Erwin McManus | First Conference 2019

Wow, it's so good to be here with you guys.

What an honor to be here at Gateway, to be invited by Pastor Robert.

We're so grateful that God decided to not let you go home.

I know you were ready, but the world needs you, so we're glad you're still here.

I made a decision in 2018 that changed my life.

I don't know if you've ever made a decision from which you knew your life was forever changed.

But last August, on my 60th birthday, I bought a fully electric car.

Changed my life.

Every time I go by a gas station, I think to myself, I'm free from the man.

I know I'm in Texas.

I'm in very, very fragile territory here.

But you're never getting one more dime from me.

But I didn't really know how to work it, because it's a lot like a lot like my iPhone, which my kids run for me, and and so we we set up this little charging station in our garage, and I was really nervous about running out of juice.

Because if you're running out of gas, you just pull over to a gas station.

But what do you do if your battery is dying?

So every time I went out with my car, I would recharge it.

It didn't matter if I went a half a block away.

I'd go get coffee, come back, charge.

Go to go to our church mosaic, come back, charge.

Run to the grocery store, come back, charge.

Until finally, my car actually started reprimanding me.

It said, stop charging me.

So you're going to give the battery a false memory if you do not allow the battery to run empty.

And it was so counterintuitive that I'm going to kill the battery if I don't kill the battery.

But I wonder how many of us look like we're running on full, but we've actually created a false memory because we haven't emptied ourselves, and so we've lost our ability to live full.

Which is what I want to talk to you about for just a few moments.

Because what I find is that so oftentimes we have all the right language about God, and we have an understanding of all the promises in the scriptures, and I think our sincere trust in Jesus is there, but but so many of us are actually running unempted.

But we have the language of full.

Now it's completely out of context, and I don't expect you to understand what it means, but it sounds powerful, doesn't it?

Now, by the way, the hymn is Jesus.

So it says that the fullness of Jesus who fills everything in every way, and the implication here is supposed to become a reality for us.

Now, here's the crazy thing that when Jesus walked among us, what the scriptures tell us is that not only did we get a picture of who God is, but we we were able to have a picture of what it means to be human.

Jesus wasn't just fully divine, he was fully human, and we were able to see a human being who was fully alive, which I think is pretty amazing.

I mean, it is amazing to get a look at God, but I think it's kind of extraordinary to look at a human being who's fully alive.

Because you you will never be God, even if you think you might, or think you are.

You will never be God, but you can be fully alive.

And it tells us about Jesus that He was He was full of the glory of God, that that He was full of grace and truth, that we beheld His beauty and wonder and glory.

And that this fullness that lives in Jesus can actually live in us.

And I don't know about you, but I'm so sick and tired of wasting my energy pretending that I'm not running on empty.

Because there have been so many times in my life that people thought I was absolutely crushing life, but all I was doing was going on the momentum of my past, but I'd lost my power and my strength.

I think that's far too many of us along the way.

But here's where it says this is the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

So even though I'm I'm a guest here and I don't know you, I can know something about you.

See, I know that there's an emptiness inside of you that longs to be filled.

I may not know what that particular emptiness is, but I know that the things that that my soul longs for are echoes of what your soul longs for.

There's some of you here, and your soul is longing to know if you actually have a reason to be alive.

You're wondering, is my life on purpose?

Is there purpose, intention to my life?

Some of you are are empty looking for a reason to live.

Even though you you know all the right things and you believe all the right things, you're wandering through life.

There's some of you here just trying to figure out if anyone will ever love you.

If you are worthy of love, if you'll ever find someone who will just not only love you but will want your love and you're looking for a place to belong or a way to connect.

There's some of you here who are just trying to make some sense of the pain of your life.

Can anyone help me find meaning in all the madness of life?

And and there's some of you, I just imagine, who are just broken and hurting, and just trying to figure out do you have to live with those wounds all your life, or can you actually find healing?

See, I don't know what the emptiness inside of you is in this moment, but I know this is that him who is full fills everything and every way.

That that there is a way to connect to God where he becomes the fullness that fills us when everything else in life is inadequate.

So then it works backwards.

It says the fullness of him who fills everything in every way, says, which is his body.

So actually, now it tells me this because have you ever felt like you're just not standing in the right place for God to do awesome things in your life?

In LA, we have terrible traffic.

I mean, you guys don't have great traffic, but we have terrible traffic.

In fact, I think this last year we were listed as the second worst traffic in the world behind London.

And so when you're in traffic in LA, you're desperate to move forward.

Have you ever been in a lane and it was the only lane that was not moving forward?

And all the other lanes are moving forward, and you're just sort of there waiting, and and and you're just being patient because you don't want to be that guy who's changing lanes every second.

But finally you give up and you change lanes.

I've had this happen.

I finally give up, like this lane doesn't work, I move and that lane stops.

And the lane I was in just starts going.

And I just go crazy.

My wife's like, just stay in the lane and go, No, and so I'll move again.

And then that lane stops.

Have you ever heard that happen to you?

Or is it just me?

And then when about the third time when all the cars stop in your lane, I want to get out and apologize.

All of you have stopped because of me.

See, I feel like a lot of times in our lives, it's as if everyone else is in the right place to keep moving forward, but everywhere you go, it just is a complete stop.

If you've ever felt as if you somehow not postured properly to receive the fullness of Him, to be fully alive, because that's what I really long for you and for me, is that we could be fully alive.

I'm convinced that's what the world needs from us, is for us to be fully alive.

And that's why right before this beautiful statement says, which is his body, which right before that in verse 22 it says, Then God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be the head over everything, which is pretty powerful, but this is not bragging on Jesus.

See, it says that Jesus has been placed over all things and appointed to be head over everything, but the reason is right here for the church, which is his body.

Here's the beautiful thing, you see, if you feel like somehow you're not standing in the right place for God to do all he longs to do in your life, everything you need him to do, it may just be that you're trying to connect to God in such an isolated way that you're not positioned to receive everything God has for you.

See, I love this country.

I'm an immigrant from El Salvador, English was my second language.

I I I chose to become an American citizen.

Most of you are just born into it.

And I was so excited when they swore me in when I took that pledge.

But um, but our country is perhaps the greatest historical experiment on human independence and individualism that humanity's ever known.

This is a a nation built on the idea that you're not really who you should be until you don't need anyone.

And so we have this undercurrent that Frank Sinatra gave us, I did it my way.

Or this Texas mentality, I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps.

What does that mean?

That's not even physically possible.

But it's this mindset that says it's just about me.

And we translate that even into our spiritual relationship.

We say it's just me and God.

It's it's me and God.

I have my own relationship with God, I have my own understanding with God, me and God, we we we we we know we you know we we have we jive.

And a lot of people say, no, I I I want God, but I don't want the church, I don't want those people.

I just mean God, me God in the trees, me, God in the ocean.

But the problem is when you think that you're actually connecting deeply with God when it's just you and God, it's actually just you.

Because it tells us here that the fullness that God promises us, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way, only happens when it's in the context of his community, and the context of his people, in the context of the church.

So I live in Hollywood, right in the middle of the epicenter of human narcissism, where everyone thinks they're the best.

They got all that, they don't need anyone, and let me tell you all those people who come to LA going, I don't need anyone, they're so broken they desperately need someone.

And one of the most difficult things is to convince someone that the fullness that God has for us is actually given to us through us.

See, the beautiful thing about this is this everything God wants to do in your life, He wants to do in the context of other people, in the context of community, in the context of the church.

But on the flip side, this is what I love about the church.

Everything God wants to do for the world, he wants to do in the context of us, serving the world.

See, we're supposed to be that that human essence that fills the longings inside of other people.

We're supposed to be the place where people find meaning.

We're supposed to be the place where people find hope.

We're supposed to be the place where people finally find a place to belong.

This is the place where people find forgiveness and freedom.

We're supposed to be the goopy human middle of all the brokenness inside of humanity, and that's the problem.

See, you know that emptiness inside of you, it probably came because of a human.

The reason you don't trust people is because people are not trustworthy.

Like God, it's just you and me.

I don't want them.

They're the reason I'm broken, they're the reason I don't trust God, they're the reason I'm hurt, there's a reason, God, that I'm the way I am.

And God's like, they may have hurt you, but they're gonna heal you.

And then the wonderful thing about the way Jesus works is that He works in us through us.

And if there's anything I could convince you of today is how much you need people.

I know we need Jesus, but the miracle isn't that simply that God draws us to himself, the miracle is that God draws us to each other.

So, how do we live in this fullness?

How do we live fully alive?

Well, it's a prayer actually.

Go up to verse 18.

He says, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know.

So he's saying, Look, you can be fully alive, but you're gonna have to see life in a new way.

I need the eyes of your heart enlightened, I need you to see what no one else can see so that you can know what is critical to be fully alive.

Because this is this is what I want you to know.

I want you to know the hope to which he has called you.

I meet so many people who are drowning in despair.

I don't know what it's like here in this city, but I can tell you in Los Angeles, 20-year-olds are paralyzed with a sense of despair.

People are struggling with depression.

We are becoming the most medicated society in human history.

We have the most opportunity, the most wealth, the most freedom.

We have more of everything, and we seem to have less of what matters.

And here he says, What I want you to know is the hope to which you've been called.

See, I think a lot of us we want the hope of God, but we do not want the call of God.

But I want you to realize is that the hope of God is only found inside of the call.

And if you don't embrace the call, you'll never experience the hope.

But when you listen and step into the call that God has for your life, you begin to live a life of hope.

I'm again from the small country called El Salvador, and I was born in a country called El Salvador, which means the savior.

I was born in a city called San Salvador, which means Holy Savior.

I grew up in a street that was called Calle de San Salvador, which means the street of the Holy Savior.

My address from my birth was the city of the Holy Savior, the city of the Savior in the city of the Holy Savior on the street of the Holy Savior.

And when I was a kid, I would go play at a park.

And the name of the park was El Parque del Salvador del Mundo, which is the park of the Savior of the world.

I don't know where you played, but I played at Jesus' park.

And if anyone had the right address, it would have been me.

But it wasn't until I heard God call me to Himself and invite me to follow Him that I found hope for my life.

And so even though I had the perfect address, by the time I was 12 years old, I was in a psychiatric chair and in and out of a hospital because I was so broken, I had no hope for my life or my future.

What I've discovered is that so oftentimes we want to find hope in healing, but actually, hope comes in calling.

Because when you realize that your life has meaning and significance and intention and purpose, and you step into that calling, you begin to find the healing you've longed for.

There's a hope that only Jesus brings when we hear him call us to himself.

We were just on vacation and we we tried vacation with the in-laws.

We had a great time.

My daughter's married.

Her name is Mariah, her husband's name is Jake, and so we went with his parents and we went out to the mountains, and one day we were in a little coffee shop, and it was me and my wife Kim and Jake's parents, mom and dad, and and our kids were not with us because they didn't want to be identified with us.

They were on the other side of the coffee shop, all talking together, drinking coffee on their phones.

And uh and and then all of a sudden, Jake's mom, Susan, went, Mariah! Mariah! Mariah! Mariah! It was so loud in that coffee shop.

And she was so loud, but Mariah never turned.

And I don't know what inspired me, but I just I just went, Mariah.

And my daughter turned around, looked right at me.

Actually, I said that louder than I actually said.

I said it more like, Mariah.

And Susan Goss, who's a therapist, said, How did you do that?

I'm gonna tell that story.

I'm gonna talk about it.

I said, see, I didn't even need to use words.

We're so connected that I knew she would hear me whisper in a crowded, loud coffee shop across the room.

See, when you live in intimacy with Jesus, when you're walking in the fullness of God, all God has to do is whisper and you hear his voice.

And in that calling, you find the hope.

But then he goes on and says, I need you to know not only the hope that you've been called to, but the riches of his glorious inheritance.

I love this.

It always makes you nervous talking about anything about riches because it seems like Christianity has really messed this thing up as if God wanted us to be rich so that we could just be rich rather than so that we could be generous.

So we seem to always forget the flip side of why God would actually bless you so that you could be a blessing.

And have you ever felt like God, I know you have resources out there, but you're not sharing?

And then you see other people prosper and you're going, okay, God, where's mine?

See, I want you to notice it says, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.

Is it possible that the fullness of all that God wants to do in your life, the riches of his glorious inheritance have not been poured into your life because he knows you're not connected to his people.

And if you don't connect to people, if God blesses you, you think it's all for you.

But when you live in relationship to a community, you know that when God blesses you, it's actually so you can bless other people.

I just had coffee this week with a writer, and when you're a writer in LA, that means you're unemployed a lot.

But he's actually been a writer on films and television.

He's a successful writer who's still poor.

And I knew him when he was young and poor, and now he's 40 and poor.

And but he bought a house in LA.

They're gonna have to leave LA because you cannot buy a house in LA.

And he he said, We we saw this house, and I wanted to buy it for my wife and kids, and I just wanted to put roots here in the city, but we just didn't have enough money, and I called my dad, my dad helped us, and and then we were just exhausted, we didn't have any other resources, and we were$20,000 short of buying this house.

We didn't have anyone else to call.

And so his dad called him over and and prayed with them.

And he and he and after they finished praying, the money was unexplainably sitting on his lap.

No, that's not true.

See, that's the way we want the story to go, but you you know, if you believe that, that's why your faith is really wavering.

It's because you want magic, not spirit.

See, when they finished praying, he was just as poor.

And then his dad said to him, While you were praying, did any names come to your heart that you need to reach out to to ask for help?

And he told me that he had to say yes because names came to his heart.

He goes, But I didn't want to ask people for help.

I was just humiliating.

I didn't want to humble myself and and and put and be imposing on my friends.

And he goes, but I went ahead and just contacted a couple of my friends and said, I need$20,000 to buy this house.

This is our dream.

And I don't know if any of you would be interested or willing to help.

And the money came so fast they bought that house.

And and it occurred to me that this is exactly what the scriptures mean when God says, I want you to know the riches of your glorious inheritance.

You you see, he had not factored in the economy of all the years of love and sacrifice and service, he had not measured how he had invested in these people's lives, and they didn't have to help them.

They loved helping him.

See, they understood that God had actually blessed them.

For this very moment.

And I think so many of us actually live our lives with a poverty we shouldn't have.

Because the poverty that we have is actually rooted in the poverty of our relationships.

See, God's economy is relational.

And when you invest in people, when you give your life away to people, God unlocks his riches and pours them out to the people in your life.

I'm a rich man, I can tell you.

In fact, I'm so rich I almost feel embarrassed.

I have people in my life that I know would sacrifice everything to walk with me.

I have people so loyal that I have to worry.

You know how you cannot buy loyalty.

I have people in my life who are so courageous that when I'm around them, I have to be more courageous.

I have people in my life who dream so big that when I get around them, I gotta start dreaming bigger.

I'm not gonna be outdreamed.

I have people in my life who actually are fun.

I look back now and I realize there were times in my life I wasn't even laughing.

Because I didn't have people in my life who knew how to enjoy life.

Now I have people when we get together, we just laugh, we just enjoy life.

I am so rich that it's almost shameful.

Except I'm gonna keep it.

Because when you're rich and fully alive, it's never just for you, it's for others.

See, God wants you to be fully alive so that others can know there's hope.

And when you begin to live your life in God's calling with God's intention, you'll begin to live a life of so much hope.

When you begin to live fully alive, you begin to live in the riches of God.

In fact, I I'm gonna say this.

My son, who's on our team now, which is amazing to me because there was a time in his life he ran so far from God and the church and hated everything about faith, and and now he's all about bringing people into relationship with Jesus, and it's like this beautiful thing.

And he's still single in his 30s, he said, I got a lot of time, so he's planting three churches at the same time, and one's in Seattle, one's in LA, Venice Beach, and one's in Orange County.

And and and then he said, Dad, I don't know if I have the talent to do this.

And I thought, well, I love that question.

I love the humility of it, but but it's the wrong framework.

Because the answer is, of course you don't.

I didn't want to say that right away, but he said, Dad, I don't know if I have, I want to go, did you ever think you did?

It's like, no, you don't.

See, I have never been called by God to do anything I had the talent to do.

Now I have done things I had the talent to do.

You see, because if you are talented enough for the life you're living, you're not living the life God created you to live.

See, and and and I look and I said, No, this is the talent you have, and this is the calling God has for you.

And it's way bigger than the talent you have.

Because the only way you will ever access the riches of God's glorious inheritance is if you are so desperate you have to ask God for help.

And and that's when people without God begin to see God in you.

I had lunch with this actress a while back, and it was a very public restaurant, and she was a really well-known actress, and and I knew she did not believe in God.

She was into Eastern mysticism, worship Bezelbub, and and yeah, there are those.

And LA is a crazy city.

And we're having this conversation, and she's asked me all these questions about the Bible, all these questions about God, and all these questions about Jesus, and and it seemed as if she was ready to give her life to Jesus.

So I thought I guess I should ask, and because I'll probably never see her again.

And I said, Well, would you like to give your life to Jesus?

And she said, Yes.

And I said, like right here?

Right, right.

All these people watching.

And it made me a little awkward.

I was hoping she'd say, you know, could we leave first?

And but she didn't.

She didn't even notice anybody.

She didn't care because she was in a moment where she could encounter the creator of the universe and come to know his love and forgiveness.

Who cares about who's in the restaurant?

I cared, but she didn't care.

And she said, Yes.

And I said, So you want to receive Jesus right now?

And she said, Yes.

And and I said, I don't want to be skeptical.

But could I ask you why so fast?

And because this is our first meeting, and you're ready to give your life to Jesus.

Seems like it's kind of quick.

And uh I I know, I know, and uh I understand I did it wrong.

And uh and and and she said, I went on the internet and did some research, and I thought, is there anyone in the world that I think might have actually met God?

And that's why I emailed you because I didn't need my questions answered, I just wanted to figure out if someone had actually met God.

And I think you have.

So I'd like to meet them too.

See, I I I think what we have mistaken is that we think the riches of God's glorious inheritance is there to make our lives easier.

It's actually to make God undeniable in our life.

And then just one last thought because I think I'm confused on time.

He says, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know his incomparably great power for us who believe.

This is the only one he expands on because he doesn't want us to be confused about power.

He says, That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at the right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion in every name that is invoked, not only in the present age, but also in the one to come.

He says that there's this power that God has placed in us, but we will not know it's there unless we access it.

We may actually live like my electric car with a false memory, looking full but living empty.

But he says, I want you to know that the power that is in you is the same power that raised Christ from the dead.

Now, I don't know about you, but how much power do you need?

You know, when I gave my life to Jesus, it was August 20th, 1978.

And they gave me a Bible with my name engraved on it.

It was a King James Bible, so I'd never read Shakespeare.

It was really confusing.

I went back to college.

I'd only been in that community of faith for about a week.

They said, read your Bible, pray every day, tell someone about Jesus, expect God to do stuff.

That was my entire discipleship.

I went back to college and I just started opening the book.

It seemed like God worked.

You'd pray, he'd answer, he'd speak, you'd act.

And I remember I went to everything the Pentecostal Bible study, the Baptist Bible study, the Methodist Bible study, the Catholic Mass.

I did everything.

I didn't know, it was just doing everything.

And in one of these groups, there was this girl who was a worship leader, and she came to me and she and we became friends.

I would always borrow her guitar, and she said, Look, I just need to tell you, I'm leaving.

I'm I'm going back to my old life.

I said, What are you talking about?

She goes, I used to live with a guy named Kenny, and and and I I was involved in drugs and just a kind of a different kind of life.

And she goes, I don't feel God anymore.

So I'm going back, leaving school.

I was new in my faith.

I couldn't even imagine anyone meeting Jesus and walking away.

I couldn't even conceptualize that someone could not be fully alive and claim Jesus as their life.

Now I didn't know what to say to her, I didn't read enough about the Bible.

I didn't know any counseling tips, I'd not been to any of Pastor Robert's seminars.

I I didn't know what to do, and I just looked at her and I said, if there's anything God could do to prove his love for you, I know he would do it.

Don't say that.

And she looked at me and she goes, Okay, then I want it to snow.

And I looked at her and I thought, see, this is why I don't understand women.

I like where did it where did that come from?

Did you have that ready?

I mean, how they just out of the blue, you want it to snow.

There's no chance for snow, no prediction of snow.

I I was in a really bad spot.

And then I heard myself say something.

I heard myself say, God is going to make it snow.

And she heard it and I heard it at the same time.

It was like one of those odd moments, and I thought, I need, I need, I need, I need time.

So I said, within 24 hours.

I meant to say he needed more than 24 hours, but I was so confused.

I gave myself a time limit.

And after you say God's gonna make it snow within 24 hours, there's nothing else to say.

So I just walked away and I just went back to my dorm room.

I remember closing the door, turning off the lights, pulling down the shades, getting on my face and saying, God, I don't know what just happened.

I'm new at this, I'm brand new, I'm brand new.

You know, do you have a grace period?

You know, and I said, I don't know, was that was that you was that me?

If it was me, could you take it on?

It's a really cool idea.

And uh and I was so desperate I fell asleep praying.

And I believe in unconscious prayer, I believe it counts.

And uh, and and after a few hours, my roommate Mark opened the door and I woke up, which reminds me, I wish I'd read the Gospel of Mark instead of the Gospel of John first.

Because in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says, Go and tell no one.

Because she went all over campus and told everyone that she saw that God's gonna make it snow because he loves her.

God's gonna make it snow because he loves her.

Now, now I know that what I should have said is when Jesus died on the cross for you, that was proof.

That's the proof, that's all the proof you need.

It's all the proof you need.

But it didn't come to me in that moment.

And uh my roommate looked at me and he knew me when I was a person who did not believe in God, and he was trying to figure me out now that suddenly I believed in God.

And then he looked at me and says, Have you um been outside?

And I said, No, I don't want to go outside.

And uh he goes, You probably should look outside, and I knew he knew.

I didn't tell anyone, so I knew he knew from her.

And I remember going to that window and pulling up that ugly yellow shade, and there was snow everywhere.

And uh and frankly, it was like it was the first moment in my life where I realized that my life was no longer the same.

That I was living in a completely different dimension of being human, that I was fully alive.

When I saw that snow everywhere, I knew.

I knew the whole time.

And uh, I ran out of that room, I ran down the hall, went across that campus, I found that girl.

She was making angels' wings in the snow.

And she didn't go back to her old life.

It says the power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in us.

And then I went to seminary, and they told me God doesn't work like that anymore.

He doesn't speak like that anymore.

And I said, I'm so sorry.

It's too late.

There's some of you here right now, you're living on empty.

You have all the right words, all the right confessions, all the right language.

But your soul, it's desperate to be fully alive.

There's some of you who are just struggling to get up in the morning.

Some of you you're just holding on to your marriage.

Some of you here, you're embarrassed because you believe in Jesus.

But if you admit to anyone how deeply you're hurting, how broken you are, they'll think you don't really believe.

But I want you to know something.

Jesus knows you.

And he's not running from you because of the longing of your soul.

He's running to you.

And that emptiness, that longing, that's just your soul letting you know that nothing in this life can feel that except for him.

And I know in whichever campus you're in right now, there's some of you who right now I just need to say, Jesus, I'm empty.

I'm broken.

I'm even desperate.

And I need your fullness in me, because I need to be fully alive.

And here's a beautiful thing.

It tells us in the Bible that Jesus emptied himself and became as nothing.

So that through his sacrifice on the cross, you and me could receive his fullness.

So if you're here right now, I'm just gonna ask everyone just to bow your heads just for a moment.

In every campus, in every location.

I want this moment to be sacred.

And if you're here and you would say, My there's an emptiness inside of me.

And I need Jesus to fill it.

I've been hiding it, I've been doing the best I can to put on a good face.

I've been trying to just be tough enough to make it through, but I I don't know if I can make it.

I I need Jesus to fill me.

I need to be fully alive in Him.

I want you right now just to stand and I want to pray for you.

If that's you, I just want you to find the courage in this moment to stand.

Because I want God to give you the eyes to see all the beauty and wonder around you.

I want God to give you access to the strength and power that is within you.

I want in this moment for you to begin to receive the riches of his glorious inheritance.

But I want you to step into the hope for which you've been called.

Just stand right now, wherever you are, in this moment, stand.

Beautiful all around.

I'm gonna pray briefly, and then every pastor from every campus is gonna come and minister with you.

Father, for those standing, may you fill the longing, the emptiness, the brokenness.

May you become the fullness in them.

May you take them in this moment and breathe your life in them that they may be fully alive in you.

Jesus, you are the fullness of God.

When you dwell in us, your fullness dwells in us.

I pray that we would live in that fullness, that we would live so that life would permeate through every pore of our body, that we would be so alive, we would have life to give to others.

I pray that they would become fountains of life, overflowing with life, that they would fill the joy and hope, God, that you would give them laughter and friendship.

God, I pray that you would pour your love, God, and your faith into them, that they would be so alive that every morning they would wake up, God, receiving the gift of life, that every night they would go to bed knowing today, today, today I left because of Jesus.

We pray in your name, Jesus.

Amen and amen.