How to Love God and People | Duane Calvin

Well Gary Vet and I had a whole dance move worked out to that song .

We were gonna come out and do it and then we prayed about it and thank God the

prayer changes things.

Y'all didn't wanna see that that was gonna be horrible for you

especially to start a message. No and all seriousness.

Hey welcome y'all, it is great to see you. How we doing today?

Hope Community Church. Yeah.

And I am excited to spend this time with you today.

I'm excited to jump into the text and I wanna start it out by just simply asking

a question. Uh,

and it's kind of related to an experience that I had a number of years ago. Uh,

and the question is this. I wanna start off by saying, uh,

if you were 1% of 125 million

people, how do you think that your life would be?

Now I want you to add to that 1% number. Uh,

the fact that in that 1% you are very different than the other

125 million people that make up the majority culture. Like you are the minority.

There's 125 million people who are different from what you know,

what you understand, what you believe, and how you even value your life,

your mission, your purpose, your plan.

So you are 1%.

How would life be?

Well 125 million is the number of people living

in the nation of Japan. And in 2011,

my family and I moved to Japan and we quickly realized uh,

as we got to that location that we were a part of that 1% number.

You see in the nation of Japan, uh,

there are 99% of the people who are not Christians and only 1% of the

population confesses that they are followers of Jesus.

It's the opposite of what a Christian nation might look like. I mean,

could you imagine the challenge when we first showed up and we were trying to

understand the culture, get used to the food,

we're trying to understand the language and then on top of that,

there's this whole thing that makes us just a little bit different from the

culture at large.

I mean we were trying to understand things and we were walking into a midst of a

place that was very different from what we had experienced.

But we realized very quickly how challenging being

1% and 125 million people can be.

We lived there for eight years and for eight years our family tried to immerse

ourselves in the culture knowing that we were already Christ followers,

knowing that this was gonna be uh,

not just an assignment to be there to do work,

but an assignment to share the good news of Jesus Christ. You see,

I was there uh, for the start because my uncle sent me,

I was a part of the United States Marine Corps and he had sent me over to play

with all my friends. And when I got there,

we served in that role for two years and then I retired and I had two other

positions.

The first one was a chaplain at a Christian school where I taught the staff all

Japanese, the Bible.

And I taught the students who were in junior and senior years of high school how

to know and learn and recognize Jesus.

And then the second role was much like it. You see,

I became a pastor on a staff in the middle of this nation that was

less than 1% reached with the hope of the gospel.

You wanna talk about a challenge you see,

I thought it was gonna be tough to go over there and to lead marines and

exercise and do pushups and crunches and sit-ups.

But that first assignment had nothing compared to the other two.

And they were great years but they were challenging. You see,

it's hard to reach a culture when everything that you know to be true uh,

is just completely different from what you experienced there.

And when I became a Christ follower,

this was the stuff that nobody told me about. You see,

they told me about this new life in Christ that I was gonna experience and that

all was true and it was exciting to me.

But nobody told me that this new life in Christ required a new way of living.

It required me to live out my life in a missional way.

You see, they told me about the message of Jesus but in the fine print was the

mission of Jesus.

And this new way of living required me to look at culture different,

to see the world different,

to look at things just a little bit different than the way that the culture at

large sees it.

And it was a challenging assignment because that kind of living is what we call

missional living.

And it's the living that the church was always supposed to move into

and the thing that the church was always supposed to be,

lemme explain what I encountered in Japan in this different culture, right?

You see that culture had very little knowledge of Jesus.

Most had never heard the name of Jesus. Most had actually, uh,

never even spent time talking about Jesus.

You see in America we say that there's all these people who haven't heard the

name of Jesus. The truth is,

is that most people have heard the name of Jesus but at some point they stop

listening to the conversation.

But there is rare for people to have heard the name of Jesus.

It was a culture that had very limited exposure to the church.

Most had never been to a church service or had never stepped foot into the doors

of the church. It was a culture that had a lot of philosophies about life.

But for the most part,

those philosophies had left them asking a lot of questions and

empty on the inside.

There was a culture that had very little knowledge of the Bible. You see,

most people hadn't read it and certainly hadn't allowed it become a part of

their lives.

And then there was this last thing that proved to be quite the obstacle that I

wasn't quite prepared for.

It was the experiences that the people who I was talking to about Jesus had had

with Christians.

You see most of what they knew of the Bible or of God and most of what they knew

about the church came through their relationships with people.

And for the most part, if I'm honest than I am,

those relationships left them in a really bad place. You see,

they were often made to feel inferior

or like they were less than or like because they didn't believe in Jesus

there was something that was wrong with them. And here's what I've learned,

the great Maya Angelou has a quote where she says,

people may not always remember what you say or what you tell them,

but they will always remember how you made them feel.

And these folks experiences with Christians had made them feel really bad.

And I'm not saying that they needed to live in their feelings or that the

experience was intentional, but it certainly left an impression.

And there I am trying to help them to get to know Jesus.

And all of a sudden they are really frustrated with this

1%.

Well fast forward just a few years and I wanna replace the

word Japan with the word America because just a few years later

God called me to serve at a local church in the middle of Raleigh,

North Carolina. And when I showed up, I began having conversations with people,

building a relationship with people.

And it almost to a fault I experienced the same kind of conversations that I

was experiencing in Japan. You see,

I grew up in a culture where church was a part of what you do.

You got up on Sunday morning and everybody in the household went to church.

Well that had changed and there was this new culture

developing right in front of our eyes.

It was a culture where there were lots of philosophies of life,

but those philosophies had left people with multitudes of questions.

It was a culture that had very little knowledge of the Bible. Uh,

it was a culture that had very little knowledge of Jesus.

They had heard the name of Jesus before,

but knowing him and experiencing him for themselves didn't really exist.

And it was a culture who had experienced some hardships

in trying to know Jesus and their relationships with Christians.

It was very similar.

So how do you engage a culture like that?

A culture that feels other to you,

a culture where you don't really know how to navigate because maybe you are part

of that 1% a culture where if you take the traditions and the ideas and the

understandings that you've come to know as your culture to try to inject those

into an environment that feels unfamiliar, how do you do that?

How do you move with the message of Jesus,

the message that the church was always supposed to carry and a culture that

seems far from God.

Now in America we may not be exactly 1%,

but we're certainly in a place that seems unfamiliar.

And today we're gonna do our best to answer the question of how you move with

the mission of God to a culture that might be far from God.

So if you have your Bibles,

I want you to go ahead and open 'em up to Acts chapter 17.

Acts 17 · chapter mention

And we're gonna take an examination of the life of a person that Aaron Nelson

shared with us last week. His name is the Apostle Paul.

We're gonna start at verse 16 and we're gonna work our way all the way through

verse 34.

And we're gonna learn how we can actually do the work of moving with the mission

of God into a culture that may be far from God.

Now while you're turning there,

I want to go ahead and kind of give you just a little bit of an idea of who the

apostle Paul was.

And Apostle Paul grew up as a Pharisee when he was a young man.

And so most of his life he would've been spent, uh,

him working with Pharisees and Pharisees are a part of the Jewish culture.

And so he would've had a lot of rules to follow.

He would've had a lot of things to do and he would've been a part of a Jewish

culture. But then at some point people began to follow Jesus. You see,

during Paul's time, the early church began to form.

And rather than Paul joining the early church and being a part of this movement,

he decided instead to persecute those Christians because they believed something

that he didn't believe and persecute 'em to the point of death.

Like Paul's goal was to have these folks killed, uh, caught and then killed.

And so he went after Christians all over the place.

And then one day when Paul is on the road to a place called Damascus,

he encounters God in a very special way. You see,

he's blinded by this bright light. He hears the audible voice of God saying,

Paul Saul at the time was his name. Why do you persecute me?

And he's so impacted by this moment with God that he falls off

of his horse and onto the ground and he gets up

and he goes on to spend a life of helping people

know this God who encountered him that day.

His whole life is transformed in this moment.

He goes and he gets some training and then a person who is now persecuting

Christians,

his whole life is transformed into a person who's now sharing the mission and

the message of Jesus with everybody he comes into contact with.

And throughout his life he makes three missionary journeys

on the text that we're gonna be today unpacks this second journey.

And he's traveled to a couple places at this point.

But during the second journey he goes to this place called Thessalonika.

And when he gets to Thessalonika,

he realizes very quickly how hard it can be to reach a culture that doesn't

really know Jesus. And so he goes to Thessalonika,

he tries to reach the culture,

but the culture has him run outta town for sharing what they called strange

ideas.

And so he leaves Thessalonika and he goes to another city knowing full well that

the people of Thessalonika probably will come after him.

He goes to a place called Berea and he begins sharing the good news again.

You see this has become the mission of his life.

And when he gets to bere, some people listen,

some people examine the scriptures that he's sharing,

but then them thesal of kins come chasing him down

and they have him run out of there.

And then he goes to a place that's very familiar.

If you've studied Greek history, it's a place called Athens.

He goes to Athens And Athens is kind of like an epicenter of Greek culture

at the time.

It's the place where you come to share and exchange philosophies of life where

you come to share ideas. And when we get to verse 16,

the apostle Paul picks up his time in Athens. Here's what it says in verse 16.

While Paul was waiting for them in Athens,

he was greatly distressed to see the city was full of

idols. Full stop here. It's not like we have any idols in America.

I mean the idea of an American idol would be a horrible idea, right?

City's full of idols.

So he reasons in the synagogue with both Jews and the God-fearing Greeks as well

as in the marketplace day by day with those who happen to be there.

And as soon as he arrives,

he begins to share the good news of Jesus and engage the culture.

In verse 18 it says that a group of epicurean and stoic philosophers began to

debate with him. Some of them asked, what is this babbler trying to say?

You wanna stop a conversation, call somebody a babbler.

Others remarked, he seems to be advocating for foreign gods.

They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the

resurrection. You see,

Paul was openly sharing the good news of Jesus in verse 19. It says,

then they took him and they brought him to a meeting of the areopagus.

The areopagus was right in the center of town.

It was like a hill where people would come to share ideas.

There's like an amphitheater out there and people would gather together to hear

new ideas. So they bring him to this place and they say to him,

may we know this new teaching that you are presenting.

You see you are bringing some strange ideas to our ears and we would like to

know what they mean.

And all the Athenians and all the foreigners who lived there spent their time

doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.

Sounds like Facebook and Twitter.

See the opus was the place where ideas were exchanged.

It was the place where culture would meet to gather and talk through things.

And if you had something that was important to share,

you would go to the Areopagus. Well, by the grace of God,

Paul finds himself right in the middle of the culture.

And in verse 22,

Paul stands up in a meeting at the Areopagus and he says these words,

people of Athens,

I see that you are very religious in every way.

For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship,

I even found an altar with the inscription that says to an unknown

God. And if we are going to share the good news, uh,

when we get to a place like this,

like when we get to a place where the culture is very different,

Paul gives us some tools that we can share it with.

The first tool that he gives us is that he meets the culture where

they are. And in meeting the culture,

he loves the culture where they are. You see,

he knows that Athens is not a place for Christ followers, right?

He can see it in the streets everywhere he goes.

One author says that Athens was a place where it was easier to trip over

an idol than it was to trip over a person. You see,

there were 30,000 idols in the city of Athens and there were only 10,000

people there.

They had this idea that the artisans reflected the image of God

through their work of making idols. And Paul gets there and he says, listen,

I can see that you guys have idols here and that you're clearly religious,

but maybe your religion is actually steering you away from God instead of

steering you towards God.

And so he takes the opportunity to meet and to love the people of Athens where

they are. He knows that that's where they are. They are religious people,

but he also uses an opportunity to love them.

And meeting people where they are means that we observe where they are,

that we listen and learn about their culture, that we have our eyes open,

that we listen and learn.

That we take what we learn and we use it as a place to maybe start a

conversation or build a relationship. And Paul does exactly that.

He takes the idols that he sees in the street and he uses it as a platform to

start a conversation.

Meaning people where they are means that we begin to build trust by

observing their current condition,

not the condition that God might move them towards,

not the condition that if they're not careful they might go away from

we see 'em for where they are and hope Community church,

we say that we love people where they are and Paul does exactly that

and it opens the door for him to be able to speak to the culture in a very real

way. You see, he makes note of the fact that there's idols in the city.

He makes note of the fact that there are religious people,

but he also uses it as a truth to convey further information.

And when we get to verse 24,

he says these words that the God who made the world and everything in it,

the Lord of heaven and earth does not live in temples built by human

hands. You see, he's not served by human hands as if he needed anything.

Rather he gives himself to everyone life and breath and

everything else. These are the gifts that God gives from one man.

He made all nations that they should inhabit the whole earth.

And he marked out their appointed times in history and their boundaries of their

lands.

And God did that so that they would seek him and perhaps each reach out for him

and find him. Though he is not far from any of us,

for in Him we live and we move and we have our very being.

And as some of your own poets have said,

we are God's offspring

right here. We see the second thing that Paul does when it gets to a culture,

culture that's far from God, he engages the culture.

Yeah, he loves them where they are,

but he also encourages them to grow in their relationship with God.

And he engages the culture by pointing them to God.

You see the idea of engagement often comes into our minds as some kind

of a war or a battle, right? We gotta engage the person.

And engagement actually doesn't mean that at all. Uh,

engagement is the idea of living in a relationship with people.

It's connecting to those people.

It's speaking to the people with the goal of influencing them,

hopefully influencing the world around us for God's glory

and even for humankind's good. And so when Paul does this,

he does it with the idea of pointing the culture towards God.

And this kind of engagement can be difficult because most of us think of it as a

fight. A few months ago, ,

I had an experience where I had an opportunity to fight and I didn't Y'all be

proud of me, . You see, I had met a young man, uh,

just through a distant relationship with another person and he found out he was

living in the area.

And so I wanted to hang out and spend some time with the guy.

And so I go and take him to breakfast.

Now here's what the guy knows about me very little.

He knows that I'm some kind of community leader, but not necessarily a pastor.

And he knows that I like bacon and eggs 'cause I like bacon and eggs.

And so I invite him to come to breakfast and we sit down and we begin to talk at

breakfast. Now,

one thing you'll know about me is that what's inside of me is gonna come outta

me.

You never have to worry about what I'm thinking 'cause I'm probably just gonna

say it, right? And so in this conversation,

Jesus begins to come outta me.

I begin to ask questions about his relationship with God. And for the most part,

he ignored me in the beginning until I ask one very specific question.

Hey bro, would you mind coming to church with me and being my guest?

This guy went bonkers like he went cra.

I mean it was a moment where I was a little worried about my safety.

He used some words I haven't used in 20 year,

in two year in a little while.

He said some things that day at the table over bacon and eggs.

I mean he began to attack the very foundation of my faith.

He started talking about the church. I don't really like the church.

The church has done nothing for me.

I don't even really like being in those big rooms. I don't like the preachers.

'cause they all a bunch of used the H word hypocrites,

all a bunch of hypocrites. And let me just say this,

I don't like your bible either because I don't believe it's true. I'm like, man,

we just supposed to be having some eggs. And I said,

I don't think I wanna pay for your meal . I didn't say that,

but I should have. No, I just sat there

and I listened

and I listened for an opportunity to opportunity to start a conversation.

And as I listened,

I heard some of his hurt and I began to hear some of his story.

And me sitting there listening to him allowed me to be able to engage him and

pointing towards God.

At the end of the conversation I asked him, Hey man,

you said earlier that you don't believe the Bible is true. Um,

well can I just ask you man, like have you already read it from start to finish?

And he said, no, I've never read the Bible completely through. And I was like,

well bro, would you be interested in reading it?

And we have a Bible reading plan at Hope Community Church and I'd love for you

to read it with me, like we could just read it together. And I said,

if you're interested man, just let me know.

I'd love to just read it with you because if you say something's true,

you probably should have read it from start to finish. And he said, man,

I'll think about it. First day goes by, he doesn't call me, doesn't read it.

second day goes by, he doesn't call me, doesn't read it.

Third day goes by, I call him and I say, Hey,

are you still interested in this reading plan? And he said, yeah, man,

actually I really wanna start it.

And he began reading the bible for the first time in a long time.

And then last Sunday,

this guy who has been not been to church in a very long time,

step foot into Hope Community Church.

And it didn't come from me yelling at him with the message of the gospel.

It didn't come from me beating him over the head with the Bible.

It came from looking for an opportunity to engage

while at the same time pointing him to God.

And those opportunities are all around us to engage.

You see, Paul uses this moment as an opportunity to engage. Uh,

in the text it says that the God that made the world and everything in it,

the Lord of heaven and earth does not live in temples built by human hands.

He engages them by pointing to the things that they already know and then using

the culture to advance the message of God. In verse 25, he says,

it's not served by human hands as if God needed anything.

Rather he himself gives breath and life and strength,

big narrative.

All the stuff that you're doing to be religious is not leading you towards God

is leading you away from him. But I wanna lead you towards him.

He even references their own poets

because he studied the culture.

Paul engages the culture and he points the culture towards Jesus.

And engage in the culture might mean that we have to have some awkward

conversations.

It might mean that we might have to get a little messy as the church it.

It might even mean that we need to listen a little more closely and maybe hear

out the whole of someone's experience before we offer advice.

But if we're gonna be effective at living out the mission that God has us on of

sharing him with an unfamiliar culture,

and engagement is something we have to get really good at,

we have to engage the culture. And verse 29,

Paul continues to engage and he says these words, therefore,

since we are God's offspring,

we should not think that the divine being is like silver or like stone or an

image made by human design and skill. You see, in the past,

God overlooks such ignorance,

but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.

The idea of repentance is turning away from sin and turning towards God.

For he has set the day when he will judge the world with justice by the man

that he has appointed. You see, now he's talking about Jesus.

He's given proof of this O to everyone by raising him Jesus

from the dead.

And so the third tool that the apostle Paul gives us in how we can engage a

culture that's far from God is that he speaks.

Jesus.

Paul speaks Jesus.

He's become very fluent in the language of sharing Jesus with people.

And so even in a moment where he is outnumbered,

even in a moment where there's a culture that's very different from his own,

he can add Jesus for the conversation. You see,

Paul appeals to them using the greatest tool that any of us

could ever have. The message of Jesus Christ.

And he shares that this same Jesus wants them to turn away from them sins.

And towards him he,

he shares that there's power in the resurrection where Jesus overcame sin

and death and God did that through Jesus so that we might have new life in him.

He speaks of the judgment that will come for all people.

That God's chosen instrument for that judgment is the same

Jesus. And if you want a relationship to God

and start with a relationship with.

Jesus.

Because Jesus is that God that you seek,

he speaks Jesus. And by speaking Jesus,

he shares the one thing that can change every person who's gathered at the Oppa

against his life that day,

the one thing that can actually bring change to their circumstance,

the one thing that can bring hope to their condition.

The one thing that is actually above and beyond any philosophy that they've come

to know is the name of Jesus.

And in verse 32,

It says that when they heard about this resurrection of Jesus,

that some of them sneered that others said,

we want to hear again about this subject. And at that Paul was like, well, cool,

but I gotta leave. Right?

And so he leaves the council and then some people go right away and begin to

follow Paul. And some of them believed.

It says that there was a man named Diane nice, who's a part of the Areopagus.

He had been there every week hearing every philosophy known the man.

And when Paul speaks Jesus, he begins to follow Jesus.

He even says that some of the women that were there began to follow Jesus and a

number of others. You see,

there's these three very distinct responses that he receives when he

engages the culture with the message of Jesus.

And they're the same responses that we experience even today.

The first one is that some of them respond with rejection. Like some people,

no matter how hard you tried, no matter how much you do,

they just don't necessarily want to hear the name of Jesus.

And some even mocked Paul during that time.

And so just know that if you're trying to share the message of Jesus,

you be faithful to the mission and let the Holy Spirit do the work

of reaching the person.

Because not everybody's gonna say yes to Jesus right away.

And God may be working on their lives in some very real ways.

Some responded with reluctance, right? Uh, others said,

we'll hear you again on this matter,

but we're not really sure we completely believe. Well,

that's an opportunity to engage. And Paul doesn't stop.

He keeps moving with the message of Jesus. He just doesn't stop.

Some are reluctant. And then there's this last group

that just receives what he says,

and they find faith in Jesus Christ. Some men, some women,

they joined him.

Not everybody's gonna respond right away to the message of Jesus,

but it doesn't mean that we have an opportunity to stop sharing.

You see, Paul just kept going and going and sharing

and loving and reaching and engaging

with the culture.

And this is the mission of the early church.

This is the mission and the movement that God has his church on.

You know, this whole series has been titled That's the Move.

And every time I see the graphic of that's the move,

I love it because the church is supposed to be on the move.

And this kind of movement of engaging people who are far from God,

that movement shouldn't have stopped with the Book of Acts. As a matter of fact,

it's the mission that God has always had his church on.

And if we're gonna move with the mission, then we need to be very good,

very good at following the steps that Paul gives us.

We need to make sure that we are a church that loves the culture exactly where

they are.

We need to make sure that we're a church that engages the culture by pointing

them to God.

And certainly we need to make sure that we're a church that's fluent in the

language and the message of Jesus Christ. But you know what else we need to do?

We need to make sure that the mission of Jesus doesn't

stop with us. See, in the first week,

Gary Yvette shared

that the mission is the movement and that the movement is the message

of Jesus Christ. And this is the thing that when I was a first,

a young Christian, when I first became, began to follow Jesus,

this was the thing that nobody shared with me.

And as I grew older in my faith and stronger in my faith,

I began to realize like this is the whole thing.

Like the reason why I'm here on earth,

the reason why any believer is here on earth is to move with the message of

Jesus Christ. You see,

when we exchange our life and our sin for a life of following Jesus,

he gives us a purpose and a plan and a mission.

We're supposed to move with that mission.

But I mystifying print of the Bible,

I missed that message.

And for years people walked by me and talked to me and spent time with me.

And I failed

to share this Jesus that had been so good in my life,

I missed the fine print. Well,

this series has a graphic and it has the idea

of that's the move on the graphic, right? And I think if we're careful,

not careful, uh, if we're, we we're not really observant,

that we could also mystifying print. You see,

the whole series has been about the early church and how the early church has

been on the move, right? That's the move.

But if you look at the fine print just beneath it,

it says the early church was on the move,

church is on the move. And then it asks the question,

are you, are you on the move?

Do you still in all of your years of following Jesus

have a heart to share this truth,

this message of the gospel,

this hope that we can find in Jesus with the world around us

because Christ is the message of the mission. And we, the church,

are responsible for that mission. You know,

right now as we speak,

we have a team on the ground in India,

a team of leaders that is gonna go and share the message and the movement of

Jesus. And you might think like, why are we going to India?

Because we know that there's people who need to know Jesus In India right now,

in all of our communities, we have small groups that meet every single week.

And you might ask, man, do we need to have a small group every week?

The reason why we have those groups is both to grow in our relationship with

Jesus, but also to share him with people who may be far from him.

And it's a great starting point to invite people into the conversation,

to engage the culture

In every community in the triangle,

we are supposed to take the message of Jesus.

With us.

Because the message of Jesus.

Is the mission.

And maybe you're sitting here today,

and maybe this is your first time at church,

maybe this is your first time watching at Get Hope tv

and you know that you've had all these philosophies of life.

But if you're honest, something is missing,

or maybe this is your first time in a long time being a part of something like

this,

and you haven't come into a church like this in a very long time because at some

point you felt like you got hurt or,

or something happened where you just kind of disengaged. Well,

I want you to know that on this mission.

That.

We want to take you with us too,

that we want you to be a part of this movement that God has given to his church.

And so I just wanna take a moment to speak Jesus to you.

You see the God of the universe who created all things He created man,

he created the world,

and he sent man into this world to live and flourish under his

command and authority. And when man got to this world,

Adam and Eve were the first people. They sinned against God.

And that created a break in the relationship. And when that break was created,

God found a way to reconcile man back unto himself.

You see, the wages of sin are death. And if these stories stop there,

the Bible says in Romans chapter three that the wages of sin are death.

And if the story stopped there, man, everything would be lost, right?

But.

It goes on to say, but the gift of God is eternal life.

And so God sent Jesus fully, God,

fully man into this earth to live a sinless life and to take

on the punishment that we deserve, the wages of sin or death.

But the gift of God is eternal life.

And that eternal life comes through a relationship with Jesus Christ.

And Jesus brings the gift that no man can bring us,

that no philosophy can give us.

It's the gift of new life in Christ,

the gift that we can't earn, a gift that we don't deserve.

What? It's the gift that gives.

Life.

And when we hear a message of hope like that,

the only response that will connect us into this relationship with Jesus

is to put our faith and our trust in Him,

to believe in our hearts and to confess with our mind that we believe that Jesus

came, that he died, that death that we deserve,

and that he rose again from the grave.

And that he now takes power over sin and death,

and that new life in him can be found through a relationship with Jesus Christ.

That's the message of hope.

That's.

Speaking Jesus.

And I wanna take a moment to simply pray a prayer of those of you who

might want to enter into that kind of relationship with Jesus in this moment.

So can we take a moment and just pray together?

And if you come to a place in your life where you realize you want to be a

follower of Jesus,

I'm gonna ask you to simply repeat these words after me.

And there's nothing magical about this prayer.

It's just an acknowledgement and a confession that we've decided to follow

Jesus. I want you to simply say,

God, I know that I'm a sinner.

I know that I've turned away from you,

and I know that because of my sin that I deserve to be

separated from you.

But I believe that you gave Jesus to this world

to pay the penalty for that sin.

I believe that he rose again.

I believe that he has come to build a relationship

with all who would follow him. And so today,

I put my trust, I put my hope,

and I put my life in Jesus.

God, would you fill me with your spirit?

Would you help me to follow Jesus closely?

Would you change my life from the inside out?

In Jesus' name, amen.

I want you to know that if you pray that prayer today,

that your campus hosts will tell you how you can take a next step of faith

in this relationship with Jesus Christ, we would love to hear about it.

And I pray that every single one of us will continue with the message,

message and the mission of Jesus Christ. God bless you guys.

Look forward to seeing you soon.

Amen. And amen to that, huh?