Building More Than Walls

Thank you guys for praying with me.

Um I can remember uh being back in college, and uh I was in school and I had a friend of mine that went to school with me, and he was uh a part-time youth pastor at this church, and he was gonna do a student lock-in.

Now, lock-ins sound like a great idea for those that have never done a lock-in.

Um they are the absolute worst thing you can possibly do.

Um, you pretty much get a bunch of teenagers together, you fill them up with caffeine and sugar and pizza, and you stay up all night long playing games and doing all kinds of things.

You think it's maybe going to be a fun night at the beginning, and then like 4 a.m.

rolls around, and you're like, why in the world did I just sign myself up for this?

But when I was in college, I could actually stay up all night, and so I said, absolutely, I'm there.

And so I rolled up to this church, and it was inside the perimeter of Atlanta, an older church that was there.

And when we pulled into the building, I was really amazed at the size of this uh facility.

I mean, it had this huge steeple, beautiful stained glass windows.

I mean, you could see just classroom and education space for days.

I mean, it was just this incredible facility.

And I walked into the sanctuary before the kids got there that morning, and I was struck by just how deserted the building looked.

Um, you could tell that the building had been abandoned is what it looked like.

There were tons of classrooms that had once been filled that seemed like they were lifeless.

And it made an incredible game of hide and go seek in the dark and in like an abandoned church, you know, walking through the cobwebs and these empty classrooms.

It was horrifying, quite honestly.

But the scarier thing wasn't necessarily the building, it was just the lack of life that the church had.

I stayed there for that Sunday morning.

There was a handful of students that were there, and then that Sunday morning wasn't much different.

See, a building is never the mission.

A church is only strong, not because of its structure, but because of the people that are inside of it.

And we've all seen this happen just in our regular everyday lives.

You probably have seen homes in your neighborhoods that have kind of been neglected and they've been kind of you see the grass growing high and the windows, you know, are not where they need to be, and the roof seems to need some desperate repair.

We've seen businesses that had once been full of life, and then suddenly there's no one that's really investing in those businesses any longer, and they're barely hanging on.

And that same idea can absolutely 100% happen in a church.

In a church, it can be full of life, it can be full of energy, but then there's something that can shift and there's something that can change where they're just holding on to survive, where they lost the mission driving them.

Instead, they become in maintenance mode.

Buildings still stand, but faith, passion, and the people inside have faded.

This slow fade doesn't begin to happen overnight.

It happens when people stop surrendering to what God wants to do in their life and they start settling for what is just comfortable.

Now listen, at Church at the Grove, there's a lot for us to celebrate.

God has been moving in some incredible ways in the last several years, especially.

We've seen tons of baptisms.

We've seen both campuses grow by about 20%.

We're running out of space, obviously, up here, and it's easy for us to see that God's doing something in our midst.

But if we ever lose sight of the mission, if we ever stop surrendering to what God's calling us to do as a people, then eventually there will be a slow fate and we'll fall into the same trap that has held many in its grasps.

And so that's why we're doing four generations.

Four generations is more than a sermon series, but it's a commitment.

It's a commitment for us to invest in something that's bigger than ourselves.

It's about sowing seeds for future generations, for us to see fruit come forth from the generations that are following us.

Last year we kicked off this initiative, and the whole kind of mission was to sow seeds of faith, but it was also to help expand the campus here at Walnut Grove so that we can continue to be a community of faith that was desperately trying to reach the community around us.

And let's be honest, this vision is not just about adding square footage, although that is a part of it.

It's more than a building expansion, though.

It's about building people of faith.

And so here's what I want us to see this morning as we finish out this four generations series is that a church's strength isn't in its structure, it's in its surrender.

A church's strength isn't in its structure, it's in its surrender.

Or you could say it this way: the true strength of a church isn't in what it builds, it's who it bows to.

And that's what we want to see this morning.

We want to see a church that, yes, builds a facility that allows us to have a tool to better reach this community and create more space, but more than that, we want to see people that are surrendered to Jesus wholeheartedly.

And one of the great stories in the Old Testament that we've been kind of walking through is the book of Nehemiah.

If you have a Bible, you can turn there.

It's a little small book found in the Old Testament.

Feel free to use your table of contents to find it if you need to.

Um but Nehemiah is this incredible leader.

Every time I read through this book, I'm just amazed at his leadership and the vision that he has.

Nehemiah is burdened by the city of Jerusalem because the people have been exiled, the Jewish people have been exiled, they've been sent to a foreign nation, and the walls of the city have been torn down, the city isn't kind of destroyed in a lot of ways, and Nehemiah gets word that that's the condition of the city that his gen the generations that have come before him dwelt in.

And so he has this burden to go back to the city of Jerusalem from where he was and to rebuild the walls of the city.

So Nehemiah rolls up and he k gets the people all together in unity and they begin to work on these walls and rebuild the city.

And as a result, they have tons of opposition.

There's people that come at them, and we looked at this a little bit last week.

There's people that were coming at them, and they were sowing seeds of discouragement.

They were sowing seeds of just disunity.

They were trying to get people distracted from the mission and the vision that God was calling them on.

But Nehemiah and his people, they stay the course.

And after fifty-two days, a few weeks of working, sweating, sacrificing, the walls of the city are rebuilt.

In light of the opposition, Nehemiah and his band of other workers were able to rebuild the city.

You can look in Nehemiah chapter 6, and you can see that the city walls are finally finished.

Nehemiah 6 · chapter mention

The gates were secure, but the mission still wasn't accomplished.

Not yet.

Because Nehemiah knew that you can build up the city walls, but if the faith inside those city walls is weak, then you've accomplished nothing.

So in Nehemiah chapter 8, which is where we'll be this morning, after all the work, Nehemiah gathers the people together, and he's not gathering the people together in a dedication ceremony to, you know, dedicate the walls.

Nehemiah 8 · chapter mention

He's not gathering the people together for a military parade.

He's gathering the people together as a call to worship.

He's wanting to get the people to worship with him because the mission hadn't been fully accomplished yet.

What's needed is not just that the walls be rebuilt, but it was for the hearts of God's people to be transformed.

And that's the same mission that we have today.

We want to build a building.

We want to build a structure that helps us reach this community.

But more than that, we want to see people's hearts and lives transformed by the message and the grace and the mercy of Jesus.

If we only focus on building a building, but we don't let God build us, then we've missed the point.

God's calling us to something more.

So Nehemiah chapter 8, verse 1, this is how it reads.

Nehemiah 8:1

It says, All the people assembled with a unified purpose at the square just inside the watergate.

They asked Ezra, the scribe, to bring out the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given for Israel to obey.

On October 8th, Ezra, the priest, brought the book of the law before the assembly, which included men, women, and all the children old enough to understand.

He faced the square just inside the water gate from early morning until noon, and read aloud for everyone who could hear to understand.

All the people listened closely to the book of the law.

Ezra the scribe stood on a high wooden platform that had been made for this occasion.

I'm going to skip the next section because I don't know how to pronounce all those names.

Verse 5.

Ezra stood on the platform in full view of all the people, and when they saw him open the book, they all rose to their feet.

Then Ezra praised the Lord, the great God, and all the people chanted, Amen, Amen, as they lifted their hands and they bowed down and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

And so we see that the walls have been rebuilt, but the walls weren't the ultimate mission.

It was ultimately to restore the people back to what God had wanted them to be all along.

His people, his people that were surrendered and devoted to him.

And so they stand up, Nehemiah and Ezra, and they begin to read the book of the law out loud, and people are moved.

And so here's what we see.

If we're going to rebuild the people of faith, if we're going to have God transform our hearts, there's three things that we can learn from this passage that we need to see happen.

The first thing is this is that there's a people that are gathered around God's word.

A people that were gathered around God's word.

Now, Ezra the scribe, he stands up and he's not preaching.

He's just reading the Torah.

He's reading the first five books of the Bible that contain the law.

They're the words that God gave Moses on Mount Sinai that contained all the God's commands and instructions and promises and outlined how Israel needed to live as his people.

And remember that the people, the nation of Israel had been exiled for 70 years.

And so for many of them, they have never even heard these words.

They've been forgotten.

They maybe have heard rumors of them, but they most likely have forgotten their spiritual heritage.

It even says in this passage that some of the scribes had to come around the people and explain what things meant because they had no concept of what the law of God taught.

But as Ezra gets up and he begins to read the book, we see that the people are eager.

The people are eager to hear what God's word had to say.

Man, what if we were a church that was eager about hearing what God's word had to say?

We were hungry for the words of God, that we wanted more and more of him.

They responded with deep emotion.

They're moved.

I mean, it says that they raised their hands, that they bowed down and they put their faces on the ground because they're so convicted about what the Lord was speaking to them through his word.

We see that they needed the priest to help them explain it.

Man, we have a country today that while God's doing incredible things around us, there's a country or there's a community and there's a generation that is totally biblically illiterate.

Much like the people that are coming back to the nation and they've lost sight of what God's word has said.

We have people that own tons of Bibles and have access to podcasts, devotions, and sermons and apps and all that stuff, but people have just a very lack of understanding when it comes to what the Bible actually teaches.

The Jewish people, when they came back to the city, they were more focused on building their own lives rather than building their faith.

And in the same way, we can fall into this trap.

We can become so concerned with building our own lives, our careers, our platforms, our wealth, our comfort, the success that we want to see out of life that we can miss out on building our spiritual foundation.

We must be people that gather around God's word.

It's easy for us to drift, it's easy for us to lose sight of what God's word says, but we desperately need to bring the word of God back to the center of everything that we do.

And we need to let the word of God be something that deeply transforms us and moves us.

We did a Bible series in January that was just really great.

And I mean it was so cool just hearing some of the conversations that I had with people.

And there was one lady that I had a conversation with that was attending a baptism that we were having down in social circle, and um she was just coming for that, but she is a member of another church, and she came up to me afterwards and she just said, Nathan, like thank you so much for that sermon.

Like, I I've grown up in church my entire life, but I've never been taught how to study the Bible.

And that's probably true for a number of people here.

We become kind of inoculated to the biblical text, but we don't actually make it a center of who we are and determine the steps that we need to take in life.

If we're going to be the people that God's called us to be, if we're going to be the people that truly bow down to the Lord like He's called us to be, then we've got to be people that are gathered around God's word.

Second thing we see is that we see there there's a people that are convicted and broken before God.

Listen to what Nehemiah 8 9 says.

It says, Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribed, and the Levites who were interpreting for the people said to them, Don't mourn or weep on such a day as this, for today is a sacred day before the Lord your God.

For the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Lord.

Now we're going to get to where Nehemiah is telling them not to weep, but we see that their response to God's word is brokenness.

They realize just how far that they've drifted, and it invokes within them an emotional response.

It's not just an emotional response for guilt or shame, but they recognize their need for spiritual renewal.

They are convicted.

And conviction is more than just feeling bad.

It's the feeling of the weight of truth and then the desire to change.

And that's what we're ultimately after.

We're not just after a group of people that gathers on a Sunday morning and hears somebody talk and teach and preach the word of God.

And then we go about our days unmoved by what has been said.

We want people that have been moved deeply and convicted and broken before God to see that he is holy, that he is lifted up, to see that he is beyond anything that we could ever imagine or know.

But yet he still comes to meet with us, and that should move us.

We should be moved deeply to know that the God of heaven and earth, the creator of all, wants to meet with us.

This past Thursday night, um, the last Thursday night of every month, we host a prayer night at our social circle campus.

And so we hosted one this past week, and um, you know, we we just kind of open up a space for people to come and just be with the Lord.

And this past uh Thursday, we had a special kind of time just praying over United Weekend, which is happening next week.

And so we had Psalm 78, and we're reading Psalm 78, we're praying through Psalm 78, and man, I'm just telling you, like if you've never been to a prayer night, like get to a prayer night.

Like it is just phenomenal.

It's just an incredible time for us just to meet with the Lord.

But God was there, and as we opened up his word and as we began to read, it was incredible just to see how God's spirit moved on his people, and there were people there that were just broken before him.

People crying out to God and people praying to the Lord and asking God to move in the hearts of the next generation and repenting of their failure to pass on their faith to the next generation.

And you saw people that were deeply moved by God.

They were in the presence of God and they were convicted and broken before him.

I love the quote by Jim Cimbala.

If you've never heard of him, he's the pastor of uh the Brooklyn Tabernacle, and uh he wrote a book called Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, which is a book that it's a small little book, but something I go back to often.

And he said this, he said, You can tell how popular a church is by who comes on Sunday morning.

You can tell how popular the pastor or evangelist is by who comes on Sunday night, but you can tell how popular Jesus is by who comes to the prayer meetings.

Um man, like I read that and I'm just I'm just man, like let's let's get after it.

Let's be people that are broken and desperate for the Lord to move on our behalf.

Let's let's let's open up God's word and truly believe that it has the power to transform our lives, to see God do something significant in our lives that we can't do ourselves.

Hebrews 4 uh 12 through 13 says, For the word of God is alive and powerful.

It's sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow.

It explodes exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.

Nothing in all creation is hidden from God.

Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable.

When we open up God's word, it has tremendous power.

It's not just a good story, it's not just something that we can learn new information about, but it's it has power.

Power to bring conviction, power to expose our innermost thoughts, power to change us and to transform us.

And please hear me that this is not a message about condemnation.

Condemnation is from the enemy, but it's an invitation to conviction, an invitation to renewal.

True repentance isn't in just us regretting the things that we have done, it's in returning to the Lord and what he's calling us to.

This is the beautiful thing about brokenness that God is not in the business of just wanting us to be broken and to leave us there, but he's wanting us to be broken so that he can rebuild us into the person that God he wants us to become.

But it comes for us to be people of humility, to be broken truly before him, to long for his word, for longing for him to move powerfully in our midst.

The people, as Nehemiah and Ezra stand up and begin to proclaim God's word, they're broken before him.

D.

L.

Moody says, the Bible was not given for our information, but our transformation.

A man can read it all of his life and remained unchanged unless he allows it to convict, break, and rebuild him.

When's the last time that the word of God or the presence of the Lord moved you to brokenness?

When was the last time that your heart was so stirred within you that you just had to bow down before the living God?

When was the last time that God so moved in your midst that you recognized your sinfulness and you recognized your desperate need for Him, that you just had to bow with your face to the ground on the floor?

We've got a lot of people in the church today, and I'm not talking about just church at the Grove, I'm talking about the global American church primarily that have this tendency to just kind of go about our lives, and Jesus and God and the Bible and the things of faith are just something that we add on to our lives.

But they aren't the things that are at the center of our lives that move us from the depths of our soul.

We need the Lord to break us.

We need to be the people of brokenness, we need to be people that allow the word of God to shape us.

But we also need to be a people that are strengthened by the joy of the Lord.

Nehemiah 10, Eight Ten says, and Nehemiah continued, Go and celebrate with a feast of rich foods and sweet drinks, and share gifts of food with people who have nothing prepared.

This is a sacred day before our Lord.

Don't be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is our strength.

The people felt the weight of their sin, but Nehemiah was saying, Hey, this isn't a day of grief, but rather it's a day of joy.

That their weeping was a proper response to the conviction that they felt, but that God was inviting them into restoration.

As they stand up and they read the law of God, and the people's hearts are moved.

It was meant to restore them, and that should bring great joy.

Joy is found in God's grace.

God is still faithful, even though the people had been unfaithful, and that was something to rejoice in.

True joy comes when we surrender to Jesus.

That's that's that's the theme that's been playing in my head recently is that I believe that there's the enemy that we are in opposition to, Satan and his band of demons.

They are trying to convince us that God's way is not the best way.

But true joy, true life, the abundant life that Jesus offers and brings to us is in his word.

It's in his ways.

God's ways are not a drag.

God's ways are not.

Something that just is trying to ruin your life and take all the fun and the joy and the excitement out of life.

No, God's ways are the best ways.

God's ways are what truly brings joy and satisfaction and life to our souls, and we cannot miss that.

We have a whole culture that's trying to teach us something different to that, that's contrary to that.

You follow this antiquated book, and man, God's just trying to mess with your life.

He just doesn't want you to experience life and all that the God uh and all that the world has to offer.

But no, I'm telling you that when you walk in obedience to God, when you seek his presence, man, his presence and his voice and his commands are joy for your souls.

God's presence and his word is our joy.

His strength.

The joy of the Lord is our strength.

God's goal isn't just to break us, but it's ultimately to rebuild us.

And when we're rebuilt into the image that God is calling us to walk in, there isn't tremendous joy in that.

I know our social circle campus, um, I've shared a lot just personally with them over the last four or five years of just how God has done just this deep work of transformation within me.

Um COVID was difficult as a church, as you can imagine, as you guys know, as I walked with most of you walked with us through that.

But God has been in a process over the last four or five years of my life where he has just broken me and he's rebuilt me, and he's helped me to experience him in new ways that are so sweet to my soul, that have brought great joy and life to my life.

And uh one of those things was uh about a year ago, a little over a year ago now, um we had a four guys uh uh went up to New York, and uh there's a conference up there called the Altars Conference, and it's a conference, it's all on prayer.

And so it was uh me, Brandon, our worship leader, uh Charlie, who's uh down at our social circle campus, and then Paul McCray, who's one of our elders and attends here.

Um and so we all flew up to New York and we went to this uh church, this building, and uh, you know, we just it was all on prayer.

And so there was preaching, there was teaching, there was, you know, prayer, obviously, there was some worship.

But on uh the Saturday session that morning, um a young guy got up, a little younger than I am, and he just stood up and he just said, Hey guys, like I really feel like the Lord just um wants to move in just a unique way this uh this morning.

And he ref referenced the passage in Nehemiah that we just read, and he just said, Hey, like I really just feel like he wants us to come to a place of repentance.

If God's truly going to move, then he wants to see his people broken before him.

And so he stood up and he said, Here's what we're gonna do.

Probably a room of, I don't know, a thousand people maybe.

And he said, Here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna confess our sins out loud to one another.

And you know, like I'm like, what?

Like, hang on, um, where's the closest exit?

Um, and so he said, Here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna say, Um, you know, I I you know, I I repent of fill in the blank.

And then after someone would say that, he said, May the blood of Jesus cover your sins.

And so we did that.

We did that for like over an hour of just people all around the room just saying, I repent of.

And it was powerful, it was significant, but what came after that was one something that just will shape my life for all of my days.

The presence of the God, the presence of the Lord just fell in such a way that I was broken.

I was broken.

Where the Lord revealed sin that had just crept into my heart and my soul that was deeper than I imagined.

And I was broken before Him.

The word of the Lord had led me to a place of brokenness, but then at the same time, the Lord also met me with grace and mercy and forgiveness and compassion, and he allowed his joy to be my strength.

We read Joel chapter 2, verses 12 through 20.

Joel 2:12–20

I want to read it for us in a second.

Um, but in this passage, we see this same pattern exist where God's word comes, people are broken and convicted, and then they're restored into walking with the joy of the Lord.

Listen to what it says starting in verse 12.

It says, That is why the Lord says, Turn to me now while there is still time.

Give me your hearts, come with fasting, weeping, and mourning.

Don't tear your clothes in your grief, but tear your hearts instead.

Return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and filled with unfailing love.

He is eager to relent and not punish.

Who knows?

Perhaps he will give you a reprieve, sending you blessing instead of curses.

Perhaps you will be able to offer grain and wine to the Lord your God as before.

Blow the ram's horn in Jerusalem, announce a time of fasting, call the people together for a solemn meeting.

Gather all the people, the elders, the children, and even the babies.

Call the bridegroom from his quarters and the bride from her private room.

Let the priest who minister in the Lord's presence stand and weep between the entry room of the temple and the altar.

Don't let them pray, spare your people, Lord.

Don't let your special possession become an object of mockery.

Don't let them become a joke for unbelieving foreigners to say, Has God left Israel?

Has the God of Israel left them?

Then the Lord will pity his people and jealousy guard the honor of his land.

And the Lord will reply, Look, I am sending you grain and new wine and olive oil, enough to satisfy your needs.

You will no longer be an object of mockery among the surrounding nations.

I will drive the armies from the north, I will send them into the parched wastelands, those in the front will be driven into the Dead Sea, and those in the rear into the Mediterranean.

The stench of their rotting bodies will rise over the land.

Surely the Lord has done great things.

Why do I share that weird passage?

Because the people were told by the prophet Joel that if they would turn back to the Lord, if they would repent, if they would mourn, if they would come to a place of brokenness and let the word of God transform them, then he would come, that he would work, that he would move on their behalf, that he would heal their land, and that he would move like only he can move.

See, a church's strength isn't found in a building, it's not found in a structure, it's ultimately found in our surrender.

Do we need a new building here at Walnut Grove?

Absolutely.

Do we believe that it's a powerful tool for us to continue to reach a growing community of Walnut Grove?

Absolutely.

Do we need everyone in our church family to contribute to the vision to make this a reality?

100%.

But the reason that we're asking you to give isn't just to provide for a building and a new space and an expanded square footage here in Walnut Grove.

The reason that we ultimately give, the reason that we ultimately serve, the reason that we ultimately pray and show up here on Sunday mornings is our surrender.

We want to see God do more than just a building expansion.

We want to see God build a people.

To build a people, to take the gospel forward, to remember the mission that He's given us, to ensure that the next generation is not a generation that is spiritually disconnected like the Israelites in Nehemiah's days, but instead to ensure that the next generation would see that God is the great God and that they would long to be a people that follow and submit to him.

And if we're gonna see spiritual renewal in our day, if we're gonna see God move in a significant way, then we have to be a people that gather around his word.

We've got to be a people that are broken and convicted before him.

We've got to be a people that are strengthened by the joy of the Lord.

If we want to see God move, then we've got to be a people of deep abiding surrender, a place of brokenness that we keep coming back to, asking desperately for the Lord to move on our behalf.

I want us to be that church.

I want us to be a church that's sold out.

I don't want us to be a church.

I don't want us to be a people that get so wrapped up in the things that are going on in this world that we miss out on just the desperate need that we have for the Lord to move mightily in our midst.

This next weekend, uh, we have an incredible opportunity with United Weekend.

United Weekend is our big student weekend that we do every single year.

And uh always come to this season in our church's life, and I'm and I just have this like level of faith that just increases.

Just believing that God wants to do something more than we can ask, think, or imagine through the student gathering this weekend.

Last year it was incredible.

Last year I got the opportunity to speak the last session and um that that Saturday night, and um it wasn't anything I said or did, but just like the Lord's presence just descended.

And we saw students just coming down from the bleachers and the uh different seats down at Social Circle Theater and just filling the altar in front of the stage down there, just weeping before the Lord, crying.

I mean, Jonah shared about uh last year about just how the floor was wet with the tears of students broken before the Lord.

It was incredible to see the salvations that occurred.

It was incredible to see how different students renewed their commitment to the Lord and dedicated their lives yet again to serve him and to be about his ways.

And there are people's lives that are still being transformed today because of that moment.

And I believe as a church, we don't need to let the teenagers lead us in that.

That we, as the people of God that are trying to set the example for the younger generations to follow, that we need to set the example of what it looks like to be fully surrendered to God's word, to gather around his word, to be broken and convicted, and to allow the strength of the Lord, his joy to be our strength.

And I'm telling you, the next generation desperately needs a move of God.

They're bombarded with confusion about truth and what is truth.

They're told that faith doesn't matter anymore.

They're struggling with anxiety and depression and hopelessness at record levels.

They're searching for meaning and purpose and just something real.

And here's the question that I have for our church, for United Weekend, for the Four Generations Initiative, as we work to build a facility that will help reach the next generation.

Here's the question I have.

Will we fight for them?

Will we be people that set the example?

Will we be people that aren't just focused on building a building, although that's important, but that we would also be people that are focused on building a people, building a people that are surrendered to Jesus.

Will we faithfully stand in the gap?

Will we invest?

Will we serve?

Will we pray?

And will we fight for the next generation?

We need to be a people that are surrendered to the Lord.

The strength of a church is not built in their buildings, it's built in who they bow down to.

What are we bowing down to?

Are we living in surrender to the Lord?

We're gonna respond to the Lord now this morning and just what the Holy Spirit might be saying to us.

And so if you want to just close your Bible, maybe set it to the side, try to maybe close your eyes and just try to remove some distractions this morning.

Um, as I prayed at the beginning, the desire for this morning is not to have a meeting about God, but to actually meet with God.

And so just with your eyes closed, we just ask you now, Holy Spirit, Lord, will you come and move like only you can?

Lord, we believe that you are a personal, intimate God, and you want to speak to our hearts and our souls right now.

And so, whether we're in this room or whether we're down at social circle listening to this message, Lord, I pray that your spirit would just move in our midst.

What is he saying to you this morning?

Are there areas of your life where maybe you've drifted?

Maybe you've drifted away from his ways, maybe you've drifted away from his word.

Is there some conviction that the Holy Spirit is bringing upon you now?

It's not condemnation, it's conviction.

It's an invitation for you to change, it's an invitation for you to repent and to be restored.

Is there some sin?

Is there something that's plagued you?

Is there something that maybe you've been just battling for years or decades?

Is there some type of just secret that you have in your life that no one else knows that the Holy Spirit's just bringing to the surface this morning?

Maybe it's about sacrifice.

Maybe you just recognize the desperate need of surrender.

And part of surrender is sacrifice.

And so maybe there's a sacrifice that you need to make.

Maybe it's something to do with generosity and giving to the four generations initiative.

Maybe it's something to do with serving, maybe it's something to do with just your giving your time or your energy, whatever it is.

Is the Lord calling you to sacrifice this morning?

And how is the Holy Spirit speaking to you on how you need to invest in the next generation?

And so, Holy Spirit, just speak to us now.

Lord, we long for more of you, Lord.

We want to be people that are centered around your word, Lord.

We want to be people that are broken before you.

We want to be people that are just get to experience the joy and that that becomes the strength that we need to continue on in our days.

And so, Holy Spirit, do what you can only do now, Lord.

Work and move in our hearts.

Lord, and bring us to a place where we're fully surrendered to you.

Lord, we do pray for the future of our church.

We pray for an expanded facility.

Lord, we pray that we're able to get a building moving here shortly.

And Lord, we thank you for some of the good news that we've received recently.

But Lord, more than that, more than a building, Lord, you want a people.

A people that are fully surrendered and devoted to you.

And so, Lord, would you come now?

Would you let us let down our guards?

Would you let us just willfully bow down before you this morning, surrendering ourselves to you.

And Lord, we just know that when we surrender to you, Lord, that's when you work, that's when you move, that's when you do the miracles, that's when you your presence comes, is when we bow down and we surrender before you.

And so as we just respond in worship this morning, Lord, I pray that you would help us to be people that are surrendered.

Lord, let this moment, let this moment even be a defining moment in our lives as we surrender once again to you.

And maybe you're here this morning, and maybe you've never put your faith and your trust in Jesus.

And man, the Lord's knocking on the door of your heart, and he wants you to come and to open it up and let him come inside.

And so maybe for you this morning, the first step is just trusting Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

Saying, Hey, God, I'm a sinner, I'm broken, I desperately need you.

I believe in what you did.

You died on the cross for our sins, and you give us the promise of eternity.

And so, Lord, I'm surrendering to you today.

And so, Lord, whatever it is that we need to do this morning, Lord, I pray that you would give us the courage and the boldness to do that.

And Lord, we just want to see you work, we want to see you move.

We're surrendering to you this morning.

So come, Holy Spirit, as we just respond to you now.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

So just as the band leads us, I know this isn't something we necessarily normally do here, but just respond to the Lord.

If that means you need to stand and sing, if that means you need to kneel with your chair, if that means you need to come forward and even pray up front, do that.

The Lord is in this place, he wants to meet with you.

Will you surrender your will to meet with him?