From Tears to Triumph | John 20

He is risen. That's right, He is.

What an incredible start to Resurrection Sunday.

Would you join me as I pray before we hear God's word?

Lord, you are King of kings. You are Lord of Lords, and you

are not dead. You are alive.

You are a living Christ. And there's a tomb in the Middle

East that sits empty right now because you beat death.

And God, we worship you for that.

We worship you for being willing to die, for having the power

over death. And right now, as we come before

your word, would you help us see you in all of your glory?

Would you help our hearts be strengthened and encouraged by

the gospel? The good news is that we can be

forgiven of all of our sin. We can have power over sin,

Satan, and death forever. It's the hope of the world and

it's found not in a concept, but in a man, and his name is Jesus.

And so we lift him high. We get ourselves low.

Lord, would you speak to parts of our heart right now that we

try to hide from the world, but that your eyes can see God?

You can do that through a messenger like me, but help me

to be as small as possible so you can be as big as possible.

God that I would become less so you could become more get get us

to see the things that we can't see.

Get us to feel the things we can't feel.

God would you help us to worship you in spirit and truth in Jesus

name Amen. Amen.

You guys can grab a seat. Thanks

bro. How we feel into this

resurrection Sunday. Hey, you guys brought some

energy to the worship said I love it.

If I don't know you, my name is Brandon Lodge.

Welcome to Saint City. We are so glad that you are

here. Whether you're here on spring

break, you're here because a family member invited you found

us on Instagram. I don't know how you got here,

but I know this. We are glad that you are here.

We love you, we love Jesus and we love the reality of what he

has done for you. We just want to tell you all

about it on this resurrection Sunday.

So if you could turn your Bibles to John chapter 20.

John 20 · chapter mention

If you don't have a Bible, don't worry, you can still follow on.

We got Bibles actually in the seats on the floor in front of

you. If you don't have a Bible, we

can keep that Bible. But it's going to be on page 906

is where I'll be reading from today.

We're not here to hear Brandon talk so much as we are here to

hear, to hear the Lord speak. And that's why we open up God's

words each and every Sunday. It's why we are built around the

Bible because we leave. God has spoken and He has

something to say to you. It is so cool to know that right

now in across the world that this Resurrection Sunday, we are

not alone. Like there's only a few hundred

of us here in this room today, but across the world right now,

we are joined with Saints from every nation, every tribe, every

tongue celebrating the same thing.

Jesus Christ is Lord and he is risen.

Amen. Amen.

Well, see, hear you guys sing like that thinking about the

reality of the global church, It's enough to make a grown man

cry. Frankly, I I'm not quite the

most emotional person. I don't really cry tears of

sadness very often, but tears of joy are common to me.

Like this Easter Sunday. Just thinking about what God has

done for me moves me. Seeing University of Arizona

losing basketball last night may or may not have made me shed a

happy tear. I don't know.

Love you ASU, love you Wildcat fans.

You're welcome here. But there's also tears of

sadness in our world. Just yesterday, parenting my 4

little kids, I think I experienced the full range of

why a kid might cry. Whether they didn't get the

candy that they wanted at the exact moment that they wanted

might have shed a tear for one of my kids.

The fact that one of them was getting crushed in a wrestling

match might have invoked the tears of fear.

Perhaps in our home. This is hypothetical, of course.

My kids would never cry, right? Or maybe, maybe just the tears

of the sadness of their family being far away.

Tears are real and tears are something we are all familiar

with. Tears are a sign.

They're a signal to us that there's something wrong with

this world. Often times when tears are

happening, it's somebody saying through their eyeballs.

It's not supposed to be this way.

It wasn't meant to be like this. And they feel that grief, that

sadness, that brokenness. There's a brokenness that exists

in the world. It's around us.

At times it's beside us, but brokenness is in us too, that we

actually can feel the shattering of.

It was not supposed to be this way.

And some of the most deeply moving and personal things that

actually move you to tears are the things that are broken in

you or somebody did to break you.

It's the brokenness of this world.

It's the grief of loss. And every person has an answer

for why brokenness is out there and a way to fix it.

Whether it's time therapy, retail therapy, distraction,

fitness, denial, there's a real brokenness in the world.

And what tears show us is this. It's not about the water in our

eyes, it's about the wounds of the world we sense in us.

It is not meant to be like this, that when we're in a place of

grief, of weeping, we can see that there's a brokenness in

this world that must be resolved or solved in some way.

My question for you this morning that we might consider together

is, who has the best answer for brokenness in your life and in

the world? Because it's out there.

There, there's no denying that there's reasons to cry, reasons

to weep, reasons to tear up. Who has the best answer?

I've entitled this sermon this morning from Tears to Triumph

because we're about to encounter the resurrected Jesus in the

story right now. And he's going to meet a woman

who is in the middle of grief and weeping and tears are

flooding her face. But she's going to move this

morning from devastation to celebration.

She's going to move from weeping to witnessing, from tears to

triumph. And I think that's God's

invitation for all of us today, that we would understand who

Jesus is and what he means for the world.

In fact, jot down this big idea that only Jesus can turn tears

into triumph. He's the only one.

There is no other solution. There is no other antidote for

suffering in this world, for the darkness, for the brokenness

that you find yourself in. I think Jesus is going to

demonstrate in all of his resurrected glory the reality

that only he has the authority, only he has the best answer for

what to do about brokenness and suffering in the world.

We're going to be in John chapter 20, verse 11.

John 20:11

If you're there, say I am there. Now turn to your neighbor and

say, let's go. Turn to the neighbor you like

less. And I'm just kidding.

John 20 verse 11 says this. But Mary stood weeping.

John 20:11

Mary Magdalene, not Mary, the mother of Jesus.

She stood weeping outside the tomb.

And as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb.

Pause right there. Think about weeping.

Don't think like a barely a tear.

Think like ugly crying, weeping, the kind where she can't get

words out, the kind where she can't see she is weeping.

And she Stoops to look into the tomb.

And she saw 2 angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus

had been laying in one at the head and one at the foot of the

bed. They said to her, woman, why are

you weeping? She said to them, They have

taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.

Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing,

but she did not know that it was Jesus.

Let's stop right there. Let's help turn our tears into

triumph this morning. And let's stop and make note of

this, that tears turn to triumph first when Jesus appears.

And I see clearly the way through the tears, the way

through the suffering is by seeing the appearance of Jesus

Christ. That when you see Jesus clearly,

you see the world clearly. When you see who He is and what

He means for your life, you can't help but understand and

see with crystal clear heavenly perspective on the world and on

suffering. She came looking for a corpse,

and she finds herself the King. This is so interesting.

Like Mary is standing there weeping.

She's coming to do the burial things, and she's like, wait a

second, he's gone. Now, in the Bible, a lot of

crazy things happen, but even Mary Magdalene didn't have a

category for, hey, this guy could have actually rose from

the Ted. She's like, obviously somebody

must have took him. Somebody must have his body

because dead people don't just start walking around.

So she's grieved not just at the reality that he's dead, but also

that her friend is missing. She is weeping over his lost

body. And she turns around and she,

after talking to the Angel, she sees what she thinks is the

gardener. It's Jesus in resurrected glory,

and he's not the the last time she saw him.

I mean, he's as bloody as blood. He gets his face marred beyond

all understanding and even visibility.

And she sees a resurrected, glorified Jesus and she doesn't

recognize him. You guys have had a similar

experience before. You've been in an airport, maybe

across the country, and somebody runs into you and you're not

expecting to see them there. And they're like, hey, and you

just can't place them. You're like, I know you from

somewhere, but I'm not expecting to see you here across the

country. So what is your name?

You've had it somewhere, maybe not at an airport.

But that bewildering experience is what she's going through

right now. She's just like, I'm not

expecting to see. You're like the last person I

expect to see. But he has appeared and she's

about to see clearly. And I can't help but wonder if

you're here today and you're like, man, can I even trust that

this story isn't just a fable, that this isn't just made-up?

Well, listen to this. This is not the kind of way you

would write a resurrection story narrative.

This is not the way. If you wanted to make up a

story, you wouldn't have started with a woman seeing Jesus back

then. It said by rabbinical law that

it was better to be burned than have a woman testify.

If this was made-up, they wouldn't have said Mary was the

first one to saw him, the first one to see him.

He appears first to women. That detail is in there because

that's what happened. And that should give you some

confidence that this story isn't fake.

It's not made-up. But in case you're still

wondering, like, hey, can I trust the resurrection count of

the gospel? I know that I'm in a church

right now. I know that Jesus is who you

guys worship. But what other theories are even

out there for what happened on that day in that tomb other than

he resurrected Because the cynical side of us might go, you

know, I kind of doubt that he rose from the dead.

Fair. But let me explain some

alternate theories to you where a speed run through these

objections. The first one I call Black

Panther theory. Black Panther theory is that

Jesus like faked his death almost.

That he only appeared to have died on that Roman cross, That

the Roman soldiers didn't know what they're doing.

That for some reason on that day they did not figure out how

crucifixion worked and that Jesus just faked his own death

just to appear dead. But listen to me, that is never

happens in all Roman history. It just doesn't happen even

through outside of the Bible. There's no example of a

crucifixion just not working. They knew what they were doing.

So Black Panther theory doesn't feel plausible to me.

Ocean's 11 theory. These are all movies, by the

way, because I like movies. Ocean's 11 theory is the idea

that the disciples took him in a holy heist of some sort.

They're like, you know what we're going to do?

We're going to get past these Roman guards.

We're going to roll away this massive tomb and we're going to

we're going to get Jesus out of there.

That's hard to maintain a conspiracy of that magnitude.

First of all, and you might be a conspiracy theorist, but the

reality of those Roman soldiers would not have seen, heard, or

even vocalize the reality. It's just not plausible that

they stole the body of Jesus. They had to take him across the

distance all the way to the reality that like, hey, we hit

him just long enough so that he could be seen.

It just doesn't make sense. And and the reality that his

body when it's seen again, does not have much of the wounds that

he carried. He just has the nail pierced

hands. How do they do that?

How do they fix that up? I mean, cosmetic surgery is good

nowadays. I don't think it was that great

back then. I don't think Ocean's 11 theory

really works, nor Parent Trap theory that this is the idea

that Jesus had a twin who died in his place.

People, you might be thinking that that seems plausible.

Like you're like I like Christopher Nolan movies.

Maybe you think of prestige instead of Parent Trap.

I don't know. But listen to me.

His wounds were a visible post resurrection.

He still had the nail scarred hands.

So you got to deal with that. Either he died or he didn't.

And if he didn't die, then how? It's not very plausible.

The inception theory is a group. Group think like hallucination

that we all dreamed this up, that all 500 people who saw him

after he resurrects, they're like, yeah, no, we all saw the

same thing at the same time in the same way, the same Jesus.

This was public. What's crazy interesting to me

about that is up until this point in history, if you wanted

to be a Messiah figure, nobody thought to themselves, hey, let

me resurrect. Like that was not the way of the

Messiah. That's all following Jesus.

Jesus does it because that's what he did to save the world.

And so Messiah figures after started that, but not before.

It was not a hallucination. Nor is it this the dumb and

Dumber theory, which is the idea that as we look back in history,

that we actually nowadays, we have better technology, better

intelligence. We know more than them.

And I just think this one is a little bit silly because they're

more acquainted with death than we are.

They knew what a dead body looked like.

They knew what a dead body smelled like.

They knew what to do with it even more than we do.

Like they didn't need to call the mortician to figure that

out. They knew what a dead body was.

And we are not smarter than them because they realized what we

know. Dead people don't rise up from

the grave. The empty tomb is not the

problem, it's the point. Do you believe?

And do you see what Jesus has done?

That he beat death, robbed a grave.

That's the point. Every theory collapses under the

same question. How do you explain then

terrified disciples who were not even there that day of his

death, going from that to martyrs on the basis of we saw a

resurrected Jesus Christ, People would die for a lot of things.

They won't die the way the disciples did for the lie.

They'll recant, but they did it because they're willing to go to

their grave saying, I've seen him.

Seeing Jesus clearly changes how you see everything.

Tears turn to triumph when he appears.

You see clearly. I think one of the things you

see most clearly is that God cares about suffering.

God died in the most brutal, gruesome, horrific way

imaginable. He cares so much about suffering

that he went through it himself. That Christianity is the only

religion that offers that that reality that God is going to

suffer among us. He came our way.

We didn't have to go to him. He came to us.

And when you see suffering like that, it changes everything.

It's not the only way that our tears turn to triumph, though.

The second points in the text that you'll see is that tears

turn to triumph when he speaks. And I hear personally, she

didn't just see a resurrected Jesus, She heard from him

personally. Look back at the Bible with me.

Jesus said to her in verse 15, woman, why you're weeping?

Why are you crying? There's no crying in baseball.

No, he didn't say that. He said, Whom are you seeking

and supposing to be the gardener?

She said to him, Sir, if you have taken, if you have carried

Jesus away, tell me where you have laid him and I will take

him away. Jesus said to her one word that

changed the whole conversation. Jesus said to her in verse 16,

Mary. Now I don't know if he said it

in a tender way. I don't know if he said in an

authoritative way. I don't know if he said it with

an accent or in a goofy way that she heard it.

All we know is that Jesus said to her, Mary, and when she hears

her name, she turned and said to him in Aramaic, Raboni.

Raboni, which means teacher, the best kind of teacher, that this

is the biggest word for teachers that they've got.

Raboni, that when Jesus speaks, he speaks personally.

The God who spoke the world with a whisper, who was humble enough

to die for the world. He is personal enough.

He is near enough to call you by name.

He is transcendent over the world, but near.

Near enough to know your name and know your story.

Know you. The resurrected Christ knows

your name. He knows your grief.

He knows your loss. He knows the broken things that

you've experienced. He knows them personally.

And guess what? He meets you in it.

She is in the middle of the tear fest still.

She's still sobbing thinking her friend is gone, but he is not

gone. He is there and he sees her and

calls her by name. Every other worldview is going

to attempt to explain to you the brokenness of this world, but

none with an answer as accurate or as personal as Jesus and

Christianity. Listen to me, secular

materialism. We'll put it this way, that

suffering is random in your life.

It's meaningless. It's just atoms, like we're just

going about our life and guess what?

It's actually meaningless. So don't take it personally

because it isn't personal. It's just random with that's

without hope, there's no meaning to it.

There's no purpose to our existence.

That feels very bleak. Moralistic religion will tell

you that suffering is punishment, that you did

something wrong and that's why you're being punished.

You didn't do enough good things, you didn't pray enough

prayers, you didn't go to church enough.

That's why what you're experiencing is happening.

There's religions that claim the name of Jesus that are not the

way of Jesus. That would tell you that That's

why you're suffering. Eastern philosophy will tell you

that suffering comes from your desire, and the antidote to that

is to detach from the world. Hurricanes don't make sense of

that. Losing a child.

There's real brokenness in this world and some of you have lived

through it. And all of these other religions

with all these other world views, I don't think they hold

the candle to Christianity suffering.

Christianity is that it's real. It is not denied, it is

happening, it is existent. You can't deny it, but it can be

redeemed because God himself entered it.

He entered into it. He joined the suffering of our

world by incarnating himself from the throne of heaven, by

joining us as a human being. And he tells us that the hope

for our hardship is not in ourselves, it's in him.

Stephen Colbert, who's a popular late night host.

He had this conversation a few years back with Anderson Cooper.

If you don't know about Stephen Colbert, he when he was a kid,

when he's 10 years old, he lost his father and his teenage

brothers when he's 10 years old in a horrific helicopter crash.

What he says is it's a gift to exist, and with existence comes

suffering. There's no escaping that.

You get awareness of other people's loss, which allows you

to connect with that other person, which allows you to love

more deeply and understand what it's like to be a human being.

If it's true that all humans suffer, then we must realize

this, that if that's true, then then we must hope in this, that

in my Christian tradition, you're really not alone because

because God does it too. That cross that represents what

happened 2000 years ago back in Jerusalem.

It shows us that Jesus was willing to bear the heaviest

crown of suffering that's ever existed because he was not

guilty. He was innocent, paying for the

sins of the guilty so we could be forgiven.

He had three to four inch thorns driven into his skull.

He had nails pierced through his hands and his feet.

He took lash after lash after lash, 39 on his back, tearing

skin from bone. It's that graphic on purpose.

Because God wants us to know He sees you.

And when He calls you by name out of your suffering, out of

the brokenness, He wants you to know that He loved you enough to

empathize with it, to sympathize with our weaknesses.

Jesus doesn't just call you out of a crowd.

He calls you by name. He is not a way, a truth, and a

life. Jesus Christ is the way, the

truth, the life, and no one gets to heaven except through Him.

There's no other hope. That's it.

That's all we got to hang our lives on.

Our eternity hangs in the balance of what will you do with

the empty tomb? Will you believe in who Jesus is

and what he has done so that your tears would turn to

triumph? Would you see him clearly?

Would you hear his voice loud and clear personally in your

life? It is not whether or not

somebody else has heard him personally.

If your mom or your dad, your grandma, your grandpa, your

brother, your sister, your cousin, your friend, No, no, no.

What will you do with the tears that you have?

Will you bring them to Jesus? Say, Jesus, I have no hope for

my sin. I have no hope for the suffering

in this world apart from you and your grace and your power.

The Bible says that Jesus Christ keeps our tears in a bottle.

That's how personal He is. Finally, tears turn to triumph,

and we'll see in the text when He ascends and I go boldly.

It's not just when He speaks, not just when he appears, but

when he ascends and I go bully. Look how the story wraps up.

Jesus said to her, do not cling to me, for I have not yet

ascended to the Father. More on that in a second, but go

to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father, and

your father to my God and your God.

Mary Magdalene does what he says.

She went and announced, she proclaimed, she shouted to the

disciples I have seen the Lord and that he had said these

things to her. Jesus is not the first person in

history to resurrect. We got Lazarus, we got Gyrus's

daughter. Like he did some miracles,

right? He had authority over it.

The thing that separates Jesus isn't just the fact that he

resurrected. Jesus dies on a cross for us,

bloody cross. He resurrects by the power of

the of God empty tomb, but he goes to the Father never to die

again. Nobody else has that.

The ascension is his coronation as King of Kings and Lord of

Lords. It is not merely that he

conquered death, it's that he truly conquered death forever.

Which gives you and I hope that guess what, we when we die, we

don't have to have the fear of dying again.

Because guess what? We will be alive just as he is

alive. We will be made new, just as He

is made new that the New Jerusalem.

When He comes back and step and sets forth His plan that He had

for all time, that guess what? The people who've called on Him

by name, who have called on his blood for salvation, who have

believed in the empty tomb and its powerful lives, guess what?

They will ascend in glory with Him.

They will live, never to die again, just as He did.

The ascension is so powerful because it's what separates

Jesus from every other human being in history.

It's what demonstrates the coronation that God looked at

him and said this is exactly why I said he was.

It's the receipt that we can take in, cash in and say He is

exactly who the Bible teaches him to be.

And you don't have to look at the Bible to know that Jesus was

real. You can look outside or you can

look at like, Roman historians and they will tell you that

something happened in the Middle East with a man named Jesus.

He definitely died on a cross. The thing that the world is

perplexed by, the thing that historians couldn't make sense

of is this. Was it an empty tomb?

And did he go to heaven afterwards?

And the Bible makes it abundantly clear that's what he

did next. He hangs out on earth for 40

days, goes to a room and like shocks all his disciples that

he's alive. Next he makes some fish tacos

with them on the beach. Then he like tells them what he

what? Hey, here's some Archie wars

Before I go. He explains to some people like,

hey, here's the Bible. He has this chat walking with

them on the road one day Jesus Christ is not going back to the

grave. He ascended to the right hand of

the Father. He has gone to the throne.

If you want to know who to put your hope and brokenness in,

guess what? I'm going with the guy who

looked at a grave and said, yeah, I'm not going back there.

The one who has authority over death because he has the words

of life. If that guy has the power over

life and death, then he certainly has the power over me.

And so I'm going to listen to him because his grave is empty.

Listen to me. Buddha is dead.

He's not getting back up. Muhammad is dead.

Joseph Smith remains dead. There is only one who is risen

and reigning, and his name is Jesus Christ.

There is no other. That is it.

He did not come to make bad people good.

He came to make dead people alive.

Listen to me. That is the only hope you have.

That's all you've got if you want to experience the life that

God wanted to give you from the very start.

It is not going to be found in anyone or anything else, any

other philosophy, any other religion.

There is one way, one truth, one life, and he is alive right now.

That's what we're celebrating this Easter.

That's what we put our hope in. You guys can clap.

Go ahead. We're going to clap, Clap.

And because he's alive and ascended, he is on the loose.

Like Easter makes Jesus dangerous.

He's not trapped somewhere. He's out there making a

difference, taking back the world, prevailing against the

gates of hell. And he's looking for you.

He is looking for you so that you could go boldly and tell

others about what he has done. He has found a way in every

single generation to thrill hearts.

In today's coronation Day, we get to celebrate what He has

done. We get to like Mary, come to the

tomb with tears and leave with a testimony, the story of what God

has done. That's why Christians, that's

why we continue to share. It's what it's what happens.

It's the natural conclusion to seeing a miracle.

The reaction is easy. When you see something awesome,

you can't shut up about it. One of the telltale signs that

you're actually a Christian is that this thing, you can't stop

talking about it. You can't stop thinking about

it. It's personal to you.

It's powerful to you. And because you saw a miracle,

you want it to go viral. You want everyone to know he

opened blind eyes. So go boldly.

You've seen him, you've heard him, you've seen him with your

now not blind eyes. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ

and be saved. So what are you going to do

about your tears? Where we started?

There's brokenness in the world. There's brokenness in you,

around you, beside you. Where are you going to put your

hope in for that? Is it in yourself?

Is it in someone else? Is it another philosophy?

I think you'll be spectacularly disappointed in those things,

but not in Jesus. Wherever you're at today, I want

to speak to you directly. In fact, you see these cards

right here, the press dimension we're going to need at the end

of the service today. These are our Connect with us

cards. We've been praying for you by

name. We've been praying for some of

you and not even knowing your names, but we're asking that you

would respond to what you've heard today in four different

ways. And you're going to write in the

prayer request card one of these 4 letters.

The 1st is the letter A, which just means this, that you're

already a Christian. Here's what I mean by that.

I'm going to ask you write down one of these 4 letters and for

you to know what you're doing with your tears, whether that

you're going to turn to God for the triumph over them.

The first person is somebody who says I'm already Christian.

You know that Jesus called you by name and you speak for him.

You live for him. Easter is more than a holiday

for you. It is the hope of your soul.

Historical faith says this, that Christ lives, but saving faith

says this, Christ lives in me. That's what it means to already

be a Christian. Not just that you go to church,

not just that you pray prayers, not that just you've thought

about God a few times or you say you believe in God.

There's a type of belief that saves, and it's the kind that

says I'm banking everything on this.

The bloody cross, the empty tomb, the throne in heaven.

You're already a Christian. Second category B is somebody

who wants to begin a relationship with God today.

You came today with wounds. You came today feeling the

brokenness of your life, the suffering that you've

experienced, and you're realizing there's no way out

except for Jesus. There's no hope for sin, Satan,

and death except for him. And today you're hearing him

call you by name. If that's you, I'm going to talk

to you in just one more moment, but I'm going to tell you how to

start that relationship with God in just a second.

The third group is C and it's OK if you're in this group

considering it's still just because you've heard the gospel

today doesn't mean you are going to respond today.

Maybe there's another day for you.

You just want to consider it more.

You want to do some more investigation.

You want to get an AI and start talking to him about, hey, this

is what he just said real. I don't know how you're going to

process it. I know this that some of you are

still in the considering it first, and may I just tell you

this is a great place to consider whatever your next step

is with Jesus. If your next step is

considering, this is a great place to do that.

It is OK to explore, OK to learn who Jesus is here because we

want to tell you all about him and what he means for your life.

In fact, I would just encourage you maybe in your exploration,

maybe just read this whole book of John this week and I would

love for you to highlight or to underline when you do that the

word believe and what you're going to find is in the Gospel

of John is there's 99 times it says the word believe.

So I think the 100th time the author John wanted you to be the

one to say I believe in Jesus Christ.

Consider it more Finally, maybe you're here and that is OK.

Welcome to Saint City. It's the D category.

Don't ever intend to follow Jesus.

Welcome to Saint City and welcome to Easter, Resurrection

Sunday. We're a place for skeptics too.

Skeptics and Saints are welcome here.

Don't worry about it. But I would ask you one

question. What are you going to do about

the empty tomb? The historical reality that a

man named Jesus came, he died and he went to a grave, and

there was a bunch of people from that era, from that chapter in

history who said he walked out of it.

You got to wrestle with that question.

I think it's the question with which all of human history

hinges upon. Come up with an answer that you

can give your life to. As for me, I think he's risen

and reigning. If you were in that B category,

this prayer doesn't save you. But what it does is it's you

saying, I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and I'm repenting

of my sins. I'm turning from my life and I'm

turning to him for triumph. It's you saying, God, I need you

in my life. It's not the prayer that says

it's the belief in the trust and who Jesus is that does.

And I just want to make it as easy as possible for you.

So would you just pray with me? If that's all of you, join me,

but the B group especially, pray with me.

Lord, thank you for conquering death for me so that I could be

reborn. I am a dead person in need of

life. Forgive me of all my sin and

save me from the punishment of it.

I give my life to you now, My calendar, my budget, my words.

I give it all to you because you gave everything for me.

Jesus name, Amen. Amen.

Would you stand and sing in worship?