"Here's Hoping" Pt.3

Hi, this is John Ozanting, lead pastor of Evolved Church, and this is the Evolve Church Podcast.

Thanks so much for tuning in.

We hope that you find today's message encouraging and full of hope for wherever you're at.

Well, we've been on a series uh for the last two Sundays called Here's Hopin'.

Everybody say, Here's Hopin'.

In a world that uh needs hope, in a world that for a lot of people feels hopeless, in a culture in a society that uh that rests in dark spaces under the weight of anxiety and mental health and suicide.

I think it's safe to say that we could probably all agree that the world needs a little bit more hope.

And not just like here's hope and kind of hope, or I hope this works, kind of hope, but a confident hope.

A hope that we can build on, a hope that we can rest in, a hope that we can trust.

And and we just have circled back unashamedly to saying hope has a name, and his name is Jesus.

And and that through Christ, um we can discover what it means to have hope.

And so we're doing a four-part series called Here's Hoping.

Week one um we defined hope as this hope is resting in the truth that you have been called flawless.

All the women were like, Yes.

Jesus made you that way, not your makeup.

Uh Jesus made you flawless, and Jesus put you in right standing with God.

We are at peace with God.

That was week one.

And if you uh would like to hear that message, you can listen to our audio podcast.

Um unfortunately, week two didn't make it onto the podcast.

The recorded file was corrupted, and we're still trying to figure out how to get it back.

A few of you have asked, um, so we're gonna keep working on that.

But last week we talked about how hope is our peace.

It's a peace that no moment, no circumstance, no diagnosis, no thought, no event, no word can ever shatter.

The kind of peace that nothing can strip away.

And so hope so far has been our understanding that because of Jesus, we're at peace with God, we're in right standing with God, we're flawless.

But also because of hope, we can walk in a continual peace.

And we talked last week about what that looks like and feels like and sounds like, and today, I want to talk about how hope is an unfettered and complete and whole and perfect relationship with God the Father.

That's what hope is.

Hope is actually a relationship with a very real God, but a relationship that's complete, a relationship that's whole, a relationship that is perfect, and a relationship that has nothing getting in the way.

It's unfettered.

We've built this series on a part of a book in the Bible, a book called Romans, and in its fifth chapter, verses one through eleven is what we've been kind of teaching off of.

And I want to reread a bit of Romans 5, 1 through 11, uh, as we kick into week three today.

And uh, I feel like before I teach, that I just want to pray.

Because I feel right now that the um the Netherlands women's soccer team needs a little bit of hope.

And I just could we just agree together in prayer before I carry on with the message, we'll just pray for my orange.

Is that okay?

Are there any other Dutch people in the room?

Yeah, a couple of you.

Thank you, thank you.

Anyone else just cheering for the Netherlands women's soccer team?

All right, a few of you.

Uh, if you're cheering for the U.S., just sit there quietly with your mouth closed, please.

Um, no, I'm just messing.

But uh, God, thank you so much that because of Jesus we have hope, including the women's soccer team.

And uh God, we just invite your spirit uh and your word, your presence here today to speak to us.

God, for those of us that are here in the room that need hope today.

Just this reminder already that that because of Jesus, um we have hope.

We're at peace with you.

Our relationship with you is in good standing.

But not just that, it's perfect, it's whole, and it's complete.

God, as we learn, as we grow together today, we just ask that you would seal something deep inside of our hearts.

We look to you, we trust you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Romans 5, starting at verse 1 in the Passion Translation, our faith in Jesus transfers God's righteousness to us.

And he now declares us flawless in his eyes.

This means we can now enjoy true and lasting peace with God, all because of what our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, has done for us.

Listen to verse 2.

Our faith guarantees us permanent access into this marvelous kindness that has given us a perfect relationship with God.

It's our faith that guarantees us a permanent, not a temporary, not a seasonal, not occasional, but a permanent access to this marvelous kindness, this perfect relationship with God.

What incredible joy bursts forth within us as we keep on celebrating our hope of experiencing God's glory.

Verse 3, but that's not all.

Even in times of trouble, we have a joyful confidence, knowing that our pressures will develop within us, patient endurance, and patient endurance refines our character, and proven character leads us right back to hope.

Verse 5, I love it.

This hope is not a disappointing fantasy.

Come on, this hope is real, it's not a disappointing fantasy because we can now experience the endless love of God cascading into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

For when the time was right, the anointed one came and died to demonstrate his love for sinners who were entirely helpless, weak, and powerless to save themselves.

Now, who of us would dare to die for the sake of a wicked person?

We can all understand if someone was willing to die for a truly noble person, that makes sense.

But Christ Jesus proved God's passionate love for us by dying in our place while we were still lost and still ungodly.

And there's still so much more of his unfailing love for us.

For through the blood of Jesus, we've heard the powerful declaration, you are now righteous in my sight.

And because of the sacrifice of Jesus, you will never experience the wrath of God.

Never.

And lastly, verse 10, this is kind of what I want to lean into today, 10 and 11.

So if while we were still still enemies, God fully reconciled us or put us in right standing, right relationship with himself through the death of his son, then something greater than friendship is ours.

Now that we are at peace with God, and because we share in his resurrection life, how much more will we be rescued from sin's dominion?

And even more than that, we overflow with triumphant joy in our new relationship of living in harmony with God, all because of Jesus Christ.

Romans 5, 1 through 11.

Hope today is an unfettered, complete, whole and perfect relationship with God the Father.

In theory, this sounds maybe almost too good to be true.

I think if I were to take a poll in the room, one-on-one, privately, and say, Do you desire a meaningful and whole and perfect relationship with the God of the heavens and the earth?

Is that something you want?

Is that something you might respond with, here's hoping?

I hope so.

I want a great relationship with God.

But we don't have any other relationships that are unfettered, complete, whole, and perfect that we can compare that one to.

Because all of our relationships here on earth are flawed.

Except for my marriage to Nicole.

She's perfect.

Right?

But no, I'm just our relationships one to another, they're not entirely whole.

They're not perfect, they're not complete, they're not unfettered.

There's stuff between us and other people.

And so our natural minds, coupled with years and years and years of religion and bad teaching, and our very own failures, all of those things try and convince us that somehow, when it comes to us and God, just like there's stuff here that between us and God, it's not as good as we hope it would be.

Our life circumstance, the things we've worked through, our own disappointments, how we've let ourselves down, all of that piles up to say, well, maybe it's true that God, in terms of relationship, is good with others, but between me and God, maybe it's not so good.

Well, we have no real and confident hope because we don't truly believe that our relationship with God, because of Jesus, is fully and entirely unfettered, complete, whole, and perfect.

Maybe we're without hope today because we don't actually believe that between me and God it's all good.

Maybe that's why we're without hope today.

Have you ever been so incredibly filthy, dirty that you forgot what it was like to be clean?

In uh 2011, we built a new home and uh it required some extensive landscaping.

And I spent a day laying sod.

Has anybody here ever laid sod before?

It's actually one of my favorite manual tasks.

I love it because it's so like it's so satisfying.

It's like instant gratification overload, right?

In a second, you've got dirt, but within two seconds, as you unroll that first piece, you're like, ooh, I own a lawn, right?

And then it's like Lego, right?

You just have to line up your seams and stay, you know, um, what's the word I'm looking for?

Like stagger, stagger your seams and and just start rolling, baby, right?

Get that hose on there, and boom, before you know it, you've got grass.

But it was it was a rainy day and it was a windy day, and and and the wind was whipping hard like only it can in Winnipeg, where we were living at the time.

And I spent the day laying sod, and when I was done, I was filthy.

I had dirt in places I didn't even know dirt could get to.

And uh as I was preparing for this, it made me think of this guy.

Have you ever heard of um his name is Amu Haji, the world's dirtiest man?

He's a real guy, he's 80 years old, but he hasn't taken a bath in over 60 years.

He exists on the planet.

But that's how I felt when I was done laying sad.

I um on Thursday, I went through like my Facebook.

I was I was sure I'd posted a photo of just how dirty I was, and I went back through like nine years of photographs trying to find them.

I couldn't find it.

But so then I found this guy, and I'm like, that's how I felt.

That's exactly how I felt.

I felt like this guy.

Look him up, Amu Haji, the world's dirtiest man.

How would you like that as your claim to fame, right?

I arrived, I did it, I'm the world's dirtiest man.

Well, I tell you, the day that I laid sun in that backyard, when I very carefully walked through the uh foyer up the stairs to our bedroom, and uh, you know, I was trying not to just shake at all because I was so filthy I didn't want to get dirt all over the floors that I had labored so hard to clean and vacuum.

I knew she'd say that.

She's good.

And uh so you know, I as a general rule, I shower on a regular basis, but some showers you just remember more than others.

That's a shower in my history that I will never forget.

That that shower that day after feeling so incredibly filthy, rinsing off hours of hard work, my muscles were sore, I had dirt under every single fingernail.

Matter of fact, it was everywhere, it was just everywhere, in my ears, up my nose.

This is disgusting, but I remember like blowing my nose and it just being dirt.

Like that's just disgusting.

But that shower wiped it all away.

Here's the deal.

I remember being in grade 11 and deciding to be all in for Jesus.

I remember when I got baptized, and I remember feeling like on top of the world.

I remember feeling so clean spiritually.

I remember this like this lightness and this like I had no care, no weight.

The things I'd done wrong in my past, none of that mattered.

I just felt so clean as I as I stepped into the fullness of my own relationship with God.

But does that feeling, and maybe you can relate to that, if you're in the room here and at some point in your story you made a deser decision to trust and follow Jesus with your whole life, maybe you remember a feeling of just like being clean.

The Bible talks about it.

There's a great verse in Acts, actually, Acts 3, verse 19, and now you must repent and turn back to God so that your sins will be removed, and so that times of refreshing will stream from the Lord's presence.

Acts 3:19

I love that.

When when we give our life to Jesus, when we when we're all in, when we make a decision to trust and follow Him with every part of our life, it's like streams of refreshing just kind of covering us.

But that feeling, does it last?

Does it always last?

And I remember it wasn't, it wasn't a short time later in grade 11 that I did something that I regretted.

I messed up, made a mistake.

And it's incredible to me how one slight error can convince me that somehow between me and God it's not as good as it used to be.

Then you compound that with years and years and seasons of error and going off and doing my own thing and not living up to the life that God laid out for me clearly, and just walking into decisions that are less than holy or less than obedient to God's best, and and the weight of that can consume and leave me and maybe leave you feeling heavy, feeling dirty, feeling like we need a good spiritual shower.

Is there a way to stay in that sweet spot?

Is there a way to stay in the continual hope and reminder that because of Jesus, regardless, that between me and God, we're good.

Some people pride themselves on living a life that that looks holy on the outside, but they're wrestling with something internal.

And other people are just they they they wear their life on their sleeve and they don't care who knows, and they've got people holding them accountable.

But I still find that all of us can fall victim to the lie that our relationship with God is somehow tainted because of the things we think, say, and do.

And it's just not true.

I want hope today to be a reminder that because of Jesus, our relationship with God is actually complete.

It's whole, it's perfect.

There's nothing in the way.

Some people think that they can find that feeling by maybe regularly rededicating their life to Jesus.

They get out to every revival service they can, sit under every prophet that they can, go to every service worship experience that they possibly can because they think somehow that being in a space like this is what helps them feel close to God.

To stay clean in our relationship with God is so important that we actually live lives that are devoted to that relationship.

Not just pursue experiences with other people, but to live a life that looks like devotion to that relationship.

Being devoted to your relationship with God takes consideration.

If hope is an unfettered, complete, whole, and perfect relationship with God the Father, then how do we build that relationship?

How do we build it?

How do we maintain it?

How do we grow it?

How do we stay in that place of believing that our hope finds us in right standing with God?

As I was preparing, I couldn't help but think of Olivia Newton-John in the film adaptation of Greece singing, hopelessly devoted to you.

You know, I'm just a fool who's willing to sit around and wait for you, but baby, can't you see there's nothing else for me to do?

I'm hopelessly devoted to you.

Come on, right?

You're all gonna go home and watch Greece today.

What does it mean to be devoted?

To be devoted, we think about it in romantic terms.

I'm so devoted to him, I'm so devoted to her, right?

And today, collectively, as a family, as a community, let's I'm so devoted to him.

I'm so devoted to God.

To be devoted, it means to be attached, to be loyal, to be affectionate, to be dedicated, to be committed, to be faithful, to be constant.

You know that God wants you to be devoted to him?

There's this ongoing principle in our spiritual journey that we just so and we've seen this at work in our own life over the seasons, that God is such a gentleman.

He's just like always patient, standing at the door, knocking.

Right?

Just I'll wait.

When you're ready, lean in and I'll be right there.

But God wants us to live devoted to him with a pursuit and an understanding and a dedication to our relationship with him.

Serving God in the time of God, the Jewish people, like when we read the first half of the Christian Bible, the Old Testament, and the story of the Jewish people and their understanding of what it meant to follow God, man, that had so much to do with staying clean.

And I I don't know if if you've ever read any of the books in the Old Testament, like Leviticus or Numbers or Deuteronomy, but it paints a pretty clear picture of what was involved, if you were a Jewish person, in trying to keep yourself clean in your relationship with God.

Um, as an example in the book of Numbers, chapter 19, here's what it says.

Numbers 19 · chapter mention

And a man who is clean shall collect the ashes of the heifer and put them outside the camp in a clean place, and they shall be kept for the congregation of the Israelites for the water for impurity.

It's a sin offering.

And he who gathers gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes, and then he'll be unclean until the evening.

This shall be to the Israelites and to the stranger who sojourns among them a perpetual statute.

He who touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean for seven days.

He shall purify himself with the water for impurity, made with the ashes of the burned heifer on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean.

But if he does not purify himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean.

That's just a tiny little section of what we nowadays call the law, the old agreement, the old covenant.

I am so glad there's a new agreement.

I am so glad there's a new covenant.

Romans 5, verse 10 and 11.

Romans 5:10

So if while we were still enemies, God fully reconciled us to himself through the death of his son, then something greater than friendship is ours.

Now that we are at peace with God and because we share in his resurrection life, how much more will we be rescued from sin's dominion?

Is that because I keep a set of rules and agreements in check every day?

No.

Is that because I'm a good person and I volunteer at a shelter once a week?

No.

Is that because I go to church on Sunday?

No, that's not even a thing.

We're not meant to go to church.

We're meant to live church and be church.

Is it because I have this moral code and every day I'm like, yep, yep, yep, yep, maybe, yep, yep.

Every day.

No.

It's simply because Jesus laid down his life as a sacrifice for us, and we put in right standing with God.

Nothing to do with anything you could say, think, or possibly drum up on your own, but all because of Jesus.

Even more than that, we overflow with triumphant joy in our new relationship of living in harmony with God, all because of me being good enough.

No, all because of Jesus Christ.

Hope is an unfettered, complete, whole, and perfect relationship with God the Father.

You know, God has made it easy for us to have a great relationship with Him and then to keep that relationship growing healthy and strong.

Wherever you're at in your journey with God, I just sense that hope for you today, in this season, is gonna grow because of something on the inside of you today that remembers that between you and God, it's good.

I actually sense in the room here today that for some of you, you're just you're standing in what God did through Jesus.

You're standing in that place right now for somebody else.

And that hope for you today is the reminder that for whatever whoever that person is, maybe a spouse or a parent or a relative or a coworker or a friend or a daughter or a son, but there's hope rising up in you that for that person as well.

Maybe they're not even in the room today, but for that person, their relationship with God is actually complete and whole when they begin to understand what Jesus did.

I want to remind all of us today in two simple things that we can all think through and add in to help us remember that our relationship with God is good.

Two things and then I'm done.

Number one, let's allow God to use his own words to speak with us.

Let's allow God to use his own words to speak with us.

There's so many things, so many voices, so much noise vying for our attention.

But how do we allow the voice of God to speak with us?

Do we even think about it?

Psalm 119, 105, truths a shining light, guides me in my choices and decisions.

The revelation, God, of your word makes my pathway clear.

Other translations of that verse say that God's word is like a lamp to my feet or a light to my path.

You know the cool thing about God's voice speaking with us is it's been written down.

Sweet.

Have you ever forgotten something?

Have you ever forgotten something?

What do we do when we're like preparing for uh an event or a vacation or an experience?

What do we do so that we don't forget things?

We make a list, we check it twice, we write it down.

I actually love that God was the originator of that concept.

He's like, I value my relationship with you so much that I'm gonna write it all down.

Everything I believe to be true about you.

This old agreement, how it used to be, but how I flipped that on its head and I ratified it and I made it brand new with my own son, who paid a price that you could never pay because I love you so much, and I write it all down.

I write down my sense and my heart and my best plans and strategies for you, and an understanding of what it means to belong to Christian community and to walk in love and to follow the path of Jesus.

I wrote it all down so you don't have to miss a step.

Allow God to use his own words to speak with you.

1 Peter 2, 1 and 3.

So abandon every form of evil, abandon every form of deceit and hypocrisy, abandon feelings of jealousy and slander, and in the same way that nursing infants cry for milk, you must intensely crave the spiritual milk of God's word.

Come on.

For this milk will cause you to grow into maturity, fully nourished and strong for life, especially now that you've had a taste of the goodness of the Lord Jehovah and have experienced his kindness.

I bring it back to grade 11 and that decision to be all in and how that made me feel.

A craving to hear from God and allow his words to speak to me is what helps me continue to foster the confidence of that relationship.

Are you allowing time in your life to let God's word speak to you?

Not as I have to.

Right?

Some of us that have been following Jesus a long time, we grew up in homes where we maybe read our daily bread at the dinner table or some other devotion book.

And I'm not saying that's bad.

You know, out of rote religion, out of just an experience, out of a tradition, we read something every day.

And we actually feel better for having read it.

But do we allow those written words to actually transform us?

Do we allow those written words to speak to our hearts and to speak to our minds and to speak to our situations and to give us hope and remind us that between us and God, it's all good.

Allow God to use his own words to speak with you.

You might do that by gathering together with a church family, by having a quiet time, by reading your Bible, or listening to a Bible, or reading a devotional book, or listening to a podcast, or having conversations with other Jesus followers, or all of the above.

However, you do it, do it.

Out of relationship, out of craving, out of a necessity to stay in the pocket of hope, allow God to speak to you.

Number two, use your own words to speak with God.

Use your own words to speak with God.

Ephesians 6 says this: be prepared.

You're up against far more than you can handle on your own.

Take all the help you can get, every weapon that God has issued, so that when it's all over, but the shouting, you'll still be on your feet.

Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, these are more than words.

Learn how to apply them.

You'll need them throughout your life.

God's word is an indispensable weapon.

In the same way, prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare.

Pray hard.

Pray long.

Pray for your brothers and sisters.

Keep your eyes open.

Wait, what?

I don't have to close my eyes when I pray.

No, keep your eyes open.

Keep each other's spirits up.

I keep my eyes open so I don't fall asleep when I pray.

Keep your eyes open.

Keep each other's spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops out.

Pray long, pray hard, pray in the same way that we allow God to speak to us as a weapon for what we're fighting with.

Speak to Him.

Matthew 6, 5 and 8.

Whenever you pray, be sincere and not like the pretenders who love the attention they receive while praying before others in meetings and on street corners.

Yeah, I gotta I gotta pause here for one second.

I know a lot of people that are like, I I don't pray.

I'm not good at it, I don't know how to do it.

And besides, do you yeah?

Sorry.

Do you have like a family gathering and like who's gonna pray?

Who gets picked?

It's usually like an extrovert who's really good with English, right?

It's it's just an extrovert who's good with vocabulary.

That's usually it.

I actually love when our kids pray.

And I actually love helping my kids shape their prayers.

It does, it's not about performance, it's not about verbiage and spiritual language, it's just about heart connection with father in relationship.

That's all it's about.

Goes on to say, believe me, those people that do that, they've already received in full their reward.

But whenever you pray, go into your innermost chamber, be alone with God the Father.

Pray to him in secret.

And your father who sees all you do will reward you openly.

When you pray, there's no need to repeat empty phrases.

Praying like those who don't know God, for they expect God to hear them because of their many words.

There's no need to imitate them since your father already knows what you need before you even ask him.

Do you have a prayer life?

Do you have a prayer habit?

Here's what I want to ask you today.

Have you ever been really, really angry and expressed it verbally?

Have you ever been really, really hurt and somehow managed to put that into words?

Maybe through tears and exhaustion, but so hurt that you could put that into words?

Have you ever been so broken that all you could mutter was a few raw moments of sadness and heartache?

Have you ever been so pumped that you screamed and blubbered and reveled and bubbled because you were so excited about something?

You just so pumped right now.

If you said yes to any of those things, you are qualified to pray well.

And I actually think it's our own misunderstanding of relationship with God that's good and perfect and complete and whole and unfettered.

It's our misunderstanding that somehow God's up there and we're down here, and so we have to be like, dearest Father, who art somewhere in heaven, right?

We we think we have to get weird when we talk to God, and somehow it's not about relationship.

On the same hand, there are some of us who follow Jesus that the only time we go to God in prayer is because we need something.

We we trust that God loves us and wants good things for us, but every time we go to God, I say, dear God, and then we ask.

We've got a list of things we want.

Let me tell you.

If in my marriage to Nicole, the only time I I spoke with my wife is because I needed something from her, what kind of marriage would we have?

Not a very good one.

Let me feel let me let me answer that for you.

Not a very good, not a very good one.

The only time I was like, hey, babe, good to see you.

Can you do my laundry?

Hey hon, how are ya?

Could you make me dinner?

Hey hon, how's it going?

Do you have some time to go upstairs and make the bed?

What were you thinking?

What were you all laughing at?

If the only time I went to Nicole was to ask her for something, would we have a relationship?

Sorry, say that again?

On the count of three, one, two, three?

No.

Some of you are right now having a revelation for your marriage.

You're you're like, uh-oh, oh, uh-uh-oh, oh, oh, right?

No.

You know what?

If you want to learn how to pray, just open up your Bible to the middle and point somewhere to the book of Psalms.

And this guy named David, I just like I want to read something to you.

Psalm 34.

Lord, I'm bursing with joy over what you've done for me.

My lips are full of perpetual praise.

I'm boasting of you and all your works, so let them all were discouraged, so let them all take heart.

Join me, everybody, let's praise the Lord together.

Let's make him famous, let's make his name glorious.

Listen to my testimony.

I cried to God in my distress and he answered me.

He freed me from all my fears.

Gaze upon him, join your life with his, and joy will come.

Your faces will glisten, you'll never wear that shame face again when I had nothing desperate, defeated.

I cried out to you, Lord, and he heard me.

I love just the honesty of this.

I want to take that and just like soak that up into my own prayer life.

If you want to continue to stay in the confident hope that is your complete, whole, perfect, unfettered relationship with God, then just two simple things I want to encourage you and remind you of.

Let him speak to you.

Let him speak to you and then speak back.

Tell him what's going on.

You know, if you're broken and hurting, if you've messed up and failed, if you're confused about something, God can handle it.

Trust me.

And you don't have to pretend to be something you're not, just be honest with God.

And at the same time, if you're celebrating and walking in the goodness of God, then be like David, shouted out from the rooftop.

I don't care who knows about it.

And a form of prayer as we close out our service today that I want to poke and prod, especially with the men in the room.

I don't I don't like to lean into stereotypes, but I've been around Jesus' church for a long time.

And if there are kids in the room right now, um I'm cool with that.

But I'm about to say something that's adult, okay?

And so we do have um ear, earmuffs if you want to borrow them for a quick second or something, but uh it covers Kale's ears.

Thanks for that.

It's a little bit adult.

I had a friend of me say recently that women are to corporate singing, worship, as men are to sex.

And men are to corporate singing and worship like women are to sex.

And this is a stereotype.

I'm gonna say that up front.

And what it simply means is I see ladies walk into a gathering like this, and from the first note, they're like, I'm all in! Yes, right?

Women are to corporate singing like men are to sex.

We get there fast, we get there quick.

And men are to corporate worship and singing like most women are to sex.

They need some time, right?

That first song at the beginning, the guys are like, okay, here we go.

Just rub my back a little.

It's gonna take some time.

And then, you know, there's a second song, they're kind of like, yeah, this is, I think this is familiar.

By the third song, they're kind of like moving their mouth to the words, but they're not really singing out loud.

And by the fourth song, they might close their eyes and like put their hand up, and then they're like, oh, not too not new, not too quick, right?

I want to poke and prod for a second, a stereotype.

And stereotypes are stereotypes, they exist because they're stereotypes.

Um, but this one in particular, to regardless of how you identify with your gender, I specifically talked about men and women, but regardless of where you land, when it comes to an all-together journey, when when the church gathers and we sing songs together, that to me is one of the most powerful ways that we can pray together.

Because we choose songs that have lyrics that are full of faith.

And let's be honest, as a as a dude, sometimes I have a hard time putting my feelings and thoughts into words.

I don't.

I'm a little weird.

But a lot of guys do, right?

But I can still forget.

I can still forget to take time to talk to God.

I can still forget to foster real relationship with other people through healthy communication.

But I don't ever want to forget that when the church gathers and we're all together and those songs are being led by that team of people, that those words are powerful for me to pray out loud, to declare in faith.

Two simple thoughts.

All I wanted you to walk away with today is if you're if you've questioned your own standing with God, if you've doubted, if you've fallen out of hope that between you and God it's good, then hope for you today is confidence that your relationship with God the Father is complete, it's whole, it's perfect, it's unfettered all because of what Jesus did.

And as we continue to stay in that confidence, it's through allowing God to speak to us and in faith, choosing to speak back, allowing God's word to talk through us in a devoted way, and fostering a language in a heart, privately and together, of prayer.

Prayer where we just open up our hearts to God.

I think those two things this week, if you begin to just apply that, build that into your routine, build that into your devotion.

For some of you, it's gonna unlock hope this week.

For some of you today, even just talking about it has unlocked something inside of you.

Hope for you today is an unfettered, complete, whole, and perfect relationship with God the Father.

So let's build that relationship.

Amen?

Let's pray.

Thank you, God, for your words.

Thank you from what we're learning together from the letter to Roman people.

A letter to a group of people who weren't raised as Jews, who weren't raised understanding all the rules about following you.

All they heard about was the hope in Jesus.

All they heard about was freedom in Jesus.

All they heard about was a savior, a Messiah King who sacrificed his life.

Not for one, not for some, but for all.

And in these words from Romans 5, we're reminded today of the hope that we have in Jesus.

We're reminded of what hope looks like.

That while we were still enemies with God, he fully reconciled us to himself through the death of Jesus, through the death of Jesus.

While we were still far away, God did everything to put us into right standing with Him.

So that something greater than friendship is ours.

The resurrection life, the kinship, being a part of family, a relationship of living in harmony with God.

A real relationship.

God, today we thank you as a community that our hope rests in the truth that you've called us flawless because of Jesus.

Our hope today is our peace that nothing can strip away.

But our hope today is an unfettered, complete, whole, and perfect relationship with you, God, because of Jesus.

We will continue to build moments where we let your words speak to us.

We will continue to carve out time, to use our own voice and our own heart and our own thoughts to speak to you through devotion, through study, through word, through prayer, through worship, that our relationship would continue to grow.

And that we might have ongoing, confident hope that that relationship between you and us is all good.

Thank you, Father.

All across this room, from the floor all the way up to the top, just with every eye closed, every head bowed.

I have a picture just in my heart today of somebody in the room that has sat under the weight of religion for years and years and years.

And that weight has felt like guilt.

And that weight has as for you, it's felt like um condemnation, judgment.

You've you've felt the weight of never being good enough.

That's it's for somebody today, somebody in this space.

You just you've just lived under that tension, a feeling like, man, I'll never measure up.

And as such, there's been there's been a barrier between you and God.

There hasn't been a freedom in that relationship.

I just pray in Jesus' name that these simple truths and thoughts that we've talked through today would just set you free here and now.

And if I'm off and that's for nobody alone, that if that's for you and you're in the room today, man, I would love to connect with you after service or just fill out one of our connect cards and say, Pastor John, oh that was me.

God did something in my life today.

In a moment, we we're all gonna pray a simple prayer together.

A prayer of faith.

A prayer that says, God, I know that I'm not good enough.

So I choose to allow Jesus to stand in my place.

He paid the price that I never could to put me into right relationship with you.

And if you're in this room today and you've never prayed that prayer, you never invited Jesus Christ to take the center of your world and put you in right standing with God.

You've been curious about faith, you've called yourself spiritual, but you've never called yourself a Christ follower.

You've never called yourself a Jesus follower, you've never said, I'm a Christian, I'm all in, whatever it takes.

If you're in the room today and that's you for the first time, you want to pray a prayer that puts you in right standing with God because of Jesus.

If you want to become a follower of Jesus, a Christian, for the very first time today, with nobody looking around, every eye closed, would you just slip up your hand right where you're seated?

All across the room, say, Pastor John, oh that's me today.

Yes.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

Awesome.

Thank you.

We're gonna pray a real simple prayer in a moment.

Just repeat after me all across this room together and say, Dear God, I thank you for sending Jesus to die in my place, to set things right completely and entirely between you and me.

My relationship with you, God, is whole and perfect today because of Jesus.

I'm yours.

Every part.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you so much for listening to today's message.

If you're ever in the Edmonton area, pop by for a visit.

And if you need any more information, visit Evolvechurch.com.

We hope to see you soon.