Pastor Bryan Grant | The Spirit Is Upon Me | September 6th, 2026

After this last um season, when we ended in, I think it was April, we had close to 75 people have gone through foundation since we started doing this 18 months ago.

And right now, already, before we even did the video, we're already sitting at 25 people.

So if you want to register, you might want to get in there quickly because we will be doing it again uh next year because we realize that so many people are wanting to be a part of this.

I have been, I'm one of the teachers, and I learn from all the other teachers.

I learn just as much as the students do about the from the other teachers as they're learning from them, maybe sometimes for the first time.

Every time we take the class, I learn something new about what God is saying and what God is doing.

Amen?

Man, God is good.

If you want to be foundations, this is the opportune time for you to sign up.

You may have noticed that I limped.

Oh yeah, yeah.

I, as people were asking me this morning, I thought maybe I should have a fun story about what happened.

You know, like I was on my motorcycle and I leapt from it at 50 kilometers to save a child falling from a tree, and I did the superhero landing, and all that happened to me was I hurt my ankle.

You'd believe me if I said that, right?

The laughing did not help me at all.

My confidence is shot.

You know what I did?

I turned too quickly playing pickleball.

I'm starting to think that pickleball is not for me.

I keep hurting myself playing a sport that is actually meant for people that need to have low-impact sports.

And somehow I keep being abnormally impacted by that sport.

I don't really care for this anymore, but I just thought I'd pass it on, so you're gonna see me hobbling around a little bit.

Just uh, God is good.

The pain is only a little bit, we'll be fine, but my mouth still works.

Amen.

My wife may not want that, but my mouth still works.

Uh what an amazing opportunity we had to hear from those students this morning, hey?

Just to hear the testimony of what God has been doing.

And this morning, even on the line of where they were going, actually really sets me up for what I want to talk to us about this morning.

For the last few weeks, I've just been feeling as we've gone through our build the church, advance the kingdom series, there's a scripture that we have at KCC that's kind of like our anchor scripture when we move into these things, and it's Isaiah 61, 1 and 2.

And I want to break down, I'm gonna read up to the end of two, and then we're gonna just break down some of this for us this morning.

So I just want to read this and then I'm gonna pray.

Isaiah 61, uh, one to two.

It says, The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance for our God to all to comfort all who mourn.

So let's just pray.

Lord, you're so good, and we're so excited that we get to be in your house this morning, hearing your word, learning more, even what these students were saying, just to know you more and to learn more about you.

That's why we're here this morning.

So we just ask that as we go through, Lord, you give me the right words to speak, Lord, the things that I need to say this morning would be blessed by you with boldness and authority, Lord, that we would be open to hear in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So I'm gonna ask a question, and I'm assuming that all of you will put up your hand, and the ones that don't are probably single men that are living now in maybe their very first place.

But how many of you own a lamp?

A lamp.

A lamp.

What did what do you think I see?

How many own land?

Definitely not a single dude at 17.

A lamp.

How many of you own a lamp?

Let's start this again.

L-A-M-P.

Let's just say that again.

A lamp.

Wait, how many, you know, okay.

I would assume everyone will put their hand up.

Now, the things about lamps is that they're amazing tools.

Where there is darkness, you flick the switch and it lights up.

Right?

That's what the job of the lamp does.

You flip that switch and what was dark becomes bright.

That's a good thing.

It changes what people can see, it changes maybe what you can find.

You can walk around with your flashlight or your lamp turned on to you find your keys.

Or how many of you are the ones in the middle of the night, if you have to get up for whatever reason, that you need to have a lamp on to or light on to get to where you gotta go?

No, just me?

Sweet.

There's like three of you in the church.

My wife is like a panther.

She can get anywhere in our house at any time in the dark with no lights on.

I trip getting out of bed.

Which is maybe why I shouldn't play pickleball.

But she can navigate the whole house, and I can't make it 15 feet to where I gotta go before I've tripped on anything that happens to me in the way.

This is the thing: the lamp itself doesn't generate any type of electricity.

It doesn't make light, it carries light.

Somebody else has made that power, someone else ran that wire, someone else built that lamp, constructed it from the ground up.

The lamp just sits there, but it lets the lamps, the light through.

Now, I want you to suspend your disbelief for a moment.

Now imagine the lamp got a little bit full of itself.

You remember those IKEA commercials?

The lamp has no feelings.

No, just me?

Okay, wrong generation here, yeah, right?

Thanks for laughing, Lucy.

I appreciate that.

It makes me feel good.

Now imagine this lamp got a little bit full of itself.

Imagine it started talking about how bright it was and how every time it went into the room it lit it up, and it just would tell you how great it was every time it was there.

Right?

How it was just it was just this, it would tell you that I am the greatest thing.

That without me you would be lost.

Now, if you knew that lamp, I'm not gonna say people, if you knew that lamp, you would probably tell it, you got three feet of cord and some scissors before you're just a decorative lamp.

You're not gonna be useful anymore, you're just gonna be a decorative lamp, you're gonna sit on the table.

This morning, this will make sense, I promise.

But I want to read through the first part of this scripture, just what we did.

The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to preach the good news.

The misreading sometimes, this is you see scripture, they see different versions when we're reading this.

The how we read this is really, really important.

And if it's not read correctly with the right context, it'll be really subtle.

It sounds really spirit spiritual, it might even sound really humble, but if we read this incorrectly, that the way we read this will actually put the wrong person at the center of that scripture.

So before I get into what this means for us, I want you to look to your neighbor, and if you're comfortable with this, I want you to say to them you're anointed.

Now, you don't have to say this to them.

You were never the source.

You are the outlet.

Now let's remember that for a little bit later this morning.

So before we get started into this, I want us to define what anointing actually is.

So I'm gonna start what anointing isn't.

Anointing isn't a good feeling.

Goosebumps and warm fuzzies during worship don't indicate the presence of God or the anointing on your life.

Right?

Because God is still good even if I don't feel his presence on a Sunday morning or when I'm sitting in my car.

Right?

His faithfulness is still good regardless of how warm and fuzzy I was.

And that's not the same as the spirit working through you or in you.

It isn't charisma.

Stage presence just brings on followers.

Anointing, God's anointing on someone's life moves them towards obedience to what God's called them to.

It isn't talent.

You can be gifted and not anointed.

You can be anointed and still developing.

You guys have watched me develop for 10 years.

I appreciate you.

But you can't perform your way into it, you can't hype your way into it, you can't fake it until you make it.

It's not a free pass on character.

Anointing has never been an excuse to sin.

It's never been excused.

Anointing should never excuse you from the consequences of sin.

So let's look what anointing actually means in the Bible.

In the Old Testament, anointing was a physical act.

They would take someone, would grab oil, oftentimes it was olive oil, or I'm assuming that's what it was in part of my study, and poured it or rubbed it on someone's head.

You see us doing this when we pray for people for healing.

There's a biblical precedent for why we do that.

And this happened to three kinds of people that you see in the Old Testament: kings, priests, and sometimes prophets.

Samuel, Pastor Brody, actually spoke about this when we were talking about David earlier on in the season.

He says it shows it happening to David.

David was out in the field, Samuel had come to see him, and he actually, when he finally got called from the field, he grabbed a horn full of oil and he poured it over David in front of his brothers.

So here's what the oil actually says when we actually talk about it like this: it isn't a reward for your good behavior.

It's not a certificate because you're extra talented, and now you got the oil, and so all of a sudden you're like marked and you got something special going on.

The oil marked a person as chosen and set apart for a specific job that God has chosen for them.

And it signaled to those that God poured out the oil on that he would go before them to make sure that they were ready for it.

That what was coming was they were ready for.

The person didn't earn anything.

And we see when we read this in the New Testament how narrow that list is.

Kings, priests, and prophets, that's it.

Anointing was for for was not for just for anyone.

And you could be in Israel your whole life and never once had your head anointed with oil.

So when Isaiah says the spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me, because the or saying in Isaiah, that because the Lord has anointed me, it's using that exact picture for us.

Am I clear?

Using that exact picture, someone has been chosen, someone has been set apart, and God's own presence is gonna go before them and what they're gonna do.

Amen?

When we read through this, we see that the promise had a name attached to it.

We gotta look at what the anointing of this verse actually produces.

Some real realities that come when we actually are anointed by God.

It doesn't produce a vague blessing, it produced named realities, good news for the poor.

Binding up the brokenhearted, freedom for captives.

All of us have been in somebody's situation, release for prisoners.

Now we need to have context for this and think about who heard this scripture for the very first time.

When we read it here in Isaiah, Israel had lived through decades of loss.

They had national identity was gone, their land was gone, the nation was crushed by Babylon, a city was torn apart, the temple, the temple was so important to them, it was in rubble.

They were carried to a different country and told they're never going to come back and see their own country.

How many of us would love to just be in that situation?

And eventually, God brings some of them back.

We see in Ezra III, which it should have sounded at the moment when we're reading this like that was like a victorious story.

They finally got back.

Should have sounded like a victory that we get there.

But Ezra III tells us that when they had gone back to their city, the priests and some of the older generation had seen the new temple that was built and they wept because it wasn't what they had remembered.

That what they had thought it was way less than they thought it was going to be.

It was so much less than they had lost.

They had waited decades to see what it was, but it was broken.

The moment finally comes, and it still didn't look like restoration.

It still didn't look like God had fulfilled the promise.

It was a fraction of what it used to be.

And what we get from this before we keep going is those this message is speaking to those who don't have it all together.

It's not speaking to them or just need a spiritual jumpstart.

It is speaking to those people who have come home and found home different.

People who have been disappointed.

People who are still waiting to see God fulfill the promise and for God to actually follow through.

Can we identify with this?

I can identify with this in my life.

And it's in that exact disappointment that we, where we see the promise come, starts coming through.

Someone is coming, someone is sent by God, anointed by him to do it.

So I want you to actually notice something about the word poor here, because we tend to hear this word poor and we immediately spiritualize it to mean we hear poor and we think far away from God.

That's partially true.

Isaiah's first audience wasn't hearing poor as a metaphor.

They had no land, they had no harvest, no temple, no security.

When Isaiah says they were poor, it meant people who could not pay for dinner, couldn't pay their rent, couldn't pay for their cell phone bill, definitely couldn't pay for Starbucks first thing in the morning.

And God is saying to them in this moment, in this scripture, I see you.

I see you, and I'm sending someone to help you.

And we can read this and be like, well, this is just poetic type of language.

It's maybe it's metaphorical or somewhere along those lines.

But this is God's word to those that are in immediate and real life disappointment.

Spoken to those who needed to know God that God hadn't forgotten them.

And I felt to say this this morning: there's many of us, some of us, in this room that need to hear this right now.

God has not left you.

God has not left you.

Natalie and I in our life have felt despair at times, trying to figure out what to do with life.

God, we want this that we've been praying for for 20 years.

That's not, it's not been a thing.

We have felt despair.

God, where are you?

Why can't I hear you?

Why can't the promise be followed through?

Well, God, you promise that this is going to be something that I can.

Why is it not here yet?

This is God speaking to people that are in real despair in their life.

And if we're honest, we're all feet, we've all felt that kind of despair and disappointing disappointment at times in our life.

But we have to understand the weight of how long that they waited.

This didn't sit on the pages of scripture in Isaiah for just a few years, it sat there for centuries.

Generation after generation, still waiting.

The Israelites were still pondering, still like, God, when are you gonna come?

When's the promise happening?

And sometimes we can't wait five minutes for dinner.

They were waiting and they were waiting, and then one Sabbath in a small synagogue in a town that no one thought of in Nazareth, it all changes.

I want you to turn with me to Luke chapter 4.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

Jesus doesn't borrow this verse here, he claims it.

This is what it says.

He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up.

This is where Jesus was raised.

And then on Sabbath day, he went to the synagogue as was his custom.

He didn't forget church.

I'm not pointing fingers, not pointing fingers.

He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him.

Remember, we just read that.

This was centuries later.

So we're seeing a prophetic word, a promise in Isaiah, centuries before Jesus, our Lord and Savior, reads this in this place.

This is amazing.

I love how the Bible works.

And the scroll of Isaiah prophet was handed to him.

Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written, The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and he sat down.

The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him.

Now imagine this: Jesus stood up to read this.

He's handed that scroll, he finds the passage that we just read.

Probably not in English.

The one written into centuries of waiting.

He reads it all, and we got we have to understand that once they would read that in their time when the teacher sat down again, it was for them to listen.

So they would just stop and they would, okay, he sat down and this they would lean in to what he's gonna say.

So let's lean in to what he's gonna say here.

This is what he says in verse 21 centuries of waiting, no national identity, they're poor, they have nothing in their life.

And he says, Today the scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

Sometimes when I read these things, I actually look at it.

I want to catch you with you to catch how big this is, and I do it by what's not there.

And then I'll read what's there.

The easiest way is to notice what he didn't say.

He didn't say what a beautiful passage.

He didn't say, Here's a principle that we can all live by.

He said, This was written about me, it's happening right now in this room, this is what it is.

So here's just a teaching thing for us.

There's two types of things that we see often through up script through scripture.

There's an application claim and a fulfillment claim.

I'm gonna give you the direction of both.

The fulfillment claim, the application claim says is something that's in scripture that contains a universal truth, a moral principle, or a spiritual lesson that we as individuals or a community can apply to our life and we can act on right now.

What we're seeing Jesus do right now is a fulfillment claim.

It's an argument, specific person, specific event, a statement that brings past uh past promise, prediction, or pattern to completion.

A fulfillment claim is a setup from an earlier text or time period that successfully met its intended payoff.

Jesus was the payoff of centuries of waiting.

Jesus isn't quoting Isaiah right here because he's an for inspiration.

He's standing in his hometown, in his own place, claiming that the answer to the promised people and that they've been waiting for centuries is right here, right now.

So we need to watch one more thing.

This is, we see when we read Isaiah, first part, it says the year of the Lord's favor, the day of the vengeance for our God, is in the same breath, in the same sentence.

When we see it in Luke, he stops reading it just before the vengeance.

He rolls it up and he hands it back to him.

Church, that's not an oversight, that's God's timing in this moment.

The favor starts now.

The vengeance waits, the payoff is here today.

So when we say today, even in there, that when Jesus is reading this, today is not the whole story, that's only part of it.

And because of what Jesus did on that cross, but when he read this scroll and it fulfilled that scripture right there, we are living in that space right now when just after he closed that scroll, we have access to Jesus.

Which means that for anyone in this room, Christian or non-Christian, the invitation to know Jesus is still open.

This morning, to know Jesus, to experience the payoff.

That's who Jesus is.

But there's a mistake that we can make, and I really want to work us through this.

It would be easy for all of us in this room who love God and want to serve Him, and we spend our time at church and we pray that we can hear the word, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and jump straight to yes, that's me too.

I'm anointed, I'm sent, I'm empowered.

There's truth to that, but we're not there yet.

If we jump too fast and we don't go deeper into Isaiah 61, 1, we step over Jesus to get to us.

We take a verse that was his first declaration about who he is, and we quietly can turn this into a statement about how capable we are.

Jesus is not one more person the Spirit rested on, he is the source of the whole thing.

Which leads us to leads us to a question.

I like to ask questions when I study.

If that anointing was us first, do any of us get near it?

Or do we just stand outside and watch?

I want you to turn with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 1.

2 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention

Here's where we get to you.

You are anointed, but never independently.

We see in this scripture that we're gonna read right here in uh 2 Corinthians that Paul is addressing his church, he's addressing his faith community, and this is what he says to them.

He said now in 2 Corinthians 1 21 and 22, now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ.

He anointed us, said his seal.

Of ownership on us and put the spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

Remember when I said at the beginning, anointing in the Old Testament was for priests, kings, and sometimes prophets?

It's a short list.

Then we see P tell see uh Paul telling his church that hey, you are anointed, you're in him.

Here's the hinge word.

Is that Christ means anointed one?

His last name isn't Christ.

We don't call him Mr.

Christ.

It's Jesus Christ.

His last name is anointed one.

So when Paul says that God anointed us, the church, the one who's committed our life to Jesus, he says that God makes us stand firm in Christ, and then he anointed us, not next to Christ, not alongside him, in Christ.

You're not anointed because you got promoted to that short list because you gave your life to Jesus.

You're anointed because you joined with Jesus.

All of you in this room are joined with Jesus.

You're anointed to the work of the ministry.

That's what God's called us to.

But then we see, I love this in 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 9, it says, You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession.

1 Peter 2:9

We see that language.

You're chosen, you're royal, you're a priesthood.

Two of those three categories that could only be anointed by Holy.

Now that's us.

Then we see in Acts chapter 2, I'm not going to read the whole thing, but in Acts chapter 2, it actually talks about being the prophetic, being anointed.

Acts 2 · chapter mention Acts 2 · chapter mention

But what we see here is this is a massive shift.

The circle of anointed grew.

Not because the standard dropped, because Jesus came, and everyone, all of us who commit our life to Jesus, join to him, get what belongs to him.

We are co-heirs or co-heirs with Christ.

Amen?

We are victorious.

We are conquerors because of Jesus.

There's no anointing available anywhere for anyone.

I don't care if you have the mass, biggest platform, the biggest stage, there's no anointing that you can receive or have that is without Jesus.

Any anointing that we get as believers is drawn out of who Jesus is.

So now I want to go back to the lamp.

Are we okay?

A lamp doesn't generate electricity.

It gives light because it's wired into the source outside of itself.

If you cut the wire, the lamp is just a decorative lamp.

It sits on the table doing nothing.

Whatever anointing you carry, however much it looks like God's power is moving through you, it was never yours to begin with.

It's wired into our connection with Jesus.

It depends on the source.

It depends on the source you didn't create and you don't control.

And even when it's wired in, the lamp doesn't start magically making its own power, maybe in movies, but not in what we're talking about here.

It doesn't graduate to independence just because it's been wired in now.

It stays connected.

Stays connected.

We stay connected to Christ.

We are in Christ.

We are connected to him.

Now I do want to be careful with my own illustration in this moment.

Because a lamp that's plugged into electricity, and electricity is a force, right?

It's a force, it's a thing.

The Holy Spirit is not a thing.

The Holy Spirit is a person, the Holy Spirit convicts, the Holy Spirit comforts, the Holy Spirit brings life.

That anointing that we have all comes from the Holy Spirit.

And in Ephesians 4, it says you can grieve him.

You don't grieve a current.

You don't grieve that you may be annoyed that your electricity turned off or you unplugged your button.

You're like, well, I'll just get a new lamp.

But we can grieve the Holy Spirit.

You grieve, when you grieve the Holy Spirit, you grieve with someone who's with you, who's walking through and cares about the things that you're doing.

So when I say, church, that we're wired in, I don't mean that you found a power supply.

I mean God came to live in this life with you.

But here's what the lamp can't do on its own.

The lamp only tells us one thing and it tells us that we're dependent.

You cut the wire and it goes dark.

Absolutely.

But if that's all of you got, that's this is this is what it leaves you on the weeks that you feel like you're running really well.

How many of you have those weeks?

Maybe not running up to school start.

But you feel like everything is going well, you and God are connected.

When you on those weeks when you feel like everything is connected, you assume that you're plugged in to God, that everything between you and him is chill.

All is going well, I'm hearing what he's saying, it's all good.

On the weeks you feel like nothing has happened.

How many of us have had those weeks?

I feel disconnected, I feel disappointed.

God, where's that promise?

I'm struggling right now in what you're saying.

You assume that in that moment, when you're not connected, that the wire came loose.

But then this is what we do.

We go and make up our own output to find out what's wrong instead of going back to the source.

We do our own thing, we say our own thing.

God, I just got to figure this out.

I'm just gonna work harder, I'm gonna put my nose down, I'm gonna grind this out, and I'm gonna figure it out.

Instead of just taking a step back and saying, where am I plugged in right now?

I need to be plugged in back to the source.

The source, I feel distant from the source.

And this is why Paul doesn't stop just at the wiring here, he gives us a second picture.

In Paul's time, a seal, we said at the end of Corinthians there, a seal marked ownership.

A merchant would put his uh seal on it so no one would take it.

This is mine, hands off.

God says, Paul says that God sealed us.

That's not describing a feeling, that's describing the claim.

You've been marked as belonging to someone.

You are not unclaimed.

So here's what matters when we consider the lamp.

The seal is not the light.

On the light, the seal is on the lamp.

What you produce can be up one week and down the next, correct?

One week you did really well reading your Bible and studying and praying and being, and then the next week it's just a real struggle.

The mark of ownership doesn't move.

Your performance has nothing to do with God's mark of ownership on your life.

The dark lamp that's not plugged in still belongs to someone, right?

It's not sitting in a store window just unclaimed, so we can't confuse the two.

The lamp tells you where your power where your power comes from, the seal tells you whose you are, and one of those things will change every single day.

One of them will change, but the other one never does.

Then Paul adds one more word, deposit.

What you carry right now is real.

But that's not the whole picture, it's a down payment of what God has already paid for us.

Proof that everything promised is still on its way, secured by the one who put the deposit down.

And this is this is not from yourself.

It's not something you built over years of ministry or volunteering or service, it's from Him.

You hear me?

It flows one direction, from Him to us, not from us to Him.

He is the source of all of our power, He's the source of all of our authority, He's the source of our wisdom, our everything that we need is that's the source.

If the anointing depended on our consistency, on our discipline, on how well we did it, and how well I read the Bible or prayed or did all of those things, we would lose the anointing every single day.

And hear me, church.

I don't want you to go away thinking, well, Pastor Brian says I don't have to read my Bible and study every day or pray.

I'm telling you the opposite.

You, in fact, need to do all of those things.

Read the Bible, pray, study his word, do what get into the word and be consistent that way.

But the closer we are to him, the easier it is for us to hear his voice.

Something we say here is that distance will create distortion.

I want to be close to him so there's not distortion between me and him.

So then I can experience his anointing to do the things he's called me to do.

Amen?

It doesn't depend on your performance, it depends on your connection.

And that means it holds as long as you are in him.

The scripture reading Corinthians says, we are in him.

That's right.

This is what anointing means.

Anointing means you're being sent.

You're being sent.

So if all of this, what I'm saying, is biblically accurate, and you're anointed to him, sealed by him, carrying that deposit that he has deposited down, here's the question that we can sit with in the church.

In the light of our series, Build the Church and Advance the Kingdom, the question is, where are we sent to?

The very first thing I read answers the question for us.

We go back to Isaiah 61 and we see what the anointing is for.

Good news for the poor.

Bind up the brokenhearted, freedom for captives, release the prisoners.

It's not about the anointed one.

Every line of this points to someone else.

It points to the spirit, doesn't come down and stop.

The spirit comes down and moves through us.

We are the outlet, we receive the electricity, and it comes through us.

This is, I just want to make sure we understand this.

Jesus proved it.

The very first thing he said, the anointing was was for the poor.

And this is what Jesus did.

We see this all through his ministry.

He went and did it.

If he is in us and he gives us the anointing to walk into what he's called us to, that means when we go and do the work of this ministry, he's gone ahead of us already.

But this is what Jesus did.

He went and he went and he would put his hands on people that society wouldn't touch, those with leprosy and sicknesses, and heal them.

He was sat with people at the table that no one else wanted to sit with.

This is what Jesus did.

Now, when we come back to this word poor, there are people that we know that are spiritually poor.

I know people that are spiritually poor, amen.

That need to know Jesus, that need to have a relationship with Him, that they're far from God.

But there's people that we know, and maybe in the city, who are poor the way Isaiah was talking to us about.

Poor on the streets, can't pay rent, don't have food.

So we can't let the meaning of the first poor that Isaiah was talking about cancel out what he meant about the second poor.

It has to be one and the same.

Because if we can help people when they're poor and they're struggling with like just material things in life, boy, can you have a testimony to actually talk to them about the things that God has for them in their life.

But we don't stop because this one poor is a bit more daunting than this one.

The lamp isn't wired in so that it can be feel like it's powered.

We're not wired into connection with God so we can feel some kind of sense of power.

We're lined in so that where there's darkness, light is shining.

That's our responsibility.

Nobody plugs in the lamp and puts it in the closet.

If you do, I would like to pray with you.

Can you stand with me?

We've been in this series about building the church, advancing the kids and the kingdom.

And this wiring about where our source comes from in Jesus is the heart of all of it.

That's the underlying authority and power that we have.

Soft heart enough that we can hear him, courageous enough that we can obey him, and compassionate enough to go where he sends us.

I don't want to say it's not because we're super impressive, it's because we're connected to him.

And through him, we can do anything.

So here's my challenge for you.

We have to consider who Jesus is talking to in this moment.

Who is that person that you know is struggling financially?

Maybe you have a burden on your heart in this place, and it's just being activated this morning to help the poor.

I mean, Isaiah's poor.

Those that need that kind of help, maybe that's on your heart today, and I'm just praying that that just God pushes and amplifies that in you in Jesus' name.

We need that.

But who's that person you know that's struggling?

Who's that broken-hearted person that you know that you've just almost been avoiding to talk to, maybe walking around them instead of talking to them?

Maybe you thought of them in the next like last 10 seconds or a minute.

Just knowing even what I'm saying, you're just feeling like this person is hurting.

Who's the captive to something that struggles with addiction, that struggles with something like that, that's actually just bound up in their life, but just needs to have be loved with the word of truth in their life.

So hear me when I say this to you, church.

When I say we are wired this way to do what God has called us to, you already have the wiring, you already have the mark, you already have the deposit.

We just don't have to wait until necessary we feel necessarily like we're qualified for it.

Because if you go where God calls you to go, he prepares the way.

And it may not look the way that you want it to look, it may look different, it may look like you have to invite them 15 times or be angrily yelled at as you invite them to church or invite them to whatever that may be.

But just know that God has prepared the way for you.

So hear this: you are never the source, you are the outlet.

So while we have our, if you want to close your eyes with me, if you're in this room today and you are just not connected to the source at all, I mean you've never committed your life to Jesus, you're hearing this maybe for the very first time, but you realize you want to be connected to that source that helps you with purpose and direction and mercy and God's grace on your life.

If that's you and you want to commit your life to Jesus this morning, just raise your hand so I can see you.

If that's you, just raise your hand so I can see it.

But while our eyes are closed, the church and all of us are going to pray this together this morning.

So, church, repeat after me.

Jesus.

I believe you are the Son of God.

I believe you died for my sins and rose again.

I turn from my sin.

I ask you to forgive me.

I give you my life today.

Be my Lord and my Savior.

Thank you for being my source.

Amen.

If that was you, just look at me, even if you didn't put up your hand.

If that was you this morning, there's a way that we can connect with you.

We'd love the opportunity to do that.

You can text the number that's hopefully on the screen, and that'll lead you to where we've got to go.

I'd love the opportunity to chat.

So would Pastor Brody.

Now, we're not quite finished yet.

I believe that there's people in this room, I'm gonna call the prayer team up.

We're just gonna close here shortly.

I want to call the prayer team up.

I believe that there's people in this room that are struggling with that disappointment.

That are struggling with God, you made a promise, and I've not seen it yet.

So while you're just close your eyes for a second.

As the team makes their way forward, maybe what God has put in your life and it's been restored looks different even than you thought it was gonna look.

So I want to pray with you.

Then we're just gonna close the service.

And if you want prayer, I want you to come forward and just receive prayer.

But if this is you and you feel like you and God are struggling, there's a disappointment, feeling like you just can't connect with what's going on and going on in your life, I want you to take a step of boldness today, church, and receive prayer.

Speak it to someone, even if it's in your row, that you know them.

It doesn't have to be up front here.

If someone in the room, you know someone in the room, find them and let them pray for you.

But when we hear that Jesus is the source, that he is the source of life, he's the source of where he needs us to go, what he's gonna call us to do, all of these things.

When he is this, we can't pass up that moment to respond to his Holy Spirit in this moment.

So if you're feeling that this morning, just with your eyes closed, I'm just gonna pray for you.

I want you to connect with someone on the prayer team or someone in this church.

But I just want to pray, Lord, even through your word, we can see that you always care for us as your children.

We see that the promises you made, Lord, you are speaking to people that had real disappointment, real struggles, real pain for the situation that they're in, Lord, and you were a faithful God that faithfully loves on them and cares for them.

So, Lord, as each person makes this assessment in their own life, Lord, that maybe they're disconnected from you.

Lord, that this is the day that that changes.

That Lord, we would reconnect with you and become, you would become the source.

We wouldn't keep finding our own way, doing our own thing.

Lord, that you would be the source.

We would lean into the source that is the source of all things.

You bring life and joy and peace.

Lord, we ask that your Holy Spirit would just, where there is just a feeling of pressure this morning, would be joy and peace over people in Jesus' name.

Lord, we just ask for your wisdom, your direction, and your words over hearts this morning as they come for prayer, as they meet with people, as they connect.

Lord, but you are so good and so faithful, Lord.

We want to walk away from this moment the same as when we came in.

Thank you for your word in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Church, if that's you and you feel like you're disconnected, you just want some prayer, it's an honor for us to be able to pray for you.

So please make your way forward, find someone in the church to pray with you.

We love you guys, bless you, and make Jesus the source.

Amen.

Love you guys.