He’s Preparing a Place

Oh, oh. They're still playing. That's what it is how we doing today. We feeling good. All right, I want you to raise your hands for something.

If you had spring break with your kids last week, won't you raise your hand? If you have spring break this next week with your kids, won't you raise your hand? Okay, all right, Buckeye, heavy in here. Okay, if, if you live in Good Year, say Amen, they're like we going, we're not going over to that church. You live in Buckeye, though, say amen, amen.

Even if you live in verado, you still live. It's okay, I'm not going to bring that up, I don't. I didn't mean to bring that up, I didn't mean to guys, we're going to be in John, chapter 6 today, going to go straight from God's word. I've got a main point that I want to give you in just a moment and that will guide the vast majority of this message today. It's not going to be difficult.

John 6 · chapter mention

I don't know if you came in looking for Unnecessary complexity, but you're not going to get it from me today. It is very, very simple, and here's your big idea, going to toss it on the screen. God knows your provision before you know your need. Amen. I love that, amen, I love it.

In the first service there were a couple people really trying to clap and I made a commitment to them that if they started a clap, just to keep doing it and the rest of the room would follow suit, and I promised them that I would do it, and then they kept clapping and so, like every two minutes I was, I told him I'd finish it, so I clapped, I paused my. If you clap, I want to celebrate, that face step. It's a face step to clap, it's a face step to say Amen. It's a face step to raise your hand. Man, I'm excited about this passage.

We've been in this series which, like I said, it's really not a series, but we've been calling it March Madness, which really gives me an excuse to kind of say what I want up here and say: well, we're just in a series called March Madness, but what we've been going through is essentially John, chapters 5 and six, where Jesus speaks of his authority and is like equality with God and people get frustrated. Where later he calls himself the bread of life and many disciples or followers stop following him. In this March Madness series, really, the impetus of it is that God has called us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices. In Romans, chap 12, that God has called us to take up our cross and follow him. He says this in the gospels.

John 5 · chapter mention

The reality of our faith is it is going to be difficult. I was praying in the Lord this morning. I don't always say it like that, it was, it was legit. I was praying this morning and I was just praying that God would kind of fulfill some of the promises that I think he has for me in my life and there's something that he made clear. I think this is from the Lord.

Could be indigestion, upset stomach, but I think I really think it's from the Lord. He said: with following me comes tons of difficulty. Get used to it, otherwise it's going to be constantly frustrating for you to follow me. And- and I know that's all throughout God's word, but that's what I felt in my spirit from the Lord this morning. It is difficult to follow Jesus, but here's the Beauty: look at your neighbor and tell them it gets better.

My wife did it, the rest of you. It takes Faith to say it gets better, doesn't it? Look at your other neighbor, the one that you didn't think looked as good, and say I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding, we're not superficial in this place. We're all going to look ugly one day and then right on the other end of that will look beautiful cuz it gets.

Amen. Look at your neighbor and say it gets better. I hope it gets better. These wrinkles aren't getting better, this receding hairline is not getting better, but it does get better. And here's one thing that I have learned about God: that regardless of how difficult things are, he's working.

Oh, I, I love it. You're trying to follow. I changed it up on you. He, he's working behind it. I, I don't remember this, but I was.

I remember hearing in seminary of this thing called the Jesus movement. Raise your hand. If you've heard of the Jesus movement, it happened back in the late 60s now. It was during a season where it seemed like the world was in tons of turmoil and Division and, you know, hippies were roaming the Earth at that in that day, . But the Jesus movement is something that occurred during a season where no one thought it was going to happen and anyone in here in the first service we had a couple that raised their hands and said they were a part of it?

Anyone in here a part? That was a part of the Jesus movement back in the 60s? Yeah, your mom was: that's awesome, that's super cool. I wasn't. I was born in 1988 and I missed the boat on that one, but I still hear about it.

Anyone in here ever heard of a church called Calvary Chapel? That's from the Jesus movement. It was this crazy setting in Costa Mesa, California, where a dude named, Chuck Smith and a couple other people who looked at the culture and where much of the church and the older generation was seeing just division, dysfunction and, you know, just complete deconstruction of Faith. These guys were like, hey, I think we can see some potential in this incoming generation, and so out there in Costa Mesa, California, they started baptizing just thousands and thousands of people and it became a movement that, while it was still happening, impacted tens of thousands, thousands of people all over the country. If you've heard of a Calvary Chapel, those were started all across the country because of what happened in the Jesus movement.

And what was unique about the Jesus movement was that it wasn't just the same old same old. It was a unification of various denominational tenants. It's. It's kind of a. It's kind of what we're trying to do, but it's a weird thing.

It's like they would read straight out of the Bible, which I love doing, by the way. We would go straight out of the Bible, preach messages that we call them in pastoral talk. We call them expository, meaning you're exposing literally the text of the Bible and then their worship Services. You would think if you just reading out in the Bible like Jonathan Edwards style manuscript sermons and all this other stuff, you'd stand up, you would sit down. It would be more lurgical in nature, but not with this Jesus movement and the churches that were coming out of it.

They would preach straight out of the Bible and then they go wild during worship. There was a mixture of what was historically seen as conservative biblical preaching and then you had charismatic level worshiping it. It mixed different schools of thought and God used it powerfully in a season that most people were like- and I, I've heard this. This is a southern phrase, if you're not from the south. It said: the world is going to hell in a hand basket.

They said it. I mean, whatever generation you are, you know the generation before you looked at you and thought you were going to hell in a hand basket because you did something a little bit different. I'll say this up front: , God was not surprised by what was happening then, and he's not surprised by what's happening right now. It's crazy though, isn't it? Amen?

Just a couple of y'all think it's crazy. The rest of y'all must be head under a rock, but at least you showed up at church today is crazy. I' I've said like five times in the past two weeks, like yo, I never thought I'd live through something like this. It's, it's interesting what is happening in the world and, during a season that looks chaotic and dysfunctional, God has been preparing the soil to do a powerful work in the valley, in the country and in this world, because that's how God works and he is making the things that are broken better. So I'm going to jump into the text before I belabor these points and go too long and you miss out on lunch.

Y'all Scared To Laugh. That was funny, starting in verse one, and I'm not going to read all the way through it. Initially I'm going to actually break down some different components. It's a little different type of preaching. I like to change things up.

How many in your closet you got all the same color of shirt? Nobody, and if you do, we should talk there. There are options out there and that's kind of my preaching. My preaching is not going to be the same week in, week out. Last time I had a whole notebook of notes and I read them, and this week I'm going to be walking you straight through the text, starting in verse one.

Sometime after this, Jesus cross to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee, that is, the Sea of tiberias, and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by Healing The Sick. Now let me catch you up for a moment. This is the story, or the, of the feeding of the 5000. I'm asking for a lot of Engagement today. If your arms are tired, I apologize, but how many of you have heard the feeding of the 5,000 story before?

Okay, long story short. Your subheading will give away the whole ending. It's kind of lame, but he feeds 5,000 plus people out in the middle of the Wilderness. It's a very cool miracle and, other than the crucifixion and Resurrection, this is the only miracle that is recorded in all four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This is such a significant miracle that all of them felt the need to discuss it.

And Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee for probably a number of reasons. The one that I always remember is that in the Book of Matthew, John the Baptist has just died, and so Jesus, going out to spend time with his father and the disciples in mour, goes out in order to just spend some time with God. Yet this crowd follows him, but all the gospels kind of build it up a little bit differently and John says simply that he is crossing the farshore of the Sea of Galilee and a great crowd follows him. Why do they follow him? They follow him because he has been performing signs, and many of us come to our faith because we look at Jesus or we look at something that happened and we're like.

The only way that can be explained is because something greater than me is working in this world. Many of us choose to follow Jesus because of the signs, but I'm going to spoil this for you for a second. The sign is amazing, but there's something more valuable than the sign later in John, chapter 6, it's the Revelation of who Jesus really is, that he's the bread of life. It not only causes those very people who followed the sign to leave Jesus. But it is the very thing that will cause you to have internal peace that surpasses understanding.

John 6 · chapter mention

But let's continue. Verse number three. Then Jesus went up on a mountain side and sat down with his disciples. The Jewish Passover Festival was near and I'm breaking this down for you intentionally, because I'm I want you to glean, I mean maybe just a little bit of what the spirit has given me over the past couple of weeks in preparation for this message, and I told the volunteers earlier this morning that there's something really powerful about verse three. Before the miracle happened, there was a Prem Miracle meeting.

A Prem Miracle meeting- you know that's what we start calling our rally volunteer, the, the pmm, even though it's early, am the Prem Miracle meeting and he gets to have this meeting with the disciples. And I can't just skip over this point. Because there are many of us who have become content over the years sitting on the sidelines watching the miracle occur when God- God- offers you an opportunity daily to participate in the miracle. I- I don't want to say this to shame anybody in this room- if you showed up here today, whether it was for a sign or whether it was for Revelation from God, regardless. I'm glad you're here.

I believe God brought you here. I believe all 5,000 plus of those people went out there to see a sign and they were all blessed richly by the Lord. But there was a Prem Miracle meeting. And that Prem Miracle, which would you rather be? Would you rather be in the group that is in the Prem Miracle meeting or would you rather be in the crowd that gets to eat some bread and fish?

Which one? You don't have to answer out loud, I, I think I can safely assume which one it is for you. One axom that we have at our church is that you want to be a part of the crew, not the crowd. We say this regularly and I want to keep saying it till I'm blew in the face. Why?

Because the crew not only got to see a miracle, but they got to be a part of Performing the miracle. If you want to grow in your relationship with God, don't just see what God does. Be used by God to do it. It'll change everything about you, and what will be powerful in your life is if you come in here. Maybe you sat down under the teaching of God's word and hopefully it was a good message or a good worship service.

But what will really really develop you is if you move from the crowd into the crew. If you're never a part of the Prem Miracle meeting, you might not understand the full extent of what Jesus wants to do. Jesus taught a lot of Parables when he was doing these teachings and they were not easy to understand, so difficult to understand that the disciples would often come around after a miracle, after a teaching, and they would say, hey, can you explain this to us? I guess you can call that the post Parable meeting, just all these meetings. You know it's like we got Congregational Church, all these committees.

They have post Revelation meeting. That's what I want. And they went up to Jesus and they asked and guess what he did? He explained it. The crowd did not see the Revelation.

You want to be a part of the crew, not the crowd. And I think it is cool because I think the disciples need a little bit of hyping up before this miracle. And it's funny because the disciples didn't even know what was going to happen. We know this because of what happens next- verse four or verse 5- when Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him. He said to Phillip: where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?

He asked this only to test him, for he would already had in mind what he was going to do. Now I don't know if you pick favorites when it comes to the Gospels- Matthew, Mark, Luke, John-, I love all of them. I love all of them, but not equally, because they all have different components to them. In the Book of John- I mentioned this last week- Jesus talks a lot more and I love the words of Jesus, but sometimes it's really confusing, and the narrative structure of Matthew, Mark and Luke really helps me understand at a deeper level. One thing that's interesting about Mark is he's not scared to talk mess about somebody.

He, he's he. He does it about Judas, he does it about Peter, he, he's not ashamed to talk mess about somebody. And he also later in the Bi Bible calls himself the Beloved disciple and it's like not scared to talk good about himself either. John's great. It's the word of God.

It's something I want to listen to, but I try to understand their different personality, and what John says here is different than what is in the other gospels. He says Jesus knew what he was going to do, but he asked philli to test him. You'll hear this in the other ones and- and it's interesting to me that he would- what, like I was. These are the questions I ask: why did ask Phillip? Why did he ask Phillip?

I was doing some research and in John, chapter 1, we find out- Philip is from Betha, which is, the city closest to where the Wilderness is- that he's about to perform this miracle. So I think to, to a certain extent, Jesus is asking him- yes, to test him, but because he's the guy who would know where to buy bread or to get fish. And so look at Philip's response right here. He says: Where shall, oh? Jesus says: where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?

John 1 · chapter mention

He asked only to test them. Verse 7. Philip answered him it would take more than half a Year's Wages, that's 200 dinari, to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite. I think this is how many of us interact with the calling of God on our life. Now I want to break that down, but I hope you kind of connecting with where I'm going here.

Many of us, God wants to do something. He invites us into the process. And then he asks us a question and we see the logic rather than the leap of faith it's going to take, or take the leap that we need to take for faith. We see the logic but we miss the faith. What happens here is that Philip, knowing Beth feta, knowing the town, he's like like that, even if there was a store that had all this stuff, that's a lot of money- it would take half a Year's wages to get that much bread for people to eat.

Now Jesus knows what he's going to do. He has prepared the ground literally to perform this miracle. But in the process of him performing The Miracle, he wants to invite all of us into the process, and his first invitation is not only on the mountain but to specifically Phillip. And what Jesus wants us to do when he invites us into this process of performing a miracle is he wants us to be willing to process with him. Many of us start out in the Philip position, where we are listening to what God's telling us and we're listing all the reasons we can't.

Many of you who came here for the first time today, I bet there was at least one reason that you were almost not going to come today when God called you to come to church for the first time in 15 years, you had plenty of reasons not to, but you felt God bringing you there, whether you saw an Instagram ad or whether you saw the Bible Gathering dust on your shelf and you said I should dust that off a little bit and start honoring God's call on my life. Maybe you used to go to church and you remember that one day, when you were stuck in that dysfunction, how God had worked. And you're coming back to it. Whatever reason you came today, that was the call of God bringing you here, and I know that it's easy to respond like a Phillip. It doesn't make sense.

How am I going to do that? I mean, that's me whenever God calls me as a pastor of this church to do something crazy. Like you, you can just go look at the Facebook for that. That little Easter egg drop, I felt. I felt the Lord said you got to go big or go back home.

I says we going to drop 20,000 eggs out of a helicopter and we G to make this happen. And every part of me that is flesh right: the insecurity, the fears, the struggles I'm like I hope people show up or I hope people enjoy it. Or I hope the eggs don't break when they hit the ground or any number of items that come in. They come in cuz cuz. Jesus calls is calling us to do something that we on our own cannot accomplish, and our first response tends to be resistance because of logic doesn't make sense.

Just go look at our Facebook. Someone's like it doesn't bother me, but I don't know how to respond to it. Sometimes some someone's like they're going to break when they hit the ground. I'm like someone was like re legs. I'm like that would, that would be terrible, like all the different things and that's.

Those are good logical questions, but I can't live in that. If you live in logic, you will never see the supernatural. So sometimes you got to depart logic in order to take a leap of faith and when you do it, you going to see the logic, but you won't see it beforehand. This is where philli is. I, Phillip, obviously shifted perspectives, but in this moment I think a lot of you can connect with it.

You're thinking: when the pastor says our goal in life is to revolve everything around Jesus, when the Bible says to take up your cross and follow Jesus, when it says You must give up your life in order to receive your life, when you're talking about believing in a guy who died on the cross-, 2,000 years ago- and supposedly raised himself from the grave three days later. Like all of these things are leaps of Faith rooted in the calling of God on your life, and in order to jump into those, you have to sidestep your logic and take a step of faith. It is hard to do. There are plenty of reasons not to, but my encouragement to you is to move to another level. Push beyond the logic, take that leap.

And one of the ways we take that leap we see in the next conversation that, that happens in the text after Philip says it would take more than half a Year's wages. You got verse eight, where it says: another of his disciples, Andrew, who is Simon Peter's brother, spoke up here is a boy with five small barley Loaves and two small fish. But how far will they go among so many? Now, let me break this down, because Phillip is one way that we respond. But another step in the direction of your faith is Simon Peter's brother, Andrew.

Now Andrew has a logical struggle here. He says: what are these to do with so many people. Five Loaves and two fish is definitely not enough. I just need to ask you to see if you're still engaged. Hey, is Five Loaves and two fish enough to feed 5,000 plus people?

No, okay, yeah, like it's so obvious that people are like: nope, of course it's not. So. The logic would dictate that you need more bread, more fish. But what I love about Andrew's response is that he took a step. Sometimes all you need to do is take a step.

You take a step within your own capacity, trusting that at some point God is going to bring in his capacity. Then you see a miracle. Andrew went and found this kid in the Book of John. That's the only Gospel where we see that we get the Five Loaves and two fish from a boy. I think it took a lot of faith for Andrew to go start searching.

I don't know exactly how it happened. I like to imagine Andrew a man of much Faith after he saw those Fish fill the Nets that one time when he and Peter were called to follow him like I, I like picturing Andrew fully faithful where he heard Jesus ask that question to philli and he's immediately going like: all right, we got any food around here. Many of us, we look at God's provision and because we don't trust that he's got real provision for us, even though he promises it, we're not even looking for it. And when you don't look for the provision of God, chances are you might not find it. There are some doors that you only see when you walk.

I mean that you only see the result when you walk through them. Right, you don't know what's in a room unless you walk through it, and if you want to see a miracle, you've got to walk through some of these logical doors and it. It's difficult, but Andrew took that step. He found a kid. You don't don't find a kid with Five Loaves and two fish and bring him to Jesus, unless you think Jesus might do something.

So he pushed past the logic, took the step. But even he's struggling and I want to give you permission to struggle. I want to give you permission to have some doubts once in a while. I'm not saying: go look at all the atheist literature and try to understand all of it, because it'll make you real sad really quickly. But what I will say is: when you doubt, don't guilt yourself out of the doubt.

It'll never get you out of the doubt. It'll just be an avoidance that eventually leads you out, and what I want you to do is I want you to give yourself permission to struggle. Here's what struggling looks like, God, I'm doing what you told me to do. I'm moving in the direction that you called me to move, like for me personally, God. I moved out here and we're trying to be faithful.

I'm reading your word, I'm praying, I'm worshiping, I'm trying to do what you called me to do, think the way you called me to think, posture myself in such a way that I can receive from you, but at this point I'm not seeing the mirac. Ulous Lord, what like? We can't do enough with just little old me. I've only got Five Loaves. I've got two fish.

My speaking ability is limited. Our worship leadership ability is limited, Your Capacity is limited, but you're moving, you're having faith and as you have faith, it might take a minute, it might take a month, it might take a year, it could take even longer, but as you move forward in faith, extending fully your capacity, at some point you're going to see Jesus do something. I- I say this and I'm GNA, keep saying it because it's been so powerful to me. My job is to create momentum in my life and in this church. God's job is to multiply it.

My job is my capacity. Tell yourself that. Close your eyes. Close your eyes, please, please, please, close your eyes and say it out loud, no one's looking at you right? Say my job is my capacity, eyes closed.

His job, his job is multiplication, is multiplication, and that's what we want to see God do and that's what he's going to do. We know he's going to multiply the loaves. Andrew does a good job, but he still asks the question and Jesus continues with this conversation. In verse 10 he said: have the people sit down. This is kind of a side note, but I got to say it.

Some of y'all are too busy to receive from God because you're not giving yourself enough time to sit down, like if he were to tell you to pause to listen to him, if you to tell you to pause to see the miraculous occur in your life. You don't have time to pause, you don't make time to pause. There's so many examples in Scripture where where receiving from God requires you to pause from other items, and this is not the sermon, but every time I've passed it earlier in the first service this morning, when I was reading it earlier this week every time I passed it where it says Jesus said: have the people sit down. I'm thinking about the person who thinks I don't have time to sit down. I came out here for a miracle.

I didn't get one, so I'm going back to work. I came out here for a miracle for my family and I don't have one, so I'm going back to figuring my own life out. But sometimes Jesus is calling you to rest in him before you see the miracle you're looking for. In fact, your biggest Miracle is going to come when you rest in him. It's I.

I want to inspire, encourage any way that I can today. Your busyness doesn't get you into eternity, but resting in Jesus provides for you for all of eternity. Rest in him. And here's what it says. Next, it says there was plenty of grass in that place and they sat down.

Y'all said: like the grass have to do with anything. I don't know why. We say in scholar, in, biblical scholarship, we say there are things that are meaning. Meaning, that's what the author meant and that's what God means through the text. And then we say there are things that are significant.

Those are the things that God gives to us while we're reading a text. It's not necessarily the main meaning of the text, but it is significant. From the text, and when I was reading it, I hit this place where it says there was plenty of grass in that place and it was like like a whirlwind around me. I've been trying to develop my prayer life and I just feel like from the spirit of God came this Revelation. Jesus was not surprised by the 5,000.

How do I know that? He's the one who walked out to the location where there was plenty of grass? You may not have been to the Sea of Galilee. I've had the luxury of being able to go to the Sea of Galilee and it's a very hilly, mountainous region. Not everywhere has plenty of grass.

So the location that they went, having plenty of grass, to me is significant. And if you don't believe me, believe John. The fact that he is writing that little detail on papyrus in the ancient world means that to him it was significant. Here's how I believe it's significant. God has already prepared the provision that he has for you.

Amen, that's right. He has already prepared you for the miracle he's going to perform in your life. He's already prepared the ground for you to walk on it. God is already working. What is that?

Songs say? We sang it today. He's already on the Move. God is already working, working, and what he's inviting you to do is, whether it's come onto the mountain or sit on the plenty of grass he's got for you. He wants you to receive the miracle and eventually participate in that Miracle.

He's he's already working. Isn't it interesting? Chuck Smith in his team. They were doing Ministry. It wasn't like they were ultimately special.

They were very much used by God, but God had already prepared the ground for them to do their Ministry. And here's what I'm believing. I'm believing that out here in Phoenix, God is already preparing the ground for a miracle. Now, the only difference between this feeding of the 5,000 and the one we're going to see is that there's not going to be plenty of grass. I know that's not like, that's not going to happen out here in Phoenix, Arizona, but I do know that the ground is prepared.

You might think: how? How do you know this, Matt? Any y'all seen church, church planting, starting ads? Just raise your hand. If you've seen, you've seen ours, at least come on somebody.

I've had people say there's a lot of churches coming out here and there. There really two ways you can look at that. One way you can look at that is: you can think: H man, these weirdos just woke up one morning, decided they were going to start a church. Why they keep coming out here to Buckeye? That's what I see, a lot of comments, that's what a lot of people say.

The way I'm looking at it is differently, because I'm trying to see things through the perspective of the ground that God is preparing for a miracle that he's going to perform, and I'm seeing all these churches coming out here and I'm becoming friends with, like all of them. It's so amazing. I'm going to have a guy preach here in two weeks who's starting a church down the street. And those churches are happening because, separately from me, other people who are called by God are starting something new in a location where they believe that God is going to cause Revival, and I believe it's going to happen out here in the West Valley- love the East Valley, but it's going to be out here- but I think that Revival is going to be at the level of things that have been seen in history, like that Jesus movement isn't. Isn't the like the environment that we're in right now so similar to the 1960s, with division, with disfunction, with deconstruction?

I think God is going to do something so powerful out here in the West Valley, and he's been preparing the ground for it, and when he has him sit down on Plenty of grass, the ground that he had prepared, he then takes the loaves, gives thanks and distributed it to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish. I want to tell you something about the supernatural work of God. I want you to know that God will provide for your needs, just like he does for the birds of the air, but I also want you to know that he provides for a lot of your wants. Woo, let me be clear with that.

You've been told since you were young that, God will provide what you need, not necessarily what you want, and that is true, I think I'm just learning how to operate with a God who has an unlimited Supply. Anyone ever been to been to dinner with someone who's like, got a lot of money, like super rich anybody? Some of y'all go find some rich friends and go to dinner with them. It's funny because, again, their supply is not unlimited. But if they, they're pretty wealthy, their supply is less limited than mine.

And so I'll go out and my tendency- and this is a social skill for you guys- you should definitely use it. When you go out with somebody else, you know that they're going to be paying, you should look at the menu and then maybe say, hey, what are you getting? What do you like to get here? And they'll tell you what they like to get, and don't get something more expensive than them. It's kind of bad protocol, .

However, I've gone out to eat with some people and they'll look at me. Sometimes they'll say, hey, get whatever you want, it's on me. And I look at that and I'm like yo, that's fun. And so then the menu, is much larger when I recognize that I can get what I want, not just something to eat. And in the same way, with God, many of us look at him like he's limited, like I can't ask for more.

But if he'll do immeasurably more, why can't I keep asking? You can ask for your needs, you can ask for your wants, your hopes, your dreams, your Ambitions. You can even ask for the dumb stuff. Keep asking why? Because God has the capacity to provide you an unlimited Supply in your life and he wants to provide you that provision.

Now, the caveat there is: he doesn't want to provide you something that hurts you. He do want to provide you something that takes you away from him, but in so much as your wants are in line with his calling on your life. God wants to keep doting on you because he loves you. You're the apple of his eye. He wants what's best for you.

And when he said that they ate and were filled, when he says they ate as much as they wanted. I'm just sitting here thinking about what it would look like for us as a church to all together start taking steps of Faith, moving beyond logic, taking, taking regular leaves, getting addicted to the supernatural work of God and continuing to ask him to do more. I'm believing God can not only increase our attendance incrementally. I believe he can bust open floodgates. I believe that God can do something powerful in your life, not just like, not just something incremental in your life.

I believe God can redeem you from addictions and struggles, not just like moderately move you away from them and help you medicate them. I believe that God can do something powerful in your life, and I think the sadness of our church- not as Orbit Church, but the big sea church- the sadness is that many of us lack the faith because we are constrained by Logic that tells us God can't, but he can. God can do more, abundantly more than you can ask or imagine. So we got to start asking, because God is already preparing the thing that he has for you to walk in, and there are some people in here. You need to start walking in faith today, and so I want to give you this very clear opportunity to move away from.

I'm not saying don't be logical, I'm saying move away from it for a second. You know, sometimes you got to change things up. Logic is just one shirt in your closet. Faith is a whole another thing it's more fun to wear too. So I want to encourage you: Embrace faith for a moment.

The Bible says that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved, and so I want to invite everyone in this room to Bow their heads and close their eyes, because somebody is about to see a miracle in their life. So we, together, at this church, we pray-, we pray this prayer out loud for the benefit of those were praying it for the first time. So if you could repeat after me- I'm going to keep it simple- say God, I believe, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Jesus Christ, I believe he died on the cross. I believe he died on the.

And Rose from the grave, from the grave. Forgive me of my sin, prepare meare for my calling and I will follow you. I will for all of my life. It's in Jesus name that we pray and God's people said amen. Can we celebrate?

Those were making the decision of faith today.