I AM: The Good Sheperd

Welcome to the Celebration Church Orlando podcast.

We are so glad you've joined us and we hope you are encouraged by today's message.

Hey church, I hope that you all are doing well with your family and your friends.

We want to thank you so much for joining us for our church at home experience.

If there's anything that we can do for you as a church, please don't hesitate to let us know.

Know that we're praying for you.

We're encouraged by you.

We want to encourage you and we're walking with you through every step that you may be taking.

My wife and I, Megan, we're so grateful to be the lead pastors here at Celebration Orlando.

And our hope and prayer along with our team is that you can continue to engage with us.

If you're watching this from um online, maybe it's your first time with us, maybe you've been around for a while, just let us know that you're checking it out.

Maybe you can post a picture of it, tag us in it.

We just want to be able to engage with our online community and thank you guys so much for being with us.

As we mentioned earlier from Pastor Justin, we're so excited to be continuing in our our second week of our series, I am.

This is a series where we're going to be exploring these seven powerful I am statements that Jesus makes throughout the course of the book of John.

And each of those I am statements are directly connected to uh an idea, a theological framework that's been established earlier in the Old Testament as we as we know it.

We see that word appear like for the first time in the Exodus chapter 3, verse 14, where God says to Moses in the burning bush, I am, I am who I am, I will be who I will be, I will be what you need me to be, is this powerful phrase that the ancient readers back then they would have understood and knew that Jesus was directly connecting himself with Yahweh, that self-existing, all-powerful God.

Exodus 3:14

So when Jesus makes this statement, he is directly connecting himself with the God of the Old Testament.

It's such a powerful idea.

And I truly believe that as we looked at last week, if we can just know who God is, then we will know who we are as well.

We know what we have access to.

And that is what we talked about last week.

So if you didn't get a chance to check out our message from last week, please go back, take a look at it, and then you can continue on in our extended series called After the Message, where we even had some more practical conversations around what does it mean when Jesus says that he is the true vine.

This week I'm excited to continue on in the conversation.

So if you do have your Bibles with you, I want to invite you to join me in the Gospel of John chapter 10.

John 10 · chapter mention

We're gonna read a couple of passages here, we're gonna pray and unpack a few things here that I think can be an encouragement for us.

But but Jesus starts off at verse number one, and he says this.

He says, Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in any other way, that man is a thief and a robber.

But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.

To him the gatekeeper opens, the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name, and he leads them out.

When he has brought them out, all that is his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee for him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.

This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

So Jesus says again, Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.

I'm going to pause there.

I want you guys to make sure that you tune in next week because we're going to be unpacking what does it mean when Jesus says that he is the door of the sheep.

We'll check that out in just a moment, but let's go on.

Verse number eight, he says this All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.

I am the door, and if anyone enters by me, he will be saved and he will go in and out and find pasture.

The thief only comes to steal, to kill, and destroy, but I come that they may have life and have it abundantly.

Verse number 11.

This is our crescendo for our thought today.

I am the good shepherd.

The shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Today I want to talk to us about this idea of what does it really mean when we're being shepherded by Jesus?

Such a powerful idea, such a powerful concept of knowing that Jesus is shepherding us, but we also have a part to play in this.

If you're taking notes, I simply want you to write this message title down.

We're going to keep it simple, The Good Shepherd.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you so much for your word.

We're so thankful that, God, that even in environments where we have to adjust, God, where we can gather together in community and family, Lord God, we know that the church can never be canceled.

We can simply move and gather and expand in a way that your church has constantly done throughout all periods of time.

So, Father, we just pray over the next few moments that you give us open eyes, open ears, and open hearts to hear, to see, and receive everything that you have for us.

We pray with an expectation in Jesus' name.

Amen and amen.

You know, most of you guys that have been around me for any period of time, you know that I often like to share stories with you about my family because it's it's such a critical part of me.

In the same way that God's family is so important for him.

And one of the things that I love about whenever my family gets together is when we get a chance to all sit at the table and enjoy a meal.

It's it's a beautiful thing.

It's a little bit chaotic because I have uh I have granddaughters who are there.

I have my my son, my daughter-in-law, I have my youngest son, Caleb, and my and my middle daughter, Daniera.

Like we all are sitting at the table along with my wife, and it can be a lot of things going on.

There's a lot of voices, there's a lot of activity.

I have I have granddaughters who are crawling all over the place.

They're they're trying to color and they're fighting and they're arguing and things are spilling.

It's a it's a beautiful mess, and I actually have really grown to enjoy it.

But more recently, just a couple of weeks ago, we all had a chance to go out to dinner and um and grab something to eat.

And that same scenario was playing out exactly as I said it.

We're all there and things are messy, but it's beautiful.

We're laughing, we're joking.

Some of the kids are the grandchildren are crying, but it's all good and and it's and it's really beautiful.

But then there's this moment where our server comes to us and she asks us if there's anything else that we want, and and of course we're we're done.

We're like, no, we're we're all finished for the day.

And then she brings to us the bill.

She puts it right in front of me.

And as she places it in front of me, she smiles and I and I thank her for it.

And as I'm beginning to reach in my pocket to pull out my card to pay for it, I begin to look around and I look at the faces of my family members.

They're all, without even missing the beat, they're all laughing and joking and continuing to engage with one another.

And then I had like this cynical chuckle in the back of my mind.

I said, Man, it must feel good when when you don't have to worry about paying the bill.

As soon as I said those words, there was like this pause that was put into my spirit because what I felt like God said to me is, this is what it looks like when children know that their father's got it all covered.

It hit so hard in my heart because I can honestly say to you, church, that there have been moments in my life where I've been sitting at the Lord's table, but I've been worrying about how things were gonna get handled.

I've been sitting at the Lord's table and I've been wondering who's gonna pay the bill.

I've been sitting at the Lord's table, and there's even been moments when I didn't feel like I was fit to be there.

Some of us can probably relate to that when we think of times where we've been invited to sit at the Lord's table, but all we're thinking about is the baggage and the things that we feel that really may have disqualified us.

I want to encourage somebody in here right now that lets you know that no matter what you've done, you're invited to sit at the Lord's table.

But what's also powerful is for us to understand is that Jesus paid the bill.

Whenever we try to pay something that Jesus has already paid, we pay with the currency that some kind can cost us our sleep.

We pay with the currency of anxiety, we pay with the currency of stress, we pay with the currency of fear, we pay with the currency of doubt, we pay with the currency of sleepless nights.

This is why when Jesus shows up and he begins to talk to us about him being the good shepherd, it is meant to help us to understand that he's got it all covered.

See, the Bible says it this way in Proverbs 12, verse 25.

Proverbs 12:25

Anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down, but the good words can make him glad.

That means that anxiety just has this ability of weighing us down.

We end up carrying things that God never intended for us to carry.

We're carrying a weight, we're we're carrying fr we're carrying frustrations, we're carrying fear, we're we're carrying condemnation.

And the Bible says that those things can weigh us down, it can put us in quicksand where it's like we're not getting the forward momentum that we know that God's best declares that we should have.

It can weigh us down.

But I love the response, the answer to that found in 1 Peter 5, 7, where it says, casting all your cares on him because he cares for you.

There's this exchange that begins to take place.

This moment when even though I got some things that are weighing me down, I have the ability to put him at the foot of the cross, and those things actually begin to be a lift to me.

I'm not sure what we're carrying right now, but I know that we live in a season right now where anxiety is very interested in adding itself to our luggage, just adding itself and weighing us down and keeping us from moving with the progress that God had intended us to do.

But I think our response in these moments is to do our best to position ourselves as close to the foot of the cross as possible, to lean in on God's word and learn how to cast our cares on Him, knowing that He cares for us.

Unfortunately, if we're not careful, we will carry things that we should be casting.

We will spend our energy worrying instead of worshiping.

We will walk in fear instead of walking by faith.

See, whenever we let circumstances get too close to us, they begin to whisper in the ears of our insecurity and we lose sight of the fact that Jesus has already got it all covered.

Please don't misunderstand something that I'm that I'm not trying to communicate.

By no means am I insinuating that we don't have to count the cost.

Am I saying that there's not moments where we don't have to be very aware of what's going on in the reality of what it is that we're facing?

Remember, faith does not deny facts, it believes God in spite of them.

But here's the thing I want us to make sure of.

The truth is facts should inform our strategy, but it shouldn't inform our faith.

Facts should inform our strategies, but it shouldn't inform our faith.

Whenever facts bypass faith, they fuel our fear.

That's what happens when we allow the facts of what's going on, and we don't run it through the grid of our faith and through what God's word says, it just ends up fueling our fear, which ends up weighing us down, paralyzing us, and keeping us from moving forward.

When Jesus makes this statement of saying that he is the good shepherd, what he's trying to do is he's trying to help us to know as followers what we can expect from him.

Because shepherds have a very powerful job description.

In fact, it's very interesting that in spite of, of course, knowing that God is a king and Jesus is Lord and all those powerful things, but the profession that is often connected to Jesus is in God is that of a shepherd.

The idea of knowing that he's a shepherd.

There's a couple of passages that I want us to write down so we can see just how serious God takes this idea of him being a shepherd to his people.

Psalm 78, 52, Psalm 80, verse 1, Isaiah 40, verse 11, Jeremiah 31, 10, Ezekiel 34, 11, 12, and verse 23, the Gospel of John 10, verse 11, Hebrews 13, 20, 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 25, 1 Peter 5, uh, verse 4.

Psalms 80:1 Isaiah 40:11 John 10:11 1 Peter 2:25

We see that there's this constant thread all throughout the course of the Bible where God wants to make sure that his people know that we are being shepherded by him, that he is our shepherd.

It's interesting how even David, who was a type and shadow of Jesus, that he had the profession of being a shepherd.

It seems as if there's this connection that God wants to make sure that we understand the importance that he wants to be with us.

And the reason why this is so important is because I think that we can often have the posture of the Pharisees and the aristocrats.

Back in those days, even though that was one of the most popular and common professions back in those days, it was still viewed as something that was very lowly.

It was very one of those things that was considered an insignificant profession, even though it was connected directly to our Lord.

Why is that?

Maybe there's a little bit of pride that keeps us from recognizing that.

And let me explain to you why.

See, shepherding is messy.

It's because sheep are messy.

And if you are, if your life has been anything like mine, I'm pretty sure we all have moments where we realize that that life is messy.

Kind of like when I'm sitting and having dinner with my entire family, that something's gonna spill, something's not gonna, there's gonna be crumbs around.

Like sometimes it can get a little bit messy.

And so what the Bible is showing us is that a shepherd, he doesn't run away from the mess, he actually leans directly into it.

Why is it that the Pharisees and the aristocrats, those who are so knowledgeable, and last week we talked about the knowledge of good and evil, those who kind of separate themselves because of what they know, why is it for this particular group of people, they they wanted to act, they wanted to stiff arm this profession of shepherding?

I think it's because they they knew just how messy it could be, and sometimes pride will cause us not to see the value in something just because it's a little bit unclean.

That's the pattern that we often see here.

Pride will struggle to see the value in messy things because it often thinks it's too clean or too good to clean it up itself.

It's easier to throw it away than it is to clean it up.

It's easier to discard something than it is to develop it.

That seems to be the posture that we see in society nowadays that whenever someone or something doesn't work out, let's find a way to get rid of it and actually instead of trying to find ways to invest into it and make it a little bit better.

I I remember um several years ago, many of you guys know I I'm I'm a big sneakerhead.

I love shoes and I have ever since I was a young man.

And and I remember just collecting Jordans.

Had a whole had a whole closet full of them.

And and you know, the new Jordans will come out and you kind of put the other ones in the box, but before we knew about resale values and and and the OG versions coming back out again, you would just have them and you would eventually get rid of them.

And I remember in the in the early 90s, I had a pair and and it got to a point where I wasn't going to wear them anymore.

So I kind of just put them inside of my closet and they became my everyday shoes.

I just wore them um when I was even cutting the grass and things that you would never think that you would do um with shoes that have that significant value to them.

Well, I remember I had a friend that came over one day and he saw them just kind of sitting in my closet.

He was like, man, I think these um I think these have a little bit of value was a few years later.

I took them out of the box and I looked at them and I saw all the grass stains on them.

I saw all the mud that was on them, I saw just how they weren't very well kept up.

So I said, man, I don't I don't want them.

He said, Are you sure?

I was like, yeah, man, you can take them.

You can you can completely have them.

My friend then took those shoes and he took them home and he put the painstaking work in of cleaning them up.

Really, really just getting a toothbrush out and just scrubbing them.

Some of y'all know what I'm talking about, just scrubbing every little thread, really helping it to re to to rebring to the surface its value and its significance.

A few months later, he was able to resell those shoes for like more than quadruple the initial cost.

I mean, a significant amount.

In fact, he still actually owes me a portion of that money, because as far as I'm concerned, I still I still gifted it to him.

But it was a valuable lesson that I learned.

That when something got messy, I didn't see the value in it anymore, so I was quick to discard it.

But meanwhile, we I had a friend who was willing to recognize that even though it may be a little bit messy, he still saw the value in it.

He still saw the significance in it, and then he took it upon himself to do what was necessary in order to clean it up and to bring the value back up to the surface.

Isn't it good to know that we have a God?

That in spite of the messiness that's in our life, that in spite of the mistakes that we may make, he doesn't view it as, man, there's just way too much work for me to put in on this.

I'm just going to discard and throw it away.

We're in some messy situations, but I love that we have a Lord, a shepherd, who is willing to step into our situations and say, no matter how messy this is, I'm willing to get on my hands and my feet and do my part to help clean this up.

Jesus models this for us when he washes his disciples' feet when he's sitting at the Last Supper.

He's showing this that no matter how far in life, no matter what my value, no matter what my esteem is, that I am a shepherd who is willing to get on my hands and my knees and to do everything I need to do to walk alongside my sheep and to make sure that they are clean.

That is a powerful thought to know that when the Lord says that he's our shepherd, he's not running away from your mess.

He's not running away from the messiness that we find ourselves in.

He is leaning into it and doing everything that we will allow him to do to help us to experience the cleanliness that God truly wants us to have.

You see, one of the primary things that a shepherd does is that a shepherd's job description essentially comes down to to guide, to provide, and to protect.

That is the that is the job description of a shepherd.

That is what they do, and I love how the psalmist David tells us in Psalm 23 how we can see this looked in our day-to-day lives.

I want to read this to us.

Starting at verse number one, it says this, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul, he leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

And even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

Verse number five.

You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies, you anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever and ever.

This is this is such a powerful thought to know that God loves us so much, that he's with us through every season, and I love the passage where it says that he restores our souls.

Kind of like how my friend restored the souls of the shoes, but you guys get what I'm saying.

He restores our souls, he sees our value, he understands those moments when we're depleted.

He's gonna he's gonna do everything that we will allow him to do to allow us to be refreshed in his presence.

But the question with all of these things is that no matter how good of a shepherd Jesus may be to us, the only way that we can truly be the beneficiaries of it, the only way that we can really receive the blessings of everything that God extends to us is that we have to play our part.

And quite honestly, to play our part, that means that we have to be the sheep.

That means that we have a part to play in all this as well.

Because no matter what God extends to us, if we don't receive it, we will never truly get the benefit of what those things are.

In order for us truly to experience the blessing that comes from the shepherd, we have to be the sheep.

And here's the job description of a sheep.

I want us to remember this.

Just simply write this down.

I think it's gonna be the most powerful thing that you will hear all year long.

Follow.

Just follow.

That is the res that is the that is the re the request that God extends to us.

Can you follow me?

Can you can you just can you lay aside all these?

Can you follow me?

Can we listen to what God's word says about us instead of allowing other things to dilute the way that we see ourselves?

Can we allow ourselves to follow Him?

The text goes on to say it tells us how the we don't follow a stranger's voice because we don't recognize it.

In fact, we should flee from it.

This is why I believe that the enemy loves to keep us away from environments that allow us to understand what God's voice says about us so that we can find ourselves going astray, listening to a voice that does not reinforce what God's calling and purpose is for our lives.

We have to follow.

That word follow, Shema, it simply means to obey, to surrender, to listen, to be obedient to what God's word says about us.

That is what God is requesting for us to do.

If we really are going to allow him to be the shepherd of our lives, it requires us to follow.

There's three overarching statements, declarations, I would even say, that we have to make as sheep daily.

This is not a one-time thing, but every day we have to make this decision.

And I want us to write these down.

Here's the first one.

I will not want.

It's so simple.

The text says, The Lord is my shepherd, I will not want.

But really think about what that means.

I will not want means that we recognize that God is our provider.

I will not want recognizes that he is our true vine.

I will not want recognizes that he is our source.

See, the Bible says it this way.

It says that the shepherd knows the condition of his flock.

And when you look at that word condition, it actually is a word that means front.

It means face.

It's often connected to understanding facial features.

So that means that God knows what we're facing, he knows our face, he knows what our struggles are.

Which means that if God knows what we're walking through, then he knows what we need.

Notice I didn't use the word want.

See, God is not so much focused on what we want, he delivers what we need.

Unfortunately, we have this desires of our heart that sometimes are straying us away from the things that God truly wants us to have because we're so fixated on the things that we want.

But God knows exactly what we need.

See, the thing is that that a lot of times we we want things that we really don't need.

And as a father of a now 16-year-old, I find myself having these conversations with my son when he comes home to me and he says, Dad, I I really need this.

I'm like, son, do you really need this or is that just something that you want?

Do you do you really need, do you really need those new Jordans, or is that something that you want?

No, I really need those Jordans.

He does it because he doesn't he can't pay for them, but I can.

But but you understand the point.

There's times where I think that we can often come to God and we're asking him and saying, God, I really, really need this.

And he's like, No, you want that.

But if I give you that thing that you want, that's actually going to pull you away from me.

So so maybe this is not the best season for you to have that.

See, our job is to simply embrace what God is presenting to us and accept it and know that he's not holding anything back from us, that God is going to give us exactly what we need.

It's I I love it how the Bible tells us that our God has the ability to supply all of our needs.

All of our needs.

When we needed salvation, God provided it for us.

When we needed, when we needed healing, God provided it for us.

When we needed a miracle, God provides it for us.

When we needed our breakthrough, God provided for us.

When we needed community, God provides it for us.

When we needed to be able to say on earth as it is in heaven, He He provides it for us.

God has this ability of providing what we need, but we have to understand that sometimes we have to submit what we want.

Even Jesus walked through this when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he had this moment, and if I can paraphrase it, Lord, I don't want to die.

There's got to be another way for us to fulfill this idea of salvation.

I don't want this, but nevertheless, not my will.

Nevertheless, not my wants.

Nevertheless, not what I am looking to get out of this, but your will be done.

It's that beautiful exchange where we can get to a place in our walk with God where we can surrender what we want and to receive what we really need.

That is a place of healing and freedom.

And that's a declaration that I believe that God wants us to make over our lives every day.

I don't want anything that God doesn't want me to have.

I don't want anything that's going to take me away from my relationship with God.

I don't want anything that's going to take me out of covenant in the places that God has called me to be.

Here's a second statement that I believe that we can see a responsibility is as sheep.

I will not fear.

That is a statement.

But here's the thing about that statement.

Did you know that fear is a choice?

A lot of times we have things that are presented to us and we have a moment to respond to it, but the Bible says that I will not fear.

See, Scripture tells us that love casts out fear.

And when we receive the love of God, it allows us to walk in a place of boldness even when we're facing circumstances that maybe we don't even have all the answers for.

It says that even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will not fear because the shepherd is with us.

That's the context to it all.

Maybe in our own strength, we have a reason to be afraid.

Maybe in our own strength that when we look at the news and we see the pandemic, when we look at the reality of the world that we live in, whether it be divisiveness, all the corruption that we see, in its own, maybe those are enough things that could fuel our fear.

But the Bible says that he is with us.

The reason why we don't have fear is because we have a shepherd that is in the valley with us.

See, I truly believe that there is victory in the valley when you know that you have a shepherd that's with you.

All throughout the course of the Bible, I see these moments where people engage in these battles and these moments of that should be filled with fear.

But when the shepherd is with them, there's victory there.

You see, it makes me it makes me think about how the children of Israel they fought against the Amalekites and they were in a valley.

But there was a shepherd there, and that shepherd being Moses, as long as his hands were lifted up, as long as he had his hands lifted up, the Bible says that they were able to be victorious over their adversaries.

See, you may be in a valley, but if you have a shepherd that is in the valley with you, I promise you you can be victorious of it.

It reminds me of David when he fights Goliath in 1 Samuel chapter 17.

1 Samuel 17 · chapter mention

The Bible says that battle takes place in the valley.

But the truth of the matter is that we had a shepherd in the valley as well, and he was able to use what was in his hands to be victorious over a giant that was standing right in front of him.

Maybe you're in a valley right now, but there's a shepherd in the valley with you, and maybe God will take what's in your hand to put the enemy under your feet because you have so much power and dominion when the shepherd is in the valley with you.

Maybe you feel like you're in a valley, but you are not alone.

You have your shepherd that is with you.

I think about the valley of dry bones, something that should be filled with death and decay.

But when the God of God, when the Lord of Lords shows up and he says, Can these bones live?

Listen to me, church.

Sometimes God's going to pose a question.

We may be seeing residue of brokenness all around us, but God will say, But do you think they can live?

Are you speaking from the place of knowing that my shepherd is with me?

So I can say, get up and walk.

I can look at some things that are decaying and recognize the goodness of God in it, or am I only going to react to the things that I think fear is trying to fuel in my life?

I think we have an option that's in front of us and we have a choice to make.

Am I going to respond with fear or am I going to respond with faith because I know that my shepherd is with me?

God is with you in your valley.

And here's here's the third thing.

It says that not only will we will we not fear, not only will we be people who will not want, we don't want anything that God doesn't want for us, but lastly, I think it's this I will dwell in the house of the Lord.

I'm going to stay where God planted me.

We talked about this at great length last week, and so I want to encourage you that if you didn't check it out to go back and recognize what we were talking about in the sense of Jesus being our true vine.

But but I do want to make sure that we that we lean in on this, that I will stay planted in the place that God has called me to be.

I will stay planted in my marriage.

I will stay planted in my home.

I will stay planted in my family.

I will stay planted in my church.

Because if I'm ever going to truly produce the fruit that God has placed on the inside of me, it's going to require me to stay planted.

God has called us all to be fruitful and to multiply.

But in order for us to do that, we have to stay faithful to the places that He's called us to be.

So here's my question for us, church, as we prepare to wrap up.

God is He's saying that He's our shepherd.

Jesus is saying that He's our shepherd.

But here's the question Am I being an effective sheep?

Am I following?

Am I truly Am I truly getting behind him and allowing his voice to be the thing that leads me, or am I allowing some other components to come in?

Because the Bible says it this way.

It says that surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

I wish I had some time to unpack this thing.

And if I wasn't sitting here, I would stand up and begin to preach this thing.

Because what I want you to walk away with for today is I want you to see this.

That as long as I'm following God, good things will follow me.

That as long as I'm following God, hope is going to follow me.

As long as I'm following God, peace is going to follow me.

As long as I'm following God, grace is going to follow me.

As long as I'm following God, strength is going to follow me.

As long as I'm following God, healing is going to follow me.

That means that as long as I'm following God, no matter where it may lead me, I will be victorious.

That is the power of what it means when we say that the Lord is our shepherd.

Are you following God?

Because if God, if you're following God, I promise you, good things are going to be following you.

I love you, church, and I know that we're in a season now where there's a lot of different voices that are fighting for our attention.

There's a lot of things that are even looking to be our shepherd.

News, social media, these these things that are looking to be the things that shepherd us, that lead us, that guide us.

But if we can lean in on God's word, we can run away from a stranger and begin to lean into the voice of God and recognize that He is the one that's supposed to be the one that we yield ourselves to and that we follow.

We may be in a season right now where we may not know what the next day may be.

We don't know what the next news break may be, but the Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want.

I shall not have any fear, and I will dwell in the places that God has called us to dwell.

I love every single one of you.

And maybe you're with us right now and you'll say, I have not made the Lord my shepherd.

I have not surrendered my life to Jesus as of yet.

I want to include you in a simple prayer.

You'll see uh you'll see a little tag come up at the bottom of the screen that's gonna instruct you on a number that you can text us so we can know that you're responding to this.

But if that's you, I want you to receive Jesus in your heart right now, believing that he is your shepherd and that we're gonna walk with you through every step of the way.

Lord, we're so thankful.

We're thankful for the opportunities that we have to gather as a family and as a community, and also those moments where we're able to surrender our lives to you, Father, recognizing God that Jesus laid his life down for us so that we can live for him.

So, Lord, I pray.

I pray alongside my brothers and sisters, everyone that is surrendering their life to Jesus, praying God that they will take those next steps, Father, so for they can become disciples, for them to be encouraged, for them to be strengthened in Jesus' name.

Church, as I mentioned, we don't know what the next couple of weeks are going to be, but I'm so grateful that we are able to engage in community right here at church at home.

We love that we have the resources and the tools that are at our fingertips that allows us to be able to stay connected as a community.

Something that you won't hear us hear us ever say here at Celebration Orlando is church is canceled.

Church never gets canceled.

We simply are able to gather and then be able to expand and go into different places.

What I love about this is that's the exact same pattern that we see in scripture.

Whenever there was any attacks against the church, the people of God will simply come together, they will become strengthened, and we would see the church grow.

Maybe, maybe this is an attack from the enemy.

What I'll tell you is this, though, I believe that God's going to do something powerful as a result of it.

So what we want to do is we want to continue to continue to fuel and put everything we can to into the church at home experience.

We want to actually even reach out to some of you that may even be interested in being some of our church at home hosts.

If that's you and you feel like that's your next step, I would love for you to text this number 25101 and type the word groups in there, and we will get you some information on what you your next steps are in regards to being a host home.

We're going to have a training here at our church on Wednesday to equip you with everything you need where you're simply opening your home up and inviting people to come in and be a part of these watch parties because we truly believe that even if we can't gather all together corporately in one building, we still can gather as a community and continue to advance the gospel and the kingdom of God.

We love you guys so much.

We're praying for every single one of you.

And if there's anything we can do for you, please don't hesitate to let us know.

I can't wait to see you all again.

God bless you.

See you soon.

Thank you for tuning in to today's podcast.

For more information about Celebration Orlando or to get in touch with us, please visit celebrationorlando.org.