Insecurity: The Lie: Religion Brings Security with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Well, welcome to the 1030 service.

Man, that is uh really exciting.

You guys made the change with us.

A lot of exciting changes here at MetaCurch, getting ready to launch our second location in just a few weeks.

As you notice, we've been telling you the last couple of weeks we've kind of changed our seating strategy.

I'm gonna give you kind of like a peek behind the curtain.

Our ushers did tell me we're kind of nervous that some people are gonna be frustrated, they don't get their special seat.

And I assured them, we are not that church, right?

We're the people who do whatever it takes to make people comfortable when they come in.

Right?

We're that people you can clap to let me know that you know, that I know, that you know, that we're.

If you're not those people, I'm gonna need you to pretend to be, okay?

We're doing this.

Uh welcome.

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

I'm the lead pastor here at Meta, and you're in week one of a new series where we are tackling head-on this issue that has plagued us throughout human existence.

We're talking about insecurity.

We all know the feeling, we know the power that it holds in our life from the time that we're young all the way till today.

And uh, those of you who come here often, you know, at MetaCurch, we don't just come here to like check a box, you know, went to church service.

We come here to get really open and brutally honest with ourselves.

We believe that the Spirit of God is here and wants to work in our life, and it's our job to be open and bring things into the light.

And so I'm gonna ask you up front, what are the insecurities that you're dealing with today?

What are the things that are plaguing you and holding you back from pursuing life in a dynamic and fearless way?

I tell you, every time you sit under my teaching that God created you on purpose, that it's by no accident you're here on planet earth, and God created you with purpose, that he has placed things inside of you that he is desperate to unleash on the world around you, that our city and our world, your neighborhoods and families, they need the people of God to walk in their created purpose and insecurity is one of the primary things that will hold you back.

Maybe you're not quite ready to face today's insecurity.

It's easier sometimes to think back on the insecurities that we had in high school and middle school and elementary school, because a lot of those we can look back and kind of laugh at now.

I'm a millennial, so when I was in middle school, uh the the craziest thing you could do as a middle school boy was to show your kneecaps.

Now I know things have changed, right?

It's 2024, skies out, thighs out, right?

That's how we roll now.

And I'm with you, dude.

I like a little breeze on my quads, you know?

But back then, dude, you would not catch me dead with my kneecaps out.

Our influencers dressed like this, right?

Like, are those shorts, are those pants, are they capris?

We really don't know.

I have a core memory, and it's really embarrassing, but I'm gonna share it with you.

I moved to the East Coast in sixth grade, and we went to PE, and I had basketball shorts on that came to about here, right?

And the PE coach said, All right, everyone, grab a seat, crisscross applesauce.

And I was like, oh no.

Because you say crisscross applesauce, you're gonna show some thigh, right?

So I can remember getting down in position and holding on to the ends of my shorts so that my kneecaps wouldn't show.

It was one of my young insecurities.

And we grow out of some of those, but we don't grow out of having insecurities.

They just start taking different shapes and different forms, and we get insecure in our relationships, so we get bitter, or we get jealous, or we get insecure about our skills, or maybe our positioning in the workplace.

And so we get overly competitive, or we start badmouthing our coworkers.

It's easy to get insecure about our looks or our influence or our intelligence, and so we begin to overcompensate, we grow anxious or bitter or even arrogant.

Now, there's a reason that insecurity is so powerful and so detrimental to our lives.

Psychologists have known for years that the two fundamental drivers of human behavior are significance and security.

The two fundamental drivers of human behavior are significance and security.

All throughout the summer, we were in a series called Pursuit.

That was about how to live a significant life.

Even if you find significance, you still will continue to search for security.

Abraham Maslow, a famous psychologist, he put together what's called the human hierarchy of needs.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

And if you look at where security is positioned in this triangle, it is right above survival.

The very bottom of your hierarchy of needs, the thing that's most important is like food, water, and shelter.

After that, you need psychological security.

As a matter of fact, the lowest part of this triangle, it literally says if you can't read it, breathing, right?

So here's your science lesson for the day.

Uh to survive, you've got to breathe, right?

So once you're breathing, it's like the next thing you need is psychological security.

It is that critical to us.

And what I want to do in this series is two things.

I want to address at the deepest level where insecurity comes from.

And I wanna show you the lies that the world around us offers us feigning security, when really, if you go down those paths, you will just end up even more insecure.

First, let's talk about where insecurity comes from at the deepest level.

Pretty much all people are born into a situation of security, at least for a little while.

Most people are born and get to experience some span of years in what we often call innocence.

Pastor Tony preached a couple weeks ago.

Uh, for the last year, he has not slept well because yesterday, baby Sonny turned one year old, right?

And we take care of babies like we take care of nothing else.

When a baby cries, we come running.

And it's because we understand the responsibility there.

We provide and we protect and we tell them the truth.

In other words, we are born into, and most of us get several years of living in a sense of security.

And people are taking care of us, they're providing for our needs, and you may think, uh, not me, man.

When I was three years old, I was getting whooped left and right, you know, like I was disciplined all the time as a kid.

And let me address that.

And some of you parents need a gentle reminder this morning that discipline and allowing consequence and setting boundaries is a part of how you provide security for your children.

It makes them feel safe and puts guardrails on their life.

Some people get a lot of years of innocence.

They're very protected and well taken care of.

That's not true for everyone.

Here's what is true.

Before the age of 10, everyone experiences real psychological pain.

For a lot of kids growing up, it's when their parents divorce.

That's the first time that they realize things aren't always okay in the world.

For others, it's the harsh words of someone pointing out a physical flaw that no one had ever made fun of before, or making fun of their station in life.

For some people, someone that they trusted lied to them and they realized that you can't always believe everything that you're told.

Sadly, for some kids, it's being abused emotionally, physically, or even sexually abused.

Something happens to all of us before the age of 10, and it's the moment that you realize that the world's not always safe, and people cannot always be trusted, and things are not always predictable.

In other words, you are not always secure.

And in that moment, once again, insecurity enters your life.

If you've been through the Movement Academy, we call this moment your inciting incident.

And we say it's like walking through a door that shuts and locks behind you.

Your period of innocence is over.

And while your insecurities will change in what they are and how they're centered and how they come into your life, the insecurity does not go away.

And at this moment, you will begin searching for security for the rest of your life.

You will look for significance and security either until you find it, or you will search until the day that you die.

And this makes anyone who can offer you security very powerful, which is why we must expose the lies of people who promise security at the end of a given path, but cannot actually deliver on it.

Insecurity is powerful.

It causes you to do things that are not helpful for your life, it holds you back from doing things that would benefit your future.

In this series, we're gonna talk about the lies that the world sells you and how you can live a truly secure life.

And today, the lie is that religion brings security.

The lie is religion brings security.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we love you.

We thank you for your great love for us.

I thank you for MetaCurch, a place for all people, all different parts of their faith journey.

Holy Spirit, you're here, and so I pray we'd be humble enough to have open hearts and open minds and allow you to speak to us.

We love you.

And we pray all these things in Jesus' name, and everyone said.

Amen.

What are some things that you find yourself insecure about?

For me, it's just like really finances, because I have a bunch of kids.

My legs and like the lower half of my body.

Like my wife and kids think of me, you know what I mean?

That's probably the most self-conscious thing about me that I have.

Uh do you think that religion is helpful in everyday life?

Yes.

Yes and no, you know, because I feel like there's there's a middle ground.

There's definitely where you take it exactly word for word by the book, and a lot of people can misconstrue that.

That's how you get like, you know, around a radical stuff.

And you have people who just very loosely followed.

So it's like you really gotta find like a middle ground.

I think some sort of spirituality, for sure.

Maybe not like just uh like the Christian religion that we all see, but I think it's important to have some belief to hold on to.

If we don't have religion, then there's no structure.

If we don't have structure, then uh we just fall apart.

Some people um need some sort of metaphysical, metaphorical leash on them.

You know what I mean?

Like, there's some people that say, hey, religion is why people aren't just killing each other left and right, and it's like, well, with that mentality, you're just an animal on a leash.

Versus somebody that doesn't believe they're gonna get punished at the end of their life or how they behave, and then it doesn't matter.

What do you think religion provides for people who subscribe to it?

Um, a sense of comfort for sure.

Uh hope and faith.

Uh, if you don't have, if you don't have hope and faith, what what what is there to look forward to?

Everyone searches for security.

And we we look for security in different things.

Some people look for it in their wealth, others in their influence, some in their good looks, some people in how many sexual partners they can have, in their career success.

But when all of that fails, and inevitably it will, people often gravitate towards something higher, maybe even something transcendent, and this is where religion comes in.

And so the question is can religion offer us true and lasting security?

Billions of people look to the world religions for this very reason.

So, can any of them deliver?

To answer that, we're gonna take a brief survey of the dominant religious worldviews that virtually all religions fall under and see if they have the security that we're looking for.

First, we're gonna look at the worldview of works-based religion.

There is an aspect of works-based religion to virtually every single religion, with the exception of biblical Christianity.

It's most evident in religions like Islam, Judaism, Mormonism, the Jehovah's Witness.

Even our Catholic brothers and sisters have created a system of works inside their tradition.

The works-based template is the same across all religions.

And so here are the necessary things to have a religion.

You need sacred men who have sacred text and then to meet in sacred spaces.

Sacred men with sacred text in sacred spaces.

And all of those are important.

You see, the men will interpret the text for you because they're sacred and you obviously are not, right?

Like, they've got like a direct line with God, you've got like a long-distance collect call at best, you know.

They are holy and you are, you know, whatever you are.

Like, you gotta come to them and they'll outline the system for you.

You've got sacred men, and they have a sacred text, and by that they typically mean the actual physical book.

Like the binding and the pages and the ink itself is sacred, as well as the words inside that only they can truly interpret for you.

And then, of course, you need a sacred space, like a temple or a mosque or a sanctuary, and that becomes the proving ground of how well you are following the system that they have put in place.

If there is no sacred space to entice the people to come to three or four or five times a week, then they can't inspect the fruit of your life and see how well you are climbing the ladder of good works.

The sacred space kind of becomes the religious NFL combine, so we can test your spiritual vertical jump and make sure that you are putting the work in.

Sacred men with sacred text and sacred spaces.

Now, every religion posits a problem and then offers a solution on works-based religions.

The problem is that you are separated from your deity and therefore a good afterlife.

You're separated from the God of that religion, and so you're separated from all that is good in this life and all that could be good in the next.

That is like a cosmic problem.

It's the biggest problem you could possibly have.

So, what is the solution?

The solution is you must work to try and attain that afterlife, but there's a huge caveat.

You will not know whether you achieved it or not until you die.

And find out.

Now, hopefully, in our search for security, you can see why that might be a problem.

Uh, we've probably all been assigned a project or an assignment at work where we weren't given clear metrics.

You don't know when you win, and so you're doing lots of work, but you don't know if you're actually succeeding.

There's very little security in that kind of work.

It'd be kind of like really falling in love with someone, and you even could spend your whole entire life with them, and you say, if we get married, will you be faithful to me?

And they say, I don't know.

Let's get married and find out, you know.

You're not gonna have a lot of security in that relationship.

So you have the world's biggest problem.

You are separated from God, you're not in relationship with God, which means you're separated from everything that is good in this life and the life to come.

And you've got to try to work your way to relationship with that God, work your way to the afterlife, to paradise, but you won't know if you got there until this life is over.

Which just means practically you cannot have any security of whether or not you have achieved it during this life.

On works-based religion, there is no security, it's not an option, and it's not an option on purpose.

Works-based religion leverages fear as the main driver of your obedience.

If you are secure in your eternal life, what power would the sacred men with the sacred text and the sacred space have over you?

There is no security on works-based religion.

What about the other dominant religious worldview?

That would be the karmic cycle religions.

Now, these are largely the Eastern religions, like Buddhism and Hinduism, and yet karmic thinking has infiltrated the West more and more over the years.

The concept of karma is that throughout life, you store up a debt of the wrongs you have done and a reserve of the good things you've done, and at some point you will receive back bad things for the bad things you've done, and you'll receive back good things for the good things that you've done.

Now, that sounds a little bit like justice, getting what you deserve and not getting what you do not deserve, but karma is far more complex than that.

For one, your actions are very rarely directly tied to the karma that you receive.

And so if you stole from your company, what would be just is you getting fired from your company.

But on karma, you could steal from your company and not see the results until 30 years later when you're diagnosed with cancer.

Now, it's even more complicated than that, because it wasn't just stealing, it was stealing from your company and flirting with someone else while you were married and beating up that kid in middle school and lying a little bit on your taxes that one time.

All of that compounds over time, and you get hit with that debt at an unspecified time.

It's very hard to judge or make sense of.

And of course, on karma, it begs the question, easily observable in our world, which is some people do nothing but lie, steal, and cheat, and they go on to have nothing but success throughout their entire lives.

Where was karma for them?

Well, that's why to believe in the karmic cycle, you also have to believe in reincarnation.

On the karmic cycle, you will be born again, not spiritually like we talk about on Christianity, you will literally be born again as a different person or a different thing in this world, which means practically the suffering that you have endured in this life, some of it not of your own making.

Maybe you feel like you always draw the short stick.

Maybe you had a spouse who misused you and left you, abandoned you.

Maybe you had parents who didn't take very good care of you.

Maybe you struggle with uh mental health and emotional issues.

All of that on the karmic cycle is you paying off a karmic debt from a life that you previously lived, that you have no memory of and no responsibility over.

You see, on the karmic cycle, your insecurity is a feature, it's not a bug.

Your insecurity is a part of the penance that you have to pay for this life or maybe even previous lives.

Not only does karma fail to offer any key to alleviating your insecurity, but it provides a way for you to cycle through that insecurity again and again as you pay off your karmic debt.

In true karmic religions, they don't even allow charity or help's ministry.

Because if you're suffering and I intervene in any way, I'm keeping you from paying off your karmic debt.

There can't be security found in workspace religion.

There is no security found in karmic cycle religions.

Every major world religion fits under one of these umbrellas, or maybe even both.

That means religion simply cannot offer you the security that you are looking for, the kind of transcendent, all-encompassing freedom to live your life on purpose and with purpose and to quit allowing pain to drive all of your decisions.

Religion is often thought of as, you know, climbing the ladder.

That's a metaphor.

The problem is it's a ladder that has no rungs.

You gotta earn every one of them, and as quickly as you earn one, you will mess something up and it will be taken away from you.

Security is always just out of reach on religion, and it's out of reach on purpose.

Because if you could find security, no one could demand your obedience, at least.

That's what religion thinks.

Now I want to talk about a third religious worldview, and many people would disagree with me.

I'll go to bat that this has become a religious worldview.

I want to talk about atheism.

And for many people, when they really investigate the major religious worldviews and there's no security to be found, and they think I don't need religion, I will just become an atheist.

I call it a religion because no movement has as much momentum in America as atheism.

Its adherents are often dogmatic, and many come from the most persuasive platforms in our culture.

Celebrities, athletes, scientists, authors, college professors.

These fields seem dominated by the belief that there is no God.

So if religion has failed you and you can't find the security that you will look for until your dying day, then maybe you can go to atheism and rationalism and scientism.

However, atheism immediately throws a huge wrench in your search for security.

And it's pretty obvious there is no God, which means there is no creator, which means there's no designer, which means there's no purposeful design.

On atheism, you came from nothing, your purpose is nothing, your destination after this life is nothing, which is to suggest that anything else, trying to find purpose or meaning or value, is to borrow from another religious idea.

This life on atheism is not part of a plan that is being played out with a meaningful beginning and a just end.

It is all a miraculous accident of particles colliding billions of years ago and eventually evolving to where we are today.

When you remove a creator, you remove something that is outside of us, outside of space and time, which means you remove an objective anchor to determine things like morality, equality, reason, and all the other component parts of life.

Now, this may sound insane, and I want to recognize very quickly that almost no atheists live like that's true.

Almost every atheist and agnostic lives as if their life has purpose and meaning, and they're meant to impact the world and do something great.

And I want to suggest for anyone who's here and isn't quite convinced of the claims of Christianity, and maybe you are atheist, or maybe you consider yourself agnostic, that drive that your life matters and you were built for purpose, I believe that is the voice of God in you calling to you to take him up on the adventure of a lifetime of coming into relationship with him and living life on purpose and with purpose.

When we're talking about these three worldviews, what I'm trying to get down to is not the PR campaign of what they offer you, but the fundamentals of what is real.

And every once in a while, an honest atheist will tell you the reality of the atheistic worldview.

Like famous atheist Charles Dawkins, who wrote, in a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt.

Other people are going to get lucky.

And you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice.

The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect.

If there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

Charles Dawkins, a famous atheist, is saying the quiet part out loud.

If there is nothing transcendent, if there is no God, then at the bottom, what you have is a world of pitiless indifference.

The blind physical forces that created you do not care about you.

You may feel insecure, but that is just a result of how you have evolved to feel.

There is no options, there is no answer, and therefore there is no security.

You can't find security in workspace religion, you can't find security in karmic cycle religions, you can't find security on atheism.

Now, if you're new to Metachurch, then when I started the message by saying, here's the big lie.

The big lie is there's no security in religion.

You might have thought, aren't we in like a religious service right now?

Like, is this the message where he gets to the end and announces the church is shutting down?

Like, what exactly is the point of this?

And I wouldn't blame you for thinking that because for a couple hundred years, Christians have dropped the ball in defending ourselves against the claim that Christianity is just another one of the world religions.

When you actually look at biblical Christianity, which comes from Christ, you learn very quickly that Jesus didn't come to start another religion.

In fact, if you read the story of Jesus in the Gospels, you will learn it was the religious elite who hung Jesus on a cross.

Jesus did not call sacred men, the ones who had climbed the ladder and read all the books.

He called very normal, ordinary people.

He didn't start them out with sacred text to protect.

He gave them the Spirit of God inside of them to enlighten them and inspire them.

And eventually, when our scriptures came together to enlighten those scriptures to us, so you didn't have to rely on some idea of a sacred man who's closer to your God than you are, because you have a direct line to your heavenly father the same way that they would.

Jesus didn't start a movement of sacred places, as a matter of fact.

The word he used when he said, I will start my church is the word ecclesia, which means the called out people.

It was never about place, it was just about people.

And so you don't need a sanctuary, you don't need a temple, you don't need a mosque.

What you need is a 151 saloon or a former bingo hall, a holotus 4-H, and you can get going.

We don't come here to inspect the fruit of your life and judge whether or not you are doing enough works.

We come here to recognize that we are all sinners saved by a miracle of grace that comes to us from God.

You see, Jesus started this movement with very ordinary men, and they started traveling on missionary journeys, and everywhere that the good news of Jesus touched, the world began to change.

And I don't just think that, the enemies of the early church thought that.

Here's what the enemies, by the way, religious leaders, enemies of the early church said in Acts 17.

They said, These men, the Christians who have turned the world upside down, have come here now.

You see, when we moved over here off Petrenko, they didn't know a movement was coming into their midst that for 2,000 years has turned the world upside down.

On October 6th, we're gonna baptize a whole bunch of you because your life has been turned upside down.

Not because you're on some path to climb some ladder.

Jesus didn't come to teach you to climb a ladder.

Jesus came to implore you to carry your cross, to take all your pain and all your insecurity and place it in the hands of an Almighty God who loved you enough to step off his throne and into our disaster and give his life for ours.

When we call it a religion, we are tearing down the uniqueness of what Jesus gave his life to start.

Jesus' movement is not works-based.

You cannot climb your way into relationship with God.

Instead, Jesus, our God, came down to us.

He did the work for us.

And what that means is that if we trust in him, we can have eternal security.

Read the New Testament, there's verse after verse after verse, just like this.

Jesus Himself said, I give them eternal life.

He didn't say they earn eternal life, they work their way to eternal life.

Later in Ephesians, it says, it is by grace, through faith, you are saved, not by your works.

He says, I give it to them.

Earlier in John's gospel, he says, God loved the world so much, he sent Jesus that anyone who believes will be given eternal life.

They will never perish, never die.

He says, I give them eternal life and they will never perish.

No one will snatch them out of my hand.

And my father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my father's hand.

You're secure from the jump.

When you come into relationship with God by simply putting your faith in Jesus, you have instant and eternal security.

And you know what that means?

It means while religion says that you've got to work for God's love, Jesus says you get to work from God's love.

You get to start with it as an everyday reality.

You go to bed loved by your God.

You wake up loved by your God.

You screw up, guess what?

You're still loved by your God.

So you pick yourself up and you keep on walking.

Jesus movement is not karma.

We have sinned against the most holy God.

Because of our sin, the only justice is for us to be separated from God.

God is holy, that means perfectly set apart.

In his very nature and perfection, he cannot dwell in the presence of sin.

But that same God that we have offended came down to this earth, paid the price for our sin.

This isn't karma.

This isn't you paying off some debt over and over and over, life after life after life.

This is Jesus coming down and trading his perfect life for my sinful, jacked up life, for your sinful, jacked up life.

It is the great reversal from what karma teaches.

Not you paying off your debt so you can be right with God.

God paying off your debt because he loves you so much.

Here's what Paul wrote to the Colossians.

He says, He erased the certificate of debt.

Not you screwed up so you get born again as a grasshopper, right?

It's not karma.

He erased it.

All the obligations that was against us and opposed to us, he's taken it away by nailing it to the cross.

If there is no God on atheism, none of this is significant.

We are just stardust, we're randomly colliding atoms.

If karma is true, then you are living one of many lives.

You're paying off the debt of someone else's bad decisions, or living in the luxury of someone else's fortunes.

If we have to work our way to heaven, then we should be scared as hell.

On my best days, I am a sinner, deeply in need of a savior.

In all the history of mankind, there's only one thing that can offer the security that we are so desperately searching for, and that is a relationship with Jesus.

Remember what caused your insecurity in the first place ultimately was sin.

Sinful people in a broken, sinful world.

It brought pain into your life.

Your security and innocence was broken.

And so to truly get eternal security back, you must have someone who can deal with the problem of sin.

And that's why there's only one relationship that can offer us the security to free us up to live fully the life we were created to live.

You can only thrive when you get back in security that comes from Jesus and Jesus alone.

And if you're a believer in Jesus, odds are, just like me, there are times when you still get insecure.

Maybe you're living through a season of great insecurity right now.

Can I tell you what happens is we start buying the lies of the world around us that says our security is gonna be found in ourselves, our security is gonna be found in a situation, our security is gonna be found in an earthly relationship, our security is gonna be found by our own good works or deeds.

If you're a believer in Jesus, you have everything that you need to live a life of true security.

But you must take your eyes off of yourself, off of your own skills, off of your own influence, off of your own wealth, off of your own good looks.

Get your eyes off of this world and lift your eyes to the cross of Jesus Christ, where you will find your value, you will find your worth, you will find your significance.

We look to Jesus, and in Jesus we find our security, and we talk about living with a pilgrim's perspective all the time here.

Because if you can get your vision elevated, then your security won't be dependent on what the people around you say about you.

It will be dependent on what Jesus Christ says about you.

It will not be dependent on your own works or skills, it will be determined by the finished work of Jesus Christ.

If you're struggling with insecurity, you're not alone.

Paul wrote a lot of the letters of the New Testament of our Bibles, and people were constantly falling back into this trap trying to work for their security when Jesus already did all the work.

Here's what he wrote to the Romans who were struggling with some of these same issues.

He said, For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present or things to come, nor powers, nor height, or depth, or any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

This is the kind of security that you could live with.

And if you're here and you've never had a moment in time where you have started a relationship with God, scripture makes it very clear that that begins by faith in Jesus.

And all that means is a moment of sincere belief that Jesus is your only hope for this life, and your only hope for the life that is to come.

Believing that he is who he says he is, and that he's done what he says that he has done.

And by putting your faith in Jesus, you are given eternal security.

You are adopted into the family of God.

A lot of our insecurity comes from our parents, and you know, none of no parents are perfect, and I certainly am not a perfect parent.

But there is one: your heavenly father, who will never give you reason to be anything but secure.

Would you pray with me right where you're at?

And bow your head and close your eyes.

There's nothing magic about that.

Just create a little bit of space.

We like to end service with a time of reflection and a time of prayer.

I want to talk to those in the room who are believers.

You've had that moment of recognizing that Jesus is your only hope.

You've started following him, adding some spiritual disciplines, but you still struggle with insecurity.

I asked you at the beginning of service, I'll ask you again, what insecurities are plaguing your life right now?

What are the voices that run through your head convincing you you're not enough, you don't have enough, you're not smart enough, you're not good-looking enough, you're not educated enough?

Recognize those insecurities go all the way back to your childhood.

All the way back to that first primary pain.

That the God of the universe loves you enough, that he gave his life for you, he's provided all that you need to begin living in security.

What would it look like for you daily, hourly, moment by moment, to start getting your eyes off of yourself and onto Jesus, the source of your security.

I want to talk to those in the room and maybe some who are watching online who have never had a moment in time where you've put your faith in Jesus.

You haven't taken the first step to security because you don't have a relationship with the God who loves you.

If that's you, today can be your day.

To simply choose to believe that Jesus is God, that He did come to this earth, died for your sins, and rose again.

He's asked you for your faith.

He's done all of the work.

And that will start a relationship that will put you on the path to a life lived on purpose and with purpose.

If you're here today and you have never made that decision and you're ready today to put your faith in Jesus, I want to ask you, right where you are, with everyone's eyes closed, to just lift your hand up in the air where I can see it.

So I know who I'm talking to, I know who I'm praying with.

Amen.

Amen.

By raising your hand, you're saying, today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Praise God.

For those who raised a hand, I want you to know that Jesus sees your faith and accepts it.

We know that through his word, which means your sins have been forgiven.

You are clothed with the righteousness of Christ, that you have been given eternal life, and nothing and no one can ever take that away from you.

For those who lifted a hand, I want to lead you through a very simple prayer to acknowledge this moment.

I want to ask you to pray it with me.

And I'm gonna ask all the believers in the room to pray this 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 that you rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

Now let me pray over you.

Jesus, I thank you that you're continuing to move here, continuing to call us towards freedom.

This life can be so difficult, so heavy, so painful.

You know that firsthand because you came and lived in this world, and yet you have made a way for us to rise above, to carry our pain and live truly heroic, powerful lives.

God, I pray for those who just received you in relationship with you, that you would bless them, that they would find their next steps and take them.

God, we rejoice over lives made new.

I pray for every believer in this room that we would find our security in you.

The world needs the people of God to walk in our full power, and I pray that today would be another step towards that.

We love you.

And we pray these things in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast.

You can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps.

You can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

Man, I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.