An Open Table

Awesome.

Well, uh good morning again, and uh thank you guys so much for being here today.

If I'd had the chance to meet you, um I am Nathan.

My name's Nathan.

I'm one of the pastors here at Church at the Grove, typically down at our social circle campus, um, but uh Russ has taken a few weeks off, and so uh Jonah's actually preaching down there this morning, and I'm up here with you guys, and it's a great opportunity uh just to be up here with our church family that I don't get to see uh super often.

But um, if you are a guest or visitor with us, we would just want to say a special welcome to you.

Um we are so thankful that you have decided to give Church at the Grove a try, and we would love if the Lord is calling you here to help you take your next steps on your faith journey.

And as Katie said, um, man, the Lord is doing some really cool things as evidence across the street that we're just seeing this building go up uh so quickly, and it's exciting times to be a part of Church at the Grove and what God is doing.

He's calling us to something that is so much greater than ourselves, and uh.

And uh I'll be honest with you, uh, I didn't want to preach the message uh that I was assigned to preach.

Um I get the opportunity to kind of uh kind of map out the series and determine who's gonna preach when.

And I really, when I kind of came up with the subject matter of today's message, I thought to myself, man, maybe I can get somebody else to preach instead.

I thought, man, this is a good one, I think, for Jonah to preach or for Anderson or Brandon.

Somebody else could preach this message far better than me because it's a subject that I'm not super fond of talking about, mainly because I'm not the best at it.

This morning what we're talking about is vulnerability.

Um, and if we're being very honest and very vulnerable about vulnerability, I hate it.

I hate vulnerability.

Um, you know, I'm this kind of master at being able to shape certain social settings.

I'm able to redirect tough conversations.

I can crack a joke at just the right time to avoid going too deep or getting too personal.

And it's not that I don't want to get deep, or it's not that I don't want to get personal.

I just like to have control of those situations.

And maybe you can relate to me in some way.

Maybe you're a professional redirector in your own life and you have a hard time being vulnerable like I do.

And listen, I I don't know all the reasons why I have a hard time being vulnerable.

It's probably something that I should uh pay a licensed counselor to talk about.

Um, but you guys are a captive audience and a lot cheaper, and so I'll try my best to do that with you guys today.

I think one reason I'm not vulnerable, and I think one of the reasons that we all probably struggle with vulnerability to some degree is because we've been hurt, right?

Um I've been hurt.

I I have opened myself up to other people and they've used what I've told them or they've you know talked about me behind my back.

And anytime you get hurt by somebody else, it's only natural for you to begin to build up walls around you.

Because you think that the walls are going to be something that protects you in the future.

And you can relate to that.

You've been hurt.

You've had people that have talked about you, you've had people that have betrayed your trust.

And I just want to say this morning, if that's you in the room, we see you.

We we know that you're here.

We relate to you.

We've been there.

But I think one of the other reasons that I tend to struggle with vulnerability, the deeper kind of root issue of why I struggle with this is because I'm afraid that if people see the real me, that they're going to not like what they see.

They're not going to want to have anything to do with me.

Tim Keller, in his book on Marriage, he says to be loved but not known is comforting but superficial.

To be known and not loved is our greatest fear.

But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.

It is what we need more than anything.

It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.

What we long for more than anything else in this life is we long to be loved.

We long to be fully known and fully loved at the same time.

But oftentimes, when it comes to at least our relationships with other people, we have a hard time putting that into practice and actually believing that that can be true in the relationships that we have.

And so isolation oftentimes occurs.

And isolation is when we might feel safe, but the thing about isolation is it's not healing.

Isolation might feel safe, but it's not healing.

Community is risky, but it's the only way that we can truly grow.

And so many of you guys this morning, as we talk about vulnerability, you maybe have some of the same hesitations and some of the same hangups that I have as well.

You have people that are smiling and nodding and making small talk, but deep down you're wondering: would they still want me at the table if they really knew who I was?

If they really saw the deepest parts of me, if they saw the sinful tendencies that I have, the addictions that I struggle with, would they really want to have anything to do with me?

Now we all long for that type of community.

We want friendships that are safe and honest and real, but at the same time, we have this impulse to hide.

We hide behind surface-level conversations, we hide behind our busyness, we hide behind spiritual language, we hide behind our highlight reel that we can post on social media while we tuck the broken parts of us deep down inside.

We have this struggle with being vulnerable, and let's just be honest this morning.

I know it's hard to be honest in church, but if we could be honest in church for a minute, church can be one of the worst places to be vulnerable.

Because we have this kind of unspoken kind of expectation that you've got to look or be a certain way in order to belong.

That you've got to have your act all together.

You got to dress the part.

And as a result, we can have rooms that are full of people that look really great on the outside, but in the on the inside, they're completely alone with no one around them.

The church shouldn't be like that.

The church should be a place where hospital for sinners, where people that are broken, can come with their woundings and their baggage, and they can find a place of belonging.

A place where we don't have to pretend that we have it all together, but that we can be vulnerable with others.

And even if it hurts us, that we can still find healing in a place where we belong.

What is healing isn't found in hiding, but ultimately our healing is found in being known.

And that's what I want us to talk about this morning.

And so if you don't get anything else from this message, here's the big idea for this morning.

The table is where masks come off or should come off, and grace shows up.

The table is where masks should come off, and grace shows up.

And before we kind of jump into the scripture this morning, I'd love for us just to pray together this morning.

And so, Holy Spirit, Lord, we say this often here at Church of the Grove that we don't come into a room like this to meet about you, but we come to meet with you.

And so, Lord, I pray that right now your Holy Spirit would come, Lord, that you would be present among us.

And Lord, that you would open up our ears and our hearts to be able to hear from you.

Lord, what we need in this room this morning is not a well-crafted sermon or message, but we need a word from you.

Um, there are people that are broken, there are people that are in hiding this morning, people that are struggling and feel like they can't maybe come into the light.

And Lord, they need the soft, gentle guidance of your spirit to lead them out.

And so, Lord, would you just be with us now?

Come, Holy Spirit, would you move in our midst as we open up your word?

And it's in your name we pray.

Amen.

So, as I said, last week we began this series, and it's a series all about the table.

And so we're looking at different parts of Scripture where Jesus is sitting around a table with different groups of people found throughout the book of Luke.

And last week was all about a table where you could find acceptance and belonging.

And this morning is a table all about vulnerability.

Um, and that's that's the goal of this morning is to try to move into vulnerability.

And the goal of this series, let's just put all the cards on the table.

I want to make sure it's very clear.

I don't want anybody to think that we pulled a fast one on you.

The goal of this series is to get you connected in a community group.

All right.

So if you don't know what your action step is, it's to get connected in a community group.

We have community groups that will launch in a few weeks.

We'll have more information about what groups are available starting next week.

But we just want to go and forewarn you, we want you to get connected in a group.

What we do in this room is awesome.

We love being able to come and collectively gather together and to sing and to hear God's word taught.

But the real lasting life change that you so desire is going to be found when you have relationships that you can have accountability and encouragement and challenge.

And so we want you to get connected in a group.

Got it?

Cool?

All right, good.

All right, so this morning we're going to be in Luke chapter 7.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

If you have a Bible, you can turn there.

And uh, this scene is a little bit different from last week.

Last week, the table uh that Jesus finds himself around uh was one of welcoming, but this table doesn't seem as warm and as welcoming.

In Luke chapter 7, starting in verse 36, this is how the story goes.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

It says, Then one of the Pharisees, who we'll later find out his name Simon, invited Jesus to eat with him.

He entered the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table, and a woman in the town who was a sinner found out that Jesus was reclining at the table in the Pharisee's house.

She brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to wash his feet with her tears.

She wiped his feet with her hair, kissing them and anointing them with perfume.

So Jesus finds himself in the house of a religious leader, and there's this sinful woman that comes in.

And so we see two radically different individuals that are here at the table with Jesus.

The first one, like I said, is the religious leader, the Pharisee.

His name is Simon.

He's someone that's well respected in the community.

He's in control of the room.

It's his house, after all.

He lived according to the law.

He lived by a strict moral and ceremonial purity laws.

He would have been educated.

He would have been knowledgeable in the Old Testament.

He most likely would have memorized, memorized, think about that, the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, by heart.

He had this public image image of righteousness and discipline and religious devotion.

So you've got this one guy over here, but then you've got this woman that shows up on the scene unpredicted, unpredictable, and she's completely the opposite.

She's known as a sinner.

Most scholars believe that the reason that she's called that is because she's most likely a prostitute, that she's ostracized, she's objectified, that she's judged, that she's uneducated, she's unfamiliar with the religious rules and expectations.

Her reputation would have been marked by shame.

People knew her past and avoided her because of it.

So we see two drastically different people show up in this story.

But there's also two drastically different responses to Jesus.

The Pharisee invites Jesus over, but he offers them no water, no kiss, and no oil.

We'll see that later in the passage in a second, which were standard acts of hospitality in Jewish culture.

His posture is controlled and reserved.

He's emotionally detached.

While he appears righteous on the outside, his sin is concealed beneath a cloak of self-righteousness.

His issue wasn't that he had no sin, but that he couldn't see the sin that he had.

The woman, on the other hand, offers everything to Jesus.

Her tears, her perfume, her dignity.

Her posture is unsteady.

She's weeping.

She's completely vulnerable in front of Jesus in the room.

She's not careful or calculating in her actions.

Instead, she's pouring out her heart.

Her sin is fully exposed.

Yet she is entirely surrendered.

She isn't hiding, but she is desperately approaching Jesus with humility and brokenness.

This is one of the truest pictures of what worship looks like.

Somebody completely undone, falling at the feet of Jesus, giving them everything that they have.

So two radically different people.

Two radically different responses.

Jump down to verse 39.

When the Pharisee, who had invited him over, saw this, he said to himself, This man, if he were a prophet, would know who and what kind of woman that is who is touching him.

She's a sinner.

So Simon sees this woman come in.

He knows of her sinful lifestyle.

And what we see play out is classic self-righteousness.

Simon believed that he was truly better than the woman that is coming to Jesus' feet.

That he deserved to be at the table with Jesus.

But this woman didn't even deserve to be in the room.

He deserved the company of Jesus, but the woman did not.

And the religious culture at the time, sadly, and this is how many religious people can be today as well, the religious culture of this time thought that sin was something that you could almost catch, like a virus.

And so what they did is they didn't want to get around anyone else that was sinful.

They wanted to stay as far away and far as removed from sinful people because they thought that if they just associated with these individuals, then they were going to get dirty.

But here's the beautiful thing about this story, and the beautiful thing about the gospel is that Jesus is never worried about being contaminated by her sin or by our sin.

Her sin doesn't make him unclean, but rather her, his holiness makes her clean.

And that's the gospel message, right?

That's the good news.

That's what we've all hopefully experienced in our life, that we have a Savior that has come in the midst of our brokenness, in the midst of our sin, in the midst of our despair, and he has touched us, he has changed us.

This is the power of grace.

It doesn't move away from the broken people, but it moves towards the broken people.

And Simon, the one that has studied the law of God, the one that has given his entire life and ministry and action all to the Lord, totally misses the heart of God.

Think about that.

The religious leader of the day totally misses the heart of God.

When he sees this woman, all he sees is a sinner, and there's this judgment that he places upon her.

So Jesus replies, I love this.

This is so savage of Jesus.

Verse 40.

Jesus replied to him, Simon, I have something to say to you.

That's a scary kind of thought, right?

He said, Say it, teacher.

And he said, verse 41, a creditor has two debtors, one owed 500 denarii, and the other fifty.

Since they could not pay it back, he graciously forgave them both.

So which one of them loves him more?

Simon answered, I suppose the one who forgave more, been had been forgiven more.

One of the shortest parables that Jesus tells us.

One man has a$500 debt, the other has a$50 debt, and it seems like a simple question.

If they're both forgiven, which one is going to love more?

Jesus is asking an obvious question, but what he's doing here is he's trying to draw Simon into a trap of grace.

He wants Simon to have to say the words out loud that he has a hard time letting his heart admit that people who have been forgiven much respond with much love.

The woman knows that she has a bigger debt.

Simon doesn't think he has a debt at all.

Simon thinks that he has it all together, and he feels like there's no need for grace in his life.

And as a result, there's no need for vulnerability.

There's no need for worship.

See, the difference in these two individuals could not be further from one another, but the difference, the main difference, isn't their moral record, but rather their awareness of their need.

All of us, whether we were in the bar last night and live a drastically different lifestyle that is contrary to the laws of Scripture, or we're in church every single Sunday obeying every single command that we have ever heard and known.

We all are in desperate need of God's grace.

The woman didn't need God's grace alone.

Simon needed God's grace, but he didn't see his need.

He had become a person that was not vulnerable.

He was somebody that was in control of the situation.

He had allowed his religious mindset to blind him from his own personal need.

And see, this is why it's so important for us to practice and be vulnerable individuals.

Because vulnerable people are the most grateful people.

They're the most generous people, they're the most transformed people because they've come face to face with their sin and they've come face to face with grace, and they've let the grace of God undo them.

And that's what we see in this woman.

This woman has been radically changed by Jesus.

And so as a result, she comes forward, laying everything out in front of the room full of people that she finds herself in, being completely and totally transparent and vulnerable, risking everything.

She comes to Jesus because she knows that it's in the presence of Jesus that she finds healing.

And so she comes.

Verse 44, it says, turning to the woman, Jesus said to Simon, so this is interesting.

He's not talking to Simon, but he's looking at the woman when he does it.

And he said, Do you see this woman?

I entered your house.

You gave me no water for my feet, but she with her tears has washed my feet and wiped them with her hair.

You gave me no kiss, but she hasn't stopped kissing my feet since I came in.

You didn't anoint my head with olive oil, but she has anointed my feet with perfume.

Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven.

That's why she loved much.

But the one who is forgiven little loves little.

Then he said to her, Your sins are forgiven.

Now, this is an electric moment, I'm sure, in the house, right?

Simon, do you see this woman?

Simon didn't see the woman.

I mean, sure, he saw her physically in front of her, but he he didn't see the woman that had been created in the image of God that had intrinsic value and worth.

When Simon saw the woman, all he saw was her past, her reputation, and the labels that she carried throughout life.

Jesus doesn't ignore her sin, though.

He names it, but then he offers forgiveness.

Her radical act of vulnerability brings about the healing that she so desperately needed in life.

And that's what I want us to see is that vulnerability in life ultimately leads to our healing.

So many of us fail to experience the healing that Jesus offers because we fail to be vulnerable with God and vulnerable with others.

So many of us are stuck in bondage over sins that continue to cling on to our souls, that we can't seem to shake, that we can't seem to get rid of.

And I would argue that a lot of that has to do with our willingness to be vulnerable with God and with others.

See, this story is a mirror for us to evaluate.

Ourselves and to see ourselves.

When I read this story, I ask this question Who am I in the story?

Am I Simon?

Or am I the woman?

Am I someone that's carefully managing my spiritual image, showing up to church, saying the right things, but in the end I'm keeping my heart locked down?

Or am I this woman desperate for Jesus, undone by grace, and willing to risk vulnerability in front of others?

Which one are you?

Are you more like the religious leader or are you more like the woman?

Here's the truth: you can't experience the healing and the power of grace if you're hiding behind pride, fear, and image management.

You can't experience real community if you don't let yourself be seen.

And so I want to pull out just three things that we can learn from this woman that I think we can apply to our lives that will revolutionize how we experience our relationship with the Lord and hopefully community as well.

The first thing is this that we are to come as you are, not as you wish you were.

She didn't wait to get her act together.

She didn't rehearse the perfect apology.

She didn't clean herself up before finding her belonging at the table.

She came broken, messy, and weeping.

And I would argue this morning and try to push on you and encourage you in every single way I possibly could that we should follow her example.

That we don't want to practice vulnerability because oftentimes we feel like we have to clean ourselves up first.

We think that in order for us to find belonging, that we have to get our act together.

We wrongly believe the lie of the enemy, that our worth and our value is found in our performance.

And so the only way that we matter, the only way that we can belong, the only way we can have a seat at the table is if we perform the right way.

I'll come clean about this after I've worked it out myself.

And so change so rarely happens on our own.

We desperately need to let other people into our mess if we are going to find true freedom in life.

Diedrich Bonhoeffer, the great German pastor that was alive during the time of World War II, said this He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone.

I've been there before.

I've been there before in my sin, being utterly alone.

See, sin isolates us, vulnerability connects us.

You don't just give God or others a cleaned up version of yourself, but bring the real you to the table.

One of my favorite authors is uh Justin Early, and he says, honesty about our sin becomes the path, not the barrier to relationship.

See, there's this lie out there that we oftentimes believe that if we bring our true selves to other people, that it's going to kill the relationship.

But what I've noticed in my personal life is that anytime I've been vulnerable with others and let people see the real me, it's drawn the relationship even closer.

So what's one area in your life that maybe you've been trying to fix before you bring to the light?

Don't live in the darkness, but bring it to Jesus and to a trusted friend or community.

Second thing we can learn don't let shame keep you from worship.

The woman in the story could have very easily allowed shame to stop her.

Imagine the whispers, the glances, the judgment that was in the room, but she came anyway.

What looked like scandal was actually worship.

Kurt Thompson in his book, The Soul of Shame, says shame is not just a consequence of something we've done wrong.

It is a way of seeing ourselves.

It tells us we are not enough, that we don't belong, and that if anyone truly knew us, they would turn away.

What shame tells us is that if people really knew you, they wouldn't love you.

But Jesus says, I know you fully and love you completely.

Wow.

Shame will always compel and cause you to hide.

I mean, think about it.

All throughout scripture, we see this practice play out.

In the very beginning, in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve eat the fruit off of the tree, what do they do?

Shame enters.

They felt shame for the very first time.

They realized they were naked, and what did they do?

They went and hid.

They hide from God.

They hide from each other.

They're covering themselves.

This is what shame does to us.

We begin to be people that hide.

We think that the hiding is going to actually protect us, but what hiding is doing is it's costing us something.

It's costing us intimacy and joy and healing and freedom.

If you can't be fully loved and when you're only partially known, you can't be healed unless you admit that you're bleeding.

We've got to be real about the situation that we find ourselves in.

Neil T.

Anderson says Satan's greatest victory is when he convinces believers to hide from the very one who came to heal them.

Jesus wants to heal you.

He wants you to walk in freedom.

He wants you to walk in abundant life.

But you got to be like the woman.

And you can't allow shame to keep you in the hiding.

What fear is keeping you from being known?

What mask are you wearing in order to stay safe?

Finally, what we see is that vulnerability unlocks grace.

You know, I've been walking with Jesus now for some time, and one of the greatest truths that's probably been ingrained in my heart over the years, when I read the scriptures, this principle is just constantly jumping out at me.

It's one of the central themes that I think we find in Scripture is that God looks for and responds to those who have their a desperate need for Him.

You could say it this way: the Lord resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

The Lord isn't looking, honestly, for people that have their lives all together.

He's looking for people that are desperately in need of grace.

You want to experience the grace of God, you have to practice vulnerability.

You have to become a person of desperation.

The table is where the mask comes off and grace shows up.

The table that Jesus sets for us isn't a table where you have to pretend.

You don't have to act like you've got it all together.

It's not a place that you have to come and wear a mask in order to belong, but it's a place where you can come as you are.

And that's the kind of community that we want to create here at Church of the Grove.

We want tables that people can come and find belonging at.

Broken people can be real and honest about their brokenness, and that people can come.

And let me just be honest with you, we're not gonna always get this right.

There are gonna be times when people do hurt you, when people do say things out of turn, when maybe it's intentional, maybe it's unintentional, but there will be times that you're going to get hurt.

But here's what I'm trying to convince you of this morning: it's still worth it.

It's still worth it to practice vulnerability because vulnerability is hard.

Vulnerability, though, leads to freedom.

It leads to belonging, it leads to healing in our lives.

And I've experienced this firsthand.

Um for our social circle campus, um, they've heard this story a thousand times, but for you guys, I'll share it with y'all.

But um, 2020 was kind of a um milestone year for me on a spiritual uh level.

Um, the Lord, as you guys know, COVID happened and you know, pretty much the whole world fell apart, and um my world fell apart.

Um, what happened is I had realized that I had kind of built all of these idols and structures in my life that I was able to lean on and control and kind of do on my own ability and own power.

And when COVID happened, everything was kind of pulled out from underneath me, and all that I had left was Jesus.

And so what started five years ago has been this process of the Lord skillfully coax coex cock leading me out of the hole that I had dug for myself.

It was, it's I mean, I get I get it emotional even thinking about it, that I felt like for so long in my life that I was hiding.

In 2020 was this beginning of this beautiful thing where Jesus came and he kind of grabbed me by the hand and he said, Nathan, come on out.

Two years ago, I'm in New York, I'm at a conference, and uh the Lord just showed up really powerful in the room and um it turned into a time of public confession.

We're not doing that this morning.

That's not the plan, at least.

But uh, this pastor's conference, um, everybody's just speaking out loud to the room, what they're confessing their sins, it's practicing vulnerability.

And uh when the Lord shows up, the walls start to come down and vulnerability starts happening.

And so, Brandon, who uh is our worship director, worship pastor here, and is down at Social Circle this morning, um, him and I stepped out of the room together and just became, you know, confess, we just started to confess sins.

Sins that no one else had even known at that point.

Continue on, God has blessed me with some deep-seated friendships, places where I feel safe, places where people know Nathan, they know my junk, they know my sin, they know my struggle, and yet they love me anyway.

And I will tell you that I have never experienced so much freedom in my life than when I had a group of people around me that knew me, that I could be vulnerable with, that could walk with me, that could challenge me, that could encourage me, that could pray for me, than I do right now.

And I'm so grateful for the Lord, and I just want to be kind of a herald this morning to invite you into the same thing.

James 5, 16 says, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed.

I so desperately want you to experience the healing of Jesus.

And listen, for some of us in the room, the first step of healing that we need to take is putting our faith and trust in Jesus.

That Jesus died for you, he rose again on the third day, and it says that anyone that puts their faith and trust in him will have eternal life.

They'll be made into a new creation.

You'll become a son or a daughter of the king of all the world.

So maybe that's the first step you need to take.

But listen to me.

This process does not stop when we first come to Jesus.

This is an ongoing journey that we have.

And I believe that there are people in the room this morning that need the healing touch of the Lord in your life, but you can't get that unless you step out in vulnerability.

I want healing for you.

This church wants you to experience healing in your life, but more than that, Jesus wants you to experience healing in your life.

But the pathway to healing is found in being vulnerable to God and to others.

Today is a day where we come to take off the masks, where we begin to get real, where we follow the example of the sinful woman who brings everything to Jesus.

She risked her reputation and she does the hard thing being vulnerable in front of the Lord and vulnerable in front of a group of people that wanted nothing to do with her.

And so this morning, I want you to send the text.

I want you to schedule the coffee.

I want you to tell the truth.

I want you to take one step forward in practicing vulnerability.

And hear me in this.

Vulnerability is never weakness.

Vulnerability is strength.

There is nothing that you will do that will be stronger than bringing your sin and your bondage and the things that you struggle with into the light.

That's the strongest thing you can possibly do.

There is nothing more stronger than shedding tears at the feet of Jesus.

That's the strongest thing you can do.

So, what's holding you back from practicing vulnerability in your life?

How do you need to experience healing?

Is it your reputation that's holding you back?

You don't want people to see you've got too much respect in the community or within this church that you're unwilling to step forward?

Is it the secrets you think are too great?

And if somebody actually knew the secrets of your life that they would want nothing to do with you?

Is it simply that you want to control the situation?

And that you want to try to be uh kind of the professional uh person that can control all the conversations and situations in your life.

Here's what I'm just trying to beg you and convince you of this morning to bring it to Jesus.

Jesus knows you.

He knows the depths of your heart, and he still loves you the same.

Bring your stuff to Jesus, but don't stop there.

Practice vulnerability with others who you're close with.

Step out on the ledge, risk.

You know, I think that's one of the definitions of faith is risk.

And sometimes we've got to make the risky decision to step out and to trust God and to trust others so that we can experience healing.

And so here's what I want us to do.

If you have a Bible or notes or whatever, if you want to close that up for just a minute, and we're gonna respond to Jesus, we're gonna take communion in a second, but before we kind of jump into that, I just want to ask the Holy Spirit again to just come.

Like we said at the beginning, we don't come to talk about God, but we come to meet with the Lord.

We know from the truth of Scripture that where his people are gathered, that he is here.

He is in our midst.

Move in our midst, move in our hearts.

What is it?

What is in your life maybe right now that nobody knows, nobody has a clue about?

Bring it to the feet of Jesus.

Maybe for some of us in the room, there's somebody in your life that immediately kind of, you know, the Lord puts in your mind that you can maybe practice vulnerability with you, with maybe others of us in the room, we have nobody.

Maybe just ask the Holy Spirit right now, Lord, who do you have for me?

Who do I need to confess to?

Who do I need to practice vulnerability with?

What is he saying to you?

Jesus wants you to be healed.

He doesn't want you to live in bondage, he wants you to walk in the abundant life that he offers.

And so, as I said a moment ago, for some of you, that's the first step that you need to take to trust Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

Just cry out to him, be like the woman desperately falling at his feet.

For some of us in the room, it's the secrets of our sin and the bondage that we carry that's held us in captivity.

And the Spirit wants to come and break the chains and lead us into the abundant life.

Just ask him to come right now.

Don't move past this moment.

The Lord wants to work, the Lord wants to do something in your life.

As we um kind of come to a close this morning, um we want to invite you to the table.

Not figuratively, but actually literally, come to the table.

Um, we're celebrating communion this morning, and communion is um the table of Jesus that he has prepared for us.

And just like the woman in Luke chapter 7, we don't come because we have it all together.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

We don't come because we've earned it.

We pump come because grace is here.

And just like the woman, you don't need to clean yourself up first.

You come as you are in your mess, your shame, your fear, your sin, and all that you have, and you lay it at the feet of Jesus.

The table that we partake in this morning is a table that's not for the perfect, it's for the broken.

This table is not a reward for the righteous, it's a feast for the forgiven.

This table is not where we pretend, but it's a table where we come to be fully known and fully loved.

And so in a minute, our band's gonna lead us, but again, I don't want us just to move quickly past this.

Spend some time wrestling with the Lord.

What are the things in your life that you need to bring into the light?

And let his soft, gentle hand lead you into the freedom that he's offering.

So come, Holy Spirit, would you move now?

And it's in your name we pray.

Amen.

So again, just as you feel ready, you can come and take in the communion table.

We've got two tables set up here, and then we've got a table set out in the lobby.

If the back, uh, three rows, if y'all can just kind of go out the side doors and then come back in through the front and the center door, that would be fantastic.

But again, don't move too quickly.

Um, process with the Lord and let healing come as you trust in Him.