Do You Actually Believe This? | 04/05/2026

Can I give a thank you, Jesus?

Lord, we praise your name.

We acknowledge you today, Father.

You are the reason for this season.

You're the reason for every season, Lord.

And I thank you for every single person here today, God.

Even the visitors, Lord, that we don't know that well.

They don't know us.

But I thank you that you know them even better than they know themselves, Lord.

I thank you that they're here today, Lord.

And this is not just coincidence, Lord, but this is part of your purpose, Father.

So we just ask for your help today in glorifying Jesus.

Help me today, Lord, to preach your word with clarity and truth, Lord.

And I pray, God, that whatever's needed today, Lord, that you would meet people where they're at, Father.

That you're a God that loves us, Lord, that it's your kindness that leads us to repentance, Father.

I just feel this in my spirit.

I feel like some people have come in here today.

You've come in here heavy with shame.

The Spirit of God knows you.

He knows what's going on in your mind and heart.

He knows you better than you know yourself.

You've come in heavy with shame.

Even in the presence of this service, maybe you're new here and you just feel you feel this heavy burden of shame because of your past.

You've made mistakes, and every time you try to think about God, you try to come to God, you think about your past.

I want to tell you something.

The power of God came so that our past record could be wiped clean.

You understand that the Apostle Paul, if you've read the Bible, the Apostle Paul is an amazing man of God, but he had a past.

He actually hurt the church.

He would persecute Christians.

That's a past.

And he tells the church, he says, I've been forgiven.

He says, I no longer look at what's behind me.

Do you understand when you're when you're running after God, sometimes we've got to do this thing where we get our eyes off of our past.

We've got to stick, we've got to stop disqualifying ourselves.

Amen.

Okay, so that was for free.

I wasn't planning on doing that, you know, but thank you, Jesus.

You're welcome.

That kids' dance was amazing.

That is a hard act to follow.

I feel like I'm gonna have to like, you know, do something.

You know, Jesus about to preach a message.

Amen.

Is that pretty good?

Literally, I heard people say no.

Where is the love in the house today?

My gosh.

I'm no longer gonna look at what's behind me.

We're just gonna move on from that.

Thank you, Jesus.

I got a question for you today.

What do you believe?

This is the question, this is the focus of today.

What do you believe?

Now we're in church, we're in Georgia, we're in the Bible Bell, you know, majority of people.

We can all we know what everyone's answer is when I ask, what do you believe?

Well, I believe in Jesus.

Amen.

Raise your hand, amen.

Okay, we believe in Jesus, and today we're celebrating that Jesus came back from the dead.

That's a crazy story, you know that, right?

That's crazy, that's supernatural.

You know, people that are not Christians sometimes think Christians are crazy because they believe crazy stuff.

A man coming back from the dead like that, and he predicted it.

He was like the original babe Ruth.

He said, I'll come back, and he did it.

That's crazy, though.

Let me read you something real quick.

This is 1 Corinthians 15, verses 3 through 9.

1 Corinthians 15:3–9

He said, This is Paul the Apostle, and he says, I passed on to you what was most important.

There's a lot of stuff in the Bible, but this is very key here.

He says, I passed on to you what was most important.

And what had also been passed on to me, Christ died for our sins, just as the scripture said.

He was buried and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the scripture said.

He was seen by Peter, and then by the twelve, and after that he was seen by more than five hundred of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.

Then he was seen by James and later by the apostles.

Last of all, as though I had been born at the wrong time, I also saw him, for I am the least of all the apostles.

In fact, I'm not even worthy to be called an apostle after the way I persecuted God's church.

I've had a view for a long time that, you know, the idea of our beliefs when it comes to the spiritual realm, if there is a spiritual realm or the afterlife, okay?

Like if we die, what happens after us?

There's there's a lot of religions and belief systems in our world.

I mean, anyone with the phone, you get online, you know that a lot of people got a lot of opinions about what happens after we die.

Y'all agree with that?

Did you know there's like over 4,000 different belief systems in our world circulating around?

4,000.

All making claims.

This is the truth, you know.

Now, some belief systems don't even believe in the afterlife.

They're like all that stuff's it's fake.

It's not real.

It's just for gullible people that want to feel they want to feel comfort.

You know, because you know, man, humanity, if you even look through the past, the ancient, you know, people and stuff, there's this common theme that we all want to we all want to know where we came from and where we're going.

Yeah.

Like, is this all that there is?

Like, you look at like those ancient civilizations, they didn't just build pyramids and stuff.

I have no idea how they built the pyramids, by the way.

I think it was aliens.

Anyone raise your hand and believe in aliens?

Okay.

I don't think everyone was honest on that question.

But one something that's common with all of humanity is that they would write on these walls and they would worship these deities that was outside of themselves.

They would give these accounts for what is outside of our physical being, our physical realm, the things that we can see, touch, and smell.

But is there something that is unseen that's actually affecting our world around us?

They would worship these deities.

They weren't satisfied just with their lives, it is.

They would search for something outside of themselves.

We have belief systems.

And there's this thought of just let people have their own truth.

Y'all heard this before?

Hey, you believe what you want to believe.

I'm not going to impose on you.

Everyone, let's just respect everyone's belief.

The idea is that we're all just making guesses and ideas of what happens after us.

We can't even tell.

So who does it matter?

I want to tell you something here.

I just read you a verse, and by the few sentences I just read you, Christianity changes the rules.

Hear me on this.

I understand we're in a Christian church, okay?

And I understand that we're in the South and everybody's a Christian, and I understand that my job as a pastor is to get you to convince you to believe this stuff, but let's just be real and honest, okay?

Christianity changes the rules with what I just read.

Christianity comes to you not as something that is asking you to simply blindly believe because of what I just read.

Christianity, unlike any other belief system, proves itself.

Christianity doesn't come and ask you to blindly believe.

Now, people that don't believe in Christianity and people that get online on their little TikToks because they want to make fun of Christians, they're gonna say some stuff.

They're gonna dishonest, they're gonna say, Oh, you're just gullible, you're blind, you just want to believe, you just want to feel better about your life.

That's not what Christianity does.

Christianity says, I'm going to bring proof of what I believe.

I'm not gonna ask you to blindly believe.

Paul does this thing here, what he does here, and this by the way, this this is 50 years after the event.

When we're talking about ancient like artifacts, studying ancient documents, historians all know, whether they're Christians or not, they all understand one thing that if you can get an ancient document that was written close to the time of the event, it's more credible.

Do y'all catch that?

And this this first Corinthians was written, they dated it, they found the documents.

I mean, guys are like digging in the desert, and they're like, oh, look at this document.

Date it.

What's it say?

Let's say what Paul just said here.

It came after about 50 years after Jesus Christ would have come back from the dead, okay?

Let me give you some context for that.

Everyone like context, everyone say context.

Everyone say context.

Have y'all heard of Alexander the Great?

Did y'all ever hear about him in school?

Do you believe he's real?

The earliest documents that we have for Alexander the Great came around 400 years after Alexander the Great supposedly existed.

And we only have a few hundred of them.

Hundreds of years later, right?

Y'all catching this?

We all believe it.

Hundreds of years later, we have a few hundred documents that point to, hey, Alexander the Great was a real guy.

Okay, in Jesus' time, we have we have tons and tons of documentation, okay, that happened in the same generation of eyewitnesses that would have seen him.

All right.

Oh, David, just oh, maybe you have a couple.

No, we don't have a couple.

We have like 24,000 circulating not just in one place, but all these different regions.

These guys are digging in all these different places.

They pulled this ancient topic.

Oh my gosh, this is as Jesus rose from the dead.

What's the date on that?

Well, that would happen right after it happened.

And then all of a sudden, there's someone in another country, they're digging in the desert, like, oh my gosh, what's this say?

It said Jesus rose from the dead, and people saw it.

This is what Christianity does.

And this is what God does with Christianity.

He says, I'm not going to come and just ask you to blindly believe.

Belief in the resurrection is not a guess, it's not just a blind faith.

What it is, is it's a decision about the real evidence presented to humanity that no other belief system does.

Let's take Islam, let's take Islam for example.

What is Islam?

Okay, this guy by himself goes into a cave and claims to have a spiritual experience, comes out by himself and says, Hey, I hadn't a spiritual experience.

Why don't you just believe me?

That's blind faith.

That's gullibility right there.

And do you know how they how they spread Islam?

He gets a couple of other people that are gullible, manipulates them.

Because again, no one saw the spiritual experience.

Hey guys, why don't we all believe in this?

This sounds good, right?

Yeah.

They form a group and they go to villages and they force people to convert or they'll kill them.

And that's like what the second biggest religion in our world today?

That's what it's based on.

One guy claimed to have a spiritual thing, nothing supernatural proven.

Want to talk about gullible?

I'll tell you one of the most faith-filled belief systems you could possibly have: atheism, humanism, secularism.

I don't believe that there's a God and I don't believe there's an afterlife.

Prove it.

Where's your evidence?

You call us gullible.

Where's your evidence?

You're claiming something that you have no ability to obtain or touch on your own.

Why don't you prove it?

Who's gullible?

We've got a real man.

Oh, by the way, secular and Christian all agree Jesus was a real person.

That's not debated.

Secular and Christian scholars all agree Jesus died on a cross.

That's not heavily debated, y'all.

Where the debate comes in is did this guy who died rise from the dead?

It's important when we're making these decisions about what do I believe and not believe, it's important that we have all the facts.

Facts do matter.

And Christianity doesn't play the game of just believe because it makes you feel good.

Christianity plays the game of this is real.

And if this is real, this means something to us today.

It takes a lot of faith to be an atheist.

A lot of faith.

You have no evidence.

Oh, oh, look at science.

Well, science is proving that there's a creator.

Your own secular sciences are turning against you.

They study creation.

You know the Bible says that creation testifies to me.

These guys go and try to disprove the reality there's a God.

They study the galaxy, by the way, they study the timeline of all the different galaxies.

The idea is that there's a big bane that the further you go out, the rings that they're going to be older in nature.

And then they go and they date these outer rings of the universe that they find out they're all the same age.

It's almost as if someone just created it.

Oh, where did that come from?

Oh the gullible Christians.

You know, Job, one of the oldest books in the Old Testament.

I'm going off and I'm not even prepared to say this, but Job, one of the oldest books that God writes, tells the Job things, and he talks about certain, what are they called?

Stars, groups of stars, constellations, thank you.

He describes constellations.

And for many years, people tried to disprove the Bible.

They said, Well, that's not a constellation.

That's just he called like this thing, I don't remember the name of it.

He called it like a group of stars.

They said, That's just one star.

And for all like hundreds of years, people were like, the Bible's wrong because Job says that's a group of stars, but it's just one star.

And then all of a sudden, our technology advanced, and we got bigger microscopes, and all of a sudden we were able to look at that thing that the book of Job talked about a thousand years, and all of a sudden, though, you know what they found?

It's a group of stars.

How did the Bible know that?

Because the creator wrote it.

I want to tell you something.

Listen, what the Bible says, it prophesies something in the time we live in now, and it says that many are going to be deceived.

And there is an onslaught against what is true.

There's people trying to deceive you because they're operating from their true father, the devil.

Okay, that's scriptural.

You can say that because they want you to go to hell.

They want you to believe a lie.

They want you to believe that Christianity is a farce.

There's a guy, he's one of the most famous lawyers of all time.

You know what lawyers were?

You know what they're experts at?

Studying evidence.

He's in the Guinness Book of World Records.

He won 245 cases in a row.

In the Guinness World Book of Records, it's like Sir Lionel Luck Who.

Everyone's like, Luck who?

Luck me, luck you, no, luck who.

This is all just improv right now.

This is raw.

Resurrection Sunday.

Morning time with Dave.

Sir Lionel Luck who's he's one of the most famous lawyers, and he studies he studies the evidence, okay?

He's an expert at studying evidence.

Y'all hear this?

And he studies for several years.

He just wants to see the facts.

He's not biased.

He's not going in this trying to prove the point he wants to prove, okay?

Which a lot of us do.

I'm not here to learn truth.

I'm gonna look at it, but I'm gonna make it say what I want it to say.

I'm guilty of that, by the way.

Even still in my Christian walk, sometimes there's scriptures that are hard to read, and I'm like, let me just twist that a little bit because I don't really like that, okay?

But understand, we all do this because sometimes we're not motivated for truth.

We're motivated to hear what we want to hear.

But it's the truth that's gonna set you free.

Lionel Luck, who goes and studies the truth, he's objective, and you know what he comes to?

The conclusion after he studies everything, he says that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the things that we can be profoundly confident in without a shadow of a doubt.

That's coming from the professional.

Everyone say professional.

Jesus Christ died on a cross, and he was buried, and he rose again.

This is not just a simple belief, this is a fact of life, and this is a fact that will set you free.

And the world does not want you to believe this.

Every other religious system.

Let me go ahead and tell you what every other religion is.

It's a ploy, a mechanism of the devil to lead you to hell because that's where he's gonna be, and he doesn't want to be alone, he would like you to be with him.

Do you know that every other major belief, you know what they do?

They give an account for Jesus.

You know why?

Because they have to, because there's so much evidence for him.

You don't see Jesus, you know, back there, like, well, let me, you know, tell you about Allah, because Allah's not anything.

That's fake, that's not a real God.

Allah's not gonna save you.

I'm sorry.

Buddhism, or whatever, is it Buddha?

That's not gonna save you, and Hinduism is weird, like you know, they got all their stuff.

I mean, like, but they all talk about Jesus, they all have to give an explanation for who Jesus is, because Jesus is so real, he's a historical figure, he's not he's not just a fairy tale to make you comfortable.

And every single one of us as human beings understand what it was that we have to take this information, we have to take this phrase that God raised Christ from the dead.

We have to take this and we have to determine do I believe this?

Because it's thrown right in front of us.

And the implications of this are staggering if it is true.

If this is true, whether you like it or not, or you want to believe or not, this is going to affect your life more than you could possibly imagine.

I I did something interesting this week, and I was not expecting to do this.

I was expecting just to do a lot of you know research that I've done, you know, years past about just you know reminding myself of all the details of the resurrection, you know, how could I, you know, approach this with you all?

Because I really want you all, if you're a believer here, to be encouraged in your belief, strengthened in your belief.

But I also wanted people here, if you're not sure, maybe you're searching to be confident to maybe make a choice today.

I'm gonna tell you my end game before I get there.

And I was I was asking God, you know, like, you know, how do you want to do this?

And I was led down a trail that I was not expecting.

And it was more a trail of of researching kind of our human characteristics of how we perceive information, how we process information, whether we would choose to believe something or not.

And in a perfect world, you would think that I could just show you evidence, and if the evidence is credible, it makes sense that everyone would just believe in change.

In a perfect world, that would be true, but that's majority-wise, that's not how we get to a point where we agree with something.

That's actually not how we all of a sudden process information and change.

And there's different layers of what we would call belief, like all of us we might say, Oh, I believe in this.

There's different levels of what belief actually is in our life.

Did you know that?

I was I was really surprised by a lot of this.

Let me go ahead and tell you this is that what Paul does here is he provides information, he provides evidence.

One of the most interesting things that he does is he says that there's witnesses that saw Jesus alive.

This is something that you need to understand, whether you like it or not, this is substantial evidence.

Paul at this time says that there's witnesses that saw him alive and they're still alive.

If you're trying to lie to someone, you don't tell him, hey, there's hundreds of people, and you don't name some of these witnesses by name that you could go and check with if I'm lying.

Did you catch that?

If I'm trying to manipulate you, I mean I'm not telling anybody about he's saying there's tons of witnesses that saw this.

This is a fact.

And and these apostles, these disciples, you know what they did is they gave up their life, not just for what they believed, it's for what they saw.

That's how Christianity changes the rules.

Many people throughout history have died for stuff they believe to be true.

The disciples died for what they knew to be true.

So we have this idea of evidence.

That's what I'm doing today.

I'm providing evidence for you.

But what God wants, if you look in the Word of God, is for this truth of God raising Christ from the dead.

God desires for this to go to your heart, the very innermost person of who you are, and actually change you.

That's the goal.

But I was I was I was surprised because did you know there's like eight different barriers or obstacles or steps that it takes from information to all of a sudden going into your heart and actually affecting the way you behave and changing you?

There's like eight barriers.

Y'all hearing this?

It's not just here's some information, agree with it, and all of a sudden I'm fine.

Eight barriers.

Everyone say barriers.

Now I'm craving berries.

Like blueberries.

Anyone like blueberries?

Okay, who likes raspberries?

Okay, I like raspberries, but blackberries.

Okay, interesting.

Blueberries?

Alright, yeah.

What was I talking about?

Strawberries?

Oh, strawberries, my bad.

Let's talk strawberry, okay.

Cranberry, right.

What do you like, Catherine?

She likes blackberries.

Yeah, okay.

Let me go ahead and tell you these eight steps.

This is what's interesting is that when we're ex we're receiving information, we have to be exposed to it.

We have to hear it.

You all are being exposed to some information this morning, but the next step is actually you have to make the choice to engage in it.

Anyone have a cell phone?

Has anyone ever used social media and you swipe, you know, like you see a video or picture and you look at it and you swipe?

Their algorithms have all changed, like Facebook and Instagram, they just changed them, but what they actually pay attention to, they can actually monitor how long do you look at something.

When you go to a video, they'll they're timing it and they're determining how you know what are they going to push for other people to see.

It completely completely changes the game.

I'm a computer engineer, by the way, so I nerd out on some of this stuff.

And but the idea is that they're they're paying attention to what do people focus on.

You have to make the choice.

I'm sitting here talking today, but I've sat in crowds just like you, and I've sitting there and watched and act like I'm listening, I'm thinking about something completely different.

Raise your hand if you're doing that right now.

Everyone that if you're raising that my father-in-law right there.

But you have to make the choice to engage.

You can hear it, but then you have to focus on it.

You have to lean into it.

Right?

But then all of a sudden, we have to comprehend it.

We can lean into it, but then we have to understand it.

You have to hear it, you have to choose to focus, but then you have to understand it.

That's three barriers.

Sometimes we hear stuff.

I've been in services and people are talking, I'm like, I have no idea what they're talking about.

Raise your hand if that's happening right now.

Alright, good deal.

But then there's credibility.

Once you comprehend it, you have to be able to trust it.

Do you know that we're creatures that we're not we don't just learn off information?

Do you know we one of the primary ways that we develop and shape our lives is through trusted voices around us?

That's why a lot of us, if we were just raised in church, we just believe it because we trust the people that put us in it in the first place.

Finally, this is the big one.

This is when things start to get interesting.

We have to have motivation.

Everyone say motivation.

We have to want this to be true.

People, they'll pers they'll look at the stuff about Christianity, but they don't want it to be true, so they'll twist and distort it.

They'll be very harsh about the information because they don't want it to be true.

This is a real thing.

This is where a lot of people trip up when it when we're talking about the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The evidence is staggering, but that doesn't mean everyone's going to believe, because maybe they're not motivated to believe.

Maybe their trusted voices in their life taught them to believe something else, whether it's crazy or not.

But if you can make it past motivation, then all of a sudden you've got the challenge to internalize it to make it personal to you.

We have this we have this idea of performance Christianity where we just do it just to feel like we belong with people.

And it never becomes our own faith.

We just play along just so we can be accepted.

You have to internalize it, you have to make it your own.

That's what God wants.

He didn't die just for y'all, he died for you.

And he wants you to make the choice.

Finally, you have to have intention.

You can internalize it and make it personal, but then you could you got to make a decision.

I want to do this.

I want to do this, whatever this calls for, because it does call for something.

It's like Jesus comes, he says, My life for your life.

You got to decide, hey, I want to do this.

I understand everything you're saying, I trust this, and all of a sudden I want to make this mine, but now I gotta decide to do it.

But then there's one more step that many kind of struggle to get to, and that is the implementation step.

And that's where you actually do it.

I've struggled in that step.

I get passionate and I'm like, God, I want to serve you.

Even Paul the Apostle had this struggle.

He says, he's like, my mind's telling me no.

But he would say, I don't do the okay.

We all have gone.

Quit laughing, brother.

That slipped out.

I only plan to say came from my past life, y'all.

I ain't looking behind me anymore.

We can struggle to implement this stuff, y'all.

We can have a disconnect from what we believe versus what we do.

This is very common.

So let's take this one step further.

Y'all want to go one step further in this?

Alright.

I'm gonna do, we're just I'm just gonna we're gonna psychoanalyze everyone in the room today.

Even if you're new here, we're gonna know you.

We're gonna be watching you always.

There's there's around seven different types of people, and people is not necessarily the right term, seven different types of way we process and receive information.

Like if I present evidence to you, if it's credible evidence, that doesn't mean that you're gonna believe it.

There's several different types of people in ways that will receive evidence, okay?

Y'all following?

Uh I need to make sure that I make this clear before we go into it, okay?

Several different types.

This is very interesting, and I was shocked when I saw this because I would love to just come and just lay out all the evidence and show you how credible Christianity is, regardless of what you've heard on TikTok.

But that doesn't work with everybody, it doesn't matter how much I can prove it to you.

That does not that's not gonna make you just believe.

Seven different types.

I'm like, oh, MG.

Evidence seeker.

And this is someone that they're gonna be honest about the evidence.

An evidence seeker is someone that's real with it, they engage in the evidence, they want to know, they want to know the sources, they want to know what's really said, and here's the thing, they're actually intellectually humble.

What that means is that they'll allow evidence to change them.

Well, I used to believe this, but I see the evidence, and now I'm willing to believe this because the evidence is better.

This group of people is rare.

But this group of people has challenges too because for them, they're analytical, right?

They're honest and objective when they study stuff, but one of their challenges is that everything has to be proven to them.

And the problem with Christianity is that if you get past the place of evidence and you place your belief that God raised Christ from the dead, one of your next steps and one of your challenges is all of a sudden you have to have faith because God raising Christ from the dead implies things to our life.

It means something to us that requires faith.

I believe that Jesus rose from the dead, but do I believe that I now walk in resurrection power?

Now that's a different story.

I was having a hard time walking resurrection power, getting up this morning.

I was like, come on, David, get up.

David, come forth.

I was like, uh it's one thing to say, you know, I believe this happened 2,000 years ago, but all of a sudden, when it's looking at you in the face, do I have faith?

You know, sometimes this evidence seeker, they're gonna have things they're gonna struggle with.

I need evidence for this.

Well, all of a sudden you start talking about praying spraying in tongues.

Like, whoa, I need evidence for that.

You're not gonna get any.

Y'all following this?

How does this work?

I don't know, it's a mystery.

But also, evidence seekers, what they can do is they can make a decision to follow Christ in their mind, but it never becomes a conviction in their heart.

Yeah, yeah, really it's just an intellectual following.

This credible source, I I enjoy that, but it never becomes a conviction for you that you live from.

James 2.19 says, You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God, good for you.

Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror.

How foolish can't you see that faith without good deeds is useless?

You're willing to be honest about the facts.

Oh, that's good.

It's credible.

I've read some books, but your faith never becomes real, it never begins, it goes into your heart and affects your life.

Let me ask you this question: if Jesus rose, what does that require of you?

The next type of person is the entrenched denier.

This is someone who debates well, but they never really change.

This is someone that they'll engage in information.

They're smart, they can debate.

Maybe some of y'all know some people that can debate very well.

My wife's amazing at it.

And her dad is too.

Amazing.

They're in a good way, in the best way.

Y'all might know some people like this, they debate well, they're smart, they know their stuff.

But there's an aspect of when they approach information, they're intellectually dishonest.

What I mean is that they're biased.

When they approach evidence, they're not going to learn truth and what's accurate, they're going to conform it into what they want it to believe.

Wow.

They're always moving the goalpost, if I could put it that way.

Do you want to know something interesting about these people?

It's their issue is not intellectual, it's not dishonesty or it's not intellectual laziness or anything like that.

Do you know why they do that?

I was shocked when I studied this.

They do this because they're trying to protect their identity.

They see themselves a certain way.

And it's not it's not truth that they're trying to get.

They're they're trying to protect their identity.

Over time, we can have experiences and we can we can see ourselves a certain way.

And that's our identity.

That's the way we do things.

This is our life, this is my friends, this is my family, this is my job, this is how my life is.

And I'm protecting that.

So when you provide new information to me, whether it's credible or not, I'm going to make that information mold to fit my identity.

I'm protecting it.

Can I commend you if that's you in the room?

That takes courage.

I'm not saying that you don't have integrity, that takes a lot of integrity.

Do you know that Christianity is called to do that?

There's times as a Christian that I have circumstantial evidence in my life that would cause me to want to doubt God.

There's times that I pray for things and nothing happens, and I would want to doubt God.

The Bible calls us to endure, to hold tight to our faith.

Our faith is the evidence for the things that we hope for.

That's noble to protect identity.

When you're a Christian, that's one of the things you're gonna have to do when the world wants to intimidate you to protect, to stay strong.

So I commend you on that.

But there is a flaw.

Well, I would like to propose it this way.

I would like to propose that there's a flaw.

The flaw, or the question I would like to ask you is is how did you come up with your identity in the first place?

Wow.

Wow.

You know, if you go see a therapist, psychologist, you know one of the things they're gonna do?

They're gonna walk you through things in your life, pain points.

You know, we have survival mechanisms that even so bad, when things happen that are so bad, you know what we can, our brain will actually do?

It can actually block it out.

Like we don't remember it.

That's crazy.

We have survival mechanisms for how we cope.

But a therapist will walk you through this and it'll help you because when we have a bad thing happen, we'll interpret it.

And what and sometimes what we can do is we can misinterpret what actually happened in our life, and we can come to conclusions that are actually false.

You can get a life coach, you can get a mentor, you can get someone to disciple a spiritual mother and father.

They're gonna walk you through things to help you see life clearly.

And sometimes we can develop an identity about ourselves that's not actually true.

What's your point, David?

One of the things that God does when he brings you into his family, because you decide, I believe that God raised Christ from the dead.

You know what he does?

He gives you a new identity.

And what if the very thing that you've been protecting all along you were never meant to protect?

You were never meant to be.

That's not who you truly are.

But your pain and your experiences have caused you to try to guard something that was never you in the first place.

It's like, it's like I stand in front of this beaten-up shed, broken windows, junky-looking place, but I stand in front of it with my AK and I say, This is my house.

I have to protect it.

I'm Macaulay coke in that thing.

You don't have to clock AK 47.

I've got a shotgun too.

But he says, This is my house, it's a beat up shed, but it's mine.

And God comes up to you and he says this.

He goes, That's not your house.

This mansion over here is your house.

That's where I intended you to live.

Would you like to go there instead?

And you don't have to guard it, I'll guard it.

You've been fighting for years, fighting against the evidence, fighting against the Spirit of God, trying to guard something that was never meant to be guarded in the first place.

2 Corinthians 5.17 says, This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.

A new person, a person that to be the way that you were intended to be.

When you try to protect something that's not real, you're gonna feel off.

There's gonna be something missing in your life.

Philippians tells us that God changes our desires.

I see people they think they know what they want in life, they think they know themselves.

Oh, they figured it all out.

What if the God of creation who knit you in your mother's womb and who knows the plans he has for you?

What if he knows you better than you know yourself?

And what if he has plans for you that are better than what you've planned for yourself?

And maybe you need to quit fighting the good that's trying to come into your life.

God raised Christ from the dead so that we could be made into a new person.

The next type is the avoider.

This is really interesting.

They avoid.

The avoider is not even gonna look at the evidence.

They're not even gonna look.

They're not gonna listen.

They're gonna change the subject.

Have you ever been around people like this?

You're trying to talk about something we just got through a marriage series.

You ever try to talk to your spouse?

They just change the subject.

It's one of my tactics with my wife.

Then we can talk about this.

I'm like, look at how pretty the sun is today.

And she's like, wow.

And then I run off.

The avoider, I felt convicted when I studied this because um I'm passionate and I can I I can be very critical sometimes of people and not really have all the information.

I'll I'll admit that.

Um, but the avoider, I would have I would have classified as they're just intellectually lazy.

That's how I would have thought of them.

They're not intellectually lazy, they're actually very strategic.

The avoider doesn't look into this, okay?

You want to know why?

Because they're afraid of the cost.

Oh, shocked.

You might be here today and you've never looked into this.

You've been avoiding this topic.

Maybe you were forced to come to church today because you know your wife made you.

Honey, it's that one time in here when you go to church with me on Easter, so please come.

Okay.

I hope some of you guys are feeling convicted in the room today.

The avoider doesn't want to look into this because they understand that this that this is so monumental that there's going to be a cost.

That if they look into this, there's it's going to force a decision to be made.

And they're afraid of the cost and they're not ready to pay it.

You've been avoiding this.

You've been avoiding coming face to face with your creator, the one who died for you and the one who rose again.

The Bible says count the cost.

I think there's some nobility in that.

You're not playing with God, you just know that God means the real thing, and you're just afraid of the cost, so you're avoiding it.

I get that.

But can I propose to you a potential flaw in your reasoning?

Is you're holding off a cost of making the decision to follow Christ and believe in this, right?

Or even look into it.

What about the cost and potential cost that you might pay for not doing it right now?

How many days are you gonna waste not being made into a new creation, living a lie, living in living in the death of sin, a slave to sin?

What is that costing you?

What is that costing your family?

Let me give you another cost, the cost of probability, the probability that you're not gonna live to tomorrow.

Do you have evidence for how long you're gonna live?

Please tell me how you have evidence.

How do you not know that you're not gonna die today?

I'm not trying to get super dark in the room, but I do want to scare you a little bit.

We do this thing, we have this thing in our in our world, in our nation and stuff.

We have a thing called life insurance.

And the idea with life insurance is that you pay a cost now so that when if something, God forbid, happens, you'll be prepared.

I have life insurance, so if I pass away, my son and my wife will have money.

I do that to prepare, okay?

I'm willing to pay that cost now.

If you delay in looking at this and you were to die tomorrow, okay, understand what the word of God says is that you would stand before your your creator, the one who died for your sins, and you would be a sinner and your sins are not forgiven.

I want you to understand something.

What the Bible tells us, if this is true, is that you will go to hell.

Is that a cost that you're willing to pay?

You're you're playing a game with probability.

I'm guessing.

I have very great faith that I'm going to keep on living.

Many people died out of nowhere.

They were young and healthy.

There's no explanation.

You're gambling with that.

That's a pretty high cost.

Do you understand what I'm saying here?

Hebrews 3.15 says, remember what it says, today when you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts as Israel did when they rebelled.

James 4.14 says, How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow?

Your life is like the morning fog.

It's here a little while, then it's gone.

Isaiah 55, 6 says, Seek the Lord while you can find him.

Call on him now while he is near.

I would like to encourage you.

The cost is worth it.

The cost is worth it because the reward is great.

If I went to a gas station and went to buy a candy bar, and I went up to pay for the candy bar and the guy told me$20, I'd be like, what?

$20?

I mean, if it was a Snickers, I could understand that.

But if it was something else, I'd be like, that's way too much.

I don't want to pay the cost because that's not a good enough reward.

Y'all with me?

Are y'all thinking about candy bars now?

Okay.

But if I went to a car dealership, I didn't want to I don't want to pay$20 for a candy bar, that's too much.

But if I went to a car dealership and I found the car I wanted, and the guy said it's only$20.

How many people would buy a brand new car for$20?

You'd be willing to pay that cost because the reward is great.

I'm telling you, what you're doing is you're withholding the greatest reward you could possibly fathom because you're afraid of potential discomfort in your life.

Don't avoid this.

When you hear his voice, answer.

Look into this, make a decision.

The next up is the apathetic.

I'm gonna hit home right here.

The apathetic, spiritually numb.

I don't care.

Some of you are young kids here.

When I preach up here, I can see the look on your face.

You don't care.

You're forced to come here.

I understand.

I used to have to be forced to go to church when I was growing up.

I would draw on the hymnal books.

Pictures.

I did.

I had to repent.

I don't care.

I could say whatever up here.

You don't care.

You're probably daydreaming.

You might be on your phone.

You might be thinking about what you want to do later.

You don't care about this stuff.

What's interesting is I as I looked at the apathetic, and actually, there's a lot of experts who've studied them.

And it's actually interesting.

There's two primary engines going on with someone who's apathetic, who doesn't care, who doesn't engage, who might feel spiritually numb.

One of the reasons is that this is meaningless to them.

They don't see this actually meaning anything to them personally.

Well, let me ask you what I last asked the last type of person.

Do you know when you're gonna die?

If I ask you to think about death for a second, what do you think?

Like if you were sitting in front of a psychologist and they asked you, what do you think about death?

Do you see yourself ever dying?

What would you think?

Go ahead and answer that to yourself.

Take a moment.

What do you think about death?

Does death mean anything?

Do you think that you're gonna die?

What do you think happens after you die?

Are you prepared if you were to die today?

Many young people die.

You hear about these school shootings, they die.

Again, I'm not trying to be morbid, but I'd laugh I'd rather get a little bit real with y'all for the sake of maybe someone making a decision that's gonna save not just their life here, but their eternal life.

And if you don't care about death and you're like, oh, your pastor's just trying to scare me.

Let me ask you no one.

What about guilt?

Do you feel bad for doing bad stuff?

Do you feel like something's wrong with you?

Does that mean anything to you?

If that does, then the resurrection of Christ means something for you.

The other one is for someone, is is that the reason they they fail to connect with this, the reason that it's meaningless, the reason that they don't care, this was interesting, is that they feel stuck and there's nothing they could do about it.

I was actually kind of heartbroken when I read about this type of person, is that you've experienced so much negative things in your life beyond your control.

And so you developed a spiritual numbness.

It feels better if I don't care.

The next type is the inherited believer.

They grew up in the faith, so you just believe it, but it's not yours.

There's many people the Bible talks about, they'll stand in front of the king, they'll stand in front of their creator, and you'll say, Depart from me, I never knew you, and they'll be shocked.

But Lord, I went to church every day with my family, and I grew up in this, and I was there, and he says, You never made this your own.

You never decided for yourself what you believe.

The next tight is a social conformist, they just do it to get along.

It's an outward performance.

I play the part because I simply want to belong to community, I want to belong to church, I like having friends, so I say the right things, I raise my hands in worship, but deep down in the private place, I don't care.

I don't agree with this.

I have questions.

And then finally, we have the disconnected believer.

The disconnected believer affirms the resurrection, but they live like it doesn't matter.

Worship on Sunday, do whatever they want on Monday.

There's a break in the chain.

There's a break from here to here.

When Paul in Romans 10 9 and 10, what he says is he says, if you want to be saved, you're going to confess through the mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, but believe in your heart.

The heart is the deepest place of who we are, it governs everything about us, everything that comes out of us, what we say, what we do.

It actually says believe in your heart that God raised Christ from the dead.

Does it actually affect your life?

This is real for you.

I've been this at different times in my life.

I was raised in church.

I was raised in church, and around the age of um 22, I got to a point where I started to have doubts.

I started to ask myself, why do I believe what I believe?

I actually ran away from God.

I got out of church and I decided that I didn't believe in this stuff.

I wasn't sure about it, so I left church.

And this is what's interesting is that um I started to get very worldly.

I started to party.

I got all new friends.

I left all my church friends and I got worldly friends.

I would be going to the club, I would be drinking, and all this stuff getting wasted because I just got tired of this.

I wanted to have a fun life.

I was around 22 years old.

And I was in the club and I was wasted out of my mind.

And I was sitting at the bar and I was looking at this people.

It was a big club, there's a big, huge dance floor, and I was just looking at everybody, and I had this moment.

I I don't know, it was like a God encounter, but it's like I was able to see everything for exactly how it really was.

Follow me on this, okay?

I was able to see everything for how it was.

And and I saw all these people that were putting what it seemed like they were putting on a facade of happiness.

They were laughing, they were, but they I saw these people as being broken, searching for something, searching for meaning, searching for belonging, trying to take the substance abuse to just comfort pain, comfort pain, but the next day feeling bad, feeling bad.

And I had this moment, I was like, this is not real.

This is not real life, this is not real joy.

I've actually had much better in my father's house.

I actually have a relationship with the real living God, a God that speaks to me.

I've had a piece that surpasses understanding.

This is not real, this is fake.

And I remember it was in that club, in that moment of that wasted state, I made this decision in my heart, Lord, I believe in you.

And not just because mom believes in you, not because dad believes in you, not because I was raised in church.

I believe that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and I'm gonna live for him the rest of my life.

That was my moment of revelation.

And I'm here to tell you today, church, that even amongst all the documentation, all the evidence, all the claims, there's an evidence that has been carried along with all of us.

There's an evidence that is greater than all these things I've just said to you, and this is the evidence.

This is the evidence of sin.

The Bible says we are all sinners, and we have all fallen short of the glory of God.

Listen to this.

The Bible says we are all sinners and we've fallen short of God's glorious standard.

And the wages of sin is death, not a death in this life, a second death, as Revelation would say.

It's a death, it's an eternal death.

It's a death where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth, a death of eternal fire, a death of a death of eternal suffering.

And the Holy Spirit comes, is sent by God to convict us of our sin.

Have you ever done something and you didn't know in your mind why it was wrong, but you felt bad?

Maybe some of you've had a one-night stand, and for some reason the next day you just feel bad.

It's the Holy Spirit telling you you've broken God's law.

And everyone that sins is not worthy to be his.

And the whole point of God raising Christ from the dead is this one thing that Jesus died for your sins.

His blood was shed to wash you clean, wash you white as snow.

So that you could have the invitation to follow him, to place your belief in him, not just as a thought, not as just as a comfort, not because you're just gullible, but because you said, I give my life to you, Lord.

So that when you die in this life, you can be raised again in the next life.

You can have eternal life.

You God can wipe away all your tears.

You go to a place where there's no pain, no suffering.

What he told the thief on the cross, he said, You're gonna be in paradise with me today.

Close your eyes, please.

Every single one of us have sinned, and I want to ask you this question today.

Do you believe that God raised Christ from the dead?

If you're not sure and you would like to make that decision today, you're not sure if you've ever done it, maybe you've never done it, but you can feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit this morning.

You feel this, something is wrong with me.

I have committed wrong, and I need a savior.

I have sinned before God.

I have been the one that's lied.

I've been the one that has had thoughts of murder.

I've had the lust and pure thoughts.

I've stolen, I've done bad things, I carry shame around, and I need a savior to wash me clean.

If you would like that today, I want you to raise your hand.

You've been here, you've followed God, you know about him, but you've wandered away from him.

You've wandered away from him, and you would like to recommit your life to him today.

I want you to raise your hand.

People that have been rebellion, they've been the prodigals, they've been running away from you.

I'm gonna wait a couple seconds.

I would like to be saved.

I've never been saved.

If I stood before Jesus, I don't know if I would go to heaven or hell.

If you want to be confident that you would be saved, I want you to raise your hand.

I have everyone closing their eyes so you don't have to feel embarrassed.

This is just me and you and God watching.

If you would like to get saved today, I'm I'm willing to wait a couple more minutes.

I know we're hungry.

I know people have plans.

I would I would rather wait a couple minutes.

If you're afraid in here to do this, I want to encourage you.

It's me and you and God watching.

I've never become a Christian.

I want to place my faith in Jesus Christ.

I would like you to raise your hand.

I'm not gonna call you out, I'm not going to embarrass you.

But I've never made this decision and I want to make it today.

I want to talk to the young person.

Listen, Call of Duty is not gonna save you from hell.

There's gonna be no pot or weed in hell to soothe your wounds.

There's gonna be no alcohol in hell, there's gonna be no pornography in hell.

Mommy and daddy's not gonna be in hell.

There's not gonna be any social media in hell to distract you.

What's gonna be in hell is fire, it's gonna be the weeping and gnashing of teeth, it's gonna be suffering, it's gonna be eternal torture.

Is that what you want?

You don't think Christianity means anything to you?

Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, Jesus.

I saw one person raise their hand.

Thank you, Jesus.

Let's just say that I want you to say this prayer with me.

Say, Lord Jesus, I come to you a sinner in need of a savior.

And I believe that Jesus Christ died on a cross, he was buried, and he rose again.

And I put my belief in you, and I ask you to come into my life and change me.

Forgive me of my sins and wash me clean.

Amen.

One last prayer before anyone claps.

Um, this is what I feel in my spirit.

There's people here today, you've been rebelling, you've hardened your heart towards God.

You know he sees that.

Man looks at the outer appearance, God looks at the heart, God sees your heart, he sees if you've hardened it towards him, and he wants you to come home.

He wants you to come home.

He's not playing with your life.

The things that you care about and you've distracted yourself with, those are not really that real.

The most real thing is God's relationship in your life.

So I want you to bow your head and close your eyes and pray this with me.

Say, Jesus, I come to you right now.

Honestly, I put down my walls.

I ask that you will forgive me for my hard heart.

Forgive me for turning against you.

Forgive me for sinning.

Restore me, heal me, rejuvenate me, and I'm coming home, Lord.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, Jesus.

God was working on some people's hearts here today.

Um, no one, I think one person raised their hand to get saved, but what's interesting is sometimes in dynamics like this is that we're nervous to do it.

But when we prayed that prayer, I believe that there's people here that made a real decision to follow Christ.

We're not here trying to count hands, we're here for conversions.

And actually, I do believe that the Lord was working on people's hearts.

You've been a Christian, you've been in this for the long term, but God is turning you back to Him.

Hear His voice and turn to Him.

This is not just a thing of performance, this is not a thing of just traditions and going through the motions.

This is a real life relationship with a real and living God.

Finally, I would like to invite the altar team up here, please.

If you're here today and you have a sickness of any kind, the Bible says this that God is a healer.

He healed many.

It doesn't matter how impossible it was, he's a healer, and it says that by his wounds we are healed.

If you have a sickness of any kind, if you feel heavy in life, if you would like someone just to simply pray for you and encourage you, I would like to invite you up to the altar.

We're gonna go ahead and dismiss, but I would like to invite the opportunity.

If you need healing or need prayer of any kind, you can come up here and this altar ministry team will minister to you.

Happy Easter, happy resurrection day.

We love you.

Would you like to say anything?

We hope you have a good day in the name of Jesus, amen.