Well, good morning crossing church.
How are you doing? Got to feel pretty good.
You're you're in day What Day 2, day three of leftovers.
It's been awesome. I want to welcome all of our
campuses joining with us all across this region.
If you're inside or online. So thankful for each and
everyone of you. I have a question.
It's got good. How often is God good?
He just is. He's good and He's good all the
time. And we have so many things to
give thanks for. I give thanks for all of you.
You are such a blessing. Ones that I'm looking at right
now. All of the view that I can't
see, but you can see me. So thankful for all of you and
what ground you're taking for God's Kingdom.
Last week I talked about being God's person and I talked a
little bit about what I go through because what I pray
about and the people that I pray for some of their attributes.
I, I know that I'm nowhere near where I need to be, but but God
uses that to sift my heart and to bring the fertile soil to the
surface. And it's so important that we
capture that. But when we, if we can, if we
can try to figure out how to become God's person, and I know
so many of you are on this, on this journey to do that, when we
do it together, we can become God's people, not just God's
person, but God's people, God's church, God's called out
assembly. And there is no stopping that
church. The first time I went through a
study called Experiencing God, it was a workbook and a class.
I had already been in ministry for 15 years.
And I have to tell you, at the time, I really thought I was
doing it right. If someone would have asked me
what my vision was, you know, what's your vision, I think I
could have come up with a passable answer.
But I don't think that outside of like simple obedience and
that there was any particular vision that was driving me.
But as I plowed through that workbook, Henry Blackaby's
workbook, something very personal and very powerful
occurred inside of my heart. And I began to realize that
Christians were going through their whole life and they were
never understanding that they could have an intimate, personal
relationship with Jesus Christ, What that meant.
And those words stuck in my heart, intimate personal
relationship with Jesus Christ. It was before I long before I
came to Quincy, I saw Christian people who were committed to
going through all the right motions.
They were professional at putting up a front, which we are
as well, but missing out on deep change.
That study formed a vision for me to break down every barrier
between every person and that intimate, personal relationship
with Jesus. And I know that it couldn't
happen by doing business as usual.
It required change. And so I I cast that vision
before the elders of the church I was serving.
In that time I said we have to do whatever it takes to help
people find an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus
Christ. And I remember at that elders
meeting I got pushed back. But that vision was inside of me
and I wasn't going to be able to honor God doing business as
usual. Because if a vision is
revelatory, then nothing will stop it.
I was passionate about, I was emotional, it was personal, it
was preoccupying, it was powerful.
And that's why I came to Quincy, IL And I, I think you can look
around you and you can see what, what has God done with people
capturing that vision of intimate personal relationship?
What is that produced? What kind of fruit has come on
the tree from that? That's good.
But you know, a vision, How does that vision become a reality?
How does it come to life in our church?
What kind of values do we need to have, you know, to make this
fellowship, Christ honoring and not self-serving.
It comes from defining the things that we that are
primarily important to us for us to make that vision into a
reality. It comes from counting the cost
of it and then signing up for it.
And I have to tell you, that's that's what this church did.
That's what the crossing has done.
And I want to go through those core values with you today to be
God's church. Our core value #1 is the outward
value. We will do whatever it takes to
reach people who are far from Jesus.
Media, take that one into your heart.
We will do whatever it takes. That's a lot to reach people who
are far from Jesus. In John 435, Jesus said, I tell
you, open your eyes and look at the fields.
They are ripe for harvest. We focus outward, which means
that our primary concern are for people who are outside our
church walls, who don't have an intimate, personal relationship
with Jesus. So we invest our time and our
abilities and our resources to reach that group.
That's why our locations are where they are.
It's why our buildings are the way they are.
It's why our services and our ministries are designed the way
they are for an hourly focused church.
The competition is not other churches in the area.
I mean, how many churches to grow?
They want to grow from the other churches in the area.
I'll tell you what our competition is at the crossing
every other available use of time.
What could you use this time for if you weren't here in church
today? If you weren't dedicating it to
the Lord right now, well, a lot of other things and the studies
that we did back then with the, the, the Quincy crossing and
then as we started to branch out into these other locations, we
found out that this was generally true, that our
communities tend to be about 80% with no active faith.
The people that live in our communities, 8 out of 10 of us
have really no active faith. So what do we do?
If we want to be an outwardly focused church, we have to get
into that. The shoes of the 80%.
We have to invite the 80%. We have to build relationships
with the 80% because we want them to know Jesus.
And as we started to do that years ago, you know what we
found out? It was that we had invited about
everybody we know, and there's nobody in the world that knows
the 80% better than the 80%. And when those 80%, those people
that were coming and they were finding Jesus for the first
time, they get so excited about it that they would go invite all
their friends who didn't know Jesus Christ.
And there was this compounding that happened where all these
people started coming who didn't have a relationship with Christ.
You know, a lot of churches, the the the baptisms that you see in
a lot of churches are children that are growing up in Christ.
But our Baptist is we're all adults.
They were people who are for the first time realizing that they
could have an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
You know, the unchurched new Christians, they come with a lot
of baggage. Some of you could could go,
yeah, I can give you an Amen to that one.
But you watch a person change right before your eyes as Jesus
touches them and I go, wow, that's my bigger yes, I don't
mind giving up things. If I can watch that miracle
happen over and over. I will give up what is
comfortable and usual for that. Many years ago I was out in this
lobby and there was a lady that came in real diminutive lady
small and she looked troubled. She looked sad and she was very
quiet and our our our people out in the lobby were very outgoing.
But she shield away. She didn't want to be noticed.
She didn't want anybody to see her.
She had a frown on her face. She didn't have a smile almost
looked painful that she was here.
But there were some people that came up closer to her and kind
of wouldn't let her off the hook and just just kept pushing in,
kept trying to understand who she was.
And over a period of weeks, because I'll tell you, after
that first week, that was a huge deal for her to even walk into a
church. After that, she would every week
she would find it just a little bit easier to come to into
church. She would sit in the back.
She didn't want to be noticed, but but she did that, found out
that the reason that she wasn't smiling or talking is because
most of her teeth were gone. Most of her teeth were gone not
from some periodontal disease, but because they had been
knocked out by a man. And so because of the abuse
she'd had in her life, she really, really pushed away from
other people, been very reclusive.
And she didn't smile because she didn't want people to see that.
She didn't talk to people because she didn't want people
to see that. And as she shared that with some
people out in the lobby, some of the guys took responsibility for
it. They said, you know, a man
knocked her teeth out, we need to do something about it.
And those guys, just guys in a church, said we need to take
responsibility for it. So they took up an offering to
pay for her to have implants and new teeth.
And I thought to myself, if that isn't outward, I don't know what
is. And I remember when the that
surgery had happened and she came in and she walked into the
lobby and she had the brightest, most powerful smile I think I'd
ever seen before. She had been transformed and and
it wasn't anything compared to what God was doing in her heart.
And I thought to myself, that's what it's all about, to be
outwardly focused, to see people where they are and to say, you
know what? Jesus can change you.
And even though a smile is a great thing, it's nothing
compared to what he can do in a human heart.
It's our first core value. Our second core value is
downward. We will gladly give up the
things we love to reach a future generation we love even more.
Sometimes it's hard because you know people younger than us,
They like different things than us.
And if we're a consumer in the church, we might want to have
what we want to have rather than focus our attention downward.
Matthew 1914, Jesus said, let the little children come to me
and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of heaven belongs to
such as these. We love little kids, we love
teens, we love young adults. We don't call them the next
generation, we call them this generation because they can
change the world. Right now.
We heavily invest in preschool and camp and weekly ministries
to help young people find that intimate personal relationship
with Jesus Christ. You know, there are elders at
the crossing that came to know Jesus Christ because their
children were in preschool here at the 48th Street campus.
There was someone standing right about here a little while ago.
Beautiful blonde girl and I remember when she was four in
preschool and she went home to her mom and dad, Craig and Julie
Hilbing and began to share Christ with them at 4:00.
Now Craig is an elder. I remember when he started
working with youth after he came to know Jesus Christ and how God
had changed his life. He's here today.
And Julie, she started using her gifts and talents to start a
workout class where Christ is shared with a bunch of the
ladies at the church. Still doing that today.
And then here's a little 4 year old Lydia now leading you in
worship. See, that's what God does.
I could tell you about Chris and Lee McKenzie and their daughter,
their their son Julian, who was a handful back then in
preschool. My wife would tell you and how
God changed their hearts so completely, how he became an
elder in the church and they served here together until they
moved to Chicago for many, many years.
I could tell you about Denny and Lindsay Wagner.
They're here this morning. How they brought their kids,
Olivia, Emily and Haley, to preschool.
And now those three girls are so active in so many ministries.
And Lindsay is in the baptistry more than more, more than most
of our pastors as she's discipling girls.
Then he's an elder. I could tell you about Dale and
Sandy Heniger. They're here today.
They were here from before I was here and their son James, who
was a miracle baby because they were dealing with infertility
and they they had already adopted.
But then here God gives him this baby.
And I remember Allison going, boy, that boy's a handful in
preschool and how God has turned that around.
I was talking to him out in the lobby earlier this morning
because now he's on staff at the crossing that is so usual around
here. I can tell you about Randy and
Becky Drish who got involved do becoming guides at Journey to
Bethlehem. And I remember when I was out in
this lobby and I tapped him on the shoulder to become campus
pastor, starting the Hannibal location and how hundreds and
hundreds of lives have come to know Jesus Christ, not just from
them, but from their kids and them serving as a family
together. Pretty awesome.
And you know, I could keep on telling stories like that.
We focus downward because Christian maturity should be
defined as it's not about us to set our own desires, our own
wants, and our own needs aside. To fix our eyes on Jesus means
to fix our eyes outward and to fix our eyes downward.
In Hebrews 12/2 and three, it says Fixing our eyes on Jesus,
the pioneer and perfector of faith.
For the joy set before him, He endured the cross, scorning his
shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners that you
do not grow weary and lose heart.
Our third core value is to be relevant.
What we say is we'll do fresh things and fresh ways to reach
people that no one else is reaching.
To hear that, to reach people that no one else is reaching.
Second Corinthians 215 says for we are to God the pleasing aroma
of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are
perishing. I have a question for you,
really important, deeply spiritual question.
How many of you have ever eaten at Lambert's?
Oh, there's a lot of hands that went up.
You know the tagline of Lambert's, It's called the home.
Yeah. That's a good.
That's it. The home of the throat roll.
Right. And I remember the first time
Allison and I ate at Lambert's. There's something special about
it. And I don't know, all of our
locations spread out if you've ever had the opportunity to do
it. But it's great because other
than the fact that you're really tying on the feed bag.
Yeah, but. But they make these fresh rolls
that are just awesome. And the smell, the fragrance of
these rolls, it rolls out of the kitchen and they come out with
these huge trays of rolls and they go hot rolls.
And then people put their hands up and they just start grabbing
rolls and chucking them at you. And so rolls fill the air going
in all directions. These ducking rolls, catching
rolls. And then of course, they have
all this stuff on the table to do.
And I thought, you know, that's the fragrance of Christ.
What smells better than fresh bread?
I did a sermon that weekend called Fresh Bread.
I found some people that could make really good rolls.
They made them in our kitchen. This is back when we were down
at the the gym before we had this part of the building at
48th St. and and you could smell it.
People were you could tell they didn't know what was going on
that day, but there was they were getting hungry because they
could smell it. And then here comes these trays
of fresh rolls. And I was preaching this sermon
called fresh bread. And I go, who wants a hot roll?
People's hands went up. We're chucking rolls all over
the place in church. That's relevant.
Man, that's that's crazy. We had Hola carts of apple
butter and regular butter and honey and all kinds of other
things to put on it. All these people listen to the
fragrance of Christ in the sermon while they're munching on
their hot rolls. Pretty awesome.
You see, that's what we want to be.
We want our songs to be fresh, our messages to make sense, use
words that we can all understand in our ministries, touch places
where we live and the challenges that we're facing.
That's why we do uncommon. Uncommon reflects that.
Rise reflects that. Camp reflects that.
Marriage retreats reflect that, as does regeneration or our
thrift stores and our coffee bars and our small groups and
all the other stuff we do. We want to meet people right
where they are and share a Jesus that they can understand.
And we will never compromise on the truth of God's Word, but we
will present it in a relevant way so that people can connect
to it. See, that's what Jesus did over
and over again. Whether you're talking about the
woman at the well or a man let down through a roof, or a woman
who touched the hem of his garment, or the 10s of thousands
that he would heal and feed in in in one afternoon, or the
thousands that were listening to his teaching on a mountainside
and on and on. I want to be a church like that.
Number of years ago at the end of a service someone came up to
me with a box, 1 of the difference makers and they came
up with a box and handed it to me and I opened it up and it was
a wedding set was a woman's wedding set, an engagement ring
and a wedding ring. And there was a note inside the
box that someone, a lady has left it in the woman's bathroom
and she said my marriage is over but maybe somebody could get the
use out of this. She handed that or this
difference maker handed it to me.
I didn't know what to do with it.
What do you do with that? So I put it in my desk drawer
and it sat in my desk drawer for probably 2 years.
Was just in there and I had a guy that was coming to me and he
came for counseling. He had a lot of addiction
issues. The woman that he was living
with also had addiction issues, but they were coming to church
and they were hearing about Jesus and it was challenging
them and he wanted more of his questions answered about that.
And as we were talking together, I said, you know what?
You're living with that girl, but you're not married to her.
You need to marry her. You need to do it.
What do we say? We need to do God's way?
Because God's way is the best way.
And he only told me, well, I'd like to ask her to marry me, but
I can't afford a ring. True story.
I went really well. God bought you a ring.
He's like, what? I go, yeah, it's right here in
my desk. He goes, what are you talking
about? I pulled that out.
I go, here's the ring that God bought for your girlfriend.
And he looked at it. He was out of excuses.
It was pretty wild. I go.
But you know, if you're going to get married and God expects you
to be the spiritual leader of your family, you need to lead
this woman in the direction of Jesus Christ.
You need to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
Are you ready to do that? He goes, I think I am.
So that weekend came to church in that baptistry, both he and
his girlfriend came forward to accept Jesus Christ.
Oh, that's not even the good part of the story.
And they got in that water together and I baptized them
both into Jesus Christ. They came up out of the water,
and guess what He had in his hand.
So in that baptistry, he asked her to marry him and put the
engagement ring on her finger. Everybody was clapping.
Knew what I said. Since it was the end of the
service, I go, everybody just stay here.
And they came right down here and I married him at the end of
the service. How's that for relevant?
How's that for doing fresh things in fresh ways to reach
people nobody else is reaching? Our 4th core value is we'll take
big faith filled risks and never insult God with small thinking
and safe living. In Acts 429 to 31, after
apostles had been beaten for their faith, they prayed this
prayer to God. Now Lord, consider their threats
and enable your servants to speak Your word with great
boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal
and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy
servant Jesus. And after they prayed, the place
where they were meeting was shaken and they were all filled
with the Holy Spirit and spoke the Word of God boldly.
Traditional churches could easily be defined as places of
small thinking and safe living. This is certainly not the case
about the church that we read about in the book of Acts.
The early church was an extreme church.
The very first sermon, all the listeners were accused of
murder. I mean, that's what Peter said.
God has made this Jesus whom you've crucified, both Lord and
Christ. And instead of picking up rocks
and stoning Peter and the rest of the apostles, they were cut
to their heart. And they said, what do we do?
And he said, repent and be baptized everyone of you in the
name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins, and
you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
And 3000 people were baptized that day.
That is an extreme church. It's also a very risky message.
It wasn't long before the apostles were being hauled in by
the authorities. They were first threatened, then
later beaten. That's pretty risky.
Not long after that, we read about the first martyrs, Stephen
and James. Definitely extreme.
Not too long after that, the church's number one enemy.
It became his greatest evangelist.
What kind of risk was it not only to forgive a man who had
brutalized and killed church members, but to unleash him to
be the international spokesman for the movement?
But that's what happened with the Apostle Paul.
I think you get the point. The church was designed to be a
risk taking enterprise. Risk is resisted in the church
because we fear failure. I find it interesting that the
church can become so adverse to failure when, in my mind,
failure is essential for doing anything great for God.
The only time I've ever really been concerned about the
crossing and its future is when we've decided it's time to slow
down, take a breath, and get our bearings before moving forward
again. And I'm amazed how quickly we
can become sedentary and neglect the urgency of our mission.
You see, debt is risky, hiring is risky.
Change is risky, eliminating programs is risky.
It's all risky. Risks are worth it, though, when
you're doing them for what you know to be the right reasons.
And even if they're the right reasons, there's going to be
times when stuff's going to blow up in your face.
Regardless of success or failure, though, God is still
God, and we're still serving it as pleasure.
And it hasn't stopped us. So we keep taking risks, resting
on our faith in Jesus to build His Kingdom, learning from our
mistakes, adapting our approach to take new ground.
We often consider the risks of trying something new, but fail
to consider the risks of not trying.
See, we considered an insult to God to remove our faith and
trust in Him by only doing things that we believe we could
accomplish without Him. Our fifth core value is we make
leaders. We will make leaders who honor
God and inspire people and they will change the world.
Second Timothy 322 says, and the things you have heard me say in
the presence of many witnesses and trust to reliable people who
will also be qualified to teach others.
Think about what Jesus accomplished through 12
committed guys more than he did with any large crowd that he
attracted. And in order for a real
discipleship to happen, three things need to be there.
An intentional leader, and Jesus was certainly that.
A relational environment where you actually are getting to know
others and a reproducible process.
And that's critical for every ministry.
At the Crossing, we encourage everyone to find their
replacement to build up the next leader of that role.
But nowhere is it more critical than the highest levels of
leadership. Why?
Because leadership isn't about winning a popularity contest.
It's about providing for a new generation the most rock solid,
biblically grounded, vision minded leaders to move Christ's
church forward. You know, our elders do that
whenever we have new elders come on, they, they spend a year in
training, They have a mentor elder.
They attend elders meetings, don't speak in those meetings.
They ask questions of their mentor and anytime in that
process they can say, you know what?
I just don't think this is for me or the existing elders can
say, I don't know if this is for you.
That's important. I remember doing this with
Clayton. It started 11 years ago when I
told the elders to be watching and praying for two years about
the possibility of Clayton being the next senior pastor.
And that's what they did. For two years they watched and
prayed, and after that two years, they agreed it was a good
idea. Clayton and I were in New York
when I told him. I also told him he'd be waiting
for six more years. He took that in stride. 3 years
ago this weekend, I announced that he was taking that role.
I can't. Amen.
Praise the Lord. I cannot tell you how many
leadership transitions in churches are Greek tragedies.
They're absolute disasters. But our church never lost a
step. As a matter of fact, it gained
some. And that's the way God intends
for it to be. Because we need to make leaders.
Our 6 core value is growth. We will never stop measuring,
changing and moving for growth because nothing matters more to
God than people. Acts 247 says the Lord added to
their number daily those who are being saved.
You know, last weekend we had 7635 people in person at our
locations. That means we had 7635
opportunities to share the gospel and we had 4693 people
online. That means we had 12,328
opportunities just last weekend. And I don't want to waste even
one. Not even one sometimes, and you
all know it, you only get one. I was talking to someone
Wednesday night in the lobby and they that person told me that
they had been inviting the same couple for 10 months and it was
Wednesday night that they came. Sometimes you only get one.
And we want to present the gospel with the greatest
excellence, even though we are as imperfect as we are.
See, we know that growth was important in the 1st century
because it was written about constantly.
On the day of Pentecost, someone counted the number of baptisms
3000. The word added described the
growth of the church in its early days.
We read about the number swelling to 5000 in the and then
in the book of Acts, the word added is changed to the word
multiplied, which is what happened when we went to
multiple locations, multiple services.
While some might resist counting or attendance numbers, it seems
like the early church considered it very important.
We also measure baptisms. I was talking to Clayton earlier
this week, and we're on schedule to go over 900 baptism this
year, 900 of them. And Buddy.
Yeah. Yeah.
Do you think that Clayton was thinking about that, or was he
thinking about how do we get to 1000?
I'll give you one guess. And then I told him that the
best we ever did as a church was 1011.
And you know, he wants to beat that one.
Yeah, I would too. But you know what?
That's all because you God's people are sharing your faith
with others. We have all sorts of metrics
that we use. We want to know how many people
go to our church in any given community, and we divide it by
the amount of people that live in the community.
And you know, the goal that we have is at least 10% of 10% of
the people that go to a particular church in a
particular community go to our church.
And we use that as a measure of influence.
How do we influence that community?
We make it count by measuring, setting goals, evaluating
processes and programs, and changing accordingly.
But listen to me, we're not who makes the church grow.
Only God makes the church grow. We plant, we water, we
cultivate, we harvest, but the miracle is the growth that only
God can do. Growth is the fingerprint of
God. Finally, our 7th core value is
oneness. The church is the hope of the
world and we can accomplish infinitely more together than
apart. In John 17, Jesus high priestly
prayer, the night before he was crucified, he prayed this.
My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will
believe in me through their message that all of them may be
one. Father, just as you are in me
and I am in You, may they also be in us, so that the world may
believe that you sent me. I have given them the glory that
you gave me, that they may be one as we are one, I and them
and You and Me, so that they may be brought to complete unity.
Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them
even as You have loved me. Few years ago Allison and I were
at a a conference meeting and we had a day off and we were in
California, Central California. And so we had a rental car and
we drove to a place called Big Basin State Park in Central
California. For one reason, neither one of
us have ever seen the coastal redwoods.
Now, coastal redwoods are something amazing to behold.
I mean, they are so massive. I remember being in that, in
that forest and it was, it was like being in Jurassic Park.
I was waiting for like AT Rex to come and attack us.
It was super quiet because of all the of that foliage.
It was actually amazing how huge they are, how tall they are.
And when I was reading about them on the signs that were
there, you know what it said? It says that their root system
is actually very shallow. You'd think with these towering
trees that they would have to have super deep root systems,
but they don't. Here's what they do have.
Those trees never grow alone. They grow in circles.
And you know what they call those circles?
Families and there's a mom tree and a dad tree and the mom tree
and the dad tree are surrounded in this circle by all their
children. And the reason that those
coastal redwoods don't fall down is because all of their root
systems entangle in one another and they hold each other up.
We did a, an album, our worship ministry.
The first album we did, it was called together as one.
And the front of that picture is a, the front of that album was a
picture Allison took of those coastal redwoods.
Because that's what we believe that we're stronger together
than we are apart, that God has used the strength of our
relationships to take new ground that we could have never taken
by ourselves. You know that 48th St. was is
kind of the mom campus to all of us and yet they only account for
about 35% of our tenants. 65% are all the other locations.
See, God never intended for us to do anything alone.
That's why the name that God gave for the church, Ecclesia,
is a word for assembly that's been called out, sanctified for
his purpose. We were intended to work in
unity. Those are the core values that
we hold tightly onto in order to reach people that don't have a
relationship with Christ to present to them an intimate,
personal relationship. I believe in this generation.
I believe that we can have an influence far greater than we've
had in the past, by far. And you know what?
I want this generation's joy, their team spirit, their
willingness to learn and share, their non judgmental attitude.
I want their leadership and their fresh new ideas of Gen.
X and Gen. Y and Gen.
Z and whatever Gen. number letter they have now.
So much of Jesus is reflected in them.
I want that millennial generation, their desire to hear
everyone, to be open, to learn and try new things.
I want the Gen. Xers where they see Jesus in
that small band of brothers and sisters and the mission of
living. I want the baby boomers that see
Jesus in his optimism building, his mighty church.
The traditionalists where we see Jesus in his loyalty, his
tenacity and his self sacrifice. We make it count when it's not
about us, and we capture the power that comes from unity when
it's not about us. And I want you to consider that
as we move to a time of decision.
And some of you might be listening to me going, OK, I
just heard a sermon about the church or about this church.
What difference does it make? Listen, it makes all the
difference. It makes all the difference.
God never sent you out to do that work alone.
He never said that I'm going to give you all of the gifts,
everything you need to do everything.
He made you intentionally to not be able to do everything so that
you would need the person sitting next to you or behind
you or coming to a different service or a different campus
than you to accomplish what you couldn't accomplish.
It's only happening when the Holy Spirit of God works through
His people as a church, as a body, as a community to change
the entire context around them. And God has done that, and He'll
do that through you. But you were never intended to
do this alone. You were intended to do it with
other people just as messed up as you, just as fouled up as
you, that all of us together would become this beautiful
thing. I'm going to ask, I didn't tell
you to do this for can tech people turn on the light, the
baptistry? You see the scripture right
there says first Peter 25. You see that?
I wonder how many of you've ever looked that up.
Do you see what looks like stones suspended in the air?
And have you ever noticed that if those stones were to go down,
they would complete that wall? And if you look up first Peter
25, you'll understand what that means that you and I, as living
stones were designed. To build a royal house, but it
won't be complete until God completes it.
And there's some of you here today that have never made a
decision to accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and
Savior. To come into an intimate,
personal relationship with Jesus Christ because something is
missing in this church and it will continue to be missing
until you are part of it. God isn't finished.
He is not finished with this community.
He's not finished with this church.
He's not finished with this region.
He is not finished. And God is calling on you to be
a part of it. And if you are here and you
don't have an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ,
there's nobody standing in your way except for you.
There's going to be somebody right up there by that
baptistry, right next to that Scripture, who would love
nothing more than to talk to you about your next steps with Jesus
Christ. And if you have accepted Christ,
these steps are for you. Now, I don't know what you might
think when you come up to these steps, but when I've knelt at
these steps, the thing that's most important is the same thing
that's important for a person who's receiving Christ for the
first time. And that is Lord, Get Me Out of
my own way so that God can do something in me unhindered by
me. I don't know what it is that God
wants you to do, but I want to ask you a question.
Is your heart available? Is your heart available?
Why don't you let him know that today, on your knees at these
steps, my heart is available for you.
Would you stand with me and pray with me?
Jesus? We pray in Jesus name, Heavenly
Father, that you would take this moment, that it be a moment of
clarity for us, that instead of a stronghold, that our heart
would be wide open, all the doors, all the windows, wide
open so that a fresh wind and a fresh fire can flow through us.
Your Holy Spirit, so that we might smell the fragrance of
Christ and be changed. Because like you Father, we want
to have a heart like you and we want to be here for your lost
children so they find their way home in Jesus name, Amen.