Maybe some of you made some New Year's resolutions.
I am not going to give you the depressing statistics on how
often those fail. Here's what I will tell you.
If you set a New Year's resolution for something, let's
say you decided this is the year 2026, I'm going to get fit.
Finally, the number one, the number one factor as to whether
or not that's going to happen is who you spend your time with.
So, so if you want to get healthier, if you'll go spend
time with people that value that, it's amazing how that
suddenly gets a little better. A good buddy of mine, Oscar,
called me up. He said, I'm ready.
I'm finally ready to get fit. And he's like, when do you work
out? I was like 4:30 in the morning
and he's like, I'm coming. I was like, we're going to find
out. And so, you know, we were two
days in, he's like, I can't walk.
I was like, yeah, that's part of it.
OK, So anyways, who you spend your time with matters.
And so here's what I want to tell you in the, in the context
of this, if if you've begun to look at kind of your life and
this year and what's going on, you're like, man, I really want
a heart more like Jesus or I really want to pursue Jesus a
little bit more. I really want to deepen my
faith. Here's what I'm going to tell
you. The number one factor to whether
or not that's going to go well in 2026 is who you spend your
time with. You want to pursue Christ a
little bit more, get in to group community relationship with
people who love Jesus and love you and you will be amazed at
how much faster you're going to paddle that boat.
So sign up for a group or sign up the fill out and I'm new here
card or fill out just about anything.
And when we call you to follow up, tell them, hey, here's what
I feel like I need. And we will start working with
you on what does it look like to find people to do this with you
and you won't need people. Now we're kicking off a four
week series starting today for the month of January Called sent
just called sent. And here's why Jesus plan to
reach the entire world with the news of the gospel was his
church. So so go ahead and look around
you look left, look right, go ahead.
If you're sitting next to your spouse, this is a good time to
go. You look good.
They like compliments men. If you're single, don't don't
say that just yet unless you know they're going to be OK with
it. So look around you.
Look at everybody sitting in the pews.
Y'all ain't Plan B. This is the plan.
You're not spectators or an audience.
You're the plan. Say me, this is this is God's
plan. If you're going like what a
plan? He didn't make a mistake.
You're not the junior varsity. He chose you before the
foundations of the earth according to the Bible.
You're the plan. I want you to, I want you to
hold on to that because we want to talk a lot about it over the
course of this month. You're the hope of the world,
Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Now, different generations have called this different things.
Some generations might call this missions or evangelism or
testimony, or we're just going to call it sent.
For the next 4 weeks, we're going to be talking about being
sent because if you're a Christian, then you have been
sent to spread the good news of Christ.
And so for this today, we're going to talk about how Jesus
did it. And then for the next two weeks,
next week and the week after, we're going to have guest
speakers come in here from other churches that are specifically
kind of an expert in specific fields, talk about what it looks
like to reach a lost and broken world.
And there's some really good, I mean, you're going to enjoy the
next two weeks. Week 4, this is super important.
Week 4, January 25th, what date? We are not going to meet here.
We're going to have one service at 10 AM in the parking lot of
the Junketeque outlet. You better write that down or it
could be really lonely over here.
We're breaking out the COVID tent.
Hopefully it doesn't come with a pandemic.
And we're going to meet in the parking lot and then we have all
kinds of stuff afterwards, different ministry
opportunities. You can sign up for them already
right now in the lobby, but we're going to do those on that
day. So I don't want you to show up
and be really lonely here. We're going to be over there at
10 AM, OK? January 25th, That's one more
time. So do you hear me?
OK, over the next 4 weeks, we, we want to teach the doctrine of
what it looks like to be sent and we want to really get into
the mission. And then we're just going to
continue to give you unapologetically opportunities
to partner with local partners, outreach organizations with us.
We have a massive emphasis in 2026 on action.
We want to get you in the game. Listen, I want you in the game
and Bakersfield needs you in the game.
So we're going to start our series today, week one in
Matthew 9, verses 35 through 38. And if you if you don't get
anything else out of today, I need you to get this one idea
that's nestled in here. And it's this.
You're not special, you're sacred.
And I'm going to explain what that means.
So let's start in Matthew 9. We're at the very end of the
chapter. All throughout the chapter,
Jesus has been doing miraculous healing.
He has healed blind men. He's healed a lame man.
He's taken a little girl who died, raised her to life.
He went and found a tax collector, which is about the
most ostracized physician in the 1st century, and he invited that
person to be his disciple. And then he casts a demon out of
a man. It's been an interesting
chapter. And then we're going to pick it
up right here in verse 35. Read with me and Jesus went
throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their
synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom and
healing every disease and every affliction.
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they
were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.
Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but
the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the
Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.
You see a phrase here in verse 35 says gospel of the Kingdom.
So gospel if you're new, you never, I don't really know
what's going on this Bible thing.
Gospel just means good news, just means good news.
It's the good news of the Kingdom.
So. So what is the good news that
he's sharing about this Kingdom? Well, here in the 1st century,
the Israelites, God's, God's people had waited for a coming
Messiah or savior. In fact, all of the Old
Testament of the Bible had been promising, prophesying that
someone was coming to save the people, the Savior, this
Messiah. And so natural question maybe if
you're hearing that you don't know much about the Christian
faith is save them from what? Well, there are a lot of
prophecies that were essentially promises from God.
We get the benefit now of looking back and understanding
that those prophecies were completed by Jesus.
And so when we read some of those, maybe they were a little
confusing at the time. They're a lot more clear now.
Let me read you one that probably at the time was very
confusing, but we understand it a lot better now.
This is Ezekiel 36, 25 through 27.
It says this the prophecy. I will sprinkle clean water on
you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses and from
all your idols. I will cleanse you, and I will
give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you.
And I will remove your heart of stone from your flesh.
And I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my Spirit
within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to
obey my rules. Now at the time that was written
might have been pretty confusing.
Sounds like a surgery they didn't even have, right?
We can look at this now and know this is what Jesus was going to
do. Jesus came to save us from
ourselves. He came to save us from sin,
from spiritual death by placing His Holy Spirit inside of us.
But back in the 1st century, if I said why is the Messiah coming
to save you, the most common interpretation was that the
Messiah was coming to save us from the Romans, Roman
occupation. And so Jesus is in the
countryside. He's going from village to
village and he's preaching good news.
The Kingdom has come and they're all going really where's where's
your army? If you're going to save us from
the Romans, you're going to need like I don't some soldiers, some
Chariots, maybe a couple Apache helicopters, right, like might
help. See, most people in that moment
missed Jesus because he wasn't offering the solution they had
imagined. They wanted people miss Jesus
because they they thought the gospel missed the point.
They thought, you know, Jesus is a great idea if he gives me what
I think I need. And in that moment it was
military strength. It was freedom from Rome.
And so they missed him or they rejected him outright.
You, it's easy to look back and be like, I don't know how you
could miss Jesus, but I do that. I've done that.
When I decide that what will really fix my life is more
money, then as long as Jesus gives me more money or a
promotion of some type than I'm totally down with Jesus.
Like Hallelujah, if that's what Jesus gives me.
And if not, well, I don't know if that's for me.
Like maybe maybe you've met someone like this.
Like, you know what we all want, What I would really like Jesus
to do is show up in my life and tell me that all of my choices
have been right. You know what I mean?
I you've been right. Everyone else is wrong.
I just need the Jesus that will show up and affirm my lifestyle
and my choices and my opinions, my political views, all of those
things. That would be wonderful.
Here's the problem with that. I mean, that would be a Jesus I
could really easily latch onto. The problem with that is he's
God and I'm not. So when the when the power of
the gospel of Christ pierces my heart that the first thing that
happens is I begin to realize how wrong I've been and how much
I actually need a Savior. The gospel, the good news of
Christ, the very first thing it does when when we meet it is it
exposes. It exposes everything about our
heart and our need for a Savior. Look at verse 36.
It says when he this is Jesus. When he saw the crowds, he had
compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like
sheep without a shepherd. In the original text, those
words harassed and helpless that they were just rich with
meaning, weary, troubled, bewildered, despondent,
scattered, meant, prostate thrown on the ground.
What the the The writer here is trying to describe to you our
helplessness without God. Jesus looks at these crowds of
people, most of whom listen to me, most of whom are going to
reject him. In fact, not that long from when
this is written, most of them, the majority is going to take
him to be crucified willingly. And yet he's going to look at
them and he's going to have compassion on their condition.
What is that condition? He's not concerned about their
poverty. He's not considered concerned
about the Roman occupation. He's concerned about the state
of humanity apart from God, because it's helpless and
hopeless. This is the message of the
entire Bible. The whole Bible is that that no
amount of money, no amount of knowledge, no amount of power,
no amount of of science, no governmental systems can fix
what is wrong deep down inside of me.
When humanity rebelled in the very beginning of the Bible, we
now all have been born under this curse, separated from the
very God who created us for relationship with Him.
We were designed for relationship with the Creator
and separated under a curse, and there's no hope.
And the state of the lost, the state of those separated from
God, should drive us to compassion and urgency.
That's what it does here in Matthew 9.
Jesus sees that, and it drives him to compassion.
If the state of lost people drives Jesus to compassion, how
come so often it drives us to anger?
Have you been around American church for any period of time?
You know what I'm talking about. Well, why do we see American
Christians so angry at lost people so often?
Well, we read the gospel. We don't see Jesus screaming to
them about their politics or their poor choices or their bad
opinions or anything else. He was disturbed, certainly.
He was not silent. He was very vocal.
He's very motivated to address the problem, but it with
compassion, to show them that there was hope.
And listen, it is possible that we can be motivated by anger,
but but anger motivates us in a very distorted way.
You see, anger causes us to see lost people as a problem to fix.
Compassion sees people as image bearers to love so that Jesus
can fix them. Anger balls up its fist and
shouts at the lost. Compassion kneels to wash their
feet. That's what's supposed to be
happening to us as Christians. The the same gospel that exposes
our heart to show us that we're the problem in need of a Savior,
exchanges our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh so
that we can begin to feel real emotion for those who are still
lost. The gospel doesn't just expose
the gospel in flames. When I was lost with a heart of
stone, nothing could set me on fire.
Nothing moved me. I could walk past homeless
people all day long. I could scroll past the
statistics on orphans. I could ignore my Co workers or
my neighbors pain. Because stone doesn't burn,
stone doesn't feel, stone doesn't move.
But because God gave me a heart of flesh and eyes to see a
broken world, now he has set me on fire to reach others.
And he's done that for you too. To, to, to look at a lost world
and see it any differently is not to see it the way Jesus
does. The heart of flesh burns and a
heart on fire moves. And I, and I think that one of
our challenges as Christians is sometimes we feel the weight of
this or the urgency of this, maybe even the passion of this.
And, but we aren't really sure what to do with it.
And so I, I think there are times where churches motivation
does not actually come from biblical places.
Here's what I mean by that. We should be passionate, but we
must be compassionate. You hear me?
We should be passionate. It should, it should well up
inside of us, but not in an angry way, in a compassionate
way. So what does Jesus do with his
compassion? He feels this compassion.
What does he what does he do? Well, he does three things.
Look back at verse 35 says when Jesus went throughout all the
cities and villages teaching in their synagogues.
You can underline teaching proclaiming.
That's another word for preaching can underline
proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom and healing.
There's the third verb, healing every disease and every
affliction. So he went just like your scent.
And he did three things, Teaching, preaching, healing.
So what does it mean to teach? Well, he engaged their minds.
Jesus is probably the best storyteller we have ever seen.
There was a study I read recently, Jr.
Briggs counted that Jesus was asked over three.
No, Jesus himself asked over 300 questions.
He's just constantly meeting people and asking them questions
to get them to think. They've done neurological
studies that when you ask a question or answer a question,
your brain waves spike. You start to think about things.
It's the way to captivate people simply to ask questions.
Jesus was constantly asking people questions.
Over 300 questions. Jesus was asked over 180
questions in his short little mission on earth.
About three years, 180 questions.
He answered five of them directly. 5 You know what he did
the rest of the time? They asked him a question, He
asked them a question, they asked him a question, He told
them a story. Jesus was constantly engaging
people's minds to try to get them to see the truth of the
Gospel. He didn't want them to just
memorize something. So he's teaching.
He's also preaching. We see Jesus preaching.
What's the difference? Teaching a little bit more
informational tends to engage the mind.
Preaching is supposed to be transformational.
Teaching leads us to understanding.
Preaching leads us to commitment.
I teach to reach your brain. I preach to reach your heart.
And so Jesus did both. He preached the Sermon on the
Mount is phenomenal and he preached through stories all the
time. Jesus loved to preach through
stories. Think about how brilliant the
the the actual genius of the story of the Good Samaritan.
The Good Samaritan story came Why?
Because someone asked him a question and he didn't answer
it. He's like there was a man
walking down. He starts the story, but think
about his story. His story is to explain who is
your neighbor? But but who are The Who are the
failures in the story, the religious elite and who's the
hero of the story, the Samaritan outcast.
Jesus preached to reach their hearts.
So he taught the gospel, but he also preached the gospel.
And then he did a third thing. It says Jesus healed.
He's healing all throughout the chapter, all of Matthew 9, he's
healing. This is a radical message about
transformation and salvation in this gospel that he's preaching.
It's not just taught to the mind.
It's not just preach to the heart, it's displayed in power.
Listen, you might not like what a guy says, but he raises a
little girl from death to life and you're like, this guy's
serious. Even Jesus skeptics had to deal
with the fact that he's doing these supernatural miracles.
In fact, if you read Jesus life, they're people that don't like
Jesus, but he keeps doing these miracles and they have to try to
explain them away. They're like, maybe he has a
demon, he's moving with unavoidable powers.
It's impossible to ignore the power, the supernatural power of
Christ. Now maybe you're thinking, OK,
look, I, I can maybe see how I can teach the gospel.
Maybe, maybe I can figure out how to preach the gospel.
But how am I supposed to do miracles?
How am I supposed to do supernatural miracles?
So here's the thing you might be missing.
You are one. That Jesus took you from
spiritual death to spiritual life as a supernatural miracle.
The the the God took someone with a stone of heart, a heart
of stone who is dead spiritually and raised you to life, set a
slave free, a rebel that's been reconciled to God.
That's not self improvement, that's resurrection.
You didn't pull yourself up and do this to yourself.
God did that. So.
So now as a Christian who's been raised from spiritual death to
spiritual life, we can live for Christ in a way that is so
impossible, so radical, so counter cultural that our very
lives are miracles. Last December, so about 13
months ago, I was up here and we were talking and I said my wife
and I had been praying and and separately in prayer had reached
a conviction that we were supposed to be foster parents.
Do anyone here remember that? OK, so we're sitting up here and
it's kind of like live at the moment.
You know, I'm like, man, my wife and I have been praying here.
Here's that. So we start on this thing.
We sign up. By the way, it is not quick.
You deal with the government. So nine months of forms and
training and certifications and inspections and two new social
workers along the way. Apparently you can't keep them
more than three months. Maybe it's us.
Nine months of work. We finally get approved, no
phone calls. So finally, a couple months
after getting approved, we get a phone call, We pick up a foster
kid. We have them for two weeks and
we have had no foster kids since it's been a year.
We spent most of that in trading and filling out forms and phone
calls and inspections to get two weeks of a foster.
As someone that really likes efficiency, this bothers me.
And I'm like, you know, you're talking to guy, You're like,
what are you going to do? What am I going to nine months
of work for? Two measly weeks of like, what
is that for? Like, what's God going to do
with two weeks? And then in the moment I'm like,
what did he do with two fishes and five loaves?
So our foster kid leaves and then he shows up the youth
group. That's cool.
And then his brothers show up in the kids ministry and his
grandparents show up, his mom shows up and we're just like
where all these people come from.
And then on December 14th, I got to baptize him.
Y'all understand that's not supposed to be how that works,
right? Because if that's the formula,
all we got to do is sign up to Foster and everybody's getting
saved. I wish you were that that,
Listen, if I were writing out this plan, OK, I'm just going to
do nine months of work and then we're going to have two weeks of
fostering. And then people are just going
to give their lives to Jesus. I'd be like, this is a stupid
plan. And if it were my plan, it would
be a stupid plan. The good news is it was not my
plan. It was a miracle because no one
writes a plan like that. It's a dumb plan.
God didn't ask me for a plan. He called me to obedience.
He said, Daniel, you have a spare room, you have a stable
household. You give it to me and I'll use
it for my glory. So we teach and we preach, but
we also live radically, and God displays his power to a lost
world. And so to live radically means
we're going to be willing to serve a bunch of people who may
not even be grateful that we're helping them.
So we're going to need supernatural motivation.
We're going to need God to light us on fire.
Because I'll be honest, ministry is hard.
People are mean. They're going to hurt you.
Hurt people hurt people. So no amount of moralism, no
amount of religion is going to want motivate you to keep
pouring yourself out. God has to light you on fire.
I want God to light you on fire. And as he does, you're going to
realize that God is leading you into specific ways to reach
people. I can't even tell you all the
ways. I just know He's going to do it.
The beauty of that, you're going to get to discover how that
works. So I want you to take a moment.
I want you to just think like what?
What are the things that God has actually already started to call
me to do? But they seem inconvenient.
They seem like a bad plan. So I've been sweeping them under
the rug. I've been ignoring them.
I don't actually want to listen to the God because I have a lot
of rational reasons not to do it.
Because I got to be honest with you, I've got a lot of rational
reasons to not be a foster parent.
What's he telling you? What's he been working on that
you don't want to listen to? I'm not trying to guilt you.
I'm trying to invite you into an adventure of a lifetime because
God wants to use you. That's the good news.
But you have to move as He leads you.
So Jesus is teaching, Jesus is preaching, Jesus is healing.
I can't heal like Jesus could at will.
Most of us probably can't. But I can live supernatural,
radical life of obedience in such a way that seems
inexplicable to the outside world.
And I can expectantly wait for God to do glorious and
impossible things through it, and he will.
You see, I don't need to have the power to heal because I know
the Healer and he's invited us into his work.
Listen to me, church. Listen, if you will live like
this, the world will notice. They're going to see the
miracles. They're going to the fact that
you're saved is a miracle. The very testimony of our
salvation is a miracle. It is a supernatural act of God.
And so this has been happening. Jesus been going around the
countryside. He's been preaching, He's been
teaching, he's been healing. People are taking notice.
And then he turns to his disciples in verse 37.
He looks at him, He says this, He says this.
The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.
And there's there's two things that he's saying in that moment.
I want you to see both of them. Here's the first thing he's
saying. Most of the world is lost.
Y'all realize that, right? Yes, yes, most of the world is
you. You know most of Kern County is
lost, most of the city of Bakersfield is lost, most of
your neighbors are lost and most of your Co workers are lost.
If you work for the church, that's weird.
You understand what I'm saying? When you leave these this
campus, most of the people you're going to see and interact
with in this world don't know Christ.
Jesus is going the the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers
are few. What does he mean by that?
Few of those saved will live like they're sent.
Few of those that know Christ will actually live like they're
on mission. Jesus isn't saying we need more
conversions in order to get more workers.
That's not at all what he's saying.
He's saying the workers are already here, they're just not
working at the harvest. They're saved, baptized, sitting
in churches around the country. That's the crisis.
We are far too comfortable. The harvest is rotting because
the laborers are sitting in the barn.
The good news is I see that changing all around this church.
I see that in you. I'm watching God move in you.
I'm seeing it happen. We have story after story after
story watching it happen. What do we do about that?
Verse 38 What do we do about that?
Therefore, so then pray earnestly to the Lord of the
harvest to underline that word. Those two words send out, send
out laborers into the harvest. Send out the actual original
language is more forceful than send out.
It means thrust forth, yes, we need to be sent out.
For some of us, this is how we get sent out, right?
Fighting every moment like I don't want to, blah, Francis
Schaefer, in one of his most famous sermons, said the the the
leadership, Christian leadership is like metal being extruded
into a form. Takes a great deal of pressure,
right, to push us into those moments because we fight it as
much as we can. I don't want to do it.
Can I tell you how much I did not want to be a foster parent?
Let me step back. Can I tell you how much I when I
was a kid, I said I want to be anything other than a pastor.
How's that working out? When I became a pastor I said
listen that's fine. What?
OK God? Fine, all right, as long as I
don't have to preach. I went from not wanting to be a
pastor to not wanting to preach, to not being able to shut up.
Y'all are laughing way too much of that joke sent forth
compelled. Every single Christian.
Say me is commissioned to go from disciple to disciple Maker.
That's what the gospel does. And the only prerequisite is
that you're saved. That's the power of the gospel.
That took fishermen and tax collectors and some ragtag group
of nobodies and turn them into apostles for Christ.
That's how someone like me hints up somewhere, like here, sent
forth. The gospel empowers.
It's what I'm trying to tell you.
It doesn't just expose, it doesn't just inflamed.
It empowers. When, when, when God saved you,
he put his Holy Spirit inside of you.
He commissioned you for the work of the harvest and equipped you
with spiritual gifts and everything that you would need.
And he wants. All He wants from you is a
humble heart and an obedient servant, and he provides the
rest. I don't know what God's about to
do in your life, but I know he's about to do something
miraculous. I see it all around this church.
I feel it in my bones like some of y'all feel the rain.
I'm like, oh, I can. I just, I see it bubbling up all
around this church. The gospel empowers.
Here's the thing, right? I'm not special.
I've just been set apart by God, just like you have.
You're not special. You're sacred.
We, we, we, we don't have some
sort of special ability that others don't have.
I can't heal at will. We're not smarter, we're not
more gifted, we're not more qualified, but we are sacred.
We've been set apart by God for his purposes.
The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in
you. You're not special, you're
sacred. You're not impressive, you're
empowered. You're not the hero, but you
know the hero, and he has invited you into his story.
So we serve and pray. That's what Jesus says.
We serve and pray. So today when we end this
service, man, we're going to pray over this whole church.
We're going to pray to the Lord of the harvest that you would
begin to realize you've been sent out.
It was a beautiful quote in one of the commentaries I was
reading I wanted to share with you was talking about this idea
of being sent forth of being commissioned and says this we
find our motive or motive for going and doing this in the
heart of Christ and our strength to do it in the prayers of the
church. This is why we pray for you so
much. I want you to come on this ride
if you're if you're willing to run after the lost.
I want to explain a bunch of tools we're putting together to
just try to help ways to equip ways to offer you opportunities,
ways for for maybe you to take a little test step in different
directions and see where God's leading.
Got a bunch of stuff this year for you.
So here's one of them we built. We built a ping pong ball wall.
And what we're going to do is every time you invite someone to
church, when you come in on Sunday, you're going to get one
of these little white ping pong balls and you're going to write
the name of the person you invited.
And you're just going to drop it in the top.
And we're going to fill this sucker up.
It's probably going to take like, I don't know, 1000 ping
pong balls. You'll have that done by
February, right? We'll build a bigger one.
And every time someone you invited comes, we're going to
let you put the name on a on an orange ball so you can just
watch the colors. And every time someone after a
service comes and it gives their life to Christ, we're going to
put their name on a on a pink ball.
We're going to put it in there. And every time someone moves
forward in obedience to believers baptism, we're going
to put their name on a like a green ball.
We're going to put it. And we're just going to watch
God do work all year. All right, check this out.
I'm going to show you how this is going to work.
Get up here, guys. Right here, right here, right
here, front step. OK, here's what I want you to
do. I'll give them some ping pong
balls just so you know the holes right here.
Go ahead and Chuck them in. Come on.
OK, one tip, 1 tip. If you want to reach people for
Christ, you might have to get close.
Going to put it out there. The Instagram verse might not be
enough. You might have to get into their
life. So every time you invite
somebody, I want you to put your name on their ball.
Why don't you put them in here? Your neighbor.
I got to meet Richard's neighbor the other night at a house
warming party. I didn't realize it, but he was
married to a girl who's a twin sister of someone that I did
their wedding and they recognized me and they're like,
we know this guy from somewhere. I'm like, oh, that's the pastor.
And Richard's like, oh, that's an in.
Let's talk about church baby. Right?
We're two down. We're almost there.
OK, so we're going to do this every Sunday.
It's going to be sitting down in the lobby.
She'll come in. I want you to think about this
every single week, man. Have I, have I invited someone
into my life, into into church, into house, and it's just a
conversation about the gospel. We're going to put the name in
there. We're going to keep doing it.
Secondly, you probably pass the tables on the way in here.
There's a bunch of things to sign up for, and I want you to
take part in them. I want you to consider them.
I want you to pray over them. There's all sorts of fun stuff
that we're going to do all month long and be opportunities, so go
check out all those things. We also put it on a website.
On our website, if you go to resurrect dot church slash sent,
there's a bunch of links of all kinds of cool stuff that we're
doing. So we're all in one place.
We'll talk about ways to partner at Jado.
We're going to go over there later in the month.
There are two big events we're going to invite you to that I
want you to go to. One of them is an evangelism
workshop. It's here in town, it's free.
It's in February, but I need you to sign up so I know how many
people I'm feeding. And the other one is at the very
end of April, beginning of May. It's in Sacramento.
It's called the Thrive Conference.
Those two things. We sent a lot of people to
Thrive last year. We're going to blow those
numbers away this year. It's like it's like church camp
for adults. We're going to love it.
OK? I want you to go to those
things. The Bakersfield Angels and
Shelby and her team are going to be out there.
There are so many ways to start taking some steps to begin to
see where God's leading, and I want you to start moving towards
some of those things and investigating where God is at
work in your life. So let's start with this.
Every single day, pray. Pray to the Lord of the harvest.
Pray that God would would keep you sensitive to those
interactions as you're at the gas station, as you stop for a
minute at Starbucks to have a conversation with a barista, to
just have conversations with people about what God is doing.
Pray, pray daily. Serve somewhere.
This month we're going to try to give you more and more
opportunities. I want you to serve somewhere,
try something out. There's going to be
opportunities everywhere. Come to these two upcoming
events that we've got planned in February and in May and start
inviting people to hear the good news.
It is my dream, it is my hope, it is my constant prayer that if
you call this church your home, you will be so compelled by the
Spirit of God that you cannot escape the work that He's doing
in your life. You'll be so empowered and
amazed by the way God is changing you that you will link
arms with people in this church. And we are going to charge into
these neighborhoods to foster, to adopt, to feed, to serve, to
give, to teach, to preach, to invite, to testify to the
supernatural work that God is doing in each of us.
Maybe you joined us today. Maybe you're online and you, you
realize that that God has actually been calling you to him
for quite some time and you haven't been able to articulate
what that was. But you're you're beginning to
understand that God actually loves you.
And that voice you hear in the back of the head, it's not a
monologue, it's actually God calling you to salvation.
We've been talking a lot about this term called gospel.
If you, if you're not familiar with the gospel message of the
Bible, then give me the last 30 seconds of your time here and
let me explain it to you. God created you for relationship
with him and every single one of us has rebelled and and broken
relationship, separated from God and we can't fix it.
So God sent his Son Jesus fully God, fully man, to live a
perfect life we could never live, to die a death that we
deserve to die and to rise from death to prove that he had
conquered sin and death. The Bible says that if you will
turn from your sin and trust Jesus, that God Forgives you
completely, adopts you as his child, and gives you eternal
life. That's the gospel, that's the
good news. So if you would like to
surrender your life to God today, I want to give you that
opportunity. Will everyone please bow with me
for just a moment, close your eyes for just a second.
I just want you to concentrate on you yourself for just a
moment and block out all the distractions.
If you're willing to ask God for forgiveness and salvation with
every eye closed, with every head bowed, I just want you to
repeat this prayer after me, quietly, silently, however you'd
like to do it. Jesus, I know I'm lost and I
can't fix myself. I need you to save me.
So I put my trust in you and I surrender my whole life.
Be my Lord, please Jesus. That's the first time you've
ever said a prayer like that. Will you raise your hand for me
to see? Thank you, thank you.
You can put your hands down in Jesus name, Amen.
Real quick as we as we leave real quick if you just
surrendered your life to Christ for the very first time.
Welcome to the family. Will you stand with us?
We're going to sing a song. Our per team's going to be up
here. We'd love to pray with you.
If you gave your life to Christ moments ago for the first time.
There are tables in the back that say I raised my hand.
We'd love it if you'd find your way back there.
As we sing, tell someone about the decision you just made.
We would love to celebrate with you.
We have a gift for you. If you need perf for any reason,
our team is going to be up here. You move as the Lord leads you.
We love you, Church.