Good morning. My name is Daniel.
I'm going to lead pastors here at Resurrection Church.
How about the youth band today, huh?
You got you bring your kids on on Wednesday nights and that is
junior high and high school band, worship band that played
and sang for you today, LED you in worship.
That's pretty awesome. Hey, I, I was staring at my
youngest kid just the other day and I was thinking kind of
through this concept. I think that raising kids in
2025 might actually be harder than at any other time in
history. Just so I want you to think
about this. Up until about 150 years ago,
you could have like 10 kids throw them outside and like, as
long as they got like, I mean, you could like they're, they're
working on the farm and all that.
You, if you, if you gave them hugs, food and discipline, they
probably turned out OK. But man, it is not that way
anymore. Did you know studies actually
say that we are spending more time paying attention to our
kids than at any other time that we've tracked in history and
we're getting worse results? That's wild.
Well, in fact, why is that? If we're spending more time,
why, why are we getting well here?
Here's what I would submit to you.
I, I would, I would tell you that the, the, the forces at
work shaping our kids are more present, more powerful, more
all-encompassing than they've ever been.
Like social media and Internet and, and streaming content is
kind of just everywhere. And all of a sudden all of this
stuff has this ability to develop our kids, whether we
like it or not. Our, our culture has taken over
as one of the primary developers of our kids.
And I'll just tell you that is not good news.
So, so, so we're seeing in kids in preteen and teens the highest
levels of preteen depression, the highest levels of anxiety
and self harm rates in history as as a parent.
Like some days it feels like the entire world is stacked against
me as a parent. Not enough time, not enough
training, not enough money, and certainly not enough energy.
It feels almost hopeless. Some wise person once said we
can live about 40 days without food, about 3 days without
water, about 8 minutes without air, but not a single second
without hope. And we have some good reasons to
be discouraged. Discouragement is a universal
disease, and we all get discouraged.
Has anyone in here felt discouraged in the last two
months? You either are raising your hand
or you're lying in church. I mean, all the introverts are
like, I don't want to do either. Howard Hendricks said that
discouragement is the anaesthetic that the devil uses
on a person right before he reaches in and carves out their
heart. When you get discouraged, a lot
of bad things tend to follow in your life.
Parents, we are raising the next generation of the world in our
homes right now. What we're shaping the future of
of the city of Bakersfield, the, the, the, the future of this
country in our living rooms and in our kitchens.
I, I want my kids to grow up to have a better chance than I did,
to make better choices than I did.
And so as a parent, if you're a parent in this room or if you're
raising kids in this room, I want you to know the what you do
matters. I know that it matters to you.
I know that your kids matter to you.
But I want you to know that your kids matter to us too, at this
church. They matter to us.
And therefore your encouragement matters.
There is real genuine hope for your home, and I want to share
it with you today. But to talk about real hope, I
think it would be important to name the problem.
So let's start here. Do you ever feel like like
everything is uphill? I don't mean the story your
parent told you about how they had to walk uphill to school
both ways. I don't in the snow in
Bakersfield, you know, I mean, do you ever feel like life is
just uphill? Like everything's uphill.
Like parenting, relationships, marriage, life, work, fitness.
It's uphill. Like it's just, it's all hard.
It's all a trudge. The Bible says that's true.
But the Bible also says that it didn't start that way, that in
the very beginning when Guy created this world and he put us
in it, that it wasn't that way, that that humanity did not
experience death or pain in that way.
In fact, we, we walked and talked in a garden with God, in
close relationship with God. But it was humanity, it was Adam
and Eve who chose to rebel against God when they bought a
lie from Satan that they didn't need God.
And as a result, death for humanity entered into the world
in the form of a curse. That's that's what Genesis 3
tells us. Here's just a couple lines from
that curse. To the woman, he said, I will
surely multiply your pain in childbearing.
Can I get a name in Almost. You almost know what it's like
for a man to have a cold. And to Adam, he said he's just
going to keep trucking on that one.
And Adam, he said cursed is the ground because of you in pain.
You shall eat of it all of the days of your life.
This is when work became hard and not fulfilling.
Thorns and thistles that she'll bring forth for you.
And you shall eat the plants of the field.
Death, pain, toil, work that is frustrating separation from God.
That event in history is called the Fall, and you and I now live
in a fallen world under the curse of sin, born into sin and
death, struggling uphill because things all went wrong.
And so that feeling that you have, that frustration that you
have, you are not alone. Look around you.
Everybody was raising their hand.
We all feel that when, when, when I was a younger parent and
we only had two kids at that point.
And, and I was, you know, I'm working a job and I'm trying to
raise kids and, and trying to figure out this marriage thing.
And no matter how hard I worked, it felt like I didn't ever get
ahead. And no matter how much I, I
thought I was trying to be a good dad, I always felt like a
bad dad. And no matter how hard I tried
to work in marriage, it always felt like I was failing.
And so, so no matter what I was doing, I just remember one night
so frustrated and everything revolved around my life.
Like everything in my life I was frustrated with.
I was so angry. And I remember yelling at my
wife like, like, as if somehow it was her fault.
But oftentimes we take out frustration on people that are
closest to us. And I remember just screaming, I
don't know what you want. I don't know how to do this.
Maybe you can relate to that. And so if you'll give me the
next 20 minutes or so, I'm going to tell you that the Bible has
phenomenal hope for you today. Great hope for you today.
If you don't remember anything else from this sermon today,
remember this line, this, this one point that we're going to,
we're going to see in this text. Hope isn't real unless it really
fixes me. Hope isn't real unless it really
fixes me. We're going to turn to a letter
in the Bible called Colossians. It was written by a follower of
Jesus name Paul to encourage an entire church in the city of
Kalasai that was going through some suffering.
They're going through some conflict.
And he wants them to know that there is real hope, like genuine
hope. Not, not, not some of the not
there. In fact, in that time there was
some scams from some religious groups trying to sell people on
some stuff. And so he's going to
simultaneously say, no, that ain't right.
And let me tell you what real hope is.
And so in probably the most famous line in that whole
letter, Colossians 127, he says this to them.
God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the
riches of his glory, of this mystery, which is Christ in you,
the hope of glory, Christ in you, the hope of glory.
You see, in Paul's day, there were these false teachers in, in
a lot of these cities in the 1st century, but particularly in
this one that were, were selling the people on this idea that
there would be real hope if, if they would do all of these
religious things and they'd be part of these special clubs,
that there would be this, this mysterious hidden knowledge that
they had that no one else had. And all they had to do was earn
it through a whole series of religious exercises.
And so Paul is going to, he's going to come into the he's
going to write this letter to this church and go, no, no, that
is not true. There's no secret religious
knowledge, and you certainly can't earn it.
However, there is a mystery, or there was.
And the mystery was how God would fix our broken world.
That was a mystery. You know why?
Because it wasn't the way anyone expected it to be.
It was a surprise. My my youngest child is my son
Quentin. And when he was about 7 years,
he's always been a really expressive kid.
If you know him like you know, he's, he's a pretty expressive
kid, but but he was about 7 years old.
We were watching this show and there was like this big plot
twist, like this crazy ending right at the end where it was
not what we were expecting. We were watching it as a 7 year
old. I remember his eyes get really
big and he goes, whoa, and he looks at me and goes plot twist.
And he goes, I did not see that coming.
I was like, well, you're 7. So I mean, Paul says that the,
the way that God would fix the problem, the, the hope for the
world was a plot to us. It was a shocker.
And so we're going to look at three, what I think are shocking
things about how God chose to fix the problem and give us
hope. And I want to, I want to drill
in on the details because I think, man, God will encourage
you today. Like, like as you begin to see
who he is, he will encourage you.
I need encouragement. If you need encouragement today,
say me, OK, we're in the right place #1 The first way that the
first shocking thing about how God would fix this world and
give us hope is this. God's hope is humble.
That was shocking.
The first thing that would shock everybody about how God would
take care of this problem was the humility.
Jesus was born into poverty. He's the son of a Carpenter.
He he multiple times refused an earthly crown.
Jesus would voluntarily die for us.
That does not sound very regal or mighty.
Sounds very humble. God's hope is humble, and that
means that God is not some distant faraway God who some
elitist God that doesn't doesn't really care about us like like
some God from Greek mythology that's just looking down on all
of us like ants in an Ant farm. No, no, God came down and was
with us. That means that God is near.
That means that God became human, means that he can relate
to our suffering. And that's good news, because
that means he understands our pain.
So God's new. God's hope is humble, but God's
hope is also different, because God's hope is himself.
It was God himself who came. He didn't create a fix or a
solution and send it. He came.
Of all the ways to fix the problem, God coming himself was
a shocker. Jesus lived a perfect life
without sin. That's the life that you and I
should have lived, but we couldn't do it.
And then he went and voluntarily died on a cross to pay a penalty
for sin. That's the death we should have
died but didn't. You know, God couldn't have put
his hope in me or you because we couldn't have done it.
We, we, we can't save humanity. I can't figure out how to save
coupons from being real. Certainly wasn't going to save
humanity, but God can and did. It was Jesus that had the power
not only to live that way, but but to be raised from the dead
three days later. And that wasn't an accident.
He literally called his shot ahead of time.
He's like, I'm going to lay my life down and I'm going to pick
it up three days later. Like that's power.
And that, let me tell you why that's such good news, because
that means that a hope in him is not a hope in some new diet,
some new politician, some new TikTok dance like that's going
to fix it. Hope is in a God who came, who
had the power to fix the problem and has the power to fix the
problem. Now, the third surprise.
So God's hope was humble and God's hope was himself.
But the third surprise is this. God's hope disregards human
power, disregards human power in order to be saved.
You can't earn it and you'll never deserve it.
All you get to do is accept it and see that's the exact
opposite of of what's happening in this the response that Paul
has in this letter, he's saying, listen, these these are
religious groups that are selling you on this concept that
somehow you're going to earn this secret knowledge is the
exact opposite of actually what God did because you could never
earn what he did. The truth of unearned salvation
strips all earthly power from a person.
Because when nothing that I can do, no, no talent, no gift, no
wealth, no ability can earn it, then it makes all of those a bit
meaningless in the moment. And here's what that means.
That means that Elon Musk or, or or Jeff Bezos, they don't have
any more right to the hope than you or I do.
So they could be a billionaire and it doesn't matter.
That's good news because I checked my bank account this
morning that I am not a billionaire yet.
Maybe. See, I think it's actually
sometimes the opposite in the Bible talks about this a little
bit as it sometimes those that are powerful in this world,
those that are wealthy in this world, those that are talented,
sometimes they have the hardest time seeing Christ because
they're so used to relying on themselves.
Sometimes it's those of us without resources that come to
Christ the fastest and easiest. You know, a lot of us struggle
with the idea that the greatest and most precious gift available
would be free because valuable things always have a cost.
And that's true. It's just that in this case,
someone else paid the bill. Amen.
The prevailing thought at this point in history in the 1st
century, was that when God came to fix the problem, he was only
going to fix the problem for this little subset group, this
small group of people, this minority group of people called
the Israelites. And so they had spent centuries
waiting for God to come and save only them.
But the actual plan as we read the Bible from the very
beginning was that God would save all people.
And so this term we see in this verse, Gentile, it just means a
non Jewish person like you or me.
It was a people group that was not expecting salvation, was it?
They didn't have hope that God would come and fix a problem and
they certainly had done nothing to deserve it.
It was truly hopeless. That's why it's such good news
that that that that you and I get to partake that that me a
Gentile, a non Jewish person, that me a Sinner can receive
what God is freely giving. So so when Paul points to this
mystery, he's simply saying, listen, the truth of how God
would come and restore hope in this world is shocking.
And while it was a mystery, now it's not.
Now it's known and then he explains what that hope is, that
God saves us and we get to understand what he calls the
riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you,
the hope of glory. Now why would Christ in me be
such a blessing? Why would that be such a big
deal? Like, why would I look at that
and even care? OK, listen, this is probably the
most important thing that you will ever hear from the Bible.
You ready, everybody? You ready?
OK. This is why it's so important
because at the end of the day, despite us acknowledging that we
live in a Dark World, there are lots of problems like the
economy, the suffering, the evil, right?
But here's the problem guys. Even if God fixed every one of
those problems, I still have to deal with the biggest problem in
my life. Me.
I'm the problem now. I have plenty of things in this
world I can look at and point at and I can try to blame, but the
reality is I'm still broken. I'm still selfish, I'm still
prideful. I'm still dysfunctional.
No matter how many external things change, I'm still my own
worst enemy. That's that's why people can
become rich and famous and live in luxury and then have the
highest suicide rate in the country.
But, but, but you are wealthy and you got famous and you got a
house. You have all these possessions
and you have all these things. Why doesn't it actually satisfy
you? Because we haven't actually
fixed the problem. Over half of all lottery winners
go bankrupt in five years. That should just be a little,
little bit of a yellow flag. Maybe that money ain't going to
fix all the problems. Even if we fix all of the
world's problems, this is my question.
Who's going to fix me? And if you don't think that's a
problem, I'll just consider this.
You don't even have to believe in Jesus, You don't even have to
believe in God to realize that you already have an idea of
right and wrong. You do.
It may be a subjective thing that you've come up with, but
you still have an idea of right and wrong, and you can't live up
to that standard, your own that you created, You can't live up
to that. Philosophers across history have
talked about this phenomenon. CS Lewis said it this way.
He said human beings all over the earth have this curious idea
that they ought to behave in a certain way and cannot really
get rid of it. Secondly, they do not in fact
behave in that way. So I've created a moral standard
and I can't live up to that. How's that for being a loser?
CS Lewis says this. He says these two facts are the
foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe
that we live in, that we know there's a moral law and we fail
to keep it. How can I expect to have hope in
this broken world when I'm broken, When I'm a hypocrite and
I can't even live up to my own standard of right and wrong?
Where's the hope in that? Someone needs to fix me.
And if someone can fix me, then even if they don't fix the
world's problems right now, maybe I have a real chance at
satisfaction and contentment. If nothing else changes but they
fix me, maybe there's hope. And that's what Christ did.
He came to change us from the inside out, to save us, to
change us, And he does that from within.
Christ in me is the hope of glory.
I'll give you an example of how unnatural this is at times, how
almost supernatural this is. You know, earlier this week I
was really frustrated. I was, in fact, I don't even
know if I said anything, but I was super, super frustrated with
my wife. And now here's what normal me
would do and the sequence of thoughts that I'll go through.
You may not be able to relate to any of these.
We'll see. But for most of my life, here's
where I would have started when I was really frustrated.
I would have been like, you know what, this needs to really fix
this problem. Some passive aggressive
comments. You know, she needs to know that
I'm frustrated. So, you know, I'm somebody
language, some facial expressions, some a little
little passive aggressive, you know, like she I got to, I got
to get this off my chest. You know, you ever felt like you
need to get something off your chest?
OK, so there's a couple honest people in here.
Appreciate you guys. And so, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm
in the middle of having kind of the little, maybe again, you've
never done. I'm having a little pity party
about how I don't really deserve to be treated this way.
Anybody. Yeah.
OK. A couple of you.
And it's not fair, you know, and
I need to say something except in this moment, in the midst of
all these feelings, which are very natural for me.
And I've had them my whole life. There's this second voice, and
it does not sound like me at all.
And you know what it's saying. You do not need to get that off
your chest. You should keep that on your
chest. What you need to do is go serve
your wife. I do not like that.
No, you need to go serve your wife.
You need to go serve your wife well.
But I don't think she deserves it.
Well, neither do you. Oh, I know who's talking right
now. Hey.
Do you remember how I came for
you? Do you remember how I found you
when you were my enemy? Do you remember what you thought
about me when I saved you? I do.
Go serve your wife.
So, so in, in the moments which
are very normal of, of selfishness and pride and pity
party, I am now compelled to act in a way that is not natural for
me to get up and go make some coffee and pull the car out and
help people get rid of like, like why I can in those moments.
Now, even though there's a, a fleshly side that's super
frustrated, there's also a knowledge that I live under the
unearned grace of God. Now, an intellectual
understanding of God's grace is not enough to compel me.
I can know some facts, but it's not enough.
So I have to. Here's why.
OK, let's be real, because I'm far too selfish for that.
No, no, something's got to compel me.
It's got to change me. It's got to actually begin to to
push and change my desire, the desires of my heart.
So I have to ask this, what power would it take to compel
someone like me to act like that?
Because that's not normal. Christ in me means a
supernatural power that can change the very desires of my
heart, the very emotions that are coming out.
That that's what I mean when I say hope isn't real unless it
really changes me. Does that make sense to you?
Like like like, OK, so then then how does this happen?
Like how do we, how do we go about a change, a real change?
We're actually want the change. You must surrender to Jesus to
be changed. There's a whole message of, of
the gospel. You must surrender.
Like here's the thing, you don't fix yourself and then come to
Jesus. You don't clean yourself up and
then come to G, but that would be like cleaning yourself up and
then getting in the shower. I don't you're doing it wrong,
right? But but also it's not enough to
intellectually know what the shower does.
If you're standing on the outside of the shower looking at
it and you know lots of facts about it, it hasn't done
anything. You got to get in and look in.
In America because of cultural Christianity, there's tons of
people showing up once a week staring at the shower.
I heard a quote this week. It says man if if you teach
people morals but but they don't know Christ, you're just getting
tidy unbelievers. You got to know him because only
he has the power to change you. You got to get in the shower.
If you're in the youth group, maybe twice.
You got to get in the shower and you got to let it wash over you
again and again and again and again.
If you want real hope. If you want real hope for your
home. If you want real hope for your
life, if you want hope that's going to actually solve the
problem, the problem is me from the inside.
You have to surrender to God and let Him begin to do work on your
life. So will you do that?
No one can push you in the shower.
That's the way it works. You have to step into the grace
and the mercy and the hope that God offers.
If you have never done that before, if you've never
surrendered your life to God, will you do that today?
The Bible says you have to place faith in Him in order to be
saved. Romans 10/9 to 10 would say this
way. Because if you'll confess with
your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that
God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
For with the heart 1 believes and is justified, and with the
mouth 1 declares and is saved. Jesus died and was raised from
death three days later. To offer you this hope, to fix
the real problem, to offer you a new life as the Lord of your
life. Listen, I don't know how old you
are. You've had that many years
trying to do it on your own. So if you would like to
surrender to your your life to God today, I want to give you
that chance. Will you all please bow your
heads and close your eyes for for just a moment.
We're going to wrap service up in just a just a second.
If you're willing to ask God for forgiveness and salvation.
If you're if you're ready to get in the shower for the first time
with every eye closed and every head bowed, I just want you to
quietly say something like this. Jesus, I know I'm a Sinner and I
can't save myself. I want you to save me and adopt
me into your family. I surrender everything to you
when I receive your promise of forgiveness and eternal life.
Be my Lord, please Jesus. Have you prayed that prayer for
the very first time? Would you be brave and raise
your hand for me to see? Thank you, thank you, thank you.
You put your hands down in Jesus name, Amen.
All right, real quick, if you just committed your life to
Jesus for the very first time, welcome to the family in a few
moments when when we respond to this sermon, we have our prayer
team up here. We have some tables in the back
say I raised my hand. We would love to to chat with
you about what it looks like to have surrendered your life to
the Lord. I want to celebrate with you.
We have a gift for you. We're excited for you, for those
of you in this room that know Christ personally, maybe maybe
it's because you just surrendered your life to him,
but maybe, maybe not. Maybe maybe you did it decades
ago. Ed, you're still overwhelmed.
And so I want to talk to you for, for the last couple moments
of the sermon about how the, the hope in Christ, Christ in you,
the hope of glory, how that works every single day.
And So what happens is that after you've submitted your life
to to Christ, after you've said, OK, Christ Jesus, you take over.
Three things start to happen. And they happen a lot.
And you need to recognize them so you can lean into them.
And here's the three things that are going to happen over and
over and over and over and over and over again.
Number one, he's going to convict you #2 he's going to
equip you. And #3 he's going to surround
you. He's going to equip you.
I mean, he's going to convict you, equip you, surround you.
He's going to convict me, equip me and surround me.
He's going to convict me. He's going to equip me.
He's going to surround me. Say it with me.
He's going to convict me, equip me, surround me.
Now let me explain what I mean. God has placed His Holy Spirit
inside of you. That is part of the salvation
process. That's what Christ in me means.
And one of the primary roles of the Holy Spirit is to be a smoke
alarm. Everyone knows what a smoke
alarm is at an incredibly convenient time. 3:00 AM this
morning, the smoke alarm in my bedroom decided it had a low
battery. But but what's the whole point
of a smoke alarm? A smoke alarm is there because,
hey, there's a potential, there's a fire and that matters
a lot. And so when the smoke alarm goes
off, you, you, you're like, hey, we better pay attention that or
because your dogs are freaking out.
But either way, we better pay attention.
We better the whole point of the alarm right is to get your
attention to go Hey there's danger the Holy Spirit responds
to sin anything that is contrary to God like a smoke alarm and
goes hey, there's a problem. Sin is dangerous sin is poison.
Sin will kill you and as a Christian, it's our job when
when we hear the Holy Spirit to listen and respond to the Holy
Spirit. The problem is that in modern
Christianity, like we, we've we've become this, this group of
people that are rarely actually responds to the work of the
Spirit instead of like we actually are really, really good
at tuning him out. Like really good at going.
I don't hear anything at all. So much so that like if I ask
most people right now who, who say I'm a Christian, if I go,
hey, tell me how you discern the will of God in your life and
what God's doing in your life right now.
Like where is he leading? What is he saying?
What is he doing? Like right now, today on a, on a
Sunday, most people would go and the fact that we don't have an
answer is dangerous. The the fact that a lot of us
would go, I'm not even sure how I would know that's dangerous if
the Holy Spirit's job is to be a guide so that we stay on a path
and so that we, we, we're working toward pleasing God and
staying off the edges where we're going to fall into a pit
and we can't figure out how to actually respond like that's
dangerous. Yes, we, we should be the
experts and hearing and responding to the Holy Spirit
and, and often times I, I don't think we as a people are doing a
very good job listening. But how do I, how do I know what
I should be doing in my life if I don't know where God is
leading? And how do I know where God is
leading if I'm not even listening?
And how do I listen if I filled my life up with so much stuff
that I have no time to talk to God?
So, so, so we got to start by asking and having some space to
listen. Secondly, he equips me.
So he convicts me, but he also equips me.
He takes, he takes your gifts and your talents and, and, and
your experiences and your past and, and often times even your
pain. And he begins to point it and
fashion it all towards this calling that he has for you.
When he saved you, it was not for the JV team.
It was not to be a spectator in the stands.
When he saved you, he also simultaneously put his spirit in
you and he called you into works of ministry.
There's no such thing as a Christian who's not called to
works of ministry. It's impossible.
And so you've got this equipping, you've got these
talents, you've got these gifts. And listen, God has literally
looked at you and said, I would like to do a great work in the
world and I and to accomplish that, I want to use you.
And so I want to ask you, where is that for you?
What does that look like? Do you know during WrestleMania,
one of those super encouraging things, if you got to kind of
watch what was going on, is we had a, a bunch of older Saints,
some of them that live in the Manor apartments, just just
people in their 70s, eighties, 90s serving all week long.
Come on, right. That's worthy of honor.
Because let me tell you what you're always going to have,
You're always going to have excuses why not to serve.
But you're missing out on one of the most encouraging parts of
the Christian life when you when you have all of these gifts and
things that God's given you and you let them sit idle.
It is tough to find contentment when you won't get in the game.
Christ in you is the hope of glory.
God gave you a superpower. Go use it.
And thirdly, God is going to surround you.
He's going to convict you. He's going to equip you and he's
going to surround you because we're going to struggle.
Amen. We're going to struggle.
I mean, even as Christians, even as people who love Jesus, we're
going to, we're going to struggle.
We're going to struggle with conviction of the Spirit.
We're going to struggle with the calling.
We're going to struggle because the world is still broken and
still evil. So, so, So what do you do when
you've been, when you've given your life to Jesus and you're,
and you're, you're trying, you're working on it, but you
just still overwhelmed by life. Guess what?
It already happened, and they already wrote about it in
Hebrews 10/23 through 25. Here's what the author says
about this struggle. He says this.
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering.
Let us hold fast to this confession of hope.
For some of you, you just made that confession.
For some of you made that confession a long time ago.
For he who promised this faithful.
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good
works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of
some, but encouraging one another.
And all the more as you see the day drawing near.
We don't gather here on Sunday mornings because this is the one
special day a week that God needs worship.
We, we, we don't gather on Sunday mornings because you only
read the Bible on Sundays. I hope we gather on Sunday
mornings so that we can do that worship and and and and speak
that truth with one another in order to encourage one another
and stir each other up. Because it's a Dark World and
you need encouragement. We need to be reminded of hope.
We need people to speak truth into our lives and we need each
other. Nobody does well alone for long
without support, and all of us need someone cheering for us.
So there's probably a couple of you here who have neglected
this. You've been casual about your
pursuit of Christ, acting like 90 minutes on Sunday morning is
enough. Let me just tell you, it is not.
We live in a crooked culture. We need a whole lot more hope
than this. So what I did is I wrote out
four things in your handout today, either a separate hand on
your bulletin, 4 things, four different ways to take a next
step. Here's the first one.
I want to be baptized now. Here's the good news baptism,
which is the very next step you take after making a confession
of faith in Jesus Christ. It is the public declaration.
If, if that is the next step for you and you've not done that and
you're checking that box right now, the good news is you can do
it today because we're about to do baptisms.
And so if that's you, all you have to do is walk over to that
door and we have T-shirts and extra clothes and towels and
everything else. Secondly, I want to join a
community group. Man, I need some people in my
life who know what's going on in my life. 3rd, I want to join a
team and use my gifts to serve in some way.
And 4th, I want to become a member.
We're going to start a membership class on Wednesday,
Wednesday night when kids come back for youth and for level up.
We're going to be doing membership.
And so if you're not a member yet of this church and you want
to do that, you can, you can check that box as well.
You can check any of those boxes you'd like and respond.
Here's what I want you to, I want you to perfectly consider
in this next moment as we pray and respond, what is it that the
Lord, the Lord is leading you to today?
To be sensitive to his Spirit as he leads.
So we're going to, we're going to get our baptism team ready
and do some baptisms in just a second as we respond.
But listen, Christ in you is not only the hope of glory, he's the
reason that we actually can have real hope for our homes.
I have AI have a daughter that has run far away from God and
and her family. And so even as in prayer I plead
with God for her heart, I also still have tremendous hope for
what he's going to do because Christ in her will change
everything. That's my hope.
And Christ in you will change everything for you too.
You just have to let him. Our prayer team's going to come
up right now. And elders, we would love for an
opportunity to pray with you. And so if you want prayer for
any reason, if you want prayer as help to respond to any of
these, the, the parts of this message, we'd love to pray with
you. If you want to go back to one of
those tables because you just made a profession of faith, we
would love to talk to you. If you believe that God is
calling you to be baptized, this is the next step.
We would love for you to come up and we'll help you with that
too. If you just want prayer, that's
an awesome reason to come on up, stand with us.
We're going to close in this song and some baptisms.
And you respond as the Lord leads you.
We love you.