The Twelve Jesus Chose (part 1)

How are we doing, everybody?

It's good to see you guys.

My goodness, there's a lot going on.

It's good to be in the house of the Lord.

If you're a guest, we welcome you.

If you're a member, we're happy you're here.

Everybody, it's good to see you.

Man, the story, St.

Jude, everything else.

My goodness, here's the only thing I gotta tell you.

If uh you're bored in this community and can't find purpose, you ain't in the church, man.

Uh, because there's more than enough to do for everybody around here, and you get to be a part of it.

I'm not gonna take too much time here in the front of it, but I do want to say that there's a lot going on with the youth ministry, uh, a lot going on with hope and a haircut.

We're gonna push some hope into this community.

Uh, and I'm thankful for that.

Ryan Stevenson, I gotta tell you, um, he's not a small guy when it comes to the music industry.

He's been in the music industry for a long time.

I have friends that are currently um relevant in the music industry that look up to this guy.

Uh, the fact that we're going to be able to have him here is an honor and a privilege.

Uh, and so if you're able to be here on that Friday night, we want you here.

And uh look, I'll be your first one, Jeff.

I don't know where you went, but I will buy uh 10 of those tickets, we'll give them away, we'll start that with me, and uh it'll be really good.

Look, people need hope.

Amen?

Amen.

And we gotta take the step forward and do it.

Uh today we're getting in our new series on the 12 that Jesus chose.

Um, I want you to understand, Jesus did not start his movement.

You remember, like, when you would grow up in Sunday school and people would be like, Do you know who the 12 disciples are?

And you would like be like, Peter, John, Peter, like, you couldn't really remember it because you only really heard about the dude that cut off the dude's ear.

And you know John because, you know, but then you didn't realize that that wasn't John.

Okay, well, listen, I have some sheets for you out there if you want to learn more about who these disciples were.

But trust me, by the time we're done with this series, you're gonna know who these disciples were.

You're gonna know their stories, and you're gonna learn how it's applicable to our life here in 2026.

With that being said, are we ready for the video?

We're gonna watch this video.

Listen, I can't promise you that there's not gonna be an ad in this video.

If it is, be the adult that I know you are, okay?

Don't go home saying, I can't believe there is an ad.

Shut up, all right?

It's just an ad.

All right?

All right, we're good.

Here we go.

Play the video, please.

Jesus did not start his movement by recruiting the best, the brightest, the most religious.

He walked along the shores of a dirty lake.

That's what he did.

And he looked at ordinary working men and he said two words that changed everything, and that was follow me.

Follow me.

That's simple.

The first disciples were not seminary graduates, they weren't temple leaders, they weren't influencers, they were fishermen with callous hands, they were tax collectors with dirty reputations, and men with more questions than answers.

Jesus chose the unqualified on purpose.

That's what he does.

And that's still how he builds his church.

Today I'm not going to be super long-winded, but I want to break down the understanding of how God operates in these disciples, but also how it's applicable to your life and mine in 2026 and how he's calling us.

And oftentimes what I hear from people is that I can't be used of God because of X, Y, and Z.

My past is too great, my sin is too great, my mistakes are too great, I'm not educated, I don't know enough of the Bible, I don't know enough.

And instead of not understanding that God never asked any of that of you, He never did that.

God has only asked you to follow Him.

So I want to speak on that just for a moment before we dive in.

Because what happens oftentimes in the American church is that when someone comes into the church, everybody else says they should look just like us.

No, you should not look just like me.

I should not look just like you.

You want to know why?

Because my relationship and following the Lord might be farther along than yours.

It may not be, I may be in a different season with the Lord than you.

But here's what I do know: that when you come into the house of the Lord, you have the opportunity to respond, not with your bad qualities, not with your good qualities, not with your experience, not with your knowledge.

You get to choose to say, Yes, I don't know what this looks like, and I don't know if I'm really made for this, but yeah, I'll take you at your word and I'll follow you.

That's it.

It's surrender.

And today we're gonna talk about that a little bit and what that really means.

My first point this morning is that Jesus calls us in the middle of ordinary life.

You know, there's times in your life where you think that maybe if I go to church today, this will be the day that everything changes.

And for some of us, that was the story.

And I hope for some of you that might be the story.

But oftentimes it's not the story because Jesus finds us in our ordinary days of life.

And this was really the same with the disciples.

Jesus did not wait for the disciples to clean themselves up or get their lives in order.

He found them at work, casting nets, mending gear, collecting taxes.

In fact, this is what the scriptures tell us in Mark 1:16 through eight.

Mark 1:16

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, so he's walking, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen.

Come follow me, Jesus said, and I will send you out to fish for people.

At once they left their nets and followed him.

Something was convincing.

This is what happened.

Jesus caught them in an ordinary moment.

Jesus calls Matthew in the middle of his work day, an ordinary day in Matthew 99.

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth.

Follow me, he told him.

And Matthew got up, quit his job, and followed him.

That's crazy.

That's crazy.

There were experiences that led to relationship, which led to discipleship.

But Jesus was a man of experience and he was a man of challenge.

And he didn't say, check your calendar and see what you're doing tomorrow.

He said, For today, I have something better to offer you.

This is what happens.

Jesus steps into the middle of our normal, messy, everyday lives, the issues that we face.

He steps right into it and he offers us the same invitation.

Are you?

I'm amazed by that.

I'm amazed that Jesus would look at someone like me and say, I want to invite you into what I'm doing, into my kingdom, into my ministry.

I want you to be a part of helping change the world in 2026.

And that's what we get to do.

It's the craziest thing because I don't deserve to read his word.

I don't deserve to have a relationship with him.

I'm not holy enough.

I'm not good enough.

But guess what?

Jesus Christ makes us good enough.

Amen.

That's it.

And he tells Matthew, this tax collector, who is a dirty man, he's a Jew, stealing from his own people for the Roman Empire, and it's disgusting.

And Jesus says, I want you.

You can see how the religious and those that viewed this hated Jesus.

You know, this is what I've learned.

I've learned that discipleship begins in the ordinary, not in the extraordinary.

So many times people want signs.

God, if this is really you, show yourself and then I will follow you.

You know, I joked about it before, and early on, you might have heard me tell a joke about a guy that went to the donut shop and he said, Lord, if if you don't want me to have a donut, uh, the first spot won't be open.

And he goes up and he pulls up and the the spot's not open.

And so he leaves and he drives around eight more times until the spot's open.

You know, some people think, try to create the extraordinary.

Can I tell you that discipleship begins in the ordinary?

It is often in your ordinary moments of your life that God will approach you and will stop you, and you will have to make the decision whether or not you're going to listen and follow Him.

We have to tune out the noise of the world that is constantly trying to tell us that to be spiritual and to be a follower of Jesus, we have to feel it.

We have to, it should be extraordinary.

No, listen, there are moments that Jesus is going to lead you to do something and you may not feel anything at all.

That's a truth.

That's a truth.

And so it's in these moments where these men were in their ordinary jobs doing ordinary things, and Jesus approached them.

This is what I love about Jesus, because it is the same Jesus who walked up on the fishermen in the middle of their shift that is still walking up on people in the middle of their mess.

This is what I love.

This is our God, this is how he operates, this is who he is.

I love when I encounter people who say, Tyler, I want to come to church, but that place will fall apart if I walk in.

Ha! Dude, are you kidding me?

Jesus walked up and he said, Follow me in the middle of my mess.

It was not when I had it figured out.

I couldn't figure it out if I wanted to.

But for me to follow him, I had to understand that he's okay with my mess right now.

Now he's not going to leave me there, he's not going to keep me there.

But at some point, we have to understand this Jesus that we worship and we follow and understand who he is.

And the same grace that he gave to us and called us into the church in the middle of our messes is the same grace and love we should extend on others when they come into the church in the middle of their mess.

Amen.

That's it.

That's it.

And so it's throughout these scriptures that we begin to learn that Jesus He chooses these people, these unqualified, these people that nobody else would have chosen.

And what we learn is that he gives a call, but this call requires an immediate and costly response.

It's in Mark 1:8 that it says that once they left their nets and followed him.

Mark 1:8

And when he had gone a little farther, he saw James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John in a boat preparing their nets.

And without delay he called them, and they left their father, Zebedee in the boat with the hired man and followed him.

I bet there probably was some words in that moment.

I bet there was.

I mean, literally.

Luke 5 and 11 says it like this.

So they pulled up their boats on the shore and left everything and followed him.

There was a radical encounter in an ordinary day, an ordinary moment.

People realize what we have to live for is not nearly as good as what Jesus has for us.

And I'm sorry if you've not experienced that in your life yet, I feel bad for you.

But I can promise you that if you're tired of living a redundant life where you just seem like you get up, you do the thing, you work, you go home, you make dinner, you eat, you watch a movie, you go to bed, you get up, you do.

If you are tired of living the redundant life of just living in a story here or a surrounding community here and wondering, is there more?

Is there more?

Is there more to this life than just going through the motions?

I promise you, yes, there's a lot more.

But to do that, you have to answer the call and be willing to leave the nets behind.

You gotta be able to do that, and that's hard and that's a challenge, and it doesn't happen overnight.

But for that to happen, you have to follow him.

You have to make that decision.

He said it.

Here's the thing that I know the call of Jesus is free, but it's never cheap.

You know that the call of Jesus, he got on the cross for you and I, he died for you and I.

But you have to make a decision.

And that decision is not a cheap decision.

That decision says that there's some things in my life that have to change.

Sometimes the greatest act of faith in our life is not what you pick up, it's what you're willing to leave behind.

I think this is so important.

And as I was studying and the Lord pressed this up on me this week at my desk, I was thinking, man, how true is that?

How true is that?

You know, my greatest moments of faith were not the things that I've done.

It's not the moment of like, my greatest act of faith wasn't praying for somebody.

My greatest act of faith is not preaching on a Sunday.

My greatest act of faith is trusting him with the things that I leave behind.

Trusting him when he told us to move from Arkansas to Ohio or Tennessee or Illinois, trusting him that when I move my kids out of a school district and they leave their old friends to come to a new place, trusting him with not having anything, but knowing that he'll provide everything.

At some point, if you want to step into the goodness of God, the best way to remind yourself of his faithfulness is to step in a faith of leaving the past behind.

You have to be willing to do that.

And I don't know what the past is in your life.

Maybe it's hurt, maybe it's people that have gone against you.

I don't know.

But as you just saw in that video, he was like, dude, I don't want to go with Matthew.

I'm a zealot.

I was against people like him.

He's a tax collector, he's nasty.

Matthew was afraid of people like that.

You have to understand the greatest act of faith is not what's ahead of you, but it's what you leave behind you.

See, this follow me, Jesus idea is saying you trust in his ways over your ideologies, beliefs, or memory.

And that's a hard thing to do because we're always thinking about the past.

We're always thinking about the things behind us, we're always thinking about what we want to take into the new season of our life, and we know that we shouldn't take it in, but we can't stop holding on to it.

And at some point in your life, the greatest act of faith may not ever seeing someone's eyes open that we're blind, but it might be forgiving the person that you hate.

That could be the greatest thing that we do.

So this morning in this season, I want to challenge us as disciples of Jesus who follow him to understand that it's in the ordinary and it's in the moments, but when he calls you, he's calling you to something greater.

And where you're going, you can't take your past with you.

You can't.

It's gotta die.

The past has to die.

Jesus never said follow me when it's convenient, he said follow me.

And the next word in the story usually is immediately.

Immediately.

Point three.

Jesus redefines greatness by choosing the unlikely.

Guys, I gotta tell you, if you would have met me at 13, you would have never looked at me and said, Wow, that guy's gonna be a preacher one day.

If you would have met me in Zuby at 15, you would have never said, Wow, that guy, he's gonna preach crusades across around the world.

You never would have said that about me.

I wouldn't have said that about me.

I would have laughed at you, being like, okay.

You would have probably hated me.

I was a punk.

I wasn't a good kid.

And for some reason, in that juvie cell when I was 15, when I told the Lord, look, I have nothing to offer.

I was just looking at scribblings on the top of or on the bottom of a bunk above me.

And I said, God, I don't want to be like this anymore.

If you can use somebody like me, you can have me.

And the Holy Spirit filled that room in a way that I had never felt before.

And I began to ball, and God began to do a work in my life.

And I went in with handcuffs on, but I came out with the Holy Spirit, and I made a decision that when I left that place, that I'm never gonna be the same again.

I'm gonna follow him, even if it means losing everything.

And this isn't about me this morning.

But you know, when I accepted Christ, I thought things would get better.

They didn't.

My grandmother had a stroke.

I ended up having to move in with my biological mom.

She kicked me out in the middle of the night at 1 a.m.

drunk.

I slept on the porch the next six months.

I ended up going from home to home.

Over the next two years, I went through eight different homes with six different families.

There was a church in town, and I would literally go.

I had no ride.

I would run behind trash cans at night trying to make it to their Sunday night service.

I would run trying to make it to their Sunday morning service.

I always tried to be in church, even when my circumstances weren't good, because I made a commitment at 15 and I said it's not gonna be perfect and it's not gonna look good.

I still did stupid stuff, I still said stupid stuff, but I wanted to follow Jesus.

And if this is the only way that I can follow him and he'll accept me, then I'm gonna do it.

And that was just the commitment.

I had every reason to be angry at God as a kid, all the things that I went through.

You have every reason, I'm sure, to be angry, but you know what?

He calls you to leave it behind.

My past does not define me because the cross told me so.

And at some point, we have to know that God has called us into relationship for us to follow Him and to do so.

I have to know that it is not people like me that deserve to be called, it is not people like me that I expected God to choose, but it is people like me that he uses because I can stand up here and say, do not worship me, but see the glory of God in what he does through the impossibilities of people like me.

That's his goodness, that's his goodness.

I say it often.

He takes our impossibilities and he writes his signature of authenticity.

You say there's no way that I'm good enough.

Good, let him use you to show the world that he uses the messed up things of the world for his good.

That's what he does.

That's what he does.

So, what are you going to leave behind today?

What are you going to choose to say?

You know what?

No more.

I'm done.

See, in Mark 3:13, it says Jesus went up on the mountainside and he called to him those he wanted, and they came to him.

Mark 3:13

He appointed 12 that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach.

This is what I love because he already had a plan.

He already had a plan.

He had a plan.

And the plan was that he was going to call 12 and he was going to send them out to preach.

And they were going to have authority to drive out demons.

And these are the 12 that he appointed.

You know, you would look at the list and you think the names would be those from the Sanhedrin or the Pharisees or those that kept all 630 plus laws of the Bible, but that was not it.

He chose a fisherman with a temper that had a big mouth on him.

What a shocker.

He chose a guy that when he asked him to pray, he kept falling asleep.

And then when he needed him the most, he overreacted and cut the ear off of a guard.

Sounds like my kind of guy, to be honest with you.

But this was Peter.

This was Peter.

Simon to whom he gave Peter.

Peter was the one that Jesus would give the keys of the kingdom to.

This is Peter.

This is good.

James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John.

They called him sons of thunder.

Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, son of Alpheus, Thaddeus, Simon, the zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

Crazy that God chose someone that he knew would have betrayed him, isn't it?

That's how good he is.

He's fair.

He gives everybody free will.

That's who he is.

Why, though?

Look at the list.

It includes a hot-tempered fisherman, a former collaborator with Rome, a political radical in Judas, and eventually a traitor in Judas as well.

Jesus deliberately chose people who would never have been picked first for anything important.

These men would have never been picked.

Not by Rome, not by the Sanhedrin, not by the Pharisees, the Sadducees, or any of them.

And some of you look at yourself in the mirror and you say, God, why would you even want anybody like me?

Because he loves you.

And because he sees something in you that you don't even see in yourself yet.

Because you're too busy hanging on to the past.

You won't come into the future and follow him.

So that he can reveal his power through you in any way.

Oh, what he could do through you if you would let him.

Oh, what he could do in this community if you'd let him.

Would you take a chance on that?

You know.

This is why he does it.

So that the glory would clearly belong to him and not to the human ability.

God still delights in using weak, ordinary, flawed people so no one can boast.

First Corinthians says it like this.

Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called Man.

What was I?

I was bad.

I wasn't good.

I was messed up.

I was still messed up.

When I want to get it right, I can't.

And I'm aware of that.

So I have authenticity in that, because what you see is what you get.

Because I don't need to be good because he's good.

I just need to follow him.

And he'll line me out.

He'll help me.

He'll direct me.

But it has to be a pure relationship.

It can't be this fake stuff.

It can't be show up on a Sunday and post something on Facebook and what's spiritual.

That's not cool.

It has to be Monday morning worship in your bedroom before you go to work.

It has to be it has to be in your truck as you're on the farm and you're just talking to the Lord.

He wants sincerity.

He doesn't want your professionalism.

He doesn't care about that.

He's not fooled by you.

And he's not fooled by me.

You may think that you're fooling the world, but you're only fooling yourself.

He wants an intimate relationship with you.

And the person that he died for is the one that you pretend that you're not.

Accept it and own it.

And also understand that you don't have to live in that anymore.

You don't have to be the person that the enemy says that you are.

You know, I talked about rhetorical questions earlier, but when the devil gets rhetorical, I get historical.

That's what I do.

Well, Tyler, you know what you did when you were 15.

Yeah, and I know what Jesus did on the cross 2,000 years ago.

When the devil wants to get rhetorical, you get historical.

Tyler, you know what you did when you were 24.

I know what I did, but I also know the price that he paid.

I know that he told me that he has he was tempted and tried, and I can come to the throne of grace.

I can come to it.

You can't use that against me.

There's enough people in this world that hate me, but I'm sorry.

I'm under the blood of Jesus Christ, which to you you may not understand.

But to me, I know grace, he gives me what I do not deserve, and mercy he keeps me from what I do deserve.

This is the kingdom of God, ladies and gentlemen.

And it's not fair to the world, but to the kingdom of God, it's all that matters.

Peter should have never been a disciple.

I don't care what you say, it ain't your call.

The king of king and lord of lords said it, and that was it.

And at some point in your life, you got to quit listening to the enemy of saying, Well, I'll never be qualified enough.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you are here in the house of God, all you have to do is say, God, I will follow you, and it not just be with your mouth, but it be with your heart.

And in doing so, he will lead you, and what you see happen in the kingdom will not be foreign to you, but it will come natural to you because when you're stepping in it, you don't even realize it.

You don't even realize it.

You don't even realize it.

Here's what he said he said, brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were cold.

Not many of you were wise by human standards.

Nope, not me.

Not many were influential.

Nope, not me.

Not many of you were of noble birth.

Nope, not me.

Not at all.

None of those.

Not influential.

Grew up in a trailer park.

Mom and dad left me at birth.

Got nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Don't don't have anything.

But God chose the foolish things.

Man, isn't that good?

Man, thank you, Lord.

I'm glad he chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.

I'm glad he chose somebody like me.

I'm glad he chose somebody like you.

I'm glad that the standard isn't that I have to keep all the laws.

I'm glad the standard isn't that my dad had to be a doctor and my mom had to be a lawyer.

And if y'all are that, that's fine.

God bless you.

But I'm glad that that's not the standard of the kingdom of God.

I'm glad that God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

I'm glad that they see that it's God in me and that it's not me.

Do not look at me and say, Oh, he's great.

I'm not great.

There's nothing about me.

But every morning, let me wake up and say, the Spirit of God within me, let people see your glory, let people see your honor, let people see your power, not for me, but for their own lives, so that they would live a life that's overcoming and that they would know you the way that I've been able to experience you, God.

That's all I want for people.

You know that?

That's all I want for people.

I just want them to experience Jesus the way He's He's revealed Himself to me.

That's all we want.

That's all we want because it's the greatest life you could ever live.

It's the greatest life you could ever live.

He chose the lowly things, He chose the lowly things.

God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things.

You may look at your life and say, I'm nasty, I'm filthy, why would He want me?

That's exactly why He wants you.

For people to be able to look at you and say, I don't know what happened to them, but my Lord, something something happened.

I want them to take a double take.

Like there, that's proof that there's a God.

And the things that are not, to nullify the things that are.

I'm wrapping up.

So that no one may boast before him.

Worship team come up.

So no one can boast before him.

I want you to understand something.

That your lack of qualification is not a barrier to Jesus.

It is often the very reason why he chose you.

This next quote is one that I want you to really take into your heart.

If God only used perfect people, the church would be empty and heaven would be quiet.

If God only used perfect people, the church would be empty and heaven would be quiet.

This is a true word this morning because you need to understand that God is not impressed by you.

He's not impressed by me.

He's not, he knows exactly who I am.

He's not impressed by me.

You know what's gonna happen when I get to heaven?

He's not gonna look at me and say, hey man, good sermon on August 2nd, 2026.

That was that was a beggar.

He's not gonna say that.

Are you kidding me?

He's gonna say one thing.

Well done, good and faithful servant.

That's what he's gonna say.

You know what?

I love Sundays, man.

I love preaching the word, I love being with people.

But you know what?

Well done, good and faithful servant, happens because of ordinary days.

It doesn't happen on a stage and it doesn't happen on a Sunday.

It happens on a Monday when nobody else can see me.

It happens on a Tuesday, it happens on a Friday.

That's where it happens.

That's where it happens.

It's somewhere in time we've got this idea that if we impress God enough, then He will accept us.

You lost your mind.

You're never gonna impress Him based on your deeds and your qualities.

You know what impresses God when you come to a moment of your life where you say, God, I couldn't get it right if I wanted to.

Couldn't get it right if I wanted to, but I'm gonna trust you.

And Jesus, if you are who you say you are, I don't I don't know the right line, you know, I don't know the right words, God.

I I haven't read the book all the way through.

I don't know all the scriptures.

He doesn't need that.

All he wants you to do is say yes.

I'll try, I'll do my best.

But God, I need you to know that there's some things in my life that I'm sorry, I know.

I know God, I know what I've done, I know the person I've been, I know, I'm not asking you to fix yourself.

If you're gonna fix yourself, you would have done it a long time ago.

I'm asking you to follow me so that I can fix your mess.

But if you don't fully surrender, see, the Bible says in Acts 4 that when they saw the courage of Peter and John, they realized that they were unschooled ordinary men, and they were astonished that they took note these men had been with Jesus.

This is an incredible scripture, and I love it.

But you know, this didn't happen overnight.

They were with Jesus.

You know, Peter had this problem, he had an anger problem, and it was Peter that in a moment that he watched Jesus die.

See, Peter told Jesus to his face, I'll never deny you.

Peter walked with Jesus, he said, I'll never deny you.

And then in the moment when the fire was hot, Peter denies him and he makes eye contact with Jesus.

And could you imagine the torment that that cost?

His friend, he just denied.

He told him he wouldn't, he lied to him, and then he betrayed him.

Peter doesn't know what to do.

So Peter just goes back to fishing, he goes back to what he was originally called from because back then it's all that he thought he was.

I'm just a fisherman.

I've betrayed God now, and I'm just a fisherman.

It's all I'm ever gonna be.

It's all I ever said that I would be.

My daddy said that's all I'm ever gonna be.

I'll never be anything better.

And in this moment, he knows I've betrayed Jesus, I've heard Jesus, and they just killed my best friend.

And in the moment where he needed me the most, I felled him.

And so he went back to the next that Jesus had originally called him from.

And oftentimes what I found in the church is that you think that you're the one holding Jesus up, that you betrayed him, that you felled him, that you messed him up.

So you run back to the alcohol, you run back to the drugs, you run back to the sex, you run back to everything else that you once knew.

Because I'll never be good enough.

I'll never be good enough.

And it's scripture later that Jesus comes back, he's raised from the dead, and he's sitting with Peter, and they're eating fish.

And Jesus looks at Peter and says, Peter, do you love me?

You know I love you.

Feed my sheep.

Hey, hey, Peter, do you love me?

God, you know I love you.

Feed my sheep.

Peter, do you love me?

Yes, Lord, you know I love you.

Then feed my sheep.

And in one moment, in his encounter with Jesus, he said, Peter, you don't have to keep going back to the next because now I have set you free.

And it's because of that encounter of screwing it up, getting it right, screwing it up, getting it right.

That Jesus empowered him through his mess.

That in Acts chapter 4, we see Peter was recognized as unschooled, ordinary men, but they had been astonished because they took note that they had been with Jesus.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

I want to tell you something.

I'm passionate about it.

But what God's doing in our community, what we're about to see with hope and a haircut and all the stories and things, I want you to be a part of it.

But don't take the credit, don't plaster a name, don't do that.

Because I'm unschooled and we're ordinary people, but we've been with Jesus.

And it's the love of God that changes generations, it's the love of God that changes homes.

It's the love of God that takes people who thought that they were bound by addiction and brings them home.

It's the love of God that can only do that.

It's the love of God that can only take a kid from juvie and do what he's done.

Seven countries, a hundred thousand plus.

We've seen salvations all over the world, and it's all for his glory.

It's never gonna be me, man.

I can't get it right if I wanted to.

But I've been with Jesus.

I've been with Jesus, and I want you to be with Jesus too.

My last point is this you don't have to be impressive to be used by God.

You just have to be willing to leave your past behind.

That's all you gotta do.

That's all you gotta do.

You just gotta be willing to say, God, I let go.

I let go.

I let go.

Because if you're in control, I know, I know it's all gonna be okay.

I know it's gonna be okay.

This series is about the 12 that Jesus chose, and for most of them, they would lose their life, but they did so in hopes that you would believe the very message that I'm preaching to you today.

Would you stand with me?

I'm gonna pray over you today, and we're gonna take communion.

But before we do, I know time's kicking in, guys.

I hear you.

But before we do, I want you to just spend a moment with the Lord.

And you make that decision this morning.

You make it in your soul.

Do I want to be one of the 12?

Do I want to be a part of this story?

Because you know what?

He's made you a part of the story.

All you have to do is follow him.

All you have to do is let go of the nets.

All you have to do is let go.

All you have to do is let go.

The world may never remember your story, but there will be there will be signs of the impacts that you've made throughout all of eternity in the kingdom of God.

Put not your treasures upon these things on the earth, but store them in heaven.

That's what we're called to.

And today, you have the opportunity to leave your past behind.

Father, we love you, we praise you.

God, you're good.

Lord, I just want to be on journey with you.

I don't know where you want to take me, what you want to do.

I don't know.

This is you.

This is you.

I'm just trying to be obedient, Lord.

These are my friends.

This is my family.

This is all I got.

And God, every one of them, I want them to know you the way that I've been able to encounter you.

And God, I know they're dealing with a lot because I'm dealing with a lot.

But God, let us step out of our past into the promise.

Let us not be the same.

Let us take you at your word.

Let us not try to step into our future while holding on to one of the nets of the past.

God, let us let go.

Lord, when we wake up, let us seek your face.

Give us the power.

Speak to us, help us.

God, nudge me when you want to use me.

Because sometimes I'm just dumb and I don't even see it in front of me.

God, help me.

Help me to show you and our community better.

Help me to love people better.

Help me to root on people better.

But Lord, more than that, let me love myself the way that you love me.

Because sometimes I don't love myself that way.

Because God, I see the mess that I am.

I see the past.

Lord, I know I'm forgiven, but I still see the past.

I see the mistakes.

I see the man that looks in the mirror.

God, and there's times that I just hate it.

But I have to remind myself the greater are you that is in me than he that's in the world.

Lord, for I am chosen, I am adopted, I am loved.

And God, I pray that for every person in this room right now, that they would be forgiven, that they would seek forgiveness, and that they would give forgiveness as it's been freely given.

We love you, Father, and we praise you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

If our communion steward would come up.