Deuteronomy

Well, welcome to church and the crossing. We are so excited that you

are here today, and today is gonna be a little bit different. I'm

Jordan and I'm the kids pastor here and we are so excited to be able

to share a message. And as you can see, maybe I don't know

if you know this, but we go together. Keatie's on stage every now

and then. But we've been married for about seventeen years. We have been

married for seventeen years and three kids later. I'm losing my mind. And

we just love doing ministry. You know, We've both been ordained pastors and

church God for a long time and we just find that we get to do

this every now and then. And so what we're gonna do today is we're

gonna tag team preach and so you're gonna get to hear a little bit from

both of us. And today we're gonna walk through a story. And I

want you to picture a photo album. We've got a picture of a photo

album on the screen, and today we're really going to dive into what our

photo album looks like. So I can remember one of the first times that

I took Jordan home to meet my family. See We met each other in

college, and we went to college in Oklahoma City. I'm originally from Michigan.

He's originally from Kentucky by way of Texas, because that makes sense.

And we met each other and it was between our senior, our junior and

our senior year, and we had gotten to know each other, and I

thought, it's about time. Maybe I should bring him to my family to

meet them, because we're all a little crazy, and maybe he doesn't want

to be connected with me forever. But he did, thank the Lord.

And when we took him home over that little vacation that we had, we

were probably not in the room about twenty thirty maybe forty minutes, and my

mom marches over to the closet pulls down the family photo album. I don't

know about you, but this photo album has me, you know, in

the bathtub, coupled it covered in bubbles with a Santa Beer. That kind

of photo album, you know, from my childhood and my family and I

we had a wonderful time reminiscing because the stories or the pictures have stories attached

to them, and we would tell the story as to why this picture was

in there. And then we got to the point where I think Jordan was

maybe poking fun at my awkward years, and I brought some of those pictures

to show you. So this is me in probably fifth grade, my before

fifth grade school picture, and I'm rocking the perm. Anybody else ever have

a perm? Okay? Good? So I'm rocking the perm and my fake

pearls and my seashell pants. You probably can't see him, but they're awesome.

So that's fifth grade. Here's me in tenth grade again, my awkward

years. Right, I am rocking. You can't see them. They're little,

tiny shiny things right there by my ears. Those are fish bone earrings.

Yes, that was a thing in tenth grade. And you know,

I can also remember the time when Jordan brought me. He brought me his

photo album to look at. He actually had one on campus, and so

we were sitting there in the dorm room and he's like, here's my photo

album. I'm so excited for you to see it. So it opened his

photo album. In his photo album, it's full of cars. Why don't

you tell us about that? Yeah, So, I don't know if you

remember the late nineties early two thousands, there was this movie called Fast and

Furious that came out, and I was addicted to this movie. In fact,

I wanted cars that looked like they were in the movie. So very

bottom picture was my first car, and I had to get it all cool,

looking at what I thought was cool at seventeen years old. And then

I moved up to this next car. It's the top picture. There's a

little picture of me, but really the car is what I was showing.

And I realized now we were laughing about this earlier. If social media was

what it was today, I probably could have had an advertisement for McDonald's on

this car and made some money with that bright red and yellow paint. And

it had a glitter clear code and it had a huge stereo system, and

I thought I was awesome. So I would show these pictures and this is

what I love, was cars. Well, today we want to dive in

and turn pages in our memories, and not just our physical photo album,

but we also want to walk through a spiritual photo album, per se and

simply put today, and we want to remember that pictures capture the experience and

it retells the story for those that come after us. So you can go

on a vacation and you can take these elaborate pictures of the beaches and water

and all these places. And you come back and you show these pictures to

your friends now on a phone, not in a photo album. But they

can't truly experience where you are and what you did without a picture, right,

because they can't just say. You can't just say, oh, I

was on this beautiful beach. Now, you have to show them that.

Then they can see, and they can envision, and they can realize where

you were and where you're at. Today, we're gonna be diving into the

Book of Deuteronomy, and Deuteronomy is a summary pretty much of the first four

books of the Bible. And today we want you to remember this big idea

that we are God's people, living out God's story for those that come after

us. But before we can explore the present and the past, we have

to understand where we've came from as Christians. So what Jordan was saying is

that the Book of Deuteronomy really is a retelling of the first four books of

the Bible. We see in Genesis that God created the world, and we

have the Tower of Babel, and we have Noah in the Ark. But

also you see the story of the Israelites emerge there, and the Israelites are

God's people. And so we're going to use the Book of Deuteronomy as a

photo album, a family album for those of us in this room, because

this is our spiritual heritage. This is where we come from. And then

the Book of Deuteronomy and throughout the entire Bible. To be honest, you

hear this phrase, God of our fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,

and that's where we're going to start today. The God of our fathers,

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Jacob is where we're going to start. And

Jacob had twelve sons, and Jacob a absolutely was the one that wrestled with

God, and his name was changed to Israelite Israel, hence the Israelites.

So Jacob's name was changed to Israel, and he had twelve sons, and

his youngest son's name was Joseph. You might know his story, Joseph and

the Amazing Coat, the Beautiful Coat of Many Colors. And Joseph's brothers did

not like that Joseph was Jacob's favorite son, and so his brothers devised a

plan and eventually sold Joseph into slavery. He came back. They came back

to their father and said, your son is dead. That's kind of the

end of that portion of that story. But Joseph's story continued after he was

sold to those slave traders. He was then sold into slavery in Egypt.

So Egypt is a land that is foreign the Israelites they live over here,

in this lush, beautiful land, and Egypt is a land that is foreign

to Joseph. And in this foreign land, Joseph worked his way kind of

up the ladder. He started as a slave, and then he was accused

of having adulterous affairs and he was thrown in prison, and then he had

some relationships in prison, and eventually he got the ear of the Pharaoh,

and that he was able to tell the pharaoh what his dream had meant.

In this dream that Joseph interpreted was all about a famine that was coming.

And so the Pharaoh took Joseph and said, you're going to be my second

in command right underneath me. Put this plan into place so that we do

not starve during this famine. So for years Joseph had told people, Okay,

if you give a little bit here, we will be safe during this

famine, and so it happens that there comes a famine, and over here

in the land of Jacob and his sons, they did not prepare for this

famine, and they were starving. But they had heard over in Egypt there

was food. So Jacob says to the other sons, go over there to

Egypt, and I want you to ask them for some food. Well again,

Joseph was head of Egypt at this time, underneath Pharaoh, and Jacob

and his sons did not know that Joseph was still alive. They really thought

in their heart that he was dead. Can you believe the surprise when those

brothers come to Egypt and realize this is Joseph. But God, in his

great mercy, had a plan of reconciliation. God brought that family back together,

and by the end of that portion we see that Joseph says, go

get my dad ad, go get our people and bring them all into the

land of Egypt, because I want to provide for them. That is how

the Israelites enter the land of Egypt, and the Bible says for years,

for years they lived there and were happy, and people talked about how good

Joseph was because he got them through the famine, and there's a very sad

scripture that says and after Joseph died, they forgot about him. For four

hundred years, the Israelites were living in a foreign land, so that would

be like the great great, great great grandchildren of Jacob. See these people

that are currently living in Israel at this time, I'm sorry, Egypt did

not know a land outside of Egypt for four hundred years. They've been here

in Egypt. And during that time, the Egyptians began to oppress them and

turn them into slavery. And there at that point, God sends most Okay,

that's the first four and a half chapters of Deuteronomy, and we're getting

to the point that we want to get to today. See God sends Moses

to say, let my people go, and the Israelites were able to leave

an exit Egypt. After they exited Egypt the Exodus, they stand at the

edge of a promised land Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Abraham had a covenant

with God, and God said you will be my people and I will be

your God. And then for four hundred years they didn't really know much more

than the stories of their ancestors and here they are on the edge of the

Promised Land from four hundred years ago. They're going to enter this land that

they'd never been to. And the Israelites they began to get a little nervous,

and they began to have a lot of doubt, and they began to

not understand that they needed to trust God. And at that point God said,

go in and take the land. And the Israelites said, no,

I think we shouldn't. The people are too big, the terrain is too

hard, we can't do it. And it was their lack of faith in

God and their disobedience to his word that caused a delay, a distraction,

a detour in their lives. See, something that should have taken eleven days

from Egypt to the Promised Land, should have taken eleven days, ended up

costing them a forty year wandering because of their lack of faith and their disobedience

that caused delays, detours, and distractions. Here's something I've learned about Indianapolis's

moving. Here we am are experts in delays and roundabouts and detours, and

most of all, the chaos of four sixty five not too long ago.

Pastor Tim and myself and Ashley, our pretty spooled rector. We needed to

run to the hospital to go visit somebody that was there, and so we

leave the church and we're like, oh, this is gonna be perfect.

We're gonna go do this hospital visit and then we're gonna grab some lunch and

we'll get back in plenty of time for our meetings this afternoon. So we

left and we made it their perfect time. It was great, did did

our visit and everything was perfect. Then we go to leave and I'm driving

and I get on to sixty nine and I'm gonna go down to Hip for

sixty five. What I did not realize is that the west lane and the

other lane had sometimes swapped since the last time I'd been there, and we

found ourselves going east, which is really on the sign of south, but

it still doesn't make sense to me. But anyway, we were going the

wrong way from the church. And what I did not know, but very

quickly we'd find out, was the next exit was closed, and did you

know that next exit was also closed? And so we continued down for sixty

five and finally find a way to get off and come back, and we're

coming back and everything's perfect. And then we find out that that first on

ramp, you know, it's closed, and then the next on ramp is

closed. And we're laughing and having a great conversation. And about twenty minutes

later, I just start rolling laughing, and I look and we're at a

stoplight and there is Community North Hospital right to my right, the place that

twenty minutes ago we started out from. Now we made it back to the

church, and we laughed and and I want you to know that we could

be aggravated in those times. Right, we wasted time. I wasted a

whole bunch of gas. I got a really good tour, I guess,

I mean we're kind of tour guys at that point. But we had some

amazing conversations in that moment. Today, one of the things we want to

talk about is in the midst of detours, when you are in a spot

in life where things just seem like you're in a funk, God is with

you. Today. We want you to know that journeying with God is filled

with faith in Him and obedience to his word. See, we are God's

people, living out His story for the people that come after us. What

we want you to know today is that we have to open up our photo

album, our spiritual photo album, and be willing to share the stories that

are touched in those photos. And really that's where faith comes in, being

able to open up to other people. You know, we have faith every

day. We have faith that we are going to be able to get out

of bed. Our alarm clock is going to go off and we're going to

get up. We have faith that when we go to the shower that our

hot water heater has still worked throughout the night and we'll have a warm shower.

We have faith that when we go to the refrigerator that we will have

cold food. However, when God asks us to have faith, oftentimes we

come to faith with worry and anxiety. We're not sure if we can trust

God. But that's what God is asking the Israelites to do. In Deuteronomy,

See they have exited Egypt. He has given them the ten Commandments.

They have disobeyed and had a lack of faith and had a forty year wandering,

and yet here they are again for the second time, standing at the

edge of the promised land. And that's where we find our scripture today.

Here is what we see in the scripture it says, listen, o Israel,

the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love

the Lord, your God with all your heart and with all your soul and

all your strength. And you must commit yourself wholeheartedly to these commands that I

am giving you to day. Repeat them again and again to your children.

Talk about them when you're at home, and when you're on the road,

when you're going to bed, and when you're getting up. Tie them to

your hands, and wear them on your foreheads as reminders. Write them on

the door posts of your house, in on your gaze. See the scripture.

They're standing on the edge of the promised land, and God is saying,

again, remember my covenant with Abraham, with your father, Isaac and

Jacob. I am, after four hundred years, still in a covenant relationship

with you. I am your God, you are my people. And this

is how you're gonna love me. See. We often face distractions and delays

in our relationship with God, but he says, trust me, listen to

me. I've got you. I've got this. See. They were promised

this land from their ancestors, and yet it's a land that is inhabited by

a different people, a land that's inhabited by different cultures, by different worship

by people that altogether did not serve or know the God of the Israelites.

And even through his great wisdom, God knew those pitfalls were there, and

he caused them to attention, and he says, listen, oh Israel,

in this land of multiple gods, I am your God, and in this

place of multiple cultures and people, you are my people. His oneness is

why he declares, and he declares his desire to be there. God.

Now this is the moment when God is telling the Israelites listen to me.

Now, many of you, if your parents and have raised young kids,

this is the moment when, for the first time you may have let your

child's hand go in a parking lot and say stay with me. And if

you're like me and you've done this multiple times, I got down on a

knee, I grabbed my child's chin. I said, look me in the

eyes, Listen to me. This parking lot is dangerous. There are cars

zooming everywhere. I am trusting you to walk by yourself, but I need

you to stay with me. I need you to keep your ears on and

pay attention, because I will tell you if something goes crazy, I will

tell you if there's a car coming, I will tell you if you need

to stop, or if you need to go, or if you need to

hurry you, I will tell you went to cross the road and go in.

And so this is the moment when God is saying that, and the

Israelites have to listen. And what God is saying, it's not about control,

It's about protection and love. He's saying, I want to protect you

because I love you so much. See God's love for us and for them

is so huge and we can't comprehend it. So we can't fully understand it.

But here's what Moses says. He explains, in this way, you

will and haven't houses. You did not build, fields, you did not

plants. But be careful not to forget the Lord. He's saying, You're

gonna go in this land and there is gonna be beautiful things. There's gonna

be houses that you have never seen. There's gonna be maybe a treason and

greenery that you have never experienced before. But listen to me. You will

get distracted easily. I want you to know, look at me, I

am with you. And so he's saying that don't let these things distract you.

And we see he says, listen. Oh, and what I think

he's saying. He's saying, listen, oh, Jordan, listen. Oh,

in fact, put your name in there. Listen, Oh, what's

your name. He's saying, listen to me. The Lord, your God,

our God is with you, the Lord alone. Jordan said, it's

about protection, and it's about love. And oftentimes in the church we hear

that God loves us, and God shown his love for us, and that

he sent his son Jesus, And really quick, I want to walk you

through that portion of what love looks like. He's see in the very beginning

of creation. The reason we were created is that God loved us and he

wanted to have a deep relationship with us. And we walked with God and

the cool of the night, the Bible says, and we had this amazing

relationship with him. And then sin entered the picture. And sin is simply

a church word to say disobedience. And that entered the picture, and that

broke the relationship we had with our God creator. And it was a chasm

that was so wide that nothing we could do, the good that we did

was not enough. The things that we did for him was not enough.

But the Bible says that Jesus Christ came, he was God himself came and

human form, and Jesus lived a perfect sinless life. And Jesus died in

our place, a perfect sinless death. And Jesus rose again, a perfect

sinless savior, so that he could be that bridge that develops that chasm that

we can now have a right relationship with our God again. And it's only

through Jesus Christ that we can have this relationship. And that's God's grand gesture

of love for us. And in this verse, God is saying, I

am your God, you are my people, and this is how you love

me. Says you must love the Lord your God with all your heart,

with all your soul, and with all your strength. And you must commit

yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I'm giving you today. Well, Jordan had

mentioned this earlier, but we have three boys. Maybe you didn't mention that,

but we have three boys. And I was sitting on the edge of

my thirteen year old's bed a couple a couple of months ago, and we

were just having a great conversation, and you know, we are both pastors

so he's grown up in church and I just kind of looked at him and

I said, do you know that God loves you? And he gave me

that look that only a thirteen year old boy can give their mother, like

duh, you know, but he said yeah. And then I just it

was just a couple of seconds and I said, how do we love him

back? And that question really opened up a great opportunity for us to talk

about what it means to love God with our whole selves, and in that,

that is what God is saying here. This is how you're gonna love

me. You're gonna love me with your whole heart, with your whole mind,

with your whole self, wholehearted. I know that a lot of times

when we hear this verse we like to segment it, which is great.

We say, I'm gonna love God with my whole heart. All of my

affections they're gonna be for God. And I'm gonna love him with my whole

soul, with everything in me, all my innermost being. And I'm gonna

love him with my strength. I'm gonna dedicate all of my physical abilities to

him. And the answer to that is yes, God says, all of

it I want all of it. I want all of your heart, I

want all of your affection, I want all of your strength. I don't

know about you, but I have one room in my house that gets all

the clutter. And you know, when somebody comes over, maybe there's a

knock at the door, I'm like, oh, boys, grab all the

stuff and shove it in my bedroom, pulls the door, or there's there's

company coming over. Oh, we didn't plan for that, so so grab

all of the clean laundry and put in my room. Yes, I have

a pile of clean laundry in my living room. It's okay, we're busy,

you know, but it's kind of like that's what what happens in our

lives when we try to segment this and don't give all to God. We

say, God, I'm gonna give you my love, but this part right

here, you're not gonna want it because it's a little messed up. And

I'm sorry, but but let me fix this before I give it to you

or God. I want to give you all of my heart, but I

have some bitterness in there that I just can't get over. And you can

have my heart, but I think we're gonna keep that right there. You

know, when we do that and we segment that, that's not how God

has asked us to be. He's asked us to be wholeheartedly in love with

him. You know, this love for God is not necessarily something that we

feel. When you look at the words in the scriptures and you pull out

those original meanings, it talks about how all three of these words our heart,

our soul, our mind, our strength, all of those words come

back and they really reference the whole self, all all of me, every

fiber of my being. I am to love God with all of it.

It's not necessarily the action of loving God. It's the way that I'd pour

out myself for God. That's what it is to love God. It reminds

me so a while back, I was in a counselor's office and we were

talking and he blatantly, pretty well said, Jordan, you know what your

problem is? Now. I love when a counselor says that, because you're

like, well, if I knew what my problem was, I wouldn't be

here. But he drew this house up on the white board and he said,

hey, you know, this is how you do relationships, And so

he walked through and he said, this is there's a house, and there's

the yard, and there's the sidewalking. There's a front gate. A lot

of times in life you have a lot of relationships that you never allow pass

the gate. They're your neighbors that you say hi to they're walking their dogs.

It's annoying people. Maybe they passed by you and you you don't know

their name, but you say hi every morning because you haven't allowed them in.

Then there's the people that you allow into the eight Now, those are

the people that may stay on the front yard and when you're cutting grass,

you talk about the weather or those generic conversations. But then there's the people

that you allow to the front porch. And those are the people that you're

willing to sit with for a while when the weather's perfect and it's exactly the

element you need, and you're not willing to give up more information than you

want, but you're sometimes willing to listen a little longer. And then there's

the people that make it into the living room. This is where we get

the old idea of courtship right. People slowly allow them into their house.

And there's the family room, and that's where things start to get serious,

you're willing to listen a little longer and maybe speak a little more. Then

there's the people that you allow into your kitchen. And see, your kitchen

is where life happens. It's also where some messes happen. But it's people

you're willing to cook with, You're willing to have a meal with. You're

willing to allow the walls that you've put up to start going down. You

get to have some deeper conversations. You're you allow yourself to be vulnerable,

you allow yourself to show emotion. And then there's the people that you allow

into that room, and those are usually a select few people, and those

are the people you really trust. You're willing to be vulnerable with. You're

willing to tell the rough stuff. You're willing to show that photo album of

the pictures that may not depict you the way you want to be depicted.

And he asked me, Jordan, how many of those people? How many

kitchen people do you have? How many of that room people do you have?

How many front porch people do you have? Because you have a whole

lot of gay people. And that's the way this is saying, is God

is saying I can't be a gay person. I can't be a family room

person. I can't be a kitchen person for you or with you. I

have to have all of you. I need you without walls, because I

know what anyway, right, don't try to filter the pictures that you show

me. A lot of times, when we're talking about our spiritual photo book,

we want to flip around where people can't see the times we were in

distractions, the times we were in delays, the times that we were on

a detour. We don't want to show those, but I have to tell

you, those are the moments when your light shines the most. I think

about my photo album and my spiritual photo album. There's all kinds of really

good camp pictures to start, and then these Stave Youth convention pictures and these

YC pictures, and then these early college pictures. And then there was some

dark pictures that I hid for a long time. And then I realized that

those dark pictures tell the deeper part of my story, the time where I

didn't know where I was going and God showed up. See Rony six seventh

through nine says repeat these commands again and again to your children. Talk about

them when you're at home, and when you're on the road, when you're

going to bed, and when you're getting up, tie them to your hands

and wear them on your foreheads as reminders. Write them on your doorposts of

your house, and on your gates. See saying God's people, we are

to live out the story of God for those that come after us. Now

he's not saying come after us as if we're dead. He's saying those down

the road that are going to know the faith. You have to open up

to these stories. You have to show these stories to everyone. So today,

as we wrap up, we want to share two steps, two really

easy ways to live out the story of God for those around you. And

number one is this become whole self devoted. See that's all loving Him with

your entire fire being. That's being totally transparent, being vulnerable, showing the

high times but also showing the low time, showing that that detour. Even

though you felt stuck, you know that God had a destination in mind for

you. See, we have to recognize his immeasurable love for us. See

God's grand gesture of love for us is he sent his son to pave a

way for us. Today you may need that moment when you think about your

album. It may have never started, You may have not ever asked Jesus

in your heart. You may be coming here just because your kid was really

cute on stage today. And what we want you to know is that God

loves you. He adores you, he says, look at me, I

have your back, he says. I want to begin this photo journey with

you today and some of you who are in this room, and your photo

album, your spiritual photo album is really thick because you've been some places and

you've done something. But what I want to ask you is are you only

relating to your children and your grandchildren and people in church? Are you only

showing the highlights series, the highlight reels of those photos. I gotta tell

you the photos that you want to flip tell your story because that is where

you had to look to him. The only other thing that shows is in

those blank ones, is that you were willing to surrender everything that you thought

you had. You were in those Aar Israelite shoes and you said, hey,

I can't get distracted about everything that looks good around me. I have

to stay focused on you. So the second way that we as God's people

are going to live out His story for the people around us is by bringing

God into our everyday life. And that seems like such a given to say

here at church, right, Yes, Okay, I'm a Christian, I'm

here, or you know, hey, I've heard about Jesus and church and

I'm here. But our faith has to go beyond the walls of the church,

has to go beyond Sunday morning. See, bringing God into our everyday

means talking about what He has done in our lives. He has freed Jordan

from addiction, he has freed me from depression. God has done great things

in our lives. That is who God is. See, when we talk

about God in our everyday life, we talk about the miraculous. I've been

in a room where God has healed a man. I personally have been in

a room where God has taken a broken relationship and put it back together.

I've been in the room when God has provided when there was no way that

anything would happen. I have been there when God has provided the people,

when God has provided the money, when God has provided the time, when

God has provided the resources. God is still in the business of the miraculous.

And we as God's people not only have to live that out, but

when we bring Him into our every day, we can speak that out.

Recently, in my daily job, I have been able to move into a

new department, and so I was kind of getting to know the new people

in my department and hadn't been there very long. But over the course of

a couple of weeks, I got to know the person that was my counterpart

in this position, and she told me that she suffers from chronic pain and

that you know, things are good, but you know sometimes I can see

that and just to kind of ignore it. Well. In our new position,

we do training, and we do six months of training, and out

of that six months of training, we do one week that is as live

here in Indianapolis. We bring people from all over the United States. They

come to Indianapolis, we train them. But in January of this past year,

we had brought everybody in and they were forecasting a snowstorm for Wednesday,

and so we did all day Monday. We did half a day on Tuesday,

and I looked at my counterpart and boy, I could tell she was

in pain. And just a couple hours later, we got the word we're

going to go virtual. We did it through COVID. We could do it

again. Everybody in Indianapolis to stay home. Everybody that went to the hotel

that we flew in to have alives week, You're staying in your hotel room

to do virtual. But through that. As I was walking to the elevator

with her that evening, I looked at her and I said, I don't

know what you believe about God, but I do believe in him, and

I think maybe this is just one way that He is saying that he cares

for you, that he wants you to stay home and rest your body tomorrow.

And from that one comment for a conversation, other conversations have come up,

and I've been able to share more and more and more of my faith

my children. They'll say, boy, she talks about God all the time.

You have an issue, Hey, did you talk to God about that?

You have a decision to make? Hey, you had any conversations with

God? What's God say about that? You know, when we, as

the people of God, live out the story of God, it shows the

world that He is still in the business of the miraculous. Why hasn't closed

today? I don't know where your photo album is what page you're on,

Like I said earlier, if it hasn't started, or if you're in the

middle of it, or maybe today you are in the middle of a detour

or a delay or some big decisions you have to make today. We want

you to know that not only as God is with you and he is for

you, but He is saying, look at me, keep your eyes on

me, forget the distractions, cut out the noise, and focus on me.

We are here as a church because we love each other and here for

each other. And part of how we do life together is sharing that photo

book. So some of you in the room, my question would be,

went to the last time you really showed somebody your book. You may have

been a follow of Christ for years and years and years, which is great,

but if the photo book hasn't been opened and shared lately, you're missing

a spot in Jesus's story that he wants you to share. He's saying,

look where I brought you from and where you're going to. Just when you

think you're in the middle of a detour doesn't mean you're not super close to

where God has you at a destination. Katie, will you pray for us

as we close, Let's pray. God, you are so marvelous and mighty

and Father, I pray over every person in this room. God. I

pray for the people here that need to know you, God, that you

would give them a desire to step out of their seats today and get to

know You and see your son Jesus as the Savior. Father. I pray

over the people here that need to hear that you love them. That it's

okay that they've had a detour or a distraction or a delay, but God,

that you still love them no matter what. God. I pray for

the person that came in this room fully alone, feeling totally empty, God,

that you would feel them, that you would use them for your glory.

God. I pray over each person here that is seeking a deeper relationship

with you, Father, that they would have the courage to take a step,

to open their mouths to say to their friends and to their neighbors and

to their family and to their co workers that God is alive. This is

who he is in my life, this is what he has done. Let

me introduce you to the God of my ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Father, I pray that you would give us a passion for your people,

a passion for the lost. That we would take the skills from our

eyes and see the neighborhoods that we live in. God, that you would

help us to reach our friends and our neighbors. For you, God,

you are good, you are faithful, and I thank you for how good

and faithful you are. And I pray all of this in the name of

Jesus Christ, your son. Amen.