For The Sake Of Others // Our Vision Is Jesus

Welcome to the look and weekly podcast.

Living in his presence.

Visit us in the moment and the looking so good to have you with us this morning.

Free gaming before the Super Bowl.

It's great.

Got a big Super Bowl today, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles.

Clearly, two teams nobody wanted in the Super Bowl.

Maybe those two over there, but I won't look at them in the face.

All right.

We're not going to give them the dignity of personal acknowledgement.

No, I'm just joking.

Now we got a fun day later today for those of you guys watching the game, but we're going to jump into the word this morning.

And if again, if you're a guest with us here today, if you're just stopping by, uh, we're so glad you're with us.

And so we, you know, if you haven't caught on by now in this community, um, we don't like just doing church.

All right.

There's a lot of churches you can go to where you can do church and politely behave well and do everything exactly what you're supposed to do and stand up and sit down at all the right times.

But man, we in this church, we believe that the life of God is explosive and it comes from the inside out.

And so we love holding an environment of worship, of prayer, and what we read in the scriptures of shouts of praise, hands lifted high before God, because how many of you know God is alive?

Jesus is alive.

Amen.

And so as we come into the word, we're not reading a dead book, we're reading a book that is alive.

Jesus is the word, and he speaks to us through his word.

Amen.

Are you guys with me this morning?

All right.

Don't make me have to fight you this morning, all right?

I expect you to come along.

So if you have your Bible, open up the 2 Corinthians chapter 5.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

That's where we're gonna start this morning.

2 Corinthians chapter 5.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

We're gonna start in verse 14.

If you're not familiar with this particular book, this is Paul's letter, his second letter to the church in Corinth, all right?

So this is after Jesus commissioned his disciples, and the church was spreading, and they're going all across the land to establish the church, to spread the gospel.

Okay, this is what Paul has to say.

Verse 14, he says, For the love of Christ controls us.

Because we have concluded this that one has died for all, therefore all have died, and he died for all, that those who live might not might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

Everybody say, For their sake.

From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh, even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away.

Behold, the new is come.

Somebody, somebody shout to Jesus.

Come on.

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.

And entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ.

God making his appeal through us, we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

For our sake, everybody say, for our sake, say it louder, for our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Once again, just shout to the Lord for a second here.

For our sake, he made him who didn't know sin to become sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

I'm thankful for that this morning, guys.

I could stop talking right now.

You could go home and you'd have all you need for today.

This is the word of the Lord.

And so this morning, uh, what I want to do uh this week and next week, and we're gonna focus in on this phrase for our sake or what you see on the screen for the sake of others.

And I want to unpack this phrase because I believe this is within this is an invitation for us this year and in this next season as a church, okay?

So if you're a guest with us here today, what I'm gonna be describing to you is a little bit of the heartbeat for this church in the season that we're moving into, okay?

Um, and so this week is more about the why.

Next week a little bit about the what, what we're doing.

But what happened was last November, uh the elders of the church, we took a retreat up to Essence Park, and we we every year we we try to carve out time in one way or another.

We try to carve out time to lean in in prayer and ask God, okay, what do you what are you doing in our community?

And and prayerfully, what we try to do is say, God, what what is it that you have for us ahead?

And some of you guys know one of the uh what we call our vision here, it's it's very simple.

In fact, we'll just put it on the screen.

It says this our vision is Jesus, abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love.

And you might read that and think, well, duh, yeah, this is a church, of course, our vision is Jesus.

But I gotta tell you, it's possible to be a church without your vision being Jesus.

There's a lot of churches who have a lot of different kinds of visions, and I'm telling you, it's not always Jesus.

That might be a surprise to you, but it's actually true.

And here's the thing, I'll just confess to you for me, the last thing, and I say this from the bottom of my heart, what what freaks me out the most is the possibility, and this is a possibility, to get to the end of my life or to stand before Jesus and say, Jesus, I built.

Look at all these things I built for you, look at all these things I did for you, look at look at what we accomplished, but then to not know him.

Does that freak you out?

So for me, the reason why it's so important to remind ourselves that our vision is not a plan, our vision is not a bigger building, our vision is not some of the things, our vision is Jesus because our vision is always a person who is alive, and we will spend eternity eternity with him forevermore.

And we have to be reminded that he is the reason.

Now, as we follow him, he invites us into what he's doing, which sometimes means huge plans, big dreams, huge things going on, right?

But let's not forget that our vision is Jesus, right?

So our vision is to be with him and to become like him and to do the things that he did.

That's what he invited us into.

So as we as an eldership gathered together like last November, we just spent the time praying, seeking the Lord together, and celebrating.

And it was really awesome because as we were together, we were filled with so much gratitude looking over this last year and just seeing the things that God has built into the life of this community, just to name a few, just the culture of worship, the culture of prayer, hospitality, emotional health, prophetic, the restoration and reconciliation of relationships, a sense of stability and steadiness in relationship and financially, and just across the board.

There's so many things that God has done, not to mention, just a deep sense of love for the family.

Are you guys with me on this?

There's so much to celebrate if you just want to take a praise break for a moment.

Let's just celebrate.

Thank you, Jesus, for everything that you do with us and inside of us and for us.

But the question that we wanted to pose before the Lord was this Jesus, in this season, how are you inviting us to look more like you?

Because as a church, we're not just trying to launch new things every year.

We're not just trying to do things that keep people happy.

We're trying to follow Jesus together.

If our vision is Jesus, then the guiding question is, Jesus, how are you inviting us to look more like you this year?

I would say that's a good question for you to ask too.

If you're following Jesus, it's a good question to ask in your life, in your business, in your family, in your marriage.

Jesus, how are you inviting me to look more like you in this next season?

And and in that question, you know, we imagined that that Jesus was going to be calling us to do more things or to double down on some things as a community.

But what kept surfacing as we were talking about was that was really around this idea that in this next season, it's not just about what Jesus wants to do in us, but what's he what he wants to do through us for the sake of others.

It's not just about what Jesus wants to do in us, but through us for the sake of others.

How many of you know that the ultimate evidence of Christ-likeness is not when we become spiritual giants, but sacrificial servants joining Jesus in the work of loving the world like he does?

Some of you are catching up.

Robert Mahollan in his book, An Invitation to a Journey, as he talks about the process of becoming into the growing into the image of Christ.

It's a it's a there's a term that we call that in the church.

It's called spiritual formation.

And we're formed from the inside out.

And here's what Robert Mahollan says he says, spiritual formation is a process of being formed in the image of Christ for the sake of others.

How many of you know it's possible to even in the church be formed in the image of Christ just for ourselves or just for the sake of self-improvement?

But true Christ-likeness never just ends with ourselves, it always results into the life that we live outside.

And so as we were meeting as an eldership, a few questions started coming to mind as as we were tapping into this question of God, how are you want us to look more like you?

And the sense of what I am doing in you, I want to do through you.

And a few questions that came to mind.

Who are you going to share my life with?

Who are you going to invite to participate into my life?

Who are you indexing yourself?

What people are you indexing yourself towards for the sake of sharing the beautiful gospel of Jesus?

And and within that, there was a question: all the gifts that I've given to you, even the fruit of the Spirit, are you going to enjoy that for yourselves, or do you intend to give it away?

You guys hearing me?

And so that's why in this passage that we read, I think Paul, this is what he's getting at.

That the basis of everything we do is love.

It's the love of Christ that in this path in this uh translation it says controls us.

Other translations say, compel us.

The love of Christ is the engine, it's the fuel in our lives.

And what happens when we're compelled by the love of Christ is that we do what he did, that when we no longer live for ourselves, but we live for the sake of others.

We live for the sake of laying down our lives.

And actually, what happens is we're compelled by the love of Jesus.

It changes the way that we see others in our lives.

You no longer see them based on the cultural categorization of what everybody tells you they are.

We regard each other according to the spirit of God.

That's what the love of Christ does within us.

As we start to see each other differently.

And in that, we become new creations.

And the old is gone, uh, the new has come, the old has passed away.

But as new creations, our our fundamental identity shifts.

That now we are what Paul calls agents of reconciliation, ambassadors of reconciliation.

And just as God has come to us for our sake, he laid his life down, he calls us to do the same thing.

He says, your fundamental identity has changed.

If you're following me, I'm asking you that just as I have brought you into a reconciling relationship with me, I'm calling you to do the exact same thing that your primary message in this world is to be reconciled to God.

That's your primary message.

That's their fundamental identity.

And that's what he calls us.

Paul is saying that God is making his appeal to others through us.

Be reconciled for God.

And then he finishes with the final cherry on top, the one-two punch.

For our sake, Jesus became sin.

So that we might become the righteousness of God.

Our best life is when we live with Jesus for the sake of others.

Can we just settle into that?

So, what does that mean to live for the sake of others?

Let me just talk about a couple things here.

Number one, we are continually transformed in the love of God.

So, our greatest witness to the world, can we just be reminded, our greatest witness to the world is not just in what we know, it's not in what we say, it's not in what we do, it's the overflow of our actual lives before God.

Your message to the world is the overflow of your life with Him.

That's why we we must not just be hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word.

Listen, I'm not most Christ-like when I feel Christ-like.

I'm most Christ-like when people around me experience me as Christ-like.

I'll say it again.

I'm not most Christ-like when I feel Christ-like.

I'm most Christ-like when the people closest to me and the people around me experience me as Christ-like.

Just ask my kids, alright?

It's very possible for me to preach a killer message and then go home.

And I'm still short-tempered.

And I'm still impatient.

And I'm lacking in joy.

So a lot of times we measure Christ-likeness by giftedness and anointing.

I'm telling you, that's not how Jesus or the scriptures measures Christ-likeness.

Love is the measurement of maturity in Christ.

Love is the measuring stick.

So don't be impressed with me.

If you want to know what I'm actually like, go talk to my wife and kids, they'll tell you.

All right.

And what would they say to you?

Well, hopefully they would say, Yeah, on most days he's, you know, he's Christ-like.

But there's some days, he needs to get saved.

He needs to get saved.

All right?

Now let's, I mean, this is real, right?

Because you can look up here and say, oh man, this is what Christ-like.

No, no, no.

You don't ask me, you talk to the people who experience me.

And it's the same is true for you.

What you feel about your Christ-likeness is not as important as how people experience the Christ-likeness flowing from your life.

Love is the measurement of maturity.

Okay.

So we must continually be transformed in the love of God.

Where we're belis belovedness is so deep that the worst parts of our life, the most sinful, broken parts, we experience the healing love of God.

And that does something with the way that we live.

That's our first, that's our primary witness in the world is our very lives.

But also what it means to live for the sake of the world is that we intentionally orient our lives around Jesus' mission.

And what was Jesus' mission?

He said it over and over again that he came to seek and save the lost.

He said that, he said to the Pharisees, he said, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.

And he would finally tell his disciples at the end of Matthew 28, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I command you, and behold, I'm with you to the end of the age.

So Jesus' mission is always about expansion.

It's always about the world that he loves.

It's always about doing something in us that he then can ultimately do through us.

That is the work of the church.

Graham Cook put it perfectly years ago when he came here.

And he said this the church is the only organization that exists for the good of its non-members.

How wild is it that the church is the only organization that exists for the good of its non-members?

How many of you guys know the church doesn't exist for self-preservation?

Our main mission is not to preserve ourselves and sustain ourselves.

When that happens, that's awesome.

But our best future is in when we're giving ourselves away for the sake of others.

All right.

So if that's true, we have a few obstacles, though, that come in our way because you guys need to know there are at least three forces that keep you from living your life for the sake of others, namely the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Okay?

Nearly everything in our life is working to keep us focused on our own self-interest every moment of the day.

This is the world that we're this is what the world that we are living in, all of the forces around you exist to keep you focused on yourself, not to give yourself away.

Okay.

So here's a few ways that we see that.

Number one, privatize spirituality.

We are always at risk as seeing our Christianity, our discipleship to Jesus as an individualized, privatized expression.

That this is really good for me, and I'm loving this, this is great, but with no intention to actually share it with anybody else on the outside.

And this is more and more, as people aren't sure even what to think about Christians anymore, they don't even know what Christianity is, especially in the evangelical church.

It's very confusing right now.

People don't know.

So we oftentimes get scared, and so we kind of chalk up the spirituality.

Okay, this is good for me, but what happens is over time, it's very possible, and this is actually what we're seeing in the church, is it's possible to walk with Jesus for years, even decades, and have never shared the love of Jesus with somebody else.

Have never actually preached the gospel to somebody because we know it works for us, and we love the feeling that we have in church, but we've chalked it up to this is my own private expression.

Can I just tell you, Jesus never invited you into a life of privatized spirituality, he invited you to come follow him for the sake of others?

Discipleship, listen, discipleship is always deeply personal, but it's never private.

So when you follow Jesus, it is personal, but it's never private.

And in the in the world of church and as believers of Jesus Christ, we're always at danger when we think that this is about me having a great time with Jesus.

Because that's not actually what he invited you into.

Alright?

Everybody smile at me.

That sounds very heavy, and I'm not trying to make this a super like bummed out sermon.

The good news is this life is way better when we share it.

Okay?

That's the good news.

Okay, guys, listen, we're we're doing fine, all right?

We got a Super Bowl in a few hours.

This is great.

Private, so one of the big obstacles though, privatized spirituality, we have to watch out for privatized spirituality.

Number two, preference-based Christianity.

Uh-oh.

Well, well, well.

So we have to kind of acknowledge that the pandemic era shifted our worldview and our relationships, our relationship with the church and with the mission of God.

Okay.

This is not this is not our fault.

This is just something that happened in the world.

For decades, we were already consuming with consumer-based Christianity.

But um, what happened in 2020 is you took consumerism and then you added fear, self-preservation, and a lot of new technology.

And what happens is what it creates in the mindset of people is I want church the way I want it, or I'm out.

And so you have people that are just kind of floating around, or I'll tune in online, or what do they have for me?

That kind of thing.

And uh, and and this has only been exacerbated by the fact that with new tech technology, everyday work.

We wake up into a blizzard of customized news news feeds tailored to what you like and what you don't like.

The algorithm that we live with every day is designed to convince us that we are the center of the universe.

Can I just remind you, you are not the center of the universe?

But most of what we consume wants us to like, hey, what do you what do you want today?

What do you like?

What do you let me give you more of what you want?

What do you need?

Everything is kind of designed to be custom tailored.

It's not all bad, but when it comes to teeing that up with our discipleship and us living our lives without us at the very center of every moment of the day, I'm telling you, it means that we have to declare war and we have to actually intentionally live into a new kind of way that resists the forces, the powers, and the principalities that surround us to get us to turn inward every moment of the day.

So Paul says it like this in Philippians 2 1.

He said, Therefore, if there's any encouragement in Christ, any comfort in love, any partition or any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being full in full accord of one mind.

And then he continues this.

He says, Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourself.

Let each of you look not only to his own interest, but also to the interests of others.

So according to Paul, if you've experienced any goodness in Christ, if you've experienced comfort, encouragement, any of that, the natural, the natural outflow of that is to is is to look around and say, who else needs what I just experienced?

Who else could benefit from this life?

And what do I have to do to consider their needs more important than my needs?

It fundamentally shifts our worldview in the paradigm that we come, that we prefer the interests of others over our needs.

This is life following Jesus.

This is life in the kingdom of God.

It doesn't mean that you don't have needs, it doesn't mean that you don't matter.

It just means that the life that Jesus calls us into is one that's always leading outward.

Okay?

You guys with me?

Privatized spirituality, preference-based Christianity.

And then I would say the third one that we have to look at is a self-optimizing culture.

It's always uh uh again, many people think that faith is a great way to become a better person, and that's it.

And so it's not uncommon for people to attend church because it makes us feel better about ourselves, and it should make you feel better about yourself most of the time.

Okay, I'm gonna resist uh, I'm gonna resist the other thoughts coming to mind right now.

But what we we put faith on the same, on the same bandwidth as I'm gonna do my yoga on Friday mornings, I'm gonna do my mindfulness practice in the afternoon, I'm going to do my keto diet thing, I'm gonna cold plunge every day, and then I'm gonna go to church on Sunday.

And what happens is it's another way of us being in control of our own self-improvement.

The self-optimizing culture, I'm saying it can get into our faith, and it wars against us remembering that all of this is about the kind of person that I am living outside of these walls and becoming a person of love.

All right.

It's easy for us in the church, even, to constantly be absorbing our time with growing and growing and growing, growing in knowledge, growing in understanding, all that kind of stuff without ever actually remembering that our greatest mission is to be with Jesus to seek and save the lost.

Now, there's a kind of a modern-day parable I'll read to you.

This is also in Robert Maholland's book, but he said this it's a story of uh a group called the Rescue Society in New England.

It said, along a reef-ridden rock-bound coast, a small group became concerned about those who were losing their lives in the shipwrecks that took place on the reefs and the rocks.

They formed the Rescue Society for the purpose of saving those who had been shipwrecked.

For years they risked themselves to save others, often losing their own lives for the sake of others, but hundreds were saved who would otherwise who otherwise would have been lost.

As a new generation entered the rescue society, they decided to perfect their techniques for rescue so that even more could be saved.

They began to attend rescue workshops to bring in consultants on the latest rescue techniques, to entertain salespeople who touted the latest and rescue equipment.

Before long, the maintenance and perfection of the rescue station, its techniques, its equipment, became the focus of the rescue society.

One night, while the entire rescue society was attending yet another meeting to perfect their rescue skills, a great passenger liner struck upon the reef and sank.

Hundreds of people were lost because there was no one left to go to their rescue.

The rescue society had come to exist for its own perfection and not for the sake of others.

And what Jesus says is this He said, Whoever tries to save his life will lose it.

But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

And I think in all of this, there's an invitation for us.

I think for this year, I think it's for our church, I think it's probably broader than our church.

This is something Jesus has always been about.

Christ's likeness is about our participation and moving beyond our own self-interest and asking God, who are you on a mission to seek and to save?

And am I with you on that mission?

Or am I on a different mission?

So for me, my confession is this I have been a Christian so long that I don't even know what it's like to not be a Christian.

All right?

I am a card-carrying church kid.

I have a certificate in my room.

I mean, I was basically baptized from the day I was born.

As my mother tells it, I accepted Jesus when I was two years old, right?

Out of a lifestyle of rebellion and wickedness.

I was in a grocery, I was in a parking lot, you know, in the backseat of the car while we were parked at, you know, at a grocery store.

My mom said, Do you want to accept Jesus into your heart?

And I said, Yes, I do.

So I left a life of sin.

My terrible twos.

And I just started following Jesus, and it just made sense.

That's what my family did, that's what I did.

No, no, that's not to say I don't know the darkness and the sin, the discrepancies of my own heart, because God does save us not just in one time, over our entire lives, He saves us.

But I I realized that if I encountered the non-Christian version of myself, would I have anything to say to him?

If you can you even remember the non-Christian version of yourself?

And if you if you met that person, do you remember what that felt like?

Do you remember how you were thinking?

Do you remember what that was like?

So, you know, I think for me, I I was in it so long that even now I stayed in it so long that eventually somebody said, You should be a professional Christian.

I said, I agree.

So I'm a pastor, which is a professional Christian now, right?

And I know you guys think that's easy because I fast every day, and when I pray, I levitate.

Um, no, no, no.

I I joke with you, but I also what I'm saying is this I have to confess, for me, it's so easy to spend the majority of my time with be people who believe the same thing, who go attend the same church, who act the same way, who do all the right things at the right time.

But I know, I know in my heart of hearts that I will not experience more of Jesus in his presence unless I'm going where he's going.

I will not, there's only revival is not just better church services.

I love worship and prayer, but the the peak of where we're going, yes, the glory of God in the church, but the glory of God in the world, the glory of God in our neighborhoods, the glory of God everywhere we go.

And so I've had to come into realization that God, I need eyes to see the world like you see the world, and I need ways to break out of my mold so I can love people like you are trying to love them through me.

And sometimes I'm my own worst enemy because I feel even me, even as a pastor, I feel inadequate.

What do I say?

What do I do?

How do I engage?

How do I talk to people about my faith without them feeling like a project or like I'm trying to sell them something?

You guys with me on that?

How do I talk to people who are jaded and disappointed with Christians or the church?

But what where it's come to me as a starting point, at least, especially over the last couple years, I just believe this all starts with prayer.

It starts with my with prayer.

God, open my eyes to see others the way that you see them.

Help me feel what you feel.

And I've had to become diligent to be around and value and pray for those in my life that God has actually given me in the season, my neighbors or people I work out with.

I've had to receive them as God.

If these are the people I get to see every day that are outside the church, I'm going to receive them as people that you've sent me to, and I'm going to pray for them.

In the last couple of years, I've kind of made that decision.

I'm just going to say, God, give me one person to pray for.

And uh, and this has happened a couple times now, and I'm just telling you, I have seen so much breakthrough.

So there's one person I started praying for, and uh and I just flagged them and said, God, I just want you, whatever it takes, every day, I'm gonna pray for them that they would encounter your love, your blessing, your goodness.

And if I can be a part of that process with them, then awesome.

But if you want to do your own thing with them, that's cool too.

So it wasn't like this over pressure, highly pressurized responsibility to evangelize.

It was, God, I am my responsibility is to hold them before you in your presence and see what you want to do.

So I started doing that.

And there's one guy that I started praying for, and I said, God, would you pique his curiosity?

Would you awaken questions in him that allow doors to open for me to even be able to speak to him?

I kid you not, the very next day we're at a like a party together, and he turns to me, he says, So you're a pastor, right?

I said, Yeah.

He said, Tell me what that's like.

What is it like like preparing sermons every week?

And I was like, gosh, that was easy.

I mean, that's like a slow pitch right there.

Boom! That's all I need.

And I started just talking, like, hey, this is you know, this is what this is what it's like.

That's this is what it's like to talk about Jesus.

And then a couple weeks later, um he comes to me and he says, Hey, I had these crazy dreams last night.

And uh somebody said that your wife knows how to interpret dreams.

And I was like, uh, yeah, I think, yeah, sure, yeah.

So I was like, dude, send me, send me your dreams.

And uh and so he did.

He sent me two dreams in a voicemail, and then my wife and I sat and prayed, listened to his dreams.

We believe in dream interpretation in this church, by the way, if you haven't figured that out, it's in the Bible, and uh it's fun.

And so he brought his dreams and we prayed and uh sought the Lord for interpretation.

It turns out they both dreams basically had the same interpretation and ultimately God was trying to get his attention.

So I was just like, hey man, um I called him back, said, Hey, here's what I think your dreams mean.

And we prayed about it.

And I know you don't believe in God, but if you're willing to give it a shot to at least pray, I think he wants to help you with your business.

I think he wants to release you from shame that your feeling of not being good enough.

And so he's like, awesome.

And then a couple days later, he maybe a week goes by and uh and he says, Hey, uh I need to pick your brain sometime.

I've uh somebody I have some neighbors that invited me to um to officiate their wedding.

And uh I'm not a I'm not a pastor or priest, I'm not even a Christian, but I know you are.

So I need to pick your brain because I want to crush this wedding.

I want to do this great.

I want to be able to just tell them, like, hey, it says in Philippians chapter 20, go do this.

And he's like, so he's like, so he's like, can you help me like officiate a wedding?

Like I'm a Christian.

I was like, I would I would love to do that.

So he's like, yeah, so what does what is what does marriage mean, you know, to you?

I'm like, well, marriage has to do with it's a picture of the love of God that was completely relentless towards us.

And it's a picture that God so loved us that he laid his life down for us, even amid our amidst our brokenness and our sin and wrongdoing.

And he crossed the distance that we couldn't cross to come near to us, to invite us into a covenant of love.

And he did that for us.

And so marriage, as we believe it, is when a husband and a wife do that for each other and lay down their lives for each other out of the overflow of love.

So basically, I got to preach the gospel to him and he's absorbing it.

No, you say, Well, what did that all amount to?

I don't know.

I don't know, but I'm telling you guys, the doors didn't start opening until I started asking for them.

And as we're coming into this year, I believe that God wants to praise uh wants us to praise some bold prayers and hold people in our hearts before him, believing that he wants to encounter those who are not yet in this room.

Are you guys with me here?

And so here's here's what I want to do for today.

And we're gonna get more specifically as a church what we're doing this year next week, but uh we're gonna hand out some cards here this morning.

And some of these guys are gonna hand out cards, and it just says, for the sake of others on it.

And it says, in 2025, I commit to pray.

Okay, I'm gonna have the worship team come up here.

Um the reality is this a life of prayer, God has invited us into a life of prayer.

Prayer, intercessory prayer is when we love somebody so much that we want to give to them more than we can give to them on our own.

When we run out of our own resources, but our love is continuing to grow for them, so we hold them before God.

God, would you be something for them that I cannot even be for them?

Prayer is intercessory prayer is a commitment to remind ourselves that there are people with names in our lives that God has assigned to us, and he wants us to be diligent to hold them into his presence, just like he holds us in his presence.

And it says in the scriptures that the Father and the Son and the Spirit that they intercede for us in heaven.

The Spirit intercedes for us in heaven, which means that God knows our name and he wants us to experience more of him.

And he calls us to do the same for others.

So here's what I want to invite you to do.

And this is a practice that I want to invite you to inhabit for this year.

What if all of us across the room, what if we all even had one name?

One person that God has put in our lives that needs to know that God loves them.

Maybe they're not aware, maybe they are estranged from God, maybe they've walked away from God, maybe they've never yet encountered the love of God.

What would it be like if you held them before God every day of this year?

Not for the sake of just how do I grow the church, not for the sake of how do I get them beyond a certain point.

That's in God's timetable, but yes, we are asking that God brings blessing and salvation and healing and joy into their lives.

What would it be like if you receive them as a target from God, just as He called us to be, ambassadors of reconciliation?

We hold somebody, one name, in our heart before the Lord and say, God, reconcile them to you.

Reconcile them to you.

Do for them what I cannot do for them, but what you want to call me to partner with you to do for them, do that for them.

What would happen if all of us committed to that as a way of daily declaring war against self-centeredness, self-preferences, self-interest?

I'm going to, for a moment every day, look beyond myself to the needs of others and say, God, what are you doing with others today?

And I believe, listen, I believe when we hold these prayers before God, God wants to do something miraculous, He wants to do something incredible for us.

What if that's somebody living in your home?

What if that's somebody living next door?

What if that's somebody that you work with?

What would happen if the doors began to open and they started to ask you, tell me about this Jesus.

Who do you say that he is?

How awesome is that?

So we're gonna sing here for a second.

We're gonna wrap up here in just a moment.

But I want you to hold this card.

If you have a pen, you can write it.

I know not all of you have pens.

Go home and use the card.

Actually, write a name and keep it in your Bible.

Keep it with you.

Don't just throw it away, don't leave it on your backseat of your car.

I want to invite you to use this and say, God, I commit to pray for this person because you called me to.

So we're gonna sing here.

I just want you to start thinking through the people in your life.

Who has God called you to pray for this year?

Okay.

So across the room, I just want you to take the card or take the person that you have, their name, their face, in your minds, on your lips.

I just want you to hold them.

Let's stand together across the room.

We're gonna just take a moment now and we're gonna direct our prayers to the ones on God's heart that He's given to us in this moment, okay?

I just want to pray.

You just you just pray by name for them, all right?

And join me in prayer.

God, I thank you, Father, across this room for the ones that you are giving us, the names, the faces of the ones you love.

And today, as a church, God, we look beyond ourselves to our neighbors, our coworkers, our families, all of these names, Lord God, and we say, Bring the light of your life to the lives of these men and women, Lord Jesus.

We thank you, Father, for salvation.

We thank you for healing, we thank you for blessing.

We ask that you would do a great work in their lives, and I thank you even now to start opening doors of curiosity, Lord Jesus, that you would open doors of questions and curiosity, that they would ask who you are, they would wonder about who you are, and they would lead you would lead them to us, Lord Jesus, so that we could speak of who you are, Lord God.

I thank you, Father, for your gospel to take root in the lives of the people that you have sent us to.

And we say, even right now, would you start with us, Lord God?

Let us go where you're going and do what you're doing for the sake of the world that you love.

We love you, Jesus, and we say all of this is possible because of your love.

It's your love that compels us, God.

So we look forward even from today in anticipation.

This year, God, we say, do a great work one life at a time.

Would you do something beautiful across this land in this church and beyond?

And it's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

And listen, today, maybe you're here today, and you have yet to respond to the love of God in your own life.

And you want a chance to do that.

Maybe you felt something this morning.

You're like, that feels different.

And I it feels different than anything I've experienced before.

And I want to respond to this, Jesus.

Listen, after at the end of our service, we're gonna have our ministry team up front.

And these are people that you can trust to pray with.

I just want to invite you, don't just run out of the doors to go prepping for Super Bowl.

I'm saying the most important thing you can do right now is pay attention to the work of God in your own life.

So that might mean you need to come up front to our prayer team.

Can we get a couple prayer team members over here as well?

And if you need prayer for anything, salvation with Jesus or or maybe just healing in your body or prayer for somebody in your life.

I just want to invite you to come up forward.

And I just want to bless you as you guys come forward.

At the end, again, if you're a guest, you we'll meet you in the back.

We'd love to get to know you.

But I want to bless you as we go from this place because we're not going empty-handed, we're going in the love of God.

Amen.

So if you just put your hands out like this, Jesus said, As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

So may the Lord bless you and keep you.

May He make His face to shine upon you, may He be gracious to you and give you rest.

All right.

Go in the love of Jesus.

Love you guys.