“When the Church Prays” by Daniel Floyd

Welcome to Gateway Churches Podcast.

Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

Y'all ready to get into the word today?

Awesome.

I'm excited to bring it to you.

What a great word that uh Pastor Mark brought to us last week on two hours of notice.

Come on, you should just give him a hand for being able to do that on two hours notice.

We're in this series called Follow Me, and uh want to bring week number two installment on this, talking about prayer around the idea of prayer.

Going to Acts chapter 12, verse 5 in the message uh transliteration says this all the time that Peter was under heavy guard, and and we'll go on and find out in the text that it was actually 16 guards because you know he's a real threat preaching the gospel.

Acts 12:5

Um he was under heavy guard.

Somebody shout pressure.

He's under a lot of pressure in the jailhouse.

And then it says this the church prayed for him most strenuously.

One translation says, but the church prayed earnestly.

Earnestly.

I want to talk to you about this title today, this thought, When the Church Prays.

Or if you need a practical subtitle, it's this, How to Handle Pressure.

Let's pray together.

Father, we love you, and we ask that you would speak to us.

We believe your word has the power to change us, and may we never be the same because of it.

And we ask this in Jesus' name.

Everybody said a big amen.

Amen.

Um, so my son, my oldest, uh sometimes last year was like, Dad, have you ever pulled an all-nighter?

Can I get a show of hands?

Anybody pull an all-nighter in comment?

Okay, some of you.

Wow, a lot of procrastinators in the room.

That was amazing.

And I knew in that moment I was being set up because if I say yes, I'm pulled, I pulled all-nighters, then it gives him permission.

Come on, can I get a better amen?

You know, those are one of those parenting moments where you're like, Do I tell the truth or do I ask for forgiveness later?

I'm joking.

And uh, and so I was like, Yeah, I did pull some all-nighters in my college life.

I remember going to the computer lab.

Come on, we didn't have personal computers.

You didn't go to college with a laptop, you had to go to the computer lab, and uh, and you had to wait for a computer to open, and you brought your disc in hand.

Come on, somebody, you brought you didn't have no cloud.

I didn't have chat GPT helping me write this paper, which is a sin.

All the young people in the house of God.

You had to go up, put that disc in there, you'd type that thing on, you'd about 7 a.m., you'd run to the cafeteria, you'd walk into class at 8, like you'd had that paper done for three weeks, right?

Like that's the way that I rolled up into class.

But I I thought about this is I kind of enjoyed the pressure.

Now, some of you, you're breaking out in hives because you have nightmares about showing up late to class and you've been out of college and high school for 30 years now, right?

Like just the thought of that, and you're like, your neck's getting red, but I kind of like the pressure.

I I thought I was more creative under the pressure.

Um, I kind of enjoyed getting right up to the moment.

I don't enjoy it as much these days, but in college I kind of enjoyed that.

And here's the thing about pressure in life: one is we all face it.

Whether you're here and you know God, or whether you're here and you're like, somebody invited me, I'm not sure if I if I really am into this thing of faith.

The reality is that the human experience is one where we face pressure.

And pressure will do one of two things to you in this life.

It will either, I like to say it this way, refine you, it'll make you better, or it'll confine you.

It'll strengthen something on the inside of you, a faith muscle you never had, or it'll cause you to shrink back and not experience the fullness of John 10.10 that Jesus has promised for those who follow him.

Pressure can do one of two things to you.

And this is where the early church is in this moment.

I'm gonna give you a little bit of context.

So, can we go to Sunday school for a minute?

Come on, I grew up Baptist, a little Baptist kid right here.

Go to Sunday school for a minute.

Here's the context of what's happening is the first 12 chapters of the book of Acts, the church is on the move.

I mean, you've got Peter standing up on the day of Pentecost, right?

Y'all remember this?

And he preaches the gospel, and really he preaches a little bit offensive, like y'all killed Jesus.

Now you need to get right, right?

He preaches this message, and 3,000 people repent and they turn to Christ, and then they take the step of water baptism, which by the way, if you've accepted Jesus and you haven't taken the next step of water baptism, you need to do that.

You need to go public with your faith.

And so then every chapter, it's like, and and numbers were being added to them every day.

I mean, every day the gospel is what it wasn't a Sunday thing.

It was every day the church was advancing, the people were being added to the church, the gospel was moving forward.

And in the middle of this, it is shaking up the status quo of the culture and of the Roman culture and of the Jewish culture.

If you're with me, say amen.

Okay.

And so it's shaking up the status.

So now King Herod is like, I've got to get involved in this because the Jews are having a problem that the message of Jesus is now pulling people away from Judaism.

It's it's now going to the Gentiles, and so now I'm gonna I'm gonna take care of this unrest that these Christians, these disciples of Jesus, are causing.

And so this is King Herod Agrippa the First, okay?

Y'all tracking, okay?

King Herod Agrippa I.

This is the grandson of King Herod who was alive during the time of Jesus.

Here's all you need to know about all the King Herods.

They're crazy.

They're all crazy and they want to kill people, okay?

And so what happened in verses 1 through 5 of Acts chapter 12, the previous to what we just read, is that James, the brother of John, not James the brother of Jesus, but James the brother of John has been killed.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

And this carried favor to King Herod, and he wanted favor from the Jewish people that he was leading because he was a bit of an illegitimate king.

And the reason I say that is because in Deuteronomy it says to be a king or a leader over Israel, you have to be of Jewish descent, and he wasn't.

He was appointed by the Senate in Rome.

If everybody's tracking, say amen.

Okay.

And so he liked to do whatever he could to gain favor with the Jewish people.

And so now he's got Peter and he's got him under arrest, and he's got guards all around him, and he won't do anything with him because it's Passover, but the very next morning, Passover is about to be over, and most likely the end of Peter is going to be this that he dies the next day.

And so here's what's happening: there's this tension of the churches moving forward, and at the same time, they're facing great pressure.

I wonder if you've ever felt in your life like this that you are winning on so many areas, but you're losing over here too.

Isn't it a weird thing?

When you feel like, man, I'm winning in my family, but I'm losing in my career.

I feel like I'm winning with parenting, but I'm losing in my marriage.

I'm winning financially, but I'm losing in all of my relationships around my life.

It is an odd tension and a place to be in in life when you feel like you are winning in so many areas, but there is some pressure.

I don't feel like I'm winning in some of these areas of my life.

And this is the tension of the church in this moment.

And I want to I want to show you what the church did.

Three things they chose that I believe that we can choose that helps us in these moments of pressure, these moments of setback in our life.

And if you're the note-taking type, write these down.

If you're not, go ahead and write them down anyways.

It's good for you, all right.

Number one, we see this is that they that that they and you can choose your response.

I love the translation of Acts 12, verse through 5 in the NIV because it says that Peter's under this pressure, it goes, but the church prayed earnestly to God for him.

Now, I don't know about you, but in in my world, whenever pressure comes on my life, sometimes my very first response isn't faith.

I know this is the saints here today, and you're like, no, as soon as pressure comes in my life, I just begin to sing, you're worthy of it all.

Just the presence of God fills me in.

My mind can go to the darkest place.

Do I got any friends in the house today?

Like, I mean, pressure comes on my life, and I can spiral down and I can create these narratives, and I can go to the darkest of valleys, and like God has forsaken me, my life is over, this is the end of it all, right?

The Bible says, though, that they're under great pressure, but the church prayed.

Here's the reality is that you don't always get to pick what happens in life.

Sometimes what you face in life is your choice, let's be honest, and we're facing the consequences of the choices that we make.

Sometimes the things that happen in life are the choices of other people, and there's nothing we can do about that.

And now we're dealing with the shrapnel of their choices.

How many of you know sometimes it's life?

We live in a broken and a fallen world where sin has affected everything, and sometimes life just happens.

So you can't always choose what you're walking through, but you do get to choose how you respond to what you're walking through.

And this church decided we're gonna pray.

That they could have it could the text could have said, and I would get it, I would understand the emotion of it and the moment of it.

It could have said, Peter's in this situation, but the church was anxious.

It could have said, but the church was planning who would do the funeral and who'd make the arrangements and who's gonna do the meal train and who's gonna provide the pies.

Come on, somebody.

It could have said that the the Peter was under this pressure, but the church was networking with political leaders and seeing if they could manipulate the situation and if they could raise some money and maybe they could pay somebody off and they could move things around to try to end their own control.

But it said that they prayed and they didn't just pray, but they prayed earnestly.

It's interesting to me that that what would be our natural response wasn't their natural response.

Prayer wasn't their last resort, it was their first response to this.

And I know this may seem a little bit elementary to us, but I think sometimes when we're facing pressure, we don't first hit our knees, we first go, how can I solve this?

What can I do about this?

But they were a contradiction to that.

And I would propose that the life of faith is a life of contradiction.

That I know that I got a diagnosis that I don't know what I'm gonna do with, but I serve the God that is well able to heal my body, to heal my mind, and to heal my soul.

I walk up in the office and they go, I know that you're walking through a hard time right now, but how are you smiling?

Because the joy of the Lord is my strength, that I'm not gonna walk down and depressed.

Hello, somebody.

I'm walking this life of faith.

Should be our response.

The Bible said they prayed earnestly.

There was a passion to their prayer.

It wasn't based on personality.

I have people come up to me sometimes at our church, and they're just our church is pretty passionate about worship.

And can I just tell you how blessed you are?

The presence of God in this place.

Unbelievable.

Here's what can happen is you can be in the presence of God in a place like this and it go over your head because you get it every week.

Don't ever let it do that.

Everybody, oh my goodness, thank you, Jesus.

That we're led by such an amazing team that knows how to usher in the presence of God.

Wow, what a gift.

What a gift.

I've learned that whenever you find what people are passionate about, all of a sudden their personality changes.

You find the thing that touches their life and touches their heart.

You get desperate enough and you throw personality out of the way because you need God to move in your life.

I have people that come up in my church sometimes, they're just like, I'm just not, I don't, I don't really like the raising the hands and uh all that thing.

And I was like, that's interesting because on Saturday when these stadiums gather for worship, there's these massive worship services.

I I think Texas is like this too.

There's these massive worship services in the Southeastern Conference.

I grew up in Tennessee, uh Upper East Tennessee, so I speak hillbilly and English, okay?

And and and people will take this pig skin that don't even know your name and have never done anything for you, but the moment they cross over into the end zone, all of a sudden your hands go up.

Hello, somebody.

You give a shout unto them.

And then we come in on Sunday, and the God that knows our name and gave his only son to die on a cross for us, we can't lift up a shout.

We can't clap our hands, we can't lift them to heaven.

Come on, the God that died for you, saved you, redeemed you, sanctified you, filled you with the Spirit of God.

This New Testament church, they got to a level of desperation where they prayed earnestly, where something rose up deep inside of them that goes, God, I'm not.

It was a Jacob kind of prayer.

Did you know Luke, the author of the Book of Acts, Dr.

Luke, who also wrote the Gospel of Luke, the word for earnestly or strenuously, he uses one other time, and it was in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus prayed.

This wasn't a golf clap prayer.

This wasn't a Lord, if you wouldn't mind, maybe you could.

No, this was a I'm not getting up from here until you break through in this area of my life.

When I was in seventh grade, my dad was my pastor, and until he passed away, it'll be 10 years ago this fall.

Um but whenever I was in middle school around seventh grade, he came down with a it took us four years to even find a diagnosis for the disease that he had.

And it would cause his lungs and muscles to tighten up to the place that he would lose his ability to breathe.

And so later on in the disease, around year six or so, I one evening was even doing chest compressions to keep him breathing while my mother, who's a registered nurse, gave him morphine so that it relaxed the muscles so he could finally breathe again.

And in year seven, the good news is God healed him completely unexplainably.

The doctors still have no explanation.

Come on, how many of you know we serve a miracle-working God?

But I grew up a little Baptist kid, and the Trinity in our church was God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Bible.

You didn't talk about the Holy Spirit.

We didn't even know if we believed in miracles.

Come on, somebody.

How many of you know that you'll start believing in miracles when you desperately need a miracle?

We learn to pray in a way that we'd never prayed before.

And we learn to ask God for things that we had never asked God for before.

This is where they are.

Can I tell you something?

When you're under pressure, the first place to go is to God in prayer.

The Bible tells us that the ear of God is not deaf, that he can't hear your prayer, nor is the arm of God too short that he can't reach down and touch your situation.

I'm just, I'm just wanting today to stir something back on the inside of you that goes, no, I may have laid that prayer aside.

I may have put it on the shelf, going, I don't know if God's gonna answer that.

I don't know if my kid's gonna come back home.

I don't know if I'm gonna get a breakthrough in my body.

I don't know if my marriage can be healed and restored.

I don't know if this anxiety can be lifted off of me.

I don't know if this depression or this seasonal issue I deal with can be lifted off of me.

I just want to stir something back in you that goes, No, God, I'm gonna seek you.

I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna knock, and I'm gonna keep on knocking on the door of heaven until I see God move in my life.

Now, think about this.

The church wouldn't need to learn to pray that way if Peter hadn't have been under the pressure he was under.

And my theology doesn't say that God sends that into your life, but it I do believe God can use it in your life.

So Romans tells us that God works all things together for the good of those who love him and are the called according to his purpose, right?

It doesn't say that God uses all good things in our life, it says he uses all things in our life, right?

And he he's like the great chef, right?

He's like kind of mixing them all together, and he makes something beautiful in our life for those who love him and are the called according to his purposes in our life.

And so God has a way of using the pressure moments in our life.

I think sometimes that God thinks we're a little schizophrenic, right?

Are y'all with me?

Say amen.

You're like, what do you mean, Pastor?

I mean this.

We come into church and the worship's amazing, and the team is leading us, and we just feel the presence of God like we did today, and we're just like, oh, God use me and God grow me, and God, I'm just yours.

I'm surrendered to you.

God, I just want to be, you know, used by you.

And then some challenge or pressure comes in our life, and God is like, oh, I can use that to build a muscle of faith that you never had before.

And then we come back the next week and we face some pressure during the week.

Because how many of you know it seems like the moment you start to lean into God is the moment the enemy starts to fight what you're trying to do.

So we come the next week and we're like, I rebuke the devil in the name of Jesus, and I get behind me, Satan, and God's like, whoa, last week you wanted to be grown and you wanted to be used.

I have found in my life that I don't ever grow where there is no resistance.

I know you can tell I hit the gym every day.

I'm kidding.

But I do know this about it is that what is happening in the gym, if I'm doing it right, is the resistance of the weight is building the muscle that I didn't have before.

Can I just encourage somebody today that you feel like you're under a mound of pressure?

It is a wonderful opportunity for God to build a muscle of faith in you that you've never had before, that if you keep pressing in and you keep pressing through, come on, somebody.

God will build a muscle of faith that you never experienced before.

The text goes on to say this, and we kind of get a change in the camera angle, the POV, so to speak, at first was the church now, it moves to Peter, and it says this the night before Herod was to bring him to trial.

Peter was sleeping, which fascinates me.

You're potentially dying in the morning, and you're sleeping.

And sentries stood guard at the entrance, and suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared, and a light shone in the cell, and he struck Peter on the side and woke him up and said, Quick, get up, and he said, and the chains fell off Peter's wrist.

And then the angel said to him, Put on your clothes and sandals, and Peter did so, wrap your cloak around you and follow me, the angel told him.

And Peter followed him out of the prison.

But he had, listen to this, no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening.

He thought he was seeing a vision.

The only way I know how to describe this is if you have a preschooler and they come into your room in the middle of the night, and they don't speak to you.

They just stand beside your bed like this.

Come on, somebody.

And you feel a presence.

And then you're like, in the name of Jesus, I rebuke you, Satan, and then they start crying.

I've just heard that happen.

I'm not saying that's my experience.

And you're like, come here, baby girl, I'm sorry.

Okay.

That's where he was, kind of half asleep, half awake.

Come on.

And it said they passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city.

It opened for them by itself and they went through it.

And when they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him.

He's like, Alright, I got you far enough.

I'm gone.

And then Peter came to himself and said, Now I know without a doubt that the Lord sent his angel and rescued me from Herod's clutches and from everything the Jewish people were anticipating.

Thought number two is this: you get to choose how you see it.

You get to choose how you see pressure.

You get to choose how you see the challenging moments in your life.

When we get two different angles, the church is praying, which I think is a great response.

Peter's sleeping, which I also think is a valid response.

Think about this for a moment.

Peter's chain between two guards.

And in between these two guards, you know, he's got chains on his wrist, and and then there's guards at the end.

He's got 16 is the whole number.

It's it's all around him.

He's got guards, and Peter's like, and he may die the next day.

He's like, I'm just gonna go to sleep.

I don't know about y'all.

But if I got something coming the next day, sometimes like 3 a.m.

I'm awake and my mind's racing.

Anyone else with me?

My mind's racing and my heart's like palpitating.

I'm like, okay, I gotta.

Peter may die, and he's like, might as well get some rest.

And and the text doesn't tell us, but I'm just guessing.

No Xanax.

Come on, no Nyquil, the Christian, put you to sleep.

Right?

No voodoo like essential oils.

I'm joking, I'm joking, all the essential oil people.

I'm messing with you.

Don't walk out.

It's not voodoo.

None of that, but he's resting.

Because I think Peter saw it a different way.

He framed it up a different way.

And you get to frame every situation in your life the way that you want it to.

The reality is you don't necessarily get to pick the picture, but you can pick the frame.

You can pick how you see it.

This past summer, I told you Tammy and I celebrated 20 years, and we planned this bucket list uh anniversary trip, and and I I worked hard on this.

I'm a I'm a little bit controlling and planning and scheduling.

And she said, Hey, I don't want you planning the whole day.

I want some spontaneous time in there.

And I said, I already planned that.

It's from one to three.

It's in the afternoons.

We got a little spontaneity right there, but it ends at three because we have somewhere else to be.

But we we visited these museums, we were in Europe, and we visited these museums, and um I'd hired a guide and uh I'd hired a private guide because there's two types of experiences.

Whenever, if you don't know this, I'll just tell you.

When you have a lot of kids, you have two experiences.

You have vacations and that's without them, you have trips and that's with them.

So we were on a vacation, and on vacations, I don't want to meet people.

I don't understand people that get around the pool and they're like, What's your name?

Where are you from?

I don't even make eye contact.

I'm like, I just go to my city.

Come on, can I get you're like, you're mean.

No, I'm on vacation, everybody.

Okay.

So we're going through these museums and and uh and the the guy, the guy just explaining these paintings, and I did learn this.

I'll give you a little tips if you ever go through.

If you just walk through like this, wow, beautiful.

You don't look at it as ignorant as you really are.

In my mind, I'm thinking, I don't understand these paintings at all.

But here's what I did notice is that some of these paintings were thousands of years old, and the frames around them were unreal.

Ornate, had to be hand-carved.

I mean, were they they weren't machine producing these things?

And the frame, on some instances, improved the look of the picture.

Here's what I want to say to you is that you don't always get to determine the brush strokes of what happens in your life, but you can determine the frame that you put around it.

You can face pressure in your life and determine I'm just gonna put the frame of doubt around it, and I'm gonna put the frame of anxiousness around it, and I'm gonna put the frame of God is forgotten about me around it, and I'm gonna put the frame of I'll never amount to enough, and I'm never enough, and this will never work out.

I just gotta kinda live through this life, and maybe one day I'll get to heaven and it'll all work out in the end, or you can determine I'm gonna put the frame of faith around it, I'm gonna put the frame of my God is for me, and he's not against me, I'm gonna put the frame of no weapon formed against me will prosper.

You get to choose how you see it.

And I think Peter could sleep in a prison jail, knowing he would most likely die the next morning, because he knew how to frame it.

He knew how to frame his life, that this was it, that God is in control of my life, that my days have been ordained for me, they were written in your book, as Psalm says, and that God is outside of time, so he is with me right now, but he is also in all of my tomorrows.

And can I remind somebody today that what you are worried about tomorrow, what you're worried about at the office, or you're worried about at your dorm, or you're worried about at school tomorrow, that God is already there.

And if God is already there, then God is already taking care of it, and if God is already taking care of it, why don't you just take a nap?

Because your God's already got you.

And you're like, but I can't see it, and I don't see God working.

Can I remind you?

The church was praying, but God didn't talk to the church.

He sent an angel to solve their problem.

Just because God isn't talking to you doesn't mean God isn't talking to your solution.

Nation of Israel was praying.

I'll give you another instance.

So, do you know there's a precedent in scripture?

The nation of Israel is praying for deliverance.

Did God talk to Israel?

No, he talked to Moses.

Just because God isn't talking to you doesn't mean that God isn't talking to your deliverance.

You choose how you see it.

Come on, clap your hands, everybody, if we're gonna clap.

And then the text says this.

This is my favorite part of it.

It says, when this had dawned on him, when he realized, oh, I've I've been this in a vision, I've really been delivered from this.

He went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying.

And Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer the door.

And when she recognized Peter's voice, so you know, you've got to kind of use your holy imagination a little bit sometimes.

So she must have been, he must have been knocking and saying, Hey, is Peter let me in, or something of that effect, right?

She was overjoyed.

So she didn't open the door.

She was overjoyed, she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, Peter is at the door.

To which these great people of faith responded, You're out of your mind.

Aren't you thankful the Bible doesn't sugarcoat things, that it's just real people living a real journey of faith?

Come on, that should encourage somebody right now that's like, I'm praying, but I think I've got about, you know, a little speck of faith on this thing.

So they're praying earnestly, strenuously.

She goes, our prayer is answered, and they go, No way.

They told her when she kept insisting that it was so, they said, It must be his angel.

And that's a whole nother thought there, because some scholars believe that in that custom, they believed that after someone had died, that their spirit would remain.

And so, really, what they were saying is he's already dead, and this is just his spirit.

Some scholars believe that's why Jesus waited four days to go see Lazarus so they know he was dead, dead.

But Peter kept on knocking.

He's like, I'm still out here, guys.

And when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished.

How do you know God wants to do something in your life that will astonish you?

So, number three, what you get to choose, you get to choose to look again.

You get to choose to look again.

Wrote a look the first time.

Came back and told them.

And I bet Peter is really happy that they came back again and opened the door.

I just want to encourage somebody today.

That you looked once and it wasn't the answer you thought you would get.

And so you laid it aside and you stopped believing, and you let your faith kind of get on empty a little bit.

And I just want to say, look again.

Look again, pray again.

I want to say, raise your expectation again.

That the God who did miracles for them is the same God that will do miracles for you today.

Believe again, pray again, expect again.

I just I want to remind you, I know you know this, but I sometimes you just need to be reminded in your spirit that the same God you're talking to is the same God of cloud by day and fire by night.

That he's the same God of parting the Red Sea.

Hello, somebody.

That he, this is the same God.

You're not talking to a different God, you're not talking to a lower God, you're not talking to the God who is diminished in his power or in his strength, the same God that took a little small stone from a little teenage boy and took down a major giant.

That's the same God that you're praying to today.

The same God that put mud on the eyes of a blind man and they were up, his eyes were open.

That's the same God that you're asking about today and talking to today, and the same God that told Lazarus, get up out of the tomb and you know, they wrapped him up, so he didn't walk out, I think.

That's the same God that you're praying to today, and no need is too small, and no need is too great in the eyes of our God, the same God that sent his only son Jesus into the earth, and he died the death that you and I should have died, and he lived the life we can never live a perfect life, and he was buried and he rose three days later, proving that he is to be claimed to be, the Son of God with the power to take away the sin of the world.

That is the same God that when you cry out to him, he hears you and he responds.

And so go back and look again.

Look for that answer again, expect for that answer again, believe for the answer again, because the same God that did it then is the same yesterday, he's the same today.

Come on, what is he?

He's the same forevermore.

You receive the word of God today.

Come on, can you put your hands together and thank God?

He's the same God.

Will you pray with me, every head bowed, every eye closed?

You know the greatest prayer that you ever utter is the one of surrender.

It's the one where you surrender your life to Jesus wholly and completely.

It's the one where you confess I'm a sinner, I'm not a mistaker that makes mistakes, I'm a sinner who has missed the mark.

And my only hope is that the forgiveness that Jesus brings through his shed blood on the cross.

Some of you today you've never surrendered your life to Jesus.

I'm not asking you if you have your name on a roll, I'm not asking you if you've been confirmed, I'm not asking if your parents' parents were faithful followers of Jesus, I'm asking, do you know personally Jesus?

I'm not even asking if you would take the label Christianity because some of that's a sometimes that's a cultural label, not a personal relationship.

There's a big difference in the two.

I'm asking today, do you know that you know that your sins have been forgiven?

That heaven is your home.

If you don't, you can know that today.

The Bible says that if we'll confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord, believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved.

And today I want to give you the opportunity to take that step to surrender your life.

I'm not talking about I like a little Jesus on Sunday, but I kind of want to run my own game through the week.

No, I'm talking about I'm giving you my life, I'm surrendering to you.

And today, if that's you, then we're gonna pray together in just a moment.

But before we do, I just want to know who I'm praying with.

We wouldn't embarrass you, no one's gonna point you out, but just a second, I'm gonna count to three when I do.

If you say, Pastor, that's me.

I need a fresh start today, I need a new beginning.

I just want you to shoot your hand up high.

And then we're gonna pray on three.

If that's you, you say I'm surrendering to Jesus today on three.

You just shoot your hand up high.

One, two, three.

You just shoot it up high all over the room, all over the room, all over the room.

It's beautiful.

God bless you.

God bless you.

You can put it down.

Church, let's pray this out loud for the benefit of those who just slipped their hand up.

Just say, Jesus, I need you.

I ask you to forgive me of all my sin.

I believe you died for me.

I believe God raised you from the dead.

Today I make you my Lord and Savior.

Thank you for a brand new beginning.

In Jesus' name.

Everybody said a big amen.

Amen.

Come on, let's celebrate those who made that decision.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you'd like to connect with us, text Connect to 71010 or visit gatewaypeople.com.

We hope you have a great week.