Experiencing God: Week 1

Good morning. I was sick Thursday night preached. About halfway

through they drenally kicked in. I was fine, and I

was in bed all weekend thinking, well, when I wake

up Sunday morning, I know I'm going to feel good.

I know I'm going to feel good. I don't feel good.

Uh So I'm going to try to get through this

and if I don't, you know, next service, whichever guy

I see first, Andrew or Michael, they'll preach the next

serv if you see them hiding. The reason they're hiding

is because I've already put a warning out that whoever

I find first, they're preaching the next sermon if I

have trouble with this one. But I'm excited about us

going through this Experiencing God series. And here's why. There's

been two different times in my life that I have

done Experiencing God. And so if you were to go

on Amazon after the service, you will see either an

Experiencing God book, which is a great book, or in

Experiencing God work Book. I've went through both, but I've

done the work book twice, and the work book both

times led to a transformation in my understanding about who

God is, how God works, how God interacts with me,

how God interacts with the church. Still to this day,

I make ministry decisions heavily based on the theology that

I learned in experiencing God. Okay, and so you'll understand it.

I'm always looking for where God is at work, and

then I want to join him. I don't want to

go start my own work. I want to go see

where God is already at and join that. And so

you'll understand why we chose this for our growth series.

So will you pray with me and then let's go

ahead and jump in. God, we give you praise today,

and we thank you for your grace and your mercy

and your love. God. These are your people, wonderful wonderful people.

Love on them today, Encourage them today. They are here

because you have called to them and they have answered.

Love on them, Lord in Jesus' name, Amen. Now. Growing up, my,

when I was young, and my family would call me Jimmy,

our jim Bob, and I didn't you know, I don't

care to be called Jimmy. You can call me Jimmy now.

I don't care, but jim Bob I didn't appreciate. And

if your name nicknames jim Bob. I'm sorry, but that's

just me. I didn't like being called Jim Bob. And

I had one ant in particular who always called me

jim Bob. And I decided before I went into kindergarten

that I was no longer going to be named jim Bob.

I was so in order to get rid of Jim Bob,

I had to get rid of Jimmy too, okay, And

so my family loves to tell the story. They still

tell the story from time to time about how that whole.

Probably three or four months before I went into kindergarten,

anytime anyone called me Jimmy or Jim Bob, I would

correct them and say, my name is James. And from

that point on in my life I have been called James.

And again, I don't care what you call me now,

but at that moment, in that time of my life,

that mattered an awful lot to me what I was called. Now.

A name change might seem insignificant, but oftentimes names carry

significant meaning in identity and in history. We've seen names

evolve all over the place matter of factor. As we

look back at some recent history, we've seen some brands

and some bands changed their name. For instance, did you

know that Google was originally called BackRub And I guess

that's because they were analyzing the back links of the

Internet back then whatever, and so then they decided to

call it google Plex. And then somebody spelled it wrong

whenever they're put in a domain registration, and that's where

we've come up with a goofy non word that has

become a word Google. Okay. The sports giant Nike. It

was originally called Blue Ribbon Sports in nineteen sixty four,

but by nineteen seventy one was named after the Greek

goddess of Victory. Nike. Okay. Now, I don't know how

many of you knew this, but did you know that

Pepsi was actually called originally Brad's Drink. Yeah, it was

called Brad's Drink until Caleb Bradham renamed it Pepsi Cola

in eighteen ninety eight, then eventually just renamed it again

and just called it Pepsi. The Beatles, going back to

some of you boomers here, the Beatles, they were originally

called Johnny and the Moondogs. This was a good name change,

This was a very good nation. They actually, I think

for a while were called the Silver Beetles as well.

Les Zeppelin leed Zeppelin was originally called the new yard

Birds and actually toured as the new yard Birds, but

then they got to seize an assist letter and so

they came up the new Moniker led Zeppelin. Changes in

name are not just limited to bands our brands. In fact,

did you know that we used to have a different

name us in this room? We had a different name

originally if you looked at the Book of Acts. Now

some people think it just lasted for a little while,

but a lot of people called us this name through

the second century. Very fascinating. We were originally called the Way.

Matter of fact, we were called the Way because Jesus

said what Jesus says, that I am the Way, the Truth,

and the Life. So the Book of the Acts uses

the Way several times to describe the early Church. Let's

look at a few of them. It says here if

he found talking about Saul when he was going out

to persecute the Christians and stop them, says that if

he found any belonging to what the Way, men or women,

he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. So originally outsiders

understood that we were called the Way. And then in

Ephesus we see the crowd. They were off, they refused

to believe and publicly maligned who the way home about us.

And so Paul one time he's standing before this governor Felix. Okay,

and he says this. He's trying to explain his background

and why he's standing there before Governor Felix. And he says,

I worship the God of our ancestors. Why because I

am a follower of the Way. And he said, which,

by the way, is called a sect. So the followers

of Jesus did not see themselves now help this rapper

und your bring a little bit. The followers of Jesus

did not see themselves as starting a new religion. No, no, no,

they were walking in the ways of Israel's Messiah, who

had fulfilled all the prophecies. So they adopted the title

the Way because of Jesus' words in emper Room when

he says, I am the Way, the Truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except for me. So

understand this, Christianity began as a way of life rather

in a label. So you're like, okay, James, well why

are we called Christians? Did you know that Christians name

only comes up three times in our New Testament. Only

three times do we see it. Matter of fact, it

says at first and Antioch it talked about this in

Acts eleven. It says, the disciples were first called Christians there.

Now here's what the verse implies. The verse implies that

it was outsiders who called us Christians first, okay. And

here's what you need to understand. It was not a compliment, okay.

And the Greek uh, you know, philosophy, the the way

the Greeks did life, they had a habit of nicknaming

someone's followers after them. So, for instance, POMPEII was you know,

people who followed him were called Pompeii ends okay. And

so people who follow Christ, they mocked them and they

called them little Christ. Okay. So the label actually began

as a big insult. And so later when Paul is

standing before King Agrippa and he presents the Gospel to him,

this king says this. He goes, do you think in

such a short time that you can persuade me to

become a Christian? Now imagine this. Whenever he says, is

you know you think you could persuade me imagine that

Felix does this, or excuse me, King Agrippa a Christian.

See it's dripping with sarcasm. He said, you think I'm

gonna become one of those Christians. But then Peter the Apostle,

he flips it. Now payetitition is first here. That's the

last time we see the word Christian in a New Testament.

Who says, however, if you suffer as a Christian, don't

be ashamed payetitition is, but praise God that you bear

that name. And so he's actually addressing that people will

persecute you, make fun of you, and even mock you.

And one of the ways that they mock you or

make fun of you is by calling you a Christian.

And so he says, hey, when people make fun of

you and they call you a Christian, well praise God.

And guess what happened after that? The Christians flipped the script.

They took this name that was meant to make fun

of them, and we wore as a badge of honor.

And that really profoundly affected who we thought we were

because we were like, yes we are, you know, we've

been fallen away of Christ, but truly we are people

who were becoming like Christ. Okay, so all right, James,

thanks for the history Lesson. We get it. We originally

called the way they made fun of us, called us Christians.

We flipped the script. Then we since that point on

been called Christians. Thank you for the history, Lesson. What's

the point. All right, here's the point. We're starting this

new Grove series, okay, and the overarching desire is for

you to experience God, to have a life changing encounter

with God. And here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna

take it one step at a time. We're gonna build

week by week. We're gonna build a foundation this week.

And here's the very first thing I want you to

understand today. The reason I start talking about way so

much is because if you want to experience God, the

first and foremost thing you must understand is that Jesus

is the way. If you want to encounter God, Jesus

is the way. If you want to understand who God is,

Jesus is the way. If you want a relationship with God,

Jesus is the way. If you want a life changing

God experience, Jesus is the way. That's what am I

really getting at all right, here's the theology of this series. Okay,

this series is about moving from knowing about God, which

I think a lot of people do. We know a

lot of things about God, to actually knowing God, and

that happens by experiencing God. Okay, I'm gonna break that

down a little bit later. But to even experience God,

you must follow the ways of Jesus. So if you

want to go from knowing about God to knowing God

at a deeper level, you will have an encounter and

you will experience God, and God will teach you more

about himself. He will reveal more about himself to you.

And that's why you know. You can look around the

church nowadays. We've got people who grew up in the church,

people who's been in the church for decades. They could

take a test and aceit. But then you wonder why

they act this way, or they act this way, or

they don't step out in faith here, they don't do

this or this and this. That's because they haven't experienced

God and grown to know Him on another level that

has changed who they are in their character. You want

to find somebody who is stunted in their growth with Christ.

It is someone who has became okay with just knowing

a lot about God, and they've stopped pursuing and running

after God to the point where they are continually experiencing God,

and thus their life is being changed because God reveals

more of himself to them. So here's what I want

to do today. All right, just for kicking giggles, we're

going to keep playing around names, okay, because names has

a significant meaning in the Bible. So what I want

to do now is I want to go back to

the very beginning, because originally God introduces himself as Elohem, okay,

but by time we get to Abraham, we see that

God is starting to experience some name changes. And when

God experiences a name change, it is because someone who

is in relationship with him has experienced God doing something amazing,

and as a result, they go from well, God, I

thought you were just this, but now I know you're

all this, So I just can't call you by that

little name anymore. Now I have to change your name.

Does that make sense? And so let's look back at

some of these okay, So they would go from just

knowing about God to have an experience with God, which

meant that they knew God on a deeper level, which

meant something like this, that God's name often changed because

of that. So we get to Abraham. Abraham experienced a

couple name changes of God. One was el should I

Now you know, this wasn't a name he learned by

looking up in a book or in Sunday school. No, no, no.

He came to call God else should I? That God

Almighty through an incredible, incredible experience. Let me explain this. Abraham,

his uh calling from Hran all the way over to

the land of Canaan came as a result of God

said here, come follow me. Now. When he got there,

God said, here's what I'm gonna do. You didn't just

follow me on a field trip. There's a plan. You're

gonna have an air through this air. You're gonna have

many nations through this nation. These nations the air, My son,

the Messiah is gonna come and redeem this world. And

so he said, you're gonna have many airs, as numerous

as the stars in the sky and the sand by

the sea. All right, So in order for this to happen,

he has to have a son ten years go by,

fifteen years go by, twenty five years go by. If

you would have walked up and asked him, how's that

air thing going? How's that you know, as numerous as

the stars in the sky thing going? Abraham of like, oh,

don't remind me, it's been twenty five years. So Abraham

hits ninety nine, his wife Sarah hits ninety one. Let's

look at this, and says here says when Abram was

ninety nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said,

I am El should I I am God Almighty, walk

before me faithfully and be blameless. Okay, So now God

says you need to understand something. I'm about ready to

do something. You're gonna understand something different about me. You're

gonna know me in a different way, and I'm gonna

be come else should die to you God Almighty? Well,

I've been around ministry for twenty some years, but even

before that, just growing up sometimes I've always understood ninety

year old ladies don't have babies. Does anybody know one? Now?

Well past the child bearing here? So it would take

a miracle. And what we see here is that God said, listen,

I'm about ready to do something impossible with you. So

then what does God do? Well at ninety nine years

old and ninety one years old, they have a baby,

a miracle baby. And so from that point on, Abraham

starts calling God. Let me tell you about my God.

His name is El Shadai, God Almighty. Okay. And when,

by the way, when Abraham called God el should I,

it wasn't theology. It was his testimony because he experienced

that he went from knowing something about God to experiencing

God's hand in his life, which meant that he knew

God at a deeper level. And now he knows God

as a Lord, God Almighty. All right, Well, we see

another scenario where God goes from el should I to

Jehovah Jirah. The Lord will provide. Here's another name changed

that Abraham experienced with God. Now this one comes about

through a really mess up circumstance. God comes to him

some time later and says, you love your son. He's

a good boy. Huh ah. It makes his mother and

father proud of he. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Abraham. It seems

like that boy's your world. You're wrapped up in him.

He's everything to you. I have a littlessignment for you, Abraham.

And he says, take your son, your only son whom

you love, Isaac, okay, by the words, by the way,

that word love is very rarely used in the Old Testament.

So this is a big deal, okay, And go to

the region of Mariah. Sacrifice him there as a offering

on a mountain that I will show you. And so

here's this crazy thing that God says. And he says,

go sacrifice your son. Now those of us who are

parents are here where like, Oh, God, You're gonna explain

a whole lot more. I need. I gotta go talk

to my spouse, you know. Abraham just grab some wood.

He grabs his son. What does it say? The five

in the wood are here. As they continue to move up,

and all of a sudden, Isaac looks around. He says,

I'm not seeing a ram. I'm not seeing a sacrifice.

He says, the fire and wood are here, Dad, But

where is the lamb for this burnt offering? And then

Abraham answered him, God himself will provide the lamb for

the burnt offering now here it is. Abraham in faith,

before something has even happened, says, don't worry, My God

will provide you don't understand, see, before you came along

there was this God who called me out of nowhere

to somewhere, and he gave me this crazy promise. In

me and your mom were way beyond child bearing ears.

But see we got pregnant and it was impossible. It's

a miracle. And that's what I'm That's when I learned

that he was God Almighty. So this God Almighty, if

he wants me to take you up to the mountain,

I'm sure he's going to provide a lamb. Why because

well I know some things about him because I've experienced him.

He's he's God Almighty. And so here he goes. He

lays the boy in an altar, he picks up the knife,

and then God interrupts. What was it say here? Do

not lay a hand on the boy? He said, do

not do anything to him. Now I know that you

fear God because you have not withhell from me, your son,

your only son. Now, let me help you break the

story down so that you know our Bible and Christianity

doesn't seem so crazy. Here's what we get to understand. Abraham

already experienced God do the impossible. So when God says,

sacrifice your son, and he was already told that your

son is the heir, the one who many nations are

going to come through. Many heirs will come through. Abraham reasoned, well,

if I kill him in order for God to be

who he is and keep his word and be God Almighty,

then God has to resurrect my son. So he went

on put us on on the altar, was about ready

to kill his son, knowing good and well, if I

kill him, God's just gonna have to do another miracle. Why,

because he is El Shadai God Almighty. Well, then what happens?

God stops him and then I believe this is the

biggest miracle of the story. And those of you who

know that I've shared this before about hunting. He looked

over and there was a ram caught in the thicket.

I believe this is one of the biggest miracles in

the whole Bible. Here's why. If you've ever went hunting

or watched hunting shows, a ram is literally the hardest

animal to hunt for. Okay. Typically when you go to

hunt for a ram, you're in some other country, you're

climbing literally mountains for days, and then when you finally

see a ram, you're taking a shot usually five six, seven, eight,

hundred yards away. And then after you shoot the ram,

you gotta climb back down the mountain, grab the land

a ram. It's it's a mess. It's it's by far

the most expensive hunting and the hardest to do in

our region in North America. So here's what you will

never find. You will never find a ram just caught

in the thicket. I promise you in all of your travels,

if any of you ever just walk up and catch

a ram, I will give you my truck in front

of the whole church. I will say they deserve this.

They walked up and grabbed not a baby, a full

grown adult ram. You're never just gonna walk up and

grab all right. So visit of itself was a miracle.

So but Abraham's like, uh, there's a ram here. This

is amazing. And then God's name changed. He says, from

now on as his whole us ram, his name's gonna

be Jehovah, Jirah, the God who provides. Abraham knew God

differently now because he experienced how God was almighty. But

he also experienced the God who will provide out of nowhere.

What about Moses? Moses, you know, God led the Israelites

through Moses out of Egypt, miracle after miracle after miracle

after miracle. But now they faced something that they needed,

something only a miracle was going to save them. And

this is where Moses got to know the Lord as

Jehovah Nissi, the Lord is my banner. See, they had

crossed over through the Red Sea. They got to the

other side, but the Amalekites kept messing with them. We've

talked about this before. And the Amalekites kept messing with them,

kept attacking them, kept hurting them, and finally they decided,

you know what, we gotta go to war. But here's

the problem. They didn't have any generals, they didn't have

a strategy, they didn't have an army. They were slaves.

They didn't know how to get into formation or fight.

They come up against this crazy, crazy, radical group of terrorists,

and so here's what they decided. Moses said, here's what

I'm gonna do. He says, Joshua, I want you go

out there and you're gonna fight the Malachis. And here's

what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna sit here and I'm

gonna hold this staff up, the same staff that split

the Red Sea in half. I'm gonna hold it up

and I'm gonna seek the Lord. Well, the battle goes on.

Imagine his swords and dust and bodies falling, and just

this brutality that we can't even imagine nowadays. But it

seemed like every time that his hands would start to

go down, Israel would start to lose. So eventually Aaron

and her came up on either side, and they lifted

up his hands and called on the Lord. At the

end of the battle, the Israelites had won a completely

improbable war, and God did a miracle. But here's the thing.

Moses gives God a new name, Jehovah Nissi. He didn't

given that later on at a worship service. He gave

God that name in the middle of a battlefield. In

the middle of a battlefield. Now, why does this name?

The Lord is my banner? Why does that matter? Okay,

why does that matter? Because you have to understand warfare

back then, back then, when you would go into war,

you fought under a banner, okay, a flag, and that

flag would either have your tribes crest on it or

your king's crest on it. And it's so to say

that the Lord is my banner is to say, he's

my rallying point. He's the one that I fighted on.

And so as long as you saw the banner of

your king still waving in the air, you knew your

army still had a fighting chance that day, they still

had a chance at victory. And when the day got

very confusing, all these people fighting, you would rally under

the banner. So the banner was hope, it was identity,

it meant victory. And Moses said when he called him

Jehovah NISI, he was saying, God, you're my rallying point.

You're the one I fight under. You're the flag that

I follow, and you are the reason we win. And

Moses understood that victory did not come from swords, but

from God. All right, one last story, one last one.

I was thinking a couple of weeks ago when I

was writing this about I wonder where we see God's

first name change. And it doesn't come from a place

that traditionally the Bible leans in on. You would think

that it was a prophet, a patriarch, a preacher. Instead,

what we see is God's very first name change came

from an Egyptian slave girl. When she called God l

rought e so going back, and let me tell you

the circumstances behind this. Going back, Abraham and his wife

became very impatient with God. Ten fifteen years, no child,

no heir, What okay, God, if you're gonna fulfill this promise,

I guess we're just gonna have to do it ourselves, right.

And that what we do when we don't see God

moving quick enough. We decided to take things into our

own hands. And he said, we'll just take things into

our own hands. And so they grab a hold of

this slave girl had no rights. She's away from her country,

she has nothing, and she says to her husband, go

in there and sleep with her. He sleeps with Hagar,

probably not by her choice. She gets pregnant. Sarah becomes

very bitter and jealous, and it gets so bad that

pregnant Hagar runs away. And now she's out in the

middle of the desert, no shade, dust, heat, no water,

hot during a day, cold at night, and then all

of a sudden we see this, something happens that changes

her life forever. It says, the Angel of the Lord

found her by a spring of water in the wilderness.

That little phrase here found her. If you're ever looking

to explain the Gospel in two words, there it is

found her. She wasn't looking for God, but God was

looking for her. And right there God speaks to her,

and God even talks to her about her child inside

her belly, says call him Ishmael. Why because God has

heard your Christ and then Hagar, That's something that no

one else in the Bible had ever done before. She

gives God a new name. She gave this name to

the Lord who spoke to her. You are the God

who sees me, el rody, I have now seen the

one who sees me again. Not a theologian, not a prophet,

not a priest, not a preacher. A pregnant, runaway girl

with no rights experiences God and her life has forever changed. Guys,

as we are diving into the series, I've told you

these stories about people who went from knowing about God

to knowing God. But it came through experiencing God. They

go from facts about God, scriptures about God, and even

in the Old Testament attendant synagogue, to experiencing God and

knowing him differently. Why because they had all mighty encounter

with the Lord. Let me tell you something about the

culture of the Israelites. Okay, let's look at Warner Brugamann's

statement here. What does he say. He says, knowing God,

having an appropriately all filled yet intimate relationship, our partnership

with the Creator, the Redeemer of Israel, the sovereign of

the universe, is and was the life goal of the

faithful Jews, the people that we study, the faithful Jews,

they wanted to know God, they wanted to experience God.

But here's the problem, because by the time Jesus gets

on the scene, we had this only thing called religion,

and they turned knowing things about God into six hundred rules.

So it pushed you to not having this faith relationship

with God, but being a person who just knew God

because of all his rules. So God became this cosmic principle,

always waiting for you to get out of line. So Jesus,

who comes along, who's the full revelation of God, says,

if you want to know God, if you want your

whole life to be altered, here's what I want you

to do. He says, follow me. I am the way

the truth in life. No one comes to the Father

except through me, and Jesus offers this bridge back to

God and see if we want to experience God it

begins with Jesus. The same danger exists. Love you. We've

grown up in a church. You and here a group

in a church. Raise your hand. You're my fellow homies

because I grew up in a church too. It is easy.

How easy is it to just check Sunday off? How

easy is it to play on your phone while I'm preaching?

That's probably my fault. Sorry, I can get more interesting.

How easy is it to just mumble through worship? And

we know so much about God that we don't feel

like we need to know him better. But God is

calling you. He wants to grow deeper with you. He

wants to reveal more of himself to the people at

church at the crossing. And that is going to happen

first through following Jesus, and secondly by saying here I

am God, lead me and guide me. And in that

faith journey that he leads you on, it's going to

create some experiences that will change the way you see

God and understand who he is. As I close up today,

I am I'm reminded of a few years ago when

it was in the middle of the pandemic, and we

got a phone call and somebody said, hey, I want

to give you a church. Those a building down the

street from here that was worth maybe two million dollars

a million and a half two million dollars. And so

I called a big group of two leaders together. We

went over. We daydreamed, We had a ton of meetings,

and and we saw that this is a great opportunity

right down the street to have this ministry center. And

as we're looking around, we start daydreaming for a ministry

to represent each and every room, like every room represented

a ministry to our community that we didn't have. I

even came to the church and I said, will you

pray for this? Somebody might give us a building. They

actually called me up said we would like to give

it to you if you can use it for ministry.

I go hunting in November, and I'm about two weeks

into my vacation, and my first two weeks of my vacation,

I'm just daydreaming like crazy about all these ministries were

going to launch. And then I get a call that

someone had bought that building out from under us, and

the building wasn't even for sale. As far as we

understood it, but somebody came and made an offer and

they sold it to him. And to be quite honest,

I didn't know what to do with myself. I was

had two more weeks in the woods, and I'm out

in the woods and just living with a dead dream now.

And I talked to God about that, and I asked

him questions like, why did you let us daydream about

all those ministries? Why did you let us just really

believed like we didn't reach out to you. We felt

like you reached out to us. We just were being faithful.

And I even told God that I was a little

embarrassed about how many meetings I had with leaders from

our church, because now I felt like I wasted their

time because it didn't happen. And I was a little embarrassed, actually,

And I didn't hear nothing bad from God. About a

day or two later, I had a long sit out

in the woods. While I'm sitting there, I felt like

God out of nowhere. I wasn't even thinking about God

at this moment. God spoke something deeply to my spirit

that changed my life, and I believe it's changed this

church's course of history. God finally answered the questions. He said,

I felt like he said deeply in my spirit, you're

gonna do all those ministries, but go do it and

worry about a building later. Follow me. First, I needed

you to think you had a building. For you to

get here, for you to dream about this, for your

heart to turn towards your community, for you to do

studies on your community, for you to find out all

the needs of your community. Everything that I needed you

to do, well, we needed a building, But now just

go do it. We'll worry about a building later, and

says then we've launched one ministry at a time. After

this service, there's a meeting about work with the homeless people.

Last Saturday, we ran out of food, literally, our shelves

emptied because we're reaching so many people who have food

needs in our area. We just baptized two weeks ago

somebody from Celebrate Recovery whose life has dramatically changed. These

are all ministries that have come about just in the

last few years. God is doing a work. And then

it was in that time that God said, you know what,

You're gonna call the people to be the hands and

feet of Christ, and that we are not We're going

to jump out of the game in the North Indianapolis

Hamilton County region. And we're no longer going to ask

how can we become a bigger church? But how can

we be a better church? And God changed us and

it changed how I understood him. And you know what

else God told me when I was in the woods,

because I was thinking, you know what a pastor does

when hears about a new ministry, he has a volunteers. Well,

that's going to take this, and that's going to take this.

I felt like in my spirit, God said, don't worry,

You'll always have volunteers and I'll always take care of

the money. And he has he has. You know, right now,

I'm learning to experience God in a different way. Right

now I'm calling God. I'm in the season of knowing

God as el Hapac, the God who transforms. Over the

last several years, I've got to watch God transform a

church into the kindest, most compassionate, loving, faithful group of

people that I've ever been around. Who are not afraid

to go out and get their hands dirty. Who are

people of grit who worship the Lord passionately, who are faithful.

Do you know, just this summer we have something happened

for the first time in the history of our church.

In the history of our church, probably never happened again.

But we're over one hundred years old. We had one

hundred percent vote on our budget. I just start telling

other pastors that they're like, no, you didn't you guys,

there's some votes lost in a bathroom or something like, no, listen,

because it doesn't happen. But God has united us, not

under what type of cool church we want to be,

but under what type of people we want to be.

And we want to be people who know Jesus and

then go out there and share Him with others. I'm

also experienced l heph Hoc the God who transforms, because

in the last year my daughter wouldn't even come to church.

And let me tell you something. She's at Anderson five

days a week. Almost every night. We're up for about

an hour or more talking about her favorite class, Bible.

I mean we're talking really late in the night about

the Bible, and you know, because I got to correct

the professors. And I'm just kidding. I'm totally kidding. She

volunteers on Sunday mornings every Sunday morning Children's Now she

doesn't miss the young adult class. She just joined a

women's Bible study at Anderson. She wouldn't even come to

church a year ago. God is the God who transforms.

And so here's what I'm asking all of us, and

here's what I'm wanting all of us to experience. I

want you to experience God at a deeper level through

this series over the next six weeks. We begin with

Jesus falling Jesus the way of Christ. In other words,

you align your life to the ways of Jesus, and

then you're gonna start looking around to see where God

is at work and you're gonna follow him. Or God

is going to speak something into your spirit and you're

gonna say yes, and then you're going to experience God

at work, and then you're gonna know Him differently. So

here's what i want to do today. We're gonna pray

and then we're gonna have some time of anointing. But

I'm want to first start out by just let's all

close your eyes and let's begin to pray now. And

since we're talking about how Jesus is the way, it's

most appropriate that if you're not in a relationship with

Jesus today I want to give you an opportunity. Maybe

you've fallen away, you stop following Christ a while ago,

or maybe you never have. I want to give you

an opportunity to either come back into a relationship with

Him or to come into a relationship for a first time.

You could begin that by committing today, committing to this journey.

Pray these words with me, Jesus, I give you my life.

I ask you to save me, to forgive me of

my sins, to lead me, to guide me. Jesus, I

believe that you died on the cross from my sins,

and that God resurrected you three days later. Holy Spirit,

lead my life. Fill me with your spirit in Jesus name,

without anybody looking up. Can you raise your hand if

you prayed that prayer of me. See that hand, I

see that hand, See that hand, see those hands. Praise

the Lord. Praise the Lord. And now I want you

just to take a moment to commit yourself over the

next six weeks to saying Lord, I'm all in. I'm

gonna adjust my life to your ways, and I want

to experience you in a way that I never experienced

you before. Not just for kicks and giggles, Lord, because

I want to know you in a deeper way. Go

ahead and pray that prayer where you're at right now.

And now we're going to take a moment to uh well,

we want to turn things back to you and just

love on you today. Maybe you came in here today,

you need encouragement, you need love, you have something that's

heavy on your heart today. We want to pray for you,

anoint you, encourage you, ask God to break down that wall,

and ask God to do that miracle. But either way,

we want you to experience more of God's love today.

So here's what I'm going to ask you that we're

going to stand up. If then you can go around

to the sides to come down the middle, and we'll

have someone dismiss you to a prayer partner. Looks like

it's going to be Andrew. And let's go ahead and

stand and if you'd like to receive some prayer today,

some anointing, please come down and let us love on

you and encourage you today.