Good morning. According to Open Doors World
Watch List, about 13 people are killed every day globally for
the Christian faith. Now that means that on average
here, even in modern times in what we would call the civilized
world in 2025, that about every two hours someone is killed for
following Christ during our service.
More than likely someone will lose their life here on earth
for proclaiming Christ is king while we sit and worship him
freely in this religious freedom.
Someone will lose their life for this.
My name is Daniel. I'm the lead preaching pastor
here at Rez Church and we're in week 3 of a series called Why
Are Things So Bad? And two weeks ago we looked at
the first of three reasons that the Bible says there is
suffering and pain in this world and that is that this world is
broken. Everything has been fractured
since that moment in which humans rebelled against God.
And now all of humanity, in fact all of nature groans to be set
right. That's one of the reasons we
suffer. Last week we looked at the
second reason the Bible says we suffer.
And that is that often times what we we're experiencing is
simply the consequences of our own actions.
Amen. Yeah, I can relate to that.
And today we're going to look at a third reason that the Bible
says that there is suffering. Jesus actually guaranteed us
that if we followed him, there would be a specific type of
suffering that we would experience and it would go so
far. He would go so far as to say we
should not be surprised by it when it comes.
When I was a sophomore in high school was 2 year, 2 weeks into
the sophomore year, my family moved to Bakersfield and I
joined the football team at East High and I found out there was
an assistant coach on that team that hated Christians.
How do I know? Because he told me I hate
Christians. I was like and So what?
What? What then happened is every
single day that I went to practice, he made sure to find
me and remind me, make fun of me, have me do extra drills and
extra work, pulled me out of the lineup because he hated
Christians. This was nothing at all like the
type of suffering we're going to talk about in the Bible.
However, it was the first time in my life that it became a
reality to me that people might treat me differently for
following Christ. See, up until then, everything
about Christianity was easy or good or positive.
It was all benefits. This was the first time there
was a real cost that I'd ever really considered.
And I will tell you, I was surprised by it, even though the
Bible says don't be surprised by it.
There's a guy named Peter. He was an apostle.
He spent probably probably spent the most time with Jesus during
the the three years that Jesus was doing ministry here on
earth. And he's going to write a couple
letters later in his life, and we're going to look at one of
them today. And when he was younger and he
was walking with Jesus, he was constantly challenging Jesus and
saying like, hey, this, this idea that you have to go and
suffer and die, like that doesn't make any sense.
So he's challenging, he's pushing on him.
He's questioning him all the time.
And then the moment that things got really hot and really hard
and persecution begin to happen, Peter ran away.
But later in life, he's going to write a letter, and his
perspective on suffering, his perspective on this has changed
substantially. He actually becomes one of the
central leaders of the first church, and he has endured
beatings and ridicule and persecution for Christ.
And so he's going to write a letter, and we're going to see
how his perspective has changed about this.
We're going to pick this up in First Peter chapter 4, verse 12.
This is what it says, beloved, and do not be surprised at the
fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you has though
something strange were happening to you.
But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you
may also rejoice, and be glad when His glory is revealed.
If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed
because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.
Now, if that weren't clear enough, Jesus in John 15 and in
Luke 6 is actually going to explain to us that if, if we
give our lives to Christ, the world will hate us because we no
longer belong to the world. We belong to Christ.
In fact, He promises that in fact, Jesus will go so far as to
tell us this. He says we should consider
ourselves blessed when people hate us and treat us differently
for following Christ. Do you we should consider
ourselves blessed when people treat us terribly for the name
of Christ? No, thank you.
I do not like the sound of that. Unsubscribe.
That does not sound like a good thing, but, but here's what I
want to do. I want to peel this apart.
OK, this is the last week we're looking at this, this idea of
suffering. The third reason.
And and I think that that for you and I say me, I think for
you and I, we have a very distorted view of suffering.
And so like particularly this kind of suffering.
And so I, I want to peel it up. I want to really look at this
today. And if you get nothing else, if
you take one thing away from today, it's this idea.
We should pray to be persecuted, not passive or political.
We're going to look at that real quick in three ways.
First, we're going to define it. So we're going to define
persecution biblically. Secondly, we're going to explain
why it is mostly absent from our lives.
And 3rd, we're going to talk about why we should pray for its
presence. Why we should pray for its
presence. OK, so here's the first thing.
What is persecution? It is a very specific type of
suffering according to the Bible.
Peter in his letter will say fiery trial.
That's the word he'll use. And he's talking about this type
of suffering that comes from following Jesus.
It's not a random bad luck. It's not general life problems.
It's not even the consequences of my own actions.
It's something more specific than that.
It's opposition, targeted opposition because of our faith.
And, and the Bible would tell us to think of it like gold being
refined, that it's going to get really hot, but it's not to
destroy the gold, it's to refine it and to purify it.
And so we're going to see a little bit of that in here as
well. Look at this verse we just read.
Let's let's break it down just a little bit more detailed and
you're going to see a couple things about persecution and and
how we should have a change maybe our perspective of it.
Here's what verse 12 says is beloved, do not be surprised.
Meaning, meaning we should expect suffering and difficulty
and not be let's be real, it's the opposite, right?
We actually expect comfort and luxury and then we're shocked
when it's not. The Bible says you should be
shocked when you're not being persecuted.
You should be surprised when you when you don't have difficulty
at the fiery trial. We'll talk about it in a minute
when it comes upon you to what's that word test you so, so fiery
trial. And in just a moment, we'll read
a couple other verses from some other people because James,
another apostle will call this trials of various kinds.
He'll say it a little differently.
And Paul, yet another he'll just call this suffering in general.
But but the goal for all three of them is the same as this
right here. Test you.
It's the test you as though something strange were happening
to you. But Oh no, what's that word?
Rejoice. Rejoice about suffering.
Show of hands any anybody suffered recently.
Go ahead. Come on.
How many people in the midst of that were like, thank you, Lord,
nobody. Come on.
We're not that kind of people. We hate.
We hate suffering. We hate it.
The Bible says, no, no, no, rejoice in this.
And and here's the thing. Peter's writing this, OK, And
you might say easy for you to say, no, no, he lived this in in
Acts. We get a story right after the
church is forming and this guy Peter is preaching.
He's saying like, man, we saw Jesus, he resurrected, he's the
king, he's the savior. And man, there's some people
that do not like that and they pull him into like this council
and they tell him not to do it and he doesn't listen.
And they severely beat him. And this is what happens right
after they beat him. Acts 541 Then they this is
Peter. And another apostle left the
presence of the council. Oh no, that word again,
rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for
the name of Christ. And it's not just Peter that's
saying this because maybe we could write this off as like,
well, there's always one weird guy, right?
I mean, so Peter, No, no, no, James, who's the half brother of
Jesus and and doubted that Jesus was even the Messiah until he
saw him resurrected, becomes an elder of the first church and he
writes a letter and in James one like right out of the gate, the
start of the letter says this. Count it all joy, my brothers,
when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the
testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let
steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect
and complete, lacking in nothing.
And then a little bit after these guys, a guy named Paul is
going to become an apostle, and he's going to write this in
Romans 5. Three.
Not only that, but we owe not that word again.
Rejoice in our sufferings, knowing the suffering produces
endurance. So Jesus and Peter and James and
Paul, they actually, they, they all not only wrote this, they
all lived this out. In the 1st century, your
community was pretty much determined by who you
worshipped. And that meant that if you were
going to worship Christ, you would have to abandon
everything. Your family, your friends, your
culture, your security, your politics.
For Jewish Christians, it meant even more.
To be a Jewish Christian in the 1st century meant beatings and
imprisonment. You'd be ostracized.
You might be killed. And so and so Peter says don't,
don't be surprised by persecution.
It was promised. Let me tell you why that's so
hard for you and I to even get our minds around is we live in
2025 in America. This is a pseudo Christian
nation that's quickly becoming postmodern.
And what does that mean pseudo Christian?
It means we have all of the tradition and trappings of
Christianity without Christ. And so you could eat.
Here's here's what I mean by that.
It's so easy to hide as a Christian here, isn't it?
Imagine you were a Muslim in a closed country where Christian
Christianity meant death. And in the moment, you're not
showing up to the mosque at the right time on the prayer mat,
bowing down, saying the right prayers, You're getting found
out. But here he ain't got to do
nothing to hide. A few years before I became a
pastor, this is a little while back, I was at another church.
I was teaching a, a adult Bible study on Sunday mornings.
And so in my car had my Bible and like my materials for the,
the Bible study in the passenger seat.
And I was going to take a client of mine.
I had a tech business and we were going to go to lunch.
And so he gets in the car and I was like, oh, sorry.
He's like, what is this? And I was like, what's my Bible?
That's my Sunday school material because I teach this class and
he looks at me and goes, You're a Christian.
And I've known you for four years.
How is it that you don't know I'm a Christian?
After four years, that's probably the most one of the
most shameful moments of my entire life.
How can I interact with this guy for four years and he had no
idea that I serve Christ as king like I call Jesus my savior and
the ruler of my life and I and I claim God with my lips.
I, I would tell people that God took me from death to life and
that that he said reset every priority in my life.
And yet he's so insubstantial in the way that I live that someone
that I've known for four years is shocked that I'm a Christian.
What are we even doing? Like, can there be a greater
failure for someone who claims Christ than to live a life
without any sign of Christ? And he was like, oh, I don't
mean that as an insult. And I was like, you have no
idea. So of course I can't tell you
about persecution. How can I be persecuted for a
faith that I have no evidence that I live by?
And so for most of us, there's an extreme absence of actual
persecution. One of the reasons that you and
I can't relate to real genuine biblical persecution like we we
read in the Bible that we see in closed countries like China is
that people would have to know we're a Christian before they
could persecute us for it. I mean, OK, maybe we share some
faith-based posts on TikTok and I got a cute like Christian van
T-shirt or something. But no one that lives around us
that interacts with us has seen anything substantial enough that
it would even be of note that it would be worth mentioning.
And so so it could be for you the same as it was for me.
For many years, my life was so similar to an unbeliever that no
one could tell the difference. My attitude, my judge,
mentalism, my lack of patience, my lack of joy, my budget, my
time, my goals. Not that different from someone
who's spiritually dead. The greatest threat to American
Christianity is passive pursuit. People would have to know I'm a
Christian before I could be persecuted for it.
And when my life looks roughly similar to someone who's
spiritually dead and on the way to hell, no one needs to
persecute me. I'm doing a great job of hiding
the gospel of Christ all on my own.
Now maybe, maybe some of you are watching online or you're here.
You're thinking to yourself like, well, that's not me.
I'm super vocal. OK, OK, a gentle warning.
The world may only know how you vote, not who you follow.
They see your political tribe, but they've never glimpsed your
Saviour. And I can speak from experience
from spending way too many hours arguing the Second Amendment on
Facebook. That's not persecution for
Christ's name. For many of us, people can't see
Jesus because we've covered him with an American flag or a
political sticker. And if you're thinking of the
other political party than yours, I'm not talking about
them. I'm talking about you.
And when you begin to realize that the gospel you've been
preaching is more cultural or political than biblical, the
only appropriate response is humble repentance.
By and large. And there's always exceptions,
But by and large for me to spend time lecturing a non Christian
about cultural things is insanity.
They don't know Jesus, they're spiritually dead.
Why would I try to teach morality to a corpse?
I'm supposed to be introducing them to the author of Life.
Can you imagine going into a cemetery and screaming at the
gravesite about how they're behaving senseless?
Facebook arguments aren't persecution and politics might
be important, but they will not save anyone's soul.
So we know what persecution is, and if we're being honest, we
can admit that there's not a lot of it for us.
But the third thing is why would we pray for its presence?
That seems counter intuitive. Why would we want this kind of
suffering? Because Peter says to rejoice.
Now, he doesn't actually say to pray for it.
He does say to rejoice, and he doesn't exactly tell us why we
would we would rejoice, but his life shows us why we would
rejoice. If we go back to his story in
Acts 5, it says this rejoicing that they were counted worthy to
suffer dishonor for the name of Christ.
What does that mean? In that moment?
He's saying me, who was once an enemy of God in rebellion to
God, has now been counted worthy to represent him in suffering.
Man, that is 1 Intense dude. But but James and Paul, whom we
read earlier that they tell us much the same thing and they
give us a little bit more explanation because what James
will say is that the suffering will actually test our faith and
it will produce in us a steadfastness.
What is that? Think, think, rootedness.
The refining that is coming will root us in our identity in
Christ so well that the the the circumstances of life, the good
and the bad, will not topple us over.
Paul will say something very similar in that text in Romans
5. He will call it endurance.
But both of them are essentially saying this, listen, there is a
a refining of our faith in our character.
You ever wondered like man, how, how do I get character like
Jesus? Like what would it look to even
even think like that, to love like that, to walk like that?
And the Bible's answer is by suffering for Jesus.
Now that seems like a strange formula.
But James says this, Paul says this all.
In fact, all the authors of these texts that we just read
will essentially say the same two things about suffering #1
what persecution will reveal about our faith.
So kind of like a litmus test, and what persecution will
produce in our faith, what it will reveal about our faith, and
what it produces in our faith. Now I want to show you both from
their lives and even from my own life some some evidence of what
this looks like. But but before I show you that,
I'll just say before we ever had to get to this, it was already
modelled for us by Jesus. Jesus himself endured the cross,
despising the shame for the joy that was set before him.
That's Hebrews 12/2. He didn't just so Jesus didn't
just teach us to expect persecution, He actually showed
us how to endure it with joy because he knew what was coming
was greater. That's our model.
Do you know? Listen, if you call yourself
Christian, our entire faith is based upon suffering.
Well, welcome to Race Church. It's not the prosperity gospel.
It's not a genie in a lamp that we're going to rub when we have
wishes. It's actually learning how to
look at something that's greater and walk through potentially
suffering in this life because the next one is greater.
That's the Christian faith. And in suffering, we figure out
really fast if our faith is real or if it was just lip service.
There's a famous story that was has been told so many times that
I don't know if it's real, but but there's a church in a closed
country where Christianity is punishable by death.
And they meet in a secret church that happens all over the world,
even in 2025, by the way. And in on one particular Sunday
when these believers are meeting, soldiers burst through
the door, armed, round up everybody and, and, and put them
in the center of the room. And an officer steps forward.
Everyone's being held at gunpoint and says, you know that
this offense is punishable by death.
I'm going to give you one chance.
If you will leave now and never come back, I will forget you're
here. And most of them leave, but some
of them stay. And he just shakes his head.
And he looks at these people who have stayed to die.
And he's like, you would die for this.
Now they just stand there. They don't say anything.
And everyone lowers their guns. And he says, we're Christians,
too. We just wanted to know who the
real Christians were. Now, look, I don't even know if
that story is true. It's been told so many times.
But that's not actually what bothers me about it.
What bothers me about that story is thinking about whether or not
I would have been one of the people that stayed, because
that's a real cost. It's quite one thing for you and
I to make bold claims about loving Jesus above all else.
As we sit here in our freedom and our religious liberties.
It's a whole nother thing to live that out when the bullets
are flying. And it makes me wonder, y'all?
Many of us cannot suffer to have our feelings hurt without being
mortally offended, let alone suffer for the case of Christ.
You're going to take a bullet for Jesus.
You can't even take criticism, Am I right?
And that's me so often. And listen to me if, if that's
you, if our lives and our faith have been more about how do we
stay comfortable? What what are we supposed to do
with a text like this? Like, like, here's my question
for you. It's been my question for myself
since I began to read this years ago.
How do I grow to have a pursuit of Christ that looks like this?
And how do I do that here in America where things are
relatively good like it? It is my great desire to see
revival breakout in Bakersfield. So, so how do I pursue Christ in
such a way? How do I get vocal about the
right things? How do I do those things?
And if I do, what will that look like here in America, in
Bakersfield in 2025? Because if, because if
persecution will reveal faith that is genuine like you, you
realize everyone can follow God and claim to be a Christian when
there are no downsides, right? But if we truly love him more
than life, the Bible says, listen, persecution is going to
come. Jesus guaranteed us persecution.
And if we're not seeing that, like that's a that's, that's a
problem because not only will it say something about our faith,
but it, but the Bible says it will change us for the better.
It will refine our character. It will grow our faith.
It will give us stark clarity about the priorities in our
life. And I want to give you a little
bit of evidence just from the lives of these authors that it
will and from my own life. 1st, every single person that I read
to you from, they were not only persecuted.
So they were not only writing this from personal experience,
every single one of them was martyred for the Christian
faith. They were killed for following
Christ and they willingly walked to their execution with joy in
their heart to their death. And so so for just a moment,
like as we I want you to just think about in your own life,
say me, OK, in your own life, you're reading about someone
going to their execution claiming Christ.
And then I want to think about you and me who like we get cut
off in traffic and I'm almost non Christian for a minute.
You know, persecution. Starbucks is out of pumpkin
spice lattes. What like like you have a, you
have a mild conflict with a friend and you're in it is
you're spiraling and anxiety and depression.
Like what would our lives look like though?
OK, I don't want you to be ashamed of that.
I want you to think of how much better it could be.
What would our lives look like if we were pursuing God with a
passion that was so incredible that you could walk to your
execution in joy because what was coming was greater than what
was happening now. Do you realize how easy conflict
would suddenly seem here with that kind of faith, with that
kind of joy? Like, can we even comprehend how
good God is to experience suffering and have that kind of
perspective? I want that.
I want that if you're, if you're here today and, and you, you
would not call yourself a Christian, maybe maybe you're a
little sceptical about Christianity, maybe you had a
bad Christian experience. Maybe you just, you label
yourself a doubter or something. I just want you to, to, to, to
think about this for a moment as we read all these texts.
And I think it should cause you to pause and just consider, you
know, every every major world religion has martyrs, but
Christianity is unique. The guys here that that died for
the faith, they weren't desperate revolutionaries.
They weren't suicide bombers seeking paradise.
These were ordinary dudes, fishermen, tax collectors.
They're housewives. I mean, just normal people who
claim to see Jesus alive after his crucifixion.
And when they were threatened with death, they did not recant.
You know, it's one thing to say, OK, maybe someone will die for a
lie that they don't. They don't know it's a lie.
But all these people died with this claim and would not recant.
So they were either telling the truth about the resurrection or
they were the most successful liars in history and they died
rather than admit it. And if you doubt that Christ is
king, I would just pause and wonder why so many people were
willing to walk to their grave for that.
And secondly, let me say this about the effectiveness of
suffering. Maybe not persecution, but at
least suffering. I, I have never experienced
persecution anything like this, anything like they, they, they
experienced in China or in Iran or in any of these places.
But I have experienced the goodness of God in the midst of
death and loss and pain and suffering, and it grew my faith
like nothing in this world. I have stood in the hospital
room holding the body of the child I lost.
I have sat in in the living room to cry through the loss of close
loved ones in tragic ways. I've suffered the emotional
distress of significant pain in the ER room as I as everything
was going wrong medically. And in each of these moments, it
has led me closer to God, to a more dependent life on God, to a
vibrant experience and stark clarity in my life and faith.
And so in those, in those moments of suffering, when we're
screaming out to the Lord, he is growing us.
He is rooting our faith. It is being made deeper.
Here's what I'm trying to tell you.
You, you may be going through some crazy circumstances,
probably not persecution, but maybe some suffering in the
moment. And I want you to know this.
Jesus is worth it. Oh, he is worth it.
He is so wonderful. He is so good.
You and I willingly partake in all the beautiful things of this
world, right? Who likes food?
Let's go. Who likes Taco?
Everybody better like tacos. We, we partake in, in, in food
and in comfort, in beauty, in relationships, like all these
wonderful things. And what I'm telling you is the
Bible says that is just a glimpse that is just a, a
distorted reflection of, of, of the creator who created those
things. It's meant for you to go, Oh
wow, if, if the distorted version is this good, how much
better is the author? So, so when you are are
experiencing something that is just phenomenal here on earth,
you need to realize that's just a cheap knock off from my Timu.
The real version isn't even here yet.
This life is supposed to be the worst life we'll ever live
because the best 1 is coming. And we get caught up because
everything is so comfortable here.
We get caught up thinking like we're trying to make we have to
make this life comfortable. We have to make this life
amazing. That's not how this works.
The best life is coming. The Bible says that this life is
the worst life that I'll ever live because the next one is
incomparable. Incomparable.
Listen to this. This is second Corinthians 4.
I just want you to hear this verse, OK?
This verse is so good. It says this so we do not lose
heart. Though our outer self is wasting
away, our inner self is being renewed day by day for this
light momentary affliction. They're being put to death.
And he's like light momentary affliction.
What's the movie where he gets his arms cut off?
He's like tis but to scratch. They're being killed for the
faith. And he says this light momentary
affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory
beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen,
but the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are
going to are transient. They're going away, but the
things that are unseen are eternal.
Amen. Come on.
So we can have hope in what awaits.
And while we're here, we can get on mission spreading that hope.
Not politics, not opinions, not culture wars, the hope of
Christ. And if we do, the Bible says
we'll face persecution. Mark Clark recently said we
can't change the world by minding our own business.
Listen, y'all, I want to change the world.
How about you? I wake up every day and they're
like, what are we going to do today, brain?
I'm like, what we're going to do every day, Pinky, take over the
world with the gospel of Christ. Amen.
So we can't mind our own business.
We can't have a holy huddle where we pretend like we'll just
wait here until Jesus comes back.
There's a lost world out there. And I don't mean over the
Atlantic like in Africa. I mean, most recent studies say
that 90% of Kern County doesn't know Christ.
We have work to do. So what do we do?
We pray to be persecuted. We pray that we would be counted
worthy of an honor to suffer for Christ.
We pray to be persecuted not not passive and not political.
We pray for it and like Peter says, don't be surprised by it.
So how practically do we do this?
Like what? What would that look like guys?
If we want to reach our world with the gospel of Christ, we
have to start with our neighbors, our Co workers, our
relatives, our circles of influence.
The Bible talks about going to the ends of the earth, but if
your Co worker doesn't know you're Christian, you might not
be ready for Africa. So let's start right here.
When was the last time I served my neighbors sacrificially?
Not the one I like, the one I don't like.
When was the last time I stopped and prayed for someone when I
realized they were hurting? When was the last time I just, I
asked someone to come and join me to hear the gospel of Christ
on a Sunday morning. Like you, you don't need a
mission trip or an evangelism certificate to start being
missional. It starts right here.
I keep these little keep all these little note cards in my
Bible and, and, and as as the Holy Spirit kind of brings
someone to mind or I run into them and I realize, oh man, I
write their names down and I start praying for them and I
keep them on my Bible. So I'm constantly running into
them. People from the gym, neighbors,
family members, and then I try to reach out to them every once
in a while, check in on them, find out there's a way to serve
them. Listen, you can do that.
Take your bullets and insert, write down three names of of the
first people to come to mind that are far from Christ.
And then for each person, simply do this.
Pray for them every day and at least once a month try to find a
way to serve them. And at least once a year, invite
them to church to hear the gospel.
Pray daily, serve monthly, invite annually.
Simple system. It might change their life,
might change your life. Now, if you've, you've been
sitting through our sermon and you've been kind of listening to
all of this, or maybe you're online listening to this and,
and you're, you're hearing us as we talk about this joy and the
satisfaction in Christ. And you wish you had that too,
perhaps perhaps today is the day that you will put your faith in
Christ. If you, if you, if you're here,
if you look, look around the room real quick, just look
around. Do do you know how much evidence
there is of God's goodness in this room?
Amen. Do you know how many people in
here whose stories are nothing but by the grace and mercy and
kindness of God? Amen.
There's a lot of that. There's evidence after evidence
after evidence after story after story, testimony after testimony
of God taking spiritually dead people who are a mess and
bringing them to life. And let me tell you, I am the
worst of the worst because I was a rebel and enemy of God, not
only by nature but by choice. But God, in his richness and
kindness, pursued me relentlessly, and He saved me
not because I wanted Him to, because He was good.
And I am not who I want to be, but by the grace of God, I am
not who I used to be. It is a work of God.
God desires to save you. And if you're realizing this for
the very first time today, then perhaps God has grabbed your
attention for a reason. He is at this very moment
awakening your soul to the things above.
He is saving you. And so I want to give you an
opportunity to respond to the work that He's doing inside of
you right now. The Bible says in Romans 10/9
and 10 Because if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is
Lord, and we believe in our hearts that God raised him from
the dead, we can be saved. For with the heart 1 believes
and is justified, and with the mouth 1 declares and is saved.
If you would like to surrender your life to God for the first
time today, I want to give you that chance.
Will you please all bow your heads and close your eyes as we
wrap up our service? Just a brief moment, if you are
willing to ask God for forgiveness, for salvation, for
this everlasting joy that seems to surpass all circumstances,
with every eye closed, with every head bowed.
I just want you to quietly or or silently repeat this prayer
after me. Jesus, I know I'm a Sinner and I
can't save myself. I need satisfaction that I can't
seem to find. I want you to save me, so I
surrender my life to you and I receive your promise of
forgiveness, of adoption into your family, and of eternal
life. Be my Lord.
Please Jesus, if you prayed that prayer to surrender your life to
Jesus for the first time right now, would you be brave and
raise your hand for me to see? Thank you, thank you.
You can put your hands down Jesus name, Amen.
Real quick eye contact. If you just surrendered your
life to God for the very first time, welcome to the family.
In just a moment, we're going to stand up and we're going to sing
to close our service out. And as we do, our protein is
going to be up here and there are going to be some tables in
the back. They say I raised my hand.
So when if you just said that prayer, whether you raised your
hand or not, I want you to sneak back there.
I want you to tell them, man, I just gave my life to Jesus.
We want to celebrate with you. We have a gift for you.
We want to talk about what does it look like to pursue Christ?
What does it look like to go hard after God?
We stand. We're going to sing a song.
Our prayer team's going to be up here.
We love to pray for you. It doesn't matter what it we
would just love to pray for you. But particularly today, if if
you have been lacking in joy, if you've allowed the circumstances
and season of your life to capsize that boat of yours, man,
we want to pray for that joy. We want to pray for that
rootedness so you come up here so we can pray for you.
You move as the Lord leads you. We love you, Church.