Blessings

We're in this series called Foundations, talking about some of the most fundamental, basic, essential concepts in God's Word that help us know who God is and how He wants to relate to us.

And week one, I mean, you Pastor Greg's up here with bricks on his body, laying on a cot, teaching us about rest.

I mean, that is crazy.

Uh, and it was such a good word on rest, and how from the very beginning of scripture, God designed us for it.

It's foundational.

Then last week he talked about faith and just the journey of the Israelites and how we can have that grasshopper effect when we can be scared of things that we shouldn't be scared of, and how easy it is for us to live beneath what God has designed us to live for.

I love hearing that you guys are expanding.

I love hearing you got vision for the future.

I love hearing that the next djinn is top on your heart because it means you've got faith for more, that you're not afraid of the economy, you're not afraid of circumstances, that you're going after it with God.

That's faith, and it's foundational to our understanding of God.

And today I want to talk to you about blessing.

Blessing.

What is the blessing of God?

Really?

I think we throw that word around.

We, those of us that have grown up in church, like it's a churchy kind of word, we we use it, but like, what really is it?

How do we get it?

How do we keep it?

How do we walk in it?

Can we lose it?

Um, the Bible tells us we should bless God.

What's that about?

Does God, how do you bless God?

This this idea of blessing is critical to how we view God and how we live for Him.

I think most of my life I've not had a good understanding of what blessing is.

Um, I've heard all the cliches, you know, like when you ask someone, hey, how you doing?

Well, too blessed to be stressed, right?

They throw that at like a Jesus juke.

You're like, well, that didn't give me anything, but whatever.

Okay.

Or favor ain't fair.

Yeah, favor ain't fair.

You've heard that one.

I've heard all the like the cheesy cliches like that.

Um, I think I've been able to sniff out most of the false teaching, like the name it, claim it, prosperity stuff, that like that's the idea of blessing and more and bigger and better and comfort and ease and life.

And I just don't see that in God's word.

I I you probably haven't experienced that in your life.

I don't think God says that we're entitled to lifestyles of the rich and famous while we're on this planet here called Earth.

Uh, in fact, God says, Hey, this isn't your home.

You're just passing through.

And by the way, while you're here, you're gonna have trouble.

At John 16, 33, Jesus says, In this world, you will have trouble, but, and then he gives us the hope of what's to come.

And so I don't think that can be it.

It can't be stuff and and and ease and comfort and all that kind of stuff.

Truthfully, I think most of my life I've probably had a transactional view of God's blessing, like works-based stuff.

Um, and as long as I've been in the church and following Jesus, and as much as I've studied God's word, it is very difficult to deprogram our minds away from we gotta earn favor with God.

Really is.

I mean, we we I think theoretically we get grace, we can't earn it.

It's it's a gift of grace, but man, we live as if we gotta prove it and we gotta earn it.

And I think my understanding of blessing really has been centered around that.

I do good for God, God will do good for me.

I mess it up, well, then it's bye-bye blessing.

We forfeit it.

And then if things are too good for too long, have things like have you ever had a season where it's like, man, there's not been any major crisis?

Money's okay, kids are okay, work's okay, everything's okay.

Something's wrong.

Like, something's about to happen, and you're kind of waiting for that other shoe to drop, or the rug to be pulled out from under your blessing, or or that God's gonna, you know, come back and settle the score on some mistake you made way back when in your life, and he just hadn't got around to you yet, and you're wondering how long can I keep this act up before eventually I fall apart, or eventually God removes his blessing.

None of these things are a good understanding of God's blessing.

And if we adopt cliche or name it, claim it, or a works-based mentality to God's blessing, we're gonna live in fear, anxiety, and we will get disappointed and disenfranchised with God in church at some point.

Maybe you're sitting here today and you're not sure about all of this because you don't feel God came through for you.

His timing wasn't your timing.

You prayed, he didn't answer.

You've been hurt, you you've been, you've been stung, and and uh you're you're just not quite sure if God's blessing is for you.

And then I think we have to ask the question like, how often do we actually every day feel blessed?

I I know most of us would say the right answer, the Bible answer is like, I'm blessed, I'm supposed to say I'm blessed, but a lot of the time we don't feel blessed.

You you know, you can have a lot going right in your life, man.

If one thing is is not right, and we all deal with like we got problems today, we got irritations, we got tensions, we got frustrations, all of us that we're dealing with.

And it is very easy for that to become your whole perspective of your existence.

Like that one thing that's not quite right in your life, and then everything is kind of like not quite right in your life, and you don't feel all that blessed.

I gotta tell you, man, these last several weeks, I can't say that I have felt all that blessed.

Let me just run through it with you.

I got COVID for Christmas, that's not good.

Uh then uh uh Nick Sabin retired.

And all our best players go to Ohio State now.

So that one hurt.

Um then uh recently my doctor, um, you know, when you when you're when you're in your mid-40s, I'm 46, so I'm starting to feel my age, right?

I know baby face and all, but like I'm telling you, mid-40s is a whole thing.

It's hard sometimes just physically to feel blessed in the everyday.

And like doctor's appointments, they shake out differently than they used to.

They're a little more personal, intrusive, disheartening.

Um, my doctor recently said, You need a colonoscopy.

I said, Why?

He said, You're at that age.

That's it, that's the reason.

I'm I'm old, so I said, Okay, he said, Don't worry about it.

It's routine.

Okay, well, tell me what's involved in a colonoscopy.

And then he described to me a colonoscopy, and I said, You're a liar, you lied to me.

There's nothing routine about what you just described.

That's easily gonna be the top five worst thing that's ever happened to me in my life, what you just described.

So that's coming up in three weeks, and then uh when you're in your mid-40s, stuff on your body just starts breaking down.

Uh, you start having pain for no reason at all.

Used to, in your 20s and 30s, if something hurt, there was a reason for it.

You could point back to an event that happened.

Now, you just wake up and stuff hurts.

And so the last two weeks, I'm putting on a brave face.

I'm playing hurt today.

I'm putting on a brave face.

For the last two weeks, I have not really been able to walk.

My left ankle has been swollen and broke down.

And I just one day, two weeks ago, woke up like that.

My ankle is swollen, like visibly, it's it's swollen, and I can't put any weight on it.

I got out of bed.

There was no other thing that happened.

I woke up and that was the situation, and and so it's been every day trying to figure out what am I gonna do?

This is I can't live like this.

And and uh I went to church last week.

There's a guy at our church, he saw me limping around in the lobby, and he said, Hey, Pastor Chris, what's what did you do?

What's wrong?

I said, Well, Daryl, uh best I can tell is in 1995 I sprained my ankle playing intermittent basketball.

In 1997, I did it again, and then I gained 40 pounds and I got 30 years older, and here we are.

That's what happened, Daryl.

Uh I know when when your pastor gets hurt, and I think Pastor Greg, he's uh torn both biceps, right, in the last few years.

When your pastor gets hurt, it's because he's curling 100-pound dumbbells and turning over cars and crazy things.

That's not been my story.

So I uh got an MRI.

I got an MRI done, and the doctor, and I quote, he said, Wow, your ankle is jacked up, which did make me feel better that I wasn't making it up because Kara, my wife, was sure I was being a baby and making it up.

No one just wakes up like this.

And uh he said, Yeah, your ankle is jacked up.

I said, Well, well, what do we do?

Should I get surgery?

He laughed and said, No, not at your age, no.

No.

I said, uh, and he's like, Um, by the way, you're not like an athlete or anything, right?

And I said, Well, I mean, I play pickleball sometimes.

He smiled and said, So no, then.

Uh so what do I do?

I just can't, this can't be my life.

He's like, Well, you can do some stretches.

I would say three times a week, write the alphabet in the air with your foot.

I'm looking at him, this is your prescription for me.

So this is my life now.

46 years old, I'm gonna get probed randomly for no reason, and you want me to sit at home writing the alphabet in the air with my foot.

This this is apparently what your mid-40s are like, and I'm telling you, when stuff starts breaking down, and these are the things that you're dealing with, and you're having different thoughts about how you're closer to the end than the beginning, you don't always feel that blessed in the everyday.

And of course, every one of us in this room is carrying much more serious stuff around with us than all of that silly stuff that I just described.

There's the surface stuff that we can talk about, but then there's the deep stuff that we all carry: the burdens, the loss, the grief, the rejection, the hurt, the disappointment, the unmet expectations.

We find ourselves saying things like, I thought I'd be farther along in life than I am now.

I thought if I said yes to Jesus, things were gonna get better in my marriage.

I thought we would have had kids by now.

I thought I would have gotten that promotion that I've been praying for.

I don't even know if prayer works, I don't even know what blessing is.

And we start to have weird thoughts about God and how he relates to us and what blessing is.

I don't feel blessed, I want to be blessed, but I don't feel blessed.

Is it real?

Is it for me?

Of course, our society, our culture, the media, they're selling us all kinds of ways.

I mean, you can scroll through your social media accounts and you're always being advertised to, right?

All the ads and the commercials are trying to tell us how to live the good life, how to have how to have a blessed life.

So, you know, you you got trouble sleeping, uh, a little overweight, uh, lost your mojo, guys, lost your mojo, uh, you know, um, need help finding that special somebody, we can help with that.

And so they lie and say that blessing comes in the form of what is it, a pill, a pillow, a powder, or a process, and we're trying to buy and scrape together whatever form of goodness or ease or comfort or joy or satisfaction or blessing that we can get, and we're grabbing for blessing wherever we can find it because we don't feel like maybe we're getting it from anywhere else.

We got to take matters into our own hands.

But the Bible says, and it's foundational, the Bible says blessing isn't a thing, it's not an event, it's not an outcome.

Blessing is a person, and we were created to live and to walk in blessing every day.

In fact, blessing is God's default setting.

Before there was original sin, Genesis 3, there was original blessing in Genesis 1.

Guys, we're ready to look at God's word today.

We're gonna go back to Genesis.

We've been spending time here in this series because this is where so much of the foundational concepts and understanding about God are first found.

And so I want to take us on a little journey uh in Genesis on this idea of blessing.

In Genesis chapter one, God creates Adam and Eve, he creates everything, and and here's what he says to them in verse 28 God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number.

He blessed them.

Right after creation, God speaks blessing over his people.

Now, this word blessed or blessing, the Hebrew word for that is barak.

And like most Hebrew words, this word has several different meanings.

It can mean to speak well of, like to speak excellent things about, to praise, it can mean to cause peace, it can mean to make to prosper, but the most fundamental kind of root meaning of this word blessed is to kneel, to bow, to kneel.

This word appears 330 times in the Old Testament.

That's a lot of times.

Makes you start thinking this is kind of foundational to our faith, into our understanding of God.

And then that theme is continued on into the New Testament, this idea of blessing.

And every kind of paradigm shifting moment in the history of God's people, especially in Genesis, we see God reaffirm and speak blessing over his people.

Let me show you what I'm talking about.

You go over to Genesis chapter 9.

Genesis 9 · chapter mention

Here's what God says to Noah after the flood.

Pretty big paradigm shift.

It's a reset on humanity.

And so God once again speaks to them.

Verse 1, then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.

He blessed them.

If you go over to Genesis chapter 12, this is another paradigm-shifting moment in the history of God's people because it's when he initiates his plan of redemption.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

The plan of redemption, by the way, that you and I are now a part of, was initiated here in Genesis chapter 12 with this guy, Abram, that would become Abraham.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

God establishes this family.

He speaks blessing over them.

And through this family, we get uh Jacob, Isaac, we get King David, we get uh ultimately Jesus comes from this lineage.

And so it's a key moment in the history of God's people.

Here's what God says in chapter 12, verse 2.

I will make you, talking to Abraham, I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you.

I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all people on earth will be blessed through you.

That's a lot of blessing.

Central to God's redemptive plan and our understanding of how he wants to relate to us is our understanding of this blessing, what it's all about.

And then if you go over to chapter 14, you have this obscure interaction with this guy named Melchizedek and Abraham.

This guy comes out of nowhere, and it's after a victory was won.

And so this king, King Makilzedek, comes and he speaks to Abraham in verse 18.

Here's what it says Then Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine.

He was priest of God most high, and he blessed Abram, saying, Blessed be Abram by God most high, creator of heaven and earth.

And praise be to God most high.

You delivered your enemies into your hand.

Then Abram gave a tenth of everything to this king.

Melchizedek is a name that means righteousness.

He's the king of Salem.

Salem means peace.

So he's the king of righteousness and peace.

He's called a king and a priest, which would have been totally unheard of.

You never see that in one person.

And he comes offering bread and wine.

Anything about that description sound familiar to you?

It's a foreshadowing, it's a picture of Jesus, the one who was priest and king, who offers the bread and wine, his body and his blood to bring us peace and righteousness.

This is God once again speaking blessing and foreshadowing our blessing.

Last thing.

Then if you go over to chapter 15, I'm not gonna have the verses on the screen, but basically, God reaffirms his covenant promise to Abraham and says, By the way, Abraham, just so you know, I am your shield, I am your reward, I am the blessing.

I know you're focused so much on what I'm gonna do in and through you.

You've got the land that you're gonna inherit, you've got your possessions on your mind, you've got your lineage, your kids and your grandkids, and how is all of that gonna come about?

I just feel like you need to be reminded the blessing is not in the stuff.

I want you to get your eyes on me, not the things that I do.

I want you to worship me for who I am, not for what I do for you.

I need you to know I'm the blessing.

I am my presence with you, is my blessing.

I am your provision, your protection, your promotion.

I'm the blessing.

So often we get our minds on the things, the outcome, the event, the process, and we forget it's really Him.

He's the blessing.

And so we get this picture of God all the way back.

It's foundational from Genesis chapter one, and you can trace it all the way through scripture that God is the one.

What does blessing mean?

To kneel at its root term, to kneel.

God is seen as the one who kneels to get low with his people, to be on our level, to be with us.

He's not a king that sits up there aloof, he's the one that gets down off of his throne to get in the mess of this life with us.

He doesn't promise a lifestyle to the rich and famous, he doesn't say all your wildest dreams are gonna come true.

He doesn't give us a deadline on the season that we're going through, but what he does say is why don't I just get in it with you and I'm just gonna be present with you, and my presence will be the blessing.

He gives us a picture of Jesus in Genesis 14, and then he gives us Jesus, the Son of God, the one who is Emmanuel, God with us, who comes to bring peace and righteousness to our lives, who made a way where there was no way to overcome sin, that we wouldn't get what we deserve.

How many times do we think we deserve something?

We go to God, we tell it to others.

I'm telling you right now, in the most basic, foundational biblical sense, I am thankful that I am not gonna get what I deserve because what I deserve is to be separated from God, but he knelt down, he got on my level, and he came to bring me peace and righteousness so that one day I could be with him in heaven forever, you know, blessed.

From the beginning to the end.

It's not the stuff, it's him, he's the blessing, and his blessing is how he marks his people.

One more passage that I want to show you.

Numbers chapter six.

This is also in the desert as the people of God are journeying from slavery to promise, and God is dealing with them.

You've been talking about it the last couple of weeks, how God has been dealing with them in that place, helping them to understand their identity.

Man, you can get people out of Egypt, but sometimes it's hard to get Egypt out of people.

And you you can you you can pray a prayer, but sometimes it's hard to get the residue off your life.

And and uh, like Pastor Greg said, that 430 years, they're slaves, they're not gonna fix all that mentality in two months, and so God is dealing with them.

And one of the key moments that he has with them out in that desert is he wants them to understand his blessing and what a big deal that is for their identity and for their future.

And so there's this moment where he tells the priests to bless the people.

Numbers chapter 6, verse 22.

Numbers 6:22

The Lord said to Moses, Tell Aaron and his sons, they were the priests, this is how you are to bless the Israelites.

Say to them, and this was supposed to be spoken over them on a regular basis so they could be reminded of it.

He says, Speak this over them.

The Lord bless you and keep you.

The Lord make his face to shine on you and be gracious to you.

The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.

And then here's what it says in verse 27.

After they spoke that blessing over the people, here's what it meant.

So they will put my name, the priest will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.

By placing my name on them, I'm marking them as mine.

It means I'm with them.

My presence is on them.

People should be able to see.

These are a called out in separate people.

My name is on them.

I came into this world as a result of an unwanted pregnancy.

I was a mistake, some would say.

But aren't you glad mistakes can be redeemed?

Praise God for that.

So when I was just real little, just a few months old, because of the goodness of God, I was adopted into a loving home, a safe home.

And with a mom and a dad that taught me to love the Lord, they were believers.

They taught me to love the Lord.

And I'm so grateful for God's sovereignty and his goodness in my life that he took an orphan that was disconnected and did not have a future and did not have a name and probably would have been a statistic.

And he brought me into a new family.

I was adopted.

And do you know what the final step of the adoption process is?

A judge says this little child can now be a part officially of this family.

And family, mom and dad, you can put your name on him.

I got a name.

I'm a Rayleigh.

So now all of a sudden I come into this legacy of this family with ancestors of faith and with all of the ups and the downs and the wards of any family, but I have the rights and the benefits of the Rayleigh name.

I had nothing.

I didn't hope I had no parents.

I was abandoned, I was an orphan.

Now all of a sudden, because a judge said I get to carry their name.

I've got benefits.

My parents, over the years, loved me when I was hard to love.

Picked me up when I would fall and make mistakes.

Opened doors of opportunity I could have never opened on my own.

Gave me a life I could have never lived and a love I would have never known.

I may not look like them physically, but I carry their spiritual DNA in me every single day.

I carry the name Rayleigh on my life.

And can I tell you there is a great judge who has decided that you get to carry the name of your heavenly father, and you have all the accents and the benefits of a son and of a daughter.

You have an accent to everything that comes.

He says, I will put my name on them.

He is Jehovah Jairah.

You have access to his provision.

He is Jehovah Rapha.

Can I tell you?

You have an access as a son or a daughter to his healing power.

He's Jehovah Shalom.

You have an access today to his peace.

He's Jehovah Nisi.

You have an access to the God who fights your battles with you.

He's Jehovah Sid Kenu.

You have Access.

That's his name to his righteousness.

He is El Shaddai, the Almighty God.

When he blesses you and puts his name on you, you have access as a son to the Almighty God.

His presence.

Let's not get it confused.

It's not what he does.

It's not a change in your circumstance.

It's the fact that he calls you his.

You have his name on you.

His presence is always with you.

You're a son, you're a daughter.

You're blessed.

So what is what is our response to his blessing?

We bless him.

The Bible says, bless the Lord.

Psalm 103, 1.

Actually, my translation says it this way: Praise the Lord, my soul.

All my inmost being.

Praise his holy name.

You might have heard it growing up, bless the Lord, oh my soul.

Your translation may say, says, bless the Lord.

It's because this the word is the same.

It's Barak.

It's the same word that we've been looking at here.

It's translated praise, but it's the same word.

So the only response to a God who blesses us with his presence is to praise him with our mouth.

To show up every day with other believers and lift up a joyful noise and sing songs of praise.

It's to get in your car and then turn on some worship music and praise his name.

It's in your coming and your going, in your wins and in your losses, in your mountaintop moments and in the valley.

You praise his name because he's worthy of your praise.

And you praise him with your life.

It's how you live.

That is the way you bless the Lord.

That you admit your need, you confess your issues.

Listen, God will not bless who you pretend to be.

You gotta be real with him and say, I don't have it all together.

I don't have it figured out.

I can't do this on my own.

I kneel before the king and I say, Help.

Not my will, your will, not my way, your way.

I'll do whatever you want me to do.

I'll go wherever you want me to go.

I'll say whatever you want me to say.

My life for your glory.

I bless you, Lord.

I bless you, Lord.

I bless you, Lord.

The only way to respond to a God who blesses us, who kneels down to get on our level, to get in the mess.

What other God does that?

What other king does that?

Our God does that, our king does that.

The only way to respond to that is to bless the Lord, to kneel and to bow before the King.

This is how we bless the Lord.

Listen, I don't know what the year holds for me or for you.

I don't know how my ankle's gonna do this year.

I don't know how that colonoscopy is gonna go.

I don't know how long the season of pain that you're in right now is gonna last.

I don't know if they're ever gonna admit that they were wrong and tell you that they're sorry.

I don't know if you're gonna get the promotion that you've been begging and praying for.

But I know this.

If your faith is in Jesus, you're blessed.

You're his, he's with you.

The God who gets down at our level, who gets in the mess with us, who loves us, who's gracious to us, who doesn't come to settle the score, but to pay our debts.

You're blessed.

You know what blessing is?

Blessing is this you're not alone.

Ever.

Even though sometimes it may feel like it, even though you might understand what's going on.

The blessing of God is that He is always with you.

You are never, ever alone.

He's with you.

You know what he was saying to Adam and Eve?

Be fruitful and multiply.

I bless you, I'm with you.

You know what it's saying to Noah?

The reset of humanity.

Populate and subdue the earth.

Be fruitful and multiply.

I bless you, I'm with you.

You know what he says to Abraham?

It's gonna be tough, it's gonna be a lot of challenges, you're not always gonna get it right, but I want you to know this.

I bless you, I'm with you, I've got a purpose for you.

You're gonna be a blessing.

You know what he says to God's people out in the wilderness, and you know what he says to you and I in our season of life right now?

I bless you.

I'm with you in it.

I'm fighting for you, I'm fighting with you.

You're never gonna be alone, I'm never gonna leave you or forsake you.

I bless you with my presence.

To be in relationship with him is the blessing.

So I want to encourage you this year.

Don't chase your feelings, don't seek and pursue false hope.

Seek the face in the presence of God, and you will walk in his blessing.

I'm gonna ask you to stand to your feet.

I want to pray over you today.

I'm gonna do two things.

In a minute, I'm gonna pray that blessing over you as a church from Numbers chapter six.

That's gonna seal our time together, and then Ryan's gonna come and close the service.

But I just feel like in a room like this, in a time like this, there could be some of you here today that would say, Pastor Chris, the truth is I don't have a relationship with Jesus.

I I've never really confessed my sin and surrendered.

I've never really bowed my life to him and said, like, I'm all in.

My life is yours.

And I feel for some strange reason I'm supposed to do that today.

Some of you, you have a history with church, you have a history with God, but the truth is for a long, long time now you've walked away from him and you've been doing life in your own strength and in your own way.

And in the weight of that is beginning to bring you down.

And what God would say to you is, listen, I'm not mad at you, I'm not out to get you.

I'm saying, welcome home.

Come back to me.

I'm I love you, I want to be with you.

If you are here today and you want to get your life right with God, begin a relationship with Jesus or rededicate your life.

You're sick of living in your own power and your own strength.

It's time to turn all of that over to God and trust Him with that.

The Bible says every one of us is a sinner, and we don't deserve to be close to God, but he did make a way where there was no way.

Sent his son Jesus to be with us, die for our sin, so we could have the hope of heaven and the presence of God in our lives for all eternity.

So if you're here today, I want to pray for you.

On the count of three, I'm just gonna ask if you would just lift up your hand until I see it, and then I'll just I'll just see it and I'll I'll include you in my prayer.

And if you believe that prayer that we're about to pray, you can know your sins are forgiven.

They're dealt with by the cross, and you have the peace and the presence of God in your life.

So this is a holy and sacred moment.

If you're watching online, this is for you as well.

Wherever you are, wherever you're watching, whenever you're watching, just lift up your hand.

God will see it, and He'll know.

And you can pray this prayer along with us.

I'm gonna count to three.

If that's you, just have the courage.

Lift up your hand.

I'll include you in my prayer.

One, two.

You need to get your life right with God today.

Three, lift it up right here where you are.

Yes, sir.

Yep, I see you right there.

Yes, sir, yes, sir.

I see you right there.

Praise God.

Yes, ma'am, I see you, yes, ma'am, yes, ma'am, yes, ma'am, yes, sir.

Oh, all over the place.

Praise God.

I see you back there, I see you right there.

Yes, ma'am, I see you right there.

Yes, sir, yes, ma'am, I see you right there.

Praise God.

Oh, man, so many in the back.

I see you guys.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

All six of you in the back right there.

Praise God.

God is moving right now in this room.

This is real stuff.

I don't know.

There were easily 20 people who raised their hand to pray this prayer.

I'm gonna lead you in the prayer.

I'm gonna ask those of you that raised your hands to repeat out loud after me, along with everybody in the room who loves the Lord.

We've all had to pray this prayer.

This is family in here.

There's no judgment, we're all on equal terms under the foot of the cross.

So we all have to pray this prayer.

So here's again, I want to remind you the power is not in the words themselves.

The power is in your heart to believe that this prayer is true.

The Bible says what it takes to be saved is we confess with our mouth and believe in our heart.

If you believe that this prayer is true, if you confess your sin, the Bible says He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sin and purify us from all unrighteousness.

You will not live a perfect life.

You may not live an easy life, but you will live a life with the presence and the blessing of God marking you.

That's a big deal in the hope of heaven.

Let's let's pray this prayer together.

One church, let's make this a declaration.

Repeat after me.

Dear Jesus, I confess that I'm a sinner.

And I need a savior.

I believe you are who you say you are.

That you died on the cross for my sin.

That you rose again, and that you're alive today.

I ask you to forgive me.

I give you my heart, I give you my life, and I choose to live for you now and forever.

In your name I pray.

Amen.