Formed for Family | Heather Sullivan

Hello and thank you so much.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you.

Um, it was about 16 years ago actually

that my family started attending Hope

and I had one goal when I got here

and it was to not know any of you.

I did not want to be seen

and I certainly did not wanna talk to anyone

and I was really good at it.

We probably spent about a year

and a half showing up just a little bit late,

dropping the kids off, sitting in the dark, dark back,

leaving a little early,

getting the kids no eye contact into the parking lot.

But Joan gone.

And when I thought about preparing for this weekend,

I thought what in the world was wrong with me

for a straight year and a half to behave that way?

Uh, and the reality is I did show up here with what a lot

of us, um, we probably would term church hurt.

And it's unfortunate to have to say that,

especially here, but it's true.

People are people and people, people even in church.

And I just decided I didn't wanna be hurt by church people.

So I let there be a gap.

And also I'm an introvert

and so my favorite plans are canceled plans.

Um, and I don't really like groups of people.

I love all of you, but I find you exhausting.

So I just didn't wanna be here.

Um, but after about a year

and a half, clearly something must have changed

because here I am and I wake up every day

and I think, what can I do to connect

people to other people?

And so I'm gonna take you on that little journey.

I'm gonna summarize a lot of time.

Part of it was just guilt.

I just felt like a year

and a half of our kids being in kid city

and nobody in our family serving

and contributing to that was not really great.

So Sean and I jumped into being four

and 5-year-old preschool small group leaders every week

'cause we don't know how to ease into anything.

So we're doing that every single week and it was great.

I didn't expect it to be, but it was.

Um, so we're doing that

and then they start talking all the time

around here about getting into a small group, small group,

this small group that it was super annoying.

Um, because if there's a anything worse

to an introvert than a big group of people,

it's definitely a large

or a small group of people

where you're gonna have a lot of small talk.

Um, but as it ha just so happens we're standing

around in one of our huddles, um, or a ministry team huddles

and as it turns out everybody in

that group also wasn't in a small group,

we're like the island of misfit toys.

So we thought let's just get together and try this thing.

So we did. And it was also pretty great.

We did the thing, we had great snacks,

we're studying the Bible, we're meeting every other week.

We got a babysitter upstairs.

My church report card was looking awesome.

I'm attending every week.

I'm serving, I'm getting snotted on while I'm serving

and I'm attending small group.

But it's gonna be weird for you to hear me say

I was missing out on having real community still even

in all of those things.

And I want to be clear, it wasn't them, it was me

because serving, being on a ministry team

and being in a small group, those things are great things.

They are great places to connect.

They're great places to grow

in your relationship with Jesus.

They're great places to learn more about the Bible

and all of those things were happening,

but there was still something missing.

And I think it's possible for a lot of us to actually be in

that place, to be showing up at church

and to be doing the things

but to miss what it means to really be connected to family.

We hear Jason say that word

and we think, what does that mean?

If you take the word community

and you take it back to its derivative, it comes from words

that include commune.

Lemme tell you how Siri defines that commune is defined

as a group of people living together and sharing possessions

or responsibilities.

Now for some of you in the room for watching online,

that just got really weird, like hold up.

What's she about to ask us to do?

Um, I am not asking you to build

or invite me to your compound

unless you have a lake house we can talk after.

Um, so as the kids would say, it's not that serious.

Take a deep breath. What I am trying to suggest is

that there's a big difference between what church can be

as a place to go or some things to do

and what community actually is supposed to be.

Because community is not something that we do.

Community is who we are.

And around here we we interchange

that word even though community's in the title

of our church name Hope community church.

We interchange that word with the word family

and you'll hear that a lot and we have good reason for that.

But let's address the tension there for just a second

because for a lot of us,

the word family brings up some pretty negative connotations.

For some of us family are the

people who've hurt us the most.

Why would we want to be associated with that?

Family is the last group of people we would actually choose

to spend time with if we had it.

But there's a good reason for us to still stick with it and,

and to not allow culture to define for us

and to not allow our past experience to define

for us what family is.

And it's because God wants us to be a part of his family.

And so rather than allow any of that to get in the way,

I say we redefine that.

We take that back and we say,

what is the family supposed to be?

What's possible to be the word family for us?

Because the family of God is meant to be different.

The family of God is meant for us

to have something different

because of what we actually can have in common.

There is no other kind of family, no other group

that's united in the same way

with the same common bond as the family of God.

And it's all thanks to the resurrection of Jesus.

And like Jason said,

since Easter we've been talking about all the different ways

that Easter or the resurrection actually can change our

world and our life and our perspective.

But the reality is you can walk in here on Easter,

you can walk into church on Easter

and you can celebrate the resurrection

and you can be super excited

about it, be caught up in the moment.

And then you can walk out the door

and you can go home to the same mess, the same crisis,

the same disappointments,

the same disillusionment that you left with.

And you can wonder how is

what I just did more than just celebrating a magic trick

because that really wasn't all that relevant

to what's going on for me right now.

And I want you to know that that's

where the danger lies in just showing up and doing church

or just doing small group or just serving

but not allowing yourself to be a part of something

that goes a little bit deeper than that true community.

I'm gonna take, um, I'm gonna call it an emotional risk here

and share with you how this breaks down in light

of something that's actually going on in my own life.

Uh, I was raised by Christian parents,

grew up in a Christian home.

It was the kind of Christian home

where you're there Sunday morning, Sunday night,

Wednesday night, you gotta wear a dress,

you gotta be there for all the things.

My dad's in charge of everything,

everything he's not in charge of.

My mom's in charge of. That's how life was.

Uh, he was in the military at some point when he

retired, he became a pastor.

And then again, people

or people, couple of bad church experiences, a couple

of congregations that really hurt my, uh, my parents

after I had already moved on

and got out of the house, um, led to them making

that decision that I had made temporarily.

Hey, we don't really have to be a part of that.

We know who Jesus is. We know, um, which channel

to watch on tv, which songs to listen to.

We know how to worship. We can do all that here.

And 20 years went by.

Now there were some times where by the way I asked my mom

for permission to share this with you.

There were some times where they dabbled

with trying out a church here

and there still the same thing.

And in July of this last year, 20 years later,

my dad started having some health complications.

Just some stuff just didn't seem quite right.

Um, after some tests and some time passed, things got worse.

Um, and I'll fast forward through a lot of hard

and get you to November when my dad was diagnosed with, uh,

I told you it was a risk Lewy body dementia.

Now if you're like me, I wasn't familiar with that term,

but it's a monster of an illness.

It's like you take Alzheimer's

and Parkinson's and you put it together.

It's extremely aggressive, pretty rapid, um,

and definitely not something that you want anybody

that you love to have to experience.

And in the time since that diagnosis,

and now it's been about six months,

I've been on the other side of, um, my own rage,

honestly my own sadness and a lot of my moms

and showing up and being there for her.

Um, and I've listened to her ask questions like,

if God loved us, why would he allow this questions?

I never thought I'd hear my mom ask,

but I've, I've heard a lot of others ask it.

And in my mind I'm going, I'm kind

of wondering the same thing.

Are we being punished because we

didn't go to church for 20 years?

And then honestly her own version

of I just wish I wasn't even alive to experience this.

And here's the truth, that thank God the Holy Spirit has

given to me to keep me tethered to what is true.

And it's this God did send his son so

that we would not perish so

that we would not live this deathlike existence so

that we would have eternal life.

But if it was all just about eternity, like the way many

of us grew up in church

and were were raised to believe, Hey,

once you believe in all of this, you repent.

You confess your sin, you repent, you receive, you,

you believe, you receive and your eternity is secure.

All of that is true. But if it was only about

that we'd be gone.

The moment that we believe it, the moment

that we receive it, when in reality we're in a meantime,

right now we're in

between the time when when Jesus was here, he died,

he was resurrected

and he sent his disciples out as witnesses of what it was

that they had seen three years of ministry, three years

of watching how he did his life

and coming to understand

what it was that he had done for them.

He goes back to heaven and he says,

you are going to be my witnesses.

There is nothing about being a witness

that doesn't include other people.

Go tell people what you saw, what you've experienced,

because I need them to know that I have power over death.

You see, this is this life, this earth, these things,

these diagnoses, these are what we're actually saved from.

We're saved into a future that does not include death,

disease or suffering or we're saved into a family.

And a promise that at some point

this isn't how it's gonna be.

The resurrection demonstrates

that Jesus has power over death.

And yes, that does matter for eternity,

but it also matters right now

because right now it gives us hope at times when we would

otherwise feel despair.

And despair is a real thing.

It's actually a thing that happens in your brain.

And you experience despair long enough

and you come up hopeless, completely hopeless.

And you've seen around you what hopelessness can lead to.

Hopelessness leads to all sorts of terrible things.

Everything ranging from addiction to isolation,

to worst case, people taking their own lives.

And there's an epidemic of that right now.

And here's the reason why. Despair is always a live option.

No matter whether you have a relationship with Jesus or not.

My mom had, my mom's been saved since she was 18 years old

and still she's asking these questions and it's

because we still have an enemy.

And the same scripture where Jesus promised that he came

to give us abundant life, he says,

caution though there's a thief

who doesn't want what's best for you.

He wants to steal, he wants to kill,

he wants to destroy you.

And despair is one of his favorite tools.

We know that Jesus came to give us life and then we doubt it

because he prays upon us and he doesn't give up.

But why a Christian? Why would he waste his time with us?

Because what's better than a hopeless Christian

who won't show or share the love of Jesus,

that they've been a witness of their whole life.

Your life looks no different than mine.

Why do I want what it is that you have?

And then at some point it becomes very simple, very easy

for us to stop believing

what it is that we've come to believe.

So now that I've laid all that on you,

what do we do, Heather?

What do we do? You tell us what we do. Well, it's simple.

You remember well time to go.

That's not so easy, is it?

It's not so easy to just remember the truth when

you're in the middle of the crisis.

But I wanna show you a group of people

that set themselves up to be able to remember super well.

I wanna take you into Acts chapter two.

And if you were here last week

or you watched online, uh, online last week,

you saw Aaron give a message where he um,

touched on Acts chapter two.

And he talked to us about Peter

and he talked to us about being an ambassador.

And truthfully, Peter, one

of the disciples was one of the first.

Um, and in Acts two, when you get there, I'm gonna ask you

to go to um, verse 37.

We see Peter, he takes the stage at a festival

that has thousands of people at it.

And he gets up on stage.

And as a minister of reconciliation, as an ambassador of

what he knows about Jesus, he shares

with this entire crowd essentially

what we've been hearing about since Easter,

that there was sin, that God had a plan to reconcile us

to himself, that he wants a relationship with us,

that he sent Jesus, and that Jesus died because of our sin.

And these people who are standing here are people

who were probably in the crowd, who were a part

of yelling, crucify him.

And it breaks their hearts.

In Acts two verse 37, it says that when they heard this,

they were cut to the heart and they said to Peter

and the other apostles, what shall we do?

And Peter is able to say, oh, there's such grace.

You can fix this, but not on your own.

God already did everything that you need

to do and you can be free.

Acts 2 38, if you repent

and are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ

for the forgiveness of your sins,

not I'm gonna put more weight on you

and you have to do a whole bunch of things,

but there's grace and it's yours.

And the way that you achieve it

or you receive it is just by saying, I believe it.

You just own it. And at that point right there,

you become a new creation.

And then baptism is a decision to symbolize. I'm new.

When we baptized around here, which by the way, we,

and this so far this year at this church,

we have had 103 people make a decision to be baptized.

That's incredible. Yes. Please clap for that.

103 people have chosen to say, I want new life.

I want to be a part of the family of God.

And that's what that represents.

But most of the time, let's not say most of the time,

a large majority of the time in the American experience,

and this was true of my own experience in some random order,

we end up in church, we hear this message,

we make a decision, we choose to be baptized.

And then after a little while

something happens and

Now what I did all that stuff

you promised abundant life.

You said my life would be full. But now what guys?

This doesn't have to be our story.

We can have a life that Jesus promised

that's full and abundant.

But how do we move from knowing that

to actually living it out?

Well, I'm gonna take you further into Acts two

and this time we're gonna, we're gonna spend a little time.

We're gonna hang out there. All right?

I want you to go to Acts chapter two.

This is the first group of people to make this decision

to say, I hear it.

I want to be able to remember it.

I wanna make sure that I don't forget

and that I never again get to a place where I feel the way

that I felt when I heard you saying that we were responsible

for Jesus having to die.

And in resurrect Acts two verses 42 through 47, um,

in my Bible, this section is titled The

Fellowship of the Believers.

It's a community that word fellowship.

This is a family of people.

It says they devoted themselves

to the apostles teaching and to the fellowship.

So first they're studying scripture together,

they're spending time together unpacking it.

If you devote yourself to the fellowship,

you're devoting yourself to the family.

This takes time to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

Now, commonly around here,

or commonly in the church world,

we know that that is associated.

The breaking of bread is associated with what Jesus did

with his disciples just before he went to the cross.

We call that communion.

There, you see that word again, commune, communion.

It's a thing that we do together where we remember

what it is that God did for us

because it's important for us to go back to that place.

And so these people devoted themselves to the breaking

of bread and then to praying together,

remembering together the death and the resurrection of Jesus

and the grace that it represented.

And it says everyone was filled with all and many wonders

and miraculous signs were done by the apostles.

And I just have to believe

that those could have been connected to some

of those prayers that they prayed.

And what wouldn't it cause you to have awe

as you see these prayers being answered,

as you see this beautiful stuff come to life.

And also they're seeing God's faithfulness even more clearly

because there's more people around to say, did you see that?

What? What I just witnessed? Yeah, I did.

Look, I just witnessed this over here.

God's faithfulness all around being reminded of it.

And all the believers were together

and they had everything in common.

Now, this doesn't mean their preferences like you know,

Marvel over DC or how do you feel about guacamole?

That's not what that means. It means what's mine is yours.

Because none of it is ours.

Because we have an entirely different perspective.

Our whole kingdom and our whole world

has been flipped upside down.

The stuff that we have here doesn't matter in light

of eternity, it doesn't matter.

In light of where we're going, my stuff is your stuff.

They were selling their possessions and goods

and they gave to anyone as he had need.

Note, there's still needs. Life's not perfect.

The things don't go away.

But now they have people,

and rather than them lingering long enough,

when they do have these needs in order for despair

to be created, the needs get met.

And every day, every day, that's a lot.

Every day they continued

to meet together in the temple courts.

And although this isn't a part of our custom now for us

to get together every single day,

it was theirs every single day.

These people did go to the temple for us.

We do that on average once a week.

But not only that,

they broke bread in their homes and they ate together.

Now here we have that breaking of bread

and that can mean communion in their homes.

You don't have to show up at church to do that.

You can do that in your home.

If you were a part of our Good Friday

experience, you may have done that.

We did that with our friends and our home.

They break broke bread in their homes and they ate together.

Hmm. There's just something about eating a meal

with people isn't there?

There's so much good

that happens when you're sitting at a table

with people eating good food.

Jesus came eating and drink. Jesus loved a good party.

He showed up at dinner parties all the time.

That's about the only place he went.

Dinner party to dinner party. What a life.

But it's because when you're sitting at a table, that's

where conversation happens.

That's where stuff comes up.

And a lot of us don't experience that right now.

We don't make the time for that in our

life and we're missing out.

But not only do we not do that in our own family,

are we doing that with other people?

These people are sitting down together

and they're having meals together in their homes

and they're praising it says, I'm sorry,

with glad and sincere hearts.

Who doesn't want that praising God?

No mistaking who gets the credit for the things

that they're seeing around them

and enjoying the favor of all the people.

And I love that part

because it could be easy just to gloss right over that.

But in reality, here's what I want you to see.

When you leave this place, or when you go back to your home

and you go back to your mess that we've talked about,

it's not going back to church

that you actually think is gonna fix it, is it?

And for the people that you're encountering in the world

around you, they're not waiting for their problem

to be solved truthfully by going to church.

That feels like another thing to do a lot of times.

Unless they see something in your life

that looks compelling enough to say,

why is your life like that?

Why are you praising God? Why do you see so seem, so glad?

And sincere? People aren't looking for church.

They're looking for community.

They're looking for who to be a part of,

not what to go and do.

And what was the result of this behavior?

What was the result of living their life this way?

It says, the Lord added to their number daily.

Those who are being saved.

I'm gonna go back through this.

They're at home, they're praying,

they're breaking bread, man.

They go to church a little.

They're selling their possessions.

They're giving all their stuff to each other.

They're praising God, eating meals.

And the Lord added to their number daily, those

who are being saved, guys,

people are not craving an organization to be a part of.

They wanna be a part

of a people they wanna belong to people.

This world right now is faced with the crisis

that sin created in the garden.

Who am I? Where do I fit? And what is my purpose?

And they won't experience that.

Sitting in a chair next to you, you won't experience that.

Sitting in a chair next to somebody else,

singing a worship song, bowing your head, listening

to a teacher, and then getting up and going out the door

and never talking to those people

again for the rest of the week.

You just won't. I'm not trying to beat anybody up.

What was it, Matt, a few weeks ago said,

I don't wanna stomp on anybody's toes, but stomp, stomp.

It's just true. That's not how we find the life

that Jesus came to make available to us.

Have you ever experienced anything like this?

I can tell you confidently that that time 16 years, uh,

14 years ago when I started doing all the things,

and I say I wasn't experiencing that.

That wasn't what my life looked like.

They were great people and they were all good things to do,

but that's not what my life looked like.

Let me tell you something. I'm not

a qualified expert in this area,

but this is my life.

This is my life. Now,

there's a group of people in Garner, North Carolina.

Some of them are at the Garner campus.

Some of them are actually in this room.

And they would drop anything To be anywhere,

anytime that I needed these people pray for me.

They pray for each other. They disciple my sons.

The devil doesn't like this, y'all.

They rally when they find someone else in need.

They show up at games and sit in the bleachers.

They notice when people are hurting and they invite them in.

They make amazing brownies. They cel.

We celebrate birthdays together. We celebrate graduations.

We celebrate when people get their decree decrees degrees.

We celebrate when people wake up on time.

We'll celebrate anything to have cake.

And life is full. It just is.

And I had to get over some stuff

'cause my house is not clean all the time.

I had to be okay with kids bouncing on my couch.

I had to be okay with

not having a full course meal at all times to feed people.

Everything not being perfect.

Me not having the perfect day,

but still having people just show up.

I had to be okay with a lot of things. But you know what?

I would never trade it in a million years for

what I'm experiencing right now.

Because when death diagnosis

and disaster come in my life right now,

these people show up with scripture.

They show up with food, they show up

with silence if that's what's necessary.

And my life, they break bread

and remind me that there is no death that I can face

that has not already been overcome.

And on Sundays, we gather

because it is important for us

to gather with other believers.

And we sing together and we pray together

and we're encouraged by scripture.

And we look for each other when we walk

in and we look for each other.

When we go to leave. We try

to find ways to have lunch together.

We see each other later. Guys, can this really work?

Practically speaking, if you want this to be true

of your life, there's a few things

that you're going to have to embrace.

Let's make this practical

and know you don't have to build a compound.

You might have to be okay with a little dirt on your floor.

But here's three concepts, if you will, that you're going

to have to practically embrace.

If you want this to be a part of your life,

and if you want to really experience the life

that Jesus came to make available to you through family,

and they are, you're gonna have to be intentional.

You're gonna have to embrace the unpredictable.

And you're gonna have to under complicate a lot of things.

Now, I actually don't think you're gonna remember that.

And it's not because I don't have faith in you.

It's 'cause it's really not very easily me.

Uh, very easily memorable.

So I'm gonna say it a little differently

in a way that I hope that you will.

The first thing that you're gonna have to do

is fill some coolers.

Now, coolers in my life

have caused a little bit of conflict.

I don't have just one cooler. I have about 11 coolers.

I know that's ridiculous, okay?

But about eight-ish years ago,

I started being a football team mom.

And I'm telling you, you just need

all kinds of coolers, guys.

But at my house, on my carport, a cooler always sits.

And when I see sodas on sale,

when I see Capri Suns on sale, I throw 'em in.

Because every Wednesday at about 6:00 PM 6:30 PM

a whole throwing of people are gonna show up

and they're thirsty and they can pull from

that cooler anytime they want.

And what that cooler represents

for me is an always be ready.

And don't make it so hard. People are thirsty.

They need to feel like family.

Just make sure there's something cold for 'em to drink.

There's lots of different ways that you can do that.

Lots of different ways. I say coolers, it can be anything.

But find a way to make sure

that people feel welcome in your

life and watch what happens.

The second, this is the one I think you'll remember the

most, Is bury your possums.

You're gonna remember that. I wanna go back

to my mom and dad for a minute.

I don't want you to leave here

and think that I've left my mom and dad in that state

because I do know that truth.

And I am a little bit more capable of being a one

who can go into their life and speak and,

and break bread over what's happening.

'cause though I'm though I'm sad, it's different

for me than it is for my mom.

And it's different for both of us than it is for my dad.

And I don't exactly know what to do. I can't fix it.

So what can I do? I can show up.

And literally, that's what family does.

That's what your community does. They just show up.

Sometimes there's nothing you can say

and there's nothing that you can do but show up.

And a couple of weeks ago, that's what I did.

I didn't know what to do, so I just drove there.

They live about four hours away.

This adds to the complication of it all.

I showed up and I'm looking around

and I'm thinking like, my goodness, what can I do

to actually bring some joy, to bring some

gladness into this environment?

And I thought, I know I'll cut the grass.

And I'm walking around outside with my mom

and suddenly she says, oh no,

this is gonna give you a little sneak peek

into what kind of mom I have.

My mom feeds the wildlife around her house.

And one of the possums that she feeds had crawled up

underneath the shed and died.

It looked like it died a peaceful death.

It didn't do an autopsy or anything.

And I just knew in that moment,

I can't let my mom bury this possum by herself.

My mom and dad have felt alone,

and they have felt regretful

that they cut their community out

because they have been going through the hardest season

of their entire life and have wondered, does anyone care?

What have we done? And so I said, mom,

we gotta bury that possum.

She said, You can't, you, you're gonna bury the possum.

Gave me the shovel. And next thing you know, for me,

family meant digging a hole

for a 12 pound possum in the woods.

And just so you know, my mom told me she'd never

seen a woman dig a hole like that.

I've been riding that compliment for weeks.

But that's what we have to do.

You gotta embrace stuff that's unpredictable.

It's not gonna look like what you expect.

It's not neat and tidy all the time.

And then last of all, under complicated,

I I didn't pick a different word.

'cause that would be complicated. Just under complicate it.

Don't make it so hard. Be where your people are.

Eat food together. Doesn't have

to be good food Sometimes it could be.

That'd be good. Read the Bible together. Pray together.

Sit at your table, laugh together. Cry together.

Play games together. Group text together.

If that's your thing, you

probably should start a group text.

I'm sorry. But you gotta stay in touch with one another.

If you need more ideas. I have so many.

Here's the last thing I wanna say.

There's a lot of our small group leaders at this church

who have been doing this.

You've been building this kind of community,

you've been creating this kind of family.

And I wanna thank you.

You are bringing hope to places that could

otherwise be filled with despair.

Keep it up. We're thankful for you.

Some of you're hearing this.

And no matter where you are, no matter

where you're listening from, your heart is pounding

because you know you've never

experienced anything like that.

And if you're honest, you're kind of tired of doing church.

Sunday mornings are hard, man.

This is just a lot more stuff for me to carry.

If that's you, I'd love to talk to you.

I'd love to connect you with some of those people that want

to create those sorts of environments

and want you to feel like you belong with them.

And maybe some of you are thinking, you know what?

I, I'd roll out a cooler for that.

I'd throw some nuggies in the oven.

Invite people into something

that they've never had the chance to experience.

If either one of those things is you,

I'm gonna ask you to do what we do around here.

I'm gonna ask you to take your phone

and text that phone number.

We're always saying seven two nine eight nine.

I want you to text connect to 7 2 9 8 9.

We need people who are ready

to take our church from the place where we're doing church

into the community in a way that changes it

and helps people see the life that Jesus actually came

to make available, whether they were to show up here or not.

Because just sitting here and doing this week

after week together is not enough.

It's not enough. And then the last group of people,

there's some of you who heard just the same way that

that first fellowship of believers did,

that God has grace for you.

That he had a plan that he started long

before you were ever here, that you didn't have to ask him

for it, but that he doesn't want you to stay in the crisis.

The situation, the sadness, the depression.

He doesn't want you to stay in that dark place.

He knows you have an enemy and he's already defeated him.

And no, we're not in heaven yet.

But he wants your life here

to look a whole lot more like it.

If you've never given your life to Jesus in that way,

if you've never said, you know what?

I do want that life,

there is no better decision that you can make.

We have actual people, not a text of actual people

who wanna talk to you about that.

If you're online, tell us in the chat.

If you're at one of our campuses,

there's something we talk about all the time.

Next steps. There's go there

and there's people there who wanna talk to you about that.

And if you already have done that,

and you wanna take another step into being a part,

committing to being a part of the family,

if you wanna commit to being a part of the family of God

and this family, we'd love to see you added to that 103.

We'd love to see you make the decision to get baptized.

And there's someone there who can

talk to you about that as well.

Guys, I believe that we can be a church

that changes our community.

I believe that our gatherings will have more meaning when we

are showing up and we are spending that time together

with our family, celebrating the life that came

because of the resurrection of Jesus.

And because we don't have to believe

that this is all there is.

Lemme pray for us. God, I thank you for every single person

who falls under the sound of my voice.

Some of those people are my family.

Some of those people are my friends who are like my family.

They are my community.

And God, there are people who are listening

who have never had the opportunity to experience

what it really means when you say, you came

to give us life to the full.

Our cup runs over God.

And I want people to be able to experience that.

Lord, I pray that if anyone's heart was moved

by hearing this, that you would lead them to not just sit in

that, to not let another week go by where they feel alone,

purposeless, despair.

God, I just pray that they would take a step

that might feel like it requires courage.

Lord, I just pray that you would lead them

to realize it's actually the simplest, most impactful step

that they can take all at once.

Lord, I pray that you would move in their hearts to, to come

after you and to be a part of what it is

that you've called us all into.

I thank you for this church.

I thank you for what it's meant to my family.

I thank you for what it means to our community.

And I pray that you enabled us

to do even more than we've already done

because of you, you and your Holy Spirit.

And it's in your name we pray. Amen.

Well, amen. Man. What a great word.

Thank you so much, Heather. Um, I'm very thankful

for our church and you know, just the number of, uh,

communicators that we have that, uh, are willing to share,

um, the word with us.

Are you guys thankful for that? Yeah.

Want to end, uh, today with, uh, praise Last week,

um, we put out, uh, an urgent need, um, for our brothers

and sisters in Haiti.

And, uh, we set a goal, uh,

to raise $20,000, uh, to help them.

And I, I wanna let you guys know that, um, we more than,

well actually, we doubled that number and we raised $40,000.

Yeah. And that allowed us

to respond immediately with, uh, relief

and help and in a way that we can share hope,

um, with a, uh, broken, uh, place and broken people.

Uh, and, um, I am so, so thankful for your generosity

and how God is using that, um, right now.

And, you know, we, we are a family

who loves God follows Jesus and shares hope

and through, uh, generosity that is a way that God uses,

um, his church to share hope.

And so, so, so thankful for that.

Um, if you would like to partner with us, uh,

here at Hope, um, in giving

and you've never done that, uh,

I wanna give you the opportunity to do that.

You can text, uh, the word give to 7 2, 9 8 9

or you can go to, uh, get hope.net/give.

And you know, we believe here at hope that, uh,

giving brings joy to God.

The Bible says that God loves a cheerful giver.

And so, um, we would love to partner with you in that way,

uh, as we exit today.

Uh, just wanna remind you guys, let's keep our heads up

and our eyes open for what God is doing around us

so that we can share the love of Jesus

and the power of the resurrection, uh, that he has to offer.

I love you all. We'll see you next week.