What is Love? 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.

All right, Valentine's Day is just around the corner.

Love is in the air.

Our beautiful couples dancing, really only at MetaCurch.

That's kind of put it in that category of only at MetaCurch.

So glad that you guys are here.

If you are new with us, my name is Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at Meta.

And uh we love love here.

It's gonna be the topic of our conversation.

We're gonna take a deep dive into love.

I love Valentine's Day.

Um, I love this, this is really controversial because some people love them and some people think it's like biting into a stick of chalk.

I love conversation hearts, like I love the way they taste, like where it almost breaks your tooth when you bite into it, but then it's so so delicious.

Um today I wanna dive into this topic, but I want to go to a level that most of us probably have not gone to before.

We're gonna center this around one of the most famous passages in the entire Bible.

Odds are, if you've ever been to a wedding, whoever officiated that wedding read these four verses of 1 Corinthians 13.

Love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs.

Love finds no joy in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth.

It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, love never ends.

See, doesn't it feel like I should say, now you may kiss your bride, right there?

Like that is the wedding passage, and it's a very powerful passage, but to understand just how powerful of an idea it represents, what we need to do is look at the context.

Because it's interesting, sometimes at a wedding, they'll read verses one, two, and three, but I have never been to a wedding, to be honest with you, I've never officiated a wedding where we finish out the chapter.

I recently studied the rest of 1 Corinthians 13, and it absolutely blew me away.

In fact, I believe that by putting this passage in its context, you will leave here today with the deepest understanding of love you have ever encountered.

I realize that is a big sell two minutes into my sermon, but I think 1 Corinthians 13 can actually deliver on that.

We will also answer a question that has been specifically plaguing our culture for years now.

It goes all the way back to that one faithful night.

The night at the Roxberry.

My message today is what is love?

We're gonna answer it together.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we love you, and we thank you for loving us, and we wanna find out what exactly that means and what it means to live and to love like you lived, and how you loved.

And so help us in Holy Spirit.

We know that you're here and you're wanting to speak to us, and so I thank you for a place like Metachurch, a movement of people, people all the way from seasoned believers who've been walking with you a long time to people who are still skeptical, on the fence, just investigating.

I pray all of us would humble ourselves and allow you to speak.

We trust that you will.

We pray this all in Jesus' name.

And if you want to find out what love is, say amen.

Amen.

Now we talk about context all the time.

Uh I want to remind you that most of the documents we have in the New Testament of the Bible, uh, most of them are letters.

We have the gospels, which are historical narratives of the life of Jesus.

And then most of what we have after that are letters.

And when these letters were written, like if you wrote a letter to someone, you wouldn't say chapter one, verse one.

You would just write a letter.

And that's how these documents are in their original format.

We put in chapters and verses hundreds of years later because we found that in a congregational setting, it was hard to get everyone on the same part of the letter.

So it was just kind of a shorthand.

But why that matters is because these are not disconnected thoughts, chapter one to chapter two, or chapter 12 to chapter 13.

These are connected thoughts, all a part of the whole.

And so to really understand what any passage is saying, you have to try and seek out the context that it sits in.

So it's really important for understanding love in 1 Corinthians 13.

So we're gonna peek back into 1 Corinthians 12.

What you find in the letters that Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, we call them 1 and 2 Corinthians, is that there was all kinds of infighting in this church.

I mean, they would they would find ways to argue over anything.

Maybe you grew up in a church like that where there was all kinds of drama and people arguing over nonsense all the time.

Um, I went to a lot of good churches growing up, but I had some church drama in my background as well.

In chapter 12, specifically, Paul is correcting them on arguments they're having over spiritual gifts.

And what seemed to be happening is people were ranking the different spiritual gifts, and then whichever ones were at the top, everyone wanted to have those, and whichever ones were at the bottom, nobody really wanted to have those.

And people were pretending that they had spiritual gifts that God had never given them to try to put themselves in a position where they could have more power.

The whole thing was cloaked in pride, and it was just simply wrong.

And so Paul pretty harshly critiques them and he uses this analogy of the body of Christ and how every local church is like a body, and every single member matters, and when one member is succeeding, the whole body is succeeding, and when one member is failing, the whole body is failing, we need each other, and how God gives us whatever gifts he chooses to give us, it's not our responsibility to beg for one kind of gifting or talent over the other.

Now, this is a conversation about love, and so I'm not gonna go really deep into discussing all of the spiritual gifts, and there's plenty, plenty of information out there about that, and we talk about it sometimes at Meta.

What's so fascinating to me is 2,000 years later, you may or may not know this, in the church world, not in this church, but in the church world broadly, there are still arguments and fights over the spiritual gifts all the time.

And what blows my mind is many people try to make their arguments out of 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14, which were written to a church to tell them to stop arguing over the gifts.

And so we ignore the context, we ignore the forest, get focused on one tree.

And you'll notice I talk a lot about how God has gifted you, but I always talk about it through the lens of purpose.

And here's why.

And this is broadly what Paul is gonna say as well is you don't pursue a gift, you pursue a purpose.

And if you pursue the purpose that God has placed on your life, which means you've believed in Jesus, you're seeking to follow him, you're in his word, you're trying to walk out how he's asked us to live, you're spreading the gospel, you're living as a witness.

As you take step by step of faith, whatever God has called you to, he will equip you for, and the gifts will take care of themselves if we are walking towards our purpose.

If you believe that, say amen.

Amen.

Good.

That was weak, but I'm gonna keep going because I'm on a clock.

From now on, I want stronger amens.

Or if you don't believe it, let's argue.

We could do that too, that'd be fun.

We're not gonna fight over gifts, we're gonna pursue purpose.

That's what we're gonna do here at MetaCurch.

So let's get back to Corinth.

Paul has used this metaphor that we are the body of Christ, and he's letting them know God gives you your gifts.

We're not gonna beg God for some certain kind of gifts, and the gifts aren't ranked, they're all important.

And here's how he concludes chapter 12, which will get us into our actual text of 1 Corinthians 13.

He says this are all apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers, do all do miracles, do all have gifts of healing?

Do all speak in tongues?

Do all interpret?

These are rhetorical questions, and the assumed answer to all of them is no.

Here's how he ends the chapter.

But desire the greater gifts.

Now, Paul very carefully defines the greater gifts in chapter 14.

We're not gonna get there today, but so you know, the greater gifts are the gifts that serve others: love, hospitality, proclaiming the gospel, sharing your story, being a witness, serving others.

The lesser gifts are the gifts that are more attached to signs and wonders that really only serve yourself or your personal relationship with God.

He says the greater gifts are the ones that are attached to our broad purpose of serving other people.

Desire the greater gifts, and then he makes a crazy promise.

Here he goes.

And I will show you an even better way.

You want to know how to navigate following Jesus?

You wanna know how to really live a life that counts, you wanna experience the purpose that God placed inside of you, you want to impact the world around you, I will show you an even greater way.

And that leads us directly in to 1 Corinthians 13, verse 1.

1 Corinthians 13:1

If I speak human or angelic tongues but do not have love, I'm a noisy gong or a clanging symbol.

If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and knowledge, and if I have so much faith that I can move mountains, but I don't have love, this is pretty harsh.

I am nothing.

How about this?

If I give away all my possessions, if I give over my body in order to boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

These famous first three verses are directly giving commentary on the arguments over gifts.

Let me show you.

What does he talk about?

If I speak human or angelic tongues, if I have the gifts of prophecy, if I have understanding, if I have all knowledge, if I have faith, if I give away my possessions, if I give over my body, these are the gifts that were in question: faith, hope, charity, tongues, prophecy, preaching, teaching, and more.

Paul is saying you can have the ultimate height of any of these gifts.

As a matter of fact, you can have maximum strength in all of the gifts.

And if you don't exercise those gifts through the lens of love, you have nothing, you gain nothing, and you are nothing.

In their pride, man, they really thought they were something because they had some kind of gift that everyone was wanting.

He said, No.

If you're using what God has given you for your own prideful gain, you're nothing.

It's harsh, but these are the inspired words of scripture, which means it's true.

You can do all these amazing things, but you do it without love.

He says, You're nothing but a clanging cymbal or a resounding gong.

We don't get it in our context, but those kind of just nonsense instruments, those were the instruments in Corinth that the pagans would use to worship false gods.

In other words, if you're exercising religious activities, but you're not doing it with the love of Christ, then your worship is no better than those who are worshiping false gods.

Love is the key.

And if you're not doing it through love, then at the end of the day, you have nothing, gain nothing, and you are nothing.

All the talent, all the gifting, all the power, it's all canceled out if you aren't doing it with love, which leads us to the obvious question.

Okay, if that's the truth, then what is love?

Baby, don't hurt me.

Y'all were thinking it, so I just put it up.

That's my last time, I won't do it again.

This is the question we have to answer.

What is love?

Paul has your back.

So he's gonna go to an in-depth definition of what love looks like, how it acts, what it isn't, and how to practice it.

Now, Paul's gonna use a very specific Greek word for love.

The the Greek that the New Testament was written in, it's called Koine Greek.

It was the common language of that time.

It was actually the language of the marketplace, so almost everyone spoke it, which is why the gospel could go out to all nations, because you had to know Koine Greek in order to do trade and to be in the marketplace and to make money.

Koine Greek is a very robust language compared to English, which is why there are multiple Greek words that we define in English with the same word of love.

There's brotherly love, which is philo, which is like Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love.

There's eros, which is like romantic intimacy, it's where we get our word erotic.

Happy Valentine's Day.

And then there is agape, and this is God's kind of love.

John's gospel says that Jesus came to fully reveal the Father to us, which means to understand the love of God, we look at the life of Jesus.

If you want to live in love like Jesus, then you live with an agape kind of love.

And Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is going to give us this list of like four verses that in depth becomes a filter for every action, reaction, decision, and relationship that we find ourselves in.

And when you take this out of the context of just a passage that we got to get through so we can get to the wedding reception, and you actually try to apply it not to your spouse next to you, but to your own life, this should be a very convicting passage to all of us.

For me, I can't get past the third word before I'm like, dang it.

Because love is patient.

And we might be in the least patient society of all time.

For most of human history, this was a part of everyone's life.

Uh we were like agrarian, and everyone knew that you had to till the ground and plant the seed and then just wait.

There was built in patience.

Everyone knew that when winter was coming, it was cold, and your house was not air conditioned.

If it was cold, it was cold, and you stayed inside, and you waited.

Now we live with so much affluence and so much convenience.

This one's tough for me because I like to move fast.

Find a staff member of MetaCurch and ask them what pace I like to move at, and they will roll their eyes collectively and say, He likes to move fast.

I like things to get going.

I also like to drive fast.

In Jesus' name, if you're in the left hand, you gotta go at least the speed limit, okay?

Or I will I will correct you in the name of the Father's Son.

You need to get over, because that's the fast lane, right?

And so I'm three words in to the filter for if I'm loving like Jesus, love is patience.

C.S.

Lewis said, understanding patience is understanding that my time does not belong to me.

What if my time actually belongs to the Lord?

If I'm in a hurry, I'm taking control of something that doesn't belong to me.

It's so deep.

Love is patient, love is kind.

You'll notice if you're looking at your Bible, there's there's no asterisk on that.

Love is kind, asterisk, you can go to the bottom and find print, um, except on Facebook, you know.

Love is kind except in political conversations.

Love is kind except with my ex-spouse.

There were less laughs on that one, I noticed.

If our three-course meal doesn't come down when we sit down 10 minutes, if it's not out, we will ruin our witness with a waiter that God has providentially put in our life so that we could be a witness of Jesus to them, and we will ruin that witness because our food isn't out as fast as we want it.

And I worked in the service industry.

Can I just give you a little sneak peek behind the curtain?

The waiter doesn't cook your food, okay?

It's not our fault, right?

It's in the kitchen, but you need to love the kitchen too, because love is patient and love is kind.

It does not envy.

You need to know this, you're in a spiritual battle.

And here's what's mind-blowing about what we're learning in 1 Corinthians 12 and 13 is it appears as though Satan does not mind you doing spiritual things.

What does it say?

If I if I speak with the voice of an angel, if I have the gift of prophecy, if I understand everything, if I have faith to move mountains, give away all my possessions, become a martyr with my own body, give away my body to the Lord.

Satan doesn't care.

What he's concerned about is making sure you're not doing those with the love of God behind them.

Scripture says the devil is as cunning as a serpent.

And maybe he knows that for you to practice spiritual or religious exercises without love behind them actually hurts this movement more than it helps it.

We live in a spiritual battle, and you're being marketed to 24-7.

People have paid$3 million for 30 seconds to give you a Super Bowl ad tonight.

Watch the ads.

They are going to convince you that you are not enough, you don't have enough, and you're missing out.

Love does not envy, which means love is based in contentment, and you're being marketed to 24 hours a day to try and keep you discontent.

Love is patient, it's kind, it does not envy, it's not boastful, it's not arrogant, it's not self-seeking, which is the name of the game in our current culture.

I seek what I want, I follow my heart, I create my own truth.

Love isn't irritable, it's not grumpy, it doesn't take its own problems and throw it on everyone else to try to make everyone else feel as miserable as you do.

Love doesn't keep score, there's no records of wrongs, there's no holding grudges, there's true forgiveness.

There's not taking an offense and filing it away and pulling it out a year later to try to win an argument.

Love finds no joy in unrighteousness.

That's a confusing one.

Like who finds joy in unrighteousness?

You want to know the answer?

Everyone.

Sin is fun.

What sin does is it brings you instant gratification and then kills you at the end of it.

What sin does is it gives you a spoonful of sugar and then a pint of poison.

If sin wasn't fun, if it didn't give us some kind of instant hit, we wouldn't all struggle with it.

Love doesn't rejoice in unrighteousness, it rejoices in the truth.

And when you begin consistently walking out an agape kind of love, loving and living like Jesus actually did, only then will your eyes be open to the reality of the short-term gain that sin is offering you today and see it for what it actually is.

Love bears all things, it has fortitude, it can navigate difficult seasons, it can stand up under suffering, it can resist the urge to walk away when things get difficult.

Love believes all things.

It doesn't lose faith, even when God isn't showing up right on your agenda, even when the prayers that you're praying don't seem to get answered like you want, it bears all, it believes all love, hopes, and endures.

Hope is based on the promise of eternity, which gives us the strength to endure through all trials and tribulations, and then we get to the end, love never ends.

And that's where we stop the list at the wedding.

This is called verse 8, lowercase A, which means we're not showing you the full verse.

And here's the twist love never ends is not the end of a thought, it's not the end of Paul's love list.

When we read the rest of the chapter, what we find is love never ends is the beginning of a new thought.

Here's verse 8 in its entirety.

Love never ends.

But as for prophecies, they will come to an end.

You see, it's a contrast.

As for tongues, they will cease.

As for knowledge, it will come to an end.

Love never ends, not only is the beginning of a new thought, but it is a contrasting statement.

So where are we?

We went through our love list, that's the filter for how to love and live like Jesus.

Now, in verse 8, we're right back into the conversation about spiritual gifts.

What does he say?

Prophecy, spiritual gift, will come to an end.

Tongues, spiritual gift, will come to an end.

Knowledge, it will come to an end.

Remember, Paul promised I'm gonna show you an even better way, which ends up being the way of love.

And here, he shows definitively why it's better.

I'm gonna share two key ideas that have blown my mind in the last month.

And here's the first one: Love is the only thing that lasts.

Prophecies, tongues, knowledge, all of the spiritual gifts will come to an end, but not love.

Love is the only thing that lasts.

So, what does that mean?

Paul is gonna take the next section.

Of verses and explain.

In 9 and 10, he says this for we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will come to an end.

Paul is expanding our perspective.

He's actually expanding our scope to the highest possible level of eternity.

When he says when the perfect comes, he's talking about when Christ returns for us.

Love never ends, means never, like literally, never, ever through eternity.

Here's what it's actually saying: love is the only thing that lasts eternally.

Which means there is no other investment that we can make that has as great of a return as when we we agape love people like Christ loves us.

Paul actually emphasizes this when he says, for we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

In the Greek, this word literally means peace by peace by peace.

But when the perfect comes, the partial will come to an end.

Here's what's so extraordinary.

Paul is explaining that all other gifts we only have in part, and further, everything we experience in life, we only experience it peace by piece by piece.

Everything except love.

Love is the only thing that we can experience fully during our time on earth.

Love is the only thing that lasts eternally.

Love is the only thing we can experience fully.

Think about this.

The smartest people who have ever lived only held an ounce of the knowledge available in the universe.

The wisest philosophers only understood a fraction of a fraction of how life actually operates.

The most powerful rulers only held a small percentage of control, and only for a short span of time.

Not only that, love is the only thing that lasts forever.

Tongues, prophecy, even knowledge will go away someday.

To show this, Paul goes through two different metaphors.

We're gonna walk through them together.

In verse 11, he says, When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, and when I became a man, I put aside childish things.

Now, this verse has been taken out of its context to be used to tell people it's time to grow up.

It's time to start maturing and put on your big boy pants and start actually following Jesus.

Now that's true, and there are other passages, like in the book of Hebrews, that talk about that very thing.

But that's not what Paul means with this metaphor.

What Paul is doing is drawing a contrast, and it's a contrast between when we are children and what we know now as adults.

And there are certain things in your life that act almost as doors that when you walk through them, they shut behind you, and the door locks, and you can never go back.

There are things that you know now as an adult that you simply didn't know as a child, and you cannot unknow them.

And so, yes, as an adult, you can pretend to think like a child, you can pretend to reason like a child, you can even pretend to think or speak like a child.

You can pretend, but even that is often super off-putting.

Wow.

Okay, right there.

Right there is a problem.

There have been reports around the office that you have been talking baby talk.

Why would people say that?

Well, I have not good authority.

Would you say following?

Can you read that back to me?

And you have a hulu tummy.

So The Office, which is a show specifically built on the idea of cringe, made a whole segment out of how cringy it is for us as adults to try and revert back to being like little children in the same way.

When we get to eternity, when the perfect comes, when Christ returns, we will speak and think and reason differently.

Right now, we do those things in part, but in eternity, we will do them with perfect knowledge.

He he builds on this metaphor with a second metaphor.

He says, for now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, but then we'll see face to face.

For now I know in part, but then I will know fully as I am fully known.

We see the contrast two times it uses now and then.

And it makes clear the distinction between our earthly life right now and our eternal life that is coming.

You might find it interesting that Corinth was known as a producer of mirrors.

Now, they didn't have mirrors the way that we do.

What they would do is they would have very, very finely polished metals.

In Corinth, they typically used bronze.

Now, even the best mirrors of that day were really rough reflections.

And Paul says our understanding and our reasoning and our knowledge today is like a dim mirror, one that's not even buffed out real well.

We also know that when you look in a mirror, you don't actually see reality, you see a mirrored version of reality.

That's where we're at right now, just grasping for understanding, grasping for wisdom, grasping for knowledge of God.

But someday we will know fully.

Here's the best news.

Right now, God fully knows you.

God knows you infinitely more than you even know yourself.

And someday when we see Him, Paul says, we will know just as we are fully known.

Here's how Paul concludes.

Now, these three remain: faith, hope, and love.

But the greatest of these is love.

Love is the only thing that lasts forever.

It's the only thing we take with us into eternity.

Tongues, prophecy, knowledge, all of it will go away someday.

All of the spiritual gifts will cease.

Even faith and hope, right now we have faith, hope, and love.

But when Jesus comes, we will not even need faith or hope in the same way.

Almost 2,000 years ago, Tertullian wrote, rightly is love the greatest.

Here's why.

For faith departs when we are convinced by vision, by seeing God.

And hope vanishes when the things hoped for come about.

But love both continues to completion and it grows more when the perfect has been given, when Jesus returns.

Love outlasts us.

When we live lives that are characterized by Jesus' kind of love, we are bringing an eternal reality down into our temporal world.

Knowledge isn't like that.

Knowledge is complete in God, and we just learn it piece by piece.

Wisdom isn't like that.

Wisdom's complete in God, and we're just grasping for it part by part.

Prophecy isn't like that.

The proclamation of God's word, that's my whole job.

I will need a new job in heaven.

There's no preachers in heaven.

That gift will cease.

When Jesus was on earth, he had his disciples there.

None of the disciples were ever like, I think it's my turn to preach.

You know why?

Because Jesus was there.

Your 401k will not follow you into heaven.

Your power, status, and position will not make it past this life.

Your prominence, your wealth, your material possessions.

Only love that lasts eternally.

And so often we take the gifts and the talents that God has given us and we use them to build things that will soon fade away and our very short lives on earth come to completion.

But if we will use those gifts in order to live and love like Christ, love lasts eternally.

And there's nothing else you can fully experience during your time on earth.

We experience things in bits and pieces, but you can fully experience the love of Christ.

And you can love others like Christ.

And it's like a bridge between heaven and earth.

You know this if someone has ever really loved you with an agape love.

You know this if you have ever really loved someone else like Christ.

You're actually getting this tiny peak into eternity.

Faith, hope, and love.

But the greatest is love.

Our life teams, which if you're not in one, I'd encourage you to check it out.

Some of you maybe even need to lead a life team.

Just do something fun and then get people together and try to apply the word into your life.

Get in Christian community.

For our life teams, you're gonna be challenged this week to memorize 1 Corinthians 13, 4 through 7.

It's four verses.

You know them, I'll read them to you again quickly.

Love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy, it's not boastful or arrogant, it's not rude or self-seeking, it's not irritable, it does not keep a record of wrongs, love finds no joy in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth, it bears all and believes all and hopes all and endures all things.

When I met Katie, I fell in love very quickly, and it was concerning to me because I had really experienced Jesus in the most profound way only a couple of years earlier.

And when you really experience Jesus, one of the things that happens, and you see this all the time in scripture, is someone understands who Jesus is, and they just kind of fall on their face and are like, Jesus, get away from me.

I'm sinful.

I don't even deserve to be in your presence.

What is that?

When you get a full picture of Jesus, how he has pursued you with a perfect love, it draws a contrast to your own brokenness and sinfulness.

And so I had fallen in love, but I was concerned that I didn't really know how to love Katie well.

And one of the things I did early in our relationship is I memorized those four verses.

I lived it out very imperfectly, but in my actions, reactions, and decisions, I had a spirit-guided filter for whether or not I was loving well.

I did it very imperfectly, but I will say this I got her to marry me.

So it worked at some level, and it can work for you as well.

This is what love looks like.

I would challenge you.

Some of you can sing 150 songs off the top of your head.

It's four verses.

How God has asked us to love.

Here's what I care about as your pastor.

Um, I don't care if we are known as like the smartest church, the most affluent church, that's probably not gonna happen, the wisest church.

I I actually don't even care if we're known as the most impactful church.

I care that we are known for our love.

And if we are known for our love, our purpose and our impact will take care of itself.

Two truths that are in the process of really changing my life love is the only thing that lasts eternally.

That is a mind-altering thought.

Number two, love is the only thing that we can fully experience on this earth.

And if those two things are true, which I believe they are, then we should invest our lives into learning how to love.

Would you pray with me right where you are?

Just bow your head and close your eyes.

Nothing magic, just create some space for yourself and for the people around you.

I wonder if you could get a vision of what it would look like for your life to truly be characterized by love, for your marriage to fall under the rubric of love that is patient and kind, not envious, not self-seeking, not bitter, not grumpy, not holding grudges, what it would look like with your friend group at work.

We know in the gospels that Jesus told us that we are to love and even to love agape our enemies.

God is not interested in empty spiritual activity.

He's interested in us taking our gifts and using them through the lens of love.

I wonder if you're here today or you're streaming online with us right now and you've never experienced the love of Jesus for yourself.

When Jesus was on earth, he told his disciples, greater love has no one than this, than to lay his life down for his friends.

That was a big world-changing thought.

And later, his friends watched him lay down his life.

You need to know that Jesus said God loved the world so much that he sent Jesus, his only son.

And he promised that anyone who believes in Jesus will never perish, never die.

But in the moment we believe, we're given eternal life.

Scripture says this is how you know God loves you, that while you are still sinners, still in rebellion, still trying to live as your own God, still separate from your heavenly Father, while you are still sinners, Christ came and he died for you.

If you're here today and you have never had a moment where you have put your faith in Jesus, I want to ask you, with everyone's eyes closed around you, for a moment of courage, if you're ready today to make that decision, to just lift your hand up into the air where I can see it.

Amen.

Amen.

So here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna stay in this prayerful state.

For those of you who lifted your hands, and for all the believers in the room, I want us all together to pray a simple prayer acknowledging our faith.

Let's pray something like this Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God, that you came to earth, that you died for my sins, and I believe you rose again.

Today I thank you for a new eternal life.

Let me pray over you.

Uh, Jesus, we continue at Metachurch to celebrate with all of heaven for life's being made new, new creations.

The old has passed away, the new has come.

I pray, God, that for those who pray this for the first time, who accepted you, Jesus, this wouldn't just be the end of something, but the beginning of something.

A life of purpose and power.

That over time they would come to experience all that you offer us.

We love you and we thank you for what you're doing here at MetaCurch.

And I pray all of us, whether we've been following you for decades or whether we started believing in you today, that more than anything we would live lives of love.

We pray all these things in the powerful name of Jesus.

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.