Good morning, Happy Mother's Day to all your mom's out there.
There's nothing like Mother's Day celebrations for getting all
the moms up super early to get all their young kids up super
early to be at church to sing for them.
Sure, that works out somehow. My name is Daniel.
I am the lead pastor here at REST Church.
Welcome. My wife and I got a phone call
at about 6:20 on Tuesday morning, and we looked at our
phones and we realized that our daughter Avery, who was driving
up the Grapevine to go to school at Cal State Northridge on
Tuesday, had got into a car accident.
And well, here I'll show you. And so as the car rolls to the
stop at the centre of the I5, up the Grapevine in the rain before
it probably had fully stopped, she was on the phone calling
mom. That's how a lot of us feel
about moms. I was, I was trying to figure
out this week, like, how many times does the average kid say
mom by like the time they're 5? And so, you know, I'm like
looking at this stuff up and I end up on this, this TikTok
video of this mom who decided to count how many times her kids
said her name like in a single day.
It's pretty hilarious. It's better because she has an
accent. But here, check.
Good. Morning.
Let's see how many times I hear the word mom in one day.
Mom. Here we go.
Comment below with your guesses. It is 8:50 and we are at 88 moms
lunchtime. 127 kids are sleeping.
This gets a little bit of a breakdown.
It's 341. So we wonder why mums are sick
of hearing their name 234 times today from 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM.
Also, just did some quick math. If that's the daily average in
one year I'm hearing it 85,410 times.
Good night. Some of you can relate to that.
The best part of being a dad is when your kid walks by you four
or five times and finally looks and goes, where's mom?
You know, for Mother's Day, I was, I was thinking about all of
the, all of the attributes about mothers that we really
appreciate the, the loyalty, sacrifice, patience,
faithfulness, just the, the presence of a mom when, when,
when a mother is around. The way for many of us, our, our
moms have prayed for us for so long, the love and tenderness.
And so, you know, I was like, man, there's so many different
things and it's trying to pick one to even do a message on
today. And I thought, you know, what
we'll do instead is instead of picking one, let's go look at
the most honored mother in the Bible and see what God
highlights about that woman that was worthy of honor and praise.
And so we're going to do that today.
We're going to be in Luke chapter 1 here near the end.
And before we we start our reading, I'll just give you some
back story. The Angel Gabriel has just shown
up to this betrothed virgin teenage girl named Mary.
And he tells her that she's been chosen by God to have a son and
she will call his name Jesus, and he will be the son of the
Most High and he will reign over the House of Jacob and his
Kingdom will have no end. And she says would probably most
of us in her place would, would say she goes, and how how is
that going to happen? Because I'm a virgin.
And the Angel has just has just told her just an impossible
miracle that she's going to have a son, this Immaculate
Conception, even though she's never been with a man.
And she's asking for an answer. OK, well, but how?
And this is we'll pick this up in Luke chapter one, verse 35.
This is the angel's answer. The Holy Spirit will come upon
you, and the power of the Most High will over shadow you, and
therefore the child to be born will be called holy.
That means set apart the Son of God, and behold, your relative
Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a Son, and this
is the 6th month with her who was called barren.
For nothing will be impossible with God.
And Mary said, Behold, I am the servant of the Lord, let it be
to me according to your word. And the Angel departed from her.
The first thing that the Bible shows us about the most honored
mother in all of Scripture is actually in Mary's response to
the Angel. The Angel doesn't give her a
detailed explanation of how any of this is going to work.
His answer is pretty vague. She says how and he gives her,
oh, the Holy Spirit, there's no, there's no scientific
explanation. He doesn't walk her through the
biological. I mean, like there's there's no
logistics. Any of your planners are very
unsettled right now. How is this going to happen?
The Holy Spirit. And then he leaves.
And yet Mary, we see from her response, the first thing is she
chooses to believe that God is who he says he is and that he
will do what he says he'll do. Now she's just been told that
her entire entire future is about to change, to be
rearranged by this impossible miracle in ways that she
probably doesn't even understand yet, and she chooses to believe.
She chooses to believe belief, and you can see it in this
moment in Scripture. Belief is not the absence of
shock. She's clearly shocked.
Belief is choosing the word of God over the logic of your own
circumstances and feelings. Christian, for the the next time
your circumstances are loudly telling you one thing and God's
word is quietly telling you another, you slow down and you
ask yourself, which one am I going to let win?
Because this is where belief lives.
Not in the easy moments, in the loud hard moments.
So the first thing that God shows us about the most honoured
mother in history is that is her belief.
But the second is this, it's her identity.
Because look at her response to the Angel.
Even without details, her response.
I am a servant of the Lord and that shows us something even
deeper. It shows us who this
impoverished teenager viewed herself as.
You know, at the root of everything, you and I, we all
have an identity. We have an identity, a way we
see ourselves. And it's actually how we we wrap
value and self worth around ourselves.
It's in fact that will lead us to it will impact how we see the
world and how we move in the world around us.
Mary's identity is I am a servant of the Lord.
Now I want you to understand how remarkable that is.
Like this isn't a stage response.
This is in the moment in the shock and angels there, it tells
her about this impossible miracle doesn't really answer
her question. And she says I am a servant of
the Lord and she could have identified herself in 100
different ways. She could have said, well, I'm a
Jew or I'm a teenage girl. She could have said, well, I'm a
I'm betrothed or, or I'm the daughter of Joey Kim.
She, she had lots of ways to identify herself.
We do this. We identify ourselves via
different, different things about ourselves.
I'm a Millennial or I'm a Gen. X.
I'm an American or I, I'm a Republican.
I'm a Christian. I'm from Bakersfield.
I'm a Texan. We have identities built around
some of these things, built around a career choice or an
education status or a relationship status, a zip code,
a political tribe, social circles.
But but Mary, in the moment, in the shock, the overflow is I am
a servant of the Lord. It's so rooted in her that even
in the moment, in real time, it's what comes out.
Now. I just just consider that for a
moment because because like just about everybody that sings as an
Angel in the in the Bible is pretty scared, right?
Because it's almost always a first response.
It's always like, don't be afraid, which tells you it's
probably pretty scary in a moment of shock.
Who are you? When you introduce yourself,
when you're worried, when you're anxious, when you're stressed,
when you're angry, who are you? What what, what bubbles up when
you can't exactly control it and put on that church face?
Is it about your reputation, about how people perceive you?
Because her reputation was about to be ruined.
And maybe she didn't realize that yet, but her response is I
am a servant of the Lord. It's a it's a question worth
taking home today. What's that identity that comes
bubbling out when you're under pressure?
Because the thing that comes out of your mouth when you're scared
is probably closer to your real identity than you want to let
on. That's the real 1, not the one
on your Instagram bio, the one that surfaces at 6:20 in the
morning when the phone rings. That's the one worthy of working
on. She believes we see her
identity, but third, we see her submission.
Listen to what she says right after this.
She says let it be to me. According to your word, that is
a costly sentence. She doesn't understand
everything that that's going to cost her in the moment.
She doesn't know the scandal that's coming.
She doesn't know that Joseph's first response when he finds out
it's not going to be great. She doesn't know anything about
the the flight to Egypt that they'll take later to escape
Herod. She doesn't.
She doesn't know about the sword that Simeon will later say will
Pierce her own soul. She doesn't understand about the
grief or the suffering that is coming.
She says yes before she even sees the full picture.
Submission to God is not passive.
It's actually, it's the most active theological posture in
the Christian life because they're always going to be
things you don't understand. The decision to let God's word
be more authoritative than your own understanding as a choice.
And, and as Christians, they're always going to be mysteries
that we don't fully understand here on earth when it comes to
the mind of the Father. They're always going to be
things that are unseen, things that are unknown, things that
are confusing, things that are unexplained.
Yet the Bible calls us who are in Christ to submit to his will.
Jesus would actually say the same thing when he teaches his
disciples how to pray. He'll say your will be done on
earth as it is in heaven. And here's this teenage girl, in
the shock of the moment, told about an impossible miracle
without a lot of answers. She believes she identifies as a
servant of the Lord, and then immediately she submits to the
will of God. Do you want to know why she's
the most honored mother in history?
Christian submission is practiced in the small things
before it's possible in the big ones.
You practice it every time you you read something in Scripture
that doesn't agree with how you feel.
Anytime you read something in the Bible that you don't want to
do when you do it anyways. Every time you choose God's
definition of forgiveness over your own feelings about it.
Every time you say your will be done out loud about something
that is genuinely going to cost you something.
That's where we start and, and, and actually belief and identity
and submission, they're actually connected.
They're all inseparable. Did you realize, Christian, that
you only actually believe the parts of the Bible that you live
out? See, if you say you believe it,
but you're not willing to live it out, that's not actually
belief. That's lip service.
To really believe it is to live it out, particularly when you
don't agree with it. This is the fourth part to this
little story. You see Mary's given
confirmation from God. The Angel tells her not only is
this going to happen to you, but your relative Elizabeth, in her
old age, who's been barren her whole life, has conceived a son
and she's already 6 months pregnant.
Because nothing is impossible with God.
That's if you you read down in the story to see what happens
next. Mary actually goes.
Elizabeth lives in another town. We find out and Mary travels to
see Elizabeth. And as she does, she gets this
confirmation of what's occurring.
Not only is Elizabeth pregnant, but you, you see this this
reaction from Elizabeth when Mary walks in the door.
Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your
womb. And why is this granted to me,
that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears,
the baby in my womb leaped for joy.
Elizabeth in another town through another miracle confirms
this angels word about Mary in this miracle.
But notice that the confirmation comes after the belief and the
identity and the submission, not before.
God doesn't give you the proof to say yes.
He gives you the promise and then when you say yes he shows
you the confirmation. That's almost always how it
works in the Bible and in the Christian life.
Notice this about the confirmation is swell.
Mary had to go find it. Mary had to get up and she had
to travel. This teenage, impoverished, now
pregnant girl had to travel to another town on her own to seek
out Elizabeth, to see the confirmation of God's promise
with her own eyes. Not because she doubted it, but
because we should all desire to see God at work.
We should push into where God is confirming things in our lives
and in our families. We should be proactive about it,
leaning in, moving toward the evidence of God at work.
And she does. She goes, this is the pattern
again and again and again. Belief, identity, submission,
and then confirmation. That's not just Mary's story.
That's the, that's the shape of every life after Jesus.
Jesus said it this way. Whoever loses his life for my
sake will find it. And Mary is the first person in
the New Testament that gets to live that out.
And he's not even been born yet, you know, for, for a lot of us.
I had someone I was texting with this last week and I said, Hey,
how can I pray for you? And they said, I, I really like
to, I really like to hear from the Lord hear, hear about
direction in my life and hear where God's leading me and get
some clarification. And, and I hear that a lot.
But I think that the opposite is often true for us.
I think God is often already confirmed things in our life.
We just haven't gone to pay attention and see it yet.
God's already at work. He's already confirming
promises. We're just really busy.
And then you get a change in the story.
In this moment, you get one of the most beautiful passages in
Scripture. It's called Mary's song or the
Magnificat. And it's if you see in your
Bible, it's kind of listed like a like song lyrics, like a poem,
and it just kind of naturally pours out of Mary and it's
recorded here in Luke 1. I want to read it to you.
That is absolutely beautiful. And I want to show you that in
it is this pattern that we should pay attention to.
It's kind of the kind of the key to unlock what's happening with
Mary. Verse 46, it says this and Mary
said, my soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in
God my Savior. For he has looked upon the
humble estate of his servant from behold, from now on, all
generations will call me blessed, for he who is mighty
has done great things for me. And holy is His name, and His
mercy is for those who fear Him from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with His arm.
He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the mighty from their Thrones and exalted
those of humble estate. He has filled the hungry with
good things, and the rich He has sent away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of His mercy, as
He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his offspring
forever. I want you to see three things
about how Mary describes God in this song and why this is so
important. The first thing in the in by
verse 49, she is describing who he is, who he is.
She calls Him holy, she calls him mighty.
This is where she starts. She didn't start with her
situation. She didn't start with her
circumstances. Here is a impoverished, teenage,
unwed pregnant girl and she's talking about who God is, not
her feelings, not her fears, some of the nature of God.
By verse 50, she begins to talk about what God does, what he
does. He's a God of mercy.
He's a God of justice. He's a God who provides.
He reverses everything in this fallen world that he has
established. He lifts the lowly.
He fills the hungry, He scatters the proud.
And she wraps up in verses 54 and 55 by explaining what he
keeps. She talks about his faithfulness
that he keeps, His promises that he remembers, He always
remembers. Think about what, what, what
Mary's doing this moment. She's describing God, his
nature, his works, his faithfulness as she's carrying
Jesus inside her body and singing about God.
The fullness of everything that she's actually saying out loud
is about to walk on earth in human flesh, and she's singing
about what Jesus is about to go do.
Because Jesus will lift the lowly, He will fill the hungry.
He will remember His mercy. The Magnificent is not just a
worship song. It is a preview of the gospel.
Now, why is this song such a big deal?
It almost feels like the thing that, you know, you're reading
the, the story and you kind of skip over, Oh, it's just a song.
But I want you to see something else.
See, when I read about these things about Mary, when I, when
I read about her belief and, and her identity and her, her
submission. And I think to myself, like, how
do you become a person that can believe like that?
How do you become a, a person who can submit who, who has an
identity that is rooted? How do you how do you do that?
How do you get an identity that is so rooted in being a child of
God that we don't get swept away by every identity that the world
offers? How do you become willing to
submit so radically that that even when things are hard, even
when they're costly, even when they're counter intuitive, like
love your enemies as yourself, turn the other cheek,
unsubscribe, serve others before yourself?
How do you become a person who wants to do that?
The answer is actually in her song.
You see, Mary had a clearview of who God is, a clearview of what
He does, a clearview of what He keeps.
If you take nothing else away from today from this message, if
you take nothing else, take this one idea away that's nestled in
Luke 1. You cannot be the best version
of you if you don't see the real version of God.
You cannot be the best version of you if you can't see the real
version of God. Mary didn't produce all of these
things in her life by trying harder.
She didn't produce them through self effort.
I'm just going to try really hard to be good.
She produced it because of what she saw in God's nature, in His
faithfulness, in his history, in his work, in her life, in the
lives of people around her. Her praise was an overflow of
her theology. Theology is just the study of
God. It bubbled up out of her because
she could see God clearly, she could see herself clearly, and
because she could see herself clearly.
We see these responses. And I think it's important to to
sit here for just a minute and talk through that.
The idea that, listen, I think most of us can trace the
problems that we're going through, the struggles that
we're having, back to this idea. We don't actually see God
clearly and therefore we don't see ourselves clearly.
When you see a distorted view of God, you will see a distorted
view of yourself. For instance, if you don't
understand how mighty God is, if you don't understand how
faithful God is, if we don't understand how loving God is, if
we don't fully grasp his omnipotence, that's that he is
all powerful or his omnipresence, that he is
everywhere at once, that he is timeless and outside of time
itself entirely, that he's omniscient and he knows all
things. God is so great that you cannot
fully wrap your mind around him. And So what we have a tendency
to do in our fallen broken state is we begin to reduce God.
We begin to begin to shrink him down into something that we can
contain and understand fully because we don't like mystery
and he can't be that powerful. And so we, we, we put him in a
box, we contain him in some, some way.
We, we reduce him to a caricature or an idol or a
concept or a meme. And when we do, we we not only
lose sight of the real God, we begin to not be able to see
ourselves clearly either. This is actually what happened.
The whole story of the Bible starts in the very beginning in
a garden, and there's two people, Adam and Eve, and Eve
eats this apple. She buys this lie, but there's
no way that she disobeys God in that moment if she could see God
clearly. Because the first thing she does
is she buys a lie that God is hiding something from them.
He's holding something good back.
She's already begun to see a distorted version of God, and
because she sees a distorted version of God, she begins to
see a distorted version of herself.
I could be like God. I shouldn't be a servant.
I shouldn't be a worshipper. I should be like God.
I should reign and rule. I should be in charge.
Because the moment you begin to see a distorted version of God,
you begin to see a distorted version of yourself.
And that sin that follows leads to every piece of devastation
that has ever happened in this broken world.
Christian, you who profess Christ.
Much of your struggle is rooted in a distorted view of who God
is. This is why the Bible says that
the beginning of all wisdom is fear of the Lord.
You get fear of the Lord. What you need to fear the Lord,
because to truly see who God is, is to respond in reverence and
fear to His might and His Majesty and His greatness.
It's like standing next to a giant waterfall.
It's beautiful, but it's powerful and therefore
dangerous. Or standing next to a rocket
launch and watching this tonnage of machinery go to space.
It's beautiful, but it's powerful.
We're standing 10 feet away from a lion.
It's beautiful, but it's powerful.
To begin to see a clearview of God is also to begin to fear
him, because there's a reverence in that power.
And to fear God means you've begun to see him clearly.
And so much of our struggle with submission and with with
identity and with belief comes down to the fact that we've lost
sight of who God really is. We've gotten busy.
This world is loud and noisy. Amen.
There's so many things that want your attention.
Do you know I was reading the statistics recently Says the
average person in America now spends 39 hours a week on social
media. Yo, that's a full time job and
they're not paying you for it. Some of you are paying for it.
It's not how jobs are supposed to work 39 hours, you know, some
of us now 39 hours we're we're being discipled by an algorithm
built by a man or a machine on a little glass screen.
See, couldn't have set that up better.
Thank you, Lauren. It's no wonder that the average
American has a distorted view of God.
We're not. We're not being discipled by
Bibles. We're being discipled by phones.
You're not being discipled by the word of God.
You're being discipled by TikTok.
Can you imagine if the average American spent 39 hours a week
in their Bible? Some of you get to 39 minutes
and you're sweating. I'm messing with you.
How do you fix this? It's actually two things at the
same time. To fix this in One Direction, we
increase the amount of time that we spend with the Lord.
If you want to improve our relationship, you spend.
You just increase the amount of time you spend with them.
But you know, the other thing that you can do is you can also
remove some of the distractions that actually create those
distortions. And so if, if you will increase
the amount of time you spend with the Lord and you will
decrease some of the time and the attention that you're giving
to the noise of the outside world, it actually begins to
help. Now, it's not enough to just do
1. You can't, you can't simply
remove some of the distractions. That's not it.
You have to do both, put some things in place to remove some
distractions and give the Lord some of our time, some of our
attention, some of our affection.
We have to steep ourselves in Scripture.
That's a that's a word we don't use very often.
Steep to steep in the Bible they use a Greek word called
epignosis and it means to this deep experiential knowledge, not
knowledge, not going to school and knowledge that you've
experienced at such a level. I like to say that it's not
simply that you've you've consumed something that's that
you've digested and metabolized it.
If the steep in the word of God. We don't use steep a lot.
Steep. Is anyone ever made a cup of
tea, you traitors? We don't drink tea.
We're American. I like my tea in the harbour
like every other patriots. These are horrible jokes.
Do you've ever, do you ever gotten a really hot cup of, of
water and you've taken that tea bag and you've you've put it in
the water and you've watched it? You actually can watch all the
flavour and the colour and everything to come out of the
tea bag and it turns a simple cup of water into a cup of tea.
And you know, crazy after, after a little while, if you, if you
let it steep enough, it smells different, it looks different,
it tastes different. Do you know if you just popped
it in and popped it out, I wouldn't do a lot right?
You know, some of us are wondering why our Christianity
is weak, and I would just tell you, maybe we could leave the
tea bag in longer, just a little longer, just a little more, a
little more, just a little more. If you're wondering why there's
a lack of flavour in your life, maybe we could just leave the
tea bag in. Just just just a little more.
Just a little more epignosis to metabolize a knowledge of God,
to know more about who He is, to be able to see him a little bit
more clearly. Because if you could see him a
little bit more clearly, you'd begin to see yourself a little
more clearly. For me, it works like this.
Even after all these years of following God and spending time
with the Lord, I still have a Bible plan that tells me what to
read every day. Yes, yes, yes I do.
I need it. It tells me read this chapter,
read this chapter. I have a little thing and I do
everyday. In fact I do this when I wake
up. I have tried to train myself to
do this. When I wake up in the morning
and I open my eyes, I try. The first thing I try to say is
God is good. And I try to think of two or
three things as soon as I wake up that are just blessings that
I can say thank you for just to be grateful for.
So I can start my day remembering who God is before I
get to the task list. And there's always a task list
And I always want to do the task list and I always want to get
anxious about the task list. So I want to start with just
who's God, because if I find that my view of God gets
distorted really quickly, it gets misaligned so fast.
And so I spend time during the day, I open up my Bible and I, I
spend some time talking to the Lord and, and walking with him
and thinking about him and praying sometimes for you,
sometimes for things that are going in my life and writing
down as God reminds me of truth. So I like to write those things
down. I tend to learn what, why am I
doing that stuff? There's no box.
I'm checking, trying to see the Lord more clearly.
These aren't spiritual superpowers.
That's not religious check boxes.
It's just the practical habits of someone trying, trying to see
God clearly. In the past two or three months
have been some of the just worst months of my life in terms of
dealing with some really deep emotions and feelings like
overwhelmed, hurt, abandoned, doubting God's plan in my life
and in this season, questioning everything about what's going
on. And it has been those those
simple little habits that have been saving my life, my
spiritual life, at least saving my life.
Why? Because I I spend time with the
Lord. Even then it's the pain and
confusion. And it is that habit that lets
him, through His word and through prayer and through wise
counsel and through other Christians and through
meditation, change me, realign me back to a clearview of who He
is. And I guys, I, I cannot do this.
I cannot be a good pastor for that matter.
I can't even be a good person. I need God to show up over and
over and over and over and over again.
And you do too. You do too.
We need the Holy Spirit to do this transformative work.
The the Spirit is active in your life as a believer.
Here's the The problem is not that the Holy Spirit is not
working in transformation in your life.
It's that we often times are working against His work.
Can you imagine if you would turn toward the work the Spirit
is doing and participate in the work He's trying to do in your
life? If you'd give him the time and
the space and the medium to really do work, to receive that
work. Verse 47, the beginning of
Mary's song. I don't want you to miss this.
This is pretty beautiful. She says.
My spirit rejoices in God my Savior, God my Savior.
Mary needed saving and she knew it.
The woman carrying the very salvation of the world inside of
her body confess that she needed it herself.
So we don't put Mary, the the most honoured mother in all the
Bible, on a pedestal and say she was perfect.
She was a woman who saw God clearly enough to know that she
was not sufficient on her own. Tuesday morning when the phone
rings and Avery's got the car smashed up backwards on the I-5.
It's raining. She's scared.
Mom, we you know what we do? Marina goes.
What happened?
And she goes. I flipped to the car.
Marina goes. You flip.
You flipped the car. She goes.
Well, it's spun and she goes. Those are very different words,
Avery. Yes.
Yes, they are. She's scared and she's on the
side of the middle of the freeway and the big rigs are
zooming by. And So what do we do?
We do what you would do. We jump in the van and we start
driving up the I5 and we're making phone calls to work.
I'm not going to be in and, you know, calling people and you
know, we didn't do though. You know what's kind of
interesting, You know, we didn't do on the way to go get her.
We didn't call her and ask her whether or not she deserved our
response. We we didn't go back and do a
little inventory of her 21 years as our child and evaluate
whether or not she'd earned it. We didn't.
We didn't put out a checklist and count how many of the boxes
she checked it, you know, to see whether or not she was a
daughter worthy of our love or of us coming to get her.
She called. She was in need.
We got in a car and drove to her.
Guy is that that's the gospel of Jesus Christ, That everyone of
us hopelessly broken, born into sin, rebelled against God with
no ability to fix the problem on our own.
Maybe that's you today. You don't know God as your
Savior yet, or you do, but you've gotten a distorted view
of Him and you are spinning out of control.
Maybe not on the I-5, but maybe in life.
Here's what I want you to hear about Jesus.
Jesus didn't wait until you had it all figured out.
He came to you while you were still terrified in the ditch on
the side of the road. Because Jesus came for us while
we were still his enemies. And if the most honoured mother
in all of the Bible will open her mouth and say, God my
Saviour, you can too. Maybe some of you in this room
today or online, you've put your faith in Christ before, but you
have allowed your view of God to become so distorted that you
can't even see yourself clearly anymore.
And you have the same opportunity granted to all of us
to cry out to God and allow Him to do work in your life.
Maybe some of you in this room are online today, have never
placed your faith in Christ. You never surrendered your will,
the control of your life, to Him.
The Bible says you must believe in your heart and declare with
your mouth that Jesus was raised from the dead and is your Lord.
Guys, every single person in this world will one day bend a
knee to Jesus, the Lord of Lords and King of Kings.
The only question is whether or not you'll be happy when you do
it. Because we're either going to be
overjoyed that our King has come back to make all things right,
or we're going to be mortified that He has come to judge the
guilty. And I have stuck my nose up and
shaken my fist at God in rebellion.
And He was loving and merciful enough to outlast my outbursts,
my rebellion, and my running. That's His unending grace.
And if you will let Him, He will save you too.
Would you bow your heads and close your eyes as we finish up
our service today? I'm going to give you the
opportunity to come to the Father.
The invitation is granted to you from Christ in Scripture to
taste and see if He is good. And I'm going to lead you in a
simple prayer of surrender. And if you are ready to follow
Christ as King, I would ask you simply repeat after me Jesus.
I know I'm a Sinner who cannot save myself.
I need you to save me. I want you to adopt me into your
family, so I surrender everything.
Be my Lord. Please, Jesus, if you said that
prayer, if you gave your life to Christ for the first time, would
you be brave and raise your hand for me to see?
Thank you. Thank you.
Can you put your hands down if you know Christ?
But you have found yourself in this moment in the season of
life with such a distorted view of the world and yourself.
You also can cry out to God to ask Him to stir up your
affection for Him, to help you to lean into knowing Him more so
you can see Him clearly, so that you can see yourself clearly.
And if you'd like to do that, I'm going to give you an
opportunity to just pray to him for just a moment and ask for
his help. I believe.
Help my unbelief in Jesus name, Amen.
Real quick, if you've given your
life to Christ moments ago or recently and you haven't told
anyone yet, welcome to the family.
If you find yourself in a season where you've been struggling to
see God clearly, I want you to know he is a good, good God and
he loves it when you cry out to him.
So in a few moments, our prayer team is going to come up.
We love praying for you, praying with you, praying over you.
So we invite you to come up. If you gave your life to Christ
moments ago or recently and you haven't told anyone yet, there
are tables in the back. They say I raised my hand.
We would love to celebrate with you and talk to you about
discipleship and give you a gift.
Will you stand? We're going to sing a song.
Everyone that is ready to get baptized already signed up.
You can just go over there to the corner where by that exit
sign. If you have given your life to
Christ moments ago or recently and you've not taken the very
next step of obedience that the Bible would tell you, which is
believers baptism, we would invite you to come and talk to
us and be baptized today. We have towels and clothes and
everything else. What a wonderful Mother's Day
celebration to celebrate meeting the Father.
And so if you'd like to be baptized, we'd love for you to
walk right over there and talk to somebody and we'll get you
dunked. The Oildale water is very warm.
I swear you move as the Lord leads you.
Thank you Church, I love you.