Transforming Lives Through Witnessing and Challenging Injustice

In Madison Church.

It's really good to be here with you today.

I've been looking forward to this.

You probably see this because of the subtitle, but I'm Alex G, lifelong Madison resident and I'm just happy to be a part of the larger church and what the Lord is doing in our community.

So I really appreciate your pastor and the leadership giving me the space to speak into the lives of other believers, my brothers and sisters in Christ.

Let me just take a moment and open this up with a word of prayer before I begin to preach and mainly teach out of the book of Acts, chapter 16.

Acts 16 · chapter mention

Lord, your heart is so overwhelmed and it's blessed from the people of God come together.

Your spirit lives within us, giving us the power to gravitate towards each other as we spur each other on in our faith and our worship to you.

And so, lord, would you please be blessed and honored in this time together.

Although I have a sense of where you're directing me, i always lean to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

So help me today, holy Spirit, to be a tool, to be a vessel and to be available.

Thank you for your gifts and thank you that we can be the people of God.

You know, brothers and sisters, there's never been a more important time, i feel, to be the people of God and to be a part of the church.

There's certainly plenty that's going on in our world that could discourage us, and, i have to be honest, most days I am a little bit discouraged, even though I see the hand of God, i feel the movement of the Spirit.

There's so many things outside of my control that really keeps me on edge, and one of the things that I'm probably most concerned about is how does the church really act, like the church, during such tumultuous times like what we're seeing in this, in this, in this world today?

How does the church begin to understand its mission, its service to humanity and our love for each other?

And so I hope to share some things in the message today that will help us to think about the role of believers and what we've really been saved for, what we've been saved from.

As a kid, i used to worship in a small church.

Pastor drove from Milwaukee and was planting a ministry here, and in my tradition there's a lot of focus on my personal piety.

Was I walking with the Lord?

Was I staying pure?

Was I fasting?

Was I praying?

Was I in the Word, the gifts of the Spirit and how God was working in me, and not a lot of talk about my influence on the world around me.

And so it's interesting now, because I preach and I talk so much about how the church is called and empowered by God to have an influence on the world around us.

I think people wonder if I believe in personal piety and salvation and our relationship with God.

That's such a done deal with me, such a such a established thing in me that I want to move beyond just having my private time with the Lord at a coffee shop.

But how do I live that out in a world that doesn't believe in our God?

We worship in Madison and I've been noticing something.

I've been here for 50 years.

We often talk about this post-Christian community.

It's so out there, it's so liberal.

You probably talk to your friends and family when they say you're doing ministry in Madison.

Your pastor probably heard it.

You're going to Madison.

What are you thinking?

What are you smoking?

They're so liberal.

You know what I'm finding out?

There's a lot of openness to a lot of things in Madison, but they haven't seen an expression of Jesus Christ often enough that speaks to them and their scenario and their situation.

After that, we have an opportunity, rather than just writing people off and just saying I, ikeba, i'm gonna just do the Old Testament thing and just knock the dust off my shoes and just say you know what, madison, you're just, you're just out there.

Maybe we have not been a strong enough witness, maybe we have not been a consistent enough witness, maybe we have not been an inclusive enough witness.

So I want us to think about what we think about when we consider serving our Christ.

What is it that we consider as we think about our witness?

You know, if you think of a court, a witness doesn't just go in and just mumble to themselves when asked a question by the judge.

You know, yeah, i was there, i saw They're like, no, no, we need that to be verbalized.

That needs to be made a record.

It needs to be an exhibits, if you will, so that we can begin to make decisions upon it.

I believe that we will see more decisions when we see more witnessing, and I don't mean knocking on doors, saying can I talk to you about my Bible and my Jesus, but our lives, when I think about the church's mission and its ability to serve along social lines, meaning the, the, the, the very ethereal basic needs of individuals, and how that lets the community know that our God is loving and compassionate.

It's not a matter of whether or not we do that or we present Christ, Because I know Christ, i love to present Christ, and so I want to talk about a very common story that comes from Acts 16.

It's a story of Paul and Silas singing in the prison at midnight.

You know, i come from a black church experience, a Pentecostal experience.

We like praising God at midnight.

We love triumphal stories where the Lord shows up and they're singing to the Lord And they're doing their call and response.

I know God is a good God.

Yes, he is.

If you call on Jesus, he'll answer.

Prayer.

Can't nobody do me like.

We love the celebration, i'm all for it.

But I think sometimes we rush to what we think is a spiritual punchline, what we think is the miracle, and we miss the process of what it is.

I believe that God is really showing us In Acts 16,.

There's a lot of text here, and so I just wanted to frame where it's found so that you could read it for its background.

But I want to get to the part where it says and at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God And the other prisoners were listening to them.

We always think that our worship is offensive to people.

I love the fact that they were listening to them not annoyed by them, but they were listening to them.

There was something they heard in prison that they weren't used to hearing in prison.

That was hope and joy.

And suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken And at once the prison doors flew open and everybody's chains came loose.

Everybody's chains came loose.

The jailer woke up and when he saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought that the prisoners had escaped.

He was just going to do the job because he knew what was going to happen to him.

When people found out that everyone escaped on his watch, they would think that he was barred off.

But Paul shouted do yourself no harm, we are all here.

And the jailer caught the lights, rushed in and felt trembling before Paul and Silas, and then he brought them out and asked sirs, what must I do to be saved?

I'm just going to stop right there.

That was 16 through 29.

So much I want to say So little time.

But this message is about how the power of God rivets through a community, through a system, into the heart of someone who has probably helped to shape the system or someone who's been a pawn of the system.

I want to entitle today's message converting and subverting.

When I was a new Christian I've been a Christian for about 45 years When I was a younger Christian, i used to long for what I call the Bible days.

I used to long for living in the Old Testament where God would let Daniel sleep on a lion as a pillow, or the fourth man in a fiery furnace.

I love the miracles, i love the stories of the miracles and the God who I saw as being in the Old Testament, but we watch those miracles and we probably can count them.

There are several.

However, in the ordinary times, day to day, shepherds and psalmist weren't walking around just raising up people from the dead haphazardly on a daily basis, but they were commissioned, they were challenged, they were authorized.

Take care of the foreigner, take care of the widows, take care of the fatherless, and not just because they were to be pitied If a widow existed and could not take care of herself, she could very likely be prostituted in order to earn her keep.

If a young child were fatherless, parentless, they could be exploited and taken advantage of.

We rarely see the social and the emotional or even a cultural value of what our God has done in Scripture.

We have read Scripture in such a myopic lens that we have almost relegated God to a place of uselessness in our society in a time when we need to follow a God who gives a writ.

True, we can say 2000 years ago Christ got on the cross and bled for us, but that means nothing to someone who's hungry today.

That's the truth.

Today We're coming from rape abuse caught COVID-19 in prison.

That means absolutely nothing if they think that that God is no more than a statue or a figment of someone's religious rhetoric.

I've just been dreaming and saying God, i wish, wow, why couldn't you have created me all those years ago where the real fun happened?

But then I started looking at the times and looking at Scripture and realizing that God was the God of yesterday, today, forevermore, and that if God ever existed, god always existed, and if God ever had power and God did and does, then God doesn't always will Then maybe I should stop looking back at what used to be and understand how that informs how I'm going to be.

And then I started looking at our world And did it really need me to sleep on a lion in the den, or did it need me to be a pawn, a son, a child, a vessel, a vehicle, a conduit of God?

in some other means and some other ways I began to realize that God had given me power, through the Holy Spirit, to absorb God, to receive God, to draw from God and to draw the reality of God into me, who, in return, would draw me to the broken and the lost in the world, that I'm not just a reservoir, i'm not just this bucket that just obtains God and maintains God, but I absorb God so that God might ring me out and ring us out and ring the church out in a way that leaves some residual impact or excuse me of love and grace of our God that we don't receive to maintain.

We receive to give back And it is in the ringing where we serve and we put ourselves at risk because ringing is costly.

We talk a lot about conversion, but converting for what?

For our own goodness, so that we can feel good and look down on others, secure our place in heaven.

Have we reduced salvation to some mere celestial insurance plan life insurance plan?

Or has God converted us in order to subvert evil systems in our world who are trapping those who are made in God's likeness and image?

Have we stopped to even ask ourselves why Paul and Silas were even in jail?

Or are we so focused on the fact that when they sang, the gates flew open?

There was a strategy to where Paul went and where he sailed with Barnabas, where he sailed with Silas, there was some uniqueness to it.

God directed them.

Because God wanted them to be at important crossroads, where there were trade routes and where there were military colonies, because God wanted to present the gospel in a way that it could move and go places.

It was never meant to be stagnant.

I made some notes here that Christianity came into prominence because of its relevance in subverting society.

Christianity shaped humanity in that we were affirmed by the goodness of God and the love of God to live in community with each other.

Christianity was shaped by an inclusive mandate and theology.

Women came to faith and brought their husbands in the early church because of the promotion of women in places of leadership in society that didn't believe that women belonged in leadership, that the church grew because women felt they affirmed who I am and who God has created me to be, and so Christianity and faith shaped humanity and the shaped society As we go along.

In the early centuries it shaped civics Constantine we got some issues about him, but he appointed bishops as judges in legal matters, the Episcopal Advocacy.

People converted.

It shaped Roman law and Justinian legal systems and the European chart of human rights and even American Declaration of Independence, which is wrought with issues, but still it was a Christian mandate, it was a biblical mandate that began to shape things.

The church, in its theology, shaped fourth century public welfare.

The deacons in the early church the deaconess says would go sometimes to the public square where babies had been thrown away, to breastfeed them and to nurture them.

That was the call of the church, with Luther and King James translating text into German and English, created phrases and terminology with shape, culture And, of course, during the medieval periods that a Renaissance has shaped art, christianity, people believing in Christ, not just the institution but the people of God, shaped society because God worked through us.

Society needs to see God in us And we need to be everywhere in art, in culture, in education, in legal systems, in law enforcement, in medicine.

We need to be all of those places.

What I love about this story is that the lead up is that Paul and Silas were in jail because there was a young slave girl who had a spirit of fortune telling.

You may be old enough to remember some of the fortune telling channels, ms Cleo these folks, you dial them up 80 cents an hour or whatever it was.

They tell you you're a fortune.

She followed them around for days, speaking over them.

These are the men of God and they're doing the wheel and the work of God.

After a few days, this Vex Paul, because Paul realized you know what, i don't need the devil as a hyped person.

I don't need the enemy to lift my work or to lift my God.

Something about what was going on with her Vexed him.

I used to think that Paul was vexed because he could somehow perceive a demonic intonation in this woman's voice that was kind of saying these are the men of God.

But you know, as I got older and as I've become more shrewd, i don't think that it was what Paul heard in the demonic tones.

I think, paul being in tune to God, sensed something's got this woman, something's got a hold of her, because it's easy to be peeved at the devil.

But I think somehow, when Paul rebuked her and set her free, it wasn't just to get the devil's hands off of her, it was to get her pimp's hands off of her.

You see, somehow somebody found out that she had a gift, that she could tell you what was going to happen tomorrow, who was going to die in two days, whether or not it was going to rain, and whose crops were going to do well, what was so well at the market, who was going to have a child, the gender of the child.

And so I said, hmm.

And so she had her gift, for no longer their own.

She can no longer live at her parents' home.

They decided what she ate and what she wore, because I'm sure they wanted her to be appealing to men's eyes as well.

And although she peddled lies, if you're going to prostitute a woman for the truth she speaks, you probably also prostitute her for a few other things.

So she was walking around, tangled and tied up in this web, not just someone who could tell the future, but someone who could not even tell their own tomorrow, because it was an incumbent upon what the men who trapped her decided she was going to be and what she was going to do.

It was men determining who she was going to be.

It was men determining what she was going to say and making all the money.

We'll protect you, honey.

We won't let anybody take advantage of you.

We'll put your money in a savings program.

We will get you a 401k.

We will take care of you.

We got you.

What they got her was the loss of her life.

What they got her was the loss of her dignity And what they got was a vexation and Paul spirit that something's not right in her.

What's wrong with the church?

that we can walk in a community and not know what's wrong?

Why is it that we can walk around and tell what everybody's doing and calling out every sin and looking down our nose on everyone who does everything that we never felt into, but we don't sense the chains?

Paul could hear the rattling, i imagine, of the chains that she walked.

I imagine he could hear the choking on her voice as she tried to get her own humanity.

I imagine he could see the Prince and the pause because someone had been hurting her.

I was talking to a woman once and I was ministering to her And as we were talking, i just and I didn't see this physically, but just in a very spiritual sense I just saw, i saw handprints on her neck And I said, baby, this relationship that you're telling me about, this from God, did he used to choke you.

She started crying in the meeting.

I don't know how, i know, although I saw handprints on her neck.

And even though she talked about the relationship and she talked about the goodness, she talked about God's in it, god being in it.

I saw something, i sent, something That doesn't make me great a spiritual.

It just meant that day, that time, i was in tune to the Holy Spirit.

How are we walking in midst, in the midst of the broken and the hurting, and the church doesn't know?

Don't we have anything more than just religious rhetoric?

Don't we have more than just the Bible first to throw off at people?

Don't we have more to do than just a warning or judgment?

Can't you feel it?

Can't you hear it?

The world is trapped, it's ensnared, it's being choked, it's being stifled.

And Paul turned around and he said you come out of her in the name of Jesus Christ, because that spirit in her welcomed others to control her, because they would manipulate her from the inside.

But they needed somebody to control her world and control her purse and control her body.

And when Paul and Silas reviewed that spirit, the enemy lost its grip and so did the men who owned her.

But when they found out that she couldn't fortune tell anymore old girl was confused like what's today, what month is this?

30 days, that's something.

She couldn't tell what the day was.

She had to think about what her name was.

She could not tell the future anymore And it was obvious.

So, for the sake of time, they took them up for the magistrates and they didn't just say, hey, these men are in my pocket, these men have messed up my money.

They say no, no, no, these Jewish men have come here to this Roman providence and they are trying to get us to do some stuff that Roman people shouldn't even do.

So they make it social, they make it political because they want to get them killed, because you messed with my money, i'm going to mess with your throat.

So because Paul and Silas not only were interested in the woman's conversion but the subversion of the system that held her, because if you don't break the system, it'll get them again.

If you don't break the system, it'll get them again.

Was this woman demon possessed because she was not a follower of Christ?

Oh, she's not a follower of Christ because she was demon possessed.

We often put the cart before the horse, thinking that we get you out, we can get you fixed.

That might be the broken system that's got people broken, thank you Jesus.

And so they got thrown into jail.

They got beaten with rods, they got what I was called, what I called as a kid, a butt weapon, and they were beaten down.

And here's something that's interesting, that we know at the end of the story I'm going to tell you this now in case I don't get a chance to get back to it We know, at the end of the story, paul was a Roman citizen, because when they came to get him out of jail, they said um, they said, well, you can go.

And Paul said no, i'm a Roman citizen and you beat me in public and then you're going to send me home in private.

No, you come here and get me where you left me, where you beat me.

And they said oh my God, these men are Roman citizens.

Oh my God, we didn't give them a tr.

Oh my God, we're going to get in trouble with Rome.

We're going to get in trouble.

So we know he was a Roman citizen, but yet while they were beating him, he didn't say he was a Roman citizen.

The cost of conversion is the loss of some of our freedom for subverting the systems that hold our people captive.

That beating, that captivity that he experienced with just a short while, could not be compared to the nights that women went to sleep and thought I wish I could die, if I could just have my mama's cooking one more night, if I could just be in my daddy's presence, if I could just have a husband, if I could just have a family, if I could just have children, if I could just have a gardener, if I could just have a life, if I could just have a life.

There's only one power that was strong enough to break demonic power over her life, and that was the power of Jesus Christ.

And Paul and Silas were on their way to a prayer meeting.

This is like the epistles version of the Good Samaritan.

They could have said well, i would go, but I'm leading praise and worship tonight.

I've been worshiping.

I've been working on all my songs, or I'm collecting offering tonight or I'm giving my sermon tonight.

They could have been so busy going to meet the Lord that they missed the Lord's captives.

So they put their prayer meeting on hold to bring church, to bring Christ, to bring liberty to this woman.

But then when they got to jail, the prayer meeting commenced And they started singing and praising God and the other listeners, the folks that were in there, started listening, listen.

I talked to my friends who have been incarcerated.

A lot of my work through Nehemiah is working with incarcerated individuals.

The pastor's gotten to know one of my vice presidents who was in charge of reentry and strategic partnerships.

They told me that that first night is the darkest.

That first night is the most frightening, because what did I do and who turned me in?

And what's my mama going to think?

Well, i see my family again.

It's my life messed up.

There's so much flooding that you don't get to the singing.

The first night, maybe once you learned your way around, maybe once you found a place to sleep, maybe you got used to the rats running across your feet.

But that first night, that first night, you're despondent, you're depressed, but the presence of Jesus, the look in that woman's eyes when that spirit broke and the clarity that came, which is the ah, ah.

They started singing and praising God And they started talking to the Lord in prayer and praise.

And we know God heard because God showed up.

That's how we know God heard God showed.

Does God show up when you pray?

Does God show up when we pray?

I was raised that something needs to happen when we pray, and it's not always the shaking of a prison ground, but something needs to move.

And they prayed and God showed up.

Okay, i got to start moving And so the power got moves.

The gates are broken.

It's symbolic of this old system of imprisoning people, and Paul and Silas were innocent.

Maybe somebody else in there was too, or maybe they stole because they were hungry.

Now there are some people in there that needed to be there, just like there's some people in prison who need to be there.

But we all know I know because I know the work There are folks in there who don't get the help, they don't get the education, they don't get the rehabilitation, they don't get the support, they don't get the peer support.

They just get the time and the $35,000 bill that we, as taxpayers, pay to keep them in there to make us safe.

Well, they locked up for 20, 30 years, learning new things because of hopelessness.

The jailer heard that the doors were open.

They could hear people roaring.

He pulls out a sword to kill himself because he's a goner anyway, and Paul says don't hurt yourself.

And the men say the man says what must I do to be saved?

Now, i got to tell you, reading this as a kid, reading this as a person who loves the power of God, i'm an old penicost.

Just show me to move with the spirit, and I'm already shouting.

Show me a good miracle in scripture and bring me to catch it, because I'm about to go out in the name of the Lord.

Was it that the gates were open?

Was it that the chains were broken?

that made the jailer think God is with you?

Or the fact that freed men stayed in a place of bondage because there was one more bound person in this story who God wanted to free?

Was it the fact that others were gone?

Was it the fact that others were running?

Was it the fact that he was looking at these bars and thinking there must be a God, or did he look around at all of that And then see Paul drop the knife.

Drop the knife, don't do it.

Don't do it.

We're here.

We're here, silas.

Silas, we're here, come here, let me talk to you.

We're here, we're here.

The man comes trembling.

I want what you got.

I don't even know what it is.

I want what you got.

I don't even know.

Is it right?

Is it a cult?

Is not like what I've heard of?

I don't know anything about this Jesus.

I hear He's a bad.

I want what you got, not because it empowered you to go, but what you got empowered you to stay.

What is it?

Who is it?

There's a woman, middle-aged white woman, who came to our ministry.

She's in our US Black History class and grew up in atheists.

Her mother was an atheist, her grandfather was.

She wanted to visit church for cultural reason.

She wanted to be outnumbered in the midst of African-Americans And we offered this time a prayer.

She got in a line and went to pray with one of my associate pastors and she was shaking And she said what is this?

I don't know what to call this.

Is this God?

Is it Jesus?

I don't have language for it because I'm an atheist.

What is this called?

But she saw something, she sent something, she felt something And she said, look, this might go against my upbringing, this might go against what I've known for most of my life, but I want what this is.

I need what I don't even know what it's called, but I know it's doing something for me, that what I've been trying isn't working.

I'm trusting God for revival, not just in the church, in the city, in the land, in the world.

I believe that people are going to say I want you, god, that they're so tired of being tired, so sick of being sick, so tired of being guilty, that they just want to say God, if you're real.

So Paul preached to them believe.

He washed their wounds.

He pours water on them.

They then take some water and baptize him into it.

They then have communion of source and he brings them into the house.

He's bringing the prison, the warden is bringing the prisoners into his house.

They're eating and they're fellowshiping.

The gospel that got Paul incarcerated for freeing someone kept him incarcerated to free someone.

That the very person who managed the very system that took Paul's rights away was not beneath the cross and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and Paul was just as committed to him, as he was to this young lady, as he was to Lydia early in this chapter, as he was to Timothy.

Timothy, this young guy, the Greek dad, lydia, this woman who's praying beside this river.

There must not be enough praying men because there's no synagogue, so he's going to start a church in her home.

This is woman that's demon possessed.

He goes to jail because he's freeing her and he stays there.

He now stays there because he put himself in harm's way.

We don't want to inconvenience ourself for each other.

We don't want you to call me without first texting me.

We don't want to wear masks to protect each other.

We are so self.

I know I was meddling with them, but I had to put it in.

We don't want to do stuff to put ourselves out or put ourselves in harm's way in order to help someone else.

And we see Paul, an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, staying in prison as soon as I saw the light of day.

I don't know if you all watch or have seen any of Tyler Perry stuff, but there's this one scene in Medea goes to jail and they were letting people out and they said Mabel, and they can't even get her name out And Medea jumped up and jumped over people, said move food, and ran out.

I would have been like that.

As soon as I saw daylight I would have been outside.

I would have been praying for the jailer in the van on the way home, but he stayed there.

I don't know what the man's job or role was once he had come back to himself.

Maybe he retired, maybe he left, maybe he stayed in Medea's system better.

I don't know.

I can only imagine with my mind.

I can't build doctrine off of something that's not in the Holy written order.

I want to, but I know this he wasn't the same.

If he stayed, he changed the system And if he left, he changed the system.

It was not going to be a part of it.

When Paul, when we as believers, receive God's powers, called impartation, then as we get to know God more intimately, it's called revelation.

God reveals the beauty of God's Son and the life of the Holy Spirit in us.

Then witnessing or testing to that revelation is transformation.

We get to tell what God has done.

Paul and Silas told the man believe, but you better know that once that and he brought his whole family to be baptized, they were transformed because they told it.

But then, as they began to work together, that's collaboration.

And then, when we have collaborated, we live for the greater good by honoring God, by empowering others, healing others, strengthening others, building up others, like Paul did with his jailer and his family, the bad guys.

That's called liberation.

If our gospel offers no grace to those we presume are the bad guys, then it's not the gospel we're preaching.

The gospel reaches the innocent slave woman and the complicit, evil jailer.

That is our grace, that is God's gospel, that is our truth, that is our God, that is what our Christ came to give us.

So, in this time of brokenness, in this time of racist upheavals and systemic racism, now I'm doing personal genealogy.

I am meeting and have met the white descendants of my family's slave owner, ruben Joshua G.

I have documentation signed by President Van Buren giving this white slave owner, my great-great grandfather's dad, 160 acres in 1841 to become wealthy so that he could buy slaves like my great-great-great grandmother Venus and rape her and have children by her.

Because it was illegal to go to Africa and get black people.

But you could rape your slaves and you could make black people have black people.

I have pictures of the plantation.

I've walked through it, created this documentary I was a part of it called Justified Journey, where this upheaval has taken place.

But if the grace of God does not exist for those folks, doesn't exist for me And it doesn't exist for you, i need to know that it works for the violists of creatures, because you and I too are the violists of creatures And the fact that we can't admit it makes us violor.

We receive God's presence, god's kingdom.

That's impartation.

We get to know God so intimately through revelation that we are connected with God and understand that we will spend forever together.

But it's not just enough to get that conversion, that old-time religion, that testimony of the spirit, the fire, ah, but I've got to share that and witness to it and attest to it, and that's in transformation.

That's in transformation That when I begin to test to that revelation, i'm changed.

The more I tell it, the more I'm changed.

And then, as I am changed, god brings me people and brings me to people.

And we don't look alike and we don't sing alike and we don't pray alike, but we love alike and God loves us alike, and that's collaboration.

But then we'll form a church family, we'll form Nehemiah, we'll form our reentry program, we'll form justified anger where we liberate people.

The work of Nehemiah is our nonprofit.

It's not just to help struggling African-American people, it's to also show that we need folks who are part of the systemic racism.

We need them to know that oppression is choking them out as well And the liberty that I push for.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, particularly in this time.

White brothers and sisters in Christ were wrestling with this ugly history of you, this ugly US history and systemic racism and what's our part in it.

I'm good.

I've been walking with Jesus for 45 years.

I know who I am.

I know who I serve.

I know what God is capable of.

I know my limitations.

He walks with me and talks with me and tells me I'm good.

But I want the liberty that held my people when we were in chains to free the children of those people who made the chains.

I want us to shout in the enemy's face that the oppressed and the oppressors can be the children of God.

Our gospel must be strong enough to not only convert but subvert criminal justice systems, drug systems, court systems, poverty.

Our gospel must infiltrate us, that we may infiltrate these systems to be salt and light.

This time has gone by too fast.

This message strengthens me every time I think about it, but I want you to understand in this city, the Church of Jesus Christ has never been more needed, more warranted.

So please, let's lean in, let's ask God not only for the power of conversions, but subversions We have to give our headquarters, or people report how many conversions we have.

What would we say if we were asked to report on subversions?

What would you say?

What would I say?

What would we say We might want to practice?

the answer, because that might be the question as I read Matthew 25 and Acts 16.

It's really been my pleasure to be a guest speaker with you all today And I pray, madison Church, that you would continue to be all that God dreamed of when you placed you in the heart of your pastor in this founding team.

God bless you.