Lay it Down | Pastor Di Beals | Venture Church

Good morning.

That's pretty awesome for original music, a good recording, and

we get a worship. Come join us. Well, welcome here

in the room and online. Glad you are joining us today.

My name is Dot part our teaching team here at

our Mill Creek campus. And yes, if you missed the memo,

I have broken bones. I've had like ten people ask

me today what happened to you?

And I didn't want to say to you.

You I did break ten bones in an epic hiking accident,

but I'm recovery. It's my privilege to bring us home.

In our series, this has been series. I'm really trying

to expose the work of the.

Enemy in our lives. We do have an enemy.

If you're a father or Jesus, do you have an enemy.

He's seeking to destroy you and your family. Have been

working towards understanding how he fights life as well as

what happens when we hide sin in our life. And

last week we talked about the open doors that we

leave sometimes unattended, that allow the enemy access to our

life and to our family.

Today, we're gonna focus in.

A little bit about generationally, so our family to follow

us or the people to follow us. One of the

statements that I made last week that I'm going to

just lead off with is we can't mess around with sin.

When we mess around with sin or dabble or see

how close we can get to the line, we don't

just hurt ourselves. We end up hurting the people around us.

And if you're a parent in this place or grandparent,

we end up affecting our.

Kids and our kids.

To come now, if you're not a parent or not

a parent yet in this place, we still share a

responsibility for raising up the next generation to know the Lord.

And we'll talk more about that in a moment, but

today we're going to look at a story from the

Old Testament that I think models for us, illustrates for

us us what happens when we are unwilling to lay

something down. We're also going to conclude though with a blessing,

because I don't want to end this series that is

heavy with you not having hope because we are not

inactive or just being carried along by something. Here, we

get a choice for how we'll participate in a relationship

with God, and we get to choose how we're gonna

how we're gonna seek God, which then passes on to

the next generation. So before we go anywhere else, would

you just join me as I pray. God, you have

been stirring things in our hearts. For those of us

that have been here these last few weeks, we've been challenged.

You've confronted us with things that we need to lay

aside or turn over to You. And so God, right

now I pray for those who are here for the

close of the service, as well as those who are

maybe here for the first time. Today you're joining us

online for the first time. Lord, would you help us

to hear from you? Would you give us ears to

hear and hearts that are sensitive to respond to you?

In your name? Amen.

If you have your Bible, I'm gonn encourage you to

turn to Second Chronicles, chapter twenty six. If you don't

have your Bible, We're gonna cover a couple of chapters

and I'm gonna summarize a lot, but the verses that

I'll highlight will be on the screens for you. So

Second Chronicles twenty six, verses one and two.

This is the NIV says.

Then all the people of Judah took Uziah, who was

sixteen years old, and they made him king in place

of his father Amaziah.

We should just stop right there and say, a sixteen

year old.

If you have teenagers, you're like, there's the first mistake, everybody.

No teenager should be in charge.

Okay.

They made him king in place of his father Amaziah

after Amaziah rested with his father's Okay. So at this

point in history, the nation of Israel has divided into

two kingdoms. The northern kingdom is called Israel. The southern

kingdom is called Judah. And we're talking here contextually about Judah.

This is the region that has been reigned by the

descendants of David, and they've been experiencing alternating periods of

faithfulness and outright rebellion to God.

Usiah came to the.

Throne of Judah at around we're at age sixteen, and

he's following his father Amazia, which scripture says after he rested.

It means after he died, and scripture also tells us

that Amaziah had turned away from the Lord. So Usiah

the teenager comes into power after his father who has

died and turned away from the Lord. And then we

learn a few things about him in the next few verses.

We know that he reigned in Jerusalem for fifty two years,

so that's a long reign. Verse four tells us he

did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.

Verse five tells us that he sought God, and we

also so can see that he learned to fear God.

Verse five also tells us as long as he sought

the Lord, God gave him success. And then the next

few verses six through fifteen are kind of a summary

of all of the successes of this man Usiah. He

was an extraordinary leader and military strategist. He won huge wars,

and you can see that in verses six and seven.

He amassed a huge army, in fact, three hundred and

seven thousand fighting men plus twenty six hundred men to

oversee his fighting men.

He was well known not only.

For his military strategy, but also for how well he

cared for his fighting men, always providing them the best

weapons and the best armor. He was also very creative,

so he invented a good amount of things. He built

towers that's verse nine, grain silos which is attributed to him,

and he invented a very advanced irrigation system at this

point in history that's in verse ten.

He also invented a device.

That would be placed at the corner of a walled

city in like a turret, and it enabled it propelled

weapons or arrows plus large rocks, so aka a catapult.

This is the guy who invented the catapult. And then

verse eight tells us that he was so famous that

his fame spread all the way to Egypt from Israel.

So the picture here Usiah started off so well, And

what a sad statement if that is the summary of

how we describe ourselves or this man. That he started

off good. He started off good is how you probably

want to say that he started off well.

But verse sixteen should shake us.

To the core because it says after Usiah became power,

his pride led to his downfall. He was unfaithful to

the Lord, his God. What happened exactly to this godly

king who started off so well? What does that mean

that his pride led to his downfall? How do we

understand that? Well? Scripture says for us in verse sixteen

that Usiah entered the temple of the Lord to burn

incense on the altar of incense. So Usiah went into

the temple of God. That's not a bad thing. He

picked up a censor, which is just the utensil that's

used in order to light the incense, which doesn't seem

like the biggest deal in the world. The problem is

he picked up an instrument that only a priest was

allowed to handle. Only a priest was allowed or authorized

to pick up this utensil.

So couldn't God overlook the.

Fact that Usiah kind of slipped up and picked up

this thing?

Well, first of all, we.

Can see already that his pride is what led to this,

so that's the real key here. But the answer is

a resounding no. God would not overlook this sin. This

was a direct violation of God's law that he had

made clear only Aaron's descendants were allowed to handle this instrument.

Usiah's role as the king was important, but it was

not the role of the priest. Those are two distinctly

different roles, and Usiah has crossed from his role into

the role of the priest, taking on both roles, which

is something God had also Forbiddensiah pride and his power,

his royal power.

Everyone does what I say.

This is an entire kingdom, three hundred and six thousand

fighting men. Do what I say That attitude gave him,

he thought the right to do whatever he wanted to do.

Now.

Additionally, and this is just I think the sad irony

is the temple was considered the dwelling place of God's

presence and its rituals. All the things that are performed

inside of the temple by the priests, they symbolize purity

and obedience.

They were meant to keep the people right with God.

And by entering that location of the temple, by entering

the holy place and burning incense unlawfully, Usiah has done

the exact opposite. Now he has defiled the temple, and

he has disrespected God's holiness.

You with me, so far things are bad.

Verse seventeen tells us that as Ariah, the priest, with

eighty other courageous priests confronted Usiah. That's gonna tell us something,

right there, not just one guy confronts the king, but

eighty one guys, and they all are described as courageous

in their confrontation because they're going to confront a guy

that could do them in if he wanted to. Verse

eighteen says they confronted him and said, it is not

right for you, Usiah, to burn incense to the Lord,

that is for the priest, which, by the way, he

already knew the priests who have been consecrated leave the sanctuary.

You have been unfaithful. Now catch this. Usiah's sin was

not that he entered the temple, that's where you go

to worship. His sin was not that he entered the temple.

He was trying to perform a ceremony that was only

allowed for priests to perform. So eighty one priests confront

him holding his censor and essentially say, Usiah, put it down,

Lay down the censor, lay it down.

What you're doing is sinful.

But Usiah, with his hand firmly grasped on the censor,

becomes angry. Verse nineteen tells us In fact, he doesn't

just become angry. That verse goes on to say, he

begins raging at the priests. Imagine his attitude or maybe

even words, which we don't know what he said to them.

It just as he raged. How dare you confront me

the king? How dare you tell me what I can

and can't do? Who are you to come and confront me?

I'm the one with the power. And he had the

opportunity to be humble, and he had the opportunity to

receive the correction and the accountability. He had the opportunity

to repent, to change his heart, to say, you're right,

I know this.

I mean he started off serving the Lord.

He knows you're right, and his pride would not allow

him to bend his knee, and he refused to lay

it down. And Verse nineteen finishes by telling us that

leprosy broke out on his forehead because the Lord had

afflicted him, which is a terrifying statement. And in case

you weren't aware of the consequences of leprosy in this society,

because it's not something that's widespread in the Western world

in the modern day, but at this point in history,

if you became leprous.

You were immediately taken out of well not take it,

No one would touch you.

You were sent out of community or your ability to

be amongst people.

You were afflicted.

So you must leave the city, leave your town, leave

your family, and go live with the other leprous people,

separated from the rest of humans for the rest of

your days, or until your leprosy went away, which it

usually didn't imagine that here's this guy who started off

so well, whose pride makes it so he picked up

some thing he shouldn't pick up, which doesn't seem like

that big of a deal, and it's totally a big deal,

and he won't put it down. And now he is

struck with leprosy. He loses his kingdom. Probably at that

moment he didn't really care, because he also loses his family,

his kids. He can no longer be around people at all,

and he sent outside of his kingdom to live alone

for the rest of his days. In fact, that's how

First twenty one describes it. It says King Yuzaiah had leprosy

until the day he died. He lived in a separate

house lepros and banned from the temple of the Lord.

You could not go there if you were unclean. And Jotham,

his son, succeeded him as king. If this story weren't

already sad enough, it already is so so sad, so

sad that a guy who started off so well is

so innovative, It is so creative, it has so much potential,

has so much influence, blows it so big because he

becomes prideful and refuses to lay down. His pride is

now struck with leprosy. But it's even more tragic how

this plays out in his family. So let's look at Jotham.

This is chapter twenty seven if you're following along in

your Bible. It's not a very long chapter and we're

not going to read it all. But let's just note

a few things. Number One, we don't know very much

about Jotham because there's not much to say about him.

Verse one tells us he's twenty five when he takes

over as king, still too young in my opinion, I

have twenty four year olds. He reigned in Jerusalem for

sixteen years, and verse two tells us that like his father,

Jotham started off doing well. He started off doing what

was right in the eyes of the Lord. That's how

it's worded. But unlike him, and this is what the

scripture says, but unlike him his father, he did not

enter the temple of the Lord. Now that's a really

interesting statement. He didn't enter the temple of the Lord. There,

if you do some digging on this, there's kind of

really only two options here. Option number one would be okay,

he didn't enter the parts of the Temple of the

Lord that he wasn't supposed to, and he didn't pick

up the things he wasn't supposed to do.

Like unlike his father.

He actually just you know, did it the right way.

But there's nowhere in there's nowhere that it says you

can't go to the temple.

In fact, this is where you go to worship.

So a king would go to the temple to worship,

and our text doesn't say he didn't go to the

temple because you know, he didn't want to mess up

and do something he wasn't supposed to do. So it

could also be understood and I think this is much

more likely that what that phrase means and Jotham did

not enter the temple of the Lord. Is that Jotham

who grew up watching his influential, powerful, father, creative, innovative,

successful military stratus status whose fame spread all the way

to Egypt. He watched his dad lead with power, But

he also watched his dad, when he happened to go

into the temple, become leprous, humiliated, and now set away

from society for the rest of his days to the

shame of their family.

It's possible that he decided.

Not to go to the temple at all, because what

happened to Dad is never going to happen to me.

And I have an empty chair here. Maybe you thought

that's because I might need to rest during this message,

But I have this chair here to represent Jotham's generation

that's missing from the church. What does it look like

when the generation of kids whose parents either screwed up

royally or have some form of church hurt, or maybe

it's further back in the family line along the way,

it comes the generation that.

Says, I'm just never going to go there, to go

to that place.

And this chair is to represent that Jotham's generation is

missing from our church. While the Bible describes Jotham as powerful,

and it actually says that he was steadfast before the Lord,

it also tells us in verse.

Two that the people continued.

Their corrupt practices, which means though Joseph may or Jothah

may not have fallen into entire consuming sin himself, he

failed in his duty as king, which was to lead

the people to know and obey the Lord, and he

did not do that part. He didn't go to the

temple at all, and after sixteen years he dies and

his son AHAs this is now Usiah's grandson becomes king.

A Has was twenty six when he became king, and

chapter twenty eight of six Second Chronicles is where we're

going to go next.

Verses two through four tell us what kind of a

man a Has was.

It says he made idols for worshiping the bales false gods.

He burned sacrifices in the valley of Ben Hennem, and he.

Sacrificed his children in the fire.

He engaged in the detestable practices of the nations that

the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. He offered

sacrifices and burned incense at high places, on the hilltops

and under every spreading tree. Just two generations later, in fact,

sixteen years since Uziah went in the temple and refused

to lay down his pride, we now see the horrifying

depths to which this family and the society they represent

have plummeted. Two. I want to proposed to you strongly

that something spiritual has been passed down here, that there

is a pride that took root inside of a man,

and when he refused to close the door on that pride,

to repent of it, to lay it down, it found

its way to his son, who just decided I'm just

not going to go to that place at all. And

now it has found its way to his son, who

has taken it to a level that nobody probably ever anticipated.

What level again, are we talking about?

Did you catch that this man a has sacrificed his

children in the fire?

I don't Maybe you don't know what that means.

The temple in Jerusalem, there's a valley right next to

it called the valley, the Henham Valley or Ben Hennem,

And in that valley it was widespread practice that you

would create these idols and shrines to the god Mlek,

and it would look like molech, and it would have

a giant mouth you would that was hollow, and you

would put a fire, stoke up a fire in there,

and then it would have hands or the bottom of

its mouth outstretched and because it was made to be hot,

because there's a fire inside, they would place their infants

in the hands of this false god, and the infants

would either die immediately because it was scorching hot, or

they would be pushed and rolled down into the fire

to be sacrificed to the god.

Will do you see do you see where we.

Have fallen from that Usiah who just wouldn't put something down?

And I want to.

Propose to you that if Usiah while holding that dumb thing,

that he would not put down. Okay, I'm not trying

to lighten the dumb thing. This was a serious offense.

But if you think about the dumb things that.

We won't lay down.

When Usiah was holding this dumb thing and he's told

lay it down and he refuses, do you think if

he could have heard the screams of his great grandchildren

being sacrificed in a fire to a false god, do

you think that would have swayed his opinion just a

little bit. Do you think he would have said, yeah, okay,

I'm gonna lay that down. How often do we fight

for our right to do something or justify something that

is wrong and not consider how this is gonna play

out in the next generation. We've gone far away from

the empty chair. Now we've gone to complete worship of

false gods. And I just have to ask myself, would I,

if I'm confronted, would I lay it down? If you're confronted,

would you be willing to lay it down? Would you

lay something down if God is confronting you with it

and saying this thing it's gotta go, because if it doesn't,

it's gonna show up in your family. And I'm not

saying this is a manipulation technique. I am explaining to

you straight from scripture how this plays out when we

mess around this stakes are too high. There are certainly

consequences for sin. There's also blessings for obedience. And that's

where we're going to end in a couple of minutes,

because there are blessings when we do things the way

that God has prescriptively offered for us to flourish. But

the consequences, and I'm just going to give you a

couple of big categories. There are generational consequences. I don't

know if you've ever said of your family or you

know someone who has, Oh, in my family, divorce is rampant. Oh,

in my family, there's been alcoholics as far back as

anyone can remember, or anger.

That's just my family's way.

Those generational consequences, some people call them curses, but if

we just strictly call them consequences of somebody's choices have

to be broken at some point, and maybe you are

the child that is in that lineage, and you've chosen

to live your life a different way.

Thank the Lord.

As you press into the Lord, he's going to break

those things and they won't be passed down to your

children and their children. And we need the people who

will press into the Lord and break those things. But

if we won't, the consequences do show up in our

generations to follow their spiritual, their moral, and they spread

to our families.

The loss of blessing in favor is a real thing.

It shows up in our children and in their children

and broken relationships and suffering. Do you want those to

be the stories that are your family is known for?

No, none of us does. None of us.

We could go so much further in depth on this,

and that's what we're attempting to do in our Breaking

Strongholds class, which is on Wednesday nights. So you're welcome

to join us Wednesday night at seven pm. But for now,

I want us to understand these two pieces of a

verse in Exodus chapter. So focus in with me, and

I know the words will be up there and it'll

be NIV and I'm actually gonna read it from the

New Living Translation. This is Exodus chapter twenty context, Moses

is receiving the law from God. Okay, so this is

also known as the Ten Commandments. Moses is receiving the law.

God is giving the instructions for how his people will

live in right relationship with him. Verse five says I

the Lord your God, am a jealous god. Jealous meaning

like I'm not going to share your devotion with some

false gods, like you partly love me and you partly

love other gods. And he says it, I'm a jealous

God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods.

I lay the sins of the parents upon their children.

The entire family is affected, even children in the third

and fourth generations of those who reject me. You'll notice

the NIV says, those who hate me, that's what That's

what we're saying to God when we reject him, that

I hate you. The consequences of our sin can be

passed down to the third and fourth generation. But before

you lose hope, and we're gonna come back to that

in a second, before you lose hope, look at verse six.

But I lavish unfailing.

Love for a thousand generations of those who love me.

And obey my commands.

I want you to first hear that God's love and

grace are infinitely multiplied beyond his consequences. There are consequences,

but his grace is infinitely more. But before you get

before you sit there and are consumed with regret and

condemnation for your mistakes, I want you to I want

you to hear this piece, which is what God is

not saying here, is if you screw up, I'm now

going to make your kids pay for the next couple generations.

That's what's intended here. And if you do some digging,

you can see this. What's intended here is if you

screw up and you don't serve me, God to say

you're gonna model that for your kids, and they're not

gonna serve me either, and then not only do you

have consequences, but they'll have consequences for their sin, and

they're going to model that for the next generation and

they'll have consequences for their own sin. But if you

serve me those blessings, it serving me is modeled, and

that goes so much further. It is infinitely further when

we model service of the Lord. Let me just go

back to this chair that's sitting here next to me.

I'm pretty sure none of us in this place want

our kids to suffer. And if you're here and you

have kids or grandkids, you're you're already rehearsing in your

mind all the mistakes you made that you can see

showing up in your family. And we are not powerless

in this We still can pray. We can still turn

to the Lord. And when we turn to the Lord

and we're a right relationship with him, we now have

the ability to pray that right relationship for our kids.

We're modeling it to the best of our ability, but

we're also praying it into existence in our children.

We're making a commitment.

This chair represents moms and dads in this place, grandparents.

To the best of our ability, we're going to raise

our kids to sit in the chairs of this church.

Is it about this chair? No, not at all.

But it's totally about the chair because when we prioritize

everything else over getting our rear ends into the chairs

where we can pursue the Lord and be in right

relationship with him, we model that for our kids. There's

a verse we pray over parents when we do child

medications it's Proverbs twenty verse seven. It says the righteously

blameless lives, blessed are their children atter them, Amen, as

we were not perfect. Okay, Blameless doesn't mean you never

make a mistake. It means when you make a mistake,

you repent and turn back to the Lord, and then

he covers you with his grace. And you know what

the result of that is, Blessed are our children after us.

And if you're here and you're like, well, I don't

even have kids, or I don't have kids, yet, we

share a community responsibility for the children that God is

bringing here, for the generation that is missing. If you know,

if you grew up in the Seattle area, this is

different than the South. I didn't grow up in the South,

But people who have grown up in the South tell me,

like everybody has gone to church and their parents went

to church and their grandparents. If you grew up here,

you know that is not the case.

Here.

We are a.

Generation or two removed from anyone in gen Z knowing

a parent or even a grandparent that went to church.

This is gen Z, this is jen A in this region.

And till we do something about it, when can you

and I commit as a community that we're going to

turn to the Lord and live in right relationship with him.

We're securing a blessing for the generation to follow us.

That's literally for our.

Family, but I'm going to say also prophetically for our community.

So the schools in this area, the neighbors, the families

that border this property, that have children that don't know

the Lord, we are going to stand in the gap

for them and believe God is going to bring the

next generation into our church. We're going to put three

hundred chairs in this balcony. That's why we're building a balcony,

because we're believing God is going to fill this place

with people who don't know Him, and they don't have

to just be children, people who didn't.

Have a family legacy passed down.

We are not powerless in that we hold the power

to pray people who don't know the Lord in and

we are putting three hundred chairs in that balcony believing

God's going to fill them with people who don't know him.

I'm going to ask you if you're in this place

and you would say die there.

Some of you, I know it's your first time here.

There's always new people here and maybe you're like, I

don't even I don't even know Jesus yet, but I'm

in on this.

Let's seek God and believe He's gonna draw people to himself,

our kids and their kids, and the kids of this region.

If you would agree with me in that prayer, would

you stand to your feet with me? If you're online,

I'm gonna ask that you would agree and stand to

your feet as well. If you'll take a second and

look around and see.

This is what happens when the body of believer stands

together and believes for the loss of.

Our generation or the generation to come, or of this

region to return to the Lord.

A dead, quiet audience isn't gonna help me. This is what.

Happens when we stand together and believe God will bring

unsaved people to know Him. It matters us being right

with the Lord, us pursuing the Lord.

It matters.

So would you just symbolically place a hand over your

heart and agree with me as I pray God? Right now,

we first repent and turn.

We turn from our own ways.

We turn from our pride, the wickedness of our pride

that says.

I don't need God or I don't need to follow what.

His prescriptive way of life is for me to flourish,

or I don't need I can just partially be in

or I can live in life where I have lots

of priorities and lots of important things, not just God,

or where I can get my family here sometimes instead

of regularly whatever it is, God, we turn from that.

Right now, we ask that you would forgive us.

And I know there are some in this place they

don't even know you, and this is the first prayer

they're agreeing with. So Lord, come rushing in with forgiveness.

We do not stand in condemnation. That's what your word says.

Our past mistakes become the past. We receive your grace

and your forgiveness. And now Lord, we ask for the unbelievers.

Of this region.

We ask for those who weren't raised in a church,

or their parents weren't raised in a church. We ask

for those that are suffering the consequences of not living

for You, and they didn't even know why we ask.

We ask for our own kids. We ask for our grandkids.

We ask for the kids of this community to be blessed.

We ask their hearts would be open and sensitive to You.

In fact, in our kids ministry right now, from the

nursery all the way up through our students in junior high,

end high school.

And some are sitting in this room.

We're asking for their hearts to be tender to you

and their minds to be open to you, and that

you would work in their lives, work in our schools,

work in our families, work in this region.

For your glory.

Fill these seats with the people who don't know you,

that they might know you for your glory.

Amen.

Amen, Yes, can we thank I.

Pastor, thank you for two weeks of courageous.

Messages of friends.

You can sit down again as another speaker here, I

will tell.

You a weight to carry, to be obedient, to deliver

two messages like that in a row, so you have

a good pastor, teacher and friend and pastor divells.

Each week we give you really concrete, practical next steps.

If you haven't checked out on What's next page in

the app, I really want to encourage you to do that.

But this week have a very specific next step that

I hope that we can all participate in. And we

heard a story about a man who knew God but

refused to lay down pride to do what he needed

to do, and he lost a generation, and a lost

generation created a tragedy. And we just don't want that

to be our story here. And it's why it matters

so deeply to us because we can all look around

and see that there is a generation gen z is

a generation rising that wants to know truth, wants to

know hope, wants to know what this is all about.

But there's also a generation being lost. And Venture Church

wants to be the kind of place that stands in

the gap, that models a joyful life aligned with God,

and then invites and trains and makes a space so

that generation does not get lost on our watch.

And I said, that's why we're expanding the building.

We're not expanding the building to make ventures name great.

We don't even want to make ventures name great. We

want to make Jesus Name great.

And the generation is to come and in our neighborhoods,

and we need like space to do that. We're not

even about being a gathering church. This is where we

gather once a week to worship.

We're a church that shares life all the time.

We want to model that in our homes and our

small groups and our youth group in our kids ministry.

So today we just have a really creative and practical

way to do it.

To make empty.

Seats, to fill up with people that we love or

don't even know yet, to encounter Jesus.

We need something really simple. We need chairs.

We need places for these people to come and gather

with us. We're gonna put three hundred chairs in that

balcony and we need to do that pretty soon. And

each one of those chairs costs seventy dollars. We need

three hundred and thirty one thousand dollars just in chairs

for this place. And so we're praying that today with

this conviction, that we together we will make the space

reach the next generation and train them in the way

of a life aligned with God. Each chair represents a life,

a story, a person who will sit here, and I'm

hoping that today we can just get this done. There's

gonna be a QR code that's coming up now and

later in the video. I have filled the lobby full

of chairs that have a sign that says a chair

seats the future. If you're online, that QR code is

coming up from you, you can't miss it. We've put

it all over the building there out there will hand

you a QR code on the way out. It is

our prayer that we can buy more than enough chairs

and get it done. And our honest prayer is that

as we're doing this, we'll think about the people that we.

Want to be in them. Like I will tell you

maybe I shouldn't do this online.

With the deepest parts of my heart, I want my

sons in that chair.

I want my family in that chair.

There are lost brothers, sisters, and parents that we want

in that chair. So I pray that we don't do

it as a mechanical offering, that we do as an

act of faith. Heather Lane asked, if I buy those

chairs for my grandkids, can I write names on the

bottom of them.

I'm like, I love that, come write names. Bless these chairs.

Every chair, every open chair, is a statement of faith

that another generation will sit here joyfully aligned with Jesus,

walking in repentance and obedience and avoiding.

The destruction that comes with a life without the Lord.

So I'm inviting us.

To do this together. We can do it easy. I

think we can finish it today. Let's make space for

the next generation. Let's fill God's house not for our name,

but for his working together to make Jesus famous. I'm

gonna play a video and that QR code's gonna come

up during the video, now thing, I'd invite you take

out your phone, jot or do it on the way out.

Let's get this done together, and at the end of

the day I'll share news along with Pastor Brandon about

how we did.

Now watch this