Your Story Isn't Over || Pastor Adam Mesa

Well, amen, it's so good to see everybody on this

Saturday evening and all those online and in the courtyard

and around the campus. I'm so excited for the month

of September at the movies. It's really a month of

an opportunity kind of get into a new routine again.

We all were kind of August, July, June, vacations, travel,

stuff like that. September is a place where we say,

all right, let's get back into our routine and it

let's September with at the movies be a great opportunity

to invite some friends.

You'd be surprised that over the years, as.

We've done at the movies, we do a little bit

different than other churches. Some of them we'll look at

one movie a week. What we do is look at

the concept of movies and get into the Word of

God still as we want to still talk and preach

from the Bible during at the movies, but we still

have our courtyard experience and the Kids Ministry and Youth

ministry are doing fun things. You'd be surprised over the

years with at the movies, how many people I've met

who once identified as atheist or but a friend invited

them to our church at at the movies, and God

used movies they were familiar with to speak to them

exactly where they were at. And God met them where

they were at. And today they are walking with God

and following Jesus because God took something as simple as

a movie, a film that they saw in the movie theater,

and God said, Hey, this is a journey, this is

a story I'm writing on your own life. And so

it's a great time during the next couple weeks to

invite someone to come to.

Church if they have kids.

So we got a lot of great stuff for kids

in the courtyard so that people can discover hope and

purpose and God's story for their life, which is what

we're doing in this month.

And so as we're in at the movies this.

Month in particular, we're gonna be looking at the life

of Moses and little aspects of Moses.

And how film connects with that.

As you saw today, we were talking about what it

means that God is writing our story.

I want you to see in Psalms one, p.

Thirty nine, if you'd like to stand for a moment

for the honor of reading God's word. Today we're gonna

start by reading from Psalms one thirty nine and then

jump back in to the life of Moses.

For a little bit.

I want you to see what this Psalm says. It

says for You created me in my inmost being. You

knit me together in my mother's womb. In other words,

before Dad heard a heartbeat, before Mom ever felt to

kick in her stomach, God was at work in the

womb of a woman, and so God knew exactly what

he was doing. And this scripture says, God, where others

may not know what's going on, you knew what was

going on in my mother's stomach, which means God knows

everything every start of the journey of our life. The

Bible also says that He even knows the very number

of hairs on your head. There's a lot of people

in this world that I love, but I'll tell you this,

I don't know a single one of them the amount

of hairs that they have on their head.

I've never sat there and count.

But God knows you and loves you so much that

he sat and he count when he created you. He

knew exactly how many hairs you once had. Maybe you

don't have the hair anymore, But there was once upon

a time.

That it was there. He said, For you created.

My inmost being, and you knit me together in my

mother's rooms. Go the next verse. I praise you because

I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful.

I know that, fool and well. My frame was not

hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.

When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days watch

this ordained for me were written in your book. In

other words, this is someone who's speaking out of a

mature place in their life. This is not written by

an infant. This is not written by a child. This

is written by someone who has gone through something, seen

some things, experience some things.

And he says this, I'm.

Not gonna lose hope that those things are lost, and God,

you are only part of the fun things, the good things.

He says, No, all things were ordained for me and

written in your book before one of them came to be. God,

you knew the picture of my life. He's not gonna

give up hope. Do we have another verse? Is there

a delay? How precious to me are your thoughts God,

how vast is the sum of them?

This is an admittance. We can stay right here on

this verse.

That was an admittance to say, God, you're precious to me,

and the way that you think about me is greater

than I've thought about myself. I don't understand it all

because there are times in our story we try to

make sense of everything that's happening.

But God knows. Let's go to the last verse.

It says this, were I to count them, they would

outnumber the grains of sand. When I wake, I am

still with you. You may be seated today. This verse

and many other verses is the emittence that says, God,

you know what's going on in my life.

You know the story that's been written. You are with me.

And what happens is when we recognize that, we begin

to see that God is fully aware of the story

and journey that He is taking us through in our

life and even through the life of Moses. If you

study the Book of Exodus, you'll see in the life

of Moses, I mean Moses, there was a decree that

Pharaoh put to kill the firstborn baby of every Israeli,

every Hebrew person, and his mother puts him down a river,

and it's Pharaoh's sister that finds him and adopts him

into this very family that was trying to kill him.

And then from there when he discovers he is a

Hebrew and he always knew he was a Hebrew, he

then murders an Egyptian.

He runs away.

He goes and he marries someone of a different culture,

a woman named Zupora, and they get married. And then

for forty years he becomes a shepherd, and he went

from a palace to now he's working with sheep every

day for his father in law.

And then he has an encounter with God.

And in that encounter with God, God sets Moses on

a mission to let his people go. And as you

read the story more, you see the experience of what

Moses went through. But also even when Pharaoh let the

people go.

The journey didn't stop. They had to deal with a

sea that couldn't cross that God.

Pardon, They had to deal with bad decisions that Israel

made where they didn't trust God, and now there were

forty years in a wilderness. On top of that, Moses

had a lot of anger issues and he had to

deal with that.

His entire life, his anger, and so.

We see if you're taking notes, I want to just

share the first thought with you. What we have to

recognize and realize is the author writes before the story begins.

God wrote before the story begins. You know, if you've

ever worked on a play or worked on a book before,

or wrote anything, even in school, how many of you

guys know there are thoughts, There are rough drafts. You

remember when we were in school and they made us

do the little cloud map thing and you had to

think of the of the intro, the plot, the middle,

the ending.

I always got terrible grades, you know, with that. But

you had the little map and then you went through.

Draft one, Draft two, Draft three, draft four. You know,

when I was in Bible School, my area of focus

was theology, which meant five times a semester we had

to write five thirty page papers in each different class,

which is really uncommon for college, but because the theology

majors were like just supposed to do the intense study.

And I remember specifically because every one of those kids

in my class, they were like four point five students.

I even in college, I wasn't one of those, And

I remember vividly because when you're studying theology, unlike other classes,

it's set that you want to be a professor or

you want to write books.

One day, and so what would happen.

Is he would put our papers on the screen and

everyone in the class had to go page by page

and criticize the writing it publicly. And I remember my

professor said one day, Adam, if you could write as

good as you talk, there would be no end for you.

But unfortunately, you're writing sucks, That's what he said. And

I said, well, then I'll stick with speaking.

That's what I'll do.

You know, when we realize though there are in writing,

there are rough drafts, plots, dramas, twists, setbacks, course corrections,

and for us, what we have to realize in our

own life, your current chapter of life you're.

In isn't your entire story. That's not your whole story.

And there are times in my life that I've wondered, God,

what's going on in this chapter of my life? And

what God is doing is there's many There's many times

in the chapters of my life God is producing endurance

in me. God is sometimes cleaning house within my heart

and within my life. There are other times God's giving

me an opportunity to grow, grow in my forgiveness, grow

in my hope, grow in my trust in Him. At

the time of the chapter, I don't always see the point.

But the beauty is I'm not writing the story God is.

God is writing the story of our life.

I want you to see.

Right here, I have a finished product of the Declaration

of Independence.

I don't know if you've ever.

Seen it before. We're all familiar. Give me the other one, please,

the finished product. Yeah, so we all know this. We've

seen this before. This is the Declaration of Independence where

the United States Congress they wrote together and you had

all the head hanchos, Benjamin Franklin and everyone. They all

signed it and pinned it and they worked on it.

And you ever seen the movie or show Hamilton and

all that stuff. It's kind of surrounded around all of this,

and we this and it's known to be in terms

of forming a government and a statement.

It's known to be as one of the best in

the world.

Like other nations look at the Declaration of Independence and

they say, Okay, how can we make a declaration for

our country that looks like this. It's so thoughtful and

it's so thorough and things like that, and all these

people come and they sign it to say, hey, we

worked on this, but I want you to see the iterations.

I have a rough draft. There were dozens upon dozens

where this is what it first looked like. This is

what the Declaration of Independence first looked like. And there

were so many of the early American fathers who they

would take this and you'll see lines are crossed out,

words are circles, notes are made. A lot of times,

we want the finished product. I want to be the

Declaration of Independence. I want the thing that people ooh

and a at. I want to be the thing that

people go I want my cousins and my family members.

To be like, oh, they got their stuff put together.

Look at them.

They look like they got God's favor or whatever else

it is. But for our life, oftentimes we are in

this phase.

Of our life. We're in the phase where God is

still annotating things.

He's crossing things out, he's circling things, say hey, I

love this about you, like, hey, let's focus on this,

or hey, this part this. You know, last week, that

one a good week. Let's go ahead and cross that

one off right there. Hey, this word in your vocabulary.

Not a fan of that. Let's go ahead and replay.

He'll take a little red pen and he'll say, Hey,

maybe the way you treat this person, or maybe the

way that you're walking or the way you're talking.

I'm not a fan. Let's do some editing. And we

don't like that. We hate asking for feedback.

Whenever I ask someone to look at something and I say, hey,

can you check this out, let me know your thoughts.

Inside my heart, I'm saying, I hope they come back

and say it was perfect, adam, no notes. But then

all too often I see it and I see no line.

This doesn't make and I'm man, I want to be

perfect right off the go. But we're not God, and

we're not writing the story. God uses us and partners

with us to guide us and lead us.

And you have free will, but you also have.

God's guidance, and he is speaking to both areas of

your life. He is speaking in the fact that he

knows the beginning from the end, while also asking you

and inviting you to walk with him at the same time.

I want you to see an exodus. When we look

at Moses, it should be in Exodus thirty one verse eighteen.

I want you to see what happens. I kind of

talked about it in the video that you saw. It says,

and he gave to Moses when he had finished speaking

with him on Mount Sinai.

The two tablets of the testimony.

This is known as the Ten Commandments, the tablets of

Stone written with the finger of God, the ten Laws

of God written with the finger of God. And he

gave to Moses when he had spent and as soon

as he came near the camp and saw the calf.

So what happens is like you saw in the video,

Moses is in the mountain talking with God. Moses has

cut two stones. God writes with his finger these laws

that he's gonna invite Israel to walk with and obey.

Moses comes down from the mountain, and what does he see.

He sees them with a calf dancing.

We'll see that in.

A couple of weeks that they boiled all of their

gold that they had gotten out of Egypt. And because

Moses was taking too long, they said, hey, let's worship

something that we can see in front of us.

You know, God's not working on our timeline.

I don't like this chapter let's put it into our

own hands. And what Moses does is says, Moses anger burned.

Hot, he got an anger issue, and he.

Threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them

at the foot of the mountain.

You see, he's so mad that.

What God gave him, he chucked it.

He tossed it.

That's how upset that he was about what they did.

Want you to see if you take notes point.

Number two is what we see is Moses breaks the tablets,

but God doesn't break his covenant. And Moses he's angry,

and he tosses the tablets and Moses shattered them when

he sees Israel's sin, and out of his anger he

throws it. And God wrote with his finger for the heart.

But Israel try to make sense of the journey with

their head.

I want you to see.

I got this little stick figure drawing right here, And

just to illustrate this a little bit deeper, I want

you to see right here. So in the story you

got Moses, he's on the mountaintop, he's with God. God

gives him the ten commandments, all right, and those are

things like thou shall not kill, thou shall not commit

a Daltrey, thou shall not have other gods.

Before you, so on and so forth.

And what happens is, as God is writing the Ten Commandments,

Bible says he's writing with his finger. Now is that

some type of the Bible often talks anthropomorphically, so not

literal finger. It would have been that's what we could understand.

It would have been something that we just don't understand.

Our words can't comprehend for it. So lightning, whatever it was,

a cloud for us, it just makes sense to say finger.

And that's why it says that.

And so what happens is is God is giving Moses

his heart. Hey, if Israel wants to stay close to me,

here's the things I need them to follow. And what

happens is this is in the book of Exodus. In Leviticus,

which is the next book, you're gonna see that as

Israel is trying to pursue or God wants them to

pursus to his heart.

God is gonna.

Tell and show Israel that there's the law, and there's

a thing called sacrifice, and when you fail at this,

there will be a sacrifice that you can do that

will cover this. And he gives them an opportunity through

the Book of Leviticus, which the Bible says and is

through lambs. If you would sacrifice lambs, it'll cover when

you break this, when you break my heart, the sacrifice

will cover that when you sin, which we now know

in the New Testament. Jesus is the lamb of God.

He's the fulfillment of this law that we break. And

Leviticus takes it further for Israel to show them that

it's impossible to live up to the heart of God

without God's love and forgiveness. But what is what's Israel

doing over here? They are thinking with their head. I

don't know how to draw a brain, so just bear

with me, right, this is some type of brain. I'm

not an artist or anything like that. They're thinking, I'll

just write the word for those that don't. You know,

I'm in practice. It Israel starts thinking with their head,

what's taking God so long? What's taking Moses so long?

What are they doing up there? You think Moses died? Well,

if Moses is dead, who's gonna lead us? And the

Bible says that. Then they started saying, hey, well, I

mean it wasn't even this bad. It really wasn't all

that bad In Egypt, in the moment of pause, they

start rationalizing, recognizing that well, that relationship wasn't so bad,

or this moment wasn't so bad, or this sin wasn't

so bad.

I mean, it's a lot better than silence.

We hate silence, and so they are trying to think

with their head while God is trying to.

Communicate with his heart.

And a lot of times we are disconnected from God.

Not because God isn't speaking to us, but we are

speaking with two different organs of our body. We are

speaking to God with our head. God, help make this

make sense.

God.

This isn't clear God, I need clear directions.

God. I'm not happy with this. God, I don't want

to do this. And what happens is.

Through God's word, through growing with relationship, through prayer. God

is trying to speak to us from the heart, but

we close that off. Why do we close that off? Well,

we close that off because what happens is this isn't

very far. Can we agree this isn't too big, This

isn't too far. I mean, if I asked anyone to

pass me anything.

They want to be like, oh, you're too far away.

I can't you're standing right here. Oh, You're just too far.

This is often known.

As the eighteen inch theory, which for the average person,

it's about eighteen inches between your head to your heart.

It's eighteen inches, and so many times in our.

Life we act like this is a big journey, This

is an impossible journey, This is an impossible task. God,

I'm ratalizing in my head. But you want me to

hear you from my heart. God, your word is speaking

to my heart. But I gotta make sense when my

head it was a God, it's just too much. That's

what Israel was doing there. That God is too much.

You're too far, We're too impatient. What's going on? And

God is saying, I'm speaking an eighteen inch difference in

your life. This isn't a mile long distance. It's not

another state, it's not another country. It's eighteen inches that

God wants to get.

Through your head to your heart. And there's so many

times that we're like, God, it's just so far. No,

it's not.

You gotta open up your heart because that's where God communicates.

I want you to see it again and see what

God wants to do is what we have to recognize

is is in this eighteen inch journey.

You have the heart and you.

Have the head, and it is a traffic stop that

goes back and forth, back and forth. But if you've

ever been on the freeway before and you've noticed that

there was a backup on one side of the road,

and you start driving and maybe you don't know, so

on one side of the freeway, you're just like, there

are no cars on the other side of the freeway,

this is odd. And then the further you get down,

it's because there's a traffic stop for whatever reason.

And so therefore the flow.

Track and you and I we make mental notes that say,

on the way back home, I gotta remind myself, I

am not driving that direction.

I don't want to deal with that.

And what happens is is when God gave Moses the

Ten Commandments, God wanted to speak to the heart of

the people that would then transform their head.

But what Israel.

Wanted was God to speak to their head and maybe

it'll get to their heart. That's why the Israel lights

are known as Israel lights, which are ones who wrestle

with God.

That's cute at first, to wrestle with God. It's not cute.

It's cute in the dating phase that you know, your girlfriend,

your boyfriend.

They're like, oh, we you know, like we wrestle, we bicker,

we disagree, it's so fun.

It's just so kitchy.

And then you're twenty years in and you're like, Lord,

this wrestle is not this whole bicker thing. You're not

cute no more. It's not fun no more. It is

very irritating at this point. And what God recognized with

Israel is they're wrestlers. But he didn't want to stay

consistently wrestling with him. He wanted to consistently stay to say,

I'm going to speak to their heart, right, he wants

to talk here. But Israel's like, no, that makes sense

to us. God, before we follow you, follow you another step.

Make it plain to us in our mind. And then

when God didn't show up on their time and their

story and their chapter and their journey, they're like, Hey,

anyone got any of that gold that's been laying around,

Let's boil that down, let's let's let's let's make something

from that. Here's what's beautiful though, because what happens is

within this story, Moses goes back up.

Tells God, even though God saw it, but he tells God.

He goes back up. Now he says, Lord, I broke

the commandments. I was so mad.

He had these ten commandments right here, and he's like,

I was so mad. Probably would have been a lot

bigger than this. This is one that goes in your house,

on your table, I guess, just to remind you how

sinful you are. You know, it's such a funny, such

a funny thing to think of the cross I get

to have in our house, but just a perpetual plaque

of you're the worst, you know, Like that's kind of crazy.

But Moses has this and he comes and he don't

have it no more. So he goes down the mountain

with it.

He comes to God. He's like, God, I broke it.

I was so mad. I broke it. And what God

didn't say was Moses.

How could you? You're the worst? Why did I choose you?

I should have chosen someone else. You and these anger issues?

What are you doing? No, God said, Moses. Cut yourself

a couple pieces of rock, and I'll write again. I'll

do it again. I'll write with my finger one more time.

What God is already nuancing to Moses is to say, Moses,

you can't do this journey by yourself.

You can't lead these people by yourself. You are gonna

have to rely on me.

And when times that you fall and you fail, I'm

there to write again, if there's anyone that had to

have a high expectation of their life.

You would think you'd be Moses.

And it's not like Moses always had it good and

he always God always showered.

Him with love and blessing.

No, Moses had a hard, uphill battle at times.

But God his.

Grace was sufficient enough that he gave this to Moses.

This again, a game with another set. He says, Moses,

go try again. I love the passage in the Bible

because there's a moment that most theologians think that is

connected to this moment. It's found in John chapter eight,

verse three to seven.

Maybe you've heard it before.

There's a story of a woman that's caught in the

middle of an act of adultery, and in.

This moment, they throw her up before Jesus.

They caught her, and the Pharisees and the scribes they

want to catch Jesus because he's a rabbi. He's one

that's supposed to follow this law really good. And look,

one of the ten commandments is, look I'm looking at

right now, thou shalt not commit adultery. It's one of

the law of God. It's punishable. And they take her

and they throw her in front of Jesus, and the

Bible says this. The scribes of the Pharisees brought a

woman who had been caught in adul tree, placing her

in the midst They said to him, teacher, this woman

has been caught in the act of adultery.

Now in the law Moses, the law right here, the.

Law Moses, this has commanded us to stone such a woman.

So what do you say?

In other words, you're gonna disagree with Moses. You're gonna

disagree with the head honcho himself that came down from

the mountain and gave us this thing.

What are you gonna say about that? What are you

gonna say about that? This?

They said to test him, that they might have some

charge to bring against them. Jesus bent down and wrote

with his finger on the ground. And as they continued

to ask him, he stood up and said to him,

let him who is without sin among you be the

first to throw a stone at her. He said some

other things, and it says in fifty eight to fifty nine,

Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you,

before Abraham was I am. So they picked up the

stones to throw at Jesus. But Jesus hid himself and

went out of the temple. You see in this moment

it continues if you continue to read. It says he

bends down to the woman and he says, you know

you've been forgiven, Go and sin no more. And so

he didn't give her permission to make the decisions that

she was making, but he showed her enough grace and

compassion to say, there is another way, if you're willing

to choose it. There's another direction. There's another portion of

your chapter that can be written that doesn't have to

be this, if you're willing to accept God's forgiveness, if

you're willing to accept God's grace. I love the image

of this that Jesus kneels down, and it says that

he writes in the sand.

And how many of you guys remember if if you were.

A person that was Jewish, and you see Jesus kneeling

down and writing in the sand. There was one person

who wrote the law with his finger in stone, and

it was Yahweh. And so what Jesus is saying to them,

he's saying this, you're all talking about this moment, this

moment where God wrote the law with his finger.

Jesus says, I'm about to rock your world.

And it's it's rumored that whatever Jesus wrote that theologians

think that maybe he could have etched it in the

stone which would have blown them away, or he wrote

it in the sand, and theologians think that he possibly

could have wrote, you know, the sins that they have in.

Their life, or whatever it is. But whatever it was.

It was enough for them to get angry that he

was saying.

Oh, that law, the law.

That Moses broke because of his anger. But God gave

him a second batch. God didn't kill Moses when he

threw the Ten Commandments. God didn't kill Israel when they

had the Golden calf. God showed mercy, God showed forgiveness.

So what Jesus says is he saying, in that moment,

I have all authority on heaven and on earth to

forgive those who are broken harder to.

Forgive those who have sin. He says this, So Bible.

Says he didn't. He didn't rewrite the law. He fulfilled it.

Fulfilled this.

He encourages her.

Hey, if you want to walk in the fullness of

your life, the story that God is writt and he says,

go and sin no more. Oftentimes we think that to

someone's heart is to talk to their head. That's how

we think saves someone. Just go rationalize it, just go

debate it. Just go through every area of their life

and show them where they failed.

Know what often happens.

What God wants to do is he wants to speak

to the broken hearted and wants to say there is

forgiveness for those broken spots. The spirit of God reveals

all things to us, and the spirit of God shows

us where our shortcomings are. And it's God who says

I can get to a place where I can forgive

you and show compassion. Jesus says this, he who is

without sin, throw the first stone. You know, there was

only one person there that had the authority to throw

the stone.

Who didn't have any sin. It was Jesus.

And he didn't choose to cast the stone. He didn't

choose to throw the stone. He chose to get on

the woman's level. You must know that a woman who

was caught in the act of adultery must have had

some broken parts of their life, and he goes to

show her, Hey, there is forgiveness.

I want you to know this last part. Here's the

last point.

Is this you and I, as God is doing something

in your life and God is writing in your life,

we have to recognize that you are the living letter

of God. You're the living letter. You're the living word

of God. Is God's word transforms you and conforms you

to himself. You and I are the living aspects of

God's words. Tewond Corinthians two three, two to three says this,

you yourselves are our letter of recommendation. It's written on

our hearts so to be known and read by all.

And you show that you are a letter from Christ,

delivered by all, or delivered by us, written not with ink,

but with the spirit of the living God, not on

tablets of stone, but on tablets of the human heart.

That's what Paul wrote concerning the Church of Corinthian. He said,

you are the letters that God is writing on the

hearts of man. That's why for our church one of

our ministries is beyond the Letter. It's a podcast, and

that beyond the Letter comes from this verse that you

and I go beyond the letter of God's Word to

live it out. It's not just about reading it. It's

about living out the Word of God in our life.

It's about getting to a place in our life where

we can say, God, here's the pin to my life.

It's yours. You have control of this. I invite you

into this before I make next steps, before I make

big decisions, before I step forward in aspects of my life. God,

I will sit with you before you feel like you

have to cross things out in my life, before you feel.

Like you have to circle things.

God, I'm gonna sit with the author being you, and

I'm gonna ask you before or I make golden calfs,

before I make desert decisions, before I go sit in valleys.

I want to say, God, as the author and the

Alpha and the Omega, what do you want to write

in my life at the.

End of my life?

What do you want the story the book of my

life to say. As I'm a living letter of God's Word,

what will it say about.

Me at the end of my life? That's what matters.

And so people may never read the Bible, but they're

reading you, and you are the first Bible that they

will ever interact with, and you are the first Scripture

that they will ever.

See being lived out.

Do we feel that when we get up in the morning,

and it's part of our lives that we have to

get a place where we don't hold the pen, we

hand it over.

I'll close with this and we'll all leave here together.

I know. In my childhood I grew up with a

movie by.

Jim Carrey called Liar, Liar, And there's a point in

the movie where he's trying to he can't lie. That's

the point of the movie. He's not allowed to lie.

And if I remember correctly, he's a he's a lawyer,

which kind of kind of hard to do his job

without stretching the truth, you know. And so he's trying

to lie. He's trying, but he can only tell the truth.

He can only tell the truth. And so what he's

trying to do is he's just he's just fighting to

try to lie, try to try to write out himself.

So what he does he gets a pin and he's

trying to save a fake color of the pen that

it really is. I want you to see the clip

so that you can make it and see it more

so in your head as we closet writ all right,

no focus, The color of this pen is.

The color of this pen is the color of the

pen that I hold in my hand is oil. What'm lie?

And I can't say it right here, right right, I'll

break it off.

Ah, No, come on, you know how many times we

can laugh at that. But you know, I feel like

at times with God, that God is trying to lead

me in a direction. God is trying to write something

with my life. And then I'm just fighting with him

over over control of the pin, over control of the highlighter,

and I'm saying, no, God, let me say let me okay,

I like that, but let me write that, let me

do this, let me just hey, let me just make

this decision. And so we fight and we fight and

we fight with God. But you want to know what's

best is if we just say, Lord, You've written it all,

you know, the end, from the beginning, You've ordained Psalms

went through or.

Night, You've ordained my life. Why am I fighting against you?

Why am I fighting against how You've made me to

love you, serve you, and.

Devote my life to you.

Why Because once we recognize that this paper, this page,

is our heart, and God holds the pen, we can say, Lord,

whatever you need to do with me.

Would you write it out? Would you lead my story?

Would you take me through what I need to go

through to get closer to you. I don't want to

get to areas in my life where I get so

impatient and I start thinking with my head so much

that I make big decisions like Israel that lead to

a desert journey forty years in the desert, just because

they couldn't wait for Moses to come down to the mountain.

That's what happened.

That's often what happens is when we get impatient, we

just start saying, God, give me that pen. I've been

staring at a blank page for too long. Well, I

need some answers. If you don't give me the answers,

I'm gonna start writing my own answers.

But when we live in the.

Fullness of where God wants to lead us, where God

wants to guide us, where he wants to erase.

Things, delete things, change things.

Then we can see that we're truly walking into the

fullness of who God is. And I'm want to close

tonight by making an invitation of faith that maybe today

I'm not here to talk to your head because your

head and our mind, oftentimes it confuses us, it disillusions us.

But what's clear is our heart.

And there's people here that you know whether your heart

is far from God or not. As we've spoken and

shared today, you've allowed God to speak to your heart.

But the Bible says that we need to make a

decision whether we will open our heart for God to reside.

Revelations three Jesus says.

He says, I stand at the door of your heart,

and I'm not whoever opens the door and invites me

into dine with them, I will enter and dine with them.

As God speaks to your heart.

That's all God was trying to do with Israel, say Israel,

let me lead you, let me guide you. But oftentimes

they said no, no, no, that's enough. We need you

to explain every step. God oftentimes won't explain every step.

If you knew the end of a movie, you wouldn't

sit through the movie. You'd say, oh, you ruined it.

It's the end. I already know what happens. God has

taken us through a process in our life. But the

greatest decision we could ever make, in the greatest chapter

of our life, will be the decision that we decide

to make Jesus Christ our Lord and savior.

It's the day that we say.

God, I have written my life of my own for

too long, and today I surrender my heart so that

you can begin to write the story clearly to me,

so that I see it.

And that starts by surrendering to God.

It starts by acknowledging that Jesus Christ died on the

cross for your sins, that for our whole life we've

been separated from God, not because of God's choice, it's

our own choosing. But through Jesus, God makes an invitation

through the perfect sacrifice, that he can redeem us.

And he can save us.

So, if you're here today and you're saying I'm ready

to make a decision, I want to pursue God with

my whole life and my whole heart. Now I want

to invite you this morning, in this moment together all

of us, would you join me in saying this right

now when you say, dear Lord Jesus, in this moment,

I believe in my heart that you died on the.

Cross and you rose three days later.

From this day forward, I turned for my sins, and

I choose to follow you for the rest of my.

Days in Jesus' name. Amen, you know.

I want to encourage you today as you may have

said yes to Jesus. What we did today is the

prayer is not the thing that saved you. God was

already at work in your heart. All we did when

we prayed right now is we affirmed and said, God,

I know you're doing something right now, and I've chosen.

To follow you.

And so if you said yes to Jesus number one,

we celebrate with you, and as a church, we want

to welcome you to the family. So would you do

me a favor if you said yes to Christ for

the first time or maybe rededicated your life. On the

counter of three, would you raise your hand? All we

want to do is welcome you into the family of God.

We want to welcome you and be part of this patriot,

this family the Kingdom of God. As you've said yesterday,

that's you. Would you be bold to raise your hand?

One two, one two three? Would you raise your hand

if you gave your life. I see so many hands

praise God. I see you, I see you, I see you,

I see you. Welcome to the family. We're so happy

and excited for the.

Decision that you've made today.

You may have walked in here and said, oh, yeah,

I'm going to say yes, but oftentimes there are people

that you've encountered in your life that they have been

praying for you for months, years, decades for this moment

right here for you to say yes to Jesus. So

it may fall like and feel like you kind of

stumbled into here, but God knew that you would be

here tonight, and many people have prayed for you to

be here tonight. If you said yes to Jesus. We

have a website we love to walk with you on.

It's called ww dot Grow Dot Faith. That's up on

the screen when you leave and as you leave if

you go to the website, we want to come alongside

of being and help you with next steps. Want to

make sure that you don't do this walk and journey alone. Additionally,

if you're here tonight and you need any prayer at all,

maybe you're going through some things, maybe there's some things

you need someone to come in agreement with you.

And pray over or with you.

Then up here at the front, our elders, deacons and

prayer team, they're going to be up here and they

would love to pray for you. I'm going to pray

for us right now, and we'll leave together. God, we

thank you for this word today.

God.

I thank you that through this series of at the movies, Lord,

though it may seem like it's fun and exciting, which

it is, and it's okay to have fun in church,

but more than that, God, it's taking a medium that

we're all familiar with and.

Saying God is writing the greatest.

Story of all. It's the story of salvation. It's the

story of redemption.

Lord.

And so I pray God that we all look with

eager anticipation as you are writing our story today.

God.

And I pray Lord, that you bless every person anoint

them this week. God, bless their thoughts, bless their hands,

bless their feet, Lord, as they go to go and

live their lives for you in Jesus name. Amen and Amen, God,

bless you family. We'll see you next week.