Easter at the Crossing 2025

Well, good morning, Pappy, sir.

We are so glad to see you here today, and

I'll think you this morning. For over one hundred years,

the Resurrection has been preached every year during his time

at Church of the Crossing. This church has been faithful

for over one hundred years as church has allowed God

to work through them. And you know what, we are

continuing that legacy today. And it's such an honor to

speak with you today. I hope that you're excited for today,

hang out, your family, your friends, and we're just so

excited to see you here today. Can I pray for

you as we jump into God's work? God, we give

you pray today. We thank you so much for the

opportunity to come and worship you, to seek you. And

now I ask Father that you will grab a hold

of our hearts and draw us near to you.

In the name of Jesus, we pray Amen.

Do any of you all have any family members who

kind of go a little cuckoo at the holidays when

it comes to over decorating anybody? Yeah, you know, I'm

talking about reindeers seeing in the front yard. You got

the Nativity scenes in the house, But I'm talking about

even beyond that, I'm talking about a serial decorator. Okay,

So you know, when it comes time for Easter, there's

stuff all over the house, Easter bunnies and eggs. When

it comes time for Halloween you got the haunted houses

and all. And then Thanksgiving you got the Pilgrims and

allso stuff out. I grew up in a home that

decorated like crazy every single room of the house for

every holiday.

My mom owned an arts and.

Crafts business, so you understand it was insane and our

friends would come over like your family has problems, and

it was.

It was insane. But let me tell you something.

My mom did a phenomenal job of making such a

huge deal out of the holidays.

We really enjoyed them.

And you know, I will share with Mike this morning

that for some reason, I always feel like Easter has

been my favorite holiday. I like it even more than Christmas. Now,

our family did it a little different. And before I

tell you this, I just want any kids to hear

this that what I'm about ready to tell you is

not biblical.

Okay, but my family.

Did presence on Easter, Like we would wake up and

on the couch would be a whole bunch of presents. Again, children,

this is unbiblical. It is probably sinful. This is not

something that your family's supposed to do. But anyways, but

my parents were sinners and so they did that. And

my favorite year was the year that I got an

e Walk village from Star Wars. I still remember waking

up and seeing the e Walk village and I loved it.

And let me tell you something else I loved. I

here's one of the biggest reasons why I loved Eastern

the Easter eight hunts. Oh my gosh.

My dad's company, ak Steel at Arco Park would have

a huge Easter ec hunt. Then our church would have

a huge Easter a hint. And then Goldie my grandma.

That's her name.

It's an old style name, but Goldie had an Easter

egg hunt too, And I love Goldie's the best. You

know why because Goldie put money in her eggs, and

so you would walk around the yard. It's like candy.

You just throw it on the ground, but then you

hear it shake, like, oh, there's some corners, Goldie, and

then you'd be pumped. But I love going to Armco

Park for the big corporate and I think I loved

Easter so much because of the competitive side of Easter,

because I would go there and I would look at

the kids that probably looked like I was their father,

you know, like, Okay, these are not the most athletic kids.

I'm gonna sit in between them. Stay away from the

kids with headbands and the cleats.

Okay, say away from those kids.

And I would just go through and I would just annihilate,

and I would have overflowing baskets of Easter candy.

I love, I love all of Easter. Now. That made

me get very excited.

When I had my own daughter, and I took her

to the first township Easter egg hunt, and I coached her,

I trained her, I gave her strategy.

I talked to her about how.

Mercy is something that Jesus does not us on h

on Easter, that you know, there's other days of the

week we can repent.

And we get there and all the kids are.

Here, and I'm beside her, and I'm like, I just

push that kid over, you know, and and it all of.

A sudden it started. She reached down and then she goes,

what's wrong.

I don't like the straw, I said, the eggs are

in the straw.

You got to fight through through that. You gotta fight

through this.

Come on, and I encourage her and encourage her to

push past her fears.

And she wouldn't touch it. She's like, I'm not touching it.

So I'm literally like, not like yelling like a psycho father,

but I'm like, you're gonna get no eggs, You're gonna

have no candy, You're gonna have nothing.

And she's like, I don't like straw. I'm not touching it.

And so the event was over and guess who had

zero eggs in her basket. And we're walking through and

let me tell you talk about talking about heartbroken.

You should have seen my face.

And we're walking through and these other kids were like

opening up their candy and like, uh, you got McDonald's.

You know, they're all excited and they're having a great time.

So I take her over to get her coco.

Just to cheer up.

And the guy who was running the event looked over

and saw my daughter's empty basket and I was like, she.

Doesn't like straw.

She has no future as a farmer.

This is it.

And he goes, hold on a minute, and he went

into this other room, and then he came with this

big bag full of Easter eggs and candy and dumped

it in her basket. To her basket was overflowing and

things of hould on grownd.

He goes, you don't believe this.

We've been doing this for decades, and this is the

first year that we had too many eggs and so

we didn't.

Set them all out. You should have seen my face.

Just see Caitlin's face.

She was so excited because our day went from a

disaster to the celebration all because of grace.

We received something we did not deserve.

And there's nothing on this earth like receiving grace and

having a bad moment. Go to a good moment and

you know you didn't deserve it. And today we're gonna

look at one of the most graceful moments.

In all of human history. But here's what I want

to warn you.

This moment, the greatest, one of the greatest moments of

grace and human history, started out with one of the

most arrogant moments of human history.

Jesus is trying to prepare his disciples.

He's like, hey, guys, it's gonna get really bad the

next few hours.

And when these.

Soldiers come in, you guys are gonna abandon me.

You're gonna leave me.

And so he says to them, he goes, you know what,

this night, you're gonna fall away because of me, and

then Peter jumps in. Okay, and Peter, now this is

why it's super arrogant, not just arrogant, like an arrogant

comment would be I won't fall away.

A super arrogant comment is.

All these other yahoos, they might fall away, but I

will remain faithful.

He literally looks at the other disciples and says.

Jesus, I don't know about these dudes. Probably I don't

have much faith in them, but don't worry about me.

Check it out. I'm not making this up. Look at this,

he says.

If they all fall away because of you, he said

this from all of them, I will never fall away.

So he says, I'm the man, I'm your number one,

I'm the head high. I won't fall away, and within hours,

by a court side.

Fire, some young kids ask Peter if.

They know who that Jesus guy is who is on trial,

and to little kids, he says, I don't even know him.

Once twice, three times he denies Jesus, and here while

Jesus ends that week with his body being beaten, moth,

spit on, and broken on our behalf, Peter ends that

week broken emotionally, spiritually, and mentally because he knows he

has failed It's best friend.

And so here's what I want to do.

I want to fast forward a couple of weeks because

what I want to talk about today is what is

it like to live under the resurrected Kingdom? Okay, so

I want to talk about what did Peter experience and

how does that respond to our life? What do we

experience as those who live in the resurrected Kingdom. So,

just to fast forward a couple weeks. Jesus he's put

to death on a Friday night. Miraculously, by Sunday morning,

he's overcame death, He's resurrected, and all of a sudden,

everything's changed.

All of history has.

Changed from that point on because Jesus overcame death. Everything

it was prophesied about him came true.

Jesus is God, he is God.

Sucked and because of what he did, we can have hope,

we can have a future.

Everything's changed except for one thing. Peter's still miserable.

Because Peter has had a huge moment of public embarrassment

and he's still living in his brokenness. And we enter

into the scene and Peter's doing what he did before

he encountered Jesus three years ago.

Let's look at this, It says Simon.

Peter said to the other disciples, you know what, I'm.

Gonna go fishing.

I'm gonna go back to the thing I'm comfortable with.

Just as the day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore.

Yet the disciples did not know.

That it was Jesus.

They didn't recognize him. And Jesus said to him, children,

do you have any fish?

And they said no.

So here we got, we got Peter. He's back at

his old job. He's doing a thing that he knew

how to do before he met Jesus. So the bottom's

falling out in his life. He goes back to his

comfort zone.

And yet here's what we see.

Peter's back to his old self, but Jesus does not

allow him to stay there.

Redemption's coming.

So Jesus asked a group of fishermen, professional fishermen, the

one question you're not supposed to ask fishermen okay, he.

Asked him, have you got anything?

A few years ago, I was driving by an old

man who was set up for fishing, and I rolled

my window down and I began to speak to him,

and he just looked at me and goes, I just

got here. He did not want me to ask him

if he caught anything yet, he just got there. And

so imagine, So they're out there, they're professional fishermen, and

Jesus goes, hey has the gold balls? Not a good

day on the sea. They've caught nothing. And so the

text continues on and says, all of a sudden, when

Peter recognized that his lord, says, and when Simon Peter

heard that it was a lord, he put on his

outer garment because he has stripped it off to work

that day, and he threw himself into the sea.

Now you gotta love Peter, okay. And you know Jesus

was like, all.

Right, here we go again, Peter, Peter Peter in verse nine,

what did I say? And when they got to the land,

they saw a charcoal fire in place.

Now can I just stop here for a moment.

We begin the story by this fire pit, the fire

pit of failure three times three times he denied knowing Jesus.

And now we find ourselves today at another fire.

For a tough conversation.

And it says that when they had finished breakfast, Jesus

said to Simon, Peter, Simon, son of John, do you

love me more than these? When he said to him, Jesus, Lord,

you know that I love you. And then Jesus said

to him, beat my lambs.

Now, okay, here's what we got on our say.

Peter was not expecting Jesus to recommission him. Okay, he

was not expecting Jesus said, Peter, you love me, Get

back to work.

We got work to do. Get back to work. And

it say to assume that Peter expected a breakup talk.

Here's why did you know that?

This is the third time that Peter has seen the

resurrect of Jesus. In the first two times, Jesus never

mentions Peter's failure. And I don't know about you guys,

but a venia all have anxiety, like did you imagine

what was going on.

In his head?

And he has to be thinking, like, Jesus, can we

just get this conversation over with? And he could just

imagine this conversation and you know, those of us who

have anxiety, we replay the scenario over and over and

over again.

And you can imagine Peter replay.

In this scenario where Jesus says, Okay, we got to

talk about him, we got to address the elephant the room. Peter, listen,

I picked you as a head honcho. You were going

to be the leader of my disciples. You were going

to represent me. But Peter, I just don't think you're

cut out for.

In that moment that I needed you, you weren't there.

And you know what, Peter, when I look back over

your whole track record, you're you're just a little impulsive,

maybe too impulsive to be a good leader. I mean,

I need someone more like John. John. He's more even

killed and and and he knows how to control his emotions.

And so, Peter, maybe you should just go back. You're

a pretty good fisherman. Why don't you just go back

to doing what you're good at. Maybe this this ministry

thing's not for you.

And so.

Peter is expecting the pain from the first fire to

consume him at the second fire, but instead Jesus filips him.

He says, Peter, I want you to get back to work.

And here's what's the first thing you need to understand.

Peter.

Probably assume that that you know that his whole future,

you might as well forget about it. You might as

well forget about it because he has fell and he's

blown up. But here's what the resurrected Christ says to Peter,

and he says to.

All of us today, you are not forgotten. Some of you.

Today you need to hear this message because you've sabotaged

your life with one BA decision after another, and.

Your life seems like it.

You know, your your marriage has messed up your maybe

you're still reeling from a bad divorce. Maybe your job

has gone away, maybe your friends have gone away. Maybe

you have a diagnosis that hasn't gone away yet. And

you're thinking, right now, God, do you even know that

I'm here? And you feel like that maybe you've messed

up your life and your whole life is.

Just in shambled, and you're like, where is God? In

the rhetoric of Christ.

Says to you today, you are not forgotten.

My eye is still on you. And because Jesus comes

to Peter here and he says, Peter.

I know all that you've done, but I'm still saying

to you today, you get back out there.

I've not forgotten about you.

Last Tuesday, in the middle of the night, I woke

up suddenly I had a dream. And the dream was

one of my students that I was very close to

when I was a youth pastor. I hadn't seen him

in ten years. He's been out of the church for

ten years, and he came to me in this dream

and he says, James.

I need to talk to you. We need to talk.

And it startled me.

It woke me up, and as soon as I woke up,

I was like, that's weird. I haven't thought about that

person in years. And then right there I felt like

the Holy Spirit told me call him today, call him today.

So I was like, all right, Lord, I will call him.

I went back to bed. A few hours later, afro Wilca.

I was like, all right, I gotta I don't have

his number, so I got to track it down. So

I reached out to his stepdad. His stepdad and I

used to hunt together, and I said, hey, I I

need such and such a number. And here's what I

was not expecting. The text back to me was I'm

so glad you reached out. We've been wanting to reach

out to you. I don't know if you've heard, but

such and such has stage four holding cancer.

And we've been.

Hoping to reach out to you and then talk to you.

And then he shares some other stuff and it is

it's it's tough.

It's tough.

So he gave me his number and I reached out

to him, and I didn't know what to say. I said, hey,

I know we haven't talked for ten years. Uh, Jesus

woke me up middle night and told me.

To call you.

And then he's a really funny guy, he told me.

He goes, yeah, man, I've been praying that God wouldn't

let you sleep.

He's this funny guy. And we talked for a while.

You know, he's thirty years old, he already has a

medical retirement, and his whole life has changed. And towards

the end of the conversation, I really started to believe

that God's not done with him, that God wants to

do something through his life. And so I asked him,

and I've never asked anybody this before, but I said, hey.

Can I be your pastor again? He was like, yeah, absolutely.

Then we got to pray, and even though he hadn't

been in church in ten years or follow the Lord,

I got to pray with him and I said, all right,

I'm going to walk with you through this journey. Think

about our God that he would wake me up at

three o'clock in the morning to say you need to

reach out to this person. If you're even thinking at

all that God has forgotten about you, I want you

to know this that God knows exactly where you're at.

He knows exactly what you're going through.

And God's eyes are upon you because you are his

child and he loves you.

And see, Peter just couldn't believe it.

You know, Jesus had every excuse to just forget about

Peter and move on to a different leader, every excuse,

but instead Jesus leans in even more. Let's pick this

back up again because I want you to look at

this scene. It gets even more intense here. And so

he says to Peter a second time. He says, Simon, son.

Of John, do you love me?

And he said, yes, Lord, you know that I love you.

And he said to him, will tend my sheep no more?

Get back to work.

And then he said to him a third time, Simon's

son of John, do you love me? Now? This is

interesting here because this really hurt Peter's feelings. Peter was

greed because he said it to him a third time?

Do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, you.

Know you know everything, and you know that I love you,

And Jesus says, get back to work, heed my sheep. Now,

in the English language, this seems like a very cruel,

redundant conversation. Right, this guy's blown it. He's had a

public humiliation. He went from the top guy, and now

his license shambles. Here's what the situation looks like from

the English language, Peter, do you love me?

You know I love you? Sure about that? I do

recall a little girl punking you out.

At the fire.

I'll ask you again, do you love me?

Yeah? Yeah, Jesus you know I love you really because

I do recall you denying me three times?

Do you love me?

I mean, it seems like a cruel conversation.

Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you

love me? And he has to keep answering it.

But so here's what's going on underneath the surface. See,

it's really a battle between two words. See in the

English language, we only have one word for love, but

in the Greek language there is multiple words for love.

And really this is a.

Battle between two words, the word agapao and the word falo.

Now agapa oh, it's a word that Jesus uses, and

we get it from the Bible where it talks about

for God so loved the world, or when it says

God is love, they're using the word agapao. And when

Jesus uses the word agapa oh, he's talking about this

type of love. He's talking about the type of love.

Or you love Jesus above everything else. You love God

above all else. So your identity is based in God.

Your being is basing God alone. You wholeheartedly serve God

above anything else, and you're willing to cut ties with

anything that would cheap you from a relationship of God,

even if it cost you your life. So this agapao

is what we would call a super natural, all in

complete love.

Let's call it today one love.

So Jesus asked Peter. He says, Peter, do you ugle

pao me? Do you love me with all of your being?

And then Peter.

Responds back, Jesus, I Fialao love you.

Falao is where we get the word.

You guys know you've seen Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love.

Falao is just like the friend it's a friendship love.

It's the type of love where you know what a

human could. Basically you're up without the supernatural help.

And so he's like Jesus like, man, hey, do you

love me above everything else?

And Peter's like, man, I love you like a good friend.

And so Jesus leans in a little bit more and.

He says, Peter, do you love me?

And he uses the word ont agapollo again, do you

love me with one hundred percent love?

And then Peter says, Jesus, I love you of filel love.

I love you with.

Sixty percent love.

Because Peter, he's not crazy. He knows that he denied

Jesus three times. He's not gonna sit there and say,

of course I love you with my whole heart. He

is in this moment of shame, in this moment of brokenness,

and Jesus is like.

Man, do you love me for all your heart? And

He's like, I mean, you know I don't love you

for all my heart. If I love you for all

my heart then I wouldn't have denied you. But man,

you know that I can't do that. You know who

I am. You know that I felled you. Man, You're

a great friend. That's the best that I want to say.

And here's what Jesus does. He flips the script the

third time, Jesus asking do you love me?

He moves from the word aga patmo to falleo and

he says, all right, do you even love me sixty percent?

And Peter's like, yeah, I can love you sixty percent.

In other words, Jesus is saying, if that's all you

got for me right now, I'll take it. I'll take it.

If that's all you're gonna love me, is even at

this level, I'm gonna take it all right, Peter.

I'm gonna work with that.

Now. Here's the last thing we need to understand. Why

did Jesus do this three times? Well, because Jesus knew

that Peter's future was gonna be pretty rough, and he

wanted to make sure that Peter was restored three times.

Because he denied Jesus three times.

That way in the future, when he had these.

Rough moments, there was no not even a shadow of

doubt that he had been restored and he had been forgiven.

And here's what Jesus was teaching Peter. He was saying, Peter,

my grace is bigger than your disgrace. Yes, you disgraced yourself,

yes you felt, but here's what you need to understand.

My grace is bigger than your disgrace.

And what you need to understand today, if you've blown it,

his grace is bigger than your disgrace. And the resurrector

Jesus wants you to know this that when you're forgiven,

you're totally forgiven. And Jesus understood it. In order for

Peter to move forward and to grab a hold of

his future that Christ had for him, he was going

to have to know that.

He knows that he was totally forgiven.

See, Jesus understood something that forgiveness has the power to

change someone's future. Forgiveness has the power to change someone's future.

Let me tell you a story. It's a true story

about a lady named Victoria Riuvlo. She was forty four

years old and she worked for a collection agency. And

the other person in this story is a nineteen year

old young man named Ryan Cushing. Ryan, have you ever

had a group of friends that when you were younger that,

how would you describe them?

They're morons?

Anyone like in order for you to be my friend,

that was like the prerequisite, you had to be a

moron to be my friend.

So we get this group of.

Friends together and then they come up with this insane idea.

And by the way, being that seventeen eighteen year old

who hung out with morons, I understand this. They were like, hey, man,

let's go by a frozen turkey and then as we're

driving down the road, let's throw that frozen turkey into

somebody's window. And then we'll just keep driving and we'll

pull over in a park and we'll just laugh and

laugh and laugh.

That's what they did.

They went by and they threw this turkey into her window.

But here's the problem.

The turkey went.

Through the window, she wrecked, and it caused her to

have just at least six surgeries to reconstruct her face.

She had metal plates. It was horrible.

As a matter of fact, her prosecutor was quoted as

even saying this that death doesn't even satisfy them for

all the pain that they've made this woman go through.

So here he is he's nineteen years old, he'd done

something stupid with his goofy friend, and now he's about

ready to go away to prison for twenty five years.

And this is where the story changes. Victoria started thinking

about how he was going to go away for twenty

five years. He was going to get out as a

middle aged man with no job skills, no education, all

these things. And she was like, his life is going

to be bad for the rest of his life, and

so she pleaded until he agreed to go down to

a second count of second degree assault, so he would

get six months in jail and one year probation. Now

what I want to do is I want to read

the rest of his story how it played out in

the courtroom, because the editor of the newspaper wrote this.

He says that the young man well carefully attentively to

where his victim was seated in the courtroom with tears

and in a whisper. He apologized, He said, I'm so

sorry for what I did you. And then she stood

up and the victim and her assailant embraced and they

started to weep. She stroked his head and then she

patted him on the back and comforted him, and she

said it's okay. She says, I just want you to

make your life the best it can be. And it

was reported that the hardened prosecutors and even the reporters

were choking back to her tears.

See her forgiveness.

Unleash the power to change that.

Young man's future.

See forgiveness unleash is a power to change a life.

But here's something that's pretty interesting. I wonder if you've

ever thought about this before. Did you know that every

single time God forgives you, it's an affirmation that he

has plans for your future.

He's not done with you. Every time he forgives you, every.

Time God pours his grace and it's mercy in his life,

an information that he has plans for your future.

He has a good future for you.

He's not done with you, he's not tired of you,

he's not sick of you. When he forgives you, he said,

I have a future for you. It's affirmation that God

has plans for your life. Matter of fact, we see

Jesus do this in this text where he speaks into

Peter's future.

Now check this out. This is very fascinating.

Jesus says that This is right after immediately after the

third time, where Jesus says, all right, will you at

least love me sixty percent? Fi Leo, all right, I'll

take that, And then he says this, check this out.

This is amazing.

After he forgives him, he speaks into Peter's future. Jesus, truly, truly,

I say to you, when you were young, you used

to dress yourself and walk wherever you want it. But someday,

when you're old, here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna

stretch out your hands and another person's gonna dress you

and carry you to where you.

Do not want to go. No, here's what he's saying.

This. He said the show by what kind of death?

He was a glory? Oh my god.

And then after he said all these things, he looked

at Peter says, follow me. Now here's what's fascinating about

this text. Peter, do you love me one hundred percent?

Now you know I can't. Sixty percent is the best?

Like to Peter, do you love me one hundred percent?

I can't do it. I can't do it. Sixty percent.

All right, sixty percent. I'll take that. But Peter, here's

what I.

Know about you.

Someday, when you're older, Peter, you're gonna have another opportunity

to deny me.

And guess what happened in church history. Peter lived on.

Peter spread the godfel throughout the world, and then at

some point he was captured and imprisoned.

And then Peter was put on trial.

And then they decided that if Peter would just deny

Jesus and say all of this was a hoax, it

was all.

A lie, then Peter would get away with his life.

But instead, at Peter's next opportunity to deny you Jesus,

what did he do? It says I cannot deny my Jesus.

And they beaten, tortured, and killed Peter in a very public, humiliating,

devastating death.

In the moment where Peter.

Said I can probably just love you at sixty percent,

Jesus said to him, that's okay, because I know someday

you're gonna get to one hundred percent.

Peter.

I have a future for you.

I know who you are.

And Peter, someday you're gonna go from loving me like

you love me today to the point where you're gonna

have an opportunity to deny me again. But when that

opportunity comes, you're gonna be so in love with me.

You're gonna love me with true Agopalllo love, and you're

gonna be so in love with me that even if

it cost you your life, you will give me your

whole life. And that's what Peter did see, even in

the midst of this brokenness, in the midst of the shame,

in the midst of where he thinks he's that has been.

Not only does Jesus not forget about him, Jesus forgives him.

And then he speaks into his future. And here's what

I want you all to understand today. Maybe you've been

around this church for many years, and you know what,

You've been on cruise control for a while. You've been

allowing certain things of your life. So you've been denying

Christ at a workspace. You've been denying Christ in your marriage.

You've been denying Christ by the pornography you watched that.

You've been denying.

Christ by the way you act with people in the

opposite sex.

You've been denying Christ even though you're in the church.

When it comes to being outside of the church, you're

kind of living a life that really denies Christ in

many ways, and you might because of this pattern in

your life, you might just say, well, this is who

I am.

Apparently I can't be that type of disciple.

And what I would tell you today is that Jesus

would say you no, no, no, no no.

I know where you're at today.

But if you will allow my grace and my mercy

to change your life, if you will allow yourself to

follow me. What did Jesus say is follow me. And

so if you will allow yourself to stop following the

ways of this world and follow Jesus, the future that

he has for you will be dramatically different. You have

a future. I don't care who you are today, you

have a future. Christ has plans for your life.

Let me tell you something.

I was hanging out with my friends seventeen years old,

and we were doing what we normally did. We'd like

to go to the pool hall and listen to really

cheesy eighties music. And I was fully into my addictions.

I lived a pretty evil life. I enjoyed living an

evil life, and my friends and I we did what

we normally did before we went to the pool hall.

We took drugs, we got high, we hung out. When

the drugs wore off, h I said, all right, it's

about time for us to go. And then I was

in the back of a car and even though my

friends don't know what was going on, all of a sudden,

for the first time, I had an encounter of God.

So just think about this.

Here I am, I'm at my worst state.

I'm full of addictions.

I'm doing evil things, and I'm enjoyed doing the evil things.

And in the midst of that state, that's when God

came to me. He says, look your life. What if

your family knew what your life was?

What if your church knew?

I knew I was living in a double life. And

then God spoke to me. And I'll never forget this.

He said to me in the back of that car,

give me your life and I will do something with it.

Give me your life and I will do something with it. Now,

think about this. He came to me. When I was

at my worst. I didn't clean my life up. I

didn't do things that were great. I didn't say this

creed or I didn't quote this scripture.

Was that my worst?

He said, listen, I want to forgive you. I want

to be in a relationship with you, and I have

a future for you. And for two days all I

can think about is, Man, I don't want to give

up sex. I don't want to give up all these things.

I don't want to give up drugs. I don't want

to give up all these things. But then Gosh just

kept overwhelming me, like man, not only does he want me,

but he says he has a future for me. And

so that night after youth, I went to my youth

pastor and I said, I said, hey, can we go

to your office?

And he loves to tell the story.

And he's told me a bunch of times because he

thought for sure the only reason I wanted to talk

to him of mine in his office was to tell

him that I got Gina pregnant. That's that's the only

good he could think that would come out of me.

And I said, no, I want to I want to

give my life to Jesus. He was more shocked at

God's grace than I was. Ministry wasn't even a thought

in my mind. All I knew was this was that

I was messed up. He had not forgotten about me.

He wanted to forgive me, and he wanted to give

me a future. How many of you in here today

like God has forgotten about you? One diagnosis after another,

one felled relationship after another, one financial crisis after another, depression, anxiety, failure,

at this fail you're at that broken relationship sin and

you feel like God has forgotten you. Let me tell

you someth right now. God has not forgotten about you.

His eyes are on you. He wants to forgive you,

and He has a future for you.

Now, how do you step in through that future? Couple things.

Number one, here's what you do. The first thing you

do is you did make a decision. Okay, you got

to make a decision to forget. See Peter how to

be reminded three times?

You just need to go ahead and just let.

God have your past, your past, your past. You Okay,

your identity is not in your past. Your identity is

not caught in that. And also your future is not

determined by your past. Your past and your past.

Give it to God.

Number two, you gotta trust God that he can handle

the mess of your life. Maybe the mess of your

life sitting next to you right now, Kim. But you're like, man,

I got a complicated, messed up life. What can God

do with this. You've got to give him a chance

and let him do something. He can take your complicated,

messed up life and turn it around.

My father in law.

He told me that when he was young, he came

to Christ. When he was eighteen, he got baptized and

actually followed Christ for a while, but then he fell

away and really for the next fifty years he partied

all that he devoted his life to debauchery.

Okay, I mean, he.

Just lived a very fleshy life. And here he is

in his seventies, and he's got cancer all of a sudden,

and life is changing. And even though I've been ministry

at this point for over twenty years, I was scared

to go talk to him about Jesus. If you ever

had somebody who just intimidates you like crazy, I was

so intimidated by him. But I knew he was having

a major surgery, and I knew that this major surgery,

he might not make it out of it, or he

might not be able to talk again. And so I

drove over to Cincinnati, and I sat down, and I

had a conversation with him.

And here's what I did.

I mustered up all my theological expertise of over twenty

years a seminary and Bible college. And I just looked

at him in his living room and I said to him.

You know you could die from this, right like, I said,

that's all I had.

I was a little intimidated by him, and I was like,

you might not survive this pretty serious and he said yeah.

I thought a lot about that. And then I talked

to him.

I said, you know that you could be forgiven, that

you can have a relationship, that this life is not

all that there is.

And that you could be forgiven of everything you've ever done.

And I shared the Gospel with him, and I said,

even at this point, you could still come to Christ,

and you can still experience Heaven, and you could still

experience the great mercy of Christ. And I said, do

you want that? And then he did something I never

thought I would ever see. He started to tear up

and right there in that living room, and I'm leaving

him to Christ, and I'm still nervous, and we prayed

for him to accept Christ.

I'll never forget that phone call I made to my wife.

I was so overjoyed. He didn't live long after that.

Cancer ended up taking him away but I look at him,

I look at Peter, I look.

At my own life, and.

I happened to notice something about our God. You could

be pretty messed up and he still wants you. You

could be a person who even has hung out with

him for years and you still mess up all the time,

and he still wants you.

And he nor only wants to be in a relationship

with you.

He wants he wants to do something through you and

give you a future.

He wants to have his hand upon your life. I

don't know about you, but I think that's pretty amazing.

And here's what I want to do today, because again

I said, what is it like for those of us

to live under the Resurrection Kingdom?

Well, in the Resurrection.

Kingdom, it's a place of forgiveness and mercy, and where

God gives us the future that we do not deserve.

He gives us grace that we do not deserve. So

here's what I want to do. I want to close

his service up by speaking to two different groups, because

I recognize we have two different groups. We have one

group who's been going to church here for a really,

really long time, and maybe just maybe you've been just

going through the motions and maybe, just maybe you've been

denying Christ and your work life and your family life,

and you've been denying Christ in many areas of your life,

and you allowed Satan to have that domain. And today

is a day to hand that back over and allow

yourself to be restored. And then there's some of you

who you are here because someone tortured you to get

here today, and we're so glad that you were tortured.

We were praying for you to be tortured and that

you would be here because we do know this that

Jesus loves you and he has a future for you,

and I want to give you an opportunity to come

into a relationship with him.

So here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna pray first for those of you who've been

following Christ. But there's some areas in your life that

you've been denying Christ in and I want you to

hand that over to the Lord, confess it, and then

allow his grace to restore you.

Let's pray. God.

We come to you now in the mighty name of Jesus.

And for those of you who are thinking right now,

the Holy Spirit is speaking to you. I want you

to just look at your life right now and say,

all right, what areas of my life am I denying Christ?

And I want you to hand that over to Him and.

Ask for forgiveness.

Jesus, We thank you for your grace and your mercy.

Remind my brothers and sisters who just prayed that prayer

right now, that forgiveness means that you have a future

for us, and God, help them to step into that future.

That you have for them, a future that brings you

glory and honor.

For those of you who are not in a relationship

with Christ, or maybe you used to be in one,

but you walked away many years ago, I want to

give you an opportunity to come into a relationship with Jesus.

Pray this prayer with me.

Jesus, I give you my life. I asked you become

my Lord and my savior, that you lead my life.

I believe that you died.

For my sins.

And that you resurrected three days later.

I again ask you to forgive me and.

Be the lord of my life. Holy Spirit, fill me

with your presence and lead and guide my life. But

if everyone's eyes closed and head bound, will you just

raise your hand?

If you've prayed that last prayer with me. I see

that hand, I see those hands, and I see those hands.

Oh wow, Amen, Amen, I see all those hands.

Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Jesus. We give you

praise today.

We give you praise for your grace and for your

mercy to those of us who have been following you

and those of us who just.

Came into a relationship with you. Today in the name

of Jesus, we pray. Amen.

We're gonna continue to worship as we close out this service,

and as you stand up, can you just give a

big applause for all those who just made a commitment

to Christ.