What are You Committed To?

Man, it is good to be back.

So my name is Russ.

And uh if I haven't had the uh pleasure of meeting you, um I want to say good morning.

Uh it is uh man, I have missed my church.

I've been to, I guess, eight different places over the past eight weeks, and there's no place like home.

I love my church.

I love my worship team.

Can I just say I love you, worship team?

We are so blessed.

And um, and hey, would you join?

Yes, we are.

And um, I want to join me in welcoming social circle this morning, welcome our social circle campus.

So that that's that's pour.

Let's do that again.

Social circle?

Yes.

Those of you that are watching online, so we're broadcasting um uh down to social circle this morning live.

And so it's exciting to be able to speak to our family here in Walnut Grove and to speak uh to our family in social circle.

And man, I am glad to be back um after eight weeks um uh with a sabbatical after 27 years of ministry and 27 years of marriage and 15 years of being a church planner and and it was good to have a little bit of rest.

I got a lot of done, a lot of work done on my doctoral degree, and and uh um I'm excited.

In May, I'll graduate in May, praise God, unless something falls apart, um, which is you know, you never know what's gonna happen with that.

But um uh Jill and I got to spend 10 days in Israel, and that was a blessing.

I'll share a little bit about that.

Um, this morning I got to play a bunch of pickleball with my brother, Butch, and uh and that was great.

Um I thought I'm gonna go play pickleball with all these old people.

And I realized I'm one of them.

And and they ran me ragged.

I've got a sore knee.

And so uh he keeps saying, When are you coming back?

I said, Oh, you know, I I've been busy, you know, getting ready for Sunday, and uh so I may not go back.

Um those they're hard, they're they play hard.

Um all right, so if you um I I I brought something back from Israel, um, and and it's a piece of pottery.

All right, you look at it, man.

That's that's Russ, that is less than spectacular.

It is, it is.

Um, if you walk uh through a tail, and there's there's these tails, they're called tails, they're ancient hills, and they're everywhere.

They're everywhere.

You realize Israel is a very young country from the standpoint of what we know and what what has yet to be discovered from an archaeological standpoint.

I mean, imagine Israel has had a physical, has been a physical country since 1948.

And so they are discovering things at a pace that's just immeasurable.

And so if you go to a tell, which is an ancient hill, which is basically made up of cities that have either been conquered or been destroyed by earthquakes or other natural disasters, and then they come back and build another city on top, and another city on top, and another city on top, and another city on top.

You'll you'll find these pieces of pottery everywhere.

And and you you can pick them up.

And so I brought some stuff home in my suitcase.

I was told, I was told by people who were in charge, you can take a few things home as long as they aren't like munitions or unexploded bombs or things, or as long as they don't have writing on them.

Because an archaeologist they get real excited when they find old stuff, but they get even more excited and they jump up and down and they dance when they find old stuff with writing on it.

The written word.

Why?

Because when you have writing, you have the written word, you you have the ability to date and authenticate um ancient history.

And you have uh the ability to uh to authenticate locations and people and events that have happened in history with very good precision.

And those of us with beliefs from a Judeo-Christian perspective, we have a treasure in the written word that no other faith system that exists in the world has.

The ability to fact-check everything that the Bible says and believe that it's true.

Not that it needs fact-checking, but it's it's a beautiful thing to see the written word and to have it in your hands and to see it come to life in the land itself.

And so what I want you to see this morning is this is that God wants more than anything else, more important than finding a piece of pottery with something written on it, is he wants to find his people with himself working through them.

He wants it to be God in us, Christ in you, the hope of glory.

As a matter of fact, the big idea for this morning is that God's most sacred treasure has been placed in his most cherished treasure.

And so there's a few things I want to just share that that came out of this summer and came out of the trip to Israel.

Um, and and and and I'm gonna share some pictures, but the first one is this that God's word is true.

God's word is true, it can be trusted.

It is continually being authenticated, it has life-changing power in our lives.

And so I'm telling you, the word of God is a treasure.

And it and it's a shame that we don't read it with more passion and more consistency than we do.

It's God's living word.

The writer of Hebrews says it's living, it's active, sharper than any two-edged sword.

It has the ability to divide between the sword and a spirit, the soul and the spirit.

It's like a two-edged sword.

It's full of life.

And so when you hike into the Judean hills like we did, we did a hiking trip.

And so we didn't, we didn't do what was is called a traditional trip where you just get on a bus and you drive to places and you get off the bus and you take some pictures and you get back on the bus.

We went to places and we get off the bus and we would hike.

We hiked um eight, eight and nine miles a couple of days, um, uh going into places out into the wilderness and and around the cities and the Jerusalem and the Sea of Galilee.

And so we we hiked um the first full day, we hiked into the Judean hills and we walked up to a place that is now known as Eli's fortress.

And there's a couple pictures that I think we can show you where we hiked.

And there's a place where you can stand at Eli's fortress, which um scholars believe is likely the place where God's people were encamped when when they were confronted with the Philistines across the valley.

David comes from Bethlehem to see his brothers, to bring them food.

And he sees this giant confronting and humiliating God's people.

And it says in 1 Samuel 17, 1 through 3, the Philistines now mustered their army for battle and camped between Soko and Judah and Azekah at Ephes Damim.

Now, I threw up a couple of pictures.

You can't necessarily make a lot of sense of it, but but I took pictures of these two hills.

One is Azekah and one is Soko.

And these are hills that were have been discovered by archaeologists, and there have been digs, and they have been verified, and they have been authenticated as being places where the Philistines were encamped, where they lived, where they did life.

And across the valley is the Eli fortress where God's people would have been encamped.

And it and it says, it says, Saul countered uh by gathering his Israelite troops near the valley of Eli.

So the Philistines and the Israelites faced each other on opposite hills with the valley between them.

And so we we we had a pastor Andy who led our trip.

He he taught us and and opened up the scriptures.

We all had to memorize scripture while we were there, and and and then we we gathered together and we walked down the trail to the brook of Eli.

And you just, I mean, I just imagine.

David and with the courage and the faith that he had.

And I don't know that the the trail that we walked is exactly where David ran down to confront Goliath, but I can tell you it's a lot farther than I thought it was.

And I just imagine as David is walking, and then as he starts jogging, and he starts running.

And he says, this, David replied to the Philistine, Goliath, he says, You come to me with the sword, the spear, and the javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of the heavens' armies, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.

Today the Lord will conquer you, and I will kill you and cut off your head, and then I will give the dead, I will uh I'll I'll cut off your head, then I will give the dead bodies of your men to the birds and wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel.

And everyone assembled here will know that the Lord rescues his people, but not with sword and spear.

This is the Lord's battle, and he will give it, he will give you to us.

And the faith of that little boy, the faith of David, as he starts jogging and he goes into full sprint, and you've got Goliath in full gear.

David had tried, he had tried to put on King Saul's armor, but it was just too big for him.

It wasn't the right fit.

And so, you know what?

What we learned from that is he he put his faith in God.

God gave him the victory.

And he picks up five stones, but he only needed one.

And you just imagine David.

You read through the Psalms and just think about the words and the word of God in him and through him, his trust and his faith.

As he charged and he let that stone go loose.

See, the word of God needs to be central to everything in our life.

That is how the king of the universe, the creator of the universe, has made himself known to us.

He has revealed himself to us through the written word.

It is something that we should cherish.

It is something that we should value.

The Jewish people, when they go to synagogue, it's just part of their tradition.

They all, they all, in a circle, they go up to the scroll.

The rabbi will hold up the scroll and they all come by and they kiss the scroll.

There is a value to the word of God in the Jewish faith.

There is a value to the word of God in the Christian faith.

But somehow we've allowed life, we've allowed busyness, we've allowed circumstances, we've allowed the enemy to steal our passion and distract us from our focus on the word of God.

That's why in a Jewish family, if you go to go into Israel and you go, especially around the Sea of Galilee and around the area where Jesus did ministry, we saw a lot of synagogues in these villages.

And and a synagogue would be a building where the church family, where the where the people of God would gather, they would read the Torah, they would read the Word of God, and they would worship, they would sing.

But right next to the synagogue, there is a building attached to it, a room attached to it where they would teach their children to read and to write.

It was a school.

And so when a young Jewish child at the age of about four or five years old, they would, they would, their parents, many of you have taken your kids and put them in school this week, and it's a big deal, especially regardless of what age, it's a big deal.

Some of I was talking to one of my friends that took their son and dropped him off to college.

I mean, that's a huge deal.

But when you take your four or five-year-old and you begin to teach them how to read and how to write, whether they go to a public school, private school, or a home school, it's a big deal to teach them so they can learn.

And so in God's people would take their children and they would have a rabbi or a teacher, and they would use the word of God to teach them how to read and how to write.

And so that first day of school, they they would sit the child down and they would take a black slate, piece of stone.

And on that stone, eventually, they would do the Hebrew alphabet, and then they would begin to write sentences that come out of the Word of God, and they would begin to memorize the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament.

Eventually, hopefully, they would move on and memorize more of the scriptures.

But that teacher would take honey and just pour it all over the slate.

And then that rabbi would quote Psalm 119, 103.

How sweet are your words to my taste.

Sweeter than honey to my lips.

We need to be pouring it into our children.

It needs to be everything.

I learned while we were over there, just the random facts that kind of blow your mind.

Um Israel has more Nobel Prizes than any other country in relationship to its population in the world.

Israel has a lower incarceration rate related to its population than any other country in the world.

And it's because I believe they have taught their kids you are created in the image of God.

God has purpose and destiny for you.

He's got a plan for your life.

And if you will put your life into the hands of the destiny maker, you'll discover it.

And it is greater than you can imagine.

And so God gives us the written word.

Say with me the written word.

The written word.

He gives us the written word, but then he gives us the living word.

Say the living word.

So the living word, Jesus.

Say Jesus.

So Jesus, Jesus comes as the living word.

He gives us the written word, he gives us the living word.

Jesus is the living word.

John 1.1 says, um, uh, in the beginning was the word, and the word was God, the word was with God.

And so Jesus is the living word.

He was willing to cross every boundary to reach all people.

John 1, 11, 14 through 14 says he came to his own people and even they rejected him.

But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become the children of God.

You, that is what God wants for you.

If you are here this morning and you've never put your faith in Jesus Christ, Jesus died for you.

He came for you.

He wants you to be adopted into the family of God.

He wants you to become part of the kingdom of God.

He wants you to partner with him in mission to advance the kingdom of God.

And so all who have become children, all who have accepted, all who have believed, have he gave the right to become children of God.

They are reborn, verse 13, not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.

So the word became human and made his home among us.

He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness, and we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father's one and only Son.

And so Jesus crosses every boundary to reach all people.

And the first boundary he crosses is he leaves his throne in heaven to become a human being.

The word becomes flesh and dwells among us.

Literally means he tabernacled.

He came and tabernacled among us.

God came.

Philippians 2, 5, 6, and 7 says, you must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to.

Instead, he gave up his divine privileges.

He took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being when he appeared in human form.

And so Jesus sets aside his deity to become a human being, to walk among his creation.

He's born into humanity.

The second person of the Trinity is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.

God the Son is born as a baby on that first Christmas.

He sets aside his deity to become human.

He modeled before us what it was like to live and to walk and to commune with his heavenly Father.

And as he lived, he continued to cross boundaries.

He goes public with his ministry, John the Baptist baptizes him, and Jesus begins to preach and teach and heal and deliver and cast out demons.

But he just didn't hang out with his own people.

He didn't just hang out with Jewish people all the time.

He was willing to cross boundaries.

If you looked at a map, if you go to your Bible, there's the Bible, the written word, and the back of the Bible, there's some maps.

Well, they have value.

They do.

You find a map that shows that on the on the um on the eastern side of the nation of Israel, there's a place called the Decapolis.

If you read through the New Testament, you see where Jesus visits multiple times.

This place called the Decapolis.

And so when Alexander the Great comes and conquers Palestine and conquers uh all the Jewish people, and then you've got Pompeii in 62 BC, he comes in.

Um they build these ten Greco-Roman cities on the uh eastern side of the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River, and they what the intent was was to draw the Jewish people out of Palestine, out into this Greco-Roman culture, and to assimilate them into a culture where they could continue to dominate them.

They wanted to disconnect them from their culture, from their God, from their way of life.

Now, if you were a good observant Jew, you understood the Significance that you don't go to these places because the culture is different.

It'd be like us telling our kids don't go hang out with with with people that are going to lead you down the wrong path.

But at the same time, we're called as light to confront darkness and to rub shoulders with people that need Jesus, right?

And that's a tough balance.

It's a fine line.

But what we see Jesus do, he continually crossed boundaries because he knew those people needed Jesus.

He knew they needed the Spirit.

They needed forgiveness.

They needed healing.

They needed a relationship with their creator.

And so he just crosses boundary after boundary.

I love Mark chapter 5, where he goes to what's called the area of the Gaterenes and he confronts this, what's called the demoniac at the tombs.

Mark 5 · chapter mention

This is in the Decapolis region.

And he casts the demons out of this man and he cast them into the pigs, you know, and they run down the cliff into the into the water and they drown.

And this man says, Oh, Jesus, I want to go with you, I want to go with you, I want to go with you.

And he says, No, you go back to your people and you tell them what I've done, what what God has done in your life.

He crosses all of these boundaries.

He went through some Samaria.

If you don't know the Bible, if you're not familiar with the history of the Bible, right, because of uh other countries coming and conquering God's people, uh there's this area in the north part of Israel where God's people assimilated with other cultures and it became known as Samaria.

They intermarried and they had children and they became outcast in connection with the Jewish people.

And so if you were a good observant Jew up in that northern area of Galilee and you wanted to come down to Jerusalem to celebrate one of the festivals and to worship, you didn't travel through Samaria because those were unclean, dirty scoundrels.

You would travel like three days longer than necessary, and you would travel east, south, and then cross back over the Jordan River and then come up the Jericho Road, which is 18 miles from there to Jerusalem.

And so Jesus says, I've got to go through Samaria.

His disciples had to think, you're crazy.

What are you doing?

You're a rabbi.

You are you are a religious leader.

You're gonna travel through Samaria, and he goes through Samaria and he ends up at a well and a conversation in the middle of the day.

And there's a reason that woman came to the well in the middle of the day.

You don't go to the you don't go to a well in the middle of Israel during the day because it's hot.

Like really hot.

And so she came during the middle of the day because nobody else would be there.

And she had been married five times, and she was a Samaritan woman, she was an outcast.

And Jesus crosses a physical boundary, a relational boundary, a gender boundary, so he can have a conversation that would lead to her putting her faith in Jesus, who is the living word and living water.

And she goes back to her village and she tells everybody about this man who showed her grace and mercy and knew everything about her life.

He knew that she'd been married five times, that she was living with a man that was not her husband.

But he gives her grace.

I mean, we could go down the list.

The woman at the well, the woman that's caught into adultery, caught in adultery, and all the religious leaders have a stone in their hand.

They're ready to stone her and kill her.

And Jesus shows up and he says, You without sin, cast the first stone.

And he and he offers her forgiveness and he tells her, Go and sin no more.

The woman with the issue of blood that says, Oh, if I could just get to him, if I could get to him, if I could just touch the hem of his garment, I could be made whole and be made well.

And the middle of a crowd, a rabbi recognizes that virtue has flown, flowed out of his heart, out of his life.

And if you're a rabbi, you would not dare acknowledge that a woman who was unclean had touched you in public.

But he turns, he says, Who touched me?

And she's made well.

I mean, we could go on and on and talk about that.

And you know what?

We could talk about you and we could talk about me.

Many of us and our stories, how God crossed boundaries to impact our life, to give us hope, to give us life, to save our souls from sin, which leads to this final just thought that God has placed his spirit into the hearts of those that follow Jesus.

And that's where the journey leads us, is there's the there's the written word.

Say the written word, and then there's the living word, and then there is the spirit at work in God's people.

We are a people who have the Spirit of God living inside of us.

God has placed his most sacred treasure into his most cherished treasure.

Deuteronomy 14, 2 says, You have been set apart as holy to the Lord your God, and he has chosen you from all the nations of the earth to be his own special treasure.

In ancient times, when when when two parties would make a covenant, they would have two copies.

Two copies of a covenant.

You've probably bought a house, you've bought something, where you had to have two copies.

You sat in an office in a closing, and you thought, how much paper does it take?

And so there'd be two copies, one party for each person in the covenant.

We see this in the story of Moses in the Exodus.

We read that when God made a covenant with the people of Israel, he wrote all the details on two stone tablets, one for him and one for Moses.

Now, I I grew up thinking, spent a lot of my ministry thinking, he came down the mountain with these two tablets.

There's five commandments on one, there's five commandments on the other.

How many of you thought that?

All right, some of you are lying.

No, it's ten, there's ten commandments on each tablet.

Ten, the whole law, all the law on each, and so one for Moses, one for God.

And so, so Moses took his copy, he puts it in the Ark of the Covenant.

We know this, many of us know the Bible, and it goes into the Holy of Holies, and it's it's it's God's people's most sacred place.

And then God takes his copy and he gives it to Moses.

Here's something you'll see.

You see with Abraham, you see it with Moses, you see it with Jesus, is that God, when he makes a covenant with you and me, he cannot lie.

He is always faithful.

But what he is willing to do is not only be responsible for his part of the covenant, he is responsible for your part of the covenant.

Because we in our sinful flesh do not have the ability to be faithful and to fulfill our part of the covenant.

And so he, Moses, God says, Hey, you got one in the ark, one's for for you and the people.

I don't need, I don't need it because I'm I am not a man that I can lie.

Or a son of man that I can change my mind.

And so God put his first covenant in place when God's people were led out of Egypt into the wilderness under the leadership of Moses.

Now, you I I've been, I'm gonna encourage you, you should always read the Bible methodically or or with a plan.

With a plan.

Don't, don't, you know, don't just open it up randomly and just, I mean, read through the New Testament, read through the gospels, read through the Old Testament, read through books at a time.

Don't just open, because here's what you're gonna do.

You're gonna you're gonna open it up one day and it's gonna you're gonna just just randomly point at a verse and it says, Judas hanged himself.

Well, that's not good.

And then you just do it again and it says, go and do likewise.

You're like, this is worse.

And you do it again, it says, Whatever thou doest, do us quickly.

No, read it methodically, read it, take the Bible version app or the Bible app, take a, and just or start at the beginning, start somewhere.

So I'm reading through the New Testament right now.

I'm in the book of Romans and I'm reading back through the Old Testament.

And I come across this story in Exodus where Moses experiences the presence of God on the mountain.

And he takes the elders with him, and he spends 40 days and 40 nights up in the presence of God.

And there's this momentum and this excitement, and there's this energy because he's gonna bring the covenant down to God's people.

And they're sitting there waiting expectantly.

God, give us the covenant, give us your word.

Is that what they're doing?

No.

They grow impatient, they grow disobedient.

I know none of this would happen to y'all.

But they they say they start collecting gold from everybody, earrings and and and jewelry.

And what do they build?

A golden calf.

Exactly what they're not supposed to do.

And they're down there having a party, worshiping a golden calf after God has delivered them out of Egypt as slaves.

And so God is angry.

And so Moses and God go back and forth, and Moses is pleading.

God, you you have you've delivered us.

You've made a promise to us.

These are your people.

Remember your word?

But God is a God who is holy, and he can't ignore sin.

The wrath of God is going to be poured out on sin.

It's just part of who he is.

He's good and he's graceful and he is wonderful and he's gracious, but he is also God and he is holy.

And so Moses intercedes on behalf of God's people.

Exodus 32.

Let me read.

He says, So he stood at the entrance to the camp and he shouted, All of you who are on the Lord's side, come here and join me.

And all the Levites gathered around him.

That's all the worship leaders.

That's all the people that were in charge of worship.

All worship leaders aren't bad.

Each of you, take your swords and go back and forth from one end of the camp to the other.

Kill everyone, even your brothers and friends and neighbors.

The Levites obeyed Moses' command and listen, listen to what it says.

And about 3,000 people died that day.

So when God's first covenant is delivered, God's people could not even obey long enough to get it delivered to them.

God's wrath is poured out in a very small measure because the priest Moses has stood on behalf of the people and pleaded their case.

But about 3,000 people died that day when the first covenant was being delivered to God's people.

Then Moses told the Levites, today you've ordained yourselves for the service of the Lord, for you obeyed him, even though it meant killing your own sons and brothers.

Today you've earned a blessing.

Now that's a that's a sad story.

About 3,000 died when the first covenant is delivered.

So I'm reading through the New Testament over the summer.

We're in Israel for part of this time, and there's nothing like it's my second time, Jill's first time, and and and is we we spent a day walking from the Mount of Olives down, and you overlook, you see the beautiful picture and the beautiful view from the Mount of Olives of the whole city of Jerusalem and specifically the Temple Mount.

It's stunning.

I took that picture.

Actually.

And so we walked down, we went to, we stopped and went into the Garden of Gethsemane, and we we spent some time considering, meditating on how Jesus prayed in anguish, but ultimately surrendered his life.

From there, you look up and you can see the eastern gates.

Now the Muslims had them closed back in the Middle Ages.

They they think that Jesus is not powerful enough to open them back up when he returns.

But we're looking up at the eastern gate, that's where Jesus would have walked in when he was headed to the cross when they yelled Hosanna on Palm Sunday.

We walked down into the Kidron Valley.

Um we ended up making our way to the garden tomb where we I can tell you that the tomb is empty.

Yeah, that is that deserves I need one hallelujah.

I mean the tomb is empty.

It was empty.

Yes, hallelujah.

I mean, the tomb, we had communion together there at the garden tomb.

But one of the things that that was so powerful powerful for me was spending time all over the Temple Mount area, but out on the front steps, I call it the front steps, it's the southern end of the temple.

But it's it's it's where it's probably where Jesus and other rabbis would have taught, taught the word.

And it's most likely the place where the disciples and Peter would have gone to after the Holy Spirit came in power in the upper room.

They would have gone down to the temple steps, the southern end of the temple mount, and Peter most likely would have preached that powerful first sermon to all the people from all the nations that were there at the Feast of Pentecost.

And I came across these words.

Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day about how many.

And so God puts his covenant in us, the Spirit of God in you, Christ in you, the hope of glory.

He replaces, you think, you think some of your life has been wasted.

You look at some of your past and you think, I'll never recover what is lost.

Let me tell you, God is way bigger than you can imagine.

He restores beyond what you could think.

He will forgive you, restore you, accept you, replenish you, re-energize you.

And why was the Holy Spirit given?

Why was the Holy Spirit given?

Was the Holy Spirit given so we could, we're gonna talk about spiritual gifts over the next several weeks.

Was the Holy Spirit given so you can speak in tongues?

No.

Was the Holy Spirit given so you could have miracles and healing?

Um, yeah that's possible, but that's not the reason.

The Holy Spirit came so it could live inside of you and that the world would look at you and say, that's Jesus.

That's the power of Jesus.

We live in a culture in America where we've become addicted to information, but we're allergic to accountability.

Man, I love a Bible study.

I want a Bible study.

What Bible study are you doing?

Well, let me tell you what we're doing, what we're studying right now, what we're studying, man.

I got a great Bible teacher.

Do you have a Bible teacher?

I love my Bible teacher.

We have a great preacher, man.

My pastor is a great Bible teacher.

He's awesome, he's the best teacher.

Listen, that's not why the Holy Spirit came to give you more information.

The Holy Spirit comes to empower us to carry out the mission that Jesus gave.

To go and make disciples of all nations.

That's why we as a church we've changed how we measure success.

It's not about how many we can gather, it's about how many we can send out.

That's why we change the metrics.

It's not, it's not, it's not about how many's here on Sunday.

We measure how many, uh, what what is the percentage of our tenants that are involved in community groups?

That's an important metric.

How many baptisms do we have?

That's an important metric.

How many leaders are we raising up?

That's an important metric.

How many churches are we planning?

That's an important metric.

God is wanting us to be sent.

God is wanting us to be on mission with Him.

We're addicted to information, but allergic to accountability.

Here's a question.

Social circle and walnut grove.

What would our church look like if everybody here had the same level of engagement?

And commitment that you have.

What would our church look like if everybody here had the same level of accountability that you currently have?

Now, for some of you, man, you're engaged, you're involved.

There's always room for growth, right?

For some of us, we have nothing.

We're warming seats every Sunday.

And we've got children that are overflowing classrooms, even with a new modular.

We're hurting on space.

Look around the room.

I don't know why this section.

There's a disease or sickness or something right over here.

I mean, so we're out of space.

And so I want to ask you to consider as we move forward, would you be willing to up your engagement, up your commitment, as we look forward to potentially, not potentially, but to the fact that we're going to add a third service here at Walnut Grove in September and a second service in Social Circle in September.

September 18th.

And we need people to serve in our children's ministry.

We need people in First Impressions.

We need people to help in our tech, worship, all of our areas.

I'm just going to ask you to pray about it.

Would you pray with me right now?

Let's pray together.

Father, God, we need you to pour out your spirit.

God, we need you to work.

You've called us to be a light in darkness.

You've called us to represent you here in Walton County and the surrounding areas in East Metro Atlanta.

You've called us to cross boundaries.

You've called us to make a difference, to reach our community.

And so I pray, God, I pray that we as your people, that God, that we'd be filled with your spirit.

And it would just be a natural flow into obedience, a natural flow into accountability.

And God, that we would see a sprinkling of revival at work in and through your church.

So God, I pray.

I pray that you would work.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

I'm going to turn it over to Pastor Nathan down in social circle.

And I'll ask if you would this morning, if you're in this room, would you just stand up for a second?

Stand up.

I want to encourage those of you that have yet to put your faith in Jesus.

Yet to make Jesus Lord of your life.

This morning, you can take that step.

It's simply, Jesus says to repent and believe.

Repentance is to do a U-turn.

It's to say, hey, I can't find forgiveness.

I can't find acceptance.

I can't find renewal in my own strength.

I'm going to repent and put my faith in what Christ did in his life, in his death, and his bodily resurrection.

And I'm going to believe by faith that he has the power to save me.

And then as you turn and take those steps, that the Holy Spirit will come and take up residence in your life and empower you.

What's your step of faith?

Is it to be in a community group?

Is it to join a serve team?

Is it to help us love on children?

Is it to invest in middle school students or high school students?

Is it to join and into a community group and learn what it means to be a leader?

Father, we pray for revival.

You would start something fresh, something new.

It's in Christ's name we pray.

Amen.