Stop Calling it a Season // David Swart

I just believe during our time of singing worship to the Lord, the presence of the Lord is here.

He's here, and I believe He is wanting to minister very specifically and very directly to people today.

He matures us.

And we aid the process by being submitted to the Word of God, by being submitted to Him, saying, Lord, will you speak to me?

So I pray, Father, this morning as I open your word, that each one of our hearts, Lord, would be open, not to what I have to say, Lord, but to what you are stirring in our hearts, to what your word is challenging in our hearts, to what you are shaking loose and rebuilding in our lives.

I pray this morning only what you want to be heard will be heard, Lord.

And that we as a church will be submitted to the word of God, which is truth itself.

We submit ourselves to you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

I have a question for you as we get started.

Have you ever gotten stuck in a job or in a city or in a relationship?

And I truly mean stuck.

You're like, oh gosh, what I do.

Or how about a group text chat?

Sometimes I get stuck in those.

More specifically, is there something that God has asked you to do?

Something he's asked you to start, uh, someone has asked you to release that you've been saying not yet for more than six months.

So often we Christians call things seasons, right?

But a season is typically about three months.

If your season's been going on for years, maybe it's not a season.

Maybe you're stuck.

Maybe you're stuck, and the Lord wants to do something today to minister to each one of us.

I don't know if we should call it procrastination or disobedience.

Sometimes there's a fine line.

I don't know if there's passive rebellion or quiet quitting is the way we say it today, or just comfortability and routine that we're stuck in.

And I want to talk today about the danger of getting stuck.

Uh, not the danger of catastrophic sin, which I'm sure we all will agree with and and and know, like, yeah, of course, don't do that.

But the danger of comfortably stopping.

We live in Ohio, and I love Ohio.

We've been here for 12 years, but can I say something to you with love?

Ohio has some sort of a gravity towards it.

It seems like everyone who leaves comes back.

Am I right?

Maybe that's you.

Uh maybe you left for a job, for college, for an adventure, and then came back.

And I'm wondering, is it because God told you to, or is it because we come back to familiar?

Do we come back to, well, it's family, so of course I gotta come back.

Or do we come back because the cost of the adventure, the cost of the unknown, feels higher than the comfort of the familiar that we find ourselves in?

Here in Ohio, I feel like we don't seem to build Towers of Babel.

That was our portion last week.

Uh we build routines, and routines, if left unchecked, can become fortresses.

And then we call these fortresses stability or being wise or waiting on the season in the Lord.

But sometimes, friends, it's just Huron.

If you don't know what a Huron is, turn to your Bibles to Genesis 11, verse 27.

Genesis 11:27

In this text, we're starting one generation before Abraham.

And if you're new with us today, if you've been visiting recently, we took this quarter, January through now, to go through Genesis chapter 1 through 12.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

And we've been slowly going through it, really unpack some of the major stories we see in just these first 11, 12 chapters, which uh set in, in a sense, the the foundation for some of the major doctrines in scripture we find in chapter 1, 2, and 3, and then reiterated in 4, 5 through 11 and 12.

We we learn about the sovereignty of God, the the creative power of God.

We we learn about the the identity of mankind in these verses.

We learn about the problem with humanity, we look at uh the call of God to us, and then most importantly, we look at the covenant of God, the promise that God makes to us all the way through these early chapters that just keep getting repeated throughout the story of Scripture.

So today we are here in getting introduced to a man named Abram, who later gets changed to Abraham.

He's a big deal, and we finish our story right our series right now.

After Easter, we start our next one, and I cannot wait to tell you more about it.

Uh, but we are gonna go through for three months through the uh the patriarchy.

The patriarchy, the the the patriarchs, not that one, the the patriarchs of our faith, the fathers of our faith.

We're gonna look at some of the big stories.

All the women are like I don't not want to listen to you right now.

Um focus, focus, you with me?

Genesis 11.

Let's get into it.

Verse 27.

Now these are the generations of Terah.

Terah fathered Abraham, Nahor, and Haran.

And Haran fathered Lot.

Haran died in the presence of his father Terah, uh, and in the land of his kindred in Ur of the Chaldeans.

Keep that in mind.

And Abraham and Nahor took wives.

The name of Abraham's wife was, I pronounce it Sarai.

Is that wrong?

Sirai?

Okay, you can be wrong too.

That's fine.

Um, we'll go with that.

And the name of Nahor's wife, Milkah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milkah and Ishka.

Verse 30.

Now, Sarai, wrong way, was barren and had no child.

Keep that in mind.

Sarah was barren and had no child.

Verse 31, Terah took Abraham, his son, and Lot, the son of Aaron, his grandson, and Sarai, Sarai, Sarai, his daughter-in-law, his son Abraham's wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan.

But when they came to Haran, they settled there.

The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran.

It stopped there.

What stood out to me here is verse 31.

It says that they had set out to go into the land of Canaan.

Now, if you are a believer, if you've been reading your Bible for a while, you'd understand Canaan has some particular importance in the story of God's people.

Here we are introduced to this in the beginning.

Terah was on his way to Canaan with Abraham.

That was the destination.

That was the plan.

But it says, but when they came to Haran, they settled there.

They stopped.

And Terah dies over there.

Now let's look at Haran for just a second.

Haran, the city, not the sun.

Haran, the city, likely gets its name from an Akkadian word called Haranu, which means road or crossroads.

It's said that Haran was a major trade hub, a place where routes intersected.

You could do business there, you could be comfortable there.

It was a good city.

In fact, they say Haran was culturally almost identical to Ur, Ur of the Chaldeans, where they started.

So they went from Ur to Haran, kind of very similar, similar language, similar trade networks, and similar god that they worship.

They worshiped the sun god in both Ur and in Haran.

So in a sense, it's like Terah may have left Ur, but he settled in the very familiar Haran, even though his destination was Canaan.

He packed for his family, but he left and stopped in a place that felt very familiar.

And then there's something sad in here as well.

Terah had a son who died.

His name was also Haran.

And we don't know whether the city was already named that or whether it just reminded him of his grief.

But the man who was supposed to go to Canaan, what you and I know today as the promised land, stopped there in a city that carried the name of his grief, of his loss.

Sometimes we stop moving because something died.

Maybe a dream, maybe a marriage, maybe a version of yourself that you thought you would be by now.

And then the season of grief becomes a home, it becomes an identity, it becomes what you settle in.

That's Terah.

And verse 32 tells us Terah died there in Haran, never reaching what he stood out for.

Let's keep reading.

We get to Genesis chapter 12 now, verse 1.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

The scriptures tell us now the Lord said to Abraham, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.

And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

So Abraham went as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him.

Abraham was 75 years old when he departed from Haran.

Let's stop there.

Now, two things I want to pull out of this portion for us here.

Number one is the call to go.

The call to go.

We see in verse 1.

Now the Lord said to Abraham, Go from your country and your kindred to your father's house, to the land that I will show you.

Go.

The Hebrew transliteration of this instruction is actually a phrase, and I'm gonna try pronounce it.

I'm not very good at this linguistics, but it goes like lek leka.

See that?

Can you say that with me?

Beautiful.

We may all be wrong in how you pronounce it, but there it is.

At least we're all wrong together.

Um the word lik is this the root word for it is walk or go, but the leka that gets added to it is what they call a reflexive pronoun.

And it means something when you put it together, it means something closer to go for yourself or for your own becoming.

It's not an exact translation, but the early uh rabbinic thoughts around this chapter was it was go for your own becoming.

There's there's a purpose in you going that will produce something in you that will be part of you becoming this thing.

It's decisive, it's defining departure for them.

So, in a sense, God isn't just telling Abraham to change his address, he's telling him to become someone that he cannot become by staying.

Can you think of that for a minute?

Go, go into this place.

If if if this is right, this interpretation, it's go because you won't be able to become the thing that I want you to be if you stayed right here.

Many of you know, Kathy and I were born and raised in South Africa, and we got married, and about a year, year and a half later, uh, I took a job in Chicago, and we're like, yeah, let's go.

We prayed about it, felt like God was in it.

I had this stirring from maybe age six.

I'm like, I don't know why I want to live in America.

I want to be in America.

I think there's something there for me.

I don't know if it's the movies or the friends or whatever, but I wanted to be here.

But there was a stirring in me, and I couldn't figure out why.

Most South Africans don't love America.

Side facts.

But we wanted to come.

There was something stirring in my heart, and I was reflecting on this this week, and I thought of what God did in us in our marriage, in a young marriage, by being in a city like Chicago, far from any family.

Something happened in us.

We became a whole different kind of unit because we went when God had told us to go.

I have a feeling had were we staying there?

And I'm not saying every couple has to leave your family.

I'm not saying that at all, please.

But um there's a sense for me, for us, if we had stayed there, we wouldn't have leaned into those uncomfortable conversations, those uncomfortable truths of becoming and discovering who we were, because comfort has a powerful hold on me.

Perhaps on you as well.

Comfort.

There's something about us leaving the home, for example, to learn to become something that you are not yet.

How many of you before you left the house knew how to cook?

Not me.

Some of you are very good, very clever.

Uh it wasn't until you left the house where you go, where you had to learn to become something that there was some you maybe you should, and now you can become a contributing member of society.

Amen.

Parents, that was your yes, amen.

It's like you had to get out of comfort zone where mother isn't making your food for you to learn how to make your food.

There's something about coming out of your comfort zone where you have to learn to trust in God like you didn't need to because all your needs were taken care of where you are.

There's something about us stepping out that God begins to form in us an identity and a purpose, but it requires for us to lek leka.

Can we say that one more time?

I want you to walk around with this.

In South Africa, there's this word called leker.

That was loud.

It's got nothing to do with that.

So lek leca.

Here we go.

All right, firstly, we're talking about the call.

Secondly, I want to pull out the destination.

Verse 1 tells us again.

Now the Lord said to him, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house.

So he knows what he had to leave: his country, his family, his father's house.

But what we don't know is where to.

To a land I will show you.

In this verse, there is no idea of the address.

It's completely absent.

Go to the place I will show you.

Now, maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I think the destination wasn't about the place.

It was about an ongoing relationship of trust.

An ongoing relationship of trust.

It's like we don't get the map up front, we get the direction.

Just go, and what we get is his presence.

And his presence will show you as you move on.

If you've read much of the Old Testament, you have this story of the manna being provided when the Israelites were wandering the desert.

Every day the Lord gave them manna for that day.

And I always wondered, why not for the week or for the month?

Let's put it in the refrigerator and we're taken care of.

But there's a sense of needing to come daily to the Lord for our provision for that day.

Daily He provides it, except for the Saturday or the day six, where you can uh have the day of rest.

The walk with the Lord seems to be a daily process of trust, a daily process of being fed into, of being uh drawing on the hand of the Lord, on the direction of the Lord.

I think this is really important for us.

So we see there in verse 2 this promise he makes him.

I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I'll make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse.

And in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

Awesome.

One of the most impressive promises made in history to that point.

But there's a little fact we saw in chapter 11.

Chapter 11, verse 30.

Now Sarah was barren, she had no child.

In the midst of this big promise that the Lord makes about a nation's and blessing to all people, your name will be remembered forever, is a man whose wife cannot have a child.

And this is not a mistake.

Here's why I say that it's a pattern, it's a pattern you see through, especially the early fathers of our faith.

Abraham got given this promise about nations.

His wife was Baron.

His son Isaac again received the promise about nations, his wife Rebecca, Baron.

Eventually they have a child, their child, Jacob, again, promise of God, covenant of God made with him, nations, his wife, Rachel, Baron.

Every single patriarch who received this covenant, a promise, has a wife who cannot naturally fulfill it.

And every time that the very promise requires them to trust in something that appears dead.

Friends, God doesn't make promises despite the impossible, He does it in the impossible so that when it happens, we can only give glory to God.

We can only give glory to God, not take glory for ourselves.

If this was just about your ability, your accomplishments, your greatness, your experience, your money, your family line, then you get to take some credit in what you're building.

But the father chooses the baron to make a promise to so that he can get the glory for the fact that this was his work.

It's incredible.

Let's keep going.

Verse 4.

What do we see?

So Abraham went.

Let's just stop there.

So Abraham went.

Wait, where is the negotiation?

Where is the argument?

Where is the but wait?

Hold up.

Where is my 401k?

How is that gonna fit into this whole situation?

Are you gonna take care of the the the cows and the the produce and the there that we see no negotiation here?

We see, and Abraham went.

He went, he just went and he did it.

He went as the Lord told him into this relationship of faith that he couldn't see the destination of.

Now, maybe you've been going through the scriptures with us and you've been wondering why now if if there was this general Adam and Eve, and you know, go and fill the earth, and then you see Noah and his family go and fill the earth, and and now you get to that, no, no, I'm gonna drill in on one family, Abraham and your offspring and your seed.

Why why are we getting so specific right now?

If you're asking that question, I think the answer is in verse three, where he says, In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

In you shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

That word families, it's again the Hebrew word here is forgive the pronunciation, Mishpa Kot.

Mishpachot.

It refers to clans, like blood-linked units of human society.

Families.

This is not a political statement, it's not like a national statement.

It's families, families, units, clans together.

In you will all of them be blessed.

You see, the target here is all of them.

The vessel was Abraham.

C.S.

Lewis puts it this way: he says, the the chosen people are chosen not for their own sake, certainly not for their own honor or pleasure, but for the sake of the unchosen.

For the sake of all the families that would be and could be blessed through the offspring of Abraham.

Now here's where the story gets even more bizarre.

We don't see this specifically in Genesis 12, but when we look at Joshua chapter 24, Joshua chapter 24, verse 2 tells us something about Genesis 12.

Joshua 24 · chapter mention Joshua 24:2

It says that Abraham was actually a pagan.

Before the call, him and his family were worshiping other gods in Ur when God called.

Him and interrupted his life.

This call of God wasn't about Abraham's goodness or his works, it was about God choosing a man through whom he wants to bless all the nations of the earth.

This is really important.

This is like grace breaking into an undeserved life simply because God chose him.

In this we can just see that God doesn't necessarily call the prepared, the perfect one.

God calls and then prepares.

God calls and prepares.

And as you're as you're thinking about this, the question I asked you up front: has God been speaking to you and you've been putting something off?

Maybe it's a place to go.

Maybe it's something to start.

Maybe it's a church community to start, something like that.

Your question is, I'm not ready yet.

I'm not, I haven't won this victory yet.

I don't have this level of finances yet.

I don't have this or this thing in place.

The story of Abraham should give us great peace.

We know nothing about him, other than the fact that his family used to worship other gods.

And God breaks in and he believes the voice he heard.

He believes God.

And he puts his faith in that one.

It's faith that is required for it, you and I, to please the Lord.

It's faith that's required for you to accomplish the thing that he has put in you.

It is not your particular cleverness and your particular ability.

Is that okay?

We're in a performance world.

And the performance world says you work, achieve up to then you get rewarded for the bigger thing and the next thing.

At least how it used to work in my career.

It's not the way of the kingdom.

The way of the kingdom is he calls and then he prepares you.

It's like when Jesus called his disciples, he's like, apprentice under me.

They were not chosen by the other rabbis.

They were not chosen by the brightest of the brightest.

They were fishermen working for their dads, or carpenters, or doing all sorts of other things.

The Lord sees them, calls them, and then equips them as they move on.

We are his apprentices.

Friends, this is where we see Jesus step into this story.

In this line, that in you will all the families of the earth be blessed.

Paul helps us interpret this in Galatians.

In Galatians chapter 3, verse 8, it says this that this was the gospel announced in advance.

Galatians 3:8

If you look at it on your screen, uh Galatians 3, verse 8.

Galatians 3:8

He preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, In you will all the nations be blessed.

There's a foreshadow of the gospel being preached through that statement.

This is what Paul is telling us.

The whole point of the covenant was to always point forward to the one who would come from his line, who would then be the blessing for every family.

This has always been about Jesus.

This has always been about Jesus, that Jesus would be the one through whom all the earth and all the nations of the earth could be blessed.

Peter tells us the same thing in Acts chapter 3, verse 25 and 26.

Acts 3:25

He identifies Jesus as being the fulfillment of the offspring of Abraham so that all the peoples on the earth would be blessed, quoting Genesis chapter 22.

Genesis 22 · chapter mention

It's like Jesus does the ultimate lech lecka.

He left the ultimate security, not an Ur or a Haram, but he left heaven.

He left his father's house to come to earth to become, in Matthew's words, a wanderer with no place to lay his head.

Jesus left the comfortable to come and become, that we may have life.

That he became the door, he became the way, he became the truth, he became the one in whose name we call on to be saved.

He is the one that Abraham was always pointing to.

And then after Jesus' resurrection, he then goes and gives us a command that's very similar to Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

In Matthew 28, he says, go.

The same imperative, the same direction without an exact map.

Go make disciples of all nations.

The word nations, same as Genesis over here.

In you all the nations will be blessed.

Go make disciples of all families, all nations, all clans.

This is for everyone.

The gospel goes out to all, and all who believe will be saved.

It's like the Great Commission is Genesis 12 in kind of full color.

Now we get to see how that plays out here for us.

Jesus is the blessing.

We are the carriers.

And I want to remind us again, 614 Church, there's an apostolic calling of God on our church to go make disciples of all nations.

That's why we're planting sites and training people, wanting people to get ready to plant churches.

That's why we're on the campus to have conversations.

That's why you are where you live.

You're not just there to have a fulfill a great church growth strategy.

This is not a church growth strategy.

It's a fulfillment of the commission of the Lord.

It's a fulfillment of the promise of God through Abraham that through the seed of Abraham all nations will be blessed.

We're always pointing people to Jesus.

This story started when one man left Haran and went and obeyed what God called him to do.

When Jackie Pullinger was here a few weeks ago, she made the statement.

She said, the way to abundant life is to pour out your own.

To pour out your own for others.

Then we begin to understand what full reliance on the Lord is.

What a full being fed by the Lord is when we're not relying on our own strength, we're pouring ourselves out for the sake of others.

So I need to ask you something today.

What is keeping us from going?

What's actually holding us in Haran?

And I don't want us to get to a place where we again need to put a list up of New Year's resolutions, and okay, now I'm just going to try harder.

I found this quote by Jonathan Edwards.

He said this that that which men love, they desire to have.

Those acts which men delight in, they are inclined to do.

So in a sense, the thing that you love is the thing that you're going to be doing.

The thing that captures your heart is the thing that you're going to find yourself prioritizing.

Maybe I can rephrase it this way: the heart is moved by what the heart finds most beautiful.

We go to where our love goes.

We stay where our deepest affections are at rest.

When Kathy and I uh started dating, no one had to tell me what to do to make time in my calendar to spend more time with her.

I still had to get all my work done.

But for some reason, nothing else was as important as my need to have a four-hour conversation with Kathy.

Nothing else was important.

My heart was leaning in that direction, so all of my priorities seemed to adjust and shift.

You didn't have to tell me to do anything.

So really the problem then is what are we looking at?

What are we fixing our minds on?

What is the thing that has captured, truly captured our heart?

Jesus says this in Matthew 6.

He said, For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Trying to answer the question of how do we move into these things?

How do we move out of Haran without me just saying, okay, just write a list and really try hard?

There's a different way to approach this.

Where your heart is, your, no, no, where your treasure is, your heart is also.

And where your heart is, this is where we're going to begin to do the things we want to do.

So we've got to ask ourselves, where is your treasure?

And this isn't just where are you giving money?

Where is your treasure?

Where is the thing you find most valuable?

What is the thing that has captured your heart?

Maybe using Babel language from last week, where is your comfort or your security or your name building?

Is that the thing you're putting most of your time and your affection on?

Because that's the thing that'll find your address, that'll find your focus of what you're doing.

The anecdote to this isn't trying harder, it's gazing more on the beauty of the Lord.

It's looking more at Him, it's finding that my focus has been on my net worth.

My focus has been on my kids and what's going to become of them.

My focus has been on my name.

My focus has been on what people think about 614.

And when my focus has been on that, none of those are bad things.

But when I love that more than loving watching him, then my heart is drawing more to this thing, and my action goes into that direction.

Does that make sense?

So the problem for us to solve is to figure out what are we looking at?

What are we gazing on?

What are we spending our time on?

And it's not that you don't love the Lord or you don't want to follow Him.

It's in a sense we love Haran more than we love the call of God on our lives.

We love the comfort.

And it's not conscious, it's not deliberate, but it becomes functionally true.

We love the predictable, we love the manageable, we we love the version of God that fits in our current life plan without disrupting it.

One of our values at 614 is presence, which I believe is exactly the answer to being stuck.

We say in this that we we pursue the presence of God wholeheartedly, knowing that one encounter with Jesus can change everything.

Because, friends, when your heart actually finds God beautiful, more beautiful than the comfort or the familiar, then leaving Haran stops feeling like a loss.

It starts feeling like the most obvious thing in the world to do next.

So I'm praying right now, and I've been praying for this message, Lord.

I don't want another to-do list here.

Father, would you show us where we're getting stuck?

Would you show us where we have put our affection?

Where we have put our attention.

In a sense, there's three harons that I want to address as we close this out.

One could be the comfort huron.

Life is good, nothing is catastrophically wrong.

God is in your life, but not exactly in the driver's seat.

You're not disobeying anything specific, but you've quietly stopped asking God the dangerous questions.

Nothing has died.

Or perhaps nothing feels fully alive either.

This is the comfort Haran.

Like the Lord perhaps wants to identify and help us move out of.

Second one is this, the the grief Haran.

We saw in here that Terah stopped in Haran, and I don't know if it is because of his son, but there's some connection here because perhaps something has died.

A dream you thought God gave you, a relationship, a business, a ministry, a version of your future, but you've stopped when you face the challenge.

You stopped when something died, and now you're stuck.

You're not angry at God, but you're just tired of fighting.

You're just tired.

And that's how you describe your walk with the Lord right now.

A third one is this: the let's call it the halfway haran.

You know the call.

You said yes once, you even took some real steps, but then you got comfortable enough that comfortable started feeling like obedience.

And you've been calling halfway close enough for so long that it actually begins to feel like home right now.

Maybe one of these identifies you, maybe all of these at different times and at different levels, but it's what I want us to do right now.

Because I said when I started, I truly believe the Lord wants to minister to you, to your heart, to your situation here today.

I don't want to just give you a vague pray about it or come and spend 12 hours next Saturday with us in worship, although that'd be fun.

You can come.

But let's just take the next few minutes, two minutes.

No phone, no side conversation, and just write down one honest answer to this question.

What is the thing I know that God has been asking me to do to go, to release, to begin, that I've been calling not yet for more than six months?

Can I say that again?

What's the one thing I know God's been asking me to do to go, to release, to begin, that I've been calling not yet for more than six months.

And then as you wrestle with that question, as you write it down, don't make a promise you won't keep.

Just name it.

Write it down and bring it to God.

And then just say this with all of us.

I don't want to die in Iran.

I don't want to get stuck halfway.

That's it.

That's all we need to do right now.

Before we get into solve mode, let's just bring this to the Lord and be honest.

I believe the Lord wants to bring courage and breathe courage back into lives who've gone dull.

He wants to bring courage back into dreams that you've had before and you've tried and you failed and you tried and you failed.

He wants to bring courage back.

But more than anything, I believe God wants to become the object of your affection again.

And when we put our focus on Him, I believe He'll make the next step way more clear, especially since you're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses right here in this room.

Men and women of faith who want to go and do all that God has called us to do.

While I'm talking, if you want to start writing that thing down, go for it.

Just do some business with the Lord.

I want to I want to talk to some people in this room here.

Perhaps you don't know Jesus.

Perhaps you've done church or you're checking out church, or your parents did church, but you yourself have never given your life to Jesus.

This is a very personal and individual thing that we get to do corporately in the body of God.

Have you given your life to Jesus?

Have you surrendered your life to Jesus?

Have you asked Him to be the Lord of your life?

Would you close your eyes for a second?

I want to I want to pray for someone who, anyone who would like to give their life to Jesus right now.

And if that's you, you just stick up your hands so I know who I'm praying for.

It doesn't mean you're joining this church, but it means you're joining the family of God.

It means you're giving your life to Him, you're starting a conversation with Him.

The Bible tells us leads us to resurrection life, eternal life, a confidence that were you to die today, you will meet Him in heaven.

If that's you, could you stick up your hands?

So I know who I'm praying for.

And we'll lead us as a church through this prayer.

I don't see any hands right now, but I want to still want us to pray this.

Perhaps you're just beginning to have this conversation with God, and I want to just start this year as a church that we could do this together.

Can we pray this together?

Say, dear Jesus, I believe you're the Son of God.

And I want to follow you.

I don't understand this all.

But I know I need a savior.

I know I'm a sinner.

And I'm asking you to forgive me of my sins.

Jesus, I believe in your resurrection.

And I believe that through faith in you, I can come to life.

And I give you my life today.

Will you help me?

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Church, can we stand together?

I went a little bit long, but I just trust that the Lord has been speaking to you.

We're gonna finish with a song.

Our ministry team is gonna be up here.

Either one of these areas that you feel you've been stuck in.

Come and pray with somebody.

Or just take the next five minutes as we worship and reorient your mind and your heart again on the most beautiful one that we worship and we honor Jesus today.

It's worship.