Where Else Would You Go?

And we pray these things in Jesus's name, and all God's people said. You may be seated. I like that song, "You Have Called Me Friend." This is my confidence—I don't sing, that's why I stopped doing that a long time ago. Guys, we're going to be in the Bible today, the Book of John. For those of you who've been following along with us the past couple of months, we've been in John chapter 4 for a while.

John 4 · chapter mention

We did a little bit into John chapter 5, but we're skipping ahead to John chapter 6 today. We're going to start in verse 66. It did not click to me until the first service that that could be perceived as interesting—a couple of y'all got it, but that's okay, it's just a number, it's just a number. I'm going to read this for you in a moment, but let me just kind of introduce this series to you. It's really not a series, we just called the month of March "March Madness" because we're really trying to encourage people to take a step or challenge themselves in their faith.

John 5 · chapter mention John 6 · chapter mention

And one of the easiest things that you can do is to show up, whether it's here or if you're out of town at a different church, to in some ways prioritize Jesus simply with your presence at church on Sunday. I think God will speak something to you, and for some of you, maybe during the week is a really difficult time for you, and so Sundays you're only pick-me-up. Well, if you go from one of those a month to five of those in the month of March, it'll make a difference for you. So our heart is to just help you move closer and closer to God. And I always make a joke, I'm like, what else you going to do?

I always ask people—I've had someone at one of my past churches, and even here—they're like, "Ah man, this is too tiring, Sunday mornings, to come to church or to serve at church or whatever." And I'm not mean at all, I get it, life happens, right? But I just, I'm always wondering, just because I'm curious, it's like, well, what else are you going to do on a Sunday morning at 9:00 a.m. Or 10:45 a.m.? If you're real about it, you ain't got a mono yard out here in Phoenix. That's what the guys over in Missouri and Arkansas used to do, they'd always be mowing their yard on Sunday or playing golf.

But you know, that's pretty expensive. So hey, I know you're gonna be sleeping, right? So I'd encourage you, over the next couple of weeks, whether you're here or out of town for spring break, I would strongly encourage you: prioritize Jesus on Sunday mornings. That is not to say you shouldn't open your Bible throughout the week. That's not to say there aren't other ways you can prioritize Jesus in your schedule, but that's the challenge.

Two months ago we did prayer and fasting, and that was really beneficial for people. This month I want to challenge you: prioritize Jesus on Sunday morning. You can do that in three ways—here, out of town, or if you're sick, do it online. But if you're in town and you're not sick, come on, come hang out, right? It'll benefit you.

But without further ado, I'll jump right into our text, and then I'll give you some context for this passage. John 6:66: "From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him." I wanted to start with that because that's interesting. Many of us don't know that there was a time during Jesus's ministry where a significant amount of disciples stopped following him. Verse 67, we find out that the 12 disciples stayed. We can safely assume that there were others there, but we know about the 12.

And Jesus looks at them in a very human moment and he says, "You do not want to leave too, do you?" I see that as one of the most human moments of Jesus. I mean, picture yourself in that position where there have been people who are kind of following you in the right direction, be it the kids in your family, your spouse, or maybe you have a larger group of people outside of your household who are following you, and it seemed like things were going well, but then you say a couple things that you felt like God was leading you into, and then all of a sudden people respond by going a different direction. This is what happened right here. And I love Peter's response: "Simon Peter answered him, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.'"

Today I want to ask you a question, this will be our sermon title—it's a little different than it's phrased in the text, but I think it'll be helpful for you, and I'll break down the message utilizing this question: Where else would you go? Where else would you go? I think that's a helpful question, because often we put things in front of God, but we don't think of the implications of putting those things in front of God. And just because I've been in a habit of kind of telling you the punchline or the end of the message before I preach the whole thing—just because it's more helpful—sometimes the things that you would put before Jesus are temporal, every single one of them, yet the words of Jesus are eternal. Anyone ever been in a bad breakup before?

Just, just you, you couple of you, come on, can we be honest in this place? Anyone ever been in a bad breakup before? Be honest. I know it could have been real bad, could have been moderately bad. I could tell you the story of mine and you think, well, that's fairly normal, that was a good breakup for me.

I don't know what your situation is, but one thing I've noticed about every breakup I've ever seen—I've only had two breakups, both of them were bad, I was sad, you know, that's bad, it's bad for me to be sad—but my second breakup, it wasn't good. But have you noticed, when there's a breakup, there's kind of one person's going in one direction, one goes in another direction, and I've just noticed one tends to be a little bit better than the other. Just say yeah if you're with me on that one. Yeah, like, I mean, the epitome of this is when one person goes in the perfect direction, everything works out for them, the other one just goes terrible, they get it, you know, bad situations, right? And if you're the one who went in the good direction, you get to look at that other person and say, "See, they missed out."

That was me, my senior year of high school.

I was in a relationship with a girl who cannot be named—it was not this one, we're still together, worked out, no bad breakups there. Almost, though, there was one time—yeah, I'm not going to tell. Anyways, almost gave too much information there, they're probably watching this sermon right now, the person I was about to talk about. Anyways, they don't care about this, so I'm just going to talk about—can I talk about everything else? All right, cool, the Lord protected me on that one.

But this girl, it was a serious relationship, about as serious as you can have when you're a senior in high school—you know what I'm talking about, every relationship's serious when you're in high school. So I got into this relationship, and they were going through a hard time—that makes it more serious 'cause I got to be there for them. I was like superhero Matt during the six months that we were dating. I watched baby sister, once in a while babysat, craziness that wasn't my style, but for her I was into it. Anyways, I'll never forget, it was about to be summer after my senior year, and she was going to be moving to another state, and that was sad, but you know, just like all relationships that are doomed, you think you're going to last even if it's long distance.

And so we made that plan, and I don't know if it was my bad personality or something I said, but I remember sitting in front of her house—it was a slope driveway, we would slip down it every time there was like, you know, ice or something like that—but sitting there right in front of the garage where her friends were listening in, and I didn't know it until in the middle of it, she dumped me. It wasn't mutual, she dumped me. See, I'm being honest in this place. All y'all saying y'all's relationships that ended badly were mutual? No, they dumped you.

It's okay. So I got dumped, and I'm sitting there, and I didn't take it very well. Any guys willing to admit that they teared up on one of their breakups? You not willing? I'm willing.

I was like sitting in—I love that girl, I thought we were going to get married—and I'm sitting there and she dumped me, my whole life was flashing before my eyes, and then I heard giggling in the garage from her friends who were saying, "Is he crying?" It was super embarrassing. And then afterwards, I didn't want to end—so I wasn't a creeper, don't get me wrong—but was that her catching up? Our friends, our friends, that's funny. Oh man. Give me one second.

Yeah, so we didn't have Instagram back then, but we did have MySpace and Facebook, and so when she moved, I kind of followed along, and I only downloaded MySpace just to see if she went in a bad direction. I read a book that she gave me just so I could prove that I was the embodiment of the success of that book called Wild at Heart—I'm a real man—but she dumped me, how dare she, she's going to go in the wrong—I was looking for her to go in the wrong direction, and I kept looking, and she ended up dating a guy really quickly, and I'm like, what's wrong with me, what's wrong with me. And then eventually, a guy got a hold of me—I have no clue where she went, I'm just assuming it was the wrong direction, because that's what happens when you break up with me. But I say all that to say this: I think for many of us, very similar to the disciples that left the presence of Jesus during his ministry because he made a hard statement, many of us choose to depart the presence of God. And I want you to know that any moment that you depart the presence of God, anytime where you leave his words in lieu of somebody else's words, in that breakup, you're the one that's going to go in the wrong direction.

It's not going to work out well for you. And what I want you to know is that, man, my heart for this church, and my heart for every individual who sits in a seat, is that you would prioritize Jesus in every part of your life. It is my belief that anything you put before God is an idol. It is something that adds very little value in eternity and keeps you from the thing that will give you peace and purpose and everlasting life. Like, that is what's at stake here.

And when you choose, in any moment—Christian or not, I'm not talking about your eternity for a moment—but when you choose to depart the presence of God, you are choosing something that is of lesser value. Paul tells us he considers all things rubbish in light of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus. And so I want to go back to my question, which is our sermon title: Where else would you go that would offer you what Jesus offers you? This is a logical question that if I were to ask you to stand up here and talk to people about your belief about it, most of you would stand right here and you would boldly proclaim Jesus is better than everything. It's when we walk out of here and live our life that we put so many things before him.

Now, I know pragmatically this is more difficult than it sounds, but I do think we can shift our posture and perspective such to the point where we do start to prioritize Jesus in every part of our life. And what I want to do is I want to give you a couple things that we tend to choose—did I flip it around the wrong way? Yeah, there we go. I've got notes for you here, it's not going to be on the screen, so if you have a notebook, you write it down. I actually wrote it down—sometimes I like to change my study habit just so it feels more fresh, hopefully it's for you, but it was for me this week.

And so I wrote down five things that we tend to choose. First of all, sometimes we choose our career over Christ. Now it's interesting, right, because our careers are very important. Like, we don't get to drive our car if we don't have some sort of career, we don't get to own our house or rent our house without some sort of career, we don't get to provide a roof over our family's heads, we don't get to go do the fun things that we want to do. A career is important—if you agree, say yeah.

Yeah, career is super important. I think that is something to strive for in your life, is to have success in whatever career God leads you into. However, your career is not as valuable as the words of Jesus. Your career is not as valuable as God's calling on your life. And this is something I run into quite often as— A pastor, I really struggle cuz I want to be nice.

I mean, y'all like nice pastors. If a pastor is mean to you, you're probably not coming back to that church. If a pastor holds you accountable to something that he doesn't have the rapport to hold you accountable to, you're like, "Man, bump that dude, I'm going to a different one where I like it." Y'all laughing because it's true. It's, it's true. Huh.

Yet at the same time, God has called me, and I think everyone in this room, to prioritize Jesus above and beyond our careers. Yet the number, number one thing I hear from people about their relationship with God is, "I want to, but work." I'm not just talking about attendance here, because I get it, your relationship with God goes beyond Sunday morning. But if you use it in one area, I've noticed you tend to use it in various areas. Goodness, I use that excuse. There are times where I'm busy doing my job and God wants me to be present and worshiping.

Now, like, I'm just being vulnerable with you right here. This is my career. It is easy for me to choose my career over the calling of God. It's called focusing on certain metrics rather than focusing on what God has given me to deliver. That can happen for me, and it happens for most of us in this room, where we choose our career over Jesus.

But your career is not as valuable as Jesus. I wrote down here that when we focus on our careers to the neglect of our relationship with God, it tends to lead to burnout, stress, and ultimately an emptiness. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to who have worked for an employer for 10, 20, 30, even 40 years, but then, because of the changes in technology and the environment economically, there's a layoff that ensues, and then the thing that they had spent their life at, career, goes away in one moment. Why? Because your career, while important, is temporary.

And if you invest all of your time and energy, even stress yourself out, in the temporary, ultimately you're going to feel unfulfilled and empty. So I want to encourage you, prioritize Jesus over your work. Now you might be thinking, "Matt's telling me my boss told me I had to be at work, and Matt's telling me that I need to be focused on Jesus, " whatever that might mean, whether it's coming to church, whether it's reading my Bible, whether it's getting up in the morning to do it. "So I'm going to adjust my work schedule." No, not saying to be that wooden and formulaic with the way that you prioritize Jesus. What I'm saying is right here, if you can start thinking about regularly prioritizing Jesus, then you and God are going to come up with a solution that benefits you.

Isn't that, is that funny, right? Like, we try to make it so simple. It doesn't have to be simple, it can be like super complicated. What matters to God is that you're looking at Him and seeking, "You first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, " trusting that He's going to add to you the wisdom necessary to make the right decision down the road. So when we choose this day to serve God over our career, success, money, employer, then He's going to give us a pathway over time to get where He, and we, actually want to be.

Man, I, I want to help you, and I didn't use this illustration when I was in the first service, because I, I've used it before, and then my wife convicted me. She said, "You know, repetition is not bad, and truth is helpful." And so I remember when I was working in public accounting, it was around this season, and I had been asked to go to a Super Bowl party. We had to travel out that morning, and I would have had to skip Sunday morning. Well, I was leading worship that morning, and I had to risk rapport with my supervisor in order to tell him no. I actually lead worship on Sundays.

I mean, he looked at me with kind of a scoff, and, and that was hard. I didn't want to make him unhappy. I kind of wanted to vibe with him because he's going to get me some good position down the road. At the same time, I had God-driven commitments in my life already, and I chose them. And what's interesting is choosing one pathway led me to where I'm much more joyful than I was in accounting.

No offense if you're an accountant, this, it wasn't me, like, I count tips on my hands, so it just wasn't, was in my career. And for you it's the same thing. I'm not saying be irresponsible, in fact I'm saying the opposite, I'm saying be excellent, because when you're excellent in the workplace while prioritizing Jesus, it's going to unlock doors for you that you didn't know could be unlocked. When you choose to prioritize Jesus, it will not return void. But many people choose their careers over Christ, and they end up frustrated and empty, because when Christ is out of the equation, you're frustrated and empty.

Number two, you could choose your family and friends over your faith. This is a tough one for me because I love my kids, I love my wife, I love y'all, I love my extended family. And at the same time, my family, no matter how close I am to them, is temporal in the grand scheme of things. Jesus and His words are eternal. They are greater than even the most valuable things here in this world.

And I am not at all saying to decline to spend time with your family when you need to. I'm saying prioritize Jesus with regard to your family. And again, ah, it's not so simple, it's not so simple, because there's going to be times where I'm focused on doing something within my calling that God has given me, and now I've got to shift focus because I've also got an equal, and sometimes separate, calling to be a husband and a father. So I'm always asking the question, "God, how do you want me to appropriate my time today?" Because I want to prioritize you with my time. And I say I always do that, I don't always do that, I struggle so much, but it is my posture to try.

And all I'm asking for you to do today is not to be perfect in your application of this message. My request to you is to shift your posture so that you would start trying to put Jesus first in every aspect of your life, because ultimately even family is temporal, it's temporary. And if you put all of your eggs into that basket, you're going to get to a certain point in life, or if not life, eternity, and figure out that there was a dynamic connection with God you could have had. Let me give you an example. You might be investing so much time into your kids, you should, hey guys, I just want you to, your kids are like the most important calling in your life.

Like, if God gave you these kids, your job is to help them become who God's called them to be. That is a huge responsibility, and it is so important. But God didn't call you to be codependent with your kids, and that's not good for your kids. Like, the kids didn't sign up to be your savior. It is important for us to love and develop our kids, but then there's going to be a day where they grow up, turn 18, and get out of the house.

And then you're going to be like, "Oh, what now?" Because if you invest all your time into that and energy and focus, then you're missing out on a dynamic relationship with God, all the while probably not being the best that you could be for your family. It's interesting how we think the best thing for our family is to not start with God, but actually the best thing for you and your family is to start with God. And it's going to be weird at first, because if they're like 13 or 15 years old, your kids, and then you choose to put Jesus at the center, they're going to look at you like, "What about the other 15 years? This is different, I don't like that." Y'all know what I'm talking about if you got teenagers and you haven't been going to church. But you know what, you're trusting that even in this time of tension, prioritizing Jesus creates a pathway for you to ultimately have spiritual success.

And guess what, when your kids are old, they're going to see what God did in you. It's going to take time, it's not easy. I was telling my small group this week that the, the difficulty of sin is it introduces complexity into our lives that make us think that God caused a problem, when in reality it was us who lived a lifestyle that presented a problem that now God is trying to redeem in the name of Jesus. I don't know if that even made sense, but it sounded good, right? Okay, hope so.

Sometimes I say things and I'm like, "I hope this sounds good."

You could choose your family and friends over your faith. You could choose your hobbies over Him. Now your hobbies are not just, y, he, I hear it, it's cool, ADHD kicking in. Your hobbies are not just the thing that you do outside of the home. Sometimes your hobbies, the new hobby that everyone has is, "I ain't, I don't do anything during the week." I ask people this all the time because I'm trying to make conversation, to slowly but surely eventually get to the place where I can invite him to church, but I'm, I'm tactful with it, you know what I'm saying.

So I'm like, "Hey, what do you do outside the home? What do you do for a living? What do you do for fun?" And they're all like, "Oh man, so busy, nothing." And when they say nothing, you know what I mean? If they say nothing, you know what I know that means? Netflix.

Yeah, that's what it means. Nothing means Netflix. It means, it means, "I feel busy, so I go home and I binge on Netflix." And so regardless of whether it's golf outside the home or whether it's something like Netflix inside the home, what those things are, they're not bad things, they're things that make you more comfortable doing a lesser thing. Does that make sense? So what Netflix and binging does for me is it lures me into a place where I feel a sense of comfort, I'm relaxed, I'm chilling at the house, I'm not stressed out about the things of life.

It's not like it's solving the things of life, it's just helping me avoid the things of life. And so I feel comforted, but that's not the source of all comfort. That's Christ Jesus. When Paul talks about it, he says the God of all comfort is the one who can comfort you. And so if you're choosing hobbies that make you feel, a sense of comfort, yet you miss out on a relationship with Jesus, you will never have true, everlasting comfort.

In fact, if you're declining regularly to engage with Him, then you're missing out on the Spirit, which is what the Bible says in John, actually, a comforter. And you could choose your hobbies over Jesus, but I want to encourage you to, choose Jesus first and allow Him to help direct and dictate what you do for entertainment. That's an interesting one, right? Because entertainment can be a bunch of things, different for each person, but it is us choosing to spend our time and energy doing something that we think will add value. And I just want you to know, like, Jesus adds the utmost value to your life.

Number four, you could choose, and this was an interesting one, you can choose religion over a relationship with Jesus. You can choose religion over a relationship with Jesus. Now, in order to communicate this point, I want to define what I mean by religion. Religion is a set of rules, rituals, or rigidity that pushes you in a direction of activity. Let me say that differently.

It is you trying to put together a set of characteristics or variables that enable you to get to the place where ultimately you are in heaven or connected to God. You're like the man who comes to Jesus and says, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" And Jesus says, "Have you kept the commandments?" And he's like, "Yeah, kept them since I was young." And then He says, "Go sell all that you have and come follow me." But the man was rich, so he didn't come follow Jesus, he went away sad, right? We're, we're trying to figure out what is the list of things that I need to do in order to be good with God. Now the problem with that definition, and religion in general, is that it keeps you from something greater. That is a dynamic relationship with Jesus.

That's what He wants with you. He wants to engage with you, He wants to interact with you, He wants a relationship with you. And what we're looking for is something so simple, we want to reduce the complexity and just say, "Give me the list of things I got to do, Lord." That's, that's religion. That's you coming up with a list of things. And, you know, I get scared sometimes.

Have any of you heard of our Discipleship Pathways? We call them the 5Gs. Y'all heard of those? We say, in general, the way you come close to God, you can break apart into five areas: gathering, growing, grouping up with people, God's people, giving, and going. We say those are some of the discipleship pathways.

And I want to be clear, if you limit yourself to gathering, growing, grouping, giving, going, and don't go beyond that, that's a, that's a problem. We give those because we want to give you a template that is helpful Point, point. But what we do in religion is we take this helpful starting point, or a list of things that you can do in order to connect with God, and say, "This is what you have to do." But a relationship isn't like that, is it? If I were to come to you and ask you about your relationship with your kids, or your best friend, or your spouse, are you going to give me a list of things? No, you're going to tell me the story of your relationship.

Now, there's going to be a list of things I need to keep in mind if I'm going to develop a relationship with that person. It's like, they don't like this, they do like this, it's probably good if 80% of the time you try to do what they like to do, otherwise that relationship is going to be sour, right? That's helpful, but it's not like the holistic viewpoint of it. And so think of your relationship with God like an actual relationship, where it's not just a subset of rules and rigidity, or this formulaic approach to knowing God. It's having a conversation with God.

It's opening up his word and saying, "God, teach me, speak to me." And you know what he'll do? He'll give you the list, but he'll also give you unique and fresh insights every morning if you read and connect with him. He wants a relationship. But many of us settle for religious principles. Number four, or number five, you could even choose yourself over God.

And I ought to be careful, because I think it's important for you to care about yourself. Yet when we trust in God and what he did through his son Jesus on the cross, we believe what Paul says in Romans chapter 12. He says, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, " and he says, "Offer your bodies therefore as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God." But many of us, we choose self. I tend to do that, like, if you're honest with yourself, when you wake up in the morning your first thought is about what affects you, even if it impacts somebody else. Let me say that again, because I need that to stick with you.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

We like — selfishness isn't not doing good things for other people. Selfishness is thinking first about yourself. And even with my kids, I so often wake up and I think, "Okay, how can I parent my kids in such a way that feels right to me but also helps them?" I'm just being honest with you. Like, I want to be less selfish. I want God to continue to redeem me in the name of Jesus, such that I'm a completely selfless parent.

But I struggle with self. I think about how things impact me rather than how God can use me to impact others. And that is a symptom of me choosing myself over Jesus. Because when I listen to his words regularly, you know what that does? It regularly puts me in a position where I'm thinking about him and about others.

It's this continued listening to the eternal words of Christ that gets me to the place where I'm not as self-focused. And my encouragement to each of you: you can look at any of these five areas, because they apply to you, they apply to me, they applied to the people in this text who left Jesus when he had said something hard. I mean, you don't think about the people — it's like, why'd they leave when he said something hard? Well, they left because they had family that they needed to focus on, and this was getting a little bit too much. They left because they had ambitions for their career that they wanted to get to, and this didn't look like a pathway to get there.

He held the words of eternal life, but that didn't get me a good job. And you could go down the list, but being a follower of Christ is choosing his words regardless of what that result might look like in my life. It's a difficult thing, but it's such a valuable thing. And this is where we have to get in our faith — we have to get desperate. Anyone in this room desperate?

I'm trying to be more desperate in my relationship with God, where I recognize that there isn't anywhere else where I would glean anything half as beneficial as the words of Jesus. And it's funny, because in all of these areas, simply choosing Jesus makes me better. I'm a better employee — well, now I'm the boss, I'm the employer, I guess I'm employed of Jesus, like — anyways, like, I'm better because of how Jesus calls me to live. I'm a better father and husband because of how Jesus calls me to live. I'm better at my hobbies because I like excellence, because I believe Jesus cared about excellence — otherwise God wouldn't have robed himself in flesh and sympathized with our weaknesses in the way that he did.

He cares about how he is presented. And since Jesus cares about excellence, guess what? I'm trying to do well in anything that I do, whether eating or drinking, I want to do it to the glory of God. I want a dynamic relationship with Jesus, and that started when I started to hear how the words of Christ impacted my spirit. And I'm a little less selfish when I meditate day and night on the words of God, the eternal words of God.

I want to be like Moses, who, when he's interacting with God on the mountain right after the golden calf was fashioned by Aaron and the Israelites, God's about to say, "I'll send — I'll send another messenger with you guys, I'm not going to go with you guys into this land that I promised you." And Moses says this, he says, "If you don't go with us, we're not going anywhere." Or like the psalmist who says, "Whom have I but you, oh Lord." You got Peter here, you've got Paul, constantly talking about how a relationship and connection with him, rooted in the grace that we see in Jesus's death on the cross, is sufficient. You might not have any of these things, you might have all of these things, but it is his grace and love for you that gives you eternity with God and a peace that surpasses all understanding. And so there's a certain group in this room, you've trusted in Jesus, but you need to keep prioritizing him. The epidemic in the church isn't necessarily that people don't hear the message, it's that it doesn't take root in their soul, and they keep putting things before him. But it's like, well, where else you gonna go?

Well, you get this kind of stuff — eternal stuff. Short answer is nowhere. So why would you choose somewhere else? This is where the words of eternal life come from. Peter gets it.

I love that passage. And then there's another group of people in this room. You're hearing this pastor with limited rapport talk to you about your eternity, and you're like, "I don't know about all of this." What I want to tell you is my words are not eternal, but God's word is. Jesus holds the word of everlasting life, everlasting peace, everlasting connection with God, everlasting purpose, meaning. God is the one who holds those.

His son Jesus died on the cross so that you might have access to those words in perpetuity, and you've got a physical word to be able to open up and read them, and every day they can inspire you to greatness in your connection with God, and it'll make you better in all of the things that you've been choosing before him. And today, this day, you can choose to put Jesus at the center of your life and start that process that we call sanctification, whereby God makes you holy. You could do that today. And so if everyone would bow their heads and close their eyes — for those of you who have already confessed Jesus as Lord, I would encourage you, keep reorienting yourself to Jesus, who should be your focus. And those of you who have never trusted in Jesus, today I want you to consider praying a prayer.

And the way we do that here is we do it out loud. But both those who have trusted in Jesus and those who are doing so for the first time, we do it out loud for the benefit of those who have never done it before. And at the end of that, I want to give you an opportunity to let us know about the decision you've made to put Jesus at the center of your life. So let's start. Y'all repeat after me.

Say: "God, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I believe he died on the cross, rose from the grave. I believe that he holds — believe — the words of everlasting life. God, forgive me of my sin, connect me to you, and I will follow you for the rest of my life. Today is my new beginning."

Heads bowed, eyes closed.

I want to give you an opportunity, if you prayed that for the first time, to let me know about it. So on the count of three, if you would just shoot your hand up really quickly, I'll take note and try to connect with you throughout the week. One, two, three. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Man, that's exciting. Can we celebrate those who just made that decision?