BAPTISM SUNDAY: Turn the Page

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.

All right, all right.

Celebration Orlando.

How are you guys doing?

You guys doing good?

I'm loving the energy.

I'm loving the energy.

I think this is gonna be a great service.

This is very well maybe the best service.

It's already my favorite service because I'm not as much concerned about the clock.

So we're gonna preach for about an hour and see what God wants to do in here today.

If you have your Bibles, I want to invite you to join me in Matthew chapter 28 while you're doing that.

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

Um, the word on the street is that today is Baptism Sunday.

So I'm so pumped to be here for that.

I'm so excited to be able to participate with all you guys with that.

Also, um, I want to encourage you to make sure that if you missed any of our weeks, to go back, check out any of our stuff on our podcast.

But also next week, we're gonna be kicking off our new series called Wild Standard.

And here's here's why I'm so excited about that.

Um, I actually was a part of preaching this series up in DC a couple of months ago.

Now, I believe that God's given me a different approach for it um here for our Orlando family, but here's what I've seen.

I've seen God do some incredible things with the series because what it ultimately does is it outline what does it really mean to be a Christian.

You know, I kind of shared a little bit last week in regards to like what kind of Christian are you, but but it really does outline like what does God's word say is the standard that he's asking us to live according to.

So it's a great one not only to strengthen and to reinforce our faith, maybe have some questions answered, but it's also a great one that if you have friends or family members that are away from God, maybe you have some people that are just kicking the tires on the faith, this is gonna be a great series for them to come and hopefully be encouraged to go through it.

So I definitely want to drop that in your spirit, but jumping into this because I'm so excited to get out there with you guys, let's look at what the Bible says in Matthew 28.

We're gonna jump over to Acts 8 after that, but let's let's see what the word says here.

Starting at verse 18, it says this and Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given unto me.

I want to pause here for a second just to provide some some much-needed clarity and context on that.

What Jesus is doing in this moment is he's talking to his disciples.

These are his final words, so to speak.

Um, this is what we often refer to as the Great Commission.

This is where he's giving them like their final instructions.

And what he's saying when he says, All power has given unto me, all authority is given unto me, he's saying that my words are the new standard that you live by.

You're going to go into some other environments, you're going to go into some other cultures, you're going to be in some other spaces that may give you conflicting information.

Always come back to what I say because I have the final authority in heaven and in earth.

He's setting that tone for us right here.

So he's saying, All authority has been given unto me.

So now he gives them instructions.

Here's his instructions.

Go therefore and make disciples in all the nations.

Here's some more instructions.

Baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

More instructions, teaching them to observe all the words that I've commanded you, and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.

Now, jumping over to Acts chapter 8, we have an opportunity to kind of see this text put into practice.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

Here's what it says, starting at verse 26.

Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, Rise and go towards south to the road that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza.

This is a desert place.

And he rose and he went, and there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all of her treasure.

He had come to Jerusalem to worship, and he was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.

And the spirit said to Philip, Go over and join to his chariot.

So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and asked him, Do you understand what you are reading?

And he says to him, How can I understand it unless someone guides me?

Another translation says, How can I understand it unless someone interprets what I'm seeing for me?

And he invited Philip to come and sit with him.

Here's what it says.

Now the passage of scripture that he was reading from went like this.

This is a quote.

This is what he's reading from in Isaiah.

Like a sheep, he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth.

In his humiliation, justice was denied him.

Who can describe his generation?

For his life was taken away from the earth.

And so the eunuch said to Philip, About whom I ask you, does the prophet say this?

Is it about himself or is it about someone else?

Verse 35.

Then Philip opened his mouth, and he began with this scripture, and he told him the good news about Jesus.

And as they were going along the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, See, here's some water.

What prevents me from being baptized?

And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both got down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized them.

And when they came out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, but he went his way rejoicing.

Okay.

I want to talk to us for a couple of minutes about the about the in the important impact that takes place when we submit our lives to Christ and allow ourselves to be baptized and what that does for us.

If you're taking notes, I want you to write this message title down and turn the page.

Let's pray.

God, I thank you for your word.

I thank you for your people, and I thank you for this incredible church.

Father, I pray over the next few moments that you give us open eyes that we can see you.

Lord, I pray for open ears that we can hear you.

And Lord, I pray for open hearts that we can receive your truth.

Father, we pray and declare all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And amen.

All right, church, I have a little bit of a confession to make.

I am I am a bit of a trafficker of information.

In other words, what that means is I love to absorb information and I love to share the information that I absorb.

I just love, I love to do it.

And so for me, I find inspiration in a in a multitude of things that can help me to learn and to grow whenever I travel.

I love to people watch, I love to look at other cultures, I love to observe and to learn from it.

I even find inspiration when I go to the movies.

So listen, if you happen to go to the movie theater and you see me at John Wick 3, don't you judge me.

It's message prep.

It's helping me to understand the privy of man and it helps me to come in here and preach the gospel later.

It's all preparation.

So all those things actually help me to get perspective on things.

But in addition to that, one of the primary ways that I do this is by reading.

I I absolutely love to read.

I love to read journals.

I love to read books.

I love to read the Bible, obviously.

It's good to be a pastor and want to read the Bible.

Like these are things, these are things that I that I love to do.

And one of the things that I can add to that, that I love to do, is I love when I get an opportunity to read something in conjunction with my wife.

It just creates phenomenal conversations.

So right now I'm in the middle of reading this book by Dr.

Henry Cloud.

He's the guy who wrote Boundaries.

Well, he has this book that he wrote before that called Changes That Heal.

Absolutely amazing book that deals with God's plan for mankind, the way that we're supposed to function.

It really puts some things in perspective.

So I'm I'm in a process of reading that.

Now, I have to admit to you, I've been I've been cheating a little bit because more recently, when I do read um from books, I typically read the digital version because it allows me to have all my books in one spot.

But in addition to that, it also allows me to download the audio version of the book.

So now I can like get through an entire book in like a week, and I feel like a genius.

Like I got through an entire 20-chapter book, and it makes you feel good about yourself.

So I'll typically read the first couple of chapters, read the next 15 chapters, read the last chapter, and it makes me feel like a G.

Like I got through an entire book in a week.

So I've been kind of rocking in that, and what I love is because of technology, you can start reading and then listening, and it just intertwines perfectly together.

So I've been I've been crushing this book probably about two weeks now.

Well, I I found myself at this spot where it got a little interesting because I felt like I was in this one chapter that would never end.

It was good stuff, don't get me wrong, but I'm not sure if you ever felt like you were reading a book and it just seemed like you just wanted to get to the end of like, I feel like I'm reading the same thing over and over again.

You're just stuck in this chapter, like I get it.

We all know those authors that sometimes drag points out.

It's like, I get it, let's just move on.

So I'm I'm doing everything I can to like just let's just let's just get to the next chapter.

At this point, I'm not even absorbing the content anymore.

I just wanna, I just wanna check the box and say that I finished it.

So I'm reading and I'm reading and I'm reading, but I don't feel like I'm making any progress.

Well, guess what?

My wife decides that she wants to start reading the book, and because we share the same account, it would sync up with her progress, and because she started after I did, I was literally reading the same chapters over and over and over and over and over again.

Like I literally memorized a chapter because every time I opened up the book, it was taking me back to her progress because we're not gonna have two different accounts.

That's a waste of money.

We share these accounts.

So I'm reading the same stuff over and over again.

I was so frustrated because all this time my progress was at a standstill because I kept reading the same page over and over again.

As I dramatically walk away from the podium.

Some of us are in a season where we're reading the same chapters over and over and over again.

And we feel like I was making progress at one point in my life.

I felt like our marriage was going good at one point in my life, but now I just feel like we're having the same argument over and over again.

I'm dealing with the same dilemmas over and over again.

I'm dealing with the same addictions over and over again.

I'm not sure if you ever felt like you were just stuck in a season that would never come to an end, and all you want to do is I just want to get to the next chapter.

I just want to get to the next season, but I seem to be stuck where I am.

See, this is the condition that my man E finds himself in.

Let me go ahead and say this.

The Ethiopian eunuch, that's my man E.

I'm not gonna refer to him as Ethiopian eunuch anymore.

So my man E, my man E, he was in this condition where he was stuck in this particular passage of scripture, but more importantly, I believe that his life was at a standstill.

See, what we see is that we're immediately introduced to his ethnicity and his dysfunction.

He's an Ethiopian and he's a eunuch.

So in the culture that he was coming from, his ethnicity made him an outsider.

He was a gentile, which means that he wasn't even allowed to go into the temple that he just came from.

But in addition to that, the Bible also says that because he was a eunuch, he was broken, he was considered dysfunctional, so he was not even allowed to approach the things of God in addition to that.

So I want you to see this for a second.

We see in scripture where when someone was not able to reproduce, it was like shame.

It was like this weight of condemnation when you couldn't reproduce.

That was the this guilt that was on them because the first instruction that God actually gives to Adam and Eve is be fruitful and multiply.

Like God is literally giving them the instructions on what does it mean to be in humanity?

And so the thing that humanity was instructed to do, he wasn't even equipped to do it.

Have you ever felt that you're in a season or that you're in a space where you've been asked to do something and you don't even feel properly equipped to do it?

Here's what I mean by that.

Let me let me make it plain.

Have you ever found yourself in a space where you've done inventory of your life and you're saying, I'm being invited to be a father, but my biological dad walked out of my life.

I don't feel equipped because I didn't have it properly modeled to me.

Some of us have been in situations where we're being asked to step into roles that we've actually never seen done successfully, and we don't feel equipped.

I don't have the proper context to do this really well, which puts us in a very vulnerable space.

This is exactly the position that he finds himself in.

I'm being requested and required to do something, and I don't, and I just don't feel like I have the equipment to do it.

But in addition to that, here's the next thing because of his ethnicity and him being a Gentile, there was only a certain boundary that he was allowed to go.

So that means that he went to the temple, but he still felt like an outsider.

This is where it gets uncomfortable.

Because the truth of the matter is there are times that we go through periods where we're struggling with different things that we can even come into the household of faith and say, I don't feel like I fit here.

As worship service is going on, and I'm seeing people lifting up their hands and I'm greeted by people smiling, I don't feel like I fit here because what their facial expression is showing is not what I'm feeling internally.

I don't, I don't feel like I fit here.

As I see people lifting up their hands in worship and tears on eyes, I I just I don't feel like I fit here.

What they're so excited about, I'm just not, I'm not feeling it right now.

This is the dilemma.

He's leaving, he's leaving Jerusalem with this revelation that you don't fit here even though you're doing your best.

I'm not sure if you've ever found yourself in a space where you come to church and and people are telling you to give it to God and you're just wondering, well, why did God give it to me?

I'm not sure if you ever have been in this space where you walked in feeling one way and walked out feeling the exact same way because you just didn't see it contextualizing your life.

Or maybe you were told to leave it at the altar, but you walk out feeling the same because the altar didn't alter you.

It happens where we have these moments when we're we're coming into the household of faith and we still feel exactly the same.

This is the dilemma he finds himself in.

So the Bible says that while he's leaving Jerusalem and he's going back to Ethiopia, that he's reading from the scriptures.

Now he's reading from the prophet Isaiah.

Let me let me unpack this for you.

He's reading from Isaiah 53.

And so he's reading from what many theologians believe is the most clear theological framework of the suffering of Christ in the entire Old Testament.

When you're reading Isaiah 53, you're basically reading this diatribe that outlines the suffering of Jesus.

Now he's leaving Jerusalem, and when he's leaving Jerusalem, it's about two months after Jesus was resurrected from the dead.

So Jerusalem has a lot of like, there's a lot of commotion in Jerusalem because you have this man who said that he was God, he died, he was raised from the dead, his followers are talking about who he is, it's it's radically shifting the environment.

So he's leaving the environment that he's reading about right now and he couldn't see Jesus in it.

It's almost like a person that if they were to go to New York City two months after 9-11 and they're reading a newspaper, they couldn't contextualize, like, wow, these buildings that are down and what I'm reading in this paper are the same thing.

It's like he couldn't make the connection.

So he was looking at suffering, but he didn't see Jesus.

And what happens to us sometimes, we find ourselves in seasons, if I can be honest with you, that we find ourselves looking at disappointment and I don't see Jesus in it.

Looking at rejection and I don't see Jesus in it, looking at the frustration that I'm feeling.

Where's Jesus?

We find ourselves in situations where sometimes the dilemma we find ourselves in, we don't seem to find Jesus in it.

And it can leave us feeling unclear, it can leave us feeling confused, it can leave us feeling frustrated because we have this cognitive awareness that God is in the midst of it all, but we're wondering how come God has not brought us any peace yet?

As he's reading this text and he's heading back, the Bible says that he has this encounter with this man named Philip.

Philip was sent there, Philip was an evangelist, he was doing well in his ministry career, but but God called him to go to this desert place.

When he sees, when he sees my man E in the in the chariot, he asked him, Hey man, like, do you understand what you're reading?

His response was powerful because he said, How can I understand it if someone doesn't explain it to me?

And what the Bible says is he invited him to come and sit with him.

This is the thing that I believe is so important.

I want you to hear me with this.

He was sitting at a place where he was unclear and unfit, dealing with his dysfunction and brokenness and probably a little bit of rejection.

But the Bible says that he invited Philip to step into that situation and bring clarity.

What that means is this.

What that means is this.

That means that instead of him inviting someone who has the same broken view that he has, he invited someone that could speak life into where he was.

The thing that I believe that we often struggle with is that unfortunately we end up being discipled by our peers, and it's actually making us duller instead of sharper.

We end up bringing people in that don't have the wisdom, the experience, or the perspective of anything other than our brokenness, and we end up finding ourselves reading the same chapter over and over again because we haven't invited the right people in to speak into it.

What the Bible says is that when Philip comes up, it says that beginning with that scripture, he preached Jesus.

Beginning with the suffering, he showed them Jesus.

Beginning with the disappointment, he showed them Jesus.

What he was doing is he was showing them that even amongst the brokenness, Jesus is there.

Even even amongst the rejection, Jesus is there.

Even amongst the pain, Jesus is there, even amongst the injustice, Jesus is there.

Celebration, let me tell you something.

No matter what season you may find yourself going through, I assure you that Jesus is there.

There's not a place that you are that the grace of God is not.

Jesus is there.

Jesus is with you.

I like to say it this way: the devil does not do down payments on destruction.

The Bible says that he comes to kill, to steal, and to destroy.

So how do you know that the grace of God is with you?

Because you still got breath in your lungs, baby.

The very fact that you are here is evidence that the grace of God has been with you from the very beginning.

There is no testimony in your existence.

The testimony is in your death from the enemy's perspective, and you're still here.

What I love is that he begins to show him Jesus even in the place of the suffering.

Now, what I find to be so fascinating is that he starts in Isaiah, what we refer to as Isaiah chapter 53.

Isaiah 53 · chapter mention

He was stuck there.

So what I imagine Philip did is Philip turned the page and allowed him to go to Isaiah chapter 54, where the Bible says, No weapon that is formed against us shall prosper.

Isaiah 54 · chapter mention

I imagine that Philip took him to Isaiah chapter 55, where it says that the promises of God will not return to him void, and that the promises of God will be fulfilled in your life.

Isaiah 55 · chapter mention

I imagine that he took him to Isaiah chapter 56.

Isaiah 56 · chapter mention

He just turned the page and allowed him to see that the very redemption that you're looking for, the body of Christ will be revealed and people will be healed in Isaiah 56.

What I'm telling you is he began to walk him through chapter by chapter and letting him know that the best is yet ahead.

I believe that many of us are stuck in a season where we are only fixated on Isaiah 53 seasons, seasons of suffering, seasons of disappointment.

But if we can just turn the page and recognize that no matter what my suffering is, there is no weapon that is formed against me that shall prosper.

But I but I gotta turn the page.

If I can just turn the page and get to Isaiah 55, then I know that when God has spoken over my family, it will not return to him void, and my faith is strengthened as a result of it.

But I gotta, but I gotta be willing to turn the page.

If I can just get to Isaiah 56, I understand that redemption is available for my family, no matter how broken, no matter how jacked up, no matter what mistakes we have made, the grace of God is gonna invade my reality, and God is not done with me yet.

I have gotta turn the page, I've gotta move forward.

I refuse to read the same chapter over and over again.

I am going to turn the page.

Now I I want you to I want you to hear this.

Let me let me get back to my let me get back to my book for a minute because I'm tired of reading the same chapter over and over again.

It confounded me, so I begin to do some some deep existential research, aka I Googled it, on on how, since my wife and I have the same account, how can I move forward and not continuously find myself reading the same chapters over and over again?

And it was it was right in front of me.

I don't even know how I missed it, but what I saw was in the top right hand corner, they have this thing called a bookmark.

Who who knew?

But watch this.

What the bookmark would allow me to do is it would allow me to secure my space so that I didn't have to go backwards anymore.

It locked in where I was so that I could move forward and not find myself reading the same thing over and over again.

Let me bring this to a close.

Baptism is the bookmark mark that announces that you have turned the page.

Baptism is how you spiritually turn the page.

The Bible says that they came to water.

Let me pause there for a moment.

They were in the desert and they came to water.

They were in a place that's not supposed to have any water, but they came to water.

That means that even when you find yourself in desert seasons, God knows how to bring you the refreshment for your soul.

That even when you're in seasons of isolation, God knows how to find you in your desert, He knows how to find you in the wilderness, He knows how to find you in the brokenness and bring you exactly what you need.

He says, I am the word of life, and all out of this will be the rivers of living water.

It's already available to you.

You just gotta be willing to receive it.

I love the way that Job says it in Job 14.

He says, There is hope for a tree that even if it is cut off, that at the scent of water it will produce life.

It's interesting how the Bible often refers to us as being planted, as being trees, and what it's saying is.

Is that even if you find yourself in a desert season, there's hope because at the scent, at the mere aroma of water, you can produce life.

What I love when I look at all this stuff is that baptism is the bookmark that moves us forward.

Jesus said, All power has been given unto me.

I am the one who sets the standard.

So here's what you'll find throughout scripture that there is not a place in the book of Acts, which is the establishment of the church, when someone who said yes to Jesus that they did not get baptized.

They were inextricably connected because it wasn't so much that baptism saves you, it demonstrated that you were saved.

In the mind of Jesus, baptism was a critical part of then making that announcement that I have turned the page and I'm in a new chapter in my life.

Let me read this to you here.

What Paul says to the Roman church in chapter 6, he says it this way Do you not know that all of us have been baptized into Christ Jesus, were baptized into his death?

We were buried therefore with him and by and by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life.

Baptism is the place where dead things are buried and a newness of life emerged, making it both a tomb and a womb simultaneously.

What are the things that we're reading from over and over again because we have not buried it and put the bookmark in our faith to say that it's time for me to move forward?

You see, for my man A, when I came upon that water, he stopped, he stopped for a second and he said, Hey, there's water.

What's to keep me from being baptized?

Here's the weight of his conversation.

What he was saying is, I just left Jerusalem and in Jerusalem, I wasn't even allowed to go inside the temple.

In Jerusalem, I am an outsider.

In Jerusalem, I I don't fit in.

But you're telling me about this guy, Jesus, who who reconciles and makes everything good.

He's asking a sincere question.

Is there anything that's keeping me from getting baptized?

Because he was still thinking from the standpoint of, even though I'm broken, am I still worthy of being baptized?

Even though I'm considered an outsider by others, am I still worthy of being baptized?

And what I believe the heart of Philip would have been in that moment is he would have taken him back to the cross when Jesus uttered those words, it is finished.

And when he uttered those words, the Bible says that the veil of the temple was ripped in half, and now the presence of God, which was only for a select few, was now available to everyone if they put their faith in Jesus.

What the Bible says is that from that point forward, we all can go boldly before the throne of grace.

We all can go into the presence of God, we all can pray, we all can have this encounter with Jesus.

So I'm going to ask you the same question that my man E asks Philip.

Outside these doors, look, there's water.

What's keeping you from getting baptized today?

Maybe, maybe you will say, hey man, I I actually didn't come prepared to get baptized today.

Like I didn't I don't I don't have the proper clothes on.

Guess what?

We got shorts, shirts, flip-flops for you.

We got everything you need.

So my question to you again, what's keeping you from getting baptized?

Well, you may be saying, like, Keith, man, like I'm I'm hungry, I got, you know, I got I got brunch plans, I got some things going on, and I'm confident that my man E has somewhere to be.

But he understood the significance and saying, But if I continue to move forward and I don't mark this moment in my soul, it'll be possible for people to remind me of my past, and I am not going to read this chapter over and over again.

Baptism is the place where we say that in spite of what my past may have been, I have moved on from that chapter.

I know that you may want to talk to me about my past, but the Bible that I read says there is no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus.

That chapter is in my past.

I have a bookmark in my soul.

I went down in the water, I died to those things, I raised in the newness of life, and I'm moving forward.

I'm sorry if you can't forgive me for my past, but guess what?

Jesus has, and I've got to move in the direction of my Lord and Savior.

I am not reading that chapter anymore.

I have bookmarked this moment and I am moving forward.

You see what baptism does?

Baptism is that moment where we've decided I'm moving forward and I'm not reading this chapter ever again.

With every head bowed and with every eye closed, I want to ask you this question.

Maybe, maybe you're in here today.

And if you were to if you were to just do inventory of kind of where you are, you would say, Keith, man, like there's some areas that I kind of relate to my man E.

There's some areas where I feel, I feel like I just don't fit in.

I feel unfit.

I don't feel equipped.

I feel like I'm I'm overwhelmed in my occurred season.

There's some areas where I I just don't see Jesus.

There's some areas where I feel like no matter what I pray, no matter what I'm doing, I'm I'm still struggling in this.

I want to include a prayer for you that I believe I can encourage you.

If that's you, on a count of three, I just want you to boldly lift your hands up so I can include you in this prayer.

One, two, three.

Just simply saying, I need to I want to see more of Jesus.

I need to see Jesus in my current situation.

I'm going through a season right now where I want to see more of Jesus.

Amen.

You can go ahead and put those hands down.

Here's my here's my next question.

This is for for those that are away from God right now.

Like, truth be told, if you were to answer this question and someone were to say to you, Are you in a relationship with Jesus?

Are you walking with God?

If your answer is anything other than yes, this is for you.

Right now, maybe you're away from God, but you know that your very next step is simply saying yes to Jesus by committing or recommitting your life to Christ.

We want to give you the space to do that right now.

If that's you, simply saying yes to Jesus, to commit or recommit your life to Christ.

I want to pray for you.

And again, on account of three, just boldly lift your hands up saying yes to Jesus.

One, two, three.

Put them up.

Amen.

Amen.

I see those hands in the back.

Amen.

Yeah, church, we can clap for that.

Keep them up, keep them up.

It's not for me.

It's not for me.

You can keep them up.

Keep them up boldly.

Church, I think we can dig a little bit deeper than that.

Let's celebrate with those who have said yes, who have gone from death to life, from darkness into light.

We celebrate you and we honor you.

Here's what I want us to do.

I want all of us to stand on our feet.

We're gonna go into a moment of worship.

We're gonna keep this moment sacred.

But here's what I want to do.

I also want to make sure that there's many of us that's in here today, and we came in here knowing that we're getting baptized.

We came in here knowing that today is my day.

If that's you and you know that your next step is that you're getting baptized today, I want to go ahead and ask you to slip out into the aisles because we have some team out there that would love to help you get prepared where you can change, you can fill out the appropriate forms, we can do all those wonderful things, and then the rest of us are gonna come out and celebrate with you.

But then for the rest of us that's in here, we're gonna we're gonna pray and we're gonna believe that the hand of God is gonna move and we're gonna see a supernatural breakthrough.

Here's the thing that I want to close with because I find this to be so fascinating.

See, for my main my man E, he did not have the ability to reproduce.

But interestingly enough, after his baptism, scholars believe that he took the Christian faith into Africa.

He became the first missionary in Africa, and he actually became the first bishop in that region.

So that one time when he could not reproduce naturally, God made it up and he became a leader of an entire region because God can take our brokenness and allow it to be the very thing that allows other people to experience life.

I want to pray for us, and then we're gonna go out and celebrate with those who are celebrating and taking this next step.

If you feel comfortable, I want you to simply lift your hands up as I pray for you.

God, you see every hand that's lifted.

Father, you recognize those that have said yes to you today, those that know that their next step is simply to commit their life to you, God.

So your word declares in Romans chapter 10 that if we confess with our mouths and if we believe in our hearts, we shall be saved.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

Father, I pray in the name of Jesus for every person that is at that place where they're surrendering their life to you, that they're infused with your Holy Spirit and they're strengthened, that they begin to confess it with their mouth, they begin to believe it and they begin to walk it out.

But Father, I pray in the name of Jesus for every one of us, God, that we're in seasons where we don't have clarity, seasons where we feel unfit, seasons where we're struggling with brokenness, seasons where we feel rejected and we don't fit in.

In the name of Jesus, I command for that condemnation to be broken, I command for healing to come forth, I command for freedom to be made manifest, Father.

So, Father, I'm praying and declaring that today it is finished, that today they are altered, that today they are our new creation, and that today they have turned the page and are not reading from the past anymore.

So in Jesus' name, we celebrate what you're doing.

Amen.

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.