The Kingdom Way Series Recap with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch podcast.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the pastor at MetaCurch, and I hope that today's message is inspiring and enlightening and really builds you up wherever you're at in life.

I want to welcome you in wherever you're joining us from.

If you're here at one of our physical locations, if you're here in Helotus, I'm so glad that you joined us.

If you're with us online and you live out of town, man, I'm so thankful for this online ministry.

If you're with us online and you live in San Antonio, what are you doing?

Right?

Get to service, am I right?

Get to service.

I mean, get in the body.

I think I'll sleep in and not go be a part of the supernatural body of Christ.

Okay.

Like, get up, get to service, be a part of this.

Uh, come where many are gathered.

The presence of Jesus is there in a unique and special way.

There's healing in the body of Christ, there's clarity in the body of Christ, there's challenge in the body of Christ, there's encouragement, there's uplifting.

How you get moved forward in the path that God has for you, come and be a part of the body of Christ.

If you're new with us, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch.

Before I take one more step into what we're doing today, please help me honor our preachers from the last two weeks.

Sherry and Andrew, please make some noise for them.

These are friends of mine, as good as they are at preaching, and they are dang good at preaching.

Um, they are even better people in real life.

And I'm very thankful for them.

I'm thankful for the ministry that God has on their lives.

Um, for my prayer warriors across Metachurch, um, if you would just put Sherry down, Sherry Richard, she had a little bit of a medical scare this week.

She seems to be out of the woods.

I think things are okay, but let's keep praying for her and for uh a full and a quick recovery.

Now, today's message is going to be very different.

It's not going to be a ton of preaching.

Next week, we're stepping into the next section of Luke's gospel.

If you're new with us today, or if you're just newer with us, we've been going through the gospel of Luke.

That is one of the four historical accounts of the life of Jesus that we have in the New Testament, what we often call the Christian scriptures, the scriptures written to the church.

And Luke is an incredible historian.

We've been going very slow.

It's been over a year, well over a year, that we've been going through Luke.

So far, we've made it through six chapters.

And in those six chapters, we broke it down into two sections.

And so, all the way back when we started with a section we called the chosen king.

And this was about the birth of Christ, the prophecies concerning his birth, his earliest days, uh, his mom and his dad, all the circumstances surrounding.

Here was the key takeaway that when heaven sent word of who Jesus would be, when the angel Gabriel showed up to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and prophesied about this coming Savior and Messiah.

Interestingly, Gabriel, the angel, did not mention his teaching, his preaching, his miracles, his healing, didn't talk about the cross, the grave, or his coming back for us someday.

What the angel Gabriel said to Mary is, You will have a son, and this son will be the king, notice, not a king.

The king that all other kings someday, in all of their arrogance and earthly splendor, will drop to their knees and confess as the king of kings and the lord of lords.

Amen.

And so, what does it mean to worship Jesus as king?

In the second section, which was basically Luke's chapter 4, 5, and 6, we called it the kingdom way.

And in this we saw Jesus as an adult step into his earthly ministry, and every moment of his life, he was demonstrating and declaring the way that his kingdom functions, the way it operates, how we can be a part of it right here and right now.

Now, next Sunday we're gonna step into our third section.

I'm gonna tell you about that at the end of my message today.

But before we do that, it was really put on our hearts that we just needed to slow down and we needed to stop and look at all that God has already done.

There's a lot of scriptural precedent for this.

One of the most famous ones was actually the very first passage I ever preached on at Metachurch about seven and a half years ago.

The Israelites had been moving towards the promised land for 40 years, and finally they were right there, they could see it.

The problem was the Jordan River, and they didn't quite know how to get across.

And so Joshua cried out to God, and God dried up the Jordan River, and they went across on dry land.

However, when they got to the other side, Joshua was inspired by God.

Here's what we learn in Joshua chapter 4.

Joshua 4 · chapter mention

It says, So Joshua summoned the twelve men he had selected from the Israelites, one man for each tribe, and said to them, Go across to the ark of the Lord your God in the middle of the Jordan, each of you lift a stone onto his shoulder, one for each of the Israelite tribes, so that this will be a sign among you.

In the future, when your children ask you, What do these stones mean to you, you should tell them, the water of the Jordan was cut off in front of the Ark of the Lord's covenant.

And when it crossed the Jordan, the Jordan's water was cut off.

Therefore, these stones will always be a memorial for the Israelites.

If this is your first time here today, typically uh I open the word, I go line by line, I do a lot of yelling and sweating.

That's kind of the whole meta church experience on Sundays.

Today, I'm not doing the majority of the preaching.

Today, uh, I want you to expand your idea of worship.

We've been working on that.

So we talk about worship through music, worship through the word, worship through prayer, worship through giving.

There's also worship through testimony.

And as Metachurch has grown, and God has grown us, and we're thankful for that, there is the ministry of testimony happening all the time, but typically not in Sunday service.

That's happening in our life teams as people get out of rows and into these circles where they're in real community.

If you're in a life team, you have gotten to watch as the gospel of Luke has begun to transform the people who you're in community with at the very level of like their being.

Some of you haven't really gotten to experience that.

And so we're gonna look at four stories today.

Joshua had them pick up 12 stones.

Today we're gonna pick up four stories as these mile markers of how God has been moving.

Some of you are gonna see yourself in one of these stories, or maybe multiples of these stories.

Some of you have been sitting under the gospel of Luke for a while now, and you just haven't really opened your heart to how God wants to move in your life.

Some of you are very new to Metachurch.

And man, I think if this is like your first Sunday, or maybe your first couple of Sundays, this is like the perfect opportunity for you to see that we're not just coming and meeting together, that we are actually moving together, that God is moving in real people's lives, and God could move in your life as well.

Amen.

And so, look, we're gonna get into our first video.

Here's what we did week one of this journey through Luke that we've called fulfilled.

We said, We want to do what Luke wanted.

Let's read about it.

Luke chapter one, verse one.

Luke writes to his friend and says, Many have undertaken to compile a narrative about the events that have been fulfilled among us.

Just as the original eyewitnesses and servants of the word handed them down to us.

So it also seemed good to me, since I have carefully investigated everything from the very first, to write you in an orderly sequence, most honorable Theophilus, that's his friend's name, so that you may know the certainty of the things about which you have been instructed.

Luke went to painstaking lengths to help his friend understand who the real Jesus is.

So we better know who Jesus is.

I told you on day one, I think this will take years to get through Luke.

One of the few things I've been right about recently.

It's going to take years to get through Luke, and that's okay, because we're getting to know Jesus on a granular level.

Our first story comes from that very first week.

After that very first message, I had shared how God was renewing a sense of urgency for the kingdom in my heart, and that it just wasn't enough to come and sit in seats once a week and feel like we're doing something.

After the service, a guy I've known for a while, Roland, came up to me, tears in his eyes.

I'd never seen him like this.

Roland is a successful guy.

He's done a lot.

He's very talented, like outrageously talented.

But he shared that he's been wasting his life, that he has no urgency.

And he looked at me with fire in his eyes and said, That changes.

I'm going to live with urgency now.

I've been in ministry for about 20 years.

I have heard countless people inspired by a sermon come and make a very bold claim.

I've chosen to have a soft heart.

I'm not gonna let the devil harden my heart, just so you know.

So I receive that and I'm encouraged and I'm excited.

I also have a brain that can remember the countless people who are inspired in a moment.

And by the time they hit the parking lot, they've let it go.

Everything's gonna change.

And the world gets back a hold of them, and six months later, nothing has changed.

Roland's story is evidence of what happens when the spirit-inspired words of scripture meet a spirit-filled, fertile heart, a heart that is ready for God to plant something new.

I want you guys to hear Roland's testimony.

Um, I just remember the very first message in this series and felt really convicted by it.

It was on a having a sense of urgency and a pilgrim's perspective, and I didn't really have either of those things.

And I felt like I had maybe wasted four decades of my life uh not really accomplishing anything towards God's kingdom.

So that that first message was a bit of a trajectory shift for me.

Part of what's happening is in this pre-pagan world, I'm just calling us to obedience.

Some of you have been here for like way too long, only coming to Sunday service.

There's like nothing else.

You're not in community, you're not applying, you're still in the same patterns, you're still struggling, you're wondering why God isn't speaking to you.

And I'm just telling you Sunday service is great, but it's not enough.

It's like showing up every Sunday and singing songs to diet and exercise and never dieting and never exercising the rest of the week.

You're deceiving yourself.

It's time to take steps.

I felt like a consumer, you know, a consumer of Christianity, I guess, and and at that point.

And the fact that I have children and wasn't, you know, being the spiritual leader of my house uh and watching these kids grow up with without that um was a big part of why I felt convicted.

This series, in conjunction with the uh the academy as well, I went through the Metal Movement Academy during the series.

And between those two, it's just been life-altering.

Um, my perspective has changed.

Uh, my perspective on myself at the start of this series was that I wasn't good enough.

Um I was in a worthy vessel.

And going through the academy kind of taught me that that's one of my false narratives is that I feel like I'm not good enough to be used by God.

And you know, that's obviously not the truth for any of us.

So, between those two things, um, feeling empowered to serve God's purpose in our life, whatever that might be, and discovering what that is as I heal and ask God to, you know, transform me and and uh just to allow me to see myself as he sees me.

Yeah, give God a hand for what he's doing in Roland's life.

He did not just get convicted and go out of service and go live life and forget about it.

He did something about it.

He jumped in with both feet.

Uh, he also mentioned that one of the things he did to help him on this journey is he went through the Meta Movement Academy.

We want everyone to go through the academy.

Info session for this fall semester is this Tuesday at 7 p.m.

at the Petranko location.

If you have not been through the Academy, I need you here Tuesday night at 7 p.m.

Now, before we get to our next testimony, uh, this is just how I operate, this is my personality.

If there's an elephant in the room, I cannot ignore it.

I have to go.

Everybody, look, there's an elephant.

So, yes, across these four videos, you're gonna see me go on a whole journey of hairstyles, okay?

It's not often you get to watch a midlife crisis play out right in front of you in 30 minutes.

We ended up going deep into the birth of Jesus, the rearing of Jesus, right before he started his ministry, as we came to the conclusion of the chosen king and we started dovetailing into the kingdom way.

Jesus went out into the desert and he was baptized by his cousin known as John the Baptist.

This was a powerful moment, and we learned a lot about John the Baptist, that he was filled with the spirit of Elijah, the most powerful prophet who ever walks the earth.

And Luke does something very unique.

Luke is the only author in Scripture who gives us a sermon from John the Baptist.

Now we believe that this word is inspired by the Holy Spirit.

There's nothing in there by accident.

We get one sermon from John the Baptist filled with the spirit of Elijah.

I think we should pay attention to it.

And his message was all about repentance.

Remember, we talked about that the word actually means to change your mind?

What does that process look like?

It looks like tearing open your heart.

Remember Joel in the Old Testament?

He talked about repentance, and he said, Don't tear your garments, tear your heart, rip open your heart, your mind, your will, your soul.

Allow God to audit, to inventory, and to evict anything that does not belong to God.

That's John's message.

What was his application?

John's like, what I want you to do is I want you to repent.

Rip open your heart, let God in, let him do his work.

What does that look like?

This is one of the many moments as I've been studying Luke with you that I was very surprised.

The only message we get from John the Baptist filled with the Spirit of Elijah.

His application is generosity.

In this key moment in scripture, here was our takeaway.

A repentant life is marked by generosity.

The next testimony we're gonna look at is like what happens when the rubber meets the road.

And so we've seen Roland, who's like, I gotta get some urgency in my life.

I gotta stop living for the kingdoms of the world, start building the kingdom of God, I gotta use who I am and what I have.

What about when God convicts you on something specific?

Something in your health, something in your relationship, something in your finances.

What does it look like to commit to that to yourself, to God, to get accountability around you, and to take real steps?

People's lives are actually being transformed here at Metachurch through the power of the Holy Spirit, through the words of God and scripture, through the power of a community around them.

And Nicole is one example of that.

You guys check out her story.

So I am someone that really likes clothes.

I love fashion.

I love curating what outfits I'm gonna wear.

I love browsing on Pinterest or on Instagram and figuring out new ways to put together outfits and I would constantly go shopping, or um, if there was an event, I needed a new outfit.

And I got to the point where it was just my closet was so full.

I had clothes that I would give away that would still have the tag on them.

I would never, I would have, I never even used them.

It was about a year ago I was sitting in service and Clayton was preaching on radical generosity and how we have been created by God to have dominion over the things of this world, but instead those things have dominion over us.

See, even though we have been purchased at the cost of the life of our king, we are so distracted and we are so drawn to and we are so in love with the kingdoms of this world that Americans live on debt.

We exist on debt, we pile it up, and we do this because we have to have it.

We have to have it, not because God said, because man said.

We have to drive it, we have to live there, we have to wear it, we have to swipe it, we have to eat there, we have to be on the trends, we have to look to part, we have to patch up insecurity that God could take care of if you'd allow him into your heart.

But we don't allow God in, so we try to fill deep vats of insecurity with material goods that only leave you emptier.

And immediately I felt convicted because I want to be radically generous.

I wanted to have obedience and to give so much to others because that's a huge, you know, mark of uh or a symbol or sign of being part of the kingdom.

But I felt the Holy Spirit say, You don't have anything to be generous with.

I made a vow to not buy myself any new clothes for a whole year, and that was really hard.

You know, I would try to find sometimes I would try to find loopholes, sometimes I would think of creative ways to like see if I could get around what I promised myself, but the Lord always divinely thwarted them, and I just had to find out ways to be creative and resourceful and to use what God has given me so that I can be radically generous.

And it's been difficult, it's been a difficult journey, but it's been so fulfilling.

And I hope when my year ends up, which is coming up soon, that I will use the same principles that I've learned from this series to continue living a radically generous life because that's what we've been called to do as Christians.

Yeah, you guys give it up for Nicole and what God's been doing in her life.

You know, I love what she said.

Like, um, we come up with these loopholes to get out of the convictions that God's put on our life.

Some of you do not care about clothes.

You haven't bought clothes in five years.

It's like no big deal for you.

Um, but what if God asks you to give up something else?

What if God asks you for a dynamic change in the trajectory of your life?

What if it looked different for you?

And it probably does look different for you.

Uh, DJ and Nicole are friends of mine, and so I happen to know that they don't just come and consume on Sunday mornings.

They are in the body of Christ.

They not only were in a life team, they now lead a life team.

And one of the reasons that we fall short of our commitments is we don't allow anyone to hold us accountable, but I know for a fact that Nicole shared this with people who love her and she could trust.

And so when they see the loophole, they can go, I'm not sure that that's what you signed up for.

I don't know if you know, there's a new kind of math.

Katie taught me this.

It's called girl math.

I didn't know math was gendered.

And what it means is if I sell two shirts, I can buy one shirt, and really, we've made money.

It's like a clever loophole that if you don't have real accountability around you, you you might just start breaking down the commitment that you made to God.

And there is a life of power and significance, and the satisfaction and fulfillment and purpose that your soul is longing for, but it has to do more than just hear the word in a Sunday.

Service, it has to take the real steps to start doing the word, to start living it out.

For some of you, that might be difficult.

You might be uh sitting here in Helotus or watching with us online, and the idea of all this sounds great, but you have a hard time really committing yourself to any kind of spiritual or religious movement.

The next testimony we're gonna look at is a young guy that I met recently named Colin, and Colin is very, very smart.

Uh, he's a brilliant young guy.

I met him the very first time.

He came and found me after service and started asking like seminary-level theological questions.

And I was like, hey guy, I didn't go to seminary, okay?

Like, pump the brakes.

So smart.

And he shared with me, he's never really been able to come and be a part of a local church because of church hurt all the way back from when he was a teenager.

And if that's you, you need to know that's a very familiar story here at MetaCurch.

In fact, that's my story.

As a young man in ministry, being so hurt by organized religion that I just gave up on it altogether.

And the problem, and Colin and I talked through this, is that yes, Jesus gave his life so that you could be in a relationship with God.

Jesus also gave his life to start this movement called church.

And when Jesus talks in scripture about the church, he doesn't say, hey, I died to start this religion, this little club, and I'd really like for you to consider being a part of it.

The church is called the body of Christ.

It's how we move and build the kingdom.

The church is also called the bride of Christ.

I'm a pretty easy-going guy.

You can talk trash to me, you can make fun of me, you can come at me however you want.

I probably won't do anything, just to be honest.

If you turn your attention towards my wife, everything changes.

We will have serious problems and quickly.

And yet, we think that we can badmouth the church.

That we can grow bitter towards the bride.

Now, I think that God sees us and he understands.

He's a loving God, he has empathy for our situation.

Many of you have been hurt by organized religion.

You need to know that God sees you, and I believe it breaks his heart as people have failed you in the name of God.

He also wants you to know that the people who have failed you in the name of God were not representing God in the ways that they hurt you.

Amen.

And that as messy as this movement can be, it is infinitely more beautiful when the people of God come together as the body, as the bride, to live out who God has called us to be.

Colin started attending in back-to-back weeks at the beginning of Luke chapter 6, where Jesus was getting in trouble being attacked by the spirit of religion.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

And what we came to learn is Jesus didn't come to start a religion.

Jesus came to bring his people into relationship with God.

And finally, Colin had the clarity that he needed to jump in with both feet.

And I just believe there's hundreds and thousands of Colins out there, men and women who stay away from the local church, even though they are the very people that God needs to invest their lives, who they are and what they have, into this movement so we can see revival and see the world change.

You're gonna get a glimpse of what Colin got out of the Beatitudes in Luke chapter 6, the insight that God has given him, how he's applying it into his life.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

And just imagine if we can get this right and build a church culture where those who have been harmed and hurt by religion can come and find a home, what an opportunity that would be.

I want you guys to hear Colin's story.

Jesus is not doing behavior modification.

Jesus is not trying to control you from the outside in.

The revelation that came through Jesus is about inside out.

Revelation changes us from the inside out.

Religion controls us from the outside in.

Do you understand the difference?

Jesus is gonna ask us to do some very difficult things in this sermon, but he knows if you do not get the inside right, then the outcome of that will never last.

The thing about the Beatitudes that really sticks out to me is they start with a reflection of self, and that reflection of self washes into an expression toward everybody else.

And I find that so profound because while I vaguely understood this, I didn't quite understand what that meant.

That when Christ comes and he does his first teaching, his first discourse, the Sermon on the Plain, the Sermon on the Mount, and he expresses his first teaching to everybody, he starts with this introspective of self before he passes on to the expression of everybody else.

And that both of those, both of those things, the introspective of self, and by that I mean the beatitudes of need, and then the beatitudes of action, are both very love-based.

And that is the central message of Christ.

I I heard this saying the other day, I thought that was really profound.

Um, God's proclamation of love precedes his declaration of law.

And in order to even get to the point where we can follow after his righteousness, we have to first seek his love.

So I'm a big believer that God gives us opportunities to practice his teachings in order to grow in him.

So often in my interactions with people, my interactions with uh uh with my wife specifically, um, I will get opportunities to practice these things.

And specifically, the biggest one I'm working on right now is meekness um and the ability to take myself out of the equation and plug Christ in.

Um, because that's where that's kind of the whole central point, uh, one of the biggest themes of the gospel is to die to self, and that my place in it um is only gonna get me hurt, is only gonna get me in trouble.

But where I can plug in Christ, where Christ can take over, where Christ can work through me, um, is gonna be how I can build a relationship with him and display that Christ, that light of Christ to other people.

Uh, we have one video left.

Uh, this video is special to me.

Colin mentioned it in his video.

It has certainly been true for me.

I hope it's been true for you.

In this journey through Luke, uniquely, I have been given opportunity, it feels like every week to stress test if I'm really ready to practice what I've been preaching.

If I really believe what I claim to believe.

When we started Jesus' most famous sermon, I went through a couple of weeks, just an overview of the startling way that Jesus starts.

Blessed are the poor, blessed are the hungry, blessed are the weeping, blessed are those who are hated for the sake of his name.

We talked about security and how the world offers us security in all kinds of things, all different paths, all different ladders to climb, relationships to have, money to make.

And all of them fall short.

And that if we are looking for our security in anything other than Jesus and Jesus alone, our security is simply misplaced.

I even talked about how our own life, how our security cannot even be in the life that we're living.

I preached that on a Sunday.

On Tuesday, I got the call that nobody wants to get.

That a family member had been diagnosed, that the future was unsure.

As we go to our last video, I want you to see how God has been working in the life of my mom.

This series has given me personally a lot of peace in this particular season of my life, uh, leading up to a time I never thought would happen in my life, uh, but it did.

Um, I got the diagnosis of cancer.

Uh, not something you want to hear.

Uh, but uh the series, Clayton, had challenged us to think about death, had challenged us to think about our life and thinking about heaven as the prize and not the consolation.

We live for the kingdoms of this world, and I'll tell you how I know this.

Even as believers in Jesus, the way we think about death is that this life is the prize, and eternal life is the consolation.

We dread dying.

And we think, you know, as much as I dread dying, at least I know I'll go to heaven.

You know what that means?

It means heaven's the consolation, it is consoling you because you're missing out on the prize, which is this life.

All of that resonated a lot with me because uh I do uh we don't want to die, you know, and uh I think deep down we think we're not for a long time.

And then you get a diagnosis like cancer.

I'm just so thankful uh because the peace that I've had uh since getting that diagnosis has been amazing.

Uh the community God's put around me, um, the messages coming from the stage, it's just put it all into perspective.

And and God has just shown up so much through all of this.

And I just um I just feel so blessed.

And I just I feel like the peace that I that I feel right now would not have been there 10, 15, 20 years ago if this had happened then.

And and that's my prayer is that God will just use this for his glory, uh, whatever, however, whatever that looks like.

And I think maybe that's it.

Maybe just the surrender, finally, you know, of just really wanting what God wants and trying to look outside of just myself.

And that's come through just trying every day and failing a lot, but trying every day to see through God's eyes, to want heaven to be the prize and not the consolation, not just let me get saved so I can go to heaven one day when all of this is over.

Um, you know, one of the big keys to this sermon, to this whole series, um, is that we're really learning who God is.

We're really learning who Jesus is, we're really learning his heart.

I feel like strongly that one of the things I'm to learn through all of this is I need to not be afraid to die.

And, you know, I've said many times, well, I'm not afraid to die because, you know, I'm going to heaven in, but that's not the truth, you know.

And the one thing I've been trying to do uh through my life over the last few years is just be truthful.

When I'm not trusting God, I try to be truthful.

When I'm not, and and tell him I'm not trusting you right now, you know.

And so truthfully, you know, I don't want to die.

Uh there's a lot here, family and friends and and my husband and things, and but I want to feel um that heaven is the price.

And and I feel like that's where God's, you know, really, really working on me and transitioning me.

For some time I have lived in the decision that Christ can have my life.

There are many things I would die for.

And I've thought hard about that.

I would die for my family, uh, I would die for the kingdom of God.

It's like every week I I preach out of Luke, and then I walk into my week, and I get an opportunity to see if I really believe it, if I'll really live it out.

I think God knows He can take my life.

I can surrender that.

What about my mom?

What about your career?

What about your health?

If God wants it, can he have it?

All of this will come down to one fundamental question.

Who is God to you?

And can you trust him?

The reality is uh at some point our time on earth will be over.

And I'm confident that my last breath in this life will be my first breath in the presence of Jesus Christ.

And so, how do we live in a way like the Apostle Paul, who says, Hey, look, I'm I don't have a death wish.

I'm happy to stay alive, and as long as I'm living, I'm gonna be building the kingdom of God, I'm gonna be useful to Jesus, I'm gonna love the people around me.

But man, when it's my time, that's the prize.

That's the finish line.

And on the other side, I'm in the presence of my father who loves me.

I helped start this church seven and a half years ago because I believe that.

And I preach passionately because I believe that.

Because every week God is bringing people into our venues and onto our stream who cannot answer life's most important question.

What comes next?

There is a next.

None of us are gonna live forever.

We don't like to think about it.

We're all taking steps towards death.

Then what?

Because for those who know Jesus, what comes next is the prize.

Here's what we believe that God created us to be in relationship with himself, but we fumbled that.

We rebel, we sin, we break God's standards, and we break our relationship.

God loves us so much that he came down to us.

It's not religion, he didn't stay distant and make us climb our way to him.

This is real love, the kind of love that steps out of a perfect heaven and down into our brokenness, that's tempted in every way that we are, but never sins.

Every sin deserves punishment.

We have a God who took your punishment on himself.

Jesus was killed in the most horrific way.

In Romans, we're reminded by the Apostle Paul that God proved his love for you.

He proved it.

When Jesus was horrifically murdered on a Roman cross, he proved his love for you.

Three days later, Jesus walked out of his own tomb, and he did that for a very specific reason.

He was proving to you and to me that he can, in fact, offer us life after death.

To have such an unbelievable gift, all of our sins forgiven.

To be able to answer life's biggest question of what comes next, you might assume to get access to a gift like that, there's probably a significant checklist.

Lots of work that we must accomplish.

Maybe you were even raised that way in a religious setting.

Here's what Jesus says it is not by your works that you are saved.

It is a gift.

A gift cannot be earned, it can only be received.

What Jesus asks for is your faith, believing that he's your only hope for this life.

And he's your only hope for what comes next, believing that he really is God.

He really died for your sins, he really walked out of his own grave, and he really is coming back for you someday.

As we close service across our venues, if you join me in a time of prayer by just bowing your head and closing your eyes, creating a little space, if you're here and you've never had a moment in time where you've put your faith in Jesus, I want to give you the opportunity to do that today.

This moment of faith gives you complete confidence in what comes after this life.

Religion offers a sliding scale.

I'm 10% sure, 40% sure, 80% sure that I might go to paradise with God.

That's not what Jesus offered.

He offers 100% certainty because it's not about you, it is about the one who you have believed in.

If you've never had a moment in time where you have consciously decided to put your faith in Jesus, my guess is the Spirit of God is pressing in on your life right now, calling you to this decision.

If that's you, with everyone's eyes closed, I want to ask you right now to just simply raise your hand up.

Raising your hand is not magic, it's a symbolic gesture that says, Today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

For those who raised a hand, we can say with confidence that God sees your faith and accepts it, forgives all of your sins, and is right now giving you a gift that no one and nothing can take away.

The gift of eternal life with God.

And all I want to do is very simply help you acknowledge this moment through a prayer.

And so if you raise your hand, I'm gonna ask you to pray this with us.

I'm gonna ask all believers to pray with me out loud as well.

Let's pray like this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God, that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

So glad you joined us for today's message.

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