Homecoming Part 3 | What Are You Driving? with Rudy

He's glorious.

Behold the one who has come to life.

Welcome to Hub City Vineyard.

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you can go to connect.hcv.church or give.hcv.church.

If at any time during this message

you feel called to make a change in your life,

text changeme to 970-00.

Thank you and enjoy the message.

Good morning Hub City Vineyard.

How are you guys doing today?

Happy Valentine's Day.

Listen.

Yeah, I'm a little late.

I'm a little late.

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

If you have a green drink, hold it up.

Cheers.

Whoo.

Whoo.

That's sweet.

St. Valentine's Day.

Wow.

That would change the entire message.

The entire message.

Listen, I just want to thank you guys here for coming today.

Just give you all a warm welcome.

If you are watching online, maybe you're at home.

Maybe you're dancing the Cupid Shuffle

underneath a palm tree somewhere in Florida.

Thank you for joining us.

We appreciate you tuning in.

Yes, our pastor who just celebrated

his birthday last Tuesday, Chris,

is resting somewhere on the beach in Florida

after watching his oldest daughter, Trinity,

rack up a bunch of K's inside the pitching circle

for Florida Atlantic University.

So there will be no dancing today.

That's Chris's thing.

But there might be singing.

That's foreshadowing.

With that said, let's pray for our lead pastor

who's getting some much needed rest, shall we?

Come, Holy Spirit.

God, we just thank you.

We thank you for our leader, our mentor, Chris Slaughterbeck.

We thank you for sending him to us.

We thank you for the prodigal son that he is,

that you had sent him back to us to help us get home.

I just thank you, God, for allowing

him to just have a few days of rest and relaxation.

I just ask God that you renew him, you restore his energy,

so when he comes back and gears up for Easter,

that he's ready to give us all of what he has, which is

nothing more than a gift from you.

God, I thank you for this morning.

I thank you for the people here.

I ask God that you just take the words that we've agreed upon

and you just let them fall on hearts

that are ready to accept them and ears that

are ready to listen.

And all God's people said, amen.

Man, that juices.

Is there anything in there besides sugar?

Hey, it's St. Patrick's Day, baby.

Let's go.

I love St. Patrick's Day.

I used to be a bartender.

Didn't so much like bartending on St. Patrick's Day.

But I may have drinking an adult beverage or two.

So let's talk about some things about St. Patrick.

Give you some factual information here and maybe

some myth.

St. Patrick was not Irish.

He was probably British.

He was some type of Roman Catholic, probably,

if they had it that far back.

His actual name, we believe, was Maywin Sokot.

Listen, these names, I make sure.

A couple years ago, I did a message and a whole bunch

of names in the Bible I could not pronounce.

So if there's a name in here that I pronounce correctly,

it's because I used YouTube pronunciation.

So later, when he went into ministry,

he referred to himself as Patricius, which YouTube

told me how to pronounce.

I'll probably still mispronounce it.

The corned beef and cabbage, the parties, the parades,

these are all mostly American traditions

because that's what we do.

We steal other people's traditions

and we use them to party.

Yes.

Even the color green was only adopted

within the last couple hundred years

as St. Patrick's traditional color would probably

have been blue.

Orange.

All right.

Obviously, I needed to watch Veggie Tales, St. Patrick's Day

special a little bit closer.

Based on Patricius's own writing,

these are the facts that we for sure know.

St. Patrick was actually kidnapped by Irish raiders

when he was 16 years old and sold as a slave in,

guess where, Northern Ireland.

After spending six years as a shepherd,

he escapes back to England.

After coming home, Patrick became a cleric

in a Catholic faith.

He studied in England and abroad.

And at one point, Patric had a vision or dream.

And in that dream, he felt that God spoke to him

and told him to go where?

Back to the people that enslaved him

and tell them about Jesus.

He ended up baptizing over 100,000 people

back in the land that enslaved him.

More foreshadowing.

So when Chris gave me this message a couple of months ago,

I immediately felt God calling me to speak today

about the heart of evangelism.

The past two weeks, Chris has shared

the story of the prodigal son.

A prodigal is a person who leaves home and behaves

recklessly, but later makes a repentant return.

Sound like anyone you know?

When I think about the prodigal son, like most of you,

I see myself.

I see the grace, the mercy, the forgiveness, the patience

that the father shows the son in that story.

And I know it is all about how much grace and mercy

and forgiveness and patience the father has shown me.

All of us, every one of you, is a prodigal son

or a prodigal daughter.

My heart says, if God is willing to leave the 99 to find me,

then I want to go help God find the next sheep.

St. Patrick understood this.

He understood this to the point that when God called him

into missionary work, he went where?

Back to the people that enslaved him.

And I believe that the reason he sent him back there

is because of what Patricius knew.

He knew sheep herding.

So who better to tell the story to than a bunch of sheep herders?

He'd spent years practicing.

See, what we tend to do when we think of the word evangelism

is to shy away.

We don't like the word.

Most of us don't like any isms.

Most of us don't like feeling sold to.

See, when I was growing up in high school,

I was Southern Baptist.

I remember two instances when we went into neighborhoods

close to my church and went door to door asking people

if they knew Jesus.

I abhorred the experience.

I probably hated it more than the people

hiding in the back of the house not answering their door.

But today, I want to change our mindset on what

it means to evangelize.

Today, I want to spend some time in the Old Testament.

See, when I hear the story of the prodigal son,

my mind immediately goes back to Jacob

and how he tricks his father Isaac and his brother Esau

into his brother's inheritance and his father's blessing.

But the more I dig in, the more I

realize Jesus was pulling this story from many, if not

every one of the Old Testament figures

as he talks about the prodigal son.

And today, God is going to use those Old Testament examples

as we discuss having a heart of evangelism.

Are you ready?

That leads us to our first point.

Jesus calls us all to evangelism.

And I want to go all the way back to Abraham or Abram,

as he was initially called.

Abraham had a beautiful wife.

So attractive that when Abraham and Sarah

would go into a new land, Abraham

would tell everyone that Sarah was his sister

because he feared the men would be jealous

and that they either might kill Abraham or do bad things

to his beautiful wife.

I guess he didn't trust God to keep him safe.

But God also made a promise to Abraham.

He told Abraham that he would have a child

and that his offspring would be numerous.

But Sarah was old and infertile.

So she decided Abraham should have

a baby with another woman.

And he agrees to it.

Scandalous.

Let me pause here for a minute.

If you're a reader, whatever your favorite genre is,

whatever the thing you'd like to read the most,

I suggest reading the Bible.

If you like spice, ladies, it's in there.

If you like mystery, it's in there.

If you like dystopia, it's in there.

Like Revelation, dystopia, the Hunger Games.

The world ends and people are living.

The Book of Eli.

We'll watch the movies this week, Gary.

If you like action, if you like romance, if you like poetry,

all that is in there.

Read your Bible.

At any rate, Abraham was broken and God used him anyway.

And God used him anyway.

Some of you may remember this song from childhood.

I warned you.

Father Abraham had many sons and many sons had father Abraham

and I am one of them and so are you.

So let's just praise the Lord.

We're not going to do right arm wrestling.

Listen, I warned you I was going to sing.

Chris can dance.

I know what my gifts are.

This song now that we sang as babies is rich in biblical truth

and I think it speaks to evangelism.

All the way back in Genesis 13 and verse 14, this is what we read.

The Lord said to Abram after Lot had parted from him,

look around from where you are to the north and to the south,

to the east and to the west.

All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever.

I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth

so that if anyone could count the dust,

only then could your offspring be counted.

See, God makes a pact with Abraham that his offspring would be uncountable.

Paul adds in the New Testament that anyone who comes into relationship with Jesus

is adopted into God's family.

That makes us one of Abraham's descendants and a child of God.

And guess what?

Once we are in a family, we are commissioned by Jesus to evangelize.

Yes, Jesus gives us the great commission

which is found in Matthew 28 down near the bottom.

Then Jesus came to them, to the apostles, and he said,

all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations,

baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,

and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded,

and surely I am with you even to the very end of the age.

Now, there's a little bit of religious talk in here.

Let's break a couple things down.

This is called the great commission.

If you haven't heard that, here's what it is.

It's called the great commission because it is the biggest task that Jesus gave us

to evangelize to everyone everywhere.

Now, let's go a step further because I also keep saying the word evangelize.

I don't want to take for granted that we all know what that word is.

What does evangelism entail?

And I want you to know this because it's a word that turned me off

from speaking Jesus for many years because I misused the word.

Evangelism simply means this,

spreading the gospel of Jesus through personal witness.

There is no better way to spread the gospel.

There is no better way to spread the good news than to tell your personal story.

Your story of Jesus is the story you know the best.

You've been practicing it your whole life.

The great commission is basically this.

If you like quotes, write this down.

The whole world doesn't have to go to church.

The church has to go to the whole world.

Every one of us is called.

And I'm going to tell you at the end of this day's message,

get your butt out of the seat and go do the thing.

This leads us to point two.

While Jesus calls us to serve and to love the enemy,

the liar, the deceiver, he tries to distract us from evangelism.

Now, this isn't in my notes, but I think it's important.

Sometimes we Christians like to blame our actions on the enemy.

The enemy is really good at what he does.

He's a really good distractor, but guess what?

Every time I screwed up, whose fault was it?

Yours. Say yours, but maybe say mine.

Now, maybe I'm going to learn on this.

Anyone else here have negative self-talk?

I'm probably the only one, right?

Like, I'm an encourager.

I like to be positive, unless you're here at 7 a.m.

But I try my best to lift up everyone around me,

except me.

So I'm not alone.

You guys are with me. Okay, good.

I was worried I might be the only one.

All this negative self-talk helps talk me out of

sharing the story of Jesus all the time.

Don't think I'm weird.

Don't think I'm crazy.

Don't laugh at me.

They probably are doing all those things anyway.

And they probably wouldn't be wrong.

You know who else questioned himself?

Moses.

Yes, Moses, another prodigal son.

He killed a man.

He fled to the backside of the wilderness for 40 years.

And then God meets him in a burning bush.

If God takes the time to show off and speak to you from a

burning bush, maybe listen to what he says.

But Moses questions him.

Moses forced self-talk.

From that bush, God tells Moses that Moses will return to

Egypt and lead his people back to the promised land.

And in Exodus 3, down in verse 11, says Moses says to God,

who am I?

Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites

out of Egypt?

Negative self-talk.

God kind of ignores it.

He continues on.

He starts to give Moses instruction.

And we further down in Exodus 4, verse 11, Moses answers him

Exodus 4:11

now, what if they don't believe me?

What if they don't listen to me?

What if they say the Lord didn't appear to you?

Negative self-talk.

Then God gives Moses tools, two signs.

He doesn't just tell him the tools.

He literally turns his staff into a snake.

There's two garter snakes in my front yard right now.

And Carrie is laughing at me yesterday.

They're like this big.

And I can't go out in the front yard.

I can't.

I can't.

That was not in my notes.

But God forgive me for snapping at my wife because she laughed

at me.

He throws his staff down and it turns into a snake.

Now, I probably wouldn't have picked it back up.

Then he tells you to put his hand in his pocket.

He pulls it out.

It's full of leprosy.

Now, thankfully, God turns those things back normal.

Now, obviously, both of those signs probably would have

scared the living out of me.

And probably scare me into saying, all right, God, let's

go.

But what does Moses do?

Negative self-talk.

In verse 11, pardon your servant, Lord, but I have never

been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken

to your servant.

I am slow of speech and tongue.

This sounds like an excuse I've heard most of y'all use.

I don't talk good.

But Timothy tells us, or sorry, Paul tells us in the second

book of Timothy, chapter 1, for God has not given us a spirit

of fear and timidity, but a spirit of power, love, and

self-discipline.

Man, God has been giving you these tools all along.

The experiences you've had, the life you've lived, the

things that you have learned, you've been practicing this

your whole life.

A couple weeks ago, in one of our morning sessions, Kelsey

Palmer told the group this about me.

You know, I love that Rudy uses metaphors and pictures to

illustrate a point.

I downplayed it until I realized, yeah, I am good at

that, not that it's mine to brag about, it's a gift from

God.

He gave that gift to me as a way that I'm going to use to

illustrate the next point.

And listen, I've been practicing to be a storyteller my

whole life.

Give me 45 minutes with a microphone and you're going to

be here three hours.

Let's go.

St. Patty's cup.

Come on.

What I want you to know is that God has already begun his

work in you.

I would say he has probably already used you, whether you

know it or not.

And guess what?

You've been practicing your whole life for this.

But the problem is, again, the enemy wants to distract us

from evangelism, which leads us to point three, we hesitate

to share with people who are different.

So here's my metaphor.

Who here likes chicken wings?

Let's go.

My wife and I, every Thursday night, we go down to Frederick,

we take Fred Kingston down for a little activity.

We go to the anchor bar and have date night.

And most times we order chicken wings.

Chicken wings.

Chicken wings.

Now listen, there's two kinds of wing eaters.

Now some of you might argue that there's more categories, but

there are only two.

How many of you like the drums, the drumettes, the legs?

Let's go.

You're my people.

How many of you like the flats, the wingettes?

Well, you're wrong.

Now, now listen, some of you say, I have no preference.

I like them all.

To that I say, you are lukewarm.

I spit you out.

Cheers aside.

Now others of you say, I just prefer boneless wings.

Sorry, that's a chicken nugget.

Not a wing.

You don't eat wings with a fork.

You get messy.

So again, I ask, which side are you on?

Drums or flats?

All right.

So now here's the illustration.

Mary and I do not agree on the best wing.

Guess which one she likes.

See, I prefer the drums.

I don't mind being messy, but I need one clean hand.

I need one clean hand because I have super sweet sugary Kool-Aid

to drink.

I need to grab my beverage with something, right?

Also, I just like to eat around the outside of the bone.

Carrie, she prefers the audience participation.

Carrie feels like there's more meat on the bone.

She's wrong.

She also thinks that the meat is easier to get out if you just

separate the bones.

I don't like to have to separate the bones.

Why?

I need one clean hand.

St. Patrick's Day, baby.

She thinks there's too much cartilage on the drum,

too much gristle.

You guys with me?

Now, Carrie and I, we can sit around all night and argue about

who's right and who's wrong, and I would win.

Actually, no.

If you're a husband, you don't win.

Thank goodness you win in God's kingdom.

But listen, check this out.

The fact that we don't agree is actually more beneficial to us

eating wings.

If we both like the same kind of wing, we'd fight over them.

Or we'd have to pay extra to get all the same kind.

It would be trumps.

Or we would end up with half a plate of uneaten wings.

But because we disagree, because we are not on the same page,

that is actually better for us.

I used to tell my students all the time, you'll know you found

your soul mate if you find the ultimate wing-eating partner.

And I found mine.

You're supposed to say, oh.

Listen, great story, right?

I was practicing.

I've been practicing that with my students my whole life.

But listen, I love my wife because of our differences.

Put yourself around more people that are different.

And then evangelize to them.

Listen to their story and tell them yours.

You might just learn something from them.

And hopefully they hear Jesus from you.

See, I mentioned Jacob earlier.

Jacob didn't get along with his brother.

They were different in almost every way.

In fact, this is one of the reasons I love stories in the Bible.

Esau was a hairy dude.

Jacob was like me.

No hair.

Jacob gorilla glues sheepskin to his body to trick his blind father

into his brother's inheritance.

That said, let's take a look at this prodigal son Jacob and his

brother Esau when God calls Jacob home.

Jacob is so scared of Esau that when he's going home,

he separates his large family into two groups.

Kind of cool.

He's coming home and he's bringing a lot of people with him.

I'm going to come back to that one.

Again, Jacob is scared.

He offers Esau flocks of cattle and donkeys,

sheeps and goats.

He even offers a number of male and female servants to Esau.

All this fear, and what do we read in Genesis 33?

Start in verse 3.

He, Jacob, went on ahead and bowed down on the ground seven times as

he approached his brother.

But what did Esau do?

But Esau ran to meet him and did what?

Embrace him.

He threw his arms around him and kissed him and they wept.

Side note, this might be for me, maybe you and someone in your life are

far away from each other and you think they will shut you down or maybe

even try to kill you.

Maybe, just maybe, if you head home, they'll surprise you like Esau did

with Jacob.

They had differences.

They embraced each other through their differences.

Let's take a look at John 13.

A new command I give you, love one another as I loved you.

So you must love one another.

Check this out.

This is how they will know you are my disciples if and only if you love one

another.

We're not killed to condemn one another.

We're not called to point out everyone else's differences in negative light.

Everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.

Thank you.

I guarantee you without Jesus in our lives, I probably wouldn't hang out

with some of y'all.

Heck, I know most of you wouldn't hang out with my loud over the top obnoxious

self.

I'm a gooseball, but we love each other anyway.

Which leads us to our fourth and final point.

Evangelism is messy.

Evangelism is messy because relationships are messy.

It's easier to not get involved in someone else's life.

People are unreasonable and irrational.

Love them anyway.

At no point did Jesus say, oh, this is going to be easy to love your

neighbor.

What he did tell us was he loves us.

Therefore, we should love others.

Remember the woman caught in adultery?

It was messy.

The woman was a mess.

The crowd was a mess.

Jesus fought through the messiness.

He found a prodigal daughter and he loved her.

He showed her love and compassion when no one else would.

And because of who Jesus was, the crowd threw their rocks down instead of

that her.

Or how about that other prodigal daughter, the woman at the well?

I love her.

What if, just what if, Jesus decided that when he met the woman at the

well, he would just stand 15 feet away from the well?

This is sterile.

This isn't messy.

This is easy.

It's easy, but what's it going to do?

It's going to cause bad things, right?

What does Jesus do?

He got messy.

He got down and sat with her.

He hung out with her for a while.

He drank water with this woman that he never should have been with.

Hanging out in a place he never should have been.

He spent time with her.

He listened to her.

He chatted with her.

He knew all there was about this ridiculous woman.

And he loved her anyway.

If I haven't stepped on any toes yet, I'm sure this next statement will.

I am not a fan of religious tracts.

Religious tracts are a numbers game.

If you've used them, I'm not judging you.

But they're a shortcut.

See, people used to bring these things into the restaurant on a Sunday

afternoon when I was a server.

Basically, they'd do two things with them.

The first thing they would do is they would just place them in the bathroom.

Like I want to pick up a little folded piece of paper off the back of a urinal.

Talk about messy evangelism.

Or, or, they weren't the easiest to take care of.

And at the end, they handed me a $2 tip and a religious tract.

If you're going to take a shortcut like this, you better be throwing me a $20 bill.

Now listen, a tract is just a little folded piece of paper with a cool,

anecdotal story that's supposed to tell someone about Jesus.

You want to know what's better?

Your cool little story.

That's the real shortcut to telling someone about Jesus.

You are the tract.

It's not a story printed on a piece of paper.

It's the story you've been practicing your whole life.

When Jesus found me, I was a train wreck.

I'm still maybe not back on the tract.

Man, you've got a story.

That's how you evangelize.

The first time Jesus speaks publicly in the synagogue, they hand him a scroll from Isaiah.

And in Luke 4 verse 8, Jesus is actually reading from Isaiah 61.1.

Luke 4:8

So in your notes, this is the same verbiage.

The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

In reading this, Jesus is doing two things.

He is fulfilling a prophecy spoken over himself.

And he has given you and me directions.

It is our job to proclaim the good news.

It is our job to proclaim freedom and to help the blind see.

Once we are found, it is our job to find the next person.

Changed people, changed people.

The bravery of telling your story is usually all it takes to start a chain-like reaction of positivity,

moving the kingdom one step further.

Brendan Manning, an American author and priest, writes this in his book, The Ragamuffin Gospel.

Hopefully I can make it through this without crying.

Because salvation is by grace through faith.

I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne,

in front of the Lamb, Jesus, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands,

I shall see the prostitute from the Kit Kat Ranch in Carson, Nevada,

who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son.

I shall see the prostitute from, sorry, where am I?

I shall see the woman, the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse,

but did the best she could, faced grueling alternatives.

The businessman be seized in debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions.

The insecure clergyman addicted to being liked,

who never challenged his people from the pulpit and who longed for unconditional love.

The sexually abused teen, molested by his father, now selling his body on the street,

who, as he falls asleep each night after his last trick,

whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school.

How, we ask? Then the voice says,

they have been washed of their robes and have been made white in the blood of the Lamb.

There they are, there we are, the multitude who so wanted to be faithful,

who at times got defeated, soiled by life, bested by trials,

wearing the bloody garments of life's tribulations, but through it all clung to faith.

My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace.

That's powerful. I'll post it on Facebook later so you can read it.

Who is supposed to find these people and share the gospel? We are.

And we have to keep showing up no matter how messy it gets.

Check this out, remember a couple weeks ago Chris did the lost and found thing?

I've been reading my Bible since, Chris.

My 11-year-old son here was here the day that I made that sign and brought it down for Chris.

That was about two weeks ago. As we carried it down to the main building,

we walked through the first time guest door and Kingston said,

Daddy, we should hang this sign on the front door of the church.

The people here are lost but found. My man.

Those of us who are found need to now look for the lost.

So let's look at four simple ways to be evangelastic.

What's evangelastic mean Rudy?

It's God's way of stretching you outside your comfort zone to share your story.

So let's see if you can guess the first action step in Exodus 35.

Our prodigal Moses is giving instructions on what supplies need to be gathered.

They're going to build a tabernacle, the tent of meeting.

It was about to ready to be built. In verse 5, Moses tells Israel this.

From what you have, take an offering for the Lord.

Everyone who is willing is to bring to the Lord an offering of gold, silver, and bronze

and a whole bunch of other very specific stuff.

This is Exodus, this is Old Testament.

And then in verse 20, the people start prepping.

And then we read, the whole Israel community withdrew from Moses' presence.

And everyone who was willing and whose heart moved them

and who had brought an offering for the Lord for the work of the tent of meeting.

And then finally in Exodus 36, verse 2, they begin to work.

Exodus 36:2

And it says, Moses summoned, I even looked these words up.

Moses summoned Bezalel and Ohelon.

I don't speak good.

These two dudes and every skilled person to whom the Lord had given ability

and who was willing to come do the work.

Action step one, be willing.

Listen, pull your toes back.

If you aren't willing, God don't want you.

Sorry, he wants a willing heart.

I'm willing to share my story because I want others to know how much he changed me

so that he can do the same for them.

But we need to make sure our willingness matches God's calling.

And most of us are called to serve right where we are, at work, at the restaurant,

on the canal, at the gym.

Sorry, I'm channeling my inner Chris with the workout stuff.

But if we are going to walk out God's calling, step two, we need to rest.

This is important and I'm glad that Chris is able to get away for a couple days.

Rest is both a gift and a commandment from God.

Let's go back to Exodus 35 because before he even tells them what to do,

to be willing, what to offer, et cetera, at the beginning,

before all that of chapter 35 and verse 1, this is what we hear.

He reiterates a commandment.

Moses assembled a whole Israelite community and said to them,

These are the things the Lord has commanded to you.

For six days work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day,

a day of Sabbath rest to the Lord.

Whoever does any work on that day will be put to death.

Man, that sounds harsh, doesn't it?

I'm working right now.

I'll get to rest tomorrow.

I read that and I wonder what it means to be put to death.

What happens to our physical bodies when we aren't getting enough rest?

Our blood pressure goes up, our heart rate spikes, we get fatigued.

Maybe it's not God or man that will put us to death,

but maybe we overwork ourselves to death.

This afternoon, have a beverage and then rest.

Evangelism can and will be exhaustive.

If you don't get rest, you won't notice things around you,

and you'll never be able to do the next step in becoming evangelistic.

You won't be able to listen, and we definitely need to listen.

Another thing people like to tell me all the time,

Rudy, I don't know enough.

I just wouldn't know what to say.

Good. Shut up.

And listen.

American theologian, Pastor Francis Schaeffer tells us this.

Man, I love this quote.

When it comes to evangelism, if I have only an hour with someone,

I will spend the first 55 minutes asking questions

and finding out what is troubling their heart and mind.

And in their last five minutes, I will share something of the truth.

James 1, 19.

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this.

Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.

You have two ears and one mouth. Use them accordingly.

Also, don't get angry or upset if they don't hear God's word.

The Holy Spirit will convict them in His time.

See, while you're using that 55 minutes to listen to that person,

also maybe listen to the Holy Spirit.

And I bet you He'll give you something to say.

And probably that something that you say will be something that you pull from your past.

It'll just all of a sudden be in your head.

That's how the Holy Spirit works.

Maybe it'll be a song lyric or maybe a verse that you learned when you learned Father Abraham.

Or maybe it's just part of your own story that will relate to them and to what they need to hear.

Can you do that? Can you listen? Can you relate?

Can you tell a story about your own life?

Good. Because we just have one more step, but before we get there,

I think there's one more thing that you need to know.

I believe that God has told me that I need to tell you something today.

Before you go out and evangelize, you need to hear this.

So this is what I want you to do. I want to listen to God right now.

So I want everyone who is willing, just put your hands out like this.

And worship team, I would like for you to fall out and accept this too.

God has a word for you and you need to receive it.

So just listen to God and receive this.

Because that negative self-talk that we talked about earlier will keep you from evangelizing.

This is what God wants you to know. Receive this.

I am proud of you. I am proud of you.

And some of you may be thinking, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But last night I,

I am proud of you. God, no, you're not. Way back then, no, God, you're not proud.

I am proud of you. I am proud of you.

I am proud of where you've been. I am proud of where you are. I am proud of where you're going.

I have never left you. I have never forsaken you.

I am proud of you.

Now, I believe some of you need to make a decision in your life.

Maybe you've been coming for a while and you're like, man, Chris is such a good speaker.

But also, I feel God's presence. He doesn't want you to feel His presence just here.

He wants it to take it with you. So I encourage you, if you've never said this prayer,

I encourage you to say this prayer. Accept Jesus into your life.

And some of you need to make a recommitment to your Father right now,

because you've forgotten just how proud He is of you. He's given you a story and He wants you to use it.

So if everyone together would just repeat after me, Jesus, thank you.

I thought I was lost, but you knew just where to find me.

Jesus, I believe that you're God's son. Jesus, I believe that you died on the cross for me.

Jesus, make me new. Jesus, take my story and allow me to use it for someone else.