Messy Introduction | Clayton Hentzel

What up, Crossing family? How you doing today?

You guys doing good, man. It is good to be with you.

I want to welcome to those of you at all of our different

locations, to those of you watching of part of The Crossing

inside. I also want to show a special

welcome to those of you are part of our online ministry.

We are going to be debuting a new online expression at the

very end of this sermon series and I hope that it will be a

blessing to each and every single one of you.

Today we are beginning A5 week sermon series called Truth,

Intention, Balancing Faith and Love on Hot Topic Issues.

Here is what I've noticed and maybe you have noticed too.

This doesn't happen all the time.

There are definitely instances where it doesn't, but by and

large this has been what I experienced from my vantage

point, that the closer you are to the sin and the person, the

more you tend to bend on the truth, and the further you are

from the sin and the person, the harder you hit on the truth.

In this series, we are going to address very sensitive issues.

We're going to talk about L, GB, T issues and abortion now.

This sermon series is going to unfold like chapters in a book

each week, building on the week before.

You probably already know this because you guys are smart

people. But there is no way that one

sermon or one sermon series can encapsulate all the things

surrounding these issues, explain all the nuances, and

bring about the situational specifics related to these

topics. These are complicated waters, so

I want to encourage you to be here.

If you can't be here, watch online.

If your schedule doesn't allow you to watch online, leverage

our playback platforms. Our sermons are posted online by

Monday morning every Monday. And to those of you who are

watching this sometime in the future, this series took place

here at The Crossing on September or in September and

October of 2023. I say that because terms keep

changing meaning. And before you start getting

frustrated about the terms that we're using in this series, I

just want you to know that in 2023, to this group of people,

these terms were completely okay, all right?

And if I'm not cancelled by week five, I am desperately asking

you to attend. That's October 12th and October

15th because at the very end of this series, or how we are going

to wrap up, this series I believe will be powerful for you

as you chart a way forward trying to navigate truth and

tension. Now, why this series, you might

be asking? Well, this series has been on my

heart for over a year. I'm telling you that because I'm

not speaking on any of these things, because of any recent

events that have happened or any recent events that will happen

as we go through the series. This was a thoughtful decision

made over a year ago to do this sermon series at this moment in

time. Why the sermon series?

I think we're ready for it. In fact, we've been building to

this series all year, and I think you and I think I'm ready.

At the beginning of the year, I preached the sermon series

called There Has to Be a Place. In fact, I've preached A sermon

series called There Has to Be a Place.

Both January since I've been the lead pastor and during those

sermon series I've been well, I've been giving you a clue.

There has to be a place that gives people time, that allow

people to take their biggest step of faith, that tell people

that their failure is not final and that when God's in the

picture it's never over. That there has to be a place for

lost causes for those who have been shunned and shamed and

given up on. There has to be a place that

believes that Jesus still changes people, that there has

to be a place that's willing to serve those in need, give people

community sacrifice on their behalf and dig today so that

other people can drink tomorrow. Then we did two sermon series on

the family, one last year and one this year.

The one last year was better and the one this year was called

Reclaim. After that of this year we

launched A sermon series called If Then You may Remember It.

We brought in Ken Ham. We talked about questions like

if God is real, if Jesus is alive, if the Bible is true,

that means that we were created by God, redeemed by God, and

will one day be united with God in heaven.

And then we spent 15 weeks going through the Book of Romans,

which is the very best book in the Bible to capture the power

of God, the love of Jesus, and the way that you and I are

supposed to live our lives in response to their redeeming act

on our behalf. The second reason we're talking

about this sermon series is because these issues are being

talked about everywhere else. The things we're going to be

talking about, they are being talked about in the classroom.

They're being talked about in school board meetings.

They're being talked about on TikTok and YouTube and Fortune

500 companies, theme parks, big box retail stores.

It's made its way to the bigger aisles, political arenas,

Supreme courts and social media. It's everywhere.

So it might as well be here. For the church to be silent on

issues like this would be awkward, weird, wrong.

If you're a a well meaning Christian and you're trying to

Orient your life around God's will and God purposes, we need

to make sure that we're speaking into that to help you be able to

walk in that and live in that. Here at the Crossing, we have a

fundamental belief and it's this that God's way is the best way.

We believe that no matter the question, no matter the

situation, no matter the struggle, no matter the

challenge, God has a better way for us.

Here's what I mean to those of you who have friends and family

members or are maybe navigating or have navigated issues

surrounding this. Personally, I want you to hear

me. We love you.

But more importantly, God loves you and has a better way for

you. I'm begging you, please don't

give up on this sermon series. I really think that you will be

glad you stayed through it. To those of you who are new to

the Crossing, or maybe this is your first time in a long time,

you're going, I cannot believe this is the weekend I decided to

show up and I want you to know what I'm thinking.

I am so glad that you are here, even though this might feel like

the wrong weekend to try out a church or to come back after a

long time. If God's way is the best way,

then anytime we are examining God's way is good for us.

Jerry and Allison, they just celebrated their 25th

anniversary and they have cemented in our hearts the

phrase an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

If my math works out, I'm going to get to be a part of this

church for 43 to 45 years, depending on my cholesterol.

And my hope is that my legacy at this church will be that God's

way is the best way. I believe that God's way is the

best way in every area of your life.

It's good for your heart. It's good for your soul.

It's good for your relationships.

It's good for your finances. It's good for your work.

It's good for your family issues, It's good for your

marriages, you name it. And I genuinely believe that

God's way is the best way to handle it, and that includes how

we handle our sexuality. The third reason we're doing the

sermon series is because I don't think many of us, myself

included, are ready to navigate these issues in a way that

honors God. I regularly see people on

opposite sides of these issues, but rarely do I see a God

honoring demonstration about how to handle and love and speak

about these issues. And in order to do that, we're

going to need a couple of ground rules here at the crossing for

the next 5 weeks. Rule #1, No clapping.

OK, now I know some of you, you're like, well, we're going

to clap at the end. You can clap at the very end of

the sermon. That's fine.

You guys are super polite. You're like, OK, good job,

preacher. OK, here's why I'm telling you I

don't want you clapping because I love it.

And when some of you guys get verbally engaged in the sermon,

you know, makes Jerry and I preach even better.

But I am not OK with you clapping at me, taking a hard

stance on a sin that you don't struggle with.

If I were to say right now, you know God made Adam and Eve not

Adam and Steve, there'd be some of you who'd be fired up and

you'd want to give, like, a standing ovation, like, preach

it, brother, preach it. But you were silent through the

entire book of Romans when we talked about the mighty saving

power and sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

And if you don't clap for the cross, I'm not going to let you

clap for the sin that put in there.

Here's what I'm going to tell you.

If you start clapping when I take a swing at a particular

sexual sin, we're just all going to assume that that's the one

you struggle with. That'll that'll dial you down,

won't it? We ain't clapping now.

OK? At the end of this sermon

series, I'll reinstitute the clapping rule.

OK, All right. The second reason is there are

people sitting at your campus who are holding their breath

right now. There are people who are a part

of this church who are L, GB, TQ.

There are people that just found out that their son or their

daughter, their grandson, their granddaughter identifies as L,

GB, T or Q and they feel like a kite in a storm.

It's been said that when Christian kids come out of the

closet, the Christian parents go in.

So sad. We're just not going to let that

happen here. Here's the crossing.

You are going to be loved and you are going to be cared for.

Rule #2, No emails. Okay.

Hear me. You can continue to send

encouraging emails. They mean the world to me.

I read them, I reply to them, and I save the very best ones to

read on dark days. However, if you have questions

or frustrations during this sermon series, we are going to

have Facetoface conversations. Due to my limited availability

and calendar, one of our team may direct you to a campus

pastor or a staff member, but I'll meet with you as many of

you as I can. We would love to grab lunch with

you, have coffee with you, have a snack with you instead of

trying to figure out nuance and tone over e-mail.

That's like the worst way to communicate.

I want you to hear this. We are here for you and we are

in your corner. We went into ministry because we

love God and we love people, and it is our honor to walk through

difficult questions and difficult seasons with you.

Rule #2, no emails. Rule #1, no clapping.

Rule #3, First Peter 3:15. But in your hearts, Revere

1 Peter 3:15

Christ is Lord. Always be prepared to give an

answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope

that you have. But do this with everybody.

Help me out. That's the target.

Somebody comes clapped. OKOK, you're like, I like that

version. Oh, no, I'm with her, OK Our

goal in this series is to address hard things in a way

that gives an answer for our hope.

But we got to do it in a way that is characterized with

gentleness and respect. I want you to hold me

accountable. I want you to think through the

lens as you hear us talk through this over the next couple weeks

where they being gentle and where they being respectful.

In the future, when you go out and you represent the cross and

you represent Christ and you represent the crossing, I want

you to make sure that when you speak about things, you do so in

a way that's gentle and respectful.

Too many times I see people on the far right or the far left

make really good points, but they do so in a way that makes

me cringe. They do so in a way that's void

of care and compassion. Their answers are dehumanizing

and they repel the very people that Jesus died for.

Why does this matter? Why does gentleness and respect

matter? There was a survey done of 1700

L GB people from and there is people who participated in it

were from every state. 83% of them were raised in the church.

51% of them left the church at the age of 18, and only 3%

stated that their primary reason for leaving was because of their

church's beliefs that their lifestyle was wrong.

The rest cited that it was the way that they were treated,

ostracized. The lack of compassion, tone,

gentleness and respect matter. So week one, you've made it

through the intro ready. We got to begin with truth, an

interpretive lens for understanding God's will.

It was laid out by the Wesleyans, and it's called the

Wesleyan Quadrilateral. It basically says there are four

ways or lenses through which we understand God's will on any

issue, on any issue. And here's what it is Scripture,

Church history and tradition. Reason and lived experience.

Pay attention to the arrow. Where do you start?

You start with scripture. You move through church history

and tradition. How did they live it out?

How did they follow it then? You reason through what are you

supposed to do? And you apply it to your lived

experience. And the order through which you

approach your discovery of truth can lead you to very different

and dangerous places in the world we live in today.

Because there's been so much pain around sex, because it's so

polarized, because it's so personal, a lot of people don't

start with what does Scripture say or what did church tradition

say. Instead, they start here.

They start with their lived experience.

They'll use phrases like my story, my truth.

Most of the time, the questions I get are not what does the

Bible say, it's how do you explain what happened to me?

So they start here on the lived experience, and then they reason

through what's happened to them. And then they begin to evaluate

and critique how the early church fathers in the early

church or church tradition handled it and how they were so

wrong for it. And then by the time they

actually get to Scripture, scripture is irrelevant.

It's lost its power. There's no way it could mean

what it actually means. However, all throughout church

history, the order has always been the exact opposite.

And the difference on how people who both claim to be Christians,

Jesus followers can end up on completely different sides of

these issues has everything to do with how they approach truth.

I was surprised by this. I follow people on Twitter, and

if you're on Twitter and you follow me and you see the people

I follow, you might go. I don't know if I'm okay with

Clayton following all these people.

I follow the fringes because I want to see what's coming.

And I was listening to a Christian pastor who believes

the exact opposite of everything that we're going to talk about.

And I was like, how does he call himself a Christian and yet have

a completely different take on everything?

And I'll tell you, it's because he starts here, I listen to one

of his sermons and he starts here and then he basically undo

does the truth of Scripture as the sermon gets longer.

Here's what you need to know for almost all of church history,

and by almost all of church history, I mean until 1975 and

here at the Crossing, the method and strategy for understanding

and applying God's Word has been and is to start here with

Scripture. You start with the truth of

God's Word, believing that God's way is the best way.

And then you look at how that truth was applied by the people

closest to it and how it was carried on.

Which is why I said until 1970 or 1975, And then reason.

And then how do I apply all of this inertia into my life?

We start there. We start because scripture has a

unified voice on these issues and Scripture cannot contradict

itself. And then you move through the

2000 plus years of church history of people who have

followed Jesus and they have a unified voice on this.

We have sages and spiritual mothers and fathers who have

gone before us and have dealt with about every single issue

under the sun that we deal with. And then we reason.

And then we import all of that into our experience and we

adjust and bend our lives to the truth.

It serves to bring you and me under a far bigger, wiser,

older, cultured, weathered faith authority than us making

ourselves the authority. That being said, let's look at

the three big verses in the New Testament about this Romans

chapter one, verse 26. Because of this, God gave them

over to shameful lust. Even their women exchanged

natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.

In the same way, the men also abandoned natural relations with

women and were inflamed with lust for one another.

Men committed shameful acts with other men and received in

themselves the due penalty for their error.

Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to

retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved

mind so that they do what ought not be done.

They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil

greed, and depravity. They are full of envy.

Murder, strife, deceit, and malice.

They are gossips, slanderers, God haters, insolent, arrogant

and boastful. They invent ways of doing evil.

They disobey their parents. They have no understanding, no

fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God's

righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death,

they not only continue to do these very things, but also

approve of those who practice them.

This might be a group of people that we probably need to

navigate carefully during the sermon series.

Is there some people who may not be participating in this, but

they're people who approve of this?

Look what it says in First Corinthians chapter 6.

1 Corinthians 6 · chapter mention

Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the

Kingdom of God? Do not be deceived.

Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers,

nor men who have sex with men, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor

drunkards, nor slanderers, nor swindlers will inherit the

Kingdom of God. And that is what some of you

were. But you were washed.

You were sanctified. You were justified in the name

of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God, First

Timothy, chapter One. And we know that the law is good

if one uses it properly. We also know the law is made not

for the righteous but for the lawbreakers and rebels, the

ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who

kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually

immoral, for those who practicing homosexuality, for

slave traders and liars and perjurers, and for whatever else

is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the

gospel concerning the glory of the blessed of God which he

entrusted to me, The Bible makes it abundantly clear that

homosexual behavior is a sin. It is not God's best way to

live. However, I think it's important

to note that it's not the only thing that he mentions.

He mentions wickedness, evil, greedy murderers, gossipers,

slanderers, disobedient kids, thieves, drunks, swindlers,

slave traders, some of your like whoo.

Finally, I'm glad Slave Traders is in there because I've never

done that one. Liars, sexually immoral and

homosexuality. It's an interesting question.

Why is it that Christian parents reach out to us on staff and

wonder if their kid is going to hell because they're gay, but

they don't ever ask if their kids going to hell because

they're living with their significant other watching porn?

Drunk liar. Disobedient.

How come this one got so elevated?

How come this one got a category of its own?

How come we have permission slips galore for all the

heterosexual sin, but we pull the highlighter out for the

homosexual sin? You might be experiencing some

tension right now. You might also be thinking some

of the things. Same things that I thought.

I'm on that list, And if I'm on that list, what right do I have

to talk about somebody else who's on that list?

I'll tell you why. Because we tell everybody what

God wants. Because we deeply believe that

God's way is the best way, and we have grace and patience for

other people as they navigate their sin issues.

Because people have grace and patience with us.

In fact, that's how God treated us.

But we don't excuse sin just because we sin because we were

called. We were commissioned that when

we made Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, that we became

Harold's messengers of the gospel sinners telling other

sinners about a Savior. Some of you might be thinking

this personally. Some of you might be thinking

this corporately. What if I was made this way,

Clayton? What right do I have to say to

somebody who they didn't have a choice?

If they could choose, they would not have chosen this.

Here's what I would tell you. There has been no genetic link

to homosexuality. There appears to be some

combination of nature and nurture.

To make it all Nurture puts an unbelievably heavy and

unnecessary burden on family and friends.

To make it all about nature excuses human responsibility.

There is a difference between disposition and Commission.

I'm not going to tell you which one of my kids, but one of my

kids struggles with anger. One of my kids struggles with

lying. But their struggle, their

disposition, is not a permission slip for Commission.

Just because one kid naturally just seems to want to be a liar

and the other one just naturally seems to want to be angry

doesn't mean that I don't hold God's standard over their life.

There's nothing I'll tell you. Process this one slowly.

Attraction is not a sin. Activity is.

You probably can't help who you're attracted to, but you are

responsible for how you act. We can be tempted to sin, but

the Bible tells us we are told to flee sexual immorality.

Some of you you might be attracted to redheads.

You don't know why, but by golly, you are.

Some of you, you're attracted to blondes.

Some of you are attracted to brunettes.

I'm obviously attracted to short, crazy brunettes, emphasis

on the crazy. And I am sure there has been a

moment or two when Jennifer has been attracted to other men,

which is hard because she has bad eyes.

But while Jennifer may from time to time be attracted to another

man, because of her love for God, because of her love for

herself, because of her love for me, she restrains herself.

You see, you can be tempted to sin and not sin.

We got a really interesting verse for you.

He was chapter 4. Therefore, since we have a great

high priest, this is talking about Jesus who has ascended

into heaven. Jesus, the Son of God.

Let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.

Keep it there, Jeff, for just a second.

Because of Jesus, let's hold firmly to the faith that we

profess. This is what we're going to do.

We're going to hang on to it. We're going to hang on to the

scriptures. We're going to hang on to the

truth. Keep reading, for we do not have

a high priest who is unable to empathize.

Pause. He gets it.

He knows what he's asking you to do.

He knows what you're he's asking you to go through with our

weaknesses. But we have one who has been.

Everybody say this word, tempted in just as we are.

Yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God's

throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and

find grace to help us in our time of need.

When you get tempted to operate outside of God's will, I want

you to know Jesus was tempted too.

But he didn't give in to it. And because he didn't give in to

it, and because we are in Him, we have the power to not give

into it too. And because of that, we can

enter in to the throne of room of Grace where He will give us

what we need in our time of need.

You see, you and I, we were designed on purpose.

We were put together. I like to articulate this

through like knives, lawn mowers, vacuums, and washing

machines. Here's what I mean by that.

Why does a knife take the form that it has?

Why does the knife have the features that it does?

If we look at the different parts of a knife and the process

of making it, we would be looking through the lens of

causality. It's like, it's like this

because they hammered it, they tempered it, they sanded it,

they shaped it. Why did they do all of these

things? Because the making of the knife,

the process of making the knife is guided by the purpose of the

knife. The knife is designed to cut.

And so everything that goes into the making of the knife is

designed to allow it to do that. When you were to look at humans,

how were did we get to where we are?

Why were we made? The way we were made tells us

something about our created and our intended purpose.

Our bodies tell a story. God was purposeful in the way he

created the universe to work, and that includes our bodies.

And by looking at our bodies, we are able to discover that

purpose and live it out. And it is God's right as the

Creator. The Christian response when it

comes to any area of our life, including our sexuality, should

be this. Not my will, but yours.

If you struggle with homosexuality and you want to

act out on it, not my will, but yours.

When you're a heterosexual and you want to have sex before you

get married, you should be going.

Not my will, but yours. When you're engaged and you want

to have sex before you get married.

Not my will, but yours. When you're married and you want

to have sex with somebody else who's married.

Not my will, but yours. We surrender our sexuality to

God's plan and God's purposes. And when you look at our bodies,

it reveals something so we can recognize it.

That God created this natural world, which includes our bodies

with purpose and with goodness. I don't know when the last time

you looked at yourself in the mirror and went.

God made this and it was good. OK, but this is what this is,

the natural law that we were put together, and breaking God's

natural law is sin, and sin does not lead to human flourishing.

You and I, we are morally obligated to honor the bodies

that God gave us, and we are obligated to honor the bodies

that he gave others and our bodies.

Exhibit a plan, design and order a purpose.

And Scripture serves as a moral guide of how we should use our

bodies and make the most of our bodies in worship to glory and

honor our Creator. What's a lawn mower designed to

do? It's designed to mow the grass.

And who decided what the lawn mower's purpose was?

The guy who made the mower. The mower didn't decide.

The grass didn't decide. The maker made the decision.

And who decided how much the lawn mower was worth?

Did the grass decide how much it was worth?

Did the mower decide how much it was worth?

Actually, in this instance, the maker and the buyer decided what

it was worth. The maker sets the price and the

buyer decides whether or not they will buy it based on 2

guiding principles. Can they afford it and do they

feel like it is good value? Money well spent.

The grass did not set the value and the mower did not set the

value. In the same way, God, our

Creator, decided our purpose and our worth in creation and He did

it in the story and how He created us.

He created you and I in his image to rule and reign with

gender complementarity to be fruitful and multiply, and when

he was done, he called it very good.

But what happens when a lawnmower has free will and gets

jealous of vacuums, So it tries to come inside and it wants to

help out around the house. However, instead of

strategically pulling up dirt fibers from the carpet and

moving the small toys out of the way as vacuums do, instead it

start to fling toy shrapnel through the windows and the

walls. In addition, the fumes of the

lawnmower hurt the family's heads and the ability to make

decisions. What if the lawnmower decided

that it wanted to be a washing machine and it would destroy

absolutely everything that you threw at it?

God's plan and purposes are visible in our gendered and

sexual design. Hear me And any deviation from

that purpose is sin and causes deep and significant pain.

God's design for sexual expression is reserved for one

man and one woman inside of a covenant of marriage.

And anytime sex takes place outside of that, lawnmowers try

to become vacuums. And then they get mad at God for

all the things that the lawn mower broke in the house and God

goes, I made that for the grass. And then hurt happens not just

to you, but to the people you care about, to the people you

love. We have to get to a place,

personally, corporately, where we trust God's vision of what is

best for us, where we go. You have a better way.

Hear me? This is not just about our

sexuality or homosexuality. This is about every part of our

lives. Think about the list again.

Remember the list that I read? The list that you were on?

Oh, tell me you weren't just thinking about the homosexuals

during this sermon. I was wanting you to think about

you because I was thinking about me.

Every one of those sins is a deviation of God's best for us,

and it hurts our families. It impacts our finances and our

futures. It hurts our witness and becomes

the source and pain and misery of the very people we're trying

to reach. The sins devalue us.

We lose sight of our worth, but in the passion story we see the

set price that the maker was willing to pay and the buyer was

willing to pay because we read that the scent of God gave his

life as a ransom for many hear this.

Who did Jesus die for? He died for sinners.

You know the people on the list. One of my favorite things is all

the things that I read to you were written by one guy.

His name was Paul. You might be going.

Paul says really hard things. You know what else Paul says

when it comes to sinning? I'm the chief of all sinners.

Maybe that's what truth intention looks like, that you

say the hardest things even though they're true, but you

never take an eye off the fact that you're a Sinner too.

And maybe we should do the same. We're moving to a time of

decision. Yeah.

OK. You know, Yeah.

OK. Alright, We're going to another

church. I recently got a car and it's so

hard to buy a car when you're the pastor.

Like, do you really negotiate hard or do you just go, What is

it? Yeah.

I mean, how how do you do that? Yeah, I mean, that guy's A

cheapskate. But you know, when you're buying

a car, like, you just have this natural inclination to like,

look for every nick. I mean, you just looking at it,

look at that. And will you look at that?

Oh, my goodness. Will you look at that?

And then you take it home and you find one you didn't see.

I didn't know that that one was there, as if you wouldn't have

bought the car. I thought that was a bug.

But no, that's that's real. And your goal of going around

and like picking out every problem in the car is what do

you think? That every neck, every Dang

reduces the price? Oh yeah, not a lot of tread left

on these old tires, the seatbelt belts.

Why is it that the driver's side always has the crack?

Maybe you guys haven't driven old cars like I have, but this

is the first time I have a vehicle where the driver's side

doesn't have, like, the, the foam showing.

I'm pretty jazzed about it. I've already put duct tape there

just in case. All right, Are you go around

there and you're just going, man, what's hoping that the

price would go down? And I wonder if subconsciously,

if that's how you view you. I wonder if subconsciously

that's how you view others. You hear about their sin and

you're like, oh, those seats are a little worn.

Oh, man. You hear about their current

situation, like, oh boy, there's a dent in the side of the bed on

that thing. You hear about their struggles.

Oh boy. The tailgate just doesn't open

and close the way it's supposed to.

Maybe that's the way you think about you.

I mean, because you know you and you know what you've done and

because you know all the problems.

Because that's what's like when you try to sell a car, because

you try to hide all the things that you know are wrong.

Just take it around the block, just not on the street.

Because you know the shift from 2nd to 3rd okay, they're not

buying that okay, just keeping the neighborhood anywhere you

want in the neighborhood, drive on the sidewalks.

But do you know that it's the exact opposite when it comes to

Jesus, He paid for all the sins. The more you sin, the more he

paid. He paid the most for the worst

sinners. He's just that good.

But our dents and our Dings and our mess ups and our mistakes

didn't lower our value. It just cost him more.

And he paid it. And he paid it to give you the

strength to live the life that he called you to and that you

were destined for. God's way is the best way.

And his love is to repurpose you, and I hope that you allow

him to do it this weekend. I'm asking all of you guys to do

me a huge favor, especially those of you who are here.

I'm asking you either to come up to the steps and get down and

pray or pray right where you're at on your knees.

But here's why I want you to do it.

Because I want us as a church holistically to want to live

God's best way and to pray for that in our lives.

Maybe there's a sin that you need to give to God, or you need

to ask for forgiveness. Maybe you need to pray over your

friends and your family members, people that you know are

struggling with truth or struggling with one of these sin

issues, because there has to be a place for them.

And I think it's here, and I think it's with us.

I think it's with a group of people who want to own their own

failures and their own struggles and beg God to do something in

it. Would you join me in that?

Would you stand God, I'm asking you to do a mighty thing in this

church, something that only you can do to bring about

restoration and redemption. Not just in the issues that I'm

speaking about, but in every area of our life.

God, we have good news. We have the gospel.

And God, we want everyone to hear it and everyone to submit

their lives to it, including ourselves.

So help us to do that and hear my pray.

Amen.