's illegal and even Jesus refused to do it.
He would let people walk away. Hey bro, I know, sell everything
you have and come follow me. And he left.
He wasn't doing that because Jesus needed his Dang money.
He was doing that because he knew that he was a slave to his
own self provision. He loved him enough to challenge
him, but he let him walk away. Can we be the church that does
this so that we can have this good land?
You're wet, dude. Come on, boss.
Man, I had a lot of emotions watching that.
I don't know how many times I've prayed for a horse, but I prayed
for that horse a lot during this service.
Don't just let him, just let him in.
Because I kept thinking about all of the people in this room
and all of our different locations and everybody around
you has just been waiting for you to finally say yes to Jesus,
going let him in, stop settling from him being so far apart.
Actually have your genuine encounter and turn your life
over to him. And it gets so much better.
And I'm looking at this horse and I'm just thinking of name
after name after name after name going.
Would you just stop bucking? Would you stop kicking?
Would you just trust him? That is all Samson knows horse
does is getting on his nerves. He bites.
Things aren't going well. He kicks, he gets scared, it
gets hard. He runs.
It's just bite, kick, run, bite, kick, run.
That's all he knows. And some of you, that's the
world you've been living in. Your marriage gets hard, you
kick. Parenting gets tough.
You bite. Stuff at work gets hard.
You bite. Things don't go the way you want
them to in your extended family. You kick.
And some of you, you did way more than biting and kicking.
You ran. And so that's just the story of
your life. Things get hard, things aren't
going the way you want them to go.
And you run and everybody is looking at you sweaty and
lathered up and going. Just stop.
Stop running away from everything and run to Jesus.
I just got to ask you, how is all the biting and kicking and
running going for you? How's that working out?
A wild horse is always trying to survive.
It's trying to stay away from the predator.
It's trying to get itself some water and find itself some some
food. But once a horse surrenders
itself to the cowboy, it doesn't have to worry about those things
anymore. Who takes care of the predator?
The cowboy does. Who takes care of providing the
food the cowboy does. Who makes sure he has water?
The cowboy does and Jesus says to me, come to me, all of you
who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
I'll be your living water. I'll be the bread of life.
I will go into the valley with you and you will fear no evil
because I'm there. So for those of you here in this
room and those of you at one of our locations, if you have never
started an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus Christ,
can I just have a quick moment of your time and tell you my
story? The single greatest decision
that I ever made was making Jesus Christ, the Lord and
Savior of my life, and beginning an intimate personal
relationship with Him. And my biggest regret is that I
didn't do it sooner. And you might be thinking, of
course, Clayton, that's just you.
Let me tell you, I'm not the only person who believes that.
If we can get a wide angle shot and those of you at all of our
locations, if you could help me out, those of you in the chat,
if you want to type, you agree. But if you would say that the
single greatest decision that you ever made was starting an
intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ, would you
just put your hand up? See, it's not just me.
And would you also back me up that your biggest regret is that
you didn't start it sooner? If you would agree with that,
would you put your hand up? It's not just me.
It's the people in your row, people at your work, people in
your family, people in your neighborhood who tell you that a
life turned over to Jesus is better than you can possibly
imagine. If you were here today and you
were watching this and you could see yourself in Samson and
you're going. I've been kicking God for too
long. I've been running from God from
too long. And today I'm ready to stop.
In just a few moments. The people around you are going
to stand and sing, and some of them are going to go to the
steps and pray. And what I would encourage you
to do is if you go next to the baptistry at any one of our
locations, there will be somebody there who would love to
talk with you and pray with you. There are some of you.
You've been LED around by God for a long time, but you've
never yielded to Him and been obedient in the area of baptism.
And maybe today is your day, and I want you to know we have
everything we need to be able to make that happen.
And you're going, you know what? We've been putting it off for
way too long. I'm going to encourage you to
walk over next to the baptistry, find the staff member there and
talk with them and allow them to pray with you to the rest of the
people in the room, to those of you who are hanging out and kind
of watching from the outside, maybe you're already a follower
of Jesus. The Bible says this, that the
the Lord is spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's
freedom. That's second Corinthians
chapter 3 verse 17. And the only way you will
experience true freedom in Christ or experience true
freedom is when you have your life found in Christ.
But to those of you who are Jesus followers, Proverbs
chapter 3 says trust in the Lord and lean not on your own
understanding in all your ways. Trust Him and He will make your
paths straight. You could see the entire time in
the round pen that Todd was trying to lead and love Samson.
And you could keep you watched him keep kicking away and moving
away from the things that he was trying to do on his behalf.
And every single one of us were sinful people.
There is an area in your life where you are not leaning on
God's wisdom, God's understanding.
There's an area of your life where you are not trusting that
God's way is the best way. And what I would encourage you
to do because in a moment of like holy surrender, to go to
the steps wherever you're watching from and spend some
time saying, God, help me to trust you in this area of my
life. And to those of you who have a
heart for people who don't know Jesus, maybe you go to the steps
and you pray that they would finally surrender to him at some
point in time. Would you guys stand with me?
Heavenly Father, I thank you for this moment right here.
I thank you for the work that you're doing in our hearts and
our lives all across this region.
And God, I'm praying that over the next couple of songs that
you would begin to write a brand new story.
For many people, Satan's been trying to keep them from you.
Their sin and their shame and their guilt has been trying to
keep them from you. But God, I pray that today they
would realize that you're good, that you can be trusted, that
you are absolutely everything our soul has been longing for.
So Heavenly Father, I'm asking you to do something that only
you can do in a way that only you can do it.
God, that every person that can hear my voice right now, that
you'd pour cement on this moment, what we're feeling and
what we're thinking. God, that our desires would be
for you and for your Kingdom and for those far from you to be
found in you. In your name I pray.
Amen.