It's Worse - Pastor Chris Kouba

Grab your Bibles, Romans chapter 3, Romans chapter 3.

Romans 3 · chapter mention Romans 3 · chapter mention

I want to give a word of greeting to all of the men at the Ramsey Unit and the women at the Plain State Correctional Facility.

We are so grateful to be able to bring, we can do better than that.

Come on now.

Incredible to be able to bring you this message.

I know that we've got a team at Plain State today, as a matter of fact, been there the last couple of days and doing some ministry today, and so it's just pretty awesome to think about us being able to bring this message to you, knowing the ministry that is taking place on site there at that correctional facility.

And man, we are so uh just excited what God is doing there.

Have you ever said to yourself it's not that bad only later to discover it's way worse than you thought?

My uh my daughter Caitlin, I've coached her most of her life.

She's been uh a basketball player, that's kind of been her main sport.

And uh, whenever she was much younger playing youth basketball, I was uh coaching her and uh she was my point guard.

If you know much about uh youth basketball, then you know that if you have any shot whatsoever of being successful in youth basketball, it requires that you have a competent point guard who can get the ball up the floor and back and be able to not get it stolen every single time that they cross midcourt.

And so Caitlin was a pretty good ball handler, always has been, and so she was my uh ball handler.

We had a really good team this particular year.

In fact, we were headed kind of towards a collision course with another team that was also really, really good.

I know what some of you are thinking, what's the big deal?

You you obviously didn't hear about it.

I was up in Dallas, so it was a big deal up there.

Maybe down here it wasn't as big of a deal.

It was a huge deal at the time, though, don't get me wrong.

Like everyone was talking about this particular girls' basketball youth team uh and the collision course that was about to come for this particular game.

And so uh we're outside and we're playing one day, and I remember Caitlin's riding her bike and she falls off her bike and hits her wrist onto the ground really hard.

And she hits it and it's all scraped up, and so we go and we kind of wash it off, and she's like, Dad, something is wrong here.

It's it's not, it doesn't feel right, and I'm like, You're fine, you're fine.

And of course, I took her to CVS like any good dad, and I got her one of those cheap braces, right?

That she put around her wrist.

And the primary reason was because I know that the next day we played that really, really good team that we're gonna be meeting in the girls' basketball championship kind of a thing, right?

So therefore I knew I needed her in order to be good, and so I got her that brace, and I'm like, you're fine, right?

Because I just kind of of the old school where you just rub dirt in it and you're fine.

I know some of you are looking at me like I'm weird.

You were that way too before we got this new thing where everybody is all hurt all the time, right?

So, like you, you know what I'm talking about.

It's normal life, right?

Rub dirt on it, you're gonna be good, it's not that big of a deal, all right?

And so, sure enough, we go towards the game, and I and I can the next day that she wakes up and she's like, Dad is still hurting, and I'm like, look, you got the brace, the brace is good, you're fine, you're gonna be no big deal.

You're you just just keep going.

And here's the deal: when you wear that brace, they're gonna think that you're hurt, and the key is to make them think that, and then you've got a competitive advantage, all right?

And so just fight through this, you're gonna be good.

On the way to the game, it was very clear that those thoughts that I was thinking were not the thoughts that she was thinking as we were going.

Sure enough, first quarter of the game starts, and it's very obvious that she was not good.

Ended up having to pull her out, and she was complaining about her wrist, and I'm telling you, we got absolutely destroyed after I pulled her off the court, all right?

And I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you're coaching and there's literally nothing that you can do to stop the onslaught that is coming against you.

Uh, and that's exactly what we experienced.

We go home and we're kind of dealing with this, and again, I'm trying to tell her mom, she's fine, it's not a big deal.

We just sprained it, there's no big deal.

All the while, I know we have a rebound game in two days, and I wanted to make sure she was good for that, right?

And so we we I I'm kind of telling her we're good.

Finally, your literal is like, I'm taking her, whether you go or not, it's up to you, right?

And so sure enough, we take Caitlin over to the orthopedic.

The orthopedic gets some x-rays, comes back, and says, You have a buckle fracture in your wrist that has gotten worse because you didn't deal with it right away.

You have to cast it up and she's out for the rest of the season.

It's not that bad.

Actually, it's a whole lot worse.

Kaelin's wrist healed up fine and everything's good, and everything's good, you know, going forward.

How many of you have perhaps along the way made that same similar comment that it's really not that bad?

Only later to discover, you know, it's not only bad, it's real bad.

It's way worse than you could have possibly ever thought, in fact.

How many times have you heard the story about the person who had the tightness in his chest who just ignored it and thought it wasn't a thing?

The person who went along the way and didn't make any changes in their lifestyle and began to ignore all of the warning signs, only to go to the doctor and be told if you don't have heart surgery immediately, you're gonna have a heart attack.

You're probably gonna die.

How many times have you seen people who have symptoms where they maybe just have a headache or they have some migraines and they kind of just blow them off, and it's not that big of a deal?

It's not that bad only to discover that those migraines were actually just symptoms of something that's much worse.

That's a cancer that's in your brain you have to be operated on immediately.

Our tendency is to want to minimize or downplay everything.

And the lie that so often we believe is not that bad.

What I want to talk about today is the final message in this sermon series.

We've been entitling The Ugly Truth, and what we've been doing is we've been looking at the first few chapters of the book of Romans and seeing that it's gonna tell us some things that are actually true about your lives, but here's the thing: they're really hard to hear.

They're not something where you're gonna leave here and think, man, I am awesome.

Somebody asked me the other day, are you guys a seeker-sensitive church?

And I'm like, Well, we preach the Bible, and sometimes the Bible tells you that you're you're great if you believe in Jesus, but the Bible, for the most part, tells you, and we specifically in Romans, things are rough.

But just because the truth is hard to hear, doesn't mean that it isn't true.

So we gotta embrace today some more hard truths.

Next week it's gonna be better, and next week it's gonna be good, but here's what I would simply tell you: you cannot fully appreciate the magnitude of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ until you understand the absolute comprehensive depth of your need for it.

The lie this morning that you maybe have a tendency to want to say and believe, even as you've heard me give these messages in the last couple of weeks.

You may be hearing me talking about this and thinking, I mean, I'm not that bad.

Here's the lie is that I'm not that bad.

The ugly truth, though, says this you are worse than you thought.

You are worse than you thought.

I promise you there'll be good news at the end, but please hear me, don't quickly jump over the bad news.

Because the bad news is what makes the good news so good.

What Paul does in Romans chapter 3 is that he he anticipates the fact that these Jewish people, these religious people, these church people, people like you and people like me have been hearing all of these things that have been said in Romans chapter 1 and Romans chapter 2, and he knows they're like kind of with their hands up almost saying, Well, what about this?

Romans 3 · chapter mention Romans 1 · chapter mention Romans 2 · chapter mention

What about this?

What about this?

And so he basically addresses the objections to the issue that is on trial, which is this Am I that bad?

What Paul does is he's gonna kind of bring us into a divine courtroom, if you will, and he's gonna present to us, first of all, some objections.

Then what we're gonna see is we're gonna see some evidence, some evidence to prove why we really are worse than we thought.

And then finally, we're gonna see a verdict that is gonna be delivered.

Let's begin reading in Romans chapter 3, and I want us to look at some of the objections.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

In verse 1, then what advantage has the Jew?

Or what is the value of circumcision?

Much in every way.

To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.

I want to kind of break these down, these first few verses, tell us some of the objections that we see in this passage.

The first objection is this question that if everyone is sinful, if everyone needs God, then what advantage is there to being a Jew?

The Jewish were religious people.

They had the law of God, they had the blessings of God, they had the land that they were given.

So if you kind of modernize this to us, it would be like this.

What advantage is there to go into church?

What advantage is there to send in my kids to camp?

What advantage is there is to homeschool or a private school or some sort of religious influence?

Surely those things count, right?

Maybe you've said those things.

I've had my kids in private Christian school, and I, no question about it, thought, surely this is like gotta be good for something.

Like, surely that's gonna matter.

I send my kids to church and I sent my kids to camp, and maybe you did all the religious things in your in your church along the way, and you gotta think, surely this is gonna make them good, right?

And what he's saying is these things aren't bad, but these things don't save you.

You see, these things only help make you more accountable because you should know your need for the gospel.

I'm gonna mention family camp at the end of our services today.

Would have loved to have you come and be a part of Family Camp at Sky Ranch.

Uh, but wait, we we I've taken a group the last probably eight years to Family Camp.

And a couple of years ago, we had a big group that went on a hike.

We got up really, really early in the morning, like 4:30 early in the morning, and we all met there at the base of the trail, and we all had different approaches to us doing this hike.

The key thing, we gave instructions to everybody, is you cannot get lost.

You have to make sure you know where you're going.

Because in the middle of the night like that, whenever you're walking up these trails, many of them spear off into other different places.

If you find yourself detached from somebody else without any way of knowing where to go, where it is that you need to go, you can very easily get lost, and nobody's gonna find you for hours.

And so, therefore, it's important that you stay together.

Some people that came along on the trip, they had these headlamps.

These headlamps were really bright, and I'm telling you, it not only provided a way for you to see where they were, it also very much helped everyone know who was with them where it is, in fact, that they were gonna be going.

Other people came along and they may have just had their phones with them, or they may have had a little flashlight, and that's what they were using to kind of light the path and the way.

But here's the deal: whether you had a headlamp or whether you had a flashlight, the expectations were the same.

Don't get lost.

Because if you get lost, then you're not gonna be able to find your way back.

Folks, what I want you to see is this.

We especially here in this area of Northeast Houston, with all the variety of churches and all of the spiritual inputs that we have access to.

We have a headlamp and we have no excuse to get lost.

There are so many things around you, so many opportunities for you to engage in God's word.

You literally have the opportunity to download an app that has thousands of translations on it.

Yet, how often do we have all of this access?

Yeah, we don't even look at it.

What he's saying is this is that God's wrath is totally justified.

Just because you have all the access doesn't necessarily mean that you're good.

We talked about this last week.

You can preach, but not practice.

Instead, we gotta recognize that what God is calling us to is obedience to what we know, not just knowledge of what we don't do.

Look at the next verse in verse 3.

He says, What if some were unfaithful?

Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?

By no means.

Let God be true, throw everyone or a liar, as it is written, that you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged.

The second objection here is, is Jewish disobedience enough to cancel God's faithfulness?

Is Jewish disobedience enough to cancel God's faithfulness?

For sure not.

The Jews had the law, the Jews had lineage, the Jews had the liturgy, yet God still saves them, which shows the depth of his grace and his mercy in spite of, not because of, the unfaithfulness of the Jewish people.

What this shows us is this is that God's goodness and his faithfulness to us is not dependent upon how much we have qualified for it, because none of us qualify for it.

You ever been to a matinee movie before?

Uh, the matinee movie, whenever you go in there, it's kind of the middle of the day, and you go there to the theater, and you get in that real comfy, cozy, dark theater, and you watch whatever movie it is that you are watching, and then you kind of get out of the movie theater, it's still kind of dark a little bit in the hallways, and you walk down towards the exit, and you know what I'm talking about in a matinee, and you forget that it's a matinee, and you walk out and you open up that door, how blinding that light is when you open it up.

I mean, it's like it's unbelievable how much you can't see when that door opens up.

Okay?

Now, had did the sunlight change at all while you were in the movie?

No.

The only thing that changed was your perspective.

Literally, the darkness highlighted the light that was already there.

What I want you to see is this is that the Jewish disobedience highlighted the salvation that has always been available to all who believe in him.

And so, because of that, we know that the gospel is magnified when the Jews disobeyed, because the darkness highlights the light.

Look at the next thing in verse 5.

But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say?

That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us?

I speak in a human way.

By no means.

For then how could God judge the world?

But if through my lie God's truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner?

And why not do evil that good may come?

As some people slanderously charge us with saying, their condemnation is just.

This is an idea of God's justice.

What they're saying is that if we sin and then it shows God's righteousness, it reveals his righteousness, then we shouldn't be held accountable for our sin.

The problem is this this is a misuse of justice.

God is just, and in order for him to be just, he demands justice and judgment.

Uh we stand condemned on our own.

Judgment, a justice is required for our sinful actions, which is why we celebrate at the cross not just that God overlooks our sins, but that he pays for our sins.

For example, a good mechanic, a good mechanic isn't going to break a car in order to prove that he can fix it.

A good doctor is not going to make a patient ill in order to show that he has the ability to bring them to health.

In the same way, we should not sin so that it could further reveal the righteousness of God.

Whenever we do that, we are diminishing the what Jesus did on the cross when he paid the penalty for our sins.

These are the objections.

I want you to keep reading, though, and I want you to see how the argument begins to move into this idea of evidence.

Verse 9, it reads this.

No, not at all.

For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin.

As it is written, none is righteous, no not one.

What Paul does is after he presents his objections, he now presents the evidence.

He now presents the evidence.

If you look at Romans chapter 3, verses 9 through 18, what you see is a compilation of a lot of Old Testament text.

Romans 3:9–18

These all Old Testament texts, what you see is 13 counts against humankind presented here.

Thirteen.

Four different times you see the phrase no one used, and three different times you see the word all used.

This is meant to be a comprehensive list.

No one is without evidence being presented and brought up against them.

This is what we call in the theological term total depravity.

Total depravity.

What this means is that in every single way, in every fiber of your being, you are totally and utterly depraved before God.

Paul knows we have a tendency to buy into this lie, though, which when you hear this, you're like, I'm not that bad.

I'm not that bad.

And the assumption is this is that the the idea is that God has things that you're not supposed to do, God has things that you're supposed to do.

If you do the things that you're supposed to do, God's happy with you.

If you do the things that you're not supposed to do, God's mad at you.

And so therefore, you evaluate your spiritual life based upon whether God is mad at you or based upon whether God is happy with you, and it's all based upon how you performed.

That is not the gospel.

The gospel is this you are so utterly and completely depraved in every aspect of who you are that there's no amount of good that you could possibly ever do on your best day that's ever existed to overcome your badness.

The Bible says this: bad people are bad, and quote, good people are bad.

All of us are bad.

That means Daniel and Esther and Joshua and Moses and all of these characters in the Old Testament.

That means that uh that means Billy Graham and Job and your grandmother, who's like perfect, right?

Like you know what I'm talking about.

Like my grandmother.

I mean, there's there's no way she was she was bad.

The Bible says even my grandmother was bad.

Hear this.

Even your grandbaby is bad.

Now, some of you grandparents, I know I just drew a fight, alright?

And I apologize for that.

Because I know you're telling me, no, no, you don't understand.

My grandbaby is the she is perfect, he is perfect in every single way.

No, I'm telling you, just wait.

They will learn how to be a sinner, alright?

They don't even have to learn, they're born that way.

Anyone you think of, when you think of this person is good, the Bible says they're totally and utterly depraved.

I'm not telling you this to pile on or make you upset.

There are way too many people out there in way too many churches that are just simply telling you if you are the best thing that's ever existed, if you just sprinkle a little Jesus, then you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.

And I would simply tell you this: that is a lie.

The Bible says you are in such desperate need, you are so wicked that literally you bring nothing to the equation, you offer nothing to the whole thing.

I tell you that why?

Because I'm telling you that's what makes Jesus so wonderful.

That's what makes our stories the same.

Not because I'm better than you were, and I just got a little Jesus, and you got No, no, no, no.

All of us had nothing.

We weren't pursuing him, we weren't going after him, but God in his mercy comes after us.

Look at Romans 3:11.

Romans 3:11

No one understands, no one seeks God.

It speaks to your mind and your thoughts.

What and how you think.

Sin has so corrupted our lives that literally affects even the things that we do and the things that we say and the way that we process things.

I like to go running early in the mornings, and I was on a run last week.

I've got a little relational thing I'm working through uh in my life, and um I'm in the middle of running.

Uh, I usually have headphones in, didn't this day, and and so because of that, I just kind of stuck in my own thoughts.

And so I start to begin to think about this particular situation, and I began to start to kind of put put forward some arguments.

And I'm literally, I'm sure if somebody saw me, it'd be super weird, but I'm like running, talking this thing out loud, right?

And so I'm literally just beginning to like make my arguments and kind of make my points, and then I'm even so much as like knowing what they're probably gonna say back, and so like I'm like talking about their rebuttal arguments back to me, and then I'm like kind of figuring out my thoughts and kind of going back, and literally in the midst of this run, I have convinced myself this totally to be true.

I am 100% right, and they are 100% wrong.

I ran myself to clarity.

That's what I felt like I did.

Isn't it amazing, though, how often you can see two people who have the exact same conversation, who have the exact same experience, who both walk away with completely different interpretations of reality.

How often do you see that I think this is right?

This person over here thinks I think this is right, yet somehow, even in the midst of maybe us being technically right, we can be wrong.

What I want you to see is this.

The Bible suggests that our issue of sin isn't just in everybody else's thoughts.

Our issue of sin is in our thoughts, meaning this.

You might be wrong.

You might not be seeing this right.

You might be off in the way that you are walking through this.

Which is why our goal and our desire is for you to be a believer in Jesus Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit of God, reading his word and allowing this to be truth, because here's what will inevitably happen.

You will talk yourself into sin.

You will talk yourself into believing and doing whatever you want to do.

All the while saying, no one seeks God.

We have to start with the starting point of saying, God, we need you.

Like we're not smart enough to do this.

We need you.

Look at the end of verse 11.

No one seeks for God.

That's kind of a weird thought.

I feel like I see people all the time who seem to be interested or want to know about the things of God.

Maybe that's a story for some of you, is that you are here today and you're interested in the things of God.

You're interested in Jesus.

You want to know more about him, and you you you're you're curious for sure.

And so you would say, No, I it's not true.

I I seek him.

Listen to what Romans chapter 5, verse 8.

Romans 5:8

We'll get to it in a few weeks, but it says this but God shows his love for us.

And that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

What this says to us is this you weren't looking for God.

He all along was looking for you and caused you to be interested in him.

Which means this: if you're here today and you're interested and you're curious about the things of God, please hear me.

God's already been seeking you.

The very fact that you are here right now proves God has got a purpose and a plan for you, and he wants you to experience a relationship with him.

Skip down with me to verse.

Actually, I'm gonna read this quote to you real quick.

Um look at what it says.

Go back to Romans 3:12.

Romans 3:12

Look at what it says there.

All have turned aside, together they have become worthless, no one does good, not even one.

I looked in the Greek text, and it basically that word no one and that word uh not even means everybody.

It means you.

From Adam and Eve at the beginning, it's always been the same story.

We basically, we basically just don't like what God says, and so we change what he says to make it fit what we want.

And the story has been playing itself out over and over and over again.

Alza Chambers, an author and pastor, he says this.

We have to recognize that sin is a fact, not a defect.

Sin is red-handed mutiny against God.

Either God or sin must die in my life.

If sin rules in me, God's life in me will be killed.

If God rules in me, sin in me will be killed.

What I want and long for you is that sin would be dying in your life.

But you can't experience that until you embrace how bad it is in your life.

We've had the objections, we have the evidence, finally, it leads us to the verdict.

Look at verse 19.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

We've seen the objections, we've seen the evidence, it leads us to the verdict.

I uh I am a decent tennis player, I really enjoy playing tennis, played in high school uh and have dabbled around with it ever since then.

And uh tennis is one of those games that it's it's uh always interesting because you really want to try to find people that are similar to you or maybe a little bit better than you that can kind of help push you.

So I had a couple of guys on staff that uh told me that they were also tennis players, and so we went out and we remember uh we played, and uh, I'm not gonna lie to you, it really wasn't that enjoyable.

There was some good staff bonding and things like that, but they weren't any good.

I don't know how else to say it.

They were terrible, all right?

And I absolutely destroyed them.

And I was like holding back because I was just so much better than these guys, and it's fine.

I mean, you know, I'm I'm sure they'll say, well, we're just trying to let you in because you're our boss.

That's not true.

They just weren't any good, all right?

And and I and I was a lot better.

And so because of that, I kind of got the big head a little bit and I was like, man, you know, I I think I'm I actually am pretty good.

Like, I I need to go and figure this out.

I need to go and play a lot more.

I mean, that's just my problem.

That's everybody's problem, man.

If you just put in more time and put in more practice, you could be really good.

So therefore, I started practicing a little bit more and I signed up for a local tournament.

Sure enough, I go to this local tournament about four or five, or some of the guys, some of you tennis players may know what all that means.

And sure enough, I go into this tournament and I'm telling you, I absolutely got destroyed.

I mean, embarrassingly whooped.

I mean, I got one game, but that's it.

I mean, I just, it was just by luck, it had a lot of unforced errors.

It was awful.

Now, what changed between me playing against the staff and then me playing against these folks that were really good?

It wasn't my serve, my serve was the exact same serve.

It wasn't my forehand or my back end, it was the exact same forehand, the exact same backhand.

What changed wasn't my volleys.

I did the exact same volley.

What changed wasn't my ability to go and cover the court, it was the exact same with both different ones.

The only thing that changed in terms of whether I felt superior or whether I felt inferior was the measure by which I was measuring myself.

Church, the verdict is in.

You're guilty.

If you try to look at your life and you say, I'm not that bad, what about so-and-so?

And you look at someone else who you think that you're better than.

Here's what it's gonna do: it's gonna minimize the grace of God in your life.

But instead, if you embrace the ugly truth, you are way worse than you thought.

And there is nobody that you are better than because the standard is not comparing yourself to other people.

The standard instead is God's holiness and God's perfection.

Then and only then can the cross of Jesus Christ be your true joy.

Because at that point I realize, yes, I am way worse than I thought.

Thank God for his grace.

Look at verse 21, it's a teaser for next week.

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law.

Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

What I want you to see is the answer has come.

It is not in a set of rules, it is not in a list of things that you're supposed to go do, it's not in a bunch of religious ceremonies that you have to go and perform.

The answer has come and it is in the person of Jesus.

The worst thing that you could ever do is get a brace when what you need is a surgeon to give you a cast who can help heal your body.

The worst thing that you could ever do is take Tylenol when you actually need brain surgery.

Yet some of you have settled for a false version of the gospel, which has never and never will be the actual gospel, and you've instead replaced a relationship with Jesus for a set of rules that you think trying to accomplish.

But the righteousness of God has been revealed, it's been told all the way back to the law in the Old Testament, all the way through the prophets, and the story is still being told today that Jesus, Christ, be magnified.

He is the living hope.

Amazing grace.

How sweet the sound.

It saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now I'm found.

I was blind, but now I see.

Would you bow your heads and would you close your eyes?

Please no one be shuffling or moving around.

I'm gonna ask for people to respect these moments that we have.

Do you know Jesus?

Do you have a relationship with him?

I'm not asking if you have a relationship with the church.

I'm not asking if other people would say they're religious, they're religious.

I'm asking if you know with certainty that you have a relationship with the one who came to live a perfect, sinless, obedient life.

Died a brutal death on a cross, paying the penalty for your sins.

And he rose from the dead.

And you transferring your trust from yourself and your stuff and your list and your resume.

Transferring all of that over to Jesus.

I want to invite you, if you've never prayed to receive Jesus into your life, that you would do that right now.

Just pray these words with me, dear God.

I want to ask you to come, be my Lord, be my Savior.

I believe that you died on a cross for me and that you rose from the dead.

And right now, in this moment, I invite you to come into my life.

Save me.

Forgive me.

Cleanse me.

To make me new.

Would you keep your heads bowed and your eyes closed?

You've got some of our staff that's going to be up front and on the sides.

If you just prayed that prayer of faith with me, I want to ask you to do me a favor.

Would you just look up and see where the nearest person is to you?

That you can know where you need to go.

What we would like to ask you to do is we have a public invitation, a time for you to make public what you've done in private.

We believe that faith is meant to be shared.

We believe that faith is meant to be open.

It's not meant to be just you and Jesus and nobody else.

Instead, it's it's a part of the church, it's a part of our story and our testimony.

Here's what I want you to know is that your story is the same as my story, it's the same as all of our team up here's story, is the fact that we were lost apart from Jesus.

And he saved us, made us new.

Others of you need to come and join United City Church.

You need to make this your home.

Please hear me.

We are a church that is gonna seek to be truthful to what God's Word says in all things, even when it's hard to hear.

We want to speak to you what God's word says is right, because we believe that's where the power comes.

When God is allowed to become fully God in our lives, when He is allowed to be able to be who He says that He is, that that's where life change happens.

We've seen it and we've experienced it, and we want that to be the case for you being a member here at United City Church.

If that's you today, if you've completing your process of membership or maybe you're beginning it, I want to ask that you come forward today.

Others may need to be baptized as an expression of your faith.

We believe baptism is an act of obedience after someone has received salvation.

We call it believers' baptism.

We want to invite you to come and to schedule and be a part of your baptism, your public display of faith.

Maybe some of you just need prayer today.

Maybe you're struggling through something.

Maybe you've got something that's weighing on you.

Perhaps you've got something that you need to confess.

We are available, we are open to receive you today, to be prayed for.

Father, I pray you'd move in these moments we have left together.

Call people to yourself in the name of Jesus.

I pray.

Amen.

Would you stand up?

And as you stand, please, no one leaving.

Our team is up front for just a few moments.

You come right now as God is leading you to respond.