Protect Your Aura

Like, think about your relationship, and I think the things that I'm going to bring to the table next week from God's word will be helpful for you. But this person was asking, "Hey, how do I know the person I'm with is the right person? How can I be there for them even when it gets difficult?" Right? So I summarized that into kind of this generic question that asks, "How can I be there for them without being them?" And you, you might have asked this question. And you might be thinking about some of your kids who are maybe departing from the way that you raised them.

You might be thinking about a spouse or a family member who you're on this journey of faith, but they want nothing to do with it. You could go beyond that and think about your place of employment, where your bosses or your co-workers don't understand why every Sunday you're showing up at a random school, and doing setup, teardown. Like, right, you could think about how, where you are on your journey, God's calling you to be there for people, but at the same time, there's a level where if you hang out with certain people, it can be really difficult to also maintain the calling that God has placed on your life. Let me say it this way. God's given all of us a calling, a project, if you will.

How many of you feel called? Raise your hand. Just a couple of you. All right. All of us should, in a general sense, feel called by God.

I could give you so many different examples, right? Abraham's call in Genesis was to be a person through whom his lineage, right, would bless the entire world. That's a pretty big calling. I think Abraham's really trying to fulfill his calling throughout the book of Genesis. Sometimes he does it the wrong way.

Other times God's working it out for him. You look at David, who feels like he has a calling to be a man of God, a man after God's own heart, in a world that wants to depart from the way of God. He screws up, but he's really trying. You see prophet after prophet after prophet who are called generally and specifically by God to honor him with their lives and do some specific things he's called them to. And while they might struggle with it, they've still got this calling that they're trying to lean into.

In the New Testament, at the end of Matthew, Matthew chapter 28, God gives us all this generic calling. It's generic, but it's for every single one of us. He says, "Go therefore unto all nations, making disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit." And when you look around the church today, you kind of struggle, because when you look at the church, you see that God has placed us in a calling, or on a specific project or task, where we're supposed to help other people come to the saving knowledge of Jesus. Yet, we're not really trying. We don't really care about these other people.

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

I've seen the church — they want to go to their holy huddle every single week, and outside of that, they don't care to be nice to people. They don't care about you at work. They don't care about anything. They just want to go, "I'm going to read the Bible. I'm gonna have my time with my family, and I'm going to love God, " but they're going to forget about the second part of the great commandment, which is to love your neighbor as yourself.

In fact, the Bible in First John tells us that they'll know you by your love for one another. So, it's this interesting thing where, God's given me a calling for other people, yet at the same time, sometimes other people are difficult to minister to. You with me on that? So, yeah. And sometimes we get so wrapped in this ministry calling to be there for other people, and sometimes it's really not a ministry calling.

Sometimes it's just us. We want to be around somebody, and they're not on the same journey as us. And so we go hang out with them, and we make excuses to, you know, derail ourselves from the calling of God because we want to be around this person. And they're not going to change their way, but we're trying to get them to change their way. Back in the day, we'd call that missionary dating, if it was a relationship.

And we always frowned on missionary dating. We want to help this person. This is the gist of a lot of "How do I know if they're the right person?" or "How can I help someone who's making bad decisions? How can I help them come to faith?" We want to be there for them. We believe that God's called us to be there for them.

And yet, at the same time, it's very difficult to do. And so the question I ask is, how can I be there for them without being them? And I want to tell you this — I'm going to tell you the answer upfront, and I'll tell you again later, because I want you to leave here with some practical feedback. The way to reach them is to start on your own relationship with Jesus. You're kind of useless without him anyways.

And so the pursuit of helping other people has to be predicated by a pursuit of God, and a recognition, fully, of the project or calling that he has you on. And I gave a title — I learned in the first service it was a stupid title, but I'm going to do it anyways, because that's what they have next on the screen. Here's my sermon title. It's called "Protect Your Aura." I know y'all don't like it. I should have gotten rid of it.

Just leave it with the question on YouTube. Don't, don't, don't put "Protector." I was trying to be relevant, and I'm 37. I can't be relevant anymore. I got to quit that. But here's the truth: you've been given a calling.

I need a few more amens. You've been given a calling. Amen. Isn't it a big calling? Just say, "Yeah." It's a big calling.

It's a calling to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. It's a call to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. It's a calling to know God, and to somehow, within you, steward the grace of God — to steward this thing that he's doing in you. What does Paul say? "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for God's working in you." You are stewarding the good work of God.

This "pouyama" — you got to put that Greek word into your vocabulary. Pouyama. Say it with me. Pouyama. You have to remind yourself that God's doing a good work in you, that he's got you on a significant project, that he's got a big task for you that might require you to say no to some people sometimes.

And sometimes you just got to tell yourself, "Pouyama, po, " because what you want to tell the other person is probably not going to be super Christian. So you're just going to say, "Pouyama. I'm on a big task, and my kids annoying me right now — he's going to derail me. My spouse is annoying me right now — they're going to derail me." I'm not telling you to be disrespectful. I'm saying just remember, he's doing something big in you.

He's got you on a project. Nehemiah is a really good example that I want to give you today. I got to give you some context, but I think it's a really good example. Nehemiah is a guy in the Old Testament, and he's a guy who was living in Persia. I'm not gonna give you all the context, because I got a limited amount of time to give you this message today — is it okay?

You can look it up on ChatGPT. I'm gonna give you a little, though. Nehemiah is not living in Jerusalem. He's living in present-day Persia under the king Artaxerxes. And he hears about Jerusalem at the time.

Now, several years before, Jerusalem had been ransacked by the Babylonians, and their wall was torn down. Now, in the ancient world, if you were a city, you really needed to have a wall. Yeah, we don't have like anti-missile defense systems back in the ancient world. We have walls. That's what prevents people from attacking your city.

You are protected by that wall. And Nehemiah hears that Jerusalem is without a wall, and it says that he is emotionally invested in that to the point where he actually has to sit down. Like, it breaks his heart that Jerusalem doesn't have a wall. And so he feels passionate in such a way that he believes actually God is calling him to go solve that problem. And God makes it such that Artaxerxes, the king, gives him permission to go over to Jerusalem and conscript people into building this wall.

And so he goes over there, he gets people, like, conscripted to build this wall. They start building this wall. There's some barriers here and there, as with any big project. But he's doing pretty well, and they're getting close to finishing this wall. But there's a group of people — you can call them enemies, or you can call them people with different trajectories or preferences — that are trying to actually derail the building of the wall.

And in our lives, there's something God's trying to do in us and through us, and there are going to be people who want us to fail at the project that God gives us. And then there are people that, because of their own trajectory in life, they're simply on a different pathway. And it's not that they want us to fail, it's that they're thinking radically differently than we are. You might think of some people in your life — they don't want you to fail, they don't even mind that you have faith, but they have their own way of living life. And sometimes their way of living life stands in stark contrast to the project or trajectory God has each of you on.

It's not that they're against you, it's that they're different than you. And many of us, we easily get derailed by the people in our lives who have different trajectories than we have. And the impetus of this message for you is to help you understand something I've already said: you've got a big calling. In fact, I would say that calling trumps everything else in your life, because God should be the most important being in your life. I love your kids — I know you love your kids — but the most important being in your life is not your kids.

Ah, I know you're scared to say "amen" to that one, because God is more important than your kids. Without God, you don't get kids. Without God, you don't get life. So God is most important. Can we agree to that?

Say, "Yeah." Awesome. More important than your spouse. Love your spouse — you should love your spouse. You should not separate from your spouse. You should live life in such a way that you honor your spouse.

But God comes first, right? Because the project, the calling he has you on, is big. And with Nehemiah here, we see a similar thing. It's very specific. It's not this big general calling — it's a specific task, to build the wall.

And what happens here — I'm going to read, starting in verse one of chapter six — is pretty interesting, and I think it's really helpful for you. And I'm going to tell you up front, the end of this first portion of Scripture is a perfect point to lean into in your life. But it says this in verse one: "When word came to Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab, and the rest of our enemies that I" — that's Nehemiah speaking — "had rebuilt the wall and not a gap was left in it, except for up to that time I'd not set the doors in the gates, Sanballat and Geshem sent me this message." So Nehemiah's enemies are sending him a message: "Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono." But everybody say "but" — "they were scheming to harm me." "So I sent messengers to them with this reply" — y'all got to listen to this reply, I think it's bold — he says, "I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?"

I love that. Why would I go down — in terms of task, in terms of trajectory, in terms of pathway, in terms of location — why would I move from where I am and step down in order to go interact with you, when I know the gravity or the magnitude of the project that God has given me?

Why would I step away from what God has called me to, for you? I know I kind of can come across like a jerk sometimes. I know this about myself. On the Myers-Briggs, I'm ENTJ, and I joke around and say that means J-E-R-K. I get it.

My personality is an eight on the Enneagram. I don't know if you know what an eight is, but everyone who studies the Enneagram knows exactly what an eight is. And as soon as I tell them that I'm an eight, they're like, "Oh, I get it." Yeah, that's me. I can be a jerk sometimes, but I want to tell you, as graciously as I possibly can: your best life is on the other side of following God. Amen.

And not on making excuses before you do. In fact, your best ministry is on the other side of following God, because the project God has you on — like, God is so much smarter than you think he is. Sometimes the project God has you on entails you doing ministry to the people you're trying to reach right now, but right now you're being distracted from his calling. The project has to come first. And I like— To use this illustration because it's such a simple one: When you're sitting on a plane and they—the flight attendants are doing their little presentation on safety that you never pay attention to—, what do they say about the breathing mask?

Do they say to put yours on first? First? You got to put your breathing mask on first. You got to find Jesus before you can actually help somebody else, right? You want them to be healed in their life and you're—you're stressing out, you're anxious for them, and you want them to be in a better place.

But at the same time, you're not in a better place. And since you're not in a better place, how much help are you going to be to them? But if you go to God first—the—the God who's able to lift people out of pits of despair, who's able to radically shift their thought process, put them on a new trajectory and help them understand what a life lived in Christ is—what if you go to Him first and He's like, "Oh yeah, I got you covered. I can help this person." The problem is you're—you're starting in the wrong order, whether it's an emotional or a romantic relationship, or whether it is a familial relationship—your desire to help that person is hindered if you start with that person, and it's helped if you start with Jesus. Nehemiah gets it.

The project that God has him on is too important for him to go down and do something different. And I—I just think, I don't know, sometimes I come in here and I just want to be like generous and gracious and super kind, and other times I'm like, "You know what? What if I just tell people how it is?" And I get scared to do that, cuz I'm scared someone's going to walk out, get offended, post about us on Instagram. But then—but then it's like, but the project I'm on is too important. Like, the project God called me to—specifically, this is not general, this is specific—He called me to come out here from the South.

Not South America, but the South of the United States of America. And I've got my accent, I got my vibe, I got my style, and I'm radically different than, you know, southwest Phoenix area, like Buckeye. And so I came out here—the specific project I'm on is to help people find peace, develop purpose, by revolving everything around Jesus. Like, I—I am consumed with that vision, but sometimes I get derailed because of the Sanballats and the Shemayas and all the other people who maybe are against me, but for the most part they have well—, meaning—or they're well-meaning. They have good intentions, but they—they just don't know the project that I'm on.

And for many of you in life, you need to kind of have this vibe about you, similar to Nehemiah, that says, "Well, I know what God called me to and I'm a focus in that direction, because if I derail, then I'm going to miss out on some of the blessings and provision of God." But we just let the first statement from a family member or our spouse completely derail us, or our kids. I heard something recently from somebody. They said, "You know, we really wanted to come, but our kids are really not enjoying church." I'm like, "Did y'all go before?" And they're like, "No." And I'm like, "What'd you think was going to happen? Who's the adult? Train up a child in the way they should go." You got a project—to follow God and to like to—to know deeply your creator and to love others as yourself.

And if you love yourself enough to go to God, and you turn and look at your kids and they tell you they don't want to know God, how loving are you if you're not just like, "Hey, I love you so much. I think after 6 months or 3 months, you're probably going to like it a little bit better." But also, since you're a kid, you're going to go with mommy, and you know, you're going to go with daddy. It's like, I don't know, maybe I'm just the jerk parent who can say no. But at the same time, I just feel like you're going to have to learn to say no if you're going to accomplish the task that God has placed in front of you. I'm spending too much time into this.

I'm going to jump into the, next text. I will give you a quote that I—I saw on TikTok recently that I thought was really helpful, because all of you have a calling. Yeah, yeah. I got to tell you, like, you have a calling and it's a big calling, and it's not some calling you want to brush under a rug. Anyone who was in VBS—which was not me, I became a Christian later than vacation Bible school—but if you grew up in vacation Bible school, you sang this song.

I think it's, —I'm. No, should I hide it under a bushel? No! What's the song? "I'm going to let it shine." Is that how—"I'm going to let it shine, I'm gonna let." Yeah.

Hey, you have got a calling, it is huge—I said, I said it the wrong way, I said huge the wrong way, everybody's think about Donald Trump when I just said that right there. But hey, I need you to know it is a big calling. It is one that you can't just brush under a rug. It is one that is worth revolving every aspect of your life around. This calling is one that will connect you at a deeper level to God.

And it's interesting, because when I was younger, I didn't necessarily grow up in a Christian household, but if you look at my family, you'll notice they're going to church. Why? It wasn't because I went to them and said, "Hey, you need to know Jesus, you need to know Jesus, stop being a—a punk, go to church." Like, I didn't go to them. I just said, "I'm going to go on my own journey and I'm going to find Jesus, and I'm going to live after His calling on my life." And eventually, His calling on your life is attractive to the people in your life. And it's so crucial for us to recognize that, because you ain't that special.

You're the apple of God's eye, but in the grand scheme of things, you're just a human being. But God's got power beyond what you could comprehend, and He will shift things in your life. And, the—the quote I saw on TikTok was, it said this. It says, "The fastest way to kill a dream—a big dream, one that maybe God's given you—is to introduce it to a smaller mind." And it was super helpful to me because it's not just that they're unintelligent, it's that they're thinking differently. And what many of you are doing is you're going back to your life, job, family, like spouse, and you're going back and you're trying to introduce something so like radically different to them.

And you just—like, it's new to you, but you're going to them and you're like just expecting them to track with it. And I just need you to know, like, this thing is so big that when you tell it to somebody, it's going to be like Joseph and the rest of his brothers. He's like, "I had a dream where all you guys were bound to me." The brothers are looking at him like, "Hold up, bro, what are you talking about?" And this is your family—they're looking at this calling that God has placed on you, and you felt it from the Lord, you've read it in Scripture, but they're not tracking with it yet. And they're looking at you like you're crazy. You got to deal with feeling crazy for a second in order to move forward, because when you introduce that dream to them—even if they love you and want what's best for you—it is the natural tendency of someone going in a different direction to pull you in that direction.

So what you have to do is you have to keep pursuing Jesus until you're so confident and so utilized by God that it starts naturally impacting the people around you. I'm not saying don't say something to the people in your life that you love. I'm saying seek Jesus as you do it. Keep Him first and foremost in your life. But let me jump back into the Scriptures.

Verse four—this is a new situation. Nehemiah says, "Four times these enemies sent me the same message, and each time I gave them the same answer. Then the fifth time, Sanballat sent his aide to me with the same message, and in his hand was written an unsealed letter in which it is written—" Pause, pause. I got to tell you, it said four times the Sanballat sent him this message trying to get him to go out to the plain of Ono, and it says four times he gave him the same reply. I'm speaking to the person in here who feels like they're getting derailed by people in their life, or situations in their life, or old mindsets in your current mind.

I just want to empower you right now to be like—I don't know, spirit of Nehemiah coming all over you, the power of God supplied to you in the midst of your weaknesses. When Sanballat, the physical enemy, or when the enemy's in and around your life, whether it's Satan or whether it's your mother-in-law—I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, guys, whoever it is—same response: "I got a project in my life, God's called me." We say here at the church that our general trajectory in Christ is gathering, growing, grouping, giving, and going, right? I'm just going to give you the five as an example. And so for me—if anything's going to keep me from gathering on a Sunday, that's what God's called me to. Anything's going to keep you from growing in your walk with God, opening God's word, spending time in prayer; grouping up, communing with God's people; giving, giving the first percent—of our 10% of our income—to the local storehouse that God utilizes not only to bless us, but to, be divvied up throughout the rest of Christendom; and then going, which is serving.

Like, those things God utilizes in our lives to grow us closer to Him and to bless other people. And I can tell you this—and I can tell you this as a guy who stands up here every single week—that, you know, I have to do it, this is how I earn my income. But I'm telling you as someone who did it before I ever earned an income doing it, those five things in my life were part of the big project that God had placed me on. And it was so crucial to me that if I had people come into town and say, "Hey, let's go out, " I say, "Yeah, cool, Friday, Saturday, we good. Sunday, you can come with me." I said, "Hey, hey, let's go get up first thing in the morning, go do this." "Yeah, cool, you can go do that, or we can go a little bit later cuz I got to spend the first 30 minutes of—of the—of the—of the day in prayer.

This is what I'm doing.", family wants to, you know, do Bible study together, which is great, but rather than going to church where God's called us to gather, I'm like, "Hold on, that might be bad theology. We need to gather together with God's people and spend time singing hymns and worshiping Him in spirit and in truth in this specific location." Like, there are so many things in my life where gathering, growing, grouping, giving and going—I—I have said no to anything that would derail me in that. And you might think, well, this is just a pastor. I'm telling you that if you want to grow closer to God, you're going to have to say no to certain things around you. And Nehemiah said four times to this guy, in the same fashion—maybe it got more intense every single time he did it, I don't know, the Scriptures don't tell us—but he said the same response: "I can't go down, I got too much to do, I've got a big project that I'm carrying right now."

But here's what happened second.

It says, "It is reported"—this is someone talking to Nehemiah—it says, "It is reported among the nations, and Geshem says that this is true, that you and the Jews are plotting to revolt, and therefore you're building this wall. Moreover, according to these reports, you are about to become their king, and have even appointed prophets to make this proclamation about you in Jerusalem: 'There is a king in Judah!' Now this report will get back to the king"—he's talking about Artaxerxes—"so come, let us meet together." This is Nehemiah's enemies telling him, "Hey, bro, a report's going out that's talking about you, saying that you're saying you're going to be king in Jerusalem, that you're building this wall so that you can rebel against King Artaxerxes and greater Persia." I know there's a lot of history there, I'm just telling you the story. And here's what Nehemiah responds. Verse 8, he said, "Nothing like what you're saying is happening. You're just making it up out of your head." And I wrote this down, and I said, others in your life are going to try to persuade you—even you are going to try to persuade you on occasion—with things that are made up in your mind, meant to derail you from the calling that God has placed you on.

But you've got to let the project, or the calling of God, guide your disposition in this world. Paul says it really well, and he doesn't say it at the beginning of his ministry, he says it near the end of his ministry. He says, "I press on toward the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus." He says it after being put in prison several times. He says it after being lashed 39 times, seven— times or five times. I am blanking on that.

Forgive me for that. But he's been lashed multiple times because of his faith. He says that after people have left the ministry that he's on. Paul is so consumed with the project that God gave him to help people know who Jesus is that he is unwilling to waver at all. Even when it gets difficult, he has thick skin, and he is called to the mission of God.

You've got to let the pro—similar to Paul, similar to Nehemiah—you've got to let the project that God placed you on trump everything else in your life. There's a time for me in ministry, very recent, where I was struggling, with one specific area of calling. I was almost derailed from it because some things get really difficult. You know, the easy stuff is—I mean, some stuff is easy. Like, if you walk out of here and there's a person with a sign that says, "Hey, people who go to church are terrible people.

You shouldn't go to church." How many of you going to be swayed by that? It's easy. Like, you know why you're here. You know why you came. You want to know who Jesus is.

You believe that God exists. And so some random person saying something like that isn't going to derail you. Like, for me, when I came out here, I knew the project that God had given me. The project was to come to the southwest of the val—or southwest valley—and come out here and help people revolve everything around Jesus. And, people would comment.

I've told you some of this stuff. I've showed—showed it to you on our anniversary video. One person, I did like some video, and I thought it was pretty good. But this—the first guy who commented on it, he said, "Bro looks gay." That's what he said, on the video. And then another person commented something pretty basic too, after our Easter egg drop.

You know what they said? They said, "Yeah, that pastor must have big money. Probably got five houses." You think that affected me in the slightest? I drive my—my wife and I drive a 2008 Honda Pilot. They got five houses?

That stuff don't affect me, right? And every one of us thinks that it's the attacks like that that are going to hit us most frequently. It's not. It's the attack inside the house, inside the camp, that gets you. And I remember one time someone actually commented something a little bit closer to the vision, and they said, "Who names a church that?" And I know you're laughing 'cause it's like, "Who does?" And in that moment, I was like, "Man, did I do the right thing?

Maybe—maybe I should listen." And I was almost like derailed from it. And then I went back, and John 14 tells us that the Spirit of God will remind us of what God said. And I think the Spirit of God, in that moment, reminded me of the—the specific assignment. The assignment is not just to preach a Jesus that helps people have a little bit of a better life. The assignment is to preach a Jesus that asks everything from everybody sitting in this room.

He wants us to revolve everything around Him. Whether eating or drinking, we do all to the glory of God. And so I was reminded of that. I was like, "Okay, cool. This metaphor came from that vision." And so we keep sticking to it because God called us to it.

I'm not going to be derailed by the lies of the enemy or the concerns of people who are on a different trajectory than me. There's so many different ways we could do this church. There's several down the street. Go to them. We're going to do it the way God called us to do it.

And it's going to be a little bit different. It might be a little weird up front. You might get frustrated once in a while, but this is the calling. I'm not saying I won't be teachable, but I'm saying sometimes you got to go back to what God said and stick to the project, even though there are people who are differing in their opinions about what that project should look like. And, sorry, I've got several notes here that I'm not going to be able to get to because I want to answer some of your cool questions.

But I'll say it as simply as this: what you've got to do in your life is you've got to be so confident in the calling that God has placed on your life that even the little and big things, they don't derail you. I wrote a couple things down here that I'll give you, that I've heard from people, as reasons for not growing in their walk with God. One person—their husband told them, when they woke up, they said, "Hey, let's sit at home and we can just watch church online together." That—it's not terrible, except for the fact that it reduces, the connection with the greater biblical community that you could have. In fact, God tells us in Hebrews that we ought to not neglect gathering together, as is the habit of some. So he takes the habits of some and says that's probably not a good habit.

Another one says, "Hey, let's do Bible study at home first, because I'm not comfortable going to a small group." And I'm like, "There's nothing wrong with Bible study. Sounds spiritual, could be helpful." But at the same time, why would you neglect the greater calling of God in your life because it's a little bit more comfortable to do it at home with people you're completely comfortable with? I'm not saying don't do the Bible study. I'm saying God has given you a big calling, and that calling requires us to get out of our comfort zone. I can think of the people whose spouses said, "Hey, I don't want to go to church 'cause I got burned one time at church." And the wife or the husband feels so called to do what God called them to do, and the husband says that—and you're just like—or wife says that, and you're just like, "Maybe I should stay there and be gracious." And I want to look at you and say, is it gracious of you to step back from your calling because somebody else has a preference from a different trajectory?

And I just don't think that's the gracious thing to do. I think the gracious thing to do is to keep loving them in the midst of your journey toward God. Again, your walk with God is going to be the best testimony to your spouse, to your kids, and to the rest of your extended family, even to your co-workers. And if you keep telling your boss you're willing to work whenever because you don't have any priorities when it comes to your spiritual walk, they're—they're going to look at you and be like, "Well, they're really not really that invested into their faith, are they?"

I'm not saying it's easy. If this were easy, it wouldn't be a big project.

Nehemiah is probably having a really hard time building a wall from scratch that had been previously destroyed, with a group of people who have no real leader. But it's the project God placed him on. And the project that God has placed each of us on is to deny ourselves and follow Him, knowing that following Him, following Him, seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, will enable us to add all the things. So for those of you in this room who are ready to go next level in your faith and start really accomplishing the project, I want to challenge you. I want to challenge you to put Jesus first and foremost in your life and not lift anything else up above Him.

Anything we put before God is an idol anyways. It's—it's something that will not sustain you. It's something that will not give you the life that you're looking for. It's only God who can develop that in you. So I'm saying to the parents who are letting their kids run the home: follow Jesus.

Ask for wisdom and lead your kids. I'm saying to the spouse, or the husband or wife who has a spouse who is unbelieving—First Peter gives us a lot of description of how to interact that way. I'd encourage you to read it. But I'll tell you right now: continue to seek Jesus and prioritize Him in every area of your life. Be understanding, gracious, and discerning with how you tell your spouse that.

But at the same time, don't neglect it, because when you neglect it, your witness slowly starts to dissipate, and it lengthens the amount of time before they get a hold of it. One of the saddest things that I see is someone who—I call them kind of Christian. And what I mean by that is they've been a Christian their whole life, but they've never really been serious about their faith. They marry someone in the midst of that season where they're not really concerned about God, who is an unbeliever. It happens.

I get it. I'm gracious with it. I get that. And then that person—I see this all the time—they finally come to church, and God gets a hold of that unbelieving spouse, and He radically shifts their trajectory in life, and they're going all in. And then the spouse who's kind of been a Christian their whole life is like, "Yo, chill out." And I look at that and I am just—this is Sanballat.

This is Shemaiah the priest. This is the people, or the prophet. These are the people there who are intentionally or unintentionally derailing people from their faith. And I need you to know that the project that God has placed you on is worth it. Seek it out.

And I challenge you to lean into it, regardless of what that means, even if it hurts. And I'll say to the people in the room who came in here and were expecting a really encouraging message—for those who didn't know Jesus, I want you to know that the reason that project is so valuable is because it's rooted in the message of love and grace that comes from our Father, who sent His Son down to die on a cross for us. And all He asks for us to do is spend our entire life preaching that message to people who have not received it. So while I might be challenging those in the faith, for those of you this is brand new to, I want you to know it comes from a place of love for you. I want you to know Jesus deeply.

And the Bible says that you can know Jesus by confessing with your mouth that He is Lord, believing in your heart that God raised Him from the dead. And so, what I typically would do now is I'd give you the opportunity to trust in Jesus. But what I'll do, because I know I want to answer some questions for you guys on the fly, I'm going to encourage you to check a box that says, "I am deciding, " or "I have decided, to follow Jesus." What that does is it triggers in our system for me or somebody on our team to reach out to you and help you take your next step toward God. So if you're interested in knowing more about following Jesus—