Just Say It | The Road Up 6

Hey, what up?

It's Mark Carter.

I'm the pastor of Fierce Church.

Welcome to our podcast.

I'm so pumped that you're able to join us today.

I hope this encourages you, inspires you, strengthens you, gives you hope to keep pressing on, and it's my prayer that this sermon gives you a more expansive view of God's love for you.

Enjoy the message.

It's important how we treat people.

It's important that we take stock from time to time and just ask the question am I on my mind most of the time?

How much?

What percent of the time is somebody else on my mind and what percent is my mind on my agenda, my thoughts, my desires, my aims?

It's important that we decide to almost force ourselves.

I've got to get outside myself.

Many of you know, of course, everyone's familiar with the Titanic sank in 1912.

One of the men that survived was named Bruce Ismay.

When he came back he got a lot of flack.

In fact, folks began to think maybe he was a villain, maybe he was a coward because he got in one of the lifeboats and the talk was he just didn't work hard enough to help other women and children get on before he got on and got away.

Well, american and Britain authorities looked into it and they said well, you know he didn't technically commit any crimes, but his name had already been besmirched.

He was now known and even now people would think, yeah, who's that guy in Titanic?

Right, he was a coward.

He was the one who was in it for himself.

I don't know what was really going on with Mr Ismay, but I know that I wouldn't want that reputation.

I wouldn't want people when they think about me.

You know that guy's a coward man.

That guy, what he thinks about is him.

And yet I know, like you probably have, I've spent too much time thinking about myself and I missed the opportunity to care and speak into somebody else.

And maybe that's even how I branded myself and they went on with life and they're like that's what they think of Carter.

They're like that dude's so into himself, he's so selfish man.

I hope I don't run into that guy again.

Is it possible that we're undercritical of ourselves from time to time?

Is it possible that where God sent us to help somebody, we just kind of forget that anyone else is out there?

It's not that we don't know that they're there, but we don't remember?

Our agenda should be finding out about their agenda, and one of the things that we can do is tell the story of what God has done for us.

In fact, the telling can change the story.

I don't know if you've got any of these.

I've got some books that probably changed the trajectory of my life.

Like doing this caused me to go a different direction.

One was it's kind of silly.

It's a Dragonlance little book.

I read this probably when I was 14.

What changed my life about it?

There was nothing that happened in the book.

It was my transition from comic books to liking books my whole life.

Like books are my favorite non-human thing on the planet.

I love books.

This probably caused a turn in my life to pay more attention, to want books, to read books.

I got into a lot of books.

Another book that changed my life was this I Was Wrong by Jim Baker.

Some of the older ones know that Jim Baker was a televangelist in the 80s and he had a great fall.

Well, in this book he details everything that began to go wrong in his heart that led to those falls.

And as I read this as a young minister, I was taken with the idea oh, you can jack this up Like you can go way wrong Just because your heart is right at first doesn't mean it's going to stay right.

That changed how I thought about myself.

It changed how I thought about ministry.

The story changed my story.

Today Moses is going to tell the story, the story that God was doing through him, and that story is going to change Jethro.

Some of you were here last week.

You remember talking about Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses.

He helped Moses.

Last week he came in it was Father's Day.

He helped Moses.

Do some delegation learn some good lessons?

Well, the scene that happens right before that, the day and night before, that is what we're going to look at today.

And this is where the telling of the story changes Jethro's story.

All Moses does is say Jethro, it's been a little bit.

Let me tell you, let me catch you up.

Let's talk about what happened.

We're going to read it together.

Verse 1.

Now Jethro, the priest of Midian, moses' father-in-law, heard all that God had done for Moses, for Israel, his people, how Yahweh had brought Israel out of Egypt.

Then Jethro, moses' father-in-law, jump to verse 5, came with his sons and his wife to Moses in the wilderness where they had camped at the Mount of God.

That Mount of God, really important.

This is where Moses is going to receive the 10 commandments.

It's also where Moses received the assignment.

So unless we're looking at the big picture of Exodus, we might miss the idea that Moses started here and now he's returning here before the next assignment.

This assignment is really done.

What did he do?

He went and got the Israelites out of Egypt, like that's what God told him to do.

Now he's back.

Okay, god done, like that part's done.

There's still a lot more for the Israelites and Moses to do, but this assignment is kind of done, and it's done in the same place.

And now his father-in-law comes to meet him.

How did his father-in-law know that he was there?

Probably, you know.

We could speculate, but there's probably several reasons.

One could be like one to three million people wandering around in the desert.

Word gets around about the fact that they're out there.

In addition, these guys just fought a giant enemy, the Amalekites, and it's their first military battle.

These are just supposed to be slave people and they beat them.

That probably gets around as well.

Oh no, that God didn't stay in Egypt and get them out.

He came with them.

Yikes, that might be a little bit intimidating.

It might also be that he was waiting for Moses because he had taken Zipporah and the kids back to himself we talked about last week.

We don't know when, but at some point Moses sent Zipporah and the kids back as he was coming into or just arrived at Egypt.

What we didn't discuss was Jethro didn't really know where Moses was going, at least according to the text.

When Moses left this mountain first to go find Pharaoh and to see him all Moses told his father-in-law was hey, I want to go see about my brothers and see if they're still alive.

And the old man's like sweet, see ya.

And then, probably before the kids get back home, to Jethro later on and they're like this guy's taking on Pharaoh, like he's turning the rivers to blood and all kinds of weird stuff is happening.

And if I'm that father-in-law and I'm hearing what this dude is dangerously doing potentially with my daughter and my kids, I'm like I'm glad you're at home, you're never seeing that dude again.

He's probably going to die because the Egyptians are the most powerful people on earth.

And so here Moses comes back, and he's coming back kind of in triumph and Jethro comes out to meet him Verse 7,.

Then Jethro went out to meet his father-in-law and he bowed down and kissed him that would have been a normal greeting in the ancient Near East and they asked each other of their welfare and went into the tent and Moses recounted to his father-in-law all that Yahweh had done to Pharaoh and the Egyptians for Israel's sake Things like the plagues, things like gnats coming up out of the ground, things like red seas, parting all the hardship that had befallen them on the journey.

Think about from Moses' perspective, remember.

At first, when he goes back to Egypt, he's entirely rejected by all the people, not only Pharaoh but his own people.

He goes through all kinds of persecution.

There's harder work that happens for the Israelites on account of Moses.

And so he's telling them hey, jethro, not only good stuff happened, but bad stuff happened too.

And then, and how Yahweh had delivered them.

And here we are, Papa, me and these several million people.

And Jethro rejoiced over all the goodness which Yahweh had done to Israel, that he had delivered them from the hand of the Egyptians, had done to Israel, that he had delivered them from the hand of the Egyptians.

And telling can change the story, because the telling that Moses just did changes Jethro's story, verse 10.

So Jethro said blessed be Yahweh, who delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of Pharaoh, who delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians.

Now I know that Yahweh is greater than all the gods, for in this matter they acted presumptuously against the people.

That's a big revelation for this priest of Midian.

He's like you know.

There's a lot of gods around here.

There's a lot of Canaanite gods, there's Baal and Asherah and Jethro's.

Like.

I've been this dude a long time.

I've been related to Moses for a long time, many decades, and he's probably mentioned the Hebrew God of Abraham, isaac and Jacob.

It's probably come up.

But here Jethro is saying I got to recognize something.

My Baal God ain't never delivered 3 million people.

He's never come close.

He didn't do anything with the Red Sea.

And here is Yahweh.

Like guys, can you think about just what a long shot that is?

You're going against Egypt and you're bringing out all these prisoners and it works.

It don't matter who you are.

You're going to be like doggone.

There might be something to this.

That's a big deal.

Then Jethro, moses' father-in-law, took a burnt offering and sacrifices for God, and Aaron came with and all the elders of Israel to eat a meal with Moses' father-in-law before the Lord.

They're eating a meal together and Jethro participates, he does a sacrifice.

Okay, most cultures would have understood this.

They understood you couldn't just approach a God Like we think, hey, man, everyone's just got to just run up to him, and that's really because you were born into a Christianized world where that is a presupposition.

But in their time you don't just run up to him and that's really because you were born into a Christianized world where that is a presupposition.

But in their time you don't just walk up to a God, you better bring something, because you've got to make up for your sin, you've got to make up for the ways you've displeased this guy.

And Jethro brings a sacrifice to Yahweh and they have what is just a fellowship meal.

They're just sitting down.

So the idea in their mind is they're sitting down at a banquet together in the presence of God as the guest of honor.

That's how that's going.

They're having this meal in front of this God and it's a big deal.

And I'll tell you why.

It's because this is where God begins to open the door of blessing to Jethro.

See, this is a hint For people that are reading this later.

This is a hint For people that are reading this later.

This is a hint.

All this time we've been learning.

Why is God only interested in the Israelites?

Why does he only care about this one family, the family of Abraham?

And here's a little drop tint, right here.

Right here, before the law is even given, right before anything of substance happens after the Exodus, and God includes a nation that is not Israel to come into his presence and fellowship with him.

Are we hearing this y'all?

God opens wide the door he promised to Abraham.

Abraham, I'm going to bless not just your family, I'm going to bless all the nations of the world through your family, and that all the nations of the world ultimately is because the Israelites are the incubation space for Jesus Christ, where he'll come from.

But even now, god wants it clear, as Israelites are reading this later.

He wants it clear Guys, I care about more than just this people, I care about all the people.

What did Moses do?

Moses personalized the story that he'd walked through for Jethro.

Jethro probably knew about stuff about God.

He probably had heard about it.

He knew the outline of what happened.

Okay, so, yeah, you went there and plagues, and then you all came out and through the water, and then one got in fights.

And now you're here.

He knew the outline.

We all know the outline, the God stories, people know about that.

But Moses personalized it for Jethro.

He says look, I'm not telling you, I'm not giving you three reasons to believe in God, jethro, I'm not giving you.

Here's some arguments why you should think the God of Israel is the best God.

He said, father-in-law.

With all love and respect, can I tell you what happened to me and how this was so personal to me?

Some of you know who Russell Brand is.

He is an actor, he's a director.

He's now kind of a commentator.

He's been talking recently about this idea that he has become a born again Christian, that he has encountered Christ.

Now you always want to be careful with these because you never know what's going to happen.

He's not dead yet, so it's not sealed up for sure.

You know we don't know what's going to happen in 20 years, but right now it seems sincere, it seems honest and Russell's kind of known like.

He was heavily into drugs.

He's known for hedonism.

In fact he recounts on his TikTok channel and many other of the spaces that he's on he's been into finding every kind of thing he could to fill his void, but he couldn't fill it until he found Jesus Christ Kind of a big deal.

Jethro says now I know that Yahweh is greater than all the gods.

And Russell Brand is one of the ones who's saying now I know God is greater than all the gods.

All the things I tried, all the things I was trying to fill my soul with, god is greater than that.

And the truth is we've all got little gods.

Let's be real for a second.

You've got stuff that's really, really, really important to you.

In fact, it's at the top of the list.

It's the things you're going to work on, no matter what, and it's not that it's not good, but it's so important that you might say I can't do life without that thing.

It might be a certain amount of prestige, it might be a certain person that you've got to be in their life or forget about it.

It might be that you're waiting to be vindicated about something and until you're vindicated you can't even be happy, and that's a little God.

And God is greater than all the gods and that's what God is determined to show everybody.

Some of you are also familiar with the scene in Avengers where the Hulk encounters Loki, who is a little G God.

And it's a very humorous moment, because Loki has no chance at all and all just whips him around and demolishes him and then he's just laying there in the ground in the cement and, guys, I don't want to freak you out, but that is what God has bent on doing to all of our little gods.

It's not that he wants to take everything from your life away, but he just wants to show you none of your stuff comes close to how awesome and beautiful and loving and forgiving and perfect and my ability to fill your life as I do.

Nothing comes close.

And so sometimes we're going through some hardships and we got to ask the question is it possible that one of the reasons I'm experiencing some of this hardship is so God can puny God some of the things in my life?

Just show me it's not as important as you've been making it.

Let me put myself a little bit higher.

And God is putting himself a lot higher in Jethro's life and he's reminding all of us as we read it.

It's not just Israel.

God cares about all the nations.

He starts very exclusively with this one, but it was always his plan to move out and reveal himself to everybody.

Why does it matter.

It matters because you're a part of that.

You're part of the nations.

Unless you're a genuine Israelite descendant of an Israelite, you're one of the ones that is outside of the Israelite community.

They would have called us Gentiles and that message has trickled down over the centuries to get to us and what you don't know, moses maybe not have known at the moment.

See, moses was a part of God's plan to get his message to the rest of the nations and we often don't know, but your story is a part of God's plan to get to the rest of the nations, the rest of the people that he wants to encounter In our time, a lot of the world.

There's really important need for missionaries and that kind of thing, but a lot of the world has heard about Jesus already.

They've heard the outline of the story.

This has taken place.

This has happened over the past two millennia.

The message of Jesus Christ has gotten around quite a bit and yet often people didn't get the whole personalized story.

And that's what we want to talk about us being able to help people understand that they can be included, just like we were included, and I need you to understand what included means.

Okay, we're going to go to Galatians 3, 7.

This is where Paul's explaining he understood the mystery.

That was only a little bit visible in Jethro's time and now is way more visible in Paul's time, and here's what he says.

The real children of Abraham, then, are those who put their faith in God.

What's more, the scriptures look forward to this time when God would make the Gentiles right in his sight because of their faith.

God proclaimed this good news to Abraham long ago when he said all nations will be blessed through you.

So all who put their faith in Christ share the same blessing Abraham received because of his faith.

We've all received it because other people shared their story.

Jethro received it because Moses.

All he did was share his faith.

We've all received it because other people shared their story.

Jethro received it because Moses.

All he did was share his story.

Other people are supposed to hear it because of our story.

I want to encourage you before we go into the points.

It's not somebody else's story.

You don't have to worry about someone else's story.

All you have to do is start where you are.

Even if you're not a Christian, you can still tell the story.

Hey man, this is where I'm at.

This is authentically who I am and where I am in my journey, wherever you are, here's three things God wants everyone to be able to say.

Number one God fought for me when I couldn't fight for myself.

God fought for me when I couldn't fight for myself.

That's what fought for myself.

That's what Moses told Jethro first.

He told him all that Yahweh had done to Pharaoh and the Egyptians for Israel's sake Many of us, you would say.

There's things that only God got you through.

You wouldn't have gotten through that, in fact you wouldn't have stayed married if it wasn't for God.

You wouldn't have moved there and gotten out of that bad situation.

If it wasn't for God, you wouldn't have pressed on.

You would have some killed themselves if it wasn't for God.

Because God fought some battles, some inner demons and outer demons for you and outer demons for you.

But there's a deeper way because of Jesus Christ, not just releasing us from physical enemies, but the enemy of sin.

See, they're going to receive the 10 commandments right after this, because God is still concerned about sin.

Yes, the Egyptians were real, but they're also a type, they're a figure of sin, and I need you to know that I care about that thing.

And sin still holds.

Egyptians probably don't hold you captive, but sin holds all of us captive and it brings misery and it brings suffering to us and to others and it ends up it winds up in death.

But here's what Jesus Christ does.

He fought for us in three ways.

He came for me, he obeyed for me and he went to the cross for me.

He came for me, he obeyed for me and he went to the cross for me.

Sin, guys, sin is.

Sometimes.

I wrestle with illustrations that can make sense of sin, but one way to think about it, if you're using your imagination, is it's a giant living vine that has wrapped itself around us and wrapped itself around our eyes so we can't see, and then wrapped around our mouth so we can't scream.

We are trapped in sin.

And what does Jesus do?

He comes for us.

He's sent by the Father.

God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son that whoever believes in him would have eternal life.

And Jesus, and Jesus alone, comes and he's the only one who can cut through the sin.

You'll never get out of it yourself, but Jesus is strong baby.

He just drips a little blood on that thing and it withers, and then you fall into his arms.

Jesus is the only one that can get us out of that.

He came for you and me, to get us out of our sin.

He came to help.

Not only that, he obeyed for you and I.

He did all the things that you.

He did right, all obeyed for you and I.

He did all the things that you, he did right, all the things that you and I would ever do wrong.

There was an Old Testament law that said eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.

That means if you carelessly punch out somebody's tooth, okay, our punishment to you is we're going to punch out your tooth.

Well, there's a deeper law here.

It's life for life, and Jesus knows to get their lives back.

I've got to give my life To get them innocent.

I must be guilty in their place.

To give them my obedience, I've got to walk every day on this earth perfectly obeying the father, and then I've still got to receive the punishment of someone who didn't.

So they can have that obedience.

That's how Jesus fought for you.

He fought for you and it was personal.

He fought for you.

He went to the cross for you and for me.

How did he do it?

Hebrews 12, two says we persevere by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.

Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding the shame, because of the joy awaiting him.

What was the joy?

It was to please the Father and it was to get you.

It was to hold you close to himself and say I got them.

They didn't fall away, I got them.

They're going to be with me in heaven forever.

It's going to sound a little bit.

Maybe I'm telling too much, but I've already told you guys way too much.

So there was a season for Kenzie and I, before we were married, where we had to be very careful to maintain purity.

Okay, it was rough.

Those of you who know Kenzie, you know she's outrageously gorgeous.

And so we had to invent.

We had to be around our friends.

We had these little rules.

One of them was four on the floor.

That means, dude, don't lay down together because something's going to happen.

If you're going to be on a sofa, sit, no naps, sit, all right.

We knew, dude, we can't do until we're married.

We can't do more than a peck, because things just go south from there.

Okay, so we can't get into some of this because we knew ourselves, we knew ways.

We'd already failed and we know that's not going to go very well and it was tough.

But can I tell you, it was for the joy set before me that I endured that suffering.

I was like, oh, I wish I had a lot more than this little peck.

But the day is coming and I'm thinking about that day and my friends.

It's not that strange or gross, but jesus thought about you a little bit like that in some sense.

He was under tremendous pain, he was suffering with the cross, but he said the day is coming, though, when this cross is gonna be worth it, because I'm gonna have them, they're gonna be mine, and no devil in hell and no sin is gonna be able to keep me away from them.

Jesus fights for you.

So what did he tell Jethro?

He said God fought for me when I couldn't fight for myself, and God was with me in my hardships.

This is so important because sometimes we feel like the message is hey, do what I do and you can have a perfect life by being a Christian.

Yee, that's really not the message at all.

That's kind of like a lie.

Moses was super honest with Jethro and we went through all this hard crap and God was with us, in fact, the first disciples.

They made sure other disciples knew this reality.

Paul and Barnabas are talking to some new disciples that they're ministering to and they say in Acts 14, 22,.

Paul and Barnabas were strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith and they said we must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God and, guys, that's just true, but God is going to be with us.

You're going to go through tremendous pain and God's going to be with you, whether you feel him or not.

You're going to go through heartbreak and God's going to be with you, whether you feel him or not.

You're going to go through radical rejection and being dismissed and, whether you feel him or not, he'll never leave you and he'll never forsake you.

Even when you look at God and you're mad at him and you're angry and you say I am done, forget it God, I'm not in your program anymore.

Even then, you know what he most of the time does.

He'll be patient and then he'll soften your heart again and then you'll be like I'm an idiot.

What was I doing?

Because he's so forgiving and because he doesn't let go.

You've got a story probably many of you that if it had not been for God, you just would have gone south, man, like it would have been a whole different story for God, you just would have gone south, man, like it would have been a whole different story.

Have you considered the possibility that there might be somebody somewhere at certain points?

They'd really benefit from that story, but you're a little afraid to bring it up, you're afraid to let that part out.

Is it possible that God doesn't want you to keep that to yourself all the time?

And then God saved me from destruction.

Yahweh delivered them.

Think about these Egyptians.

Okay, they're chasing out these Israelites.

There's not near as many Egyptians as there are Israelites.

There's at least a million and a half Israelites.

Okay, there's not that many Egyptian soldiers.

It's going to be hard to round them up and just bring them all back.

Their plan is likely to cut down a lot of these chumps who thought that they could walk out on the job we gave them.

They were headed for destruction.

Even if they happen to live, they'd still get the whip of the lash, the lash of the whip every day for the rest of their lives.

The lash of the whip every day for the rest of their lives and God saved them from that destruction.

They would have been slaughtered.

I know for me I don't know if you have moments like this I know God has caused me to miss car accidents Like it was so ridiculous.

It was my fault, I should have been dead and he just preserved me.

Somehow I've almost drowned four times.

I know that God has preserved me.

I don't know if you have any of those, but God is preserving you in many ways all the time.

There's certain things he just didn't let come to you.

There's certain things he just didn't let happen to you.

And the best part is Jesus saves us from the penalty of sin.

See, when we die, my friend, wherever we go, we spend eternity there, and there's two options that the Bible gives us.

One is eternity separated from God, really getting what we've been asking for this whole time.

God, leave me alone.

I prefer to just take your wrath, forget it, or in the safe, warm arms of Jesus Christ.

Guys, and it's legit, we need saved.

We don't need religion, we need Jesus to forgive us and give us his right, standing with God.

Because, why?

Because justice.

Our world is so like drunk on justice right now, like justice everything, man.

Let's have justice for you know, jellyfish.

Justice for everything.

Everybody needs justice, except when we turn it in on ourselves.

Should there be justice, really, just for the way you've broken serious laws that God gave to people?

Should there be justice for that?

Should there be justice when you ignored your creator and just hardened your heart against him?

I don't want to hear about this.

Do you want justice for that?

Probably not.

Well, justice would be that you do get the penalty, or justice would be that somebody perfect gets the penalty and gives you what only they can give you, which is a perfect record.

That would be a way to satisfy justice, and that's what Jesus, and Jesus alone, does.

John 5, 24,.

I tell you the truth those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life.

They listen to this because it's really important, because some of you feel guilty and condemned all the time.

They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death to life.

Doggone God's word.

They will never be condemned.

That means God knows that you're going to sin again and he says I'm hurt by that.

That's not joyous for my heart, but you've already come under the blood covenant of Jesus Christ.

I knew Jesus would say when I got on that cross you were going to commit all the sins you have committed and all the ones you still will.

And I chose you anyway.

And you're still covered and you're still.

People will condemn you.

Check it out.

Jesus won't condemn you.

You might even have to like have restitution from time to time.

You break a law, you might get the ticket, you might go to jail, but Jesus, even though you do, he'll never condemn you and he'll never leave you.

How many think Jesus is just the awesomest person in the universe.

So Moses tells Jethro, he tells him just his story.

He tells them just his story.

And where I think maybe we are just too into ourselves sometimes is we don't notice there's other Jethro's all around us.

There's people that you're eating with, you're driving with and you're sharing with and you're even close to them the way that Moses was close to Jethro.

And it's not that you need to like call them to Christ or something like that, but there may be times, you see, god knows their whole future and he knows when his spirit is moving you.

It's time for you to open your mouth and say well, I'll tell you the way God got me through my hardship.

I'll tell you the way God freed me from destruction.

He did it this way.

Is it possible?

Is that too much to ask?

To be thinking about them enough to be like, oh, that reminds me of a thing I went through.

Let me tell you about it.

It's hard to trust sometimes that God has put the right people in our life.

Hey, listen, god is not asking you to go toe-to-toe on YouTube with some like super atheist, but he is asking you to love the people he put in your life on purpose and just don't lie.

And when they need help, tell them the good stories that God has given you, because your telling can change their story.

And, my friends, what we also don't understand when we're thinking only about ourselves, is that everybody's hurting and everybody's in a little bit of trouble somehow, and what they need is a loving friend like Moses to just tell them what happened.

One of the things they need is they need patience.

This didn't happen for Jethro and Moses the other decades that they were together.

It only happened at God's appointed time.

And there's people in your life, dude, you don't need to like rush anybody.

You don't need to force anybody, you don't need to convince them.

Oh man, if you just like listen to this sermon for Pastor Carter.

Need to force anybody, you don't need to convince them.

Oh man, if you just like listen to this sermon for Pastor Carter, whoa man, then he's going to get it.

I'm not saying you shouldn't do that, but we can't force anybody into an openness to Jesus.

Only the Holy Spirit can do that.

But we can be patient and, my friends, I think this is a curse of our age.

We're just so fast that we want everyone to move fast and we don't know how long Jesus took us to give us the level of understanding that we've got.

Here's one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite all-time books, the Pursuit of God from AW Tozer.

He says failure to see this is the cause of a very serious breakdown of modern evangelicalism.

The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture.

It's too slow, too common.

We demand glamor and fast-flowing, dramatic action.

A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient for the slower, less direct methods of reaching their goals.

We've been trying to apply machine age methods to our relations with God.

Sometimes we just need to slow down and remember.

There's nothing I have to do.

I just have to tell my story, and the power is in the telling, not in the teller.

God has made the gospel itself and the story of what Jesus has done powerful in itself.

How do you know?

It won't help.

It helped me when I began to hear when I was 18, different ways that people, man, they'd really discovered Jesus was personal to them.

It wasn't just like the religion I'd had as a kid.

He was interacting with them, he was speaking to them, he had knocked on the door to their heart.

And that's what Jesus does for all of us.

So before we share our story, it might be wise to make sure.

Have I allowed Jesus to change my story?

That's a hard decision.

It's a weighty decision.

It's like am I going to trust Jesus to come into my heart and just be boss?

There's a scripture really really meaningful, powerful, beautiful Revelation 3.20.

This is Jesus, really talking to all humankind.

He says here I am, I stand at the door and knock.

Isn't that cool?

He doesn't barge in, he could.

He could just, you know, disappear at the door.

If anyone hears my voice and opens the door and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person and they with me.

This world's on fire, man.

It doesn't seem like it's getting less fiery.

It seems like everything's chaos a lot of the time and we should work hard to help people and to help fix that.

At the same time, we've all got to recognize we're all running out of time and the weight of sin is a real thing.

And if you feel that weight of sin today, it's for a reason.

It's because Jesus is alerting you.

That's him knocking on the door of your heart, and here's what he wants you and I to be able to say.

I don't know if you can say it yet, but we're going to pray it in a second.

He wants you to be able to say God fought for me when I couldn't fight for myself and God was with me in my hardships, and God saved me from destruction.

Have you opened yourself up to Jesus' story that he's been trying to share with you, or maybe have you only had it to crack open and now it's time to like what are we doing, man?

Rip that thing open, let the God in.

Let's do this.

I wanna have a time of prayer.

I'm gonna pray for you and if anyone feels led during this next song, you wanna come and just.

Sometimes there's a strange kind of a help we get when we just come down front and kneel before this like it's an altar before the throne of heaven.

Sometimes God meets us down there in a special way.

Nobody has to do that.

But if you feel like that's something you wanna do to do business with God, you are invited to do that.

But in the meantime let's bow our heads, jesus.

Some of us hear you knocking and we recognize we've been ignoring it.

We want to ask for your forgiveness.

We've been clutching too tightly to our own agendas, to our own goals, to the things we're trying to do.

In fact, some of us have been clinging too tightly to our own story and the way we want it to go.

So, sweet Jesus, we open the door and we say you already know everything we want.

Now we want to submit it to you and say, yes, I still want that.

But whatever you want, let that override it, jesus.

And then help us to be aware that we are supposed to occasionally encourage people, maybe frequently encourage people.

This is how I've seen God move in my life we're supposed to tell the story that might change someone else's story.

Jesus, would you come, would you fill us with your Holy Spirit right now?

For those who have never asked Jesus for forgiveness, lord, we ask right now please forgive me, come into my life, Fill me with your personhood, your personality and your forever friendship In Jesus' name, amen.

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Whatever challenges you're facing, I know you can make it.

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He won't let go of you.

Jesus loves you so much and we love you.

I hope someday we get to meet in person.

Thanks again for listening.